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Professor  E.S.  Moore 


t 

THE 


ATLANTIC    MONTHLY 


A   MAGAZINE   OF 


Literatiire,  Science,  Art,  and  Politics. 


VOLUME    XXII. 


BOSTON: 
FIELDS,    OSGOOD,    &    CO., 

SUCCESSORS  TO   TICKNOR  AND    FIELDS. 
1868. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1868,  by 

FIELDS,     OSGOOD,     &     CO., 

in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


AP  . 

A8 


UNIVERSITY  PRESS  :  WELCH,   BIGELOW,   &  Co., 
CAMBRIDGE. 


CONTENTS. 




Charles  Daivson  Shanly 

150 
.     513,  682 

I  Islanders,  Some 
ite,  A    

James  D.  Hague     . 
.     William  J.  Stillman  . 

•         •         •           3^' 

.       221 
702 

Henry  James,  Jr. 

57 

Theodore  Lyman     . 

zo8 

in 
320,  466,  564,  663 

•    *     494 

James  K.  Mcdbery  . 

s,  The.     I.,  II.,  III.,  IV. 

United  States,  The 
st,  The      .        .        .        . 

E  H  Derby 

.    Edward  Everett  Hale 
Eugene  Benson 

•     744 

545 
.        .        .        .     485 

nong  the  Quakers 
t  to  the  . 

Wendell  P.  Garrison  . 

American  Diplomacy 

"  A  Modern  Lettre  de  Cachet "  reviewed 

Bacon.     I.,  II 

Caleb's  Lark 

Calico-Printing  in  France 

Convivial  Songs 

Co-operative  H 

Coral  Islands  an 

Cretan  Days 

Day  at  a  Consulate,  A 

De  Grey  :  A  Romance 

De  Piscium  Natura 

Edmund  Brook 

Erie  Imbroglio, 

Face  in  the  Gla 

Finances  of  the 

First  and  the  L^ 

Foreign  Faces 

Free  Produce  a 

Gorilla,  My  Visit  to  the 

Gothic  Capital,  A        .         .         .         . 

Hawthorne,  The  Genius  of    .  . 

Hooker         .  ' 

Hudson  River  at  New  York,  Along  the 

Ideal  Property 

Impossibility  of  Chance,  The 

Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One 

Ischia,  A  Trip  to 

Island  of  Maddalena,  The 

Kentucky's  Ghost 

Kings'  Crowns  and  Fools'  Caps ..... 

Land  of  Paoli,  The 

Lost  and  Found 

Man  and  Brother,  The.     I.,  II 

Maydenvalley,  Spinsterland 

Minor  Elizabethan  Poets 

Modern  French  Painting    ...... 

\..  Xcws 

Notre  Dame  and  the  Advent  of  Gothic  Architecture 

Our  Painters 

Our  Paris  Letter 

Out  en  the  Reef 

Petroleum  in  Burrnah 

"  Physical  Phenomena,"  A  Remarkable  Case  of  . 

Poisons,  On  the  Modern  Methods  of  studying  . 

Poor  in  Cities,  The .         . 

"Russia,  The  Tr.iditicmal  Policy  of      . 

St.  Michael's  Night.     L,  II.,  III.,  TV. 

Sculpture  in  the  United  States 


Henry  T.  Tuckerman 
Isaac  Ray 
E.  P.  Whipple     . 
Jane  G.  Austin 


Page 
.     343 

227 

6>  573 

652 


Theodore  Bacotl  . 


E.  P. 

Charles  Damson  Shanty  . 

James  D.  Whelplcy 

C.  J.  Spraguc  . 

James  Parton 

Bayard  Taylor 

Bayard  Taylor 

E.  Sinart  P  helps 

Jane  G.  Austin 

Bayard  Taylor 

Harriet  Prcscott  SpofforJ  . 

J.  W.-  Deforest      .. 

Adams  S.  Hill 

E.  P.  Whipple 

Eugene  Benson      .         .         . 

E.  Stuart  Phclps 

Eugene  Benson 

John  Ncal 


337' 


John  Wilder   .         ..... 

y.  W.  Palmer      .        ...         .         .         . 

H.  A.   H'lllfs    ...... 

S.  Weir  Mitchell         ..... 

Mrs.  C.  A.  Hopkinson    .... 

Knrl  Blind  ....... 

Miss  A  £>:•>::  IfurrisM     .          .      12,136,285, 


711 

359 

674 

i 

167 
315 
385 
155 
326 
624 
42§ 
6n 
243 
'  4H 
605 
26 
88 
257 
212 
641 
723 
176 
404 
129 
294 
52 

585 
439 


IV 


Contents. 


Siberian- Exiles Thomas  IP*.  Knox 273 

Sidney  and  Raleigh E.  P.  IVhipple 304 

Stage-Sti-uck •      .          Justin  Winsor 79 

TonelH's  Marriage <r.  D.  Howclls 96 

What  Five  Years  will  do 'Miss  E.  If.  Appleton       ....  525 

Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine  ?   .                 .         .         .     James  Par  ton !8g 

POETRY. 

Autumnal 651 

Bill  and  Joe Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  '    .        .        .        .313 

Dole  of  Jarl  Thorkeli,  The John  G.  Whitticr I0 

Expectation Cclia'Tliaxter 272 

Footpath,  The .     James  Russell  Lowell     ....  252 

Four-o'clock,  A  •.        • Harriet  Prescoit  Spofford  .        .        .         .no 

Harvester,  The 624 

In  Vacation 302 

Love's  Queen       .........     William  Winter      .....  475 

My  Darlings A  lice  Gary    . 544 

My  Ship  at  Sea R .  S.  Spofford 56 

Pandora Bayard  Taylor 507 

Sea-Gulls .        .        .        .        .        .  5s4 

To  C.  S.  .         .         .         .         .         .        .         .         .         .         H.T.  Tucker  man 174 

Two  Rabbis,  The John  G:  Whittier 426 

Watch  in  the  Night,  A A  Igcrnon  Charles  Swinburne    .        .        .698 

Worldly  Wise Alice  Cary 207 

REVIEWS  AND  LITERARY  NOTICES. 

Alcott's  Tablets 764 

Appleton's  Short-Trip  Guide  to  Europe 512 

Bartlett's  Familiar  Quotation.-; '. 635 

Bellows's  The  Old  World  in  its  New  Face 127 

Bigelovv's  Autobiography  of  Benjamin  Franklin 126 

Boynton's  History  of  the  Navy  during  the  Rebellion         .         . 377 

Brinton's  Myths  of  the  New  World 509 

Brooks's  Translation  of  The  Layman's  Breviary         .                 255 

Darwin's  Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants  under  Domestication 122 

Dickens's  Illustrated  Christmas  Carol 762 

Durand's  Translation  of  Taine's  Italy,  Rome,  and  Naples     .........  124 

George  Eliot's  Spanish  Gypsy 380 

Gould's  The  Tragedian 757 

Male's  If,  Yes,  and  Perhaps 634 

Hans  Breitmann's  Party. 511 

Keckley's  Behind  the  Scenes 128 

Miss  McGregor's  John  Ward's  Governess 637 

Mrs.  Henshaw's  Our  Branch  and  its  Tributaries        ...........  753 

Mrs.  Mann's  Translation  of  Life  in  the  Argentine  Republic  .         .........  374 

Modern  Women    '..................  639" 

Morris's  Earthly  Paradise 255 

M tiller's  On  the  Stratification  of  Language 761 

Parton's  Smoking  and  Drinking 637 

Reade  and  Boucicault's  Foul  Play 254 

Richardson's  Personal  History  of  Ulysses  S.  Grant 638 

Sturgis's  Manual  of  the  Jarves  Collection  of  Early  Italian  Painters •  I27 

Swift's  Going  to  Jericho 256 

The  Opium  Habit .        .  636 

The  Story  of  the  Kearsage  and  Alabama 640 

Wilson's  Ever-Victorious  Army 636 

Wright's  Highland  Ramble; 


THE 


ATLANTIC    MONTHLY. 

.A   Magazine  of  Literature,  Science,   Art, 

and  Politics. 


VOL.    XXII.— JULY,    1868.  — NO.    CXXIX) 


ALONG    THE    HUDSON    RIVER    AT    NEW    YORK. 


VERY  rural  and  tranquil  is  the  vi- 
cinity of  Spuyten  Duyvel  Creek,  at 
•the  head   of  the  island  of  Manhattan. 
'Standing  on  the  bridge  here,  it  is  diffi- 

•  cult  to  realize  the  fact  that  one  is  \vith- 

•  in   three  hours'  walk  of  a  great  city. 
The  din  of  it,  and  the  smoke,  and  the 
smells,  are  shut  out  from  this  quiet  val- 
ley by  the  intervening  ridge  of  Wash- 
ington Heights.     But  to  and  fro  on  the 
blue  Hudson  go  the   toiling   steamers 
and  the  white-sailed  river  craft,  linking 
the  gazer  to  the  city  by  their  commer- 
cial associations.    The  inhabitants  near 
this  bridge  appear  to  be  unsophisticated 
.and  primitive  in  their  ways,  but  they  are 

only  superficially  so.  They  dredge  their 
•own  oysters,  which  lends  an  air  of  self- 
support  and  independence  to  the  place  ; 
but  then  they  charge  New  York  prices 
for  them,  which  shows  that  with  them 
rural  simplicity  is  but  skin-deep.  One 
of  the  two  boys  who  sit  there  on  the 
stone-faced  bank  of  the  creek,  fishing, 
has  no  clothes  on,  which  heightens  the 
idea  of  the  primitive,  certainly;  but 
then  the  other  wears  the  traditional  red 
•shirt  of  the  Xew  York  rowdy,  and  his 
expletives  just  now,  when  he  acciden- 


tally baited  his  hook  with  his  ear,  were 
couched  in  the  choicest  profanity  of 
Mackerelville.  A  rustic  damsel  comes 
tripping  along  a  lane  that  leads  to 
the  main  road.  She  is  not  so  rustic 
on  a  near  view.  In  size  and  shape 
her  chignon  resembles  a  two-hundred 
pound  conical  shell.  She  wears  enor- 
mous red  ear-rings,  and  her  broad,  ser- 
viceable feet  are  bursting  through  tan- 
colored  French  boots.  Disgusted  with 
the  inconsistencies  of  the  place,  I  leave 
it,  and,  turning  cityward,  take  the  road 
that  leads  by  Washington  Heights  to 
New  York. 

This  is  the  most  picturesque  route  to 
the  city  from  the  land  side.  It  winds 
past  villas  that  stand  on  sloping  lawns, 
or,  like  amateur  Rhenish  castles,  frown 
from  lofty  peaks  down  upon  the  un- 
resenting  river.  Evidences  of  wealth 
and  culture  meet  the  eye  everywhere. 
Gate  lodges  give  an  air  of  European 
aristocracy  to  the  locality.  There  is  a 
feudal  atmosphere  about  the  place  ;  one 
can,  with  due  confusion  of  associations, 
almost  fancy  the  curfew  tolling  here 
at  nightfall,  from  the  cajnpanHc  that 
crowns  yon  lofty  knoll;  though  it  is 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Confess,  in  the  year  iS68,  by  TICKXOR  AXD  FIELDS,  in  the  Clerk's  Office 

•  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 
VOL.    XXII.  —  XO.    129.  I 


Along  the  Hudson  River  at  New  York. 


[July,. 


not  so  easy  to  conceive  that  the  serfs 
who  dwell  hereabouts  would  extinguish 
their  lamps  at  its  bidding.  Trim  hedges 
of  beautiful  flowering  shrubs  border  the 
gravel-walks  that  lead  from  the  road  to 
the  villas.  Cows  of  European  lineage 
crop  the  velvet  turf  in  the  glades  of  the 
copses.  Now  and  then  the  river  is  shut 
out  from  view,  but  only  to  appear  again  in 
scenic  vistas,  with  glimpses  of  the  white 
villages  on  the  New  Jersey  shore  be- 
yond. But  the  road  becomes  less  and 
less  rural  as  it  leaves  the  heights  and 
stretches  along  the  more  level  ground 
on  its  way  to  the  city.  Soon  it  assumes 
the  air  of  a  village  street.  Indeed,  it 
passes  through  several  villages  in  its 
course  ;  and  of  these  it  would  not  be 
easy  to  say  where  any  one  of  them  be- 
gins and  ends,  so  linked  together  are 
they  all  by  a  chain  of  heterogeneous 
houses.  This  is  a  subject  on  which  to 
be  reserved,  however,  because  it  might 
not  be  safe  to  confound  an  inhabitant 
of  Carmansville  with  one  of  Manhattan- 
ville.  It  is  ever  so  with  "  villes."  They 
have  conflicting  interests  and  sectional 
jealousies  to  keep  their  borders  in  a 
blaze.  Who,  for  instance,  could  imag- 
ine a  neighborly  feeling  between  some 
Temperanceville  and  the  Toddy ville 
that  jostles  its  elbow  ?  Bloomingdaie  is 
before  us,  and  from  this  village  the  road 
takes  its  name,  —  a  name  suggestive  of 
buxom  damsels  and  spring  blossoms. 
Bloomingdaie  is  the  village  nearest  to 
the  city,  but  its  surroundings  are  rural 
as  yet.  The  banks  on  either  hand 
are  well  shaded  with  trees.  Country 
churches  lift  their  towers  at  intervals. 
Large  asylums  loom  up  through  the  old 
trees,  —  asylums  in  which  lunatics  are 
cared  for,  and  asylums  for  orphan 
children.  There  are  old  family  man- 
sions that  stand  away  off  the  road  in 
grounds,  —  places  with  more  or  less 
family  romance  in  their  history  no 
doubt  ;  and  huge  sign  -  boards  over 
the  gateways  of  some  of  these  inform 
us  that  they  have  been  debased  into 
public  gardens,  where  people  congre- 
gate in  the  summer  time  to  smoke  and 
drink  beer.  Now  the  chirping  of  Eng- 
lish sparrows  is  heard  on  every  side, 


and  small  flocks  of  these  insolent  birds 
are  seen  foraging  in  the  dust  of  the 
road,  or  clustering  like  brown  blossoms 
on  the  hibiscus-bushes  and  other  low 
shrubs  that  skirt  it.  It  is  hardly  five 
years  since  a  few  dozen  of  these  birds 
were  imported  for  Central  Park.  With- 
in two  or  three  years  they'  increased 
prodigiously,  spreading  first  over  the 
bosky  grounds  of  the  villas  along  the 
Bloomingdaie  Road.  Thence  they  found 
their  way  townward,  —  for  the  sparrow 
is  essentially  a  bird  about  town.  Now 
the  eaves  of  up-town  houses  are  musi- 
cal with  their  chirps,  and  most  of  the 
city  parks  are  swarming  with  them. 
Calling  them  English  sparrows,  I  ask 
some  question  concerning  them  of  a. 
burly  policeman  who  is  patrolling  here. 
At  once  his  brow  contracts,  and  he 
avers,  in  the  mellifluous  accent  of  sea- 
green  Erin,  that  there  ain't  no  English 
sparrows  here,  and  folks  would  n't  have 
'em ;  that  they  are  Irish  sparrows,  de- 
scendants of  the  original  ones  let  loose 
in  Central  Park,  which,  I  think  he  stated, 
vacated  their  native  egg-shells  some- 
where in  the  vicinity  of  Cork. 

The  Bloomingdaie  Road  is  a  continua- 
tion of  Broadway,  taking  its  rural  name 
at  the  point  where  the  great  city  thor- 
oughfare touches  the  southwestern  an- 
gle of  Central  Park.  It  is  Broadway 
run  out  into  the  country,  in  fact,  to  en- 
joy a  breath  of  fresh  air.  Right  under 
the  steep,  woody  bank  that  slopes  to 
the  west  from  this  road  runs  the  Hud- 
son River  Railway,  and  much  of  the 
intervening  ground  is  occupied  by  mar- 
ket-gardens. So  is  much  of  the  tract 
lying  between  the  road  and  Central 
Park  to  the  east.  It  is  a  bright,  balmy 
October  day  as  I  pass  by  these  plots, 
and  the  odor  of  fragrant  pot-herbs  gives 
a  zest  to  the  air.  But  the  dust  will  soon 
be  stirred  up  now,  for  the  fast  trotting- 
horse  man  is  the  figure  that  gives  life 
and  movement  to  the  Bloomingdaie 
Road,  and  people  of  his  tribe  are  al- 
ready beginning  to  whirl  past.  A  fat 
livery-stable  keeper  in  a  spider  wagon, 
drawn  by  a  span  of  strawberry  horses, 
rushes  by  tugging  upon  his  nags  at 
arms'  length.  A  sporting  butcher  in  a 


1 868.] 


Along  the  Hudson  River  at  New  York. 


sulky  is  on  his  track.  He  ejaculates 
"Hi!  hi  !  "  to  his  cream-colored  pony, 
and  as  he  does  so  his  teeth  gleam  like 
those  of  a  leopard  under  the  cruel  curve 
that  he  gives  to  his  black-bristled  upper 
lip.  Here,  at  a  more  leisurely  pace, 
comes  a  swell,  driving  tandem  with  a 
team  of  blood  bays.  Probably  he  is  a 
gold  broker,  or  a  successful  gambler  in 
some  other  branch  of  the  profession. 
He  drives  an  English  sporting  "  trap," 
on  the  hind  seat  of  which  his  groom 
insecurely  sits,  and,  somewhat  igno- 
miniously,  faces  to  the  rear.  Superb, 
nevertheless,  is  this  young  man,  in  his 
claret-colored  livery  with  huge  metal 
buttons,  his  knee-breeches  and  top- 
boots,  and  his  shiny  hat  with  a  cockade 
on  it.  Later  in  the  afternoon  the  road 
will  be  crowded  with  teams,  from  the 
one-horse  buggy  to  the  heavy  drag 
driven  four-in-hand,  —  most  of  them 
come  over  from  the  Park  on  their  way 
by  the  Bloomingdale  to  the  Kingsbridge 
Road. 

Nearing  the  city,  the  aspect  of  the 
scene  changes,  and  changes  much  for 
the  worse.  The  market-gardens  are 
smaller  now,  and  many  of  them  lie  deep 
down  in  hollows,  —  the  roofs  of  the 
small  dwellings  that  stand  in  them 
sometimes  being  on  a  level  with  the 
road.  To  the  left  are  seen  the  rocky 
knolls  of  Central  Park.  Tall,  narrow 
houses  lift  their  heads  singly,  at  in- 
tervals, along  the  streets  that  bound 
the  Park,  blinking  right  and  left  with 
their  wistful  windows,  as  if  looking 
out  for  the  advent  of  other  buildings 
destined  to  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder 
with  them  in  the  future.  The  masses 
of  gray  rock  to  the  south  of  the  Park, 
just  where  the  city  begins,  are  very 
populous.  Log  shanties,  or  shanties 
made  of  rough  boards,  crown  every 
boulder,  or  stick  their  stove-pipe  chim- 
neys out  of  clefts  in  the  rock.  Some 
of  them  have  their  weather -gables 
and  roofs  covered  with  sheets  of  rusty 
iron.  Lean  and  hungry  dogs,  most 
of  them  large-sized,  but  undistinguish- 
able  as  to  breed,  roam  about  the  pur- 
lieus. Goats  enhance  the  sub-Alpine 
effect  of  the  place  ;  but  it  would  re- 


quire some  stretch  of  imagination  to 
make  the  whitewashed  hut  on  the  sum- 
mit of  yon  rock  a  Swiss  chalet,  and  the 
rag-picker  who  has  just  emerged  from 
it  a  chamois-hunter  going  forth  to  stalk 
the  familiar  kids  that  cluster  on  the 
neighboring  peaks.  Small  children, 
fluttering  with  rags,  and  booted  with 
black  mud,  riot  and  tumble  everywhere 
among  these  free  crags.  Their  parents 
are  mostly  away  in  the  city,  roaming 
among  the  ash-barrels  and  garbage- 
boxes,  out  of  the  depths  of  which  they 
make  their  living  by  hook  and  by  crook. 
Soon  this  little  colony  of  half-savages 
on  the  rocks  will  have  lapsed  into  the 
past.  Blasting-powder  is  already  mak- 
ing havoc  in  the  vicinity,  and  grand 
mansions  with  their  appurtenances  will 
erelong  cover  the  ground  over  which 
this  curious  hamlet  of  squatters  is  now 
scattered. 

Down  to  the  right  now  I  take  my 
way,  where  the  railway  track  runs  close 
by  the  wharfage  along  the  Hudson  Riv- 
er. The  country  begins  to  merge  into 
the  city  here,  and  there  is  not  much  of 
the  rural  to  be  seen.  A  remnant  of  it 
may  be  discerned,  however,  about  some 
old  mansions  that  stand  between  the  rail- 
way and  the  river.  They  are  surround- 
ed with  gardens,  and  closely  shaded 
with  ancient  trees.  The  old  box-bushes 
in  the  gardens  are  yet  kept  trimmed  in- 
to formal  blocks  of  dark  verdure.  Gen- 
tility of  an  old-fashioned  kind  marks 
these  last  connecting  links  between  the 
country  and  the  city,  and  there  is  a 
suggestion  about  them  of  former  opu- 
lence and  family  pride.  Once,  as  I 
walked  in  a  bit  of  dark  and  damp  wood- 
land that  runs  from  the  rear  of  one 
of  these  houses  down  to  the  beach 
of  the  river,  I  came  upon  an  old  weather- 
stained  stone  lion,  grasping  with  one 
paw  a  stone  globe.  This  might  have 
been  the  heraldic  device  of  one  of  the 
early  lords  of  the  soil.  Possibly  it 
might  have  done  duty  in  former  days 
as  a  guardian  at  the  vestibule  of  some 
older  mansion  than  the  one  that  now 
stands  there  ;  and  its  appearance,  as 
it  lay  among  the  dank  herbage  of  the 
grove,  greatly  heightened  the  sense  of 


Along  the  Hudson  River  at  New  York. 


neglect  and  decay  that  hung  about  the 
whole  place. 

Wealth  and  poverty,  enterprise  and 
squalor,  clutch  at  and  jostle  each  other 
now,  as  the  road  gathers  itself  for  its 
plunge  into  the  city.  Columns  of 
tawny  smoke  rise  upward  from  the 
huge  chimneys  of  the  factories  that 
abound  in  this  district.  Every  board 
of  the  rough  fences  along  the  road- 
side is  used  as  an  advertising  medi- 
um, and  so  is  every  bit  of  rock  that 
crops  up  from  the  barren  soil.  Super- 
scriptions, in  great  black  or  white  let- 
ters, apprise  the  world  of  balms, 
bitters,  baby-jumpers,  and  a  hundred 
other  indispensable  things  in  the  way 
of  panaceas  and  labor-saving  inven- 
tions. Here,  just  on  the  margin  of 
the  river,  is  a  field  strewn  with  great 
blocks  of  brown  stone,  out  of  which 
many  stone-cutters  are  shaping  col- 
umns and  cornices  destined  to  increase 
the  gloom  of  an  architecture  that  is 
already  sombre  to  excess.  It  must  be 
in  brown-studies  that  the  architects  of 
New  York  work  out  their  designs.  A 
grassy  road  leads  down  to  the  river 
and  at  the  foot  of  it  some  small  pleas- 
ure-boats are  moored ;  but  the  place  is 
lonely  and  still,  and  no  sound  is  heard 
save  the  clink  of  the  stone-cutters' 
tools,  and  the  steam-whistles  of  the 
tug-boats  that  puff  by  each  other  on  the 
river.  Passing  on  along  the  front,  one 
is  led  to  reflect  on  the  character  of  the 
.successive  streets  that  run  down  to  the 
river.  The  gradual  demoralization  of 
these  streets,  as  they  near  the  manufac- 
turing district,  is  grievous  to  the  observ- 
er. Here  is  one  with  which  I  am  well 
acquainted  at  points  near  the  central 
ridge  of  the  city,  and  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  fashionable  avenues.  It  runs 
between  blocks  of  stately  brown-stone 
houses  there,  and  is  of  a  deportment  at 
once  gracious  and  reserved.  In  this 
locality  its  associations  are  of  the  lowest. 
The  block  of  houses  on  the  right-hand 
side,  as  I  follow  it  toward  the  river,  is 
of  brick ;  and  the  houses  are  lofty,  con- 
veying the  impression  that  the  specu- 
lator who  built  them  might  have  been 
subject  to  delirious  visions  of  a  future 


genteel  neighborhood  in  this  dreary 
district.  A  more  dismal  spectacle  than 
these  old  rattle-trap  tenements  now  pre- 
sent it  would  be  difficult  to  conceive. 
The  shattered  blinds  dangle  half  off 
their  hinges  from  the  windows,  threat- 
ening destruction  to  the  wayfarer  who 
treads  the  unswept  sidewalk  below. 
Most  of  these  houses  have  low  bar- 
rooms on  their  ground-floors,  with  cheap 
restaurants  or  oyster-cribs  attached. 
Here  and  there  a  few  small  and  mean- 
ly appointed  shops  are  to  be  seen, 
where  miscellaneous  goods,  ranging 
from  tape  to  tallow  candles,  are  dis- 
played for  sale.  The  doors  of  nearly 
all  the  houses  stand  open,  revealing 
dirty,  gloomy  hall-ways  with  rickety 
stairs  -leading  to  the  upper  floors. 
From  many  of  the  windows  above 
pop  forth  the  heads  of  women  and  chil- 
dren ;  for  the  houses  are  tenements, 
with  several  families  dwelling  on  each 
floor.  Opposite  to  this  depressing  row, 
the  whole  length  of  the  block  is  occupied 
by  an  immense  gas-work  concern,  the 
smoke  and  coal-dust  from  which  begrime 
all  things  around ;  near  this  are  a  sta- 
tion for  horse-cars  of  what  is  called  the 
"'cross-town  line,"  and  a  wharf  from 
which  ferry-boats  ply  to  Weehawken 
on  the  New  Jersey  side.  This  ferry  is 
not  a  pleasant  one  for  passengers  who 
cherish  prejudice  in  favor  of  quiet  lives. 
From  Weehawken  the  boats  come  gen- 
erally loaded  with  cattle  of  obstreper- 
ous New  Jersey  breeds.  Weehawken, 
for  all  its  romantic  name,  is  nothing 
but  a  huddle  of  low  drinking  -  shops, 
to  which  roughs  and  robbers  of  the 
worst  class  resort  from  the  city.  Re- 
spectable persons  who  are  rash  enough 
to  venture  across  the  river  by  this 
route  are  liable  to  be  maltreated  and 
robbed  during  the  trip,  — instances  of 
this  kind  having  more  than  once  oc- 
curred. 

The  explorer  who  extends  his  inves- 
tigations to  the  edge  of  the  river  here 
will  now  and  then  discover  that  his 
footsteps  have  not  fallen  in  pleasant 
places.  At  times  warning  whiffs  are 
wafted  to  him  from  some  huge  wooden 
abattoir,  urging  him  to  pass  on,  nor 


1 863." 


Along  the  Hudson  River  at  New  York. 


seek  to  penetrate  too  curiously  the 
mysteries  of  the  place.  The  sickly 
stench  peculiar  to  a  community  of 
swine  comes  up  here  from  a  great 
range  of  sheds  along  the  road  by  which 
I  go  toward  the  river.  On  either  hand 
the  lots  are  covered  with  pens,  in  which 
sheep  and  other  market  animals  await 
unconsciously  the  last  offices  of  the 
butcher.  The  sheep  are  crowded  to- 
gether in  long  sheds  on  one  side  of  the 
road  ;  they  are  very  dirty  and  bedraggled 
muttons,  recalling  no  pastoral  associa- 
tions of  Arcadian  shepherdesses  with 
blue-ribboned  straw  hats  on  their  co- 
quettish heads,  and  flageolets  at  their 
kissable  lips.  The  spruce  Verboeck- 
hoven  could  hardly  paint  such  untidy, 
demoralized  sheep  as  these,  though 
Jules  Breton  perhaps  might.  The 
space  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  road  is 
flooded  with  feculent  ooze,  —  a  Dead 
Sea  of  swill,  over  which  a  turkey-buz- 
zard might  love  to  hover,  perhaps  ;  but 
no  pure  dove  could  fly  over  it  without 
falling  stifled  into  its  pungent  slush. 
The  gray,  unpainted  boards  of  the  im- 
mense sheds  in  which  the  pigs  are  kept 
do  not  tend  to  relieve  the  monotony  of 
the  scene.  Further  on,  close  by  the 
wharf  belonging  to  the  concern,  are 
the  slaughter-houses,  where  passing 
glimpses  may  be  had  of  many  butch- 
ers at  work  on  long  rows  of  carcass- 
es that  hang  from  the  beams.  It  is 
not  a  pleasant  spot  to  linger  near. 
Leave  the  butchers  to  their  tasks  ;  but 
reflect,  as  you  go,  that  to  be  human  is 
to  be  carnivorous,  and  let  your  senti- 
ment for  the  occasion  be,  "  No  butcher, 
no  festive  board." 

Not  much  farther  on  do  you  go  be- 
fore the  place  alluringly  announced  as 
the  "  Free  Dumping-Ground  "  appeals 
to  your  senses  in  more  ways  than  one. 
Worse  than  the  horrible  odors  of  the 
swine-pens  are  the  fumes  that  hang 
over  this  disgusting  acre  of  city  gar- 
bage and  filth.  Pestilence  appears  to 
brood  upon  the  place.  And  yet,  in  this 
noisome  acre  there  is  a  mine  of  wealth 
and  beauty  and  health.  Fields  and 
market-gardens  shall  yet  rejoice  and 
grow  exuberant  under  the  influence  of 


its  fertilizing  composts.  Flowers  and 
grains  will  be  all  the  richer  for  it. 
Man  and  beast  will  derive  renewed 
power  from  it ;  and  so  through  innu- 
merable channels  its  benefits  will  be 
extended  to  the  painted  butterfly  and 
the  piping  bird. 

A  black,  unsightly  tract  is  that  in 
which  the  depot  of  the  Hudson  River 
Railway  stands,  with  its  grimy  build- 
ings and  bewildering  network  of  rails. 
Old  men  waving  flags  confuse  one  with 
abstruse  signals.  Wheezy  locomotives 
rush  out  from  enclosures,  make  short, 
jerking  trips  without  any  obvious  pur- 
pose, stop  suddenly,  as  though  they  had 
forgotten  something,  —  the  key  to  the 
signals  made  by  the  old  men,  perhaps, 
—  and  then  run  grunting  back  to  the 
points  from  which  they  started.  Inter- 
minable trains  are  coming  and  going, 
the  blackest  and  dirtiest  of  them  laden 
with  rows  of  immense  tubs.  You  pass 
all  these,  and  great  mountains  of  coal 
piled  up  within  strongly  fenced  enclos- 
ures, where  it  flashes  like  steel  in  the 
bright  sunshine.  The  posts  and  chains 
and  cradles  of  the  complicated  arrange- 
ments for  hoisting  it  stand  out  sharply 
against  the  sky.  At  the  piers  near  by 
coal-vessels  are  discharging  their  car- 
goes, the  apparatus  for  which  is  worked 
by  horses  or  mules,  driven  round  circu- 
lar platforms  by  whistling,  unconcerned 
boys.  About  the  gates  of  the  coal-yards 
dirty  old  women  lie  in  wait,  watching 
the  carts  that  go  out  loaded  with  coal, 
the  droppings  of  which  they  eagerly 
snatch  from  the  road,  and  thrust  into 
omnivorous  bags,  in  which  they  also 
carry  broken  victuals,  rags,  and  such 
rubbish  as  they  can  gather  from  the 
gutters  and  garbage-boxes.  Old  men, 
armed  with  shovels,  carry  on  an  un- 
civil wrar  against  these,  —  old  men 
whose  function  it  is  to  follow  the  carts 
to  a  short  distance  from  the  coal-yard 
gates,  and  recover  such  bits  of  the 
black  diamond  as  may  fall  to  the 
ground.  The  rough  clay  road  now 
leads  through  an  immense  tract  of  lum- 
ber, piled  in  towering  layers  upon  the 
ground  that  lies  between  town  and 
river.  The  perfume  of  the  fresh  pine 


Along  the  Hudson  River  at  New  York. 


[July, 


boards  is  ambrosial  after  the  exhala- 
tions of  the  pigpens  and  dumping- 
grounds.  Some  of  these  great  piles 
of  lumber  slope  from  the  perpendicu- 
lar, like  towers  of  Pisa,  and  suggest 
danger  to  the  wight  who  would  seek 
shelter  to  the  leeward  of  them  in  a 
gale  of  wind.  The  buzz  of  the  planing- 
mills  vibrates  on  the  ear,  and  huge  oil- 
stores  vitiate  with  their  odors  the  wood- 
land perfume  of  the  pine.  Here  lies 
a  fleet  of  ice-barges,  —  or,  rather,  of 
floating  ice-houses,  —  rigged  out  with 
a  forest  of  little  masts  fitted  with 
ropes  and  pulleys  for  hoisting  the  ice. 
Horses  are  at  work  making  short 
journeys  with  this  hoisting-tackle  ;  and 
the  clean,  prismatic  blocks  of  ice  are 
packed  into  heavy  wagons,  in  which 
they  are  carried  through  the  city.  Near 
by  is  the  ice-offi.ce,  along  the  street 
in  front  of  which  a  great  number  of 
ice-wagons  may  be  seen  ranged  before 
and  after  the  working  hours  of  the  day. 
Here,  too,  are  the  stables  in  which  the 
horses  of  the  company  are  kept.  Look- 
ing up  at  this  structure,  the  gazer  is 
apt  to  be  startled  by  the  apparition  of 
horses'  heads  thrust  out  of  second- 
story  windows.  But  the  ups  and  downs 
of  equine  life  are  nowhere  more  marked 
than  in  New  York,  where  horses  take 
their  ease  in  cellars,  as  well  as  in  the 
more  airy  apartments  up  stairs. 

Vacant  lots  where  stagnant  pools  lie 
reeking  have  now  to  be  traversed.  The 
ground  is  covered  with  heaps  of  rub- 
bish, —  ashes,  old  iron,  rags,  decaying 
animal  and  vegetable  matter,  and  that 
omnipresent  element  of  rubbish-heaps, 
the  tangled  hoop  arrangement  of  wire 
by  which  the  lovely  feminine  shape  is 
even  yet  sometimes  assimilated  to  the 
form  of  the  volcanic  peak.  Round  the 
heaps  are  squatted  groups  of  ragged 
children,  occupied  in  sifting  cinders 
from  the  promiscuous  mass.  One  half 
of  the  world  may  here  guess  how  the 
other  half  scantily  warms  itself.  These 
poor  children  are  expected  to  be  good 
and  honest,  of  course;  and  wouldn't 
the  old  man  of  the  coal-yard  chop  the 
fingers  off  any  one  of  them  with  his 
shovel,  if  a  dive  were  made  by  the 


shivering,  dirty  little  hand  to  lift  the 
smallest   nugget   of  his    coal  ? 

Such  things  be;  and  the  sky  looks 
bright  and  pleasant  riverward,  and 
pleasant  to  watch  are  the  white  sea- 
gulls as  they  describe  concentric  circles 
on  their  wide  wings.  Tug-boats  are 
puffing  to  and  fro  on  the  river,  tow- 
ing vessels  freighted,  with  lumber. 
Schooners  are  discharging  their  car- 
goes of  cord-wood  at  the  piers.  Great 
sea-going  steamers  loom  up  black  and 
grim  in  the  stream.  Mean  by  com- 
parison with  these  are  the  canal-boats 
packed  like  sardines  in  the  docks,  —  their 
lazy  hands  smoking  on  their  decks,  and 
exchanging  scurrilous  jokes  about  the 
gang  of  smartly  dressed  French  man- 
of-war's  men  passing  down  the  wharf. 
Sloops  loading  with  stable-manure  ex- 
hale their  fragrance  upon  the  air.  Ship- 
smithies  abound,  with  signs  setting  forth 
that  therein  are  "Anchors  made  and  re- 
paired." Old  iron  chains,  and  ship 
iron  of  all  sorts,  are  scattered  around 
their  thresholds.  Here  is  a  shipwright 
and  calker,  whose  sign  announces  that 
he  also  deals  in  wines,  liquors,  and 
cigars.  Sloop -stores  and  rectifying 
distilleries ;  spars  and  masts ;  blocks 
and  pumps  ;  steering-gear,  oars,  hand- 
spikes, and  other  things  in  which  mari- 
ners take  an  interest,  —  all  these  in- 
crease more  and  more  as  the  street 
leads  on  past  the  busier  piers.  Hay- 
barges,  like  great  barns  somehow  got 
adrift,  are  discharging  their  cargoes 
of  litter  and  fodder,  carts  for  the  con- 
veyance of  which  to  the  stables  through- 
out the  city  are  crowding  to  the  wharf. 
The  horses  that  draw  the  carts  appear 
to  take  great  interest  in  their  job  ;  but 
more  interesting  to  the  human  drudge  are 
the  long  rows  of  oyster-barges  that  are 
moored  permanently  along  the  wharves 
at  certain  points.  Villages  of  oyster- 
houses,  rather,  are  they,  very  compactly 
built  and  closely  ranged,  and  painted 
white.  Sloops  loaded  with  oysters  are 
continually  arriving  for  the  supply  of 
these  depots.  On  the  pier,  in  front  of 
the  gangways  that  lead  to  the  barges, 
groups  of  men  sit  upon  stools,  busily 
engaged  in  opening  the  bivalves,  which 


1 868.] 


Along  the  Hudson  River  at  New  York. 


they  throw  into  pails.  On  inquiry,  I 
find  that  large  quantities  of  these  oys- 
ters are  "kagged,"  as  my  informant 
expressed  it,  for  the  Western  market. 
They  will  keep  for  a  couple  of  weeks, 
he  says,  in  the  neat  little  ashen  kegs 
in  which  they  are  put  up.  He  was  a 
rough  but  civil  man  was  the  oyster- 
opener  to  whom  I  addressed  myself  for 
information,  and  his  grim  features  re- 
laxed into  a  smile  when  I  told  him  how 
the  passengers  in  a  railway  train  that  was 
.snowed  up  on  a  Western  prairie,  some 
years  ago,  might  have  been  starved  to 
death  but  for  the  fact  that  one  of  the 
•cars  was  freighted  with  oysters  thus  put 
up  in  kegs.  His  professional  pride  was 
tickled  by  this,  and  he  tendered  me  an 
-oyster  with  native,  though  untutored, 
affability.  The  poetry  that  tinges  the 
life  even  of  the  oyster-opener  is  ob- 
servable in  the  old  horseshoes  nailed 
to  most  of  the  gangways  ;  for  super- 
.stition  is  poetry,  and  there  is  some- 
thing mystic  and  pleasing  in  the  idea  of 
thus  exorcising  the  nocturnal  goblins 
by  whom  the  fresh  oysters  might  be 
spoiled.  Among  the  heaps  of  shells 
.accumulated  behind  the  openers  un- 
laved  boys  of  epicurean  "  proclivities  " 
forage  for  the  oysters  that  may  have 
been  rejected  for  their  suspicious  tang. 
You  now  pass  the  Hoboken  ferry- 
liouses,  to  and  from  which  crowds  of 
men,  women,  and  children  are  hurrying 
pell-mell.  Stout  Germans,  dragging 
their  stout  wives  after  them,  come  thun- 
dering down  street  to  catch  the  boat 
that  will  not  leave  her  dock  for  five 
minutes  yet.  People  always  run  to 
catch  ferry-boats,  and  always  try  to 
jump  off  them  before  they  come  within 
six  feet  of  the  wharf.  The  large  fronts 
of  premises  belonging  to  various  great 
steamship  companies  now  display  their 
wild  architecture  at  brief  intervals  along 
the  street.  In  some  of  the  docks  about 
these,  men  in  boats  are  engaged  in 
•dragging  the  turbid  waters  as  I  pass. 
Yesterday  there  was  an  awful  explosion 
here  at  noon.  The  steam-engine  used 
in  hoisting  to  and  from  the  Liverpool 
steamers  burst,  hurling  in  fragments 
into  the  air  a  wooden  building  of  great 


size,  together  with  the  blacksmith's 
shop  and  out-houses  attached.  Eight 
unfortunate  men,  who  happened  to  be 
on  the  premises  at  the  time,  were  blown 
and  scattered  far  away ;  some  of  them 
falling  scalded  and  shrieking  into  the 
water,  others  coming  down  in  mangled 
pulp  on  the  neighboring  wharves  and 
heaps  of  coal.  As  one  of  the  victims 
swam  wildly  about  in  the  dock,  scream- 
ing and  yelling  in  his  intense  ^gony, 
the  blood  of  the  spectators  ran  cold, 
and  many  of  them  had  to  turn  away 
from  the  terrible  sight.  Had  the  ac- 
cident not  occurred  during  the  din- 
ner hour,  when  most  of  the  men  em- 
ployed about  the  pier  were  absent, 
the  loss  of  life  must  have  been  very 
great. 

Yonder,  upon  a  clumsy  tub  of  a 
barge,  there  hangs  a  sign-board  an- 
nouncing "  Boats  and  Groves  for  Excur- 
sions." And  queer  picnic  parties  they 
are  that  make  up  these  excursions,  and 
sickly  are  the  groves  on  the  Jersey  and 
Long  Island  shores  to  which  the  ex- 
cursionists resort !  Classical  was  the 
grove  of  Academe.  Birnam  Wood  has 
memories  about  it  that  time  cannot 
kill ;  in  the  "  Let1  us  haste  to  Kelvin 
Grove,  bonnie  lassie  O,"  of  the  Scot- 
tish singer  there  are  sweet  suggestions 
of  love-making  under  green  and  whis- 
pering leaves  ;  but  to  the  groves  pro- 
vided for  the  gay  excursionists  of  New 
York  none  of  these  associations  belong, 
as  the  present  writer,  from  actual  ex- 
periences, can  aver. 

The  sailmaking  trade  looks  very 
flourishing  hereabouts.  It  ought  to 
be  flourishing,  for  see  the  thousands 
of  white-winged  schooners  and  other 
craft  that  are  flitting  to  and  fro  upon 
the  river.  Many  clothing-stores  for 
mariners  also  hang  out  their  attrac- 
tive goods.  Yellow  oil-skin  jackets, 
heavy  tarpaulin  overcoats,  with  "sou- 
wester"  hats  to  match,  and  coarse 
flannel  shirts,  are  flapping  everywhere 
from  the  rafters  of  the  wooden  awnings 
that  jut  out  over  the  greasy  sidewalk. 
Here,  too,  the  oddest  little  oyster- 
shops  abound.  Entering  one  of  these, 
which  presents  externally  the  appear- 


8 


Along  the  Hudson  River  at  New  York. 


[July, 


ance  of  a  deserted  dog-kennel,  I  find  it 
to  be  a  cell  of  about  twelve  feet  by 
eight.  There  are  three  small  tables  in  it, 
clothless,  but  kept  very  neat  and  clean. 
Over'  these  presides  a  stout,  florid 
woman.  Through  a  side  door  there  is 
a  glimpse  of  a  little  stall  of  a  kitchen 
beyond,  revealing  the  culinary  artist  of 
the  establishment,  — a  leisurely  be  whis- 
kered gentleman  in  Cardigan  jacket 
and  checked  apron,  who  reads  a  news- 
paper with  one  eye,  while  he  keeps 
the  other  on  a  simmering  oyster-stew. 
Canaries  that  pipe  in  their  cages  under 
the  low  roof  impart  an  element  of  re- 
finement to  this  little  retreat,  and  for 
bouquets  there  are  numerous  bundles 
of  aromatic  potherbs  suspended  from 
the  ceiling  and  on  the  walls.  Leaving 
all  these  allurements,  I  pass  on  along 
the  wharves.  In  one  of  the  slimy  docks, 
a  "  free  church  for  seamen  and  boat- 
men "  goes  undulating  up  and  down  to 
the  movement  of  the  lazy  tide.  It  is  a 
very  clingy-looking  old  structure,  pro- 
vided with  a  belfry  and  bell.  An  in- 
scription on  its  weather-beaten  gable 
informs  the  observer  that  the  church  is 
open  for  services  on  Wednesday  and 
Friday  afternoons  ;  but  one  feels  an  as- 
surance that  the  rickety  bridge  leading 
to  the  duck-like  old  edifice  will  never 
be  broken  down  by  a  rush.  The  name 
and  address  of  the  watery-grave  sex- 
ton are  also  lettered  on  the  hull.  Has 
he  a  grave-digger  in  his  pay  ?  or  does 
he  sew  up  in  heavily  shotted  hammocks 
the  inanimate  forms  that  come  to  him 
in  the  way  of  business,  and  heave  them 
overboard  ? 

Floating  steam-mills  now  tower  up 
from  the  docks,  faced  with  huge  pla- 
cards advertising  "  Meal,  oats,  corn, 
rye,  and  general  feed."  The  marine 
stores  begin  to  swarm  along  the  street, 
and  everything  is  characteristic  of  the 
great  seaport  town.  Numbers  of  those 
amphibious  beings  known  as  'long- 
shore-men are  working  or  lounging 
about  the  piers.  There  are  stores,  on 
the  door-posts  of  which  one  reads  that 
such  fascinating  things  as  "steam  vac- 
uums "  and  "  cop  waste  "  are  kept  for 
sale  within.  There  are  ship-chandlers, 


whose  establishments  are  blockaded 
with  ships'  compasses,  fenders,  pullies, 
blocks,  quadrants,  binnacles,  hand- 
spikes, telescopes,  and  all  things  that 
salt  and  boaty  be.  There  are  provision 
stores,  the  open  fronts  and  thresholds 
of  which  are  cumbered  with  enormous 
hams  sewed  up  in  canvas  painted  yel- 
low; with  herrings  in  kegs  ;  with  boxes 
of  palm-soap  and  other  soaps  ;  with 
saleratus,  smoked  fish,  "  extra  cider 
vinegar,"  fresh  Turkey  primes,  molas- 
ses, and  all  other  such  necessaries  and 
luxuries  as  are  specially  laid  in  for  those 
who  "  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships."  At 
the  corners  of  the  streets  are  planted 
semicircular  lunch-tables,  from  behind 
which  morose  proprietors  dispense  fly- 
blown oysters  and  bits  of  mouldy  pis 
in  little  plates.  Here  is  a  wooden 
structure  over  the  door  of  which  a 
board  with  the  word  "  Dining-Room  " 
painted  on  it  is  fixed.  Curious  in  re- 
gard to  this  concern,  I  inspect  it  more 
closely,  and  find  that  it  is  quite  full 
when  there  is  one  diner  in  it  at  a  time. 
All  along  the  sidewalks  are  glass-cov- 
ered cases  in  which  street  merchants 
display  their  mixed  wares.  Counterfeit 
watches,  mock  jewelry,  cheap  cutlery,  — 
that  would  be  dear  at  any  price,  —  brier- 
wood  pipes  carved  from  pine-knots, 
daggers,  pistols,  braces,  violins,  and 
everything  else  that  can  make  life  tol- 
erable, are  to  be  had  at  these  wonderful 
street  bazaars.  Here  and  there,  close 
by  the  doors  of  eating-houses,  small 
cigar  cells  belonging  to  the  establish- 
ments are  open  to  the  street.  Splendid 
is  the  attire  of  some  of  the  young  men 
who  attend  to  these,  with  their  am- 
brosial locks,  and  with  their  sky-blue 
cravats,  the  ends  of  which  are  passed 
through  bright  metal  bands. 

Washington  Market  is  a  feature  of 
the  river-front  here,  —  an  old  and  in- 
tricate pile  of  rickety  wooden  galleries, 
and  sheds  and  stalls.  It  lies  on  both 
sides  of  the  street ;  the  portion  to  river- 
ward  being  a  sort  of  village  of  provision 
stalls,  intersected  by  alleys.  The  husk 
of  the  old  place  is  decayed  and  shat- 
tered to  a  sad  extent,  but  the  kernel  is 
sound.  Householders  prefer  it  to  mcst 


1 868.] 


Along  the  Hudson  River  at  New  York. 


of  the  other  markets  of  the  city,  as  well 
for  the  excellence  as  for  the  compara- 
tive cheapness  of  its  produce.  Inward- 
ly, it  is  made  as  much  of  as  circum- 
stances permit.  Outwardly,  it  would  be 
a  disgrace  to  a  community  of  nest-build- 
ing apes.  Along  its  festering  walls 
crazy  little  parasitical  stalls  grow  out 
everywhere,  like  the  wens  on  diseased 
trees.  The  perennial  rat  has  it  much 
his  own  way  here  at  all  seasons,  and  in 
summer  the  place  is  rendered  noxious 
by  myriads  of  bloated  flies.  At  the 
cellar  doors  that  yawn  along  the  walls 
of  the  structure  outside  sit  frowzy,  slut- 
tish old  women,  watching  over  the  tin- 
ware and  crockery  laid  out  for  sale. 
They  smoke  short  but  admirably  col- 
ored pipes,  and  pass  esoteric  jokes 
with  old  men  who  come  forth  from 
their  burrows  under  the  market,  every 
now  and  then,  to  sweep  out  the  gutters. 
The  sidewalks  of  the  market  square  are 
lumbered  up  everywhere  with  barrels 
of  all  the  edible  roots  and  fruits  of  the 
season.  The  street  is  thronged  with 
market  vehicles  of  every  description. 
Carts  bearing  large  lath-work  cribs  full 
of  living  fowls  for  the  table  are  stand- 
ing by  the  stalls,  and  geese  poke  up 
their  long  necks  between  the  laths,  and 
cackle  querulously  for  their  native  pud- 
dles. Round  the  newspaper  stands, 
planted  here  and  there,  idle  men  and 
women  are  grouped,  improving  their 
minds  between  intervals  of  business 
by  the  inspection  and  perusal  of  the 
flash  police  papers  and  other  obscene 
trash  of  the  kind  by  which  the  city  is 


deluged.  Glaring  posters,  announcing 
pugilistic  encounters  and  other  re- 
fined entertainments,  are  stuck  every- 
where upon  the  timbers  and  boards. 
The  whole  place,  with  its  intricate 
nooks,  and  crannies,  and  huge,  dirty 
wooden  chests,  does  not  look  like  one 
in  the  purlieus  of  which  it  would  be 
safe  to  pass  the  night.  It  is  notorious 
as  a  resort  for  pickpockets ;  and  that 
manly,  interesting  variety  of  klepto- 
maniac known  to  the  police  as  a  "  sneak 
thief"  finds  in  the  crowded  and  tumul- 
tuous environs  of  Washington  Market 
a  fertile  field  for  the  exercise  of  his 
enviable  talents. 

The  shipping  and  steamship  trade 
along  the  piers  is  expanding  here,  and 
the  view  across  the  broadened  river  to 
the  Jersey  shore  is  obstructed  by  forests 
of  masts  and  spars  and  smoke-stacks. 
Bales  of  cotton  are  piled  along  the 
wharves,  or  trundled  by  busy  warehouse- 
men to  the  scales  beside  which  the  im- 
partial weighers  watch.  And  now  that 
bald  and  unsightly  conglomerate  called 
Castle  Garden  looms  upon  the  view,  — • 
Castle  Garden  of  the  many  vicissitudes, 
where  the  notes  of  the  Swedish  Night- 
ingale first  vibrated  upon  the  charmed 
American  ear;  where  now  the  wonder- 
ing emigrants  from  far-off  lands  first 
take  their  impressions  of  that  Colum- 
bia which  they  have  come  to  hail ;  and 
around  which  the  skeleton  trees  of  the 
Battery  point  with  their  ghastly  fingers 
at  the  jobbers  who  have  allowed  a  once 
pleasant  resort  to  go  to  ruthless  ruia 
and  decay. 


I0  The  Dole  of  Jarl  Thorkdl.  [July, 


THE    DOLE    OF    JARL    THORKELL. 

THE  land  was  pale  with  famine 
And  racked  with  fever-pain ; 
The  frozen  fiords  were  fishless, 
The  earth  withheld  her  grain. 

Men  saw  the  boding  Fylgja 

Before  them  come  and  go, 
And,  through  their  dreams,  the  Urdar-moon 

From  west  to  east  sailed  slow  ! 

Jarl  Thorkell  of  Thevera 

At  Yule-time  made  his  vow; 
On  Rykdal's  holy  Doom-stone 

He  slew  to  Frey  his  cow. 

To  bounteous  Frey  he  slew  her  ; 

To  Skuld,  the  younger  Norn, 
Who  watches  over  birth  and  death, 

He  gave  her  calf  unborn. 

And  his  little  gold-haired  daughter 

Took  up  the  sprinkling-rod, 
And  smeared  with  blood  the  temple 

And  the  wide  lips  of  the  god. 

Hoarse  below,  the  winter  water 

Ground  its  ice-blocks  o'er  and  o?er; 

Jets  of  foam,  like  ghosts  of  dead  waves, 
Rose  and  fell  along  the.  shore. 

The  red  torch  of  the  Jokul, 

Aloft  in  icy  space, 
Shone  down  on  the  bloody  Horg-stones 

And  the  statue's  carven  face. 

And  closer  round  and  grimmer 

Beneath  its  baleful  light 
The  Jotun  shapes  of  mountains 

Came  crowding  through  the  night. 

The  gray-haired  Hersir  trembled 
As  a  flame  by  wind  is  blown  ; 

A  weird  power  moved  his  white  lips, 
And  their  voice  was  not  his  own  ! 

"  The  ^Esir  thirst !  "  he  muttered  ; 

"The  gods  must  have  more  blood 
Before  the  tun  shall  blossom 

Or  fish  shall  fill  the  flood. 


1 868.]  The  Dole  of  Jarl  Thorkell.  II 

"The  /Esir  thirst  and  hunger, 

And  hence  our  blight  and  ban; 
The  mouths  of  the  strong  gods  water 

For  the  flesh  and  blood  of  man ! 

"Whom  shall  we  give  to  Asgard? 

Not  warriors,  sword  on  thigh  ; 
But  let  the  nursling  infant 

And  bedrid  old  man  die." 

"So  be  it!"  cried  the  young  men, 
"  There  needs  nor  doubt  nor  parle  " ; 

But,  knitting  hard  his  red  brows, 
In  silence  stood  the  Jarl. 

A  sound  of  woman's  weeping 

At  the  temple  door  was  heard  ; 
But  the  old  men  bowed  their  white  heads, 

And  answered  not  a  word. 

Then  the  Dream-wife  of  Thingvalla, 

A  Vala  young  and  fair, 
Sang  softly,  stirring  with  her  breath 

The  veil  of  her  loose  hair. 

She  sang  :  "  The  winds  from  Alf  heim 

Bring  never  sound  of  strife  ; 
The  gifts  for  Frey  the  meetest 

Are  not  of  death,  but  life. 

"He  loves  the  grass-green  meadows, 

The  grazing  kine's  sweet  breath  ; 
He  loathes  your  bloody  Horg-stones, 

Your  gifts  that  smell  of  death. 

"  No  wrong  by  wrong  is  righted, 

No  pain  is  cured  by  pain  ; 
The  blood  that  smokes  from  Doom-rings 

Falls  back  in  redder  rain. 

"The  gods  are  what  you  make  them, 

As  earth  shall  Asgard  prove ; 
And  hate  will  come  of  hating, 

And  love  will  come  of  love. 

"  Make  dole  of  skyr  and  black  bread 

That  old  and  young  may  live ; 
And  look  to  Frey  for  favor 

When  first  like  Frey  you  give. 

"Even  now  o'er  Njord's  sea-meadows 

The  summer  dawn  begins  ; 
The  tun  shall  have  its  harvest, 

The  fiord  its  glancing  fins." 


12 


S/.  MicJiaers  Night.  [July, 

Then  up  and  swore  Jarl  Thorkell  : 

"By  Gimli  and  by  Hel, 
O  Vala  of  Thingvalla, 

Thou  singest  wise  and  well! 

"Too  dear  the  ^sir's  favors 

Bought  with  our  children's  lives  ; 
Better  die  than  shame  in  living 

Our  mothers  and  our  wives. 

"  The  full  shall  give  his  portion 

To  him  who  hath  most  need  ; 
Of  curdled  skyr  and  black  bread, 

Be  daily  dole  decreed." 

He  broke  from  off  his  neck-chain 

Three  links  of  beaten  gold  ; 
And  each  man,  at  his  bidding, 

Brought  gifts  for  young  and  old. 

Then  mothers  nursed  their  children, 

And  daughters  fed  their  sires, 
And  Health  sat  down  with  Plenty 

Before  the  next  Yule  fires. 

The  Horg-stones  stand  in  Rykdal  ; 

The  Doom-ring  still  remains  ; 
But  the  snows  of  a  thousand  winters 

Have  washed  away  the  stains. 


Christ  ruleth  now  ;  the 

Have  found  their  twilight  dim  ; 
And,  wiser  than  she  dreamed,  of  old 

The  Vala  sang  of  Him  ! 


ST.    MICHAEL'S    NIGHT. 

CHAPTER  VI.  in   her  gay  holiday  dress  by  the  dim 

lights  of  the  waning  crescent  moon  and 

PHAT  night,  before  many  hours  had  the  early  dawn,  she  heard  the  thunder- 
passed  over,  and  Jeanne  had  sunk  ous  roll  of  the  surf  on  the  shore,  and 
from  troubled  thinking  into  restless  the  echoes  that  the  cliffs  %sent  back, 
dreams,  and  from  these  into  deep  un-  while  the  house  was  shaken  by  the 
broken  slumber,  the  winds  from  the  gusts  of  angry  wind.  Such  storms 
north  and  west  had  risen  from  their  se-  were  not  unfrequent,  and  Jeanne  felt 
cret  chambers,  and  were  riding  through  little  anxiety  for  her  father's  safety, 
the  darkness,  and  chafing  into  angry  deciding  in  her  own  mind  that  he  would 
waves  the  waters  of  the  Channel.  And  probably  have  given  up  the  fishing  ex- 
when  Jeanne  rose,  and  arrayed  herself  pedition  at  the  first  indication  of  bad 


1 868.] 


£/.  Michael's  Night. 


weather,  and  put  into  the  harbor  at 
Dieppe,  and  that  there  she  would  in 
all  probability  find  him  during  the 
day. 

Poor  Jeanne  !  It  was  not  the  fete 
day  she  had  looked  forward  to.  That 
had  been  a  day  all  bright  in  sunshine 
and  pleasant  excitement  in  her  antici- 
pations. Gabriel  and  she  were  to  have 
gone  together,  she  wearing  the  dress 
his  mother  had  given  her;  they  were 
both  to  see  for  the  first  time  the  Cita- 
delle  and  the  oyster-garden,  but  now 
the  storm  had  come  up,  and  there  would 
certainly  be  rain,  and  her  father's  fish- 
ing was  spoiled,  and  — -indeed,  it  must  be 
confessed,  that,  for  Jeanne,  the  weather 
within  was  as  bad  as  that  without.  The 
fatal,  angry  words  that  had  come  be- 
tween Gabriel  and  herself  were  still 
sore  in  her  heart.  If  she  could  only 
feel  light  -  hearted  and  content  again 
.as  she  had  done  before  this  had  hap- 
pened !  Gabriel  had  asked  her  to  mar- 
ry him.  Why  should  she  ?  That  meant 
to  leave  her  home,  to  leave  her  father, 
to  leave  the  coast.  She  had  not  yet 
thought  of  marrying.  Yes,  she  had 
had  always  a  vague  prospect  before  her 
in  the  future,  that  some  time  she  would 
marry  a  fisherman,  who'  would  help  her 
father,  and  live  in  the  cottage ;  but  this 
was  different,  —  altogether  different ;  she 
was  bewildered,  perplexed,  by  the  pros- 
pect that  opened  before  her.  She  had 
said  "  No  "  to  Gabriel,  sure  enough  ;  she 
was  glad  she  had  said  "No";  but  she 
wished,  with  a  sinking  heart,  that  they 
had  not  quarrelled.  Gabriel,  Gabriel, 
marry  Gabriel,  —  that  all  seemed  so 
strange  ;  and  yet  he  was  so  near,  so  close- 
ly tied  by  affection  and  habit  to  her  life, 
that  the  thought  of  estrangement  be- 
tween her  and  him  gave  her  a  bitter  pang. 
What  would  Aunt  Ducres  say  ?  An  un- 
easy suspicion  vexed  her  that  she  might 
take  her  son's  part  in  the  matter,— 
of  course  a  mother  always  did,  and 
Aunt  Duci-cs  loved  Gabriel  more  than 
most  mothers  do  their  sons.  A  dismal 
prospect  of  alienation  and  separation 
seemed  to  open  before  her,  a  maelstrom 
of  perplexity  seemed  ready  to  swallow 
her  up.  So  you  see  Jeanne's  thoughts 


before   her  little   mirror    were    by   no 
means  in  harmony  with  her  gay  attire. 

There  was  little  to  do,  when  she  was 
dressed,  but  her  bed  to  make,  and  her 
every-day  clothes  to  be  laid  away  ;  for 
she  had  set  all  the  house  in  order  over- 
night, even  to  the  grooming  of  her 
donkey,  that,  sleek  and  well  conditioned, 
stood  in  his  stall,  and  only  needed  to 
be  saddled  and  have  the  pannier  offish 
slung  across  his  back.  This  was  an 
easy  task  to  Jeanne's  adroit  and  expe- 
rienced hands.  So,  leading  her  donkey 
by  the  bridle,  Jeanne  walked  slowly 
down  the  lane  towards  the  Robbes' 
cottage. 

It  were  hard  to  imagine  a  dress  more 
suited  and  becoming  to  the  strong 
rounded  figure,  with  its  movements  of 
natural  grace  and  dignity,  than  the 
short  red  petticoat,  the  trim  flowered 
bodice,  and  the  fair  white  Norman  cap, 
beneath  which  appeared  heavy  braids 
of  golden-brown  hair.  A  threefold  sil- 
ver chain  encircled  Jeanne's  neck,  to 
which  hung  a  silver  figure  of  the  Ma- 
donna ;  and  heavy  gold  earrings,  heir- 
looms of  many  generations  in  her 
mother's  family,  completed  her  costume. 
In  her  hand  she  carried  her  rosary  and 
missal. 

A  pleasant  greeting  met  Jeanne,  as 
she  neared  the  Robbes'  gate,  from  the 
group  of  neighbors  and  friends  who  — 
all  like  herself  in  holiday  dress,  some 
on  foot  and  some  mounted  on  their 
donkeys  —  were  awaiting  the  assembling 
of  the  rest  of  the  little  company  before 
starting  on  their  day's  pilgrimage.  The 
stream  of  lively  talk  ran  on  with  added 
force  after  her  arrival ;  for  the  new  robe 
de  fete  had  to  be  examined  and  ad- 
mired, and  the  girls  crowded  about  her 
with  loud  ejaculations  of  approval,  as 
they  fingered  the  bows  of  ribbon,  and 
felt  the  delicate  texture  of  her  skirt. 

Marie  Robbe  stood  aloof  at  first, 
and  made  an  attempt  to  behave  with 
a  becoming  degree  of  coldness  in  re- 
sentment for  Jeanne's  bnisqncric  of  the 
previous  evening.  But  her  assumed 
dignity  was  not  proof  against  the  good- 
humored  indifference  of  Jeanne  ;  and  her 
little  airs  of  displeasure  melted  away 


St.  Michael's  Night. 


[July, 


when  Jeanne  began  to  arrange  the 
basket  of  fish  on  Marie's  despised 
donkey,  and  then  invited  her  to  mount 
her  own  handsome  beast. 

Others  of  the  villagers  came  up  by 
twos  and  threes  till  all  were  assembled, 
and  the  whole  company  began  to  move 
forward,  falling  into  the  natural  groups 
that  family  ties  or  mutual  sympathy 
dictated.  The  womeii  chatted  togeth- 
er over  their  household  concerns,  and 
the  men  discussed  the  prospects  of  the 
fishing-season.  The  children  of  the 
company  trudged  on  sturdily  by  the 
sides  of  their  mothers,  or  rode  before 
them  on  the  donkeys,  or  chased  each 
other  through  the  thymy  grass.  As  the 
morning  wore  on,  and  the  blustering 
wind  made  the  walking  more  fatiguing, 
the  talk  flagged;  even  Marie  Robbe's 
tongue  ceased  its  chatter,  and  she  al- 
lowed her  mind  to  fall  back  upon  the 
more  important  business  of  scheming 
how  it  should  be  her  turn  to  ride  on 
their  entrance  into  the  town.  This  at 
the  present  moment  was  the  most  ar- 
dent wish  of  her  heart,  and  if  to  this 
satisfaction  she  could  have  added  that 
of  passing  Frangois  Milette  on  her  tri- 
umphal entry,  and  have  poisoned  his 
happiness  for  the  day  by  some  coquet- 
tish slight,  so  that  his  very  holiday 
wine  should  become  gall  and  the  sweet 
fete  cakes  wormwood  to  his  taste,  per- 
haps she  would  have  experienced  the 
keenest  sense  of  pleasure  of  which  her 
nature  was  capable. 

Jeanne,  meanwhile,  was  walking  by 
the  side  of  Epiphanie  Milette,  whose 
pretty  face  did  indeed  look  pale  and 
careworn  enough  to  justify  the  belief 
of  some  people  that  she  had  received 
the  ominous  greeting  from  the  Fairy. 
It  is  true  that  evil  fortune  had  pursued 
poor  Epiphanie,  and  things  had  gone 
unkindly  with  her.  Her  father  had,  as 
I  said  before,  been  a  hard  man  of  no 
very  good  character,  on  whom  the  more 
pious  surmised  the  good  Saints  had 
laid  a  ban  on  account  of  certain  nefa- 
rious undertakings  under  shadow  of 
the  night,  bringing  him  more  than  once 
into  collision  with  the  coast  guards. 
Certain  it  is  that  the  fickle  fortune 


of  the  sea  had  never  smiled  upon 
Milette  as  a  fisherman,  nay,  had  most 
persistently  frowned,  and  yet  he  had 
had  at  times  unaccountably  large  sums 
of  money.  Madame  Milette,  during 
her  husband's  lifetime,  though  she  was 
always  well  clothed,  and  had  money 
to  spend,  had  a  sour  and  discontented 
look.  They  had  always  had  little  to  do 
with  other  people,  and  she  had  a  hard 
life  of  it,  it  \  .  >  said,  down  in  the  lonely 
house  on  the  cliffside  with  her  sickly 
child  and  her  bad  husband  ;  and  some 
of  the  women,  if  they  did  speak  taunt- 
ingly of  her  leather  shoes  and  new  chain, 
pitied  her,  and  were  ready,  when  the 
time  came,  to  do  her  a  good  turn. 

Jeanne's  good  aunt  had  been  one  of 
these,  and,  on  the  morning  after  that 
stormy  night  when  Milette  was  brought 
home  dead,  she  went  down  to  the  deso- 
late house  on  the  cliffside,  and  per- 
formed the  office  of  good  neighbor  to 
the  poor  widow,  who  was  sitting  there 
alone  with  her  daughter,  and  feeling, 
Heaven  help  her  !  more  bitterly  the  fact 
that  the  world  had  turned  its  back  on 
her  than  that  death  had  robbed  her  of 
her  husband.  For,  indeed,  the  death  of 
her  husband  confirmed  all  the  suspi- 
cions of  his  evil  life. 

That  stormy  winter's  morning,  just 
at  dawn,  when  the  two  fishermen  came 
stumbling  up  the  shingly  pathway  to  the 
lonely  house  bearing  the  body  drenched 
with  sea-water,  and  with  a  pistol-wound 
in  the  breast,  the  two  scared  and  trem- 
bling women  dragged  him  in,  and  laid 
him  on  the  bed,  asking  no  questions. 

So  the  shadow  of  Milette's  life  grew 
darker  over  his  death,  and  people  stood 
aloof  from  the  widow  and  her  daughter. 
Jeanne's  aunt  and  old  Madame  Len- 
net  were,  for  a  time,  their  only  friends  : 
and,  indeed,  on  one  of  those  cold,  win- 
ter days,  Madame  Lennet  had  gone  up 
to  see  Monsieur  le  Cure  himself,  to  beg 
him  —  which  she  did  with  tears  and  the 
simple  eloquence  of  her  compassionate 
heart  —  to  let  Milette's  body  receive  the 
full  rites  of  Christian  burial  without 
question  as  to  the  cause  of  his  death, 
usual  in  such  cases,  so  that  the  widow 
might  be  spared  the  additional  disgrace 


1868.] 


St.  Michael's  Night. 


and  misery  certain  to  result  on  inves- 
tigation. 

"  Without  doubt,"  argued  good  Ma- 
dame Lennet,  "  Milette  had  come  by 
that  ugly  wound  in  the  breast  in  an 
affray  with  some  of  the  smuggling  gang 
to  which  he  belonged,  and  who  were 
now  safely  hidden  in  one  of  their  clens 
on  the  coast,  or,  more  probably  still,  in 
some  English  seaport.  Their  own  nefa- 
rious traffic  led  them  to  'r  i  knowledge 
of  many  a  secret  asylum,  and  swift  and 
sure  ways  of  flight  Inquiry  into  the 
means  by  which  Milette  had  come  by 
his  death,  while  it  would  almost  cer- 
tainly fail  in  bringing  the  murderers  to 
justice,  would  only  make  certain  and 
public  the  facts  of  the  evil  doings  of 
the  murdered  man."  And  Monsieur  le 
Cure,  with  his  thin,  white  hands  clasped 
behind  him,  pacing  softly  to  and  fro  in 
his  dingy  little  room,  as  was  his  custom 
when  his  mind  was  disturbed,  though 
perplexed  by  the  question  in  which 
human  pity  seemed  to  confront  abstract 
justice  and  ecclesiastical  duty,  did  not 
turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  good  woman's 
petition.  He  dismissed  her  with  a 
promise  to  accede  to  her  wishes,  and 
with  his  benediction. 

As  time  went  on,  the  cloud  was  grad- 
ually lifted  off  the  Widow  Milette  and 
her  daughter,  especially  as  Epiphanie, 
then  growing  into  womanhood,  became 
a  fair  and  blooming,  though  somewhat 
delicate  girl.  Few  had  the  heart  to 
slight  the  gentle  young  creature,  who 
rarely  showed  her  downcast  face  and 
brown  eyes  anywhere  but  at  church. 

Jeanne  Defere  followed  her  good 
aunt's  example,  and  remained  a  firm 
friend  to  Epiphanie,  who  clung  to  her 
with  the  natural  instinct  which  binds 
the  weak  and  timid  to  the  strong  and 
resolute,  and  in  time  their  neighborly 
intimacy  ripened  into  a  close  and  lasting 
friendship.  Good  old  Madame  Lennet, 
likewise,  as  we  have  seen,  befriended 
the  widow,  and  never  turned  her  back 
upon  her  from  the  time  when  Pierre, 
her  son,  then  a  young  man  of  five- 
and-twenty,  had  come  home,  and  told 
his  mother  the  story  of  the  finding  of 
the  bruised  and  wounded  body  float- 


ing among  the  rocks  on  the  rising  tide, 
touching  her  kind  heart  by  the  picture 
of  the  two  pale  and  trembling  women 
who  had  met  him  at  the  threshold,  and 
taken  in  the  body  in  unnatural  silence, 
but  with  looks  of  dread  and  terror. 

Perhaps  the  plaintive  eyes  of  the 
younger  woman,  then  a  girl  of  seven- 
teen, had  touched  the  honest  heart  of 
Pierre  ;  he  did  many  a  good  turn  for 
the  widow  after  that,  and  often,  soften- 
ing his  boisterous  tones,  would  seek  to 
draw  Epiphanie  from  her 'quiet  corner 
at  the  village  merry-makings,  and  make 
her  dance  among  the  rest. 

Some  people  said  Pierre  Lennet 
would  marry  the  Widow  Milette's  timid 
daughter;  but  years  went  on,  Pierre 
went  voyages  and  returned,  ^and  had 
many  an  unlucky  turn,  and  Epiphanie 
won  the  heart  of  a  well-to-do  grocer 
from  Treport,  and,  after  a  somewhat 
long  wooing,  married  him,  —  though 
with  a  sad  grace,  as  people  thought,  and 
more  to  please  her  mother  than  herself. 
Madame  Milette  went  to  live  with  her 
daughter  and  the  honest  grocer,  in  the 
dingy  little  shop  on  the  quay  at  Trd- 
port. 

But  within  two  years  poor  Epipha- 
nie's  ill-starred  married  life  came  to 
an  end.  A  sharp  fever  seized  her  hus- 
band, who  died  after  a  few  days'  illness. 
His  relations,  who  had  always  disliked 
the  intruding  wife  and  her  mother,  took 
possession  of  the  little  stock  of  goods, 
and  the  young  widow  and  her  mother 
returned  to  their  old  home  at  Verange- 
ville,  —  the  mother,  a  disappointed  and 
embittered  woman  ;  her  daughter,  pale 
and  careworn  beyond  her  years. 

Epiphanie's  life,  however,  was  bright- 
ened by  the  presence  of  her  baby,  —  the 
only  token  of  the  brief  interlude  of  her 
wedded  life  brought  back  with  her  to 
Verangeville,  —  and  in  the  care  of  this 
child  the  whole  happiness  of  her  days 
centred. 

During  the  years  that  had  since  gone 
by,  they  had  lived  together  in  the  little 
house  at  the  foot  of  the  cliff,  supported 
partly  by  the  earnings  of  Epiphanie, 
who  wrought  skilfully  at  the  ivory  carv- 
ing for  which  Dieppe  is  famous.  She 


16 


5/.  Michael's  Night. 


[July, 


carried  in,  from  time  to  time,  the  little 
packet  of  thimbles,  crosses,  and  brooches 
that  she  had  made,  and  returned  with 
her  small  earnings.  This  source  of 
income  helped  to  eke  out  Francois's 
gains  as  a  fisherman.  Francois  was  a 
young  man  now,  twenty-three  years 
of  age,  and  had  been  at  home  for  two 
years  since  his  last  voyage.  He  was 
a  handsome  fellow,  and  had  done  well 
enough  as  a  fisherman,  as  any  one 
might  judge  by  old  Defere's  taking  him 
so  often  in  his  boat,  and  sharing  the 
profits  of  his  night's  work  with  him. 
Indeed,  Francois  seemed  to  bid  fair  to 
redeem  the  shattered  fame  of  his  family, 
and  to  win  back  respect  to  the  name  of 
Milette.  One  indiscretion  he  certainly 
had  committed,  and  that  was  having 
given  his  heart  to  Marie  Robbe,  who, 
as  we  have  seen,  set  small  store  by  the 
gift. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

"  IT  will  be  a  stormy  night,  Jeanne, 
sure  enough,"  said  Epiphanie,  looking 
to  seaward,  as,  with  the  rest  of  the  com- 
pany, they  journeyed  across  the  cliffs 
towards  Dieppe.  "  See  how  the  clouds 
are  flying,  and  the  wind  is  driving  hard 
ashore.  I  wish  they  had  not  started 
last  night." 

"  So  do  I,"  said  Jeanne. 

"  Francois  had  little  heart  for  the 
fishing,  I  know,"  said  Epiphanie  ;  "but 
I  thought  it  was  only  because  he  would 
iniss  the  fete  to-day  by  being  at  sea. 
I  wonder  if  he  thought  of  bad  weather. 
O  Jeanne,  I  wish  I  had  begged  him  to 
stay!" 

"  Don't  trouble  thyself!  "  said  Jeanne. 
"  It  was  n't  that  he  feared  bad  weather ; 
he  was  vexing  himself  because  he  could 
not  go  with  Marie  Robbe  to  Dieppe  to- 
day ;  and  I  '11  tell  thee,  Epiphanie,  — and 
this  is  my  mind  on  that  matter,  —  he  had 
much  better  have  bad  weather  at  sea 
than  fair  weather  with  Marie  ;  a  man 
may  get  to  know  what  the  worst  sea 
means  in  time,  and  learn  how  to  steer 
through  it,  but  a  false  heart,  — who  can 
ever  learn  the  shiftings  of  that,  without 
breaking  his  own  ?  " 


Epiphanie  shook  her  head.  "  She  is  a 
coquette,  it  is  true,  but  —  dost  thou  think 
she  will  not  marry  Francois  after  all  ?  I 
know  it  is  the  desire  of  his  heart,  and  in 
another  year  or  two  he  will  have  saved 
enough  to  marry  on.  Old  Robbe  is  well 
off  too.  She  has  danced  with  him  all 
summer  more  than  with  any  other  lad  ; 
and  every  bourrcs  after  the  Angelus  last 
Sunday  he  was  her  partner,  and  she  has 
taken  all  his  gifts." 

"  Oui  da !  "  said  Jeanne,  with  con- 
temptuous emphasis;  "and  she  will 
marry 'him  —  if — she  marries  not  some 
one  else  —  and,  as  bonne  amic  of  Fran- 
9015,  I  wish  she  would.  It  might  give 
him  a  sore  heart  for  a  while,  but  he 
would  learn  a  good  lesson  therefrom, 
that  is,  that  a  man  ought  to  choose  his 
wife  as  he  would  his  friend,  —  for  her 
good  faith,  and  for  the  good  qualities 
God  has  given  her,  and  not  for  this  or 
that,  her  dress  or  her  dancing,  with 
which  the  boil  Dicu  has  nothing  to 
do." 

"  Francois  would  take  it  very  hardly," 
said  Epiphanie,  leaving  the  abstract 
question,  with  which  she  had  no  con- 
cern, and  returning  to  the  fate  of  her 
brother. 

"Yes,  pauvre  gars"  said  Jeanne, 
sighing ;  "  but  I  don't  think  it  would 
hurt  him  so  much  as  thou  thinkest  for. 
He  would  see  what  a  false  heart  she 
had,  and  that  he  had  been  a  fool ;  and 
to  know  that  is  to  be  wise  sometimes. 
It  is  a  bad  thing  to  marry  ill,  for  either 
man  or  woman,  but  it  is  worse  for  a 
man,  I  think.  A  woman  is  miserable 
if  she  has  a  bad  husband,  without  doubt, 
—  more  miserable  than  a  man,  perhaps  ; 
but  then  she  will  think  all  the  more  of 
the  Sainte  Viergc  and  the  saints,  and 
consoles  herself  with  her  children  ;  but 
a  man  who  has  a  bad  wife,  for  him  there 
is  but  one  road,  —  c'est  au  diable." 

"  But  she  might  not  make  so  bad  a 
wife,  after  all,"  said  Epiphanie  ;  "some 
girls  that  are  foolish  enough  before 
grow  wiser  when  they  are  married." 

"No,  no,"  said  Jeanne,  "Marie  is 
stupid  because  she  has  a  bad  heart ; 
she  cannot  sew,  she  cannot  keep  the 
house,  she  cannot  make  the  best  of 


i86S.] 


MicliacVs  Night. 


little  troubles,  she  cannot  give  good 
counsel,  she  understands  only  to  do 
one  thing,  — to  torment ;  in  that  she  has 
wit,  in  that  she  has  sense  :  she  can  tor- 
ment with  the  patience  of  a  saint  and 
the  fury  of  a  devil." 

"  These  are  hard  words,"  sighed 
Epiphanie. 

"  One  ought  not  to  mind  hearing  the 
truth,"  said  Jeanne.  "It  is  better  to 
listen  when  they  tell  you  the  tide  is 
going  down,  than  shut  your  eyes  and 
hope  till  you  find  your  nets  are  stranded  ; 
for  my  part,  I  'd  rather  suffer  thirst  for 
a  while  than  sicken  my  stomach  by 
drinking  bad  cider." 

"  Thou  speakest  so  strongly,  Jeanne," 
said  Epiphanie,  almost  bitterly.  "  It 
makes  my  heart  heavy  to  think  of  him. 
I  —  I  know  what  is  to  —  to  be  dis- 
appointed, —  at  least,  to  have  to  be 
contented  with  what  one  does  not 
•want." 

Jeanne  looked  up  at  her  friend  ;  her 
eyes  lately  so  fierce  in  denunciation,  so 
stern  in  judgment,  melted,  softened, 
almost  to  tears.  She  laid  her  arm  on 
Epiphanie's  waist. 

"  Have  I  not  pity  ?  "  she  said.  "  O 
yes,  I  tell  thee  ;  and  it  is  that  that  makes 
me  feel  and  speak  so  hard.  It  is  al- 
ways so  with  me ;  when  I  feel  this  sor- 
row and  pity,  it  grows  and  grows,  and 
seems  to  make  my  heart  burn,  and  then 
I  speak  as  if  I  were  angry.  Tiens,  mon 
amie !  when  I  think  of  thee  and  the 
child,  and  pray  God  to  give  thee  some 
happiness  now,  when  thou  hast  had  so 
little,  when  I  get  up  from  my  knees, 
my  hands  ache  with  clasping  them  so 
tightly,  so  much  do  I  desire  it,  and  so 
much  does  thy  sorrow  pain  me." 

"  Tu  es  bonne  amie,  Jeanne,  I  know 
it  well ;  but  sometimes,  —  dost  thou 
know?— I  think  perhaps  Francois  and 
I  have  an  evil  fate  that  will  always 
bring  us  misfortune  ?  " 

"  I  tell  thee  no,"  said  Jeanne  ;  "it  is 
only  because  thou  art  so  full  of  fears  i 
Thou  hast  been  a  good  girl  always  ;  thou 
hast  done  the  will  of  God,  thou  hast 
never  done  evil  to  any  one  ;  if  thou  hast 
had  sorrows,  God  sent  thee  them :  they 
Lave  not  been  misfortunes ;  we  make  our 

VOL.  xxn.  —  xo.  129.  2 


own  misfortunes,  —  voila  la  difference  ! 
Le  bon  Dieu  t'aime,  and  he  has  confi- 
dence in  thee  ;  for,  behold  !  has  he  not 
given  thee  this  child  ?  "  and  she  laid  her 
hand  on  the  sleeping  child  in  Epipha- 
nie's arms. 

"Thou  always  puttest  me  in  good 
heart,  Jeanne,  and  I  begin  to  think, 
while  thou  art  talking,  that  perhaps  I 
may  be  wrong  about  Pierre,  and  that 
it  might  be  well  for  the  child,  too,  if  I 
married  him ;  but  then  I  go  back  again, 
and  think  I  am  too  sad,  too  quiet,  that  I 
should  not  make  him  happy,  and  I  fear 
lest  he  should  not  love  the  child.  Ah, 
when  one  has  beaten  down  one's  heart 
once,  Jeanne,  and  it  has  ached  long 
enough,  it  grows  heavy,  and  it  is  not 
hard  to  give  up  what  one  desires !  " 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Jeanne,  "how 
that  may  be.  I  think  thou  troublest  thy- 
self too  much  with  these  fears.  When 
one's  heart  is  at  peace,  and  makes  one 
no  reproaches,  one  may  take  what  is 
offered  one,  when  one  knows  it  is  good ; 
and  the  love  of  Pierre  —  is  it  not  good, 
I  ask  thee  ?  " 

"  If  I  did  not  think  so  much  of  it,  I 
should  not  be  so  afraid  to  take  it,  I 
think,"  she  said  with  a  sigh.  "  It  is 
like  a  dream,  Jeanne,  to  be  thinking 
again  of  Pierre  after  all  these  years,  — 
and  —  and  maybe  it  isn't  right  for  me, 
who  am  a  widow,  to  feel  so  towards 
him  whom  I  knew  before  I  was  married. 
There  are  many  things  that  make  me 
afraid;  but  I  will  tell  thee  all,  that  of 
which  I  have  never  spoken  before,  and 
thou  mayest  judge  for  thyself,  —  and  for 
me.  Long  ago,  when  he  first  used  to 
come  to  our  house,  and  used  to  make 
me  dance,  when  there  were  all  the  other 
girls  ready  to  dance  with  him,  — for  he 
was  always  the  favorite,  —  I  used  to  think 
it  was  pity  that  made  him  kind,  and  I 
felt  as  if  my  body  were  stone  and  my 
feet  lead,  and  I  could  dance  no  more, 
and  speak  no  more,  and  he  thought  me 
cold.  And  then  sometimes  I  thought 
he  did  not  think  of  pity  at  all,  and 
cared  nothing  that  I  was  the  smug- 
gler Milette's  daughter,  and  my  heart 
grew  warm  and  light  as  it  had  never 
done  before.  But  he  went  to  sea,  and, 


i8 


St.  Michael's  Nirht. 


[July, 


when  he  came  back  again,  I  thought, 
Perhaps  he  will  ask  me  to  be  his  wife  ; 
but  he  had  had  ill  luck,  — he  had  been 
wrecked,  and  lost  all  he  had.  The  night 
he  came  home,  I  was  down  at  your 
house,  and  he  came  to  supper,  thou 
knowest,  and  told  of  his  voyage;  and 
while  we  sat  round  the  fire,  little  Jacques 
Bignard  ran  in,  crying  that  a  man  had 
fallen  from  the  cliff  and  was  near 
drowning;  and  Pierre  jumped  up  and 
ran  out,  and  thou  and  thy  father  fol- 
lowed him  with  the  others,  but  I  stayed, 
—  I  dared  not  see  Pierre  jump  into  the 
dark  water  among  the  rocks,  for  I 
knew  he  would  be  the  one  to  do  it, 
being  so  much  younger  than  thy  father. 
A  dread  like  death  came  into  my  heart, 
that  he  might  be  drowned  now,  just  as 
he  had  reached  home.  I  could  faintly 
hear  the  shouts  below  on  the  shore,  for 
the  night  was  still,  the  men  were  call- 
ing to  each  other  about  the  rope  that 
Pierre  swam  out  with,  but  I  thought  it 
might  be  for  fresh  help,  and  I  was  sick 
with  fear.  I  knelt  down  before  the  cru- 
cifix, and  cried,  '  O  my  God,  have  pity 
upon  me,  and  spare  his  life  !  I  offer  thee 
this  love  that  is  the  life  of  my  life,  but 
spare  his  life,  which  is  more  dear  than 
my  own  ! '  My  heart  suddenly  filled 
with  a  great  joy  and  peace,  and  I  stood 
up,  and,  behold,  voices  of  rejoicing  on 
the  shore,  and  I  knew  that  God  had 
heard  me,  and  that  Pierre  was  safe.  I 
went  to  the  door,  and  held  the  lamp 
above  my  head  to  light  them  up  the 
path  ;  and  I  heard  them  coming  slowly 
and  heavily,  thy  father  and  Pierre  carry- 
ing the  man  who  seemed  dead.  It  was 
just  as  he  had  brought  home  my  father, 
Jeanne !  They  were  busy  with  the  poor 
drowned  man.  He  was  long  in  coming 
to  himself,  and  then  he  could  not  speak, 
or  at  least  only  English,  which  none 
but  Pierre  could  understand,  and  he  but 
a  little.  There  were  others  of  the 
neighbors  who  had  come  up  with  them 
from  the  beach.  I  went  out  to  get 
cider,  to  make  into  hot  drink  for  the 
men  who  had  been  in  the  water ;  and 
as  I  stood  in  the  shed  by  the  barrel, 
drawing  the  cider,  I  heard  Madame 
Robbe  and  Marie  Bignard  talking  just 


outside.  They  were  talking  of  Pierre,  — 
what  ill  luck  he  had  had,  so  different 
from  the  other  Lennets.  'Be  sure,'  Ma- 
rie Bignard  said,  'there's  worse  luck 
in  store  for  him  if  he  is  fool  enough 
to  marry  the  smuggler  Milette's  daugh- 
ter! Ever  since  he  has  had  to  do 
with  the  widow  and  that  girl  things 
have  gone  wrong  with  him, —  I  have  ob- 
served that!'  O  Jeanne,  I  could  not 
help  hearing  those  words,  and  my  heart 
became  as  lead  while  I  listened  !  " 

"  Malicious  gossips  !  "  said  Jeanne, 
with  indignant  violence  ;  "  why  shouldst 
thou  have  cared  what  they  said,  my  poor 
Epiphanie  ?  Madame  Robbe  speaks  the 
truth  but  once  in  the  month,  and  that  is 
when  she  goes  to  the  confessional  and 
tells  her  sins ;  and  it  is  time  to  cross 
one's  self,  and  call  on  the  good  saints 
for  protection,  when  Marie  Bignard 
speaks  well  of  one  !  " 

"  But  they  say  the  dead  and  listeners 
hear  the  truth  about  themselves,"  said 
Epiphanie,  smiling  sadly.  "  No,  Jeanne,- 
when  I  heard  that,  I  knew  how  it  would 
all  be.  The  Lennets  were  honorable 
people,  and  had  all  married  well.  I 
was  the  smuggler's  daughter ;  it  could 
never  be  otherwise.  I  could  not  make 
myself  what  I  was  not,  however  I  might 
try ;  I  remembered  my  vow.  God  re- 
quired it  of  me,  —  I  knew  that :  it  was 
not  because  the  women  that  loved  me 
not  had  said  this,  but  because  God  had 
let  me  hear  them  say  this.  And  I  knew 
what  people  would  say  of  Pierre,  and 
that  it  would  be  like  a  disgrace  to  him, 
and  so  ill  luck  would,  as  they  said,  stick 
to  him.  I  hid  myself  from  Pierre  all 
the  time  he  was  at  home,  nor  danced, 
nor  went  out  much  at  all,  and  went 
quickly  away  from  church  ;  but  told  no 
one,  —  neither  my  mother  nor  thee, 
Jeanne,  —  for  fear  I  might  be  shaken  in 
my  purpose.  And  I  walked  on  in  a  sort 
of  dream.  And  one  day  they  told  me  that 
Pierre  was  going;  his  ship  was  ordered 
to  sail  suddenly  at  a  few  hours'  warn- 
ing. I  knew  he  would  come  that  even- 
ing to  say  good  by,  and  I  ran  down  to 
the  shore,  and  hid  myself  in  an  empty 
boat;  I  saw  him  come  down  the  path 
on  the  cliff,  and  I  knew  he  had  been  to- 


1 868.] 


Michael's  Night. 


our  house,  and  was  going ;  I  shut  my 
eyes  till  he  had  passed,  and  then  I 
went  home.  They  said  it  would  be  a 
short  voyage,  but  it  was  nearly  two  years 
before  he  came  back. 

"  Mais  done,  Epiphanie  !  how  couldst 
thou  do  it  ?  "  said  Jeanne,  looking  with 
eyes  full  of  tender  pity,  almost  awe,  at 
her  friend.  "If  it  had  but  been  for 
religion,  thou  wouldst  have  been  a  mar- 
tyr.'" 

Epiphanie  crossed  herself.  "Hush, 
Jeanne  !  "  she  said  ;  "  my  heart  was 
weak  as  a  reed ;  but  God  aided  me,  I 
think.*'  After  a  pause,  she  continued  : 
"My  mother  was  sick  all  that  winter 
and  the  spring,  Francois  was  away, 
thou  wast  with  thy  aunt  at  the  Valle'e 
d'Allon,  and  I  had  no  friend  beside.  It 
was  then  Coutelenq  came,  and  was  kind 
to  my  mother,  and  helped  her  in  many 
ways.  My  mother  talked  always  of 
Coutelenq,  but  I  thought  of  Pierre  night 
and  clay.  '  And,'  I  said  to  myself,  '  if  I 
can  make  enough  money  to  keep  us  this 
winter,  when  Franqois  comes  home  he 
will  have  his  wages,  and  can  pay  Coute- 
lenq his  debt.'  So  I  worked  on,  some- 
times at  night,  and  sometimes  early  in 
the  morning ;  but  I  was  sad  and  sick, 
and  the  strength  seemed  gone  from  my 
hands.  I  set  off  one  day,  early  in  the 
morning,  to  take  my  ivory  work  into 
Dieppe,  and  hoped  I  might  bring  back 
the  money  with  me  ;  but  the  man  at  the 
shop  said  the  work  was  bad,  and  he 
could  not  give  me  the  full  price  for  it, 
and  two  pieces  he  would  not  take  at 
all.  I  cried  as  I  came  home.  I  felt  as 
if  the  bon  Dlcu  himself  had  thrust  me 
from  him.  Then  I  thought,  it  is  because 
I  have  forgotten  my  vow,  and  think 
always  of  Pierre,  and  desire  to  be  his 
wife.  *  For  some  there  must  always  be 
pain,  and  thou  art  one,'  I  said." 

"  O  Epiphanie,  Epiphanie  !  that  was 
too  hard  ! "  burst  out  Jeanne,  full  of  pity 
and  impatience  at  the  same  time.  "  God 
is  good,  and  does  not  sell  us  what  we 
desire,  but  gives  it  us  through  love,  and 
that  we  may  love  him  in  return.  He 
could  not  desire  to  make  thee  so  mis- 
erable !  " 

"  I  don't  know ;   Jeanne,   I   did  my 


best.  My  mother  was  ill ;  I  could  not 
forget  her.  Coutelenq  said,  "If  thou 
wilt  marry  me,  Epiphanie,  thy  mother 
shalt  have  no  more  care  ;  there  is  room 
at  Treport  for  her  also."  Epiphanie 
paused.  "Thou  knowest  the  rest, 
Jeanne,"  she  said. 

"Yes,"  said  Jeanne,  "I  know." 

"  I  was  better  in  health  at  Tre'port," 
continued  Epiphanie,  "after  the  child 
came,  for  I  had  him  to  think  of  and 
care  for.  O  mon  ange !  mon  petit 
marmot !  mon  seul  bonheur ! "  she 
cried,  suddenly,  holding  the  child  closer 
to  her  bosom,  and  pressing  kiss  after 
kiss  upon  his  rosy  face. 

She  had  told  her  story  hitherto  with 
unaltering  tones  ;  her  voice  now  was 
eager,  broken  with  sudden  tenderness. 
Jeanne,  with  instinctive  sagacity,  per- 
ceived the  omnipotent  thought  of 
Epiphanie's  heart :  in  the  child  her  life 
now  centred  ;  her  love,  her  conscience, 
vibrated  to  this  tender  touch  with  unal- 
terable loyalty  ;  through  him  all  things 
approached  her  heart ;  he  was  at  once 
the  key  that  opened  and  the  door  that 
barred. 

"Epiphanie,"  said  Jeanne,  "  thou  hast 
told  me  all  thy  story,  and  I  will  tell  thee 
what  I  think.  Thou  hast  been  as  good 
as  an  angel,  but  now  I  say  —  and  I  say 
it  with  a  good  conscience  —  that  thou 
shouldst  not  say  'no'  to  Pierre  any 
more.  Thou  hast  done  thy  duty  with- 
out thinking  of  thy  own  will ;  thou 
hast  been  good  wife,  good  daughter, 
good  mother,  — yes,  I  say,  —  let  me  go 
on,"  as  Epiphanie  appeared  about  to 
say  something,  "  I  don't  say  it  is  always 
good  to  give  a  child  a  step-father,  but 
thou  and  Pierre  are  different  from  most 
people.  If  thou  and  thy  mother  were 
to  die,  who  would  be  so  ready  as  Pierre 
to  provide  for  the  boy  ?  and  whom 
couldst  thou  trust  so  well  ?  I  tell  thee, 
Pierre's  heart  is  deep,  large  as  -the  sea ; 
he  loves  thee  and  all  things  that  belong 
to  thee,  —  thy  mother,  thy  child.  He 
has  loved  thee  at  home,  at  ::ea,  in  evil 
fortune  and  in  good ;  he  loved  thee 
then,  he  loves  thee  now,  and  he  has 
loved  thee  seven  long  years  !  No,  I 
have  not  finished  yet,  —  thou  wouldst 


2O  °'- 

say  something  of  thy  vow  ;  well,  look  at 
it?  _  thy  vow  !  Hast  thou  not  observed 
it  well  ?  I  tell  thee,  yes.  Thou  gavest 
up  thy  happiness  once,  and  thou  madest 
thy  husband  happy  while  he  lived;  I 
know  thy  life  at  Trcport,  and  how  thou 
wast  always  gentle  and  uncomplaining 
and  kind,  till  even  thy  husband's  rela- 
tions were  forced  to  love  thee !  Now, 
when  the  bon  Dieu  has  made  Pierre 
faithful  to  thee  still,  and  offers  thee 
again  some  happiness,  is  it  thou  who 
must  say  ;no'?  If  thou  thinkest  of 
thy  evil  luck,  and  that  thou  wilt  bring 
it  on  Pierre,  ma  foi !  I  don't  understand 
that.  Look  a  little,  —  Pierre  is  what 
one  may  call  rich,  I  tell  thee.  He  has 
money  in  Dieppe,  he  is  first  mate  of  his 
ship,  he  has  never  had  a  bad  voyage 
since  the  first  two,  and  he  cares  as 
much  for  the  Widow  Milette  and  her 
daughter  as  ever;  4 1  have  observed  that' 
(with  some  asperity  of  tone),  as  well  as 
Marie  Bignard !  Thou  art  no  longer 
'  Milette,'  but  the  Widow  Coutelenq,  — 
as  good  a  name  as  Robbe  or  Bignard, 
for  example  ;  and,  if  we  call  thee  '  Mi- 
lette,' still,  it  is  because  we  like  the  old 
name  better.  Eh  bien  !  I  will  tell  thee 
one  thing  more.  Thou  hast  done  thy 
duty  to  all,  —  to  thy  mother,  to  thy  hus- 
band, to  me,  —  always,  Epiphanie;  but 
there  remains  still  one  whom  thou  hast 
wronged ;  je  le  dit  whom  thou  hast  made 
to  suffer,  whom  thou  hast  caused  to  put 
himself  in  danger  instead  of  staying 
tranquilly  at  home.  It  is  necessary  to 
make  this  one  amends,  and  who  is 
this  ?  It  is  Pierre  Lennet ! " 

Epiphanie  smiled.  "  It  sounds  like 
Monsieur  le  Cure,  when  he  gives  one 
advice,"  she  said,  "to  hear  thee  talk. 
Thou  art  always  so  strong  and  sure 
about  everything  ;  thou  always  usedst 
as  a  child  to  speak  out,  and  wast  always 
ready  to  do  things  that  the  others  held 
back  from  out  of  fear." 

"  Ah ! "  said  Jeanne,  with  a  sigh, 
"  there  's  no  great  good  comes  of  quick 
words  or  quick  deeds  after  all.  You 
should  be  sure  you  want  to  get  there 
before  you  jump  into  a  hole,  because 
changing  your  mind  when  you  are 
down  at  the  bottom  is  poor  work,  to 


Night. 


[July, 


my  thinking.  Look,  Epiphanie,  there  is 
Dieppe,"  and  she  pointed  to  eastward, 
where  a  sudden  bend  in  the  line  of 
cliffs  showed  them  a  glimpse  of  the 
harbor.  In  another  moment  the  towers 
of  the  Citadelle  rose  above  the  cliffs,  and 
the  sudden  clash  of  bells  borne  fitfully 
on  the  wind  met  them,  and  proclaimed 
that  they  neared  the  town. 

Marie  Robbe,  who  had  diplomatical- 
ly walked  an  extra  mile  to  accomplish 
her  object,  now  mounted  the  donkey, 
and  rode  on  triumphantly  in  front ; 
glancing  demurely  from  under  her  dark 
lashes  at  the  crowds  that  filled  the 
streets,  and  were  now  already  stream- 
ing into  the  great  church  of  St.  Jacques. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

AND  now  the  little  company  began 
to  separate,  —  some  to  visit  their  friends 
in  the  different  quarters  of  the  city 
where  they  were  to  spend  the  day ; 
others  to  the  market-place  to  do  their 
business  before  church-time  ;  and  the 
more  devout  going  at  once  into  the 
church,  to  spend  the  time  before  ser- 
vice in  visiting  the  shrines  to  the  Ma- 
donne  de  Bon  Secours  and  St.  Jacques, 
or  to  place  a  votive  candle  before  the 
shrine  of  the  entombment,  an  ancient 
and  rude  carving  in  stone,  representing 
the  group  of  mourning  women  and  dis- 
ciples at  the  tomb.  These  figures  stand 
within  a  deep  recess,  in  a  sombre  nook 
near  the  entrance  of  the  church.  They 
are  enclosed,  in  front,  by  an  iron  grat- 
ing, through  which  the  people  pass  by 
a  little  gate  ;  and,  after  placing  their 
candles  on  an  iron  frame,  not  unlike 
an  upturned  harrow,  that  stands  before 
the  shrine,  the  votaries  may  meditate 
on  this  ancient  and  sacred  scene  of 
sorrow  till  their  own  troubles  become 
ennobled  by  the  fellowship  or  lessened 
by  the  contrast. 

Epiphanie  Milette  was  one  of  these 
votaries,  and  left  Jeanne  at  the  market- 
place, going  herself  at  once  to  the 
church.  Marie  Robbe  accompanied 
Jeanne  as  far  as  the  end  of  the  narrow 
street  where  lived  her  uncle,  the  ivor}-- 


1 868.] 


£/.  Michael's  Night. 


21 


carver ;  and  Jeanne,  as  she  mounted 
her  donkey  once  more,  looking  back, 
saw  her  arranging  her  dress  with  a 
face  of  much  discontent  at  the  clouds 
of  dust  that  were  driving  along  the 
street. 

Jean  Farge,  at  whose  house  Jeanne 
was  to  stay  the  night,  lived  in  the  Pol- 
let,  —  an  ancient  part  of  the  town,  sepa- 
rated from  the  rest  of  Dieppe  by  the 
intervening  harbor  and  dock.  In  the 
Pollet  still  linger  some  of  the  primitive 
customs  of  ancient  Normandy,  nowhere 
else  to  be  found.  The  Polletais  are  a 
bold,  free  people,  who  love  the  sea,  and 
have  held  to  their  own  ways  with  a 
tenacity  that  perhaps  more,  strongly 
than  anything  else  bears  witness  to 
their  Scandinavian  blood.  They  still 
pride  themselves  on  their  ancient  title 
of  Loups  de  Mer,  —  a  title  most  likely 
handed  down  from  their  ancestors, 
those  veritable  sea-wolves,  who,  sweep- 
ing southward  from  the  far  away  north- 
ern forests  and  rocky  shores  of  Den- 
mark, came  down  upon  the  fair  coasts  of 
Normandy,  and,  stealing  up  the  rivers 
in  their  black  ships,  burned  and  plun- 
dered town  and  village,  and  drove  the 
miserable  inhabitants  before  them  like 
panic-stricken  sheep. 

Perhaps  there  is  not  in  history  a 
more  wonderful  tale  than  this  of  Nor- 
mandy, —  the  story  of  the  first  coming 
of  those  turbulent  sea  robbers,  —  those 
square-browed  and  yellow-haired  Vi- 
kings, who,  in  their  fierce  and  invincible 
strength,  seem  to  make  credible  the 
stories  of  the  Skalds  and  the  super- 
human heroes  of  the  Niebelungenlied. 
They  spread  over  the  land,  and  kept  it 
with  the  hard  grasp  of  men  who  could 
hold  as  well  as  win,  who  could  be  princes 
and  rulers  as  well  as  conquerors  and 
robbers.  Then  they  were  gradually 
softened  and  ennobled  under  this  sweet- 
er sky,  and  the  dew  and  sunshine  of 
the  Christian  faith.  Their  enterprise 
and  strength  and  daring  had  found  a 
new  channel  ;  and  then  rose  the  noble 
churches  of  Rouen,  Chartres,  and  Caen, 
and  an  order  of  knights,  who  seemed 
to  carry  victory  and  empire  before 
them.  When  Guaimar,  prince  of  Sa- 


lerno, and  his  trembling  subjects,  were 
ready  to  submit  to  the  demands  of  the 
haughty  Saracens,  who  besieged  his 
gates,  forty  Norman  pilgrims,  who  hap- 
pened to  be  at  the  time  within  the 
walls,  entreated  to  be  allowed  to  have 
horses  and  arms,  and  liberty  to  go  forth 
and  chastise  these  insolent  pagans. 
The  request  was  eagerly  granted,  the 
gates  thrown  open,  and  the  band  of 
Normans,  like  a  thunderbolt,  descended 
on  the  foe.  The  Saracens,  amazed  by 
the  furious  and  unexpected  onslaught, 
fled  tumultuously ;  and  the  Pilgrims 
returned  to  lay  down  their  arms  and 
take  up  their  weeds  once  more.  When 
Guaimar  would  have  loaded  them  with 
presents,  they  rejected  them  with  scorn : 
"  For  the  love  of  God  and  of  the 
Christian  faith,"  they  said,  "we  have 
done  what  we  have  done  ;  and  we  can 
neither  accept  of  wages  for  such  ser- 
vice nor  delay  our  return  to  our 
homes."  Some  say,  however,  that  the 
Polletais'  title  to  Loup  de  Mer  has  no 
such  historic  meaning,  but  is  simply 
another  name  for  "  Seals,"  —  an  appel- 
lation which  they  can  certainly  claim 
at  this  day  as  entirely  characteristic. 
They  love  the  sea,  and  follow  the  sea- 
man's craft  with  an  undivided  heart. 
No  Polletais  was  ever  known  to  be 
anything  but  fisherman  or  sailor,  and 
the  best  pilots  on  the  coast  are  found 
among  them. 

There  is  usually  some  solemnity  in 
the  taking  up  of  the  hereditary  craft, 
for,  before  a  young  man  goes  his  first 
independent  voyage,  he  is  presented  by 
his  mother  or  sister  with  a  new  fishing- 
net,  the  work  of  her  own  hands.  This 
net  is  his  sole  capital.  His  family  and 
neighbors  accompany  him  down  to  his 
boat,  and  there  embracing  him,  and 
calling  down  upon  him  the  blessing  of 
God,  and  the  protecting  care  of  St. 
James,  they  send  him  forth  upon  the 
sea,  which  they  neither  fear  nor  regard 
with  distrust. 

If,  on  a  pleasant  summer's  evening, 
about  dusk,  you  walk  along  the  wharf- 
side  of  the  Pollet,  passing  the  rows  of 
quaint  gabled  houses  that  open  on  the 
quay,  you  may  see  many  a  picturesque 


22 


S/.  Michael's  Night. 


[July, 


group  sitting  in  the  doorway ;  the  wo- 
men in  their  white  caps  and  bright- 
colored  petticoats,  knitting,  or,  shuttle 
in  hand,  weaving  fishing-nets,  as  the 
children  play  about  the  pavement,  gab- 
bling in  the  queer  Pollet  dialect,  which 
ignores  the  double  letters  and  all  j's 
and  g's,  and  gives  a  soft  and  flowing 
sound  to  their  speech  not  unlike  Ital- 
ian, and  thus  does  a  little  to  strengthen 
the  theory  held  by  some  fantastic  anti- 
quarians, that  the  Pollet  is  the  remains 
of  a  Venetian  settlement.  On  the 
benches  by  the  doorways  sit  groups 
of  men,  smoking  and  talking,  whose 
dress  if  it  be  Sunday  or  holiday  is 
worth  the  seeing.  It  consists  of  a  vel- 
vet cap,  ornamented  with  embroideries 
in  silver  thread ;  a  vest  of  blue  cloth, 
also  embroidered,  and  with  large  but- 
tons ;  breeches  laced  at  the  knee,  silk 
stockings,  and  low  shoes  with  silver 
clasps.  A  little  later  sounds  the  curfew, 
and  before  it  has  done  ringing  the 
streets  become  silent  and  deserted;  a 
light  here  and  there  twinkles  in  the 
windows,  supper  is  over,  the  prayer 
said,  and  the  Pollet  by  a  little  after  nine 
is  abed.  At  the  corner  of  a  narrow 
street,  as  the  darkness  deepens,  glim- 
mers the  feeble  light  of  a  yellow  candle 
burning  at  the  feet  of  the  Madonna, 
placed  there  by  some  devout  Polletais. 
The  sea  breaks  on  the  shingly  beach 
below  the  cliff,  the  lights  of  the  town 
twinkle  across  the  harbor,  the  wind 
sighs  pleasantly  through  the  many 
masts  in  the  dock,  and  so  the  Pollet 
sleeps  till  morning. 

They  tell  you  strange  stories  in  the 
Pollet.  There  it  was  that  I  first  heard 
the  story  of  the  little  wren,  that  sings 
on  ^Christmas  eve  and  proclaims  the 
Nativity.  Another  tale  of  this  kind  I 
heard  one  day,  as  I  sat  sheltered  from 
a  pelting  shower  in  a  fisherman's  cot- 
tage, watching  through  the  open  door- 
way the  rain  sweeping  down  between  me 
and  the  masts  in  the  dock,  and  the  rifts 
of  blue  sky  that  widened  and  widened 
over  the  gables  of  the  town  as  the 
storm  cleared.  I  asked  the  fisherman's 
wife  —  a  pretty  young  woman,  who  sat 
knitting  as  she  rocked  her  child  on 


her  knee  —  about  the    Dieppe   Light- 
house. 

"A  fine  light,"  she  said,  "and  an 
excellent  gnetteur  to  watch  it,  without 
doubt."  I  had  heard  of  Monsieur  Bou- 
zard  ?  —  a  man  of  a  great  courage  ;  the 
post  of  watchman  to  the  Dieppe  Light 
had  been  in  his  family  for  more  than 
a  hundred  years.  Old  Bouzard,  grand- 
father to  the  present  watchman,  (she 
had  often  heard  her  father  tell  of  him,) 
he  had  saved  one,  two,  three,  four,  five, 
six  lives  from  drowning,  —  counting 
them  on  her  fingers  with  her  knitting- 
needles,  —  "  he  was  a  swimmer  for  ex- 
ample !  "  She  had  been  told  that  some 
great  king"  (Louis  XVI.)  had  called 
him  'Le  brave  homme  Bouzard';  and 
the  great  Napoleon,  uncle  of  our  Em- 
peror, had  made  to  be  built  that  house 
for  him  and  his  family  forever ;  and  on 
it  one  can  read  of  all  the  people  they 
have  saved,  and  there  one  may  see  the 
medals  of  gold  and  silver,  and  learn  all 
the  honor  of  the  family  Bouzard.  "  But 
what  is  that?"  continues  the  pleasant 
little  fishwife ;  "  I  would  not  be  guet-> 
teur  for  my  part.  To  be  always  solitary 
in  the  wind  and  darkness  on  stormy 
nights  ;  and  then  the  phantom  ship,"  — 
with  a  shudder,  —  "  one  might  die  of 
fear  to  see  that." 

"  Phantom  ship ! "  I  said  ;  "  and  what 
is  that  ?  " 

Mademoiselle  had  not  heard  of  the 
phantom  ship  ?  that  was  strange,  but 
strangers  can  know  so  little  of  the  true 
marvels  of  a  place,  to  be  sure  ! 

At  my  request  she  told  me  the  story. 
"  On  All-Souls'  night  the  watchman  on 
the  pier,  as  he  walks  there  all  alone, 
just  after  midnight,  sees,  approaching, 
a  dark  ship,  with  black  sails,  without 
light,  without  sound,  but  it  makes  for 
the  harbor.  He  hails  it,  but  there  is  no 
answer  ;  he  shouts  to  those  on  board 
the  ship  to  throw  the  rope ;  but  then, 
—  then  while  he  watches  it,  —  all  slow- 
ly, slowly  it  disappears  into  the  dark- 
ness, and  he  hears  the  sound  of  cries 
for  help,  and  those  die  away  into  the 
darkness  also,  and  his  very  flesh  creeps, 
for"  —  suddenly  leaning  forward  with 
her  wide  brown  eyes  fixed  on  my  face, 


.1868.] 


St.  Michael's  Night. 


and  her  voice  dropping  to  a  dramatic 
whisper — "he  knows  the  voices;  they 
are  those  of  the  sailors  who  have  been 
•drowned  that  year!"  and  the  speaker 
suddenly  claps  her  saboted  foot  down 
on  the  ground,  and  continues  to  rock 
and  knit. 

It  was  to  one  of  the  houses  of  the 
Pollet,  then,  that  Jeanne  repaired,  after 
leaving  Marie  Robbe.  Her  path  lay- 
over the  draw-bridge  that  crosses  the 
dock,  and  along  the  wharf,  where  she 
had  to  thread  her  way  among  cables, 
and  piles  of  nets  and  tackle,  that  lay 
about  on  every  side.  Her  destination 
was  the  house  of  Jean  Farge.  Jean 
Farge  and  his  family  were  old  friends 
of  the  Deferes ;  and  the  quaint  little 
house,  built  in  the  side  of  the  cliff,  and 
approached  by  steps  cut  in  the  chalk 
rock,  was  always  their  stopping-place 
when  business  or  a  fete  day  brought 
Jeanne  or  her  father  to  Dieppe.  As 
Jeanne  passed  along,  she  saw  numbers 
of  fishing-boats  running  into  the  har- 
bor, seeking  shelter  from  the  storm; 
for  there  was  no  doubt  now  that  the 
wind  was  rising,  and  gave  it  promise  of 
a  rough  night.  How  the  wind  blew !  It 
came  sweeping  up  from  the  sea,  and  roar- 
ing into  the  hollows  of  the  cliffs,  —  said 
to  have  been  the  caves  of  smugglers  in 
former  times,  but  at  present  serving  for 
the  more  innocent,  but  less  interesting, 
purpose  of  storing  herring-barrels,  old 
spars,  and  disabled  rowing-boats  ;  —  it 
came  blustering  down  the  wharf,  send- 
ing a  cloud  of  dust  before  it,  and 
swinging  the  fishing  tackle  and  nets 
that  hung  against  the  sides  of  the 
houses,  and  rattling  the  rigging  of  the 
ships  that  lay  at  anchor  in  the  dock. 

Jeanne  was  glad  to  turn  into  the  shel- 
tered alley  that  led  to  Jean  Farge's 
abode.  Fastening  her  donkey  at  the 
foot  of  the  steps,  she  ascended,  and 
knocked  at  the  door.  All  were  from 
home  but  old  Madame  Farge,  who  sat 
at  her  spinning-wheel  in  the  window 
looking  on  to  the  wharf.  She  held  out 
her  hand  to  Jeanne,  and  kissed  her 
somewhat  ceremoniously  on  the  fore- 
head. "  Que  Uieu  te  benisse,  ma 
fille  !  "  she  said. 


"  Cue  Dieu  vous  garde,  madame  !  " 
replied  the  young  girl,  stooping,  and 
kissing  the  proffered  hand. 

Madame  Farge  was  a  true  Polletais ; 
and  to-day,  though  she  could  not  attend 
the  service,  she  was  arrayed  in  her  full 
holiday  attire.  She  was  a  little  old  wo- 
man, thin  and  spare,  with  a  wrinkled, 
sharp-cut  face.  "  Ai,  Jeanne !  but  thou 
art  somewhat  late,  ma  fille,"  she  said  ; 
"thou  hast  missed  the  others.  It  is 
too  stormy  for  me,  and  I  stay  by  my 
spinning-wheel." 

"  Yes,"  said  Jeanne,  "  it  is  bad  weath- 
er on  land,  let  alone  the  sea ;  and  my 
father  is  out  in  it  too  ;  he  started  last 
night,  with  the  tide,  at  seven  o'clock. 
No  doubt  but  he  will  put  into  harbor 
to-day.  I  saw  the  boats  running  in 
by  the  dozen  as  I  came  along  the 
wharf." 

"  Yes,  yes,  that  is  what  he  will  do," 
said  Madame  Farge ;  "thy  father  always 
was  a  prudent  man,  and  has  had  good 
luck ;  and  that  means,  ma  fille,  that  he 
has  always  had  a  stout  heart  and  a  cool 
head,  and  watched  which  way  the  wind 
blew,  —  eh,  Jeanne  ?  It  is  the  fools 
that  have  always  bad  luck,  —  is  it  not  ? " 

"  Maybe,"  said  Jeanne  ;  "but  it  is  not 
so  easy  always  to  be  wise.  But,"  she 
continued,  looking  through  the  little 
window  that  commanded  a  view  of  the 
harboi,  "  the  men  say  it  won't  be  much 
of  a  storm,  only  a  blow  enough  to  spoil 
the  fish-haul,  but  not  enough  to  do 
much  damage." 

"  Well,  I  hope  it  may,"  said  the  old 
woman  ;  "  but  I  don't  like  the  whistle  of 
the  wind  in  the  cliffs  ;  it  brings  the  gulls 
about,  squalling,  and  they  know  more 
about  bad  weather  than  the  men  do,  I 
fancy.  I,  for  my  part,  never  like  a 
stormy  fete  day,  nor  dost  thou,  either, 
I  suppose.  When  one  wears  ruban  de 
soie  like  that  on  one's  bodice,"  she 
continued,  stooping  towards  Jeanne, 
and  inspecting  her  attire,  "one  does 
not  like  rain  !  Ai !  a  present  from  thy 
Aunt  Ducrds,  —  is  it  ?  Ah  !  she  knows 
what  is  suitable,  to  be  sure.  Thy  cous- 
in Gabriel  was  here  last  night.  How 
was  it  you  did  not  come  together  ?  He 
told  me  something  about  it,  but  I  for- 


S/.  Michael's  Night. 


[July, 


get;  well,  he  and  my  grandson  have 
been  out  since  daybreak,  I  know  not 
for  what.  Thou  wilt  meet  them  at 
church,  most  likely,  and  you  can  return 
here  together,  —  or  wilt  thou  wait  here 
awhile  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  Jeanne,  "  it  is  time  to  go 
now  ;  I  don't  wish  to  be  late.  Epipha- 
nie  Milette  is  waiting  for  me  at  the 
shrine  of  Notre  Dame.  Gabriel  can 
come  with  the  other  boys." 

"  Eh  bien,  ma  fille  !  fasten  thy  don- 
key in  the  shed,  give  him  some  feed, 
and  return  soon." 

And  Jeanne  departed,  and  walked 
swiftly  along  the  wharf-side,  fearing  to 
meet  Gabriel  by  the  way.  But  she  had 
little  cause  for  such  concern.  Gabriel 
was  far  away,  and  she  was  destined  to 
meet  him  under  very  different  circum- 
stances, —  not  till  the  quick  anguish  of 
despair  of  ever  seeing  him  again  had 
shown  her  that  his  life  was  dear  to  her 
as  her  own. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

MADAME  FARGE  was  right.  The 
gulls  did  know  more  about  the  weather 
than  she  or  any  one  else.  The  wind 
rose  steadily  all  day,  and  by  afternoon 
the  gleams  of  light  that  had  brightened 
the  cloudy  heavens  every  now  and  then 
during  the  morning,  and  given  fitful 
hopes  of  clearing,  had  entirely  disap- 
peared, and  a  heavy  surging  mass  of 
vapor  spread  sulky  and  dark  from  ho- 
rizon to  horizon.  The  rain  began  in 
gusty  showers,  which  abated  nothing 
the  violence  of  the  wind.  The  fishing- 
boats  came  in  hour  by  hour,  seeking 
the  shelter  of  the  harbor,  unwilling  to 
face  the  storm  that  now  threatened  to 
last  all  night.  Knots  of  women,  blown 
about  by  the  wind,  stood  on  the  pier, 
watching  the  coming  in  of  the  boats. 
Some  of  them,  with  still  a  thought  to 
their  holiday  dress,  sheltered  themselves 
under  the  lea  of  the  sentry-box  that 
stands  by  the  great  crucifix  at  one  end 
of  the  pier.  The  more  anxious  leaned 
over  the  low  wall  of  the  pier,  and  gazed 
out  towards  the  dark,  threatening  sea 


and  sky,  or  watched  the  slow  approach 
of  the  boats,  that  one  by  one,  strug- 
gling and  laboring  in  the  heavy  sea, 
made  their  way  towards  the  mouth  of 
the  harbor.  From  time  to  time,  when 
the  cry  of  "A  boat  comes  !  "  was  given, 
the  crowd  became  suddenly  animated  ; 
the  talk  rose  by  a  rapid  crescendo  into 
an  almost  incoherent  babel  of  exclam- 
atory discussion,  accompanied  by  eager 
gesticulations  ;  and  all  rushed  with  one 
accord  to  the  end  of  the  pier.  As  the 
boat  entered  the  narrow  mouth  of  the 
harbor,  the  excitement  became  intensi- 
fied ;  all  eyes  were  strained  to  catch  the 
first  sight  of  the  rope  thrown  out  from 
the  vessel  by  which  she  was  to  be  towed 
into  dock. 

In  another  moment,  with  a  shrill 
whir,  the  rope  came,  and  had  scarcely 
touched  the  ground  when  it  was  seized 
by  the  eager  crowd,  men  and  women 
together,  who,  forming  into  a  double 
line,  to  the  jubilant  clack  of  their  own 
sabots,  trooped  along,  chattering  gayly 
as  they  pulled,  —  the  women  calling 
shrill  welcomes  in  reply  to  the  shouts 
of  greeting  from  the  men  in  the  boat 
below. 

Jeanne  had  watched  hour  by  hour  for 
her  father's  boat  in  vain.  A  little  before 
four  o'clock  the  tide  had  turned,  and 
begun  to  rise,  and  by  about  ten  o'clock 
it  would  be  high  tide  ;  and  the  men  pre- 
dicted that  the  storm  would  abate  after 
that,  and  go  down  with  the  falling  tide. 
But  there  were  six  anxious  hours  to 
pass  over  before  then,  and  the  storm 
seemed  to  grow  more  violent  every 
moment. 

"  It  was  possible,"  reasoned  Jeanne, 
"that  her  father  might  have  put  back 
into  Verangeville,  or,  if  he  had  got  down 
as  far  as  Treport,  he  might  have  put  in 
there  for  the  night ;  her  father  knew 
how  difficult  the  harbor  at  Dieppe  was, 
and  would  most  probably  choose  an- 
other." And,  in  view  of  all  these  con- 
tingencies/Jeanne  consoled  Epiphanie, 
who  thought  of  her  brother's  evil  luck, 
and  looked  out  on  the  grim,  desolate 
sea  with  despair  deepening  in  her  eyes 
every  moment.  How  much  Jeanne's 
own  stout  heart  misgave  her  as  she 


1 368." 


Michael's  Night. 


argued  thus,  and  sought  to  reassure 
her  more  disconsolate  companion,  we 
need  not  inquire  ;  but  she  kept  up  a 
brave  front  to  misfortune,  at  any  rate. 
Jeanne  tried  to  persuade  her  companion 
to  go  back  to  Madame  Farge,  to  stay 
there  till  the  evening  service,  on  account 
of  the  child,  while  she  herself  would 
remain  on  the  watch,  and  promised  to 
send  her  word  at  the  first  sight  of  the 
boat.  Epiphanie  did  not  leave  Jeanne 
willingly  ;  she  clung  to  her  hope-giving, 
cheery  presence  ;  but  at  last  reluctantly 
obeyed,  and  Jeanne  remained  to  watch 
and  wait  alone.  As  the  day  wore  on  to 
its  close,  the  boats  came  in  at  greater 
intervals,  and  old  Defe're's  boat  was 
not  among  them.  Jeanne  chatted  with 
the  other  women  and  one  or  two  men 
who  still  remained  on  the  pier,  and  lent 
a  hand  in  towing  in  the  boats  as  they 
arrived ;  but,  as  evening  approached, 
and  nearly  all  of  the  expected  fishing- 
craft  had  found  safe  harborage,  the 
number  of  spectators  gradually  dimin- 
ished, and  Jeanne  was  left  with  the 
few  watchers  who  still  remained.  As 
it  grew  dark,  the  bell  began  to  ring 
for  evening  service,  and  Epiphanie 
came  hurrying  along  the  pier,  wrapped 
in  her  long  cloak,  under  which  the  baby 
lay  and  slept,  sheltered  from  the  wind 
and  rain. 

"  Come,  Jeanne,"  she  said,  "  it  is 
time  to  go  up  to  the  office.  I  have 
brought  thee  some  supper  down  from 
Madame  Farge ;  thou  canst  eat  it  as 
we  go  along." 

So  they  went  up  together,  stopping 
once  or  twice,  with  the  involuntary  curi- 
osity of  country  women,  to  look  into 
the  shop  windows,  some  of  which  were 
already  lit  up,  and  displayed  their  wares 
under  the  bright  gaslight.  As  they 
crossed  the  market-place,  the  wind 
caught  them,  and,  like  a  malignant 
spirit,  seemed  to  hold  them  back  from 
the  church-porch.  Out  of  the  bluster- 
ing storm  they  turned  into  the  silence 
of  the  old  church.  The  lights  on  the 
high  altar  faintly  illuminated  the  chan- 
cel, but  the  great  body  of  the  nave  and 
side  aisles  lay  in  gloom,  the  tall  arches 
lost  themselves  in  the  sombre  dimness 


of  the  vaulted  roof,  and  the  glowing 
colors  of  the  windows  were  fading 
slowly  from  their  lovely  twilight  splen- 
dor. 

The  two  women  paused  for  a  moment 
at  the  Shrine  of  the  Entombment,  and 
then  passed  up  the  church.  Taking 
two  of  the  innumerable  chairs  piled  in 
a  stack  round  one  of  the  pillars  near 
the  chancel,  they  knelt  down  to  pass 
the  time  before  service  in  their  private 
devotions.  The  church  soon  began  to 
fill  rapidly,  the  high  vaulted  roof  re- 
echoing to  the  constant  slamming  of 
the  great  padded  door  at  the  west  en- 
trance, as  the  crowd  streamed  in.  The 
lights  upon  the  high  altar  grew  into 
full  radiance,  the  long  line  of  priests 
and  choristers  entered  the  chancel,  and 
the  service  began. 

It  was  the  Feast  of  St.  Michael 
and  All  Angels.  Round  the  church 
beat  the  storm,  howling  through  the 
flying  buttresses,  and  lashing  the  rain 
against  the  windows.  As  the  service 
went  on,  the  monotonous  chanting  of 
the  priests  gave  place  to  the  organ  and 
the  voices  of  the  choir;  the  sounds  of 
storm  without  were  drowned  in  the  tri- 
umphant tones,  and  it  seemed  as  if  St. 
Michael  and  his  hosts,  "the  shining 
squadrons  of  the  sky,"  fought  with  the 
rebellious  spirits  of  the  air,  and  drove 
them  back  with  sweet  tones  of  angelic 
victory. 

The  two  women  knelt  side  by  side 
in  the  strange  companionship  and  iso- 
lation of  their  devotion.  Each  joined1 
devoutly  in  the  triumphant  service  of 
the  church,  and  yet  each  poured  into  it 
the  warm  life  of  her  own  heart  with  its 
individual  longings  and  grief.  Jeanne's 
face  was  raised,  and  her  eyes  were  fixed 
on  the  high  altar  and  its  blazing  lights. 
The  warm  light,  falling  full  upon  her 
front,  made  her  like  some  glowing  pic- 
ture as  she  knelt,  with  her  high,  white 
Norman  cap  and  scarlet  bodice,  the 
trembling  ear-rings  and  the  chain  about 
her  throat,  her  soft  and  shining  hair 
that  fell  beneath  her  cap,  her  clasped 
hands,  and  fervent,  upturned  face.  Epi- 
phanie cradled  her  baby  in  her  arms  that 
rested  on  the  top  of  her  chair,  and  her 


26 


Minor  Elizabethan  Poets. 


pale  face  was  bent  over  the  rosy,  sleep- 
ing child,  that  lay  against  her  bosom ; 
her  lips  moved  with  her  prayers,  her 
brother  and  the  fishing-boats  were  in 
her  thoughts,  and  every  angry  gust  that 
blustered  round  the  church  increased 
the  sickening  pangs  of  her  anxiety  ;  for 
years  of  care  had  worn  away  the  youth- 
ful spring  of  her  spirit,  and  self-distrust 
and  despondency  were  almost  natural 
to  her. 

It  had  been  well  for  Jeanne  that  she 
had  had  others  to  think  of  aH  day ;  she 
had  carried  the  child  for  Epiphanie, 
and  spoken  words  of  cheer  to  many  an 
anxious  watcher  on  the  pier,  and  this 
had  given  her  more  comfort  than  she 
herself  knew  of  at  the  time.  When 
Epiphanie  took  the  child  from  her  arms, 
and  knelt  down,  Jeanne  understood  that 
her  care  was  set  aside.  Epiphanie  had 
thrown  herself  and  her  anxieties  and 
sadness  on  a  stronger  arm,  and  for  the 
time  needed  Jeanne  no  longer.  Poor 
Jeanne  !  now  she  must  think  of  herself 
and  her  own  troubles,  —  of  her  father, 
—  of  Gabriel ! 


She  repeated  her  usual  prayers,  but 
they  had  neither  strength  nor  savor  as 
heretofore,  for  all  was  confusion  with- 
in. There  was  fear  for  her  father  and 
poor  Frangois,  and  in  her  heart,  buf- 
feted and  tossed  by  doubt  and  perplex- 
ity, rung  her  angry  parting  words  with 
Gabriel.  She  bowed  her  head,  while 
the  floods  of  a  bitter  humiliation  passed 
over  her.  Suddenly  a  cry  rose  in  her 
heart  with  all  the  vehemence  of  youth 
and  strength.  "Spare  his  life,  spare 
but  his  life,  O  God!  His  anger  may 
remain;  we  may  never  be  at  peace 
again  any  more,  if  that  be  thy  will ;  but 
from  the  horror  of  death  and  danger 
O  save  him,  Good  Lord  ! "  For  clear 
and  strong  before  her  had  risen  a  vision 
of  Gabriel  encompassed  with  danger  ; 
it  impressed  itself  upon  her  mind  with 
importunate  persistency  and  the  clear 
horror  of  reality ;  and  in  that  moment 
in  which  she  learned  that  the  with- 
drawal of  his  love  must  be  as  the  dark- 
ening of  her  life,  she  accepted  this  if  it 
were  the  alternative  of  his  death,  and 
prayed  for  his  life  alone. 


MINOR    ELIZABETHAN    POETS. 


IN  the  April  number  of  this  magazine 
we  ventured  some  remarks  on  the 
genius  of  Spenser.  In  the  present  we 
propose  to  speak  of  a  few  of  his  more 
eminent  contemporaries  and  successors, 
who  were  rated  as  poets  in  their  own 
generation,  however  neglected  they  may 
be  in  ours.  We  shall  select  those  who 
have  some  pretensions  to  originality  of 
character  as  well  as  mind ;  and  though 
there  is  no  space  to  mention  all  who 
claim  the  attention  of  students  of  liter- 
ary history,  we  fear  we  shall  gain  the 
gratitude  of  the  reader  for  those  omit- 
ted, rather  than  for  those  included,  in 
the  survey.  Sins  of  omission  are  some- 
times exalted  by  circumstances  into  a 
high  rank  among  the  negative  virtues. 
Among  the  minor  poets  of  this  era 


were  two  imitators  of  Spenser,  —  Phine- 
as  and  Giles  Fletcher.  They  were  cous- 
ins of  Fletcher  the  dramatist,  but  with 
none  of  his  wild  blood  in  their  veins, 
and  none  of  his  flashing  creativeness 
in  their  souls,  to  give  evidence  of  the 
relationship.  "The  Purple  Island,"  a 
poem  in  twelve  cantos,  by  Phineas,  is 
a  long  allegorical  description  of  the 
body  and  soul  of  man,  perverse  in  de- 
sign, melodious  in  expression,  occa- 
sionally felicitous  in  the  personification 
of  abstract  qualities,  but  on  the  whole 
to  be  considered  as  an  exercise  of 
boundless  ingenuity  to  produce  insuf- 
ferable tediousness.  Not  in  the  dis- 
secting-room itself  is  anatomy  less 
poetical  than  in  the  harmonious  stanzas 
of  "  The  Purple  Island."  Giles,  the 


1 868.] 


Minor  Elizabethan  Poets. 


brother  of  Phineas,  was  the  more  potent 
spirit  of  the  two,  but  his  power  is  often 
directed  by  a  taste  even  more  elabo- 
rately bad.  His  poem  of  "  Christ's 
Victory  and  Triumph,"  in  parts  almost 
sublime,  in  parts  almost  puerile,  is  a 
proof  that  imaginative  fertility  may  exist 
in  a  mind  without  any  imaginative  grasp. 
Campbell,  however,  considers  him  a 
connecting  link  between  Spenser  and 
Milton. 

Samuel  Daniel,  another  poet  of  this 
period,  was  the  son  of  a  music-master, 
and  was  born  in  1562.  Fuller  says  of 
him,  that  "  he  carried,  in  his  Christian 
and  surname,  two  holy  prophets,  his 
monitors,  so  to  qualify  his  raptures  that 
he  abhorred  all  profaneness."  Amiable 
in  character,  gentle  in  disposition,  and 
with  a  genius  meditative  rather  than  en- 
ergetic, he  appears  to  have  possessed 
that  combination  of  qualities  which 
makes  men  personally  pleasing  if  it 
does  not  make  them  permanently  fa- 
mous. He  was  patronized  both  by 
Elizabeth  and  James,  was  the  friend 
of  Shakespeare  and  Camden,  and  was 
highly  esteemed  by  the  most  accom- 
plished women  of  his  time.  A  most 
voluminous  writer  in  prose  and  verse, 
he  was  distinguished  in  both  for  the 
purity,  simplicity,  and  elegance  of  his 
diction.  Browne  calls  him  "  the  well- 
languaged  Daniel."  But  if  he  avoided 
the  pedantry  and  quaintness  which  were 
too  apt  to  vitiate  the  style  of  the  period, 
and  wrote  what  might  be  called  modern 
English,  it  has  still  been  found  that 
modern  Englishmen  cannot  be  coaxed 
into  reading  what  is  so  lucidly  written. 
His  longest  work,  a  versified  History 
of  the  Civil  Wars,  dispassionate  as  a 
chronicle  and  unimpassioned  as  a  poem, 
is  now  only  read  by  those  critics  in 
whom  the  sense  of  duty  is  victorious 
over  the  disposition  to  doze.  The  best 
expressions  of  his  pensive,  tender,  and 
thoughtful  nature  are  his  epistles  and 
his  sonnets.  Among  the  epistles,  that 
to  the  Countess  of  Cumberland  is  the 
best.  It  is  a  model  for  all  adulatory 
addresses  to  women  ;  indeed,  a  master- 
piece of  subtile  compliment ;  for  it  as- 
sumes in  its  object  a  sympathy  with 


whatever  is  noblest  in  sentiment,  and 
an  understanding  of  whatever  is  most 
elevated  in  thought.  The  sonnets,  first 
published  in  1592,  in  his  thirtieth  year, 
record  the  strength  and  the  disappoint- 
ment of  a  youthful  passion.  The  lady, 
whom  he  addresses  under  the  name  of 
Delia,  refused  him,  it  is  said,  for  a 
wealthier  lover,  and  the  pang  of  this 
baffled  affection  made  him  wretched  for 
years,  and  sent  him 

"  Haunting  untrodden  paths  to  wail  apart." 

Echo,  —  he  tells  us,  while  he  was  aim- 
ing to  overcome  the  indifference  of  the 
maiden,  — 

"Echo,  daughter  of  the  air, 

Babbling  guest  of  rocks  and  rills, 
Knows  the  name  of  my  fierce  fair, 
And  sounds  the  accents  of  my  ills." 

Throughout  the  sonnets,  the  match- 
less perfection  of  this  Delia  is  ever  con- 
nected with  her  disdain  of  the  poet  who 
celebrates  it :  — 

"  Fair  is  my  love,  and  cruel  as  she 's  fair ; 

Her  brow  shades  frowns,  although  her  eyes  are 

sunny ; 

Her  smiles  are  lightning,  though  her  pride  de- 
spair ; 

And  her  disdains  are  gall,  her  favors  honey. 
A  modest  maid,  decked  with  a  blush  of  honor, 

Who  treads  along  green  paths  of  youth  and  love, 
The  wonder  of  all  eyes  that  gaze  upon  her, 
Sacred  on  earth,  designed  a  saint  above." 

This  picture  of  the  "modest  maid, 
decked  with  a  blush  of  honor,"  is  ex- 
quisite ;  but  it  is  still  a  picture,  and  not 
a  living  presence.  Shakespeare,  touch- 
ing the  same  beautiful  object  with  his 
life-imparting  imagination,  suffuses  at 
once  the  sense  and  soul  with  a  feeling 
of  the  vital  reality,  when  he  describes 
the  French  princess  as  a  "maiden 
rosed  over  with  the  virgin  crimson  of 
modesty." 

The  richest  and  most  elaborately  fan- 
ciful of  these  sonnets  is  that  in  which 
the  poet  calls  upon  his  mistress  to  give 
back  her  perfections  to  the  objects  from 
which  she  derived  them  :  — 

"  Restore  thy  tresses  to  the  golden  ore  ; 

Yield  Cytherea's  son  those  arcs  of  love; 
Bequeath  the  heavens  the  stars  that  I  adore  ; 

And  to  the  orient  do  thy  pearls  remove. 
Yield  thy  hand's  pride  unto  the  ivory  white  ; 

To  Arabian  odors  give  thy  breathing  sweet  ; 
Restore  thy  blush  unto  Aurora  bright ; 

To  Thetis  give  the  honor  of  thy  feet. 


Minor  Elizabethan  Poets. 


Let  Venus  have  thy  graces,  her  resigned  ; 

And  thy  sweet  voice  give  back  unto  the  spheres  ; 
But  yet  restore  thy  fierce  and  cruel  mind 

To  Hyrcan  tigers  and  to  ruthless  bears  ; 
Yield  to  the  marble  thy  hard  heart  again  ; 
So  shall  thou  cease  to  plague  and  I  to  pain." 

There  is  a  fate  in  love.  This  man, 
who  could  not  conquer  the  insensibility 
of  one  country  girl,  was  the  honored 
friend  of  the  noblest  and  most  cele- 
brated woman  of  his  age.  Eventually, 
at  the  age  of  forty,  he  was  married  to 
a  sister  of  John  Florio,  to  whom  his 
own  sister,  the  Rosalind  who  jilted 
Spenser,  is  supposed  to  have  been  pre- 
viously united.  He  died  in  retirement, 
in  1619,  in  his  fifty-eighth  year. 

A  more  powerful  and  a  more  prolific 
poet  than  Daniel  was  Michael  Drayton, 
who  rhymed  steadily  for  some  forty 
years,  and  produced  nearly  a  hundred 
thousand  lines.  The  son  of  a  butcher, 
and  born  about  the  year  1 563,  he  early 
exhibited  an  innocent  desire  to  be  a 
poet,  and  his  first  request  to  his  tu- 
tor at  college  was  to  make  him  one. 
Like  Daniel,  he  enjoyed  the  friendship 
and  patronage  of  the  noble  favorers  of 
learning  and  genius.  His  character 
seems  to  have  been  irreproachable. 
Meres,  in  his  "  Wit's  Treasury,"  says 
of  him,  that  among  all  sorts  of  people 
"  he  is  held  as  a  man  of  virtuous  dispo- 
sition, honest  conversation,  and  well- 
governed  carriage,  which  is  almost, 
miraculous  among  good  wits  in  these 
declining  and  corrupt  times,  when  there 
is  nothing  but  roguery  in  villanous 
man  ;  and  when  cheating  and  crafti- 
ness is  counted  the  cleanest  wit  and 
soundest  wisdom."  But  the  market- 
value,  both  of  his  poetry  and  virtue,  was 
small,  and  he  seems  to  have  been  al- 
ways on  bad  terms  with  the  booksellers. 
His  poems,  we  believe,  were  the  first 
which  arrived  at  second  editions  by  the 
simple  process  of  merely  reprinting  the 
title-pages  of  the  first,  —  a  fact  which  is 
ominous  of  his  bad  success  with  the 
public.  The  defect  of  his  mind  was 
not  the  lack  of  materials,  but  the  lack 
of  taste  to  select,  and  imagination  to 
fuse,  his  materials.  His  poem  of  "  The 
Barons'  Wars  "  is  a  metrical  chronicle  ; 
his  "Poly-Olbion"  is  an  enormous  piece 


of  metrical  topography,  extending  to 
thirty  thousand  twelve-syllabled  lines. 
In  neither  poem  does  he  view  his  sub- 
ject from  an  eminence,  but  doggedly 
follows  the  course  of  events  and  the 
succession  of  objects.  His  "Poly-Ol- 
bion" is  in  general  so  accurate  as  a 
description  of  England,  that  it  is  quoted 
as  authority  by  such  antiquaries  as 
Hearne  and  Wood  and  Nicholson. 
Campbell  has  felicitously  touched  its 
fatal  defect  in  saying  that  Drayton 
"  chained  his  poetry  to  the  map."  The 
only  modern  critic  who  seems  to  have 
followed  all  its  wearisome  details  with 
loving  enthusiasm  is  Charles  Lamb, 
who  speaks  of  Drayton  as  that  "pan- 
egyrist of  my  native  earth  who  has 
gone  over  her  soil  with  the  fidelity  of  a 
herald  and  the  painful  love  of  a  son ; 
who  has  not  left  a  rivulet  (so  narrow  that 
it  may  be  stepped  over)  without  hon- 
orable mention  ;  and  has  animated  hills 
and  streams  with  life  and  passion  above 
the  dreams  of  old  mythology."  But, 
in  spite  of  this  warm  commendation, 
the  essential  difficulty  with  the  "  Poly- 
Olbion  "  is,  that,  with  all  its  merits,  it  is 
unreadable.  The  poetic  feeling,  the 
grace,  the  freshness,  the  pure,  bright, 
and  vigorous  diction,  which  character- 
ize it,  appear  to  more  advantage  in  his 
minor  poems,  where  his  subjects  are 
less  unwieldy,  and  the  vivacity  of  his 
fancy  makes  us  forget  his  lack  of  high 
imagination.  His  fairy  poem  of  "  Nym- 
phiclia,"  for  instance,  is  one  of  the  most 
deliciously  fanciful  creations  in  the  lan- 
guage ;  and  many  of  his  smaller  pieces 
have  the  point  and  sparkle  of  Carew's 
and  Suckling's.  In  reading,  too,  his 
longer  poems,  we  frequently  light  upon 
passages  as  perfect  of  their  kind  as 
this  description  of  Queen  Isabella's 
hand : — 

"  She  laid  her  fingers  en  his  manly  cheek, 

The  God's  pure  sceptres  and  the  darts  of  love, 

That  with  their  touch  might  make  a  tiger  meek, 
Or  might  great  Atlas  from  his  seat  remove. 

So  white,  so  soft,  so  delicate,  so  sleek, 
As  she  had  worn  a  lily  for  a  glove." 

A  more  popular  poet  than  Daniel,  or 
Drayton,  or  the  Fletchers,  was  William 
Warner,  an  attorney  of  the  Common 
Pleas,  who  was  born  about  the  year 


iS6S.] 


l\Ii)ior  ElizabctJian  Poets. 


29 


1558,  and  who  died  in  1609.  His 
"Albion's  England/'  a  poem  of  some 
ten  thousand  verses,  was  published  in 
1586,  ran  through  six  editions  in  six- 
teen years,  and  died  out  of  the  mem- 
ory of  mankind  with  the  last,  in  1612. 
After  having  conscientiously  waded 
through  such  immense  masses  of  unin- 
teresting rhyme,  as  we  have  been  com- 
pelled to  do  in  the  preparation  of  these 
notices,  we  confess,  with  a  not  unma- 
licious  exultation,  that  we  know  War- 
ner's poem  only  by  description  and 
extracts.  Albion  is  a  general  name  for 
both  Scotland  and  England  ;  and  Al- 
bion's England  is  a  metrical  history 
— "  not  barren,"  in  the  author's  own 
words,  "of  inventive  intermixtures  "  — 
of  the  southern  portion  of  the  island, 
beginning  at  the  deluge,  and  ending 
with  the  reign  of  James  I.  As  James 
might  have  said,  anticipating  Metter- 
nich,  "after  me  the  deluge,"  Warner's 
poem  may  be  considered  as  ending  in 
some  such  catastrophe  as  it  began. 
The  merit  of  Warner  is  that  of  a  story- 
teller, and  he  reached  classes  of  readers 
to  whom  Spenser  was  hardly  known  by 
name.  The  work  is  a  strange  mixture 
of  comic  and  tragic  fact  and  fable,  ex- 
ceedingly gross  in  parts,  with  little 
power  of  imagination  or  grace  of  lan- 
guage, but  possessing  the  great  popular 
excellence  of  describing  persons  and 
incidents  in  the  fewest  and  simplest 
words.  The  best  story  is  that  of  Ar- 
gentile  and  Curan,  and  it  is  told  as 
briefly  as  though  it  were  intended  for 
transmission  by  telegraph  at  the  cost 
of  a  dollar  a  word.  Warner  has  some 
occasional  touches  of  nature  and  pa- 
thos which  almost  rival  the  old  ballads 
for  directness  and  intensity  of  feeling. 
The  most  remarkable  of  these,  con- 
densed in  two  of  his  long  fourteen- 
syllabled  lines,  is  worth  all  the  rest  of 
his  poems.  It  is  where  he  represents 
Oueen  Eleanor  as  striking  the  fair 
Rosamond  :  — 

"With   that  she   clashed  her  on  the  lips,  so  dyed 

double  red  : 

Hard  was  the  heart  that  jrave  the  blow,  soft  were 
those  lips  that  bled." 

It  is  a  rapid  transition  from  Warner, 


the  poet  of  the  populace,  to  Donne, 
the  poet  of  the  metaphysicians,  but  the 
range  of  the  Elizabethan  mind  is  full 
of  contrasts.  In  the  words  of  the  satir- 
ist, Donne  is  a  poet,  — 

"  Whose  muse  on  dromedary  trots, 
Wreathes  iron  pokers  into  true  love-knots  ; 
Rhyme's  sturdy  cripple,  fancy's  maze  and  clue, 
Wit's  forge   and  fire-blast,  meaning's   press   and 
screw. 

See  lewdness  with  theology  combined,  — 

A  cynic  and  a  sycophantic  mind, 

A  fancy  shared  party  per  pale  between 

Death's  heads  and  skeletons  and  Aretine  !  — 

Not  his  peculiar  defect  and  crime, 

lint  the  true  current  mintage  of  the  time. 

Such  were  the  established  signs  and  tokens  given 

To  mark  a  loyal  churchman,  sound  and  even, 

Free  from  papistic  and  fanatic  leaven." 

John  Donne,  the  ludicrous  complexity 
of  whose  intellect  and  character  is  thus 
maliciously  sketched,  was  one  of  the 
strangest  of  versifiers,  sermonizers,  and 
men.  He  was  the  son  of  a  wealthy 
London  merchant,  and  was  born  in 
1573.  One  of  those  youthful  prodigies 
who  have  an  appetite  for  learning  as 
other  boys  have  an  appetite  for  cakes 
and  plums,  he  was,  at  the  age  of  eleven, 
sufficiently  advanced  in  his  studies  to 
enter  the  University  of  Oxford,  where 
he  remained  three  years.  He  was  then 
transferred  to  Cambridge.  His  classi- 
cal and  mathematical  education  being 
thus  completed,  he,  at  the  age  of  seven- 
teen, was  admitted  into  Lincoln's  Inn 
to  study  the  law.  His  relations  being 
Roman  Catholics,  he  abandoned,  at  the 
age  of  nineteen,  the  law,  in  order  to 
make  an  elaborate  examination  of  the 
points  in  dispute  between  the  Roman- 
ists and  the  Reformed  churches.  Hav- 
ing in  a  year's  time  exhausted  this 
controversy,  he  spent  several  years  in 
travelling  in  Italy  and  Spain.  On  his 
return  to  England  he  was  made  chief 
secretary  of  Lord  Chancellor  Ellesmere, 
—  an  office  which  he  held  five  years.  It 
was  probably  during  the  period  between 
his  twentieth  and  thirtieth  years  that 
most  of  his  secular  poetry  was  written, 
and  that  his  nature  took  its  decided 
eccentric  twist.  An  insatiable  intel- 
lectual curiosity  seems,  up  to  this  time, 
to  have  been  his  leading  characteristic  ; 
and  as  this  led  him  to  all  kinds  of  liter- 


Minor  Elizabethan  Poets. 


ature  for  mental  nutriment,  his  facul- 
ties, in  their  formation,  were  inlaid  with 
the  oddest  varieties  of  opinions  and 
crotchets.  With  vast  learning,  with  a 
subtile  and  penetrating  intellect,  with  a 
fancy  singularly  fruitful  and  ingenious, 
he  still  contrived  to  disconnect,  more  or 
less,  his  learning  from  what  was  worth 
learning,  his  intellect  from  what  was 
reasonable,  his  fancy  from  what  was 
beautiful.  His  poems,  or  rather  his 
metrical  problems,  are  obscure  in 
thought,  rugged  in  versification,  and 
full  of  conceits  which  are  intended  to 
surprise  rather  than  to  please ;  but 
they  still  exhibit  a  power  of  intellect, 
both  analytical  and  analogical,  compe- 
tent at  once  to  separate  the  minutest 
and  connect  the  remotest  ideas.  This 
power,  while  it  might  not  have  given 
his  poems  grace,  sweetness,  freshness, 
and  melody,  would  still,  if  properly 
directed,  have  made  them  valuable  for 
their  thoughts ;  but  in  the  case  of 
Donne  it  is  perverted  to  the  produc- 
tion of  what  is  bizarre  or  unnatural, 
and  his  muse  is  thus  as  hostile  to  use 
as  to  beauty.  The  intention  is,  not  to 
idealize  what  is  true,  but  to  display 
the  writer's  skill  and  wit  in  giving  a 
show  of  reason  to  what  is  false.  The 
effect  of  this  on  the  moral  character  of 
Donne  was  pernicious.  A  subtile  in- 
tellectual scepticism,  which  weakened 
will,  divorced  thought  from  action  and 
literature  from  life,  and  made  existence 
a  puzzle  and  a  dream,  resulted  from  this 
perversion  of  his  intellect.  He  found 
that  he  could  wittily  justify  what  was 
vicious  as  well  as  what  was  unnatural ; 
and  his  amatory  poems,  accordingly, 
are  characterized  by  a  cold,  hard,  la- 
bored, intellectualized  sensuality,  worse 
than  the  worst  impurity  of  his  contem- 
poraries, because  it  has  no  excuse  in 
passion  for  its  violations  of  decency. 

But  now  happened  an  event  which 
proved  how  little  the  talents  and  ac- 
complishments of  this  voluptuary  of  in- 
tellectual conceits  were  competent  to 
serve  him  in  a  grapple  with  the  realities 
of  life.  Lady  Ellesmere  had  a  niece, 
the  daughter  of  Sir  George  Moore,  with 
whom  Donne  fell  in  love ;  and  as,  ac- 


cording to  Izaak  Walton,  his  behavior, 
when  it  would  entice,  had  "a  strange 
kind  of  elegant,  irresistible  art,"  he  in- 
duced her  to  consent  to  a  private  mar- 
riage, against  the  wishes  and  without 
the  knowledge  of  her  father.  Izaak  ac- 
counts for  this,  on  the  perhaps  tenable 
ground,  that  "love  is  a  flattering  mis- 
chief, that  hath  denied  aged  and  wise 
men  a  foresight  of  those  evils  that  too 
often  prove  to  be  children  of  that  blind 
father,  a  passion  that  carries  us  to  com- 
mit errors  with  as  much  ease  as  whirl- 
winds move  feathers,  and  begets  in  us 
an  unwearied  industry  to  the  attainment 
of  what  we  desire."  But  Sir  George 
Moore,  the  father  of  the  lady,  an  arro- 
gant, avaricious,  and  passionate  brute, 
was  so  enraged  at  the  match,  that  he 
did  not  rest  until  he  had  induced  Lord 
Ellesmere  to  dismiss  Donne  from  his 
service,  and  until  he  had  placed  his 
son-in-law  in  prison.  Although  Sir 
George,  compelled  to  submit  to  what 
was  inevitable,  became  at  last  recon- 
ciled to  Donne,  he  refused  to  contrib- 
ute anything  towards  his  daughter's 
maintenance.  As  Donne's  own  for- 
tune had  been  by  this  time  all  expended 
in  travel,  books,  and  other  dissipation, 
and  as  he  was  deprived  of  his  office,  he 
was  now  stripped  of  everything  but  his 
power  of  framing  conceits  ;  and  accord- 
ingly, in  a  dismal  letter  to  his  wife,  re- 
counting his  miseries,  he  has  nothing 
but  this  quibble  to  support  her  under 
affliction  :  — 

"John  Donne,  Ann  Donne,  Un- 
done." 

A  charitable  kinsman  of  the  Elles- 
meres,  however,  Sir  Francis  Wolly, 
seeing  the  helplessness  of  this  man  of 
brain,  took  him  and  his  wife  into  his 
own  house.  Here  they  resided  until 
the  death  of  their  benefactor ;  Donne 
occupying  his  time  in  studying  the  civil 
and  canon  laws,  and  probably  also  in 
composing  his  treatise  on  Self-Murder, 
—  a  work  in  which  his  ingenuity  is 
thought  to  have  devised  some  excuses 
for  suicide,  but  the  reading  of  which, 
according  to  Hallam,  would  induce  no 
man  to  kill  himself,  unless  he  were 
threatened  with  another  volume. 


1 868.] 


Minor  Elizabethan  Poets. 


During  his  residence  with  Sir  Francis 
Wolly,  Donne,  whose  acquirements  in 
theology  were  immense,  was  offered  a 
benefice  by  Dr.  Morton,  then  Dean  of 
Gloucester;  but  he  declined  to  enter 
the  Church  from  a  feeling  of  spiritual 
unfitness.  It  is  probable  that  his  habits 
of  intellectual  self-indulgence,  while  they 
really  weakened  his  conscience,  made 
it  morbidly  acute.  He  would  not  adopt 
the  profession  of  law  or  divinity  for  a 
subsistence,  though  he  was  willing  to 
depend  for  subsistence  on  the  charity 
of  others.  Izaak  Walton  praises  his 
humility  ;  but  his  humility  was  another 
name  for  his  indisposition  to  or  inability 
for  practical  labor,  —  a  humility  which 
makes  self-depreciation  an  excuse  for 
moral  laziness,  and  shrinks  as  ner- 
vously from  duty  as  from  pride.  Both 
law  and  divinity,  therefore,  he  con- 
tinued to  make  the  luxuries  of  his  ex- 
istence. 

In  good  time  this  selfish  intellectual- 
ity resulted  in  that  worst  of  intellectual 
diseases,  mental  disgust.  After  the 
death  of  his  patron,  his  father-in-law  al- 
lowed him  but  £  80  a  year  to  support 
his  family.  Sickness,  and  affliction,  and 
comparative  poverty  came  to  wake  him 
from  his  dream,  and  reveal  him  to  him- 
self. In  some  affecting  letters,  which 
have  been  preserved,  he  moans  over  his 
moral  inefficiency,  and  confesses  to  an 
"  over-earnest  desire  for  the  next  life  " 
to  escape  from  the  perplexities  of  this. 
"I  grow  older,"  he  says,  "and  not  bet- 
ter; my  strength  diminisheth,  and  my 
load  grows  heavier ;  and  yet  I  would 
fain  be  or  do  something;  but  that  I  can- 
not tell  what  is  no  wonder  in  this  time 
of  my  sadness  ;  for  to  choose  is  to  do  ; 
but  to  be  no  part  of  anybody  is  as  to 
be  nothing :  and  so  I  am,  and  shall  so 
judge  myself,  unless  I  could  be  so  in- 
corporated into  a  part  of  the  world  as 
by  business  to  contribute  some  suste- 
nation  to  the  whole.  This  I  made  ac- 
count ;  I  began  early,  when  I  undertook 
the  study  of  our  laws  ;  but  was  diverted 
by  leaving  that,  and  embracing  the 
worst  voluptuousness,  an  hydroptic  im- 
moderate desire  of  human  learning  and 
languages Now  I  am  become  so 


little,  or  such  a  nothing,  that  I  am  not 
a  subject  good  enough  for  one  of  my 
own  letters I  am  rather  a  sick- 
ness or  disease  of  the  world  than  any 
part  of  it,  and  therefore  neither  love  it 
nor  life."  And  he  closes  with  the 
words,  "Your  poor  friend  and  God's 
poor  patient,  John  Donne." 

And  this  was  the  mental  state  to 
which  Donne  was  reduced  by  thirty 
years  of  incessant  study,  —  of  study  that 
sought  only  the  gratification  of  intel- 
lectual caprice  and  of  intellectual  curi- 
osity, of  study  without  a  practical  object. 
From  this  wretched  mood  of  self-disgust 
and  disgust  with  existence,  this  fret  of 
thought  at  the  impotence  of  will,  we 
may  date  Donne's  gradual  emancipa- 
tion from  his  besetting  sins  ;  for  life,  at 
such  a  point  of  spiritual  experience,  is 
only  possible  under  the  form  of  a  new 
life.  His  theological  studies  and  medi- 
tations were  now  probably  directed 
more  to  the  building  up  of  character, 
and  less  to  the  pandering  to  his  glut- 
tonous intellectuality.  His  recovery 
was  a  work  of  years  ;  and  it  is  doubtful 
if  he  would  ever  have  chosen  a  profes- 
sion, if  King  James,  delighted  with  his 
views  regarding  the  questions  of  su- 
premacy and  allegiance,  and  amazed  at 
his  opulence  in  what  then  was  called 
learning,  had  not  insisted  on  his  enter- 
ing the  Church.  After  much  hesitation, 
and  long  preparation,  Donne  yielded  to 
the  royal  command.  He  was  succes- 
sively made  Chaplain  in  Ordinary,  Lec- 
turer at  Lincoln's  Inn,  and  Dean  of  St. 
Paul's ;  was  soon  recognized  as  one 
of  the  ablest  and  most  eloquent  preach- 
ers of  his  time ;  and  impressed  those 
who  sat  under  his  ministrations,  not 
merely  with  admiration  for  his  genius, 
but  reverence  for  his  holy  life  and  al- 
most ascetic  self-denial.  The  profession 
he  had  adopted  with  so  much  self-dis- 
trust he  came  to  love  with  such  fervor 
that  his  expressed  wish  was  to  die  in 
the  pulpit,  or  in  consequence  of  his  la- 
bors therein.  This  last  wish  was  grant- 
ed in  1631,  in  his  fifty-eighth  year; 
"and  that  body,"  says  Walton  with 
quaint  pathos,  "  which  once  was  a  tem- 
ple of  the  Holy  Ghost"  now  became 


Minor  Elizabethan  Pccts. 


[July, 


"but  a  small  quantity  of  Christian 
dust." 

Donne's  published  sermons  are  in 
form  nearly  as  grotesque  as  his  poems, 
though  they  are  characterized  by  pro- 
founder  qualities  of  heart  and  mind. 
It  was  his  misfortune  to  know  thor- 
oughly the  works  of  fourteen  hundred 
writers,  most  of  them  necessarily  worth- 
less ;  and  he  could  not  help  displaying 
his  erudition  in  his  discourses.  In 
what  is  now  called  taste  he  was  abso- 
lutely deficient  His  sermons  are  a 
curious  mosaic  of  quaintness,  quotation, 
wisdom,  puerility,  subtilty,  and  ecstasy. 
The  pedant  and  the  seer  possess  him 
by  turns,  and  in  reading  no  other  divine 
are  our  transitions  from  yawning  to 
rapture  so  swift  and  unexpected.  He 
has  passages  of  transcendent  merit,  pas- 
sages which  evince  a  spiritual  vision  so 
piercing,  and  a  feeling  of  divine  things 
so  intense,  that  for  the  time  we  seem 
to  be  communing  with  a  religious  genius 
of  the  most  exalted  and  exalting  order; 
but  soon  he  involves  us  in  a  maze 
of  quotations  and  references,  and  our 
minds  are  hustled  by  what  Hallam 
calls  "  the  rabble  of  bad  authors " 
that  this  saint  and  sage  has  always  at 
his  skirts,  even  when  he  ascends  to 
the  highest  heaven  of  contemplation. 
Doubtless  what  displeases  this  age 
added  to  his  reputation  in  his  own. 
Donne  was  more  pedantic  than  his 
clerical  contemporaries  only  because  he 
had  more  of  that  thought-suffocating 
learning  which  all  of  them  regarded 
with  irrational  respect.  One  of  the 
signs  of  Bacon's  superiority  to  his  age 
was  the  cool  audacity  with  which  he 
treated  sophists,  simpletons,  bigots,  and 
liars,  even  though  they  wrote  in  Latin 
and  Greek. 

A  poet  as  intellectual  as  Donne,  but 
whose  intelligence  was  united  to  more 
manliness  and  efficiency,  was  Sir  John 
Davies.  He  was  born  in  1570,  and  was 
educated  for  the  law.  The  first  we 
hear  of  him,  after  being  called  to  the 
bar,  was  his  expulsion  from  the  society 
of  the  Middle  Temple,  for  quarrelling 
with  one  Richard  Martin,  and  giving 
him  a  sound  beatincr.  This  was  in 


1598.  The  next  recorded  fact  of  his 
biography  was  the  publication,  a  year 
afterwards,  of  his  poem  on  the  Im- 
mortality of  the  $bul.  A  man  who  thus 
combined  so  much  pugilistic  with  so 
much  philosophic  power,  could  not  be 
long  kept  down  in  a  country  so  full  of 
fight  and  thought  as  England.  He 
was  soon  restored  to  his  profession, 
won  the  esteem  both  of  Elizabeth  and 
James,  held  high  offices  in  Ireland,  and 
in  1626  was  appointed  Chief  Justice  of 
England,  but  died  of  apoplexy  before 
he  was  sworn  in. 

The  two  works  on  which  his  fame  as 
a  poet  rests  are  on  the  widely  different 
themes  of  Dancing  and  the  Immortality 
of  the  Soul.  The  first  is  in  the  form 
of  a  dialogue  between  Penelope  and 
one  of  her  wooers,  and  most  melodious- 
ly expresses  "the  antiquity  and  excel- 
lence of  dancing."  Only  in  the  Eliza- 
bethan age  could  such  a  great  effort  of 
intellect,  learning,  and  fancy  have  arisen 
from  the  trifling  incident  of  asking  a 
lady  to  dance.  It  was  left  unfinished  ; 
and,  indeed,  as  it  is  the  object  of  the 
wooer  to  prove  to  Penelope  that  dan- 
cing is  the  law  of  nature  and  life,  the 
poem  could  have  no  other  end  than 
the  exhaustion  of  the  writer's  ingenu- 
ity in  devising  subtile  analogies  for  the 
wooer  and  answers  as  subtile  from 
Penelope,  who  aids 

"  The  music  of  her  tongue 
With  the  sweet  speech  of  her  alluring  eyes." 

To  think  logically  from  his  premises 
was  the  necessity  of  Davies's  mind.  In 
the  poem  on  Dancing  the  premises  are 
fanciful ;  in  the  poem  on  the  Immortal- 
ity of  the  Soul  the  premises  are  real; 
but  the  reasoning  in  both  is  equally 
exact.  It  is  usual  among  critics,  even 
such  critics  as  Hallam  and  Campbell, 
to  decide  that  the  imaginative  power  of 
the  poem  on  the  Immortality  of  the 
Soul  consists  in  the  illustration  of  the 
arguments  rather  than  in  the  percep- 
tion of  the  premises.  But  the  truth 
would  seem  to  be  that  the  author  ex- 
hibits his  imagination  more  in  his  in- 
sight than  in  his  imagery.  The  poetic 
excellence  of  the  work  comes  from  the 
power  of  clear,  steady  beholding  of 


1 868.] 


Elinor  Elizabethan  Poets. 


33 


spiritual  facts  with  the  spiritual  eye,  — 
of  beholding  them  so  clearly  that  the 
task  of  stating,  illustrating,  and  reason- 
ing from  them  is  performed  with  mas- 
terly ease.  In  truth,  the  great  writers 
of  the  time  believed  in  the  soul's  im- 
mortality, because  they  were  conscious 
of  having  souls  ;  the  height  of  their 
thinking  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
soul  was  always  in  the  premises,  and 
thought,  with  them,  included  imagina- 
tive vision  as  well  as  dialectic  skill. 
To  a  lower  order  of  minds  than  Shake- 
speare, Hooker,  and  Bacon,  than  Chap- 
man, Sidney,  and  Davies,  proceed  the 
theories  of  materialism,  for  no  thinking 
from  the  soul  can  deny  the  soul's  ex- 
istence. It  is  curious  to  observe  the 
advantage  which  Davies  holds  over  his 
materialistic  opponents,  through  the  cir- 
cumstance that,  while  his  logical  under- 
standing is  as  well  furnished  as  theirs, 
it  reposes  on  central  ideas  and  deep 
experiences  which  they  either  want  or 
ignore.  No  adequate  idea  of  the  gen- 
eral gravity  and  grandeur  of  his  think- 
ing can  be  conveyed  by  short  extracts  ; 
yet,  opening  the  poem  at  the  fourth 
section,  devoted  to  the  demonstration 
that  the  soul  is  a  spirit,  we  will  quote 
a  few  of  his  resounding  quartrains  in 
illustration  of  his  manner  :  — 

"  For  she  all  natures  under  heaven  doth  pass, 

Being  like  those  spirits  which  God's  face  do  see, 
Or  like  himself  whose  image  once  she  was, 
Though  now,  alas  !  she  scarce  his  shadow  be. 

"  Were  she  a  body,  how  could  she  remain 

Within  the  body  which  is  less  than  she  ? 
Or  how  could  she  the  world's  great  shape  contain, 
And  in  our  narrow  breasts  contained  be  ? 

*'  All  bodies  are  confined  within  some  place, 
But  she  all  place  within  herself  confines  ; 
All  bodies  have  their  measure  and  their  space  ; 
But  who  can  draw  the  soul's  dimensive  lines?  " 

The  next  poet  we  shall  mention  was 
•a  link  of  connection  between  the  age 
of  Elizabeth  and  Cromwell ;  a  contem- 
porary equally  of  Shakespeare  and  Mil- 
ton ;  a  man  whose  first  work  was  pub- 
lished ten  years  before  Shakespeare 
had  produced  his  greatest  tragedies  ; 
and  who,  later  in  life,  defended  Episco- 
pacy against  Milton.  We  of  course 
refer  to  Joseph  Hall.  He  was  born  in 
1574,  was  educated  at  Cambridge,  and, 

VOL.  XXIL  — xo.  129.  3 


in  1597,  at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  pub- 
lished his  satires.  Originally  intended 
for  the  Church,  he  was  now  presented 
with  a  living  by  Sir  Robert  Drury,  the 
munificent  patron  of  Donne.  He  rose 
gradually  to  preferment,  was  made  Bisl> 
op  of  Exeter  in  1627,  and  translated  to 
the  see  of  Norwich  in  1641.  In  1643 
he  was  deprived  of  his  palace  and  rev- 
enue by  the  Parliamentary  Committee 
of  Sequestration,  and  died  in  1656,  in 
his  eighty-second  year.  As  a  church- 
man, he  was  in  favor  of  moderate  meas- 
ures, and  he  had  the  rare  fortune  to 
oppose  Archbishop  Laud,  and  to  suffer 
under  Oliver  Cromwell. 

As  a  satirist,  if  we  reject  the  claim 
of  Gascoigne  to  precedence,  he  was  the 
earliest  that  English  literature  can  boast. 
In  his  own  words  :  — 

"  I  first  adventure  ;  follow  me  who  list, 
And  be  the  second  English  satirist." 

He  had  two  qualifications  for  his  chos- 
en task,  —  penetrating  observation  and 
unshrinking  courage.  The  follies  and 
vices,  the  manners,  prejudices,  delu- 
sions, and  crimes  of  his  time,  form  the 
materials  of  his  satires  ;  and  these  he 
lashes  or  laughs  at,  according  as  the 
subject-matter  provokes  his  indignation 
or  his  contempt.  "  Sith,"  he  says  in 
his  Preface,  "faults  loathe  nothing 
more  than  the  light,  and  men  love  noth- 
ing more  than  their  faults,"  it  follows 
that  "  what  with  the  nature  of  the  faults, 
and  the  faults  of  the  persons,"  it  is  im- 
possible "  that  so  violent  an  appeach- 
ment  should  be  quietly  brooked."  But 
to  those  who  are  offended  he  vouchsafes 
but  this  curt  and  cutting  defence  of  his 
plain  speaking.  "  Art  thou  guilty  ? 
Complain  not,  thou  art  not  wronged. 
Art  thou  guiltless  ?  Complain  not, 
thou  art  not  touched."  These  satires, 
however,  striking  as  they  are  for  their 
compactness  of  language  and  vigor  of 
characterization,  convey  but  an  inade- 
quate idea  of  the  depth,  devoutness, 
and  largeness  of  soul  displayed  in  Hall's 
theological  writings.  His  "  Medita- 
tions," especially,  have  been  read  by 
thousands  who  never  heard  of  him  as 
a  tart  and  caustic  wit.  But  the  one 
characteristic  of  sententiousness  marks 


34 


Minor  ElizabetJian  Poets. 


[July, 


equally  the  sarcasm  of  the  youthful  sat- 
irist and  the  raptures  of  the  aged  saint. 

The  next  writer  we  shall  consider, 
Sir  Henry  Wotton,  possessed  one  of 
the  most  accomplished  and  enlightened 
minds  of  the  age  ;  though,  unhappily  for 
us,  he  has  left  few  records  of  it  in  liter- 
ature. He  was  born  in  1568,  educated 
at  Oxford,  and,  leaving  the  university 
in  his  twenty-second  year,  passed  nine 
years  in  travelling  in  Germany  and 
Italy.  On  his  return  his  conversation 
showed  such  wit  and  information,  that 
it  was  said  to  be  "  one  of  the  delights 
of  mankind."  He  entered  the  service 
of  the  Earl  of  Essex,  and,  on  the  dis- 
covery of  the  Earl's  treason,  prudently 
escaped  to  the  Continent.  While  in 
Italy  he  rendered  a  great  service  to  the 
Scottish  king  ;  and  James,  on  his  acces- 
sion to  the  English  throne,  knighted 
him,  and  sent  him  as  ambassador  to 
Venice.  He  remained  abroad  over 
twenty  years.  On  his  return  he  was 
made  provost  of  Eton  College.  He 
died  in  1639  in  his  seventy-first  year. 

Wotton  is  one  of  the  few  Englishmen 
who  have  succeeded  in  divesting  them- 
selves of  English  prejudices  without  at 
the  same  time  divesting  themselves  of 
English  virtues.  He  was  a  man  of  the 
world  of  the  kind  described  by  Bacon,  — 
a  man  "  whose  heart  was  not  cut  off  from 
other  men's  lands,  but  a  continent  that 
joined  to  them."  One  of  the  ablest  and 
most  sagacious  diplomatists  that  Eng- 
land ever  sent  abroad  to  match  Italian 
craft  with  Saxon  insight,  he  was  at  the 
same  time  chivalrous,  loyal,  and  true. 
Though  the  author  of  the  satirical  defi- 
nition of  an  ambassador,  as  "  an  honest 
man  sent  to  lie  abroad  for  the  good  of 
his  country,"  his  own  course  was  the  op- 
posite of  falsehood.  Indeed,  he  laid  down 
this  as  an  infallible  aphorism  to  guide 
an  English  ambassador,  that  he  should 
always  tell  the  truth  :  first,  because  he 
will  secure  himself  if  called  to  account; 
second,  because  he. will  never  be  be- 
lieved, and  he  will  thus  "put  his  ad- 
versaries, who  will  ever  hunt  counter, 
at  a  loss."  One  of  his  many  accom- 
plishments was  the  art  in  conversation 
of  saying  pointed  things  in  pithy  lan- 


guage. At  Rome,  a  priest  asked  him, 
"  Where  was  your  religion  before  Lu- 
ther ?"  To  which  Wotton  answered, 
"  My  religion  was  to  be  found  then 
where  yours  is  not  to  be  found  now, — 
in  the  written  Word  of  God."  He  then 
put  to  the  priest  this  question :  "  Do 
you  believe  all  those  many  thousands 
of  poor  Christians  were  damned,  that 
were  excommunicated  because  the  Pope 
and  the  Duke  of  Venice  could  not  agree 
about  their  temporal  power,  —  even 
those  poor  Christians,  that  knew  not 
why  they  quarrelled  ?  Speak  your  con- 
science." The  priest's  reply  was, "  Mon- 
sieur, excuse  me."  Wotton's  own  Prot- 
estantism, however,  did  not  consist, 
like  that  of  too  many  others  of  his  time 
and  of  ours,  in  hating  Romanists.  He 
was  once  asked  "  whether  a  papist  may 
be  saved."  His  answer  was:  "You 
may  be  saved  without  knowing  that. 
Look  to  yourself."  The  spirit  of  this 
reply  is  of  the  inmost  essence  of  tolera- 
tion. 

Cowley,  in  his  elegy  on  Wotton,  has 
touched  happily  on  those  felicities  of 
his  nature  and  culture  which  made  him 
so  admired  by  his  contemporaries  :  — • 

"  What  shall  we  say,  since  silent  now  is  he, 
Who,  when  he  spoke,  all  things  would  silent  be? 
Who  had  so  many  languages  in  store, 
That  only  fame  shall  speak  of  him  in  more. 
Whom  England,  now  no  more  returned,  must  see  ;. 
He  's  gone  to  heaven  on  his  fourth  embassy. 

So  well  he  understood  the  most  and  best 
Of  tongues,  that  Babel  sent  into  the  west, 
Spoke  them  so  truly,  that  he  had,  you  'd  swear, 
Not  only  lived  but  been  born  everywhere. 

Nor  ought  the  language  of  that  man  be  less, 
Who  in  his  breast  had  all  things  to  express." 

As  a  poet  Sir  Henry  Wotton  is  uni- 
versally known  by  one  exquisite  little 
poem,  "  The  Character  of  a  Happy 
Life,"  which  is  in  all  hymn-books. 
The  general  drift  of  his  poetry  is  to 
expose  the  hollowness  of  all  the  objects 
to  which  as  a  statesman  and  courtier 
the  greater  portion  of  his  own  life  was 
devoted.  His  verses  are  texts  for  dis- 
courses, uniting  economy  of  words  with 
fulness  of  thought  and  sentiment.  His 
celebrated  epitaph  on  a  married  couple 
is  condensed  to  the  point  of  converting; 
feeling  into  wit :  — 


1 868.] 


Minor  Elizabethan  Poets. 


11  He  first  deceased.     She,  for  a  little,  tried 
To  do  without  him,  liked  it  not,  and  died." 

In  one  of  his  hymns  he  has  this 
striking  image,  — 

"  No  hallowed  eils,  no  gums  I  need, 

No  new-born  drams  of  purging  fire  ; 
One  rosy  drop  from  David's  seed 

Was  worlds  of  seas  to  quench  their  ire." 

Excellent,  however,  of  its  kind  as 
Wotton's  poetry  is,  it  is  not  equal  to 
that  living  poem,  his  life.  He  was  one 
of  those  men  who  are  not  so  much 
makers  of  poems  as  subjects  about 
whom  poems  are  made. 

The  last  poet  of  whom  we  shall 
speak,  George  Herbert,  was  one  in 
whom  the  quaintness  of  the  time  found 
its  most  fantastic  embodiment.  He 
began  life  as  a  courtier;  and  on  the 
disappointment  of  his  hopes,  or  on  his 
conviction  of  the  vanity  of  his  ambi- 
tions, he  suddenly  changed  his  whole 
course  of  thought  and  life,  became  a 
clergyman,  and  is  known  to  posterity 
only  as  "holy  George  Herbert."  His 
poetry  is  the  bisarrc  expression  of  a 
deeply  religious  and  intensely  thought- 
ful nature,  sincere  at  heart,  but  strange, 
far-fetched,  and  serenely  crotchety  in 
utterance.  Nothing  can  be  more  frigid 
than  the  conceits  in  which  he  clothes 
the  great  majority  of  his  pious  ejacu- 
lations and  heavenly  ecstasies.  Yet 
every  reader  feels  that  his  fancy,  quaint 
as  it  often  is,  is  a  part  of  the  organism 
of  his  character  ;  and  that  his  quaint- 
ness,  his  uncouth  metaphors  and  com- 
parisons, his  squalid  phraseology,  his 
holy  charades  and  pious  riddles,  his 
inspirations  crystallized  into  ingenui- 
ties, and  his  general  disposition  to  rep- 
resent the  divine  through  the  exterior 
guise  of  the  odd,  are  vitally  connected 
with  that  essential  beauty  and  sweet- 
ness of  soul  which  give  his  poems 
their  wild  flavor  and  fragrance.  Ama- 
teurs in  sanctity,  and  men  of  fine  relig- 
ious taste,  will  tell  you  that  genuine 
emotion  can  never  find  an  outlet  in 
such  an  elaborately  fantastic  form ; 


and  the  proposition,  according,  as  it 
does,  with  the  rules  of  Blair  and 
Kames  and  Whately,  commands  your 
immediate  assent;  but  still  you  feel 
that  genuine  emotion  is  there,  and,  if 
you  watch  sharply,  you  will  find  that 
Taste,  entering  holy  George  Herbert's 
"  Temple,"  after  a  preliminary  sniif  of 
imbecile  contempt,  somehow  slinks 
away  abashed  after  the  first  verse  at 
the  "  Church-porch  "  :  — 

"  Thou  whose  sweet  youth  and  early  hopes  enhance 
Thy  rate  and  price,  and  mark  thee  for  a  treasure, 
Hearken  unto  a  verser,  who  may  chance 
Rhyme  thee  to  good,  and  make  a  bait  of  pleasure  : 
A  verse  may  find  him  whom  a  sermon  flies, 
And  turn  delight  into  a  sacrifice." 

And  that  fine  gentleman,  Taste,  hav- 
ing relieved  us  of  his  sweetly  scented 
presence,  redolent  with  the  "  balm  of 
a  thousand  flowers,"  let  us,  in  closing, 
quote  one  of  the  profoundest  utterances 
of  the  Elizabethan  age,  George  Her- 
bert's lines  on  Man  :  — 

"  Man  is  all  symmetric, 
p'ull  of  proportions,  one  limbe  to  another, 

And  all  to  all  the  world  besides  : 

Each  part  may  call  the  farthest,  brother : 
For  head  with  foot  hath  private  amitie, 

And  both  with  moon  and  tides. 

"  Nothing  hath  got  so  farre, 
But  man  hath  caught  and  kept  it,  as  his  prey. 

His  eyes  dismount  the  highest  starre  : 

He  is  in  little  all  the  sphere 
Herbs  gladly  cure  our  flesh,  because  that  they 

Finds  their  acquaintance  there. 

"  The  starres  have  us  to  bed  ; 
Night  draws  the  curtain,  which  the  sun  withdraws : 

Musick  and  light  attend  our  head. 

All  things  unto  ovx  flesh  are  kinde 
In  their  descent  and  being  ;  to  our  minde 

In  their  ascent  and  cause. 

"  More  servants  wait  on  Man 
Than  he  '11  take  notice  of;  in  every  path 

He  treads  down  that  which  doth  befriend  him, 

When  sickness  makes  him  pale  and  wan, 
O  mightie  love  !     Man  is  one  world,  and  hath 

Another  to  attend  him. 

"  Since  then,  my  God,  thou  hnst 
So  brave  a  Palace  built ;  O  dwell  in  it, 

That  it  may  dwell  with  thee  at  last  ! 

Till  then  afford  us  so  much  wit, 
That  as  the  world  serves  us  we  may  serve  thee, 

And  both  thy  servants  be." 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


[July, 


SOME    CORAL    ISLANDS    AND    ISLANDERS. 


THE  tropical  Pacific  is  an  ocean  of 
many  islands.  Some  of  these  are 
high  volcanic  peaks,  others  are  low 
coral  islets.  Some  lie  crowded  in  archi- 
pelagoes, others  in  scattered  groups  of 
five  or  six,  and  a  few  are  solitary  specks 
of  dry  land  or  coral  reef,  the  only  ob- 
jects in  vast  areas  that  break  the  mo- 
notony of  sea  and  sky. 

The  "  Union  Group  "  is  a  little  clus- 
ter of  three  l®w  coral  islands.  It  is 
about  nine  degrees  of  latitude  south  of 
the  equator,  and  near  the  one  hundred 
and  seventy- second  meridian.  It  is 
three  or  four  hundred  miles  from  any 
other  important  group,  and  the  three 
islands  composing  it  are  about  forty  or 
fifty  miles  from  each  other. 

At  noon  on  the  tenth  day  of  March, 
1860,  we  reckoned  our  little  schooner 
to  be  eighteen  miles  to  windward  of 
Oatafu,  the  northwestern  member  of 
this  group  ;  and  at  three  o'clock  in  the 
afternoon  all  on  board  were  earnestly 
looking  for  the  first  signs  of  land  ahead. 
We  only  knew  of  this  island,  that  it  was 
of  coral  formation.  Whether  it  was  in- 
habited or  not  we  had  never  learned. 
Whether  it  was  laid  down  on  the  chart 
correctly  we  could  not  tell,  and  this  un- 
certainty, combined  with  the  fear  that 
we  might  be  the  victims  of  misplaced 
confidence  in  our  chronometer,  caused 
us  to  scan  the  horizon  with  uncommonly 
sharp  eyes. 

