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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859
+by  Various
+
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+Title: Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859
+
+Author:  Various
+
+Release Date: December, 2005  [EBook #9467]
+[This file was first posted on October 3, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. IV, NO. 26, DECEMBER, 1859 ***
+
+
+
+
+E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, Tonya Allen, and Project Gutenberg
+Distributed Proofreaders
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+
+THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS
+
+VOL. IV, DECEMBER, 1859, NO. XXVI
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EXPERIENCE OF SAMUEL ABSALOM, FILIBUSTER.
+
+
+In the winter of 1856, the outlook of the present writer, known
+somewhere as Samuel Absalom, became exceedingly troubled, and indeed
+scarcely respectable. As gold-digger in California, Fortune had looked
+upon him unkindly, and he was grown to be one of the indifferent,
+ragged children of the earth. Those who came behind him might read as
+they ran, stamped on canvas once white, "Stockton Mills. Self-Rising
+Flour!"--the well-known label in California, at that day, of greatest
+embarrassment.
+
+One morning, after sleeping out the night in the streets of Oroville,
+he got up, and read these words, or some like them, in the village
+newspaper:--"The heavy frost which fell last night brings with it at
+least one source of congratulation for our citizens. Soon the crowd of
+vagrant street-sleepers, which infests our town, will be forced to go
+forth and work for warmer quarters. It has throughout this summer been
+the ever-present nuisance and eyesore of our otherwise beautiful and
+romantic moonlit nights." "Listen to this scoundrel!" said he; "how he
+can insult an unfortunate man! Makes his own living braying, lying, and
+flinging dirt, and spits upon us sad devils who fail to do it in an
+honest manner! Ah, the times are changing in California! Once, no one
+knew but this battered hat I sit under might partially cover the head
+of a nobleman or man of honor; but men begin to show their quality by
+the outside, as they do elsewhere in the world, and are judged and
+spoken to accordingly. I will shake California dust from my feet, and
+be gone!"
+
+In this mood, I thought of General Walker, down there in Nicaragua,
+striving to regenerate the God-forsaken Spanish Americans. "I will go
+down and assist General Walker," said I. So next morning found me on my
+way to San Francisco, with a roll of blankets on my shoulder and some
+small pieces of money in my pocket. Arrived in the city, I sought out
+General Walker's agent, one Crittenden by name, a respectable,
+honest-looking man, and obtained from him the promise of two hundred
+and fifty acres of Nicaraguan land and twenty-five dollars per month
+for service in the army of General Walker, and also a steerage-ticket
+of free passage to the port of San Juan del Norte by one of the
+steamers of the Nicaragua Transit Line. Of my voyage down I do not
+intend to speak; several unpublished sensations might have been picked
+up in that steerage crowd of bog Irish, low Dutch, New Yorkers, and
+California savages of every tribe, returning home in red flannel shirts
+and boots of cowhide large; but my business is not with them, and I say
+only that after a brief and prosperous voyage we anchored early one
+morning in the harbor of San Juan del Sur, at that time part of the
+dominions of General Walker.
+
+Whilst the great crowd of home-bound passengers, with infinite din and
+shouting, are bustling down the gangways toward the shore, our little
+party of twenty or thirty Central American regenerators assemble on the
+ship's bow, and answer to our names as read out by a small,
+mild-featured man, whom at a glance I should have thought no
+filibuster. It seems he was our captain _pro tem._, and bore
+recommendations from the agent at San Francisco to a commission in the
+Nicaraguan service. He had made the voyage on the cabin side of the
+ship, and I saw him now for the first time. His looks betokened no
+fire-eating soul; but your brave man has not necessarily a truculent
+countenance; and I was, indeed, thankful for the prospect of fighting
+under an honest man and no cut-throat outwardly.
+
+We followed this our chief down the vessel's side to the shore,
+catching a glimpse of Fate as we passed over the old hulk in our
+course. It was one of Walker's soldiers in the last stage of fever. His
+skin was as yellow and glazed as parchment, and seemed drawn over a
+mere fleshless skeleton. Poor man! he lay there watching the noisy
+passengers descend from the ship. "His eyes are with his heart, and
+that is far away," carried back by the bustling scene to another
+shore,--the goal of that passing crowd,--never more to gladden _his_
+dim eye. The unrelenting grasp of death was on him; and even now,
+perhaps, the waves are rolling his bleaching bones to and fro on that
+distant beach. I say that this dismal omen damped the spirit of us all.
+But nothing in this world can long dishearten the brave; we soon grow
+lighter, and, marching along in the crowd, blackguard effectively the
+witty or witless dogs that crack jokes at us and forebode hard fate
+ahead of us.
+
+When we came into the town of San Juan, we found there a general and
+colonel of the filibuster army, and reported ourselves forthwith as a
+party of recruits just arrived and at their service. The general was
+altogether absorbed hobnobbing with the old friends whom he had
+discovered in the passenger crowd, and would not listen to us; but the
+colonel pointed out an empty building, and told us to drop our luggage
+there, and amuse ourselves until we heard further from him. This town
+of San Juan del Sur is entirely the creation of the Nicaragua Transit
+Company, and is the Pacific terminus of the Isthmus portage-road. It
+consisted of half a dozen board hotels, and a litter of native
+grass-thatched huts, and lay at the foot of a high, woody spur, which
+curves out into the sea and forms the southern rim of a beautiful
+little harbor, completed by another less elevated point jutting out on
+the north. The country inland is entirely shut out by a dense forest,
+into which the Transit road plunges and is immediately lost. Whilst I
+was walking about this sequestered place, now all alive with the
+California passengers, a party of Walker's cavalry came riding in from
+the interior, and at once drew all eyes upon them. They were mounted on
+horses or mules of every color, shape, and size,--themselves
+yellow-faced, ragged, and dirty; nevertheless, their deadly garniture,
+rifles, revolvers, and bowie-knives, and their fierce and shaggy looks,
+kept them from being laughed at. They dismounted and tied their beasts
+in front of one of the hotels, and then dispersed about the town in
+search of whatever was refreshing.
+
+From these men we learned that General Walker's prospects were never so
+fair as now. His enemies, they said, worn out and ready to despair, had
+drawn off to Granada, where they now lay irresolute and quarrelling
+amongst themselves. General Walker held the Transit route from ocean to
+ocean, and a single filibuster might walk all through the country
+without danger. This news was not satisfactory to all of us. A small,
+bright-eyed youth, from the California theatre, who had been noted on
+the voyage down for his loud talking, declared that for his part he had
+come to Nicaragua to fight, and, now that there was no more fighting to
+be done, he would pass through and take ship for the United States. The
+filibusters smiled at each other grimly, and told him, if that was the
+difficulty, he had better not go, for Walker intended driving the enemy
+out of Granada shortly, and he would there find all that he wanted. And
+well it was that they satisfied him to stay; for on that day this youth
+went without his dinner because he had no cent in his pocket to buy it,
+and ship-captains refuse to assist all such as lie under that unhappy
+cloud. Oh, thou light-bodied son of Thespis! Where art thou now? I saw
+thee last, with heavy musket on thy shoulder, marching wearily to the
+assault of San Jorge. Did the vultures tear thee there? Or art thou
+still somewhere amongst men, blowing the great deeds wrought by thy
+feathery arm that day? I hope thou wast not left on that dismal shore!
+
+Late in the afternoon, when the Californians had departed for Virgin
+Bay, where they were to embark on Lake Nicaragua, our party of recruits
+took the road for the same place, on our way to Rivas, the
+head-quarters of the filibuster army. A short distance from the
+Pacific, we began the ascent of the Cordillera chain, not very
+formidable here, but broken into spurs and irregular ridges, with deep
+umbrageous hollows, and little streams of clear water winding noisily
+among them. Coming down from this rugged high ground, we entered a wide
+plain, stretching away to Lake Nicaragua, out of whose waters we saw
+the blue cones of Ometepec and Madeira lifting their heads up above
+all, and capped with clouds. Before we had crossed the twelve miles
+between ocean and lake, and entered Virgin Bay, it was dark, and the
+Californians were already hurrying aboard a little steamer, which
+puffed and whistled at the wharf. In half an hour afterwards they were
+steaming across the lake for the entrance or head of the Rio San Juan.
+
+It was here that we ate our first meal at the expense of General
+Walker, or, rather, at the expense of an innkeeper of Virgin Bay; for
+he, our entertainer, looked upon us as little better than sorners,
+declaring he had already fed filibusters to the value of six thousand
+dollars, without other return than General Walker's promise to pay,
+which he professed to esteem but slightly or not at all. These
+hotel-keepers of Virgin Bay and San Juan, who came in the wake of the
+Transit Company, and made their money by the California passengers,
+seemed to be a good deal worried by General Walker. Their business was
+no longer profitable, and their families lived in a state of continual
+alarm between the combatants; yet they were not allowed the alternative
+of flight; for it was General Walker's policy, wise or unwise, when he
+had got a man into Nicaragua who was useful to him, to keep him there;
+and the last Transit Company, being entirely in his interest, carried
+no emigrant out of the Isthmus unfurnished with a passport from
+President Walker himself.
+
+That night we slept in an empty building, and were aroused next
+morning at daybreak, and ordered to continue our march to Rivas, which
+was said to lie nine miles to the north of us. We set forward,
+grumbling sorely for lack of breakfast, and stiff from our
+twelve-miles' march of the evening before. Our path led us sometimes
+under the deep shades of a tangled forest, sometimes along the open
+lake-beach, on which the waves rolled with almost the swell of an ocean
+surf. A few miles short of Rivas we emerged from the ragged forest, and
+entered a beautiful, cultivated country, through which we passed along
+green lanes fringed with broad-leaved plantains, bending oranges,
+tufted palms, and all tropical fruit-trees,--a very Nicaraguan paradise
+to the sore-footed wayfarer. At last this enchanting approach brought
+us to the outskirts of Rivas, and we entered a narrow, mud-walled
+street, and never halted until we came out upon the central and only
+_plaza_ of the miserable town. Our incumbered march, without breakfast,
+after a long, inactive sea-voyage, had wearied us sadly; and we threw
+our luggage upon, the ground, lay down upon it, and ruminated on a
+scene of little comfort to the faint-hearted, if there were any such in
+our little crowd of world-battered and battering strong men, topers,
+and vagabonds.
+
+The square we had entered was perhaps one hundred yards or more in
+width, much overgrown with grass, and surrounded by buildings of mean
+and gloomy aspect. Six narrow and sordid streets debouched into
+it,--two coming with parallel courses from the west, two from the east,
+and one entering at each eastern angle from the north and south. It was
+at the opening of the last of these that we rested, and received our
+first impressions of the wretched _plaza_,--since hung for us with a
+thousand dirty reminiscences.
+
+It displayed none of those architectural embellishments and attempts at
+magnificence which usually centre about the _plazas_ of the
+Spanish-American capitals,--not even a carved door-facing or trifling
+ornament of any description. The entire side on our right, between the
+two eastern streets, was occupied by the cracked and roofless walls of
+an ancient church or convent, which had long been a neglected ruin. The
+fallen stones and mortar had raised a sloping embankment high up its
+venerable sides; and the small trees, here and there shooting above the
+luxuriant grass and running vines which, covered this climbing pile of
+rubbish, waved their branches over the top of the mouldering walls. The
+interior of the crumbling structure was a wilderness of rank grass and
+weeds, the elysium of reptiles, iguanas, centipedes, and ten thousand
+poisonous insects. On our left, opposite the falling church, was
+another ruin; but its vulgar features owned none of the green and mossy
+dignity of age, which gave a melancholy beauty to the former. It was a
+glaring pile of naked dust and rubbish, and its shot crumbled walls and
+riddled doors told the tale of its destruction. The entire front on
+that side of the _plaza_ was in ruins, with the exception of one stout
+building on the corner diagonally opposed to us. The northern side was
+inclosed by a long, low building, with its elevated doors partly hidden
+by the far-projecting, red-tiled roof; and in front of it six or eight
+grim pieces of cannon, mounted upon wheels, gaped their black mouths
+toward us. Our own side of the square was occupied by a building
+exactly like the one opposite. The low-reaching roof was supported by
+wooden posts, and the long porch or corridor between the posts and the
+wall was paved with large earthen tiles. The doors, elevated several
+feet above this pavement to baffle the heat of a tropical sun, were
+darkened by the overhanging roof; and this, together with the effect of
+the small wooden-grated windows and the absence of furniture, gave the
+rooms a gloomy and comfortless aspect. All these buildings, with the
+exception of the ruined convent, which was of stone, were built of
+_adobes_, or large sun-dried blocks of mud; and their walls, doors, and
+staring red roofs were everywhere bruised or perforated with shot.
+
+Such was the _plaza_ and middle spot of Rivas, a town of some two or
+three thousand inhabitants, where General Walker stood at bay many
+weary days against the combined Costa Ricans, Guatemalans, and
+Chamorristas, and was netted at last. But these observations of the
+squalid _plaza_ were of another date. At present our eyes and thoughts
+fasten upon the crowd of melancholy, fever-eaten filibusters, who walk
+with heavy pace up and down the corridors, and along the paths which
+cross the grass-grown plaza. There was a morbid, yellowish glaze,
+almost universal, on their faces, and an unnatural listlessness and
+utter lack of animation in all their movements and conversation, which
+contrasted painfully with the boisterous hilarity and rugged
+healthiness of our late Californian fellow-travellers. Their appearance
+was most forlorn and despicable in a military view,--no soldier's
+uniform or spirit amongst them, only the poor man's uniform of rags and
+dirt, and the spirit of careless, disease-worn, doomed men.
+Nevertheless, all bore about them some emblem of their trade; some, for
+the most part with difficulty, carried muskets or rifles; some, the
+better-dressed and healthier looking, wore swords,--a weapon, as I
+afterwards found, distinctive of commissioned officers; some had with
+them only their pistols or cartridge-boxes, which, belted around the
+middle, served a double purpose in keeping up their ragged breeches.
+Then almost all of them, as they moved about or lay in the shade of the
+corridors, sucked or gnawed some fruit of the country,--the only thing
+which they seemed to do with energy or due sensation.
+
+Whilst I sat looking about at these miserable people, I was accosted by
+an individual whom I had known in California. He professed to be glad
+to see me; told me Nicaragua was the finest of countries; "but," said
+he, with some latent humor of too ghastly a hue, "I'm sorry you didn't
+come down with us three months ago, as you thought of doing; we've all
+been promoted. The officers and two-thirds of the men have died, and
+nearly all the rest of us are promoted. I myself am captain. You made a
+great mistake, you see."
+
+"My friend," said I, "you needn't try to frighten me. I've lived in a
+tropical climate before, and it is the healthiest part of the world for
+men of my temperament."
+
+"Then you'll be promoted," said he. "A healthy man is sure of his
+reward in this service. Do you see that fellow crossing the plaza with
+the old shoes in his hand?"
+
+"Yes," said I,--"poor man!"
+
+"He has got them off of some dead man's feet out at the hospital. They
+die out there night and day. All these men you see here will die in six
+months."
+
+After running through this humorous vein, he told me what adventures he
+had seen since joining the filibuster army; which, however, I have no
+intention to recount;--honor enough, if I may relate veridically, and
+with passable phrase, my own tamer befallings.
+
+Long after we had grown sufficiently hungry, one came from General
+Walker, and led us to a house in the outer parts of the town, where, he
+informed us, we had been allotted to quarter for the present. The same
+person further instructed us to send to the commissary, and we should
+obtain wherewith to satisfy our hunger. We did so gladly; and having
+drawn a supply of beef, tortillas, and plantains, were comparatively
+content for the rest of the day.
+
+After several days of idle loitering about the camp, our party was
+separated and ranked in divers old companies of the army. Myself and
+some few others obtained seats amongst the horsemen, and had reason to
+think ourselves happy; for the mounted part of the service was so much
+more esteemed, that lieutenants of the foot companies had been known to
+drop their rank voluntarily and take grade as private soldiers in the
+saddle.
+
+But first it was necessary to achieve our horses before we could mount;
+and to that end we were permitted, and indeed commanded, by General
+Walker, President of Nicaragua, to search the surrounding _haciendas_
+and stables, until we were satisfactorily provided. Accordingly we set
+out one morning on this errand, furnished, all of us, with rifles and
+store of ammunition, against the possibility of collision with such
+countryfolk as might desire over-ardently to keep their horses by them.
+It will not be profitable to follow our search over that magnificent
+country, diversified with groves of cocoa and plantain trees, patches
+of sugar-cane and maize, with here and there a picturesque grange
+embowered amidst orange and palm trees. Suffice it to say, that all the
+animals in the vicinity of Rivas, fit for warlike purposes, had been
+removed, and toward evening we found ourselves out amongst the hills to
+the west, beyond the circle of cultivation, and as yet with no horses
+in tow. From the summit of a high, grass-crowned hill we swept all the
+surrounding country;--toward the east spread a vast sea of verdure,
+rolled into gentle hollows and ridges, broken by the red roofs of
+Rivas, San Jorge, and Obraja; and beyond all, the lake stretching into
+misty remoteness, with its islands, and the ever-notable volcanoes,
+Madeira and Ometepec, rising abruptly out of it. It was a glorious
+scene, worthy of reverie. But we must scan it as Milton's Devil--to
+compare us with one far above us--did the hardly fairer garden of
+Paradise,--with thoughts of prey in our hearts. Nor were we
+disappointed, any more than that other greater one; for on top of an
+open ridge, a short distance west of us, we saw a solitary horse,
+tethered, and feeding composedly, as if he had nothing to fear out here
+amongst the hills. Part of us keep our eyes upon him, lest his tricky
+owner should get the alarm and remove him; whilst others plunge into
+the coppice which fills the intervening hollow, and soon reappear on
+the ridge beyond.
+
+Whilst we stood about the horse, communing doubtfully, not knowing
+where to find another, an old man approached us, and, with rueful look
+and gesture, besought us not to deprive him of the sole support of his
+life.
+
+"Beyond that hill," said he, "the Padre has many better horses. _El
+Padre esta un rico hombre. Yo estoy muy pobre, Senores_."
+
+Set it down to the credit of filibusters, that we gladly surrendered
+this old man his horse, and betook ourselves to the rear of the hill
+which he pointed out to us; and there, after some search, we found, in
+close covert of tangled and almost impenetrable bushes, a small
+_corral_ of mules and horses, which the Padre had begrudged the service
+of General Walker. For my own share in the spoils of this Trojan
+adventure, I chose a well-legged mule, young, lively, and well enough
+looking generally; and thenceforward I was entitled to call myself
+"Mounted Ranger," according to General Walker's rather high-sounding
+classification.
+
+Let no one reflect upon the writer because he assisted in robbing this
+churchman of his horses. For him there was no choice; and if he is
+chargeable with moral depravity, it must be elsewhere,--forsooth, in
+joining with one who made war unprovided with a military chest
+sufficient to cover expenses. However, this is no matter, one way or
+the other. The private character of the relator, Samuel Absalom, is not
+before the reader; nor is it to be expected that he will care to turn
+his eye upon it for a moment.
+
+The ranger company in which we had been ranked was stationed below, on
+the Transit road; but as it would return to head-quarters as soon as
+the California immigrants, now due, had crossed over to the Pacific, we
+were ordered to await it there. We spent the interim foraging for our
+animals or loitering about the camp. It may be that some short
+exposition of filibuster spirit and circumstances, as we saw them at
+this leisure time, will have interest for one or two. A few weeks
+before our arrival, the prospect of the Americans in Nicaragua was
+black enough, and, indeed, despaired of by most. General Henningsen,
+with the greater part of the force, was cooped up and half starved in
+Granada, by three or four thousand Costa Ricans and Chamorristas;
+General Walker, with the remainder, lay lower down on the Isthmus,
+watched by a second division of the enemy, and too weak to give him any
+assistance. General Henningsen's men, reduced to a mere handful by
+starvation and the bullets of the enemy, could hold out but a day or
+two longer; and then the entire force of the allies would unite and
+beat up General Walker, and end the squalid game. The Central Americans
+were certain of their prey. But just at this juncture several hundred
+healthy Americans landed on the Transit road, and, placing them on one
+of the lake steamers, together with his old force, General Walker took
+them up to Granada, sent them ashore in bungos under a heavy fire, told
+them to do or die, and then paddled out into the lake with the steamer.
+It was a good stroke. The men, without other hope, fought their way
+over three successive barricades to General Henningsen, brought him
+out, setting fire to the city, reembarked on the steamer, and finally
+landed again at the fort of San Jorge, two miles east of Rivas. After
+that, General Walker gathered all his force at Rivas, and the enemy
+drew off to Granada, with some thirty or forty miles between.
+
+When we reached Nicaragua, in the latter part of December, 1856, the
+entire force of the filibusters was still in Rivas, with the exception
+of a small party stationed on the Rio San Juan, beyond the lake, and
+communicating with the Isthmus force only by means of two small
+steamers, "La Virgen" and "San Carlos," which plied across the lake
+between the head of the river and Virgin Bay, on the California
+passenger-line. The allies had remained inactive at Granada, and were
+said to be broken into factions, and daily deserting and returning home
+in large bodies. The isthmus of Rivas was free ground to the
+filibusters, and a score of rangers might forage with little danger
+from the Costa Rican line almost to Granada. Their force outside of the
+hospital, as we saw it at head-quarters, numbered probably from eight
+hundred to one thousand men,--one-third mere skeletons, scarcely able
+to go through drill on the _plaza_,--fit only to bury,--and the great
+majority of the remainder turning yellow, shaken daily by chills and
+fever, and soon to be as worthless as the others. They were all
+foreigners,--Americans, Germans, Irish, French, and English,--with the
+exception of one small company of natives, captained by a half-breed
+Mexican. It was said, however, that many of the poorer natives were
+willing to fight against the Chamorristas,--the aristocratic Nicaraguan
+faction originally opposed to Patricio Rivas and the Liberals, now in
+arms against General Walker,--but that they made miserable soldiers
+outside of a barricade, and General Walker had no arms to throw away
+upon them. For sustenance, the filibusters had the fruits around Rivas,
+and a small ration of tortillas and beef, furnished them daily by
+Walker's commissary. The beef, as we heard, was supplied by Senor
+Pineda, General Walker's most powerful and faithful friend amongst the
+natives; and the tortillas were bought from the native women in the
+neighborhood of Rivas. It was the quality of the food--assisted largely
+by exposure, irregular fasts, and _aguardiente_--which made Nicaragua
+so fatal to the filibusters. The isthmus between the lake and the
+Pacific, swept nine months of the year by cool eastern breezes, is not
+unhealthy. But the ration of beef and tortillas (simple maize cakes
+without salt) was too scanty and intermittent; and in the absence of
+proper food, the men were driven to fill their stomachs with the
+unwholesome fruits which everywhere surrounded their quarters, and but
+few were able to stand it many months.
+
+As to the spirit which seemed to animate these men, it was certainly
+most discouraging. They had lost all thought--supposing them to have
+ever had such thought--of regenerating Central America; and most of
+them wished no better thing than to fill their bellies, or to escape
+from Nicaragua. Many of them were sunk into a physical and mental
+lethargy, thinking of nothing and caring for nothing, and were gone,
+not a few, even into lunacy. Some cursed General Walker for enticing
+them there under false pretences. There were men with families who
+professed to have come there to settle and cultivate the soil, having
+been persuaded that the war was ended and the country prepared for
+peaceful immigration. Some had paid their own passage, purposing merely
+to reconnoitre, and remain or not, as it pleased them; but when they
+landed in Nicaragua, General Walker placed muskets in their unwilling
+hands, and there he had kept them, fighting, not for himself or his
+promises, but for life. It disgusted others that the service was not
+only almost certain death and thankless, but was altogether
+unprofitable. It was General Walker's practice, and had been always, to
+discharge his soldiers' wages with scrip of no cash value whatever, or
+so little that many neglected to draw it when due them. And this was
+concealed at their enlistment. Indeed, the hatred towards General
+Walker and the service seemed almost universal amongst the privates,
+and they would have revolted and thrown away their arms at any moment,
+had there been hope of escape in that. But they were held together by
+common danger in a treacherous or hostile country, separated by broad
+oceans and impassable forests from a land of safe refuge. There was,
+besides, distrust of each other; and fear, though no love, of General
+Walker. He was said to have the iron will and reckless courage of the
+true man of destiny. At one time, so they told us, a large body of
+fresh, able-bodied men, just arrived in Nicaragua, refused to join the
+filibusters on account of some disappointment about the amount of
+promised wages. General Walker led out his crowd of yellow men, whom
+the newcomers might have knocked down with the wind of their fists, and
+so overawed them by this display of resolution that they forthwith
+swallowed their complaints and joined his ranks with as good a grace as
+they might. I myself, in these first days, saw a little incident which
+impressed me that the man was no trifler. I was in his quarters one
+day, when an officer came in and made a report to him about some matter
+of his duty.
+
+"Captain," said General Walker, looking serenely over the man's head,
+"if this is the way you are going to do business, Nicaragua has no
+further need for you. We want nothing of this sort done here, Sir."
+
+The fierce, big-whiskered officer said nothing, but looked cowed; and,
+indeed, not without excuse; for though there was a nasal whine in the
+tone of the little General, and no great fire in his unmeaning eye,
+there was yet a quiet self-reliance about him extremely imposing, and
+which, as I thought, reached back of any temporary sufflation as tyrant
+of Rivas, and was based upon perennial character. Nor is it contrary,
+so far as I know, to the laws of psychology, for a man to be endued
+with all the self-reliance of Bonaparte, with, at the same time, an
+unusually short gift of the great man's marvellous insight, military or
+other.
+
+Such an all-pervading demoralized spirit amongst the men as this I have
+slightly marked was sure to be contagious; and I am persuaded that
+there were few of us who came down there with enthusiasm or admiration
+for General Walker, but lost most of it during our first days' mixture
+in Rivas.
+
+At the end of some six or eight days, our company came up from the
+Transit road, without the California passengers having as yet made
+their appearance. General Walker was expecting by this steamer, so long
+due on the Atlantic side, a large body of recruits with cannon, bombs,
+and other military stores, whose arrival would put him in condition to
+attack the enemy at Granada. He began to grow uneasy; and at length
+sent an armed row-boat across the lake to the head of the Rio San Juan
+to get intelligence. The little party which held that river were
+thought to be in no danger behind the walls of San Carlos and Castillo,
+and still further protected by the impenetrable forests which stretched
+backward from either bank; but now it began to be whispered that
+General Walker had committed a fatal blunder in not using the surest
+means to keep his only communication with the Atlantic open.
+
+In the mean while our company of rangers was ordered back to the
+Transit road, to remain until the passengers crossed. We rode down by a
+trail that lay nearer the Pacific than the one by which we had first
+approached Rivas.
+
+We found the same desolate, vine-netted forest; but on this route it
+was broken at several points by grassy savannas, dotted thinly with
+calabash-trees, and browsed by a few wild mules and cattle. In one of
+these openings, several miles from the Transit road, we passed a
+red-tiled building, the only one of any sort on the trail beyond the
+ring-fenced cultivation of Rivas. It was known as the Jocote
+Ranch-house, and became afterwards the scene of a bloody defeat for the
+filibusters.
+
+Our ride terminated at a large open shed, standing on the Transit road,
+two miles east of San Juan, which had been erected by the Transit
+Company, and was used by them as shelter for their carriages. Here,
+together with a second company of mounted rangers, we were to quarter
+until the arrival of the California passengers; and then it was to be
+our duty to guard those feeble travellers through the dominions of
+President Walker to the Pacific. Our own company numbered some thirty
+heads,--men and officers,--and being but lately come to Nicaragua, were
+yet tolerably healthy and lively,--although shaken at times by chills
+and melancholy, and nearly all turning perceptibly yellow. At all times
+of the day, when not in the presence of food or drink, some of them
+were bewailing the hour they came to Nicaragua, and sighing sadly to
+escape; and had Samuel Absalom come there from any light motive of
+vanity, he had surely repented with them: as it was, he had seen a
+worse day; the life, too, was not without charms for some men, and his
+heart stayed within him through all. The other company was even smaller
+than ours, older soldiers, and in much worse health,--many of them
+having a chill daily, others wasted with perpetual diarrhoea.
+
+Our routine of duty at this camp was, to ride each day into the forest
+and hunt our ration of beef, to water our horses, and to stand an
+hour's guard occasionally at night; the remainder of consciousness we
+spent broiling and eating cow's flesh, sucking sugar-cane, and waging
+horrid warfare against a host of ravenous ticks and crawling creatures
+of basest name.
+
+One day, after we had so passed it off for a week or more, a report
+reached us from Virgin Bay, that one of the Transit steamers had been
+seen to pass up the lake toward Granada, without stopping to land the
+passengers. A little after came an order from the colonel of the
+rangers directing our party to ride with all haste to Virgin Bay, and
+garrison it against the enemy. We mounted immediately and rode over the
+Transit as fast as such beasts as we had could carry us. On the way we
+met some of the American residents of Virgin Bay, with carpet-bags in
+their hands, hurrying across to find comfort near the emigrant steamer,
+which still awaited her passengers in the harbor of San Juan. They were
+a good deal frightened, and said an attack was expected on Virgin Bay
+at any hour.
+
+When we came into the town, it was dark, and, having no time to lose in
+getting out the pickets, our horses were left tied under saddle in the
+street, and we took station, four at a post, out on the several
+approaches to the town. It seemed that nothing was known with certainty
+of the enemy; but it was doubted by no one, since the steamer had
+passed in sight of her wharf without making or answering signals, that
+the enemy were in possession of her; and it seemed probable that they
+would land somewhere that night, and attack before General Walker had
+time to prepare for them. Our force to oppose them, should they attempt
+to land at Virgin Bay, the only convenient place with a pier on the
+whole lake, was scarcely thirty in all,--a detachment from both
+companies having been sent a few days before to Rivas; and of this
+force, the privates, to a man nearly, were wanted to furnish out the
+picket-guards,--leaving a reserve body in the citadel of some
+half-dozen officers armed mostly with revolvers.
+
+All that night we listened anxiously to the ceaseless din of the lake
+breaking upon the shore; but it brought no enemy, and at morning we
+were released from guard and sent out to forage. At our shed-camp of
+the previous week the animals were turned out to feed in an inclosure,
+and we were spared the troublesome duty of foraging. But at Virgin Bay
+we were forced to go at it again under disadvantages; for the town had
+no surrounding circle of cultivation like that of Rivas,--having been
+but recently redeemed from the forest by the Transit Company,--and our
+only resource was a few distant _ranchos_ scattered up and down the
+lake shore. Beside this, we had the daily duty, as before, of searching
+the open savannas in the forest for beef,--the commissary department
+furnishing us no part of a ration but bread,--and other irregular
+expeditions, which kept us in the saddle the greater part of the day.
+
+Almost a week had passed in this manner, with no appearance or news of
+the enemy, and we had grown heartily tired of riding and watching to no
+purpose, when one day the steamer hove in sight towards the north; and
+steaming down she went to land, almost directly opposite Virgin Bay,
+against the island of Ometepec. Day after day she lay there immovable,
+with her white side gleaming dimly across the water, and far out of the
+reach of us wistful filibusters;--for although there was a small brig
+of General Walker's floating beside the pier which ran out into the
+lake, yet it was out of repair; and, in any state, the wind blew too
+strongly and constantly from the northeast for a sail vessel to make
+the island, which lay almost in its teeth. Nevertheless, carpenters
+were set at work on it, and row-boats, borrowed of the vessels in San
+Juan harbor, were hauled over the Transit road; and it was said that
+the old brig was to be filled with soldiers and worked across to the
+island by aid of the row-boats. The thing seemed far from impossible.
+The space between the island and Virgin Bay was not above ten or twelve
+miles, and for part of the distance, under lee of the great volcano,
+the wind was lull. Could the brig be worked round the wind and brought
+into this calm water, the towing thenceforward was easy; and all this
+done in the space of one night, the surprise and recapture of the
+steamer were certain. In the mean while a detachment of foot marched
+down daily from Rivas, and, without giving us any relief, marched as
+regularly back again. Our hard-worked garrison, almost worn down by
+watching and riding, and, at sight of these men, hoping always to be
+relieved, snarled bitterly at such apparently useless expenditure of
+leg-muscle,--an article, truly, of which those lean, saffron-colored
+trampers had but too scanty supply for ordinary need.
+
+One night, after the detachment of foot had gone, and there was no
+force but the rangers in the town, a large light, supposed to be under
+the boilers of the steamer, was seen on the water approaching from the
+north, and it was thought that the enemy were coming at last to attack
+us. However, when the light came almost opposite, it made toward the
+island and soon after disappeared. Next morning, looking across to the
+island, we saw a dark-colored steamer lying beside the white one; and
+we knew that the enemy were in possession of both the Transit steamers,
+and held the lake wholly at command. It was the same day, I think, that
+one of the boats was seen to be getting up steam, and shortly afterward
+she paddled out from the island, and came directly toward Virgin Bay.
+Things were quickly put in posture for a fight. The neutral residents,
+who had returned from San Juan, again set out over the Transit road.
+The squad of infantry which had just come in from Rivas was placed at
+the extreme end of the wooden pier that ran some one hundred and fifty
+yards into the lake. They were armed with rifled muskets and Minie
+ball, and hoped to kill at eight hundred or a thousand yards. The
+rangers, with arms of shorter range, waited on the shore. As the
+steamer approached, she was seen to be covered with a crowd of
+dark-skinned soldiers. She came steadily up within quarter of a mile of
+the shore, and then, suddenly turning broadside to, opened with a
+single cannon. The ball struck the water some little distance from the
+end of the pier,--after an interval implying awkward handling, another
+roar,--and then one or two nervous soldiers on the pier, not liking to
+await the ball in that place, break for the shore; but they are
+promptly knocked down by the others, and make no further progress. The
+steamer continues her fire out there leisurely, and the officer on the
+pier, being satisfied at last that she will come no closer, gives her a
+volley of musketry. In a moment the decks are cleared with a scamper,
+and no man is anywhere visible; whilst, at the same time, the steamer
+hastily puts about, and never stops until she reaches the island.
+
+This ill-supported bravado was as much as we saw of the enemy at Virgin
+Bay; for next day we were recalled to headquarters, and gladly left
+that post to the care of the infantry. When we came to Rivas, we found
+many rumors about the enemy, but it was certain only that a bungo with
+natives from the island had been captured, as it came to shore, by a
+party of rangers, and it was these prisoners' report that the enemy
+were gathering provisions on the island, and awaiting reinforcements,
+on whose arrival they would land and attack us upon the isthmus.
+
+I may as well state here the explanation, as we afterwards learned it,
+of this most unexpected reappearance of the enemy,--which came upon
+General Walker like a thunderclap, whilst he dreamed they had left him
+for good and all. It seems that the Vanderbilt Company, whom Walker had
+made enemies by ousting them from the Transit route, sent an agent (one
+Spencer) to the disheartened Costa Ricans, who showed them that they
+might easily strangle the filibuster force by seizing the ill-guarded
+Rio San Juan. Led by Spencer, they secretly cut a road through the
+forest on the Costa Rican side, found the forts scarcely watched by a
+few spiritless sick men, and overwhelmed and scattered them without
+difficulty. At the same time they surprised and seized all the Transit
+steamers on the river and lake, so that thenceforward communication
+with the Atlantic was closed to General Walker, and a large body of New
+Orleans recruits under Lockridge, who had just arrived at the mouth of
+the river, found themselves headed off, and began a long and skilless
+fight to recover the steamers and make the junction with the isthmus
+force. So, after all, Walker owes his defeat, not to the natives of
+Central America, but to his own countrymen; and, had it not been for
+the malice or revenge of Vanderbilt, he might have reigned in Nicaragua
+at this day,--unless he had blundered himself out of it unassisted, as
+many who lived with him thought he could hardly fail to do, were time
+but granted him.--After capture of the lake steamers, the Costa Ricans,
+impressing their American crews into service, took them up to Granada
+to embark the old force of Costa Ricans and Chamorristas still
+remaining there. They were on this errand when the steamer San Carlos
+was first seen to pass Virgin Bay. But what other reinforcement they
+expected, whilst they lay so long against the island after their return
+from Granada, I do not know,--unless it was the Guatemalans, who we
+knew soon afterward had joined them in large force.
+
+The next day after we had returned to Rivas, our company, now united
+again, had orders to ride to San Juan, on the Pacific, and convoy back
+some cart-loads of lead. As we were bringing our charge on the return,
+we were overtaken in the forest by an order to hasten to Virgin Bay, to
+the assistance of the infantry about to be attacked by the enemy.
+Leaving three or four of the company to follow the carts, we started
+immediately at hard gallop for Virgin Bay. When we arrived there, we
+found that the enemy, after a trifling cannonade of the town from one
+of the steamers, had put back to the island again, leaving no greater
+damage than a shot-hole in one of the row-boats,--which still lay at
+Virgin Bay awaiting the bungling delay (better worthy of greasers than
+earnest filibusters) about the brig. This demonstration against Virgin
+Bay was probably a ruse to divide the filibuster force; for, next day,
+as I recollect it, the Alcalde of Obraja, a native partisan of General
+Walker, hurried into Rivas with the news that fifteen hundred of the
+enemy had landed from the lake, ten or twelve miles above.
+
+The Alcalde brought with him to Rivas his family and valuables, and
+proved himself one of the few natives of the better class who, during
+my sojourn, took active part with the Americans. It was said, that,
+when Patricio Rivas was President, and Walker General-in-chief of his
+army, many men of wealth and station amongst the Liberals--as Rivas's
+democratic party, opposed to the Chamorristas or aristocratic party,
+were called--encouraged and thought well of their American assistants.
+But after the Chamorristas were worsted,--mainly by strength of
+Walker's Californians,--and General Walker had broken with Rivas, and
+set up for President of Nicaragua himself, almost all the natives of
+any name or property had deserted him. However, many of them remained
+on their _haciendas_, and took no part in the struggle on either side.
+Those in the vicinity of Rivas feigned sympathy with us, but were
+probably inimical at heart. Indeed, intelligence of some act of
+disaffection was continually coming to General Walker; and thereupon he
+would oust the offender, confiscate his estate to the government, and,
+perhaps, grant it to some one of his officers, or pawn it to foreign
+sympathizers for military stores. The neighborhood of Rivas was dotted
+with ranch-houses, distenanted by these means,--rank grass growing in
+the court-yards, the cactus-hedges gapped, and the crops swept away by
+the foragers. Perhaps, had these men been let alone, jealousy toward
+foreigners would not, of itself, have made them enemies; but General
+Walker was obliged to provide arms and provisions for his soldiers,
+and, having no other resource, he must come down heavily on the
+Nicaraguans, so far as he could reach them. That this was a ground of
+great disgust and odium toward us, throughout the country, our company
+of rangers, which did some foraging and mule-gathering, had good reason
+to know. I remember, on one occasion, a small party of us, armed only
+with revolvers, were retreating out of a large _hacienda_, heavily
+incumbered with horse-provender, when we saw the landlord and his
+peons, with _machetes_ in their hands, coming to meet us. As we trotted
+up toward them, the angry man stood at the roadside, lariat in hand,
+frowning, and in the attitude to arrest our foremost horseman;--but the
+filibuster drew his revolver, concealed hitherto by his burden, and
+cocked it,--and the poor man, seeing that he was unequal, was fain to
+vent his wrath in boiling words. This man, who doubtless became an
+enemy, might have been soothed, had General Walker taken the pains to
+furnish foraging-papers to the rangers. He professed himself a true
+friend of Walker's, holding all he possessed at his service; but it was
+out of his power, he said, to contain himself, whilst a troop of
+_Americanos_ were leaping his fences and ravaging his fields, without
+token of authority, or word of apology on any part. However, after all,
+General Walker may have acted for the wisest in this matter. The writer
+of this narrative was an unenlightened private in the filibuster army,
+and, of course, though open-eyed to some extent, saw all things of
+policy through a glass dimly. It may be that General Walker, who had
+opportunities for thorough acquaintance with Spanish-American
+character, held it weakness to place any trust or value upon their
+friendship, and therefore took no care to conciliate it. This has a
+look of wisdom, and would explain many apparently stupid and gratuitous
+negligences. But what shall I think when he seemed as little
+solicitous, and certainly was at no greater pains, to attach his own
+men? Instead of treating us like fellow-soldiers and adventurers in
+danger, upon whom he was wholly dependent, until his power was
+established, he bore himself like an Eastern tyrant,--reserved and
+haughty,--scarcely saluting when he met us,--mixing not at all, but
+keeping himself dose in his quarters,--some said through fear, lest
+some of his own men should shoot him, of which indeed there was great
+danger to such a man. But his treatment of the wounded was his worst
+policy. There was, it is true, a hospital at Rivas; but he never, or
+rarely, visited it; and it was so badly kept, that every good captain
+who had friends in the ranks chose the great inconvenience of nursing
+his wounded at his own quarters, rather than send them into that
+wretched hole whence few ever came out. It is true, the wounded seldom
+got well in that climate, and Walker's best general said that the
+government liked to have the enemy kill the men, rather than wound
+them; yet, had they been wiser, they would have taken care of them
+merely for the sake of the spirit of the rest.--But I have wandered
+from my narrative.
+
+Toward the evening of the same day that the faithful _alcalde_ brought
+his report, I walked down to the _plaza_, to see what stir the news had
+created among the skeleton foot-soldiers. There was no stir at all,
+outwardly. They sat in their doors and talked listlessly, without
+laughter or excitement, as they were always wont before. A hearty laugh
+or a loud voice in conversation always sounded unnaturally in the
+streets of Rivas; and, indeed, few amongst the foot found spirit for
+such things,--unless new recruits, or under the stimulus of
+_aguardiente_. As often as I have left the quarters of the more healthy
+and animated rangers in the outskirts, and walked down into the
+populous part of the camp, I have been reminded of one of those
+enchanted cities of the "Arabian Nights," where the silent inhabitants,
+though grouped about, seemingly engaged in their ordinary occupations,
+are in reality soulless, and no better than dead men or frozen fish.
+
+I took my seat in the porch of the guard-house,--that stout building
+which I have mentioned as the only one surviving the ruin on the west
+side of the _plaza_,--and watched the foot go through their evening
+drill. Classed as musketeers, riflemen, and artillery-men, they were
+trained to a part of the United States army-practice, each morning and
+evening, on the _plaza_. The rangers were taught no drill of any kind;
+and when I observed how some of the despicable officers pricked those
+feeble creatures with their swords to make them look sharp and step
+lively, I was glad enough to go without instruction in the military
+science. The men, on the present occasion, were clothed in black felt
+hats, blue cotton trousers, brogans, and blue flannel shirts, with the
+letter of their company and the number of the regiment sewed upon the
+breast in characters of white cloth. They had received this uniform, I
+think, by the steamer on which I came down, and it was become somewhat
+greasy and louse-seamed by this time; nevertheless, their appearance
+was much more soldierlike and respectable than when I first saw them.
+After the exercise was ended, the men gathered around a small brass
+band, of half a dozen Germans, which began to play in front of General
+Walker's quarters. The little General himself sat in his door, and
+looked out with impassible countenance upon the crowd in the street. It
+was an excellent conglomerate to study, for any one who could have the
+head and feeling there. What General Walker made of it, not even his
+staff-officers, who sat beside him, could tell,--if it were true, as
+was said, that he had no confidant, even amongst them.
+
+Toward dusk, as I was returning to quarters, I saw a detachment of some
+one hundred riflemen marching out on the Obraja road, to the slow tap
+of a kettle-drum, and dragging a small piece of artillery with them.
+This, with the exception of some rangers, who had been sent forward to
+scout, was the sole force yet dispatched to meet the enemy,--who were
+now said to be advanced to Obraja, a hamlet nine miles northwest of
+Rivas.
+
+[To be continued.]
+
+
+
+
+THE MINISTER'S WOOING.[1]
+
+[Concluded]
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+OLD LOVE AND NEW DUTY.
+
+The sun was just setting, and the whole air and sea seemed flooded with
+rosy rays. Even the crags and rocks of the sea-shore took purple and
+lilac hues, and savins and junipers, had a painter been required to
+represent them, would have been found not without a suffusion of the
+same tints. And through the tremulous rosy sea of the upper air, the
+silver full-moon looked out like some calm superior presence which
+waits only for the flush of a temporary excitement to die away, to make
+its tranquillizing influence felt.
+
+Mary, as she walked homeward with this dreamy light around her, moved
+with a slower step than when borne along by the vigorous arm and
+determined motion of her young friend.
+
+It is said that a musical sound uttered with decision by one instrument
+always makes the corresponding chord of another vibrate; and Mary felt,
+as she left her positive, but warm-hearted friend, a plaintive
+vibration of something in her own self, in which she was conscious her
+calm friendship for her future husband had no part. She fell into one
+of those reveries which she thought she had forever forbidden to
+herself, and there rose before her mind the picture of a
+marriage-ceremony,--but the eyes of the bridegroom were dark, and his
+curls were clustering in raven ringlets, and her hand throbbed in his
+as it had never throbbed in any other.
+
+It was just as she was coming out of a little grove of cedars, where
+the high land overlooks the sea, and the dream which came to her
+overcame her with a vague and yearning sense of pain. Suddenly she
+heard footsteps behind her, and some one said, "Mary!" It was spoken in
+a choked voice, as one speaks in the crisis of a great emotion; and she
+turned and saw those very eyes, that very hair, yes, and the cold
+little hand throbbed with that very throb in that strong, living, manly
+hand; and, whether in the body or out of the body God knoweth, she felt
+herself borne in those arms, and words that spoke themselves in her
+inner heart, words profaned by being repeated, were on her ear.
+
+"Oh! is this a dream? is this a dream? James! are we in heaven? Oh, I
+have lived through such an agony! I have been so worn out! Oh, I
+thought you never would come!" And then the eyes closed, and heaven and
+earth faded away together in a trance of blissful rest.
+
+But it was no dream; for an hour later you might have seen a manly form
+sitting in that selfsame place, bearing in his arms a pale figure which
+he cherished as tenderly as a mother her babe. And they were talking
+together,--talking in low tones; and in all this wide universe neither
+of them knew or felt anything but the great joy of being thus side by
+side.
+
+They spoke of love mightier than death, which many waters cannot
+quench. They spoke of yearnings, each for the other,--of longing
+prayers,--of hopes deferred,--and then of this great joy,--for _one_
+had hardly yet returned to the visible world.
+
+Scarce wakened from deadly faintness, she had not come back fully to
+the realm of life,--only to that of love,--to love which death cannot
+quench. And therefore it was, that, without knowing that she spoke, she
+had said all, and compressed the history of those three years into one
+hour.
+
+But at last, thoughtful of her health, provident of her weakness, he
+rose up and passed his arm around her to convey her home. And as he did
+so, he spoke one word that broke the whole charm.
+
+"You will allow me, Mary, the right of a future husband, to watch over
+your life and health."
+
+Then came back the visible world,--recollection, consciousness, and
+the great battle of duty,--and Mary drew away a little, and said,--
+
+"Oh, James, you are too late! that can never be!"
+
+He drew back from her.
+
+"Mary, are you married?"
+
+"Before God, I am," she said, "My word is pledged. I cannot retract it.
+I have suffered a good man to place his whole faith upon it,--a man who
+loves me with his whole soul."
+
+"But, Mary, you do not love _him_. _That_ is impossible!" said James,
+holding her off from him, and looking at her with an agonized
+eagerness. "After what you have just said, it is not possible."
+
+"Oh, James! I am sure I don't know what I have said,--it was all so
+sudden, and I didn't know what I was saying,--but things that I must
+never say again. The day is fixed for next week. It is all the same as
+if you had found me his wife."
+
+"Not quite," said James, his voice cutting the air with a decided
+manly ring. "I have some words to say to that yet."
+
+"Oh, James, will you be selfish? will you tempt me to do a mean,
+dishonorable thing? to be false to my word deliberately given?"
+
+"But," said James, eagerly, "you know, Mary, you _never_ would have
+given it, if you had known that I was living."
+
+"That is true, James; but I _did_ give it. I have suffered him to build
+all his hopes of life upon it. I _beg_ you not to tempt me,--help me to
+do right!"
+
+"But, Mary, did you not get my letter?"
+
+"Your letter?"
+
+"Yes,--that long letter that I wrote you."
+
+"I never got any letter, James."
+
+"Strange!" he said. "No wonder it seems sudden to you!"
+
+"Have you seen your mother?" said Mary, who was conscious this moment
+only of a dizzy instinct to turn the conversation from where she felt
+too weak to bear it.
+
+"No; do you suppose I should see anybody before you?"
+
+"Oh, then, you must go to her!" said Mary. "Oh, James, you don't know
+how she has suffered!"
+
+They were drawing near to the cottage-gate.
+
+"Do, pray!" said Mary. "Go, hurry to your mother! Don't be too sudden,
+either, for she's very weak; she is almost worn out with sorrow. Go, my
+dear brother! _Dear_ you always will be to me."
+
+James helped her into the house, and they parted. All the house was yet
+still. The open kitchen-door let in a sober square of moonlight on the
+floor. The very stir of the leaves on the trees could be heard. Mary
+went into her little room, and threw herself upon the bed, weak, weary,
+yet happy,--for deep and high above all other feelings was the great
+relief that he was living still. After a little while she heard the
+rattling of the wagon, and then the quick patter of Miss Prissy's
+feet, and her mother's considerate tones, and the Doctor's grave
+voice,--and quite unexpectedly to herself, she was shocked to find
+herself turning with an inward shudder from the idea of meeting him.
+"How very wicked!" she thought,--"how ungrateful!"--and she prayed that
+God would give her strength to check the first rising of such feelings.
+
+Then there was her mother, so ignorant and innocent, busy putting away
+baskets of things that she had bought in provision for the
+wedding-ceremony.
+
+Mary almost felt as if she had a guilty secret. But when she reflected
+upon the last two hours, she felt no wish to take them back again. Two
+little hours of joy and rest they had been,--so pure, so perfect! she
+thought God must have given them to her as a keepsake to remind her of
+His love, and to strengthen her in the way of duty.
+
+Some will, perhaps, think it an unnatural thing that Mary should have
+regarded her pledge to the Doctor as of so absolute and binding force;
+but they must remember the rigidity of her education. Self-denial and
+self-sacrifice had been the daily bread of her life. Every prayer,
+hymn, and sermon, from her childhood, had warned her to distrust her
+inclinations and regard her feelings as traitors. In particular had she
+been brought up to regard the sacredness of a promise with a
+superstitious tenacity; and in this case the promise involved so deeply
+the happiness of a friend whom she had loved and revered all her life,
+that she never thought of any way of escape from it. She had been
+taught that there was no feeling so strong but that it might be
+immediately repressed at the call of duty; and if the thought arose to
+her of this great love to another, she immediately answered it by
+saying, "How would it have been, if I had been married? As I could have
+overcome then, so I can now."
+
+Mrs. Scudder came into her room with a candle in her hand, and Mary,
+accustomed to read the expression of her mother's countenance, saw at a
+glance a visible discomposure there. She held the light so that it
+shone upon Mary's face.
+
+"Are you asleep?" she said.
+
+"No, mother."
+
+"Are you unwell?"
+
+"No, mother,--only a little tired."
+
+Mrs. Scudder set down the candle, and shut the door, and, after a
+moment's hesitation, said,--
+
+"My daughter, I have some news to tell you, which I want you to prepare
+your mind for. Keep yourself quite quiet"
+
+"Oh, mother!" said Mary, stretching out her hands towards her, "I know
+it. James has come home."
+
+"How did you hear?" said her mother, with astonishment.
+
+"I have seen him, mother."
+
+Mrs. Scudder's countenance fell.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I went to walk home with Cerinthy Twitchel, and, as I was coming back,
+he came up behind me, just at Savin Rock."
+
+Mrs. Scudder sat down on the bed and took her daughter's hand.
+
+"I trust, my dear child," she said. She stopped.
+
+"I think I know what you are going to say, mother. It is a great joy,
+and a great relief; but of course I shall be true to my engagement with
+the Doctor."
+
+Mrs. Scudder's face brightened.
+
+"That is my own daughter! I might have known that you would do so. You
+would not, certainly, so cruelly disappoint a noble man who has set his
+whole faith upon you."
+
+"No, mother, I shall not disappoint him. I told James that I should be
+true to my word."
+
+"He will probably see the justice of it," said Mrs. Scudder, in that
+easy tone with which elderly people are apt to dispose of the feelings
+of young persons. "Perhaps it may be something of a trial, at first."
+
+Mary looked at her mother with incredulous blue eyes. The idea that
+feelings which made her hold her breath when she thought of them could
+be so summarily disposed of! She turned her face wearily to the wall,
+with a deep sigh, and said,--
+
+"After all, mother, it is mercy enough and comfort enough to think that
+he is living. Poor Cousin Ellen, too,--what a relief to her! It is like
+life from the dead. Oh, I shall be happy enough; no fear of that!"
+
+"And you know," said Mrs. Scudder, "that there has never existed any
+engagement of any kind between you and James. He had no right to found
+any expectations on anything you ever told him."
+
+"That is true also, mother," said Mary, "I had never thought of such a
+thing as marriage, in relation to James."
+
+"Of course," pursued Mrs. Scudder, "he will always be to you as a near
+friend."
+
+Mary assented.
+
+"There is but a week now, before your wedding," continued Mrs. Scudder;
+"and I think Cousin James, if he is reasonable, will see the propriety
+of your mind being kept as quiet as possible. I heard the news this
+afternoon in town," pursued Mrs. Scudder, "from Captain Staunton, and,
+by a curious coincidence, I received from him this letter from James,
+which came from New York by post. The brig that brought it must have
+been delayed out of the harbor."
+
+"Oh, please, mother, give it to me!" said Mary, rising up with
+animation; "he mentioned having sent me one."
+
+"Perhaps you had better wait till morning," said Mrs. Scudder; "you are
+tired and excited."
+
+"Oh, mother, I think I shall be more composed when I know all that is
+in it," said Mary, still stretching out her hand.
+
+"Well, my daughter, you are the best judge," said Mrs. Scudder; and she
+set down the candle on the table, and left Mary alone.
+
+It was a very thick letter of many pages, dated in Canton, and ran as
+follows:--
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+JACOB'S VOW.
+
+"My Dearest Mary:--
+
+"I have lived through many wonderful scenes since I saw you last. My
+life has been so adventurous, that I scarcely know myself when I think
+of it. But it is not of _that_ I am going now to write. I have written
+all that to mother, and she will show it to you. But since I parted
+from you, there has been another history going on within me; and that
+is what I wish to make you understand, if I can.
+
+"It seems to me that I have been a changed man from that afternoon when
+I came to your window, where we parted. I have never forgot how you
+looked then, nor what you said. Nothing in my life ever had such an
+effect upon me. I thought that I loved you before; but I went away
+feeling that love was something so deep and high and sacred, that I was
+not worthy to name it to you. I cannot think of the man in the world
+who is worthy of what you said you felt for me.
+
+"From _that_ hour there was a new purpose in my soul,--a purpose which
+has led me upward ever since. I thought to myself in this way: 'There
+is some secret source from whence this inner life springs,'--and I knew
+that it was connected with the Bible which you gave me; and so I
+thought I would read it carefully and deliberately, to see what I could
+make of it.
+
+"I began with the beginning. It impressed me with a sense of something
+quaint and strange,--something rather fragmentary; and yet there were
+spots all along that went right to the heart of a man who had to deal
+with life and things as I did. Now I must say that the Doctor's
+preaching, as I told you, never impressed me much in any way. I could
+not make out any connection between it and the men I had to manage and
+the things I had to do in my daily life. But there were things in the
+Bible that struck me otherwise. There was _one_ passage in particular,
+and that was where Jacob started off from all his friends to go and
+seek his fortune in a strange country, and laid down to sleep all alone
+in the field, with only a stone for his pillow. It seemed to me exactly
+the image of what every young man is like, when he leaves his home and
+goes out to shift for himself in this hard world. I tell you, Mary,
+that one man alone on the great ocean of life feels himself a very weak
+thing. We are held up by each other more than we know till we go off by
+ourselves into this great experiment. Well, there he was as lonesome as
+_I_ upon the deck of my ship. And so lying with the stone under his
+head, he saw a ladder in his sleep between him and heaven, and angels
+going up and down. That was a sight which came to the very point of his
+necessities. He saw that there was a way between him and God, and that
+there were those above who did care for him, and who could come to him
+to help him.
+
+"Well, so the next morning he got up, and set up the stone to mark the
+place; and it says Jacob vowed a vow, saying, 'If God will be with me,
+and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat
+and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in
+peace, _then_ shall the Lord be my God.' Now _there_ was something that
+looked to me like a tangible foundation to begin upon.
+
+"If I understand Dr. H., I believe he would have called that all
+selfishness. At first sight it does look a little so; but then I
+thought of it in this way: 'Here he was all alone. God was entirely
+invisible to him; and how could he feel certain that He really existed,
+unless he could come into some kind of connection with Him? the point
+that he wanted to be sure of, more than merely to know that there was a
+God who made the world;--he wanted to know whether He cared anything
+about men, and would do anything to help them. And so, in fact, it was
+saying, "If there is a God who interests Himself at all in me, and will
+be my Friend and Protector, I will obey Him, so far as I can find out
+His will."'
+
+"I thought to myself, 'This is the great experiment, and I will try
+it.' I made in my heart exactly the same resolution, and just quietly
+resolved to assume for a while as a fact that there _was_ such a God,
+and, whenever I came to a place where I could not help myself, just to
+ask His help honestly in so many words, and see what would come of it.
+
+"Well, as I went on reading through the Old Testament, I was more and
+more convinced that all the men of those times had tried this
+experiment, and found that it would bear them; and in fact, I did begin
+to find, in my own experience, a great many things happening so
+remarkably that I could not but think that _Somebody_ did attend even
+to my prayers,--I began to feel a trembling faith that _Somebody_ was
+guiding me, and that the events of my life were not happening by
+accident, but working themselves out by His will.
+
+"Well, as I went on in this way, there were other and higher thoughts
+kept rising in my mind. I wanted to be better than I was. I had a sense
+of a life much nobler and purer than anything I had ever lived, that I
+wanted to come up to. But in the world of men, as I found it, such
+feelings are always laughed down as romantic, and impracticable, and
+impossible. But about this time I began to read the New Testament, and
+then the idea came to me, that the same Power that helped me in the
+lower sphere of life would help me carry out those higher aspirations.
+Perhaps the Gospels would not have interested me so much, if I had
+begun with them first; but my Old Testament life seemed to have
+schooled me, and brought me to a place where I wanted something higher;
+and I began to notice that my prayers now were more that I might be
+noble, and patient, and self-denying, and constant in my duty, than
+for any other kind of help. And then I understood what met me in the
+very first of Matthew: 'Thou shall call his name Jesus, for he shall
+save his people from their sins.'
+
+"I began now to live a new life,--a life in which I felt myself coming
+into sympathy with you; for, Mary, when I began to read the Gospels, I
+took knowledge of you, that you had been with Jesus.
+
+"The crisis of my life was that dreadful night of the shipwreck. It was
+as dreadful as the Day of Judgment. No words of mine can describe to
+you what I felt when I knew that our rudder was gone, and saw those
+hopeless rocks before us. What I felt for our poor men! But, in the
+midst of it all, the words came into my mind, 'And Jesus was in the
+hinder part of the ship asleep on a pillow,' and at once I felt He was
+there; and when the ship struck I was only conscious of an intense
+going out of my soul to Him, like Peter's when he threw himself from
+the ship to meet Him in the waters.
+
+"I will not recapitulate what I have already written,--the wonderful
+manner in which I was saved, and in which friends and help and
+prosperity and worldly success came to me again, after life had seemed
+all lost; but now I am ready to return to my country, and I feel as
+Jacob did when he said, 'With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and
+now I am become two bands.'
+
+"I do not need any arguments now to convince me that the Bible is from
+above. There is a great deal in it that I cannot understand, a great
+deal that seems to me inexplicable; but all I can say is, that I have
+tried its directions, and find that in my case they do work,--that it
+is a book that I can live by; and that is enough for me.
+
+"And now, Mary, I am coming home again, quite another man from what I
+went out,--with a whole new world of thought and feeling in my heart,
+and a new purpose, by which, please God, I mean to shape my life. All
+this, under God, I owe to you; and if you will let me devote my whole
+life to you, it will be a small return for what you have done for me.
+
+"You know I left you wholly free. Others must have seen your loveliness
+and felt your worth; and you may have learnt to love some better man
+than me. But I know not what hope tells me that this will not be; and I
+shall find true what the Bible says of love, that 'many waters cannot
+quench it, nor floods drown.' In any case, I shall be always, from my
+very heart, yours, and yours only.
+
+"JAMES MARVYN."
+
+Mary rose, after reading this letter, rapt into a divine state of
+exaltation,--the pure joy, in contemplating an infinite good to
+another, in which the question of self was utterly forgotten.
+
+He was, then, what she had always hoped and prayed he would be, and she
+pressed the thought triumphantly to her heart. He was that true and
+victorious man, that Christian able to subdue life, and to show, in a
+perfect and healthy manly nature, a reflection of the image of the
+superhuman excellence. Her prayers that night were aspirations and
+praises, and she felt how possible it might be so to appropriate the
+good and the joy and the nobleness of others as to have in them an
+eternal and satisfying treasure. And with this came the dearer thought,
+that she, in her weakness and solitude, had been permitted to put her
+hand to the beginning of a work so noble. The consciousness of good
+done to an immortal spirit is wealth that neither life nor death can
+take away.
+
+And so, having prayed, she lay down to that sleep which God giveth to
+his beloved.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+THE QUESTION OF DUTY.
+
+It is a hard condition, of our existence here, that every exaltation
+must have its depression. God will not let us have heaven here below,
+but only such glimpses and faint showings as parents sometimes give to
+children, when they show them beforehand the jewelry and pictures and
+stores of rare and curious treasures which they hold for the possession
+of their riper years. So it very often happens that the man who has
+gone to bed an angel, feeling as if all sin were forever vanquished,
+and he himself immutably grounded in love, may wake the next morning
+with a sick-headache, and, if he be not careful, may scold about his
+breakfast like a miserable sinner.
+
+We will not say that our dear little Mary rose in this condition next
+morning,--for, although she had the headache, she had one of those
+natures in which, somehow or other, the combative element seems to be
+left out, so that no one ever knew her to speak a fretful word. But
+still, as we have observed, she had the headache and the
+depression,--and there came the slow, creeping sense of waking up,
+through all her heart and soul, of a thousand, thousand things that
+could be said only to one person, and that person one that it would be
+temptation and danger to say them to.
+
+She came out of her room to her morning work with a face resolved and
+calm, but expressive of languor, with slight signs of some inward
+struggle.
+
+Madame de Frontignac, who had already heard the intelligence, threw two
+or three of her bright glances upon her at breakfast, and at once
+divined how the matter stood. She was of a nature so delicately
+sensitive to the most refined shades of honor, that she apprehended at
+once that there must be a conflict,--though, judging by her own
+impulsive nature, she made no doubt that all would at once go down
+before the mighty force of reawakened love.
+
+After breakfast she would insist upon following Mary about through all
+her avocations. She possessed herself of a towel, and would wipe the
+cups and saucers, while Mary washed. She clinked the glasses, and
+rattled the cups and spoons, and stepped about as briskly as if she had
+two or three breezes to carry her train, and chattered half English and
+half French, for the sake of bringing into Mary's cheek the shy, slow
+dimples that she liked to watch. But still Mrs. Scudder was around,
+with an air as provident and forbidding as that of a sitting hen who
+watches her nest; nor was it till after all things had been cleared
+away in the house, and Mary had gone up into her little attic to spin,
+that the long-sought opportunity came of diving to the bottom of this
+mystery.
+
+"_Enfin, Marie, nous voici!_ Are you not going to tell me anything,
+when I have turned my heart out to you like a bag? _Chere enfant!_ how
+happy you must be!" she said, embracing her.
+
+"Yes, I am very happy," said Mary, with calm gravity.
+
+"_Very happy!_" said Madame de Frontignac, mimicking her manner. "Is
+that the way you American girls show it, when you are very happy? Come,
+come, _ma belle_! tell little Virginie something. Thou hast seen this
+hero, this wandering Ulysses. He has come back at last; the tapestry
+will not be quite as long as Penelope's? Speak to me of him. Has he
+beautiful black eyes, and hair that curls like a grape-vine? Tell me,
+_ma belle_!"
+
+"I only saw him a little while," said Mary, "and I felt a great deal
+more than I saw. He could not have been any clearer to me than he
+always has been in my mind."
+
+"But I think," said Madame de Frontignac, seating Mary, as was her
+wont, and sitting down at her feet, "I think you are a little _triste_
+about this. Very likely you pity the good priest. It is sad for him;
+but a good priest has the Church for his bride, you know."
+
+"You do not think," said Mary, speaking seriously, "that I shall break
+my promise given before God to this good man?"
+
+"_Mon Dieu, mon enfant!_ you do not mean to marry the priest, after
+all? _Quelle idee!_"
+
+"But I _promised_ him," said Mary.
+
+Madame de Frontignac threw up her hands, with an expression of
+vexation.
+
+"What a pity, my little one, you are not in the True Church! Any good
+priest could dispense you from that."
+
+"I do not believe," said Mary, "in any earthly power that can dispense
+us from solemn obligations which we have assumed before God, and on
+which we have suffered others to build the most precious hopes. If
+James had won the affections of some girl, thinking as I do, I should
+not think it right for him to leave her and come to me. The Bible says,
+that the just man is 'he that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth
+not.'"
+
+"_C'est le sublime de devoir!_" said Madame de Frontignac, who, with
+the airy frailty of her race, never lost her appreciation of the fine
+points of anything that went on under her eyes. But, nevertheless, she
+was inwardly resolved, that, picturesque as this "sublime of duty" was,
+it must not be allowed to pass beyond the limits of a fine art, and so
+she recommenced.
+
+"_Mais c'est absurde_. This beautiful young man, with his black eyes,
+and his curls,--a real hero,--a Theseus, Mary,--just come home from
+killing a Minotaur,--and loves you with his whole heart,--and this
+dreadful promise! Why, haven't you any sort of people in your Church
+that can unbind you from promises? I should think the good priest
+himself would do it!"
+
+"Perhaps he would," said Mary, "if I should ask him; but that would be
+equivalent to a breach of it. Of course, no man would marry a woman
+that asked to be dispensed."
+
+"You are an angel of delicacy, my child; _c'est admirable!_ but, after
+all, Mary, this is not well. Listen now to me. You are a very sweet
+saint, and very strong in goodness. I think you must have a very strong
+angel that takes care of you. But think, _chere enfant,_--think what it
+is to marry one man while you love another!"
+
+"But I love the Doctor," said Mary, evasively.
+
+"_Love!_" said Madame de Frontignac. "Oh, Marie! you may love him well,
+but you and I both know that there is something deeper than that. What
+will you _do_ with this young man? Must he move away from this place,
+and not be with his poor mother any more? Or can you see him, and hear
+him, and be with him, after your marriage, and not feel that you love
+him more than your husband?"
+
+"I should hope that God would help me to feel right," said Mary.
+
+"I am very much afraid He will not, _ma chere._ I asked Him a great
+many times to help _me,_ when I found how wrong it all was; but He did
+not. You remember what you told me the other day,--that, if I would do
+right, I must not _see_ that man any more. You will have to ask him to
+go away from this place; you can never see him; for this love will
+never die till you die;--that you may be sure of. Is it wise? is it
+right, dear little one? _Must_ he leave his home forever for you? or
+must you struggle always, and grow whiter and whiter, and fall away
+into heaven, like the moon this morning, and nobody know what is the
+matter? People will say you have the liver-complaint, or the
+consumption, or something. Nobody ever knows what we women die of."
+
+Poor Mary's conscience was fairly posed. This appeal struck upon her
+sense of right as having its grounds. She felt inexpressibly confused
+and distressed.
+
+"Oh, I wish somebody would tell me exactly what is right!" she said.
+
+"Well, _I_ will," said Madame de Frontignac. "Go down to the dear
+priest, and tell him the whole truth. My dear child, do you think, if
+he should ever find it out after your marriage, he would think you used
+him right?"
+
+"And yet _mother_ does not think so; mother does not wish me to tell
+him."
+
+"_Pauvrette, toujours les meres!_ Yes, it is always the mothers that
+stand in the way of the lovers. Why cannot she marry the priest
+herself?" she said between her teeth, and then looked up, startled and
+guilty, to see if Mary had heard her.
+
+"I _cannot,_" said Mary,--"I cannot go against my conscience, and my
+mother, and my best friend."
+
+At this moment, the conference was cut short by Mrs. Scudder's
+provident footsteps on the garret-stairs. A vague suspicion of
+something French had haunted her during her dairy-work, and she
+resolved to come and put a stop to the interview, by telling Mary that
+Miss Prissy wanted her to come and be measured for the skirt of her
+dress.
+
+Mrs. Scudder, by the use of that sixth sense peculiar to mothers, had
+divined that there had been some agitating conference, and, had she
+been questioned about it, her guesses as to what it might have been
+would probably have given no bad _resume_ of the real state of the
+case. She was inwardly resolved that there should be no more such for
+the present, and kept Mary employed about various matters relating to
+the dresses, so scrupulously that there was no opportunity for anything
+more of the sort that day.
+
+In the evening James Marvyn came down, and was welcomed with the
+greatest demonstrations of joy by all but Mary, who sat distant and
+embarrassed, after the first salutations had passed.
+
+The Doctor was innocently paternal; but we fear that on the part of the
+young man there was small reciprocation of the sentiments he expressed.
+
+Miss Prissy, indeed, had had her heart somewhat touched, as good little
+women's hearts are apt to be by a true love-story, and had hinted
+something of her feelings to Mrs. Scudder, in a manner which brought
+such a severe rejoinder as quite humbled and abashed her, so that she
+coweringly took refuge under her former declaration, that, "to be sure,
+there couldn't be any man in the world better _worthy_ of Mary than the
+Doctor," while still at her heart she was possessed with that
+troublesome preference for unworthy people which stands in the way of
+so many excellent things. But she went on vigorously sewing upon the
+wedding-dress, and pursing up her small mouth into the most perfect and
+guarded expression of non-committal; though she said afterwards, "it
+went to her heart to see how that poor young man did look, sitting
+there just as noble and as handsome as a picture. She didn't see, for
+_her_ part, how anybody's heart _could_ stand it; though, to be sure,
+as Miss Scudder said, the poor Doctor ought to be thought about, dear
+blessed man! What a pity it was things _would_ turn out so! Not that it
+was a pity that Jim came home,--that was a great providence,--but a
+pity they hadn't known about it sooner. Well, for her part, she didn't
+pretend to say; the path of duty did have a great many hard places in
+it."
+
+As for James, during his interview at the cottage, he waited and tried
+in vain for one moment's private conversation. Mrs. Scudder was
+immovable in her motherly kindness, sitting there, smiling and chatting
+with him, but never stirring from her place by Mary.
+
+Madame de Frontignac was out of all patience, and determined, in her
+small way, to do something to discompose the fixed state of things. So,
+retreating to her room, she contrived, in very desperation, to upset
+and break a water-pitcher, shrieking violently in French and English at
+the deluge which came upon the sanded floor and the little piece of
+carpet by the bedside.
+
+What housekeeper's instincts are proof against the crash of breaking
+china?
+
+Mrs. Scudder fled from her seat, followed by Miss Prissy.
+
+"Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro," while Mary sat quiet as a
+statue, bending over her sewing, and James, knowing that it must be now
+or never, was, like a flash, in the empty chair by her side, with his
+black moustache very near to the bent brown head.
+
+"Mary," he said, "you _must_ let me see you once more. All is not said,
+is it? Just hear me,--hear me once alone!"
+
+"Oh, James, I am too weak!--I dare not!--I am afraid of myself!"
+
+"You think," he said, "that you _must_ take this course, because it is
+right. But _is_ it right? Is it right to marry one man, when you love
+another better? I don't put this to your inclination, Mary,--I know it
+would be of no use,--I put it to your conscience."
+
+"Oh, I was never so perplexed before!" said Mary. "I don't know what I
+_do_ think. I must have time to reflect. And you,--oh, James!--you
+_must_ let me do right! There will never be any happiness for me, if I
+do wrong,--nor for you, either."
+
+All this while the sounds of running and hurrying in Madame de
+Frontignac's room had been unintermitted; and Miss Prissy, not without
+some glimmerings of perception, was holding tight on to Mrs. Scudder's
+gown, detailing to her a most capital receipt for mending broken china,
+the history of which she traced regularly through all the families in
+which she had ever worked, varying the details with small items of
+family history, and little incidents as to the births, marriages, and
+deaths of different people for whom it had been employed, with all the
+particulars of how, where, and when, so that James's time for
+conversation was by this means indefinitely extended.
+
+"Now," he said to Mary, "let me propose one thing. Let _me_ go to the
+Doctor, and tell him the truth."
+
+"James, it does not seem to me that I can. A friend who has been so
+considerate, so kind, so self-sacrificing and disinterested, and whom I
+have allowed to go on with this implicit faith in me so long. Should
+you, James, think of _yourself_ only?"
+
+"I do nor, I trust, think of myself only," said James; "I hope that I
+am calm enough, and have a heart to think for others. But, I ask you,
+is it doing right to _him_ to let him marry you in ignorance of the
+state of your feelings? Is it a kindness to a good and noble man to
+give yourself to him only seemingly, when the best and noblest part of
+your affections is gone wholly beyond your control? I am quite sure of
+_that_, Mary. I know you do love him very well,--that you would make a
+most true, affectionate, constant wife to him; but what I know you feel
+for me is something wholly out of your power to give to him,--is it
+not, now?"
+
+"I think it is," said Mary, looking gravely and deeply thoughtful "But
+then, James, I ask myself, 'What if this had happened a week hence?' My
+feelings would have been just the same, because they are feelings over
+which I have no more control than over my existence. I can only control
+the expression of them. But in _that_ case you would not have asked me
+to break my marriage-vow; and why now shall I break a solemn vow
+deliberately made before God? If what I can give him will content him,
+and he never knows that which would give him pain, what wrong is done
+him?"
+
+"I should think the deepest possible wrong done me," said James, "if,
+when I thought I had married a wife with a whole heart, I found that
+the greater part of it had been before that given to another. If you
+tell him, or if I tell him, or your mother,--who is the proper person,
+and he chooses to hold you to your promise, then, Mary, I have no more
+to say. I shall sail in a few weeks again, and carry your image forever
+in my heart;--nobody can take that away; that dear shadow will be the
+only wife I shall ever know."
+
+At this moment Miss Prissy came rattling along towards the door,
+talking--we suspect designedly--on quite a high key. Mary hastily
+said,--
+
+"Wait, James,--let me think,--tomorrow is the Sabbath-day. Monday I
+will send you word, or see you."
+
+And when Miss Prissy returned into the best room, James was sitting at
+one window and Mary at another,--he making remarks, in a style of most
+admirable commonplace, on a copy of Milton's "Paradise Lost," which he
+had picked up in the confusion of the moment, and which, at the time
+Mrs. Katy Scudder entered, he was declaring to be a most excellent
+book,--a really, truly, valuable work.
+
+Mrs. Scudder looked keenly from one to the other, and saw that Mary's
+cheek was glowing like the deepest heart of a pink shell, while, in all
+other respects, she was as cold and calm. On the whole, she felt
+satisfied that no mischief had been done.
+
+We hope our readers will do Mrs. Scudder justice. It is true that she
+yet wore on her third finger the marriage-ring of a sailor lover, and
+his memory was yet fresh in her heart; but even mothers who have
+married for love themselves somehow so blend a daughter's existence
+with their own as to conceive that she must marry their love, and not
+her own. Besides this, Mrs. Scudder was an Old Testament woman, brought
+up with that scrupulous exactitude of fidelity in relation to promises
+which would naturally come from familiarity with a book in which
+covenant-keeping is represented as one of the highest attributes of
+Deity, and covenant-breaking as one of the vilest sins of humanity. To
+break the word that had gone forth out of one's mouth was to lose
+self-respect, and all claim to the respect of others, and to sin
+against eternal rectitude.
+
+As we have said before, it is almost impossible to make our
+light-minded times comprehend the earnestness with which those people
+lived. It was, in the beginning, no vulgar nor mercenary ambition that
+made her seek the Doctor as a husband for her daughter. He was poor,
+and she had had offers from richer men. He was often unpopular; but he
+of all the world was the man she most revered, the man she believed in
+with the most implicit faith, the man who embodied her highest ideas of
+the good; and therefore it was that she was willing to resign her child
+to him.
+
+As to James, she had felt truly sympathetic with his mother, and with
+Mary, in the dreadful hour when they supposed him lost; and had it not
+been for the great perplexity occasioned by his return, she would have
+received him, as a relative, with open arms. But now she felt it her
+duty to be on the defensive,--an attitude not the most favorable for
+cherishing pleasing associations in regard to another. She had read the
+letter giving an account of his spiritual experience with very sincere
+pleasure, as a good woman should, but not without an internal
+perception how very much it endangered her favorite plans. When Mary,
+however, had calmly reiterated her determination, she felt sure of her;
+for had she ever known her to say a thing she did not do?
+
+The uneasiness she felt at present, was not the doubt of her daughter's
+steadiness, but the fear that she might have been unsuitably harassed
+or annoyed.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+THE TRANSFIGURED.
+
+The next morning rose calm and fair. It was the Sabbath-day,--the last
+Sabbath in Mary's maiden life, if her promises and plans were
+fulfilled.
+
+Mary dressed herself in white,--her hands trembling with unusual
+agitation, her sensitive nature divided between two opposing
+consciences and two opposing affections. Her devoted filial love toward
+the Doctor made her feel the keenest sensitiveness at the thought of
+giving him pain. At the same time, the questions which James had
+proposed to her had raised serious doubts in her mind whether it was
+altogether right to suffer him blindly to enter into this union. So,
+after she was all prepared, she bolted the door of her chamber, and,
+opening her Bible, read, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of
+God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall
+be given him"; and then, kneeling down by the bedside, she asked that
+God would give her some immediate light in her present perplexity. So
+praying, her mind grew calm and steady, and she rose up at the sound of
+the bell which marked that it was time to set forward for church.
+
+Everybody noticed, as she came into church that morning, how beautiful
+Mary Scudder looked. It was no longer the beauty of the carved statue,
+the pale alabaster shrine, the sainted virgin, but a warm, bright,
+living light, that spoke of some summer breath breathing within her
+soul.
+
+When she took her place in the singers' seat, she knew, without turning
+her head, that he was in his old place, not far from her side; and
+those whose eyes followed her to the gallery marvelled at her face
+there,--
+
+        "her pure and eloquent blood
+    Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought
+    That you might almost say her body thought";
+
+for a thousand delicate nerves were becoming vital once more,--the holy
+mystery of womanhood had wrought within her.
+
+When they rose to sing, the tune must needs be one which they had often
+sung together, out of the same book, at the singing-school,--one of
+those wild, pleading tunes, dear to the heart of New England,--born, if
+we may credit the report, in the rocky hollows of its mountains, and
+whose notes have a kind of grand and mournful triumph in their warbling
+wail, and in which different parts of the harmony, set contrary to all
+the canons of musical Pharisaism, had still a singular and romantic
+effect, which a true musical genius would not have failed to recognize.
+The four parts, tenor, treble, bass, and counter, as they were then
+called, rose and swelled and wildly mingled, with the fitful
+strangeness of Aeolian harp, or of winds in mountain-hollows, or the
+vague moanings of the sea on lone, forsaken shores. And Mary, while her
+voice rose over the waves of the treble, and trembled with a pathetic
+richness, felt, to her inmost heart, the deep accord of that other
+voice which rose to meet hers, so wildly melancholy, as if the soul in
+that manly breast had come to meet her soul in the disembodied, shadowy
+verity of eternity. The grand old tune, called by our fathers "China,"
+never, with its dirge-like melody, drew two souls more out of
+themselves, and entwined them more nearly with each other.
+
+The last verse of the hymn spoke of the resurrection of the saints with
+Christ:
+
+  "Then let the last dread trumpet sound
+     And bid the dead arise;
+   Awake, ye nations under ground!
+     Ye saints, ascend the skies!"
+
+And as Mary sang, she felt sublimely upborne with the idea that life is
+but a moment and love is immortal, and seemed, in a shadowy trance, to
+feel herself and him past this mortal fane, far over on the shores of
+that other life, ascending with Christ, all-glorified, all tears wiped
+away, and with full permission to love and to be loved forever. And as
+she sang, the Doctor looked upward, and marvelled at the light in her
+eyes and the rich bloom on her cheek,--for where she stood, a sunbeam,
+streaming aslant through the dusty panes of the window, touched her
+head with a kind of glory,--and the thought he then received
+outbreathed itself in the yet more fervent adoration of his prayer.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+THE ICE BROKEN.
+
+Our fathers believed in special answers to prayer. They were not
+stumbled by the objection about the inflexibility of the laws of
+Nature; because they had the idea, that, when the Creator of the world
+promised to answer human prayers, He probably understood the laws of
+Nature as well as they did. At any rate, the laws of Nature were His
+affair, and not theirs. They were men, very apt, as the Duke of
+Wellington said, to "look to their marching-orders,"--which, being
+found to read, "Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and
+supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto
+God," they did it. "They looked unto Him and were lightened, and their
+faces were not ashamed." One reads, in the Memoirs of Dr. Hopkins, of
+Newport Gardner, one of his African catechumens, a negro of singular
+genius and ability, who, being desirous of his freedom, that he might
+be a missionary to Africa, and having long worked without being able to
+raise the amount required, was counselled by Dr. Hopkins that it might
+be a shorter way to seek his freedom from the Lord, by a day of solemn
+fasting and prayer. The historical fact is, that, on the evening of a
+day so consecrated, his master returned from church, called Newport to
+him, and presented him with his freedom. Is it not possible that He who
+made the world may have established laws for prayer as invariable as
+those for the sowing of seed and raising of grain? Is it not as
+legitimate a subject of inquiry, when petitions are not answered, which
+of these laws has been neglected?
+
+But be that as it may, certain it is, that Candace, who on this morning
+in church sat where she could see Mary and James in the singers' seat,
+had certain thoughts planted in her mind which bore fruit afterwards in
+a solemn and select consultation held with Miss Prissy at the end of
+the horse-shed by the meeting-house, during the intermission between
+the morning and afternoon services.
+
+Candace sat on a fragment of granite boulder which lay there, her black
+face relieved against a clump of yellow mulleins, then in majestic
+altitude. On her lap was spread a checked pocket-handkerchief,
+containing rich slices of cheese, and a store of her favorite brown
+doughnuts.
+
+"Now, Miss Prissy," she said, "dar's _reason_ in all tings, an' a good
+deal _more_ in some tings dan dar is in oders. Dar's a good deal more
+reason in two young, handsome folks comin' togeder dan dar is in"----
+
+Candace finished the sentence by an emphatic flourish of her doughnut.
+
+"Now, as long as eberybody thought Jim Marvyn was dead, dar wa'n't
+nothin' else in de world _to_ be done _but_ marry de Doctor. But, good
+lan! I hearn him a-talkin' to Miss Marvyn las' night; it kinder' mos'
+broke my heart. Why, dem two poor creeturs, dey's jest as onhappy's dey
+can be! An' she's got too much feelin' for de Doctor to say a word; an'
+_I_ say _he oughter be told on't!_ dat's what _I_ say," said Candace,
+giving a decisive bite to her doughnut.
+
+"I say so, too," said Miss Prissy. "Why, I never had such bad feelings
+in my life as I did yesterday, when that young man came down to our
+house. He was just as pale as a cloth. I tried to say a word to Miss
+Scudder, but she snapped me up so! She's an awful decided woman when
+her mind's made up. I was telling Cerinthy Ann Twitchel,--she came
+round me this noon,--that it didn't exactly seem to me right that
+things should go on as they are going. And says I, 'Cerinthy Ann, I
+don't know anything what to do.' And says she, 'If I was you, I know
+what _I'd_ do,--I'd tell the Doctor,' says she. 'Nobody ever takes
+offence at anything _you_ do, Miss Prissy.' To be sure," added Miss
+Prissy, "I have talked to people about a good many things that it's
+rather strange I should; 'cause I a'n't one, somehow, that can let
+things go that seem to want doing. I always told folks that I should
+spoil a novel before it got half-way through the first volume, by
+blurting out some of those things that they let go trailing on so, till
+everybody gets so mixed up they don't know what they're doing."
+
+"Well, now, honey," said Candace, authoritatively, "ef you's got any
+notions o' dat kind, I tink it mus' come from de good Lord, an' I
+'dvise you to be 'tendin' to't, right away. You jes' go 'long an' tell
+de Doctor yourself all you know, an' den le's see what'll come on't. I
+tell you, I b'liebe it'll be one o' de bes' day's works you eber did in
+your life!"
+
+"Well," said Miss Prissy, "I guess tonight, before I go to bed, I'll
+make a dive at him. When a thing's once out, it's out, and can't be got
+in again, even if people don't like it; and that's a mercy, anyhow. It
+really makes me feel 'most wicked to think of it, for he is the most
+blessedest man!"
+
+"Dat's what he _is_" said Candace. "But de blessedest man in de world
+oughter know de truth; dat's what _I_ tink!"
+
+"Yes,--true enough!" said Miss Prissy. "I'll tell him, anyway."
+
+Miss Prissy was as good as her word; for that evening, when the Doctor
+had retired to his study, she took her life in her hand, and, walking
+swiftly as a cat, tapped rather timidly at the study-door, which the
+Doctor opening said, benignantly,--
+
+"Ah, Miss Prissy!"
+
+"If you please, Sir," said Miss Prissy, "I'd like a little
+conversation."
+
+The Doctor was well enough used to such requests from the female
+members of his church, which, generally, were the prelude to some
+disclosures of internal difficulties or spiritual experiences. He
+therefore graciously motioned her to a chair.
+
+"I thought I must come in," she began, busily twirling a bit of her
+Sunday gown. "I thought--that is--I felt it my duty--I thought--
+perhaps--I ought to tell you--that perhaps you ought to know."
+
+The Doctor looked civilly concerned. He did not know but Miss Prissy's
+wits were taking leave of her. He replied, however, with his usual
+honest stateliness,--
+
+"I trust, dear Madam, that you will feel perfect freedom to open to me
+any exercises of mind that you may have."
+
+"It isn't about myself," said Miss Prissy. "If you please, it's about
+you and Mary!"
+
+The Doctor now looked awake in right earnest, and very much astonished
+besides; and he looked eagerly at Miss Prissy, to have her go on.
+
+"I don't know how you would view such a matter," said Miss Prissy; "but
+the fact is, that James Marvyn and Mary always did love each other,
+ever since they were children."
+
+Still the Doctor was unawakened to the real meaning of the words, and
+he answered, simply,--
+
+"I should be far from wishing to interfere with so very natural and
+universal a sentiment, which, I make no doubt, is all quite as it
+should be."
+
+"No,--but," said Miss Prissy, "you don't understand what I mean. I mean
+that James Marvyn wanted to marry Mary, and that she was--well--she
+wasn't engaged to him, but"----
+
+"Madam!" said the Doctor, in a voice that frightened Miss Prissy out of
+her chair, while a blaze like sheet-lightning shot from his eyes, and
+his face flushed crimson.
+
+"Mercy on us! Doctor, I hope you'll excuse me; but there the fact
+is,--I've said it out,--the fact is, they wa'n't engaged; but that Mary
+loved him ever since he was a boy, as she never will and never can love
+any man again in this world, is what I'm just as sure of as that I'm
+standing here; and I've felt you ought to know it: 'cause I'm quite
+sure, that, if he'd been alive, she'd never given the promise she
+has,--the promise that she means to keep, if her heart breaks, and his
+too. They wouldn't anybody tell you, and I thought I must tell you;
+'cause I thought you'd know what was right to do about it."
+
+During all this latter speech the Doctor was standing with his back to
+Miss Prissy, and his face to the window, just as he did some time
+before, when Mrs. Scudder came to tell him of Mary's consent. He made a
+gesture backward, without speaking, that she should leave the
+apartment; and Miss Prissy left, with a guilty kind of feeling, as if
+she had been striking a knife into her pastor, and, rushing
+distractedly across the entry into Mary's little bedroom, she bolted
+the door, threw herself on the bed, and began to cry.
+
+"Well, I've done it!" she said to herself. "He's a very strong, hearty
+man," she soliloquized, "so I hope it won't put him in a
+consumption;--men do go into a consumption about such things sometimes.
+I remember Abner Seaforth did; but then he was always narrow-chested,
+and had the liver-complaint, or something. I don't know what Miss
+Scudder will say;--but I've done it. Poor man! such a good man, too! I
+declare, I feel just like Herod taking off John the Baptist's head.
+Well, well! it's done, and can't be helped."
+
+Just at this moment Miss Prissy heard a gentle tap at the door, and
+started, as if it had been a ghost,--not being able to rid herself of
+the impression, that, somehow, she had committed a great crime, for
+which retribution was knocking at the door.
+
+It was Mary, who said, in her sweetest and most natural tones, "Miss
+Prissy, the Doctor would like to see you."
+
+Mary was much astonished at the frightened, discomposed manner with
+which Miss Prissy received this announcement, and said,--
+
+"I'm afraid I've waked you up out of sleep, I don't think there's the
+least hurry."
+
+Miss Prissy didn't, either; but she reflected afterwards that she might
+as well get through with it at once; and therefore, smoothing her
+tumbled cap-border, she went to the Doctor's study. This time he was
+quite composed, and received her with a mournful gravity, and requested
+her to be seated.
+
+"I beg, Madam," he said, "you will excuse the abruptness of my manner
+in our late interview. I was so little prepared for the communication
+you had to make, that I was, perhaps, unsuitably discomposed. Will you
+allow me to ask whether you were requested by any of the parties to
+communicate to me what you did?"
+
+"No, Sir," said Miss Prissy.
+
+"Have any of the parties ever communicated with you on the subject at
+all?" said the Doctor.
+
+"No, Sir," said Miss Prissy.
+
+"That is all," said the Doctor. "I will not detain you. I am very much
+obliged to you, Madam."
+
+He rose, and opened the door for her to pass out, and Miss Prissy,
+overawed by the stately gravity of his manner, went out in silence.
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+THE SACRIFICE.
+
+When Miss Prissy left the room, the Doctor sat down by the table and
+covered his face with his hands. He had a large, passionate, determined
+nature; and he had just come to one of those cruel crises in life in
+which it is apt to seem to us that the whole force of our being, all
+that we can hope, wish, feel, enjoy, has been suffered to gather itself
+into one great wave, only to break upon some cold rock of inevitable
+fate, and go back, moaning, into emptiness.
+
+In such hours men and women have cursed God and life, and thrown
+violently down and trampled under their feet what yet was left of
+life's blessings, in the fierce bitterness of despair. "This, or
+nothing!" the soul shrieks, in her frenzy. At just such points as
+these, men have plunged into intemperance and wild excess,--they have
+gone to be shot down in battle,--they have broken life, and thrown it
+away, like an empty goblet, and gone, like wailing ghosts, out into the
+dread unknown.
+
+The possibility of all this lay in that heart which had just received
+that stunning blow. Exercised and disciplined as he had been, by years
+of sacrifice, by constant, unsleeping self-vigilance, there was rising
+there, in that great heart, an ocean-tempest of passion, and for a
+while his cries unto God seemed as empty and as vague as the screams of
+birds tossed and buffeted in the clouds of mighty tempests.
+
+The will that he thought wholly subdued seemed to rise under him as a
+rebellious giant. A few hours before, he thought himself established in
+an invincible submission to God's will that nothing could shake. Now he
+looked into himself as into a seething vortex of rebellion, and against
+all the passionate cries of his lower nature could, in the language of
+an old saint, cling to God only by the naked force of his will. That
+will rested unmelted amid the boiling sea of passion, waiting its hour
+of renewed sway. He walked the room for hours, and then sat down to his
+Bible, and roused once or twice to find his head leaning on its pages,
+and his mind far gone in thoughts from which he woke with a bitter
+throb. Then he determined to set himself to some definite work, and,
+taking his Concordance, began busily tracing out and numbering all the
+proof-texts for one of the chapters of his theological system! till, at
+last, he worked himself down to such calmness that he could pray; and
+then he schooled and reasoned with himself, in a style not unlike, in
+its spirit, to that in which a great modern author has addressed
+suffering humanity:--
+
+"What is it that thou art fretting and self-tormenting about? Is it
+because thou art not happy? Who told thee that thou wast to be happy?
+Is there any ordinance of the universe that thou shouldst be happy? Art
+thou nothing but a vulture screaming for prey? Canst thou not do
+without happiness? Yea, thou canst do without happiness, and, instead
+thereof, find blessedness."
+
+The Doctor came, lastly, to the conclusion, that blessedness, which was
+all the portion his Master had on earth, might do for him also; and
+therefore he kissed and blessed that silver dove of happiness, which he
+saw was weary of sailing in his clumsy old ark, and let it go out of
+his hand without a tear.
+
+He slept little that night; but when he came to breakfast, all noticed
+an unusual gentleness and benignity of manner, and Mary, she knew not
+why, saw tears rising in his eyes when he looked at her.
+
+After breakfast he requested Mrs. Scudder to step with him into his
+study, and Miss Prissy shook in her little shoes as she saw the matron
+entering. The door was shut for a long time, and two voices could be
+heard in earnest conversation.
+
+Meanwhile James Marvyn entered the cottage, prompt to remind Mary of
+her promise that she would talk with him again this morning.
+
+They had talked with each other but a few moments, by the
+sweetbrier-shaded window in the best room, when Mrs. Scudder appeared
+at the door of the apartment, with traces of tears upon her cheeks.
+
+"Good morning, James," she said. "The Doctor wishes to see you and Mary
+a moment, together."
+
+Both looked sufficiently astonished, knowing, from Mrs. Scudder's
+looks, that something was impending. They followed her, scarcely
+feeling the ground they trod on.
+
+The Doctor was sitting at his table, with his favorite large-print
+Bible open before him. He rose to receive them, with a manner at once
+gentle and grave.
+
+There was a pause of some minutes, during which he sat with his head
+leaning upon his hand.
+
+"You all know," he said, turning toward Mary, who sat very near him,
+"the near and dear relation in which I have been expected to stand
+towards this friend. I should not have been worthy of that relation, if
+I had not felt in my heart the true love of a husband, as set forth in
+the New Testament,--who should love his wife even as Christ loved the
+Church and gave himself for it; and in case any peril or danger
+threatened this dear soul, and I could not give myself for her, I had
+never been worthy the honor she has done me. For, I take it, whenever
+there is a cross or burden to be borne by one or the other, that the
+man, who is made in the image of God as to strength and endurance,
+should take it upon himself, and not lay it upon her that is weaker;
+for he is therefore strong, not that he may tyrannize over the weak,
+but bear their burdens for them, even as Christ for his Church.
+
+"I have just discovered," he added, looking kindly upon Mary, "that
+there is a great cross and burden which must come, either on this dear
+child or on myself, through no fault of either of us, but through God's
+good providence; and therefore let me bear it.
+
+"Mary, my dear child," he said, "I will be to thee as a father, but I
+will not force thy heart."
+
+At this moment, Mary, by a sudden, impulsive movement, threw her arms
+around his neck and kissed him, and lay sobbing on his shoulder.
+
+"No! no!" she said,--"I will marry you, as I said!"
+
+"Not, if I will not," he replied, with a benign smile. "Come here,
+young man," he said, with some authority, to James. "I give thee this
+maiden to wife." And he lifted her from his shoulder, and placed her
+gently in the arms of the young man, who, overawed and overcome,
+pressed her silently to his heart.
+
+"There, children, it is over," he said. "God bless you!"
+
+"Take her away," he added; "she will be more composed soon."
+
+Before James left, he grasped the Doctor's hand in his, and said,--
+
+"Sir, this tells on my heart more than any sermon you ever preached. I
+shall never forget it. God bless you, Sir!"
+
+The Doctor saw them slowly quit the apartment, and, following them,
+closed the door; and thus ended THE MINISTER'S WOOING.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+THE WEDDING.
+
+Of the events which followed this scene we are happy to give our
+readers more minute and graphic details than we ourselves could
+furnish, by transcribing for their edification an autograph letter of
+Miss Prissy's, still preserved in a black oaken cabinet of our
+great-grandmother's; and with which we take no further liberties than
+the correction of a somewhat peculiar orthography. It is written to
+that sister "Lizabeth," in Boston, of whom she made such frequent
+mention, and whom, it appears, it was her custom to keep well-informed
+in all the gossip of her immediate sphere.
+
+"My DEAR SISTER:--
+
+"You wonder, I s'pose, why I haven't written you; but the fact is, I've
+been run just off my feet, and worked till the flesh aches so it seems
+as if it would drop off my bones, with this wedding of Mary Scudder's.
+And, after all, you'll be astonished to hear that she ha'n't married
+the Doctor, but that Jim Marvyn that I told you about. You see, he came
+home a week before the wedding was to be, and Mary, she was so
+conscientious she thought 'twa'n't right to break off with the Doctor,
+and so she was for going right on with it; and Mrs. Scudder, she was
+for going on more yet; and the poor young man, he couldn't get a word
+in edgeways, and there wouldn't anybody tell the Doctor a word about
+it, and there 'twas drifting along, and both on 'em feeling dreadful,
+and so I thought to myself, 'I'll just take my life in my hand, like
+Queen Esther, and go in and tell the Doctor all about it.' And so I
+did. I'm scared to death always when I think of it. But that dear
+blessed man, he took it like a saint. He just gave her up as serene and
+calm as a psalm-book, and called Jim in and told him to take her.
+
+"Jim was fairly overcrowed,--it really made him feel small,--and he
+says he'll agree that there is more in the Doctor's religion than most
+men's: which shows how important it is for professing Christians to
+bear testimony in their works,--as I was telling Cerinthy Ann Twitchel:
+and she said there wa'n't anything made her want to be a Christian so
+much, if that was what religion would do for people.
+
+"Well, you see, when this came out, it wanted just three days of the
+wedding, which was to be Thursday, and that wedding-dress I told you
+about, that had lilies-of-the-valley on a white ground, was pretty much
+made, except puffing the gauze round the neck, which I do with white
+satin piping-cord, and it looks beautiful too; and so Mrs. Scudder and
+I, we were thinking 'twould do just as well, when in come Jim Marvyn,
+bringing the sweetest thing you ever saw, that he had got in China, and
+I think I never did see anything lovelier. It was a white silk, as
+thick as a board, and so stiff that it would stand alone, and overshot
+with little fine dots of silver, so that it shone, when you moved it,
+just like frostwork; and when I saw it, I just clapped my hands, and
+jumped up from the floor, and says I, 'If I have to sit up all night,
+that dress shall be made, and made well, too.' For, you know, I thought
+I could get Miss Olladine Hocum to run the breadths and do such parts,
+so that I could devote myself to the fine work. And that French woman I
+told you about, she said she'd help, and she's a master hand for
+touching things up. There seems to be work provided for all kinds of
+people, and French people seem to have a gift in all sorts of dressy
+things, and 'tisn't a bad gift either.
+
+"Well, as I was saying, we agreed that this was to be cut open with a
+train, and a petticoat of just the palest, sweetest, loveliest blue
+that ever you saw, and gauze puffings down the edgings each side,
+fastened in, every once in a while, with lilies-of-the-valley; and
+'twas cut square in the neck, with puffings and flowers to match, and
+then tight sleeves, with full ruffles of that old Mechlin lace that you
+remember Mrs. Katy Scudder showed you once in that great camphor-wood
+trunk.
+
+"Well, you see, come to get all things together that were to be done,
+we concluded to put off the wedding till Tuesday; and Madame de
+Frontignac, she would dress the best room for it herself, and she spent
+nobody knows what time in going round and getting evergreens and making
+wreaths, and putting up green boughs over the pictures, so that the
+room looked just like the Episcopal church at Christmas. In fact, Mrs.
+Scudder said, if it had been Christmas, she shouldn't have felt it
+right, but, as it was, she didn't think anybody would think it any
+harm.
+
+"Well, Tuesday night, I and Madame de Frontignac, we dressed Mary
+ourselves, and, I tell you, the dress fitted as if it was grown on her;
+and Madame de Frontignac, she dressed her hair; and she had on a wreath
+of lilies-of-the-valley, and a gauze veil that came almost down to her
+feet, and came all around her like a cloud, and you could see her white
+shining dress through it every time she moved, and she looked just as
+white as a snow-berry; but there were two little pink spots that came
+coming and going in her cheeks, that kind of lightened up when she
+smiled, and then faded down again. And the French lady put a string of
+real pearls round her neck, with a cross of pearls, which went down and
+lay hid in her bosom.
+
+"She was mighty calm-like while she was being dressed; but just as I
+was putting in the last pin, she heard the rumbling of a coach
+down-stairs, for Jim Marvyn had got a real elegant carriage to carry
+her over to his father's in, and so she knew he was come. And pretty
+soon Mrs. Marvyn came in the room, and when she saw Mary, her brown
+eyes kind of danced, and she lifted up both hands, to see how beautiful
+she looked. And Jim Marvyn, he was standing at the door, and they told
+him it wasn't proper that he should see till the time come; but he
+begged so hard that he might just have one peep, that I let him come
+in, and he looked at her as if she was something he wouldn't dare to
+touch; and he said to me softly, says he, 'I'm 'most afraid she has got
+wings somewhere that will fly away from me, or that I shall wake up and
+find it is a dream.'
+
+"Well, Cerinthy Ann Twitchel was the bridesmaid, and she came next with
+that young man she is engaged to. It is all out now, that she is
+engaged, and she don't deny it. And Cerinthy, she looked handsomer than
+I ever saw her, in a white brocade, with rosebuds on it, which I guess
+she got in reference to the future, for they say she is going to be
+married next month.
+
+"Well, we all filled up the room pretty well, till Mrs. Scudder came in
+to tell us that the company were all together; and then they took hold
+of arms, and they had a little time practising how they must stand, and
+Cerinthy Ann's beau would always get her on the wrong side, 'cause he's
+rather bashful, and don't know very well what he's about; and Cerinthy
+Ann declared she was afraid that she should laugh out in prayer-time,
+'cause she always did laugh when she knew she mus'n't. But finally Mrs.