By  four  o'clock  our  anxiety  was  re- 
moved, and  new  interest  aroused  by  the 
cry  of  "  Land,  ho  !  "  Looking  in  the 
direction  indicated  by  the  lookout  aloft, 
to  whom  belonged 'the  honor  of  the 
discovery,  we  discerned  an  uneven  line 
of  tree-tops,  —  a  kind  of  dotted  line,  a 
little  raised  above  the  water,  asid  stretch- 
ing along  the  horizon  for  a  few  miles. 
These  dots  gradually  developed  into  a 
continuous  line  of  verdure.  Approach- 
ing still  nearer,  this  line  assumed  a 
circular  form,  enclosing  within  its  limits 
the  quiet  waters  of  a  lagoon.  Finally 


the  surf,  rolling  in  heavily  upon  the 
reef,  breaking  into  foam,  dashing  up 
the  white  coral  beach,  and  contrasting 
strangely  and  beautifully  with  the  green 
foliage  above,  became  clearly  visible. 

A  view  from  aloft  revealed  this  still 
more  to  our  admiration.  The  island, 
with  its  enclosed  lagoon,  appeared  per- 
haps four  or  five  miles  long  by  two  or 
three  wide.  A  belt  of  reef  and  land,  a 
hundred  rods  in  width,  encircled  a  lake. 
Without  were  the  waters  of  the  ocean, 
the  long  heavy  swells  breaking  violently 
on  the  outer  reef;  within  were  the  placid, 
delicately  tinted  waters  of  the  lagoon, 
their  surface  scarcely  ruffled  by  the 
wind,  and  dotted  here  and  there  with 
green  islets. 

An  occasional  break  in  the  line  of 
foliage  marked  the  place  where  a  nar- 
row channel  connected  the  waters  of 
the  ocean  and  the  lake.  The  outer  reef, 
which  first  broke  the  force  of  the  ocean 
waves,  was  a  level  platform  three  or 
four  hundred  feet  wide,  about  even  with 
or  very  little  below  the  surface  of  the 
sea,  and  over  this  the  snowy  breakers 
were  chasing  each  other  towards  the 
shore.  Then  came  the  strip  of  elevated 
land,  a  gently  rising,  snow-white  beach, 
crowned  by  a  bright  green  belt  of 
shrubbery  and  trees,  the  lofty  plumes 
of  the  cocoanut  towering  above  the 
whole.  This  belt  of  land  seemed  but  a 
few  hundred  feet  wide,  and  about  ten 
feet  high.  On  the  inner  shore,  a  smooth 
beach  of  finest  sand  was  gently  washed 
by  the  lagoon  waters.  It  lay  on  the 
blue  ocean  before  us  like  a  green  wreath, 
with  a  border  of  sparkling  spray  and 
foam. 

All  this  we  saw  while  approaching 
and  sailing  along  the  southern  shore  of 
the  island;  but  in  the  mean  time  the 
wind  had  become  so  light,  and  our 
progress  had  been  so  slow,  that  when 
we  were  fairly  under  the  lee  of  the  land 
the  sun  had  reached  the  horizon,  aad 
darkness  would  speedily  follow  the  very 


1 868.] 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


37 


short  tropical  twilight.  It  was  not  only 
too  late  to  land,  but  too  late  to  look  for 
anchorage ;  for  the  shores  of  a  coral 
island  or  reef  usually  make  off  so  pre- 
cipitously that  the  sounding-lead  may 
find  a  hundred  fathoms  of  water  within 
a  ship's  length  of  the  breakers,  and 
anchorage,  when  it  exists,  must  be 
sought  cautiously.  Our  captain,  there- 
fore, determined  to  test  our  patience  by 
remaining  under  sail  all  night,  standing 
off  and  on  until  morning ;  and  in  a  very 
few  minutes  our  little  schooner  found 
herself  close  hauled  on  the  wind,  and 
thereupon  commenced  pitching  savagely 
into  the  waves,  as  though  she  shared 
our  annoyance.  Aggravating  as  this 
was  to  those  of  us  who  were  impatient 
for  a  run  ashore,  there  was  no  appeal, 
and  so  we  quietly  made  the  best  of  it. 
We  watched  the  island  from  the  deck, 
until  it  became  indistinct  in  the  dark- 
ness. Then  we  went  down  to  tea,  and 
tried,  with  poor  success,  to  compensate 
ourselves  for  a  slighted  dinner.  Then 
came  the  inevitable  rubber  of  whist,  in 
which  the  captain  played  atrociously, 
because,  as  he  said,  he  never  could 
play  well  when  near  the  land.  Finally, 
having  arranged  for  an  earlier  breakfast 
than  usual,  we  laid  ourselves  upon  our 
respective  shelves,  and  slept. 

It  is  no  wonder  if  our  dreams  that 
night  were  somewhat  colored  by  the 
experience  of  the  afternoon.  The  sight 
of  a  coral  island,  especially  of  the  la- 
goon form,  is  very  impressive.  The 
origin  of  the  material,  the  formation  of 
the  reef,  and  notably  the  remarkable 
annular  structure  of  the  island,  suggest 
innumerable  inquiries  to  any  thought- 
ful observer. 

No  wonder  the  early  voyagers  were 
struck  with  surprise  and  admiration  at 
their  first  view  of  such  an  island,  with 
all  its  beauty  of  grove  and  lake,  and 
that  they  marvelled  at  beholding  an 
immense  ring  of  rock  and  dry  land, 
standing  in  mid-ocean,  in  almost  un- 
fathomable depths,  an  irresistible  bar- 
rier to  the  waves,  and  enclosing  a  quiet 
l?ke,  in  whose  undisturbed  waters  vast 
fields  of  growing  corals  flourish. 

No  wonder  that  they  were  puzzled  to 


explain  this  remarkable  feature,  and  that 
their  speculations  gave  rise  to  some 
strange  theories,  in  which  their  fancy 
pictured  the  "coral  worms"  as  skilful 
architects,  building  up  reefs  and  islands 
as  beavers  build  dams,  and  invested 
the  animalculae  with  truly  wonderful  in- 
stincts, supposed  to  be  especially  shown 
in  their  choice  of  the  annular  form  of 
island,  as  best  adapted  to  withstand  the 
force  of  the  waves,  and  provide  a  se- 
cure retreat  for  themselves  and  their 
young. 

But  Science,  in  later  days,  has  set 
aside  these  vague  and  erroneous  impres- 
sions, and  given  clear  ideas  of  the  na- 
ture and  functions  of  the  coral-making 
zoophytes,  and  of  the  way  in  which  the 
reefs  are  formed.  And  Mr.  Darwin  has 
shown  that  the  annular  form  of  island, 
instead  of  being  due  to  the  instinct  of 
the  polyp,  is  caused  by  the  slow  sub- 
sidence of  the  land  on  which  the  coral 
growth  was  based.  That  thus,  in  few 
words,  a  coral  reef,  beginning  in  the 
shallow  waters  on  the  shore  of  an 
island,  and  encircling  it  as  a  fringing 
reef,  has  gradually  increased  upward, 
while  the  land  itself  has  been  slowly  de- 
pressed ;  and  finally,  the  upward  growth 
having  kept  pace  with  the  depression, 
the  reef  appears  as  a  ring  of  rock  upon 
the  surface,  after  the  last  peak  of  the 
island  or  mountain-top  has  disappeared. 

In  time  the  loose  fragments  of  broken 
coral  and  shells,  ground  into  sand,  are 
swept  together  by  the  waves,  and  form 
a  narrow  strip  of  land  a  few  feet  above 
the  ocean  level. 

Then  floating  cocoanuts  or  seeds, 
wafted  by  the  winds,  or  brought  by 
drifting  logs,  find  their  mysterious  way 
to  the  newly  made  land.  Trees  spring 
up,  and  soon  a  luxuriant  growth  of  vege- 
tation converts  the  reef  into  a  habitable 
islet.  In  process  of  time  a  canoe-load  of 
voyagers,  natives  of  some  other  island, 
perhaps  drifted  off  by  irresistible  cur- 
rents or  violent  gales,  or,  possibly,  hav- 
ing set  out  from  an  over -populated 
island  in  search  of  a  new  home,  find 
their  way  thither,  and  it  becomes  the 
abode  of  man. 

Thus  coral  lagoons  are  souvenirs  of 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


[July, 


lands  that  have  disappeared.  They  lie 
like  garlands  upon  the  waters,  simple 
memorials  of  buried  islands. 

Oatafu,  the  island  before  us,  on  the 
following  morning,  wore  nothing  of  a 
sombre  or  funereal  aspect.  The  bright 
green  colors  of  the  foliage,  the  dazzling 
brilliancy  of  the  snow-white  beach,  and 
the  sparkling  foam  of  the  breakers,  were 
too  gay  and  joyous  in  their  appearance 
to  suggest  regret  for  a  departed  con- 
tinent. Moreover,  the  novelties  of  the 
present  were  too  interesting  to  allow 
just  then  a  thought  of  the  past.  Early 
in  the  morning,  before  we  were  fairly 
up  and  dressed,  we  had  been  surprised, 
and  our  curiosity  excited,  by  the  dis- 
covery of  two  canoes  putting  off  from 
the  lee  side  of  the  island  towards  us. 
In  each  canoe  were  two  men,  paddling 
vigorously.  As  we  had  no  information 
concerning  inhabitants,  we  were  natu- 
rally very  much  interested  in  knowing 
what  manner  of  men  these  might  be 
who  were  about  to  pay  us  a  visit.  Our 
unconfiding  captain  jumped  directly  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  islanders  were 
a  race  of  man-eaters,  and  that  the  four 
representatives,  now  approaching  us, 
were  a  sort  of  prospecting  committee 
of  the  commissary  department;  but  as 
there  were  only  two  men  in  each  canoe, 
we  who,  with  all  hands  told,  were  thrice 
that  number,  could  have  no  hesitation  in 
receiving  them,  however  carnally  minded 
they  might  be. 

In  a  few  minutes  the  canoes  came 
alongside.  These  were  each  about 
twenty  or  twenty-five  feet  long,  and  two 
feet  deep  and  wide,  sharpened  at  both 
ends,  and  furnished  with  out-riggers. 
Though  having  at  first  the  appearance 
of  "dug-outs,"  they  proved  to  be  made 
of  many  parts,  ingeniously  fitted,  and 
lashed  together  with  fastenings  of  na- 
tive twine.  They  seemed  quite  water- 
tight, and  behaved  very  well  under  the 
skilful  management  of  the  natives,  who 
were  paddling  with  all  their  force  to 
keep  up  with  the  vessel. 

The  occupants  of  the  two  canoes 
were  three  men  and  one  boy.  They 
were  good-looking  fellows,  well  made, 
and  in  excellent  condition.  The  boy 


was  quite  naked,  and  the  men  wore 
nothing  of  enough  importance  to  be 
described,  having  only  a  narrow  strip 
of  material,  something  like  cloth,  worn 
above  the  hips,  and  passing  between  the 
thighs.  Their  faces  were  very  friendly, 
and  they  could  hardly  restrain  their  de- 
light at  seeing  straagers.  Although  we 
could  hardly  understand  a  word  they 
said,  they  talked  unceasingly,  with  great 
earnestness  and  much  gesticulation, 
occasionally  breaking  out  into  an  irre- 
pressible song,  then  a  loud  laugh,  and 
finally  paddling  away  with  a  good-hu- 
mored fury. 

Through  the  interpretation  of -one 
of  our  men,  a  native  of  the  Sandwich 
Islands,  who -found  that  he  could  un- 
derstand a  little  of  their  dialect,  we 
made  out  that  they  gave  us  a  warm 
welcome,  and  invited  us  to  visit  their 
village,  which  lay  on  the  inner  shore  of 
the  lagoon,  just  hidden  by  the  cocoanut- 
trees.  We  deferred  doing  this,  how- 
ever, until  after  breakfast,  and  mean- 
time our  visitors  paddled  off  for  the 
island,  to  make  their  report. 

About  nine  o'clock,  as  we  were  pre- 
paring to  go  ashore,  we  discovered  an- 
other and  much  larger  canoe  coming 
towards  us  under  sail.  In  it  were 
seated  fifteen  or  twenty  men.  As  they 
neared  the  vessel,  one  old  fellow  stood 
up,  and  waved  in  the  air  over  his  head 
a  large  roll  or  bundle  of  matting,  fringed 
at  both  ends.  Exactly  what  this  meant 
we  were  left  to  imagine,  but  it  was 
doubtless  the  prerogative  of  royalty  to 
have  it  and  wave  it ;  for,  as  soon  as  they 
came  alongside,  our  acquaintance  of  the 
early  morning  presented  himself,  and, 
pointing  to  him  who  held  the  bundle, 
gave  us  to  understand  that  he  was  the 
"ariki,"  or  king. 

His  Coralline  Majesty  was  a  well- 
made  man  of  about  fifty  years  of  age. 
His  raiment  was  as  simple  as  that  worn 
by  his  ambassadors  of  the  morning. 
As  a  mark  of  royalty,  however,  he  wore 
a  strip  of  a  cocoanut  leaf,  two  or  three 
inches  wide,  split  along  the  middle, 
which,  being  put  on  over  his  head, 
rested  upon  his  shoulders.  The  upper 
part  of  his  body,  especially  his  breast, 


1 868.] 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


39 


-was  profusely  tattooed.  He  was  very 
dignified  in  manner,  not  talking  much, 
nor  manifesting  the  great  curiosity 
which  took  possession  of  most  of  his 
followers.  Withal  he  was  a  very  fail- 
specimen  of  royalty  in  the  crude  state. 
He  sat  clown  at  once  upon  an  offered 
deck  chair,  and,  stretching  out  his  legs, 
surveyed  the  assembly  with  a  coolness 
which  quite  took  me  by  surprise. 

Presently  a  number  of  canoes  came 
alongside,  and  the  deck  of  our  schooner 
was  soon  crowded  by  native  men  and 
boys.  Evidently  the  arrival  and  pres- 
ence among  them  of  a  vessel  was  a 
great  and  rare  event,  and  was  made  the 
occasion  of  a  general  holiday.  Many 
of  them  had  got  themselves  up  for  the 
visit  with  great  care,  and  were  abun- 
dantly anointed  with  oil.  Some  wore 
head-dresses  of  shells,  and  necklaces 
of  shells  or  beads  ;  and  one  fellow  put 
on  a  great  many  airs,  parading  about 
the  deck  with  a  brass  button  (probably 
a  souvenir  of  some  naval  visit)  hung 
round  his  neck  by  a  piece  of  twine. 
But  the  most  remarkable  ornament  of 
all,  worn  by  a  good-looking  man,  was 
nothing  else  than  a  common  board  nail 
stuck  through  his  ear  like  an  ear-ring. 
I  observed  that  they  all  had  their  ears 
perforated,  though  more  for  utility  than 
ornament,  for,  having  no  pockets,  they 
find  it  convenient  to  carry  small  articles 
stuck  through  their  ears.  Some  of  the 
older  ones  had  so  stretched  their  ears 
by  use,  that  the  slits  in  them  were  larger 
than  a  large  button-hole.  The  king,  on 
being  presented  with  two  cigars,  lit  one 
of  them,  in  imitation  of  his  host,  and 
stuck  the  other  in  his  ear,  to  reserve  for 
a  future  occasion. 

Would  not  an  island  like  this  serve 
well  as  a  kind^f  Botany  Bay  for  pick- 
pockets ? 

Among  those  who  claimed  special 
attention  was  one  who  said  that  he  was 
a  native  of  the  Navigators'  (Samoan) 
Islands,  and  that  he  had  been  sent 
thence  to  Oatafu  as  a  native  mission- 
ary. He  had,  in  evidence  of  this,  a 
single  copy  of  the  Bible  in  the  Samoan 
language.  During  the  visit,  however,  I 
saw  no  other  copy  of  this  or  any  book ; 


and,  though  I  was  perhaps  unable  to 
judge  fairjy,  it  did  not  appear  to  me 
that  he  had  gained  much,  if  any,  in- 
fluence among  the  people. 

We  proposed  a  visit  on  shore  to  the 
chief,  to  which  he  earnestly  expressed 
his  assent,  and,  in  spite  of  the  captain's 
warning,  three  of  us  prepared  to  land. 
Immediately  all  the  canoes  started  off 
in  advance,  as  if  to  advise  the  remain- 
der of  the  inhabitants  of  our  coming ; 
and  we  soon  followed  them,  taking  the 
chief  and  two  other  natives  with  us. 
Reaching  the  shore  safely  under  the 
gufdance  of  the  chief,  we  walked  to- 
wards the  village,  which  was  on  the 
inner  or  lagoon  side  of  the  belt  of  land. 
Passing  for  some  distance  through  a 
cocoanut  grove,  we  presently  came  upon 
a  collection  of  about  fifty  houses.  They 
were  arranged  with  considerable  regu- 
larity along  an  avenue  running  parallel 
with  the  beach.  In  the  middle  of  the 
street  was  a  walk  paved  with  smooth 
slabs  of  coral  beach  rock.  The  houses 
were  of  very  simple  construction,  con- 
sisting of  upright  frames  five  or  six  feet 
high,  covered  by  a  high-peaked  roof  of 
cocoanut  thatch.  The  eaves  of  the  roof 
extended  considerably  beyond  the  sides, 
and  lacked  but  two  or  three  feet  of 
reaching  the  ground.  The  sides  of  the 
houses  were  sometimes  open,  and  in 
some  cases  thatched.  As  we  passed 
along  towards  the  chief's  house,  troops 
of  young  children  made  their  appear- 
ance ;  but  the  women,  none  of  whom 
had  been  on  board,  remained  within 
their  houses,  though  their  manner  in- 
dicated that  their  seclusion  was  not  al- 
together a  voluntary  act. 

The  king's  house  only  differed  from 
the  more  common  in  being  larger.  The 
floor  was  made  of  evenly  spread  gravel 
or  coral  pebbles,  covered  with  mats,  for 
which  the  fibre  of  the  cocoanut  husk 
probably  furnished  the  material.  About 
the  house  were  disposed  many  and 
various  articles  of  use  or  ornament. 
Fish-hooks  of  shell  and  wood,  nets, 
mats,  calabashes,  grass-rope,  fish-lines, 
twine  and  cordage,  generally  were  abun- 
dant. 

On  his  Majesty's  "what-not"  was  an 


40 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


[July, 


empty  sardine-box,  and  a  glass  bottle 
marked  "Batty  and  Company's  Best 
Pickles."  But  we  saw  no  clubs,  bows, 
nor  arrows,  nor  weapons  of  any  kind, 
excepting  two  or  three  old  hatchets  and 
sheath-knives,  evidently  obtained  from 
some  visitors  like  ourselves.  On  one 
of  the  posts  I  saw  a  rude  figure  carved, 
which  had  the  appearance  of  being  an 
object  of  worship.  Presently  some  lads 
came  in,  bringing  some  young  cocoa- 
nuts  and  a  string  of  small  fish.  The 
latter,  by  active  wriggling  and  squirm- 
ing, gave  sufficient  evidence  of  having 
been  freshly  caught.  These  were  spread 
before  the  company,  and  we  were  invited 
to  the  repast.  A  draught  of  the  cocoa- 
nut  water  was  a  luxury  not  to  be  de- 
spised, but  the  feast  of  raw  fish  was 
politely  declined.  Our  backwardness, 
however,  was  not  shared  by  our  hosts  ; 
and  the  sight  of  the  party  as  they  sat 
upon  the  ground,  each  with  a  piece  of 
cocoanut  in  one  hand,  and  a  nice  little 
fish,  held  by  the  tail,  in  the  opposite1 
hand,  taking  first  a  mouthful  of  one  and 
then  of  the  other,  was  something  long 
to  be  remembered. 

This  entertainment  being  over,  we 
went  out  for  a  ramble  under  the  guid- 
ance of  several  of  the  men.  A  few  steps 
brought  us  to  a  house  where  many  of 
the  women  and  young  children  seemed 
to  have  congregated.  Looking  around 
upon  the  assembly,  with  an  eye  for 
feminine  beauty,  and  curious  to  see  if 
the  gentler  sex  were  as  highly  favored 
as  their  partners  in  form  and  feature,  I 
was  much  disappointed  to  remark  that 
most  of  those  present  were  quite  old, 
and  that  the  very  youngest  woman  in 
the  party  was  old  enough  to  have  been 
the  mother  of  the  damsel  of  sweet  six- 
teen for  whom  my  eyes  were  vainly 
searching.  Nevertheless,  although  pret- 
ty well  seasoned,  the  better-looking 
gave  some  evidence  to  the  fact  that, 
with  the  charms  of  youth,  they  might 
have  been  quite  attractive.  They  were 
well  formed,  and  had  rather  pleasing 
features.  Like  the  men,  they  were 
profusely  tattooed,  though  more  about 
the  lips  and  lower  part  of  the  face  than 
about  the  breast.  Their  only  dress 


was  a  kind  of  girdle,  made  of  cocoanut- 
leaves,  so  arranged  as  to  hang  about 
the  body  like  a  skirt.  It  was  fastened 
just  above  the  hips  ;  and,  though  quite 
short,  —  hardly  more  than  a  foot  in 
length,  —  was  very  thick,  and  so  made 
as  to  stand  out  in  a  bell-shaped  form, 
resembling  somewhat  the  upper  part  of 
a  large  crinoline  skirt.  As  they  moved 
about  in  this  remarkable  costume,  they 
suggested  the  figure  of  a  ballet-dancer 
with  a  widely  spreading,  but  somewhat 
abbreviated,  skirt.  This  suggestion 
must  be  understood  to  refer  to  ballet- 
dancers  of  the  more  modest  sort;  as 
such  a  comparison  with  some  of  the 
artistes  of  the  present  day  would  be  a 
great  injustice  to  the  Oatafu  ladies. 
The  entire  absence  of  young  women 
from  the  company  seemed  quite  re- 
markable, especially  because  among 
the  men  there  was  a  due  proportion  of 
youths  and  young  men ;  and  it  imme- 
diately occurred  to  us  that  some  un- 
pleasant experience  with  former  visit- 
ors might  have  taught  the  lords  of 
this  part  of  creation  the  policy  of  keep- 
ing in  seclusion  the  younger  and  more 
attractive  members  of  the  communi- 
ty. I  was  subsequently  told,  by  one 
who  had  some  means  of  knowing, 
that  such  was  the  truth ;  and,  fur- 
ther, that,  only  a  few  years  ago,  the 
islanders  had  put  to  death  a  boat's 
crew  of  sailors,  who  had  landed  from  a 
whale-ship,  and  given  offence  by  un- 
welcome familiarity  with  the  women. 
The  account  of  the  killing  of  these  men 
was  remarkable.  Being  unused  to  war, 
and  having  no  weapons,  the  natives 
proceeded  on  this  wise  :  A  number  of 
them,  unobserved,  climbed  to  the  tops 
of  several  cocoanut-trees,  that  stood  to- 
gether, some  sixty  or  seventy  feet  high. 
The  white  men,  of  course  ignorant  of 
the  design,  were  then  gradually  led 
along  by  other  natives  until  they  were 
directly  below  those  who  had  climbed 
the  trees,  when  the  men  aloft  threw 
down  cocoanuts  upon  them  with  so> 
great  and  such  well-directed  force,  that 
they  were  at  once  overcome,  and  then 
finished  by  those  on  the  ground.  The 
natives  then  took  the  boat,  laid  the  oars 


1 868.] 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


and  other  appurtenances  in  it,  shoved 
it  off  through  the  surf,  and  set  it  adrift 
within  sight  of  the  vessel  to  which  it 
belonged.  The  ship  captain  —  so  says 
the  story  —  understood  what  had  hap- 
pened ;  but,  fearing  to  attempt  revenge, 
picked  up  his  boat,  and  sailed  away 
with  all  haste. 

Whatever  of  truth  or  fiction  there 
may  be  in  this  story,  the  islanders  evi- 
dently had  no  intention  of  cocoanutting 
us,  —  at  least  in  the  same  way ;  for  we 
soon  discovered  that  the  greater  part 
of  the  men  were  engaged  in  loading  up 
their  canoes  with  fish,  cocoanuts,  and 
shells,  and  were  setting  off  to  the 
schooner  with  the  desire  of  trading; 
and  before  long  we  were  left  with  only 
a  few  men  and  several  of  the  women, 
who  joined  us  on  our  stroll  about  the 
village. 

This  little  strip  of  coral-made  land 
we  found  to  be  about  six  hundred  feet 
wide,  forming  an  irregularly  shaped 
ring  some  ten  or  fifteen  miles  in  cir- 
cumference. It  was  composed  simply 
of  the  accumulations  of  coral  fragments 
heaped  up  by  the  waves  on  the  reef, 
and  was  not  over  eight  or  ten  feet  high. 
In  some  places,  a  thin  coral  soil  lay 
upon  the  surface ;  in  others,  only  the 
blackened  and  weathered  pieces  of  cor- 
al, slowly  disintegrating,  and  forming 
a  kind  of  gravel.  Nevertheless,  the 
whole  surface,  from  the  outer  to  the  in- 
ner beach,  bore  a  luxuriant  growth  of 
vegetation.  Cocoanut-trees  were  very 
abundant.  There  seemed  to  be  no 
sources  of  fresh  water  on  the  island. 
On  some  islands  of  this  description 
fresh  water  may  be  obtained  by  digging 
down  a  few  feet  through  the  loosely 
accumulated  material  to  the  hard  bot- 
tom, where  a  thin  stratum  of  fresh  wa- 
ter, the  result  of  rains,  is  found,  and 
may  be  scooped  up  without  difficulty. 
But  on  this  island  I  saw  no  evidences 
of  such  a  supply.  The  natives  showed 
us  their  method  of  collecting  rain-water 
by  cutting  out  an  excavation  in  the 
trunk  of  an  old  cocoanut-tree  just  above 
the  ground.  As  the  tree  stands  slightly 
leaning  in  the  direction  of  the  trade- 
wind,  the  water  falling  upon  it  trickles 


down  the  trunk  upon  the  lower  side, 
and  collects  at  the  bottom  in  the  place 
so  hollowed  out  for  its  reception.  We 
saw  a  number  of  trees  so  prepared  for 
catching  water.  Each  excavation  might 
have  held  four  or  five  gallons.  But  the 
natives  do  not  depend  on  this  source 
of  water  for  subsistence.  The  cocoa- 
nut-tree,  which  supplies  them  with  food, 
gives  them  also  drink.  The  young  nuts 
are  filled  with  a  thin,  watery  liquid, 
which  quenches  thirst ;  while  the  older 
nuts  are  their  chief  resource  for  food. 
The  uses  of  the  cocoanut-tree  are  truly 
wonderful ;  and  in  its  relations  to  hu- 
man life  it  is  certainly  without  a  parallel 
among  trees.  Here  it  is  both  meat 
and  drink,  —  and  more.  It  furnishes  all 
the  material  for  the  islanders'  houses  and 
canoes.  Their  scanty  dress  is  from  the 
same  source.  The  nutshells  are  useful 
as  containers  and  drinking-vessels, 
while  calabashes  and  other  utensils  are 
made  from  the  wood.  The  fibre  of  the 
husk  supplies  the  material  for  cordage, 
matting,  fish-nets,  and  lines.  The  oil, 
pressed  from  the  ripe  nuts,  furnishes 
the  evening  light,  besides  supplying 
other  wants.  Thus  the  tree  not  only 
sustains  the  life,  but  is  the  source  from 
which  every  physical  need  of  the  island- 
er is  supplied. 

To  these  people  this  little  coral  isl- 
and is  all  the  known  world.  They 
probably  possess  less  knowledge  of 
other  portions  of  this  planet  than  we  do 
of  other  planets.  They  knew,  indeed, 
of  the  existence  of  a  neighboring  island, 
like  their  own,  and  whence  they  or 
their  ancestors  had  probably  come  ;  but 
many  of  the  living  generation  had  never 
seen  it.  It  is  difficult  clearly  to  con- 
ceive of  the  moral  and  intellectual  con- 
dition of  a  people  whose  ideas  have 
never  expanded  beyond  the  limits  of  a 
coral  island  ;  who  have  no  conception 
of  a  mountain  or  a  river,  of  a  surface 
of  land  greater  than  their  own  little 
belt,  or  of  a  slope  higher  than  their  own 
beach  ;  who  have  but  a  single  mineral, 
—  the  coral  limestone,  —  but  very  few 
plants,  no  quadrupeds  excepting,  per- 
haps, rats  or  mice ;  who  live  almost 
without  labor,  gathering  cocoanuts, 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


[July, 


without  an  idea  of  tilling  the  soil  ; 
whose  only  arts  are  the  taking  of  fish, 
and  the  making  of  houses,  canoes,  and 
their  few  utensils  ;  whose  unwritten 
language  is  only  adapted  to  the  expres- 
sion of  the  simplest  ideas  ;  who  have 
never  gone  beyond  their  island  horizon 
and  returned  again;  and  whose  only 
intercourse  with  other  human  beings 
has  been  through  the  rare  and  brief 
visits  of  passing  vessels.  After  a  some- 
what extended  walk,  we  returned  to  the 
vicinity  of  the  houses,  where  one  or 
two  more  of  the  younger  ladies  favored  • 
us  with  their  company.  We,  of  course, 
considered  this  a  pleasing  indication 
that  they  were  gradually  overcoming 
the  fear,  or  the  restraint,  that  had  kept 
them  away  at  first.  Some  of  the  wo- 
men prepared  to  cook  a  large  fish  for  our 
benefit ;  and,  while  this  was  going  on, 
the  young  ones  devoted  themselves  en- 
tirely to  our  entertainment  by  singing 
what,  I  dare  say,  was  a  very  jolly  song, 
and  finally  commencing  a  dance.  How 
this  would  have  ended,  if  no  inter- 
ruption had  occurred,  it  is  impossible 
to  say.  Quite  likely,  one  after  anoth- 
er, the  hidden  beauties  would  have 
slipped  out  from  their  places  of  con- 
cealment to  join  in  the  festivities  ;  and, 
when  the  canoes  returned,  the  men 
might,  perhaps,  have  found  the  whole 
troop  of  young  things  performing  the 
"  Black  Crook,"  or  some  other  equally 
impressive  presentation  of  the  Terp- 
sichorean  art ;  but,  unhappily,  just  as 
one  of  our  ne\T  friends  was  in  the  midst 
of  an  extravagant  pas  seul,  a  party  of  a 
dozen  men,  who  had  come  ashore  un- 
noticed, suddenly  arrived  upon  the 
ground,  and  put  an  injunction  on  fur- 
ther proceedings.  Moreover,  they 
brought  a  note  from-  our  nervous  cap- 
tain, saying  that  the  vessel  was  over- 
run by  the  natives,  who,  he  feared, 
would  soon  begin  some  mischief;  and 
imploring  us,  by  all  the  regard  we  had 
for  his  comfort,  to  come  off  at  once,  and 
let  him  get  under  way.  We  therefore 
reluctantly  took  leave  of  our  island 
friends  ;  and,  launching  our  boat  safely 
through  the  surf,  soon  regained  the 
vessel.  The  captain  had  spent  an  un- 


easy clay.  Unwilling  to  put  the  least 
trust  in  the  natives,  he  would  gladly 
have  kept  his  vessel  out  of  their  reach, 
and  so  not  permitted  them  to  come  on 
board  ;  but  while  we  were  ashore,  he 
was  equally  desirous,  for  our  sakes,  to 
keep  on  good  terms.  However,  as  we 
were  now  ready  to  go,  and  had  a  good 
breeze,  we  gave  them  notice  to  clear 
the  deck.  The  king,  who  remained  to 
the  last,  went  over  the  side,  I  am  sorry 
to  say,  in  quite  an  unamiable  mood, 
because,  having  ground  up  an  old 
hatchet  for  him,  we  firmly  declined  giv- 
ing him  the  grindstone.  But  he  recov- 
ered his  good-nature  before  we  got  be- 
yond hearing  distance  ;  and  we  caught 
our  last  glimpse  of  him  as  he  stood  up 
in  his  canoe,  waving  the  royal  insig- 
nia with  which  he  had  welcomed  us  in 
the  morning,  and  shouting,  with  his 
companions,  an  affectionate  farewell. 

Since  the  date  of  this  visit  I  have 
met  with  some  information  that  throws 
a  little  light  on  the  previous  history  of 
the  island  and  its  neighbors  of  the 
same  group.  The  island  of  Oatafu 
was  discovered  by  Commodore  Byron, 
during  his  voyage  round  the  world,  on 
June  24,  1765.  He  called  it  the  Duke 
of  York's  Island.  A  party  landed  to 
gather  cocoanuts,  and  returned  with  the 
report  that  there  were  no  indications 
that  the  island  had  ever  been  inhabited. 
It  would  thus  appear  that  there  were 
no  people  there  a  century  ago.  He 
did  not  see  the  other  islands  of  the 
group.  These  are  Nunkunono,  or  the 
Duke  of  Clarence ;  and  Fakaafo,  or 
Bowditch. 

The  Missionary  Chronicle,  the  pub- 
lished record  of  the  London  Missionary 
Society,  printed,  in  1847,  a  letter  from 
one  of  the  resident  missionaries  at  the 
port  of  Apia,  Upolu,  one  of  the  Samoan 
(or  Navigators')  Group,  dated  Decem- 
ber, 1846,  relating  that  a  whale-ship, 
just  arrived  at  that  place,  had  picked 
up,  a  few  days  before,  a  double  canoe, 
containing  eleven  natives  in  a  very 
exhausted  condition.  Their  language 
proved  to  be  somewhat  similar  to  the 
Samoan,  and  from  their  account  they 
were  evidently  natives  of  the  Union 


1 868.] 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


43 


Group.  They  had  started  in  their  ca- 
noe, with  twenty  other  canoes,  to  go 
from  Nunkunono  to  Oatafu.  A  violent 
gale  had  blown  this  unfortunate  party 
off,  and  they  could  not  tell  whether  the 
others  reached  their  destination  safely 
or  not.  They  had  been  drifting  be- 
tween two  and  three  months,  subsist- 
ing scantily  on  cocoanuts,  and  perhaps 
some  fish,  catching  rain-water  in  their 
open  mouths.  The  letter  stated  that 
they  would  be  returned  when  oppor- 
tunity offered,  and  that  Samoan  converts 
would  accompany  them  as  religious 
teachers.  This  statement  accounts  for 
the  presence  of  the  "missionary"  re- 
ferred to  on  a  foregoing  page. 

We  visited  the  other  islands  of  the 
group,  Nunkunono  and  Fakaafo  ;  but  our 
experience  there  was  so  much  like  that 
already  related,  that  a  detailed  account 
would  involve  too  much  repetition.  I 
prefer,  therefore,  to  describe  a  visit  to 
the  island  of  Manihiki,  or  Humphrey's, 
which  with  its  neighbor,  Rakaanga,  or 
Rierson's,  lies  some  six  or  seven  hun- 
dred miles  east  of  the  Union  Group. 
These  islands  closely  resemble  those 
already  described  in  natural  features, 
but  the  combined  influences  of  inter- 
course with  foreigners  and  the  teach- 
ings of  Christian  missionaries  have 
wrought  some  strange  and  interesting 
effects  among  the  people. 

We  sighted  the  island  of  Manihiki 
at  daylight.  It  lay  ten  or  fifteen  miles 
distant,  the  broken  line  of  tree-tops 
just  skirting  the  horizon.  Unfortu- 
nately the  wind  had  died  entirely  away, 
and  the  flapping  sails  and  lazily  rocking 
vessel  promised  us  a  tedious  day  of  wait- 
ing for  a  breeze.  Discontented  with 
this,  we  determined  to  set  out  at  once 
in  our  boat  for  the  island,  and  leave  the 
captain  and  crew  to  bring  the  schooner 
up  as  soon  after  as  possible.  Accord- 
ingly, prepared  with  lunch  and  fresh 
water,  we  embarked,  and,  after  three  or 
four  hours'  rowing,  reached  the  shore, 
and  landed  upon  one  of  the  little  islets 
of  the  atoll. 

We  had  no  previous  information  con- 
cerning the  island,  and  did  not  even 
know  whether  it  was  inhabited  or  not. 


After  spending  some  time  on  the  islet 
on  which  we  had  landed,  we  brought 
our  boat  through  the  channel  from  the 
ocean  side  to  the  inner  lake,  and  pre- 
pared for  a  little  sail  on  the  lagoon. 
After  a  short  cruise,  we  observed  on  a 
distant  part  of  the  shore  what  appeared 
to  be  a  house  ;  and,  while  looking  at  it, 
discovered  on  the  beach  a  large  party 
of  people,  and  several  canoes  filled  with 
men  just  setting  off  to  meet  us. 

A  few  minutes  later  they  were  closely 
approaching  us,  and  if  we,  at  firs*t,  had 
any  apprehensions  of  an  unfriendly 
reception,  they  were  removed  as  soon 
as  the  men  came  near  enough  to  be  dis- 
tinctly visible.  They  were  all  dressed 
in  shirts,  pantaloons,  and  straw  hats, 
and  their  amiable  faces  bespoke  great 
pleasure  at  seeing  visitors.  As  soon 
as  we  were  within  hail,  they  began  to 
speak ;  and  we  were  glad  to  discover 
that  our  interpreter  could  communicate 
much  more  readily  with  them  than  with 
the  natives  of  the  Union  Group. 

We  also  made  another  discovery, 
which  not  only  enlightened  us  consid- 
erably regarding  the  people  and  their 
condition,  but  also  helped  to  assure  us 
of  a  kind  welcome. 

About  a  thousand  miles  from  this 
island  there  is  another  large  island 
called  Tanning's,  abounding  in  cocoa- 
nuts,  and  uninhabited  until  recently, 
when  an  Englishman  took  possession 
of  it,  and  began  the  manufacture  of 
cocoanut  -  oil.  This  we  had  known 
before,  but  we  now  learned  that  his 
necessary  laborers  were  hired  from  this 
island  and  its  neighbor  ;  it  being  his 
custom  to  take  up  a  party  of  men, 
women,  and  children  once  in  a  year,  and 
then  return  to  exchange  them  for  a 
fresh  lot.  He  pays  their  labor  in  calico 
and  such  clothing  as  they  commonly 
wear,  —  pantaloons,  shirts,  and  straw 
hats,  —  besides  tobacco,  knives,  and  oth- 
er implements.  As  this  had  been  in  op- 
eration several  years,  most  of  the  inhab- 
itants had  been  engaged  in  the  work  at 
one  time  or  another,  and  their  employ- 
er's name  had  become  a  household 
word. 

As  we  claimed  acquaintance  with  the 


44 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


[July- 


gentleman,  we  were  at  once  received  as 
his  "  brothers."  They  gave  us  a  hearty 
welcome,  and  pointed  to  the  shore, 
where,  they  said,  the  missionary  was 
waiting  to  receive  us  ;  and  a  part  of  the 
company  at  once  paddled  off  to  precede 
us  with  a  report. 

On  reaching  the  shore,  we  found 
nearly  the  whole  population  of  the 
village,  some  two  or  three  hundred 
people,  assembled  to  receive  us.  Most 
of  the  grown  people  were  dressed,  — 
the  men  in  shirts  or  pantaloons  or 
both,  and  the  women  in  loose  calico 
robes  or  gowns.  A  few  of  the  older 
and  more  conservative  people,  however, 
seemed  to  look  upon  such  articles  of 
dress  as  innovations  of  the  rising  and 
progressive  generation,  and  such  held 
fast  to  their  old-fashioned  cocoanut 
ideas.  The  young  children  generally 
were  naked. 

The  "  missionary  "  came  forward  to 
do  the  honors.  He  proved  to  be  a 
native  of  Raratonga,  a  large  and  high 
island  of  the  Hervey  Group,  some  five 
or  six  hundred  miles  away,  where  the 
English  missionaries  have  long  been 
established,  and  under  whose  teachings 
he  had  become  a  convert.  Having 
been  qualified  by  them  to  teach  others, 
he  had  come  thence  to  Manihiki  some 
ten  years  before,  and  had  become  a  very 
important  member  of  their  society. 

He  received  us  with  much  dignity  in 
the  midst  of  the  assembled  people,  all  of 
whom  pressed  forward  to  shake  hands  ; 
and,  when  these  greetings  were  over, 
we  were  invited  to  the  king's  house, 
where  his  Majesty  was  expecting  us. 

Led  by  the  missionary,  and  followed 
by  the  people,  we  walked  along  a  wide, 
well-shaded  avenue  which  crossed  the 
belt  of  land  at  a  right  angle  to  the  two 
beaches.  We  soon  reached  the  "  Pal- 
ace," —  a  house  similar  in  construction 
to  those  already  described,  in  which  we 
found  the  king  sitting  on  a  high-backed 
bench,  something  like  an  old-fashioned 
settle.  He  was  a  good-natured  old 
fellow,  perhaps  sixty  years  of  age.  He 
wore  a  blue  woollen  shirt  and  blue  pan- 
taloons, such  as  are  common  among 
us  for  "overalls."  Before  him  was  a 


roughly  made  table,  a  specimen  of  na- 
tive workmanship.  He  gave  us  places 
beside  him  on  the  "  throne,"  and  cocoa- 
nuts  in  all  their  various  edible  forms 
were  set  before  us. 

After  a  short  interview,  during  which 
he  invited  us  to  spend  the  night  ashore, 
as  it  was  already  too  late  to  pull  back 
to  the  vessel,  we  went  out  for  a  walk. 
To  our  surprise  we  came  directly  upon 
some  stone  buildings  of  very  consider- 
able dimensions;  built  of  coral  beach 
and  reef  rock,  and  plastered  over  with 
lime,  made  from  burning  the  same  rock. 
The  doors  and  window-spaces  were 
arched,  and  the  latter  furnished  with 
roughly  made  blinds,  though  without 
sash.  The  first  of  these  was  pointed 
out  as  the  church,  and  over  the  door 
was  written  "  Ziona." 

Opposite  the  church  was  another 
stone  building,  which  proved  to  be  the 
missionary's  house.  Farther  on,  a  third, 
was  in  process  of  construction,  intended 
to  be  the  school-house  ;  and  opposite  the 
last  was  a  large  building,  not  of  stone, 
but  of  the  primitive  style,  which  served 
as  a  hall  of  assembly  for  public  pur- 
poses, and  also  as  a  place  of  confine- 
ment for  offenders.  These  four  build- 
ings formed  the  four  corners  of  the  two 
avenues  of  the  village  ;  and  at  this  point 
we  found  the  cross  street,  running  par- 
allel to  the  sea-beach,  and  more  than  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  long,  paved  like  the 
other  in  the  middle,  well  shaded,  and 
having  on  either  side  a  long  row  of 
dwellings.  These  houses  were  of  the 
simple  native  style  of  construction,  and 
seemed  to  be  neatly  kept.  About  many 
of  the  houses  were  pigs  and  fowls,  which 
had  been  introduced  upon  the  island 
some  time  before.  Before  the  doors  the 
preparations  for  the  evening  meal,  or 
rather  the  evening  cocoanuts,  were  now 
going  on,  some  of  the  people  having 
satisfied  their  curiosity  sufficiently  to  be 
able  to  resume  their  domestic  duties. 

During  our  walk  we  were  taken  to 
see  some  of  their  canoes  of  the  larger, 
sea-going  sort.  Small  canoes  for  ordi- 
nary uses  were  plenty  enough ;  but  these 
larger  ones,  which  are  not  often  re- 
quired, were  hauled  up,  and  put  under 


1 868.] 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


45 


cover.  They  were  between  fifty  and 
sixty  feet  long,  made  with  much  care 
and  some  attempt  at  ornamentation, 
certain  parts  of  the  woodwork  being 
inlaid  with  pearl.  They  were  double 
canoes,  that  is,  two  were  joined  togeth- 
er by  stout  cross-pieces  of  such  length 
that  the  two  canoes  were  several  feet 
apart.  The  bow  of  either  canoe  was 
opposite  the  stern  of  the  other.  When 
used  under  sail,  the  sail  is  set  on  the 
lee  canoe,  while  the  passengers  and 
freight  are  in  the  weather  one  ;  and,  if  it 
be  necessary  to  tack  ship,  the  masts 
and  sails  are  shifted  to  the  other  canoe, 
and  passengers  and  cargo  transferred 
accordingly.  The  natives  use  these 
vessels  for  crossing  from  Manihiki  to 
the  neighboring  island,  some  forty  miles 
distant.  This  journey,  I  believe,  is  not 
often  made,  and  only  attempted  under 
favorable  winds,  as  these  canoes  are 
not  adapted  to  beating  to  windward. 
It  has  happened  twice  within  a  few 
years  that  parties  have  been  blown  or 
currented  off  while  making  this  jour- 
ney. Once,  previous  to  the  visit  herein 
described,  a  party  of  men  and  women, 
unable  to  gain  the  land,  were  drifted 
off,  and,  after  floating  several  weeks, 
landed  upon  an  uninhabited  island 
about  one  thousand  miles  distant. 
Here  they  subsisted  on  the  few  co- 
coanuts  they  found  until  they  were 
taken  off  by  a  passing  vessel,  and  car- 
ried to  the  Samoan  Islands,  whence 
they  were,  in  time,  returned  to  their 
native  home.  Some  of  these  survivors 
we  saw  at  the  time  of  our  visit. 

Another  party,  in  1861,  were  current- 
ed off  in  a  similar  manner  ;  and,  after 
eight  weeks  of  untold  suffering,  those 
who  survived  landed  upon  an  inhab- 
ited island  fourteen  hundred  miles  west 
of  their  own.  There  they  remained  five 
months,  until  taken  off  by  the  Mission- 
ary packet,  a  vessel  devoted  to  the  ser- 
vice of  the  London  Missionary  Society. 
The  Chronicle,  relating  this,  adds  the 
interesting  fact,  that  among  the  surviv- 
ors of  this  party  were  several  converts, 
one  of  them  a  deacon  of  the  church  on 
his  native  island.  They  had  their  Bi- 
bles with  them.  Finding  that  the  in- 


habitants of  the  island  to  which  they 
had  come  had  never  received  a  Chris- 
tian teacher,  or  any  instruction  what- 
ever, they  began  at  once  to  teach  them 
to  read,  and  to  preach  to  them  the  Gos- 
pel of  Jesus  Christ,  and  so  prepared  the 
way  for  further  missionary  effort  after 
their  departure. 

When  we  had  finished  our  walk,  the 
missionary  took  us  to  his  own  house. 
This  was  a  large  stone  building,  di- 
vided into  three  apartments,  of  which 
the  middle  one  was  the  general  recep- 
tion-room. The  floor  was  covered  by 
mats,  and  several  roughly  made  tables 
and  seats  composed  the  furniture.  On 
one  table  was  a  number  of  books,  chiefly 
Bibles,  hymn-books,  and  primers.  These 
books  were,  I  believe,  in  the  language 
of  Raratonga,  possibly  modified  to  suit 
the  dialect  of  the  islanders.  We  were 
told  that  all  the  inhabitants  could  read, 
and  many  could  write.  All  possess 
Bibles  and  hymn-books,  slates  and 
pencils.  All  the  children  attend  school, 
and  receive  instruction  in  reading,  writ- 
ing, and  arithmetic.  The  church  is  reg- 
ularly organized,  and  comprises  more 
than  a  hundred  members,  and  many,  if 
not  all,  the  remaining  adults  are  what 
are  termed  "  class  members."  The  en- 
tire population  may  be  said  to  have 
embraced  Christianity.  A  report  in  the 
Chronicle  of  date  subsequent  to  that 
of  this  visit  states  that  the  islanders  of 
Manihiki  had  paid  more  than  fifteen 
pounds  for  Bibles  and  books  for  their 
own  use,  and  contributed  more  than  ten 
pounds  for  missionary  work  elsewhere, 
and  that  four  young  men,  natives  of 
Manihiki,  were  going  to  Raratonga  to 
study  and  qualify  themselves  as  relig- 
ious teachers  among  other  islanders. 

While  still  with  the  missionary,  a 
messenger  Came  from  the  king  to  invite 
us  to  supper  with  the  "royal  family." 
We  obeyed  immediately.  We  found 
our  host  seated  alone  behind  his  table, 
on  which  the  feast  was  spread.  Cocoa- 
nuts  were  of  course  in  abundance,  and 
flying -fish,  partially  baked,  were  not 
uninviting  ;  but  the  glory  of  the  occasion 
was  a  chicken  that  had  been  sacrificed 
for  our  good.  The  king  did  the  honors 


46 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


tJ»iy, 


gracefully,  and  seemed  much  pleased 
with  our  expressions  of  satisfaction. 
Meantime  the  queen  and  princess  royal 
sat  on  the  floor,  surrounded  by  many 
people  of  various  degrees  of  distinction, 
and  all  much  interested  in  watching  the 
strangers. 

This  entertainment  was  scarcely  over, 
when  the  missionary  sent  for  us  to  re- 
turn to  his  house,  where,  to  our  surprise, 
we  found  a  second  repast  prepared  in 
much  the  same  style,  and  a  larger  con- 
gregation of  natives  assembled  to  wit- 
ness our  disposal  of  it.  We  did  all  that 
men  of  our  capacity  could,  but,  unhap- 
pily, failed  to  do  full  justice  to  our  host's 
hospitality. 

As  the  evening  wore  away,  and  we 
began  to  think  of  bed,  we  heard  a  re- 
markable noise  in  the  street.  It  was 
the  beating  of  the  Rap  Tap.  This  in- 
strument, as  I  afterwards  discovered, 
was  a  piece  of  wood  twelve  or  fifteen 
inches  long,  and  three  or  four  thick, 
hollowed  out  like  a  trough,,  so  that, 
when  beaten,  it  gave  a  dull,  ringing 
sound.  One  man,  with  two  attendants, 
marched  through  the  village,  beating 
this  at  short  intervals,  and  following  the 
beating,  first  with  a  distressing  screech, 
and  then  a  short  proclamation  to  the 
effect  that  bed-time  had  come,  and 
warning  all  against  being  found  out  of 
doors  or  with  lights  burning  thereafter. 
The  missionary  informed  us  that  this 
was  a  very  strict  rule,  and  any  one  of- 
fending against  it  was  liable  to  fine  or 
punishment.  He  accordingly  showed 
us  places  to  sleep  in  an  adjoining  apart- 
ment, giving  us  very  comfortable  mats 
for  beds,  and  then  bade  us  good  night. 
A  few  minutes  later,  quiet  reigned 
throughout  the  entire  community. 

We  had  learned  that  the  inhabitants 
of  the  island,  numbering  altogether  four 
or  five  hundred,  were  divided  into  two 
communities,  one  of  which  lived  in  a 
village  similar  to  this  on  the  other  side 
of  the  lagoon.  We  were  also  told  that 
with  this  other  community  were  living 
two  white  men,  who  had  been  on  the 
island  several  months.  A  messenger 
had  been  sent  to  these  foreigners  to 
report  our  visit,  and  in  the  morn- 


ing they  both  made  their  appearance. 
They  were  delighted  to  see  us,  and 
welcomed  an  opportunity  to  get  away 
from  the  island  ;  they  lost  no  time  in 
making  known  their  desire  to  go  with 
us  under  any  conditions,  and  to  be  left 
anywhere,  only  asking  to  be  taken  away. 
The  reason  for  this  soon  became  ap- 
parent. 

Of  these  two  men,  one  was  an  Eng- 
lishman, forty  or  fifty  years  of  age, 
and  the  other  an  American  not  over 
twenty-five.  The  former  had  been  left 
on  the  island  about  seven  months  be- 
fore by  a  trading-vessel  that  had  called 
in  search  of  pearls.  The  American  had 
belonged  to  the  crew  of  a  little  vessel 
that  had  touched  there  four  months  be- 
fore, on  her  way  from  San  Francisco 
to  Tahiti ;  and  he,  hoping  to  enjoy  an 
indolent  and  lawless  life  among  the 
islanders,  had  deserted  the  vessel. 

The  Englishman,  it  appeared,  had 
lived  for  many  years  by  vagrancy.  He 
had  wandered  all  over  the  Pacific  Ocean, 
and  had  either  visited  or  lived  upon  a 
large  number  of  its  islands.  It  is  not 
improbable  that  he  was  an  escaped  con- 
vict, and  so,  partly  from  choice,  partly 
from  necessity,  preferred  to  spend  his 
life  beyond  the  reach  of  law.  In  this 
way  the  vagabond  had  spent  a  few 
months,  or  possibly  years,  on  one  island, 
and  then,  having  exhausted  the  novelties 
of  the  place,  and  made  himself  odious 
to  the  people,  had  succeeded,  by  means 
of  some  passing  whaler  or  other  vessel, 
in  reaching  another,  and  then  another, 
and  so  on  until  he  had  brought  up 
where  we  found  him,  in  a  very  unhappy 
condition,  and  ready  for  still  another 
island.  The  American  was  a  stout  and 
hearty  but  demoralized  youth,  who  had 
chosen  to  enter  upon  the  same  career, 
but  had  made  what  he  considered  an 
unhappy  beginning  on  an  island  and 
among  a  people  where  he  felt  the  rigors 
of  the  law  in  a  degree  he  had  never  be- 
fore dreamed  of. 

They  gave  a  long  account  of  their 
experience  among  the  people  ;  and  their 
statements,  though  necessarily  to  be 
taken  with  many  grains  of  allowance, 
furnished  some  information  concerning 


1 868.] 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


47 


the  native  character  and  social  con- 
dition. The  missionary,  they  said,  had 
been  there  about  ten  years,  and  was  not 
only  the  religious  teacher,  but  had  be- 
come the  lawgiver.  The  king  and  chiefs, 
who  were  the  ostensible  rulers,  were 
entirely  under  his  influence,  and  did 
nothing  without  his  approval.  The 
laws,  which  were  rigidly  enforced,  had 
been  framed  by  the  missionary;  they 
were  based  generally  upon  the  precepts 
taught,  by  the  English  missionaries  at 
Raratonga,  and  included  what  addition- 
al light  he  could  get  from  the  Mosaic 
code. 

No  wonder  that  a  couple  of  first-class 
vagabonds,  who  had  felt  the  inconveni- 
ence of  law  at  home,  and  who  were 
seeking  a  place  where  neither  Law  nor 
Gospel  had  ever  been  heard  of,  found 
themselves  in  very  unpleasant  circum- 
stances under  such  an  administration. 

When  they  had  first  come,  they  were 
kindly  and  hospitably  received.  They 
were  regarded  as  the  representatives 
of  a  superior  race,  and  hailed  as  resi- 
dents with  delight.  Everybody  was 
happy  to  do  them  a  service.  They 
were  welcome  guests  in  any  house,  and 
were  provided  with  plenty  of  cocoanuts 
and  fish  without  even  the  labor  of  help- 
ing themselves.  But  after  a  time  the 
lustre  of  their  superiority  began  to  wear 
off.  Their  laziness  and  worthlessness 
were -properly  appreciated,  and  their  va- 
rious sins  of  omission  and  commission, 
which,  at  first,  had  been  allowed  to  pass 
unnoticed,  now  gave  offence,  and  the 
offenders  were  held  responsible  at  law, 
precisely  as  any  other  member  of  the 
community.  It  was  then  they  began 
to  realize  that  the  way  of  transgressors 
is  hard. 

Whether  the  missionary  had  given 
the  islanders  a  regularly  written  code, 
or  not,  I  cannot  say  ;  but  a  few  of  their 
regulations  will  indicate  how  far  their 
daily  walk  and  conversation  were  af- 
fected by  the  system  of  laws. 

Absence  from  church,  unless  for  a 
satisfactory  reason,  was  a  punishable 
offence.  Men  were  forbidden  to  smoke 
on  Sunday,  and  women  at  any  time. 
Walking  out  on  Sunday  was  against 


law.  Women  were  fined  for  appearing 
at  church  without  bonnets.  (And  such 
bonnets  !  for  some  good  Christian  ladies 
in  London,  thinking  perhaps,  that,  next 
to  a  new  heart,  a  benighted  woman 
would  most  need  a  new  bonnet,  had 
sent  out  a  lot  of  the  drollest-fashioned, 
high-peaked  straw  bonnets  for  the  poo- 
things  to  wear.  And  I  will  take  advan- 
tage of  this  parenthesis  to  add,  that  the 
same  considerate  people  had  sent  a  full 
suit  of  black  broadcloth,  with  a  black 
cylinder  hat,  for  the  missionary  to  wear 
when  discharging  the  duties  of  his  of- 
fice. As  these  clothes  were  wholly  un- 
like those  in  common  use,  he  had  come 
to  regard  them  somewhat  as  robes  of 
office,  and  to  put  them  on  as  a  priest 
puts  on  the  sacred  vestments ;  and  it 
is  truly  ludicrous  to  fancy  him,  as  de- 
scribed by  the  white  men,  on  semi- 
official occasions,  when,  in  addition  to 
his  simple  native  garments,  he  would, 
according  to  his  estimate  of  the  impor- 
tance of  the  event,  wear  now  the  coat, 
or  the  vest,  or,  perhaps,  only  the  hat 
alone.)  Anything  like  musical  instru- 
ments were  forbidden,  because,  I  sup- 
pose, only  associated  with  dancing. 
Singing  songs  which  were  not  in  the 
hymn-book  was  likewise  forbidden. 
Every  member  of  the  community,  from 
the  king  to  the  youngest  child  able  to 
talk,  was  obliged  to  recite  a  verse  of 
Scripture  every  Sunday,  and,  in  default 
thereof,  was  held  liable  to  a  fine. 

Fines  are  the  usual  punishment  for 
offences  ;  and,  if  their  system  of  laws  is 
peculiar,  that  of  the  fines  is  more  so. 
It  seems  to  have  been  based  on  the 
doctrine,  that  he  that  offends  in  one 
point  of  the  law  is  guilty  of  all ;  and,  fur- 
ther, that,  as  the  second  violation  of  a 
law  is  a  greater  crime  than  the  first 
offence,  the  enormity  of  the  sin  is 
measured  only  by  the  number  of  times 
that  the  sinner  has  offended.  Whatever 
the  theory,  the  fact  appeared  to  be,  that 
the  first  violation  of  law  was  punished 
by  a  certain  fine,  the  second  offence  by 
double  the  first  fine,  the  third  offence,  no 
matter  what,  whether  smoking,  dancing, 
or  adultery,  by  double  the  second  fine, 
and  so  on  in  geometrical  progression. 


48 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


[July, 


The  fines  were  usually  levied  in  calico, 
for,  as  the  labor  of  the  people  is  gener- 
ally paid  in  that  article,  it  has  become 
the  currency  of  the  country.  The  unit 
is  one  fathom  of  calico,  and  is  con- 
sidered the  equivalent  of  fifty  cents. 
Values  are  expressed  in  fathoms,  and 
a  ten-dollar  coin  is  accordingly  a  twenty- 
fathom  piece.  The  fine  for  the  first 
violation  of  law  is  five  fathoms ;  and, 
according  to  the  foregoing,  that  of  the 
second,  third,  or  fourth  offence  is  ten, 
twenty,  or  forty  fathoms.  '  I  was  told 
that  persons  had  been  fined  even  one 
thousand  fathoms  and  over.  I  naturally 
inquired  what  became  of  all  the  calico 
that  must  from  time  to  time  be  forfeited 
by  offenders,  and  was  told  that  all  fines 
were  paid  over  to  the  "  Council,"  con- 
sisting of  the  king,  chief  men,  and  the 
missionary,  who  made  distribution  there- 
of for  the  public  good  or  their  own ; 
that  sometimes  fines  were  paid  in  pigs, 
fowls,  or  cocoanuts,  and  that  this  pro- 
vision was  appropriated  for  refreshments 
at  the  meetings  of  the  "  Council,"  and 
that,  when  the  delinquents  and  their 
friends  had  no  more  wherewith  to  pay, 
the  sentence  was  convertible  into  work 
upon  the  road  or  public  buildings. 

Now,  as  may  readily  be  supposed, 
our  two  foreign  friends  had  brought  but 
a  small  supply  of  dry  goods  or  any  other 
goods  to  the  island  ;  and,  when  they  be- 
came subject  to  law,  a  very  brief  career 
in  vice  brought  them  to  the  end  of 
their  calico.  The  very  first  fine  ex- 
hausted their  stock,  and  took  their 
extra  shirts  and  pants  besides  ;  and  the 
Englishman  could  find  no  words  to  ex- 
press his  deep  sense  of  the  injustice 
done  him,  when  the  "  Council,"  having 
taken  everything  else  of  the  calico  kind 
from  him,  finally  laid  out  in  one  straight 
line  his  sea-chest,  shot-gun,  pocket- 
revolver,  straw  hat,  tobacco-box,  pipe, 
and  other  personal  property,  and  took 
them  calico  measure,  fathom  per  fathom, 
in  payment  of  a  fine. 

This,  at  the  moment,  had  been  too 
much  for  him,  and  he  had  attempted 
resistance,  but  soon  found  that  worse 
than  useless,  for  it  increased  his  pun- 
ishment, which  was  now  converted  into 


work  upon  the  public  way,  and,  at  the 
time  of  our  arrival,  both  men  were  under 
sentence  to  build  an  almost  incredible 
number  of  fathoms  of  road.  Truly  the 
lines  had  fallen  to  them  in  unpleasant 
places.  Much  of  the  foregoing,  it  must 
be  remembered,  is  given  as  the  state- 
ment of  the  two  white  men,  who  could 
hardly  be  expected  to  be  unprejudiced 
witnesses  ;  but  I  subsequently  had  oc- 
casion to  learn  from  an  intelligent  man, 
who,  in  connection  with  the  business, 
before  referred  to,  of  making  cocoanut- 
oil,  had  seen  much  of  these  people,  that 
the  statements  were  in  the  main  correct, 
and,  as  far  as  they  go,  fairly  indicate 
some  of  the  first  results  of  the  influ- 
ences of  civilization  and  the  teaching 
of  Christian  missionaries  among  this 
simplest  of  all  simple  folk. 

The  missionary,  who  was  himself  a 
convert  from  heathenism,  himself  in- 
structed in  and  teaching  them  from  a 
Bible  which,  owing  to  the  extreme  pov- 
erty of  their  language,  must  have  been 
a  very  deficient  translation,  may  have 
been  able  to  give  but  very  imperfect 
ideas  of  Christian  doctrines,  and  of  their 
application  to  the  every-day  life  and 
conduct  of  believers ;  but  he  was,  I 
think,  a  sincere  and  conscientious  man, 
and  honestly  gave  them  such  light  as 
he  had,  imparting  to  them  what  he  had 
himself  received.  Having  been  their 
first  teacher,  and  having  instructed  them 
in  the  new  religion,  he  was  naturally 
looked  to  for  guidance  and  direction  in 
other  matters,  and  so  became  their 
Lawgiver. 

We  spent  the  following  day  or  two 
on  the  island.  The  schooner  arrived, 
and  came  to  anchor,  opposite  the  vil- 
lage, though  not  until  her  apprehensive 
captain  had  positively  assured  himself 
that  we  had  not  been  eaten  up  on  the 
first  night  of  our  absence. 

Trade  for  fowls  and  cocoanuts  was 
opened,  and  was  carried  on  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  king  and  missionary,  their 
approval  being  necessary  for  each  trans- 
action. We  found  occasion  to  visit  the 
village  on  the  other  side  of  the  lagoon, 
where  we  found  a  state  of  affairs  pre- 
cisely similar  to  that  with  which  we  had 


1 868.] 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


49 


already  become  acquainted.  We  looked 
into  the  church,  and  found  the  interior 
furnished  with  rather  roughly  made 
benches  or  seats,  arranged  like  pews  in 
an  ordinary  meeting-house  among  us. 
At  one  end  was  a  high  pulpit,  reached 
by  steps.  The  wood- work  was  orna- 
mented by  inlaid  pearl.  Before  the 
pulpit  was  a  table,  where,  the  white 
men  said,  the  sacrament  was  adminis- 
tered monthly.  What  was  used  as  a 
substitute  for  bread  and  wine  in  this 
service  I  could  not  learn  ;  but  if  any- 
thing other  than  cocoanut  and  water, 
it  must  have  been  imported  for  the  pur- 
pose. 

On  the  evening  of  the  second  day  I 
had  an  interesting  experience.  Among 
my  first  acquaintances  on  the  island 
were  two  young  men  who  had  enjoyed 
unusual  advantages  for  seeing  the  world. 
A  year  or  two  previous  a  whale-ship 
had  called  there  in  passing,  whose  cap- 
tain had  induced  these  two  youths  to 
join  the  vessel  in  a  cruise  for  a  year, 
with  the  condition  that  they  should  be 
returned  at  the  end  of  the  time.  They 
had  accordingly  spent  one  year  in  the 
forecastle  of  this  ship,  and  had  acquired 
a  good  deal  of  such  knowledge  as  the 
associations  of  the  place  furnished  and 
their  limited  capacity  enabled  them  to 
receive.  They  came  back  as  travelled 
men.  They  could  speak  a  few  words 
of  English,  and  this  accomplishment, 
combined  with  their  comparatively 
wider  experience,  made  them  important 
members  of  society.  One  was  called 
John  Allen  (possibly  the  name  of  the 
ship),  the  other  was  Jeremiah.  The 
latter  had  married  the  king's  daughter, 
and  John  was  also  connected  with  some 
of  the  first  families  on  the  island.  John 
and  Jeremiah  lived  together  with  their 
families.  They  invited  me  to  spend  our 
second  night  at  their  house,  and  I  hav- 
ing promised  to  do  so,  they  asked  a 
number  of  their  aristocratic  connections 
to  meet  me  there  in  the  evening  "  very 
sociably."  'On  arriving,  I  found  fifteen 
or  twenty  people  besides  the  usual  mem- 
bers of  the  household.  The  first  part 
cf  the  entertainment  was  provided  in 
the  shape  of  a  roasted  chicken  and  two 

VOL.  xxii.  —  NO.  129.  4 


boiled  eggs,  which  I  was  desired  to  eat 
while  the  host  and  the  other  guests 
looked  on.  As  the  chicken  was  small 
and  the  eggs  fresh,  I  found  this  a  com- 
mendable arrangement.  After  the  cloth 
was  removed,  the  company  found  great 
entertainment  in  asking  me  as  many  and 
various  questions  as  John  and  Jeremiah, 
with  their  small  stock  of  words  and 
ideas,  could  put  into  English.  Then 
slates  and  pencils  were  introduced,  and 
I  was  desired  to  write  my  name,  the 
name  of  our  vessel,  where  we  came 
from,  and  so  forth,  all  of  which  was 
very  carefully  imitated  by  my  observers. 
They  were  desirous  that  I  should  sing 
for  them,  but  I  was  obliged  to  excuse 
myself;  and,  on  returning  the  compli- 
ment by  asking  them  for  a  song,  John 
replied  that  I  should  hear  them  "  bime- 
by."  This  was  soon  explained.  At 
eight  o'clock  the  Rap  Tap  sounded,  and 
immediately  all  guests  left  the  house  to 
go  to  their  own.  When  quiet  was  re- 
stored, John  took  two  hymn-books  and 
a  Bible  from  the  shelf,  and,  giving  one 
hymn-book  to  Jeremiah,  the  two  led  off 
in  a  hymn,  the  rest  of  the  family  follow- 
ing. The  words,  of  course,  were  native  ; 
and  such,  I  judge,  may  have  been  the 
music,  as  there  was  no  semblance  of  a 
tune.  When  this  was  concluded,  John 
read  a  chapter  from  the  Bible  ;  and  then, 
all  kneeling  down,  he  offered  up  the 
evening  prayer. 

After  this  there  was  a  brief  interval, 
during  which  preparations  for  the  night's 
rest  were  made.  A  wooden  bench  or 
couch,  covered  by  a  mat,  was  appropri- 
ated to  my  use.  The  rest  of  the  people 
spread  their  mats  on  the  floor.  John's 
father  and  mother  occupied  one  corner. 
The  young  children  lay  in  another  cor- 
ner. John  and  his  wife  took  the  cor- 
ner nearest  to  me,  and  Jeremiah  and 
his  wife  -were  crowded  out,  and  so  lay 
on  their  mats  just  outside  the  house, 
under  the  projecting  eaves.  In  a  few 
minutes  everybody  was  asleep. 

As  I  lay  down  for  the  night,  I  could 
but  think  of  the  position  of  the  two 
white  men  among  these  people.  This 
quiet  scene  of  family  worship,  and  the 
social  and  religious  conditions  which 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


[July, 


its  observance  implied,  contrasted  most 
strangely  with  what  they,  in  their  evil 
imaginations,  had  expected  and  hoped 
to  find.  Seeking  only  a  country  with- 
out law,  where  they  could  lead  lives  of 
indolence  and  licentiousness,  and  do 
the  works  of  the  flesh  without  restraint, 
they  found  themselves  among  a  most 
exacting  people,  and  subject  to  laws 
compared  with  which,  in  their  view,  a 
state -prison  discipline  appeared  alto- 
gether lovely.  I  shall  long  remember 
poor  Bill,  the  Englishman,  who,  stating 
his  grievances,  and  warming  up  with 
the  subject,  said :  "  Why,  sir,  the  people 
are  good  enough  in  their  way.  I  've 
got  nothing  agin  the  people.  But  you 
see,  sir,  it 's  the  law  that  I  don't  like. 
The  law,  that  they  pretend  to  take 
from  the  Bible,  and  that  the  missionary 
says  is  the  same  as  in  my  country. 
Now,  sir,  it 's  true  as  how  I  'ave  n't 
read  the  Bible  a  great  deal,  but  I  never 
'  found  no  such  laws  as  theirn  in  what 
little  I  'ave  read.  And  then,  when  I 
tell  'em  there's  no  such  laws  in  my 
country,  in  spite  of  what  the  missionary 
says,  they  just  say,  'Fine  him  ag'in  for 
disputin'  the  missionary ' ;  and  when  I 
say  there 's  no  law  for  that  in  the  Bible, 
they  up  and  say,  '  'Ave  'im  up  ag'in  for 
sayin'  it 's  not  in  the  Bible.'  But  it 's 
plain  their  Bible  can't  be  like  ourn, 
.  for,  as  you  well  know,  sir,  there  are 
four-and-twenty  letters  in  our  alphabet, 
while  there  are  no  more  than  twelve  in 
theirn,  and  I  should  just  like  to  know 
how  a  language  of  twenty-four  letters 
can  be  turned  into  one  of  twelve.  So 
it  stands  to  reason  that  the  Bibles  can't 
be  all  the  same."  The  following  day 
we  were  to  leave.  The  two  men 
begged  to  be  taken  away,  and  landed 
on  some  other  island.  We  told  them 
our  next  point  of  destination  was  an 
uninhabited  island  known  as  Su war- 
row's  (or  SouvorofPs),  some  hundreds 
of  miles  distant.  Bill  declared  that 
he  knew  the  island  of  old,  and  would 
rather  be  left  there  than  remain  where 
he  was.  The  American  seconded  him 
in  this,  and  we  finally  consented  to 
take  them  and  two  women,  who,  they 
declared,  were  their  wives,  under  condi- 


tion that  they  should  disembark  at  Su- 
warrow's  Island.  This,  they  said,  was 
what  they  most  desired  ;  for  there  they 
would  have  an  island  to  themselves, 
would  make  their  own  laws,  and  raise  a 
colony  after  their  own  heart.  Imme- 
diately they  prepared  to  go,  but  were  at 
once  met  by  objections  on  the  part  of 
the  "  Council,"  who  held  that  the  men 
should  work  out  their  sentence  on  the 
road  before  taking  their  departure. 
This,  however,  was  finally  compro- 
mised, and  the  party  came  aboard  the 
vessel.  As  soon  as  we  had  said  good 
by  to  our  friends  ashore,  and  com- 
pleted all  other  arrangements,  we  got 
under  way ;  but  just  as  the  sails  were 
filling,  and  the  vessel  beginning  to 
move,  a  cry  was  heard  alongside,  and 
directly  a  woman  was  discovered  cling- 
ing to  a  rope's  end  that  hung  over  the 
gangway.  As  she  not  only  begged  to 
be  taken  on  board,  but  refused  to  re- 
turn ashore,  she  was  hoisted  in.  Prob- 
ably her  coming  had  been  previously 
arranged;  but  the  men,  fearing  a  re- 
fusal, had  not  ventured  to  ask  trans- 
portation for  a  spare  wife.  So  we  set 
out  with  five  colonists.  In  a  few  days 
we  reached  the  designated  island.  We 
found  it  similar  in  character  to  the 
coral  islands  already  described,  but 
much  greater  in  extent,  the  lagoon 
being  hardly  less  than  twenty  miles  in 
diameter.  Leading  into  this  lagoon  we 
found  a  fine  channel,  through  which 
we  sailed,  and  came  to  anchor  in  the 
waters  of  the  lake.  A  day  or  two  were 
spent  in  examination,  during  which  the 
colonists  were  busy  in  spying  out  the 
land  with  reference  to  their  future  hap- 
piness. Bill  declared  himself  disap- 
pointed. Instead  of  finding  cocoanut- 
trees  in  abundance,  he  had  only  count- 
ed fifty.  He  had  looked  for  fresh  water 
in  vain;  and  as  the  time  for  our  de- 
parture drew  near,  he  began  to  realize 
that  the  pleasure  of  being  his  own  law- 
giver would  be  attended  by  some  sac- 
rifices. Unwilling  to  leave  the  party 
there  against  their  wish,  especially  as 
the  island  is  very  rarely  visited  by 
vessels,  we  finally  gave  them  the  alter- 
native of  returning  whence  we  had 


1 868.] 


Some  Coral  Islands  and  Islanders. 


brought  them.  This  decided  the  mat- 
ter. Both  men  declared  that,  rather 
than  return,  they  would  struggle  for 
existence  where  they  were.  Cocoanuts 
might  be  scarce,  but  fish  and  crabs 
would  abound  ;  and  they  would  at  least 
have  their  own  way,  and  be  happy.  So 
they  began  at  once  to  build  their  house. 
The  men  cut  the  wood,  and  put  up  a 
rough  frame,  while  the  women  gathered 
branches  and  prepared  the  thatch  ;  and 
before  we  left  they  were  about  ready  to 
go  to  housekeeping.  We  gave  them  a 
cask  of  water,  one  or  two  barrels  of 
bread,  some  tools,  fish-lines,  and  hooks, 
and  some  other  articles  very  desirable 
under  their  circumstances.  They  pro- 
fessed themselves  contented,  and  well 
pleased  with  their  prospects,  and  prom- 
ised faithfully  to  preserve  our  names  in 
their  posterity.  So  we  bade  them  good 
by,  and  on  the  following  morning,  at 
sunrise,  we  hoisted  our  sails  to  the 
breeze  and  sailed  out  of  the  lagoon, 
while  the  five  colonists  stood  on  the 
beach,  waving  hats  and  hands,  and  a 
little  red,  white,  and  blue  flag,  which 
Bill  had  somehow  managed  to  conceal 
or  to  recover  from  the  never-to-be-for- 
gotten "  Council."  I  have  never  since 
heard  of  them.  For  aught  that  I  know 
they  are  still  there.  If  so,  I  trust  that 
they  get  on  without  the  world  as  well 
as  the  world  does  without  them. 

The  voyage  of  which  the  foregoing  is 
a  partial  account  was  made  in  1860. 
There  is  a  melancholy  item  of  the  sub- 
sequent history  of  the  islands  referred 
to  which  must  be  added.  In  1863  a 
number  of  slaving-vessels  were  fitted 
out  at  Callao,  in  Peru,  to  cruise  among 
the  islands  of  the  Pacific  in  quest  of 
coolies,  or,  more  properly,  slaves,  for 
the  Peruvian  market.  The  very  islands 


herein  described,  and  many  like  them, 
were  visited,  and  their  defenceless  in- 
habitants kidnapped.  From  Manihiki 
many  were  taken ;  and  from  Oatafu,  it 
is  said,  every  able-bodied  man  and 
woman  and  the  larger  children  were 
seized  and  hurried  off,  leaving  only  the 
aged  and  helpless  behind.  There  is  an 
additional  interest  given  to  the  account 
of  this  deplorable  affair,  by  the  fact  that 
the  island  of  Oatafu  had,  but  a  short 
time  before,  become  the  scene  of  very 
successful  missionary  labors.  Christian 
teachers  had  been  sent  there  in  1861, 
and  the  entire  population  had  become 
converts.  They  had  learned  to  read 
and  write,  and  the  church  and  school 
were  in  a  nourishing  condition.  The 
same  is  true  of  many  of  the  other  islands 
depopulated  by  the  man-stealers. 

The  recital  of  the  operations  of  these 
slavers,  who,  in  order  to  secure  the  na- 
tives on  board  the  vessels,  used  force 
where  strategy  failed,  in  some  cases 
driving  them  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet, 
firing  upon  and  killing  many  in  order 
to  terrify  and  capture  the  rest,  —  of  the 
fearful  suffering  of  all  the  captives, 
and  the  death  of  many  on  the  voyage, 
and,  finally,  of  their  miserable  condition 
in.  Peru,  —  is  truly  distressing.  The 
French  government,  on  learning  the 
facts,  promptly  called  the  Peruvian  gov- 
ernment to  account  for  depredations 
committed  on  islands  under  French  pro- 
tection. Unfortunately  the  islands  that 
suffered  most  are  unprotected  by  any 
nation.  An  indignation  meeting  was 
held  in  Sydney,  and  a  memorial  ad- 
dressed to  the  British  government,  pray- 
ing for  intervention  in  the  matter ;  but 
I  have  never  learned  what  measifres,  if 
any,  were  adopted  by  that  government 
to  seek  redress  for  this  diabolical  out- 
rage upon  humanity. 


The  Poor  in  Cities. 


[July, 


THE     POOR     IN     CITIES. 


HOW  to  relieve  the  poor  in  our 
cities  without  wounding  their 
self-respect,  by  insuring  them  employ- 
ment at  fair  wages,  is  a  problem  that 
taxes  the  wits  of  economists  and  philan- 
thropists. Private  charity  assists  many 
over  the  hard  places  till  they  can  plant 
their  feet  firmly  once  more,  and  have 
the  certainty  of  bread  for  the  day.  But 
when  trouble  comes  in  financial  circles, 
thousands  of  these  poor  people  are 
thrown  out  of  employment,  and,  having 
no  bread  for  the  day,  are  glad  of  the 
city's  supply  of  soup.  It  is  no  new 
song  of  sorrow  that  we  hear,  of  more 
seamstresses  than  shirts,  more  teachers 
than  pupils,  of  starvation  in  attics,  or 
its  alternative,  infamy  in  the  streets. 
The  intelligence-offices  are  crowded 
with  applicants  for  all  kinds  of  labor, 
and  day  after  day  the  pressure  contin- 
ues. 

This  is  in  Boston,  the  capital  of  the 
State  of  Massachusetts.  Three  miles 
from  Boston  it  is  next  to  impossible  to 
find  a  woman  to  do  plain  needle-work  ; 
and  in  the  country,  a  hundred  miles 
from  Boston,  everybody  does  his  or  her 
own  drudgery,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  nobody  can  be  hired  to  do  it. 
There  is  plenty  of  material  out  of 
place,  and  a  great  scarcity  when  and 
where  you  want  it. 

It  would  seem,  at  first,  that  the  sup- 
ply would  seek  the  demand.  In  ordi- 
nary cases  this  would  occur  without 
effort*  or  special  care,  and  laborers 
would  be  dispersed  in  such  directions 
as  would  be  most  desirable.  But  the 
poor  in  our  cities  have  now  become  so 
great  in  number  as  to  require  more  as- 
sistance than  they  have  ever  yet  had, 
to  enable  them  to  work  out  the  highest 
prosperity  for  themselves  and  the  State. 
A  large  proportion  of  these  people  are 
Irish  immigrants  of  a  class  too  igno- 
rant to  plan  for  themselves.  Swedes 
and  Germans  generally  proceed  at  once 
to  the  West,  and  found  or  join  commu- 


nities there.  The  Irish  usually  stay 
in  the  cities  where  they  first  land. 
They  seek  at  once  the  persons  they 
have  previously  known  in  Ireland,  and 
through  them  endeavor  to  obtain  em- 
ployment, either  in  factories  or  on  rail- 
roads. Indeed,  it  can  hardly  be  ex- 
pected that  men  with  families  will  vol- 
untarily start  off  for  the  distant  parts  of 
the  country,  uncertain  of  their  destina- 
tion, and  unable  to  do  anything  but  dig. 
They  leave  Ireland  with  understand- 
ings almost  as  limited  as  their  accom- 
plishments, and  they  need  guidance 
and  assistance,  as  a  general  rule,  from 
the  time  they  come  to  this  country. 

In  addition  to  the  Irish  element  of 
our  population,  large  numbers  of  native 
women  and  their  children  crowd  in  at- 
tics and  cellars,  living  from  day  to  day 
on  the  smallest  means  that  will  sustain 
life.  The  man  who  keeps  the  slop-shop 
gives  these  women  only  six  cents  for 
making  a  shirt,  not  because  he  is  a  hard- 
hearted wretch,  but  because  plenty  of 
women  in  the  country  will  make  shirts 
for  six  cents,  in  their  leisure  hours.  It 
is  a  waste  of  breath  to  urge  any  of  these 
seamstresses  or  their  daughters  to  seek 
employment  in  the  only  avenue  not  al- 
ready crowded,  namely,  domestic  ser- 
vice. From  false,  but  not  the  less  in- 
veterate, notions  of  respectability,  they 
decline  acting  in  what  they  consider  a 
servile  capacity.  To  starve  is  disa- 
greeable, but  to  answer  bells  is  dishon- 
orable, and  what  no  free-born  American 
woman  will  descend  to.  They  have 
always  hopes  of  an  improvement  in 
their  fate  ;  they  repel  the  insult  of  pub- 
lic aid  ;  they  feign  cheerfulness  and  as- 
surance to  conceal  the  wasting  fear  for 
the  morrow;  and  when  the  morrow 
brings  death,  they  leave  their  children 
with  an  inheritance  of  the  same  cour- 
age, endurance,  and  false  pride  which 
has  sustained  themselves.  It  is  not 
easy  to  see  how  such  persons  can  be 
permanently  helped,  except  by  the  indi- 


1 868.] 


The  Poor  in  Cities. 


53 


rect  influence  of  change  of  place.  The 
circum'stances  and  modes  of  living  in 
remote  country  towns  often  offer  pleas- 
ant and  acceptable  openings  for  indus- 
try, without  wounding  the  sensitiveness 
and  pride  already  spoken  of.  Many  of 
these  American  families  have  hidden 
themselves  in  city  garrets,  rather  than 
face  a  change  from  abundance  to  poverty 
among  those  who  knew  them  in  pros- 
perity. An  entire  change  of  position 
is  often  the  salvation  of  families  of  this 
description  ;  and  any  one  familiar  with 
the  characteristics  of  this  portion  of  our 
people  can  understand  how  difficult  it 
is  for  any  permanent  benefit  to  be 
secured  to  them  without  this  entire 
change.  The  strength  and  the  weak- 
ness are  both  useful  under  new  circum- 
stances. 

These  two  classes  —  the  ignorant  but 
industrious  emigrant,  and  the  poor, 
proud  American  —  should  be  cared  for 
by  an  association  so  organized  as  con- 
stantly to  command  the  opportunities 
they  need  to  better  their  condition. 
The  work  is  in  different  parts  of  the 
State.  The  men  and  women  to  do  the 
work,  packed  close  in  the  attics  and 
cellars  of  the  city,  wait  for  the  employ- 
ment which  is  not  to  be  had  where  they 
are. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  State  has  no 
right  to  interfere  with  the  liberty  of  in- 
dividuals, by  directing  their  motions, 
and  removing  them  from  place  to  place. 
But  has  not  the  State  the  right  to 
protect  itself  against  pauperism,  and 
its  consequence,  heavy  taxation  ?.  As 
things  now  are,  the  honest  and  indus-  . 
trious  poor  strain  every  nerve,  and  live 
on  scanty  fare,  in  order  to  pay  their 
proportion  of  a  tax  to  support  the  idle 
and  profligate  in  houses  of  correction 
or  in  prisons.  Whenever  the  unem- 
ployed poor  who  are  crowded  in  cities 
come  to  utter  want  the  State  must  take 
up  the  burden  of  their  support.  Has 
not  the  State  a  right  to  organize  guar- 
dianship as  well  as  punishment,  preven- 
tion as  well  as  cure  ? 

Not  to  look  at  the  moral  or  senti- 
mental side  of  the  subject,  but  only  at 
what  good  policy  requires,  it  would 


seem  the  duty  of  the  State  to  organize 
some  method  of  permanent  relief  for  the 
unemployed  portion  of  its  population. 
The  means  of  relief  exist.  The  right 
to  employ  them  only  is  wanting. 

A  hundred  miles  from  the  city,  and 
at  a  distance  from  any  railway,  are 
many  towns  where  agriculture  is  car- 
ried on  with  great  difficulty,  from  the 
impossibility  of  procuring  labor  of  the 
commonest  sort.  In  some  towns,  one 
man  only  is  skilled  in  gardening ;  and 
when  "  Mr.  Peck  "  is  not  to  be  had,  each 
gentleman  must  dig  his  own  strawberry- 
bed,  as  his  wife  has  already  found  it 
necessary  to  do  her  own  scrubbing. 
Persons  in  easy  circumstances,  who 
are  ready  to  pay  high  wages  for  ser- 
vice, cannot  command  it.  These  facts 
are  so  familiar  to  every  one,  that  it  is 
not  necessary  to  repeat  them,  or  to  add 
that  the  same  remarks  apply  to  towns 
only  twenty  miles  away  from  large 
cities,  if  they  are  off  the  great  railroad 
lines,  and  necessarily  at  a  distance  from 
a  Catholic  church. 

Seeing  this  state  of  things,  private 
charity  has  attempted  relief  on  a 
small  scale,  and  generally,  it  must  be 
confessed,  with  poor  success.  A  fam- 
ily removed  from  destitution  in  the 
city  to  a  country  village  proves,  some- 
times, a  worthless  addition  to  a  small 
community  quick  to  observe  short- 
comings, and  not  over-eager  to  make 
allowances  for  faults.  Sometimes  the 
people  are  unwilling  to  take  the  risk  of 
having  possible  paupers  thrust  upon 
them  ;  and  the  more  thrifty  and  able 
the  community,  the  greater  is  the 
dread  of  poor  hangers-on.  Many  obvi- 
ous objections  to  schemes  of  private 
charity  would  disappear  under  organ- 
ized and  systematic  public  manage- 
ment. Much  experience,  however, 
would  be  necessary  in  order  to  bring 
about  the  greatest  good  to  the  parties 
to  be  benefited ;  for  it  is  not  too  much 
to  say,  that  the  benefit  would  be  as 
great  to  the  employer  as  to  the  em- 
ployed. 

Within  three  miles  of  Vanity  Fair 
lives  a  basket-maker  and  his  wife,  with 
ten  children.  Of  course  they  are  half 


54 


The  Poor  in  Cities. 


[July, 


starved,  and  are  clothed  mostly  by 
charity.  Yet  when  urged  to  go  to  Beu- 
lah, where  were  willows  enough,  room 
enough,  food  enough,  and  probably 
quite  as  good  a  market  for  baskets, 
the  basket-maker  declined  to  fly  to 
evils  that  he  knew  not  of;  while  the  in- 
habitants of  Beulah  declined,  quite  as 
decidedly,  the  possibilities  of  pauper- 
ism involved  in  the  proposition.  No 
guaranties  could  be  offered  on  either 
side.  But  guaranties  would  be  offered 
and  secured  in  a  public  organization ; 
while  wise  mediation  and  energetic 
management,  on  the  part  of  officers 
experienced  in  dealing  with  the  poor, 
would  obviate  the  difficulties  inevitably 
connected  with  private  schemes  of  re- 
lief. If  the  basket-maker,  who  half 
lives  on  charity  where  he  is,  had  his 
fare  paid  to  Beulah,  forty  miles  off,  and 
if  somebody  was  there  ready  to  receive 
him,  to  guarantee  his  good  behavior 
and  his  rent,  the  inhabitants  would  wel- 
come to  their  delectable  land  twelve 
additions  to  their  working  community  ; 
while  he  and  his  family,  being  at  last  in 
their  proper  place,  would  cease  to  be  a 
burden,  and  begin  to  feel  that  there  is 
some  blessedness  in  living. 

Franklin  says :  "  It  has  been  com- 
puted that,  if  every  man  and  woman 
would  work  four  hours  a  day  in  some- 
thing useful,  that  labor  would  produce 
sufficient  to  procure  all  the  necessaries 
and  comforts  of  life.  Want  and  misery 
would  be  banished  from  the  world,  and 
the  rest  of  the  twenty-four  hours  would 
be  leisure  and  pleasure." 

Two  things  hinder  a  state  of  univer- 
sal contentment,  it  is  said,  —  one,  that 
labor  is  not  equally  shared  by  all ;  the 
other,  that  the  labor  of  all  is  not  equally 
rewarded.  It  is  not  supposed  that  any 
philanthropic  or  economic  schemes  will 
bring  about  a  universal  competence. 
While  vice,  idleness,  and  improvidence 
continue,  it  is  not  likely  Utopia  will 
come  into  fashion ;  but  the  State  can 
defend  itself,  and  promote  the  health 
and  happiness  of  its  citizens,  by  wise 
authority  and  effort  in  their  behalf.  It 
can  place  its  redundant  poor  where 
they  can  at  least  have  the  chance  of 


working  their  four  hours  a  day;  and 
where  they  can  supply  a  want  wh'ich,  of 
itself,  retards  the  prosperity  and  pro- 
gress of  a  large  portion  of  the  com- 
munity. The  impossibility  of  procuring 
labor  to  carry  on  the  farm  in  New  Eng- 
land exists,  not  because  the  laborers 
are  not  in  the  State,  but  because  they 
are  lounging  in  city  streets,  waiting  for 
those  better  times  that  will  give  them  a 
sewer  to  dig,  or  coal  to  heave,  or  else 
famishing  in  attics,  their  hearts  sick 
with  hope  deferred. 

Let  there  be  an  "  Emigrant  Agency," 
to  which  unemployed  persons  may  go, 
—  not  to  be  sent  to  Illinois  or  Kansas, 
or  any  far-off  place,  but  to  some  point 
on  lines  radiating  from  a  capital  city, 
and  within  the  State.  Let  there  be 
officers  employed  at  each  extremity  of 
these  radiating  lines,  and  at  all  other 
points  where  occupation  is  secured  for 
the  applicants,  to  receive  the  families, 
or  the  individuals,  who  want  work,  and 
to  see  that  they  are  housed  and  em- 
ployed. Let  the  emigrants  begin  to 
feel  at  once  that  the  eye  of  the  State  is 
upon  them ;  that  they  are  members  of 
a  self-respecting  community,  and  are 
expected  to  grow  up  both  useful  and 
ornamental. 

If  it  be  objected,  that  such  a  plan  is 
too  vast,  that  it  requires  large  means, 
and  a  multitude  of  officers,  it  may 
be  answered,  that  the  means  required 
would  not  be  equal  to  those  annually 
employed  in  the  present  administra- 
tion of  private  and  public  beneficence 
in  the  Northern  States.  As  now  made, 
.our  great  outlay  scantily,  unequally, 
and,  above  all,  unseasonably,  meets  the 
pressing  wants  described.  The  mis- 
chief is  nearly  done  before  any  relief 
is  applied.  Destitution  has  already 
taken  the  form  of  vice,  and  has  offend- 
ed public  opinion  and  public  safety  be- 
fore public  charity  offers  succor.  A 
little  care  beforehand,  and  the  police- 
station  and  house  of  reformation  would 
not  have  been  needed. 

The  organization  of  the  Children's 
Mission  presents  many  features  desir- 
able to  be  copied  in  any  association  on 
a  large  scale.  This  Mission  is  intended 


1 868.] 


The  Poor  in  Cities. 


55 


to  benefit  destitute  orphans  or  vagrants 
"by  sending  them  to  homes  in  the  far 
West,  where  agents  are  stationed,  and 
where  homes  are  ready  to  receive  the 
children.  When  a  sufficient  number  of 
the  little  ones  is  collected,  clothed,  and 
instructed,  they  make  the  \yestern  jour- 
ney under  the  care  of  an  agent,  who 
delivers  them  in  the  appointed  places. 
Correspondence  is  constantly  kept  up 
between  these  children  and  the  officers 
at  this  end  of  the  line.  The  benefit  is 
mutual.  They  are  saved  from  vice  and 
vagrancy  here,  and  they  are  welcome 
where  work  is  abundant  and  workers 
few. 

But  New  England  does  not  want  to 
send  away  her  laborers.  On  the  con- 
trary, she  needs  them  all.  There  is 
room  enough  for  all,  and  more  than 
work  enough.  In  fact,  labor  is  a  great 
deal  too  well  paid,  —  that  is  to  say,  un- 
skilled labor.  Following  the  law  of 
supply  and  demand,  the  ignorant  house- 
maid in  a  country  town,  who  scarcely 
knows  the  name  of  the  commonest 
utensil,  and  who,  in  justice,  does  not 
earn  the  bread  she  eats,  requires,  and 
obtains,  the  same  wages  that  an  expe- 
rienced and  competent  person  in  the 
city  receives.  The"  labor  must  be  ob- 
tained somehow,  at  any  cost.  But  if 
there  were  ten  times  as  many  laborers 
in  the  country,  work  would  be  ten  times 
*better  done  than  it  is  now.  So  many 
of  the  young  men  of  New  England 
have  emigrated  to  the  West,  that 
there  is  abundant  room  for  the  raw  ma- 
terial from  Ireland,  if  only  the  immi- 
grants are  wisely  directed  and  appor- 
tioned. 

As  to  the  objection,  that  a  very  large 
number  of  officers  is  necessary  to  carry 
on  a  plan  of  this  kind,  it  seems  hardly 
worth  considering.  Perhaps  the  same 
men  who  so  skilfully  and  humanely 
manage  the  houses  of  correction  and  ref- 
ormation already  mentioned  might  be 
employed  in  a  work  to  supersede  either. 
The  foreign  population  thus  brought 
more  directly  under  purely  American 
influences  would  be  greatly  benefited. 
The  Yankee  leaven  leavens  great  lumps, 
-and  the  natural  position  of  employer 


gives  an  advantage  in  requiring  and 
encouraging  improvement  in  habits  and 
character.  In  Syracuse,  New  York, 
some  years  ago,  the  writer  was  shown 
a  row  of  pretty,  white  cottages,  built 
alike,  and  with  trim  gardens  to  each. 
It  was  a  profound  surprise  to  learn  that 
these  dwellings  were  a  successful  ex- 
periment on  the  part  of  a  large  railroad 
proprietor,  and  that  the  houses  were 
all  occupied  by  Irish  laborers.  They 
were  rent  free  the  first  year,  on  condi- 
tion that  they  should  be  kept  in  perfect 
order.  The  next  year  they  were  rented 
low,  but  always  on  the  same  condition  ; 
and  for  some  time  the  occupants  had 
now  paid  full  rent,  and  had  great  pride 
in  keeping  their  little  places  with  order 
and  neatness.  This  experiment  would 
seem  to  prove  that  progress  is  possible, 
under  favorable  circumstances,  even 
among  the  reckless  and  improvident 
Hibernians. 

The  late  Governor  Andrew,  when  he 
sent  one  hundred  respectable,  well-edu- 
cated young  women  to  the  extreme 
West,  where  there  were  no  such  luxu- 
ries, and  provided  them  with  a  suitable 
escort  thither,  and  an  assurance  of  em- 
ployment at  their  journey's  end,  did  the 
right  thing  in  the  right  way,  which 
might  well  be  imitated  on  a  large  scale 
with  the  redundant  poor  who  are  unem- 
ployed in  our  cities.  For  these  young 
women  were  educated  to  an  employ- 
ment which  was  already  crowded.  They 
were  removed,  at  the  expense  of  the 
State,  to  a  place  where  they  were  need- 
ed, to  a  part  of  the  country  where  their 
education  would  be  useful  to  themselves 
and  those  about  them.  Who  shall  say 
what  will  be  the  difference  between  a 
community  formed  under  such  New 
England  influences,  and  one  grown  up 
with  casual  and  possibly  barbarous  in- 
fluences ?  Such  power  has  character 
that  it  is  believed  many  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  impressible  Irish  men  and 
women  might  be  made  into  excellent 
Yankees,  if  they  were  so  dispersed  as 
to  receive  fairly,  and  without  prejudice, 
the  unconscious  education  that  would 
come  from  daily  contact  with  our  own 
people.  There  might  be  a  mutual  in- 


My  Ship  at  Sea. 


[July, 


fluence  with  advantage  to  both  ;  but  the 
sterner  characteristics  would  be  the 
stronger  ones,  at  least  in  this  bracing 
climate,  and  we  should  see,  in  the  next 
generation,  the  vivacious  Irish  temper- 
ament assimilated  in  outward  gravity  to 
that  of  the  Yankee,  while  he,  in  his  turn, 
might  have  possibly  borrowed  some- 
thing of  the  other's  hilarity.  The  uncon- 
scious missionaries  acting  daily  at  the 
heads  of  households  are  illustrations  of 
this.  An  Irish  girl  who  has  been  in  an 
American  family  for  a  year  will  have  so 
much  changed  her  accent,  that,  when 
the  rest  of  her  family  follow  her  from 
Ireland,  as  they  generally  do  by  that 
time,  they  scarcely  recognize  her  speech. 


If  these  people  were  generally  dispersed 
through  the  country,  and  those  gregari- 
ous habits  broken  up  which  are  both 
the  cause  and  effect  of  poverty,  they 
would  soon  be  visibly  affected  and 
changed  by  the  direct  social  influences 
that  would  b«  brought  to  bear  on  them. 
For  every  reason,  political  and  relig- 
ious, it  is  desirable  that  the  victims  of 
poverty,  ignorance,  and  vice  now  crowd- 
ed together  in  cities,  and  totally  inca- 
pable of  making  any  feasible  arrange- 
ments for  their  own  advantage,  should 
receive  the  systematic  aid  of  the  State 
in  seeking  a  market  for  their  labor,  and 
the  opportunity  permanently  to  better 
their  lot. 


MY     SHIP     AT     SEA. 

O  SAILOR,  have  you  spoken  her,  and  on  what  distant  sea, 
The  ship,  so  long  expected,  that  is  coming  home  to  me  ? 
When  shall  I  mark  the  sun  and  wave  break  into  sparkling  spray, 
As,  laden  with  my  ventures,  she  comes  sailing  up  the  bay  ? 

O  sailor,  if  you  have  not  hailed  my  ship  by  sea  or  shore, 
Some  word,  mayhap,  you  bring  of  her,  unheard  by  me  before ; 
For  fairer  far  than  all  the  fleets  of  India  or  Cathay 
Is  the  craft  that  flies  my  colors,  and  that  cruises  far  away! 

Not  Count  Arnaldos'  shining  prow,  that  sailed  with  satin  sails  ; 
Not  Cleopatra's  burnished  barge,  wooed  by  the  lovesick  gales  ; 
Nor  that  famed  ship  of  old  which  bore  the  Argonauts  from  Greece,. 
By  Orphean  strains  accompanied,  to  win  the  Golden  Fleece,  — 

Great  Ccesar  and  his  fortunes  not  that  classic  bark  which  bore, 
Nor  that  in  which  Queen  Dido  saw  ^Eneas  quit  the  shore  ; 
Nor  that  wherein,  as  Horace  sings,  one  half  his  soul  was  penned,, 
Because  among  her  passengers  embarked  his  dearest  friend,  — 

Not  those  proud  galleons  of  Spain  whose  bulging  hulls  we  know 
Brought  tribute  to  her  conquering  Crown  the  wealth  of  Mexico, 
And  rivalled  all  romance  of  the  Old  World  in  the  New, 
When  Pizarro  blazed  upon  her  with  the  plunder  of  Peru, — 

Not  that  sea-ranger  bold  whose  fame  will  nevermore  be  hid, 
Whilst  'tween  decks  sailor-yarns  are  spun  of  Captain  Robert  Kidd, 
Nor  those  which  even  now  excite  the  merchantman's  grim  fears 
As  o'er  the  Spanish  Main  he  roves,  where  roved  the  buccaneers,  — 


i868.] 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


57 


Not  that  immortal  vessel  whose  memory  is  as  sweet 
As  was  the  blessed  name  she  bore  when  first  the  Pilgrims'  feet 
In  pious  faith  and  holy  zeal  her  narrow  deckways  trod, 
Self-consecrate  to  liberty,  to  justice,  and  to  God,— 

Not  all  the  storied  stately  helms  of  history  or  of  song, 
Not  all  whose  war-set  pennants  gleam  the  martial  waves  along, 
Not  all  the  ships,  in  sooth,  that  sail,  or  ever  sailed,  the  sea,— 
Are  half  so  fair  as  that  which  bears  my  signals  floating  free ! 

From  truck  to  keelson,  fore  and  aft  from  shapely  stem  to  stern, 
The  sea  reflects  no  line  of  hers  my  heart  does  not  return  ; 
And  all  my  fondest  hopes  and  prayers  encircle  her  around, 
As  Xerxes'  palm  on  every  branch  with  chains  of  gold  was  bound. 

More  dear  to  me  than  silken  bales,  or  wealth  of  Eastern  zones, 
Frankincense,  myrrh,  and  ivory,  rich  gums  and  precious  stones, 
She  carries  for  her  cargo  my  life's  uncounted  years, 
With  all  their  hidden  mysteries  of  future  smiles  and  tears. 

O  speed  her,  every  prospering  gale,  and  every  subject  sea! 

Those  solemn  stars  by  whom  she  steers,  O  guide  her  course  to  me  1 

For  what  care  I  for  all  the  fleets  of  India  or  Cathay, 

If  the  ship  that  bears  my  fortunes  shall  cruise  so  far  away? 


DE    GREY:     A    ROMANCE. 


IT  was  the  year  1820,  and  Mrs.  De 
Grey,  by  the  same  token,  as  they 
say  in  Ireland  (and,  for  that  matter,  out 
of  it),  had  reached  her  sixty-seventh 
spring.  She  was,  nevertheless,  still  a 
handsome  woman,  and,  what  is  better 
yet,  still  an  amiable  woman.  The  un- 
troubled, unruffled  course  of  her  life 
had  left  as  few  wrinkles  on  her  temper 
as  on  her  face.  She  was  tall  and  full 
of  person,  with  dark  eyes  and  abundant 
white  hair,  which  she  rolled  back  from 
her  forehead  over  a  cushion,  or  some 
such  artifice.  The  freshness  of  youth 
and  health  had  by  no  means  faded  out 
of  her  cheeks,  nor  had  the  smile  of  her 
imperturbable  courtesy  expired  on  her 
lips.  She  dressed,  as  became  a  woman 
of  her  age  and  a  widow,  in  black  gar- 
ments, but  relieved  with  a  great  deal  of 
white,  with  a  number  of  handsome  rings 
on  her  fair  hands.  Frequently,  in  the 


spring,  she  wore  a  little  flower  or  a 
sprig  of  green  leaves  in  the  bosom  of 
her  gown.  She  had  been  accused  of 
receiving  these  little  floral  ornaments 
from  the  hands  of  Mr.  Herbert  (of 
whom  I  shall  have  more  to  say) ;  but 
the  charge  is  unfounded,  inasmuch  as 
they  were  very  carefully  selected  from 
a  handful  cut  in  the  garden  by  her 
maid. 

That  Mrs.  De  Grey  should  have 
been  just  the  placid  and  elegant  old 
lady  that  she  was,  remained,  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world  at  large,  in  spite  of  an 
abundance  of  a  certain  sort  of  evidence 
in  favor  of  such  a  result,  more  or  less 
of  a  puzzle  and  a  problem.  It  is  true, 
that  every  one  who  knew  anything 
about  her  knew  that  she  had  enjoyed 
great  material  prosperity,  and  had  suf- 
fered no  misfortunes.  She  was  mis- 
tress in  her  pwn  right  of  a  handsome 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


property  and  a  handsome  house ;  she 
had  lost  her  husband,  indeed,  within  a 
year  after  marriage;  but,  as  the  late 
George  De  Grey  had  been  of  a  sullen 
and  brooding  humor,  —  to  that  degree, 
indeed,  as  to  incur  the  suspicion  of  in- 
sanity, —  her  loss,  leaving  her  well  pro- 
vided for,  might  in  strictness  have  been 
accounted  a  gain.  Her  son,  moreover, 
had  never  given  her  a  moment's  trou- 
ble ;  he  had  grown  up  a  charming 
young  man,  handsome,  witty,  and  wise  ; 
he  was  a  model  of  filial  devotion.  The 
lady's  health  was  good  ;  she  had  half  a 
dozen  perfect  servants  ;  she  had  the 
perpetual  company  of  the  incomparable 
Mr.  Herbert ;  she  was  as  fine  a  figure 
of  an  elderly  woman  as  any  in  town  ; 
she  might,  therefore,  very  well  have 
been  happy  and  have  looked  so.  On 
the  other  hand,  a  dozen  sensible  women 
had  been  known  to  declare  with  em- 
phasis, that  not  for  all  her  treasures  and 
her  felicity  would  they  have  consented 
to  be  Mrs.  De  Grey.  These  ladies 
were,  of  course,  unable  to  give  a  logi- 
cal reason  for  so  strong  an  aversion. 
But  it  is  certain  that  there  hung  over 
Mrs.  De  Grey's  history  and  circum- 
stances a  film,  as  it  were,  a  shadow  of 
mystery,  which  struck  a  chill  upon  im- 
aginations which  might  easily  have 
been  kindled  into  envy  of  her  good  for- 
tune. "  She  lives  in  the  dark,"  some 
one  had  said  of  her.  Close  observers 
did  her  the  honor  to  believe  that  there 
was  a  secret  in  her  life,  but  of  a  wholly 
undefined  character.  Was  she  the  vic- 
tim of  some  lurking  sorrow,  or  the  mis- 
tress of  some  clandestine  joy  ?  These 
imputations,  we  may  easily  believe,  are 
partially  explained  by  the  circumstance 
that  she  was  a  Catholic,  and  kept  a 
priest  in  her  house.  The  unexplained 
portion  might  very  well,  moreover,  have 
been  discredited  by  Mrs.  De  Grey's' 
perfectly  candid  and  complacent  de- 
meanor. It  was  certainly  hard  to  con- 
ceive, in  talking  with  her,  to  what  part 
of  her  person  one  might  pin  a  mystery, 
—  whether  on  her  clear,  round  eyes  or 
her  handsome,  benevolent  lips.  Let  us 
say,  then,  in  defiance  of  the  voice  of 
society,  that  she  was  no  tragedy  queen. 


She  was  a  fine  woman,  a  dull  woman, 
a  perfect  gentlewoman.  She  had  taken 
life,  as  she  liked  a  cup  of  tea,  —  weak, 
with  an  exquisite  aroma  and  plenty  of 
cream  and  sugar.  She  had  never  lost 
her  temper,  for  the  excellent  reason 
that  she  had  none  to  lose.  She  was 
troubled  with  no  fears,  no  doubts,  no 
scruples,  and  blessed  with  no  sacred 
certainties.  She  was  fond  of  her  son, 
of  the  church,  of  her  garden,  and  of  her 
toilet.  She  had  the  very  best  taste; 
but,  morally,  one  may  say  that  she  had 
had  no  history. 

Mrs.  De  Grey  had  always  lived  in 
seclusion  ;  for  a  couple  of  years  previ- 
ous to  the  time  of  which  I  speak  she 
had  lived  in  solitude.  Her  son,  on 
reaching  his  twenty-third  year,  had 
gone  to  Europe  for  a  long  visit,  in  pur- 
suance of  a  plan  discussed  at  intervals 
between  his  mother  and  Mr.  Herbert 
during  the  whole  course  of  his  boy- 
hood. They  had  made  no  attempt  to 
forecast  his  future  career,  or  to  prepare 
him  for  a  profession.  Strictly,  indeed, 
he  was  at  liberty,  like  his  late  father,  to 
dispense  with  a  profession.  Not  that 
it  was  to  be  wished  that  he  should  take 
his  father's  life  as  an  example.  It  was 
understood  by  the  world  at  large,  and, 
of  course,  by  Mrs.  De  Grey  and  her 
companion  in  particular,  that  this  gen- 
tleman's existence  had  been  blighted, 
at  an  early  period,  by  an  unhappy  love- 
affair  ;  and  it  was  notorious  that,  in 
consequence,  he  had  spent  the  few 
years  of  his  maturity  in  gloomy  idleness 
and  dissipation.  Mrs.  De  Grey,  whose 
own  father  was  an  Englishman,  reduced 
to  poverty,  but  with  claims  to  hi.2;h  gen- 
tility, professed  herself  unable  to  under- 
stand why  Paul  should  not  live  decent- 
ly on  his  means.  Mr.  Herbert  declared 
that  in  America,  in  any  walk  of  life,  idle- 
ness was  indecent ;  and  that  he  hoped 
the  young  man  would  —  nominally  at 
least  —  select  a  career.  It  was  agreed 
on  both  sides,  however,  that  there  was 
no  need  for  haste;  and  that  it  was 
proper,  in  the  first  place,  he  should 
see  the  world.  The  world,  to  Mrs.  De 
Grey,  was  little  more  than  a  name  ;  but 
to  Mr.  Herbert,  priest  as  he  was,  it  was 


1 868.] 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


59 


a  vivid  reality.  Yet  he  felt  that  the 
generous  and  intelligent  youth  upon 
whose  education  he  had  lavished  all 
the  treasures  of  his  tenderness  and  sa- 
gacity, was  not  unfitted,  either  by  na- 
ture or  culture,  to  measure  his  sinews 
against  its  trials  and  temptations  ;  and 
that  he  should  love  him  the  better  for 
coming  home  at  twenty-five  an  accom- 
plished gentleman  and  a  good  Catholic, 
sobered  and  seasoned  by  experience, 
sceptical  in  small  matters,  confident  in 
great,  and  richly  replete  with  good  sto- 
ries. When  he  came  of  age,  Paul  re- 
ceived his  walking-ticket,  as  they  say, 
in  the  shape  of  a  letter  of  credit  for 
a  handsome  sum  on  certain  London 
bankers.  But  the  young  man  pocketed 
the  letter,  and  remained  at  home,  por- 
ing over  books,  lounging  in  the  garden, 
and  scribbling  heroic  verses.  At  the 
end  of  a  year,  he  plucked  up  a  little  am- 
bition, and  took  a  turn  through  the 
country,  travelling  much  of  the  way  on 
horseback.  He  came  back  an  ardent 
American,  and  felt  that  he  might  go 
abroad  without  danger.  During  his 
absence  in  Europe  he  had  written 
home  innumerable  long  letters, — com- 
positions so  elaborate  (in  the  taste  of 
that  day,  recent  as  it  is)  and  so  de- 
lightful, that,  between  their  pride  in  his 
epistolary  talent,  and  their  longing  to 
see  his  face,  his  mother  and  his  ex-tu- 
tor would  have  been  at  a  loss  to  deter- 
mine whether  he  gave  them  more  satis- 
faction at  home  or  abroad. 

With  his  departure  the  household 
was  plunged  in  unbroken  repose.  Mrs. 
De  Grey  neither  went  out  nor  enter- 
tained company.  An  occasional  morn- 
ing call  was  the  only  claim  made  upon 
her  hospitality.  Mr.  Herbert,  who  was 
a  great  scholar,  spent  all  his  hours  in 
study;  and  his  patroness  sat  for  the 
most  part  alone,  arrayed  with  a  perfec- 
tion of  neatness  which  there  was  no 
one  to  admire  (unless  it  be  her  waiting- 
maid,  to  whom  it  remained  a  constant 
matter  of  awe),  reading  a  pious  book 
or  knitting  imder-garments  for  the  or- 
thodox needy.  At  times,  indeed,  she 
wrote  long  letters  to  her  son,  —  the 
contents  of  which  Mr.  Herbert  found 


it  hard  to  divine.  This  was  accounted 
a  dull  life  forty  years  ago  ;  now,  doubt- 
less, it  would  be  considered  no  life  at 
all.  It  is  no  matter  of  wonder,  there- 
fore, that  finally,  one  April  morning,  in 
her  sixty-seventh  year,  as  I  have  said, 
Mrs.  De  Grey  suddenly  began  to  sus- 
pect that  she  was  lonely.  Another 
long  year,  at  least,  was  to  come  and  go 
before  Paul's  return.  After  meditating 
for  a  while  in  silence,  Mrs.  De  Grey 
resolved  to  take  counsel  with  Father 
Herbert. 

This  gentleman,  an  Englishman  by 
birth,  had  been  an  intimate  friend  of 
George  De  Grey,  who  had  made  his 
acquaintance  during  a  visit  to  Europe, 
before  his  marriage.  Mr.  Herbert  was 
a  younger  son  of  an  excellent  Catholic 
family,  and  was  at  that  time  beginning, 
on  small  resources,  the  practice  of  the 
law.  De  Grey  met  him  in  London, 
and  the  two  conceived  a  strong  mutual 
sympathy.  Herbert  had  neither  taste 
for  his  profession  nor  apparent  ambi- 
tion of  any  sort.  He  was,  moreover, 
in  weak  health  ;  and  his  friend  found  no 
difficulty  in  persuading  him  to  accept  the 
place  of  travelling  companion  through 
France  and  Italy.  De  Grey  carried  a 
very  long  purse,  and  was  a  most  liberal 
friend  and  patron  ;  and  the  two  young 
men  accomplished  their  progress  as  far 
as  Venice  in  the  best  spirits  and  on 
the  best  terms.  But  in  Venice,  for 
reasons  best  known  to  themselves,  they 
bitterly  and  irretrievably  quarrelled. 
Some  persons  said  it  was  over  a  card- 
table,  and  some  said  it  was  about  a 
woman.  At  all  events,  in  consequence, 
De  Grey  returned  to  America,  and 
Herbert  repaired  to  Rome.  He  ob- 
tained admission  into  a  monastery, 
studied  theology,  and  finally  was  in- 
vested with  priestly  orders.  In  Amer- 
ica, in  his  thirty-third  year,  De  Grey 
married  the  lady  whom  I  have  de- 
scribed. A  few  weeks  after  his  mar- 
riage he  wrote  to  Herbert,  expressing 
a  vehement  desire  to  be  reconciled. 
Herbert  felt  that  the  letter  was  that  of 
a  most  unhappy  man  ;  he  had  already 
forgiven  him  ;  he  pitied  him,  and  after 
a  short  delay  succeeded  in  obtaining 


60 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


[July, 


an  ecclesiastical  mission  to  the  United 
States.  He  reached  New  York  and 
presented  himself  at  his  friend's  house, 
which  from  this  moment  became  his 
home.  Mrs.  De  Grey  had  recently 
given  birth  to  a  son  ;  her  husband  was 
confined  to  his  room  by  illness,  reduced 
to  a  shadow  of  his  former  self  by  re- 
peated sensual  excesses.  He  survived 
Herbert's  arrival  but  a  couple  of 
months  ;  and  after  his  death  the  rumor 
went  abroad  that  he  had  by  his  last 
will  settled  a  handsome  income  upon 
the  priest,  on  condition  that  he  would 
continue  to  reside  with  his  widow,  and 
take  the  entire  charge  of  his  boy's  edu- 
cation. 

This  rumor  was  confirmed  by  the 
event.  For  twenty-five  years,  at  the 
time  of  which  I  write,  Herbert  had 
lived  under  Mrs.  De  Grey's  roof  as 
her  friend  and  companion  and  coun- 
sellor, and  as  her  son's  tutor.  Once 
reconciled  to  his  friend,  he  had  grad- 
ually dropped  his  priestly  character. 
He  was  of  an  essentially  devout  tem- 
perament, but  he  craved  neither  parish 
nor  pulpit.  On  the  other  hand,  he  had 
become  an  indefatigable  student.  His 
late  friend  had  bequeathed  to  him  a 
valuable  library,  which  he  gradually  en- 
larged. His  passion  for  study,  how- 
ever, appeared  singularly  disinterested, 
inasmuch  as,  for  many  years,  his  little 
friend  Paul  was  the  sole  witness  and 
receptacle  of  his  learning.  It  is  true 
that  he  composed  a  large  portion  of  a 
History  of  the  Catholic  Church  in 
America,  which,  although  the  manu- 
script exists,  has  never  seen,  and,  I 
suppose,  is  never  destined  to  see,  the 
light.  It  is  in  the  very  best  keeping, 
for  it  contains  an  immense  array  of 
facts.  The  work  is  written,  not  from  a 
sympathetic,  but  from  a  strictly  respect- 
ful point  of  view ;  but  it  has  a  fatal 
defect,  —  it  lacks  unction. 

The  same  complaint  might  have  been 
made  of  Father  Herbert's  personal 
character.  He  was  the  soul  of  polite- 
ness, ,but  it  was  a  cold  and  formal 
courtesy.  When  he  smiled,  it  was,  as 
the  French  say,  with  the  end  of  his 
lips,  and  when  he  took  your  hand,  with 


the  end  of  his  fingers.  He  had  had  a 
charming  face  in  his  younger  clays,  andy 
when  gentlemen  dressed  their  hair  with 
powder,  his  fine  black  eyes  must  have 
produced  the  very  best  effect.  But  he 
had  lost  his  hair,  and  he  wore  on  his 
naked  crown  a  little  black  silk  cap. 
Round  his  neck  he  had  a  black  cravat 
of  many  folds,  without  any  collar.  He 
was  short  and  slight,  with  a  stoop  in 
his  shoulders,  and  a  handsome  pair  of 
hands. 

"  If  it  were  not  for  a  sad  sign  to  the 
contrary,"  said  Mrs.  De  Grey,  in  pur- 
suance of  her  resolve  to  take  counsel 
of  her  friend,  "  I  should  believe  I  am 
growing  younger." 

"What  is  the  sign  to  the  contrary?" 
asked  Herbert. 

"  I  'm  losing  my  eyes.  I  can't  see 
to  read.  Suppose  I  should  become 
blind." 

"And  what  makes  you  suspect  that 
you  are  growing  young  again  ?  " 

u  I  feel  lonely.  I  lack  company.  I 
miss  Paul." 

"  You  will  have  Paul  back  in  a  year." 

"Yes  ;  but  in  the  mean  while  I  shall 
be  miserable.  I  wish  I  knew  some  nice 
person  whom  I  might  ask  to  stay  with 
me." 

"Why  don't  you  take  a  companion, 
—  some  poor  gentlewoman  in  search  of 
a  home  ?  She  would  read  to  you,  and 
talk  to  you." 

"No;  that  would  be  dreadful.  She 
would  be  sure  to  be  old  and  ugly.  I 
should  like  some  one  to  take  Paul's 
place,  —  some  one  young  and  fresh  like 
him.  WTe  're  all  so  terribly  old,  in  the 
house.  You  're  at  least  seventy  ;  I  'm 
sixty-five  "  (Mrs.  De  Grey  was  pleased 
to  say);  "Deborah  is  sixty,  the  cook 
and  coachman  are  fifty-five  apiece." 

"  You  want  a  young  girl  then  ?  " 

"Yes,  some  nice,  fresh  young  girl, 
who  would  laugh  once  in  a  while,  and 
make  a  little  music,  —  a  little  sound  in 
the  house." 

"  Well,"  said  Herbert,  after  reflecting 
a  moment,  "you  had  better  suit  your- 
self before  Paul  comes  home.  You 
have  only  a  year." 

"Dear  me,"  said  Mrs.  De  Grey;  "I 


1 868.] 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


6l 


should  n't  feel  myself  obliged  to  turn 
her  out  on  Paul's  account." 

Father  Herbert  looked  at  his  compan- 
ion with  a  penetrating  glance.  "  Never- 
theless, my  dear  lady,"  he  said,  "you 
know  what  I  mean." 

"  O  yes,  I  know  what  you  mean,  — 
and  you,  Father  Herbert,  know  what  I 
think." 

"  Yes,  madam,  and,  allow  me  to  add, 
that  I  don't  greatly  care.  Why  should 
I  ?  I  hope  with  all  ray  heart  that  you  '11 
never  find  yourself  compelled  to  think 
otherwise." 

"  It  is  certain,"  said  Mrs.  De  Grey, 
"  that  Paul  has  had  time  to  play  out  his 
little  tragedy  a  dozen  times  over." 

"His  father,"  rejoined  Herbert, 
gravely,  "  was  twenty-six  years  old." 

At  these  words  Mrs.  De  Grey  looked 
at  the  priest  with  a  slight  frown  and  a 
flushed  cheek.  But  he  took  no  pains 
to  meet  her  eyes,  and  in  a  few  moments 
she  had  recovered,  in  silence,  her  habit- 
ual calmness. 

Within  a  week  after  this  conversa- 
tion Mrs.  De  Grey  observed  at  church 
two  persons  who  appeared  to  be  stran- 
gers in  the  congregation :  an  elderly 
woman,  meanly  clad,  and  evidently  in 
ill  health,  but  with  a  great  refinement 
of  person  and  manner ;  and  a  young 
girl  whom  Mrs.  De  Grey  took  for  her 
daughter.  On  the  following  Sunday 
she  again  found  them  at  their  devo- 
tions, and  was  forcibly  struck  by  a  look 
of  sadness  and  trouble  in  their  faces 
and  attitude.  On  the  third  Sunday 
they  were  absent ;  but  it  happened  that 
during  the  walk,  going  to  confession, 
she  met  the  young  girl,  pale,  alone,  and 
dressed  in  mourning,  apparently  just 
leaving  the  confessional.  Something  in 
her  gait  and  aspect  assured  Mrs.  De 
Grey  that  she  was  alone  in  the  world, 
friendless  and  helpless;  and  the  good 
lady,  who  at  times  was  acutely  sensible 
of  her  own  isolation  in  society,  felt  a 
strong  and  sympathetic  prompting  to 
speak  to  the  stranger,  and  ask  the  se- 
cret of  her  sorrow.  She  stopped  her 
before  she  left  the  church,  and,  address- 
ing her  with  the  utmost  kindness,  suc- 
ceeded so  speedily  in  winning  her  con- 


fidence that  in  half  an  hour  she  was  in 
possession  of  the  young  girl's  entire 
history.  She  had  just  lost  her  mother, 
and  she  found  herself  in  the  great  city 
penniless,  and  all  but  houseless.  They 
were  from  the  South;  her  father  had 
been  an  officer  in  the  navy,  and  had 
perished  at  sea,  two  years  before.  Her 
mother's  health  had  failed,  and  they 
had  come  to  New  York,  ill-advisedly 
enough,  to  consult  an  eminent  physi- 
cian. He  had  been  very  kind,  he  had 
taken  no  fees,  but  his  skill  had  been 
applied  in  vain.  Their  money  had 
melted  away  in  other  directions,  —  for 
food  and  lodging  and  clothing.  There 
had  been  enough  left  to  give  the  poor 
lady  a  decent  burial ;  but  no  means  of 
support  save  her  own  exertions  re- 
mained for  the  young  girl.  She  had  no 
relatives  to  look  to,  but  she  professed 
herself  abundantly  willing  to  work.  "  I 
look  weak,"  she  said,  "and  pale,  but 
I  'm  really  strong.  It's  only  that  I  'm 
tired,  —  and  sad.  I  'm  ready  to  do  any- 
thing. But  I  don't  know  where  to 
look."  She  had  lost  her  color  and  the 
roundness  and  elasticity  of  youth  ;  she 
was  thin  and  ill-dressed  ;  but  Mrs.  De 
Grey  saw  that  at  her  best  she  must  be 
properly  a  very  pretty  creature,  and  that 
she  was  evidently,  by  rights,  a  charm- 
ing girl.  She  looked  at  the  elder  lady 
with  lustrous,  appealing  blue  eyes  from 
under  the  hideous  black  bonnet  in 
which  her  masses  of  soft  light  hair 
were  tucked  away.  She  assured  her 
that  she  had  received  a  very  good  edu- 
cation, and  that  she  played  on  the 
piano-forte.  Mrs.  De  Grey  fancied  her 
divested  of  her  rusty  weeds,  and  dressed 
in  a  white  frock  and  a  blue  ribbon, 
reading  aloud  at  an  open  window,  or 
touching  the  keys  of  her  old  not  unme- 
lodious  spinnet;  for  if  she  took  her  (as 
she  mentally  phrased  it)  Mrs.  De  Grey 
was  resolved  that  she  would  not  be 
harassed  with  the  sight  of  her  black 
garments.  It  was  plain  that,  frightened 
and  faint  and  nervous  as  she  was,  the 
poor  child  would  take  any/service  un- 
conditionally. She  kissed  her  then 
tenderly  within  the  sacred  precinct, 
and  led  her  away  to  her  carriage,  quite 


62 


De  Grey :  a  Romance. 


[July, 


forgetting  her  business  with  her  con- 
fessor. On  the  following  day  Marga- 
ret Aldis  (such  was  the  young  girl's 
name)  was  transferred  in  the  same 
vehicle  to  Mrs.  De  Grey's  own  resi- 
dence. 

This  edifice  was  demolished  some 
years  ago,  and  the  place  where  it  stood 
forms  at  the  present  moment  the  very 
centre  of  a  turbulent  thoroughfare.  But 
at  the  period  of  which  I  speak  it  stood 
on  the  outskirts  of  the  town,  with  as 
vast  a  prospect  of  open  country  in  one 
direction  as  in  the  other  of  close-built 
streets.  It  was  an  excellent  old  man- 
sion, moreover,  in  the  best  taste  of  the 
time,  with  large  square  rooms  and  broad 
halls  and  deep  windows,  and,  above  all, 
a  delightful  great  garden,  hedged  off 
from  the  road  by  walls  of  dense  verd- 
ure. Here,  steeped  in  repose  and 
physical  comfort,  rescued  from  the  tur- 
bid stream  of  common  life,  and  placed 
apart  in  the  glow  of  tempered  sunshine, 
valued,  esteemed,  caressed,  and  yet  feel- 
ing that  she  was  not  a  mere  passive  ob- 
ject of  charity,  but  that  she  was  doing 
her  simple  utmost  to  requite  her  pro- 
tectress, poor  Miss  Aldis  bloomed  and 
flowered  afresh.  With  rest  and  luxury 
and  leisure,  her  natural  gayety  and 
beauty  came  back  to  her.  Her  beauty 
was  not  dazzling,  indeed,  nor  her  gayety 
obtrusive;  but,  united,  they  were  the 
flower  of  girlish  grace.  She  still  re- 
tained a  certain  tenuity  and  fragility  of 
aspect,  a  lightness  of  tread,  a  softness 
of  voice,  a  faintness  of  coloring,  which 
suggested  an  intimate  acquaintance  with 
suffering.  But  there  seemed  to  burn, 
nevertheless,  in  her  deep  blue  eyes  the 
light  of  an  almost  passionate  vitality; 
and  there  sat  on  her  firm,  pale  lips  the 
utterance  of  a  determined,  devoted  will. 
It  seemed  at  times  as  if  she  gave  her- 
self up  with  a  sensuous,  reckless,  half- 
thankless  freedom  to  the  mere  con- 
sciousness of  security.  It  was  evident 
that  she  had  an  innate  love  of  luxury. 
She  would  sometimes  sit,  motionless, 
for  hours,  with  her  head  thrown  back, 
and  her  eyes  slowly  wandering,  in  a 
silent  ecstasy  of  content.  At  these 
times  Father  Herbert,  who  had  ob- 


served her  attentively  from  the  moment 
of  her  arrival  (for,  scholar  and  recluse 
as  he  was,  he  had  not  lost  the  faculty 
of  appreciating  feminine  grace),  —  at 
these  times  the  old  priest  would  watch 
her  covertly  and  marvel  at  the  fantastic, 
soulless  creature  whom  Mrs.  De  Grey 
had  taken  to  her  side.  One  evening, 
after  a  prolonged  stupor  of  this  sort,  in 
which  the  young  girl  had  neither  moved 
nor  spoken,  sitting  like  one  whose  soul 
had  detached  itself  and  was  wandering 
through  space,  she  rose,  on  Mrs.  De 
Grey's  at  last  giving  her  an  order,  and 
moved  forward  as  if  in  compliance ; 
and  then,  suddenly  rushing  toward  the 
old  woman,  she  fell  on  her  knees,  and 
buried  her  head  in  her  lap  and  burst 
into  a  paroxysm  of  sobs.  Herbert,  who 
had  been  standing  by,  went  and  laid 
one  hand  on  her  head,  and  with  the 
other  made  over  it  the  sign  of  the 
cross,  in  the  manner  of  a  benediction, 
—  a  consecration  of  the  passionate  grat- 
itude which  had  finally  broken  out  into 
utterance.  From  this  moment  he  loved 
her. 

Margaret  read  aloud  to  Mrs.  De 
Grey,  and  on  Sunday  evenings  sang  in 
a  clear,  sweet  voice  the  chants  of  their 
Church,  and  occupied  herself  constantly 
with  fine  needle-work,  in  which  she  pos- 
sessed great  skill.  They  spent  the 
long  summer  mornings  together,  in 
reading  and  work  and  talk.  Margaret 
told  her  companion  the  simple,  sad  de- 
tails of  the  history  of  which  she  had 
already  given  her  the  outline ;  and 
Mrs.  De  Grey,  who  found  it  natural  to 
look  upon  them  as  a  kind  of  practical 
romance  organized  for  her  entertain- 
ment, made  her  repeat  them  over  a  doz- 
en times.  Mrs.  De  Grey,  too,  honored 
the  young  girl  with  a  recital  of  her  own. 
biography,  which,  in  its  vast  vacuity, 
produced  upon  Margaret's  mind  a  vague 
impression  of  grandeur.  The  vacuity, 
indeed,  was  relieved  by  the  figure  of 
Paul,  whom  Mrs.  De  Grey  never  grew 
weary  of  describing,  and  of  whom,  final- 
ly, Margaret  grew  very  fond  of  thinking. 
She  listened  most  attentively  to  Mrs. 
De  Grey's  eulogies  of  her  son,  and 
thought  it  a  great  pity  he  was  not  at 


1 868.] 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


home.     And  then   she  began  to  long 
for  his  return,  and  then,  suddenly,  she 
began   to   fear  it.     Perhaps  he  would 
dislike  her  being  in  the  house,  and  turn 
her  out  of  doors.     It  was  evident  that 
his  mother  was  not  prepared  to  contra- 
dict him.     Perhaps  —  worse  still — he 
would  marry  some  foreign  woman,  and 
bring  her  home,  and  she  would  turn  wick- 
edly jealous  of  Margaret  (in  the  manner 
of  foreign  women).     De  Grey,  roaming 
through   Europe,  took  for  granted,  pi- 
ously  enough,   that  he  was  never  ab- 
sent from  his  good  mother's  thoughts  ; 
but  he  remained  superbly  unconscious 
of  the  dignity  which  he  had  usurped  in 
the   meditations   of  her  humble   com- 
panion.     Truly,   we  know  where   our 
lives  begin,  but  who  shall  say  where 
they  end  ?     Here  was  a  careless  young 
gentleman  whose  existence  enjoyed  a 
perpetual  echo  in  the  soul  of  a  poor 
girl  utterly  unknown  to  him.     Mrs.  De 
Grey  had  two    portraits   of   her  son, 
which,  of  course,  she  lost  no  time  in 
exhibiting  to  Margaret, — one  taken  in 
his  boyhood,  with  brilliant  red  hair  and 
cheeks,  the   lad's   body  encased  in   a 
bright  blue  jacket,  and  his  neck  encir- 
cled in  a  frill,  open  very  low  ;  the  other, 
executed  just  before  his  departure,  a 
handsome  young  man  in  a  buff  waist- 
coat, clean   shaven,  with   an  animated 
countenance,  dark,  close-curling  auburn 
hair,  and  very  fine  eyes.     The  former 
of  these  designs   Margaret  thought  a 
very  pretty  child  ;  but  to  the  other  the 
poor  girl  straightway  lost  her  heart,  — 
the  more  easily  that  Mrs.  De  Grey  as- 
sured her,  that,  although  the  picture  was 
handsome  enough,  it  conveyed  but  the 
faintest  idea  of  her  boy's  adorable  flesh 
and  blood.      In  a  couple    of   months 
arrived  a  long-expected    letter    from 
Paul,  and  with  it  another  portrait,  —  a 
miniature,  painted  in  Paris  by  a  famous 
artist.     Here  Paul  appeared  a  far  more 
elegant  figure  than  in  the  work  of  the 
American  painter.     In  what  the  change 
consisted  it  was  hard  to  tell ;  but  his 
mother  declared  that  it  was  easy  to  see 
that  he  had  spent  two  years  in  the  best 
company  in  Europe. 

"  O,  the  best  company  ! "  said  Father 


Herbert,  who  knew  the  force  of  this 
term.  And,  smiling  a  moment  with  in- 
offensive scorn,  he  relapsed  into  his 
wonted  gravity. 

"I  think  he  looks  very  sad,"  said 
Margaret,  timidly. 

"  Fiddlesticks  !  "  cried  Herbert,  im- 
patiently. "  He  looks  like  a  coxcomb. 
Of  course,  it 's  the  Frenchman's  fault," 
he  added,  more  gently.  "  Why  on  earth 
does  he  send  us  his  picture  at  all  ?  It 's 
a  great  piece  of  impertinence.  Does 
he  think  we  've  forgotten  him  ?  When 
I  want  to  remember  my  boy,  I  have 
something  better  to  look  to  than  that 
flaunting  bit  of  ivory." 

At  these  words  the  two  ladies  went 
off,  carrying  the  portrait  with  them,  to 
read  Paul's  letter  in  private.  It  was  in 
eight  pages,  and  Margaret  read  it  aloud. 
Then,  when  she  had  finished,  she  read 
it  again  ;  and  in  the  evening  she  read  it 
once  more.  The  next  day,  Mrs.  De 
Grey,  taking  the  young  girl  quite  into 
her  confidence,  brought  out  a  large 
packet  containing  his  earlier  letters,  and 
Margaret  spent  the  whole  morning  in 
reading  them  over  aloud.  That  evening 
she  took  a  stroll  in  the  warden  alone, 
—  the  garden  in  which  /z^*ad  played  as 
a  boy,  and  lounged  and  dreamed  as  a 
young  man.  She  found  his  name  —  his 
beautiful  name  —  rudely  cut  on  a  wooden 
bench.  Introduced,  as  it  seemed  to 
her  that  she  had  been  by  his  letters, 
into  the  precincts  of  his  personality, 
the  mystery  of  his  being,  the  magic 
circle  of  his  feelings  and  opinions  and 
fancies  ;  wandering  by  his  side,  unseen, 
over  Europe,  and  treading,  unheard, 
the  sounding  pavements  of  famous 
churches  and  palaces,  she  felt  that  she 
tasted  for  the  first  time  of  the  substance 
and  sweetness  of  life.  Margaret  walked 
about  for  an  hour  in  the  starlight, 
among  the  dusky,  perfumed  alleys.  Mrs. 
De  Grey,  feeling  unwell,  had  gone  to 
her  room.  The  young  girl  heard  the 
far-off  hum  of  the  city  slowly  decrease 
and  expire,  and  then,  when  the  stillness 
of  the  night  was  unbroken,  she  came 
back  into  the  parlor  across  the  long 
window,  and  lit  one  of  the  great  silver 
candlesticks  that  decorated  the  ends  of 


•64 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


[July, 


the  mantel.  She  carried  it  to  the  wall 
where  Mrs.  De  Grey  had  suspended 
•her  son's  miniature,  having  first  inserted 
it  in  an  immense  gold  frame,  from  which 
she  had  expelled  a  less  valued  picture. 
Margaret  felt  that  she  must  see  the 
portrait  before  she  went  to  bed.  There 
was  a  certain  charm  and  ravishment  in 
beholding  it  privately  by  candlelight. 
The  wind  had  risen,  —  a  warm  west 
wind,  —  and  the  long  white  curtains  of 
the  open  windows  swayed  and  bulged 
in  the  gloom  in  a  spectral  fashion. 
Margaret  guarded  the  flame  of  the  can- 
dle with  her  hand,  and  gazed  at  the 
polished  surface  of  the  portrait,  warm 
in  the  light,  beneath  its  glittering  plate 
of  glass.  What  an  immensity  of  life 
and  passion  was  concentrated  into  those 
few  square  inches  of  artificial  color ! 
The  young  man's  eyes  seemed  to  gaze 
at  her  with  a  look  of  profound  recogni- 
tion. They  held  her  fascinated ;  she 
lingered  on  the  spot,  unable  to  move. 
Suddenly  the  clock  on  the  chimney- 
piece  rang  out  a  single  clear  stroke. 
Margaret  started  and  turned  about,  at 
the  thought  that  it  was  already  half 
past  ten.  She  raised  her  candle  aloft 
to  look  at  the  dial-plate  ;  and  perceived 
three  things :  that  it  was  one  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  that  her  candle  was 
half  burnt  out,  and  that  some  one  was 
watching  her  from  the  other  side  of  the 
room.  Setting  down  her  light,  she 
recognized  Father  Herbert. 

"  Well,  Miss  Aldis,"  he  said,  coming 
into  the  light,  "what  do  you  think  of 
it,?" 

Margaret  was  startled  and  confused, 
but  not  abashed.  "  How  long  have  I 
been  here  ?  "  she  asked,  simply. 

'k  I  have  no  idea.  I  myself  have 
been  here  half  an  hour." 

"  It  was  very  kind  of  you  not  to  dis- 
turb me,"  said  Margaret,  less  simply. 

"  It  was  a  very  pretty  picture,"  said 
Herbert. 

"  O,  it 's  beautiful !  "  cried  the  young 
girl,  casting  another  glance  at  the  por- 
trait over  her  shoulder. 

The  old  man  smiled  sadly,  and  turned 
away,  and  then,  coming  back,  "  How 
•do  you  like  our  young  man,  Miss  Al- 


dis ?"  he  asked,  apparently  with  a  pain- 
ful effort. 

"  I  think  he  's  very  handsome,"  said 
Margaret,  frankly. 

"  He  ;s  not  so  handsome  as  that," 
said  Herbert. 

"  His  mother  says  he  's  handsomer." 

"  A  mother's  testimony  in  such  cases 
is  worth  very  little.  Paul  is  well 
enough,  but  he  's  no  miracle." 

"  I  think  he  looks  sad,"  said  Marga- 
ret. "  His  mother  says  he  's  very  gay." 

"  He  may  have  changed  vastly  with- 
in two  years.  Do  you  think,"  the  old 
man  added,  after  a  pause,  "that  he 
looks  like  a  man  in  love  ? " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Margaret,  in  a 
low  voice.  "  I  never  saw  one." 

"  Never  ? "  said  the  priest,  with  an 
earnestness  which  surprised  the  young 
girl. 

She  blushed  a  little.  "Never,  Fa- 
ther Herbert." 

The  priest's  dark  eyes  were  fixed  on 
her  with  a  strange  intensity  of  expres- 
sion. "  I  hope,  my  child,  you  never 
may,"  he  said,  solemnly. 

The  tone  of  his  voice  was  not  unkind, 
but  it  seemed  to  Margaret  as  if  there 
were  something  cruel  and  chilling  in 
the  wish.  "  Why  not  I  as  well  as  an- 
other ? "  she  asked. 

The  old  man  shrugged  his  shoulders. 
"  O,  it 's  a  long  story,"  he  said. 

The  summer  passed  away  and  flushed 
into  autumn,  and  the  autumn  slowly 
faded,  and  finally  expired  in  the  cold 
embrace  of  December.  Mrs.  De  Grey 
had  written  to  her  son  of  her  having 
taken  Margaret  into  her  service.  At 
this  time  came  a  letter  in  which  the 
young  man  was  pleased  to  express  his 
satisfaction  at  this  measure.  "  Present 
my  compliments  to  Miss  Aldis,"  he 
wrote,  "and  assure  her  of  my  gratitude 
for  the  comfort  she  has  given  my  deal- 
mother, —  of  which,  indeed,  I  hope  be- 
fore very  long  to  inform  her  in  person." 
In  writing  these  good-natured  words 
Paul  De  Grey  little  suspected  the  infi- 
nite reverberation  they  were  to  have 
in  poor  Margaret's  heart.  A  month 
later  arrived  a  letter,  which  was  handed 
to  Mrs.  De  Grey  at  breakfast.  "  You 


1 868.] 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


will  have  received  my  letter  of  Decem- 
ber 3cl,:'  it  began  (a  letter  which  had 
miscarried  and  failed  to  arrive),  "  and 
will  have  formed  your  respective  opin- 
ions of  its  contents."  As  Mrs.  De 
Grey  read  these  words,  Father  Herbert 
looked  at  Margaret ;  she  had  turned 
pale.  "Favorable  or  not,"  the  letter 
continued,  "  I  am  sorry  to  be  obliged 
to  bid  you  undo  them  again.  But  my 
engagement  to  Miss  L.  is  broken  off. 
It  had  become  impossible.  As  I  made 
no  attempt  to  give  you  a  history  of  it, 
or  to  set  forth  my  motives,  so  I  shall 
not  now  attempt  to  go  into  the  logic  of 
the  rupture.  But  it 's  broken  clean  off, 
I  assure  you.  Amen."  And  the  letter 
passed  to  other  matters,  leaving  our 
friends  sadly  perplexed.  They  awaited 
the  arrival  of  the  missing  letter  ;  but 
all  in  vain  ;  it  never  came.  Mrs.  De 
Grey  immediately  wrote  to  her  son, 
urgently  requesting  an  explanation  of 
the  events  to  which  he  had  referred. 
His  next  letter,  however,  contained 
none  of  the  desired  information.  Mrs. 
De  Grey  repeated  her  request.  Where- 
upon Paul  wrote  that  he  would  tell  her 
the  story  when  he  had  reached  home. 
He  hated  to  talk  about  it.  "  Don't 
be  uneasy,  dear  mother,"  he  added  ; 
"Heaven  has  insured  me-  against  a 
relapse.  Miss  L.  died  three  weeks  ago 
at  Naples."  As  Mrs.  De  Grey  read 
these  words,  she  laid  down  the  letter 
and  looked  at  Father  Herbert,  who  had 
been  called  to  hear  it.  His  pale  face 
turned  ghastly  white,  and  he  returned 
the  old  woman's  gaze  with  compressed 
lips  and  a  stony  immobility  in  his  eyes. 
Then,  suddenly,  a  fierce,  inarticulate  cry 
broke  from  his  throat,  and,  doubling  up 
his  fist,  he  brought  it  down  with  a  terri- 
ble blow  on  the  table.  Margaret  sat 
watching  him,  amazed.  He  rose  to  his 
feet,  seized  her  in  his  arms,  and  pressed 
her  on  his  neck. 

"My  child!  my  child!"  he  cried,  in 
a  broken  voice,  "  I  have  always  loved 
you  !  I  have  been  harsh  and  cold  and 
crabbed.  I  was  fearful.  The  thunder 
has  fallen !  Forgive  me,  child.  I  'm 
myself  again."  Margaret,  frightened, 
disengaged  herself,  but  he  kept  her 

VOL.  xxn. — NO.  128.  5 


hand.     "  Poor  boy  !  "  he  cried,  with  a 
tremulous  sigh. 

Mrs.  De  Grey  sat  smelling  her  vinai- 
grette, but  not  visibly  discomposed. 
"  Poor  boy  ! "  she  repeated,  but  with- 
out a  sigh,  —  which  gave  the  words  an 
ironical  sound.  —  "  He  had  ceased  to 
care  for  her,"  she  said. 

<kAh,  madam!"  cried  the  priest, 
"don't  blaspheme.  Go  down  on  your 
knees,  and  thank  God  that  we  have 
been  spared  that  hideous  sight ! " 

Mystified  and  horrified,  Margaret 
drew  her  hand  from  his  grasp,  and 
looked  with  wondering  eyes  at  Mrs. 
De  Grey.  She  smiled  faintly,  touched 
her  forefinger  to  her  forehead,  tapped 
it,  raised  her  eyebrows,  and  shook  her 
head. 

From  counting  the  months  that  were 
to  elapse  before  Paul's  return,  our 
friends  came  to  counting  the  weeks, 
and  then  the  days.  The  month  of  May 
arrived;  Paul  had  sailed  from  England. 
At  this  time  Mrs.  De  Grey  opened  her 
son's  room,  and  caused  it  to  be  pre- 
pared for  occupation.  The  contents 
were  just  as  he  had  left  them  ;  she 
bade  Margaret  come  in  and  see  it. 
Margaret  looked  at  her  face  in  his  mir- 
ror, and  sat  down  a  moment  on  his 
sofa,  and  examined  the  books  on  his 
shelves.  They  seemed  a  prodigious 
array  ;  they  were  in  several  languages, 
and  gave  a  deep  impression  of  their 
owner's  attainments.  Over  the  chim- 
ney hung  a  small  sketch  in  pencrl, 
which  Margaret  made  haste  to  inspect, 
—  a  likeness  of  a  young  girl,  skilfully 
enough  drawn.  The  original  had  ap- 
parently been  very  handsome,  in  the 
dark  style ;  and  in  the  corner  of  the 
sketch  was  written  the  artist's  name,  — 
De  Grey.  Margaret  looked  at  the  por- 
trait in  silence,  with  quickened  heart- 
beats. 

"  Is  this  Mr.  Paul's  ?  "  she  asked  at 
last  of  her  companion. 

"  It  belongs  to  Paul,"  said  Mrs.  De 
Grey.  "  He  used  to  be  very  fond  of  it, 
and  insisted  upon  hanging  it  there.  His 
father  sketched  it  before  our  marriage." 

Margaret  drew  a  breath  of  relief. 
"  And  who  is  the  lady  ?  "  she  asked. 


66 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


[July, 


"  I  hardly  know.  Some  foreign  per- 
son, I  think,  that  Mr.  De  Grey  had 
been  struck  with.  There  's  something 
about  her  in  the  other  corner." 

In  effect,  Margaret  detected  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  sketch,  written  in 
minute  characters,  the  word  "  obiit^ 
1786." 

"  You  don't  know  Latin,  I  take  it, 
my  dear,"  said  Mrs.  De  Grey,  as  Mar- 
garet read  the  inscription.  "  It  means 
that  she  died  thirty-four  good  years 
ago." 

"  Poor  girl  !  "  said  Margaret,  softly. 
As  they  were  leaving  the  room,  she 
lingered  on  the  threshold  and  looked 
about  her,  wishing  that  she  might  leave 
some  little  memento  of  her  visit.  "  If 
we  knew  just  when  he  would  arrive," 
she  said,  "  I  would  put  some  flowers  on 
his  table.  But  they  might  fade." 

As  Mrs.  De  Grey  assured  her  that 
the  moment  of  his  arrival  was  quite 
uncertain,  she  left  her  fancied  nosegay 
uncut,  and  spent  the  rest  of  the  day 
in  a  delightful  tremor  of  anticipation, 
ready  to  see  the  dazzling  figure  of  a 
young  man,  equipped  with  strange  for- 
eign splendor,  start  up  before  her  and 
look  at  her  in  cold  surprise,  and  hurry 
past  her  in  search  of  his  mother.  At 
every  sound  of  footsteps  or  of  an  open- 
ing door,  she  laid  down  her  work,  and 
listened  curiously.  In  the  evening,  as 
if  by  a  common  instinct  of  expectancy, 
Father  Herbert  met  Mrs.  De  Grey  in 
the  front  drawing-room,  —  an  apart- 
ment devoted  exclusively  to  those  fes- 
tivities which  never  occurred  in  the 
annals  of  this  tranquil  household. 

"  A  year  ago  to-day,  madam,"  said 
Margaret,  as  they  all  sat  silent  among 
the  gathering  shadows,  "  I  came  into 
your  house.  To-day  ends  a  very  happy 
year." 

"  Let  us  hope,"  said  Father  Herbert, 
sententiously,  "  that  to-morrow  will  be- 
gin another." 

"  Ah,  my  dear  lady  !  "  cried  Marga- 
ret, with  emotion  ;  "  my  good  father,  — 
my  only  friends,  —  what  harm  can  come 
to  me  with  you  ?  It  was  you  who  res- 
cued me  from  harm."  Her  heart  was 
swollen  with  gratitude,  and  her  eyes 


with  rising  tears.  She  gave  a  long 
shudder  at  the  thought  of  the  life  that 
might  have  been  her  fate.  But,  feeling 
a  natural  indisposition  to  obtrude  her 
peculiar  sensations  upon  the  attention 
of  persons  so  devoutly  absorbed  in  the 
thought  of  a  coming  joy,  she  left  her 
place,  and  wandered  away  into  the  gar- 
den. Before  many  minutes,  a  little 
gate  opened  in  the  paling,  not  six  yards 
from  where  she  stood.  A  man  came 
in,  whom,  in  the  dim  light,  she  knew  to 
be  Paul  De  Grey.  Approaching  her 
rapidly,  he  made  a  movement  as  if  to 
greet  her,  but  stopped  suddenly,  and 
removed  his  hat. 

"  Ah,  you  're  Miss  —  the  young  lady," 
he  said. 

He  had  forgotten  her  name.  This 
was  something  other,  something  less 
felicitous,  than  the  cold  surprise  of  the 
figure  in  Margaret's  vision.  Neverthe- 
less, she  answered  him,  audibly  enough  : 
"  They  are  in  the  drawing-room  ;  they 
expect  you." 

He  bounded  along  the  path,  and  en- 
tered the  house.  She  followed  him 
slowly  to  the  window,  and  stood  with- 
out, listening.  The  silence  of  the  young 
man's  welcome  told  of  its  warmth. 

Paul  De  Grey  had  made  good  use  of 
his  sojourn  in  Europe  ;  he  had  lost 
none  of  his  old  merits,  and  had  gained 
a  number  of  new  ones.  He  was  by  na- 
ture and  culture  an  intelligent,  amiable, 
accomplished  fellow.  It  was  his  for- 
tune to  possess  a  peculiar,  indefinable 
charm  of  person  and  manner.  He  was 
tall  and  slight  of  structure,  but  com- 
pact, firm,  and  active,  with  a  clear,  fair 
complexion,  an  open,  prominent  brow, 
crisp  auburn  hair,  and  eyes  —  a  glance, 
a  smile  —  radiant  with  youth  and  intel- 
lect. His  address  was  frank,  manly, 
and  direct ;  and  yet  it  seemed  to  Mar- 
garet that  his  bearing  was  marked  by 
a  certain  dignity  and  elegance  —  at 
times  even  verging  upon  formalism  — 
which  distinguished  it  from  that  of 
other  men.  It  was  not,  however,  that 
she  detected  in  his  character  any  signs 
of  that  strange  principle  of  melancholy 
which  had  exerted  so  powerful  an  action 
upon  the  other  members  of  the  house- 


1 868.] 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


67 


hold  (and,  from  what  she  was  able  to 
gather,  on  his  father).  She  fancied,  on 
the  contrary,  that  she  had  never  known 
less  levity  associated  with  a  more  ex- 
quisite mirth.  If  Margaret  had  been  of 
a  more  analytical  turn  of  mind,  she 
would  have  told  herself  that  Paul  De 
Grey's  nature  was  eminently  aristocrat- 
ic. But  the  young  girl  contented  her- 
self with  understanding  it  less,  and  se- 
cretly loving  it  more  ;  and  when  she 
was  in  want  of  an  epithet,  she  chose  a 
simpler  term.  Paul  was  like  a  ray  of 
splendid  sunshine  in  the  dull,  colorless 
lives  of  the  two  women  ;  he  filled  the 
house  with  light  and  heat  and  joy. 
He  moved,  to  Margaret's  fancy,  in  a 
circle  of  almost  supernatural  glory. 
His  words,  as  they  fell  from  his  lips, 
seemed  diamonds  and  pearls ;  and,  in 
truth,  his  conversation,  for  a  month 
after  his  return,  was  in  the  last  degree 
delightful.  Mrs.  De  Grey's  house  was 
par  excellence  the  abode  of  leisure,  —  a 
castle  of  indolence ;  and  Paul  in  talk- 
ing, and  his  companions  in  listening, 
were  conscious  of  no  jealous  stress  of 
sordid  duties.  The  summer  days  were 
long,  and  Paul's  daily  fund  of  loquacity 
was  inexhaustible.  A  week  after  his 
arrival,  after  breakfast,  Father  Herbert 
contracted  the  habit  of  carrying  him  off 
to  his  study  ;  and  Margaret,  passing 
the  half-open  door,  would  hear  the 
changeful  music  of  his  voice.  She  be- 
grudged the  old  man,  at  these  times, 
the  exclusive  enjoyment  of  so  much 
eloquence.  She  felt  that  with  his  tutor, 
Paul's  talk  was  far  wiser  and  richer 
than  it  was  possible  it  should  be  with 
two  simple-minded  women  ;  and  the 
young  girl  had  a  pious  longing  to  hear 
him,  to  see  him,  at  his  best.  A  bril- 
liant best  it  was  to  Father  Herbert's 
mind ;  for  Paul  had  surpassed  his 
fondest  hopes.  He  had  amassed  such 
a  store  of  knowledge ;  he  had  learned 
all  the  good  that  the  old  man  had  en- 
joined upon  him  ;  and,  although  he  had 
not  wholly  ignored  the  evil  against 
which  the  priest  had  warned  him,  he 
judged  it  so  wisely  and  wittily!  Wo- 
men and  priests,  as  a  general  thing,  like 
a  man  none  the  less  for  not  being  ut- 


terly innocent.  Father  Herbert  took 
an  unutterable  satisfaction  in  the  hap- 
py development  of  Paul's  character. 
He  was  more  than  the  son  of  his  loins  : 
he  was  the  child  of  his  intellect,  his 
patience,  and  devotion. 

The  afternoons  and  evenings  Paul 
was  free  to  devote  to  his  mother,  who, 
out  of  her  own  room,  never  dispensed 
for  an  hour  with  Margaret's  attend- 
ance. This,  thanks  to  the  young  girl's 
delicate  tact  and  sympathy,  had  now 
become  an  absolute  necessity.  Marga- 
ret sat  by  with  her  work,  while  Paul 
talked,  and  marvelled  at  his  inexhaust- 
ible stock  of  gossip  and  anecdote  and 
forcible,  vivid  v  description.  He  made 
cities  and  churches  and  galleries  and 
playhouses  swarm  and  shine  before  her 
enchanted  senses,  and  reproduced  the 
people  he  had  met  and  the  scenery 
through  which  he  had  travelled,  until 
the  young  girl's  head  turned  at  the  rap- 
id succession  of  images  and  pictures. 
And  then,  at  times,  he  would  seem  to 
grow  weary,  and  would  sink  into  si- 
lence ;  and  Margaret,  looking  up  as- 
kance from  her  work,  would  see  his  eyes 
absently  fixed,  and  a  faint  smile  on  his 
face,  or  else  a  cold  gravity,  and  she 
would  wonder  what  far-off  memory  had 
called  back  his  thoughts  to  that  un- 
known European  world.  Sometimes, 
less  frequently,  when  she  raised  her 
eyes,  she  found  him  watching  her  own 
figure,  her  bent  head,  and  the  busy 
movement  of  her  hands.  But  (as  yet, 
at  least)  he  never  turned  away  his 
glance  in  confusion  ;  he  let  his  eyes 
rest,  and  justified  his  scrutiny  by  some 
simple  and  natural  remark. 

But  as  the  weeks  passed  by,  and  the 
summer  grew  to'  its  fulness,  Mrs.  De 
Grey  contracted  the  habit  of  going  af- 
ter dinner  to  her  own  room,  where,  we 
may  respectfully  conjecture,  she  passed 
the  afternoon  in  dishabille  and  slumber. 
But  De  Grey  and  Miss  Aldis  tacitly 
agreed  together  that,  in  the  prime  and 
springtime  of  life,  it  was  stupid  folly  to 
waste  in  any  such  fashion  the  longest 
and  brightest  hours  of  the  year ;  and  so 
they,  on  their  side,  contracted  the  habit 
of  sitting  in  the  darkened  drawing-room* 


68 


DC  Grey:  a  Romance. 


[July, 


and  gossiping  away  the  time  until 
within  an  hour  of  tea.  Sometimes,  for 
a  change,  they  went  across  the  garden 
into  a  sort  of  summer-house,  which  oc- 
cupied a  central  point  in  the  enclosure, 
and  stood  with  its  face  averted  from 
the  mansion,  and  looking  to  the  north, 
and  with  its  sides  covered  with  dense, 
clustering  vines.  Within,  against  the 
wall,  was  a  deep  'garden  bench,  and  in 
the  middle  a  table,  upon  which  Marga- 
ret placed  her  work-basket,  and  the 
young  man  the  book,  which,  under  the 
pretence  of  meaning  to  read,  he  usually 
carried  in  his  hand.  Within  was  cool- 
ness and  deep  shade  and  silence,  and 
without  the  broad  glare  of  the  immense 
summer  sky.  When  I  say  there  was  si- 
lence, I  mean  that  there  was  nothing  to 
interrupt  the  conversation  of  these  hap- 
py idlers.  Their  talk  speedily  assumed 
that  desultory,  volatile  character,  which 
is  the  sign  of  great  intimacy.  Marga- 
ret found  occasion  to  ask  Paul  a  great 
many  questions  which  she  had  not  felt 
at  liberty  to  ask  in  the  presence  of  his 
mother,  and  to  demand  additional  light 
upon  a  variety  of  little  points  which 
Mrs.  De  Grey  had  been  content  to 
leave  in  obscurity.  Paul  was  perfectly 
communicative.  If  Miss  Aldis  cared  to 
hear,  he  was  assuredly  glad  to  talk. 
But  suddenly  it  struck  him  that  her 
attitude  of  mind  was  a  singular  provo- 
cation to  egotism,  and  that  for  six 
weeks,  in  fact,  he  had  done  nothing  but 
talk  about  himself,  —  his  own  adven- 
tures, sensations,  and  opinions. 

"  I  declare,  Miss  Aldis,"  he  cried, 
"you're  making  me  a  monstrous  ego- 
tist. That 's  all  you  women  are  good 
for.  I  shall  not  say  another  word  about 
Mr.  Paul  De  Grey.  Now  it's  your 
turn." 

"  To  talk  about  Mr.  Paul  De  Grey  ?  " 
asked  Margaret,  with  a  smile. 

"  No,  about  Miss  Margaret  Aldis,  — 
which,  by  the  way,  is  a  very  pretty 
name." 

"By  the  way,  indeed!"  said  Mar- 
garet. "  By  the  way  for  you,  perhaps. 
But  for  me,  my  pretty  name  is  all  I 
have." 

"If  you   mean,    Miss   Aldis,"    cried 


Paul,  "  that  your  beauty  is  all  in  your 
name  —  " 

"  I  'm  sadly  mistaken.  Well,  then, 
I  don't.  The  rest  is  in  my  imagina- 
tion." 

"Very  likely.  It  's  certainly  not  in 
mine." 

Margaret  was,  in  fact,  at  this  time,, 
extremely  pretty  ;  a  little  pale  with  the 
heat,  but  rounded  and  developed  by 
rest  and  prosperity,  and  animated  — 
half  inspired,  I  may  call  it  —  with  ten- 
der .gratitude.  Looking  at  her  as  he 
said  these  words,  De  Grey  was  forci- 
bly struck  with  the  interesting  charac- 
ter of  her  face.  Yes,  most  assuredly, 
her  beauty  was  a  potent  reality.  The 
charm  of  her  face  was  forever  refreshed 
and  quickened  by  the  deep  loveliness 
of  her  soul. 

"  I  mean  literally,  Miss  Aldis,"  said 
the  young  man,  "  that  I  wish  you  to 
talk  about  yourself.  I  want  to  hear 
your  adventures.  I  demand  it,  —  I 
need  it." 

"  My  adventures  ?  "  said  Margaret. 
"  I  have  never  had  any." 

"  Good  !  "  cried  Paul ;  "  that  in  itself 
is  an  adventure." 

In  this  way  it  was  that  Margaret 
came  to  relate  to  her  companion  the 
short  story  of  her  young  life.  The 
story  was  not  all  told,  however,  short 
as  it  was,  in  a  single  afternoon  ;  that  is, 
a  whole  week  after  she  began,  the 
young  girl  found  herself  setting  Paul 
right  with  regard  to  a  matter  of  which 
he  had  received  a  false  impression. 

"  Nay,  he  is  married,"  said  Marga- 
ret ;  "  I  told  you  so." 

"  O,  he  is  married  ? "  said  Paul. 

"  Yes  ;  his  wife 's  an  immense  fat 
woman." 

"  O,  his  wife  's  an  immense  fat  wo- 
man ? " 

"  Yes  ;  and  he  thinks  all  the  world 
of  her." 

"  O,  he  thinks  all  the  world  of  her !  " 

It  was  natural  that,  in  this  manner, 
with  a  running  commentary  supplied 
by  Paul,  the  narrative  should  proceed 
slowly.  But,  in  addition  to  the  obser- 
vations here  quoted,  the  young  man 
maintained  another  commentary,  less 


1 868.] 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


audible  and  more  profound.  As  he 
listened  to  this  frank  and  fair-haired 
maiden,  and  reflected  that  in  the  wide 
world  she  might  turn  in  confidence  and 
sympathy  to  other  minds  than  his,  — as 
he  found  her  resting  her  candid  thoughts 
and  memories  on  his  judgment,  as  she 
might  lay  her  white  hand  on  his  arm,  — 
it  seemed  to  him  that  the  pure  inten- 
tions with  which  she  believed  his  soul 
to  -be  peopled  took  in  her  glance  a 
graver  and  higher  cast.  All  the  gor- 
geous color  faded  out  of  his  recent 
European  reminiscences  and  regrets, 
and  he  was  sensible  only  of  Margaret's 
presence,  and  of  the  tender  rosy  radi- 
ance in  which  she  sat  and  moved,  as  in 
a  sort  of  earthly  halo.  Could  it  be,  he 
asked  himself,  that  while  he  was  roam- 
ing about  Europe,  in  a  vague,  restless 
search  for  his  future,  his  end,  his  aim, 
these  things  were  quietly  awaiting  him 
at  his  own  deserted  hearth-stone,  gath- 
ered together  in  the  immaculate  person 
of  the  sweetest  and  fairest  of  women  ? 
Finally,  one  day,  this  view  of  the  case 
struck  him  so  forcibly,  that  he  cried 
out  in  an  ecstasy  of  belief  and  joy. 

**  Margaret,"  he  said,  "  my  mother 
found  you  in  church,  and  there,  before 
the  altar,  she  kissed  you  and  took  you 
into  her  arms.  I  have  often  thought 
of  that  scene.  It  makes  it  no  common 
adoption." 

"  I  'm  sure  I  have  often  thought  of 
it,"  said  Margaret. 

"  It  makes  it  sacred  and  everlasting," 
said  Paul.  "  On  that  blessed  day  you 
came  to  us  for  ever  and  ever." 

Margaret  looked  at  him  with  a  face 
tremulous  between  smiles  and  tears. 
k-  For  as  long  as  you  will  keep  me,"  she 
said.  "  Ah,  Paul !  "  For  in  an  instant 
the  young  man  had  expressed  all  his 
longing  and  his  passion. 

With  the  greatest  affection  and  es- 
teem for  his  mother,  Paul  had  always 
found  it  natural  to  give  precedence  to 
Father  Herbert  in  matters  of  appeal 
and  confidence.  The  old  man  possessed 
a  delicacy  of  intellectual  tact  which 
made  his  sympathy  and  his  counsel 
alike  delightful.  Some  days  after  the 
conversation  upon  a  few  of  the  salient 


points  of  which  I  have  lightly  touched, 
Paul  and  Margaret  renewed  their  mu- 
tual vows  in  the  summer-house.  -They 
now  possessed  that  deep  faith  in  the 
sincerity  of  their  own  feelings,  and  that 
undoubting  delight  in  each  other's  reit- 
erated protests,  which  left  them  nothing 
to  do  but  to  take  their  elders  into  their 
confidence.  They  came  through  the 
garden  together,  and  oh  reaching  the 
threshold  Margaret  found  that  she  had 
left  her  scissors  in  the  garden  hut ; 
whereupon  Paul  went  back  in  search  of 
them.  The  young  girl  came  into  the 
house,  reached  the  foot  of  the  staircase, 
and  waited  for  her  lover.  At  this  mo- 
ment Father  Herbert  appeared  in  the 
open  doorway  of  his  study,  and  looked 
at  Margaret  with  a  melancholy  smile. 
He  stood,  passing  one  hand  slowly 
over  another,  and  gazing  at  her  with 
kindly,  darksome  looks. 

"  It  seems  to  me,  Mistress  Margaret," 
he  said,  k'  that  you  keep  all  this  a  mar- 
vellous secret  from  your  poor  old  Doc- 
tor Herbert" 

In  the  presence  of  this  gentle  and 
venerable  scholar,  Margaret  felt  that 
she  had  no  need  of  vulgar  blushing  and 
simpering  and  negation.  "  Dear  Fa- 
ther Herbert,"  she  said,  with  heavenly 
simpleness,  "  I  have  just  been  begging 
Paul  to  teil  you." 

"Ah,  my  daughter,"  —  and  the  old 
man  but  half  stifled  a  sigh,  —"it 's  all 
a  strange  and  terrible  mystery." 

Paul  came  in  and  crossed  the  hall 
with  the  light  step  of  a  lover. 

"  Paul,"  said  Margaret,  "  Father  Her- 
bert knows." 

"  Father  Herbert  knows  !  "  repeated 
the  priest,  —  "Father  Herbert  knows 
everything.  You  're  very  innocent  for 
lovers." 

"  You  're  very  wise,  sir,  for  a  priest," 
said  Paul,  blushing. 

"  I  knew  it  a  week  ago,"  said  the  old 
man,  gravely. 

"  Well,  sir,"  said  Paul,  "  we  love  you 
none  the  less  for  loving  each  other  so 
much  more.  I  hope  you  '11  not  love  us 
the  less." 

"  Father  Herbert  thinks  it 's  *  terri- 
ble,' "  said  Margaret,  smiling. 


70 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


[My, 


"  O  Lord  !  "  cried  Herbert,  raising 
his  hand  to  his  head  as  if  in  pain. 
He  turned  about,  and  went  into  his 
room. 

Paul  drew  Margaret's  hand  through 
his  arm  and  followed  the  priest.  "You 
suffer,  sir,"  he  said,  "at  the  thought  of 
losing  us,  —  of  our  leaving  you.  That 
certainly  need  n't  trouble  you.  Where 
should  we  go?  As  long  as  you  live, 
as  long  as  my  mother  lives,  we  shall 
all  make  but  a  single  household." 

The  old  man  appeared  to  have  recov- 
ered his  composure.  "Ah  !  "  he  said  ; 
"  be  happy,  no  matter  where,  and  I  shall 
be  happy.  You  're  very  young." 

"  Not  so  young,"  said  Paul,  laughing, 
but  with  a  natural  disinclination  to  be 
placed  in  too  boyish  a  light.  "  I  'm  six- 
and-twenty.  J'ai  vecu,  —  I  've  lived." 
"  He  's  been  through  everything," 
said  Margaret,  leaning  on  his  arm. 

"  Not  quite  everything."  And  Paul, 
bending  his  eyes,  with  a  sober  smile, 
met  her  upward  glance. 

"  O,  he  's  modest,"  murmured  Father 
Herbert. 

"  Paul 's  been  all  but  married  al- 
ready," said  Margaret. 

The  young  man  made  a  gesture  of 
impatience.  Herbert  stood  with  his 
eyes  fixed  on  his  face. 

"Why  do  you  speak  of  that  poor 
girl?"  said  Paul.  Whatever  satisfac- 
tion he  may  have  given  Margaret  on 
the  subject  of  his  projected  marriage 
in  Europe,  he  had  since  his  return 
declined,  on  the  plea  that  it  was  ex- 
tremely painful,  to  discuss  the  matter 
either  with  his  mother  or  with  his  old 
tutor. 

"  Miss  Aldis  is  perhaps  jealous," 
said  Herbert,  cunningly. 

"O  Father  Herbert!"  cried  Mar- 
garet. 

"  There  is  little  enough  to  be  jealous 
of,"  said  Paul. 

"  There  's  a  fine  young  man  !  "  cried 
Herbert.     "One  would  think  he   had 
never  cared  for  her." 
"  It's  perfectly  true." 
"  Oh  ! "  said   Herbert,  in   a  tone  of 
deep  reproach,  laying  his  hand  on  the 
young  man's  arm.     "  Don't  say  that." 


"  Nay,  sir,  I  shall  say  it.  I  never 
said  anything  less  to  her.  She  en- 
chanted, me,  she  entangled  me,  but, 
before  Heaven,  I  never  loved  her ! " 
"  O,  God  help  you  !  "  cried  the  priest. 
He  sat  down,  and  buried  his  face  in  his 
hands. 

Margaret  turned  deadly  pale,  and  re- 
called the  scene  which  had  occurred  on 
the  receipt  of  Paul's  letter,  announcing 
the  rupture  of  his  engagement.  "  Fa- 
ther Herbert,"  she  cried,  "what  hor- 
rible, hideous  mystery  do  you  keep 
locked  up  in  your  bosom  ?  If  it  con- 
cerns me, — if  it  concerns  Paul,  —  I 
demand  of  you  to  tell  us." 

Moved  apparently  by  the  young 
girPs  tone  of  agony  to  a  sense  of  the 
needfulness  of  self-control,  Herbert 
uncovered  his  face,  and  directed  to 
Margaret  a  rapid  glance  of  entreaty. 
She  perceived  that  it  meant  that,  at 
any  cost,  she  should  be  silent.  Then, 
with  a  sublime  attempt  at  dissimulation, 
he  put  out  his  hands,  and  laid  one  on 
each  of  his  companions'  shoulders. 
"  Excuse  me,  Paul,"  he  said,  "  I  'm  a 
foolish  old  man.  Old  scholars  are  a 
sentimental,  a  superstitious  race.  We 
believe  still  that  all  women  are  angels, 
and  that  all  men  —  " 

"  That  all  men  are  fools,"  said  Paul, 
smiling. 

"  Exactly.  Whereas,  you  see,"  whis- 
pered Father  Herbert,  '"there  are  no 
fools  but  ourselves." 

Margaret  listened  to  this  fantastic 
bit  of  dialogue  with  a  beating  heart, 
fully  determined  not  to  content  herself 
with  any  such  flimsy  explanation  of  the 
old  man's  tragical  allusions.  Mean- 
while, Herbert  urgently  besought  Paul 
to  defer  for  a  few  days  making  known 
his  engagement  to  his  mother. 

The  next  day  but  one  was  Sunday, 
the  last  in  August.  The  heat  for  a 
week  had  been  oppressive,  and  the  air 
was  now  sullen  and  brooding,  as  if  with 
an  approaching  storm.  As  she  left  the 
breakfast-table,  Margaret  felt  her  arm 
touched  by  Father  Herbert. 

"  Don't  go  to  church,"  he  said,  in  a 
low  voice.  "  Make  a  pretext,  and  stay 
at  home." 


1 868.] 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


"  A  pretext  ?  —  " 

"  Say  you  've  letters  to  write." 

"  Letters  ?  "  and  Margaret  smiled  half 
bitterly.  "  To  whom  should  I  write 
letters  ?  " 

"  Dear  me,  then  say  you  're  ill.  I 
give  you  absolution.  When  they  're 
gone,  come  to  me." 

At  church-time,  accordingly,  Manga- 
ret  feigned  a  slight  indisposition;  and 
Mrs.  De  Grey,  taking  her  son's  arm, 
mounted  into  her  ancient  deep-seated 
coach,  and  rolled  away  from  the  door. 
Margaret  immediately  betook  herself  to  ' 
Father  Herbert's  apartment.  She  saw 
in  the  old  man's  face  the  portent  of 
some  dreadful  avowal.  Efts  whole  fig- 
ure betrayed  the  weight  of  an  inexorable 
necessity. 

"  My  daughter,"  said  the  priest,  "you 
are  a  brave,  pious  girl  —  " 

"  Ah  !  "  cried  Margaret,  "  it 's  some- 
thing horrible,  or  you  would  n't  say 
that.  Tell  me  at  once  !  " 

"  You  need  all  your  courage." 

"  Does  n't  he  love  me  ?  —  Ah,  in 
Heaven's  name,  speak  ! " 

"  If  he  did  n't  love  you  with  a  damning 
passion,  I  should  have  nothing  to  say." 

"  O,  then,  say  what  you  please ! " 
said  Margaret. 

"Well  then,  —  you  must  leave  this 
house." 

"  Why  ?  —  when  ?  —  where  must  I 
go  ? " 

"  This  moment,  if  possible.  You 
must  go  anywhere,  —  the  further  the 
better,  —  the  further  from  him.  Listen, 
my  child,"  said  the  old  man,  his  bosom 
wrung  by  the  stunned,  bewildered  look 
of  Margaret's  face  ;  "  it 's  useless  to 
protest,  to  weep,  to  resist.  It's  the 
voice  of  fate  !  " 

"  And  pray,  sir,"  said  Margaret,  "  of 
what  do  you  accuse  me  ? " 

"  I  accuse  no  one.  I  don't  even  ac- 
cuse Heaven." 

"  But  there  's  a  reason,  —  there  's  a 
motive —  " 

Herbert  laid  his  hand  on  his  lips, 
pointed  to  a  seat,  and,  turning  to  an 
ancient  chest  on  the  table,  unlocked  it, 
and  drew  from  it  a  small  volume,  bound 
in  vellum,  apparently  an  old  illuminated 


missal.  "  There  's  nothing  for  it,"  he 
said,  "  but  to  tell  you  the  whole  story." 

He  sat  down  before  the  young  girl, 
who  held  herself  rigid  and  expectant. 
The  room  grew  dark  with  the  gathering 
storm-clouds,  and  the  distant  thunder 
muttered. 

"  Let  me  read  you  ten  words,"  said 
the  priest,  opening  at  a  fly-leaf  of  the 
volume,  on  which  a  memorandum  or 
register  had  been  inscribed  in  a  great 
variety  of  hands,  all  minute  and  some 
barely  legible.  "  God  be  with  you  !  " 
and  the  old  man  crossed  himself.  In- 
voluntarily, Margaret  did  the  same. 
" '  George  De  Grey,'  "  he  read,  "  <  met 
and  loved,  September,  1786,  Antonietta 
Gambini,  of  Milan.  She  died  October 
9th,  same  year.  John  De  Grey  mar- 
ried, April  4th,  1749,  Henrietta  Spencer. 
She  died  May  7th.  George  De  Grey 
engaged  himself  October,  1710,  to  Ma- 
ry Fortescue.  She  died  October  3ist. 
Paul  De  Grey,  aged  nineteen,  betrothed 
June,  1672,  at  Bristol,  England,  to  Lu- 
cretia  Lefevre,  aged  thirty-one,  of  that 
place.  She  died  July  27th.  Jbhn  De 
Grey,  affianced  January  loth,  1649,  to 
Blanche  Ferrars,  of  Castle  Ferrars. 
Cumberland.  She  died,  by  her  lover's 
hand,  January  I2th.  Stephen  De  Grey 
offered  his  hand  to  Isabel  Stirling, 
October,  1619.  She  died  within  the 
month.  Paul  De  Grey  exchanged 
pledges  with  Magdalen  Scrope,  August, 
1586.  She  died  in  childbirth,  Septem- 
ber, 1587.'"  Father  Herbert  paused. 
"  Is  it  enough  ?  "  he  asked,  looking  up 
with  glowing  eyes.  "  There  are  two 
pages  more.  The  De  Greys  are  an 
ancient  line  ;  they  keep  their  rec- 
ords." 

Margaret  had  listened  with  a  look  of 
deepening,  fierce,  passionate  horror,  — 
a  look  more  of  anger  and  of  wounded 
pride  than  of  terror.  She  sprang  to- 
wards the  priest  with  the  lightness  of  a 
young  cat,  and  dashed  the  hideous 
record  from  his  hand. 

"  What  abominable  nonsense  is  this  ! " 
she  cried.  "  What  does  it  mean  ?  I 
barely  heard  it ;  I  despise  it ;  I  laugh 
at  it !  " 

The  old  man  seized  her  arm  with  a 


72 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


[July, 


firm  grasp.  "  Paul  De  Grey,"  he  said, 
in  an  awful  voice,  "  exchanged  pledges 
with  Margaret  Aldis,  August,  1821. 
She  died  — with  the  falling  leaves." 

Poor  Margaret  looked  about  her  for 
help,  inspiration,  comfort  of  some  kind. 
The  room  contained  nothing  but  ser- 
ried lines  of  old  parchment-covered 
books,  each  seeming  a  grim  repetition 
of  the  volume  at  her  feet.  A  vast  peal 
of  thunder  resounded  through  the  noon- 
day stillness.  Suddenly  her  strength 
deserted  her ;  she  felt  her  weakness 
and  loneliness,  the  grasp  of  the  hand  of 
fate.  Father  Herbert  put  out  his  arms, 
she  flung  herself  on  his  neck,  and  burst 
into  tears. 

"  Do  you  still  refuse  to  leave  him  ? " 
asked  the  priest.  "If  you  leave  him, 
you  're  saved." 

"  Saved  ?  "  cried  Margaret,  raising 
her  head;  "and  Paul?" 

"  Ah,  there  it  is. —  He  '11  forget  you." 
-The  young  girl  pondered  a  moment. 
"  To  have  him  do  that,"  she  said,  "  I 
should  apparently  have  to  die."  Then 
wringing  her  hands  with  a  fresh  burst 
of  grief;  "  Is  it  certain,"  she  cried, 
"  that  there  are  no  exceptions  ? " 

"None,  my  child";  and  he  picked 
up  the  volume.  "You  see  it's  the 
first  love,  the  first  passion.  After  that, 
they  're  innocent.  Look  at  Mrs.  De 
Grey.  The  race  is  accursed.  It 's  an 
awful,  inscrutable  mystery.  I  fancied 
that  you  were  safe,  my  daughter,  and 
that  that  poor  Miss  L.  had  borne  the 
brunt.  But  Paul  was  at  pains  to  un- 
deceive me.  I  've  searched  his  life, 
I  've  probed  his  conscience  :  it 's  a  vir- 
gin heart.  Ah,  my  child,  I  dreaded  it 
from  the  first.  I  trembled  when  you 
came  into  the  house.  I  wanted  Mrs. 
De  Grey  to  turn  you  off.  But  she 
laughs  at  it,  —  she  calls  it  an  old-wife's 
tale.  She  was  safe  enough  ;  her  hus- 
band didn't  care  two  straws  for  her. 
But  there  's  a  little  dark-eyed  maiden 
buried  in  Italian  soil  who  could  tell  her 
another  story.  She  withered,  my  child. 
She  was  life  itself,  —  an  incarnate  ray 
of  her  own  Southern  sun.  She  died  of 
De  Grey's  kisses.  Don't  ask  me  how 
it  began,  it 's  always  been  so.  It  goes 


back  to  the  night  of  time.  One  of  the 
race,  they  say,  came  home  from  the 
East,  from  the  crusades,  infected  with 
the  germs  of  the  plague.  He  had 
pledged  his  love-faith  to  a  young  girl 
before  his  departure,  and  it  had  been 
arranged  that  the  wedding  should  im- 
mediately succeed  his  return.  Feeling 
unwell,  he  consulted  an  elder  brother 
of  the  bride,  a  man  versed  in  fantastic 
medical  lore,  and  supposed  to  be  gifted 
with  magical  skill.  By  him  he  was  as- 
sured that  he  was  plague-stricken,  and 
that  he  was  in  duty  bound  to  defer  the 
marriage.  The  young  knight  refused  to 
comply,  and  the  physician,  infuriated, 
pronounced  a  curse  upon  his  race. 
The  marriage  took  place ;  within  a 
week  the  bride  expired,  in  horrible 
agony ;  the  young  man,  after  a  slight 
illness,  recovered;  the  curse  took  ef- 
fect." 

Margaret  took  the  quaint  old  missal 
into  her  hand,  and  turned  to  the  grisly 
register  of  death.  Her  heart  grew  cold 
as  she  thought  of  her  own  sad  sister- 
hood with  all  those  miserable  women 
of  the  past.  Miserable  women,  but 
ah !  tenfold  more  miserable  men,  — 
helpless  victims  of  their  own  baleful 
hearts.  She  remained  silent,  with  her 
eyes  fixed  on  the  book,  abstractedly ; 
mechanically,  as  it  were,  she  turned  to 
another  page,  and  read  a  familiar  orison 
to  the  blessed  Virgin.  Then  raising 
her  head,  with  her  deep-blue  eyes  shin- 
ing with  the  cold  light  of  an  immense 
resolve,  —  a  prodigious  act  of  volition, 
—  "Father  Herbert,"  she  said,  in  low, 
solemn  accents,  "  I  revoke  the  curse. 
I  undo  it.  / curse  it! " 

From  this  moment,  nothing  would  in- 
duce her  to  bestow  a  moment's  thought 
on  salvation  by  flight.  It  was  too  late, 
she  declared.  If  she  was  destined  to 
die,  she  had  already  imbibed  the  fatal 
contagion.  But  they  should  see.  She 
cast  no  discredit  on  the  existence  or  the 
potency  of  the  dreadful  charm  ;  she  sim- 
ply assumed,  with  deep  self-confidence 
which  filled  the  old  priest  with  mingled 
wonder  and  anguish,  that  it  would  vain- 
ly expend  its  mystic  force  once  and  for- 
ever upon  her  own  devoted,  impas- 


1 868.] 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


73 


sioned  life.  Father  Herbert  folded  his 
trembling  hands  resignedly.  He  had 
done  his  duty  ;  the  rest  was  with  God. 
At  times,  living  as  he  had  done  for 
years  in  dread  of  the  moment  which 
had  now  arrived,  with  his  whole  life 
darkened  by  its  shadow,  it  seemed  to 
him  among  the  strange  possibilities  of 
nature  that  this  frail  and  pure  young 
girl  might  indeed  have  sprung,  at  the 
command  of  outraged  love,  to  the  res- 
cue of  the  unhappy  line  to  which  he 
had  dedicated  his  manhood.  And  then 
at  other  moments  it  seemed  as  if  she 
were  joyously  casting  herself  into  the 
dark  gulf.  At  all  events,  the  sense  of 
peril  had  filled  Margaret  herself  with 
fresh  energy  and  charm.  Paul,  if  he 
had  not  been  too  enchanted  with  her 
feverish  gayety  and  grace  to  trouble 
himself  about  their  motive  and  origin, 
would  have  been  at  loss  to  explain 
their  sudden  morbid  intensity.  Forth- 
with, at  her  request,  he  announced  his 
engagement  to  his  mother,  who  put  on 
a  very  gracious  face,  and  honored  Mar- 
garet with  a  sort  of  official  kiss. 