+Scudder told us we must go in, and looked so reproving at Cerinthy that
+she had to hold her mouth with her pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"Well, the old Doctor was standing there in the very silk gown that the
+ladies gave him to be married in himself,--poor, dear man!--and he
+smiled kind of peaceful on 'em when they came in, and walked up to a
+kind of bower of evergreens and flowers that Madame de Frontignac had
+fixed for them to stand in. Mary grew rather white, as if she was going
+to faint; but Jim Marvyn stood up just as firm, and looked as proud and
+handsome as a prince, and he kind of looked down at her,--'cause, you
+know, he is a great deal taller,--kind of wondering, as if he wanted to
+know if it was really so. Well, when they got all placed, they let the
+doors stand open, and Cato and Candace came and stood in the door. And
+Candace had on her great splendid Mogadore turban, and a crimson and
+yellow shawl, that she seemed to take comfort in wearing, although it
+was pretty hot.
+
+"Well, so when they were all fixed, the Doctor, he begun his
+prayer,--and as 'most all of us knew what a great sacrifice he had
+made, I don't believe there was a dry eye in the room; and when he had
+done, there was a great time,--people blowing their noses and wiping
+their eyes, as if it had been a funeral. Then Cerinthy Ann, she pulled
+off Mary's glove pretty quick; but that poor beau of hers, he made such
+work of James's that he had to pull it off himself, after all, and
+Cerinthy Ann, she liked to have laughed out loud. And so when the
+Doctor told them to join hands, Jim took hold of Mary's hand as if he
+didn't mean to let go very soon, and so they were married.
+
+"I was the first one that kissed the bride after Mrs. Scudder;--I got
+that promise out of Mary when I was making the dress. And Jim Marvyn,
+he insisted upon kissing me,--''Cause,' says he, 'Miss Prissy, you are
+as young and handsome as any of 'em'; and I told him he was a saucy
+fellow, and I'd box his ears, if I could reach them.
+
+"That French lady looked lovely, dressed in pale pink silk, with long
+pink wreaths of flowers in her hair; and she came up and kissed Mary,
+and said something to her in French.
+
+"And after a while old Candace came up, and Mary kissed her; and then
+Candace put her arms round Jim's neck, and gave him a real hearty
+smack, so that everybody laughed.
+
+"And then the cake and the wine was passed round, and everybody had
+good times till we heard the nine-o'clock-bell ring. And then the coach
+come up to the door, and Mrs. Scudder, she wrapped Mary up, kissing
+her, and crying over her, while Mrs. Marvyn stood stretching her arms
+out of the coach after her; and then Cato and Candace went after in the
+wagon behind, and so they all went off together; and that was the end
+of the wedding; and ever since then we ha'n't any of us done much but
+rest, for we were pretty much beat out. So no more at present from your
+affectionate sister,
+
+"PRISSY.
+
+"P.S.--I forgot to tell you that Jim Marvyn has come home quite rich.
+He fell in with a man in China who was at the head of one of their
+great merchant-houses, whom he nursed through a long fever, and took
+care of his business, and so, when he got well, nothing would do but he
+must have him for a partner; and now he is going to live in this
+country and attend to the business of the firm here. They say he is
+going to build a house as grand as the Vernons'. And we hope he has
+experienced religion; and he means to join our church, which is a
+providence, for he is twice as rich and generous as that old Simeon
+Brown that snapped me up so about my wages. I never believed in him,
+for all his talk. I was down to Mrs. Scudder's when the Doctor examined
+Jim about his evidences. At first the Doctor seemed a little anxious,
+'cause he didn't talk in the regular way; for you know Jim always did
+have his own way of talking, and never could say things in other
+people's words; and sometimes he makes folks laugh, when he himself
+don't know what they laugh at, because he hits the nail on the head in
+some strange way they aren't expecting. If I was to have died, I
+couldn't help laughing at some things he said; and yet I don't think I
+ever felt more solemnized. He sat up there in a sort of grand,
+straightforward, noble way, and told all the way the Lord had been
+leading of him, and all the exercises of his mind, and all about the
+dreadful shipwreck, and how he was saved, and the loving-kindness of
+the Lord, till the Doctor's spectacles got all blinded with tears, and
+he couldn't see the notes he made to examine him by; and we all cried,
+Mrs. Scudder, and Mary, and I; and as to Mrs. Marvyn, she just sat with
+her--hands clasped, looking into her son's eyes, like a picture of the
+Virgin Mary. And when Jim got through, there wa'n't nothing to be heard
+for some minutes; and the Doctor; he wiped his eyes, and wiped his
+glasses, and looked over his papers, but he couldn't bring out a word,
+and at last says he, "Let us pray,"--for that was all there was to be
+said; for I think sometimes things so kind of fills folks up that there
+a'n't nothing to be done but pray, which, the Lord be praised, we are
+privileged to do always. Between you and I, Martha, I never could
+understand all the distinctions our dear, blessed Doctor sets up; but
+when he publishes his system, if I work my fingers to the bone, I mean
+to buy one and study it out, because he is such a blessed man; though,
+after all's said, I have come back to my old place, and trust to the
+loving-kindness of the Lord, who takes care of the sparrow on the
+house-top, and all small, lone creatures like me; though I can't say
+I'm lone either, because nobody need say that, so long as there's folks
+to be done for. So if I _don't_ understand the Doctor's theology, or
+don't get eyes to read it, on account of the fine stitching on his
+shirt-ruffles I've been trying to do, still I hope I may be accepted on
+account of the Lord's great goodness; for if we can't trust that, it's
+all over with us all."
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+LAST WORDS.
+
+We know it is fashionable to drop the curtain over a newly married
+pair, they recede from the altar; but we cannot but hope our readers
+may by this time have enough of interest in our little history to wish
+for a few words on the lot of the personages whose acquaintance they
+have thereby made.
+
+The conjectures of Miss Prissy in regard to the grand house which James
+was to build for his bride were as speedily as possible realized. On a
+beautiful elevation, a little out of the town of Newport, rose a fair
+and stately mansion, whose windows overlooked the harbor, and whose
+wide, cool rooms were adorned by thy constant presence of the sweet
+face and form which has been the guiding star of our story. The fair
+poetic maiden, the seeress, the saint, has passed into that appointed
+shrine for woman, more holy than cloister, more saintly and pure than
+church or altar,--_a Christian home_. Priestess, wife, and mother,
+there she ministers daily in holy works of household peace, and by
+faith and prayer and love redeems from grossness and earthliness the
+common toils and wants of life.
+
+The gentle guiding force that led James Marvyn from the maxims and
+habits and ways of this world to the higher conception of an heroic and
+Christ-like manhood was still ever present with him, gently touching
+the springs of life, brooding peacefully with dovelike wings over his
+soul, and he grew up under it noble in purpose and strong in spirit. He
+was one of the most energetic and fearless supporters of the Doctor in
+his life-long warfare against an inhumanity which was intrenched in all
+the mercantile interests of the day, and which at last fell before the
+force of conscience and moral appeal.
+
+Candace in time transferred her allegiance to the growing family of her
+young master and mistress, and predominated proudly in gorgeous raiment
+with her butterfly turban over a rising race of young Marvyns. All the
+care not needed by them was bestowed upon the somewhat querulous old
+age of Cato, whose never-failing cough furnished occupation for all her
+spare hours and thought.
+
+As for our friend the Doctor, we trust our readers will appreciate the
+magnanimity with which he proved a real and disinterested love, in a
+point where so many men experience only the graspings of a selfish one.
+A mind so severely trained as his had been brings to a great crisis,
+involving severe self-denial, an amount of reserved moral force quite
+inexplicable to those less habituated to self-control. He was like a
+warrior whose sleep even was in armor, always ready to be roused to the
+conflict.
+
+In regard to his feelings for Mary, he made the sacrifice of himself to
+her happiness so wholly and thoroughly that there was not a moment of
+weak hesitation,--no going back over the past,--no vain regret.
+Generous and brave souls find a support in such actions, because the
+very exertion raises them to a higher and purer plane of existence.
+
+His diary records the event only in these very calm and temperate
+words:--"It was a trial to me,--_a very great_ trial; but as she did
+not deceive me, I shall never lose my friendship for her."
+
+The Doctor was always a welcome inmate in the house of Mary and James,
+as a friend revered and dear. Nor did he want in time a hearthstone of
+his own, where a bright and loving face made him daily welcome; for we
+find that he married at last a woman of a fair countenance, and that
+sons and daughters grew up around him.
+
+In time, also, his theological system was published. In that day, it
+was customary to dedicate new or important works to the patronage of
+some distinguished or powerful individual. The Doctor had no earthly
+patron. Four or five simple lines are found in the commencement of his
+work, in which, in a spirit reverential and affectionate, he dedicates
+it to our Lord Jesus Christ, praying Him to accept the good, and to
+overrule the errors to His glory.
+
+Quite unexpectedly to himself, the work proved a success, not only in
+public acceptance and esteem, but even in a temporal view, bringing to
+him at last a modest competence, which he accepted with surprise and
+gratitude. To the last of a very long life, he was the same steady,
+undiscouraged worker, the same calm witness against popular sins and
+proclaimer of unpopular truths, ever saying and doing what he saw to be
+eternally right, without the slightest consultation with worldly
+expediency or earthly gain; nor did his words cease to work in New
+England till the evils he opposed were finally done away.
+
+Colonel Burr leaves the scene of our story to pursue those brilliant
+and unscrupulous political intrigues so well known to the historian of
+those times, and whose results were so disastrous to himself. His duel
+with the ill-fated Hamilton, the awful retribution of public opinion
+that followed, and the slow downward course of a doomed life are all on
+record. Chased from society, pointed at everywhere by the finger of
+hatred, so accursed in common esteem that even the publican who lodged
+him for a night refused to accept his money when he knew his name,
+heart-stricken in his domestic relations, his only daughter taken by
+pirates and dying amid untold horrors,--one seems to see in a doom so
+much above that of other men the power of an avenging Nemesis for sins
+beyond those of ordinary humanity.
+
+But we who have learned of Christ may humbly hope that these crushing
+miseries in this life came not because he was a sinner above
+others,--not in wrath alone,--but that the prayers of the sweet saint
+who gave him to God even before his birth brought to him those friendly
+adversities, that thus might be slain in his soul the evil demon of
+pride, which had been the opposing force to all that was noble within
+him. Nothing is more affecting than the account of the last hours of
+this man, whom a woman took in and cherished in his poverty and
+weakness with that same heroic enthusiasm with which it was his lot to
+inspire so many women. This humble keeper of lodgings was told, that,
+if she retained Aaron Burr, all her other lodgers would leave. "Let
+them do it, then," she said; "but he shall remain." In the same
+uncomplaining and inscrutable silence in which he had borne the
+reverses and miseries of his life did this singular being pass through
+the shades of the dark valley. The New Testament was always under his
+pillow, and when alone he was often found reading it attentively; but
+of the result of that communion with Higher Powers he said nothing.
+Patient, gentle, and grateful, he was, as to all his inner history,
+entirely silent and impenetrable. He died with the request, which has a
+touching significance, that he might be buried at the feet of those
+parents whose lives had finished so differently from his own.
+
+  "No farther seek his errors to disclose,
+  Or draw his frailties from their dread abode."
+
+Shortly after Mary's marriage, Madame de Frontignac sailed with her
+husband for home, where they lived in a very retired way on a large
+estate in the South of France. An intimate correspondence was kept up
+between her and Mary for many years, from which we shall give our
+readers a few extracts. Her first letter is dated shortly after her
+return to France.
+
+"At last, my sweet Marie, you behold us in peace after our wanderings.
+I wish you could see our lovely nest in the hills which overlook the
+Mediterranean, whose blue waters remind me of Newport harbor and our
+old days there. Ah, my sweet saint, blessed was the day I first learned
+to know you! for it was you, more than anything else, that kept me back
+from sin and misery. I call you my Sibyl, dearest, because the Sibyl
+was a prophetess of divine things out of the Church; and so are you.
+The Abbe says, that all true, devout persons of all persuasions belong
+to the True Catholic Apostolic Church, and will in the end be
+enlightened to know it. What do you think of that, _ma belle?_ I fancy
+I see you look at me with your grave, innocent eyes, just as you used
+to; but you say nothing.
+
+"I am far happier, _ma Marie_, than I ever thought I could be. I took
+your advice, and told my husband all I had felt and suffered. It was a
+very hard thing to do; but I felt how true it was, as you said, that
+there could be no real friendship without perfect truth at bottom; so I
+told him all, and he was very good and noble and helpful to me; and
+since then he has been so gentle and patient and thoughtful, that no
+mother could be kinder; and I should be a very bad woman, if I did not
+love him truly and dearly,--as I do.
+
+"I must confess that there is still a weak, bleeding place in my heart
+that aches yet, but I try to bear it bravely; and when I am tempted to
+think myself very miserable, I remember how patiently you used to go
+about your house-work and spinning, in those sad days when you thought
+your heart was drowned in the sea; and I try to do like you. I have
+many duties to my servants and tenants, and mean to be a good
+_chatelaine_; and I find, when I nurse the sick and comfort the poor,
+that my sorrows are lighter. For, after all, Marie, I have lost nothing
+that ever was mine,--only my foolish heart has grown to something that
+it should not, and bleeds at being torn away. Nobody but Christ and His
+dear Mother can tell what this sorrow is; but they know, and that is
+enough."
+
+The next letter is dated some three years after.
+
+"You see me now, my Marie, a proud and happy woman. I was truly
+envious, when you wrote me of the birth of your little son; but now the
+dear good God has sent a sweet little angel to me, to comfort my
+sorrows and lie close to my heart; and since he came, all pain is gone.
+Ah, if you could see him! he has black eyes, and lashes like silk, and
+such little hands!--even his finger-nails are all perfect, like little
+gems; and when he puts his little hand on my bosom, I tremble with joy.
+Since he came, I pray always, and the good God seems very near to me.
+Now I realize, as I never did before, the sublime thought that God
+revealed Himself in the infant Jesus; and I bow before the manger of
+Bethlehem where the Holy Babe was laid. What comfort, what adorable
+condescension for us mothers in that scene!--My husband is so moved, he
+can scarce stay an hour from the cradle. He seems to look at me with a
+sort of awe, because I know how to care for this precious treasure that
+he adores without daring to touch. We are going to call him Henri,
+which is my husband's name and that of his ancestors for many
+generations back. I vow for him an eternal friendship with the son of
+my little Marie; and I shall try and train him up to be a brave man and
+a true Christian. Ah, Marie, this gives me something to live for! My
+heart is full,--a whole new life opens before me!"
+
+Somewhat later, another letter announces the birth of a daughter,--and
+later still, the birth of another son; but we shall add only one more,
+written some years after, on hearing of the great reverses of popular
+feeling towards Burr, subsequently to his duel with the ill-fated
+Hamilton.
+
+"_Ma chere Marie_,--Your letter has filled me with grief. My noble
+Henri, who already begins to talk of himself as my protector, (these
+boys feel their manhood so soon, _ma Marie_!) saw by my face, when I
+read your letter, that something pained me, and he would not rest till
+I told him something about it. Ah, Marie, how thankful I then felt that
+I had nothing to blush for before my son! how thankful for those dear
+children whose little hands had healed all the morbid places of my
+heart, so that I could think of all the past without a pang! I told
+Henri that the letter brought bad news of an old friend, but that it
+pained me to speak of it; and you would have thought, by the grave and
+tender way he talked to his mamma, that the boy was an experienced man
+of forty, to say the least.
+
+"But, Marie, how unjust is the world! how unjust both in praise and
+blame! Poor Burr was the petted child of Society; yesterday she doted
+on him, flattered him, smiled on his faults, and let him do what he
+would without reproof; to-day she flouts and scorns and scoffs him, and
+refuses to see the least good in him. I know that man, Marie,--and I
+know, that, sinful as he may be before Infinite Purity, he is not so
+much more sinful than all the other men of his time. Have I not been in
+America? I know Jefferson; I knew poor Hamilton,--peace be with the
+dead! Neither of them had a life that could bear the sort of trial to
+which Burr's is subjected. When every secret fault, failing, and sin is
+dragged out, and held up without mercy, what man can stand?
+
+"But I know what irritates the world is that proud, disdainful calm
+which will give neither sigh nor tear. It was not that he killed poor
+Hamilton, but that he never seemed to care! Ah, there is that evil
+demon of his life,--that cold, stoical pride, which haunts him like a
+fate! But I know he _does_ feel; I know he is not as hard at heart as
+he tries to be; I have seen too many real acts of pity to the
+unfortunate, of tenderness to the weak, of real love to his friends, to
+believe that. Great have been his sins against our sex, and God forbid
+that the mothers of children should speak lightly of them I but is not
+so susceptible a temperament, and so singular a power to charm as he
+possessed, to be taken into account in estimating his temptations?
+Because he is a sinning man, it does not follow that he is a demon. If
+any should have cause to think bitterly of him, I should. He trifled
+inexcusably with my deepest feelings; he caused me years of conflict
+and anguish, such as he little knows; I was almost shipwrecked; yet I
+will still say to the last that what I loved in him was a better
+self,--something really noble and good, however concealed and perverted
+by pride, ambition, and self-will. Though all the world reject him, I
+still have faith in this better nature, and prayers that he may be led
+right at last. There is at least one heart that will always intercede
+with God for him."
+
+It is well known, that, for many years after Burr's death, the odium
+that covered his name was so great that no monument was erected, lest
+it should become a mark for popular violence. Subsequently, however, in
+a mysterious manner, a plain granite slab marked his grave; by whom
+erected has never been known. It was placed in the night by some
+friendly, unknown hand. A laborer in the vicinity, who first discovered
+it, found lying near the spot a small _porte-monnaie_, which had
+perhaps been used in paying for the workmanship. It contained no papers
+that could throw any light on the subject, except the fragment of the
+address of a letter on which was written "Henri de Frontignac."
+
+
+
+
+THE NORTHERN LIGHTS AND THE STARS.
+
+
+The stars are watching at their posts
+  And raining silence from the sky,
+And, guarded by the heavenly hosts,
+  Earth closes her day-wearied eye.
+
+A reign of holy quietness
+  Replaces the tumultuous light,
+And Nature's weary tribes confess
+  The calm beatitude of Night:
+
+When from the Arctic pit up-steams
+  The Boreal fire's portentous glare,
+And, bursting into arrowy streams,
+  Hurls horrid splendors on the air.
+
+The embattled meteors scale the arch,
+  And toss their lurid banners wide;
+Heaven reels with their tempestuous march,
+  And quivers in the flashing tide.
+
+Against the everlasting stars,
+  Against the old empyreal Right,
+They vainly wage their anarch wars,
+  In vain they urge their fatuous light.
+
+The skies may flash and meteors glare,
+  And Hell invade the spheral school;
+But Law and Love are sovereign there,
+  And Sirius and Orion rule.
+
+The stars are watching at their posts,
+  Again the Silences prevail;
+The meteor crew, like guilty ghosts,
+  Have slunk to the infernal jail.
+
+The truths of God forever shine,
+  Though Error glare and Falsehood rage;
+The cause of Order is divine,
+  And Wisdom rules from age to age.
+
+Faith, Hope, and Love, your time abide!
+  Let Hades marshal all his hosts,
+The heavenly forces with you side,
+  The stars are watching at their posts.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS PAINE IN ENGLAND AND IN FRANCE.
+
+
+Paine landed at Havre in May, A.D. 1787, _aet. suae_ 50, with many
+titles to social success. He brought with him a literary fame which
+ranks higher in France than elsewhere; and his works were in the
+fashionable line of the day. He had been an energetic actor in the
+American Revolution,--a subject of unbounded enthusiasm with Frenchmen,
+who look upon it, to this day, as an achievement of their own. And he
+could boast of a scientific _specialite_, without which no intelligent
+gentleman was complete in the last third of the eighteenth century.
+Philosopher, American, republican, friend of humanity, _savant_,--he
+could show every claim to notice. Besides all this, and better than
+all, he brought letters from Franklin, the charming old man, whose
+fondness for "that dear nation" which he could not leave without regret
+was returned a thousand fold by its admiring affection. De Rayneval did
+not exaggerate when he wrote to him,--"You will carry with you the
+affection of all France"; and De Chastellux told the simple truth in
+the graceful compliment he sent to the old sage after his return
+home,--"When you were here, we had no need to praise the Americans; we
+had only to say, 'Look! here is their representative.'" Let us devoutly
+pray that our ambassadors may not be made use of for the same purpose
+now!
+
+For these reasons, Paine's reception in Paris was cordial; visits and
+invitations poured in upon him; he dined with Malesherbes; M. Le Roy
+took him to Buffon's, where he saw some interesting experiments on
+inflammable air; the Abbe Morellet exerted himself to get the model of
+his bridge, which had been stopped at the custom-house, safely to
+Paris. Through their influence it was submitted to a committee of the
+Academie des Sciences; their report was, in substance, that the iron
+bridge of M. Paine was _ingenieusement imagine_,--that it merited an
+attempt to execute it, and furnished a new example of the application
+of a metal which had not yet been sufficiently used on a large scale.
+
+Two other gentlemen from America, who were interested in science and in
+mechanics, were in Paris at that time. Rumsey was there with his model
+of a steamboat; and Thomas Jefferson, whose curiosity extended to all
+things visible or audible, was busily collecting ground-plans and
+elevations, and preparing to add at least two ugly buildings to a State
+"over which," as he himself wrote, "the Genius of Architecture had
+showered his malediction."
+
+Unfortunately for inventors, the times were not favorable for the
+construction of boats or of bridges. A taste had sprung up in France
+for constitution-making, one of the most difficult and expensive of
+public works. A translation of the American State Constitutions
+attracted more attention in Paris than Paine's iron-work; for these
+also, the French thought, were _ingenieusement imaginees_, and worthy
+of an attempt to execute them abroad. The American Revolution, with its
+brilliant termination of wisdom, liberty, and peace, seemed to promise
+similar good results to the efforts of reformers elsewhere. Treatises
+on moral science and on the nature and end of civil government were
+eagerly read, "_Humanite, mot nouveau_," as Cousin says, became the
+watch-word of the Parisians. It was the fashion among all classes, high
+as well as low, to talk of human rights, to exalt the virtue of the
+people, hitherto supposed to have none, and to execrate "bloody
+tyrants," "silly despots," the members of the kingly profession, which
+fell into such sad disfavor towards the end of the last century. Segur,
+after his return from America, heard the whole court applaud these
+lines at the theatre:--
+
+  "Je suis fils de Brutus, et je porte en mon coeur
+  La liberte gravee et les rois en horreur."
+
+None suspected whither the road would lead which they were pursuing
+with so much gayety and enlightenment. Philosophers, nobles, and
+parliaments all clamored for reform--in others; and for the public
+good, provided their own goods did not suffer. The King meant reform;
+he, at least, was in earnest. But how to get it? He had sought
+assistance from the middle classes; had tried Turgot, the political
+economist, and Necker, the banker, as ministers; but both broke down
+under the opposition of the nobility. Then Calonne volunteered, witty
+and reckless, and convoked the notables, or not-ables, as Lafayette
+called them in one of his American letters, borrowing a bad pun from
+Thomas Paine. Calonne could do nothing with the notables, who
+obstinately refused to submit to taxation. Brienne, Archbishop of
+Toulouse, took his place. This was in April, 1787, a month before
+Paine's arrival in France. The notables suddenly became manageable
+under the new minister, and voted all the necessary taxes; but now the
+parliaments grew restive, refused to register the edicts, declaring
+that they had not the legal right to consent to taxes, that the
+States-General alone had authority to impose new ones. Brienne,
+indignant at this perverseness,--for hitherto they had claimed the sole
+right of registering taxes,--forced them to register the stamp-tax and
+the land-tax, and exiled them to Troyes. This took place on the 15th of
+August. The same day the two brothers of the King went to register the
+edicts in the Cour des Comptes and the _Cour des Aides_. Monsieur was
+received with acclamations; but D'Artois, who belonged to the unpopular
+Calonne party, was hissed and jostled by the crowd. Alarmed, he ordered
+his guard to close about him. "I was standing in one of the apartments
+through which he had to pass," says Paine, "and could not avoid
+reflecting how wretched is the condition of a disrespected man."
+
+Evidently no bridges to be built here at present. It would be better to
+try in England, Paine thought, and in September crossed to London. Sir
+Joseph Banks, a great scientific authority, thought well of his model,
+and recommended the construction of one on a larger scale. The
+different parts of the new bridge were cast in a Yorkshire foundry
+belonging to Thomas Walker, a Whig friend of the inventor, brought by
+sea to London, and erected in an open field at Faddington, where the
+structure was inspected by great numbers of people. After standing
+there a year, it was taken down, and the materials used in building a
+bridge over the river Wear at Sunderland, of two hundred and thirty-six
+feet span, with a rise of thirty-four feet. This bridge is still in
+use.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Stephenson says, in rather bad English, (we quote from the
+_Quarterly_),--"If we are to consider Paine as its author, his daring
+in engineering certainly does full justice to the fervor of his
+political career; for, successful as the result has undoubtedly proved,
+want of experience and consequent ignorance of the risk could alone
+have induced so bold an experiment; and we are rather led to wonder at
+than to admire a structure which, as regards its proportions and the
+small quantity of material employed in its construction, will probably
+remain unrivalled,"--thus resembling the spider's web, which furnished;
+the original suggestion. In 1801, when Paine had exhausted his theory
+of human rights in France, he offered his plan to Chaptal, the Minister
+of the Interior, who proposed to build an iron bridge over the Seine.
+Two years later, after his return to America, he addressed a memorial
+to Congress on the same subject, offering the nation the invention as a
+free gift, and his own services to superintend the structure; but
+neither Chaptal nor Congress thought fit to accept his offer.]
+
+Paine had forgotten his bridge long before it was taken down. His soul
+was engrossed by the contemplation of the wonderful event which was
+daily developing itself in France. Bankruptcy had brought on the
+crisis. In August, 1788, the interest was not paid on the national
+debt, and Brienne resigned. The States-General met in May of the next
+year; in June they declared themselves a national assembly, and
+commenced work upon a constitution under the direction of Sieyes, who
+well merited the epithet, "indefatigable constitution-grinder," applied
+to Paine by Cobbett. Not long after, the attempted _coup d'etat_ of
+Louis XVI. failed, the Bastille was demolished, and the political
+Saturnalia of the French people began.
+
+It is evident, that, in the beginning, Paine did not aspire to be the
+political Prometheus of England. He rather looked to the Whig party and
+to Mr. Burke as the leaders in such a movement. As for himself, a
+veteran reformer from another hemisphere, he was willing to serve as a
+volunteer in the campaign against the oppressors of mankind. He had
+adopted for his motto, "Where liberty is not, there is my country,"--a
+negative variation of Franklin's saying, which suited his tempestuous
+character. As he flitted to and fro across the Channel, observing with
+sharp, eager eyes the progress of "principles" in France, gradually
+there arose in his mind the thought that poor, old, worn-out England
+might be regenerated by these new methods. "The French are doubling
+their strength," he wrote, "by allying, if it may be so expressed, (for
+it is difficult to express a new idea by old terms,) the majesty of the
+sovereign with the majesty of the nation."
+
+Paris swarmed with enthusiastic "friends of humanity," English, Scotch,
+and Irish. Among them Paine naturally took a foremost position, being
+an authority in revolutionary matters, and a man who had principles on
+the subject of government. In spite of his contempt of titles, he wrote
+himself, "Secretary for Foreign Affairs to the Congress of the United
+States," slightly improving upon the office he had actually held, to
+suit the sound to European capacity,--showing that in this, likewise,
+he possessed a genuine American element of character. Lafayette thought
+much of him, used his pen freely, and listened to his advice. The
+Marquis, warm-hearted, honest, but endowed with little judgment and a
+womanish vanity, was trying to make himself the Washington of a French
+federative republic, and felt happy in having secured the experienced
+services of Mr. Paine. He wrote to his great master,--"'Common Sense'
+is writing a book for you, and there you will see a part of my
+adventures. Liberty is springing up around us in the other parts of
+Europe, and I am encouraging it by all the means in my power." Paine
+was in Paris when the Bastille was taken. Lafayette placed the key in
+his hands, to be transmitted to Washington. Paine wrote to the
+President, "That the principles of America opened the Bastille is not
+to be doubted, and therefore the key comes to the right place."
+Washington, returning his thanks to Paine for the key, added,--"It will
+give you pleasure to learn that the new government answers its purposes
+as well as could have been reasonably expected." Yes! and still answers
+reasonable purposes to this day. In the mean while dozens of French
+constitutions, "perfections of human wisdom," have been invented, set
+up, and crushed to atoms.
+
+It was a time of revival in politics. Holland was indulging in hope,
+Germany was anxious, and steady old England began to lend an ear to the
+new doctrines from the other side of the Channel. The tendency of the
+human mind to believe in a golden future, until knowledge of the world
+and reflection teach us that these bright visions always shrink into
+the ordinary dimensions of the present as they approach it, misled
+enthusiastic Englishmen, many of them of a high order of intelligence.
+There was something grand in the idea, that the prejudices and the
+abuses of twenty centuries had been buried forever in the ruins of the
+old French monarchy. This was not enough. All governments and all
+prejudices of society were to be thrown into the melting-pot; out of
+the fusion was to arise the new era, the millennium. All other evil
+things would cease to exist, as well as monopolies, titles, places, and
+pensions. Sickness, even death, perhaps, might be evaded by the skill
+of a new science. Who could tell? Franklin had suggested this, half in
+jest, years before; Condorcet believed and asserted it now. Ignorance
+and misery, at all events, should come to an end. When kings and a
+wicked self-seeking aristocracy should be swept away, the divine sense
+of right, which God had implanted in the people, would rule; there
+could be no wars; armies and fleets would become useless; taxes would
+amount to nothing. All the nations would form one grand republic, with
+a universal convention sitting at the world's centre, to watch over the
+rights of man! Liberty, virtue, happiness, seemed ready to descend upon
+the earth.
+
+  "Jam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto,
+  Ac toto surget gens aurea mundo."
+
+As each week brought the news of some stupendous change, a kind of
+madness seized upon the minds of men. Fanatics were jubilant.
+"Revolutions," they said, "can do no wrong; all are for the best."
+Englishmen, hitherto sane, forgot their nationality, and became violent
+Frenchmen. So strongly did the current set in this direction, that the
+massacres of September, the execution of the King, the despotism of the
+Directory and the Consulship could not turn it, until Napoleon united
+all France under him and all England against him. As late as 1793, such
+men as James Watt, Jr., and the poet Wordsworth were in Paris, on
+intimate terms with Robespierre and his Committee.
+
+Before 1789, there was no particular discontent in England. Some talk
+there had been of reform in the representation, and the usual
+complaints of the burden of taxation. The Dissenters had been trying to
+get the Corporation and Test Acts repealed, without much success. But
+nothing beyond occasional meetings and petitions to Parliament would
+have occurred, had it not been for the explosion in France, then, as
+since, the political powder-magazine of Europe. The Whig party had seen
+with pleasure the beginning of the French reforms. Paine, who had
+partaken of Mr. Burke's hospitality at Beaconsfield, wrote to him
+freely from Paris, assuring him that everything was going on right;
+that little inconveniences, the necessary consequences of pulling down
+and building up, might arise; but that these were much less than ought
+to be expected; and that a national convention in England would be the
+best plan of regenerating the nation. Christie, a foolish Scotchman,
+and Baron Clootz (soon to become Anacharsis) also wrote to Burke in the
+same vein. Their communications affected his mind in a way they little
+expected. Mr. Burke had lost all faith in any good result from the
+blind, headlong rush of the Revolution, and was appalled at the
+toleration, or rather, sympathy, shown in England, for the riots,
+outrages, and murders of the Parisian rabble. He began writing the
+"Reflections," as a warning to his countrymen. He was led to enlarge
+the work by some remarks made by Fox and Sheridan in the House of
+Commons; and more particularly by some passages in a sermon preached at
+the Old Jewry by Dr. Price. Eleven years before, this scientific
+divine, by a resolution of the American Congress, had been invited to
+consider himself an American citizen, and to furnish the rebellious
+Colonists with his assistance in regulating their finances. He had
+disregarded this flattering summons. Full of zeal for "humanity," he
+eagerly accepted the request of the Revolution Society to deliver their
+anniversary sermon. In this discourse, the Doctor, the fervor of whose
+sentiments had increased with age, maintained the right of the nation
+"to cashier the king," choose a new ruler, and frame a government for
+itself. The sermon and the congratulatory addresses it provoked were
+published by the society and industriously circulated.
+
+Mr. Burke's well-known "Reflections" appeared in October, 1790. The
+book was hailed with delight by the conservatives of England. Thirteen
+thousand copies were sold and disseminated. It was a sowing of the
+dragon's teeth. Every copy brought out some radical, armed with speech
+or pamphlet. Among a vulgar and forgotten crowd of declaimers, the
+harebrained Lord Stanhope, Mary Wolstonecraft, who afterward wrote a
+"Vindication of the Rights of Women," and the violent Catharine
+Macaulay came forward to enter the ring against the great Mr. Burke.
+Dr. Priestley, Unitarian divine, discoverer of oxygen gas,
+correspondent of Dr. Franklin, afterward mobbed in Birmingham, and
+self-exiled to Pennsylvania, fiercely backed Dr. Price, and maintained
+that the French Revolution would result "in the enlargement of liberty,
+the melioration of society, and the increase of virtue and happiness."
+The "Vindiciae Gallicae" brought into notice Mr. Mackintosh, an
+opponent whom Burke did not consider beneath him. But the champion was
+Thomas Paine. At the White Bear, Piccadilly, Paine's favorite lounge,
+where Romney, who painted a good portrait of him, Lord Edward
+Fitzgerald, Colonel Oswald, Horne Tooke, and others of that set of
+clever, impracticable reformers used to meet, there had been talk of
+the blow Mr. Burke was preparing to strike, and Paine had promised his
+friends to ward it off and to return it. He set himself to work in the
+Red-Lion Tavern, at Islington, and in three months, Part the First of
+the "Rights of Man" was ready for the press. Here a delay occurred. The
+printer who had undertaken the job came to a stop before certain
+treasonable passages, and declined proceeding farther. This caused the
+loss of a month. At last, Jordan, of Fleet Street, brought it out on
+the 13th of March, 1791. No publication in Great Britain, not Junius
+nor Wilkes's No. 45, had produced such an effect. All England was
+divided into those who, like Cruger of Bristol, said "Ditto to Mr.
+Burke," and those who swore by Thomas Paine. "It is a false, wicked,
+and seditious libel," shouted loyal gentlemen. "It abounds in
+unanswerable truths, and principles of the purest morality and
+benevolence; it has no object in view but the happiness of mankind,"
+answered the reformers. "He is the scavenger of rebellion and
+infidelity."--"Say, rather, 'the Apostle of Freedom, whose heart is a
+perpetual bleeding fountain of philanthropy.'" The friends of the
+government carried Paine in effigy, with a pair of stays under his
+arms, and burned the figure in the streets. The friends of humanity
+added a new verse to the national hymn, and sung,--
+
+  "God save great Thomas Paine,
+  His Rights of Man proclaim
+  From pole to pole!"
+
+This pamphlet, which excited Englishmen of seventy years ago to such a
+pitch of angry and scornful contention, may be read safely now. Time
+has taken the sting from it. It is written in that popular style which
+was Paine's extraordinary gift. He practised the maxim of
+Aristotle,--although probably he had never heard of it,--"Think like
+the wise, and speak like the common people." Fox said of the "Rights of
+Man," "It seems as clear and as simple as the first rule in
+arithmetic." Therein lay its strength. Paine knew exactly what he
+wanted to say, and exactly how to say it. His positions may be
+wrong,--no doubt frequently are wrong,--but so clearly, keenly, and
+above all so boldly stated, and backed by such shrewd arguments and
+such apposite illustrations, that it is difficult not to yield to his
+common-sense view of the question he is discussing. His plain and
+perspicuous style is often elegant. He may sometimes be coarse and
+rude, but it is in the thought rather than in the expression. It is
+true, that, in the heat of conflict, he is apt to lose his temper and
+break out into the bitter violence of his French associates; but even
+the scientific and reverend Priestley "called names,"--apostate,
+renegade, scoundrel. This rough energy added to his popularity with the
+middle and the lower classes, and made him doubly distasteful to his
+opponents. Paine, who thought all revolutions alike, and all good,
+could not understand why Burke, who had upheld the Americans, should
+exert his whole strength against the French, unless he were "a traitor
+to human nature." Burke did Paine equal injustice. He thought him
+unworthy of any refutation but the pillory. In public, he never
+mentioned his name. But his opinion, and, perhaps, a little soreness of
+feeling, may be seen in this extract from a letter to Sir William
+Smith:--
+
+"He [Paine] is utterly incapable of comprehending his subject. He has
+not even a moderate portion of learning of any kind. He has learned the
+instrumental part of literature, without having ever made a previous
+preparation of study for the use of it. Paine has nothing more than
+what a man, whose audacity makes him careless of logical consequences
+and his total want of honor makes indifferent to political
+consequences, can very easily write."
+
+The radicals thought otherwise. They drank Mr. Burke's health with
+"thanks to him for the discussion he had provoked." And the student of
+history, who may read Paine's opening sketch of the French Revolution,
+written to refute Burke's narrative of the same events, will not deny
+Paine's complete success. He will even meet with sentences that Burke
+might have composed. For instance: Paine ridicules, as Quixotic, the
+fine passage in the "Reflections on the Decay of Chivalry"; and adds,
+"Mr. Burke's mind is above the homely sorrows of the vulgar. He can
+only feel for a king or for a queen. The countless victims of tyranny
+have no place in his sympathies. He is not affected by the reality of
+distress touching upon his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it.
+He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird."
+
+The French constitution,--"a fabric of government which time could not
+destroy and the latest posterity would admire." This was the boast of
+the National Assembly, echoed by the English clubs. Even Mr. Fox, as
+late as April, 1791, misled by his own magniloquence, spoke of it as
+"the most stupendous and glorious edifice of liberty which had been
+erected on the foundation of human integrity in any time or country."
+Paine heartily concurred with him. Such a constitution as this, he
+said, is needed in England. There is no hope of it from Parliament.
+Indeed, Parliament, if it desired reforms, could not make them; it has
+not the legal right. A national convention, fresh from the people, is
+indispensable. Then, _reculant pour mieux sauter_, Paine goes back to
+the origin of man,--a journey often undertaken by the political
+philosophers of that day. He describes his natural rights,--defines
+society as a compact,--declares that no generation has a right to bind
+its successors, (a doctrine which Mr. Jefferson, and some foolish
+people after him, thought a self-evident truth,)--hence, no family has
+a right to take possession of a throne. An hereditary rule is as great
+an absurdity as an hereditary professorship of mathematics,--a place
+supposed by Dr. Franklin to exist in some German university. Paine grew
+bolder as he advanced: "If monarchy is a useless thing, why is it kept
+up anywhere? and if a necessary thing, how can it be dispensed with?"
+This is a pretty good specimen of one of Paine's dialectical methods.
+Here is another: The French constitution says, that the right of war
+and of peace is in the nation. "Where else should it reside, but in
+those who are to pay the expense? In England, the right is said to
+reside in a metaphor shown at the Tower for sixpence or a shilling."
+Dropping the crown, he turned upon the aristocracy and the Church, and
+tore them. He begged Lafayette's pardon for addressing him as Marquis.
+Titles are but nicknames. Nobility and no ability are synonymous. "In
+all the vocabulary of Adam, you will find no such thing as a duke or a
+count." The French had established universal liberty of conscience,
+which gave rise to the following Painean statement: "With respect to
+what are called denominations of religion,--if every one is left to
+judge of his own religion, there is no such thing as a religion which
+is wrong; but if they are to judge of each other's religion, there is
+no such thing as a religion that is right;--and therefore all the world
+is right or all the world is wrong." The next is better: "Religion is
+man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his heart; and though these
+fruits may differ from each other, like the fruits of the earth, the
+grateful tribute of every one is accepted."
+
+To encounter an antagonist like Burke, and to come off with credit,
+might stimulate moderate vanity into public self-exposure; but in Paine
+vanity was the besetting weakness. It was now swollen by success and
+flattery into magnificent proportions. Franklin says, that, "when we
+forbear to praise ourselves, we make a sacrifice to the pride or to the
+envy of others." Paine did not hesitate to mortify both these failings
+in his fellow-men. He praises himself with the simplicity of an Homeric
+hero before a fight. He introduces himself, without a misgiving, almost
+in the words of Pius Aeneas,--
+
+  "Sum Thomas Paine,
+  Fauna, super aethera notus."
+
+"With all the inconveniences of early life against me, I am proud to
+say, that, with a perseverance undismayed by difficulties, a
+disinterestedness that compels respect, I have not only contributed to
+raise a new empire in the world, founded on a new system of government,
+but I have arrived at an eminence in political literature, the most
+difficult of all lines to succeed and excel in, which aristocracy, with
+all its aids, has not been able to reach or to rival." "I possess," he
+wrote in the Second Part of the "Rights of Man," "more of what is
+called consequence in the world than any one of Mr. Burke's catalogue
+of aristocrats." Paine sincerely believed himself to be an adept who
+had found in the rights of man the _materia prima_ of politics, by
+which error and suffering might be transmuted into happiness and truth.
+A second Columbus, but greater than the Genoese! Christopher had
+discovered a new world, it is true, but Thomas had discovered the means
+of making a new world out of the old. About this time, Dumont, the
+Benthamite, travelled with him from Paris to London. Dumont was
+irritated with "his incredible _amour-propre_ and his presumptuous
+self-conceit." "He was mad with vanity." "The man was a caricature of
+the vainest of Frenchmen. He believed that his book on the 'Rights of
+Man' might supply the place of all the books that had ever been
+written. If it was in his power, he would destroy all the libraries in
+the world without hesitation, in order to root out the errors of which
+they were the deposit, and so recommence by the 'Rights of Man' a new
+chain of ideas and principles." Thus Paine and his wild friends had
+reached the point of folly in the reformer's scale, and, like so many
+of their class since, made the fatal mistake of supposing that the old
+world knew nothing.
+
+When Dumont fell in with Paine, he was returning from a flying visit to
+Paris, invigorated by the bracing air of French freedom. He had seen
+Pope Pius burned in effigy in the Palais Royal, and the poor King
+brought back a prisoner from Varennes,--a cheerful spectacle to the
+friend of humanity. He was on his way to be present at a dinner given
+in London on the 14th of July, to commemorate the taking of the
+Bastille; but the managers of the festivity thought it prudent that he
+should not attend. He wrote, soon after, the address read by Horne
+Tooke to the meeting of the 20th of August, at the Thatched House
+tavern. So enlightened were the doctrines set forth in this paper, that
+the innkeeper declined receiving Mr. Tooke and his friends on any
+subsequent occasion. On the 4th of November, he assisted at the
+customary celebration of the Fifth by the Revolution Society, and gave,
+for his toast, "The Revolution of the World."
+
+Meanwhile, Paine had reloaded his piece, and was now ready for another
+shot at kings, lords, and commons. A thousand guineas were offered for
+the copyright and refused. He declined to treat as a merchantable
+commodity principles of such importance to mankind. His plan was, to
+publish Part the Second on the day of the opening of Parliament; but
+Chapman, the printer, became frightened, like his predecessor, at a
+treasonable paragraph, and refused to go on.
+
+A fortnight passed before work was resumed, and the essay did not
+appear until the 16th of February, 1792. It combined, according to the
+author, "principles and practice." Part the First was now fully
+expounded, and enlarged by a scheme for diminishing the taxes and
+improving the condition of the poor, by making weekly allowances to
+young children, aged people, travelling workmen, and disbanded
+soldiers. This project of Paine, stated with the mathematical accuracy
+which was a characteristic of his mind, sprang from the same source as
+the thousand Utopianisms which form the ludicrous side of the terrible
+French Revolution.
+
+Part the First was dedicated to Washington; Part the Second bore the
+name of Lafayette. It is evident, from the second dedication, that
+Paine had kept pace with the railway speed of the Revolution, and had
+far outstripped the Marquis, who was not born to lead, or even to
+understand the period he attempted to direct. The foremost men of 1792
+had no time to wait;--"Mankind are always ripe enough to understand
+their true interest," said Paine; adding words which seemed to quiet
+Englishmen of fearful significance:--
+
+"I do not believe that monarchy and aristocracy will continue seven
+years longer in any of the enlightened countries of Europe."--"When
+France shall be surrounded with revolutions, she will be in peace and
+safety."--"From what we can learn, all Europe may form but one great
+republic, and man be free of the whole."--"It is only a certain service
+that any man can perform in the state, and the service of any
+individual in the routine of office can never exceed the value of ten
+thousand pounds a year."--"I presume that no man in his sober senses
+will compare the character of any of the kings of Europe with that of
+George Washington. Yet in France and in England the expenses of the
+Civil List only for the support of one man are eight times greater than
+the whole expense of the Federal government of America."--"The time is
+not very distant when England will laugh at itself for sending to
+Holland, Hanover, Zell, or Brunswick, for men, at the expense of a
+million a year, who understand neither her laws, her language, or her
+interest, and whose capacities would scarcely have fitted them for the
+office of a parish constable. If government could be trusted to such
+hands, it must be some easy and simple thing indeed, and materials fit
+for all the purposes may be found in every town and village in
+England."
+
+Here is treasonable matter enough, surely; and no wonder that Mr.
+Chapman judged it prudent to stop his press.
+
+Paine sent fifty copies to Washington; and wrote to him that sixteen
+thousand had been printed in England, and four editions in
+Ireland,--the second of ten thousand copies. Thirty thousand copies
+were distributed by the clubs, at their own expense, among the poor.
+Six months after the appearance of the Second Part, Paine sent the
+Society for Constitutional Information a thousand pounds, which he had
+received from the sale of the book. He then gave up the copyright to
+the public. The circulation of this tract was prodigious. The original
+edition had been printed in the same form as Burke's "Reflections," in
+order that the antidote might be bound up with the bane. The high price
+preventing many from purchasing, Paine got out a cheap edition which
+was retailed at sixpence all over England and Scotland. It is said that
+at least one hundred thousand copies were sold, besides the large
+number distributed gratuitously. An edition was published in the United
+States. It was translated into French by Dr. Lanthenas, a member of the
+National Convention, and into German by C. F. Kraemer. Upon English
+readers of a certain class it retained a hold for many years. In 1820,
+Carlile, the bookseller, said, that in the preceding three years he had
+sold five thousand copies of the "Rights of Man." Perhaps Cobbett's
+resurrection of the bones of the prophet brought the book into fashion
+again at that time. It may yet be read in England; but in this country,
+where a citizen feels that his rights are anything he may choose to
+claim, it is certainly a superfluous publication, and seldom met with.
+
+In England, in 1792, Burke and Paine revived the royalist and
+republican parties, which had lain dormant since 1688. A new body of
+men, the manufacturing, entered the political field on the republican
+side. The contest was embittered not only by the anger of antagonism,
+but by the feeling of class. A radical of Paine's school was considered
+by good society as a pestilent blackguard, unworthy of a gentleman's
+notice,--much as an Abolitionist is looked down upon nowadays by the
+American "Chivalry." But the strife was confined to meetings,
+resolutions, and pamphlets. Few riots took place; none of much
+importance. The gentlemen of England have never wanted the courage or
+the strength to take care of themselves.
+
+The political clubs were the principal centres of agitation. There were
+two particularly active on the liberal side: the Revolution Society,
+originally founded to commemorate the Revolution of 1688, and the
+Society for Constitutional Information, established for the purpose of
+bringing about a reform in the representation. But the revolutionary
+changes in France had quickened their ideas, and had given them a taste
+for stronger and more rapid measures. They now openly "resolved" that
+England was "a prey to an arbitrary King, a senile Peerage, a corrupt
+House of Commons, and a rapacious and intolerant Clergy." A third club,
+the Corresponding Society, was younger and more violent, with branches
+and affiliations all over England on the Jacobins' plan, and in active
+correspondence with that famous institution. The middle and lower
+classes in manufacturing towns, precursors of the Chartists of 1846,
+belonged to this society. Their avowed objects were annual parliaments
+and universal suffrage; but many members were in favor of a national
+convention and a republic. The tone of all three societies became
+French; they used a jargon borrowed from the other side of the Channel.
+They sent deputations to the National Convention, expressing their wish
+to adopt the republican form in England, and their hope of success. The
+Corresponding Society even sent addresses of congratulation after the
+massacres of September. Joel Barlow, the American, a man of the Paine
+genus, without his talent or honesty of purpose, went as Commissioner
+of the Society for Constitutional Information to the Convention,--
+carrying with him an address which reads like a translation from the
+French, and a thousand pair of shoes, with the promise of a thousand
+pair a week for six weeks to come.
+
+On the other side there were, of course, numerous Tory associations,
+counter clubs, as violent as their republican antagonists, whose loyal
+addresses to the throne were duly published in the Gazette.
+
+The probability of a revolution now became a subject of general
+discussion. Government, at last convinced that England, in the words of
+Mr. Burke, "abounded in factious men, who would readily plunge the
+country into blood and confusion for the sake of establishing the
+fanciful Systems they were enamored of," determined to act with vigor.
+A royal proclamation was issued against seditious writings. Paine
+received notice that he would be prosecuted in the King's Bench. He
+came immediately to London, and found that Jordan, his publisher, had
+already been served with a summons, but, having no stomach for a
+contest with the authorities, had compromised the affair with the
+Solicitor of the Treasury by agreeing to appear and plead guilty. Such
+pusillanimity was beneath the mark of Paine's enthusiasm. He wrote to
+McDonald, the Attorney-General, that he, Paine, had no desire to avoid
+any prosecution which the authorship of one of the most useful books
+ever offered to mankind might bring upon him; and that he should do the
+defence full justice, as well for the sake of the nation as for that of
+his own reputation. He wound up a long letter by the very ungenerous
+insinuation, that Mr. Burke, not being able to answer the "Rights of
+Man," had advised legal proceedings.
+
+The societies, checked for a moment by the blow struck at them, soon
+renewed their exertions. The sale of the "Rights of Man" became more
+extended than ever. Paine said that the proclamation served hint for an
+advertisement. The Manchester and Sheffield branches of the
+Constitutional Society voted unanimously addresses of thanks to him for
+his essay, "a work of the highest importance to every nation under
+heaven." The newspapers were full of speeches, votes, resolutions, on
+the same subject. Every mail was laden with congratulations to the
+Jacobins on the coming time,--
+
+  "When France shall reign, and laws be all
+    repealed."
+
+To the Radicals, the Genius of Liberty seemed to be hovering over
+England; and Thomas Paine was the harbinger to prepare his way.
+
+Differences of opinion, when frequently expressed in hard words,
+commonly lead to hard blows; and the conservative classes of England
+were not men to hold their hands when they thought the proper time had
+come to strike. But the party which looked up to Paine as its apostle
+was not as numerous as it appeared to be from the noise it made. There
+is never a sufficiently large number of reckless zealots in England to
+do much mischief,--one of the greatest proofs of the inherent good
+sense of that people. Dr. Gall's saying, "_Tout ce qui est ultra est
+bete_," is worth his whole phrenological system. Measures and doctrines
+had now been pushed so far that a numerous and influential body of
+liberals called a halt,--the prelude of a union with the government
+forces.
+
+Luckily for Paine, his French admirers stepped in at this critical
+moment to save him. Mons. Audibert, a municipal officer from Calais,
+came to announce to him that he was elected to the National Convention
+for that department. He immediately proceeded to Dover with his French
+friend. In Dover, the collector of the customs searched their pockets
+as well as their portmanteaus, in spite of many angry protestations.
+Finally their papers were returned to them, and they were allowed to
+embark. Paine was just in time; an order to detain him arrived about
+twenty minutes after his embarkation.
+
+The trial came on before Lord Kenyon. Erskine appeared for the absent
+defendant. The Attorney-General used, as his brief, a foolish letter he
+had received from Paine at Calais, read it to the jury, made a few
+remarks, and rested his case. The jury found Paine guilty without
+leaving their seats. Sentence of outlawry was passed upon him. Safe in
+France, he treated the matter as a capital joke. Some years later he
+found that it had a disagreeable meaning in it.
+
+The prophet had been translated to another sphere of revolutionary
+unrest. His influence gradually died away. He dwindled into a mere
+name. "But the fact remains," to use his own words, "and will hereafter
+be placed in the history of extraordinary things, that a pamphlet
+should be produced by an individual, unconnected with any sect or
+party, and almost a stranger in the land, that should completely
+frighten a whole government, and that in the midst of its triumphant
+security."
+
+Paine might have published his "principles" his life long without
+troubling many subjects of King George, had it not been for their
+combination with "practice" in France,--whither let us now follow him.
+
+When he landed at Calais, the guard turned out and presented arms; a
+grand salute was fired; the officer in command embraced him and
+presented him with the national cockade; a good-looking _citoyenne_
+asked leave to pin it on his hat, expressing the hope of her
+compatriots that he would continue his exertions in favor of liberty.
+Enthusiastic acclamations followed,--a grand chorus of _Vive Thomas
+Paine!_ The crowd escorted him to Dessein's hotel,[1] in the Rue de
+l'Egalite, formerly Rue du Roi, and shouted under his windows. At the
+proper time he was conducted to the Town Hall. The municipality were
+assembled to bestow the _accolade fraternelle_ upon their
+representative. M. le Maire made a speech, which Audibert, who still
+had Paine in charge, translated. Paine laid his hand on his heart,
+bowed, and assured the municipality that his life should be devoted to
+their service. In the evening, the club held a meeting in the Salle des
+Minimes. The hall was jammed. Paine was seated beside the President,
+under a bust of Mirabeau, surmounted by the flags of France, England,
+and the United States. More addresses, compliments, protestations, and
+frantic cries of _Vive Thomas Paine!_ The _seance_ was adjourned to the
+church, to give those who could not obtain admission into the Club Hall
+an opportunity to look at their famous representative. The next evening
+Paine went to the theatre. The state-box had been prepared for him. The
+house rose and _vivaed_ as he entered.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_.]
+
+When Calais had shouted itself hoarse, Paine travelled towards Paris.
+The towns he traversed on the road thither received him with similar
+honors. From the capital he addressed a letter of thanks to his
+fellow-citizens. Although he sat for Calais in the Convention, he had
+been chosen by three other departments. Priestley was a candidate for
+Paris, but was beaten by Marat, a doctor of another description. He
+was, however, duly elected in the department L'Orne, but never took his
+seat. Paine and Baron Clootz were the only foreigners in the
+Convention. Another stranger, of political celebrity out of doors,
+styled himself American as well as Paine,--_Fournier l'Americain_, a
+mulatto from the West Indies, whose complexion was not considered
+"incompatible with freedom" in France,--a violent and blood-thirsty
+fellow, who shot at Lafayette on the _dix-sept Juillet_, narrowly
+missing him,--led an attacking party against the Tuileries on the _dix
+Aout_, and escaped the guillotine to be transported by Bonaparte.
+
+In Paris, Paine was already a personage well known to all the leading
+men,--a great republican luminary, "foreign benefactor of the species,"
+who had commenced the revolution in America, was making one in England,
+and was willing to help make one in France. His English works,
+translated by Lanthenas, a friend of Robespierre and co-editor with
+Brissot of the "Patriote Francais," had earned for him the dignity of
+_citoyen Francais_,--an honor which he shared with Mackintosh, Dr.
+Price, the Priestleys, father and son, and David Williams. He had
+furnished Lafayette with a good deal of his revolutionary rhetoric, had
+contributed to the Monthly Review of the Girondists and the "Chronique
+de Paris," and had written a series of articles in defence of
+representative government, which Condorcet had translated for him.
+Paine was a man of one idea in politics; a federal republic, on the
+American plan, was the only system of government he believed in, and
+the only one he wished to see established in France. Lafayette belonged
+to this school. So did Condorcet, Petion, Buzot, and others of less
+note. Under Paine's direction they formed a republican club, which met
+at Condorcet's house. This federal theory cost them dear. In 1793, it
+was treason against the _une et indivisible_, and was punished
+accordingly.
+
+After the flight to Varennes, Paine openly declared that the King was
+"a political superfluity." This was true enough. The people had lost
+all respect for the man and for the office. None so base as to call him
+King. He was only the _pouvoir executif_, or more commonly still,
+_Monsieur Veto_. Achille Duchatelet, a young officer who had served in
+America, called upon Dumont to get him to translate a proclamation
+drawn up by Paine, urging the people to seize the opportunity and
+establish a republic. It was intended to be a "Common Sense" for
+France. Dumont refusing to have anything to do with it, some other
+translator was found. It appeared on the walls of the capital with
+Duchatelet's name affixed. The placard was torn down by order of the
+Assembly and attracted little attention. The French were not quite
+ready for the republic, although gradually approaching it. They seemed
+to take a pleasure in playing awhile with royalty before exterminating
+it.
+
+The Abbe Sieyes was a warm monarchist. He wrote in the "Moniteur," that
+he could prove, "on every hypothesis," that men were more free in a
+monarchy than in a republic. Paine gave notice in Brissot's paper, that
+he would demolish the Abbe utterly in fifty pages, and show the world
+that a constitutional monarchy was a nullity,--concluding with the
+usual flourish about "weeping for the miseries of humanity," "hell of
+despotism," etc., etc., the fashionable doxology of patriotic authors
+in that day. Sieyes announced his readiness to meet the great Paine in
+conflict. This passage of pens was interrupted by the publication of
+Part Second of the "Rights of Man." Before Paine returned to Paris, the
+mob had settled the question for the time, so far as the French nation
+were concerned.
+
+Paine had also taken a leading part in some of the politico-theatrical
+entertainments then so frequent in the streets of Paris. At the
+festival of the Federation, in July, 1790, when Clootz led a
+"deputation" of the _genre humain_, consisting of an English editor and
+some colored persons in fancy dresses, Paine and Paul Jones headed the
+American branch of humanity and carried the stars and stripes. Not long
+after, Fame appears again marshalling a deputation of English and
+Americans, who waited upon the Jacobin Club to fraternize. Suitable
+preparations had been made by the club for this solemn occasion. The
+three national flags, united, were placed in the hall over the busts of
+Dr. Franklin and Dr. Price. Robespierre himself received the generous
+strangers; but most of the talking seems to have been done by a fervid
+_citoyenne_, who took _la parole_ and kept it. "Let a cry of joy rush
+through all Europe and fly to America," said she. "But hark!
+Philadelphia and all its countries repeat, like us, _Vive la Liberte!_"
+To see a man of Paine's clear sense and simple tastes pleased by such
+flummery as this shows us how difficult it is not to be affected by the
+spirit of the generation we live with. How could he have supposed that
+the new heaven upon earth of his dreams would ever be constructed out
+of such pinchbeck materials?
+
+It was now the year 1. of the Republic. The _dix Aout_ was over, the
+King a prisoner in the Temple. Lafayette, in his attempt to imitate his
+"master," Washington, had succeeded no better than the magician's
+apprentice, who knew how to raise the demon, but not how to manage him
+when he appeared. He had gone down before the revolution, and was now
+_le traitre Lafayette_, a refugee in Austria. Dumouriez commanded on
+the north-eastern frontier in his place. France was still shuddering at
+the recollection of the prison-massacres of the _Septembriseurs_, and
+society, to use the phrase of a modern French revolutionist, was _en
+proces de liquidation_.
+
+Paine got on very well, at first. The Convention was impressed with the
+necessity of looking up first principles, and Paine was emphatically
+the man of principles. A universal republic was the hope of the
+majority, with a convention sitting at the centre of the civilized
+world, watching untiringly over the rights of man and the peace of the
+human race. Meantime, they elected a committee to make a new
+constitution for France. Paine was, of course, selected. His colleagues
+were Sieyes, Condorcet, Gensonne, Vergniaud, Petion, Brissot, Barere,
+and Danton. Of these nine, Paine and Sieyes alone survived the Reign of
+Terror. When, in due time, this constitution was ready to be submitted
+to the Convention, no one could be found to listen to the reading of
+the report. The revolution had outstripped the committee. Their labors
+proved as useless as the Treatise on Education composed by Mr. Shandy
+for the use of his son Tristram;--when it was finished, the child had
+outgrown every chapter.
+
+Thenceforward, we catch only occasional glimpses of Paine. In the days
+of his glory, he lived in the fashionable Rue de Richelieu, holding
+levees twice a week, to receive a public eager to gaze upon so great a
+man. His name appears at the _fete civique_ held by English and Irish
+republicans at White's Hotel. There he sat beside Santerre, the famous
+brewer, and proposed, as a sentiment, "The approaching National
+Convention of Great Britain and Ireland." At this dinner, Lord Edward
+Fitzgerald, then an officer in the British service, gave, "May the 'Ca
+ira,' the 'Carmagnole,' and the 'Marseillaise' be the music of every
+army, and soldier and citizen join in the chorus,"--a toast which cost
+him his commission, perhaps his life. We read, too, that Paine was
+struck in a _cafe_ by some loyal, hot-headed English captain, who took
+that means of showing his dislike for the author of the "Rights of
+Man." The police sternly seized the foolish son of Albion. A blow
+inflicted upon the sacred person of a member of the Convention was
+clearly sacrilege, punishable, perhaps, with death. But Paine
+interfered, procured passports, and sent the penitent soldier safely
+out of the country.
+
+Speaking no French, for he never succeeded in learning the language,
+Paine's part in the public sittings of the Convention must have been
+generally limited to eloquent silence or expressive dumbshow. But when
+the trial of the King came on, he took a bold and dangerous share in
+the proceedings, which destroyed what little popularity the ruin of his
+federal schemes had left him, and came near costing him his head. He
+was already so great a laggard behind the revolutionary march, that he
+did not suspect the determination of the Mountain to put the King to
+death. Louis was guilty, no doubt, Paine thought,--but not of any great
+crime. Banishment for life, or until the new government be
+consolidated,--say to the United States, where he will have the
+inestimable privilege of seeing the working of free institutions;--once
+thoroughly convinced of his royal errors, morally, as well as
+physically uncrowned, he might safely be allowed to return to France as
+plain Citizen Capet: that should be his sentence. But the extreme left
+of the Convention and the constituent rabble of the galleries wanted to
+break with the past, and to throw a king's head into the arena as wager
+of battle to the despots of Europe. The discovery of the iron safe in
+the palace offered, it was thought, sufficient show of evidence for the
+prosecution; if not, they were ready to dispense with any. The case was
+prejudged; the trial, a cruel and an empty form. There were two
+righteous men in that political Gomorrah,--Tronchet and the venerable
+Malesherbes. They offered their services to defend the unfortunate
+victim. Who can read Malesherbes's noble letter to the President of the
+Convention, without thinking the better of French nature forever after?
+
+A fierce preliminary discussion arose the Convention on the
+constitutional question of the King's inviolability. Paine had no
+patience with the privileges of kingship and voted against
+inviolability. He requested that a speech he had prepared on the
+subject might be read to the House at once, as he wished to send off a
+copy to London for the English papers. This wretched composition was
+manifestly written for England. Paine had George III. in his mind,
+rather than Louis XVI. Here is a specimen of the style of
+it,--interesting, as showing the temper of the time, as well as of
+Member Thomas Paine:--"Louis, as an individual, is an object beneath
+the notice of the Republic. But he ought to be tried, because a
+conspiracy has been formed against the liberty of all nations by the
+crowned ruffians of Europe. Louis XVI. is believed to be the partner of
+that horde, and is the only man of them you have in your power. It is
+indispensable to discover who the gang is composed of, and this may be
+done by his trial. It may also bring to light the detestable conduct of
+Mr. Guelph, Elector of Hanover, and be doing justice to England to make
+them aware of it. It is the interest of France to be surrounded by
+republics, and that revolutions be universal. If Louis XVI. can serve
+to prove, by the flagitiousness of government in general, the necessity
+of revolutions, France ought not to let slip so precious an
+opportunity. Seeing no longer in Louis XVI. but a weakminded and
+narrow-spirited individual, ill-bred, like all his colleagues, given,
+as it is said, to frequent excesses of drunkenness, and whom the
+National Assembly raised again imprudently to a throne which was not
+made for him,--if we show him hereafter some pity, it shall not be the
+result of the burlesque idea of a pretended inviolability."
+
+A secretary read this speech from the tribune,--Paine standing near
+him, silent, furnishing perhaps an occasional gesture to mark the
+emphasis. The Convention applauded warmly, and ordered it to be printed
+and circulated in the departments.
+
+When the King was found guilty, and it came to the final vote, whether
+he should be imprisoned, banished, or beheaded, the Girondins, who had
+spoken warmly against the death-penalty, voted for it, overawed by the
+stormy abuse of the galleries. Paine, coarse and insolent, but not
+cowardly or cruel, did not hesitate to vote for banishment. He
+requested the member from the Pas de Calais to read from the tribune
+his appeal in favor of the King. Drunau attempted to do it, but was
+hooted down. Paine persisted,--presented his speech again the next day.
+Marat objected to its reception, because Paine was a Quaker, and
+opposed to capital punishment on principle; but the Convention at last
+consented to the reading. After alluding to the all-important
+assistance furnished by Louis XVI. to the insurgent American Colonies,
+Paine, as a citizen of both countries, proposed sending him to the
+United States. "To kill Louis," wrote Paine, "is not only inhuman, but
+a folly. It will increase the number of your enemies. France has but
+one ally,--the United States of America,--and the execution of the King
+would spread an universal affliction in that country. If I could speak
+your language like a Frenchman, I would descend a suppliant to your
+bar, and in the name of all my brothers in America present to you a
+petition and prayer to suspend the execution of Louis." The Mountain
+and the galleries roared with rage. Thuriot exclaimed,--"That is not
+the true language of Thomas Paine."
+
+"I denounce the translator," shrieked venomous Marat; "these are not
+the opinions of Thomas Paine; it is a wicked and unfaithful
+translation."
+
+Coulon affirmed, solemnly, that he had seen the original in Paine's
+hands, and that it was exact. The reader was finally allowed to resume.
+"You mean to send an ambassador to the United States. Let him announce
+to the Americans that the National Convention of France, from pure
+friendship to America, has consented to respite the sentence of Louis.
+Ah, Citizens, do not give the despot of England the pleasure of seeing
+sent to the scaffold the man who helped my beloved brethren of America
+to free themselves from his chains!"
+
+Soon after the execution of the King, Paris fell into the hands of the
+lowest classes. Their leaders ruled with terrible energy. Chabot's
+_dictum,--"Il n'y a pas de crimes en revolution_," and Stablekeeper
+Drouet's exclamation,--"_Soyons brigands pour le bonheur du peuple_,"
+contain the political principles which guided them. Marat thundered
+away in his paper against Brissotins, Girondins, federalism, and
+moderantism. The minority members, thus unpleasantly noticed, went
+armed; many of them dared not sleep at home. Soon came the arrest of
+the _suspects_. The 31st of May, _cette insurrection toute morale_, as
+Robespierre called it, followed next. The Convention was stormed by the
+mob and purged of Brissotins and Girondins. The _Comite de Salut
+Public_ decreed forced loans and the _levee en masse_. Foreigners were
+expelled from the Convention and imprisoned throughout France. Mayor
+Bailly, Mme. Roland, Manuel, and their friends, passed under the axe.
+The same fate befell the Girondins, a party of phrase-makers who have
+enjoyed a posthumous sentimental reputation, but who, when living, had
+not the energy and active courage to back their fine speeches. The
+_reductio ad horribile_ of all the fine arguments in favor of popular
+infallibility and virtue had come; neither was the _reductio ad
+absurdum_ wanting. The old names of the days and months and years were
+changed. The statues of the Virgin were torn from the little niches in
+street-walls, and the busts of Marat and Lepelletier set up in their
+stead. The would-be God, _soi-disant Dieu_, was banished from France.
+Clootz and Chaumette, who called themselves Anacharsis and Anaxagoras,
+celebrated the worship of the Goddess of Reason. Bonfires of feudality;
+Goddesses of Liberty in plaster; trees of liberty planted in every
+square; altars _de la patrie_; huge rag-dolls representing Anarchy and
+Discord; Cleobis and Biton dragging their revered parents through the
+streets; _bonnets rouges, banderolles, ca iras, carmagnoles,
+fraternisations, accolades_; the properties, as well as the text of the
+plays, borrowed from Ancient Greece or Rome. What a bewildering
+retrospect! A period well summed up by Emerson:--"To-day, pasteboard
+and filigree; to-morrow, madness and murder." _Tigre-singe_, Voltaire's
+epigrammatic definition, describes his countrymen of the Reign of
+Terror in two words.
+
+Neglected by all parties, and disgusted with all, Paine moved to a
+remote quarter of Paris, and took rooms in a house which had once
+belonged to Mme. de Pompadour. Brissot, Thomas Christie, Mary
+Wolstonecraft, and Joel Barlow were his principal associates. Two
+Englishmen, "friends of humanity," and an ex-officer of the
+_garde-du-corps_ lodged in the same building. The neighborhood was not
+without its considerable persons. Sanson, most celebrated of headsmen,
+had his domicile ii the same section. He called upon Paine,
+complimented him in good English upon his "Rights of Man," which he had
+read, and offered his services in a polite manner.
+
+When the Reign of Terror was fully established, the little party seldom
+left their walls, and amused themselves as best they could with
+conversation and games. The news of the confusion and alarm of Paris
+reached them in their retreat, as if they were miles away in some quiet
+country residence. Every evening the landlord went into the city and
+brought back with him the horrible story of the day. "As to myself,"
+Paine wrote to Lady Smith, "I used to find some relief by walking in
+the garden and cursing with hearty good-will the authors of that
+terrible system that had turned the character of the revolution I had
+been proud to defend."
+
+After some weeks, the two Englishmen contrived to escape to
+Switzerland, leaving their enthusiasm for humanity behind them. Two
+days later, a file of armed men came to arrest them. Before the month
+was out, the landlord was carried off in the night. Last of all came
+the turn of Paine. He was arrested in December, by order of
+Robespierre, "for the interest of America, as well as of France, as a
+dangerous enemy of liberty and equality." On his way to the Luxembourg,
+he stopped at Barlow's lodgings and left with him the First Part of the
+"Age of Reason," finished the day before. The Americans in Paris
+applied to the Convention for Paine's release, offering themselves as
+security for his good conduct during his stay in France. They rounded
+off their petition with a phrase of the prisoner's,--"Ah, Citizens! do
+not give the leagued despots of Europe the pleasure of seeing Thomas
+Paine in irons." This document was presented by a Major Jackson, a
+"volunteer character," who had come to Europe with a letter of
+introduction to Gouverneur Morris, then minister, from Mr. Jefferson.
+Instead of delivering his letter to Morris, Jackson lodged it with the
+_Comite de Salut Public_ as a credential, and represented his country
+on the strength of it. The Convention, careless of the opinion of the
+"leagued despots," as well as of Major Jackson, replied, that Paine was
+an Englishman, and the demand for his release unauthorized by the
+United States. Paine wrote to Morris to request him to demand his
+discharge of the citizen who administered foreign affairs. Morris did
+so; but this official denied that Paine was an American. Morris
+inclosed this answer to Paine, who returned a shrewd argument in his
+own behalf, and begged Morris to lay the proofs of his citizenship
+before the minister. But Morris disliked Paine, and his own position in
+France was far from satisfactory. It is probable that he was not very
+zealous in the matter, and shortly after Paine's letter all
+communication with prisoners was forbidden.
+
+The news of the outer world reached these unfortunates, penned up like
+sheep waiting for the butcher, only when the doors of the dungeon
+opened to admit a new _fournee_, or batch of victims, as the French
+pleasantly called them. They knew then that the revolution had made
+another stride forward, and had trodden these down as it moved on.
+Paine saw them all--Ronsin, Hebert, Momoro, Chaumette, Clootz, Gobel,
+the crazy and the vile, mingled together, the very men he had cursed in
+his garden at St. Denis--pass before him like the shadows of a
+magic-lantern, entering at one side and gliding out at the other,--to
+death. A few days later came Danton, Camille, Desmoulins, and the few
+who remained of the moderate party. Paine was standing near the wicket
+when they were brought in. Danton embraced him. "What you have done for
+the happiness and liberty of your country I have in vain tried to do
+for mine. I have been less fortunate, but not more culpable. I am sent
+to the scaffold." Turning to his friends.--"_Eh, bien! mes amis, allons
+y gaiement._" Happy Frenchmen! What a consolation it was to them to be
+thus always able to take an attitude and enact a character! Their
+fondness for dramatic display must have served them as a moral
+anaesthetic in those scenes of murder, and have deadened their
+sensibility to the horrors of their actual condition.
+
+In July, the carnage had reached its height. No man could count upon
+life for twenty-four hours. The tall, the wise, the reverend heads had
+been taken off, and now the humbler ones were insecure upon their
+shoulders. Fouquier-Tinville had erected a guillotine in his
+court-room, to save time and transportation. Newsboys sold about the
+streets printed lists of those who were to suffer that day. "_Voici
+ceux qui ont gagne a la loterie de la Sainte Guillotine!_" they cried,
+with that reckless, mocking, blood-thirsty spirit which is found only
+in Frenchmen, or, perhaps, in their fellow-Celts. It seemed to Paine
+that Robespierre and the Committee were afraid to leave a man alive. He
+expected daily his own summons; but he was overlooked. There was
+nothing to be gained by killing him, except the mere pleasure of the
+thing.
+
+He ascribed his escape to a severe attack of fever, which kept him out
+of sight for a time, and to a clerical error on the part of the
+distributing jailer. He wrote this account of it, after his return to
+America:--"The room in which I was lodged was on the ground-floor, and
+one of a long range of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened
+outward and flat against the wall, so that, when it was opened, the
+inside of the door appeared outward, and the contrary when it was shut
+I had three fellow-prisoners with me,--Joseph Van Huile of Bruges,
+Michel and Robin Bastini of Louvain. When persons by scores were to be
+taken out of prison for the guillotine, it was always done in the
+night, and those who performed that office had a private mark by which
+they knew what rooms to go to and what number to take. We, as I have
+said, were four, and the door of our room was marked, unobserved by us,
+with that number in chalk; but it happened, if happening is a proper
+word, that the mark was put on when the door was open and flat against
+the wall, and thereby came on the inside when we shut it at night, and
+the destroying angel passed by it." Paine thought his escape
+providential; the Orthodox took a different view of it.
+
+After the fall of Robespierre, in Thermidor, seventy-three members of
+the Convention, who had survived the Reign of Terror, resumed their
+seats. But Paine was not released. Monroe had superseded Morris in
+August, but had no instructions from his government. Indeed, as Paine
+had accepted citizenship in France, and had publicly acted as a French
+citizen, it was considered, even by his friends, that he had no claim
+to the protection of the United States. Paine, as was natural, thought
+differently. He wrote to Monroe, explaining that French citizenship was
+a mere compliment paid to his reputation; and in any view of the case,
+it had been taken away from him by a decree of the Convention. His seat
+in that body did not affect his American _status_, because a convention
+to make a constitution is not a government, but extrinsic and
+antecedent to a government. The government once established, he would
+never have accepted a situation under it. Monroe assured him that he
+considered him an American citizen, and that "to the welfare of Thomas
+Paine Americans are not nor can they be indifferent,"--with which fine
+phrase Paine was obliged to be satisfied until November. On the fourth
+of that month he was released. The authorities of Thermidor disliked
+the Federalist government, and Paine was probably kept in prison some
+additional months on account of Monroe's application for his discharge.
+
+He left the Luxembourg, after eleven months of incarceration, with
+unshaken confidence in his own greatness and in the truth of his
+principles,--but in appearance and in character another man, with only
+the tatters of his former self hanging about him. A certain elegance of
+manner and of dress, which had distinguished him, was gone. He drank
+deep, and was noisy. His fondness for talking of himself had grown to
+such excess as to destroy the conversational talents which all his
+contemporaries who speak of him describe as remarkable. "I will venture
+to say that the best thing will be said by Mr. Paine": that was Horne
+Tooke's prophecy, talking of some proposed dinner-party.
+
+Demoralized by poverty, with ruined health, his mind had become
+distorted by physical suffering and by brooding over the ingratitude
+and cruel neglect of the American people, who owed, as he really
+believed, their very existence as a nation to him. "Is this what I
+ought to have expected from America," he wrote to General Washington,
+"after the part I have acted towards her?" "I do not hesitate to say
+that you have not served America with more fidelity or greater zeal or
+more disinterestedness than myself, and perhaps not with better
+effect." Henceforth he was a man of two ideas: he engrafted his
+resentment upon his "Rights of Man," and thought himself carrying out
+his theory while indulging in his wrath. He poured the full measure of
+his indignation upon the party who directed affairs in the United
+States, and upon the President. In two long letters, composed after his
+release, under Monroe's roof, he accused Washington of conniving at his
+imprisonment, to keep him, Paine, "the marplot of all designs against
+the people," out of the way. "Mr. Washington and his new-fangled party
+were rushing as fast as they dared venture into all the vices and
+corruptions of the British government; and it was no more consistent
+with the policy of Mr. Washington and those who immediately surrounded
+him than it was with that of Robespierre or of Pitt that I should
+survive." As he grew more angry, he became more abusive. He ridiculed
+Washington's "cold, unmilitary conduct" during the War of Independence,
+and accused his administration, since the new constitution, of
+"vanity," "ingratitude," "corruption," "bare-faced treachery," and "the
+tricks of a sharper." He closed this wretched outbreak of peevishness
+and wounded self-conceit with the following passage:--
+
+"And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have
+been to me, and that in the day of danger) and a hypocrite in public
+life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate
+or an impostor,--whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether
+you ever had any."
+
+The remains of the old Convention invited Paine to resume his place in
+their assemblage. A committee of eleven, unaided by his experience, had
+been working at a new constitution, the political spring-fashion in
+Paris for that year. It was the plan since known as the _Directoire_,
+reported complete about the time Paine reappeared in the Convention.
+Disapproving of some of the details of this instrument, Paine furbished
+up his old weapons, and published "A Dissertation on the First
+Principles of Government." This tract he distributed among
+members,--the _libretto_ of the speech he intended to make.
+Accordingly, on the 5th of July, on motion of his old ally, Lanthenas,
+who had managed to crawl safely through the troubles, permission was
+granted to Thomas Paine to deliver his sentiments on the "Declaration
+of Rights and the Constitution." He ascended the tribune for the last
+time, and the secretary read the translation. He began, of course, with
+rights; but qualified them by adding, that, when we consider rights, we
+ought always to couple with them the idea of duties,--a happy union,
+which did not strike him before the Reign of Terror, and which is
+almost always overlooked. He then brought forward his universal
+political specific and panacea,--representative government and a
+written constitution. "Had a constitution been established two years
+ago," he said, "(as ought to have been done,) the violences that have
+since desolated France and injured the character of the Revolution
+would, in my opinion, have been prevented." There is nothing else in
+his speech of interest to us, except, that, in attacking a property
+qualification, which was wisely inserted in the new system, he made use
+of the _reductio-ad-absurdum_ illustration so often attributed to Dr.
+Franklin:--"When a broodmare shall fortunately produce a foal or a mule
+that by being worth the sum in question shall convey to its owner the
+right of voting, or by its death take it from him, in whom does the
+origin of such a right exist? Is it in the man or in the mule?"
+
+The new government went into operation in September, 1795. Bonaparte's
+lesson to the insurgents of Vendemiaire, in front of the Church of St.
+Roche, followed immediately after. On the 26th of October, the
+Convention was dissolved, and Paine ceased to be a legislator for
+France.
+
+He was no longer an object of consideration to Frenchmen, whose faith
+in principles and in constitutions was nearly worn out. Poor and
+infirm, indebted to Monroe's hospitality for a lodging, he remained
+eighteen months under the roof of the Embassy, looking for an
+opportunity to get back to America. Monroe wished to send him as bearer
+of dispatches before the dissolution of the Convention. But a member of
+that body could not leave France without a passport from it. To apply
+for it would have announced his departure, and have given the English
+government a chance to settle the old account they had against him.
+After Monroe had returned to the United States, Paine engaged his
+passage, and went to Havre to embark: but the appearance of a British
+frigate off the port changed his plans. The sentence of outlawry, a
+good joke four years before, had now become an unpleasant reality. So
+he travelled back to Paris, full of hate against England, and relieved
+his mind by writing a pamphlet on the "Decline and Fall of the English
+System of Finance," a performance characteristic of the man,--sound,
+clear sense mixed with ignorance and arrogance. He attempted to show
+arithmetically that the English funding system could not continue to
+the end of Mr. Pitt's life, supposing him to live to the usual age of
+man. The calculation is ingenious, but has not proved to be as accurate
+as some of Newton's. On the other hand, his remarks on paper money are
+excellent, and his sneer at the Sinking Fund, then considered a great
+invention in finance, well placed:--"As to Mr. Pitt's project for
+paying off the national debt by applying a million a year for that
+purpose while he continues adding more than twenty millions a year to
+it, it is like setting a man with a wooden leg to run after a
+hare;--the longer he runs, the farther he is off." The conclusion is
+one of his peculiar flourishes of his own trumpet:--"I have now exposed
+the English system of finance to the eyes of all nations,--for this
+work will be published in all languages. As an individual citizen of
+America, and as far as an individual can go, I have revenged (if I may
+use the expression without any immoral meaning) the piratical
+depredations committed on the American commerce by the English
+government."
+
+From Monroe's departure until the year 1802, little is known of Paine.
+He is said to have lived in humble lodgings with one Bonneville, a
+printer, editor of the "Bouche de Fer" in the good early days of the
+Revolution. He must have kept up some acquaintance with respectable
+society; for we find his name on the lists of the _Cercle
+Constitutionnel_, a club to which belonged Talleyrand, Benjamin
+Constant, and conservatives of that class who were opposed to both the
+_bonnet-rouge_ and the _fleur-de-lis_. Occasionally he appears above
+the surface with a pamphlet. Politics were his passion, and to write a
+necessity of his nature. If public matters interested him, an essay of
+some kind made its way into print. When Baboeuf's agrarian conspiracy
+was crushed, Paine gave the world his views on "Agrarian Justice."
+Every man has a natural right to a share in the land; but it is
+impossible that every man should exercise this right. To compensate him
+for this loss, be should receive at the age of twenty-one fifteen
+pounds sterling; and if he survive his fiftieth year, ten pounds _per
+annum_ during the rest of his life. The funds for these payments to be
+furnished by a tax on inheritances.
+
+Camille Jourdain made a report to the Five Hundred on priests and
+public worship, in which he recommended, _inter alia_, that the use of
+church-bells and the erection of crosses be again permitted by law.
+This reactionary measure excited Paine's liberal bigotry. He published
+a letter to Jourdain, telling him that priests were useless and bells
+public nuisances. Another letter may be seen, offering his subscription
+of one hundred francs to a fund for the invasion of England,--a
+favorite project of the Directory, and the dearest wish of Paine's
+heart. He added to his mite an offer of any personal service he could
+render to the invading army. When Carnot, Barthelemy, and Pichegru were
+expelled from power by the _coup d'etat_ of the 18th Fructidor,--a
+military demonstration against the Republic,--Paine wrote an address to
+the people of France and to the French armies, heartily approving of
+the summary method that had been adopted with these reactionists, who
+must have their bells and their priests. He did not then perceive the
+real significance of the movement.
+
+On one remarkable occasion, Paine made a full-length appearance before
+the French public,--not in his character of a political philosopher,
+but as a moralist. Robespierre, a few days before his fall, declared
+atheism to be aristocratic, reinstated _l'Etre supreme_, and gave a
+festival in his honor. There religious matters had rested. Deism, pure
+and simple, was the faith of true republicans, and the practice of
+morality their works. But deism is a dreary religion to the mass of
+mankind, and the practice of morality can never take the place of
+adoration. The heart must be satisfied, as well as the conscience.
+Larevilliere, a Director, of irreproachable character, felt this
+deficiency of their system, and saw how strong a hold the Catholic
+priesthood had upon the common people. The idea occurred to him of
+rivalling the churches by establishing regular meetings of moral men
+and women, to sing hymns of praise to the Almighty, "one and
+indivisible," and to listen to discourses and exhortations on moral
+subjects. Hauey, a brother of the eminent crystallogist, assembled the
+first society of Theophilanthropists, (lovers of God and man,) as they
+called themselves. They held their meetings on the day corresponding to
+Sunday. They had their manual of worship and their book of canticles.
+Their dogmas were the existence of one God and the immortality of the
+soul. And they wisely said nothing about matters which they did not
+believe. Paine, who in his "Age of Reason" had attempted to prepare a
+theology _ad usum reipublicae,_ felt moved by the spirit of morality,
+and delivered a sermon to one of these Theophilanthropist
+congregations. His theme was the existence of God and the propriety of
+combining the study of natural science with theology. He chose, of
+course, the _a-posteriori_ argument, and was brief, perhaps eloquent.
+Some passages of his discourse might pass unchallenged in the sermon of
+an Orthodox divine. He kept this one ready in his memory of brass, to
+confound all who accused him of irreligion:--"Do we want to contemplate
+His power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to
+contemplate His wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which
+the incomprehensible whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate His
+mercy? We see it in His not withholding His abundance even from the
+unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not written
+books, but the Scriptures called the Creation."
+
+If it were possible to establish a new _cultus,_ based upon mere
+abstract principles, Frenchmen, we should say, would be about the last
+people who could do it. This new worship, like any other play, drew
+well as long as it was new, and no longer. The moral men and women soon
+grew tired of it, and relapsed into the old faith and the old forms.
+
+The end of all this child's play at government and at religion came at
+last. Bonaparte, checked at Acre by Sir Sydney Smith, left the East,
+landed in France in October, 1799, sent a file of grenadiers to turn
+Ancients and Five Hundred out of their halls, and seated himself in the
+chair of state.
+
+After this conclusive _coup d'etat,_ Paine sunk out of sight. The First
+Consul might have examined with interest the iron bridge, but could
+never have borne with the soiled person and the threadbare principles
+of the philosopher of two hemispheres. Bonaparte loved neatness and
+elegance, and disliked _ideologues_ and _bavards,_ as he styled all
+gentlemen of Paine's turn of mind.
+
+In 1802, after the peace with England, Paine set sail from Havre to end
+his days in the United States. Here we leave him. We have neither space
+nor inclination to sum up his virtues and his vices in these columns,
+and to give him a character according to the balance struck. We have
+sketched a few outlines of his history as we have found it scattered
+about in newspapers and pamphlets. Our readers may make up their own
+minds whether this supposed ally of the Arch Enemy was as black as he
+has been painted.
+
+
+
+
+ELKANAH BREWSTER'S TEMPTATION.
+
+
+I was always of opinion that the fruit forbidden to our grandmother Eve
+was an unripe apple. Eaten, it afflicted Adam with the first colic
+known to this planet. He, the weaker vessel, sorrowed over his
+transgression; but I doubt if Eve's repentance was thorough; for the
+plucking of unripe fruit has been, ever since, a favorite hobby of her
+sons and daughters,--until now our mankind has got itself into such a
+chronic state of colic, that even Dr. Carlyle declares himself unable
+to prescribe any Morrison's Pill or other remedial measure to allay the
+irritation.
+
+Part of this irritation finds vent in a great cry about "legitimate
+ambition." Somehow, because any American _may_ be President of the
+United States, almost every American feels himself bound to run for the
+office. A man thinks small things of himself, and his neighbors think
+less, if he does not find his heart filled with an insane desire, in
+some way, to attain to fame or notoriety, riches or bankruptcy.
+Nevertheless, we are not purse-proud,--nor, indeed, proud at all,
+more's the pity,--and receive a man just as readily whose sands of life
+have been doled out to suffering humanity in the shape of patent pills,
+as one who has entered Fifth Avenue by the legitimate way of pork and
+cotton speculations, if only he have been successful,--which I call a
+very noble trait in the American character.
+
+Now this is all very well, and, granted that Providence has placed us
+here to do what is best pleasing to ourselves, it is surely very noble
+and grand in us to please to serve nothing less than our country or our
+age. But let us not forget that the English language has such a little
+word as _duty_. A man's talents, and, perhaps, once in a great while,
+his wishes, would make him a great man, (if wishes ever did such
+things, which I doubt,) while duty imperatively demands that he shall
+remain a _little_ man. What then? Let us see.
+
+Elkanah Brewster was going to New York to-morrow.
+
+"What for, boy?" asked old Uncle Shubael, meeting whom on the
+fish-wharf, he had bid him a cheery good-bye.
+
+"To make my fortune," was the bold reply.
+
+"Make yer fortin? You're a goose, boy! Stick to yer work here,--fishin'
+summers an' shoemakin' winters. Why, there isn't a young feller on the
+hull Cape makes as much as you. What's up? Gal gin ye the mitten? Or
+what?"
+
+"I don't want to make shoes, nor fish neither, Uncle Shub," said
+Elkanah, soberly, looking the old fellow in the face,--"goin' down to
+the Banks year arter year in cold an' fish-gurry, an' peggin' away all
+winter, like mad. I want to be rich, like Captain Crowell; I want to be
+a gentleman, like that painter-chap that give me drawin'-lessons, last
+summer, when I stayed to home."
+
+"Phew! Want to be rich an' a gentleman, eh? Gittin' tu big for yer
+boots, youngster? What's yer old man du but go down t' the Banks
+regular every spring? You're no better 'n he, I guess: Keep yer trade,
+an' yer trade'll keep you. A rollin' stun gathers no moss. Dry bread tu
+home's better 'n roast meat an' gravy abroad."
+
+"All feet don't tread in one shoe, Uncle Shub," said young Brewster,
+capping the old fellow's proverbs with another. "Don't see why I
+shouldn't make money as well's other fellers. It's a free country, an'
+if a feller wants to try suthin' else 'sides fishin' uv it, what d'yer
+all want to be down on him fur? I don't want to slave all my days, when
+other folks ken live in big houses an' ride in 'kerriges, an' all
+that."
+
+"A'n't yer got bread enough to eat, an' a place to sleep? an' what
+more's any on 'em got? You stay here; make yer money on the old Cape,
+where yer father an' grand'ther made it afore you. Use yer means, an'
+God 'll give the blessin'. Yer can't honestly git rich anywheres all tu
+once. Good an' quickly don't often meet. One nail drives out another.
+Slow an' easy goes fur in a day. Honor an' ease a'n't often bedfellows.
+Don't yer be a goose, I tell ye. What's to become of Hepsy Ann?"
+
+Having delivered himself of which last and hardest shot, Uncle Shubael
+shouldered his cod-craft, and, without awaiting an answer, tugged
+across the sand-beach for home.
+
+Elkanah Brewster was a Cape-Cod boy, with a pedigree, if he had ever
+thought of it, as long as any on the Cape,--and they are the longest in
+the land. His forefathers had caught fish to the remotest generation
+known. The Cape boys take to the water like young ducks; and are born
+with a hook and line in their fists, so to speak, as the Newfoundland
+codfish and Bay Chaleur mackerel know, to their cost. "Down on old
+Chatham" there is little question of a boy's calling, if he only comes
+into the world with the proper number of fingers and toes; he swims as
+soon as he walks, knows how to drive a bargain as soon as he can talk,
+goes cook of a coaster at the mature age of eight years, and thinks
+himself robbed of his birthright, if he has not made a voyage to the
+Banks before his eleventh birthday comes round. There is good stuff in
+the Cape boys, as the South-Street ship-owners know, who don't sleep
+easier than when they have put a "Cape man" in charge of their best
+clipper. Quick of apprehension, fertile in resource, shrewd,
+enterprising, brave, prudent, and, above all, lucky,--no better seamen
+sail the sea. Long may they keep their prestige and their sand!
+
+They are not rich on the Cape,--in the Wall-Street sense of the word,
+that is to say. I doubt if Uncle Lew Baker, who was high line out of
+Dennis last year, and who, by the same token, had to work himself right
+smartly to achieve that honor,--I doubt if this smart and thoroughly
+wide-awake fellow took home more than three hundred dollars to his wife
+and children when old Obed settled the voyage. But then the good wife
+saves while he earns, and, what with a cow, and a house and garden-spot
+of his own, and a healthy lot of boys and girls, who, if too young to
+help, are not suffered to hinder, this man is more forehanded and
+independent, gives more to the poor about him and to the heathen at the
+other end of the world, than many a city man who makes, and spends, his
+tens of thousands.
+
+Uncle Abijah Brewster, the father of this Elkanah, was an old
+Banker,--which signifies here, not a Wall-Street broker-man, but a
+Grand-Bank fisherman. He had brought up a goodly family of boys and
+girls by his hook-and-line and, though now a man of some fifty winters,
+still made his two yearly fares to the Banks, in his own trim little
+pinky, and prided himself on being the smartest and jolliest man
+aboard. His boys had sailed with him till they got vessels of their
+own, had learned from his stout heart and strong arm their seamanship,
+their fisherman's acuteness, their honest daring, and child-like trust
+in God's Providence. These poor fishermen are not rich, as I have said;
+a dollar looks to them as big as a dinner-plate to us, and a moderately
+flush Wall-Street man might buy out the whole Cape and not overdraw his
+bank-account. Also, they have but little book-learning among them,
+reading chiefly their Bible, Bowditch, and Nautical Almanac, and
+leaving theology mostly to the parson, on shore, who is paid for it.
+But they have a conscience, and, knowing a thing to be right, do it
+bravely, and against all odds. I have seen these men on Sunday, in a
+fleet of busy "Sunday fishers," fish biting all around them, sitting
+faithfully,--ay, and contentedly,--with book in hand, sturdily
+refraining from what the mere human instinct of destruction would
+strongly impel them to, without counting the temptation of
+dollars,--and this only because they had been taught that Sunday was a
+day of rest and worship, wherein no man should catch fish, and knew no
+theological quibble or mercantile close-sailing by which to weather on
+God's command. It sounds little to us who have not been tempted, or, if
+tempted, have gracefully succumbed, on the plea that other people do so
+too; but how many stock-speculators would see their follows buying
+bargains and making easy fortunes on Sunday morning, and not forget the
+ring of Trinity chimes and go in for dollars? Or which of us denies
+himself his Monday morning's paper?
+
+Elkanah had always been what his mother called a strange boy. He was,
+indeed, an odd sheep in her flock. Restless, ambitious, dreamy, from
+his earliest youth, he possessed, besides, a natural gift for drawing
+and sketching, imitating and constructing, that bade fair, unless
+properly directed, to make of him that saddest and most useless of
+human lumber, a jack-at-all-trades. He profited more by his limited
+winter's schooling than his brothers and fellows, and was always
+respected by the old man as "a boy that took naterally to book-larnin',
+and would _be_ suthin' some day." Of course he went to the Banks, and
+acquitted himself there with honor,--no man fishing more zealously or
+having better luck. But all the time he was dreaming of his future,
+counting this present as nothing, and ready, as soon as Fortune should
+make him an opening, to cast away this life, and grasp--he had not
+settled what.
+
+"_I_ dun know what ails him," said his father; "but he don't take
+kindly to the Banks. Seems to me he kinder despises the work, though he
+_does_ it well enough. And then he makes the best shoes on the Cape;
+but he a'n't content, somehow."
+
+And that was just it. He was not contented. He had seen men--"no better
+than I," thought he, poor fool!--in Boston, living in big houses,
+wearing fine clothes, putting fair, soft hands into smooth-fitting
+kid-gloves; "and why not I?" he cried to himself continually. Year by
+year, from his seventeenth to his twenty-first, he was pursued by this
+demon of "ambition," which so took possession of his heart as to crowd
+out nearly everything else,--father, mother, work,--even pretty
+Hepzibah Nickerson, almost, who loved him, and whom he also loved
+truly. They had almost grown up together, had long loved each other,
+and had been now two years betrothed. When Elkanah was out of his time
+and able to buy a share in a vessel, and had made a voyage to the Banks
+as captain, they were to be married.
+
+The summer before this spring in which our story opens, Elkanah had
+stayed at home for two months, because of a rheumatism contracted by
+unusual exposure on the Banks in early spring; and at this time he made
+the acquaintance of Mr. James Graves, N. A., from New York, spending
+part of his summer on the Cape in search of the picturesque,--which I
+hope he found. Elkanah had, as I have said, a natural talent for
+drawing, and some of his sketches had that in them which elicited the
+approval of Graves, who saw in the young fellow an untutored genius,
+or, at least, very considerable promise of future excellence. To him
+there could be but one choice between shoemaking and "Art"; and finding
+that young Brewster made rapid advances under his desultory tuition, he
+told him his thoughts, that he should not waste himself making
+sea-boots for fishermen, but enter a studio in Boston or New York, and
+make his career as a painter. It scarcely needed this, however; for
+Elkanah took such delight in his new proficiency, and got from Graves's
+stories of artist life such exalted ideas of the unalloyed felicity of
+the gentleman of the brush, that, even had the painter said no word, he
+would have worked out that way himself.
+
+"Only wait till next year, when I'm out of my time," said he to Graves;
+and to himself,--"This is the opening for which I have been waiting."
+
+That winter--"my last at shoemaking"--he worked more diligently than
+ever before, and more good-naturedly. Uncle Abijah was delighted at the
+change in his boy, and promised him great things in the way of a lift
+next year, to help him to a speedy wedding. Elkanah kept his own
+counsel, read much in certain books--which Graves had left him, and
+looked impatiently ahead to the day when, twenty-one years of age, he
+should be a free man,--able to go whither he listed and do what he
+would, with no man authoritatively to say him nay.
+
+And now the day had come; and with I don't know how few dollars in his
+pocket, his scant earnings, he had declared to his astounded parents
+his determination to fish and shoemake no longer, but to learn to be a
+painter.
+
+"A great painter,"--that was what he said.
+
+"I don't see the use o' paintin' picters, for my part," said the old
+man, despairingly; "can't you learn that, an' fish tu?"
+
+"Famous and rich too," said Elkanah half to himself, looking through
+the vista of years at the result he hoped for, and congratulating
+himself in advance upon it. And a proud, hard loot settled in his eye,
+which froze the opposition of father and mother, and was hardly dimmed
+by encountering the grieved glance of poor Hepsy Ann Nickerson.
+
+Poor Hepsy Ann! They had talked it all over, time and again. At first
+she was in despair; but when he laid before her all his dazling hopes,
+and painted for her in such glowing colors the final reward which
+should come to him and her in return for his struggles,--when she saw
+him, her love and pride, before her already transfigured, as it were,
+by this rare triumph, clothed in honors, his name in all mouths,--dear,
+loving soul, her heart consented, "ay, if it should break meantime,"
+thought she, as she looked proudly on him through her tears, and
+said,--"Go, in God's name, and God be with you!"
+
+Perhaps we might properly here consider a little whether this young man
+did well thus to leave father, mother, home, his promised bride,
+sufficient bread-and-butter, healthy occupation, all, to attempt life
+in a new direction. Of course, your man who lives by bread alone will
+"pooh! pooh!" all such folly, and tell the young man to let well enough
+alone. But consider candidly, and decide: Should Elkanah have gone to
+New York?
+
+On the whole, _I_ think, _yes_. For,--He had a certain talent, and gave
+good promise of excellence in his chosen profession.
+
+He liked it, felt strongly impelled towards it. Let us not yet
+scrutinize too closely the main impelling forces. Few human actions
+originate solely in what we try to think the most exalted motives.
+
+He would have been discontented for life, had he not had his way. And
+this should count for something,--for much, indeed. Give our boys
+liberty to try that to which their nature or fancy strongly drives
+them,--to burn their fingers, if that seem best.
+
+Let him go, then; and God be with him! as surely He will be, if the
+simple, faithful prayers of fair, sad Hepsy Ann are heard. Thus will
+he, thus only can any, solve that sphinx-riddle of life which is
+propounded to each passer to-day, as of old in fable-lands,--failing to
+read which, he dies the death of rusting discontent,--solving whose
+mysteries, he has revealed to him the deep secret of his life, and sees
+and knows what best he may do here for himself and the world.
+
+But _what, where, who_, is Elkanah Brewster's world?
+
+While we stand reasoning, he has gone. In New York, his friend Graves
+assisted him to a place in the studio of an artist, whose own works
+have proved, no less than those of many who have gathered their most
+precious lessons from him, that he is truly a master of his art. But
+what are masters, teachers, to a scholar? It's very fine boarding at
+the Spread-Eagle Hotel; but even after you have feed the waiter, you
+have to chew your own dinner, and are benefited, not by the amount you
+pay for it, but only by so much of all that with which the bounteous
+mahogany is covered as you can thoroughly masticate, easily contain,
+and healthily digest. Elkanah began with the soup, so to speak. He
+brought all his Cape-Cod acuteness of observation to bear on his
+profession; lived closely, as well he might; studied attentively and
+intelligently; lost no hints, no precious morsels dropping from the
+master's board; improved slowly, but surely. Day by day he gained in
+that facility of hand, quickness of observation, accuracy of memory,
+correctness of judgment, patience of detail, felicity of touch, which,
+united and perfected and honestly directed, we call genius. He was
+above no drudgery, shirked no difficulties, and labored at the
+insignificant sketch in hand to-day as though it were indeed his
+masterpiece, to be hung up beside Raphael's and Titian's; meantime,
+keeping up poor Hepsy Ann's heart by letters full of a hope bred of his
+own brave spirit, rather than of any favoring circumstances in his
+life, and gaining his scant bread-and-butter by various honest
+drudgeries which I will not here recount.
+
+So passed away three years; for the growth of a poor young artist in
+public favor, and that thing called fame, is fearfully slow. Oftenest
+he has achieved his best when the first critic speaks kindly or
+savagely of him. What, indeed, _at best_, do those blind leaders, but
+zealously echo a sentiment already in the public heart,--which they
+vainly endeavor to create (out of nothing) by any awe-inspiring formula
+of big words?
+
+Men grow so slowly! But then so do oaks. And little matter, so the
+growth be straight.
+
+Meantime Elkanah was getting, slowly and by hardest labor, to have some
+true conception of his art and his aims. He became less and less
+satisfied with his own performances; and, having with much pains and
+anxious prayers finished his first picture for the Academy, carefully
+hid it under the bed, and for that year played the part of independent
+critic at the Exhibition. Wherefrom resulted some increase of
+knowledge,--though chiefly negative.
+
+For what positive lesson is taught to any by that yearly show of what
+we flatter ourselves by calling Art? Eight hundred and fifteen new
+paintings this year, shown by no less than two hundred and eighty-one
+painters. When you have gone patiently through and looked at every
+picture, see if you don't wish the critics _had_ eyes, and a little
+common sense, too. How many of these two hundred and eighty-one, if
+they live to be a hundred, will ever solve their great riddle? and once
+solved, how many would honestly go back to shoemaking?