"  Ah  me  !  "  muttered  Father  Herbert, 
"and  now  she  thinks  she  has  bound 
them  fast."  And  later,  the  next  day, 
when  Mrs.  De  Grey,  talking  of  the 
matter,  avowed  that  it  really  did  cost 
her  a  little  to  accept  as  a  daughter  a 
girl  to  whom  she  had  paid  a  salary,  — 
"  A  salary,  madam  !  "  cried  the  priest 
with  a  bitter  laugh;  "upon  my  word, 
I  think  it  was  the  least  you  could 
do." 

"  Nous  vei-rons"  said  Mrs.  De  Grey, 
composedly. 

A  week  passed  by,  without  ill  omens. 
Paul  was  in  a  manly  ecstasy  of  bliss. 
At  moments  he  was  almost  bewildered 
by  the  fulness  with  which  his  love  and 
faith  had  been  requited.  Margaret  was 
transfigured,  glorified,  by  the  passion 
which  burned  in  her  heart.  "Give 
a  plain  girl,  a  common  girl,  a  lover," 
thought  Paul,  "and  she  grows  pretty, 
charming.  Give  a  charming  girl  a 
lover  —  "  and  if  Margaret  was  present, 
his  eloquent  eyes  uttered  the  conclu- 
sion ;  if  she  was  absent,  his  restless 
steps  wandered  in  search  of  her.  Her 


beauty  within  the  past  ten  days  seemed 
to  have  acquired  an  unprecedented 
warmth  and  richness.  Paul  went  so 
far  as  to  fancy  that  her  voice  had  grown 
more  deep  and  mellow.  She  looked 
older ;  she  seemed  in  an  instant  to 
have  overleaped  a  year  of  her  develop- 
ment, and  to  have  arrived  at  the  per- 
fect maturity  of  her  youth.  One  might 
have  imagined  that,  instead  of  the  fur- 
ther, she  stood  just  on  the  hither  verge 
of  marriage.  Meanwhile  Paul  grew 
conscious  of  he  hardly  knew  what  deli- 
cate change  in  his  own  emotions.  The 
exquisite  feeling  of  pity,  the  sense  of 
her  appealing  weakness,  her  heavenly 
dependence,  which  had  lent  its  tender 
strain  to  swell  the  concert  of  his  affec- 
tions, had  died  away,  and  given  place  to 
a  vague,  profound  instinct  of  respect. 
Margaret  was,  after  all,  no  such  simple 
body;  her  nature,  too,  had  its  myste- 
ries. In  truth,  thought  Paul,  tender- 
ness, gentleness,  is  its  own  reward.  He 
had  bent  to  pluck  this  pallid  flower  of 
sunless  household  growth ;  he  had 
dipped  its  slender  stem  in  the  living 
waters  of  his  love,  and  lo  !  it  had  lifted 
its  head,  and  spread  its  petals,  and 
brightened  into  splendid  purple  and 
green.  This  glowing  potency  of  loveli- 
ness filled  him  with  a  tremor  which  was 
almost  a  foreboding.  He  longed  to 
possess  her ;  he  watched  her  with  cov- 
etous eyes  ;  he  wished  to  call  her  utter- 
ly his  own. 

"  Margaret,"  he  said  to  her,  "you  fill 
me  with  a  dreadful  delight.  You  grow 
more  beautiful  every  day.  We  must  be 
married  immediately,  or,  at  this  rate,  by 
our  wedding-day,  I  shall  have  grown 
mortally  afraid  of  you.  By  the  soul  of 
my  father,  I  did  n't  bargain  for  this ! 
Look  at  yourself  in  that  glass."  And 
he  turned  her  about  to  a,  long  mirror ; 
it  was  in  his  mother's  dressing-room  ; 
Mrs.  De  Grey  had  gone  into  the  ad- 
joining chamber. 

Margaret  saw  herself  reflected  from 
head  to  foot  in  the  glassy  depths,  and 
perceived  the  change  in  her  appear- 
ance. Her  head  rose  with  a  sort  of 
proud  serenity  from  the  full  curve  of 
her  shoulders ;  her  eyes  were  brilliant, 


74 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


[July, 


her  lips  trembled,  her  bosom  rose  and 
fell  with  all  the  insolence  of  her  deep 
devotion.  "  Blanche  Ferrars,  of  Castle 
Ferrars,"  she  silently  repeated,  "Isabel 
Stirling,  Magdalen  Scrope,  — poor  fool- 
ish women  !  You  were  not  women,  you 
were  children.  It 's  your  fault,  Paul," 
she  cried,  aloud,  "  if  I  look  other  than  I 
should  !  Why  is  there  such  a  love  be- 
tween us  ? "  And  then,  seeing  the 
young  man's  face  beside  her  own,  she 
fancied  he  looked  pale.  "  My  Paul," 
she  said,  taking  his  hands,  "  you  're 
pale.  What  a  face  for  a  happy  lover ! 
You  're  impatient.  Well-a-day,  sir  !  it 
shall  be  when  you  please." 

The  marriage  was  fixed  for  the  last 
of  September  ;  and  the  two  women  im- 
\  mediately  began  to  occupy  themselves 
with  the  purchase  of  the  bridal  gar- 
ments. Margaret,  out  of  her  salary, 
had  saved  a  sufficient  sum  to  buy.  a 
handsome  wedding  gown  ;  but,  for  the 
other  articles  of  her  wardrobe,  she  was 
obliged  to  be  indebted  to  the  liberality 
of  Mrs.  De  Grey.  She  made  no  scru- 
ple, indeed,  of  expending  large  sums  of 
money,  and,  when  they  were  expended, 
of  asking  for  more.  She  took  an  active, 
violent  delight  in  procuring  quantities 
of  the  richest  stuffs.  It  seemed  to  her 
that,  for  the  time,  she  had  parted  with 
all  flimsy  dignity  and  conventional  reti- 
cence and  coyness,  as  if  she  had  flung 
away  her  conscience  to  be  picked  up 
by  vulgar,  happy,  unimperilled  women. 
She  gathered  her  marriage  finery  to- 
gether in  a  sort  of  fierce  defiance  of 
impending  calamity.  She  felt  excited 
to  outstrip  it,  to  confound  it,  to  stare 
it  out  of  countenance. 

One  day  she  was  crossing  the  hall, 
with  a  piece  of  stuff  just  sent  from  the 
shop.  It  was  a  long  morsel  of  vivid 
pink  satin,  and,  as  she  held  it,  a  por- 
tion of  it  fell  over  her  arm  to  her  feet. 
Father  Herbert's  door  stood  ajar  ;  she 
stopped,  and  went  in. 

"  Excuse  me,  reverend  sir,"  said 
Margaret ;  "  but  I  thought  it  a  pity  not 
to  show  you  this  beautiful  bit  of  satin. 
Isn't  it  a  lovely  pink?  — it's  almost 
red,  —  it 's  carnation.  It 's  the  color  of 
our  love,  —  of  my  death.  Father  Her- 


bert," she  cried,  with  a  shrill,  resound- 
ing laugh,  "  it 's  my  shroud  f  Don't  you 
think  it  would  be  a  pretty  shroud  ?  — 
pink  satin,  and  blond-lace,  and  pearls  ? " 

The  old  man  looked  at  her  with  a 
haggard  face.  "  My  daughter,"  he  said, 
"  Paul  will  have  an  incomparable  wife." 

"  Most  assuredly,  if  you  compare  me 
with  those  ladies  in  your  prayer-book. 
Ah  !  Paul  shall  have  a  wife,  at  least. 
That 's  very  certain." 

"  Well,"  said  the  old  man,  "  you  're 
braver  than  I.  You  frighten  me." 

"  Dear  Father  Herbert,  did  n't  you 
once  frighten  me  ?  " 

The  old  man  looked  at  Margaret  with 
mingled  tenderness  and  horror.  "  Tell 
me,  child,"  he  said,  "  in  the  midst  of  all 
this,  do  you  ever  pray  ?  " 

"  God  forbid  !  "  cried  the  poor  crea- 
ture. "  I  have  no  heart  for  prayer." 

She  had  long  talks  with  Paul  about 
their  future  pleasures,  and  the  happy  life 
they  should  lead.  He  declared  that  he 
would  set  their  habits  to  quite  another 
tune,  and  that  the  family  should  no 
longer  be  buried  in  silence  and  gloom. 
It  was  an  absurd  state  of  things,  and 
he  marvelled  that  it  should  ever  have 
come  about.  They  should  begin  to 
live  like  other  people,  and  occupy  their 
proper  place  in  society.  They  should 
entertain  company,  and  travel,  and  go 
to  the  play  of  an  evening.  Margaret 
had  never  seen  a  play  ;  after  their  mar- 
riage, if  she  wished,  she  should  see  one 
every  week  for  a  year.  "  Have  no  fears, 
my  dear,"  cried  Paul,  "  I  don't  mean  to 
bury  you  alive  ;  I  'm  not  digging  your 
grave.  If  I  expected  you  to  be  content 
to  live  as  my  poor  mother  lives,  we 
might  as  well  be  married  by  the  funeral 
service." 

When  Paul  talked  with  this  buoyant 
energy,  looking  with  a  firm,  undoubting 
gaze  on  the  long,  blissful  future,  Mar- 
garet drew  from  his  words  fortitude  and 
joy,  and  scorn  of  all  danger.  Father 
Herbert's  secret  seemed  a  vision,  a 
fantasy,  a  dream,  until,  after  a  while, 
she  found  herself  again  face  to  .face 
with  the  old  man,  and  read  in  his  hag- 
gard features  that  to  him,  at  least,  it 
was  a  deep  reality.  Nevertheless, 


1 868.] 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


75 


among  all  her  feverish  transitions  from 
hope  to  fear,  from  exaltation  to  despair, 
she  never,  for  a  moment,  ceased  to  keep 
a  cunning  watch  upon  her  physical  sen- 
sations, and  to  lie  in  wait  for  morbid 
symptoms.  She  wondered  that,  with 
this  ghastly  burden  on  her  conscious- 
ness, she  had  not  long  since  been  goad- 
ed to  insanity,  or  crushed  into  utter 
idiocy.  She  fancied  that,  sad  as  it 
would  have  been  to  rest  in  ignorance 
of  the  mystery  in  which  her  life  had 
been  involved,  it  was  yet  more  terrible 
to  know  it.  During  the  week  after  her 
interview  with  Father  Herbert,  she  had 
not  slept  half  an  hour  of  the  daily  twen- 
ty-four ;  and  yet,  far  from  missing  her 
sleep,  she  felt,  as  I  have  attempted  to 
show,  intoxicated,  electrified,  by  the 
unbroken  vigilance  and  tension  of  her 
will.  But  she  well  knew  that  this  could 
not  last  forever.  One  afternoon,  a 
couple  of  days  after  Paul  had  uttered 
those  brilliant  promises,  he  mounted 
his  horse  for  a  ride.  Margaret  stood 
at  the  gate,  watching  him  regretfully, 
and,  as  he  galloped  away,  he  kissed 
her  his  hand.  An  hour  before  tea  she 
came  out  of  her  room,  and  entered  the 
parlor,  where  Mrs.  De  Grey  had  estab- 
lished herself  for  the  evening.  A  mo- 
ment later,  Father  Herbert,  who  was 
in  the  act  of  lighting  his  study-lamp, 
heard  a  piercing  shriek  resound  through 
the  house. 

His  heart  stood  still.  "  The  hour  is 
come,"  he  said.  "  It  would  be  a  pity 
to  miss  it."  He  hurried  to  the  draw- 
ing-room, together  with  the  servants, 
also  startled  by  the  cry.  Margaret  lay 
stretched  on  the  sofa,  pale,  motionless, 
panting,  with  her  eyes  closed  and  her 
hand  pressed  to  her  side.  Herbert  ex- 
changed a  rapid  glance  with  Mrs.  De 
Grey,  who  was  bending  over  the  young 
girl,  holding  her  other  hand. 

"Let  us  at  least  have  no  scandal," 
she  said,  with  dignity,  and  straight- 
way dismissed  the  servants.  Margaret 
gradually  revived,  declared  that  it  was 
nothing,  —  a  mere  sudden  pain,  —  that 
she  felt  better,  and  begged  her  com- 
panions to  make  no  commotion.  Mrs. 
De  Grey  went  to  her  room,  in  search 


of  a  phial  of  smelling-salts,  leaving 
Herbert  alone  with  Margaret.  He  was 
on  his  knees  on  the  floor,  holding  her 
other  hand.  She  raised  herself  to  a 
sitting  posture. 

"  I  know  what  you  are  going  to  say," 
she  cried,  "but  it's  false.  Where's 
Paul  ?  " 

"  Do  you  mean  to  tell  him  ?  "  asked 
Herbert. 

"  Tell  him  ?  "  and  Margaret  started 
to  her  feet.  "  If  I  were  to  die,  I  should 
wring  his  heart ;  if  I  were  to  tell  him,  I 
should  break  it." 

She  started  up,  I  say;  she  had 
heard  and  recognized  her  lover's  rapid 
step  in  the  passage.  Paul  opened  the 
door  and  came  in  precipitately,  out  of 
breath  and  deadly  pale.  Margaret 
came  towards  him  with  her  hand  still 
pressed  to  her  side,  while  Father  Her- 
bert mechanically  rose  from  his  kneel- 
ing posture.  "  What  has  happened  ?  " 
cried  the  young  man.  "  You  've  been 
ill!" 

"Who  told  you  that  anything  has 
happened  ?  "  said  Margaret. 

"  What  is  Herbert  doing  on  his 
knees  ? " 

"  I  was  praying,  sir,"  said  Herbert. 

"  Margaret,"  repeated  Paul,  "in  Heav- 
en's name,  what  is  the  matter  ?  " 

"  What 's  the  matter  with  you,  Paul  ? 
It  seems  to  me  that  I  should  ask  the 
question." 

De  Grey  fixed  a  dark,  searching  look 
on  the  young  girl,  and  then  closed 
his  eyes,  and  grasped  at  the  back  of  a 
chair,  as  if  his  head  were  turning. 
"  Ten  minutes  ago,"  he  said,  speaking 
slowly,  "  I  was  riding  along  by  the 
river-side  ;  suddenly  I  heard  in  the  air 
the  sound  of  a  distant  cry,  which  I  knew 
to  be  yours.  I  turned  and  galloped. 
I  made  three  miles  in  eight  minutes." 

"  A  cry,  dear  Paul  ?  what  should  I 
cry  about  ?  and  to  be  heard  three 
miles !  A  pretty  compliment  to  my 
lungs." 

"  Well,"  said  the  young  man,  "I  sup- 
pose, then,  it  was  my  fancy.  But  my 
horse  heard  it  too  ;  he  lifted  his  ears, 
and  plunged  and  started." 

"It  must  have  been  his  fancy  too! 


76 


De  Grey:  a  Romance, 


[July, 


It  proves  you  an  excellent  rider,  —  you 
and  your  horse  feeling  as  one  man  ! " 

"  Ah,  Margaret,  don't  trifle  !  " 

"  As  one  horse,  then  !  " 

"  Well,  whatever  it  may  have  been, 
I  'm»not  ashamed  to  confess  that  I  'm 
thoroughly  shaken.  I  don't  know  what 
has  become  of  my  nerves." 

"  For  pity's  sake,  then,  don't  stand 
there  shivering  and  staggering  like  a 
man  in  an  ague-fit.  Come,  sit  down 
on  the  sofa."  She  took  Hold  of  his 
arm,  and  led  him  to  the  couch.  He,  in 
turn,  clasped  her  arm  in  his  own  hand, 
and  drew  her  down  beside  him.  Father 
Herbert  silently  made  his  exit,  un- 
heeded. Outside  of  the  door  he  met 
Mrs.  De  Grey,  with  her  smelling-salts. 

"  I  don't  think  she  needs  them  now," 
he  said.  "She  has  Paul."  And  the 
two  adjourned  together  to  the  tea-table. 
When  the  meal  was  half  finished,  Mar- 
garet came  in  with  Paul. 

"  How  do  you  feel,  dear  ?  "  said  Mrs. 
De  Grey. 

"He  feels  much  better,"  said  Mar- 
garet, hastily. 

Mrs.  De  Grey  smiled  complacently. 
"  Assuredly,"  she  thought,  "  my  future 
daughter-in-law  has  a  very  pretty  way 
of  saying  things." 

The  next  day,  going  into  Mrs.  De 
Grey's  room,  Margaret  found  Paul  and 
his  mother  together.  The  latter's  eyes 
were  red,  as  if  she  had  been  weeping ; 
and  Paul's  face  wore  an  excited  look, 
as  if  he  had  been  making  some  painful 
confession.  When  Margaret  came  in, 
he  walked  to  the  window  and  looked 
out,  without  speaking  to  her.  She 
feigned  to  have  come  in  search  of  a 
piece  of  needle-work,  obtained  it,  and 
retired.  Nevertheless,  she  felt  deeply 
wounded.  What  had  Paul  been  doing, 
saying  ?  Why  had  he  not  spoken  to 
her  ?  Why  had  he  turned  his  back 
upon  her  ?  It  was  only  the  evening 
before,  when  they  were  alone  in  the 
drawing-room,  that  he  had  been  so 
unutterably  tender.  It  was  a  cruel 
mystery  ;  she  would  have  no  rest  un- 
til she  learned  it,  —  although,  in  truth, 
she  had  little  enough  as  it  was.  In  the 
afternoon,  Paul  again  ordered  his  horse, 


and  dressed  himself  for  a  ride.  She 
waylaid  him  as  he  came  down  stairs, 
booted  and  spurred ;  and,  as  his  horse 
was  not  yet  at  the  door,  she  made  him 
go  with  her  into  the  garden. 

"Paul,"  she  said,  suddenly,  "what 
were  you  telling  your  mother  this 
morning  ?  Yes,"  she  continued,  try- 
ing to  smile,  but  without  success,  "  I 
confess  it,  —  I  'm  jealous." 

"  O  my  soul !  "  cried  the  young  man, 
wearily,  putting  both  his  hands  to  his 
face. 

"  Dear  Paul,"  said  Margaret,  taking 
his  arm,  "that's  very  beautiful,  but 
it's  not  an  answer." 

Paul  stopped  in  the  path,  took  the 
young  girl's  hands  and  looked  stead- 
fastly into  her  face,  with -an  expression 
that  was  in  truth  a  look  of  weariness, 
— of  worse  than  weariness,  of  despair. 
"  Jealous,  you  say  ?  " 

"  Ah,  not  now  !  "  she  cried,  pressing 
his  hands. 

"  It 's  the  first  foolish  thing  I  have 
heard  you  say." 

"  Well,  it  was  foolish  to  be  jealous 
of  your  mother  ;  but  I  'm  still  jealous 
of  your  solitude,  —  of  these  pleasures  in 
which  I  have  no  share,  —  of  your  horse, 
—  your  long  rides." 

"  You  wish  me  to  give  up  my  ride  ?  " 

"  Dear  Paul,  where  are  your  wits  ? 
To  wish  it  is  —  to  wish  it.  To  say  I 
wish  it  is  to  make  a  fool  of  myself." 

"  My  wits  are  with  —  with  something 
that 's  forever  gone  !  "  And  he  closed 
his  eyes  and  contracted  his  forehead 
as  if  in  pain.  "  My  youth,  my  hope, — 
what  shall  I  call  it  ?  —  my  happiness." 

"  Ah  !  "  said  Margaret,  reproachfully, 
"you  have  to  shut  your  eyes  to  say 
that." 

"  Nay,  what  is  happiness  without 
youth  ?  " 

"  Upon  my  word,  one  would  think  I 
was  forty,"  cried  Margaret. 

"  Well,  so  long  as  I  'm  sixty  !  " 

The  young  girl  perceived  that  behind 
these  light  words  there  was  something 
very  grave.  "Paul,"  she  said,  "the 
trouble  simply  is  that  you  're  unwell." 

He  nodded  assent,  and  with  his  as- 
sent it  seemed  to  her  that  an  unseen 


1 868." 


De  Grey:  a  Romance.. 


77 


hand   had   smitten   the  life  out  of  her 
heart. 

"  That  is  what  you  told  your  moth- 
er?" 

He  nodded  again. 

"  And  what  you  were  unwilling  to 
tell  me  ? " 

He  blushed  deeply.  "  Naturally,"  he 
said. 

She  dropped  his  hands  and  sat  down, 
for  very  faintness,  on  a  garden  bench. 
Then  rising  suddenly,  "  Go,  and  take 
your  ride,"  she  rejoined.  "  But,  before 
you  go,  kiss  me  once." 

And  Paul  kissed  her,  and  mounted 
his  horse.  As  she  went  into  the  house, 
she  met  Father  Herbert,  who  had  been 
watching  the  young  man  ride  away, 
from  beneath  the  porch,  and  who  was 
returning  to  his  study. 

"  My  dear  child,"  said  the  priest, 
"  Paul  is  very  ill.  God  grant  that,  if 
you  manage  not  to  die,  it  may  not  be  at 
his  expense  !  " 

For  all  answer,  Margaret 'turned  on 
him,  in  her  passage,  a  face  so  cold, 
ghastly,  and  agonized,  that  it  seemed 
a  vivid  response  to  his  heart-shaking 
fears.  When  she  reached  her  room, 
she  sat  down  on  her  little  bed,  and 
strove  to  think  clearly  and  deliberately. 
The  old  man's  words  had  aroused  a 
deep-sounding  echo  in  the  vast  spiritual 
solitudes  of  her  being.  She  was  to 
find,  then,  after  her  long  passion,  that 
the  curse  was  absolute,  inevitable, 
eternal.  It  could  be  shifted,  but  not 
eluded ;  in  spite  of  the  utmost  striv- 
ings of  human  agony,  it  insatiably 
claimed  its  victim.  Her  own  strength 
was  exhausted  ;  what  was  she  to  do  ? 
All  her  borrowed  splendor  of  brilliancy 
and  bravery  suddenly  deserted  her,  and 
she  sat  alone,  shivering  in  her  weak- 
ness. Deluded  fool  that  she  was,  for 
a  day,  for  an  hour,  to  have  concealed 
her  sorrow  from  her  lover  !  The  great- 
er her  burden,  the  greater  should" have 
been  her  confidence.  What  neither 
might  endure  alone,  they  might  have 
surely  endured  together.  But  she  blind- 
ly, senselessly,  remorselessly  drained  the 
life  from  his  being.  As  she  bloomed 
and  prospered,  he  drooped  and  lan- 


guished. While  she  was  living  for 
him,  he  was  dying  of  her.  Execrable, 
infernal  comedy  !  What  would  help  her 
now  ?  She  thought  of  suicide,  and  she 
thought  of  flight ;  —  they  were  about 
equivalent.  If  it  were  certain  that  by 
the  sudden  extinction  of  her  own  life 
she  might  liberate,  exonerate  Paul,  it 
would  cost  her  but  an  instant's  delay  to 
plunge  a  knife  into  her  heart.  But  who 
should  say  that,  enfeebled,  undermined 
as  he  was,  the  shock  of  her  death  might 
not  give  him  his  own  quietus  ?  Worse 
rthan  all  was  the  suspicion  that  he  had 
begun  to  dislike  her,  and  that  a  dim 
perception  of  her  noxious  influence 
had  already  taken  possession  of  his 
senses.  He  was  cold  and  distant.  Why 
else,  when  he  had  begun  really  to  feel 
ill,  had  he  not  spoken  first  to  her? 
She  was  distasteful,  loathsome.  Nev- 
ertheless, Margaret  still  grasped,  with 
all  the  avidity  of  despair,  at  the  idea 
that  it  was  still  not  too  late  to  take  him 
into  her  counsels,  and  to  reveal  to  him 
all  the  horrors  of  her  secret.  Then  at 
least,  whatever  came,  death  or  freedom, 
they  should  meet  it  together. 

Now  that  the  enchantment  of  her 
fancied  triumph  had  been  taken  from 
her,  she  felt  utterly  exhausted  and 
overwhelmed.  Her  whole  organism 
ached  with  the  desire  for  sleep  and  for- 
getfulness.  She  closed  her  eyes,  and 
sank  into  the  very  stupor  of  repose. 
When  she  came  to  her  senses,  her 
room  was  dark.  She  rose,  and  went  to 
her  window,  and  saw  the  stars.  Light- 
ing a  candle,  she  found  that  her  little 
clock  indicated  nine.  She  had  slept 
five  hours.  She  hastily  dressed  herself, 
and  went  down  stairs. 

In  the  drawing-room,  by  an  open  win- 
dow, wrapped  in  a  shawl,  with  a  lighted 
candle,  sat  Mrs.  De  Grey. 

"You  're  happy,  my  dear,"  she  cried, 
"  to  be  able  to  sleep  so  soundly,  when 
we  are  all  in  such  a  state." 

"  What  state,  dear  lady  ?  " 

"  Paul  has  not  come  in." 

Margaret  made  no  reply ;  she  was 
listening  intently  to  the  distant  sound 
of  a  horse's  steps.  She  hurried  out  of 
the  room,  to  the  front  door,  and  across 


De  Grey:  a  Romance. 


the  court-yard  to  the  gate.  There,  in 
the  dark  starlight,  she  saw  a  figure  ad- 
vancing, and  the  rapid  ring  of  hoofs. 
The  poor  girl  suffered  but  a  moment's 
suspense.  Paul's  horse  came  dashing 
along  the  road  —  riderless.  Margaret, 
with  a  cry,  plunged  forward,  grasping 
at  his  bridle ;  but  he  swerved,  with  a 
loud  neigh,  and,  scarcely  slackening  his 
pace,  swept  into  the  enclosure  at  a 
lower  entrance,  where  Margaret  heard 
him  clattering  over  the  stones  on  the 
road  to  the  stable,  greeted  by  shouts 
and  ejaculations  from  the  hostler. 

Madly,  precipitately,  Margaret  rushed 
out  into  the  darkness,  along  the  road, 
calling  upon  Paul's  name.  She  had 
not  gone  a  quarter  of  a  mile,  when  she 
heard  an  answering  .voice.  Repeating 
her  cry,  she  recognized  her  lover's  ac- 
cents. 

He  was  upright,  leaning  against  a 
tree,  and  apparently  uninjured,  but  with 
his  face  gleaming  through  the  darkness 
like  a  mask  of  reproach,  white  with  the 
phosphorescent  dews  of  death.  He  had 
suddenly  felt  weak  and  dizzy,  and  in  the 
effort  to  keep  himself  in  the  saddle  had 
frightened  his  horse,  who  had  fiercely 
plunged,  and  unseated  him.  He  leaned 
on  Margaret's  shoulder  for  support,  and 
spoke  with  a  faltering  voice. 

"I  have  been  riding,"  he  said,  "like 
a  madman.  I  felt  ill  when  I  went  out, 
but  without  the  shadow  of  a  cause.  I 
was  determined  to  work  it  off  by  motion 
and  the  open  air."  And  he  stopped, 
gasping. 

"  And  you  feel  better,  dearest  ?  "  mur- 
mured Margaret. 

"  No,  I  feel  worse.  I  'm  a  dead 
man." 

Margaret  clasped  her  lover  in  her 
arms  with  a  long,  piercing  moan,  which 
resounded  through  the  night. 

"  I  'm  yours  no  longer,  dear  unhappy 
soul,  —  I  belong,  by  I  don't  know  what 
fatal,  inexorable  ties,  to  darkness  and 
death  and  nothingness.  They  stifle 
.me.  Do  you  hear  my  voice  ?  " 

"  Ah,  senseless  clod  that  I  am,  I  have 
killed  you ! " 

"  I  believe  it 's  true.   But  it 's  strange. 


What  is  it,  Margaret  ?  —  you  're  enchant- 
ed, baleful,  fatal!"  He  spoke  barely 
above  a  whisper,  as  if  his  voice  were 
leaving  him  ;  his  breath  was  cold  on  her 
cheek,  and  his  arm  heavy  on  her  neck. 

"  Nay,"  she  cried,  "  in  Heaven's  name, 
go  on  !  Say  something  that  will  kill 
me." 

"  Farewell,  farewell !  "  said  Paul,  col- 
lapsing. 

Margaret's  cry  had  been,  for  the  star- 
tled household  she  had  left  behind  her, 
an  index  to  her  halting-place.  Father 
Herbert  drew  near  hastily,  with  ser- 
vants and  lights.  They  found  Marga- 
ret sitting  by  the  roadside,  with  her  feet 
in  a  ditch,  clasping  her  lover's  inanimate 
head  in  her  arms,  and  covering  it  with 
kisses,  wildly  moaning.  The  sense  had 
left  her  mind  as  completely  as  his  body, 
and  it  was  likely  to  come  back  to  one 
as  little  as  to  the  other. 

A  great  many  months  naturally 
elapsed  before  Mrs.  De  Grey  found 
herself  in  the  humor  to  allude  directly 
to  the  immense  calamity  which  had 
overwhelmed  her  house  ;  and  when  she 
did  so,  Father  Herbert  was  surprised 
to  find  that  she  still  refused  to  accept 
the  idea  of  a  supernatural  pressure 
upon  her  son's  life,  and  that  she  quietly 
cherished  the  belief  that  he  had  died  of 
the  fall  from  his  horse. 

"  And  suppose  Margaret  had  died  ? 
Would  to  Heaven  she  had ! "  said  the 
priest. 

"  Ah.  suppose  !  "  said  Mrs.  De  Grey. 
"  Do  you  make  that  wish  for  the  sake  of 
your  theory  ?  " 

u  Suppose  that  Margaret  had  had  a 
lover,  —  a  passionate  lover,  —  who  had 
offered  her  his  heart  before  Paul  had 
ever  seen  her ;  and  then  that  Paul  had 
come,  bearing  love  and  death." 

"  Well,  what  then  ? " 

"  Which  of  the  three,  think  you,  would 
have  had  most  cause  for  sadness  ? " 

"  It 's  always  the  survivors  of  a  ca- 
lamity who  are  to  be  pitied,"  said  Mrs. 
De  Grey. 

"Yes,  madam,  it's  the  survivors, 
—  even  after  fifty  years." 


1 868.] 


Stage-Struck. 


79 


STAGE-STRUCK. 


1  Though  this  may  be  play  to  you, 
'Tis  death  to  us." 

ROGER  L' ESTRANGE. 


DURING  the  early  part  of  the  last 
century  the  society  of  an  English 
town  was  spared  the  homilies -that  the 
then  uncared-for  Province  of  Maine  was 
one  day  to  incarnate  in  the  person  of 
Neal  Dow.  Worthy  people  got  drunk 
every  night,  and  were  not  thought  the 
worse  for  it,  as  Dr.  Johnson  tells  us  of 
the  Lichfieldians  ;  indeed,  his  townsmen 
were  esteemed  the  decentest  people  in 
the  kingdom  ;  and,  when  they  could  talk 
without  a  lisp,  spoke,  as  the  great  lex- 
icographer declared,  the  purest  Eng- 
lish. The  ecclesiastics  of  the  Chapter 
were  a  most  pious  body,  and  it  was  not 
their  fault  if  the  neighboring  gentry 
courted  their  learning  and  warmed  their 
eloquence  upon  occasions.  Farquhar, 
in  the  opening  scenes  of  his  "Beaux' 
Stratagem,"  seems  to  leave  us  to  infer 
that  the  good  people  of  Lichfield  had 
something  of  a  fame  for  strong  drink. 
The  Registrar  of  the  Ecclesiastical 
Court  was  the  finest  gentleman  among 
them  ;  he  set  a  bountiful  table,  liked  to 
see  its  places  well  filled,  was  politely  def- 
erential to  all,  could  talk  like  a  learned 
Pundit,  or  be  as  volatile  as  Mercutio, 
over  his  port.  Gilbert  Walmesley  was 
too  well-bred  to  be  exclusive,  too  hu- 
mane to  be  exacting  ;  and  the  attrac- 
tions of  an  accomplished  wife  —  when 
he  abandoned  in  ripe  years  his  bachel- 
orhood—added to  the  zest  of  his  hos- 
pitality. 

Quite  a  different  sort  of  man  was 
Master  Hunter,  who  kept  the  free  school 
at  Lichfield  in  the  low,  dingy  building, 
where  the  doors,  likely  enough,  showed 
the  marks  of  the  barrings-out  which  Ad- 
dison,  some  years  before,  had  been  con- 
cerned in.  A  severe,  stern-eyed,  pom- 
pous man  was  Master  Hunter.  He  plied 
the  birch  with  a  most  complacent  air, 
and,  as  he  strutted  into  school,  arrayed 
in  gown  and  cassock  and  full-dressed 


wig,  a  titter  of  mirth,  despite  the  fear 
he  engendered,  would  sibilate  along  the 
benches.  Yet,  as  such  men  sometimes 
do,  he  beat  no  small  share  of  learning 
into  his  pupils,  and  filled  up  the  pauses 
with  depicting  the  gallows  they  were 
all  coming  to.  We  do  not  read  that 
any  of  his  scholars  ever  came  nearer  to 
it  than  the  seven  who,  as  luck  would 
have  it,  became  contemporary  justices 
of  Westminster,  and  laughed  together 
very  injudicialLy  at  the  thoughts  of  the 
floggings  he  had  given  them  every  one. 
There  never  yet  was  a  master  so 
brutal  but  some  lucky  little  fellow  knew 
how  to  bring  a  smile  upon  his  harsh 
features,  and  give  the  school  a  moment 
for  a  good  long  breath.  Master  Hunt- 
er had"  such  a  boy  in  his  forms,  —  a 
merry,  black-eyed  urchin,  quick  as  a 
flash  to  catch  the  very  minute,  and  as 
nimble  as  a  squirrel  zigzagging  the 
thither  side  of  a  tree,  and  keeping  it 
between  himself  and  danger.  Among 
other  things,  Master  Hunter  had  a  lik- 
ing for  partridges  ;  and  cunning  little 
Davy  knew  well  enough  where  to  dis- 
close his  secret,  when  he  had,  perchance, 
discovered  a  covey.  Some  small  favor  al- 
ways followed.  His  fellows  saw  that  their 
merry  little  companion  could  "  miss  " 
with  impunity ;  and  if  Master  Hunter 
bethought  him  of  a  new  book  that  old 
Michael  Johnson  was  to  procure  for 
him  from  London,  Davy  was  sure  to  be 
despatched  to  go  and  fetch  it.  As  it 
happened,  the  staid  old  bibliopole  had 
a  son  of  his  own  in  Master  Hunter's 
forms.  A  gross,  misshapen,  lubberly 
boy  was  Sam,  and,  as  he  was  some  sev- 
en years  the  elder  of  the  other,  Davy 
held  only  a  sort  of  deferential  intimacy 
with  him.  Sam  had  a  forbidding  as- 
pect, except  to  those  who  knew  him 
well ;  and  Master  Hunter,  who  had 
many  a  time  whipped  him  for  idleness, 


80 


Stage- Struck, 


[July, 


held  his  pupil,  nevertheless,  in  a  forced 
esteem.  The  boy's  face  was  scarred  with 
the  scrofula,  and  ceaselessly  twitched 
into  wry  contortions  ;  yet  he  was  an 
oracle  among  the  youngsters,  and  his 
word  had  an  impressiveness  that  made 
it  law.  Strange  was  he,  too,  at  times  ; 
and  the  good  women  of  the  town  talked 
darkly  of  Sam  Johnson's  going  off  so 
much  by  himself,  and  wandering  about 
the  fields.  Yet  this  lazy,  uncouth  fellow 
and  the  agile,  laughing  little  Davy 
formed  a  companionship  that  was  not 
thought  so  strangely  of,  in  view  of 
their  being  considered  lads  of  won- 
derful ability,  and  each  a  sort  of  half- 
prodigy. 

Gilbert  Walmesley  was  a  man  of  the 
true  Maecenas  stamp,  and  Sam  and 
Davy  were  both  welcome  visitors  at  his 
hospitable  home.  He  liked  to  see  this 
strange  commingling  of  spirits.  Sam 
delivered  his  opinions  with  such  a  judi- 
cial shake  of  the  head,  and  could  even, 
at  fit  moments,  bow  to  the  addresses  of 
the  ladies  of  his  household  with  so  much 
complaisance,  that  you  would  never 
think  him  the  youth  old  Michael,  his 
father,  sometimes  found  so  refractory. 
Gilbert  Walmesley  knew  the  true  pro- 
vocative of  the  most  genial  converse,  and 
yielded  to  the  gathering  faculties  of  his 
young  guest  with  a  hearty  relish  for 
his  talk.  Little  Davy  was  too  cunning 
not  to  be  cautious,  but  he  accompanied 
the  graver  dissertations  of  his  elder 
with  such  a  buzz  of  comment  and  merry 
sport  as  served  only  to  appetize  the 
,  listeners,  without  impeding  the  humor 
of  the  steadier  Sam. 

The  strolling  players  frequently  set 
up  their  booths  in  the  Lichfield  market- 
place, to  the  great  consternation  of  sun- 
dry of  the  good  townsfolk,  who  placed 
on  different  sides  of  the  dividing  line  be- 
tween innocence  and  sin  the  sleep  that 
was  disturbed  with  visions  of  tragic  sit- 
uations and  that  which  was  too  heavy 
with  Staffordshire  strong  drink.  The 
tent  of  the  players,  and  the  bruit  of  their 
accomplishments  which  went  through 
the  town,  had  already  before  this  made 
a  stir  in  the  family  of  a  certain  half- 
pay  officer,  whose  rank,  and  marriage 


with  a  daughter  of  one  of  the  vicars  of 
the  cathedral,  made  their  position  in 
society  one  of  the  best.  Their  income, 
however,  was  very  moderate  ;  and  their 
study,  as  Sam  Johnson  had  afterwards 
to  say  of  them,  was  to  make  fourpence 
do  what  others  did  with  fourpence  half- 
penny. Davy's  curiosity  —  he  was  one 
of  this  household  —  was  excited  to  the 
highest  pitch  by  recitals  of  the  other 
boys,  who  had  seen  other  companies  of 
strollers  ;  and  he  doubtless  importuned 
his  elder  brother,  Peter,  to  intercede 
with  their  mother  for  permission  to  see 
the  play.  Peter's  disposition  was  very 
different.  He  was  graver,  and  seemed 
to  inherit  the  soberer  qualities  of  his 
mother.  Davy  was  more  like  his  father, 
whose  looks  did  not  belie  the  French 
origin  that  was  ascribed  to  the  family. 
He  was  a  small,  sprightly,  dark-eyed 
man,  and  Davy  was  very  plainly  his 
likeness.  It  would  not  have  been  so 
natural  for  him  to  refuse  the  indul- 
gence; and,  the  mother's  hesitancy  giv- 
ing way  before  an  appeal  to  her  good- 
nature, Davy  was  allowed  to  run  off  to 
the  market-place. 

There  is  little  in  boyish  experiences 
so  indelibly  put  in  our  memory  as  the 
impressions  from  seeing  our  first  play. 
We  know  how  genially  the  essayist 
Elia  has  depicted  all  those  fresh  sen- 
sations. Many  an  autobiographer  has 
dwelt  lovingly  on  the  recital.  Had  we 
a  diary  of  Shakespeare,  we  might  read  of 
his  flushed  exultation  in  his  first  play  at 
Kenilworth.  Scott  recounts  with  delight 
the  story  of  his  earliest  acquaintance 
with  the  scene.  Southey  tells  us  how 
rapturously  he  doubted  the  fictitiousness 
of  the  action.  Leigh  Hunt  looks  back 
upon  it,  and  exclaims,  "Then  I  was  not 
critical,  and  could  enjoy."  The  elder 
Mathews  tells  of  the  glorious  two  shil- 
lings' worth  of  stealthy  disobedience  of 
that  first  night.  Hans  Andersen,  just 
from  the  delineation  of  Lear,  fashions 
in  his  joy  some  little  puppets,  and, 
dressing  them  in  costume,  reproduces 
the  mimic  scene ;  while,  as  he  cuts  and 
sews  their  dresses,  his  mother,  good 
soul  !  having  destined  him  to  a  tailor's 
stool,  rejoices  at  his  precocious  snip- 


1 868.] 


Stage- Sir  nek. 


81 


ping !  The  theatre  of  Ludwigsburg 
opened  to  the  rapturous  Schiller,  a  boy 
of  nine,  a  vision  of  his  future  glory.  In 
the  memoirs  of  Iffland  and  Kotzebue, 
of  Henderson,  of  Frederic  Reynolds 
and  George  Frederic  Cooke,  we  have 
the  same  tale  of  heated  joy  and  a  deter- 
minate future. 

The  talk  at  Walmesley's  fireside  of- 
ten turned  on  the  theatrical  experiences 
of  our  friends.  Sam  criticised  the  play, 
but  Davy  dwelt  upon  the  acting.  Any 
little  irregularity  of  the  plot  or  flatten- 
ing of  the  dialogue  was  sure  to  receive 
the  censure  of  the  elder,  who  had  a  way 
of  mouthing  through  a  passage  with  his 
own  substitutions.  Davy's  bright  eye 
glimmered  at  this,  and  a  droll  look  at 
see-sawing  Sam  would  not  escape  the 
notice  of  their  host ;  but  what  was 
more  remarkable  was  the  way  in  which 
the  younger  lad  would  accompany  the 
other's  recital  with  a  pantomimic  action. 

One  day,  in  bringing  up  such  matters 
in  this  circle,  Davy  related  how  he  had 
prevailed  upon  his  mother  to  grant  him 
liberty  to  perform  "a  play  on  his  own 
account,  and  how  all  that  was  wanted 
to  complete  the  arrangements  was  a 
prologue  from  a  friendly  hand ;  and  as 
Samuel  not  long  before  had  come  to 
the  assistance  of  some  young  ladies  in 
a  like  emergency,  the  boyish  manager 
intimated  that  the  poet  might  now 
show  his  friendship,  if  not  his  gallantry. 
Sam,  however,  for  some  reason  not  to 
us  known,  refused  the  assistance,  and 
Davy  had  no  other  resource  but  patch- 
ing up  an  old  prologue  to  his  liking.  A 
room  was  procured  and  arranged  ;  and, 
perhaps  because  it  reminded  him  of 
occasional  duties  of  his  father,  "The 
Recruiting  Officer  "  of  Farquhar  was  se- 
lected, and  the  parts  distributed  among 
his  mates  and  his  sisters  with  mana- 
gerial tact.  The  little  actor  reserved  for 
himself  the  part  of  the  recruiting  ser- 
geant Kite,  and,  we  are  assured,  plied 
his  crafty  intrigues  with  approved 
sprightliness  ;  and  soon  everybody  in 
the  town  had  heard  the  rumor  of  the 
capital  acting  of  little  Davy  Garrick. 
We  are  not  told  if  lazy  Samuel  wit- 
nessed the  triumph  of  his  companion. 

VOL.  XXII.  —  NO.    129.  6 


Walmesley  was  a  near  friend  to  the 
family,  and  was  doubtless  there,  to  en- 
joy in  the  highest  degree  the  vivacious 
bluster  of  his  young  friend.  Davy's 
well-wishers  could  have  no  reason  to 
fear  that  this  was  opening  a  vista  to  the 
future  of  a  great  actor.  To  play  plays 
in  boyhood  is  too  natural  an  excitement. 
It  is  the  precocity,  and  not  the  incli- 
nation, that  surprises  us  in  Pope,  at 
t\velve,  turning  the  siege  of  Troy  into  a 
play,  making  his  school-fellows  the  ac- 
tors, and  summoning  the  gardener  for  his 
Ajax.  That  Ariosto  fashioned  the  story 
of  Pyramus  and  Thisbe  into  a  drama, 
and  drilled  his  brothers  and  sisters  to 
the  performance  of  it,  could  not  alone 
point  to  Ariosto's  future.  The  young 
Cumberland,  when  he  was  mulcted  in  a 
translation  from  Juvenal,  for  stealthily 
assisting  at  a  representation  of  Cato, 
thought  of  the  penalty,  and  not  of  the 
augury.  These  first  triumphs  of  a 
boy-actor  have  a  flush  of  delight  that 
no  subsequent  success  can  thoroughly 
equal.  Barton  Booth  felt  himself  to  be 
without  a  rival  —  as  he  was  —  in  the 
Latin  comedy  of  his  school-days.  Some 
theatricals  got  up  in  his  neighborhood 
were  a  prophecy  for  Macklin.  Kean 
was  a  garret  Richard  in  his  childish 
f  revels.  Talma's  paroxysms  of  acted 
grief  began  in  his  school-days.  Ellis- 
ton  was  the  boast  of  his  mates.  Ed- 
win ranted  in  Alexander,  and  Cooke 
was  the  tragic  hero,  while  they  were 
yet  in  their  jackets. 

Davy  was  accordingly  a  frequent  at- 
tendant on  the  strollers'  performances, 
without  exciting  any  solicitude  among 
his  good  relatives  in  the  Church.  He, 
not  unfrequently,  was  accompanied  by 
Samuel ;  and  we  can  imagine  his  hi- 
larity, tempered  with  something  of 
awe,  as  he  heard  the  rather  gruffly 
whispered  comments  of  his  neighbor. 
One  night  it  was  Colley  Gibber's  rois- 
tering farce  of  "  Hob  in  a  Well  "  they 
were  sitting  before.  A  certain  actress 
played  Flora  in  such  a  way  that  she 
bewitched  Samuel,  and  Davy  never 
forgot  his  companion's  uncouth  symp- 
toms of  devotion.  Again,  some  Sir 
Harry  Wildair  sported  his  gay  hour 


82 


Stage-Struck. 


[July, 


on  the  stage.  "What  courtly  vivac- 
ity ! "  exclaimed  Samuel ;  but  Davy 
laid  it  up  in  his  memory,  and  years  af- 
terwards he  whispered  it  about  that 
Johnson's  courtier  was  as  vulgar  a 
ruffian  as  ever  trod  the  boards.  How- 
ever Sam's  visual  or  mental  percep- 
tions may  have  been  at  fault,  those 
long,  sinewy  limbs  of  his  could  make 
certain  amends  for  their  ungainliness. 
It  was  not  the  folio  alone  that  in  after 
life  knocked  down  Osborne,  nor  the 
oaken  staff  that  would  have  done  the 
same  office  by  Foote,  but  an  indomita- 
ble will  that  never  brooked  an  insult 
or  suffered  any  interference.  The  youth 
Samuel  foreshadowed  the  man.  Davy 
long  afterwards  was  wont  to  recall  a 
certain  evening,  when  he  and  Johnson 
had  taken  stools  upon  the  player's  plat- 
form, and  Sam  had  left  his  for  a  mo- 
ment, when  it  was  occupied  by  another. 
Remonstrance  produced  no  effect  on 
the  interloper,  and  so  the  redoubtable 
bookseller's  son  took  stool  and  man, 
and  tossed  both  into  the  pit! 

The  years  went  on,  and  Johnson  was 
at  Oxford.  Davy,  now  thirteen  or  four- 
teen years  old,  must  fix  upon  some 
destined  avocation.  The  stage  could 
not,  of  course,  be  thought  of,  —  that 
was  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  dividing . 
line  between  innocence  and  sin.  On 
the  other  side  of  it,  an  uncle  of  his,  a 
wine-merchant  in  Lisbon,  had  acquired 
a  fortune  that  looked  splendid  in  the 
eyes  of  the  family  of  our  half-pay  officer. 
He  had  heard  what  a  promising  nephew 
he  had  at  Lichfield,  and,  several  years 
before  this,  he  had  written  to  have  him 
sent  out,  to  be  trained  in  so  lucrative 
a  business.  So  Davy  went.  The  rich 
uncle  was  a  good  liver,  entertained 
great  company,  and  Davy  was  not  long 
in  discovering  that  he  enjoyed  life  much 
more  mounted  on  the  table  after  des- 
sert, and  gaining  the  plaudits  of  the 
guests  by  his  declamations  and  droll- 
eries, than  by  any  drilling  of  the  count- 
ing-house. His  uncle  soon  discov- 
ered the  same  thing  for  himself;  and 
Davy,  after  a  year's  trial,  was  sent 
home,  to  seek  another  sphere  for  his 
life's  business. 


This  brought  him  back  again  to 
the  charge  of  Master  Hunter.  But  a 
change  was  coming  to  his  father's 
house.  An  increasing  family  had  made 
the  half-pay  officer  of  late  see  the  ne- 
cessity of  resuming  the  active  duties  of 
his  rank  to  meet  the  increased  expen- 
ditures of  his  household ;  and  he  had 
accordingly  been  ordered  to  Gibraltar, 
leaving  his  family  to  the  pursuit  of 
their  accustomed  economical  shifts. 
Davy  became  the  filial  correspondent 
of  the  soldier  abroad.  There  is  a  kind 
of  humorous  sadness  in  the  boy's  epis- 
tles to  his  absent  father.  He  writes 
of  the  shabby  wardrobe  of  the  family, 
of  his  sick  mother,  and  the  cost  of  buy- 
ing her  wine,  of  the  laces  that  sisters 
Magdalene  and  Jane,  poor  souls !  ought 
to  have  for  their  head-dresses.  Then 
again,  he  tells  of  some  new  silver 
bugkles,  a  present  he  had  had,  and 
declares  how  admirable  they  would 
look  if  he  only  had  a  pair  of  velvet 
breeches.  "They  tell  me,"  he  adds, 
slyly,  "velvet  is  very  cheap  at  Gib- 
raltar. Amen,  and*  so  be  it !  "  Then 
again  —  the  little  actor  that  he  was  — 
the  next-post  takes  the  far-away  soldier 
a  rhapsody  about  a  certain  miniature 
painted  by  Le  Grout,  which  he  declares 
a  better  feast  to  look  at  than  anything 
of  Apelles  could  be.  "  It  is  a  figure  of 
a  gentleman,"  he  adds,'  "and  I  suppose 
military  by  the  dress.  I  think  Le 
Grout  told  me  his  name  was  one  Cap- 
tain Peter  Garrick ;  perhaps,  as  you  are 
in  the  army,  you  may  know  him ;  he  is 
pretty  jolly,  and  I  believe  not  very  tall."' 
Not  a  word  about  the  velvet  breeches ;. 
but  a  wager  that  he  got  them  !  Davy, 
the  boy,  and  David  Garrick,  Esq.,  the 
man,  had  a  wonderful  luck  in  getting 
through  life  more  than  a  mortal's  share 
of  everything  he  wanted.  There  was  a 
certain  grand  house  in  the  neighbor- 
hood, but  to  visit  a  grand  house 
the::  one  must  have  a  purse  in  hr.nd, 
or  the  servants  ignored  their  voca- 
tion, much  to  the  guest's  discomfiture. 
This  neglect  was  something  that  even 
velvet  breeches  and  silver  buckles 
could  not  protect  one  from  ;  but  Gilbert 
Walmesley  could,  and  when  he  had 


1 868.] 


Stage-Struck. 


slipped  a  couple  of  half-crowns  in  the 
boy's  hands,  off  started  the  dapper 
little  Davy,  and  lavished  his  fees  with 
as  genteel  an  air  as  the  best  of  them. 

Not  many  of  the  lads  of  Lichfield  in 
those  days  could  go  up  to  London 
town  as  Davy  did.  Captain  Garrick 
was  a  man  of  many  friends,  and  Master 
David  knew  their  accessible  sides  ;  and 
so  if  business  called  them  to  the  me- 
tropolis, ten  to  one  they  assured  Mad- 
am Garrick  that  Davy  was  a  good  boy, 
that  they  should  be  gone  but  a  few 
days,  and  that  it  would  delight  them 
very  much  to  take  Davy  along.  The 
playhouses  of  London  opened  new  vis- 
ions to  the  boy.  He  could  see  Ouin, 
who  then  upheld  the  reputation  of  the 
stage  with  a  good  voice  and  a  majestic 
mien,  and  whose  Falstaffand  Cato  pos- 
terity is  taught  to  believe  it  were  a  dif- 
ficult matter  to  excel.  Unfortunately, 
Othello  had  but  a  few  years  before 
quitted  the  scene  in  Barton  Booth  ;  but 
Colley  Gibber  still  occasionally  returned 
to  a  stage  he  had  formally  left,  to  be  the 
most  exquisite  fop  the  theatre  has  per- 
haps ever  seen.  The  laureate's  worth- 
less son  had  just  taken  to  wife  the 
daughter  of  an  upholsterer,  and  old 
Colley  himself  was  drilling  her  for  the 
stage.  In  the  rooms  of  Aaron  Hill  in 
Villiers  Street,  Davy  may  have  seen  the 
early  performances  of  "  Zara  "  j  but  as 
he  saw  the  grace  and  dignity  of  its  her- 
oine, this  new  actress,  he  little  thought 
of  the  triumphs  in  this  same  play  that 
were  to  join  the  names  of  Garrick  and 
Mrs.  Cibber. 

Meanwhile  the  gossips  of  Lichfield 
had  a  subject  to  their  liking.  Johnson, 
leaving  Oxford,  had  had  sundry  hard 
experiences  as  a  bookseller's  hack,  and 
usher ;  but  he  had  found  a  widow,  dur- 
ing his  absence,  double  his  own  age, 
who  was  wofully  ugly  to  all  eyes  but  his 
own,  and  who  had  decided  that  Sam- 
uel was  the  most  sensible  man  she  ever 
knew.  He,  on  his  part,  had  determined 
on  making  Tetty  his  wife  ;  and,  in  con- 
sideration of  the  little  property  she  had, 
he  hurried  to  Lichfield  to  tell  his  moth- 
er, and  make  arrangements  for  settin«- 
up  a  boarding-school.  His  old  mentor 


and  Davy's,  Walmesley,  now  prevailed 
on  Mrs.  Garrick  to  put  her  son  at  Edial 
Hall,  as  the  new  seminary  was  called  ; 
and  there  young  Garrick  passed  a  half- 
year,  till  his  father's  return  from  Gib- 
raltar, —  and  a  half-year  of  curious  expe- 
riences it  was  !  We  can  picture  Samuel 
Johnson  more  readily  in  any  other 
light  than  as  a  teacher  of  youth.  The 
condition  is  quite  as  anomalous  as  his 
adulatory  caresses  of  his  Tetty  of  sixty, 
—  fat,  painted,  patched,  fantastic,  as  she 
was.  Keyhole  observations  afforded  for 
his  four  or  five  scholars  a  world  of 
fun,  and  if  the  scene  of  love-making 
was  genuine  within,  the  mock  repro- 
duction without  raised  a  titter  that  sent 
the  lads  scampering  to  their  rooms. 
This  could  not  last  long.  Davy's  com- 
positions were  sure  to  be  farces,  in  a 
double  sense ;  and  the  master  had  his 
head  full  of  "Irene,"  and  of  a  future  in 
London.  Walmesley  again  arranged 
matters.  He  approved  of  Johnson's 
tragedy,  and  told  Captain  Garrick  he 
could  pave  the  way  for  Davy's  study 
of  the  law,  to  which  his  good  father, 
thankful  the  boy  had  not  gone  into  the 
army,  as  he  at  one  time  inclined  to  do, 
destined  him.  A  university  course  was 
beyond  the  means  of  the  Garricks,  but 
Walmesley  had  bethought  him  of  a 
friend  at  Rochester,  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Colson ;  and  so  the  post  takes  this 
gentleman  a  letter,  recommendatory  of 
David,  and,  arrangements  apparently 
being  made,  Walmesley,  under  date  of 
March  2,  1737,  again  writes:  "David 
and  another  friend  of  mine,  one  Mr. 
Johnson,  set  out  this  morning  for  Lon- 
don together,  —  Davy  to  be  with  you 
early  next  week,  and  Mr.  Johnson  to 
try  his  fate  with  a  tragedy."  Thus  was 
heralded  the  advent  of  one  Johnson  and 
the  favorite  Davy  to  London !  And 
never  before  among 

"The  brave  spirits  who  go  up  to  \VGO 
That  terrible  city,  whose  neglect  is  death, 
Whose  smile  is  lame," 

was  there  a  pair  whose  future  was  of 
more  significance.  To  become  a  sov- 
ereign in  literature  and  a  monarch  of 
the  stage  was  a  fulfilment  not  granted 
before  to  twain  adventurers  ! 


84 


Stage-  Struck. 


[July, 


Douglas  Jerrold  has  exclaimed  about 
the  golden  volume  to  be  written  of  the 
first  struggles  of  forlorn  genius  in  that 
great  metropolis.  Brilliant  essayists 
have  pictured  the  deplorable  prospects 
of  a  new  man  of  letters,  at  that  time  par- 
ticularly. And  Johnson  came  as  such 
to  London  almost  without  a  friend.  St. 
John's  Gate  bounded  his  aspirations. 
His  companion  looked  with  hardly  bet- 
ter hopes  to  the  future.  Their  pockets 
were  so  empty  that  they  had  almost 
immediately  to  give  their  joint  note  for 
five  pounds  to  a  bookseller  in  the 
Strand,  who  kindly  forewarned  the 
man  with  a  tragedy  in  his  pocket, 
that  a  porter's  knot  was  a  surer  de- 
pendence than  letters,  in  London. .  Per- 
haps, too,  Johnson  saw  in  the  print- 
shop  windows  the  sketch  of  "  The  Dis- 
tressed Poet,"  which  Hogarth  had  just 
published,  —  a  pitiable  but  too  true 
prophecy,  alas  !  There  is  an  awkward 
whimsicality  in  Johnson's  attempt  to 
note  the  advantages  of  living  in  a  gar- 
ret, years  afterwards,  when  he  had  not 
forgotten  these  first  years  in  London. 
It  was  a  time  when  the  sponging-house 
and  the  King's  Bench  were  the  haunts 
of  genius ;  and  it  was  deemed  most  con- 
sistent for  an  author  to  be  reckless  and 
eccentric,  and  to  pass  for  a  bully  or  a 
blood,  who  took,  but  never  gave,  the 
wall.  There  was  scarcely  one  of  the 
craft  that  the  bailiffs  had  not  measured 
wits  and  legs  with,  if  we  except  Lillo, 
who  had  just  produced  his  best  play, 
and  who  cut  jewels  in  his  shop,  that  his 
shop  might  not  cut  him ;  and  Richard- 
son, who  was  wise  enough  to  be  his 
own  publisher. 

To  Garrick,  too,  came  disappoint- 
ments. Colson's  terms  proved  be- 
yond his  means,  and,  in  a  week's  time 
after  his  arrival  in  London,  we  find  his 
name  entered  with  the  Honorable  So- 
ciety of  Lincoln's  Inn.  He  was  not  the 
first  of  his  profession  who  had  been 
consigned  originally  to  the  dry  study 
of  the  law.  It  is  not  long  since  a  Lord 
Chancellor  of  England  thought  it  worth 
while  to  show  the  probability  of  Shake- 
speare's having  been  articled  to  an  at- 
torney. We  read  of  a  certain  novice  of 


the  courts,  Jean  Baptiste  Poquelin,  who 
could  not  appease  the  offended  dignity 
of  a  father,  even  by  assuming  the- dis- 
guise of  "  Moliere  "  and  making  it  im- 
mortal. And  we  have  further  instances 
of  an  importunity  in  the  drama  supe- 
rior to  that  of  the  pandects  and  the 
codes  in  the  lives  of  Ariosto  and  Les- 
sing,  of  Congreve,  Wycherley,  and 
Rowe,  of  Ouin,  Foote,  King,  Colman, 
and  Macready. 

But  a  change  was  at  hand.  The  Lis- 
bon uncle  returned  to  England,  died, 
and  left  David  a  thousand  pounds, 
which  warranted  the  acceptance  of  Col- 
son's  terms,  and  to  him  the  law  student 
now  went.  During  the  first  weeks  in 
London,  David  had  lost  his  father,  who 
left  a  numerous  family  slenderly  pro- 
vided for;  and,  in  view  of  the  sacred 
charge  imposed  on  the  elder  sons,  he 
gave  up  all  hopes  of  the  bar,  and,  after  a 
year's  time,  joined  his  brother  in  Lon- 
don, and,  hiring  vaults  in  Durham 
Yard,  the  two  commenced  partnership 
as  wine-merchants,  —  still  on  the  side 
of  innocence.  Their  transactions  were 
probably  small  enough  to  give  color  to 
the  smart  insinuation  of  Foote,  long 
afterwards,  that  he  remembered  the 
great  actor  living  in  Durham  Yard 
with  three  quarts  of  vinegar  in  his  cel- 
lar, and  calling  himself  a  wine-mer- 
chant !  Somehow  Foote  always  him- 
self forgot  his  days  of  partnership  as  a 
small-beer  brewer. 

The  stalls  of  the  play-venders  had  in- 
tercepted David's  walks  from  the  Tem- 
ple. The  clubs  and  coffee-houses, 
haunts  of  the  poets  and  players,  were 
now  in  his  immediate  vicinity.  The 
young  vintner  soon  made  himself  the 
centre  of  their  circles.  He  could  bandy 
wit  with  the  sharpest,  and  print  in  the 
journals  as  good  a  criticism  on  the  play- 
ers as  the  deftest  penman  of  them  all. 

The  power  of  the  coffee-houses  was 
an  acknowledged  estate  of  the  realm. 
Scandal  and  news  here  acquired  a  po- 
tency. Faction  ran  high  in  so  motley  a 
crowd,  made  up  of  notables,  invumera- 
bles,  bravoes,  and  critics.  The  wits 
made  the  poor  devil  of  an  author  wince 
beneath  his  incognito.  Tom  Puzzles 


1 868.] 


Stage-Struck. 


were  abundant,  with  knowledge  enough 
to  raise  a  doubt,  but  not  to  clear  one. 
The  liar  met  the  truth-stickler  at  a 
tilt,  and  the  fashionable  booby  looked 
on  with  a  haw,  tapped  his  red-heeled 
shoes,  and  twisted  his  gold-embroid- 
ered hose.  Here,  too,  was  the  spruce 
young  Templar, — 

"  Deep  in  the  drama,  shallow  in  the  law." 

But  it  was  the  circles  of  The  Bedford 
that  held  oracular  sway  over  every- 
thing pertaining  to  the  drama.  The  ac- 
tors and  playwrights  made  this  tavern 
their  great  resort,  and  with  them  David 
was  not  long  in  establishing  terms  of 
intimacy,  —  much,  however,  to  the  dis- 
like of  his  elder  brother,  who  had  a 
very  keen  perception  of  the  line  of 
respectability  and  innocence  running 
between  their  cellars  and  the  green- 
rooms. David  was  good  at  propitiatory 
manoeuvres,  and  he  induced  Giffard, 
the  manager  of  Goodman's  Field,  to 
persuade  the  proprietors  of  The  Bed- 
ford to  supply  themselves  from  the  new 
vintners.  Peter  Garrick  rejoiced  at  the 
increased  run  of  custom,  but  he  still  kept 
a  wary  eye  on  the  bodeful  line.  He  had 
a  horror  of  brother  Davy's  being  stage- 
struck!  He  felt  himself,  in  view  of 
such  an  event,  the  embodiment  of  a 
most  eminent  respectability.  He  felt 
for  the  memory  of  his  father,  for  the 
sensibility  of  his  mother,  for  the  hap- 
piness of  himself.  Meanwhile,  David 
preserved  the  most  discreet  silence 
about  such  reprehensible  intentions ; 
but,  when  Peter  lost  him  from  under 
his  eye,  he  could  most  surely  find  him 
over  at  The  Bedford. 

Prominent  at  this  place  was  to  be 
seen  the  strong,  rugged  face  of  Charles 
Macklin,  then  in  the  vigor  of  mature 
life,  and,  by  a  change  in  the  style  of 
acting,  preparing  the  way  for  a  greater. 
David  soon  was  fixed  in  his  good 
graces.  Here,  too,  came  Havard  and 
Woodward,  both  comedians  of  mark,  — 
the  one  destined  to  be  commemorated 
in  an  epitaph  from  the  great  manager's 
pen,  and  the  other  to  dispute  his  claim 
t©  a  universal  supremacy  by  his  admi- 
rable Bobadil.  Here,  too,  came  a  man 


of  established  reputation  in  a  kindred 
art,  —  likely  enough  to  sketch  a  carica- 
ture on  his  thumb-nail,  —  whose  name 
was  Hogarth.  Another  noted  man 
came  from  the  Inns  of  Court ;  a  clever 
playwright  he  was  accounted,  —  for  the 
name  of  Fielding  was  not  yet  associ- 
ated with  his  novels.  A  gentleman 
by  birth,  he  had  commanded  distin- 
guished patrons  ;  and  he  had  possessed 
an  easy  disposition  to  make  the  best 
of  life,  although  his  plays  were  often 
damned  as  easily  as  he  wrote  them.  A 
handsome,  stalwart  fellow  he  was  ;  but 
a  life  of  dissipation,  to  which  he  had 
added  the  trials  of  managing  a  company 
of  players  and  editing  a  magazine,  had 
already  marked  him  with  disease,  al- 
though he  was  hardly  turned  of  thirty. 
He  had  taken  a  wife,  however,  who 
incited  him  to  study,  and  his  student's 
gown,  at  this  time,  was  no  incongruity. 
Yet  he  could  not  resist  mixing  occa- 
sionally with  his  old  companions  of  the 
playhouse ;  and  as  Macklin  was  his 
next  friend,  and  Garrick's  also,  the 
playwright  and  the  vintner  were  thus 
brought  into  terms  of  a  like  relationship. 
Perhaps  still  more  noticeable  was  a  cer- 
tain short,  stout  fellow,  who  spent  his 
mornings  lounging  at  The  Grecian,  but 
was  sure  to  saunter  in  at  The  Bedford 
as  the  evening  came,  and  startle  all 
ears  with  the  laugh  he  raised.  It  was 
said  he  also  had  chambers  in  the  Tem- 
ple, and  was  quite  the  madcap  Ranger 
a  gownsman  was  afterwards  dramati- 
cally represented  to  be  by  Hoadley; 
and  he  did  not  much  depart  from  the 
standard  of  a  Templar  which  Fielding 
had  already  portrayed  in  one  of  his 
pieces.  He  had  a  broad  and  rather 
vulgar  face,  only  redeemed  by  a  flexible 
mouth  and  a  sparkling  eye.  This  was 
Samuel  Foote ;  and  people  had  little 
doubt  he  studied  the  chances  of  the 
gaming-table  more  than  the  abstrusities 
of  the  law. 

Such  was  the  assembly  of  wits  that 
made  The  Bedford  the  centre  of  dra- 
matic interest.  Here  each  new  play  was 
canvassed,  and  every  innovation  of  the 
managers  criticised.  The  talk  was  now 
of  Ouin,  —  how  he  had  done  this  in  Lear, 


86 


Stage-  Struck. 


[July, 


or  that  in  Julius  Caesar ;  —  now  of  old 
Gibber,  who  had  again  resumed  the 
sock,  in  Shallow  to  Quin's  Falstaff;  and 
who,  it  was  rumored  one  night,  when 
he  played  in  Richard,  had  found  his 
old  vigor  gone,  and  had  declared,  be- 
hind the  scenes,  that  he  would  give 
fifty  guineas  to  be  at  home  in  his  easy- 
chair.  Faction  was  exasperated  when 
it  was  reported  that  the  Lord  Cham- 
berlain had  stopped  the  rehearsal  of 
Brook's  "  Gustavus  Vasa,"  at  Drury 
Lane,  because  there  were  words  in  it 
that  had  an  ugly  meaning  for  the  gov- 
ernment ;  and  the  question  ran  round, 
where  now  are  Pope,  Pitt,  and  Lyttel- 
ton,  who  have  heretofore  befriended  this 
man  ?  Then  there  came  out  a  new 
tragedy,  written,  as  the  bills  gave  out, 
"  in  imitation  of  Shakespeare  "  ;  and 
Billy  Havarcl,  as  the  good  soul  was 
called  familiarly,  was  forced  to  acknowl- 
edge the  paternity  of  "Charles  the 
First."  There  was,  too,  a  new  actress, 
just  from  Dublin,  young  and  handsome, 
announced  for  Sylvia  in  "  The  Recruit- 
ing Officer,"  and  all  the  town  was  wild 
about  her,  —  the  merry  young  vintner 
not  the  least  so,  —  and  the  excitement 
only  increased  when,  a  few  nights  after, 
she  dashed  upon  them  in  "  Sir  Harry 
Wildair."  Garrick  was  not  long  in  mak- 
ing himself  one  of  the  most  favored  of 
Peg  Woffington's  admiring  circle.  He 
had  likewise,  by  this  time,  aspired  to  be  an 
author,  and  the  frequenters  of  the  coffee- 
houses knew  that  the  lively  little  wine- 
merchant  of  Durham  Yard  had  written 
the  unique  after-piece  of  Lethe,  which 
Giffard  had  brought  out  for  his  benefit ; 
though  Peter  did  not  know  a  word  of  it, 
but  was  only  troubled  with  vague  sur- 
mises. Then,  again,  Walmesley  sends 
down  from  Lichfield  a  patriotic  song,  to 
which  David  adds  a  verse  ;  and  it  is  sung 
one  night  at  Drury  Lane,  after  a  benefit 
play  for  an  English  crew  who  had  fought 
the  Spaniards.  But  the  event  that  was 
causing  most  comment  and  misgivings 
was  the  promised  Shylock  of  Macklin. 
For  forty  years  the  town  had  had  noth- 
ing but  a  farcical  alteration  of  Shake- 
speare's play,  in  which  the  Jew  was  la- 
boriously comic,  and  played  all  sorts-  of 


fooleries  ;  and  yet  the  club-rooms  rang 
with  a  laugh  when  it  was  announced 
that  Macklin  was  to  make  Shylock  a 
serious  part.  The  manager  was  fright- 
ened, and  begged  his  actor  to  desist; 
but  Macklin  was  not  a  man  to  retreat. 
He  paid,  in  those  days,  an  unwonted  at- 
tention to  costume,  and  caused  a  stare 
and  winks  in  the  green-room  when  he 
appeared  for  the  stage,  arrayed  in  a 
loose  black  gown,  a  peaked  beard,  and 
a  red  hat.  "  I  was  Charles  the  Great 
for  that  night,"  he  cried,  when  narrating 
his  success  afterwards  ;  and  whether 
Pope  really  did  or  did  not  compliment 
him  in  the  celebrated  distich, 

"This  is  the  Jew 
That  Shakespeare  drew," 

it  is  certain  he  commended  his  pains  in 
the  appointments  of  the  play  ;  and,  for 
that  and  many  subsequent  seasons,  to 
see  Macklin  in  Shylock  was  one  of  the 
sights  of  the  metropolis. 

While  Garrick  was  living  in  this 
round  of  excitement,  his  old  friend 
Johnson  was  drudging  for  the  book- 
sellers, dating  time  from  his  clean-shirt 
day,  and  now  and  then  getting  a  lift 
through  Walmesley rs-  influence,  but 
knowing  London  as  he  wrote  about  it 
in  his  poem  of  that  name.  He  had 
managed  to  make  his  approach  to  Cave, 
the  potentate  of  St.  John's  Gate  and 
the  Gentleman's  Magazine,  —  taciturn, 
distant,  but  good-hearted  man  as  he  was, 
—  dispenser  of  all  the  bounty  a  poor 
hackney  writer  hoped  for.  It  was  at 
his  table  that  Johnson  told  of  the  inim- 
itable powers  of  mirth  in  his  townsman 
who  kept  the  wine-vaults  in  Durham 
Yard,  and  the  magnanimous  Cave  re- 
solved to  see  for  himself.  In  the  room 
over  the  arch  a  stage  was  hastily  pre- 
pared, and,  with  such  decorations  and 
dresses  as  could  be  easily  improvised, 
Garrick  assumed  a  manager's  direction, 
with  an  audience  of  the  literary  handi- 
craftsmen of  the  magazine.  There  was 
much  of  a  likeness  among  these  dang- 
ling hirelings, — needy  poets,  improvi- 
dent wits,  skulking  essayists,  —  hunted 
of  the  bailiffs,  all.  A  long,  thin  face,  up- 
on whose  coarse  features  gravity  sat  as 
in  mockery,  told  the  miserable  life  that 


1 868.] 


Stage-Struck. 


was  led  by  Richard  Savage.  Johnson 
and  he  had  but  lately  walked  St.  James 
Square  all  night  for  want  of  means  to 
hire  a  lodging.  Too  profligate  to  hold 
his  friends,  he  was  to  find  the  only  two 
vindicators  of  his  memory  in  this  com- 
pany, —  Johnson  was  to  write  his  life  ; 
and  Garrick,  when  its  author  was  long 
dead,  was  to  befriend  a  straggling  trag- 
edy that  about  this  very  time  in  his  de- 
spondency its  author  had  sold  to  Cave. 
There  was  another  among  this  audience 
whom  the  transient  manager  may  have 
liked  to  propitiate  ;  for  it  was  thought 
a  certain  slovenly,  near-sighted  fellow 
present  had  a  talent  for  '  the  drama, 
and  it  was  nothing  incongruous  that 
his  lodging  was  too  often  in  a  spong- 
ing-house.  This  was  Samuel  Boyse, 
whose  poem  of  "  The  Deity,"  published 
soon  after,  is  not  rightfully  forgotten,  if 
we  have  faith  in  the  judgment  of  the 
author  of  "  Tom  Jones." 

On  the  night  in  question  it  was  Field- 
ing's farce  of  "  The  Mock  Doctor  "  they 
were  to  play ;  and  Garrick,  taking  Greg- 
ory to  himself,  distributed  the  parts 
among  the  journeyman  printers  of  the 
establishment.  He  could  not  have  had 
a  better  vehicle  for  broad  farcical  hu- 
mor ;  and  the  applause  he  gained  only 
sent  him  back  to  his  wine-vaults  more 
dissatisfied  than  ever,  and  open  to  the 
admonitions  of  Peter,  still  persistent  in 
his  reproofs. 

It  was  not  long  before  his  constancy 
was  put  to  another  test.  The  Eton 
boys  got  up  "The  Orphan"  at  the 
little  York-building  theatre  ;  and  Gar- 
rick, being  cast  with  them  for  Chamont, 
so  fascinated  the  ladies  who  attended, 
that  they  offered  him  their  purses  and 
trinkets  from  the  boxes.  This  attempt 
led  to  another.  One  night  manager 
,-d  was  distressed  because  his  har- 
lequin was  suddenly  taken  ill,  and  the 
flushed  amateur  quickly  donned  -the 
jacket,  and  nobody  in  the  house  ever 
suspected  the  change ;  and  Peter,  too, 
was  for  a  long  time  spared  the  mortifi- 
cation of  knowing  it. 

David  was  thus  fast  making  up  his 
mind  that  he  must  openly  cross  the 
fatal  boundary  of  respectability,  and 


rely  upon  his  powers  to  retrieve  his 
good  name.  He  dared  not  break  the 
matter  to  his  brother.  Peter  had  al- 
ready frowned  dreadfully  at  the  mere 
surmise ;  and  he  could  but  now  mark 
that  a  cloud  was  over  his  brother's 
spirits,  when  in  his  presence.  He 
spoke  to  him  of  their  good  family 
name,  and  portrayed  the  sure  displeas- 
ure which  their  parents,  if  surviving, 
would  manifest.  His  mother,  David  of- 
ten acknowledged,  had  fortunately  been 
so  dear  to  him,  that  the  thought  of  her 
restrained  him  at  many  a  critical  mo- 
ment. He  lived  to  account  it  a  great 
advantage  that  this  restraint  gave  his 
powers  time  to  ripen.  He  was  in  his 
twenty-fifth  year  when  restraint  was  no 
longer  effectual.  It  is  not  within  the 
scope  of  this  paper  to  picture  the  reali- 
zation of  his  long-indulged  hopes.  He 
went  through  a  brief  probationary  in- 
cognito at  a  provincial  theatre,  and 
came  back  to  London,  reassured,  and 
undertook  that  most  remarkable  first 
season,  which  began  a  ^ong  career 
without  a  parallel  in  the  history  of  the 
stage,  proving  for  thirty-five  successive 
years  that  he  had  not  in  vain  been 
stage-struck ! 

That  life  has  been  often  told,  but 
never  yet  as  it  should  be.  Tom  Davies, 
the  actcr,  —  whose  relations  with  his 
manager  were  not  always  the  happiest, 
and  whose  shop,  when  he  became,  after 
Churchill's  "  Rosciad "  stung  him,  a 
bookseller,  was  the  rendezvous  of  a  set 
of  men  fond  of  saying  savage  things 
2.bout  the  Drury  Lane  potentate,  —  was 
the  first  to  tell  the  story  of  the  great 
actor.  He  published  it  the  year  after 
Garrick's  death  ;  and,  though  he  is  sup- 
posed to  have  had  Johnson's  counte- 
nance and  aid,  he  received  no  assistance 
from  the  actor's  widow  and  the  guardi- 
ans of  his  papers.  His  book  is  lively, 
and  cannot  be  overlooked  by  any  subse- 
quent biographer,  though  Davies's  mem- 
ory was  not  exact,  and  he  trusted  to  it  too 
freely.  The  next  attempt  was  made  by 
Arthur  Murphy,  when  Garrick  had  been 
dead  twenty-one  years  ;  and  the  inter- 
val had  not  been  long  enough  for  Mur- 
phy to  forget  how  he  had  practised  the 


88 


Modern  French  Painting. 


[July, 


astutest  arts  a  disappointed  playwright 
could  summon  to  harass  the  most  sen- 
sitive of  managers.  His  book  is  dull, 
full  of  errors,  and  affords  but*  little  that 
is  complementary  to  the  earlier  life. 
Next  came  Boaden,  who,  ten  years 
later,  and  thirty-six  years  ago,  presented 
in  two  plethoric  quartos,  a  large  mass 
of  Garrick's  correspondence,  very  care- 
lessly arranged  and  heedlessly  selected, 
and,  for  the  first  time,  in  the  rather  mea- 
gre memoir  prefixed,  gave  something 
of  authority  to  the  recital  of  this  busy 
life. 

It  has  been  for  some  years  known 
that  there  was  still  a  considerable  por- 
tion of  Garrick's  papers  not  used  by 
Boaden,  particularly  letters  illustrating 
his  Lichfield  life ;  and  Forster  gave 
us  in  the  second  edition  of  his  ad- 
mirable "Life  and  Times  of  Oliver 
Goldsmith,"  a  chapter  on  this  part  of 
the  actor's  career  that  made  some  new 
revelations.  Those  who  fancied  there 
had  been  an  equal  reservation  of  papers 
regarding  Garrick's  riper  years,  had 
hopes  of  much  additional  illustration, 
when  it  was  announced  that  Mr.  Percy 


Fitzgerald  would  have  access  to  the 
inedited  manuscripts  in  writing  a  new 
biography.  These  hopes  have  not  been 
fully  met,  and  a  thorough  life  of  Garrick 
is  still  to  be  written.  The  new  biog- 
rapher casts  a  slur  upon  Boaden's  edi- 
torial labors,  but  he  does  not  make 
good  his  assertion  that  there  was  much 
of  the  best  in  reservation,  beyond  what 
Mr.  Forster  had  already  eliminated. 
His  "  Life  of  Garrick  "  has  two  grand 
faults.  It  is  carelessly,  and  sometimes 
awkwardly,  put  together  ;  and  it  slights 
many  points  of  the  first  importance  in 
understanding  Garrick,  because  the  au- 
thor could  not  find  much  to  add  to  what 
was  currently  known,  while  passages  of 
inferior  interest  are  dilated.  To  such, 
then,  as  are  not  previously  versed  in 
the  story  of  that  wonderful  theatrical 
and  social  career,  this  last  narrative  will 
seem  disjointed  and  out  of  perspective  ; 
although  much  has  been  done  in  the 
bringing  together  of  data  and  memoran- 
da to  make  the  book  an  entertaining  one 
for  the  general  reader,  and  a  useful  one 
for  the  student  of  English  social  his- 
tory of  the  last  century. 


MODERN     FRENCH     PAINTING. 


A  GOOD  model,  badly  posed,  lends 
itself  to  very  awkward  studies,  and 
does  not  instruct  the  eye  as  it  should. 
French  art  is  a  subject  that  for  a  long 
time  has  been  badly  posed  before  Amer- 
icans. Those  of  us  who  have  been  in- 
fatuated with  it  have  not  been  very 
respectful  to  native  talent ;  those  who 
have  derided  it  as  superficial  have  only 
considered  it  as  it  appears  in  its  most 
recent  form. 

French  art  is  made  of  a  great  many 
diverse  things.  It  is  one  thing  in  In- 
gres, and  another  in  Delacroix  ;  it  is 
one  thing  in  Gdrome,  and  another  in 
Flandrin  ;  it  is  one  thing  in  Hamon, 
and  another  in  Millet ;  it  is  one  thing 


in  Theodore  Rousseau,  and  another  in 
Corot. 

The  only  common  ground  for  a  char- 
acterization under  the  general  head 
"  French  Art,"  presenting  itself  to 
my  judgment,  is  that  each  of  these 
painters  has  a  style  which  adequately 
corresponds  with  his  subject  ;  that 
the  short-coming  of  his  work  is  never 
in  a  bad  understanding  of  his  means 
of  expression,  as  is  so  often  the  case 
with  the  work  of  our  painters,  whose 
average  power  of  representation  is  lower 
than  the  average  value  of  their  subject, 
—  lower  than  that  of  the  painters  who 
make  Paris  the  centre  of  arts. 

Any  generalization  about  French  artr 


1868.] 


Modern  French  Painting. 


89 


either  for  or  against  its  ascendency, 
must  be  considered  simply  as  a  hasty 
dash  of  the  mind  to  cover  a  vast  and 
varied  subject,  without  due  considera- 
tion of  the  meaning  and  value  of  its 
parts.  I  do  not  believe  it  judicious, 
and  it  is  not  very  instructive. 

At  the  present  hour  French  art  is 
not  maintained  at  its  highest  level.  It 
has  lost  its  great  representative  men. 
The  ebb  is  so  great  at  this  moment, 
that  all  the  barrenness  of  the  French 
mind,  when  not  fed  from  the  fecund, 
outlying,  elemental  forces,  is  revealed ; 
the  present  is  the  thin  and  shallow 
and  corrupt  hour  of  French  art.  It 
is  beginning  to  correspond  very  well 
with  the  epoch  of  the  Regency,  which 
gave  to  France  the  art  and  literature 
and  sentiment  of  courtesans.  We  may 
admire  France  very  much,  but  we  must 
admit  that  France  is  very  barren  in 
great  things  when  it  is  dominated  by 
the  Parisian  sentiment,  and  does  not 
derive  its  ideas  from  the  Continent 
and  England,  rather  than  from  its  own 
characteristic  life.  The  characteristic 
life  of  France  is  in  action  and  in  pleas- 
ure. 

But  yesterday  France  held  the  great 
representative  painters  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  —  men  who  were  fed  by  all  the 
great  springs  of  intellectual  and  moral 
life  outside  of  France  ;  to-day  she  has 
a  group  of  figure-painters,  who  repre- 
sent the  pleasures  and  tragedies  of 
Roman  civilization,  and  seek  to  make 
France  repeat  the  cruel,  arbitrary,  cen- 
tralized life  of  the  ancient  imperial 
world. 

Yesterday,  France  had  Delacroix  ex- 
ercising his  genius  in  the  highest  realms 
of  imagination,  and  dedicating  his  art 
to  the  suffering  of  humanity ;  she  had 
Ingres,  in  the  reasoned,  restrained,  mo- 
notonous, and  classic  world  ;  she  had 
Flandrin,  devout  and  elevated  in  senti- 
ment, thorough  in  his  work,  positive  in 
his  style  ;  she  had  Scheffer,  in  poetry 
and  religious  sentiment ;  she  had  Dela- 
roche,  in  the  historical  and  literary  ;  she 
had  Decamps,  in  the  picturesque  of  sub- 
ject, the  caprice  of  effect,  the  vivid  of 
natural  color ;  —  then  Troyon,  the  great, 


simple,  natural  colorist ;  Rousseau,  the 
landscapist,  rich  and  subtile  in  his  color ; 
and  to-day,  last  members  of  the  same 
group,  Corot,  the  dreamy  poet ;  and  Mil- 
let, the  profoundly  impressive  and  sim- 
ple painter  of  the  peasants  of  France. 

The  decadence  of  French  art  —  save 
where  it  is  checked  by  such  men  as  the 
landscapists  of  France,  and  Courbet  in 
his  best  efforts  —  has  been  rapid  since 
the  death  of  Troyon.  For  the  most 
part,  the  landscape  painters  are  outside 
of  imperial  France. 

I  propose  that  we  go  back  a  few 
years,  to  the  time  when  society  was 
in  ferment,  and  the  forces  of  life  were 
not  suppressed  by  the  imperial  regime. 
The  splendid  outburst  of  thirty  years 
ago  in  France  was  a  reaction  against 
authority ;  it  was  the  substitution  of 
the  will  or  caprice  of  the  individual  for 
the  fixed  law  of  a  school ;  it  was  a 
revolt.  It  was  a  revolt  that  had  Victor 
Hugo,  Dumas,  George  Sand,  Delacroix, 
Gericauk,  and  Decamps,  and  all  the  suc- 
ceeding landscape  and  genre  painters 
for  its  leaders  and  supporters.  They 
resisted  the  Academy  of  Beaux-Arts 
and  the  Academy  of  Belles-Lettres. 

To-day  France  is  again  quiet,  —  the- 
last  wave  of  revolt  has  nearly  spent 
itself,  the  tide  is  low,  the  shore  barren. 
To-day  France  is  again  contented  with 
authority,  and  accepts  tradition.  The 
Institute  and  Tuileries  are  well  guard- 
ed ;  both  have  succeeded  in  convincing 
the  cultivated  classes  that  a  nation  is 
best  when  its  people  are  kept  as  minors, 
not  recognized  as  lords  of  the  estate. 
Victor  Hugo  is  in  exile ;  the  forms  of 
constitutional  government  are  main- 
tained only  as  so  many  tribunes  from 
which  the  hireling  deputies  throw  a 
dust  of  words  between  the  people  and 
the  arbitrary  acts  of  a  ruler,  who  closes 
his  hand  tighter  and  tighter  on  the  na- 
tion. 

Understand  well,  that  the  epoch  of 
constitutional  government  and  of  revo- 
lution in  France  is  represented  in  paint- 
ing by  Gericault,  Delacroix,  Scheffer, 
Delaroche,  Decamps,  and  the  overrated 
Vernet.  The  Second  Empire  is  repre- 
sented by  Gerome,  Meissonier,  Caba- 


90 


Modern  French  Painting. 


[July, 


nel,  Baudry,  Chaplin,  Diaz,  and  Hamon ; 
in  literature,  by  Gautier,  Houssaye,  Fe- 
val,  Feydeau,  Baudelaire,  and  Dumas 
fils.  These  men  illustrate  art  detached 
from  the  moral,  —  the  artistic  emanci- 
pated from  ideas  of  morality  and  •  ideas 
of  democracy.  They  represent  the 
cruelty,  the  corruption,  and  sometimes 
the  splendor,  of  the  purely  artistic ; 
but,  on  the  whole,  they  may  be  taken  as 
illustrations  of  the  artistic  in  excess. 

The  epoch  of  revolution  and  consti- 
tutional government  had  a  group  of  writ- 
ers of  greater  reach,  nobler  purpose, 
and  more  profound  genius.  It  had  Gui- 
zot,  Lamartine,  Beranger,  George  Sand, 
Auguste  Comte,  Victor  Hugo,  Balzac, 
and  De  Musset,  —  the  great  names  of 
modern  France.  De  Musset,  however, 
did  not  hold  either  the  revolutionary 
or  republican  spirit.  He  was  simply 
an  unhappy  soul  with  a  rare  artistic 
sense. 

Men  like  Sainte-Beuve  and  Ingres, 
who  exalted  authority  and  tradition  in 
letters  and  in  arts  as  opposed  to  the 
individual  genius  or  wilfulness,  easily 
found  their  place,  cushioned,  under  the 
Empire.  So  true  it  is  that  the  mind 
which  relies  upon  an  external  fact  is  al- 
ways consistent,  always  ready  for  a  mas- 
ter. Sainte-Beuve,  who  never  had  any 
convictions  ;  and  Ingres,  who  only  had 
one,  —  that  is,  that  Phidias  and  Raphael 
fixed,  for  all  time,  the  one  perfect  form  of 
art, — gravitated  towards  the  paternal 
government ;  and  both  have  given  eclat 
to  art  and  letters  under  the  imperial 
regime. 

If  my  thought  is  true,  I  have  indicated 
the  place  which  the  leading  masters  of 
painting,  in  France,  hold  in  the  scale  of 
its  political  development.  But  we  must 
go  still  nearer  to  the  great  masters  who 
came  after  the  first  revolution. 

No  modern  nation  has  a  group  of 
men  comparable  to  the  French  paint- 
ers of  the  last  thirty  years.  In  the  art 
of  painting,  as  understood  by  paint- 
ers, they  have  no  peers,  save  in  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries. 
Their  science  of  art  is  French  ;  their 
ideas  are  universal,  —  do  not  belong 
exclusively  to  the  French  mind.  To- 


day, French  art  is  more  local,  less 
universal ;  therefore,  not  great.  It  has 
again  fallen  to  the  level  of  the  average 
French  mind.  The  average  French 
mind  —  or  genius  —  is  exact  like  Ge- 
rome,  light  like  Chaplin,  pagan  and  sen- 
sual like  Cabanel,  full  of  exaggeration 
like  Dord,  bold  and  prosaic  like  Vernet, 
whose  popularity  "is  the  accusation 
of  a  whole  nation."  But,  back  of  all 
these  traits,  which  are  so  characteristic 
of  the  French,  there  is  a  genuine  love 
of  out-of-door  life ;  and  the  modern 
French  landscape  painters  are  the  ar- 
tistic correspondence  of  that  love.  That 
love  is  universal ;  therefore  the  French 
landscapists  have  a  public  outside  of 
France.  They  are  not  localized.  Great 
men  are  not  local.  They  do  not  corre- 
spond with  the  average  men  of  their 
nation  ;  they  correspond  with  the  supe- 
rior men  of  the  world. 

The  average  of  French  art,  like  the 
average  of  French  literature,  is  exclu- 
sively a  matter  of  expression,  which  is 
generally  attractive,  and  disengages  the 
mind  from  the  subject  to  please  it  with 
the  execution.  The  average  work  of 
the  French  painter  is  too  artistic,  and 
outside  of  reality ;  the  average  work  of 
the  English  painter  is  not  in  the  least 
artistic,  but  awkward,  yet  holding  a 
certain  fixed  relation  to  the  domestic 
sentiment  and  poetic  feeling  of  the 
English  people. 

But  in  arts  and  in  letters  we  are  not 
concerned  with  the  average  power  of  a 
people.  We  ask  to  know  the  highest 
or  characteristic  development  reached 
by  the  genius  of  a  people.  It  is  Shake- 
speare, Milton,  and  Shelley ;  it  is  Ho- 
garth, Reynolds,  and  Turner  ;  in 
France,  it  is  Moliere,  Voltaire,  and 
George  Sand ;  it  is  Claude  Lorraine, 
Delacroix,  Gowarnic. 

None  of  Delacroix's  works  have  any 
value  as  studies  of  manners,  or  as  real- 
istic renderings  of  the  subject.  If  you 
are  in  the  habit  of  occupying,  your  mind 
with  details  ;  if  you  follow  the  contem- 
porary method  in  art,  —  in  which  the 
observation  is  everything,  and  the 
dream  nothing,  —  in  a  word,  if  Balzac 
and  Thackeray  are  your  best  types,  you 


1 868.] 


Modem  French  Painting. 


will  not  understand,  much  less  appre- 
ciate, Delacroix. 

Delacroix  is  properly  the  subject  of  a 
special  study ;  it  is  not  within  my  pur- 
pose to  write  a  commentary  on  his  gen- 
ius. I  notice  his  work  only  so  far  as 
is  necessary  to  make  apparent  that  his 
is  the  first  name  in  my  classification 
of  French  painters.  Delacroix  and 
Ge'ricault  are  the/rj-/,  among  French- 
men, who  treated  things  with  the  brush 
of  the  Venetians,  and  in  the  large  epic 
style  that  to-day  is  without  any  illus- 
tration in  the  works  of  living  painters. 

It  has  been  Delacroix's  glory  and  re- 
proach, that  he  spontaneously  gave 
being  to  purely  personal  impressions, 
lifted  the  subject  out  of  a  cold,  lifeless, 
artistic  form,  and  hurled  it,  as.it  were, 
palpitating  with  all  the  emotions  of  his 
heart,  to  an  inert  public. 

The  aggressive  Proudhon,  who  op- 
poses the  whole  spirit  and  fact  of 
French  art  as  being  anti-democratic 
and  anti-realistic,  says  :  "  Delacroix 
has  a  lining  of  Lord  Byron,  of  Lamar- 
tine,  of  Victor  Hugo,  of  George  Sand ; 
he  is  also  the  illustrator  of  Shakespeare 
and  Goethe."  And  then  he  asks  :  "  But 
what  do  I  care  for  all  these  declaimers 
and  weepers?" 

No  doubt  these  are  appropriate  and 
expressive  words  in  the  mouth  of  a 
democrat  No  doubt  the  man  occupied 
with  the  question  of  labor  and  emanci- 
pation has  no  respect  for  the  romantic 
dreams,  the  spiritual  and  moral  disor- 
ders of  men  and  women  whom  ex- 
cess of  sensibility  and  passion  for  the 
ideal  forbid  to  mix  in  the  hurly-burly 
of  life,  but  place  before  the  specta- 
cle of  the  human  soul,  in  its  body  of 
flesh,  enacting  the  perpetual  drama  of 
its  desires  and  its  debasements. 

Proudhon's  book  is  a  running,  ag- 
gressive, democratic  commentary  on 
art.  It  is  the  only  book  that  I  know 
which  is  a  brave  and  sturdy  effort  to 
refute  the  artistic  idea  as  it  is  under- 
stood by  the  artists  ;  it  aims  to  substi- 
tute a  purely  democratic  idea  of  the 
painter's  function.  The  only  art  that 
can  hold  a  place  in  Proudhon's  eman- 
cipated society  is  the  modern  land- 


scapist's  ;  or  the  art  of  the  painter  who 
flatly  outrages  the  classic  ideal  and  the 
studied  form,  —  like  Courbet. 

If  I  should  speak  from  Proudhon's 
book  about  French  art  in  the  nine- 
teenth century,  I  should  be  perfectly 
well  understood  by  every  American  ; 
and  the  average  reader  would  recognize 
good  sense,  and  wonder  why  he  ever 
admitted  the  metaphysical  talk  about 
"  art  "  and  "  beauty  "  and  "  the  ideal " 
to  impose  itself  upon  his  mind  and 
convict  him  of  ignorance.  I  should  be 
thought  sensible  and  convincing  with 
Proudhon's  thought  on  my  lips  ;  but, 
let  me  hasten  to  add,  I  should  be  at 
once  outside  of  the  idea  of  art  as  it  is 
understood  by  artists.  I  should  be 
speaking  from  the  very  lapse  of  the 
artistic  sense.  I  should  be  honoring 
common  sense,  which  in  Proudhon, 
as  never  before,  does  its  iconoclastic 
work  upon  the  beautiful  world,  cher- 
ished at  the  cost  of  the  comfort  of  the 
people. 

Proudhon's  book  is  the  gospel  of 
modern  art  as  it  must  be  developed  in 
America;  that  is,  free  from  tradition, 
free  from  the  voluptuous,  based  wholly 
on  the  common  life  of  the  democratic 
man,  who  develops  his  being  on  a  free 
soil,  and  in  the  midst  of  a  vast  country. 

At  this  moment  the  national  galleries 
of  France  contain  the  most  perfect  ex- 
amples of  the  art  of  painting  that  have 
been^produced  in  the  world  since  1789 ; 
at  this  moment  they  contain  works  the 
most  varied  in  style  and  subject,  and 
the  most  illustrative  of  the  resources  of 
the  palette  of  any  modern  art  save  that 
of  Turner ;  at  this  moment  French  art 
is  most  universal  in  its  influence,  and 
the  most  expressive  of  art  as  art.  But 
at  this  moment  the  leading  men  of  the 
French  .  school  —  Gdrome,  Meissonier, 
Cabanel  —  do  not  entertain  universal 
ideas  and  elevated  sentiments  corre- 
sponding with  the  ideas  and  sentiments 
of  Delacroix,  Scheffer,  and  Delaroche. 

French  art  has  become  Parisian,  and 
in  becoming  Parisian  it  has  fallen  to 
the  level  of  a  corrupt  and  luxurious 
world,  —  a  world  in  which  taste  and 
voluptuousness  are  exacted  in  the  work 


Modern  French  Painting. 


[July, 


of  every  figure-painter.  It  still  remains 
true  to  the  idea  of  art  for  art.  Need 
\ve  say  it  gained  its  ascendency  over 
the  modern  world  when  it  was  less  local, 
and  at  a  time  when  art  was  not  pursued 
for  its  own  sake,  but  because  it  was 
believed  to  be  a  beautiful  and  special 
means  of  expressing  the  sentiments  and 
passions,  and  depicting  the  noblest  and 
most  beautiful  parts  of  nature  and  the 
life  of  man  ? 

When  France  was  thrown  open  by 
the  Revolution,  and  was  accessible  to 
foreign  influences,  she  was  greater  than 
to-day;  now  she  is  shut  within  her- 
self by  imperialism.  When  her  literary 
and  artistic  genius  was  fed  with  Shake- 
speare, with  Oriental  dreams,  with  me- 
diasval  imaginations,  it  was  enriched  by 
external  things.  To-day  France  has 
become  more  Parisian,  —  that  is,  local, 
—  and,  in  becoming  more  Parisian,  she 
has  fallen  in  the  scale  of  greatness. 

So  far  we  can  generalize  and  render 
truthfully  the  leading  facts  of  French 
art,  and  therefore  of  France  itself.  But 
we  have  reached  our  limit,  and  we  must 
look  more  closely  at  the  actual  men  of 
the  hour,  and  ask  in  what  manner  they 
sustain  the  glory  made  for  French  art 
by  the  splendid  group  of  artists  whom 
I  have  so  often  named. 

I  have  said  that  they  are  not  imbued 
with  the  large  spirit,  and  do  not  show 
the  general  aim  of  their  great  predeces- 
sors ;  that  the  ablest  and  simplest  men 
who  yet  live  are  a  part  of  that  great 
outburst  of  artistic  power  that  began 
with  Gericault,  and  seems  now  almost 
spent.  Who  are  these  men  ?  Certainly 
not  the  fashionable  painters.  Meisso- 
nier  is  not  of  them,  nor  Ge'rome,  nor 
Cabanel,  nor  even  the  elegant  and  deli- 
cate Fromentin. 

Ge'rome,  who  is  the  most  exact  and 
intellectual,  and  the  most  reasonable,  — 
the  man  whose  pictures  have  all  the 
dignity  that  mind  can  give  to  a  work 
of  art, — is  well  known;  and  likewise 
so  known  is  Meissonier ;  and  Cabanel, 
who  paints  to  charm  the  senses  just  as 
they  are  charmed  at  the  Jardin  Mabille 
or  the  Porte  Saint  Martin. 

Properly  speaking,  Ge'rome  and  Meis- 


sonier are  not  painters.  They  are  sim- 
ply draughtsmen  or  designers,  who 
have  acquired  all  of  the  art  of  painting 
that  can  be  taught.  Their- limitations 
are  limitations  of  organization.  And 
yet  their  method  of  characterizing  their 
work  by  the  line  and  the  design,  and 
limiting  the  play  of  the  brush  and  the 
flow  of  color,  is  in  keeping  with  the 
exact  and  positive  ideas  that  have  taken 
the  first  place  in  current  criticism.  But 
the  masters  of  painting  have  always 
made  less  of  the  refinements  of  the  line 
or  the  form,  and  more  of  the  splendid  and 
fleeting  impression  of  color  and  effect. 

I  have  to  speak  of  Theodore  Rous- 
seau, Diaz,  Millet,  Fromentin,  Corot, 
Jules  Duprez,  Daubigny,  and  Courbet. 
These  men  represent  the  most  health- 
ful phase  of  French  art,  and  show  that, 
however  much  they  may  be  below  the 
epic  greatness  of  Delacroix  and  Ge'ri- 
cault,  they  carry  forward  the  work  so 
splendidly  begun  by  those  two  great 
dramatic  painters.  They  react  against 
tradition,  and  give  the  ascendency  to 
individual  genius,  rather  than  train  it  in 
classic  or  academic  forms,  according  to 
the  example  of  Flandrin,  Ingres,  and 
even  Ge'rome. 

Rousseau,  who  died  but  yesterday 
in  the  poetical  village  of  Barbison,  on 
the  edge  of  the  forest  of  Fontaine- 
bleau,  represents  the  richest  and  strong- 
est genius  in  landscape  art.  His 
work  has  strength,  force,  and  luxuri- 
ance, and  all  these  traits  and  qualities 
are  held  in  a  rich  and  solid  style  of 
painting.  He  was  varied  in  his  sub- 
jects, and  had  two  distinct  manners ; 
but  his  proper  style  was  solid,  rich,  and 
close.  The  landscapes  of  our  own  In- 
ness,  without  being  as  firmly  designed 
as  Rousseau's,  without  having  the  same 
depth  and  clearness  of  tone,  yet  are 
not  unlike  those  of  the  great  French 
landscapist. 

Another  painter  is  Corot,  an  old  man 
now,  and  an  old  favorite.  He  paints  — 
in  a  manner  just  the  reverse  of  Rous- 
seau—  with  a  light,  quick,  loose  touch, 
and  makes  a  vague,  floating,  dreamy 
effect.  He  paints  like  no  one  else,  be- 
cause he  finds  in  nature  everything  but 


1868.] 


Modern  French  Painting. 


93 


the  obvious  and  positive  forms  that  we 
know  by  experience.  His  pictures  are 
to  me  the  most  charming  reveries,  —  all 
light  and  air,  fresh  like  the  morning, 
and,  suggesting  I  know  not  what  pen- 
sive and  veiled  idyllic  beings  to  corre- 
spond with  his  fresh  and  idyllic  nature. 
Corot  is  one  of  the  most  disputed  tal- 
ents in  France.  I  suppose  precisely 
because  he  is  not  commonplace,  —  pre- 
cisely.because  he  has  a  way  of  seeing 
and  rendering  nature  not  cognizable  to 
the  vulgar.  The  man  is  charming,  sin- 
cere, naif.  The  studios  are  full  of  de- 
lightful stories  about  him.  He  is  a 
man  of  sensibility;  say,  just  like  his 
pictures,  —  all  tender  and  fresh  and 
floating. 

One  day,  standing  before  a  picture  by 
Delacroix,  he  said  :  "  He  is  an  eagle  ; 
I  am  but  a  lark,  throwing  my  little  song 
into  my  gray  clouds."  What  a  charm- 
ing way  of  saying  his  thought !  One  of 
those  delightful  words  that  open  a  win- 
dow, and  let  fresh  air  into  the  stale  at- 
mosphere of  our  academic  or  hospital 
life! 

Corot  is  reproached  for  being  vague 
and  sketchy.  I  consider  the  criticism 
shallow ;  and  generally  it  is  the  out- 
flow of  a  common  mind.  But  it  is 
worth  while  to  make  apparent,  that  he 
may  be  both  vague  and  sketchy,  and 
yet  a  true  and  uncommon  landscape 
painter.  Corot  understands  that  nature 
is  an  influence ;  most  landscapists  have 
not  gone  beyond  the  idea  that  she  is  a 
form.  Corot  understands  that  nature 
is  a  depth  lighted  by  a  sun ;  most  land- 
scapists understand  her  as  a  surface 
against  which  objects  are  not  only  in- 
evitably defined,  but  "made  out,"  like 
so  many  pieces  of  needle-work.  Corot 
understands  that  nature,  to  the  eye,  is 
not  a  fixed  fact,  but  a  fleeting  impres- 
sion ;  most  landscapists  understand  na- 
ture as  a  vast  piece  of  still-life  which 
they  must  imitate,  and  an  agglomera- 
tion of  facts  that  they  are  to  photo- 
graph. But  Corot,  being  a  poet,  under- 
stands nature  as  a  life,  as  one  thing, 
and  he  aims  to  express  it.  Without 
being  a  man  of  great  reach  or  varied 
power,  he  is  sympathetic  and  true ;  he 


is  penetrated  with  the  quality  and  the 
spirit  of  his  subject.  He  never  de- 
lineates ;  he  expresses.  The  depth  of 
air,  the  fulness  of  light,  the  penetrabil- 
ity of  masses  of  foliage,  the  loosening 
of  the  wind,  and  the  scattered  aspect  of 
vegetation  on  his  canvases,  are  ren- 
dered with  a  free  and  light  brush  which 
gives  to  his  work  an  indescribable 
charm. 

Like  a  man  who  always  looks  at  the 
distance  and  the  floating  clouds,  his 
eye  is  not  filled  with  the  vivid  color  of 
the  grass  close  to  him,  nor  does  he 
notice  the  plants  that  lift  themselves, 
each  after  their  own  fashion,  by  his 
feet.  No;  Corot  is  a  dreamer  who 
sometimes  even  forgets  the  soil  on 
which  he  stands,  but  never  the  look  of 
the  remote  country  at  the  horizon,  or 
the  low  clouds  that  float  over  the  water. 
Happily  he  is  one  man  who  has  not 
the  pretension  to  exhaust  nature  on  his 
canvas  ;  he  has  not  the  pedantry  im- 
plied in  the  so-called  complete,  syste- 
matic, detailed,  in  the  midst  of  won- 
derful and  inexhaustible  and  infinite 
nature !  Who  can  help  loving  his 
delightful  suggestions  of  the  aspect  of 
things,  his  breathing  harmony  of  color  ? 
He  is  the  good  gray  landscape  painter 
of  France. 

Francois  Millet  is  a  grand  and  sim- 
ple painter,  with  something  of  Rem- 
brandt and  everything  else  of  himself, — 
the  one  man  in  France  among  the  art- 
ists who  has  made  the  despised  peas- 
ant—  broken  with  labor,  and  brown 
like  the  soil  —  look  on  the  full  impres- 
siveness  of  his  humanity  in  the  midst 
of  his  silent  and  laborious  life. 

I  cannot  express  to  you  the  profound 
spirit,  the  simple  and  large  form,  of 
Millet's  pictures.  He  makes  you  feel 
the  common  and  mysterious  unity  of 
the  universal  life  that  is  in  man.  Millet 
is  the  poet  of  the  peasant.  He  aggran- 
dizes the  traits  of  his  subject,  but  never 
seeks  for,  rather  avoids,  the  feminine 
graces,  and  the  pretty  parts  that  paint- 
ers love  to  find  even  in  the  homeliest 
conditions  of  life.  Millet  is  a  wan,  not 
a  dainty  lover  of  the  pretty.  He  dis- 
engages his  subject  from  the  prosaic 


94 


Modern  French  Painting. 


[July, 


without  destroying  its  real  character. 
He  is  more  than  Jules  Breton,  because 
of  the  trait  of  grandeur,  because  of  the 
simpler  form  of  his  art,  and  because  he 
is  more  profound ;  and,  finally,  he  first 
devoted  himself  to  paint  the  peasant  as 
he  is.  He  is  the  sincerest  and  most 
truly  poet  of  any  living  figure-painter 
in  France.  He  alone  is  a  protest 
against  the  false,  dazzling,  polished,  and 
sensual  art  of  the  salons  of  Paris  to- 
day. But  I  am  too  hasty;  the  sturdy 
and  prosaic  and  unequal  Courbet  is 
also  a  protest  against  the  corrupt  and 
the  classic  art  patronized  by  the  offi- 
cials of  the  Second  Empire. 

Last  we  are  to  speak  of  Diaz,  who  is 
an  extraordinary  colorist,  a  maker  of 
rose-dreams,  and  creamy-tinted,  flower- 
soft  women,  and  also  a  painter  of  the 
deep,  dark  forest.  He  renders  a  rich 
and  vagabond  vegetation,  —  woods  stur- 
dy and  dense,  —  the  very  home  of  si- 
lence and  solitude. 

Without  defining  or  drawing  a  line, 
by  mere  combination  of  lights  and 
darks,  warmed  and  enriched  with  the 
colors  of  his  Spanish  palette,  on  which 
all  soft,  pulpy,  juicy,  mellow  things 
have  been  crushed, — in  one  word,  the 
palette  of  Keats,  —  he  makes  his  canvas 
glow  and  shine,  and  you  behold,  in 
brown  or  golden  shadows.  Cupids  and 
Nymphs  and  Fauns,  or  the  light  ladies 
of  the  Decameron  ;  loose,  falling  robes, 
the  dazzle  of  shoulders ;  a  luminous 
group  of  beautiful  nude  beings,  neither 
Greek  nor  Parisian,  belonging  wholly 
to  the  ideal,  —  perhaps  the  bastard 
ideal,  —  which  gave  us  Shakespeare's 
fairies  and  Keats's  Endymion.  His  is 
an  art  that  gives  pleasure  to  the  ordi- 
nary artistic  sense  ;  it  is  the  other  side 
of  the  cold,  exact,  passionless,  serious 
sensualities  that  have  so  much  place  in 
the  work  of  a  man  so  dignified  and  able 
as  Ge'rome. 

Another  positive  talent  is  that  of 
Eugene  Fromentin, — a  writer  who,  as 
such,  has  won  from  Sainte  -  Beuve, 
George  Sand,  and  The'ophile  Gautier 
alike,  carefully  chosen  words  expres- 
sive of  the  superiority  of  his  talent,  and 
a  painter  to  whom  all  current  criticism 


gives  a  first  rank.  His  picture  of  La 
Smala  en  Voyage  is  a  beautiful  example 
of  all  the  finest  and  most  elegant  artis- 
tic traits  proper  to  the  subject ;  the 
color  is  clear  and  brilliant,  the  touch 
neat  and  rapid,  the  form  delicate  and 
pure.  The  tribe  of  the  Smala  are  just 
crossing  a  shallow  stream,  and  ascend- 
ing a  spur  of  the  mountain  in  front  of 
them, — the  chiefs,  in  advance,  mounted 
on  supple  and  fiery  Arab  horses,  of 
varied  and  lovely  colors,  with  manes 
silken  and  combed  like  the  hair  of 
women.  Negroes  laden  with  baggage, 
women  and  children  in  picturesque  dis- 
order, cross  the  ford.  The  white  haiks 
and  colored  bernouses  of  the  chiefs, 
blown  apart,  reveal  their  sleeves  and 
vests  embroidered  with  jewels  and  gold 
sparkling  in  the  light.  The  haughty 
and  noble  grace  and  grave  aspect  of 
the  chiefs,  the  movement  and  character 
of  the  people  of  the  tribe,  are  rendered 
in  a  vivid  and  picturesque,  and  also  in 
an  elegant  manner.  It  is  one  of  the 
many  pictures  that  confirms  Fromen- 
tin as  a  master  in  his  art.  In  some 
of  his  earlier  works  I  noticed  a  mani- 
fest artificiality  of  color  which  detracted 
from  their  value.  But  his  is  a  superior 
and  special  talent,  and  he  has  as  many 
imitators  as  Decamps  or  Gerome. 

The  remaining  actual  workers  who 
hold  a  first  rank  in  the  French  school 
are  Couture,  Gustave  Moreau,  Isabey, 
Zeim,  Emile  Breton,  and  Jules  Breton. 
They  are  of  the  first  rank  in  power  of 
execution,  and  they  complete  the  re- 
markable group  of  French  artists  of  the 
nineteenth  century;  they  have  no  liv- 
ing superiors  in  mastery  of  the  resources 
of  the  palette.  They  illustrate  every 
phase  of  art  save  that  of  the  vast  and 
grand  in  landscape  art  of  which  Turner 
is  the  unrivalled  master.  Not  one 
painter  in  France  among  the  landscap- 
ists  has  ever  reached  the  height  of 
power  that  characterizes  Turner's  pic- 
tures ;  by  the  subject  and  the  com- 
position, they  occupy  a  place  above 
all  contemporary  landscape  art.  .The 
French  landscapists  have  rendered  cer- 
tain simple  phases  of  color  and  effect 
with  a  brush  more  fed  and  a  hand 


1 868.] 


Modern  French  Painting. 


95 


more  vigorous  than  Turner's.  But  Tur- 
ner excels  them  by  his  Shakespearian 
imagination,  and  the  Shakespearian  cor- 
respondence with  fact  at  the  same  time 
that  he  exercises  a  most  extraordinary 
imagination.  He  has  no  peer  among 
the  French  landscapists. 

It  is  among  the  figure-painters  that 
we  must  go  to  find  the  peer  of  Turner. 
Delacroix  and  Turner  are  the  two  great 
epic  poets  of  the  nineteenth  century; 
the  one  French,  the  other  English. 
Both  correspond  with  the  national  gen- 
*  ius,  while  they  rise  above  its  purely 
local  character.  Delacroix  se6ms  like 
the  last  effort  of  the  genius  of  painting, 
while  Turner  is  the  magician  who  cov- 
ers the  whole  future  of  art :  from  Tur- 
ner dates  the  gradual  but  inevitable 
ascendency  of  nature  over  humanity  in 
the  painter's  world.  The  immense  fund 
of  human  passion,  the  invention,  the 
unrestrained  force,  the  fecundity  of 
Delacroix's  genius  is  without  a  mod- 
ern parallel.  He  is  brother  of  Tinto- 
rett  in  energy,  and  a  colorist  like  Velas- 
quez. 

Judge,  then,  how  it  becomes  us  to 
speak  carelessly  or  irreverently  of 
French  art;  judge,  then,  if  we  dare  de- 
preciate the  work  of  that  versatile,  often 
superficial,  but  sometimes  grand  people, 
who  riot  in  Paris  and  are  ambitious  to 
make  themselves  ^o. gendarmes  of  all 
Europe ! 

No ;  that  feminine  race  has  the  gen- 
ius of  art ;  and  although  its  average 
work  belongs  wholly  to  the  domain  of 
taste,  and  is  meant  only  to  flatter  the 
eye,  it  has  given  us  great  examples, 
made  in  its  great  days,  when,  nourished 
by  Continental  genius,  open  on  every 
side,  it  appropriated  a.nd  aggrandized 
the  ideas  that  belong  to  our  common 
humanity  ;  then  it  produced  works  that 
match  the  best  of  the  great  masters  of 
the  great  age  of  painting. 

Liberate  France  from  imperialism,  — 
which  shuts  her  from  the  play  of  for- 
eign minds,  —  inundate  her  with  the 
revolutionary  spirit,  and  she  gives  us 
Mirabeau,  George  Sand,  and  Delacroix. 
Imprison  her  within  the  bounds  of  the 


Parisian  idea,  which  is  Caesarism, —  an 
organizing,  centralizing,  arbitrary  spirit, 
—  and  she  is  only  capable  of  producing 
works  especially  French.  Gerome, 
Baudry,  Cabanel,  to-day ;  in  the  past, 
Watteau,  Boucher,  and  Mignard. 

It  is  because  England  and  America 
have  always  been  so  open-minded  that 
their  productive  force  has  been  so  noble 
and  great.  Place  the  French  people 
in  the  same  condition,  and  their  artistic 
and  literary  forms  must  embody  ideas 
and  thoughts  and  sentiments  that  appeal 
to  the  human  race,  instead  of  the  local 
taste  of  the  Parisian  public,  and  the 
luxurious  rich  corresponding  with  that 
public  who  exist  in  all  large  cities. 

At  this  moment  we  are  misled  by  the 
mechanical  dexterities  of  a  Meissonier, 
or  the  delicate  sensualities  of  a  Cabanel, 
or  the  cruel,  passionless,  polished  nudi- 
ties of  Gerome,  —  or  perhaps  we  fall 
down  to  the  tiresome  level  of  Frere. 
But  these  are  not  the  masters  of  French 
art  in  the  nineteenth  century,  they  are 
simply  the  able  men  of  the  hour.  When 
you  say  French  art,  base  your  thought 
upon  Delacroix,  Millet,  Rousseau,  and 
Corot,  —  for  they  are  not  local,  or  Pa- 
risian, but  French,  that  is,  Continental, 
universal.  When  you  wish  to  know 
Parisian  art,  you  should  ask  about 
Cabanel,  Baudry,  Dejonghe,  and,  as  at 
its  highest  intellectual  level,  GeVome. 

The  traditional  or  classic  of  French 
art  remains  in  the  works  of  David, 
Ingres,  Gleyre ;  and,  at  its  best,  in 
Flandrin's  frescos.  We  must  respect 
it  because  it  is  Venerable  ;  we  must  re- 
spect it,  because,  like  a  graveyard,  it 
holds  a  great  many  dead  bodies  and  a 
great  many  melancholy  epitaphs.  But 
it  would  be  folly  to  expect  to  see  it 
exercising  any  marked  influence  upon 
the  modern  or  democratic  form  of  art. 
The  people  do  not  even  sympathize 
with,  much  less  understand,  its  frigid, 
abstract  forms,  sometimes  beautiful, 
but  always  disengaged  from  the  pas- 
sionate, suffering,  actual  life  of  men 
and  women  in  the  nineteenth  century. 
It  is  the  official,  and  therefore  false,  side 
of  modern  French  art. 


96 


Tonelli' s  Marriage. 


[July, 


TONELLI'S     MARRIAGE. 


r~pHERE  was  no  richer  man  in  Ven- 
J-  ice  than  Tommaso  Tonelli,  who 
had  enough  on  his  florin  a  day ;  and 
none  younger  than  he,  who  owned  him- 
self forty-seven  years  old.  He  led  the 
cheerfullest  life  in  the  world,  and  was 
quite  a  monster  of  content ;  but,  when 
I  come  to  sum  up  his  pleasures,  I  fear 
that  I  shall  appear  to  the  readers  of  this 
magazine  to  be  celebrating  a  very  in- 
sipid and  monotonous  existence.  I 
doubt  if  even  a  summary  of  his  duties 
could  be  made  attractive  to  the  consci- 
entious imagination  of  hard-working 
people ;  for  Tonelli's  labors  were  not 
killing,  nor,  for  that  matter,  were  those 
of  any  Venetian  that  I  ever  knew.  He 
had  a  stated  employment  in  the  office  of 
the  notary  Cenarotti;  and  he  passed 
there  so  much  of  every  working-day  as 
lies  between  nine  and  five  o'clock,  writ- 
ing upon  deeds  and  conveyances  and  pe- 
titions, and  other  legal  instruments,  for 
the  notary,  who  sat  in  an  adjoining  room, 
secluded  from  nearly  everything  in  this 
world  but  snuff.  He  called  Tonelli  by 
the  sound  of  a  little  bell ;  and,  when  he 
turned  to  take  a  paper  from  his  safe,  he 
seemed  to  be  abstracting  some  secret 
from  long-lapsed  centuries,  which  he 
restored  again,  and  locked  back  among 
the  dead  ages,  when  his  clerk  replaced 
the  document  in  his  hands.  These 
hands  were  very  soft  and  pale,  and  their 
owner  was  a  colorless  old  man,  whose 
silvery  hair  fell  down  a  face  nearly  as 
white  ;  but,  as  he  has  almost  nothing  to 
do  with  the  present  affair,  I  shall  merely 
say  that,  having  been  compromised  in 
the  last  revolution,  he  had  been  obliged 
to  live  ever  since  in  perfect  retirement, 
and  that  he  seemed  to  have  been 
blanched  in  this  social  darkness  as  a 
plant  is  blanched  'by  growth  in  a  cellar. 
His  enemies  said  that  he  was  naturally 
a  timid  man,  but  they  could  not  deny 
that  he  had  seen  things  to  make  the 
brave  afraid,  or  that  he  had  now  every 
reason  from  the  police  to  be  secret  and 


cautious  in  his  life.  He  could  hardly 
be  called  company  for  Tonelli,  who 
must  have  found  the  day  intolerably 
long  but  for  the  visit  which  the  notary's 
pretty  granddaughter  contrived  to  pay 
every  morning  in  the  cheerless  mezzo,. 
She  commonly  appeared  on  some  errand 
from  her  mother,  but  her  chief  business 
seemed  to  be  to  share  with  Tonelli 
the  modest  feast  of  rumor  and  hearsay 
which  he  loved  to  furnish  forth  for  her, 
and  from  which  doubtless  she  carried 
back  some  fragments  of  gossip  to  the 
family  apartments.  Tonelli  called  her, 
with  that  mingled  archness  and  tender- 
ness of  the  Venetians,  his  Paronsina; 
and,  as  he  had  seen  her  grow  up  from 
the  smallest  possible  of  Little  Mistress- 
es, there  was  no  shyness  between  them, 
and  they  were  fully  privileged  to  each 
other's  society  by  her  mother.  When 
she  flitted  away  again,  Tonelli  was  left 
to  a  stillness  broken  only  by  the  soft 
breathing  of  the  old  man  in  the  next 
room,  and  by  the  shrill  discourse  of  his 
own  loquacious  pen,  so  that  he  was 
commonly  glad  enough  when  it  came 
five  o'clock.  At  this  hour  he  put  on  his 
black  coat,  that  shone  with  constant 
use,  and  his  faithful  silk  hat,  worn 
down  to  the  pasteboard  with  assiduous 
brushing,  and  caught  up  a  very  jaunty 
cane  in  his  hand.  Then,  saluting  the 
notary,  he  took  his  way  to  the  little 
restaurant  where  it  was  his  custom 
to  dine,  and  had  his  tripe  soup,  and 
his  risotto,  or  dish  of  fried  liver,  in 
the  austere  silence  imposed  by  the 
presence  of  a  few  poor  Austrian  cap- 
tains and  lieutenants.  It  was  not  that 
the  Italians  feared  to  be  overheard  by 
these  enemies  ;  but  it  was  good  diuios- 
trazione  to  be  silent  before  the  oppress- 
or, and  not  let  him  know  that  they  even 
enjoyed  their  dinners  well  enough,  under 
his  government,  to  chat  sociably  over 
them.  To  tell  the  truth,  this  duty  was 
an  irksome  one  to  Tonelli,  who  liked 
far  better  to  dine,  as  he  sometimes  did, 


1 868.] 


T&nclli's  Marriage. 


97 


at  a  cook-shop,  where  he  met  the  folk 
of  the  people  {gente  del  popolo\  as  he 
called  them  ;  and  where,  though  himself 
a  person  of  civil  condition,  he  discoursed 
freely  with  the  other  guests,  and  ate  of 
their  humble  but  relishing  fare.  He 
was  known  among  them  as  Sior  Tom- 
maso ;  and  they  paid  him  a  homage, 
which  they  enjoyed  equally  with  him, 
as  a  person  not  only  learned  in  the  law, 
but  a  poet  of  gift  enough  to  write  wed- 
ding and  funeral  verses,  and  a  veteran 
who  had  fought  for  the  dead  Republic  of 
'Forty-eight.  They  honored  him  as  a 
most  travelled  gentleman,  who  had  been 
in  the  Tyrol,  and  who  could  have 
spoken  German,  if  he  had  not  despised 
that  tongue  as  the  language  of  the  ugly 
Croats,  like  one  born  to  it.  Who,  for 
example,  spoke  Venetian  more  elegantly 
than  Sior  Tommaso  ?  or  Tuscan,  when 
he  chose  ?  And  yet  he  was  poor,  —  a 
man  of  that  genius  !  Patience  !  When 
Garibaldi  came,  we  should  see  !  The 
facchini  and  gondoliers,  who  had  been 
wagging  their  tongues  all  day  at  the 
church-corners  and  ferries,  were  never 
tired  of  talking  of  this  gifted  friend  of 
theirs,  when,  having  ended  some  im- 
pressive discourse  or  some  dramatic 
story,  he  left  them  with  a  sudden  adieu, 
and  walked  quickly  away  toward  the 
Riva  degli  Schiavoni. 

Here,  whether  he  had  dined  at  the 
cook-shop,  or  at  his  more  genteel  and 
gloomy  restaurant  of  the  Bronze  Hor- 
ses, it  was  his  custom  to  lounge  an  hour 
or  two  over  a  cup  of  coffee,  and  a  Vir- 
ginia cigar,  at  one  of  the  many  caffe, 
and  to  watch  all  the  world  as  it  passed 
to  and  fro  on  the  quay.  Tonelli  was 
gray,  he  did  not  disown  it;  but  he 
always  maintained  that  his  heart  was 
still  young,  and  that  there  was,  more- 
over, a  great  difference  in  persons  as  to 
age,  which  told  in  his  favor.  So  he 
loved  to  sit  there,  and  look  at  the  ladies  ; 
and  he  amused  himself  by  inventing  a 
pet  name  for  every  face  he  saw,  which 
he  used  to  teach  to  certain  friends  of 
his,  when  they  joined  him  over  his 
coffee.  These  friends  were  all  young 
enough  to  be  his  sons,  and  wise  enough 
to  be  his  fathers  ;  but  they  were  always 

VOL.  xxn.  —  xo.  1 29.  7 


glad  to  be  with  him,  for  he  had  so 
cheery  a  wit  and  so  good  a  heart  that 
neither  his  years  nor  his  follies  could 
make  any  one  sadf  His  kind  face 
beamed  with  smiles,  when  Penneliini, 
chief  among  the  youngsters  in  his 
affections,  appeared  on  the  top  of  the 
nearest  bridge,  and  thence  descended 
directly  towards  his  little  table.  Then 
it  was  that  he  drew  out  the  straw  which 
ran  through  the  centre  of  his  long  Vir- 
ginia, and  lighted  the  pleasant  weed, 
and  gave  himself  up  to  the  delight  of 
making  aloud  those  comments  on  the 
ladies  which  he  had  hitherto  stifled  in 
his  breast.  Sometimes  he  would  feign 
himself  too  deeply  taken  with  a  passing 
beauty  to  remain  quiet,  and  would  make 
his  friend  follow  with  him  in  chase  of 
her  to  the  Public  Gardens.  But  he  was 
a  fickle  lover,  and  wanted  presently  to 
get  back  to  his  caffe,  where  at  decent 
intervals  of  days  or  weeks  he  would 
indulge  himself  in  discovering  a  spy  in 
some  harmless  stranger,  who,  in  going 
out,  looked  curiously  at  the  scar  Tonel- 
li's  cheek  had  brought  from  the  battle 
of  Vicenza  in  1848. 

"  Something  of  a  spy,  no  ?  "  he  asked 
at  these  times  of  the  waiter,  who,  flat- 
tered by  the  penetration  of  a  frequenter 
of  his  caffe,  and  the  implication  that  it 
was  thought  seditious  enough  to  be 
watched  by  the  police,  assumed  a  pen- 
sive importance,  and  answered,  "  Some- 
thing of  a  spy,  certainly." 

Upon  this  Tonelli  was  commonly  en- 
couraged to  proceed  :  "  Did  I  ever  tell 
you  how  I  once  sent  one  of  those  ugly 
muzzles  out  of  a  caffe  ?  I  knew  him  as 
soon  as  I  saw  him,  —  I  am  never  mis- 
taken in  a  spy,  —  and  I  went  with  my 
newspaper,  and  sat  down  close  at  his 
side.  Then  I  whispered  to  him  across 
the  sheet,  <  We  are  two.'  '  Eh  ? '  says 
he.  '  It  is  a  very  small  caffe,  and  there 
is  no  need  of  more  than  one/  and  then 
I  stared  at  him,  and  frowned^  He  looks 
at  me  fixedly  a  moment,  then  gathers 
up  his  hat  and  gloves,  and  takes  his 
pestilency  off." 

The  waiter,  who  had  heard  this  story, 
man  and  boy,  a  hundred  times,  made  a 
quite  successful  show  of  enjoying  it,  as 


98 


he  walked  away  with  Tonelli's  fee  of 
half  a  cent  in  his  pocket.  Tonelli  then 
had  left  from  his  day's  salary  enough 
to  pay  for  the  ice  which  he  ate  at  ten 
o'clock,  but  which  he  would  sometimes 
forego,  in  order  to  give  the  money  in 
charity,  though  more  commonly  he  in- 
dulged himself,  and  put  off  the  beggar 
with,  "  Another  time,  my  dear.  I  have 
no  leisure  now  to  discuss  those  matters 
with  thee." 

On  holidays  this  routine  of  Tonelli's 
life  was  varied.  In  the  forenoon  he 
went  to  .mass  at  St.  Mark's,  to  see  the 
beauty  and  fashion  of  the  city ;  and  then 
he  took  a  walk  with  his  four  or  five 
young  friends,  or  went  with  them  to  play 
at  bowls,  or  even  made  an  excursion  to 
the  main-land,  where  they  hired  a  car- 
riage, and  all  those  Venetians  got  into 
it,  like  so  many  seamen,  and  drove  the 
horse  with  as  little  mercy  as  if  he  had 
been  a  sail-boat.  At  seven  o'clock  To- 
nelli dined  with  the  notary,  next  whom 
he  sat  at  table,  and  for  whom  his  quaint 
pleasantries  had  a  zest  that  inspired  the 
Paronsina  and  her  mother  to  shout  them 
into  his  dull  ears,  that  he  might  lose 
none  of  them.  He  laughed  a  kind  of 
faded  laugh  at  them,  and,  rubbing  his 
pale  hands  together,  showed  by  his  act 
that  he  did  not  think  his  best  wine  too 
good  for  his  kindly  guest.  The  signora 
feigned  to  take  the  same  delight  shown 
by  her  father  and  daughter  in  Tonelli's 
drolleries;  but  I  doubt  if  she  had  a 
great  sense  of  his  humor,  or,  indeed, 
cared  anything  for  it  save  as  she  per- 
ceived that  it  gave  pleasure  to  those  she 
loved.  Otherwise,  however,  she  had 
a  sincere  regard  for  him,  for  he  was 
most  useful  and  devoted  to  her  in  her 
quality  of  widowed  mother  ;  and  if  she 
could  not  feel  wit,  she  could  feel  grati- 
tude, which  is  perhaps  the  rarer  gift,  if 
not  the  more  respectable. 

The  Little  Mistress  was  dependent 
upon  him  for  nearly  all  the  pleasures, 
and  for  the  only  excitements,  of  her  life. 
As  a  young  girl  she  was  at  best  a  sort 
of  caged  bird,  who  had  to  be  guarded 
against  the  youth  of  the  other  sex  as 
if  they,  on  their  part,  were  so  many 
marauding  and  ravening  cats.  During 


Tonelli's  Marriage. 


[July, 


most  days  of  the  year  the  Paronsina's 
parrot  had  almost  as  much  freedom  as 
she.     He  could  leave  his  gilded  prison 
when   he   chose,   and    promenade    the 
notary's  house  as  far  down  as  the  mar- 
ble well  in  the  sunless  court,  and  the 
Paronsina  could  do  little  more.     The 
signora  would  as  soon  have  thought  of 
letting   the    parrot  walk    across    their 
campo  alone  as  her  daughter,  though 
the    local  dangers,   either  to   bird   or 
beauty,  could  not  have  been  very  great. 
The   green-grocer  of  that  sequestered 
campo  was  an  old  woman,  the  apoth- 
ecary   was    gray,    and   his    shop    was 
haunted   by  none   but    superannuated 
physicians  ;  the  baker,  the  butcher,  the 
waiters   at  the   caffe,   were  all  profes- 
sionally, and  as  purveyors  to  her  fam- 
ily, out  of  the  question ;  the  sacristan, 
who  sometimes   appeared  at  the  per- 
ruquier's  to  get  a  coal  from  under  the 
curling-tongs  to  kindle  his  censer,  had 
but  one  eye,  which  he  kept  single  to 
the  service   of  the    Church,   and    his 
perquisite  of  candle-drippings  ;   and  I 
hazard  little  in  saying  that  the  Paron- 
sina might  have  danced  a  polka  around 
Campo  San  Giuseppe  without  jeopardy 
so    far    as    concerned    the    handsome 
wood-carver,  for  his  wife  always  sat  in 
the  shop  beside  him.     Nevertheless,  a 
custom   is   not  idly  handed   down   by 
mother  to  daughter  from  *the  dawn  of 
Christianity  to  the  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century ;  and  I  cannot  deny  that 
the  local  perruquier,  though  stricken  in 
years,  was  still  so  far  kept  fresh  by  the 
immortal  youth  of  the  wax  beads  in  his 
window  as  to  have  something  beauish 
about  him  ;  or  that,  just  at  the  moment 
the  Paronsina  chanced  to  go  into  the 
campo  alone,  a   Icone  from   Florian's, 
might  not  have  been  passing  through 
it,  when  he  would  certainly  have  looked 
boldly  at  her,  perhaps  spoken  to  her, 
and  possibly  pounced  at  once  upon  her 
fluttering  heart.     So  by  day  the  Paron- 
sina  rarely  went  out,   and  she   never 
emerged  unattended  from  the  silence 
and  shadow  of  her  grandfather's  house- 
If  I  were  here  telling  a  story  of  the 
Paronsina,  or  indeed  any  story  at  all,, 
I  might  suffer  myself  to  enlarge  some-- 


1 868.] 


Tonclli's  Marriage. 


99 


what  upon  the  daily  order  of  her  se- 
cluded life,  and  show  how  the  seclusion 
of  other  Venetian  girls  was  the  widest 
liberty  as  compared  with  hers ;  but  I 
have  no  right  to  play  with  the  reader's 
patience  in  a  performance  that  can 
promise  no  excitement  of  incident,  no 
charm  of  invention.  Let  him  figure  to 
himself,  if  he  will,  the  ancient  and  half- 
ruined  palace  in  which  the  notary  dwelt, 
with  a  gallery  running  along  one  side  of 
its  inner  court,  the  slender  pillars  sup- 
porting upon  the  corroded  sculpture  of 
their  capitals  a  clinging  vine,  that  dap- 
pled the  floor  with  palpitant  light  and 
shadow  in  the  afternoon  sun.  The  gate, 
whose  exquisite  Saracenic  arch  grew  in- 
to a  carven  flame,  was  surmounted  by  the 
armorial  bearings  of  a  family  that  died 
of  its  sins  against  the  Serenest  Republic 
long  ago ;  the  marble  cistern  which 
stood  in  the  middle  of  the  court  had 
still  a  ducal  rose  upon  either  of  its  four 
sides,  and  little  lions  of  stone  perched 
upon  the  posts  at  the  head  of  the  mar- 
ble stairway  climbing  to  the  gallery,  — 
their  fierce  aspects  worn  smooth  and 
amiable  by  the  contact  of  hands  that 
for  many  ages  had  mouldered  in  tombs. 
Toward  the  canal  the  palace  windows 
had  been  immemorially  bricked  up  for 
some  reason  or  caprice,  and  no  morn- 
ing sunlight,  save  such  as  shone  from 
the  bright  eyes  of  the  Paronsina,  ever 
looked  into  the  dim  halls.  It  was  a  fit 
abode  for  such  a  man  as  the  notary, 
exiled  in  the  heart  of  his  native  city, 
and  it  was  not  unfriendly  in  its  influ- 
ences to  a  quiet  vegetation  like  the 
signora's  ;  but  to  the  Paronsina  it  was 
sad  as  Venice  itself,  where,  in  some 
moods,  I  have  wondered  that  any  sort 
of  youth  could  have  the  courage  to  ex- 
ist. Nevertheless,  the  Paronsina  had 
contrived  to  grow  up  here  a  child  of  the 
gayest  and  archest  spirit,  and  to  lead  a 
life  of  due  content,  till  after  her  return 
home  from  the  comparative  freedom  and 
society  of  Madame  Prateux's  school, 
where  she  spent  three  years  in  learning 
all  polite  accomplishments,  and  whence 
she  came  with  brilliant  hopes,  and  ro- 
mances ready  imagined  for  any^  possi- 
ble exigency  of  the  future.  She  adored 


all  the  modern  Italian  poets,  and  read 
their  verse  with  that  stately  and  rhyth- 
mical fulness  of  voice  which  often 
made  it  sublime  and  always  pleasing. 
She  was  a  relentless  patriot,  an  Ital- 
ianissima  of  the  vividest  green,  white. 
and  red ;  and  she  could  interpret  the 
historical  novels  of  her  countrymen  in 
their  subtilest  application  to  the  mod- 
ern enemies  of  Italy.  But  all  the  Par- 
onsina's  gifts  and  accomplishments 
were  to  poor  purpose,  if  they  brought 
no  young  men  a-wooing  under  her  bal- 
cony ;  and  it  was  to  no  effect  that  her 
fervid  fancy  peopled  the  palace's  empty 
halls  with  stately  and  gallant  company 
out  of  Marco  Visconti,  Nicolo  de'  Lapi, 
Margherita  Pusterla,  and  the  other  ro- 
mances, since  she  could  not  hope  to 
receive  any  practicable  offer  of  mar- 
riage from  the  heroes  thus  assembled. 
Her  grandfather  invited  no  guests  of 
more  substantial  presence  to  his  house. 
In  fact,  the  police  watched  him  too  nar- 
rowly to  permit  him  to  receive  society, 
even  had  he. been  so  minded,  and  for 
kindred  reasons  his  family  paid  few 
visits  in  the  city.  To  leave  Venice, 
except  for  the  autumnal  villeggiatura, 
was  almost  out  of  the  question ;  re- 
peated applications  at  the  Luogotenenza 
won  the  two  ladies  but  a  tardy  and  scan- 
ty grace  ;  and  the  use  of  the  passport 
allowing  them  to  spend  a  few  weeks  in 
Florence  was  attended  with  so  much 
vexation,  in  coming  and  going,  upon 
the  imperial  confines,  —  and  when  they 
returned  home  they  were  subject  to  so 
great  fear  of  perquisition  from  the  police, 
—  that  it  was  after  all  rather  a  mortifica- 
tion than  a  pleasure  that  the  govern- 
ment had  given  them.  The  signora 
received  her  few  acquaintances  once  a 
week  ;  but  the  Paronsina  found  the  old 
ladies  tedious  over  their  cups  of  coffee 
or  tumblers  of  lemonade,  and  declared 
that  her  mamma's  reception-days  were 
a  martyrdom,  actually  a  martyrdom,  to 
her.  She  was  full  of  life  and  the  beau- 
tiful and  tender  longing  of  youth  ;  she 
had  a  warm  heart  and  a  sprightly  wit ; 
but  she  led  an  existence  scarce  livelier 
than  a  ghost's,  and  she  was  so  poor  in 
friends  and  resources  that  she  shud- 


100 


TonellVs  Marriage. 


[July, 


dered  to  think  what  must  become  of 
her  if  Tonelli  should  die.  It  was  not 
possible,  thanks  to  God !  that  he  should 
marry. 

The  signora  herself  seldom  cared  to 
go  out,  for  the  reason  that  it  was  too 
cold  in  winter  and  too  hot  in  summer. 
In  the  one  season  she  clung  all  day  to 
her  wadded  arm-chair,  with  her  scaldino 
in  her  lap  ;  and  in  the  other  season  she 
found  it  a  sufficient  diversion  to  sit  in  the 
great  hall  of  the  palace,  and  be  fanned 
by  the  salt  breeze  that  came  from 
the  Adriatic  through  the  vine-garlanded 
gallery.  But  besides  this  habitual  in- 
clemency of  the  weather,  which  forbade 
out-door  exercise  nearly  the  whole  year, 
it  \vas  a  displeasure  to  walk  in  Venice 
on  account  of  the  stairways  of  the 
bridges  ;  and  the  signora  much  pre- 
ferred to  wait  till  they  went  to  the  coun- 
try in  the  autumn,  when  she  always 
rode  to  take  the  air.  The  exceptions 
to  her  custom  were  formed  by  those  af- 
ter-dinner promenades  which  she  some- 
times made  on  holidays,  in  summer. 
Then  she  put  on  her  richest  black,  and 
the  Paronsina  dressed  herself  in  her 
best,  and  they  both  went  to  walk  on  the 
Molo,  before  the  pillars  of  the  lion  and 
the  saint,  under  the  escort  of  Tonelli. 

It  often  happened  that,  at  the  hour  of 
their  arrival  on  the  Molo,  the  moon  was 
coming  up  over  the  low  bank  of  the 
Lido  in  the  east,  and  all  that  prospect  of 
ship-bordered  quay,  island,  and  lagoon, 
which,  at  its  worst,  is  everything  that 
heart  can  wish,  was  then  at  its  best, 
and  far  beyond  words  to  paint.  On  the 
right  stretched  the  long  Giudecca,  with 
the  domes  and  towers  of  its  Palladian 
church,  and  the  swelling  foliage  of  its 
gardens,  and  its  line  of  warehouses  — 
painted  pink,  as  if  even  Business,  grate- 
ful to  be  tolerated  amid  such  lovely 
scenes,  had  striven  to  adorn  herself. 
In  front  lay  San  Giorgio,  picturesque 
with  its  church,  and  pathetic  with  its 
political  prisons  ;  and,  farther  away  to 
the  east  again,  the  gloomy  mass  of  the 
madhouse  at  San  Servolo,  and  then 
tne  slender  campanili  of  the  Armenian 
Convent  rose*  over  the  gleaming  and 
tremulous  water.  Tonelli  took  in  the 


beauty  o.f  the  scene  with  no  more  con- 
sciousness than  a  bird  ;  but  the  Paron- 
sina had  learnt  from  her  romantic  po- 
ets and  novelists  to  be  complimentary 
to  prospects,  and  her  heart  gurgled  out 
in  rapturous  praises  of  this.  The  un- 
wonted freedom  exhilarated  her  ;  there 
was  intoxication  in  the  encounter  of 
faces  on  the  promenade,  in  the  dazzle 
and  glimmer  of  the  lights,  and  even  in 
the  music  of  the  Austrian  band,  playing 
in  the  Piazza,  as  it  came  purified  to  her 
patriotic  ear  by  the  distance.  There 
were  none  but  Italians  upon  the  Molo, 
and  one  might  walk  there  without  so 
much  as  touching  an  officer  with  the 
hem  of  one's  garment;  and,  a  little 
later,  when  the  band  ceased  playing, 
she  should  go  with  the  other  Italians 
and  possess  the  Piazza  for  one  blessed 
hour.  In  the  mean  time,  the  Paronsina 
had  a  sharp  little  tongue ;  and,  after  she 
had  flattered  the  landscape,  and  had, 
from  her  true  heart,  once  for  all,  saluted 
the  promenaders  as  brothers  and  sisters 
in  Italy,  she  did  not  mind  making  fun 
of  their  peculiarities  of  dress  and  per- 
son. She  was  signally  sarcastic  upon 
such  ladies  as  Tonelli  chanced  to  ad- 
mire, and  often  so  stung  him  with  her 
jests,  that  he  was  glad  when  Penr;ellini 
appeared,  as  he  always  did  exactly  at 
nine  o'clock,  and  joined  the  ladies  in 
their  promenade,  asking  and  answering 
all  those  questions  of  ceremony  which 
form  Venetian  greeting.  He  was  a 
youth  of  the  most  methodical  exactness 
in  his  whole  life,  and  could  no  more 
have  arrived  on  the  Molo  a  moment  be- 
fore or  after  nine  than  the  bronze  giants 
on  the  clock-tower  could  have  hastened 
or  lingered  in  striking  the  hour.  Na- 
ture, which  had  made  him  thus  punc- 
tual and  precise,  gave  him  also  good 
looks,  and  a  most  amiable  kindness  of 
heart.  The  Paronsina  cared  nothing 
at  all  for  him  in  his  quality  of  hand- 
some young  fellow;  but  she  prized 
him  as  an  acquaintance  whom  she 
might  salute,  and  be  saluted  by,  in  a 
city  where  her  grandfathers  isolation 
kept  her  strange  to  nearly  all  the  faces 
she  saw.  Sometimes  her  evenings  on 
the  Molo  wasted  away  without  the  ex- 


i868.] 


Tonelli3 s  Marriage. 


101 


change  of  a  word  save  with  Tonelli,  for 
her  mother  seldom  talked  ;  and  then  it 
was  quite  possible  her  teasing  was 
greater  than  his  patience,  and  that  he 
grew  taciturn  under  her  tongue.  At 
such  times  she  hailed  Pennellini's  ap- 
pearance with  a  double  delight ;  for,  if 
he  never  joined  in  her  attacks  upon 
Tonelli's  favorites,  he  always  enjoyed 
them,  and  politely  applauded  them.  If 
his  friend  reproached  him  for  this  trea- 
son, he  made  him  every  amend  in  an- 
swering, "She  is  jealous,  Tonelli,"  — 
a  wily  compliment  which  had  the  most 
intense  effect  in  coming  from  lips  ordi- 
narily so  sincere  as  his. 

The  signora  was  weary  of  the  prom- 
enade long  before  the  Austrian  music 
ceased  in  the  Piazza,  and  was  very  glad 
when  it  came  time  for  them  to  leave 
the  Molo,  and  go  and  ^sit  down  to  an 
ice  at  the  Caffe  Florian.  This  was  the 
supreme  hour  to  the  Paronsina,  the  one 
heavenly  excess  of  her  restrained  and 
eventless  life.  All  about  her  were  scat- 
tered tranquil  Italian  idlers,  listening  to 
the  music  of  the  strolling  minstrels  who 
had  succeeded  the  military  band;  on 
either  hand  sat  her  friends,  and'she  had 
thus  the  image  of  that  tender  devotion 
without  which  a  young  girl  is  said  not 
to  be  perfectly  happy;  while  the  very 
heart  of  adventure  seemed  to  bound  in 
her  exchange  of  glances  with  a  hand- 
some foreigner  at  a  neighboring  table. 
On  the  other  side  of  the  Piazza  a  few 
officers  still  lingered  at  the  Caffe 
Quadri ;  and  at  the  Specchi  sundry 
groups  of  citizens  in  their  dark  dress 
contrasted  well  with  these  white  uni- 
forms ;  but,  for  the  most  part,  the  moon 
and  gas-jets  shone  upon  the  broad, 
empty  space  of  the  Piazza,  whose  lone- 
liness the  presence  of  a  few  belated 
promenaders  only  served  to  render  con- 
spicuous. As  -the  giants  hammered 
eleven  upon  the  great  bell,  the  Austrian 
sentinel  under  the  Ducal  .Palace  uttered 
a  long,  reverberating  cry  ;  and  soon  af- 
ter a  patrol  of  soldiers  clanked  across 
the  Piazza,  and  passed  with  echoing 
feet  through  the  arcade  into  the  narrow 
and  devious  streets  beyond.  The  young 
girl  found  it  hard  to  rend  herself  from 


the  dreamy  pleasure  of  the  scene,  or 
even  to  turn  from  the  fine  impersonal 
pain  which  the  presence  of  the  Austri- 
ans  in  the  spectacle  inflicted.  All  gave 
an  impression  something  like  that  of  the 
theatre,  with  the  advantage  that  here 
one  was  one's  self  part  of  the  panto- 
mime ;  and  in  those  days,  when  nearly 
everything  but  the  puppet-shows  was 
forbidden  to  patriots,  it  was  altogether 
the  greatest  enjoyment  possible  to  the 
Paronsina.  The  pensive  charm  of  the 
place  imbued  all  the  little  company  so 
deeply  that  they  scarcely  broke  it,  as 
they  loitered  slowly  homeward  through 
the  deserted  Merceria.  When  they 
'  reached  the  Campo  San  Salvatore,  on 
many  a  lovely  summer's  midnight,  their 
footsteps  seemed  to  waken  a  nightin- 
gale whose  cage  hung  from  a  lofty  bal- 
cony there  ;  for  suddenly,  at  their  com- 
ing, the  bird  broke  into  a  wild  and 
thrilling  song,  that  touched  them  all, 
and  suffused  the  tender  heart  of  the 
Paronsina  with  an  inexpressible  pa- 
thos. 

Alas  !  she  had  so  often  returned  thus 
from  the  Piazza,  and  no  stealthy  foot- 
step had  followed  hers  homeward  with 
love's  persistence  and  diffidence  !  She 
was  young,  she  knew,  and  she  thought 
not  quite  dull  or  hideous  ;  but  her  spirit 
was  as  sole  in  that  melancholy  city  as 
if  there  were  no  youth  but  hers  in  the 
world.  And  a  little  later  than  this, 
when  she  had  her  first  affair,  it  did  not 
originate  in  the  Piazza,  nor  at  all  re- 
spond to  her  expectations  in  a  love-af- 
fair. In  fact,  it  was  altogether  a  busi- 
ness affair,  and  was  managed  chiefly 
by  Tonelli,  who,  having  met  a  young 
doctor  laurelled  the  year  before  at 
Padua,  had  heard  him  express  so  pun- 
gent a  curiosity  to  know  what  the 
Paronsina  would  have  to  her  dower, 
that  he  perceived  he  must  be  madly  in 
love  with  her.  So  with  the  consent  of 
the  signora  he  had  arranged  a  corre- 
spondence between  the  young  people  ; 
and  all  went  on  well  at  first,  —  the 
letters  from  both  passing  through  his 
hands.  But  his  office  was  anything  but 
a  sinecure,  for  while  the  Doctor  was  on 
his  part  of  a  cold  temperament,  and 


102 


Tonelli's 


disposed  to  regard  the  affair  merely 
as  a  proper  way  of  providing  for  the 
natural  affections,  the  Paronsina  cared 
nothing  for  him  personally,  and  only 
viewed  him  favorably  as  abstract  matri- 
mony, —  as  the  means  of  escaping  from 
the  bondage  of  her  girlhood  and  the 
sad  seclusion  of  her  life  into  the  world 
outside  her  grandfather's  house.  So 
presently  the  correspondence  fell  al- 
most wholly  upon  Tonelli,  who  worked 
up  to  the  point  of  betrothal  with  an  ex- 
pense of  finesse  and  sentiment  that 
would  have  made  his  fortune  in  diplo- 
macy or  poetry.  What  should  he  say 
now  ?  that  stupid  young  Doctor  would 
cry  in  a  desperation,  when  Tonelli  deli- 
cately reminded  him  that  it  was  time 
to  answer  the  Paronsina's  last  note. 
Say  this,  that,  and  the  other,  Tonelli 
would  answer,  giving  him  the  heads  of 
a  proper  letter,  which  the  Doctor  took 
down  on  square  bits  of  paper,  neatly 
fashioned  for  writing  prescriptions. 
"And  for  God's  sake,  caro  Dottore,  put 
a  little  warmth  into  it ! "  The  poor 
Doctor  would  try,  but  it  must  always 
end  in  Tonelli's  suggesting  and  almost 
dictating  every  sentence  ;  and  then  the 
letter,  being  carried  to  the  Paronsina, 
made  her  laugh  :  "  This  is  very  pretty, 
my  poor  Tonelli,  but  it  was  never  my 
onoratissimo  dottore,  who  thought  of 
these  tender  compliments.  Ah !  that 
allusion  to  my  mouth  and  eyes  could 
only  have  come  from  the  heart  of  a 
great  poet.  It  is  yours,  Tonelli,  don't 
deny  it."  And  Tonelli,  taken  in  his 
weak  point  of  literature,  could  make 
but  a  feeble  pretence  of  disclaiming  the 
child  of  his  fancy,  while  the  Paronsina, 
being  in  this  reckless  humor,  more 
than  once  responded  to  the  Doctor  in 
such  fashion  that  in  the  end  the  inspi- 
ration of  her  altered  and  amended  letter 
was  Tonelli's.  Even  after  the  betroth- 
al, the  love-making  languished,  and  the 
Doctor  was  indecently  patient  of  the 
late  day  fixed  for  the  marriage  by  the 
notary.  In  fact,  the  Doctor  was  very 
busy ;  and,  as  his  practice  grew,  the 
dower  of  the  Paronsina  dwindled  in  his 
fancy,  till  one  day  he  treated  the  whole 
question  of  their  marriage  with  such 


coldness  and  uncertainty  in  his  talk 
with  Tonelli,  that  the  latter  saw  whith- 
er his  thoughts  were  drifting,  and  went 
home  with  an  indignant  heart  to  the 
Paronsina,  who  joyfully  sat  down  and 
wrote  her  first  sincere  letter  to  the 
Doctor,  dismissing  him. 

"  It  is  finished,"  she  said,  "and  I  am 
glad.  After  all,  perhaps  I  don't  want 
to  be  any  freer  than  I  am  ;  and  while 
I  have  you,  Tonelli,  I  don't  want  a 
younger  lover.  Younger  ?  Diana  ! 
You  are  in  the  flower  of  youth,  and  I 
believe  you  will  never  wither.  Did 
that  rogue  of  a  Doctor,  then,  really  give 
}^ou  the  elixir  of  youth  for  writing  him 
those  letters?  Tell  me,  Tonelli,  as  a 
true  friend,  how  long  have  you  been 
forty-seven  ?  Ever  since  your  fiftieth 
birthday  ?  Listen !  I  have  been  more 
afraid  of  losing  you  than  my  sweetest 
Doctor.  I  thought  you  would  be  so 
much  in  love  with  love-making  that  you 
would  go  break-neck  and  court  some 
one  in  earnest  on  your  own  account !  " 

Thus  the  Paronsina  made  a  jest  of 
the  loss  she  had  sustained,  but  it  was 
not  pleasant  to  her,  except  as  it  dis- 
solved a  tie  which  love  had  done  noth- 
ing to  form.  Her  life  seemed  colder 
and  vaguer  after  it,  and  the  hour  very 
far  away  when  the  handsome  officers  of 
her  King  (all  good  Venetians  in  those 
days  called  Victor  Emanuel  "  our 
king")  should  come  to  drive  out  the 
Austrians,  and  marry,  their  victims. 
She  scarcely  enjoyed  the  prodigious 
privilege,  offered  her  at  this  time  in 
consideration  of  her  bereavement,  of 
going  to  the  comedy,  under  Tonelli's 
protection  and  along  with  Pennellini 
and  his  sister,  while  the  poor  signora 
afterwards  had  real  qualms  of  patriotism 
concerning  the  breach  of  public  duty 
involved  in  this  distraction  of  her 
daughter.  She  hoped  that  no  one 
had  recognized  her  at  the  theatre,  oth- 
erwise they  might  have  a  warning  from 
the  Venetian  Committee.  "  Thou  know- 
est,"  she  said  to  the  Paronsina,  "  that 
they  have  even  admonished  the  old 
Conte  Tradonico,  who  loves  the  com- 
edy better  than  his  soul,  and  who  used 
to  go  every  evening?  Thy  aunt  told 


1868.] 


Tonellis  Marriage. 


IO 


me,  and  that  the  old  rogue,  when  peo- 
ple ask  him  why  he  does  n't  go  to  the 
play,  answers,  'My  mistress  won't  let 
me.'  But  fie !  I  am  saying  what  young 
girls  ought  not  to  hear." 

After  the  affair  with  the  Doctor,  I  say, 
life  refused  to  return  exactly  to  its  old 
expression,  and  I  suppose  that,  if  what 
presently  happened  was  ever  to  happen, 
it  could  not  have  occurred  at  a  more 
appropriate  time  for  a  disaster,  or  at  a 
time  when  its  victims  were  less  able 
to  bear  it.  I  do  not  know  whether  I 
have  yet  sufficiently  indicated  the  fact, 
but  the  truth  is,  both  the  Paronsina 
and  her  mother  had  from  long  use 
come  to  regard  Tonelli  as  a  kind  of 
property  of  theirs,  which  had  no  right 
in  any  way  to  alienate  itself.  They 
would  have  felt  an  attempt  of  this  sort 
to  be  not  only  very  absurd,  but  very 
wicked,  in  view  of  their  affection  for 
him  and  dependence  upon  him  ;  and 
while  the  Paronsina  thanked  God  that 
he  would  never  marry,  she  had  a  deep 
conviction  that  he  ought  not  to  marry, 
even  if  he  desired.  It  was  at  the  same 
time  perfectly  natural,  nay,  filial,  that 
she  should  herself  be  ready  to  desert 
this  old  friend,  whom  she  felt  so  strictly 
bound  to  be  faithful  to  her  loneliness. 
As  matters  fell  out,  she  had  herself  pri- 
marily to  blame  for  Tonelli's  loss ;  for, 
in  that  interval  of  disgust  and  ennui 
following  the  Doctor's  dismissal,  she 
had  suffered  him  to  seek  his  own  pleas- 
ure on  holiday  evenings  ;  and  he  had 
thus  wandered  alone  to  the  Piazza,  and 
so,  one  night,  had  seen  a  lady  eating 
an  ice  there,  and  fallen  in  love  without 
more  ado  than  another  man  should 
drink  a  lemonade. 

This  facility  came  of  habit,  for  To- 
nelli had  now  been  falling  in  love  every" 
other  day  for  some  forty  years  ;  and  in 
that  time  had  broken  the  hearts  of  innu- 
merable women  of  all  nations  and  class- 
es. The  prettiest  water-carriers  in  his 
neighborhood  were  in  love  with  him,  as 
their  mothers  had  been  before  them,  and 
ladies  of  noble  condition  were  believed 
to  cherish  passions  for  him.  Especially, 
gay  and  beautiful  foreigners,  as  they  sat 
at  Florian's,  were  taken  with  hopeless 


love  of  him  ;  and  he  could  tell  stories 
of  very  romantic  adventure  in  which 
he  figured  as  hero,  though  nearly  al- 
ways with  moral  effect.  For  example, 
there  was  the  countess  from  the  main- 
land, —  she  merited  the  sad  distinction 
of  being  chief  among  those  who  had 
vainly  loved  him,  if  you  could  believe 
the  poet  who  both  inspired  and  sang 
her  passion.  When  she  took  a  palace 
in  Venice,  he  had  been  summoned  to 
her  on  the  pretended  business  of  a 
secretary  ;  but  when  she  presented  her- 
self with  those  idle  accounts  of  her 
factor  and  tenants  on  the  main-land, 
her  household  expenses  and  her  cor- 
respondence with  her  advocate,  Tonelli 
perceived  at  once  that  it  was  upon  a 
wholly  different  affair  that  she  had 
desired  to  see  him.  She  was  a  rich 
widow  of  forty,  of  a  beauty  preternatu- 
rally  conserved  and  very  great.  "  This 
is  no  place  for  thee,  Tonelli  mine,"  the 
secretary  had  said  to  himself,  after  a 
week  had  passed,  and  he  had  under- 
stood all  the  wickedness  of  that  un- 
happy lady's  intentions  ;  "  thou  art  not 
too  old,  but  thou  art  too  wise,  for  these 
follies,  though  no  saint " ;  and  so  had 
gathered  up  his  personal  effects,  and 
secretly  quitted  the  palace.  But  such 
was  the  countess's  fury  at  his  escape, 
that  she  never  paid  him  his  week's 
salary;  nor  did  she  manifest  the  least 
gratitude  that  Tonelli,  out  of  regard  for 
her  son,  a  very  honest  young  man, 
refused  in  any  way  to  identify  her,  but, 
to  all  except  his  closest  friends,  pre- 
tended that  he  had  passed  those  terrible 
eight  days  on  a  visit  to  the  country  vil- 
lage where  he  was  born.  It  showed 
Pennellini's  ignorance  of  life  that  he 
should  laugh  at  this  history ;  and  I 
prefer  to  treat  it  seriously,  and  to  use 
it  in  explaining  the  precipitation  with 
which  Tonelli's  latest  inamorata  re- 
turned his  love. 

Though,  indeed,  why  should  a  lady 
of  thirty,  and  from  an  obscure  coun- 
try* town,  hesitate  to  be  enamored 
of  any  eligible  suitor  who  presented 
himself  in  Venice  ?  It  is  not  my  duty 
to  enter  upon  a  detail  or  summary  of 
Carlotta's  character  or  condition,  or  to 


104 


Tonelli's  Marriage. 


[July, 


do  more  than  indicate  that,  while  she 
did  not  greatly  excel  in  youth,  good 
looks,  or  worldly  gear,  she  had  yet  a 
little  property,  and  was  of  that  soft 
prettiness  which  is  often  more  effective 
than  downright  beauty.  There  was, 
indeed,  something  very  charming  about 
her ;  and,  if  she  was  a  blonde,  I  have 
no  reason  to  think  she  was  as  fickle  as 
the  Venetian  proverb  paints  that  com- 
plexion of  woman  ;  or  that  she  had  not 
every  quality  which  would  have  excused 
any  one  but  Tonelli  for  thinking  of 
marrying  her. 

After  their  first  mute  interview  in  the 
Piazza,  the  two  lost  no  time  in  mak- 
ing each  other's  acquaintance ;  but 
though  the  affair  was  vigorously  con- 
ducted, no  one  could  say  that  it  was 
not  perfectly  in  order. '  Tonelli  on  the 
following  day,  which  chanced  to  be 
Sunday,  repaired  to  St.  Mark's  at  the 
hour  of  the  fashionable  mass,  where  he 
gazed  steadfastly  at  the  lady  during  her 
orisons,  and  whence,  at  a  discreet  dis- 
tance, he  followed  her  home  to  the 
house  of  the  friends  whom  she  was 
visiting.  Somewhat  to  his  discomfiture 
at  first,  these  proved  to  be  old  acquaint- 
ances of  his ;  and  when  he  came  at 
night  to  walk  up  and  down  under  their 
balconies,  as  bound  in  true  love  to  do, 
they  made  nothing  of  asking  him  in- 
doors, and  presenting  him  to  his  lady. 
But  the  pair  were  not  to  be  entirely 
balked  of  their  romance,  and  they  still 
arranged  stolen  interviews  at  church, 
•where  one  furtively  whispered  word  had 
the  value  of  whole  hours  of  unrestricted 
converse  under  the  roof  of  their  friends. 
They  quite  refused  to  take  advantage 
of  their  anomalously  easy  relations,  be- 
yond inquiry  on  his  part  as  to  the 
amount  of  the  lady's  dower,  and  on  hers 
as  to  the  permanence  of  Tonelli's  em- 
ployment. He  in  due  form  had  Pen- 
nellini  to  his  confidant,  and  Carlotta 
unbosomed  herself  to  her  hostess ;  and 
the  affair  was  thus  conducted  with  such 
secrecy  that  not  more  than  two  thirds 
of  Tonelli's  acquaintance  knew  any- 
thing about  it  when  their  engagement 
was  announced. 

There  were  now  no  circumstances  to 


prevent  their  early  union,  yet  the  hap- 
py conclusion  was  one  to  which  Tonelli 
urged  himself  after  many  secret  and 
bitter  displeasures  of  spirit.  I  am  per- 
suaded that  his  love  for  Carlotta  must 
have  been  most  ardent  and  sincere,  for 
there  was  everything  in  his  history  and 
reason  against  marriage.  He  could  not 
disown  that  he  had  hitherto  led  a  joy- 
ous and  careless  life,  or  that  he  was 
exactly  fitted  for  the  modest  delights, 
the  discreet  variety,  of  his  present  state, 
—  for  his  daily  routine  at  the  notary's, 
his  dinner  at  the  Bronze  Horses  or  the 
cook-shop,  his  hour  at  the  caffe,  his 
walks  and  excursions,  for  his  holiday 
banquet  with  the  Cenarotti,  and  his  for- 
mal promenade  with  the  ladies  of  that 
family  upon  the  Molo.  He  had  a  good 
employment  with  a  salary  that  held  him 
above  want,  and  afforded  him  the  small 
luxuries  already  named ;  and  he  had 
fixed  habits  of  work  and  of  relaxation, 
which  made  both  a  blessing.  He  had 
his  chosen  circle  of  intimate  equals,  who 
regarded  him  for  his  good-heartedness 
and  wit  and  foibles ;  and  his  little  fol- 
lowing of  humble  admirers,  who  looked 
upon  him  as  a  gifted  man  in  disgrace 
with  fortune.  His  friendships  were  as 
old  as  they  were  secure  and  cordial ;  he 
was  established  in  the  kindliness  of  all 
who  knew  him  ;  and  he  was  flattered  by 
the  dependence  of  the  Paronsina  and 
her  mother,  even  when  it  was  trouble- 
some to  him.  He  had  his  past  of  sen- 
timent and  war,  his  present  of  story- 
telling and  romance.  He  was  quite 
independent :  his  sins,  if  he  had  any, 
began  and  ended  in  himself,  for  none 
was  united  to  him  so  closely  as  to  be 
hurt  by  them ;  and  he  was  far  too  im- 
prudent a  man  to  be  taken  for  an  ex- 
ample by  any  one.  He  came  and  went 
as  he  listed,  he  did  this  or  that  without 
question.  With  no  heart  chosen  yet 
from  the  world  of  woman's  love,  he  was 
still  a  young  man,  with  hopes  and  affec- 
tions as  pliable  as  a  boy's.  He  had, 
in  a  word,  that  reputation  of  good-fel- 
low which  in  Venice  gives  a  man  the 
title  of  buon  diavolo,  but  on  which  he 
does  not  anywhere  turn  his  back  with 
impunity,  either  from  his  own  conscious- 


1 868.] 


Tonellis  Marriage. 


105 


ness  or  from  public  opinion.  There 
never  was  such  a  thing  in  the  world  as 
both  good  devil  and  good  husband  ;  and 
even  with  his  betrothal  Tonelli  felt  that 
his  old,  careless,  merry  life  of  the  hour 
ended,  and  that  he  had  tacitly  recog- 
nized a  future  while  he  was  yet  unable 
to  cut  the  past.  If  one  has  for  twenty 
years  made  a  jest  of  women,  however 
amiably  and  insincerely,  one  does  not 
propose  to  marry  a  woman  without 
making  a  jest  of  one's  self.  The  aveng- 
ing remembrance  of  elderly  people 
whose  'late  matrimony  had  furnished 
food  for  Tonelli's  wit  now  rose  up  to 
torment  him,  and  in  his  morbid  fancy 
the  merriment  he  had  caused  was  ech- 
oed back  in  his  own  derision. 

It  shocked  him  to  find  how  quickly 
his  secret  took  wing,  and.it  annoyed 
him  that  all  his  acquaintances  were  so 
prompt  to  felicitate  him.  He  imagined 
a  latent  mockery  in  their  speeches,  and 
he  took  them  with  an  argumentative 
solemnity.  He  reasoned  separately 
with  his  friends;  to  all  who  spoke  to 
him  of  his  marriage  he  presented  elab- 
orate proofs  that  it  was  the  wisest  thing 
he  could  possibly  do,  and  tried  to  give 
the  affair  a  cold  air  of  prudence.  "  You 
see,  I  am  getting  old ;  that  is  to  say,  I 
am  tired  of  this  bachelor  life  in  which  I 
have  no  one  to  take  care  of  me,  if  I  fall 
sick,  and  to  watch  that  the  doctors  do 
not  put  me  to  death.  My  pay  is  very 
little,  but,  with  Carlotta's  dower  well 
invested,,  we  shall  both  together  live 
better  than  either  of  us.  lives  alone. 
She  is  a  careful  woman,  and  will  keep 
me  neat  and  comfortable.  She  is  not 
so  young  as  some  women  I  had  thought 
to  marry,  —  no,  but  so  much  the  better  ; 
nobody  will  think  her  half  so  charming 
as  I  do,  and  at  my  time  of  life  that 
is  a  great  point  gained.  She  is  good, 
and  has  an  admirable  disposition.  She 
is  not  spoiled  by  Venice,  but  as  inno- 
cent as  a  dove.  O,  I  shall  find  myself 
very  well  with  her  !  " 

This  was  the  speech  which  with 
slight  modification  Tonelli  made  over 
and  over  again  to  all  his  friends  but 
Pennellini.  To  him  he  unmasked,  and 
said  boldly  that  at  last  he  was  really  in 


love  ;  and  being  gently  discouraged  in 
what  seemed  his  folly,  and  incredulously 
laughed  at,  he  grew  angry,  and  gave  such 
proofs  of  his  sincerity  that  Pennellini 
was  convinced,  and  owned  to  himself, 
"  This  madman  is  actually  enamored,  — 
enamored  like  a  cat !  Patience  !  What 
will  ever  those  Cenarotti  say  ? " 

In  a  little  while  poor  Tonelli  lost  the 
philosophic  mind  with  which  he  had  at 
first  received  the  congratulations  of  his 
friends,  and,  from  reasoning  with  them, 
fell  to  resenting  their  good  wishes.  Very 
little  things  irritated  him,  and  pleasant- 
ries which  he  had  taken  in  excellent 
part,  time  out  of  mind,  now  raised  his 
anger.  His  barber  had  for  many  years 
been  in  the  habit  of  saying,  as  he  ap- 
plied the  stick  of  fixature  to  Tonelli's 
mustache,  and  gave  it  a  jaunty  upward 
curl,  "Now  we  will  bestow  that  little  dash 
of  youthfulness  ";  and  it  both  amazed  and 
hurt  him  to  have  Tonelli  respond  with 
a  fierce  "  Tsit ! "  and  say  that  this  jest 
was  proper  in  its  antiquity  to  the  times 
of  Romulus  rather  than  our  own  period, 
and  so  go  out  of  the  shop  without  that 
"  Adieu,  old  fellow,"  which  he  had  nev- 
er failed  to  give  in  twenty  years.  "  Cap- 
peri  ! "  said  the  barber,  when  he  emerged 
from  a  profound  revery  into  which  this 
outbreak  had  plunged  him,  and  in  which 
he  had  remained  holding  the  nose  of 
his  next  customer,  and  tweaking  it  to 
and  fro  in  the  violence  of  his  emotions, 
regardless  of  those  mumbled  maledic- 
tions which  the  lather  would  not  per- 
mit the  victim  to  articulate  ;  "  if  Tonelli 
is  so  savage  in  his  betrothal,  we  must 
wait  for  his  marriage  to  tame  him.  I 
am  sorry.  He  was  always  such  a  good 
devil." 

But  if  many  things  annoyed  Tonelli, 
there  were  some  that  deeply  wounded 
him,  and  chiefly  the  fact  that  his  be- 
trothal seemed  to  have  fixed  an  impas- 
sable gulf  of  years  between  him  and  all 
those  young  men  whose  company  he 
loved  so  well.  He  had  really  a  boy's 
heart,  and  he  had  consorted  with  them 
because  he  felt  himself  nearer  their  age 
than  his  own.  Hitherto  they  had  in 
no  wise  found  his  presence  a  restraint. 
They  had  always  laughed,  and  told  their 


106 


Tonelli  s  Marriage. 


[July, 


loves,  and  spoken  their  young  men's 
thoughts,  and  made  their  young  men's 
jokes,  without  fear  or  shame,  before  the 
merry-hearted  sage,  who  never  offered 
good  advice,  if  indeed  he  ever  dreamed 
that  there  was  a  wiser  philosophy  than 
theirs.  It  had  been  as  if  he  were  the 
youngest  among  them ;  but  now,  in 
spite  of  all  that  he  or  they  could  do, 
he  seemed  suddenly  and  irretrievably 
aged.  They  looked  at  him  strangely, 
as  if  for  the  first  time  they  saw  that 
his  mustache  was  gray,  that  his  brow 
was  not  smooth  like  theirs,  that  there 
were  crow's-feet  at  the  corners  of  his 
kindly  eyes.  They  could  not  phrase 
the  vague  feeling  that  haunted  their 
hearts,  or  they  would  have  said  that 
Tonelli,  in  offering  to  marry,  had  volun- 
tarily turned  his  back  upon  his  youth ; 
that  love,  which  would  only  have 
brought  a  richer  bloom  to  their  age, 
had  breathed  away  forever  the  autum- 
nal blossom  of  his. 

Something  of  this  made  itself  felt  in 
Tonelli's  own  consciousness,  whenever 
he  met  them,  and  he  soon  grew  to  avoid 
these  comrades  of  his  youth.  It  was 
therefore  after  a  purely  accidental  en- 
counter with  one  of  them,  and  as  he 
was  passing  into  the  Campo  Sant' 
Angelo,  head  down,  and  supporting 
himself  with  an  inexplicable  sense  of 
infirmity  upon  the  cane  he  was  wont  so 
jauntily  to  flourish,  that  he  heard  him- 
self addressed  with,  "  I  say,  master  ! J' 
He  looked  up,  and  beheld  the  fat  mad- 
man who  patrols  that  campo,  and  who 
has  the  license  of  his  affliction  to  utter 
insolences  to  whomsoever  he  will,  lean- 
ing against  the  door  of  a  tobacconist's 
shop,  with  his  arms  folded,  and  a  lazy, 
mischievous  smile  loitering  down  on  his 
greasy  face.  As  he  caught  Tonelli's  eye 
he  nodded,  "  Eh !  I  have  heard,  master  " ; 
while  the  idlers  of  that  neighborhood, 
who  relished  and  repeated  his  incohe- 
rent pleasantries  like  the  mots  of  some 
great  diner-out,  gathered  near  with  ex- 
pectant grins.  Had  Tonelli  been  al- 
together himself,  as  in  other  days,  he 
would  have  been  far  too  wise  to  an- 
swer, "What  hast  thou  heard,  poor 
animal  ?" 


*'  That  you  are  going  to  take  a  mate 
when  most  birds  think  of  flying  away," 
said  the  madman.  "  Because  it  has 
been  summer  a  long  time  with  you, 
master,  you  think  it  will  never  be  win- 
ter. Look  out :  the  wolf  does  n't  eat 
the  season." 

The  poor  fool  in  these  words  seemed 
to  utter  a  public  voice  of  disapprobation 
and  derision  ;  and  as  the  pitiless  by- 
standers, who  had  many  a  time  laughed 
with  Tonelli,  now  laughed  at  him,  join- 
ing in  the  applause  which  the  madman 
himself  led  off,  the  miserable  good 
devil  walked  away  with  a  shiver,  as  if 
the  weather  had  actually  turned  cold. 
It  was  not  till  he  found  himself  in  Car- 
lotta's  presence  that  the  long  summer 
appeared  to  return  to  him.  Indeed,  in 
her  tenderness  and  his  real  love  for 
Her  he  won  back  all  his  youth  again ; 
and  he  found  it  of  a  truer  and  sweeter 
quality  than  he  had  known  even  when 
his  years  were  few,  while  the  gay  old- 
bachelor  life  he  had  long  led  seemed  to 
him  a  period  of  miserable  loneliness 
and  decrepitude.  Mirrored  in  her  fond 
eyes,  he.  saw  himself  alert  and  hand- 
some ;  and,  since  for  the  time  being 
they  were  to  each  other  all  the  world, 
we  may  be  sure  there  was  nothing  in 
the  world  then  to  vex  or  shame  Tonelli. 
The  promises  of  the  future,  too,  seemed 
not  improbable  of  fulfilment,  for  they 
were  not  extravagant  promises.  These 
people's  castle  in  the  air  was  a  house 
furnished  from  Carlotta's  modest  por- 
tion, and  situated  in  a  quarter  of  the 
city  not  too  far  from  the  Piazza,  and 
convenient  to  a  decent  caffc,  from  which 
they  could  order  a  lemonade  or  a  cup 
of  coffee  for  visitors.  Tonelli's  stipend 
was  to  pay  the  housekeeping,  as  well 
as  the  minute  wage  of  a  servant-girl 
from  the  country ;  and  it  was  believed 
that  they  could  save  enough  from  that, 
and  a  little  of  Carlotta's  money  at  in- 
terest, to  go  sometimes  to  the  Malibran 
theatre  or  the  Marionette,  or  even 
make  an  excursion  to  the  main-land 
upon  a  holiday  ;  but  if  they  could  not, 
it  was  certainly  better  Italianism  to 
stay  at  home  ;  and  at  least  they  could 
always  walk  to  the  Public  Gardens.  At 


1868.] 


Tonclii  's  I\Ia  rriagc. 


107 


one  time,  religious  differences  threat- 
ened to  cloud  this  blissful  vision  of  the 
future  ;  but  it  was  finally  agreed  that 
Carlotta  should  go  to  mass  and  con- 
fession as  often  as  she  liked,  and  should 
not  tease  Tonelli  about  his  soul ;  while 
he,  on  his  part,  was  not  to  speak  ill  of 
the  Pope  except  as  a  temporal  prince, 
or  of  any  of  the  priesthood  except  of 
the  Jesuits  when  in  company,  in  order 
to  show  that  marriage  had  not  made 
him  a  codiuo.  For  the  like  reason,  no 
change  was  to  be  made  in  his  custom 
of  praising  Garibaldi  and  reviling  the 
accursed  Germans  upon  all  safe  occa- 
sions. 

As  Tonelli  had  nothing  in  the  world 
but  his  salary  and  his  slender  ward- 
robe, Carlotta  eagerly  accepted  the  idea 
of  a  loss  of  family  property  during  the 
revolution.  Of  Tonelli's  scar  she  was 
as  proud  as  Tonelli  himself. 

When  she  came  to  speak  of  the 
acquaintance  of  all  those  young  men, 
it  seemed  again  like  a  breath  from  the 
north  to  her  betrothed  ;.  and  he  an- 
swered, with  a  sigh,  that  this  was  an 
affair  that  had  already  finished  itself. 
"  I  have  long  thought  them  too  boyish 
for  me,"  he  said,  "  and  I  shall  keep 
none  of  them  but  Pennellini,  who  is 
even  older  than  I,  —  who,  I  believe,  was 
never  born,  but  created  middle-aged 
out  of  the  dust  of  the  earth,  like  Adam. 
He  is  not  a  good  devil,  but  he  has 
every  good  quality." 

While  he  thus  praised  his  friend, 
Tonelli  was  meditating  a  service  which, 
when  he  asked  it  of  Pennellini,  had 
almost  the  effect  to  destroy  their  an- 
cient amity.  This  was  no  less  than 
the  composition  of  those  wedding- 
verses,  without  which,  printed  and  ex- 
posed to  view  in  all  the  shop-windows, 
no  one  in  Venice  feels  himself  ade- 
quately and  truly  married.  Pennellini 
had  never  willingly  made  a  verse  in  his 
life ;  and  it  was  long  before  he  under- 
stood Tonelli,  when  he  urged  the  deli- 
cate request.  Then  in  vain  he  pro- 
tested, recalcitrated.  It  was  all  an  of- 
fence to  Tonelli's  morbid  soul,  already 
irritated  by  his  friend's  obtuseness, 
and  eager  to  turn  even  the  reluctance 


of  nature  into  insult.  He  took  his 
refusal  for  a  sign  that  he,  too,  deserted 
him  ;  and  must  be  called  back,  after 
bidding  Pennellini  adieu,  to  hear  the 
only  condition  on  which  the  accursed 
sonnet  would  be  furnished,  namely,  that 
it  should  not  be  signed  Pennellini,  but 
An  Affectionate  Friend.  Never  was 
sonnet  cost  poet  so  great  anguish  as 
this:  Pennellini  went  at  it  conscien- 
tiously as  if  it  were  a  problem  in  math- 
ematics ;  he  refreshed  his  prosody,  he 
turned  over  Carrer,  he  toiled  a  whole 
night,  and  in  due  time  appeared  as 
Tonelli's  affectionate  friend  in  all  the 
butchers'  and  bakers'  windows.  But  it 
had  been  too  much  to  ask  of  him,  and 
for  a  while  he  felt  the  shock  of  To- 
nelli's unreason  and  excess  so  much 
that  there  was  a  decided  coolness  be- 
tween them. 

This  important  particular  arranged, 
little  remained  for  Tonelli  to  do  but  to 
come  to  that  open  understanding  with 
the  Paronsina  and  her  mother  which  he 
had  long  dreaded  and  avoided.  He 
could  not  conceal  from  himself  that  his 
marriage  was  a  kind  of  desertion  of  the 
two  dear  friends  so  dependent  upon  his 
singleness,  and  he  considered  the  case 
of  the  Paronsina  with  a  real  remorse. 
If  his  meditated  act  sometimes  appeared 
to  him  a  gross  inconsistency  and  a 
satire  upon  all  his  former  life,  he  had 
still  consoled  himself  with  the  truth  of 
his  passion,  and  had  found  love  its  own 
apology  and  comfort ;  but,  in  its  rela- 
tion to  these  lonely  women,  his  love 
itself  had  no  fairer  aspect  than  that  of 
treason,  and  he  shrank  from  owning  it 
before  them  with  a  sense  of  guilt.  Some 
wild  dreams  of  reconciling  his  future 
with  h;s  past  occasionally  haunted  him  ; 
but,  in  his  saner  moments,  he  discerned 
their  folly.  Carlotta,  he  knew,  was  good 
and  patient,  but  she  was  nevertheless  a 
woman,  and  she  would  never  consent 
that  he  should  be  to  the  Cenarotti  all 
that  he  had  been  ;  these  ladies  also 
were  very  kind  and  reasonable,  but  they 
too  were  women,  and  incapable  of  ac- 
cepting a  less  perfect  devotion.  Indeed, 
was  hot  his  proposed  marriage  too  much 
like  taking  her  only  son  from  the  sig- 


108 


Tonelli9 s  Marriage. 


[July, 


nora  and  giving  the  Paronsina  a  step- 
mother ?  It  was  worse,  and  so  the 
ladies  of  the  notary's  family  viewed  it, 
cherishing  a  resentment  that  grew  with 
Tonelli's  delay  to  deal  frankly  with 
them  ;  while  Carlotte,  on  her  part,  was 
wounded  that  these  old  friends  should 
ignore  his  future  wife  so  utterly.  On 
both  sides  evil  was  stored  up. 

When  Tonelli  would  still  make  a 
show  of  fidelity  to  the  Paronsina  and 
her  mother,  they  accepted  his  awkward 
advances,  the  latter  with  a  cold  visage, 
the  former  with  a  sarcastic  face  and 
tongue.  He  had  managed  particularly 
ill  with  the  Paronsina,  who,  having  no 
romance  of  her  own,  would  possibly 
have  come  to  enjoy  the  autumnal  poet- 
ry of  his  love  if  he  had  permitted.  But 
when  she  first  approached  him  on  the 
subject  of  those  rumors  she  had  heard, 
and  treated  them  with  a  natural  derision, 
as  involving  the  most  absurd  and  pre- 
posterous ideas,  he,  instead  of  suffering 
her  jests,  and  then  turning  her  interest 
to  his  favor,  resented  them,  and  closed 
his  heart  and  its  secret  against  her. 
What  could  she  do,  thereafter,  but 
feign  to  avoid  the  subject,  and  adroitly 
touch  it  with  constant,  invisible  stings  ? 
Alas !  it  did  not  need  that  she  should 
ever  speak  to  Tonelli  with  the  wicked 
intent  she  did  ;  at  this  time  he  would 
ha\*e  taken  ill  whatever  most  innocent 
thing  she  said.  When  friends  are  to 
be  estranged,  they  do  not  require  a 
cause.  They  have  but  to  doubt  one 
another,  and  no  forced  forbearance  or 
kindness  between  them  can  do  aught 
but  confirm  their  alienation.  This  is 
on  the  whole  fortunate,  for  in  this  man- 
ner neither  feels  to  blame  for  the  broken 
friendship,  and  each  can  declare  with 
perfect  truth  that  he  did  all  he  could  to 
maintain  it  Tonelli  said  to  himself, 
"  If  the  Paronsina  had  treated  the  affair 
properly  at  first !  "  and  the  Paronsina 
thought,  "  If  he  had  told  me  frankly 
about  it  to  begin  with  !  "  Both  had  a 
latent  heartache  over  their  trouble,  and 
both  a  sense  of  loss  the  more  bitter 
because  it  was  of  loss  still  unacknowl- 
edged. 

As  the  day  fixed  for  Tonelli's  wed- 


ding drew  near,  the  rumor  of  it  came 
to  the  Cenarotti  from  all  their  acquaint- 
ance. But  when  people  spoke  to  them 
of  it,  as  of  something  they  must  be  fully 
and  particularly  informed  of,  the  sig- 
nora  answered  coldly,  "It  seems  that 
we  have  not  merited  Tonelli's  confi- 
dence " ;  and  the  Paronsina  received 
the  gossip  with  an  air  of  clearly  affect- 
ed surprise,  and  a  "Dawerof"  that  at 
least  discomfited  the  tale-bearers. 

The  consciousness  of  the  unworthy 
part  he  was  acting  toward  these  ladies 
had  come  at  last  to  poison  the  pleasure 
of  Tonelli's  wooing,  even  in  Carlotta's 
presence' ;  yet  I  suppose  he  would  still 
have  let  his  wedding-day  come  and  go, 
and  been  married  beyond  hope  of  atone- 
ment, so  loath  was  he  to  inflict  upon 
himself  and  them  the  pain  of  an  expla- 
nation, if  one  day,  within  a  week  of  that 
time,  the  notary  had  not  bade  his  clerk 
dine  with  him  on  the  morrow.  It  was 
a  holiday,  and  as  Carlotta  was  at  home, 
making  ready  for  the  marriage,  Tonelli 
consented  to  take  his  place  at  the  table 
from  -which  he  had  been  a  long  time 
absent.  But  it  turned  out  such  a  frigid 
and  melancholy  banquet  as  never  was 
known  before.  The  old  notary,  to 
whom  all  things  came  dimly,  finally 
missed  the  accustomed  warmth  of  To- 
nelli's fun,  and  said,  with  a  little  shiver, 
"  Why,  what  ails  you,  Tonelli  ?  You 
are  as  moody  as  a  man  in  love." 

The  notary  had  been  told  several 
times  of  Tonelli's  affair,  but  it  was  his 
characteristic  not  to  remember  any 
gossip  later  than  that  of  'Forty-eight. 

The  Paronsina  burst  into  a  laugh  full 
of  the  cruelty  and  insult  of  a  woman's 
long-smothered  sense  of  injury.  "  Ca- 
ro  nonnp,"  she  screamed  into  her  grand- 
father's dull  ear,  "  he  is  really  in  de- 
spair how  to  support  his  happiness.  He 
is  shy,  even  of  his  old  friends,  —  he 
has  had  so  little  experience.  It  is  the 
first  love  of  a  young  man.  Bisogna 
compatire  la  gioventu,  caro  nonno." 
And  her  tongue  being  finally  loosed, 
the  Paronsina  broke  into  incoherent 
mockeries,  that  hurt  more  from  their 
purpose  than  their  point,  and  gave  no 
one  greater  pain  than  herself. 


1868." 


Tonelli* s  Marriage. 


109 


Tonelli  sat  sad  and  perfectly  mute 
under  the  infliction,  but  he  said  in  his 
heart,  "  I  have  merited  worse." 

At  first  the  signora  remained  quite 
aghast ;  but  when  she  collected  herself, 
she  called  out  peremptorily,  "  Madami- 
•gella,  you  push  the  affair  a  little  beyond. 
Cease  !  " 

The  Paronsina,  having  said  all  she 
desired,  ceased,  panting. 

The  old  notary,  for  whose  slow  sense 
all  but  her  first  words  had  been  too 
quick,  though  all  had  been  spoken  at 
him,  said  dryly,  turning  to  Tonelli,  "  I 
imagine  that  my  deafness  is  not  always 
a  misfortune." 

It  was  by  an  inexplicable,  but  hardly 
less  inevitable,  violence  to  the  inclina- 
tions of  each,  that,  after  this  miserable 
dinner,  the  signora,  the  Paronsina,  and 
Tonelli  should  go  forth  together  for  their 
wonted  promenade  on  the  Molo.  Use, 
which  is  the  second,  is  also  very  often 
the  stronger  nature,  and  so  these  parted 
friends  made  a  last  show  of  union  and 
harmony.  In  nothing  had  their  amity 
been  more  fatally  broken  than  in  this 
careful  homage  to  its  forms  ;  and  now, 
as  they  walked  up  and  down  in  the 
moonlight,  they  were  of  the  saddest 
kind  of  apparitions ;  not  mere  disem- 
bodied spirits,  which,  however,  are  bad 
enough,  but  disanimated  bodies,  which 
are  far  worse,  and  of  which  people  are 
not  more  afraid  only  because  they  go 
about  in  society  so  commonly.  As  on 
many  and  many  another  night  of  sum- 
mers past,  the  moon  came  up  and  stood 
over  the  Lido,  striking  far  across  the 
glittering  lagoon,  and  everywhere  win- 
ning the  flattered  eye  to  the  dark  mass- 
es of  shadow  upon  the  water;  to  the 
trees  of  the  Gardens,  to  the  trees  and 
towers  and  domes  of  the  cloistered  and 
templed  isles.  Scene  of  pensive  and 
incomparable  loveliness !  giving  even 
to  the  stranger,  in  some  faint  and  most 
unequal  fashion,  a  sense  of  the  awful 
meaning  of  exile  to  the  Venetian,  who 
in  all  other  lands  in  the  world  is  doubly 
an  alien,  from  their  unutterable  unlike- 
ness  to  his  sole  and  beautiful  city.  The 
prospect  had  that  pathetic  unreality 
to  the  friends  which  natural  things 


always  assume  to  people  playing  a  part, 
and  I  imagine  that  they  saw  it  not  more 
substantial  than  it  appears  to  the  exile 
in  his  dreams.  In  their  promenade 
they  met  again  and  again  the  unknown, 
wonted  faces,  they  even  encountered 
some  acquaintances,  whom  they  greet- 
ed, and  with  whom  they  chatted  for  a 
while ;  and  when  at  nine  the  bronze 
giants  beat  the  hour  upon  their  bell,  — 
with  as  remote  effect  as  if  they  were 
giants  of  the  times  before  the  flood,  — 
they  were  aware  of  Pennellini,  prompt- 
ly appearing  like  an  exact  and  method- 
ical spectre. 

But  to-night  the  Paronsina,  who  had 
made  the  scene  no  compliments,  did 
not  insist  as  usual  upon  the  ice  at 
Florian's ;  and  Pennellini  took  his  for- 
mal leave  of  the  friends  under  the  arcli 
of  the  Clock  Tower,  and  they  walked 
silently  homeward  through  the  echoing 
Merceria. 

At  the  notary's  gate  Tonelli  would 
have  said  good  night,  but  the  signora 
made  him  enter  with  them,  and  then 
abruptly  left  him  standing  with  the 
Paronsina  in  the  gallery,  while  she  was 
heard  hurrying  away  to  her  own  apart- 
ment. She  reappeared,  extending  to- 
ward Tonelli  both  hands,  upon  which 
glittered  and  glittered  manifold  skeins 
of  the  delicate  chain  of  Venice. 

She  had  a  very  stately  and  impres- 
sive bearing,  as  she  stood  there  in  the 
moonlight,  and  addressed  him  with  a 
collected  voice.  "  Tonelli,"  she  said, 
"  I  think  you  have  treated  your  oldest 
and  best  friends  very  cruelly.  Was  it 
not  enough  that  you  should  take  your- 
self from  us,  but  you  must  also  for- 
bid our  hearts  to  follow  you  even  in 
sympathy  and  good  wishes  ?  I  had 
almost  thought  to  say  adieu  forever 
to-night ;  but,"  she  continued,  with  a 
breaking  utterance,  and  passing  tender- 
ly to  the  familiar  form  of  address,  "  I 
cannot  part  so  with  thee.  Thou  hast 
been  too  like  a  son  to  me,  too  like  a 
brother  to  my  poor  Clarice.  Maybe 
thou  no  longer  lovest  us,  yet  I  think 
thou  wilt  not  disdain  this  gift  for  thy 
wife.  Take  it,  Tonelli,  if  not  for  our 
sake,  perhaps  then  for  the  sake  of  sor- 


110 


A  Four-o  clock. 


[July, 


rows  that  in  times  past  we  have  shared 
together  in  this  unhappy  Venice." 

Here  the  signora  ended  perforce  the 
speech,  which  had  been  long  for  her, 
and  the  Paronsina  burst  into  a  passion 
of  weeping,  —  not  more  at  her  mamma's 
words  than  out  of  self-pity,  and  from 
the  national  sensibility. 

Tonelli  took  the  chain,  and  reverently 
kissed  it  and  the  hands  that  gave  it. 
He  had  a  helpless  sense  of  the  injustice 
the  signora's  words  and  the  Paronsina's 
tears  did  him ;  he  knew  that  they  put 
him  with  feminine  excess  further  in 
the  wrong  than  even  his  own  weak- 
ness had ;  but  he  tried  to  express 
nothing  of  this,  —  it  was  but  part  of  the 
miserable  maze  in  which  his  life  was 
involved.  With  what  courage  he  might 
he  owned  his  error,  but  protested  his 
faithful  friendship,  and  poured  out  all 
his  troubles,  — his  love  for  Carlotta,  his 
regret  for  them,  his  shame  and  remorse 
for  himself.  They  forgave  him^  and 


there  was  everything  in  their  words 
and  will  to  restore  their  old  friendship, 
and  keep  it ;  and  when  the  gate  with  a 
loud  clang  closed  upon  Tonelli,  going 
from  them,  they  all  felt  that  it  had  irre- 
vocably perished. 

I  do  not  say  that  there  was  not  always 
a  decent  and  affectionate  bearing  on 
the  part  of  the  Paronsina  and  her 
mother  towards  Tonelli  and  his  wife  : 
I  acknowledge  that  it  was  but  too 
careful  and  faultless  a  tenderness,  ever 
conscious  of  its  own  fragility.  Far 
more  natural  was  the  satisfaction  they 
took  in  the  delayed  fruitfulness  of  To- 
nelli's  marriage,  and  then  in  the  fact 
that  his  child  was  a  girl,  and  not  a  boy. 
It  was  but  human  that  they  should 
doubt  his  happiness,  and  that  the  signora 
should  always  say,  when  hard  pressed 
with  questions  upon  the  matter  :  "  Yes, 
Tonelli  is  married ;  but  if  it  were  to  do 
again,  I  think  he  would  do  it  to-morrow 
rather  than  to-day." 


A    FOUR-O'CLOCK. 


AH,  happy  day,  refuse  to  go ! 
Hang  in  the  heavens  forever  so ! 
Forever  in  mid-afternoon, 
Ah,  happy  day  of  happy  June  ! 
Pour  out  thy  sunshine  on  the  hill, 
The  piny  wood  with  perfume  fill, 
And  breathe  across  the  singing  sea 
Land-scented  breezes,  that  shall  be 
Sweet  as  the  gardens  that  they  pass, 
Where  children  tumble  in  the  grass ! 

Ah,  happy  day,  refuse  to  go! 
Hang  in  the  heavens  forever  so! 
And  long  not  for  thy  blushing  rest 
In  the  soft  bosom  of  the  west, 
But  bid  gray  evening  get  her  back 
With  all  the  stars  upon  her  track! 
Forget  the  dark,  forget  the  dew, 
The  mystery  of  the  midnight  blue, 
And  only  spread  thy  wide  warm  wings 
While  summer  her  enchantment  flings ! 


1868.] 


The  Great  Erie  Imbroglio. 


Ill 


Ah,  happy  clay,  refuse  to  go! 

Hang  in  the  heavens  forever  so! 

Forever  let  thy  tender  mist 

Lie  like  dissolving  amethyst 

Deep  in  the  distant  dales,  and  shed 

Thy  mellow  glory  overhead! 

Yet  wilt  thou  wander,  —  call  the  thrush, 

And  have  the  wilds  and  waters  hush 

To  hear  his  passion-broken  tune, 

Ah,  happy  day  of  happy  June ! 


THE    GREAT    ERIE    IMBROGLIO. 


THE  ultimate  solution  of  the  Erie 
contest  awaits  the  next  election  of 
the  board  of  directors. 

Until  the  second  Tuesday  of  October 
we  shall  have  plenty  of  surmises  ;  there 
will  possibly  be  very  strange  and  con- 
flicting tactics,  the  purposes  of  the  cap- 
italists who  have  ventured  many  mil- 
lions in  the  fight  will  become  more  and 
more  enigmatical  and  inscrutable  ;  but 
of  the  real  import  of  the  war  the  right- 
fully curious  public  will  have  no  certain 
knowledge  before  the  autumnal  meeting 
of  the  Erie  shareholders. 

In  our  present  review  of  the  recent 
developments  regarding  the  Erie  Rail- 
road, therefore,  no  attempt  will  be  made 
to  forecast  the  future.  Neither  shall 
v;e  essay  to  explain  the  aspect  which 
affairs  have  seemed  to  assume  since 
the  passage  of  the  anti-consolidation 
bill  through  the  New  York  Legislature. 
It  suffices  that  what  has  already  trans- 
pired of  the  immediate  or  habitual  pol- 
icy of  the  principal  actors  in  this  unfin- 
ished drama  is  of  a  nature  so  notably 
representative  .of  railway  management 
and  stock  operations  in  America  as  to 
justify  careful  examination,  whatever 
may  be  the  incongruities  in  sequel. 

The  primary  fact,  the  overshadowing 
fact,  the  fact  which  should  be  kept 
steadfastly  in  the  foreground  in  all  spec- 
ulations upon  the  conflict,  is  that  Cor- 
nelius Vanderbilt  had  resolved  to  secure 
control  of  the  Erie  Railroad,  in  order  to 


largely  enhance  the  cost  of  travel  and 
freightage  throughout  every  rood  of  soil 
in  the  State  whereof  with  one  exception 
he  is  the  wealthiest  citizen.  The  pro- 
gramme was  broad,  and  with  many  ram- 
ifications. If  completed,  it  would  affect 
disastrously,  not  only  the  producing  class 
and  the  national  commerce,  but  the  very 
share-gamblers  who  have  been  most 
clamorous  in  its  favor.  Nevertheless, 
the  scheme  was  defended  so  sagacious- 
ly, so  secretly,  and  with  such  incom- 
parable sophistry,  that  for  many  months 
its  full  measure  was  most  imperfectly 
comprehended,  while  it  encountered  on- 
ly halting  and  spasmodic  opposition. 

The  general  public  first  became  cog- 
nizant of  the  monopoly  programme  dur- 
ing the  initial  session  of  the  recent 
Constitutional  Convention  of  New  York. 
At  that  time  a  strenuous  effort  was 
made  to  estop  finally  and  comprehen- 
sively all  combinations  looking  toward 
exorbitant  charges  in  railroad  trans- 
portation ;  and  the  subsequent  result  of 
the  struggle  was  the  insertion  among 
the  proposed  amendments  of  a  clause 
forbidding  the  Legislature  from  authoriz- 
ing "  the  consolidation  of  railroad  cor- 
porations owning  parallel  or  competing 
lines  of  road."  The  measure  naturally 
provoked  a  very  considerable  discussion, 
and  in  the  course  of  its  advocacy  there 
gradually  transpired  certain  facts  and 
hypotheses  of  which  the  following  are 
the  most  trustworthy. 


112 


TJie  Great  Eric  Imbroglio. 


[July, 


By  a  series  of  rapid  and  enormous 
purchases  of  stock,  the  Vanderbilt  fam- 
ily had  acquired  the  control,  not  only  of 
the  Harlem  and  Hudson  River  Railroads 
connecting  the  commercial  with  the  leg- 
islative capital  of  the  State,  but  also  of 
the  New  York  Central,  which  traverses 
the  inland  counties  from  Albany  to  Buf- 
falo. 

The  capital  stock  of  these  lines  may 
be  thus  tabulated  :  — 

Present  capital,  —  Hudson $  14,000,000 

Bonds  outstanding  Jan.  i,  1868      .     .     .       5,000,000 

Present  capital,  —  Harlem 6,800,000 

Bonds  outstanding  Jan.  i,  1868.     .     .     .      5,000,000 

Present  capital,  —  New  York  Central     .     28,990,000 

Bonds  outstanding  Jan.  i,  1 86S      .     .     .     11,347,000 

Giving  in  sum  total $71,137,000 

The  fourteen  millions  credited  to 
Hudson  in  the  above  summary  repre- 
sents only  ten  and  a  half  millions  of 
actual  money,  and  owes  its  creation  to 
one  of  those  peculiar  financial  expedi- 
ents by  which  shrewd  American  capital- 
ists acquire  the  enviable  title  of  railroad 
kings.  When  the  head  of  the  dynasty 
which  now  dominates  over  the  three 
affined  companies  made  his  first  move 
toward  empire  by  securing  possession 
of  the  river  route,  he  inaugurated  a  sys- 
tem of  economical  management,  special 
traffic  arrangements,  and  vast  construc- 
tion outlays  which  afforded  a  specious 
pretext  for  augmenting  the  capital  stock. 
It  was  therefore  voted  that  the  then  cap- 
ital of  seven  millions  should  be  increased 
to  fourteen  by  an  issue  of  bonus  shares 
at  fifty  per  cent.  Each  stockholder 
paid  in  fifty  dollars,  and  received  scrip, 
the  par  value  of  which  was  one  hundred, 
but  which  sold  in  Wall  Street  at  forty-five 
premium.  This  splendid  manoeuvre,  by 
which  the  company  obtained  three  and 
a  half  millions  for  the  construction 
and  repair  fund,  while  the  stockholders 
doubled  their  money,  presented  features 
too  large  and  captivating  to  lapse  into 
desuetude.  It  was  now  proposed  to  re- 
peat the  same  operation  along  all  the 
lines,  which  at  the  same  time  were  to 
be  consolidated.  The  scrip  dividend  in 
this  second  scheme  was  to  be  333-  per 
cent. 

This  \vould  give  :  — 


Fresh  capital,  —  Hudson $6.000,000 

Harlem 3,200,000 

N.  Y.  Central  ....  9,663,000 

With  previous  sum  total  of  capital  .  .  .71,137,000 
Capital  of  consolidation  ....  £  90,000,000 

But  this  magnificent  project  had  one 
important  drawback.  The  increasing 
business  upon  the  coalescing  roads, 
though  certain,  is  essentially  slow.  It 
was  inconceivable  that  the  ordinary 
earnings  could  allow  of  current  divi- 
dends on  so  vast  an  augmentation  of 
capital.  The  statistics  of  railroads  are 
subject  to  the  tyranny  of  arithmetic. 
If  the  subtrahend  remain  the  same,  and 
the  subtracter  be  multiplied  33^  or  50 
per  cent,  the  remainder  will  be  definite- 
ly decreased.  It  was  evident  that  the 
profitableness  of  the  programme  de- 
pended upon  the  possible  elasticity  of 
the  rates  of  transportation.  At  this 
dilemma  Mr.  Vanderbilt  showed  himself 
in  no  wise  disconcerted.  Dividends 
must  be  provided  for,  and  he  would 
therefore  advance  the  tariff. 

Experts  in  railroads  are  generally 
agreed  that  the  expense  of  freightage  is 
seventy-five  per  cent  on  earnings.  It 
costs  a  trifle  less  to  carry  passengers, 
somewhat  more  to  transport  merchan- 
dise ;  but  the  average  is  about  three 
fourths  of  gross-income,  while  out  of  the 
residual  twenty-five  per  cent  must  pro- 
ceed the  money  for  repairs  and  replace- 
ment, the  interest  on  bonds,  the  contin- 
gent fund,*  and  the  dividends.  Now  it 
would  put  the  company  to  no  greater 
expense  to  carry  a  ton  of  wheat  at  eight 
cents  than  at  four,  while  a  merely  mar- 
ginal increase  on  rates  of  goods  in  bulk 
and  of  passenger  travel  would  secure 
quite  satisfactory  profits  on  the  new 
shares. 

Such  an  enhancement  of  current  rates 

*  Under  the  impress  of  modern  ideas,  this  item 
has  recently  acquired  startling  proportions.  The 
Union  Pacific,  for  instance,  paid  not  less  than 
$500,000  for  services  rendered  to  the  company  by 
lobbyists  at  Washington.  It  recently  cost  the  Mis- 
souri Pacific  Railroad  $192,178  to  secure  the  posses- 
sion of  that  road  by  State  legislation.  The  New 
York  Central  credits  $250,000  to  the  contingent  fund 
for  expenses  at  Albany  in  1866-67.  In  view  of  these 
facts,  it  seems  just  to  modify  the  popular  prejudice 
against  the  Camden  and  Amboy  Railroad,  which  has 
certainly  attained  its  ends  in  Congress  and  at  Tren- 
ton by  a  far  mere  economical  expenditure. 


1 868." 


The  Great  Erie  Imbroglio. 


1 1 


was  therefore  a  necessary  feature  of  the 
scheme.  From  one  aspect  this  pro- 
gramme was  not  only  plausible,  but  fea- 
sible. Against  the  irritation  incident  to 
an  advance  in  charges  stood  the  habit- 
ual lethargy  of  the  citizens  of  the  United 
States,  who  pay  six  cents  as  readily  as 
five  for  a  ride  in  a  street  car,  ten  cents 
as  quickly  as  six  in  omnibuses,  and 
forty  cents  for  expressage  where  they 
once  paid  twenty-five  ;  while  even  if 
popular  excitement  should  so  far  de- 
velop itself  as  to  prompt  Albany  legis- 
lation, there  was  "  influence  "  at  hand 
quite  adequate  to  check  agitation. 

It  was  the  ever-present  danger  of 
competition  which  constituted  the  im- 
portant obstacle  to  the  measure.  As 
long  as  the  Erie  Railroad  occupied  the 
position  of  an  active  rival,  it  was  impos- 
sible either  to  effect  dividends  on  the 
fictitious  stock,  or  even  to  insure  large 
returns  on  the  genuine  capital.  In  pre- 
vious years,  and  on  a  minor  scale,  an 
agreement  had  been  entered  into,  not 
only  with  this  line,  but  also  with  the 
Pennsylvania  Central,  by  which  the  gen- 
eral rates  had  been  kept  up  very  much 
above  a  reasonable  maximum.  Goods 
shipped  from  St.  Louis  to  New  York  at 
the  average  charge  of  $  2.62  were  carried 
from  the  same  point  to  Baltimore  for 
Si. 10.  From  Chicago  there  was  a 
like  invidious  distinction  of  sixty-two 
cents;  from  Cincinnati,  of  eighty  cents. 
On  large  importations  the  difference 
amounted  to  immense  sums,  and  was 
threatening  disaster  to  the  mercantile 
interests  of  the  metropolis. 

Nevertheless,  this  exorbitant  tax  was 
found  utterly  insufficient  for  the  pur- 
poses of  the  prospective  consolidation, 
and  a  more  intimate  alliance  became 
of  paramount  importance.  One  of  two 
courses  was  open  to  the  president  of 
the  New  York  Central.  He  must 
either  secure  the  unlimited  co-oper- 
ation of  the  Erie  direction  by  treaty, 
or  he  must  control  the  road  by  buying 
up  a  majority  of  the  stock.  Each  of 
these  alternatives  presented  peculiar 
difficulties,  and  subsequent  events 
would  seem  to  prove  that  his  mind  has 
been  in  a  state  of  painful  indecision  as 

VOL.  xxn. — NO.  129.  8 


to  which  he  should  finally  adopt.  It  is 
a  historical  fact,  that  he  made  essays  in 
both  these  particulars.  We  have  now 
to  consider  the  special  embarrassments 
of  the  problem. 

The  Erie  is  one  of  the  most  impor- 
tant links  in  the  great  chain  of  interior 
railway  connection  between  the  produ- 
cing and  the  consuming  States.  It  was 
built  under  the  impulsion  of  popular 
excitement,  amid  keen  opposition,  and 
with  the  disadvantage,  at  the  start,  of 
being  enormously  expensive.  Its  broad 
and  massive  line  sweeps  through  a 
country  of  singular  picturesqueness, 
while,  for  every  glory  of  river  gorge  and 
mountain  slope  its  stockholders  have 
had  to  pay  enormously  in  deep  cuts, 
solid  causeways,  and  firm-built  bridges. 
There  is  scarcely  a  road  in  the  country 
which  will  compare  with  it  for  unavoid- 
able and  immense  engineering  ex- 
penses. Moreover,  its  splendid  gauge, 
while  undeniably  the  most  luxurious  to 
travellers,  and  admitting  of  excessive 
freighting,  is  notoriously  costly,  both  in 
construction  and  repairs.  Still  further  : 
the  central  idea  of  the  New  York  and 
Erie,  as  it  was  originally  called,  was  the 
modern  one  of  comparatively  straight 
lines,  and  through  trade,  rather  than  in- 
termediate traffic.  This  principle  un- 
derlay the  construction  of  the  Illinois 
Central,  and  is  seen  in  most  remark- 
able activity  in  the  Pacific  railroads. 
Experience  has  demonstrated  the  wis- 
dom of  the  theory.  It  has  been  seen 
that  population  accepts  the  fresh  chan- 
nels, that  cities  rapidly  spring  up,  that 
manufacture  as  well  as  agriculture  cen- 
tralizes itself  around  the  new  highways, 
and  real  estate  triples  and  quadruples 
its  value  everywhere  within  sound  of 
the  locomotive  whistle.  But  all  these 
immeasurable  changes  come  after  the 
completion  of  the  roads  ;  and,  in  the  in- 
terval, the  rewards  to  invested  capital 
are  in  inverse  ratio  to  desert.  It  has 
happened,  therefore,  that  what  is  aver- 
agely  true  of  the  first  stockholders, 
even  of  such  roads  as  pass  through  a 
comparatively  well-populated  country 
from  the  first,  was  exasperatingly  true  of 
the  original  share-owners  of  Erie.  The 


114 


The  Great  Erie  Imbroglio. 


[July, 


agriculturists  and  land-owners  through- 
out all  the  inland  lower  tier  of  counties 
were  enriched,  New  York  City  was  en- 
riched, but  the  stockholders  were  hope- 
lessly ruined.  Mr.  Greeley  recently 
stated  that  on  five  thousand  dollars, 
which  he  invested  out  of  pure  public 
spirit,  his  loss  was  forty  per  cent,  and 
it  is  believed  that  his  case  was  compar- 
atively a  fortunate  one. 

But  there  is  a  worse  fact  beyond. 
Ordinarily  the  capitalist  who  steps  in 
and  buys  the  shares  which  have  proved 
fatal  to  former  investment  succeeds  in 
bringing  up  the  property  to  a  dividend- 
paying  basis.  In  the  case  of  the  New 
York  and  Erie  this  was  never  accom- 
plished. Had  Dr.  Kane  discovered  an 
orange-grove  on  the  borders  of  the 
Central  Polar  Sea,  he  would  not  have 
been  more  astonished  than  would  have 
been  a  holder  of  the  old  Erie  stock  by 
the  announcement  of  a  six-per-cent 
dividend.  The  road  was  not  merely 
expensive  in  building,  but  it  had  the 
misfortune  of  requiring  large  sums  for 
repair  and  improvement,  while  its  direc- 
tion never  appears  to  have  acted  in  the 
best  interests  of  the  company.  Al- 
though it  had  received  a  State  gift  of 
three  millions,  it  was  always  in  debt, 
from  which  it  extricated  itself  only  by 
fresh  emissions  of  stock  or  bonds,  that 
depressed,  while  flooding,  the  market. 

This  exceptional  phase  finally  result- 
ed in  the  bankruptcy  of  the  company. 
The  mortgages  were  foreclosed,  the 
property  passed  into  the  hands  of  re- 
ceivers, a  reorganization  of  the  corpora- 
tion was  effected,  and  under  a  new 
name,  but  with  much  the  same  manage- 
ment as  before,  the  road  made  a  fresh 
appeal  to  public  confidence.  The  con- 
fidence, however,  never  came.  That 
large  portion  of  the  well-to-do  and  opu- 
lent classes  which  buys  stocks  for  the 
sake  of  dividends  alone  refused  to  in- 
vest in  the  new  scrip.  The  contractors 
were  "  suspect,"  the  employees  and  di- 
rectors were  "suspect"  ;  an  atmosphere 
of  distrust  closed  in  around  the  com- 
pany, as  the  spring  fog  closes  around 
the  Erie  ferry-boats.  This  disastrous 
suspicion  gave  birth  to  one  of  the  most 


curious  phenomena  in  railway  annals. 
The  really  profitable  roads  in  America 
are  seldom  quoted  on  the  stock-list. 
The  old  Camden  and  Amboy  never 
was.  Neither  is  Panama  stock ;  nei- 
ther is  Central  Pacific.  Other  roads, 
like  the  Illinois  Central,  are  only  par- 
tially used  for  speculation  ;  a  very  con- 
siderable portion  of  the  shares  being 
absorbed  for  trust  funds,  or  held  by 
local  capitalists.  But  it  has  resulted  to 
Erie,  by  reason  of  its  unparalleled  ex- 
penditures, its  indubitably  incompetent 
management*  and  the  redistribution 
of  its  shares,  that  the  sum  total  of  its 
stock  in  all  its  vast  volume  has  become 
"street"  property.  Discarded  as  a  le- 
gitimate investment,  it  has  been  taken 
up  by  the  lower  or  lesser  operators  on 
'Change  and  employed  for  "  corners,"  to 
control  elections,  for  all  possible  uses 
but  that  for  which  it  was  originally  cre- 
ated. With  no  deeper  significance  than 
a  ball  in  the  game  of  financial  battle- 
dore and  shuttlecock,  or  counters  in 
rouge  et  noire,  it  has  acquired  a  noto- 
riety the  most  shameful  and  infamous. 
The  hard  practical  argot  of  Wall  Street 
has  a  certain  odd  admixture  of  meta- 
phor in  its  texture.  Like  the  gramma- 
rian of  verse,  it  deals  in  "  longs  "  and 
"shorts."  A  share-bidder  who  rises  or 
falls  with  the  market  is  described  as 
"riding  in  the  saddle."  A  broker  who 
temporarily  yields  to  the  storm  of  ad- 
verse fortune  is  said  to  "  squat."  True 
to  this  rude  tendency  for  figurative  lan- 
guage, the  stock  board  has  shown  its 
contempt  for  the  creature  of  its  shame- 
less uses  by  affixing  to  Erie  the  terse 
Saxon  epithet  which  King  James's 

*  This  vague  phrase  has  a  very  definite  meaning 
among  railway  men,  especially  as  regards  Erie.  It 
includes  quite  a  variety  of  improprieties,  such  as  the 
borrowing  of  money  to  pay  dividends,  the  conceal- 
ment of  debts  from  the  published  reports,  the  Wall 
Street  operations  of  responsible  directors,  secret  ar- 
rangements with  contractors,  &c.,  &c.  It  is  asserted 
that,  although  no  salary  attaches  to  the  position  of 
director,  yet  no  man  of  intellect,  however  poor  on 
assuming  office,  has  ever  left  the  Erie  board  other 
than  rich.  A  former  secretary,  who  had  never  been 
more  than  a  newspaper  reporter  until  accepting  place 
in  the  company,  died  worth  half  a  million.  Any  one 
familiar  with  the  history  of  the  Napoleon  Transporta- 
tion Company,  connected  with  the  Camden  and  Am- 
boy Railroad,  will  comprehend  how  this  opulence  is 
generally  attained. 


1 868.] 


The  Great  Erie  Imbroglio. 


translators  of  the  Apocalypse  attached 
to  the  mystery  of  Babylon.  It  is  "  on 
the  street."  It  is  the  scarlet  woman 
of  the  Stock  Exchange. 

This  statement  of  the  actual  condi- 
tion of  Erie  scrip  will  enable  the  reader 
to  properly  understand  one  feature  of 
the  problem  which  Mr.  Vanderbilt  was 
now  attempting  to  solve.  The  whole 
volume  of  stock  last  October  amounted 
to  about  twenty-five  millions.  If  his 
purpose,  therefore,  were  supreme  con- 
trol, he  would  have  to  purchase  one 
hundred  and  thirty  thousand  shares. 
The  fact  that  this  stock  was  entirely  in 
the  street  might,  or  might  not,  be  in  his 
favor.  It  would  enable  his  agents  to 
work  more  rapidly,  but  it  also  subjected 
his  movements  to  observation,  with  the 
possibility  of  encountering  an  opponent 
who  could  either  hopelessly  embarrass 
the  enterprise,  or  convert  it  into  that 
species  of  victory  which  is  worse  than 
defeat.  It  remained  for  events  to  de- 
termine whether  such  an  obstacle  would 
disclose  itself;  but  the  King  of  Central 
well  knew  that  there  was  but  one  per- 
son throughout  all  Wall  Street  who 
could  contest  supremacy  with  himself. 
This  antagonist  was  Daniel  Drew. 

Three  years  younger  than  Commo- 
dore Vanderbilt,  Mr.  Drew  is  far  his 
senior  in  all  that  pertains  to  the  mys- 
tery of  stocks.  Not  so  wealthy,*  he  is 
essentially  more  subtle ;  and  in  the 
present  issue  he  had  the  immense  ad- 
vantage of  working  from  interior  lines. 
His  connection  with  Erie  has  been  a 
long  one,  and  in  the  devious  transac- 
tions which  this  intercourse  necessi- 
tated, he  had  come  to  comprehend  in 
minutest  detail  every  "point"  on  which 
speculations  in  its  stocks  must  hinge. 
It  is  an  open  question  whether  the  road 
profited  by  the  intimacy.  On  certain 
occasions,  it  is  true,  Mr.  Drew  has 
come  to  the  rescue  of  the  direction,  and 

*  Mr.  Yanderbilt  is  credited  with  property  to  the 
amount  of  forty  millions  ;  Mr.  Drew,  with  fourteen 
millions.  Such  estimates  are,  however,  very  delu- 
sive, as  they  depend  upon  valuations  of  stock,  —  a 
species  of  wealth  the  most  fluctuating  and  uncertain 
in  the  \vorld.  That  they  are  each  very  rich,  we  are 
quite  free  to  admit.  Mr.  Drew,  for  instance,  is  ^.iul 
to  have  raised  ten  millions  in  one  day  without  bor- 
rowing a  dollar. 


propped  up  the  waning  credit  of  Erie 
by  extraordinary  loans,  where  other 
capitalists  declined  the  proffered  terms. 
But  there  was  something  in  the  nature 
of  these  financial  expedients  that  re- 
minds us  of  Sir  Morton  Peto,  while  at 
best  they  operated  like  high  stimulants, 
flushing  the  exchequer  of  the  company 
for  the  moment,  to  be  invariably  suc- 
ceeded by  long  periods  of  still  greater 
abasement. 

In  one  particular  there  is  a  dim  re- 
semblance between  the  monopolizing 
president  and  the  speculative  direc- 
tor. The  former,  partly  from  honorable 
pride,  but  not  less  from  a  personal 
theory  of  stock  finance  as  complete  and 
more  secure  than  the  "systems"  of 
players  at  trente  et  quarante,  habitually 
tides  up  the  shares  of  the  roads  under 
his  control  to  the  maximum  register. 
Every  one  knows  that  Hudson  and 
New  York  Central  rule  higher  than  the 
actual  dividends  would  justify.  Nor 
are  there  wanting  acute  thinkers,  who 
hold  that  this  fictitious  appreciation  is 
quite  as  questionable  a  procedure  as 
any  unwarrantable  depression.  Among 
railroad  men,  however,  this  tendency  of 
Mr.  Vanderbilt  is  regarded  as  an  unus- 
ual and  sterling  virtue ;  and  the  friends 
of  Mr.  Drew  claim  that  to  a  certain 
limit  his  policy  is  the  same.  The  stock 
of  the  old  New  York  and  Erie  corpora- 
tion sold  for  17.  Under  the  new  re- 
gime, Mr.  Drew  has  seldom  permitted 
it  to  fall  below  60.  But  at  this  point 
he  stops.  To  lift  Erie  to  par,  and  to 
float  it  to  120  or  145,  as  Vanderbilt  per- 
sistently does  Hudson,  is  contrary  to 
the  whole  bias  of  his  nature.  A  be- 
liever in  the  doctrine  of  total  depravity, 
and  an  active  participant  in  the  sombre 
transactions  of  both  stock-boards,  the 
speculative  director  has  acquired  that 
melancholy  tinge  of  character  which 
gives  to  all  its  victims  in  Wall  Street 
the  epithet  of  "  bear."  Having  from 
his  official  relations  very  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  intimate  affairs  of  the 
company,  he  is  able  to  predict  with 
something  like  astronomical  accuracy 
the  rise  and  fall  of  its  shares  in  the 
market;  and  his  constitutional  infirmity 


116 


The  Great  Erie  Imbroglio. 


invariably  leads  him  to  employ  this 
information  in  the  depreciating  interest. 
To  sell  "  short,"  to  offer  large  quanti- 
ties of  shares  for  future  delivery  at 
figures  below  ruling  rates,  or,  as  his 
enemies  would  say,  to  pledge  himself 
to  render  the  scrip  of  the  corporation 
of  which  he  is  a  leading  member  less 
valuable  than  the  share-board  estimates 
it,  is  his  familiar  practice.  At  times, 
indeed,  this  leviathan  of  the  Stock 
Exchange  has  appeared  to  reverse  his 
habitual  rule,  and  to  look  more  hope- 
fully upon  the  resources  of  the  great 
broad-gauge  line.  The  public  has  not 
forgotten  the  famous  movement  of 
1866,  when  Mr.  Drew,  as  is  popularly 
believed,  formed  a  "  pool "  with  other 
speculators  who  were  committed  to  the 
rise,  and  lifted  Erie  buoyantly  to  97. 
But  it  would  seem  that  the  preternatu- 
ral distrust  of  the  constitutional  "bear" 
had  in  no  respect  lost  its  empire.  Side 
by  side  with  every  dollar  invested  in 
the  "  corner "  Mr.  Drew  staked  five 
dollars  in  short  sales.  At  last  this 
strange  financial  zigzag  reached  its 
crisis.  The  original  "  pool  "  threat- 
ened to  transmute  itself  into  a  specu- 
lating Frankenstein.  The  despondent 
director,  startled  at  his  own  creation, 
turned  to  the  Erie  Company  for  an 
instrument  to  check  this  untoward  ap- 
preciation of  its  shares.  Some  little 
while  previous  he  had  lent  the  corpo- 
ration three  millions  and  a  half,  for 
which  there  had  been  deposited  in  his 
hands,  as  collateral  security,  converti- 
ble bonds  and  unissued  stock  at  sixty 
cents  on  the  dollar.  Mr.  Drew  is  well 
known  as  a  powerful  lay  preacher,  and 
his  appeals  during  periods  of  great 
religious  interest  have  been  helpful  to 
the  conversion  of  many  souls,  but  his 
capacity  for  converting  bonds  is  not 
less  remarkable.  Quietly  but  quickly  he 
"  placed  "  all  these  collaterals,  amount- 
ing to  fifty-eight  thousand  shares,  upon 
the  market.*  A  chill  struck  the  mer- 

*  These  shares  he  bought  of  the  company  for 
$  3,480.000.  He  sold  them  in  the  street  when  the 
stock  stood  at  97.  Supposing  that  the  average  price 
realized  was  80,  this  would  give  Mr.  Drew  a  clear 
profit  of  £  1,160,000  ;  but,  as  he  bought  up  the  stock 
again  when  it  reached  50,  he  made  very  much  more. 


curial  Exchange.  Stock  dropped  to  40. 
The  operators  for  the  rise  were  reck- 
lessly ruined,  while  Mr.  Drew,  who  had 
already  made  more  than  half  a  mil- 
lion, now  ventured  on  long  purchases, 
brought  the  shares  rapidly  up  to  a 
healthy  figure,  and  then  retired  from 
the  field  much  elated,  much  execrated, 
and  so  powerful  that  he  could  over- 
look and  stand  superior  to  his  defam- 
ers. 

One  feature  in  this  magnificent  trans- 
action, as  will  presently  be  shown,  links 
it  with  the  recent  imbroglio.  The  de- 
tails, however,  are  not  without  their 
immediate  lesson.  It  cannot  fail  to  be 
apparent  to  the  reader,  that  a  gentleman 
whose  fatal  facility  for  rapid  and  per- 
fectly safe  stock  operations  was  quite 
as  remunerative  as  the  far-sighted 
methods  of  Mr.  Vanderbilt,  would  not 
readily  abandon  his  own  system,  and 
accept  the  other,  unless  prompted 
thereto  by  very  potent  reasons. 

Had  the  president  of  the  New  York 
Central  any  such  reasons  at  command  ? 

The  answer  to  this  question,  so  far  as 
relates  to  known  facts,  must  be  in  the 
negative.  Whatever  arguments  may 
have  been  at  Mr.  Vanderbilt's  service, 
there  is  no  satisfactory  evidence  that 
he  employed  them  with  any  success  for 
the  purposes  of  coalition.  Indeed,  the 
first  positive  revelation  of  his  intentions 
which  has  reached  the  public  was  that 
of  a  combination  in  which  Mr.  Drew 
was  wholly  ignored. 

Between  New  England  and  the  dis- 
tant West  there  has  long  existed  a 
subtle  bond,  the  offspring  of  a  senti- 
ment and  an  aspiration,  both  of  them  le- 
gitimate, but  as  yet  attended  by  scarce- 
ly commensurate  fruit.  That  wonderful 
homogeneity  of  Eastern  States,  which 
through  its  superfluous  population  has 
created  the  W'est,  and  given  tone  to 
Occidental  communities,  where  its  pres- 
ence, gauged  by  statistics,  is  but  dimly 

So  also  in  the  case  of  the  five  million  convertible 
bonds,  the  sale  of  which  led  to  the  late  widespread 
litigation.  Mr.  Drew  bought  them  at  72^,  and  sold 
the  stock  largely  at  So ;  thus  clearing  a  fair  fortune 
from  the  company,  apart  from  what  he  made  on  the 
street.  To  transactions  like  these  Erie  owes  much 
of  its  ill  repute. 


1 868.] 


The  Great  Erie  Imbroglio. 


117 


recognizable,  justly  regards  direct  and 
rapid  commercial  intercourse  with  the 
vast  agricultural  resources  of  the  Lakes, 
the  Mississippi,  and  the  Pacific,  as  of 
predominant  importance.  From  the  as- 
pect of  social  science,  it  would  seem 
proper  that  what  are  pre-eminently  the 
producing  and  consuming  States  should 
be  brought  into  intimate  relations.  Nor 
are  there  wanting  many  cogent  political 
reasons  for  such  a  restoration  of  the 
national  balance  as  shall  keep  the  Mid- 
dle States  more  in  equipoise,  and  check 
the  tendencies  of  commerce  to  enor- 
mous concentration  in  and  around  New 
York. 

Heretofore,  however,  peculiar  obsta- 
cles have  stood  in  the  way  of  this  con- 
summation. Although  Boston  is  some 
twenty-four  hours  nearer  Europe  than 
is  New  York,  yet  the  latter  city  has 
been  enabled  by  the  convergence  of 
existing  lines  to  hold  the  grain  market 
tightly  under  control.  The  problem  of 
New  England  capital  at  the  present 
time  is  to  obviate  this  disadvantage  ; 
and  among  the  enterprises  looking  to 
this  end  is  the  Boston,  Hartford,  -and 
Erie  Railroad.  The  plans  of  its  pro- 
jectors include  the  tapping  of  the  Erie 
line  at  Newburg.  This  would  open  to 
the  manufacturing  centres  of  the  East 
not  only  the  coal  section,  but  all  that 
trade  which  now  finds  its  way  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Hudson  by  the  short 
route  from  Buffalo. 

At  the  head  of  this  railway  move- 
ment was  Mr.  John  S.  Eldridge,  a 
gentleman  comparatively  new  in  Wall 
Street,  bound  to  no  clique,  clean  in 
record,  and  believed  to  entertain  the 
somewhat  obsolete  idea  that  railroads 
are  created  by  legislatures  solely  for 
public  advantage  and  shareholders' 
profit.  As  the  route  which  he  favored 
was  to  connect  with  Erie,  and  as  it  was 
desirable  that  a  close  alliance  between 
the  two  roads  should  be  effected,  not 
only  for  the  purpose  qf  securing  an 
indorsement  of  four  millions  bonds  of 
the  Boston  company,  but  for  making 
the  parent  line  a  solvent  and  dividend- 
paying  property,  he  determined  to  so 
shape  the  approaching  election  as  to 


sweep   the   great   speculative   director 
from  the  board. 

When,  therefore,  the  stock-jobbing 
owners  of  Erie  began  to  prepare  their 
proxies,  they  found  among  the  solici- 
tors for  their  vote  a  monopolizing 
railroad  king,  a  great  share-gambler, 
and  a  representative  New-Englander, 
whose  principles  were  supposed  to  be 
those  of  his  own  section,  —  a  section 
signally  exempt  from  corruption  in  its 
corporations,  and  as  hostile  to  monop- 
oly in  transportation  as  it  is  to  monop- 
oly in  labor. 

The  sanctity  of  truth  compels  us  to 
relieve  "  the  street  "  from  any  imputa- 
tion of  giving  its  suffrages  to  either  of 
the  three  rivals  out  of  any  romantic 
impulse  of  admiration  for  their  individ- 
ual qualities.  A  majority  of  the  stock- 
holders parted  with  their  stock  outright ; 
a  large  majority  sold  their  proxies,  and 
retained  their  shares.* 

As  the  momentous  second  Tuesday 
drew  near,  the  chief  contestants  began 
to  count  their  votes  and  make  their 
estimate  of  chances.  It  was  found  that 
neither  of  the  three  had  a  majority. 
Although  the  Eastern  party  held  the 
larger  vote  ;  yet  a  combination  of  any 
two  would  ruin  the  third.  That  such 
a  dilemma  should  have  arisen  would 
seem  to  prove  that  Mr.  Vanderbilt 
chose  to  make  his  first  attempt  in  the 
vast  consolidating  programme  by  secur- 
ing the  co-operation  of  the  Erie  direc- 
tion, rather  than  by  controlling  it.  In 
that  event,  however,  if  our  estimate  of 
Mr.  Eldridge's  position  be  correct,  he 
had  no  alternative  but  to  ally  himself 
with  Mr.  Drew.  Unfortunately,  at  this 
juncture,  the  speculative  director  was 
not  in  the  Commodore's  good  graces. 
The  latter  for  many  weeks  had  been 
"  long  "  in  an  immense  stock  operation  ; 

*  It  is  court  testimony  that  Vanderbilt's  agents 
advertised  for  proxies,  and  that  Drew's  agent  sold 
out  to  the  Central  party.  There  is  probably  no 
greater  impropriety  in  selling  one's  vote  at  a  rail- 
road corporation  election  than  at  the  polls  of  that 
larger  corporation  which  is  called  the  State.  Both 
acts  are  the  offspring  of  indifference,  and  in  the 
case  of  Erie  there  is  this  excuse,  that  no  one  can 
hold  it  without  being  brought  temporarily  into  some- 
what the  same  moral  condition  which  is  normal  to 
Swiss  body-guards  and  Free  I/ancers. 


118 


The  Great  Erie  Imbroglio. 


[July, 


ancj  —  So  far  from  aiding  him  in  the 
emergency  —  the  hero  of  the  1866  cor- 
ner had  developed  a  powerful  "bear" 
interest,  producing  a  stringent  money 
market,  and  effectually  checkmating  Mr. 
Vanderbilt  at  the  moment  of  apparent 
success.  Upon  this,  the  king  of  the 
affined  roads  sacrificed  his  policy  to 
his  pique,  and  threw  the  weight  of  his 
influence  on  the  side  of  Mr.  Eldridge. 

The  hour  of  election  arrived.  The 
president  of  the  Boston  line  was  in- 
stalled president  of  Erie.  Mr.  Drew 
was  dropped  from  the  board,  and  for  a 
little  space  financial  New  York  throbbed 
with  novel  excitement.  Scarcely,  how- 
ever, had  the  street  recovered  from  its 
surprise,  when  there  succeeded  a  second 
shock,  even  more  electric  than  the  first. 
It  was  currently  rumored  that  one  of 
the  newly  elected  directors  had  resigned, 
that  Mr.  Drew  was  reinstated  in  office, 
and  that  he  held  the  keys  of  the  Erie 
treasury !  The  report  proved  true. 
At  the  last  moment  Mr.  Vanderbilt 
had  repented  of  his  rashness,  and  had 
patched  up  an  awkward  compromise, 
of  which  this  was  the  singular  sequel. 
The  outside  public  was  scandalized, 
but  it  was  also  mystified.  Queer  whis- 
pers circulated.  Metaphor-loving  bro- 
kers spoke  in  parables,  and  quoted 
Scripture.  It  was  gravely  hinted  that 
"the  path  which  leads  to  destruction  " 
had  a  point  of  resemblance  with  Erie, 
—  they  were  both  broad  gauge  !  The 
market  partially  collapsed.  A  multi- 
tude of  small  speculators  and  outsiders 
went  "  short "  in  the  unpopular  scrip. 
The  stock  fell  sharply.  When  at  length 
Erie  was  fairly  shivering  in  the  lower 
register,  the  curtain  which  had  veiled 
the  secrets  of  the  great  railroad  intrigue 
was  suddenly  pushed  aside,  and  the 
jubilant  shorts  found  themselves  con- 
fronted by  a  gigantic  bull  interest,  with 
nine  million  in  the  pool,  and  Messrs. 
Drew  and  Vanderbilt  at  the  head.  The 
stock  rose  with  a  bound.  In  January 
the  pool  was  closed,  and  the  easy  vic- 
tors divided  their  immense  spoils. 

Flushed  with  his  late  triumph,  the 
president  of  the  New  York  Central 
now  converged  his  entire  strength  to 


effect  that  coalition  of  the  railroads 
on  which  the  -splendid  monopoly  pro- 
gramme necessarily  depended.  A  meet- 
ing of  the  rival  managers  was  called. 
Holding  the  main  scheme  guardedly  in 
the  background,  Mr.  Vanderbilt  pro- 
posed that  the  agreement  for  a  uniform 
tariff  of  freight  and  passengers  from  the 
metropolis  to  the  West  should  be  con- 
tinued for  the  next  five  years.  Assent 
to  this  proposition  once-  gained,  the 
rest  would  be  easy.  The  measure 
provoked  great  discussion.  A  scrutiny 
of  details  revealed  the  fact  that  the 
profits  of  the  alliance  were  wholly  on 
the  side  of  the  Central  clique.  Never- 
theless, that  party  refused  to  make  any 
modifications.  The  conference  conse- 
quently broke  up  in  confusion,  and  the 
railroad  king,  foiled  in  his  attempt  at 
coalition,  boldly  accepted  the  alterna- 
tive, and,  sending  out  orders  in  all  di- 
rections, began  the  prodigious  task  of 
purchasing  the  control  of  Erie. 

Meanwhile  Mr.  Eldridge  and  his  asso- 
ciates were  quietly  completing  a  com- 
prehensive plan  for  extending  the 
connections  of  the  broad-gauge  road, 
and  at  the  same  time  effecting  the 
entire  renovation  of  its  present  rolling 
stock  and  road-bed.  By  the  Ohio  and 
Mississippi,  Erie  already  reaches  St. 
Louis  ;  by  the  Atlantic  and  Great  West- 
ern, it  commands  Cincinnati.  It  was 
now  proposed  that  a  new  road  should 
be  built  from  Akron,  on  the  line  of  the 
latter  route,  to  Toledo.  Here  a  junction 
would  be  formed  with  the  Michigan 
Southern,  and  thence,  by  means  of  an 
extra  rail,  would  be  established  unbroken 
communication  between  New  England, 
New  York,  and  the  great  interior  grain 
State  whose  central  depot  is  Chicago. 

The  scheme  was  gigantic,  but  it  re- 
quired corresponding  expenditure.  The 
treasury  was  worse  than  empty  ;  it  was 
a  million  dollars  in  arrears.  Yet  there 
seemed  no  possible  expedient  for  secur- 
ing the  necessary  funds  for  this  large 
and  imperative  improvement  save  by 
adding  to  that  indebtedness.  The 
company  therefore  voted  an  issue  of 
ten  million  of  bonds,  and  as  usual  Mr. 
Drew  stood  ready  to  accept  the  loan. 


1 868.] 


The  Great  Erie  Imbroglio. 


119 


The  contract  was  signed,  and  the  con- 
vertibles transferred.  True  to  his  con- 
stitutional infirmity,  the  speculative  di- 
rector was  just  then  very  short.  Mr. 
Vanderbilt,  now  pledged  to  the  success 
of  his  programme,  had  bought  up  some 
fourteen  millions  of  stock.  The  shares 
were  wellnigh  swept  from  the  market. 
Yet,  with  Erie  rising  day  by  day,  the 
agents  of  Mr.  Drew  still  continued  to 
sell  large  quantities  for  future  delivery 
on  current  rates,  at  both  open  and  close 
board.  The  claquers  of  the  Central 
clique  were  dumb  at  the  recklessness 
with  which  their  antagonist  was  plun- 
ging into  inevitable  destruction.  This 
amazement,  however,  was  but  momen- 
tary. Placing  on  the  street  in  one  day 
the  fifty  thousand  shares  into  which  the 
fresh  issue  of  bonds  had  been  convert- 
ed, Mr.  Drew  forced  down  Erie  from 
82_|  to  65,  and  at  the  same  time  sent 
his  loan  to  the  company  as  a  "  special 
deposit  "  to  the  banks. 

Our  narrowing  space  precludes  any 
adequate  portrayal  of  the  immense  ex- 
plosion which  followed  upon  this  unique 
invention  of  Mr.  Drew  for  "  covering 
his  shorts "  ;  nor  indeed  is  there  a 
necessity  for  details.  Its  history  is 
fresh  in  all  memories.  Probably  from 
no  single  cause  were  the  financial  cir- 
cles of  New  York  ever  so  deeply  and 
so  continuously  affected  as  by  this 
strategetic  movement  of  the  treasurer 
of  the  Erie.  Never  did  the  legal  fra- 
ternity reap  a  more  abundant  harvest, 
nor  the  State  legislators  indulge  in 
brighter  dreams.  Strangely  enough, 
the  feature  which  appealed  most  con- 
spicuously to  public  attention  was  that 
of  least  practical  importance.  The  liti- 
gation in  the  courts  was  a  meaningless 
farce.  All  those  injunctions,  attach- 
ments, precepts,  and  affidavits  which 
hurtled  through  the  air,  and  served  as 
texts  for  innumerable  and  ill-considered 
editorials,  were  employed  by  both  par- 
ties, not  because  a  great  wrong  had 
been  committed,  but  simply  as  legiti- 
mate instruments  for  attaining  a  definite 
result.  The  suit  of  Work  against  Drew, 
regarding  the  issue  of  stocks  in  the 
1866  corner,  had  been  overhanging  the 


latter  for  months,  and  could  have  been 
compromised  at  any  time  if  the  defend- 
ant had  chosen  to  accept  the  proffered 
terms.  The  injunction  restraining  the 
directors  from  the  ten-million  issue 
came  from  Mr.  Vanderbilt,  not  because 
he  believed  the  act  was  criminal  or 
illegal,  but  in  order  to  gain  time  for 
freeing  himself  from  his  terrible  entan- 
glement. 

Indeed,  the  position  in  which  the 
great  railroad  king  found  himself  when 
the  Erie  "  bear  "  closed  upon  him  was 
one  of  the  most  peculiar  and  dangerous 
on  record.  It  was  not  merely  his  Cen- 
tral programme  that  was  at  hazard,  he 
was  on  the  edge  of  what  might  have 
been  the  most  startling  financial  failure 
of  the  century.  Resolved  to  continue 
his  hold  of  Erie,  he  had  absorbed  the 
new  emission,  and  was  carrying  shares 
to  the  extent  of  twenty  millions  of 
dollars.  With  the  depression  of  the 
market,  his  bankers  compelled  him  to 
put  up  his  margins,  while  his  antago- 
nist not  only  continued  the  short  move- 
ment, but,  by  calling  in  loans  and  form- 
ing extensive  alliances  with  the  capital  of 
outside  cities,  he  produced  a  heretofore 
unparalleled  stringency  of  the  money 
market.  If  all  the  facts  of  this  great 
passage  of  arms  between  these  gigantic 
moneyed  powers  could  be  accurately 
related,  it  would  afford  one  of  the  most 
thrilling  chapters  of  financial  history. 

At  present,  however,  they  are  veiled 
behind  a  cloud  of  conflicting  surmises, 
and  we  only  know  that,  after  a  few  days 
of  breathless  anxiety,  Mr.  Vanderbilt 
emerged  from  his  embarrassments  tri- 
umphant and  serene.  Popular  rumor 
affirms  that  he  accomplished  this  by 
mortgaging  his  whole  railroad  and  real- 
estate  property  for  a  temporary  loan  of 
thirty  million  dollars,  which  he  effected 
with  a  famous  foreign  house.  What- 
ever credence  this  may  receive,  no 
smaller  sum  could  have  enabled  him  to 
wrestle  on  equal  terms  with  his  acute 
and  remorseless  antagonist. 

But  although  extricated  from  the  toils 
of  the  bear  interest,  the  success  of  the 
monopoly  scheme  was  still  matter  of 
grave  doubt.  The  Erie  directors,  driven 


120 


The  Great  Erie  Imbroglio. 


[July, 


into  exile,  plucked  victory  from  defeat, 
and  secured  from  the  courts  and  legisla- 
ture of  New  Jersey  what  New  York  de- 
nied them.  At  Albany  the  sons-in-law 
of  Vanderbilt,  together  with  the  attor- 
ney of  the  New  York  Central,  success- 
fully manipulated  the  Assembly.  The 
financial  and  editorial  columns  of  the 
metropolitan  press,  with  a  single  excep- 
tion, labored  morning  and  night  in  the 
consolidation  interest.  Nevertheless, 
the  outlook  remained  dubious.  Mr. 
Vanderbilt  maintained  his  control  of 
Erie  stock,  but  a  large  proportion  was 
rn  the  new  issue.  This  issue  was 
entered  on  the  stock  ledger  in  the  name 
©f  the  original  buyers,  while  the  trans- 
fer clerk  was  in  Jersey  City ;  and  it  was 
given  out  that  the  books  were  closed, 
and  would  continue  so  until  the  October 
election.  In  that  event  the  proxies  on 
the  ten  millions  would  be  unavailable 
for  monopoly  purposes.  Moreover,  the 
fearful  calamity  of  April  15,  at  Carr's 
Rock,  so  far  from  inhering  to  the  disad- 
vantage of  the  Erie  directors,  afforded 
a  remarkable  justification  for  their  con- 
duct, especially  as  Mr.  Eldridge  now 
came  forward,  and  pledged  himself 
that  the  moneys  accruing  from  the  loan 
would  be  sacredly  devoted  to  the  reno- 
vation of  the  entire  line.  Still  further, 
the  affined  roads  were  suffering  griev- 
ously from  more  thaa  one  cause.  Mr. 
Drew's  boats  had  commenced  to  run 
from  the  State  capital  to  New  York 
for  a  dollar.  Fares  were  reduced  on 
Erie  thirty-three  and  even  sixty  per 
cent.  The  merchants  and  grain-grow- 
ers along  the  Central  complained  of  the 
outrageous  rules  of  the  company,  which 
required  that  no  freight  should  be 
taken  for  any  point  with  which  their 
route  connected,  unless  shipped  all  the 
way  by  rail ;  and  these  complaints  be- 
gan to  have  their  effect  at  Albany. 

What  fresh  tactics  Mr.  Vanderbilt 
may  have  determined  upon  at  this  crisis 
are  known  only  to  himself.  The  theory 
that  he  gave  up  the  contest  in  despair 
is  absurd.  His  resources  are  too  great, 
his  ambition  too  exalted,  for  so  crude  a 
supposition.  Yet  so  far  as  the  external 
indications,  he  would  certainly  seem  to 


have  retired  from  the  field.  The  Erie 
bill  was  hurried  through  the  legislature 
with  railroad  speed.  The  extension  of 
lines  East  and  West  was  authorized, 
the  issue  of  bonds  indorsed,  and  the 
consolidation  scheme  rendered  legally 
impossible.  In  New  York  City  the 
courts  still  kept  up  their  highly  scenical 
display  ;  but  the  exiles  of  Erie  returned 
from  their  sojourn  in  Jersey  City,  and 
reposed  secure  in  their  luxurious  apart- 
ments at  the  palatial  West  Street  offices. 
It  is  proper  to  add  that  this  singular 
phenomenon  is  ascribed  in  financial 
circles  to  a  mysterious  compromise,  in 
which  Drew  and  Vanderbilt  are  parties, 
and  of  which  the  great  public  is  to  be 
the  unconscious  and  submissive  victim. 
For  the  sake  of  the  national  honor 
and  the  interests  of  commerce,  we  may 
well  hope  that  these  floating  rumors  are 
destitute  of  foundation.  The  scheme 
which  the  King  of  the  Central  has  at 
least  momentarily  abandoned  would 
have  proved  disastrous,  not  only  to 
New  York,  but  to  New  England  as  well. 
The  theory  of  "  watered "  stock,  on 
which  it  was  based,  is  fatal  to  the  pros- 
perity, not  only  of  the  mercantile  and 
producing  class,  but  to  the  very  inter- 
ests it  apparently  favors.*  Compelled 
to  vast  gains,  in  order  to  meet  its  exces- 
sive obligations,  monopoly  would  find 
itself  at  the  hour  of  supremest  success 
on  the  verge  of  appalling  disaster. 
The  impatient  and  long-suffering  West 
would  seek  new  outlets  by  Canada,  by 
Baltimore,  by  the  Mississippi.  No 
expedient  could  ward  off  this  sure  re- 
sult, save  spasmodic  competition,  en- 
tailing the  loss  in  a  week  of  the  profits 
of  a  year.  Nor  could  "privilege,"  the 

*  All  fictitious  stock  is  a  tax  on  the  community, 
and  in  the  end,  by  encouraging  lavish  expenditure, 
large  salaries,  careless  contracts,  it  impoverishes  the 
corporations  themselves.  At  present,  however,  the 
tendency  in  America  is  strongly  in  this  direction. 
It  is  estimated  that  the  "  watered  "  stock  of  the 
railroads  in  the  United  States  is  from  thirty  to  forty 
per  cent  above  actual  cost,  and  that  the  whole 
volume  of  fictitious  railway  paper  can  be  little  less 
than  four  hundred  millions.  The  loss  entailed  by  this 
vicious  system  on  all  industries  is  enormous  ;  nor 
can  we  safely  look  for  the  day  of  cheap  transporta- 
tion before  legislation  shall  have  peremptorily  for- 
bidden any  increase  of  capital  beyond  the  narrowest 
limits  of  economical  management. 


1 868.] 


The  Great  Erie  Imbroglio. 


121 


creature  of  the  State,  maintain  its  fleet- 
ing existence,  except  by  such  corruption 
in  the  legislative  chambers  as  must 
inevitably  arouse  that  giant  sense  of 
public  virtue,  now  strangely  drugged, 
but  liable  at  any  moment  to  spring  into 
terrible  activity. 

But  while  "  fictions  "are  fraught  with 
equal  ruin  to  commerce  and  to  corpora- 
tions, share-gambling  is  demoralizing 
our  financial  centres,  and  eating  like  a 
canker  into  the  very  heart  of  the  nation- 
al life.  Capital  draws  back  discouraged 
from  new  and  necessary  investments. 
Under  present  conditions,  it  cannot  be 
otherwise.  When  Mr.  Drew  and  his 
imitators  on  other  railroad  boards  sell 
"  short,"  they  destroy  the  value  of  the 
stock  they  are  sworn  to  protect,  at  least 
to  the  extent  of  their  profits  in  specula- 
tion. Practically  it  is  the  same  as  if 
President  Lincoln  had  wagered  his  offi- 
cial salary  on  the  success  of  the  late 
Confederacy,  or  Napoleon  had  bet  on 
Wellington  before  the  Battle  of  Water- 
loo. The  state  of  Erie  under  the  Drew 
system  is  a  sufficient  illustration  of  the 
injury  which  results.  What  that  state 
is  has  already  partially  been  set  forth  ; 
but  there  is  further  testimony  upon  this 
subject  which  should  by  no  means  be 
omitted.  In  the  very  heat  of  the  in- 
junction period  a  pamphlet  was  issued 
on  the  Erie  side,  which  contained  the 
subjoined  paragraph  :  — 

"  The  object  of  a  borrower  should  be  to 
have  his  loan  so  made  that  he  will  never  be 
called  upon  to  pay  either  principal  or  inter- 
est. The  Erie  Company  appear  to  have 
perfectly  accomplished  this  end.  Its  shares, 
like  British  consols,  are  never  due.  As  for 
interest  in  the  shape  of  dividends,  this  is 
what  no  one  expected  or  expects.  The 
holders  of  Erie  stock  do  not  want  a  divi- 
dend. Were  one  regularly  paid,  the  stock 
would  in  a  great  measure  lose  its  value  as 
an  instrument  of  speculation.  All  parties, 
therefore,  are,  or  ought  to  be,  perfectly  sat- 
isfied. As  for  the  Erie,  it  is  certainly  a 
wonderful  stroke  of  good  fortune  to  be  able 
to  raise  $  7,250,000  for  construction  and  re- 
pairs upon  its  road,  without  incurring  an  obli- 
gation for  a  dollar.  Not  to  avail  themselves 
of  such  an  opportunity  would  show  that  the 
directors  were  utterly  unfit  for  their  place." 


This  significant  statement,  written 
apparently  with  no  consciousness  of  its 
splendid  irony,  indicates  very  remark- 
ably the  estimate  of  Wall  Street  upon 
the  uses  of  railroad  property,  nor  can 
there  be  any  stability  in  stock,  until  the 
strong  arm  of  legislation  intervenes, to 
arrest  the  demoralization  of  the  hour. 
It  must  be  made  as  criminal  for  a  di- 
rector to  deal  in  railroad  scrip  as  it  is 
to  utter  counterfeit  money  or  to  appro- 
priate trust  funds.  In  fact,  the  national 
or  State  governments  ought  to  enter  at 
once  upon  the  construction  of  a  rail- 
road code  which  should  be  universal 
in  its  working  and  sweeping  in  its  re- 
forms. 

If  the  developments  of  the  Erie  con- 
test anywise  conduce  to  such  an  auspi- 
cious result,  we  may  well  rest  satisfied. 
That  contest,  so  inadequately  described 
in  these  pages,  conveys  its  own  les- 
sons. What  new  shape  it  will  assume 
it  is  not  for  us  to  forecast.  But  we  may 
safely  affirm  that  neither  in  the  ascend- 
ency of  Mr.  Drew  nor  of  the  Vanderbilt 
clique  is  any  health  possible.  What 
Erie  needs  is  revolution.  From  Bos- 
ton, from  Chicago,  from  New  York, 
there  should  be  a  simultaneous  con- 
junction of  capital,  powerful  enough  to 
wrest  the  line  from  share-gamblers  and 
monopolists,  and  thoroughly  determined 
to  take  the  solution  of  the  difficulty 
firmly  in  hand.  We  know  not  what 
forces  are  at  the  control  of  the  actual 
president,  but  it  seems  to  us  that  no 
man  more  adequately  comprehends  the 
situation,  or  more  ardently  desires  to 
infuse  fresh  blood  into  the  management 
of  the  road, — to  repair,  replace,  reor- 
ganize, and  reform  ;  to  make  the  stock 
a  stable  property,  clean  from  the  defile- 
ment of  the  street,  certain  of  dividends, 
safe  for  fiduciary  investment.  If  he 
should  accomplish  this,  by  whatsoever 
device,  he  will  acquire  a  national  repu- 
tation as  enviable  as  it  would  be  justly 
earned.  We  may  overestimate  Mr. 
Eklridge's  intentions  or  his  powers ; 
but  there  can  be  no  question  of  his 
opportunity.  It  is  for  the  future  to 
disclose  how  far  that  opportunity  is 
converted  into  achievement. 


122 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[July, 


REVIEWS   AND    LITERARY   NOTICES. 


The  Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants  under 
Domestication.  By  CHARLES  DARWIN. 
2  vols.  8vo.  London :  John  Murray. 
1868. 

WHEN  Mr.  Darwin  published  his  "  Ori- 
gin of  Species,"  he  stated  it  to  be  only  the 
forerunner  of  a  more  complete  work  on  the 
subject,  in  which  he  hoped  to  present  the 
evidence  on  which  his  conclusions  were 
founded  with  a  much  greater  fulness  of  de- 
tail. The  volumes  now  before  us  are,  if  we 
neglect  a  couple  of  essays  on  special  sub- 
jects, the  first  instalment  of  the  promised 
work.  They  are  to  be  followed  in  due  time 
by  another  treatise,  on  the  variation  of  ani- 
mals and  plants  in  the  wild  state,  and  then  by 
a  review  of  the  objections  which  have  been 
made  to  the  theory  of  Natural  Selection. 

The  present  work  contains  a  great  mass 
of  facts  drawn  from  a  very  wide  range  of 
original  observation  and  a  most  extensive 
search  through  the  material  published  by 
others.  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  his 
generalizations,  no  one  can  deny  to  the  au- 
thor the  merit  of  painstaking  and  conscien- 
tious industry  in  the  accumulation  of  facts. 
The  first  volume  is  devoted  to  a  history  of 
our  most  important  domestic  animals  and 
plants.  The  pigeon  is  the  most  thoroughly 
treated,  and  is,  as  might  have  been  expect- 
ed, in  a  measure,  the  cheval  de  bataille  of  the 
author.  In  Volume  II.  all  those  general 
questions  of  reproduction  which  arise  as 
soon  as  we  begin  to  consider  the  subject  of 
inheritance  and  the  nature  of  species,  such 
as  reversion  to  ancestral  forms,  the  effects 
of  crossing,  the  causes  of  sterility  and  those 
of  variation,  are  discussed,  —  with  a  spirit 
of  candor,  indeed,  which  no  one  can  fail  to 
be  impressed  by,  and  with  which  all  who 
are  acquainted  with  Mr.  Darwin's  previous 
works  are  familiar,  but  at  the  same  time 
with  a  degree  of  subtilty  and  ingenuity  in 
places  which  we  think  may  to  many  read- 
ers prove  a  poor  substitute  for  that  fulness 
and  plainness  in  the  evidence  that  alone 
can  inspire  perfect  confidence. 

Nevertheless,  precipitate  as  some  of  the 
conclusions  may  seem  to  a  cold  judgment, 
some  weight  is  to  be  allowed  here,  as  every- 
where else,  to  the  instinctive  guesses  of 
men  of  genius  and  large  practical  experi- 
ence ;  and  the  book  remains  so  important, 


both  with  regard  to  the  general  question  of 
species  transformation  and  the  special  ones 
of  inheritance,  that  no  one  interested  in  the 
science  of  life  can  afford  to  leave  it  un- 
read. It  would  be  impossible,  in  the  short 
space  at  our  command,  to  convey  the  "gist" 
of  it  to  the  reader,  nor  would  an  abstract 
be  of  much  value,  apart  from  the  special 
evidence.  Still,  as  every  one  has  heard  more 
or  less  about  "  Darwinism,"  and  many  peo- 
ple have  a  most  inaccurate  notion  of  the 
contents  of  that  mysterious  expression,  we 
will  subjoin  a  brief  account  of  a  single  fac- 
tor in  Mr.  Darwin's  reasoning.  It  will  give 
to  the  unlearned  reader  a  slight  idea  of  the 
kind  of  speculation  indicated  by  the  word, 
and  at  the  same  time  give  us  an  opportu- 
nity to  notice  a  very  curious  fact  or  law 
which  Mr.  Darwin  thinks  he  has  discov- 
ered. 

The  factor  we  mean  is  that  called  atavism, 
or  reversion.  It  is  a  matter  of  common 
knowledge  that  children  frequently  repro- 
duce traits  of  their  grandparents  or  still 
more  remote  ancestors,  which  nevertheless 
did  not  exist  in  their  own  immediate  pro- 
genitors. Darwin  gives  a  striking  instance 
of  a  pointer  bitch,  who  gave  birth  to  some 
pups  marked  with  blue.  The  color  is  so 
unusual  in  purely  bred  pointers,  that  it  was 
considered  the  pups  must  be  of  base  de- 
scent on  the  father's  side,  and  all  but  one 
were  drowned.  Two  years  afterwards  it 
was  accidentally  discovered  that  this  one  was 
the  great-great-grandson  of  an  animal  which 
had  been  marked  in  a  similar  manner, — 
so  that  the  peculiarity  had  remained  latent 
during  three  generations  before  appearing 
in  this  litter. 

The  most  evident  examples  of  this  "  law  " 
are  to  be  found  in  the  reversions  of  crosses 
to  one  or  the  other  original  parent  form. 
"  In  a  litter  of  Essex  pigs,  two  young  ones 
appeared  which  were  the  image  of  the 
Berkshire  boar  that  had  been  used  twenty- 
eight  years  before  in  giving  size  and  consti- 
tution to  the  breed " ;  and  similar  facts 
may  almost  be  called  notorious,  but  only 
more  so  in  these  particular  cases,  Mr.  Dar- 
win thinks,  because  the  characteristic  marks 
are  too  obvious  to  escape  notice,  which  they 
must  often  do  when  the  ancestors  belong  to 
the  same  breed.  Now,  to  this  fact  or  prin- 
ciple of  reversion,  the  reality  of  which  must 


1 868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


123 


needs  be  acknowledged,  Mr.  Darwin  refers 
a  number  of  apparently  capricious  variations 
in  our  domestic  races,  and  then  proceeds  to 
draw  many  weighty  conclusions,  first  as  to 
the  origin  of  the  races  in  question,  and  then 
as  to  the  extent  of  possible  deviation  from 
their  origin  of  races  in  general.  In  pigeons, 
for  instance,  in  all  the  fancy  breeds,  with 
their  so  greatly  differing  structure,  there 
occasionally  appear  birds  of  a  blue  color, 
with  certain  other  marks,  of  which  the 
most  important  are  double  black  bars  on 
the  wings  and  white  or  blue  croups.  "  When- 
ever a  blue  bird  appears  in  any  race,  the 
wings  almost  invariably  show  the  black 
bars."  Now  the  wild  rock-pigeon,  Colum- 
ba  livia,  from  whom,  on  many  other  accounts, 
Mr.  Darwin  thinks  our  domestic  races  are 
probably  descended,  is  characterized  by 
just  these  peculiarities  of  coloring  ;  and  the 
coincidence  of  their  appearance  in  all  these 
separate  tame  kinds  has  its  apparent  strange- 
ness much  diminished  if  we  are  enabled  to 
look  at  it  as  in  each  case  owing  to  reversion 
to  the  original  stock,  or  rock-pigeon.  In 
our  various  domestic  breeds  of  fowl,  again, 
which  widely  differ  in  most  respects,  we 
meet  "  black-breasted-red  "  birds  as  occa- 
sional exceptions.  Only  in  a  very  few  pure 
breeds  has  Mr.  Darwin  not  heard  of  their 
occurrence.  Now,  as  this  coloring  is  pecu- 
liar to  the  Callus  bankiva  of  Northern  India, 
a  bird  which  is  almost  certainly  the  parent 
of  the  game-fowl,  and  which,  for  many  rea- 
sons, Darwin  thinks  likely  to  have  been  the 
parent  form  of  all  our  other  kinds,  its  spo- 
radic appearance  in  our  poultry-yards  re- 
ceives a  plausible  explanation.  In  the 
horse,  to  take  a  third  example,  individuals 
are  everywhere  to  be  met,  but  more  fre- 
quently in  some  strains  than  in  others, 
striped  in  a  more  or  less  complicated  way 
down  the  back,  over  the  shoulder,  and 
across  the  legs.  These  marks  are  frequent- 
ly associated  with  a  dun  color.  The  ass, 
as  is  well  known,  presents  some  of  them 
normally,  others  occasionally,  and  so  do 
the  other  wild  members  of  the  family.  Af- 
ter the  two  former  cases,  the  conclusion  in 
this  case  will  be  obvious  to  the  reader. 
Hut  the  imperfection  of  the  reasoning 
throughout  will  also  not  escape  him,  — 
first,  that  these  marks  are  facts  of  reversion 
to  the  wild  form  X,  because  many  other 
circumstances  make  it  likely  that  X  is  the 
common  ancestor ;  and  then  X  is  all  the 
more  certainly  the  common  ancestor,  be- 
cause these  marks,  being  facts  of  reversion, 
are  all  found  in  X.  It  is  a  sort  of  circular 


reasoning,  and  at  best  helps  to  accumulate 
a  probability. 

Now  for  the  curious  law  we  spoke  of  as 
having  been  discovered  by  Darwin.  It  is 
that  in  crossing  itself  we  have  a  direct 
cause  of  reversion  to  characters  long  ex- 
tinct ;  or,  in  other  words,  when  two  individ- 
uals which  have  diverged  from  a  common 
parent  stock  are  mated,  there  is  a  tendency 
in  their  offspring  to  take  on  features  of  that 
stock  that  may  have  been  absent  for  great 
numbers  of  generations.  Some  crosses 
made  in  France  first  called  his  attention  to 
the  subject  in  pigeons,  and  he  then  made 
experiments  himself,  both  with  them  and 
with  fowls.  Many  of  the  pigeons  which  he 
crossed  belonged  to  breeds  in  which  blue 
birds  are  of  excessive  rarity,  and  many  of 
these  crosses  were  most  complicated ;  yet 
there  appeared  among  the  mongrels  a  sur- 
prising number  colored  (in  many  instances 
almost  exactly)  like  the  Columba  livia. 
With  fowls  of  long-established  breeds,  in 
which,  when  kept  pure,  there  is  no  record 
of  a  red  feather  ever  having  appeared,  he 
continually  got  mongrels  exhibiting  a  ten- 
dency to  approach  the  plumage  of  the 
Gallus  bankiva.  One  of  these  was  a  gor- 
geous cock,  whose  plumage  was  almost 
identical  with  that  of  the  wild  bird.  Its 
father  being  a  Black  Spanish,  and  its  moth- 
er a  Silk  fowl,  both  of  which  are  notorious 
for  breeding  true,  and  the  race  of  the 
mother  being  in  many  respects  so  peculiar 
as  to  have  been  considered  by  some  authors 
a  separate  species.  The  crossing  of  the 
several  equine  species,  in  its  turn  "  tends  in 
a  marked  manner  to  cause  stripes  to  appear 
on  various  parts  of  the  body,  especially  on 
the  legs."  This,  of  course,  "can  be  only 
hypothetically  attributed  to  reversion.  But 
most  persons,  after  considering  "  the  case  of 
pigeons,  fowls,  &c.,  "  will  come  to  the  same 
conclusion  in  respect  to  the  horse  genus, 
and  admit  that  the  progenitor  of  the  group 
was  striped  on  the  legs,  shoulders,  face, 
and  probably  over  the  whole  body,  like  a 
zebra." 

The  interest  and  importance  of  these 
facts,  if  Mr.  Darwin's  interpretation  of 
them  be  correct,  is  evident.  But  unfor- 
tunately the  interpretation  has  just  so 
much  of  the  hypothetical  element  in  it,  in 
all  the  cases,  that  a  sceptic  who  should 
refuse  to  accept  it  would  have  no  trouble 
in  presenting  a  legal  and  logical  justifica- 
tion for  his  conduct.  The  author  adds  to 
them  some  other  facts  concerning  instincts 
which  are  curious.  Thus,  the  aboriginal 


124 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[July, 


species  of  hen  must,  of  course,  have  been  a 
good  incubator ;  but  so  many  cases  are  on 
record  of  the  crossed  offspring  from  two 
races  of  non-sitting  hens  "  becoming  first- 
rate  incubators,  that  the  reappearance  of 
this  instinct  must  be  attributed  to  reversion 
from  crossing."  One  author  says :  "  A 
cross  between  two  non  -  sitting  varieties 
almost  invariably  produces  a  mongrel  that 
becomes  broody,  and  sits  with  remarkable 
steadiness."  Again  :  "  The  parents  of  all 
our  domesticated  animals  were,  of  course, 
originally  wild  in  disposition  ;  and  when  a 
domesticated  species  is  crossed  with  a 
distinct  species,  whether  this  be  a  domes- 
ticated or  only  a  tamed  animal,  the  hybrids 
are  often  wild  to  such  a  degree  that  the 
fact  is  intelligible  only  on  the  principle  that 
the  cross  has  caused  a  partial  return  to  the 
primitive  disposition."  He  gives  instances 
from  cattle,  swine,  and  various  birds,  and 
finally  asks  whether  the  degraded  and  sav- 
age disposition  which  many  travellers  have 
reported  to  exist  in  certain  half-caste  races 
of  men  may  not  have  a  similar  cause:  :.d.me- 
ly,  reversion  to  the  condition  of  a  savage 
ancestor. 

From  all  this  the  nature  of  the  reasoning 
on  which  Darwin's  hypothesis  is  based  will 
be  seen.  It  is  nowhere  of  strictly  logical 
cogency,  for  the  conclusions  drawn  from 
certain  premises  are  assumed  in  their  turn 
as  true,  in  order  to  make  those  same  pre- 
mises seem  more  probable.  Perhaps  from 
the  very  nature  of  the  case,  and  the  enor- 
mous spaces  of  time  in  question,  it  may 
never  be  any  more  possible  to  give  a  phys- 
ically strict  proof  of  it,  complete  in  every 
link,  than  it  now  is  to  give  a  logically  bind- 
ing disproof  of  it.  This  may  or  may  not  be 
a  misfortune  ;  at  any  rate  it  removes  the 
matter  from  the  jurisdiction  of  critics  who 
are  not  zoologists,  but  mere  reasoners  (and 
who  have  already  written  nonsense  enough 
about  it),  and  leaves  it  to  the  learned  tact 
of  experts,  which  alone  is  able  to  weigh 
delicate  facts  against  each  other,  and  to 
decide  how  many  possibilities  make  a  prob- 
ability, and  how  many  small  probabilities 
make  an  almost  certainty.  Among  those 
experts  Mr.  Darwin's  own  name  stands 
high,  and  this  work  will  probably  not  lower 
its  place.  The  "general  reader,"  anxious 
only  for  results,  will  find  it  much  drier  and 
less  interesting  than  the  "  Origin  of  Spe- 
cies " ;  but  the  student,  as  we  have  already 
said,  must  read  it,  and,  whichever  way  his 
conclusions  may  tend,  cannot  fail  to  learn  a 
•rreat  deal  from  it. 


Italy,  Rome,  and  Naples :  from  the  French 
of  Henri  Tame.  By  JOHN  DURAND. 
New  York :  Leypoldt  &  Holt. 

M.  TAINE  has  very  clear  eyes ;  he  sees 
what  is  before  him,  —  a  rare  and  wonderful 
faculty  in  a  traveller.  At  Naples  he  finds 
more  in  the  life,  the  air,  and  the  scenery  to 
remind  of  the  classic  period  than  at  Rome, 
which  externally  is  hardly  Greek  or  feu- 
dal, but  Renaissance  to  a  degree  that  does 
not  permit  M.  Taine,  looking  upon  her 
churches  and  palaces,  to  think  of  anything 
but  the  sixteenth  century.  Only  among 
the  antiques  of  the  Roman  galleries,  and 
before  the  vague  and  broken  monuments  of 
the  past,  does  he  find  the  spirit  which  walks 
the  noonday  streets  of  Naples,  and  which 
he  recognizes  with  such  exquisite  grace  in 
this  picture  of  the  Villa  Reale  :  — 

"  Evening  was  coming  on,  and  in  watching 
the  fading  tints  it  seemed  as  if  I  were  in  the 
Elysian  fields  of  the  ancient  poets.  Ele- 
gant forms  of  trees  defined  themselves 
clearly  on  the  transparent  azure.  Leafless 
sycamores  and  naked  oaks  seemed  to  be 
smiling,  the  exquisite  serenity  of  the  sky, 
crossed  with  their  web  of  light  branches, 
apparently  communicating  itself  to  them. 
They  did  not  appear  to  be  dead  or  torpid 
as  with  us,  but  seemed  to  be  dozing,  and, 
at  the  touch  of  the  balmy  breeze,  ready  to 
open  their  buds  and  confide  their  blossoms 
to  the  coming  spring.  Here  and  there 
shone  a  glimmering  star,  and  the  moon 
began  to  diffuse  its  white  light.  Statues 
still  whiter  seemed  in  this  mysterious 
gloom  to  be  alive  ;  groups  of  young  maid- 
ens, in  light  flowing  robes,  advanced  noise- 
lessly, like  beautiful  spirits  of  gladness.  I 
seemed  to  be  gazing  on  ancient  Greek  life, 
to  comprehend  the  delicacy  of  their  sensa- 
tions, to  find  a  never-ending  study  in  the 
harmony  of  these  slender  forms  and  faded 
tints ;  color  and  luminousness  no  longer 
seemed  requisite.  I  was  listening  to  the 
verses  of  Aristophanes,  and  beheld  his 
youthful  athlete  with  crowned  brow,  chaste 
and  beautiful,  walking  pleasantly  with  a 
sage  companion  of  his  own  years  amongst 
poplars  and  the  flowering  smilax.  Naples 
is  a  Greek  colony,  and  the  more  one  sees 
the  more  does  he  recognize  that  the  taste 
and  spirit  of  a  people  assume  the  character- 
istics of  its  landscape  and  climate." 

The  truth  here  presented  had  already 
been  felt  and  expressed,  and  throughout 
his  book,  the  novelty  of  M.  Taine's  discov- 
ery is  less  than  the  accuracy  of  his  study. 


1 868.' 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


But  this  accuracy  delights  you  so  much  that 
you  are  inclined  to  believe  him  first,  where 
he  is  at  best,  perhaps,  only  original ;  and  it 
is  on  review  of  his  book  that  you  find  he 
has  taken  you  through  a  country  not  undis- 
covered, but  not  before  so  thoroughly  ex- 
plored. 

lie  understands  Italy  exceedingly  well, 
however,  and  for  Rome  of  the  Renaissance 
it  seems  to  us  that  there  is  no  guide  to 
compare  with  him.  Here,  even  his  want  of 
sympathy  becomes  a  virtue  ;  for  the  Renais- 
sance is  a  period  to  be  entirely  appreciated 
by  the  intellect  alone,  as  it  was  a  purely 
intellectual  effort  which  produced  it.  M. 
Taine  studies  its  art  from  its  history,  and 
not  its  history  from  its  art,  as  Mr.  Ruskin 
does,  for  example ;  and  we  think  he  has  by 
far  the  clearer  idea  of  the  time,  its  people, 
and  its  works.  The  tastes  and  customs  of 
an  artist's  contemporaries  shape,  if  they  do 
not  inspire  him  ;  and  it  is  better  to  argue 
from  Julius  II.  to  Buonarotti  than  frorn 
Buonarotti  to  Julius  II.,  though  it  is  not  al- 
together false  to  do  the  latter.  In  his  cold 
way  of  loving  nothing,  hating  nothing,  judg- 
ing everything,  M.  Taine  never  affronts 
common-sense,  nor  attempts  impostures 
upon  his  readers.  You  see  everything  that 
he  points  out  in  pictures,  because,  though 
the  characteristic  traits  he  sees  are  subtile 
enough,  they  exist ;  while  he  does  not 
dwell  upon  the  perfectly  obvious,  he  does 
not  riot  upon  the  supposed  intention  of  the 
painter.  "  Always,"  says  M.  Taine,  with 
that  peculiar  clearness  and  directness  which 
make  him  appear  the  first  discoverer  of 
truth,  —  "  always  when  an  art  predominates, 
the  contemporary  mind  contains  its  essential 
elements  ;  whether,  as  in  the  arts  of  poetry 
and  music  these  consist  of  ideas  or  senti- 
ments ;  or,  as  in  sculpture  and  painting, 
they  consist  of  colors  or  of  forms.  Every- 
where art  and  intelligence  encounter  each 
other,  and  this  is  why  the  first  expresses 
the  second  and  the  second  the  first.  Hence 
if  we  find  in  the  Italy  of  that  period  [the 
Renaissance]  a  revival  of  pagan  art  it  is  be- 
cause there  was  a  revival  of  pagan  manners 

and  morals With  the  sentiment  of 

the  rude,  with  the  exercise  of  the  muscles 
and  the  expansion  of  physical  activity,  the 
love  of  and  worship  of  the  human  form 
appeared  a  second  time.  All  Italian  art 
turns  upon  this  idea,  namely,  the  resuscita- 
tion of  the  naked  figure  ;  the  rest  is  simply 
preparation,  development,  variety,  altera- 
tion, or  decline.  Some,  like  the  Venetians, 
display  its  grandeur  and  freedom  of  move- 


ment, its  magnificence  and  voluptuousness  ; 
others,  like  Correggio,  its  exquisite  sweet- 
ness and  grace;  others,  like  the  Bolognese, 
its  dramatic  interest ;  others,  like  Caravag- 
gio,  its  coarse  striking  reality,  —  all,  in  short, 
caring  for  nothing  beyond  the  truthfulness, 
grace,  action,  voluptuousness  and  magnifi- 
cence of  a  fine  form,  naked  or  draped,  rais- 
ing an  arm  or  a  leg.  If  groups  exist,  it  is  to 
complete  this  idea,  to  oppose  one  form  to 
another,  to  balance  one  sensation  by  a  simi- 
lar one.  When  landscape  comes  it  simply 
serves  as  a  background  and  accessory,  and 
is  as  subordinate  as  moral  expression  on 
the  countenance  or  historical  accuracy  in 
the  subject  The  question  is,  Do  you  feel 
interested  in  expanded  muscles  moving  a 
shoulder  and  throwing  back  the  body  bow- 
like  on  the  opposite  thigh  ?  It  is  within 
this  limited  circle  that  the  imagination  of 
the  great  artists  of  that  day  wrought,  and 

in  the  centre  of  it  you  find  Raphael 

That  which  interests  the  moderns  in  a 
head,  the  expression  of  some  rare  profound 
sentiment,  elegance,  and  whatever  denotes 
finesse  and  native  superiority,  is  never  ap- 
parent with  them,  save  in  that  precocious 
investigator,  that  refined,  saddened  thinker, 
that  universal  feminine  genius,  Leonardo 
da  Vinci.  Domenichino's  '  Judith '  is  a  fine, 
healthy,  innocent,  peasant-girl,  well  painted 
and  well  proportioned.  If  you  seek  the 
exalted,  complicated  sentiments  of  a  virtu- 
ous, pious,  and  patriotic  woman  who  has 
just  converted  herself  into  a  courtesan  and 
an  assassin,  who  comes  in  with  bloody 
hands,  feeling  perhaps,  under  her  girdle, 
the  motions  of  the  child  of  the  man  whom 
she  has  just  murdei'ed,  you  must  seek  for 
them  elsewhere  ;  you  must  read  the  drama 
of  Hebbel,  the  '  Cenci '  of  Shelley,  or  pro- 
pose the  subject  to  a  Delacroix,  or  to  an 
Ary  Scheffer." 

There  is,  as  we  have  indicated,  a  prevail- 
ing motive  of  generalization  in  this  book,  to 
which  it  is  more  safe  to  yield  in  considering 
the  past  than  the  present,  though  we  do  not 
find  that  it  often  leads  M.  Taine  astray  in 
his  study  of  modern  Italians.  Much  in  his 
sketches  of  Rome  reminds  the  reader  of 
About's  Rome  Contemporaine,  but  one  is  all 
the  time  sensible  that  Taine  is  an  honester 
man  than  About,  and  that  he  does  not  gen- 
eralize beyond  his  facts.  He  is  not  so  live- 
ly as  About  ;  but,  though  very  firm  and 
solid  in  his  thought,  he  is  far  from  heavy. 
His  book  is  singularly  untouristic,  and  the 
reader  remembers  no  trace  of  M.  Taine  in 
anything  but  its  opinions  and  decisions  ; 


126 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


there  are  no  traveller's  adventures,  and  few 
traveller's  anecdotes;  the  stories  told  are 
generally  from  other  people,  and  are  given 
merely  to  illustrate  some  topic  in  hand. 


Autobiography  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  Ed- 
ited from  his  Manuscript,  with  Notes  and 
an  Introduction,  by  JOHN  BIGELOW. 
Philadelphia:  J.  B.  Lippincott  &  Co. 

IN  his  Introduction  Mr.  Bigelow  tells  us 
the  very  interesting  story  of  the  chance 
which  gives  us  now,  after  the  lapse  of  half 
a  century,  the  autobiography  of  Dr.  Frank- 
lin as  he  left  it,  and  enables  the  present 
editor  to  supply  eight  pages  of  the  original, 
wanting  in  the  work  as  hitherto  published, 
as  well  as  to  correct  some  twelve  hun- 
dred corrections  made  by  former  editors  in 
Franklin's  text.  The  story  is  briefly  this  : 
Franklin  presented  to  M.  le  Veillard,  a 
French  gentleman  of  his  acquaintance 
(Mayor  of  Passy  and  gentilhomme  ordinaire 
du  Roi],  a  copy  of  his  autobiography,  which 
passed  into  the  hands  of  his  widow  after  M. 
le  Veillard  was  guillotined  in  1794.  Wil- 
liam Temple  Franklin,  who  went  to  Lon- 
don as  early  as  1790  to  prepare  an  edition 
of  his  grandfather's  works  for  publication, 
and  who,  under  circumstances  bringing  up- 
on him  suspicions  of  bribery  from  the  Brit- 
ish government,  delayed  their  appearance 
till  1817,  applied  to  the  Widow  le  Veillard 
for  this  copy,  as  being  a  fair  one  to  print 
from,  and,  in  return,  gave  her  the  autograph 
of  the  memoirs  bequeathed  him  by  his  grand- 
father. This  autograph  went  from  Madame 
le  Veillard,  at  her  death,  to  her  daughter, 
who,  in  1834,  left  it  to  M.  le  Senarmont,  her 
cousin.  In  1867  this  gentleman  transferred 
it  to  Mr.  Bigelow,  together  with  the  famous 
pastel  portrait  of  Franklin  by  Duplessis, 
an  engraving  of  which  adorns  the  present 
volume.  The  life  which  Mr.  Bigelow  now 
gives  the  world  must  naturally  become 
the  standard  version  of  an  autobiography 
which,  after  being  first  fragmentarily  pub- 
lished in  French  and  translated  into  Eng- 
lish, was  later  edited  in  imperfect  and  un- 
faithful shape  by  Franklin's  grandson,  and 
is  here,  at  last,  printed  from  Franklin's  6wn 
manuscript,  and  precisely  as  he  wrote  it. 

Mr.  Bigelow  gives  some  pages,  showing 
in  parallel  columns  the  nature  of  the  changes 
made  in  the  original  text  by  the  edition 
of  1817,  of  which  he  says,  very  justly: 
"Many  are  mere  modernizations  of  style, 
such  as  would  measure  some  of  the  modifi- 


cations which  English  prose  has  undergone 
between  the  days  of  Goldsmith  and  South- 
ey.  Some  Franklin  might  have  approved 
of;  others  he  might  have  tolerated ;  but  it 
is  safe  to  presume  that  very  many  he  would 
have  rejected  without  ceremony."  How- 
ever this  may  be,  there  is  profound  satis- 
faction in  having  the  life  as  written  by 
Franklin,  whose  very  errors  and  negli- 
gences have  no  small  value  to  the  reader  of 
the  life  in  illustrating  the  greatness  and  pe- 
culiarities of  his  career  and  character.  Who 
had  corrected  him  Mr.  Bigelow  does  not 
positively  indicate  ;  but  this  will  now  be- 
come a  matter  of  less  importance  every  day 
to  all  but  the  mere  curioso, 

It-is  supposed  William  Temple  Franklin 
never  observed  that  the  final  eight  pages  of 
the  autograph  were  wanting  in  the  Veillard 
copy  from  which  he  printed ;  and  he  thus 
added  another  to  the  proofs  already  existing 
of  his  unfitness  to  edit  his  grandfather's 
works,  —  an  unfitness  that  had  become  a  na- 
tional reproach  before  his  edition  appeared. 
Mr.  Bigelow  leaves  to  the  reader  the  ques- 
tion whether  or  not  William  Temple  Frank- 
lin was  induced  by  the  British  government  to 
withhold  the  manuscripts  in  his  hands,  and 
contents  himself  with  stating  the  charge, 
and  giving  Franklin's  denial  of  its  truth.  It 
is  certainly  strange  that  he  should  have  de- 
layed for  twenty-seven  years  to  discharge 
the  duty  intrusted  to  him,  and  that  then  he 
should  have  performed  it  with  so  little  care 
as  to  omit  some  of  the  most  important 
passages  from  the  autobiography.  The 
grandson's  edition  of  the  life  terminates  with 
Franklin's  arrival  at  London  on  the  27th 
of  July,  1757,  and  is  wanting  in  the  account 
given  by  Franklin  in  the  autograph  and  the 
present  edition  of  his  interview  with  Lord 
Granville,  and  his  subsequent  consultations 
with  the  Proprietaries  of  the  Province  of 
Pennsylvania  with  regard  to  the  quarrel 
existing  between  Governor  Denny  and  the 
Pennsylvania  Assembly,  together  with  the 
proceedings  upon  the  Proprietaries'  peti- 
tion to  the  king  in  council. 

In  an  Appendix  Mr.  Bigelow  gives  the 
correspondence  of  William  Temple  Frank- 
lin with  the  Veillards  in  reference  to  his 
grandfather's  works,  as  well  as  some  letters 
of  Franklin's  from  the  Veillard  collection, 
relating  to  his  memoirs,  and  other  matter 
immediately  useful  and  interesting  to  the 
reader  of  the  restored  autobiography.  He 
has  in  all  respects  executed  a  delicate  and 
important  task  with  singular  discretion,  — 
not  exulting  too  much  in  the  fortune  which 


1 868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


127 


permits  him  to  connect  his  name  perma- 
nently with  Franklin's,  nor  magnifying  a 
service  to  letters  which  is  self-evidently 
great.  The  reader's  interest  in  the  subject 
is  both  awakened  and  satisfied,  and  he 
readily  forgives  Mr.  Bigelow,  as  a  sole 
instance  of  critical  prodigality,  the  state- 
ment that  the  autobiography  is  a  "  limpid 
narrative,  gemmed  all  over,  like  a  cloudless 
firmament  at  night,  with  pertinent  anecdotes, 
curious  observations,  and  sage  reflections." 

Manual  of  the  Jarves  Collection  of  Early 
Italian  Pictures,  deposited  in  the  Galleries 
of  the  Yale  School  of  Fine  Arts.  By  RUS- 
SELL STURGIS,  JR.  New  Haven  :  Pub- 
lished by  Yale  College. 

EVEN  if  we  had  not  to  praise  the  excel- 
lent taste  with  which  Mr.  Sturgis  has  per- 
formed a  task  not  to  be  estimated  in  its 
difficulties  by  the  size  of  his  book,  we 
should  wish  to  speak  of  this  Manual  as 
making  a  fresh  claim  upon  public  attention 
for  a  gallery  of  pictures  which  was  remark- 
able in  Europe,  and  is  unique  here.  In 
this  collection  Yale  College  has  secured  the 
sole  series  of  pictures  by  which  Italian  art, 
from  Giunta  da  Pisa  to  Domenichino,  can 
be  studied  and  enjoyed  in  America,  and 
offers  an  attraction  which  must  be  enhanced 
by  whatever  growth  we  make  in  cultivation 
and  elegance.  The  Jarves  collection  would 
be  a  thing  to  go  from  one  Italian  city  to  an- 
other to  see  ;  and  we  hope  that  it  shall  not 
be  very  long  till  any  person  within  a  day's 
journey  of  New  Haven  shall  be  ashamed 
not  to  have  seen  it.  We  rate  very  highly 
its  capacity  for  pleasing  a  generally  intelli- 
gent public  like  ours,  because  its  works 
are  mostly  of  the  early  period  of  art,  when 
sentiment  was  more  than  execution,  and 
have  qualities  of  religion,  tenderness,  and 
sincerity  which  strongly  appeal  to  the  ear- 
nest natures  predominating  with  us.  On 
the  other  hand,  a  gallery  which  includes 
paintings  of  Paolo  Veronese,  Bassano,  Bor- 
done,  the  Caracci,  Guido,  Rubens,  and  Ve- 
lasquez cannot  be  lacking  in  those  splendors 
of  art  and  triumphs  of  skill  in  which  the 
student  and  connoisseur  find  great  part  of 
their  satisfaction. 

It  is  not  easy  to  say  how  Mr.  Sturgis  in 
his  Manual  puts  his  reader  in  possession  of 
those  quite  primary  facts  of  artistic  history 
and  technics  necessary  with  the  average 
American  for  the  appreciation  of  such  a  gal- 
lery, and  yet  contrives  not  to  offend  those  al- 
ready cognizant  of  them.  His  introductory 


essay,  which  is  full  of  admirable  suggestion 
and  criticism,  is  unambitious  in  itself,  and 
modest  for  the  collection,  while  it  rates  the 
pictures  at  their  just  intrinsic  value,  and  in- 
dicates their  incomparable  worth  here  ;  and 
the  brief  biographical  and  critical  notice  of 
each  painter  which  is  given  with  the  mention 
of  his  picture  is  enough  for  the  present  in- 
telligence of  those  who  have  known  nothing 
of  the  subject,  and  excellent  even  for  the 
memory  of  such  as  may  charitably  suppose 
themselves  to  have  forgotten  a  great  deal. 

The  Old  World  in  its  New  Face.  Impres- 
sions of  Europe  in  1867-68.  By  HENRY 
W.  BELLOWS.  New  York :  Harper 
and  Brothers. 

THE  difficulty  of  writing  home  from  Eu- 
rope anything  that  is  worth  reading  does 
not  seem  to  affect  the  production  of  foreign 
letters,  or  the  volumes  of  travel  growing 
out  of  them.  To  this  fact,  no  doubt,  we 
owe  now  and  then  a  book  like  Dr.  Bel- 
lows's,  which  is  interesting  and  desirable ; 
and  as  for  the  books  that  are  neither,  they 
are  forgotten  even  in  spite  of  the  critics 
who  blame  them,  and  seek  to  give  them 
the  sad  immortality  of  dispraise  in  the  news- 
papers. So  the  state  of  affairs  might  be 
worse  than  it  is. 

We  shall  hardly  describe  what  Dr.  Bel- 
lows has  done  if  we  say  he  spent  a  year 
in  France,  Prussia,  Switzerland,  and  Aus- 
tria, —  so  many  people  have  done  all  this  ; 
but  if  we  say  that  he  looked  at  Europe  from 
the  pulpit  of  the  Broad  Church,  and  with  a 
view  to  study  it  in  an  honest  and  liberal 
way,  we  distinguish  him  somewhat  from  the 
million  other  Americans  abroad.  He  writes 
down  his  thought  in  candid  and  manly 
fashion,  without  flippancy,  and  commonly 
without  effort  to  be  either  funny  or  fine,  — 
Eloquence  and  Humor  being  the  Scylla  and 
Charybdis  of  most  travellers.  Mountains, 
we  confess,  are  occasionally  too  much  for 
him.  There  is,  for  example,  "  Untersberg, 
wThose  awful  comb  saws  the  sky  with  its 
marble  teeth  "  ;  and  in  the  noonday  haze  of 
the  adjacent  meadows,  other  of  these  un- 
manageable mountains  "  seem  to  swim  like 
beautiful  black  monsters  in  a  sea  of  emer- 
ald "  ;  while  at  dawn  they  are  mottled  with 
black  and  white,  and  "  Beauty,  Love,  and 
Terror  seem  contending  for  their  posses- 
sion." All  this,  however,  may  be  forgiven  a 
traveller  who  tells  us  something  of  the  state 
of  religious  thought  in  Germany,  and  de- 
scribes to  us  several  of  the  leaders  of  the 


128 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[July. 


conservative  and  liberal  church  parties,  in 
a  way  to  make  them  and  his  readers  glad 
that  he  saw  them  and  talked  with  them. 
His  observations  and  ideas  of  Switzerland 
strike  us  as  being  very  true  and  good ; 
there  is  much  that  is  new  in  what  he  tells 
us  of  the  present  social  and  political  life  of 
the  Swiss;  and  the  chapter  on  Berne  is 
particularly  interesting.  It  appears  to  us 
that  he  justly  characterizes  the  political  con- 
dition of  Austria  as  one  in  which  the  gov- 
ernment has  to  take  the  lead  in  creating 
liberal  institutions  for  a  people  indifferent 
to  nearly  all  liberty  but  that  of  laughing  at 
their  rulers.  There  is  no  prophecy  in  the 
book  as  to  the  political  future  of  France,  — 
a  subject  on  which  every  one  ought  to 
be  grateful  to  be  told  nothing,  knowing 
that  thereby  only  is  he  dealt  fairly  with. 
Our  author  does  not  refuse  to  see  that 
the  French  people  generally  are  contented 
with  a  despotism  which  he  dislikes  ;  bet- 
ter still,  he  does  not  become  enamored  of 
it  because  they  bear  it  quietly.  This  again 
distinguishes  him  from  the  million  other 
Americans  abroad.  He  can  even  tell  us 
something  intelligible  and  probable  about 
Prussia,  in  whose  military  superiority  to 
France  he  does  not  at  all  believe,  and  in 
whose  over-restrained  and  over-protected 
people  he  does  not  see  the  greatest  prom- 
ise for  the  future.  It  is  one  of  the  vir- 
tues of  Dr.  Bellows  in  this  book  that  he 
nowhere  makes  pretence  to  infallible  un- 
derstanding of  what  he  saw,  or  to  subtile 
analysis  of  the  varied  character  presented 
to  him. 

Behind  the  Scenes.  By  ELIZABETH  KECK- 
LEY,  formerly  a  Slave,  but  more  recently 
Modiste  and  Friend  to  Mrs.  Abraham 
Lincoln.  Or,  Thirty  Years  a  Slave,  and 
Four  Years  in  the  White  House.  New 
York  :  G.  W.  Carleton  &  Co. 

WE  suppose  that  Mrs.  Keckley,  as  a  lit- 
erary resource,  is  probably  exhausted  in  the 
volume  before  us ;  but  we  would  not  have 
the  ingenious  editor  of  the  work  (whoever 
he  may  be)  despair  on  that  account.  In- 
deed, he  need  never  want  inspiration  while 
there  are  cooks,  lady's-maids,  coachmen, 
and  footmen  about,  who  have  lived  in  fam- 
ilies of  eminent  persons.  Why  should  he 
not  give  us  next,  "  Behind  the  Pantry  Door  ; 
or,  Mr.  Seward's  After-Dinner-ana,  over- 
heard by  his  Butler  "  ?  —  or,  "  On  the 
Kitchen  Stairs  ;  Sayings  and  Doings  of 
Chief  Justice  Chase,  reported  by  his  for- 


mer Cook  "  ?  —  and  so  on,  concluding  with 
"The  Married  Life  of  our  Distinguished 
Clergymen  by  a  Serving  -  woman  out  of 
place  "  ?  He  need  not  be  deterred  by  the 
fact  that  the  present  book  is  an  outrage,  for 
he  is  not  likely  to  be  affected  by  any  kind 
of  criticism  that  can  reach  his  case. 

We  put  Mrs.  Keckley  out  of  the  ques- 
tion of  authorship  ;  and,  of  the  material 
which  she  has  supplied,  we  have  but  to  say 
that  it  is  both  dull  and  trivial,  and  only 
considerable  in  its  effect  of  dragging  the 
family  affairs  of  Mrs.  Lincoln  before  the 
public.  We  should  be  quite  ashamed  to 
base  upon  it  any  speculations  about  the 
character  of  the  late  President ;  and  with 
that  of  his  wife  and  children  we  have  no 
possible  concern,  further  than  to  express 
our  belief  that,  if  the  nation  had  dealt 
more  generously  with  them,  it  would  now 
be  able  to  judge  Mrs.  Lincoln  more  kind- 
ly, or  perhaps  would  not  be  obliged  to 
judge  her  at  all. 

Highland  Rambles :  a  Poem.     By  WILLIAM 
R.  WRIGHT.     Boston  :  Adams  &  Co. 

THESE  highland  rambles  began  late  in 
May,  about  daybreak, 

"  As  three  strayed  spirits,  Arthur,  Vivian,  Paul, 
Brushed  off  the  humming  swarms  of  early  dreams, 
And  sprang  from  beds  of  pine-boughs  underneath 
Thick-branching  pines.     And   Paul,    who  sought 

the  East, 

Cried,  '  Look,  the  crescent  strands  her  silver  keel 
Upon  the  pearly  breakers  of  the  dawn.' 
And  Vivian,  '  Let  us  climb  to  yonder  peak, 
Ere  the  first  rosy  ripple  break.'     But  he, 
Whose  wit  blew  cool  as  winds  from  mountain  lakes, 
Arthur,  '  Go  up.     I  follow  when  my  brows 
Three  times  are  dipped  in  water.'    And  the  three  " 

rambled  on  for  one  hundred  and  eighty 
pages  up  and  down  the  familiar  heights  of 
Mr.  Tennyson's  poetry.  We  suppose  that 
somewhere  in  this  excursion  they  had  loves 
and  sorrows,  for  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  at 
least  one  young  lady  out  of  The  Gardener's 
Daughter's  garden.  But  we  have  not  read 
the  whole  poem,  and  could  not.  We  take 
the  reader  to  witness  that  we  do  not  con- 
demn it,  or  do  aught  but  wonder  that  any 
one  having  a  proper  entity,  and  man's  in- 
alienable right  to  obscurity,  should  care 
so  conspicuously  to  disown  himself,  and  to 
appear  solely  in  the  voice,  movement,  and 
expression  of  another  whom  he  suffers  us 
scarcely  a  moment  to  forget.  Yet  even  this 
wonder  of  ours  is  mild,  for  frequent  sur- 
prises of  the  sort  have  tempered  us  to  what 
we  must  still  regret. 


THE 


ATLANTIC    MONTHLY. 

A   Magazine   of  Literature,   Science,   Art, 
and  Politics. 


VOL.    XXII.  —  AUGUST,    1868.  — NO.    CXXX. 


A   REMARKABLE   CASE   OF   "PHYSICAL   PHENOMENA." 


IT  is  proposed  to  give  a  plain  and 
truthful  statement  of  facts  concern- 
ing a  very  marked  case  of  the  phenom- 
ena known  to  Spiritualists  as  "  physical 
manifestations,"  regarded  by  scientific 
men  generally  as  "  tricks  of  jugglery," 
and  by  common-sense,  practical  people 
looked  upon  as  wonderful  natural  ef- 
fects, the  cause  of  which  has  never  be^n 
explained. 

This  case  in  many  respects  resem- 
bles that  of  the  French  peasant-girl, 
Angelique  Cottin,  so  well  described  by 
.Robert  Dale  Owen  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  of  September,  1864,  in  an  ar- 
ticle entitled  the  "Electric  Girl  of  La 
Perriere,"  which  (though  well  authenti- 
cated by  French  journals)  took  place 
twenty  years  before. 

The  chief  interest  which  may  attach 
to  this  article  will  lie  in  the  fact,  that 
the  occurrences  it  describes  are  of  very 
recent  date,  —  having  happened  during 
the  past  few  months,  —  and  are  sus- 
>ceptible  of  verification. 

Further  than  this,  it  may  be  added, 
that  the  writer  is  a  confirmed  sceptic  as 
to  the  so-called  doctrine  of  Spirittialism. 
Indeed,  a  careful  study  of  these  phe- 


nomena, witnessed  by  himself,  has 
strengthened  him  in  the  belief,  that  to 
attribute  their  production  to  the  spirits 
of  the  departed  is  ridiculous  folly,  delu- 
sion, and  imposture. 

Mary  Carrick  is  an  Irish  girl,  eighteen 
years  of  age,  who  came  to  this  country 
in  the  month  of  May,  1867.  She  is  very 
ignorant,  like  the  most  of  her  class,  but 
quick  to  learn  anything  required.  Pre- 
vious to  leaving  her  native  land  she 
had,  for  a  short  time,  lived  in  a  gentle- 
man's family  as  a  "  maid  of  all  work," 
and  she  has  always  been  healthy  with 
the  exception  of  a  severe  attack  of  fe- 
ver occurring  a  few  months  before  she 
left  home.  By  a  correspondence  with 
the  gentleman  in  whose  service  she  had 
lived  in  Ireland,  we  find  that  nothing 
remarkable  was  ever  discovered  con- 
cerning her,  except  that  at  one  time  she 
had  been  a  somnambulist,  but  seemed 
to  have  recovered  from  her  tendency  to 
sleep-walking. 

Immediately  upon  her  arrival,  she 
went  to  live  with  a  very  respectable 
family  in  one  of  the  larger  towns  in 
Massachusetts.  At  this  time  she  ap- 
peared to  be  in  perfect  health.  She 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  iSGS,  by  TICK  NOR  AND  FIELDS,  in  the  Clerk's  Office 

of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 
VOL.   XXII.  —  NO.    I3O.  9 


-A  Remarkable  Case  of  "  Physical  Phenomena?     [August,. 


performed  the  duties  required  of  her  in 
a  most  acceptable  manner,  and  nothing 
whatever  in  her  appearance  or  behavior 
excited  particular  remark.  She  seldom 
left  the  house,  and,  at  the  time  when 
the  occurrences  we  are  about  to  de- 
scribe took  place,  she  did  not  have  the 
acquaintance  of  six  persons  outside  the 
family.  She  had  lived  in  this  situation 
about  six  weeks,  when,  upon  the  3d  of 
July,  the  bells  hanging  in  the  kitchen 
and  communicating  with  the  outside 
doors  and  chambers  commenced  ring- 
ing in  an  unaccountable  manner.  This 
would  occur  at  intervals  of  half  an 
hour  or  longer,  during  the  day  and 
evening,  but  not  during  the  night.  It 
was  at  first  attributed  to  the  antics  of 
rats  upon  the  wires.  An  examination 
showed  this  to  be  impossible  ;  though, 
to  put  the  matter  beyond  doubt,  the 
wires  were  detached  from  the  bells  ;  but 
the  ringing  went  on  as  before.  These 
bells  hang  near  the  ceiling  of  a  room 
eleven  feet  high.  They  never  rang  un- 
less the  girl  was  in  that  room  or  the 
adjoining  one,  but  were  often  seen  and 
heard  to  ring  when  different  members  of 
the  family  were  present  in  the  room  with 
the  girl.  The  ringing  was  not  a  mere 
stroke  of  the  bell,  but  there  was  a  vio- 
lent agitation  of  all  the  bells,  such  as 
might  have  been  produced  by  a  vigorous 
use  of  the  bell-pulls,  had  they  been  con- 
nected. A  careful  examination  by  the 
writer  and  others  showed  that  there 
was  no  mechanism  or  other  appliance 
by  which  the  ringing  could  be  produced. 
A  few  clays  after  the  bell-ringing  com- 
menced frequent  loud  and  startling 
raps  were  heard,  which  seemed  to  be 
on  the  walls,  doors,  or  windows  of  the 
room  where  the  girl  might  be  at  work. 
The  noises  thus  produced  were  quite 
as  loud  as  would  ordinarily  follow  a 
smart  application  of  the  knuckles  to 
any  article  of  wood.  They  were  heard 
by  all  the  members  of  the  family,  and 
many  others  whom  curiosity  prompted 
to  come  in  for  the  purpose  of  verifying, 
by  their  own  senses,  what  they  were 
slow  to  believe.  These  occurrences  in- 
creased from  day  to  day,  and  became 
a  source  of  great  annoyance.  The  girl, 


ignorant  as  she  was,  and  naturally  su- 
perstitious, became  very  much  excited  ; 
and  it  was  with  the  greatest  difficulty 
that  she  could  be  kept  in  a  comparative 
state  of  calmness  during  her  wakeful 
hours,  while  in  her  sleep  at  night  she 
was  continually  raving.  She  wept  very 
much,  protested  that  she  had  no  action 
in  the  occurrences,  and  begged  of  the 
family  not  to  send  her  away,  for  she  had 
not  a  single  friend  in  the  country  to 
whom  she  could  go,  and  none  of  her 
countrymen  would  take  her  in,  for  the 
matter  had  already  become  notorious, 
and  they  shunned  her  as  they  would  the 
Evil  One  himself.  Several  applications 
were  made  by  professed  Spiritualists, 
offering  to  take  the  girl,  and  provide  for 
her  ;  but  it  was  not  deemed  advisable  to 
place  her  under  such  questionable  super- 
vision. It  was  finally  decided  to  retain 
her,  and  try  to  endure  the  disagreea- 
ble phenomena  which,  as  will  be  seen, 
were  only  the  beginning  of  troubles. 

It  should  be  stated  that  the  raps  re- 
ferred to  followed  the  girl  from  room 
to  room,  and  could  be  heard  in  her 
chamber  at  night,  when  she  was  found 
to  be  in  a  profound  sleep.  Thus  had 
matters  gone  on  for  nearly  three  weeks, 
when  occurrences  of  a  more  extraor- 
dinary character  began  to  take  place. 
Chairs  were  upset,  crockery- ware  thrown 
down,  tables  lifted  and  moved,  and  va- 
rious kitchen  utensils  hurled  about  the 
room.  No  particular  record  of  these 
occurrences  was  made  until  August 
ist ;  after  which  time,  and  until  the  phe- 
nomena had  entirely  ceased,  accurate 
daily  memoranda  were  noted,  from 
which  some  extracts  are  here  taken. 

"On  the  5th  of  August,  Mary  was 
washing  clothes,  when  a  bench,  having 
upon  it  two  large  tubs  filled  with  water, 
was  suddenly  moved  several  inches. 
The  lid  of  a  copper  wash-boiler  was 
repeatedly  thrown  up,  when  the  girl  was 
not  near  enough  to  touch  it.  These 
occurrences  were  observed  by  different 
members  of  the  family." 

"  August  6th,  Mary  was  ironing.  The 
table  at  which  she  worked  continually 
lifted  itself,  and  troubled  her  so  much 
that  she  took  her  work  to  another  table, 


1 868.]         A  Remarkable  Case  of  "Physical  Phenomena? 


where  the  same  operation  was  repeated, 
and  her  flat-iron,  which  she  left  for  a 
moment,  was  thrown  to  the  floor."  This 
annoyance  was  always  repeated  when- 
ever she  worked  at  ironing,  and  more 
or  less  at  other  times.  It  was  seen  by 
all  the  members  of  the  family  and  other 
persons.  The  writer  saw  the  table  thus 
lifted  when  neither  the  girl  nor  any  oth- 
er person  was  near  enough  to  touch  it. 
It  has  happened  when  a  child  nine 
years  of  age  was  sitting  upon  it,  and 
also  when  persons  have  tried  to  hold  it 
clown.  This  lifting  propensity  seemed 
to  communicate  itself  to  everything 
movable.  The  covers  to  the  wood- 
box  and  wash-boiler  were  constantly 
slamming.  A  heavy  soapstone  slab, 
one  and  a  half  inches  thick,  weighing 
forty-eight  pounds,  which  formed  the 
top  of  a  case  of  drawers,  was  often  af- 
fected in  a  similar  manner. 

"  On  the  6th  of  August,  as  Mary  was 
putting  away  the  '  tea  things,'  and  about 
to  place  a  metallic  tray  filled  with 
dishes  upon  this  slab,  it  suddenly  flew 
up,  and  struck  the  bottom  of  the  tray 
with  such  force  as  to  upset  the  dishes 
upon  it."  This  was  seen  by  one  of  the 
family,  and  frequently  occurred  after- 
wards. The  stone  would  also  often  be 
thrown  up  violently  when  Mary  was  at 
'work  at  the  sink  near  it.  On  the  last 
occasion  that  this  happened,  August 
25111,  the  writer  was  seated  near  to  it, 
and  watching  for  the  movement,  which 
had  been  repeated  several  times  within 
an  hour.  Suddenly  it  raised  itself,  and 
fell  with  great  force,  breaking  in  two 
through  the  centre,  Mary  at  the  mo- 
ment being  in  the  act  of  wringing  out 
her  ^  dish-cloth."  Soon  after, "one  half 
of  the  same  was  thrown  to  the  floor ; 
and  the  fragments  were  then  thrown 
out  of  the  house  on  the  ground,  where 
they  remained  quiet.  This  peculiarly 
active  stone,  it  should  be  added,  had  a 
few  clays  previous  been  taken  from  its 
place,  and  laid  upon  the  floor  of  a  room 
adjoining,  with  a  heavy  bucket  placed 
upon  it  ;  but,  as  the  same  movements 
continued,  it  was  replaced  in  its  posi- 
tion for  the  purpose  of  noticing  the 
effect,  and  with  the  result  before  stated. 


It  had  also,  at  one  time,  been  fastened 
in  its  place  by  wooden  clamps,  which 
were  forcibly  torn  away.  It  is  more- 
over worthy  of  particular  notice,  that  an- 
other soapstone  slab,  in  which  the  cop- 
per wash-boiler  is  set,  and  which  had 
become  loosened  from  the  brick-work, 
was  split  and  thrown  to  the  floor  in  like 
manner  ;  showing  that  the  force,  what- 
ever it  may  be,  has  a  striking  effect 
upon  this  kind  of  material.  A  piece  of 
the  same,  weighing  several  pounds,  was 
also  thrown  into  the  kitchen  from  the 
wash-room,  no  person  being  in  the 
latter  room  at  the  time.  A  common 
cherry  table,  standing  against  the  wall 
in  the  kitchen,  often  started  out  into  the 
room,  and  at  one  time  was  hurled  com- 
pletely over  upon  its  top. 

"On  the  2oth  of  August  the  table 
movements  occurred  many  times.  On 
this  day  a  large  basket  filled  with 
clothes  was  thrown  to  the  floor.  A 
small  board,  used  for  scouring  knives, 
hanging  against  the  wall,  was  thrown 
quite  across  the  kitchen.  The  doors 
were  continually  slamming  unless  locked 
or  latched. 

"  August  26  and  27  were  very  stirring 
days,  there  being  hardly  a  half-hour  of 
quiet.  The  rappings  (which  occurred 
daily)  were  particularly  vigorous  on 
these  days.  The  chairs,  and  other 
movables,  were  thrown  about ;  a  large 
wash-tub,  filled  with  clothes  soaking, 
was  thrown  from  the  wash-form  to  the 
floor,  and  emptied  of  its  contents;  a 
stool,  having  upon  it  a  pail  filled  with 
water,  moved  itself  along  the  floor;  a 
porcelain-lined  kettle,  standing  in  the 
sink,  was  lifted  over  the  side,  and 
dropped  upon  the  floor.  The  movable 
furniture  in  the  girl's  room  was  so 
much  agitated,  that,  with  the  exception 
of  the  bedstead,  it  was  all  taken  from 
the  room  for  the  sake  of  quiet." 

The  foregoing  are  a  few  only  of  the 
various  phenomena  occurring  from  the 
3d  to  the  27th  of  August, 'there  being 
but  one  day  during  the  whole  time  when 
nothing  of  the  kind  took  place.  On 
the  date  last  mentioned  the  girl  was 
sent  away .  for  two  clays,  to  observe 
what  the  effect  mi^ht  be. 


A  Remarkable  Case  of  "Physical  Phenomena"     [August, 


On  the  evening  of  the  2Qth  she  re- 
turned, and  reported  that  she  had  not 
seen  or  heard  anything  unusual  during 
her  absence.  It  should  also  be  re- 
marked that  the  family  experienced  no 
trouble  while  she  was  away.  But,  with- 
in two  hours  after  her  return,  the  demon- 
strations again  commenced. 

It  is  needless  to  follow  them  further 
in  detail.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that 
similar  scenes  to  those  of  the  previous 
days  and  weeks  were  daily  repeated 
from  the  date  of  her  return  until  the 
night  of  September  I2th,  when  her  ner- 
vous system  succumbed,  and  she  was 
suddenly  seized  with  a  violent  attack  of 
hysteria.  During  the  paroxysm,  which 
continued  two  or  three  hours,  she  was 
in  an  unconscious  state,  and  could  be 
restrained  upon  her  bed  only  by  the 
combined  strength  of  her  attendants. 
After  the  subsidence  of  the  paroxysm 
she  slept  quietly  until  morning.  For 
several  days  she  remained  in  a  very 
excited  state,  and  on  the  nights  of  the 
1 5th  and  lyth  there  was  a  return  of  the 
paroxysm,  but  without  a  loss  of  con- 
sciousness. These  attacks  were  not 
characterized  by  any  very  peculiar  symp- 
toms, excepting,  perhaps,  a  very  dis- 
tressing sensation  referred  to  the  base 
of  the  brain.  From  time  to  time  she 
would  seize  the  hand  of  her  attendant, 
and  press  it  upon  the  back  of  her  head, 
and  at  the  same  time  complain  of  strange 
noises.  She  also  had  severe  attacks 
of  bleeding  at  the  nose,  which  seemed 
in  some  measure  to  relieve  her. 

From  the  date  of  her  prostration  un- 
til her  removal  to  an  asylum,  on  the  iSth, 
no  phenomena  occurred. 

At  the  end  of  three  weeks  she  was 
thought  to  be  sufficiently  recovered  to 
return  to  her  work  ;  'and  pity  for  her 
condition,  as  well  as  a  curiosity  to  ob- 
serve if  the  phenomena  would  return, 
induced  the  family  to  receive  her  back 
to  service  again. 

She  returned  in  a  very  happy  frame 
of  mind,  and  comparatively  calm  ;  but 
it  was  noticed  that  she  was  quite  ner- 
vous, and  would  start  suddenly  at  any 
little  noise  at  all  resembling,  the  rap- 
pings  or  movements  of  furniture  which 


had  formerly  so  much  annoyed  her, 
and  driven  her  to  the  verge  of  in- 
sanity. But  none  of  the  phenomena 
ever  again  occurred.  She  seemed  very- 
well,  grew  very  fleshy,  and  performed 
her  duties  with  alacrity.  Being  desir- 
ous of  learning  to  read  and  write,  a 
member  of  the  family  undertook  the 
task  of  teaching  her. 

She  proved  a  very  apt  scholar,  and 
made  remarkable  progress.  At  times, 
however,  she  complained  of  great  dis- 
tress in  her  head  ;  but  nothing  of  a  seri- 
ous nature  occurred  until  some  six 
weeks  after  her  return,  when,  on  the 
night  of  the  28th  of  November,  she  had 
an  attack  of  somnambulism,  it  being 
the  first  instance  of  the  kind  since  com- 
ing to  this  country.  She  arose  and 
dressed  herself,  went  to  the  room  of 
her  mistress,  and  asked  permission  to 
go  out  to  clean  the  outside  of  the  win- 
dows. Her  condition  was  at  once  dis- 
covered, and  she  was  with  some  diffi- 
culty induced  to  go  back  to  bed.  She 
remembered  nothing  of  this  in  the 
morning.  On  the  following  and  for 
five  consecutive  nights  this  was  re- 
peated. At  about  the  same  hour  of  the 
night  she  would  get  up,  go  down  stairs, 
usually  in  her  night-dress,  with  no  light, 
and  go  about  her  work.  She  would 
sweep  rooms,  dust  clothing,  scour 
knives,  go  out  of  doors  (cold  weather 
as  it  was)  and  brush  the  steps,  sit  down 
in  the  darkness  and  study  her  reading 
and  spelling  lesson,  and  finally,  in  an 
hour  or  two,  return  to  bed.  On  the 
fifth  night,  however,  nature  gave  out, 
and  she  again  passed  into  the  condition 
of  hysteria.  She  was  again  conveyed 
to  the  asylum,  where  she  now  remains, 
though  she  seems  to  have  entirely  re- 
covered, and  is  there  employed  as  a 
housemaid. 

So  much  for  the  facts  in  this  extraor- 
dinary case,  —  facts  well  attested  and 
beyond  contravention.  As  to  a  theory 
of  the  "moving  cause  "  we  have  none. 
But  we  now  proceed  to  give  results  of 
observations  and  experiments  bearing 
upon  the  case,  referring  their  explana- 
tion to  those  competent  to  give  an  opin- 
ion. At  an  early  stage  of  the  phenome- 


1 868.]         A  Remarkable  Case  of  "Physical  Phenomena!' 


na  we  sought  to  trace  their  production 
to  electricity,  and  the  results  of  some 
experiments  seemed  to  give  support  to 
this  theory.  It  has  already  been  stated 
that  the  rappings  were  repeatedly  heard 
in  the  girl's  room  by  members  of  the 
family  who  went  in  after  she  was  asleep. 
The  noises  seemed  to  be  on  the  doors, 
and  sometimes  on  the  footboard  of  the 
bedstead,  and  at  times,  as  they  came 
very  loud,  she  would  start  in  her  sleep, 
and  scream  as  though  in  the  utmost 
terror. 

Conceiving  the  idea  that  the  sounds 
might  be  produced  electrically,  the  writ- 
er caused  the  bedstead  to  be  perfectly 
insulated  by  placing  the  posts  upon 
glass.  The  effect  was  all  that  could  be 
desired.  Although  the  raps  continued 
to  follow  ,her  all  day  from  room  to  room 
and  to  her  chamber  at  night,  yet,  so 
soon  as  she  was  fairly  in  bed,  every- 
thing of  the  kind  ceased.  For  six 
weeks  or  longer  the  bedstead  was  kept 
thus  insulated  ;  and  no  raps  were  ever 
heard,  except  once,  when  an  examina- 
tion showed  the  insulation  to  be  de- 
stroyed, one  of  the  posts  having  slipped 
off  the  glass.  It  was  replaced  with  the 
same  effect  as  before.  Another  experi- 
ment, similar  to  the  one  described,  was 
tried.  The  cherry  table  in  the  kitchen 
before  alluded  to,  at  which  Mary  took 
her  meals,  was  nearly  always  agitated 
when  she  sat  down  to  eat.  At  such 
times,  also,  the  rappings  were  very 
loud  and  frequent,  troubling  her  so 
much  that  she  had  no  desire  to  eat. 
On  one  or  two  occasions  this  was  pecu- 
liarly the  case,  and  a  remedy  for  it  was 
sought  in  insulation.  The  table  and 
her  chair  were  placed  on  glass,  but  be- 
fore she  was  ready  to  sit  the  former 
suddenly  jumped  off  the  insulators,  but 
was  at  once  replaced,  when  she  took 
her  seat,  and  was  able  to  finish  her  meal 
in  peace,  there  being  no  movements 
and  no  raps.  This  was  afterwards  re- 
peated with  the  same  success.  It  was 
evident  that,  whatever  force  this  might 
be,  —  whether  electricity  or  not,  —  there 
did  seem  to  be  some  sort  of  attraction 
between  the  girl  and  these  inanimate  ob- 
jects of  wood,  stone,  iron,  and  other  ma- 


terial which  set  them  in  motion  when- 
ever she  was  near  them,  and  they  were 
not  insulated.  In  this  connection  it 
should  be  noticed  that  the  movements  of 
furniture,  &c.,  seldom  occurred  in  rooms 
with  woollen  carpets  on  the  floors,  but 
were  mostly  confined  to  rooms  with 
bare  floors  or  oil  carpets  and  matting. 
The  raps,  also,  were  more  frequent  and 
louder  in  such  rooms.  In  the  daily  jour- 
nal which  was  kept  the  state  of  the 
weather  each  day  was  carefully  noted, 
and  for  a  time  it  was  thought  that  the 
phenomena  were  much  more  frequent 
on  a  clear  day  than  on  a  damp  or  sultry 
one  ;  but  a  careful  study  of  that  record 
shows  that  some  of  the  most  marked 
and  violent  demonstrations  actually  oc- 
curred on  very  rainy  days,  though  the 
latter  were  generally  more  quiet  than 
days  of  fair  weather.  Thus  it  would 
seem  that  the  phenomena,  though  -ap- 
pearing in  some  degree  electrical,  did 
not  in  all  cases  follow  the  known  laws 
of  electricity. 

The  writer  has  heretofore  stated  that 
he  is  a  thorough  sceptic  concerning  tlu 
so-called  doctrine  of  Spiritualism.  Th  - 
same  may  be  said  of  every  member  of  th  j 
large  family  (ten  persons)  in  which  thess 
things  occurred.  With  the  exception 
of  the  girl  herself,  no  one  of  .the  house- 
hold ever  became  in  the  least  degree 
nervous,  much  less  inclined  to  believe 
that  the  spirits  of  the  departed  had 
returned  to  earth  only  to  make  their 
presence  known  by  means  so  oalpaoly 
ridiculous. 

But  the  Spiritualists,  of  whom  there 
are  many  in  the  community  where  these 
occurrences  took  place,  became  very 
much  exercised  about  the  matter.  The 
family  were  excessively  annoyed  at  fre- 
quent applications  from  this  class  of 
persons  for  the  privilege  of  coming  in 
to  witness  the  "  manifestations,"  as 
they  call  them,  and  to  see  the  girl.  But 
not  one  of  them  was  ever  admitted,  nor 
has  the  girl  ever  yet  held  any  communi- 
cation with  a  person  of  this  character. 
Of  Spiritualism  she  had  never  heard  in 
the  old  country,  and,  when  any  one 
spoke  of  "mediums,"  she  seemed  to 
have  an  idea  that  they  were  something 


134 


A  Remarkable  Case  of  "Physical  Phenomena"     [August, 


dreadful  to  contemplate.  But  although 
no  Spiritualists  were  invited  to  enlight- 
en us,  we  did  on  three  occasions  hold 
"  circles  "  among  ourselves,  being  will- 
ing to  test  the  matter. 

At  such  times,  seated  around  a  large 
dining-table  with  the  poor  simple-heart- 
ed and  terror-stricken  girl  in  the  midst, 
we  in  all  seriousness  went  through  the 
farce  of  inviting  communications  from 
the  spirits  present.  Occasional  raps 
were  heard,  questions  were  put,  and  the 
alphabet  used,  after  the  most  approved 
manner  of  those  mysterioiis  circles,  but 
without  ever  eliciting  the  first  gleam  of 
intelligence ;  and  the  conclusion  was 
reached,  that,  if  there  were  any  spirits 
present,  their  education  must  have  been 
sadly  neglected  while  on  the  earth, 
and  that  no  improvement  had  been 
made  since  they  passed  into  the  other 
world.  But  this  folly  was  soon  given 
up,  having  only  resulted  in  highly  excit- 
ing the'  girl,  whose  nervous  system  had 
now  reached  a  terrible  state.  Day  by 
day  she  became  more  and  more  ex- 
cited, and  rapidly  lost  flesh.  She 
would  complain  of  great  distress  in  her 
head  and  of  great  noises  in  her  ears. 
At  times  she  would  sink  into  a  sort  of 
lethargy  bordering  upon  the  "  trance 
state."  But  she  still  kept  about  her 
work.  One  of  the  ladies  of  the  house 
was  in  the  habit  of  going  to  church  to 
practise  organ-playing,  and  sometimes 
took  Mary  to  "blow,"  with  which  she 
was  quite  delighted,  but  the  great  diffi- 
culty at  such  times  was  to  keep  her 
awake,  the  music  made  her  so  sleepy  ; 
and  this  peculiarity  was  noticed,  that, 
so  long  as  the  organ  was  played  softly, 
she  was  wakeful,  and  performed  her 
part  at  the  "bellows,"  but,  when  the 
loud  playing  commenced,  she  invari- 
ably, became  sleepy,  and  the  failing 
wind  would  soon  give  notice  that  she 
had  sunk  into  slumber.  At  night,  in 
her  sleep,  she  would  sing  for  hours  to- 
gether, although  she  had  never  been 
heard  to  sing  in  her  wakeful  moments, 
being  in  a  very  unhappy  frame  of 
mind. 

We  have  spoken  of  her  somnambu- 
listic habits.  To  this  should  be  added 


still  another   accomplishment,   that    of 
"  clairvoyance." 

The  most  marked  instance  of  the  lat- 
ter was  shown  in  a  declaration  by  her, 
that  a  young  lady  member  of  the  family, 
who  had  been  absent  in  a  distant  city 
for  several  weeks,  was  sick.  She  seemed 
in  great  distress  of  mind  about  it,  but 
was  assured  that  she  had  just  been 
heard  from,  and  was  quite  well.  But 
she  would  not  be  quieted,  and  declared 
that  the  young  lady  was  ill,  and  suffer- 
ing much  from  a  very  bad  sore  upon 
her  hand.  And  this  proved  to  be  ex- 
actly as  she  had  stated,  and  is  only 
another  evidence  of  this  extraordinary 
power,  of  which  science  now  allows 
the  existence,  though  it  cannot  ful- 
ly explain  it.  These  things  are  men- 
tioned here  simply  on  account  of  the 
possible  bearing  they  may  have  on  the 
physiological  aspect  of  this  remark- 
able case. 

The  question  may  be  asked,  Why, 
during  the  long  continuance  of  these 
strange  phenomena,  which  occurred 
nearly  every  day  for  a  period  of  ten 
weeks,  was  no  scientific  investigation 
instituted  ?  We  answer,  that  such  a 
one  was  sought  for  by  the  family  and 
others  interested.  At  the  end  of  four 
weeks  from  the  commencement  of  the 
phenomena  a  plain  statement  of  facts 
was  made  in  writing,,  and  submitted 
with  proper  indorsement  to  two  of  the 
learned  professors  of  one  of  our  educa- 
tional institutions,  with  the  request  that 
some  proper  person  might  be  sent  to 
witness  and  experiment.  To  our  sur- 
prise the  communication  was  treated 
with  contempt,  and  returned  with  the 
statement  that  we  were  being  imposed 
upon ;  that  such  things  could  not  take 
place  save  through  the  agency  of  some 
person ;  they  advised  constant  watch- 
fulness in  order  to  discover  the  "  trick- 
ery." As  may  be  supposed,  after  meet- 
ing with  such  a  rebuff,  a  second  attempt 
to  invoke  the  assistance  of  these  wise 
men  would  not  soon  be  made. 

However,  acting  upon  the  only  advice 
they  did  volunteer,  "  constant  watchful- 
ness "  was  maintained ;  the  girl  being 
watched  in  every  available  manner  to 


i868.]         A  Remarkable  Case  of  "Physical  Phenomena" 


detect  the  tricks,  if  any  were  attempted. 
It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  the  question 
of  her  honesty  and  innocence  in  the  mat- 
ter was  put  beyond  a  shadow  of  doubt. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  a  daily  journal 
of  the  occurrences  was  commenced,  and 
continued  so  long  as  the  phenomena 
lasted  ;  and  from  this  journal  the  in- 
stances noticed  in  these  pages  are  ta- 
ken. 

In  justice  to  another  professor  of  the 
institution  mentioned,  it  should  be 
said,  that,  having  incidentally  heard  of 
the  case,  he  expressed  a  wish  to  have 
an  investigation  made,  and  directed  two 
of  his  students  to  make  arrangements 
to  witness  the  phenomena  ;  but  unfortu- 
nately the  proposition  came  too  late,  as, 
before  the  arrangements  could  be  made, 
the  phenomena  had  already  ceased,  and 
the  girl  was  prostrated  as  before  stated. 
A  detailed  statement  was  made,  how- 
ever, and  submitted  to  this  gentleman, 
containing  a  copy  of  the  daily  journal 
of  events,  to  which  he  gave  careful 
attention,  and  accorded  to  the  writer 
two  long  interviews  upon  the  subject. 
He  seemed  greatly  interested,  and  did 
not  deny  the  possibility  of  the  phenom- 
ena at  all,  and  regretted  much  their 
abrupt  cessation,  which  precluded  an 
investigation.  It  was  hoped  that,  when 
the  girl  returned,  there  would  be  a  re- 
currence of  them,  to  afford  this  inves- 
tigation, though  the  annoyance  to  the 
family  was  great.  The  fact  that  they 
did  not  return  is  as  strange  as  that  they 
ever  occurred  at  all.  Upon  the  girl's 
return,  all  the  conditions  appeared  to 
be  the  same.  As  has  been  stated,  her 
nervous  condition  was  bad,  and  grew 
worse,  until  she  was  again  prostrated ; 
but  there  were  none  of  the  noises  and 
movements  as  before.  For  the  benefit 
of  the  incredulous,  who  may  say  that 
a  knowledge  on  her  part  that  an  inves- 
tigation was  to  be  had  prevented  the 
repetition,  it  should  be  remarked,  that 
such  knowledge  was  kept  from  her, 
though  she  had  known  of  the  first  ap- 
plication that  was  made  to  have  the 


matter  looked  into  by  scientific  men, 
and  sometimes  asked  when  the  "  sanc- 
tified" men  were  coming  to  put  a  stop 
to  the  troubles. 

No  one  can  regret  more  than  the 
writer  that  the  application  was  so  dis- 
dainfully treated;  though  an  extenua- 
tion of  the  action  of  these  men  is  found 
in  the  fact  that  they  had  previously  been 
most  egregiously  humbugged  by  what 
they  supposed  to  be  cases  similar  to 
this.  Still,  we  cannot  but  feel  that  per- 
haps the  opportunity  for  a  valuable 
addition  to  scientific  discoveries  was 
lost. 

We  believe  that  the  day  will  come 
when  such  occurrences  as  are  herein 
described  will  be  as  satisfactorily  ex- 
plained as  are  now  the  wonders  of 
electricity.  Whether  it  shall  be  soon 
or  late  depends  upon  the  willingness  of 
learned  men  to  treat  seriously  phenom- 
ena which  they  now  almost  universally 
denounce  as  imposture  and  trickery, 
without  having  examined  into  them. 
That  they  are  not  of  every-day  occur- 
rence does  not  argue  that  they  do  not 
occur.  That  they  are  usually  so  mixed 
up  with  the  humbugging  tricks  of  the 
so-called  Spiritualists  as  to  be  difficult 
of  elucidation  we  will  allow ;  but  when 
a  case  is  presented  of  the  character  of 
the  one  under  consideration,  entirely 
free  from  surroundings  calculated  to 
produce  distrust,  we  contend  that  it  is  a 
subject  worthy  the  study  of  any  man. 

In  closing  we  would  say,  that  not 
from  any  wish  to  give  notoriety  to  the 
case  herein  described  has  this  article 
been  written,  but  with  the  sincere  hope 
and  desire  that,  as  time  goes  on,  and 
other  cases  of  a  like  nature  occur,  this 
record  may  be  of  some  service  for  com- 
parison, or  perhaps  may  in  itself  induce 
competent  men  to  undertake  an  expla- 
nation with  which  the  world  will  be  sat- 
isfied, and  which  may  save  from  the  per- 
nicious doctrines  of  Spiritualism  and 
from  our  insane  asylums  thousands 
who  are  now  hopelessly  drifting  in  that 
direction. 


136 


S/.  Michael's  Night. 


[August,, 


ST.    MICHAEL'S    NIGHT. 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE  service  came  to  an  end  ;  the 
many  lights  were  extinguished,  and 
the  congregation  streamed  out  into  the 
darkness  and  the  storm.  Marie  Robbe 
came  pressing  against  the  crowd  as 
Jeanne  and  her  companion  reached  the 
church  door,  and  seized  Jeanne  by  the 
arm.  "  O  Jeanne  !  "  she  burst  forth, 
"  make  haste  !  make  haste  !  there  's  a 
boat  just  off  the  bar,  trying  to  get  in  ; 
maybe  it 's  thy  father's  boat,  —  and 
some  of  them  say  she  is  badly  hurt, 
and  some  that  she  is  driving  on  shore. 
Come,  Jeanne,  make  haste !  Let  us 
push  our  way  to  the  side  door.  How  the 
clumsy  people  push  one  to  death  !  Ma- 
dame is  a  pagan  cat  to  conduct  herself 
with  such  haste  in  the  church  !  "  —  this 
to  a  somewhat  austere-looking  devote, 
who  was  elbowing  her  way  through  the 
crowd,  and  who  had  pushed  past  Marie. 
"  Why,  indeed,"  she  continued,  angrily, 
for  Marie  was  one  of  those  persons 
whose  emotions,  when  excited  above 
a  certain  degree,  always  take  the  form 
of  ill-humor,  —  "  why  thy  father  should 
have  chosen  last  night  for  going  out, 
when  any  one  might  have  supposed 
there  would  be  a  storm,  I  can't  tell ; 
but  some  people  trust  to  their  good 
luck  always,  and  then  draw  others  into 
their  scrapes  !  I  wish  my  father  had 
not  been  so  foolish  as  to  go  !  " 

There  was  little  to  be  made  out  of 
Marie's  incoherent  words  ;  but  Jeanne 
and  her  companion  needed  no  urging, 
and  the  three  women  sped  swiftly  down 
towards  the  pier  ;  Marie  half  sobbing 
with  excitement  and  anger,  but  still,  with 
the  instinct  of  physical  well-being  para- 
mount in  the  midst  of  her  terror,  wrap- 
ping a  corner  of  Epiphanie's  large 
cloak  round  her  to  protect  her  from  the 
\vind  and  rain. 

As  they  reached  the  wharf  they  over- 
took a  group  of  fishermen,  some  of 
whom,  evidently  but  lately  landed,  were 


recounting  the  story  of  their  day's  ill 
luck  and  the  adventures  of  their  coming 
in,  to  the  others. 

"Are  there  any  boats  out  yet?" 
asked  Jeanne,  joining  the  men,  who,  like 
themselves,  were  going  towards  the 
pier. 

"  Yes,  there  is  one  out  there,"  re- 
plied the  man  ;  "  and  it 's  a  wonder  if 
she  gets  in  at  all.  We  have  just  come 
ashore  ourselves,  and  passed  within 
fifty  yards  of  her." 

"Was  she  damaged  any  way,  do  you- 
think  ?  "  asked  Jeanne. 

"One  couldn't  say.  She  seemed  to/ 
be  holding  off  from  shore,  as  well  as  we 
could  make  out,  and  not  making  for 
the  harbor  at  all." 

"  Come,"  said  Jeanne,  quickening  her    . 
pace,  and    followed   by  all    the    rest. 
"  Did  you   know  the   boat  ? " 

"  One  cannot  see  much  such  a  night 
as  this,  though  I  suppose  I  know  most 
of  the  craft  on  the  coast  for  ten  miles 
down.  It  was  a  well-sized  sloop,  and 
had  an  open  row-boat  in  company. 
But  one  has  as  much  to  look  after  as 
one's  own  two  eyes  can  manage,  com- 
ing into  this  inaudit  harbor  in  fair 
weather,  let  alone  a  night  like  this." 

"  I  Jm  a  Pourville  man,"  said  another 
of  the  men,  "and  I  *ve  run  down  from 
Pourville  to  Dieppe  these  fourteen 
years,  and  I  never  saw  blacker  weather 
round  the  harbor's  mouth  than  to- 
night !  " 

"  There  's  one  thing  I  can  affirm,"  said 
the  man  Jeanne  had  at  first  addressed,. 
"  for  I  heard  his  voice  as  he  shouted 
to  the  men  in  the  little  craft, — that 
Francois  Milette  was  aboard  the  fish- 
ing-boat." 

"  Mais,  mon  Dieu,"  broke  in  Epi- 
phanie,  "  c'est  mon  frere  !  " 

"  Ei,  your  brother  !  "  exclaimed  the 
Pourville  man.  "  You  are  Epiphame 
Coutelenq,  I  suppose  ;  I  used  to  know 
your  husband  long  ago.  And  Francois 
has  had  good  luck  as  a  fisherman  ?  " 


1 868.] 


•SV.  Michael's  Night. 


137' 


"Yes, grace  a  Dieu,"said  Epiphanie, 
"  this  is  the  worst  night  he  has  ever 
been  out  in." 

"  For  my  part,"  said  the  man,  "  I 
think  they  '11  get  in  well  enough,  if 
she  's  a  stout  boat,  and  well  managed." 

"  It 's  my  father's  boat,  sure  enough," 
said  Jeanne.  "  Frangois  Milette  went 
out  with  him  last  night ;  but  what  the 
row-boat  was  I  cannot  tell."  And  she 
hurried  on  faster.  The  men  broke 
into  a  jog-trot. 

"  Come  on,"  said  the  man  who  had 
recognized  Epiphanie,  "  next  to  getting 
in  one's  self,  there  's  nothing  better  than 
towing  in  a  neighbor  !  " 

So  they  all  came  clattering  along 
over  the  stones  of  the  Pollet  pier,  which 
was  already  dotted  with  groups  of  peo- 
ple eagerly  watching  the  black  object 
dimly  discernible  in  the  darkness,  as  it 
rose  and  fell  among  the  white-capped 
billows. 

The  tide  was  rising  fast ;  the  sea 
rolled  up  in  huge  black  waves,  that 
struck  from  time  to  time  like  thunder- 
bolts against  the  stout  masonry  of  the 
pier,  and  then  springing  upwards  from 
the  shock,  a  majestic  column,  thirty  feet 
high,  fell  in  a  shower  of  spray.  Jean 
Farge  and  a  company  of  Polletais  stood 
at  a  certain  spot  on  the  pier  to  which  the 
rope  was  always  thrown.  The  night 
was  very  dark.  The  wind  roared 
fiercely  round  the  end  of  the  pier,  the 
men  held  their  caps  tight  on  their 
heads,  and  the  few  women  crouched 
under  the  shelter  of  the  high  parapet, 
as  if  fearing  to  be  carried  away  bodily 
by  the  raging  gusts  of  wind.  All 
watched  the  light  at  the  mast-head  of 
the  boat,  as  it  swayed  and  rose  and 
fell.  The  boat  lay  scarcely  two  hun- 
dred yards  from  the  end  of  the  pier. 
The  tide  was  running  in,  hurried  and 
torn  by  the  wind  that  was  beating  dead 
on  shore.  The  boat  approached  very 
slowly,  by  short  tacks,  so  as  to  keep 
her  bow  meeting  the  big  waves,  one  of 
which,  catching  her  broadside,  was 
enough  to  founder  her. 

The  great  question  was,  whether  she 
could  safely  pass  the  end  of  the  Dieppe 
pier,  throw  her  rope  at  the  right  mo- 


ment, and  sweep  round  into  the  narrow 
mouth  of  the  harbor.  It  required  a 
strong  and  dexterous  arm  to  hurl  the 
heavy  coil  from  the  distance,  whence, 
on  account  of  the  eddy  at  the  harbor's 
mouth,  it  became  necessary  to  steady 
the  boat,  and  assist  her  by  towing. 
This  was  a  sufficiently  nice  matter  in- 
fair  weather,  but  in  the  darkness,  and 
with  a  wind  and  sea  such  as  the  pres- 
ent, the  difficulties  of  entrance  were 
tenfold.  The  news  of  the  probability 
of  its  being  Defere's  boat  spread  rapid- 
ly through  the  crowd.  The  men  shouted 
again  and  again  ;  but  the  wind  and  the 
storm  were  too  loud  for  their  voices  to 
reach  the  boat,  and  no  reply  came  to- 
either  direction  or  inquiry.  Jean  Farge 
was  talking  to  the  Pourville  fisherman 
who  bore  testimony  to  having  heard 
Franqois's  voice  on  board  the  boat,  ars 
he  himself  rode  into  harbor.  They 
were  joined  by  another  man. 

"There's  but  a  poor  chance,  I  say," 
said  the  last  comer.  "  I  watched  her 
for  an  hour  before  it  grew  dark,  beating 
round,  and  trying  to  get  into  clear  sea 
just  off  the  Camp  de  Cesar,  but  it  was. 
hard  work." 

"  When  the  Newhaven  steamer  can't 
face  the  weather,  but  puts  back  into 
dock,  there 's  but  poor  chance  for  a 
fishing-boat,"  said  another. 

"  Defe're  will  save  the  old  boat  if  any 
man  can,  be  sure  of  that,"  said  Farge, 
who  stood  holding  his  hat  clown  over  his. 
eyes,  and  peering  through  the  darkness 
and  driving  rain  at  the  unsteady  light 
as  it  rose  and  fell.  "See  — see! "he 
called  out  suddenly,  "she  's  coming  on 
fast  now  —  now  she  's  down  —  no,  there 
she  is  again  —  yes  — yes,  she  's  turned 
her  bow  —  she  's  riding  up  —  she  's 
making  straight  for  the  harbor.  Seven 
devils  take  this  rain,  but  how  it  blinds 
one  !  Here  she  comes,  —  she  's  a  boat 
after  all !  But  she  's  wavering,  —  she 's 
tacking,  —  she  '11  lose  the  drift,  she  will 

—  she    will !      Heavenly  saints  !  "   he 
shrieked,    wringing    his   hands  wildly, 
"bring   her  in,  bring   her   in."     Then 
with  a  voice  like  a  trumpet,  he  bawled, 
"  The    breakwater  —  look  —  out  —  for 

—  the  —  breakwater  !  " 


138 


Michael's  Night. 


[August, 


Slowly,  slowly,  the  dark  form  of  the 
boat  approached,  struggling  and  stag- 
gering in  the  fierce  sea,  and  now  she 
certainly  was  tacking  and  holding  off. 
What  was  the  meaning  of  it  ? 

"Whist!"  said  the  Pourville  man, 
"  they  're  calling,  what  is  it  ?  "  All  bent 
over  the  low  parapet,  and  strained  their 
hearing  to  catch  the  words.  A  clear 
voice  from  the  boat  rang  out  something ; 
but  the  roar  of  the  wind  and  waters 
howled  above  it,  and  the  sound  con- 
veyed no  meaning.  "  What  was  it  ? 
Listen  again  !  Where  's  a  trumpet  ? 
Diantre  !  They  '11  be  too  late  if  they 
don't  come  in  a  minute !  Are  they 
all  mad  ? "  shouted  a  dozen  voices  at 
once.  But  a  sudden  silence  fell  upon 
the  crowd  like  a  shock,  for  across  the 
darkness  of  their  perplexity  and  dismay 
a  new  intelligence  shot  like  a  meteor. 

Jeanne  had  been  during  the  last  few 
minutes  leaning  with  her  elbows  on 
the  parapet,  motionless  and  silent. 
When  the  cry  from  the  boat  reached 
her  ears,  buffeted  by  the  storm  as  it 
was,  so  that  the  words  to  all  others  had 
lost  their  meaning,  she  suddenly  sprang 
to  her  feet,  cast  off  the  encumbering 
arm  of  Epiphanie  wound  about  her,  and 
caught  up  a  lantern  from  a  sheltered 
corner  where  it  had  been  placed  for 
safety. 

"Quick!"  she  cried,  "to  the  end  of 
the  pier  !  "  With  a  bound  she  was  on 
the  low  parapet,  and,  running  swiftly  to 
the  higher  wall  at  the  extreme  end 
of  the  pier,  she  sprang  upon  that  dizzy 
height  above  the  surging  sea,  and, 
holding  the  lantern  high  above  her 
head,  she  sent  a  cry  over  the  water, 
shrill,  clear,  and  vibrating,  such  as 
no  wind  on  earth  could  whistle  down, 
"A  —  la  —  lumiere  !  "  How  it  rang  out, 
—  that  long-sustained  cry !  Despair, 
exultation,  and  passionate  hope  were 
the  strength  of  it,  and  the  very  wind 
seemed  to  pause  to  listen ! 

A  breathless  pause,  in  which  the 
girl's  figure,  blown  by  the  tempestu- 
ous winds  and  drenched  in  spray, 
stood  motionless  with  the  light  above 
her  head,  and  then  "  whir  ! "  and, 
like  a  dark  snake,  and  hissing  as  it 


sped,  the  rope  came  just  above  the 
lantern,  showing  how  true  had  been 
the  aim.  With  a  shout  it  was  caught 
by  a  hundred  eager  hands  before  it 
touched  the  ground.  Shout  after  shout 
went  up  as  the  rope  stretched  and 
strained,  and  the  long  double  line 
clattered  along,  chattering  and  laughing, 
some  weeping  in  the  wild  excitement, 
some  bawling  congratulations  to  the 
men  in  the  boat  far  below  in  the  dark- 
ness, which  they  could  not  hear,  and  all 
pulling  at  the  rope  with  a  will. 

Jeanne  slipped  down  from  the  para- 
pet, and  joined  the  rest,  taking  her 
place  at  the  rope.  Epiphanie,  laughing 
and  weeping  by  turns,  ran  by  her  side. 

"  O  Jeanne,  dear  Jeanne  !  They  are 
in  !  They  are  in  !  Thou  hast  saved 
them  !  Marie  bienfaisante,  but  it  was 
well  done  !  "  And  then,  sobbing  with 
joy  and  excitement,  she  fell  to  hushing 
the  baby,  who  had  awakened  in  this 
Babel,  as  was  only  natural  he  should. 
Jeanne  said  nothing.  She  felt  as  if  she 
could  have  drawn  the  boat  in,  unaided 
by  another  hand.  The  wet  straining 
rope  was  pressed  against  her  warm 
beating  heart ;  and  she  grasped  it  in  her 
strong  hands,  and  could  have  kissed  it 
in  tender  ecstasy  as  Epiphanie  did  her 
baby. 

"  Who  held  the  light  ?"  shouted  some 
one  far  down  the  line. 

"  Jeanne  Defe're,  Jeanne  Defere  !  " 
bawled  a  dozen  voices  in  reply;  but 
Jeanne  hardly  heard  them.  Everybody 
talked  at  once. 

"  The  rope  was  too  short,"  said  one. 
"  They  could  not  reach  the  '  middle 
point,'  and  wanted  us  to  meet  them 
lower  down  the  pier." 

"  Yes,  yes,  of  course,  that  was  what 
they  were  shouting  about,  "  said  anoth- 
er man.  "  I  knew  how  it  was  in  a  min- 
ute." 

"  Eh,  neighbor  ! "  called  out  a  some- 
what shrill-voiced  Polletaise,  "  if  you 
knew  so  well,  why  did  n't  you  speak  ? 
You  men  always  know  where  the  rat 
lives,  I  observe,  after  you  see  the  cat 
at  the  hole  !  " 

"And  the  women  know  more  about 
it  than  the  cat  herself,  I  believe,"  re- 


1 868.] 


St.  Michael's  Night. 


139 


plied  the  man  with  a  laugh.  "Why 
didn't  I  speak?  Because  a  woman 
spoke  before  me.  That  was  not  strange 
however,  —  eh,  Voisine  Legros  ?  " 

"You  are  right,"  said  the  undaunted 
Polletaise.  "It  is  not  I  who  will  con- 
tradict you  when  you  say  the  men  are 
slow.  Le  bon  Dieu  gave  the  men  the 
stronger  arm  to  make  up  for  the  want 
of  wit." 

"Many  words  and  much  wit  do  not 
always  run  together,"  replied  the  Diep- 
pois,  who,  finding  it  difficult  satisfacto- 
rily to  refute  this  theory  of  compensa- 
tive justice,  betook  himself  prudently  to 
another  view  of  the  question.  "You 
women,  I  observe,  my  good  friend,  will 
talk  for  a  good  hour  over  a  thing  I 
would  not  waste  my  breath  on  !  " 

"  And  you  men,  I  observe,  my  good 
friend,"  returned  the  Polletaise,  "are 
always  bragging  about  being  able  to 
hold  your  tongues.  And  well  it  is,  if 
some  of  you  can  be  silent,  and  not  show 
all  the  folly  that  is  in  you  !  Waste  your 
breath  !  Ha,  ha  !  you  're  the  man,  per- 
haps, that  would  not  waste  his  breath 
on  a  candle,  and  burnt  his  fingers  in 
snuffing  it  out !  Hein ! " 

"  He,  he,  he !  "  laughed  the  trebles 
in  the  crowd. 

"With  a  Polletaise  it  is  one's  ears 
more  than  one's  breath  that  one  fears 
to  lose,"  said  another  man,  coming  to 
the  rescue  of  his  fellow. 

"  Ho,  ho,  ho  !  "  from  the  basses. 

"And  no  great  loss  to  you  either,  I 
should  think,"  said  the  Polletaise,  who, 
spurred  by  the  derisive  laughter  of 
her  opponents,  and  exhilarated  by  a 
fine  inbred  consciousness  of  her  own 
resources,  was  becoming  pleasantly  ex- 
cited in  the  contest,  —  "  no  great  loss 
to  you,  while  there  is  still  a  woman  left 
to  see  and  speak  in  your  place,  —  as 
to-night,  for  example  !  " 

"  Ya-ho-ha-hu  !  "  shouted  the  men 
from  the  boat  below.  That  shout  pro- 
claimed that  they  were  within  the  dock- 
waters,  and  the  rope  slackened  grad- 
ually as  the  boat  ran  alongside  the 
wharf.  "  Throw  up  the  rope  !  Bring 
her  up  gently!  Welcome  to  the  old 
boat !  "  And  the  crowd  closed  rgund 


the  top  of  the  perpendicular  ladder  which 
ran  up  the  side  of  the  dock  wall  from 
the  boat  below,  and  up  which  Defe're 
and  his  companions  were  coming.  One 
by  one,  they  emerged  from  the  dark- 
ness, and  began  to  ascend,  coming  as 
they  approached  the  top,  into  the  light 
of  the  lantern  held  by  Jean  Farge. 

"  Here  we  are  !  "  bawled  Pere  Robbe, 
coming  up  in  a  crab-like  fashion,  side- 
wise.  "  The  old  boat  has  had  a  nice 
night  of  it,  —  eh  ?  The  last  boat  in, 
are  we  ?  Well,  the  good  saints  have 
learned  what  La  Sainte  Perpetua  is 
made  of,  and  that  she  has  good  luck 
is  an  understood  thing  !  "  Pere  Robbe 
was  followed  more  slowly  by  old  De- 
fere,  with  his  waterproof  hat  tied  down 
like  a  nightcap  ;  then  Francois  Milette, 
and  still  two  stood  below.  Another 
began  to  mount.  Good  saints  !  Pierre 
Lennet ;  and  close  behind  him  a  dark 
head  without  covering,  the  hair 
drenched  with  water,  —  Gabriel !  Jeanne 
bowed  her  head,  but  her  heart  was 
lifted  up  ;  not  in  exultation  that  to  her 
quick  senses  and  vigorous  will  they 
owed  their  lives,  but  that  the  cry  of  her 
heart,  piercing  the  deeper  gloom  and 
storm  of  doubt  and  despair,  had 
reached  the  Ruler  of  all  storms  and 
the  Giver  of  all  peace. 

"Jeanne,  Jeanne,  my  daughter,  where 
art  thou  ?  "  cried  old  Defe're,  peering 
amongst  the  crowd.  Jeanne  embraced 
her  father,  her  heart  aching  with  bliss, 
but  said  not  a  word. 

"  Here,  here  !  lend  a  hand  with  these 
things,"  shouted  Pere  Robbe,  who  had 
again  descended  to  the  boat  after  the 
first  greetings  were  over,  and  who  was 
now  busy  gathering  together  an  incon- 
gruous heap,  —  baskets  containing  the 
provision  for  the  fishing  expedition,  a 
lantern,  nets,  stone  water-bottles,  and 
what  not.  "  Pierre  !  Francois  !  Di- 
antre  !  are  the  men  all  deaf  ?  Here, 
Gabriel  Ducre's,  lend  a  hand  with  this 
lantern  and  the  tackle,  and  I  '11  bring  up 
the  baskets."  And  Gabriel  began  reluc- 
tantly to  descend  the  ladder  once  more. 

"  Yes,  here  we  are,"  said  Pierre  Len- 
net, giving  his  burly  person  a  shake,  as 
a  water-dog  does  on  reaching  shore,  — 


140 


Michael's  Night. 


[August, 


"  here  we  are,  and  a  nice  night  we  've 
had  of  it,  —  eh,  Neighbor  Defere  ?  And 
who  was  the  lass  that  held  the  lantern  ? 
We  knew  it  was  a  woman ;  I  aimed 
straight  at  her  white  cap ;  but,  Ma- 
donna !  it  was  the  saving  of  us." 

"Jeanne  Defe're!  Jeanne  Defe're!" 
cried  many  voices.  And  then  came  a 
confusion  of  questions  and  answers 
and  exclamations,  and  Pierre's  loud 
voice  sounding  above  all,  recounting 
his  adventures. 

"  But  how  came  you  there  at  all, 
Pierre  Lennet  ? — 'and  Gabriel  Ducres, 
too !  —  the  good  saints  must  have 
dropped  them  from  the  clouds." 

"  I  don't  know  rightly  yet  how  they 
came  together,"  said  old  Defere.  "We 
have  n't  had  much  time  for  talking ;  but 
if  it  had  been  the  holy  St.  Jacques  and 
his  brother,  I  should  n't  have  been 
more  glad  to  see  them  than  when  they 
came  alongside  with  that  rope." 

"  Rope  !  "  exclaimed  several  voices 
at  once,  "  how  was  that  ?  " 

"Well,  you  see,"  said  old.  Defere, 
"  we  ran  out  very  well  last  night,  and 
lay  off  about  two  miles  from  shore,  but 
scarce  a  herring  could  we  touch.  They 
ran  before  us  just  as  if  the  Devil  were 
at  their  tails.  The  wind  had  got  up  a 
bit  by  that  time,  but  the  fish  had  given 
us  the  slip  so  often  that  we  thought  we 
would  make  another  trial  farther  down 
the  coast,  and  so  drop  into  Treport  if 
the  weather  grew  worse.  But  little 
enough  of  Treport  did  we  see.  We 
knocked  about  for  three  hours,  and 
found  we  could  not  make  head  against 
the  wind,  and  so  turned  about  and  rode 
before  it  towards  Dieppe.  Such  a 
wind  !  and  to  come  up  without  a  bit 
of  warning !  Behold  us  there  as  the 
day  wears  away.  The  sea  washes  over 
us  every  minute.  After  each  wave  I 
look  up  to  see  whether  Francois  and 
Jacques  are  not  gone ;  but  no,  there 
we  all  are  !  A  great  wave  comes  that 
throws  me  on  my  face,  the  boat  veers 
as  the  helm  flies  loose,  and  we  catch  a 
broadside  from  the  sea  that  makes  the 
old  boat  shiver  and  crack  again,  and  I 
say  to  myself,  as  the  water  goes  over 
me,  '  Here  is  an  end  to  thy  fishing,  Pere 


Defe're,  and  thy  days  altogether.  La 
Sainte  Perpetua  won't  reach  harbor; 
but  at  least  thou  wilt  not  have  to  leave 
the  olr^boat,7  —  for  I  held  on  to  the  helm 
through  all.  But  up  we  come  again  ; 
the  water  sweeps  off,  and  the  boat 
rights  herself.  Francois  and  Jacques 
are  both  there,  but  the  rope  is  gone. 
Eh,  bien  !  where  is  our  chance  for  get- 
ting into  Dieppe  to-night  ?  So  there 
we  lie  and  beat  about,  and  wait  to  see 
what  the  bon  Dieu  will  do  next,  for  our 
best  is  done.  After  an  hour  or  more, 
we  signal  the  men  on  shore,  and  they 
come  out  to  us,  bringing  the  rope  ;  and 
who  are  they  but  Pierre  and  Gabriel ! 
Madonna  !  how  they  worked  !  Cousin 
Gabriel  there,  he  is  no  sailor,  but  he 
is  of  the  right  stuff  to  make  one.  A 
strong  arm  is  a  strong  arm,  and  a  stout 
heart  is  a  stout  heart,  whether  it 's  in  a 
blouse  or  a  sailor's  jacket !  " 

"  Ei,"  broke  in  Pierre  Lennet,  "  thou 
wouldst  not  make  a  bad  sailor,  friend 
Gabriel !  He  worked  like  a  skipper,  to 
be  sure,  and  has  a  voice  for  a  long 
shout !  It  was  his  voice  brought  out 
the  light,  any  way.  Mais,  bon  patron, 
could  not  you  hear  us  before  ?  I  gave 
a  shout  enough  to  reach  Dover,  and 
you  no  more  answered  than  so  many 
herrings." 

The  crowd  pressed  still  round  De- 
fere, discussing  eagerly  the  further 
story  of  his  adventures.  Pierre  looked 
round  through  the  crowd,  dimly  seen 
by  the  light  of  the  lanterns.  "  La 
voila ! "  he  said,  and  made  his  way 
towards  Jeanne,  who  stood  a  little  apart 
from  the  rest. 

She  was  standing  near  a  pile  of 
cordage,  upon  which  some  one  had  set 
a  lantern,  and  by  its  light  was  busily 
engaged  in  wringing  out  the  water  from 
her  father's  seaman's  coat,  and  the 
nets  which  had  been  brought  up  from 
the  boat-hold.  Epiphanie  had  seated 
herself  on  this  heap  of  cordage,  but, 
while  the  light  of  the  lantern  fell  full 
upon  Jeanne,  Epiphanie's  figure  was 
entirely  lost  in  shadow,  the  dark  side 
being  turned  towards  her.  Jeanne  did 
not  look  up  from  her  work  till  Pierre 
laid  his  heavy  hand  upon  her  shoulder.. 


i868.] 


£/.  Michael's  Night. 


141 


"Bon  soir,  Jeanne  ;  is  thy  cap  any  the 
worse  for  the  rope  ?  "  he  said. 

"  5T  was  a  good  aim,"  said  Jeanne, 
smiling,  and  holding  out  her  hand. 
"  Didst  thou  know  it  was  our  boat, 
Pierre,  when  you  two  went  out  with  the 
rope  ? " 

"  Not  I,"  said  Pierre.  "  I  had  gone 
up  to  the  Etablissement  des  Bains, 
just  below  the  Camp  de  Cesar,  with 
two  of  our  men  (for  after  the  steamer 
put  back  we  had  nothing  to  do),  and 
we  were  standing  in  the  shed  there  with 
half  a  dozen  people  who  had  collected 
watching  the  sloop.  She  wasn't  an 
eighth  of  a  league  Trom  shore  then." 

"Did  they  signal?  "  asked  Jeanne. 

"  Of  course  ;  and  we  soon  found  out 
it  was  the  rope  they  had  lost,  and  thy 
cousin  Ducres  there  and  I  went  out." 

"  How  came  Gabriel  to  go  with 
thee,"  asked  Jeanne,  stooping  again 
towards  the  pile  of  wet  nets,  "  when 
there  were  sailors  there  ? " 

"  Because  they  would  n't,  les  grands 
laches!  When  I  ran  to  haul  down  a 
boat  (there  are  always  safety -boats 
there  for  the  bathers  in  the  summer, 
and  plenty  of  tackle)  the  man  who  owns 
the  place  cursed  me  for  a  fool,  and  said 
I  should  not  have  the  boat,  and  talked 
and  blasphemed  so  about  the  danger, 
that  not  a  man  of  them  would  stir  to 
help  me.  Suddenly,  a  young  man 
comes  forward,  and  says  :  '  I  'm  only  a 
landsman,  but  I  can  row  well  enough, 
and  I  'm  ready  to  go  if  you  choose  to 
take  me,  Pierre  Lennet'  (he  knew  me, 
it  seemed,  though  I  did  n't  know  him). 
*  One  can  but  be  drowned  at  the  worst,' 
he  says.  'Come  on,'  said  I,  and  we 
hauled  the  boat  down  gayly  between 
us.  Monsieur  le  Baigneur  I  knew 
dare  n't  prevent  us  taking  it.  A  man 
gets  no  good  character  who  refuses  to 
help  a  boat  in  distress.  C'est  un  gar- 
c,on  d'un  cceur  harcli,  ton  cousin  ! " 
continued  Pierre,  pointing  over  his 
shoulder  with  his  thumb  towards  the 
direction  of  the  boat;  "and  I  never 
knew  who  it  was  till  I  heard  thy  father 
call  him  by  his  name." 

Jeanne  looked  up,  a  sudden  grate- 
ful radiance  shining  in  her  gray  eyes. 


"  Thou  hast  done  my  father  a  good 
service,  Pierre,  —  and  me  too.  The 
good  saints  reward  thee  !  " 

"  Thou  hast  done  me  some  good 
turns  too,  Jeanne  Defere,"  said  Pierre, 
laying  his  hand  upon  the  girl's  shoulder, 
and  looking  kindly  into  her  face.  "  But 
for  thee,  I  should  have  been  at  the 
other  end  of  the  world,  or  perhaps  at 
the  bottom  of  the  sea.  But  per- 
haps," he  added,  with  an. uneasy  laugh, 
pushing  his  hand  somewhat  discon- 
solately through  his  hair,  "  it  would 
have  been  better  to  have  gone  than 
stayed  when  one  feels  one's  self  always 
growing  older,  but  no  happier." 

"  Whist !  "  said  Jeanne,  giving  him  a 
smart  rap  with  the  back  of  her  hand 
on  the  lips,  "thou  art  always  a  fool, 
Pierre  !  Here  is  Epiphanie  close  to 
thee  !  "  And,  without  waiting  to  see 
his  surprise  and  confusion,  she  turned 
her  back  on  him,  and,  in  turning,  came 
full  upon  Gabriel,  standing  with  the  lan- 
tern in  his  hand,  and  regarding  her 
with  eyes  full  of  the  bitterest  rage  and 
dismay.  He  was  near  enough  to  have 
seen  all  that  passed  between  her  and 
Pierre,  thougli  not  to  have  heard  what 
they  had  said. 

"  Cousin  Gabriel !  "  said  Jeanne,  with 
the  sudden  conviction  of  what  was  in 
his  mind,  and  of  the  force  which  the 
scene  of  the  last  few  minutes  must  have 
lent  to  his  suspicions,  —  "  Gabriel !  " 
and  then  she  stopped.  She  had  no  wit 
to  dissemble,  and,  rinding  herself  sud- 
denly with  all  the  appearance  of  guilt 
upon  her,  she  felt  for  the  moment  as  if 
she  were  guilty,  and  stood  powerless  to 
say  a  word.  She  had  thought  to  meet 
him  so  differently  too  ! 

But  Gabriel  knew  nothing  of  this ; 
he  clutched  the  lantern  till  it  rattled  in 
his  hard  grip,  and  turned  away.  Jeanne 
sprang  forward,  and  caught  his  arm ; 
he  looked  at  her  for  a  moment,  and 
then,  shaking  himself  loose  from  her 
appealing  hand,  he  strode  on. 

"  Gamin  !  "  said  Jeanne,  her  perplex- 
ity and  discomfiture  suddenly  blazing 
forth  into  red-hot  anger  at  this  exas- 
perating dismissal  of  her  overtures  of 
conciliation  ;  and  she  turned  on  her 


142 


S/.  Michael's  Night. 


[August, 


heel.  "  Comme  ils  sont  betes,  —  les 
hommes  !  "  she  said  with  a  contemptu- 
ous stamp  of  her  sabot.  But  her  heart 
was  sore  and  heavy,  in  spite  of  her  an- 
ger, and  the  hot  tears  fell  on  her  fa- 
ther's rough  seaman's  coat  as  she  took  it 
up.  She  had  even  forgotten  Epiphanie. 
Throwing  the  coat  over  her  arm,  and 
obeying  the  call  of  her  father,  who 
stood  ready  to  go,  she  took  his  hand  in 
hers,  and  went  on  with  the  rest  of  the 
company  into  the  town. 


CHAPTER  XL 

"  SOME  must  meet  and  some  must 
part,  so  runs  the  world  away " ;  and 
when  Jeanne  turned  and  met  Gabriel, — 
an  encounter  destined  to  increase  the 
bitterness  of  their  last  parting  by  fur- 
ther strife,  Pierre  Lennet  drew  near  to 
Epiphanie  ;  and  Epiphanie,  who  had 
heard  Pierre's  last  words  with  Jeanne, 
shrunk  half  timidly  into  her  corner, 
with  a  sure  knowledge  that  this  encoun- 
ter between  her  and  Pierre  would  be 
either  a  meeting  or  a  parting  for  their 
lives. 

Pierre,  leaning  up  against  the  cord- 
age, cast  her  into  still  deeper  shade 
as  he  brought  his  broad  shoulders 
between  her  and^the  light.  Into  this 
friendly  shadow  Epiphanie  leaned  with 
gathering  confidence.  She  listened, 
with  her  head  bent  down  towards  the 
baby  that  lay  sleeping  in  her  arms,  as 
Pierre,  resting  on  his  elbows,  and  strok- 
ing his  tawny  beard  thoughtfully  as  he 
spoke,  looked  up  into  her  face.  It  y/as 
not  long  that  Pierre  spoke,  and  Epi- 
phanie listened  ;  but  when  Jeanne  took 
her  father's  hand,  and  the  little  knot 
of  people  began  to  move  off,  Epiphanie 
slid  down  from  her  high  seat,  and  stood 
for  a  moment,  as  Pierre,  taking  her  to 
his  faithful  heart,  bent  and  kissed  her 
on  the  lips.  Then,  with  a  laugh,  he 
took  the  child  from  her  arms,  and 
walked  on  by  her  side,  her  sabots 
keeping  up  a  merry  and  harmonious 
clack,  as  she  endeavored  to  keep  step 
with  the  rolling  gait  of  her  compan- 
ion. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  men  stood  consulting,  before 
they  separated  for  the  night,  about  the 
next  day.  It  was  agreed  that  some 
one  of  them  must  run  a  boat  clown  to 
Verangeville  in  the  morning,  if  the 
storm  had  by  that  time  abated,  to 
fetch  from  thence  a  rudder  that  old 
Defere  had  lying  at  home,  for  his  dis- 
abled fishing-boat,  and  so  save  the  ex- 
pense of  getting  a  new  one  in  Dieppe. 
Every  day  is  of  importance  in  the  fish- 
ing-season, and  every  hour  that  La 
Sainte  Perpetua  lay  by  was  so  much 
lost  to  him  in  the  profits  for  the  year. 
Jean  Farge  offered  the  use  of  his  boat 
for  this  purpose,  on  condition  that  she 
should  start  early  in  the  morning  and 
be  back  the  next  night.  This  was 
agreed  to,  and  then  came  the  ques- 
tion, who  wfas  to  go,  and  who  stay 
behind.  Old  Robbe  had  business  to 
keep  him  in  Dieppe  all  da}',  so  it  nat- 
urally fell  to  old  Defere  and  Francois 
Milette,  though  he  probably  would 
have  liked  better  to  stay  anoLier  day 
in  Dieppe,  in  the  company  of  Marie 
Robbe,  who  was  to  remain  for  several 
days  longer  at  her  uncle's,  the  ivory- 
carver.  The  rest  of  the  company, 
including  Jeanne,  Epiphanie,  and,  pos- 
sibly, Pierre,  were  to  return  by  land, 
the  next  day.  Gabriel  Ducres  declared 
his  intention  of  going  to  Arques  on  the 
morrow,  to  buy  seed  for  the  farm,  —  a 
journey  he  had  put  off  from,  day  to  day, 
during  the  past  week  at  Verangeville. 