+
+Why should they not paint? Because, unless some of them are poorer men
+than I think, that is not the thing they are like to do best; and a man
+is put into this world, not to do what he may think or hope will most
+speedily or effectually place him in the list of this world's
+illustrious benefactors, but honestly and against all devilish
+temptations to stick to that thing by which he can best serve and
+bless--
+
+Whom? A city? A state? A republic? A king?
+
+No,--but that person who Is nearest to, and most dependent upon him.
+Look at Charles Lamb, and then at Byron and Shelley.
+
+The growth of a poor young artist into public favor is slow enough. But
+even poor young artists have their temptations. When Elkanah hung his
+first picture in the Academy rooms, he thought the world must feel the
+acquisition. Now the world is a notoriously stupid world, and never
+does its duty; but kind woman not seldom supplies its omissions. So it
+happened, that, though the world ignored the picture, Elkanah became at
+once the centre of admiration to a coterie of young ladies, who thought
+they were appreciating Art when they flattered an artist, and who, when
+they read in the papers the gratifying Intelligence (invented by some
+sanguine critic, over a small bottle of Champagne cider) that the
+American people are rapidly growing in true love for the fine arts,
+blushingly owned to themselves that their virtuous labors in this
+direction were not going unrewarded.
+
+Have you never seen them in the Academy,--these dear young ladies, who
+are so constantly foreseeing new Raphaels, Claudes, and Rembrandts?
+Positively, in this year's Exhibition they are better worth study than
+the paintings. There they run, up and down, critical or enthusiastical,
+as the humor strikes: Laura, with big blue eyes and a loud voice,
+pitying Isidora because she "has never met" that dear Mr. Herkimer, who
+paints such delicious, dreamy landscapes; and Emily dragging everybody
+off to see Mr. Smith's great work, "The Boy and the Windmill,"
+which--so surprising is his facility--he actually painted in less than
+twelve days, and which "promises so much for his success and the future
+of American Art," says this sage young critic, out of whose gray eyes
+look the garnered experiences of almost eighteen summers.
+
+Whoever desiderates cheap praise, let him cultivate a beard and a
+sleepy look, and hang a picture in the Academy rooms. Elkanah received
+it, you may be sure. It was thought _so_ romantic, that he, a
+fisherman,--the young ladies sunk the shoemaker, I believe,--should be
+_so_ devoted to Art. How splendidly it spoke for our civilization, when
+even sailors left their vessels, and, abjuring codfish, took to canvas
+and brushes! What admirable courage in him, to come here and endeavor
+to work his way up from the very bottom! What praiseworthy
+self-denial,--"No!! is it _really_ so?" cried Miss Jennie,--when he had
+left behind him a fair young bride!
+
+It was as though it had been written, "Blessed is he who forsaketh
+father, mother, and wife to paint pictures." But it is not so written.
+
+It was as if the true aim and glory of every man in a civilized
+community should be to paint pictures. Which has this grain of truth in
+it, that, in the highest form of human development, I believe every man
+will be at heart an artist. But then we shall be past picture-painting
+and exhibitions. Don't you see, that, if the fruit be thoroughly ripe,
+it needs no violent plucking? or that, if a man is really a painter, he
+_will_ paint,--ay, though he were ten times a shoe-maker, and could
+never, never hope to hang;--his pictures on the Academy walls, to win
+cheap wonder from boarding-school misses, or just regard from
+judicious critics?
+
+Elkanah Brewster came to New York to make his career,--to win nothing
+less than fame and fortune. When he had struggled through five years of
+Art-study, and was now just beginning to earn a little money, he began
+also to think that he had somehow counted his chickens before they were
+hatched,--perhaps, indeed, before the eggs were laid. "Good and quickly
+come seldom together," said old Uncle Shubael. But then a man who has
+courage commonly has also endurance; and Elkanah, ardently pursuing
+from love now what he had first been prompted to by ambition, did not
+murmur nor despair. For, indeed, I must own that this young fellow had
+worked himself up to the highest and truest conception of his art, and
+felt, that, though the laborer is worthy of his hire, unhappy is the
+man who lowers his art to the level of a trade. In olden times, the
+priests did, indeed, eat of the sacrificial meats; but we live under a
+new and higher dispensation.
+
+
+II.
+
+Meantime, what of Hepsy Ann Nickerson? She had bravely sent her hero
+out, with her blessing on his aspirations. Did she regret her love and
+trust? I am ashamed to say that these five long, weary years had passed
+happily to this young woman. She had her hands full of work at home,
+where she reigned over a family of brothers and sisters, _vice_ her
+mother, promoted. Hands busied with useful toils, head and heart filled
+with love and trust of Elkanah, there was no room for unhappiness. To
+serve and to be loved: this seems, indeed, to be the bliss of the
+happiest women I have known,--and of the happiest men, too, for that
+matter. It does not sound logical, and I know of no theory of woman's
+rights which will satisfactorily account for the phenomenon. But
+then--there are the facts.
+
+A Cape household is a simpler affair than you will meet with in the
+city. If any young marrying man waits for a wife who shall be an adept
+in the mysteries of the kitchen and the sewing-basket, let him go down
+to the Cape. Captain Elijah Nickerson, Hepsy Ann's father, was master
+and owner of the good schooner "Miranda," in which excellent, but
+rather strongly scented vessel, he generally made yearly two trips to
+the Newfoundland Banks, to draw thence his regular income; and it is to
+be remarked, that his drafts, presented in person, were never
+dishonored in that foggy region. Uncle Elijah, (they are all uncles, on
+the Cape, when they marry and have children,--and _boys_ until then,)
+Uncle Elijah, I say, was not uncomfortably off, as things go in those
+parts. The year before Elkanah went to New York, the old fellow had
+built himself a brand-new house, and Hepsy Ann was looked up to by her
+acquaintance as the daughter of a man who was not only brave and
+honest, but also lucky. "Elijah Nickerson's new house"--as it is still
+called, and will be, I suppose, until it ceases to be a house--was
+fitted up inside in a way which put you much in mind of a ship's cabin,
+and would have delighted the simple heart of good Captain Cuttle. There
+was no spare space anywhere thrown away, nor anything suffered to lie
+loose. Beckets and cleats, fixed into the walls of the sitting-room,
+held and secured against any possible damage the pipes, fish-lines,
+dolphin-grains, and sou'westers of the worthy Captain; and here he and
+his sat, when he was at home, through the long winter evenings, in
+simple and not often idle content. The kitchen, flanked by the
+compendious outhouses which make our New England kitchens almost
+luxurious in the comfort and handiness of every arrangement, was the
+centre of Hepsy Ann's kingdom, where she reigned supreme, and waged
+sternest warfare against dirt and disorder. Hence her despotic sway
+extended over the pantry, an awful and fragrant sanctuary, whither she
+fled when household troubles, or a letter from Elkanah, demanded her
+entire seclusion from the outer world, and of whose interior the
+children got faint glimpses and sniffs only on special and
+long-remembered occasions; the west room, where her father slept when
+he was at home, and where the curious searcher might find store of old
+compasses, worn-out cod-hooks, condemned gurry-knives, and last year's
+fishing-mittens, all "stowed away against time-o'-need"; the spare
+room, sacred to the rites of hospitality; the "up-stairs," occupied by
+the children and Hepsy Ann's self; and finally, but most important of
+all, the parlor, a mysterious and hermetically sealed apartment, which
+almost seemed to me an unconsecrated spot in this little temple of the
+homely virtues and affections,--a room furnished in a style somewhat
+ostentatious and decidedly uncomfortable, swept and dusted on Saturday
+afternoons by Hepsy Ann's own careful hands, sat in by the Captain and
+her for an hour or two on Sundays in awkward state, then darkened and
+locked for the rest of the week.
+
+As for the queen and mistress of so much neatness and comfort, I must
+say, that, like most queens whose likeness I have seen, she was rather
+plain than strictly beautiful,--though, no doubt, her loyal subjects,
+as in such cases commonly occurs, pictured her to themselves as a very
+Helen of Troy. If her cheeks had something of the rosy hue of health,
+cheeks, and arms, too, were well tanned by frequent exposure to the
+sun. Neither tall nor short, but with a lithe figure, a natural grace
+and sweet dignity of carriage, the result of sufficient healthy
+exercise and a pure, untroubled spirit; hands and feet, mouth and nose,
+not such as a gentleman would particularly notice; and straight brown
+hair, which shaded the only _really_ beautiful part of Hepsy Ann's
+face,--her clear, honest, brave blue eyes: eyes from which spoke a soul
+at peace with itself and with the outward world,--a soul yet full of
+love and trust, fearing nothing, doubting nothing, believing much good,
+and inclined to patient endurance of the human weaknesses it met with
+in daily life, as not perhaps altogether strange to itself. The Cape
+men are a brave, hardy race; and the Cape women, grave and somewhat
+silent, not demonstrative in joy or grief, reticent mostly of anxieties
+and sorrows, born to endure, in separation from fathers, brothers,
+lovers, husbands, in dangers not oftener fancied than real, griefs
+which more fortunate women find it difficult to imagine,--these Cape
+women are worthy mothers of brave men. Of such our Hepsy Ann was a fair
+example,--weaving her rather prosaic life into golden dreams in the
+quiet light of her pantry refuge, happy chiefly because she thought
+much and carefully for others and had little time for self-brooding;
+like most genuine heroines, (except those of France,) living an heroic
+life without in the least suspecting it.
+
+And did she believe in Elkanah?
+
+Utterly.
+
+And did Elkanah believe in himself?
+
+Yes,--but with certain grave doubts. Here is the difference: the
+woman's faith is intuition; the man must have a reason for the faith
+that is in him.
+
+Yet Elkanah was growing. I think a man grows like the walls of a house,
+by distinct stages: so far the scaffolding reaches, and then a general
+stoppage while the outer shell is raised, the ladders lengthened, and
+the work squared off. Now I don't know, unhappily, the common process
+of growth of the artistic mind, and how far the light of today helps
+the neophyte to look into the indefinite twilight of to-morrow; but
+step by step was the slow rule of Elkanah's mind, and he had been now
+five years an artist, and was held in no despicable repute by those few
+who could rightly judge of a man's future by his past, when first it
+became very clear to him that he had yet to find his _speciality_ in
+Art,--that truth which _he_ might better represent than any other man.
+Don't think five years long to determine so trivial a point. The right
+man in the right place is still a rare phenomenon in the world; and
+some men spend a lifetime in the consideration of this very point,
+doubtless looking to take their chance of real work in the next world.
+I mean to say it took Elkanah just five years to discover, that, though
+he painted many things well, he did yet put his very soul into none,
+and that, unless he could now presently find this, _his_ right place,
+he had, perhaps, better stop altogether.
+
+Elkanah considered; but he also worked unceasingly, feeling that the
+best way to break through a difficulty is to pepper away at its outer
+walls.
+
+Now while he was firing away wearily at this fortress, which held, he
+thought, the deepest secret of his life, Hepsy Ann sat in her pantry,
+her serene soul troubled by unwonted fears. Captain Elijah Nickerson
+had sailed out in his stanch schooner in earliest spring, for the
+Banks. The old man had been all winter meditating a surprise; and his
+crew were in unusual excitement, peering out at the weather, consulting
+almanacs, prophesying (to outsiders) a late season, and winking to each
+other a cheerful disbelief of their own auguries. The fact is, they
+were intending to slip off before the rest, and perhaps have half their
+fare of fish caught before the fleet got along. No plan could have
+succeeded better--up to a certain point. Captain Elijah got off to sea
+full twelve days earlier than anybody else, and was bowling merrily
+down towards the eternal fog-banks when his neighbors were yet scarce
+thinking of gathering up their mittens and sea-boots. By the time the
+last comers arrived on the fishing-ground, one who had spoken the
+"Miranda" some days before, anchored and fishing away, reported that
+they had, indeed, nearly _wet her salt_,--by which is meant that she
+was nearly filled with good, sound codfish. The men were singing as
+they dressed their fish, and Captain Elijah, sitting high up on the
+schooner's quarter, took his pipe out of his mouth, and asked, as the
+vessel rose on the sea, if they had any news to send home, for three
+days more like that would fill him up.
+
+That was the last word of Captain Elijah Nickerson's ever heard by men
+now living. Whether the "Miranda" was sunk by an iceberg; whether run
+down in the dark and silent watches of the night by some monster packet
+or swift hurling steamer, little recking the pale fisher's light feebly
+glimmering up from the surface of the deep; or whether they went down
+at their anchors, in the great gale which set in on the third night, as
+many brave men have done before, looking their fate steadfastly in the
+face for long hours, and taking time to bid each other farewell ere the
+great sea swallowed them;--the particulars of their hapless fate no man
+may know, till the dread day when the sea shall give up its dead.
+
+Vainly poor Hepsy Ann waited for the well-known signal in the
+offing,--daily walking to the shore, where kind old Uncle Shubael, now
+long superannuated, and idly busying himself about the fish-house,
+strove to cheer her fainting soul by store of well-chosen proverbs, and
+yarns of how, aforetimes, schooners not larger and not so stout as the
+"Miranda," starting early for the Banks, had been blown southward to
+the West Indies, and, when the second-fare men came in with their fish,
+had made their appearance laden with rich cargoes of tropical molasses
+and bananas. Poor Hepsy Ann! what need to describe the long-drawn agony
+which grew with the summer flowers, but did not wane with the summer
+sun? Hour after hour, day after day, she sat by her pantry-window,
+looking with wistful eyes out upon the sand, to that spot where the
+ill-fated "Miranda" had last been seen, but never should appear
+again,--another
+
+  "poor lone Hannah,
+Sitting by the window, binding shoes,"--
+
+cheeks paling, eyes dimming, with that hope deferred which maketh the
+heart sick. Pray God you never may be so tried, fair reader! If, in
+these days, she had not had the children to keep and comfort, she has
+since told me, she could scarce have borne it. To calm their fears, to
+soothe their little sorrows, to look anxiously--more anxiously than
+ever before--after each one of her precious little brood, became now
+her chief solace.
+
+Thus the long, weary days rolled away, each setting sun crushing
+another hope, until at last the autumn storms approached, the last
+Banker was safe home; and by this time it was plain, even to poor Hepsy
+Ann's faithful heart, that her dead would not come back to her.
+
+"If only Elkanah were here!" she had sometimes sighed to herself;--but
+in all these days she wrote him no word. And he--guessing nothing of
+her long, silent agony, himself sufficiently bemired in his slough of
+despond, working away with sad, unsatisfied heart in his little studio,
+hoping yet for light to come to his night--was, in truth, so full of
+himself, that Hepsy Ann had little of his thoughts. Shall I go farther,
+and admit that sometimes this poor fellow dimly regretted his pledged
+heart, and faintly murmured, "If only I were free, _then_ I might do
+something"? If only the ship were rid of her helmsman, then indeed
+would she go--somewhere.
+
+At last,--it was already near Thanksgiving,--the news reached Elkanah.
+"I thought you'd ha' been down afore this to see Hepsy Ann Nickerson in
+her trouble," said an old coasting-skipper to him, with mild reproach,
+handing him a letter from his mother,--of all persons in the world!
+Whereupon, seeing ignorance in Elkanah's inquiring glance, he told the
+story.
+
+Elkanah was as one in a maze. Going to his little room, he opened his
+mother's letter, half-dreading to find here a detailed repetition of
+what his heart had just taken in. But the letter was short.
+
+"MY SON ELKANAH,--
+
+"Do you not know that Captain Elijah Nickerson will never come home
+from the Banks, and that Hepsy Ann is left alone in the world?
+
+"'For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and be joined
+to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.'"
+
+That was all.
+
+Elkanah sat on his stool, before his easel, looking vacantly at the
+unfinished picture, as one stunned and breathless. For the purport of
+this message was not to be mistaken. Nor did his conscience leave him
+in doubt as to his duty, O God! was this, indeed, the end? Had he
+toiled, and hoped, and prayed, and lived the life of an anchorite these
+five years only for this? Was such faith, such devotion, _so_ rewarded?
+
+But had any one the right to demand this sacrifice of him? Was it not a
+devilish temptation to take him from his calling, from that work in
+which God had evidently intended him to work for the world? Had he a
+right to spoil his life, to belittle his soul, for any consideration?
+If Hepsy Ann Nickerson had claims, had not he also, and his Art? If he
+were willing, in this dire extremity, to sacrifice his love, his
+prospects of married bliss, might he not justly require the same of
+her? Was not Art his mistress?--Thus whispered the insidious devil of
+Selfishness to this poor, tempted, anguished soul.
+
+"Yea," whispered another still, small voice; "but is not Hepsy Ann your
+promised wife?" And those fatal words sounded in his heart: "For this
+cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and be joined to his
+wife."
+
+"Lord, inspire me to do what is right!" prayed poor mazed Elkanah,
+sinking on his knees at his cot-side.
+
+But presently, through his blinding tears, "Lord, give me strength to
+do the right!"
+
+And then, when he awoke next morning, the world seemed another world to
+him. The foundations of his life seemed broken loose. Tears were no
+longer, nor prayers. But he went about slowly, and with loving hands,
+packing up his brushes, pallets, paints, easel,--all the few familiar
+objects of a life which was his no longer, and on which he seemed to
+himself already looking as across some vast gulf of years. At last all
+was done. A last look about the dismantled garret, so long his
+workshop, his home, where he had grown out of one life into another,
+and a better, as he thought,--out of a narrow circle into a broader.
+And then, away for the Cape. No farewells, no explanations to friends,
+nothing that should hold out to his sad soul any faintest hope of a
+return to this garret, this toil, which now seemed to him more heaven
+than ever before. Thus this Adam, left his paradise, clinging to his
+Eve.
+
+It was the day before Thanksgiving when Elkanah arrived at home. Will
+any one blame him, if he felt little thankful? if the thought of the
+Thanksgiving turkey was like to choke him, and the very idea of giving
+thanks seemed to him a bitter satire? Poor fellow! he forgot that there
+were other hearts to whom Thanksgiving turkey seemed little tempting.
+
+The Cape folk are not demonstrative. They have warm hearts, but the old
+Puritan ice has never quite melted away from the outer shell.
+
+"Well, Elkanah, glad to see you, boy!" said his father, looking up from
+his corner by the stove; "how's things in New York?" Father and son had
+not met for three years. But, going out into the kitchen, he received a
+warm grasp of the hand, and his mother said, in her low, sweet voice,
+"I knew you'd come." That was all. But it was enough.
+
+How to take his sad face over to Elijah Nickerson's new house? But that
+must be done, too. Looking through the little sitting-room window, as
+he passed, he saw pale-faced Hepsy Ann sitting quietly by the table,
+sewing. The children had gone to bed. He did not knock;--why should
+he?--but, walking in, stood silent on the floor. A glad, surprised
+smile lit up the sad, wan face, as she recognized him, and, stepping to
+his side, said, "Oh, Elkanah! I knew you'd come. How good of you!"
+Then, abashed to have so committed herself and him, she shrank to her
+chair again.
+
+Let us not intrude further on these two. Surely--Elkanah Brewster had
+been less than man, had he not found his hard heart to soften, and his
+cold love to warm, as he drew from her the story of her long agony, and
+saw this weary heart ready to rest upon him, longing to be comforted in
+his strong arms.
+
+The next day a small sign was put up at Abijah Brewster's door:--
+
+BOOTS AND SHOES
+
+MADE AND MENDED
+
+By
+
+ELKANAH BREWSTER.
+
+It was arranged that he should work at his trade all winter. In the
+spring, he was to have his father's vessel, and the wedding would be
+before he started for the Banks.
+
+So the old life was put on again. I will not say that Elkanah was
+thoroughly content,--that there were no bitter longings, no dim
+regrets, no faint questionings of Providence. But hard work is a good
+salve for a sore heart; and in his honest toils, in his care for Hepsy
+Ann and her little brood, in her kind heart, which acknowledged with
+such humility of love all he did for her and all he had cast away for
+her, he found his reward.
+
+The wedding was over,--a quiet affair enough,--and Elkanah was anchored
+on the Banks, with a brave, skilful crew, and plenty of fish. His old
+luck had not deserted him; wherever he dropped anchor, there the cod
+seemed to gather; and, in the excitement of catching fish and guarding
+against the dangers of the Banks, the old New York life seemed
+presently forgotten; and, once more, Elkanah's face wore the old,
+hopeful calm which belonged there. Art, that had been so long his
+tyrant mistress, was at last cast off.
+
+Was she?
+
+As he sat, one evening, high on the quarter, smoking his pipe, in that
+calm, contemplative mood which is the smoker's reward for a day of
+toil,--the little vessel pitching bows under in the long, tremendous
+swell of the Atlantic, the low drifting fog lurid in the light of the
+setting sun, but bright stars twinkling out, one by one, overhead, in a
+sky of Italian clearness and softness,--it all came to him,--that which
+he had so long, so vainly sought, toiled for, prayed for in New
+York,--his destiny.
+
+Why should he paint heads, figures, landscapes, objects with which his
+heart had never been really filled?
+
+But now, as in one flash of divinest intelligence, it was revealed to
+him!--This sea, this fog, this sky, these stars, this old, old life,
+which he had been almost born into.--Oh, blind bat indeed, not to have
+seen, long, long ago, that this was your birthright in Art! not to have
+felt in your innermost heart, that this was indeed that thing, if
+anything, which God had called you to paint!
+
+For this Elkanah had drunk in from his earliest youth,--this he
+understood to its very core; but the poor secret of that other life,
+which is so draped about with the artistic mannerisms and fashionable
+Art of New York, or any other civilized life, he had never rightly
+appreciated.
+
+In that sunset-hour was born a _painter_!
+
+
+III.
+
+It chanced, that, a few months ago, I paid my accustomed summer visit
+to an old friend, living near Boston,--a retired merchant he calls
+himself. He began life as a cabin-boy,--became, in time, master of an
+Indiaman,--then, partner in a China house,--and after many years'
+residence in Canton, returned some years ago, heart and liver whole, to
+spend his remaining days among olden scenes. A man of truest culture,
+generous heart, and rarely erring taste. I never go there without
+finding something new and admirable.
+
+"What am I to see, this time?" I asked, after dinner, looking about the
+drawing-room.
+
+"Come. I'll show you."
+
+He led me up to a painting,--a sea-piece:--A schooner, riding at her
+anchor, at sunset, far out at sea, no land in sight, sails down, all
+but a little patch of storm-sail fluttering wildly in the gale, and
+heavily pitching in a great, grand, rolling sea; around, but not
+closely enveloping her, a driving fog-bank, lurid in the yellow sheen
+of the setting sun; above her, a few stars dimly twinkling through a
+clear blue sky; on the quarter-deck, men sitting, wrapped in all the
+paraphernalia of storm-clothing, smoking and watching the roll of the
+sea.
+
+"What do you think?" asked Captain Eastwick, interrupting my rapt
+contemplation.
+
+"I never in my life saw so fine a seaview. Whose can it be?"
+
+"A Cape-Cod fisherman's."
+
+"But he is a genius!" cried I, enthusiastically.
+
+"A great, a splendid genius!" said my friend, quietly.
+
+"And a fisherman?"
+
+"Yes, and shoemaker."
+
+"What a magnificent career he might make! Why don't you help him? What
+a pity to bury such a man in fish-boots and cod-livers!"
+
+"My dear----," said Captain Eastwick, "you are a goose. The highest
+genius lives above the littleness of making a career. This man needs no
+Academy prizes or praises. To my mind, his is the noblest, happiest
+life of all."
+
+Whereupon he told me the story which I have endeavored to relate.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+MAGDALENA.
+
+
+I would have killed you, if a breath
+Freighted with some insensate death,
+  Magdalena,
+
+Had power to breathe your life away,
+To so exhale that rose-hued clay,
+  Magdalena,
+
+That it had faded from my sight,
+Like roses in a single night,
+  Magdalena!
+
+I could have killed you thus, and felt
+My will a blessed doom had dealt,
+  Magdalena!
+
+Ah, would to God! then I had been
+Unconscious of your scarlet sin,
+  Magdalena!
+
+Ah, when I thought your soul as white
+As the white rose you wore that night,
+  Magdalena,
+
+I wondered how your mother came
+To give you that sin-sullied name,
+  Magdalena!
+
+Did some remorseless, vengeful Fate,
+In mockery of your lofty state,
+  Magdalena,
+
+Because you wore the branded name,
+Fling over you its scarlet shame,
+  Magdalena?
+
+There is no peace for you below
+That horrid heritage of woe,
+  Magdalena!
+
+There is no room for you on earth,
+Accursed from your very birth,
+  Magdalena!
+
+But where the angels chant and sing,
+And where the amaranth-blossoms spring,
+  Magdalena,
+
+There's room for you, who have no room
+Where lower angels chant your doom,
+  Magdalena!
+
+There's room for you! The gate's ajar!
+The white hands beckon from afar,
+  Magdalena!
+
+And nearer yet! they stoop! they wait!
+They open wide the jasper gate,
+  Magdalena!
+
+And nearer yet! the hands stretch out!
+A thousand silver trumpets shout,
+  Magdalena!
+
+They lift you up through floods of light!
+I see your garments growing white,
+  Magdalena!
+
+And whiter still, too white to touch
+The robes of us, who blamed you much,
+  Magdalena!
+
+They lift you up through floods of light!
+The streaming splendor blinds my sight,
+  Magdalena!
+
+I feel the whirl of countless wings!
+I lose the sense of earthly things,
+  Magdalena!
+
+The starry splendors burn anew!
+The starry splendors light me through,
+  Magdalena!
+
+I gain the dizzy height! I see!
+There's room for _me!_ There's room for _me_,
+  Magdalena!
+
+
+
+
+"STRANGE COUNTRIES FOR TO SEE."
+
+
+To begin with a mild egotism,--I do not like De Sautys.
+
+You remember De Sauty? Perched on his steadfast stool, in a deserted
+telegraph-house, hard by that bay of the broken promise, De Sauty, like
+Poe's raven, "still was sitting, still was sitting," watching, in
+forlorn, but hopeful loneliness, the paralyzed tongue of the Atlantic
+Cable, to catch the utterances that never came for all his patient
+coaxing; and ever and anon he iterated, feebly and more feebly, as if
+all his sinking soul he did outpour into the words, that melancholy
+monotone which was his only stock and store,--"All right! De Sauty."
+
+I never did like ravens, and I do not like De Sautys; for if, indeed,
+it were all right with the De Sautys, it would be all wrong with
+certain things that are most dear to the romantic part of me; since De
+Sauty is to my imagination the living type of that indiscriminate
+sacrilege of trade which would penetrate the beautiful illusions of
+remoteness, as through an opera-glass,--which would tie the ends of the
+earth together and toss it over shoulder like a peddler's bundle, to
+"swop" quaint curiosities, inspiring relics, and solemn symbols, for
+British prints or American pig-iron. Puck us no Pucks, De Sauty, nor
+constrict our planet's rotundity with any forty-minute girdle; for in
+these days of inflating crinoline and ever-increasing circumference of
+hooped skirts, it becomes us to leave our Mother Earth at least in the
+fashion, nor strive to reduce her to such unmodish dimensions that one
+may circumnavigate her in as little time, comparatively, as he may make
+the circuit of Miss Flora MacFlimsey.
+
+I beseech you, do not call that nonsense; it is but a good-natured way
+of stating the case in the aspect it presents from the De Sauty point
+of view; for tightly laced as poor Mother Earth already is, with
+railroad corsets and steamship stays, growing small by degrees and
+beautifully less, she needs but the forty-minute girdle of Puck De
+Sauty to so contract her waist at the equator that any impudent
+traveller may span it with a carpet-bag and an umbrella.
+
+On that memorable night of the Cable Celebration, when so many paper
+lanterns and so many enlightened New Yorkers were sold in the name of
+De Sauty,--when all the streets and all the people were alive with
+gas,--when we fired off rockets and Roman candles and spread-eagle
+speeches in illustrious exuberance,--when the city children lit their
+little dips, and the City Fathers lit their City Hall,--when we hung
+out our banners, and clanged our bells, and banged our guns,--when
+there was Glory to God in the highest steeple, and Peace on Earth in
+the lowest cellar,--I drifted down the Broadway current of a mighty
+flood of folk, a morose and miserable sentimentalist.
+
+I had seen locomotives, those Yankee Juggernauts, drive, roaring and
+ruthless, over the beautiful bodies of fine old travellers' fictions;
+and once, in Burmah, I had beheld a herd of stately elephants plunge
+and scoot, scampering and squealing, like pigs on a railroad, away from
+the steam scream of a new-fangled man-of-war. I had witnessed those
+monstrous sacrileges, and survived,--had even, when locomotive and
+steamer were passed, picked up my beautiful fictions again, and called
+back my panic-stricken elephants with the gong of imagination; but here
+were Gulliver and Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor torn from their golden
+thrones, and this insolent De Sauty, crowned with zinc and copper and
+sceptred with gutta-percha, set up in their places to the tune of "All
+Eight."
+
+"I will build you a house of gold, and you shall be my Padshah Begum,
+some day," said the whimsically cruel King of Oude to Nuna, his favorite
+Cashmere dancing-girl.
+
+For a while Nima's dreams were golden. But the time came when the King
+was not in the vein. He followed vacantly her most enchanting
+undulations and yawned listlessly.
+
+"Boppery bopp!" he exclaimed, presently, "but this bores us. Is there
+no better fun? Let us have a quail-fight, Khan."
+
+The Khan rose to order in the quails. The King gazed on Nuna with
+languid satiety.
+
+"I wonder how she would look, Europe-fashion."
+
+"Nothing is easier, Sire, than to see how she would look," said the
+Khan, as he returned with the quails.
+
+So a gown, and other articles of European female attire, were sent for
+to the Khan's house; for he was a married man; and when they were
+brought, Nuna was told to retire and put them on. The quail-fight
+proceeded on the table.
+
+Then Nuna reappeared in her new costume. A more miserable
+transformation it is hardly possible to imagine. The clothes hung
+loosely about her, in forlorn dowdyness. She felt that she was
+ridiculous. All grace was gone, all beauty. It was distressing to
+witness her mortified plight.
+
+The King and the Khan laughed heartily, while scalding tears coursed
+down poor Nuna's cheeks. The other nautch-girls, jealous, had no pity
+for her; they chuckled at her disgrace, turning up their pretty noses,
+as they whispered,--"Serve her right,--the brazen minx!"
+
+For days, nay, for weeks, did poor Nuna thus appear, a laughing-stock.
+She implored permission to leave the court, and return to her wretched
+home in Cashmere; but that was refused. In the midst of the Mohurrim,
+she suddenly disappeared. There were none to inquire for her.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Private Life of an Eastern King.]
+
+Oh, they may say what they please about the irresistible march of
+civilization, and clearing the way for Webster's Spelling-Book,--about
+pumps for Afric's sunny fountains, and Fulton ferry-boats for India's
+coral strand; but there's nothing in what the Atlantic Cable gives,
+like that it takes away from the heart of the man who has looked the
+Sphinx in the face and dreamed with the Brahmin under his own banian.
+Spare the shrinking Nunas of our poetry your Europe-fashions!
+
+Because the De Sautys are scientifically virtuous, shall there be no
+more barbaric cakes and ale for us? Because they are joined to their
+improved Shanghaes, must we let our phoenixes alone? Must we deny our
+crocodiles when they preach to us codfish? And shall we abstain from
+crying, "In the name of the Prophet, figs!" in order that they may
+bawl, "In the name of Brother Jonathan, doughnuts"?
+
+Yes, the world is visibly shrinking in the hard grip of commerce, and
+the magic and the marvels that filled our childish souls with
+adventurous longing are fading away in the change. Let us make haste,
+then, before it is too late,--before the very Sphinx is guessed, and
+the Boodh himself baptized in Croton water; and, like the Dutchmen in
+Hans Christian Andersen's story, who put on the galoches of happiness
+and stepped out into the Middle Ages, let us slip our feet into the
+sandals of imagination and step out into the desert or the jungle.
+
+One who expressed his Oriental experiences in an epic of fresh and
+thrilling sensations has written,--"If a man be not born of his mother
+with a natural Chifney bit in his mouth, there comes to him a time for
+loathing the wearisome ways of society,--a time for not liking tamed
+people,--a time for not dancing quadrilles,--a time for pretending that
+Milton, and Shelley, and all sorts of mere dead people are greater in
+death than the first living lord of the treasury,--a time, in short,
+for scoffing and railing, for speaking lightly of the opera, and all
+our most cherished institutions. A little while you are free and
+unlabelled, like the ground you compass; but civilization is coming,
+and coming; you and your much-loved waste-lands will be surely
+inclosed, and sooner or later you will be brought down to a state of
+utter usefulness,--the ground will be curiously sliced into acres and
+roods and perches, and you, for all you sit so smartly on your saddle,
+you will be caught, you will be taken up from travel, as a colt from
+grass, to be trained, and matched, and run.
+
+"All this in time: but first come Continental tours, and the moody
+longing for Eastern travel; your native downs and moors can hold you no
+longer; with larger stride you burst away from these slips and patches
+of free-land,--you thread your way through the crowds of Europe, and at
+last, on the banks of the Jordan, you joyfully know that you are upon
+the very frontier of all accustomed respectabilities.
+
+"There, on the other side of the river, (you can swim it with one arm,)
+there reigns the people that will be like to put you to death for _not_
+being a vagrant, for _not_ being a robber, for _not_ being armed and
+houseless. There is comfort in that,--health, comfort, and strength, to
+one who is dying from very weariness of that poor, dear, middle-aged,
+deserving, accomplished, pedantic, pains-taking governess, Europe."
+
+Better the abodes of the anthropophagi, the "men whose heads do grow
+beneath their shoulders," than no place to get away to at all; for to
+every vigorous soul there one day comes a longing, by the light of
+which magnificent distances appear beautiful, and the possibilities of
+infinite far-offness delicious; to the Christian traveller, who exults
+in the faith that "each remotest nation shall learn Messiah's name,"
+how dear is that remoteness which renders the promise sublime! It is
+these considerations which make us, old-fashioned Pucks, whose
+performances go no farther than putting a girdle round about the earth
+in fifty months, object to telegraphs, and protest against De Sauty.
+
+Among your books and your lectures, you must have observed that there
+are several well-defined and widely distinct kinds of traveller. One is
+the professional tourist, who formally and statedly "sets out," in his
+own deliberate way, packed, marked, and paid through; he is shipped
+like preserved meats, hermetically sealed to foreign impressions, and
+warranted to keep in any climate,--the same snug, well-arranged
+"commercial traveller" who went abroad for materials, for which you are
+to pay; and when he has laid in the necessary stock,--the identical
+stock as per original advices,--he comes back again, and that is
+all,--the very same as to himself and his baggage, except that the
+latter is heavier by the addition of a corpulent carpet-bag bloated
+with facts and figures, the aspect of the country, the dimensions of
+monuments, the customs of the people, their productions and
+manufactures; he might as well have done his tour around his own
+library, with a copy of Bayard Taylor's Cyclopaedia of Travel, and an
+assortment of stereoscopic views, for all the freshness of impression
+or originality of narrative you'll get from him,--from whom preserve
+us! Give us, rather, that truer traveller who goes by the
+accommodation-train of Whim, and whom, in the language of conductors,
+you may take up or put down anywhere, because he is no "dead-head," nor
+"ticketed through." This is he of whom I have spoken elsewhere,--in the
+magic mirror of whose memory (as to the last he saw of this wonder or
+of that) "a stony statuesqueness prevails, to produce an effect the
+weirdest of all; for there every living thing stands arrested in the
+attitude or gesture it presented at the fine instant to which his
+thought returns to find it,--seized in the midst, it may be, of the
+gayest, most spirited, or most passionate action,--laughter, dance,
+rage, conflict; and so fixed as unchangeable as the stone faces of the
+gods, forever and forever." In the midst of a Burmese jungle I have
+tried that sad experiment by its reverse, and, gazing into _my_ magic
+mirror, have beheld my own dear home, and the old, familiar faces,--all
+stony, pale, and dim. At such times, how painfully the exile's heart is
+tried by the apparition of any object, however insignificant, to which
+his happy childhood was accustomed! I think my heart was never more
+sharply wrung than once at Prome, in the porch of a grim old temple of
+Guadma;--a kitten was playing with a feather there.
+
+In his enumeration of the chief points of attraction in the more
+striking books of voyages and travels, Leigh Hunt, with his happy
+appreciation of whatever is most quaint in description, most
+sympathetic in impression, has helped us to an arrangement, which, with
+a convenient modification of our own, we shall follow congenially. We
+shall seek for remoteness and obscurity of place,--marvellousness of
+hearsay,--surprising, but conceivable truth,--barbaric magnificence,--
+the grotesque and the fantastic,--strangeness of custom,--personal
+danger, courage, and suffering,--and their barbaric consolations.
+In the pursuit of these, our path should wind, had we time to take
+the longest, among deserts and lands of darkness,--phoenixes and
+griffins and sphinxes,--human monsters, and more monstrous gods,--the
+courts of Akbhar and Aurengzebe,--palaces of the Mogul and the Kathayan
+Khan,--pigmies, monkey-gods, mummies, Fakeers, dancing-girls, tattooed
+warriors, Thugs, cannibals, Fetishes, human sacrifices, and the Evil
+Eye,--Chinese politeness, Bedouin honor, Bechuana simplicity,--the plague,
+the _amok_, the bearding of lions, the graves of hero-travellers, flowers
+in the desert, and the universal tenderness of women.
+
+And as our wild way leads us onward, it shall open up visions, new and
+wondrous, or beautiful as new, to those who try it for the first time.
+See now, at the outset, stepping into the footprints of old Sir John
+Mandeville, what do we behold?--"In that kingdom of Abcay is a great
+marvel; for a province of the country, that hath in circuit three days'
+journeys, that men call Hanyson, is all covered with darkness, without
+any brightness or light,--so that no man may see nor hear, nor no man
+dare enter into it. And nevertheless, they of that country say that
+sometimes men hear voices of folks, and horses neighing, and cocks
+crowing; and they know well that men live there, but they know not what
+men. And they say that the darkness befell by miracle of God; for an
+accursed emperor of Persia, that was named Saures, pursued all
+Christian men for to destroy them, and to compel them to make sacrifice
+to his idols; and rode with a great host, all that ever he could, for
+to confound the Christian men. And then in that country dwelled many
+good Christian men, the which left their goods, and would have fled
+into Greece; and when they were in a plain called Megon, anon this
+cursed emperor met with them, with his host, for to have slain them and
+hewn them in pieces. And anon the Christian men did kneel to the
+ground, and make their prayers to God to succor them. Then a great
+thick cloud came and covered the emperor and all his host; and so they
+remain in that manner, that no more may they get out on any side; and
+so shall they evermore abide in darkness, till the day of doom, by the
+miracle of God. And then the Christian men went whither they liked
+best, at their own pleasure, without hindrance of any creature, and
+their enemies were inclosed and confounded in darkness without a blow.
+And that was a great miracle that God made for them; wherefore methinks
+that Christian men should be more devout to serve our Lord God than any
+other men of any other belief."
+
+Thus doth the simple, willing faith of the childlike traveller of 1350
+draw from his strange old story a moral which may serve to light the
+way for you and me when we wend through the soul's land of darkness.
+
+  "Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day;
+  Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay."--
+
+So sings Tennyson; and what's a cycle of Cathay? Let us ask Mandeville.
+
+"Cathay is a great country, and a fair, noble, and rich, and full of
+merchants. Thither go merchants, every year, for to seek spices, and
+all manner of merchandises, more commonly than in any other part.
+
+"In Cathay is the great city of Xanadu; and in this city is the seat of
+the great Khan, in a full great palace, and the most passing fair in
+all the world, of the which the walls be in circuit more than two
+miles; and within the walls it is all full of other palaces. And in the
+garden of the great palace there is a great hill, upon the which there
+is another palace; and it is the most fair and the most rich that any
+man may devise. And there is the great garden, full of wild beasts; so
+that when the great Khan would have any sport, to take any of the wild
+beasts, or of the fowls, he will cause them to be chased, and take them
+at his windows, without going out of his chamber. The palace where the
+seat is is both great and passing fair; and within the palace, in the
+hall, there be twenty-four pillars of fine gold; and all the walls are
+covered within with red skins of beasts, that men call panthers, that
+be fair beasts, and well smelling; so that for the sweet odor of the
+skins no evil air may enter into the palace. And in the midst of this
+palace is the _mountour_ (high seat) for the great Khan, that is all
+wrought of gold and of precious stones and great pearls; and at the
+four corners of the _mountour_ be four serpents of gold, and all about
+there is made large nets of silk and gold and great pearls hanging all
+about the _mountour_. And the hall of the palace is full nobly arrayed,
+and full marvellously attired on all parts, in all things that men
+apparel any hall with. And at the chief end of the hall is the
+emperor's throne, full high, where he sitteth at his meat; and that is
+of fine precious stones, bound all about with purified gold and
+precious stones and great pearls; and the steps that he goeth up to the
+table be of precious stones mixed with gold. Under the firmament is not
+so great a lord, nor so mighty, nor so rich, as the great Khan. Neither
+Prester John, that is emperor of the high India, nor the Sultan of
+Babylonia, nor the Emperor of Persia. All these be not in comparison to
+the great Khan, neither of might, nor of nobleness, nor of royalty, nor
+of riches; for in all these he passeth all earthly princes. Wherefore
+it is great harm that he believeth not faithfully in God."
+
+And here we naturally recall that wondrous vision which Coleridge
+conjured up, when, opium-rapt, he dreamed in his study-chair of Kubla's
+enchanted ground.
+
+"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
+A stately pleasure-dome decree,
+Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,
+Through caverns measureless to man,
+Down to a sunless sea.
+So twice five miles of fertile ground
+With walls and towers were girded round;
+And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
+Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
+And here were forests ancient as the hills,
+Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
+
+"Five miles, meandering with a mazy motion,
+Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
+Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
+And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
+And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
+Ancestral voices prophesying war!
+
+"A damsel with a dulcimer
+In a vision once I saw;
+It was an Abyssinian maid,
+And on her dulcimer she played,
+Singing of Mount Abora.
+Could I revive within me
+Her symphony and song,
+To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
+That with music loud and long
+I would build that dome in air,
+That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
+And all who heard should see them there,
+And all should cry, Beware! beware
+His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
+Weave a circle round him thrice,
+And close your lips with holy dread,
+For he on honey-dew hath fed,
+And drunk the milk of Paradise!"
+
+The account which Herodotus gives of the gifts that Croesus sent to the
+Oracle at Delphi is a splendid example of barbaric magnificence. First,
+the King offered up three thousand of every kind of sacrificial beast,
+and burned upon a huge pile couches coated with silver and gold, and
+golden goblets, and robes and vests of purple. Next he issued a command
+to all the people of the land to offer up a sacrifice according to
+their means. And when this sacrifice was consumed, he melted down a
+vast quantity of gold, and ran it into one hundred and seventeen
+ingots, each six palms long, three palms broad, and one palm in
+thickness. He also caused the statue of a lion to be made of refined
+gold, in weight ten talents. When these great works were completed,
+Croesus sent them away to Delphi, and with them two bowls of enormous
+size, one of gold, the other of silver. These two bowls, Herodotus
+affirms, were removed when the temple of Delphi was burned to the
+ground; and now the golden one is in the Clazomenian treasury, and
+weighs eight talents and forty-two _minae_; the silver one stands in a
+corner of the ante-chapel and holds six hundred _amphorae_ (over five
+thousand gallons);--this is known, because the Delphians fill it at the
+time of the Theophania. Croesus sent also four silver casks, which are
+in the Corinthian treasury; and two lustral vases, a golden and a
+silver one. Beside these various offerings, he sent to Delphi many
+others of less account, among the rest a number of round silver basins.
+He also dedicated a female figure in gold, three cubits high, which the
+Delphians declared was the statue of his baking woman; and lastly, he
+presented the necklace and the girdles of his wife.
+
+When Croesus sent his Lydian messengers to the Oracle, one Alcmaeon,
+who seems to have been a shrewd fellow, with a sharp eye to the main
+chance, entertained them with generous hospitality; which so pleased
+Croesus, when he was told of it, that he immediately invited Alcmaeon
+to visit him at Sardis. When he arrived, the King told him that he was
+at liberty to enter his treasury and help himself to as much gold as he
+could carry off on his person at once. No sooner said than done.
+Alcmaeon, without bashfulness, arrayed himself in a tunic that bagged
+abominably at the waist, drew on the biggest buskins in Sardis, dressed
+his hair loose, and, marching into the treasure-house, (imagine what
+the treasury of Croesus must have been,) waded into a desert of gold
+dust. He crammed the bosom of his tunic, crammed his bombastian
+buskins, filled his hair full, and finally stuffed his mouth, so that,
+as he passed out, he could only wink his fat red eyes and bob to
+Croesus, who, when he had laughed till his sides ached, repaid his
+funny, but voracious guest for the amusement he had afforded him by not
+only confirming the gift of gold, but conferring an equal amount in
+jewels and rich raiment.
+
+But we must not remain to marvel among the overwhelming displays of
+barbaric profusion. Akbhar, the imperial Mogul, who on his birthday
+caused himself to be weighed in golden scales three times,--first
+against gold pieces, then against silver, and lastly against fine
+perfumes,--who scattered among his courtiers showers of gold and silver
+nuts, for which even his gravest ministers were not too dignified to
+scramble,--even Akbhar must not detain us. Nor Aurengzebe, who made his
+marches, seated on a throne flashing with gold and rich brocades, and
+borne on the shoulders of men; while his princesses and favorite begums
+followed in all the pomp and glory of the seraglio, nestled in
+delicious pavilions curtained with massy silk, and mounted on the backs
+of stately elephants of Pegu and Martaban.
+
+We must get away from these; for the realm of the Supernatural and the
+Marvellous lies open before us, and on the very threshold, over which
+Sir John Mandeville conducts us, broods in his fiery nest that wondrous
+fowl, the Phoenix.
+
+"In Egypt is the city of Eliopolis, that is to say, the City of the
+Sun. In that city there is a temple made round, after the shape of the
+temple of Jerusalem. The priests of that temple have all their writing
+dated by the fowl that is called Phoenix; and there is none but one in
+all the world. And he cometh to burn himself upon the altar of the
+temple at the end of five hundred years; for so long he liveth. And at
+the end of the five hundred years, they array their altar carefully,
+and put thereon spices and live sulphur, and other things that will
+burn lightly. And then the bird Phoenix cometh and burneth himself to
+ashes. And the first day next after, men find in the ashes a worm; and
+the second day next after, men find a bird, quick and perfect; and the
+third day next after, he flieth away. And so there is no more birds of
+that kind in all the world but that alone. And, truly, that is a great
+miracle of God. And men may well liken that bird unto God, because
+there is no God but one, and also that our Lord arose from death the
+third day. This bird men see often flying in those countries; and he is
+not much more than an eagle. And he hath a crest of feathers upon his
+head greater than the peacock hath. And his neck is yellow, after the
+color of an orial, that is a stone well shining. And his beak is
+colored blue, and his wings are of purple color, and his tail is yellow
+and red. And he is a full fair bird to look upon against the sun; for
+he shineth full gloriously and nobly."
+
+Let us pray that our Phoenix may not fall into the clutches of the De
+Sautys, to be made goose-meat of; rather may they themselves be utterly
+cast out,--into the land of giants that are hideous to look upon, and
+have but one eye, and that in the middle of the forehead,--into the
+land of folk of foul stature and of cursed kind, that have no heads,
+and whose eyes be in their shoulders,--into the isle of those that go
+upon their hands and feet, like beasts, and that are all furred and
+feathered,--or into the country of the people who have but one leg, the
+foot of which is so large that it shades all the rest of the body from
+the sun, when they lie down on their backs to rest at noonday. But not
+into the Land of Women, where all are wise, noble, and worthy. For once
+there was a king in that country, and men married; but presently befell
+a war with the Scythians, and the king was slain in battle, and with
+him all of the best blood of his realm. So when the queen, and the
+other noble ladies, saw that they were all widows, and all the royal
+blood was spilled, they armed themselves, and, like mad creatures, slew
+all the men that were left in the country; for they wished that all the
+women might be widows, as the queen and they were. And thenceforward
+they never would suffer men to dwell among them, especially men of the
+De Sauty sort, who, as Hans Christian Andersen says, ask questions and
+never dream.
+
+The town of Lop, says Marco Polo, is situated near the commencement of
+the great desert called the Desert of Lop. It is asserted as a
+well-known fact, that this desert is the abode of many evil spirits,
+which entice travellers to destruction with extraordinary delusions.
+If, during the daytime, any persons remain behind on the road until the
+caravan has passed a hill and is no longer in sight, they unexpectedly
+hear themselves called by their names, in a tone of voice to which they
+are accustomed. Supposing the call to proceed from their companions,
+they are led away by it from the direct road, and, not knowing in what
+direction to advance, are left to perish. In the night-time they are
+persuaded they hear the march of a great cavalcade, and concluding the
+noise to be the tramp of their own party, they make the best of their
+way in the direction of the quarter whence it seems to come; but when
+the day breaks, they find they have been misled and drawn into a
+situation of danger. Sometimes, during the day, these spirits assume
+the appearance of their travelling-companions, who address them by
+name, and endeavor to draw them out of the proper road. It is said,
+also, that some travellers, in their way across the desert, have seen
+what appeared to them to be a body of armed men advancing toward them,
+and, fearful of being attacked and plundered, have taken to flight.
+Thus, losing the right path, and ignorant of the direction they should
+take to regain it, they have miserably perished of hunger.
+
+Marvellous, indeed, and almost passing belief, are the stories related
+of these spirits of the desert, which are said to fill the air at times
+with the sounds of all kinds of musical instruments, of drama, and the
+clash of arms. When the journey across this dreadful waste is
+completed, the trembling traveller arrives at the city of the Great
+Khan.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Leigh Hunt.]
+
+In this rich chapter of horrors how finished an allegory for old John
+Bunyan! With what religious unction he would have led his Christian
+traveller from that unknown city on the edge of the sands, across the
+Soul's Desert of Lop, with its
+
+  "Voices calling in the dead of night,
+  And airy tongues that syllable men's names,"
+
+safe into the _City of the Great Khan!_
+
+Leigh Hunt declares that he has read, in some other account, of a
+dreadful, unendurable face that used to stare at people as they went
+by.
+
+The Barbaric has also its features of solemnity and grandeur, filling
+the mind with exalted contemplations, and the imagination with
+inspiring and ennobling apparitions. Surroundings that contribute a
+quality of awfulness embrace in such scenes the soul of the traveller,
+and hold him in their tremendous thrall. Mean or flippant ideas may not
+enter here; but the man puts off the smaller part of him, as the
+Asiatic puts off his sandals on entering the porches of his god. Of
+such is the Eternal Sphinx, as Eothen Kinglake beheld her. We cannot
+feel her aspect more grandly than by the aid of his inspiration.
+
+"And near the Pyramids, more wondrous and more awful than all else in
+the land of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphinx. Comely the creature
+is; but the comeliness is not of this world; the once worshipped beast
+is a deformity and a monster to this generation; and yet you can see
+that those lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some
+ancient mould of beauty, now forgotten,--forgotten because that Greece
+drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam of the Aegean, and in her
+image created new forms of beauty, and made it a law among men that the
+short and proudly wreathed lip should stand for the sign and main
+condition of loveliness through all generations to come. Yet still
+lives on the race of those who were beautiful in the fashion of the
+elder world; and Christian girls of Coptic blood will look on you with
+the sad, serious gaze, and kiss you your charitable hand with the big,
+pouting lips of the very Sphinx.
+
+"Laugh and mock, if you will, at the worship of stone idols; but mark
+ye this, ye breakers of images, that in one regard the stone idol bears
+awful semblance of Deity,--unchangefulness in the midst of change,--the
+same seeming will and intent, forever and forever inexorable. Upon
+ancient dynasties of Ethiopian and Egyptian kings,--upon Greek and
+Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors,--upon Napoleon dreaming of an
+Eastern empire,--upon battle and pestilence,--upon the ceaseless misery
+of the Egyptian race,--upon keen-eyed travellers,--Herodotus yesterday,
+Warbarton to-day,--upon all, and more, this unworldly Sphinx has
+watched and watched like a Providence, with the same earnest eyes, and
+the same sad, tranquil mien. And we, we shall die; and Islam will
+wither away; and the Englishman, leaning far over to hold his loved
+India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile, and sit in the
+seats of the Faithful; and still that sleepless rock will lie watching
+and watching the works of the new, busy race, with those same sad,
+earnest eyes, and that same tranquil mien, everlasting. You dare not
+mock at the Sphinx!"
+
+Not less stupendously placid than the Sphinx, and even grimmer in his
+remoteness from the places that have heard Messiah's name, is the
+Boodh, throned in trance, and multitudinously worshipped. Shall I tell
+you how I first beheld him in his glory?
+
+We were approaching some sacred caves in Burmah. Lighting our torches,
+and each man taking one, we mounted the steep, tortuous, and slippery
+foot-path of damp, green stones, through the thorny shrubs that beset
+it, to the low entrance to the outer cavern. Stooping uncomfortably, we
+passed into a small, vacant antechamber, having a low, dripping roof,
+perpendicular walls, clammy and green, and a rocky floor, sloping
+inward through a narrow arch to a long, double, transverse gallery,
+divided in the direction of its length, partly by a face of rock,
+partly by a row of pillars. Here were innumerable images of Guadma, the
+counterfeit presentment of the Fourth Boodh, whose successor is to see
+the end of all things,--innumerable, and of every stature, from
+Hop-o'-my-thumbs to Hurlo-thrombos, but all of the identical orthodox
+pattern,--with pendulous ears, one hand planted squarely on the knee,
+the other sleeping in the lap, an eternity of front face, and a smooth
+stagnancy of expression, typical of an unfathomable calm,--the Guadma
+of a span as grim as he of ten cubits, and he of ten cubits as vacant
+as the Guadma of a span,--of stone, of lead, of wood, of clay, of
+earthenware and alabaster,--on their bottoms, on their heads, on their
+backs, on their sides, on their faces,--black, white, red, yellow,--an
+eye gone, a nose gone, an ear gone, a head gone,--an arm off at the
+shoulder, a leg at the knee,--a back split, a bosom burst,--Guadma,
+imperturbable, eternal, calm,--in the midst of time, timeless! It is
+not annihilation which the Boodh has promised, as the blessed crown of
+a myriad of progressive transmigrations; it is not Death; it is not
+Sleep,--it is this.
+
+Our entrance awoke a pandemonium. Myriads of bats and owls, and all
+manner of fowls of darkness and bad omen, crazed by the glare of twenty
+torches, startled the echoes with infernal clangor. Screaming and
+huddling together, some fled under the wide skirts of sable, which
+Darkness, climbing to the roof in fear, drew up after her; some hid
+with lesser shadows between columns of great girth, or in the remotest
+murky niches, or down in the black profound of resounding chasms; some,
+bewildered or quite blinded by the flashes of the co-eternal beam,
+dashed themselves against the stony walls, and fell crippled, gasping,
+staring, at our feet. And when, at last, our guides and servants,
+mounting to pinnacles and jutting points, and many a frieze and coigne
+of vantage, placed blue lights on them all, and at the word illuminated
+all together, there was redoubled bedlam in that abode of Hecate, and
+the eternal calm of the Boodh became awful. For what deeds of outer
+darkness, done long ago in that black hole of superstition, so many
+damned souls shrieked from their night-fowl transmigrations, 'twere
+vain to question there were no disclosures in that trance of stone.
+
+For an experience of the oppressive awfulness of solitude, and all the
+weary monotony of waste, come now, with Kinglake, into mid-desert.
+
+"As long as you are journeying in the interior of the desert, you have
+no particular point to make for as your resting-place. The endless
+sands yield nothing but small stunted shrubs; even these fail after the
+first two or three days; and from that time you pass over broad plains,
+you pass over newly reared hills, you pass through valleys that the
+storm of the last week has dug; and the hills and the valleys are sand,
+sand, sand, still sand and only sand, and sand and sand again. The
+earth is so samely, that your eyes turn toward heaven,--toward heaven,
+I mean, in the sense of sky. You look to the sun, for he is your
+task-master, and by him you know the measure of the work that you have
+done, the measure of the work that remains for you to do. He comes when
+you strike your tent in the early morning, and then, for the first hour
+of the day, as you move forward on your camel, he stands at your near
+side, and makes you know that the whole day's toil is before you. Then,
+for a while, and a long while, you see him no more; for you are veiled
+and shrouded, and dare not look upon the greatness of his glory; but
+you know where he strides over your head by the touch of his flaming
+sword. No words are spoken; but your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, your
+skin glows, your shoulders ache; and, for sights, you see the pattern
+and the web of the silk that veils your eyes, and the glare of the
+outer light.
+
+"Time labors on,--your skin glows, and your shoulders ache, your Arabs
+moan, your camels sigh, and you see the same pattern on the silk, and
+the same glare beyond; but conquering Time marches on, and by-and-by
+the descending sun has compassed the heaven, and now softly touches
+your right arm, and throws your lank shadow over the sand, right along
+on the way to Persia. Then again you look upon his face, for his power
+is all veiled in his beauty, and the redness of flames has become the
+redness of roses; the fair, wavy cloud that fled in the morning now
+comes to his sight once more,--comes blushing, but still comes
+on,--comes burning with blushes, yet hastens, and clings to his side."
+
+When one has been sufficiently dis-Europized by remote travel, to
+become, as to his imagination, a child again, and receive a child's
+impressions from the strangeness that surrounds him, the grotesque and
+fantastic aspects of his situation afford him the same emotions, of
+unquestioning wonder and romantic sympathy, that he derived in the old
+time from the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor, the exploits of Jack the
+Giant-Killer, what Gulliver saw, or Munchausen did. Behold Belzoni in
+the necropolis of Thebes, crawling on his very face among the dusty
+rubbish of unnumbered mummies, to steal papyri from their bosoms.
+Fatigued with the exertion of squirming through a mummy-choked passage
+of five hundred yards, he sought a resting-place; but when he would
+have sat down, his weight bore on the body of an Egyptian, and crushed
+it like a bandbox. He naturally had recourse to his hands to sustain
+his weight; but they found no better support, and he sunk altogether in
+a crash of broken bones, rags, and wooden cases, that raised such a
+dust as kept him motionless for a quarter of an hour, waiting for it to
+subside. He could not move from the place, however, without increasing
+it, and every step he took smashed a mummy. Once, in forcing his way
+through a steeply inclined passage, about twenty feet in length, and no
+wider than his body could be squeezed through, he was overwhelmed with
+an avalanche of bones, legs, arms, and hands, rolling from above; and
+every forward move brought his face in contact with the abhorred
+features of some decayed Egyptian.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Bayard Taylor.]
+
+Behold Denham in the Desert of Dead Bones, where his sick comrades were
+constantly disheartened by the sight of the skulls and skeletons of men
+who had perished on those sands. During several days, they passed from
+sixty to ninety skeletons a day; but the numbers that lay about the
+wells at El Hammar were countless. Those of two women, whose perfect
+and regular teeth bespoke them young, perhaps beautiful, were
+particularly shocking. Their arms were still clasped around each
+other's neck, in the attitude in which they had expired, although the
+flesh had long since been consumed in the rays of the sun, and the
+blackened bones alone were left.
+
+Parkyns, among the little greenish-gray monkeys of Tigre, enjoyed a
+treat to make the mouth of our young imagination water. He saw them
+conversing, quarrelling, making love; mothers were taking care of their
+children, combing their hair, nursing or "trotting" them; and the
+passions of all--jealousy, rage, love--were as strongly marked as in
+men. They had a language as distinct to them as ours to us; and their
+women were as noisy and as fond of disputation as any fish-fag in
+Billingsgate.
+
+"On their marches, a few of the heedless youth occasionally lagged
+behind to snatch a handful of berries; sometimes a matron halted for a
+while to nurse her baby, and, not to lose time, dressed its hair while
+it took its meal. Now and then a young lady, excited by jealousy or
+some sneering look or word, made an ugly mouth at one of her
+companions, and then, uttering a shrill squeal, highly expressive of
+rage, vindictively snatched at the offender's tail or leg, and
+administered a hearty bite. This provoked a retort, and a most
+unladylike quarrel ensued, till a loud remonstrance from mothers or
+aunts called them to order."
+
+According to Marco Polo, there have been among the monkeys, from time
+to time, certain Asiatic Yankees, who did a lively business in the
+manufacture of an article which would, no doubt, have found a ready
+purchaser at Barnum's Museum.
+
+"It should be known," says the veracious old Venetian, "that what is
+reported respecting the dead bodies of diminutive human creatures or
+pigmies, brought from India, is an idle tale; such pretended men being
+manufactured in the island of Basman in the following manner. The
+country produces a species of monkey of a tolerable size, and having a
+countenance resembling that of a man. Those persons who make it their
+business to catch them shave off the hair, leaving it only about the
+chin. They then dry and preserve them with camphor and other drugs; and
+having prepared them in such a mode that they have exactly the
+appearance of little men, they put them into wooden boxes, and sell
+them to trading people, who carry them to all parts of the world."
+
+Not the least familiar of the aspects of the Barbaric are its actions
+and situations of horror. I could tell tales from the later, not less
+than from the older travellers, that would send my readers shuddering
+to sleepless beds: the ferocities of Tippoo reenacted in the name of
+Nena Sahib; the noiseless murders of Thuggee's nimble cord; the drunken
+_diablerie_ of the Doorga Pooja; the monstrous human sacrifices of the
+Khonds and Bheels; the dreadful rites of the Janni before the gory
+altar of the Earth goddess; the indiscriminate slashing and stabbing of
+the Amok; the shuddering dodges of the plague-chased Cavrite; the grim
+and lonely duels of the French lion-killer under the melancholy stars;
+the carrion-like exposures of the Parsee dead; the nightmarish legends
+of the Evil Eye. But my hope is to part with them on pleasant terms; so
+rather would I strew their pillows with the consolations of this
+many-mooded Barbaric,--moss from ruins, and pretty flowers from the
+desert,--that beneficent botany which maketh the wilderness to blossom
+like the rose.
+
+When Mungo Park, deserted by his guides, and stripped by thieves,
+utterly paralyzed by misfortune, and misery, would have laid him down
+to die in a desert place,--at that moment, of all others, the
+extraordinary beauty of a small moss in fructification caught his eye.
+"I mention this," he says, "to show you from what trifling
+circumstances the mind will sometimes derive consolation; for, though
+the whole plant was not larger than the top of one of my fingers, I
+could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its root, leaves,
+and capsule without admiration. Can that Being, thought I, who planted,
+watered, and brought to perfection, in this obscure part of the world,
+a thing which appears of so small importance, look with unconcern upon
+the situation and sufferings of creatures formed after his own image? I
+started up, and, disregarding both danger and fatigue, travelled
+forward, assured that relief was at hand; and I was not disappointed."
+
+Richardson, in the midst of Sahara, beheld with brimming eyes two small
+trees, the common desert acacia, and by-and-by two or three pretty blue
+flowers. As he snatched them, to fold them in his bosom, he could not
+help exclaiming, _Elhamdullah!_ "Praise be to God!"--for Arabic was
+growing second-born to his tongue, and he began to think in it and to
+pray in it. An Arab said to him, "Yakob, if we had a reed, and were to
+make a melodious sound, those flowers, the color of heaven, would open
+and shut their mouths."
+
+Once, Mungo Park (the once too often of telling this story can never
+come) sat all day,--without food, under a tree. The night threatened to
+be very pitiless; for the wind arose, and there was every sign of a
+heavy rain; and wild beasts prowled around. But about sunset, as he was
+preparing to pass the night in the branches of the tree, a woman,
+returning from the labors of the field, perceived how weary and
+dejected he was, and, taking up his saddle and bridle, invited him to
+follow her. She conducted him to her hut, where she lighted a lamp,
+spread a mat on the floor, and bade him welcome. Then she went out, and
+presently returning with a fine fish, broiled it on the embers, and set
+his supper before him. The rites of hospitality thus performed toward a
+stranger in distress, that _savage_ angel, pointing to the mat, and
+assuring him that he might sleep there without fear, commanded the
+females of her family, who all the while had stood gazing on him in
+fixed astonishment, to resume their spinning. Then they sang, to a
+sweet and plaintive air, these words: "The winds roared, and the rains
+fell. The poor white man, faint and weary, came and sat under our tree.
+Let us pity the white man; no mother hath he to bring him milk, no wife
+to grind his corn." Flowers in the desert![1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Leigh Hunt.]
+
+Flowers in the desert! And De Sauty shall spare them, though he
+botanize on his mother's grave. Borro-boolah-gah may know us by our
+India-rubber shirts and pictorial pocket-handkerchiefs; and King Mumbo
+Jumbo may reduce his rebellious locks to subjection with a Yankee
+currycomb; but these, our desert flowers, are All Right, De Sauty!
+
+
+
+
+BEAUTY AT BILLIARDS.
+
+
+There is a lady in this case.
+
+For three days she had sat opposite me at the table of the pleasantest
+of White Mountain resorts, (of course I give no hint as to which _that_
+is,--tastes differ,) and I had gradually become enthralled. Her beauty
+was dazzling, and her name was Tarlingford. For the first of these
+items, I was indebted to my own intelligence; for the second to the
+hotel register, which also informed me that she was from New York.
+
+I, too, had come from New York;--a coincidence too startling to be
+calmly overlooked.
+
+Our acquaintance began oddly. One morning, at breakfast, I was musing
+over a hard-boiled egg, and wondering if I could perforate her
+affections with anything like the success which had followed my fork as
+it penetrated the shell before me, when I felt a timid touch upon my
+toe, thrilling me from end to end like a telegraph-wire when the
+insulation is perfect. I looked up, and detected a pink flush making
+its way browward on the lovely countenance across the table.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said I, with much concern.
+
+"It was my fault, Sir; excuse _me_," said she, permitting the pink
+flush to deepen, rosily.
+
+"Shall I pass you the buttered toast?" said I.
+
+"Muffins, if you please," said she, and so sweetly that I was blinded
+to the absence of sugar in my second cup of coffee.
+
+I was confused by this incident. Many men would have concealed their
+disquietude by an affectation of sudden appetite, or by bullying the
+waiter, or by abrupt departure from the scene. I did neither. I felt I
+had a right to be confused, and I gloried in it.
+
+Very soon Miss Tarlingford withdrew, and I experienced an aching void
+within, which chops and fritters had no power to replenish.
+
+I opened a chambermaid's heart with a half-dollar, and the treasures of
+her knowledge were revealed to me. The beauty and her party were to
+remain a fortnight Among her companions there were no males, except a
+youthful irresponsibility. _Exultemus!_
+
+Later in the morning I heard the tinkling of the parlor pianoforte.
+Music has soothing charms for me, though I have not a savage breast. I
+drew near, and found Miss Tarlingford trifling with the keys,--those
+keys which lock together so many chains of human sympathy. She rose,
+and gave out demonstrations of impending disappearance. I interposed,--
+
+"Pray, continue. I am famished for music, and came specially to
+listen."
+
+"It is hardly worth while."
+
+"How can you say so? It is I who know best what I need."
+
+"I will play for you, then."
+
+And she did. This was wonderful. Usually, a long and painful struggle
+precedes feminine acquiescence, on such occasions. Repeated refusals,
+declarations of incapacity, partial consent vouchsafed and then
+waywardly withdrawn, poutings, head-tossings, feebler murmurs of
+disinclination, and final reluctant yielding form the fashionable order
+of proceeding. The charm of it all is, that the original intention is
+the same as the ultimate action. Whence, then, this folly? Having been
+many times wretchedly bored by this sort of thing, I was now
+correspondingly gladdened by the contrast.
+
+Miss Tarlingford played well, and I said so.
+
+"Pretty well," she answered, frankly; "but not so well as I could
+wish."
+
+Shock Number Two. It is customary in good society for tolerable
+performers to disavow all praises, (secretly yearning for more,) and to
+assail with invective their own artistic accomplishments. Here was a
+young lady who played well, and had the hardihood to acknowledge it.
+This rather took away my breath, and a vacuum began to come under my
+waistcoat.
+
+For three blissful days Miss Tarlingford and I were seldom separated.
+Her sister, a pale, sedate maiden, of amiable appearance, and her
+brother, a small, rude boy, of intrusive habits and unguarded speech, I
+consented to undergo, for the sake of conventional necessity. To the
+mother of the Tarlingfords additional respect seemed due, and was
+accorded.
+
+Three blissful days of sunshine, meadowy rambles, forest explorations,
+the majestic tranquillity of Nature spiced with the sauce of
+flirtation, or something stronger. Sometimes we took our morning
+happiness on foot, sometimes our mid-day ecstasy served up on
+horseback, sometimes our evening rapture in an open wagon at two forty.
+
+The puerile Tarlingford, interfering at first, was summarily crushed.
+Aspiring to equestrian distinctions, he wrought upon maternal
+indulgence, until, not without misgivings, maternal anxiety was
+stifled, and, with injunctions that we should hover protectingly near
+him, he was sent forth, a thorn in our sides. In half an hour he was
+accidentally remembered, and was found to be nowhere within view; so we
+pursued our way, well pleased. He had dropped quietly off, at the first
+canter, into a miry slough, and had returned sobbingly, covered with
+mortification and mud, to the arms of his parent. Keen questioning at
+dinner was the result.
+
+"Why did you so neglect him?" demanded fond mamma, adding,
+reproachfully, "The child's life might have been sacrificed."
+
+"Mother, we looked for him, and he was gone. Why didn't he cry out?"
+
+"So I did," shouted this youth of open speech; "but you two had your
+heads together, laughing and talking like anything, and couldn't hear,
+I suppose." (With a juvenile sneer.)
+
+"Oh, fie, Walter! Now I think you were so frightened that you could not
+speak."
+
+"I shall know better than to intrust him to your care again," said
+indignant mamma, as one who withdrew a blessed privilege.
+
+"Don't say that, mother; it would be a punishment too severe," said the
+mischievous little pale sister, in tones of pity, and her face brimming
+with mirth.
+
+Everybody laughed, and peace was restored.
+
+On the third evening, misery came to me in an envelope post-marked New
+York:--
+
+"My DEAR PLOVINS:--
+
+"I shall be with you the night after you receive this. Engage a room
+for me. Have you seen anything of a Miss Tarlingford, where you are
+staying? You should know her. She is very brilliant and accomplished,
+but is retiring. I am willing to tell you, but it must go no farther,
+that we are betrothed.
+
+"Yours, in a hurry,
+
+"FRANK LILLIVAN."
+
+My heart was as the mercury of a thermometer which is plunged into ice;
+but I preserved an outward composure. Turning over the pile of letters
+awaiting owners, I came upon one, directed in Lillivan's handwriting,
+to Miss A. Tarlingford, etc., etc.
+
+To think that a paltry superscription should carry such a weight of
+tribulation with it!
+
+I thus discovered that my lines had fallen in unpleasant places. I was
+fishing in a preoccupied stream, and had got myself entangled.
+
+I avoided the public table, and shrunk from society. During the whole
+of the next morning, I kept aloof from the temptations of Tarlingford,
+and took to billiards.
+
+In the afternoon, as I sat gloomily in my room, with feet protruding
+from the window, and body inclined rearward, (the American attitude of
+despair,) the piano tinkled. It was the same melody which had attracted
+me a few happy days before. Strengthening myself with a powerful
+resolution to extricate myself from the bewitching influence which had
+surrounded me, I arose, and went straightway to the parlor. Could it be
+that a flash of pleasure beamed on Miss Tarlingford's face? or was I a
+deluded gosling? The latter suggestion seemed the more credible, so I
+cheerfully adopted it.
+
+"We have missed you, Mr. Plovins," said the fair enslaver; "I hope you
+have not been unwell?"
+
+"Unwell?--oh, no, no!"
+
+"You have not been near me--us, today," (reprovingly,) "not even at
+dinner; and the trout were superb."
+
+A sudden hope mounted within me.
+
+"Miss Tarlingford, pray, excuse me,--your first name, may I ask what it
+is?"
+
+"Arabella is my name, and" (whisperingly) "you may use it, if you
+like."
+
+"Oh, hideous horror! And this is what they call flirtation," I thought.
+And the hope which had risen blazing, like a rocket, went down
+fuliginous, like the stick.
+
+"Mr. Plovins, I will say you are very--very inconstant, to be absent
+all day, thus."
+
+"Miss Tarlingford, it is not inconstancy, it is billiards."
+
+"Billiards!"
+
+"Billiards. I adore them. You know nothing of billiards; women never
+do. They are my joy. Pardon me," (with a sudden uprising of the moral
+sense,) "I have an engagement at the billiard-room, and I should be
+there."
+
+"Dear me! I should like to do billiards."
+
+"Heaven forbid!"
+
+"Why so, Sir?"
+
+"No, I do not mean that; but ladies never play billiards."
+
+"I suppose there is no reason why they should not?"
+
+"A thousand."
+
+"Why, what harm?"
+
+"My dear Miss Tarlingford, if your first name were not Arabella,--alas,
+alas!--there would be none."
+
+"Nonsense! now you are laughing at me. Come, you shall teach me
+billiards."
+
+"It cannot be, Miss Tarlingford." (Low tragedy tones.)
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because your name is Arabella."
+
+"Very well, Sir,--if you do not like my name, you need not repeat it."
+
+"I adore it; it is not that. Forgive me."
+
+"Then I will get my hat";--and her light footsteps tapped upon the
+stairs.
+
+Here was a state of things! Where were my firmness and my resolution
+now? Where was the Pythian probity for which, according to my
+expectations, Lillivan was to have poured Damoniac gratitude upon me?
+Was I, or was I not, rapidly degenerating into villany? I felt that I
+was, and blushed for my family.
+
+If her name had been anything but Arabella,--anything the initial of
+which was not A, then I could have justified myself; but now,--and I
+was about to teach her billiards! To what depth of depravity had I come
+at last!
+
+She rejoined me, beaming with anticipation and radiant with the
+exercise of running down-stairs. Together we entered the billiard-room.
+
+Now this I declare: the ball-room, with its flashing lights,
+intoxicating perfumes, starry hosts of gleaming, eyes, refulgent robes,
+mirrors duplicating countless splendors and ceaseless whirl of vanity,
+may add a tenfold lustre to the charm of beauty, and I know it does;
+the opera-box embellishments of blazing gas, and glittering gems and
+flowers, fresh from native beds of millinery, all-odorous with divinest
+scents of Lubin, harmoniously dulcified, have their value, which is
+great and glorious, no doubt, and regally doth woman expand and glow
+among them; in numberless ways, and aided by numberless accessories, do
+feminine graces nimbly and sweetly recommend themselves unto our
+pleasant senses; but this I will for ever and ever say,--that nowhere,
+neither in gorgeous hall, nor gilded opera-box, nor in any other place,
+nor under any other circumstances, may such bewildering and insidious
+power of maidenly enchantment be exercised as at the billiard-table;
+especially when the enchantress is utterly ignorant of the duties
+required of her, and confidingly seeks manly encouragement and
+guidance. Controlled by the hand of beauty, the cue becomes a magic
+wand, and the balls are no longer bits of inanimate ivory, but, poked
+restlessly hither and thither, circulating messengers of fascination.
+
+I know, for I have been there.
+
+Had Miss Tarlingford turned her thoughts toward the bowling-alley, I
+might without difficulty have retained my self-possession; for her sex
+are not charming at ten-pins. They stride rampant, and hurl danger
+around them, aiming anywhere at random; or they make small skips and
+screams, and perform ridiculous flings in the air, injurious to the
+alleys and to their game; or they drop balls with unaffected languor,
+and develop at an early stage of proceedings a tendency to _gutters_,
+above which they never rise throughout; and all this is annoying, and
+fit only for Bloomers, who can be degraded by nothing on earth.
+
+But billiards! what statuesque postures, what freedom of gesture, what
+swaying grace and vivacious energy this game involves! And then the
+attendant distractions,--the pinching together of the hand, to form the
+needed notch, the perfect art of which, like fist-clenching, is
+unattainable by woman, who substitutes some queerness all her own,--the
+fierce grasping and propulsion of the cue,--the loving reclension upon
+the table when the long shots come in,--the dainty foot, uprising, to
+preserve the owner's balance, but, as it gleams suspended, destroying
+the observer's,--all combine, as they did this time, to scatter stern
+promptings of duty beyond recalling.
+
+First, Arabella's little hand must be moulded into a bridge, and, being
+slow to cramp itself correctly, though pliant as a politician's
+conscience, the operation of folding it together had to be many times
+repeated. Next, shots must be made for her, she retaining her hold of
+the cue, to get into the way of it. Then all went on smoothly with her,
+turbulently with me, until, enthusiastically excited, she must be
+lifted on to the table's edge, "just to try one lovely little shot,"
+which escaped her reach from the ground.
+
+My game was up!
+
+We were alone. Arabella perched upon the table, jubilant at having
+achieved a pocket,--I dismal and blue, beside her.
+
+"There, take me down," she said.
+
+I looked around through each window, inclined my ear to the door, swept
+an arm around her waist, and forgot to proceed.
+
+"Oh, Arabella! Arabella! wherefore art thou Arabella?"
+
+"Do you wish I were somebody else?" she asked, slyly.
+
+"No, no! but what of Frank Lillivan?"
+
+"Frank, do you know him?" (With a luminous face.)
+
+"And he has told me----yes."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Of his relations with Miss Tarlingford."
+
+"With Anna,--yes."
+
+"What Anna? Who is Anna?"
+
+"Dear me! my sister Anna. Don't be absurd!"
+
+"But I never knew"----
+
+"No,--you knew nothing of her; the worse for you! You avoided her,--I'm
+sure I don't see why,--and she is retiring."
+
+"_Retiring!_--the very word!"
+
+"What word? You vex me; you puzzle me; take me down."
+
+"Forgive me, dear Arabella! I'm too delighted to explain. I never will
+explain. I thought it was you on whom Frank's affections were fixed."
+
+"Dear, no! Frank is sensible; he knows better; he has judgment"; and
+she laughed a quiet laugh, and made as if she would jump down.
+
+As she descended, two heads caromed together with a click. It was the
+irrepressible influence of the billiard atmosphere, I suppose. No one
+contemplated it.
+
+That evening, when Frank Lillivan arrived, I met him at the door.
+
+"God bless you, Frank!" said I; "I forgive you everything. Say no
+more."
+
+"Hollo! what's up?" cried Frank.
+
+"Well, certainly, it was a little imprudent for you to neglect writing
+the whole address of the letter you sent to Anna Tarlingford. I thought
+it was for Arabella."
+
+"Dear me!" said Frank, twinkling, "what then?"
+
+That is enough.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+ITALY, 1859.
+
+
+Wait a little: do _we_ not wait?
+Louis Napoleon is not Fate;
+Francis Joseph is not Time;
+There's One hath swifter feet than Crime;
+Cannon-parliaments settle nought;
+Venice is Austria's,--whose is Thought?
+Minie is good, but, spite of change,
+Gutenberg's gun has the longer range.
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     In the shadow, year out, year in,
+     The silent headsman waits forever!
+
+Wait, we say; our years are long;
+Men are weak, but Man is strong;
+Since the stars first curved their rings,
+We have looked on many things;
+Great wars come and great wars go,
+Wolf-tracks light on polar snow;
+We shall see him come and gone,
+This second-hand Napoleon.
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     In the shadow, year out, year in,
+     The silent headsman waits forever!
+
+We saw the elder Corsican,
+And Clotho muttered as she span,
+While crowned lackeys bore the train
+Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne,--
+"Sister, stint not length of thread!
+Sister, stay the scissors dread!
+On St. Helen's granite bleak,
+Hark, the vulture whets his beak!"
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     In the shadow, year out, year in,
+     The silent headsman waits forever!
+
+The Bonapartes, we know their bees,
+That wade in honey, red to the knees;
+Their patent-reaper, its sheaves sleep sound
+In doorless garners underground:
+We know false Glory's spendthrift race,
+Pawning nations for feathers and lace;
+It may be short, it may be long,--
+"'Tis reckoning-day!" sneers unpaid Wrong.
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     In the shadow, year out, year in,
+     The silent headsman waits forever!
+
+The cock that wears the eagle's skin
+Can promise what he ne'er could win;
+Slavery reaped for fine words sown,
+System for all and rights for none,
+Despots at top, a wild clan below,
+Such is the Gaul from long ago:
+Wash the black from the Ethiop's face,
+Wash the past out of man or race!
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     In the shadow, year out, year in,
+     The silent headsman waits forever!
+
+'Neath Gregory's throne a spider swings
+And snares the people for the kings:
+"Luther is dead; old quarrels pass;
+The stake's black scars are healed with grass";
+So dreamers prate;--did man e'er live
+Saw priest or woman yet forgive?
+But Luther's broom is left, and eyes
+Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies.
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     In the shadow, year out, year in,
+     The silent headsman waits forever!
+
+Smooth sails the ship of either realm,
+Kaiser and Jesuit at the helm;
+But we look down the deeps and mark
+Silent workers in the dark,
+Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs,
+Old instincts hardening to new beliefs:
+Patience, a little; learn to wait;
+Hours are long on the clock of Fate.
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     Darkness is strong, and so is Sin,
+     But only God endures forever!
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE AURORA BOREALIS.
+
+
+The aurora borealia, or rather, the polar aurora,--for there are
+aurorae australes as well as aurorae boreales,--has been an object of
+wonder and admiration from time immemorial.
+
+Pliny and Aristotle record phenomena identical with those which later
+times have witnessed. The ancients ranked this with other celestial
+phenomena, as portending great events.
+
+In a Bible imprinted at London in the year 1599, the 22d verse of the
+37th chapter of Job reads thus: "The brightness commeth out of the
+Northe, the praise to God which is terrible." The writer of the Book of
+Job was very conversant with natural objects, and may have referred to
+the aurora borealis and the phenomena immediately connected therewith.
+
+In 1560, we are told, it was seen at London in the shape of burning
+spears, a similitude which would be no less appropriate now than then.
+Frequent displays are recorded during the fifteen years following that
+date. During the latter half of the seventeenth century, the phenomena
+were frequently visible, often-times being characterized by remarkable
+brilliancy. After 1745, the displays suddenly diminished, and were but
+rarely seen for the next nine years. The present century has been
+favored to a remarkable degree. The displays during the years 1835,
+'36, '37, '46, '48, '51, '52, and '59, have been especially grand.
+
+What is the origin of these remarkable phenomena? The ancients asked
+the question, and the moderns reply by repeating it. Before proceeding
+to describe the magnificent auroral displays of August 28th and
+September 2d, let us examine authorities upon this subject, and see if
+we cannot arrive at some satisfactory solution of the phenomena. The
+following is the description given by Humboldt in "Cosmos":--
+
+"An aurora borealis is always preceded by the formation in the horizon
+of a sort of nebulous veil, which slowly ascends to a height of 4 deg.,
+6 deg., 8 deg., and even to 10 deg.. It is towards the magnetic meridian
+of the place that the sky, at first pure, begins to get brownish. Through
+this obscure segment, the color of which passes from brown to violet,
+the stars are seen, as through a thick fog. A wider arc, but one of
+brilliant light, at first white, then yellow, bounds the dark segment.
+Sometimes the luminous arc appears agitated, for hours together, by a
+sort of effervescence, and by a continuous change of form, before the
+rising of the rays and columns of light, which ascend as far as the
+zenith. The more intense the emission of the polar light, the more
+vivid are its colors, which, from violet and bluish white, pass through
+all the intermediate shades of green and purple-red. Sometimes the
+columns of light appear to come out of the brilliant arc mingled with
+blackish rays, resembling a thick smoke; sometimes they rise
+simultaneously from different points of the horizon, and unite
+themselves into a sea of flames, the magnificence of which no painting
+could express; for, at each instant, rapid undulations cause their form
+and brilliancy to vary. Motion appears to increase the visibility of
+the phenomena. Around the point in the heaven which corresponds to the
+direction of the dipping needle produced, the rays appear to meet and
+form the boreal corona. It is seldom that the appearance is so
+complete, and is prolonged to the formation of the corona; but when the
+latter appears, it always announces the end of the phenomenon. The rays
+then become more rare, shorter, and less vividly colored. Soon nothing
+further is seen on the celestial vault than wide, motionless, nebulous
+spots, pale, or of an ashy color; they have already disappeared, when
+the traces of the dark segment whence the appearance originated still
+remain on the horizon."
+
+The connection that seems to exist, says De la Rive, between the polar
+light and the appearance of a certain species of clouds is confirmed by
+all observers; all have affirmed that the polar light emitted its most
+brilliant rays when the high regions of the air contained heaps of
+cirri,--strata of sufficient tenuity and lightness to cause a corona to
+arise around the light. Sometimes these clouds are grouped and arranged
+almost like the rays of an aurora borealis; they then appear to disturb
+the magnetized needle. Father Secchi has remarked, that magnetic
+disturbances are manifested at Rome whilst the sky is veiled with
+clouds that are slightly phosphorescent, which, at night, present the
+appearance of feeble aurorae boreales.
+
+After a brilliant aurora borealis, we have been able to recognize, on
+the following morning, trains of clouds, which, during the night, had
+appeared as so many luminous rays.
+
+The absolute height of aurorae boreales has been very variously
+estimated by different observers. It has long been thought that we
+might determine it by regarding, from two places widely distant from
+each other, the same part of the aurora,--the corona, for example. But
+we have started from a very inaccurate assumption, namely, that the two
+observers had their eyes directed to the same point at the same
+time,--whilst it is now well proved that the corona is an effect of
+perspective, due to the apparent convergence of the parallel rays
+situated in the magnetic meridian; so that each observer sees his own
+aurora borealis, as each sees his own rainbow. The aspect of the
+phenomenon depends also upon the positions of the observers. The seat
+of the aurora borealis is in the upper regions of the atmosphere;
+though sometimes it appears to be produced in the less elevated regions
+where the clouds are formed. This, at least, is what follows from some
+observations, especially from those of Captain Franklin, who saw an
+aurora borealis the light of which appeared to him to illuminate the
+lower surface of a stratum of clouds; whilst some twenty-five miles
+farther on, Mr. Kendal, who had watched the whole of the night without
+losing sight of the sky for a single moment, did not perceive any trace
+of light. Captain Parry saw an aurora borealis display itself against
+the side of a mountain; and we are assured that a luminous ring has
+sometimes been perceived upon the very surface of the sea, around the
+magnetic pole. Lieutenant Hood and Dr. Richardson, being placed at the
+distance of about forty-five miles from each other, in order to make
+simultaneous observations, whence they might deduce the parallax of the
+phenomenon, and consequently its height, were led to the conclusion
+that the aurora borealis had not a greater elevation than five miles.
+M. Liais, having had the opportunity of applying a method, which he had
+devised for measuring the height of aurorae boreales, to an aurora seen
+at Cherbourg Oct. 31, 1853, found that the arc of the aurora was about
+two and a half miles above the ground, at its lower edge.
+
+Various observations made by Professor Olmsted, in conjunction with
+Professor Twining, of New Haven, led him, on the contrary, to fix the
+elevation on different occasions at forty-two, one hundred, and one
+hundred and sixty miles. He claims that it is rarely less than seventy
+miles from the earth, and never more than one hundred and sixty. He
+also claims that its origin is cosmical,--or, in other words, that the
+earth, in revolving in its orbit, at certain periods passes through a
+nebulous body, which evolves this strange light in more or less
+brilliancy, as the body is larger or smaller. To support this theory,
+he attempted to establish that there were fixed epochs for its display
+in the highest degree of brilliancy. The length of these periods was
+from sixty to seventy years, and the next appearance was to be in 1890.
+The remarkable displays of August 28th and September 2d show the
+fallacy of his conclusions in this respect.
+
+Mairon and Dalton had also thought that the aurora borealis was a
+cosmical, and not an atmospheric phenomenon. But M. Biot, who had
+himself had an opportunity of observing the aurora in the Shetland
+Isles in 1817, had already been led to recognize it as an atmospheric
+phenomenon, by the consideration that the arcs and the coronae of the
+aurora in no way participate in the apparent motion of the stars from
+east to west,--a proof that they are drawn along by the rotation of the
+earth. Hence, almost all observers have arrived at the same
+conclusions; we will in particular cite MM. Lottin and Bravais, who
+have observed more than a hundred and forty aurorae boreales. It is
+therefore now clearly proved that the aurora borealis is not an
+extra-atmospheric phenomenon. To the proofs drawn from the appearance
+of the phenomenon itself we may add others deduced from certain effects
+which accompany it, such as the noise of crepitation, which the
+dwellers nearest to the pole affirm that they have heard when there is
+the appearance of an aurora, and the sulphurous odor that accompanies
+it. Finally, if the phenomena took place beyond our planet and its
+atmosphere, why should they take place at the polar regions only, as
+they often do?
+
+J. S. Winn, in a letter to Dr. Franklin, dated Spithead, August 12th,
+1772, says: "The observation is new, I believe, that the aurora
+borealis is constantly succeeded by hard southerly or southwest winds,
+attended with hazy weather and small rain. I think I am warranted from
+experience in saying _constantly_, for in twenty-three instances that
+have occurred since I first made the observation it has invariably
+obtained; and the knowledge has been of vast service to me, as I have
+got out of the Channel when other men as alert, and in faster ships,
+but unapprised of this circumstance, have not only been driven back,
+but with difficulty escaped shipwreck."
+
+Colonel James Capper, the discoverer of the circular nature of storms,
+remarks: "As it appears, that, on all such occasions, the current of
+air comes in a direction diametrically opposite to that where the
+meteor appears, it seems probable that the aurora borealis is caused by
+the ascent of a considerable quantity of electric fluid in the superior
+regions of the atmosphere to the north and northeast, where,
+consequently, it causes a body of air near the earth to ascend, when
+another current of air will rush from the the opposite point to fill up
+the vacuum, and thus may produce the southerly gales which succeed the
+aurora borealis."
+
+The bark "Northern Light," arrived at Boston from Africa, was at sea on
+the night of the great exhibition of the aurora borealis, the 28th of
+August. The vessel was struck by lightning twice, after which the red
+flames of the aurora burst upon the astonished vision of the crew. Most
+of them are confident that they smelt a sulphurous odor all night.
+
+M. de Tessan, who, in the voyage of the "Venus" around the world, had
+the opportunity of seeing a very beautiful aurora australis, (southern
+aurora,) which he describes with much care, also considers that this
+phenomenon takes place in the atmosphere. The summit of the aurora
+being in the magnetic meridian, it was elevated 14 deg. above the horizon,
+and the centre of the arc was on the prolongation of the dipping
+needle, the dip being about 68 deg. at the place of the observation. M. de
+Tessan did not hear the noise arising from the aurora, which he
+attributes to the circumstance that he was too far distant from the
+place of the phenomenon; but he reports the observation of a
+distinguished officer of the French navy, M. Verdier, who, on the night
+of October 13th, 1819, being in the latitude of Newfoundland, had heard
+very distinctly a sort of crackling or crepitation, when the vessel he
+was on board was in the midst of an aurora borealis. This was also
+observed in many localities during the aurora of August 28th, 1859. A
+New York paper, alluding to the subject, remarks: "Many imagined that
+they heard rushing sounds, as if Aeolus had let loose the winds; others
+were confident that a sweeping, as if of flames, was distinctly
+audible." Burns, a good observer, if ever there was one, and not likely
+to be aware of any theories on the subject, alludes in his "Vision" to
+a noise accompanying the aurora, as if it were of ordinary
+occurrence:--
+
+  "The cauld blue North was flashing forth
+   Her lights wi' hissing eerie din."
+
+It finds confirmation also in the fact, generally admitted by the
+inhabitants of the northern regions, that, when the auroras appear low,
+a crackling is heard similar to that of the electric spark. The
+Greenlanders think that the souls of the dead are then striking against
+each other in the air. M. Ramm, Inspector of Forests in Norway, wrote
+to M. Hansteen, in 1825, that he had heard the noise, which always
+coincided with the appearance of the luminous jets, when, being only
+ten years old, he was crossing a meadow covered with snow and
+hoar-frost, near which no forests were in existence. Dr. Gisler, who
+for a long time dwelt in the North of Sweden, remarks that the matter
+of the aurorae boreales sometimes descends so low that it touches the
+ground; at the summit of high mountains it produces upon the faces of
+travellers an effect analogous to that of the wind. Dr. Gisler adds,
+that he has frequently heard the noise of the aurora, and that it
+resembles that of a strong wind, or the hissing that certain chemical
+substances produce in the act of decomposition.
+
+M. Necker, who has described a great number of aurorae which he
+observed at the end of 1839 and at the commencement of 1840, in the
+Isle of Skye, never himself heard the noise in question; but he remarks
+that this noise had been very frequently heard by persons charged with
+meteorological observations at the light-house of Swenburgh Head, at
+the southern extremity of Shetland. M. Necker is not the only observer
+who has not heard the noise; neither have MM. Lottier and Bravais, who
+have observed so great a number of aurorae, ever heard it; and a great
+many others are in this case. This may be due to the fact that it is
+necessary to be very near to the aurora in order to hear the
+crepitation in question, and also to the fact that it is possible that
+it does not always take place, at least in a manner sufficiently
+powerful to be heard.
+
+We have just been pointing out, as concomitant effects of the aurora
+borealis, a noise of crepitation analogous to that of distant
+discharges, and a sulphurous odor similar to that which accompanies the
+fall of lightning. M. Matteucci also observed at Pisa, during the
+appearance of a brilliant aurora borealis, decided signs of positive
+electricity in the air; but of all phenomena, those which invariably
+take place at the same time as the appearance of the aurora borealis
+are the magnetic effects. Magnetized needles suffer disturbances in
+their normal direction which cause them to deviate generally to the
+west first, afterwards to the east. These disturbances vary in
+intensify, but they never fail to take place, and are manifested even
+in places in which the aurora borealis is not visible. This
+coincidence, proved by M. Arago without any exception, during several
+years of observation, is such that the learned Frenchman was able,
+without ever having been mistaken, to detect from the bottom of the
+cellars of the observatory of Paris the appearance of an aurora
+borealis. M. Matteucci had the opportunity of observing this magnetic
+influence under a new and remarkable form. He saw, during the
+appearance of the aurora borealis of November 17, 1848, the soft iron
+armatures employed in the electric telegraph between Florence and Pisa
+remain attached to their electro-magnets, as if the latter were
+powerfully magnetized, without, however, the apparatus being in action,
+and without the currents in the battery being set in action. This
+singular effect ceases with the aurora, and the telegraph, as well as
+the batteries, could operate anew, without having suffered any
+alteration. Mr. Highton also observed in England a very decided action
+of the aurora borealis, November 17, 1848. The magnetized needle was
+always driven toward the same side, even with much force. But it is in
+our own country that the action of the aurora upon the telegraph-wires
+has been the most remarkable.
+
+My attention was first called in 1847 to the probability of the
+aurora's producing an effect upon the wires; but, although having an
+excellent opportunity to observe such an effect, I was not fortunate
+enough to do so until the winter of 1850, and then, owing to the feeble
+displays of the aurora, only to a limited extent. In September, 1851,
+however, there was a remarkable aurora, which took complete possession
+of all the telegraph-lines in New England and prevented any business
+from being transacted during its continuance. The following winter
+there was another remarkable display, which occurred on the 19th of
+February, 1852. It was exceedingly brilliant throughout the northern
+portion of our continent. I extract the following account of its
+effects upon the wires from my journal of that date. I should premise,
+that the system of telegraphing used upon the wires, during the
+observation of February, 1852, was Bain's chemical. No batteries were
+kept constantly upon the line, as in the Morse and other magnetic
+systems. The main wire was connected directly with the chemically
+prepared paper on the disc, so that any atmospheric currents were
+recorded upon the disc with the greatest accuracy. Our usual battery
+current, decomposing the salts in the paper, and uniting with the iron
+point of the pen wire, left a light blue mark on the white paper, or,
+if the current were strong, a dark one,--the color of the mark
+depending upon the quantity of the current upon the wire.
+
+"_Thursday, February 19, 1852_.
+
+"Towards evening a heavy blue line appeared upon the paper, which
+gradually increased in size for the space of half a minute, when a
+flame of fire succeeded to the blue line, of sufficient intensity to
+burn through a dozen thicknesses of the moistened paper. The current
+then subsided as gradually as it, had come on, until it entirely
+ceased, and was then succeeded by a negative current (which bleaches,
+instead of coloring, the paper). This gradually increased, in the same
+manner as the positive current, until it also, in turn, produced its
+flame of fire, and burned through many thicknesses of the prepared
+paper; it then subsided, again to be followed by the positive current.
+This state of things continued during the entire evening, and
+effectually prevented any business being done over the wires."
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+Never, however, since the establishment of the telegraphic system in
+this country, have the wires been so greatly affected by the aurora as
+upon Sunday night, the 28th of August, 1859. Throughout the entire
+northern portion of the United States and Canada, the lines were
+rendered useless for all business purposes through its action. So
+strongly was the atmosphere charged with the electric fluid, that lines
+or circuits of only twelve miles in length were so seriously affected
+by it as to render operation difficult, and, at times, impossible.
+
+The effects of this magnetic storm were apparent upon the wires during
+a considerable portion of Saturday evening, and during the whole of the
+next day. At 6, P.M., the line between Boston and New Bedford (sixty
+miles in length) could be worked only at intervals, although, of
+course, no signs of the aurora were apparent to the eye at that hour.
+The same was true of the wires running eastward through the State of
+Maine, as well as those to the north.
+
+The wire between Boston and Fall River had no battery upon it Sunday,
+and yet there was an artificial current upon it, which increased and
+decreased in intensity, producing upon the electromagnets in the
+offices the same effect as would be produced by constantly opening and
+closing the circuit at intervals of half a minute. This current, which
+came from the aurora, was strong enough to have worked the line,
+although not sufficiently steady for regular use.
+
+The current from the aurora borealis comes in waves,--light at first,
+then stronger, until we have, frequently, a strength of current equal
+to that produced by a battery of two hundred Grove cups. The waves
+occupy about fifteen seconds each, ordinarily, but I have known them to
+last a full minute; though this is rare. As soon as one wave passes,
+another, of the reverse polarity, always succeeds. I have never known
+this to fail, and it may be set down as an invariable rule. When the
+poles of the aurora are in unison with the poles of the current upon
+the line, its effect is to increase the current; but when they are
+opposed, the current from the battery is neutralized,--null. These
+effects were observed at times during Saturday, Saturday evening, and
+Sunday, but were very marked during Sunday evening.
+
+It is hardly necessary to add here, that the effect of the aurora
+borealis, or magnetic storm, is totally unlike that of common or free
+electricity, with which the atmosphere is charged during a
+thunderstorm. The electricity evolved during a thunder-storm, as soon
+as it reaches a conductor, explodes with a spark, and becomes at once
+dissipated. The other, on the contrary, is of very low tension, remains
+upon the wires sometimes half a minute, produces magnetism, decomposes
+chemicals, deflects the needle, and is capable of being used for
+telegraphic purposes, although, of course, imperfectly.
+
+Mr. 0.S. Wood, Superintendent of the Canadian telegraph-lines,
+says:--"I never, in my experience of fifteen years in the working of
+telegraph-lines, witnessed anything like the extraordinary effect of
+the aurora borealis, between Quebec and Father Point, last night. The
+line was in most perfect order, and well-skilled operators worked
+incessantly from eight o'clock last evening till one o'clock this
+morning, to get over, in even a tolerably intelligible form, about four
+hundred words of the steamer "Indian's" report for the press; but at
+the latter hour, so completely were the wires under the influence of
+the aurora borealis, that it was found utterly impossible to
+communicate between the telegraph-stations, and the line was closed for
+the night."
+
+We have seen from the foregoing examples that the aurora borealis
+produces remarkable effects upon the telegraph-lines during its entire
+manifestation. We have, however, to record yet more wonderful effects
+of the aurora upon the wires, namely, _the use of the auroral current
+for transmitting and receiving telegraphic dispatches_. This almost
+incredible feat was accomplished in the forenoon of September 2,
+between the hours of half past eight and eleven o'clock, on the wires
+of the American Telegraph Company between Boston and Portland, and upon
+the wires of the Old Colony and Fall River Railroad Company between
+South Braintree and Fall River.
+
+The auroral influence was observed upon all the lines running out of
+the office in Boston, at the hour of commencing business, (eight
+o'clock, A. M.,) and it continued so strong up to half past eight as to
+prevent any business being done; the ordinary current upon the wires
+being at times neutralized by the magnetism of the aurora, and at other
+times so greatly augmented as to render operations impracticable. At
+this juncture it was suggested that the batteries should be cut off,
+and the wires simply connected with the earth.
+
+It is proper to remark here, that the current from the aurora coming in
+waves of greater or less intensity, there are times, both while the
+wave is approaching and while it is receding, when the instruments are
+enabled to work; but the time, varying according to the rapidity of the
+vibrations of the auroral bands, is only from one quarter of a minute
+to one minute in duration. Therefore, whatever business is done upon
+the wires during these displays has to be accomplished in brief
+intervals of from quarter to half a minute in duration.
+
+During one of these intervals, the Boston operator said to the one at
+Portland,--
+
+"Please cut off your battery, and let us see if we cannot work with the
+auroral current alone."
+
+The Portland operator replied,--
+
+"I will do so. Will you do the same?"
+
+"I have already done so," was the answer. "We are working with the aid
+of the aurora alone. How do you receive my writing?"
+
+"Very well indeed," responds the operator at Portland; "much better
+than when the batteries were on; the current is steadier and more
+reliable. Suppose we continue to work so until the aurora subsides?"
+
+"Agreed," replied the Boston operator. "Are you ready for business?"
+
+"Yes; go ahead," was the answer.
+
+The Boston operator then commenced sending private dispatches, which he
+was able to do much more satisfactorily than when the batteries were
+on, although, of course, not so well as he could have done with his own
+batteries without celestial assistance.
+
+The line was worked in this manner more than two hours, when, the
+aurora having subsided, the batteries were resumed. While this
+remarkable phenomenon was taking place upon the wires between Boston
+and Portland, the operator at South Braintree informed me that he was
+working the wire between that station and Fall River--a distance of
+about forty miles--with the current from the aurora alone. He continued
+to do so for some time, the line working comparatively well. Since then
+I have visited Fall River, and have the following account from the
+intelligent operator in the railroad office at that place. The office
+at the station is about half a mile from the regular office in the
+village. The battery is kept at the latter place, but the operator at
+the station is provided with a switch by which he can throw the battery
+off the line and put the wire in connection with the earth at pleasure.