After  these  various  plans  were  ar- 
ranged, the  whole  company  trooped 
along  together;  some  dropping  oft'  at 
different  points  on  the  way,  where  were 
their  lodgings  for  the  night. 

Epiphanie  Milette  and  Jeanne  and 
her  father  were  to  stay  at  the  Farges  in 
the  Pollet,  and  Frangois  and  Gabriel 
were  to  sleep  at  the  house  of  a  neigh- 
bor. 

Frangois  left  the  others,  at  the  md 
of  the  drawbridge  that  crosses  the  ''  :k, 
to  accompany  Marie  Robbe  to  the  Rue 
de  St.  Remi,  where  lived  her  uncle, 
and  where  she  was  staying. 

The  rest  of  the  company  continued 


1 868.] 


6V.  Michael's  Niht. 


their  way  across  the  bridge,  and  along 
the  side  of  the  dock.  The  wind  blew 
hard  in  their  faces,  as  they  walked. 
Jean  Farge  went  first,  carrying  the 
lantern,  and  talking  to  old  Defere,  who, 
with  Jeanne,  walked  just  behind. 

Most  of  the  houses,  that  run  along 
the  wharf-side  in  the  Pollet,  were  closed 
for  the  night,  but  a  light  twinkled  in 
the  window  of  the  Farge  cottage,  which, 
as  I  said,  stood  on  the  cliffside,  raised 
above  the  other  houses. 

"  The  old  woman  is  waiting  for  us," 
said  Jean  Farge.  "  Ha— hoi !  "  he 
shouted,  as  they  turned  and  approached 
the  steps  worn  in  the  cliffside.  The 
light  moved  suddenly,  the  door  opened, 
letting  out  a  pleasant  stream  of  hos- 
pitable light  on  the  wet  and  weary 
company  standing  below. 

"  Here  we  are,  mother,"  said  Jean, 
"safe  and  sound,  and  hungry  as  gulls." 

"  Dieu  merci !  "  said  the  old  woman, 
"supper  has  been  ready  this  hour  or 
more.  I  kept  the  mpat  half  cooked, 
though  not  knowing  when  you'd 
come  ! 

Madame  Farge  had  stood  on  those 
steps  many  a  stormy  night  before,  and 
looked  out  into  the  darkness  at  the 
sound  of  approaching  footsteps  ;  but 
each  time  Jean's  voice,  ringing  out,  just 
as  it  did  to-night,  had  assured  her  that 
all  was  well,  and  set  her  anxious  heart 
at  rest. 

"  Come  in,  come  in,"  said  the  old 
woman  ;  "  so  }rou  've  had  a  bad  night 
of  it,  eh,  Neighbor  Defere  ?  Jeanne, 
ma  fille,  and  Epiphanie  Milette,  blessed 
saints!  how  wet  you  are!  Come  to 
the  fire,  children,  and  warm  yourselves. 
Pierre  Lennet  with  the  baby  !  Ah,  the 
sweet  child,  how  he  sleeps  !  And  Epi- 
phanie trusted  thee  with  him,  Pierre  ! 
Why,  she  would  not  leave  him  with 
me,  for  all  I  could  say  !  Take  him  up, 
Epiphanie,  my  child,  and  lay  him  in 
bed,  and,  if  he  wakes,  I  have  a  cup  of 
milk  ready  for  him  at  the  fire. 
re  petit !  I  've  had  my  bowl  of  bat- 
ter ready  this  half-hour,  but  not  agalette 
have  I  made ;  for,  of  galettes,  I  say, 
unless  they  are  as  fresh  as  a  six-o'clock 
daisy,  they  're  not  worth  the  eating." 


"  Have  you  room  for  me  also  ? " 
said  Pierre. 

"  Eh !  always  for  good  company, 
Pierre  ;  here's  a  place  for  thee,  between 
Jeanne  and  Epiphanie,"  said  the  old 
woman.  "  And  Gabriel  Ducres,  where 
is  he  ?  "  she  continued  ;  "  has  he  not 
come  up  with  you  ?  " 

"Good  night!"  called  Gabriel,  out 
of  the  darkness,  where  he  stood,  at  the 
foot  of  the  steps. 

"  Come  up,  Gabriel,  come  in  ! " 
shouted  several  voices  together.  "  Here 
's  supper  ready,  come  up  !  " 

"  No,  I  'in  going  to  Neighbor  Le- 
gros's.  Francois  and  I  sleep  there  to- 
night. I  don't  want  any  supper." 

"  O,  come  in,  Gabriel,"  said  Pierre. 
"  We  are  a  merrier  company  here  than 
at  Neighbor  Legros's" ;  and  he  took 
Gabriel  by  the  arm,  as  if  to  compel  him 
to  come  in.  "  Thou  and  I  have  been 
comrades  all  day,  and  I  count  this  the 
best  night  of  my  life,  and  thou  must 
share  it  with  me.  Come  in !  " 

But  Pierre's  words  had  anything  but 
a  persuasive  effect  upon  Gabriel,  who 
wrenched  himself  loose,  and  stalked 
off  into  the1  darkness. 

"  Ma  foi !  he  must  be  sleepy,  indeed, 
if  he  is  in  such  a  hurry  to  go  supper- 
less  to  bed  !  "  said  Pierre,  with  a  laugh. 
"Eh  bien  i  Gabriel,"  he  bawled  after 
the  receding  figure,  "  Jeanne  and  I  will 
drink  thy  share  of  cider,  to  thy  good 
dreams  !  " 

"  It  is  because  he  does  not  want  to 
keep  them  up  at  Neighbor  Legros's,  that 
he  would  not  come  in,"  said  Epiphanie. 

"Yes,  yes,"  chimed  in  old  Defere, 
"he  is  always  careful  and  good-na- 
tured, that  boy  there  !  " 

"  And  stout-hearted,  too,"  added 
Pierre. 

"  In  his  disposition  he  resembles  his 
blessed  grandmother,"  said  Madame 
Farge,  with  the  melancholy  cadence  of 
one  who  speaks  of  the  virtues  of  the 
departed. 

"Well,  well,"  said  Jean  Farge,  to 
whom  a  regretful  state  of  mind  was  not 
natural,  "let  us  sit  down  to  supper 
now,  and  not  waste  any  more  time  in 
talking.  Here  's  a  supper  for  you  !  — 


144 


St.  Michael's  Night. 


[August, 


beefsteaks,  and  potatoes  roasted  in 
their  jackets,  and  soup  of  crabs  in 
which  one  might  drown  one's  self  from 
pure  joy,  and  hot  cakes,  and  a  stew  of 
onions  to  season  all !  A  good  supper, 
I  say,  for  men  who  have  seen  noth- 
ing better  than  an  uncooked  herring 
all  day  !  " 

So  they  took  their  places  round  the 
table,  and  for  a  moment  all  heads  bent 
reverently,  as,  with  uplifted  hands,  the 
words  of  thanksgiving  were  said,  and 
—  shall  we  doubt  it  ?  —  the  Blessed 
iblessed  the  meal. 

The  talk  flowed  on  merrily,  above 
the  clatter  of  the  knives  and  forks. 
Jean  Farge,  in  the  intervals  between 
his  mouthfuls  of  food,  gave  an  account 
of  the  events  of  the  night  to  his  wife, 
who  sat  on  a  stool  by  the  wide  open 
fireplace  baking  the  cakes  that  were 
placed  smoking  hot  before  the  hungry 
guests  every  few  minutes.  The  tins 
on  the  wall  gleamed,  and  the  little  oil 
lamp  hanging  under  the  crucifix  faded 
to  a  mere  spark  in  the  ruddy  glow  of 
the  firelight  that  lit  up  the  whole  room. 
Jeanne  helped  the  old  woman  with  her 
cooking,  set  the  cakes  upon  *the  table, 
cut  slices  from  the  big  brown  loaf,  ar- 
ranged them  neatly  on  a  dish,  and 
served  the  table  with  a  tact  and  fore- 
thought that,  had  she  been  de  Fere, 
instead  of  Defere,  and  found  herself  in 
the  circle  of  the  system  to  which  this 
apparently  trifling  change  would  have 
given  her  a  right,  would  have  made  her 
a,  queen  of  social  entertainment.  With 
her  brisk  activity,  her  natural  cheerful- 
ness returned ;  she  moved  about  the 
room  with  a  quick,  firm  tread,  attend- 
ing to  the  wants  of  all  with  impartial 
zeal.  She  had  the  hot  plate  always 
ready  for  the  old  woman  the  moment 
the  cakes  were  baked,  and  talked  pleas- 
antly to  those  at  the  table,  as  she  stood 
by  the  fire  filling  the  pitchers  with  hot 
cider  from  the  kettle  that  stood  on  the 
hob,  and  whence  issued  an  odorous 
steam,  like  the  breath  of  sunny  orchards 
in  September. 

"  You  must  drink  first,  Jeanne,  to 
sweeten  the  drink,"  said  Pierre,  whose 
glass  she  was  filling  with  the  warm  and 


fragrant  cider;  and  he  held  it  towards 
her. 

"To  your  good  appetite,  Pierre  Len- 
net,"  she  said,  raising  the  cup  to  her 
lips,  and  drinking  its  contents  to  the 
last  drop.  "So  much  for  your  empty 
gallantry,"  and  she  turned  to  fill  the 
cup  of  old  Robbe.  Pierre  burst  into  a 
loud  laugh,  and  in  the  midst  of  his 
stentorian,  "  Ho,  ho  !  "  a  tiny  peal  of 
infantine  laughter  sounded  from  above. 
Epiphanie,  at  the  first  note,  sprang  to 
her  feet,  and  mounted  the  steep  stairs 
that  led  from  the  room  in  which  they 
sat  to  the  one  above.  Pierre  looked 
dismayed. 

"  Thou  hast  wakened  the  child, 
Pierre,  with  thy  laughing,"  said  Jean 
Farge,  "  and  Epiphanie  will  scold  for 
that.  She's  a  different  woman,  when 
the  child  is  concerned,  for  all  she  seems 
so  quiet  and  timid.  I  believe"  (lower- 
ing his  voice  solemnly  and  crossing 
himself  as  he  spoke),  —  "  I  believe,  she 
would  walk  alone  over  the  cliffs  to 
Pourville  wood,  on  All-Souls'  night,  if 
it  would  do  that  child  any  good." 

"  Yes,  yes,"  said  Robbe,  "  that 's 
just  the  way  with  some  women.  They 
are  just  like  the  gulls,  that  shriek,  and 
seem  as  if  they'd  drop  all  their  feathers 
through  sheer  fright,  if  you  go  near 
them  in  open  sea,  but  who  '11  fly  in 
your  face,  and  fight  till  they  're  caught, 
if  you  trouble  their  nests."  e 

In  another  moment,  Epiphanre's 
was  heard  above,  laughing  and  chatter- 
ing with  the  child,  who  had  evidently 
wakened  in  high  good-humor,  and  ready 
for  general  entertainment.  There  was 
a  sound  of  kissing  and  coaxing,  and 
to  every  remonstrance  a  shrill  reply 
of  "En  bas,  en  bas  !  "  And  pres- 
ently Epiphanie's  voice  said  some- 
what apologetically  at  the  top  of  the 
stairs. 

"  He  wants  to  come  down ;  and  he  is 
so  quite,  quite  awake  !  " 

"  Bring  him  down,  bring  him  down," 
cried  several  voices  at  once. 

Then  she  appeared,  carrying  the 
little  fellow  wrapped  in  her  cloak,  his 
cheeks  rosy  with  sleep,  his  curling  hair 
about  his  eyes,  which  blinked,  partly 


1 868.] 


St.  Michael's  Night. 


145 


before  the  blazing  light  and  partly  be- 
fore the  strange  faces. 

"  Pauvre  gars !  It  was  my  roaring 
that  waked  him,"  said  Pierre,  throwing 
himself  back  on  his  stool  towards 
Epiphanie,  as  she  passed  behind  him 
to  the  fire.  * 

"  No,  no,"  she  said,  "  his  feet  were 
cold  with  being  out  so  long,  and  that 
made  him  restless.  I  '11  just  warm 
them,  and  give  him  a  cupful  of  milk, 
and  he  '11  soon  sleep." 

Pierre  took  the  little  soft  white  feet 
in  his  large  brown  hand.  The  warmth 
was  pleasant,  and  the  little  fellow  smiled 
upon  him,  half  shy,  half  pleased.  A  ten- 
der light  came  into  the  mother's  eyes. 
Her  hand  touched  Pierre's  lightly  with 
a  sudden  caress,  and,  for  a  moment, 
he  held  the  little  foot  and  her  hand  in 
his  strong  grasp.  Then  Epiphanie, 
smiling,  and  with  a  happy  blush  on  her 
cheek,  went  to  the  fire,  and,  seating 
herself  on  a  low  wooden  stool,  laid  the 
child  on  her  lap  and  fed  him,  while  he, 
basking  and  smiling,  spread  his  toes  in 
the  warm  firelight,  and  gradually  fell 
asleep. 

"  Come,  Jeanne,  eat  your  supper ! 
you  eat  nothing ;  and  those  who  serve 
have  double  fare,  they  say,"  said  Jean 
Farge  to  Jeanne,  who  had  pushed  her 
plate  away  from  her,  and  was  sitting 
with  her  arms  folded  on  the  table  be- 
fore her. 

"  I  'm  not  hungry,"  she  said.  "  I  've 
had  a  hard  day,  and  I  shall  not  eat  till 
I  have  slept,  I  think."  And  she  rose 
from  the  table. 

When  Pierre  and  old  ^Robbe  had 
gone,  Jeanne  persuaded  Epiphanie  to 
-take  the  child  up  stairs,  and  go  to  bed 
herself,  promising  to  come  up  directly 
after  she  had  helped  the  old  woman  to 
put  all  in  order  after  the  supper.  Jean 
Farge  and  his  wife  occupied  a  little 
room  adjoining  the  kitchen,  and  old 
Dcfcre  slept  on  a  shelf  placed  within  a 
recess  in  the  kitchen  wall,  after  the 
fashion  of  a  berth  on  shipboard. 

The  two  young  women  were  to  share 
the  little  room  above.  When  Jeanne 
•went  up  the  creaking  stairs,  creeping 
softly  so  as  not  to  awaken  the  sleepers, 

VOL.    XXII.  —  NO.    130.  10 


she  found  Epiphanie  sleeping,  and 
turned  towards  the  child  that  nestled 
beside  her,  with  a  face  not  much  less 
peaceful  and  innocent  than  his. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

JEANNE  set  the  candle  on  the  shelf 
below  the  little  looking-glass,  and,  seat- 
ing herself  on  a  low  stool,  began  to 
unwind  the  long  braids  of  her  hair, 
still  damp  from  the  spray  and  rain. 

She  was  tired,  body  and  mind ;  not 
healthily  tired,  but  wearied  with  ex- 
citement, and  sudden  revulsions,  and 
storms  within.  Her  whole  past  life 
was  changing,  slipping  out  of  her 
grasp  ;  the  thoughts  of  yesterday  were 
no  longer  hers.  She  had  embarked  on 
a  wild  stream  that  bore  her  she  knew 
not  whither.  The  excitement  of  her 
anger  towards  Gabriel  was  over  ;  anger 
was  past,  and  love  remained.  The 
clear  light  that  had  risen  out  of  the  an- 
guish of  her  despair,  as  she  stood  on 
the  pier,  had  faded  and  gone,  and  left 
her  in  darkness,  with  the  chill  of  dis- 
appointment, and  with  clouds  of  per- 
plexity gathering  about  her.  To  have 
quarrelled,  to  have  met  again  and  part- 
ed in  anger,  after  he  had  helped  to  save 
her  father's  boat !  But  she  would  see 
Gabriel,  she  would  thank  him,  she 
would  be  at  peace  with  him  at  least ! 
And  yet,  if  she  met  him  again,  they 
would  probably  quarrel.  Ah  !  perhaps 
that  was  to  be  her  fate,  —  that  Gabriel 
and  she  could  never  more  be  at  peace  ; 
but  she  would  love  him  all  her  life  ! 

She  pushed  her  hair  back  from  her 
cheeks,  and,  resting  her  chin  on  her 
two  hands,  looked  straight  before  her, 
her  eyes  full  of  despondency.  The 
tears  gathered  silently,  and  flowed  over 
her  cheeks  faster  and  faster  till  the 
storm  burst,  and  she  bowed  her  head 
down  on  her  knees,  and  tried  to  stifle 
the  sobs  that  shook  her  whole  body. 

The  sound,  subdued  as  it  was,  dis- 
turbed Epiphanie  in  her  light  and  hap- 
py slumber.  She  put  out  her  hand 
instinctively  over  the  child,  and  mur- 
mured some  soft  tones  of  love  and 


146 


.SV.  Michael* s  Night. 


[August,. 


soothing.  In  another  moment  her  eyes 
opened  wide,  and,  rising  hastily,  she 
crossed  the  room  before  Jeanne  could 
look  up,  and  slid  down  on  the  floor 
beside  her. 

"  O  Jeanne,  Jeanne,  what  ails  thee  ? 
what  is  it  ?  "  she  cried  in  a  low  voice, 
and  wound  her  soft  arms  about  her, 
and  pressed  her  cheek  to  hers. 

"Je  suis  malheureuse  —  malheure- 
use,  to  the  bottom  of  my  heart !  "  said 
Jeanne,  shaking  her  head.  Epiphanie 
was  puzzled.  Her  own  heart,  quick- 
ened by  its  blissful  contentment,  re- 
sponded acutely  to  the  suffering  of 
her  friend  ;  but  she  said  'nothing,  only 
wound  her  arms  closer,  and  whispered  : 
"  Jeannette,  my  Jeannette  !  "  and  waited 
with  patient  sympathy  till  Jeanne  had 
exhausted  the  relief  of  tears,  —  that 
mute  confession  of  a  troubled  heart,  — 
and  should  seek  the  further  relief  of 
words.  After  a  while  the  violence  of 
her  weeping  subsided,  and  she  raised 
her  head. 

"  I  have  quarrelled  with  Gabriel,  and 
we  shall  never  be  at  peace  again,  — 
never,  never,  never ! "  she  said,  in  a 
tone  of  vehement  despair. 

Epiphanie  had  not  been  Jeanne's 
friend  all  her  life,  and  learned  her 
thoughts  and  ways,  without  having  had 
her  own  convictions  on  the  subject  of 
Gabriel, Ducres  ;  but  concerning  him 
there  had  been  no  confidence  between 
them,  probably  because  there  was  none 
on  the  part  of  Jeanne  to  give.  She 
talked  continually  of  him  without  re- 
serve, and  with  perfect  simplicity  and 
candor.  Jeanne  was  different  from  the 
other  village  girls,  each  of  whom  had 
usually  some  special  adherent  among 
the  young  men,  —  a  sort  of  temporary 
lover  or  permanent  partner,  whichever 
term  may  describe  the  dubious  position 
best,  —  with  whom  she  danced,  walked 
home  from  vespers,  and  exchanged  lit- 
tle gifts  and  tokens  of  regard.  A  liai- 
son of  this  kind  occasionally  developed 
into  a  betrothal,  but  more  frequently 
lasted  only  a  few  months,  and  was  then 
dissolved,  —  one  or  both  of  the  contract- 
ing parties  desiring  a  change,  or  be- 
coming tired  of  each  other;  and  this 


without  the  slightest  reproach  on  the 
score  of  inconstancy. 

Jeanne,  as  Epiphanie  knew,  had  nev- 
er admitted  any  of  the  village  youths  to 
this  privileged  position  towards  herself. 
She  danced  at  all  the  merry-makings, 
treating  the  young  men  with  equal  fa- 
vor; and,  whatever  might  have  been 
the  thoughts  or  desires  of  the  youths 
themselves,  not  one  amongst  them  had 
ever  been  able  to  establish  any  tenderer 
relation  than  that  of  a  bonne  amitie  be- 
tween himself  and  Jeanne.  But  about 
Gabriel  Ducres  Epiphanie  felt  there 
was  something  very  different ;  he  held 
an  exceptional  place  in  Jeanne's  mind. 
She  had  known  him  all  her  life ;  she 
loved  his  mother  with  the  full  warmth 
of  her  heart ;  she  was  always  happy  and 
contented  when  with  him,  and  always 
seemed  to  connect  him  insensibly  with 
her  own  affairs.  In  short,  he  was  con- 
venable,  and  Epiphanie  felt  that  there 
was  something  inevitable  about  Gabriel 
Ducres  when  she  pondered  as  to  whom 
Jeanne  would  marry.  So  when  Jeanne 
said,  simply,  that  she  was  miserable, 
and  had  quarrelled  with  Gabriel,  Epi- 
phanie was  not  surprised,  and  merely 
said  :  "  But  how  was  it,  Jeanne  ?  " 

"We  quarrelled  last  night,"  said 
Jeanne,  "because  —  he  asked  me  to 
marry  him,  and  I  was  all  confused  and 
disturbed,  and  said,  —  I  know  not  what, 

—  I  thought  we  were  so  happy  as  we 
were,  —  and  I  said  I  meant  always  to 
marry  a  sailor.     And  at  that  he  grew 
suddenly  fierce  and  angry,  and   I  was 
angry  too,  —  and  left  him,  and  when  I 
came  back  again   he  was  gone.     And 
that  was   the   way  that  he  came   into 
Dieppe  last  night,  instead  of  waiting  till 
this  morning,  and  coming  with  us." 

"  Ah  !  "  said  Epiphanie.  "  Thou 
saidst  no,-  then  !  " 

"Yes,"  said  Jeanne  ;  "  I  sa;  '  .vhat  I 
felt  then,  and  that  was  anger,  .'ut  it  is 
a  long  time  since  last  night,  Epiphanie, 

—  it  seems  like  a  week  to  me,  —  and  he 
has  helped  to  save  my  father's  boat  too, 

—  and —     But  to-night,"  she   contin- 
ued, with  increasing  energy,  "  when  I 
would  have  thanked  him,  he  was  full 
anger  still,  and  turned  from  me.     Ai 


1 868.] 


S/.  Michael's  Night. 


147 


so  we  have  quarrelled  again,  and  he 
will  go  back  to  the  Vallee  d'Allon,  and 
maybe  marry  some  girl  for  anger  ;  and 
God  would  punish  such  wickedness, 
and  he  would  be  miserable,  and  I 
should  never  have  another  happy 
day ! " 

"  Our  good  God  has  many  ways  to 
bring  things  about,"  said  Epiphanie, 
softly,  but  with  great  earnestness.  Ga- 
briel would  not  be  so  false-hearted  as 
to  ask  any  girl  to  marry  him,  when  his 
heart  was  away  from  it ;  and  God  will 
not  forsake  thee,  Jeanne,  even  as  thou 
hast  not  forsaken  me  ! "  she  continued, 
her  voice  trembling,  not  with  weakness, 
but  with  the  strength  and  passion  of 
conviction.  Jeanne  looked  at  her,  won- 
dering whence  came  this  sudden  illu- 
mination. She  was  suddenly  abashed 
before  the  earnest,  radiant  face.  A 
great  light  was  shining  full  on  Epipha- 
nie, and  Jeanne  felt  it  in  a  reflected 
glow  upon  her  own  heart.  And  is  it 
not  a  great  day  for  the  wisest  or  the 
simplest,  when,  after  years  of  sorrowful 
waiting,  the  power  of  renunciation  hav- 
ing grown  from  the  mere  habit  of  dis- 
appointment, we  find  the  sacrifice  ac- 
cepted, and,  instead  of  resignation,  as 
the  fruit  of  our  tears  and  prayers,  be- 
hold the  joy  that  we  have  striven  to 
resign  laid  before  our  feet,  with  the 
very  blessing  of  Heaven  resting  upon 
it? 

So  Jeanne,  feeling  dimly  something 
of  all  this,  opened  her  heart  to  her 
friend,  and  rehearsed  the  matter  from 
the  beginning,  telling  her  about  her 
last  interviews  with  her  cousin.  When 
she  came  to  the  scene  between  herself 
and  Gabriel,  after  she  had  parted  with 
Pierre  in  the  garden,  and  when  Gabriel 
had  made  those  surly  remarks,  and  she 
had  left  him  to  eat  his  supper  alone, 
Epiphanie  asked  :  "  But  why  wast  thou 
angry  when  he  asked  about  Pierre  ?  " 

••  Because  it  was  a  secret.  Pierre 
confided  in  me  as  a  friend,  and  I  was 
not  going  to  talk  of  any  one's  affairs  to 
another.  And  then  Gabriel  asked  me 
questions  that  I  did  not  know  how  to 
answer,  without  telling  all.  I  cannot 
open  my  eyes  wide,  and  say,  '  Voila 


tout,'  like  Marie  Robbe,  and  make  peo- 
ple think  they  knew  everything  when 
they  know  nothing.  I  was  vexed  that 
Gabriel  should  be  so  curious,  and  —  I 
could  not  help  being  angry." 

"  But  he  was  angry  only  because  he 
loves  thee  so  well.  Thou  shouldst  not 
have  been  so  hasty,  my  Jeannette  !  " 
said  Epiphanie. 

"  When  is  Gabriel  going  back  to  Ve- 
rangeville  ?  "  asked  she,  after  a  pause. 

"  The  day  after  to-morrow,  I  sup- 
pose," replied  Jeanne.  "  He  is  going 
to  Arques  to-morrow  morning  to  get 
the  seed  for  the  farm.  He  will  start 
early  in  the  morning,  I  know,  for  it  is  a 
long  walk  to  Arques." 

"  And  thou  art  going  back  to  Verange- 
ville  to-morrow  morning,  Jeanne  ?  " 

"Yes,"  said  Jeanne,  with  a  sigh.  "  I 
am  going  with  the  rest.  Thou  art  go- 
ing also,  Epiphanie,  n'est-ce  pas  ?  " 

"I  —  I  don't  know,"  said  Epiphanie, 
hesitating.  "  About  the  coat  I  meant  to 
get  for  the  child,  Jeanne :  the  storm  to- 
day put  everything  out  of  my  head,  —  I 
never  stopped  to  see  any  stuffs,  or  to  ask 
the  prices  in  any  of  the  shops.  I  thought 
I  would  noi  get  it  till  Tous  Saints  ;  but 
I  do  not  see  why  I  should  not  get  it 
now,  if  things  are  cheaper,  as  Madame 
Farge  says  they  are.  One  can  get  a 
piece  of  stuff  of  last  year,  she  says,  for 
.two  thirds  the  price  it  would  be  later, 
when  the  cold  weather  sets  in,  and 
everybody  is  buying.  Madame  Farge 
has  asked  me  to  stay  over  to-morrow, 
and  I  thought  —  at  least  I  think  —  it 
would  be  as  well,  Jeanne,  not  to  go  till 
to-morrow  evening.  I  heard  Nanette 
Planche  say  she  and  the  new  maid 
they  have  got  at  The  Giraffe  were  go- 
ing back  to-morrow  evening,  and  I  can 
go  with  them,"  continued  Epiphanie, 
looking  at  Jeanne,  with  her  head  turned 
thoughtfully  to  one  side,  as  if  she  were 
weighing  the  question  in  all  its  lights. 

"Yes,  perhaps  so,"  said  Jeanne,  "it 
may  be  best  for  thee  to  do  so."  She 
was  a  little  disconcerted  by  this  un- 
looked-for defection  on  the  part  of  her 
friend,  but  tried  not  to  show  it.  "  I 
dare  say  thou  art  right.  But  let  us  get 
to  bed  now,  for  it  must  be  late." 


148 


St.  Michael's  Night. 


[August, 


Epiphanie  had  meant  to  tell  Jeanne, 
when  they  came  to  be  together  in  their 
room  at  night,  of  her  momentous  talk 
with  Pierre  on  the  heap  of  cordage; 
but,  as  we  have  seen,  Jeanne  stayed 
down  stairs  awhile,  and  Epiphanie, 
wearied  by  her  long  day  of  fatigue  and 
excitement,  fell  into  a  light  slumber. 
The  slight  sound  of  Jeanne  coming  up 
the  stairs  had  in  part  roused  her,  but 
she  lay  with  closed  eyes  dreaming  the 
pleasant  dream  that  belongs  to  gradual 
awakening,  till  the  sound  of  distress 
startled  her  into  full  consciousness. 
Then  came  their  talk  and  a  revelation 
of  her  friend's  grief.  A  delicate  sense 
made  Epiphanie  forbear  to  tell  of  her 
own  happiness  just  when  her  joy  would 
clash  in  such  hard  contrast  with 
Jeanne's  troubles. 

"  In  the  morning  I  will  tell  her,"  she 
said ;  "  or,  better  still,  I  will  wait  till  all 
these  troubles  are  made  straight.  Ma- 
rie de  Bon  Secours,  help  me  ! " 

So  Epiphanie  lay  awake  for  very  hap- 
piness, busy  making  plans  for  the  dis- 
entangling of  her  friend's  difficulties, 
long  after  Jeanne  had  fallen  into  the 
dull  and  dreamless  sleep  of  a  heavy 
heart. 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

FRANCOIS  MILETTE  missed  his  sup- 
per on  this  eventful  evening,  and  the  way 
in  which  it  happened  was  this.  You 
must  remember  that  he  parted  with  the 
rest  of  the  company  at  the  end  of  the 
drawbridge,  on  his  way  up  with  Marie 
Robbe  to  her  uncle's  house.  He  came 
back  to  the  Neighbor  Legros's,  where 
he  and  Gabriel  were  to  stay  the  night, 
so  late  that  he  found  the  house  closed, 
and  all  the  household  abed  with  the 
exception  of  Gabriel,  who  let  him  into 
the  little,  loft-like  room  at  the  back  of 
the  house,  which  was  reached  by  an 
outside  staircase,  and  which  they 
were  to  share  for  their  night's  quar- 
ters. 

They  had  waited  supper  a  long 
while,  Gabriel  said,  and  at  last  con- 
cluded that  Francois  had  gone  up  to 
Jean  Farge's  and  joined  the  others,  and, 


thinking  he  could  come  in  at  what  hour 
he  pleased  and  reach  his  room  by  the 
outside  staircase,  Neighbor  Legros  had 
locked  up  the  house,  and  all  had  gone 
to  bed. 

Francois  laughed,  and  said  he  did 
not  care  for  supper,  threw  himself  down 
on  the  bed,  and  was  soon  asleep. 

Now,  if  you  will  go  back  to  the  Rue 
St.  Remi,  and  see  what  was  happening 
there  half  an  hour  or  so  earlier,  you 
will  see  how  it  came  about  that  Fran- 
gois  was  so  late. 

The  Rue  St.  Remi  is  a  narrow  street 
that  leads  from  the  Grande  Rue  to  the 
Plage.  For  a  short  distance  it  is  a  tol- 
erable street,  narrow,  and  paved  with 
cobble-stones,  it  is  true,  but,  for  a  side 
street  that  makes  no  pretensions,  not 
so  bad  after  all.  But  farther  on  comes 
the  great  flank  of  the  church  of  St. 
Remi  backing  down  upon  it,  and,  the 
secular  buildings  following  the  lead  of 
the  church,  the  street  is  reduced  to  lit- 
tle more  than  an  alley.  For  the  Rue 
St.  Remi,  like  a  poor  relation,  in  shar- 
ing the  honors  of  a  gre.at  name,  has 
naturally  to  put  up  with  many  slights, 
not  to  say  positive  ill  treatment,  from 
its  great  connections. 

Over  the  narrow  archway  of  an  entry 
that  opens  into  the  narrowest  part  of 
the  Rue  St.  Remi  stands  a  diamond- 
shaped  case  not  unlike  a  coffin,  con- 
taining the  usual  figure  of  the  Madon- 
na with  her  pink  cheeks,  large  blue  eyes 
gazing  pensively  at  the  pavement,  and 
a  string  of  yellow  beads  about  her 
throat.  At  her  feet  hangs  a  rusty  oil 
lamp.  She  is  somewhat  worn  and 
weather-beaten,  for  there  she  has  stood, 
summer  and  winter,  rain  and  shine,  for 
many  a  year,  lighting  up  this  dingy 
corner  by  night,  and  looking  down  up- 
on the  children  playing  in  the  street 
below,  and  the  crowd  that  struggle  out 
by  the  small  side  door  of  the  church 
after  service,  with  the  same  passive 
smile. 

A  strange  object  for  reverence,  this 
painted  doll  in  coffin-like  case!  And 
yet  there  is  something  forever  touching 
in  the  sight"  of  this  figure  as  one  meets 
it  in  Catholic  ^countries,  —  at  the  turn 


1 868.] 


6V.  Michael's  Night. 


149 


of  a  quiet  country  road,  in  the  solitude 
of  a  mountain  pathway,  at  the  rushing 
waters  of  a  ford,  and  perhaps  beyond 
all,  when  raised  above  the  shoulders  of 
the  crowd  in  the  noise  and  squalor  of 
a  city  street,  —  this  type  of  something 
innocent  and  pure  and  tender,  set  up  to 
receive  the  passing  homage  of  human 
hearts. 

Just  at  this  corner,  where  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  decide  whether  the  Rue  St. 
Remi  is  street  or  alley,  lived  Marie 
Robbe's  uncle,  the  ivory-carver.  The 
little  black-framed  bow -window,  in 
which  the  ivory  wares  were  exposed 
for  sale,  bulged  itself  out  over  the  nar- 
row sidewalk  so  that  the  passer  was 
obliged  to  take  three  steps  in  the  gut- 
ter, or  to  balance  himself  for  that  dis- 
tance on  the  curbstone.  Other  win- 
dows in  the  street  protrude  themselves 
in  the  same  aggressive  manner ;  and  for 
that  reason  I  suppose  it  is  that  people 
usually  walk  down  the  middle  of  the 
Rue  St.  Remi  on  the  big  paving-stones, 
worn  clean  from  the  droppings  of  the 
overhanging  runnels  and  spouts  of  the 
church. 

About  eleven  o'clock  on  this  eventful 
night  of  the  storm,  though  the  rain  had 
ceased,  the  w'ater  was  dropping  from 
every  point  and  spout  and  gable-end  in 
Rue  St.  Remi.  The  Madonna's  light 
burned  brightly  in  its  sheltered  corner, 
lighting  up  a  few  feet  of  the  pavement 
below,  a  sombre  buttress  of  the  old 
church,  and  also  the  figure  of  Francois 
Milette,  leaning  with  his  elbow  on  one 
knee  as  he  rested  his  foot  on  the  top 
step  of  the  ivory-carver's  house.  On 
the  top  of  the  steps  stood  Marie  Robbe, 
lounging  against  the  door-post.  They 
had  been  talking  for  some  time,  when 
Francois  said :  "  If  I  have  to  go  down 
to  Verangeville  to-morrow  with  the 
boat,  there  is  one  thing  I  can  still  do. 
I  will  come  into  Dieppe  on  Sunday, 
and  take  thee  round  to  see  the  sights, 
—  eh,  Marie?" 

"  No,  no,  that  won't  do,"  said  Marie, 
with  some  hesitation.  "  Most  likely 
we  shall  all  go  to  Arques  on  Sunday, 
and  you  might  have  your  journey  for 
nothing." 


"Dame!"*  said  Francois,  "and  you 
won't  be  at  home  till  next  week.  There 
's  one  thing  I  know,  Marie,  if  I  don't 
go  into  Dieppe  on  Sunday,  I  will  go  to 
Pourville  to  see  my  cousin  and  the 
children ;  it 's  better  than  staying  at 
home." 

"  I  would  n't  be  in  your  place  to  walk 
home  by  the  shore  at  nightfall,"  said 
she ;  "  the  fairy  of  Fallaise  is  out  these 
nights." 

"  Eh  bien  !  she  may  give  me  a  fair 
greeting  and  a  pleasant  promise,"  said 
Francois  ;  "  she  does  n't  like  those  who 
fear  her,  they  say.  And  — "  seeing 
Marie  made  no  response  —  "I  must  do 
something  on  Sunday.  I  shall  not  care 
to  go  to  the  dancing  after  Vespers." 

"  And  why  not,  indeed  ?  "  said  Marie, 
with  affected  carelessness. 

"  Dost  thou  not  know  ?  "  said  Fran- 
c.ois,  taking  the  girl's  hand  that  hung 
listlessly  at  her  side;  "if  thou  art  not 
there,  Marie,  it  gives  me  little  pleasure 
to  go  to  the  dance." 

"There  are  plenty  of  girls  left." 

"To  be  sure  there  are,"  said  Fran- 
^ois,  "  and  if  I  go  with  the  others  I  shall 
have  to  dance.  I  could  not  stand  and 
just  look  on,  and  take  no  part." 

"  Vraiment !  "  said  Marie,  with  a 
shrug  of  her  shoulders. 

"  Why,  all  the  girls  would  laugh  at 
me,  and  say,  'There  stands  Francois 
Milette  so  lovesick  that  he  cannot 
dance,  because  his  own  girl  is  away.' 
And  there  is  no  use  in  looking  like  a 
fool  when  it  gives  one  no  pleasure.  But 
I  can  tell  thee  one  thing,  Marie  ;  one 
goes  through  the  dances  as  a  ceremony 
when  she  is  not  there  whom  one  alone 
desires  to  talk  to  and  to  be  with.  Eh, 
Marie,  is  it  not  so  ? "  said  Francois, 
earnestly,  and  looking  wistfully  up  into 
her  face. 

"  O,  I  don't  take  things  in  that  way  !" 
said  Marie,  with  an  impatient  shake  of 
the  head;  "one  must  not  be  so  exact, 
but  please  one's  self  wherever  one  is." 

"  Certainly,"  rejoined  Francois,  "  that 

*  For  the  sake  of  Francois's  reputation  as  a  young 
man  of  good  feeling,  I  may  venture  to  remind  the 
reader  that  this  word  is  much  more  harmless  than  its 
sound  at  first  suggests,  —  that  it  may  properly  be 
translated  by  our  own  "  marry  "  or  "  forsooth." 


150 


Convivial  Songs. 


[August, 


is  all  true ;  but  when  one  cannot  please 
one's  self  it  is  a  different  thing.  If  one 
has  everything,  —  everything  in  the 
world  except  what  one  wants,  —  ma 
foi !  what  is  that  ?  And  then  to  have 
to  watch  others  amusing  themselves 
when  one  has  no  pleasure  one's  self, 
is  still  worse  !  Now  I  shall  be  thinking- 
all  Sunday  of  theej  of  what  thou  art 
doing,  and  who  thou  art  with." 

Marie  showed  signs  of  uneasiness  as 
Frangois  said  this.  "  Hush  !  "  she  said  ; 
"that  is  Aunt  Madelon's  voice  ;  she  is 
coming  down  stairs." 

"  Stop  one  moment,"  said  Frangois  ; 
"thou  knowest,  Marie,  after  dancing, 
every  lad  has  the  right  to  kiss  his  part- 
ner, following  the  custom  of  good  man- 
ners. I  shall  kiss  no  girl  next  Sunday 
after  the  dance,  but  thou  must  give  me 
the  kiss  now." 

Marie  laughed,  and  raised  her  hand 
to  the  little  brass  knocker.  Francois 
sprang  on  to  the  steps,  and  caught  her 
hand.  "  Don't  knock,  Marie,  wait  a 
moment ! "  But  in  the  encounter  of 
hands  the  knocker  slipped,  and  fell 
softly,  making  a  faint  sound. 
*  "Give  me  the  kiss,"  said  Francois, 
still  holding  her  hand,  "and  I  shall  not 
then  feel  so  discontented  on  Sunday ; 
thou  hast  no  right  to  refuse,  because, 


as  I  said,  it  is  only  according  to  cus- 
tom." 

"  Aunt  Madelon  is  coming  ;  she  has 
heard  that  knock,"  cried  Marie,  in  evi- 
dent trepidation,  not  wishing,  for  some 
reason,  to  be  caught  gossiping  with 
Francois.  "Let  me  go,  Francois,  let 
me  go  !  "  But  Francois  still  persisted. 
"Then  because  we  are  parting,  and  I 
shall  not  see  thee  for  so  many  days,  — 
for  adieu,  Marie,  at  least  for  adieu  ! 

"Well,  then,  for  adieu?  said  Marie, 
hastily,  and  holding  up  her  cheek 
somewhat  ungraciously.  Aunt  Made- 
Ion  was  already  unbarring  the  door; 
at  the  same  moment  that  she  opened 
it  Francois  Milette  sprang  down  the 
steps,  and  Marie  turned. 

"  Here  I  am,  Aunt  Madelon,"  she 
said  ;  "  my  father  is  going  to  stay  down 
in  the  Pollet  to-night.  A  neighbor 
brought  me  up,  on  his  way  home. 
Good  night,  Francois  Milette,  I  thank 
you  for  your  civility."  And  she  turned 
into  the  house. 

So  Frangois  walked  back  along  the 
deserted  streets,  whistling  as  he  went, 
and  thinking  with  a  lighter  heart  on  the 
journey  of  the  morrow,  and  even  of  the 
joyless  Sunday,  since  he  had  placed  that 
little  seal  of  amity  upon  the  cheek  of  Ma- 
rie, though  it  might  be  only  "  for  adieu" 


CONVIVIAL     SONGS. 


F'OR  some  time  past  an  impression 
seems  to  have  been  gaining  ground 
among  hilariously  thirsty  people  who 
do  not  recognize  the  total-abstinence 
principle,  that  the  liquors  used  by  them 
are  steadily  deteriorating  in  quality. 
There  is  a  flutter  among  the  drinkers 
of  Bourbon  whiskey,  who  imagine  that 
they  can  trace  to  that  stimulant  all  the 
ailings  and  failings  to  which  they  find 
themselves  gradually  becoming  subject. 
But  they  experience  no  amelioration 
of  their  condition  when  they  forswear 
Bourbon  and  take  to  "  Old  Rye."  In- 


deed, they  soon  discover  that  the  latter 
is,  to  all  bad  intents  and  purposes,  pret- 
ty much  the  same  as  the  former,  if  not 
worse.  Then  they  betake  themselves 
to  foreign  sources  for  their  inspiration, 
and  go  to  drinking  the  stuff  that  is  dis- 
pensed over  the  bars  of  the  public- 
houses  as  Scotch  whiskey  and  London 
gin.  By  and  by  an  article  appears  in 
some  newspaper,  or  in  pamphlet  form, 
descriptive  of  the  witching  processes  by 
which  these  liquors  are  compounded, 
and  branding  them  as  deleterious  imi- 
tations of  spirits,  the  names  of  whic 


1 868.] 


Convivial  Songs. 


have  been  mendaciously  bestowed  upon 
them.  The  tippler  of  Scotch  whiskey 
is  informed  that  to  creosote,  and  noth- 
ing else,  is  he  indebted  for  the  entran- 
cing, smoky  flavor  of  the  liquor  he  loves 
the  more  the  faster  it  is  killing  him. 
Something  is  said  about  strychnine,  or 
oil  of  vitriol,  in  connection  with  gin. 
Then  the  whiskey-drinkers  consult  with 
,the  gin-drinkers  over  mugs  of  ale,  and 
'they  arrive  at  a  conviction  that  malt 
liquors  are  the  only  safe  ones,  after  all. 
Malt  and  muscle  go  together,  say  they  ; 
and,  remembering  how  ancient  an  insti- 
tution beer  is,  and  how  much  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race  is  indebted  to  it  for  pith 
and  pluck,  they  adopt  a  resolution  to 
give  up  spirits  altogether,  and  drink 
nothing  but  beer.  Presently  there 
comes  to  them  "  one  who  knows,"  for 
he  has  been  in  the  brewing  business 
once  himself.  He  is  no  longer  inter- 
ested in  beer,  however,  and  so  he  lets 
out  the  dread  secrets  of  the  vat,  dwell- 
ing with  malignant  detail  upon  the 
cocculus  indicus  and  other  drugs  used 
in  the  manufacture  of  malt  liquors. 
Then  a  ghastly  pallor  overspreads  the 
faces  of  the  drinkers,  and  a  foggy  idea 
of  the  results  of  cocculus  indicus  upon 
the  human  vitals  wraps  them  in  its 
vapory  pall.  Ale  ceases  to  have  allure- 
ments for  them  ;  and,  as  lager-beer  is 
only  weak  ale  with  rosin  in  it,  that  pota- 
tion is  quite  out  of  the  question.  Some- 
body then  prompts  them  with  the  notion 
that  "  generous  wine  "  is  the  only  prop- 
er beverage  for  gentlemen  to  drink,  and 
they  take  at  once  to  sherry.  Over  this 
fine  tonic  they  become  more  garrulous 
and  maudlin  than  ever.  They  dilate 
upon  the  unique  flavor  and  quality  of 
the  wine  of  Xeres.  They  retail  anec- 
dotes connected  with  it.  They  narrate 
fictions  about  their  own  experiences  of 
it  when  they  were  younger.  And  so 
they  wax  happy  and  grow  pimply  on 
their  sherry,  until  a  new  panic  dispels 
their  confidence  in  it.  A  suit  is  brought 
by  the  government  against  certain  par- 
ties for  the  alleged  undervaluation  of  a 
quantity  of  so-called  sherry  wine.  The 
' .itions  brought  to  light  during  the 
trial  of  this  case  are  of  a  very  startling 


and  conclusive  character.  It  is  proved 
by  competent  testimony  that  "  the 
largest  Spanish  exporters  send  no  real 
sherry  to  America,  and  but  little  to 
England "  ;  and  that  a  spurious  stuff, 
made  from  grapes  of  the  poorest  qual- 
ity, and  doctored  with  various  abomina- 
ble drugs,  is  manufactured  at  Cadiz 
expressly  for  exportation.  It  is  further 
stated  in  evidence,  that  one  house  alone, 
at  Cadiz,  sends  three  thousand  butts  of 
this  stuff,  annually,  to  the  United  States ; 
and  one  witness,  an  employee  of  the 
house  in  question,  testifies  in  relation 
to  this  compound,  that  "it  is  never 
used  in  Spain  ;  the  bulk  of  it  is  shipped 
to  the  United  States."  This  is  a  terri- 
ble shock  to  our  topers,  who  have  run 
through  the  gamut  of  drinks  from  whis- 
key to  sherry.  The  discussion  as  to 
what  is  to  be  done  next  now  arises 
among  them,  and  every  kind  of  sugges- 
tion—  except,  indeed,  that  of  abstain- 
ing from  the  use  of  wine  and  ardent 
spirits  altogether  —  is  brought  to  bear 
upon  the  subject.  An  effort  is  then 
made  to  settle  down  upon  the  native 
American  wines,  with  some  of  the 
cheaper  of  which  they  achieve  a  sort 
of  cheerless  inebriety  for  a  while  ;  but 
a  suspicion  of  quackery  soon  arises 
about  these,  and  finally  the  topers  be- 
come predestinarians,  falling  back  upon 
their  whiskeys  and  gins,  in  the  tranquil 
belief  that,  as  they  were  born  to  be 
poisoned,  they  have,  at  least,  a  right  to 
be  their  own  toxicologists. 

One  of  the  results  of  this  loss  of  con- 
fidence in  the  liquors  of  the  period  is 
the  decadence  of  bacchanalian  melo- 
dies. Persons  who  keep  pace  with, 
and  watch  the  progress  of,  social  cus- 
toms and  pastimes  must  have  observed 
that,  for  some  years  past,  the  drinking- 
song  has  been  gradually  going  out  of 
favor.  No  longer,  now,  is  the  vine  cel- 
ebrated vocally.  The  grape  that  clus- 
ters upon  it  draws  no  laudatory  verses 
from  the  minstrel.  "John  Barleycorn" 
finds  no  bard  in  these  dreary  c^ys 
of  equivocal  fluids.  It  must  have 
been  something  very  superior  to  Bour- 
bon whiskey  that  inspired  Burns  to 


152 


Convivial  Songs. 


[August, 


"  The  cock  may  craw,  the  day  may  daw, 
But  aye  we  '11  taste  the  barley-bree." 

No  man  would  be  ridiculous  enough, 
now-a-days,  to  break  out  with  : 

"  While  Ceres  most  kindly  refills  my  brown  jug, 
With  good  ale  I  will  make  myself  mellow  : 
In  my  old  wicker  chair  I  will  seat  myself  snug, 
Like  a  jolly  and  true  happy  fellow." 

How  could  a  singer,  harassed  with  a 
suspicion  of  the  deadly  Indian  berry  in 
his  drink,  sing  thus  so  confidently  of 
making  himself  mellow  on  it?  The 
malt-drinker  of  the  period  in  which  we 
live  swallows  his  beer  under  protest 
only,  and  nobody  now  ever  thinks  of 
addressing  the  soporific  fusion  in  song. 
Like  the  gallant,  who  fondly  imagined 
that  he  was  serenading  the  fair  object 
of  his  affections,  while,  in  reality,  he 
was  twanging  his  mandoline  to  the  col- 
ored servant-girl  who  peeped  from  the 
dim  lattice,  so  with  the  singer  who 
would  now  be  absurd  enough  to  lilt  a 
complimentary  strain  to  his  tipple.  He 
might  troll  forth  his  most  dulcet  notes 
in  praise  of  the  "  regal  purple  stream," 
singing,  as  did  the  men  of  yore,  — 

"  When  it  sparkles,  the  eyes  of  my  love  I  behold, 
Her  smiles  in  the  wine-cup  eternally  shine  ; 
The  soul  that  drinks  deeply  shall  never  grow  cold, 
For  love  ever  dwells  in  a  goblet  of  wine  !  "  — 

and  be  wasting  his  mellow  phrases 
upon  logwood  or  some  other  perni- 
cious dye-stuff  with  which  the  impe- 
rial hue  of  the  grape-juice  is  simulated. 
Or,  should  he  haply  attune  his  throat 
to  "  Cruiskeen  Lawn,"  or  to  some  other 
rollicking  Irish  song  in  praise  of  whis- 
key, practically  he  would  be  eulogizing 
creosote,  or  oil  of  vitriol,  or  anything 
else  whatever  in  the  combustion  way 
short  of  nitro-glycerine.  That  pen- 
sive ditty,  "I  cannot  sing  the  old 
song,"  might  well  be  parodied,  now, 
with  application  to  the  table-songs  of 
the  past,  hardly  an  echo  of  which  is 
ever  to  be  heard  in  the  "free-and- 
easies "  to  which  the  drinkers  resort. 
I  have  before  me,  as  I  write,  a  book  of 
the  songs  that  are  most  popular  in  the 
various  places  of  this  kind  which  have 
grown,  of  late  years,  to  be  "institu- 
tions "  in  New  York.  In  this  repertoire 
there  are  but  four  drinking-songs.  The 


staple  of  it  consists  in  such  sentimen- 
tal ditties  as  "Mother,  I  have  heard 
sweet  music"  ;  and,  "Her  bright  smile 
haunts  me  still."  But,  although  Bac- 
chus is  no  longer  musical  director  of 
the  free-and-easy,  it  is  not  therefore  to 
be  surmised  that  the  libations  poured 
out  by  his  worshippers  are  less  copious 
than  formerly.  Quite  the  reverse.  The 
gentleman  with  the  fluty  voice,  who 
mounts  the  platform  beside  the  piano, 
and  warbles,  "Can  I  e'er  forget  the 
valley  ?  "  freshens  his  memories  during 
the  evening  with  unlimited  potations 
of  "Old  Tom,  hot,"  but  he  has  no 
sentiment  of  commendation  for  that 
insidious  beverage.  The  metal  mugs 
of  ale  circulate  as  freely  as  ever,  but 
there  is  a  melancholy  silence  with  re- 
gard to  its  qualities,  and  not  a  voice  is 
there  in  the  whole  company  to  troll 
forth  in  manly  confession,  "  I  likes  a 
drop  of  good  beer,  I  does  "  ;  or,  "  Dear 
Tom,  this  brown  jug  that  now  foams 
with  mild  ale."  These  manly,  if  bibu- 
lous, effusions  are  superseded  by  such 
drivelling  inanities  as  "  Champagne 
Charley,"  and  the  morals  of  the  com- 
munity at  large  do  not  appear  to  be 
any  the  better  for  that. 

In  the  Anacreontic  songs  of  past 
generations  love  and  liquor  generally 
went  merrily  together,  hand  in  hand. 
"  Pretty  Belle,"  by  Tom  Dibdin,  opens 
thus :  — 

"True  to  my  love  and  a  bottle,  this  throttle 
A  pottle  will  merrily  quaff." 

That  other  Tom,  known  in  epicurean 
philosophy  by  the  surname  of  Moore, 
must  have  had  love  and  wine  on  the 
brain,  simultaneously,  all  the  while. 
He  was  an  arrant  little  gourmet  too, 
and  some  of  his  florid  images  take  a 
very  odd  and  ludicrous  character  from 
this  fact.  See  the  opening  verse  of  his. 
"  Bard's  Legacy,"  for  example  :  — 

"When  in  death  I  shall  calm  recline, 

O,  bear  my  heart  to  my  mistress  clear  ; 
Tell  her  it  lived  upon  smiles  and  wine 

Of  the  brightest  hue  while  it  lingered  here. 
Bid  her  not  shed  one  tear  of  sorrow 

To  sully  a  heart  so  brilliant  and  light ; 
But  balm  v  drops  of  the  red  grape  borrow, 

To  bathe  the  relic  from  morn  till  night." 

Here  we  have  a  flight  of  fancy  quite 


1 868.] 


Convivial  Songs. 


153 


culinary  enough  to  carry  away  on  its 
aspiring  pinions  to  realms  of  bliss  the 
least  enthusiastic  of  professional  gas- 
tronomes. And  it  is  matter  for  won- 
der, that,  in  this  decline  of  the  bac- 
chanalian song,  and  in  this  period  of 
a  gastronomy  so  Apician  and  artistic, 
hymns  to  aliment  have  not  oftener  en- 
gaged the  modern  bard.  In  an  old 
French  "  Recueil  de  Chansons  "  I  find 
homage  paid  to  the  platter  in  a  queer 
chanson  a  manger,  which  also  is  set  to 
music  for  a  bass  voice,  —  a  voice  of 
which  the  lower  register,  being  some- 
what ventriloquial,  is  all  the  fitter  for 
interpreting  song  inspired  by  the  natural 
appetite  for  victuals.  Taking  the  gist 
of  this  song,  without  any  regard  to  the 
metre  or  construction  of  the  original,  I 
give  here  such  version  or  paraphrase 
of  it  as  may  serve  to  convey  its  inten- 
tion :  — 

"  Away  with  your  songs  about  wine  ! 

What  I  want  is  a  strain  gastronomic. 
Why  should  bards  always  rant  of  the  vine 

While  we  've  pot-herbs  to  gladden  the  stomach? 
With  the  greens  and  the  roots  I  'm  at  home  ; 

And  I  hope  that  my  bluntness  you  'H  pardon, 
When  I  say  that  no  vineyard  can  bloom 

Like  the  beds  of  a  fat  kitchen-garden. 
"  And  then,  when  the  hunger  is  sharp, 

And  the  mouth  longs  for  something  to  shut  on, 
Do  you  think  that  I  'd  cavil  or  carp, 

At  a  saddle  of  succulent  mutton? 
Or  if,  haply,  there  come  to  the  pot 

A  turbot,  a  trout,  or  a  salmon, 
Why  shouldn't  I  sing  like  the  sot, 

With  such  dainties  to  make  epigram  on? 
"  In  the  wine-cup  a  demon  there  lurks 

That  the  bibulous  brain  disarranges, 
Strange  freaks  with  the  drinker  it  works. 

Till  at  last  to  a  wine-butt  he  changes. 
But  sale  are  the  joys  of  the  dish, 

They  ne'er  to  the  wits  put  a  stopper. 
Then  hurrah  for  the  flesh,  fowl,  and  fish, 

And  the  pot-herbs  that  to  them  are  proper !  " 

Whiskey  has  been  for  many  genera- 
tions at  once  the  solace  and  the  bane 
of  the  sociable  Irishman,  and  really 
wonderful  for  audacity  of  assertion  and 
incongruity  of  statement  are  the  drink- 
ing-songs that  rise  to  his  teeming  brain 
under  the  inspiration  of  his  favorite 
stimulant,  hot  whiskey  punch.  Few 
better  examples  of  this  are  to  be  found 
than  that  really  quaint  and  pleasing  old 
ditty,  -The  Jug  o'  Punch,"  the  au- 
thorship of  which  I  have  not  been  able 
to  trace  :  — 


"As  I  was  sitting  in  my  room, 
One  pleasant  evening  in  the  month  of  June, 
I  heard  a  thrush  singing  in  a  bush, 
And  the  tune  he  sang  was  a  jug  o'  punch  : 

Tooraloo." 

The  statement  in  this  stanza,  regarding 
the  convertibility  of  a  tune  and  a  jug  of 
punch,  is  of  a  mystic  and  bewildering 
character,  and  to  the  practical  Saxon 
mind  seems  to  require  explanation. 
Possibly  the  bard  confounded  the  thrush 
with  the  nightingale,  for  he  informs  us 
that  it  was  evening  when  the  wonderful 
bird-song  fell  upon  his  ear,  and  one  of 
the  most  touching  strains  in  the  lilt  of 
the  nightingale  is  the  monosyllable 
"jug,"  reiterated  many  times  in  a  pas- 
sionate staccato.  Another  stanza  of  the 
song  runs  thus  :  — 

"  The  'mortal  gods  drink  nectar  wine, 
And  claret,  too,  is  very  fine  ; 
But  I  'd  give  them  all,  just  in  a  bunch, 
For  one  good  pull  at  a  jug  o'  punch  ; 

Tooraloo." 

Ever  faithful  to  his  national  beverage 
is  the  bard,  as  we  see  ;  and  then  the 
pathos  with  which  he  foreshadows  in 
the  last  verse  his  final  place  of  rest,  and 
the  simplicity  of  the  arrangements  he. 
contemplates  for  marking  appropriately 
the  hallowed  spot,  have  rarely  been 
surpassed  in  song  :  — 

"  When  I  am  dead,  and  in  my  grave, 
No  costly  tombstone  I  will  have, 
I  '11  have  a  grave  both  wide  and  deep, 
With  a  jug  o'  punch  at  my  head  and  feet : 

Tooraloo." 

This  famous  old  ditty  has  been  sung: 
to  many  different  tunes,  most  of  them 
of  a  gay  or  jingling  character  ;  but  the 
air  to  which  the  words  properly  belong 
is  a  sweet  and  pathetic  one,  and  the 
word  "tooraloo,"  in  the  chorus,  is  re- 
peated solemnly  in  four  cadent  bars, 
with  a  rest  after  each.  Humor  and 
pathos  are  extremes  that  ever  meet ; 
and  the  image  of  the  singer's  grave, 
with  a  steaming  jug  of  punch  at  either 
end  of  it,  is  as  likely  to  bring  a  tear  as 
a  smile  from  mellowed  listeners,  when 
the  lines  are  sung  by  one  who  can 
enter  into  the  feeling  of  his  theme. 

There  is  another  song  yet  more  in- 
congruous than  that  just  quoted,  but 
inferior  to  it  in  pathos.  I  here  give  the 
opening  stanza,  which  — happily  or  un- 
happily, just  as  the  reader  may  think  — 


154 


Convivial  Songs. 


[August, 


is  the  only  one  of  some  forty  or  fifty  be- 
longing to  it  that  I  can  at  present  recall 
to  mind.  The  abandon  with  which  it 
rushes  in  medias  res  is  remarkable. 

"  There  were  three  Irish  fair  maids,  lived  in  the  Isle 

of  Wight, 
They   drank  from   Monday  morning  till  late   on 

Saturday  night, 
They  drank  from  Monday  morning  till  their  money 

was  run  out, 
For  they  were  three  Irish  fair  maids,  and  they  sent 

the  punch  about." 

There  may  have  been  some  subtle 
meaning  intended  by  the  poet  in  thus 
localizing  these  fair,  though  somewhat 
dissipated,  exiles  of  Erin  upon  the  Isle 
of  Wight.  Considering  the  habits  of  ex- 
cessive conviviality  attributed  to  them 
in  the  song,  one  might  guess  that  their 
native  isle  had  been  scandalized  by  their 
orgies,  and  that  they  had  been  com- 
pelled to  fly  for  refuge  to  the  smaller 
one.  Even  there  it  seems  that  their 
credit  was  not  good,  because  they 
were  obliged  to  desist  from  drinking 
when  "  their  money  was  run  out,"  and 
were  probably  unable  even  to  procure 
"a  flask  for  Sunday,"  as  is  the  usage 
of  those  irrepressible  topers  for  whom 
the  excise  law  has  terrors.  It  is  prob- 
able, however,  that  the  Isle  of  Wight 
was  selected  by  the  poet  in  accord- 
ance with  that  recklessness  of  assertion 
so  often  to  be  observed  in  Irish  songs 
of  this  class.  In  Richard  Milliken's 
"  Groves  of  Blarney,"  for  instance,  we 
have  a  wizard  glimpse  of  "  the  trout  and 
salmon  playing  at  backgammon  " ;  and  it 
would  sadly  puzzle  one  not  acquainted 
with  Irish  character  and  modes  of 
thinking,  to  conceive  how  an  image  so 
much  at  variance  with  the  teachings  of 
ichthyology  could  have  been  generated 
in  the  mind. 

In  their  bacchanalian  songs  the  Ger- 
mans are  as  heavy  and  dense  as  in 
their  drinking  and  metaphysics.  There 
is  a  strong  flavor  of  beer  and  tobacco 
about  the  staves  chanted  by  the  stu- 
dents in  their  great  universities,  though 
a  certain  scholarly  character  is  im- 
parted to  many  of  them  by  couching 
the  choruses  or  refrains  in  Latin. 
Some  English  songs  of  the  jovial  kind 
are  also  lightly  touched  by  the  maca- 
ronic muse ;  and  I  have  old  memories 


of  a  capital  college  song,  the  refrain  of 
which  ran  thus  :  — 

"  Plena  pocula  cernite,  nonne  aspernite, 

Sprinkle  the  wings  of  old  Time  as  he  flies,  — 

Fill,  fill,  jolly  fraternity, 

Here  's  to  the  holly  whose  leaf  never  dies ! " 

For  neatness  of  turn,  though,  and  a 
certain  refined  feeling  for  thirst,  the  old 
French  carousal  songs  are,  perhaps, 
unrivalled.  These  it  would  be  impos- 
sible to  translate  literally,  without  loss 
of  epigram,  —  a  quality  in  which  they  are 
often  wonderfully  subtle  and  artistic. 
Taking  the  idea  of  one  of  those  con- 
tained in  the  repertory  already  men- 
tioned, however,  it  may  be  thus  rendered 
in  English  without  altogether  losing  its 
bouquet : 

"  Says  Maturin  the  miller 

Unto  his  friend  Gregoire, 

'The  brook  my  soul  disquiets, 

Its  freaks  afflict  me  sore. 

"  '  To-day  so  low  its  ripple 

That  sleeping  lies  my  mill  ; 
No  money,  lad,  no  tipple, 
So  of  the  brook  I  swill 

"  '  To-night  the  rain  may  gather, 

To-morrow  the  brook  may  grow  ; 
And  then  my  wheel  shall  turn, 
'And  wine  to  my  throat  shall  flow.'  " 

More  plaintive  than  this  is  the  fol- 
lowing, the  French  original  of  which 
is  set  to  an  air  of  inexpressible  de- 
spondency and  gloom.  It  is  a  plaint 
that  will  go  directly  home  to  the  heart 
of  many  a  bar-room  lounger,  whose 
purse  and  credit  have  both  deserted 
him  in  the  hour  of  his  need,  —  by 
which  may  be  understood  any  hour 
whatever  of  the  twenty-four. 

"  Prythee,  vintner,  hear  my  prayer  ; 
No  cash  my  lonely  pockets  bear, 
But  haply  I  of  thee  might  borrow 
One  cup  of  sack  to  ease  my  sorrow. 

"  Ruthless  vintner,  you  decline 
Me  to  trust  for  cup  of  wine  ? 
Ah,  the  woes  of  empty  purse  ! 
Ah,  of  quenchless  thirst  the  curse  ! 

"  Yet,  O  vintner,  one  small  boon 
Grant ;  since  death  must  have  me  soon,  — 
At  thy  counter  let  me  die, 
Drinking  all  the  lieei-tnps  dry  :  " 

These  are  some  of  the  snatches  of 
song  that  were  inspired  by  the  wines 
and  liquors  of  other  lands.  Here,  as  I 
have  already  remarked,  confidence  in 
strong  drink  has  long  since  departed, 
and  hence  we  hear  no  more  of  songs  in 
praise  of  it. 


1 868.] 


A  Trip  to  Ischia. 


155 


A     TRIP     TO     ISCHIA. 


THE  island  of  Ischia,  rising  like  a 
loftier  Salamis  at  the  northern 
entrance  of  the  Bay  of  Naples,  is  so 
unlike  its  opposite  sentinel,  Capri,  that 
the  landscape-painter,  to  whom  the 
peculiarities  of  mountain  forms  are  as 
familiar  as  to  the  geologist,  would  pro- 
nounce as  readily  on  the  diversity  of 
its  origin.  The  latter  might  say  : 
"This  island  is  Plutonic,  that  Nep- 
tunic "  ;  and  the  former :  "  Here  are 
long,  finely  broken  outlines,  and  sharp, 
serrated  summits  ;  yonder,  broad  mass- 
es and  sudden,  bold  escarpments  "  ; 
but  both  would  express  the  same  fact 
in  different  dialects.  The  two  islands 
are  equidistant  from  the  main-land ; 
they  occupy  the  same  relative  position 
to  the  bay  and  to  the  central  Vesuvian 
peak ;  they  are  equally  noble  land- 
marks to  the  manners  coming  from 
the  Tyrrhene  or  the  Ionian  Sea.  Here 
the  resemblance  ends.  Capri  is  the 
resort  of  artists,  Ischia  of  invalids. 
Tiberius  and  the  Blue  Grotto  belong  to 
the  litany  of  travel ;  but  Ischia  —  larger, 
richer,  more  accessible  than  Capri  — 
has  no  such  special  attractions  to  com- 
mend it.  It  must  be  sought  for  its  own 
sake. 

The  little  steamer  upon  which  I  em- 
barked at  Naples  was  called  the  Ttfeo, 
from  Typhoeus,  the  Titan  who  lies 
buried  under  Epomeo,  like  Enceladus 
under  Etna.  The  decks  were  crowded  ; 
but  every  face  was  Italian,  and  every 
tongue  uttered  the  broad,  barbaric  dia- 
lect of  Southern  Italy.  Priests,  peas- 
ant-women, small  traders,  sailors,  and 
fishermen  were  mingled  in  a  motley 
mass,  setting  their  faces  together  in 
earnest  gossip,  and  turning  their  backs 
upon  sea,  shore,  and  sky.  As  we 
cd  Castell'  dell'  Ovo,  the  signs  of 
the  recent  terrible  land-slide  on  the 
rock  of  Pizzofalcone  drew  their  atten- 
tion for  a  minute  ;  and  I,  too,  looked 
with  a  shudder  at  the  masses  of  rock 
under  which  I  had  lived,  unsuspect- 


ingly, until  within  three  days  of  the 
catastrophe.  The  house  wherein  we 
had  chosen  quarters  was  crushed  to 
atoms  ;  and,  although  nearly  a  month 
had  elapsed,  the  great  pile  of  ruin  was 
not  yet  cleared  away. 

Onward,  over  the  bright  blue  sea,  — 
past  the  shores  of  Posilipo,  the  ma- 
rine villa  of  Lucullus,  and  the  terraced 
steep,  yonder,  where  the  poet  Silius 
Italicus  kept  sacred  the  tomb  of  his 
master,  Virgil,  —  past  the  burnt -out 
crater  of  Nisida,  and  the  high  white 
houses  of  Pozzuoli,  until  the  bay  of 
Baias  opens  to  the  right,  and  we  fetch 
a  compass  for  the  ancient  Cape  Mise- 
num.  How  these  names  stir  the  blood ! 
Yet  my  feiiow-voyagers  never  lifted 
their  eyes  to  the  shores  ;  and  if  they 
mentioned  the  names,  it  was,  perhaps, 
to  say,  "  I  bought  some  pigs  at  Baiae 
the  other  day,"  or,  "What  is  land 
worth  about  Lake  Avernus  ?  "  or,  "  Do 
you  raise  pumpkins  at  Cumse  ?  " 

Between  Cape  Misenuin  and  the 
island  of  Procida  there  is  a  strait  two 
or  three  miles  in  width.  The  town  of 
Procida  rests  on  the  water  like  a  long 
white  wedge,  the  but  of  which  bears 
up  the  immense  old  fortress.  Ap- 
proaching from  Naples,  the  whole 
island  lies  before  the  loftier  Ischia  like 
Imbros  before  Samothrace,  and  seems 
to  belong  to  it,  as  ancient  geographers 
declare  that  it  once  did.  The  town  is 
like  a  seaport  of  the  Grecian  Archi- 
pelago, and,  as  seen  from  the  water, 
one  could  not  wish  it  cleaner  or  less 
irregular.  Fronting  the  sea,  it  presents 
a  crescent  of  tall  white  houses,  broken 
with  arched  balconies,  and  deep,  scat- 
tered windows,  and  stained  with  patches 
of  gray  and  moss -green.  Over  the 
domed  roofs  rises  here  and  there  a 
palm.  The  castle  to  the  left,  on  its 
rock,  rejoices  in  its  ancient  strength, 
and  seems  to  command  the  Bay  of 
Ga,'ta  as  well  as  that  of  Naples. 

I    tried   to   recall   something   of  the 


156 


A   Trip  to  Isc/iia. 


[August,' 


history  of  Procida,  and  struck  in  the 
middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  on  the 
famous  Giovanni, — "John  of  Procida," 
—  before  and  after  whom  there  was  a 
blank.  The  island  once  belonged  to 
him  in  toto,  and  must  have  been  a 
goodly  possession.  I  believe  he  lost 
it  for  a  time,  on  account  of  the  part 
which  he  took  in  the  Sicilian  Vespers. 
Meanwhile  the  steamer  came  to  a  stop 
in  the  little  port,  and  boats  crowded 
about  the  gangways.  I  determined  to 
go  the  length  of  the  island  towards 
Ischia  by  land,  and  so  scrambled  down 
with  the  rest.  An  old  Italian  pointed 
to  a  house  which  was  being  repaired, 
and  said  to  his  neighbor,  "Now  what 
they  are  going  to  do  to  that  house  is 
beyond  my  intellect  to  guess."  The 
masons  were  raising  it  another  story,  I 
thought ;  but  the  man  said,  "  It  can't 
be  a  loggia,  it  has  an  upper  story  al- 
ready ;  and  let  anybody  tell  me  if  he 
knows,  for  my  intellect  just  stands  still 
when  I  look  at  it"  The  boatmen 
grinned,  and  said  nothing. 

I  landed  on  a  narrow  quay,  so  filthy 
and  malodorous  that  I  made  haste  to 
accept  the  guidance  of  the  first  boy 
who  offered  his  services.  He  led  me 
into  a  street  just  as  bad ;  but,  as  we 
mounted  towards  the  castle,  the  aspect 
of  the  town  improved.  This  is  the  only 
place  in  Italy  where  the  holiday  cos- 
tume is  Greek,  and  one  might  therefore 
expect  to  find  faces  of  the  Hellenic 
type ;  yet  such  are  fewer  than  on 
Capri.  The  costume  disappears  more 
and  more,  and  only  on  grand  festas  do 
the  women  appear  in  bodices  embroid- 
ered with  gold,  and  gowns  edged  with 
the  ancient  labyrinth  pattern.  They 
have  splendid  eyes,  like  all  the  island- 
ers ;  but  I  saw  no  beauties  in  my  rapid 
march  across  Procida. 

After  the  view  from  the  castle,  there 
is  really  nothing  of  interest  in  the 
little  town.  The  island  is  low  and 
nearly  level,  so  that  the  high  walls 
which  enclose  the  road  shut  out  all 
view  of  its  vineyards  and  gardens.  The 
eastern  shore,  near  which  my  path  led, 
is  formed  by  three  neighboring  craters, 
the  rims  of  which  are  broken  down  on 


the  seaside,  and  boats  anchor  on  the 
lava  of  the  bottoms.  The  road  was 
almost  a  continuous  street,  the  suburb 
of  Procida  running  into  that  of  the 
large  village  of  L'  Olmo.  A  crowd  of 
wayfarers  went  to  and  fro,  and  in  all 
the  open  arches  women  sat  spinning  in 
the  sun.  There  were  no  beggars  ;  one 
of  the  women,  indeed,  called  across  the 
road  to  another,  as  I  passed,  "Ask 
him  for  a  bajocco ! "  but  the  latter 
laughed,  and  turned  her  head  aside. 
Although  so  little  of  the  island  was  to- 
be  seen,  there  was  no  end  to  the  pic- 
tures made  by  the  windings  of  the  road, 
the  walls  draped  with  fern  and  ivy,  the 
deep  arches  of  shade  with  bright,  sunlit 
court-yards  behind  them,  and  the  quaint 
terraces  overhung  with  vines. 

A  walk  of  two  miles  brought  me  to 
the  western  shore,  where  the  road  de- 
scended to  the  fishing  hamlet  of  Chiai- 
olella.  The  place  seemed  to  be  de- 
serted; I  walked  between  the  silent 
old  houses,  and  had  nearly  reached  the 
beach,  when  a  brown  old  mariner  glided 
out  from  the  shadow  of  a  buttress,  and 
followed  me.  -Some  boats  lay  on  the 
sand  in  the  little  land-locked  crater- 
bay;  and  presently  three  other  men, 
who  had  been  sleeping  somewhere  in 
the  corners,  came  forward,  scenting  a 
fee.  Of  course  they  asked  too  much  ; 
but,  to  my  surprise,  they  gradually 
abated  the  demand,  although  there  was 
no  competition.  The  old  man  said, 
very  frankly,  "  If  you  give  us  a  franc 
apiece,  we  shall  only  make  ten  sous, 
and  we,  should  like  to  earn  a  little 
more."  We  thereupon  soon  came  to 
terms  ;  two  of  them  carried  me  into 
the  boat,  and  we  set  off  for  Ischia. 

Just  beyond  the  last  point  of  Procida 
rises  the  rocky  island  of  Vivara,  which 
is  nothing  but  a  fragment  left  from  the 
ruin  of  a  volcanic  crater.  Its  one  slant- 
ing side  is  covered  with  olive-trees,  and 
a  single  house  stands  on  the  summit. 
The  landing-place  is  a  rocky  shelf  a 
yard  or  so  in  width,  only  accessible 
when  the  sea  is  quite  smooth.  The 
island  belqngs  to  Signer  Scotti,  of  Pro- 
cida, so  the  boatmen  told  me,  but  he 
is  too  shrewd  to  live  upon  it.  As  we 


1 868.] 


A    Trip  to  IscJiia. 


157 


floated  past  it  into  the  open  strait,  the 
I  Jay  of  Gffita  opened  grandly  on  the 
right,  stretching  away  to  the  far  Cape 
of  Circe,  beyond  Terracina.  In  front 
Ischia,  grand  in  its  nearness,  possessed 
the  sea.  One  is  here  still  in  Odyssean 
waters.  Here  Homer  once  sailed,  so 
sure  as  there  ever  was  a  Homer,  and 
heard  Typhceus  groaning  under  Ina- 
rime.  What  Kinglake  so  finely  says 
of  the  Troad  is  here  equally  true.  The 
theories  of  scholars  go  to  the  winds  ; 
one  learns  to  believe  in  Homer,  no  less 
than  in  Moses. 

The  picture  of  Ischia,  from  the  sea, 
is  superb.  In  front  towers  the  castle, 
on  a  thrice  bolder  and  broader  wedge 
of  rock  than  that  of  Procida ;  with- 
drawn behind  it,  as  if  for  protection, 
the  white  crescent  of  the  town  sweeps 
along  the  water ;  garden-groves  rise  in 
the  rear,  then  great,  climbing  slopes  of 
vine,  and,  high  over  all,  Monte  Epomeo 
converges  the  broken  outlines  of  the 
island,  and  binds  them  together  in  his 
knotted  peak.  The  main  features  are 
grandly  broad  and  simple,  yet  there  is 
an  exquisite  grace  and  harmony  in  the 
minor  forms  of  the  landscape.  As  we 
ran  under  the  shadows  of  the  castle- 
rock,  whereon  the  Marquis  Pescara  was 
born,  my  thoughts  were  involuntarily 
directed  to  two  women,  —  his  sister,  the 
heroic  Costanza,  whose  defence  of  the 
castle  gave  the  governorship  of  Ischia 
to  her  family  for  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years  ;  and  his  wife,  Vittoria  Colonna. 
Her,  however,  we  remember  less  as 
the  Marchesa  Pescara  than  as  the 
friend  of  Michel  Angelo,  in  whose  arms 
she  died.  Theirs  was  the  only  friend- 
ship between  man  and  woman,  which 
the  breath  of  that  corrupt  age  did  not 
dare  to  stain,  —  noble  on  both  sides, 
and  based  on  the  taste  and  energy  and 
intellect  of  both.  Vittoria,  of  whom 
Ariosto  says, — 

no.  e  '1  nome  ;  e  ben  conviensi  a  nata 
le  vittorie," 

retired  to  this  castle  of  Ischia  to  mourn 
her  husband's  death.  Strange  that  her 
\v  excites  in  us  so  little  sympathy  ; 
while,  at  this  distance  of  time,  the  pic- 
ture of  Michel  Anzelo  after  her  death 


gives  us  a  pang.  Moral,  —  it  is  better 
to  be  the  friend  of  a  great  artist  than 
the  wife  of  a  great  general. 

The  landing  at  Ischia  is  as  attractive 
as  that  at  Procida  is  repulsive.  The 
town  comes  down  to  the  bright,  sunny 
quay  in  a  broad,  clean  street ;  the 
houses  are  massive,  and  suggestive  of 
comfort,  and  there  are  glimpses  of  the 
richest  gardens  among  them.  "  You 
must  go  to  the  locanda  nobilc"  said 
the  sailors  ;  and  to  make  sure  they  went 
with  me.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  only  toler- 
able inn  in  the  place  ;  yet  my  first 
impression  was  not  encouraging.  The 
locanda  consisted  of  a  large  hall,  filled 
with  mattresses,  a  single  bare  bedroom, 
and  the  landlord's  private  quarters. 
The  only  person  I  saw  was  a  one-eyed 
youth,  who  came  every  five  minutes, 
while  I  sat  watching  the  splendid  sun- 
set illumination  of  the  castle  and  sea, 
to  ask,  "  Shall  I  make  your  soup  with 
rice  or  macaroni  ?  "  "  Will  you  have 
your  fish  fried  or  in  nmido  ?  "  Notwith- 
standing all  this  attention,  it  was  a  most 
meagre  dinner  which  he  finally  served  ; 
and  I  longed  for  the  flesh-pots  of  Capri. 
In  spite  of  Murray,  artists  are  not  stoics, 
and  where  they  go  the  fare  is  wont  to 
be  good.  The  English  guide  says,  very 
complacently  :  "  Such  or  such  an  hotel 
is  third-rate,  patronized  by  artisfs  !  "  or, 
"  The  accommodations  are  poor ;  but 
artists  may  find  them  sufficient  /  "  —  as  if 
"  artists  "  had  no  finer  habits  of  palate 
or  nerves  !  When  I  contrasted  Pagano's 
table  in  Capri  with  that  of  the  nobile 
locanda  of  Ischia,  I  regretted  that  ar- 
tists had  not  been  staying  at  the  lat- 
ter. 

In  walking  through  the  two  cold  and 
barren  rooms  of  the  hotel  I  had  caught 
a  glimpse,  through  an  open  door,  of  a  man 
lying  in  bed,  and  an  old  Francisan  friar, 
in  a  brown  gaberdine,  hanging  over  him. 
Now,  when  my  Lenten  dinner  (although 
it  was  Carnival)  was  finished,  thzpadrona 
came  to  me,  and  said  :  "  Won't  you  walk 
in  and  see  Don  Michele  ?  He 's  in  bed, 
sick,  but  he  can  talk,  and  it  will  pass 
away  the  time  for  him." 

"  But  the  Frate  -  "  here  I  hesitated, 
thinking  of  extreme  unction. 


158 


A   Trip  to  Ischia. 


[August, 


"  O,  never  mind  the  Frate,"  said  the 
padrona;  "  Don  Michele  knows  you  are 
here,  and  he  wants  to  have  a  talk  with 
you." 

The  invalid  landlord  was  a  man  of 
fifty,  who  lay  in  bed,  groaning  with  a 
fearful  lumbago,  as  he  informed  me.  At 
the  foot  of  the  bed  sat  the  old  friar, 
gray-headed,  with  a  snuffy  upper  lip, 
and  an  expression  of  amiable  imbecility 
on  his  countenance.  The  one-eyed 
servant  was  the  landlord's  son ;  and 
there  were  two  little  daughters,  one  of 
whom,  Filomena,  carried  the  other, 
Maria  Teresa.  There  was  also  a  son, 
a  sailor,  absent  in  Egypt.  "  Four  left 
out  of  twelve,"  said  Don  Michele  ; 
"  but  you  notice  there  will  soon  be 
thirteen  ;  so  I  shall  have  five,  if  the 
Lord  wills  it." 

"  And  so  you  are  from  America,"  he 
continued ;  "  my  son  was  there,  but, 
whether  in  North  or  South,  I  don't 
know.  They  say  there  is  cholera  in 
Africa,  and  I  hope  the  saints  will  pro- 
tect him  from  it.  Here  on  Ischia  —  as 
perhaps  you  don't  know — we  never 
had  the  cholera  ;  we  have  a  saint  who 
keeps  it  away  from  the  island.  It  was 
San  Giuseppe  della  Croce,  and  nobody 
can  tell  how  many  miracles  he  has 
wrought  for  us.  He  left  a  miraculous 
plant, — it's  inside  the  castle, —  and 
there  it  grows  to  this  day,  with  WTOII- 
derful  powers  of  healing ;  but  no  one 
dares  to  touch  it.  If  you  were  to  so 
much  as  break  a  leaf,  all  Ischia  would 
rise  in  revolution." 

"  What  a  benefit  for  the  island  !  "  I 
remarked. 

"  Ah,  you  may  well  say  that ! "  ex- 
claimed Don  Michele.  "  Here  every- 
thing is  good,  —  the  fish,  the  wine,  the 
people.  There  are  no  robbers  among 
us,  —  no,  indeed  !  You  may  go  where 
you  like,  and  without  fear,  as  the  Frate 
will  tell  you.  This  is  my  brother" 
(pointing  to  the  friar).  "  I  am  affiliated 
with  the  Franciscans,  and  so  he  comes 
to  keep  me  company." 

The  friar  nodded,  took  a  pinch  of 
snuff,  and  smiled  in  the  vague,  silly 
way  of  a  man  who  don't  know  what  to 
say. 


"  I 'have  met  many  of  your  brethren 
in  the  Holy  Land,"  I  said,  to  the  latter. 

"  Gran  Dio  !  you  have  been  there  ?  " 
both  exclaimed. 

I  must  need  tell  them  of  Jerusalem 
and  Jericho,  of  Nazareth  and  Tiberias  ; 
but  Don  Michele  soon  came  back  to 
America.  "  You  are  one  of  the  nobility, 
I  suppose  ?  "  he  said. 

"  What !  "  I  answered,  affecting  a 
slight  indignation;  "don't  you  know 
that  we  have  no  nobility  ?  All  are  equal 
before  the  law,  and  the  poorest  man 
may  become  the  highest  ruler,  if  he 
kas  the  right  degree  of  intelligence." 
(I  was  about  to  add,  and  honesty,  — 
but  checked  myself  in  time.) 

"  Do  you  hear  that  ? "  cried  Don 
Michele  to  the  friar.  "I  call  that  a 
fine  thing." 

"  Che  bella  cosa  !  "  repeated  the  friar, 
as  he  took  a  fresh  pinch  of  snuff. 

"  What  good  is  your  nobility  ?  "  I 
continued.  "  They  monopolize  the  offi- 
ces, they  are  poor  and  proud,  and  they 
won't  work.  The  men  who  do  the 
most  for  Italy  are  not  nobles." 

"  True  !  true  !  listen  to  that !  "  said 
Don  Michele.  "  And  so,  in  America, 
all  have  an  equal  chance  ?  " 

"'•  If  you  were  living  there,"  I  an- 
swered, "  your  son,  if  he  had  talents, 
might  become  the  Governor  of  a  State, 
or  a  minister  to  a  foreign  court.  Could 
he  be  that  here,  whatever  might  be  his 
intellect  ?  " 

"  Gran  Dio  !  Che  bella  cosa  !  " 
said  the  friar. 

"  It  is  the  balance  of  Astroea!"  cried 
Don  Michele,  forgetting  his  lumbago, 
and  sitting  up  in  bed.  I  was  rather 
astonished  at  this  classical  allusion  ; 
but  it  satisfied  me  that  I  was  not  im- 
providently  wasting  my  eloquence  ;  so 
I  went  on  :  — 

"What  is  a  title  ?  Is  a  man  any  the 
more  a  man  for  having  it  ?  He  may  be 
a  duke  and  a  thief,  and,  if  so,  I  put  him 
far  below  an  honest  fisherman.  Are 
there  titles  in  heaven  ?  "  Here  I  turned 
to  the  friar. 

"  Behold  !  A  noble,  —  a  beautiful 
word !  "  cried  the  Don  again.  The 
friar  lifted  his  hands  to  heaven,  shook 


1 868.' 


A   Trip  to  Ischia. 


his    head   in   a   melancholy   way,    and 
took  another  pinch  of  snuff. 

We  were  in  a  fair  way  to  establish 
the  universal  fraternal  republic,  when 
a  knock  at  the  door  interrupted  us.  It 
was  Don  Michele's  sister,  accompanied 
by  an  old  man,  and  a  young  one,  with  a 
handsome,  but  taciturn  face. 

"  Ah,  here  is  my  Jigliucdo !  "  said 
Don  Michele,  beckoning  forward  the 
latter.  "  He  will  furnish  a  donkey,  and 
guide  you  all  over  Ischia,  —  up  to  the 
top  of  Epomeo,  to  Fori',  and  Casamich'." 

Now,  I  had  particularly  requested  a 
young  and  jovial  fellow,  —  not  one  of 
your  silent  guides,  who  always  hurry 
you  forward  when  you  want  to  pause, 
and  seem  to  consider  you  as  a  bad  job, 
to  be  gotten  rid  of  as  soon  as  possible. 
Giovanni's  was  not  the  face  I  desired, 
but  Don  Michele  insisted  stoutly  that 
he  was  the  very  man  for  me  ;  and  so 
the  arrangement  was  concluded. 

I  went  to  bed,  feeling  more  like  a 
guest  of  the  family  than  a  stranger ; 
and,  before  sleeping,  determined  that  I 
would  make  an  experiment.  The  rule 
in  Italy  is,  that  the  man  who  does  not 
bargain  in  advance  is  inevitably  cheat- 
ed ;  here,  however,  it  seemed  that  I 
had  stumbled  on  an  unsophisticated 
region.  I  would  make  no  bargains, 
ask  no  mistrustful  questions,  and  test 
the  natural  honesty  of  the  people. 

Mounted  on  the  ass,  and  accompa- 
nied by  Giovanni,  I  left  the  locanda  no- 
bile  the  next  morning,  to  make  the  tour 
of  the  island.  "Be  sure  and  show  him 
everything  and  tell  him  everything  !  " 
cried  Don  Michele,  from  his  bed; 
whereat  Giovanni,  with  a  short  "  Yes  !  " 
which  promised  nothing  to  my  ear,  led 
the  way  out  of  the  town. 

We  ascended  the  low  hill  on  which 
the  town  is  built,  under  high  garden 
wails,  overhung  by  the  most  luxuriant 
foliage  of  orange  and  olive.  There 
were  line  cypresses,  — a  tree  rare  in 
Southern  Italy,  —  and  occasional  palms. 
Wo  very  soon  emerged  into  the  coun- 
try, where  Kpomeo  towered  darkly- 
above  us,  in  the  shadow  of  clouds 
which  the  sirocco  had  blown  from  the 
sea.  The  road  was  not  blinded  by 


walls,  as  on  Procida,  but  open  and 
broad,  winding  forward  between  vine- 
yards of  astonishing  growth.  Here  the 
threefold  crops  raised  on  the  same 
soil,  about  Naples  and  Sorrento,  would 
be  impossible.  In  that  rich  volcanic 
earth  wheat  is  only  the  parterre  or 
ground-floor  of  cultivation.  .  The  thin 
shade  of  the  olive,  or  the  young  leaves 
of  vine,  do  not  intercept  sun  enough  to 
hinder  its  proper  maturity;  and  thus 
oil  or  wine  (or  sometimes  both)  be- 
comes a  higher  crop,  a  bel  e  tags;  while 
the  umbrella-pines,  towering  far  above 
all,  constitute  an  upper  story  for  the 
production  of  lumber  and  firewood. 
Ischia  has  the  same  soil,  but  the  vine, 
on  account  of  the  superior  quality  of 
its  juice,  is  suffered  to  monopolize  it. 
Stems  of  the  thickness  of  a  man's  leg 
are  trained  back  and  forth  on  poles 
thirty  feet  high.  The  usual  evergreen 
growths  of  this  region,  which  make  a 
mimicry  of  summer,  have  no  place 
here ;  far  and  wide,  high  and  low,  the 
landscape  is  gray  with  vines  and  poles. 
I  can  only  guess  what  a  Bacchic  laby- 
rinth it  must  be  in  the  season  of  vint- 
age. 

The  few  trees  allowed  to  stand  were 
generally  fig  or  walnut.  There  are  no 
orange-groves,  as  about  Sorrento,  for 
the  reason  that  the  wine  of  Ischia,  be- 
ing specially  imported  to  mix  with  and 
give  fire  and  temper  to  other  Italian 
wines,  is  a  very  profitable  production. 
The  little  island  has  a  population  of 
about  thirty  thousand,  very  few  of  whom 
are  poor,  like  the  inhabitants  of  Capri. 
During  my  trip  I  encountered  but  a 
single  beggar,  who  was  an  old  woman 
on  crutches.  Yet,  although  the  fields 
were  gray,  the  banks  beside  the  road 
were  bright  with  young  grass,  and  gay 
with  violets,  anemones,  and  the  gok».en 
blossoms  of  the  broom. 

On  our  left  lay  the  long  slopes  of 
Monte  Campagnano,  which  presents  a 
rocky  front  to  the  sea.  Between  this 
mountain  and  Epomeo  the  road  trav- 
ersed a  circular  valley,  nearly  a  mile 
in  diameter,  as  superbly  rich  as  any 
of  the  favored  gardens  of  Syria.  The 
aqueduct  which  brings  water  from  the 


i6o 


A    Trip  to  Is  Ma. 


[August, 


mountains  to  the  town  of  Ischia  cross- 
es it  on  lofty  stone  arches.  Beyond 
this  valley,  the  path  entered  a  singular 
winding  ravine,  thirty  or  forty  feet  in 
depth,  and  barely  wide  enough  for  two 
asses  to  pass  each  other.  Its  walls  of 
rock  were  completely  hidden  in  mosses 
and  ferns,- and  old  oak-trees,  with  ivied 
trunks,  threw  their  arms  across  it.  The 
country  people,  in  scarlet  caps  and  vel- 
vet jackets,  on  their  way  to  enjoy  the 
festa  (the  Carnival)  at  the  villages, 
greeted  me  with  a  friendly  "  buou  dl  /  " 
I  was  constantly  reminded  of  those  ex- 
quisitely picturesque  passes  of  Arcadia, 
which  seem  still  to  be  the  haunts  of 
Pan  and  the  Nymphs. 

Bishop  Berkeley,  whose  happiest 
summer  (not  even  excepting  that  he 
passed  at  Newport)  was  spent  on  Is- 
chia, must  have  frequently  travelled 
that  path ;  and,  without  having  seen 
more  of  the  island,  I  was  quite  willing 
to  accept  his  eulogies  of  its  scenery.  I 
had  some  difficulty,  however,  in  adjust- 
ing to  the  reality  Jean  Paul's  imaginary 
description,  which  it  is  conventional  to 
praise,  in  Germany.  The  mere  enu- 
meration of  orange-trees,  olives,  rocks, 
chestnut  woods,  vines,  and  blue  sea, 
blended  into  a  glimmering  whole,  with 
no  distinct  outlines,  does  not  constitute 
description  of  scenery.  An  author  ven- 
tures upon  dangerous  ground,  when  he 
attempts  to  paint  landscapes  which  he 
has  never  seen.  Jean  Paul  had  the 
clairvoyant  faculty  of  the  poet,  and  was 
sometimes  able  to  "make  out"  (to  use 
Charlotte  Bronte's  expression)  Italian 
atmospheres  and  a  tolerable  dream  of 
scenery ;  but  he  would  have  described 
Ischia  very  differently  if  he  had  ever 
visited  the  island. 

Winding  on  and  upward  through  the 
ravine,  I  emerged  at  last  on  the  sunny 
hillside,  whence  there  was  a  view  of 
the  sea  beyond  Monte  Campagnano.  A 
little  farther,  we  reached  the  village  of 
Barano,  on  the  southeastern  slope  of 
Epomeo,  —  a  deep  gray  gorge  below  it, 
and  another  village  beyond,  sparkling 
in  the  sun.  The  people  were  congre- 
gated on  the  little  piazza,  enjoying  the 
day  in  the  completest  idleness.  The 


place  was  a  picture  in  itself,  and  I 
should  have  stopped  to  sketch  it,  but 
Giovanni  pointed  to  the  clouds  which 
were  hovering  over  Epomeo,  and  pre- 
dicted rain.  So  I  pushed  on  to  Moro- 
pano,  the  next  village,  the  southern  side 
of  the  island  opening  more  clearly  and 
broadly  to  view.  A  succession  of  vine- 
terraces  mounted  from  the  sea  to  a 
height  of  two  thousand  feet,  ceasing 
only  under  the  topmost  crags.  At  in- 
tervals, however,  the  slopes  were  di- 
vided by  tremendous  fissures,  worn 
hundreds  of  feet  deep  through  the  ash- 
en soil  and  volcanic  rock.  Wherever 
a  little  platform  of  shelving  soil  had 
been  left  on  the  sides  of  the  sheer 
walls,  it  was  covered  with  a  growth  of 
oaks. 

The  road  obliged  me  to  cross  the 
broadest  of  these  chasms,  and,  after  my 
donkey  had  once  fallen  on  the  steep 
path  notched  along  the  rock,  I  judged  it 
safest  to  climb  the  opposite  side  on  foot. 
A  short  distance  farther  we  came  to  an- 
other fissure,  as  deep  but  much  nar- 
rower, and  resembling  the  cracks  pro- 
duced by  an  earthquake.  The  rocky 
walls  were  excavated  into  wine-cellars, 
the  size  of  which,  and  of  the  tuns  with- 
in, gave  good  token  of  the  Ischian  vin- 
tages. Out  of  the  last  crevice  we 
climbed  to  the  village  of  Fontana,  the 
highest  on  the  island.  A  review  of  the 
National  Guards  was  held  in  a  narrow 
open  space  before  the  church.  There 
were  perhaps  forty  men  —  fishermen 
and  vine-growers  —  under  arms,  all  with 
military  caps,  although  only  half  a 
dozen  had  full  uniforms.  The  officers 
fell  back  to  make  room  for  me,  and  I 
passed  the  company  slowly  in  review, 
as  I  rode  by  on  the  donkey.  The  eyes 
were  "right,"  as  I  commenced,  but 
they  moved  around  to  left,  curiously 
following  me,  while  the  heads  remained 
straight.  Gallant-looking  fellows  they 
were,  nevertheless ;  and  moreover,  it 
was  pleasant  to  see  a  militia  system 
substituted  for  the  former  wholesale 
conscription. 

At  the  end  of  the  piazza,  a  dry  laurel- 
bush,  hanging  over  the  door,  denoted  a 
wine-shop ;  and  Giovanni  and  I  emp- 


1 868.] 


A    Trip  to  IscJiia. 


161 


tied  a  bottle  of  the  Fontana  vintage 
before  going  farther.  I  ordered  a  din- 
ner to  be  ready  on  our  return  from 
Epomeo,  and  we  then  set  out  for  the 
hermitage  of  San  Nicola,  on  the  very 
summit.  In  a  ravine  behind  the  vil- 
lage we  met  a  man  carrying  almost  a 
stack  of  straw  on  hi&liead,  his  body  so 
concealed  by  it  that  the  mass  seemed 
to  be  walking  upon  its  own  feet.  It 
stopped  on  approaching  us,  and  an  un- 
intelligible voice  issued  from  it;  but 
Giovanni  understood  the  sounds. 

'•  The  hermit  of  San  Nicola  is  sick," 
he  said  ;  "  this  is  his  brother." 

"  Then,  the  hermit  is  alone  on  the 
mountain  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  No,  he  is  now  in  Fontana.  When 
be  gets  sick,  he  comes  down,  and  his 
brother  goes  up  in  his  place,  to  keep 
the  lamp  a-burning." 

We  were  obliged  to  skirt  another 
fissure  for  some  distance,  and  then 
took  to  the  open  side  of  the  mountain, 
climbing  between  fields  where  the  di- 
minishing vines  struggled  to  drive  back 
the  mountain  gorse  and  heather.  In 
half  an  hour  the  summit  was  gained, 
and  I  found  myself  in  front  of  a  singu- 
lar, sulphur-colored  peak,  out  of  which 
a  chapel  and  various  chambers  had 
been  hewn.  A  man  appeared,  breath- 
less with  climbing  after  us,  and  proved 
to  be  the  moving  principle  of  the  straw- 
stack.  He  unlocked  a  door  in  the 
peak,  and  allowed  the  donkey  to  enter  ; 
then,  conducting  me  by  a  passage  cut 
in  the  living  rock,  he  led  the  way 
through,  out  of  the  opposite  side,  and 
by  a  flight  of  rude  steps,  around  giddy 
corners,  to  a  platform  about  six  feet 
square,  on  the  very  topmost  pinnacle 
of  the  island,  2,700  feet  above  the  sea. 

Epomeo  was  an  active  volcano  until 
just  before  Vesuvius  awakened,  in  A.  D. 
79;  and  as  late  as  the  year  1302  there 
was  an  eruption  on  Ischia,  at  the 
northern  base  of  the  mountain.  But 
the  summit  now  scarcely  retains  the 
•crater  form.  The  ancient  sides  are 
broken  in,  leaving  four  or  five  jagged 
peaks  standing  apart ;  and  these,  from 
the  platform  on  which  I  stood,  formed 
a  dark,  blasted  foreground,  shaped  like 

VOL.  XXII. —  NO.  130.  II 


a  star  with  irregular  rays,  between 
which  I  looked  down  and  oft"  on  the 
island,  the  sea,  and  the  Italian  shores. 
The  clouds,  whose  presence  I  had  la- 
mented daring  the  ascent,  now  proved 
to  be  marvellous  accessories.  Swoop- 
ing so  low  that  their  skirts  touched  me, 
they  covered  the  whole  vault  of  heaven, 
down  to  the  sea  horizon,  with  an  impen- 
etrable veil ;  yet,  beyond  their  sphere, 
the  sunshine  poured  full  upon  the  wa- 
ter, which  became  a  luminous  uncler- 
sky,  sending  the  reflected  light  up'. 
on  the  island  landscape.  In  all  my 
experience,  I  have  never  beheld  such  a 
phenomenon.  Looking  southward,  it 
was  scarcely  possible  not  to  mistake 
the  sea  for  the  sky ;  and  this  illusion 
gave  the  mountain  an  immeasurable, 
an  incredible,  height.  All  the  base  of 
the  island  —  the  green  shores  and 
shining  towns  visible  in  deep  arcs  be- 
tween the  sulphury  rocks  of  the  crater 
—  basked  in  dazzling  sunshine  ;  and 
the  gleam  was  so  intense  and  golden 
under  the  vast,  dark  roof  of  cloud,  that 
I  know  not  how  to  describe  it.  From 
the  Cape  of  Circe  to  that  of  Palinarus, 
200  miles  of  the  main-land  of  Italy  were 
full  in  view.  Vesuvius  may  sweep  a 
wider  horizon,  but  the  view  from  Epo- 
meo, in  its  wondrous  originality,  is  far 
more  impressive. 

When  I  descended  from  the  dizzy 
pinnacle,  I  found  Giovanni  and  the 
hermit's  brother  drying  their  shirts 
before  a  fire  of  brush.  The  latter,  after 
receiving  a  fee  for  his  services,  begged 
for  an  additional  fee  for  St.  Nicholas. 
"  What  does  St.  Nicholas  want  with 
it  ?  "  I  asked.  "  You  will  buy  food  and 
drink,  I  suppose,  but  the  saint  needs 
nothing."  Giovanni  turned  away  his 
head,  and  I  saw  that  he  was  laughing. 

"  O,  I  can  burn  a  lamp  for  the  saint," 
was  the  answer. 

Nowr,  as  St.  Nicholas  is  the  patron  of 
children,  sailors,  and  travellers,  I  r 
well  have  lit  a  lamp  in  his  honor  ;  but 
as  I  could  not  stay  to  see  the  oil  pur- 
chased and  the  lamp  lighted,  with  my 
own  eyes,  I  did  not  consider  that  there 
was  sufficient  security  in  the  hermit's 
brother  for  such  an  investment. 


162 


A   Trip  to  Ischia. 


[August,. 


When  I  descended  to  Fontana  the 
review  was  over,  and  several  of  the 
National  Guards  were  refreshing  them- 
selves in  the  wine-shop.  The  black- 
bearded  host,  who  looked  like  an  affec- 
tionate bandit,  announced  that  he  had 
cooked  a  pig's  liver  for  us,  and  straight- 
way prepared  a  table  in  the  shop  beside 
the  counter.  There  was  but  one  plate, 
but  Giovanni,  who  kept  me  company, 
ate  directly  from  the  dish.  I  have  al- 
most a  Hebrew  horror  of  fresh  pork  ; 
but  since  that  day  I  confess  that  a  pig's 
liver,  roasted  on  skewers,  and  flavored 
with  the  smoke  of  burning  myrtle,  is 
not  a  dish  to  be  despised.  Eggs  and 
the  good  Ischian  wine  completed  the 
repast ;  and  had  I  not  been  foolish 
enough  to  look  at  the  host  as  he  wiped 
out  the  glasses  with  his  unwashed  fin- 
gers, I  should  have  enjoyed  it  the  more. 

The  other  guests  were  very  jolly,  but 
I  could  comprehend  little  of  their  jar- 
gon when  they  spoke  to  each  other. 
The  dialect  of  Ischia  is  not  only  dif- 
ferent from  that  of  Capri,  but  varies  on 
different  sides  of  the  island.  Many 
words  are  identical  with  those  used 
on  Sardinia  and  Majorca  ;  they  have  a 
clear,  strong  ring,  which  —  barbaric  as 
it  may  be — I  sometimes  prefer  to  the 
pure  Italian.  For  instance,  freddo 
(with  a  tender  lingering  on  the  double 
d)  suggests  to  me  a  bracing,  refresh- 
ing coolness,  while  .in  the  Ischian 
frctt  one  feels  the  sharp  sting  of 
frost.  Filicaja's  pathetic  address  to 
Italy, 

"  Deh  fossi  tu  men  bella,  o  almen  piii  forte  !  " 

might  also  be  applied  to  the  language. 
The  elision  of  the  terminal  vowels, 
which  is  almost  universal  in  this  part 
of  Italy,  roughens  the  language,  cer- 
tainly, but  gives  it  a  more  masculine 
sound. 

When  the  people  spoke  to  me,  they 
were  more  careful  in  the  choice  of 
words,  and  so  made  themselves  intel- 
ligible. They  were  eager  to  talk  and 
ask  questions,  and  after  one  of  them 
had  broken  the  ice  by  pouring  a  bottle 
of  wine  into  a  glass,  while  he  drank 
from  the  latter  as  fast  as  he  poured,  the 


Captain  of  the  Guard,  with  many  apolo- 
gies for  the  liberty,  begged  to  know 
where  I  came  from. 

"  Now  tell  me,  if  you  please/'  he  con- 
tinued, "  whether  your  country  is  Cath- 
olic or  Protestant  ?  " 

"  Neither,"  said^  I ;  "it  is  better  than 
being  either." 

The  people  pricked  up  their  ears, 
and  stared.  "  How  do  you  mean  ?  " 
some  one  presently  asked. 

';  All  religions  are  free.  Catholics 
and  Protestants  have  equal  rights  ; 
and  that  is  best  of  all,  —  is  it  not  ?  " 

There  was  a  unanimous  response. 
"  To  be  sure  that  is  best  of  all !  "  they 
cried  ;  "  avete  ragione" 

"  But,"  said  the  Captain,  after  a 
while,  "  what  religion  is  your  govern- 
ment ?  " 

"  None  at  all,"  I  answered. 

"  I  don't  understand,"  said  he ;  "sure- 
ly it  is  a  Christian  government." 

It  was  easy  to  explain  my  meaning, 
and  I  noticed  that  the  village  magis- 
trate, who  had  entered  the  shop,  lis- 
tened intently.  He  was  cautiously 
quiet,  but  I  saw  that  the  idea  of  a 
separation  of  Church  and  State  was 
not  distasteful  to  the  people.  From, 
religion  we  turned  to  politics,  and  I 
gave  them  a  rough  sketch  of  our  repub- 
lican system.  Moreover,  as  a  professed 
friend  of  Italian  nationality,  I  endeav- 
ored to  sound  them  in  regard  to  their 
views  of  the  present  crisis.  This  was 
more  delicate  ground  ;  yet  two  or  three 
spoke  their  minds  with  tolerable  plain- 
ness, and  with  more  judgment  and 
moderation  than  I  expected  to  find. 
On  two  points  all  seemed  to  be  agreed, 
—  that  the  people  must  be  educated, 
and  must  have  patience. 

In  the  midst  of  the  discussion  a  men- 
dicant friar  appeared,  barefooted,  and 
with  a  wallet  on  his  shoulder.  He  was 
a  man  of  thirty,  of  tall  and  stately 
figure,  and  with  a  singularly  noble  and 
refined  countenance.  He  did  not  beg, 
but  a  few  bajocchi  were  handed  to  him, 
and  the  landlord  placed  a  loaf  of  bread 
on  the  counter.  As  he  was  passing  mer 
without  asking  alms,  I  gave  him  some 
money,  which  he  took  with  a  slight 


1 868.] 


A   Trip  to  Ischia. 


163 


bow  and  the  words,  "  Providence  will 
requite  you."  Though  so  coarsely 
dressed,  he  was  not  one  of  those  friars 
who  seem  to  think  filth  necessary  to 
their  holy  character.  I  have  rarely  seen 
a  man  whose  features  and  bearing  har- 
monized so  ill  with  his  vocation.  He 
looked  like  a  born  teacher  and  leader ; 
yet  he  was  a  useless  beggar. 

The  ram,  which  had  come  up  during 
dinner,  now  cleared  away,  and  I  re- 
sumed my  journey.  Giovanni,  who 
had  made  one  or  two  desperate  ef- 
forts at  jollity  during  the  ascent  of  the 
mountain,  was  remarkably  silent  after 
the  conversation  in  the  inn,  and  I  had  no 
good  of  him  thenceforth.  A  mistrust- 
ful Italian  is  like  a  tortoise  ;  he  shuts 
up  his  shell,  and  crow-bars  can't  open 
him.  I  have  not  the  least  doubt  that 
Giovanni  believed,  in  his  dull  way,  in 
the  temporal  power  of  the  Pope  and 
the  restoration  of  the  Bourbons. 

There  were  no  more  of  the  great 
volcanic  fissures  to  be  crossed.  The 
•road,  made  slippery  by  the  rain,  de- 
scended so  rapidly  that  I  was  forced 
to  walk  during  the  remainder  of  the 
day's  journey.  It  was  a  country  of 
vines,  less  picturesque  than  I  had  al- 
ready passed ;  but  the  sea  and  south- 
western shore  of  the  island  were  con- 
stantly in  view.  I  first  reached  the 
little  village  of  Serrara,  on  a  projecting 
spur  of  Epomeo  ;  then,  after  many  steep 
and  rugged  descents,  came  upon  the 
rich  garden-plain  of  Panza.  Here  the 
surface  of  the  island  is  nearly  level,  the 
vegetation  is  wonderfully  luxuriant,  and 
the  large  gray  farm-houses  have  a  state- 
ly and  commanding  air.  In  another 
hour,  skirting  the  western  base  of 
Epomeo,  the  towers  of  Foria,  my  des- 
tination for  the  night,  came  into  view. 
There  were  some  signs  of  the  Carnival 
in  the  lively  streets,  —  here  and  there 
a  mask,  followed  by  shouting  and  de- 
lighted children  ;  but  the  greater  part 
of  the  inhabitants  contented  themselves 
with  sitting  on  the  doorsteps  and  ex- 
changing jokes  with  their  neighbors. 

The  guide-book  says  there  is  no  inn 
in  Foria.  Don  Michele,  however,  as- 
sured me  that  Signer  Scotti  kept  a 


locanda  for  travellers,  and  I  can  testify 
that  the  Don  is  right.  I  presume  it  is 
"noble,"  also,  for  the  accommodations 
were  like  those  in  Ischia.  On  entering, 
I  was  received  by  a  woman,  who  threw 
back  her  shoulders  and  lifted  her  head 
in  such  an  independent  way  that  I 
asked,  '•  Are  you  the  padrona  ?  " 

"  No,"  she  answered,  laughing ;  "  I  'fn 
the  modestica;  but  that  will  do  just  as 
well."  (She  meant  domestica,  but  I 
like  her  rendering  of  the  word  so  well 
that  I  shall  retain  it.) 

"  Can  you  get  me  something  for  din- 
ner?" 

"  Let  us  see,"  said  she,  counting  up- 
on her  fingers  :  "  fish,  that 's  one  ;  kid, 
that 's  two ;  potatoes,  that  's  three  ; 
and  —  and  —  surely  there's  something 
else." 

"  That  will  do,"  said  I  ;  "  and 
eggs?" 

"  Sicuro !  Eggs  ?  I  should  think  so. 
And  so  that  will  suit  your  Excel- 
lency ! " 

Thereupon  the  modestica  drew  back 
her  shoulders,  threw  out  her  chest, 
and,  in  a  voice  that  half  Foria  might 
have  heard,  sang  I  know  not  what  song 
of  triumph  as  she  descended  to  the 
kitchen.  Signor  Scotti,  for  whom  a 
messenger  had  been  sent,  now  arrived. 
He  had  but  one  eye,  and  I  began  to 
imagine  that»I  was  on  the  track  of  the 
Arabian  Prince.  After  a  few  polite 
commonplaces,  I  noticed  that  he  was 
growing  uneasy,  and  said,  "  Pray,  let 
me  not  keep  you  from  the  Carnival." 

"  Thanks  to  your  Excellency,"  said 
he,  rising  ;  "  my  profession  calls  me, 
and  with  your  leave  I  will  withdraw." 
I  supposed  that  he  might  be  a  city 
magistrate,  but  on  questioning  the 
modestica,  when  she  came  to  announce 
dinner,  I  found  that  he  was  a  barber. 

I  was  conducted  into  a  bedroom,  in 
the  floor  of  which  the  modestica  opened 
a  trap-door,  and  bade  me  descend  a 
precipitous  flight  of  steps  into  the  kitch- 
en. There  the  table  was  set,  and  I  re- 
ceived my  eggs  and  fish  directly  from 
the  fire.  The  dessert  was  peculiar, 
consisting  of  raw  stalks  of  anise,  cut  off 
at  the  root,  very  tough,  and  with  a  sick- 


164 


A    Trip  to  Is chia. 


[August, 


]y  sweet  flavor.  Seeing  that  I  rejected 
them,  the  modestica  exclaimed,  in  a 
strident  voice,  — 

fk  Eh  ?  What  would  you  have  ?  They 
are  beautiful,  —  they  are  superb  !  The 
gentry  eat  them,  — nay,  what  do  I  know  \ 
—  the  King  himself,  and  the  Pope! 
Behold  !  "  And  with  these  words  she 
snatched  a  stalk  from  the  plate,  and 
crunched  it  between  two  rows  of  teeth 
which  it  was  a  satisfaction  to  see. 

Half  an  hour  afterwards,  as  I  was  in 
the  bedroom  which  had  been  given 
to  my  use,  a  horribly  rough  voice  at 
my  back  exclaimed,  "  What  do  you 
want  ? " 

I  turned,  and  beheld  an  old  woman 
as  broad  as  she  was  short,  —  a  woman 
with  fierce  eyes  and  a  gray  mustache 
on  her  upper  lip.. 

"What  do  you  want  ?  "  I  rejoined. 

She  measured  me  from  head  to  foot, 
gave  a  grunt,  and  said,  "/'m  the  pa- 
drona  here." 

I  was  a  little  surprised  at  this  intru- 
sion, and  considerably  more  so,  half  an 
hour  afterwards,  as  I  sat  smoking  in 
the  common  room,  at  the  visit  of  a  gen- 
darme, who  demanded  my  passport. 
After  explaining  to  him  that  the  docu- 
ment had  never  before  been  required 
in  free  Italy,  —  that  the  law  did  not  even 
oblige  me  to  carry  it  with  me,  —  I  handed 
it  to  him. 

He  turned  it  up  and  down,  and  from 
side  to  side,  with  a  puzzled  air.  "  I 
can't  read  it,"  he  said,  at  last. 

"  Of  course  you  can't,"  I  replied ; 
"but  there  is  no  better  passport  in  the 
world,  and  the  Governor  of  Naples  will 
tell  you  the  same  thing.  Now,"  I 
added,  turning  to  the  padrona,  "  if  you 
have  sent  for  this  officer  through  any 
suspicion  of  me,  I  will  pay  for  my  din- 
ner and  go  on  to  Casamicciola,  where 
they  know  how  to  receive  travellers." 

The  old  woman  lifted  up  her  hands, 
and  called  on  the  saints  to  witness  that 
she  did  not  mistrust  me.  The  gen- 
darme apologized  for  his  intrusion,  add- 
ing :  "  We  are  out  of  the  way,  here,  and 
therefore  I  am  commanded  to  do  this 
duty.  I  cannot  read  your  passport,  but 
I  can  see  that  you  are  a  galantuomo" 


This  compliment  obliged  me  to  give 
him  a  cigar,  after  which  I  felt  justified 
in  taking  a  little  revenge.  "  I  am  a  re- 
publican," I  cried,  "  and  a  friend  of  the 
Italian  Republicans  !  I  don't  believe  in 
the  temporal  power  of  the  Pope  !  I 
esteem  Garibaldi  ! " 

"  Who  does  n't  esteem  him  ?  "  said 
the  old  woman,  but  with  an  expression 
as  if  she  did  n't  mean  it.  The  gen- 
darme twisted  uneasily  on  his  seat,  but 
he  had  lighted  my  cigar,  and  did  not 
feel  free  to  leave. 

I  shall  not  here  repeat  my  oration, 
which  spared  neither  the  Pope,  nor 
Napoleon  the  Third,  nor  even  Victor 
Emanuel.  I  was  as  fierce  and  reckless 
as  Mazzini,  and  exhausted  my  stock  of 
Italian  in  advocating  freedom,  educa- 
tion, the  overthrow  of  priestly  rule,  and 
the  abolition  of  the  nobility.  When  I 
stopped  to  take  breath,  the  gendarme 
made  his  escape,  and  the  padrona's 
subdued  manner  showed  that  she  be- 
gan to  be  afraid  of  me. 

In  the  evening  there  was  quite  an* 
assemblage  in  the  room,  —  two  Neapol- 
itan engineers,  a  spruce  young  Forian, 
a  widow  with  an  unintelligible  story  of 
grievances,  and  the  never-failing  uiodes- 
tica,  who  took  her  seat  on  the  sofa,  and 
made  her  tongue  heard  whenever  there 
was  a  pause.  I  grew  so  tired  with 
striving  to  unravel  their  dialect,  that  I 
fell  asleep  in  my  chair,  and  nearly  tum- 
bled into  the  brazier  of  coals  ;  but  the 
chatter  went  on  for  hours  after  I  was  in 
bed. 

In  the  heavenly  morning  that  fol- 
lowed I  walked  about  the  town,  which 
is  a  shipping  port  for  wine.  The  quay 
was  piled  with  tuns,  purple-stained. 
The  situation  of  the  place,  at  the  foot 
of  Epomeo,  with  all  the  broad  Tyrrhene 
sea  to  the  westward,  is  very  beautiful, 
and,  as  usual,  a  Franciscan  monastery 
has  usurped  the  finest  position.  No 
gardens  can  be  richer  than  those  in  the 
rear,  mingling  with  the  vineyards  that 
rise  high  on  the  mountain  slopes. 

After  the  modestica  had  given  me 
half  a  tumbler  of  coffee  and  a  crust  of 
bread  for  my  breakfast,  I  mounted  the 
donkey,  and  set  out  for  Casamicciola. 


1 868." 


A    Trip  to  Ischia. 


165 


The  road  skirts  the  sea  ,or  a  short  dis- 
tance, and  then  enters  a  wild  dell, 
where  I  saw  clumps  of  ilex  for  the  first 
time  on  the  island.  After  a  mile  of 
rugged,  but  very  beautiful,  scenery,  the 
dell  opened  on  the  northern  shore  of 
Ischia,  and  I  saw  the  bright  town  and 
sunny  beach  of  Lacco  below  me.  There 
was  a  sudden  and  surprising  change  in 
the  character  of  the  landscape.  Dark, 
graceful  carob-trees  overhung  the  road ; 
the  near  gardens  were  filled  with  al- 
monds in  light  green  leaf,  and  orange- 
trees  covered  with  milky  buds  ;  but  over 
them,  afar  and  aloft,  from  the  edge  of 
the  glittering  sapphire  to  the  sulphur- 
crags  of  the  crowning  peak,  swept  a 
broad,  grand  amphitheatre  of  villas,  or- 
chards, and  vineyards.  Gayly  colored 
palaces  sat  on  all  the  projecting  spurs 
of  Epomeo,  rising  above  their  piles  of 
garden  terraces  ;  and,  as  I  rode  along 
the  beach,  the  palms  and  cypresses  in 
the  gardens  above  me  were  exquisitely 
pencilled  on  the  sky.  Here  everything 
spoke  of  old  cultivation,  of  wealth  and 
luxurious  days. 

In  the  main  street  of  Lacco  I  met 
the  gendarme  of  Foria,  who  took  off  his 
cocked  hat  with  an  air  of  respect,  which, 
however,  produced  no  effect  on  my  don- 
key-man, Giovanni.  We  mounted  si- 
lently to  Casamicciola,  which,  as  a 
noted  watering-place,  boasts  of  hotels 
with  Neapolitan  prices,  if  not  comforts. 
I  felt  the  need  of  one,  and  selected  the 
Sentinella  Grande  on  account  of  its 
lordly  position.  It  was  void  of  guests, 
and  I  was  obliged  to  wait  two  hours  for 
a  moderate  breakfast.  The  splendor 
of  the  day,  the  perfect  beauty  of  the 
Ischian  landscapes,  and  the  soft  hum- 
ming of  bees  around  the  wall-flower 
blossoms,  restored  my  lost  power  to 
enjoy  the  dolcefar  nicntc,  and  I  had  for- 
gotten all  about  my  breakfast  when  it 
was  announced. 

From  Casamicciola  it  is  little  more 
than  an  hour's  ride  to  Ischia,  and  my 
tour  of  the  island  lacked  but  that  much 
of  completion.  The  season  had  not 
commenced,  and  the  marvellous  heal- 
ing fountains  and  baths  were  deserted  ; 
yet  the  array  of  stately  villas,  the  lux- 


ury of  the  gardens,  and  the  broad,  well- 
made  roads,  attested  the  popularity  of 
the  watering-place.  Such  scenery  as 
surrounds  it  is  not  surpassed  by  any  on 
the  Bay  of  Naples.  I  looked  longingly 
up  at  the  sunny  mountain-slopes  and 
shadowed  glens,  as  I  rode  away.  What 
I  had  seen  was  but  the  promise,  the 
hint,  of  a  thousand  charms  which  I  had 
left  unvisited. 

On  the  way  to  Ischia  I  passed  the 
harbor,  which  is  a  deep  little  crater 
connected  with  the  sea  by  an  artificial 
channel.  Beside  it  lies  the  Casino 
Reale,  with  a  magnificent  park,  unin- 
habited since  the  Bourbons  left.  Be- 
yond it  I  crossed  the  lava-fields  of 
1302,  which  are  still  unsubdued.  Here 
and  there  a  house  has  been  built,  some 
pines  have  been  planted,  clumps  of 
broom  have  taken  root,  and  there  are 
a  few  rough,  almost  hopeless,  begin- 
nings of  fields.  Having  passed  this 
dreary  tract,  the  castle  of  Ischia  sud- 
denly rose  in  front,  and  the  bright  town 
received  me.  I  parted  from  the  taci- 
turn Giovanni  without  tears,  and  was 
most  cordially  welcomed  by  Don  Mi- 
chele,  his  wife,  the  one-eyed  son,  and 
the  Franciscan  friar.  The  Don's  lum- 
bago was  not  much  better,  and  the 
friar's  upper  lip,  it  seemed  to  me,  was 
more  snuffy  than  ever. 

In  the  evening  I  heard  what  ap- 
peared to  be  a  furious  altercation.  I 
recognized  Don  Michele's  voice,  threat- 
ening vengeance,  at  its  highest  pitch, 
while  another  voice,  equally  excited, 
and  the  screams  of  women,  gave  addi- 
tional breath  to  the  tempest.  But  when 
I  asked  my  one-eyed  servitor,  "  What 
in  Heaven's  name  has  happened  ?  "  he 
mildly  answered,  "  O,  it 's  only  the 
uncle  discoursing  with  papa!" 

I  arose  at  dawn,  the  next  day,  to  take 
the  steamer  for  Naples.  The  flaming 
jets  of  Vesuvius,  even  against  the  glow- 
ing morning  sky,  were  visible  from  my 
window,  twenty-five  miles  distant.  I 
was  preparing  to  bid  farewell  to  Ischia 
with  a  feeling  of  profound  satisfaction. 
My  experiment  had  succeeded  remark- 
ably well.  I  had  made  no  bargains  in 
advance,  and  had  not  been  overcharged 


1 66 


A   Trip  to  IscJiia. 


[August, 


to  the  extent  of  more  than  five  francs 
during  the  whole  trip.  But  now  came 
the  one-eyed  son,  with  a  bill  fifty  per 
cent  higher  than  at  first,  for  the  same 
accommodation.  This,  too,  after  I  had 
promised  to  send  my  friends  to  the 
locanda  nobile,  and  he  had  written 
some  very  grotesque  cards,  which  I 
was  to  disseminate. 

Don  Michele  was  calling  me  to  say 
good  by.  I  went  to  his  chamber,  and 
laid  the  grotesque  cards  upon  the  bed. 
"  Here  ! "  I  exclaimed  ;  "  I  have  no 
use  for  these.  I  shall  recommend  no 
friends  of  mine  to  this  hotel.  You  ask 
another  price  now  for  the  same  ser- 
vice." 

The  Don's  countenance  fell.  "  But 
we  kept  the  same  room  for  you,"  he 
feebly  urged. 

"  Of  course  you  kept  it,"  I  said,  "  be- 
cause you  have  no  other,  and  nobody 
came  to  take  it !  This  is  not  the  bal- 
ance of  Astrasa  !  You  lament  over  the 
condition  of  Italy,  —  you  say  she  has 
fallen  behind  the  other  nations  of  Eu- 
rope, —  and  here  is  one  of  the  causes  ! 
So  long  as  you,  and  the  people  of  whom 
you  are  one,  are  dishonest,  —  so  long 
as  you  take  advantage  of  strangers, 
—  just  so  long  will  you  lack  the  order, 
the  security,  the  moral  force  which 
every  people  possess  who  are  ashamed 
to  descend  to  such  petty  arts  of  cheat- 
ing!" 

"  Ma  —  Signore  !  "  pleaded  Don  Mi- 
chele. 

"  It  is  true  !  "  I  continued  ;  "  I,  who 
am  a  friend  of  Italy,  say  it  to  you.  You 
talk  of  corruption  in  high  places,  —  be- 


gin your  reforms  at  home  !  Learn  to 
practise  common  honesty  ;  teach  your 
children  to  do  it ;  respect  yourselves 
sufficiently  to  be  above  such  meanness, 
and  others  will  respect  you.  What 
were  my  fine,  my  beautiful  words  worth 
to  you  ?  I  thought  I  was  sowing  seed 
on  good  ground  —  " 

"  Signore,  Signore,  hear  me  !  "  cried 
the  Don. 

'•  I  have  only  one  word  more  to  say, 
and  that  is  Addio  !  and  not  a  rivederci! 
I  am  going,  and  I  shall  not  come  back 
again." 

Don  Michele  jumped  up  in  bed,  but 
I  was  already  at  the  door.  I  threw  it 
open,  closed  it  behind  me,  and  dashed 
down  the  stairs.  A  faint  cry  of  "  Sig- 
nore !  "  followed  me. 

In  two  minutes  more  I  was  on  the 
pier,  waiting  for  the  steamer  to  come 
around  the  point  from  Casamicciola. 
The  sweet  morning  air  cooled  my  ex- 
citement, and  disposed  me  to  gentler 
thoughts.  I  fancied  Don  Michele  in 
his  bed,  mortified  and  repentant,  and 
almost  regretted  that  I  had  not  given 
him  a  last  chance  to  right  himself  in 
my  eyes.  Moreover,  reviewing  the  in- 
cidents of  my  trip,  I  was  amused  at  the 
part  which  I  had  played  in  it.  Without 
the  least  intent  or  premeditation,  I  had 
been  a  self-constituted  missionary  of 
religious  freedom,  education,  and  the 
Universal  Republic.  But  does  the 
reader  suppose  that  I  imagine  any  word 
thus  uttered  will  take  root,  and  bring 
forth  fruit,  — that  any  idea  thus  planted 
will  propagate  itself  further  ? 

No,  indeed  ! 


1 868.] 


Ideal  Property. 


167 


IDEAL     PROPERTY. 


THE  nomenclature  of  common  life 
and  the  nomenclature  of  common 
law  have  brought  with  them  from  an 
age  without  philosophy,  a  time  when 
every  house  was  defensible,  when  the 
king  was  the  state,  when  the  large  land- 
holders were  pares  and  comitcs^  from 
semi-barbarous  times  in  fact,  words  and 
phrases  denoting  ownership  and  de- 
scriptive of  the  subject-matter  owned. 
Property,  in  the  law,  is  that  which  be- 
longs to  a  man,  —  that  which  is  his 
own,  — that  which  is  proprium  sibi. 
And  property  in  land  is  called  real 
(royal,  ultimately  in  the  king,  not  actual, 
or  of  the  true  sort),  while  movable 
property  is  called  personal,  because  it 
is  attached  to  the  individual,  has  once 
been  separated  from  the  soil,  and  has 
not  been  reattached  with  a  very  con- 
siderable degree  of  permanence.  Thus 
a  house  built  of  stone  or  brick  or  wood, 
all  the  materials  of  which  have  been 
separated  from  land  and  reattached  to 
it  as  firmly  as  their  nature  permits,  is 
real  property,  but  the  mirrors  and  pic- 
tures fastened  against  the  walls  are  not. 
Because  of  the  ultimate  royal  interest 
in  landed  property,  injury  to  real  estate 
was  formerly  a  higher  offence  than  in- 
jury to  the  person  or  personality.  But 
in  a  republic,  where  the  liberty  of  the 
person  is  of  a  higher  degree  than  in  a 
monarchy,  the  sacredness  of  property 
go'es  outward  from  the  person  ;  and  that 
which  is  most  inseparable  from  the  man 
—  his  personal  liberty  and  rights  of  pay- 
ment for  labor — is  of  the  highest  or- 
der, and  that  which  is  most  connected 
with  society,  of  the  lowest.  The  sacred- 
ness  of  landed  property  is  still  main- 
tained by  conservatives,  and  it  is  only 
slowly  encroached  on  by  doctrines  of 
fixtures  and  the  like.  Formerly,  all 
attachments  to  land  were  real  estate ; 
but  now,  temporary  attachments,  un- 
known to  the  ancients,  are  called  fix- 
tures, and  are  held  to  be  personal  prop- 
erty. It  may  be  more  labor  to  detach 


some  fixtures,  such  as  elaborate  gas 
chandeliers,  or  to  remove  a  portable 
safe,  than  to  detach  some  parts  of  the 
real  estate,  such  as  doors  or  windows  ; 
yet  a  door  in  a  house  is  a  different 
sort  of  property  from  a  safe  or  a  chan- 
delier;  and  it  is  a  far  higher  offence 
to  break  a  door  or  window  in  order  to 
steal,  than  to  rob  an  open  safe  of  mil- 
lions. Singular  as  it  may  seem,  there 
is  a  sort  of  property  well  known  to  all 
men,  —  by  many  hardly  thought  of  as 
property  at  all,  — of  a  higher  nature  than 
real  estate,  or  fixtures,  or  any  sort  of 
movable  property,  —  made  property  by  a 
deeper  principle,  less  destructible,  more 
valuable,  more  compact,  and  in  most  in- 
stances so  compact  as  to  be  absolutely 
invisible,  intangible,  inseparable  from 
the  person  of  its  owner.  And  to  this 
property  we  '  shall  give  the  name  of 
Ideal  Property. 

Before  proceeding  to  the  considera- 
tion of  this,  let  us  look,  in  the  first  in- 
stance, at  the  origin  of  the  appropriation 
or  sequestration,  to  one  man,  of  that 
which  in  the  early  time  belonged  to  no 
one,  because  it  was  the  property  of  all. 

A  beneficent  Creator  arranged  that 
man  should  have  dominion  over  the 
earth,  and  gave  it  to  him,  with  all  its 
products  and  increments,  to  occupy, 
improve,  and  employ.  And  it  is  gener- 
ally considered  that  the  first  occupant 
acquired  a  property  in,  or  sequestered, 
what  he  occupied  from  the  common 
stock,  and  individualized  it,  subject  to 
the  chances  of  reabsorption  or  change 
of  individualization  by  superior  force. 
Taking  facts  as  they  now  exist,  we  shall 
see  that  the  ultimate  community  of 
property  is  a  permanent  notion.  The 
common  burdens  of  society,  the  support 
of  the  poor,  the  protection  of  life  and 
goods  from  foreign  and  domestic  foes, 
legislation,  and  the  transaction  of  all 
business  which  is  the  business  of  socie- 
ty, of  the  commonwealth,  are  at  com- 
mon charge,  defrayed  by  taxation ;  and 


i68 


Ideal  Property. 


[August, 


in  case  of  intestate  and  unheired  de- 
cease, it  is  the  commonwealth  which 
inherits,  be  it  king  or  state.  Even  in 
cases  of  testamentary  disposition,  this 
theory  of  community  of  property  is  si- 
lently, but  almost  universally,  acknowl- 
edged by  the  rich,  when  they  bequeath 
funds  to  public  charities  or  foundations. 

The  universe  is  God's  universe,  be- 
cause He  created  it.  And  what  a  man 
calls  his  property  is  his,  because  he  has 
made  it,  created  it,  out^  of  the  materials 
he  had.  In  the  matter  of  land,  if  he 
allows  it  to  be  unproductive,  he  loses 
its  value  gradually  by  paying  its  tax,  or 
the  land  itself  by  having  it  sold  for  ar- 
rears of  tax.  He  cannot  be  allowed  to 
prevent  creation.  The  patriarch  Abra- 
ham reclaimed  his  well  of  Abimelech 
"  because  he  had  made  it."  The  miner, 
by  the  laws  of  all.  countries  where  min- 
ing is  a  leading  business,  holds  title  to 
a  mine  by  doing  work  upon  it,  and  owns 
the  ore  he  has  raised,  and  the  metal  he 
smelts  from  it,  by  the  same  principle, — 
that  he  has  created  the  metal  from  the 
dust,  and  brought  to  the  sight  and  the 
knowledge  of  man  that  which  did  not 
before  exist  within  his  sight  and  knowl- 
edge. 

Upon  this  notion  of  property  in  his 
creations  rests  the  doctrine  of  me- 
chanics-lien and,  ultimately,  the  doc- 
trine of  liens  of  all  sorts.  And  upon 
this  also  rests  the  curious  distinction 
of  the  law,  that  if  one  simply  change 
the  form  of  another's  material,  as  to 
make  shoes  out  of  leather  or  boards 
out  of  logs,  the  property  is  not  changed ; 
but  if  one  change  the  substance,  as  to 
make  bread  out  of  wheat,  or  oil  out  of 
olives,  or  paint  a  picture  on  canvas, 
the  property  is  changed. 

Upon  this  principle  of  property  in 
his  creations  rests  the  right  of  man 
to  ideal  property. 

Without  debating  how  this  purest 
and  clearest  creation  of  man,  the  ideal, 
is  originated,  or  attempting  to  classify 
it  according  to  its  nature  and  causes, 
let  us  only  think  of  it  in  its  manifesta- 
tions, and  classify  our  ideal  property 
into  four  sorts,  —  reputation  or  good- 
will, trade-mark,  copies,  and  inventions. 


The  consideration  with  which  a  man 
is  regarded  by  his  fellows  has  always 
been  held  to  be  one  of  his  most  sacred 
properties.  In  times  of  chivalry,  it  was 
for  this,  in  the  main,  that  noble  life  was 
risked  and  taken.  But  the  cliques  of 
chivalry  advanced  towards  the  societies 
of  to-day  and  the  society  of  the  future  ; 
and  society,  acting  in  accordance  with 
general  consent  and  right  reason,  with 
a  clearer  idea  of  its  function  and  duty,. 
has  replaced,  by  better  means  and  with 
surer  results,  the  individual  redress  of 
wrongs,  and  forbidden  the  injured  party 
to  be  at  once  complainant,  tribunal^ 
and  sheriff,  actor,  -judex,  and  lictor  j  has 
decreed  that  these  functions  shall  be 
exercised  by  public  servants  acting  un- 
der fixed  rules ;  and  under  the  limits 
of  these  rules,  and  through  its  servants, 
has  assumed  the  right  of  judging  of  the 
wrong  done  and  the  duty  of  punishing 
it;  and  this  has  originated  the  actions 
of  libel  and  slander. 

Good-will  is  exoteric,  while  reputa- 
tion is  esoteric.  It  is  that  business 
reputation  which  induces  the  public  to 
concur  for  the  profit  of  an  individual. 
It  is  a  concrete  form  of  reputation, 
subject  to  commercial  valuation  ;  and 
is,  in  fact,  the  reputation  of  an  indi- 
vidual mingled  with,  and  undistinguish- 
able  from,  the  business  he  does  and  the 
goods  he  deals  in,  and  affecting  the 
public  to  such  an  extent  that  they 
prefer  him  to  others  of  the  same  call- 
ing. 

Yet  even  good -will  is  essentially 
ideal,  as  will  be  seen  by  a  considera- 
tion of  the  best  existing  illustration  of 
it,  —  a  newspaper  property.  The  Bos- 
ton Post  or  Advertiser,  the  New  York 
Herald  or  Tribune,  are  hardly  even 
names ;  for  in  thirty  days'  time  the 
name  of  the  paper  could  be  changed, 
and  its  readers  would  ask  for  it  as  well 
by  the  new  name  as  the  old.  They  do 
not  sell  because  of  their  editors,  for 
these  often  change,  and  but  few  readers 
know  who  the  real  writers  and  mana- 
gers of  therr^  are.  They  are  not  a 
subscription  list,  for  that  is  constantly- 
changing  ;  and,  in  each  case,  the  sub- 
scription list  is  largely  composed  of 


353.] 


Ideal  Property. 


169 


dealers  vvho  sell  to  a  miscellaneous 
public.  They  are  certainly  not  either 
offices  or  type  or  material  or  advertise- 
ments, or  anything  of  the  sort;  for  a 
complete  annihilation  of  all  the  visible 
and  tangible  appendages  and  necessi- 
ties of  the  newspaper  business  by  fire 
could  not  destroy  the  property,  since 
next  clay  all  the  advertisements,  the 
memoranda  of  which  were  lost,  would 
come  in  ;  a  contract  would  be  made  to 
print  again,  and,  on  the  morning  after 
the  loss,  the  paper  would  be  published. 
The  newspaper  is  good-will  simply,  and 
is  an  estate.  The  profit  of  a  column  in 
the  London  Times  was  thought  a  fit 
and  large  dowry  for  a  lady  of  rank  and 
fashion  ;  and  many  large  fortunes  have 
been  made  in  this  country  from  the 
business,  as  well  as  a  comfortable  sup- 
port for  hosts  of  honest  and  hard-work- 
ing men. 

A  form  of  ideal  property  more  con- 
crete still,  and  in  which  the  public 
interest  is  more  directly  concerned 
than  in  good-will,  is  the  trade-mark. 
The  line  between  good-will  and  trade- 
mark is  as  indefinite  as  that  between 
two  colors  of  the  solar  spectrum.  They 
insensibly  melt  into  each  other.  The 
habit  of  the  travelling  public  to  use  a 
certain  tavern  is  good-will.  The  spe- 
cial marks  and  devices  of  spool-cotton 
are  trade-marks  clearly.  But  the  right 
to  use  a  firm  name  in  a  given  business 
is  both.  Consequently  the  decisions 
of  the  courts  have  frequently  spoken  of 
incidents  of  good-will  as  incidents  of 
trade-marks,  and  -vice  versa.  The  law 
of  trade-mark  seems  to  be  that  the 
creator  of  it  is  secured  in  its  exclusive 
use,  because  it  assures  the  public  from 
fraud  or  deception  in  their  purchases 
by  a  designation  and  insurance  of 
quality.  And  hence  it  has  been  held, 
that  if  the  trade-mark  attempts  to 
describe,  and  describes  falsely,  the 
commodity  to  which  it  is  attached,  it 
is  not  entitled  to  protection  ;  and  also 
that  a  trade-mark  must  have  been  used 
long  enough  to  acquaint  the  public 
with  the  quality  of  goods  it  insures  and 
designates,  and  must  be  still  in  use  for 
such  purpose  at  the  time  it  is  infringed. 


We  now  come  to  property  in  copies. 
This  phrase  is  chosen  by  design,  in- 
stead of  the  word  "  copyright " ;  because 
the  latter  word  has  been  complicated" 
by  statute,  and  denotes  only  a  limited 
sort  of  copy  property,  established  for 
the  benefit  of  society  for  a  term  of 
years,  for  the  purpose  of  avoiding  com- 
plications which  might  arise  were  copy- 
right without  limit,  as  trade-mark  or 
good-will  may  be.  And  as,  in  its  own 
opinion  at  least,  the  public  receives  a 
larger  reciprocal  benefit  in  the  matter 
of  trade-mark  and  good-will  than  in 
the  matter  of  intellectual  publications, 

—  in  the  one  case  the  return  being,  as 
it  were,  cesthetic,  in  the  other  economic, 

—  the  copyright  law  of  statute  has  been 
substituted  for  the  perpetual  ownership 
of  copies  of  common  right,  arising  from 
the  creation  of  the  author.     It  has  only 
been  within  the  last  few  years,  indeed, 
that  it  has  been  finally  determined  that 
the  statute  security  after  publication,  or 
multiplication  and  exposure  for  sale  in 
open   market,  abolished  the   exclusive 
and  enduring  right  of  the  author  or  his 
assigns  to  control,  after  such  publica- 
tion, the  dissemination  of  his  intellect- 
ual work.     There  still  remains  to  him 
the  exclusive  right  to  control  the  time, 
place,  and  manner  of  publication ;  the 
exclusive  right  to  use  in  every  manner 
which  is  not  publication,  or  multiplica- 
tion and  exposure  for  sale,  his  produc- 
tion.    If  it  be  a  play,  he  can  license  its 
representation  to  one,  and  forbid  it  to 
another.     If  it  be  a  piece  of  music,  he 
can  authorize  one  body  of  musicians  to 
play  it  in  public,  and  refuse  this  right 
to  others.     If  it  be  a  lecture,  he  can  de- 
liver it  where  he  please,  and  no  one  can 
take  notes  of  it  to  print  or  to  lecture 
from.     If  it  be  an  engraving  or  picture, 
he  can  have  it  multiplied,  and  can  dis- 
pose of  the  prints  by  gift  as  he  please  ; 

—  and  no  one  can  print  it  for  sale,  or 
even  describe  it  in  a  catalogue,  without 
consent. 

And  it  is  the  misfortune  of  the  stat- 
ute of  copyright,  that  it  has  taken  away 
the  foreign  author's  right  to  control 
after  publication,  in  countries  not  his 
own,  that  which  the  Legislature  of 


170 


Ideal  Property. 


[August, 


Massachusetts  declared  in  1783  was  a 
property  than  which  none  was  "more 
peculiarly  a  man's  own,"  and  the  con- 
trol of  which  was  "  a  natural  right  of  all 
men";  and  has  also  led,  as  we  have 
lately  seen,  artists  to  doubt  whether 
they  could  protect  themselves  against 
the  universal  unauthorized  publication 
of  their  pictures  by  chromo-lithogra- 
phy;  a  right  which  upon  the  doctrine 
of  the  law  of  publication  as  applied  to 
lectures,  plays,  music,  and  etchings  the 
artist  must  possess,  until  by  his  own 
consent  copies  of  his  picture  were  mul- 
tiplied and  sold  in  open  market. 

The  rule  of  exclusive  property  in 
creation  holds  good  with  regard  to  in- 
vention. That  arrangement  of  words 
which  formulates  thought  is  literary 
creation.  It  is  entirely  independent  of 
the  paper  on  which,  or  the  ink  in  which, 
it  is  written,  or  the  breath  with  which 
it  is  spoken ;  and  it  is  very  analogous 
to  the  arrangement  of  bits  of  metal  of 
various  forms  and  sizes,  with  which  a 
dynamic  idea  is  formulated  in  machin- 
ery. And,  in  each  case,  the  act  of  crea- 
tion is  one  of  selection  and  formulation 
alone.  The  steam-engine  is  complete 
as  a  creation  when  it  is  drawn  on  pa- 
per ;  the  employment  of  diamonds  for 
drill  points  is  complete  as  a  creation 
when  conceived.  The  motor  does  not 
exist,  it  is  true,  nor  the  drill ;  but  from 
the  drawing  or  the  description  a  man 
of  ordinary  skill  as  a  mechanic  can 
make  the  machine. 

Having  seen,  then,  that  the  right  to 
the  enjoyment  of  all  kinds  of  ideal  prop- 
erty inheres  in  the  originator  or  creator 
of  it,  and  is  a  natural  right  of  man,  let 
us  consider  next  to  what  means  he 
must  resort  to  compel  the  recognition 
of  his  rights  by  society. 

Every  man  makes  his  own  reputa- 
tion. It  results  naturally  from  his  ac- 
tion towards  his  fellow-man.  So  also 
with  regard  to  the  good-will  of  his  busi- 
ness, and  the  designative  authority  of 
his  trade-mark.  And  the  judicial  power 
—  that  branch  of  society  whose  duty  it 
is  to  establish  rights  against  society  or 
the  individual,  or  redress  wrongs  of  so- 
ciety or  the  individual  —  will,  on  proper 


application,  assert,  against  all  assail- 
ants, an  exclusive  usufructory  property 
in  the  person  to  the  reputation  he  has 
established,  the  good-will  he  has  built 
up,  or  the  trade-mark  to  which  he  has 
given  a  designation  and  authority.  The 
property  inheres  from  its  creation  in  the 
creator,,and  is  defended  by  society  up- 
on complaint  of  infringement,  so  long 
as  it  be  in  use. 

In  the  more  embodied  forms  of  ideal 
property,  where  spiritual  force  is  for- 
mulated in  sound  or  substance,  there 
has  been,  for  reasons  satisfactory  to  so- 
ciety, and  founded  on  general  utility,  a 
separation  of  rights  into  rights  before 
publication,  which  are  vested  by  crea- 
tion and  are  protected  whenever  de- 
sired, and  rights  after  publication, 
which,  though  natural,  are  secured  only 
by  certain  formalities,  and  by  entering 
into  a  contract  with  society  to  abandon 
them  to  the  public  after  a  specified 
time.  There  would  constantly  arise  in 
any  attempt  to  assert  rights  after  pub- 
lication, without  the  statute,  the  com- 
plication that  now  arises  at  times  when 
rights  before  publication  are  asserted. 
It  would  always  be  said,  as  in  a  recent 
case  relative  to  the  play  of  "  Our  Amer- 
ican Cousin,"  that  the  plaintiff  had 
abandoned  his  exclusive  rights  to  the 
public,  and  the  expense  and  tediousness 
of  litigation  would  be  increased.  In 
the  matter  of  invention,  non-user  and 
abandonment  would  always  be  insisted 
on  to  defeat  the  right  of  the  inventor ; 
and,  in  both  instances,  endeavors  would 
be  made  to  show  that  the  idea  had  been 
conceived  and  formulated  before  by 
others.  To  avoid  these  difficulties,  a 
registration  of  the  formula  or  method 
of  formulating  has  been  prescribed,  to 
be  made  in  a  solemn  manner,  in  a  pub- 
lic office  ;  in  return  for  which  a  public 
officer  gives  a  certificate  of  protection 
for  a  definite  term ;  and  it  is  only  upon 
this  proof  of  contract  with  the  public 
that  a  court  of  law  will  act  against  vio- 
lators of  the  secured  right. 

Of  course,  if  the  holder  of  the  certifi- 
cate is  not  the  creator  or  his  assign,  he 
has  no  right  to  secure  ;  and  so  the  cer- 
tificate is  waste  paper.  In  most  cases 


1 868.] 


Ideal  Property. 


171 


of  copies,  the  certificate  is  called  a 
copyright,  and  in  case  of  invention  a 
patent. 

In  ideal  property  of  mixed  aesthetic 
and  economic  character,  such  as  de- 
signs, engravings,  pictures,  and  the 
like,  it  may  be  a  copyright  or  a  patent, 
according  as  its  aesthetic  or  economic 
character  predominates.  A  map,  how- 
ever, which  is  purely  economic,  is,  be- 
cause of  its  method  of  making,  a  sub- 
ject of  copyright ;  and  a  statue,  because 
it  is  more  nearly  classed  as  a  design, 
like  a  carpet  pattern  or  a  cooking-stove 
casting,  than  as  a  book  like  a  map  or  a 
chart,  is  subject  of  patent. 

This  registration  and  receipt  of  a  cer- 
tificate, in  every  country  but  America, 
is  all  that  is  required  for  inventions. 
Here,  however,  in  the  year  1836  the 
National  Legislature  decided  that  gov- 
ernment should  take  upon  itself  to  ad- 
judicate in  advance  upon  all  inventions, 
and  decide  whether  they  were  new  and 
useful ;  at  the  same  time,  however,  re- 
fusing to  make  the  patent  issued  con- 
clusive evidence  of  a  right  to  recover 
against  an  infringer.  Why  this  rule  was 
adopted,  how  it  could  have  been  im- 
agined possible  that  a  body  of  savans 
could  be  assembled  in  Washington, 
kept  constantly  informed  of  all  that  was 
going  on  in  the  world,  with  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  past  and  present  all  at  com- 
mand, and  judging  competently  as  to 
novelty  in  fact  and  the  utility  of  the 
novelty  in  practice,  is  inconceivable. 
In  trials  of  patent  cases,  where  the  de- 
fence is  lack  of  novelty,  a  devotion  and 
investigation  of  months  is  often  given 
by  specialist  experts ;  the  reasoning 
faculties  of  the  most  highly  educated 
reason ers,  the  bar,  are  taxed  often  for 
years  to  decide  these  questions  ;  and 
the  amount  of  money  expended  in  the 
preparation  for  a  hearing  in  court  on  a 
simple  question  of  novelty  or  utility  is 
always  large,  and  often  reaches  to  tens, 
and  at  times  hundreds,  of  thousands  of 
dollars.  The  annual  salary  of  one  of 
the  junior  counsel  in  the  great  India- 
cr  controversy  was  larger  than 
that  paid  to  the  Attorney-General  or 
Chief- Justice  of  the  United  States; 


and  the  fees  of  the  leaders,  for  their 
occasional  counsel  and  labor  in  court, 
were  even  more  magnificent.  Money 
enough  has  been  expended  in  this 
country,  in  patent  suits,  to  pay  a  great 
share  of  the  national  debt ;  and  it 
is  not  probable  that  the  system  of 
preliminary  examination  at  the  Patent 
Office  has  decreased  this  sum  at  all.  A 
great  invention  always  meets  its  oppo- 
nents and  infringers  ;  the  cost  of  over- 
coming prejudice  and  opposition  is,  of 
course,  greater  the  more  radical  and  ad- 
vantageous the  improvement  or  inno- 
vation ;  and  it  is  the  controversy  at- 
tending infringement  which  induces  the 
world  to  consider  and  adopt. 

A  valuable  invention  ought  to  be  liti- 
gated to  introduce  it;  and  no  invention 
not  valuable  is  ever  litigated.  The  pre- 
liminary' examination  is  of  no  value  as 
preventing  litigation,  and  would  be  hurt- 
ful if  it  did. 

Were  it  possible  to  obtain  a  complete 
knowledge  of  the  work,  published  and 
unpublished,  before  the  world  and  in 
the  closet,  of  all  students,  a  preliminary 
examination  might  insure  novelty.  It 
cannot  do  this  ;  and,  of  course,  without 
experiment  or  a  perfect  knowledge  of 
principles  and  a  perfect  reasoning  fac- 
ulty, utility  cannot  be  insured. 

What  results,  then,  from  the  system 
of  examination?  A  sort  of  pinchbeck 
assurance  of  novelty  and  utility,  giving 
to  the  proprietor  of  an  invention  of 
comparatively  small  value  a  quasi  gov- 
ernment indorsement,  influencing  pur- 
chasers to  better  offers  of  price.  It 
helps  the  charlatan  and  hinders  the 
savant.  It  is  a  cheap  repute  and  brass- 
farthing  celebrity,  that  the  United  States 
boasts  of,  when  it  plumes  itself  on  the 
progress  of  invention  shown  by  the 
number  of  patents  issued. 

Invention  is  conception  and  formula- 
tion of  a  dynamic  idea.  To  discover 
the  identity  of  formulas  in  language  re- 
quires a  linguist,  a  philologist,  a  man  of 
letters.  To  discover  the  identity  of  dy- 
namic formulas  requires  an  investiga- 
tion the  more  profound,  as  the  ability  to 
estimate  force  and  its  applications  and 
channels  is  more  rare  than  the  ability  to 


172 


Ideal  Property. 


[August, 


consider  facts  and  figures  and  words. 
The  United  States  can  never  afford  to 
pay  in  money  a  first-class  salary  for 
highly  educated  labor  ;  or,  at  any  rate,  it 
does  not  do  so.  A  large  steamboat  line 
pays  its  superintending  and  construct- 
ing engineer  ten  thousand  dollars  a  year 
or  more.  A  first-class  factory  pays  at 
the  same  rate  for  its  manufacturing 
agent.  Brains  have  a  market  value,  and 
the  United  States  tries  to  purchase 
cheap,  and  in  many  instances  gets  a  low 
order  of  talent.  The  salaries  of  Patent 
Office  examiners  range  from  eighteen 
hundred  to  three  thousand  dollars.  Now 
the  duty  done  by  examiners  in  the  Pa- 
tent Office  is  that  of  dynamic  criticism. 
A  literary  reviewer's  duty  is  criticism  of 
thought.  No  leading  magazine  could 
exist  whose  criticisms  were  simply  ver- 
bal ;  and  no  dynamic  criticism  is  of 
value,  that  does  not  consider  the  dynamic 
idea,  as  well  as  its  formula.  Yet  an  ex- 
amination of  the  list  of  published  pa- 
tents will  show  that  the  large  majority 
of  inventions  patented  are  only  dynamic 
formulas,  and  very  many  of  them  are 
only  old  formulas  put  into  equivalent 
terms,  —  mere  translations,  as  it  were, 
into  different  dialects  or  languages. 

It  is  a  current  notion  that  invention 
is  the  result  of  lucky  hits.  But  it  is  no 
more  proper  to  think  of  luck  in  inven- 
tion than  in  literature.  Organization  or 
capacity  is  the  only  luck  in  either  case. 
Education,  generally  of  a  special  sort, 
has  built  the  habit  of  thought  which  in 
the  one  case  makes  a  successful  book, 
in  the  other  a  successful  machine.  In- 
vention is  the  literature  of  dynamics; 
and  is  as  impossible  without  training  as 
literary  work.  And  the  same  habits  of 
observation  and  ability  for  deductive 
reasoning  are  requisite  as  in  the  law  or 
in  medicine.  A  successful  inventor  is 
always,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  a 
logician.  This  training  or  education, 
this  logical  work,  then,  combined  with 
the  criticism  which  the  inventor  himself 
would  consider  necessary  to  make,  or 
have  made,  by  competent  friends,  upon 
his  conception  and  its  embodiment,  in 
order  that  he  might  warrant  his  work, 
and  secure  the  greatest  profit  from  it, 


would  be  a  far  greater  security  than  a 
government  examination  as  at  present. 
All  great  inventors  and  most  of  the 
lesser  are  specialists,  and  in  their  own 
lines  consider  rightly  that  they  know 
more  than  the  Patent  Office.  What  we 
want,  then,  is  a  change  in  the  patent 
law  to  make  a  patent  evidence  only  of 
registration  and  of  the  inventor's  opin- 
ion regarding  its  novelty  and  utility,  and 
to  this  extent  a  patent  should  make  a 
prima  facie  case  for  the  patentee.  Next 
the  patent  should  be  issued  without 
Government  examination  or  guaranty, 
upon  the  relation  of  the  inventor,  and 
should  so  state.  And,  thirdly,  the  pa- 
tentee in  his  specification  should  be 
allowed  to  state  his  invention,  either  by 
distinguishing  what  is  old  or  asserting 
what  is  new,  and  not,  as  at  present,  sim- 
ply asserting  what  is  new.  Fourthly, 
the  patent  should  always  be  favorably 
construed  for  the  patentee,  quo  res  magis 
valeat  quam  pereat,  and  reissues  should 
be  abolished. 

In  this  way  invention  would  be  assim- 
ilated more  nearly  with  other  ideal 
property  ;  the  requirements  of  the  pub- 
lic in  registration  would  be  attained ; 
property  of  the  highest  order,  that  which 
advances  the  economies  of  the  world, 
would  be  secured  as  readily  as  aesthetic 
property,  or  that  which  instructs  or 
amuses  the  mind,  and  the  public  be  as 
much  or  more  benefited  than  at  pres- 
ent. 

There  sometimes  arises  a  controversy 
as  to  who  is  the  true  inventor.  If  two 
people  study  on  the  same  subject,  reason 
on  the  same  facts,  they  must,  if  they 
study  or  reason  correctly,  come  to  sim- 
ilar conclusions.  In  formulating  the 
conclusion,  they  will  present  it  in  differ- 
ent terms.  One  may  say  specific  grav- 
ity instead  of  atomic  weight,  specific 
heat  instead  of  insusceptibility  to  heat. 
One  may  prescribe  an  eccentric  instead 
of  a  crank,  a  slotted  yoke  in  lieu  of  a 
connecting-rod.  In  solving  the  problem 
of  placing  marine  engines  below  the  wa- 
ter-line, the  Princeton  had  pendulum  en- 
gines ;  the  Barwon,  steeple  ;  and  almost 
every  conceivable  form  of  engine  has 
since  been  used.  Now,  from  what  we 


1 868.] 


Ideal  Property. 


173 


have  already  seen  with  regard  to  other 
property  than  the  ideal,  the  reasonable 
demand  of  the  public  for  the  use  of  the 
invention  must  be  supplied  ;  and  if  an 
inventor  simply  formulates  on  paper,  or 
conceives  a  notion  without  putting  it  to 
practical  employment,  he  is  not  so  well 
entitled  to  protection  as  the  man  wh© 
actually  builds  the  working  machine 
from  his  own  conceptions,  and  runs  it, 
and  offers  it  for  sale.  The  world  has 
an  interest  in  progress,  and  he  who  can 
help,  and  does  not,  will  not  be  allowed 
to  prevent  the  work  and  help  of  those 
who  can  and  do.  The  law  has  hardly 
gone  so  far  as  this  ;  but,  before  it  is  set- 
tled on  the  basis  of  right  reason,  it  will. 

True  liberty  of  the  person  within  the 
law  is  the  basis  of  our  government. 
The  ownership  of  body  and  soul  is  the 
foundation  of  liberty.  The  closer  to 
the  person  the  more  sacred  the  property. 
Repute,  good-will,  trade-mark,  property 
in  copy,  invention,  all  flow  (out  from  the 
person  to  the  public ;  and  the  mainte- 
nance of  their  creator's  property  in 
them,  and  his  exclusive  control  over 
them  by  act  and  deed,  is  only  less  im- 
portant to  the  establishment  of  that  per- 
sonal and  individual  royalty  or  kinghood 
of  each  member  of  society  which  forms 
the  true  foundation  of  a  free  govern- 
ment, than  liberty  of  religious  and  intel- 
lectual thought  and  speech,  and  the 
right  of  each  man  to  control  his  own 
manual  labor. 

Unless  the  end  and  aim  of  republican 
government  is  to  make  a  society  of 
kings  and  queens,  —  acknowledged  as 
such  in  all  countries  ;  held  as  natural 
equals  everywhere  by  the  highest  class- 


es, because  of  their  grand  humanity  and 
essential  spiritual  force,  —  a  republic  is 
no  better  than  a  monarchy.  Unless  it 
succeeds  in  making  a  goodly  number  of 
them,  it  is  not  so  good  as  an  aristocra- 
cy ;  and,  if  it  do  not  progress  upward,  it 
will  surely  go  downward.  One  step  to 
the  establishment  of  intelligent  king- 
hood  is  established  sanctity  of  ideal 
property,  an  education  into  the  belief 
that  the  nearer  the  soul  of  man  the  bet- 
ter .  the  property ;  and,  the  better  the 
quality  of  property  near  his  soul,  the  less 
earthly  is  his  soul  likely  to  be. 

NOTE.  —  That  which  is  here  stated 
as  the  law  of  copy  as  distinct  from  copy- 
right will  probably  be  disputed  by  many 
lawyers,  but  it  results  .inevitably  from 
the  dicta  and  decisions  of  both  English 
and  American  courts.  A  resume,  more 
or  less  thorough,  of  the  whole  matter 
may  be  found  in  4  House  of  Lords 
Cases,  in  an  elaborate  opinion  of  Judge 
Cadwallader  of  Pennsylvania,  reported 
in  9  American  Law  Register,  and  in 
an  opinion  of  Judge  Hoar  of  Massachu- 
setts, reported  in  the  15  Gray's  Reports. 
Cachvallader's  opinion  contains  abso- 
lutely all  the  learning  on  the  subject, 
but  it  is  not  so  compactly  arranged  as 
Hoar's.  The  comedy  of  "  Our  Ameri- 
can Cousin  "  is  the  subject-matter  of 
most  of  the  American  decisions ;  and 
the  research  and  acumen  of  the  plain- 
tiffs counsel  in  the  cases,  Mr.  William 
D.  Booth,  of  New  York,  have  mainly 
produced  a  crystallization  of  the  law  of 
copy  in  America,  so  that  to-day  it  is 
much  more  compact  and  definite  here 
than  in  England. 


To  C.  S.  [August, 


TO     C.     S. 


AS  the  aroma  thou  hast  bravely  sung 
Floats  round  some  treasure  of  thy  mother  tongue, 
And  memory  lures  thee  from  the  page  awhile, 
Let  my  fond  greeting  \vin.a  passing  smile! 

Though  vanish  landmarks  of  the  hallowed  past, 

And  few  now  linger  where  their  lot  was  cast, 

While  kindred  migrate  like  the  tribes  of  old, 

And  children  wander  from  the  parent  fold, 

As  if  the  world  were  one  vast  camp,  —  ne'er  still, 

Whose  fragile  tents  are  reared  and  struck  at  will,  — 

True  as  the  oak  to  that  one  spot  of  earth 

Which  gives  its  strength  and  leafy  honors  birth, 

Thy  loyal  soul  no  other  prospect  craves 

Than  the  old  hearthstone  and  the  household  graves  ! 

Enough  for  thee  to  feel  the  Sabbath  air, 
With  touch  benign,  dispel  the  clouds  of  care ; 
To  meet  the  twilight,  —  harbinger  of  rest, 
With  genial  converse  of  some  friendly  guest, 
Or,  thoughtful,  watch  the  golden  sunset  play 
On  the  broad  waters  of  thy  native  bay ; 
In  vain  the  starry  pennons  flaunting  there, 
Wooed  thee  to  older  lands,  and  climes  more  fair ; 
Content  with  paths  thy  infant  gambols  knew, 
The  grasp  of  hands  to  early  friendship  true  ; 
Nor  for  life's  charm  and  blessing  fain  to  roam 
From  their  pure  source,  —  the  atmosphere  of  home. 

Though  crowds  profane  the  old  sequestered  way 

Where  patient  kine  once  homeward  loved  to  stray, 

And  lofty  structures  now  usurp  the  place 

Our  fathers'  modest  homesteads  used  to  grace, — 

Though  the  frank  aspect  and  benignant  mien 

My  grandsire  wore  are  there  no  longer  seen, — 

Gone  with  his  dwelling,  on  whose  southern  wall 

Was  left  the  impress  of  the  Briton's  ball, 

Beneath  whose  arbor,  on  the  garden  side, 

Plashed  the  low  eddies  of  the  lapsing  tide  ;  — 

Where  streets  encroach  upon  the  sea's  domain, 

And  Fashion  triumphs  o'er  the  watery  plain,  — 

Gone  with  his  sunny  threshold's  ample  floor, 

Where  children  played,  and  neighbors  flocked  of  yore, 

While  doves  his  daily  largess  came  to  greet, 

And,  fearless,  pecked  the  kernels  at  his  feet; 

Still  thou  art  there  ;  thy  kindred  memories  twine 

Round  the  old  haunts  of  love's  deserted  shrine  : 


868.]  To  C.  S.  175 

Oft  have  I  followed  with  youth's  votive  eye 
Thy  step  elastic  as  it  flitted  by ; 
First  of  the  living  bards  my  boyhood  knew, 
Who  from  the  heart  his  inspiration  drew, 
Untrained  in  schools  of  academic  fame, 
And  with  no  title  but  a  freeman's  name.' 

Amid  the  frauds  and  follies  of  the  mart, 

With  cheering  presence  and  intrepid  heart, 

Above  the  lust  of  gain,  yet  prompt  to  wield 

O'er  humblest  trusts  thine  honor's  faithful  shield; 

While,  like  the  law  that  circling  planets  hold 

Each  to  the  orbit  that  it  ranged  of  old, 

Thy  bright  allegiance  rounded,  year  by  year, 

The  daily  circuit  of  thy  duty's  sphere. 

And  when  the  sterile  task  at  length  was  o'er, 

And  thou  wert  free  on  Fancy's  wing  to  soar, 

With  freshened  zest  how  eager  thou  didst  turn 

Unto  the  *'  thoughts  that  breathe  and  words  that  burn ! " 

Not  the  vague  dreams  of  transcendental  lore, 

Nor  cold  mosaics  from  a  classic  shore,  — 

But  the  deep  wells  of  "  English  undefiled," 

From  Rydal's  seer  to  Avon's  peerless  child. 

Not  thine  the  subtile  fantasies  of  song 
That  to  the  minstrels  of  to-day  belong, 
But  the  chaste  fervor  of  an  earlier  time, 
When  crystal  grace  informed  the  earnest  rhyme  : 
Though  coy  thy  muse,  how  buoyant  is  her  flight ! 
Affection's  tribute,  art's  serene  delight ; 
Whether  she  trace  the  myriad  lures  that  bind 
The  vagrant  passion  of  the  curious  mind,  — 
Exalt  thy  country,  mourn  thy  cherished  dead, 
Or  weave  a  garland  for  dear  Shakespeare's  head. 

Peace  to  thy  age !    its  tranquil  joys  prolong ! 
The  ripe  contentment  of  a  child  of  Song ; 
By  faith  upheld,  by  filial  love  enshrined, 
By  wisdom  guarded,  and  by  taste  refined. 


76 


Out  on  the  Reef. 


[August, 


OUT     ON    THE     REEF. 


DURING  a  portion  of  the  war  the 
head-quarters  of  our  -regiment, 
the  Second  United  States  Colored 
Infantry,  were  at  Key  West,  Florida. 
The  post  is  an  exceedingly  important 
one,  and  the  southernmost  point  over 
which  the  flag  of  the  Union  flies.  From 
the  piazza  of  the  Light-House  Barracks, 
the  highest  position  on  the  island,  there 
is  a  noble  view  of  the  ocean,  the  great 
Gulf  Stream  —  bearing  on  its  bosom 
the  exhaustless  commerce  of  the  Gulf — 
sweeping  by  almost  at  the  beholder's 
feet.  There,  all  the  sunny  days,  may  be 
seen  a  silent  procession  of  great  ships, 
slowly  and  gravely  passing,  seemingly 
hung  in  mid  air,  so  blue  and  clear  is  the 
\vater.  Pleasant  as  is  the  view  from 
the  land  to  the  voyager  who  was,  per- 
haps, shivering  at  New  York  in  mid- 
winter, less  than  five  days  before,  the 
sight  of  the  tropical  palms  and  golden 
orange-trees  as  he  enters  the  sunny 
harbor  is  even  more  captivating. 

Comfortably  quartered  were  we  at 
Fort  Taylor  and  at  various  barracks  on 
the  island,  and  vigorously  did  we  drill 
during  the  spring  of  our  arrival  in  1864. 
At  that  time  we  hardly  knew  what  we 
could  do  ourselves  ;  and  the  islanders,  to 
whom  the  appearance  in  line  of  battle 
of  nine  hundred  black  men  with  shining 
muskets,  brass  buttons,  and  white  gloves, 
was  a  novel,  if  not  an  unconstitutional 
sight,  had  not  the  dimmest  idea.  The 
people  of  Key  West,  one  of  the  largest 
communities  in  Florida,  and  having  a 
fair  share  of  fashionable  slaveholding 
society,  unlike  the  inhabitants  of  the 
rest  of  the  State,  were  loyal.  Fort 
Taylor  is  located  at  Key  West,  and  its 
guns  command  the  town.  At  the  out- 
break of  the  war  the  Crusader  lay  off 
the  harbor.  So,  as  I  said,  they  were 
loyal.  In  few  places  was  the  error  of 
secession  more  plainly  seen.  Never- 
theless, as  a  people  they  are  not  pre- 
eminently distinguished  for  intellectual 
activity.  Were  the  place  to  be  de- 


stroyed by  a  tornado,  as  has  once  or  twice 
been  threatened,  the  arts  would  not  be 
lost.  Even  metaphorically  there  would 
not  be  "  an  eye  plucked  out  of  Greece." 
It  has,  however,  its  advantages.  It  would 
still  be  as  eligible  a  place  to  be  wrecked 
upon  as  any  in  the  Gulf,  and  its  in- 
habitants would  generously  restore  to 
the  shipwrecked  as  large  a  proportion 
of  their  own  property  as  any  engaged 
in  similar  occupations,  —  and  more. 
They  are  not  prompt  in  receiving  im- 
pressions ;  especially  are  they  not  in 
advance  of  the  age  in  regard  to  anti- 
slavery.  Their  principal  street  is  not 
called  Wilberforce,  nor  is  their  chief 
hotel  the  Clarkson  House.  It  is  even 
questionable  whether  an  institution  so 
little  radical  as  Sir  T.  Fowell  Buxton's 
brewery  would  ever  have  been  tolerated 
there.  After  we  had  been  quietly  en- 
sconced in  the  fort  and  barracks  and 
parading  their  streets  several  months, 
the  idea  occurred  to  a  number  of  the 
more  intelligent,  that  the  island  was 
actually  garrisoned  by  colored  troops. 
The  rumor  spread,  and  ultimately  gained 
a  general  credence.  It  was,  I  think,  the 
shop-keepers  who  discovered  it  first. 
Trade  is  sharp-sighted.  No  portion  of 
the  obnoxious  hue  of  the  colored  sol- 
dier's skin  was  found  by  experience  to 
adhere  to  his  greenbacks.  We  never 
became  the  rage,  however,  officers  or 
men.  There,  as  elsewhere,  the  courte- 
ous received  us  civilly.  We  lived  un- 
der the  cold  shadow  of  the  displeasure 
of  others,  which  in  a  hot  climate  was 
not  very  uncomfortable,  after  all. 

Then  followed  the  summer  of  1864,  in 
which  the  yellow  fever,  mercifully  stayed 
from  New  Orleans,  raged  at  Key  West. 
The  kindness  and  attention  we  then  re- 
ceived were  not  confined  to  the  technical- 
ly loyal.  Very  few  of  the  unacclimated 
escaped  the  disease  ;  and,  from  the  com- 
manding general  down,  the  loss  of  life 
was  lamentable.  In  our  own  regiment, 
among  the  men,  (though  they  were 


1 868.] 


Out  on  the  Reef. 


177 


originally  from  Virginia  and  Maryland,) 
the  disease  was  comparatively  harm- 
less •  but,  of  all  the  officers  of  the  regi- 
ment who  were  stationed  there,  we  lost 
over  one  half.  Beginning  with  our  no- 
ble colonel,  —  I  have  n't  the  heart  to 
recall  the  list,  —  we  buried  them  one 
after  another  with  the  honors  of  war  ; 
and  finally,  between  deaths  and  the 
furloughs  of  the  convalescent,  we  had 
hardly  enough  remaining  to  follow  our 
honored  comrades  to  a  soldier's  grave. 
Educated  and  true-hearted  gentlemen 
were  they  for  the  most  part.  If  noble 
devotion,  even  unto  death,  in  a  just 
cause,  be  chivalric,  then  these  generous 
youths,  even  in  dpng,  have  won  their 
spurs. 

"  The  knights  are  dust, 
And  their  good  swords  are  rust  ; 
Their  souls  are  with  the  saints,  we  trust." 

It  was  during  this  terrible  season, 
when  ships  refused  to  stop,  —  when  day 
after  day  we  could  see  them  passing, 
yet  almost  unwilling  to  receive  the 
mails  from  the  little  pilot-boat  that  plied 
in  and  out  the  harbor,  —  when  even  the 
ships  of  war,  whose  usual  station  was 
close  to  the  island,  lay  off  at  Sand  Key 
Light  grim  and  silent,  but  clustered  to- 
gether as  if  for  sympathy  while  keeping 
watch  over  us  as  over  condemned  crim- 
inals, —  that  several  of  the  officers  of 
the  garrison,  in  hope  of  relief  and  change 
from  the  sad  monotony,  concluded  to 
pass  a  few  days  upon  the  reef  in  hunt- 
ing and  fishing.  We  kept  up  stout 
hearts  and  whatever  of  cheerfulness 
we  could.  The  requisite  arrangements 
having  been  made  the  day  before, 
we  assembled  at  the  Cove  at  early 
daybreak,  and  found  our  pretty  little 
schooner  with  everything  apparently  in 
.readiness. 

The  great  Florida  reef  stretches 
round  the  southern  extremity  of  the 
peninsula,  from  the  vicinity  of  Key 
Biscayne  to  the  Dry  Tortugas,  a  dis- 
tance of  about  one  hundred  and  fifty 
miles.  It  is  of  varying  breadth,  from 
twenty  to  thirty  miles  in  many  parts, 
and  throughout  the  greater  portion  of 
its  extent  the  water  is  very  shallow,  the 
reef  frequently  coming  to  the  surface 

VOL.    XXII.  —  NO.    130.  12 


and  forming  small  islands,  or  keys,  as 
they  are  commonly  called.  Nearly  all 
these  keys  are  uninhabitable  from  lack 
of  fresh  water,  though  they  are  usually 
covered  with  luxuriant  vegetation  very 
attractive  to  the  eye.  This  great  reef, 
together  with  the  peninsula,  of  which  it 
seems  to  form  the  outlying  guard,  is 
the  work  of  coral  zoophytes  which  for 
ages  have  here  multiplied  and  died. 
They  are  of  many  different  kinds, 
adapted  to  the  part  they  have  to  per- 
form in  reef-building ;  and  as  they  ap- 
proach the  surface  of  the  water  their 
work  becomes  of  a  lighter  and  more 
fantastic  form,  beautifully  imitating  and 
rivalling  various  kinds  of  vegetation. 
These  charming  groves  are  filled  with 
many  rare  and  curious  forms  of  animal 
life.  We  eagerly  looked  forward  to  a 
trip  over  the  quiet  waters,  which  prom- 
ised so  much  of  novel  and  fascinating 
interest.  Our  crew,  consisting  of  but 
one  man,  might  at  first  sight  have  ap- 
peared rather  disproportioned  to  the 
officers  ;  but  William,  a  private  of  Com- 
pany A,  was  a  thorough  sailor  and  a 
host  in  himself. 

"  Shove  off!  "  said  the  Doctor,  —  who 
by  virtue  of  a  cheerful,  confident  dispo- 
sition, and  of  knowing  least  about  the 
management  of  a  boat,  naturally  as- 
sumed command,  —  and  off  we  went, 
heading  for  a  little  key  a  few  miles  dis- 
tant, where  we  hoped  to  obtain  craw- 
fish for  bait. 

It  was  a  delightful  morning,  the  air 
fresh  and  cool,  and  the  water  of  that 
peculiar  pale  green  tinge  which  it  has 
on  the  coral  beds,  —  so  clear  that  its 
depth  to  the  eye  is  lessened  amazingly. 
The  boat  was  well-found,  except  that  we 
had  no  anchor ;  a  heavy  round  shot 
thrust  into  a  pillow-case  was  all  that  in- 
genuity suggested  when  the  lack  at  the 
last  moment  was  discovered.  Though 
it  was  ludicrously  inadequate  as  an 
anchor,  yet  the  confident  and  cheerful 
tone  of  the  Doctor,  who  with  brisk  alac- 
rity pronounced  it  all-sufficient,  seemed 
somehow  to  give  it  several  hundred 
pounds  of  additional  weight,  and  Wil- 
liam, who  wished  for  a  better  substitute, 
was  promptly  overruled. 


Out  on  the  Reef. 


[August, 


Now  the  Doctor,  besides  being  a  very 
skilful  surgeon  and  most  genial  compan- 
ion, was  learned,  at  least  theoretically, 
in  ships.  He  knew  all  about  tri-remes 
and  quadri-remes,  and  could  locate  the 
aphlaston  in  ancient,  or  Samson's-post 
in  modern  vessels.  Snows,  pinks,  and 
caracks,  galleons  and  gallivats,  were  all 
familiar  to  him.  His  library  contained 
Cooper  and  Marryat,  and  he  had  read 
"Tom  Cringle's  Log,"  and  "Sindbad 
the  Sailor"  ;  and  though  he  lived  in  a 
Mediterranean  State,  where  no  ships 
ever  come  except  of  the  sort  which 
"touched  upon  the  deserts  of  Bohe- 
mia,"—built  by  the  poets,  and  lightly 
freighted  with  their  fancies,  —  yet  he 
had  made  a  voyage  from  New  York  to 
New  Orleans,  and  from  New  Orleans  to 
Key  West,  upon  each  of  which  occa- 
sions he  would  doubtless  have  taken 
the  management  of  the  vessel  into  his 
own  hands,  had  not  an  untimely  sea- 
sickness, by  confining  him  to  his  state- 
room, seemed  to  limit  his  usefulness  in 
this  regard. 

No  such  obstacle  now  presented  itself. 
His  orders,  which  had  a  genuine  salt- 
water flavor  about  them,  were  gener- 
ally understood  by  William,  and  exe- 
cuted with  as  much  of  literal  exactness 
as  the  nature  of  the  case  would  allow ; 
causing  us  thereby  to  present  so  singu- 
lar an  appearance,  that  we  attracted  at- 
tention on  a  neighboring  man-of-war, 
and  even  caused  an  officer  to  ascend 
a  few  ratlines  for  a  better  look  with  a 
glass.  This  act  the  Doctor  attributed 
to  watchfulness  that  no  contraband 
traffic  should  go  on  in  the  harbor,  and 
predicted  that,  as  soon  as  the  glass 
revealed  the  uniforms  of  United  States 
officers,  there  would  be  no  trouble. 
He  was  justified  by  the  event ;  the  glass 
was  soon  shut,  and  the  man  descended. 
This  settled  the  Doctor's  supremacy  in 
the  boat.  The  Major,  once  or  twice 
disturbed  by  an  occasional  incoming 
wave,  in  a  nap  which  at  that  hour  of 
the  day  he  had  absurdly  undertaken 
to  woo,  seemed  to  accept  the  accident 
as  one  of  the  inevitable  discomforts  of 
the  sea,  and  no  longer  seconded  by  any 
mark  of  approbation  my  mild  sugges- 


tions to  the  Doctor.  Thenceforth  my 
only  allies  were  the  big  round  eyes  of 
William,  protruding  abnormally  from 
their  sockets. 

We  soon  reached  the  key  for  which 
we  were  bound,  and  William,  with 
grains  in  hand,  announced  himself 
ready  to  spear  any  crawfish  which 
might  appear.  "  Crawfish  ?  "  said  the 
Doctor,  with  an  incredulous  smile,  and 
that  inflexion  of  voice  which  would  be 
represented  on  paper  by  half  a  dozen 
marks  of  interrogation.  "  Impossible  ! 
Water  particularly  salt  and  briny,"  said 
he,  tasting  it,  "due  to  excessive  evapora- 
tion. There  are  no  crawfish  here.  Craw- 
fish, more  elegantly*crayfish,  are  of  the 
macrourous  Crustacea,  belong  to  the  ge- 
nus astacus,  and  are  found  in  fresh- water 
streams.  Among  other  peculiarities  — 
At  that  moment  William,  having  struck 
a  particularly  fine  crawfish,  drew  him 
quickly  into  the  boat,  and  called  loudly 
to  the  Doctor  to  free  the  grains,  as  he 
saw  another.  With  distinguished  good 
sense,  the  Doctor  immediately  com- 
plied, though  it  involved  a  sudden  "so- 
lution of  continuity  "  in  his  remarks,  and 
joined  cheerfully  in  the  roar  which  fol- 
lowed  at  his  expense.  Even  William's 
eyes  glistened,  though  life  on  a  Vir- 
ginia plantation  had  taught  him  better 
than  to  laugh  in  the  face  of  his  betters. 
He  went  on,  however,  spearing  right 
and  left,  while  the  Doctor  recommenced 
the  discussion  of  the  subject,  vehement- 
ly sustaining  his  own  opinion  with 
words  of  sesquipedalian  length,  which 
he  pronounced  with  a  surprising  flu- 
ency ;  and  then,  to  our  surprise,  pro- 
duced an  opportune  copy  of  Webster's 
Dictionary,  which  sustained  him  to  the 
letter.  Then  arose  a  hot  discussion  as 
to  whether  Webster's  Dictionary  or  the 
Florida  fishermen  were  the  better  au- 
thority upon  crawfish,  and  the  Doctor, 
rising  from  his  place  to  emphasize  some 
of  his  conclusions,  I  slipped  into  it,  and 
thus,  taking  charge  of  the  tiller,  usurped 
command  of^the  boat. 

With  a  brisk  wind  in  our  quarter,  we 
flew  along  over  the  reef,  the  little  ves- 
sel gracefully  riding  the  waves,  which, 
far  and  near,  were  crested  with  foam, 


1 868.] 


Out  on  tJie  Reef. 


179 


and  from  which  the  wind  every  now  and 
then  blew  the  spray  merrily  into  our 
faces.  For  several  successive  hours 
we  ran  thus,  following  the  sinuosities 
of  the  channel,  or  boldly  striking  across 
the  open  reef  when  the  depth  of  water 
permitted,  and  frequently  coming  in 
sight  of  wooded  islets  or  sandy  keys 
variously  scattered  on  our  right  and 
left.  About  noon  we  saw  a  large  key, 
whose  luxuriant  foliage  rose  sharply 
defined  against  the  sky,  and  towards 
which  the  white -capped  waves  were 
chasing  each  other  tumultuously.  Run- 
ning almost  before  the  wind  as  we 
rapidly  approached  it,  we  looked  in 
vain  for  any  appearance  of  land.  What 
had  before  appeared  as  a  dense  and 
continuous  wood  opened  into  islets  of 
mangroves  growing  immediately  out  of 
the  water,  the  island  itself  being  every- 
where pierced  and  veined  by  the  sea. 
Then,  as  we  entered  its  sylvan  gates, 
which  opened  to  receive  us,  appeared 
a  charming  scene,  and  one  rarely  to  be 
enjoyed  elsewhere.  Hardly  a  vestige 
of  land  was  to  be  seen,  while,  as  we 
advanced,  wooded  avenues,  arched  and 
festooned,  opened  on  either  hand,  into 
which  the  fresh  sea  rolled,  dying  grad- 
ually in  gentle  undulations,  while  far 
in  their  recesses  could  be  seen  smooth 
and  quiet  water,  dark  with  overhanging 
shadows.  Through  the  principal  high- 
ways of  this  singular  place  —  the  Ven- 
ice of  the  woods  —  rolled  tranquil  bank- 
less  rivers,  on  which  we  were  steadily 
borne  by  the  tide,  though  the  wind 
was  almost  entirely  shut  out.  Though 
silent,  this  sylvan  city  was  full  of  life 
from  basement  to  airy  chamber  and 
leafy  dome.  For  a  long  time,  I  leaned 
over  the  boat  and  watched  the  inhabi- 
tants as  we  slowly  moved  along.  Fish 
were  passing  and  repassing  as  though 
intent  on  affairs  or  pleasure.  Are  there 
no  social  distinctions  beneath  the  wa- 
ters ?  I  thought  I  could  distinguish 
the  sharp  and  eager,  the  bedizened  fop, 
and  the  quiet  father  of  a  family,  who, 
though  soaked  in  water,  evidently  felt 
as  comfortable  as  Clarence  in  his  butt 
of  Malmsey.  Round  the  root  of  an  old 
tree,  the  hereditary  possession,  per- 


haps, of  father  and  son,  were  gathered 
a  knot  of  the  well-to-do;  while  occa- 
sionally there  darted  out  from  obscurity 
one  as  if  solicitous  of  custom  or  eager 
for  news.  Political  processions  wrere 
out,  and  excitement  evidently  ran  high. 
Troops  of  supporters  followed  their  fa- 
vorite leaders ;  while,  balanced  in  the 
water,  a  little  aloof  from  the  crowd,  was 
a  meditative  fellow,  perhaps  a  politician 
by  trade,  his  fins  moving  uneasily  to 
and  fro,  an  eager  observer  of  the  con- 
test, but  hardly  decided  on  which  side 
to  range  himself. 

While  this  animated  scene  appeared 
below,  our  boat,  a  creature  of  both  ele- 
ments, was  passing  through  squares 
and  streets  and  avenues,  awaking  no 
small  commotion  among  the  inhabitants 
of  the  groves.  As  I  said,  no  land  was 
visible  on  the  surface ;  the  trees  grew 
directly  out  of  the  water.  Like  the  ban- 
ian-tree, the  mangrove  throws  down 
shoots  from  its  branches,  which  take 
root  beneath  the  shallow  water  of  the 
reef,  and  thus  aid  essentially  in  its 
growth.  Here  and  there  in  the  interior 
of  some  of  the  thickest  clumps  of  this 
water-logged  town,  where  the  land  rose 
a  few  inches  from  the  surface,  stood 
larger  trees,  lifting  themselves  above 
their  companions,  and  on  some  dead 
limb,  the  watch-tower  of  the  feathered 
inhabitants,  whether  for  foes  without  or 
food  within,  was  gathered  a  heteroge- 
neous company  of  cranes,  pelicans,  and 
all  long-legged  and  web-footed  fowls. 
There  they  sat  in  solemn  silence,  un- 
til alarmed  by  our  approach,  or  by  a 
chance  shot  that  brought  down  one  of 
their  number,  when  with  an  air  of  star- 
tled dignity  they  would  fly  uneasily 
away.  Several  .which  we  shot  we  were 
unable  to  secure,  owing  to  the  density 
of  the  undergrowth  and  the  want  of 
footing;  their  leafy  fortresses  being  a 
perfect  protection  from  the  dishonor  of 
capture,  if  not  from  the  peril  of  sud- 
den death.  Occasionally  one  of  the 
birds  would  come  sweeping  round  the 
curve,  following  the  course  of  the  wa- 
tery way  in  search  of  fish,  until,  seeing 
us,  it  would  rise  reluctantly,  and  take 
itself  off. 


i8o 


Out  on  the  Reef. 


[August, 


Meanwhile,  we  stood  in  the  bow  of 
the  boat  and  on  either  side,  and  as  the 
.game  flew,  we  shot  right  and  left,  fre- 
quently bringing  down  our  birds  and 
oftener  missing  them,  as  their  startled 
and  unexpected  rush  disturbed  the  aim. 
At  times,  swept  steadily  onward  by 
the  tide,  we  would  turn  a  bend,  and 
come  unexpectedly  upon  a  Central 
Park  of  the  city,  the  lazy  and  dignified 
inhabitants  of  which  disdained  to  move 
until  the  noise  of  the  guns,  breaking 
the  stillness  and  reverberating  from 
side  to  side  in  unaccustomed  sounds, 
frightened  them  away  in  respectable 
alarm. 

Such  hunting  is  glorious.  No  skulk- 
ing nor  hiding,  decoys  nor  ambuscades. 
No  elaborate  drives  of  the  game,  in 
which  an  army  of  dependants  does  the 
work  and  the  languid  fowler  lazily  reaps 
the  benefit,  —  a  species  of  royal  road  to 
hunting  in  which  the  flavor  of  £.  s.  d. 
must  be  far  too  apparent  in  the  game 
for  most  republican  tastes  ;  but  a  fresh 
and  novel  plunge  at  once  into  the  mys- 
terious heart  of  Nature  and  her  long- 
kept  preserves,  unvisited  and  undis- 
turbed save  by  here  and  there  her  spe- 
cial favorites. 

Not  infrequently  a  young  crane,  al- 
ready prominent  by  reason  of  its  white 
plumage  contrasting  with  the  gray 
branches  and  shallow  nest  of  sticks 
in  which  it  stood,  would  squawk  dis- 
cordant notes  of  stupid  alarm,  as  if 
especially  anxious  to  court  capture, 
and  would  sit  or  stand  upon  the  nest 
until  taken  off  by  hand,  striking  with 
its  long  bill  as  we  approached.  The 
cranes  aue  good  eating,  and  afford  each 
several  pounds  of  excellent  meat,  despite 
their  famished  appearance.  The  young 
pelicans,  however,  though  similarly  situ- 
ated, and  if  possible  more  discordant, 
we  did  not  disturb  :  they  are  too  filthy 
to  be  eaten.  So  exhilarating  and  full 
of  attraction  was  our  sport,  that  time 
slipped  away  unheeded ;  and  it  was 
not  until  the  lengthening  shadows  had 
settled  darkly  on  the  secluded  and  wa- 
tery pathways,  that  we  emerged  into 
the  daylight,  and  found  the  sun  still  shin- 
ing, though  within  an  hour  of  setting. 


Since  daybreak  we  had  eaten  nothing 
but  a  little  hard-tack,  nor  had  felt  the 
need  of  food  in  our  unusual  excitement. 
We  had  birds  enough  for  a  party  of 
many  times  our  number,  even  with  ap- 
petites as  sharp  as  our  own.  No  land 
offering  on  which  to  camp  in  all  the  ex- 
panse of  the  submerged  island  we  had 
left,  we  bore  away  for  a  sandy  and 
wooded  point  a  few  miles  distant, 
where  a  white  beach,  dimly  glistening 
in  the  feeble  rays  of  the  declining  sun, 
promised  us  a  resting-place. 

Though  the  waves  tumbled  in  on  the 
beach  with  considerable  force,  we  ran, 
head  on,  and  were  landed  dry-shod  on 
the  shoulders  of  the  faithful  William. 
A  fire  was  soon  kindled,  and  coffee  boil- 
ing, and  a  most  odoriferous  and  savory 
steam  began  to  rise  from  the  bird^r- 
Zoo,  —  a  compound  of  various  appetizing 
ingredients  well  known  upon  the  reef, 
which  made  our  previously  sharp  appe- 
tites still  more  impatient.  One  of  the 
party  going  down  to  the  boat,  which  lay 
at  some  little  distance  in  the  surf,  in 
search  of  seasoning  or  condiment  which 
had  been  left,  a  low  shout  and  a  heavy 
splash  soon  announced  that  he  had 
managed  to  fall  clumsily  into  the  water. 
He  was  soon  fished  out,  however,  with 
little  damage,  and  joined  at  first  so  ob- 
streperously in  the  laugh,  that  his  mer- 
riment was  at-  once  perceived  to  be 
forced.  Finding  at  length  that  his  lit- 
tle artifice  was  detected,  the  shivering 
wretch  began  to  grow  rapidly  angry  at 
what  appeared  to  him  the  prolonged 
and  unseasonable  mirth  of  the  party ; 
his  broad  visage  subsided  into  a  faint 
watery  smile,  preparatory  to  coming 
wrath,  when  suddenly  a  sense  of  his 
ridiculous  position  dawning  upon  him, 
he  burst  into  a  hearty  laugh  of  unmis- 
takable sincerity. 

The  coffee  was  soon  served,  and  was 
found  potulent ;  the  furloo  was  unsur- 
passed ;  the  drenched  member  of  the 
party  was  luxuriously  placed  in  the 
thickest  smoke  of  the  fire,  and  good 
feeling  prevailed.  The  joke  well  sent 
and  well  received  enlivened  the  meal. 
Let  me  add,  however,  dear  reader,  that, 
unless  you  are  constitutionally  good- 


1 868.] 


Out  on  the  Reef. 


181 


natured,  you  had  best  not  fall  overboard 
on  an  empty  stomach.  While  your 
mouth  is  full  of  salt  water,  and  your 
hair  of  sand,  while  your  back  aches  and 
discomfited  dignity  cries  aloud,  the  ten- 
dency to  mirth  is  not  irresistible.  I 
regret  to  be  obliged  to  speak  from 
personal  knowledge. 

The  place  of  our  encampment  was  an 
island  like  the  rest,  though  the  land  was 
higher,  and  in  some  places  rose  into 
very  respectable  little  ridges  or  hillocks 
crowned  with  various  trees ;  and,  what 
was  very  remarkable,  though  we  searched 
it  over  in  the  morning  for  fresh  water, 
and  could  not  find  a  drop  nor  the  signs 
of  any,  yet  there  was  a  great  multitude  of 
raccoons,  and  perhaps  other  small  ani- 
mals, stepping  lightly  about  us  all  night. 
One  of  the  former  was  knocked  over 
by  the  Major,  who,  noticing  William's 
eyes  eagerly  fixed  upon  it,  gave  it  to 
him.  He  received  it  with  pleasure,  and 
roasted  it  with  some  eagerness,  but  I 
noticed  that  he  ate  little,  in  spite  of 
his  long  fast  and  hard  work,  and  that 
he  soon  retired,  wrapping  himself  in 
his  blanket.  What  thoughts  of  a  far- 
off  Virginia  cabin,  of  wife  and  dusky 
offspring  waiting  there  with  the  sublime 
patience  of  their  race  for  the  "  Coming 
of  the  Kingdom  "  and  for  the  return  of 
the  husband  and  father,  may  have  been 
excited  in  the  honest  fellow  by  the  un- 
expected sight  of  this  animal  so  famil- 
iar in  the  Virginia  woods,  I  know  not ; 
yet,  waking  long  after  we  had  been 
asleep,  !  heard  William's  voice,  indis- 
tinct yet  plaintive,  coining  from  the 
depths  of  his  blanket,  and  I  knew  that 
he  was  at  prayer.  A  faithful  soldier  he 
was,  and  stout-hearted  as  the  immortal 
Ciusar,  as  events  subsequently  proved. 
I  had  enlisted  him  at  Norfolk,  and 
since  then  he  had  attached  himself  con- 
stantly to  me. 

No  rattling  reveille  awoke  us.  Lying 
on  my  back,  while  our  early  breakfast 
was  preparing,  I  watched  the  first  gray 
coming  of  the  dawn,  and  the  fading  of 
the  quiet  stars  so  near  to  us  all  night, 
and  then  the  empurpled  clouds,  radiant 
with  promise  of  the  day.  We  rose 
refreshed,  and  breakfasted  like  men. 


Our  boat  had  been  stranded  in  the 
night,  and  the  incoming  tide  had  not 
yet  reached  it.  So  we  walked  for  half 
an  hour  on  the  beach,  and  found  it  cov- 
ered with  tracks  of  animals  which  all 
night  long  had  visited  it  in  search  of 
food  ;  now  that  day  had  come,  flocks  of 
birds — snipe,  curlew,  and  the  like,  di- 
minished but  faithful  copies  all  of  their 
long-legged  cousins  of  the  day  before 
—  thronged  the  shore,  bobbing  up  and 
down  in  the  sunlight,  in  the  most  ani- 
mated manner.  The  Major,  who  was 
the  life  and  soul  of  the  party  as  a  sports- 
man, had  here  the  opportunity  to  gratify 
another  of  his  passions  in  gathering 
sea-mosses,  or  alga;,  of  which  he  al- 
ready had  a  splendid  collection.  In 
the  warm  waters  of  the  Gulf  these 
mosses  appear  in  brighter  and  gayer 
colors  than  their  more  sober  kindred  of 
the  North.  So  delicate  and  lovely  in 
form  and  color  are  they,  that,  when 
carefully  arranged  and  pressed,  it  is  im- 
possible to  distinguish  them  from  the 
most  exquisite  productions  of  the  pen- 
cil, and  one  wonders  by  what  subtile 
alchemy  the  sun's  rays  painted  their 
vivid  hues  in  the  dark  cold  bosom  of 
the  ocean. 

The  tide  being  up,  we  at  length  em- 
barked, and  were  borne  -rapidly  on 
the  flood  towards  our  favorite  fish- 
ing-ground. Here,  as  elsewhere  on 
many  parts  of  the  reef,  the  water  was 
dotted  at  the  distance  of  a  few  miles  in 
various  directions  with  little  emerald 
islands  compact  of  dark  green  foli- 
age, and  offering  a  striking  contrast  to 
the  water,  out  of  which  they  abruptly 
rose.  Occasionally  they  formed  a  long 
arm  or  semicircle,  in  which  perchance 
would  be  seen  the  white  sails  of  a 
sponger  from  Key  West.  The  busi- 
ness of  sponging  is  carried  on  by  a 
peculiar  class  of  the  population  called 
"  Conchs,"  originally  from  the  Bahamas, 
and  said  by  some  to  be  the  descendants 
of  North  Carolina  or  other  Tories,  who 
fled  to  British  protection  during  the 
Revolutionary  War.  They  are  very 
ignorant,  have  manners  and  customs 
peculiar  to  themselves,  and  reside  in  a 
distinct  part  of  the  island.  The}'  were 


182 


Out  on  tJie  Reef. 


[August, 


formerly  much  looked  down  upon  by  the 
more  wealthy  ;  but,  as  they  have  not  a 
few  good  traits,  the  prejudice  against 
them  is  sensibly  dying  out  The  arri- 
val of  a  colored  regiment  at  Key  West, 
by  giving  the  good  people  a  more  im- 
mediate object  of  disgust,  helped  the 
Conchs  measurably  in  this  regard ; 
though  I  am  sorry  to  say  they  did  not 
appear  to  appreciate  it.  During  the 
war  they  were  rebel  almost  to  a  man, 
though  few  of  them  did  sanguinary 
deeds  in  arms.  They  preferred  spong- 
ing, which  is  more  profitable  ;  and  fish- 
ing, which  is  safer.  While  active  hos- 
tilities lasted,  they  were  forbidden  to 
frequent  the  coast  of  the  main-land,  but 
at  the  close  of  the  war  they  reaped 
large  profits  from  the  accumulations  of 
previous  years.  The  shallow  waters  of 
the  reef  everywhere  reveal  sponges  at 
the  bottom,  and  they  are  thrown  upon 
all  the  beaches ;  but  the  finer  quali- 
ties are  not  readily  obtained.  These 
Conchs  do  not  like  to  be  followed  when 
gathering  sponges,  and  will  desert  a 
neighborhood  that  is  too  much  fre- 
quented. 

On  leaving  the  place  of  our  last 
night's  encampment,  the  Doctor  had,  as 
a  matter  of  course,  again  assumed  the 
command,  and  whether  his  wild  steer- 
ing gave  the  impression  that  we  were 
going  to  run  down  to  them,  or  from 
general  shyness,  one  or  two  spongers 
which  had  been  in  sight  about  half  an 
hour  gradually  edged  away,  and  soon 
disappeared  behind  the  intervening  isl- 
ands. 

While  running  through  the  channels 
with  which  the  reef  is  seamed,  we  would 
troll  for  fish  ;  cutting  our  bait  from  the 
rind  of  pork  in  rude  imitation  of  a  small 
fish,  and  so  fastening  it  on  the  hook  as 
to  cause  the  line  to  turn  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  twist.  Without  this  pre- 
caution the  strongest  lines  would  soon 
be  ruined.  The  sport  was  excellent. 
Every  few  minutes  the  loop  which  is 
left  in  the  line  to  show  when  a  fish 
bites  would  be  suddenly  and  violently 
drawn  out,  and  a  vigorous  pull  by  the 
hand  would  discover  a  clean  active  fish 
shooting  through  the  water  at  a  great 


rate,  generally  on  the  surface  or  just 
below  it,  and  at  as  large  an  angle  with 
the  course  of  the  boat  as  the  line  would 
allow,  darting  hither  and  thither  in  its 
vigorous  efforts  to  escape.  Commonly 
it  would  prove  to  be  a  Spanish  mack- 
erel, jackfish,  or  kingfish,  —  all  splendid 
fish,  vigorous,  muscular,  and  symmet- 
rical, for  none  other  could  catch  the 
bait,  which  fairly  flies  along  the  sur- 
face of  the  water.  As  soon  as  caught, 
the  fish  were  transferred  to  the  well,  with 
which  our  own,  in  common  with  most 
of  the  Key  West  boats,  was  provided. 
However  good  for  the  huntsman  the 
wilds  of  Florida  may  be,  its  waters  are 
the  paradise  of  the  fisherman,  for  they 
are  fairly  alive  with  the  most  choice 
and  beautiful  of  the  finny  tribe.  Very 
many  of  the  Northern  kinds  are  here 
found,  and  others  not  inferior.  Finer 
fish  than  those  caught  in  the  Gulf  I 
have  seldom  seen.  Their  number  and 
variety  are  incredible.  From  the  larg- 
est and  most  misshapen  monsters  that 
roam  the  deep  down  to  the  tiniest  and 
most  delicate  creations,  these  favored 
waters  are  prolific  in  them.  On  many 
parts  of  the  coast  they  will  jump  into  a 
boat  in  large  quantities  if  a  light  be 
displayed  at  night ;  and,  with  a  seine,  a 
daily  supply  for  an  army  corps  could  be 
secured  at  the  mouth  of  the  Calloosi- 
chatchee,  where  a  part  of  our  regiment 
was  stationed. 

In  crossing  the  reef,  where  the  water 
is  in  many  places  so  clear  that  the 
bottom  is  seen  with  almost  microscopic 
distinctness,  the  voracious  barracuda, 
the  rakish  gar,  and  many  other  strange 
varieties,  attract  attention  ;  while  occa- 
sionally a  huge  turtle  may  be  seen 
asleep  on  the  water,  and  looking  at  a  lit- 
tle distance  like  a  projecting  rock.  In 
the  "  coral  grove  "  of  Florida,  however, 

"The  purple  mullet  and  goldfish  rove  " 

only  in  the  imagination  of  the  poet,  if  at 
all.  One  kind,/ an  immense  flat  fish,  has 
a  remarkable  projection  or  elongation 
of  the  spine,  making  a  flexible  appen- 
dage several  feet  in  length,  which  is 
commonly  supposed  to  be  armed  with 
a  sting,  and  is  capable  of  being  thrown 


1868.] 


Out  on  the  Reef. 


about  in  manner  not  a  little  suggestive 
to  the  cautious.  The  fish  is  common- 
ly called  a  stinger ee,  but  doubtless  its 
proper  name  is  sting-ray. 

As  we  shot  out  from  the  open  water 
of  the  reef,  and  ran  behind  the  isl- 
ands cosily  locking  in  a  sunny  little 
bay,  whose  smooth  white  sandy  bottom 
was  carpeted  here  and  there  with 
patches  of  green,  spreading  corals,  and 
fanlike  sponges,  two  of  these  huge 
fish,  seemingly  side  by  side,  and  almost 
stationary  as  they  lay  near  the  bottom, 
like  patches  of  vegetation,  appeared 
almost  under  our  bows,  yet  a  little  too 
far  to  be  reached  with  the  grains,  in 
the  hands  of  the  ever-ready  and  expect- 
ant William.  They  did  not  move,  how- 
ever, as  we  passed,  and  with  unanimous 
consent  the  boat  was  put  about.  Our 
headway  had  carried  us  some  distance, 
and  when,  under  the  management  of 
the  Doctor,  the  boat  was  at  length 
turned  the  other  way,  they  were  no 
longer  in  sight;  but  they  soon  reap- 
peared, in  nearly  their  old  position. 
As  we  rapidly  neared  them,  William 
stood  up  in  the  bow  with  the  grains 
poised  in  his  stalwart  hand,  when 
suddenly  something  darkened  for  an 
instant  the  space  between  me  and 
the  sun,  and  an  enormous  shark  was 
seen  playing  backward  and  forward 
in  the  clear  water  but  a  few  rods  from 
the  boat,  with  such  inconceivable  rapid- 
ity that  it  was  not  without  difficulty 
that  his  motions  were  followed  by  the 
startled  eye.  He  was  fairly  to  be  seen, 
however,  his  dorsal  fin  cutting  the  sur- 
face of  the  shallow  water  as  he  passed 
and  repassed  with  almost  the  lightness 
and  freedom  of  a  shadow.  At  this,  mo- 
ment \Villiam  planted  the  grains  firmly 
in  the  back  of  one  of  the  sluggish  mon- 
sters of  which  we  were  in  pursuit,  which 
immediately  started  off  with  great  pow- 
er ;  a  nervous  motion  of  the  helm 
caused  a  quick  change  in  the  direction 
of  the  boat,  the  line  taughtcncd  violently 
in  William's  hands,  and  over  he  went  on 
the  side  next  the  shark,  which,  with  the 
rapidity  of  a  flash,  changed  its  direction, 
and  darted  towards  the  boat.  No  speed 
c«uld  avail,  but  our  loud  and  vigorous 


cries  startled  the  ferocious  though  cow- 
ardly monster,  and  when  within  about 
thirty  feet,  he  sheered  and  passed,  re- 
turning again  upon  his  track  immediate- 
ly. William  knew  his  danger,  and  rap- 
idly drawing  himself  on  board  with  the 
line  which  was  fast  to  the  boat,  and 
which  he  fortunately  held  in  his  hands, 
he  kicked  and  splashed  lustily.  In  a 
moment  the  Major's  powerful  grasp  had 
him  firmly  by  the  collar,  and  he  was 
hauled  safely  into  the  boat ;  while  the 
shark,  reluctant  to  lose  his  prey,  again 
passed  and  repassed,  nearer  than  before. 
Finally,  balked,  but  not  discouraged,  it 
swept  in  cruel  and  rapid  circles  about 
us.  It  was  all  over  in  a  minute  or  two, 
but  exciting  while  it  lasted.  The  raven- 
ous thing  seemed  more  like  an  incarnate 
fiend  than  a  fish,  it  passed  so  rapidly, 
and  yet  so  noiselessly,  about  us.  While 
this  was  passing,  the  boiling  water  and 
constant  plunges  of  the  boat  showed 
that  the  stingeree  was  making  violent 
efforts  to  escape  ;  and  during  the  excite- 
ment, the  boat  having  broached  to,  a 
sudden  jerk  drew  out  the  grains,  and 
he  was  off.  The  shark  hung  about  us 
for  some  time,  but  we  finally  lost  sight 
of  him  in  deep  water.  No  fish  is  more 
common  on  the  reef  than  the  sharks, 
but  they  are  generally  not  of  the  kind 
called  man-eaters ;  and  though  I  have 
often  seen  them  twelve  and  fourteen 
feet  long,  I  have  never  known  any 
person  bitten  by  them.  This  one  had 
doubtless  followed  us  in  from  deep 
water,  attracted  by  bits  of  pork  or 
other  refuse  thrown  overboard,  and 
must,  judging  from  his  audacity,  have 
been  nearly  famished. 

In  the  channels  and  on  the  outer 
edges  of  the  reef,  which  are  everywhere 
abrupt,  the  fishing  for  quite  large  fish 
is  excellent.  Moored  at  length  by  the 
side  of  a  little  sandy  key,  we  threw  over 
our -lines  in  water  fifty  or  sixty  feet 
deep,  and  many  an  active  fish  stoutly 
struggling  to  escape  rewarded  our  exer- 
tions. Of  strange  and  infrequent  kinds 
were  these,  which  seldom  leave  their 
gloomy  caverns  on  any  voluntary  errand 
to  the  surface.  Occasionally  one  would 
be  brought  up  from  the  depths  of  the 


1 84 


Out  on  the  Reef. 


[August; 


"sunless  sea,"  pulling  and  shooting 
violently  about,  only,  as  he  saw  the  un- 
welcome light,  to  snap  the  hook  and 
quickly  disappear.  Now  and  then  a 
voracious  pull,  quiet  but  with  almost 
the  reserved  force  of  a  steam-engine, 
and  a  .broken  hook  or  line  would  tes- 
tify to  the  existence  of  monsters  below 
to,  which  hooks  and  lines,  however 
strong,  were  embarrassments  scarcely 
felt 

Hours  of  exciting  and  active  sport 
followed,  until  early  in  the  afternoon, 
having  secured  as  many  fish  as  we 
could  conveniently  carry  and  preserve, 
and  wearied  with  the  labor,  we  drew  in 
our  lines. 

We  had  passed  in  the  morning  a 
large  key,  higher-  than  the  others,  from 
which  with  the  glass  smoke  could  be 
seen  rising  as  if  from  habitations  ;  and 
it  was  decided  to  run  down  there  and 
dine.  An  hour  or  two  brought  us  to  a 
strait  or  land-locked  bay  between  two 
islands.  Rocks  protected  the  entrance, 
while  far  up  the  bay  —  and  a  pleasant 
vista  it  was  — could  be  seen  a  cottage 
and  signs  of  cultivation.  Not  wishing 
to  disturb  the  inmates  by  an  inroad  of 
hungry  visitors,  we  landed,  and,  after 
due  preparation,  dined  sumptuously  on 
as  excellent  fish  and  game  as  ever  tempt- 
ed an  epicure.  The  wind  had  died 
away  outside,  and  where  we  were  hardly 
a  breath  disturbed  the  atmosphere  ;  but 
though  warm",  it  was  not  oppressive. 
The  Major  and  the  Doctor,  having  fin- 
ished their  post-prandial  cigars,  had, 
after  a  day  of  active  and  exciting  sport, 
yielded  to  the  drowsy  influences  of  the 
liour.  Stretched  at  full  length  in  the 
comfortable  shade,  I  watched  the  last 
blue  whiffs  of  my  own  cigar,  fragrant  to 
the  last,  as  they  slowly  rose  in  graceful 
curls  on  the  still  air  until  lost  in  the 
spreading  branches  of  the  evergreens 
above,  and  was  preparing  to  follow  the 
example  of  my  comrades,  when  sud- 
denly there  came  round  the  point,  and 
heading  up  the  bay,  a  light  canoe,  or 
kooner  as  it  is  called  on  the  reef,  hol- 
lowed from  a  single  tree.  As  it  swept 
rapidly  and  not  ungracefully  by, — was 
it  vision  or  some  yet  finer  sense  which 


told  me  there  was  a  young  and  pretty- 
woman  in  it?  Under  her  dexterous 
paddle  the  distance  quickly  increased 
between  us  when  we  were  perceived, 
and  she  soon  disappeared  behind  in- 
tervening trees.  Just  at  this  point,  so 
suitable  for  an  agreeable  revery,  and 
so  inauspicious  for  violent  noises,  a 
"  barbaric  yawp,"  which  would  have  de- 
lighted the  energetic  author  of  "  Leaves 
of  Grass,"  forced  itself  upon  my  unwill- 
ing ear.  I  looked  and  beheld  the1  Doc- 
tor, so  lately  stertorous  and  prone,  up- 
right, and  in  a  state  of  violent  physical 
agitation.  He  was  dancing  up  and 
down  on  an  old  log  in  the  most  in- 
comprehensible manner,  shaking  his 
hand,  and  ever  and  anon  grinding  some- 
thing under  his  heel  in  the  most  ener- 
getic way  imaginable.  I  ran  hastily 
towards  him,  and  perceived,  a  kind  of 
paste  thinly  spread  out  on  the  log ; 
this  the  Doctor  assured  me  represent- 
ed the  body  of  a  scorpion  which  a  few 
minutes  before  was  full  of  life  and 
vigor ;  and  he  exhibited  ruefully  a 
wound  in  the  hand  which  he  had  re- 
ceived, having  probably  rolled  on  the 
animal  in  his  sleep.  Such  wounds, 
though  painful,  are  seldom  or  never  fa- 
tal, and  if  attended  to  in  time  are  com- 
monly not  serious.  Here  William 
promptly  came  forward  and  plentifully 
covered  the  place  with  tobacco-juice, 
which  acted  as  an  excellent  alexiphar- 
mic,  perhaps  as  good  as  any  the  Doctor 
himself  could  apply,  and  the  pain  began 
to  abate.  As  a  further  means  of  dis- 
tracting the  Doctor's  attention,  I  related 
what  I  had  seen  in  the  canoe  with  all 
the  little  embellishments  which  the 
truth  would  allow,  and  it  was  unani- 
mously voted  to  know  more  of  the  mat- 
ter. 

The  bay  was  a  pleasant  little  cul-dc- 
sac,  densely  wooded  on  the  low  shores, 
rising,  however,  into  some  little  eleva- 
tion a  short  distance  from  the  water. 
At  the  lower  end,  on  a  little  knoll,  a 
few  acres  were  cleared,  on  which  was  a 
cottage  shaded  by  a  pumber  of  cocoa- 
nut-trees,  ordinarily  rare  on  the  reef, 
and  surrounded  by  various  shrubs  and 
plants  of  tropical  or  semi-tropical  vari- 


1868.] 


Out  on  the  Reef. 


eties,  not  a  few  of  which  seemed  as 
much  for  ornament  as  use.  At  the 
landing  lay  the  canoe  which  had  recent- 
ly passed  us,  and  a  larger  boat  with 
mast  and  sails,  both  of  them  in  good 
order,  and  the  canoe  cushioned.  A 
well-worn  path,  bordered  with  spread- 
ing cactuses,  led  from  the  landing  to 
the  cottage,  of  which  the  surroundings 
were  heat  and  comfortable. 

Almost  on  our  arrival  we  were  greet- 
ed by  the  proprietor  — a  well-looking 
man  of  somewhat  past  middle  age  — 
with  a  courtesy  which  we  did  -not  an- 
ticipate. He  spoke  English  with  a 
strong  accent,  as  though  a  foreigner. 
The  undress  uniform  which  we  wore 
did  not  seem  unfamiliar  to  him,  nor  un- 
pleasing.  After  acquainting  him  with 
our  position,  we  were  invited  to  the 
house,  the  principal  room  of  which  was 
comfortably  and  even  neatly  furnished. 
A  pleasant  perfume  of  flowers  came 
in  at  the  open  window.  A  crucifix 
hung  prominently  on  the  wall,  while 
opposite  to  it  were  a  couple  of  London- 
made  fowling-pieces,* and  in  the  corner 
a  German  yager,  which  we  had  an  op- 
portunity subsequently  to  examine.  A 
considerable  number  of  old-fashioned 
and  substantially  bound  books  were  on 
shelves,  while  upon  a  dark,  richly  carved 
and  ancient  piece  of  furniture  —  some- 
thing like  a  wooden  escritoire,  and 
much  superior  to  the  rest  of  the  furni- 
ture —  lay  a  handsomely  inlaid  guitar 
with  a  broken  string. 

Our  host  soon  showed  himself  a  well- 
informed  and  dignified  gentleman.  A 
remark  of  the  Major  upon  the  foreign 
make  of  the  guias  brought  out  the  fact 
that  he  had  travelled  extensively ;  and 
he  was  apparently  familiar  with  several 
of  the  European  capitals.  He  politely 
furnished  us  with  tobacco  and  pipes, 
two  of  which  were  of  meerschaum,  Mark 
with  age  and  elaborately  carved.  He 
was  evidently  from  the  North  of  Europe ; 
:r.id  from  remarks  he  let  drop  in  the 
course  of  a  friendly,  and  to  us  interest- 
ing conversation,  we  learned  that  he 
was  born  a  Protestant,  but  had  become 
a  Catholic  from  choice  ;  that  he  had 
formerly  been  in  the  service  of  some 


Northern  power,  —  probably  in  the 
navy,  for  he  had  visited  many  parts  of 
the  world,  and  had  evidently  lived  a  rov- 
ing life,  and  one  full  of  vicissitude.  He 
seemed  to  have  lived  a  number  of  years 
where  he  was,  in  almost  complete  sol- 
itude ;  but  he  informed  us  that  he  should 
soon  remove,  and  he  evidently  had  lit- 
tle of  the  churlishness  of  most  hermits. 
The  books  that  we  saw  were  largely 
devotional,  or,  at  least,  theological,  in 
their  character ;  and  amongst  others  I 
noticed  an  old  copy  of  the  "  Centuries 
of  Magdeburg"  in  good  bincTing  and 
preservation.  They  were  mainly  in 
French,  some  few  in  other  languages, 
but  rarely  one  in  English.  He  informed 
us  that  game  was  not  uncommon  in  the 
neighborhood,  and  fish  were  to  be  had 
everywhere.  As  he  obligingly  accom- 
panied us  to  the  boat,  he  made  one  or 
two  inquiries  as  to  the  progress  of  the 
war,  though  apparently  less  from  inter- 
est than  as  a  matter  of  courtesy  to  us. 
On  the  way  he  pointed  out  two  tame 
pelicans  which  he  had  taught  to  fish  for 
him  as  he  had  seen  these  birds  trained 
in  China.  In  assisting  us  to  shove  off 
the  boat,  which  had  become  stranded, 
he  displayed  a  large,  muscular  arm, 
curiously  marked  and  tattooed,  —  form- 
ing, perhaps,  an  illustrated  history  of 
his  life,  if  it  could  be  read. 

No  sooner  were  we  afloat  than  spec- 
ulation raged  as  to  this  mysterious 
stranger  located  in  the  wilderness. 
Everything  probable  from  a  pirate  to 
a  prince  was  discussed  and  rejected, 
though  it  was  unanimously  agreed  that 
he  was  a  very  courteous  gentleman. 
But  upon  the  Lady  of  the  Isle,  whom 
none  of  us  had  seen,  we  could  not  so 
well  harmonize.  It  was,  however,  final- 
ly settled  by  the  majority,  that  she  must 
be  young  and  wondrously  fair,  the  own- 
er of  the  guitar  which  we  had  seen,  and 
of  course  a  charming  performer  on  it. 
"  Little  Gretchen,"  said  one,  "  shall 
have  some  new  guitar-strings,  and  I  '11 
send  her  one  or  two  of  my  German 
songs.  I  don't  doubt  she  sings  delight- 
fully in  German.  Fact  is,  I  mean  to 
cultivate  the  old  gentleman's  acquaint- 
ance." 


i86 


Out  on  the  Reef. 


[August, 


"  Gretchen,  indeed  !  "  quoth  another, 
fresh  in  whose  mind  were  pleasant  mem- 
ories of  the  dark-haired  daughters  of  a 
neighboring  sunny  clime ;  "  why  not 
call  her  Olga  at  once  ?  Do  you  take 
the  girl  for  a  Tartar  ?  Who  ever  heard 
of  a  lady  playing  the  guitar  under  palm- 
trees  with  such  a  name  as  Gretchen? 
It 's  worse  than  an  east-wind.  Call 
lier  Juanita,  or  something  soft  and  pret- 
ty. As  for  your  Scandinavian,  or  even 
German  gutturals,  they  are  barbarously 
unfit  for  music.  You  can  see  that  her 
father  brought  her  here  as  much  to  have 
her  out  of  the  way  of  hearing  such 
sounds  as  to  get  the  chill  out  of  his 
own  blood.  There  's  no  language  north 
of  the  Rhine  fit  for  either  love  or  music. 
Where  are  all  your  pretty  little  dimin- 
utives, and  soft  and  liquid  endearments, 
that  drop  out  of  one's  mouth  so  nat- 
urally that  they  can't  be  helped?  Give 
the  lady  her  guitar-strings,  but  banish 
German,  or  even  English." 

It  was  late  in  the  evening  before  we 
encamped,  as  we  had  a  long  distance 
to  run.  A  rather  uncomfortable  night 
upon  a  little  sand  key  infested  with  un- 
numbered mosquitoes  and  other  little 
torments,  did  not  dispose  us  to  prolong 
our  uneasy  slumbers,  and  early  the  next 
morning  we  were  again  afloat. 

A  lovely  sight  soon  rewarded  us  for 
our  activity.  Far  in  the  distance  could 
be  perceived,  in  the  early  morning  light, 
a  noble  structure  crowned  with  battle- 
ments and  towers,  and  looming  grandly 
up,  yet  indistinct  and  dim  in  the  little 
haze  which  yet  rested  on  the  water. 
No  land  whatever  could  be  seen  about 
it,  and  even  where  sky  and  water  met 
could  not  be  perceived ;  and,  when  after 
a  little  while  the  sun  came  up,  wreath- 
ing it  in  many-colored  mists,  it  seemed 
like  an  enchanted  castle  springing  from 
the  waves,  light  and  beautiful  as  a  cre- 
ation of  fancy.  From  the  walls,  hardly 
unfolded  in  the  light  air  which  was 
stirring,  soon  floated,  however,  the  flag 
of  our  country;  but  it  required  some 
little  time  to  realize  that  this  stately 
structure,  enclosing  fourteen  acres,  and 
rising  apparently  from  the  waiter  with- 
out human  agency,  was  the  celebrated 


military  prison,  the  dreaded  Dry  Tor- 
tugas.  Fort  Jefferson  stands  on  the 
principal  of  the  little  sandy  keys  which 
form  the  group  of  the  Dry  Tortugas, 
and  covers  the  whole  island.  Two 
or  three  little  sand-banks  around  it, 
with  scarcely  a  tree  or  shrub,  com- 
plete the  group.  It  is  a  place  of  com- 
manding importance  in  the  event  of 
war  with  a  maritime  power,  and,  in 
connection  with  Fort  Taylor  an.d  two 
other  forts  or  martello  towers  now 
building  at  Key  West,  it  controls  the 
priceless  commerce  of  the  Gulf.  Its 
chief,  and  perhaps  only,  design  is, 
I  believe,  to  form  a  naval  harbor  or 
refuge  for  our  ships  of  war  during  active 
hostilities.  Its  foundations  are  sunk 
deep  in  the  coral  bed,  and  in  many 
places  soon  become  covered  by  coral- 
line deposits.  Some  interesting  obser- 
vations upon  the  growth  of  the  reef 
have  been  made  here.  In  common 
with  all  the  fortifications  on  the  reef, 
there  is  not  a  brick  nor  a  stone  in  its 
structure  but  has  been  brought  from 
the  North  at  great  expense.  Within 
the  fort,  sheltered  by  trees,  is  a  pleas- 
ant parade-ground ;  and  the  famous 
light-house,  celebrated  by  Cooper,  in 
which  the  pretty  Rose  and  her  gallant 
lover  were-  so  romantically  united,  just 
peeps  over  the  top. 

With  the  heat  tempered  by  almost 
constant  breezes  from  the  ocean,  with 
an  abundance  of  fresh  water  condensed 
on  the  spot,  and  with  the  same  food  as 
the  garrison,  the  several  -hundred  pris- 
oners confined  in  this  healthful  place 
during  the  war  might  have  been  in  a 
worse  position  certainly. 

At  a  little  distance  stands  Logger- 
head Light,  one  of  the  finest  lights  with 
which  the  care  of  the  general  govern- 
ment has  studded  this  most  dangerous 
coast?  The  outer  edges  of  the  reef  are 
so  steep  that  little  warning  is  given 
on  approach  ;  and  the  currents  are  so 
strange  and  varying,  that  navigation 
here  is  exceedingly  deceptive  and  dan- 
gerous. Not  all  the  wrecks,  however, 
which  have  so  plentifully  strewn  the 
reef,  are  the  result  of  accident.  Many, 
it  is  believed,  occurred  through  col- 


:868.] 


Out  on  the  Reef. 


i87 


lusion.  Of  later  years,  owing  to  the 
employment  of  a  better  class  of  ship- 
masters, greater  precautions  by  the  in- 
surance companies,  —  which  have  al- 
ways an  agent  located  at  Key  West,  — 
and  other  causes,  the  number  of  wrecks 
has  decreased  ;  yet  in  the  autumn  of 
1865  a  terrific  tornado  swept  over  the 
reef,  wrecking  many  vessels,  blowing 
clown  one  of  the  towers  at  Fort  Jeffer- 
son, overturning  barracks  at  Key  West, 
and  doing  much  other  damage,  accom- 
panied with  loss  of  life.  Some  two 
million  dollars'  worth  of  wrecked  prop- 
erty saved  from  the  fury  of  this  one 
storm  was  said  to  have  been  brought 
into  Key  West  alone. 

The  wind  soon  freshening,  we  made 
famous  time  all  the  morning.  About 
noon  we  stopped  for  rest  and  refresh- 
ment, and  enjoyed  a  glorious  bath  on  a 
pretty  white  beach.  The  water  of  the 
Gulf  makes  a  truly  luxurious  bath,  not 
too  cold  for  the  feeblest  constitution. 

The  beeches  on  the  reef,  though 
smooth  and  hard,  contain  not  a  particle 
of  ordinary  sand,  but  are  entirely  com- 
posed of  broken  corals  and  comminuted 
shells,  and  would  doubtless  burn  into 
very  tolerable  lime.  At  Key  West  the 
common  domestic  fowls  will  not  flourish 
for  lack  of  their  accustomed  gravel. 

While  gathering  algtz  and  other  ma- 
rine curiosities  upon  the  beach,  the 
indefatigable  Major  piled  up  a  pyramid 
of  conchs  several  feet  high,  with  the 
intention  of  taking  them  into  the  boat ; 
but,  except  two  or  three  of  unusually 
delicate  and  roseate  colors,  we  con- 
cluded to  leave  them,  having  already  as 
much  weight  as  we  could  carry  in  our 
light -draught  little  schooner.  They 
make  a  very  palatable  soup,  and  are 
excellent  bait.  The  fishermen  have  a 
curious  way  «f  extracting  the  fish,  by 
knocking  off  with  a  sharp  blow  the  ap- 
ex of  the  shell,  to  which  he  remains 
attached,  and  then  twisting  him  out  by 
following  the  convolutions  of  the  shell. 
The  Major  was  more  successful,  how- 
ever, when,  having  discovered  fresh 
deer-tracks,  he  proposed  that  we  should 
hunt  a  little.  Near  us  was  a  much 
larger  island,  from  which  the  deer  had 


probably  swam  over  in  the  night.  We 
had  no  dogs,  but  the  key  was  so  small 
that  we  felt  confident  of  being  able  to 
kill  one,  if  they  still  remained.  William 
brought  up  our  Sharpe's  rifles,  and  with 
the  Doctor  went  round  in  the  boat  to 
the  lower  end  of  the  island,  which  we 
supposed  not  to  be  more  than  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  distant,  to  drive  up  whatev- 
er game  they  might  find;  while  the 
Major  and  myself  placed  ourselves  in 
ambush  near  the  upper  end,  at  a  narrow 
place  where  the  sea  occasionally  washed 
entirely  across,  and  where  there  were 
but  a  few  bushes  or  obstructions  in  the 
way. 

It  was  twelve  when  the  Doctor  start- 
ed. Quarter  past  and  half  past  twelve 
came  and  no  signs  of  the  game  or  Doctor. 
The  enthusiasm  with  which  I  had  en- 
tered into  the  project  began  sensibly  to 
abate.  Stretched  at  full  length  upon 
the  burning  sand,  the  reflection  from 
which  was  of  almost  blinding  intensity, 
with  a  vertical  sun  upon  the  back  and  a 
wretched  apology  for  shelter  in  a  mis- 
erable prickly  cactus,  with  the  gun-bar- 
rel long  since  too  hot  to  be  held  in  the 
naked  hand,  I  turned  and  twisted  un- 
easily. "  How  long  must  this  arenation 
continue  ?  "  thought  I.  The  Major  was 
posted  behind  me.  I  turned  anxiously 
and  looked  at  him.  From  his  cool  and 
placid  expression  of  countenance,  one 
would  have  supposed  that  grateful 
shades  surrounded  him,  and  cooling 
waters  ran  prattling  at  fiis  feet.  He 
had  been  an  old  sportsman  on  the  Rio 
Grande.  I  was  in  despair.  My  throat 
was  parched,  and  my  face  almost  blis- 
tered by  the  heat  I  closed  my  eyes  for 
relief  to  the  straining  sight.  Delicious 
thoughts  of  plashing  fountains  and  shady 
groves  long  wandered  through  my  fe- 
verish brain.  How  I  envied  the  Major  ! 
At  last  I  opened  my  eyes  again  upon 
the  dreary  scene  ;  and  there,  twenty  feet 
before  me,  was  the  first  wild  doe  that  I 
had  ever  seen,  standing  with  head  erect, 
nostrils  dilated,  and  mild  large  eyes 
fixed  intently  upon  me.  What  could  I 
do  ?  She  might  have  been  shot  with  a 
pop-gun,  yet  the  slightest  movement 
would  betray  me  ;  and,  with  the  awk- 


i88 


Out  on  the  Reef. 


[August, 


wardness  of  a  novice,  I  was  lying  on 
my  gun.  Hoping  to  be  mistaken  for 
a  log,  with  a  most  amiable  expression 
of  countenance  I  lay  in  an  agony  of 
expectation,  waiting  for  an  opportunity 
to  use  my  gun.  Vain  illusion  !  Toss- 
ing her  head  significantly,  she  turned, 
and  bounded  into  the  wood,  not  lightly 
as  she  came,  but  with  startled  leaps, 
crashing  the  brush.  In  a  moment  the 
nervous  hand  of  the  Major  was  upon 
me. 

"  Why  did  n't  you  fire  ?  "  said  he, 
almost  sternly. 

"  How  could  I  fire  with  the  gun  un- 
der me  ?  "  • 

"  I  could  have  bored  her  through  and 
through,  but  on  your  account  I  would 
n't,"  said  he,  and  he  walked  away.  Not 
the  least  self-denial  of  the  trip  was  that ; 
I  knew  what  it  cost  him.  The  deer  was 
not  destined  to  escape,  however,  for  the 
Doctor  and  William  both  heard  her 
coming,  and  both  wounded  her;  the 
former,  who  was  a  capital  shot,  mortally. 
William  brought  her  in  upon  his  shoul- 
ders, but  the  sight  had  little  pleasure 
for  me.  An  opportunity  was  lost  for- 
ever. 

Though  we  had  already  come  a  con- 
siderable distance  on  our  return,  we  soon 
re-embarked,  for  we  hoped  to  reach  the 
fort  that  night.  A  long  sunny  after- 
noon wore  pleasantly  away,  and  at  sun- 
set, as  nearly  as  we  could  judge,  we  were 
not  more  than  a  dozen  miles  from  the 
fort.  The  wind,  however,  which  had 
blown  strongly  all  the  afternoon,  seemed 
to  have  exhausted  itself,  and  now  came 
but  fitfully  and  at  long  intervals,  and 
at  times  we  drifted  helplessly  with 
the  tide.  The  sun,  not  lingering  as  in 
Northern  latitudes,  had  sunk  into  the 
waters  round  and  burning  reel,  and 
clouds  had  for  some  time  darkened  in 
the  horizon.  Though  the  ocean  had  be- 
come smooth,  almost  ominously  so,  an 
uneasy  feeling  pervaded  all  of  us.  We 
were  drifting  in  the  darkness  we  knew 
not  whither,  our  cannon-shot,  as  we  had 
found  long  before,  offering  but  the  fee- 
blest resistance.  An  elemental  change 
of  some  character  seemed  presaged  by 
the  peculiar  feeling  of  the  atmosphere, 


which  seemed  stifled  and  heavy.  Should 
a  storm  arise,  we  were  in  imminent  dan- 
ger, not  only  of  being  overturned  or 
dashed  on  the  rocks,  but  of  being  blown 
off  the  reef  into  the  open  Gulf,  where  the 
prospect  of  suffering,  if  not  perishing 
from  thirst,  in  the  absence  of  succor 
from  any  passing  vessel  was  serious, 
our  supply  of  fresh  water  being  already 
nearly  exhausted.  Our  folly  in  trust- 
ing to  so  wretched  a  substitute  for  an 
anchor  was  now  painfully  apparent. 

An  hour  or  two  passed  in  this  way, 
though  the  dreary  suspense  seemed  far 
longer,  when  a  faint  diffused  flash  on 
the  horizon,  and  a  dull,  heavy  roar,  dis- 
tinct and  low  in  the  still  night  a-ir,  was 
borne  to  our  ears.  It  was  the  evening 
gun  from  Fort  Taylor,  and  we  almost- 
thought  we  could  distinguish  the  rol- 
licking tattoo  that  followed,  beaten  by 
the  vigorous  hands  of  the  dusky  garri- 
son. 

The  wind  had  now  died  entirely  away. 
The  sails  hardly  flapped  on  the  masts 
in  the  occasional,  almost  imperceptible,, 
swaying  of  the  vessel.  The  sea  was 
still,  and  we  were  alone  upon  the  water 
at  night ;  the  booming  of  the  gun  seemed 
the  last  farewell  from  the  land,  —  an  of- 
ficial notice  that  we  were  turned  over 
to  the  protecting  care  of  the  darkness 
and  the  ocean.  We  lay  in  various  posi- 
tions, indulging  the  thoughts  and  im- 
aginings which  the  situation  could 
hardly  fail  to  inspire.  The  air  was  de- 
liciously  gentle,  almost  caressing  in  its 
softness  ;  yet  not  free  from  a  certain  al- 
most indefinable  feeling  of  oppression  • 
and  the  sea,  what  a  glory  was  there  I 
I  have  been  stationed  many  months  in 
Florida,  and  during  nearly  all  the  time 
at  different  places  on  the  coast  and 
within  sight  of  the  water,  and  I  have 
made  many  excursions  and  voyages 
over  it ;  but  I  never  had  seen  it  before, 
nor  have  I  seen  it  since,  present  any 
such  appearance  as  it  wore  at  that  time. 
Black  as  midnight  to  the  view  when 
undisturbed,  no  sooner  was  its  surface 
broken  than  it  glowed  and  blazed  in 
phosphorescent  splendor  ;  not  the  dull, 
pale  glitter  of  our  Northern  waters,  but 
a  warm,  concentrated  fire  of  molten 


1 868.] 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


189 


gold,  which  fringed  and  bordered  every 
ripple  or  disturbance  of  its  surface  by 
the  sluggish  motion  of  the  vessel,  and 
•which,  when  agitated  in  masses,  cast 
a  perceptible  light,  very  strange  and 
startling,  into  the  face  of  the  beholder. 
Stranger  still,  as  though  for  once  the 
mantle  of  night  had  in  vain  fallen  on 
the  ocean,  and  all  its  secrets  were  about 
to  be  revealed,  there  could  be  traced 
with  distinctness  beneath  the  surface 
the  motions  of  the  fish,  as  they  lazily 
moved  to  and  fro,  by  their  attendant 
subaqueous  track  of  fire.  We  drifted 
on  an  ocean  of  darkness,  veined  all 
about  us  with  tracks  of  living  light. 
Save  for  the  blackness  of  the  waters, 
which  increased  tenfold  the  glorious 
contrast,  the  magnificent  imagery  of 
Scripture  was  verified :  the  "  sea  of 
glass  mingled  with  fire  "  was  spread  out 
before  us.  So  strong  was  the  fascina- 
tion, not  altogether  unmingled  with  a 
more  solemn  feeling,  at  this  wonderful 
scene,  that  we  remained  almost  in  si- 
lence. Darkness  was  overhead,  and 
the  fires  of  the  firmament  seemed 
strangely  blazing  at  our  feet. 

The  quick,  religious  imagination  of 
his  race  seemed  excited  in  William, 
and  he  appeared  to  feel  a  kind  of  awe 
as  he  gazed,  apparently  unable  to  speak 
or  move,  or  even  to  turn  away  his 
eyes. 

How  long  this  continued  we  hardly 
knew,  though  no  one  thought  of  sleep- 
ing. Finally  the  moon  emerged,  wan 
and  drenched,  out  of  the  ocean.  —  mel- 


ancholy as  the  old  moon  always  is 
shrunk  from  her  just  proportions,  and 
now  feebly  shining  with  diminished 
light  through  the  clouds.  Her  rays 
rather  deepened  than  lessened  the  spell 
which  the  scene  had  cast  upon  us. 

But  when,  an  hour  after,  the  wimd 
rose,  and  our  little  bark,  catching  the 
breeze,  began  to  move  gayly  forward 
with*  a  wholesome  rustle  at  her  bows, 
my  spirits  rose  with  it,  and  it  mattered 
little  to  me,  except  as  a  pleasure,  how 
flamed  the  rustling  waters  as  we  ad- 
vanced, or  how  imperial  a  splendor  fol- 
lowed in  our  wake.  And  when,  as 
we  drew  off  the  reef,  the  long  smooth 
rollers,  still  dark,  except  where  they 
met  with  an  obstruction,  rushed  glori- 
ously through  the  tangled  roots  and  in- 
terlaced stems  of  the  mangrove  keys, 
which  we  passed  in  succession,  carry- 
ing torches  of  fire  far  into  their  cavern- 
ous recesses,  it  was  with  a  wholesome 
exhilaration  of  spirits  that  my  vision 
followed  them. 

The  last  that  we  saw  of  this  mighty 
display  was  the  sea  upon  a  distant 
beach  breaking  in  billows  of  flame,  and 
flooding  like  liquid  lightning  far  up  the 
shore.* 

*  So  marked  was  this  phosphorescent  display,  that 
an  officer  stationed  at  the  fort  afterwards  told  me 
that  on  the  same  night  he  sharply  rebuked  a  sentry  for 
allowing  lights  to  burn  beneath  the  bridge  connect- 
ing the  fort  with  the  town ;  supposing,  upon  his 
midnight  inspection,  that  persons  were  there  fishing. 
Yet  there  was  no  wind,  only  the  gentle  motion  of  the 
tide  against  the  piles.  Had  there  been  a  storm,  I 
can  imagine  no  sight  of  more  unearthly  beauty  than 
would  probably  have  been  presented. 


WILL   THE   COMING   MAN    DRINK   WINE? 


THE  teetotalers  confess  their  fail- 
ure. After  forty-five  years  of  zeal- 
ous and  well-meant  effort  in  the  "cause," 
they  agree  that  people  are  drinking 
more  than  ever.  Dr.  R.  T.  Trail  of 
New  York,  the  most  thoroughgoing 
teetotaler  extant,  exclaims :  "  Where 
are  we  to-day  ?  Defeated  on  all  sides. 


The  enemy  victorious  and  rampant 
everywhere.  More  intoxicating  liquors 
manufactured  and  drunk  than  ever  be- 
fore. Why  is  this?"  Why,  indeed! 
When  the  teetotalers  can  answer  that 
question  correctly,  they  will  be  in  a  fair 
way  to  gain  upon  the  "  enemy "  that 
is  now  so  "rampant."  They  are  not 


190 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


[August, 


the  first  people  who  have  mistaken  a 
symptom  of  disease  for  the  disease  it- 
self, and  striven  to  cure  a  cancer  by 
applying  salve  and  plaster  and  cooling 
washes  to  the  sore.  They  are  not  the 
first  travellers  through  this  Wilderness 
who  have  tried  to  extinguish  a  smoulder- 
ing fire,  and  discovered,  at  last,  that  they 
had  been  pouring  water  into  the  crater 
of  a  volcano. 

Dr.  Trail  thinks  we  should  all  become 
teetotalers  very  soon,  if  only  the  doc- 
tors would  stop  prescribing  wine,  beer, 
and  whiskey  to  their-  patients.  But  the 
doctors  will  not.  They  like  a  glass  of 
wine  themselves.  Dr.  Trail  tells  us 
that,  during  the  Medical  Convention 
held  at  St.  Louis  a  few  years  ago,  the 
doctors  dined  together,  and  upon  the 
table  were  "forty  kinds  of  alcoholic  liq- 
uors." The  most  enormous  feed  ever 
accomplished  under  a  roof  in  America, 
I  suppose,  was  the  great  dinner  of  the 
doctors,  given  in  New  York,  fifteen 
years  ago,  at  the  Metropolitan  Hall.  I 
had  the  pleasure  on  that  occasion  of  see- 
ing half  an  acre  of  doctors  all  eating  and 
drinking  at  once,  and  I  can  testify  that 
very  few  of  them  —  indeed,  none  that  I 
could  discover  —  neglected  the  bottle. 
It  was  an  occasion  which  united  all  the 
established  barbarisms  and  atrocities 
of  a  public  dinner,  —  absence  of  ladies, 
indigestible  food  in  most  indigestible 
quantities,  profuse  and  miscellaneous 
drinking,  clouds  of  smoke,  late  sitting, 
and  wild  speaking.  Why  not  ?  Do  not 
these  men  live  and  thrive  upon  such 
practices  ?  Why  should  they  not  set 
an  example  of  the  follies  which  enrich 
them  ?  It  is  only  heroes  who  offend, 
deny,  and  rebuke  the  people  upon  whose 
favor  their  fortune  depends  ;  and  there 
are  never  many  heroes  in  the  world  at 
one  time.  No,  no,  Dr.  Trail !  the  doc- 
tors are  good  fellows  ;  but  their  affair 
is  to  cure  disease,  not  to  preserve 
health. 

One  man,  it  seems,  and  only  one,  has 
had  much  success  in  dissuading  people 
from  drinking,  and  that  was  Father 
Mathew.  A  considerable  proportion  of 
his  converts  in  Ireland,  it  is  said,  re- 
main faithful  to  their  pledge  ;  and  most 


of  the  Catholic  parishes  in  the  United 
States  have  a  Father  Mathew  Society 
connected  with  them,  which  is  both  a 
teetotal  and  a  mutual-benefit  organiza- 
tion. In  New  York  and  adjacent  cities 
the  number  of  persons  belonging  to 
such  societies  is  about  twenty-seven 
thousand.  On  the  anniversary  of  Fa- 
ther Mathew's  birth  they  walk  in  pro- 
cession, wearing  aprons,  carrying  large 
banners  (when  the  wind  permits),  and 
heaping  up  gayly  dressed  children  into 
pyramids  and  mountains  drawn  by  six 
and  eight  horses.  At  their  weekly  or 
monthly  meetings  they  sing  songs,  re- 
cite poetry,  perform  plays  and  farces, 
enact  comic  characters,  and,  in  other 
innocent  ways,  endeavor  to  convince 
on-lookers  that  people  can  be  happy  and 
merry,  uproariously  merry,  without  put- 
ting a  headache  between  their  teeth. 
These  societies  seem  to  be  a  great  and 
unmingled  good.  They  do  actually  help 
poor  men  to  withstand  their  only  Amer- 
ican enemy.  They  have,  also,  the  ap- 
proval of  the  most  inveterate  drinkers, 
both  Catholic  and  Protestant.  Jones 
complacently  remarks,  as  he  gracefully 
sips  his  claret  (six  dollars  per  dozen) 
that  this  total  abstinence,  you  know, 
is  an  excellent  thing  for  emigrants  ;  to 
which  Brown  and  Robinson  invariably 
assent. 

Father  Mathew  used  to  administer 
his  pledge  to  people  who  knelt  before 
him,  and  when  they  had  taken  it  he 
made  over  them  the  sign  of  the  cross. 
He  did  not  usually  deliver  addresses ; 
he  did  not  relate  amusing  anecdotes ; 
he  did  not  argue  the  matter ;  he  merely 
pronounced  the  pledge,  and  gave  to  it 
the  sanction  of  religion,  and  something 
of  the  solemnity  of  a  sacrament.  The 
present  Father  Mathew  Societies  are 
also  closely  connected  with  the  church, 
and  the  pledge  is  regarded  by  the  mem- 
bers as  of  religious  obligation.  Hence, 
these  societies  are  successful,  in  a  re- 
spectable degree  ;  and  we  may  look,  with 
the  utmost  confidence,  to  see  them  ex- 
tend and  flourish  until  a  great  multi- 
tude of  Catholics  are  teetotalers*  Cath- 
olic priests,  I  am  informed,  genen 
drink  wine,  and  very  many  of 


1868.] 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


191 


smoke  ;  but  they  are  able  to  induce 
men  to  take  the  pledge  without  setting 
them  an  example  of  abstinence,  just  as 
parents  sometimes  deny  their  children 
pernicious  viands  of  which  they  freely 
partake  themselves. 

But  we  cannot  proceed  in  that  way. 
Our  religion  has  not  power  to  control 
a  physical  craving  by  its  mere  fiat,  nor 
do  we  all  yet  perceive  what  a  deadly 
and  shameful  sin  it  is  to  vitiate  our  own 
bodies.  The  Catholic  Church  is  an- 
tiquity. The  Catholic  Church  is  child- 
hood. IV e  are  living  in  modern  times  ; 
ivc  have  grown  a  little  past  childhood  ; 
and  when  we  are  asked  to  relinquish  a 
pleasure,  we  demand  to  be  convinced 
that  it  is  best  we  should.  By  and  by 
we  shall  all  comprehend  that,  when  a 
person  means  to  reform  his  life,  the  very 
first  thing  for  him  to  do,  —  the  thing 
preliminary  and  most  indispensable,  — 
will  be  to  cease  violating  physical  laws. 
The  time,  I  hope,  is  at  hand,  when  an 
audience  in  a  theatre,  who  catch  a  man- 
ager cheating  them  out  of  their  fair  al- 
lowance of  fresh  air,  will  not  sit  and 
gasp,  and  inhale  destruction  till  eleven 
p.  M.,  and  then  rush  wildly  to  the  street 
for  relief.  They  will  stop  the  play ; 
they  will  tear  up  the  benches,  if  neces- 
sary ;  they  will  throw  things  on  the 
stage ;  they  will  knock  a  hole  in  the 
wall;  they  will  have  the  means  of 
breathing,  or  perish  in  4he  struggle. 
But  at  present  people  do  not  know 
what  they  are  doin£  when  they  inhale 
poison.  They  do  not  know  that  more 
than  one  half  of  all  the  diseases  that 
plague  us  most, — scarlet  fever,  small- 
pox, measles,  and  all  the  worst  fevers 
—  come  of  breathing  bad  air.  Not  a 
child  last  winter  would  have  had  the 
scarlet  fever,  if  all  the  children  in  the 
world  had  slept  with  a  window  open, 
and  had  had  pure  air  to  breathe  all 
day.  This  is  Miss  Nightingale's  opin- 
ion, and  there  is  no  better  authority. 
,)le  are  ignorant  of  these  things, 
and  they  are  therefore  indifferent  to 
them.  They  will  remain  indifferent 
till  they  are  enlightened. 

Our  teetotal  friends  have   not   neg- 
lected the  scientific  questions  involved 


in  their  subject ;  nor  have  they  settled 
them.  Instead  of  insulting  the  public 
intelligence  by  asserting  that  the  wines 
mentioned  in  the  Bible  were  some  kind 
of  unintoxicating  slop,  and  exasperat- 
ing the  public  temper  by  premature 
prohibitory  laws,  they  had  better  ex- 
pend their  strength  upon  the  science 
of  the  matter,  and  prove  to  mankind, 
if  they  can,  that  these  agreeable  drinks 
which  they  denounce  are  really  hurtful. 
We  all  know  that  excess  is  hurtful. 
We  also  know  that  adulterated  liquors 
may  be.  But  is  the  thing  in  itself  per- 
nicious ?  —  pure  wine  taken  in  modera- 
tion ?  good  beer  ?  genuine  Old  Bour- 
bon? 

For  one,  I  wish  it  could  be  demon- 
strated that  these  things  are  hurtful. 
Sweeping,  universal  truths  are  as  con- 
venient as  they  are  rare.  The  evils  re- 
sulting from  excess  in  drinking  are  so 
enormous  and  so  terrible,  that  it  would 
be  a  relief  to  know  that  alcoholic  liquors 
are  in  themselves  evil,  and  to  be  always 
avoided.  What  are  the  romantic  woes 
of  a  Desdemona,  or  the  brief  pictu- 
resque sorrows  of  a  Lear,  compared  with 
the  thirty  years'  horror  and  desolation 
caused  by  a  drunken  parent  ?  We  laugh 
when  we  read  Lamb's  funny  description 
of  his  waking  up  in  the  morning,  and 
learning  in  what  condition  he  had  come, 
home  the  night  before  by  seeing  all  his 
clothes  carefully  folded.  But  his  sister 
Mary  did  not  laugh  at  it.  He  was  all 
she  had  ;  it  was  tragedy  to  her,  —  this 
self-destruction  of  her  sole  stay  and 
consolation.  Goethe  did  not  find  it  a 
laughing  matter  to  have  a  drunken  wife 
in  his  house  for  fifteen  years,  nor  a  jest 
to  have  his  son  brought  in  drunk  from 
the  tavern,  and  to  see  him  dead  in  his 
coffin,  the  early  victim  of  champagne. 
Who  would  not  like  to  have  a  clear 
conviction,  that  what  we  have  to  do 
with  regard  to  all  such  fluids  is  to  let 
them  alone?  I  am  sure  I  should.  It 
is  a  great  advantage  to  have  your  ene- 
my in  plain  sight,  and  to  be  sure  he  is 
an  enemy. 

What  is  wine  ?  Chemists  tell  us  they 
do  not  know.  Three  fifths  of  a  glass 
of  wine  is  water.  One  fifth  is  alcohol. 


192 


Will  the  Coming  Mail  drink  Wine? 


[August, 


Of  the  remaining  fifth,  about  one  half 
is  su°~ar.  One  tenth  of  the  whole  quan- 
tity remains  to  be  accounted  for.  A  small 
part  of  that  tenth  is  the  acid  which 
makes  vinegar  sour.  Water,  alcohol, 
sugar,  acid,  —  these  make  very  nearly 
the  whole  body  of  the  wine  ;  but  if  we 
mix  these  things  in  the  proportions  in 
which  they  are  found  in  Madeira,  the 
liquid  is  a  disgusting  mess,  nothing  like 
Madeira.  The  great  chemists  confess 
they  do  not  know  what  that  last  small 
fraction  of  the  glass  of  wine  is,  upon 
which  its  flavor,  its  odor,  its  value,  its 
fascination,  depend.  They  do  not  know 
what  it  is  that  makes  the  difference  be- 
tween port  and  sherry,  but  are  obliged 
to  content  themselves  with  giving  it  a 
hard  name. 

Similar -things  are  admitted  concern- 
ing the  various  kinds  of  spirituous 
and  malt  liquors.  Chemistry  seems  to 
agree  with  the  temperance  society,  that 
wine,  beer,  brandy,  whiskey,  and  rum 
are  alcohol  and  water,  mixed  in  differ- 
ent proportions,  and  with  some  slight 
differences  of  flavoring  and  coloring 
matter.  In  all  these  drinks,  teetotalers 
maintain,  alcohol  is  power,  the  other 
ingredients  being  mere  dilution  and  fla- 
voring. Wine,  they  assure  us,  is  alco- 
hol and  water  flavored  with  grapes ; 
.beer  is  alcohol  and  water  flavored  with 
malt  and  hops ;  Bourbon  whiskey  is 
alcohol  and  water  flavored  with  corn. 
These  things  they  assert,  and  the  great 
chemists  do  not  enable  us  drinkers  of 
those  seductive  liquids  to  deny  it.  On 
the  contrary,  chemical  analysis,  so  far 
as  it  has  gone,  supports  the  teetotal 
view  of  the  matter. 

What  does  a  glass  of  wine  do  to  us 
when  we  have  swallowed  it  ? 

We  should  naturally  look  to  physi- 
cians for  an  answer  to  such  a  question  ; 
but  the  great  lights  of  the  profession  — 
men  of  the  rank  of  Astley  Cooper,  Bro- 
die,  Abernethy,  Holmes  —  all  assure 
the  public,  that  no  man  of  them  knows, 
and  no  man  has  ever  known,  how  me- 
dicinal substances  work  in  the  system, 
and  why  they  produce  the  effects  they 
do.  Even  of  a  substance  so  common 
as  Peruvian  bark,  no  one  knows  why 


and  how  it  acts  as  a  tonic ;  nor  is  there 
any  certainty  of  its  being  a  benefit  to 
mankind.  There  is  no  science  of  med- 
icine. The  "  Red  Lane  "  of  the  children 
leads  to  a  region  which  is  still  myste- 
rious and  unknown ;  for  when  the  eye 
can  explore  its  recesses,  a  change  has 
occurred  in  it,  which  is  also  mysterious 
and  unknown  :  it  is  dead.  Quacks  tell 
us,  in  every  newspaper,  that  they  can 
cure  and  prevent  disease  by  pouring  or 
dropping  something  down  our  throats, 
and  we  have  heard  this  so  often,  that, 
when  a  man  is  sick,  the  first  thing  that 
occurs  to  him  is  to  "  take  physic."  But 
physicians  who  are  honest,  intelligent, 
and  in  an  independent  position,  appear 
to  be  coming  over  to  the  opinion  that 
this  is  generally  a  delusion.  We  see 
eminent  physicians  prescribing  for  the 
most  malignant  fevers  little  but  open 
windows,  plenty  of  blankets,  Nightin- 
gale nursing,  and  beef  tea.  Many 
young  physicians,  too,  have  gladly 
availed  themselves  of  the  ingenuity  of 
Hahnemann,  and  satisfy  at  once  their 
consciences  and  their  patients  by  pre- 
scribing doses  of  medicine  that  are 
next  to  no  medicine  at  all.  The  higher 
we  go  among  the  doctors,  the  more 
sweeping  and  emphatic  is  the  assurance 
we  receive  that  the  profession  does  not 
understand  the  operation  of  medicines 
in  the  living  body,  and  does  not  really 
approve  theif  employment. 

If  something  more  is  known  of  the 
operation  of  alcohol  than  of  any  other 
chemical  fluid,  —  if  there  is  any  ap- 
proach to  certainty  respecting  it,  —  we 
owe  it  chiefly  to  the  teetotalers,  be- 
cause it  is  they  who  have  provoked 
contradiction,  excited  inquiry,  and  sug- 
gested experiment.  They  have  not 
done  much  themselves  in  the  way  of 
investigation,  but  they  started  the  topic, 
and  have  kept  it  alive.  They  have  also 
published  a  few  pages  which  throw 
light  upon  the  points  in  dispute.  After 
going  over  the  ground  pretty  thoroughly, 
I  can  tell  the  reader  in  a  few  words  the 
substance  of  what  has  been  ascertained, 
and  plausibly  inferred,  concerning  the 
effects  of  wine,  beer,  and  spirits  upon 
the  human  constitution. 


1 868.] 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine  ? 


193 


They  cannot  be  nourishment,  in  the 
ordinary  acceptation  of  that  word,  be- 
cause the  quantity  of  nutritive  matter 
in  them  is  so  small.  Liebig,  no  enemy 
of  beer,  says  this  :  "  We  can  prove, 
with  mathematical  certainty,  that  as 
much  flour  or  meal  as  can  lie  on  the 
point  of  a  table-knife  is  more  nutritious 
than  nine  quarts  of  the  best  Bavarian 
beer ;  that  a  man  who  is  able  daily  to 
consume  that  amount  of  beer  obtains 
from  it,  in  a  whole  year,  in  the  most 
favorable  case,  exactly  the  amount  of 
nutritive  constituents  which  is  contained 
in  a  five-pound  loaf  of  bread,  or  in  three 
pounds  of  flesh."  So  of  wine;  when 
we  have  taken  from  a  glass  of  wine  the 
ingredients  known  to  be  innutritious, 
there  is  scarcely  anything  left  but  a 
grain  or  two  of  sugar.  Pure  alcohol, 
though  a  product  of  highly  nutritive 
substances,  is  a  mere  poison,  —  an  ab- 
solute poison,  —  the  mortal  foe  of  life 
in  every  one  of  its  forms,  animal  and 
vegetable.  If,  therefore,  these  bever- 
ages do  us  good,  it  is  not  by  supplying 
the  body  with  nourishment. 

Nor  can  they  aid  digestion  by  assist- 
ing to  decompose  food.  When  we  have 
taken  too  much  shad  for  breakfast,  we 
find  that  a  wineglass  of  whiskey  in- 
stantly mitigates  the  horrors  of  indi- 
gestion, and  enables  us  again  to  con- 
template the  future  without  dismay. 
But  if  we  catch  a  curious  fish  or  reptile, 
and  want  to  keep  him  from  decompos- 
ing, and  bring  him  home  as  a  contri- 
bution to  the  museum  of  Professor 
A^assiz,  we  put  him  in  a  bottle  of 
whiskey.  Several  experiments  have 
been  made  with  a  view  to  ascertain 
whether  mixing  alcohol  with  the  gas- 
tric juice  increases  or  lessens  its  power 
to  decompose  food,  and  the  results  of 
all  of  them  point  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  alcohol  retards  the  process 
of  decomposition.  A  little  alcohol 
retards  it  a  little,  and  much  alcohol 
retards  it  much.  It  has  been  proved 
by  repeated  experiment,  that  any  por- 
tion of  alcohol,  however  small,  dimin- 
ishes the  power  of  the  gastric  juice  to 
decompose.  The  digestive  fluid  has 
been  mixed  with  wine,  beer,  whiskey, 

VOL.  xxn.  —  NO.  130.  13 


brandy,  and  alcohol  diluted  with  wa- 
ter, and  kept  at  the  temperature  of  the 
living  body,  and  the  motions  of  the 
body  imitated  during  the  experiment ; 
but,  in  every  instance,  the  pure  gastric 
juice  was  found  to  be  the  true  and  sole 
digester,  and  the  alcohol  a  retarder  of 
digestion.  This  fact,  however,  required 
little  proof.  We  are  all  familiar  with 
alcohol  as  a  preserver,  and  scarcely 
need  to  be  reminded,  that,  if  alcohol 
assists  digestion  at  all,  it  cannot  be  by 
assisting  decomposition. 

Nor  is  it  a  heat-producing  fluid.  On 
the  contrary,  it  appears,  in  all  cases,  to 
diminish  the  efficiency  of  the  heat-pro- 
ducing process.  Most  of  us,  who  live 
here  in  the  North,  and  who  are  occa- 
sionally subjected  to  extreme  cold  for 
hours  at  a  time,  know  this  by  personal 
experience  ;  and  all  the  Arctic  voyagers 
attest  it.  Brandy  is  destruction  when 
men  have  to  face  a  temperature  of  sixty 
below  zero  ;  they  want  lamp-oil  then, 
and  the  rich  blubber  of  the  whale  and 
walrus.  Dr.  Rae,  who  made  two  or 
three  pedestrian  tours  of  the  polar 
regions,  and  whose  powers  of  endur- 
ance were  put  to  as  severe  a  test  as 
man's  ever  were,  is  clear  and  emphatic 
upon  this  point.  Brandy,  he  says, 
stimulates  but  for  a  few  mjnutes,  and 
greatly  lessens  a  man's  power  to  endure 
cold  and  fatigue.  Occasionally  we  have 
in  New  York  a  cool  breeze  from  the 
North  which  reduces  the  temperature 
below  zero,  — to  the  sore  discomfort  of 
omnibus-drivers  and  car-drivers,  who 
have  to  face  it  on  their  way  up  town. 
On  a  certain  Monday  night,  two  or 
three  winters  ago,  twenty-three  drivers 
on  one  line  were  disabled  by  the  cold, 
many  of  whom  had  to  be  lifted  from 
the  cars,  and  carried  in.  It  is  a  fact 
familiar  to  persons  in  this  business, 
that  men  who  drink  freely  are  more 
likely  to  be  benumbed  and  overcome 
by  the  cold  than  those  who  abstain. 
It  seems  strange  to  us,  when  we  first 
hear  it,  that  a  meagre  teetotaler  should 
be  safer  on  such  a  night  than  a 
bluff,  red-faced  imbiber  of  beer  and 
whiskey,  who  takes  something  at  each 
end  of  the  line  to  keep  himself  warm. 


194 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


[August, 


It  nevertheless  appears  to  be  true.  A 
traveller  relates,  that,  when  Russian 
troops  are  about  to  start  upon  a  march 
in  a  very  cold  region,  no  grog  is  al- 
lowed to  be  served  to  them  ;  and  when 
the  men  are  drawn  up,  ready  to  move, 
the  corporals  smell  the  breath  of  every 
man,  and  send  back  to  quarters  all  who 
have  been  drinking.  The  reason  is, 
that  men  who  start  under  the  influence 
of  liquor  are  the  first  to  succumb  to 
the  cold,  and  the  likeliest  to  be  frost- 
bitten. It  is  the  uniform  experience 
of  the  hunters  and  trappers  in  the 
northern  provinces  of  North  America, 
and  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  that 
alcohol  diminishes  their  power  to  resist 
cold.  This  whole  magazine  could  be 
filled  with  testimony  on  this  point. 

Still  less  is  acohol  a  strength-giver. 
Every  man  that  ever  trained  for  a  su- 
preme exertion  of  strength  knows  that 
Tom  Sayers  spoke  the  truth  when  he 
said  :  "  I  'm  no  teetotaler  :  but  when 
I  've  any  business  to  do,  there  's  noth- 
ing like  water  and  the  dumb-bells." 
Richard  Cobden,  whose  powers  were 
subjected  to  a  far  severer  trial  than  a 
pugilist  ever  dreamed  of,  whose  labors 
by  night  and  day,  during  the  corn-law 
struggle,  were  excessive  and  continuous 
beyond  those  of  any  other  member  of 
the  House  of  Commons,  bears  similar 
testimony:  "The  more  work  I  have 
had  to  do,  the  more  I  have  resorted  to 
the  pump  and  the  teapot."  On  this 
branch  of  the  subject,  all  the  testimony 
is  against  alcoholic  drinks.  Whenever 
the  point  has  been  tested,  — and  it  has 
often  been  tested,  —  the  truth  has  been 
confirmed,  that  he  who  would  do  his  very 
best  and  most,  whether  in  rowing,  lift- 
ing, running,  watching,  mowing,  climb- 
ing, fighting,  speaking,  or  writing,  must 
not  admit  into  his  system  one  drop  of 
alcohol.  Trainers  used  to  allow  their 
men  a  pint  of  beer  per  day,  and  severe 
trainers  half  a  pint ;  but  now  the  know- 
ing ones  h'ave  cut  off  even  that  moderate 
allowance,  and  brought  their  men  down 
to  cold  water,  and  not  too  much  of  that, 
the  soundest  digesters  requiring  little 
liquid  of  any  kind.  Mr.  Bigelow,  by 
his  happy  publication  lately  of  the  cor- 


rect version  of  Franklin's  Autobiogra- 
phy, has  called  to  mind  the  famous  beer 
passage  in  that  immortal  work :  "  I 
drank  only  water  ;  the  other  workmen, 
near  fifty  in  number,  were  great  guz- 
zlers *  of  beer.  On  occasion  I  carried 
up  and  down  stairs  a  large  form  of 
types  in  each  hand,  when  others  carried 
but  one  in  both  hands."  I  have  a  long 
list  of  references  on  this  point ;  but, 
in  these  cricketing,  boat-racing,  prize- 
fighting days,  the  fact  has  become  too 
familiar  to  require  proof.  The  other 
morning,  Horace  Greeley,  teetotaler, 
came  to  his  office  after  an  absence 
of  several  days,  and  found  letters  and 
arrears  of  work  that  would  have  been 
appalling  to  any  man  but  him.  He 
shut  himself  in  at  ten,  A.  M.,  and  wrote 
steadily,  without  leaving  his  room,  till 
eleven,  p.  M., —  thirteen  hours.  When  he 
had  finished,  he  had  some  little  difficulty 
in  getting  down  stairs,  owing  to  the  stiff- 
ness of  his  joints,  caused  by  the  long 
inaction;  but  he  was  as  fresh  and 
smiling  the  next  morning  as  though  he 
had  done  nothing  extraordinary.  Are 
any  of  us  drinkers  of  beer  and  wine 
capable  of  such  a  feat  ?  Then,  during 
the  war,  when  he  was  writing  his  his- 
tory, he  performed  every  day,  for  two 
years,  two  days'  work,  —  one,  from  nine 
to  four,  on  his  book  ;  the  other,  from 
seven  to  eleven,  upon  the  Tribune ; 
and,  in  addition,  he  did  more  than 
would  tire  an  ordinary  man  in  the  way 
of  correspondence  and  public  speaking. 
I  may  also  remind  the  reader,  that  the 
clergyman  who,  of  all  others  in  the 
United  States,  expends  most  vitality, 
both  with  tongue  and  pen,  and  who 
does  his  work  with  least  fatigue  and 
most  gayety  of  heart,  is  another  of 
Franklin's  "  water  Americans." 

If,  then,  wine  does  not  nourish  us, 
does  not  assist  the  decomposition  of 
food,  does  not  warm,  does  not  strength- 
en, what  does  it  do  ? 

We  all  know  that,  when  we  drink 
alcoholic  liquor,  it  affects  the  brain 
immediately.  Most  of  us  are  aware, 

*  We  owe  to  Mr.  Bigelow  the  restoration  of  this 
strong  Franklinian  word.  The  common  editions 
have  it  "drinkers." 


1 868.] 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


195 


too,  that  it  affects  the  brain  injuriously, 
lessening  at  once  its  power  to  discern 
and  discriminate.  If  I,  at  this  ten,  A.  M., 
full  of  interest  in  this  subject,  and  ea- 
ger to  get  my  view  of  it  upon  paper, 
were  to  drink  a  glass  of  the  best  port, 
Madeira,  or  sherry,  or  even  a  glass  of 
lager-beer,  I  should  lose  the  power  to 
continue  in  three  minutes  ;  or,  if  I  per- 
sisted in  going  on,  I  should  be  pretty 
sure  to  utter  paradox  and  spurts  of 
extravagance,  which  would  not  bear 
the  cold  review  of  to-morrow  morning. 
Any  one  can  try  this  experiment.  Take 
two  glasses  of  wine,  and  then  immedi- 
ately apply  yourself  to  the  hardest  task 
your  mind  ever  has  to  perform,  and 
you  will  find  you  cannot  do  it.  Let 
any  student,  just  before  he  sits  down  to 
his  mathematics,  drink  a  pint  of  the 
purest  beer,  and  he  will  be  painfully 
conscious  of  loss  of  power.  Or,  let  any 
salesman,  before  beginning  with  a  diffi- 
cult but  important  customer,  perform  the 
idiotic  action  of  "  taking  a  drink,"  and 
he  will  soon  discover  that  his  ascen- 
dency over  his  customer  is  impaired. 
In  some  way  this  alcohol,  of  which  we 
are  so  fond,  gets  to  the  brain  and  injures 
it.  We  are  conscious  of  this,  and  we 
can  observe  it.  It  is  among  the  wine- 
drinking  classes  of  our  fellow-beings 
that  absurd,  incomplete,  and  reaction- 
ary ideas  prevail.  The  receptive,  the 
curious,  the  candid,  the  trustworthy 
brains,  —  those  that  do  not  take  things 
for  granted,  and  yet  are  ever  open  to 
conviction,  —  such  heads  are  to  be  found 
on  the  shoulders  of  men  who  drink 
little  or  none  of  these  seductive  fluids. 
How  we  all  wondered  that  England 
should  think  so  erroneously,  and  ad- 
here to  its  errors  so  obstinately,  dur- 
ing our  late  war!  Mr.  Gladstone  has 
in  part  explained  the  mystery.  The 
adults  of  England,  he  said,  in  his  fa- 
mous wine  speech,  drink,  on  an  aver- 
age, three  hundred  quarts  of  beer  each 
per  annum  !  Now,  it  is  physically  im- 
possible for  a  human  brain,  muddled 
every  day  with  a  quart  of  beer,  to  cor- 
rectly hold  correct  opinions,  or  appro- 
priate pure  knowledge.  Compare  the 
conversation  of  a  group  of  Vermont 


farmers,  gathered  on  the  stoop  of  a 
country  store  on  a  rainy  afternoon,  with 
that  which  you  may  hear  in  the  far- 
mers' room  of  a  market-town  inn  in 
England  !  The  advantage  is  not  wholly 
with  the  Vermonfers  ;  by  no  means, 
for  there  is  much  in  human  nature 
besides  the  brain  and  the  things  of  the 
brain.  But  in  this  one  particular  —  in 
the  topics  of  conversation,  in  the  inter- 
est manifested  in  large  and  important 
subjects  —  the  water-drinking  Vermont- 
ers  are  to  the  beer-drinking  English- 
men what  Franklin  was  to  the  London 
printers.  It  is  beyond  the  capacity  of 
a  well-beered  brain  even  to  read  the 
pamphlet  on  Liberty  and  Necessity 
which  Franklin  wrote  in  those  times. 

The  few  experiments  which  have 
been  made,  with  a  view  to  trace  the 
course  of  alcohol  in  the  living  system,  all 
confirm  what  all  drinkers  feel,  that  it  is 
to  the  brain  alcohol  hurries  when  it  has 
passed  the  lips.  Some  innocent  dogs 
have  suffered  and  died  in  this  investi- 
gation. Dr.  Percy,  a  British  physician, 
records,  that  he  injected  two  ounces 
and  a  half  of  alcohol  into  the  stomach 
of  a  dog,  which  caused  its  almost  in- 
stant death.  The  dog  dropped  very 
much  as  he  would  if  he  had  been  struck 
upon  the  head  with  a  club.  The  exper- 
imenter, without  a  moment's  unneces- 
sary delay,  removed  the  animal's  brain, 
subjected  it  to  distillation,  and  extracted 
from  it  a  surprising  quantity  of  alcohol, 
—  a  larger  proportion  than  he  could 
distil  from  the  blood  or  liver.  The 
alcohol  seemed  to  have  rushed  to  the 
brain;  it  was  a  blow  upon  the  head 
which  killed  the  dog.  Dr.  Percy  intro- 
duced into  the  stomachs  of  other  dogs 
smaller  quantities  of  alcohol,  not  suf- 
ficient to  cause  death  ;  but  upon  killing 
the  dogs,  and  subjecting  the  brain,  the 
blood,  the  bile,  the  liver,  and  other  por- 
tions of  the  body,  to  distillation,  he  in- 
variably found  more  alcohol  in  the  brain 
than  in  the  same  weight  of  other  or- 
gans. He  injected  alcohol  into  the 
blood  of  dogs,  which  caused  death  ;  but 
the  deadly  effect  was  produced,  not 
upon  the  substance  of  the  blood,  but 
upon  the  brain.  His  experiments  go 


196 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


[August, 


far  toward  explaining  why  the  drinking 
of  alcoholic  liquors  does  not  sensibly 
retard  digestion.  It  seems  that,  when 
we  take  wine  at  dinner,  the  alcohol  does 
not  remain  in  the  stomach,  but  is  im- 
mediately absorbed  into  the  blood,  and 
swiftly  conveyed  to  the  brain  and  other 
organs.  If  one  of  those  "four-bottle 
men  "  of  the  last  generation  had  fallen 
down  dead,  after  boozing  till  past  mid- 
night, and  he  had  been  treated  as  Dr. 
Percy  treated  the  dogs,  his  brain,  his 
liver,  and  all  the  other  centres  of  power, 
would  have  yielded  alcohol  in  abun- 
dance ;  his  blood  would  have  smelt  of 
it ;  his  -flesh  would  have  contained  it ; 
but  there  would  have  been  very  little  in 
the  stomach.  Those  men  were  able  to 
drink  four,  six,  and  seven  bottles  of 
wine  at  a  sitting,  because  the  sitting 
lasted  four,  six,  and  seven  hours,  which 
gave  time  for  the  alcohol  to  be  distrib- 
uted over  the  system.  But  instances 
have  occurred  of  laboring  men  who 
have  kept  themselves  steadily  drunk  for 
forty-eight  hours,  and  then  died.  The 
bodies  of  two  such  were  dissected  some 
years  ago  in  England,  and  the  food 
which  they  had  eaten  at  the  beginning 
of  the  debauch  was  undigested.  It  had 
been  preserved  in  alcohol  as  we  pre- 
serve snakes. 

Once,  and  only  once,  in  the  lifetime  of 
man,  an  intelligent  human  eye  has  been 
able  to  look  into  the  living  stomach,  and 
watch  the  process  of  digestion.  In 
1822,  at  the  United  States  military  post 
of  Michilimackinac,  Alexis  St.  Martin, 
a  Canadian  of  French  extraction,  re- 
ceived accidentally  a  heavy  charge  of 
duck-shot  in  his  side,  while  he  was 
standing  one  yard  from  the  muzzle  of 
the  gun.  The  wound  was  frightful. 
One  of  the  lungs  protruded,  and  from 
an  enormous  aperture  in  the  stomach 
the  food  recently  eaten  was ,  oozing. 
Dr.  William  Beaumont,  U.  S.  A.,  the 
surgeon  of  the  post,  was  notified,  and 
dressed  the  wound.  In  exactly  one 
year  from  that  day  the  young  man  was 
well  enough  to  get  out  of  doors,  and 
walk  about  the  fort ;  and  he  continued 
to  improve  in  health  and  strength,  until 
he  was  as  strong  and  hardy  as  most  of 


his  race.  He  married,  became  the 
father  of  a  large  family,  and  -performed 
for  many  years  the  laborious  duties  ap- 
pertaining to  an  officer's  servant  at  a 
frontier  post.  But  the  aperture  into 
the  stomach  never  closed,  and  the  pa- 
tient would  not  submit  to  the  painful 
operation  by  which  such  wounds  are 
sometimes  closed  artificially.  He  wore 
a  compress  arranged  by  the  doctor, 
without  which  his  dinner  was  not  safe 
after  he  had  eaten  it. 

By  a  most  blessed  chance  it  hap- 
pened that  this  Dr.  William  Beaumont, 
stationed  there  on  the  outskirts  of  crea- 
tion, was  an  intelligent,  inquisitive  hu- 
man being,  who  perceived  all  the  value 
of  the  opportunity  afforded  him  by  this 
unique  event.  He  set  about  improving 
that  opportunity.  He  took  the  young 
man  into  his  service,  and,  at  intervals, 
for  eight  years,  he  experimented  upon 
him.  He  alone  among  the  sons  of  men 
has  seen  liquid  flowing  into  the  stomach 
of  a  living  person  while  yet  the  vessel 
was  at  the  drinker's  lips.  Through  the 
aperture  (which  remained  two  and  a 
half  inches  in  circumference)  he  could  - 
watch  the  entire  operation  of  digestion, 
and  he  did  so  hundreds  of  times.  If 
the  man's  stomach  ached,  he  could  look 
into  it  and  see  what  was  the  matter; 
and,  having  found  out,  he  would  drop 
a  rectifying  pill  into  the  aperture.  He 
ascertained  the  time  it  takes  to  digest 
each  of  the  articles  of  food  commonly 
eaten,  and  the  effects  of  all  the  usual 
errors  in  eating  and  drinking.  In  1833 
he  published  a  thin  volume,  at  Platts- 
burg  on  Lake  Champlain,  in  which  the 
results  of  thousands  of  experiments 
and  observations  were  only  too  briefly 
stated.  He  appears  not  to  have  heard 
of  teetotalism,  and  hence  all  that  he 
says  upon  the  effects  of  alcoholic  liq- 
uors is  free  from  the  suspicion  which 
the  arrogance  and  extravagance  of 
some  teetotalers  have  thrown  over 
much  that  has  been  published  on 
this  subject.  With  a  mind  unbiassed, 
Dr.  Beaumont,  peering  into  the  stom- 
ach of  this  stout  Canadian,  notices  that 
a  glass  of  brandy  causes  the  coats  of 
that  organ  to  assume  the  same  inflamed 


1 868.] 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


197 


appearance  as  when  he  had  been  very 
angry,  or  much  frightened,  or  had  over- 
eaten, or  had  had  the  flow  of  perspira- 
tion suddenly  checked.  In  other  words, 
brandy  played  the  part  of  a  foe  in  his 
system,  not  that  of  a  friend ;  it  pro- 
duced effects  which  were  morbid,  not 
healthy.  Nor  did  it  make  any  material 
difference  whether  St.  Martin  drank 
brandy,  whiskey,  wine,  cider,  or  beer, 
except  so  far  as  one  was  stronger  than 
the  other. 

"  Simple  water,"  says  Dr.  Beaumont, 
"is  perhaps  the  only  fluid  that  is  called 
for  by  the  wants  of  the  economy.  The 
artificial  drinks  are  probably  all  more 
or  less  injurious  ;  some  more  so  than 
others,  but  none  can  claim  exemption 
from  the  general  charge.  Even  tea  and 
coffee,  the  common  beverages  of  all 
classes  of  people,  have  a  tendency  to 

debilitate  the  digestive  organs 

The  whole  class  of  alcoholic  liquors 
may  be  considered  as  narcotics,  produ- 
cing very  little  difference  in  their  ulti- 
mate effects  upon  the  system." 

He  ascertained  too  (not  guessed,  or 
inferred,  but  ascertained,  watch  in  hand) 
that  such  things  as  mustard,  horse-rad- 
ish, and  pepper  retard  digestion.  At 
the  close  of  his  invaluable  work  Dr. 
Beaumont  appends  a  long  list  of  "  In- 
ferences," among  which  are  the  follow- 
ing :  "  That  solid  food  of  a  certain  tex- 
ture is  easier  of  digestion  than  fluid; 
that  stimulating  condiments  are  inju- 
rious to  the  healthy  system  ;  that  the 
use  of  ardent  spirits  always  produces 
disease  of  the  stomach  if  persisted  in  ; 
that  water,  ardent  spirits,  and  most 
other  fluids,  are  not  affected  by  the  gas- 
tric juice,  but  pass  from  the  stomach 
soon  after  they  have  been  received." 
One  thing  appears  to  have  much  sur- 
prised Dr.  Beaumont,  and  that  was, 
the  degree  to  which  St.  Martin's  sys- 
tem could  be  disordered  without  his 
being  much  inconvenienced  by  it.  Af- 
ter drinking  hard  every  day  for  eight 
or  ten  days,  the  stomach  would  show 
alarming  appearances  of  disease;  and 
yet  the  man  would  only  feel  a  slight 
headache,  and  a  general  dulness  and 
languor. 


If  there  is  no  comfort  for  drinkers  in 
Dr.  Beaumont's  precious  little  volume, 
it  must  be  also  confessed,  that  neither 
the  dissecting-knife  nor  the  microscope 
afford  us  the  least  countenance.  All  that 
has  yet  been  ascertained  of  the  effects 
of  alcohol  by  the  dissection  of  the  body 
favors  the  extreme  position  of  the  ex- 
treme teetotalers.  A  brain  alcoholized 
the  microscope  proves  to  be  a  brain 
diseased.  Blood  which  has  absorbed 
alcohol  is  unhealthy  blood,  —  the  micro- 
scope shows  it.  The  liver,  the  heart, 
and  other  organs,  which  have  been  ac- 
customed to  absorb  alcohol,  all  give 
testimony  under  the  microscope  which 
produces  discomfort  in  the  mind  of  one 
who  likes  a  glass  of  wine,  and  hopes  to 
be  able  to  continue  the  enjoyment  of  it. 
The  dissecting-knife  and  the  microscope 
so  far  have  nothing  to  say  for  us,  —  noth- 
ing at  all :  they  are  dead  against  us. 

Of  all  the  experiments  which  have 
yet  been  undertaken  with  a  view  to 
trace  the  course  of  alcohol  through  the 
human  system,  the  most  important  were 
those  made  in  Paris  a  few  years  ago  by 
Professors  Lallemand,  Perrin,  and  Du- 
roy,  distinguished  physicians  and  chem- 
ists. Frenchmen  have  a  way  of  co-op- 
erating with  one  another,  both  in  the 
investigation  of  scientific  questions  and 
in  the  production  of  literature,  which 
is  creditable  to  their  civilization  and 
beneficial  to  the  world.  The  experi- 
ments conducted  by  these  gentlemen 
produced  the  remarkable  effect  of  caus- 
ing the  editor  of  a  leading  periodical  to 
confess  to  the  public  that  he  was  not 
infallible.  In  1855  the  Westminster 
Review  contained  an  article  by  Mr. 
Lewes,  in  which  the  teetotal  side  of 
these  questions  was  effectively  ridi- 
culed;  but,  in  1861,  the  same  periodi- 
cal reviewed  the  work  of  the  French 
professors  just  named,  and  honored  it- 
self by  appending  a  note  in  which  it 
said  :  "  Since  the  date  of  our  former  ar- 
ticle, scientific  research  has  brought  to 
light  important  facts  which  necessarily 
modify  the  opinions  we  then  expressed 
concerning  the  role  of  alcohol  in  the 
animal  body."  Those  facts  were  re- 
vealed or  indicated  in  the  experiments 


198 


Will  tJie  Coining  Man  drink  Wine? 


[August, 


of  Messrs.  Lallemand,  Perrin,  and  Du- 
roy. 

Ether  and  chloroform,  —  their  mode 
of  operation  ;  why  and  how  they  ren- 
der the  living  body  insensible  to  pain 
under  the  surgeon's  knife  ;  what  be- 
comes of  them  after  they  have  per- 
formed that  office,  —  these  were  the 
points  which  engaged  their  attention, 
and  in  the  investigation  of  which  they 
spent  several  years.  They  were  re- 
warded, at  length,  with  the  success  due 
to  patience  and  ingenuity.  By  the  aid 
of  ingenious  apparatus,  after  experi- 
ments almost  numberless,  they  felt  them- 
selves in  a  position  to  demonstrate, 
that,  when  ether  is  inhaled,  it  is  imme- 
diately absorbed  by  the  blood,  and  by 
the  blood  is  conveyed  to  the  brain.  If 
a  surgeon  were  to  commit  such  a  breach 
of  professional  etiquette  as  to  cut  off  a 
patient's  head  at  the  moment  of  com- 
plete insensibility,  he  would  be  able  to 
distil  from  the  brain  a  great  quantity 
of  ether.  But  it  is  not  usual  to  take 
that  liberty  except  with  dogs.  The 
inhalation,  therefore,  proceeds  until  the 
surgical  operation  is  finished,  when  the 
handkerchief  is  withdrawn  from  the 
patient's  face,  and  he  is  left  to  regain 
his  senses.  What  happens  then  ?  What 
becomes  of  the  ether  ?  These  learned 
Frenchmen  discovered  that  most  of  it 
goes  out  of  the  body  by  the  road  it 
came  in  at,  —  the  lungs.  It  was  breathed 
in  ;  it  is  breathed  out  The  rest  es- 
capes by  other  channels  of  egress  ;  it 
all  escapes,  and  it  escapes  unchanged ! 
That  is  the  point;  it  escapes  without 
having  left  anything  in  the  system.  All 
that  can  be  said  of  it  is,  that  it  entered 
the  body,  created  morbid  conditions  in 
the  body,  and  then  left  the  body.  It 
cost  these  patient  men  years  to  arrive 
at  this  result ;  but  any  one  who  has 
ever  had  charge  of  a  patient  that  has 
been  rendered  insensible  by  ether  will 
find  little  difficulty  in  believing  it. 

Having  reached  this  demonstration, 
the  experimenters  naturally  thought  of 
applying  the  same  method  and  similar 
apparatus  to  the  investigation  of  the  ef- 
fects of  alcohol,  which  is  the  fluid  nearest 
resembling  ether  and  chloroform.  Dogs 


and  men  suffered  in  the  cause.  In  the 
moisture  exhaled  from  the  pores  of  a 
drunken  dog's  skin,  these  cunning 
Frenchmen  detected  the  alcohol  which 
had  made  him  drunk.  They  proved  it  to 
exist  in  the  breath  of  a  man,  at  six  o'clock 
in  the  evening,  who  had  drunk  a  bottle 
of  claret  for  breakfast  at  half  past  ten  in 
the  morning.  They  also  proved  that,  at 
midnight,  the  alcohol  of  that  bottle  of 
wine  was  still  availing  itself  of  other 
avenues  of  escape.  They  proved  that 
when  alcohol  is  taken  into  the  system 
in  any  of  its  dilutions,  —  wine,  cider, 
spirits,  or  beer,  —  the  whole  animal  econ- 
omy speedily  busies  itself  with  its  ex- 
pulsion, and  continues  to  do  so  until 
it  has  expelled  it.  The  lungs  exhale 
it ;  the  pores  of  the  skin  let  out  a  little 
of  it ;  the  kidneys  do  their  part ;  and 
by  whatever  other  road  an  enemy  can 
escape  it  seeks  the  outer  air.  Like 
ether,  alcohol  enters  the  body,  makes  a 
disturbance  there,  and  goes  out  of  the 
body,  leaving  it  no  richer  than  it  found 
it.  It  is  a  guest  that  departs,  after 
giving  a  great  deal  of  trouble,  without 
paying  his  bill  or  "  remembering  "  the 
servants.  Now,  to  make  the  demonstra- 
tion complete,  it  would  be  necessary  to 
take  some  unfortunate  man  or  dog, 
give  him  a  certain  quantity  of  alcohol, 
—  say  one  ounce,  —  and  afterwards  dis- 
til from  his  breath,  perspiration,  &c., 
the  whole  quantity  that  he  had  swal- 
lowed. This  has  not  been  done  ;  it 
never  will  be  done  ;  it  is  obviously  im- 
possible. Enough  has  been  done  to 
justify  these  conscientious  and  indefat- 
igable inquirers  in  announcing,  as  a 
thing  susceptible  of  all  but  demonstra- 
tion, that  alcohol  contributes  to  the 
human  system  nothing  whatever,  but 
leaves  it  undigested  and  wholly  un- 
changed. They  are  fully  persuaded 
(and  so  will  you  be,  reader,  if  you  read 
their  book)  that,  if  you  take  into  your 
system  an  ounce  of  alcohol,  the  whole 
ounce  leaves  the  system  within  forty- 
eight  hours,  just  as  good  alcohol  as  it 
went  in. 

There  is  a  boy  in  Pickwick  who 
swallowed  a  farthing.  "Out  with  it," 
said  the  father;  and  it  is  to  be  pre- 


1 868.] 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


199 


sumed  —  though  Mr.  Weller  does  not 
mention  the  fact — that  the  boy  com- 
plied with  a  request  so  reasonable. 
Just  as  much  nutrition  as  that  small 
copper  coin  left  in  the  system  of  that 
boy,  plus  a  small  lump  of  sugar,  did 
the  claret  which  we  drank  yesterday 
deposit  in  ours  ;  so,  at  least,  we  must 
infer  from  the  experiments  of  Messrs. 
Lallemand,  Perrin,  and  Duroy. 

To  evidence  of  this  purely  scientific 
nature  might  be  added,  if  space  could 
be  afforded,  a  long  list  of  persons  who, 
having  indulged  in  wine  for  many  years, 
have  found  benefit  from  discontinuing 
the  use  of  it.  Most  of  us  have  known 
such  instances.  I  have  known  several, 
and  I  can  most  truly  say,  that  I  have 
never  known  an  individual  in  tolerable 
health,  who  discontinued  the  use  of 
any  stimulant  whatever  without  bene- 
fit. We  all  remember  Sydney  Smith's 
strong  sentences  on  this  point,  scattered 
through  the  volume  which  contains  the 
correspondence  of  that  delicious  hu- 
morist and  wit.  "  I  like  London  better 
than  ever  I  liked  it  before,"  he  writes 
in  the  prime  of  his  prime  (forty-three 
years  old)  to  Lady  Holland,  "  and  sim- 
ply, I  believe,  from  water -drinking. 
Without  this,  London  is  stupefaction 
and  inflammation."  So  has  New  York 
become.  Again,  in  1828,  when  he  was 
fifty-seven,  to  the  same  lady :  "  I  not 
only  was  never  better,  but  never  half 
so  well ;  indeed,  I  find  I  have  been 
very  ill  all  my  life  without  knowing  it. 
Let  me  state  some  of  the  goods  arising 
from  abstaining  from  all  fermented  liq- 
uors. First,  sweet  sleep  ;  having  never 
known  what  sweet  sleep  was,  I  sleep 
like  a  baby  or  a  plough-boy.  If  I  wake, 
no  needless  terrors,  no  black  visions  of 
life,  but  pleasing  hopes  and  pleasing 
recollections  :  Holland  House,  past 
and  to  come  !  If  I  dream,  it  is  not  of 
lions  and  tigers,  but  of  Easter  dues 
and  tithes.  Secondly,  I  can  take 
longer  walks,  and  make  greater  exer- 
tions, without  fatigue.  My  understand- 
ing is  improved,  and  I  comprehend 
political  economy.  I  see  better  with- 
out wine  and  spectacles  than  when  I 
used  both.  Only  one  evil  ensues  from 


it ;  I  am  in  such  extravagant  spirits 
that  I  must  lose  blood,  or  look  out  for 
some  one  who  will  bore  or  depress  me. 
Pray  leave  off  wine :  the  stomach  is 
quite  at  rest;  no  heartburn,  no  pain, 
no  distention." 

I  have  also  a  short  catalogue  of  per- 
sons who,  having  long  lived  innocent 
of  these  agreeable  drinks,  began  at 
length  to  use  them.  Dr.  Franklin's 
case  is  striking.  That  "  water  Ameri- 
can," as  he  was  styled  by  the  London 
printers,  whose  ceaseless  guzzling  of 
beer  he  ridiculed  in  his  twentieth  year, 
drank  wine  in  his  sixtieth  with  the 
freedom  usual  at  that  period  among 
persons  of  good  estate.  "  At  parting," 
he  writes  in  1768,  when  he  was  sixty- 
two,  "  after  we  had  drank  a  bottle  and 
a  half  of  claret  each,  Lord  Clare  hugged 
and  kissed  me,  protesting  he  never  in 
his  life  met  with  a  man  he  was  so  much 
in  love  with."  The  consequence  of 
this  departure  from  the  customs  of  his 
earlier  life  was  ten  years  of  occasional 
acute  torture  from  the  stone  and  gravel. 
Perhaps,  if  Franklin  had  remained  a 
"  water  American,"  he  would  have  an- 
nexed Canada  to  the  United  States  at 
the  peace  of  1782.  An  agonizing  attack 
of  stone  laid  him  on  his  back  for  three 
months,  just  as  the  negotiation  was 
becoming  interesting ;  and  by  the  time 
he  was  well  again  the  threads  were 
gone  out  of  his  hands  into  those  of  the 
worst  diplomatists  that  ever  threw  a 
golden  chance  away. 

What  are  we  to  conclude  from  all 
this  ?  Are  we  to  knock  the  heads  out 
of  all  our  wine-casks,  join  the  temper- 
ance society,  and  denounce  all  men 
who  do  not  follow  our  example  ?  Tak- 
ing together  all  that  science  and  obser- 
vation teach  and  indicate,  we  have  one 
certainty:  That,  to  a  person  in  good 
health  and  of  good  life,  alcoholic  liquors 
are  not  necessary,  but  are  always  in 
some  degree  hurtful.  This  truth  be- 
comes so  clear,  after  a  few  weeks'  in- 
vestigation, that  I  advise  every  person 
who  means  to  keep  on  drinking  such 
liquors  not  to  look  into  the  facts  ;  for 
if  he  does,  he  will  never  again  be  able 
to  lift  a  glass  of  wine  to  his  lips,  nor 


200 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


[August, 


contemplate  a  foaming  tankard,  nor  mix 
his  evening  toddy,  nor  hear  the  pop  and 
melodious  gurgle  of  champagne,  with 
that  fine  complacency  which  irradiates 
his  countenance  now,  and  renders  it  so 
pleasing  a  study  to  those  who  sit  on 
the  other  side  of  the  table.  No  ;  never 
again  !  Even  the  flavor  of  those  fluids 
will  lose  something  of  their  charm. 
The  conviction  will  obtrude  itself  upon 
his  mind,  at  most  inopportune  moments, 
that  this  drinking  of  wine,  beer,  and 
whiskey,  to  which  we  are  so  much 
addicted,  is  an  enormous  delusion.  If 
the  teetotalers  would  induce  some  ra- 
tional being  —  say  that  public  benefac- 
tor, Dr.  Willard  Parker  of  New  York 
—  to  collect  into  one  small  volume  the 
substance  of  all  the  investigations  al- 
luded to  in  this  article,  —  the  substance 
of  Dr.  Beaumont's  precious  little'  book, 
the  substance  of  the  French  professors' 
work,  and  the  others,  —  adding  no  com- 
ment except  such  as  might  be  neces- 
sary to  elucidate  the  investigators' 
meaning,  it  could  not  but  carry  con- 
viction to  every  candid  and  intelligent 
reader,  that  spirituous  drinks  are  to  the 
healthy  system  an  injury  necessarily, 
and  in  all  cases.* 

The  Coming  Man,  then,  so  long  as  he 
enjoys  good  health,  —  which  he  usually 
will  from  infancy  to  hoary  age,  —  will 
not  drink  wine,  nor,  of  course,  any  of 
the  coarser  alcoholic  dilutions.  To  that 
unclouded  and  fearless  intelligence, 
science  will  be  the  supreme  law  ;  it  will 
be  to  him  more  than  the  Koran  is  to  a 
Mohammedan,  and  more  than  the  Infal- 

*  The  teetotal  tracts  and  books  abound  in  exag- 
geration. In  a  treatise  which  professes  to  be 
scientific  I  read  such  explosions  as  the  following  : 
"Wilkes  Booth,  the  cowardly  murderer  of  the  late 
President  of  the  United  States,  when  he  saw  his 
helpless  victim  in  the  box  at  the  theatre,  had  not  the 
cruelty  to  strike  the  blow ;  his  better  feelings  over- 
came him,  and,  trembling  with  suppressed  agony  at 
the  thought  of  becoming  an  assassin,  he  rushed  into 
the  nearest  restaurant,  crying  out,  —  '  Brandy  !  Bran- 
dy !  Brandy  ! '  Then,  gulping  down  the  hellish 
draught,  it  instantly  poisoned  his  blood,  fired  up  his 
brain,  transformed  his  whole  nature  into  that  of  a 
raging  fiend ;  and  in  this  remorseless  condition  he 
shot  down  that  noble  -  hearted  President,  —  the 
nation's  great  hope,  —  the  people's  best  friend. 
Then,  what  killed  the  President  of  the  United 
States?  I  answer,  '  Brandy  !  Brandy  !  Brandy  ! '  " 
Such  falsehoods  may  provoke  laughter,  but  cannot 
create  conviction. 


lible  Church  is  to  a  Roman  Catholic. 
Science,  or,  in  other  words,  the  law  of 
God  as  revealed  in  nature,  life,  and 
history,  and  as  ascertained  by  experi- 
ment, observation,  and  thought,  —  this 
will  be  the  teacher  and  guide  of  the 
Coming  Man. 

A  single  certainty  in  a  matter  of  so 
much  importance  is  not  to  be  despised. 
I  can  now  say  to  young  fellows  who 
order  a  bottle  of  wine,  and  flatter  them- 
selves that,  in  so  doing,  they  approve 
themselves  "jolly  dogs  "  :  No,  my  lads, 
it  is  because  you  are  dull  dogs  that 
you  want  the  wine.  You  are  forced  to 
borrow  excitement  because  you  have 
squandered  your  natural  gayety.  The 
ordering  of  the  wine  is  a  confession 
of  insolvency.  When  we  feel  it  ne- 
cessary to  "  take  something  "  at  certain 
times  during  the  day,  we  are  in  a  con- 
dition similar  to  that  of  a  merchant  who 
every  day,  about  the  anxious  hour  of 
half  past  two,  has  to  run  around  among 
his  neighbors  borrowing  credit.  It  is 
something  disgraceful  or  suspicious. 
Nature  does  not  supply  enough  of  in- 
ward force.  We  are  in  arrears.  Our 
condition  is  absurd,  and,  if  we  ought 
not  to  be  alarmed,  we  ought  at  least  to 
be  ashamed.  Nor  does  the  borrowed 
credit  increase  our  store  ;  it  leaves 
nothing  behind  to  enrich  us,  but  takes 
something  from  our  already  insufficient 
stock;  and  the  more  pressing  our  need 
the  more  it  costs  us  to  borrow. 

But  the  Coming  Man,  blooming,  ro- 
bust, alert,  and  light-hearted  as  he  will 
be,  may  not  be  always  well.  If,  as  he 
springs  up  a  mountain-side,  his  foot 
slips,  the  law  of  gravitation  will  re- 
spect nature's  darling  too  much  to  keep 
him  from  tumbling  down  the  precipice  ; 
and,  as  he  wanders  in  strange  regions, 
an  unperceived  malaria  may  poison  his 
pure  and  vivid  blood.  Some  generous 
errors,  too,  he  may  commit  (although 
it  is  not  probable),  and  expend  a  por- 
tion of  his  own  life  in  warding  off  evil 
from  the  lives  of  others.  Fever  may 
blaze  even  in  his  clear  eyes  ;  poison 
may  rack  his  magnificent  frame,  and  a 
long  convalescence  may  severely  try  his 
admirable  patience.  Will  the  Coming 


1868.] 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


2OI 


Man  drink  wine  when  he  is  sick  ?  Here 
the  testimony  becomes  contradictory. 
The  question  is  not  easily  answered. 

One  valuable  witness  on  this  branch 
of  the  inquiry  is  the  late  Theodore 
Parker.  A  year  or  two  before  his  la- 
mented death,  when  he  was  already 
struggling  with  the  disease  that  termi- 
nated his  existence,  he  wrote  for  his 
friend,  Dr.  Bowditch,  "  the  consumptive 
history  "  of  his  family  from  1634,  when 
his  stalwart  English  ancestor  settled  in 
New  England.  The  son  of  that  an- 
cestor built  a  house,  in  1664,  upon  the 
slope  of  a  hill  which  terminated  in  "  a 
great  fresh  meadow  of  spongy  peat," 
which  was  "always  wet  all  the  year 
through,"  and  from  which  "  fogs  could 
be  seen  gathering  towards  night  of  a 
clear  day."  *  In  the  third  generation  of 
the  occupants  of  this  house  consump- 
tion was  developed,  and  carried  off  eight 
children  out  of  eleven,  all  between  the 
ages  of  sixteen  and  nineteen.  From 
that  time  consumption  was  the  bane  of 
the  race,  and  spared  not  the  offspring  of 
parents  who  had  removed  from  the  fam- 
ily seat  into  localities  free  from  malaria. 
One  of  the  daughters  of  the  house,  who 
married  a  man  of  giant  stature  and  great 
strength,  became  the  mother  of  four 
sons.  Three  of  these  sons,  though  set- 
tled in  a  healthy  place  and  in  an  innox- 
ious business,  died  of  consumption  be- 
tween twenty  and  twenty-five.  But  the 
fourth  son  became  intemperate,  —  drank 
great  quantities  of  New  England  rum. 
He  did  not  die  of  the  disease,  but  was 
fifty-five  years  of  age  when  the  account 
was  written,  and  then  exhibited  no  con- 
sumptive tendency  !  To  this  fact  Mr. 
Parker  added  others  :  — 

"I.  I  know  a  consumptive  family 
living  in  a  situation  like  that  I  have  men- 
tioned for,  perhaps,  the  same  length  of 
time,  who  had  four  sons.  Two  of  them 
were  often  drunk,  and  always  intem- 
perate, —  one  of  them  as  long  as  I  can 
remember  ;  both  consumptive  in  early 
life,  but  now  both  hearty  men  from  sixty 
to  seventy.  The  two  others  were  tem- 
perate, one  drinking  moderately,  the 

*  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Theodore  Parker. 
By  John  Weiss.  Vol.  II.  p.  513. 


other  but  occasionally.  They  both  died 
of  consumption,  the  eldest  not  over  forty- 
five. 

"2.  Another  consumptive  family  in 
such  a  situation  as  has  been  already 
described  had  many  sons  and  several 
daughters.  The  daughters  were  all 
temperate,  married,  settled  elsewhere, 
had  children,  died  of  consumption,  be- 
queathing it  also  to  their  posterity.  But 
five  of  the  sons,  whom  I  knew,  were 
drunkards,  —  some,  of  the  extremest  de- 
scription ;  they  all  had  the  consumptive 
build,  and  in  early  life  showed  signs  of 
the  disease,  but  none  of  them  died  of 
it ;  some  of  them  are  still  burning  in 
rum.  There  was  one  brother  temper- 
ate, a  farmer,  living  in  the  healthiest 
situation.  But  I  was  told  he  died  some 
years  ago  of  consumption." 

To  these  facts  must  be  added  one 
more  woful  than  a  thousand  such,' — that 
Theodore  Parker  himself,  one  of  the 
most  valuable  lives  upon  the  Western 
Continent,  died  of  consumption  in  his 
fiftieth  year.  The  inference  which  Mr. 
Parker  drew  from  the  family  histories 
given  was  the  following  :  "  Intemperate 
habits  (where  the  man  drinks  a  pure, 
though  coarse  and  fiery,  liquor,  like 
New  England  rum)  tend  to  check  the 
consumptive  tendency,  though  the 
drunkard,  who  himself  escapes  the  con- 
sequences, may  transmit  the  fatal  seed 
to  his  children." 

There  is  not  much  comfort  in  this 
for  topers  ;  but  the  facts  are  interest- 
ing, and  have  their  value.  A  similar 
instance  is  related  by  Mr.  Charles 
Knight ;  although  in  this  case  the  poi- 
soned air  was  more  deadly,  and  more 
swift  to  destroy.  Mr.  Knight  speaks,  in 
his  Popular  History  of  England,  of  the 
"  careless  and  avaricious  employers " 
of  London,  among  whom,  he  says,  the 
master-tailors  were  the  most  notorious. 
Some  of  them  would  "  huddle  sixty  or 
eighty  workmen  close  together,  nearly 
knee  to  knee,  in  a  room  fifty  feet  long  by 
twenty  feet  broad,  lighted  from  above, 
where  the  temperature  in  summer  was 
thirty  degrees  higher  than  the  tempera- 
ture outside.  Young  men  from  the 
country  fainted  when  they  were  first 


202 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


[August, 


confined  in  such  a  life-destroying  pris- 
on ;  the  maturer  ones  sustained  them- 
selves by  gin,  till  they  perished  of  con- 
sumption, or  typhus,  or  delirium  tre- 
mens."* 

To  a  long  list  of  such  facts  as  these 
could  be  added  instances  in  which  the 
deadly  agent  was  other  than  poisoned 
air,  —  excessive  exertion,  very  bad  food, 
gluttony,  deprivation.  During  the  war  I 
knew  of  a  party  of  cavalry  who,  for  three 
days  and  three  nights,  were  not  out  of 
the  saddle  fifteen  minutes  at  a  time. 
The  men  consumed  two  quarts  of  whis- 
key each,  and  all  of  them  came  in  alive. 
It  is  a  custom  in  England  to  extract 
the  last  possible  five  miles  from  a  tired 
horse,  when  those  miles  ?mtst  be  had 
from  him,  by  forcing  down  his  most 
unwilling  throat  a  quart  of  beer.  It  is 
known,  too,  that  life  can  be  sustained 
for  many  years  in  considerable  vigor, 
upon  a  remarkably  short  allowance  of 
food,  provided  the  victim  keeps  his  sys- 
tem well  saturated  with  alcohol.  Trav- 
ellers across  the  plains  to  California 
tell  us  that,  soon  after  getting  past  St. 
Louis,  they  strike  a  region  where  the 
principal  articles  of  diet  are  saleratus 
and  grease,  to  which  a  little  flour  and 
pork  are  added  ;  upon  which,  they  say, 
human  life  cannot  be  sustained  unless 
the  natural  waste  of  the  system  is  re- 
tarded by  "  preserving  "  the  tissues  in 
whiskey.  Mr.  Greeley,  however,  got 
through  alive  without  resorting  to  this 
expedient,  but  he  confesses  in  one  of 
his  letters  that  he  suffered  pangs  and 
horrors  of  indigestion. 

All  such  facts  as  these  —  and  they 
could  be  collected  in  great  numbers  — 
indicate  the  real  office  of  alcohol  in  our 
modern  life  :  //  enables  us  to  violate 
the  laws  of  nature  without  immediate 
suffering  and  speedy  destruction.  This 
appears  to  be  its  chief  office,  in  con- 
junction with  its  ally,  tobacco.  Those 
tailors  would  have  soon  died  or  escaped 
but  for  the  gin  ;  and  those  horsemen 
would  have  given  up  and  perished  but 
for  the  whiskey.  Nature  commanded 
those  soldiers  to  rest,  but  they  were 

*  Quoted  by  Governor  Andrew,  in  his  "Argu- 
ment," from  Knight,  Vol.  VIII.  p.  392. 


enabled,  for  the  moment,  to  disobey 
her.  Doubtless  Nature  was  even  with 
them  afterwards  ;  but,  for  the  time,  they 
could  defy  their  mother  great  and  wise. 
Alcohol  supported  them  in  doing  wrong. 
Alcohol  and  tobacco  support  half  the 
modern  world  in  doing  wrong.  That  is 
their  part  —  their  role,  as  the  French 
investigators  term  it  —  in  the  present 
life  of  the  human  race. 

Dr.  Great  Practice  would  naturally 
go  to  bed  at  ten  o'clock,  when  he  comes 
in  from  his  evening  visits.  It  is  his 
cigar  that  keeps  him  up  till  half  past 
twelve,  writing  those  treatises  which 
make  him  famous,  and  shorten  his  life. 
Lawyer  Heavy  Fee  takes  home  his 
papers,  pores  over  them  till  past  one, 
and  then  depends  upon  whiskey  to 
quiet  his  brain  and  put  him  to  sleep. 
Young  Bohemian  gets  away  from  the 
office  of  the  morning  paper  which  en- 
joys the  benefit  of  his  fine  talents  at 
three  o'clock.  It  is  two  mugs  of  lager- 
beer  which  enable  him  to  endure  the 
immediate  consequences  of  eating  a 
supper  before  going  home.  This  is 
mad  work,  my  masters ;  it  is  respectable 
suicide,  nothing  better. 

There  is  a  paragraph  now  making 
the  grand  tour  of  the  newspapers, 
which  informs  the  public  that  there 
was  a  dinner  given  the  other  evening 
in  New  York  consisting  of  twelve 
courses,  and  kept  the  guests  five  hours 
at  the  table.  For  five  hours,  men  and 
women  sat  consuming  food,  occupying 
half  an  hour  at  each  viand.  What 
could  sustain  human  nature  in  such  an 
amazing  effort  ?  What  could  enable 
them  to  look  into  one  another's  faces 
without  blushing  scarlet  at  the  infamy 
of  such  a  waste  of  time,  food,  and  di- 
gestive force  ?  What  concealed  from 
them  the  iniquity  and  deep  vulgarity  of 
what  they  were  doing  ?  The  explana- 
tion of  this  mystery  is  given  in  the 
paragraph  that  records  the  crime  : 
"There  was  a  different  kind  of  wine 
for  each  course." 

Even  an  ordinary  dinner-party, — 
what  mortal  could  eat  it  through,  or 
sit  it  out,  without  a  constant  sipping 
of  wine  to  keep  his  brain  muddled,  and 


1868.] 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


203 


lash  his  stomach  to  unnatural  exertion. 
The  joke  of  it  is,  that  we  all  know  and 
confess  to  one  another  how  absurd  such 
banquets  are,  and  yet  few  have  the 
courage  and  humanity  to  feed  their 
friends  in  a  way  which  they  can  enjoy, 
and  feel  the  better  for  the  next  morn- 
ing. 

When  I  saw  Mr.  Dickens  eating  and 
drinking  his  way  through  the  elegantly 
bound  book  which  Mr.  Delmonico  sub- 
stituted for  the  usual  bill  of  fare  at  the 
dinner  given  by  the  Press  last  April  to 
the  great  artist,  —  a  task  of  three  hours' 
duration,  —  when,  I  say,  I  saw  Mr.  Dick- 
ens thus  engaged,  I  wondered  which 
banquet  was  the  furthest  from  being 
the  right  thing,  —  the  one  to  which  he 
was  then  vainly  trying  to  do  justice,  or 
the  one  of  which  Martin  Chuzzlewit 
partook,  on  the  day  he  landed  in  New 
York,  at  Mrs.  Pawkins's  boarding-hoose. 
The  poultry,  on  the  latter  occasion, 
"disappeared  as  if  every  bird  had  had 
the  use  of  its  wings,  and  had  flown 
in  desperation  down  a  human  throat. 
The  oysters,  stewed  and  pickled,  leaped 
from  their  capacious  reservoirs,  and 
slid  by  scores  into  the  mouths  of  the 
assembly.  The  sharpest  pickles  van- 
ished, whole  cucumbers  at  once,  like 
sugar-plums,  and  no  man  winked  his 
eye.  Great  heaps  of  indigestible  matter 
melted  away  as  ice  before  the  sun.  It 
was  a  solemn  and  an  awful  thing  to 
see."  Of  course,  the  company  ad- 
journed from  the  dining-room  to  "the 
bar-room  in  the  next  block,"  where 
they  imbibed  strong  drink  enough  to 
keep  their  dinner  from  prostrating 
them. 

The  Delmonico  banquet  was  a  very 
different  affair.  Our  public  dinners  are 
all  arranged  on  the  English  system  ; 
for  we  have  not  yet  taken  up  with  the 
fine,  sweeping  principle,  that  whatever 
is  right  for  England  is  wrong  for  Amer- 
ica. Hence,  not  a  lady  was  present! 
Within  a  day's  journey  of  New  York 
there  are  about  thirty  ladies  who  write 
regularly  for  the  periodical  press,  be- 
sides as  many  more,  perhaps,  who  con- 
tribute to  it  occasionally.  Many  editors, 
too,  derive  constant  and  important  as- 


sistance, in  the  exercise  of  their  pro- 
fession, from  their  wives  and  daughters, 
who  read  books  for  them,  suggest  top- 
ics, correct  errors,  and  keep  busy  edi- 
tors in  mind  of  the  great  truth  that  more 
than  one  half  the  human  race  is  female. 
Mrs.  Kemble,  who  had  a  treble  claim  to 
a  seat  at  that  table,  was  not  many  miles 
distant.  Why  were  none  of  these  gifted 
ladies  present  to  grace  and  enliven  the 
scene  ?  The  true  answer  is  :  Wine 
and  smoke  !  Not  our  wine  and  smoke, 
but  those  of  our  British  ancestors  who 
invented  public  dinners.  The  hospita- 
ble young  gentlemen  who  had  the  affair 
in  charge  would  have  been  delighted, 
no  doubt,  to  depart  from  the  established 
system,  but  hardly  liked  to  risk  so  tre- 
mendous an  innovation  on  an  occasion 
of  so  much  interest.  If  it  had  been  put 
to  the  vote  (by  ballot),  when  the  com- 
pany had  assembled,  Shall  we  have 
ladies  or  not  ?  all  the  hard  drinkers, 
all  the  old  smokers,  would  have  fur- 
tively written  "  not  "  upon  their  ballots. 
Those  who  drink  little  wine,  and  do  not 
depend  upon  that  little  ;  those  who  do 
not  smoke  or  can  easily  dispense  with 
smoke,  —  would  have  voted  for  the  la- 
dies ;  and  the  ladies  would  have  carried 
the  day  by  the  majority  which  is  so  hard 
to  get,  —  two  thirds. 

It  was  a  wise  man  who  discovered 
that  a  small  quantity  of  excellent  soup 
is  a  good  thing  to  begin  a  dinner  with. 
He  deserves  well  of  his  species.  The 
soup  allays  the  hungry  savage  within  us, 
and  restores  us  to  civilization  and  to 
one  another.  Nor  is  he  to  be  reckoned 
a  traitor  to  his  kind  who  first  proclaimed 
that  a  little  very  nice  and  dainty  fish,  hot 
and  crisp  from  the  fire,  is  a  pleasing  in- 
troduction to  more  substantial  viands. 
Six  oysters  upon  their  native  shell, 
fresh  from  their  ocean  home,  and  fresh- 
ly opened,  small  in  size,  intense  in  flavor, 
cool,  but  not  too  cold,  radiating  from  a 
central  quarter  of  a  lemon,  —  this,  too, 
was  a1  fine  conception,  worthy  of  the  age 
in  which  we  live.  But  in  what  language 
can  we  characterize  aright  the  aban- 
doned man  who  first  presumed  lo  tempt 
Christians  to  begin  a  repast  by  partak- 
ing of  all  three  of  these,  —  oysters, 


204 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


[August, 


soup,  andhsh.  ?  The  object  is  defeated. 
The  true  purpose  of  these  introductory 
trifles  is  to  appease  the  appetite  in  a 
slight  degree,  so  as  to  enable  us  to  take 
sustenance  with  composure  and  dignity, 
and  dispose  the  company  to  conversa- 
tion. When  a  properly  constituted  per- 
son has  eaten  six  oysters,  a  plate  of 
soup,  and  the  usual  portion  of  fish,  with 
the  proper  quantity  of  potatoes  and 
bread,  he  has  taken  as  much  sustenance 
as  nature  requires.  All  the  rest  of  the 
banquet  is  excess  ;  and  being  excess,  it 
is  also  mistake  ;  it  is  a  diminution  of 
the  sum-total  of  pleasure  which  the  re- 
past was  capable  of  affording.  But 
when  Mr.  Delmonico  had  brought  us 
successfully  so  far  on  our  way  through 
his  book ;  when  we  had  consumed  our 
oysters,  our  cream  of  asparagus  in  the 
Dumas  style,  our  kettle-drums  in  the 
manner  of  Charles  Dickens,  and  our 
trout  cooked  so  as  to  do  honor  to  Queen 
Victoria,  we  had  only  picked  up  a  few 
pebbles  on  the  shore  of  the  banquet, 
while  the  great  ocean  of  food  still 
stretched  out  before  us  illimitable.  The 
fillet  of  beef  after  the  manner  of  Lucul- 
lus,  the  stuffed  lamb  in  the  style  of  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  the  cutlets  a  la  Fenimore 
Cooper,  the  historic  pates,  the  sighs  of 
Mantalini,  and  a  dozen  other  efforts  of 
Mr.  Delmonico's  genius,  remained  to  be 
attempted. 

No  man  would  willingly  eat  or  sit 
through  such  a  dinner  without  plenty  of 
wine,  which  here  plays  its  natural  part, 
—  supporting  us  in  doing  wrong.  It  is 
the  wine  which  enables  people  to  keep 
on  eating  for  three  hours,  and  to  cram 
themselves  with  highly  concentrated 
food,  without  rolling  on  the  floor  in  ag- 
ony. It  is  the  wine  which  puts  it  with- 
in our  power  to  consume,  in  digesting 
one  dinner,  the  force  that  would  suffice 
for  the  digestion  of  three. 

On  that  occasion  Mr.  Dickens  was 
invited  to  visit  us  every  twenty-five 
years  "  for  the  rest  of  his  life,"  to  see 
how  we  are  getting  on.  The  Coming 
Man  may  be  a  guest  at  the  farewell  ban- 
quet which  the  Press  will  give  to  the 
venerable  author  in  1893.  That  banquet 
will  consist  of  three  courses  ;  and,  in- 


stead of  seven  kinds  of  wine  and  various 
brands  of  cigars,  there  will  be  at  every 
table  its  due  proportion  of  ladies,  the 
ornaments  of  their  own  sex,  the  in- 
structors of  ours,  the  boast  and  glory 
of  the  future  Press  of  America. 

Wine,  ale,  and  liquors,  administered 
strictly  as  medicine,  —  what  of  them  ? 
Doctors  differ  on  the  subject,  and  known 
facts  point  to  different  conclusions. 
Distinguished  physicians  in  England 
are  of  the  opinion  that  Prince  Albert 
would  be  alive  at  this  moment  if  no 
wine  had  been  given  him  during  his 
last  sickness  ;  but  there  were  formerly 
those  who  thought  that  the  Princess 
Charlotte  would  have  been  saved,  if,  at 
the  crisis  of  her  malady,  she  could  have 
had  the  glass  of  port  wine  which  she 
craved  and  asked  for.  The  biographers 
of  William  Pitt —  Lord  Macaulay  among 
them  —  tell  us,  that  at  fourteen  that 
precocious  youth  was  tormented  by  in- 
herited gout,  and  that  the  doctors  pre- 
scribed a  hair  of  the  same  dog  which 
had  bitten  his  ancestor  from  whom 
the  gout  was  derived.  The  boy,  we 
are  told,  used  to  consume  two  bottles 
of  port  a  day  ;  and,  after  keeping  up 
this  regimen  for  several  months,  he 
recovered  his  health,  and  retained  it 
until,  at  the  age  of  forty-seven,  the  news 
of  Ulm  and  Austerlitz  struck  him  mor- 
tal blows.  Professor  James  Miller,  of 
the  University  of  Edinburgh,  a  decided 
teetotaler,  declares  for  wine  in  bad 
cases  of  fever;  but  Dr.  R.  T.  Trail, 
another  teetotaler,  says  that  during 
the  last  twenty  years  he  has  treated 
hundreds  of  cases  of  fevers  on  the  cold- 
water  system,  and  "  not  yet  lost  the 
first  one "  ;  although,  during  the  first 
ten  years  of  his  practice,  when  he  gave 
wine  and  other  stimulants,  he  lost 
"  about  the  usual  proportion  of  cases." 
The  truth  appears  to  be  that,  in  a  few 
instances  of  intermittent  disease,  a 
small  quantity  of  wine  may  sometimes 
enable  a  patient  who  is  at  the  low  tide 
of  vitality  to  anticipate  the  turn  of  the 
tide,  and  borrow  at  four  o'clock  enough 
of  five  o'clock's  strength  to  enable  him 
to  reach  five  o'clock.  With  regard  to 
this  daily  drinking  of  wine  and  whiskey, 


1 868.] 


Will  the  Coming  Man  drink  Wine? 


205 


by  ladies  and  others,  for  mere  debility, 
it  is  a  delusion.  In  such  cases  wine 
is,  in  the  most  literal  sense  of  the  word, 
a  mocker.  It  seems  to  nourish,  but 
does  not ;  it  seems  to  warm,  but  does 
not ;  it  seems  to  strengthen,  but  does 
not.  It  is  an  arrant  cheat,  and  perpet- 
uates the  evils  it  is  supposed  to  alle- 
viate. 

The  Coming  Man,  as  before  remarked, 
will  not  drink  wine  when  he  is  well. 
It  will  be  also  an  article  of  his  religion 
not  to  commit  any  of  those  sins  against 
his  body  the  consequences  of  which 
can  be  postponed  by  drinking  wine. 
He  will  hold  his  body  in  veneration. 
He  will  feel  all  the  turpitude  and  shame 
of  violating  it.  He  will  not  acquire  the 
greatest  intellectual  good  by  the  small- 
est bodily  loss.  He  will  know  that  men- 
tal acquisitions  gained  at  the  expense 
of  physical  power  or  prowess  are  not 
culture,  but  effeminacy.  He  will  hon- 
or a  rosy  and  stalwart  ignoramus,  who 
is  also  an  honest  man,  faithfully  stand- 
ing at  his  post ;  but  he  will  start  back 
with  affright  and  indignation  at  the 
spectacle  of  a  pallid  philosopher.  The 
Coming  Man,  I  am  firmly  persuaded, 
will  not  drink  wine,  nor  any  other  stim- 
ulating fluid.  If  by  chance  he  should 
be  sick,  he  will  place  himself  in  the 
hands  of  the  Coming  Doctor,  and  take 
whatever  is  prescribed.  The  impres- 
sion is  strong  upon  my  mind,  after  read- 
ing almost  all  there  is  in  print  on  the 
subject,  and  conversing  with  many  phy- 
sicians, that  the  Coming  Doctor  will 
give  his  patients  alcoholic  mixtures 
about  as  often  as  he  will  give  them 
laudanum,  and  in  doses  of  about  the 
same  magnitude,  reckoned  by  drops. 

We  drinkers  have  been  in  the  habit, 
for  many  years,  of  playing  off  the  wine 
countries  against  the  teetotalers  ;  but 
even  this  argument  fails  us  when  we 
question  the  men  who  really  know  the 
wine  countries.  Alcohol  appears  to  be 
as  pernicious  to  man  in  Italy,  France, 
and  Southern  Germany,  where  little  is 
taken  except  in  the  form  of  wine,  as  it 
is  in  Sweden,  Scotland,  Russia,  Eng- 
land, and  the  United  States,  where 
more  fiery  and  powerful  dilutions  are 


usual.  Fenimore  Cooper  wrote  :  "  I 
came  to  Europe  under  the  impression 
that  there  was  more  drunkenness  among 
us  than  in  any  other  country,  —  England, 
perhaps,  excepted.  A  residence  of  six 
months  in  Paris  changed  my  views  en- 
tirely ;  I  have  taken  unbelievers  with 
me  into  the  streets,  and  have  never 
failed  to  convince  them  of  their  mistake 

in  the  course  of  an  hour On  one 

occasion  a  party  of  four  went  out  with 
this  object ;  we  passed  thirteen  drunken 
men  within  a  walk  of  an  hour,  —  many 
of  them  were  so  far  gone  as  to  be  total- 
ly unable  to  walk In  passing  be- 
tween Paris  and  London,  I  have  been 
more  struck  by  drunkenness  in  the 
streets  of  the  former  than  in  those  of 
the  latter."  Horatio  Greenough  gives 
similar  testimony  respecting  Italy: 
"  Many  of  the  more  thinking  and  pru- 
dent Italians  abstain  from  the  use  of 
wine  ;  several  of  the  most  eminent  of 
the  medical  men  are  notoriously  op- 
posed to  its  use,  and  declare  it  a  poison. 
One  fifth,  and  sometimes  one  fourth,  of 
the  earnings  of  the  laborers  are  expend- 
ed in  wine." 

I  have  been  surprised  at  the  quantity, 
the  emphasis,  and  th'e  uniformity  of  the 
testimony  on  this  point.  Close  observ- 
ers of  the  famous  beer  countries,  such 
as  Saxony  and  Bavaria,  where  the  beer 
is  pure  and  excellent,  speak  of  this  de- 
licious liquid  as  the  chief  enemy  of  the 
nobler  faculties  and  tastes  of  human 
nature.  The  surplus  wealth,  the  sur- 
plus time,  the  surplus  force  of. those 
nations  are  chiefly  expended  in  fuddling 
the  brain  with  beer.  Now,  no  reader  of 
this  periodical  needs  to  be  informed 
that  the  progress  of  man,  of  nations, 
and  of  men  depends  upon  the  use  they 
make  of  their  little  surplus.  It  is  not  a 
small  matter,  but  a  great  and  weighty 
consideration, — the  cost  of  these  drinks 
in  mere  money.  We  drinkers  must 
make  out  a  very  clear  case  in  order  to 
justify  such  a  country  as  France  in  pro- 
ducing a  billion  and  a  half  of  dollars1 
worth  of  wine  and  brandy  per  annum. 

The  teetotalers,  then,  are  rirjlit  in 
their  leading  positions,  and  yet  they 
stand  aghast,  wondering  at  their  failure 


2OO 


Will  the  Coining  Matt  drink  Wine? 


[August, 


to  convince  mankind.  Mr.  E.  G.  Dela- 
van  writes  from  Paris  within  these  few 
weeks :  "  When  I  was  here  thirty 
years  since,  Louis  Philippe  told  me 
that  wine  was  the  curse  of  France ; 
that  he  wished  every  grape-vine  was 
destroyed,  except  for  the  production  of 
food ;  that  total  abstinence  was  the 
only  true  temperance;  but  he  did  not 
believe  there  were  fifteen  persons  in 
Paris  who  understood  it  as  it  was  un- 
derstood by  his  family  and  myself; 
but  he  hoped  from  the  labors  in  Amer- 
ica, in  time,  an  influence  would  flow 
back  upon  France  that  would  be  bene- 
ficial. I  am  here  again  after  the  lapse 
of  so  many  years,  and,  in  place  of  wit- 
nessing any  abatement  of  the  evil,  I 
think  it  is  on  the  increase,  especially  in 
the  use  of  distilled  spirits." 

The  teetotalers  have  always  under- 
rated the  difficulty  of  the  task  they  have 
undertaken,  and  misconceived  its  na- 
ture. It  is  not  the  great  toe  that  most 
requires  treatment  when  a  man  has  the 
gout,  although  it  is  the  great  toe  that 
makes  him  roar.  When  we  look  about 
us,  and  consider  the  present  physical 
life  of  man,  we  are  obliged  to  conclude 
that  the  whole  head  is  sick  and  the 
whole  heart  is  faint.  Drinking  is  but 
a  symptom  which  reveals  the  malady. 
Perhaps,  if  we  were  all  to  stop  our  guz- 
zling suddenly,  without  discontinuing 
our  other  bad  habits,  we  should  rather 
lose  by  it  than  gain.  Alcohol  supports 
us  in  doing  wrong !  It  prevents  our 
immediate  destruction.  The  thing  for 
us  to  do  is,  to  strike  at  the  causes  of 
drinking,  to  cease  the  bad  breathing, 
the  bad  eating,  the  bad  reading,  the 
bad  feeling  and  bad  thinking,  which,  in 
a  sense,  necessitate  bad  drinking.  For 
some  of  the  teetotal  organizations  might 
be  substituted  Physical  Welfare  Socie- 
ties. 

The  Human  Race  is  now  on  trial  for 
its  life  !  One  hundred  and  three  years 
ago  last  April  James  Watt,  a  poor 
Scotch  mechanic,  while  taking  his  walk 
on  Sunday  afternoon  on  Glasgow  Green, 
conceived  the  idea  which  has  made 
steam  man's  submissive  and  untiring 
slave.  Steam  enables  the  fifteen  mil- 


lions of  adults  in  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland  to  produce  more  commod:  js 
than  the  whole  population  of  the  earth 
could  produce  without  its  assistance. 
Steam,  plus  the  virgin  soil  of  two  new 
continents,  has  placed  the  means  of 
self-destruction  within  the  reach  of 
hundreds  of  millions  of  human  beings 
whose  ancestors  were  almost  as  safe 
in  their  ignorance  and  poverty  as  the 
beasts  they  attended.  At  the  same 
time,  the  steam-engine  is  an  infuriate 
propagator  ;  and  myriad  creatures  of  its 
producing—  creatures. of  eager  desires, 
thin  brains,  excessive  vanity,  and  small 
self-control  —  seem  formed  to  bend  the 
neck  to  the  destructive  tyranny  of  fash- 
ion, and  yield  helplessly  to  the  more  de- 
structive tyranny  of  habit.  The  steam- 
engine  gives  them  a  great  variety  of 
the  means  of  self-extirpation,  —  air-tight 
houses,  labor-saving  machines,  luxuri- 
ous food,  stimulating  drinks,  highly 
wrought  novels,  and  many  others.  Let 
all  women  for  the  next  century  but 
wear  such  restraining  clothes  as  are 
now  usual,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  the  race 
could  ever  recover  from  the  effects  ;  it 
is  doubtful  if  there  could  ever  again  be 
a  full-orbed,  bouncing  baby.  Wherever 
we  look,  we  see  the  human  race  dwin- 
dling. The  English  aristocracy  used 
to  be  thought  an  exception,  but  Miss 
Nightingale  says  not.  She  tells  us,  that 
the  great  houses  of  England,  like  the 
small  houses  of  America,  contain  great- 
grandmothers  possessing  constitutions 
without  a  flaw,  grandmothers  but  slight- 
ly impaired,  mothers  who  are  often  ail- 
ing and  never  strong,  daughters  who 
are  miserable  and  hopeless  invalids. 
And  the  steam-engine  has  placed  effi- 
cient means  of  self-destruction  within 
reach  of  the  kitchen,  the  stable,  the 
farm,  and  the  shop  ;  and  those  means 
of  self-destruction  are  all  but  univer- 
sally used. 

Perhaps  man  has  nearly  run  his 
course  in  this  world,  and  is  about  to 
disappear,  like  the  mammoth,  and  give 
place  to  some  nobler  kind  of  creature 
who  will  manage  the  estate  better  than 
the  present  occupant.  Certainly  we 
cannot  boast  of  having  done  very  well 


1 868.] 


Worldly  Wise. 


207 


with  it,  nor  could  we  complain  if  we 
shc/M  receive  notice  to  leave.  Per- 
haps james  Watt  came  into  the  world 
to  extinguish  his  species.  If  so,  it  is 
well.  Let  us  go  on,  eating,  drinking, 
smoking,  over-working,  idling,  men  kill- 
ing themselves  to  buy  clothes  for  their 
wives,  wives  killing  themselves  by 
wearing  them,  children  petted  and  can- 
died into  imbecility  and  diphtheria.  In 
that  case,  of  course,  there  will  be  no 
Coming  Man,  and  we  need  not  take 
the  trouble  to  inquire  what  he  will 
do. 


But  probably  the  instinct  of  self-pres- 
ervation will  assert  itself  in  time,  and 
an  antidote  to  the  steam-engine  will  be 
found  before  it  has  impaired  the  whole 
race  beyond  recovery.  To  have  dis- 
covered the  truth  with  regard  to  the 
effects  of  alcohol  upon  the  system  was 
of  itself  no  slight  triumph  of  the  self- 
preserving  principle.  It  is  probable 
that  the  truly  helpful  men  of  the  next 
hundred  years  will  occupy  themselves 
very  much  with  the  physical  welfare  of 
the  race,  without  which  no  other  wel- 
fare is  possible. 


WORLDLY    WISE. 

IT  was  the  boatman  Ronsalee, 
And  he  sailed  through  the  mists  so  white; 
And  two  little  ladies  sat  at  his  knee, 
With  their  two  little  heads  so  bright; 
And  so  they  sailed  and  sailed  —  all  three  — 
On  the  golden  coast  o'  the  night. 

Young  Ronsalee  had  a  handsome  face, 
And  his  great  beard  made  him  brown  ; 
And  the  two  little  ladies  in  girlish  grace 
They  kept  their  eyelids  down, — 
The  one  in  her  silken  veil  of  lace, 
And  the  one  in  her  woolsey  gown. 

For  one  little  lady  lived  in  the  wood, 

Like  a  flower  that  hides  from  the  day ; 

Her  name  was  Jenny,  —  they  called  her  the  good. 

And  the  name  o'  the  other  was  May  ; 

And  her  palace  windows  looked  on  the  flood, 

Where  they  softly  sailed  away. 

Long  time  the  balance  even  -stood 

With  our  Ronsalee  that  day; 

But  what  was  a  little  house  in  the  wood 

To  a  palace  grand  and  gay  ? 

So  he  gave  his  heart  to  Jenny,  the  good, 

And  his  hand  he  gave  to  May. 


208 


De  Piscium  Natura. 


[August, 


DE     PISCIUM     NATURA. 


HPHERE  was  one  woodcut  in  the  pri- 
-1  mary  geography  which  alone  was 
well  worth  the  price  of  the  book,  and 
that  was  "  Indians  spearing  Salmon." 
There  were  other  woodcuts  of  decided 
merit ;  exempli  gratia,  the  view  of  a 
"  civilized  and  enlightened  "  nation, 
wherein  a  severely  stiff  gentleman  is 
taking  off  his  bell-crowned  hat  to  a 
short-waisted  lady  in  a  coal-scuttle 
bonnet.  But  "  Indians  spearing  Sal- 
mon "  was  a  great  deal  better.  Two  of 
them  there  were,  with  not  much  cloth- 
ing save  a  spear,  wherewith  they  were 
threatening  certain  fishes  that,  like  ani- 
mated shoe-soles,  were  springing  nimbly 
against  a  waterfall.  An  almost  mythi- 
cal romance  overspread  the  scene ;  for 
Indians  and  Salmon  are  long  since  lost 
to  us,  and  only  a  vanishing  form  of 
them  still  lingers  in  the  half-breeds  and 
the  sea-trout  of  Marshpee,  just  as  the 
alligator  now  brings  to  mind  the  great 
fossil  saurians  he  so  degenerately  rep- 
resents. Yet  our  woodcut  is  not  at  all 
mythical,  but  really  historical.  Does 
not  excellent  Gookin  inform  us  of  the 
notable  "  fishing -place"  at  Wamesit, 
where  Reverendus  Eliot  "spread  the 
net  of  the  Gospel "  to  fish  for  the  souls 
of  the  poor  Indian  pagans  ?  Alas  !  all 
this  is  replaced  by  the  High  Honorable 
Locks  and  Canals  Company,  and  the 
turbine  and  other  not  easily  understood 
water-wheels,  of  Lowell.  Not  that  we 
have  anything  against  the  High  Hon- 
orable, the  only  old-fashioned  corpo- 
ration we  know  of  that  invites  offi- 
cial persons  to  dine,  —  a  praiseworthy 
custom,  followed  not  even  by  the  Mas- 
sachusetts Hospital  Life  Insurance  Of- 
fice ;  although  some  of  the  insurance 
companies  keep  crackers,  and  others 
ginger-nuts,  whereby  certain  worthy  old 
gentlemen,  who  have  not  more  than  a 
million,  or,  at  the  outside,  a  million  and 
a  half,  make  a  clear  daily  saving  (Sun- 
days excepted)  in  the  matter  of  lun- 
cheon. But  the  High  Honorable  gives 


you  a  real  dinner  chez  mine  host  Mr. 
T.,  no  less  a  man  than  the  discoverer 
and  owner  of  the  celebrated  "Black- 
hawk,"  —  and  yet  so  little  puffed  up  by 
this  distinction,  that,  with  his  proper 
hands,  he  will  bring  in  the  breaded  pigs' 
feet  for  which  his  house  is  noted.  Also 
he  has  invented  a  safe,  which,  like  the 
Union  Deposit  Vaults,  is  to  be  forced 
nee  igne  nee  ferro;  for,  being  asked 
how  he  secured  the  Oleroso  Sherry  of 
the  High  Honorable,  he  replied  that  it 
was  in  a  place  where  no  harm  ever 
could  come  to  it,  —  to  wit,  under  his 
bed.  Is  it  not  a  pity  he  cannot  serve  a 
Salmon  taken  in  its  season,  glittering, 
from  Pawtucket  Falls  ? 

When  the  apple-trees  of  our  thrifty 
forefathers  were  bursting  into  blossom 
on  the  banks  of  the  Merrimack,  and  the 
land  was  furrowed  for  the  corn  and  the 
pumpkins,  and  the  pleasant  river  itself 
was  running  swift  and  full,  then  the 
great  silver  Salmon,  fresh  from  the  salt 
water,  would  leap  and  tumble  as  they 
drove  up  stream,  bound  for  the  cold 
brooks  of  the  Pemigewasset,  or  away 
beyond  it  to  those  of  Franconia  Notch. 
With  them  came  great  battalions  of 
Shad ;  and  hosts  of  homely  Alevvives, 
that  forced  themselves  through  every 
little  rivulet  as  they  crowded  to  their 
breeding-ponds.  The  Shad  held  so- 
berly to  the  main  stream  till  they  came 
to  the  Winnipiseogee  River,  where 
they  said  au  revoir  to  the  Salmon,  and 
turned  their  heads  toward  the  lake. 
That  lake  knows  them  no  more,  yet 
there  is  a  fish  therein  that  still  is  called 
the  Shad-w^//<?r,  who  perhaps  regards 
his  friend  as  a  sort  of  "  Malbrook,"  and 
who  yearly  repeats  to  himself,  "  II  re- 
viendra  au  Paque  ou  a  la  Trinite." 
Yes!  the  two  Indians  of  the  woodcut 
have  gone,  and  their  Salmon  have 
gone.  We  don't  want  the  Indians  back 
again,  but  we  should  like  the  Salmon  ; 
we  should  like  to  stand  on  the  Dracut 
shore,  and  hook  a  twenty-pound  fish, 


1 868.] 


De  Piscium  Nattira. 


209 


without  the  risk  of  having  our  scalp 
nailed  to  the  gates  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Cotton  Mills. 

When  we  asked  Mr.  Madder  Spin- 
ney why  there  were  no  longer  fish  in 
the  river,  that  enterprising  mill-owner 
replied,  that  it  was  "  owing  to  the  pro- 
gress of  civilization";  whereupon  we 
were  led  to  wonder,  whether,  if  we 
should  cut  all  the  belting  in  his  mill, 
Mr.  Spinney  would  say  the  machinery 
stopped  by  reason  of  the  progress  of 
civilization.  Spinney  junior  is  getting 
his  education  at  Harvard,  and  there  he 
will  probably  learn  enough  to  under- 
stand that  the  fish  were  not  taken  care 
of,  and  therefore  disappeared.  If  com- 
pelled to  write  a  forensic  on  the  sub- 
ject, he  might  get  enough  information 
to  tell  the  following  sad  tale  of  the  de- 
struction of  the  Autochthonoi. 

Less  than  a  century  ago  people  were 
seized  with  a  beaver-like  desire  to  build 
dams.  They  called  themselves  slack- 
water  companies,  —  which  referred,  per- 
haps, to  their  finances.  These  dams 
bothered  the  fish,  for  no  way  was  given 
to  help  them  over,  notwithstanding  the 
old  Crown  law,  and  notwithstanding 
learned  decisions,  as  in  Stoughton  ver- 
sus Baker;  for  the  beavers  cared  not 
for  Crown  law,  and  took  no  kind  of  in- 
terest in  Mr.  Stoughton  or  Mr.  Baker. 
So  the  Salmon  and  Shad  were  dimin- 
ished, yet  not  destroyed.  Now  ingen- 
ious gentlemen  used  to  go  up  to 
Chelmsford  and  Dracut,  and  gaze  at  the 
river.  Perhaps  they  considered  how 
slack  the  water  was.  At  any  rate  they 
soon  began  to  resolve  great  things.  If, 
thought  they,  a  mill-pond  will  turn  a 
wheel  to  grind  corn,  why  not  also  a 
wheel  to  spin  cotton  ?  and  why  not 
thus  spin  a  great  deal  of  cotton  ?  So 
they  began  ;  while  the  merchants  looked 
on  with  horror  at  this  prospect  of  sev- 
eral thousand  yards  of  cloth  to  be  cast, 
in  one  vast  flood,  upon  the  market. 

Next  year  the  sober  Shad,  making 
their  usual  rush  at  the  sloping  face  of 
the  Pawtucket  Falls  dam,  had  a  tough 
thing  of  it.  Some  got  over,  and  some 
had  to  fall  back,  all  out  of  breath,  and 
take  another  run.  Never  had  their 

VOL.  XXIL  — NO.  130.  14 


dignity  been  so  tried.  The  fact  is,  the 
dam  had  been  raised.  It  is  true  the 
Salmon  made  nothing  of  it.  The  lazy 
ones  went  up  the  sloping  part,  while 
the  more  lively  jumped  the  steeper  por- 
tions ;  and  one  active  fellow,  incited  by 
his  lady-love,  who  was  peeking  over 
the  crest  of  the  fall  at  him,  made  such  a 
frantic  bound  at  the  "corner,"  that  he 
threw  himself  ten  feet  out  of  water,  and 
came  down,  slosh,  in  the  mill-pond 
above,  to  the  delight  of  the  females, 
though  his  own  sex  said  anybody  could 
do  it  who  chose  to  try.  The  fishermen 
looked  with  apprehension  on  these  in- 
creasing difficulties,  and  threatened  to 
pull  the  dam  down  ;  but  the  gentlemen, 
from  being  ingenious,  as  aforesaid,  now 
became  defiant,  and  expressed  them- 
selves to  this  effect,  namely,  that  they 
should  like  to  see  the  fishermen  do  it 
This  was  sarcasm  ;  and  though  Whate- 
ly  says  sarcasm  should  be  used  spar- 
ingly, in  this  instance  the  effect  was 
good,  and  the  dam  remained. 

By  this  time,  what  with  seines,  pots, 
dip-nets,  spears,  hooks,  dams,  and  mills, 
the  fisheries  were  in  a  poor  way ;  and 
the  old  New  Hampshire  lady  who  used 
to  spear  Salmon  with  a  pitchfork  could 
do  so  no  more.  The  fishes  whimpered, 
and  would  have  whimpered  much  more 
had  they  known  what  was  coming. 

Certain  Pentakosiomedimnoi  of  Ath- 
ens determined  to  put  a  hotbed  of 
manufactures  in  a  corner  of  An-dover, 
on  the  Merrimack,  and  to  grow  mills, 
like  early  lettuce,  all  in  four  weeks. 
They  spoke 

"  The  words  that  cleft  Eildon  hills  in  three," 
"  And  bridled  the  Tweed  with  a  curb  of  stone  "  ; 

and,  when  the  Salmon  and  the  Shad 
came  up  the  next  spring,  they  ran  their 
noses  against  a  granite  scarp,  twenty- 
three  feet  high,  from  whose  crest  fell  a 
thundering  cataract.  The  Shad  rolled 
up  their  eyes  at  it,  waggled  their  tails, 
and  fell  down  stream  to  Marston's  Fer- 
ry. The  Salmon,  springing  and  plung- 
ing, eagerly  reconnoitred  the  position 
from  wing  to  wing.  At  last  one  lively 
grilse  cried  out :  "  Here  is  a  sort  of 
trough  coming  down  from  the  top  !  but 


210 


De  Piscium  Natura. 


[August, 


it 's  awful  steep  !  "  "  Stand  aside," 
shouted  the  hoarse  voice  of  an  old 
male  Salmon,  whose  glorious  hooked 
jaw  penetrated  his  upper  lip,  and  stood 
out  two  inches  above  his  nose.  And 
with  that  he  rushed  tete  baissee  against 
the  torrent.  An  old  fisherman  who  was 
standing  on  the  abutment  suddenly  ex- 
chimed  :  "There  was  a  whopper  tried 
it !  He  got  half-way  up  ;  but  it  ain't  no 
kkid  er  use.  I  told  them  County  Com- 
missioners that  the  only  way  they  would 
get  fish  up  that  fishway  was  to  hitch 
a  rope  to  'em.  But  they  was  like  all 
folks  that  don't  know  nothin',  —  they 
thought  they  knew  all  about  it." 

The    Lawrence  dam   and  its   noted 
fishway  (constructed  "to   the   satisfac- 
tion  of  the   County   Commissioners  ") 
made  an  end  of  the  Salmon,  because 
they  can  hatch  their  eggs  only  in  the 
mountain  brooks  ;  but  the  Shad  could 
breed  in  warmer  and  more  turbid  wa- 
ters, and  they  therefore   continued   to 
flourish  in  a  limited  sort  of  way.     Time 
went  on.      Children   who  ate   of   the 
last  shad  of  New   Hampshire  waters 
had   grown  to  man's   estate,  and  the 
memory  of   the    diet    of   their    youth 
seemed  to  have  died  within  them  ;  but 
it  slept  only.     In   the   year    1865   they 
rose  as  one  man  and  as  one  woman, 
and  cried :  "  Give  us  the  flesh-pots  of 
our  youth,  the  Salmon  and  the  Shad, 
and  the  Alewife,  and  the  fatness  there- 
of !  or  we  will  divert  all  the  waters  of 
the  great  Lake  Winnipiseogee  into  the 
Piscataqua,  which   runs   down   to   the 
sea  over  against  Portsmouth  ! "     These 
cries  came  to  the  ears   of  the    Penta- 
kosiomedimnoi,   the    High    Honorable 
Locks  and  Canals,  and  all  the  Manda- 
rins  of  the    Red   Button   that  are   in 
and  about  Franklin  Street.     They  took 
counsel  together.     "  Do  nothing  about 
it !  "  said  the  Mandarins.    "  Pay  them," 
suggested     the     Pentakosiomedimnoi. 
"Dine  them  —  Blackhawk  —  pigs'  feet," 
murmured  the  High  Honorable.     Here 
the  echoes  seemed  to  say  "  Fishway  s  !  " 
This  was  a  dreadful  word,  because  to 
them  a  fishway  (other  than   that  of  a 
County  Commissioner)  was  a  big  gap 
to  let  all  the  water  out  of  a  mill-pond. 


They  appeared  in  force  before  the  Leg- 
islature with  a  panathenaic  chorus. 

PARHODOS.* 

O  honorable  Areopagites 

lo!  Io!  — 

Zeus  the  earth-shaker, 

Poseidon,  heaver  of  the  waves, 

Send  us  water  ;  — 

Hephaistos,  the  iron-worker, 

And  his  much  skilful  Kuklops 

Give  us  power : 

Do  not  those  wretches  who  cry 

Fish !  Fish  I 

Strive  against  the  immortal  Gods  ? 

The  Legislature  did  what  everybody 
ought  to  do  who  has  any  responsibility  : 
namely,  first,   not  to  assume   said  re- 
sponsibility ;   secondly,   to  gain  time  ; 
thirdly,  to  get  somebody  else  to  do  the 
work.     The  somebody  else  took  on  the 
form  of  two  commissioners,  —  the  very 
"  official  persons  "  already  referred  to. 
These  proceeded  to  collect  information. 
They  cross-questioned   the   oldest  in- 
habitants, and  got  crooked   answers  ; 
they  entered  into  the  mysteries  of  flash- 
boards,  and  investigated  the  properties 
of  garancine  ;  they  wandered  on   the 
river-banks   after   the    manner   of   the 
spotted    tatler   (Totanus   macularius} ; 
and  at  last  they  made  a  report  only  fifty 
pages  long,  the  brevity  of  which  proved 
two    negative    points :    first,   that    the 
commissioners  were  not  congressmen  : 
and,  second,  that  they  had  never  writ- 
ten for  newspapers  or  for  periodicals. 
Thereupon    the    Legislature,   gratified 
beyond   measure,  said  :   "  Good  boys  ! 
now   work    some   more.      Build    some 
fishvvays.     Breed  some  fish.     And  here 
is  a  check  to  pay  for  it  all."     Thus  en- 
couraged, the  official  persons  did  build 
fishways,  especially  a  big  one  at  Law- 
rence in  place  of  the  singular  trough 
already  referred   to.     But,   when   they 
came  to  Holyoke,  on  the  Connecticut, 
the    Wooden-Dam-and-Nutmeg    Com- 
pany there   dwelling  were  inclined   to 
the    papal    aphorism,   Non  possumus, 
which  is  equivalent  to  Mr.  Toodles's 
"  It 's  not  quite  in  our  line ;   and  we 
really  can't."     The  fact  is,   the   Nut- 

*  Those  who  have  studied  the  useful  metrical 
works  of  our  universities  will  know  that  this  is  an 
iambic  trimeter  acatalectic  in  pyrrichium  aut  iambum. 
Those  who  do  not  know  this  are  to  be  pitied. 


1 868.] 


De  Piscium  Natiira. 


211 


megs  had  a  "  charter  "  which  they  held 
to  be  a  sovereign  balm  for  fishways, 
and  which  they  fulminated  against  the 
official  persons,  as  William  the  Testy 
fulminated  his  proclamation  against  the 
Yankee  onion  patches.  This,  and  the 
high  water  of  that  summer,  retarded 
the  development  of  the  fishway  for  the 
time  being  ;  but  meanwhile  important 
incubations  were  going  on  just  below 
the  dam, —  nothing  less,  indeed,  than 
the  hatching  of  Shad  by  an  artificial 
method.  All  this  is  something  to  be 
explained,  and  deserves  a  new  para- 
graph. 

In  the  times  of  the  later  Roman  em- 
perors, to  such  a  pitch  had  luxury  risen, 
that  a  mullet  was  often  sold  —  No ! 
this  is  a  little  too  bad  ;  you  shall  not  be 
bored  with  dreadful  old  stories  of  Heli- 
ogabalus  and  oysters,  or  of  the  cruel 
gourmet  with  his  "in  mnrtznas"  Well, 
then,  start  once  more:  In  the  Middle 
Ages,  when  Europe  was  overshadowed 
by  monkish  superstition,  the  observ- 
ance of  Lent  rendered  a  large  supply  of 
fish  necessary ;  fish-ponds  were  there- 
fore —  Oh  !  there  we  go  again,  more 
prosy  than  ever.  Come,  now,  let  us  get 
at  once  to  Joseph  Rdmy.  Joseph  R6- 
my,  a  man  of  humble  station  and  slight 
education,  but  of  studious  and  reflec- 
tive temperament,  was  one  of  those  in- 
stances, more  common  in  America  than 
abroad,  where  a  man,  without  the  ex- 
ternal advantages  of  culture  or  of  for- 
tune, rises  by  his  own  efforts  to  a  well- 
deserved  eminence.  He  was  a —  yes, 
and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  The  fact  is, 
Rdmy  found  he  could  squeeze  the  eggs 
out  of  fishes,  and  hatch  them  after- 
wards ;  and  so  can  anybody  else  who 
chooses  to  try,  and  who  will  take  pains 
enough.  We  have  had  Columbus  and 
the  hen's  egg ;  now  we  have  Rdmy  and 
the  fish  egg.  As  to  the  exact  manner 
of  hatching  fish,  is  it  not  written  in  the 
report  of  the  Commissioners  for  this 
year,*  and  in  the  report  of  the  United 
*  House  Document  No.  60  (z868). 


States  Commissioner  of  Agriculture  for 
1866,  and  in  the  "Voyages"  of  Pro- 
fessor Coste,  and  in  five  hundred  books 
and  papers  beside  ? 

From  this  fish  culture,  if  we  will  only 
make  it  a  real  industry  in  this  Com- 
monwealth, may  come  important  addi- 
tions to  our  bill  of  fare.  Many  things 
are  more  pleasant  than  paying  as  much 
as  we  now  do  for  animal  food.  Fish, 
flesh,  and  fowl  are  all  as  dear  as  dear 
can  be ;  and,  what  is  worse,  they  are  hard 
to  come  at,  for  our  back-country  peo- 
ple, during  the  hot  weather.  We  have 
two  goodly  rivers  in  Massachusetts, 
and  plenty  of  streams,  brooks,  ponds, 
pools,  and  springs.  We  cultivate  corn 
and  potatoes  on  the  land  (and  lose 
money  on  every  bushel) ;  why  not  culti- 
vate fish  in  the  waters,  and  make  mon- 
ey ?  There  are  two  secrets  at  the  foun- 
dation of  success.  First,  fishes  must 
be  taken  from  the  domain  of  game,  and 
become  property.  Secondly,  the  fishes 
must  be  fed  for  nothing ;  and  the  way 
to  do  that  is  to  breed  multitudes  of  her- 
bivorous or  of  insectivorous  fishes  to 
feed  the  carnivorous  fishes,  which,  in 
turn,  are  to  feed  man.  Thus,  if  you 
have  a  thousand  Trout,  do  you  breed 
for  their  diet  a  million  Shiners;  and 
these  will  take  care  of  themselves,  ex- 
cept in  the  matter  of  getting  caught  by 
the  Trout.  So  much  for  domestic  cul- 
ture, —  our  fish-coop,  as  we  may  come  to 
call  it.  Then,  as  to  the  encouragement 
of  migratory  sea-fishes,  —  the  Salmon, 
Sea-trout,  Shad,  Bass,  Alewife,  Stur- 
geon, —  if  you  would  have  children, 
you  must  have  a  nursery  ;  if  you  would 
have  fish,  you  must  extend  their  breed- 
ing-grounds. Open,  then,  the  ten  thou- 
sand dams  that  bar  our  streams,  and, 
with  care  and  patience,  these  waters 
will  be  peopled  ;  and  we,  whose  mother 
earth  is  so  barren,  will  find  that  mother 
sea  will  each  year  send  abundant  food 
into  every  brook  that  empties  into  a 
stream,  that  flows  into  a  river,  that 
runs  to  the  ocean. 


212        Notre  Dame  and  the  Advent  of  Gothic  Architecture.    [August, 


NOTRE  DAME  AND  THE  ADVENT  OF  GOTHIC 
ARCHITECTURE. 


Q  EVEN  centuries  the  towers  of  Notre 
O  Dame  have  risen  over  the  island 
city  of  Paris.  The  ages  have  gnawed 
their  solemn  stones,  and  filled  their 
scars  with  the  dust,  and  tinted  their  old 
walls  with  the  gray  of  all  antique  things. 
Raised  by  a  humanity  that  is  immortal, 
the  rude  movements  of  revolutions,  the 
tooth  and  rigor  of  the  winds  and  rains, — 
all  the  unchronicled  violences  of  time, — 
have  not  altered  the  grandeur  of  their 
essential  forms.  Square,  firm,  majestic, 
they  stand  to-day  over  modern  Paris  as 
they  stood  yesterday  over  the  pointed 
roofs  and  narrow  streets  of  the  ancient 
city.  They  make  us  know  the  grand 
spirit  and  ancient  vigor  of  a  people 
who  had  none  of  the  things  that  are 
the  boast  of  the  modern  man.  They 
are  the  work  of  a  people  who  were 
united  and  almost  democratic  without 
the  newspaper  and  the  railway,  —  a  peo- 
ple who  were  poets  and  artists  without 
critics,  skilled  workmen  without  printed 
encyclopaedias,  religious  without  tract 
societies  and  sectarian  journals. 

The  grand  cathedrals  were  simulta- 
neously begun  in  the  rich  cities  of 
France  in  what  was  called  at  the  time 
the  royal  domain.  During  the  twelfth 
century  the  people  exhibited  an  extraor- 
dinary political  movement  for  consolida- 
tion, and  of  emancipation  from  local 
powers.  They  ranged  themselves  un- 
der the  large  ideas  of  religion  and  mon- 
archy. Led  by  the  bishops,  stimulated 
by  the  monks,  instructed  by  the  archi- 
tects, they  erected  the  cathedrals  as 
visible  types  of  something  more  mighty 
than  barons,  lords,  and  counts.  They 
created  in  a  grand  effort  of  enthusiasm 
religious  monuments  and  national  edi- 
fices. It  was  from  the  union  of  all  the 
forces  of  France  of  the  twelfth  century 
that  the  cathedrals  were  projected.  No 
human  work  was  ever  more  grandly 
nourished  or  more  boldly  conceived. 

To-day   we  have  marvellous   agents 


for  the  rapid  and  sure  communication 
of  peoples  and  of  thoughts  ;  then  they 
made  great  sanctuaries  for  each  stricken 
soul,  and  visible  proofs  of  the  power  of 
religious  faith. 

In  the  cathedrals  that  raised  their 
grave  and  sculptured  walls  over  the 
castles  of  dukes  and  barons  to  humble 
them,  over  the  houses  of  the  poor  to 
console  them,  all  the  facts,  dreams,  and 
superstitions  of  their  life  in  the  Dark 
Ages  were  embodied.  The  cathedral 
stones  held  the  memorials  of  the  awful 
years  of  suffering  and  gross  superstition 
that  had  afflicted  populations  after  the 
dissolution  of  Roman  order.  The  gro- 
tesque forms  that  seem  to  start  out  of 
the  very  walls,  and  speak  to  the  mind, 
are  not  capricious  and  idle  inventions. 
The  very  name  they  bear  memorializes 
an  old  mediaeval  superstition,  for  during 
the  Middle  Ages  the  dragons  of  Rouen 
and  Metz  were  called  gargouilles.  Gar- 
gouille  is  the  French  architectural  terra 
to-day. 

It  was  in  that  night  of  ignorance, 
in  those  years  in  which  society  was 
plunged  into  almost  historical  oblivion, 
that  those  disordered  and  debased  ideas 
of  natural  life  had  full  play.  The  monk- 
ish workers  in  stone  shared  the  super- 
stition of  the  people,  and  they  carved 
with  gusto  the  typical  vices  and  beasts, 
from  which  faith  in  religion  alone  could 
protect  or  deliver  man.  Later  the  more 
beautiful  forms  of  the  sinless  flower  and 
perfect  leaf,  which  we  find  in  the  pure 
and  noble  Gothic,  took  the  place  of  the 
beast  and  the  dragon.  The  graceful 
vine,  stone-caryed,  twined  tenderly  in 
the  arches,  or  climbed  the  column,  and 
the  flower-petal  unfolded  in  the  capital, 
or  under  the  gallery,  or  upon  the  altar. 
The  monk  had  been  delivered  by  art, 
the  people  had  found  an  issue  in  the 
vigor  of  work  and  in  the  unity  of  faith. 

The  forms  which  like  a  petrified  pop- 
ulation look  over  Paris  from  the  walls 


1 868.]      Notre  Dame  and  the  Advent  of  Gothic  Architecture.          2 1  3 


and  towers  of  Notre  Dame  are  sur- 
prisingly vigorous  and  sincere  in  char- 
acter. They  show  an  uncommon 
knowledge  of  natural  structure  and  a 
rare  invention.  Suppose  you  go  with 
me  to  the  summit  of  the  towers  of 
Notre  Dame.  Victor  Hugo  and  Thdo- 
phile  Gautier  have  gone  before  us,  like 
students  and  poets.  To  go  to  the  sum- 
mit you  enter  the  north  tower  through 
a  little  door,  and  ascend  three  hundred 
and  eighty-nine  steps,  dimly  lighted, 
worn  down  into  little  hollows,  made 
visible  by  long,  thin  cuts  in  the  wall, 
such  as  would  serve  for  an  arrow  or 
a  sunbeam.  At  length  you  reach  the 
light  gallery,  supported  by  slender  col- 
ums  ;  about  two  hundred  more  steps  in 
perfect  darkness  take  you  to  the  sum- 
mit of  the  tower.  You  are  pedestalled 
by  centuries  of  human  labor  ;  you  are 
surrounded  by  dragons,  cranes,  dogs, 
and  apes.  Dogs  of  a  ferocious  aspect ; 
apes  with  the  breasts  of  women  and 
the  powerful  hands  of  men  ;  a  bear,  an 
elephant,  a  goat ;  great  muscular  devils, 
with  backs  like  dragons,  and  the  face 
terminating  in  a  snout  or  a  beak,  ears 
like  swine,  and  horns  like  bulls,  —  a 
strange-looking  bird,  half  parrot,  half 
eagle,  with  a  cloth  thrown  over  the  head, 
like  an  old  woman  !  They  are  posed 
on  the  balustrade  of  the  gallery,  and  at 
each  angle  of  the  towers  ;  at  other  places 
they  serve  as  water-spouts,  and  are 
called  gargoyles.  All  these  forms  and 
faces  are  carved  in  the  boldest  and  larg- 
est sculpturesque  style  ;  the  anatomy 
is  well  based  on  nature  ;  all  the  leading 
forms  truly  and  expressively  rendered, 
though  entirely  foreign  to  the  Phidian 
idea  of  form.  These  figures,  about  the 
size  of  a  man,  posed  at  each  corner  of 
the  gallery,  or  looking  down  upon  Paris 
or  afar  off  over  the  humid  Seine,  show 
dark  against  the  sky,  and  are  enor- 
mous in  character  ;  in  each  an  amaz- 
ing muscular  energy  has  been  ex- 
pressed, —  never  so  much  ferocious 
force  and  so  much  variety  of  invention. 
The  grotesque  of  the  bright  Greek  mind 
is  child's  play  next  to  these  intensely 
horrible  figures.  Some  of  them  just 
touch  the  horrible,  indecent,  and  ob- 


scene.  All  hold  the  horrible  or  stimu- 
late the  curiosity  of  the  mind.  On  the 
towers,  over  the  fatalest  and  gayest 
city  of  the  world,  your  sentinels  are 
monsters.  You  question  which  be  the 
most  terrible,  these  frank,  gross  de- 
mons about  you,  carved  by  the  old  Gal- 
lic stone-cutters,  or  the  fair,  smiling 
city,  so  vast  and  heterogeneous,  below 
you.  The  radiant  aspect  of  the  city  is 
deceptive,  like  the  fabled  smile  of  the 
Sphinx.  At  the  Morgue  every  morn- 
ing you  will  find  a  fresh  victim  who  has 
failed  under  the  task  it  imposed  upon 
his  life. 

It  is  difficult  to  resist  the  thoughts 
that  reach  you  at  such  a  height.  The 
city,  which  changes  like  the  vesture  of 
a  man,  far  below  you  ;  the  cathedral, 
which  remains  essentially  the  same 
through  all  the  centurifes,  about  you. 
Underneath,  our  great  humanity  dwell- 
ing in  poor,  little,  suffering,  foolish  men  ; 
jet  their  hands  were  enough  to  raise 
such  a  monument !  From  their  brain 
these  inventions,  from  their  hands  these 
forms  ! 

Strange  exaltation  and  strange  hu- 
miliation for  us  !  We  have  been  in  our 
unity  great  enough  to  create  the  long- 
enduring;  and  in  our  individual  lives 
we  are  mocked  by  the  grandeur  we 
have  made,  and  which  is  the  memorial 
of  our  past  existence.  An  awe  of  our 
ancestors  steals  over  us  ;  the  ancient 
time  takes  awful  proportions  ;  we  forget 
the  actual  Paris,  with  its  costly  and  mo- 
notonous barracks,  the  new  opera-house, 
the  new  wing  of  the  Tuileries  !  With 
the  deformed  Quasimodo  of  Victor  Hu- 
go,  we  can  neither  feel  alone  nor  occupy 
ourselves  with  the  actual  city.  The  old 
sculptors  had  left  him  the  saintly  figures 
and  the  grotesque  dreams  and  dreads 
of  their  imagination.  Kings,  bishops, 
martyrs,  saints !  Around  the  ogival 
portals,  the  Last  Judgment  and  its  crowd 
of  holy  and  serene  souls,  its  mob  of 
convulsed  and  damned  beings.  These 
were  his  friends  when  he  entered  the 
cathedral.  When  he  went  up  to  strike 
the  sweet  and  awful  bells  of  the  great 
south  tower,  he  went  up  to  demons  and 
dragons  who  were  not  less  his  friends, 


2IA       Notre  Dame  and  the  Advent  of  Gothic  Architecture.    [August, 


for  he  was  familiar  with  them.  What  a 
world  in  stone  !  What  a  society  !  We 
have  no  such  impressive  and  varied 
types.  Until  we  stand  before  a  cathe- 
dral of  the  twelfth  or  thirteenth  century, 
we  do  not  even  know  them  ! 

The  exact  and  learned  Viollet-Leduc 
has  objected  to  the  characterization  that 
defines  Gothic  architecture  as  an  ex- 
pression of  the  suffering  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  I  think  he  alludes  especially  to 
one  of  Taine's  lectures  at  the  Ecole 
des  Beaux  Arts.  It  seems  to  me  that 
neither  of  the  writers  has  neatly  defined 
the  relation  of  his  generalization  to  the 
particular  facts  of  the  subject.  It  is 
true,  as  Viollet-Leduc  says,  the  cathe- 
drals are  the  proof  of  the  force  and 
invention  of  the  old  Gallic  spirit ;  it  is 
not  less  true  that  they  embody  suffering. 
The  force  and  invention  is  in  the  con- 
structive art ;  the  suffering  is  expressed 
in  the  picturesque  and  convulsed  forms 
with  which  the  constructive  art  adorned 
itself. 

And  from  what  a  society  this  con- 
structive art  grew !  from  what  a  so- 
ciety these  forms  were  evolved! — at 
the  moment  when  light  was  quicken- 
ing the  intelligence,  and  the  instinct 
of  brotherhood  was  moving  the  hearts 
of  populations,  fresh  from  the  long 
marches  and  common  sentiment  of  the 
Crusades,  warm  from  that  union  for 
a  sacred  idea,  bringing  back  from  the 
Orient  souvenirs  of  an  older  and  more 
opulent  life.  In  that  burning  land  of 
color  and  light  they  had  seen  vast  and 
impressive  forms,  Pagan  temples,  rich 
and  beautiful.  The  impressionable 
mind  and  fervid  heart  of  the  Frank 
was  amazed  and  delighted  by  the  su- 
perb spectacle  of  Constantinople.  Af- 
ter his  pilgrimages  through  the  wilder- 
ness and  over  the  mountains,  he  looked 
upon  the  proudest  and  most  dazzling 
city  of  the  Orient.  His  recollections 
of  France,  a  dark  and  cloudy  land 
compared  with  the  East,  had  nothing 
equal  to  what  he  saw  at  that  moment. 
His  native  city,  Paris  or  Orleans  or 
Rheims  or  Troyes,  was  dark  and  poor 
with  heavy  Roman  forms  or  more  prim- 
itive types  of  building.  His  own  land 


had  nothing  to  equal  the  Greek  and 
Oriental  temples  and  gardens  and  cir- 
cuses and  mosques  ;  the  groves,  where 
the  rose,  the  sycamore,  the  cypress, 
mingled  their  forms  and  colors ;  a 
splendid  union  of  the  rich  and  barbaric 
of  the  East  with  the  simple  and  pure 
types  of  Greece.  His  religion,  his 
faith,  his  God,  his  priesthood,  in  the 
lowlands  of  his  country,  were  repre- 
sented by  a  grave,  gloomy,  formal  style 
of  edifice.  He  had  left  his  cities,  hav- 
ing the  feudal  character  of  grim  castles 
and  grave  monasteries,  to  find  cities 
full  of  temples  and  mosques,  decorated 
with  color  and  adorned  with  gold.  He 
came  from  the  East  with  ideas  and  in- 
spirations. He  could  not  import  the 
color  or  the  atmosphere  of  the  Orient, 
but  he  had  received  his  impulse ;  his 
mind  had  been  started  out  of  tradition, 
out  of  monotony,  out  of  the  oppression 
of  habit.  He  was  prepared  to  create. 