+The battery at the other terminus of the line is at Boston; but the
+operator at South Braintree is furnished with a similar switch, which
+enables him to dispense with its use at pleasure. There are no
+intermediate batteries; consequently, if the Fall River operator put
+his end of the wire in connection with the earth, and the South
+Braintree operator do the same, the line is without battery, and of
+course without an electrical current. Such was the state of the line on
+the 2d of September last, when for more than an hour they held
+communication over the wire with the aid of the celestial batteries
+alone.
+
+This seems almost too wonderful for belief, and yet the proof is
+incontestable. However, the fact being established that the currents
+from the aurora borealis do have a direct effect upon the
+telegraph-wires, and that the currents are of both kinds, positive and
+negative,--as I have shown in my remarks upon the aurora of 1852, which
+sometimes left a dark line upon the prepared paper, and at other times
+bleached it,--it is a natural consequence that the wires should work
+better without batteries than with them, whenever a current from the
+aurora has sufficient intensity to neutralize the current from the
+batteries.
+
+I will try to make myself clear upon this point. It makes no
+difference, in working the Morse, or any other system of _magnetic_
+telegraph, whether we have the positive or the negative pole to the
+line; but, whichever way we point, the same direction must be continued
+with all additional batteries we put upon the line. Now if we put a
+battery upon the line at Boston, of, say, twenty-five cells, and point
+the positive pole eastward, and the same number of cells at Portland,
+pointing the positive pole westward, the current will be null, that is
+to say, each will neutralize the other. Now the aurora, in presenting
+its positive pole, we will say, increases the current upon the line
+beyond the power of the magnet-keeper-spring to control it, and thus
+prevents the line from working, by surfeiting it with the electric
+current; until, presently, the wave recedes and is followed by a
+negative current which neutralizes the battery current, and prevents
+the line from working for want of power. It is plain, therefore, that,
+if the batteries be taken off, the positive current of the aurora
+cannot increase nor the negative decrease the working state of the line
+to the same extent as when the batteries are connected; but that,
+whichever pole is presented, the magnetism can be made use of by the
+operator for the ordinary duties of the line.
+
+At Springfield, a gentleman who observed the needle of the compass,
+during the auroral display of August 28th, noticed that it was
+deflected first to the west, and then to the east, while the waves of
+the aurora were in motion. The electrotype plates at the office of the
+"Republican" at that place were so seriously affected by the aurora,
+that they could not be printed from during the continuance of the
+phenomenon.
+
+The aurora borealis of August 28th was surpassingly brilliant not only
+in the northern portion of this continent, but also as far south as the
+equator,--as well as in Cuba, Jamaica, California, and the greater
+portion of Europe. The London newspapers of the 29th contain glowing
+descriptions of it. A California journal says:--"During the last ten
+years the aurora borealis was never seen in California except on very
+rare occasions, and then the light was very faint or barely visible;
+but on the 28th ult., it appeared in wonderful splendor,--the whole
+northern part of the sky being of a bright crimson; and the same
+phenomenon, with equal magnificence, was repeated on the night of the
+first instant."
+
+In Jamaica the aurora borealis was witnessed for the first time,
+perhaps, since the discovery of this island by Columbus. So rare is the
+phenomenon in those latitudes, that it was taken for the glare of a
+fire, and was associated with the recent riots.
+
+Mr. E.B. Elliot of Boston, in an interesting article upon the recent
+aurora, points out the simultaneous occurrence of the auroral display
+of February 19th, 1852, with the eruption of Mauna Loa,--the largest
+volcano in the world, situated on Hawaii, (one of the Sandwich Island
+group,)--on the 20th of February; on which occasion, the side of the
+mountain gave way about two-thirds of the distance from the base,
+giving passage to a magnificent stream of lava, five hundred feet deep
+and seven hundred broad.
+
+Again, on the 17th of December, 1857, between the hours of one and four
+in the morning, there occurred an aurora of unwonted magnificence. The
+first steamer arriving from Europe after that date brought the
+following intelligence, which is taken from one of the journals of the
+day:--"An earthquake took place on the night of the 17th, throughout
+the whole kingdom of Naples, but its effects were most severe in the
+towns of Salerno, Potenza, and Nola. At Salerno, the walls of the
+houses were rent from top to bottom. Numerous villages were half
+destroyed."
+
+Were these coincidences of extraordinary auroras with extraordinary
+commotions in the physical condition of our globe merely accidental? or
+are these phenomena due to a common cause? The latter supposition is
+not improbable, but the question can be fully settled only by further
+observations.
+
+Mr. Meriam, "the sage of Brooklyn," as the daily journals denominate
+him, considers the aurora as the result of earthquakes or volcanic
+eruptions. He also says:--"The auroral light sometimes is composed of
+threads, like the silken warp of a web; these sometimes become broken
+and fall to the earth, and possess exquisite softness and a silvery
+lustre, and I denominate them the products of the silkery of the skies.
+_I once obtained a small piece, which I preserved._"
+
+It is due to Mr. Meriam, as well as to the scientific world, to say,
+that he stands alone in his convictions with regard to the aurora, both
+in respect of the cause and the effect of the phenomenon.
+
+Having thus illustrated the effects of the aurora, let us now return to
+the discussion of its causes.
+
+The intimate and constant connection between the phenomena of the
+aurora borealis and terrestrial magnetism led Humboldt to class under
+the head of Magnetic Storms all disturbances in the equilibrium of the
+earth's magnetic forces. The presence of such storms is indicated by
+the oscillations of the magnetized needle, the disturbance of the
+currents upon the telegraph-wires, and the appearance of the aurora, of
+which these oscillations and disturbances are, as it were, the
+forerunners, and which itself puts an end to the storm,--as in electric
+storms the phenomenon of lightning announces that, the electrical
+equilibrium, temporarily disturbed, is now restored.
+
+The atmosphere is constantly charged with positive
+electricity,--electricity furnished by the vapors that rise from the
+sea, especially in tropical regions,--and, on the other hand, the earth
+is negatively electrized. The recomposition or neutralization of the
+two opposite electricities of the atmosphere and of the terrestrial
+globe is brought about by means of the moisture with which the lower
+strata of the air are more or less charged. But it is especially in the
+polar regions, where the eternal ice that reigns there constantly
+condenses the aqueous vapors under the form of haze, that this
+recomposition must be brought about; the more so, as the positive
+vapors are carried thither and accumulated by the tropical current,
+which, setting out from the equatorial regions, where it occupies the
+most elevated regions of the atmosphere, descends as it advances
+towards the higher latitudes, until it comes in contact with the earth
+in the neighborhood of the poles. It is there, then, chiefly, that the
+equilibrium between the positive electricity of the vapors and the
+negative electricity of the earth must be accomplished by means of a
+discharge, which, when of sufficient intensity, will be accompanied
+with light, if, as is almost always the case near the poles, and
+sometimes in the higher parts of the atmosphere, it take place among
+those extremely small icy particles which constitute the hazes and the
+very elevated clouds.
+
+There can be no doubt that the occurrence of the phenomenon is
+materially dependent on the presence in the atmosphere of these
+particles of ice, forming a kind of thin haze, which, becoming luminous
+by the transmission of electricity, must appear simply as an
+illuminated surface of greater or less extent, and more or less cut up.
+The phenomenon actually takes place in this manner in the parts of the
+atmosphere that are the most distant from the earth. We perceive what
+are termed auroral plates of a purple or reddish-violet color, more or
+less extended, according as this species of veil, formed by icy
+particles, extends to a greater or less distance from the poles. The
+tenuity of this veil is such that it admits of our seeing the stars
+through the auroral plates. Of its existence, independently of indirect
+proofs, we have a direct demonstration in the observation of MM. Bixio
+and Baral, who, being raised in a balloon to a great height, found
+themselves, on a sudden, although the sky was entirely serene and the
+atmosphere cloudless, in the midst of a perfectly transparent veil,
+formed by a multitude of little icy needles, so fine that they were
+scarcely visible.
+
+If we place the pole of an electro-magnet over the jets of electric
+light that are made to converge in extremely rarefied air, we shall see
+that the electric light, instead of coming out indifferently from all
+points of the upper surface, as had taken place before the
+magnetization, comes out from the points of the circumference only of
+this surface, so as to form around it a continuous luminous ring. This
+ring possesses a movement of rotation around the magnetized cylinder,
+sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another, according to the
+direction of the discharge and of the magnetization. Finally, some more
+brilliant jets seem to come out from this luminous circumference
+without being confounded with the rest of the group. Now the magnetic
+pole exercises over the luminous haze which we have mentioned as always
+present during an aurora precisely the same action which the pole of
+the electro-magnet exercises in the experiment just described; and what
+takes place on the small scale of the experiment is precisely what
+takes place on the large scale of the phenomenon of the aurora
+borealis.
+
+The arc of the aurora borealis is a portion of a luminous ring, the
+different points of which are sensibly at equal distances from the
+earth, and which centres upon the boreal magnetic pole, so as to cut at
+right angles all the magnetic meridians that converge towards this
+pole. Such a ring, seen by an observer placed at the surface of the
+earth, evidently presents to him the known arc of the aurora; and its
+_apparent_ summit is always necessarily situated in the magnetic
+meridian of the place.
+
+The diameter of the luminous ring is greater in proportion as the
+magnetic pole is more distant from the surface of the earth, since this
+pole must be situated upon the intersection of the plane of the ring
+with the axis of the terrestrial globe; if we could determine
+rigorously the position of the aurora borealis, we should then have the
+means of knowing exactly that of the pole itself.
+
+Each observer sees the summit of the auroral arc at his magnetic
+meridian; it is, therefore, only those who are on the same magnetic
+meridian who see the same summit, and who are able by simultaneous
+observations to take its height.
+
+If the summit of the arc pass beyond the zenith of the observer, the
+latter is surrounded by the matter of the aurora borealis. This matter
+is nothing else than aqueous vapors traversed by the discharges, and
+which are in general luminous only at a certain height from the ground,
+either because the air is there more rarefied, or because they are
+themselves congealed, and more capable, consequently, of liberating
+their electric light. Then it is, that, from being nearer to the spot
+where the phenomenon is taking place, the observer hears the
+crepitation, or whizzing, of which we have spoken, especially if he be
+in an open country and in a quiet place. But if the arc do not attain
+to his zenith, he is situated beyond the region in which the meeting of
+the electric currents takes place; he sees only an arc a little more
+elevated to the north or the south, according as he is situated in one
+hemisphere or the other; and he hears no noise, on account of his too
+great distance. The crepitation is the result of the action of a
+powerful magnetic pole upon luminous electric jets in its immediate
+neighborhood. With regard to the sulphurous odor which some observers
+have perceived, it arises, as does that which accompanies the fall of
+lightning, from the conversion into ozone of the oxygen of the air, by
+the passage of electric discharges.
+
+Gisler says, that on the high mountains of Sweden the traveller is
+sometimes suddenly enveloped in a very transparent fog, of a
+whitish-gray color inclining a little to green, which rises from the
+ground, and is transformed into an aurora borealis. The cirro-cumulus
+and the hazes become luminous when they are traversed by sufficiently
+energetic discharges of electricity, and when the light of day is no
+longer present to overcome their more feeble light. Dr. Usher describes
+an aurora borealis seen in the open day, at noon, May 24, 1778.
+
+MM. Cornulier and Verdier are convinced, after carefully studying the
+subject, that there are almost always aurorae boreales in the high
+polar latitudes, and that their brilliancy alone is variable. This
+conviction is in accordance with the very careful observations which
+have now been made for four years in the northern hemisphere. It
+appears, as the result of these, that the aurora borealis is visible
+almost every clear night, but it does not show itself at all the
+stations at the same time. From October to March there is scarcely a
+night in which it may not be seen; but it is in February that it is
+most brilliant. In 1850 it was observed two hundred and sixty-one
+nights, and during 1851 two hundred and seven. The proportion of nights
+in which the aurora is seen is much greater the nearer we are to the
+magnetic pole.
+
+De la Rive, from whose admirable treatise upon Electricity we have
+borrowed our general views, and whose theory we have attempted to
+illustrate in this paper, concludes that the aurora borealis is a
+phenomenon which has its seat in the atmosphere, and consists in the
+production of a luminous ring of greater or less diameter, having for
+its centre the magnetic pole. Experiment shows, as we have seen, that,
+on bringing about in rarefied air the reunion of the two electricities,
+near the pole of a powerful artificial magnet, a small luminous ring is
+produced, similar to that which constitutes the aurora borealis, and
+animated by a similar movement of rotation. The aurora borealis would
+be due, consequently, to electric discharges taking place in the polar
+regions between the positive electricity of the atmosphere and the
+negative electricity of the earth. These electric discharges taking
+place constantly, but with intensities varying according to the state
+of the atmosphere, the aurora borealis should be a daily phenomenon,
+more or less intense, consequently visible at greater or less
+distances, but only when the nights are clear,--which is perfectly in
+accordance with observation.
+
+The aurora australis presents precisely the same phenomena as the
+aurora borealis, and is explained, consequently, in the same manner.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
+
+WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.
+
+
+A young fellow, born of good stock, in one of the more thoroughly
+civilized portions of these United States of America, bred in good
+principles, inheriting a social position which makes him at his ease
+everywhere, means sufficient to educate him thoroughly without taking
+away the stimulus for vigorous exertion, and with a good opening in
+some honorable path of labor, is the finest sight our private satellite
+has had the opportunity of inspecting on the planet to which she
+belongs. In some respects it was better to be a young Greek. If we may
+trust the old marbles,--my friend with his arm stretched over my head,
+above there, (in plaster of Paris,) or the discobolus, whom one may see
+at the principal sculpture gallery of this metropolis,--those Greek
+young men were of supreme beauty. Their close curls, their elegantly
+set heads, column-like necks, straight noses, short, curled lips, firm
+chins, deep chests, light flanks, large muscles, small joints, were
+finer than anything we ever see. It may well be questioned whether the
+human shape will ever present itself again in a race of such perfect
+symmetry. But the life of the youthful Greek was local, not planetary,
+like that of the young American. He had a string of legends, in place
+of our Gospels. He had no printed books, no newspaper, no steam
+caravans, no forks, no soap, none of the thousand cheap conveniences
+which have become matters of necessity to our modern civilization.
+Above all things, if he aspired to know as well as to enjoy, he found
+knowledge not diffused everywhere about him, so that a day's labor
+would buy him more wisdom than a year could master, but held in private
+hands, hoarded in precious manuscripts, to be sought for only as gold
+is sought in narrow fissures and in the bed of brawling streams. Never,
+since man came into this atmosphere of oxygen and azote, was there
+anything like the condition of the young American of the nineteenth
+century. Having in possession or in prospect the best part of half a
+world, with all its climates and soils to choose from; equipped with
+wings of fire and smoke that fly with him day and night, so that he
+counts his journey not in miles, but in degrees, and sees the seasons
+change as the wild fowl sees them in his annual flights; with huge
+leviathans always ready to take him on their broad backs and push
+behind them with their pectoral or caudal fins the waters that seam the
+continent or separate the hemispheres; heir of all old civilizations,
+founder of that new one which, if all the prophecies of the human heart
+are not lies, is to be the noblest, as it is the last; isolated in
+space from the races that are governed by dynasties whose divine right
+grows out of human wrong, yet knit into the most absolute solidarity
+with mankind of all times and places by the one great thought he
+inherits as his national birthright; free to form and express his
+opinions on almost every subject, and assured that he will soon acquire
+the last franchise which men withhold from man,--that of stating the
+laws of his spiritual being and the beliefs he accepts without
+hindrance except from clearer views of truth,--he seems to want nothing
+for a large, wholesome, noble, beneficent life. In fact, the chief
+danger is that he will think the whole planet is made for him, and
+forget that there are some possibilities left in the _debris_ of the
+old-world civilization which deserve a certain respectful consideration
+at his hands.
+
+The combing and clipping of this shaggy wild continent are in some
+measure done for him by those who have gone before. Society has
+subdivided itself enough to have a place for every form of talent.
+Thus, if a man show the least sign of ability as a sculptor or a
+painter, for instance, he finds the means of education and a demand for
+his services. Even a man who knows nothing but science will be provided
+for, if he does not think it necessary to hang about his birthplace all
+his days,--which is a most un-American weakness. The apron-strings of
+an American mother are made of India-rubber. Her boy belongs where he
+is wanted; and that young Marylander of ours spoke for all our young
+men, when he said that his home was wherever the stars and stripes blew
+over his head.
+
+And that leads me to say a few words of this young gentleman, who made
+that audacious movement lately which I chronicled in my last
+record,--jumping over the seats of I don't know how many boarders to
+put himself in the place which the Little Gentleman's absence had left
+vacant at the side of Iris. When a young man is found habitually at the
+side of any one given young lady,--when he lingers where she stays, and
+hastens when she leaves,--when his eyes follow her as she moves, and
+rest upon her when she is still,--when he begins to grow a little
+timid, he who was so bold, and a little pensive, he who was so gay,
+whenever accident finds them alone,--when he thinks very often of the
+given young lady, and names her very seldom,----
+
+What do you say about it, my charming young expert in that sweet
+science in which, perhaps, a long experience is not the first of
+qualifications?
+
+----But we don't know anything about this young man, except that he is
+good-looking, and somewhat high-spirited, and strong-limbed, and has a
+generous style of nature,--all very promising, but by no means proving
+that he is a proper lover for Iris, whose heart we turned inside out
+when we opened that sealed book of hers.
+
+Ah, my dear young friend! When your mamma--then, if you will believe
+it, a very slight young lady, with very pretty hair and figure--came
+and told _her_ mamma that your papa had--had--asked----No, no, no! she
+couldn't say it; but her mother--oh, the depth of maternal
+sagacity!--guessed it all without another word!--When your mother, I
+say, came and told her mother she was _engaged_, and your grandmother
+told your grandfather, how much did they know of the intimate nature of
+the young gentleman to whom she had pledged her existence? I will not
+be so hard as to ask how much your respected mamma knew at that time of
+the intimate nature of your respected papa, though, if we should
+compare a young girl's _man-as-she-thinks-him_ with a forty-summered
+matron's _man-as-she-finds-him_, I have my doubts as to whether the
+second would be a fac-simile of the first in most cases.
+
+The idea that in this world each young person is to wait until he or
+she finds that precise counterpart who alone of all creation was meant
+for him or her, and then fall instantly in love with it, is pretty
+enough, only it is not Nature's way. It is not at all essential that
+all pairs of human beings should be, as we sometimes say of particular
+couples, "born for each other." Sometimes a man or a woman is made a
+great deal better and happier in the end for having had to conquer the
+faults of the one beloved, and make the fitness not found at first, by
+gradual assimilation. There is a class of good women who have no right
+to marry perfectly good men, because they have the power of saving
+those who would go to ruin but for the guiding providence of a good
+wife. I have known many such cases. It is the most momentous question a
+woman is ever called upon to decide, whether the faults of the man she
+loves are beyond remedy and will drag her down, or whether she is
+competent to be his earthly redeemer and lift him to her own level.
+
+A person of _genius_ should marry a person of _character_. Genius does
+not herd with genius. The musk-deer and the civet-cat are never found
+in company. They don't care for strange scents,--they like plain
+animals better than perfumed ones. Nay, if you will have the kindness
+to notice, Nature has not gifted my lady musk-deer with the personal
+peculiarity by which her lord is so widely known.
+
+Now when genius allies itself with character, the world is very apt to
+think character has the best of the bargain. A brilliant woman marries
+a plain, manly fellow, with a simple intellectual mechanism; we have
+all seen such cases. The world often stares a good deal and wonders.
+She should have taken that other, with a far more complex mental
+machinery. She might have had a watch with the philosophical
+compensation-balance, with the metaphysical index which can split a
+second into tenths, with the musical chime which can turn every quarter
+of an hour into melody. She has chosen a plain one, that keeps good
+time, and that is all.
+
+Let her alone! She knows what she is about. Genius has an infinitely
+deeper reverence for character than character can have for genius. To
+be sure, genius gets the world's praise, because its work is a tangible
+product, to be bought, or had for nothing. It bribes the common voice
+to praise it by presents of speeches, poems, statues, pictures, or
+whatever it can please with. Character evolves its best products for
+home consumption; but, mind you, it takes a deal more to feed a family
+for thirty years than to make a holiday feast for our neighbors once or
+twice in our lives. You talk of the fire of genius. Many a blessed
+woman, who dies unsung and unremembered, has given out more of the real
+vital heat that keeps the life in human souls, without a spark flitting
+through her humble chimney to tell the world about it, than would set a
+dozen theories smoking, or a hundred odes simmering, in the brains of
+so many men of genius. It is in _latent caloric_, if I may borrow a
+philosophical expression, that many of the noblest hearts give out the
+life that warms them. Cornelia's lips grow white, and her pulse hardly
+warms her thin fingers,--but she has melted all the ice out of the
+hearts of those young Gracchi, and her lost heat is in the blood of her
+youthful heroes.
+
+We are always valuing the soul's temperature by the thermometer of
+public deed or word. Yet the great sun himself, when he pours his
+noonday beams upon some vast hyaline boulder, rent from the eternal
+ice-quarries, and floating toward the tropics, never warms it a
+fraction above the thirty-two degrees of Fahrenheit that marked the
+moment when the first drop trickled down its side.
+
+How we all like the spirting up of a fountain, seemingly against the
+law that makes water everywhere slide, roll, leap, tumble headlong, to
+get as low as the earth will let it! That is genius. But what is this
+transient upward movement, which gives us the glitter and the rainbow,
+to that unsleeping, all-present force of gravity, the same yesterday,
+to-day, and forever, (if the universe be eternal,)--the great outspread
+hand of God himself, forcing all things down into their places, and
+keeping them there? Such, in smaller proportion, is the force of
+character to the fitful movements of genius, as they are or have been
+linked to each other in many a household, where one name was historic,
+and the other, let, me say the nobler, unknown, save by some faint
+reflected ray, borrowed from its lustrous companion.
+
+Oftentimes, as I have lain swinging on the water, in the swell of the
+Chelsea ferry-boats, in that long, sharp-pointed, black cradle in which
+I love to let the great mother rock me, I have seen a tall ship glide
+by against the tide, as if drawn by some invisible tow-line, with a
+hundred strong arms pulling it. Her sails hung unfilled, her streamers
+were drooping, she had neither side-wheel nor stern-wheel; still she
+moved on, stately, in serene triumph, as if with her own life. But I
+knew that on the other side of the ship, hidden beneath the great hulk
+that swam so majestically, there was a little toiling steam-tug, with
+heart of fire and arms of iron, that was hugging it close and dragging
+it bravely on; and I knew, that, if the little steam-tug untwined her
+arms and left the tall ship, it would wallow and roll about, and drift
+hither and thither, and go off with the refluent tide, no man knows
+whither. And so I have known more than one _genius_, high-decked,
+full-freighted, wide-sailed, gay-pennoned, that, but for the bare
+toiling arms, and brave, warm, beating heart of the faithful little
+wife, that nestled close in his shadow, and clung to him, so that no
+wind or wave could part them, and dragged him on against all the tide
+of circumstance, would soon have gone down the stream and been heard of
+no more.--No, I am too much a lover of genius, I sometimes think, and
+too often get impatient with dull people, so that, in their weak talk,
+where nothing is taken for granted, I look forward to some future
+possible state of development, when a gesture passing between a
+beatified human soul and an archangel shall signify as much as the
+complete history of a planet, from the time when it curdled to the time
+when its sun was burned out. And yet, when a strong brain is weighed
+with a true heart, it seems to me like balancing a bubble against a
+wedge of gold.
+
+----It takes a very _true_ man to be a fitting companion for a woman of
+genius, but not a very great one. I am not sure that she will not
+embroider her ideal better on a plain ground than on one with a
+brilliant pattern already worked in its texture. But as the very
+essence of genius is truthfulness, contact with realities, (which are
+always ideas behind shows of form or language,) nothing is so
+contemptible as falsehood and pretence in its eyes. Now it is not easy
+to find a perfectly true woman, and it is very hard to find a perfectly
+true man. And a woman of genius, who has the sagacity to choose such a
+one as her companion, shows more of the divine gift in so doing than in
+her finest talk or her most brilliant work of letters or of art.
+
+I have been a good while coming at a secret, for which I wished to
+prepare you before telling it I think there is a kindly feeling growing
+up between Iris and our young Marylander. Not that I suppose there is
+any distinct understanding between them, but that the affinity which
+has drawn him from the remote corner where he sat to the side of the
+young girl is quietly bringing their two natures together. Just now she
+is all given up to another; but when he no longer calls upon her daily
+thoughts and cares, I warn you not to be surprised, if this bud of
+friendship open like the evening primrose, with a sound as of a sudden
+stolen kiss, and lo! the flower of full-blown love lies unfolded before
+you.
+
+And now the days had come for our little friend, whose whims and
+weaknesses had interested us, perhaps, as much as his better traits, to
+make ready for that long journey which is easier to the cripple than to
+the strong man, and on which none enters so willingly as he who has
+borne the life-long load of infirmity during his earthly pilgrimage. At
+this point, under most circumstances, I would close the doors and draw
+the veil of privacy over the chamber where the birth which we call
+death, out of life into the unknown world, is working its mystery. But
+this friend of ours stood alone in the world, and, as the last act of
+his life was mainly in harmony with the rest of its drama, I do not
+here feel the force of the objection commonly lying against that
+death-bed literature which forms the staple of a certain portion of the
+press. Let me explain what I mean, so that my readers may think for
+themselves a little, before they accuse me of hasty expressions.
+
+The Roman Catholic Church has certain formulae for its dying children,
+to which almost all of them attach the greatest importance. There is
+hardly a criminal so abandoned that he is not anxious to receive the
+"consolations of religion" in his last hours. Even if he be senseless,
+but still living, I think that the form is gone through with, just as
+baptism is administered to the unconscious new-born child. Now we do
+not quarrel with these forms. We look with reverence and affection upon
+all symbols which give peace and comfort to our fellow-creatures. But
+the value of the new-born child's passive consent to the ceremony is
+null, as testimony to the truth of a doctrine. The automatic closing of
+a dying man's lips on the consecrated wafer proves nothing in favor of
+the Real Presence, or any other doctrine. And, speaking generally, the
+evidence of dying men in favor of any belief is to be received with
+great caution.
+
+They commonly tell the truth about their present feelings, no doubt. A
+dying man's deposition about anything _he knows_ is good evidence. But
+it is of much less consequence what a man thinks and says when he is
+changed by pain, weakness, apprehension, than what he thinks when he is
+truly and wholly himself. Most murderers die in a very pious frame of
+mind, expecting to go to glory at once; yet no man believes he shall
+meet a larger average of pirates and cutthroats in the streets of the
+New Jerusalem than of honest folks that died in their beds.
+
+Unfortunately, there has been a very great tendency to make capital of
+various kinds out of dying men's speeches. The lies that have been put
+into their mouths for this purpose are endless. The prime minister,
+whose last breath was spent in scolding his nurse, dies with a
+magnificent apothegm on his lips,--manufactured by a reporter. Addison
+gets up a _tableau_ and utters an admirable sentiment,--or somebody
+makes the posthumous dying epigram for him. The incoherent babble of
+green fields is translated into the language of stately sentiment. One
+would think, all that dying men had to do was to say the prettiest
+thing they could,--to make their rhetorical point, and then bow
+themselves politely out of the world.
+
+Worse than this is the torturing of dying people to get their evidence
+in favor of this or that favorite belief. The camp-followers of
+proselyting sects have come in at the close of every life where they
+could get in, to strip the languishing soul of its thoughts, and carry
+them off as spoils. The Roman Catholic or other priest who insists on
+the reception of his formula means kindly, we trust, and very commonly
+succeeds in getting the acquiescence of the subject of his spiritual
+surgery. But do not let us take the testimony of people who are in the
+worst condition to form opinions as evidence of the truth or falsehood
+of that which they accept. A lame man's opinion of dancing is not good
+for much. A poor fellow who can neither eat nor drink, who is sleepless
+and full of pains, whose flesh has wasted from him, whose blood is like
+water, who is gasping for breath, is not in a condition to judge fairly
+of human life, which in all its main adjustments is intended for men in
+a normal, healthy condition. It is a remark I have heard from the wise
+Patriarch of the Medical Profession among us, that the moral condition
+of patients with disease _above_ the great breathing-muscle, the
+diaphragm, is much more hopeful than that of patients with disease
+_below_ it, in the digestive organs. Many an honest ignorant man has
+given us pathology when he thought he was giving us psychology. With
+this preliminary caution I shall proceed to the story of the Little
+Gentleman's leaving us.
+
+When the divinity-student found that our fellow-boarder was not likely
+to remain long with us, he, being a young man of tender conscience and
+kindly nature, was not a little exercised on his behalf. It was
+undeniable that on several occasions the Little Gentleman had expressed
+himself with a good deal of freedom on a class of subjects which,
+according to the divinity-student, he had no right to form an opinion
+upon. He therefore considered his future welfare in jeopardy.
+
+The Muggletonian sect have a very odd way of dealing with people. If I,
+the Professor, will only give in to the Muggletonian doctrine, there
+shall be no question through all that persuasion that I am competent to
+judge of that doctrine; nay, I shall be quoted as evidence of its
+truth, while I live, and cited, after I am dead, as testimony in its
+behalf; but if I utter any ever so slight Anti-Muggletonian sentiment,
+then I become _incompetent to form any opinion on the matter_. This,
+you cannot fail to observe, is exactly the way the pseudo-sciences go
+to work, as explained in my Lecture on Phrenology. Now I hold that he
+whose testimony would be accepted in behalf of the Muggletonian
+doctrine has a right to be heard against it. Whoso offers me any
+article of belief for my signature implies that I am competent to form
+an opinion upon it; and if my positive testimony in its favor is of any
+value, then my negative testimony against it is also of value.
+
+I thought my young friend's attitude was a little too much like that of
+the Muggletonians. I also remarked a singular timidity on his part lest
+somebody should "unsettle" somebody's faith,--as if faith did not
+require exercise as much as any other living thing, and were not all
+the better for a shaking up now and then. I don't mean that it would be
+fair to bother Bridget, the wild Irish girl, or Joice Heth, the
+centenarian, or any other intellectual non-combatant; but all persons
+who proclaim a belief which passes judgment on their neighbors must be
+ready to have it "unsettled," that is, questioned at all times and by
+anybody,--just as one who sets up bars across a thoroughfare must
+expect to have them taken down by every one who wants to pass, if he is
+strong enough.
+
+Besides, to think of trying to waterproof the American mind against the
+questions that Heaven rains down upon it shows a misapprehension of our
+new conditions. If to question everything be unlawful and dangerous, we
+had better undeclare our independence at once; for what the Declaration
+means is the right to question everything, even the truth of its own
+fundamental proposition.
+
+The old-world order of things is an arrangement of locks and canals,
+where everything depends on keeping the gates shut, and so holding the
+upper waters at their level; but the system under which the young
+republican American is born trusts the whole unimpeded tide of life to
+the great elemental influences, as the vast rivers of the continent
+settle their own level in obedience to the laws that govern the planet
+and the spheres that surround it.
+
+The divinity-student was not quite up to the idea of the commonwealth,
+as our young friend the Marylander, for instance, understood it. He
+could not get rid of that notion of private property in truth, with the
+right to fence it in, and put up a sign-board, thus:--
+
+ALL TRESPASSERS ARE WARNED OFF THESE GROUNDS
+
+He took the young Marylander to task for going to the Church of the
+Galileans, where he had several times accompanied Iris of late.
+
+I am a Churchman,--the young man said,--by education and habit. I love
+my old Church for many reasons, but most of all because I think it has
+educated me out of its own forms into the spirit of its highest
+teachings. I think I belong to the "Broad Church," if any of you can
+tell what that means.
+
+I had the rashness to attempt to answer the question myself.--Some say
+the Broad Church means the collective mass of good people of all
+denominations. Others say that such a definition is nonsense; that a
+church is an organization, and the scattered good folks are no
+organization at all. They think that men will eventually come together
+on the basis of one or two or more common articles of belief, and form
+a great unity. Do they see what this amounts to? It means an equal
+division of intellect! It is mental agrarianism! a thing that never was
+and never will be, until national and individual idiosyncrasies have
+ceased to exist. The man of thirty-nine beliefs holds the man of one
+belief a pauper; he is not going to give up thirty-eight of them for
+the sake of fraternizing with the other in the temple which bears on
+its front, "_Deo erexit Voltaire_." A church is a garden, I have heard
+it said, and the illustration was neatly handled. Yes, and there is no
+such thing as a _broad_ garden. It must be fenced in, and whatever is
+fenced in is narrow. You cannot have arctic and tropical plants growing
+together in it, except by the forcing system, which is a mighty narrow
+piece of business. You can't make a village or a parish or a family
+think alike, yet you suppose that you can make a world pinch its
+beliefs or pad them to a single pattern! Why, the very life of an
+ecclesiastical organization is a life of _induction_, a state of
+perpetually disturbed equilibrium kept up by another charged body in
+the neighborhood. If the two bodies touch and share their respective
+charges, down goes the index of the electrometer!
+
+Do you know that every man has a religious belief peculiar to himself?
+Smith is always a Smithite. He takes in exactly Smith's-worth of
+knowledge, Smith's-worth of truth, of beauty, of divinity. And Brown
+has from time immemorial been trying to burn him, to excommunicate him,
+to anonymous-article him, because he did not take in Brown's-worth of
+knowledge, truth, beauty, divinity. He cannot do it, any more than a
+pint-pot can hold a quart, or a quart-pot be filled by a pint. Iron is
+essentially the same everywhere and always; but the sulphate of iron is
+never the same as the carbonate of iron. Truth is invariable; but the
+_Smithate_ of truth must always differ from the _Brownate_ of truth.
+
+The wider the intellect, the larger and simpler the expressions in
+which its knowledge is embodied. The inferior race, the degraded and
+enslaved people, the small-minded individual, live in the details which
+to larger minds and more advanced tribes of men reduce themselves to
+axioms and laws. As races and individual minds must always differ just
+as sulphates and carbonates do, I cannot see ground for expecting the
+Broad Church to be founded on any fusion of _intellectual_ beliefs,
+which of course implies that those who hold the larger number of
+doctrines as essential shall come down to those who hold the smaller
+number. These doctrines are to the _negative_ aristocracy what the
+quarterings of their coats are to the _positive_ orders of nobility.
+
+The Broad Church, I think, will never be based on anything that
+requires the use of _language_. Freemasonry gives an idea of such a
+church, and a brother is known and cared for in a strange land where no
+word of his can be understood. The apostle of this church may be a deaf
+mute carrying a cup of cold water to a thirsting fellow-creature. The
+cup of cold water does not require to be translated for a foreigner to
+understand it. I am afraid the only Broad Church possible is one that
+has its creed in the heart, and not in the head,--that we shall know
+its members by their fruits, and not by their words. If you say this
+communion of well-doers is no church, I can only answer, that all
+_organized_ bodies have their limits of size, and that, when we find a
+man a hundred feet high and thirty feet broad across the shoulders, we
+will look out for an organization that shall include all Christendom.
+
+Some of us do practically recognize a Broad Church and a Narrow Church,
+however. The Narrow Church may be seen in the ship's boats of humanity,
+in the long boat, in the jolly boat, in the captain's gig, lying off
+the poor old vessel, thanking God that _they_ are safe, and reckoning
+how soon the hulk containing the mass of their fellow-creatures will go
+down. The Broad Church is on board, working hard at the pumps, and very
+slow to believe that the ship will be swallowed up with so many poor
+people in it, fastened down under the hatches ever since it floated.
+
+----All this, of course, was nothing but my poor notion about these
+matters. I am simply an "outsider," you know; only it doesn't do very
+well for a nest of Hingham boxes to talk too much about outsiders and
+insiders!
+
+After this talk of ours, I think these two young people went pretty
+regularly to the Church of the Galileans. Still they could not keep
+away from the sweet harmonies and rhythmic litanies of Saint Polycarp
+on the great Church festival-days; so that, between the two, they were
+so much together, that the boarders began to make remarks, and our
+landlady said to me, one day, that, though it was noon of her business,
+them that had eyes couldn't help seein' that there was somethin' goin'
+on between them two young people; she thought the young man was a very
+likely young man, though jest what his prospecs was was unbeknown to
+her; but she thought he must be doin' well, and rather guessed he would
+be able to take care of a femily, if he didn't go to takin' a house;
+for a gentleman and his wife could board a great deal cheaper than they
+could keep house;--but then that girl was nothin' but a child, and
+wouldn't think of bein' married this five year. They was good boarders,
+both of 'em, paid regular, and was as pooty a couple as she ever laid
+eyes on.
+
+--To come back to what I began to speak of before,--the
+divinity-student was exercised in his mind about the Little Gentleman,
+and, in the kindness of his heart,--for he was a good young man,--and
+in the strength of his convictions,--for he took it for granted that he
+and his crowd were right, and other folks and their crowd were
+wrong,--he determined to bring the Little Gentleman round to his faith
+before he died, if he could. So he sent word to the sick man, that he
+should be pleased to visit him and have some conversation with him; and
+received for answer that he would be welcome.
+
+The divinity-student made him a visit, therefore, and had a somewhat
+remarkable conversation with him, which I shall briefly report, without
+attempting to justify the positions taken by the Little Gentleman. He
+found him weak, but calm. Iris sat silent by his pillow.
+
+After the usual preliminaries, the divinity-student said, in a kind
+way, that he was sorry to find him in failing health, that he felt
+concerned for his soul, and was anxious to assist him in making
+preparations for the great change awaiting him.
+
+I thank you, Sir,--said the Little Gentleman;--permit me to ask you,
+what makes you think I am not ready for it, Sir, and that you can do
+anything to help me, Sir?
+
+I address you only as a fellow-man,--said the divinity-student,--and
+therefore a fellow-sinner.
+
+I am _not_ a man, Sir!--said the Little Gentleman.--I was born into
+this world the wreck of a man, and I shall not be judged with a race to
+which I do not belong. Look at this!--he said, and held up his withered
+arm.--See there!--and he pointed to his misshapen extremities.--Lay
+your hand here!--and he laid his own on the region of his misplaced
+heart.--I have known nothing of the life of your race. When I first
+came to my consciousness, I found myself an object of pity, or a sight
+to show. The first strange child I ever remember hid its face and would
+not come near me. I was a broken-hearted as well as broken-bodied boy.
+I grew into the emotions of ripening youth, and all that I could have
+loved shrank from my presence. I became a man in years, and had nothing
+in common with manhood but its longings. My life is the dying pang of a
+worn-out race, and I shall go alone down into the dust, out of this
+world of men and women, without ever knowing the fellowship of the one
+or the love of the other. I will not die with a lie rattling in my
+throat. If another state of being has anything worse in store for me, I
+have had a long apprenticeship to give me strength that I may bear it.
+I don't believe it, Sir! I have too much faith for that. God has not
+left me wholly without comfort, even here. I love this old place where
+I was born;--the heart of the world beats under the three hills of
+Boston, Sir! I love this great land, with so many tall men in it, and
+so many good, noble women.--His eyes turned to the silent figure by his
+pillow.--I have learned to accept meekly what has been allotted to me,
+but I cannot honestly say that I think my sin has been greater than my
+suffering. I bear the ignorance and the evil-doing of whole generations
+in my single person. I never drew a breath of air nor took a step that
+was not a punishment for another's fault. I may have had many wrong
+thoughts, but I cannot have done many wrong deeds,--for my cage has
+been a narrow one, and I have paced it alone. I have looked through the
+bars and seen the great world of men busy and happy, but I had no part
+in their doings. I have known what it was to dream of the great
+passions; but since my mother kissed me before she died, no woman's
+lips have pressed my cheek,--nor ever will.
+
+----The young girl's eyes glittered with a sudden film, and almost
+without a thought, but with a warm human instinct that rushed up into
+her face with her heart's blood, she bent over and kissed him. It was
+the sacrament that washed out the memory of long years of bitterness,
+and I should hold it an unworthy thought to defend her.
+
+The Little Gentleman repaid her with the only tear any of us ever saw
+him shed.
+
+The divinity-student rose from his place, and, turning away from the
+sick man, walked to the other side of the room, where he bowed his head
+and was still. All the questions he had meant to ask had faded from his
+memory. The tests he had prepared by which to judge of his
+fellow-creature's fitness for heaven seemed to have lost their virtue.
+He could trust the crippled child of sorrow to the Infinite Parent. The
+kiss of the fair-haired girl had been like a sign from heaven, that
+angels watched over him whom he was presuming but a moment before to
+summon before the tribunal of his private judgment.
+
+Shall I pray with you?--he said, after a pause.--A little before he
+would have said, Shall I pray _for_ you?--The Christian religion, as
+taught by its Founder, is full of _sentiment_. So we must not blame the
+divinity-student, if he was overcome by those yearnings of human
+sympathy which predominate so much more in the sermons of the Master
+than in the writings of his successors, and which have made the parable
+of the Prodigal Son the consolation of mankind, as it has been the
+stumbling-block of all exclusive doctrines.
+
+Pray!--said the Little Gentleman.
+
+The divinity-student prayed, in low, tender tones, that God would look
+on his servant lying helpless at the feet of his mercy; that he would
+remember his long years of bondage in the flesh; that he would deal
+gently with the bruised reed. Thou hast visited the sins of the fathers
+upon this their child. Oh, turn away from him the penalties of his own
+transgressions! Thou hast laid upon him, from infancy, the cross which
+thy stronger children are called upon to take up; and now that he is
+fainting under it, be Thou his stay, and do Thou succor him that is
+tempted! Let his manifold infirmities come between him and Thy
+judgment; in wrath remember mercy! If his eyes are not opened to all
+thy truth, let thy compassion lighten the darkness that rests upon him,
+even as it came through the word of thy Son to blind Bartimeus, who sat
+by the wayside, begging!
+
+Many more petitions he uttered, but all in the same subdued tone of
+tenderness. In the presence of helpless suffering, and in the
+fast-darkening shadow of the Destroyer, he forgot all but his Christian
+humanity, and cared more about consoling his fellow-man than making a
+proselyte of him.
+
+This was the last prayer to which the Little Gentleman ever listened.
+Some change was rapidly coming over him during this last hour of which
+I have been, speaking. The excitement of pleading his cause before his
+self-elected spiritual adviser,--the emotion which overcame him, when
+the young girl obeyed the sudden impulse of her feelings and pressed
+her lips to his cheek,--the thoughts that mastered him while the
+divinity-student poured out his soul for him in prayer, might well
+hurry on the inevitable moment. When the divinity-student had uttered
+his last petition, commending him to the Father through his Son's
+intercession, he turned to look upon him before leaving his chamber.
+His face was changed.--There is a language of the human countenance
+which we all understand without an interpreter, though the lineaments
+belong to the rudest savage that ever stammered in an unknown barbaric
+dialect. By the stillness of the sharpened features, by the blankness
+of the tearless eyes, by the fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the
+deadening tints, by the contracted brow, by the dilating nostril, we
+know that the soul is soon to leave its mortal tenement, and is already
+closing up its windows and putting out its fires.--Such was the aspect
+of the face upon which the divinity-student looked, after the brief
+silence which followed his prayer. The change had been rapid, though
+not that abrupt one which is liable to happen at any moment in these
+cases.--The sick man looked towards him.--Farewell,--he said.--I thank
+you. Leave me alone with her.
+
+When the divinity-student had gone, and the Little Gentleman found
+himself alone with Iris, he lifted his hand to his neck, and took from
+it, suspended by a slender chain, a quaint, antique-looking key,--the
+same key I had once seen him holding. He gave this to her, and pointed
+to a carved cabinet opposite his bed, one of those that had so
+attracted my curious eyes and set me wondering as to what it might
+contain.
+
+Open it,--he said,--and light the lamp.--The young girl walked to the
+cabinet and unlocked the door. A deep recess appeared, lined with black
+velvet, against which stood in white relief an ivory crucifix. A silver
+lamp hung over over it. She lighted the lamp and came back to the
+bedside. The dying man fixed his eyes upon the figure of the dying
+Saviour.--Give me your hand,--he said; and Iris placed her right hand
+in his left. So they remained, until presently his eyes lost their
+meaning, though they still remained vacantly fixed upon the white
+image. Yet he held the young girl's hand firmly, as if it were leading
+him through some deep-shadowed valley and it was all he could cling to.
+But presently an involuntary muscular contraction stole over him, and
+his terrible dying grasp held the poor girl as if she were wedged in an
+engine of torture. She pressed her lips together and sat still. The
+inexorable hand held her tighter and tighter, until she felt as if her
+own slender fingers would be crushed in its gripe. It was one of the
+tortures of the Inquisition she was suffering, and she could not stir
+from her place. Then, in her great anguish, she, too, cast her eyes
+upon that dying figure, and, looking upon its pierced hands and feet
+and side and lacerated forehead, she felt that she also must suffer
+uncomplaining. In the moment of her sharpest pain she did not forget
+the duties of her tender office, but dried the dying man's moist
+forehead with her handkerchief, even while the dews of agony were
+glistening on her own. How long this lasted she never could tell.
+_Time_ and _thirst_ are two things you and I talk about; but the
+victims whom holy men and righteous judges used to stretch on their
+engines knew better what they meant than you or I!--What is that great
+bucket of water for? said the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, before she
+was placed on the rack.--_For you to drink_,--said the torturer to the
+little woman.--She could not think that it would take such a flood to
+quench the fire in her and so keep her alive for her confession. The
+torturer knew better than she.
+
+After a time not to be counted in minutes, as the clock
+measures,--without any warning, there came a swift change of his
+features; his face turned white, as the waters whiten when a sudden
+breath passes over their still surface; the muscles instantly relaxed,
+and Iris, released at once from her care for the sufferer and from his
+unconscious grasp, fell senseless, with a feeble cry,--the only
+utterance of her long agony.
+
+Perhaps you sometimes wander in through the iron gates of the Copp's
+Hill burial-ground. You love to stroll round among the graves that
+crowd each other in the thickly peopled soil of that breezy summit. You
+love to lean on the free-stone slab which lies over the bones of the
+Mathers,--to read the epitaph of stout John Clark, "despiser of little
+men and sorry actions,"--to stand by the stone grave of sturdy Daniel
+Malcom and look upon the splintered slab that tells the old rebel's
+story,--to kneel by the triple stone that says how the three
+Worthylakes, father, mother, and young daughter, died on the same day
+and lie buried there; a mystery; the subject of a moving ballad, by the
+late BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, as may be seen in his autobiography, which will
+explain the secret of the triple gravestone; though the old philosopher
+has made a mistake, unless the stone is wrong.
+
+Not very far from that you will find a fair mound, of dimensions fit to
+hold a well-grown man. I will not tell you the inscription upon the
+stone which stands at its head; for I do not wish you to be _sure_ of
+the resting-place of one who could not bear to think that he should be
+known as a cripple among the dead, after being pointed at so long among
+the living. There is one sign, it is true, by which, if you have been a
+sagacious reader of these papers, you will at once know it; but I fear
+you read carelessly, and must study them more diligently before you
+will detect the hint to which I allude.
+
+The Little Gentleman lies where he longed to He, among the old names
+and the old bones of the old Boston people. At the foot of his
+resting-place is the river, alive with the wings and antennae of its
+colossal water-insects; over opposite are the great war-ships, and the
+long guns, which, when they roar, shake the soil in which he lies; and
+in the steeple of Christ Church, hard by, are the sweet chimes which
+are the Boston boy's _Ranz des Vaches_, whose echoes follow him all the
+world over.
+
+_In Pace!_
+
+I told you a good while ago that the Little Gentleman could not do a
+better thing than to leave all his money, whatever it might be, to the
+young girl who has since that established such a claim upon him. He did
+not, however. A considerable bequest to one of our public institutions
+keeps his name in grateful remembrance. The telescope through which he
+was fond of watching the heavenly bodies, and the movements of which
+had been the source of such odd fancies on my part, is now the property
+of a Western College. You smile as you think of my taking it for a
+fleshless human figure, when I saw its tube pointing to the sky, and
+thought it was an arm under the white drapery thrown over it for
+protection. So do I smile _now_; I belong to the numerous class who are
+prophets after the fact, and hold my nightmares very cheap by daylight.
+
+I have received many letters of inquiry as to the sound _resembling a
+woman's voice_, which occasioned me so many perplexities. Some thought
+there was no question that he had a second apartment, in which he had
+made an asylum for a deranged female relative. Others were of opinion
+that he was, as I once suggested, a "Bluebeard" with patriarchal
+tendencies, and I have even been censured for introducing so Oriental
+an element into my record of boarding-house experience.
+
+Come in and see me, the Professor, some evening when I have nothing
+else to do, and ask me to play you _Tartini's Devil's Sonata_ on that
+extraordinary instrument in my possession, well known to amateurs as
+one of the master-pieces of _Joseph Guarnerius_. The _vox humana_ of
+the great Haerlem organ is very lifelike, and the same stop in the
+organ of the Cambridge chapel might be mistaken in some of its tones
+for a human voice; but I think you never heard anything come so near
+the cry of a _prima donna_ as the A string and the E string of this
+instrument. A single fact will illustrate the resemblance. I was
+executing some _tours de force_ upon it one evening, when the policeman
+of our district rang the bell sharply, and asked what was the matter in
+the house. He had heard a woman's screams,--he was sure of it. I had to
+make the instrument _sing_ before his eyes before he could be satisfied
+that he had not heard the cries of a woman. This instrument was
+bequeathed to me by the Little Gentleman. Whether it had anything to do
+with the sounds I heard coming from his chamber, you can form your own
+opinion; I have no other conjecture to offer. It is _not true_ that a
+second apartment with a secret entrance was found; and the story of the
+veiled lady is the invention of one of the Reporters.
+
+Bridget, the housemaid, always insisted that he died a Catholic. She
+had seen the crucifix, and believed that he prayed on his knees before
+it. The last circumstance is very probably true; indeed, there was a
+spot worn on the carpet just before this cabinet which might be thus
+accounted for. Why he, whose whole life was a crucifixion, should not
+love to look on that divine image of blameless suffering, I cannot see;
+on the contrary, it seems to me the most natural thing in the world
+that he should. But there are those who want to make private property
+of everything, and can't make up their minds that people who don't
+think as they do should claim any interest in that infinite compassion
+expressed in the central figure of the Christendom which includes us
+all.
+
+The divinity-student expressed a hope before the boarders that he
+should meet him in heaven.--The question is, whether he'll meet
+_you_,--said the young fellow John, rather smartly. The
+divinity-student hadn't thought of _that_.
+
+However, he is a worthy young man, and I trust I have shown him in a
+kindly and respectful light. He will get a parish by-and-by; and, as he
+is about to marry the sister of an old friend,--the Schoolmistress,
+whom some of us remember,--and as all sorts of expensive accidents
+happen to young married ministers, he will be under bonds to the amount
+of his salary, which means starvation, if they are forfeited, to think
+all his days as he thought when he was settled,--unless the majority of
+his people change with him or in advance of him. A hard case, to which
+nothing could reconcile a man, except that the faithful discharge of
+daily duties in his personal relations with his parishioners will make
+him useful enough in his way, though as a thinker he may cease to exist
+before he has reached middle age.
+
+--Iris went into mourning for the Little Gentleman. Although, as I have
+said, he left the bulk of his property, by will, to a public
+institution, he added a codicil, by which he disposed of various pieces
+of property as tokens of kind remembrance. It was in this way I became
+the possessor of the wonderful instrument I have spoken of, which had
+been purchased for him out of an Italian convent. The landlady was
+comforted with a small legacy. The following extract relates to Iris:
+"----in consideration of her manifold acts of kindness, but only in
+token of grateful remembrance, and by no means as a reward for services
+which cannot be compensated, a certain messuage, with all the land
+thereto appertaining, situate in ---- Street, at the North End, so
+called, of Boston, aforesaid, the same being the house in which I was
+born, but now inhabited by several families, and known as 'the
+Rookery.'" Iris had also the crucifix, the portrait, and the
+red-jewelled ring. The funeral or death's-head ring was buried with
+him.
+
+It was a good while, after the Little Gentleman was gone, before our
+boarding-house recovered its wonted cheerfulness. There was a flavor in
+his whims and local prejudices that we liked, even while we smiled at
+them. It was hard to see the tall chair thrust away among useless
+lumber, to dismantle his room, to take down the picture of Leah, the
+handsome Witch of Essex, to move away the massive shelves that held the
+books he loved, to pack up the tube through which he used to study the
+silent stars, looking down at him, like the eyes of dumb creatures,
+with a kind of stupid half-consciousness, that did not worry him as did
+the eyes of men and women,--and hardest of all to displace that sacred
+figure to which his heart had always turned and found refuge, in the
+feelings it inspired, from all the perplexities of his busy brain. It
+was hard, but it had to be done.
+
+And by-and-by we grew cheerful again, and the breakfast-table wore
+something of its old look. The Koh-i-noor, as we named the gentleman
+with the _diamond_, left us, however, soon after that "little mill," as
+the young fellow John called it, where he came off second best. His
+departure was no doubt hastened by a note from the landlady's daughter,
+inclosing a lock of purple hair which she "had valued as a pledge of
+affection, ere she knew the hollowness of the vows he had breathed,"
+speedily followed by another, inclosing the landlady's bill. The next
+morning he was missing, as were his limited wardrobe and the trunk that
+held it. Three empty bottles of Mrs. Allen's celebrated preparation,
+each of them asserting, on its word of honor as a bottle, that its
+former contents were "not a dye," were all that was left to us of the
+Koh-i-noor.
+
+From this time forward, the landlady's daughter manifested a decided
+improvement in her style of carrying herself before the boarders. She
+abolished the odious little flat, gummy side-curl. She left off various
+articles of "jewelry." She began to help her mother in some of her
+household duties. She became a regular attendant on the ministrations
+of a very worthy clergyman, having been attracted to his meetin' by
+witnessing a marriage ceremony in which he called a man and a woman a
+"gentleman" and a "lady,"--a stroke of gentility which quite overcame
+her. She even took a part in what she called a _Sabbath_ school, though
+it was held on Sunday, and by no means on Saturday, as the name she
+intended to utter implied. All this, which was very sincere, as I
+believe, on her part, and attended with a great improvement in her
+character, ended in her bringing home a young man, with straight, sandy
+hair, brushed so as to stand up steeply above his forehead, wearing a
+pair of green spectacles, and dressed in black broadcloth. His personal
+aspect, and a certain solemnity of countenance, led me to think he must
+be a clergyman; and as Master Benjamin Franklin blurted out before
+several of us boarders, one day, that "Sis had got a beau," I was
+pleased at the prospect of her becoming a minister's wife. On inquiry,
+however, I found that the somewhat solemn look which I had noticed was
+indeed a professional one, but not clerical. He was a young undertaker,
+who had just succeeded to a thriving business. Things, I believe, are
+going on well at this time of writing, and I am glad for the landlady's
+daughter and her mother. Sextons and undertakers are the cheerfullest
+people in the world at home, as comedians and circus-clowns are the
+most melancholy in their domestic circle.
+
+As our old boarding-house is still in existence, I do not feel at
+liberty to give too minute a statement of the present condition of each
+and all of its inmates. I am happy to say, however, that they are all
+alive and well, up to this time. That kind old gentleman who sat
+opposite to me is growing older, as old men will, but still smiles
+benignantly on all the boarders, and has come to be a kind of father to
+all of them,--so that on his birthday there is always something like a
+family festival. The Poor Relation, even, has warmed into a filial
+feeling towards him, and on his last birthday made him a beautiful
+present, namely, a very handsomely bound copy of Blair's celebrated
+poem, "The Grave."
+
+The young man John is still, as he says, "in fust-rate fettle." I saw
+him spar, not long since, at a private exhibition, and do himself great
+credit in a set-to with Henry Finnegass, Esq., a professional gentleman
+of celebrity. I am pleased to say that he has been promoted to an upper
+clerkship, and, in consequence of his rise in office, has taken an
+apartment somewhat lower down than number "forty-'leven," as he
+facetiously called his attic. Whether there is any truth, or not, in
+the story of his attachment to, and favorable reception by, the
+daughter of the head of an extensive wholesale grocer's establishment,
+I will not venture an opinion; I may say, however, that I have met him
+repeatedly in company with a very well-nourished and high-colored young
+lady, who, I understand, is the daughter of the house in question.
+
+Some of the boarders were of opinion that Iris did not return the
+undisguised attentions of the handsome young Marylander. Instead of
+fixing her eyes steadily on him, as she used to look upon the Little
+Gentleman, she would turn them away, as if to avoid his own. They often
+went to church together, it is true; but nobody, of course, supposes
+there is any relation between religious sympathy and those wretched
+"sentimental" movements of the human heart upon which it is commonly
+agreed that nothing better is based than society, civilization,
+friendship, the relation of husband and wife, and of parent and child,
+and which many people must think were singularly overrated by the
+Teacher of Nazareth, whose whole life, as I said before, was full of
+sentiment, loving this or that young man, pardoning this or that
+sinner, weeping over the dead, mourning for the doomed city, blessing,
+and perhaps kissing, the little children,--so that the Gospels are
+still cried over almost as often as the last work of fiction!
+
+But one fine June morning there rumbled up to the door of our
+boarding-house a hack containing a lady inside and a trunk on the
+outside. It was our friend the lady-patroness of Miss Iris, the same
+who had been called by her admiring pastor "The Model of all the
+Virtues." Once a week she had written a letter, in a rather formal
+hand, but full of good advice, to her young charge. And now she had
+come to carry her away, thinking that she had learned all she was
+likely to learn under her present course of teaching. The Model,
+however, was to stay awhile,--a week, or more,--before they should
+leave together.
+
+Iris was obedient, as she was bound to be. She was respectful,
+grateful, as a child is with a just, but not tender parent. Yet
+something was wrong. She had one of her trances, and became
+statue-like, as before, only the day after the Model's arrival. She was
+wan and silent, tasted nothing at table, smiled as if by a forced
+effort, and often looked vaguely away from those who were looking at
+her, her eyes just glazed with the shining moisture of a tear that must
+not be allowed to gather and fall. Was it grief at parting from the
+place where her strange friendship had grown up with the Little
+Gentleman? Yet she seemed to have become reconciled to his loss, and
+rather to have a deep feeling of gratitude that she had been permitted
+to care for him in his last weary days.
+
+The Sunday after the Model's arrival, that lady had an attack of
+headache, and was obliged to shut herself up in a darkened room alone.
+Our two young friends took the opportunity to go together to the Church
+of the Galileans. They said but little going,--"collecting their
+thoughts" for the service, I devoutly hope. My kind good friend the
+pastor preached that day one of his sermons that make us all feel like
+brothers and sisters, and his text was that affectionate one from John,
+"My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in
+deed and in truth." When Iris and her friend came out of church, they
+were both pale, and walked a space without speaking.
+
+At last the young man said,--You and I are not little children, Iris!
+
+She looked in his face an instant, as if startled, for there was
+something strange in the tone of his voice. She smiled faintly, but
+spoke never a word.
+
+In deed and in truth, Iris,--What shall a poor girl say or do, when a
+strong man falters in his speech before her, and can do nothing better
+than hold out his hand to finish his broken sentence?
+
+The poor girl said nothing, but quietly laid her ungloved hand in
+his,--the little, soft white hand which had ministered so tenderly and
+suffered so patiently.
+
+The blood came back to the young man's cheeks, as he lifted it to his
+lips, even as they walked there in the street, touched it gently with
+them, and said,--"It is mine!"
+
+Iris did not contradict him.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+The seasons pass by so rapidly, that I am startled to think how much
+has happened since these events I was describing. Those two young
+people would insist on having their own way about their own affairs,
+notwithstanding the good lady, so justly called the Model, insisted
+that the age of twenty-five years was as early as any discreet young
+lady should think of incurring the responsibilities, etc., etc. Long
+before Iris had reached that age, she was the wife of a young Maryland
+engineer, directing some of the vast constructions of his native
+State,--where he was growing rich fast enough to be able to decline
+that famous Russian offer which would have made him a kind of nabob in
+a few years. Iris does not write verse often, nowadays, but she
+sometimes draws. The last sketch of hers I have seen in my Southern
+visits was of two children, a boy and girl, the youngest holding a
+silver goblet, like the one she held that evening when I--I was so
+struck with her statue-like beauty. If in the later summer months you
+find the grass marked with footsteps around that grave on Copp's Hill I
+told you of, and flowers scattered over it, you may be sure that Iris
+is here on her annual visit to the home of her childhood and that
+excellent lady whose only fault was, that Nature had written out her
+list of virtues on ruled paper, and forgotten to rub out the lines.
+
+One more thing I must mention. Being on the Common, last Sunday, I was
+attracted by the cheerful spectacle of a well-dressed and somewhat
+youthful papa wheeling a very elegant little carriage containing a
+stout baby. A buxom young lady watched them from one of the stone
+seats, with an interest which could be nothing less than maternal. I at
+once recognized my old friend, the young fellow whom we called John. He
+was delighted to see me, introduced me to "Madam," and would have the
+lusty infant out of the carriage, and hold him up for me to look at.
+
+Now, then,--he said to the two-year-old,--show the gentleman how you
+hit from the shoulder.--Whereupon the little imp pushed his fat fist
+straight into my eye, to his father's intense satisfaction.
+
+Fust-rate little chap,--said the papa.--Chip of the old block. Regl'r
+little Johnny, you know.
+
+I was so much pleased to find the young fellow settled in life, and
+pushing about one of "them little articles" he seemed to want so much,
+that I took my "punishment" at the hands of the infant pugilist with
+great equanimity.--And how is the old boarding-house?--I asked.
+
+A 1,--he answered.--Painted and papered as good as new. Gabs in all the
+rooms up to the sky-parlors. Old woman's layin' up money, they say.
+Means to send Ben Franklin to college.--Just then the first bell rang
+for church, and my friend, who, I understand, has become a most
+exemplary member of society, said he must be off to get ready for
+meetin', and told the young one to "shake dada," which he did with his
+closed fist, in a somewhat menacing manner. And so the young man John,
+as we used to call him, took the pole of the miniature carriage, and
+pushed the small pugilist before him homewards, followed, in a somewhat
+leisurely way, by his pleasant-looking lady-companion, and I sent a
+sigh and a smile after him.
+
+That evening, as soon as it was dark, I could not help going round by
+the old boarding-house. The "gahs" was lighted, but the curtains, or,
+more properly, the painted shades, were not down. And so I stood there
+and looked in along the table where the boarders sat at the evening
+meal,--our old breakfast-table, which some of us feel as if we knew so
+well. There were new faces at it, but also old and familiar ones.--The
+land-lady, in a wonderfully smart cap, looking young, comparatively
+speaking, and as if half the wrinkles had been ironed out of her
+forehead.--Her daughter, in rather dressy half-mourning, with a vast
+brooch of jet, got up, apparently, to match the gentleman next her, who
+was in black costume and sandy hair,--the last rising straight from his
+forehead, like the marble flame one sometimes sees at the top of a
+funeral urn.--The poor relation, not in absolute black, but in a stuff
+with specks of white; as much as to say, that, if there were any more
+Hirams left to sigh for her, there were pin-holes in the night of her
+despair, through which a ray of hope might find its way to--an
+adorer.--Master Benjamin Franklin, grown taller of late, was in the act
+of splitting his face open with a wedge of pie, so that his features
+were seen to disadvantage for the moment.--The good old gentleman was
+sitting still and thoughtful. All at once he turned his face toward the
+window where I stood, and, just as if he had seen me, smiled his
+benignant smile. It was a recollection of some past pleasant moment;
+but it fell upon me like the blessing of a father.
+
+I kissed my hand to them all, unseen as I stood in the outer darkness;
+and as I turned and went my way, the table and all around it faded into
+the realm of twilight shadows and of midnight dreams.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so my year's record is finished. The Professor has talked less than
+his predecessor, but he has heard and seen more. Thanks to all those
+friends who from time to time have sent their messages of kindly
+recognition and fellow-feeling! Peace to all such as may have been
+vexed in spirit by any utterance these pages have repeated! They will,
+doubtless, forget for the moment the difference in the hues of truth we
+look at through our human prisms, and join in singing (inwardly) this
+hymn to the Source of the light we all need to lead us, and the warmth
+which alone can make us all brothers.
+
+A Sun-Day Hymn.
+
+Lord of all being! throned afar,
+Thy glory flames from sun and star;
+Centre and soul of every sphere,
+Yet to each loving heart how near!
+
+Sun of our life, thy wakening ray
+Sheds on our path the glow of day;
+Star of our hope, thy softened light
+Cheers the long watches of the night.
+
+Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn;
+Our noontide is thy gracious dawn;
+Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign;
+All, save the clouds of sin, are thine!
+
+Lord of all life, below, above,
+Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love,
+Before thy ever-blazing throne
+We ask no lustre of our own.
+
+Grant us thy truth to make us free,
+And kindling hearts that burn for thee,
+Till all thy living altars claim
+One holy light, one heavenly flame!
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+_The Oxford Museum_. By HENRY W. ACLAND, M. D., Regius Professor of
+Medicine, and JOHN RUSKIN, M. A., Honorary Student of Christ Church.
+London, 1859.
+
+The last ten years have formed a remarkable period in the history of
+the ancient and honored University of Oxford. Guided by wise and
+discerning counsels, it has made rapid and substantial advance. The
+scope of its studies has been greatly enlarged, the standard of its
+requirements raised. Its traditionary adherence to old methods and its
+bigoted conservatism have been overcome, and with happy pliancy it has
+yielded to the demands of the times and adapted itself to the new
+desires and growing needs of men. Its aristocratic prejudices have not
+been allowed longer to confine its privileges and its operations to one
+class alone of the community,--and in identifying itself with the
+system of middle-class education, Oxford has won new claims to
+gratitude and to respect, and now exercises a wider and more confirmed
+authority over the thought of England than ever before. To us, who take
+pride in her ancient fame, who honor her long and memorable services in
+the cause of good learning, who cherish the memory of the great and
+good men, the masters of modern thought, whom she has nurtured, who
+recall the names of our own forefathers who came out from her and from
+her sister University with will and power to lay the foundations of our
+state, and whom, by her discipline, in the midst of all the refinement
+of hooks and the quietness of study, she had prepared to meet and to
+overcome the hardships of exile, poverty, and labor, in the cause of
+truth and freedom,--to us it may well be matter of rejoicing to witness
+the freshness of her spirit and the spring of her perennial youth,--to
+see her
+
+  "so famous,
+  So excellent in art, and still so rising."
+
+One of the most marked features of the advance that has lately been
+made is the full recognition of the Natural Sciences as forming an
+essential part of the scheme of University studies. For centuries there
+had been an "intellectual onesidedness" at Oxford. It had chiefly
+cultivated classic learning. But it has now undertaken to repair the
+deficiency that existed in this respect, and, while still retaining all
+its classic studies, it has added to them a full course of training in
+the knowledge of Nature. "Our object is," says Dr. Acland, speaking as
+one of the professors of the University, "our object is,--first, to
+give the learner a general view of the planet on which he lives, of its
+constituent parts, and of the relation which it occupies as a world
+among worlds; and secondly, to enable him to study, in the most
+complete scientific manner, and for any purpose, any detailed portion
+which his powers qualify him to grasp."
+
+Such an object brings the University into full sympathy with the
+present tendencies of education in our own country. With us, scientific
+pursuits and the study of Nature are receiving greater and greater
+attention and engrossing a continually larger share of the interest,
+the time, and the talent of students. There already exists, and there
+is danger of its increase, in many of our best institutions of
+learning, and many of our most educated men, an intellectual
+onesidedness of a contrary, but not less unfortunate character, to that
+which long existed at Oxford. The temper of our people, the wide field
+for their energies, the development of the so-called practical traits
+of character under the stimulus of our political and social
+institutions, the solitary dissociation of America from the history and
+the achievements of the Old World, the melancholy absence of monuments
+of past greatness and worth,--these and many other circumstances
+peculiar to our position all serve to weaken the general interest in
+what are called classical studies, and to direct the attention of the
+most ambitious and active minds far too exclusively to the pursuits of
+science. And when to these circumstances peculiar to ourselves is added
+the influence of those general causes which have had the effect of
+leading men throughout the civilized world to give of late years more
+and more of thought and study to the investigation of Nature and to the
+pursuits resulting therefrom, it is not strange that learning,
+so-called, should, for the present at least, find itself but poorly off
+in America, and that the essential value of learned studies for an even
+and fair development of the intellectual faculties should be far too
+little regarded. The danger that arises from a too exclusive devotion
+to scientific pursuits is pointed out by Dr. Acland in a passage which
+deserves thoughtful consideration, coming as it does from a man
+distinguished not more for scientific eminence than for his wide and
+cultivated intellect.
+
+"The further my observation has extended," he says, "the more satisfied
+I am that no _knowledge of things_ will supply the place of the early
+study of letters,--_literae humaniores_. I do not doubt the value of
+any honest mental labor. Indeed, since the _material_ working of the
+Creator has been so far displayed to our gaze, it is both dangerous and
+full of impiety to resist its ennobling influence, even on the ground
+that His _moral_ work is greater. But notwithstanding this, the study
+of language, of history, and of the thoughts of great men which they
+exhibit, seems to be almost necessary (as far as learning is necessary
+at all) for disciplining the heart, for elevating the soul, and for
+preparing the way for the growth in the young of their personal
+spiritual life; while, on the other hand, the best corrective to
+pedantry in scholarship, and to conceit in mental philosophy, is the
+study of the facts and laws exhibited by Natural Science."
+
+Oxford, having thus fully acknowledged the need of enlarging her system
+of education, at once set about preparing a home for the Natural
+Sciences within her precincts. The building of the Oxford Museum is a
+fact characteristic of the large spirit of the University, and of
+special interest from the design and nature of its architecture. It is
+not merely intended for the holding of collections in the different
+departments of physical science, but it contains also lecture- and
+work-rooms, and all the accommodations required for in-door study. To
+provide the mere shell of such a building, the University granted the
+sum of L30,000. The design that was selected from those which were sent
+for competition was of the Gothic style,--the work of Messrs. Deane and
+Woodward; and this style was chosen because it was believed, that, "in
+respect of capacity of adaptation to any given wants, Gothic has no
+superior in any known form of Art,"--and that, this being so, "it was,
+upon the whole, the best suited to the general architectural character
+of Mediaeval Oxford." "The centre of the edifice, which is to contain
+the collections, consists of a quadrangle," covered by a glass roof.
+The court is surrounded by an open arcade of two stories. "This arcade
+furnishes ready means of communication between the several departments
+and their collections in the area." "Round the arcade is ranged upon
+three sides the main block of the building,"--the fourth side being
+left unoccupied by apartments, to afford means for future extension.
+Each department of science is provided with ample accommodations,
+specially adapted to its peculiar needs. The building, as it stands at
+present, is in its largest dimensions about 330 by 170 feet. Its
+erection has formed an epoch not only in the history of Oxford, but
+also in that of Gothic Art in England.
+
+It is the first considerable building which has for centuries been
+erected in England according to the true principles of Gothic Art. It
+is a revival of the spirit and freedom of Gothic architecture. It is no
+copy, but an original creation of thought, fancy, and imagination. It
+has combined beauty with use, elegance with convenience, and ornament
+with instruction. It has proved the perfect pliancy of Gothic
+architecture to modern needs, and shown its power of entire adaptation
+to the requirements of new conditions. In its details no less than in
+its general scope it exhibits the recognition by its builders of the
+essential characteristics of the best Gothic Art, and shows in the
+harmonized variety of its parts the inventive thought and the
+independent execution of many minds and hands presided over by a single
+will. Gothic architecture in its best development is the expression at
+once of law and of liberty. The exactest principles of proportion are
+combined in it with the freest play of fancy. Its spaces are divided
+mathematically by the rule and the square, its main lines are
+determined with absolute precision,--but within these limits of order
+the imagination works out its free results, and, because limited by
+mathematical laws, reaches the most perfect freedom of beauty.
+
+But the system of Gothic decorations, "which," says Mr. Ruskin, "took
+eight hundred years to mature, gathering its power by undivided
+inheritance of traditional method," is not an easy thing to revive
+under new and difficult conditions. A single example of what has been
+attempted in this way in the Oxford Museum must suffice to show the
+spirit which pervades its construction. The lower arcade upon the
+central court is supported by thirty-three piers and thirty shafts; the
+upper arcade by thirty-three piers and ninety-five shafts. "The shafts
+have been carefully selected, under the direction of the Professor of
+Geology, from quarries which furnish examples of many of the most
+important rocks of the British Islands. On the lower arcade are placed,
+on the west side, the granitic series; on the east, the metamorphic; on
+the north, calcareous rocks, chiefly from Ireland; on the south, the
+marbles of England." The capitals and bases are to represent different
+groups of plants and animals, illustrating the various geological
+epochs, and the natural orders of existence. Thus, the column of
+sienite from Charnwood Forest has a capital of the cocoa palm; the red
+granite of Ross, in Mull, is crowned with a capital of lilies; the
+beautiful marble of Marychurch has an exquisitely sculptured capital of
+ferns;--and so through all the range of the arcades, new designs,
+studied directly from Nature, and combining art with science, have been
+executed by the workmen employed on the building.
+
+To complete the beauty of the court, massive corbels have been thrown
+out from the piers, upon which statues of the greatest and most famous
+men in science are to be, or are already, placed. These shafts and
+capitals and statues have been, in great part, the gift of individuals
+interested in the progress and successful completion of such a
+building. The Queen presented five of the statues; and her example has
+been followed by many of the graduates of the University and lovers of
+Art in England.
+
+Mr. Ruskin ends his second letter in the little book before us with
+these words: "Although I doubt not that lovelier and juster expressions
+of the Gothic principle will be ultimately arrived at by us than any
+which are possible in the Oxford Museum, its builders will never lose
+their claim to our chief gratitude, as the first guides in a right
+direction; and the building itself, the first exponent of recovered
+truth, will only be the more venerated, the more it is excelled."
+
+Such is the way in which Oxford, having a Museum to build, sets to
+work. She lays down a large and generous plan, and erects a building
+worthy of her ancient fame, worthy to increase the love and honor in
+which she is held,--a building that adds a new beauty to her old
+beauties of hall and chapel, of quadrangle and cloister. She does not
+mistake parsimony for economy; she does not neglect to regard the duty
+that lies upon her, as the guardian and instructress of youth, to set
+before their eyes models of fair proportion, noble structures which
+shall exercise at once an influence to refine the taste and the
+sentiment and to enlarge the intellect. She acknowledges the claims of
+the future as well as of the present, and does not erect that which the
+future, however it may advance in constructive power, will regard as
+base, mean, or ugly. She recognizes the value to herself, as well as to
+her sons, of all those associations which, through the power of her
+adorned and munificent architecture, shall bind them to her in ties of
+closer tenderness, and of strong, though most delicate feeling. Her
+building is to have an aspect that shall correspond to the nobility of
+its function,--that shall impress the student, as he walks along the
+hard and dry paths of science, with some sense, faint though it be, of
+the beauty of that learning which is furnished with so goodly an abode.
+The influence of a fine building, complete in all its parts, is one
+which cannot be estimated in money, cannot be investigated by any
+practical process, but which is nevertheless as strong and precious as
+it is secret, as constant as it is unobserved.
+
+It would seem that there could be no country in the world where
+buildings of the noblest kind would be more desired than in America,
+for there is none in which they are so much needed. But such is not the
+case. As men who have lived long in darkness become so accustomed to
+the want of light as not to feel its absence, so the absoluteness of
+the want of fine buildings in America prevents that want from being
+generally felt. Heirs of the intellectual wealth of the past, we have
+no inheritance of the great works of its hands. No material heirlooms
+have been transmitted to us. We are cut off from any share in the
+monuments on which the labor, the affection, and the possessions of
+former generations were expended. The precious and enlarging
+associations connected with such works, which bind successive
+generations of men together with ties of memory and reverence,
+stimulating the imagination to new conceptions, and nerving the will to
+large efforts, have nothing to cling to here. The land is barren and
+naked; and, moreover, no effort is made to relieve the future from the
+want which the present feels so keenly. With wealth ample enough for
+undertakings of any magnitude,--with intelligence, more boasted than
+real, but still sufficient for the conception of improvement, we
+exhibit in our civilization neither the taste nor the capacity for any
+noble works of Art. The value of beauty is disregarded, and the
+cultivation of the sense of beauty is treated as of little worth,
+compared with the culture of what are styled the practical faculties.
+Our wealth is spent in the erection of extravagant stores and
+shops,--in the decoration of oyster-saloons, hotels, and
+steamboats,--in the lavish and selfish adornment of drawing-rooms and
+chambers. In the whole breadth of the continent there is not a single
+building of such beauty as to be an object of national pride, and few
+which will have any value in future times, except as historic records
+of the poverty of sentiment and the deficiency of character of the men
+of this generation.
+
+Our oldest and best endowed University has, like Oxford, lately engaged
+in the erection of a Museum, which, though more limited in its general
+object, has yet a scope of such large and generous proportion as to
+make it a work of even more than national interest. It is undertaken on
+such a scale as to fit it not merely for present needs, but for the
+increasing wants of later times. The State has contributed to it from
+the public treasury, and private citizens have given their
+contributions liberally towards its support. The building has been
+rapidly carried forward, and the portion undertaken is now near
+completion. How does it compare with the Oxford Museum? What provision
+has been made that in its outward aspect it shall correspond with the
+worth and grandeur of the collections it is to hold and the studies
+that are to be carried on within it? What patient thought, what stores
+of imagination, what happy adaptations do its walls reveal? These
+questions are easily answered. Convenience of internal arrangement has
+been sought without regard to external beauty, without consideration of
+the claims of Art. The architect has, we must suppose, been obliged to
+conform his plans to the most frugal estimates; but we cannot help
+thinking, that, generous as the State has been, it would have been more
+worthy of her, had no such necessity existed. The building for the
+Museum is one which can never excite high admiration, never touch any
+chord of poetic sentiment, never arouse in the student within its walls
+any feeling save that of mere convenience and utility. Its bare,
+shadowless walls, unadorned by carven columns or memorial statues, will
+stand incapable of affording support for those associations which
+endear every human work of worth, covering it with praise and
+remembrance, as the ivy clings to the stone, adding beauty to
+beauty,--associations which make men proud of their ancestors and
+desirous to equal them in achievement The University at Cambridge, just
+entering on the second quarter of its third century, has not a single
+building that is beautiful, perhaps we might say none that is not
+positively ugly; and we almost despair of a future when our people
+shall become enlightened and magnanimous enough to appreciate noble
+architecture at its true worth, as the expression of the greatness of
+national character, as an enduring record of faith and of truth, and as
+an essential instrument in any system of education that professes to be
+complete.
+
+
+1._Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter_; being Reminiscences of
+MESHACH BROWNING, a Maryland Hunter; roughly written down by Himself.
+Revised and illustrated by E. STABLER. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott &
+Co. 1859. pp. x., 400.
+
+2. _Ten Years of Preacher-Life_; Chapters from an Autobiography. By
+WILLIAM HENRY MILBURN. New York: Derby & Jackson. 1859. pp. 363.
+
+BENVENUTO CELLINI was right in his _dictum_ about autobiographies; and
+so was Dr. Kitchener, in his about hares. First catch your perfectly
+sincere and unconscious man. He is even more uncommon than a genius of
+the first order. Most men dress themselves for their autobiographies,
+as Machiavelli used to do for reading the classics, in their best
+clothes; they receive us, as it were, in a parlor chilling and awkward
+from its unfamiliarity with man, and keep us carefully away from the
+kitchen-chimney-corner, where they would feel at home, and would not
+look on a lapse into nature as the unpardonable sin. But what do we
+want of a hospitality that makes strangers of us, or of confidences
+that keep us at arm's-length? Better the tavern and the newspaper; for
+in the one we can grumble, and from the other learn more of our
+neighbors than we care to know. John Smith's autobiography is commonly
+John Smith's design for an equestrian statue of himself,--very fine,
+certainly, and as much like him as like Marcus Aurelius. Saint
+Augustine, kneeling to confess, has an eye to the picturesque, and does
+it in _pontificalibus_, resolved that Domina Grundy shall think all the
+better of him. Rousseau cries, "I will bare my heart to you!" and,
+throwing open his waistcoat, makes us the confidants of his dirty
+linen. Montaigne, indeed, reports of himself with the impartiality of a
+naturalist, and Boswell, in his letters to Temple, shows a maudlin
+irretentiveness; but is not old Samuel Pepys, after all, the only man
+who spoke to himself of himself with perfect simplicity, frankness, and
+unconsciousness?--a creature unique as the dodo,--a solitary specimen,
+to show that it was possible for Nature to indulge in so odd a whimsey!
+An autobiography is good for nothing, unless the author tell us in it
+precisely what he meant not to tell. A man who can say what he thinks
+of another to his face is a disagreeable rarity; but one who could look
+his own Ego straight in the eye, and pronounce unbiased judgment, were
+worthy of Sir Thomas Browne's Museum. Had Cheiron written his
+autobiography, the consciousness of his equine crupper would have
+ridden him like a nightmare; should a mermaid write hers, she would
+sink the fish's tail, nor allow it to be put into the scales, in
+weighing her character. The mermaid, in truth, is the emblem of those
+who strive to see themselves;--her mirror is too small to reflect
+anything more than the _mulier formosa superne_.
+
+We looked for a great prize in Meshach Browning's account of himself,
+and have been disappointed. Not that some very fair grains of wheat may
+not be had for the winnowing, but the proportion of chaff is
+disheartening. Meshach has been edited, and has not come out of that
+fiery furnace unscathed. Mr. Stabler has not let him come before us in
+his deerskin hunting-shirt, but has made him presentable by getting him
+into a black dress-coat, the uniform of perfect respectability and
+tiresomeness. He has corrected Meshach's style for him! He has made him
+write that unexceptionable English which neither gods nor men, but only
+columns, allow. (The kindness of an anonymous correspondent, however,
+enables us to assure him that _lay_, and not _laid_, is the preterite
+of _lie_.) One page of Meshach's own writing would have been worth all
+his bear-stories put together. Many men may shoot bears, but few can
+write like backwoodsmen. We shall expect an edition of "The Rivals"
+from Mr. Stabler, with Mrs. Malaprop's epitaphs revised by the "Aids to
+Composition." Luckily, Meshach himself will never know the wrong that
+has been done him. On the contrary, he probably pleases himself in
+finding that he is made to write President's English, and admires the
+new leaves and apples not his own. But, in his polishing, American
+letters have met as great a loss as American fiction did when the
+depositions of the survivors of Bunker's Hill, taken fifty years after
+the battle, were burned.
+
+However, he who knows how to read with the ends of his fingers may yet
+find good meat in the book. An honest provincialism has escaped Mr.
+Stabler's weeding-hoe here and there, and we get a few glimpses, in
+spite of him, into log-cabin interiors when the inmates are not in
+their Sunday-clothes. We learn how much a sound stomach has to do with
+human felicity; that a bride may make her husband happy, though her
+whole outfit consist of two cups and saucers, two knives and forks, and
+two spoons; that a man may be hospitable in a cabin, twelve by fifteen,
+with only the forest for his larder; and that an American needs only an
+axe, a rifle, and _nary red_, for his start in life. Meshach Browning
+finds in his Paradise very much what our first parents found outside of
+theirs. At nineteen he is the husband of pretty Mary McMullen, and
+joint-proprietor with the rest of mankind of all-outdoors,--it being an
+eccentricity of McMullen _pere_ to prefer a back to a front view of his
+sons-in-law. Meshach, who is sure of a comfortable fireside wherever
+there are trees, moves into the nearest bit of wilderness, builds a
+house with the timber felled to make a clearing, plants his acre or
+two, and forthwith shoots a bear, whose salted flesh will keep him and
+his wife alive till harvest. Thus in 1800 was a family founded, which
+fifty years later had increased to one hundred and twenty-two, of whom
+sixty-seven, as their progenitor says proudly, were "capable of bearing
+arms for the defence of their country,"--though, to be sure, the
+Harper's Ferry affair leaves us in some doubt as to the direction in
+which they would bear them. The community of which the Brownings, man
+and wife, became members at their marriage was a wholly self-subsistent
+one. The men wore deerskins procured by their own rifles and dressed
+and tailored by themselves,--while the women spun and wove both flax
+and wool. Powder and lead seem to have been the only things for which
+they were dependent on outsiders. Browning's father was an English
+soldier, who, escaping from Braddock's massacre, deserted and settled
+in the highlands of Western Maryland,--as a place, we suppose, equally
+safe from the provost-martial of the redcoat and the tomahawk of the
+red man. It is curious to think of the great contrast between father
+and son: the one a British soldier of the day of strictest powder and
+pigtail; the other, a man who never wore a hat, except in fine
+weather,--and in the house, of course, like the rest of his countrymen.
+In this case, we find the very purest American type (for Meshach has
+not a single Old-World notion) produced in a single generation. We
+ourselves have known a parallel instance in the children of a British
+soldier who deserted during the War of 1812; in tone of thought,
+accent, dialect, and physique they were unmistakably Yankee. If the
+backwoods Americanize men so fast, is it wonderful that two centuries
+of the Western Hemisphere should have produced a breed so unlike the
+parent Bull? It is time Bull began to reconcile himself to it.
+
+One of the most amusing passages in Meshach's autobiography is that in
+which he relates his military experience as captain of a company of
+militia. The company appear to have gone into action only once, and
+that was on occasion of a muster when they undertook to _lick_ their
+commander, with whom, for some reason or other, they were discontented.
+As well as we can make out, the result seems to have been, that the
+captain licked _them_; though our Caesar's Commentaries are naturally
+so confused on this topic, that we almost feel, after reading them, as
+if we had been through the fight ourselves.
+
+The book should have been shorter by at least two-thirds,--for one
+bear-story is just like another, and Meshach's style of narrative is
+one that cannot bear the prosperity of print. However, we find much
+that is interesting in the volume, as in all records of real
+experience.
+
+Mr. Milburn's account of himself we have also found very entertaining.
+In some respects it belongs on the same shelf with Meshach Browning's;
+for we think the best chapters in it are those which bring us into
+contact with Cartwright and other Methodist ministers, the frontiersmen
+and bushfighters of the Church, who do not bandy subtilties with
+Mephistopheles, nor consider that the Prince of Darkness is a
+gentleman, but go in for a rough-and-tumble fight with Satan and his
+imps, as with so many red _Injuns_ undeserving of the rights and
+incapable of the amenities of civilized warfare. We confess a thorough
+liking for these Leatherstockings of the clergy, true apostolic
+successors of the heavy-handed fisherman, Peter. Their rough-and-ready
+gospel is just the thing for men who feel as if they could not get
+religion, unless from a preacher who can "whip" them as well as thunder
+doctrine at their ears.
+
+We prefer those parts of Mr. Milburn's book in which he tells us what
+he saw (if we may say it of a blind man) to those in which he
+undertakes to tell us what he was. The history of the growth of his
+mind is not of vital importance to us, and we should be quite willing
+to have "returned unexperienced to our graves," like Grumio's
+fellow-servants. We think there is getting to be altogether too much
+unreserve in the world. We doubt if any man have the right to take
+mankind by the button and tell all about himself, unless, like Dante,
+he can symbolize his experience. Even Goethe we only half thank,
+especially when he kisses and tells, and prefer Shakspeare's
+indifference to the intimacy of the German. Silence about one's self is
+the most golden of all, as men commonly discover after babbling. Mr.
+Milburn, in one of his chapters, gives an account of his passage
+through what he is pleased to call _neology_ and _rationalism_. He
+represents himself as having sounded the depths of German metaphysics,
+criticism, and aesthetics. But a man who is able to write a sentence in
+which Lessing's Works are spoken of as if the reading of them tended to
+make men "transcendentalists of the supra-nebulous order" no more
+deserves a scourging by angels for his devotion to German literature
+than Saint Jerome did for being a Ciceronian. No truly thorough course
+of study ever weakened or unsteadied any man's mind, for it is the
+surest way to make him think less of himself,--and we cannot help
+believing that the disease Mr. Milburn went through was nothing more
+nor less than _sentimentalism_, a complaint as common to a certain
+period of life as measles. But while we think him mistaken in his
+diagnosis, we cannot but commend the good sense and manliness of his
+course of treatment.
+
+Bating the egotism unavoidable in a work of the sort, the style of Mr.
+Milburn's book is agreeable, and the anecdotes of various kinds with
+which it abounds render it very amusing. It is of particular interest
+as showing how much a blind man may accomplish both for himself and
+others, that the loss of sight may be borne with cheerfulness as well
+as resignation, and that the sufferer by such a calamity is sure of
+kindness and sympathy from his fellow-men.
+
+_A First Lesson in Natural History_. By ACTAEA. Boston: Little, Brown,
+& Co. 1859. pp. 82.
+
+This is an altogether charming little book. Simple, clear, and
+methodical, the style leaves nothing to be desired, and suggests no
+wish that anything were away. An aunt called upon for more stories--and
+no wonder, when she tells them so well--resolves to play the Nereid,
+and takes her little ones in fancy down among the slopes and dells of
+Ocean to watch the lovely growths and the strange creatures in which,
+through plant and mineral, or what seem such, Life is yearning upward
+toward the higher individuality of Volition. She tells us (for we
+seemed among her hearers as we read, and drew our stool nearer) all
+about the sea-anemones and corals, the coral-reefs, the jelly-fishes,
+star-fishes, and sea-urchins,--which last are not to be confounded with
+the buoys so frequently to be met with in our harbors. That the stories
+have the sanction of Agassiz is warrant of their scientific accuracy,
+while the feminine grace with which they are told is a science to be
+learned of no professor.
+
+Since the fairies are all dead, it is pleasant to know that Pan can be
+brought to life again for children by the study of Nature. Now that the
+wonders of the invisible world are closed, the little ones can have no
+better set-off than in the beauty and marvel of God's visible creation.
+Here also are food for the imagination and material for poetry.
+Whatever teaches a child to observe teaches him to think, and
+strengthens memory, a faculty which in fitting conjunction is
+cumulative genius.
+
+We dislike the science that is sometimes forced down youthful throats
+by the Mrs. Squeerses of polite learning, a vile compound of treacle
+and brimstone; but there is a vast difference between science as dead
+fact and science as living poetry,--the harvest of the child's own
+eyes, gathered on seashores and hillsides, in fields and lanes. We like
+the aim and tendency of this little book, because it is likely to draw
+children away from hooks, and to entice them into that admirably
+ventilated schoolroom of out-doors which will give them sound lungs and
+stomachs and muscular limbs. It teaches them, too, without their
+knowing it; which is the only true way; for they contrive to make their
+minds duck's-backs, under the assiduous watering-pot of instruction.
+The knowledge it gives them is real, and not merely a thing of terms
+and phrases. Moreover, the kind of it is suitable; a great thing; for
+we hold a Pascal in a pinafore to be as great an outrage as a learned
+pig.
+
+We have found the generality of books written for children of late so
+thoroughly bad, as void of invention as they are full of vulgarisms in
+thought and language, that it is a downright pleasure to meet with one
+so fresh and graceful as this of Aectaea's. We hope she will follow it
+with a series, for she has shown herself qualified to do for science
+what Hawthorne has done for mythology.
+
+
+_Poems_. By ASNE WHITNEY. New York: Appleton & Co. 1859.
+
+This modest volume is a collection of Miss Whitney's previously printed
+poems, scattered about in forgotten newspapers, with perhaps as many
+more, which now appear in print for the first time. The uncommon merit
+of some of her early poems, especially "Bertha," "Hymn to the Sea," and
+"Lilian," (here most unpoetically called "Facts in Verse,") long ago
+awakened a desire in lovers of good poetry to know more of Miss Whitney
+and what she had written; and the desire is gratified by the
+publication of this book. We can hardly say that the new poems are
+better than the old; though some of them, as "The Ceyba and the
+Jaguey," "Undine," "Dominique," and "My Window," are marked by the same
+quick insight, the same force and dignity of expression, which charm us
+in the earlier verses. We still find "Lilian" the best of all, as it is
+the longest; there are in it passages of description as clear and vivid
+as the landscapes of Church and Turner, and touches of profound and
+glowing imagination; and the whole poem, in spite of its obscurity,
+affects the mind like a strain of high and mournful music. The Sonnets
+are all more or less harsh and unintelligible,--a criticism which
+applies to many of the other poems. Miss Whitney evidently despises
+foot-notes as utterly as Tennyson, and leaves much unexplained in her
+titles and in the poems themselves, which might help us to understand
+them, if we knew it. Obscurity of thought and a lack of facility in
+versification cause evident defects in her otherwise fine book; on the
+other hand, she is never flat and seldom feeble, but writes as one
+whose thoughts and feelings move on a high level, sustained by a
+familiarity with the strength and beauty, rather than the grace and
+tenderness of literature. Few of our countrywomen have written better
+poems, and her little book gives finer food for thought and fancy than
+many a more bulky volume. Is it ungracious to charge her with
+affectation? for this is the clinging curse of modern poetry, and one
+may trace it even in the noble idyls of the greatest English poet now
+alive. The Brownings overflow with it, and it is the chief
+characteristic of scores of the lesser poets of the day. If all who
+write verses could learn how sacred language is, how full of beauty is
+its austere simplicity, they would cease from their endless tricks of
+word-painting and the Florentine mosaics of speech. Miss Whitney
+offends less than many in this way, and has shown some of the rarer
+gifts of that indefinable being,--a true poet.
+
+
+_Sword and Gown_. A Novel: by the Author of "Guy Livingstone." Boston:
+Ticknor & Fields.
+
+This is rather a brilliant sketch than a carefully wrought and finely
+finished romance. The actors are drawn in bold outlines, which it does
+not appear to have been the purpose of the author to fill up in the
+delicate manner usually deemed necessary for the development of
+character in fiction. But they are so vigorously drawn, and the
+narration is so full of power, that few readers can resist the
+fascination of the story, in spite of the intrusive little digressions
+which everywhere appear, and which, jumping at random through passages
+of history, religion, art, politics, literature, as a circus-rider
+forsakes his steed to dash through the many-colored tissue screens that
+are invitingly held out to him, interfere quite seriously with its
+progress. It is certainly a book in which the interest is positive, and
+from which the attention is seldom allowed to wander; and is, so far, a
+success.
+
+But there is also another relation in which it is to be considered.
+Without being much of a moralist, one may clearly perceive that its
+tone is unhealthy and its sentiment vicious. What it aims at we would
+not assume to decide; what it accomplishes is, to secure a sympathy for
+a reckless and dare-devil spirit which drives the hero through a
+tolerably long career of more than moderate iniquity, and leaves him
+impenitent at the end. It will hardly do to say that the object of the
+book is only to amuse. Dealing with the subjects it does, it must work
+good or evil. Its theme is this: An imperious beauty, whose heart has
+been seared in earliest youth, and whose passions are half supposed to
+be dead, is brought in contact, at a French watering-place, with a man
+whose life has been passed in wildest excesses, whose amatory exploits
+have echoed through Europe, and who knows no higher human motive of
+action than the prosecution of selfish and sensual enjoyment. His good
+qualities are dauntless personal courage, which, however, often sinks
+into brutal ferocity, and occasional touches of generous emotion
+towards his friends. The young girl's heart-strings are again set in
+tune, and made to quiver in harmony with those of the determined
+conqueror. Just as her soul is yielded, the intelligence that her lover
+has a living wife is imparted to her. Here a resemblance to a striking
+incident in "Jane Eyre" may be detected; but mark the difference in the
+result:--Jane Eyre, resolute in her righteous convictions, flies from a
+struggle which she perhaps feels herself incapable of sustaining; the
+present heroine consents to remain near her lover, on his promise of
+good behavior! What follows cannot be averted,--who would expect that
+it should be? The elopement which is planned, however, is prevented by
+the interference of a third party, and the lovers submit to their
+destiny of separation. They meet once again, but it is only when the
+hero, mortally wounded in a Crimean battle, lies expiring at Scutari.
+With the bitter agony of the dying farewell, the scene closes. The
+characters remain unchanged to the end. The Sword, though stained in
+many places with impurities, still glistens with a lustre that
+bewilders and confuses the senses. The Gown--which seems introduced at
+all only for the purpose of mockery, its representative being invested
+with all contemptible and unmanly attributes--still lies covered with
+the reproach that has been cast upon it.
+
+The moral of such a book is not a good one. The author does his best,
+by various arts, to make the reader look kindly upon a guilty love, and
+to regard with admiration those who are animated by it, notwithstanding
+the hero is no better at the end than he was at the opening, and the
+heroine is rather worse. And such is his undeniable power, that with
+many readers he will be too likely to carry his point.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS.
+
+
+Reynard the Fox, after the German Version of Goethe. By Thomas James
+Arnold, Esq.; with Illustrations from the Designs of Wilhelm von
+Kaulbach. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. 226. $3.50.
+
+The Eighteen Christian Centuries. By the Rev. James White, Author of a
+"History of France"; with a Copious Index. From the Second Edinburgh
+Edition. Philadelphia. Parry & McMillan. 12mo. pp. 538. $1.25.
+
+A New Dictionary of Quotations from the Greek, Latin, and Modern
+Languages. Translated into English, and occasionally accompanied with
+Illustrations, Historical, Poetical, and Anecdotical; with an Extensive
+Index, referring to Every Important Word. By the Author of "Live and
+Learn," etc. From the last London Edition. Philadelphia. J.B.
+Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp. 527. $1.50.
+
+An Inquiry into the Formation of Washington's Farewell Address.
+Philadelphia. Parry & McMillan. 8vo. pp. vii., 250. $1.25.
+
+Sermons Published and Revised by the Rev. C.H. Spurgeon. Sixth Series.
+New York. Sheldon & Co. 12mo. pp. xii., 450. $1.00.
+
+The Boy's Book of Industrial Information. By Elisha Noyce, Author of
+"Outlines of Creation." Illustrated with Three Hundred and Seventy
+Engravings. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 16mo. $1.25.
+
+The Prairie: A Tale. By J. Fenimore Cooper. Illustrated from Drawings
+by F.O.C. Darley. New York. W.A. Townsend & Co. 12mo. pp. ix., 479.
+$1.50.
+
+Men who have Risen. A Book for Boys. Illustrated by C.A. Doyle. New
+York. W.A. Townsend & Co. 16mo. pp. 315. 75 cts.
+
+Leaves from an Actor's Note-Book; with Reminiscences and Chit-Chat of
+the Green-Room, and the Stage, in England and America. By George
+Vandenhoff. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. vi., 347. $1.00.
+
+The Manufacture of Photogenic or Hydro-Carbon Oils, from Coal and other
+Bituminous Substances, capable of supplying Burning Fluids. By Thomas
+Antisell, M.D., Professor of Chemistry in the Medical Department of
+Georgetown College, D.C., etc. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp.
+144. $1.75.
+
+The Boy's Own Toy-Maker; a Practical Illustrated Guide to the Useful
+Employment of Leisure Hours. By E. Landells, Author of "Home Pastime,
+or the Child's Own Toy-Maker." With Numerous Engravings. New York. D.
+Appleton & Co. Square 16mo. pp. viii., 153. 50 cts.
+
+The Children's Picture-Gallery. Engravings from One Hundred Paintings
+by Eminent English Artists. Adapted for the Young. New York. D,
+Appleton & Co. 4to. pp. 105. $1.50.
+
+Women of Worth. A Book for Girls. Illustrated by W. Dickes. New York.
+W.A. Townsend & Co. 16mo. pp. 302. 75 cts.
+
+The Headsman; or, The Abbaye des Vignerons. A Tale. By J. Fenimore
+Cooper. Illustrated from Drawings by F.O.C. Darley. New York. W.A.
+Townsend & Co. 12mo. pp. x., 496. $1.50.
+
+The Physiology of Common Life. By George Henry Lewes, Author of
+"Seaside Studies," "Life of Goethe," etc. 2 vols. Vol. I. New York. D.
+Appleton & Co. 16mo. pp. viii., 368. $1.00.
+
+The Glory of the House of Israel; or the Hebrew's Pilgrimage to the
+Holy City; comprising a Picture of Judaism in the Century which
+preceded the Advent of our Saviour. By Frederick Strauss. Philadelphia.
+J.B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp. xxiii., 480. $1.25.
+
+Women Artists in all Ages and Countries. By Mrs. Ellet, Author of "The
+Women of the American Revolution," etc. New York. Harper & Brothers.
+12mo. pp. xx., 377. $1.00.
+
+Sword and Gown. By the Author of "Guy Livingstone." Boston. Ticknor &
+Fields. 16mo. pp. 308. 75 cts.
+
+The Money King and other Poems. By John G. Saxe. With a New Portrait.
+Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. x., 182. 75 cts.
+
+Chambers's Encyclopaedia; a Dictionary of Universal Knowledge for the
+People. On the Basis of the Latest Edition of the German
+Conversations-Lexicon. Illustrated by Wood Engravings and Maps. Part
+VII. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp. 64. 15 cts.
+
+A Good Fight, and other Tales. By Charles Reade, Author of "Love Me
+Little, Love Me Long," "Peg Woffington," "Christie Johnstone," etc.,
+etc.; with Illustrations. New York. Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 341.
+75 cts.
+
+Family-Circle Glee-Book; containing about Two Hundred Songs, Glees,
+Choruses, etc., including many of the most Popular Pieces of the Day;
+arranged and harmonized for Four Voices with Full Accompaniments for
+the Piano, Seraphine, and Melodeon. For the Use of Glee-Clubs,
+Singing-Classes, and the Home Circle. Compiled by Elias Howe. Vol. II.
+Boston. Russell & Tolman. Square 8vo. pp. 240. $1.50.
+
+Gold Foil Hammered from Popular Proverbs. By Timothy Titcomb, Author of
+"Letters to the Young." New York. Charles Scribner. 16mo. pp. 358.
+$1.00.
+
+Address Commemorative of Rufus Choate. By Theophilus Parsons. Delivered
+before the Students of the Law School of Harvard University, at their
+Request, on the 29th of September, 1859. Boston. Little, Brown, & Co.
+8vo. pp. 40. 25 cts.
+
+Life of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. By Alphonse de Lamartine. New
+York. Sheldon & Co. 18mo. pp. 275. 50 cts.
+
+Loss and Gain; or, Margaret's Home. By Alice B. Haven. New York. D.
+Appleton & Co. 16mo. pp. 315. $1.00.
+
+At Home and Abroad; a Sketch-Book of Life, Scenery, and Men. By Bayard
+Taylor. New York. G.P. Putnam. 12mo. pp. vi., 500. $1.25.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. IV, NO. 26, DECEMBER, 1859 ***
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859
+by  Various
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
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+Title: Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859
+
+Author:  Various
+
+Release Date: December, 2005  [EBook #9467]
+[This file was first posted on October 3, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. IV, NO. 26, DECEMBER, 1859 ***
+
+
+
+
+E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, Tonya Allen, and Project Gutenberg
+Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
+
+A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS
+
+VOL. IV, DECEMBER, 1859, NO. XXVI
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EXPERIENCE OF SAMUEL ABSALOM, FILIBUSTER.
+
+
+In the winter of 1856, the outlook of the present writer, known
+somewhere as Samuel Absalom, became exceedingly troubled, and indeed
+scarcely respectable. As gold-digger in California, Fortune had looked
+upon him unkindly, and he was grown to be one of the indifferent,
+ragged children of the earth. Those who came behind him might read as
+they ran, stamped on canvas once white, "Stockton Mills. Self-Rising
+Flour!"--the well-known label in California, at that day, of greatest
+embarrassment.
+
+One morning, after sleeping out the night in the streets of Oroville,
+he got up, and read these words, or some like them, in the village
+newspaper:--"The heavy frost which fell last night brings with it at
+least one source of congratulation for our citizens. Soon the crowd of
+vagrant street-sleepers, which infests our town, will be forced to go
+forth and work for warmer quarters. It has throughout this summer been
+the ever-present nuisance and eyesore of our otherwise beautiful and
+romantic moonlit nights." "Listen to this scoundrel!" said he; "how he
+can insult an unfortunate man! Makes his own living braying, lying, and
+flinging dirt, and spits upon us sad devils who fail to do it in an
+honest manner! Ah, the times are changing in California! Once, no one
+knew but this battered hat I sit under might partially cover the head
+of a nobleman or man of honor; but men begin to show their quality by
+the outside, as they do elsewhere in the world, and are judged and
+spoken to accordingly. I will shake California dust from my feet, and
+be gone!"
+
+In this mood, I thought of General Walker, down there in Nicaragua,
+striving to regenerate the God-forsaken Spanish Americans. "I will go
+down and assist General Walker," said I. So next morning found me on my
+way to San Francisco, with a roll of blankets on my shoulder and some
+small pieces of money in my pocket. Arrived in the city, I sought out
+General Walker's agent, one Crittenden by name, a respectable,
+honest-looking man, and obtained from him the promise of two hundred
+and fifty acres of Nicaraguan land and twenty-five dollars per month
+for service in the army of General Walker, and also a steerage-ticket
+of free passage to the port of San Juan del Norte by one of the
+steamers of the Nicaragua Transit Line. Of my voyage down I do not
+intend to speak; several unpublished sensations might have been picked
+up in that steerage crowd of bog Irish, low Dutch, New Yorkers, and
+California savages of every tribe, returning home in red flannel shirts
+and boots of cowhide large; but my business is not with them, and I say
+only that after a brief and prosperous voyage we anchored early one
+morning in the harbor of San Juan del Sur, at that time part of the
+dominions of General Walker.
+
+Whilst the great crowd of home-bound passengers, with infinite din and
+shouting, are bustling down the gangways toward the shore, our little
+party of twenty or thirty Central American regenerators assemble on the
+ship's bow, and answer to our names as read out by a small,
+mild-featured man, whom at a glance I should have thought no
+filibuster. It seems he was our captain _pro tem._, and bore
+recommendations from the agent at San Francisco to a commission in the
+Nicaraguan service. He had made the voyage on the cabin side of the
+ship, and I saw him now for the first time. His looks betokened no
+fire-eating soul; but your brave man has not necessarily a truculent
+countenance; and I was, indeed, thankful for the prospect of fighting
+under an honest man and no cut-throat outwardly.
+
+We followed this our chief down the vessel's side to the shore,
+catching a glimpse of Fate as we passed over the old hulk in our
+course. It was one of Walker's soldiers in the last stage of fever. His
+skin was as yellow and glazed as parchment, and seemed drawn over a
+mere fleshless skeleton. Poor man! he lay there watching the noisy
+passengers descend from the ship. "His eyes are with his heart, and
+that is far away," carried back by the bustling scene to another
+shore,--the goal of that passing crowd,--never more to gladden _his_
+dim eye. The unrelenting grasp of death was on him; and even now,
+perhaps, the waves are rolling his bleaching bones to and fro on that
+distant beach. I say that this dismal omen damped the spirit of us all.
+But nothing in this world can long dishearten the brave; we soon grow
+lighter, and, marching along in the crowd, blackguard effectively the
+witty or witless dogs that crack jokes at us and forebode hard fate
+ahead of us.
+
+When we came into the town of San Juan, we found there a general and
+colonel of the filibuster army, and reported ourselves forthwith as a
+party of recruits just arrived and at their service. The general was
+altogether absorbed hobnobbing with the old friends whom he had
+discovered in the passenger crowd, and would not listen to us; but the
+colonel pointed out an empty building, and told us to drop our luggage
+there, and amuse ourselves until we heard further from him. This town
+of San Juan del Sur is entirely the creation of the Nicaragua Transit
+Company, and is the Pacific terminus of the Isthmus portage-road. It
+consisted of half a dozen board hotels, and a litter of native
+grass-thatched huts, and lay at the foot of a high, woody spur, which
+curves out into the sea and forms the southern rim of a beautiful
+little harbor, completed by another less elevated point jutting out on
+the north. The country inland is entirely shut out by a dense forest,
+into which the Transit road plunges and is immediately lost. Whilst I
+was walking about this sequestered place, now all alive with the
+California passengers, a party of Walker's cavalry came riding in from
+the interior, and at once drew all eyes upon them. They were mounted on
+horses or mules of every color, shape, and size,--themselves
+yellow-faced, ragged, and dirty; nevertheless, their deadly garniture,
+rifles, revolvers, and bowie-knives, and their fierce and shaggy looks,
+kept them from being laughed at. They dismounted and tied their beasts
+in front of one of the hotels, and then dispersed about the town in
+search of whatever was refreshing.
+
+From these men we learned that General Walker's prospects were never so
+fair as now. His enemies, they said, worn out and ready to despair, had
+drawn off to Granada, where they now lay irresolute and quarrelling
+amongst themselves. General Walker held the Transit route from ocean to
+ocean, and a single filibuster might walk all through the country
+without danger. This news was not satisfactory to all of us. A small,
+bright-eyed youth, from the California theatre, who had been noted on
+the voyage down for his loud talking, declared that for his part he had
+come to Nicaragua to fight, and, now that there was no more fighting to
+be done, he would pass through and take ship for the United States. The
+filibusters smiled at each other grimly, and told him, if that was the
+difficulty, he had better not go, for Walker intended driving the enemy
+out of Granada shortly, and he would there find all that he wanted. And
+well it was that they satisfied him to stay; for on that day this youth
+went without his dinner because he had no cent in his pocket to buy it,
+and ship-captains refuse to assist all such as lie under that unhappy
+cloud. Oh, thou light-bodied son of Thespis! Where art thou now? I saw
+thee last, with heavy musket on thy shoulder, marching wearily to the
+assault of San Jorge. Did the vultures tear thee there? Or art thou
+still somewhere amongst men, blowing the great deeds wrought by thy
+feathery arm that day? I hope thou wast not left on that dismal shore!
+
+Late in the afternoon, when the Californians had departed for Virgin
+Bay, where they were to embark on Lake Nicaragua, our party of recruits
+took the road for the same place, on our way to Rivas, the
+head-quarters of the filibuster army. A short distance from the
+Pacific, we began the ascent of the Cordillera chain, not very
+formidable here, but broken into spurs and irregular ridges, with deep
+umbrageous hollows, and little streams of clear water winding noisily
+among them. Coming down from this rugged high ground, we entered a wide
+plain, stretching away to Lake Nicaragua, out of whose waters we saw
+the blue cones of Ometepec and Madeira lifting their heads up above
+all, and capped with clouds. Before we had crossed the twelve miles
+between ocean and lake, and entered Virgin Bay, it was dark, and the
+Californians were already hurrying aboard a little steamer, which
+puffed and whistled at the wharf. In half an hour afterwards they were
+steaming across the lake for the entrance or head of the Rio San Juan.
+
+It was here that we ate our first meal at the expense of General
+Walker, or, rather, at the expense of an innkeeper of Virgin Bay; for
+he, our entertainer, looked upon us as little better than sorners,
+declaring he had already fed filibusters to the value of six thousand
+dollars, without other return than General Walker's promise to pay,
+which he professed to esteem but slightly or not at all. These
+hotel-keepers of Virgin Bay and San Juan, who came in the wake of the
+Transit Company, and made their money by the California passengers,
+seemed to be a good deal worried by General Walker. Their business was
+no longer profitable, and their families lived in a state of continual
+alarm between the combatants; yet they were not allowed the alternative
+of flight; for it was General Walker's policy, wise or unwise, when he
+had got a man into Nicaragua who was useful to him, to keep him there;
+and the last Transit Company, being entirely in his interest, carried
+no emigrant out of the Isthmus unfurnished with a passport from
+President Walker himself.
+
+That night we slept in an empty building, and were aroused next
+morning at daybreak, and ordered to continue our march to Rivas, which
+was said to lie nine miles to the north of us. We set forward,
+grumbling sorely for lack of breakfast, and stiff from our
+twelve-miles' march of the evening before. Our path led us sometimes
+under the deep shades of a tangled forest, sometimes along the open
+lake-beach, on which the waves rolled with almost the swell of an ocean
+surf. A few miles short of Rivas we emerged from the ragged forest, and
+entered a beautiful, cultivated country, through which we passed along
+green lanes fringed with broad-leaved plantains, bending oranges,
+tufted palms, and all tropical fruit-trees,--a very Nicaraguan paradise
+to the sore-footed wayfarer. At last this enchanting approach brought
+us to the outskirts of Rivas, and we entered a narrow, mud-walled
+street, and never halted until we came out upon the central and only
+_plaza_ of the miserable town. Our incumbered march, without breakfast,
+after a long, inactive sea-voyage, had wearied us sadly; and we threw
+our luggage upon, the ground, lay down upon it, and ruminated on a
+scene of little comfort to the faint-hearted, if there were any such in
+our little crowd of world-battered and battering strong men, topers,
+and vagabonds.
+
+The square we had entered was perhaps one hundred yards or more in
+width, much overgrown with grass, and surrounded by buildings of mean
+and gloomy aspect. Six narrow and sordid streets debouched into
+it,--two coming with parallel courses from the west, two from the east,
+and one entering at each eastern angle from the north and south. It was
+at the opening of the last of these that we rested, and received our
+first impressions of the wretched _plaza_,--since hung for us with a
+thousand dirty reminiscences.
+
+It displayed none of those architectural embellishments and attempts at
+magnificence which usually centre about the _plazas_ of the
+Spanish-American capitals,--not even a carved door-facing or trifling
+ornament of any description. The entire side on our right, between the
+two eastern streets, was occupied by the cracked and roofless walls of
+an ancient church or convent, which had long been a neglected ruin. The
+fallen stones and mortar had raised a sloping embankment high up its
+venerable sides; and the small trees, here and there shooting above the
+luxuriant grass and running vines which, covered this climbing pile of
+rubbish, waved their branches over the top of the mouldering walls. The
+interior of the crumbling structure was a wilderness of rank grass and
+weeds, the elysium of reptiles, iguanas, centipedes, and ten thousand
+poisonous insects. On our left, opposite the falling church, was
+another ruin; but its vulgar features owned none of the green and mossy
+dignity of age, which gave a melancholy beauty to the former. It was a
+glaring pile of naked dust and rubbish, and its shot crumbled walls and
+riddled doors told the tale of its destruction. The entire front on
+that side of the _plaza_ was in ruins, with the exception of one stout
+building on the corner diagonally opposed to us. The northern side was
+inclosed by a long, low building, with its elevated doors partly hidden
+by the far-projecting, red-tiled roof; and in front of it six or eight
+grim pieces of cannon, mounted upon wheels, gaped their black mouths
+toward us. Our own side of the square was occupied by a building
+exactly like the one opposite. The low-reaching roof was supported by
+wooden posts, and the long porch or corridor between the posts and the
+wall was paved with large earthen tiles. The doors, elevated several
+feet above this pavement to baffle the heat of a tropical sun, were
+darkened by the overhanging roof; and this, together with the effect of
+the small wooden-grated windows and the absence of furniture, gave the
+rooms a gloomy and comfortless aspect. All these buildings, with the
+exception of the ruined convent, which was of stone, were built of
+_adobes_, or large sun-dried blocks of mud; and their walls, doors, and
+staring red roofs were everywhere bruised or perforated with shot.
+
+Such was the _plaza_ and middle spot of Rivas, a town of some two or
+three thousand inhabitants, where General Walker stood at bay many
+weary days against the combined Costa Ricans, Guatemalans, and
+Chamorristas, and was netted at last. But these observations of the
+squalid _plaza_ were of another date. At present our eyes and thoughts
+fasten upon the crowd of melancholy, fever-eaten filibusters, who walk
+with heavy pace up and down the corridors, and along the paths which
+cross the grass-grown plaza. There was a morbid, yellowish glaze,
+almost universal, on their faces, and an unnatural listlessness and
+utter lack of animation in all their movements and conversation, which
+contrasted painfully with the boisterous hilarity and rugged
+healthiness of our late Californian fellow-travellers. Their appearance
+was most forlorn and despicable in a military view,--no soldier's
+uniform or spirit amongst them, only the poor man's uniform of rags and
+dirt, and the spirit of careless, disease-worn, doomed men.
+Nevertheless, all bore about them some emblem of their trade; some, for
+the most part with difficulty, carried muskets or rifles; some, the
+better-dressed and healthier looking, wore swords,--a weapon, as I
+afterwards found, distinctive of commissioned officers; some had with
+them only their pistols or cartridge-boxes, which, belted around the
+middle, served a double purpose in keeping up their ragged breeches.
+Then almost all of them, as they moved about or lay in the shade of the
+corridors, sucked or gnawed some fruit of the country,--the only thing
+which they seemed to do with energy or due sensation.
+
+Whilst I sat looking about at these miserable people, I was accosted by
+an individual whom I had known in California. He professed to be glad
+to see me; told me Nicaragua was the finest of countries; "but," said
+he, with some latent humor of too ghastly a hue, "I'm sorry you didn't
+come down with us three months ago, as you thought of doing; we've all
+been promoted. The officers and two-thirds of the men have died, and
+nearly all the rest of us are promoted. I myself am captain. You made a
+great mistake, you see."
+
+"My friend," said I, "you needn't try to frighten me. I've lived in a
+tropical climate before, and it is the healthiest part of the world for
+men of my temperament."
+
+"Then you'll be promoted," said he. "A healthy man is sure of his
+reward in this service. Do you see that fellow crossing the plaza with
+the old shoes in his hand?"
+
+"Yes," said I,--"poor man!"
+
+"He has got them off of some dead man's feet out at the hospital. They
+die out there night and day. All these men you see here will die in six
+months."
+
+After running through this humorous vein, he told me what adventures he
+had seen since joining the filibuster army; which, however, I have no
+intention to recount;--honor enough, if I may relate veridically, and
+with passable phrase, my own tamer befallings.
+
+Long after we had grown sufficiently hungry, one came from General
+Walker, and led us to a house in the outer parts of the town, where, he
+informed us, we had been allotted to quarter for the present. The same
+person further instructed us to send to the commissary, and we should
+obtain wherewith to satisfy our hunger. We did so gladly; and having
+drawn a supply of beef, tortillas, and plantains, were comparatively
+content for the rest of the day.
+
+After several days of idle loitering about the camp, our party was
+separated and ranked in divers old companies of the army. Myself and
+some few others obtained seats amongst the horsemen, and had reason to
+think ourselves happy; for the mounted part of the service was so much
+more esteemed, that lieutenants of the foot companies had been known to
+drop their rank voluntarily and take grade as private soldiers in the
+saddle.
+
+But first it was necessary to achieve our horses before we could mount;
+and to that end we were permitted, and indeed commanded, by General
+Walker, President of Nicaragua, to search the surrounding _haciendas_
+and stables, until we were satisfactorily provided. Accordingly we set
+out one morning on this errand, furnished, all of us, with rifles and
+store of ammunition, against the possibility of collision with such
+countryfolk as might desire over-ardently to keep their horses by them.
+It will not be profitable to follow our search over that magnificent
+country, diversified with groves of cocoa and plantain trees, patches
+of sugar-cane and maize, with here and there a picturesque grange
+embowered amidst orange and palm trees. Suffice it to say, that all the
+animals in the vicinity of Rivas, fit for warlike purposes, had been
+removed, and toward evening we found ourselves out amongst the hills to
+the west, beyond the circle of cultivation, and as yet with no horses
+in tow. From the summit of a high, grass-crowned hill we swept all the
+surrounding country;--toward the east spread a vast sea of verdure,
+rolled into gentle hollows and ridges, broken by the red roofs of
+Rivas, San Jorge, and Obraja; and beyond all, the lake stretching into
+misty remoteness, with its islands, and the ever-notable volcanoes,
+Madeira and Ometepec, rising abruptly out of it. It was a glorious
+scene, worthy of reverie. But we must scan it as Milton's Devil--to
+compare us with one far above us--did the hardly fairer garden of
+Paradise,--with thoughts of prey in our hearts. Nor were we
+disappointed, any more than that other greater one; for on top of an
+open ridge, a short distance west of us, we saw a solitary horse,
+tethered, and feeding composedly, as if he had nothing to fear out here
+amongst the hills. Part of us keep our eyes upon him, lest his tricky
+owner should get the alarm and remove him; whilst others plunge into
+the coppice which fills the intervening hollow, and soon reappear on
+the ridge beyond.
+
+Whilst we stood about the horse, communing doubtfully, not knowing
+where to find another, an old man approached us, and, with rueful look
+and gesture, besought us not to deprive him of the sole support of his
+life.
+
+"Beyond that hill," said he, "the Padre has many better horses. _El
+Padre está un rico hombre. Yo estoy muy pobre, Señores_."
+
+Set it down to the credit of filibusters, that we gladly surrendered
+this old man his horse, and betook ourselves to the rear of the hill
+which he pointed out to us; and there, after some search, we found, in
+close covert of tangled and almost impenetrable bushes, a small
+_corral_ of mules and horses, which the Padre had begrudged the service
+of General Walker. For my own share in the spoils of this Trojan
+adventure, I chose a well-legged mule, young, lively, and well enough
+looking generally; and thenceforward I was entitled to call myself
+"Mounted Ranger," according to General Walker's rather high-sounding
+classification.
+
+Let no one reflect upon the writer because he assisted in robbing this
+churchman of his horses. For him there was no choice; and if he is
+chargeable with moral depravity, it must be elsewhere,--forsooth, in
+joining with one who made war unprovided with a military chest
+sufficient to cover expenses. However, this is no matter, one way or
+the other. The private character of the relator, Samuel Absalom, is not
+before the reader; nor is it to be expected that he will care to turn
+his eye upon it for a moment.
+
+The ranger company in which we had been ranked was stationed below, on
+the Transit road; but as it would return to head-quarters as soon as
+the California immigrants, now due, had crossed over to the Pacific, we
+were ordered to await it there. We spent the interim foraging for our
+animals or loitering about the camp. It may be that some short
+exposition of filibuster spirit and circumstances, as we saw them at
+this leisure time, will have interest for one or two. A few weeks
+before our arrival, the prospect of the Americans in Nicaragua was
+black enough, and, indeed, despaired of by most. General Henningsen,
+with the greater part of the force, was cooped up and half starved in
+Granada, by three or four thousand Costa Ricans and Chamorristas;
+General Walker, with the remainder, lay lower down on the Isthmus,
+watched by a second division of the enemy, and too weak to give him any
+assistance. General Henningsen's men, reduced to a mere handful by
+starvation and the bullets of the enemy, could hold out but a day or
+two longer; and then the entire force of the allies would unite and
+beat up General Walker, and end the squalid game. The Central Americans
+were certain of their prey. But just at this juncture several hundred
+healthy Americans landed on the Transit road, and, placing them on one
+of the lake steamers, together with his old force, General Walker took
+them up to Granada, sent them ashore in bungos under a heavy fire, told
+them to do or die, and then paddled out into the lake with the steamer.
+It was a good stroke. The men, without other hope, fought their way
+over three successive barricades to General Henningsen, brought him
+out, setting fire to the city, reembarked on the steamer, and finally
+landed again at the fort of San Jorge, two miles east of Rivas. After
+that, General Walker gathered all his force at Rivas, and the enemy
+drew off to Granada, with some thirty or forty miles between.
+
+When we reached Nicaragua, in the latter part of December, 1856, the
+entire force of the filibusters was still in Rivas, with the exception
+of a small party stationed on the Rio San Juan, beyond the lake, and
+communicating with the Isthmus force only by means of two small
+steamers, "La Vírgen" and "San Cárlos," which plied across the lake
+between the head of the river and Virgin Bay, on the California
+passenger-line. The allies had remained inactive at Granada, and were
+said to be broken into factions, and daily deserting and returning home
+in large bodies. The isthmus of Rivas was free ground to the
+filibusters, and a score of rangers might forage with little danger
+from the Costa Rican line almost to Granada. Their force outside of the
+hospital, as we saw it at head-quarters, numbered probably from eight
+hundred to one thousand men,--one-third mere skeletons, scarcely able
+to go through drill on the _plaza_,--fit only to bury,--and the great
+majority of the remainder turning yellow, shaken daily by chills and
+fever, and soon to be as worthless as the others. They were all
+foreigners,--Americans, Germans, Irish, French, and English,--with the
+exception of one small company of natives, captained by a half-breed
+Mexican. It was said, however, that many of the poorer natives were
+willing to fight against the Chamorristas,--the aristocratic Nicaraguan
+faction originally opposed to Patricio Rivas and the Liberals, now in
+arms against General Walker,--but that they made miserable soldiers
+outside of a barricade, and General Walker had no arms to throw away
+upon them. For sustenance, the filibusters had the fruits around Rivas,
+and a small ration of tortillas and beef, furnished them daily by
+Walker's commissary. The beef, as we heard, was supplied by Señor
+Pineda, General Walker's most powerful and faithful friend amongst the
+natives; and the tortillas were bought from the native women in the
+neighborhood of Rivas. It was the quality of the food--assisted largely
+by exposure, irregular fasts, and _aguardiente_--which made Nicaragua
+so fatal to the filibusters. The isthmus between the lake and the
+Pacific, swept nine months of the year by cool eastern breezes, is not
+unhealthy. But the ration of beef and tortillas (simple maize cakes
+without salt) was too scanty and intermittent; and in the absence of
+proper food, the men were driven to fill their stomachs with the
+unwholesome fruits which everywhere surrounded their quarters, and but
+few were able to stand it many months.
+
+As to the spirit which seemed to animate these men, it was certainly
+most discouraging. They had lost all thought--supposing them to have
+ever had such thought--of regenerating Central America; and most of
+them wished no better thing than to fill their bellies, or to escape
+from Nicaragua. Many of them were sunk into a physical and mental
+lethargy, thinking of nothing and caring for nothing, and were gone,
+not a few, even into lunacy. Some cursed General Walker for enticing
+them there under false pretences. There were men with families who
+professed to have come there to settle and cultivate the soil, having
+been persuaded that the war was ended and the country prepared for
+peaceful immigration. Some had paid their own passage, purposing merely
+to reconnoïtre, and remain or not, as it pleased them; but when they
+landed in Nicaragua, General Walker placed muskets in their unwilling
+hands, and there he had kept them, fighting, not for himself or his
+promises, but for life. It disgusted others that the service was not
+only almost certain death and thankless, but was altogether
+unprofitable. It was General Walker's practice, and had been always, to
+discharge his soldiers' wages with scrip of no cash value whatever, or
+so little that many neglected to draw it when due them. And this was
+concealed at their enlistment. Indeed, the hatred towards General
+Walker and the service seemed almost universal amongst the privates,
+and they would have revolted and thrown away their arms at any moment,
+had there been hope of escape in that. But they were held together by
+common danger in a treacherous or hostile country, separated by broad
+oceans and impassable forests from a land of safe refuge. There was,
+besides, distrust of each other; and fear, though no love, of General
+Walker. He was said to have the iron will and reckless courage of the
+true man of destiny. At one time, so they told us, a large body of
+fresh, able-bodied men, just arrived in Nicaragua, refused to join the
+filibusters on account of some disappointment about the amount of
+promised wages. General Walker led out his crowd of yellow men, whom
+the newcomers might have knocked down with the wind of their fists, and
+so overawed them by this display of resolution that they forthwith
+swallowed their complaints and joined his ranks with as good a grace as
+they might. I myself, in these first days, saw a little incident which
+impressed me that the man was no trifler. I was in his quarters one
+day, when an officer came in and made a report to him about some matter
+of his duty.
+
+"Captain," said General Walker, looking serenely over the man's head,
+"if this is the way you are going to do business, Nicaragua has no
+further need for you. We want nothing of this sort done here, Sir."
+
+The fierce, big-whiskered officer said nothing, but looked cowed; and,
+indeed, not without excuse; for though there was a nasal whine in the
+tone of the little General, and no great fire in his unmeaning eye,
+there was yet a quiet self-reliance about him extremely imposing, and
+which, as I thought, reached back of any temporary sufflation as tyrant
+of Rivas, and was based upon perennial character. Nor is it contrary,
+so far as I know, to the laws of psychology, for a man to be endued
+with all the self-reliance of Bonaparte, with, at the same time, an
+unusually short gift of the great man's marvellous insight, military or
+other.
+
+Such an all-pervading demoralized spirit amongst the men as this I have
+slightly marked was sure to be contagious; and I am persuaded that
+there were few of us who came down there with enthusiasm or admiration
+for General Walker, but lost most of it during our first days' mixture
+in Rivas.
+
+At the end of some six or eight days, our company came up from the
+Transit road, without the California passengers having as yet made
+their appearance. General Walker was expecting by this steamer, so long
+due on the Atlantic side, a large body of recruits with cannon, bombs,
+and other military stores, whose arrival would put him in condition to
+attack the enemy at Granada. He began to grow uneasy; and at length
+sent an armed row-boat across the lake to the head of the Rio San Juan
+to get intelligence. The little party which held that river were
+thought to be in no danger behind the walls of San Carlos and Castillo,
+and still further protected by the impenetrable forests which stretched
+backward from either bank; but now it began to be whispered that
+General Walker had committed a fatal blunder in not using the surest
+means to keep his only communication with the Atlantic open.
+
+In the mean while our company of rangers was ordered back to the
+Transit road, to remain until the passengers crossed. We rode down by a
+trail that lay nearer the Pacific than the one by which we had first
+approached Rivas.
+
+We found the same desolate, vine-netted forest; but on this route it
+was broken at several points by grassy savannas, dotted thinly with
+calabash-trees, and browsed by a few wild mules and cattle. In one of
+these openings, several miles from the Transit road, we passed a
+red-tiled building, the only one of any sort on the trail beyond the
+ring-fenced cultivation of Rivas. It was known as the Jocote
+Ranch-house, and became afterwards the scene of a bloody defeat for the
+filibusters.
+
+Our ride terminated at a large open shed, standing on the Transit road,
+two miles east of San Juan, which had been erected by the Transit
+Company, and was used by them as shelter for their carriages. Here,
+together with a second company of mounted rangers, we were to quarter
+until the arrival of the California passengers; and then it was to be
+our duty to guard those feeble travellers through the dominions of
+President Walker to the Pacific. Our own company numbered some thirty
+heads,--men and officers,--and being but lately come to Nicaragua, were
+yet tolerably healthy and lively,--although shaken at times by chills
+and melancholy, and nearly all turning perceptibly yellow. At all times
+of the day, when not in the presence of food or drink, some of them
+were bewailing the hour they came to Nicaragua, and sighing sadly to
+escape; and had Samuel Absalom come there from any light motive of
+vanity, he had surely repented with them: as it was, he had seen a
+worse day; the life, too, was not without charms for some men, and his
+heart stayed within him through all. The other company was even smaller
+than ours, older soldiers, and in much worse health,--many of them
+having a chill daily, others wasted with perpetual diarrhoea.
+
+Our routine of duty at this camp was, to ride each day into the forest
+and hunt our ration of beef, to water our horses, and to stand an
+hour's guard occasionally at night; the remainder of consciousness we
+spent broiling and eating cow's flesh, sucking sugar-cane, and waging
+horrid warfare against a host of ravenous ticks and crawling creatures
+of basest name.
+
+One day, after we had so passed it off for a week or more, a report
+reached us from Virgin Bay, that one of the Transit steamers had been
+seen to pass up the lake toward Granada, without stopping to land the
+passengers. A little after came an order from the colonel of the
+rangers directing our party to ride with all haste to Virgin Bay, and
+garrison it against the enemy. We mounted immediately and rode over the
+Transit as fast as such beasts as we had could carry us. On the way we
+met some of the American residents of Virgin Bay, with carpet-bags in
+their hands, hurrying across to find comfort near the emigrant steamer,
+which still awaited her passengers in the harbor of San Juan. They were
+a good deal frightened, and said an attack was expected on Virgin Bay
+at any hour.
+
+When we came into the town, it was dark, and, having no time to lose in
+getting out the pickets, our horses were left tied under saddle in the
+street, and we took station, four at a post, out on the several
+approaches to the town. It seemed that nothing was known with certainty
+of the enemy; but it was doubted by no one, since the steamer had
+passed in sight of her wharf without making or answering signals, that
+the enemy were in possession of her; and it seemed probable that they
+would land somewhere that night, and attack before General Walker had
+time to prepare for them. Our force to oppose them, should they attempt
+to land at Virgin Bay, the only convenient place with a pier on the
+whole lake, was scarcely thirty in all,--a detachment from both
+companies having been sent a few days before to Rivas; and of this
+force, the privates, to a man nearly, were wanted to furnish out the
+picket-guards,--leaving a reserve body in the citadel of some
+half-dozen officers armed mostly with revolvers.
+
+All that night we listened anxiously to the ceaseless din of the lake
+breaking upon the shore; but it brought no enemy, and at morning we
+were released from guard and sent out to forage. At our shed-camp of
+the previous week the animals were turned out to feed in an inclosure,
+and we were spared the troublesome duty of foraging. But at Virgin Bay
+we were forced to go at it again under disadvantages; for the town had
+no surrounding circle of cultivation like that of Rivas,--having been
+but recently redeemed from the forest by the Transit Company,--and our
+only resource was a few distant _ranchos_ scattered up and down the
+lake shore. Beside this, we had the daily duty, as before, of searching
+the open savannas in the forest for beef,--the commissary department
+furnishing us no part of a ration but bread,--and other irregular
+expeditions, which kept us in the saddle the greater part of the day.
+
+Almost a week had passed in this manner, with no appearance or news of
+the enemy, and we had grown heartily tired of riding and watching to no
+purpose, when one day the steamer hove in sight towards the north; and
+steaming down she went to land, almost directly opposite Virgin Bay,
+against the island of Ometepec. Day after day she lay there immovable,
+with her white side gleaming dimly across the water, and far out of the
+reach of us wistful filibusters;--for although there was a small brig
+of General Walker's floating beside the pier which ran out into the
+lake, yet it was out of repair; and, in any state, the wind blew too
+strongly and constantly from the northeast for a sail vessel to make
+the island, which lay almost in its teeth. Nevertheless, carpenters
+were set at work on it, and row-boats, borrowed of the vessels in San
+Juan harbor, were hauled over the Transit road; and it was said that
+the old brig was to be filled with soldiers and worked across to the
+island by aid of the row-boats. The thing seemed far from impossible.
+The space between the island and Virgin Bay was not above ten or twelve
+miles, and for part of the distance, under lee of the great volcano,
+the wind was lull. Could the brig be worked round the wind and brought
+into this calm water, the towing thenceforward was easy; and all this
+done in the space of one night, the surprise and recapture of the
+steamer were certain. In the mean while a detachment of foot marched
+down daily from Rivas, and, without giving us any relief, marched as
+regularly back again. Our hard-worked garrison, almost worn down by
+watching and riding, and, at sight of these men, hoping always to be
+relieved, snarled bitterly at such apparently useless expenditure of
+leg-muscle,--an article, truly, of which those lean, saffron-colored
+trampers had but too scanty supply for ordinary need.
+
+One night, after the detachment of foot had gone, and there was no
+force but the rangers in the town, a large light, supposed to be under
+the boilers of the steamer, was seen on the water approaching from the
+north, and it was thought that the enemy were coming at last to attack
+us. However, when the light came almost opposite, it made toward the
+island and soon after disappeared. Next morning, looking across to the
+island, we saw a dark-colored steamer lying beside the white one; and
+we knew that the enemy were in possession of both the Transit steamers,
+and held the lake wholly at command. It was the same day, I think, that
+one of the boats was seen to be getting up steam, and shortly afterward
+she paddled out from the island, and came directly toward Virgin Bay.
+Things were quickly put in posture for a fight. The neutral residents,
+who had returned from San Juan, again set out over the Transit road.
+The squad of infantry which had just come in from Rivas was placed at
+the extreme end of the wooden pier that ran some one hundred and fifty
+yards into the lake. They were armed with rifled muskets and Minié
+ball, and hoped to kill at eight hundred or a thousand yards. The
+rangers, with arms of shorter range, waited on the shore. As the
+steamer approached, she was seen to be covered with a crowd of
+dark-skinned soldiers. She came steadily up within quarter of a mile of
+the shore, and then, suddenly turning broadside to, opened with a
+single cannon. The ball struck the water some little distance from the
+end of the pier,--after an interval implying awkward handling, another
+roar,--and then one or two nervous soldiers on the pier, not liking to
+await the ball in that place, break for the shore; but they are
+promptly knocked down by the others, and make no further progress. The
+steamer continues her fire out there leisurely, and the officer on the
+pier, being satisfied at last that she will come no closer, gives her a
+volley of musketry. In a moment the decks are cleared with a scamper,
+and no man is anywhere visible; whilst, at the same time, the steamer
+hastily puts about, and never stops until she reaches the island.
+
+This ill-supported bravado was as much as we saw of the enemy at Virgin
+Bay; for next day we were recalled to headquarters, and gladly left
+that post to the care of the infantry. When we came to Rivas, we found
+many rumors about the enemy, but it was certain only that a bungo with
+natives from the island had been captured, as it came to shore, by a
+party of rangers, and it was these prisoners' report that the enemy
+were gathering provisions on the island, and awaiting reinforcements,
+on whose arrival they would land and attack us upon the isthmus.
+
+I may as well state here the explanation, as we afterwards learned it,
+of this most unexpected reappearance of the enemy,--which came upon
+General Walker like a thunderclap, whilst he dreamed they had left him
+for good and all. It seems that the Vanderbilt Company, whom Walker had
+made enemies by ousting them from the Transit route, sent an agent (one
+Spencer) to the disheartened Costa Ricans, who showed them that they
+might easily strangle the filibuster force by seizing the ill-guarded
+Rio San Juan. Led by Spencer, they secretly cut a road through the
+forest on the Costa Rican side, found the forts scarcely watched by a
+few spiritless sick men, and overwhelmed and scattered them without
+difficulty. At the same time they surprised and seized all the Transit
+steamers on the river and lake, so that thenceforward communication
+with the Atlantic was closed to General Walker, and a large body of New
+Orleans recruits under Lockridge, who had just arrived at the mouth of
+the river, found themselves headed off, and began a long and skilless
+fight to recover the steamers and make the junction with the isthmus
+force. So, after all, Walker owes his defeat, not to the natives of
+Central America, but to his own countrymen; and, had it not been for
+the malice or revenge of Vanderbilt, he might have reigned in Nicaragua
+at this day,--unless he had blundered himself out of it unassisted, as
+many who lived with him thought he could hardly fail to do, were time
+but granted him.--After capture of the lake steamers, the Costa Ricans,
+impressing their American crews into service, took them up to Granada
+to embark the old force of Costa Ricans and Chamorristas still
+remaining there. They were on this errand when the steamer San Carlos
+was first seen to pass Virgin Bay. But what other reinforcement they
+expected, whilst they lay so long against the island after their return
+from Granada, I do not know,--unless it was the Guatemalans, who we
+knew soon afterward had joined them in large force.
+
+The next day after we had returned to Rivas, our company, now united
+again, had orders to ride to San Juan, on the Pacific, and convoy back
+some cart-loads of lead. As we were bringing our charge on the return,
+we were overtaken in the forest by an order to hasten to Virgin Bay, to
+the assistance of the infantry about to be attacked by the enemy.
+Leaving three or four of the company to follow the carts, we started
+immediately at hard gallop for Virgin Bay. When we arrived there, we
+found that the enemy, after a trifling cannonade of the town from one
+of the steamers, had put back to the island again, leaving no greater
+damage than a shot-hole in one of the row-boats,--which still lay at
+Virgin Bay awaiting the bungling delay (better worthy of greasers than
+earnest filibusters) about the brig. This demonstration against Virgin
+Bay was probably a ruse to divide the filibuster force; for, next day,
+as I recollect it, the Alcalde of Obraja, a native partisan of General
+Walker, hurried into Rivas with the news that fifteen hundred of the
+enemy had landed from the lake, ten or twelve miles above.
+
+The Alcalde brought with him to Rivas his family and valuables, and
+proved himself one of the few natives of the better class who, during
+my sojourn, took active part with the Americans. It was said, that,
+when Patricio Rivas was President, and Walker General-in-chief of his
+army, many men of wealth and station amongst the Liberals--as Rivas's
+democratic party, opposed to the Chamorristas or aristocratic party,
+were called--encouraged and thought well of their American assistants.
+But after the Chamorristas were worsted,--mainly by strength of
+Walker's Californians,--and General Walker had broken with Rivas, and
+set up for President of Nicaragua himself, almost all the natives of
+any name or property had deserted him. However, many of them remained
+on their _haciendas_, and took no part in the struggle on either side.
+Those in the vicinity of Rivas feigned sympathy with us, but were
+probably inimical at heart. Indeed, intelligence of some act of
+disaffection was continually coming to General Walker; and thereupon he
+would oust the offender, confiscate his estate to the government, and,
+perhaps, grant it to some one of his officers, or pawn it to foreign
+sympathizers for military stores. The neighborhood of Rivas was dotted
+with ranch-houses, distenanted by these means,--rank grass growing in
+the court-yards, the cactus-hedges gapped, and the crops swept away by
+the foragers. Perhaps, had these men been let alone, jealousy toward
+foreigners would not, of itself, have made them enemies; but General
+Walker was obliged to provide arms and provisions for his soldiers,
+and, having no other resource, he must come down heavily on the
+Nicaraguans, so far as he could reach them. That this was a ground of
+great disgust and odium toward us, throughout the country, our company
+of rangers, which did some foraging and mule-gathering, had good reason
+to know. I remember, on one occasion, a small party of us, armed only
+with revolvers, were retreating out of a large _hacienda_, heavily
+incumbered with horse-provender, when we saw the landlord and his
+peons, with _machetes_ in their hands, coming to meet us. As we trotted
+up toward them, the angry man stood at the roadside, lariat in hand,
+frowning, and in the attitude to arrest our foremost horseman;--but the
+filibuster drew his revolver, concealed hitherto by his burden, and
+cocked it,--and the poor man, seeing that he was unequal, was fain to
+vent his wrath in boiling words. This man, who doubtless became an
+enemy, might have been soothed, had General Walker taken the pains to
+furnish foraging-papers to the rangers. He professed himself a true
+friend of Walker's, holding all he possessed at his service; but it was
+out of his power, he said, to contain himself, whilst a troop of
+_Americanos_ were leaping his fences and ravaging his fields, without
+token of authority, or word of apology on any part. However, after all,
+General Walker may have acted for the wisest in this matter. The writer
+of this narrative was an unenlightened private in the filibuster army,
+and, of course, though open-eyed to some extent, saw all things of
+policy through a glass dimly. It may be that General Walker, who had
+opportunities for thorough acquaintance with Spanish-American
+character, held it weakness to place any trust or value upon their
+friendship, and therefore took no care to conciliate it. This has a
+look of wisdom, and would explain many apparently stupid and gratuitous
+negligences. But what shall I think when he seemed as little
+solicitous, and certainly was at no greater pains, to attach his own
+men? Instead of treating us like fellow-soldiers and adventurers in
+danger, upon whom he was wholly dependent, until his power was
+established, he bore himself like an Eastern tyrant,--reserved and
+haughty,--scarcely saluting when he met us,--mixing not at all, but
+keeping himself dose in his quarters,--some said through fear, lest
+some of his own men should shoot him, of which indeed there was great
+danger to such a man. But his treatment of the wounded was his worst
+policy. There was, it is true, a hospital at Rivas; but he never, or
+rarely, visited it; and it was so badly kept, that every good captain
+who had friends in the ranks chose the great inconvenience of nursing
+his wounded at his own quarters, rather than send them into that
+wretched hole whence few ever came out. It is true, the wounded seldom
+got well in that climate, and Walker's best general said that the
+government liked to have the enemy kill the men, rather than wound
+them; yet, had they been wiser, they would have taken care of them
+merely for the sake of the spirit of the rest.--But I have wandered
+from my narrative.
+
+Toward the evening of the same day that the faithful _alcalde_ brought
+his report, I walked down to the _plaza_, to see what stir the news had
+created among the skeleton foot-soldiers. There was no stir at all,
+outwardly. They sat in their doors and talked listlessly, without
+laughter or excitement, as they were always wont before. A hearty laugh
+or a loud voice in conversation always sounded unnaturally in the
+streets of Rivas; and, indeed, few amongst the foot found spirit for
+such things,--unless new recruits, or under the stimulus of
+_aguardiente_. As often as I have left the quarters of the more healthy
+and animated rangers in the outskirts, and walked down into the
+populous part of the camp, I have been reminded of one of those
+enchanted cities of the "Arabian Nights," where the silent inhabitants,
+though grouped about, seemingly engaged in their ordinary occupations,
+are in reality soulless, and no better than dead men or frozen fish.
+
+I took my seat in the porch of the guard-house,--that stout building
+which I have mentioned as the only one surviving the ruin on the west
+side of the _plaza_,--and watched the foot go through their evening
+drill. Classed as musketeers, riflemen, and artillery-men, they were
+trained to a part of the United States army-practice, each morning and
+evening, on the _plaza_. The rangers were taught no drill of any kind;
+and when I observed how some of the despicable officers pricked those
+feeble creatures with their swords to make them look sharp and step
+lively, I was glad enough to go without instruction in the military
+science. The men, on the present occasion, were clothed in black felt
+hats, blue cotton trousers, brogans, and blue flannel shirts, with the
+letter of their company and the number of the regiment sewed upon the
+breast in characters of white cloth. They had received this uniform, I
+think, by the steamer on which I came down, and it was become somewhat
+greasy and louse-seamed by this time; nevertheless, their appearance
+was much more soldierlike and respectable than when I first saw them.
+After the exercise was ended, the men gathered around a small brass
+band, of half a dozen Germans, which began to play in front of General
+Walker's quarters. The little General himself sat in his door, and
+looked out with impassible countenance upon the crowd in the street. It
+was an excellent conglomerate to study, for any one who could have the
+head and feeling there. What General Walker made of it, not even his
+staff-officers, who sat beside him, could tell,--if it were true, as
+was said, that he had no confidant, even amongst them.
+
+Toward dusk, as I was returning to quarters, I saw a detachment of some
+one hundred riflemen marching out on the Obraja road, to the slow tap
+of a kettle-drum, and dragging a small piece of artillery with them.
+This, with the exception of some rangers, who had been sent forward to
+scout, was the sole force yet dispatched to meet the enemy,--who were
+now said to be advanced to Obraja, a hamlet nine miles northwest of
+Rivas.
+
+[To be continued.]
+
+
+
+
+THE MINISTER'S WOOING.[1]
+
+[Concluded]
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+OLD LOVE AND NEW DUTY.
+
+The sun was just setting, and the whole air and sea seemed flooded with
+rosy rays. Even the crags and rocks of the sea-shore took purple and
+lilac hues, and savins and junipers, had a painter been required to
+represent them, would have been found not without a suffusion of the
+same tints. And through the tremulous rosy sea of the upper air, the
+silver full-moon looked out like some calm superior presence which
+waits only for the flush of a temporary excitement to die away, to make
+its tranquillizing influence felt.
+
+Mary, as she walked homeward with this dreamy light around her, moved
+with a slower step than when borne along by the vigorous arm and
+determined motion of her young friend.
+
+It is said that a musical sound uttered with decision by one instrument
+always makes the corresponding chord of another vibrate; and Mary felt,
+as she left her positive, but warm-hearted friend, a plaintive
+vibration of something in her own self, in which she was conscious her
+calm friendship for her future husband had no part. She fell into one
+of those reveries which she thought she had forever forbidden to
+herself, and there rose before her mind the picture of a
+marriage-ceremony,--but the eyes of the bridegroom were dark, and his
+curls were clustering in raven ringlets, and her hand throbbed in his
+as it had never throbbed in any other.
+
+It was just as she was coming out of a little grove of cedars, where
+the high land overlooks the sea, and the dream which came to her
+overcame her with a vague and yearning sense of pain. Suddenly she
+heard footsteps behind her, and some one said, "Mary!" It was spoken in
+a choked voice, as one speaks in the crisis of a great emotion; and she
+turned and saw those very eyes, that very hair, yes, and the cold
+little hand throbbed with that very throb in that strong, living, manly
+hand; and, whether in the body or out of the body God knoweth, she felt
+herself borne in those arms, and words that spoke themselves in her
+inner heart, words profaned by being repeated, were on her ear.
+
+"Oh! is this a dream? is this a dream? James! are we in heaven? Oh, I
+have lived through such an agony! I have been so worn out! Oh, I
+thought you never would come!" And then the eyes closed, and heaven and
+earth faded away together in a trance of blissful rest.
+
+But it was no dream; for an hour later you might have seen a manly form
+sitting in that selfsame place, bearing in his arms a pale figure which
+he cherished as tenderly as a mother her babe. And they were talking
+together,--talking in low tones; and in all this wide universe neither
+of them knew or felt anything but the great joy of being thus side by
+side.
+
+They spoke of love mightier than death, which many waters cannot
+quench. They spoke of yearnings, each for the other,--of longing
+prayers,--of hopes deferred,--and then of this great joy,--for _one_
+had hardly yet returned to the visible world.
+
+Scarce wakened from deadly faintness, she had not come back fully to
+the realm of life,--only to that of love,--to love which death cannot
+quench. And therefore it was, that, without knowing that she spoke, she
+had said all, and compressed the history of those three years into one
+hour.
+
+But at last, thoughtful of her health, provident of her weakness, he
+rose up and passed his arm around her to convey her home. And as he did
+so, he spoke one word that broke the whole charm.
+
+"You will allow me, Mary, the right of a future husband, to watch over
+your life and health."
+
+Then came back the visible world,--recollection, consciousness, and
+the great battle of duty,--and Mary drew away a little, and said,--
+
+"Oh, James, you are too late! that can never be!"
+
+He drew back from her.
+
+"Mary, are you married?"
+
+"Before God, I am," she said, "My word is pledged. I cannot retract it.
+I have suffered a good man to place his whole faith upon it,--a man who
+loves me with his whole soul."
+
+"But, Mary, you do not love _him_. _That_ is impossible!" said James,
+holding her off from him, and looking at her with an agonized
+eagerness. "After what you have just said, it is not possible."
+
+"Oh, James! I am sure I don't know what I have said,--it was all so
+sudden, and I didn't know what I was saying,--but things that I must
+never say again. The day is fixed for next week. It is all the same as
+if you had found me his wife."
+
+"Not quite," said James, his voice cutting the air with a decided
+manly ring. "I have some words to say to that yet."
+
+"Oh, James, will you be selfish? will you tempt me to do a mean,
+dishonorable thing? to be false to my word deliberately given?"
+
+"But," said James, eagerly, "you know, Mary, you _never_ would have
+given it, if you had known that I was living."
+
+"That is true, James; but I _did_ give it. I have suffered him to build
+all his hopes of life upon it. I _beg_ you not to tempt me,--help me to
+do right!"
+
+"But, Mary, did you not get my letter?"
+
+"Your letter?"
+
+"Yes,--that long letter that I wrote you."
+
+"I never got any letter, James."
+
+"Strange!" he said. "No wonder it seems sudden to you!"
+
+"Have you seen your mother?" said Mary, who was conscious this moment
+only of a dizzy instinct to turn the conversation from where she felt
+too weak to bear it.
+
+"No; do you suppose I should see anybody before you?"
+
+"Oh, then, you must go to her!" said Mary. "Oh, James, you don't know
+how she has suffered!"
+
+They were drawing near to the cottage-gate.
+
+"Do, pray!" said Mary. "Go, hurry to your mother! Don't be too sudden,
+either, for she's very weak; she is almost worn out with sorrow. Go, my
+dear brother! _Dear_ you always will be to me."
+
+James helped her into the house, and they parted. All the house was yet
+still. The open kitchen-door let in a sober square of moonlight on the
+floor. The very stir of the leaves on the trees could be heard. Mary
+went into her little room, and threw herself upon the bed, weak, weary,
+yet happy,--for deep and high above all other feelings was the great
+relief that he was living still. After a little while she heard the
+rattling of the wagon, and then the quick patter of Miss Prissy's
+feet, and her mother's considerate tones, and the Doctor's grave
+voice,--and quite unexpectedly to herself, she was shocked to find
+herself turning with an inward shudder from the idea of meeting him.
+"How very wicked!" she thought,--"how ungrateful!"--and she prayed that
+God would give her strength to check the first rising of such feelings.
+
+Then there was her mother, so ignorant and innocent, busy putting away
+baskets of things that she had bought in provision for the
+wedding-ceremony.
+
+Mary almost felt as if she had a guilty secret. But when she reflected
+upon the last two hours, she felt no wish to take them back again. Two
+little hours of joy and rest they had been,--so pure, so perfect! she
+thought God must have given them to her as a keepsake to remind her of
+His love, and to strengthen her in the way of duty.
+
+Some will, perhaps, think it an unnatural thing that Mary should have
+regarded her pledge to the Doctor as of so absolute and binding force;
+but they must remember the rigidity of her education. Self-denial and
+self-sacrifice had been the daily bread of her life. Every prayer,
+hymn, and sermon, from her childhood, had warned her to distrust her
+inclinations and regard her feelings as traitors. In particular had she
+been brought up to regard the sacredness of a promise with a
+superstitious tenacity; and in this case the promise involved so deeply
+the happiness of a friend whom she had loved and revered all her life,
+that she never thought of any way of escape from it. She had been
+taught that there was no feeling so strong but that it might be
+immediately repressed at the call of duty; and if the thought arose to
+her of this great love to another, she immediately answered it by
+saying, "How would it have been, if I had been married? As I could have
+overcome then, so I can now."
+
+Mrs. Scudder came into her room with a candle in her hand, and Mary,
+accustomed to read the expression of her mother's countenance, saw at a
+glance a visible discomposure there. She held the light so that it
+shone upon Mary's face.
+
+"Are you asleep?" she said.
+
+"No, mother."
+
+"Are you unwell?"
+
+"No, mother,--only a little tired."
+
+Mrs. Scudder set down the candle, and shut the door, and, after a
+moment's hesitation, said,--
+
+"My daughter, I have some news to tell you, which I want you to prepare
+your mind for. Keep yourself quite quiet"
+
+"Oh, mother!" said Mary, stretching out her hands towards her, "I know
+it. James has come home."
+
+"How did you hear?" said her mother, with astonishment.
+
+"I have seen him, mother."
+
+Mrs. Scudder's countenance fell.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I went to walk home with Cerinthy Twitchel, and, as I was coming back,
+he came up behind me, just at Savin Rock."
+
+Mrs. Scudder sat down on the bed and took her daughter's hand.
+
+"I trust, my dear child," she said. She stopped.
+
+"I think I know what you are going to say, mother. It is a great joy,
+and a great relief; but of course I shall be true to my engagement with
+the Doctor."
+
+Mrs. Scudder's face brightened.
+
+"That is my own daughter! I might have known that you would do so. You
+would not, certainly, so cruelly disappoint a noble man who has set his
+whole faith upon you."
+
+"No, mother, I shall not disappoint him. I told James that I should be
+true to my word."
+
+"He will probably see the justice of it," said Mrs. Scudder, in that
+easy tone with which elderly people are apt to dispose of the feelings
+of young persons. "Perhaps it may be something of a trial, at first."
+
+Mary looked at her mother with incredulous blue eyes. The idea that
+feelings which made her hold her breath when she thought of them could
+be so summarily disposed of! She turned her face wearily to the wall,
+with a deep sigh, and said,--
+
+"After all, mother, it is mercy enough and comfort enough to think that
+he is living. Poor Cousin Ellen, too,--what a relief to her! It is like
+life from the dead. Oh, I shall be happy enough; no fear of that!"
+
+"And you know," said Mrs. Scudder, "that there has never existed any
+engagement of any kind between you and James. He had no right to found
+any expectations on anything you ever told him."
+
+"That is true also, mother," said Mary, "I had never thought of such a
+thing as marriage, in relation to James."
+
+"Of course," pursued Mrs. Scudder, "he will always be to you as a near
+friend."
+
+Mary assented.
+
+"There is but a week now, before your wedding," continued Mrs. Scudder;
+"and I think Cousin James, if he is reasonable, will see the propriety
+of your mind being kept as quiet as possible. I heard the news this
+afternoon in town," pursued Mrs. Scudder, "from Captain Staunton, and,
+by a curious coincidence, I received from him this letter from James,
+which came from New York by post. The brig that brought it must have
+been delayed out of the harbor."
+
+"Oh, please, mother, give it to me!" said Mary, rising up with
+animation; "he mentioned having sent me one."
+
+"Perhaps you had better wait till morning," said Mrs. Scudder; "you are
+tired and excited."
+
+"Oh, mother, I think I shall be more composed when I know all that is
+in it," said Mary, still stretching out her hand.
+
+"Well, my daughter, you are the best judge," said Mrs. Scudder; and she
+set down the candle on the table, and left Mary alone.
+
+It was a very thick letter of many pages, dated in Canton, and ran as
+follows:--
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+JACOB'S VOW.
+
+"My Dearest Mary:--
+
+"I have lived through many wonderful scenes since I saw you last. My
+life has been so adventurous, that I scarcely know myself when I think
+of it. But it is not of _that_ I am going now to write. I have written
+all that to mother, and she will show it to you. But since I parted
+from you, there has been another history going on within me; and that
+is what I wish to make you understand, if I can.
+
+"It seems to me that I have been a changed man from that afternoon when
+I came to your window, where we parted. I have never forgot how you
+looked then, nor what you said. Nothing in my life ever had such an
+effect upon me. I thought that I loved you before; but I went away
+feeling that love was something so deep and high and sacred, that I was
+not worthy to name it to you. I cannot think of the man in the world
+who is worthy of what you said you felt for me.
+
+"From _that_ hour there was a new purpose in my soul,--a purpose which
+has led me upward ever since. I thought to myself in this way: 'There
+is some secret source from whence this inner life springs,'--and I knew
+that it was connected with the Bible which you gave me; and so I
+thought I would read it carefully and deliberately, to see what I could
+make of it.
+
+"I began with the beginning. It impressed me with a sense of something
+quaint and strange,--something rather fragmentary; and yet there were
+spots all along that went right to the heart of a man who had to deal
+with life and things as I did. Now I must say that the Doctor's
+preaching, as I told you, never impressed me much in any way. I could
+not make out any connection between it and the men I had to manage and
+the things I had to do in my daily life. But there were things in the
+Bible that struck me otherwise. There was _one_ passage in particular,
+and that was where Jacob started off from all his friends to go and
+seek his fortune in a strange country, and laid down to sleep all alone
+in the field, with only a stone for his pillow. It seemed to me exactly
+the image of what every young man is like, when he leaves his home and
+goes out to shift for himself in this hard world. I tell you, Mary,
+that one man alone on the great ocean of life feels himself a very weak
+thing. We are held up by each other more than we know till we go off by
+ourselves into this great experiment. Well, there he was as lonesome as
+_I_ upon the deck of my ship. And so lying with the stone under his
+head, he saw a ladder in his sleep between him and heaven, and angels
+going up and down. That was a sight which came to the very point of his
+necessities. He saw that there was a way between him and God, and that
+there were those above who did care for him, and who could come to him
+to help him.
+
+"Well, so the next morning he got up, and set up the stone to mark the
+place; and it says Jacob vowed a vow, saying, 'If God will be with me,
+and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat
+and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in
+peace, _then_ shall the Lord be my God.' Now _there_ was something that
+looked to me like a tangible foundation to begin upon.
+
+"If I understand Dr. H., I believe he would have called that all
+selfishness. At first sight it does look a little so; but then I
+thought of it in this way: 'Here he was all alone. God was entirely
+invisible to him; and how could he feel certain that He really existed,
+unless he could come into some kind of connection with Him? the point
+that he wanted to be sure of, more than merely to know that there was a
+God who made the world;--he wanted to know whether He cared anything
+about men, and would do anything to help them. And so, in fact, it was
+saying, "If there is a God who interests Himself at all in me, and will
+be my Friend and Protector, I will obey Him, so far as I can find out
+His will."'
+
+"I thought to myself, 'This is the great experiment, and I will try
+it.' I made in my heart exactly the same resolution, and just quietly
+resolved to assume for a while as a fact that there _was_ such a God,
+and, whenever I came to a place where I could not help myself, just to
+ask His help honestly in so many words, and see what would come of it.
+
+"Well, as I went on reading through the Old Testament, I was more and
+more convinced that all the men of those times had tried this
+experiment, and found that it would bear them; and in fact, I did begin
+to find, in my own experience, a great many things happening so
+remarkably that I could not but think that _Somebody_ did attend even
+to my prayers,--I began to feel a trembling faith that _Somebody_ was
+guiding me, and that the events of my life were not happening by
+accident, but working themselves out by His will.
+
+"Well, as I went on in this way, there were other and higher thoughts
+kept rising in my mind. I wanted to be better than I was. I had a sense
+of a life much nobler and purer than anything I had ever lived, that I
+wanted to come up to. But in the world of men, as I found it, such
+feelings are always laughed down as romantic, and impracticable, and
+impossible. But about this time I began to read the New Testament, and
+then the idea came to me, that the same Power that helped me in the
+lower sphere of life would help me carry out those higher aspirations.
+Perhaps the Gospels would not have interested me so much, if I had
+begun with them first; but my Old Testament life seemed to have
+schooled me, and brought me to a place where I wanted something higher;
+and I began to notice that my prayers now were more that I might be
+noble, and patient, and self-denying, and constant in my duty, than
+for any other kind of help. And then I understood what met me in the
+very first of Matthew: 'Thou shall call his name Jesus, for he shall
+save his people from their sins.'
+
+"I began now to live a new life,--a life in which I felt myself coming
+into sympathy with you; for, Mary, when I began to read the Gospels, I
+took knowledge of you, that you had been with Jesus.
+
+"The crisis of my life was that dreadful night of the shipwreck. It was
+as dreadful as the Day of Judgment. No words of mine can describe to
+you what I felt when I knew that our rudder was gone, and saw those
+hopeless rocks before us. What I felt for our poor men! But, in the
+midst of it all, the words came into my mind, 'And Jesus was in the
+hinder part of the ship asleep on a pillow,' and at once I felt He was
+there; and when the ship struck I was only conscious of an intense
+going out of my soul to Him, like Peter's when he threw himself from
+the ship to meet Him in the waters.
+
+"I will not recapitulate what I have already written,--the wonderful
+manner in which I was saved, and in which friends and help and
+prosperity and worldly success came to me again, after life had seemed
+all lost; but now I am ready to return to my country, and I feel as
+Jacob did when he said, 'With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and
+now I am become two bands.'
+
+"I do not need any arguments now to convince me that the Bible is from
+above. There is a great deal in it that I cannot understand, a great
+deal that seems to me inexplicable; but all I can say is, that I have
+tried its directions, and find that in my case they do work,--that it
+is a book that I can live by; and that is enough for me.
+
+"And now, Mary, I am coming home again, quite another man from what I
+went out,--with a whole new world of thought and feeling in my heart,
+and a new purpose, by which, please God, I mean to shape my life. All
+this, under God, I owe to you; and if you will let me devote my whole
+life to you, it will be a small return for what you have done for me.
+
+"You know I left you wholly free. Others must have seen your loveliness
+and felt your worth; and you may have learnt to love some better man
+than me. But I know not what hope tells me that this will not be; and I
+shall find true what the Bible says of love, that 'many waters cannot
+quench it, nor floods drown.' In any case, I shall be always, from my
+very heart, yours, and yours only.
+
+"JAMES MARVYN."
+
+Mary rose, after reading this letter, rapt into a divine state of
+exaltation,--the pure joy, in contemplating an infinite good to
+another, in which the question of self was utterly forgotten.
+
+He was, then, what she had always hoped and prayed he would be, and she
+pressed the thought triumphantly to her heart. He was that true and
+victorious man, that Christian able to subdue life, and to show, in a
+perfect and healthy manly nature, a reflection of the image of the
+superhuman excellence. Her prayers that night were aspirations and
+praises, and she felt how possible it might be so to appropriate the
+good and the joy and the nobleness of others as to have in them an
+eternal and satisfying treasure. And with this came the dearer thought,
+that she, in her weakness and solitude, had been permitted to put her
+hand to the beginning of a work so noble. The consciousness of good
+done to an immortal spirit is wealth that neither life nor death can
+take away.
+
+And so, having prayed, she lay down to that sleep which God giveth to
+his beloved.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+THE QUESTION OF DUTY.
+
+It is a hard condition, of our existence here, that every exaltation
+must have its depression. God will not let us have heaven here below,
+but only such glimpses and faint showings as parents sometimes give to
+children, when they show them beforehand the jewelry and pictures and
+stores of rare and curious treasures which they hold for the possession
+of their riper years. So it very often happens that the man who has
+gone to bed an angel, feeling as if all sin were forever vanquished,
+and he himself immutably grounded in love, may wake the next morning
+with a sick-headache, and, if he be not careful, may scold about his
+breakfast like a miserable sinner.
+
+We will not say that our dear little Mary rose in this condition next
+morning,--for, although she had the headache, she had one of those
+natures in which, somehow or other, the combative element seems to be
+left out, so that no one ever knew her to speak a fretful word. But
+still, as we have observed, she had the headache and the
+depression,--and there came the slow, creeping sense of waking up,
+through all her heart and soul, of a thousand, thousand things that
+could be said only to one person, and that person one that it would be
+temptation and danger to say them to.
+
+She came out of her room to her morning work with a face resolved and
+calm, but expressive of languor, with slight signs of some inward
+struggle.
+
+Madame de Frontignac, who had already heard the intelligence, threw two
+or three of her bright glances upon her at breakfast, and at once
+divined how the matter stood. She was of a nature so delicately
+sensitive to the most refined shades of honor, that she apprehended at
+once that there must be a conflict,--though, judging by her own
+impulsive nature, she made no doubt that all would at once go down
+before the mighty force of reawakened love.
+
+After breakfast she would insist upon following Mary about through all
+her avocations. She possessed herself of a towel, and would wipe the
+cups and saucers, while Mary washed. She clinked the glasses, and
+rattled the cups and spoons, and stepped about as briskly as if she had
+two or three breezes to carry her train, and chattered half English and
+half French, for the sake of bringing into Mary's cheek the shy, slow
+dimples that she liked to watch. But still Mrs. Scudder was around,
+with an air as provident and forbidding as that of a sitting hen who
+watches her nest; nor was it till after all things had been cleared
+away in the house, and Mary had gone up into her little attic to spin,
+that the long-sought opportunity came of diving to the bottom of this
+mystery.
+
+"_Enfin, Marie, nous voici!_ Are you not going to tell me anything,
+when I have turned my heart out to you like a bag? _Chère enfant!_ how
+happy you must be!" she said, embracing her.
+
+"Yes, I am very happy," said Mary, with calm gravity.
+
+"_Very happy!_" said Madame de Frontignac, mimicking her manner. "Is
+that the way you American girls show it, when you are very happy? Come,
+come, _ma belle_! tell little Virginie something. Thou hast seen this
+hero, this wandering Ulysses. He has come back at last; the tapestry
+will not be quite as long as Penelope's? Speak to me of him. Has he
+beautiful black eyes, and hair that curls like a grape-vine? Tell me,
+_ma belle_!"
+
+"I only saw him a little while," said Mary, "and I felt a great deal
+more than I saw. He could not have been any clearer to me than he
+always has been in my mind."
+
+"But I think," said Madame de Frontignac, seating Mary, as was her
+wont, and sitting down at her feet, "I think you are a little _triste_
+about this. Very likely you pity the good priest. It is sad for him;
+but a good priest has the Church for his bride, you know."
+
+"You do not think," said Mary, speaking seriously, "that I shall break
+my promise given before God to this good man?"
+
+"_Mon Dieu, mon enfant!_ you do not mean to marry the priest, after
+all? _Quelle idée!_"
+
+"But I _promised_ him," said Mary.
+
+Madame de Frontignac threw up her hands, with an expression of
+vexation.
+
+"What a pity, my little one, you are not in the True Church! Any good
+priest could dispense you from that."
+
+"I do not believe," said Mary, "in any earthly power that can dispense
+us from solemn obligations which we have assumed before God, and on
+which we have suffered others to build the most precious hopes. If
+James had won the affections of some girl, thinking as I do, I should
+not think it right for him to leave her and come to me. The Bible says,
+that the just man is 'he that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth
+not.'"
+
+"_C'est le sublime de devoir!_" said Madame de Frontignac, who, with
+the airy frailty of her race, never lost her appreciation of the fine
+points of anything that went on under her eyes. But, nevertheless, she
+was inwardly resolved, that, picturesque as this "sublime of duty" was,
+it must not be allowed to pass beyond the limits of a fine art, and so
+she recommenced.
+
+"_Mais c'est absurde_. This beautiful young man, with his black eyes,
+and his curls,--a real hero,--a Theseus, Mary,--just come home from
+killing a Minotaur,--and loves you with his whole heart,--and this
+dreadful promise! Why, haven't you any sort of people in your Church
+that can unbind you from promises? I should think the good priest
+himself would do it!"
+
+"Perhaps he would," said Mary, "if I should ask him; but that would be
+equivalent to a breach of it. Of course, no man would marry a woman
+that asked to be dispensed."
+
+"You are an angel of delicacy, my child; _c'est admirable!_ but, after
+all, Mary, this is not well. Listen now to me. You are a very sweet
+saint, and very strong in goodness. I think you must have a very strong
+angel that takes care of you. But think, _chère enfant,_--think what it
+is to marry one man while you love another!"
+
+"But I love the Doctor," said Mary, evasively.
+
+"_Love!_" said Madame de Frontignac. "Oh, Marie! you may love him well,
+but you and I both know that there is something deeper than that. What
+will you _do_ with this young man? Must he move away from this place,
+and not be with his poor mother any more? Or can you see him, and hear
+him, and be with him, after your marriage, and not feel that you love
+him more than your husband?"
+
+"I should hope that God would help me to feel right," said Mary.
+
+"I am very much afraid He will not, _ma chère._ I asked Him a great
+many times to help _me,_ when I found how wrong it all was; but He did
+not. You remember what you told me the other day,--that, if I would do
+right, I must not _see_ that man any more. You will have to ask him to
+go away from this place; you can never see him; for this love will
+never die till you die;--that you may be sure of. Is it wise? is it
+right, dear little one? _Must_ he leave his home forever for you? or
+must you struggle always, and grow whiter and whiter, and fall away
+into heaven, like the moon this morning, and nobody know what is the
+matter? People will say you have the liver-complaint, or the
+consumption, or something. Nobody ever knows what we women die of."
+
+Poor Mary's conscience was fairly posed. This appeal struck upon her
+sense of right as having its grounds. She felt inexpressibly confused
+and distressed.
+
+"Oh, I wish somebody would tell me exactly what is right!" she said.
+
+"Well, _I_ will," said Madame de Frontignac. "Go down to the dear
+priest, and tell him the whole truth. My dear child, do you think, if
+he should ever find it out after your marriage, he would think you used
+him right?"
+
+"And yet _mother_ does not think so; mother does not wish me to tell
+him."
+
+"_Pauvrette, toujours les mères!_ Yes, it is always the mothers that
+stand in the way of the lovers. Why cannot she marry the priest
+herself?" she said between her teeth, and then looked up, startled and
+guilty, to see if Mary had heard her.
+
+"I _cannot,_" said Mary,--"I cannot go against my conscience, and my
+mother, and my best friend."
+
+At this moment, the conference was cut short by Mrs. Scudder's
+provident footsteps on the garret-stairs. A vague suspicion of
+something French had haunted her during her dairy-work, and she
+resolved to come and put a stop to the interview, by telling Mary that
+Miss Prissy wanted her to come and be measured for the skirt of her
+dress.
+
+Mrs. Scudder, by the use of that sixth sense peculiar to mothers, had
+divined that there had been some agitating conference, and, had she
+been questioned about it, her guesses as to what it might have been
+would probably have given no bad _résumé_ of the real state of the
+case. She was inwardly resolved that there should be no more such for
+the present, and kept Mary employed about various matters relating to
+the dresses, so scrupulously that there was no opportunity for anything
+more of the sort that day.
+
+In the evening James Marvyn came down, and was welcomed with the
+greatest demonstrations of joy by all but Mary, who sat distant and
+embarrassed, after the first salutations had passed.
+
+The Doctor was innocently paternal; but we fear that on the part of the
+young man there was small reciprocation of the sentiments he expressed.
+
+Miss Prissy, indeed, had had her heart somewhat touched, as good little
+women's hearts are apt to be by a true love-story, and had hinted
+something of her feelings to Mrs. Scudder, in a manner which brought
+such a severe rejoinder as quite humbled and abashed her, so that she
+coweringly took refuge under her former declaration, that, "to be sure,
+there couldn't be any man in the world better _worthy_ of Mary than the
+Doctor," while still at her heart she was possessed with that
+troublesome preference for unworthy people which stands in the way of
+so many excellent things. But she went on vigorously sewing upon the
+wedding-dress, and pursing up her small mouth into the most perfect and
+guarded expression of non-committal; though she said afterwards, "it
+went to her heart to see how that poor young man did look, sitting
+there just as noble and as handsome as a picture. She didn't see, for
+_her_ part, how anybody's heart _could_ stand it; though, to be sure,
+as Miss Scudder said, the poor Doctor ought to be thought about, dear
+blessed man! What a pity it was things _would_ turn out so! Not that it
+was a pity that Jim came home,--that was a great providence,--but a
+pity they hadn't known about it sooner. Well, for her part, she didn't
+pretend to say; the path of duty did have a great many hard places in
+it."
+
+As for James, during his interview at the cottage, he waited and tried
+in vain for one moment's private conversation. Mrs. Scudder was
+immovable in her motherly kindness, sitting there, smiling and chatting
+with him, but never stirring from her place by Mary.
+
+Madame de Frontignac was out of all patience, and determined, in her
+small way, to do something to discompose the fixed state of things. So,
+retreating to her room, she contrived, in very desperation, to upset
+and break a water-pitcher, shrieking violently in French and English at
+the deluge which came upon the sanded floor and the little piece of
+carpet by the bedside.
+
+What housekeeper's instincts are proof against the crash of breaking
+china?
+
+Mrs. Scudder fled from her seat, followed by Miss Prissy.
+
+"Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro," while Mary sat quiet as a
+statue, bending over her sewing, and James, knowing that it must be now
+or never, was, like a flash, in the empty chair by her side, with his
+black moustache very near to the bent brown head.
+
+"Mary," he said, "you _must_ let me see you once more. All is not said,
+is it? Just hear me,--hear me once alone!"
+
+"Oh, James, I am too weak!--I dare not!--I am afraid of myself!"
+
+"You think," he said, "that you _must_ take this course, because it is
+right. But _is_ it right? Is it right to marry one man, when you love
+another better? I don't put this to your inclination, Mary,--I know it
+would be of no use,--I put it to your conscience."
+
+"Oh, I was never so perplexed before!" said Mary. "I don't know what I
+_do_ think. I must have time to reflect. And you,--oh, James!--you
+_must_ let me do right! There will never be any happiness for me, if I
+do wrong,--nor for you, either."
+
+All this while the sounds of running and hurrying in Madame de
+Frontignac's room had been unintermitted; and Miss Prissy, not without
+some glimmerings of perception, was holding tight on to Mrs. Scudder's
+gown, detailing to her a most capital receipt for mending broken china,
+the history of which she traced regularly through all the families in
+which she had ever worked, varying the details with small items of
+family history, and little incidents as to the births, marriages, and
+deaths of different people for whom it had been employed, with all the
+particulars of how, where, and when, so that James's time for
+conversation was by this means indefinitely extended.
+
+"Now," he said to Mary, "let me propose one thing. Let _me_ go to the
+Doctor, and tell him the truth."
+
+"James, it does not seem to me that I can. A friend who has been so
+considerate, so kind, so self-sacrificing and disinterested, and whom I
+have allowed to go on with this implicit faith in me so long. Should
+you, James, think of _yourself_ only?"
+
+"I do nor, I trust, think of myself only," said James; "I hope that I
+am calm enough, and have a heart to think for others. But, I ask you,
+is it doing right to _him_ to let him marry you in ignorance of the
+state of your feelings? Is it a kindness to a good and noble man to
+give yourself to him only seemingly, when the best and noblest part of
+your affections is gone wholly beyond your control? I am quite sure of
+_that_, Mary. I know you do love him very well,--that you would make a
+most true, affectionate, constant wife to him; but what I know you feel
+for me is something wholly out of your power to give to him,--is it
+not, now?"
+
+"I think it is," said Mary, looking gravely and deeply thoughtful "But
+then, James, I ask myself, 'What if this had happened a week hence?' My
+feelings would have been just the same, because they are feelings over
+which I have no more control than over my existence. I can only control
+the expression of them. But in _that_ case you would not have asked me
+to break my marriage-vow; and why now shall I break a solemn vow
+deliberately made before God? If what I can give him will content him,
+and he never knows that which would give him pain, what wrong is done
+him?"
+
+"I should think the deepest possible wrong done me," said James, "if,
+when I thought I had married a wife with a whole heart, I found that
+the greater part of it had been before that given to another. If you
+tell him, or if I tell him, or your mother,--who is the proper person,
+and he chooses to hold you to your promise, then, Mary, I have no more
+to say. I shall sail in a few weeks again, and carry your image forever
+in my heart;--nobody can take that away; that dear shadow will be the
+only wife I shall ever know."
+
+At this moment Miss Prissy came rattling along towards the door,
+talking--we suspect designedly--on quite a high key. Mary hastily
+said,--
+
+"Wait, James,--let me think,--tomorrow is the Sabbath-day. Monday I
+will send you word, or see you."
+
+And when Miss Prissy returned into the best room, James was sitting at
+one window and Mary at another,--he making remarks, in a style of most
+admirable commonplace, on a copy of Milton's "Paradise Lost," which he
+had picked up in the confusion of the moment, and which, at the time
+Mrs. Katy Scudder entered, he was declaring to be a most excellent
+book,--a really, truly, valuable work.
+
+Mrs. Scudder looked keenly from one to the other, and saw that Mary's
+cheek was glowing like the deepest heart of a pink shell, while, in all
+other respects, she was as cold and calm. On the whole, she felt
+satisfied that no mischief had been done.
+
+We hope our readers will do Mrs. Scudder justice. It is true that she
+yet wore on her third finger the marriage-ring of a sailor lover, and
+his memory was yet fresh in her heart; but even mothers who have
+married for love themselves somehow so blend a daughter's existence
+with their own as to conceive that she must marry their love, and not
+her own. Besides this, Mrs. Scudder was an Old Testament woman, brought
+up with that scrupulous exactitude of fidelity in relation to promises
+which would naturally come from familiarity with a book in which
+covenant-keeping is represented as one of the highest attributes of
+Deity, and covenant-breaking as one of the vilest sins of humanity. To
+break the word that had gone forth out of one's mouth was to lose
+self-respect, and all claim to the respect of others, and to sin
+against eternal rectitude.
+
+As we have said before, it is almost impossible to make our
+light-minded times comprehend the earnestness with which those people
+lived. It was, in the beginning, no vulgar nor mercenary ambition that
+made her seek the Doctor as a husband for her daughter. He was poor,
+and she had had offers from richer men. He was often unpopular; but he
+of all the world was the man she most revered, the man she believed in
+with the most implicit faith, the man who embodied her highest ideas of
+the good; and therefore it was that she was willing to resign her child
+to him.
+
+As to James, she had felt truly sympathetic with his mother, and with
+Mary, in the dreadful hour when they supposed him lost; and had it not
+been for the great perplexity occasioned by his return, she would have
+received him, as a relative, with open arms. But now she felt it her
+duty to be on the defensive,--an attitude not the most favorable for
+cherishing pleasing associations in regard to another. She had read the
+letter giving an account of his spiritual experience with very sincere
+pleasure, as a good woman should, but not without an internal
+perception how very much it endangered her favorite plans. When Mary,
+however, had calmly reiterated her determination, she felt sure of her;
+for had she ever known her to say a thing she did not do?
+
+The uneasiness she felt at present, was not the doubt of her daughter's
+steadiness, but the fear that she might have been unsuitably harassed
+or annoyed.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+THE TRANSFIGURED.
+
+The next morning rose calm and fair. It was the Sabbath-day,--the last
+Sabbath in Mary's maiden life, if her promises and plans were
+fulfilled.
+
+Mary dressed herself in white,--her hands trembling with unusual
+agitation, her sensitive nature divided between two opposing
+consciences and two opposing affections. Her devoted filial love toward
+the Doctor made her feel the keenest sensitiveness at the thought of
+giving him pain. At the same time, the questions which James had
+proposed to her had raised serious doubts in her mind whether it was
+altogether right to suffer him blindly to enter into this union. So,
+after she was all prepared, she bolted the door of her chamber, and,
+opening her Bible, read, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of
+God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall
+be given him"; and then, kneeling down by the bedside, she asked that
+God would give her some immediate light in her present perplexity. So
+praying, her mind grew calm and steady, and she rose up at the sound of
+the bell which marked that it was time to set forward for church.
+
+Everybody noticed, as she came into church that morning, how beautiful
+Mary Scudder looked. It was no longer the beauty of the carved statue,
+the pale alabaster shrine, the sainted virgin, but a warm, bright,
+living light, that spoke of some summer breath breathing within her
+soul.
+
+When she took her place in the singers' seat, she knew, without turning
+her head, that he was in his old place, not far from her side; and
+those whose eyes followed her to the gallery marvelled at her face
+there,--
+
+        "her pure and eloquent blood
+    Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought
+    That you might almost say her body thought";
+
+for a thousand delicate nerves were becoming vital once more,--the holy
+mystery of womanhood had wrought within her.
+
+When they rose to sing, the tune must needs be one which they had often
+sung together, out of the same book, at the singing-school,--one of
+those wild, pleading tunes, dear to the heart of New England,--born, if
+we may credit the report, in the rocky hollows of its mountains, and
+whose notes have a kind of grand and mournful triumph in their warbling
+wail, and in which different parts of the harmony, set contrary to all
+the canons of musical Pharisaism, had still a singular and romantic
+effect, which a true musical genius would not have failed to recognize.
+The four parts, tenor, treble, bass, and counter, as they were then
+called, rose and swelled and wildly mingled, with the fitful
+strangeness of Aeolian harp, or of winds in mountain-hollows, or the
+vague moanings of the sea on lone, forsaken shores. And Mary, while her
+voice rose over the waves of the treble, and trembled with a pathetic
+richness, felt, to her inmost heart, the deep accord of that other
+voice which rose to meet hers, so wildly melancholy, as if the soul in
+that manly breast had come to meet her soul in the disembodied, shadowy
+verity of eternity. The grand old tune, called by our fathers "China,"
+never, with its dirge-like melody, drew two souls more out of
+themselves, and entwined them more nearly with each other.
+
+The last verse of the hymn spoke of the resurrection of the saints with
+Christ:
+
+  "Then let the last dread trumpet sound
+     And bid the dead arise;
+   Awake, ye nations under ground!
+     Ye saints, ascend the skies!"
+
+And as Mary sang, she felt sublimely upborne with the idea that life is
+but a moment and love is immortal, and seemed, in a shadowy trance, to
+feel herself and him past this mortal fane, far over on the shores of
+that other life, ascending with Christ, all-glorified, all tears wiped
+away, and with full permission to love and to be loved forever. And as
+she sang, the Doctor looked upward, and marvelled at the light in her
+eyes and the rich bloom on her cheek,--for where she stood, a sunbeam,
+streaming aslant through the dusty panes of the window, touched her
+head with a kind of glory,--and the thought he then received
+outbreathed itself in the yet more fervent adoration of his prayer.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+THE ICE BROKEN.
+
+Our fathers believed in special answers to prayer. They were not
+stumbled by the objection about the inflexibility of the laws of
+Nature; because they had the idea, that, when the Creator of the world
+promised to answer human prayers, He probably understood the laws of
+Nature as well as they did. At any rate, the laws of Nature were His
+affair, and not theirs. They were men, very apt, as the Duke of
+Wellington said, to "look to their marching-orders,"--which, being
+found to read, "Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and
+supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto
+God," they did it. "They looked unto Him and were lightened, and their
+faces were not ashamed." One reads, in the Memoirs of Dr. Hopkins, of
+Newport Gardner, one of his African catechumens, a negro of singular
+genius and ability, who, being desirous of his freedom, that he might
+be a missionary to Africa, and having long worked without being able to
+raise the amount required, was counselled by Dr. Hopkins that it might
+be a shorter way to seek his freedom from the Lord, by a day of solemn
+fasting and prayer. The historical fact is, that, on the evening of a
+day so consecrated, his master returned from church, called Newport to
+him, and presented him with his freedom. Is it not possible that He who
+made the world may have established laws for prayer as invariable as
+those for the sowing of seed and raising of grain? Is it not as
+legitimate a subject of inquiry, when petitions are not answered, which
+of these laws has been neglected?
+
+But be that as it may, certain it is, that Candace, who on this morning
+in church sat where she could see Mary and James in the singers' seat,
+had certain thoughts planted in her mind which bore fruit afterwards in
+a solemn and select consultation held with Miss Prissy at the end of
+the horse-shed by the meeting-house, during the intermission between
+the morning and afternoon services.
+
+Candace sat on a fragment of granite boulder which lay there, her black
+face relieved against a clump of yellow mulleins, then in majestic
+altitude. On her lap was spread a checked pocket-handkerchief,
+containing rich slices of cheese, and a store of her favorite brown
+doughnuts.
+
+"Now, Miss Prissy," she said, "dar's _reason_ in all tings, an' a good
+deal _more_ in some tings dan dar is in oders. Dar's a good deal more
+reason in two young, handsome folks comin' togeder dan dar is in"----
+
+Candace finished the sentence by an emphatic flourish of her doughnut.
+
+"Now, as long as eberybody thought Jim Marvyn was dead, dar wa'n't
+nothin' else in de world _to_ be done _but_ marry de Doctor. But, good
+lan! I hearn him a-talkin' to Miss Marvyn las' night; it kinder' mos'
+broke my heart. Why, dem two poor creeturs, dey's jest as onhappy's dey
+can be! An' she's got too much feelin' for de Doctor to say a word; an'
+_I_ say _he oughter be told on't!_ dat's what _I_ say," said Candace,
+giving a decisive bite to her doughnut.
+
+"I say so, too," said Miss Prissy. "Why, I never had such bad feelings
+in my life as I did yesterday, when that young man came down to our
+house. He was just as pale as a cloth. I tried to say a word to Miss
+Scudder, but she snapped me up so! She's an awful decided woman when
+her mind's made up. I was telling Cerinthy Ann Twitchel,--she came
+round me this noon,--that it didn't exactly seem to me right that
+things should go on as they are going. And says I, 'Cerinthy Ann, I
+don't know anything what to do.' And says she, 'If I was you, I know
+what _I'd_ do,--I'd tell the Doctor,' says she. 'Nobody ever takes
+offence at anything _you_ do, Miss Prissy.' To be sure," added Miss
+Prissy, "I have talked to people about a good many things that it's
+rather strange I should; 'cause I a'n't one, somehow, that can let
+things go that seem to want doing. I always told folks that I should
+spoil a novel before it got half-way through the first volume, by
+blurting out some of those things that they let go trailing on so, till
+everybody gets so mixed up they don't know what they're doing."
+
+"Well, now, honey," said Candace, authoritatively, "ef you's got any
+notions o' dat kind, I tink it mus' come from de good Lord, an' I
+'dvise you to be 'tendin' to't, right away. You jes' go 'long an' tell
+de Doctor yourself all you know, an' den le's see what'll come on't. I
+tell you, I b'liebe it'll be one o' de bes' day's works you eber did in
+your life!"
+
+"Well," said Miss Prissy, "I guess tonight, before I go to bed, I'll
+make a dive at him. When a thing's once out, it's out, and can't be got
+in again, even if people don't like it; and that's a mercy, anyhow. It
+really makes me feel 'most wicked to think of it, for he is the most
+blessedest man!"
+
+"Dat's what he _is_" said Candace. "But de blessedest man in de world
+oughter know de truth; dat's what _I_ tink!"
+
+"Yes,--true enough!" said Miss Prissy. "I'll tell him, anyway."
+
+Miss Prissy was as good as her word; for that evening, when the Doctor
+had retired to his study, she took her life in her hand, and, walking
+swiftly as a cat, tapped rather timidly at the study-door, which the
+Doctor opening said, benignantly,--
+
+"Ah, Miss Prissy!"
+
+"If you please, Sir," said Miss Prissy, "I'd like a little
+conversation."
+
+The Doctor was well enough used to such requests from the female
+members of his church, which, generally, were the prelude to some
+disclosures of internal difficulties or spiritual experiences. He
+therefore graciously motioned her to a chair.
+
+"I thought I must come in," she began, busily twirling a bit of her
+Sunday gown. "I thought--that is--I felt it my duty--I thought--
+perhaps--I ought to tell you--that perhaps you ought to know."
+
+The Doctor looked civilly concerned. He did not know but Miss Prissy's
+wits were taking leave of her. He replied, however, with his usual
+honest stateliness,--
+
+"I trust, dear Madam, that you will feel perfect freedom to open to me
+any exercises of mind that you may have."
+
+"It isn't about myself," said Miss Prissy. "If you please, it's about
+you and Mary!"
+
+The Doctor now looked awake in right earnest, and very much astonished
+besides; and he looked eagerly at Miss Prissy, to have her go on.
+
+"I don't know how you would view such a matter," said Miss Prissy; "but
+the fact is, that James Marvyn and Mary always did love each other,
+ever since they were children."
+
+Still the Doctor was unawakened to the real meaning of the words, and
+he answered, simply,--
+
+"I should be far from wishing to interfere with so very natural and
+universal a sentiment, which, I make no doubt, is all quite as it
+should be."
+
+"No,--but," said Miss Prissy, "you don't understand what I mean. I mean
+that James Marvyn wanted to marry Mary, and that she was--well--she
+wasn't engaged to him, but"----
+
+"Madam!" said the Doctor, in a voice that frightened Miss Prissy out of
+her chair, while a blaze like sheet-lightning shot from his eyes, and
+his face flushed crimson.
+
+"Mercy on us! Doctor, I hope you'll excuse me; but there the fact
+is,--I've said it out,--the fact is, they wa'n't engaged; but that Mary
+loved him ever since he was a boy, as she never will and never can love
+any man again in this world, is what I'm just as sure of as that I'm
+standing here; and I've felt you ought to know it: 'cause I'm quite
+sure, that, if he'd been alive, she'd never given the promise she
+has,--the promise that she means to keep, if her heart breaks, and his
+too. They wouldn't anybody tell you, and I thought I must tell you;
+'cause I thought you'd know what was right to do about it."
+
+During all this latter speech the Doctor was standing with his back to
+Miss Prissy, and his face to the window, just as he did some time
+before, when Mrs. Scudder came to tell him of Mary's consent. He made a
+gesture backward, without speaking, that she should leave the
+apartment; and Miss Prissy left, with a guilty kind of feeling, as if
+she had been striking a knife into her pastor, and, rushing
+distractedly across the entry into Mary's little bedroom, she bolted
+the door, threw herself on the bed, and began to cry.
+
+"Well, I've done it!" she said to herself. "He's a very strong, hearty
+man," she soliloquized, "so I hope it won't put him in a
+consumption;--men do go into a consumption about such things sometimes.
+I remember Abner Seaforth did; but then he was always narrow-chested,
+and had the liver-complaint, or something. I don't know what Miss
+Scudder will say;--but I've done it. Poor man! such a good man, too! I
+declare, I feel just like Herod taking off John the Baptist's head.
+Well, well! it's done, and can't be helped."
+
+Just at this moment Miss Prissy heard a gentle tap at the door, and
+started, as if it had been a ghost,--not being able to rid herself of
+the impression, that, somehow, she had committed a great crime, for
+which retribution was knocking at the door.
+
+It was Mary, who said, in her sweetest and most natural tones, "Miss
+Prissy, the Doctor would like to see you."
+
+Mary was much astonished at the frightened, discomposed manner with
+which Miss Prissy received this announcement, and said,--
+
+"I'm afraid I've waked you up out of sleep, I don't think there's the
+least hurry."
+
+Miss Prissy didn't, either; but she reflected afterwards that she might
+as well get through with it at once; and therefore, smoothing her
+tumbled cap-border, she went to the Doctor's study. This time he was
+quite composed, and received her with a mournful gravity, and requested
+her to be seated.
+
+"I beg, Madam," he said, "you will excuse the abruptness of my manner
+in our late interview. I was so little prepared for the communication
+you had to make, that I was, perhaps, unsuitably discomposed. Will you
+allow me to ask whether you were requested by any of the parties to
+communicate to me what you did?"
+
+"No, Sir," said Miss Prissy.
+
+"Have any of the parties ever communicated with you on the subject at
+all?" said the Doctor.
+
+"No, Sir," said Miss Prissy.
+
+"That is all," said the Doctor. "I will not detain you. I am very much
+obliged to you, Madam."
+
+He rose, and opened the door for her to pass out, and Miss Prissy,
+overawed by the stately gravity of his manner, went out in silence.
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+THE SACRIFICE.
+
+When Miss Prissy left the room, the Doctor sat down by the table and
+covered his face with his hands. He had a large, passionate, determined
+nature; and he had just come to one of those cruel crises in life in
+which it is apt to seem to us that the whole force of our being, all
+that we can hope, wish, feel, enjoy, has been suffered to gather itself
+into one great wave, only to break upon some cold rock of inevitable
+fate, and go back, moaning, into emptiness.
+
+In such hours men and women have cursed God and life, and thrown
+violently down and trampled under their feet what yet was left of
+life's blessings, in the fierce bitterness of despair. "This, or
+nothing!" the soul shrieks, in her frenzy. At just such points as
+these, men have plunged into intemperance and wild excess,--they have
+gone to be shot down in battle,--they have broken life, and thrown it
+away, like an empty goblet, and gone, like wailing ghosts, out into the
+dread unknown.
+
+The possibility of all this lay in that heart which had just received
+that stunning blow. Exercised and disciplined as he had been, by years
+of sacrifice, by constant, unsleeping self-vigilance, there was rising
+there, in that great heart, an ocean-tempest of passion, and for a
+while his cries unto God seemed as empty and as vague as the screams of
+birds tossed and buffeted in the clouds of mighty tempests.
+
+The will that he thought wholly subdued seemed to rise under him as a
+rebellious giant. A few hours before, he thought himself established in
+an invincible submission to God's will that nothing could shake. Now he
+looked into himself as into a seething vortex of rebellion, and against
+all the passionate cries of his lower nature could, in the language of
+an old saint, cling to God only by the naked force of his will. That
+will rested unmelted amid the boiling sea of passion, waiting its hour
+of renewed sway. He walked the room for hours, and then sat down to his
+Bible, and roused once or twice to find his head leaning on its pages,
+and his mind far gone in thoughts from which he woke with a bitter
+throb. Then he determined to set himself to some definite work, and,
+taking his Concordance, began busily tracing out and numbering all the
+proof-texts for one of the chapters of his theological system! till, at
+last, he worked himself down to such calmness that he could pray; and
+then he schooled and reasoned with himself, in a style not unlike, in
+its spirit, to that in which a great modern author has addressed
+suffering humanity:--
+
+"What is it that thou art fretting and self-tormenting about? Is it
+because thou art not happy? Who told thee that thou wast to be happy?
+Is there any ordinance of the universe that thou shouldst be happy? Art
+thou nothing but a vulture screaming for prey? Canst thou not do
+without happiness? Yea, thou canst do without happiness, and, instead
+thereof, find blessedness."
+
+The Doctor came, lastly, to the conclusion, that blessedness, which was
+all the portion his Master had on earth, might do for him also; and
+therefore he kissed and blessed that silver dove of happiness, which he
+saw was weary of sailing in his clumsy old ark, and let it go out of
+his hand without a tear.
+
+He slept little that night; but when he came to breakfast, all noticed
+an unusual gentleness and benignity of manner, and Mary, she knew not
+why, saw tears rising in his eyes when he looked at her.
+
+After breakfast he requested Mrs. Scudder to step with him into his
+study, and Miss Prissy shook in her little shoes as she saw the matron
+entering. The door was shut for a long time, and two voices could be
+heard in earnest conversation.
+
+Meanwhile James Marvyn entered the cottage, prompt to remind Mary of
+her promise that she would talk with him again this morning.
+
+They had talked with each other but a few moments, by the
+sweetbrier-shaded window in the best room, when Mrs. Scudder appeared
+at the door of the apartment, with traces of tears upon her cheeks.
+
+"Good morning, James," she said. "The Doctor wishes to see you and Mary
+a moment, together."
+
+Both looked sufficiently astonished, knowing, from Mrs. Scudder's
+looks, that something was impending. They followed her, scarcely
+feeling the ground they trod on.
+
+The Doctor was sitting at his table, with his favorite large-print
+Bible open before him. He rose to receive them, with a manner at once
+gentle and grave.
+
+There was a pause of some minutes, during which he sat with his head
+leaning upon his hand.
+
+"You all know," he said, turning toward Mary, who sat very near him,
+"the near and dear relation in which I have been expected to stand
+towards this friend. I should not have been worthy of that relation, if
+I had not felt in my heart the true love of a husband, as set forth in
+the New Testament,--who should love his wife even as Christ loved the
+Church and gave himself for it; and in case any peril or danger
+threatened this dear soul, and I could not give myself for her, I had
+never been worthy the honor she has done me. For, I take it, whenever
+there is a cross or burden to be borne by one or the other, that the
+man, who is made in the image of God as to strength and endurance,
+should take it upon himself, and not lay it upon her that is weaker;
+for he is therefore strong, not that he may tyrannize over the weak,
+but bear their burdens for them, even as Christ for his Church.
+
+"I have just discovered," he added, looking kindly upon Mary, "that
+there is a great cross and burden which must come, either on this dear
+child or on myself, through no fault of either of us, but through God's
+good providence; and therefore let me bear it.
+
+"Mary, my dear child," he said, "I will be to thee as a father, but I
+will not force thy heart."
+
+At this moment, Mary, by a sudden, impulsive movement, threw her arms
+around his neck and kissed him, and lay sobbing on his shoulder.
+
+"No! no!" she said,--"I will marry you, as I said!"
+
+"Not, if I will not," he replied, with a benign smile. "Come here,
+young man," he said, with some authority, to James. "I give thee this
+maiden to wife." And he lifted her from his shoulder, and placed her
+gently in the arms of the young man, who, overawed and overcome,
+pressed her silently to his heart.
+
+"There, children, it is over," he said. "God bless you!"
+
+"Take her away," he added; "she will be more composed soon."
+
+Before James left, he grasped the Doctor's hand in his, and said,--
+
+"Sir, this tells on my heart more than any sermon you ever preached. I
+shall never forget it. God bless you, Sir!"
+
+The Doctor saw them slowly quit the apartment, and, following them,
+closed the door; and thus ended THE MINISTER'S WOOING.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+THE WEDDING.
+
+Of the events which followed this scene we are happy to give our
+readers more minute and graphic details than we ourselves could
+furnish, by transcribing for their edification an autograph letter of
+Miss Prissy's, still preserved in a black oaken cabinet of our
+great-grandmother's; and with which we take no further liberties than
+the correction of a somewhat peculiar orthography. It is written to
+that sister "Lizabeth," in Boston, of whom she made such frequent
+mention, and whom, it appears, it was her custom to keep well-informed
+in all the gossip of her immediate sphere.
+
+"My DEAR SISTER:--
+
+"You wonder, I s'pose, why I haven't written you; but the fact is, I've
+been run just off my feet, and worked till the flesh aches so it seems
+as if it would drop off my bones, with this wedding of Mary Scudder's.
+And, after all, you'll be astonished to hear that she ha'n't married
+the Doctor, but that Jim Marvyn that I told you about. You see, he came
+home a week before the wedding was to be, and Mary, she was so
+conscientious she thought 'twa'n't right to break off with the Doctor,
+and so she was for going right on with it; and Mrs. Scudder, she was
+for going on more yet; and the poor young man, he couldn't get a word
+in edgeways, and there wouldn't anybody tell the Doctor a word about
+it, and there 'twas drifting along, and both on 'em feeling dreadful,
+and so I thought to myself, 'I'll just take my life in my hand, like
+Queen Esther, and go in and tell the Doctor all about it.' And so I
+did. I'm scared to death always when I think of it. But that dear
+blessed man, he took it like a saint. He just gave her up as serene and
+calm as a psalm-book, and called Jim in and told him to take her.
+
+"Jim was fairly overcrowed,--it really made him feel small,--and he
+says he'll agree that there is more in the Doctor's religion than most
+men's: which shows how important it is for professing Christians to
+bear testimony in their works,--as I was telling Cerinthy Ann Twitchel:
+and she said there wa'n't anything made her want to be a Christian so
+much, if that was what religion would do for people.
+
+"Well, you see, when this came out, it wanted just three days of the
+wedding, which was to be Thursday, and that wedding-dress I told you
+about, that had lilies-of-the-valley on a white ground, was pretty much
+made, except puffing the gauze round the neck, which I do with white
+satin piping-cord, and it looks beautiful too; and so Mrs. Scudder and
+I, we were thinking 'twould do just as well, when in come Jim Marvyn,
+bringing the sweetest thing you ever saw, that he had got in China, and
+I think I never did see anything lovelier. It was a white silk, as
+thick as a board, and so stiff that it would stand alone, and overshot
+with little fine dots of silver, so that it shone, when you moved it,
+just like frostwork; and when I saw it, I just clapped my hands, and
+jumped up from the floor, and says I, 'If I have to sit up all night,
+that dress shall be made, and made well, too.' For, you know, I thought
+I could get Miss Olladine Hocum to run the breadths and do such parts,
+so that I could devote myself to the fine work. And that French woman I
+told you about, she said she'd help, and she's a master hand for
+touching things up. There seems to be work provided for all kinds of
+people, and French people seem to have a gift in all sorts of dressy
+things, and 'tisn't a bad gift either.
+
+"Well, as I was saying, we agreed that this was to be cut open with a
+train, and a petticoat of just the palest, sweetest, loveliest blue
+that ever you saw, and gauze puffings down the edgings each side,
+fastened in, every once in a while, with lilies-of-the-valley; and
+'twas cut square in the neck, with puffings and flowers to match, and
+then tight sleeves, with full ruffles of that old Mechlin lace that you
+remember Mrs. Katy Scudder showed you once in that great camphor-wood
+trunk.
+
+"Well, you see, come to get all things together that were to be done,
+we concluded to put off the wedding till Tuesday; and Madame de
+Frontignac, she would dress the best room for it herself, and she spent
+nobody knows what time in going round and getting evergreens and making
+wreaths, and putting up green boughs over the pictures, so that the
+room looked just like the Episcopal church at Christmas. In fact, Mrs.
+Scudder said, if it had been Christmas, she shouldn't have felt it
+right, but, as it was, she didn't think anybody would think it any
+harm.
+
+"Well, Tuesday night, I and Madame de Frontignac, we dressed Mary
+ourselves, and, I tell you, the dress fitted as if it was grown on her;
+and Madame de Frontignac, she dressed her hair; and she had on a wreath
+of lilies-of-the-valley, and a gauze veil that came almost down to her
+feet, and came all around her like a cloud, and you could see her white
+shining dress through it every time she moved, and she looked just as
+white as a snow-berry; but there were two little pink spots that came
+coming and going in her cheeks, that kind of lightened up when she
+smiled, and then faded down again. And the French lady put a string of
+real pearls round her neck, with a cross of pearls, which went down and
+lay hid in her bosom.
+
+"She was mighty calm-like while she was being dressed; but just as I
+was putting in the last pin, she heard the rumbling of a coach
+down-stairs, for Jim Marvyn had got a real elegant carriage to carry
+her over to his father's in, and so she knew he was come. And pretty
+soon Mrs. Marvyn came in the room, and when she saw Mary, her brown
+eyes kind of danced, and she lifted up both hands, to see how beautiful
+she looked. And Jim Marvyn, he was standing at the door, and they told
+him it wasn't proper that he should see till the time come; but he
+begged so hard that he might just have one peep, that I let him come
+in, and he looked at her as if she was something he wouldn't dare to
+touch; and he said to me softly, says he, 'I'm 'most afraid she has got
+wings somewhere that will fly away from me, or that I shall wake up and
+find it is a dream.'
+
+"Well, Cerinthy Ann Twitchel was the bridesmaid, and she came next with
+that young man she is engaged to. It is all out now, that she is
+engaged, and she don't deny it. And Cerinthy, she looked handsomer than
+I ever saw her, in a white brocade, with rosebuds on it, which I guess
+she got in reference to the future, for they say she is going to be
+married next month.
+
+"Well, we all filled up the room pretty well, till Mrs. Scudder came in
+to tell us that the company were all together; and then they took hold
+of arms, and they had a little time practising how they must stand, and
+Cerinthy Ann's beau would always get her on the wrong side, 'cause he's
+rather bashful, and don't know very well what he's about; and Cerinthy
+Ann declared she was afraid that she should laugh out in prayer-time,
+'cause she always did laugh when she knew she mus'n't. But finally Mrs.