Notwithstanding  the  admirably  rea- 
soned pages  in  which  Renan  proves 
the  Gothic  to  have  developed  naturally 
from  the  Roman  style,  we  cannot  resist 
the  old  conviction,  that  the  experience 
of  the  East  urged  it  into  its  develop- 
ment, and  accelerated  its  departure 
frorn.  the  Norman-Roman. 

Trie  experience  of  the  Crusades  had 
put  into  action  the  whole  mind  of  the 
epoch,  and  initiated  the  people  into  a 
democratic,  a  social  life.  The  isolated 
and  brutal  existence  of  the  feudal  lord 
had  been  invaded  ;  the  serf,  in  becoming 
a  soldier  and  a  tradesman,  had  become  a 
brother  and  a  democrat,  and  was  fitted 
to  work  on  a  grand  scale.  Thought 
had  dawned  with  action.  Travel  had 
taught  and  liberated  the  monastic  work- 
ers. 

To  emulate  the  splendor  of  the  cities 
he  had  seen,-  to  memorialize  his  faith, 
to  enshrine  his  religion  in  forms  grand- 
er than  all  the  pretensions  of  temporal 
power  about  him,  he  begun  to  build 
upon  the  ruins  of  Pagan  temples,  and 
to  enlarge  the  old  basilicas  which  held 
his  altar.  He  began  to  graft  upon 
grave  Roman  forms  a  new  type. 

He  could  not  have  the  luminous  Ori- 
ent for  a  background  to  his  spires  and 


1 868.]      Notre  Dame  and  the  Advent  of  Gothic  Architecture.          215 


pinnacles ;  he  could  not  have  the  deli- 
cate minaret  that  defined  itself  always 
against  a  deep-toned  and  clear  sky. 
Under  his  humid  and  gray  clouds  he 
must  make  the  form  more  salient  and 
the  decoration  less  delicate.  He  must 
not  depend  upon  the  fine  accentuation 
of  for,m,  and  the  clear  note  of  color, 
about  a  portal,  which  the  Oriental  could 
oppose  to  a  broad  flat  surface  for  the 
sun  to  make  dazzling  with  light  He 
must  use  shadows  as  the  Oriental 
availed  himself  of  sunshine.  So  he  cut 
his  portals  deeper ;  he  made  his  deco- 
ration more  vigorous  and  scattered  ;  he 
multiplied  forms ;  he  avoided  flat  sur- 
faces, —  which  the  Greek,  the  Persian, 
and  the  Moor  always  availed  themselves 
of,  and  with  which  they  produced  such 
fine  effects. 

The  Gothic  architect  pursued  the  op- 
posite aim.  He  made  stones  blossom 
into  leaves  and  flowers,  and  crowded 
niches  and  arches  with  images  of  the 
animal  life  he  recollected  or  imagined. 
Therefore  you  see  the  Asiatic  elephant 
and  hippopotamus,  when  you  expect 
only  purely  Occidental  forms  and  Chris- 
tian symbols. 

Soon  his  cathedral  became  his  idol- 
atry, his  artistic  means  ;  and,  before  the 
fourteenth  century,  the  priest  had  only 
the  altar :  the  rest  belonged  to  the  peo- 
ple and  to  the  artist. 

The  workmen  who  had  been  trained 
under  the  protection  of  abbeys  were  at 
hand  to  design  and  execute.  The  he- 
raldic draughtsmen  and  the  illuminators 
of  sacred  writings  were  learned  and 
skilful ;  the  Crusades  had  increased  the 
demand  for  their  art,  and  enlarged  their 
knowledge.  Each  nobleman  had  to 
carry  upon  his  shield  and  breast  the 
picture-symbol  of  his  origin,  his  ex- 
ploits, his  loyalty ;  each  trade  imposed 
its  sign  of  being  upon  each  workman. 
These  needs  gave  a  peculiar  and  pow- 
erful impulse  to  the  arts  of  design  and 
color,  and  forced  them  into  full  action  ; 
just  as  to-day  the  needs  of  exchange  of 
thought  and  illustration  of  knowledge 
enlist  every  form  of  printed  expression. 

Thus  was  prepared  the  means  for 
those  marvellous  cathedrals  which,  in 


the  short  space  of  fifty  years,  reached 
their  full  perfection ;  thus  was  pro- 
duced an  art  that  was  superbly  illus- 
trated through  three  succeeding  cen- 
turies, and  then  perished.  "Developed 
with  an  incredible  rapidity,"  writes 
Viollet-Leduc,  "it  [the  Gothic]  arrived 
at  its  apogee  fifty  years  after  its  first 
essays." 

"  The  cathedral  was  the  grand  popu- 
lar monument  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It 
was  not  only  the  place  of  prayer,  and 
the  abode  of  God,  but  the  centre  of  in- 
tellectual movement,  the  storehouse  of 
all  art-traditions  and  all  human  knowl- 
edge. What  we  place  in  the  cabinets 
of  museums  our  fathers  intrusted  to 
the  treasury  of  churches;  what  we 
seek  in  books  they  went  and  read  in 
living  characters  upon  the  chiselling  of 
gates  or  the  paintings  of  windows.  This 
is  why,  by  the  very  side  of  religious 
and  moral  allegories,  we  find  in  such 
number  upon  the  walls  of  our  cathe- 
drals those  calendars,  those  botanical 
and  zoological  illustrations,  those  de- 
tails about  trades,  those  warnings  about 
hygiene,  which  composed  an  encyclo- 
paedia for  the  use  and  within  the  reach 
of  all.  At  Rheims,  St.  Denis,  Sainte 
Chapelle,  they  kept  stuffed  crocodiles, 
ostriches'  eggs,  cameos,  and  antique 
vases,  relics  of  martyrs  and  saints,  to 
draw  the  people  within  the  place  of  wor- 
ship." So  writes  a  devout  Catholic. 

Victor  Hugo  is  superb  when  he  sig- 
nals the  correspondence  between  the 
cathedral  and  the  mind  of  the  Middle 
Age.  He  not  only  discovers  that  the 
cathedral  is  the  encyclopaedia,  it  is  also 
the  stone-bible,  the  majestic  and  visible 
poem,  the  grand  publication,  of  the  time. 
Each  stone  is  a  leaf  of  the  mighty  vol- 
ume, each  cathedral  a  different  and  en- 
larged edition.  The  sculptor  of  the 
period,  like  the  writer  for  the  press  to- 
day, had  the  liberty  of  expression, — 
perhaps  more  liberty  than  is  granted 
by  a  million-voiced  Public  Opinion  to 
the  writer  in  America.  Then  the  bish- 
op was  the  publisher  ;  the  people,  sub- 
scribers ;  the  architect,  the  sculptor, 
the  painter,  the  jeweller  and  mason,  fel- 
low-workers. 


2 1 6        Notre  Dame  and  the  Advent  of  Gothic  Architecture.    [August, 


The  sculptor  gave  full  play  to  his 
hand,  and  the  designer  license  to  his 
pencil.  In  windows,  upon  facades,  in 
capitals,  on  galleries,  upon  towers,  they 
rudely  sketched  or  exquisitely  elaborat- 
ed their  ideas.  The  walls  became  the 
utterance  of  their  emancipation.  They 
proclaimed  liberty.  They  revealed  that 
the  most  formal  of  arts,  the  most 
severe  science  of  form,  architecture, 
could  appropriate  a  new  beauty,  and 
express  a  new  life,  in  giving  itself  to 
the  people  and  the  artist.  And  how 
the  mediaeval  sculptor  rioted  in  his 
new-found  liberty  !  He  chiselled  the 
stone  edifice  as  though  it  were  a  casket 
of  silver  or  a  box  of  ivory  for  his  mis- 
tress. "  Sometimes,"  writes  Victor 
Hugo,  "he  made  a  portal  or  a  facade 
present  a  symbolic  sense  absolutely 
foreign  to  the  worship,  and  foreign  to 
the  church." 

But  let  us  go  back  to  our  text,  — 
Notre  Dame.  Before  the  Cathedral  of 
Strasburg  we  have  the  most  ecstatic, 
wondering  admiration  ;  by  its  color,  its 
form,  its  high  and  delicate  spire,  it  is 
the  most  beautiful ;  before  Notre  Dame 
de  Paris,  we  are  conscious  of  the  great- 
er dignity  and  majesty.  It  is  scarred, 
broken,  monumental,  enduring.  Time 
and  history  have  written  their  records 
upon  it.  The  force  and  genius  of  the 
twelfth  century  confront  us  and  abase 
us  by  the  silent  and  expressive  grand- 
eur of  the  cathedral.  It  is  a  mask  of 
time  ;  back  of  it  the  people,  the  work- 
men, the  lords,  the  kings,  the  bishops, 
the  saints,  the  martyrs  of  France.  You 
appreciate  why  it  is  said  that  not  one  of 
the  French  cathedrals  possesses  a  more 
monumental  and  majestic  facade  than 
Notre  Dame  de  Paris.  Others  may  be 
more  beautiful,  but  none  more  grand. 
It  has  the  circular  arch  of  the  Roman, 
the  simple  colonnettes  and  capitals  of 
the  Norman,  the  pointed  arch  of  the 
pure  Gothic,  and  by  its  solidity  recalls 
its  Roman  origin.  Its  three  great  ogival 
portals  bold  and  deep,  its  large  rosace 
flanked  by  two  windows,  its  high  and 
light  gallery  supported  by  fine  colon- 
nettes, its  two  massive  and  dark  towers, 
make  a  fagade  that,  divided  into  five 


great  parts,  "  develops  to  the  eye  with- 
out trouble  innumerable  details  in  the 
midst  of  a  powerful  and  tranquil  grand- 
eur of  general  effect."  Its  portals,  its 
rosace,  and  its  gallery  are  the  announce- 
ment of  the  richness  of  the  full  and 
perfect  Gothic  that  burst  into  that  mar- 
vellous flower  of  architecture,  the  west 
fagade  of  the  cathedral  of  Rheims,  — 
the  most  splendid  conception  of  its  cen- 
tury, writes  Viollet-Leduc ;  the  most 
complete  type  of  the  Gothic,  writes 
Guilhabaud. 

The  truly  historical  epoch  of  Notre 
Dame  begins  in  the  twelfth  century. 
Anterior  to  that  time  incomplete  tradi- 
tions merely  suggest  the  aspect  of  the 
cradle  of  the  grand  edifice  which  has 
been  connected  with  all  the  epochs  of 
the  history,  and  associated  with  the 
most  august  names,  of  France.  Like 
most  of  the  cathedrals,  it  covers  ground 
once  dedicated  to  Pagan  gods,  which 
fact  should  touch  the  imagination. 

The  founder  of  Notre  Dame,  Mau- 
rice de  Sully,  "was  of  an  obscure  birth, 
and  superior  to  his  age.  He  resolved 
to  build  upon  a  new  plan  the  old  basilica, 
which  had  formerly  served  the  Chris- 
tian population  of  the  island.  The  first 
stone  of  Notre  Dame  was  laid  in  1163 

or  1165,  by  Pope  Alexander  III 

From  the  fourteenth  to  the  fifteenth 
century  the  cathedral  appears  to  have 
retained  intact  its  first  physiognomy. 
But  a  series  of  changes  and  mutilations 
have  succeeded,  without  interruption,  to 
our  day.  Piety,  which  pretends  to  re- 
generate the  Church  by  modern  embel- 
lishments, was  not  less  fatal  than  the 
barbarism  that  later  fell  upon  it.  The 
labors  undertaken  in  the  seventeenth 
century  to  consolidate  the  edifice, 
robbed  it  by  turn  of  its  mouldings, 
its  stone  vegetation,  and  its  gargoyles. 
During  the  reign  of  Louis  XV.  a  uni- 
form paving,  in  large  marble  squares, 
replaced  the  old  funeral  tablets  which 
covered  the  soil  of  the  church,  and 
showed  the  effigies  of  a  crowd  of  illus- 
trious persons.  When  the  storm  of 
the  first  revolution  burst,  some  men, 
and  among  them  Citizen  Chaumette, 
prevailed  upon  the  Commune  to  spare 


1 868.]      Notre  Dame  and  the  Advent  vf  Gothic  Architecture.          217 


the  figures  of  the  kings  in  the  portal. 
He  claimed,  in  the  name  of  arts  and 
philosophy,  some  tolerance  for  the 
effigies." 

The  restorations  now  being  made, 
though  under  the  direct  supervision  of 
a  generation  of  artists  who  have  been 
formed  under  Viollet-Leduc  and  upon 
the  study  of  "  the  old  national  art  of 
France,"  are  probably  more  satisfying 
to  them  than  to  those  who  are  uninter- 
ested students  of  the  ancient  carvings 
and  architecture.  They  are  learned, 
they  are  exact ;  but  they  are  not  workers 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  best  that 
Viollet-Leduc  can  do  is  to  imitate  the 
old  forms,  —  which  is  no  better  than  an 
effort  to  imitate  a  picture  of  one  of  the 
early  Christian  painters.  The  restora- 
tions of  St.  Denis  give  it  a  very  unim- 
pressive character.  The  pieces  placed 
in  the  crumbling  stones  of  Notre  Dame, 
and  the  decorations  of  the  chapels,  are 
an  intelligent  failure.  Better  to  let 
Time  do  his  work.  The  new  leaf 
placed  in  the  old  parchment  sheet,  the 
restored  illumination,  the  new  glass  in 
the  old  window,  make  a  discord,  and 
are  foreign  to  the  ancient  matter.  No 
stained  glass  rivals  the  old ;  none 
equals  its  intensity,  its  harmony,  its 
sweet  melody  of  color;  no  carving  (imi- 
tated or  not)  is  so  naive,  so  quaint,  as 
that  of  the  mediaeval  sculptor. 

As  an  example  of  reverential  restora- 
tion, consider  the  group  in  full  relief  in 
the  left  portal  of  Notre  Dame.  The 
whole  is  a  copy  of  the  ancient  stone. 
But  why  does  it  not  look  like  the  origi- 
nal ?  Not  because  it  is  of  new,  fresh 
stone,  but  because  the  Parisian  sculptor 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  though  evi- 
dently closely  following  the  old  sculp- 
tor's work,  makes  his  Eve  more  beauti- 
ful, less  quaint,  less  awkward,  than  the 
work  of  the  mediaeval  sculptor.  The 
figure,  in  spite  of  the  original,  takes  a 
voluptuous  form,  a  suave  outline,  a  se- 
ductive character,  that  marks  it  as  the 
Parisian  type  of  to-day.  It  is  a  false 
passage  interpolated  in  the  old  text. 

At  all  times  the  pretensions  of  formal, 
obvious  knowledge  are  enormous  ;  but 
a  little  wisdom  is  always  discriminating, 


and  does  not  replace  the  work  of  the 
past  with  imitations  or  copies.  The 
wise  artist  does  not  attempt  to  make 
Sphinxes  like  the  Eygptian,  nor  Ve- 
nuses  like  the  Venetian,  nor  Saints  like 
the  early  Christian.  Only  the  pedant 
has  the  pretension  and  the  fatuity  to 
think  he  can  revive  a  lost  art,  and  re- 
sist his  age  with  bookish  inspirations. 
Fresh  from  his  studies  and  outside  of 
the  actual  tendencies  of  his  epoch,  he 
only  becomes  a  corrupter  of  the  ancient 
art,  and  is  blind  to  the  vital  work  done 
by  his  more  simple  and  more  vigor- 
ous fellow-men.  Hogarth  creates  from 
contemporary  life  ;  likewise  Reynolds. 
Poor  Barry  seeks  after  the  heroic  and 
antique,  and  represents  a  regiment  of 
modern  soldiers  naked  like  Greeks  and 
Trojans,  and  is  ridiculous.  The  bad 
architect  puts  a  Greek  temple  in  a 
gloomy  climate,  and  dreams  of  using 
color  in  England  as  in  Venice  or  Con- 
stantinople. 

But  again  let  us  return  to  our  text,  — 
to  Notre  Dame,  that  majestic  monu- 
ment sombre  with  the  tints  and  stains 
of  centuries.  To  what  uses  it  has  been 
put  !  In  the  twelfth  century,  before  its 
high  altar,  the  Count  of  Toulouse  came, 
barefooted  and  in  his  shirt,  penitent,  to 
be  absolved  by  the  Church  and  king. 
The  King  St.  Louis  walked  barefooted 
under  its  high  springing  arches,  carry- 
ing, it  is  said,  the  holy  crown  of  thorns, 
which  he  bought  from  the  Emperor  of 
Constantinople.  In  the  next  century, 
Henry  VI.  of  England  was  crowned  at 
Notre  Dame  as  king  of  France. 

It  is  a  long  list,  —  the  solemn  and 
splendid  ceremonies  enacted  in  Notre 
Dame,  —  great  days  when  the  pomp  of 
state  and  the  consecrations  of  official 
religion  were  laid  upon  the  royal  heads 
of  France.  But  the  cathedral  has  evil 
days.  The  revolution  comes  and  dese- 
crates it  in  the  name  of  Reason  !  The 
Convention  decrees  that  its  name  shall 
be  altered,  and  on  November  10,  1793, 
abolishes  the  Catholic  religion,  and 
changes  the  name  of  Notre  Ddtae  into 
that  of  Temple  of  Reason!  But  the 
new  name  and  the  new  worship  were 
not  destined  to  replace  a  long  time  the 


2 1 8       Notre  Dame  and  the  Advent  of  Gothic  Architecture.    [August, 


old.     The  day  arrived,  in  1795,  when  it 
was  restored  to  the  Catholic  clergy. 

In  1804  the  first  Napoleon  was 
crowned  Emperor  of  France,  and  Jose- 
phine Empress  ;  which  occasion,  writes 
the  historian,  was  the  most  sumptuous 
and  solemn  of  all  the  ceremonies  that 
have  taken  place  in  the  ancient  edifice. 
In  1842,  the  funeral  of  the  Duke  of  Or- 
leans;  in  1853,  the  marriage  of  the 
present  Emperor  with  Eugenie,  Coun- 
tess of  Teba  ;  last,  the  christening  of 
the  Prince  Imperial. 

This  is  the  rough  outline  of  the  pub- 
lic ceremonies  that  have  been  celebrated 
in  Notre  Dame  de  Paris,  —  of  spectacles 
meant  to  dazzle  the  eye  and  impress 
the  imagination  of  the  people.  But, 
after  all,  ceremonials,  pomps,  splendors, 
great  and  royal  names,  have  been  less 
than  the  solemn  thoughts,  the  music- 
led  reveries,  the  ardent  movements  of 
the  soul  of  sincere  worshippers,  that 
have  risen  within  it,  amid  the  swinging 
of  incense  and  the  chant  of  boy-voices, 
up  to  the  unseen  God  of  all  religious 
life. 

In  the  summer  twilight,  among  the 
grouped  and  lofty  columns,  in  the  dim 
aisles,  under  the  high  springing  arches, 
poor,  faint  hearts  have  been  consoled  ; 
and  as  in  forests,  as  on  the  shore  of  the 
sea,  the  human  soul  has  had  glimpses  of 
something  infinite,  something  consol- 
ing ;  it  has  shaken  off  the  load  of  social 
trivialties  or  social  crimes,  and  been 
admonished  and  healed  by  the  touch  of 
influences  emanating  from  things  great- 
er than  its  temporary  sufferings  and 
wrongs. 

But  the  great  day  of  Notre  Dame 
and  the  religious  form  which  it  repre- 
sents has  gone.  The  time  when  it 
represented  the  highest  word  of  relig- 
ious life  is  past.  I  can  dream  those 
ancient  days  when  the  streets  about  it 
were  narrow,  dirty,  thronged  ;  when  the 
lords  were  brutal,  and  the  people  help- 
less serfs ;  I  can  recall  that  ancient 
time  when  the  priest  was  the  teacher, 
the  hope,  the  guide  of  the  people ; 
when  he  uttered  the  word  nearest  to  de- 
mocracy and  equality  ;  when  Catholi- 
cism repeated  the  most  humane  word  that 


had  been  given  to  man.  Then,  in  the 
twelfth  and  the  thirteenth  centuries,  the 
priest  was  the  friend  of  the  people,  and 
made  the  Church  powerful  to  protect 
the  weak.  Then  the  windows  of  Notre 
Dame,  in  celestial  and  intense  colors, 
made  the  interior  like  a  beautiful  prism 
charged  with  sacred  meanings ;  the 
three  great  rosaces,  mysterious  and 
vivid,  filtered  and  changed  the  common 
light  of  day,  and  flattered  the  eye  with 
visions  of  heaven  itself ;  then  the  virgins 
consecrated  to  Christ,  barefooted,  with 
pure  hands  and  white  robes,  made  a 
holy  chorus,  a  saintly  procession,  mov- 
ing around  the  nave  in  the  lofty  and 
remote  galleries,  —  a  procession  ecstat- 
ic, na'ive,  remote!  Then  the  ceremo- 
nies of  the  church  were  high,  sincere, 
solemn,  —  for  they  had  not  been  con- 
fronted by  the  inflexible  face  of  science. 
To-day  we  are  emancipated,  and  must 
put  aside  childish  things.  A  simpler 
form  of  religious  life,  with  a  better  word 
for  man,  has  appealed  to  his  mind.  The 
day  of  the  color,  the  image,  the  martyr, 
and  the  saint  has  passed  away,  no  more 
to  return.  We  have  martyrs,  but  sci- 
ence and  art  celebrate  them ;  we  have 
saints,  but  literature  holds  their  mem- 
ory. 

We  go  to  the  grand  cathedrals  of  the 
Middle  Ages  to-day.  They  retain  mu- 
sic and  the  voice  of  bells  to  touch  us. 
All  the  rest  are  nothing  to  the  modern 
man.  They  are  disfigured  by  tawdry 
looking  chapels,  and  frivolous  looking 
altars,  and  ignoble  looking  priests.  But 
for  the  universal  voice  of  the  organ,  the 
undying  charm  of  music,  they  would 
be  void  and  dreary ;  no  better  than 
Pagan  temples  and  Egyptian  monu- 
ments. 

What  actually  remains  of  the  sincere 
work  of  past  ages  must  impress  the 
modern  man.  When  the  great  bells  of 
cathedrals  thunder  over  his  head,  he 
listens  ;  when  he  looks  at  the  high 
towers,  the  lofty  spires,  the  elegant 
mouldings,  the  quaint  carvings,  the  fe- 
cund inventions,  he  thinks.  When  he 
goes  within,  he  is  touched  and  over- 
awed. Strasburg,  Rheims,  Rouen,  and 
Notre  Dame  are  beautiful  and  majestic 


1 868.]      Notre  Dame  and  the  Advent  of  Gothic  Architecture.          2 1 9 


works  that  cannot  be  repeated,  for  they 
cannot  be  imitated.  As  soon  expect  to 
see  the  Pyramids,  the  art  of  Michael 
Angelo,  or  the  heads  of  Da  Vinci,  in 
the  prairies  of  the  West.  In  spite  of 
learned  restorations,  they  shall  crumble 
and  be  seen  no  more.  The  only  en- 
during is  our  humanity,  which  goes 
through  the  centuries  supplanting  and 
inventing,  always  equal  to  its  needs, 
always  throwing  its  full  force  into  some 
new  production.  The  debris  of  its  old 
march  and  its  old  work  enable  us  to 
write  history,  —  sometimes  only  an  ep- 
itaph. Its  old  shell  confronts  the  ac- 
tual generation  with  things  greater  than 
itself.  We  interrogate  the  colossus  of 
Memnon,  the  colonnades  of  Karnak, 
the  ruins  of  Greek  temples,  the  Gothic 
cathedrals,  and  we  are  humbled  by 
what  they  say  to  us. 

We  pass  upon  the  earth,  accomplish- 
ing a  few  great  works,  —  the  greatest 
witness  to  our  energy  and  our  intelli- 
gence ;  and  they  are  the  final  utterance, 
the  original  expression,  the  inimitable 
production  of  their  epoch. 

To-day  we  do  not  build  cathedrals, 
that  is,  sanctuaries  for  the  people ;  we 
build  ships,  that  is,  means  for  the  com- 
merce of  peoples.  The  twelfth  cen- 
tury gave  us  a  church  architecture  :  the 
nineteenth  century  has  given  us  a  naval 
architecture.  To  each  creation  all  the 
forces  of  their  respective  epochs  have 
contributed. 

The  last  day  I  was  at  Notre  Dame, 
—  again  impressed  with  its  grandeur  of 
form  and  its  ancient  color,  recollecting 
the  great  bell,  the  largest  in  France, 
rung  only  on  fete  days  and  the  obse- 
quies of  kings  now  silent  in  the  grand 
towers,  —  I  was  standing  under  the 
deep-cut  ogival  portal,  where  the  sim- 
ple sculptor  of  the  Middle  Age  had 
represented  in  full  relief  the  drama  of 
the  Last  Judgment,  the  serene,  prim 
saints  on  one  side,  the  crowded,  pre- 
cipitated sinners  on  the  other, — with 
the  one  the  angels,  with  the  other  the 
demons.  The  stones  were  old,  broken, 
tinted,  dear  to  an  antiquarian  and  an 
artist.  A  noise  of  wings,  a  fluttering 
over  my  head,  arrested  my  antiquarian 


observations,  and  I  looked  up.  A  brood 
of  birds,  with  cries  of  love,  in  the  sweet 
air  of  spring,  were  wavering  a  moment 
under  the  Gothic  arch.  They  flew  in 
and  out  of  the  stone  vegetation,  and 
perched  an  instant  on  the  sculptured 
heads  and  robes.  That  brief  lyric  of 
life  was  sufficient  to  charm  the  mind, 
and  dispel  all  the  oppressiveness  that 
seemed  to  emanate  from  the  majestic 
old  monument.  Nature  had  reinstated 
herself  in  the  place  of  art.  One  gush 
of  bird-music,  one  jet  of  life,  one  hour 
of  love,  one  moment  of  happiness,  be 
it  but  that  of  sparrows  that  mate  and 
build  their  nests,  is  better  than  all  this 
antiquity  and  all  this  art !  The  flut- 
tering joy  of  the  inconstant  sparrows  — 
those  wee,  noisy,  swift-winged  birds  — 
about  the  towers,  the  niches,  the  por- 
tals of  Notre  Dame,  was  a  fact  of  Na- 
ture. It  was  her  voice,  her  life,  that 
deliciously  recalled  me  from  the  crum- 
bling, dusty,  gray,  weather-stained 
stones  to  the  perennial  force  and  good 
of  actual  life  ! 

But  for  you  who  have  not  had  the 
privilege  of  looking  upon  the  great  mon- 
uments of  Gothic  architecture,  it  will 
not  be  well  to  leave  you  with  my  purely 
personal  thought.  No  ;  you  must  med- 
itate, you  must  consider,  you  must  at- 
tempt to  realize  what  was  the  work  done 
by  the  Franks,  the  Gauls,  the  Normans, 
the  Saxons  of  the  Middle  Ages,  in  that 
marvellous  architecture  which,  based 
upon  the  Roman,  reached  the  Norman- 
Roman,  and  after  the  Crusades  the 
pure  Gothic.  The  new  sap,  the  cross- 
ing of  elements,  the  enlarged  experi- 
ence, produced  a  new  and  a  national 
type.  The  Roman  arch  became  pointed 
like  a  Norman  helmet ;  the  capitals 
burst  into  bloom  ;  the  dome  became  a 
spire.  The  very  stones  were  covered 
with  the  forms  of  a  rich  and  beautiful 
vegetation.  Then  the  spire  of  Stras- 
burg  was  carried  to  the  clouds,  and 
the  cathedrals  of  Rouen  and  Rheims 
adorned  themselves  with  delicate  broid- 
eries of  stone,  and  the  towers  of  Notre 
Dame  were  bound  together  by  a  light 
gallery.  Then  in  France  was  seen  dur- 
ing three  centuries  the  full  development 


220       Notre  Dame  and  the  Advent  of  Gothic  Architecture.    [August, 


of  an  architecture  neither  Greek  nor 
Roman  nor  Oriental.  But  a  new  idea, 
capable  of  unlimited  expansion,  subject 
to  the  law  of  liberty,  and  not  to  that  of 
the  arbitrary ;  corresponding  with  the 
mind  of  its  epoch,  expressive  of  its 
character  ;  corresponding  especially 
with  the  Northern  as  distinguished  from 
the  Hellenic  and  the  Roman  mind ; 
corresponding  with  the  old  Gallic  spirit 
that  had  been  cradled  in  dark  forests, 
amid  shadows  and  the  brief  glory  of 
sunset ;  cradled  amid  the  high  branch- 
ing pines  and  bold  armed  oaks,  which 
had  given  to  it  its  primitive  temple,  vast, 
shadowy,  and  richly  toned.  In  the  ca- 
thedral we  see  the  beautiful  result  of 
its  necessities  and  its  experience. 

The  natural  forms  dear  or  terrible  to 
the  childhood  of  a  half-civilized  race 
are  recalled  by  the  work  itself;  it  is  the 
foreign  achievement  and  the  experience 
of  travel  that  excites  its  emulation  and 
sets  it  to  work  on  a  grand  scale  and 
after  an  original  plan.  But  back  of  all 
was  the  religious  sentiment,  potent  to 
seek  a  new,  but  slow  to  abandon  an 
old,  form  of  its  life.  It  required  six 
centuries  for  the  Roman  style  imposed 
on  the  Druidic  form  to  reach  the  Gothic 
of  the  twelfth  century. 

It  is  true  that  the  most  studied 
research  and  the  most  conscientious 
thinking  have  repudiated  the  term 
"  Gothic  "  applied  to  the  marvellous  ar- 
chitecture of  the  Middle  Ages,  —  to  what 
is,  properly  speaking,  the  old  national 
French  architecture.  It  is  true  that  its 
so-called  Oriental  origin  is  questioned, 
and  the  pretensions  of  a  Germanic  ori- 
gin absolutely  abandoned.  The  facts 
prove  that  the  first  churches  now  called 
Gothic  were  built  in  France  ;  that  the 
borders  of  the  Rhine  were  marked  only 
by  Roman  constructions  when  the  mas- 
terpieces of  the  Gothic  were  being  ele- 
vated in  the  North  of  France  ;  that  the 
Gothic  churches  in  England,  built  in 
the  twelfth  century,  were  designed  by 
French  architects. 

The  first  Gothic  architect  not  French 
\vas  Erwin  of  Steinbach,  in  the  thir- 
teenth century.  In  Germany,  up  to 
the  fourteenth  century,  the  Gothic  style 


was  called  "the  French  style."  The 
latest  and  most  conscientious  writer 
upon  the  subject  of  the  art  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  tells  us  that  the  first  essays 
of  that  architecture,  which  seems  so 
frail,  so  audacious,  so  barbarous  to  the 
classical  mind,  were  in  what  is  called 
"Pile  de  France,  Vexin,  Valois,  Beau- 
vaisis,  a  part  of  Champaigne,  and  all 
the  basin  of  the  Oise,  —  in  the  true 
France." 

It  can  no  longer  be  contested  that 
the  Gothic  is  an  art  purely  French.  It 
was  born  with  French  nationality,  it 
was  the  work  of  communities  stimulated 
by  the  clergy  and  directed  by  laymen, 
and  represents  the  great  social  and 
intellectual  movement  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  In  the  largest  expression,  it  was 
the  creation  of  the  old  Gallic  genius 
which,  audacious,  inventive,  rapid,  has 
left  the  most  poetic  and  impressive  em- 
bodiment of  the  religious  sentiment  of 
Christendom.  It  was  the  last  effort  to 
make  a  temple  large  enough  for  human- 
ity. The  story  of  the  building  of  a 
cathedral  reads  like  a  fairy  tale.  The 
people  come  from  the  provinces  envi- 
roning that  of  a  cathedral  like  volun- 
teers of  a  war  for  liberty.  As  they  had 
gone  pell-mell  to  the  Holy  Land,  so 
they  went  pell-mell  to  build  the  cathe- 
drals. They  are  blessed  by  the  bishop  ; 
they  go  through  the  land  recruiting 
their  forces,  chanting  hymns,  with  float- 
ing banners  ;  they  rally  about  the  walls 
of  a  church  or  the  quarry,  and  labor  for 
no  other  pay  than  bread. 

In  the  solemn  nights  of  the  twelfth 
century,  what  a  spectacle  in  the  French 
provinces  !  By  the  light  of  torches  the 
lofty  walls  of  cathedrals  rose  as  by  day ; 
they  were  thronged  with  enthusiastic 
workmen  in  the  night  as  in  the  dawn. 
What  energy  of  -  enthusiasm !  All 
classes,  vassals  and  nobles,  men  of  fra- 
ternities and  communities,  dragged  the 
stones  from  the  quarry.  Each  one  gave 
himself  to  the  work  he  understood  best. 
The  fervor,  the  fanaticism  of  building 
was  so  great,  that  the  women  threw  un- 
der the  foundation  -  stones  gold  and 
jewels,  saying,  "  Thy  walls,  O  God, 
shall  be  of  precious  stones." 


1 868.] 


Cretan  Days. 


221 


The  monks'  learning  and  the  peoples' 
force  made  the  cathedrals.  The  shafts 
rose,  slender  like  reeds,  and  were  bound 
in  strength  ;  the  spire  swam  in  light ; 
the  tall  windows  were  webbed  with  sem- 
blances of  branch  and  vine  ;  the  arches 
were  adorned  by  carved  flowers  ;  the 
doors  were  flanked  by  sculptured  figures. 


The  whole  made  a  living,  expressive, 
elegant,  aspiring  form,  distinct,  admira- 
ble, and  unlike  all  other  great  historic 
forms.  We  shall  never  behold  a  repe- 
tition of  the  great  work  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  It  is  an  accomplished  fact,  and 
the  constructive  and  artistic  genius  of 
man  seeks  another  embodiment. 


CRETAN     DAYS. 


IV. 

THE   APOKORONA. 

ANY  journey  from  Canea  has  a 
charming  commencement.  The 
wide  level  plain,  almost  entirely  covered 
with  the  rich  green  olive-trees,  the  roads, 
lined  with  aloe-hedges ;  glimpses  here 
and  there  of  gardens  over  whose  high 
walls  cluster  the  tops  of  orange  and 
pomegranate,  huge  mulberries,  and  here 
and  there  a  towering  stone-pine,  —  con- 
vey an  impression  of  exuberant  fer- 
tility I  have  never  received  from  any 
other  plain  country.  Then,  breaking 
precipitately  down  into  it,  the  bold,  bare, 
ravine-cloven  Malaxa  hills  add  a  con- 
trast of  the  most  artistic  character.  I 
have  spent  many  days  among  those 
groves,  following  on  donkey-back  lanes 
and  by-paths  amid  blackberry  hedges, 
and  in  the  shade  of  olive-trees  which 
must  have  seen  the  Roman  Empire,  and 
still  are  vigorous  and  profitable  to  their 
owners  and  the  Sublime  Porte. 

But,  speaking  of  roads,  I  must  not  be 
considered  as  indicating  what  would  be 
called  such  in  any  other  part  of  the 
world.  There  exists  but  one  in  Crete, 
—  the  high  road  built  by  the  Venetians 
(or  perhaps  only  restored  by  them  after 
the  Romans),  which  ran,  and  still  limps, 
from  Canea  to  Candia,  passing  by  Reti- 
mo  en  route.  But  as  there  are  no  re- 
pairs in  Turkey,  and  a  paved  road  three 
hundred  years  old  without  them  must 
be  a  dilapidated  affair,  so  the  Cretans, 


as  a  general  thing,  know  the  Candia 
road  only  to  keep  off  it.  When  the 
late  Abdul  Medjid  came  to  see  Crete, 
three  miles  and  a  half  English  were  put 
into  repair,  that  a  carriage  might  serve 
his  Majesty  to  visit  Canea  in,  he  hav- 
ing debarked  at  Suda.  Since  that  day 
there  are  three  miles  and  a  half  of  road 
that  a  carriage  may  roll  and  a  horse 
gallop  over.  The  Sultan's  road  leads 
only  to  the  head  of  Suda  Bay,  whence, 
skirting  the  shore  of  that  magnificent 
haven  for  whose  possession  Crete  has 
been  cursed  so  many  years,  we  rise  by 
a  mule-path  which  extorts  from  the 
traveller  unexperienced  in  Cretan  way- 
faring a  crescendo  of  epithets,  varying 
according  to  his  horsemanship  and 
habits  of  less  or  greater  profanity,  until 
he  comes  to  a  bit  of  road  which  ner- 
vous men  and  bad  riders  prefer  to  take 
afoot.  But,  the  summit  reached,  we  are 
in  the  mythologic  land,  —  in  one  of 
the  homes  of  the  antiquest  myth.  West 
of  us  rise  the  heights  of  Mt.  Berecyn- 
tius,  the  highest  point  of  the  Malaxa 
range,  where  the  Idasan  Dactyls  worked 
the  first  iron  mines  known  to  semi- 
authentic  history.  These  mythical  be- 
ings, long  reverenced  in  Crete  as  divin- 
ities of  a  mysterious  and  exalted  divine 
power,  are  supposed,  by  those  of  the 
modern  historical  authors  who  have 
studied  most  carefully  the  traces  of 
history  found  in  the  myths,  to  have  been 
a  Phrygian  colony,  which  brought  arts 
and  mysteries  unknown  to  the  ab- 
origines. Diodorus  Siculus  declares 


222 


Cretan  Days. 


[August, 


them  to  have  been  the  primitive  inhabi- 
tants, but  the  fact  that  they  were  made 
demi-gods  of  indicates  another  and  in- 
ferior race,  over  which  the  new-comers 
gained  permanent  influence,  and  govern- 
ment perhaps.  The  geology  of  Bere- 
cyntius  indicates  ferriferous  formations, 
though,  in  the  very  incomplete  examina- 
tion of  the  country  which  has  been 
made,  it  is  not  surprising  that  no  indi- 
cation of  ancient  mines  has  been  dis- 
covered. 

East  of  us,  on  a  bold,  isolated  hill, 
overlooking  the  sea,  and  between  it  and 
the  road,  is  the  site  of  the  ancient  Ap- 
tera,  fabled  to  have  been  so  called  from 
the  result  of  the  singing  contest  be- 
tween the  Sirens  and  Muses  ;  the  former 
of  whom,  defeated,  lost  their  wings, 
and  fell  into  the  sea,  when  they  were 
transformed  into  three  islands,  which 
demonstrate  the  existence  of  the  myth- 
ists,  if  not  of  the  Sirens,  and  were 
known  to  the  ancients  as  the  Leucae 
Islands.  One,  on  which  stands  the 
Venetian  town  of  Suda,  is  situated  like 
the  island  in  the  narrows  of  New  York 
Harbor,  and,  properly  fortified,  would 
defend  the  bay  against  any  fleet ;  but 
now  it  only  holds  a  tumble-down  town, 
and  a  saluting  battery  of  field-pieces, 
with  a  small  population  of  fishermen 
and  soldiers.  The  opposite  point  of  the 
narrows  is  the  Akroteri,  and  on  a  hillock 
back  of  the  perpendicular  cliffs,  where 
you  may  still  see  the  batteries  built  by 
the  Turks  to  reduce  Suda,  stood  the 
ancient  city  of  Nimoa,  supposed  to 
have  been  founded  by  Nimos,  but  of 
which  the  oldest  story  we  possess  is  one 
of  ruins.  Spratt  has  placed  it,  in  his 
chart  and  book,  on  the  shore  of  Suda 
Bay,  and  near  a  small  volcanic  basin, 
which  he  supposed  served  as  port  to  it ; 
but  a  careful  examination  of  the  whole 
ground  assures  me  that  the  slight  re- 
mains supposed  by  him  to  indicate  the 
site  of  the  town  are  of  some  compara- 
tively recent  work.  But,  rounding  the 
point  of  the  Akroteri  eastward,  we  enter 
into  a  perfect  and  land-locked  harbor, 
with  smooth  sand-beach,  much  more  fa- 
vorable for  the  uses  of  ancient  mariners 
than  the  confined  basin  with  abrupt 


shores  which  Spratt  supposes  the  har- 
bor of  Nimoa.  In  commencing  my 
search  for  the  remains  of  this  town,  I 
asked  a  peasant  if  there  was  any  an- 
cient city  in  that  vicinity.  He  replied 
that  there  were  some  remains  of  <.,  very 
ancient  city  in  a  locality  he  pointed  out, 
but  level  with  the  ground.  Misled  by 
Spratt,  who  placed  Nimoa  a  mile  and  a 
half  away  from  this  locality,  I  neglected 
at  the  time  to  search  where  the  Cretan 
indicated  ;  but,  dissatisfied  with  the  re- 
mains which  Spratt  points  out,  I  com- 
menced a  systematic  survey  of  the 
whole  promontory,  and  found  on  the 
hill  the  peasant  had  shown  me,  not  only 
traces  of  walls,  but  tombs  and  quarries 
of  a  very  ancient  date.  As  in  many 
other  places,  the  Venetians  had  found 
cut  stone  lying  above  ground  cheaper 
than  quarries  ;  and  so  nothing  remains 
but  traces  of  walls,  and  the  foundations 
of  a  few  houses,  which  seem  by  their 
dimensions  and  plan  to  have  been  of  the 
heroic  age.  But  nothing  in  the  remains, 
—  not  even  the  rare  beauty  of  the  loca- 
tion, sheltered  from  all  winds  but  the 
east,  with  its  outlook  on  Aptera,  the 
white  mountains  (now  Sphakian),  and 
a  fertile  plain  half  round  it,  —  had  more 
weight  with  me  than  the  evidence  of  the 
Cretan  who  pointed  out  the  site  as 
that  of  the  ancient  city.  The  tenacity 
of  the  ancient  traditions  and  memories 
in  the  minds  of  this  people  is  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  psychological  phe- 
nomena I  have  ever  observed,  and  their 
attachment  to  the  traces  of  what  they 
call  the  "Hellenic"  period  is  exceed- 
ingly interesting.  In  fact,  they  can 
have  changed  little  except  names.  The 
uneducated  preserve  the  identical  su- 
perstitions the  ancient  authors  record, 
as  my  guide  showed  me  on  passing 
Aptera,  where  we  will  pick  up  the  bro- 
ken thread  of  the  journey. 

Near  the  city  are  some  grottos, 
where,  said  my  guide,  a  shepherd  was 
amusing  himself  by  playing  on  his  violin, 
when  from  the  sea  came  a  company  of 
nereids,  who  demanded  his  services 
while  they  danced.  In  a  mortal  fear  of 
his  supernatural  visitors,  he  complied, 
and  gradually  his  fear  not  only  wore 


1 868.] 


Cretan  Days. 


223 


off,  but  he  began  to  entertain  a  passion 
for  one  of  the  nymphs,  which  brought 
him  habitually  to  the  enchanted  grot. 
He  looked  and  played,  but  spoke  not  of 
his  lo-e,  yet,  after  pining  awhile,  sought 
the  aavice  of  a  wise  old  woman,  who 
told  him  that  the  only  way  to  secure  his 
mistress  was  to  catch  her  as  she  passed 
him  in  the  circle  of  dancers,  and  hold 
her  by  force,  come  what  might  She 
would  change  her  form  to  many  others, 
but  nothing  must  induce  him  to  let  her 
go ;  and,  when  he  had  satisfied  her  that 
his  determination  was  invincible,  she 
would  cease  her  efforts  to  escape  him, 
and  resign  herself  to  Hymen. 

He  lost  no  time  in  following  direc- 
tions, and,  after  a  frightful  struggle,  in 
which  his  beloved  was  beastly  and  fishy 
and  reptilian  in  all  grades  of  develop- 
ment, she  fulfilled  the  old  woman's  pre- 
diction. They  were  married  (whether 
by  the  priest,  informant  did  n't  know), 
and  though  madame  never  made  any 
attempt  to  escape  bonds,  she  seemed 
always  sad,  and  never  spoke  to  her  hus- 
band under  any  provocation.  This  was 
too  much  of  a  good  thing,  and  he  had 
recourse  to  the  wise  woman  for  a  recipe 
to  make  his  wife  talk.  They  had  an  in- 
fant, and  the  father  was  to  take  this  infant 
and  pretend  to  lay  it  on  the  fire,  when 
the  mother  would  probably  speak  ;  if 
not,  he  was  to  put  it  on  the  fire  an 
instant,  when  she  would  certainly  find 
voice  and  rescue  the  child. 

The  menace  did  not  succeed ;  but 
when  the  unhappy  father  actually  put 
the  child  on  the  embers,  the  mother, 
shrieking,  fled  to  the  sea,  and  never 
was  heard  of  again. 

Of  Aptera  there  remains  a  beautiful 
specimen  of  Cyclopean  wall  preserving 
nearly  the  whole  circuit ;  and  several 
cisterns  are  still  in  a  state  to  hold  water. 
Fragments  of  marble  appear  here  and 
there,  and  Pashley  and  Spratt  have  re- 
corded a  most  interesting  inscription, 
containing  a  decree  of  the  Demos, 
built  into  the  foundations  of  the  con- 
vent which  gives  shelter  to  wayfarers 
for  the  night.  We  would  not  tarry, 
but  followed  our  winding  road  down 
into  the  plains  of  the  Apokorona. 


The  view  before  us,  as  we  descended 
into  the  lower  lands  (for,  though  I  have 
used  the  term  "  plains  of  the  Apoko- 
rona," I  must  qualify  it  as  entirely  a 
comparative  use  of  the  word),  was  like 
an  Alpine  landscape  reproduced  on  a 
scale  of  about  one  half.  The  bare, 
angular,  seemingly  crystalline,  peaks  of 
the  white  mountains  rose  against  the 
sky,  overlooking  the  Apokorona,  where 
villages  of  white  masonry  glimmered 
through  groves  of  olive  that  appeared 
to  overspread  the  whole  district.  The 
road  plunged  down  into  a  quiet  valley, 
where  wound,  zigzag  and  impetuous,  a 
clear  streamlet,  in  which  I  peered  and 
poked  instinctively  for  some  signs  of 
trout.  Who  ever  heard,  in  any  part  of 
the  world,  except  in  Crete,  of  a  clear, 
cold  stream,  full  in  August  and  Septem- 
ber, which  had  not  trout  in  it  ?  As  we 
came  down  into  the  little  level  or  bot- 
tom which  enclosed  the  streamlet,  we 
saw  how  broken  and  really  hilly  the 
Apokorona  is.  On  the  hillside  oppo- 
site us  was  Stylos,  since  noteworthy  as 
the  scene  of  the  first  repulse  of  Musta- 
pha  Pacha  on  his  Sphakian  campaign, 
—  an  affair  which  delayed  operations  two 
weeks,  and  cost  the  Egyptians  a  pacha 
amongst  their  losses.  The  rich  bottom- 
land nourishes  noble  olives,  and,  with 
its  level  lines  and  beautiful  tree-groups, 
forms  one  of  the  most  picturesque 
scenes  I  saw  in  Crete.  We  passed  a 
group  of  villagers,  tending  their  sheep 
among  the  olive-trees,  piping  and  pas- 
toral, and 110  begging! 

We  halted  at  Armeni  to  lunch.  A 
cold  fowl  and  boiled  eggs  of  Cydonian 
production,  with  some  coarse  bread  and 
harsh  Apokorona  wine,  made  the  re- 
past, and  one  of  the  roughest  rides  I 
had  ever  taken  supplied  the  sauce, — one 
I  can  confidently  recommend  to  all  who 
do  not  know  what  jolting  in  a  mule's 
saddle  will  do  in  the  way  of  exciting  an 
appetite. 

The  valley  of  the  stream  which  we 
crossed  many  times  hereabouts,  and 
which  empties  into  the  sea  at  Kalyves 
(site  of  Kisamon,  ancient  port  of  Apte- 
ra, not  to  be  confounded  with  another 
Kisamon,  now  Kisamo-Castelli,  and  of 


224 


Cretan  Days. 


[August, 


which  I  have  spoken  earlier),  is  one  of 
those  best  adapted  for  high  cultivation 
and  semi-tropical  gardening  which  the 
Mediterranean  basin  can  show.  Abun- 
dantly supplied  with  perennial  springs, 
securing  easy  irrigation,  the  soil  alluvial 
along  the  stream,  and  calcareous  on  the 
ridges,  it  needs  but  application  and  a 
little  capital  to  be  made  a  paradise  for 
an  agricultural  community.  But  what 
can  be  done  in  a  country  where  every 
advance  in  production  is  met  by  a  coun- 
ter move  of  the  tax-gatherer,  and  where, 
except  by  robbery,  or  farming  of  the 
tithes,  no  one  can  grow  rich, — where 
capital  is  worth  twenty  per  cent  per 
annum,  and  would  be  worth  more  if 
there  were  any  considerable  demand, 
and  where  the  Christian,  who  is  the 
only  industrious  citizen,  can  always  be 
robbed  of  his  accumulations,  and  in 
many  cases  of  his  capital,  by  an  avari- 
cious Mussulman  ?  I  have  spoken 
before  of  the  general  poverty  of  Cre- 
tan houses,  and  might  add  expletives 
and  intensify  diminutives  in  speak- 
ing of  the  dwellers  in  the  Apoko- 
rona.  It  contains  many  villages,  main- 
ly of  Christians,  the  Mussulmans  being 
scattered  individuals,  and  produces 
much  oil,  and  might  produce  cereals 
and  vegetables  at  discretion  :  but  for 
what  end  ?  No  road  exists  which  would 
permit  a  profitable  transport  to  the 
towns ;  cheese  and  oil  only,  of  its  produc- 
tions, pay  freight  to  Canea  ;  and,  beside 
these  two  articles,  there  is,  therefore,  no 
inducement  to  produce  more  than  the 
peasants  use  themselves.  It  is  almost 
useless  to  ask  at  one  of  these  villages 
for  a  dfcmer,  unless  you  can  dine  up- 
on black  bread  and  olives,  with  boiled 
herbs  in  the  spring  and  autumn.  A 
fowl  fat  enough  to  eat  to  advantage  I 
never  saw, — eggs  seem  to  be  all  that  can 
be  expected  from  fowls.  The  houses 
of  the  villages  in  the  plains  about  the 
'cities  are  luxurious  compared  with 
these;  —  a  single  room  divided  in  two 
for  man  and  beast ;  a  mat  of  rushes  to 
sleep  on,  which  the  Cretan  spares  you 
willingly,  to  sleep  on  the  floor  of  earth 
himself;  fleas  innumerable  and  filth  im- 
measurable in  the  four  walls,  — are  what 


you  must  expect  to  find.  But  with  it  all 
there  is  a  something  in  the  Cretan  peas- 
antry which  commands  respect ;  and  in 
the  Apokorona  they  are  a  hardy  and  in- 
dependent breed,  warlike  to  a  degree. 
As  their  country  is  the  gate  to  Spha- 
kia,  which  has  always  been  the  abode 
of  the  bitterest  resistance  to  local  ty- 
ranny, they  suffer  the  inroads  of  all  the 
most  formidable  Turkish  expeditions. 

It  is  only  thirty  miles  to  Retimo  from 
Canea,  yet  in  ten  hours'  journey  we  were 
scarcely  half-way.  As  night  drew  near 
we  pushed  ahead,  hoping  to  find  quar- 
ters and  something  to  eat  at  a  convent 
near  or  at  Karidi ;  and  as  the  Pacha 
had  insisted  on  my  accepting  a  guard 
of  two  mounted  zapties,  we  made  the 
only  use  of  them  which  the  journey 
offered,  and  sent  them  ahead  to  pre- 
pare our  quarters,  while  we  followed 
at  a  safer  pace. 

As  it  grew  twilight,  and  we  tired  and 
hungry,  with  a  mile  yet  to  the  convent, 
our  zapties  came  clattering  over  the 
wretched  path  to  say  that  the  priests  had 
all  gone  to  their  farm  work  at  a  distant 
metochi  (farm  establishment),  that  the 
convent  was  locked,  and  they  could  not 
get  in.  Too  late  to  get  to  the  next  vil- 
lage beyond  we  had  only  to  retrace  our 
steps  in  the  dark  to  Vamos,  the  village 
last  past,  where,  after  much  running  to 
and  fro  of  the  zapties,  and  a  local  official 
whose  status  I  did  not  comprehend,  we 
found  an  empty  loft  of  a  house,  boast- 
ing two  stories,  which  we  had  to  our- 
selves, and  where  we  spread  the  blan- 
kets which  by  day  made  our  saddles  en- 
durable, —  I,  only,  as  the  high  dignitary 
of  the  occasion,  having  a  spare  mattress. 
While  we  looked  after  the  beds,  the 
friendly  villagers  brought  eggs,  which 
frying  in  oil  below,  sent  up  to  us  sav- 
ory summons  to  come  down  and  eat ; 
and  presently,  having  disposed  of  our 
eggs,  olives,  and  bread,  washed  down 
by  strong  wine,  with  a  relish  worthy  of 
a  better  meal,  we  adjourned  to  the  vil- 
lage cafe*,  and  took  a  cup  of  coffee,  and 
a  nargile  offered  with  eager  haste  by  a 
Sphakiote  captain,  who  happened  to  be 
there  on  business  ;  and  while  the  curi- 
ous townsmen  came  and  looked,  we 


1868.] 


Cretan  Days. 


225 


bubble  -  bubbled  in  the  open  air,  the 
capacity  of  the  cafe  extending  only  to 
the  fabrication  and  storing  of  its  com- 
modities. The  Sphakiote  asked  many 
questions,  and  answered  a  few,  —  all  I 
asked.  He  had  come  down  to  buy 
sheep  or  sell  them,  I  forget  which,  and 
was  evidently  a  man  of  much  conse- 
quence, having  travelled,  —  having  even 
been  as  far  as  Naples.  I  suspect  he 
had  been  a  pirate  in  his  earlier  years, 
like  most  of  his  clansmen,  and  so  had 
grown  richer  than  his  neighbors.  I 
have  passed  a  great  many  more  com- 
fortable nights  than  that,  and,  as  soon 
as  the  day  dawned,  we  were  in  the  sad- 
dle again. 

The  path  (it  seems  absurd  to  talk 
of  roads)  led  down  into  the  pass  of 
Armyro,  the  eastern  gate  of  the  Apok- 
orona.  The  river-bed  was  wild  and  pic- 
turesque, though  rarely  showing  signs 
of  water ;  the  hills  narrowed  in  their 
approaches  ;  and  we  descended  into  a 
gorge,  through  which,  coming  from  the 
south,  on  our  right  hand,  swept  a  bub- 
bling, dancing  stream  of  clear,  beautiful 
water.  But  it  bubbled  out  of  some  sa- 
line depths,  and  would  have  put  the  last 
touch  to  the  woe  of  Tantalus.  It  is  both 
medicinal  and  unpalatable  ;  but  its  bor- 
ders are  lined  with  green  and  luxuriant 
plants  and  fringed  with  flowering  olean- 
ders. An  old  Venetian  castle,  its  bat- 
tlements crumbling  away  and  its  walls 
festooned  with  ivy,  rising  from  the  little 
intervale  at  the  bottom,  commanded 
the  gorge  until  the  beginning  of  the 
Revolution  of  1821  -30  ;  but  the  Chris- 
tians then  took  it  by  storm,  and  dis- 
mantled it,  since  when  it  has  been  a 
ruin,  of  no  great  dignity,  and  not  prob- 
ably destined  to  boast  to  n.  .ay  genera- 
tions. 

Nothing  in  the  deepest  v,  ilclcrness  of 
the  New  World  could  be  more  solitary 
than  this  gorge.  No  sign  of  habitation 
existed  ;  beyond  us  was  a  bleak  moor, 
occupying  a  space  perhaps  a  mile  wide 
between  the  hills  and  the  sea,  and  des- 
elalc  as  the  desert.  It  is  a  broad  stripe 
of  sea-drift,  scarcely  as  uneven  as  the 
sea  itself;  and  at  its  farther  side  the  bare, 
strongly  marked  rock  ridges  plunged 

VOL.   XXII. —  NO.    130.  15 


down  almost  vertically  to  meet  its  level. 
The  plain  was  purple  with  heather, 
and  here  and  there  springs  gushed  out 
from  the  boggy  soil  and  ran  to  the  sea  ; 
green  willows,  mingling  with  oleanders 
and  shrubs  whose  names  I  knew  not, 
marked  their  courses,  and  relieved  the 
flatness  of  the  land  a  little. 

Armyro  is,  by  the  guess  of  Pashley, 
the  site  of  Amphimallion,  but  no  trace 
of  any  ancient  city  can  be  discovered;  it 
is,  like  most  of  the   hundred  cities,  a 
name  and   nothing    more,   one  of  the 
traditional  witnesses   of  the   turbulent 
and  checkered  character  of  the  history 
of  Crete,  —  each  city  besieging,  razing 
its  neighbor,  and  being  razed  in  turn. 
Almost  the  only  ruins  which  we  find  are 
Pelasgic,  and  are  those  which  no  hate 
could  lend  force  to  destroy,  —  even  late 
Roman  ruins  have  melted  away  in  the 
fierce  struggles  between  Christian  and 
Saracen  since  the  eighth  century  ;  the 
castle-builders   and    the   temple-haters 
have  left  nothing  that  could  be  moved. 
At  our  left,  on  the  sea-shore,  where  the 
river  pf  Armyro  (a  name  which  signi- 
fies  salt-spring,  being   the    Cretan  for 
Almyro)  empties,  was  Amphimalla,  —  a 
maritime  town  having  a  port  protected 
by  an   island,  which  still  offers  shelter' 
for  a  few  small   craft  from   northerly 
gales ;  at  the  right,  at  the  foot  of  the  pic- 
turesque hills,  is  the  lake  of  Kuma,  now 
only  noted  for  its  habit  of  overrunning 
with  the  melting  of  the  snows  in  spring, 
and  flooding  the  plain  around  with  eels, 
which  the  peasants  bring  to  Canea  for 
sale.     It  was  anciently  the  site  of  a  tem- 
ple of  Athena,  and  a  city  called  Corium. 
No  trace  of  ruins  on  either  of  these 
places  exists,  and  so  we  contented  our- 
selves with  looking  at  them  from  afar, 
and  followed  the  meandering  path  down 
to  the  sea.     We  passed  on  the  way  a 
small    clearing    planted    with   melons, 
which  grow  of  excellent  quality  in  the 
warm  sandy  soil,  where  running  streams 
render  irrigation  easy.     A  Cretan,  with 
dog  and  gun,  inhabited  a  little  house 
made  of  reeds,  in  the  midst  of  the  field, 
and  guarded  its  product  from  passers- 
by  ;  of  him  we  purchased  a  supply  for 
a  few  paras  (a  para  is  a  hypothetical 


226 


Cretan  Days. 


[August,. 


coin  little  more  than  our  mill  in 
value).  Thence  we  had  about  ten 
miles  of  smooth  sand-beach,  at  the  end 
of  which  another  river  cuts  its  passage 
to  the  sea,  and  affords  us  a  bit  of  ruin  in 
a  fine,  high,  single-arch  Venetian  bridge, 
which  formerly  led  the  road  part  way 
up  the  steep  ridge  forming  the  eastern 
side  of  the  gorge.  I  could  only  think 
what  must  have  been  the  violence  of 
the  torrent  which  had  cut  such  a  chasm 
for  itself  through  the  eternal  rock,  and 
turn  a  resolute  shoulder  to  the  tempta- 
tions of  picturesque  bits  which  its  zig- 
zag cliffs  presented.  The  place  is  called 
Petres  Kamara,  or  arched  stones ;  and 
the  bridge,  from  which  doubtless  it  de- 
rived its  name,  has  been  only  fragments 
for  many  years.  Under  the  Turks,  noth- 
ing but  decay  obtains. 

We  had  passed,  before  reaching  this 
point,  the  village  of  Dramia  (ancient 
Hydramon),  whence  a  road  branches  off 
southward  to  Argyropolis  and  Kalli- 
krati,  which  we  shall  take  on  a  future 
occasion  (following  the  campaign  of 
Omer  Pacha  against  Sphakia),  and  now 
only  note,  that,  though  on  the  inner  side 
of  the  plain,  it  was  anciently  a  seaport, 
and  attached  to  the  important  city  of 
Eleutherna,  the  ruins  of  which  are  to 
the  southeast  of  Retimo,  at  least  twen- 
ty miles  away.  This  was  a  curious 
characteristic  of  the  early  Cretan  towns, 
most  of  which  are  built  on  commanding 
positions  and  far  from  their  seaports. 
Thus  we  saw  that  Polyrrhenia  was  three 
hours  from  its  port  Phalasarna  ;  Ap- 
tera,  an  hour  or  more  from  Kisamon  ; 
and  elsewhere  we  shall  find  Cnossus, 
Gortyn,  Lyttus,  and  other  noted  cities, 
placed  at  considerable  distances  from 
their  seaports. 

From  Petres  Kamara  our  ride  was  a 
rough  one,  and  we  found  little  beside 
the  picturesque  beauty  of  the  scenery 
to  interest  us.  The  path  wound  over 
rugged  ridges  and  along  by  the  sea,  in 
places  at  dizzy  proximity  to  the  wild 
precipices  against  which  the  winter 
storms  of  the  y£gean  beat,  wearing, 
cutting  into  caves,  and  undermining,  the 
massive  rock.  Only  in  one  place  did 
\ve  halt,  at  Hagios  Nikolas,  —  a  little 


chapel  built  near  a  delicious  spring,. 
which  gushes  out  at  the  bottom  of  a 
ravine,  where  it  opens  on  a  white,  sandy 
beach.  No  Cretan  will  pass  a  favorite 
spring  without  stopping  to  drink,  even 
if  he  is  not  thirsty.  That  a  good  spring 
is  to  be  passed  even  justifies  a  detour; 
and  as  we  were  tired  and  thirsty,  we  ate 
our  bread  and  caviare  —  all  we  had  — 
with  additional  zest  borrowed  from  the 
fountain  of  St.  Nicholas,  which  de- 
serves its  repute. 

The  road  ascending  from  this  ravine 
was  so  bad  that  I  dared  not  stay  on  my 
mule,  and  most  of  my  retinue  had  dis- 
mounted before  me.  The  old  Venetian 
pavement,  which  could  not  be  entirely 
avoided,  was  worse  than  the  natural  rock, 
but  occupied  the  ledge  so  fully  that  we 
must  hobble  over  its  cobble-stones  as 
best  we  could.  And  with  such  ups  and 
downs  we  drew  near  to  Retimo.  ^yhose 
castle  and  minarets  we  saw  at  length 
gleaming  far  off  in  the  noonday  sun,  —  for 
we  had  occupied  twenty  hours  of  travel 
in  making  our  journey  of  thirty  miles. 

It  was  a  bleak,  rugged  range  of  rocks 
from  which  we  saw  the  city  ;  but  the 
road  declined  gently  along  the  side  and 
down  near  the  sea.  Above  it  other 
similar  ridges  jutted  out  one  after  the 
other,  receding  in  the  distance,  where 
loomed  up,  sharp  and  flat,  Mount  Ida, 
the  birthplace  of  mighty  Jupiter.  Be- 
yond the  city  the  sea-coast  swept  away 
in  successive  capes  and  bays,  and  the 
olive-clad  and  fertile  slopes  of  Mylopo- 
tamo  rose  from  the  white-footed  cliffs  to 
the  gray  and  glistening  peaks  which 
culminated  in  Ida. 

It  was  Friday,  and,  noon  coming  be- 
fore we  could  reach  the  city  gates,  we 
halted  at  a  spring  over  which  some 
charitable  or  spring-loving  Mussulman 
had  built  a  domed  khan,  where  way- 
farers might  rest  and  cool  themselves 
before  indulging  in  the  almost  icy  wa- 
ter. We  must  wait  here  until  the  noon- 
day prayer  was  over,  as  the  '•.  :  ssulmans, 
oppressed  by  a  prophecy  which  they 
have  recorded,  that  their  cities  will  be 
taken  on  Friday,  their  Sabbath,  shut 
their  gates  while  they  are  at  the  mosque. 
It  was  a  hot  day,  but  the  sea-breeze 


1 868.] 


:A  Modern  Lettrs  de  Cachet"  Reviewed. 


227 


had  been  blowing  an  hour  or  more,  and 
\ve  threw  our  saddle-blankets  on  the 
stone  seats,  and  lay  clown  to  rest,  until 
passers-by  from  the  city  notified  us  that 
the  gates  were  open. 

Near  the  city  we  passed  several  little 
cave-chapels  and  hermitages,  which, 
dug  in  the  soft  sandstone,  —  a  rock  re- 
sembling the  Caen  stone,  —  made  dry 
and  comfortable  dwellings,  as  compared 
with  those  I  saw  at  Katholico  and  other 
places.  The  frequency  of  these  little 
monasteries,  as  the  Cretans  call  them  all, 
and  of  the  little  chapels  which  dot  the 
island  with  their  white  ruins,  attests,  as 
well  as  history  and  prevalent  customs, 
the  intensely  devotional  tone  of  the  Cre- 
tan character,  now  mostly  shown  in  ab- 
surd superstitions,  the  growth  of  igno- 
rance, but  occasionally,  in  a  martyr-like 
adherence  to  their  faith  through  perse- 
cutions of  which  Retirno  can  tell  many 
fearful  stories,  the  Ottoman  power  here, 
remote  from  European  influences,  hav- 
ing had  fuller  swing  in  its  dealing  with 
the  Christians. 


As  we  entered  the  city,  my  guide 
called  my  attention  to  the  very  exten- 
sive Turkish  cemeteries  outside  the 
gates,  saying  that  they  were  almost  en- 
tirely the  growth  of  "  the  great  revolu- 
tion" ;  and,  as  we  entered  the  little  out- 
work which  once  defended  the  approach 
to  the  principal  city  gate,  he  pointed  to 
a  solitary  tree,  "  the  hangman's  tree," 
and  added  that  he  had  seen  under  that 
tree,  during  the  insurrection,  a  pile  of 
Christian  heads  as  high  as  he  could 
reach. 

We  rode  through  the  gate,  through  a 
long,  dark  passage  under  the  bastion 
which  commanded  it,  and  then  through 
another  inner  gate,  and  came  out  into  a 
little  place  where  the  full  character  of  a 
Turkish  town  for  the  first  time  struck 
me,  —  cafe's,  lazy  smokers,  the  overtop- 
ping minaret,  and  the  grateful  shade 
of  a  huge  sycamore,  with  all  the  world 
wondering,  rising,  and  staring,  as  "his 
Excellency"  and  suite  brought  civiliza- 
tion home  to  them, —  to  some  for  the 
first  time. 


"A"  MODERN   LETTRE   DE   CACHET"   REVIEWED. 

[It  is  not  our  custom  to  print  any' criticism  on  articles  which  have  appeared  in  these  pages  ;  but  the  follow- 
ing paper  comes  to  us  with  such  high  claims  for  consideration,  that  we  give  space  to  it.  —  EDITORS.] 


AN  article  in  the  May  number  of 
this  Magazine,  entitled  "A  Modern 
Lettre  de  Cachet,"  is  so  incorrect  in 
most  of  its  statements,  that  it  does 
great  injustice  to  certain  individuals, 
and  is  calculated  to  leave  a  false  im- 
pression respecting  the  merits  of  the 
question  at  issue.  As  few  of  its  readers 
will  be  likely  to  detect  these  misstate- 
ments,  and  fewer  still  suspect  that  they 
are  advanced  without  some  color  of  fact, 
we  feel  constrained  to  give  it  a  notice 
to  which,  otherwise,  it  would  hardly  be 
entitled.  The  scene  of  the  occurrences 
is  hundreds  of  miles  away  from  most 
readers,  the  persons  referred  to  are  en- 
tirely unknown  to  them,  and  the  sub- 


ject discussed  quite  foreign  to  their 
thoughts.  The  common  tendency  is, 
in  the  absence  of  particular  informa- 
tion, to  regard  that  as  presumptively 
true  which  is  confidently  and  plausibly 
told ;  and,  thus  received,  to  hold  rather 
than  relinquish  it,  even  in  the  face  of 
the  strongest  evidence  to  the  contrary. 
When  a  man  is  put  on  trial  for  a  crimi- 
nal offence,  he  is  presumed  in  law  to  be 
innocent  until  proved  to  be  guilty.  On 
the  contrary,  when  an  i  Dividual  or  an 
institution  is  charged  with  delinquency 
at  the  bar  of  public  opinion,  the  charge 
is  generally  held  to  be  true,  until  — and 
sometimes  after  —  it  is  proved  to  be 
false.  A  judicious  scepticism  in  such 


228 


"A  Modern  Lettre  de  Cachet'''  Reviewed.          [August, 


a  case  is  one  of  those  degrees  of  men- 
tal training  which  multitudes  never  at- 
tain. 

The  ostensible  purpose  of  the  arti- 
cle in  question  is  to  urge  a  change  of 
the  method  by  which  persons  are  ad- 
mitted into  our  asylums  and  hospitals 
for  the  insane.  This,  it  is  alleged,  can 
be  and  actually  is  perverted  into  a 
means  of  the  grossest  wrong-doing.  In 
the  discussion  of  the  subject,  —  if  the 
wild  and  reckless  statements  which 
make  up  the  staple  of  the  article  are 
worthy  of  that  name,  —  many  things  are 
related,  implicating  more  or  less  direct- 
ly the  honor  and  honesty  of  men  who 
have  ever  stood  unspotted  before  the 
world ;  and  imputing  venality  or  some- 
thing worse  .to  institutions  generally 
believed  to  be  engaged  in  a  work  of 
humanity,  under  the  direction  of  men 
supposed  worthy  of  their  trust.  The 
connection  between  the  thing  to  be 
reformed  and  most  of  these  allegations 
is  not  very  obvious,  for  the  formalities 
with  which  a  patient  may  be  admitted 
into  a  hospital  can  have  nothing  to 
do  with  his  subsequent  treatment.  It 
seems  to  be  only  the  old  artifice  of  as- 
sailing a  cause  by  bringing  up  some 
obnoxious  incident,  remotely,  and  not 
necessarily,  connected  with  it ;  and  the 
way  in  which  this  is  managed  leads  us 
to  suspect  that  the  writer  was  governed 
more  by  private  pique  than  any  regard 
for  the  public  good.  We  propose  to 
follow  him  through  from  one  statement 
to  another,  and  show  by  indisputable 
evidence  precisely  what  each  is  worth  ; 
and  we  solicit  the  patient  attention  of 
all  who  have  been  inclined  to  suppose 
that  they  were  made  in  truth  and  sin- 
cerity. 

It  appears  that  patients  are  now  ad- 
mitted into  hospitals  for  the  insane 
chiefly  on  the  strength  of  a  certificate 
of  insanity  signed  by  one  or  two  phy- 
sicians. This  is  alleged  to  be  all  wrong, 
because  physicians  —  considering  what 
wretches  many  of  them  are  —  may  be 
bribed  to  certify  what  they  do  not  be- 
lieve, or  may  honestly  be  mistaken  in 
their  opinion  ;  and  thus  persons  never 
supposed  to  be  insane  may  be  hurried 


away  to  a  place  of  perpetual  confine- 
ment, solely  in  order  that  ill-natured 
relatives  may  be  the  better  able  to  work 
out  some  nefarious  purpose.  Relatives 
are  so  anxious  to  do  this,  and  physi- 
cians are  so  ready  to  help  them,  accord- 
ing to  the  intimations  of  this  writer, 
that  we  can  only  wonder  that  half  the 
community,  at  least,  are  not  shut  up, 
with  no  hope  of  release  but  by  death. 
And  inasmuch  as  physicians  have  it  in 
their  power  also  to  poison  every  pa- 
tient whom  wicked  relations  may  think 
it  worth  their  money  to  get  rid  of  in 
that  way,  we  wonder  that  they  have  not 
been  swept  from  the  face  of  the  earth, 
instead  of  being  still  trusted  with  the 
lives  of  those  we  hold  most  dear. 

Seriously,  the  usages  of  society  and 
the  common  feelings  of  men  indicate  no 
difference  between  insanity  and  other 
diseases,  as  to  the  manner  in  which  the 
patient  should  be  treated  by  his  family 
and  friends.  When  a  person  is  struck 
down  by  mental  or  other  disease,  the 
usual  means  and  appliances  of  cure 
are  provided  ;  the  physician  is  called 
in,  nurses  are  engaged,  and  visitors 
are  excluded  from  the  room.  If  the 
physician  advises  that  he  can  be  better 
cared  for  somewhere  else,  that  the 
chances  of  recovery  would  be  increased 
by  removal  to  the  country,  or  the  sea- 
side, or  a  watering-place,  or  by  a  trip  to 
Europe,  the  advice  may  or  may  not  be 
followed;  but  it  is  not  customary  to 
think  that  the  physician  is  actuated  by 
corrupt  motives,  or  assumes  a  duty  that 
does  not  belong  to  him,  in  giving  it.  The 
presumption  is  nowise  different,  if,  it 
being  a  case  of  mental  disease,  he  ad- 
vises removal  to  a  hospital  as  the  most 
approved  instrumentality  which  the  sci- 
ence and  philanthropy  of  the  age  have 
created  for  the  treatment  of  mental  dis- 
orders. We  are  willing  to  admit  that 
the  medical  profession  has  its  share  of 
unworthy  members,  some  of  whom,  for 
a  consideration,  might  be  induced  to 
commit  the  alleged  offence;  but  it  does 
not  follow  that  this  or  any  other  possi- 
ble form  of  delinquency  should  be  met 
by  indiscriminating  legislation.  No  ac- 
cumulation of  safeguards  can  change 


1 868.] 


"A  Modem  Lettre  ds  Cachet"  Reviewed. 


229 


completely  the  course  of  human  nature. 
To  some  extent,  certainly,  we  are 
obliged  to  trust  to  the  honesty  of  men. 
The  business  of  life  could  not  be  car- 
ried on  without  this  trust,  and  it  would 
be  no  mark  of  wisdom  to  act  as  if 
everybody  were  only  waiting  for  an 
opportunity  to  abuse  it.  A  physician 
gives  a  certificate  of  insanity  precisely 
as  he  performs  any  other  professional 
duty,  —  in  both  cases  under  the  same 
sanctions  of  morality  and  religion,  and 
with  the  same  deference  to  the  laws  of 
the  land  and  the  good  opinion  of  his 
fellow -men.  What  better  safeguards 
can  we  have  ? 

But  doctors  disagree,  and  litigated 
cases  are  given  in  which  there  was  a 
diversity  of  opinion  among  the  medical 
witnesses.  Hence  it  follows  that  a 
medical  certificate  is  totally  unreliable, 
because  it  is  only  the  opinion  of  one  or 
two  physicians,  from  which  one  or  two 
others  might  be  found  who  would  be 
likely  to  dissent  Is  that  in  accord- 
ance with  the  principles  on  which  men 
ordinarily  act?  Is  the  opinion  of  a 
lawyer,  or  a  judge,  or  a  merchant,  or 
an  engineer,  or  a  mechanic,  or  a  far- 
mer, on  subjects  belonging  to  their 
respective  callings,  worthless,  because 
other  lawyers,  or  judges,  or  merchants 
might  not  concur  in  it  ?  The  writer 
labors  under  the  mistaken  notion  that 
rare,  exceptional  abuse  of  a  thing  can 
be  remedied  only  by  the  total  abolition 
of  the  thing  itself.  The  truth  is,  that, 
in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred, 
the  medical  certificate  is  all  that  can  • 
be  justly  required.  The  disease  is  ob- 
vious, the  necessity  for  hospital  treat- 
ment is  imperative,  and  all  parties  are 
satisfied.  For  the  exceptional  cases,  in 
regard  to  which  any  reasonable  doubt 
or  dissatisfaction  may  exist,  it  is  easy 
to  provide  by  a  suitable  legal  process 
without  abolishing  altogether  the  pres- 
ent practice. 

'*  There  it  stands,"  says  the  writer  of 
the  Lettr?  de  Cachet,  meaning  the  medi- 
cal certificate,  "in  all  its  monstrous 
proportions,  the  foulest  blot  upon  a  na- 
tion's statute-books."  And  again  he 
speaks  of  legislators  "wincing  at  the 


existence  of  a  laiv  which  permits  such 
oppression,"  and  only  regretting  "  that 
it  is  not  expunged  from  our  statute- 
books,"  referring  to  the  certificate,  if 
we  may  judge  from  the  context,  though 
the  connection  of  his  thoughts  one  with 
another  is  not  always  very  easily  traced. 
He  evidently  supposes  that  this  certifi- 
cate is  required  by  the  laws  of  the 
State,  but  such  is  not  the  fact.  It  is 
required  by  the  rules  of  every  hospital 
in  the  land,  as  a  salutary  measure  of 
protection  against  abuse  ;  but  only  in 
two  or  three  States  is  it  made  obliga- 
tory by  law.  The  fact  is,  the  merit  of 
whatever  has  been  done  for  this  pur- 
pose belongs  to  these  very  institutions 
which  are  charged  with  favoring  the 
designs  of  wrong-doers.  Without  their 
spontaneous  and  unsolicited  action,  not 
even  the  medical  certificate  would  have 
been  required.  They  have  been  re- 
garded as  purely  benevolent  in  their  ob- 
ject, and  philanthropists  have  thought 
they  were  doing  good  service  in  the 
cause  of  humanity  by  providing  for  the 
admission  within  their  walls  of  as  many 
as  possible  of  those  afflicted  ones  who 
have  lost  Heaven's  noblest  gift  to  man. 
Our  stupid  forefathers  never  became 
aware  of  the  appalling  fact,  so  obvious 
to  the  keener  discernment  of  some  of 
their  descendants,  that  they  are  only 
"nurseries  for  and  manufactories  of 
madness."  Thus,  completely  unaware 
of  their  true  character,  they  took  no 
measures  of  prevention,  and  weakly  re- 
posed upon  the  honor  and  honesty  of  a 
class  of  men  who,  we  are  now  told,  are 
ever  ready  to  convert  the  opportunities 
of  benevolence  into  a  means  for  perpe- 
trating the  foulest  of  wrongs.  Even 
after  the  light  of  modern  humanity 
had  fairly  dawned  upon  them,  people 
continued  so  insensible  that  when  one 
of  those  victims  of  oppression  was 
brought  from  an  insane  asylum  into 
court  on  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus,  and  his 
discharge  was  urged  for  the  reason  that 
his  detention  was  authorized  by  no  law 
whatever,  common  or  statute,  the  court 
was  swift  to  say  by  the  mouth  of  that 
eminent  judge,  Chief  Justice  Shaw  of 
Massachusetts,  that  his  detention  in  the 


230 


A  Modern  Lettre  de  Caclict"  Reviewed. 


[August, 


asylum  was  amply  authorized  by  "the 
great  law  of  humanity." 

It  may  be  well  to  say,  in  this  connec- 
tion, that  for  several  years  the  Asso- 
ciation of  Superintendents  of  North 
American  hospitals  for  the  insane,  at 
its  annual  meetings,  has  been  discuss- 
ing and  maturing  the  project  of  a  gen- 
eral law  for  regulating  the  position  of 
the  insane,  which  it  proposes  to  recom- 
mend for  adoption  in  every  State  of  the 
Union.  This  proposed  law,  while  rec- 
ognizing the  sacred  right  of  the  family, 
under  the  great  law  of  humanity,  to 
place  one  of  its  members  in  a  hospital 
for  the  insane,  restricted  by  no  other 
condition  than  that  of  the  medical  cer- 
tificate, provides  a  judicial  procedure 
for  authorizing  this  measure  in  the  case 
of  those  who  have  no  family  or  near 
friend  to  care  for  them,  and  also  for 
that  class  of  patients  whose  relatives 
may  differ  respecting  the  proper  course 
to  be  pursued.  It  also  provides  a  ju- 
dicial inquisition  for  ascertaining  the. 
mental  condition  of  such  as  may  be 
alleged  to  be  detained  in  a  hospital 
after  recovery  from  their  derangement ; 
and  it  makes  such  disposition  of  those 
who  are  acquitted  on  trial  for  criminal 
acts  as  will  best  secure  the  safety  of 
society  and  satisfy  the  claims  of  hu- 
manity. 

It  would, seem  as  if  a  would-be  re- 
former of  the  laws  should  know  with 
some  degree  of  accuracy  what  the  laws 
are  ;  but  to  our  writer  that  kind  of  in- 
formation is  a  matter  of  perfect  indif- 
ference. His  remarks  on  the  pecuniary 
bond  given  by  the  friends  of  patients 
exhibit  the  same  confusion  of  ideas  that 
we  have  witnessed  in  his  remarks  about 
the  medical  certificate.  Having  quoted 
the  bond  required  at  the  Frankford 
asylum,  he  adds  immediately  :  "Thus  is 
written  the  law  upon  this  matter,  bor- 
rowed scores  and  scores  of  years  ago 

from  England Yet  here  upon 

our  statute-books  it  stands  as  it  was 
recorded  on  the  day  of  its  adoption." 
It  seems  almost  an  insult  to  the  under- 
standing of  our  readers  to  tell  them 
that  neither  this  nor  any  bond  for 
the  Frankford  or  other  hospital  in 


Pennsylvania  ever  existed  in  the  shape 
of  a  statute.  It  was  required  by  the 
managers  of  the  asylum,  in  order  to 
secure  the  payment  of  their  expenses. 
A  similar  bond  is  used  in  every  hos- 
pital where  the  patients  are  not  entirely 
supported  at  the  public  expense.  It 
has  no  connection  whatever  with  the 
mode  of  admission,  and  would  be  re- 
tained even  if  the  former  were  made  to 
depend  on  a  trial  by  jury.  It  is  a  com- 
mon usage  of  the  world  to  require  secu- 
rity for  the  payment  of  pecuniary  obli- 
gations. Hospitals  for  the  insane  are 
charitable  institutions,  depending  for 
their  support  more  or  less  on  the  in- 
come derived  from  their  patients.  If 
the  rich  sometimes  pay  more  than  the 
actual  cost,  they  obtain  what  they  get 
at  a  much  lower  price  than  they  could 
in  any  other  way,  while  the  excess  in- 
ures to  the  benefit  of  the  poorer  classes, 
who  thereby  pay  considerably  less  than 
the  cost.  The  effect  of  bad  debts, 
therefore,  is  to  enhance  the  price  to  the 
latter  class,  and  to  that  extent  deprive 
them  of  the  benefit  of  hospital  treat- 
ment. To  find  in  such  a  bond  an  oc- 
casion of  reproach  indicates  either  an 
extraordinary  ignorance  of  the  ways  of 
business,  or  a  determination  to  excite 
prejudice  and  ill-feeling  at  all  hazards. 

"  The  natural  consequences,"  he  says, 
"of  granting  physicians  such  immense 
powers"  (meaning  thereby,  we  suppose, 
the  power  of  giving  a  certificate  of  in- 
sanity, and  perhaps  that  of  requiring  a 
bond  for  the  payment  of  expenses) "  are 
flung  into  the  faces  of  our  legislators, 
judges,  and  jurors,  with  'damnable  itera- 
tion.' "  What  is  meant  by  consequences 
that  are  flung  about  in  this  extraordina- 
ry manner  he  does  not  vouchsafe  to  in- 
form us,  but  we  are  inclined  to  believe  it 
is  only  one  of  those  spontaneous  flights 
of  rhetoric  in  which  he  is  fond  of  indulg- 
ing. The  sentence  is  immediately  fol- 
lowed by  the  statement  that  "  the  law- 
books  are  full  of  such  cases,"  but  we 
are  left  as  much  in  the  dark  as  to  these 
"  cases  "  as  we  are  about  the  "  conse- 
quences "  aforesaid.  He  can  hardly 
mean  the  cases  of  persons  who  have 
been  delivered  from  durance  by  th 


1 868.] 


"A  Modem  Lettre  de  Cachet"  Reviewed. 


231 


writ  of  habeas  corpus,  because  he  pres- 
ently harrows  up  our  feelings  with  a 
sensational  paragraph  on  the  extreme 
difficulty  of  obtaining  the  writ  at  all, 
and  the  cold  comfort  afforded  by  it  when 
it  is  obtained.  At  the  victim's  hearing, 
"everything  is  against  him";  "he 
comes  into  court  feverish  and  excited. 
His  wrongs,  his  sufferings,  his  associa- 
tions in  the  asylum,  have  wrought  their 
worst  upon  him."  His  witnesses  fail 
to  appear,  "for  his  star  is  in  the  de- 
scendant, and  the  taint  of  the  prison  is 
on  him."  Then,  too,  on  the  other  side 
are  feed  counsel  and  the  "  influential 
citizens "  that  compose  the  Board  of 
Directors  ;  and  "  the  medical  staff  of 
eminent  men  already  biassed  against 
any  one  "  pronounced  insane  by  a  pro- 
fessional brother  ;  and  "  the  crowd  of 
spectators,  who  glare  at  the  prisoner  as 
if  he  were  a  wild  beast " ;  and  the 
"keeper  ever  by  his  side";  and  "the 
judge,  whose  face  betokens  no  interest 
in  him,  but  is  lighted  up  with  cordial 
recognition  of  each  of  the  eminent 
medical  jailers  as  they  enter.  They 
have  sworn  away  so  many  men's  liber- 
ties, before  his  Honor,  that  they  and 
the  court  are  quite  old  friends."  If  the 
prisoner  can  stand  all  this,  and  rise 
superior  to  the  depressing  influences 
that  have  surrounded  him,  and  "  under- 
go an  examination  with  perfect  calm- 
ness," even  then  he  has  but  "a  desper- 
ate chance."  The  Anglo-Saxon  world 
has  been  in  the  habit  of  thinking,  that, 
of  all  the  instrumentalities  of  the  law 
none  is  more  potent  in  effecting  its  ob- 
jects than  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus. 
.-trength  of  surroundings,  no  influ- 
ence of  wealth  or  station,  no  cunning 
device  of  lawyers,  has  been  supposed 
hie  of  resisting  its  power  or  thwart- 
Its  purposes.  All  this,  it  appears, 
is  one  of  those  popular  fallacies  which 
pass  among  unenlightened  people  for 
veritable  facts.  To  the  poor  unfortu- 
nate who  has  suffered  the  wrong  and 
indignity  of  being  pronounced  insane, 
and  shut  up  among  "gibbering  idiots 
and  raving  maniacs,"  it  furnishes  no 
relief.  Plain  people,  insensible  to  the 
arts  of  rhetoric,  and  governed  solely  by 


the  dictates  of  common  sense,  would 
rather  conclude  that  the  failure  of  the 
writ  to  procure  redress  in  the  class  of 
cases  referred  to  only  showed  that  the 
persons  were  really  insane  and  properly 
held  in  confinement. 

Again  we  are  puzzled.  In  spite  of 
the  inefficiency  of  the  writ  here  com- 
plained of,  the  writer  says  that  "a  dis- 
tinguished member  of  the  Philadelphia 
bar  lately  referred  to  six  cases  in  which 
he  had  been  engaged  during  the  last 
year,  where  there  had  been  imprison- 
ment for  alleged  insanity,  and  release 
effected  only  after  long  confinement  and 
tedious  efforts  "  ;  and  this,  he  intimates, 
is  not  an  unusually  large  proportion, 
"for,  if  we  could  examine  the  dockets 
of  every  practising  lawyer  in  the  United 
States,  we  should  find  multitudes  of 
entries  telling  the  same  story."  This 
curious  fact  in  the  statistics  of  insanity 
we  commend  to  the  attention  of  our 
friend,  Dr.  Jarvis,  by  whom  it  seems  to 
have  been  overlooked  in  his  researches 
in  this  department  of  knowledge.  In 
the  mean  time,  we  will  give  him  the  bene- 
fit of  such  inquiries  as  the  above  state- 
ment induced  us  to  make.  In  the  last 
Philadelphia  Directory  the  list  of  law- 
yers embraces  about  seven  hundred 
names.  On  the  supposition  that  only 
half  of  these  are  in  actual  practice,  and 
that  these  have  been  engaged  in  only 
half  as  many  cases  of  imprisonment  for 
alleged  insanity  as  the  "distinguished 
member  of  the  Philadelphia  bar,"  with 
whom  it  may  have  been  a  specialty, 
then  the  whole  number  of  cases  must 
have  amounted,  for  the  year  1867,  to 
one  thousand  and  fifty !  We  find,  how- 
ever, that  during  that  year  two  persons 
only  were  discharged  from  the  Penn- 
sylvania Hospital  for  the  Insane  by 
means  of  the  writ  of  habeas  corpus,  and 
neither  of  them  on  the  ground  of  their 
not  being  insane,  and  not  one  from 
either  of  the  other  hospitals,  public  or 
private,  out  of  an  aggregate  of  about 
thirteen  hundred  patients.  During 
the  twenty-seven  years  that  the  first- 
named  institution  has  existed,  out  of 
more  tha,n  five  thousand  patients  re- 
ceived, only  three  cases  have  been  dis- 


232 


Modem  Lettre  de  Cachet"  Revived.          [August, 


charged  by  writ  of  habeas  corpus,  where 
the  officers  made  any  objection,  ancl  in 
these  cases  the  discharge  was  not  made 
because  the  patients  were  believed  to 
be  sane.  One  other  patient  was  re- 
leased during  the  proceedings  of  a 
Commission  in  Lunacy,  and  one  was 
removed  by  his  friends  before  the  final 
hearing,  and  soon  afterwards  found 
drowned  in  the  Delaware  River.  From 
all  the  other  establishments  together, 
since  they  began,  one  only  —  from  that 
at -Harrisburg  —  has  been  discharged  by 
the  writ.  The  conclusion  seems  to  be 
inevitable,  that  "the  distinguished  mem- 
ber of  the  Philadelphia  bar'"  who  suc- 
ceeded in  delivering  six  persons  from 
durance  vile  in  the  year  1867  is  no  bet- 
ter than  a  myth  ;  or,  if  he  were  really  a 
thing  of  flesh  and  blood,  that  he  was 
playing  upon  the  credulity  of  the  writer. 

The  writer  is  not  content  with  gen- 
eral assertions  respecting  the  abuses 
that  grow  out  of  the  present  arrange- 
ment. Several  cases  are  described  that 
would  seem  to  furnish  some  ground  for 
his  conclusions,  provided  they  are  fairly 
related.  If,  however,  these  accounts 
abound  in  misrepresentations,  then  they 
only  prove  that  the  writer  is  unreliable 
in  anything.  Let  us  see  how  this  is. 

The  first  case  adduced  for  the  pur- 
pose of  showing  that  sane  men  may  be 
caught  up  while  quietly  pursuing  their 
customary  avocations,  and  kept  in  close 
confinement  under  the  false  pretence 
of  their  insanity,  is  that  of  Morgan 
Hinchman,  which  occurred  in  Philadel- 
phia, Pennsylvania,  over  twenty  years 
ago.  It  would  be  impossible  within  our 
allotted  space  to  enter  into  the  merits 
or  demerits  of  this  case,  and  we  must, 
therefore,  be  content  with  noticing  only 
the  misrepresentations  of  the  writer, 
vitiating,  as  they  do,  almost  every  state- 
ment he  has  made  concerning  it.  This 
will  show,  however,  the  animus  with 
which  the  article  was  written,  and  the 
degree  of  credit  which  it  deserves. 

The  facts  of  the  case  were  disclosed 
at  the  trial  of  an  action  of  conspiracy, 
brought  by  Hinchman  against  fifteen 
persons,  among  whom  were  his  sister, 
Ijis  wife's  sister,  the  men  who  took  him 


to  the  asylum,  the  physician  who  gave 
the  certificate,  the  officers  of  the  asylum, 
and  a  person  who  was  charged  with 
being  placed  corruptly  on  the  jury  that 
pronounced  him  insane  (after  making 
inquisition  in  compliance  with  a  writ  de 
lunatico  inquirendo}.  The  alleged  ob- 
ject of  the  conspiracy  was  to  place  him 
in  the  asylum  at  Frankford,  in  order  to 
obtain  the  possession  or  control  of  his 
property.  He  obtained  a  verdict ;  but 
few,  we  believe,  can  read  the  evidence 
now,  free  from  the  prejudices  of  the 
time,  without  being  satisfied  that  he  was 
very  insane,  and  that  no  corrupt  or 
other  improper  motive  could  be  fairly 
imputed  to  any  one  of  the  defendants. 
In  fact,  there  was  nothing  whatever  to 
distinguish  the  course  of  events  in  this 
case  from  that  which  ordinarily  occurs. 
For  several  years  this  person  had  la- 
bored under  mental  derangement,  which 
at  times  deprived  him  of  all  self-control, 
and  made  him  behave  as  most  insane 
people  do  in  the  highest  grade  of  the 
disease,  though  at  other  'times  he  re- 
tained his  self-possession,  and  to  the 
casual  observer  presented  no  trace  of 
disorder.  Gradually  he  grew  worse. 
His  paroxysms  became  more  frequent, 
and  created  constant  apprehension  in 
the  family  circle.  Naturally  reluctant 
to  take  the  last  step,  and  hoping  that  ev- 
ery attack  would  be  the  last,  his  friends 
attempted  no  interference  until  his  own 
welfare  and  the  safety  of  others  ren- 
dered it  imperatively  necessary.  Then 
his  mother  and  his  sister,  his  wife  and 
her  sister,  assuming  a  responsibility 
that  belonged  to  them  alone,  concluded 
to  send  him  to  a  hospital.  Accord- 
ingly, they  invoked  the  aid  of  some 
male  friends  to  carry  this  measure  into 
eifect.  A  physician  who  had  long  and 
intimately  known  him  gave  the  medi- 
cal certificate,  his  family  physician  ad- 
vised him  to  go  quietly,  and  all  con- 
cerned were  his  friends  and  well- 
wishers.  He  was  placed  in  an  asylum 
admirably  fitted  for  its  destined  purpose 
allowed  every  comfort  and  privile 
conducive  to  his  welfare,  and  in  less 
than  six  months  discharged,  free  from 
all  trace  of  active  disease.  On  the  face 


1 868.] 


"A  Modern  Lcttre  de  Cachet"  Reviewed. 


233 


of  this  transaction  there  was  nothing 
suspicious  ;  everything  was  done  open- 
ly and  aboveboard,  in  the  usual  way 
and  by  the  usual  means.  The  very  day 
after  his  admission  to  the  asylum  ap- 
plication was  made  by  his  mother  for  a 
jury  of  inquest,  which  was  granted  ;  and, 
the  fact  of  insanity  being  established, 
a  committee  was  appointed  to  take 
charge  of  his  property  and  manage  his 
affairs.  Yet,  out  of  this  simple  trans- 
action, conceived  in  kindness  and  com- 
pleted in  good  faith,  this  writer  conjures 
up  an  array  of  horrors  suggestive  of  the 
Holy  Inquisition,  the  Star  Chamber, 
the  Bastile,  and  iron  cages.  How  much 
foundation  the  horrors  have  is  a  question 
we  propose  to  answer,  and  we  will  take 
them  in  the  order  in  which  they  stand. 

Horror  \st.  —  "An  estrangement 
arising  out  of  it  [his  wife's  assignment 
of  her  property  to  him]  grew  up  be- 
tween him  and  his  wife,  instigated,  it 
was  alleged,  by  her  family." 

There  was  not  a  tittle  of  proof  of  any 
estrangement  on  her  part,  nor  any 
change  of  manner  or  feeling  beyond 
what  would  necessarily  result  from  the 
manifestation  of  Hinchman's  mental 
disease. 

Horror  id.  —  "  For  six  long  and 
dreadful  months  was  this  gentleman 
kept  a  close  prisoner,  denied  the  usual 
privileges  of  the  establishment,  encom- 
passed by  gibbering  idiots  and  raving 
maniacs,"  "  deprived  of  all  intercourse 
with  the  outer  world,  save  those  of  his 
enemies  who  had  placed  him  there." 

Dr.  Evans,  the  visiting  physician,  tes- 
tified, on  the  trial,  that,  "during  the  ear- 
ly period  of  his  being  in  the  asylum,  he 
was  limited  to  the  men's  wing  of  the 
building,  and  to  the  airing-yard  attached 
thereto.  As  his  health  improved,  he 
was  allowed  the  use  of  the  garden,  the 
library,  and  grounds  adjoining  it ;  and, 
when  his  convalescence  was  thought  to 
be  secured,  he  was  allowed  the  range 
of  the  whole  farm,  to  go  where  and  as 
he  would"  ;  and  it  appeared  from  other 
wif  nesses,  that  once  he  visited  a  brother- 
in-law  living  a  few  miles  from  the  asy- 
lum, and  spent  the  night  with  him.  He 
received  a  visit  from  his  mother  and  his 


wife,  though  they  probably  are  ranked 
by  our  writer  among  his  "enemies"; 
from  his  brother-in-law,  who  had  noth- 
ing to  do  with  placing  him  in  the  asy- 
lum ;  from  his  uncle,  who  tried  hard  to 
have  him  discharged,  and  several  other 
persons.  Several  letters,  too,  passed 
between  him  and  the  "  outer  world." 
By  a  rule  of  the  asylum,  no  idiots,  gib- 
bering or  otherwise,  are  ever  received  ; 
and  if  raving  maniacs  were  in  the  house 
at  that  time,  they  were  in  a  different 
ward  from  that  occupied  by  Hinchman, 
and  could  not  have  seriously  annoyed 
him. 

Horror  yl.  —  "  In  his  far-away  home, 
and  unknown  to  him,  his  eldest  child 
lay  dying." 

We  are  unable  to  see  what  bearing 
this  event  has  on  the  question  of  Mr. 
Hinchman's  insanity,  or  the  manner  in 
which  he  was  placed  in  the  asylum.  He 
was  not  informed  of  this  fact,  probably 
for  the  reason  that  it  seemed  likely  to 
disturb  and  agitate  him,  and  thus  retard 
his  recovery.  Such  is  the  course  often 
pursued  in  asylums  ;  and  that  it  is  mer- 
ciful and  judicious  no  one  can  doubt 
wbo  has  been  much  conversant  with 
the  insane. 

Horror  4///.  —  "  His  property  was 
sold  away  from  him  under  the  auction- 
eer's hammer  ;  his  books,  his  furniture, 
his  very  garments,  divided  among  *  his 
friends]  who  had  given  the  orders  by 
which  he  was  buried  alive." 

It  seems  that  one  of  Hinchman's  cred- 
itors obtained  a  judgment  previously  to 
his  being  sent  to  the  asylum,  but  the  exe- 
cution was  issued  afterwards.  To  pre- 
vent the  sacrifice  of  the  stock  and  other 
things  on  the  farm,  the  sale  of  which 
had  been  ordered  by  the  sheriff,  one  of 
the  persons  included  in  the  roll  of  con- 
spirators, in  the  kindness  of  his  heart, 
advanced  the  money  to  satisfy  the  exe- 
cution, and  by  judicious  management 
obtained  a  good  price  for  the  property. 
The  surplus  was  used  to  discharge  oth- 
er demands  against  the  estate.  So  that 
on  the  discharge  of  the  commission,  as 
was  abundantly  proved  by  the  evidence, 
Hinchman's  real  estate  was  restored  to 
him  just  as  he  left  it,  and  his  psrsonal 


234 


"A  Modern  Lett  re  de  Cachet"  Reviewed.          [August, 


property  accounted  for  to  him  within 
two  hundred  dollars  of  his  own  esti- 
mate,—  a  number  of  debts  having  been 
paid,  his  family  supported,  and  an  exe- 
cution advantageously  satisfied. 

What  ground  the  writer  has  for  say- 
ing Hinchman's  clothes  were  divided 
among  his  friends  we  cannot  ascertain. 
We  doubt  if  he  has  any.  There  is  not 
a  syllable  to  that  effect  in  the  testimony, 
and  no  one  within  reach  of  inquiry  ever 
heard  of  it  before.  Hinchman's  wife 
may  possibly  have  given  away  a  pair  of 
old  trousers,  or  some  other  worn-out 
garment  supposed  to  be  not  worth  keep- 
ing. 

Horror  $th.  —  "  They  had  consigned 
him  to  a  living  death  ;  nobody  came  to 
his  rescue,  nobody  knew  of  the  place  of 
his  incarceration,  —  nobody,  relative  or 
true  friend,  alien  or  neighbor." 

The  testimony  showed  that  many 
persons,  friends,  neighbors,  and  rela- 
tives, knew  of  his  being  in  the  asylum, 
and  his  uncle  visited  him  two  or  three 
times,  and  used  every  effort  to  get  him 
discharged. 

Horror  6th.  —  At  the  trial,  "signa- 
tures were  denied,  orders  repudiated, 
minutes  kept  back,  records  vitiated  and 
altered,  letters  burned." 

It  is  true  that  some  papers  of  little 
importance,  called  for  from  the  defence, 
were  not  forthcoming  at  once,  having 
been  obviously  mislaid  ;  and  that  is  the 
only  grain  of  truth  in  the  whole  charge. 
Nothing  was  kept  back,  denied,  vitiated, 
or  burned. 

Horror  yth.  —  When  the  uncle  "  went 
in  his  wrath  to  those  who  had  placed 
him  there,  who  had  sold  his  property 
and  divided  his  raiment  among  them,  he 
was  told  '  that  he  had  better  not  at- 
tempt reclaiming  his  nephew's  property, 
but  leave  it  with  them,  because  they 
would  either  prove  him  insane  or  so 
blacken  his  character  that  he  could  not 
walk  the  streets.'  " 

The  conversation  referred  to  was 
with  the  person  who  had  been  appointed 
the  committee  to  take  charge  of  his  af- 
fairs, and  is  here  grossly  misrepresented. 
This  person,  who  had  taken  no  part, 
by  word  or  deed,  in  placing  Hinchman 


in  the  asylum,  said  to  the  uncle,  what 
he  had  already  said  to  the  nephew,  as 
a  reason  why  they  should  refrain  from 
revoking  the  guardianship,  —  that  it 
would  be  the  means  of  blackening  his 
character  ;  that  is,  Hinchman  had  done 
things  that  coulcl  be  excused  only  on 
the  ground  of  insanity,  such  as  taking 
money  from  a  bank  in  which  he  was 
employed,  and  in  which  he  consequent- 
ly lost  his  place.  The  Friends'  Meet- 
ing, to  which  he  belonged,  directed 
inquiry  to  be  made  into  the  matter, 
according  to  their  custom ;  and  the 
conclusion  was  that  he  was  insane, 
and  therefore  not  deserving'  of  censure 
or  discipline. 

Horror  %th.  —  "Said  the  chief  con- 
spirator to  his  victim,  '  Make  a  deed  of 
trust.  If  you  do  that,  you  may  come  out 
a  sane  man.'  Another  witness  testified 
that  the  superintendent  of  the  asylum 
said:  *  It  is  a  mere  family  quarrel;  if 
he  would  arrange  his  property,  there 
would  be  an  end  of  it.'  " 

The  truth  of  these  statements,  which 
were  said  by  the  uncle  to  have  been 
made  to  him,  not  to  the  '  victim,'  was 
positively  denied  by  affidavit  of  the 
persons  referred  to,  one  of  whom  was 
Hinchman's  wife. 

Horror  glh.  —  "The  physician  who 
signed  the  certificate  had  never  been 
Morgan  Hinchman's  physician,  had  not 
seen  him  a  single  moment  for  four 
months  previous  to  issuing  it." 

This  may  have  been  so,  but  it  must 
be  borne  in  mind  that  the  physician 
was  made  a  defendant  in  the  case,  and 
of  course  his  mouth  was  shut.  The 
writer  was  careful  not  to  add,  what  he 
knew  very  well,  that  this  gentleman  was 
a  fellow-member  of  the  same  Friends' 
Meeting  ;  that,  when  the  Meeting  was 
obliged  to  take  cognizance  of  Hinch- 
man's conduct,  he  was  one  of  the  commit- 
tee chosen  to  visit  and  examine  him,  and 
report  on  the  proper  course  to  be  pur- 
sued ;  that,  in  consequence  of  these  re- 
lations, he  became  well  acquainted  with 
Hinchman's  mental  condition,  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  he  was  insane,  and 
advised  the  Meeting  to  treat  him  accord- 
ingly. He  was,  therefore,  as  well  fitted 


1868.] 


"A  Modern  Lcttre  de  Cachet"  Reviewed. 


235 


to  give  a  certificate  as  any  other  phy- 
sician would  have  been  on  the  strength  of 
one  or  two  interviews.  But  instead  of 
"being  outside  of  the  reach  of  the  law, 
and  acquitted,"  as  the  writer  states,  with 
his  usual  inaccuracy,  he  was  convicted 
with  the  rest  of  the  conspirators. 

Horror  iQth.  —  "A  manager  of  the 
asylum  testified  that  'the  superintend- 
ent could  not  look  beyond  the  papers 
of  admission  supplied  by  the  patient's 
friends  ;  that  the  superintendent  had 
no  power  to  discharge  an  inmate,  no 
matter  how  long  his  cure  had  been  es- 
tablished, without  the  consent  of  the 
friends  who  had  placed  him  there.''  " 

We  can  find  nothing  like  this  in  the 
printed  testimony.  On  the  contrary, 
one  of  the  rules  of  the  asylum,  pro- 
duced at  the  trial,  is,  that,  "in  case  of 
a  patient  being  fully  restored,  or  other 
causes  rendering  his  or  her  removal 
proper,  reasonable  notice  shall  be  given 
thereof  to  the  friends  of  the  patient ; 
but,  should  they  decline  applying  for  a 
discharge,  the  visiting  managers  shall 
report  the  case  to  the  board,  and  pro- 
ceed under  its  direction  to  discharge 
and  remove  the  patient." 

It  must  be  a  desperate  cause  that 
can  derive  any  support  from  a  distorted 
account  of  a  case  which  no  true  friend 
of  the  principal  party  concerned  would 
have  been  anxious  to  drag  from  its  long 
sleep  into  the  gaze  of  a  new  generation. 
The  fact  of  Hinchman's  insanity  was 
abundantly  established  by  the  testimony 
of  his  own  family,  his  neighbors,  and  his 
physicians.  He  was  placed  in  an  asylum 
where  he  was  properly  and  kindly  cared 
for, and  allowed  every  suitable  privilege, 
and  from  which  he  was  discharged,  if 
not  as  perfectly  recovered,  yet  in  a  far 
better  mental  condition  than  when  he 
entered.  His  property  was  very  prop- 
erly placed  in  charge  of  a  committee, 
by  whom  it  was  prudently  and  judi- 
ciously managed.  The  case  did  pre- 
sent an  extraordinary  feature,  unparal- 
leled in  the  records  of  jury-trials.  It 
was  the  spirit  in  which  this  man  and 
his  coadjutor  pushed  through  an  action 
at  law  against  those  from  whom  he  had 
received  nothing  but  kindness,  and  ob- 


tained vindictive  damages,  which,  with 
a  noble  sense  of  honor,  was  pafd  chiefly 
by  his  own  flesh  and  blood,  though  it 
stripped  his  aged  mother  of  the  greater 
portion  of  her  humble  means. 

In  pursuing  his  design  of  exposing 
the  wrongs  effected  by  the  medical 
certificate,  the  writer  mentions  the  case 
of  a  lady  who  was  recently  placed  in  the 
Pennsylvania  Hospital  for  the  insane 
by  her  husband,  who  had  ceased  to  love 
her,  and  took  this  means  of  getting  her 
out  of  the  way,  and,  perhaps,  of  obtain- 
ing a  libel  of  divorce,  for  which,  with  his 
wonderfully  accurate  knowledge  of  law, 
he  thinks  "incarceration  in  a  mad-house 
for  a  certain  period  would  give  him 
grounds."  This  wicked  scheme  was 
frustrated,  it  seems,  by  Dr.  Kirkbride,the 
physician  of  the  hospital,  who  "  became 
especially  interested  in  her,  watched  her 
assiduously,  examined  into  the  facts  of 
her  case,  taking  a  great  deal  of  trouble 
in  the  matter,  satisfied  himself  of  her 
sanity,  brought  the  attention  of  the 
court  to  the  subject,  and  procured  her 
discharge."  Various  circumstances  ren- 
der it  impossible  to  mistake  the  case 
here  alluded  to,  and  a  more  unfortunate 
one  for  the  purpose  can  scarcely  be  im- 
agined. The  certificate  of  insanity  was 
signed  by  two  physicians,  one  of  whom 
had  attended  her  and  her  children  for 
several  months,  and  taken  great  pains 
to  ascertain  her  mental  condition,  which 
his  relation  to  the  family  gave  him  am- 
ple opportunity  of  doing  ;  and  the  other 
was  a  gentleman  who  had  had  charge 
of  a  large  establishment  for  the  insane 
for  several  years,  and  had  observed 
and  conversed  with  the  patient  several 
times.  In  their  depositions,  given  be- 
4fore  a  commissioner,  to  be  used  in  an 
application  she  made  for  the  custody  of 
the  children,  the  reasons  for  their  opin- 
ion are  so  clearly,  so  fully,  and  so  intel- 
ligently presented  as  to  remove  any 
shadow  of  doubt  respecting  its  correct- 
ness. It  was  strengthened,  if  that  were 
possible,  by  the  testimony  of  a  host  of 
witnesses,  —  servants,  nurses,  the  peo- 
ple with  whom  she  boarded,  and  cas- 
ual acquaintances.  It  was  no  friendly 
office  to  try  to  deprive  her  of  the  only 


236 


" A  Modern  Lcttrc  dc  Cachet"  Reviewed.          [August, 


possible  excuse  for  conduct  that  would 
have  been  disgraceful  to  any  sane  wo- 
man. What  is  said  of  Dr.  Kirkbride's 
attention  to  the  case  is  all  very  true,  we 
doubt  not ;  but  he  authorizes  us  to  say 
that  he  never  expressed  the  opinion 
that  she  was  not  insane,  that  he  never 
called  the  attention  of  the  court  to  her 
case,  and  that  neither  she  nor  any  one 
else  was  ever  discharged  from  his 
care  under  the  circumstances  stated. 
She  was  removed  by  her  brother,  her 
husband  not  objecting,  and  without  any 
process  of  law,  at  the  end  of  seven 
or  eight  weeks.  As  an  indication  of 
the  temper  and  designs  of  her  husband, 
let  it  be  remembered  that  some  six  or 
seven  months  previously  he  had  placed 
her  in  the  hospital,  and,  at  the  end  of  a 
fortnight,  yielded  to  her  importunities, 
and  took  her  home,  where  her  previous 
conduct  was  renewed  in  a  more  objec- 
tionable form. 

Another  case  is  given  of  a  man  re- 
cently sent  to  the  same  institution  by 
his  relatives,  merely  because  in  the 
indulgence  of  his  aesthetic  tastes  he 
bought  a  few  books  and  pictures,  there- 
by diminishing  the  hoards  that  would 
naturally  come  to  them  after  his  death. 
The  reader  is  to  believe  that  for  this 
reason  alone,  as  no  other  is  given,  a 
man  in  Philadelphia  was  put  into  a 
hospital  for  the  insane,  and  kept  there 
some  two  or  three  months  !  Consider- 
ing the  multitude  of  indifferent  pictures 
disposed  of  in  that  market,  at  almost 
incredible  prices,  the  purchase  of  paint- 
ings would  seem  about  the  last  thing  to 
be  regarded  by  Philadelphians  as  proof 
of  insanity.  There  was,  unquestionably, 
an  old  man  in  Philadelphia,  who  bought 
a  great  many  pictures,  was  pronounced 
insane  by  his  physician,  sent  to  the 
Pennsylvania  Hospital  for  the  insane, 
and  discharged  therefrom  by  order  of 
court.  Thus  much  is  true,  and  a  great 
deal  more  not  mentioned  at  all,  which 
omission  we  propose  to  supply  as  fully 
as  possible.  We  are  unable  to  obtain 
any  notes  of  the  testimony,  but  the 
following  private  communication  from 
Judge  Allison,  who  issued  the  writ  of 
habeas  corpus,  will  sufficiently  answer 


our  purpose.  "  I  had  no  doubt  of  his 
insanity  at  the  time  when  he  was  placed 
in  the  hospital.  The  testimony  of  his 
friends  and  associates,  and  also  that  of 
a  very  respectable  physician  who  had 
attended  him  professionally  for  a  long 
time,  satisfied  me  on  that  point.  His 
conduct  towards  his  relations  suddenly, 
and  without  cause,  changed  from  gen- 
tleness and  kindness  to  violence  and 
abuse.  The  evidence  showed  that  his 
daily  behavior  was  strange  and  unnat- 
ural, and  wholly  inconsistent  with  rea- 
son and  sound  judgment.  The  proof 
of  his  acts,  of  his  speech,  and  of  his 
appearance  left  no  doubt  on  my  mind 
that  at  the  time  when  he  was  sent  to 
the  asylum  he  was  insane,  and  needed 
both  restraint  and  judicious  treatment, 
with  a  view  to  his  restoration  to  reason. 
When  brought  before  me,  he  was,  ac- 
cording to  the  evidence,  very  much 
improved ;  and  although  manifesting  in 
court  considerable  excitement  of  man- 
ner, I  did  not  think  it  would  be  unsafe 
to  discharge  him  from  custody,  or  that 
he  would  do  violence  to  himself  or  to 
others.  And  on  this  ground  mainly  I 
rested  my  decision.  To  this  may  be 
added  my  belief,  —  presumptuous,  per- 
haps,—  from  what  I  saw  of  the  man,  as 
well  as  from  the  testimony,  that  his 
entire  recovery  would  be  aided  by  free- 
dom rather  than  by  further  restraint  of 
liberty.  That  he  was  a  monomaniac  in 
relation  to  the  purchase  of  pictures  and 
furniture  no  one,  I  think,  could  doubt 
for  a  moment.  His  purchases  at  auc- 
tion were  frequent,  as  well  as  large  in 
amount,  reaching  some  thousands  of 
dollars,  and,  as  the  auctioneer  testified, 
without  judgment,  and  very  much  at 
random.  This  was  carried  to  so  great 
an  extent,  that  auctioneers,  after  a  time, 
avoided  or  refused  his  bids.  M— 
resided  with  his  mother,  and  her  house 
was  filled  with  his  purchases  ;  not  only 
the  rooms,  but  the  passage-ways  as 
well.  I  informed  his  friends  at  the 
hearing,  that  he  could  be  restrained  by 
process  of  law  from  wasting  his  prop- 
erty, because  of  his  unsoundness  of 
mind;  and  I  delayed  my  decision,  to 
afford  them  an  opportunity  to  apply  fo 


1 868.] 


"A  Modern  Lettrc  de  Cachet"  Reviewed. 


237 


a  commission  of  lunacy,  as  well  as  to 
test  his  case  for  my  own  satisfaction 
by  a  further  delay ;  but  no  inquisition 
was  instituted,  and,  for  the  reasons  al- 
ready stated,  I  discharged  him."  So  it 
seems  that  these  rapacious  relatives, 
who  did  not  shrink  from  the  outrage  of 
falsely  imprisoning  this  old  gentleman, 
would  not  trouble  themselves  to  at- 
tempt to  deprive  him  by  legal  measures 
of  the  control  of  his  property,  even  with 
a  fair  prospect  of  success. 

We  are  sorry  to  say  that  one  state- 
ment in  this  case  is  unquestionably 
true.  He  was  taken  to  a  station-house, 
and  kept  there  overnight.  The  stupid 
policeman  who  had  charge  of  him 
either  thought  that  patients  were  not 
received  into  the  hospital  after  dark,  or 
that  it  would  be  more  agreeable  to  go 
by  daylight,  and  so  he  took  him  to  the 
police  station  for  safe-keeping  until 
morning.  It  was  no  fault  of  the  friends 
or  the  physician,  and  might  have  hap- 
pened had  he  been  committed  by  order 
of  court. 

Whether  this  person  subsequently 
served  on  a  jury,  as  the  writer  states, 
Ave  have  not  taken  the  trouble  to  ascer- 
tain. If  he  did,  we  dare  say  he  per- 
formed the  duty  acceptably,  but  we 
have  not  been  so  profoundly  impressed 
with  the  wisdom  of  juries  as  to  regard 
the  fact  as  conclusive  proof  that  he  was 
not  then,  and  never  had  been,  insane. 
We  doubt  not  that  many  of  the  inmates 
of  our  hospitals  would  perform  the  func- 
tions of  a  juryman  as  creditably  as  the 
average  of  men  now  put  into  the  jury- 
box.  They  do  a  great  many  other 
things  requiring  more  forethought  and 
steadiness  than  it  does  to  •  say  yes  or 
no  to  a  verdict  as  likely  to  be  wrong  as 
right. 

The  writer's  grievances  are  not  con- 
fined  to   the    medical    certificate    nor 
the    mercenary  motives  of  the  friends 
procure   it.      He    more   than  in- 
ites  that  hospitals  for  the  insane, 
all    the    country   over,    are    guilty    of 
many  reprehensible  practices,  and  even 
gross   abuses,  while  admitting,  Judas- 
like,   that  "their  laws   are   perfection, 
and  their  treatment  of  patients  tender 


and  thoughtful  as  it  should  be  ;  that 
their  principles  are  the  highest  results 
of  refined  and  cultivated  minds,  and 
generous,  sympathetic  hearts." 

He  complains  that  the  patients'  let- 
ters are  not  sent  without  being  first 
read  by  the  superintendent,  and  not 
always  then.  This  is  not  exactly  true. 
In  many  hospitals,  —  for  of  course  we 
cannot  know  respecting  every  one  in 
the  country,  —  many  a  patient's  letters 
are  sent  without  being  read  by  the 
officers ;  and  nothing  is  more  common 
than  a  regular  correspondence  between 
a  patient  and  friends,  that  meets  no 
other  eye  than  theirs.  Patients  in  an 
active  stage  of  disease  often  write  let- 
ters full  of  folly  and  nonsense,  which 
are  wisely  and  kindly  withheld ;  and 
no  one  is  more  grateful  for  the  discre- 
tion thus  exercised  than  the  patient 
when  he  comes  to  himself.  No  sooner 
is  convalescence  fairly  established  than 
he  begins  to  be  mortified  by  the  recol- 
lection of  such  letters,  and  experiences 
a  sense  of  relief  most  salutary  in  his 
condition  when  assured  that  they  were 
withheld.  Why  should  an  insane  per- 
son be  allowed  to  expose  his  infirmities 
in  the  shape  of  a  letter  that  may  be 
read  by  scores  or  hundreds,  more  than 
in  the  shape  of  crazy  acts  and  crazy 
discourse  ?  Not  unfrequently,  a  refined 
and  cultivated  woman  writes  letters, 
while  in  the  height  of  disease,  the 
thought  of  which,  when  restored,  over- 
whelms her  with  shame  and  confusion. 
To  forward  such  letters  wrould  be  an 
outrage  upon  decency,  and  would  raise 
the  blood  of  every  true  husband,  broth- 
er, and  parent,  who  would  make  the 
case  their  own.  It  would  be  a  breach 
of  trust  on  the  part  of  any  hospital 
officer  permitting  it,  that  should  be 
followed  by  his  instant  dismissal.  Be- 
sides, the  letters  of  the  insane  often 
convey  information  respecting  their 
mental  condition  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance to  those  intrusted  with  their  care. 
Many  a  patient  who  conceals  his  delu- 
sions and  mad  designs  from  ordinary 
observation  betrays  them  in  his  writ- 
ings, and  many  a  patient  has  been 
preserved  from  harm  to  himself  or  to 


238 


1 A  Modern  Lettre  de  Cachet"  Reviewed.          [August, 


others  by  means  of  the  statements  con- 
tained in  his  letters.  It  is  the  business 
and  the  duty  of  the  physician  of  the 
insane  to  make  himself  acquainted  with 
what  is  passing  in  the  mind  of  his 
patient ;  and  to  inspect  his  writings  in 
furtherance  of  this  purpose  is  as  proper 
as  it  would  be  to  ascertain  the  condi- 
tion of  his  heart  and  lungs  by  means  of 
the  stethoscope,  or  the  state  of  his  eyes 
by  means  of  the  ophthalmoscope. 

The  writer  also  complains  that  to  the 
superintendent  is  intrusted  "  the  sole 
direction  of  the  medical,  moral,  and 
dietetic  treatment  of  the  patients,  and 
the  selection  of  all  persons  employed 
in  their  care."  All  this  is  bad  enough 
in  the  public  and  incorporated  asylums, 
but  it  must  be  far  worse,  he  thinks,  in 
"those  private  mad-houses  whose  name 
is  legion."  It  will  not  be  very  obvious, 
we  imagine,  why  an  organization  of  ser- 
vice that  has  been  universally  adopt- 
ed in  mills,  ships,  railways,  and  many 
other  industrial  establishments  where- 
well-defined  responsibility,  harmonious 
working,  and  prompt  execution  are 
necessary  to  the  highest  degree  of 
success,  should  not  be  equally  suitable 
to  a  hospital  where  many  persons  are 
employed,  and  many  operations  go- 
ing on  requiring  industry,  vigilance, 
thoughtfulness,  and  fidelity,  and  all 
with  reference  to  a  common  end.  Hos- 
pitals are  now  put  into  the  charge  of 
a  superintendent  responsible  for  the 
management,  because,  after  a  thorough 
trial  of  every  other  method,  this  has 
been  found  to  be  the  most  efficient. 
The  time  was  when  the  physician, 
whose  duties  were  exclusively  medical, 
came  in  three  or  four  times  a  week, 
walked  through  the  wards,  exchanged 
a  few  words  with  the  attendants,  pre- 
scribed the  necessary  medicines,  and 
then  went  his  way.  The  steward,  war- 
den, or  whatever  might  be  his  title, 
lived  in  the  house,  obtained  the  sup- 
plies, looked  after  the  house  and 
grounds,  paid  the  employees,  and  re- 
ported their  misconduct  to  the  direc- 
tors. The  attendants  were  called  to  ac- 
count by  these  functionaries,  to  whom 
they  may  have  owed  their  appointment, 


and  by  whom  their  delinquencies  would 
naturally  be  regarded  with  indulgence. 
The  directors  themselves  might  take 
a  turn  at  executive  duty  occasionally, 
which  proved  not  very  conducive  to  the 
general  harmony.  In  this  way,  nobody 
was  strictly  responsible  for  anything, 
nobody's  duties  were  defined,  and  an 
endless  jar  was  the  usual  result.  It 
was  under  such  management  that  those 
terrible  abuses  occurred  in  the  English 
establishments,  which  were  exposed  by 
parliamentary  inquiry  in  1815.  If  we 
are  anxious  to  have  them  renewed 
among  ourselves,  we  have  only  to  take 
from  the  physician  the  sole  direction 
of  affairs,  fritter  away  everybody's  re- 
sponsibility, and  rely  upon  every  em- 
ployee to  do  his  duty  only  according  to 
his  own  good  will  and  pleasure. 

How  the  writer  arrives  at  the  fact 
that  we  have  among  us  a  "legion  of 
private  mad-houses,"  as  he  elegantly 
designates  them,  we  are  quite  unable 
to  conceive.  With  opportunities,  fully 
equal,  probably,  to  his,  of  knowing, 
we  doubt  if  there  are  a  dozen  ;  in- 
deed, we  cannot  reckon  up  more  than 
seven.  We  begin  to  think  that  he  has 
some  remarkable  endowment  of  mental 
vision  analogous  to  the  structure  of  the 
eye  in  some  insects,  which,  being  com- 
posed of  a  multitude  of  lesser  eyes, 
sees  the  object  it  looks  at  multiplied 
ten-thousand-fold.  In  some  such  ex- 
traordinary manner  this  writer,  who 
may  have  seen  our  friend  Given's 
excellent  establishment  at  Media,  be- 
holds the  images  of  it  depicted  on  his 
mental  retina,  multiplied  more  times 
than  any  known  denomination  of  num- 
bers can  express.  Of  course  the  moun- 
tain of  abuse  suggested  by  this  large 
expression  will  sink  into  a  very  insig- 
nificant pile. 

Another  charge  against  hospitals  for 
the  insane  is,  that,  while  they  may  be 
all  very  well  for  insane  people,  "  they 
become  torture  -  houses,  breeders  of 
insanity,  for  those  who  may,  by  cruel 
chance,  be  brought  improperly  under 
their  peculiar  influences,"  a  circumlo- 
cution which  refers,  no  doubt,  to 
pie  who  are  not  insane.  To  disci 


1 863.] 


'A  Modem  Lcttre  de  Cachet"  Reviewed. 


239 


the  effect  of  hospitals  on  the  sane, 
before  \ve  have  better  proof  of  the  ex- 
istence of  this  abuse,  \vould  be  but  a 
waste  of  time  and  space.  With  that 
class  of  worthies  who  think  it  their 
mission  to  excite  popular  prejudices 
against  hospitals  for  the  insane,  it  is 
a  favorite  means  to  represent  them  as 
calculated  to  remove  any  vestige  of 
sanity  that  may  be  left,  and  destroy  all 
chances  of  cure.  Many  persons  have 
been  kept  away  from  them,  under  the 
influence  of  this  notion,  until  the  disease 
has  become  completely  incurable,  or, 
worse  still,  until  some  deplorable  deed 
of  violence  has  rendered  delay  no 
longer  possible.  The  steadily  increas- 
ing list  of  suicides  and  homicides  at- 
tributed by  coroners'  juries  to  insanity 
bears  witness  to  the  power  and  extent 
of  this  miserable  prejudice.  Surely, 
nothing  less  than  some  constitutional 
mental  obliquity  can  account  for  the 
satisfaction  these  people  take  in  wit- 
nessing the  mischief  they  occasion, 
and  finding  in  it  a  fresh  reason  for 
persevering  in  their  unholy  work. 

Not  the  least  of  this  writer's  com- 
plaints against  hospitals  is,  that  the 
patients  are  subjected  to  all  manner 
of  ill  -  treatment.  He  says  that  in 
England  "  it  was  recently  found  ne- 
cessary to  direct,  under  the  authority 
of  Parliament,  an  investigation  into  the 
character  and  treatment  of  the  patients 
confined  in  the  mad-houses  of  the  Unit- 
ed Kingdom.  The  official  reports  of 
these  investigations  are  tales  of  wrong, 
cruelty,  and  oppression,  at  which  the 
heart  sickens,"  &c.  Now,  we  feel  safe 
in  denying  that  any  such  investigation 
has  been  made  recently,  and  the  annual 
reports  of  the  Commissioners  in  Luna- 
cy must  convince  any  reasonable  mind 
that  such  charges  against  the  asylums 
of  the  present  day  are  groundless.  The 
statement  here  quoted  will  apply  to 
the  famous  parliamentary  inquiry  of 
1815,  which,  with  the  writer's  usual 
proclivity  for  confusing  all  the  relations 
of  time,  space,  and  number,  he  repre- 
sents as  an  occurrence  within  our  own 
time. 

According  to   the   writer's   account, 


our  own  hospitals,  especially  those  of 
Pennsylvania,  are  no  less  shamefully 
managed  ;  and  in  proof  he  quotes  from 
two  public  documents,  one,  the  report 
of  what  he  calls  the  "  Pennsylvania 
Medical  Association,"  and  the  ether, 
the  "Report  of  a  Special  Commission 
Appointed  by  the  Governor."  The 
passages  quoted  reveal  the  most  bar- 
barous treatment  of  the  insane,  attrib- 
uted by  implication  to  the  hospitals  and 
asylums  for  the  insane.  Some  were  in 
cold  basement  rooms,  without  fresh  air 
and  the  means  of  exercise  ;  males  and 
females  without  clothing  were  found  in. 
adjoining  rooms  ;  some  were  fastened 
by  a  chain  to  a  staple  in  the  floor  ;  one 
said  to  be  deranged  was  chained  to 
a  sixty-pound  weight,  which  he  was 
obliged  to  carry  about ;  and  one,  over 
eighty  years  old,  had  been  chained  for 
twenty  years.  These  passages  are  so 
introduced  as  to  give  the  impression  — 
which,  no  doubt,  the  writer  deliberately 
intended  to  give  —  that  such  things 
were  witnessed  in  the  incorporated 
and  the  State  hospitals  for  the  insane. 
Here  are  the  actual  facts,  known  as 
well  to  the  writer  as  to  anybody  else. 
The  State  hospitals  being  filled  to 
their  utmost  capacity,  it  was  thought 
necessary  that  more  should  be  provid- 
ed ;  and,  to  make  the  necessity  as  ob- 
vious as  possible,  the  "Medical  Society 
of  the  State  of  Pennsylvania"  appointed 
a  committee  to  prepare  a  memorial  to 
the  Legislature  on  the  subject,  in  which, 
among  other  things,  they  exposed  the 
wretched  condition  of  the  insane  in  the 
poor-houses  of  the  towns  and  counties. 
With  the  same  object  in  view,  the  spe- 
cial commissioner  was  directed  to  ex- 
amine into  the  condition  of  the  insane 
inmates  of  the  poor-houses  and  jails. 
The  results  of  these  inquiries  were 
presented  to  the  Legislature,  as  an  in- 
ducement for  establishing  another  hos- 
pital, and  the  Legislature  voted  the  ne- 
cesst,ry  appropriation.  Not  one  word, 
be  it  observed,  is  said  by  the  writer 
about  jails  or  poor-houses  in  connection 
'with  these  passages.  In  view  of  this 
attempt  to  cast  a  lasting  reproach  upon 
honest  men,  what  credit  can  be  given  to 


240 


Modern  Lettre  de  Cachet"  Reviewed.          [August, 


any  of  his  statements,  and  what  terms 
of  reprobation  can  be  too  strong  to  be- 
stow upon  such  a  deliberate  deception  ? 
The  writer's  remedy  for  all  defects 
in  the  present  practices  and  laws  is 
"  some  statutory  regulation  as  to  the 
degree  of  aberration  of  mind  justifying 
detention,  and  provision  made  for  a 
hearing  before  a  board  of  magistrates, 
and  a  sworn  jury  of  twelve,  composed 
of  men  of  strong  and  sterling  sense." 
He  does  not  tell  us  what  degree  of  ab- 
erration ought,  in  his  opinion,  to  war- 
rant a  person's  detention  in  a  hospital ; 
and  we  are  puzzled  to  conceive  how 
our  law-makers,  who  are  not  supposed 
to  be  remarkably  inclined  to  psycho- 
logical studies,  will  be  able  to  take  the 
first  step  towards  framing  the  "statu- 
tory regulation"  required.  Their  at- 
temps  at  definition  would  be  likely  to 
result,  we  apprehend,  much  like  that  of 
Polonius  in  the  play  :  — 

"  Mad  call  I  it ;  for  to  define  true  madness, 
What  is 't,  but  to  be  nothing  else  but  mad  ?  " 

But,  supposing  this  difficulty  sur- 
mounted, we  'are  no  less  puzzled  to 
conceive  by  what  sort  of  evidence  the 
prescribed  degree  of  insanity  is  to  be 
proved.  Our  writer  has  no  faith  in  doc- 
tors, because  doctors  sometimes  disa- 
gree, and  besides  they  may  be  bribed, 
so  they  would  have  to  be  excluded  as 
incompetent  witnesses.  But,  probably, 
he  considers  it  the  crowning  excellence 
of  this  arrangement,  that  the  degree  of 
insanity  is  to  be  determined  solely  by 
that  strong  and  sterling  sense  which,  it 
is  well  known,  is  so  characteristic  of 
juries.  Seriously,  since  a  jury-trial  is 
not  universally  considered  the  perfec- 
tion of  wisdom,  even  when  the  facts 
are  intelligible  to  the  meanest  under- 
standing, we  are  unable  to  see  how  a 
jury  can  be  the  best  tribunal  for  decid- 
ing questions  of  a  professional  nature. 
The  Solons  of  Illinois  think  otherwise, 
for  they  have  provided,  by  a  stringent 
law,  that  no  person  shall  be  placed  in 
any  hospital  for  the  insane  whose  dis- 
ease has  not  been  proved  by  a  jury- 
trial.  Arc  we  prepared  to  follow  such 
legislation  ?  When  an  afflictive  dis- 
ease is  filling  our  homes  with  sorrow 


and  apprehension,  is  it  a  matter  of 
pleasing  reflection  that  we  can  lay  our 
griefs  before  the  judge  or  the  sheriff, 
who  will  authorize  twelve  men  to  gather 
around  the  bedside  of  the  beloved  wife 
or  daughter,  and  there,  after  learning 
those  painful  circumstances  of  the  do- 
mestic history  which  every  sentiment 
of  propriety  would  forbid  us  to  mention 
beyond  the  family  circle,  but  which 
may  immediately  become  food  for  gos- 
sip in  the  streets  and  the  shops,  —  even 
without  the  aid  of  a  newspaper-reporter, 
though  the  "  representatives  of  the 
press  "  probably  would  not  be  excluded 
from  the  room,  —  this  august  tribunal 
may  or  may  not  decide  that  the  patient  is 
insane,  and  give  or  withhold  its  author- 
ity for  removal  to  a  hospital  ?  Would 
we  rejoice  at  the  prospect  of  thus  bring- 
ing the  law  and  its  ministers  within  our 
very  doors,  at  the  moment  when  of  all 
others  we  would  wish  to  be  shielded 
from  the  public  gaze  ?  Few  families, 
we  are  sure,  would  submit  to  the  opera- 
tion of  such  a  law  as  long  as  it  could 
be  possibly  avoided  ;  and  every  expedi- 
ent and  makeshift  would  be  resorted  to, 
until  the  exhaustion  of  their  means  and 
strength  left  them  no  alternative. 

One  or  two  words  respecting  the 
great  grievance  which  forms  the  bur- 
den of  the  article  in  question. 

Of  all  the  bugbears  conjured  up  in 
these  latter  times  to  frighten  grown 
people  from  the  course  pointed  out  by 
true  science  and  true  humanity,  it  would 
be  hard  to  find  one  more  destitute  of 
real  substance  than  the  alleged  practice 
of  confining  sane  persons  in  hospitals 
for  the  insane.  We  have  yet  to  learn  of 
the  first  well-authenticated  case  in  this 
country ;  and  we  have  heard  the  same 
thing  asserted  by  others,  whose  profes- 
sional duties  have  enabled  them  to  be 
well  informed  on  this  subject.  Al- 
though this  does  not  prove  the  impossi- 
bility of  such  an  abuse,  it  certainly  does 
prove  that  it  must  be  an  exceedingly 
rare  occurrence.  If  it  be  answerec 
that  these  persons  were  biassed  by  their 
occupations,  and  thus  labored  under 
insuperable  difficulty  in  discovering  the 
sanity  of  people  wrongly  charged  witl 


1 868.] 


"A  Modem  Lcttrc  dc  Cachet"  Reviewed. 


241 


being  insane,  let  us  listen  to  the  decla- 
ration of  one  who,  with  the  amplest 
opportunities  for  learning  the  truth, 
cannot  be  charged  with  having  been 
under  a  bias  that  would  lead  him  to 
overlook  or  ignore  an  abuse  of  the  kind 
in  question.  Some  thirty  years  ago, 
the  British  Parliament  established  a 
"  Board  of  Commissioners  in  Lunacy," 
whose  business  it  was  to  visit  every 
hospital  for  the  insane,  public  and  pri- 
vate, once,  at  least,  every  year ;  to  make 
themselves  acquainted  with  their  ac- 
commodations and  management,  their 
merits  and  defects;  to  point  out  faults 
and  suggest  improvements  ;  to  mark  the 
circumstances  of  particular  patients,  and, 
if  thought  expedient,  recommend  their 
removal  to  some  other  establishment. 
Though  clothed  with  no  executive 
powers,  yet  so  potent  was  their  advice, 
that  when  they  recommended,  as  they 
sometimes  did,  the  withdrawal  of  the 
license  of  some  private  house,  their  ad- 

\vas  always  followed.  The  present 
Earl  Shaftesbury  was  a  member  and 
chairman  of  this  Board  from  the  be- 
ginning up  to  a  very  recent  period,  and 

particularly  distinguished  by  the 
activity  and  intelligence  with  which  he 
•discharged  his  duties,  and  by  his  inter- 
est in  whatever  pertained  to  the  welfare 
of  the  insane.  He  was  never  slow  to 
perceive  deficiencies,  nor  to  administer 
a  sharp  rebuke  when  it  seemed  to  be 
deserved.  He  was  never  supposed  to 
entertain  any  partiality  for  medical  men 
likely  to  influence  his  opinion  in  ques- 
tions where  they  were  concerned.  In 
the  parliamentary  session  of  1858  and 
1859  a  committee  was  appointed  to  in- 
quire and  report  respecting  some  luna- 
cy question,  and  the  Karl  was  requested 
to  testily.  On  that  occasion  he  said, 
*•  The  notion  of  improper  admissions  or 
detentions  is  essentially  wrong";  and 
he  left  it  to  be  implied  that  such  occur- 
•uld  only  take  place  at  rare 
intervals,  and  under  unusual  circum- 

:es. 

Y>~e  occasionally  hear  it  alleged,  no 
doubt,  as  it  is  in  the  article  before  us, 
that  a  certain  inmate  of  an  asylum  is 
not  insane,  but  only  a  victim  of  the 

VOL.   XXII.  — NO.    130.  16 


greed  or  hatred  of  his  or  her  relations. 
A  persistent  clamor  may  be  heard 
through  the  whole  length  and  breadth 
of  the  land  over  some  case  of  this  kind  ; 
the  newspapers  may  teem  with  angry 
paragraphs  ;  and  the  courts  be  beset  for 
writs  of  habeas  corpus,  writs  of  injunc- 
tion, and  every  possible  legal  instru- 
mentality for  the  relief  of  injured  inno- 
cence. All  this  is  perfectly  compatible 
with  what  we  have  said  above,  and  is  sat- 
isfactorily explained  by  what  we  know  of 
the  nature  of  insanity.  This  disease  is 
not  always  obvious  to  the  casual  observ- 
er. Its  manifestations  require  time  and 
opportunity,  in  the  absence  of  which  its 
workings  are  confined  to  the  inmost 
thoughts,  or  exhibited  only  in  those 
domestic  relations  that  are  not  exposed 
to  the  public  view  ;  and,  even  when  the 
patient  proclaims  his  delusions,  they 
may  not  be  of  a  kind  necessarily  im- 
possible. If  he  believes  that  his  head 
is  turned  round,  or  that  he  is  the  son 
of  perdition,  nobody  doubts  his  insan- 
ity. But  when  a  child  or  parent  is 
charged  with  unkindness,  a  husband  or 
wife  with  infidelity  to  marriage-vows, 
and  that  too  with  an  air  of  sincerity 
seemingly  incompatible  with  deception 
and  a  minuteness  of  circumstance  in- 
compatible with  fiction,  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  the  stranger,  or  sometimes 
even  the  intimate  friend,  should  believe 
the  story,  and  use  every  endeavor  to 
abate  the  wrong.  If  disposed  to  doubt 
or  hesitate  in  view  of  the  unsullied  rep- 
utation of  the  parties  accused,  there 
comes  the  artful  suggestion,  that  if  a 
man  is  tired  of  his  wife  or  a  woman  of 
her  husband,  and  bent  upon  forbidden 
pleasures  ;  if  children  are  looking  with 
greedy  eyes  upon  houses  and  lands  and 
stocks  which  the  prolonged  existence 
of  a  parent  keeps  from  their  grasp,  — 
what  more  convenient  course  could  they 
adopt  than  to  declare  the  person  who 
bars  the  way  to  the  coveted  object  to 
be  insane,  and  consign  him  to  impris- 
onment in  a  hospital  ?  The  most  com- 
mon traits  of  the  insane,  —  their  ability 
to  conceal  more  or  less  the  manifes- 
tations of  disease,  the  plausibility  with 
which  they  set  forth  the  wrongs  alleged 


242 


"A  Modern  Lcitrc  dc  Cachet"  Renewed.          [August, 


to  be  inflicted  on  them,  the  fact  that 
the  mental  disorder  is  often  witnessed 
rather  in  the  conduct  than  the  conversa- 
tion, their  disposition  to  hate  and  malign 
those  who  have  been  most  assiduous 
in  offices  of  kindness  and  affection,  — 
these  are  all  ignored,  even  by  persons 
whose  culture  would  seem  to  have  se- 
cured them  from  such  grievous  igno- 
rance. 

We  cannot  conchuje  without  animad- 
verting upon  the  spirit  of  hostility  to- 
wards hospitals  for  the  insane  which 
pervades  the  whole  article  .reviewed. 
That  they  are  not  perfect,  that  they  are 
liable  to  defects  like  every  other  enter- 
prise conducted  by  men  and  women,  it 
needs  no  prophet  to  tell  us.  Consider- 
ing the  unavoidable  difficulties  of  their 
work,  —  difficulties  which  the  world 
knows  little  about,  —  and  the  rare  mor- 
al and  intellectual  endowments  required 
for  its  successful  performance,  we  only 
wonder  that  they  have  reached  a  meas- 
ure of  excellence  worthy  of  the  admira- 
tion of  all  who  can  see  in  a  good  work 
something  besides  its  little  imperfec- 
tions. To  remedy  their  defects,  to  give 
them  the  highest  degree  of  efficiency,  to 
keep  them  fully  up  with  the  advancing 
steps  of  modern  civilization,  —  these  are 
things  that  require,  not  the  ill-natured 
flings  of  amateur  reformers  who  never 
spent  a  couple  of  hours  in  them  in  all 
their  lives,  and  have  no  conception  of 
any  other  form  of  insanity  than  that  of 
raving  mania,  but  the  counsel  and  aid 
of  those  who  have  personal  knowledge 
of  their  management  and  affairs,  of  the 
nature  of  insanity,  and  of  the  ways  of 
the  insane.  It  is  too  late  in  the  day  to 
decry  these  institutions.  Consecrated 
by  the  labors  of  a  Tuke,  a  Mann,  a  Dix, 
and  others  like  them  in  spirit,  if  not  in 
fame,  and  the  better  fitted  for  their  work 
by  the  bounties  of  those  who  have  been 
glad  to  devote  a  portion  of  their  wealth 
to  the  service  of  humanity,  they  are 
among  the  best  fruits  of  that  noble  phi- 
lanthropy, of  that  peculiarly  Christian 
spirit  and  principle,  which  distinguish 
the  social  condition  of  our  times.  To 
gain  an  adequate  conception  of  the  good 
they  accomplish,  let  one  traverse  their 


halls  and  grounds,  witness  the  order, 
peace,  and  freedom  that  prevail,  —  the 
admirable  arrangements  for  promoting 
the  physical  and  mental  comfort  of  their 
inmates  by  means  of  good  food,  pure 
air,  abundant  recreation,  and  employ- 
ment out  of  doors  books,  papers,  pic- 
tures, amusements  within,  —  and  learn 
something  of  the  unceasing,  unwearied 
effort  to  prevent  abuses  and  render  the 
law  of  kindness  paramqunt  to  every 
other  influence  ;  and  then  go  to  the  jails 
and  almshouses  where  these  stricken 
ones,  "bound  in  affliction  and  iron," 
endure  too  often  the  last  extremity  of 
human  wretchedness.  We  envy  not 
the  heart  of  that  man  who  could  wit- 
ness this  contrast  without  invoking 
blessings  on  the  modern  hospital  for 
the  insane  and  bidding  it  God  speed 
in  its  holy  work. 

The  writer  professes  to  entertain  only 
the  kindest  feeling  towards  these  in- 
stitutions ;  but  let  him  take  no  credit  to 
himself  on  that  score.  Almost  every 
sentence  bears  witness  to  a  very  differ- 
ent kind  of  feeling.  The  vocabulary  of 
oppression  and  tyranny  is  ransacked  for 
titles  and  epithets  wherewith  to  render 
them  odious  and  unworthy  of  confidence. 
They  are  called  "  prisons,"  "  Bastiles,"  ; 
"torture-houses,"  "breeders  of  insani- 
ty"; their  physicians  are  styled  "jail- 
ers," and  their  attendants  "morose 
keepers " ;  their  inmates  are  called 
"  prisoners,"  and  their  seclusion  "  im- 
prisonment," "  being  buried  alive,"  and 
"incarceration  in  a  mad-house," where 
they  "  vainly  beat  against  the  iron  bars 
of  their  cage."  We  do  not  suppose 
that  such  spiteful  effusions  do  much 
harm  to  these  institutions  or  the  persons 
connected  with  them.  They  may  ex- 
cite a  temporary  sensation  in  the  minds 
of  over-credulous  people,  and  of  all 
those  who  are  ever  ready  to  believe  that 
the  fairest  outside  is  only  a  cloak  for  con- 
cealing some  hideous  evil  beneath  it. 
There  need  be  no  fear  that  these  insti- 
tutions will  fail  to  meet  the  demand  ui  , 
the  times  for  higher  and  still  higher 
grades  of  excellence,  since  the  men  who 
control  them  are  of  the  sort  that  rec- 
ognize the  great  law  of  improvement, 


1868.] 


Lost  and  Found. 


243 


and  have  given  their  hearts  and  their 
hands  to  the  duty  of  meeting  its  require- 
ments. As  an  earnest  of  what  they 
will  be  hereafter,  it  is  fair  to  present 
the  contrast  between  their  present  con- 


dition and  that  which  marked  the  earli- 
est days  of  their  existence,  —  a  contrast 
fully  equal  to  that  exhibited  by  the  pro- 
gress of  any  other  benevolent  enter- 
prise of  modern  times. 


LOST     AND     FOUND. 


"\J  O  one  can  appreciate  fully  the  mis- 
ery of  losing  a  husband  in  the 
unknown  wilderness  of  the  streets  of 
New  York,  without  having  previously 
experienced  the  misery  of  being  the 
very  shyest  person  in  all  the  uncomforta- 
ble world. 

Half-way  across  the  continent,  and 
travelling  night  and  day,  would  have 
been  enough  to  fatigue  Hercules  him- 
self, who  never  had  any  such  labors  to 
perform  among  all  his  famous  dozen  ; 
and  we  were  about  as  weary  of  jar  and 
joggle  and  tumult  as  one  would  think 
the  round  globe  itself  should  be  at  this 
point  of  time.  However,  the  earth 
never  stops  to  rest  in  her  rolling,  and 
why  should  we  ?  We  must  follow  her 
example  and  despatch  on  a  smaller 
.  and  go  straight  through  to  Canada 
that  night. 

It  might  be  supposed  that  so  long  a 
journey,  and  a  winter's  residence  in  one 
of  the  gayest  of  gay  cities,  would  have 
overcome  in  great  measure  the  painful 
diffidence  of  a  retiring  nature  ;  but,  on 
the  contrary,  it  had  only  intensified  it,  — • 
every  fresh  approaching  face  had  be- 
come a  fresh  agony,  every  introduc- 
tion had  assumed  as  dreadful  a  guise  as 
a  death-warrant,  and  instead  of  gaining 
courage  or  chic,  or  the  aplomb  of  a  wo- 
man of  the  world,  I  had  gradually  ac- 
quired the  habit  of  hiding  under  my 
thick  veil,  and  wishing  for  nothing  but 
the  cap  of  invisibility. 

This  sad  shyness  was,  and  is,  the 
curse  of  my  existence  ;  it  put  me  from 
the  beginning  under  the  feet  of  ser- 
vants ;  I  took  what  waiters  chose  to 
bring  me,  and  never  grumbled  ;  I  hard- 


ly ever  -went  out  without  the  tacit  per- 
mission of  my  chambermaid  ;  I  walked 
a  mile   rather  than  ask  my  way  of  the 
next  person  ;   in  the  cars  I  alternated 
between  comfort  and  distress  with  my 
ticket,  according  to  the  exit  or  entrance 
of  the  conductor  ;  and  as  for  hackmen, 
they  drove  me  to  distraction,  —  I  have 
seen  my  friend  pay  one  at  the  door  with 
my  own  eyes,  but  have  unhesitatingly 
paid  him  over  again,  on  his  stout  assev- 
eration  that   nothing   of  the   kind  had 
ever  taken  place.     I  have  been  consider- 
ately requested  by  another  to  alight  at 
the  foot  of  Somerset  Street,  in  a  sister 
city,  as  his  horses  could  not  convenient- 
ly climb  the  hill,  and  have  remunerated 
him  with  a  full  fare,  obeyed  his  wish, 
and  modestly  climbed  the  hill  myself; 
and    I    never   knew  the   time   when   I 
seemed  to  be  rolling  along  luxuriously 
in  my  private  coach,  that  the  wretch  of 
a  driver  did  not  take  a  short  cut  down 
some  back  slum,  and  destroy  the  illusion 
by  inviting  upon  the  box  a  comrade  r 
shirt-sleeves,  —  which  can  be  the  apr        .1 
priat'e  livery  of  nobody  but  bishop'       AO* 
I  am  not  a  bishop.     Taking  the        J»  and 
so  much  shyness,  it  is  evident         total  ot 
not  exactly  the  person  to  lo"       •  *"at  I  am 
in  a  labyrinth  with  whiV      J°  a  husband 
unacquainted,  and  to        :n  l  am  ««erly 
have  not  the    slioh'   S**OSe    ma»*    I 
hope  of  finding  K          *  .clew'  *'ith  any 

However  -Vt;im.^ain- 

Iliv  ,'ti h'S  3S  niere  ^gression. 
de  ,  ?*' bC  }t  1know'n»  through  the  or- 

*I  ot  the  splendid  hotel  upholstery 
and  mirrors,  designed  especially  to  put 
you  out  of  countenance,  endured  he 
breakfast  at  the  Fifth  Avenue,  and  the 
impertinent  staring  of  my  'uis-i\.vis;  fur. 


244 


Lost  and  Found. 


[August, 


ihermore,  survived  several  stately  calls, 
and  at  last  sallied  forth  for  my  pur- 
chases and  the  boat,  safe  in  my  hus- 
•band's  escort. 

I  had  with  me  only  my  travelling-bag ; 
for  it  had  seemed  unnecessary  on  the 
previous  night  to  bring  all  our  luggage 
up  to  the  hotel,  —  big  trunk,  little  trunk, 
bandbox,  and  bundle.  Do  not,  I  beg 
you,  imagine  that  all  the  contents  of 
the  chests  and  portmanteaus  were  van- 
ities of  mine ;  indeed,  lace  and  linen, 
txmnet  and  bernouse,  filled  one  little 
•trunk  alone  ;  the  rest  belonged  to  Char- 
lie, every  inch  of  them.  And  what 
was  there  in  them  ?  Why,  —  newspa- 
pers. I  knew  you  would  not  believe 
ane,  yet  I  assure  you  again  that  their  con- 
tents were  nothing  but  newspapers.  All 
the  way  from  Omaha,  from  St.  Louis, 
from  Chicago,  from  Cincinnati,  from 
Baltimore,  —  nothing  but  newspapers  ; 
after  every  stay  in  every  town  a  new 
•trunk  appeared,  and  in  its  recesses  were 
filed  away  the  invaluable  newspapers, 
—  Chicago  Tomahawks,  and  La  Crosse 
What-is-its,  and  Baltimore  Butcher- 
blades,  and  Congressional  Chester- 
fields, —  the  contemporary  records  of  the 
time,  Charlie  said,  which  no  student  of 
history  could  spare.  These,  according- 
ly, were  left  in  the  baggage-room  at 
the  station,  in  one  of  those  spasms  of 
economy  that  always  prove  more  expen- 
sive in  the  end,  and  now  they  were  to 
;~y&  •expressed  across  the  city  to  the  boat, 
-.-•and  there  was  very  little  time  to  do  it. 
"  We  never  can  have  any  peace  about 
^our  shopping  with  such  a  weight  on 
v  minds  as  all  that  luggage,"  said 

^        rjie.     "  I  think  that  had  best  be  at- 

Cha.       '  to  first." 

tencleu       ^  allj»  l  answered,  not  feeling 

'  ^Ot  -u    1<5  ^oss  °f  tne   trunks  to  be 
the  possib.  ^       .  .;  for  if  we  Qnce  go  down 

complete  rui  shaU  cQme    back?  and 

there  we   never       -osents  to  buy.». 
there  are  all  our  pi         .,  hegt  do  ^  b 

«  Well,  then,  you  hau  ^      .  ^  luff<ra<re> 
Ing,  my  love,  and  I  will  do  tn,     ^ 

"  Me  ?  "  I.  exclaimed,  in  a  const. 
tion. 

«  Yes.    Why  not  ?  " 

•"  But  you  know  I  always  make  some- 
lx>ay   buy  for    me.      I    can't  beat  the 


creatures  down  ;  and  they  clap  on  the 
pinnacle  of  prices  the  moment  they  lay 
eyes  on  my  face." 

"  Well,  —  it  will  be  a  good  lesson  to 
you.  Early  exercises  in  bargains.  I 
don't  see  anything  else  to  be  done." 

"  But  what  ?  " 

"  But  for  me  to  take  a  stage  down  to 
the  station,  —  it  is  an  hour's  ride,  — 
and  for  you  to  saunter  down  Broadway." 

"What  —  without  you  ?  " 

"  Why,  certainly ;  they  don't  mur- 
der in  open  daylight  on  Broadway." 

"  But  I  don't  know  my  way." 

"  You  won't  have  to  find  your  way. 
You  have  only  to  keep  straight  on.  Do 
be  strong-minded  for  once.  Make  your 
purchases,  and  wait  for  me  at  the 
corner  —  " 

"  Wait  in  the  street  ?  " 

"  Yes  ;  it  makes  no  difference,  where 
nobody  knows  you.  Wait  for  me  at  the 
corner  opposite  City  Hall  Park,  —  you 
remember  that  place  ?  " 

"  Ye-es.  VvTe  passed  it  last  night. 
Yes,  I  should  know  it  if  I  saw  it.  And 
keep  straight  ahead  till  I  reach  there, 
you  said  ? "  with  a  cold  perspiration, 
which  I  said  nothing  about. 

"  Yes,  and  wait  on  the  Astor  House 

corner.     I  will  attend  to  the  trunks  and 

-.then  saunter  up  Broadway  till  I  meet 

you,   or    you    might    go    to     Delmon- 

ico's." 

"  O  no  indeed, —  I  don't  know  where 
it  is,  —  I  never  should  find  it,  —  I  had 
rather  not !  O  no  indeed,  I  will  wait 
for  you  on  the  corner  opposite  City  Hall 
Park.  I  will  certainly  wait  there." 

"Very  well.  I  will  find  you  there. 
Don't  be  afraid  now.  Give  me  your 
travelling-bag,  I  will  lock  it  up  in  the 
state-room." 

"  Will  it  be  safe  there  ?  It  has  all 
my  precious  manuscript  in  it,"  —  alas, 
I  am  literary  !  —  u  absolutely  promised 
for  next  week,  and  if  it  is  lost  I  shall  be 
undone." 

"  Pshaw !  Perfectly  safe  ;  it  is  n't  sen- 
sational enough  to  explode  the  steam- 
Loat  at  the  wharf,  —  is  it?  Want  any 
money  t  "  And  then  Mr.  Charlie  put 
his  hand  in  his  pocket,  and  drew  it  out 
as  if  he  had  burned  it,  —  the  place  was 


1 868.] 


Lost  and  Found. 


245 


empty!  Hi?»  pocket-book  apparently 
had  been  afraid  it  should  be  left  be- 
hind, and  had  taken  French  leave. 

Charlie  always  receives  the  inevitable 
with  a  good  grace.  "I  have  been 
robbed,"  said  he.  "  About  as  bad  a  pre- 
dicament —  I  must  make  haste  and 
leave  word  at  the  Central  Police  Office, 
or  whatever  they  call  it  here.  Don't 
know  as  it  is  of  any  use,  —  all  thieves 
together.  However,  we  must  spring 
round  now,  for  we  've  no  money  to 
stay  another  night  in  the  city.  That 's 

a pretty  scrape,  with  two  dividends 

waiting  for  us  at  home." 

"  Can't  you  borrow  ?  " 

"  Don't  know  a  soul  in  New  York. 
No  matter  ;  our  passage  is  paid,  and 
I  've  change  enough  in  my  waistcoat 
pocket  for  the  stages." 

"  But  you  can  have  this  back." 

**O  no!  The  presents  must  be 
bought ;  we  go  straight  through,  and 
don't  see  another  store,  as  you  may 
say,  after  we  leave  Broadway,  and  the 
girls  will  expect  them,  of  course.  Good 
by,  —  straight  ahead,  —  saunter  slow- 
ly, —  and  wait  at  the  corner  opposite 
City  Hall  Park." 

'•City  Hall  Park,"  said  I.  And  he 
seized  my  bag,  hailed  a  stage,  and  was 
out  of  sight. 

Protected  by  my  husband,  how  brave 
and  strong  I  had  felt,  defying  the  great 
whirlpool  of  the  metropolis  and  all  its 
terrors  !  but  now  suddenly  I  shrunk  up 
into  myself  like  a  sea-anemone ;  and 
all  the  careless  crowd,  brushing  by  me, 
gave  me  a  sensation  as  if  I  were  being 
•d  by  so  many  bristles.  . 

This  was  Broadway  then  !  There 
would  be  temptations  ;  things  in  the  win- 
!  Now  I  would  not  be  a  fool,  but 
would  shmv  myself  fit  to  live  in  the 
world.  And  in  that  spirit  I  threw  up 
my  veil,  adjusted  my  eye-glasses  satis- 
factorily, —  alas,  I  am  nearsighted  !  — 
and  commenced  my  sauntering. 

My  purse  was  firmly  grasped,  —  I 
never  trust  my  purse  out  of  my  hands, 
—  it  contained  our  little  all,  for  the 
present,  and  demanded  a  share  of  my 
attention.  I  made  no  purchases  yet ; 
but,  as  I  strolled  along,  kept  waiting  for 


the  splendid  windows  to  come  into  sight. 
Somebody  had  told  me  if  I  wanted  to 
get  cheap  things  to  go  to  Sixth  Avenue  ; 
but  that  had  been  out  of  the  ques- 
tion on  account  of  the  want  of  timer 
and,  if  the  things  were  dearer  on  Broad- 
way, they  were  probably  all  the  prettier. 
But  either  my  glasses  were  poor  or  this 
was  not  Broadway,  for  the  ideally 
lovely  things  that  I  expected  failed 
to  present  themselves.  Nevertheless, 
I  continued  my  ramble,  trusting  to  ru- 
mor, and  not  venturing  inside  any  doors 
because  fancying  that  I  should  certainly 
see  the  desired  display  behind  glass  a 
little  farther  down  town. 

All  at  once  a  mass  of  granite  and 
scaffolding  across  the  way  began  to 
loom  into  view;  a  sort  of  spire  be- 
yond ;  an  iron  railing  and  ballads 
hanging  over  it,  —  the  new  Post  Office 
probably,  that  I  had  read  was  in  pro- 
cess of  erection,  —  Great  Heavens, 
this  was  City  Hall  Park  ! 

To  this  day  I  do  not  know  whether 
Broadway  goes  any  farther,  that  was 
and  is  the  end  of  it  to  me.  I  dared  not 
stir  a  step  beyond ;  and  here  I  was 
at  the  end  of  my  tether,  and  not  a  pres- 
ent bought,  and  there  were  all  those 
gaping  girls  at  home,  each  expecting, 
without  doubt,  some  lovely  memento  of 
my  journey,  which  I  also  desired  that 
they  should  have.  There  was  a  glitter- 
ing window  at  my  right  hand  now ;  it 
belonged  to  a  jewelry  establishment; 
in  desperation  I  plunged  within,  —  and 
lighted  on  a  locket. 

"  Forty-five  dollars." 

Goodness  !     And  I  had  but  thirty- 

" This  one?" 

"  Forty." 

"  And  that  ?  " 

"  Thirty-five." 

There  were  others  at  twenty-two, 
eighteen,  ten,  six,  five,  but  they  were  the 
very  canaille  of  lockets,  —  and  the  first 
one  was  such  a  piece  of  perfection. 
Suddenly  a  locket  became  the  one  de- 
sirable thing  in  all  the  treasures  of  a 
jeweller.  What  was  the  difference  be^- 
tween  the  forty-five-dollar  one  and  the 
forty  ?  The  young  man  hardly  knew,  — 
.some  trifle  of  workmanship  he  pre- 


246 


Lost  and  Found. 


[August, 


sumed.  It  grew  upon  me  like  a  fungus, 
as  I  looked  at  the  case,  and  nothing 
else  would  catch  my  eye,  that  I  must 
have  that  locket,  —  it  was  such  a  beau- 
ty, such  beaten,  burnished,  golden  gold  ; 
such  chasing  and  enamelling,  such  a 
charming  initial  in  tiny  diamonds,  which 
was  the  very  thing.  I  already  saw  it 
hanging  on  Eleanor's  white  throat,  — 
no  toilet  could  be  complete  without  it 
What  was  the  very  lowest  —  vox  hezstt, 
but  I  overcame  —  at  which  either  of  the 
first  two  could  be  had?  The  young 
man  hardly  knew  again,  — looked  at  me, 
—  at  the  lockets.  Which  did  I  wish  to 
purchase  ?  he  would  like  to  know. 

I  should  like  to  purchase  this  one  ; 
but  I  could  by  no  means  give  forty-five 
dollars.  Still  he  did  n't  know.  Could  n't 
he  find  out  ?  Would  he  inquire  if  there 
could  be  any  abatement  in  the  price,  as 
I  was  in  a  hurry  ?  With  that  he  sum- 
moned a  messenger,  and  despatched 
him  and  the  locket  to  the  cavernous 
back  part  of  the  store  ;  and,  in  the  ab- 
sence of  the  cynosure,  a  great  gray 
gentleman  in  gold  spectacles,  who 
seemed  to  be  made  of  lockets,  and  who, 
as  I  heard  another  customer  remark, 
"bossed  round  promiscuous,"  inquired, 
in  a  sweetly  paternal  way,  if  I  were 
finding  the  article  that  I  desired.  I  gave 
him  to  understand  that. the  article  was 
all  right  as  soon  as  the  price  was,  and 
by  that  time  the  locket  had  returned, 
the  great  gray  gentleman  had  covered 
successfully  the  dialogue  between  my 
dapper  young  man  and  his  messenger, 
and  the  young  man  politely  requested 
to  know  how  much  I  would  be  willing 
to  pay. 

It  was  certainly  not  my  business  to 
fix  prices,  so  I  summoned  all  my  cour- 
age, and  said  I  should  be  willing  to  pay 
as  little  as  possible.  And  then,  as  he 
still  seemed  desirous  that  I  should 
name  my  figure,  I  put  a  bold  face  on 
the  matter,  and  said  twenty-five  dollars. 

The  young  man  made  a  movement  to 
replace  it  in  the  case,  but  paused  half- 
way. "  That  is  not  to  be  thought  of," 
said  he,  rapidly.  "  I  could  n't  listen  to 
such  a  proposition  ;  it  really  cost  us 
nearly  twice  that;  we  are  selling  at 


a  discount  as  it  is.  I  should  be  glad 
to  accommodate  you,  but.  indeed,  we 
might  as  well  give  it  away." 

"  Very  well,"  I  remarked,  finding  the 
beating  -  down  business  not  so  tre- 
mendous after  all.  '*  But  you  are  will- 
ing to  take  something  less  apparently. 
Please  say  what,  for  I  am  in  a  hurry,  as 
I  said." 

"  If  you  take  it  at  forty  dollars  we 
shall  lose  —  " 

u  Then  I  will  not  be  the  means  of 
your  losing.  I  cannot  give  forty  for  it," 
and  I  began  to  give  it  up. 

"  But  indeed,  madam,  it  is  cheap  at 
that,"  said  he,  glibly  ;  "  eighteen  carat 
gold,  Viennese  workmanship,  and  the 
diamonds  real.  If  you  can  find  any  at 
a  less  price  in  the  city,  we  shall  be  glad 
to  get  them  ourselves." 

"  A  friend  of  mine  had  one  much  like 
this,"  I  said,  in  a  last  effort,  "and  gave 
but  twenty-five  dollars  for  it.  I  don't 
think  this  is  worth  any  more,  but  I  am 
in  haste,  and  will  give  you  thirty." 

"  Will  you  have  it  in  a  box  ?  "  said  he. 

"  No ;  I  will  take  it  here  in  my 
purse,"  I  answered  mechanically,  in 
astonishment;  and  before  1  recovered 
from  my  amazement  and  self-congratu- 
lation the  money  was  paid,  the  locket 
was  in  my  purse,  and  I  in  the  street. 

No  miser,  no  discoverer,  ever  felt  bet- 
ter pleased ;  but  meanwhile  the  locket 
was  the  only  thing  in  my  purse  except 
a  card,  —  and  Alice's,  Maud's,  Susie's, 
and  Georgie's  presents  had  vanished 
into  thin  air. 

In  the  street  once  again,  I  felt  better 
than  I  had  felt  before ;  my  skirmish 
with  the  shopman  had  rather  inspirited 
me  ;  indignation  at  the  forty-five  dol- 
lars demanded,  and  desire  of  the  locket, 
and  finally  pleasure  over  the  victory, 
had  put  my  shyness  momentarily  out  of 
sight,  and  I  found  it  quite  possible  to 
ask  an  apple-woman  if  this  was  City 
Hall  Park,  to  make  certain. 

"  Faix  an'  it  was,"  she  assured  me,— 
"what  there  was  left  of  it" 

I  looked  along  the  length  of  the 
crowded  street  before  me,  penetrating 
it  well  as  eye-glasses  would,  but  no 
Charlie  rewarded  my  gaze ;  however, 


1 863.] 


Lost  in  id  Found. 


he  must  be  there  presently,  and  I  could 
wait ;  so  I  waited,  a  quarter,  a  half 
hour,  and  still  no  Charlie.  And  then 
it  rushed  over  me  that  perhaps  he  had 
already  been  there  before  me,  had  grown 
tired,  in  his  masculine  impatience,  and 
had  begun  sauntering  up  to  meet  me. 
In  that  case  we  should  never  meet,  un- 
less I  took  to  sauntering  again  in  my 
own  precisely  opposite  direction,  and 
we  both  lived  long  enough  to  turn  up  in 
China.  I  stood  there  bewildered,  in  a 
perplexity  out  of  which  the  only  thing 
that  became  clear  was  an  anathematiz- 
ing of  the  locket ;  and  then  I  began 
to  bethink  me  if  this  were  the  right 
corner  or  not,  for  I  saw  that  there  were 
half  a  dozen  corners  that  might  all 
claim  to  be  opposite  City  Hall  Park; 
but  this  seemed  to  be  the  last,  and  I 
thought  it  safest  to  assume  that  it  was 
the  appointed  one. 

I  waited  there  till  I  knew  exactly  how 
my  own  little  pony  felt  when  she  had 
stood  three  days  in  her  stall,  —  and 
no  Charlie.  There  was  a  bitter 
wind  blowing,  the  sky  was  overcast, 
all  the  world  was  hurrying  by, — and 
still  no  Charlie.  Had  he  really  passed 
the  store  I  was  in,  and  gone  up  the 
street  to  find  me  ?  Had  I  best  turn 
about  and  follow  ?  or  would  he  go  all 
the  way  to  the  Fifth  Avenue  again,  and 
then  retrace  his  steps  till  he  found  me  ? 
It  always  made  him  ill  to  walk,  and 
made  me  ill  to  stand  ;  we  should  be  in 
a  nice  condition  to  continue  our  journey 
that  night.  Nevertheless,  there  was  no 
safety  in  deserting  my  post,  —  then  I 
should  never  find  him.  All  I  could  do 
was  to  remain  where  I  was  ;  and  so  I 
wailed,  —  long  enough  for  him  to  have 
gone  up  to  the  Fifth  Avenue  and  back 
half  a  dozen  times,  —  and  still  no 
signs  of  him.  What  did  it  mean  ?  I 
then  began  to  ask  myself.  Something 
must  have  happened,  —  what  could  it 
He  must  really  be  in  some  great 
I  )le  to  leave  me  so ;  he  never  would 
in  the  world  if  he  could  help  it ;  and  I 
could  not  go  to  him.  I  was  getting 
worried  beyond  expression,  and  so 
tired  that  I  would  have  given  the 
locket  itself  for  a  seat. 


Meanwhile  the  crowd  was  still  surg- 
ing up  and  dowrn,  jostling  and  pushing, 
hastening  and  lingering,  old  and  young, 
little  and  great,  men  and  women,  and 
every  one  had  an  eye  to  spare,  it 
seemed,  for  me.  Suddenly  I  remem- 
bered the  New  York  Herald,  and  the 
first  left-hand  corner  of  it.  It  was  only 
the  day  before  that,  unfolding  it  in  the 
cars,  I  said,  laughingly,  to  my  husband, 
"  Let  me  see  if  anybody  has  answered 
my  Personal  yet,"  and  he  had  replied 
in  disgust,  "  Don't  speak  of  the  things ! " 
Now,  if  there  is  anything  on  which  I 
pride  myself,  it  is  my  stanch  respecta- 
bility, —  a  word  and  a  thing  dear  to  my 
heart  of  hearts  ;  if  I  am  nobody  myself, 
there  are  my  ancestors  !  And  it  is  not 
difficult  to  realize  how  my  sense  of  pos- 
session staggered  as  I  began  to  feel 
that  every  soul  that  saw  me  knew  I  had 
been  standing  there  a  long  hour  and 
a  half  waiting  for  a  gentleman ;  each 
glance  that  each  new  passer  gave 
seemed  to  be  more  curious  than'  the 
last.  I  put  down  my  veil  in  self-de- 
fence, but  threw  it  up  again  in  fear,  lest 
I  should  miss  seeing  Charlie,  or  his 
eye  should  fail  to  catch  sight  of  me  by 
reason  of  its  obstruction  ;  I  grew  mor- 
tally sure  that  every  man  that  passed 
me  took  me  for  one  of  the  miserable 
women  of  the  Personals.  I  was  faint 
with  the  idea;  moreover,  my  back  ached 
so  with  standing,  that  I  was  faint  in 
reality.  What  else  could  they  think  of 
this  despairing-looking  woman  in  black, 
with  the  limp  white  lace  scarf  and  the 
draggled  curls,  —  alas,  my  hair  curls  ! 
Is  it  not  Thackeray  who  says  every 
woman  with  a  iiez  retrousse  dresses  her 
hair  in  curls  to  make  herself  as  much 
as  may  be  resemble  a  King  Charles 
spaniel  ?  and  already  in  the  raw  east 
wind  I  knew  my  nose  was  as  pink  as  a 
poodle's  and  as  cold  as  a  healthy  pup- 
py's, —  horrible  comparisons  !  Or,  if 
they  did  not  think  that,  —  but  they  did, 
I  knew  they  did,  —  they  must  think  that 
I  was  set  there  to  perform  some  public 
penance  ;  and  what  dreadful  sin  must 
they  think  I  had  committed  to  deserve 
such  a  penance  as  this ! 

A  little  flower-girl  came  along  with 


>4S 


Lost  and  Found. 


[August, 


her  last  bouquet,  and  saluted  me  with 
her  petition  and  her  poverty,  beggin'g 
me  to  buy  the  flowers  that  she  might 
go  home,  —  they  were  fuchsias  and  Par- 
ma violets,  and  one  bursting  rose,  — 
they  would  have  been  a  real  consola- 
tion to  me.  I  had  some  loose  coppers 
in  my  pocket,  but  I  dared  not  spend 
them,  lest  I  might  want  them  in  the 
night  for  a  roll ;  so  the  child  went  her 
way,  and  I  could  not  find  it  in  my  heart 
to  pity  her,  she  was  so  much  better  off 
than  I ;  she  had  a  home  to  go  to.  The 
tears  began  to  well  slowly  into  my 
eyes  ;  they  only  added  to  my  distress, 
as  I  was  conscious  how  they  increased 
my  forlorn  appearance.  I  blushed  and 
tingled  with  fresh  access  of  mortifica- 
tion ;  I  saw  my  dear  respectability  be- 
coming small  by  degrees  and  beautifully 
less.  If  I  had  really  been  keeping  an 
improper  appointment,  I  could  not  have 
endured  the  agony  of  that  long  hour. 
The  little  urchins,  who  tossed  down 
their  pennies,  and  took  dirty  slices  of 
sv/imming  pineapple  from  the  candy- 
stand  behind  the  lamp-post  at  my  side, 
hit  me  right  and  left  with  insulting  im- 
punity. I  would  have  given  almost  the 
whole  creation,  had  it  been  mine  to 
give,  to  dare  to  lean  against  that  lamp- 
post. Meanwhile  a  burly  policeman 
eyed  me,  and  I  expected  momentarily 
that  he  would  tell  me  to  move  on, — 
and  where  in  the  world  was  I  to  move 
to  ?  The  sense  of  irretrievable  dis- 
grace was  fastening  upon  me  with  fear- 
ful fangs, — 'Still  no  Charlie. 

When  one's  circumstances  become 
a  matter  of  breathless  importance  to 
one's  self,  it  is  the  most  natural  thing 
to  believe  them  of  equal  importance  to 
everybody  else.  I  was  sure  that  the 
great  gray  gentleman  in  gold  specta- 
cles, and  the  dapper  young  man,  who 
could  plainly  see  me  from  their  window, 
must  wonder  where  my  haste  and  hurry 
had  gone.  I  looked  across  the  street, 
and  down  the  side  street,  and  then  this 
way  and  that,  in  the  intricacies  of  the 
moving;  throng  of  the  pavement.  —  far, 
far  off,  what  was  the  appalling  sight  I 
saw  ?  An  umbrella  !  Ah,  was  it  really 
r:\ining  down  there  ?  cr  was  it  some 


prim  piece  of  precision  only  afraid  of 
the  dampness  on  her  finery  ?  Would  I 
ever  see,  in  all  that  forest  of  hats,  the 
broad  brim  of  Charlie's  again  ?  Had 
he  possibly  been  meditating  the  awful 
deed  for  days,  and,  leaving  me,  gone 
to  commit  suicide  ?  or  had  I  been  de- 
ceiving myself  with  my  happiness  for 
years,  and  had  he  taken  this  way  to  rid 
himself  of  me  ?  I  cannot  endure  a 
great  deal,  I  was  afraid  I  was  growing 
crazy. 

How  astonishingly  small  all  the  men's 
hats  were,  —  little  roly  -  poly  things, 
never  a  generous  turn  among  them, — 
not  one  sign  of  Charlie's  ! 

The  umbrella  had  drawn  nearer  and 
had  passed  me.  Yes,  there  really  was 
a  heavy  dampness,  a  sort  of  settling 
moisture  ;  well,  I  would  n't  mind  that, 
of  course,  —  though  assuredly  it  would 
spoil  my  crape.  But  now  it  was  a 
decided  falling  mist,  a  slow  drizzle, — 
other  umbrellas,  —  a  woman  running, 
—  rain,  real  downright  rain,  no  shower, 
but  the  regular  beginning  of  a  three 
days'  easterly  storm.  What  was  I  to 
do,  where  was  I  to  go  ?  I  dared  not 
take  refuge  in  a  shop,  —  for  would 
Charlie  be  able  to  go  into  all  the  shops 
of  Broadway  to  look  for  his  wife  ?  would 
it  even  occur  to  him  at  all  ?  and  was 
there  any  possibility  of  his  hitting  upon 
the  right  one,  and  would  they  not  all 
be  closed  before  he  could  make  the 
tour  of  half  their  number  ?  Down 
plunged  the  rain  ;  I  should  certainly 
be  arrested  presently  for  an  insane 
vagrant.  I  went  and  stood  under  an 
awning;  the  man  came  out  and  took 
the  awning  down.  Then  I  was  in  de- 
spair. Where,  where,  where  should  I 
go? 

At  this  crisis  of  my  affairs  I  recol- 
lected that  something  had  been  said 
about  Delmonico's.  If  I  found  the 
place,  if  I  went  there,  would  Charlie 
ever  remember  it?  —  he  was  such  a 
forgetful  fellow ;  he  never  would,  I  was 
morally  sure,  but  it  was  the  only  thing 
there  was  left  for  me  to  do.  I  sum- 
moned my  courage,  —  she  could  but 
refuse, — and  ran  to  my  apple-woman, 
and  asked  her  if  a  gentleman  with  gray 


1 863.] 


Lost  and  Found. 


249 


eyes  and  a  black  coat,  I  meant  with  a 
gray  coat  and  black  eyes,  —  I  didn't 
know  what  I  meant,  —  questioned  her 
about  a  lady  looking  like  me,  would 
.she  tell  him  I  had  gone  to  Delmon- 
ico's  ?  And  then  I  cried. 

"  Niver  bother  a  bit  about  it,  be- 
gorra  !  "  she  replied.  "  Sure  an'  I 
wull.  An'  if  I  'm  not  by  meself,  alan- 
na,  there  's  my  ould  man  '11  do  ye  the 
good  turn." 

Blessed  race  with  their  blarney  ! 
They  forget  all  about  you  the  moment 
your  back  is  turned,  but  for  the  time 
being  how  they  encourage  you  !  The 
woman  who  has  not  a  sympathetic 
Irish  girl  in  her  kitchen  wants  one  of 
the  greatest  blessings  in  life. 

Quite  cheered,  I  added  a  second  re- 
quest Could  she  tell  me  where  Del- 
monico's  was  ? 

"  I  can't  that.  Hi,  Michael,  —  two 
cents  yer  honor,  thanking  ye  kindly, 
—  whereabouts  this  Delumiker's  is, — 
the  'tel  ? " 

Michael  gave  me  the  direction  ;  I 
gave  him  some  pennies,  and  many 
thanks,  and  turned  back,  following 
Broadway  up  to  the  corner  of  Cham- 
bers Street.  Still  the  thought  haunted 
me,  Would  Charlie  dream  of  going  to 
Delmonico's  for  me  ?  If  I  dared  accost 
a  policeman  !  There  was  one,  but  he 
looked  so  terrible;  yet  he  could  but 
kill  me,  and  for  what  I  saw  I  should 
have  to  pass  the  night  in  a  station,  or 
else  die  a  natural  death,  as  it  was.  I 
paused  in  my  rapid  walk,  and  then 
stepped  up  to  him  deferentially,  —  guar- 
dian of  our  manners,  our  morals,  and 
our  peace.  "Is  this  your  beat,  sir?" 
I  asked,  timidly. 

He  looked  down  at  me  like  Gog  and 
Magog  and  Memphremagog,  —  if  that 
was  the  third  giant's  name,  —  but  made 
me  no  reply.  I  had  a  nervous  idea  that 
he  grasped  his  cudgel,  —  a  handsome 
one  it  was,  as  if  it  were  more  agreeable 
to  people  to  have  their  brains  beaten 
out  with  rosewood,  —  grasped  it  more 
inflexibly;  and  I  hastened  to  add,  be- 
fore he  could  use  it,  "  I  mean,  do  you 
stay  here,  whether  it  rains  or  not  ?  " 

"  I  do,"  said  he,  his  whole  face  slowly 


opening  in  surprise  till,  like  a  dissolv- 
ing view,  it  became  another  man's. 

"  Then,  sir,  will  you  do  me  the  kind- 
ness," I  said,  tremblingly,  "  if  a  gentle- 
man inquires  of  you  concerning  a  lady 
of  my  description,  to  tell  him  that  I 
have  gone  to  Delmonico's  ? "  And 
with  that  it  rushed  over  me,  in  a  burn- 
ing torrent  again,  that  he  must  take  me 
for  one  of  those  horrid  women  of  the 
assignations  in  the  Personals,  and  would 
decide  that  his  duty  allowed  him  to 
further  no  such  bad  business ;  there 
was  nothing  for  it  but  to  bestow  my 
confidence  upon  him,  and  I  broke  out 
with  the  exclamation :  "  It  is  my  hus- 
band, sir  ;  and  I  am  a  stranger  in  town, 
and  do  not  know  my  way ;  and  I  have 
lost  him,  and  we  are  to  leave  to-night, 
and  the  boat  goes  at  five,"  and  it  was 
too  much  for  me,  and  then  I  cried  again. 

"  I  '11  tell  him,"  said  he.  And  straight- 
way I  felt  as  if  I  had  one  protector,  and 
could  have  embraced  him  on  the  spot. 
But  I  restrained  my  feelings,  and  meekly 
hurried  to  my  destination. 

I  had  always  thought  Delmonico's 
was  on  Broadway ;  there  were  two,  I 
knew,  and  this  must  be  the  down-town 
one ;  but  when  I  reached  the  desig- 
nated place,  no  such  place  was  to  be 
found.  I  looked  about  me,  and,  at  a 
short  distance  down  Chambers  Street 
a  little  modest  sign  caught  my  eye. 
Could  that  be  the  great  and  mighty 
Delmonico's  ?  How  was  I  to  know  ? 
Must  I  have  the  misery  of  addressing 
another  stranger,  —  could  this  one  tell 
me  where  I  should  find  the  ladies'  en- 
trance to  Delmonico's  ? 

"  Could  n't  raally,"  was  the  response, 
as  the  individual  resumed  his  whistle, 
and  passed  on  with  his  hands  in  his 
tan-colored  pockets,  leaving  me  only 
the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  the 
rain  was  sousing  him  as  wet  as  I  was. 

However,  I  made  for  the  modest 
sign,  pushed  open  the  door,  ran  up  the 
stairs,  and  looked  into  the  great  room  ; 
peradventure  — the  wild  thought  flashed 
over  me  —  Charlie  had  given  up  the 
search  and  come  here  to  wait  for  me ; 
I  looked  in,  I  say;  saw  a  different 
place,  at  first  glance,  from  Welcker's  or 


250 


Lost  and  Found. 