+Scudder told us we must go in, and looked so reproving at Cerinthy that
+she had to hold her mouth with her pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"Well, the old Doctor was standing there in the very silk gown that the
+ladies gave him to be married in himself,--poor, dear man!--and he
+smiled kind of peaceful on 'em when they came in, and walked up to a
+kind of bower of evergreens and flowers that Madame de Frontignac had
+fixed for them to stand in. Mary grew rather white, as if she was going
+to faint; but Jim Marvyn stood up just as firm, and looked as proud and
+handsome as a prince, and he kind of looked down at her,--'cause, you
+know, he is a great deal taller,--kind of wondering, as if he wanted to
+know if it was really so. Well, when they got all placed, they let the
+doors stand open, and Cato and Candace came and stood in the door. And
+Candace had on her great splendid Mogadore turban, and a crimson and
+yellow shawl, that she seemed to take comfort in wearing, although it
+was pretty hot.
+
+"Well, so when they were all fixed, the Doctor, he begun his
+prayer,--and as 'most all of us knew what a great sacrifice he had
+made, I don't believe there was a dry eye in the room; and when he had
+done, there was a great time,--people blowing their noses and wiping
+their eyes, as if it had been a funeral. Then Cerinthy Ann, she pulled
+off Mary's glove pretty quick; but that poor beau of hers, he made such
+work of James's that he had to pull it off himself, after all, and
+Cerinthy Ann, she liked to have laughed out loud. And so when the
+Doctor told them to join hands, Jim took hold of Mary's hand as if he
+didn't mean to let go very soon, and so they were married.
+
+"I was the first one that kissed the bride after Mrs. Scudder;--I got
+that promise out of Mary when I was making the dress. And Jim Marvyn,
+he insisted upon kissing me,--''Cause,' says he, 'Miss Prissy, you are
+as young and handsome as any of 'em'; and I told him he was a saucy
+fellow, and I'd box his ears, if I could reach them.
+
+"That French lady looked lovely, dressed in pale pink silk, with long
+pink wreaths of flowers in her hair; and she came up and kissed Mary,
+and said something to her in French.
+
+"And after a while old Candace came up, and Mary kissed her; and then
+Candace put her arms round Jim's neck, and gave him a real hearty
+smack, so that everybody laughed.
+
+"And then the cake and the wine was passed round, and everybody had
+good times till we heard the nine-o'clock-bell ring. And then the coach
+come up to the door, and Mrs. Scudder, she wrapped Mary up, kissing
+her, and crying over her, while Mrs. Marvyn stood stretching her arms
+out of the coach after her; and then Cato and Candace went after in the
+wagon behind, and so they all went off together; and that was the end
+of the wedding; and ever since then we ha'n't any of us done much but
+rest, for we were pretty much beat out. So no more at present from your
+affectionate sister,
+
+"PRISSY.
+
+"P.S.--I forgot to tell you that Jim Marvyn has come home quite rich.
+He fell in with a man in China who was at the head of one of their
+great merchant-houses, whom he nursed through a long fever, and took
+care of his business, and so, when he got well, nothing would do but he
+must have him for a partner; and now he is going to live in this
+country and attend to the business of the firm here. They say he is
+going to build a house as grand as the Vernons'. And we hope he has
+experienced religion; and he means to join our church, which is a
+providence, for he is twice as rich and generous as that old Simeon
+Brown that snapped me up so about my wages. I never believed in him,
+for all his talk. I was down to Mrs. Scudder's when the Doctor examined
+Jim about his evidences. At first the Doctor seemed a little anxious,
+'cause he didn't talk in the regular way; for you know Jim always did
+have his own way of talking, and never could say things in other
+people's words; and sometimes he makes folks laugh, when he himself
+don't know what they laugh at, because he hits the nail on the head in
+some strange way they aren't expecting. If I was to have died, I
+couldn't help laughing at some things he said; and yet I don't think I
+ever felt more solemnized. He sat up there in a sort of grand,
+straightforward, noble way, and told all the way the Lord had been
+leading of him, and all the exercises of his mind, and all about the
+dreadful shipwreck, and how he was saved, and the loving-kindness of
+the Lord, till the Doctor's spectacles got all blinded with tears, and
+he couldn't see the notes he made to examine him by; and we all cried,
+Mrs. Scudder, and Mary, and I; and as to Mrs. Marvyn, she just sat with
+her--hands clasped, looking into her son's eyes, like a picture of the
+Virgin Mary. And when Jim got through, there wa'n't nothing to be heard
+for some minutes; and the Doctor; he wiped his eyes, and wiped his
+glasses, and looked over his papers, but he couldn't bring out a word,
+and at last says he, "Let us pray,"--for that was all there was to be
+said; for I think sometimes things so kind of fills folks up that there
+a'n't nothing to be done but pray, which, the Lord be praised, we are
+privileged to do always. Between you and I, Martha, I never could
+understand all the distinctions our dear, blessed Doctor sets up; but
+when he publishes his system, if I work my fingers to the bone, I mean
+to buy one and study it out, because he is such a blessed man; though,
+after all's said, I have come back to my old place, and trust to the
+loving-kindness of the Lord, who takes care of the sparrow on the
+house-top, and all small, lone creatures like me; though I can't say
+I'm lone either, because nobody need say that, so long as there's folks
+to be done for. So if I _don't_ understand the Doctor's theology, or
+don't get eyes to read it, on account of the fine stitching on his
+shirt-ruffles I've been trying to do, still I hope I may be accepted on
+account of the Lord's great goodness; for if we can't trust that, it's
+all over with us all."
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+LAST WORDS.
+
+We know it is fashionable to drop the curtain over a newly married
+pair, they recede from the altar; but we cannot but hope our readers
+may by this time have enough of interest in our little history to wish
+for a few words on the lot of the personages whose acquaintance they
+have thereby made.
+
+The conjectures of Miss Prissy in regard to the grand house which James
+was to build for his bride were as speedily as possible realized. On a
+beautiful elevation, a little out of the town of Newport, rose a fair
+and stately mansion, whose windows overlooked the harbor, and whose
+wide, cool rooms were adorned by thy constant presence of the sweet
+face and form which has been the guiding star of our story. The fair
+poetic maiden, the seeress, the saint, has passed into that appointed
+shrine for woman, more holy than cloister, more saintly and pure than
+church or altar,--_a Christian home_. Priestess, wife, and mother,
+there she ministers daily in holy works of household peace, and by
+faith and prayer and love redeems from grossness and earthliness the
+common toils and wants of life.
+
+The gentle guiding force that led James Marvyn from the maxims and
+habits and ways of this world to the higher conception of an heroic and
+Christ-like manhood was still ever present with him, gently touching
+the springs of life, brooding peacefully with dovelike wings over his
+soul, and he grew up under it noble in purpose and strong in spirit. He
+was one of the most energetic and fearless supporters of the Doctor in
+his life-long warfare against an inhumanity which was intrenched in all
+the mercantile interests of the day, and which at last fell before the
+force of conscience and moral appeal.
+
+Candace in time transferred her allegiance to the growing family of her
+young master and mistress, and predominated proudly in gorgeous raiment
+with her butterfly turban over a rising race of young Marvyns. All the
+care not needed by them was bestowed upon the somewhat querulous old
+age of Cato, whose never-failing cough furnished occupation for all her
+spare hours and thought.
+
+As for our friend the Doctor, we trust our readers will appreciate the
+magnanimity with which he proved a real and disinterested love, in a
+point where so many men experience only the graspings of a selfish one.
+A mind so severely trained as his had been brings to a great crisis,
+involving severe self-denial, an amount of reserved moral force quite
+inexplicable to those less habituated to self-control. He was like a
+warrior whose sleep even was in armor, always ready to be roused to the
+conflict.
+
+In regard to his feelings for Mary, he made the sacrifice of himself to
+her happiness so wholly and thoroughly that there was not a moment of
+weak hesitation,--no going back over the past,--no vain regret.
+Generous and brave souls find a support in such actions, because the
+very exertion raises them to a higher and purer plane of existence.
+
+His diary records the event only in these very calm and temperate
+words:--"It was a trial to me,--_a very great_ trial; but as she did
+not deceive me, I shall never lose my friendship for her."
+
+The Doctor was always a welcome inmate in the house of Mary and James,
+as a friend revered and dear. Nor did he want in time a hearthstone of
+his own, where a bright and loving face made him daily welcome; for we
+find that he married at last a woman of a fair countenance, and that
+sons and daughters grew up around him.
+
+In time, also, his theological system was published. In that day, it
+was customary to dedicate new or important works to the patronage of
+some distinguished or powerful individual. The Doctor had no earthly
+patron. Four or five simple lines are found in the commencement of his
+work, in which, in a spirit reverential and affectionate, he dedicates
+it to our Lord Jesus Christ, praying Him to accept the good, and to
+overrule the errors to His glory.
+
+Quite unexpectedly to himself, the work proved a success, not only in
+public acceptance and esteem, but even in a temporal view, bringing to
+him at last a modest competence, which he accepted with surprise and
+gratitude. To the last of a very long life, he was the same steady,
+undiscouraged worker, the same calm witness against popular sins and
+proclaimer of unpopular truths, ever saying and doing what he saw to be
+eternally right, without the slightest consultation with worldly
+expediency or earthly gain; nor did his words cease to work in New
+England till the evils he opposed were finally done away.
+
+Colonel Burr leaves the scene of our story to pursue those brilliant
+and unscrupulous political intrigues so well known to the historian of
+those times, and whose results were so disastrous to himself. His duel
+with the ill-fated Hamilton, the awful retribution of public opinion
+that followed, and the slow downward course of a doomed life are all on
+record. Chased from society, pointed at everywhere by the finger of
+hatred, so accursed in common esteem that even the publican who lodged
+him for a night refused to accept his money when he knew his name,
+heart-stricken in his domestic relations, his only daughter taken by
+pirates and dying amid untold horrors,--one seems to see in a doom so
+much above that of other men the power of an avenging Nemesis for sins
+beyond those of ordinary humanity.
+
+But we who have learned of Christ may humbly hope that these crushing
+miseries in this life came not because he was a sinner above
+others,--not in wrath alone,--but that the prayers of the sweet saint
+who gave him to God even before his birth brought to him those friendly
+adversities, that thus might be slain in his soul the evil demon of
+pride, which had been the opposing force to all that was noble within
+him. Nothing is more affecting than the account of the last hours of
+this man, whom a woman took in and cherished in his poverty and
+weakness with that same heroic enthusiasm with which it was his lot to
+inspire so many women. This humble keeper of lodgings was told, that,
+if she retained Aaron Burr, all her other lodgers would leave. "Let
+them do it, then," she said; "but he shall remain." In the same
+uncomplaining and inscrutable silence in which he had borne the
+reverses and miseries of his life did this singular being pass through
+the shades of the dark valley. The New Testament was always under his
+pillow, and when alone he was often found reading it attentively; but
+of the result of that communion with Higher Powers he said nothing.
+Patient, gentle, and grateful, he was, as to all his inner history,
+entirely silent and impenetrable. He died with the request, which has a
+touching significance, that he might be buried at the feet of those
+parents whose lives had finished so differently from his own.
+
+  "No farther seek his errors to disclose,
+  Or draw his frailties from their dread abode."
+
+Shortly after Mary's marriage, Madame de Frontignac sailed with her
+husband for home, where they lived in a very retired way on a large
+estate in the South of France. An intimate correspondence was kept up
+between her and Mary for many years, from which we shall give our
+readers a few extracts. Her first letter is dated shortly after her
+return to France.
+
+"At last, my sweet Marie, you behold us in peace after our wanderings.
+I wish you could see our lovely nest in the hills which overlook the
+Mediterranean, whose blue waters remind me of Newport harbor and our
+old days there. Ah, my sweet saint, blessed was the day I first learned
+to know you! for it was you, more than anything else, that kept me back
+from sin and misery. I call you my Sibyl, dearest, because the Sibyl
+was a prophetess of divine things out of the Church; and so are you.
+The Abbé says, that all true, devout persons of all persuasions belong
+to the True Catholic Apostolic Church, and will in the end be
+enlightened to know it. What do you think of that, _ma belle?_ I fancy
+I see you look at me with your grave, innocent eyes, just as you used
+to; but you say nothing.
+
+"I am far happier, _ma Marie_, than I ever thought I could be. I took
+your advice, and told my husband all I had felt and suffered. It was a
+very hard thing to do; but I felt how true it was, as you said, that
+there could be no real friendship without perfect truth at bottom; so I
+told him all, and he was very good and noble and helpful to me; and
+since then he has been so gentle and patient and thoughtful, that no
+mother could be kinder; and I should be a very bad woman, if I did not
+love him truly and dearly,--as I do.
+
+"I must confess that there is still a weak, bleeding place in my heart
+that aches yet, but I try to bear it bravely; and when I am tempted to
+think myself very miserable, I remember how patiently you used to go
+about your house-work and spinning, in those sad days when you thought
+your heart was drowned in the sea; and I try to do like you. I have
+many duties to my servants and tenants, and mean to be a good
+_châtelaine_; and I find, when I nurse the sick and comfort the poor,
+that my sorrows are lighter. For, after all, Marie, I have lost nothing
+that ever was mine,--only my foolish heart has grown to something that
+it should not, and bleeds at being torn away. Nobody but Christ and His
+dear Mother can tell what this sorrow is; but they know, and that is
+enough."
+
+The next letter is dated some three years after.
+
+"You see me now, my Marie, a proud and happy woman. I was truly
+envious, when you wrote me of the birth of your little son; but now the
+dear good God has sent a sweet little angel to me, to comfort my
+sorrows and lie close to my heart; and since he came, all pain is gone.
+Ah, if you could see him! he has black eyes, and lashes like silk, and
+such little hands!--even his finger-nails are all perfect, like little
+gems; and when he puts his little hand on my bosom, I tremble with joy.
+Since he came, I pray always, and the good God seems very near to me.
+Now I realize, as I never did before, the sublime thought that God
+revealed Himself in the infant Jesus; and I bow before the manger of
+Bethlehem where the Holy Babe was laid. What comfort, what adorable
+condescension for us mothers in that scene!--My husband is so moved, he
+can scarce stay an hour from the cradle. He seems to look at me with a
+sort of awe, because I know how to care for this precious treasure that
+he adores without daring to touch. We are going to call him Henri,
+which is my husband's name and that of his ancestors for many
+generations back. I vow for him an eternal friendship with the son of
+my little Marie; and I shall try and train him up to be a brave man and
+a true Christian. Ah, Marie, this gives me something to live for! My
+heart is full,--a whole new life opens before me!"
+
+Somewhat later, another letter announces the birth of a daughter,--and
+later still, the birth of another son; but we shall add only one more,
+written some years after, on hearing of the great reverses of popular
+feeling towards Burr, subsequently to his duel with the ill-fated
+Hamilton.
+
+"_Ma chère Marie_,--Your letter has filled me with grief. My noble
+Henri, who already begins to talk of himself as my protector, (these
+boys feel their manhood so soon, _ma Marie_!) saw by my face, when I
+read your letter, that something pained me, and he would not rest till
+I told him something about it. Ah, Marie, how thankful I then felt that
+I had nothing to blush for before my son! how thankful for those dear
+children whose little hands had healed all the morbid places of my
+heart, so that I could think of all the past without a pang! I told
+Henri that the letter brought bad news of an old friend, but that it
+pained me to speak of it; and you would have thought, by the grave and
+tender way he talked to his mamma, that the boy was an experienced man
+of forty, to say the least.
+
+"But, Marie, how unjust is the world! how unjust both in praise and
+blame! Poor Burr was the petted child of Society; yesterday she doted
+on him, flattered him, smiled on his faults, and let him do what he
+would without reproof; to-day she flouts and scorns and scoffs him, and
+refuses to see the least good in him. I know that man, Marie,--and I
+know, that, sinful as he may be before Infinite Purity, he is not so
+much more sinful than all the other men of his time. Have I not been in
+America? I know Jefferson; I knew poor Hamilton,--peace be with the
+dead! Neither of them had a life that could bear the sort of trial to
+which Burr's is subjected. When every secret fault, failing, and sin is
+dragged out, and held up without mercy, what man can stand?
+
+"But I know what irritates the world is that proud, disdainful calm
+which will give neither sigh nor tear. It was not that he killed poor
+Hamilton, but that he never seemed to care! Ah, there is that evil
+demon of his life,--that cold, stoical pride, which haunts him like a
+fate! But I know he _does_ feel; I know he is not as hard at heart as
+he tries to be; I have seen too many real acts of pity to the
+unfortunate, of tenderness to the weak, of real love to his friends, to
+believe that. Great have been his sins against our sex, and God forbid
+that the mothers of children should speak lightly of them I but is not
+so susceptible a temperament, and so singular a power to charm as he
+possessed, to be taken into account in estimating his temptations?
+Because he is a sinning man, it does not follow that he is a demon. If
+any should have cause to think bitterly of him, I should. He trifled
+inexcusably with my deepest feelings; he caused me years of conflict
+and anguish, such as he little knows; I was almost shipwrecked; yet I
+will still say to the last that what I loved in him was a better
+self,--something really noble and good, however concealed and perverted
+by pride, ambition, and self-will. Though all the world reject him, I
+still have faith in this better nature, and prayers that he may be led
+right at last. There is at least one heart that will always intercede
+with God for him."
+
+It is well known, that, for many years after Burr's death, the odium
+that covered his name was so great that no monument was erected, lest
+it should become a mark for popular violence. Subsequently, however, in
+a mysterious manner, a plain granite slab marked his grave; by whom
+erected has never been known. It was placed in the night by some
+friendly, unknown hand. A laborer in the vicinity, who first discovered
+it, found lying near the spot a small _porte-monnaie_, which had
+perhaps been used in paying for the workmanship. It contained no papers
+that could throw any light on the subject, except the fragment of the
+address of a letter on which was written "Henri de Frontignac."
+
+
+
+
+THE NORTHERN LIGHTS AND THE STARS.
+
+
+The stars are watching at their posts
+  And raining silence from the sky,
+And, guarded by the heavenly hosts,
+  Earth closes her day-wearied eye.
+
+A reign of holy quietness
+  Replaces the tumultuous light,
+And Nature's weary tribes confess
+  The calm beatitude of Night:
+
+When from the Arctic pit up-steams
+  The Boreal fire's portentous glare,
+And, bursting into arrowy streams,
+  Hurls horrid splendors on the air.
+
+The embattled meteors scale the arch,
+  And toss their lurid banners wide;
+Heaven reels with their tempestuous march,
+  And quivers in the flashing tide.
+
+Against the everlasting stars,
+  Against the old empyreal Right,
+They vainly wage their anarch wars,
+  In vain they urge their fatuous light.
+
+The skies may flash and meteors glare,
+  And Hell invade the spheral school;
+But Law and Love are sovereign there,
+  And Sirius and Orion rule.
+
+The stars are watching at their posts,
+  Again the Silences prevail;
+The meteor crew, like guilty ghosts,
+  Have slunk to the infernal jail.
+
+The truths of God forever shine,
+  Though Error glare and Falsehood rage;
+The cause of Order is divine,
+  And Wisdom rules from age to age.
+
+Faith, Hope, and Love, your time abide!
+  Let Hades marshal all his hosts,
+The heavenly forces with you side,
+  The stars are watching at their posts.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS PAINE IN ENGLAND AND IN FRANCE.
+
+
+Paine landed at Havre in May, A.D. 1787, _aet. suae_ 50, with many
+titles to social success. He brought with him a literary fame which
+ranks higher in France than elsewhere; and his works were in the
+fashionable line of the day. He had been an energetic actor in the
+American Revolution,--a subject of unbounded enthusiasm with Frenchmen,
+who look upon it, to this day, as an achievement of their own. And he
+could boast of a scientific _spécialité_, without which no intelligent
+gentleman was complete in the last third of the eighteenth century.
+Philosopher, American, republican, friend of humanity, _savant_,--he
+could show every claim to notice. Besides all this, and better than
+all, he brought letters from Franklin, the charming old man, whose
+fondness for "that dear nation" which he could not leave without regret
+was returned a thousand fold by its admiring affection. De Rayneval did
+not exaggerate when he wrote to him,--"You will carry with you the
+affection of all France"; and De Chastellux told the simple truth in
+the graceful compliment he sent to the old sage after his return
+home,--"When you were here, we had no need to praise the Americans; we
+had only to say, 'Look! here is their representative.'" Let us devoutly
+pray that our ambassadors may not be made use of for the same purpose
+now!
+
+For these reasons, Paine's reception in Paris was cordial; visits and
+invitations poured in upon him; he dined with Malesherbes; M. Le Roy
+took him to Buffon's, where he saw some interesting experiments on
+inflammable air; the Abbé Morellet exerted himself to get the model of
+his bridge, which had been stopped at the custom-house, safely to
+Paris. Through their influence it was submitted to a committee of the
+Académie des Sciences; their report was, in substance, that the iron
+bridge of M. Paine was _ingénieusement imaginé_,--that it merited an
+attempt to execute it, and furnished a new example of the application
+of a metal which had not yet been sufficiently used on a large scale.
+
+Two other gentlemen from America, who were interested in science and in
+mechanics, were in Paris at that time. Rumsey was there with his model
+of a steamboat; and Thomas Jefferson, whose curiosity extended to all
+things visible or audible, was busily collecting ground-plans and
+elevations, and preparing to add at least two ugly buildings to a State
+"over which," as he himself wrote, "the Genius of Architecture had
+showered his malediction."
+
+Unfortunately for inventors, the times were not favorable for the
+construction of boats or of bridges. A taste had sprung up in France
+for constitution-making, one of the most difficult and expensive of
+public works. A translation of the American State Constitutions
+attracted more attention in Paris than Paine's iron-work; for these
+also, the French thought, were _ingénieusement imaginées_, and worthy
+of an attempt to execute them abroad. The American Revolution, with its
+brilliant termination of wisdom, liberty, and peace, seemed to promise
+similar good results to the efforts of reformers elsewhere. Treatises
+on moral science and on the nature and end of civil government were
+eagerly read, "_Humanité, mot nouveau_," as Cousin says, became the
+watch-word of the Parisians. It was the fashion among all classes, high
+as well as low, to talk of human rights, to exalt the virtue of the
+people, hitherto supposed to have none, and to execrate "bloody
+tyrants," "silly despots," the members of the kingly profession, which
+fell into such sad disfavor towards the end of the last century. Ségur,
+after his return from America, heard the whole court applaud these
+lines at the theatre:--
+
+  "Je suis fils de Brutus, et je porte en mon coeur
+  La liberté gravée et les rois en horreur."
+
+None suspected whither the road would lead which they were pursuing
+with so much gayety and enlightenment. Philosophers, nobles, and
+parliaments all clamored for reform--in others; and for the public
+good, provided their own goods did not suffer. The King meant reform;
+he, at least, was in earnest. But how to get it? He had sought
+assistance from the middle classes; had tried Turgot, the political
+economist, and Necker, the banker, as ministers; but both broke down
+under the opposition of the nobility. Then Calonne volunteered, witty
+and reckless, and convoked the notables, or not-ables, as Lafayette
+called them in one of his American letters, borrowing a bad pun from
+Thomas Paine. Calonne could do nothing with the notables, who
+obstinately refused to submit to taxation. Brienne, Archbishop of
+Toulouse, took his place. This was in April, 1787, a month before
+Paine's arrival in France. The notables suddenly became manageable
+under the new minister, and voted all the necessary taxes; but now the
+parliaments grew restive, refused to register the edicts, declaring
+that they had not the legal right to consent to taxes, that the
+States-General alone had authority to impose new ones. Brienne,
+indignant at this perverseness,--for hitherto they had claimed the sole
+right of registering taxes,--forced them to register the stamp-tax and
+the land-tax, and exiled them to Troyes. This took place on the 15th of
+August. The same day the two brothers of the King went to register the
+edicts in the Cour des Comptes and the _Cour des Aides_. Monsieur was
+received with acclamations; but D'Artois, who belonged to the unpopular
+Calonne party, was hissed and jostled by the crowd. Alarmed, he ordered
+his guard to close about him. "I was standing in one of the apartments
+through which he had to pass," says Paine, "and could not avoid
+reflecting how wretched is the condition of a disrespected man."
+
+Evidently no bridges to be built here at present. It would be better to
+try in England, Paine thought, and in September crossed to London. Sir
+Joseph Banks, a great scientific authority, thought well of his model,
+and recommended the construction of one on a larger scale. The
+different parts of the new bridge were cast in a Yorkshire foundry
+belonging to Thomas Walker, a Whig friend of the inventor, brought by
+sea to London, and erected in an open field at Faddington, where the
+structure was inspected by great numbers of people. After standing
+there a year, it was taken down, and the materials used in building a
+bridge over the river Wear at Sunderland, of two hundred and thirty-six
+feet span, with a rise of thirty-four feet. This bridge is still in
+use.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Stephenson says, in rather bad English, (we quote from the
+_Quarterly_),--"If we are to consider Paine as its author, his daring
+in engineering certainly does full justice to the fervor of his
+political career; for, successful as the result has undoubtedly proved,
+want of experience and consequent ignorance of the risk could alone
+have induced so bold an experiment; and we are rather led to wonder at
+than to admire a structure which, as regards its proportions and the
+small quantity of material employed in its construction, will probably
+remain unrivalled,"--thus resembling the spider's web, which furnished;
+the original suggestion. In 1801, when Paine had exhausted his theory
+of human rights in France, he offered his plan to Chaptal, the Minister
+of the Interior, who proposed to build an iron bridge over the Seine.
+Two years later, after his return to America, he addressed a memorial
+to Congress on the same subject, offering the nation the invention as a
+free gift, and his own services to superintend the structure; but
+neither Chaptal nor Congress thought fit to accept his offer.]
+
+Paine had forgotten his bridge long before it was taken down. His soul
+was engrossed by the contemplation of the wonderful event which was
+daily developing itself in France. Bankruptcy had brought on the
+crisis. In August, 1788, the interest was not paid on the national
+debt, and Brienne resigned. The States-General met in May of the next
+year; in June they declared themselves a national assembly, and
+commenced work upon a constitution under the direction of Sièyes, who
+well merited the epithet, "indefatigable constitution-grinder," applied
+to Paine by Cobbett. Not long after, the attempted _coup d'état_ of
+Louis XVI. failed, the Bastille was demolished, and the political
+Saturnalia of the French people began.
+
+It is evident, that, in the beginning, Paine did not aspire to be the
+political Prometheus of England. He rather looked to the Whig party and
+to Mr. Burke as the leaders in such a movement. As for himself, a
+veteran reformer from another hemisphere, he was willing to serve as a
+volunteer in the campaign against the oppressors of mankind. He had
+adopted for his motto, "Where liberty is not, there is my country,"--a
+negative variation of Franklin's saying, which suited his tempestuous
+character. As he flitted to and fro across the Channel, observing with
+sharp, eager eyes the progress of "principles" in France, gradually
+there arose in his mind the thought that poor, old, worn-out England
+might be regenerated by these new methods. "The French are doubling
+their strength," he wrote, "by allying, if it may be so expressed, (for
+it is difficult to express a new idea by old terms,) the majesty of the
+sovereign with the majesty of the nation."
+
+Paris swarmed with enthusiastic "friends of humanity," English, Scotch,
+and Irish. Among them Paine naturally took a foremost position, being
+an authority in revolutionary matters, and a man who had principles on
+the subject of government. In spite of his contempt of titles, he wrote
+himself, "Secretary for Foreign Affairs to the Congress of the United
+States," slightly improving upon the office he had actually held, to
+suit the sound to European capacity,--showing that in this, likewise,
+he possessed a genuine American element of character. Lafayette thought
+much of him, used his pen freely, and listened to his advice. The
+Marquis, warm-hearted, honest, but endowed with little judgment and a
+womanish vanity, was trying to make himself the Washington of a French
+federative republic, and felt happy in having secured the experienced
+services of Mr. Paine. He wrote to his great master,--"'Common Sense'
+is writing a book for you, and there you will see a part of my
+adventures. Liberty is springing up around us in the other parts of
+Europe, and I am encouraging it by all the means in my power." Paine
+was in Paris when the Bastille was taken. Lafayette placed the key in
+his hands, to be transmitted to Washington. Paine wrote to the
+President, "That the principles of America opened the Bastille is not
+to be doubted, and therefore the key comes to the right place."
+Washington, returning his thanks to Paine for the key, added,--"It will
+give you pleasure to learn that the new government answers its purposes
+as well as could have been reasonably expected." Yes! and still answers
+reasonable purposes to this day. In the mean while dozens of French
+constitutions, "perfections of human wisdom," have been invented, set
+up, and crushed to atoms.
+
+It was a time of revival in politics. Holland was indulging in hope,
+Germany was anxious, and steady old England began to lend an ear to the
+new doctrines from the other side of the Channel. The tendency of the
+human mind to believe in a golden future, until knowledge of the world
+and reflection teach us that these bright visions always shrink into
+the ordinary dimensions of the present as they approach it, misled
+enthusiastic Englishmen, many of them of a high order of intelligence.
+There was something grand in the idea, that the prejudices and the
+abuses of twenty centuries had been buried forever in the ruins of the
+old French monarchy. This was not enough. All governments and all
+prejudices of society were to be thrown into the melting-pot; out of
+the fusion was to arise the new era, the millennium. All other evil
+things would cease to exist, as well as monopolies, titles, places, and
+pensions. Sickness, even death, perhaps, might be evaded by the skill
+of a new science. Who could tell? Franklin had suggested this, half in
+jest, years before; Condorcet believed and asserted it now. Ignorance
+and misery, at all events, should come to an end. When kings and a
+wicked self-seeking aristocracy should be swept away, the divine sense
+of right, which God had implanted in the people, would rule; there
+could be no wars; armies and fleets would become useless; taxes would
+amount to nothing. All the nations would form one grand republic, with
+a universal convention sitting at the world's centre, to watch over the
+rights of man! Liberty, virtue, happiness, seemed ready to descend upon
+the earth.
+
+  "Jam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto,
+  Ac toto surget gens aurea mundo."
+
+As each week brought the news of some stupendous change, a kind of
+madness seized upon the minds of men. Fanatics were jubilant.
+"Revolutions," they said, "can do no wrong; all are for the best."
+Englishmen, hitherto sane, forgot their nationality, and became violent
+Frenchmen. So strongly did the current set in this direction, that the
+massacres of September, the execution of the King, the despotism of the
+Directory and the Consulship could not turn it, until Napoleon united
+all France under him and all England against him. As late as 1793, such
+men as James Watt, Jr., and the poet Wordsworth were in Paris, on
+intimate terms with Robespierre and his Committee.
+
+Before 1789, there was no particular discontent in England. Some talk
+there had been of reform in the representation, and the usual
+complaints of the burden of taxation. The Dissenters had been trying to
+get the Corporation and Test Acts repealed, without much success. But
+nothing beyond occasional meetings and petitions to Parliament would
+have occurred, had it not been for the explosion in France, then, as
+since, the political powder-magazine of Europe. The Whig party had seen
+with pleasure the beginning of the French reforms. Paine, who had
+partaken of Mr. Burke's hospitality at Beaconsfield, wrote to him
+freely from Paris, assuring him that everything was going on right;
+that little inconveniences, the necessary consequences of pulling down
+and building up, might arise; but that these were much less than ought
+to be expected; and that a national convention in England would be the
+best plan of regenerating the nation. Christie, a foolish Scotchman,
+and Baron Clootz (soon to become Anacharsis) also wrote to Burke in the
+same vein. Their communications affected his mind in a way they little
+expected. Mr. Burke had lost all faith in any good result from the
+blind, headlong rush of the Revolution, and was appalled at the
+toleration, or rather, sympathy, shown in England, for the riots,
+outrages, and murders of the Parisian rabble. He began writing the
+"Reflections," as a warning to his countrymen. He was led to enlarge
+the work by some remarks made by Fox and Sheridan in the House of
+Commons; and more particularly by some passages in a sermon preached at
+the Old Jewry by Dr. Price. Eleven years before, this scientific
+divine, by a resolution of the American Congress, had been invited to
+consider himself an American citizen, and to furnish the rebellious
+Colonists with his assistance in regulating their finances. He had
+disregarded this flattering summons. Full of zeal for "humanity," he
+eagerly accepted the request of the Revolution Society to deliver their
+anniversary sermon. In this discourse, the Doctor, the fervor of whose
+sentiments had increased with age, maintained the right of the nation
+"to cashier the king," choose a new ruler, and frame a government for
+itself. The sermon and the congratulatory addresses it provoked were
+published by the society and industriously circulated.
+
+Mr. Burke's well-known "Reflections" appeared in October, 1790. The
+book was hailed with delight by the conservatives of England. Thirteen
+thousand copies were sold and disseminated. It was a sowing of the
+dragon's teeth. Every copy brought out some radical, armed with speech
+or pamphlet. Among a vulgar and forgotten crowd of declaimers, the
+harebrained Lord Stanhope, Mary Wolstonecraft, who afterward wrote a
+"Vindication of the Rights of Women," and the violent Catharine
+Macaulay came forward to enter the ring against the great Mr. Burke.
+Dr. Priestley, Unitarian divine, discoverer of oxygen gas,
+correspondent of Dr. Franklin, afterward mobbed in Birmingham, and
+self-exiled to Pennsylvania, fiercely backed Dr. Price, and maintained
+that the French Revolution would result "in the enlargement of liberty,
+the melioration of society, and the increase of virtue and happiness."
+The "Vindiciae Gallicae" brought into notice Mr. Mackintosh, an
+opponent whom Burke did not consider beneath him. But the champion was
+Thomas Paine. At the White Bear, Piccadilly, Paine's favorite lounge,
+where Romney, who painted a good portrait of him, Lord Edward
+Fitzgerald, Colonel Oswald, Horne Tooke, and others of that set of
+clever, impracticable reformers used to meet, there had been talk of
+the blow Mr. Burke was preparing to strike, and Paine had promised his
+friends to ward it off and to return it. He set himself to work in the
+Red-Lion Tavern, at Islington, and in three months, Part the First of
+the "Rights of Man" was ready for the press. Here a delay occurred. The
+printer who had undertaken the job came to a stop before certain
+treasonable passages, and declined proceeding farther. This caused the
+loss of a month. At last, Jordan, of Fleet Street, brought it out on
+the 13th of March, 1791. No publication in Great Britain, not Junius
+nor Wilkes's No. 45, had produced such an effect. All England was
+divided into those who, like Cruger of Bristol, said "Ditto to Mr.
+Burke," and those who swore by Thomas Paine. "It is a false, wicked,
+and seditious libel," shouted loyal gentlemen. "It abounds in
+unanswerable truths, and principles of the purest morality and
+benevolence; it has no object in view but the happiness of mankind,"
+answered the reformers. "He is the scavenger of rebellion and
+infidelity."--"Say, rather, 'the Apostle of Freedom, whose heart is a
+perpetual bleeding fountain of philanthropy.'" The friends of the
+government carried Paine in effigy, with a pair of stays under his
+arms, and burned the figure in the streets. The friends of humanity
+added a new verse to the national hymn, and sung,--
+
+  "God save great Thomas Paine,
+  His Rights of Man proclaim
+  From pole to pole!"
+
+This pamphlet, which excited Englishmen of seventy years ago to such a
+pitch of angry and scornful contention, may be read safely now. Time
+has taken the sting from it. It is written in that popular style which
+was Paine's extraordinary gift. He practised the maxim of
+Aristotle,--although probably he had never heard of it,--"Think like
+the wise, and speak like the common people." Fox said of the "Rights of
+Man," "It seems as clear and as simple as the first rule in
+arithmetic." Therein lay its strength. Paine knew exactly what he
+wanted to say, and exactly how to say it. His positions may be
+wrong,--no doubt frequently are wrong,--but so clearly, keenly, and
+above all so boldly stated, and backed by such shrewd arguments and
+such apposite illustrations, that it is difficult not to yield to his
+common-sense view of the question he is discussing. His plain and
+perspicuous style is often elegant. He may sometimes be coarse and
+rude, but it is in the thought rather than in the expression. It is
+true, that, in the heat of conflict, he is apt to lose his temper and
+break out into the bitter violence of his French associates; but even
+the scientific and reverend Priestley "called names,"--apostate,
+renegade, scoundrel. This rough energy added to his popularity with the
+middle and the lower classes, and made him doubly distasteful to his
+opponents. Paine, who thought all revolutions alike, and all good,
+could not understand why Burke, who had upheld the Americans, should
+exert his whole strength against the French, unless he were "a traitor
+to human nature." Burke did Paine equal injustice. He thought him
+unworthy of any refutation but the pillory. In public, he never
+mentioned his name. But his opinion, and, perhaps, a little soreness of
+feeling, may be seen in this extract from a letter to Sir William
+Smith:--
+
+"He [Paine] is utterly incapable of comprehending his subject. He has
+not even a moderate portion of learning of any kind. He has learned the
+instrumental part of literature, without having ever made a previous
+preparation of study for the use of it. Paine has nothing more than
+what a man, whose audacity makes him careless of logical consequences
+and his total want of honor makes indifferent to political
+consequences, can very easily write."
+
+The radicals thought otherwise. They drank Mr. Burke's health with
+"thanks to him for the discussion he had provoked." And the student of
+history, who may read Paine's opening sketch of the French Revolution,
+written to refute Burke's narrative of the same events, will not deny
+Paine's complete success. He will even meet with sentences that Burke
+might have composed. For instance: Paine ridicules, as Quixotic, the
+fine passage in the "Reflections on the Decay of Chivalry"; and adds,
+"Mr. Burke's mind is above the homely sorrows of the vulgar. He can
+only feel for a king or for a queen. The countless victims of tyranny
+have no place in his sympathies. He is not affected by the reality of
+distress touching upon his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it.
+He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird."
+
+The French constitution,--"a fabric of government which time could not
+destroy and the latest posterity would admire." This was the boast of
+the National Assembly, echoed by the English clubs. Even Mr. Fox, as
+late as April, 1791, misled by his own magniloquence, spoke of it as
+"the most stupendous and glorious edifice of liberty which had been
+erected on the foundation of human integrity in any time or country."
+Paine heartily concurred with him. Such a constitution as this, he
+said, is needed in England. There is no hope of it from Parliament.
+Indeed, Parliament, if it desired reforms, could not make them; it has
+not the legal right. A national convention, fresh from the people, is
+indispensable. Then, _reculant pour mieux sauter_, Paine goes back to
+the origin of man,--a journey often undertaken by the political
+philosophers of that day. He describes his natural rights,--defines
+society as a compact,--declares that no generation has a right to bind
+its successors, (a doctrine which Mr. Jefferson, and some foolish
+people after him, thought a self-evident truth,)--hence, no family has
+a right to take possession of a throne. An hereditary rule is as great
+an absurdity as an hereditary professorship of mathematics,--a place
+supposed by Dr. Franklin to exist in some German university. Paine grew
+bolder as he advanced: "If monarchy is a useless thing, why is it kept
+up anywhere? and if a necessary thing, how can it be dispensed with?"
+This is a pretty good specimen of one of Paine's dialectical methods.
+Here is another: The French constitution says, that the right of war
+and of peace is in the nation. "Where else should it reside, but in
+those who are to pay the expense? In England, the right is said to
+reside in a metaphor shown at the Tower for sixpence or a shilling."
+Dropping the crown, he turned upon the aristocracy and the Church, and
+tore them. He begged Lafayette's pardon for addressing him as Marquis.
+Titles are but nicknames. Nobility and no ability are synonymous. "In
+all the vocabulary of Adam, you will find no such thing as a duke or a
+count." The French had established universal liberty of conscience,
+which gave rise to the following Painean statement: "With respect to
+what are called denominations of religion,--if every one is left to
+judge of his own religion, there is no such thing as a religion which
+is wrong; but if they are to judge of each other's religion, there is
+no such thing as a religion that is right;--and therefore all the world
+is right or all the world is wrong." The next is better: "Religion is
+man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his heart; and though these
+fruits may differ from each other, like the fruits of the earth, the
+grateful tribute of every one is accepted."
+
+To encounter an antagonist like Burke, and to come off with credit,
+might stimulate moderate vanity into public self-exposure; but in Paine
+vanity was the besetting weakness. It was now swollen by success and
+flattery into magnificent proportions. Franklin says, that, "when we
+forbear to praise ourselves, we make a sacrifice to the pride or to the
+envy of others." Paine did not hesitate to mortify both these failings
+in his fellow-men. He praises himself with the simplicity of an Homeric
+hero before a fight. He introduces himself, without a misgiving, almost
+in the words of Pius Aeneas,--
+
+  "Sum Thomas Paine,
+  Faunâ, super aethera notus."
+
+"With all the inconveniences of early life against me, I am proud to
+say, that, with a perseverance undismayed by difficulties, a
+disinterestedness that compels respect, I have not only contributed to
+raise a new empire in the world, founded on a new system of government,
+but I have arrived at an eminence in political literature, the most
+difficult of all lines to succeed and excel in, which aristocracy, with
+all its aids, has not been able to reach or to rival." "I possess," he
+wrote in the Second Part of the "Rights of Man," "more of what is
+called consequence in the world than any one of Mr. Burke's catalogue
+of aristocrats." Paine sincerely believed himself to be an adept who
+had found in the rights of man the _materia prima_ of politics, by
+which error and suffering might be transmuted into happiness and truth.
+A second Columbus, but greater than the Genoese! Christopher had
+discovered a new world, it is true, but Thomas had discovered the means
+of making a new world out of the old. About this time, Dumont, the
+Benthamite, travelled with him from Paris to London. Dumont was
+irritated with "his incredible _amour-propre_ and his presumptuous
+self-conceit." "He was mad with vanity." "The man was a caricature of
+the vainest of Frenchmen. He believed that his book on the 'Rights of
+Man' might supply the place of all the books that had ever been
+written. If it was in his power, he would destroy all the libraries in
+the world without hesitation, in order to root out the errors of which
+they were the deposit, and so recommence by the 'Rights of Man' a new
+chain of ideas and principles." Thus Paine and his wild friends had
+reached the point of folly in the reformer's scale, and, like so many
+of their class since, made the fatal mistake of supposing that the old
+world knew nothing.
+
+When Dumont fell in with Paine, he was returning from a flying visit to
+Paris, invigorated by the bracing air of French freedom. He had seen
+Pope Pius burned in effigy in the Palais Royal, and the poor King
+brought back a prisoner from Varennes,--a cheerful spectacle to the
+friend of humanity. He was on his way to be present at a dinner given
+in London on the 14th of July, to commemorate the taking of the
+Bastille; but the managers of the festivity thought it prudent that he
+should not attend. He wrote, soon after, the address read by Horne
+Tooke to the meeting of the 20th of August, at the Thatched House
+tavern. So enlightened were the doctrines set forth in this paper, that
+the innkeeper declined receiving Mr. Tooke and his friends on any
+subsequent occasion. On the 4th of November, he assisted at the
+customary celebration of the Fifth by the Revolution Society, and gave,
+for his toast, "The Revolution of the World."
+
+Meanwhile, Paine had reloaded his piece, and was now ready for another
+shot at kings, lords, and commons. A thousand guineas were offered for
+the copyright and refused. He declined to treat as a merchantable
+commodity principles of such importance to mankind. His plan was, to
+publish Part the Second on the day of the opening of Parliament; but
+Chapman, the printer, became frightened, like his predecessor, at a
+treasonable paragraph, and refused to go on.
+
+A fortnight passed before work was resumed, and the essay did not
+appear until the 16th of February, 1792. It combined, according to the
+author, "principles and practice." Part the First was now fully
+expounded, and enlarged by a scheme for diminishing the taxes and
+improving the condition of the poor, by making weekly allowances to
+young children, aged people, travelling workmen, and disbanded
+soldiers. This project of Paine, stated with the mathematical accuracy
+which was a characteristic of his mind, sprang from the same source as
+the thousand Utopianisms which form the ludicrous side of the terrible
+French Revolution.
+
+Part the First was dedicated to Washington; Part the Second bore the
+name of Lafayette. It is evident, from the second dedication, that
+Paine had kept pace with the railway speed of the Revolution, and had
+far outstripped the Marquis, who was not born to lead, or even to
+understand the period he attempted to direct. The foremost men of 1792
+had no time to wait;--"Mankind are always ripe enough to understand
+their true interest," said Paine; adding words which seemed to quiet
+Englishmen of fearful significance:--
+
+"I do not believe that monarchy and aristocracy will continue seven
+years longer in any of the enlightened countries of Europe."--"When
+France shall be surrounded with revolutions, she will be in peace and
+safety."--"From what we can learn, all Europe may form but one great
+republic, and man be free of the whole."--"It is only a certain service
+that any man can perform in the state, and the service of any
+individual in the routine of office can never exceed the value of ten
+thousand pounds a year."--"I presume that no man in his sober senses
+will compare the character of any of the kings of Europe with that of
+George Washington. Yet in France and in England the expenses of the
+Civil List only for the support of one man are eight times greater than
+the whole expense of the Federal government of America."--"The time is
+not very distant when England will laugh at itself for sending to
+Holland, Hanover, Zell, or Brunswick, for men, at the expense of a
+million a year, who understand neither her laws, her language, or her
+interest, and whose capacities would scarcely have fitted them for the
+office of a parish constable. If government could be trusted to such
+hands, it must be some easy and simple thing indeed, and materials fit
+for all the purposes may be found in every town and village in
+England."
+
+Here is treasonable matter enough, surely; and no wonder that Mr.
+Chapman judged it prudent to stop his press.
+
+Paine sent fifty copies to Washington; and wrote to him that sixteen
+thousand had been printed in England, and four editions in
+Ireland,--the second of ten thousand copies. Thirty thousand copies
+were distributed by the clubs, at their own expense, among the poor.
+Six months after the appearance of the Second Part, Paine sent the
+Society for Constitutional Information a thousand pounds, which he had
+received from the sale of the book. He then gave up the copyright to
+the public. The circulation of this tract was prodigious. The original
+edition had been printed in the same form as Burke's "Reflections," in
+order that the antidote might be bound up with the bane. The high price
+preventing many from purchasing, Paine got out a cheap edition which
+was retailed at sixpence all over England and Scotland. It is said that
+at least one hundred thousand copies were sold, besides the large
+number distributed gratuitously. An edition was published in the United
+States. It was translated into French by Dr. Lanthenas, a member of the
+National Convention, and into German by C. F. Krämer. Upon English
+readers of a certain class it retained a hold for many years. In 1820,
+Carlile, the bookseller, said, that in the preceding three years he had
+sold five thousand copies of the "Rights of Man." Perhaps Cobbett's
+resurrection of the bones of the prophet brought the book into fashion
+again at that time. It may yet be read in England; but in this country,
+where a citizen feels that his rights are anything he may choose to
+claim, it is certainly a superfluous publication, and seldom met with.
+
+In England, in 1792, Burke and Paine revived the royalist and
+republican parties, which had lain dormant since 1688. A new body of
+men, the manufacturing, entered the political field on the republican
+side. The contest was embittered not only by the anger of antagonism,
+but by the feeling of class. A radical of Paine's school was considered
+by good society as a pestilent blackguard, unworthy of a gentleman's
+notice,--much as an Abolitionist is looked down upon nowadays by the
+American "Chivalry." But the strife was confined to meetings,
+resolutions, and pamphlets. Few riots took place; none of much
+importance. The gentlemen of England have never wanted the courage or
+the strength to take care of themselves.
+
+The political clubs were the principal centres of agitation. There were
+two particularly active on the liberal side: the Revolution Society,
+originally founded to commemorate the Revolution of 1688, and the
+Society for Constitutional Information, established for the purpose of
+bringing about a reform in the representation. But the revolutionary
+changes in France had quickened their ideas, and had given them a taste
+for stronger and more rapid measures. They now openly "resolved" that
+England was "a prey to an arbitrary King, a senile Peerage, a corrupt
+House of Commons, and a rapacious and intolerant Clergy." A third club,
+the Corresponding Society, was younger and more violent, with branches
+and affiliations all over England on the Jacobins' plan, and in active
+correspondence with that famous institution. The middle and lower
+classes in manufacturing towns, precursors of the Chartists of 1846,
+belonged to this society. Their avowed objects were annual parliaments
+and universal suffrage; but many members were in favor of a national
+convention and a republic. The tone of all three societies became
+French; they used a jargon borrowed from the other side of the Channel.
+They sent deputations to the National Convention, expressing their wish
+to adopt the republican form in England, and their hope of success. The
+Corresponding Society even sent addresses of congratulation after the
+massacres of September. Joel Barlow, the American, a man of the Paine
+genus, without his talent or honesty of purpose, went as Commissioner
+of the Society for Constitutional Information to the Convention,--
+carrying with him an address which reads like a translation from the
+French, and a thousand pair of shoes, with the promise of a thousand
+pair a week for six weeks to come.
+
+On the other side there were, of course, numerous Tory associations,
+counter clubs, as violent as their republican antagonists, whose loyal
+addresses to the throne were duly published in the Gazette.
+
+The probability of a revolution now became a subject of general
+discussion. Government, at last convinced that England, in the words of
+Mr. Burke, "abounded in factious men, who would readily plunge the
+country into blood and confusion for the sake of establishing the
+fanciful Systems they were enamored of," determined to act with vigor.
+A royal proclamation was issued against seditious writings. Paine
+received notice that he would be prosecuted in the King's Bench. He
+came immediately to London, and found that Jordan, his publisher, had
+already been served with a summons, but, having no stomach for a
+contest with the authorities, had compromised the affair with the
+Solicitor of the Treasury by agreeing to appear and plead guilty. Such
+pusillanimity was beneath the mark of Paine's enthusiasm. He wrote to
+McDonald, the Attorney-General, that he, Paine, had no desire to avoid
+any prosecution which the authorship of one of the most useful books
+ever offered to mankind might bring upon him; and that he should do the
+defence full justice, as well for the sake of the nation as for that of
+his own reputation. He wound up a long letter by the very ungenerous
+insinuation, that Mr. Burke, not being able to answer the "Rights of
+Man," had advised legal proceedings.
+
+The societies, checked for a moment by the blow struck at them, soon
+renewed their exertions. The sale of the "Rights of Man" became more
+extended than ever. Paine said that the proclamation served hint for an
+advertisement. The Manchester and Sheffield branches of the
+Constitutional Society voted unanimously addresses of thanks to him for
+his essay, "a work of the highest importance to every nation under
+heaven." The newspapers were full of speeches, votes, resolutions, on
+the same subject. Every mail was laden with congratulations to the
+Jacobins on the coming time,--
+
+  "When France shall reign, and laws be all
+    repealed."
+
+To the Radicals, the Genius of Liberty seemed to be hovering over
+England; and Thomas Paine was the harbinger to prepare his way.
+
+Differences of opinion, when frequently expressed in hard words,
+commonly lead to hard blows; and the conservative classes of England
+were not men to hold their hands when they thought the proper time had
+come to strike. But the party which looked up to Paine as its apostle
+was not as numerous as it appeared to be from the noise it made. There
+is never a sufficiently large number of reckless zealots in England to
+do much mischief,--one of the greatest proofs of the inherent good
+sense of that people. Dr. Gall's saying, "_Tout ce qui est ultrà est
+bête_," is worth his whole phrenological system. Measures and doctrines
+had now been pushed so far that a numerous and influential body of
+liberals called a halt,--the prelude of a union with the government
+forces.
+
+Luckily for Paine, his French admirers stepped in at this critical
+moment to save him. Mons. Audibert, a municipal officer from Calais,
+came to announce to him that he was elected to the National Convention
+for that department. He immediately proceeded to Dover with his French
+friend. In Dover, the collector of the customs searched their pockets
+as well as their portmanteaus, in spite of many angry protestations.
+Finally their papers were returned to them, and they were allowed to
+embark. Paine was just in time; an order to detain him arrived about
+twenty minutes after his embarkation.
+
+The trial came on before Lord Kenyon. Erskine appeared for the absent
+defendant. The Attorney-General used, as his brief, a foolish letter he
+had received from Paine at Calais, read it to the jury, made a few
+remarks, and rested his case. The jury found Paine guilty without
+leaving their seats. Sentence of outlawry was passed upon him. Safe in
+France, he treated the matter as a capital joke. Some years later he
+found that it had a disagreeable meaning in it.
+
+The prophet had been translated to another sphere of revolutionary
+unrest. His influence gradually died away. He dwindled into a mere
+name. "But the fact remains," to use his own words, "and will hereafter
+be placed in the history of extraordinary things, that a pamphlet
+should be produced by an individual, unconnected with any sect or
+party, and almost a stranger in the land, that should completely
+frighten a whole government, and that in the midst of its triumphant
+security."
+
+Paine might have published his "principles" his life long without
+troubling many subjects of King George, had it not been for their
+combination with "practice" in France,--whither let us now follow him.
+
+When he landed at Calais, the guard turned out and presented arms; a
+grand salute was fired; the officer in command embraced him and
+presented him with the national cockade; a good-looking _citoyenne_
+asked leave to pin it on his hat, expressing the hope of her
+compatriots that he would continue his exertions in favor of liberty.
+Enthusiastic acclamations followed,--a grand chorus of _Vive Thomas
+Paine!_ The crowd escorted him to Dessein's hotel,[1] in the Rue de
+l'Égalité, formerly Rue du Roi, and shouted under his windows. At the
+proper time he was conducted to the Town Hall. The municipality were
+assembled to bestow the _accolade fraternelle_ upon their
+representative. M. le Maire made a speech, which Audibert, who still
+had Paine in charge, translated. Paine laid his hand on his heart,
+bowed, and assured the municipality that his life should be devoted to
+their service. In the evening, the club held a meeting in the Salle des
+Minimes. The hall was jammed. Paine was seated beside the President,
+under a bust of Mirabeau, surmounted by the flags of France, England,
+and the United States. More addresses, compliments, protestations, and
+frantic cries of _Vive Thomas Paine!_ The _séance_ was adjourned to the
+church, to give those who could not obtain admission into the Club Hall
+an opportunity to look at their famous representative. The next evening
+Paine went to the theatre. The state-box had been prepared for him. The
+house rose and _vivaed_ as he entered.
+
+[Footnote 1: See Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_.]
+
+When Calais had shouted itself hoarse, Paine travelled towards Paris.
+The towns he traversed on the road thither received him with similar
+honors. From the capital he addressed a letter of thanks to his
+fellow-citizens. Although he sat for Calais in the Convention, he had
+been chosen by three other departments. Priestley was a candidate for
+Paris, but was beaten by Marat, a doctor of another description. He
+was, however, duly elected in the department L'Orne, but never took his
+seat. Paine and Baron Clootz were the only foreigners in the
+Convention. Another stranger, of political celebrity out of doors,
+styled himself American as well as Paine,--_Fournier l'Américain_, a
+mulatto from the West Indies, whose complexion was not considered
+"incompatible with freedom" in France,--a violent and blood-thirsty
+fellow, who shot at Lafayette on the _dix-sept Juillet_, narrowly
+missing him,--led an attacking party against the Tuileries on the _dix
+Août_, and escaped the guillotine to be transported by Bonaparte.
+
+In Paris, Paine was already a personage well known to all the leading
+men,--a great republican luminary, "foreign benefactor of the species,"
+who had commenced the revolution in America, was making one in England,
+and was willing to help make one in France. His English works,
+translated by Lanthenas, a friend of Robespierre and co-editor with
+Brissot of the "Patriote Français," had earned for him the dignity of
+_citoyen Français_,--an honor which he shared with Mackintosh, Dr.
+Price, the Priestleys, father and son, and David Williams. He had
+furnished Lafayette with a good deal of his revolutionary rhetoric, had
+contributed to the Monthly Review of the Girondists and the "Chronique
+de Paris," and had written a series of articles in defence of
+representative government, which Condorcet had translated for him.
+Paine was a man of one idea in politics; a federal republic, on the
+American plan, was the only system of government he believed in, and
+the only one he wished to see established in France. Lafayette belonged
+to this school. So did Condorcet, Pétion, Buzot, and others of less
+note. Under Paine's direction they formed a republican club, which met
+at Condorcet's house. This federal theory cost them dear. In 1793, it
+was treason against the _une et indivisible_, and was punished
+accordingly.
+
+After the flight to Varennes, Paine openly declared that the King was
+"a political superfluity." This was true enough. The people had lost
+all respect for the man and for the office. None so base as to call him
+King. He was only the _pouvoir exécutif_, or more commonly still,
+_Monsieur Veto_. Achille Duchâtelet, a young officer who had served in
+America, called upon Dumont to get him to translate a proclamation
+drawn up by Paine, urging the people to seize the opportunity and
+establish a republic. It was intended to be a "Common Sense" for
+France. Dumont refusing to have anything to do with it, some other
+translator was found. It appeared on the walls of the capital with
+Duchâtelet's name affixed. The placard was torn down by order of the
+Assembly and attracted little attention. The French were not quite
+ready for the republic, although gradually approaching it. They seemed
+to take a pleasure in playing awhile with royalty before exterminating
+it.
+
+The Abbé Sièyes was a warm monarchist. He wrote in the "Moniteur," that
+he could prove, "on every hypothesis," that men were more free in a
+monarchy than in a republic. Paine gave notice in Brissot's paper, that
+he would demolish the Abbé utterly in fifty pages, and show the world
+that a constitutional monarchy was a nullity,--concluding with the
+usual flourish about "weeping for the miseries of humanity," "hell of
+despotism," etc., etc., the fashionable doxology of patriotic authors
+in that day. Sièyes announced his readiness to meet the great Paine in
+conflict. This passage of pens was interrupted by the publication of
+Part Second of the "Rights of Man." Before Paine returned to Paris, the
+mob had settled the question for the time, so far as the French nation
+were concerned.
+
+Paine had also taken a leading part in some of the politico-theatrical
+entertainments then so frequent in the streets of Paris. At the
+festival of the Federation, in July, 1790, when Clootz led a
+"deputation" of the _genre humain_, consisting of an English editor and
+some colored persons in fancy dresses, Paine and Paul Jones headed the
+American branch of humanity and carried the stars and stripes. Not long
+after, Fame appears again marshalling a deputation of English and
+Americans, who waited upon the Jacobin Club to fraternize. Suitable
+preparations had been made by the club for this solemn occasion. The
+three national flags, united, were placed in the hall over the busts of
+Dr. Franklin and Dr. Price. Robespierre himself received the generous
+strangers; but most of the talking seems to have been done by a fervid
+_citoyenne_, who took _la parole_ and kept it. "Let a cry of joy rush
+through all Europe and fly to America," said she. "But hark!
+Philadelphia and all its countries repeat, like us, _Vive la Liberté!_"
+To see a man of Paine's clear sense and simple tastes pleased by such
+flummery as this shows us how difficult it is not to be affected by the
+spirit of the generation we live with. How could he have supposed that
+the new heaven upon earth of his dreams would ever be constructed out
+of such pinchbeck materials?
+
+It was now the year 1. of the Republic. The _dix Août_ was over, the
+King a prisoner in the Temple. Lafayette, in his attempt to imitate his
+"master," Washington, had succeeded no better than the magician's
+apprentice, who knew how to raise the demon, but not how to manage him
+when he appeared. He had gone down before the revolution, and was now
+_le traître Lafayette_, a refugee in Austria. Dumouriez commanded on
+the north-eastern frontier in his place. France was still shuddering at
+the recollection of the prison-massacres of the _Septembriseurs_, and
+society, to use the phrase of a modern French revolutionist, was _en
+procès de liquidation_.
+
+Paine got on very well, at first. The Convention was impressed with the
+necessity of looking up first principles, and Paine was emphatically
+the man of principles. A universal republic was the hope of the
+majority, with a convention sitting at the centre of the civilized
+world, watching untiringly over the rights of man and the peace of the
+human race. Meantime, they elected a committee to make a new
+constitution for France. Paine was, of course, selected. His colleagues
+were Sièyes, Condorcet, Gensonné, Vergniaud, Pétion, Brissot, Barère,
+and Danton. Of these nine, Paine and Sièyes alone survived the Reign of
+Terror. When, in due time, this constitution was ready to be submitted
+to the Convention, no one could be found to listen to the reading of
+the report. The revolution had outstripped the committee. Their labors
+proved as useless as the Treatise on Education composed by Mr. Shandy
+for the use of his son Tristram;--when it was finished, the child had
+outgrown every chapter.
+
+Thenceforward, we catch only occasional glimpses of Paine. In the days
+of his glory, he lived in the fashionable Rue de Richelieu, holding
+levees twice a week, to receive a public eager to gaze upon so great a
+man. His name appears at the _fête civique_ held by English and Irish
+republicans at White's Hotel. There he sat beside Santerre, the famous
+brewer, and proposed, as a sentiment, "The approaching National
+Convention of Great Britain and Ireland." At this dinner, Lord Edward
+Fitzgerald, then an officer in the British service, gave, "May the 'Ça
+ira,' the 'Carmagnole,' and the 'Marseillaise' be the music of every
+army, and soldier and citizen join in the chorus,"--a toast which cost
+him his commission, perhaps his life. We read, too, that Paine was
+struck in a _café_ by some loyal, hot-headed English captain, who took
+that means of showing his dislike for the author of the "Rights of
+Man." The police sternly seized the foolish son of Albion. A blow
+inflicted upon the sacred person of a member of the Convention was
+clearly sacrilege, punishable, perhaps, with death. But Paine
+interfered, procured passports, and sent the penitent soldier safely
+out of the country.
+
+Speaking no French, for he never succeeded in learning the language,
+Paine's part in the public sittings of the Convention must have been
+generally limited to eloquent silence or expressive dumbshow. But when
+the trial of the King came on, he took a bold and dangerous share in
+the proceedings, which destroyed what little popularity the ruin of his
+federal schemes had left him, and came near costing him his head. He
+was already so great a laggard behind the revolutionary march, that he
+did not suspect the determination of the Mountain to put the King to
+death. Louis was guilty, no doubt, Paine thought,--but not of any great
+crime. Banishment for life, or until the new government be
+consolidated,--say to the United States, where he will have the
+inestimable privilege of seeing the working of free institutions;--once
+thoroughly convinced of his royal errors, morally, as well as
+physically uncrowned, he might safely be allowed to return to France as
+plain Citizen Capet: that should be his sentence. But the extreme left
+of the Convention and the constituent rabble of the galleries wanted to
+break with the past, and to throw a king's head into the arena as wager
+of battle to the despots of Europe. The discovery of the iron safe in
+the palace offered, it was thought, sufficient show of evidence for the
+prosecution; if not, they were ready to dispense with any. The case was
+prejudged; the trial, a cruel and an empty form. There were two
+righteous men in that political Gomorrah,--Tronchet and the venerable
+Malesherbes. They offered their services to defend the unfortunate
+victim. Who can read Malesherbes's noble letter to the President of the
+Convention, without thinking the better of French nature forever after?
+
+A fierce preliminary discussion arose the Convention on the
+constitutional question of the King's inviolability. Paine had no
+patience with the privileges of kingship and voted against
+inviolability. He requested that a speech he had prepared on the
+subject might be read to the House at once, as he wished to send off a
+copy to London for the English papers. This wretched composition was
+manifestly written for England. Paine had George III. in his mind,
+rather than Louis XVI. Here is a specimen of the style of
+it,--interesting, as showing the temper of the time, as well as of
+Member Thomas Paine:--"Louis, as an individual, is an object beneath
+the notice of the Republic. But he ought to be tried, because a
+conspiracy has been formed against the liberty of all nations by the
+crowned ruffians of Europe. Louis XVI. is believed to be the partner of
+that horde, and is the only man of them you have in your power. It is
+indispensable to discover who the gang is composed of, and this may be
+done by his trial. It may also bring to light the detestable conduct of
+Mr. Guelph, Elector of Hanover, and be doing justice to England to make
+them aware of it. It is the interest of France to be surrounded by
+republics, and that revolutions be universal. If Louis XVI. can serve
+to prove, by the flagitiousness of government in general, the necessity
+of revolutions, France ought not to let slip so precious an
+opportunity. Seeing no longer in Louis XVI. but a weakminded and
+narrow-spirited individual, ill-bred, like all his colleagues, given,
+as it is said, to frequent excesses of drunkenness, and whom the
+National Assembly raised again imprudently to a throne which was not
+made for him,--if we show him hereafter some pity, it shall not be the
+result of the burlesque idea of a pretended inviolability."
+
+A secretary read this speech from the tribune,--Paine standing near
+him, silent, furnishing perhaps an occasional gesture to mark the
+emphasis. The Convention applauded warmly, and ordered it to be printed
+and circulated in the departments.
+
+When the King was found guilty, and it came to the final vote, whether
+he should be imprisoned, banished, or beheaded, the Girondins, who had
+spoken warmly against the death-penalty, voted for it, overawed by the
+stormy abuse of the galleries. Paine, coarse and insolent, but not
+cowardly or cruel, did not hesitate to vote for banishment. He
+requested the member from the Pas de Calais to read from the tribune
+his appeal in favor of the King. Drunau attempted to do it, but was
+hooted down. Paine persisted,--presented his speech again the next day.
+Marat objected to its reception, because Paine was a Quaker, and
+opposed to capital punishment on principle; but the Convention at last
+consented to the reading. After alluding to the all-important
+assistance furnished by Louis XVI. to the insurgent American Colonies,
+Paine, as a citizen of both countries, proposed sending him to the
+United States. "To kill Louis," wrote Paine, "is not only inhuman, but
+a folly. It will increase the number of your enemies. France has but
+one ally,--the United States of America,--and the execution of the King
+would spread an universal affliction in that country. If I could speak
+your language like a Frenchman, I would descend a suppliant to your
+bar, and in the name of all my brothers in America present to you a
+petition and prayer to suspend the execution of Louis." The Mountain
+and the galleries roared with rage. Thuriot exclaimed,--"That is not
+the true language of Thomas Paine."
+
+"I denounce the translator," shrieked venomous Marat; "these are not
+the opinions of Thomas Paine; it is a wicked and unfaithful
+translation."
+
+Coulon affirmed, solemnly, that he had seen the original in Paine's
+hands, and that it was exact. The reader was finally allowed to resume.
+"You mean to send an ambassador to the United States. Let him announce
+to the Americans that the National Convention of France, from pure
+friendship to America, has consented to respite the sentence of Louis.
+Ah, Citizens, do not give the despot of England the pleasure of seeing
+sent to the scaffold the man who helped my beloved brethren of America
+to free themselves from his chains!"
+
+Soon after the execution of the King, Paris fell into the hands of the
+lowest classes. Their leaders ruled with terrible energy. Chabot's
+_dictum,--"Il n'y a pas de crimes en révolution_," and Stablekeeper
+Drouet's exclamation,--"_Soyons brigands pour le bonheur du peuple_,"
+contain the political principles which guided them. Marat thundered
+away in his paper against Brissotins, Girondins, federalism, and
+moderantism. The minority members, thus unpleasantly noticed, went
+armed; many of them dared not sleep at home. Soon came the arrest of
+the _suspects_. The 31st of May, _cette insurrection toute morale_, as
+Robespierre called it, followed next. The Convention was stormed by the
+mob and purged of Brissotins and Girondins. The _Comité de Salut
+Public_ decreed forced loans and the _levée en masse_. Foreigners were
+expelled from the Convention and imprisoned throughout France. Mayor
+Bailly, Mme. Roland, Manuel, and their friends, passed under the axe.
+The same fate befell the Girondins, a party of phrase-makers who have
+enjoyed a posthumous sentimental reputation, but who, when living, had
+not the energy and active courage to back their fine speeches. The
+_reductio ad horribile_ of all the fine arguments in favor of popular
+infallibility and virtue had come; neither was the _reductio ad
+absurdum_ wanting. The old names of the days and months and years were
+changed. The statues of the Virgin were torn from the little niches in
+street-walls, and the busts of Marat and Lepelletier set up in their
+stead. The would-be God, _soi-disant Dieu_, was banished from France.
+Clootz and Chaumette, who called themselves Anacharsis and Anaxagoras,
+celebrated the worship of the Goddess of Reason. Bonfires of feudality;
+Goddesses of Liberty in plaster; trees of liberty planted in every
+square; altars _de la patrie_; huge rag-dolls representing Anarchy and
+Discord; Cleobis and Biton dragging their revered parents through the
+streets; _bonnets rouges, banderolles, ça iras, carmagnoles,
+fraternisations, accolades_; the properties, as well as the text of the
+plays, borrowed from Ancient Greece or Rome. What a bewildering
+retrospect! A period well summed up by Emerson:--"To-day, pasteboard
+and filigree; to-morrow, madness and murder." _Tigre-singe_, Voltaire's
+epigrammatic definition, describes his countrymen of the Reign of
+Terror in two words.
+
+Neglected by all parties, and disgusted with all, Paine moved to a
+remote quarter of Paris, and took rooms in a house which had once
+belonged to Mme. de Pompadour. Brissot, Thomas Christie, Mary
+Wolstonecraft, and Joel Barlow were his principal associates. Two
+Englishmen, "friends of humanity," and an ex-officer of the
+_garde-du-corps_ lodged in the same building. The neighborhood was not
+without its considerable persons. Sanson, most celebrated of headsmen,
+had his domicile ii the same section. He called upon Paine,
+complimented him in good English upon his "Rights of Man," which he had
+read, and offered his services in a polite manner.
+
+When the Reign of Terror was fully established, the little party seldom
+left their walls, and amused themselves as best they could with
+conversation and games. The news of the confusion and alarm of Paris
+reached them in their retreat, as if they were miles away in some quiet
+country residence. Every evening the landlord went into the city and
+brought back with him the horrible story of the day. "As to myself,"
+Paine wrote to Lady Smith, "I used to find some relief by walking in
+the garden and cursing with hearty good-will the authors of that
+terrible system that had turned the character of the revolution I had
+been proud to defend."
+
+After some weeks, the two Englishmen contrived to escape to
+Switzerland, leaving their enthusiasm for humanity behind them. Two
+days later, a file of armed men came to arrest them. Before the month
+was out, the landlord was carried off in the night. Last of all came
+the turn of Paine. He was arrested in December, by order of
+Robespierre, "for the interest of America, as well as of France, as a
+dangerous enemy of liberty and equality." On his way to the Luxembourg,
+he stopped at Barlow's lodgings and left with him the First Part of the
+"Age of Reason," finished the day before. The Americans in Paris
+applied to the Convention for Paine's release, offering themselves as
+security for his good conduct during his stay in France. They rounded
+off their petition with a phrase of the prisoner's,--"Ah, Citizens! do
+not give the leagued despots of Europe the pleasure of seeing Thomas
+Paine in irons." This document was presented by a Major Jackson, a
+"volunteer character," who had come to Europe with a letter of
+introduction to Gouverneur Morris, then minister, from Mr. Jefferson.
+Instead of delivering his letter to Morris, Jackson lodged it with the
+_Comité de Salut Public_ as a credential, and represented his country
+on the strength of it. The Convention, careless of the opinion of the
+"leagued despots," as well as of Major Jackson, replied, that Paine was
+an Englishman, and the demand for his release unauthorized by the
+United States. Paine wrote to Morris to request him to demand his
+discharge of the citizen who administered foreign affairs. Morris did
+so; but this official denied that Paine was an American. Morris
+inclosed this answer to Paine, who returned a shrewd argument in his
+own behalf, and begged Morris to lay the proofs of his citizenship
+before the minister. But Morris disliked Paine, and his own position in
+France was far from satisfactory. It is probable that he was not very
+zealous in the matter, and shortly after Paine's letter all
+communication with prisoners was forbidden.
+
+The news of the outer world reached these unfortunates, penned up like
+sheep waiting for the butcher, only when the doors of the dungeon
+opened to admit a new _fournée_, or batch of victims, as the French
+pleasantly called them. They knew then that the revolution had made
+another stride forward, and had trodden these down as it moved on.
+Paine saw them all--Ronsin, Hébert, Momoro, Chaumette, Clootz, Gobel,
+the crazy and the vile, mingled together, the very men he had cursed in
+his garden at St. Denis--pass before him like the shadows of a
+magic-lantern, entering at one side and gliding out at the other,--to
+death. A few days later came Danton, Camille, Desmoulins, and the few
+who remained of the moderate party. Paine was standing near the wicket
+when they were brought in. Danton embraced him. "What you have done for
+the happiness and liberty of your country I have in vain tried to do
+for mine. I have been less fortunate, but not more culpable. I am sent
+to the scaffold." Turning to his friends.--"_Eh, bien! mes amis, allons
+y gaiement._" Happy Frenchmen! What a consolation it was to them to be
+thus always able to take an attitude and enact a character! Their
+fondness for dramatic display must have served them as a moral
+anaesthetic in those scenes of murder, and have deadened their
+sensibility to the horrors of their actual condition.
+
+In July, the carnage had reached its height. No man could count upon
+life for twenty-four hours. The tall, the wise, the reverend heads had
+been taken off, and now the humbler ones were insecure upon their
+shoulders. Fouquier-Tinville had erected a guillotine in his
+court-room, to save time and transportation. Newsboys sold about the
+streets printed lists of those who were to suffer that day. "_Voici
+ceux qui ont gagné à la loterie de la Sainte Guillotine!_" they cried,
+with that reckless, mocking, blood-thirsty spirit which is found only
+in Frenchmen, or, perhaps, in their fellow-Celts. It seemed to Paine
+that Robespierre and the Committee were afraid to leave a man alive. He
+expected daily his own summons; but he was overlooked. There was
+nothing to be gained by killing him, except the mere pleasure of the
+thing.
+
+He ascribed his escape to a severe attack of fever, which kept him out
+of sight for a time, and to a clerical error on the part of the
+distributing jailer. He wrote this account of it, after his return to
+America:--"The room in which I was lodged was on the ground-floor, and
+one of a long range of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened
+outward and flat against the wall, so that, when it was opened, the
+inside of the door appeared outward, and the contrary when it was shut
+I had three fellow-prisoners with me,--Joseph Van Huile of Bruges,
+Michel and Robin Bastini of Louvain. When persons by scores were to be
+taken out of prison for the guillotine, it was always done in the
+night, and those who performed that office had a private mark by which
+they knew what rooms to go to and what number to take. We, as I have
+said, were four, and the door of our room was marked, unobserved by us,
+with that number in chalk; but it happened, if happening is a proper
+word, that the mark was put on when the door was open and flat against
+the wall, and thereby came on the inside when we shut it at night, and
+the destroying angel passed by it." Paine thought his escape
+providential; the Orthodox took a different view of it.
+
+After the fall of Robespierre, in Thermidor, seventy-three members of
+the Convention, who had survived the Reign of Terror, resumed their
+seats. But Paine was not released. Monroe had superseded Morris in
+August, but had no instructions from his government. Indeed, as Paine
+had accepted citizenship in France, and had publicly acted as a French
+citizen, it was considered, even by his friends, that he had no claim
+to the protection of the United States. Paine, as was natural, thought
+differently. He wrote to Monroe, explaining that French citizenship was
+a mere compliment paid to his reputation; and in any view of the case,
+it had been taken away from him by a decree of the Convention. His seat
+in that body did not affect his American _status_, because a convention
+to make a constitution is not a government, but extrinsic and
+antecedent to a government. The government once established, he would
+never have accepted a situation under it. Monroe assured him that he
+considered him an American citizen, and that "to the welfare of Thomas
+Paine Americans are not nor can they be indifferent,"--with which fine
+phrase Paine was obliged to be satisfied until November. On the fourth
+of that month he was released. The authorities of Thermidor disliked
+the Federalist government, and Paine was probably kept in prison some
+additional months on account of Monroe's application for his discharge.
+
+He left the Luxembourg, after eleven months of incarceration, with
+unshaken confidence in his own greatness and in the truth of his
+principles,--but in appearance and in character another man, with only
+the tatters of his former self hanging about him. A certain elegance of
+manner and of dress, which had distinguished him, was gone. He drank
+deep, and was noisy. His fondness for talking of himself had grown to
+such excess as to destroy the conversational talents which all his
+contemporaries who speak of him describe as remarkable. "I will venture
+to say that the best thing will be said by Mr. Paine": that was Horne
+Tooke's prophecy, talking of some proposed dinner-party.
+
+Demoralized by poverty, with ruined health, his mind had become
+distorted by physical suffering and by brooding over the ingratitude
+and cruel neglect of the American people, who owed, as he really
+believed, their very existence as a nation to him. "Is this what I
+ought to have expected from America," he wrote to General Washington,
+"after the part I have acted towards her?" "I do not hesitate to say
+that you have not served America with more fidelity or greater zeal or
+more disinterestedness than myself, and perhaps not with better
+effect." Henceforth he was a man of two ideas: he engrafted his
+resentment upon his "Rights of Man," and thought himself carrying out
+his theory while indulging in his wrath. He poured the full measure of
+his indignation upon the party who directed affairs in the United
+States, and upon the President. In two long letters, composed after his
+release, under Monroe's roof, he accused Washington of conniving at his
+imprisonment, to keep him, Paine, "the marplot of all designs against
+the people," out of the way. "Mr. Washington and his new-fangled party
+were rushing as fast as they dared venture into all the vices and
+corruptions of the British government; and it was no more consistent
+with the policy of Mr. Washington and those who immediately surrounded
+him than it was with that of Robespierre or of Pitt that I should
+survive." As he grew more angry, he became more abusive. He ridiculed
+Washington's "cold, unmilitary conduct" during the War of Independence,
+and accused his administration, since the new constitution, of
+"vanity," "ingratitude," "corruption," "bare-faced treachery," and "the
+tricks of a sharper." He closed this wretched outbreak of peevishness
+and wounded self-conceit with the following passage:--
+
+"And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have
+been to me, and that in the day of danger) and a hypocrite in public
+life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate
+or an impostor,--whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether
+you ever had any."
+
+The remains of the old Convention invited Paine to resume his place in
+their assemblage. A committee of eleven, unaided by his experience, had
+been working at a new constitution, the political spring-fashion in
+Paris for that year. It was the plan since known as the _Directoire_,
+reported complete about the time Paine reappeared in the Convention.
+Disapproving of some of the details of this instrument, Paine furbished
+up his old weapons, and published "A Dissertation on the First
+Principles of Government." This tract he distributed among
+members,--the _libretto_ of the speech he intended to make.
+Accordingly, on the 5th of July, on motion of his old ally, Lanthenas,
+who had managed to crawl safely through the troubles, permission was
+granted to Thomas Paine to deliver his sentiments on the "Declaration
+of Rights and the Constitution." He ascended the tribune for the last
+time, and the secretary read the translation. He began, of course, with
+rights; but qualified them by adding, that, when we consider rights, we
+ought always to couple with them the idea of duties,--a happy union,
+which did not strike him before the Reign of Terror, and which is
+almost always overlooked. He then brought forward his universal
+political specific and panacea,--representative government and a
+written constitution. "Had a constitution been established two years
+ago," he said, "(as ought to have been done,) the violences that have
+since desolated France and injured the character of the Revolution
+would, in my opinion, have been prevented." There is nothing else in
+his speech of interest to us, except, that, in attacking a property
+qualification, which was wisely inserted in the new system, he made use
+of the _reductio-ad-absurdum_ illustration so often attributed to Dr.
+Franklin:--"When a broodmare shall fortunately produce a foal or a mule
+that by being worth the sum in question shall convey to its owner the
+right of voting, or by its death take it from him, in whom does the
+origin of such a right exist? Is it in the man or in the mule?"
+
+The new government went into operation in September, 1795. Bonaparte's
+lesson to the insurgents of Vendémiaire, in front of the Church of St.
+Roche, followed immediately after. On the 26th of October, the
+Convention was dissolved, and Paine ceased to be a legislator for
+France.
+
+He was no longer an object of consideration to Frenchmen, whose faith
+in principles and in constitutions was nearly worn out. Poor and
+infirm, indebted to Monroe's hospitality for a lodging, he remained
+eighteen months under the roof of the Embassy, looking for an
+opportunity to get back to America. Monroe wished to send him as bearer
+of dispatches before the dissolution of the Convention. But a member of
+that body could not leave France without a passport from it. To apply
+for it would have announced his departure, and have given the English
+government a chance to settle the old account they had against him.
+After Monroe had returned to the United States, Paine engaged his
+passage, and went to Havre to embark: but the appearance of a British
+frigate off the port changed his plans. The sentence of outlawry, a
+good joke four years before, had now become an unpleasant reality. So
+he travelled back to Paris, full of hate against England, and relieved
+his mind by writing a pamphlet on the "Decline and Fall of the English
+System of Finance," a performance characteristic of the man,--sound,
+clear sense mixed with ignorance and arrogance. He attempted to show
+arithmetically that the English funding system could not continue to
+the end of Mr. Pitt's life, supposing him to live to the usual age of
+man. The calculation is ingenious, but has not proved to be as accurate
+as some of Newton's. On the other hand, his remarks on paper money are
+excellent, and his sneer at the Sinking Fund, then considered a great
+invention in finance, well placed:--"As to Mr. Pitt's project for
+paying off the national debt by applying a million a year for that
+purpose while he continues adding more than twenty millions a year to
+it, it is like setting a man with a wooden leg to run after a
+hare;--the longer he runs, the farther he is off." The conclusion is
+one of his peculiar flourishes of his own trumpet:--"I have now exposed
+the English system of finance to the eyes of all nations,--for this
+work will be published in all languages. As an individual citizen of
+America, and as far as an individual can go, I have revenged (if I may
+use the expression without any immoral meaning) the piratical
+depredations committed on the American commerce by the English
+government."
+
+From Monroe's departure until the year 1802, little is known of Paine.
+He is said to have lived in humble lodgings with one Bonneville, a
+printer, editor of the "Bouche de Fer" in the good early days of the
+Revolution. He must have kept up some acquaintance with respectable
+society; for we find his name on the lists of the _Cercle
+Constitutionnel_, a club to which belonged Talleyrand, Benjamin
+Constant, and conservatives of that class who were opposed to both the
+_bonnet-rouge_ and the _fleur-de-lis_. Occasionally he appears above
+the surface with a pamphlet. Politics were his passion, and to write a
+necessity of his nature. If public matters interested him, an essay of
+some kind made its way into print. When Baboeuf's agrarian conspiracy
+was crushed, Paine gave the world his views on "Agrarian Justice."
+Every man has a natural right to a share in the land; but it is
+impossible that every man should exercise this right. To compensate him
+for this loss, be should receive at the age of twenty-one fifteen
+pounds sterling; and if he survive his fiftieth year, ten pounds _per
+annum_ during the rest of his life. The funds for these payments to be
+furnished by a tax on inheritances.
+
+Camille Jourdain made a report to the Five Hundred on priests and
+public worship, in which he recommended, _inter alia_, that the use of
+church-bells and the erection of crosses be again permitted by law.
+This reactionary measure excited Paine's liberal bigotry. He published
+a letter to Jourdain, telling him that priests were useless and bells
+public nuisances. Another letter may be seen, offering his subscription
+of one hundred francs to a fund for the invasion of England,--a
+favorite project of the Directory, and the dearest wish of Paine's
+heart. He added to his mite an offer of any personal service he could
+render to the invading army. When Carnot, Barthélémy, and Pichegru were
+expelled from power by the _coup d'état_ of the 18th Fructidor,--a
+military demonstration against the Republic,--Paine wrote an address to
+the people of France and to the French armies, heartily approving of
+the summary method that had been adopted with these reactionists, who
+must have their bells and their priests. He did not then perceive the
+real significance of the movement.
+
+On one remarkable occasion, Paine made a full-length appearance before
+the French public,--not in his character of a political philosopher,
+but as a moralist. Robespierre, a few days before his fall, declared
+atheism to be aristocratic, reinstated _l'Être suprême_, and gave a
+festival in his honor. There religious matters had rested. Deism, pure
+and simple, was the faith of true republicans, and the practice of
+morality their works. But deism is a dreary religion to the mass of
+mankind, and the practice of morality can never take the place of
+adoration. The heart must be satisfied, as well as the conscience.
+Larévillière, a Director, of irreproachable character, felt this
+deficiency of their system, and saw how strong a hold the Catholic
+priesthood had upon the common people. The idea occurred to him of
+rivalling the churches by establishing regular meetings of moral men
+and women, to sing hymns of praise to the Almighty, "one and
+indivisible," and to listen to discourses and exhortations on moral
+subjects. Haüy, a brother of the eminent crystallogist, assembled the
+first society of Theophilanthropists, (lovers of God and man,) as they
+called themselves. They held their meetings on the day corresponding to
+Sunday. They had their manual of worship and their book of canticles.
+Their dogmas were the existence of one God and the immortality of the
+soul. And they wisely said nothing about matters which they did not
+believe. Paine, who in his "Age of Reason" had attempted to prepare a
+theology _ad usum reipublicae,_ felt moved by the spirit of morality,
+and delivered a sermon to one of these Theophilanthropist
+congregations. His theme was the existence of God and the propriety of
+combining the study of natural science with theology. He chose, of
+course, the _a-posteriori_ argument, and was brief, perhaps eloquent.
+Some passages of his discourse might pass unchallenged in the sermon of
+an Orthodox divine. He kept this one ready in his memory of brass, to
+confound all who accused him of irreligion:--"Do we want to contemplate
+His power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to
+contemplate His wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which
+the incomprehensible whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate His
+mercy? We see it in His not withholding His abundance even from the
+unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not written
+books, but the Scriptures called the Creation."
+
+If it were possible to establish a new _cultus,_ based upon mere
+abstract principles, Frenchmen, we should say, would be about the last
+people who could do it. This new worship, like any other play, drew
+well as long as it was new, and no longer. The moral men and women soon
+grew tired of it, and relapsed into the old faith and the old forms.
+
+The end of all this child's play at government and at religion came at
+last. Bonaparte, checked at Acre by Sir Sydney Smith, left the East,
+landed in France in October, 1799, sent a file of grenadiers to turn
+Ancients and Five Hundred out of their halls, and seated himself in the
+chair of state.
+
+After this conclusive _coup d'état,_ Paine sunk out of sight. The First
+Consul might have examined with interest the iron bridge, but could
+never have borne with the soiled person and the threadbare principles
+of the philosopher of two hemispheres. Bonaparte loved neatness and
+elegance, and disliked _idéologues_ and _bavards,_ as he styled all
+gentlemen of Paine's turn of mind.
+
+In 1802, after the peace with England, Paine set sail from Havre to end
+his days in the United States. Here we leave him. We have neither space
+nor inclination to sum up his virtues and his vices in these columns,
+and to give him a character according to the balance struck. We have
+sketched a few outlines of his history as we have found it scattered
+about in newspapers and pamphlets. Our readers may make up their own
+minds whether this supposed ally of the Arch Enemy was as black as he
+has been painted.
+
+
+
+
+ELKANAH BREWSTER'S TEMPTATION.
+
+
+I was always of opinion that the fruit forbidden to our grandmother Eve
+was an unripe apple. Eaten, it afflicted Adam with the first colic
+known to this planet. He, the weaker vessel, sorrowed over his
+transgression; but I doubt if Eve's repentance was thorough; for the
+plucking of unripe fruit has been, ever since, a favorite hobby of her
+sons and daughters,--until now our mankind has got itself into such a
+chronic state of colic, that even Dr. Carlyle declares himself unable
+to prescribe any Morrison's Pill or other remedial measure to allay the
+irritation.
+
+Part of this irritation finds vent in a great cry about "legitimate
+ambition." Somehow, because any American _may_ be President of the
+United States, almost every American feels himself bound to run for the
+office. A man thinks small things of himself, and his neighbors think
+less, if he does not find his heart filled with an insane desire, in
+some way, to attain to fame or notoriety, riches or bankruptcy.
+Nevertheless, we are not purse-proud,--nor, indeed, proud at all,
+more's the pity,--and receive a man just as readily whose sands of life
+have been doled out to suffering humanity in the shape of patent pills,
+as one who has entered Fifth Avenue by the legitimate way of pork and
+cotton speculations, if only he have been successful,--which I call a
+very noble trait in the American character.
+
+Now this is all very well, and, granted that Providence has placed us
+here to do what is best pleasing to ourselves, it is surely very noble
+and grand in us to please to serve nothing less than our country or our
+age. But let us not forget that the English language has such a little
+word as _duty_. A man's talents, and, perhaps, once in a great while,
+his wishes, would make him a great man, (if wishes ever did such
+things, which I doubt,) while duty imperatively demands that he shall
+remain a _little_ man. What then? Let us see.
+
+Elkanah Brewster was going to New York to-morrow.
+
+"What for, boy?" asked old Uncle Shubael, meeting whom on the
+fish-wharf, he had bid him a cheery good-bye.
+
+"To make my fortune," was the bold reply.
+
+"Make yer fortin? You're a goose, boy! Stick to yer work here,--fishin'
+summers an' shoemakin' winters. Why, there isn't a young feller on the
+hull Cape makes as much as you. What's up? Gal gin ye the mitten? Or
+what?"
+
+"I don't want to make shoes, nor fish neither, Uncle Shub," said
+Elkanah, soberly, looking the old fellow in the face,--"goin' down to
+the Banks year arter year in cold an' fish-gurry, an' peggin' away all
+winter, like mad. I want to be rich, like Captain Crowell; I want to be
+a gentleman, like that painter-chap that give me drawin'-lessons, last
+summer, when I stayed to home."
+
+"Phew! Want to be rich an' a gentleman, eh? Gittin' tu big for yer
+boots, youngster? What's yer old man du but go down t' the Banks
+regular every spring? You're no better 'n he, I guess: Keep yer trade,
+an' yer trade'll keep you. A rollin' stun gathers no moss. Dry bread tu
+home's better 'n roast meat an' gravy abroad."
+
+"All feet don't tread in one shoe, Uncle Shub," said young Brewster,
+capping the old fellow's proverbs with another. "Don't see why I
+shouldn't make money as well's other fellers. It's a free country, an'
+if a feller wants to try suthin' else 'sides fishin' uv it, what d'yer
+all want to be down on him fur? I don't want to slave all my days, when
+other folks ken live in big houses an' ride in 'kerriges, an' all
+that."
+
+"A'n't yer got bread enough to eat, an' a place to sleep? an' what
+more's any on 'em got? You stay here; make yer money on the old Cape,
+where yer father an' grand'ther made it afore you. Use yer means, an'
+God 'll give the blessin'. Yer can't honestly git rich anywheres all tu
+once. Good an' quickly don't often meet. One nail drives out another.
+Slow an' easy goes fur in a day. Honor an' ease a'n't often bedfellows.
+Don't yer be a goose, I tell ye. What's to become of Hepsy Ann?"
+
+Having delivered himself of which last and hardest shot, Uncle Shubael
+shouldered his cod-craft, and, without awaiting an answer, tugged
+across the sand-beach for home.
+
+Elkanah Brewster was a Cape-Cod boy, with a pedigree, if he had ever
+thought of it, as long as any on the Cape,--and they are the longest in
+the land. His forefathers had caught fish to the remotest generation
+known. The Cape boys take to the water like young ducks; and are born
+with a hook and line in their fists, so to speak, as the Newfoundland
+codfish and Bay Chaleur mackerel know, to their cost. "Down on old
+Chatham" there is little question of a boy's calling, if he only comes
+into the world with the proper number of fingers and toes; he swims as
+soon as he walks, knows how to drive a bargain as soon as he can talk,
+goes cook of a coaster at the mature age of eight years, and thinks
+himself robbed of his birthright, if he has not made a voyage to the
+Banks before his eleventh birthday comes round. There is good stuff in
+the Cape boys, as the South-Street ship-owners know, who don't sleep
+easier than when they have put a "Cape man" in charge of their best
+clipper. Quick of apprehension, fertile in resource, shrewd,
+enterprising, brave, prudent, and, above all, lucky,--no better seamen
+sail the sea. Long may they keep their prestige and their sand!
+
+They are not rich on the Cape,--in the Wall-Street sense of the word,
+that is to say. I doubt if Uncle Lew Baker, who was high line out of
+Dennis last year, and who, by the same token, had to work himself right
+smartly to achieve that honor,--I doubt if this smart and thoroughly
+wide-awake fellow took home more than three hundred dollars to his wife
+and children when old Obed settled the voyage. But then the good wife
+saves while he earns, and, what with a cow, and a house and garden-spot
+of his own, and a healthy lot of boys and girls, who, if too young to
+help, are not suffered to hinder, this man is more forehanded and
+independent, gives more to the poor about him and to the heathen at the
+other end of the world, than many a city man who makes, and spends, his
+tens of thousands.
+
+Uncle Abijah Brewster, the father of this Elkanah, was an old
+Banker,--which signifies here, not a Wall-Street broker-man, but a
+Grand-Bank fisherman. He had brought up a goodly family of boys and
+girls by his hook-and-line and, though now a man of some fifty winters,
+still made his two yearly fares to the Banks, in his own trim little
+pinky, and prided himself on being the smartest and jolliest man
+aboard. His boys had sailed with him till they got vessels of their
+own, had learned from his stout heart and strong arm their seamanship,
+their fisherman's acuteness, their honest daring, and child-like trust
+in God's Providence. These poor fishermen are not rich, as I have said;
+a dollar looks to them as big as a dinner-plate to us, and a moderately
+flush Wall-Street man might buy out the whole Cape and not overdraw his
+bank-account. Also, they have but little book-learning among them,
+reading chiefly their Bible, Bowditch, and Nautical Almanac, and
+leaving theology mostly to the parson, on shore, who is paid for it.
+But they have a conscience, and, knowing a thing to be right, do it
+bravely, and against all odds. I have seen these men on Sunday, in a
+fleet of busy "Sunday fishers," fish biting all around them, sitting
+faithfully,--ay, and contentedly,--with book in hand, sturdily
+refraining from what the mere human instinct of destruction would
+strongly impel them to, without counting the temptation of
+dollars,--and this only because they had been taught that Sunday was a
+day of rest and worship, wherein no man should catch fish, and knew no
+theological quibble or mercantile close-sailing by which to weather on
+God's command. It sounds little to us who have not been tempted, or, if
+tempted, have gracefully succumbed, on the plea that other people do so
+too; but how many stock-speculators would see their follows buying
+bargains and making easy fortunes on Sunday morning, and not forget the
+ring of Trinity chimes and go in for dollars? Or which of us denies
+himself his Monday morning's paper?
+
+Elkanah had always been what his mother called a strange boy. He was,
+indeed, an odd sheep in her flock. Restless, ambitious, dreamy, from
+his earliest youth, he possessed, besides, a natural gift for drawing
+and sketching, imitating and constructing, that bade fair, unless
+properly directed, to make of him that saddest and most useless of
+human lumber, a jack-at-all-trades. He profited more by his limited
+winter's schooling than his brothers and fellows, and was always
+respected by the old man as "a boy that took naterally to book-larnin',
+and would _be_ suthin' some day." Of course he went to the Banks, and
+acquitted himself there with honor,--no man fishing more zealously or
+having better luck. But all the time he was dreaming of his future,
+counting this present as nothing, and ready, as soon as Fortune should
+make him an opening, to cast away this life, and grasp--he had not
+settled what.
+
+"_I_ dun know what ails him," said his father; "but he don't take
+kindly to the Banks. Seems to me he kinder despises the work, though he
+_does_ it well enough. And then he makes the best shoes on the Cape;
+but he a'n't content, somehow."
+
+And that was just it. He was not contented. He had seen men--"no better
+than I," thought he, poor fool!--in Boston, living in big houses,
+wearing fine clothes, putting fair, soft hands into smooth-fitting
+kid-gloves; "and why not I?" he cried to himself continually. Year by
+year, from his seventeenth to his twenty-first, he was pursued by this
+demon of "ambition," which so took possession of his heart as to crowd
+out nearly everything else,--father, mother, work,--even pretty
+Hepzibah Nickerson, almost, who loved him, and whom he also loved
+truly. They had almost grown up together, had long loved each other,
+and had been now two years betrothed. When Elkanah was out of his time
+and able to buy a share in a vessel, and had made a voyage to the Banks
+as captain, they were to be married.
+
+The summer before this spring in which our story opens, Elkanah had
+stayed at home for two months, because of a rheumatism contracted by
+unusual exposure on the Banks in early spring; and at this time he made
+the acquaintance of Mr. James Graves, N. A., from New York, spending
+part of his summer on the Cape in search of the picturesque,--which I
+hope he found. Elkanah had, as I have said, a natural talent for
+drawing, and some of his sketches had that in them which elicited the
+approval of Graves, who saw in the young fellow an untutored genius,
+or, at least, very considerable promise of future excellence. To him
+there could be but one choice between shoemaking and "Art"; and finding
+that young Brewster made rapid advances under his desultory tuition, he
+told him his thoughts, that he should not waste himself making
+sea-boots for fishermen, but enter a studio in Boston or New York, and
+make his career as a painter. It scarcely needed this, however; for
+Elkanah took such delight in his new proficiency, and got from Graves's
+stories of artist life such exalted ideas of the unalloyed felicity of
+the gentleman of the brush, that, even had the painter said no word, he
+would have worked out that way himself.
+
+"Only wait till next year, when I'm out of my time," said he to Graves;
+and to himself,--"This is the opening for which I have been waiting."
+
+That winter--"my last at shoemaking"--he worked more diligently than
+ever before, and more good-naturedly. Uncle Abijah was delighted at the
+change in his boy, and promised him great things in the way of a lift
+next year, to help him to a speedy wedding. Elkanah kept his own
+counsel, read much in certain books--which Graves had left him, and
+looked impatiently ahead to the day when, twenty-one years of age, he
+should be a free man,--able to go whither he listed and do what he
+would, with no man authoritatively to say him nay.
+
+And now the day had come; and with I don't know how few dollars in his
+pocket, his scant earnings, he had declared to his astounded parents
+his determination to fish and shoemake no longer, but to learn to be a
+painter.
+
+"A great painter,"--that was what he said.
+
+"I don't see the use o' paintin' picters, for my part," said the old
+man, despairingly; "can't you learn that, an' fish tu?"
+
+"Famous and rich too," said Elkanah half to himself, looking through
+the vista of years at the result he hoped for, and congratulating
+himself in advance upon it. And a proud, hard loot settled in his eye,
+which froze the opposition of father and mother, and was hardly dimmed
+by encountering the grieved glance of poor Hepsy Ann Nickerson.
+
+Poor Hepsy Ann! They had talked it all over, time and again. At first
+she was in despair; but when he laid before her all his dazling hopes,
+and painted for her in such glowing colors the final reward which
+should come to him and her in return for his struggles,--when she saw
+him, her love and pride, before her already transfigured, as it were,
+by this rare triumph, clothed in honors, his name in all mouths,--dear,
+loving soul, her heart consented, "ay, if it should break meantime,"
+thought she, as she looked proudly on him through her tears, and
+said,--"Go, in God's name, and God be with you!"
+
+Perhaps we might properly here consider a little whether this young man
+did well thus to leave father, mother, home, his promised bride,
+sufficient bread-and-butter, healthy occupation, all, to attempt life
+in a new direction. Of course, your man who lives by bread alone will
+"pooh! pooh!" all such folly, and tell the young man to let well enough
+alone. But consider candidly, and decide: Should Elkanah have gone to
+New York?
+
+On the whole, _I_ think, _yes_. For,--He had a certain talent, and gave
+good promise of excellence in his chosen profession.
+
+He liked it, felt strongly impelled towards it. Let us not yet
+scrutinize too closely the main impelling forces. Few human actions
+originate solely in what we try to think the most exalted motives.
+
+He would have been discontented for life, had he not had his way. And
+this should count for something,--for much, indeed. Give our boys
+liberty to try that to which their nature or fancy strongly drives
+them,--to burn their fingers, if that seem best.
+
+Let him go, then; and God be with him! as surely He will be, if the
+simple, faithful prayers of fair, sad Hepsy Ann are heard. Thus will
+he, thus only can any, solve that sphinx-riddle of life which is
+propounded to each passer to-day, as of old in fable-lands,--failing to
+read which, he dies the death of rusting discontent,--solving whose
+mysteries, he has revealed to him the deep secret of his life, and sees
+and knows what best he may do here for himself and the world.
+
+But _what, where, who_, is Elkanah Brewster's world?
+
+While we stand reasoning, he has gone. In New York, his friend Graves
+assisted him to a place in the studio of an artist, whose own works
+have proved, no less than those of many who have gathered their most
+precious lessons from him, that he is truly a master of his art. But
+what are masters, teachers, to a scholar? It's very fine boarding at
+the Spread-Eagle Hotel; but even after you have feed the waiter, you
+have to chew your own dinner, and are benefited, not by the amount you
+pay for it, but only by so much of all that with which the bounteous
+mahogany is covered as you can thoroughly masticate, easily contain,
+and healthily digest. Elkanah began with the soup, so to speak. He
+brought all his Cape-Cod acuteness of observation to bear on his
+profession; lived closely, as well he might; studied attentively and
+intelligently; lost no hints, no precious morsels dropping from the
+master's board; improved slowly, but surely. Day by day he gained in
+that facility of hand, quickness of observation, accuracy of memory,
+correctness of judgment, patience of detail, felicity of touch, which,
+united and perfected and honestly directed, we call genius. He was
+above no drudgery, shirked no difficulties, and labored at the
+insignificant sketch in hand to-day as though it were indeed his
+masterpiece, to be hung up beside Raphael's and Titian's; meantime,
+keeping up poor Hepsy Ann's heart by letters full of a hope bred of his
+own brave spirit, rather than of any favoring circumstances in his
+life, and gaining his scant bread-and-butter by various honest
+drudgeries which I will not here recount.
+
+So passed away three years; for the growth of a poor young artist in
+public favor, and that thing called fame, is fearfully slow. Oftenest
+he has achieved his best when the first critic speaks kindly or
+savagely of him. What, indeed, _at best_, do those blind leaders, but
+zealously echo a sentiment already in the public heart,--which they
+vainly endeavor to create (out of nothing) by any awe-inspiring formula
+of big words?
+
+Men grow so slowly! But then so do oaks. And little matter, so the
+growth be straight.
+
+Meantime Elkanah was getting, slowly and by hardest labor, to have some
+true conception of his art and his aims. He became less and less
+satisfied with his own performances; and, having with much pains and
+anxious prayers finished his first picture for the Academy, carefully
+hid it under the bed, and for that year played the part of independent
+critic at the Exhibition. Wherefrom resulted some increase of
+knowledge,--though chiefly negative.
+
+For what positive lesson is taught to any by that yearly show of what
+we flatter ourselves by calling Art? Eight hundred and fifteen new
+paintings this year, shown by no less than two hundred and eighty-one
+painters. When you have gone patiently through and looked at every
+picture, see if you don't wish the critics _had_ eyes, and a little
+common sense, too. How many of these two hundred and eighty-one, if
+they live to be a hundred, will ever solve their great riddle? and once
+solved, how many would honestly go back to shoemaking?
+
+Why should they not paint? Because, unless some of them are poorer men
+than I think, that is not the thing they are like to do best; and a man
+is put into this world, not to do what he may think or hope will most
+speedily or effectually place him in the list of this world's
+illustrious benefactors, but honestly and against all devilish
+temptations to stick to that thing by which he can best serve and
+bless--
+
+Whom? A city? A state? A republic? A king?
+
+No,--but that person who Is nearest to, and most dependent upon him.
+Look at Charles Lamb, and then at Byron and Shelley.
+
+The growth of a poor young artist into public favor is slow enough. But
+even poor young artists have their temptations. When Elkanah hung his
+first picture in the Academy rooms, he thought the world must feel the
+acquisition. Now the world is a notoriously stupid world, and never
+does its duty; but kind woman not seldom supplies its omissions. So it
+happened, that, though the world ignored the picture, Elkanah became at
+once the centre of admiration to a coterie of young ladies, who thought
+they were appreciating Art when they flattered an artist, and who, when
+they read in the papers the gratifying Intelligence (invented by some
+sanguine critic, over a small bottle of Champagne cider) that the
+American people are rapidly growing in true love for the fine arts,
+blushingly owned to themselves that their virtuous labors in this
+direction were not going unrewarded.
+
+Have you never seen them in the Academy,--these dear young ladies, who
+are so constantly foreseeing new Raphaels, Claudes, and Rembrandts?
+Positively, in this year's Exhibition they are better worth study than
+the paintings. There they run, up and down, critical or enthusiastical,
+as the humor strikes: Laura, with big blue eyes and a loud voice,
+pitying Isidora because she "has never met" that dear Mr. Herkimer, who
+paints such delicious, dreamy landscapes; and Emily dragging everybody
+off to see Mr. Smith's great work, "The Boy and the Windmill,"
+which--so surprising is his facility--he actually painted in less than
+twelve days, and which "promises so much for his success and the future
+of American Art," says this sage young critic, out of whose gray eyes
+look the garnered experiences of almost eighteen summers.
+
+Whoever desiderates cheap praise, let him cultivate a beard and a
+sleepy look, and hang a picture in the Academy rooms. Elkanah received
+it, you may be sure. It was thought _so_ romantic, that he, a
+fisherman,--the young ladies sunk the shoemaker, I believe,--should be
+_so_ devoted to Art. How splendidly it spoke for our civilization, when
+even sailors left their vessels, and, abjuring codfish, took to canvas
+and brushes! What admirable courage in him, to come here and endeavor
+to work his way up from the very bottom! What praiseworthy
+self-denial,--"No!! is it _really_ so?" cried Miss Jennie,--when he had
+left behind him a fair young bride!
+
+It was as though it had been written, "Blessed is he who forsaketh
+father, mother, and wife to paint pictures." But it is not so written.
+
+It was as if the true aim and glory of every man in a civilized
+community should be to paint pictures. Which has this grain of truth in
+it, that, in the highest form of human development, I believe every man
+will be at heart an artist. But then we shall be past picture-painting
+and exhibitions. Don't you see, that, if the fruit be thoroughly ripe,
+it needs no violent plucking? or that, if a man is really a painter, he
+_will_ paint,--ay, though he were ten times a shoe-maker, and could
+never, never hope to hang;--his pictures on the Academy walls, to win
+cheap wonder from boarding-school misses, or just regard from
+judicious critics?
+
+Elkanah Brewster came to New York to make his career,--to win nothing
+less than fame and fortune. When he had struggled through five years of
+Art-study, and was now just beginning to earn a little money, he began
+also to think that he had somehow counted his chickens before they were
+hatched,--perhaps, indeed, before the eggs were laid. "Good and quickly
+come seldom together," said old Uncle Shubael. But then a man who has
+courage commonly has also endurance; and Elkanah, ardently pursuing
+from love now what he had first been prompted to by ambition, did not
+murmur nor despair. For, indeed, I must own that this young fellow had
+worked himself up to the highest and truest conception of his art, and
+felt, that, though the laborer is worthy of his hire, unhappy is the
+man who lowers his art to the level of a trade. In olden times, the
+priests did, indeed, eat of the sacrificial meats; but we live under a
+new and higher dispensation.
+
+
+II.
+
+Meantime, what of Hepsy Ann Nickerson? She had bravely sent her hero
+out, with her blessing on his aspirations. Did she regret her love and
+trust? I am ashamed to say that these five long, weary years had passed
+happily to this young woman. She had her hands full of work at home,
+where she reigned over a family of brothers and sisters, _vice_ her
+mother, promoted. Hands busied with useful toils, head and heart filled
+with love and trust of Elkanah, there was no room for unhappiness. To
+serve and to be loved: this seems, indeed, to be the bliss of the
+happiest women I have known,--and of the happiest men, too, for that
+matter. It does not sound logical, and I know of no theory of woman's
+rights which will satisfactorily account for the phenomenon. But
+then--there are the facts.
+
+A Cape household is a simpler affair than you will meet with in the
+city. If any young marrying man waits for a wife who shall be an adept
+in the mysteries of the kitchen and the sewing-basket, let him go down
+to the Cape. Captain Elijah Nickerson, Hepsy Ann's father, was master
+and owner of the good schooner "Miranda," in which excellent, but
+rather strongly scented vessel, he generally made yearly two trips to
+the Newfoundland Banks, to draw thence his regular income; and it is to
+be remarked, that his drafts, presented in person, were never
+dishonored in that foggy region. Uncle Elijah, (they are all uncles, on
+the Cape, when they marry and have children,--and _boys_ until then,)
+Uncle Elijah, I say, was not uncomfortably off, as things go in those
+parts. The year before Elkanah went to New York, the old fellow had
+built himself a brand-new house, and Hepsy Ann was looked up to by her
+acquaintance as the daughter of a man who was not only brave and
+honest, but also lucky. "Elijah Nickerson's new house"--as it is still
+called, and will be, I suppose, until it ceases to be a house--was
+fitted up inside in a way which put you much in mind of a ship's cabin,
+and would have delighted the simple heart of good Captain Cuttle. There
+was no spare space anywhere thrown away, nor anything suffered to lie
+loose. Beckets and cleats, fixed into the walls of the sitting-room,
+held and secured against any possible damage the pipes, fish-lines,
+dolphin-grains, and sou'westers of the worthy Captain; and here he and
+his sat, when he was at home, through the long winter evenings, in
+simple and not often idle content. The kitchen, flanked by the
+compendious outhouses which make our New England kitchens almost
+luxurious in the comfort and handiness of every arrangement, was the
+centre of Hepsy Ann's kingdom, where she reigned supreme, and waged
+sternest warfare against dirt and disorder. Hence her despotic sway
+extended over the pantry, an awful and fragrant sanctuary, whither she
+fled when household troubles, or a letter from Elkanah, demanded her
+entire seclusion from the outer world, and of whose interior the
+children got faint glimpses and sniffs only on special and
+long-remembered occasions; the west room, where her father slept when
+he was at home, and where the curious searcher might find store of old
+compasses, worn-out cod-hooks, condemned gurry-knives, and last year's
+fishing-mittens, all "stowed away against time-o'-need"; the spare
+room, sacred to the rites of hospitality; the "up-stairs," occupied by
+the children and Hepsy Ann's self; and finally, but most important of
+all, the parlor, a mysterious and hermetically sealed apartment, which
+almost seemed to me an unconsecrated spot in this little temple of the
+homely virtues and affections,--a room furnished in a style somewhat
+ostentatious and decidedly uncomfortable, swept and dusted on Saturday
+afternoons by Hepsy Ann's own careful hands, sat in by the Captain and
+her for an hour or two on Sundays in awkward state, then darkened and
+locked for the rest of the week.
+
+As for the queen and mistress of so much neatness and comfort, I must
+say, that, like most queens whose likeness I have seen, she was rather
+plain than strictly beautiful,--though, no doubt, her loyal subjects,
+as in such cases commonly occurs, pictured her to themselves as a very
+Helen of Troy. If her cheeks had something of the rosy hue of health,
+cheeks, and arms, too, were well tanned by frequent exposure to the
+sun. Neither tall nor short, but with a lithe figure, a natural grace
+and sweet dignity of carriage, the result of sufficient healthy
+exercise and a pure, untroubled spirit; hands and feet, mouth and nose,
+not such as a gentleman would particularly notice; and straight brown
+hair, which shaded the only _really_ beautiful part of Hepsy Ann's
+face,--her clear, honest, brave blue eyes: eyes from which spoke a soul
+at peace with itself and with the outward world,--a soul yet full of
+love and trust, fearing nothing, doubting nothing, believing much good,
+and inclined to patient endurance of the human weaknesses it met with
+in daily life, as not perhaps altogether strange to itself. The Cape
+men are a brave, hardy race; and the Cape women, grave and somewhat
+silent, not demonstrative in joy or grief, reticent mostly of anxieties
+and sorrows, born to endure, in separation from fathers, brothers,
+lovers, husbands, in dangers not oftener fancied than real, griefs
+which more fortunate women find it difficult to imagine,--these Cape
+women are worthy mothers of brave men. Of such our Hepsy Ann was a fair
+example,--weaving her rather prosaic life into golden dreams in the
+quiet light of her pantry refuge, happy chiefly because she thought
+much and carefully for others and had little time for self-brooding;
+like most genuine heroines, (except those of France,) living an heroic
+life without in the least suspecting it.
+
+And did she believe in Elkanah?
+
+Utterly.
+
+And did Elkanah believe in himself?
+
+Yes,--but with certain grave doubts. Here is the difference: the
+woman's faith is intuition; the man must have a reason for the faith
+that is in him.
+
+Yet Elkanah was growing. I think a man grows like the walls of a house,
+by distinct stages: so far the scaffolding reaches, and then a general
+stoppage while the outer shell is raised, the ladders lengthened, and
+the work squared off. Now I don't know, unhappily, the common process
+of growth of the artistic mind, and how far the light of today helps
+the neophyte to look into the indefinite twilight of to-morrow; but
+step by step was the slow rule of Elkanah's mind, and he had been now
+five years an artist, and was held in no despicable repute by those few
+who could rightly judge of a man's future by his past, when first it
+became very clear to him that he had yet to find his _speciality_ in
+Art,--that truth which _he_ might better represent than any other man.
+Don't think five years long to determine so trivial a point. The right
+man in the right place is still a rare phenomenon in the world; and
+some men spend a lifetime in the consideration of this very point,
+doubtless looking to take their chance of real work in the next world.
+I mean to say it took Elkanah just five years to discover, that, though
+he painted many things well, he did yet put his very soul into none,
+and that, unless he could now presently find this, _his_ right place,
+he had, perhaps, better stop altogether.
+
+Elkanah considered; but he also worked unceasingly, feeling that the
+best way to break through a difficulty is to pepper away at its outer
+walls.
+
+Now while he was firing away wearily at this fortress, which held, he
+thought, the deepest secret of his life, Hepsy Ann sat in her pantry,
+her serene soul troubled by unwonted fears. Captain Elijah Nickerson
+had sailed out in his stanch schooner in earliest spring, for the
+Banks. The old man had been all winter meditating a surprise; and his
+crew were in unusual excitement, peering out at the weather, consulting
+almanacs, prophesying (to outsiders) a late season, and winking to each
+other a cheerful disbelief of their own auguries. The fact is, they
+were intending to slip off before the rest, and perhaps have half their
+fare of fish caught before the fleet got along. No plan could have
+succeeded better--up to a certain point. Captain Elijah got off to sea
+full twelve days earlier than anybody else, and was bowling merrily
+down towards the eternal fog-banks when his neighbors were yet scarce
+thinking of gathering up their mittens and sea-boots. By the time the
+last comers arrived on the fishing-ground, one who had spoken the
+"Miranda" some days before, anchored and fishing away, reported that
+they had, indeed, nearly _wet her salt_,--by which is meant that she
+was nearly filled with good, sound codfish. The men were singing as
+they dressed their fish, and Captain Elijah, sitting high up on the
+schooner's quarter, took his pipe out of his mouth, and asked, as the
+vessel rose on the sea, if they had any news to send home, for three
+days more like that would fill him up.
+
+That was the last word of Captain Elijah Nickerson's ever heard by men
+now living. Whether the "Miranda" was sunk by an iceberg; whether run
+down in the dark and silent watches of the night by some monster packet
+or swift hurling steamer, little recking the pale fisher's light feebly
+glimmering up from the surface of the deep; or whether they went down
+at their anchors, in the great gale which set in on the third night, as
+many brave men have done before, looking their fate steadfastly in the
+face for long hours, and taking time to bid each other farewell ere the
+great sea swallowed them;--the particulars of their hapless fate no man
+may know, till the dread day when the sea shall give up its dead.
+
+Vainly poor Hepsy Ann waited for the well-known signal in the
+offing,--daily walking to the shore, where kind old Uncle Shubael, now
+long superannuated, and idly busying himself about the fish-house,
+strove to cheer her fainting soul by store of well-chosen proverbs, and
+yarns of how, aforetimes, schooners not larger and not so stout as the
+"Miranda," starting early for the Banks, had been blown southward to
+the West Indies, and, when the second-fare men came in with their fish,
+had made their appearance laden with rich cargoes of tropical molasses
+and bananas. Poor Hepsy Ann! what need to describe the long-drawn agony
+which grew with the summer flowers, but did not wane with the summer
+sun? Hour after hour, day after day, she sat by her pantry-window,
+looking with wistful eyes out upon the sand, to that spot where the
+ill-fated "Miranda" had last been seen, but never should appear
+again,--another
+
+  "poor lone Hannah,
+Sitting by the window, binding shoes,"--
+
+cheeks paling, eyes dimming, with that hope deferred which maketh the
+heart sick. Pray God you never may be so tried, fair reader! If, in
+these days, she had not had the children to keep and comfort, she has
+since told me, she could scarce have borne it. To calm their fears, to
+soothe their little sorrows, to look anxiously--more anxiously than
+ever before--after each one of her precious little brood, became now
+her chief solace.
+
+Thus the long, weary days rolled away, each setting sun crushing
+another hope, until at last the autumn storms approached, the last
+Banker was safe home; and by this time it was plain, even to poor Hepsy
+Ann's faithful heart, that her dead would not come back to her.
+
+"If only Elkanah were here!" she had sometimes sighed to herself;--but
+in all these days she wrote him no word. And he--guessing nothing of
+her long, silent agony, himself sufficiently bemired in his slough of
+despond, working away with sad, unsatisfied heart in his little studio,
+hoping yet for light to come to his night--was, in truth, so full of
+himself, that Hepsy Ann had little of his thoughts. Shall I go farther,
+and admit that sometimes this poor fellow dimly regretted his pledged
+heart, and faintly murmured, "If only I were free, _then_ I might do
+something"? If only the ship were rid of her helmsman, then indeed
+would she go--somewhere.
+
+At last,--it was already near Thanksgiving,--the news reached Elkanah.
+"I thought you'd ha' been down afore this to see Hepsy Ann Nickerson in
+her trouble," said an old coasting-skipper to him, with mild reproach,
+handing him a letter from his mother,--of all persons in the world!
+Whereupon, seeing ignorance in Elkanah's inquiring glance, he told the
+story.
+
+Elkanah was as one in a maze. Going to his little room, he opened his
+mother's letter, half-dreading to find here a detailed repetition of
+what his heart had just taken in. But the letter was short.
+
+"MY SON ELKANAH,--
+
+"Do you not know that Captain Elijah Nickerson will never come home
+from the Banks, and that Hepsy Ann is left alone in the world?
+
+"'For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and be joined
+to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.'"
+
+That was all.
+
+Elkanah sat on his stool, before his easel, looking vacantly at the
+unfinished picture, as one stunned and breathless. For the purport of
+this message was not to be mistaken. Nor did his conscience leave him
+in doubt as to his duty, O God! was this, indeed, the end? Had he
+toiled, and hoped, and prayed, and lived the life of an anchorite these
+five years only for this? Was such faith, such devotion, _so_ rewarded?
+
+But had any one the right to demand this sacrifice of him? Was it not a
+devilish temptation to take him from his calling, from that work in
+which God had evidently intended him to work for the world? Had he a
+right to spoil his life, to belittle his soul, for any consideration?
+If Hepsy Ann Nickerson had claims, had not he also, and his Art? If he
+were willing, in this dire extremity, to sacrifice his love, his
+prospects of married bliss, might he not justly require the same of
+her? Was not Art his mistress?--Thus whispered the insidious devil of
+Selfishness to this poor, tempted, anguished soul.
+
+"Yea," whispered another still, small voice; "but is not Hepsy Ann your
+promised wife?" And those fatal words sounded in his heart: "For this
+cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and be joined to his
+wife."
+
+"Lord, inspire me to do what is right!" prayed poor mazed Elkanah,
+sinking on his knees at his cot-side.
+
+But presently, through his blinding tears, "Lord, give me strength to
+do the right!"
+
+And then, when he awoke next morning, the world seemed another world to
+him. The foundations of his life seemed broken loose. Tears were no
+longer, nor prayers. But he went about slowly, and with loving hands,
+packing up his brushes, pallets, paints, easel,--all the few familiar
+objects of a life which was his no longer, and on which he seemed to
+himself already looking as across some vast gulf of years. At last all
+was done. A last look about the dismantled garret, so long his
+workshop, his home, where he had grown out of one life into another,
+and a better, as he thought,--out of a narrow circle into a broader.
+And then, away for the Cape. No farewells, no explanations to friends,
+nothing that should hold out to his sad soul any faintest hope of a
+return to this garret, this toil, which now seemed to him more heaven
+than ever before. Thus this Adam, left his paradise, clinging to his
+Eve.
+
+It was the day before Thanksgiving when Elkanah arrived at home. Will
+any one blame him, if he felt little thankful? if the thought of the
+Thanksgiving turkey was like to choke him, and the very idea of giving
+thanks seemed to him a bitter satire? Poor fellow! he forgot that there
+were other hearts to whom Thanksgiving turkey seemed little tempting.
+
+The Cape folk are not demonstrative. They have warm hearts, but the old
+Puritan ice has never quite melted away from the outer shell.
+
+"Well, Elkanah, glad to see you, boy!" said his father, looking up from
+his corner by the stove; "how's things in New York?" Father and son had
+not met for three years. But, going out into the kitchen, he received a
+warm grasp of the hand, and his mother said, in her low, sweet voice,
+"I knew you'd come." That was all. But it was enough.
+
+How to take his sad face over to Elijah Nickerson's new house? But that
+must be done, too. Looking through the little sitting-room window, as
+he passed, he saw pale-faced Hepsy Ann sitting quietly by the table,
+sewing. The children had gone to bed. He did not knock;--why should
+he?--but, walking in, stood silent on the floor. A glad, surprised
+smile lit up the sad, wan face, as she recognized him, and, stepping to
+his side, said, "Oh, Elkanah! I knew you'd come. How good of you!"
+Then, abashed to have so committed herself and him, she shrank to her
+chair again.
+
+Let us not intrude further on these two. Surely--Elkanah Brewster had
+been less than man, had he not found his hard heart to soften, and his
+cold love to warm, as he drew from her the story of her long agony, and
+saw this weary heart ready to rest upon him, longing to be comforted in
+his strong arms.
+
+The next day a small sign was put up at Abijah Brewster's door:--
+
+BOOTS AND SHOES
+
+MADE AND MENDED
+
+By
+
+ELKANAH BREWSTER.
+
+It was arranged that he should work at his trade all winter. In the
+spring, he was to have his father's vessel, and the wedding would be
+before he started for the Banks.
+
+So the old life was put on again. I will not say that Elkanah was
+thoroughly content,--that there were no bitter longings, no dim
+regrets, no faint questionings of Providence. But hard work is a good
+salve for a sore heart; and in his honest toils, in his care for Hepsy
+Ann and her little brood, in her kind heart, which acknowledged with
+such humility of love all he did for her and all he had cast away for
+her, he found his reward.
+
+The wedding was over,--a quiet affair enough,--and Elkanah was anchored
+on the Banks, with a brave, skilful crew, and plenty of fish. His old
+luck had not deserted him; wherever he dropped anchor, there the cod
+seemed to gather; and, in the excitement of catching fish and guarding
+against the dangers of the Banks, the old New York life seemed
+presently forgotten; and, once more, Elkanah's face wore the old,
+hopeful calm which belonged there. Art, that had been so long his
+tyrant mistress, was at last cast off.
+
+Was she?
+
+As he sat, one evening, high on the quarter, smoking his pipe, in that
+calm, contemplative mood which is the smoker's reward for a day of
+toil,--the little vessel pitching bows under in the long, tremendous
+swell of the Atlantic, the low drifting fog lurid in the light of the
+setting sun, but bright stars twinkling out, one by one, overhead, in a
+sky of Italian clearness and softness,--it all came to him,--that which
+he had so long, so vainly sought, toiled for, prayed for in New
+York,--his destiny.
+
+Why should he paint heads, figures, landscapes, objects with which his
+heart had never been really filled?
+
+But now, as in one flash of divinest intelligence, it was revealed to
+him!--This sea, this fog, this sky, these stars, this old, old life,
+which he had been almost born into.--Oh, blind bat indeed, not to have
+seen, long, long ago, that this was your birthright in Art! not to have
+felt in your innermost heart, that this was indeed that thing, if
+anything, which God had called you to paint!
+
+For this Elkanah had drunk in from his earliest youth,--this he
+understood to its very core; but the poor secret of that other life,
+which is so draped about with the artistic mannerisms and fashionable
+Art of New York, or any other civilized life, he had never rightly
+appreciated.
+
+In that sunset-hour was born a _painter_!
+
+
+III.
+
+It chanced, that, a few months ago, I paid my accustomed summer visit
+to an old friend, living near Boston,--a retired merchant he calls
+himself. He began life as a cabin-boy,--became, in time, master of an
+Indiaman,--then, partner in a China house,--and after many years'
+residence in Canton, returned some years ago, heart and liver whole, to
+spend his remaining days among olden scenes. A man of truest culture,
+generous heart, and rarely erring taste. I never go there without
+finding something new and admirable.
+
+"What am I to see, this time?" I asked, after dinner, looking about the
+drawing-room.
+
+"Come. I'll show you."
+
+He led me up to a painting,--a sea-piece:--A schooner, riding at her
+anchor, at sunset, far out at sea, no land in sight, sails down, all
+but a little patch of storm-sail fluttering wildly in the gale, and
+heavily pitching in a great, grand, rolling sea; around, but not
+closely enveloping her, a driving fog-bank, lurid in the yellow sheen
+of the setting sun; above her, a few stars dimly twinkling through a
+clear blue sky; on the quarter-deck, men sitting, wrapped in all the
+paraphernalia of storm-clothing, smoking and watching the roll of the
+sea.
+
+"What do you think?" asked Captain Eastwick, interrupting my rapt
+contemplation.
+
+"I never in my life saw so fine a seaview. Whose can it be?"
+
+"A Cape-Cod fisherman's."
+
+"But he is a genius!" cried I, enthusiastically.
+
+"A great, a splendid genius!" said my friend, quietly.
+
+"And a fisherman?"
+
+"Yes, and shoemaker."
+
+"What a magnificent career he might make! Why don't you help him? What
+a pity to bury such a man in fish-boots and cod-livers!"
+
+"My dear----," said Captain Eastwick, "you are a goose. The highest
+genius lives above the littleness of making a career. This man needs no
+Academy prizes or praises. To my mind, his is the noblest, happiest
+life of all."
+
+Whereupon he told me the story which I have endeavored to relate.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+MAGDALENA.
+
+
+I would have killed you, if a breath
+Freighted with some insensate death,
+  Magdalena,
+
+Had power to breathe your life away,
+To so exhale that rose-hued clay,
+  Magdalena,
+
+That it had faded from my sight,
+Like roses in a single night,
+  Magdalena!
+
+I could have killed you thus, and felt
+My will a blessed doom had dealt,
+  Magdalena!
+
+Ah, would to God! then I had been
+Unconscious of your scarlet sin,
+  Magdalena!
+
+Ah, when I thought your soul as white
+As the white rose you wore that night,
+  Magdalena,
+
+I wondered how your mother came
+To give you that sin-sullied name,
+  Magdalena!
+
+Did some remorseless, vengeful Fate,
+In mockery of your lofty state,
+  Magdalena,
+
+Because you wore the branded name,
+Fling over you its scarlet shame,
+  Magdalena?
+
+There is no peace for you below
+That horrid heritage of woe,
+  Magdalena!
+
+There is no room for you on earth,
+Accursed from your very birth,
+  Magdalena!
+
+But where the angels chant and sing,
+And where the amaranth-blossoms spring,
+  Magdalena,
+
+There's room for you, who have no room
+Where lower angels chant your doom,
+  Magdalena!
+
+There's room for you! The gate's ajar!
+The white hands beckon from afar,
+  Magdalena!
+
+And nearer yet! they stoop! they wait!
+They open wide the jasper gate,
+  Magdalena!
+
+And nearer yet! the hands stretch out!
+A thousand silver trumpets shout,
+  Magdalena!
+
+They lift you up through floods of light!
+I see your garments growing white,
+  Magdalena!
+
+And whiter still, too white to touch
+The robes of us, who blamed you much,
+  Magdalena!
+
+They lift you up through floods of light!
+The streaming splendor blinds my sight,
+  Magdalena!
+
+I feel the whirl of countless wings!
+I lose the sense of earthly things,
+  Magdalena!
+
+The starry splendors burn anew!
+The starry splendors light me through,
+  Magdalena!
+
+I gain the dizzy height! I see!
+There's room for _me!_ There's room for _me_,
+  Magdalena!
+
+
+
+
+"STRANGE COUNTRIES FOR TO SEE."
+
+
+To begin with a mild egotism,--I do not like De Sautys.
+
+You remember De Sauty? Perched on his steadfast stool, in a deserted
+telegraph-house, hard by that bay of the broken promise, De Sauty, like
+Poe's raven, "still was sitting, still was sitting," watching, in
+forlorn, but hopeful loneliness, the paralyzed tongue of the Atlantic
+Cable, to catch the utterances that never came for all his patient
+coaxing; and ever and anon he iterated, feebly and more feebly, as if
+all his sinking soul he did outpour into the words, that melancholy
+monotone which was his only stock and store,--"All right! De Sauty."
+
+I never did like ravens, and I do not like De Sautys; for if, indeed,
+it were all right with the De Sautys, it would be all wrong with
+certain things that are most dear to the romantic part of me; since De
+Sauty is to my imagination the living type of that indiscriminate
+sacrilege of trade which would penetrate the beautiful illusions of
+remoteness, as through an opera-glass,--which would tie the ends of the
+earth together and toss it over shoulder like a peddler's bundle, to
+"swop" quaint curiosities, inspiring relics, and solemn symbols, for
+British prints or American pig-iron. Puck us no Pucks, De Sauty, nor
+constrict our planet's rotundity with any forty-minute girdle; for in
+these days of inflating crinoline and ever-increasing circumference of
+hooped skirts, it becomes us to leave our Mother Earth at least in the
+fashion, nor strive to reduce her to such unmodish dimensions that one
+may circumnavigate her in as little time, comparatively, as he may make
+the circuit of Miss Flora MacFlimsey.
+
+I beseech you, do not call that nonsense; it is but a good-natured way
+of stating the case in the aspect it presents from the De Sauty point
+of view; for tightly laced as poor Mother Earth already is, with
+railroad corsets and steamship stays, growing small by degrees and
+beautifully less, she needs but the forty-minute girdle of Puck De
+Sauty to so contract her waist at the equator that any impudent
+traveller may span it with a carpet-bag and an umbrella.
+
+On that memorable night of the Cable Celebration, when so many paper
+lanterns and so many enlightened New Yorkers were sold in the name of
+De Sauty,--when all the streets and all the people were alive with
+gas,--when we fired off rockets and Roman candles and spread-eagle
+speeches in illustrious exuberance,--when the city children lit their
+little dips, and the City Fathers lit their City Hall,--when we hung
+out our banners, and clanged our bells, and banged our guns,--when
+there was Glory to God in the highest steeple, and Peace on Earth in
+the lowest cellar,--I drifted down the Broadway current of a mighty
+flood of folk, a morose and miserable sentimentalist.
+
+I had seen locomotives, those Yankee Juggernauts, drive, roaring and
+ruthless, over the beautiful bodies of fine old travellers' fictions;
+and once, in Burmah, I had beheld a herd of stately elephants plunge
+and scoot, scampering and squealing, like pigs on a railroad, away from
+the steam scream of a new-fangled man-of-war. I had witnessed those
+monstrous sacrileges, and survived,--had even, when locomotive and
+steamer were passed, picked up my beautiful fictions again, and called
+back my panic-stricken elephants with the gong of imagination; but here
+were Gulliver and Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor torn from their golden
+thrones, and this insolent De Sauty, crowned with zinc and copper and
+sceptred with gutta-percha, set up in their places to the tune of "All
+Eight."
+
+"I will build you a house of gold, and you shall be my Padshah Begum,
+some day," said the whimsically cruel King of Oude to Nuna, his favorite
+Cashmere dancing-girl.
+
+For a while Nima's dreams were golden. But the time came when the King
+was not in the vein. He followed vacantly her most enchanting
+undulations and yawned listlessly.
+
+"Boppery bopp!" he exclaimed, presently, "but this bores us. Is there
+no better fun? Let us have a quail-fight, Khan."
+
+The Khan rose to order in the quails. The King gazed on Nuna with
+languid satiety.
+
+"I wonder how she would look, Europe-fashion."
+
+"Nothing is easier, Sire, than to see how she would look," said the
+Khan, as he returned with the quails.
+
+So a gown, and other articles of European female attire, were sent for
+to the Khan's house; for he was a married man; and when they were
+brought, Nuna was told to retire and put them on. The quail-fight
+proceeded on the table.
+
+Then Nuna reappeared in her new costume. A more miserable
+transformation it is hardly possible to imagine. The clothes hung
+loosely about her, in forlorn dowdyness. She felt that she was
+ridiculous. All grace was gone, all beauty. It was distressing to
+witness her mortified plight.
+
+The King and the Khan laughed heartily, while scalding tears coursed
+down poor Nuna's cheeks. The other nautch-girls, jealous, had no pity
+for her; they chuckled at her disgrace, turning up their pretty noses,
+as they whispered,--"Serve her right,--the brazen minx!"
+
+For days, nay, for weeks, did poor Nuna thus appear, a laughing-stock.
+She implored permission to leave the court, and return to her wretched
+home in Cashmere; but that was refused. In the midst of the Mohurrim,
+she suddenly disappeared. There were none to inquire for her.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Private Life of an Eastern King.]
+
+Oh, they may say what they please about the irresistible march of
+civilization, and clearing the way for Webster's Spelling-Book,--about
+pumps for Afric's sunny fountains, and Fulton ferry-boats for India's
+coral strand; but there's nothing in what the Atlantic Cable gives,
+like that it takes away from the heart of the man who has looked the
+Sphinx in the face and dreamed with the Brahmin under his own banian.
+Spare the shrinking Nunas of our poetry your Europe-fashions!
+
+Because the De Sautys are scientifically virtuous, shall there be no
+more barbaric cakes and ale for us? Because they are joined to their
+improved Shanghaes, must we let our phoenixes alone? Must we deny our
+crocodiles when they preach to us codfish? And shall we abstain from
+crying, "In the name of the Prophet, figs!" in order that they may
+bawl, "In the name of Brother Jonathan, doughnuts"?
+
+Yes, the world is visibly shrinking in the hard grip of commerce, and
+the magic and the marvels that filled our childish souls with
+adventurous longing are fading away in the change. Let us make haste,
+then, before it is too late,--before the very Sphinx is guessed, and
+the Boodh himself baptized in Croton water; and, like the Dutchmen in
+Hans Christian Andersen's story, who put on the galoches of happiness
+and stepped out into the Middle Ages, let us slip our feet into the
+sandals of imagination and step out into the desert or the jungle.
+
+One who expressed his Oriental experiences in an epic of fresh and
+thrilling sensations has written,--"If a man be not born of his mother
+with a natural Chifney bit in his mouth, there comes to him a time for
+loathing the wearisome ways of society,--a time for not liking tamed
+people,--a time for not dancing quadrilles,--a time for pretending that
+Milton, and Shelley, and all sorts of mere dead people are greater in
+death than the first living lord of the treasury,--a time, in short,
+for scoffing and railing, for speaking lightly of the opera, and all
+our most cherished institutions. A little while you are free and
+unlabelled, like the ground you compass; but civilization is coming,
+and coming; you and your much-loved waste-lands will be surely
+inclosed, and sooner or later you will be brought down to a state of
+utter usefulness,--the ground will be curiously sliced into acres and
+roods and perches, and you, for all you sit so smartly on your saddle,
+you will be caught, you will be taken up from travel, as a colt from
+grass, to be trained, and matched, and run.
+
+"All this in time: but first come Continental tours, and the moody
+longing for Eastern travel; your native downs and moors can hold you no
+longer; with larger stride you burst away from these slips and patches
+of free-land,--you thread your way through the crowds of Europe, and at
+last, on the banks of the Jordan, you joyfully know that you are upon
+the very frontier of all accustomed respectabilities.
+
+"There, on the other side of the river, (you can swim it with one arm,)
+there reigns the people that will be like to put you to death for _not_
+being a vagrant, for _not_ being a robber, for _not_ being armed and
+houseless. There is comfort in that,--health, comfort, and strength, to
+one who is dying from very weariness of that poor, dear, middle-aged,
+deserving, accomplished, pedantic, pains-taking governess, Europe."
+
+Better the abodes of the anthropophagi, the "men whose heads do grow
+beneath their shoulders," than no place to get away to at all; for to
+every vigorous soul there one day comes a longing, by the light of
+which magnificent distances appear beautiful, and the possibilities of
+infinite far-offness delicious; to the Christian traveller, who exults
+in the faith that "each remotest nation shall learn Messiah's name,"
+how dear is that remoteness which renders the promise sublime! It is
+these considerations which make us, old-fashioned Pucks, whose
+performances go no farther than putting a girdle round about the earth
+in fifty months, object to telegraphs, and protest against De Sauty.
+
+Among your books and your lectures, you must have observed that there
+are several well-defined and widely distinct kinds of traveller. One is
+the professional tourist, who formally and statedly "sets out," in his
+own deliberate way, packed, marked, and paid through; he is shipped
+like preserved meats, hermetically sealed to foreign impressions, and
+warranted to keep in any climate,--the same snug, well-arranged
+"commercial traveller" who went abroad for materials, for which you are
+to pay; and when he has laid in the necessary stock,--the identical
+stock as per original advices,--he comes back again, and that is
+all,--the very same as to himself and his baggage, except that the
+latter is heavier by the addition of a corpulent carpet-bag bloated
+with facts and figures, the aspect of the country, the dimensions of
+monuments, the customs of the people, their productions and
+manufactures; he might as well have done his tour around his own
+library, with a copy of Bayard Taylor's Cyclopaedia of Travel, and an
+assortment of stereoscopic views, for all the freshness of impression
+or originality of narrative you'll get from him,--from whom preserve
+us! Give us, rather, that truer traveller who goes by the
+accommodation-train of Whim, and whom, in the language of conductors,
+you may take up or put down anywhere, because he is no "dead-head," nor
+"ticketed through." This is he of whom I have spoken elsewhere,--in the
+magic mirror of whose memory (as to the last he saw of this wonder or
+of that) "a stony statuesqueness prevails, to produce an effect the
+weirdest of all; for there every living thing stands arrested in the
+attitude or gesture it presented at the fine instant to which his
+thought returns to find it,--seized in the midst, it may be, of the
+gayest, most spirited, or most passionate action,--laughter, dance,
+rage, conflict; and so fixed as unchangeable as the stone faces of the
+gods, forever and forever." In the midst of a Burmese jungle I have
+tried that sad experiment by its reverse, and, gazing into _my_ magic
+mirror, have beheld my own dear home, and the old, familiar faces,--all
+stony, pale, and dim. At such times, how painfully the exile's heart is
+tried by the apparition of any object, however insignificant, to which
+his happy childhood was accustomed! I think my heart was never more
+sharply wrung than once at Prome, in the porch of a grim old temple of
+Guadma;--a kitten was playing with a feather there.
+
+In his enumeration of the chief points of attraction in the more
+striking books of voyages and travels, Leigh Hunt, with his happy
+appreciation of whatever is most quaint in description, most
+sympathetic in impression, has helped us to an arrangement, which, with
+a convenient modification of our own, we shall follow congenially. We
+shall seek for remoteness and obscurity of place,--marvellousness of
+hearsay,--surprising, but conceivable truth,--barbaric magnificence,--
+the grotesque and the fantastic,--strangeness of custom,--personal
+danger, courage, and suffering,--and their barbaric consolations.
+In the pursuit of these, our path should wind, had we time to take
+the longest, among deserts and lands of darkness,--phoenixes and
+griffins and sphinxes,--human monsters, and more monstrous gods,--the
+courts of Akbhar and Aurengzebe,--palaces of the Mogul and the Kathayan
+Khan,--pigmies, monkey-gods, mummies, Fakeers, dancing-girls, tattooed
+warriors, Thugs, cannibals, Fetishes, human sacrifices, and the Evil
+Eye,--Chinese politeness, Bedouin honor, Bechuana simplicity,--the plague,
+the _amok_, the bearding of lions, the graves of hero-travellers, flowers
+in the desert, and the universal tenderness of women.
+
+And as our wild way leads us onward, it shall open up visions, new and
+wondrous, or beautiful as new, to those who try it for the first time.
+See now, at the outset, stepping into the footprints of old Sir John
+Mandeville, what do we behold?--"In that kingdom of Abcay is a great
+marvel; for a province of the country, that hath in circuit three days'
+journeys, that men call Hanyson, is all covered with darkness, without
+any brightness or light,--so that no man may see nor hear, nor no man
+dare enter into it. And nevertheless, they of that country say that
+sometimes men hear voices of folks, and horses neighing, and cocks
+crowing; and they know well that men live there, but they know not what
+men. And they say that the darkness befell by miracle of God; for an
+accursed emperor of Persia, that was named Saures, pursued all
+Christian men for to destroy them, and to compel them to make sacrifice
+to his idols; and rode with a great host, all that ever he could, for
+to confound the Christian men. And then in that country dwelled many
+good Christian men, the which left their goods, and would have fled
+into Greece; and when they were in a plain called Megon, anon this
+cursed emperor met with them, with his host, for to have slain them and
+hewn them in pieces. And anon the Christian men did kneel to the
+ground, and make their prayers to God to succor them. Then a great
+thick cloud came and covered the emperor and all his host; and so they
+remain in that manner, that no more may they get out on any side; and
+so shall they evermore abide in darkness, till the day of doom, by the
+miracle of God. And then the Christian men went whither they liked
+best, at their own pleasure, without hindrance of any creature, and
+their enemies were inclosed and confounded in darkness without a blow.
+And that was a great miracle that God made for them; wherefore methinks
+that Christian men should be more devout to serve our Lord God than any
+other men of any other belief."
+
+Thus doth the simple, willing faith of the childlike traveller of 1350
+draw from his strange old story a moral which may serve to light the
+way for you and me when we wend through the soul's land of darkness.
+
+  "Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day;
+  Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay."--
+
+So sings Tennyson; and what's a cycle of Cathay? Let us ask Mandeville.
+
+"Cathay is a great country, and a fair, noble, and rich, and full of
+merchants. Thither go merchants, every year, for to seek spices, and
+all manner of merchandises, more commonly than in any other part.
+
+"In Cathay is the great city of Xanadu; and in this city is the seat of
+the great Khan, in a full great palace, and the most passing fair in
+all the world, of the which the walls be in circuit more than two
+miles; and within the walls it is all full of other palaces. And in the
+garden of the great palace there is a great hill, upon the which there
+is another palace; and it is the most fair and the most rich that any
+man may devise. And there is the great garden, full of wild beasts; so
+that when the great Khan would have any sport, to take any of the wild
+beasts, or of the fowls, he will cause them to be chased, and take them
+at his windows, without going out of his chamber. The palace where the
+seat is is both great and passing fair; and within the palace, in the
+hall, there be twenty-four pillars of fine gold; and all the walls are
+covered within with red skins of beasts, that men call panthers, that
+be fair beasts, and well smelling; so that for the sweet odor of the
+skins no evil air may enter into the palace. And in the midst of this
+palace is the _mountour_ (high seat) for the great Khan, that is all
+wrought of gold and of precious stones and great pearls; and at the
+four corners of the _mountour_ be four serpents of gold, and all about
+there is made large nets of silk and gold and great pearls hanging all
+about the _mountour_. And the hall of the palace is full nobly arrayed,
+and full marvellously attired on all parts, in all things that men
+apparel any hall with. And at the chief end of the hall is the
+emperor's throne, full high, where he sitteth at his meat; and that is
+of fine precious stones, bound all about with purified gold and
+precious stones and great pearls; and the steps that he goeth up to the
+table be of precious stones mixed with gold. Under the firmament is not
+so great a lord, nor so mighty, nor so rich, as the great Khan. Neither
+Prester John, that is emperor of the high India, nor the Sultan of
+Babylonia, nor the Emperor of Persia. All these be not in comparison to
+the great Khan, neither of might, nor of nobleness, nor of royalty, nor
+of riches; for in all these he passeth all earthly princes. Wherefore
+it is great harm that he believeth not faithfully in God."
+
+And here we naturally recall that wondrous vision which Coleridge
+conjured up, when, opium-rapt, he dreamed in his study-chair of Kubla's
+enchanted ground.
+
+"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
+A stately pleasure-dome decree,
+Where Alph, the sacred river, ran,
+Through caverns measureless to man,
+Down to a sunless sea.
+So twice five miles of fertile ground
+With walls and towers were girded round;
+And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
+Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
+And here were forests ancient as the hills,
+Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
+
+"Five miles, meandering with a mazy motion,
+Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
+Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
+And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
+And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
+Ancestral voices prophesying war!
+
+"A damsel with a dulcimer
+In a vision once I saw;
+It was an Abyssinian maid,
+And on her dulcimer she played,
+Singing of Mount Abora.
+Could I revive within me
+Her symphony and song,
+To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
+That with music loud and long
+I would build that dome in air,
+That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
+And all who heard should see them there,
+And all should cry, Beware! beware
+His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
+Weave a circle round him thrice,
+And close your lips with holy dread,
+For he on honey-dew hath fed,
+And drunk the milk of Paradise!"
+
+The account which Herodotus gives of the gifts that Croesus sent to the
+Oracle at Delphi is a splendid example of barbaric magnificence. First,
+the King offered up three thousand of every kind of sacrificial beast,
+and burned upon a huge pile couches coated with silver and gold, and
+golden goblets, and robes and vests of purple. Next he issued a command
+to all the people of the land to offer up a sacrifice according to
+their means. And when this sacrifice was consumed, he melted down a
+vast quantity of gold, and ran it into one hundred and seventeen
+ingots, each six palms long, three palms broad, and one palm in
+thickness. He also caused the statue of a lion to be made of refined
+gold, in weight ten talents. When these great works were completed,
+Croesus sent them away to Delphi, and with them two bowls of enormous
+size, one of gold, the other of silver. These two bowls, Herodotus
+affirms, were removed when the temple of Delphi was burned to the
+ground; and now the golden one is in the Clazomenian treasury, and
+weighs eight talents and forty-two _minae_; the silver one stands in a
+corner of the ante-chapel and holds six hundred _amphorae_ (over five
+thousand gallons);--this is known, because the Delphians fill it at the
+time of the Theophania. Croesus sent also four silver casks, which are
+in the Corinthian treasury; and two lustral vases, a golden and a
+silver one. Beside these various offerings, he sent to Delphi many
+others of less account, among the rest a number of round silver basins.
+He also dedicated a female figure in gold, three cubits high, which the
+Delphians declared was the statue of his baking woman; and lastly, he
+presented the necklace and the girdles of his wife.
+
+When Croesus sent his Lydian messengers to the Oracle, one Alcmaeon,
+who seems to have been a shrewd fellow, with a sharp eye to the main
+chance, entertained them with generous hospitality; which so pleased
+Croesus, when he was told of it, that he immediately invited Alcmaeon
+to visit him at Sardis. When he arrived, the King told him that he was
+at liberty to enter his treasury and help himself to as much gold as he
+could carry off on his person at once. No sooner said than done.
+Alcmaeon, without bashfulness, arrayed himself in a tunic that bagged
+abominably at the waist, drew on the biggest buskins in Sardis, dressed
+his hair loose, and, marching into the treasure-house, (imagine what
+the treasury of Croesus must have been,) waded into a desert of gold
+dust. He crammed the bosom of his tunic, crammed his bombastian
+buskins, filled his hair full, and finally stuffed his mouth, so that,
+as he passed out, he could only wink his fat red eyes and bob to
+Croesus, who, when he had laughed till his sides ached, repaid his
+funny, but voracious guest for the amusement he had afforded him by not
+only confirming the gift of gold, but conferring an equal amount in
+jewels and rich raiment.
+
+But we must not remain to marvel among the overwhelming displays of
+barbaric profusion. Akbhar, the imperial Mogul, who on his birthday
+caused himself to be weighed in golden scales three times,--first
+against gold pieces, then against silver, and lastly against fine
+perfumes,--who scattered among his courtiers showers of gold and silver
+nuts, for which even his gravest ministers were not too dignified to
+scramble,--even Akbhar must not detain us. Nor Aurengzebe, who made his
+marches, seated on a throne flashing with gold and rich brocades, and
+borne on the shoulders of men; while his princesses and favorite begums
+followed in all the pomp and glory of the seraglio, nestled in
+delicious pavilions curtained with massy silk, and mounted on the backs
+of stately elephants of Pegu and Martaban.
+
+We must get away from these; for the realm of the Supernatural and the
+Marvellous lies open before us, and on the very threshold, over which
+Sir John Mandeville conducts us, broods in his fiery nest that wondrous
+fowl, the Phoenix.
+
+"In Egypt is the city of Eliopolis, that is to say, the City of the
+Sun. In that city there is a temple made round, after the shape of the
+temple of Jerusalem. The priests of that temple have all their writing
+dated by the fowl that is called Phoenix; and there is none but one in
+all the world. And he cometh to burn himself upon the altar of the
+temple at the end of five hundred years; for so long he liveth. And at
+the end of the five hundred years, they array their altar carefully,
+and put thereon spices and live sulphur, and other things that will
+burn lightly. And then the bird Phoenix cometh and burneth himself to
+ashes. And the first day next after, men find in the ashes a worm; and
+the second day next after, men find a bird, quick and perfect; and the
+third day next after, he flieth away. And so there is no more birds of
+that kind in all the world but that alone. And, truly, that is a great
+miracle of God. And men may well liken that bird unto God, because
+there is no God but one, and also that our Lord arose from death the
+third day. This bird men see often flying in those countries; and he is
+not much more than an eagle. And he hath a crest of feathers upon his
+head greater than the peacock hath. And his neck is yellow, after the
+color of an orial, that is a stone well shining. And his beak is
+colored blue, and his wings are of purple color, and his tail is yellow
+and red. And he is a full fair bird to look upon against the sun; for
+he shineth full gloriously and nobly."
+
+Let us pray that our Phoenix may not fall into the clutches of the De
+Sautys, to be made goose-meat of; rather may they themselves be utterly
+cast out,--into the land of giants that are hideous to look upon, and
+have but one eye, and that in the middle of the forehead,--into the
+land of folk of foul stature and of cursed kind, that have no heads,
+and whose eyes be in their shoulders,--into the isle of those that go
+upon their hands and feet, like beasts, and that are all furred and
+feathered,--or into the country of the people who have but one leg, the
+foot of which is so large that it shades all the rest of the body from
+the sun, when they lie down on their backs to rest at noonday. But not
+into the Land of Women, where all are wise, noble, and worthy. For once
+there was a king in that country, and men married; but presently befell
+a war with the Scythians, and the king was slain in battle, and with
+him all of the best blood of his realm. So when the queen, and the
+other noble ladies, saw that they were all widows, and all the royal
+blood was spilled, they armed themselves, and, like mad creatures, slew
+all the men that were left in the country; for they wished that all the
+women might be widows, as the queen and they were. And thenceforward
+they never would suffer men to dwell among them, especially men of the
+De Sauty sort, who, as Hans Christian Andersen says, ask questions and
+never dream.
+
+The town of Lop, says Marco Polo, is situated near the commencement of
+the great desert called the Desert of Lop. It is asserted as a
+well-known fact, that this desert is the abode of many evil spirits,
+which entice travellers to destruction with extraordinary delusions.
+If, during the daytime, any persons remain behind on the road until the
+caravan has passed a hill and is no longer in sight, they unexpectedly
+hear themselves called by their names, in a tone of voice to which they
+are accustomed. Supposing the call to proceed from their companions,
+they are led away by it from the direct road, and, not knowing in what
+direction to advance, are left to perish. In the night-time they are
+persuaded they hear the march of a great cavalcade, and concluding the
+noise to be the tramp of their own party, they make the best of their
+way in the direction of the quarter whence it seems to come; but when
+the day breaks, they find they have been misled and drawn into a
+situation of danger. Sometimes, during the day, these spirits assume
+the appearance of their travelling-companions, who address them by
+name, and endeavor to draw them out of the proper road. It is said,
+also, that some travellers, in their way across the desert, have seen
+what appeared to them to be a body of armed men advancing toward them,
+and, fearful of being attacked and plundered, have taken to flight.
+Thus, losing the right path, and ignorant of the direction they should
+take to regain it, they have miserably perished of hunger.
+
+Marvellous, indeed, and almost passing belief, are the stories related
+of these spirits of the desert, which are said to fill the air at times
+with the sounds of all kinds of musical instruments, of drama, and the
+clash of arms. When the journey across this dreadful waste is
+completed, the trembling traveller arrives at the city of the Great
+Khan.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Leigh Hunt.]
+
+In this rich chapter of horrors how finished an allegory for old John
+Bunyan! With what religious unction he would have led his Christian
+traveller from that unknown city on the edge of the sands, across the
+Soul's Desert of Lop, with its
+
+  "Voices calling in the dead of night,
+  And airy tongues that syllable men's names,"
+
+safe into the _City of the Great Khan!_
+
+Leigh Hunt declares that he has read, in some other account, of a
+dreadful, unendurable face that used to stare at people as they went
+by.
+
+The Barbaric has also its features of solemnity and grandeur, filling
+the mind with exalted contemplations, and the imagination with
+inspiring and ennobling apparitions. Surroundings that contribute a
+quality of awfulness embrace in such scenes the soul of the traveller,
+and hold him in their tremendous thrall. Mean or flippant ideas may not
+enter here; but the man puts off the smaller part of him, as the
+Asiatic puts off his sandals on entering the porches of his god. Of
+such is the Eternal Sphinx, as Eothen Kinglake beheld her. We cannot
+feel her aspect more grandly than by the aid of his inspiration.
+
+"And near the Pyramids, more wondrous and more awful than all else in
+the land of Egypt, there sits the lonely Sphinx. Comely the creature
+is; but the comeliness is not of this world; the once worshipped beast
+is a deformity and a monster to this generation; and yet you can see
+that those lips, so thick and heavy, were fashioned according to some
+ancient mould of beauty, now forgotten,--forgotten because that Greece
+drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam of the Aegean, and in her
+image created new forms of beauty, and made it a law among men that the
+short and proudly wreathed lip should stand for the sign and main
+condition of loveliness through all generations to come. Yet still
+lives on the race of those who were beautiful in the fashion of the
+elder world; and Christian girls of Coptic blood will look on you with
+the sad, serious gaze, and kiss you your charitable hand with the big,
+pouting lips of the very Sphinx.
+
+"Laugh and mock, if you will, at the worship of stone idols; but mark
+ye this, ye breakers of images, that in one regard the stone idol bears
+awful semblance of Deity,--unchangefulness in the midst of change,--the
+same seeming will and intent, forever and forever inexorable. Upon
+ancient dynasties of Ethiopian and Egyptian kings,--upon Greek and
+Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors,--upon Napoleon dreaming of an
+Eastern empire,--upon battle and pestilence,--upon the ceaseless misery
+of the Egyptian race,--upon keen-eyed travellers,--Herodotus yesterday,
+Warbarton to-day,--upon all, and more, this unworldly Sphinx has
+watched and watched like a Providence, with the same earnest eyes, and
+the same sad, tranquil mien. And we, we shall die; and Islam will
+wither away; and the Englishman, leaning far over to hold his loved
+India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile, and sit in the
+seats of the Faithful; and still that sleepless rock will lie watching
+and watching the works of the new, busy race, with those same sad,
+earnest eyes, and that same tranquil mien, everlasting. You dare not
+mock at the Sphinx!"
+
+Not less stupendously placid than the Sphinx, and even grimmer in his
+remoteness from the places that have heard Messiah's name, is the
+Boodh, throned in trance, and multitudinously worshipped. Shall I tell
+you how I first beheld him in his glory?
+
+We were approaching some sacred caves in Burmah. Lighting our torches,
+and each man taking one, we mounted the steep, tortuous, and slippery
+foot-path of damp, green stones, through the thorny shrubs that beset
+it, to the low entrance to the outer cavern. Stooping uncomfortably, we
+passed into a small, vacant antechamber, having a low, dripping roof,
+perpendicular walls, clammy and green, and a rocky floor, sloping
+inward through a narrow arch to a long, double, transverse gallery,
+divided in the direction of its length, partly by a face of rock,
+partly by a row of pillars. Here were innumerable images of Guadma, the
+counterfeit presentment of the Fourth Boodh, whose successor is to see
+the end of all things,--innumerable, and of every stature, from
+Hop-o'-my-thumbs to Hurlo-thrombos, but all of the identical orthodox
+pattern,--with pendulous ears, one hand planted squarely on the knee,
+the other sleeping in the lap, an eternity of front face, and a smooth
+stagnancy of expression, typical of an unfathomable calm,--the Guadma
+of a span as grim as he of ten cubits, and he of ten cubits as vacant
+as the Guadma of a span,--of stone, of lead, of wood, of clay, of
+earthenware and alabaster,--on their bottoms, on their heads, on their
+backs, on their sides, on their faces,--black, white, red, yellow,--an
+eye gone, a nose gone, an ear gone, a head gone,--an arm off at the
+shoulder, a leg at the knee,--a back split, a bosom burst,--Guadma,
+imperturbable, eternal, calm,--in the midst of time, timeless! It is
+not annihilation which the Boodh has promised, as the blessed crown of
+a myriad of progressive transmigrations; it is not Death; it is not
+Sleep,--it is this.
+
+Our entrance awoke a pandemonium. Myriads of bats and owls, and all
+manner of fowls of darkness and bad omen, crazed by the glare of twenty
+torches, startled the echoes with infernal clangor. Screaming and
+huddling together, some fled under the wide skirts of sable, which
+Darkness, climbing to the roof in fear, drew up after her; some hid
+with lesser shadows between columns of great girth, or in the remotest
+murky niches, or down in the black profound of resounding chasms; some,
+bewildered or quite blinded by the flashes of the co-eternal beam,
+dashed themselves against the stony walls, and fell crippled, gasping,
+staring, at our feet. And when, at last, our guides and servants,
+mounting to pinnacles and jutting points, and many a frieze and coigne
+of vantage, placed blue lights on them all, and at the word illuminated
+all together, there was redoubled bedlam in that abode of Hecate, and
+the eternal calm of the Boodh became awful. For what deeds of outer
+darkness, done long ago in that black hole of superstition, so many
+damned souls shrieked from their night-fowl transmigrations, 'twere
+vain to question there were no disclosures in that trance of stone.
+
+For an experience of the oppressive awfulness of solitude, and all the
+weary monotony of waste, come now, with Kinglake, into mid-desert.
+
+"As long as you are journeying in the interior of the desert, you have
+no particular point to make for as your resting-place. The endless
+sands yield nothing but small stunted shrubs; even these fail after the
+first two or three days; and from that time you pass over broad plains,
+you pass over newly reared hills, you pass through valleys that the
+storm of the last week has dug; and the hills and the valleys are sand,
+sand, sand, still sand and only sand, and sand and sand again. The
+earth is so samely, that your eyes turn toward heaven,--toward heaven,
+I mean, in the sense of sky. You look to the sun, for he is your
+task-master, and by him you know the measure of the work that you have
+done, the measure of the work that remains for you to do. He comes when
+you strike your tent in the early morning, and then, for the first hour
+of the day, as you move forward on your camel, he stands at your near
+side, and makes you know that the whole day's toil is before you. Then,
+for a while, and a long while, you see him no more; for you are veiled
+and shrouded, and dare not look upon the greatness of his glory; but
+you know where he strides over your head by the touch of his flaming
+sword. No words are spoken; but your Arabs moan, your camels sigh, your
+skin glows, your shoulders ache; and, for sights, you see the pattern
+and the web of the silk that veils your eyes, and the glare of the
+outer light.
+
+"Time labors on,--your skin glows, and your shoulders ache, your Arabs
+moan, your camels sigh, and you see the same pattern on the silk, and
+the same glare beyond; but conquering Time marches on, and by-and-by
+the descending sun has compassed the heaven, and now softly touches
+your right arm, and throws your lank shadow over the sand, right along
+on the way to Persia. Then again you look upon his face, for his power
+is all veiled in his beauty, and the redness of flames has become the
+redness of roses; the fair, wavy cloud that fled in the morning now
+comes to his sight once more,--comes blushing, but still comes
+on,--comes burning with blushes, yet hastens, and clings to his side."
+
+When one has been sufficiently dis-Europized by remote travel, to
+become, as to his imagination, a child again, and receive a child's
+impressions from the strangeness that surrounds him, the grotesque and
+fantastic aspects of his situation afford him the same emotions, of
+unquestioning wonder and romantic sympathy, that he derived in the old
+time from the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor, the exploits of Jack the
+Giant-Killer, what Gulliver saw, or Munchausen did. Behold Belzoni in
+the necropolis of Thebes, crawling on his very face among the dusty
+rubbish of unnumbered mummies, to steal papyri from their bosoms.
+Fatigued with the exertion of squirming through a mummy-choked passage
+of five hundred yards, he sought a resting-place; but when he would
+have sat down, his weight bore on the body of an Egyptian, and crushed
+it like a bandbox. He naturally had recourse to his hands to sustain
+his weight; but they found no better support, and he sunk altogether in
+a crash of broken bones, rags, and wooden cases, that raised such a
+dust as kept him motionless for a quarter of an hour, waiting for it to
+subside. He could not move from the place, however, without increasing
+it, and every step he took smashed a mummy. Once, in forcing his way
+through a steeply inclined passage, about twenty feet in length, and no
+wider than his body could be squeezed through, he was overwhelmed with
+an avalanche of bones, legs, arms, and hands, rolling from above; and
+every forward move brought his face in contact with the abhorred
+features of some decayed Egyptian.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Bayard Taylor.]
+
+Behold Denham in the Desert of Dead Bones, where his sick comrades were
+constantly disheartened by the sight of the skulls and skeletons of men
+who had perished on those sands. During several days, they passed from
+sixty to ninety skeletons a day; but the numbers that lay about the
+wells at El Hammar were countless. Those of two women, whose perfect
+and regular teeth bespoke them young, perhaps beautiful, were
+particularly shocking. Their arms were still clasped around each
+other's neck, in the attitude in which they had expired, although the
+flesh had long since been consumed in the rays of the sun, and the
+blackened bones alone were left.
+
+Parkyns, among the little greenish-gray monkeys of Tigré, enjoyed a
+treat to make the mouth of our young imagination water. He saw them
+conversing, quarrelling, making love; mothers were taking care of their
+children, combing their hair, nursing or "trotting" them; and the
+passions of all--jealousy, rage, love--were as strongly marked as in
+men. They had a language as distinct to them as ours to us; and their
+women were as noisy and as fond of disputation as any fish-fag in
+Billingsgate.
+
+"On their marches, a few of the heedless youth occasionally lagged
+behind to snatch a handful of berries; sometimes a matron halted for a
+while to nurse her baby, and, not to lose time, dressed its hair while
+it took its meal. Now and then a young lady, excited by jealousy or
+some sneering look or word, made an ugly mouth at one of her
+companions, and then, uttering a shrill squeal, highly expressive of
+rage, vindictively snatched at the offender's tail or leg, and
+administered a hearty bite. This provoked a retort, and a most
+unladylike quarrel ensued, till a loud remonstrance from mothers or
+aunts called them to order."
+
+According to Marco Polo, there have been among the monkeys, from time
+to time, certain Asiatic Yankees, who did a lively business in the
+manufacture of an article which would, no doubt, have found a ready
+purchaser at Barnum's Museum.
+
+"It should be known," says the veracious old Venetian, "that what is
+reported respecting the dead bodies of diminutive human creatures or
+pigmies, brought from India, is an idle tale; such pretended men being
+manufactured in the island of Basman in the following manner. The
+country produces a species of monkey of a tolerable size, and having a
+countenance resembling that of a man. Those persons who make it their
+business to catch them shave off the hair, leaving it only about the
+chin. They then dry and preserve them with camphor and other drugs; and
+having prepared them in such a mode that they have exactly the
+appearance of little men, they put them into wooden boxes, and sell
+them to trading people, who carry them to all parts of the world."
+
+Not the least familiar of the aspects of the Barbaric are its actions
+and situations of horror. I could tell tales from the later, not less
+than from the older travellers, that would send my readers shuddering
+to sleepless beds: the ferocities of Tippoo reënacted in the name of
+Nena Sahib; the noiseless murders of Thuggee's nimble cord; the drunken
+_diablerie_ of the Doorga Pooja; the monstrous human sacrifices of the
+Khonds and Bheels; the dreadful rites of the Janni before the gory
+altar of the Earth goddess; the indiscriminate slashing and stabbing of
+the Amok; the shuddering dodges of the plague-chased Cavrite; the grim
+and lonely duels of the French lion-killer under the melancholy stars;
+the carrion-like exposures of the Parsee dead; the nightmarish legends
+of the Evil Eye. But my hope is to part with them on pleasant terms; so
+rather would I strew their pillows with the consolations of this
+many-mooded Barbaric,--moss from ruins, and pretty flowers from the
+desert,--that beneficent botany which maketh the wilderness to blossom
+like the rose.
+
+When Mungo Park, deserted by his guides, and stripped by thieves,
+utterly paralyzed by misfortune, and misery, would have laid him down
+to die in a desert place,--at that moment, of all others, the
+extraordinary beauty of a small moss in fructification caught his eye.
+"I mention this," he says, "to show you from what trifling
+circumstances the mind will sometimes derive consolation; for, though
+the whole plant was not larger than the top of one of my fingers, I
+could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its root, leaves,
+and capsule without admiration. Can that Being, thought I, who planted,
+watered, and brought to perfection, in this obscure part of the world,
+a thing which appears of so small importance, look with unconcern upon
+the situation and sufferings of creatures formed after his own image? I
+started up, and, disregarding both danger and fatigue, travelled
+forward, assured that relief was at hand; and I was not disappointed."
+
+Richardson, in the midst of Sahara, beheld with brimming eyes two small
+trees, the common desert acacia, and by-and-by two or three pretty blue
+flowers. As he snatched them, to fold them in his bosom, he could not
+help exclaiming, _Elhamdullah!_ "Praise be to God!"--for Arabic was
+growing second-born to his tongue, and he began to think in it and to
+pray in it. An Arab said to him, "Yakob, if we had a reed, and were to
+make a melodious sound, those flowers, the color of heaven, would open
+and shut their mouths."
+
+Once, Mungo Park (the once too often of telling this story can never
+come) sat all day,--without food, under a tree. The night threatened to
+be very pitiless; for the wind arose, and there was every sign of a
+heavy rain; and wild beasts prowled around. But about sunset, as he was
+preparing to pass the night in the branches of the tree, a woman,
+returning from the labors of the field, perceived how weary and
+dejected he was, and, taking up his saddle and bridle, invited him to
+follow her. She conducted him to her hut, where she lighted a lamp,
+spread a mat on the floor, and bade him welcome. Then she went out, and
+presently returning with a fine fish, broiled it on the embers, and set
+his supper before him. The rites of hospitality thus performed toward a
+stranger in distress, that _savage_ angel, pointing to the mat, and
+assuring him that he might sleep there without fear, commanded the
+females of her family, who all the while had stood gazing on him in
+fixed astonishment, to resume their spinning. Then they sang, to a
+sweet and plaintive air, these words: "The winds roared, and the rains
+fell. The poor white man, faint and weary, came and sat under our tree.
+Let us pity the white man; no mother hath he to bring him milk, no wife
+to grind his corn." Flowers in the desert![1]
+
+[Footnote 1: Leigh Hunt.]
+
+Flowers in the desert! And De Sauty shall spare them, though he
+botanize on his mother's grave. Borro-boolah-gah may know us by our
+India-rubber shirts and pictorial pocket-handkerchiefs; and King Mumbo
+Jumbo may reduce his rebellious locks to subjection with a Yankee
+currycomb; but these, our desert flowers, are All Right, De Sauty!
+
+
+
+
+BEAUTY AT BILLIARDS.
+
+
+There is a lady in this case.
+
+For three days she had sat opposite me at the table of the pleasantest
+of White Mountain resorts, (of course I give no hint as to which _that_
+is,--tastes differ,) and I had gradually become enthralled. Her beauty
+was dazzling, and her name was Tarlingford. For the first of these
+items, I was indebted to my own intelligence; for the second to the
+hotel register, which also informed me that she was from New York.
+
+I, too, had come from New York;--a coincidence too startling to be
+calmly overlooked.
+
+Our acquaintance began oddly. One morning, at breakfast, I was musing
+over a hard-boiled egg, and wondering if I could perforate her
+affections with anything like the success which had followed my fork as
+it penetrated the shell before me, when I felt a timid touch upon my
+toe, thrilling me from end to end like a telegraph-wire when the
+insulation is perfect. I looked up, and detected a pink flush making
+its way browward on the lovely countenance across the table.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said I, with much concern.
+
+"It was my fault, Sir; excuse _me_," said she, permitting the pink
+flush to deepen, rosily.
+
+"Shall I pass you the buttered toast?" said I.
+
+"Muffins, if you please," said she, and so sweetly that I was blinded
+to the absence of sugar in my second cup of coffee.
+
+I was confused by this incident. Many men would have concealed their
+disquietude by an affectation of sudden appetite, or by bullying the
+waiter, or by abrupt departure from the scene. I did neither. I felt I
+had a right to be confused, and I gloried in it.
+
+Very soon Miss Tarlingford withdrew, and I experienced an aching void
+within, which chops and fritters had no power to replenish.
+
+I opened a chambermaid's heart with a half-dollar, and the treasures of
+her knowledge were revealed to me. The beauty and her party were to
+remain a fortnight Among her companions there were no males, except a
+youthful irresponsibility. _Exultemus!_
+
+Later in the morning I heard the tinkling of the parlor pianoforte.
+Music has soothing charms for me, though I have not a savage breast. I
+drew near, and found Miss Tarlingford trifling with the keys,--those
+keys which lock together so many chains of human sympathy. She rose,
+and gave out demonstrations of impending disappearance. I interposed,--
+
+"Pray, continue. I am famished for music, and came specially to
+listen."
+
+"It is hardly worth while."
+
+"How can you say so? It is I who know best what I need."
+
+"I will play for you, then."
+
+And she did. This was wonderful. Usually, a long and painful struggle
+precedes feminine acquiescence, on such occasions. Repeated refusals,
+declarations of incapacity, partial consent vouchsafed and then
+waywardly withdrawn, poutings, head-tossings, feebler murmurs of
+disinclination, and final reluctant yielding form the fashionable order
+of proceeding. The charm of it all is, that the original intention is
+the same as the ultimate action. Whence, then, this folly? Having been
+many times wretchedly bored by this sort of thing, I was now
+correspondingly gladdened by the contrast.
+
+Miss Tarlingford played well, and I said so.
+
+"Pretty well," she answered, frankly; "but not so well as I could
+wish."
+
+Shock Number Two. It is customary in good society for tolerable
+performers to disavow all praises, (secretly yearning for more,) and to
+assail with invective their own artistic accomplishments. Here was a
+young lady who played well, and had the hardihood to acknowledge it.
+This rather took away my breath, and a vacuum began to come under my
+waistcoat.
+
+For three blissful days Miss Tarlingford and I were seldom separated.
+Her sister, a pale, sedate maiden, of amiable appearance, and her
+brother, a small, rude boy, of intrusive habits and unguarded speech, I
+consented to undergo, for the sake of conventional necessity. To the
+mother of the Tarlingfords additional respect seemed due, and was
+accorded.
+
+Three blissful days of sunshine, meadowy rambles, forest explorations,
+the majestic tranquillity of Nature spiced with the sauce of
+flirtation, or something stronger. Sometimes we took our morning
+happiness on foot, sometimes our mid-day ecstasy served up on
+horseback, sometimes our evening rapture in an open wagon at two forty.
+
+The puerile Tarlingford, interfering at first, was summarily crushed.
+Aspiring to equestrian distinctions, he wrought upon maternal
+indulgence, until, not without misgivings, maternal anxiety was
+stifled, and, with injunctions that we should hover protectingly near
+him, he was sent forth, a thorn in our sides. In half an hour he was
+accidentally remembered, and was found to be nowhere within view; so we
+pursued our way, well pleased. He had dropped quietly off, at the first
+canter, into a miry slough, and had returned sobbingly, covered with
+mortification and mud, to the arms of his parent. Keen questioning at
+dinner was the result.
+
+"Why did you so neglect him?" demanded fond mamma, adding,
+reproachfully, "The child's life might have been sacrificed."
+
+"Mother, we looked for him, and he was gone. Why didn't he cry out?"
+
+"So I did," shouted this youth of open speech; "but you two had your
+heads together, laughing and talking like anything, and couldn't hear,
+I suppose." (With a juvenile sneer.)
+
+"Oh, fie, Walter! Now I think you were so frightened that you could not
+speak."
+
+"I shall know better than to intrust him to your care again," said
+indignant mamma, as one who withdrew a blessed privilege.
+
+"Don't say that, mother; it would be a punishment too severe," said the
+mischievous little pale sister, in tones of pity, and her face brimming
+with mirth.
+
+Everybody laughed, and peace was restored.
+
+On the third evening, misery came to me in an envelope post-marked New
+York:--
+
+"My DEAR PLOVINS:--
+
+"I shall be with you the night after you receive this. Engage a room
+for me. Have you seen anything of a Miss Tarlingford, where you are
+staying? You should know her. She is very brilliant and accomplished,
+but is retiring. I am willing to tell you, but it must go no farther,
+that we are betrothed.
+
+"Yours, in a hurry,
+
+"FRANK LILLIVAN."
+
+My heart was as the mercury of a thermometer which is plunged into ice;
+but I preserved an outward composure. Turning over the pile of letters
+awaiting owners, I came upon one, directed in Lillivan's handwriting,
+to Miss A. Tarlingford, etc., etc.
+
+To think that a paltry superscription should carry such a weight of
+tribulation with it!
+
+I thus discovered that my lines had fallen in unpleasant places. I was
+fishing in a preoccupied stream, and had got myself entangled.
+
+I avoided the public table, and shrunk from society. During the whole
+of the next morning, I kept aloof from the temptations of Tarlingford,
+and took to billiards.
+
+In the afternoon, as I sat gloomily in my room, with feet protruding
+from the window, and body inclined rearward, (the American attitude of
+despair,) the piano tinkled. It was the same melody which had attracted
+me a few happy days before. Strengthening myself with a powerful
+resolution to extricate myself from the bewitching influence which had
+surrounded me, I arose, and went straightway to the parlor. Could it be
+that a flash of pleasure beamed on Miss Tarlingford's face? or was I a
+deluded gosling? The latter suggestion seemed the more credible, so I
+cheerfully adopted it.
+
+"We have missed you, Mr. Plovins," said the fair enslaver; "I hope you
+have not been unwell?"
+
+"Unwell?--oh, no, no!"
+
+"You have not been near me--us, today," (reprovingly,) "not even at
+dinner; and the trout were superb."
+
+A sudden hope mounted within me.
+
+"Miss Tarlingford, pray, excuse me,--your first name, may I ask what it
+is?"
+
+"Arabella is my name, and" (whisperingly) "you may use it, if you
+like."
+
+"Oh, hideous horror! And this is what they call flirtation," I thought.
+And the hope which had risen blazing, like a rocket, went down
+fuliginous, like the stick.
+
+"Mr. Plovins, I will say you are very--very inconstant, to be absent
+all day, thus."
+
+"Miss Tarlingford, it is not inconstancy, it is billiards."
+
+"Billiards!"
+
+"Billiards. I adore them. You know nothing of billiards; women never
+do. They are my joy. Pardon me," (with a sudden uprising of the moral
+sense,) "I have an engagement at the billiard-room, and I should be
+there."
+
+"Dear me! I should like to do billiards."
+
+"Heaven forbid!"
+
+"Why so, Sir?"
+
+"No, I do not mean that; but ladies never play billiards."
+
+"I suppose there is no reason why they should not?"
+
+"A thousand."
+
+"Why, what harm?"
+
+"My dear Miss Tarlingford, if your first name were not Arabella,--alas,
+alas!--there would be none."
+
+"Nonsense! now you are laughing at me. Come, you shall teach me
+billiards."
+
+"It cannot be, Miss Tarlingford." (Low tragedy tones.)
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because your name is Arabella."
+
+"Very well, Sir,--if you do not like my name, you need not repeat it."
+
+"I adore it; it is not that. Forgive me."
+
+"Then I will get my hat";--and her light footsteps tapped upon the
+stairs.
+
+Here was a state of things! Where were my firmness and my resolution
+now? Where was the Pythian probity for which, according to my
+expectations, Lillivan was to have poured Damoniac gratitude upon me?
+Was I, or was I not, rapidly degenerating into villany? I felt that I
+was, and blushed for my family.
+
+If her name had been anything but Arabella,--anything the initial of
+which was not A, then I could have justified myself; but now,--and I
+was about to teach her billiards! To what depth of depravity had I come
+at last!
+
+She rejoined me, beaming with anticipation and radiant with the
+exercise of running down-stairs. Together we entered the billiard-room.
+
+Now this I declare: the ball-room, with its flashing lights,
+intoxicating perfumes, starry hosts of gleaming, eyes, refulgent robes,
+mirrors duplicating countless splendors and ceaseless whirl of vanity,
+may add a tenfold lustre to the charm of beauty, and I know it does;
+the opera-box embellishments of blazing gas, and glittering gems and
+flowers, fresh from native beds of millinery, all-odorous with divinest
+scents of Lubin, harmoniously dulcified, have their value, which is
+great and glorious, no doubt, and regally doth woman expand and glow
+among them; in numberless ways, and aided by numberless accessories, do
+feminine graces nimbly and sweetly recommend themselves unto our
+pleasant senses; but this I will for ever and ever say,--that nowhere,
+neither in gorgeous hall, nor gilded opera-box, nor in any other place,
+nor under any other circumstances, may such bewildering and insidious
+power of maidenly enchantment be exercised as at the billiard-table;
+especially when the enchantress is utterly ignorant of the duties
+required of her, and confidingly seeks manly encouragement and
+guidance. Controlled by the hand of beauty, the cue becomes a magic
+wand, and the balls are no longer bits of inanimate ivory, but, poked
+restlessly hither and thither, circulating messengers of fascination.
+
+I know, for I have been there.
+
+Had Miss Tarlingford turned her thoughts toward the bowling-alley, I
+might without difficulty have retained my self-possession; for her sex
+are not charming at ten-pins. They stride rampant, and hurl danger
+around them, aiming anywhere at random; or they make small skips and
+screams, and perform ridiculous flings in the air, injurious to the
+alleys and to their game; or they drop balls with unaffected languor,
+and develop at an early stage of proceedings a tendency to _gutters_,
+above which they never rise throughout; and all this is annoying, and
+fit only for Bloomers, who can be degraded by nothing on earth.
+
+But billiards! what statuesque postures, what freedom of gesture, what
+swaying grace and vivacious energy this game involves! And then the
+attendant distractions,--the pinching together of the hand, to form the
+needed notch, the perfect art of which, like fist-clenching, is
+unattainable by woman, who substitutes some queerness all her own,--the
+fierce grasping and propulsion of the cue,--the loving reclension upon
+the table when the long shots come in,--the dainty foot, uprising, to
+preserve the owner's balance, but, as it gleams suspended, destroying
+the observer's,--all combine, as they did this time, to scatter stern
+promptings of duty beyond recalling.
+
+First, Arabella's little hand must be moulded into a bridge, and, being
+slow to cramp itself correctly, though pliant as a politician's
+conscience, the operation of folding it together had to be many times
+repeated. Next, shots must be made for her, she retaining her hold of
+the cue, to get into the way of it. Then all went on smoothly with her,
+turbulently with me, until, enthusiastically excited, she must be
+lifted on to the table's edge, "just to try one lovely little shot,"
+which escaped her reach from the ground.
+
+My game was up!
+
+We were alone. Arabella perched upon the table, jubilant at having
+achieved a pocket,--I dismal and blue, beside her.
+
+"There, take me down," she said.
+
+I looked around through each window, inclined my ear to the door, swept
+an arm around her waist, and forgot to proceed.
+
+"Oh, Arabella! Arabella! wherefore art thou Arabella?"
+
+"Do you wish I were somebody else?" she asked, slyly.
+
+"No, no! but what of Frank Lillivan?"
+
+"Frank, do you know him?" (With a luminous face.)
+
+"And he has told me----yes."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Of his relations with Miss Tarlingford."
+
+"With Anna,--yes."
+
+"What Anna? Who is Anna?"
+
+"Dear me! my sister Anna. Don't be absurd!"
+
+"But I never knew"----
+
+"No,--you knew nothing of her; the worse for you! You avoided her,--I'm
+sure I don't see why,--and she is retiring."
+
+"_Retiring!_--the very word!"
+
+"What word? You vex me; you puzzle me; take me down."
+
+"Forgive me, dear Arabella! I'm too delighted to explain. I never will
+explain. I thought it was you on whom Frank's affections were fixed."
+
+"Dear, no! Frank is sensible; he knows better; he has judgment"; and
+she laughed a quiet laugh, and made as if she would jump down.
+
+As she descended, two heads caromed together with a click. It was the
+irrepressible influence of the billiard atmosphere, I suppose. No one
+contemplated it.
+
+That evening, when Frank Lillivan arrived, I met him at the door.
+
+"God bless you, Frank!" said I; "I forgive you everything. Say no
+more."
+
+"Hollo! what's up?" cried Frank.
+
+"Well, certainly, it was a little imprudent for you to neglect writing
+the whole address of the letter you sent to Anna Tarlingford. I thought
+it was for Arabella."
+
+"Dear me!" said Frank, twinkling, "what then?"
+
+That is enough.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+ITALY, 1859.
+
+
+Wait a little: do _we_ not wait?
+Louis Napoleon is not Fate;
+Francis Joseph is not Time;
+There's One hath swifter feet than Crime;
+Cannon-parliaments settle nought;
+Venice is Austria's,--whose is Thought?
+Minié is good, but, spite of change,
+Gutenberg's gun has the longer range.
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     In the shadow, year out, year in,
+     The silent headsman waits forever!
+
+Wait, we say; our years are long;
+Men are weak, but Man is strong;
+Since the stars first curved their rings,
+We have looked on many things;
+Great wars come and great wars go,
+Wolf-tracks light on polar snow;
+We shall see him come and gone,
+This second-hand Napoleon.
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     In the shadow, year out, year in,
+     The silent headsman waits forever!
+
+We saw the elder Corsican,
+And Clotho muttered as she span,
+While crowned lackeys bore the train
+Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne,--
+"Sister, stint not length of thread!
+Sister, stay the scissors dread!
+On St. Helen's granite bleak,
+Hark, the vulture whets his beak!"
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     In the shadow, year out, year in,
+     The silent headsman waits forever!
+
+The Bonapartes, we know their bees,
+That wade in honey, red to the knees;
+Their patent-reaper, its sheaves sleep sound
+In doorless garners underground:
+We know false Glory's spendthrift race,
+Pawning nations for feathers and lace;
+It may be short, it may be long,--
+"'Tis reckoning-day!" sneers unpaid Wrong.
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     In the shadow, year out, year in,
+     The silent headsman waits forever!
+
+The cock that wears the eagle's skin
+Can promise what he ne'er could win;
+Slavery reaped for fine words sown,
+System for all and rights for none,
+Despots at top, a wild clan below,
+Such is the Gaul from long ago:
+Wash the black from the Ethiop's face,
+Wash the past out of man or race!
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     In the shadow, year out, year in,
+     The silent headsman waits forever!
+
+'Neath Gregory's throne a spider swings
+And snares the people for the kings:
+"Luther is dead; old quarrels pass;
+The stake's black scars are healed with grass";
+So dreamers prate;--did man e'er live
+Saw priest or woman yet forgive?
+But Luther's broom is left, and eyes
+Peep o'er their creeds to where it lies.
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     In the shadow, year out, year in,
+     The silent headsman waits forever!
+
+Smooth sails the ship of either realm,
+Kaiser and Jesuit at the helm;
+But we look down the deeps and mark
+Silent workers in the dark,
+Building slow the sharp-tusked reefs,
+Old instincts hardening to new beliefs:
+Patience, a little; learn to wait;
+Hours are long on the clock of Fate.
+     Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
+     Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever!
+     Darkness is strong, and so is Sin,
+     But only God endures forever!
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+THE AURORA BOREALIS.
+
+
+The aurora borealia, or rather, the polar aurora,--for there are
+aurorae australes as well as aurorae boreales,--has been an object of
+wonder and admiration from time immemorial.
+
+Pliny and Aristotle record phenomena identical with those which later
+times have witnessed. The ancients ranked this with other celestial
+phenomena, as portending great events.
+
+In a Bible imprinted at London in the year 1599, the 22d verse of the
+37th chapter of Job reads thus: "The brightness commeth out of the
+Northe, the praise to God which is terrible." The writer of the Book of
+Job was very conversant with natural objects, and may have referred to
+the aurora borealis and the phenomena immediately connected therewith.
+
+In 1560, we are told, it was seen at London in the shape of burning
+spears, a similitude which would be no less appropriate now than then.
+Frequent displays are recorded during the fifteen years following that
+date. During the latter half of the seventeenth century, the phenomena
+were frequently visible, often-times being characterized by remarkable
+brilliancy. After 1745, the displays suddenly diminished, and were but
+rarely seen for the next nine years. The present century has been
+favored to a remarkable degree. The displays during the years 1835,
+'36, '37, '46, '48, '51, '52, and '59, have been especially grand.
+
+What is the origin of these remarkable phenomena? The ancients asked
+the question, and the moderns reply by repeating it. Before proceeding
+to describe the magnificent auroral displays of August 28th and
+September 2d, let us examine authorities upon this subject, and see if
+we cannot arrive at some satisfactory solution of the phenomena. The
+following is the description given by Humboldt in "Cosmos":--
+
+"An aurora borealis is always preceded by the formation in the horizon
+of a sort of nebulous veil, which slowly ascends to a height of 4°, 6°,
+8°, and even to 10°. It is towards the magnetic meridian of the place
+that the sky, at first pure, begins to get brownish. Through this
+obscure segment, the color of which passes from brown to violet, the
+stars are seen, as through a thick fog. A wider arc, but one of
+brilliant light, at first white, then yellow, bounds the dark segment.
+Sometimes the luminous arc appears agitated, for hours together, by a
+sort of effervescence, and by a continuous change of form, before the
+rising of the rays and columns of light, which ascend as far as the
+zenith. The more intense the emission of the polar light, the more
+vivid are its colors, which, from violet and bluish white, pass through
+all the intermediate shades of green and purple-red. Sometimes the
+columns of light appear to come out of the brilliant arc mingled with
+blackish rays, resembling a thick smoke; sometimes they rise
+simultaneously from different points of the horizon, and unite
+themselves into a sea of flames, the magnificence of which no painting
+could express; for, at each instant, rapid undulations cause their form
+and brilliancy to vary. Motion appears to increase the visibility of
+the phenomena. Around the point in the heaven which corresponds to the
+direction of the dipping needle produced, the rays appear to meet and
+form the boreal corona. It is seldom that the appearance is so
+complete, and is prolonged to the formation of the corona; but when the
+latter appears, it always announces the end of the phenomenon. The rays
+then become more rare, shorter, and less vividly colored. Soon nothing
+further is seen on the celestial vault than wide, motionless, nebulous
+spots, pale, or of an ashy color; they have already disappeared, when
+the traces of the dark segment whence the appearance originated still
+remain on the horizon."
+
+The connection that seems to exist, says De la Rive, between the polar
+light and the appearance of a certain species of clouds is confirmed by
+all observers; all have affirmed that the polar light emitted its most
+brilliant rays when the high regions of the air contained heaps of
+cirri,--strata of sufficient tenuity and lightness to cause a corona to
+arise around the light. Sometimes these clouds are grouped and arranged
+almost like the rays of an aurora borealis; they then appear to disturb
+the magnetized needle. Father Secchi has remarked, that magnetic
+disturbances are manifested at Rome whilst the sky is veiled with
+clouds that are slightly phosphorescent, which, at night, present the
+appearance of feeble aurorae boreales.
+
+After a brilliant aurora borealis, we have been able to recognize, on
+the following morning, trains of clouds, which, during the night, had
+appeared as so many luminous rays.
+
+The absolute height of aurorae boreales has been very variously
+estimated by different observers. It has long been thought that we
+might determine it by regarding, from two places widely distant from
+each other, the same part of the aurora,--the corona, for example. But
+we have started from a very inaccurate assumption, namely, that the two
+observers had their eyes directed to the same point at the same
+time,--whilst it is now well proved that the corona is an effect of
+perspective, due to the apparent convergence of the parallel rays
+situated in the magnetic meridian; so that each observer sees his own
+aurora borealis, as each sees his own rainbow. The aspect of the
+phenomenon depends also upon the positions of the observers. The seat
+of the aurora borealis is in the upper regions of the atmosphere;
+though sometimes it appears to be produced in the less elevated regions
+where the clouds are formed. This, at least, is what follows from some
+observations, especially from those of Captain Franklin, who saw an
+aurora borealis the light of which appeared to him to illuminate the
+lower surface of a stratum of clouds; whilst some twenty-five miles
+farther on, Mr. Kendal, who had watched the whole of the night without
+losing sight of the sky for a single moment, did not perceive any trace
+of light. Captain Parry saw an aurora borealis display itself against
+the side of a mountain; and we are assured that a luminous ring has
+sometimes been perceived upon the very surface of the sea, around the
+magnetic pole. Lieutenant Hood and Dr. Richardson, being placed at the
+distance of about forty-five miles from each other, in order to make
+simultaneous observations, whence they might deduce the parallax of the
+phenomenon, and consequently its height, were led to the conclusion
+that the aurora borealis had not a greater elevation than five miles.
+M. Liais, having had the opportunity of applying a method, which he had
+devised for measuring the height of aurorae boreales, to an aurora seen
+at Cherbourg Oct. 31, 1853, found that the arc of the aurora was about
+two and a half miles above the ground, at its lower edge.
+
+Various observations made by Professor Olmsted, in conjunction with
+Professor Twining, of New Haven, led him, on the contrary, to fix the
+elevation on different occasions at forty-two, one hundred, and one
+hundred and sixty miles. He claims that it is rarely less than seventy
+miles from the earth, and never more than one hundred and sixty. He
+also claims that its origin is cosmical,--or, in other words, that the
+earth, in revolving in its orbit, at certain periods passes through a
+nebulous body, which evolves this strange light in more or less
+brilliancy, as the body is larger or smaller. To support this theory,
+he attempted to establish that there were fixed epochs for its display
+in the highest degree of brilliancy. The length of these periods was
+from sixty to seventy years, and the next appearance was to be in 1890.
+The remarkable displays of August 28th and September 2d show the
+fallacy of his conclusions in this respect.
+
+Mairon and Dalton had also thought that the aurora borealis was a
+cosmical, and not an atmospheric phenomenon. But M. Biot, who had
+himself had an opportunity of observing the aurora in the Shetland
+Isles in 1817, had already been led to recognize it as an atmospheric
+phenomenon, by the consideration that the arcs and the coronae of the
+aurora in no way participate in the apparent motion of the stars from
+east to west,--a proof that they are drawn along by the rotation of the
+earth. Hence, almost all observers have arrived at the same
+conclusions; we will in particular cite MM. Lottin and Bravais, who
+have observed more than a hundred and forty aurorae boreales. It is
+therefore now clearly proved that the aurora borealis is not an
+extra-atmospheric phenomenon. To the proofs drawn from the appearance
+of the phenomenon itself we may add others deduced from certain effects
+which accompany it, such as the noise of crepitation, which the
+dwellers nearest to the pole affirm that they have heard when there is
+the appearance of an aurora, and the sulphurous odor that accompanies
+it. Finally, if the phenomena took place beyond our planet and its
+atmosphere, why should they take place at the polar regions only, as
+they often do?
+
+J. S. Winn, in a letter to Dr. Franklin, dated Spithead, August 12th,
+1772, says: "The observation is new, I believe, that the aurora
+borealis is constantly succeeded by hard southerly or southwest winds,
+attended with hazy weather and small rain. I think I am warranted from
+experience in saying _constantly_, for in twenty-three instances that
+have occurred since I first made the observation it has invariably
+obtained; and the knowledge has been of vast service to me, as I have
+got out of the Channel when other men as alert, and in faster ships,
+but unapprised of this circumstance, have not only been driven back,
+but with difficulty escaped shipwreck."
+
+Colonel James Capper, the discoverer of the circular nature of storms,
+remarks: "As it appears, that, on all such occasions, the current of
+air comes in a direction diametrically opposite to that where the
+meteor appears, it seems probable that the aurora borealis is caused by
+the ascent of a considerable quantity of electric fluid in the superior
+regions of the atmosphere to the north and northeast, where,
+consequently, it causes a body of air near the earth to ascend, when
+another current of air will rush from the the opposite point to fill up
+the vacuum, and thus may produce the southerly gales which succeed the
+aurora borealis."
+
+The bark "Northern Light," arrived at Boston from Africa, was at sea on
+the night of the great exhibition of the aurora borealis, the 28th of
+August. The vessel was struck by lightning twice, after which the red
+flames of the aurora burst upon the astonished vision of the crew. Most
+of them are confident that they smelt a sulphurous odor all night.
+
+M. de Tessan, who, in the voyage of the "Venus" around the world, had
+the opportunity of seeing a very beautiful aurora australis, (southern
+aurora,) which he describes with much care, also considers that this
+phenomenon takes place in the atmosphere. The summit of the aurora
+being in the magnetic meridian, it was elevated 14° above the horizon,
+and the centre of the arc was on the prolongation of the dipping
+needle, the dip being about 68° at the place of the observation. M. de
+Tessan did not hear the noise arising from the aurora, which he
+attributes to the circumstance that he was too far distant from the
+place of the phenomenon; but he reports the observation of a
+distinguished officer of the French navy, M. Verdier, who, on the night
+of October 13th, 1819, being in the latitude of Newfoundland, had heard
+very distinctly a sort of crackling or crepitation, when the vessel he
+was on board was in the midst of an aurora borealis. This was also
+observed in many localities during the aurora of August 28th, 1859. A
+New York paper, alluding to the subject, remarks: "Many imagined that
+they heard rushing sounds, as if Aeolus had let loose the winds; others
+were confident that a sweeping, as if of flames, was distinctly
+audible." Burns, a good observer, if ever there was one, and not likely
+to be aware of any theories on the subject, alludes in his "Vision" to
+a noise accompanying the aurora, as if it were of ordinary
+occurrence:--
+
+  "The cauld blue North was flashing forth
+   Her lights wi' hissing eerie din."
+
+It finds confirmation also in the fact, generally admitted by the
+inhabitants of the northern regions, that, when the auroras appear low,
+a crackling is heard similar to that of the electric spark. The
+Greenlanders think that the souls of the dead are then striking against
+each other in the air. M. Ramm, Inspector of Forests in Norway, wrote
+to M. Hansteen, in 1825, that he had heard the noise, which always
+coincided with the appearance of the luminous jets, when, being only
+ten years old, he was crossing a meadow covered with snow and
+hoar-frost, near which no forests were in existence. Dr. Gisler, who
+for a long time dwelt in the North of Sweden, remarks that the matter
+of the aurorae boreales sometimes descends so low that it touches the
+ground; at the summit of high mountains it produces upon the faces of
+travellers an effect analogous to that of the wind. Dr. Gisler adds,
+that he has frequently heard the noise of the aurora, and that it
+resembles that of a strong wind, or the hissing that certain chemical
+substances produce in the act of decomposition.
+
+M. Necker, who has described a great number of aurorae which he
+observed at the end of 1839 and at the commencement of 1840, in the
+Isle of Skye, never himself heard the noise in question; but he remarks
+that this noise had been very frequently heard by persons charged with
+meteorological observations at the light-house of Swenburgh Head, at
+the southern extremity of Shetland. M. Necker is not the only observer
+who has not heard the noise; neither have MM. Lottier and Bravais, who
+have observed so great a number of aurorae, ever heard it; and a great
+many others are in this case. This may be due to the fact that it is
+necessary to be very near to the aurora in order to hear the
+crepitation in question, and also to the fact that it is possible that
+it does not always take place, at least in a manner sufficiently
+powerful to be heard.
+
+We have just been pointing out, as concomitant effects of the aurora
+borealis, a noise of crepitation analogous to that of distant
+discharges, and a sulphurous odor similar to that which accompanies the
+fall of lightning. M. Matteucci also observed at Pisa, during the
+appearance of a brilliant aurora borealis, decided signs of positive
+electricity in the air; but of all phenomena, those which invariably
+take place at the same time as the appearance of the aurora borealis
+are the magnetic effects. Magnetized needles suffer disturbances in
+their normal direction which cause them to deviate generally to the
+west first, afterwards to the east. These disturbances vary in
+intensify, but they never fail to take place, and are manifested even
+in places in which the aurora borealis is not visible. This
+coincidence, proved by M. Arago without any exception, during several
+years of observation, is such that the learned Frenchman was able,
+without ever having been mistaken, to detect from the bottom of the
+cellars of the observatory of Paris the appearance of an aurora
+borealis. M. Matteucci had the opportunity of observing this magnetic
+influence under a new and remarkable form. He saw, during the
+appearance of the aurora borealis of November 17, 1848, the soft iron
+armatures employed in the electric telegraph between Florence and Pisa
+remain attached to their electro-magnets, as if the latter were
+powerfully magnetized, without, however, the apparatus being in action,
+and without the currents in the battery being set in action. This
+singular effect ceases with the aurora, and the telegraph, as well as
+the batteries, could operate anew, without having suffered any
+alteration. Mr. Highton also observed in England a very decided action
+of the aurora borealis, November 17, 1848. The magnetized needle was
+always driven toward the same side, even with much force. But it is in
+our own country that the action of the aurora upon the telegraph-wires
+has been the most remarkable.
+
+My attention was first called in 1847 to the probability of the
+aurora's producing an effect upon the wires; but, although having an
+excellent opportunity to observe such an effect, I was not fortunate
+enough to do so until the winter of 1850, and then, owing to the feeble
+displays of the aurora, only to a limited extent. In September, 1851,
+however, there was a remarkable aurora, which took complete possession
+of all the telegraph-lines in New England and prevented any business
+from being transacted during its continuance. The following winter
+there was another remarkable display, which occurred on the 19th of
+February, 1852. It was exceedingly brilliant throughout the northern
+portion of our continent. I extract the following account of its
+effects upon the wires from my journal of that date. I should premise,
+that the system of telegraphing used upon the wires, during the
+observation of February, 1852, was Bain's chemical. No batteries were
+kept constantly upon the line, as in the Morse and other magnetic
+systems. The main wire was connected directly with the chemically
+prepared paper on the disc, so that any atmospheric currents were
+recorded upon the disc with the greatest accuracy. Our usual battery
+current, decomposing the salts in the paper, and uniting with the iron
+point of the pen wire, left a light blue mark on the white paper, or,
+if the current were strong, a dark one,--the color of the mark
+depending upon the quantity of the current upon the wire.
+
+"_Thursday, February 19, 1852_.
+
+"Towards evening a heavy blue line appeared upon the paper, which
+gradually increased in size for the space of half a minute, when a
+flame of fire succeeded to the blue line, of sufficient intensity to
+burn through a dozen thicknesses of the moistened paper. The current
+then subsided as gradually as it, had come on, until it entirely
+ceased, and was then succeeded by a negative current (which bleaches,
+instead of coloring, the paper). This gradually increased, in the same
+manner as the positive current, until it also, in turn, produced its
+flame of fire, and burned through many thicknesses of the prepared
+paper; it then subsided, again to be followed by the positive current.
+This state of things continued during the entire evening, and
+effectually prevented any business being done over the wires."
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+Never, however, since the establishment of the telegraphic system in
+this country, have the wires been so greatly affected by the aurora as
+upon Sunday night, the 28th of August, 1859. Throughout the entire
+northern portion of the United States and Canada, the lines were
+rendered useless for all business purposes through its action. So
+strongly was the atmosphere charged with the electric fluid, that lines
+or circuits of only twelve miles in length were so seriously affected
+by it as to render operation difficult, and, at times, impossible.
+
+The effects of this magnetic storm were apparent upon the wires during
+a considerable portion of Saturday evening, and during the whole of the
+next day. At 6, P.M., the line between Boston and New Bedford (sixty
+miles in length) could be worked only at intervals, although, of
+course, no signs of the aurora were apparent to the eye at that hour.
+The same was true of the wires running eastward through the State of
+Maine, as well as those to the north.
+
+The wire between Boston and Fall River had no battery upon it Sunday,
+and yet there was an artificial current upon it, which increased and
+decreased in intensity, producing upon the electromagnets in the
+offices the same effect as would be produced by constantly opening and
+closing the circuit at intervals of half a minute. This current, which
+came from the aurora, was strong enough to have worked the line,
+although not sufficiently steady for regular use.
+
+The current from the aurora borealis comes in waves,--light at first,
+then stronger, until we have, frequently, a strength of current equal
+to that produced by a battery of two hundred Grove cups. The waves
+occupy about fifteen seconds each, ordinarily, but I have known them to
+last a full minute; though this is rare. As soon as one wave passes,
+another, of the reverse polarity, always succeeds. I have never known
+this to fail, and it may be set down as an invariable rule. When the
+poles of the aurora are in unison with the poles of the current upon
+the line, its effect is to increase the current; but when they are
+opposed, the current from the battery is neutralized,--null. These
+effects were observed at times during Saturday, Saturday evening, and
+Sunday, but were very marked during Sunday evening.
+
+It is hardly necessary to add here, that the effect of the aurora
+borealis, or magnetic storm, is totally unlike that of common or free
+electricity, with which the atmosphere is charged during a
+thunderstorm. The electricity evolved during a thunder-storm, as soon
+as it reaches a conductor, explodes with a spark, and becomes at once
+dissipated. The other, on the contrary, is of very low tension, remains
+upon the wires sometimes half a minute, produces magnetism, decomposes
+chemicals, deflects the needle, and is capable of being used for
+telegraphic purposes, although, of course, imperfectly.
+
+Mr. 0.S. Wood, Superintendent of the Canadian telegraph-lines,
+says:--"I never, in my experience of fifteen years in the working of
+telegraph-lines, witnessed anything like the extraordinary effect of
+the aurora borealis, between Quebec and Father Point, last night. The
+line was in most perfect order, and well-skilled operators worked
+incessantly from eight o'clock last evening till one o'clock this
+morning, to get over, in even a tolerably intelligible form, about four
+hundred words of the steamer "Indian's" report for the press; but at
+the latter hour, so completely were the wires under the influence of
+the aurora borealis, that it was found utterly impossible to
+communicate between the telegraph-stations, and the line was closed for
+the night."
+
+We have seen from the foregoing examples that the aurora borealis
+produces remarkable effects upon the telegraph-lines during its entire
+manifestation. We have, however, to record yet more wonderful effects
+of the aurora upon the wires, namely, _the use of the auroral current
+for transmitting and receiving telegraphic dispatches_. This almost
+incredible feat was accomplished in the forenoon of September 2,
+between the hours of half past eight and eleven o'clock, on the wires
+of the American Telegraph Company between Boston and Portland, and upon
+the wires of the Old Colony and Fall River Railroad Company between
+South Braintree and Fall River.
+
+The auroral influence was observed upon all the lines running out of
+the office in Boston, at the hour of commencing business, (eight
+o'clock, A. M.,) and it continued so strong up to half past eight as to
+prevent any business being done; the ordinary current upon the wires
+being at times neutralized by the magnetism of the aurora, and at other
+times so greatly augmented as to render operations impracticable. At
+this juncture it was suggested that the batteries should be cut off,
+and the wires simply connected with the earth.
+
+It is proper to remark here, that the current from the aurora coming in
+waves of greater or less intensity, there are times, both while the
+wave is approaching and while it is receding, when the instruments are
+enabled to work; but the time, varying according to the rapidity of the
+vibrations of the auroral bands, is only from one quarter of a minute
+to one minute in duration. Therefore, whatever business is done upon
+the wires during these displays has to be accomplished in brief
+intervals of from quarter to half a minute in duration.
+
+During one of these intervals, the Boston operator said to the one at
+Portland,--
+
+"Please cut off your battery, and let us see if we cannot work with the
+auroral current alone."
+
+The Portland operator replied,--
+
+"I will do so. Will you do the same?"
+
+"I have already done so," was the answer. "We are working with the aid
+of the aurora alone. How do you receive my writing?"
+
+"Very well indeed," responds the operator at Portland; "much better
+than when the batteries were on; the current is steadier and more
+reliable. Suppose we continue to work so until the aurora subsides?"
+
+"Agreed," replied the Boston operator. "Are you ready for business?"
+
+"Yes; go ahead," was the answer.
+
+The Boston operator then commenced sending private dispatches, which he
+was able to do much more satisfactorily than when the batteries were
+on, although, of course, not so well as he could have done with his own
+batteries without celestial assistance.
+
+The line was worked in this manner more than two hours, when, the
+aurora having subsided, the batteries were resumed. While this
+remarkable phenomenon was taking place upon the wires between Boston
+and Portland, the operator at South Braintree informed me that he was
+working the wire between that station and Fall River--a distance of
+about forty miles--with the current from the aurora alone. He continued
+to do so for some time, the line working comparatively well. Since then
+I have visited Fall River, and have the following account from the
+intelligent operator in the railroad office at that place. The office
+at the station is about half a mile from the regular office in the
+village. The battery is kept at the latter place, but the operator at
+the station is provided with a switch by which he can throw the battery
+off the line and put the wire in connection with the earth at pleasure.
+The battery at the other terminus of the line is at Boston; but the
+operator at South Braintree is furnished with a similar switch, which
+enables him to dispense with its use at pleasure. There are no
+intermediate batteries; consequently, if the Fall River operator put
+his end of the wire in connection with the earth, and the South
+Braintree operator do the same, the line is without battery, and of
+course without an electrical current. Such was the state of the line on
+the 2d of September last, when for more than an hour they held
+communication over the wire with the aid of the celestial batteries
+alone.
+
+This seems almost too wonderful for belief, and yet the proof is
+incontestable. However, the fact being established that the currents
+from the aurora borealis do have a direct effect upon the
+telegraph-wires, and that the currents are of both kinds, positive and
+negative,--as I have shown in my remarks upon the aurora of 1852, which
+sometimes left a dark line upon the prepared paper, and at other times
+bleached it,--it is a natural consequence that the wires should work
+better without batteries than with them, whenever a current from the
+aurora has sufficient intensity to neutralize the current from the
+batteries.
+
+I will try to make myself clear upon this point. It makes no
+difference, in working the Morse, or any other system of _magnetic_
+telegraph, whether we have the positive or the negative pole to the
+line; but, whichever way we point, the same direction must be continued
+with all additional batteries we put upon the line. Now if we put a
+battery upon the line at Boston, of, say, twenty-five cells, and point
+the positive pole eastward, and the same number of cells at Portland,
+pointing the positive pole westward, the current will be null, that is
+to say, each will neutralize the other. Now the aurora, in presenting
+its positive pole, we will say, increases the current upon the line
+beyond the power of the magnet-keeper-spring to control it, and thus
+prevents the line from working, by surfeiting it with the electric
+current; until, presently, the wave recedes and is followed by a
+negative current which neutralizes the battery current, and prevents
+the line from working for want of power. It is plain, therefore, that,
+if the batteries be taken off, the positive current of the aurora
+cannot increase nor the negative decrease the working state of the line
+to the same extent as when the batteries are connected; but that,
+whichever pole is presented, the magnetism can be made use of by the
+operator for the ordinary duties of the line.
+
+At Springfield, a gentleman who observed the needle of the compass,
+during the auroral display of August 28th, noticed that it was
+deflected first to the west, and then to the east, while the waves of
+the aurora were in motion. The electrotype plates at the office of the
+"Republican" at that place were so seriously affected by the aurora,
+that they could not be printed from during the continuance of the
+phenomenon.
+
+The aurora borealis of August 28th was surpassingly brilliant not only
+in the northern portion of this continent, but also as far south as the
+equator,--as well as in Cuba, Jamaica, California, and the greater
+portion of Europe. The London newspapers of the 29th contain glowing
+descriptions of it. A California journal says:--"During the last ten
+years the aurora borealis was never seen in California except on very
+rare occasions, and then the light was very faint or barely visible;
+but on the 28th ult., it appeared in wonderful splendor,--the whole
+northern part of the sky being of a bright crimson; and the same
+phenomenon, with equal magnificence, was repeated on the night of the
+first instant."
+
+In Jamaica the aurora borealis was witnessed for the first time,
+perhaps, since the discovery of this island by Columbus. So rare is the
+phenomenon in those latitudes, that it was taken for the glare of a
+fire, and was associated with the recent riots.
+
+Mr. E.B. Elliot of Boston, in an interesting article upon the recent
+aurora, points out the simultaneous occurrence of the auroral display
+of February 19th, 1852, with the eruption of Mauna Loa,--the largest
+volcano in the world, situated on Hawaii, (one of the Sandwich Island
+group,)--on the 20th of February; on which occasion, the side of the
+mountain gave way about two-thirds of the distance from the base,
+giving passage to a magnificent stream of lava, five hundred feet deep
+and seven hundred broad.
+
+Again, on the 17th of December, 1857, between the hours of one and four
+in the morning, there occurred an aurora of unwonted magnificence. The
+first steamer arriving from Europe after that date brought the
+following intelligence, which is taken from one of the journals of the
+day:--"An earthquake took place on the night of the 17th, throughout
+the whole kingdom of Naples, but its effects were most severe in the
+towns of Salerno, Potenza, and Nola. At Salerno, the walls of the
+houses were rent from top to bottom. Numerous villages were half
+destroyed."
+
+Were these coincidences of extraordinary auroras with extraordinary
+commotions in the physical condition of our globe merely accidental? or
+are these phenomena due to a common cause? The latter supposition is
+not improbable, but the question can be fully settled only by further
+observations.
+
+Mr. Meriam, "the sage of Brooklyn," as the daily journals denominate
+him, considers the aurora as the result of earthquakes or volcanic
+eruptions. He also says:--"The auroral light sometimes is composed of
+threads, like the silken warp of a web; these sometimes become broken
+and fall to the earth, and possess exquisite softness and a silvery
+lustre, and I denominate them the products of the silkery of the skies.
+_I once obtained a small piece, which I preserved._"
+
+It is due to Mr. Meriam, as well as to the scientific world, to say,
+that he stands alone in his convictions with regard to the aurora, both
+in respect of the cause and the effect of the phenomenon.
+
+Having thus illustrated the effects of the aurora, let us now return to
+the discussion of its causes.
+
+The intimate and constant connection between the phenomena of the
+aurora borealis and terrestrial magnetism led Humboldt to class under
+the head of Magnetic Storms all disturbances in the equilibrium of the
+earth's magnetic forces. The presence of such storms is indicated by
+the oscillations of the magnetized needle, the disturbance of the
+currents upon the telegraph-wires, and the appearance of the aurora, of
+which these oscillations and disturbances are, as it were, the
+forerunners, and which itself puts an end to the storm,--as in electric
+storms the phenomenon of lightning announces that, the electrical
+equilibrium, temporarily disturbed, is now restored.
+
+The atmosphere is constantly charged with positive
+electricity,--electricity furnished by the vapors that rise from the
+sea, especially in tropical regions,--and, on the other hand, the earth
+is negatively electrized. The recomposition or neutralization of the
+two opposite electricities of the atmosphere and of the terrestrial
+globe is brought about by means of the moisture with which the lower
+strata of the air are more or less charged. But it is especially in the
+polar regions, where the eternal ice that reigns there constantly
+condenses the aqueous vapors under the form of haze, that this
+recomposition must be brought about; the more so, as the positive
+vapors are carried thither and accumulated by the tropical current,
+which, setting out from the equatorial regions, where it occupies the
+most elevated regions of the atmosphere, descends as it advances
+towards the higher latitudes, until it comes in contact with the earth
+in the neighborhood of the poles. It is there, then, chiefly, that the
+equilibrium between the positive electricity of the vapors and the
+negative electricity of the earth must be accomplished by means of a
+discharge, which, when of sufficient intensity, will be accompanied
+with light, if, as is almost always the case near the poles, and
+sometimes in the higher parts of the atmosphere, it take place among
+those extremely small icy particles which constitute the hazes and the
+very elevated clouds.
+
+There can be no doubt that the occurrence of the phenomenon is
+materially dependent on the presence in the atmosphere of these
+particles of ice, forming a kind of thin haze, which, becoming luminous
+by the transmission of electricity, must appear simply as an
+illuminated surface of greater or less extent, and more or less cut up.
+The phenomenon actually takes place in this manner in the parts of the
+atmosphere that are the most distant from the earth. We perceive what
+are termed auroral plates of a purple or reddish-violet color, more or
+less extended, according as this species of veil, formed by icy
+particles, extends to a greater or less distance from the poles. The
+tenuity of this veil is such that it admits of our seeing the stars
+through the auroral plates. Of its existence, independently of indirect
+proofs, we have a direct demonstration in the observation of MM. Bixio
+and Baral, who, being raised in a balloon to a great height, found
+themselves, on a sudden, although the sky was entirely serene and the
+atmosphere cloudless, in the midst of a perfectly transparent veil,
+formed by a multitude of little icy needles, so fine that they were
+scarcely visible.
+
+If we place the pole of an electro-magnet over the jets of electric
+light that are made to converge in extremely rarefied air, we shall see
+that the electric light, instead of coming out indifferently from all
+points of the upper surface, as had taken place before the
+magnetization, comes out from the points of the circumference only of
+this surface, so as to form around it a continuous luminous ring. This
+ring possesses a movement of rotation around the magnetized cylinder,
+sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another, according to the
+direction of the discharge and of the magnetization. Finally, some more
+brilliant jets seem to come out from this luminous circumference
+without being confounded with the rest of the group. Now the magnetic
+pole exercises over the luminous haze which we have mentioned as always
+present during an aurora precisely the same action which the pole of
+the electro-magnet exercises in the experiment just described; and what
+takes place on the small scale of the experiment is precisely what
+takes place on the large scale of the phenomenon of the aurora
+borealis.
+
+The arc of the aurora borealis is a portion of a luminous ring, the
+different points of which are sensibly at equal distances from the
+earth, and which centres upon the boreal magnetic pole, so as to cut at
+right angles all the magnetic meridians that converge towards this
+pole. Such a ring, seen by an observer placed at the surface of the
+earth, evidently presents to him the known arc of the aurora; and its
+_apparent_ summit is always necessarily situated in the magnetic
+meridian of the place.
+
+The diameter of the luminous ring is greater in proportion as the
+magnetic pole is more distant from the surface of the earth, since this
+pole must be situated upon the intersection of the plane of the ring
+with the axis of the terrestrial globe; if we could determine
+rigorously the position of the aurora borealis, we should then have the
+means of knowing exactly that of the pole itself.
+
+Each observer sees the summit of the auroral arc at his magnetic
+meridian; it is, therefore, only those who are on the same magnetic
+meridian who see the same summit, and who are able by simultaneous
+observations to take its height.
+
+If the summit of the arc pass beyond the zenith of the observer, the
+latter is surrounded by the matter of the aurora borealis. This matter
+is nothing else than aqueous vapors traversed by the discharges, and
+which are in general luminous only at a certain height from the ground,
+either because the air is there more rarefied, or because they are
+themselves congealed, and more capable, consequently, of liberating
+their electric light. Then it is, that, from being nearer to the spot
+where the phenomenon is taking place, the observer hears the
+crepitation, or whizzing, of which we have spoken, especially if he be
+in an open country and in a quiet place. But if the arc do not attain
+to his zenith, he is situated beyond the region in which the meeting of
+the electric currents takes place; he sees only an arc a little more
+elevated to the north or the south, according as he is situated in one
+hemisphere or the other; and he hears no noise, on account of his too
+great distance. The crepitation is the result of the action of a
+powerful magnetic pole upon luminous electric jets in its immediate
+neighborhood. With regard to the sulphurous odor which some observers
+have perceived, it arises, as does that which accompanies the fall of
+lightning, from the conversion into ozone of the oxygen of the air, by
+the passage of electric discharges.
+
+Gisler says, that on the high mountains of Sweden the traveller is
+sometimes suddenly enveloped in a very transparent fog, of a
+whitish-gray color inclining a little to green, which rises from the
+ground, and is transformed into an aurora borealis. The cirro-cumulus
+and the hazes become luminous when they are traversed by sufficiently
+energetic discharges of electricity, and when the light of day is no
+longer present to overcome their more feeble light. Dr. Usher describes
+an aurora borealis seen in the open day, at noon, May 24, 1778.
+
+MM. Cornulier and Verdier are convinced, after carefully studying the
+subject, that there are almost always aurorae boreales in the high
+polar latitudes, and that their brilliancy alone is variable. This
+conviction is in accordance with the very careful observations which
+have now been made for four years in the northern hemisphere. It
+appears, as the result of these, that the aurora borealis is visible
+almost every clear night, but it does not show itself at all the
+stations at the same time. From October to March there is scarcely a
+night in which it may not be seen; but it is in February that it is
+most brilliant. In 1850 it was observed two hundred and sixty-one
+nights, and during 1851 two hundred and seven. The proportion of nights
+in which the aurora is seen is much greater the nearer we are to the
+magnetic pole.
+
+De la Rive, from whose admirable treatise upon Electricity we have
+borrowed our general views, and whose theory we have attempted to
+illustrate in this paper, concludes that the aurora borealis is a
+phenomenon which has its seat in the atmosphere, and consists in the
+production of a luminous ring of greater or less diameter, having for
+its centre the magnetic pole. Experiment shows, as we have seen, that,
+on bringing about in rarefied air the reunion of the two electricities,
+near the pole of a powerful artificial magnet, a small luminous ring is
+produced, similar to that which constitutes the aurora borealis, and
+animated by a similar movement of rotation. The aurora borealis would
+be due, consequently, to electric discharges taking place in the polar
+regions between the positive electricity of the atmosphere and the
+negative electricity of the earth. These electric discharges taking
+place constantly, but with intensities varying according to the state
+of the atmosphere, the aurora borealis should be a daily phenomenon,
+more or less intense, consequently visible at greater or less
+distances, but only when the nights are clear,--which is perfectly in
+accordance with observation.
+
+The aurora australis presents precisely the same phenomena as the
+aurora borealis, and is explained, consequently, in the same manner.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
+
+WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.
+
+
+A young fellow, born of good stock, in one of the more thoroughly
+civilized portions of these United States of America, bred in good
+principles, inheriting a social position which makes him at his ease
+everywhere, means sufficient to educate him thoroughly without taking
+away the stimulus for vigorous exertion, and with a good opening in
+some honorable path of labor, is the finest sight our private satellite
+has had the opportunity of inspecting on the planet to which she
+belongs. In some respects it was better to be a young Greek. If we may
+trust the old marbles,--my friend with his arm stretched over my head,
+above there, (in plaster of Paris,) or the discobolus, whom one may see
+at the principal sculpture gallery of this metropolis,--those Greek
+young men were of supreme beauty. Their close curls, their elegantly
+set heads, column-like necks, straight noses, short, curled lips, firm
+chins, deep chests, light flanks, large muscles, small joints, were
+finer than anything we ever see. It may well be questioned whether the
+human shape will ever present itself again in a race of such perfect
+symmetry. But the life of the youthful Greek was local, not planetary,
+like that of the young American. He had a string of legends, in place
+of our Gospels. He had no printed books, no newspaper, no steam
+caravans, no forks, no soap, none of the thousand cheap conveniences
+which have become matters of necessity to our modern civilization.
+Above all things, if he aspired to know as well as to enjoy, he found
+knowledge not diffused everywhere about him, so that a day's labor
+would buy him more wisdom than a year could master, but held in private
+hands, hoarded in precious manuscripts, to be sought for only as gold
+is sought in narrow fissures and in the bed of brawling streams. Never,
+since man came into this atmosphere of oxygen and azote, was there
+anything like the condition of the young American of the nineteenth
+century. Having in possession or in prospect the best part of half a
+world, with all its climates and soils to choose from; equipped with
+wings of fire and smoke that fly with him day and night, so that he
+counts his journey not in miles, but in degrees, and sees the seasons
+change as the wild fowl sees them in his annual flights; with huge
+leviathans always ready to take him on their broad backs and push
+behind them with their pectoral or caudal fins the waters that seam the
+continent or separate the hemispheres; heir of all old civilizations,
+founder of that new one which, if all the prophecies of the human heart
+are not lies, is to be the noblest, as it is the last; isolated in
+space from the races that are governed by dynasties whose divine right
+grows out of human wrong, yet knit into the most absolute solidarity
+with mankind of all times and places by the one great thought he
+inherits as his national birthright; free to form and express his
+opinions on almost every subject, and assured that he will soon acquire
+the last franchise which men withhold from man,--that of stating the
+laws of his spiritual being and the beliefs he accepts without
+hindrance except from clearer views of truth,--he seems to want nothing
+for a large, wholesome, noble, beneficent life. In fact, the chief
+danger is that he will think the whole planet is made for him, and
+forget that there are some possibilities left in the _débris_ of the
+old-world civilization which deserve a certain respectful consideration
+at his hands.
+
+The combing and clipping of this shaggy wild continent are in some
+measure done for him by those who have gone before. Society has
+subdivided itself enough to have a place for every form of talent.
+Thus, if a man show the least sign of ability as a sculptor or a
+painter, for instance, he finds the means of education and a demand for
+his services. Even a man who knows nothing but science will be provided
+for, if he does not think it necessary to hang about his birthplace all
+his days,--which is a most un-American weakness. The apron-strings of
+an American mother are made of India-rubber. Her boy belongs where he
+is wanted; and that young Marylander of ours spoke for all our young
+men, when he said that his home was wherever the stars and stripes blew
+over his head.
+
+And that leads me to say a few words of this young gentleman, who made
+that audacious movement lately which I chronicled in my last
+record,--jumping over the seats of I don't know how many boarders to
+put himself in the place which the Little Gentleman's absence had left
+vacant at the side of Iris. When a young man is found habitually at the
+side of any one given young lady,--when he lingers where she stays, and
+hastens when she leaves,--when his eyes follow her as she moves, and
+rest upon her when she is still,--when he begins to grow a little
+timid, he who was so bold, and a little pensive, he who was so gay,
+whenever accident finds them alone,--when he thinks very often of the
+given young lady, and names her very seldom,----
+
+What do you say about it, my charming young expert in that sweet
+science in which, perhaps, a long experience is not the first of
+qualifications?
+
+----But we don't know anything about this young man, except that he is
+good-looking, and somewhat high-spirited, and strong-limbed, and has a
+generous style of nature,--all very promising, but by no means proving
+that he is a proper lover for Iris, whose heart we turned inside out
+when we opened that sealed book of hers.
+
+Ah, my dear young friend! When your mamma--then, if you will believe
+it, a very slight young lady, with very pretty hair and figure--came
+and told _her_ mamma that your papa had--had--asked----No, no, no! she
+couldn't say it; but her mother--oh, the depth of maternal
+sagacity!--guessed it all without another word!--When your mother, I
+say, came and told her mother she was _engaged_, and your grandmother
+told your grandfather, how much did they know of the intimate nature of
+the young gentleman to whom she had pledged her existence? I will not
+be so hard as to ask how much your respected mamma knew at that time of
+the intimate nature of your respected papa, though, if we should
+compare a young girl's _man-as-she-thinks-him_ with a forty-summered
+matron's _man-as-she-finds-him_, I have my doubts as to whether the
+second would be a fac-simile of the first in most cases.
+
+The idea that in this world each young person is to wait until he or
+she finds that precise counterpart who alone of all creation was meant
+for him or her, and then fall instantly in love with it, is pretty
+enough, only it is not Nature's way. It is not at all essential that
+all pairs of human beings should be, as we sometimes say of particular
+couples, "born for each other." Sometimes a man or a woman is made a
+great deal better and happier in the end for having had to conquer the
+faults of the one beloved, and make the fitness not found at first, by
+gradual assimilation. There is a class of good women who have no right
+to marry perfectly good men, because they have the power of saving
+those who would go to ruin but for the guiding providence of a good
+wife. I have known many such cases. It is the most momentous question a
+woman is ever called upon to decide, whether the faults of the man she
+loves are beyond remedy and will drag her down, or whether she is
+competent to be his earthly redeemer and lift him to her own level.
+
+A person of _genius_ should marry a person of _character_. Genius does
+not herd with genius. The musk-deer and the civet-cat are never found
+in company. They don't care for strange scents,--they like plain
+animals better than perfumed ones. Nay, if you will have the kindness
+to notice, Nature has not gifted my lady musk-deer with the personal
+peculiarity by which her lord is so widely known.
+
+Now when genius allies itself with character, the world is very apt to
+think character has the best of the bargain. A brilliant woman marries
+a plain, manly fellow, with a simple intellectual mechanism; we have
+all seen such cases. The world often stares a good deal and wonders.
+She should have taken that other, with a far more complex mental
+machinery. She might have had a watch with the philosophical
+compensation-balance, with the metaphysical index which can split a
+second into tenths, with the musical chime which can turn every quarter
+of an hour into melody. She has chosen a plain one, that keeps good
+time, and that is all.
+
+Let her alone! She knows what she is about. Genius has an infinitely
+deeper reverence for character than character can have for genius. To
+be sure, genius gets the world's praise, because its work is a tangible
+product, to be bought, or had for nothing. It bribes the common voice
+to praise it by presents of speeches, poems, statues, pictures, or
+whatever it can please with. Character evolves its best products for
+home consumption; but, mind you, it takes a deal more to feed a family
+for thirty years than to make a holiday feast for our neighbors once or
+twice in our lives. You talk of the fire of genius. Many a blessed
+woman, who dies unsung and unremembered, has given out more of the real
+vital heat that keeps the life in human souls, without a spark flitting
+through her humble chimney to tell the world about it, than would set a
+dozen theories smoking, or a hundred odes simmering, in the brains of
+so many men of genius. It is in _latent caloric_, if I may borrow a
+philosophical expression, that many of the noblest hearts give out the
+life that warms them. Cornelia's lips grow white, and her pulse hardly
+warms her thin fingers,--but she has melted all the ice out of the
+hearts of those young Gracchi, and her lost heat is in the blood of her
+youthful heroes.
+
+We are always valuing the soul's temperature by the thermometer of
+public deed or word. Yet the great sun himself, when he pours his
+noonday beams upon some vast hyaline boulder, rent from the eternal
+ice-quarries, and floating toward the tropics, never warms it a
+fraction above the thirty-two degrees of Fahrenheit that marked the
+moment when the first drop trickled down its side.
+
+How we all like the spirting up of a fountain, seemingly against the
+law that makes water everywhere slide, roll, leap, tumble headlong, to
+get as low as the earth will let it! That is genius. But what is this
+transient upward movement, which gives us the glitter and the rainbow,
+to that unsleeping, all-present force of gravity, the same yesterday,
+to-day, and forever, (if the universe be eternal,)--the great outspread
+hand of God himself, forcing all things down into their places, and
+keeping them there? Such, in smaller proportion, is the force of
+character to the fitful movements of genius, as they are or have been
+linked to each other in many a household, where one name was historic,
+and the other, let, me say the nobler, unknown, save by some faint
+reflected ray, borrowed from its lustrous companion.
+
+Oftentimes, as I have lain swinging on the water, in the swell of the
+Chelsea ferry-boats, in that long, sharp-pointed, black cradle in which
+I love to let the great mother rock me, I have seen a tall ship glide
+by against the tide, as if drawn by some invisible tow-line, with a
+hundred strong arms pulling it. Her sails hung unfilled, her streamers
+were drooping, she had neither side-wheel nor stern-wheel; still she
+moved on, stately, in serene triumph, as if with her own life. But I
+knew that on the other side of the ship, hidden beneath the great hulk
+that swam so majestically, there was a little toiling steam-tug, with
+heart of fire and arms of iron, that was hugging it close and dragging
+it bravely on; and I knew, that, if the little steam-tug untwined her
+arms and left the tall ship, it would wallow and roll about, and drift
+hither and thither, and go off with the refluent tide, no man knows
+whither. And so I have known more than one _genius_, high-decked,
+full-freighted, wide-sailed, gay-pennoned, that, but for the bare
+toiling arms, and brave, warm, beating heart of the faithful little
+wife, that nestled close in his shadow, and clung to him, so that no
+wind or wave could part them, and dragged him on against all the tide
+of circumstance, would soon have gone down the stream and been heard of
+no more.--No, I am too much a lover of genius, I sometimes think, and
+too often get impatient with dull people, so that, in their weak talk,
+where nothing is taken for granted, I look forward to some future
+possible state of development, when a gesture passing between a
+beatified human soul and an archangel shall signify as much as the
+complete history of a planet, from the time when it curdled to the time
+when its sun was burned out. And yet, when a strong brain is weighed
+with a true heart, it seems to me like balancing a bubble against a
+wedge of gold.
+
+----It takes a very _true_ man to be a fitting companion for a woman of
+genius, but not a very great one. I am not sure that she will not
+embroider her ideal better on a plain ground than on one with a
+brilliant pattern already worked in its texture. But as the very
+essence of genius is truthfulness, contact with realities, (which are
+always ideas behind shows of form or language,) nothing is so
+contemptible as falsehood and pretence in its eyes. Now it is not easy
+to find a perfectly true woman, and it is very hard to find a perfectly
+true man. And a woman of genius, who has the sagacity to choose such a
+one as her companion, shows more of the divine gift in so doing than in
+her finest talk or her most brilliant work of letters or of art.
+
+I have been a good while coming at a secret, for which I wished to
+prepare you before telling it I think there is a kindly feeling growing
+up between Iris and our young Marylander. Not that I suppose there is
+any distinct understanding between them, but that the affinity which
+has drawn him from the remote corner where he sat to the side of the
+young girl is quietly bringing their two natures together. Just now she
+is all given up to another; but when he no longer calls upon her daily
+thoughts and cares, I warn you not to be surprised, if this bud of
+friendship open like the evening primrose, with a sound as of a sudden
+stolen kiss, and lo! the flower of full-blown love lies unfolded before
+you.
+
+And now the days had come for our little friend, whose whims and
+weaknesses had interested us, perhaps, as much as his better traits, to
+make ready for that long journey which is easier to the cripple than to
+the strong man, and on which none enters so willingly as he who has
+borne the life-long load of infirmity during his earthly pilgrimage. At
+this point, under most circumstances, I would close the doors and draw
+the veil of privacy over the chamber where the birth which we call
+death, out of life into the unknown world, is working its mystery. But
+this friend of ours stood alone in the world, and, as the last act of
+his life was mainly in harmony with the rest of its drama, I do not
+here feel the force of the objection commonly lying against that
+death-bed literature which forms the staple of a certain portion of the
+press. Let me explain what I mean, so that my readers may think for
+themselves a little, before they accuse me of hasty expressions.
+
+The Roman Catholic Church has certain formulae for its dying children,
+to which almost all of them attach the greatest importance. There is
+hardly a criminal so abandoned that he is not anxious to receive the
+"consolations of religion" in his last hours. Even if he be senseless,
+but still living, I think that the form is gone through with, just as
+baptism is administered to the unconscious new-born child. Now we do
+not quarrel with these forms. We look with reverence and affection upon
+all symbols which give peace and comfort to our fellow-creatures. But
+the value of the new-born child's passive consent to the ceremony is
+null, as testimony to the truth of a doctrine. The automatic closing of
+a dying man's lips on the consecrated wafer proves nothing in favor of
+the Real Presence, or any other doctrine. And, speaking generally, the
+evidence of dying men in favor of any belief is to be received with
+great caution.
+
+They commonly tell the truth about their present feelings, no doubt. A
+dying man's deposition about anything _he knows_ is good evidence. But
+it is of much less consequence what a man thinks and says when he is
+changed by pain, weakness, apprehension, than what he thinks when he is
+truly and wholly himself. Most murderers die in a very pious frame of
+mind, expecting to go to glory at once; yet no man believes he shall
+meet a larger average of pirates and cutthroats in the streets of the
+New Jerusalem than of honest folks that died in their beds.
+
+Unfortunately, there has been a very great tendency to make capital of
+various kinds out of dying men's speeches. The lies that have been put
+into their mouths for this purpose are endless. The prime minister,
+whose last breath was spent in scolding his nurse, dies with a
+magnificent apothegm on his lips,--manufactured by a reporter. Addison
+gets up a _tableau_ and utters an admirable sentiment,--or somebody
+makes the posthumous dying epigram for him. The incoherent babble of
+green fields is translated into the language of stately sentiment. One
+would think, all that dying men had to do was to say the prettiest
+thing they could,--to make their rhetorical point, and then bow
+themselves politely out of the world.
+
+Worse than this is the torturing of dying people to get their evidence
+in favor of this or that favorite belief. The camp-followers of
+proselyting sects have come in at the close of every life where they
+could get in, to strip the languishing soul of its thoughts, and carry
+them off as spoils. The Roman Catholic or other priest who insists on
+the reception of his formula means kindly, we trust, and very commonly
+succeeds in getting the acquiescence of the subject of his spiritual
+surgery. But do not let us take the testimony of people who are in the
+worst condition to form opinions as evidence of the truth or falsehood
+of that which they accept. A lame man's opinion of dancing is not good
+for much. A poor fellow who can neither eat nor drink, who is sleepless
+and full of pains, whose flesh has wasted from him, whose blood is like
+water, who is gasping for breath, is not in a condition to judge fairly
+of human life, which in all its main adjustments is intended for men in
+a normal, healthy condition. It is a remark I have heard from the wise
+Patriarch of the Medical Profession among us, that the moral condition
+of patients with disease _above_ the great breathing-muscle, the
+diaphragm, is much more hopeful than that of patients with disease
+_below_ it, in the digestive organs. Many an honest ignorant man has
+given us pathology when he thought he was giving us psychology. With
+this preliminary caution I shall proceed to the story of the Little
+Gentleman's leaving us.
+
+When the divinity-student found that our fellow-boarder was not likely
+to remain long with us, he, being a young man of tender conscience and
+kindly nature, was not a little exercised on his behalf. It was
+undeniable that on several occasions the Little Gentleman had expressed
+himself with a good deal of freedom on a class of subjects which,
+according to the divinity-student, he had no right to form an opinion
+upon. He therefore considered his future welfare in jeopardy.
+
+The Muggletonian sect have a very odd way of dealing with people. If I,
+the Professor, will only give in to the Muggletonian doctrine, there
+shall be no question through all that persuasion that I am competent to
+judge of that doctrine; nay, I shall be quoted as evidence of its
+truth, while I live, and cited, after I am dead, as testimony in its
+behalf; but if I utter any ever so slight Anti-Muggletonian sentiment,
+then I become _incompetent to form any opinion on the matter_. This,
+you cannot fail to observe, is exactly the way the pseudo-sciences go
+to work, as explained in my Lecture on Phrenology. Now I hold that he
+whose testimony would be accepted in behalf of the Muggletonian
+doctrine has a right to be heard against it. Whoso offers me any
+article of belief for my signature implies that I am competent to form
+an opinion upon it; and if my positive testimony in its favor is of any
+value, then my negative testimony against it is also of value.
+
+I thought my young friend's attitude was a little too much like that of
+the Muggletonians. I also remarked a singular timidity on his part lest
+somebody should "unsettle" somebody's faith,--as if faith did not
+require exercise as much as any other living thing, and were not all
+the better for a shaking up now and then. I don't mean that it would be
+fair to bother Bridget, the wild Irish girl, or Joice Heth, the
+centenarian, or any other intellectual non-combatant; but all persons
+who proclaim a belief which passes judgment on their neighbors must be
+ready to have it "unsettled," that is, questioned at all times and by
+anybody,--just as one who sets up bars across a thoroughfare must
+expect to have them taken down by every one who wants to pass, if he is
+strong enough.
+
+Besides, to think of trying to waterproof the American mind against the
+questions that Heaven rains down upon it shows a misapprehension of our
+new conditions. If to question everything be unlawful and dangerous, we
+had better undeclare our independence at once; for what the Declaration
+means is the right to question everything, even the truth of its own
+fundamental proposition.
+
+The old-world order of things is an arrangement of locks and canals,
+where everything depends on keeping the gates shut, and so holding the
+upper waters at their level; but the system under which the young
+republican American is born trusts the whole unimpeded tide of life to
+the great elemental influences, as the vast rivers of the continent
+settle their own level in obedience to the laws that govern the planet
+and the spheres that surround it.
+
+The divinity-student was not quite up to the idea of the commonwealth,
+as our young friend the Marylander, for instance, understood it. He
+could not get rid of that notion of private property in truth, with the
+right to fence it in, and put up a sign-board, thus:--
+
+ALL TRESPASSERS ARE WARNED OFF THESE GROUNDS
+
+He took the young Marylander to task for going to the Church of the
+Galileans, where he had several times accompanied Iris of late.
+
+I am a Churchman,--the young man said,--by education and habit. I love
+my old Church for many reasons, but most of all because I think it has
+educated me out of its own forms into the spirit of its highest
+teachings. I think I belong to the "Broad Church," if any of you can
+tell what that means.
+
+I had the rashness to attempt to answer the question myself.--Some say
+the Broad Church means the collective mass of good people of all
+denominations. Others say that such a definition is nonsense; that a
+church is an organization, and the scattered good folks are no
+organization at all. They think that men will eventually come together
+on the basis of one or two or more common articles of belief, and form
+a great unity. Do they see what this amounts to? It means an equal
+division of intellect! It is mental agrarianism! a thing that never was
+and never will be, until national and individual idiosyncrasies have
+ceased to exist. The man of thirty-nine beliefs holds the man of one
+belief a pauper; he is not going to give up thirty-eight of them for
+the sake of fraternizing with the other in the temple which bears on
+its front, "_Deo erexit Voltaire_." A church is a garden, I have heard
+it said, and the illustration was neatly handled. Yes, and there is no
+such thing as a _broad_ garden. It must be fenced in, and whatever is
+fenced in is narrow. You cannot have arctic and tropical plants growing
+together in it, except by the forcing system, which is a mighty narrow
+piece of business. You can't make a village or a parish or a family
+think alike, yet you suppose that you can make a world pinch its
+beliefs or pad them to a single pattern! Why, the very life of an
+ecclesiastical organization is a life of _induction_, a state of
+perpetually disturbed equilibrium kept up by another charged body in
+the neighborhood. If the two bodies touch and share their respective
+charges, down goes the index of the electrometer!
+
+Do you know that every man has a religious belief peculiar to himself?
+Smith is always a Smithite. He takes in exactly Smith's-worth of
+knowledge, Smith's-worth of truth, of beauty, of divinity. And Brown
+has from time immemorial been trying to burn him, to excommunicate him,
+to anonymous-article him, because he did not take in Brown's-worth of
+knowledge, truth, beauty, divinity. He cannot do it, any more than a
+pint-pot can hold a quart, or a quart-pot be filled by a pint. Iron is
+essentially the same everywhere and always; but the sulphate of iron is
+never the same as the carbonate of iron. Truth is invariable; but the
+_Smithate_ of truth must always differ from the _Brownate_ of truth.
+
+The wider the intellect, the larger and simpler the expressions in
+which its knowledge is embodied. The inferior race, the degraded and
+enslaved people, the small-minded individual, live in the details which
+to larger minds and more advanced tribes of men reduce themselves to
+axioms and laws. As races and individual minds must always differ just
+as sulphates and carbonates do, I cannot see ground for expecting the
+Broad Church to be founded on any fusion of _intellectual_ beliefs,
+which of course implies that those who hold the larger number of
+doctrines as essential shall come down to those who hold the smaller
+number. These doctrines are to the _negative_ aristocracy what the
+quarterings of their coats are to the _positive_ orders of nobility.
+
+The Broad Church, I think, will never be based on anything that
+requires the use of _language_. Freemasonry gives an idea of such a
+church, and a brother is known and cared for in a strange land where no
+word of his can be understood. The apostle of this church may be a deaf
+mute carrying a cup of cold water to a thirsting fellow-creature. The
+cup of cold water does not require to be translated for a foreigner to
+understand it. I am afraid the only Broad Church possible is one that
+has its creed in the heart, and not in the head,--that we shall know
+its members by their fruits, and not by their words. If you say this
+communion of well-doers is no church, I can only answer, that all
+_organized_ bodies have their limits of size, and that, when we find a
+man a hundred feet high and thirty feet broad across the shoulders, we
+will look out for an organization that shall include all Christendom.
+
+Some of us do practically recognize a Broad Church and a Narrow Church,
+however. The Narrow Church may be seen in the ship's boats of humanity,
+in the long boat, in the jolly boat, in the captain's gig, lying off
+the poor old vessel, thanking God that _they_ are safe, and reckoning
+how soon the hulk containing the mass of their fellow-creatures will go
+down. The Broad Church is on board, working hard at the pumps, and very
+slow to believe that the ship will be swallowed up with so many poor
+people in it, fastened down under the hatches ever since it floated.
+
+----All this, of course, was nothing but my poor notion about these
+matters. I am simply an "outsider," you know; only it doesn't do very
+well for a nest of Hingham boxes to talk too much about outsiders and
+insiders!
+
+After this talk of ours, I think these two young people went pretty
+regularly to the Church of the Galileans. Still they could not keep
+away from the sweet harmonies and rhythmic litanies of Saint Polycarp
+on the great Church festival-days; so that, between the two, they were
+so much together, that the boarders began to make remarks, and our
+landlady said to me, one day, that, though it was noon of her business,
+them that had eyes couldn't help seein' that there was somethin' goin'
+on between them two young people; she thought the young man was a very
+likely young man, though jest what his prospecs was was unbeknown to
+her; but she thought he must be doin' well, and rather guessed he would
+be able to take care of a femily, if he didn't go to takin' a house;
+for a gentleman and his wife could board a great deal cheaper than they
+could keep house;--but then that girl was nothin' but a child, and
+wouldn't think of bein' married this five year. They was good boarders,
+both of 'em, paid regular, and was as pooty a couple as she ever laid
+eyes on.
+
+--To come back to what I began to speak of before,--the
+divinity-student was exercised in his mind about the Little Gentleman,
+and, in the kindness of his heart,--for he was a good young man,--and
+in the strength of his convictions,--for he took it for granted that he
+and his crowd were right, and other folks and their crowd were
+wrong,--he determined to bring the Little Gentleman round to his faith
+before he died, if he could. So he sent word to the sick man, that he
+should be pleased to visit him and have some conversation with him; and
+received for answer that he would be welcome.
+
+The divinity-student made him a visit, therefore, and had a somewhat
+remarkable conversation with him, which I shall briefly report, without
+attempting to justify the positions taken by the Little Gentleman. He
+found him weak, but calm. Iris sat silent by his pillow.
+
+After the usual preliminaries, the divinity-student said, in a kind
+way, that he was sorry to find him in failing health, that he felt
+concerned for his soul, and was anxious to assist him in making
+preparations for the great change awaiting him.
+
+I thank you, Sir,--said the Little Gentleman;--permit me to ask you,
+what makes you think I am not ready for it, Sir, and that you can do
+anything to help me, Sir?
+
+I address you only as a fellow-man,--said the divinity-student,--and
+therefore a fellow-sinner.
+
+I am _not_ a man, Sir!--said the Little Gentleman.--I was born into
+this world the wreck of a man, and I shall not be judged with a race to
+which I do not belong. Look at this!--he said, and held up his withered
+arm.--See there!--and he pointed to his misshapen extremities.--Lay
+your hand here!--and he laid his own on the region of his misplaced
+heart.--I have known nothing of the life of your race. When I first
+came to my consciousness, I found myself an object of pity, or a sight
+to show. The first strange child I ever remember hid its face and would
+not come near me. I was a broken-hearted as well as broken-bodied boy.
+I grew into the emotions of ripening youth, and all that I could have
+loved shrank from my presence. I became a man in years, and had nothing
+in common with manhood but its longings. My life is the dying pang of a
+worn-out race, and I shall go alone down into the dust, out of this
+world of men and women, without ever knowing the fellowship of the one
+or the love of the other. I will not die with a lie rattling in my
+throat. If another state of being has anything worse in store for me, I
+have had a long apprenticeship to give me strength that I may bear it.
+I don't believe it, Sir! I have too much faith for that. God has not
+left me wholly without comfort, even here. I love this old place where
+I was born;--the heart of the world beats under the three hills of
+Boston, Sir! I love this great land, with so many tall men in it, and
+so many good, noble women.--His eyes turned to the silent figure by his
+pillow.--I have learned to accept meekly what has been allotted to me,
+but I cannot honestly say that I think my sin has been greater than my
+suffering. I bear the ignorance and the evil-doing of whole generations
+in my single person. I never drew a breath of air nor took a step that
+was not a punishment for another's fault. I may have had many wrong
+thoughts, but I cannot have done many wrong deeds,--for my cage has
+been a narrow one, and I have paced it alone. I have looked through the
+bars and seen the great world of men busy and happy, but I had no part
+in their doings. I have known what it was to dream of the great
+passions; but since my mother kissed me before she died, no woman's
+lips have pressed my cheek,--nor ever will.
+
+----The young girl's eyes glittered with a sudden film, and almost
+without a thought, but with a warm human instinct that rushed up into
+her face with her heart's blood, she bent over and kissed him. It was
+the sacrament that washed out the memory of long years of bitterness,
+and I should hold it an unworthy thought to defend her.
+
+The Little Gentleman repaid her with the only tear any of us ever saw
+him shed.
+
+The divinity-student rose from his place, and, turning away from the
+sick man, walked to the other side of the room, where he bowed his head
+and was still. All the questions he had meant to ask had faded from his
+memory. The tests he had prepared by which to judge of his
+fellow-creature's fitness for heaven seemed to have lost their virtue.
+He could trust the crippled child of sorrow to the Infinite Parent. The
+kiss of the fair-haired girl had been like a sign from heaven, that
+angels watched over him whom he was presuming but a moment before to
+summon before the tribunal of his private judgment.
+
+Shall I pray with you?--he said, after a pause.--A little before he
+would have said, Shall I pray _for_ you?--The Christian religion, as
+taught by its Founder, is full of _sentiment_. So we must not blame the
+divinity-student, if he was overcome by those yearnings of human
+sympathy which predominate so much more in the sermons of the Master
+than in the writings of his successors, and which have made the parable
+of the Prodigal Son the consolation of mankind, as it has been the
+stumbling-block of all exclusive doctrines.
+
+Pray!--said the Little Gentleman.
+
+The divinity-student prayed, in low, tender tones, that God would look
+on his servant lying helpless at the feet of his mercy; that he would
+remember his long years of bondage in the flesh; that he would deal
+gently with the bruised reed. Thou hast visited the sins of the fathers
+upon this their child. Oh, turn away from him the penalties of his own
+transgressions! Thou hast laid upon him, from infancy, the cross which
+thy stronger children are called upon to take up; and now that he is
+fainting under it, be Thou his stay, and do Thou succor him that is
+tempted! Let his manifold infirmities come between him and Thy
+judgment; in wrath remember mercy! If his eyes are not opened to all
+thy truth, let thy compassion lighten the darkness that rests upon him,
+even as it came through the word of thy Son to blind Bartimeus, who sat
+by the wayside, begging!
+
+Many more petitions he uttered, but all in the same subdued tone of
+tenderness. In the presence of helpless suffering, and in the
+fast-darkening shadow of the Destroyer, he forgot all but his Christian
+humanity, and cared more about consoling his fellow-man than making a
+proselyte of him.
+
+This was the last prayer to which the Little Gentleman ever listened.
+Some change was rapidly coming over him during this last hour of which
+I have been, speaking. The excitement of pleading his cause before his
+self-elected spiritual adviser,--the emotion which overcame him, when
+the young girl obeyed the sudden impulse of her feelings and pressed
+her lips to his cheek,--the thoughts that mastered him while the
+divinity-student poured out his soul for him in prayer, might well
+hurry on the inevitable moment. When the divinity-student had uttered
+his last petition, commending him to the Father through his Son's
+intercession, he turned to look upon him before leaving his chamber.
+His face was changed.--There is a language of the human countenance
+which we all understand without an interpreter, though the lineaments
+belong to the rudest savage that ever stammered in an unknown barbaric
+dialect. By the stillness of the sharpened features, by the blankness
+of the tearless eyes, by the fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the
+deadening tints, by the contracted brow, by the dilating nostril, we
+know that the soul is soon to leave its mortal tenement, and is already
+closing up its windows and putting out its fires.--Such was the aspect
+of the face upon which the divinity-student looked, after the brief
+silence which followed his prayer. The change had been rapid, though
+not that abrupt one which is liable to happen at any moment in these
+cases.--The sick man looked towards him.--Farewell,--he said.--I thank
+you. Leave me alone with her.
+
+When the divinity-student had gone, and the Little Gentleman found
+himself alone with Iris, he lifted his hand to his neck, and took from
+it, suspended by a slender chain, a quaint, antique-looking key,--the
+same key I had once seen him holding. He gave this to her, and pointed
+to a carved cabinet opposite his bed, one of those that had so
+attracted my curious eyes and set me wondering as to what it might
+contain.
+
+Open it,--he said,--and light the lamp.--The young girl walked to the
+cabinet and unlocked the door. A deep recess appeared, lined with black
+velvet, against which stood in white relief an ivory crucifix. A silver
+lamp hung over over it. She lighted the lamp and came back to the
+bedside. The dying man fixed his eyes upon the figure of the dying
+Saviour.--Give me your hand,--he said; and Iris placed her right hand
+in his left. So they remained, until presently his eyes lost their
+meaning, though they still remained vacantly fixed upon the white
+image. Yet he held the young girl's hand firmly, as if it were leading
+him through some deep-shadowed valley and it was all he could cling to.
+But presently an involuntary muscular contraction stole over him, and
+his terrible dying grasp held the poor girl as if she were wedged in an
+engine of torture. She pressed her lips together and sat still. The
+inexorable hand held her tighter and tighter, until she felt as if her
+own slender fingers would be crushed in its gripe. It was one of the
+tortures of the Inquisition she was suffering, and she could not stir
+from her place. Then, in her great anguish, she, too, cast her eyes
+upon that dying figure, and, looking upon its pierced hands and feet
+and side and lacerated forehead, she felt that she also must suffer
+uncomplaining. In the moment of her sharpest pain she did not forget
+the duties of her tender office, but dried the dying man's moist
+forehead with her handkerchief, even while the dews of agony were
+glistening on her own. How long this lasted she never could tell.
+_Time_ and _thirst_ are two things you and I talk about; but the
+victims whom holy men and righteous judges used to stretch on their
+engines knew better what they meant than you or I!--What is that great
+bucket of water for? said the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, before she
+was placed on the rack.--_For you to drink_,--said the torturer to the
+little woman.--She could not think that it would take such a flood to
+quench the fire in her and so keep her alive for her confession. The
+torturer knew better than she.
+
+After a time not to be counted in minutes, as the clock
+measures,--without any warning, there came a swift change of his
+features; his face turned white, as the waters whiten when a sudden
+breath passes over their still surface; the muscles instantly relaxed,
+and Iris, released at once from her care for the sufferer and from his
+unconscious grasp, fell senseless, with a feeble cry,--the only
+utterance of her long agony.
+
+Perhaps you sometimes wander in through the iron gates of the Copp's
+Hill burial-ground. You love to stroll round among the graves that
+crowd each other in the thickly peopled soil of that breezy summit. You
+love to lean on the free-stone slab which lies over the bones of the
+Mathers,--to read the epitaph of stout John Clark, "despiser of little
+men and sorry actions,"--to stand by the stone grave of sturdy Daniel
+Malcom and look upon the splintered slab that tells the old rebel's
+story,--to kneel by the triple stone that says how the three
+Worthylakes, father, mother, and young daughter, died on the same day
+and lie buried there; a mystery; the subject of a moving ballad, by the
+late BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, as may be seen in his autobiography, which will
+explain the secret of the triple gravestone; though the old philosopher
+has made a mistake, unless the stone is wrong.
+
+Not very far from that you will find a fair mound, of dimensions fit to
+hold a well-grown man. I will not tell you the inscription upon the
+stone which stands at its head; for I do not wish you to be _sure_ of
+the resting-place of one who could not bear to think that he should be
+known as a cripple among the dead, after being pointed at so long among
+the living. There is one sign, it is true, by which, if you have been a
+sagacious reader of these papers, you will at once know it; but I fear
+you read carelessly, and must study them more diligently before you
+will detect the hint to which I allude.
+
+The Little Gentleman lies where he longed to He, among the old names
+and the old bones of the old Boston people. At the foot of his
+resting-place is the river, alive with the wings and antennae of its
+colossal water-insects; over opposite are the great war-ships, and the
+long guns, which, when they roar, shake the soil in which he lies; and
+in the steeple of Christ Church, hard by, are the sweet chimes which
+are the Boston boy's _Ranz des Vaches_, whose echoes follow him all the
+world over.
+
+_In Pace!_
+
+I told you a good while ago that the Little Gentleman could not do a
+better thing than to leave all his money, whatever it might be, to the
+young girl who has since that established such a claim upon him. He did
+not, however. A considerable bequest to one of our public institutions
+keeps his name in grateful remembrance. The telescope through which he
+was fond of watching the heavenly bodies, and the movements of which
+had been the source of such odd fancies on my part, is now the property
+of a Western College. You smile as you think of my taking it for a
+fleshless human figure, when I saw its tube pointing to the sky, and
+thought it was an arm under the white drapery thrown over it for
+protection. So do I smile _now_; I belong to the numerous class who are
+prophets after the fact, and hold my nightmares very cheap by daylight.
+
+I have received many letters of inquiry as to the sound _resembling a
+woman's voice_, which occasioned me so many perplexities. Some thought
+there was no question that he had a second apartment, in which he had
+made an asylum for a deranged female relative. Others were of opinion
+that he was, as I once suggested, a "Bluebeard" with patriarchal
+tendencies, and I have even been censured for introducing so Oriental
+an element into my record of boarding-house experience.
+
+Come in and see me, the Professor, some evening when I have nothing
+else to do, and ask me to play you _Tartini's Devil's Sonata_ on that
+extraordinary instrument in my possession, well known to amateurs as
+one of the master-pieces of _Joseph Guarnerius_. The _vox humana_ of
+the great Haerlem organ is very lifelike, and the same stop in the
+organ of the Cambridge chapel might be mistaken in some of its tones
+for a human voice; but I think you never heard anything come so near
+the cry of a _prima donna_ as the A string and the E string of this
+instrument. A single fact will illustrate the resemblance. I was
+executing some _tours de force_ upon it one evening, when the policeman
+of our district rang the bell sharply, and asked what was the matter in
+the house. He had heard a woman's screams,--he was sure of it. I had to
+make the instrument _sing_ before his eyes before he could be satisfied
+that he had not heard the cries of a woman. This instrument was
+bequeathed to me by the Little Gentleman. Whether it had anything to do
+with the sounds I heard coming from his chamber, you can form your own
+opinion; I have no other conjecture to offer. It is _not true_ that a
+second apartment with a secret entrance was found; and the story of the
+veiled lady is the invention of one of the Reporters.
+
+Bridget, the housemaid, always insisted that he died a Catholic. She
+had seen the crucifix, and believed that he prayed on his knees before
+it. The last circumstance is very probably true; indeed, there was a
+spot worn on the carpet just before this cabinet which might be thus
+accounted for. Why he, whose whole life was a crucifixion, should not
+love to look on that divine image of blameless suffering, I cannot see;
+on the contrary, it seems to me the most natural thing in the world
+that he should. But there are those who want to make private property
+of everything, and can't make up their minds that people who don't
+think as they do should claim any interest in that infinite compassion
+expressed in the central figure of the Christendom which includes us
+all.
+
+The divinity-student expressed a hope before the boarders that he
+should meet him in heaven.--The question is, whether he'll meet
+_you_,--said the young fellow John, rather smartly. The
+divinity-student hadn't thought of _that_.
+
+However, he is a worthy young man, and I trust I have shown him in a
+kindly and respectful light. He will get a parish by-and-by; and, as he
+is about to marry the sister of an old friend,--the Schoolmistress,
+whom some of us remember,--and as all sorts of expensive accidents
+happen to young married ministers, he will be under bonds to the amount
+of his salary, which means starvation, if they are forfeited, to think
+all his days as he thought when he was settled,--unless the majority of
+his people change with him or in advance of him. A hard case, to which
+nothing could reconcile a man, except that the faithful discharge of
+daily duties in his personal relations with his parishioners will make
+him useful enough in his way, though as a thinker he may cease to exist
+before he has reached middle age.
+
+--Iris went into mourning for the Little Gentleman. Although, as I have
+said, he left the bulk of his property, by will, to a public
+institution, he added a codicil, by which he disposed of various pieces
+of property as tokens of kind remembrance. It was in this way I became
+the possessor of the wonderful instrument I have spoken of, which had
+been purchased for him out of an Italian convent. The landlady was
+comforted with a small legacy. The following extract relates to Iris:
+"----in consideration of her manifold acts of kindness, but only in
+token of grateful remembrance, and by no means as a reward for services
+which cannot be compensated, a certain messuage, with all the land
+thereto appertaining, situate in ---- Street, at the North End, so
+called, of Boston, aforesaid, the same being the house in which I was
+born, but now inhabited by several families, and known as 'the
+Rookery.'" Iris had also the crucifix, the portrait, and the
+red-jewelled ring. The funeral or death's-head ring was buried with
+him.
+
+It was a good while, after the Little Gentleman was gone, before our
+boarding-house recovered its wonted cheerfulness. There was a flavor in
+his whims and local prejudices that we liked, even while we smiled at
+them. It was hard to see the tall chair thrust away among useless
+lumber, to dismantle his room, to take down the picture of Leah, the
+handsome Witch of Essex, to move away the massive shelves that held the
+books he loved, to pack up the tube through which he used to study the
+silent stars, looking down at him, like the eyes of dumb creatures,
+with a kind of stupid half-consciousness, that did not worry him as did
+the eyes of men and women,--and hardest of all to displace that sacred
+figure to which his heart had always turned and found refuge, in the
+feelings it inspired, from all the perplexities of his busy brain. It
+was hard, but it had to be done.
+
+And by-and-by we grew cheerful again, and the breakfast-table wore
+something of its old look. The Koh-i-noor, as we named the gentleman
+with the _diamond_, left us, however, soon after that "little mill," as
+the young fellow John called it, where he came off second best. His
+departure was no doubt hastened by a note from the landlady's daughter,
+inclosing a lock of purple hair which she "had valued as a pledge of
+affection, ere she knew the hollowness of the vows he had breathed,"
+speedily followed by another, inclosing the landlady's bill. The next
+morning he was missing, as were his limited wardrobe and the trunk that
+held it. Three empty bottles of Mrs. Allen's celebrated preparation,
+each of them asserting, on its word of honor as a bottle, that its
+former contents were "not a dye," were all that was left to us of the
+Koh-i-noor.
+
+From this time forward, the landlady's daughter manifested a decided
+improvement in her style of carrying herself before the boarders. She
+abolished the odious little flat, gummy side-curl. She left off various
+articles of "jewelry." She began to help her mother in some of her
+household duties. She became a regular attendant on the ministrations
+of a very worthy clergyman, having been attracted to his meetin' by
+witnessing a marriage ceremony in which he called a man and a woman a
+"gentleman" and a "lady,"--a stroke of gentility which quite overcame
+her. She even took a part in what she called a _Sabbath_ school, though
+it was held on Sunday, and by no means on Saturday, as the name she
+intended to utter implied. All this, which was very sincere, as I
+believe, on her part, and attended with a great improvement in her
+character, ended in her bringing home a young man, with straight, sandy
+hair, brushed so as to stand up steeply above his forehead, wearing a
+pair of green spectacles, and dressed in black broadcloth. His personal
+aspect, and a certain solemnity of countenance, led me to think he must
+be a clergyman; and as Master Benjamin Franklin blurted out before
+several of us boarders, one day, that "Sis had got a beau," I was
+pleased at the prospect of her becoming a minister's wife. On inquiry,
+however, I found that the somewhat solemn look which I had noticed was
+indeed a professional one, but not clerical. He was a young undertaker,
+who had just succeeded to a thriving business. Things, I believe, are
+going on well at this time of writing, and I am glad for the landlady's
+daughter and her mother. Sextons and undertakers are the cheerfullest
+people in the world at home, as comedians and circus-clowns are the
+most melancholy in their domestic circle.
+
+As our old boarding-house is still in existence, I do not feel at
+liberty to give too minute a statement of the present condition of each
+and all of its inmates. I am happy to say, however, that they are all
+alive and well, up to this time. That kind old gentleman who sat
+opposite to me is growing older, as old men will, but still smiles
+benignantly on all the boarders, and has come to be a kind of father to
+all of them,--so that on his birthday there is always something like a
+family festival. The Poor Relation, even, has warmed into a filial
+feeling towards him, and on his last birthday made him a beautiful
+present, namely, a very handsomely bound copy of Blair's celebrated
+poem, "The Grave."
+
+The young man John is still, as he says, "in fust-rate fettle." I saw
+him spar, not long since, at a private exhibition, and do himself great
+credit in a set-to with Henry Finnegass, Esq., a professional gentleman
+of celebrity. I am pleased to say that he has been promoted to an upper
+clerkship, and, in consequence of his rise in office, has taken an
+apartment somewhat lower down than number "forty-'leven," as he
+facetiously called his attic. Whether there is any truth, or not, in
+the story of his attachment to, and favorable reception by, the
+daughter of the head of an extensive wholesale grocer's establishment,
+I will not venture an opinion; I may say, however, that I have met him
+repeatedly in company with a very well-nourished and high-colored young
+lady, who, I understand, is the daughter of the house in question.
+
+Some of the boarders were of opinion that Iris did not return the
+undisguised attentions of the handsome young Marylander. Instead of
+fixing her eyes steadily on him, as she used to look upon the Little
+Gentleman, she would turn them away, as if to avoid his own. They often
+went to church together, it is true; but nobody, of course, supposes
+there is any relation between religious sympathy and those wretched
+"sentimental" movements of the human heart upon which it is commonly
+agreed that nothing better is based than society, civilization,
+friendship, the relation of husband and wife, and of parent and child,
+and which many people must think were singularly overrated by the
+Teacher of Nazareth, whose whole life, as I said before, was full of
+sentiment, loving this or that young man, pardoning this or that
+sinner, weeping over the dead, mourning for the doomed city, blessing,
+and perhaps kissing, the little children,--so that the Gospels are
+still cried over almost as often as the last work of fiction!
+
+But one fine June morning there rumbled up to the door of our
+boarding-house a hack containing a lady inside and a trunk on the
+outside. It was our friend the lady-patroness of Miss Iris, the same
+who had been called by her admiring pastor "The Model of all the
+Virtues." Once a week she had written a letter, in a rather formal
+hand, but full of good advice, to her young charge. And now she had
+come to carry her away, thinking that she had learned all she was
+likely to learn under her present course of teaching. The Model,
+however, was to stay awhile,--a week, or more,--before they should
+leave together.
+
+Iris was obedient, as she was bound to be. She was respectful,
+grateful, as a child is with a just, but not tender parent. Yet
+something was wrong. She had one of her trances, and became
+statue-like, as before, only the day after the Model's arrival. She was
+wan and silent, tasted nothing at table, smiled as if by a forced
+effort, and often looked vaguely away from those who were looking at
+her, her eyes just glazed with the shining moisture of a tear that must
+not be allowed to gather and fall. Was it grief at parting from the
+place where her strange friendship had grown up with the Little
+Gentleman? Yet she seemed to have become reconciled to his loss, and
+rather to have a deep feeling of gratitude that she had been permitted
+to care for him in his last weary days.
+
+The Sunday after the Model's arrival, that lady had an attack of
+headache, and was obliged to shut herself up in a darkened room alone.
+Our two young friends took the opportunity to go together to the Church
+of the Galileans. They said but little going,--"collecting their
+thoughts" for the service, I devoutly hope. My kind good friend the
+pastor preached that day one of his sermons that make us all feel like
+brothers and sisters, and his text was that affectionate one from John,
+"My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in
+deed and in truth." When Iris and her friend came out of church, they
+were both pale, and walked a space without speaking.
+
+At last the young man said,--You and I are not little children, Iris!
+
+She looked in his face an instant, as if startled, for there was
+something strange in the tone of his voice. She smiled faintly, but
+spoke never a word.
+
+In deed and in truth, Iris,--What shall a poor girl say or do, when a
+strong man falters in his speech before her, and can do nothing better
+than hold out his hand to finish his broken sentence?
+
+The poor girl said nothing, but quietly laid her ungloved hand in
+his,--the little, soft white hand which had ministered so tenderly and
+suffered so patiently.
+
+The blood came back to the young man's cheeks, as he lifted it to his
+lips, even as they walked there in the street, touched it gently with
+them, and said,--"It is mine!"
+
+Iris did not contradict him.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+The seasons pass by so rapidly, that I am startled to think how much
+has happened since these events I was describing. Those two young
+people would insist on having their own way about their own affairs,
+notwithstanding the good lady, so justly called the Model, insisted
+that the age of twenty-five years was as early as any discreet young
+lady should think of incurring the responsibilities, etc., etc. Long
+before Iris had reached that age, she was the wife of a young Maryland
+engineer, directing some of the vast constructions of his native
+State,--where he was growing rich fast enough to be able to decline
+that famous Russian offer which would have made him a kind of nabob in
+a few years. Iris does not write verse often, nowadays, but she
+sometimes draws. The last sketch of hers I have seen in my Southern
+visits was of two children, a boy and girl, the youngest holding a
+silver goblet, like the one she held that evening when I--I was so
+struck with her statue-like beauty. If in the later summer months you
+find the grass marked with footsteps around that grave on Copp's Hill I
+told you of, and flowers scattered over it, you may be sure that Iris
+is here on her annual visit to the home of her childhood and that
+excellent lady whose only fault was, that Nature had written out her
+list of virtues on ruled paper, and forgotten to rub out the lines.
+
+One more thing I must mention. Being on the Common, last Sunday, I was
+attracted by the cheerful spectacle of a well-dressed and somewhat
+youthful papa wheeling a very elegant little carriage containing a
+stout baby. A buxom young lady watched them from one of the stone
+seats, with an interest which could be nothing less than maternal. I at
+once recognized my old friend, the young fellow whom we called John. He
+was delighted to see me, introduced me to "Madam," and would have the
+lusty infant out of the carriage, and hold him up for me to look at.
+
+Now, then,--he said to the two-year-old,--show the gentleman how you
+hit from the shoulder.--Whereupon the little imp pushed his fat fist
+straight into my eye, to his father's intense satisfaction.
+
+Fust-rate little chap,--said the papa.--Chip of the old block. Regl'r
+little Johnny, you know.
+
+I was so much pleased to find the young fellow settled in life, and
+pushing about one of "them little articles" he seemed to want so much,
+that I took my "punishment" at the hands of the infant pugilist with
+great equanimity.--And how is the old boarding-house?--I asked.
+
+A 1,--he answered.--Painted and papered as good as new. Gabs in all the
+rooms up to the sky-parlors. Old woman's layin' up money, they say.
+Means to send Ben Franklin to college.--Just then the first bell rang
+for church, and my friend, who, I understand, has become a most
+exemplary member of society, said he must be off to get ready for
+meetin', and told the young one to "shake dada," which he did with his
+closed fist, in a somewhat menacing manner. And so the young man John,
+as we used to call him, took the pole of the miniature carriage, and
+pushed the small pugilist before him homewards, followed, in a somewhat
+leisurely way, by his pleasant-looking lady-companion, and I sent a
+sigh and a smile after him.
+
+That evening, as soon as it was dark, I could not help going round by
+the old boarding-house. The "gahs" was lighted, but the curtains, or,
+more properly, the painted shades, were not down. And so I stood there
+and looked in along the table where the boarders sat at the evening
+meal,--our old breakfast-table, which some of us feel as if we knew so
+well. There were new faces at it, but also old and familiar ones.--The
+land-lady, in a wonderfully smart cap, looking young, comparatively
+speaking, and as if half the wrinkles had been ironed out of her
+forehead.--Her daughter, in rather dressy half-mourning, with a vast
+brooch of jet, got up, apparently, to match the gentleman next her, who
+was in black costume and sandy hair,--the last rising straight from his
+forehead, like the marble flame one sometimes sees at the top of a
+funeral urn.--The poor relation, not in absolute black, but in a stuff
+with specks of white; as much as to say, that, if there were any more
+Hirams left to sigh for her, there were pin-holes in the night of her
+despair, through which a ray of hope might find its way to--an
+adorer.--Master Benjamin Franklin, grown taller of late, was in the act
+of splitting his face open with a wedge of pie, so that his features
+were seen to disadvantage for the moment.--The good old gentleman was
+sitting still and thoughtful. All at once he turned his face toward the
+window where I stood, and, just as if he had seen me, smiled his
+benignant smile. It was a recollection of some past pleasant moment;
+but it fell upon me like the blessing of a father.
+
+I kissed my hand to them all, unseen as I stood in the outer darkness;
+and as I turned and went my way, the table and all around it faded into
+the realm of twilight shadows and of midnight dreams.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+And so my year's record is finished. The Professor has talked less than
+his predecessor, but he has heard and seen more. Thanks to all those
+friends who from time to time have sent their messages of kindly
+recognition and fellow-feeling! Peace to all such as may have been
+vexed in spirit by any utterance these pages have repeated! They will,
+doubtless, forget for the moment the difference in the hues of truth we
+look at through our human prisms, and join in singing (inwardly) this
+hymn to the Source of the light we all need to lead us, and the warmth
+which alone can make us all brothers.
+
+A Sun-Day Hymn.
+
+Lord of all being! throned afar,
+Thy glory flames from sun and star;
+Centre and soul of every sphere,
+Yet to each loving heart how near!
+
+Sun of our life, thy wakening ray
+Sheds on our path the glow of day;
+Star of our hope, thy softened light
+Cheers the long watches of the night.
+
+Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn;
+Our noontide is thy gracious dawn;
+Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign;
+All, save the clouds of sin, are thine!
+
+Lord of all life, below, above,
+Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love,
+Before thy ever-blazing throne
+We ask no lustre of our own.
+
+Grant us thy truth to make us free,
+And kindling hearts that burn for thee,
+Till all thy living altars claim
+One holy light, one heavenly flame!
+
+
+
+
+REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
+
+_The Oxford Museum_. By HENRY W. ACLAND, M. D., Regius Professor of
+Medicine, and JOHN RUSKIN, M. A., Honorary Student of Christ Church.
+London, 1859.
+
+The last ten years have formed a remarkable period in the history of
+the ancient and honored University of Oxford. Guided by wise and
+discerning counsels, it has made rapid and substantial advance. The
+scope of its studies has been greatly enlarged, the standard of its
+requirements raised. Its traditionary adherence to old methods and its
+bigoted conservatism have been overcome, and with happy pliancy it has
+yielded to the demands of the times and adapted itself to the new
+desires and growing needs of men. Its aristocratic prejudices have not
+been allowed longer to confine its privileges and its operations to one
+class alone of the community,--and in identifying itself with the
+system of middle-class education, Oxford has won new claims to
+gratitude and to respect, and now exercises a wider and more confirmed
+authority over the thought of England than ever before. To us, who take
+pride in her ancient fame, who honor her long and memorable services in
+the cause of good learning, who cherish the memory of the great and
+good men, the masters of modern thought, whom she has nurtured, who
+recall the names of our own forefathers who came out from her and from
+her sister University with will and power to lay the foundations of our
+state, and whom, by her discipline, in the midst of all the refinement
+of hooks and the quietness of study, she had prepared to meet and to
+overcome the hardships of exile, poverty, and labor, in the cause of
+truth and freedom,--to us it may well be matter of rejoicing to witness
+the freshness of her spirit and the spring of her perennial youth,--to
+see her
+
+  "so famous,
+  So excellent in art, and still so rising."
+
+One of the most marked features of the advance that has lately been
+made is the full recognition of the Natural Sciences as forming an
+essential part of the scheme of University studies. For centuries there
+had been an "intellectual onesidedness" at Oxford. It had chiefly
+cultivated classic learning. But it has now undertaken to repair the
+deficiency that existed in this respect, and, while still retaining all
+its classic studies, it has added to them a full course of training in
+the knowledge of Nature. "Our object is," says Dr. Acland, speaking as
+one of the professors of the University, "our object is,--first, to
+give the learner a general view of the planet on which he lives, of its
+constituent parts, and of the relation which it occupies as a world
+among worlds; and secondly, to enable him to study, in the most
+complete scientific manner, and for any purpose, any detailed portion
+which his powers qualify him to grasp."
+
+Such an object brings the University into full sympathy with the
+present tendencies of education in our own country. With us, scientific
+pursuits and the study of Nature are receiving greater and greater
+attention and engrossing a continually larger share of the interest,
+the time, and the talent of students. There already exists, and there
+is danger of its increase, in many of our best institutions of
+learning, and many of our most educated men, an intellectual
+onesidedness of a contrary, but not less unfortunate character, to that
+which long existed at Oxford. The temper of our people, the wide field
+for their energies, the development of the so-called practical traits
+of character under the stimulus of our political and social
+institutions, the solitary dissociation of America from the history and
+the achievements of the Old World, the melancholy absence of monuments
+of past greatness and worth,--these and many other circumstances
+peculiar to our position all serve to weaken the general interest in
+what are called classical studies, and to direct the attention of the
+most ambitious and active minds far too exclusively to the pursuits of
+science. And when to these circumstances peculiar to ourselves is added
+the influence of those general causes which have had the effect of
+leading men throughout the civilized world to give of late years more
+and more of thought and study to the investigation of Nature and to the
+pursuits resulting therefrom, it is not strange that learning,
+so-called, should, for the present at least, find itself but poorly off
+in America, and that the essential value of learned studies for an even
+and fair development of the intellectual faculties should be far too
+little regarded. The danger that arises from a too exclusive devotion
+to scientific pursuits is pointed out by Dr. Acland in a passage which
+deserves thoughtful consideration, coming as it does from a man
+distinguished not more for scientific eminence than for his wide and
+cultivated intellect.
+
+"The further my observation has extended," he says, "the more satisfied
+I am that no _knowledge of things_ will supply the place of the early
+study of letters,--_literae humaniores_. I do not doubt the value of
+any honest mental labor. Indeed, since the _material_ working of the
+Creator has been so far displayed to our gaze, it is both dangerous and
+full of impiety to resist its ennobling influence, even on the ground
+that His _moral_ work is greater. But notwithstanding this, the study
+of language, of history, and of the thoughts of great men which they
+exhibit, seems to be almost necessary (as far as learning is necessary
+at all) for disciplining the heart, for elevating the soul, and for
+preparing the way for the growth in the young of their personal
+spiritual life; while, on the other hand, the best corrective to
+pedantry in scholarship, and to conceit in mental philosophy, is the
+study of the facts and laws exhibited by Natural Science."
+
+Oxford, having thus fully acknowledged the need of enlarging her system
+of education, at once set about preparing a home for the Natural
+Sciences within her precincts. The building of the Oxford Museum is a
+fact characteristic of the large spirit of the University, and of
+special interest from the design and nature of its architecture. It is
+not merely intended for the holding of collections in the different
+departments of physical science, but it contains also lecture- and
+work-rooms, and all the accommodations required for in-door study. To
+provide the mere shell of such a building, the University granted the
+sum of £30,000. The design that was selected from those which were sent
+for competition was of the Gothic style,--the work of Messrs. Deane and
+Woodward; and this style was chosen because it was believed, that, "in
+respect of capacity of adaptation to any given wants, Gothic has no
+superior in any known form of Art,"--and that, this being so, "it was,
+upon the whole, the best suited to the general architectural character
+of Mediaeval Oxford." "The centre of the edifice, which is to contain
+the collections, consists of a quadrangle," covered by a glass roof.
+The court is surrounded by an open arcade of two stories. "This arcade
+furnishes ready means of communication between the several departments
+and their collections in the area." "Round the arcade is ranged upon
+three sides the main block of the building,"--the fourth side being
+left unoccupied by apartments, to afford means for future extension.
+Each department of science is provided with ample accommodations,
+specially adapted to its peculiar needs. The building, as it stands at
+present, is in its largest dimensions about 330 by 170 feet. Its
+erection has formed an epoch not only in the history of Oxford, but
+also in that of Gothic Art in England.
+
+It is the first considerable building which has for centuries been
+erected in England according to the true principles of Gothic Art. It
+is a revival of the spirit and freedom of Gothic architecture. It is no
+copy, but an original creation of thought, fancy, and imagination. It
+has combined beauty with use, elegance with convenience, and ornament
+with instruction. It has proved the perfect pliancy of Gothic
+architecture to modern needs, and shown its power of entire adaptation
+to the requirements of new conditions. In its details no less than in
+its general scope it exhibits the recognition by its builders of the
+essential characteristics of the best Gothic Art, and shows in the
+harmonized variety of its parts the inventive thought and the
+independent execution of many minds and hands presided over by a single
+will. Gothic architecture in its best development is the expression at
+once of law and of liberty. The exactest principles of proportion are
+combined in it with the freest play of fancy. Its spaces are divided
+mathematically by the rule and the square, its main lines are
+determined with absolute precision,--but within these limits of order
+the imagination works out its free results, and, because limited by
+mathematical laws, reaches the most perfect freedom of beauty.
+
+But the system of Gothic decorations, "which," says Mr. Ruskin, "took
+eight hundred years to mature, gathering its power by undivided
+inheritance of traditional method," is not an easy thing to revive
+under new and difficult conditions. A single example of what has been
+attempted in this way in the Oxford Museum must suffice to show the
+spirit which pervades its construction. The lower arcade upon the
+central court is supported by thirty-three piers and thirty shafts; the
+upper arcade by thirty-three piers and ninety-five shafts. "The shafts
+have been carefully selected, under the direction of the Professor of
+Geology, from quarries which furnish examples of many of the most
+important rocks of the British Islands. On the lower arcade are placed,
+on the west side, the granitic series; on the east, the metamorphic; on
+the north, calcareous rocks, chiefly from Ireland; on the south, the
+marbles of England." The capitals and bases are to represent different
+groups of plants and animals, illustrating the various geological
+epochs, and the natural orders of existence. Thus, the column of
+sienite from Charnwood Forest has a capital of the cocoa palm; the red
+granite of Ross, in Mull, is crowned with a capital of lilies; the
+beautiful marble of Marychurch has an exquisitely sculptured capital of
+ferns;--and so through all the range of the arcades, new designs,
+studied directly from Nature, and combining art with science, have been
+executed by the workmen employed on the building.
+
+To complete the beauty of the court, massive corbels have been thrown
+out from the piers, upon which statues of the greatest and most famous
+men in science are to be, or are already, placed. These shafts and
+capitals and statues have been, in great part, the gift of individuals
+interested in the progress and successful completion of such a
+building. The Queen presented five of the statues; and her example has
+been followed by many of the graduates of the University and lovers of
+Art in England.
+
+Mr. Ruskin ends his second letter in the little book before us with
+these words: "Although I doubt not that lovelier and juster expressions
+of the Gothic principle will be ultimately arrived at by us than any
+which are possible in the Oxford Museum, its builders will never lose
+their claim to our chief gratitude, as the first guides in a right
+direction; and the building itself, the first exponent of recovered
+truth, will only be the more venerated, the more it is excelled."
+
+Such is the way in which Oxford, having a Museum to build, sets to
+work. She lays down a large and generous plan, and erects a building
+worthy of her ancient fame, worthy to increase the love and honor in
+which she is held,--a building that adds a new beauty to her old
+beauties of hall and chapel, of quadrangle and cloister. She does not
+mistake parsimony for economy; she does not neglect to regard the duty
+that lies upon her, as the guardian and instructress of youth, to set
+before their eyes models of fair proportion, noble structures which
+shall exercise at once an influence to refine the taste and the
+sentiment and to enlarge the intellect. She acknowledges the claims of
+the future as well as of the present, and does not erect that which the
+future, however it may advance in constructive power, will regard as
+base, mean, or ugly. She recognizes the value to herself, as well as to
+her sons, of all those associations which, through the power of her
+adorned and munificent architecture, shall bind them to her in ties of
+closer tenderness, and of strong, though most delicate feeling. Her
+building is to have an aspect that shall correspond to the nobility of
+its function,--that shall impress the student, as he walks along the
+hard and dry paths of science, with some sense, faint though it be, of
+the beauty of that learning which is furnished with so goodly an abode.
+The influence of a fine building, complete in all its parts, is one
+which cannot be estimated in money, cannot be investigated by any
+practical process, but which is nevertheless as strong and precious as
+it is secret, as constant as it is unobserved.
+
+It would seem that there could be no country in the world where
+buildings of the noblest kind would be more desired than in America,
+for there is none in which they are so much needed. But such is not the
+case. As men who have lived long in darkness become so accustomed to
+the want of light as not to feel its absence, so the absoluteness of
+the want of fine buildings in America prevents that want from being
+generally felt. Heirs of the intellectual wealth of the past, we have
+no inheritance of the great works of its hands. No material heirlooms
+have been transmitted to us. We are cut off from any share in the
+monuments on which the labor, the affection, and the possessions of
+former generations were expended. The precious and enlarging
+associations connected with such works, which bind successive
+generations of men together with ties of memory and reverence,
+stimulating the imagination to new conceptions, and nerving the will to
+large efforts, have nothing to cling to here. The land is barren and
+naked; and, moreover, no effort is made to relieve the future from the
+want which the present feels so keenly. With wealth ample enough for
+undertakings of any magnitude,--with intelligence, more boasted than
+real, but still sufficient for the conception of improvement, we
+exhibit in our civilization neither the taste nor the capacity for any
+noble works of Art. The value of beauty is disregarded, and the
+cultivation of the sense of beauty is treated as of little worth,
+compared with the culture of what are styled the practical faculties.
+Our wealth is spent in the erection of extravagant stores and
+shops,--in the decoration of oyster-saloons, hotels, and
+steamboats,--in the lavish and selfish adornment of drawing-rooms and
+chambers. In the whole breadth of the continent there is not a single
+building of such beauty as to be an object of national pride, and few
+which will have any value in future times, except as historic records
+of the poverty of sentiment and the deficiency of character of the men
+of this generation.
+
+Our oldest and best endowed University has, like Oxford, lately engaged
+in the erection of a Museum, which, though more limited in its general
+object, has yet a scope of such large and generous proportion as to
+make it a work of even more than national interest. It is undertaken on
+such a scale as to fit it not merely for present needs, but for the
+increasing wants of later times. The State has contributed to it from
+the public treasury, and private citizens have given their
+contributions liberally towards its support. The building has been
+rapidly carried forward, and the portion undertaken is now near
+completion. How does it compare with the Oxford Museum? What provision
+has been made that in its outward aspect it shall correspond with the
+worth and grandeur of the collections it is to hold and the studies
+that are to be carried on within it? What patient thought, what stores
+of imagination, what happy adaptations do its walls reveal? These
+questions are easily answered. Convenience of internal arrangement has
+been sought without regard to external beauty, without consideration of
+the claims of Art. The architect has, we must suppose, been obliged to
+conform his plans to the most frugal estimates; but we cannot help
+thinking, that, generous as the State has been, it would have been more
+worthy of her, had no such necessity existed. The building for the
+Museum is one which can never excite high admiration, never touch any
+chord of poetic sentiment, never arouse in the student within its walls
+any feeling save that of mere convenience and utility. Its bare,
+shadowless walls, unadorned by carven columns or memorial statues, will
+stand incapable of affording support for those associations which
+endear every human work of worth, covering it with praise and
+remembrance, as the ivy clings to the stone, adding beauty to
+beauty,--associations which make men proud of their ancestors and
+desirous to equal them in achievement The University at Cambridge, just
+entering on the second quarter of its third century, has not a single
+building that is beautiful, perhaps we might say none that is not
+positively ugly; and we almost despair of a future when our people
+shall become enlightened and magnanimous enough to appreciate noble
+architecture at its true worth, as the expression of the greatness of
+national character, as an enduring record of faith and of truth, and as
+an essential instrument in any system of education that professes to be
+complete.
+
+
+1._Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter_; being Reminiscences of
+MESHACH BROWNING, a Maryland Hunter; roughly written down by Himself.
+Revised and illustrated by E. STABLER. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott &
+Co. 1859. pp. x., 400.
+
+2. _Ten Years of Preacher-Life_; Chapters from an Autobiography. By
+WILLIAM HENRY MILBURN. New York: Derby & Jackson. 1859. pp. 363.
+
+BENVENUTO CELLINI was right in his _dictum_ about autobiographies; and
+so was Dr. Kitchener, in his about hares. First catch your perfectly
+sincere and unconscious man. He is even more uncommon than a genius of
+the first order. Most men dress themselves for their autobiographies,
+as Machiavelli used to do for reading the classics, in their best
+clothes; they receive us, as it were, in a parlor chilling and awkward
+from its unfamiliarity with man, and keep us carefully away from the
+kitchen-chimney-corner, where they would feel at home, and would not
+look on a lapse into nature as the unpardonable sin. But what do we
+want of a hospitality that makes strangers of us, or of confidences
+that keep us at arm's-length? Better the tavern and the newspaper; for
+in the one we can grumble, and from the other learn more of our
+neighbors than we care to know. John Smith's autobiography is commonly
+John Smith's design for an equestrian statue of himself,--very fine,
+certainly, and as much like him as like Marcus Aurelius. Saint
+Augustine, kneeling to confess, has an eye to the picturesque, and does
+it in _pontificalibus_, resolved that Domina Grundy shall think all the
+better of him. Rousseau cries, "I will bare my heart to you!" and,
+throwing open his waistcoat, makes us the confidants of his dirty
+linen. Montaigne, indeed, reports of himself with the impartiality of a
+naturalist, and Boswell, in his letters to Temple, shows a maudlin
+irretentiveness; but is not old Samuel Pepys, after all, the only man
+who spoke to himself of himself with perfect simplicity, frankness, and
+unconsciousness?--a creature unique as the dodo,--a solitary specimen,
+to show that it was possible for Nature to indulge in so odd a whimsey!
+An autobiography is good for nothing, unless the author tell us in it
+precisely what he meant not to tell. A man who can say what he thinks
+of another to his face is a disagreeable rarity; but one who could look
+his own Ego straight in the eye, and pronounce unbiased judgment, were
+worthy of Sir Thomas Browne's Museum. Had Cheiron written his
+autobiography, the consciousness of his equine crupper would have
+ridden him like a nightmare; should a mermaid write hers, she would
+sink the fish's tail, nor allow it to be put into the scales, in
+weighing her character. The mermaid, in truth, is the emblem of those
+who strive to see themselves;--her mirror is too small to reflect
+anything more than the _mulier formosa supernè_.
+
+We looked for a great prize in Meshach Browning's account of himself,
+and have been disappointed. Not that some very fair grains of wheat may
+not be had for the winnowing, but the proportion of chaff is
+disheartening. Meshach has been edited, and has not come out of that
+fiery furnace unscathed. Mr. Stabler has not let him come before us in
+his deerskin hunting-shirt, but has made him presentable by getting him
+into a black dress-coat, the uniform of perfect respectability and
+tiresomeness. He has corrected Meshach's style for him! He has made him
+write that unexceptionable English which neither gods nor men, but only
+columns, allow. (The kindness of an anonymous correspondent, however,
+enables us to assure him that _lay_, and not _laid_, is the preterite
+of _lie_.) One page of Meshach's own writing would have been worth all
+his bear-stories put together. Many men may shoot bears, but few can
+write like backwoodsmen. We shall expect an edition of "The Rivals"
+from Mr. Stabler, with Mrs. Malaprop's epitaphs revised by the "Aids to
+Composition." Luckily, Meshach himself will never know the wrong that
+has been done him. On the contrary, he probably pleases himself in
+finding that he is made to write President's English, and admires the
+new leaves and apples not his own. But, in his polishing, American
+letters have met as great a loss as American fiction did when the
+depositions of the survivors of Bunker's Hill, taken fifty years after
+the battle, were burned.
+
+However, he who knows how to read with the ends of his fingers may yet
+find good meat in the book. An honest provincialism has escaped Mr.
+Stabler's weeding-hoe here and there, and we get a few glimpses, in
+spite of him, into log-cabin interiors when the inmates are not in
+their Sunday-clothes. We learn how much a sound stomach has to do with
+human felicity; that a bride may make her husband happy, though her
+whole outfit consist of two cups and saucers, two knives and forks, and
+two spoons; that a man may be hospitable in a cabin, twelve by fifteen,
+with only the forest for his larder; and that an American needs only an
+axe, a rifle, and _nary red_, for his start in life. Meshach Browning
+finds in his Paradise very much what our first parents found outside of
+theirs. At nineteen he is the husband of pretty Mary McMullen, and
+joint-proprietor with the rest of mankind of all-outdoors,--it being an
+eccentricity of McMullen _père_ to prefer a back to a front view of his
+sons-in-law. Meshach, who is sure of a comfortable fireside wherever
+there are trees, moves into the nearest bit of wilderness, builds a
+house with the timber felled to make a clearing, plants his acre or
+two, and forthwith shoots a bear, whose salted flesh will keep him and
+his wife alive till harvest. Thus in 1800 was a family founded, which
+fifty years later had increased to one hundred and twenty-two, of whom
+sixty-seven, as their progenitor says proudly, were "capable of bearing
+arms for the defence of their country,"--though, to be sure, the
+Harper's Ferry affair leaves us in some doubt as to the direction in
+which they would bear them. The community of which the Brownings, man
+and wife, became members at their marriage was a wholly self-subsistent
+one. The men wore deerskins procured by their own rifles and dressed
+and tailored by themselves,--while the women spun and wove both flax
+and wool. Powder and lead seem to have been the only things for which
+they were dependent on outsiders. Browning's father was an English
+soldier, who, escaping from Braddock's massacre, deserted and settled
+in the highlands of Western Maryland,--as a place, we suppose, equally
+safe from the provost-martial of the redcoat and the tomahawk of the
+red man. It is curious to think of the great contrast between father
+and son: the one a British soldier of the day of strictest powder and
+pigtail; the other, a man who never wore a hat, except in fine
+weather,--and in the house, of course, like the rest of his countrymen.
+In this case, we find the very purest American type (for Meshach has
+not a single Old-World notion) produced in a single generation. We
+ourselves have known a parallel instance in the children of a British
+soldier who deserted during the War of 1812; in tone of thought,
+accent, dialect, and physique they were unmistakably Yankee. If the
+backwoods Americanize men so fast, is it wonderful that two centuries
+of the Western Hemisphere should have produced a breed so unlike the
+parent Bull? It is time Bull began to reconcile himself to it.
+
+One of the most amusing passages in Meshach's autobiography is that in
+which he relates his military experience as captain of a company of
+militia. The company appear to have gone into action only once, and
+that was on occasion of a muster when they undertook to _lick_ their
+commander, with whom, for some reason or other, they were discontented.
+As well as we can make out, the result seems to have been, that the
+captain licked _them_; though our Caesar's Commentaries are naturally
+so confused on this topic, that we almost feel, after reading them, as
+if we had been through the fight ourselves.
+
+The book should have been shorter by at least two-thirds,--for one
+bear-story is just like another, and Meshach's style of narrative is
+one that cannot bear the prosperity of print. However, we find much
+that is interesting in the volume, as in all records of real
+experience.
+
+Mr. Milburn's account of himself we have also found very entertaining.
+In some respects it belongs on the same shelf with Meshach Browning's;
+for we think the best chapters in it are those which bring us into
+contact with Cartwright and other Methodist ministers, the frontiersmen
+and bushfighters of the Church, who do not bandy subtilties with
+Mephistopheles, nor consider that the Prince of Darkness is a
+gentleman, but go in for a rough-and-tumble fight with Satan and his
+imps, as with so many red _Injuns_ undeserving of the rights and
+incapable of the amenities of civilized warfare. We confess a thorough
+liking for these Leatherstockings of the clergy, true apostolic
+successors of the heavy-handed fisherman, Peter. Their rough-and-ready
+gospel is just the thing for men who feel as if they could not get
+religion, unless from a preacher who can "whip" them as well as thunder
+doctrine at their ears.
+
+We prefer those parts of Mr. Milburn's book in which he tells us what
+he saw (if we may say it of a blind man) to those in which he
+undertakes to tell us what he was. The history of the growth of his
+mind is not of vital importance to us, and we should be quite willing
+to have "returned unexperienced to our graves," like Grumio's
+fellow-servants. We think there is getting to be altogether too much
+unreserve in the world. We doubt if any man have the right to take
+mankind by the button and tell all about himself, unless, like Dante,
+he can symbolize his experience. Even Goethe we only half thank,
+especially when he kisses and tells, and prefer Shakspeare's
+indifference to the intimacy of the German. Silence about one's self is
+the most golden of all, as men commonly discover after babbling. Mr.
+Milburn, in one of his chapters, gives an account of his passage
+through what he is pleased to call _neology_ and _rationalism_. He
+represents himself as having sounded the depths of German metaphysics,
+criticism, and aesthetics. But a man who is able to write a sentence in
+which Lessing's Works are spoken of as if the reading of them tended to
+make men "transcendentalists of the supra-nebulous order" no more
+deserves a scourging by angels for his devotion to German literature
+than Saint Jerome did for being a Ciceronian. No truly thorough course
+of study ever weakened or unsteadied any man's mind, for it is the
+surest way to make him think less of himself,--and we cannot help
+believing that the disease Mr. Milburn went through was nothing more
+nor less than _sentimentalism_, a complaint as common to a certain
+period of life as measles. But while we think him mistaken in his
+diagnosis, we cannot but commend the good sense and manliness of his
+course of treatment.
+
+Bating the egotism unavoidable in a work of the sort, the style of Mr.
+Milburn's book is agreeable, and the anecdotes of various kinds with
+which it abounds render it very amusing. It is of particular interest
+as showing how much a blind man may accomplish both for himself and
+others, that the loss of sight may be borne with cheerfulness as well
+as resignation, and that the sufferer by such a calamity is sure of
+kindness and sympathy from his fellow-men.
+
+_A First Lesson in Natural History_. By ACTAEA. Boston: Little, Brown,
+& Co. 1859. pp. 82.
+
+This is an altogether charming little book. Simple, clear, and
+methodical, the style leaves nothing to be desired, and suggests no
+wish that anything were away. An aunt called upon for more stories--and
+no wonder, when she tells them so well--resolves to play the Nereïd,
+and takes her little ones in fancy down among the slopes and dells of
+Ocean to watch the lovely growths and the strange creatures in which,
+through plant and mineral, or what seem such, Life is yearning upward
+toward the higher individuality of Volition. She tells us (for we
+seemed among her hearers as we read, and drew our stool nearer) all
+about the sea-anemones and corals, the coral-reefs, the jelly-fishes,
+star-fishes, and sea-urchins,--which last are not to be confounded with
+the buoys so frequently to be met with in our harbors. That the stories
+have the sanction of Agassiz is warrant of their scientific accuracy,
+while the feminine grace with which they are told is a science to be
+learned of no professor.
+
+Since the fairies are all dead, it is pleasant to know that Pan can be
+brought to life again for children by the study of Nature. Now that the
+wonders of the invisible world are closed, the little ones can have no
+better set-off than in the beauty and marvel of God's visible creation.
+Here also are food for the imagination and material for poetry.
+Whatever teaches a child to observe teaches him to think, and
+strengthens memory, a faculty which in fitting conjunction is
+cumulative genius.
+
+We dislike the science that is sometimes forced down youthful throats
+by the Mrs. Squeerses of polite learning, a vile compound of treacle
+and brimstone; but there is a vast difference between science as dead
+fact and science as living poetry,--the harvest of the child's own
+eyes, gathered on seashores and hillsides, in fields and lanes. We like
+the aim and tendency of this little book, because it is likely to draw
+children away from hooks, and to entice them into that admirably
+ventilated schoolroom of out-doors which will give them sound lungs and
+stomachs and muscular limbs. It teaches them, too, without their
+knowing it; which is the only true way; for they contrive to make their
+minds duck's-backs, under the assiduous watering-pot of instruction.
+The knowledge it gives them is real, and not merely a thing of terms
+and phrases. Moreover, the kind of it is suitable; a great thing; for
+we hold a Pascal in a pinafore to be as great an outrage as a learned
+pig.
+
+We have found the generality of books written for children of late so
+thoroughly bad, as void of invention as they are full of vulgarisms in
+thought and language, that it is a downright pleasure to meet with one
+so fresh and graceful as this of Aectaea's. We hope she will follow it
+with a series, for she has shown herself qualified to do for science
+what Hawthorne has done for mythology.
+
+
+_Poems_. By ASNE WHITNEY. New York: Appleton & Co. 1859.
+
+This modest volume is a collection of Miss Whitney's previously printed
+poems, scattered about in forgotten newspapers, with perhaps as many
+more, which now appear in print for the first time. The uncommon merit
+of some of her early poems, especially "Bertha," "Hymn to the Sea," and
+"Lilian," (here most unpoetically called "Facts in Verse,") long ago
+awakened a desire in lovers of good poetry to know more of Miss Whitney
+and what she had written; and the desire is gratified by the
+publication of this book. We can hardly say that the new poems are
+better than the old; though some of them, as "The Ceyba and the
+Jaguey," "Undine," "Dominique," and "My Window," are marked by the same
+quick insight, the same force and dignity of expression, which charm us
+in the earlier verses. We still find "Lilian" the best of all, as it is
+the longest; there are in it passages of description as clear and vivid
+as the landscapes of Church and Turner, and touches of profound and
+glowing imagination; and the whole poem, in spite of its obscurity,
+affects the mind like a strain of high and mournful music. The Sonnets
+are all more or less harsh and unintelligible,--a criticism which
+applies to many of the other poems. Miss Whitney evidently despises
+foot-notes as utterly as Tennyson, and leaves much unexplained in her
+titles and in the poems themselves, which might help us to understand
+them, if we knew it. Obscurity of thought and a lack of facility in
+versification cause evident defects in her otherwise fine book; on the
+other hand, she is never flat and seldom feeble, but writes as one
+whose thoughts and feelings move on a high level, sustained by a
+familiarity with the strength and beauty, rather than the grace and
+tenderness of literature. Few of our countrywomen have written better
+poems, and her little book gives finer food for thought and fancy than
+many a more bulky volume. Is it ungracious to charge her with
+affectation? for this is the clinging curse of modern poetry, and one
+may trace it even in the noble idyls of the greatest English poet now
+alive. The Brownings overflow with it, and it is the chief
+characteristic of scores of the lesser poets of the day. If all who
+write verses could learn how sacred language is, how full of beauty is
+its austere simplicity, they would cease from their endless tricks of
+word-painting and the Florentine mosaics of speech. Miss Whitney
+offends less than many in this way, and has shown some of the rarer
+gifts of that indefinable being,--a true poet.
+
+
+_Sword and Gown_. A Novel: by the Author of "Guy Livingstone." Boston:
+Ticknor & Fields.
+
+This is rather a brilliant sketch than a carefully wrought and finely
+finished romance. The actors are drawn in bold outlines, which it does
+not appear to have been the purpose of the author to fill up in the
+delicate manner usually deemed necessary for the development of
+character in fiction. But they are so vigorously drawn, and the
+narration is so full of power, that few readers can resist the
+fascination of the story, in spite of the intrusive little digressions
+which everywhere appear, and which, jumping at random through passages
+of history, religion, art, politics, literature, as a circus-rider
+forsakes his steed to dash through the many-colored tissue screens that
+are invitingly held out to him, interfere quite seriously with its
+progress. It is certainly a book in which the interest is positive, and
+from which the attention is seldom allowed to wander; and is, so far, a
+success.
+
+But there is also another relation in which it is to be considered.
+Without being much of a moralist, one may clearly perceive that its
+tone is unhealthy and its sentiment vicious. What it aims at we would
+not assume to decide; what it accomplishes is, to secure a sympathy for
+a reckless and dare-devil spirit which drives the hero through a
+tolerably long career of more than moderate iniquity, and leaves him
+impenitent at the end. It will hardly do to say that the object of the
+book is only to amuse. Dealing with the subjects it does, it must work
+good or evil. Its theme is this: An imperious beauty, whose heart has
+been seared in earliest youth, and whose passions are half supposed to
+be dead, is brought in contact, at a French watering-place, with a man
+whose life has been passed in wildest excesses, whose amatory exploits
+have echoed through Europe, and who knows no higher human motive of
+action than the prosecution of selfish and sensual enjoyment. His good
+qualities are dauntless personal courage, which, however, often sinks
+into brutal ferocity, and occasional touches of generous emotion
+towards his friends. The young girl's heart-strings are again set in
+tune, and made to quiver in harmony with those of the determined
+conqueror. Just as her soul is yielded, the intelligence that her lover
+has a living wife is imparted to her. Here a resemblance to a striking
+incident in "Jane Eyre" may be detected; but mark the difference in the
+result:--Jane Eyre, resolute in her righteous convictions, flies from a
+struggle which she perhaps feels herself incapable of sustaining; the
+present heroine consents to remain near her lover, on his promise of
+good behavior! What follows cannot be averted,--who would expect that
+it should be? The elopement which is planned, however, is prevented by
+the interference of a third party, and the lovers submit to their
+destiny of separation. They meet once again, but it is only when the
+hero, mortally wounded in a Crimean battle, lies expiring at Scutari.
+With the bitter agony of the dying farewell, the scene closes. The
+characters remain unchanged to the end. The Sword, though stained in
+many places with impurities, still glistens with a lustre that
+bewilders and confuses the senses. The Gown--which seems introduced at
+all only for the purpose of mockery, its representative being invested
+with all contemptible and unmanly attributes--still lies covered with
+the reproach that has been cast upon it.
+
+The moral of such a book is not a good one. The author does his best,
+by various arts, to make the reader look kindly upon a guilty love, and
+to regard with admiration those who are animated by it, notwithstanding
+the hero is no better at the end than he was at the opening, and the
+heroine is rather worse. And such is his undeniable power, that with
+many readers he will be too likely to carry his point.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS.
+
+
+Reynard the Fox, after the German Version of Goethe. By Thomas James
+Arnold, Esq.; with Illustrations from the Designs of Wilhelm von
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+
+The Eighteen Christian Centuries. By the Rev. James White, Author of a
+"History of France"; with a Copious Index. From the Second Edinburgh
+Edition. Philadelphia. Parry & McMillan. 12mo. pp. 538. $1.25.
+
+A New Dictionary of Quotations from the Greek, Latin, and Modern
+Languages. Translated into English, and occasionally accompanied with
+Illustrations, Historical, Poetical, and Anecdotical; with an Extensive
+Index, referring to Every Important Word. By the Author of "Live and
+Learn," etc. From the last London Edition. Philadelphia. J.B.
+Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp. 527. $1.50.
+
+An Inquiry into the Formation of Washington's Farewell Address.
+Philadelphia. Parry & McMillan. 8vo. pp. vii., 250. $1.25.
+
+Sermons Published and Revised by the Rev. C.H. Spurgeon. Sixth Series.
+New York. Sheldon & Co. 12mo. pp. xii., 450. $1.00.
+
+The Boy's Book of Industrial Information. By Elisha Noyce, Author of
+"Outlines of Creation." Illustrated with Three Hundred and Seventy
+Engravings. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 16mo. $1.25.
+
+The Prairie: A Tale. By J. Fenimore Cooper. Illustrated from Drawings
+by F.O.C. Darley. New York. W.A. Townsend & Co. 12mo. pp. ix., 479.
+$1.50.
+
+Men who have Risen. A Book for Boys. Illustrated by C.A. Doyle. New
+York. W.A. Townsend & Co. 16mo. pp. 315. 75 cts.
+
+Leaves from an Actor's Note-Book; with Reminiscences and Chit-Chat of
+the Green-Room, and the Stage, in England and America. By George
+Vandenhoff. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. vi., 347. $1.00.
+
+The Manufacture of Photogenic or Hydro-Carbon Oils, from Coal and other
+Bituminous Substances, capable of supplying Burning Fluids. By Thomas
+Antisell, M.D., Professor of Chemistry in the Medical Department of
+Georgetown College, D.C., etc. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. pp.
+144. $1.75.
+
+The Boy's Own Toy-Maker; a Practical Illustrated Guide to the Useful
+Employment of Leisure Hours. By E. Landells, Author of "Home Pastime,
+or the Child's Own Toy-Maker." With Numerous Engravings. New York. D.
+Appleton & Co. Square 16mo. pp. viii., 153. 50 cts.
+
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+
+Women of Worth. A Book for Girls. Illustrated by W. Dickes. New York.
+W.A. Townsend & Co. 16mo. pp. 302. 75 cts.
+
+The Headsman; or, The Abbaye des Vignerons. A Tale. By J. Fenimore
+Cooper. Illustrated from Drawings by F.O.C. Darley. New York. W.A.
+Townsend & Co. 12mo. pp. x., 496. $1.50.
+
+The Physiology of Common Life. By George Henry Lewes, Author of
+"Seaside Studies," "Life of Goethe," etc. 2 vols. Vol. I. New York. D.
+Appleton & Co. 16mo. pp. viii., 368. $1.00.
+
+The Glory of the House of Israel; or the Hebrew's Pilgrimage to the
+Holy City; comprising a Picture of Judaism in the Century which
+preceded the Advent of our Saviour. By Frederick Strauss. Philadelphia.
+J.B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo. pp. xxiii., 480. $1.25.
+
+Women Artists in all Ages and Countries. By Mrs. Ellet, Author of "The
+Women of the American Revolution," etc. New York. Harper & Brothers.
+12mo. pp. xx., 377. $1.00.
+
+Sword and Gown. By the Author of "Guy Livingstone." Boston. Ticknor &
+Fields. 16mo. pp. 308. 75 cts.
+
+The Money King and other Poems. By John G. Saxe. With a New Portrait.
+Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. x., 182. 75 cts.
+
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+
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+etc.; with Illustrations. New York. Harper & Brothers. 12mo. pp. 341.
+75 cts.
+
+Family-Circle Glee-Book; containing about Two Hundred Songs, Glees,
+Choruses, etc., including many of the most Popular Pieces of the Day;
+arranged and harmonized for Four Voices with Full Accompaniments for
+the Piano, Seraphine, and Melodeon. For the Use of Glee-Clubs,
+Singing-Classes, and the Home Circle. Compiled by Elias Howe. Vol. II.
+Boston. Russell & Tolman. Square 8vo. pp. 240. $1.50.
+
+Gold Foil Hammered from Popular Proverbs. By Timothy Titcomb, Author of
+"Letters to the Young." New York. Charles Scribner. 16mo. pp. 358.
+$1.00.
+
+Address Commemorative of Rufus Choate. By Theophilus Parsons. Delivered
+before the Students of the Law School of Harvard University, at their
+Request, on the 29th of September, 1859. Boston. Little, Brown, & Co.
+8vo. pp. 40. 25 cts.
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+Life of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. By Alphonse de Lamartine. New
+York. Sheldon & Co. 18mo. pp. 275. 50 cts.
+
+Loss and Gain; or, Margaret's Home. By Alice B. Haven. New York. D.
+Appleton & Co. 16mo. pp. 315. $1.00.
+
+At Home and Abroad; a Sketch-Book of Life, Scenery, and Men. By Bayard
+Taylor. New York. G.P. Putnam. 12mo. pp. vi., 500. $1.25.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOL. IV, NO. 26, DECEMBER, 1859 ***
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