[August, 


from  Parker's,  but  no  Charlie.  I  made 
bold  enough  to  ask  the  gentleman  at 
the  desk  if  this  were  the  ladies'  dining- 
hall,  and  had  no  doubt  of  his  surprise 
at  seeing  me,  on  his  answering  in  the 
affirmative,  leave  the  place  as  if  I  had 
been  shot.  I  dared  not  stay  up  there 
in  any  one  of  those  enticing  seats,  I 
must  go  down  and  wait  in  the  open 
porch,  thence  looking  up  and  number- 
ing all  that  passed  the  head  of  the 
street ;  and,  being  seen  of  them,  I  could 
thus  see  all  the  people  still  who  passed 
along  Broadway,  and,  if  Charlie  were 
among  them,  I  should  certainly  see 
him,  and  he  might  possibly  see  me. 
Still  I  .waited  and  watched,  and  still  he 
did  not  come.  My  glasses  were  so 
blurred  with  the  continual  pattering  of 
the  rain  that  I  hardly  trusted  them  any 
longer.  If  I  could  find  a  messenger 
now,  I  would  send  up  to  the  Fifth 
Avenue,  and  have  word  left  there  as  to 
my  whereabouts ;  but  nobody  passed 
that  looked  at  all  as  if  an  errand  would 
be  an  object.  What  a  decent  and  well- 
clothed  set  of  people  frequent  Cham- 
bers Street!  not  a  ragged  one  among 
them  all.  At  last  a  boy  with  holes  in 
his  shoes  —  what  delightful  holes,  shoes 
handsomer  than  Cinderella's  !  — shuffled 
by-  I  hailed  him,  forgetful  of  every- 
thing but  my  absolute  necessities. 
Would  he  do  me  an  errand  ? 

"  Where  to  ?  " 

"  The  Fifth  Avenue." 

"No  indeed,"  with  a  fiendish  little 
laugh. 

"  But  I  will  pay  you." 

"  Don't  want  your  pay."  And  he  too 
went  by  on  the  other  side. 

Everybody  hurried  along,  everybody 
had  somewhere  to  hurry  to.  I  remem- 
bered my  gay  friends  of  the  morning, 
sitting  now  in  their  elegant  dresses 
with  attentive  groups  around  them, 
and  here  was  I,  lost,  bewildered,  shel- 
terless. Nobody  knew  and  nobody 
cared  anything  about  my  misery.  The 
only  comfort  I  had  was  that  I  could 
still  see  my  policeman,  standing  stolid 
in  the  storm.  Where  could  Charlie  be  ? 
I  began  to  get  angry  as  well  as  all  the 
rest,  —  angry  with  fate,  it  may  be,  but 


certainly  not  with  Charlie.  It  must  be 
late  by  this  time  ;  even  if  he  came  now 
we  should  n't  probably  have  time  to 
reach  the  boat,  and  it  would  go  off,  and 
my  precious,  precious  manuscript  on 
board,  and  here  we  would  be  left  in 
the  great  town  without  a  single  cent  to 
bless  us.  What  would  become  of  me  ? 
Something  must  have  happened  to  Char- 
lie ;  he  must  be  dead  ;  and  I  never 
should  know  !  Tears  —  I  am  afraid  I 
am  great  on  tears  —  ran  down  my 
cheeks  in  unrepressed  succession. 

A  woman  stepped  up  into  the  porch 
beside  me  to  find  safety  for  a  gorgeous 
new  bonnet,  —  she  had  some  vain  idea 
that  it  was  going  to  stop  raining  pres- 
ently. I  asked  her  if  she  knew  what 
time  it  was,  —  I  was  case-hardened  now, 
—  and  she  informed  me  by  a  lovely  little 
watch,  with  a  tiny  fox  and  hounds  cours- 
ing along  the  chain,  that  it  was  five  min- 
utes past  four,  and  put  the  finishing 
stroke  to  my  trouble  thereby.  But  I 
did  not  dare  to  ask  her  if  she  had  not 
made  a  mistake,  and  it  was  really  four 
minutes  past  five  ;  I  did  n't  want  to 
know  if  it  was,  relief  though  it  would 
have  been.  I  watched  the  head  of  the 
street  as  a  cat  watches  a  mouse.  The 
woman  wanted  to  open  a  conversation, 
but  I  had  to  turn  my  head  to  hear  what 
she  said,  owing  to  the  noise  of  wind  and 
rain  and  pavement,  and  finally  told  her 
I  could  not  talk,  for  I  was  looking  for 
my  husband,  and  was  encouraged  by 
her  cheerful  opinion  that  it  was  like 
looking  for  a  needle  in  a  haymow. 
Gentlemen  were  going  in  and  out  of  the 
doors  behind  me  ;  they  all  seemed  to 
have  bold  eyes.  I  fancied  painfully 
and  shamefully  that  they  were  all  fast 
men ;  one  pleasant  woman  came  out, 
and  I  blessed  her  for  making  the  place 
respectable  for  such  a  castaway  as  I  to 
stand  in.  And  still  no  Charlie. 

Still  I  stood  there,  puzzling,  thinking, 
resolving,  and  all  at  once  saying  to  my- 
self that  Charlie  was  of  such  a  free-and- 
easy  sort,  he  had  probably  gone  back 
to  the  hotel,  and  would  expect  me  to 
turn  up  there,  and  we  should  remain  in 
New  York  while  he  telegraphed  home 
for  money.  And,  just  as  I  was  taking 


1 868.] 


Lost  and  Found. 


251 


comfort,  I  remembered  that  you  cannot 
sign  receipts  for  dividends  by  telegraph  ; 
and  the  fall  from  my  buoyant  anticipa- 
tion was  fathoms  deep  into  trouble 
!  and  bewilderment  and  fright  again. 
Suddenly  I  gave  a  start ;  an  omnibus 
was  passing  the  head  of  the  street :  a 
great,  broad-brimmed,  black  hat,  and  a 
pair  of  black  eyes  beneath  it,  were  out 
of  the  window,  evidently  in  search  of 
some  one  through  the  throng  upon  the 
sidewalk.  Heaven  be  thanked  !  it  was 
Charlie  and  no  one  else.  I  sprang  into 
the  street  without  a  word  to  my  woman, 
regardless  of  rain  or  umbrellas  or  crowds 
or  any  one,  and  made  after  the  omnibus, 
shouting  "  Charlie  !  Charlie  !  Charlie  !  " 
at  the  top  of  my  voice.  Just  then  the 
driver  whipped  up  his  horses  ;  Charlie 
never  heard  me ;  the  omnibus  dashed 
along  ;  I  dashed  after  it.  My  only  sal- 
vation was  in  keeping  that  vehicle  in 
sight.  I  was  a  disreputable  -  looking 
thing  enough,  —  wet,  draggled,  blown 
to  pieces,  and  dishevelled,  and  chasing 
somebody  in  an  omnibus.  But  if  Char- 
lie did  n't  see  me  the  crowd  did  ;  every- 
body looked,  everybody  turned,  every- 
body waved  their  umbrellas,  everybody 
began  chasing  the  omnibus  with  me, 
everybody  shouted  Charlie,  and  at  last, 
just  as  I  was  ready  to  drop,  panting 
and  breathless,  Charlie  seemed  to  per- 
ceive that  something  unusual  was  hap- 
pening, glanced  about  him  hurriedly, 
pulled  the  check,  leaped  out,  and  caught 
me.  I  never  knew  what  joy  was  before. 
"  You  are  a  pretty-looking  object," 
was  his  first  exclamation,  as  he  tucked 
me  under  his  arm  and  walked  off.  "  And 
as  for  me,  I  never  experienced  anything 
like  it  in  my  life,  —  could  n't  have  hap- 
pened in  any  other  city  under  the  sun  ! 
Got  an  expressman  to  take  my  trunks 
across  ;  he  promised  to  be  there  in  fif- 
teen minutes,  and  if  I  waited  a  minute 
I  waited  two  mortal  hours  for  the  ras- 
cal, —  knew  if  I  did  n't,  my  luggage 
would  all  be  dumped  down  in  the  dock 
and  made  oft"  with.  However,  I  guess 
we  Ve  time  for  a  plate  of  soup  at  Del- 
monico's,  —  found  a  bill  in  my  vest- 
pocket.  Was  that  where  you  were  ? 
Should  n't  have  dreamed  of  going  for 


you  there  till  everything  else  failed." 
And  never  did  any  triumphant  Roman 
with  his  trophies  feel  more  pricle  than 
did  I  when  I  vindicated  myself  and  pa- 
raded my  newly  found  husband  by  the 
woman  waiting  for  the  rain  to  leave  off 
and  save  her  gorgeous  bonnet.  "  You 
see  I  found  my  needle,"  I  said.  "  Good 
by." 

"  But  how  came  you  in  the  stage  ?  " 
I  asked  Charlie,  presently,  as  we  burned 
our  mouths  with  our  soup. 

"  Why,  the  steamboat  landing  I  found 
to  be  half-way  up  town,"  said  he.  "  So 
I  took  a  stage,  meaning  to  ride  down  to 
the  Astor  House  corner  as  appointed, 
and  if  I  did  n't  find  you,  saunter  up." 

"  I  don't  believe  I  Ve  been  at  the 
Astor  House  corner  at  all.  But  did 
you  suppose  I  would  wait  out  there  in 
the  rain  ?  " 

"  No,  I  fancy  you  know  enough  to  go 
in  when  it  rains.  Nevertheless,  that 
worried  me  out  of  my  wits,  as  it  seems 
to  have  worried  you.  But,"  said  Char- 
lie, mischievously,  "  I  saw  I  must  either 
lose  my  luggage  or  my  wife,  and  I  de- 
cided I  would  attend  to  my  luggage  !  " 

Do  you  wonder  that  I  hate  news- 
papers ?  "  Well,"  said  I,  as  we  steamed 
over  the  Sound  at  last,  taking  out  my 
single  purchase  in  ecstasy,  after  having 
been  reviled  for  finding  no  stores  in  all 
Broadway  with  anything  in  the  windows, 
"  at  any  rate,  I  have  this." 

"  Let  me  see  it,"  said  Charlie.  "  Where 
did  you  get  it  ?  " 

I  mildly  told  him,  and  was  conster- 
nated to  see  him  fillip  it  with  his  thumb 
and  finger,  as  he  replied,  "  I  thought 
so  !  The  great  Bogus  Jewelry  Store  ; 
the  place  of  Attleboro'  splendors  !  Vien- 
nese workmanship,  indeed  !  eighteen 
carats  fine,  and  the  diamonds  real  ! 
Thirty  dollars  !  You  are  no  more  to  be 
trusted  with  money  in  your  pocket  — 
Charlie  stopped,  recollecting  the  money 
in  his  pocket  that  morning.  "  Thirty 
dollars  !  thirty  cents  would  have  been 
high,  my  love.  It  is  n't  worth  the  tin 
it 's  gilt  on  !  " 

u  The  natural  consequence,  my  love, 
of  leaving  me  to  shop  alone  in  Broad- 
way ! " 


e  Footpath.  [August, 


THE     FOOTPATH. 

IT  mounts  athwart  the  windy  hill, 
Through  sallow  slopes  of  upland  bare, 
And  Fancy  climbs  with  footfall  still 
Its  narrowing  curves  that  end  in  air. 

By  day,  a  warmer-hearted  blue 

Stoops  softly  to  that  topmost  swell 

Whence  the  mind  drinks  imagined  view 
Of  gracious  climes  where  all  is  well. 

By  night,  far  yonder,  I  surmise 

An  ampler  world  than  clips  my  ken, 

Where  the  great  stars  of  happier  skies 
Commingle  nobler  fates  of  men. 

I  look  and  long,  then  haste  me  home, 
Still  master  of  my  secret  rare  ; 

Once  tried,  the  path  would  end  in  Rome, 
But  now  it  leads  me  everywhere. 

Forever  to  the  new  it  guides, 

From  former  good,  old  overmuch ; 

What  Nature,  for  her  poets  hides, 
'T  is  wiser  to  divine  than  clutch. 

The  bird  I  list  hath  never  come 
Within  the  scope  of  mortal  ear ; 

My  prying  step  would  make  him  dumb, 
And  the  fair  tree,  his  shelter,  sere. 

Behind  the  hill,  behind  the  sky, 

Behind  my  inmost  thought,  he  sings; 

No  feet  avail:  to  hear  it  nigh, 
The  song  itself  must  lend  the  wings. 

Sing  on,  sweet  bird,  close-hid,  and  raise 
Those  angel-stairways  in  my  brain, 

That  climb  from  our  diminished  days, 
To  spacious  sunshines  far  from  pain. 

Sing  when  thou  wilt,  enchantment  fleet, 
I  leave  thy  covert  haunt  untrod, 

And  envy  Science  not  her  feat 
To  make  a  twice-told  tale  of  God. 


1 868.]  The  Footpath.  253 

They  said  the  fairies  tript  no  more, 

And  long  ago  that  Pan  was  dead  ; 
'T  was  but  that  fools  preferred  to  bore 

Earth's  rind  inch-deep  for  truth  instead. 

Pan  leaps  and  pipes  all  summer  long, 
The  fairies  dance  each  full-mooned  night, 

Would  we  but  doff  our  lenses  strong, 
And  trust  our  wiser  eyes'  delight. 

City  of  Elf-land,  just  without 

Our  seeing,  marvel  ever  new, 
Glimpsed  in  fair  weather,  a  sweet  doubt, 

Sketched-in,  mirage-like,  on  the  blue, 

I  build  thee  in  yon  sunset  cloud, 
Whose  edge  allures  to  climb  the  height; 

I  hear  thy  drowned  bells,  inly-loud, 

From  still  pools  dusk  with  dreams  of  night. 

Thy  gates  are  shut  to  hardiest  will, 
Thy  countersign  of  long-lost  speech,  — 

Those  fountained  courts,  those  chambers  still 
Fronting  Time's  far  East,  who  shall  reach? 

I  know  not  and  will  never  pry, 

But  trust  our  human  heart  for  all ; 
Wonders  that  from  the  seeker  fly, 

Into  an  open  sense  may  fall. 

Hide  in  thine  own  soul,  and  surprise 

The  password  of  the  unwary  elves  ; 
Seek  it,  thou  canst  not  bribe  their  spies  ; 

Unsought,  they  whisper  it  themselves. 


254 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[August, 


REVIEWS   AND    LITERARY   NOTICES. 


Foul  Play.    By  CHARLES  READE  and  DION 
BOUCICAULT.       Boston  :     Ticknor    and 

Fields. 

PERHAPS  if  Robinson  Crusoe  'had  not 
lived,  Miss  Rolleston  and  Mr.  Penfold 
had  never  been  born  ;  but  this  is  not  cer- 
tain; and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  very 
clear  that  the  plot  of  this  bewitching  novel 
is  one  of  the  freshest  and  most  taking  to 
be  imagined.  If  we  had  the  very  hardest 
heart  for  fiction,  and  were  as  exacting  in 
our  novels  as  men  are  in  their  neighbors' 
morals,  we  think  we  could  ask  nothing 
better  than  that  a  young  lady  and  gentle- 
man of  this  period  should  be  cast  away 
together  upon  a  tropical  island  in  the  heart 
of  the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  there  left  for 
several  months  to  the  mutual  dependence, 
the  constant  companionship,  and  the  vicis- 
situdes of  soul  inevitable  from  the  situation. 
If  we  could  desire  anything  more,  it  would 
be  that  this  young  lady  should  have  been 
wrecked  in  going  from  Australia  to  be 
married  in  London,  and  that  this  young 
gentleman  should  have  been  an  escaped 
ticket-of-leave  man,  refined,  conscientious, 
and  unjustly  condemned  to  transportation 
for  a  crime  committed  by  her  betrothed  ;  — 
and  these  blissful  conditions  we  have  ex- 
actly in  "  Foul  Play."  It  seems  almost  too 
great  a  happiness  when  we  have  added  to 
them  the  fact  that  the  Rev.  Mr.  Penfold  has 
already  quarrelled  with  Miss  Rolleston,  who 
rejects  his  love,  and  believes  him  a  slander- 
ous and  wicked  villain,  because  he  has  ac- 
cused her  betrothed,  and  that  he  is  put 
upon  his  most  guarded  behavior  by  this 
circumstance,  until  she  herself  consents  to 
believe  him  good  and  just,  even  while 
clinging  to  her  troth  with  his  enemy. 

Being  a  character  of  Mr.  Reade's  creation, 
it  is  not  necessary  to  say  that  Helen  Rolles- 
ton is  a  very  natural  and  lovable  woman, 
admirably  illogical,  cruel,  sagacious,  and 
generous.  Through  all  her  terrible  disasters 
and  thrilling  adventures  she  is  always  a 
young  lady,  and  no  more  abandoned  on  that 
far-away  island  by  her  exquisite  breeding 
and  the  pretty  conventions  of  her  English 
girlhood,  than  she  would  be  upon  her  native 
croquet  -  ground.  A  delicious  charm  is 
gained  to  the  romance  by  the  retention  of 


these  society  instincts  and  graces,  which 
are  made  to  harmonize  rather  than  conflict 
with  the  exhibitions  of  a  woman's  greatness 
and  self-devotion,  when  occasion  calls  forth 
those  qualities.  Helen's  progress,  from 
prejudice  to  passion  is  tacit,  and  is  always 
confessed  more  by  some  last  effort  of  the 
former  than  by  any  expression  of  the  latter. 
When  she  suspects  that  Penfold  is  only 
making  her  comfortable  on  the  island  be- 
cause he  intends  her  to  pass  the  rest  of  her 
days  there,  and  furiously  upbraids  him, 
she  does  his  purpose  a  gross  wrong,  though 
she  strikes  at  the  heart  of  his  unconscious 
desire,  which  nothing  but  her  own  love  for 
him  could  reveal  to  her.  She  makes  him 
a  sublime  reparation  when  at  last  the 
steamer  appears  which  has  come  to  seek 
her,  and  she  will  not  kindle  the  signal -fire 
which  he  has  built  on  the  height,  but  which 
he  cannot  himself  reach  for  illness  ;  and  so 
reveals  that  she  dreads  the  rescue  that 
shall  divide  them.  It  is  fortunate  for  the 
author's  invention,  no  doubt,  that  her  father 
arrives  upon  the  steamer  just  at  that  time ; 
yet  until  the  moment  that  her  father  takes 
her  in  his  arms,  nothing  has  soiled  the  puri- 
ty of  her  dream  of  love.  He  finds  in  her 
lover  an  escaped  ticket-of-leave  man,  and 
the  shock  of  now  beholding  Penfold  in  this 
light  for  the  first  time  naturally  prompts 
those  wild  and  most  amusing  reproaches 
that  Helen  heaps  upon  him  for  winning  her 
heart  under  a  false  character  ;  but  she  is 
heroic  and  quite  as  womanly  again  when 
she  defends  him  against  her  father's  blame, 
pours  out  all  her  love  upon  him,  and  puts 
a  vehement  and  tremendous  faith  in  his 
declaration  that  he  is  not  a  felon,  but  a  mar- 
tyr. With  the  chambermaid  of  the  Holly- 
Tree  Inn,  witnessing  the  adieux  of  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Harry  Walmers,  Junior,  through  the 
kcyhple,  the  reader  feels  that  "  It 's  a  shame 
to  part  'em  ! "  and  does  not  care  much  for 
the  ingenious  story  after  Mr.  Penfold  is  left 
alone  on  his  island,  though,  of  course,  one 
reads  on  to  the  reunion  of  the  lovers,  and, 
in  a  minor  way,  enjoys  all  the  plotting  and 
punishment  and  reward  that  take  place. 

That  part,  however,  Wilkie  Collins  could 
have  done,  while  the  island  and  its  people 
are  solely  Mr.  Reade's.  This  novelist,  at 
all  times  brilliant  and  fascinating,  has  given 


1 868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


255 


us  of  his  best  in  "  Foul  Play,"  and  in  a  story 
unburdened  by  the  problem  that  crushed 
"  Griffith  Gaunt,"  and,  dealing  simply  with 
the  play  of  character  amid  beautiful  scenes 
that  give  it  the  most  novel  and  winning 
relief,  has  produced  a  work  of  which  noth- 
ing but  a  superhuman  dulness  and  obdu- 
racy could  resist  the  sorcery. 


The  Earthly  Paradise  :  A  Poem.  By  WIL- 
LIAM MORRIS,  Author  of  "  The  Life  and 
Death  of  Jason."  Boston:  Roberts  Broth- 
ers. 1868. 

THE  trouz'L're,  as  distinct  from  the  trcniba- 
donr,  seemed  almost  disappearing  from  lit- 
erature, when  Mr.  Morris  revived  the  ancient 
line,  or,  to  speak  more  exactly,  the  ancient 
thousand  lines.  He  brings  back  to  us  the 
almost  forgotten  charm  of  mere  narrative. 
We  have  lyric  poets,  and,  while  Browning 
lives,  a  dramatic  poet ;  it  is  a  comfort  if  we 
can  have  also  a  minstrel  who  can  tell  a 
story. 

It  is  true,  as  Keats  said,  that  there  is  a 
peculiar  pleasure  in  a  long  poem,  as  in  a 
meadow  where  one  can  wander  about  and 
pick  flowers.  One  should  cultivate  a  hope- 
ful faith,  like  that  of  George  Dyer,  who 
bought  a  bulky  volume  of  verse  by  an  un- 
known writer,  in  the  belief  (so  records 
Charles  Lamb)  that  "there  must  be  some 
good  things  in  a  poem  of  three  thousand 
lines."  That  kindly  critic  would  have 
found  a  true  Elysium  in  the  "  Earthly  Par- 
adise." 

If  not  so  crowded  as  "  Jason  "  with  sweet, 
fresh,  Chaucerian  passages,  it  has  more 
breadth  and  more  maturity,  and  briefer  in- 
tervals of  dulness.  Yet  the  word  "  Chau- 
cerian "  must  be  used  writh  reluctance,  and 
only  to  express  a  certain  freshness  of  qual- 
ity that  no  other  phrase  can  indicate.  Im- 
itative these  poems  certainly  are  not ;  their 
simplicity  is  simple,  whereas  the  simplicity 
of  some  poets  is  the  last  climax  of  their 
affectation.  The  atmosphere  of  Morris's 
poems  is  really  healthy,  though  limited  ;  and 
their  mental  action  is  direct  and  placid,  not 
constrained. 

The  old  legends  of  Cupid  and  Psyche, 
-nta,  Alcustis  and  Pygmalion,  are  here 
rendered  with  new  sweetness,  interspersed 
with  tales  more  modern.  It  is  pleasant  to 
see  these  immortal  Greek  stories  repro- 
duced in  English  verse  ;  for,  at  the  present 
rate  of  disappearance,  who  knows  that  there 
will  be  an  American  a  hundred  vcars  hence 


who  can  read  a  sentence  of  that  beautiful 
old  language,  or  to  whom  the  names  of  "  the 
Greeks  and  of  Troy  town  "  will  be  anything 
but  an  abomination  ?  It  is  a  comfort  to 
think  that  the  tales  of  the  world's  youth 
may  take  a  new  lease  of  life  in  these  and 
other  English  rhymes,  and  so  something  of 
the  ideal  world  be  preserved  for  our  grand- 
children, as  well  as  Herbert  Spencer,  and 
Greeley's  "American  Conflict." 

Such  themes  are  far  more  congenial  to 
Morris  than  to  Swinburne  ;  for  Greek  po- 
etry is  at  once  simple  and  sensuous,  and 
we  come  nearer  to  it  when  put  on  short 
allowance  of  the  sensuous  than  when  it  runs 
riot  and  becomes  unpleasantly  conscious  of 
its  own  nudity.  Morris  is  also  wiser  in  not 
attempting  any  imitation  of  the  antique 
forms.  Indeed,  his  poems  belong  in  a 
world  of  their  own,  neither  ancient  nor 
modern,  and  touching  remotely  on  all  hu- 
man interests.  The  lyrical  poems  inter- 
spersed between  the  legends  are  the  only 
modern  things,  and  even  those  are  tender 
little  bits  of  English  landscape-painting  that 
might  have  been  executed  centuries  ago. 
His  story-tellers  and  his  listeners  dwell  for- 
ever in  a  summer  land,  where  youths  and 
maidens  may  sit  beneath  their  own  vines 
and  fig-trees,  and  even  a  poem  of  seven 
hundred  pages  cannot  molest  them  nor 
make  them  afraid. 


The  Laymaifs  Breviary,  from  the  German 
of  Leopold  Schefer.  Translated  by 
CHARLES  T.  BROOKS.  Boston  :  Roberts 
Brothers.  1868. 

A  GERMAN  critic  declares  that  the  "  Lay- 
man's Breviary  "  has  helped  more  souls  to 
the  understanding  of  themselves  than  any 
other  book  of  German  poetry.  What  is 
more  remarkable  for  a  devotional  work  in 
that  language,  no  other  book  is  needed  to 
help  souls  to  understand  it.  It  is  simple, 
as  varied,  and  as  attractive  as  if  it  were  not 
in  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  parts,  and 
in  blank  verse  from  beginning  to  end. 

Leopold  Schefer,  after  wandering  through 
the  world  with  Prince  Piickler  Muskau,  and 
writing  seventy-three  novels  of  musical  and 
Oriental  life,  returned  at  last  to  Germany, 
and  found  in  his  home,  his  wife,  and  his 
child  the  true  sources  of  inspiration.  The 
novels  are  yet  untranslated,  perhaps  un- 
translatable, but  this  volume  of  poetic 
meditations,  after  passing  through  twelve 
editions  in  the  original,  has  already  entered 


256 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[August 


on  a  new  career  of  favor  in  this  new  land. 
Nothing  can  be  more  remote  from  all  the 
technicalities  of  the  creeds ;  but  there  is 
condensed  into  every  meditation  so  much 
of  practical  wisdom,  such  simple  feeling, 
such  appreciation  of  life's  daily  blessings, 
such  fresh  and  delicate  poetic  beauties,  as 
must  make  it  dearer  to  the  reader  with  ev- 
ery day.  It  fell,  fortunately,  into  the  hands 
of  one  who  has,  perhaps,  no  equal  among 
us,  save  Mr.  Longfellow,  in  the  translator's 
peculiar  gifts,  and  who  evades  the  quarrel 
between  the  literal  and  the  poetic  methods, 
by  uniting  them  in  one.  In  rendering  these 
meditations,  he  has  put  into  them  the  beau- 
ty of  his  own  spirit  and  the  sympathy  of 
his  own  poetic  mind.  In  such  literary  ser- 
vice laborare  est  orare. 


Going  to  Jericho :  or  Sketches  of  Travel  in 
Spain  and  the  East.  By  JOHN  FRANK- 
LIN SWIFT.  New  York  and  San  Fran- 
cisco :  A.  Roman  &  Co. 

THERE  are  many  reasons  why  California, 
if  she  gives  us  literature  at  all,  should  give 
us  something  very  racy  and  distinctive. 
The  violent  contrasts  and  extraordinary  jux- 
tapositions of  the  most  unassorted  persons 
and  people  which  mark  her  history  were  not 
circumstances  which,  according  to  received 
ideas,  invited  to  early  literary  production  ; 
but  since  books  have  been  therein  produced, 
it  was  scarcely  possible  that  they  should  not 
in  some  way  reflect  the  mental  characteris- 
tics of  that  anomalous  civilization  on  the 
Pacific.  And,  in  fact,  they  have  done  so 
with  a  singular  vividness  and  strength,  and 
are  so  far  all  marked  by  that  fantastic  spirit 
of  drollery  which  is  the  predominant  mood 
of  the  popular  American  mind,  in  the  face 
of  great  novelties  and  emergencies.  The 
author  of  the  John  Phoenix  papers  first  made 
known  to  us  the  peculiar  flavor  of  the  Pacific 
literature,  and  he  still  remains  at  the  head 
of  the  California  school  of  humorists.  Next 
to  him  is  Mr.  Harte,  of  whose  "  Condensed 
Novelists  "  we  have  heretofore  spoken  in 
this  place,  and  whose  humor  has  more  re- 
cently found  expression  in  a  volume  of  very 
amusing  verse :  performances  betraying 
greater  consciousness,  and  having  less 
originality  of  form  than  the  sole  Phoenix's, 
but  imbued  with  the  same  unmistakable 
Californianism.  In  Mr.  Swift,  like  quaint- 
ness  and  extravagance  appear  in  a  book  of 


travel,  carrying  the  reader  through  regions 
where  almost  the  only  new  thing  to  be  dis- 
covered and  described  is  the  traveller  him- 
self. Mr.  Swift,  therefore,  makes  a  narrative 
of  almost  purely  personal  adventure,  and 
lets  us  off  with  very  little  information. 
What  he  does  give  is  again  of  personal 
character,  and  relates  chiefly  to  interviews 
with  President  Adams  of  the  American 
colony  at  Jaffa,  with  Abd-el-Kader  and 
Lady  Hester  Stanhope,  and  is  acceptable 
enough  if  you  set  aside  some  questions  of 
taste.  "  Eothen  "  has  pitched  the  pipe  for 
all  sarcastic  travellers  visiting  the  Holy 
Places,  but  Mr.  Swift  arranges  the  old  air 
with  much  originality,  and  makes  his  read- 
er laugh  with  a  new  though  somewhat  guilty 
pleasure,  at  fun  which  hardly  stops  short  of 
sacred  memories,  and  is  at  other  times  too 
lawless. 

The  best  chapters  in  his  book  are  those 
sketching  some  episodes  of  Spanish  travel. 
The  account  of  the  bull-fight  at  Madrid  is 
one  of  the  most  surprising  of  these,  —  it  is 
both  graphic  and  interesting,  and  thus  dif- 
fers from  most  efforts  upon  that  shame- 
lessly tattered  old  topic,  in  reading  which 
you  always  regret  that  some  one  of  the 
bulls  had  not  made  it  a-  point  to  get  at 
and  gore  the  tourist  intending  to  celebrate 
the  spectacle.  "  My  first  Step  in  Crime," 
in  which  our  traveller  recounts  his  adven- 
tures in  ridding  himself  of  the  bad  money 
passed  upon  him  in  Spain,  is  very  amusing,, 
with  occasional  excess  and  abandon  which 
does  not  seem  quite  necessary  to  the  ex- 
pression of  humor,  but  which  seems  again 
quite  Californian. 

Romantic  and  Scriptural  scenes  are  gen- 
erally looked  at  from  the  same  point  of  view, 
and  discussed  in  the  light  of  San  Francisco 
associations,  —  sometimes  with  a  delightful 
mock  newspaper-seriousness,  and  a  habit  of 
unexpected  allusion  to  American  politics 
and  society.  No  one  could  enjoy  the  shams 
and  absurdities  of  travel  so  keenly  as  Mr. 
Swift  does,  without  also  appreciating  its 
other  aspects  ;  and  in  spite  of  the  levity 
of  the  book  we  are  aware,  not  only  of 
sound  common  sense,  but  of  sympathy 
with  much  that  is  fine  and  good  in  the 
things  seen.  Still,  the  latter  faculty  is 
subordinated,  '&nd  so  we  have  a  book 
in  which  the  disposition  to  droll  not  only 
betrays  the  author  into  passages  of  very 
questionable  taste,  but  at  last  fatigues  the 
reader. 


THE 


ATLANTIC    MONTHLY. 

A   Magazine   of  Literature,   Science,   Art, 
and  Politics. 


VOL.  XXIL— SEPTEMBER;  1868.  — NO.  cxxxi. 


NO     NEWS. 


NONE  at  all.  Understand  that, 
please,  to  begin  with.  That  you 
•will  at  once,  and  distinctly,  recall  Dr. 
Sharpe  —  and  his  wife,  I  make  no 
doubt.  Indeed,  it  is  because  the  histo- 
ry is  a  familiar  one,  some  of  the  unfa- 
miliar incidents  of  which  have  come 
into  my  possession,  that  I  undertake  to 
tell  it.  • 

My  relation  to  the  Doctor,  his  wife, 
and  their  friend,  has  been  in  many  re- 
spects peculiar.  Without  entering  into 
explanations  which  I  am  not  at  liberty 
to  make,  let  me  say,  that  those  portions 
of  their  story  which  concern  our  pres- 
ent purpose,  whether  or  not  they  fell 
under  my  personal  observation,  are 
accurately,  and  to  the  best  of  my  judg- 
ment impartially,  related. 

Nobody,  I  think,  who  was  at  the  wed- 
ding, dreamed  that  there  would  ever  be 
such  a  story  to  tell.  It  was  such  a 
pretty,  peaceful  wedding  !  If  you  were 
there,  you  remember  it  as  you  remem- 
ber a  rare  sunrise,  or  a  peculiarly  del- 
icate May-flower,  or  that  strain  in  a 
simple  old-  song  which  is  like  orioles 
and  butterflies  and  dew-drops. 

There  were  not  many  of  us  ;  we  were 


all  acquainted  with  one  another ;  the 
day  was  bright,  and  Harrie  did  not  faint 
nor  cry.  There  were  a  couple  of  brides- 
maids, —  Pauline  Dallas,  and  a  Miss  — 
Jones,  I  think,  —  besides  Harrie's  little 
sisters ;  and  the  people  were  well  dressed 
and  well  looking,  but  everybody  was 
thoroughly  at  home,  comfortable,  and 
on  a  level.  There  was  no  annihilating 
of  little  country  friends  in  gray  alpacas 
by  city  cousins  in  point  and  pearls,  no 
crowding  and  no  crush,  and,  I  believe, 
not  a  single  "front  breadth"  spoiled 
by  the  ices. 

Harrie  is  not  called  exactly  pretty, 
but  she  must  be  a  very  plain  woman 
who  is  not  pleasant  to  see  upon  her  wed- 
ding day.  Harrie's  eyes  shone,  —  I 
never  saw  such  eyes  !  and  she  threw 
her  head  back  like  a  queen  whom  they 
were  crowning. 

Her  father  married  them.  Old  :,Ir. 
Bird  was  an  odd  man,  with  odd  notions 
of  many  things,  of  which  marriage  was 
one.  The  service  was  his  own.  I  af- 
terwards asked  him  for  a  copy  of  it, 
which  I  have  preserved.  The  Covenant 
ran  thus  :  — 

"Appealing  to  your  Father  who  is 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1868,  by  TICKNOR  AND  FIELDS,  in  the  Clerk's  Office 

of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 
VOL.   XXII.  — NO.    131.  17 


258 


JVb  News. 


[September,. 


in  heaven  to  witness  your  sincerity, 
you  ....  do  now  take  this  woman 
whose  hand  you  hold  —  choosing  her 
alone  from  all  the  world  —  to  be  your 
lawfully  wedded  wife.  You  trust  her 
as  your  best  earthly  friend.  You  prom- 
ise to  love,  to  cherish,  and  to  protect 
her  ;  to  be  considerate  of  her  happiness 
in  your  plans  of  life  ;  to  cultivate  for 
her  sake  all  manly  virtues ;  and  in  all 
things  to  seek  her  welfare  as  you  seek 
your  own.  You  pledge  yourself  thus 
honorably  to  her,  to  be  her  husband  in 
good  faith,  so  long  as  the  providence 
of  God  shall  spare  you  to  each  other. 

"In  like  manner,  looking  to  your 
Heavenly  Father  for  his  blessing, 
you  ....  do  now  receive  this  man, 
whose  hand  you  hold,  to  be  your  law- 
fully wedded  husband.  You  c.hoose 
him  from  all  the  world  as  he  has  chosen 
you.  You  pledge  your  trust  to  him  as 
your  best  earthly  friend.  You  promise 
to  love,  to  comfort,  and  to  honor  him  ; 
to  cultivate  for  his  sake  all  womanly 
graces  ;  to  guard  his  reputation,  and 
assist  him  in  his  life's  work  ;  and  in  all 
things  to  esteem  his  happiness  as  your 
own.  You  give  yourself  thus  trustfully 
to  him,  to  be  his  wife  in  good  faith,  so 
long  as  the  providence  of  God  shall 
spare  you  to  each  other." 

When  Harrie  lifted  her  shining  eyes 
to  say,  "I  'do!"  the  two  little  happy 
words  rang  through  the  silent  room  like 
a  silver  bell ;  they  would  have  tinkled 
in  your  ears  for  weeks  to  come  if  you 
had  heard  them. 

I  have  been  thus  particular  in  noting 
the  words  of  the  service,  partly  because 
they  pleased  me,  partly  because  I  have 
since  had  some  occasion  to  recall  them, 
and  partly  because  I  remember  having 
wondered,  at  the  time,  how  many  mar- 
ried men  and  women  of  your  and  my  ac- 
quaintance, if  honestly  subjecting  their 
union  to  the  test  and  full  interpreta- 
tions and  remotest  bearing  of  such  vows 
as  these,  could  live  in  the  sight  of  God 
and  man  as  "lawfully  wedded"  hus- 
band and  wife. 

Weddings  are  always  very  sad  things 
to  me  ;  as  much  sadder  than  burials  as 
the  beginning  of  life  should  be  sadder 


than  the  end  of  it.  The  readiness 
with  which  young  girls  will  flit  out  of 
a  tried,  proved,  happy  home  into  the 
sole  care  and  keeping  of  a  man  whom 
they  have  known  three  months,  six, 
twelve,  I  do  not  profess  to  understand. 
Such  knowledge  is  too  wonderful  for  me ; 
it  is  high,  I  cannot  attain  unto  it.  But 
that  may  be  because  I  am  fifty-five,  an 
old  maid,  and  have 'spent  twenty  years 
in  boarding-houses. 

A  woman  reads  the  graces  of  a  man 
at  sight  His  faults  she  cannot  thor- 
oughly detect  till  she  has  been  for  years 
his  wife.  And  his  faults  are  so  much 
more  serious  a  matter  to  her  than  hers 
to  him  ! 

I  was  thinking  of  this  the  day  before- 
the  wedding.  I  had  stepped  in  from, 
the  kitchen  to  ask  Mrs.  Bird  about  the- 
salad,  when  I  came  abruptly,  at  the 
door  of  the  sitting-room,  upon  as  choice 
'a  picture  as  one  is  likely  to  see. 

The  doors  were  open  through  the 
house,  and  the  wind  swept  in  and  out. 
A  scarlet  woodbine  swung  lazily  back 
and  forth  beyond  the  window.  Dimples 
of  light  burned  through  it,  dotting  the 
carpet  and  the  black-and-white  marbled 
oilcloth  of  the  hall.  Beyond,  in  the  lit- 
tle front  parlor,  framed  in  by  the  series- 
of  doorways,  was  Harrie,  all  in  a  cloud 
of  white.  It  floated  about  her  with  an 
idle,  wavelike  motion.  She  had  a  veil 
like  fretted  pearls  through  which  her: 
tinted  arm  shone  faintly,  and  the  shad- 
ow of  a  single  scarlet  leaf  trembled 
through  a  curtain  upon  her  forehead. 

Her  mother,  crying  a  little,  as  moth- 
ers  will  cry  the  clay  before  the  wedding,, 
was  smoothing  with  tender  touch  a  tiny 
crease  upon  the  cloud  ;  a  bridesmaid 
or  two  sat  chattering  on  the  floor ;  ' 
gloves,  and  favors,  and  flowers,  and  bits  ] 
of  lace  like  hoar-frost,  lay  scattered 
about  ;  and  the  whole  was  repictured 
and  reflected  and  reshaded  in  the  great 
old-fashioned  mirrors  before  which  Har- 
rie turned  herself  about. 

It  seemed  a  pity  that  Myron  Sharpe 
should  miss  that,  so  I  called  him  in 
from  the  porch  where  he  sat  reading 
Stuart  Mill  on  Liberty. 

If  you  form  your  own  opinion  of  a- 


1 868." 


No  News. 


259 


man  who  might  spend  a  livelong  morn- 
ing, —  an  October  morning,  quivering 
with  color,  alive  with  light,  sweet  with 
the  breath  of  dropping  pines,  soft  with 
the  caress  of  a  wind  that  had  filtered 
through  miles  of  sunshine,  —  and  that 
the  morning  of  the  day  before  his  wed- 
ding, —  reading  Stuart  Mill  on  Liberty, 
—  I  cannot  help  it. 

Harrie,  turning  suddenly,  saw  us,  — 
met  her  lover's  eyes,  stood  a  moment 
with  lifted  lashes  and  bright  cheeks,  — 
crept  with  a  quick,  impulsive  movement 
into  her  mother's  arms,  kissed  her,  and 
floated  away  up  the  stairs. 

"  It 's  a  perfect  fit,"  said  Mrs.  Bird, 
coming  out  with  one  corner  of  a  very 
dingy  handkerchief —  somebody  had 
just  used  it  to  dust  the  Parian  vases  — 
at  her  eyes. 

And  though,  to  be  sure,  it  was  none  of 
my  business,  I  caught  myself  saying, 
under  my  breath,  — 

"It's  a  fit  for  life;  for  a  life,  Dr. 
Sharpe." 

Dr.  Sharpe  smiled  serenely.  He  was 
very  much  in  love  with  the  little  pink- 
and-white  cloud  that  had  just  fluttered 
tip  the  stairs.  If  it  had  been  drifting  to 
him  for  the  venture  of  twenty  lifetimes, 
he  would  have  felt  no  doubt  of  the  "  fit." 

Nor,  I  am  sure,  would  Harrie.  She 
stole  out  to  him  that  evening  after  the 
bridal  finery  was  put  a\vay,  and  knelt  at 
his  feet  in  her  plain  little  muslin  dress, 
her  hair  all  out  of  crimp,  slipping 
from  her  net  behind  her  ears,  —  Harrie's 
ears  were  very  small,  and  shaded  off  in 
the  colors  of  a  pale  apple-blossom,  — 
up-turning  her  flushed  and  v/eary  face. 

"  Put  away  the  book,  please.  Myron." 

Myron  put  away  the  bock  (somebody 
on  Bilious  Affections),  and  looked  for 
a  moment  without  speaking  at  the  up- 
turned face. 

Dr.  Sharpe  had  spasms  of  distrusting 
himself  amazingly ;  perhaps  most  men 
have,- —  and  ought  to.  His  face  grew 
grave  just  then.  That  little  girl's  clear 
eyes  shone  upon  him  like  the  lights  upon 
an  altar.  In  very  unworthiness  of  soul 
he  would  have  put  the  shoes  from  off 
his  feet.  The  ground  on  which  he  trod 
was  holy. 


When  he  spoke  to  the  child,  it  was 
in  a  whisper  :  — 

"  Harrie,  are  you  afraid  of  me  ?  I 
know  I  am  not  very  good." 

And  Harrie,  kneeling  with  the  shad- 
ows of  the  scarlet  leaves  upon  her  hair, 
said  softly,  — 

"  How  could  I  be  afraid  of  you  ?  It 
is  /who  am  not  good." 

Dr.  Sharpe  could  not  have  made  much 
progress  in  Bilious  Affection  that  even- 
ing. All  the  time  that  the  skies  were 
fading,  we  saw  them  wandering  in  and 
out  among  the  apple-trees,  —  she  with 
those  shining  eyes,  and  her  hand  in  his. 
And  when  to-morrow  had  come  and 
gone,  and  in  the  dying  light  they  drove 
away,  and  Miss  Dallas  threw  old  Grand- 
mother Bird's  little  satin  boot  after  the 
carriage,  the  last  we  saw  of  her  was 
that  her  hand  was  clasped  in  his,  and 
that  her  eyes  were  shining. 

Well,  I  believe  that  they  got  along 
very  well  till  the  first  baby  came.  As 
far  as  my  observation  goes,  young  peo- 
ple usually  get  along  very  well  till  the 
first  baby  comes.  These  particular 
young  people  had  a  clear  conscience, — 
as  young  people's  consciences  go,  — 
fair  health,  a  comfortable  income  for 
two,  and  a  very  pleasant  home. 

This  home  was  on  the  coast.  The 
townspeople  made  shoes,  and  minded 
their  own  business.  Dr.  Sharpe  bought 
the  dying  practice  of  an  antediluvian 
who  believed  in  camomile  and  castor- 
oil.  Harrie  mended  a  few  stockings, 
made  a  few  pies,  and  watched  the  sea. 

It  was  almost  enough  of  itself  to 
make  one  happy  —  the  sea  —  as  it 
tumbled  about  the  shores  of  Lime. 
Harrie  had  a  little  seat  hollowed  out  in 
the  clitfs,  and  a  little  scarlet  bathing- 
dress,  which  was  surprisingly  becoming, 
and  a  little  boat  of  her  own,  moored  in 
a  little  bay,  —  a  pretty  shell  which  her 
husband  had  had  made  to  order,  that 
she  might  be  able  to  row  herself  on  a 
calm  water.  He  was  very  thoughtful 
for  her  in  those  days. 

She  used  to  take  her  sewing  out  upon 
the  cliff;  she  would  be  demure  and 
busy ;  she  would  finish  the  selvage 


260 


No  News. 


[September, 


seam ;  but  the  sun  blazed,  the  sea 
shone,  the  birds  sang,  all  the  world  was 
at  play,  —  what  could  it  matter  about 
selvage  seams  ?  So  the  little  gold  thim- 
ble would  drop  off,  the  spool  trundle 
down  the  cliff,  and  Harrie,  sinking  back 
into  a  cushion  of  green  and  crimson 
sea-weed,  would  open  her  wide  eyes  and 
dream.  The  waves  purpled  and  sil- 
vered, and  broke  into  a  mist  like  pow- 
dered amber,  the  blue  distances  melted 
softly,  the  white  sand  glittered,  the 
gulls  were  chattering  shrilly.  What  a 
world  it  was  ! 

"  And  he  is  in  it !  "  thought  Harrie. 
Then  she  would  smile  and  shut  her 
eyes.  "  And  the  children  of  Israel  saw 
the  face  of  Moses,  that  Moses'  face 
shone,  and  they  were  afraid  to  come 
nigh  him. "  Harrie  wondered  if  every- 
body's joy  were  too  great  to  look  upon, 
and  wondered,  in  a  childish,  frightened 
way,  how  it  might  be  with  sorrow  ;  if 
people  stood  with  veiled  faces  before  it, 
dumb  with  pain  as  she  with  peace,  —  and 
then  it  was  dinner-time,  and  Myron 
came  down  to  walk  up  the  beach  with 
her,  and  she  forgot  all  about  it. 

She  forgot  all  about  everything  but 
the  bare  joy  of  life  and  the  sea,  when 
she  had  donned  the  pretty  scarlet  suit, 
and  crept  out  into  the  surf, — at  the 
proper  medicinal  hour,  for  the  Doctor 
was  very  particular  with  her,  —  when  the 
warm  brown  waves  broke  over  her  face, 
the  long  sea-weeds  slipped  through 
her  fingers,  the  foam  sprinkled  her  hair 
with  crystals,  and  the  strong  wind  was 
up. 

She  was  a  swift  swimmer,  and,  as 
one  watched  from  the  shore,  her  lithe 
scarlet  shoulders  seemed  to  glide  like  a 
trail  of  fire  through  the  lighted  water  ; 
and  when  she  sat  in  shallow  foam  with 
sunshine  on  her,  or  flashed  through  the 
dark  green  pools  among  the  rocks,  or 
floated  with  the  incoming  tide,  her  great 
bathing-hat  dropping  shadows  on  her 
wet  little  happy  face,  and  her  laugh 
ringing  out,  it  was  a  pretty  sight. 

But  a  prettier  one  than  that,  her  hus- 
band thought,  was  to  see  her  in  her 
boat  at  sunset ;  when  sea  and  sky  were 
aflame,  when  every  flake  of  foam  was 


a  rainbow,  and  the  great  chalk-cliffs 
were  blood-red  ;  when  the  wind  blew 
her  net  off,  and  in  pretty  petulance  she 
pulled  her  hair  down,  and  it  rippled  all 
about  her  as  she  dipped  into  the  blaz- 
ing West. 

Dr.  Sharpe  used  to  drive  home  by  the 
beach,  on  a  fair  night,  always,  that  he 
might  see  it.  Then  Harrie  would  row- 
swiftly  in,  and  spring  into  the  low,  broad 
buggy  beside  him,  and  they  rode  home 
together  in  the  fragrant  dusk.  Some- 
times she  used  to  chatter  on  these  twi- 
light drives  ;  but  more  often  she  crept 
up  to  him  and  shut  her  eyes,  and  was  as 
still  as  a  sleepy  bird.  It  was  so  pleas- 
ant to  do  nothing  but  be  happy  ! 

I  believe  that  at  this  time  Dr.  Sharpe 
loved  his  wife  as  unselfishly  as  he  knew 
how.  Harrie  often  wrote  me  that  he 
was  "very  good."  She  was  sometimes 
a  little  troubled  that  he  should  "  know 
so  much  more  "  than  she,  and  had  fits 
of  reading  the  newspapers  and  review- 
ing her  French,  and  studying  cases  of 
hydrophobia,  or  some  other  pleasant 
subject  which  had  a  professional  air. 
Her  husband  laughed  at  her  for  her 
pains,  but  nevertheless  he  found  her  so 
much  the  more  entertaining.  Sometimes 
she  drove  about  with  him  on  his  calls, 
or  amused  herself  by  making  jellies  in 
fancy  moulds  for  his  poor,  or  sat  in  his 
lap  and  discoursed  like  a  bobolink  of 
croup  and  measles,  pulling  his  whiskers 
the  while  with  her  pink  fingers. 

All  this,  as  I  have  said,  was  before 
the  first  baby  came. 

It  is  surprising  what  vague  ideas 
young  people  in  general,  and  young 
men  in  particular,  have  of  the  rubs  and 
jars  of  domestic  life  ;  especially  do- 
mestic life  on  an  income  of  eighteen 
hundred,  American  constitutions  and 
country  servants  thrown  in. 

Dr.  Sharpe  knew  something  of  illness 
and  babies  and  worry  and  watch  ing  ;  but 
that  his  own  individual  baby  should  de- 
liberately lie  and  scream  till  two  o'clock 
in  the  morning  was  a  source  of  perpetual 
astonishment  to  him  ;  and  that  it,  —  he 
and  Mrs.  Sharpe  had  their  first  quarrel 
over  his  persistence  in  calling  the  child 
an  "  it,"  — that  it  should  invariably  feel 


1 868.] 


No  News. 


261 


called  upon  to  have  the  colic  jijst  as  he 
had  fallen  into  a  nap,  after  a  night  spent 
with  a  dying  patient,  was  a  phenomenon 
of  the  infant  mind  for  which  he  was,  to 
say  the  least,  unprepared. 

It  was  for  a  long  time  a  mystery  to 
his  masculine  understanding,  that  Biddy 
could  not  be  nursery-maid  as  well  as 
cook.  "  Why,  what  has  she  to  do  now  ? 
Nothing  but  to  broil  steaks  and  make 
tea  for  two  people  ! "  That  whenever 
he  had  Harrie  quietly  to  himself  for  a 
peculiarly  pleasant  tea-table,  the  house 
should  resound  with  sudden  shrieks 
from  the  nursery,  and  there  was  always 
a  pin  in  that  baby,  was  forever  a  fresh 
surprise  ;  and  why,  when  they  had  a 
house  full  of  company,  no  "  girl,"  and 
Harrie  clown  with"  a  sick-headache,  his 
son  and  heir  should  of  necessity  be 
threatened  with  scarlatina,  was  a  philo- 
sophical problem  over  which  he  specu- 
lated long  and  profoundly. 

So,  gradually,  in  the  old  way,  the  old 
sweet  habits  of  the  long  honeymoon 
were  broken.  Harrie  dreamed  no  more 
on  the  cliffs  by  the  bright  noon  sea ; 
had  no  time  to  spend  making  scarlet 
pictures  in  '.he  little  bathing-suit ;  had 
seldom  strength  to  row  into  the  sunset, 
her  hair  loose,  the  bay  on  fire,  and  one 
to  watch  her  from  the  shore.  There 
were  no  more  walks  up  the  beach  to  din- 
ner ;  there  came  an  end  to  the  drives  in 
the  happy  twilight ;  she  could  not  climb 
now  upon  her  husband's  knee  because 
of  the  heavy  baby  on  her  own. 

The  spasms  of  newspaper  reading 
subsided  rapidly ;  Corinne  and  Racine 
gathered  the  dust  in  peace  upon  their 
shelves  ;  Mrs.  Sharpe  made  no  more 
fancy  jellies,  and  found  no  time  to  in- 
quire after  other  people's  babies. 

One  becomes  used  to  anything  after 
a  while,  especially  if  one  happens  to  be 
a  man.  It  would  have  surprised  .Dr. 
Sharpe,  if  he  had  taken  the  pains  to 
notice, — which  I  believe  he  never  did, — 
low  easily  he  became  used  to  his  soli- 
tary drives  and  disturbed  teas  ;  to 
missing  Harrie's  watching  face  at  door 
or  window ;  to  sitting  whole  evenings  by 
himself  while  she  sang  to  the  fretful 
baby  overhead  with  her  sweet  little 


tired  voice  ;  to  slipping  off  into  the 
"  spare  room  "  to  sleep  when  the  child 
cried  at  night,  and  Harrie,  up  and  down 
with  him  by  the  hour,  flitted  from  cra- 
dle to  bed,  or  paced  the  room,  or  sat 
and  sang,  or  lay  and  cried  herself,  in 
sheer  despair  of  rest;  to  wandering 
away  on  lonely  walks  ;  to  stepping  often 
into  a  neighbor's  to  discuss  the  election 
or  the  typhoid  in  the  village  ;  to  for- 
getting that  his  wife's  conversational 
capacities  could  extend  beyond  Biddy 
and  teething;  to  forgetting  that  she 
might  ever  hunger  for  a  twilight  drive, 
a  sunny  sail,  for  the  sparkle  and  fresh- 
ness, the  dreaming,  the  petting,  the 
caresses,  all  the  silly  little  lovers' habits 
of  their  early  married  days  ;  to  going 
his  own  ways,  and  letting  her-  go  hers. 

Yet  he  loved  her,  and  loved  her  only, 
and  loved  her  well.  That  he  never 
doubted,  nor,  to  my  surprise,  did  she. 
I  remember  once,  when  on  a  visit 
there,  being  fairly  frightened  out  of  the 
proprieties  by  hearing  her  call  him  "  Dr. 
Sharpe."  I  called  her  away  from  the 
children  soon  after,  on  pretence  of  help- 
ing me  unpack.  I  locked  the  door, 
pulled  her  down  upon  a  trunk  tray  be- 
side me,  folded  both  her  hands  in  mine, 
and  studied  her  face  ;  it  had  grown  to 
be  a  very  thin  little  face,  less  pretty  than 
it  was  in  the  shadow  of  the  woodbine, 
with  absent  eyes  and  a  sad  mouth.  She 
knew  that  I  loved  her,  and  my  heart 
was  full  for  the  child ;  and  so,  for  I 
could  not  help  it,  I  said,  — 

"  Harrie,  is  all  well  between  you  ? 
Is  he  quite  the  same  ?  " 

She  looked  at  me  with  a  perplexed 
and  musing  air. 

"  The  same  ?  O  yes,  he  is  quite  the 
same  to  me.  He  would  always  be  the 
same  to  me.  Only  there  are  the  chil- 
dren, and  we  are  so  busy.  He  —  why, 
he  loves  me,  you  know,  —  "  she  turned 
her  head  from  side  to  side  wearily, 
with  the  puzzled  expression  growing  on 
her  forehead,  —  "  he  loves  me  just  the 
same  — just  the  same.  I  am  his  ivife  ; 
don't  you  see  ?  " 

She  drew  herself  up  a  little  haughtily, 
said  that  she  heard  the  baby  crying,  and 
slipped  away. 


262 


No  News. 


[September, 


But  the  perplexed  knot  upon  her  fore- 
head did  not  slip  away.  I  was  rather 
glad  that  it  did  not.  I  liked  it  better  than 
the  absent  eyes.  That  afternoon  she  left 
her  baby  with  Biddy  for  a  couple  of 
hours,  went  away  by  herself  into  the 
garden,  sat  down  upon  a  stone  and 
thought. 

Harrie  took  a  great  deal  of  comfort 
in  her  babies,  quite  as  much  as  I 
wished  to  have  her.  Women  whose 
dream  of  marriage  has  faded  a  little 
have  a  way  of  transferring  their  passion- 
ate devotion  and  content  from  husband 
to  child.  It  is  like  anchoring  in  a  har- 
bor, —  a  pleasant  harbor,  and  one  in 
which  it  is  good  to  be,  —  but  never  on 
shore  and  never  at  home.  Whatever 
a  woman's  children  may  be  to  her,  her 
husband  should  be  always  something 
beyond  and  more  ;  forever  crowned  for 
her  as  first,  dearest,  best,  on  a  throne 
that  neither  son  nor  daughter  can  usurp. 
Through  mistake  and  misery  the  throne 
may  be  left  vacant  or  voiceless  :  but 
what  man  cometh  after  the  King  ? 

So,  when  Harrie  forgot  the  baby  for 
a  whole  afternoon,  and  sat  out  on  her 
stone  there  in  the  garden  thinking,  I  felt 
rather  glad  than  sorry. 

It  was  when  little  Harrie  was  a  baby, 
I  believe,  that  Mrs.  Sharpe  took  that 
notion  about  having  company.  She 
was  growing  out  of  the  world,  she  said  ; 
turning  into  a  fungus  ;  petrifying ;  had 
forgotten  whether  you  called  your  seats 
at  the  Music  Hall  pews  or  settees,  and 
was  as  afraid  of  a  well-dressed  woman 
as  she  was  of  the  croup. 

So  the  Doctor's  house  at  Lime  was 
for  two  or  three  months  overrun  with 
visitors  and  vivacity.  Fathers  and 
mothers  made  fatherly  and  motherly 
stays,  with  the  hottest  of  air-tights  put 
up  for  their  benefit  in  the  front  room  ; 
sisters  and  sisters-in-law  brought  the 
fashions  and  got  up  tableaux  ;  cousins 
came  on  the  jump  ;  Miss  Jones,  Pauline 
Dallas,  and  I  were  invited  in  turn,  and 
the  children  had  the  mumps  at  cheerful 
intervals  between. 

The  Doctor  was  not  much  in  the  mood 
for  entertaining  Miss  Dallas  ;  he  was  a 
little  tired  of  company,  and  had  had 


a  hard  week's  work  with  an  epidemic 
down  town.  Harrie  had  not  seen  her 
since  her  wedding-day,  and  was  pleased 
and  excited  at  the  prospect  of  the  visit. 
Pauline  had  been  one  of  her  eternal 
friendships  at  school. 

Miss  Dallas  came  a  day  earlier  than 
she  was  expected,  and,  as  chance 
would  have  it,  Harrie  was  devoting  the 
afternoon  to  cutting  out  shirts.  Any 
one  who  has  sat  from  two  till  six  at  that 
engaging  occupation,  will  understand, 
precisely  how  her  back  ached  and  her 
temples  throbbed,  and  her  fingers  stung, 
and  her  neck  stiffened;  why  her  eyes 
swam,  her  cheeks  burned,  her  brain  was 
deadened,  the  children's  voices  were  in- 
sufferable, the  slamming  of  a  door  an 
agony,  the  past  a  blot,  the  future  un- 
endurable, life  a  burden,  friendship 
a  myth,  her  hair  down,  and  her  collar 
unpinned. 

Miss  Dallas  had  never  cut  a  shirt, 
nor,  I  believe,  had  Dr.  Sharpe. 

Harrie  was  groaning  over  the  last 
wristband  but  one,  when  she  heard  her 
husband's  voice  in  the  hall. 

"  Harrie,  Harrie,  your  friend  is  here. 
I  found  her,  by  a  charming  accident, 
at  the  station,  and  drove  her  home..." 
And  Miss  Dallas,  gloved,  perfumed, 
rustling,  in  a  very  becoming  veil  and 
travelling-suit  of  the  latest  mode,  swept 
in  upon  her. 

Harrie  was  too  much  of  a  lady  to 
waste  any  words  on  apology,  so  she  ran 
just  as  she  was,  in  her  calico  dress, 
with  the  collar  hanging,  into  Pauline's 
stately  arms,  and  held  up  her  little  burn- 
ing cheeks  to  be  kissed. 

But  her  husband  looked  annoyed. 

He  came  down  before  tea  in  his  best 
co'at  to  entertain  their  guest.  Biddy 
was  "  taking  an  afternoon  "  that  day, 
and  Harrie  bustled  about  with  her 
aching  back  to  make  tea  and  wash  the 
children.  She  had  no  time  to  spend 
upon  herself,  and,  rather  than  keep  a 
hungry  traveller  waiting,  smoothed  her 
hair,  knotted  a  ribbon  at  the  collar,  and 
came  down  in  her  calico  dress. 

Dr.  Sharpe  glanced  at  it  in  some  sur- 
prise. He  repeated  the  glances  several 
times  in  the  course  of  the  evening,  as 


1 868.] 


No  News. 


263- 


he  sat  chatting  with  his  wife's  friend. 
Miss  Dallas  was  very  sprightly  in  con- 
versation ;  had  read  some,  had  thought 
some ;  and  had  the  appearance  of  hav- 
ing read  and  thought  about  twice  as 
much  as  she  had. 

Myron  Sharpe  had  always  considered 
his  wife  a  handsome  woman.  That  no- 
body else  thought  her  so  had  made  no 
difference  to  him.  He  had  often  looked 
into  the  saucy  eyes  of  little  Harrie  Bird, 
and  told  her  that  she  was  very  pretty. 
As  a  matter  of  theory,  he  supposed  her 
to  be  very  pretty,  now  that  she  was  the 
mother  of  his  three  children,  and  break- 
ing her  back  to  cut  out  his  shirts. 

Miss  Dallas  was  a  generously  framed, 
well-proportioned  woman,  who  carried 
long  trains,  and  tied  her  hair  with  crim- 
son velvet.  She  had  large,  serene  eyes, 
white  hands,  and  a  very  pleasant  smile. 
A  delicate  perfume  stirred  as  she  stirred, 
and  she  wore  a  creamy  lace  about  her 
throat  and  wrists. 

Calicoes  were  never  becoming  to 
Karrie,  and  that  one  with  the  palm-leaf 
did  not  fit  her  well,  —  she  cut  it  her- 
self, to  save  expense.  As  the  evening 
passed,  in  reaction  from  the  weariness 
of  shirt-cutting  she  grew  pale,  and  the 
sallow  tints  upon  her  face  came  out ; 
her  features  sharpened,  as  they  had  a 
of  doing  when  she  was  tired  ;  and 
she  had  little  else  to  do  that  evening 
than  think  how  tired  she  was,  for  her 
husband  observing,  as  he  remarked 
afterwards,  that  she  did  not  feel  like 
talking,  kindly  entertained  her  friend 
himself. 

As  they  went  up  stairs  for  the  night, 
it  struck  him,  for  the  first  time  in  his 
life,  that  Harrie  had  a  snubbed  nose. 
It  annoyed  him,  because  she  was  his 
wife,  and  he  loved  her,  and  liked  to  feel 
that  she  was  as  well  looking  as  other 
en. 

"  Your  friend  is  a  bright  girl,"  he  said, 
encouragingly,  when  Harrie  had  hushed 
a  couple  of  children,  and  sat  wearily 
down  to  unbutton  her  boots. 

"  I  think  you  will  find  her  more  easy 
to  entertain  than  Cousin  Mehitabel." 

Then,  seeing  that  Harrie  answered 
absently,  and  how  exhausted  she  looked, 


he  expressed  his  sorrow  that  she  should 
have  worked  so  long  over  the  shirts,  and 
kissed  her  as  he  spoke ;  while  Harrie 
cried  a  little,  and  felt  as  if  she  would 
cut  them  all  over  again  for  that. 

The  next  day  Miss  Dallas  and  Mrs. 
Sharpe  sat  sewing  together ;  Harrie 
cramping  her  shoulders  and  blackening 
her  hands  over  a  patch  on  Rocko's 
rough  little  trousers ;  Pauline  playing 
idly  with  purple  and  orange  wools,  —  her 
fingers  were  white,  and  she  sank  with 
grace  into  the  warm  colors  of  the  arm- 
chair ;  the  door  was  open  into  the  hall, 
and  Dr.  Sharpe  passed  by,  glancing  in 
as  he  passed. 

"  Your  husband  is  a  very  intelligent 
man,  Harrie,"  observed  Miss  Dallas, 
studying  her  lavenders  and  lemons 
thoughtfully.  "  I  was  much  interested 
in  what  he  said  about  pre-Adamic  man, 
last  evening." 

"  Yes,"  said  Harrie,  "  he  knows  a 
great  deal.  I  always  thought  so."  The 
little  trousers  slipped  from  her  black 
fingers  by  and  by,  and  her  eyes  wan- 
dered out  of  the  window  absently. 

She  did  not  know  anything  about 
pre-Adamic  man. 

In  the  afternoon  they  walked  down 
the  beach  together,  —  the  Doctor,  his 
wife,  and  their  guest,  —  accompanied 
by  as  few  children  aS  circumstances 
would  admit  of.  Pauline  was  stately  in 
a  beach-dress  of  bright  browns,  which 
shaded  softly  into  one  another  ;  it  was 
one  of  Miss  Dallas's  peculiarities,  that 
she  never  wore  more  than  one  color  or 
two  at  the  same  time.  Harrie,  as  it 
chanced,  wore,  over  her  purple  dress 
(Rocko  had  tipped  over  two  ink-bottles 
and  a  vinegar-cruet  on  the  sack  which 
should  have  matched  it)  a  dull  gray 
shawl ;  her  bonnet  was  blue,  —  it  had 
been  a  present  from  Myron's  sister,  and 
she  had  no  other  way  than  to  wear  it. 
Miss  Dallas  bounded  with  pretty  feet 
from  rock  to  rock.  Rocko  hung  heavily 
to  his  mother's  fingers  ;  she  had  no 
gloves,  the  child  would  have  spoiled 
them  ;  her  dress  dragged  in  the  sanc^ 
—  she  could  not  afford  two  skirts,  and 
one  must  be  long,  —  and  between  Rocko 
and  the  wind  she  held  it  up  awkwardly. 


264 


No  News. 


Dr.  Sharpe  seldom  noticed  a  woman's 
dress  ;  he  could  not  have  told  now 
'  whether  his  wife's  shawl  was  sky-blue 
or  pea-green  ;  he  knew  nothing  about 
the  ink-spots  ;  he  had  never  heard  of  the 
unfortunate  blue  bonnet,  or  the  myste- 
ries of  short  and  long  skirts.  He  might 
have  gone  to  walk  with  her  a  dozen 
times  and  thought  her  very  pretty  and 
"proper"  in  her  appearance.  Now, 
without  the  vaguest  idea  what  was  the 
trouble,  he  understood  that  something 
was  wrong.  A  woman  would  have  said, 
Mrs.  Sharpe  looks  dowdy  and  old-fash- 
ioned ;  he  only  considered  that  Miss 
Dallas  had  a  pleasant  air,  like  a  soft 
brown  picture  with  crimson  lights  let 
in,  and  that  it  was  an  air  which  his  wife 
lacked.  So,  when  Rocko  dragged 
heavily  and  more  heavily  at-his  mother's 
skirts,  and  the  Doctor  and  Pauline 
wandered  off  to  climb  the  cliffs,  Harrie 
did  not  seek  to  follow  or  to  call  them 
back.  She  sat  down  with  Rocko  on 
the  beach,  wrapped  herself  with  a  sav- 
age, hug  in  the  ugly  shawl,  and  won- 
dered with  a  bitterness  with  which  only 
women  can  wonder  over  such  trifles, 
why  God  should  send  Pauline  all  the 
pretty  beach-dresses  and  deny  them  to 
her,  —  for  Harrie,  like  many  another 
"dowdy"  woman  whom  you  see  up- 
on the  street,  my  dear  madam,  was  a 
woman  of  fine,  keen  tastes,  and  would 
have  appreciated  the  soft  browns  no  less 
than  yourself.  It  seemed  to  her  the 
very  sting  of  poverty,  just  then,  that 
one  must  wear  purple  dresses  and  blue 
bonnets. 

At  the  tea-table  the  Doctor  fell  to  re- 
constructing the  country,  and  Miss  "Dal- 
las, who  was  quite  a  politician  in  Miss 
Dallas's  way,  observed  that  the  horizon 
looked  brighter  since  Tennessee's  ad- 
mittance, and  that  she  hoped  that  the 
clouds,  &c.,  —  and  what  did\&  think  of 
Brownlow  ?  &c.,  £c. 

"  Tennessee  !  "  exclaimed  Harrie  ; 
"why,  how  long  has  Tennessee  been 
in  ?  I  did  n't  know  anything  about  it." 
-  Miss  Dallas  smiled  kindly.  Dr. 
Sliarpe  bit  his  lip,  and  his  face  flushed. 

"  Harrie,  you  really  ought  to  read  the 
papers,'-'  he  said,  with  some  impatience ; 


[September, 


it 's  no  wonder  you  don't  know  any- 
thing." 

"  How  should  I  know  anything,  tied 
to  the  children  all  day?"  Harrie 
spoke  quickly,  for  the  hot  tears  sprang. 
"  Why  did  n't  you  tell  me  something 
about  Tennessee  ?  You  never  talk  poli- 
tics with  me." 

This  began  to  be  awkward ;  Miss 
Dallas,  who  never  interfered  —  on  prin- 
ciple —  between  husband  and  wife, 
gracefully  took  up  the  baby,  and  grace- 
fully swung  her  dainty  Geneva  watch 
for  the  child's  amusement,  smiling  bril- 
liantly. She  could  not  endure  babies, 
but  you  would  never  have  suspected  it. 

In  fact,  when  Pauline  had  been  in  the 
house  four  or  five  days,  Harrie,  who 
never  thought  very  much  of  herself,  be- 
came so  painfully  alive  to  her  own  de- 
ficiencies, that  she  fell  into  a  permanent 
fit  of  low  spirits,  which  did  not  adch 
either  to  her  appearance  or  her  vivacity. 

"  Pauline  is  so  pretty  and  bright,"  she 
wrote  to  me,  "  I  always  knew  I  was 
a  little  fool.  You  can  be  a  fool  before 
you  're  married,  just  as  well  as  not. 
Then,  when  you  have  three  babies  to 
look  after,  it  is  too  late  to  make  your- 
self over.  I  try  very  hard  now. to  read 
the  newspapers,  only  Myron  does  not 
know  it." 

One  morning  something  occurred  to 
Mrs.  Sharpe.  It  was  simply  that  her 
husband  had  spent  every  evening  at 
home  for  a  week.  .  She  was  in  the  nur- 
sery when  the  thought  struck  her,  rock- 
ing slowly  in  her  low  sewing-chair,  hold- 
ing the  baby  on  one  arm  and  trying  to 
darn  stockings  with  the  other. 

Pauline  was  —  she  did  not  really  know 
where.  .Was  not  that  her  voice  upon 
the  porch  ?  The  rocking-chair  stopped 
sharply,  and  Harrie  looked  down 
through  the  blinds.  The  Doctors 
horse  was  tied  at  the  gate.  The  Doc- 
tor sat  fanning  himself  with  his  hat  in 
one  of  the  garden  chairs  ;  Miss  Dallas 
occupied  the  Bother  ;  she  was  chatting, 
and  twisting  her  golden  wools  about 
her  fingers,  —  it  was  noticeable  that  she 
used  only  golden  wools  that  morning ; 
her  dress  was  pale  blue,  and  the  effect 
of  the  purples  would  not  have  been  good'. 


1 868.] 


No  News. 


265 


"  I  thought  your  calls  were  going  to 
take  till  dinner,  Myron,"  called  Harrie, 
through  the  blinds. 

"  I  thought  so  too,"  said  Myron,  pla- 
cidly, "  but  they  do  not  seem  to.  Won't 
you  come  down  ?  " 

Harrie  thanked  him,  saying,  in  a 
pleasant,  nonchalant  way,  that  she  could 
not  leave  the  baby.  It  was  almost  the 
first  bit  of  acting  that  the  child  had  ever 
been  guilty  of, — for  the  baby  was  just 
going  to  sleep,  and  she  knew  it. 

She  turned  away  from  the  window 
quietly.  She  could  not  have  been  an- 
gry, and  scolded ;  or  noisy,  and  cried. 
She  put  little  Harrie  into  her  cradle, 
crept  upon  the  bed,  and  lay  perfectly 
still  for  a  long  time. 

When  the  dinner-bell  rang,  and  she 
got  up  to  brush  her  hair,  that  absent, 
apathetic  look  of  which  I  have  spoken 
had  left  her  eyes.  A  stealthy  brightness 
came  and  went  in  them,  which  her  hus- 
band might  have  observed  if  he  and 
Miss  Dallas  had  not  been  deep  in  the 
Woman  question.  Pauline  saw  it ; 
Pauline  saw  everything. 

"  Why  did  you  not  come  down  and 
sit  with  us  this  morning  ?  "  she  asked, 
reproachfully,  when  she  and  Harrie 
were  alone  after  dinner.  "  I  don't  want 
your  husband  to  feel  that  he  must  run 
away  from  you  to  entertain  me." 

"  My  husband's  ideas  of  hospitality 
are  generous,"  said  Mrs.  Sharpe.  "  I 
have  always  found  him  as  ready  to  make 
it  pleasant  here  for  my  company  as  for 
his  own." 

She  made  this  little  speech  with  dig- 
nity. Did  both  women  know  it  for  the 
farce  it  was  ?  To  do  Miss  Dallas  jus- 
tice, —  I  am  not  sure.  She  was  not  a 
bad-hearted  woman.  She  was  a  hand- 
some woman.  She  had  come  to  Lime 
to., .enjoy  herself.  Those  September 
days  and  nights  were  fair  there  by  the 
dreamy  sea.  On  the  whole,  I  am  in- 
clined to  think  that  she  did  not  know 
exactly  what  she  was  about. 

"My  perfumery  never  lasts,"  said 
Harrie,  once,  stooping  to'  pick  up  Pau- 
line's fine  handkerchief,  to  which  a  faint 
scent  like  unseen  heliotrope  clung;  it 
clung  to  everything  of  Pauline's ;  you 


would  never  see  a  heliotrope  without 
thinking  of  her,  as  Dr.  Sharpe  had 
often  said.  "  Myron  used  to  like  good 
cologne,  but  I  can't  afford  to  buy  it,  so 
I  make  it  myself,  and  use  it  Sundays, 
and  it 's  all  blown  away  by  the  time  I 
get  to  church.  Myron  says  he  is  glad 
of  it,  for  it  is  more  like  Mrs.  Allen's 
Hair  Restorer  than  anything  else. 
What  do  you  use,  Pauline  ?  " 

"  Sachet  powder,  of  course,"  said 
Miss  Dallas,  smiling. 

That  evening  Harrie  stole  away  by 
herself  to  the  village  apothecary's. 
Myron  should  not  know  for  what  she 
went.  If  it  were  the  breath  of  a  helio- 
trope, thought  foolish  Harrie,  which 
made  it  so  pleasant  for  people  to  be 
near  Pauline,  that  was  a  matter  easily 
remedied.  But  sachet  powder,  you 
should  know,  is  a  dollar  an  ounce,  and 
Harrie  must  needs  content  herself  with 
"  the  American,"  which  could  be  had  for 
fifty  cents ;  and  so,  of  course,  after 
she  had  spent  her  money,  and  made 
her  little  silk  bags,  and  put  them  away 
into  her  bureau  drawers,  Myron  never 
told  her,  for  all  her  pains,  that  she  re- 
minded him  of  a  heliotrope  with  the 
dew  on  it.  One  day  a  pink  silk  bag  fell 
out  from  under  her  dress,  where  she 
had  tucked  it. 

"What 's  all  this  nonsense,  Harrie  ?  " 
said  her  husband,  in  a  sharp  tone. 

At  another  time,  the  Doctor  and 
Pauline  were  driving  upon  the  beach  at 
sunset,  when,  turning  a  sudden  corner, 
Miss  Dallas  cried  out,  in  real  delight, — 

"  See  !  That  beautiful  creature !  Who 
can  it  be  ?  " 

And  there  was  -Harrie,  out  on  a  rock 
in  the  opal  surf,  —  a  little  scarlet  mer- 
maid, combing  her  hair  with  her  thin 
fingers,  from  which  the  water  almost 
washed  the  wedding  ring.  It  was  — 
who  knew  how  long,  since  the  pretty 
bathing-suit  had  been  taken  down  from 
the  garret  nails  ?  What  sudden  yearn- 
ing for  the  wash  of  waves,  and  the 
spring  of  girlhood,  and  the  conscious- 
ness that  one  is  fair  to  see,  had  over- 
taken her  ?  She  watched  through  her 
hair  and  her  fingers  for  the  love  in  her 
husband's  eyes. 


'66 


No  News. 


[September, 


But  he  waded  out  to  her,  ill-pleased. 

"  Harrie,  this  is  very  imprudent,  — 
very  !  I  don't  see  what  could  have 
possessed  you  ! " 

Myron  Sharpe  loved  his  wife.  Of 
course  he  did.  He  began,  about  this 
time,  to  state  the  fact  to  himself  several 
times  a  day.  Had  she  not  been  all  the 
world  to  him  when  he  wooed  and  won 
her  in  her  rosy,  ripening  days  ?  Was 
she  not  all  the  world  to  him  now  that 
a  bit  of  sereness  had  crept  upon  her,  in 
a  married  life  of  eight  hard-working 
years  ? 

That  she,  had  grown  a  little  sere, 
he  felt  somewhat  keenly  of  late.  She 
had  a  dreary,  draggled  look  at  break- 
fast, after  the  children  had  cried  at 
night,  —  and  the  nights  when  Mrs. 
Sharpe's  children  did  not  cry  were  like  - 
angels'  visits.  It  was  perhaps  the  more 
noticeable,  because  Miss  Dallas  had  a 
peculiar  color  and  coolness  and  sparkle 
in  the  morning,  like  that  of  opening 
flowers.  She  had  not  been  up  till  mid- 
night with  a  sick  baby. 

Harrie  was  apt  to  be  too  busy  in  the 
kitchen  to  run  and  meet  him  when  he 
came  home  at  dusk.  Or,  if  she  came,  it 
was  with  her  sleeves  rolled  up  and  an 
apron  on.  Miss  Dallas  sat  at  the  win- 
dow ;  the  lace  curtain  waved  about  her  ; 
she  nodded  and  smiled  as  he  walked 
up  the  path.  In  the  evening  Harrie 
talked  of  Rocko,  or  the  price  of  butter ; 
she  did  not  venture  beyond,  poor  thing ! 
since  her  experience  with  Tennessee. 

Miss  Dallas  quoted  Browning,  and 
discussed  Goethe,  and  talked  Parepa ; 
and  they  had  no  lights,  and  the  Sep- 
tember moon  shone  .  in.  Sometimes 
Mrs.  Sharpe  had  mending  to  do,  and, 
as  she  could  not  sew  on  her  husband's 
buttons  satisfactorily  by  moonlight, 
would  slip  into  the  dining-room  with 
kerosene  and  mosquitoes  for  company. 
The  Doctor  may  have  noticed,  or  he 
may  not,  how  comfortably  he  could,  if 
he  made  the  proper  effort,  pass  the 
evening  without  her. 

But  Myron  Sharpe  loved  his  wife. 
To  be  sure  he  did.  If  his  wife  doubted 
it,  —  but  why  should  she  doubt  it  ?  Who 
thought  she  doubted  it  ?  If  she  did,  she 


gave  no  sign.  Her  eyes,  he  observed, 
.had  brightened  of  late  ;  and  when  they 
went  to  her  from  the  moonlit  parlor, 
there  was  such  a  pretty  color  upon 
her  cheeks,  that  he  used  to  stoop  and 
kiss  them,  while  Miss  Dallas  discreetly 
occupied  herself  in  killing  mosquitoes. 
Of  course  he  loved  his  wife  ! 

It  was  observable  that,  in  proportion 
to  the  frequency  with  which  he  found  it 
natural  to  remark  his  fondness  for  Har- 
rie, his  attentions  to  her  increased.  He 
inquired  tenderly  after  her  headaches  ; 
he  brought  her  flowers,  when  he  and 
Miss  Dallas  walked  in  the  autumn 
woods  ;  he  was  particular  about  her 
shawls  and  wraps ;  he  begged  her  to 
sail  and  drive  with  them  ;  he  took  pains 
to  draw  his  chair  beside  hers  on  the 
porch  ;  he  patted  her  hands,  and  played 
with  her  soft  hair. 

Harrie's  clear  eyes  puzzled  over  this 
for  a  day  or  two ;  but  by  and  by  it 
might  have  been  noticed  that  she  re- 
fused his  rides,  shawled  herself,  was 
apt  to  be  with  the  children  when  he 
called  her,  and  shrank,  in  a  quiet  way, 
from  his  touch. 

She  went  into  her  room  one  after- 
noon, and  locked  the  children  out.  An 
east  wind  blew,  and  the  rain  fell  drear- 
ily. The  Doctor  and  Pauline  were 
playing  chess  down  stairs  ;  she  should 
not  be  missed.  She  took  out  her  wed- 
ding-dress from  the  drawer  where  she 
had  laid  it  tenderly  away  ;  the  hoar- 
frost and  fretted  pearl  fell  down  upon 
her  faded  morning-dress  ;  the  little 
creamy  gloves  hung  loosely  upon  her 
worn  lingers.  Poor  little  gloves  !  Poor 
little  pearly  dress !  She  felt  a  kind  of 
pity  for  their  innocence  and  ignorance 
and  trustfulness.  Her  hot  tears  fell  and 
spotted  them.  What  if  there  were  any 
way  of  creeping  back  through  them  to 
be  little  Harrie  Bird  again  ?  Would 
she  take  it? 

Her  children's  voices  sounded  crying 
for  her  in  the  hall.  Three  innocent 
babies  —  and  how  many  more  ?  —  to 
grow  into  life  under  the  shadow  of  a 
wrecked  and  loveless  home !  What 
had  she  done  ?  What  had  they  done  ? 

Harrie's  was  a  strong,  healthy  little 


1 868.] 


No  Nczvs. 


267 


s0ul,  with  a  strong,  healthy  love  of  life ; 
but  she  fell  down  there  that  dreary  af- 
ternoon, prone  upon  the  nursery  floor, 
among  the  yellow  wedding  lace,  and 
prayed  God  to  let  her  die. 

Yet  Myron  Sharpe  loved  his  wife, 
you  understand.  Discussing  elective 
affinities  down  there  over  the  chess- 
board with  Miss  Dallas,  —he  loved  his 
wife,  most  certainly  ;  and,  pray,  why  was 
she  not  content  ? 

It  was  quite  late  when  they  came  up 
for  Harrie.  She  had  fallen  into  a  sleep 
or  faint,  and  the  window  had  been 
open  all  the  time.  Her  eyes  burned 
sharply,  and  she  complained  of  a  chill, 
which  did  not  leave  her  the  next  day 
nor  the  next. 

One  morning,  at  the  breakfast-table, 
Miss  Dallas  calmly  observed  that  she 
should  go  home  on  Friday. 

Dr.  Sharpe  dropped  his  cup;  Harrie 
wiped  up  the  tea. 

"My  dear  Miss  Dallas — surely — we 
cannot  let  you  go  yet !  Harrie  !  Can't 
you  keep  your  friend  ?  " 

Harrie  said  the  proper  thing  in  a  low 
tone.  Pauline  repeated  her  determina- 
tion with  much  decision,  and  was  afraid 
that  her  visit  had  been  more  of  a  bur- 
den than  Harrie,  with  all  her  care,  was 
able  to  bear.  Dr.  Sharpe  pushed  back 
his  chair  noisily,  and  left  the  room. 

He  went  and  stood  by  the  parlor 
window.  The  man's  face  was  white. 
What  business  had  the  days  to  close 
down  before  him  like  a  granite  wall, 
because  a  woman  with  long  trains  and 
white  hands  was  going  out  of  them  ? 
Harrie's  patient  voice  came  in  through 
the  open  door  :  — 

"  Yes,  yes,  yes,  Rocko ;  mother  is 
tired  to-day  ;  wait  a  minute." 

Pauline,  sweeping  by  the  piano, 
brushed  the  keys  a  little,  and  sang :  — 

"  Drifting,  drifting  on  and  on, 
Mail  and  oar  and  rudder  gone, 
Fatal  danger  for  each  one, 
We  helpless  as  iu  dreams." 

What  had  he  been  about  ? 

The  air  grew  sweet  with  the  sudden 
scent  of  heliofrope,  and  Miss  Dallas 
pushed  aside  the  curtain  gently. 

"  1  may  have  that  sail  across  the  bay 


before  I  go  ?  It  promises  to  be  fair 
to-morrow. n 

He  hesitated. 

"  I  suppose  it  will  be  our  last,"  said 
the  lady,  softly. 

She  was  rather  sorry  when  she  had 
spoken,  for  she  really  did  not  mean, 
anything,  and  was  surprised  at  the 
sound  of  her  own  voice. 

But  they  took  the  sail. 

Harrie  watched  them  off — her  hus- 
band did  not  invite  her  to  go  on  that 
occasion  —  with  that  stealthy  sharpness 
in  her  eyes.  Her  lips  and  hands  and 
forehead  were  burning.  She  had  been 
cold  all  day.  A  sound  like  the  tolling 
of  a  bell  beat  in  her  ears.  The  chil- 
dren's voices  were  choked  and  distant. 
She  wondered  if  Biddy  were  drunk,  she 
seemed  to  dance  about  so  at  her  iron- 
ing-table, and  wondered  if  she  must  dis- 
miss her,  and  who  could  supply  her 
place.  She  tried  to  put  my  room  in 
order,  for  she  was  expecting  me  that 
night  by  the  last  train,  but  gave  up  the 
undertaking  ia  weariness  and  confu- 
sion. 

In  fact,  if  Harrie  had  been  one  of  the 
Doctor's  patients,  he  would  have  sent 
her  to  bed  and  prescribed  for  brain- 
fever.  As  she  was  not  a  patient,  but 
only  his  wife,  he  had  .not  found  out  that 
anything  ailed  her. 

Nothing  happened  while  he  was  gone, 
except  that  a  friend  of  Biddy's  "dropped 
in,"  and  Mrs.  Sharpe,  burning  and  shiv- 
ering in  her  sewing-chair,  dreamily 
caught  through  the  open  door,  and 
dreamily  repeated  to  herself,  a  dozen 
words  of  compassionate  Irish  brogue  :  — 

"  Folks  as  laves  folks  cryin'  to  home 
and  goes  sailin'  round  with  other  wo- 
men —  " 

Then  the  wind  latched  the  door. 

The  Doctor  and  Miss  Dallas  drew  in 
their  oars,  and  floated  softly. 

There  were  gray  and  silver  clouds 
overhead,  and  all  the  light  upon  the  sea 
slanted  from  low  in  the  west:  it  was  a 
red  light,  in  which  the  bay  grew  warm  ; 
it  struck  across  Pauline's  hands,  which 
she  dipped,  as  the  mood  took  her,  into 
the  waves,  leaning  upon  the  side  of  the 


268 


No  News. 


[September, 


boat,  looking  down  into  the  water.  One 
other  sail  only  was  to  be  seen  upon 
the  bay.  They  watched  it  for  a  while. 
It  dropped  into  the  west,  and  sunk  from 
sight. 

They  were  silent  for  a  time,  and  then 
they  talked  of  friendship,  and  nature, 
and  eternity,  and  then  were  silent  for  a 
time  again,  and  then  spoke  —  in  a  very 
general  and  proper  way  —  of  separation 
and  communion  in  spirit,  and  broke  off 
softly,  and  the  boat  rose  and  fell  upon 
the  strong  outgoing  tide. 

"  Drifting,  drifting  on  and  on," 

hummed  Pauline. 

The  west,  paling  a  little,  left  a  hag- 
gard look  upon  the  Doctor's  face. 

"An  honest  man,"  the  Doctor  was 
saying,  —  "an  honest  man,  who  loves 
his  wife  devotedly,  but  who  cannot  find 
in  her  that  sympathy  which  his  higher 
nature  requires,  that  comprehension  of 
his  intellectual  needs,  that  —  " 

"  I  always  feel  a  deep  compassion  for 
such  a  man,"  interrupted  Miss  Dallas, 
gently. 

"  Such  a  man,"  questioned  the  Doc- 
tor in  a  pensive  tone,  "  need  not  be  de- 
barred, by  the  shallow  conventionalities 
of  an  unappreciative  world,  from  a 
friendship  which  will  rest,  strengthen, 
and  ennoble  his  weary  soul?" 

"  Certainly  not,"  said  Pauline,  with 
her  eyes  upon  the  water;  dull  yellow, 
green,  and  indigo  shades  were  creep- 
ing now  upon  its  ruddiness. 

"  Pauline,"  —  Dr.  Sharpe's  voice  was 
low,  —  "  Pauline  !  " 

Pauline  turned  her  beautiful  head. 

"  There  are  marriages  for  this  world ; 
true  and  honorable  marriages,  but  for 
this  world.  But  there  is  a  marriage  for 
eternity,  —  a  marriage  of  souls." 

Now  Myron  Sharpe  is  not  a  fool, 
but  that  is  precisely  what  he  said  to 
Miss  Pauline  Dallas,  out  in  the  boat 
on  that  September  night.  If  wiser  men 
than  Myron  Sharpe  never  uttered  more 
unpardonable  nonsense  under  similar 
circumstances,  cast  your  stones  at  him. 

"  Perhaps  so,"  said  Miss  Dallas  with 
a  sigh  ;  "  but  see  !  How  dark  it  has 
grown  while  we  have  been  talking.  We 


shall  be  caught  in  a  squall ;  but  I  shall 
.  not  be  at  all  afraid  —  with  you." 

They  were  caught  indeed,  not  only 
in  a  squall,  but  in  the  steady  force  of  a 
driving  northeasterly  storm  setting  in. 
doggedly  with  a  very  ugly  fog.  If  Miss 
Dallas  was  not  at  all  afraid  —  with  him, 
she  was  nevertheless  not  sorry  when 
they  grated  safely  on  the  dull  white 
beach. 

They  had  had  a  hard  pull  in  against 
the  tide.  Sky  and  sea  were  black. 
The  fog  crawled  like  a  ghost  over  flat 
and  cliff  and  field.  The  rain  beat  upon 
them  as  they  turned  to  walk  up  the 
beach. 

Pauline  stopped  once  suddenly. 

"  What  was  that  ?  " 

"  I  heard  nothing." 

"  A  cry,  —  I  fancied  a  cry  down  there 
in  the  fog." 

They  went  back,  and  walked  down 
the  slippery  shore  for  a  space.  Miss 
Dallas  took  off  her  hat  to  listen. 

"  You  will  take  cold,"  said  Dr.  Sharpe, 
anxiously.  She  put  it  on ;  she  heard 
nothing,  —  she  was  tired  and  excited, 
he  said. 

They  walked  home  together.  Miss 
Dallas  had  sprained  her  white  wrist, 
trying  to  help  at  the  oars ;  he  drew  it 
gently  through  his  arm.. 

It  was  quite  dark  when  they  reached 
the  house.  No  lamps  were  lighted. 
The  parlor  window  had  been  left  open, 
and  the  rain  was  beating  in.  "How 
careless  in  Harrie  ! "  said  her  husband, 
impatiently. 

He  remembered  those  words,  and 
the  sound  of  his  own  voice  in  saying 
them,  for  a  long  time  to  come  ;  he  re- 
members them  now,  indeed,  I  fancy, 
on  rainy  nights  when  the  house  is  dark. 

The  hall  was  cold  and  dreary.  No 
table  was  set  for  supper.  The  children 
were  all  crying.  Dr.  Sharpe  pushed 
open  the  kitchen  door  with  a  stern  face. 

"  Eiddy !  Biddy  !  what  does  all  this 
mean  ?  Where  is  Mrs.  Sharpe  ?  " 

"  The  Lord  only  knows  what  it  manes, 

or  where  is  Mrs.  Sharpe,"  said  Biddy, 

sullenly.     "  It 's  high  time,  in  me  own 

belafe,  for  her  husband  to  come  ashkin' 

'    and  inquirin',  her  close  all  in  a  hape  on 


1 868.] 


No  News. 


269 


the  floor  up  stairs,  with  her  bath-dress 
gone  from  the  nails,  and  the  front  door 
swingin',  —  me  never  findin'  of  it  out 
till  it  cooms  tay-time,  with  all  the  chil- 
dren cryin'  on  me,  and  me  head  shplit 
with  the  noise,  and  — " 

Dr.  Sharpe  strode  in  a  bewildered 
way  to  the  front  door.  Oddly  enough, 
the  first  thing  he  did  was  to  take  down 
the  thermometer,  and  look  at  it.  Gone 
out  to  bathe  in  a  temperature  like  that ! 
His  mind  ran  like  lightning,  while  he 
hung  the  thing  back  upon  its  nail,  over 
Harrie's  ancestry.  Was  there  not  a 
traditionary  great-uncle  who  died  in  an 
asylum  ?  The  whole  future  of  three 
children  with  an  insane  mother  spread 
itself  out  before  him  while  he  was  but- 
toning his  overcoat. 

"  Shall  I  go  and  help  you  find  her  ?  " 
asked  Miss  Dallas,  tremulously ;  "  or 
shall  I  stay  and  look  after  hot  flannels 
and  —  things  ?  What  shall  I  do  ?  " 

"/don't  care  what  you  do  !  "  said  the 
Doctor,  savagely.  To  his  justice  be  it 
recorded  that  he  did  not.  He  would 
not  have  exchanged  one  glimpse  of 
Harrie's  little  homely  face  just  then  for 
an  eternity  of  sunset-sailing  with  the 
"  friend  of  his  soul."  .  A  sudden  cold 
loathing  of  her  possessed  him ;  he 
hated  the  sound  of  her  soft  voice ;  he 
hated  the  rustle  of  her  garments,  as  she 
leaned  against  the  door  with  her  hand- 
kerchief at  her  eyes.  Did  he  remember 
at  that  moment  an  old  vow,  spoken  on 
an  old  October  day,  to  that  little  miss- 
ing face  ?  Did  he  comfort  himself  thus, 
as  he  stepped  out  into  the  storm, 
"  You  have  'trusted  her,'  Myron  Sharpe, 
as  '  your  best  earthly  friend  '  "  ? 

As  luck,  or  providence,  or  God  — 
whichever  word  you  prefer  —  decreed  it, 
the  Doctor  had  but  just  shut  the  door 
when  he  saw  me  driving  from  the  sta- 
tion through  the  rain.  I  heard  enough 
of  the  story  while  he  was  helping  me 
clown  the  carriage  steps.  I  left  my  bon- 
rct  and  bag  with  Miss  Dallas,  pulled 
my  waterproof  over  my  head,  and  we 
turned  our  faces  to  the  sea  without  a 
word. 

The  Doctor  is  a  man  who  thinks  and 
acts  rapidly  in  .emergencies,  and  little 


time  was  lost  about  help  and  lights.  Yet 
when  all  was  done  which  could  be  done, 
we  stood  there  upon  the  slippery,  weed- 
strewn  sand,  and  looked  in  one  an- 
other's faces  helplessly.  Harrie's  little 
boat  was  gone.  The  sea  thundered  out 
beyond  the  bar.  The  fog  hung,  a  dead 
weight,  upon  a  buried  world.  Our  lan- 
terns cut  it  for  a  foot  or  two  in  a  ghost- 
ly way,  throwing  a  pale  white  light  back 
upon  our  faces  and  the  weeds  and  bits 
of  wreck  under  our  feet. 

The  tide  had  turned.  We  put  out 
into  the  surf,  not  knowing  what  else  to 
do,  and  called  for  Harrie ;  we  leaned 
on  our  oars  to  listen,  and  heard  the 
water  drip  into  the  boat,  and  the  dull 
thunder  beyond  the  bar ;  we  called 
again,  and  heard  a  frightened  sea-gull 
scream. 

'•'•This  yere  's  wastin'  valooable  time," 
said  Hansom,  decidedly.  I  forgot  to 
say  that  it  was  George  Hansom  whom 
Myron  had  picked  up  to  help  us. 
Anybody  in  Lime  will  tell  you  who 
George  Hansom  is,  —  a  clear-eyed, 
open-hearted  sailor ;  a  man  to  whom 
you  would  turn  in  trouble  as  instinc- 
tively as  a  rheumatic  man  turns  to  the 
sun. 

I  cannot  accurately  tell  you  what  he 
did  with  us  that  night.  I  have  confused 
memories  of  searching  shore  and  cliffs 
and  caves  ;  of  touching  at  little  islands 
and  inlets  that  Harrie  fancied ;  of  the 
peculiar  echo  which  answered  our 
shouting  ;  of  the  look  that  settled  lit- 
tle by  little  about  Dr.  Sharpe's  mouth  ; 
of  the  sobbing  of  the  low  wind  ;  of  the 
flare  of  lanterns  on  gaping,  green  waves  ; 
of  spots  of  foam  that  writhed  like  nests 
of  white  snakes  ;  of  noticing  the  pud- 
dles in  the  bottom  of  the  boat,  and  of 
wondering  confusedly  what  they  would 
do  to  my  travelling-dress,  at  the  very 
moment  when  I  saw  —  I  was  the  first 
to  see  it  —  a  little  empty  boat ;  of  our 
hauling  alongside  of  the  tossing,  silent 
thing  ;  of  a  bit  of  a  red  scarf  that  lay 
coiled  in  its  stern ;  of  our  drifting  by, 
and  speaking  never  a  word  ;  of  our 
coasting  along  after  that  for.  a  mile  down 
the  bay,  because  there  was  nothing 
in  the  world  to  take  us  there  but  the 


270 


No  News. 


[September, 


dread  of  seeing  the  Doctor's  eyes  when 
we  should  turn. 

It  was  there  that  we  heard  the  first 
cry. 

"  It 's  shoreward  !  "  said  Hansom. 

"  It  is  seaward  !  "  cried  the   Doctor. 

"  It  is  behind  us  ! "  said  I. 

Where  was  it  ?  A  sharp,  sobbing 
cry,  striking  the  mist  three  or  four  times 
in  rapid  succession, — hushing  suddenly, 
—  breaking  into  shrieks  like  a  fright- 
ened child's,  —  dying  plaintively  down. 

We  struggled  desperately  after  it 
through  the  fog.  Wind  and  water  took 
the  sound  up  and  tossed  it  about.  Con- 
fused and  bewildered,  we  beat  about  it 
and  about  it ;  it  was  behind  us,  before 
us,  at  our  right,  at  our  left,  —  crying  on 
in  a  blind,  aimless  way,  making  us  no 
replies,  —  beckoning  us,  slipping  from 
us,  mocking  us  utterly. 

The  Doctor  stretched  his  hands  cut 
upon  the  solid  wall  of  mist ;  he  groped 
with  them  like  a  man  struck  blind. 

"To  die  there,  —  in  my  very  hear- 
ing, —  without  a  chance  —  " 

And  while  the  words  were  upon  his 
lips  the  cries  ceased. 

He  turned  a  gray  face  slowly  around, 
shivered  a  little,  then  smiled  a  little, 
then  began  to  argue  with  ghastly  cheer- 
fulness :  — 

"  It  must  be  only  for  a  moment,  you 
know.  We  shall  hear  it  again,  —  I  am 
quite  sure  we  shall  hear  it  again,  Han- 
som ! " 

Hansom,  making  a  false  stroke,  I  be- 
lieve for  the  first  time  in  his  life, 
snapped  an  oar  and  overturned  a  lan- 
tern. We  put  ashore  for  repairs.  The 
wind  was  rising  fast.  Some  drift-wood, 
covered  with  slimy  weeds,  washed 
heavily  up  at  our  feet.  I  remember  that 
a  little  disabled  ground-sparrow,  chased 
by  the  tide,  was  fluttering  and  drowning 
just  in  sight,  and  that  Myron  drew  it 
out  of  the  water,  and  held  it  up  for  a 
moment  to  his  cheek. 

Bending  over  the  ropes,  George 
spoke  between  his  teeth  to  me  :  — 

"  It  may  fee  a  night's  job  on 't,  findin' 
of  the  body." 

"The  WHAT?" 

The  poor  little  sparrow  dropped  from 


Dr.  Sharpe's  hand.  He  took  a  step 
backward,  scanned  our  faces,  sat  down 
dizzily,  and  fell  over  upon  the  sand. 

He  is  a  man  of  good  nerves  and  great 
self-possession,  but  he  fell  like  a  woman, 
and  lay  like  the  dead. 

"  It 's  no  place  for  him,"  Hansom 
said,  softly.  "  Get  him  home.  Me  and 
the  neighbors  can  do  the  rest.  Get  him 
home,  and  put  his  baby  into  his  arms, 
and  shet  the  door,  and  go  about  your 
business." 

I  had  left  him  in  the  dark  on  the 
office  floor  at  last.  Miss  Dallas  and  I 
sat  in  the  cold  parlor  and  looked  at 
each  other. 

The  fire  was  low  and  the  lamp 
dull.  The  rain  beat  in  an  uncanny 
way  upon  the  windows.  I  never  like 
to  hear  the  rain  upon  the  windows.  I 
liked  it  less  than  usual  that  night,  and 
'  was  just  trying  to  brighten  the  fire  a 
little  when  the  front  door  blew  open. 

"  Shut  it,  please,"  said  I,  between  the 
jerks  of  my  poker. 

But  Miss  Dallas  looked  over  her 
shoulder  and  shivered. 

"  Just  look  at  that  latch  !  "  I  looked 
at  that  latch. 

It  rose  and  fell  in  a  feeble  fluttering 
way,  —  was  still  for  a  minute, —  rose 
and  fell  again. 

When  the  door  swung  in,  and  Harrie 
—  or  the  ghost  of  her —  staggered  into 
the  chilly  room  and  fell  down  in  a  scar- 
let heap  at  my  feet,  Pauline  bounded 
against  the  wall  'with  a  scream  which 
pierced  into  the  dark  office  where  the 
Doctor  lay  with  his  face  upon  the  floor. 

It  was  long  before  v;e  knew  the  poor 
child's  story.  Indeed,  I  suppose  v/e 
have  never  known  it  all.  How  she 
glided  down,  a  little  red  wraith,  through 
the  dusk  and  clamp  to  her  boat ;  how 
she  tossed  about,  with  some  dim,  deliri- 
ous idea  of  finding  Myron  on  the  ebbing 
waves  ;  that  she  found  herself  stranded 
and  tangled  at  last  in  the  long,  matted 
grass  of  that  muddy  cove,  started  to 
wade  home,  and  sunk  in  the  ugly  ooze, 
held,  chilled,  and  scratched  by  the  sharp 
grass,  blinded  and  frightened  by  the  fog, 
and  calling,  as  she  thought  of  it,  for  help  ; 


1868.] 


No  News. 


271 


that  in  the  first  shallow  wash  of  the 
flowing  tide  she  must  have  struggled 
free,  and  found  her  way  home  across 
the  fields,  —  she  can  tell  us,  but  she  can 
tell  no  more. 

This  very  morning  on  which  I  write, 
an  unknown  man,  imprisoned  in  the 
same  spot  in  the  same  way  overnight, 
was  found  by  George  Hansom  dead 
there  from  exposure  in  the  salt  grass. 

It  was  the  walk  home,  and  only  that, 
which  could  have  saved  her. 

Yet  for  many  weeks  we  fought,  her 
husband  and  I,  hand  to  hand  with  death, 
seeming  to  see  the  life  slip  out  of  her, 
and  watching  for  wandering  minutes 
when  she  might  look  upon  us  with 
sane  eyes. 

We  kept  her  —  just.  A  mere  little 
wreck,  with  drawn  lips,  and  great  eyes, 
and  shattered  nerves,  —  but  we  kept 
her. 

I  remember  one  night,  when  she  had 
fallen  into  her  first  healthful  nap,  that 
the  Doctor  came  down  to  rest  a  few 
minutes  in  the  parlor  where  I  sat  alone. 
Pauline  was  washing  the  tea-things. 

He  began  to  pace  the  room  with  a 
weary,  abstracted  look,  —  he  was  much 
worn  by  watching,  —  and,  seeing  that  he 
was  in  no  mood  for  words,  I  took  up  a 
book  which  lay  upon  the  table.  It 
chanced  to  be  one  of  Alger's,  which 
somebody  had  lent  to  the  Doctor  before 
Harrie's  illness  ;  it  was  a  marked  book, 
and  I  ran  my  eye  over  the  pencilled  pas- 
sages. I  recollect  having  been  struck 
with  this  one  :  "  A  man's  best  friend  is 
a  wife  of  good  sense  and  good  heart, 
whom  he  loves  and  who  loves  him." 

"  You  believe  that  ?  "  said  Myron, 
suddenly  behind  my  shoulder. 

"  I  believe  that  a  man's  wife  ought  to 
be  his  best  friend,  —  in  every  sense  of 
the  word,  his  best  friend,  —  or  she 
ought  never  to  be  his  wife." 

"And  if — there  will  be  differences 
of  temperament,  and — other  things. 
If  you  were  a  man  now,  for  instance,' 
Miss  Hannah  —  " 

I  interrupted  him  with  hot  cheeks 
and  sudden  courage. 

"  If  I  were  a  man,  and  my  wife  were 
not  the  best  friend  I  had  or  could  have 


in  the  world,  nobody  should  ever  know  z/, 
—  she,  least  of  all,  —  Myron  Sharpe  !  " 

Young  people  will  bear  a  great  deal 
of  impertinence  from  an  old  lady,  but 
we  had  both  gone  further  than  we  meant 
to.  I  closed  Mr.  Alger  with  a  snap,  and 
went  up  to  Harrie. 

The  day  that  Mrs.  Sharpe  sat  up  in 
the  easy-chair  for  two  hours,  Miss 
Dallas,  who  had  felt  called  upon  to  stay 
and  nurse  her  dear  Harrie  to  recovery, 
and  had  really  been  of  service,  detailed 
on  duty  among  the  babies,  went  home. 

Dr.  Sharpe  drove  her  to  the  station. 
I  accompanied  them  at  his  request. 
Miss  Dallas  intended,  I  think,  to  look 
a  little  pensive,  but  had  her  lunch  to 
cram  into  a  very  full  travelling-bag,  and 
forgot  it  The  Doctor,  with  clear,  cour- 
teous eyes,  shook  hands,  and  wished  her 
a  pleasant  journey. 

He  drove  home  in  silence,  and  went 
directly  to  his  wife's  room.  A  bright 
blaze  flickered  on  the  old-fashioned 
fireplace,  and  the  walls  bowed  with 
pretty  dancing  shadows.  Harrie,  all 
alone,  turned  her  face  weakly  and 
smiled. 

Well,  they  made  no  fuss  about  it 
after  all.  Her  husband  came  and  stood 
beside  her ;  a  cricket  on  which  one  of 
the  baby's  dresses  had  been  thrown, 
lay  between  them  ;  it  seemed,  for  the 
moment,  as  if  he  dared  not  cross  the 
tiny  barrier.  Something  of  that  old 
fancy  about  the  lights  upon  the  altar  may 
have  crossed  his  thought. 

"  So  Miss  Dallas  has  fairly  gone, 
Harrie,"  said  he,  pleasantly,  after  a 
pause. 

"  Yes.  She  has  been  very  kind  to 
the  children  while  I  have  been  sick." 

"Very." 

"  You  must  miss  her,"  said  poor 
Harrie,  trembling ;  she  was  very  weak 
yet. 

The  Doctor  knocked  away  the  crick- 
et, folded  his  wife's  two  shadowy  hands 
into  his  own,  and  said  :  — 

"  Harrie,  we  have  no  strength  to 
waste,  either  of  u's,  upon  a  scene  ;  but 
I  am  sorry,  and  I  love  you." 

She  broke  all  down  at  that,  and,  dear 
me  !  they  almost  had  a  scene  in  spite  of 


Expectation.  [September, 

themselves.      For   O,  she  had  always  world.     I  believe  —  I  declare  !  —  Miss 

known  what  a  little  goose  she  was  ;  and  Hannah !  -r—  I  believe  I  must  send  you 

Pauline  never  meant  any  harm,   and  to  bed." 

.how  handsome   she   was,   you   know  !  "  And  then  I  'm  SUCH  a  little  skele- 

only  she  cfidn't  have   three   babies  to  ton!"  finished  Harrie,  royally,. with  a 

look  after,  nor  a  snubbed  nose  either,  great  gulp. 

and  the  sachet  powder  was  only  Ameri-  Dr.  Sharpe  gathered  the  little  skele- 

can,  and  the  very  servants  knew,  and,  O  ton  all  into  a  heap  in  his  arms,  —  it  was 

Myron  !  she  had  wanted  to  be  dead  so  a  very  funny  heap,  by  the  way,  but  that 

long,  and  then  —  does  n't  matter,  —  and  to  the  best  of  my 

';  Harrie  ! "  said  the  Doctor,  at  his  knowledge   and  belief    he    cried    jusf 

•wits'   end,    "  this  will  never  do  in  the  about  as  hard  as  she  did. 


EXPECTATION. 

'"pHROUGHOUT  the  lonely  house  the  whole  day  long 
JL     The  wind-harp's  fitful  music  sinks  and  swells  ; 
A  cry  of  pain  sometimes,  or  sad  and  strong, 
Or  faint,  like  broken  peals  of  silver  bells. 

Across  the  little  garden  comes  the  breeze, 
Bows  all  its  cups  of  flame,  and  brings  to  me 

Its  breath  of  mignonette  and  bright  sweet  peas, 
With  drowsy  murmurs  from  the  encircling  sea. 

In  at  the  open  door  a  crimson  drift 

Of  fluttering,  fading  woodbine  leaves  is  blown ; 

And  through  the  clambering  vine  the  sunbeams  sift, 
And  trembling  shadows  on  the  floor  are  thrown. 

I  climb  the  stair  and  from  the  window  lean, 
Seeking  thy  sail,  O  love,  that  still  delays, 

Longing  to  catch  its  glimmer,  searching  keen 
The  jealous  distance  veiled  in  tender  haze. 

What  care  I  if  the  pansies  purple  be, 

Or  sweet  the  wind-harp  wails  through  the  slow  hours  ? 
Or  that  the  lulling  music  of  the  sea 

Comes  woven  with  the  perfume  of  the  flowers  ? 

Thou  comest  not !     I  ponder  o'er  the  leaves, 
The  crimson  drift  behind  the  open  door ; 

Soon  shall  we  listen  to  a  wind  that  grieves, 
Mourning  this  glad  year,  clead  forevermore. 

And,  O  my  love,  shall  we  on  some  sad  day 
Find  joys  and  hopes  low  fallen  like  the  leaves, 

Blown  by  life's  chilly  autumn  wind  away 

In  withered  heaps  God's  eye  alone  perceives  ? 


1 868.]  Siberian  Exiles. 

Come  thou,  and  save  me  from  my  dreary  thought! 

Who  dares  to  question  Time,  what  it  may  bring  ? 
Yet  round  us  lies  the  radiant  summer,  fraught 

With  beauty ;  must  we  dream  of  suffering  ? 

Yea,  even  so.    Through  this  enchanted  land, 
This  morning-red  of  life,  we  go  to  meet 

The  tempest  in  the  desert,  hand  in  hand, 
Along  God's  paths  of  pain  that  seek  his  feet. 

But  this  one  golden  moment, — hold  it  fast! 

The  light  grows  long;  low  in  the  west  the  sun, 
Clear-red  and  glorious,  slowly  sinks  at  last, 

And  while  I  muse  the  tranquil  day  is  done. 

The  land-breeze  freshens  in  thy  gleaming  sail ! 

Across  the  singing  waves  the  shadows  creep, 
Under  the  new  moon's  thread  of  silver  pale, 

With  the  first  star,  thou  comest  o'er  the  deep  I 


273 


SIBERIAN    EXILES. 


IN  the  sixteenth  century,  Russia  was 
far  from  holding  her  present  rank 
•among  the  nations  of  Europe.  Poland 
•on  the  one  hand,  and  Turkey  on  the 
other,  were  formidable  opponents ;  it 
appeared  at  that  time  more  than  possi- 
ble that  the  former  would  ultimately 
absorb  what  has  since  become  the  most 
powerful  government  in  the  world.  The 
Mongol  hordes  that  marched  westward 
under  Genghis- Khan  readily  subdued 
the  princes  of  Muscovy,  and  met  suc- 
cessful resistance  only  when  they  had 
passed  through  Russia  and  were  wav- 
.ing  their  banners  in  Central  Europe. 
The  stream  of  Tartar  conquest  was  im- 
peded when  it  encountered  a  barrier  of 
Polish  and  German  breasts  ;  its  reflu- 
ent course  was  scarcely  less  rapid, 
though  more  irregular  than  its  advance. 
Like  the  wave  along  the  sea-shore,  or 
the  flood  upon  a  river's  bank,  it  left  en- 
during traces  of  its  visit.  The  Tartar 
districts  of  many  Russian  cities,  the 
minarets  of  mosques  that  rise  along  the 
:.great  road  from  the  Volga  to  the  Ural 
Mountains,  the  dialects  of  Mongolia 

VOL.   XXII.  —  NO.    131.  1 8 


heard  at  the  very  gates  bf  the  Kremlin, 
and  the  various  Asiatic  customs  in  Rus- 
sian daily  life,  perpetuate  the  memory 
of  the  invasion  that  made  all  Europe 
tremble  for  its  safety.  Three  centuries 
ago,  after  a  long  and  difficult  campaign, 
the  Czar  of  Russia  stood  victorious  on 
the  walls  of  Kazan,  the  Tartar  city  that 
had  long  been  the  mistress  of  the  Vol- 
ga, and  compelled  the  Muscovite  princes 
to  bring  annual  tribute  to  its  king. 

The  royal  crown  of  Kazan,  symbol- 
izing the  downfall  of  Tartar  power  in 
Europe,  is  preserved  in  the  Imperial 
Treasury  at  Moscow  not  less  proudly 
than  the  throne  of  Poland,  or  the  stand- 
ards and  other  trophies  from  the  deci- 
sive field  of  Pultawa.  The  capture  of 
Kazan  was  the  beginning  of  a  career  of 
Russian  conquest  in  the  East,  along 
the  very  route  followed  by  the  Tartar 
invaders ;  to-day  the  Russian  flag  is 
unfurled  on  the  mountains  overlooking 
the  valley  where  Genghis-Khan  first 
saw  the  light,  and  fancied  he  heard  a 
voice  from  heaven  calling  him  to  lead 
the  Mongol  shepherds  to  victorious  war. 


274 


Siberian  Exiles. 


[September, 


Ivan  the  Terrible  —  to  whom  Rus- 
sia owes  the  city  which  Nicholas  called 
his  third  capital  —  did  not  get  along 
very  well  with  his  subjects.  After  the 
conquest  of  Kazan,  he  was  troubled 
with  local  insurrection  and  defiance  of 
power  in  various  parts  of  the  country 
he  claimed  to  control.  The  most  tur- 
bulent of  those  who  owed  him  allegi- 
ance were  the  Cossacks  of  the  Don, 
several  of  their  tribes  or  clans  having 
openly  refused  to  obey  his  orders.  One 
of  the  leaders  —  Yermak  by  name  —  was 
particularly  troublesome,  and  him  Ivan 
prepared  to  chastise.  Not  able  to  re- 
sist successfully,  and  unwilling  to  be 
punished,  Yermak  very  sensibly  took 
himself  out  of  harm's  reach,  followed  by 
three  hundred  men  of  his  tribe.  He 
crossed  the  Volga,  and_  supported  him- 
self by  a  system  of  robbery  and  general 
freebooting  in  the  country  between  that 
river  and  the  Ural  chain.  Ivan  sent  a 
military  force  against  him,  and  Yermak, 
intent  upon  Having  things  his  own  way, 
crossed  the  mountains  and  entered 
Northern  Asia.  On  the  banks  of  the 
river  Irtish  he  founded  a  fort  on  the 
ruins  of  the  Tartar  village  of  Sibeer ; 
from  that  village  the  country  known  as 
Siberia  received  its  name.  Yermak 
and  his  adventure- loving  followers 
pushed  their  conquest  with  great  rapid- 
ity, and  were  victorious  in  every  encoun- 
ter with  the  natives.  The  territory 
they  occupied  was  proffered  to  the  Czar, 
who  tendered  full  pardon  to  the  errant 
Cossacks  and  their  leader ;  as  a  mark 
of  special  favor,  he  presented  Yermak 
with  a  coat  of  mail  which  once  adorned 
his  royal  person,  and  accompanied  the 
gift  with  an  autograph  letter  full  of  com- 
plimentary phrases.  Proud  of  his  dis- 
tinction, the  Cossack  chief  donned  the 
armor  on  the  occasion  of  dining  with 
some  Tartar  friends  who  dwelt  near  his 
fortress.  Returning  homeward  at  night, 
he  fell,  or  was  thrown,  into  the  river ; 
the  heavy  steel  carried  him  beneath 
the  waters  and  caused  his  death. 

The  discoverers  and  conquerors  of 
Siberia  were  at  the  same  time  its  first 
exiles.  The  government  turned  their 
conquest  to  good  account,  just  as  it  has 


since  profited  by  the  labors  of  the  men 
banished  for  political  or  criminal  offences. 

After  the  death  of  Yermak,  the  Cos- 
sacks, reinforced  and  supplied  by  their 
friends  in  Russia,  continued  to  press 
toward  the  East ;  in  less  than  seventy 
years  from  the  date  of  the  first  incur- 
sion the  authority  of  the  Czar  was  ex- 
tended over  more  than  four  million 
square  miles  of  Asiatic  territory,  and 
the  standard  of  Muscovy  floated  in  the 
breeze  on  the  shores  of  the  Ohotsk  Sea. 
The  cost  of  the  conquest  was  borne 
entirely  by  individuals,  who  found  suffi- 
cient remuneration  in  the  profits  of  the 
fur  trade.  The  government  which  ac- 
quired so  much  was  at  no  expense, 
either  of  men  or  means,  and  exercised 
no  control  over  the  movements  of  the 
adventurous  Cossacks.  Was  there  ever 
a  nation  that  extended  its  area  with 
greater  economy,  and  experienced  so 
little  trouble  with  its  filibusters  ? 

Considering  its  magnificent  distances, 
its  long  winters  and  severe  frosts,  the 
rigor  of  its  climate  and  the  general  at- 
tachment of  the  Russian  people  to  the 
places  of  their  birth,  Siberia  was  occu- 
pied with  surprising  rapidity.  Tobolsk 
was  founded  in  1587  ;  Tomsk,  in  1604  ; 
Yakutsk,  in  1632  ;  Irkutsk,  in  1652  ;  and 
Ohotsk,  in  1638.  The  posts  established 
throughout  the  country  were  located 
less  with  a  view  to  agricultural  advan- 
tages than  for  the  purpose  of  collecting 
tribute  from  the  natives.  Siberia  was 
important  on  account  of  its  fur  product ; 
and,  as/ast  as  the  aboriginal  inhabitants 
became  subject  to  Russia,  they  were 
required  to  pay  an  annual  tax  in  furs. 
In  return  for  this  they  received  the 
powerful  protection  of  the  Czar,  — what- 
ever that  might  be,  —  and  were  priv- 
ileged to  trade  with  the  Cossacks,  on 
terms  that  gave  handsome  profits  to  the 
latter.  The  system  then  inaugurated 
is  still  in  use  in  most  parts  of  Siberia ; 
the  annual  tax  being  payable  in  furs, 
though  at  rates  proportioned  to  the  di- 
minished supply  and  consequent  ad- 
vance in  prices.  In  Kamchatka,  the 
tax  for  each  adult  man  was  one  sable- 
skin  ;  now  a  skin  pays  the  tribute  of 
four  individuals. 


1 868.] 


Siberian  Exiles. 


275 


Down  to  the  time  of  Peter  the  Great, 
Siberia  was  colonized  by  voluntary  em- 
igrants, including,  of  course,  a  great 
many  individuals  who  found  it  conven- 
ient to  go  there,  just  as  some  of  our 
own  citizens  resorted  to  Texas  twenty 
years  ago.  The  great  monarch  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  making  his  Asiatic 
possessions  a  place  of  exile  for  political 
and  criminal  offenders,  where  they 
make  themselves  useful,  and  have  little 
opportunity  for  wrong -doing.  Peter 
never  did  anything  by  halves,  and  when 
he  began  the  business  of  exiling  he 
made  no  distinctions.  Not  content 
with  banishing  Russians,  he  made  Si- 
beria the  home  of  Polish  and  Swedish 
prisoners  of  war.  A  great  many  cap- 
tives from  the  battles  of  Pultawa  were 
among  the  early  exiles,  and  their  graves 
are  still  marked  and  remembered  in 
the  cemeteries  of  the  Siberian  towns. 
Turbulent  characters  in  Moscow  and 
elsewhere  were  sent  beyond  the  Urals  ; 
officers  and  men  of  unruly  regiments, 
persons  suspected  of  plotting  against 
the  state,  criminals  of  all  grades,  and 
numerous  individuals,  either  bond  or 
free,  whose  lives  were  dissolute,  followed 
the  same  road.  The  emigrants,  on 
reaching  Siberia,  were  allotted  to  vari- 
ous districts,  according  to  the  character 
of  their  offences  and  the  service  re- 
quired of  them.  Exiles  under  sentence 
of  hard  labor  were  employed  in  mines 
or  upon  roads ;  those  condemned  to 
prison  were  scattered  among  the  larger 
towns  ;  while  those  ordered  to  become 
colonists  found  their  destination  in  the 
districts  that  most  required  develop- 
ment. The  control  of  the  exiles  was 
lodged  with  an  imperial  commission 
which  had  full  power  to  regulate  local 
affairs  in  its  own  way,  but  not  to  change 
the  sentences  of  the  men  confided  to  it. 
Pardon  could  only  come  from  the  Em- 
peror;  but  there  were  frequent  oppor- 
tunities for  the  Siberian  authorities  to 
mitigate  punishments  and  soften  the 
asperities  of  exile.  Everywhere  in  the 
world  the  condition  of  a  prisoner  de- 
pends much  on  the  humanity,  or  the 
lack  of  it,  in  the  breast  of  his  keeper. 
Siberia  is  no  exception  to  the  rule. 


Early  in  1866  I  planned  a  visit  to 
Siberia,  and  in  the  same  year  my  plan 
was  carried  out;  I  entered  Asiatic 
Russia  by  one  of  its  Pacific  ports,  and, 
after  an  interesting  journey,  —  which 
included  a  sleigh-ride  of  thirty-six  hun- 
dred miles, — crossed  the  Ural  Moun- 
tains and  entered  Europe.  Years  ear- 
lier my  interest  in  this  far-off  country 
had  been  awakened  by  that  charming 
story,  "  The  Exiles  of  Siberia,"  written  ; 
by  Madame  de  Cottin,  and  adopted  as  a 
text-book  for  American  students  of  the 
French  language.  The  mention  of  Si- 
beria generally  brought  to  my  mind  the 
picture  of  Elizabeth,  —  the  patient,  lov- 
ing, and  devoted  girl,  who  succeeded 
by  her  individual  effort  in  restoring  her 
father  to  his  native  land.  My  interest 
in  Elizabeth  was  the  first  prompting  of 
a  desire  to  visit  Northern  Asia,  to  see 
with  my  own  eyes  the  men  whom  Rus- 
sian law  had  banished,  and  to  learn  as 
much  as  possible  of  their  condition.  I 
found  that  the  story  of  that  heroic  girl 
was  well  known,  and  received  no  less 
admiration  in  Siberia  than  elsewhere. 
Russian  artists  had  made  it  the  subject 
of  illustration,  as  was  shown  by  four 
steel  engravings,  bearing  the  imprint  of 
a  Moscow  publisher,  and  depicting  as 
many  scenes  in  Elizabeth's  career. 

The  plan  inaugurated  by  Peter  the' 
Great  has  been  followed  by  all  his  suc- 
cessors. Crime  in  Russia  is  rarely 
punished  with  death ;  many  offences 
which  in  other  countries  would  demand 
the  execution  of  the  offender  are  there 
followed  by  exile  to  Siberia.  As  Rus- 
sia is  but  thinly  inhabited,  her  rulers 
are  greatly  averse  to  taking  the  lives  of 
their  subjects;  the  transfer  of  an  indi- 
vidual from  one  part  of  the  empire  to 
another  is  a  satisfactory  mode  of  pun- 
ishment, and  gladly  practised  in  a  coun- 
try that  has  no  population  to  spare. 
Siberia,  with  its  immense  area,  has 
barely  four  millions  of  inhabitants,  and 
consequently  possesses  abundant  room 
for  all  those  who  offend  against  Rus- 
sian laws.  Criminals  of  various  grades 
become  dwellers  in  Siberia,  and  very 
often  make  excellent  citizens  ;  then 
there  are  political  offenders,  banished 


276 


for  disturbing  the  peace  and  dignity  of 
the  state,  or  loving  other  forms  of  gov- 
ernment better  than  the  Emperor's. 
Outside  of  Russia  there  is  a  belief,  as 
erroneous  as  it  is  general,  that  the  great 
majority  of  exiles  t&tpoKtiques.  Except 
at  the  close  of  the  periodic  revolutions 
in  Poland,  the  criminals  outnumber  the 
political  exiles  in  the  ratio  of  twenty 
to  one.  For  a  year  or  more  following 
each  struggle  of  the  Poles  for  their  na- 
tional independence  the  road  to-  Siberia 
is  travelled  to  an  unusual  extent ;  be- 
tween the  insurrections  there  is  only 
the  regular  stream  of  deported  crimi- 
nals, with  here  and  there  a  batch  of 
those  who  plot  against  the  government. 
It  is  easy  to  go  to  Siberia ;  easier,  I 
am  told,  than  to  get  away  from  it.  Ban- 
ishment is  decreed  for  various  offences, 
some  of  them  of  a  very  serious  char- 
acter. Many  a  murderer,  who  would 
have  been  hanged  in  England  or  Amer- 
ica, has  been  sent  into  exile  with  the 
opportunity  of  becoming  a  free  citizen 
after  ten  or  twenty  years  of  compulsory 
labor.  On  the  descending  scale  of  cul- 
pability there  are  burglars,  street  and 
highway  robbers,  petty  thieves,  and  so 
on  through  a  list  of  namable  and 
nameless  offenders.  Before  the  aboli- 
tion of  serfdom,  a  master  could  send  a 
serf  to  Siberia  for  no  other  reason  than 
that  he  chose  to  do  so.  The  record 
against  the  exile  stated  that  he  was 
banished  "by  the  will  of  his  master," 
but  it  was  not  necessary  to  declare  the 
cause  of  this  exercise  of  arbitrary 
power.  The  plan  was  instituted  to 
enable  land-owners  to  rid  themselves 
of  idle,  quarrelsome,  or  dissolute  serfs, 
whose  absence  was  desirable,  but  who 
had  committed  no  offence  that  the  laws 
could  touch.  Doubtless  it  was  often 
abused ;  and  instances  are  narrated 
where  the  best  men  or  women  on  an 
estate  have  been  banished  upon  ca- 
price of  their  owners,  or  for  worse 
reasons.  Its  liability  to  abuse  was 
checked  by  the  requirement  that  the 
master  must  pay  the  outfitting  and  trav- 
elling expenses  of  the  exiled  serf,  and 
also  those  of  his  wife  and  immature 
children. 


Siberian  Exiles. 


[September, 


Of  political  exiles  there  are  the  men, 
and  sometimes  women,  concerned  in 
the  •  various  insurrections  in  Poland, 
taken  with  arms  in  their  hands,  or  in- 
volved in  conspiracies  for  Polish  inde- 
pendence. Then  there  are  Russian 
revolutionists,  like  the  Decembrists  of 
1825,  or  the  restless  spirits  that  now 
and  then  declare  that  the  government 
of  the  Czar  is  not  the  best  for  their 
beloved  country.  In  the  scale  of  intel- 
ligence, the  politiques  are  far  above  the 
criminals,  and  frequently  include  some 
of  Russia's  ablest  men. 

Theoretically  all  persons  sent  into, 
exile  —  with  the  exception  of  the  serfs 
mentioned  above  —  must  be  tried  and 
convicted  before  a  court,  military  com- 
mission, or  some  kind  of  judicial  au- 
thority. Practically  this  is  not  always 
the  case;  but  instances  of  arbitrary 
banishment  are  far  less  frequent  now 
than  under  former  rulers.  Catharine 
II.  exiled  many  of  her  subjects  without 
so  much  as  a  hearing,  and  the  Emperor 
Paul  was  accustomed  to  issue  orders  of 
deportation  for  little  or  no  apparent  rea- 
son. Nicholas,  though  severe,  aimed 
to  be  just;  and  the  present  Emperor 
has  the  reputation  of  tempering  justice 
with  mercy  quite  as  much  as  could  be 
expected  of  a  despotic  monarch.  Very 
likely  it  occasionally  happens  that  a 
banished  man  has  no  trial,  or  is  unfairly 
sentenced  ;  but  I  do  not  think  Russia 
is  any  worse  in  the  matter  of  justice 
than  the  average  of  European  govern- 
ments. Certainly  the  rule  of  Alexan- 
der is  better  than  that  of  the  Queen  of 
Spain  ;  and,  so  far  as  I  have  knowledge 
of  Austria  and  France,  there  is  little  to 
choose  between  them  and  their  rugged 
Northern  antagonist. 

A  criminal  condemned  to  exile  is 
sent  away  with  very  little  ceremony ; 
and  the  same  is  the  case  with  the  great 
majority  of  politiques.  Where  an  of- 
ficer of  the  army,  or  other  person  of 
note,  has  been  sentenced  to  banish- 
ment for  life,  he  is  dressed  in  full  uni- 
form, and  led  to  a  scaffold  in  some 
public  place.  In  the  presence  of  the 
multitude,  and  of  certain  officials  ap- 
pointed to  execute  the  sentence,  he  is 


1 868.] 


Siberian  Exiles. 


277 


made  to  kneel.  His  epaulets  and  dec- 
orations are  then  torn  from  his  coat, 
and  his  sword  is  broken  above  his 
head,  to  indicate  that  he  no  longer  pos- 
sesses rank  and  title..  He  is  declared 
legally  dead  ;  his  estates  are  confiscated 
to  the  Crown  ;  and  hi-s  wife,  if  he  is  mar- 
ried, can  consider  herself  a  widow  if 
she  so  chooses.  From  the  scaffold  he 
starts  on  his  journey  to  Siberia.  His 
wife  and  children,  sisters  or  mother,  can 
follow  or  accompany  him,  but  only  on 
the  condition  that  they  share  his  ban- 
ishment, and  cannot  return  to  Europe. 
Children  born  to  him  in  exile  are  ille- 
gitimate in  the  eye  of  the  law,  and 
technically,  though  not  practically,  are 
forbidden  to  bear  their  family  name. 
They  cannot  leave  Siberia  while  their 
father  is  under  sentence  ;  but  this  reg- 
ulation is  occasionally  evaded  by  daugh- 
ters' marrying,  and  travelling  under  the 
name  of  their  husbands. 

Formerly  St.  Petersburg  and  Mos- 
cow were  the  points  of  departure  for 
exiles  on  their  way  to  Siberia,  most  of 
the  convoys  being  made  up  at  the  lat- 
ter city.  Those  from  St.  Petersburg 
generally  passed  through  Moscow ;  but 
sometimes,  when  great  haste  was  de- 
sired, they  were  sent  by  a  shorter  route, 
and  reached  the  great  road  at  Perm. 
At  present  the  proper  starting-point 
is  at  Nijne  Novgorod,  —  the  terminus 
of  the  railway,  —  unless  the  exiles  hap- 
pen to  come  from  the  eastern  prov- 
inces, in  which  case  they  are  sent  to 
Kazan  or  Ekaterineburg.  Distinctions 
have  always  been  carefully  made  be- 
tween political  and  criminal  offenders. 
Men  of  noble  birth  were  allowed  to 
ride,  and,  while  on  the  road,  enjoyed 
certain  privileges  which  were  denied 
their  inferiors.  Sometimes,  owing  to 
the  unusually  large  numbers  going  to 
Siberia,  the  facilities  of  transportation 
were  unequal  to  the  demand.  It  thus 
happened  that  individuals  entitled  *to 
ride  were  compelled  to  go  on  foot,  and 
occasionally,  by  mistake  or  the  brutal- 
ity of  officials,  a  politique  was  placed 
among  criminals.  Persons  of  the  high- 
est rank  were  often  treated  with  special 
deference,  and  went  more  like  princes 


on  pleasure-journeys  than  as  men  ban- 
ished from  their  homes.  When  brave 
old  Suwaroff,  who  covered  the  Russian 
name  with  glory,  fell  under  the  dis- 
pleasure ^of  his  sovereign,  and  was  or- 
dered to  Siberia,  a  luxurious  coach  with 
a  guard  of  honor  was  assigned  to  his 
use.  "No,"  said  the  aged  warrior,  as 
he  stepped  from  his  door,  and  beheld 
the  glittering  equipage,  "  Suwaroff  goes 
not  to  parade,  but  to  exile."  He  then 
commanded  a  common  wagon,  like  that 
in  general  use  among  the  peasantry, 
and  departed  with  none  but  his  driver 
and  the  soldier  who  had  him  in  charge. 
Of  late  years  the  government  has 
increased  its  facilities  of  transportation, 
and  assigns  vehicles  to  a  much  larger 
proportion  than  formerly  of  its  travel- 
ling exiles.  In  my  winter  journey  from 
Lake  Baikal  westward  I  met  frequent 
convoys  of  prisoners,  and  think  that 
not  more  than  a  fifth  or  a  sixth  of  them 
were  on  foot.  Those  who  rode  were  in 
the  ordinary  sleighs  of  the  country,  and 
appeared  comfortably  protected  against 
the  cold,  —  as  much  so  as  travellers  in 
vehicles  of  the  same  class.  A  convoy 
contained  from  five  to  fifteen  or  twenty 
sleighs,  and  generally  the  first  and  last 
sleighs  were  occupied  by  the  guards. 
If  prisoners  were  on  foot,  their  guards 
walked  with  them,  and  thus  insured 
their  charges  against  being  pressed  for- 
ward too  rapidly.  Women  accompany- 
ing the  exiles  are  always  treated  with 
consideration,  especially  if  they  happen 
to  be  young  and  pretty :  gallantry  to 
the  tender  sex  is  not  wanting  in  the 
Russian  breast,  whatever  some  writers 
may  have  declared  to  the  contrary.  I 
remember  a  couple  of  old  ladies  accom- 
panying a  convoy  that  I  happened  to 
encounter  in  one  of  my  daily  halts. 
The  officers  and  soldiers  were  as  defer- 
ential and  kind  to  them  as  though  they 
were  their  own  mothers,  and  attended 
them  into  and  out  of  their  sleighs  with 
evident  desire  to  make  them  com- 
fortable. Each  convoy  of  pedestrian 
prisoners  was  generally  allowed  from 
one  to  half  a  dozen  vehicles  to  carry 
women,  baggage,  and  such  of  the  men 
as  became  footsore. 


278 


Along  the  entire  line  of  the  great 
road  through  Siberia,  as  well  as  on  the 
side  roads  leading  to  the  principal  dis- 
tricts, there  are  stations  where  exiles 
are  lodged  during  their  nightly  halts. 
These  stations  are  from  ten  to  twenty- 
five  miles  apart,  and  generally  just  out- 
side the  villages  where  post-horses  are 
changed.  They  consist  of  one  or  more 
houses  surrounded  with  high  fences, 
containing  gateways  for  men  and  car- 
riages. Each  station  is  in  charge  of  a 
resident  guard,  whose  room  is  near 
the  gate  ;  while  the  space  assigned  to 
prisoners  is  farther  from  the  place  of 
egress.  None  of  the  stations  are  in- 
viting in  point  of  cleanliness,  and  the 
number  of  fleas  which  they  can  and  do 
harbor  is  not  easy  to  compute.  An 
exile  once  told  me  that  each  station 
would  average  ten  resident  fleas  to 
every  lodger,  without  counting  those 
that  belong  especially  to  the  travellers, 
and  are  carried  by  them  to  their  places 
of  destination.  The  stations  have  the- 
oretical conveniences  for  cooking,  but 
these  are  sometimes  more  imaginary 
than  real.  The  rations  dealt  out  to  the 
exiles  consist  of  rye  bread  and  cabbage 
soup,  —  the  national  diet  of  the  Rus- 
sian Empire. 

The  guards  are  responsible  for  the 
safety  of  the  prisoners  confided  to 
them,  and  are  equally  culpable  whether 
their  charges  are  lost  by  accident  or 
escape.  Some  years  ago  a  Polish  lady, 
on  her  way  into  exile,  fell  from  a  boat 
while  descending  a  river,  and  barely 
.escaped  drowning  ;'  when  she  was  res- 
cued, the  soldier  wept  for  joy,  and  for 
some  minutes  was  unable  to  speak. 
When  his  tears  were  dried,  he  said  to 
the  lady  :  "  I  am  responsible  for  you, 
and  shall  be  severely  punished  if  you 
are  lost ;  I  beg  of  you,  for  my  sake,  not 
to  drown  yourself,  or  fall  into  the  river 
again." 

The  rapidity  of  travel  varies  ac- 
cording to  the  character  and  offence  of 
the  prisoner.  Distinguished  offenders 
against  the  state  are  often  sent  for- 
ward,—  in  vehicles,  of  course, — with 
orders  to  make  no  halt  except  for  food 
and  change  ©f  horses  until  they  have 


Siberian  Exiles. 


[September,' 


reached  their  journey's  end.  In  1825 
the  exiled  Decen.ibrists  were  taken 
from  St.  Petersburg  to  Nerchinsk,  on 
the  head-waters  of  the  Amoor,  a  dis- 
tance of  five  thousand  miles,  in  thirty- 
one  days.  A  few  years  earlier,  several 
prisoners  were  sent  from  Moscow  to 
Kamchatka,  nearly  ten  thousand  miles 
away,  and  made  no  unnecessary  stop- 
page on  the  entire  route.  Ordinary 
prisoners  transported  jn  vehicles  are 
generally  halted  at  tlhe  stations  at 
night,  but  as  they  can  sleep  quite 
comfortably  while  on  the  road,  the 
most  of  them  prefer  to  make  little 
delay,  and  finish  their  jo-urn ey  as  soon 
as  possible.  Exiles  have  told  me  that 
they  petitioned  the  officers  conducting 
them  not  to  remain  over  night  at  the 
stations,  as  .  by  constantly  travelling 
they  avoided  the  necessity  of  lodging 
in  badly  ventilated  and  generally  repul- 
sive rooms.  The  officers  were  quite 
willing  to  grant  their  request,  but  some- 
times the  distances  between  different 
convoys  forbade  the  infringement  of 
the  general  rule.  Parties  on  foot'  travel 
two  days  in  succession,  and  then  rest 
one  day,  —  their  clay's  marches  being 
from  one  station  to  the  next.  If  the 
roads  are  good,  the  travel  is  110  more 
fatiguing  than  the  ordinary  march  of 
an  army,  unless  the  prisoners  happen 
to  wear  chains  or  fetters.  The  pedes- 
trian prisoners  often  ask  to  be  excused 
from  halting  every  third  day,  as  they 
find  the  open  airwgreatly  preferable  to 
the  confinement  of  the  station,  and  are 
naturally  desirous  of  making  an  early 
end  of  their  travelling  life.  The  jour- 
ney on  foot  from  Moscow  to  the  mines 
of  Nerchinsk,  where  the  worst  crimi- 
nals are  generally  sent,  requires  from 
ten  to  fifteen  and  even  twenty  months, 
according  to  the  various  contingencies 
of  delay. 

.  JThe  Russian  people,  the  Siberians 
especially,  are  very  kind  to  prisoners  ; 
when  convoys  are  passing  through  vil- 
lages and  towns,  the  inhabitants  give 
liberally  of  money  and  provisions,  and 
never  seem  weary  of  bestowing  charity, 
even  though  their  means  are  limited 
In  each  party  of  prisoners,  whatever 


1863.] 


Siberian  Exiles. 


279 


may  be  its  size,  there  is  one  person  to 
receive  for  all,  the  office  being  changed 
daily.  The  guards  do  not  oppose  the 
reception  of  alms,  but,  so  far  as  I  could 
observe,  always  appeared  to  encourage 
it.  When  I  was  in  Irkutsk  I  was 
lodged  in  a  house  that  fronted  a  prison 
on  the  other  side  of  a  public  square  ;  I 
used  frequently  to  see  parties  carrying 
water  from  the  river  to  the  prison,  —  each 
party  consisting  of  two  men  bearing  a 
large  bucket  upon  a  pole,  and  guarded 
by  two  soldiers.  One  of  the  twain 
generally  doffed  his  hat  to  every  person 
they  passed,  and  solicited  "charity  to 
the  unfortunate."  When  anybody  ap- 
proached them  with  the  evident  inten- 
tion of  being  benevolent,  the  guards 
invariably  stopped,  to  afford  opportu- 
nity for  almsgiving.  To  satisfy  myself, 
I  tried  the  experiment  repeatedly,  and 
always  found  the  soldiers  halting  as 
soon  as  I  placed  my  hand  to  my  pocket. 
One  prisoner  received  the  gift,  but  both 
returned  thanks,  and  called  for  bless- 
ings on  the  head  of  the  giver. 

The  Russians  never  'apply  the  name 
of  "  prisoner  "  or  "  exile  "  to  a  banished 
individual,  except  in  conversation  in 
other  languages  than  their  own.  The 
Siberian  people  invariably  call  the  ex- 
iles "  unfortunates  "  ;  in  official  docu- 
ments and  verbal  communications  they 
are  classed  as  "hi voluntary  emigrants." 

The  treatment  of  an  exile  varies  ac- 
cording to  the  crime  proven  or  alleged 
against  him,  and  for  which  he  has 
received  sentence  in  Russia.  The  se- 
verest penalty  is  perpetual  banishment, 
with  twenty  years'  compulsory  labor  in 
mines.  Hard  labor  was  formerly  as- 
signed for  life  ;  at  present,  if  a  man 
survives  it  twenty  years,  he  is  then 
allowed  to  register  himself  as  a  resi- 
dent of  a  specified  district,  and  is  not 
liable  to  be  called  upon  for  further  ser- 
vice. Below  this  highest  penalty  there 
arc  sentences  to  compulsory  labor  for 
different  terms,  —  all  the  way  from  one 
3'ear  upwards.  The  exiles  condemned 
to  long  terms  of  servitude  are  gener- 
ally sent  to  the  district  of  Nerchinsk 
beyond  Lake  Baikal ;  technically  they 
.arc  required  to  labor  underground,  but 


practically  they  are  employed  on  or 
below  the  surface,  just  as  their  super- 
intendents may  direct.  Formerly  all 
convicts  sentenced  to  labor  for  life  had 
their  nostrils  slit,  and  were  branded  on 
the  forehead  ;  this  practice  was  aban- 
doned nearly  twenty  years  ago,  so  that 
few  persons  thus'  mutilated  are  now 
seen.  A  great  many  prisoners  are 
kept  in  chains,  which  they  wear  day 
and  night,  whether  working  or  lying 
idle  ;  I  could  never  hear  the  clanking 
of  chains  without  a  shudder,  and,  ac- 
cording to  my  observation,  the  Rus- 
sians did  not  consider  it  a  cheerful 
sound.  By  regulation  the  weight  of 
the  chain  must  not  exceed  five  pounds, 
and  the  links  are  not  less  than  a  certain 
specified  number.  Some  convicts  wear 
chains,  and  others  do  not ;  the  same  is 
the  case  among  the  politiqucs  :  I  was 
unable  to  learn  where  and  why  the  line 
of  fettering  or  non-fettering  was  drawn. 
None  of  the  pedestrian  exiles  I  met 
on  the  road  were  in  chains,  and  I 
was  told  that  the  worst  offenders  are 
allowed  full  use  of  their  limbs  while 
travelling. 

The  exiles  sentenced  to  forced  labor 
(Katorgd)  are  ordinarily  but  a  small  pro- 
portion —  five  or  ten  per  cent  —  of  the 
whole  number ;  possibly  the  ratio  is 
larger  now  than  under  previous  emper- 
ors, as  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs  has 
done  away  with  banishment  "  by  the 
will  of  the  master."  The  lowest  sen- 
tence now  given  is  that  of  simple  depor- 
tation, the  exile  having  full  liberty  to  go 
where  he  chooses,  unless  it  be  out  of 
the  country.  He  may  live  in  any  prov- 
ince or  district,  engage  in  whatever  hon- 
est business  he  finds  profitable  and 
agreeable,  and  have  pretty  much  his 
own  way.  in  everything.  The  prohibi- 
tion to  return  is  for  a  specified  time,  and, 
as  it  gives  him  the  range  of  a  country 
larger  than  the  United  States,  he  has 
plenty  of  room  for  stretching  his  limbs. 
Less  happy  are  the  exiles  confined  to 
specified  provinces,  districts,  towns,  or 
villages,  and  required  to  report  to  the 
police  at  stated  intervals.  Some  of  them 
must  report  daily,  others  every  third 
day,  others  ence  a  week,  and  so  on 


280 


Siberian  Exiles. 


[September, 


through  an  increasing  scale  of  time  ; 
between  the  intervals  of  reporting  they 
can  absent  themselves  from  home  either 
with  or  without  special  permission. 
Some  of  the  simple  detenus  can  engage 
in  any  business  they  fancy,  while  others 
are  restricted  as  to  their  employments. 
Many  exiles  are  condemned  to  be  colo- 
.  nists,  generally  in  the  northern  parts  of 
Siberia ;  they  are  furnished  with  the 
means  for  building  houses,  and  receive 
allotments  of  land  to  clear  and  cultivate. 
They  can  employ  their  surplus  time  in 
hunting,  fishing,  or  any  other  occupa- 
tion not  incompatible  with  the  life  of  a 
backwoodsman.  It  is  not  an  agreeable 
fate  to  be  sentenced  to  become  a  colo- 
nist in  Siberia,  especially  if  one  has 
been  tenderly  reared,  and  knows  noth- 
ing of  manual  labor  until  the  time  of 
his  banishment. 

Many  exiles  are  "  drafted  into  the 
army,"  and  assigned  to  duty  as  common 
soldiers.  They  receive  soldiers'  pay 
and  rations,  and  have  the  possibility  of 
promotion,  if  their  conduct  is  meritori- 
ous. They  are  generally  assigned  to 
regiments  on  the  frontier  of  the  Kirghese 
country,  or  in  Circassia,  where  the  op- 
portunities for  desertion  and  escape  are 
very  slight.  The  regulations  forbid 
more  than  a  certain  proportion  of  such 
men  in  each  regiment,  and  these  are 
always  well  distributed  among  the  faith- 
ful. In  some  instances  revolts  have 
occurred  among  the  drafted  men,  but  I 
never  heard  that  they  were  successful. 
Desertions  are  occasional ;  but  as  the 
deserters  generally  flee  to  the  countries 
beyond  the  border,  they  find,  when  too 
late,  that  they  have  exchanged  their  fry- 
ing-pan for  a  very  hot  fire.  The  Kirg- 
hese, Turcomans,  and  other  barbarous 
Asiatics,  have  an  unpleasant  habit  of. 
making  slaves  of  stray  foreigners  who 
enter  their  country  without  proper  au- 
thority ;  to  prevent  escape,  they  insert 
a  horse-hair  into  a  small  incision  in 
a  prisoner's  heel,  and  cripple  him  for 
life.  He  is  thus  secured  against  walk- 
ing away,  and  they  take  good  care  that 
he  does  not  have  access  to  a  horse. 

The  exiles  in  Asiatic  Russia  are  far 
less  numerous  than  the  descendants  of 


exiles,  who  form  a  considerable  propor- 
tion of  the  population.  Eastern  Siberia 
is  mainly  peopled  by  involuntary  emi- 
grants, and  their  second  and  third  gen- 
erations ;  while  Western  Siberia  is  very 
largely  so.  The  ordinary  deportation 
across  the  Ural  Mountains  is  about  ten 
thousand  a  year,  nearly  all  of  them  be- 
ing offenders  .against  the  civil  laws. 
Each  revolt  in  Poland  makes  a  large 
number  of  exiles,  who  are  not  counted 
in  the  regular  supply.  From  the  rev- 
olution of  1863  twenty-four  thousand 
Poles  were  banished  beyond  the  Urals, 
—  ten  thousand  being  sent  to  Eastern 
Siberia,  and  the  balance  to  the  Western 
Provinces.  Many  of  these  men  were 
liberated  by  the  ukase  of  1867,  and 
others  have  been  allowed  to  transfer 
their  banishment  to  countries  outside 
of  Russia.  Quite  recently  I  met  in 
New  York  a  young  Pole  who  went  to 
Siberia  in  1865,  and  was  permitted  in 
the  following  year  to  exchange  that 
country  for  America.  It  is  hardly  ne^ 
cessary  to  say,  that  he  promptly  em- 
braced the  opportunity,  and  does  not 
regret  doing  so. 

Exiles  are  found  in  so  many  occupa- 
tions in  Siberia,  that  it  would  be  hard 
to  mention  anything  in  which  they  are 
not  engaged,  unless  it  be  holding  high 
official  position.  Many  subordinate  of- 
fices are  filled  by  them,  and  I  believe 
they  do  their  duty  quite  as  well  as  the 
average  of  the  rest  of  mankind.  It  was 
not  unusual  in  my  journey  to  find  them 
in  charge  of  post-stations,  and  I  was 
told  that  many  exiles  were  in  service  as 
government  clerks,  messengers,  and  em- 
ployees of  various  grades.  During  a 
month's  stay  at  Irkutsk,  the  capital  of 
Eastern  Siberia,  I  encountered  a  fair 
number  of  men  I  knew  to  be  exiles, 
and  probably  a  great  many  more  of  the 
same  class  whose  condition  was  not 
mentioned  to  me.  The  clerk  of  the 
principal  hotel  was  an  exile,  and  so  was 
one  of  the  waiters  ;  an  officer  who  dined 
there  with  me  said  the  clerk  was  his- 
schoolmate,  and  graduated  in  his  class. 
A  merchant,  of  whom  I  used  to  buy  my 
cigarettes,  was  an  involuntary  emigrant ; 
and  I  believe  that  the  man  who  fabrl- 


1 868.] 


Siberian  Exiles. 


281 


cated  them,  and  whose  shop  was  near 
my  lodgings,  journeyed  to  Siberia 
against  his  will.  My  fur  clothing  was 
made  by  an  exiled  tailor;  my  boots 
were  repaired  by  a  banished  cobbler, 
and  my  morning  beefsteak  and  potatoes 
were  prepared  by  a  cook  who  left  St. 
Petersburg  with  the  aid  of  the  police. 
A  gentleman  of  my  acquaintance  fre- 
quently placed  his  carriage  at  my  ser- 
vice, and  with  it  a  driver  who  pleased 
me  with  his  skill  and  dash.  One  night 
this  driver  was  a  little  intoxicated,  and 
amused  me  and  a  friend  at  my  side  by  his 
somewhat  reckless  driving.  We  com- 
mented in  French  upon  his  condition, 
and  laughed  a  little  at  the  situation ; 
when  he  set  us  down  at  our  door,  he  pro- 
tested that  he  was  perfectly  sober,  and 
hoped  we  would  not  say  to  his  master 
what  we  had  talked  between  ourselves. 
He  happened  to  be  an  exile  from  St. 
Petersburg,  where  he  had  been  coach- 
man to  a  French  family,  and  learned 
something  of  the  French  language. 

I  met  at  Irkutsk  a  Polish  gentleman 
who  was  exiled  for  taking  part  in  the 
revolution  of  1863;  he  was  formerly 
connected  with  the  University  at  War- 
saw, spoke  French  with  ease  and  cor- 
rectness, and,  at  the  time  I  saw  him, 
was  in  charge  of  the  Museum  of  the 
Siberian  Geographical  Society.  As  a 
taxidermist,  he  possessed  unusual  skill, 
and  was  then  engaged  in  making  a  col- 
lection of  Siberian  birds.  Two  Polish 
physicians  were  practising  at  Irkutsk; 
one  of  them  was  in  high  repute,  and  I 
was  told  that  his  services  were  more  in 
demand  than  those  of  any  Russian  com- 
petitor in  the  city. 

I  reached  the  Trans-Baikal  district 
of  Siberia  too  late  in  the  season  to  visit 
the  mines  where  convicts  are  employed, 
and  am  therefore  unable  to  speak  of 
therr  condition  from  personal  observa- 
tion. I  passed  through  the  town  of 
Nerchinsk,  which  lies  two  hundred 
miles  north  of  Nerchinsk  Zavod,  the 
centre  of  the  mining  works  of  that  re- 
gion. English  and  German  travellers 
who  have  visited  the  Zavod  do  not  agree 
as  to  the  treatment  of  the  prisoners,  — 
one  averring  that  he. found  many  evi- 


dences of  cruelty  on  the  part  of  keepers, 
and  another  declaring  that  everything 
appeared  satisfactory.  I  presume  the 
management  had  changed  between  the 
visits  of  these  gentlemen,  —  a  harsh  and 
unpitying  keeper  having  made  way  for 
a  lenient  one.  From  all  I  could  learn, 
I  infer  that  the  truthful  history  of  the 
Nerchinsk  mines  would  contain  many 
accounts  of  oppression  on  the  part  of 
unscrupulous  managers,  who  cared  less 
for  the  sufferings  of  'prisoners  than  for 
the  gold  to  be  wrung  from  their  labor. 
The  only  persons  from  whom  I  obtained 
information  of  the  present  condition  of 
the  mines  were  interested  parties,  and 
their  testimony  would  go  for  nothing  in 
a  court  of  law.  As  the  present  Gover- 
nor-General of  Eastern  Siberia  is  a 
man  of  tender  heart,  and  very  earnest 
in  promoting  the  comfort  of  his  sub- 
jects, I  conclude  that  the  prisoners  in 
the  mines  are  treated  no  worse  than  the 
average  of  hard-labor  convicts  else- 
where. I  saw  and  heard  many  evidences 
of  his  enlightened  and  generous  spirit, 
and  believe  he  would  not  permit  the 
oppression  of  unfortunates,  or  confide 
them  to  men  less  merciful  than  himself. 

Most  of  the  exiles  condemned  to  be 
colonists  are  sent  to  the  provinces  of 
Yakutsk  and  Yeneseisk,  where  they  are 
little  likely  to  be  seen  by  strangers.  I 
saw  very  few  of  those  now  colonizing 
Siberia  by  involuntary  emigration,  not 
enough  to  enable  me  to  form  an  opinion 
from  my  own  knowledge.  I  think,  how- 
ever, that  my  comment  and  conclusion 
regarding  the  convicts  in  the  mines  will 
apply  very  fairly  to  this  other  class  of 
laborers. 

We  come  now  to  the  exiles,  pure  and 
simple.  If  a  man  can  forget  that  he  is 
deprived  of  liberty,  he  is  not  under  or- 
dinary circumstances  very  badly  off  in 
Siberia.  He  leads  a  more  independent 
life  —  unless  under  the  special  eye  of 
the  police  —  than  in  European  Russia, 
and  has  a  better  prospect  of  wealth  and 
social  advancement.  If  a  laboring  man, 
he  can  generally  be  more  certain  of  em- 
ployment than  in  the  region  whence  he 
came,  and,  except  in  times  of  special 
scarcity,  can  purchase  food  quite  as 


282 


Siberian  Exiles. 


[September, 


cheaply  as  where  the  population  is 
more  dense.  Everybody  around  him 
is  oblivious  of  the  fault  that  led  to  his 
exile,  and  he  is  afforded  full  opportu- 
nity for  reformation.  If  a  farmer,  he 
cultivates  his  land,  sells  his  surplus 
crops,  and  sits  in  his  own  house,  with 
no  fear  that  he  will  be  disturbed  for 
past  offences.  If  he  brought  no  family 
with  him,  he  is  permitted  and  encour- 
aged to  marry,  though  not  required  to 
do  so.  The  authorities  know  very  well 
that  he  who  has  wife  and  children  is 
more  a  fixture  in  the  country  than  one 
who  has  not ;  and  hence  their  readi- 
ness to  permit  an  exile  to  take  his  fam- 
ily to  Siberia,  and  their  encouragement 
for  him  to  commit  matrimony  if  he  goes 
there  unmarried. 

Exiles  to  Siberia,  especially  those 
who  marry  there,  and  are  not  cursed 
by  fortune,  frequently  become  as  much 
attached  to  the  country  as  the  men 
who  visit  California  or  the  West  in- 
tending to  stay  but  a  few  years,  and 
never  finding  a  suitable  time  to  return.' 
Many  exiles  remain  in  Siberia  after 
their  terms  of  banishment  are  ended, 
especially  if  they  have  been  long  in 
the  country,  and  hesitate  to  return  to 
Russia  and  find  themselves  forgotten. 
Some  men  consider  their  banishment  a 
piece  of  good  -  fortune,  as  it  enabled 
them  to  accomplish  what  they  never 
could  have  done  in  the  old  country. 
Especially  is  this  the  case  among  the 
serfs,  banished  "at  the  will  of  their 
masters."  Every  exiled  serf  became  a 
free  peasant  as  soon  as  he  entered  Si- 
beria, and  no  law  existed  whereby  he 
could  be  re-enslaved.  His  children  were 
free,  and  enjoyed  a  condition  far  su- 
perior to  that  of  the  serf,  under  the 
system  prevalent  before  1859.  Many 
descendants  of  exiles  have  become 
wealthy  through  gold -mining,  com- 
merce, and  agriculture,  and  occupy  high 
civil  positions.  I  know  a  merchant 
whose  fortune  is  counted -by  millions, 
and  who  is  famous  through  Siberia  for 
his  enterprise  and  generosity ;  he  is 
the  son  of  an  exiled  serf,  and  has  risen 
by  his  own  ability.  Since  I  left  Sibe- 
ria, I  learn-  with  pleasure  that  the  Em- 


peror has  honored  him  with  a  decora- 
tion,—  the  boon  so  priceless  to  every 
Russian  heart.  Many  prominent  mer- 
chants and  proprietary  miners  were 
mentioned  to  me  as  examples  of  the 
prosperity  of  the  second  and  third  gen- 
erations from  banished  men.  I  was 
tolcl  of  a  wealthy  gold-miner,  whose 
evening  of  life  is  cheered  by  an  ample 
fortune  and  two  well-educated  children. 
Forty  years  ago  his  master  gave  him  a 
start  in  life  by  capriciously  sending  him 
to  Siberia ;  had  the  man  remained  in 
Europe,  the  chances  are  more  than 
even  that  he  would  have  died  unno- 
ticed and  unknown. 

Some  of  the  political  exiles  —  Poles 
and  Russians  —  who  remain  volunta- 
rily in  Siberia  say  they  were  drawn 
unwillingly  into  the  acts  that  caused 
their  banishment,  and  mav  suffer  again 
in  the  same  way  if  they  go  home.  In 
Siberia  they  are  removed  from  all  dis- 
turbing influences,  while  at  home  they 
are  at  the  mercy  of  uneasy  revolution- 
ists, and  are  often  led  to  commit  acts 
they  do  not  really  approve.  All  the 
Poles  now  in  Asiatic  Russia,  from  the 
insurrection  of  1831,  are  at  liberty  to 
return  ;  I  was  told  that  less  than  half 
the  prisoners  liberated  by  the  pardon 
ukase  at  the  coronation  of  Alexander 
II.  availed  themselves  of  its  privileges. 
Long  absence  from  their  old  homes, 
and  attachment  to  the  new,  caused 
them  to  give  preference  to  the  latter. 

"  Are  you  endeavoring  to  prove," 
some  one  may  ask,  "that  exile  is  de- 
sirable, and  the  intended  punishment 
really  a  benefit  to  the  offender  ?  "  Not 
a  bit  of  it ;  don't  understand  me  to  say 
anything  of  the  kind.  I  only  wish  to 
show  that  banishment  to  Siberia  is 
less  terrible  than  generally  supposed. 
While  some  choose  to  remain  in  that 
country  when  their  terms  of  exile  are 
ended,  a  great  many  others  embrace 
the  earliest  opportunity  to  quit  it.  and 
are  careful  not  to  risk  going  there 
again.  It  depends  very  much  upon  aj 
man's  association,  fortune,  and  the  I 
treatment  he  receives,  whether  lie  will 
think  well  or  ill  of  any  place  that  hei 
visits  or  resides  in.  While  Siberia  is! 


•1868.] 


Siberian  Exiles. 


283 


cheerless,  desolate,  and  every  way  dis- 
a°reeable  to  one  man,  it  is  fertile,  pros- 
Iperous,  and  happy  in  the  opinion  of 
another;  every  country  in  the  world 
could  produce  witnesses  to  testify  in  all 
sincerity  that  it  was  the  best  —  or  the 
worst  —  inhabited  by  mankind. 

A  traveller  in  Northern  Asia  hears 
i  frequent  mention  of  the  unfortunates  of 
the  1 4th  of  December,  and  their  influ- 
ence upon  the  country.    The  attempted 
•.revolution  on    that  memorable   day  in 
1825  was  caused  by  a  variety  of  evils, 
some  of  them  real,  and  others  imagi- 
nary.    In  the  early  part  of  the  present 
century  Russia  was  by  no  means  hap- 
py.    The  Emperor  Paul,  called  to  the 
throne  at  the  death   of  Catharine  II., 
displayed   anything   but   ability  ;    what 
his  mother  had  done  for  the  country 
he  was  inclined  to  undo,  regardless  of 
(the  results.     He  displayed  a  tyrannical 
Disposition,  and  issued  many  orders  as 
(arbitrary  as  they  were  unjust ;  not  con- 
itent  with  these,  he  put  forth  manifestoes 
iof  a  whimsical  character,  one  of  which 
•jd  against  round  hats,  and 
.or  against  shoe-strings.    The  glar- 
iors  now  used  upon  bridges,  sen- 
ses, and  other  imperial  property 
of  his  selection,  and  so  numerous 
vere  his  eccentricities  that  he  was  de- 
lared  of  unsound  mind.     In   March, 
80 1,  he  was  smothered  in  the  palace 
ie  had  just  completed.     It  is  said  that, 
vithin  an  hour  after  the  fact  of  his  death 
\vas  known,  round  hats  appeared  on  the 
treets  in  considerable  numbers.    • 

Alexander  I.  endeavored  to  repair 
some  of  the  evils  of  his  father's  reign. 
He  recalled  many  exiles  from  Siberia, 
-.'ied  the  secret  inquisition,  and  re- 
stored many  rights  that  had  been  taken 
"rom  the  people.  In  the  wars  with 
France  he  displayed  his  greatest  abili- 
ies,  and,  after  the  general  peace,  de- 
rated himself  to  inspecting  and  devel- 
oping the  resources  of  the  country. 
-is  the  first,  and  thus  far  the  only, 
r  of  Russia  to  cross  the  Ural 
^Mountains  and  visit  the  mines  of  that 
I'egion,  and  his  death  occurred  during 
k  tour  in  the  southern  provinces  of  the 
empire.  Some  of  his  reforms  were 


based  upon  the  principles  of  other  Eu- 
ropean governments,  which  he  endeav- 
ored to  study.  It  is  related  that,  on  his 
return  from  England,  he  told  his  coun- 
cil that  the  best  thing  he  saw  there  was 
the  opposition  in  Parliament.  He  in- 
nocently thought  it  a  part  of  the  gov- 
ernment machinery,  and  regretted  it 
could  not  be  introduced  in  Russia. 

Constantine,  the  eldest  brother  of 
Alexander  I.,  had  relinquished  his  right 
to  the  crown,  thus  breaking  the  regular 
succession.  From  the  time  of  Paul,  a 
revolutionary  party  existed  in  Russia, 
and  once,  at  least,  it  plotted  Alexan- 
der's assassination.  There  was  an  in- 
terregnum of  three  weeks  between  the 
death  of  Alexander  and  the  assumption 
of  power  by  his  second  brother,  Nicho- 
las ;  the  change  of  succession  strength- 
ened the  revolutionists,  and  they  em- 
ployed the  interregnum  to  organize  a 
conspiracy  for  seizing  the  government. 
The  conspiracy  was  widespread,  and 
included  many  able  men  ;  the  army  was 
seriously  implicated,  particularly  the 
regiments  nearest  the  person  of  Nicho- 
las. The  revolutionists  desired  a  con- 
stitutional government,  but  they  did 
not  consider  it  prudent  to  intrust  their 
secret  to  the  rank  and  file,  who  sup- 
posed they  were  to  fight  for  Constan- 
tine, and  the  regular  succession  to  the 
throne.  The  rallying  cry  "  COXSTITU- 
TIA  "  was  explained  to  the  soldiers  as 
the  name  of  Constantine's  wife. 

Nicholas  learned  of  the  conspiracy, 
the  day  before  his  accession.  The 
imperial  guard  was  changed  during 
the  night,  and  replaced  by  a  battalion 
from  Finland.  On  receiving  intelli- 
gence of  the  assembling  of  the  insur- 
gents, Nicholas  called  his  wife  to  the 
chapel  of  the  palace,  where  he  spent  a 
few  moments  in  prayer;  then  taking 
his  son,  the  present  Emperor,  he  led 
him  to  the  soldiers  of  the  new  guard, 
confided  him  to  their  protection,  and 
departed  for  St.  Isaac's  Square  to  sup- 
press the  revolt.  The  soldiers  kept  the 
boy  till  the  Emperor's  return,  and  would 
not  even  surrender  him  to  his  tutor. 
The  conspiracy  was  so  extended  that 
its  organizers  had  every  hope  of  sue- 


284 


Siberian  Exiles. 


[September* 


cess  ;  but  whole  regiments  backed  out 
at  the  last  moment,  and  left  only  a  for- 
lorn hope  to  begin  the  struggle.  Nich- 
olas* rode  with  his  officers  to  St.  Isaac's 
Square  and  twice  commanded  the  as- 
sembled insurgents  to  surrender.  They 
refused,  and  were  then  saluted  with 
"the  last  argument  of  kings."  A 
storm  of  grape-shot  and  a  charge  of 
cavalry,  the  latter,  continued  through 
many  streets  and  lanes  of  St.  Peters- 
burg, ended  the  insurrection. 

A  long  and  searching  investigation 
followed,  disclosing  all  the  ramifications 
of  the  plot ;  the  conspirators  declared 
they  were  led  to  what  they  undertook 
by  the  unfortunate  condition  of  the 
country,  and  the  hope  of  improving  it. 
Nicholas,  concealed  behind  a  screen, 
heard  most  of  the  testimony  and  con- 
fessions, and  learned  therefrom  a  very 
wholesome  lesson.  The  end  of  the 
affair  was  the  execution  of  five  prin- 
cipal conspirators,  and  the  banishment 
of  many  others  to  Siberia.  With- 
in six  months  from  the  day  of  the 
insurrection  most  of  the  banished  men 
had  reached  their  destination ;  they 
were  sent  to  different  districts,  some 
to  labor  in  mines,  and  others  to  be- 
come colonists. 

The  Decembrists  included  some  of 
the  ablest  men  in  Russia ;  they  were  of 
the  best  families,  and,  though  quite 
young,  most  of  them  were  married  or 
betrothed.  By  law  they  were  consid- 
ered dead,  and  their  wives  were  theoret- 
ical widows  ;  to  the  credit  of  Russian 
women  be  it  said,  not  one  of  these 
exiles'  wives  availed  herself  of  the  priv- 
ilege of  staying  in  Russia  and  marrying 
again.  I  was  told  that  every  married 
Decembrist  was  followed  by  his  wife,  and 
some  who  were  single  were  afterwards 
joined  by  their  mothers  and  sisters. 

The  sentence  to  hard  labor  in  the 
mines  was  not  rigorously  carried  out 
in  the  case  of  these  unfortunates.  For 
two  years  the  letter  of  the  law  was  en- 
forced, but  at  the  end  of  that  time  a 
change  of  keepers  operated  greatly  to 
the  advantage  of  the  prisoners.  They 
were  then  employed  at  indoor  work  of 
different  kinds,  much  of  it  being  more 


nominal  than  real ;  and  as  time  wore  on 
and  passion  subsided,  they  were  allowed 
to  select  residences  in  villages.  Very 
soon  they  were  permitted  to  go  to  the  lar- 
ger towns  ;  and,  once  there,  those  whose 
wives  possessed  property  in  their  own 
right  built  themselves  elegant  houses, 
and  took  the  position  to  which  their 
abilities  entitled  them.  They  became 
the  leaders  in  society,  and  their  influ- 
ence upon  the  Siberian  people  was 
highly  beneficial.  I  repeatedly  heard 
the  present  polish  of  manner  and  gen- 
eral intelligence  among  the  native  Si- 
berians ascribed  to  the  Decembrists 
and  their  families.  General  KorsackoiF, 
the  present  Governor-General,  told  me 
that  when  he  first  went  to  serve  in 
Siberia  there  was  a  ball  one  evening  at 
the  house  of  a  high  official.  Observing 
a  man  who  danced  the  Mazurka  to  per- 
fection, he  whispered  to  General  Mou- 
ravieff,  and  asked  the  name  of  the  stran- 
ger. "That,"  said  MouraviefF,  "is  a 
revolutionist  of  1825  ;  he  is  one  of  the 
best  men-  of  society  in  Irkutsk." 

After  their  first  few  years  of  exile  the 
Decembrists  had  little  to  complain  of, 
except  the  prohibition  to  return  to 
Europe ;  to  men  whose  youth  was 
passed  amid  the  gayeties  of  the  capitals, 
Siberian  life  was  irksome,  and  they 
earnestly  desired  to  abandon  it.  Year 
after  year  passed  away,  and  on  the 
twenty-fifth  anniversary  of  their  exile 
they  looked  for  pardon,  but  were  dis- 
appointed. Nicholas  had  no  forgiving 
disposition,  and  those  who  plotted  his 
overthrow  were  little  likely  to  obtain 
favor,  even  though  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury had  elapsed  since  their  crime.  It 
was  not  until  the  death  of  Nicholas  and 
the  coronation  of  Alexander  II.  that 
they  were  fully  pardoned,  restored  to 
all  their  political  rights,  and  permitted 
to  go  where  they  wished.  But  when 
pardon  came  it  was  less  a  boon  than 
they  expected ;  some  of  them  did. 
not  wish  to  return  to  a  society  from 
which  they  had  been,  absent  thirty, 
years,  and  where  they  could  hardly 
expect  to  meet  acquaintances.  Others 
who  were  unmarried  when  they  went: 
to  Siberia  had  become  heads  of  families. 


1 868.] 


Michael's  Night. 


285 


and  were  thus  fastened  to  the  country  ; 
all  were  so  near  the  end  of  life,  that  the 
hardship  of  the  journey  would  quite 
likely  outweigh  the  pleasure  of  going 
home.  Not  more  than  half  the  De- 
cembrists who  were  living  at  the  time 
of  Alexander's  coronation  availed  them- 
selves of  his  permission  to  return  to 
Europe. 

The  princes  Troubetskoi  and  Vol- 
bonskoi  hesitated  for  some  time,  but  at 
length  determined  to  return  ;  both  died 
in  Europe  quite  recently.  Their  de- 
parture was  greatly  regretted  by  many 
persons  in  Irkutsk,  as  their  absence  was 
a  considerable  loss  to  society.  Both 
the  princes  and  their  wives  paid  great 
attention  to  educating  their  children, 
and  fitting  them  for  ultimate  position 
in  St.  Petersburg  society.  One  of  the 
princes  was  not  in  complete  harmony 
with  his  wife ;  and  I  was  told  that  the 
latter,  with  the  children  and  servants, 
occupied  the  large  and  elegant  man- 


sion, while  the  prince  lived  in  a  small 
house  in  the  court-yard.  He  had  a 
farm  near  town,  and  used  to  sell  the 
various  products  to  his  wife,  who  con- 
ducted her  household  as  if  she  had  no 
husband  at  all. 

While  in  Irkutsk  I  saw  one  of  the 
Decembrists,  who  had  grown  wealthy 
as  a  wine-merchant ;  another  of  these 
exiles  was  living  in  the  city,  but  I  did 
not  meet  him.  Others  were  residing 
at  various  points  in  the  governments 
of  Irkutsk  and  Yeneseisk,  but  I  believe 
the  whole  number  of  these  unfortunates 
then  in  Siberia  was  less  than  a  dozen. 
Forty-one  years  had  brought  them  to 
the  brink  of  the  grave  ;  as  I  write  these 
lines,  I  hear  that  one  of  their  number 
has  died  since  my  journey,  and  another 
cannot  long  survive.  Very  soon  the 
active  spirits  of  that  unhappy  revolt  will 
have  passed  away,  but  their  memory  will 
long  be  cherished  in  the  hearts  of  their 
many  Siberian  friends. 


ST.    MICHAEL'S    NIGHT. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE  next  morning  rose  clear,  al- 
most unclouded.  The  gray  twi- 
light, hanging  like  a  pale  shadow  over 
the  dim  expanse  of  sea,  and  the  roofs 
and  gables  of  the  sleeping  town,  grows 
paler  and  paler,  and  the  crescent  moon 
and  her  one  attendant  star  are  fading 
to  the  westward  in  the  growing  light. 
The  heavens  are  calm  and  fresh  with 
the  eternal  beauty  of  morning.  The 
wind  has  died  away;  and  though  the 
ea  still  swells  and  rolls  sonorously  up 
the  beach,  this  is  but  the  unspent  agi- 
tation of  yesterday's  tumult,  and  each 
wave,  as  it  comes  to  shore,  is  more 
languid  than  the  last.  In  the  town  all 
is  still ;  there  is  nothing  to  tell  of  the 
past  storm  but  the  washed  look  of  the 
streets,  a  shutter  off  its  hinges  at  the 
little  Hotel  cles  Strangers  on  the  wharf, 


a  few  boughs  and  leaves  torn  from  the 
great  elm-trees  of  the  Place  St.  Jacques. 
The  little  light  of  the  Madonna,  in  the 
Rue  St.  Remi,  twinkles  feebly  and 
more  feebly  as  the  daylight  grows. 
Suddenly  the  topmost  pinnacle  of  the 
Church  of  St.  Jacques  is  touched  with 
golden  light,  and  almost  at  that  sign 
the  herald  swallows  slide  from  their 
high  homes  beneath  the  eaves,  and  dart 
with  ringing  cries  across  the  place. 
Down  towards  the  fountain,  then  up- 
ward again,  past  the  closed  windows 
of  the  houses,  sounding  their  shrill 
alarums  to  the  sleeping  folk  within, 
catching,  as  they  fly,  gleams  of  golden 
light  on  their  delicate  white  breasts, 
they  skim,  and  veer,  and  dart  about 
the  pinnacles  and  buttresses  of  the 
church,  their  pointed  wings  flashing 
blue  like  burnished  steel. 

It  is  early  yet,  but  the  clay  has  begun 


286 


St.  Michael's  Nig/it. 


[September, 


in  Dieppe.  Shutters  are  beginning  to 
be  opened,  stray  people  are  about  the 
streets,  the  sound  of  sabots  is  heard 
on  the  wharf,  the  great  bell  of  the  Sem- 
inaire  is  beginning  to  ring,  and,  already, 
old  Defere  and  his  partner,  Robbe,  and 
Frangois  Milette  are  on  their  way  down 
to  the  wharf  to  examine  into  the  con- 
dition of  La  Sainte  Perpetua.  The  re- 
sult of  this  examination  we  may  as  well 
state  in  a  few  words.  The  boat  was  in 
much  better  condition  than  they  had 
supposed  she  would  be  after  her  rough 
fight  with  the  storm.  A  few  hours' 
work  would  be  sufficient  to  put  her  into 
complete  trim,  and  the  journey  down  to 
Verangeville  after  the  new  rudder  was 
•  consequently  abandoned.  Francois  Mi- 
lette blessed  his  good  patron  saint  more 
than  once  for  this  pleasant  turn  of  for- 
tune, and  sprang  lightly  up  the  ladder 
on  the  dock  wall,  as  he  thought  of 
another  day  in  Dieppe,  and  the  expe- 
dition to  the  Citadelle,  or  to  le  Pare 
aux  hintres,  that  he  would  certainly 
take  that  evening  with  Marie  Robbe. 

Gabriel  Ducres  did  not  start  early 
this  morning  on  his  walk  to  Arques,  as 
Jeanne  had  supposed.  He  followed 
Frangois  down  to  the  dock,  helped  in 
the  work  on  the  boat,  and,  after  that 
was  done,  went  up  to  Jean  Farge's, 
ostensibly  to  make  further  inquiries 
about  the  road  to  Arques,  but  perhaps 
also  with  some  uncertain  hope  of  see- 
ing or  hearing  something  of  his  cousin. 
But  if  this  were  his  object,  he  was  dis- 
appointed. Jeanne  had  already  started 
on  her  journey  back  to  Verangeville, 
and  Epiphanie  had  accompanied  her 
as  far  as  the  end  of  the  Rue  de  la 
Barre.  Gabriel  found  Madame  Farge 
entertaining  company.  On  the  long 
wooden  bench  that  stood  against  the 
wall  under  the  rows  of  shining  tin  and 
copper  pans  sat  a  fat  little  man,  with 
sleek  black  hair,  a  high,  bald  forehead, 
and  a  somewhat  pompous  expression 
of  countenance.  He  was  dressed  in  a 
black  coat,  snuff-colored  trousers,  and 
a  black  satin  waistcoat.  He  was  fur- 
ther adorned  with  a  pink  cotton  neck- 
tie, and. wore  two  thick  gold  rings  on 
his  fat  brown  hands.  By  his  side,  her 


face  flushed,  and  her  black  eyes  spark- 
ling with  the  keenest  animation,  sat 
Marie  Robbe,  twisting  the  folds  of  her 
heavy  jnpon  in  her  restless  fingers. 

"  Gabriel,"  said  Madame  Farge,  "be- 
hold our  neighbor  Bouffle,  and  Marie 
Robbe,  whom  you  know,  to  be  sure. 
Monsieur,"  (addressing  the  neighbor 
Bouffle,)  "  this  is  my  third  cousin,  Ga- , 
briel  Ducres,  son  of  Marie  Farge,  who 
married  \ht  fermier  Ducr<£s.  It  is  he 
of  whom  you  heard  just  now,  and  of 
whom  I  have  been  telling  you." 

The  little  man  bounded  to  his  feet, 
and  bowed  with  the  utmost  solemnity. 
"  Madame,  I  am  delighted  to  make 
Monsieur  your  third  cousin's  acquaint- 
ance," said  he. 

"  It  is  quite  droll,"  said  Madame 
Farge  ;  "  Monsieur  Bouffle  was  just 
saying  he  had  heard  of  thee,  Gabriel."1 

"Exactly,  Madame,"  said  the  little 
man  ;  "  it  is  very  droll.  Mademoiselle 
and  I,  we  make  a  little  course  this 
morning.  I  make  her  acquainted  with 
some  of  the  beauties  of  our  town,  —  not 
all,  I  assure  you,  Mademoiselle,  —  by  no 
means  «//,"  —  turning  to  Marie.  "  We 
visit  the  Plage,  the  Faubourg  de  la 
Barre  ;  we  meet  a  friend  here,  a  friend 
there,  who  relates  of  this  or  that  of  the 
storm  of  yesterday,  —  two  men  drowned 
a  little  way  down  the  coast,  the  bodies  to 
be  quite  agreeably  seen  at  the  hospital. 
Also'  of  a  young  man  from  the  country, 
who  saves  a  boat  with  courage  and  sa- 
gacity. And  then,  Mademoiselle  and  I, 
we  call  on  Madame  Farge  to  say  un 
petit  bon  jour,  and  find  there  this  young 
man,  who  is  Madame's  third  cousin, 
Voila  une  circonstance  particuliere ! " 

Gabriel  changed  color,  and  for  a 
moment  his  heart  beat  more  quickly 
as  he  thought  of  that  adventure  of  the 
previous  night,  undertaken  in  such  bet- 
ter heart,  being  the  common  talk  of  the 
streets  to-day ;  not  that  Gabriel  cared 
more  than  others  for  the  praise  of  men, 
but  he  had  a  foolish  fancy  that  it 
might  reach  the  ears  of  some  one  who 
had  been  all  too  deaf  to  his  words,  and 
had  once,  as  we  know,  cruelly  told  him 
to  spend  his  ill-humor  on  the  sea. 

"Gabriel,"  said  Madame  Farge,  "and 


1868.] 


St.  Michael's  Night. 


287 


where  hast  thou  been  this  morning  ? 
I  thought  thou  wast  going  to  Arques, 
and  I  told  Epiphanie  Milette  just  now, 
when  she  came  in,  and  was  asking 
where  thou  wast,  that  thou  hadst  al- 
ready started." 

"  What    did    £piphanie    want    with 
me  ? "  said  Gabriel,  with  some  eagerness. 
"  I  know  not,  my  son.     Most  likely 
.  to  give  thee  a  message  from  Jeanne  on 
;  Uncle  Defere  ;  nothing  of  consequence, 
!  I  think,  or  she  would  have  left  the  mes- 
,  sage  with  me  to  give  to  thee,  without 
I  doubt.      My  cousin,"    continued    Ma- 
dame Farge,  addressing  Bouffle,  "  has 
come  up  about  the  sale  of  the  lavender, 
grown  on  their  farm,  and  takes  a  little 
pleasure   while   he   is  in   town.     It   is 
well  for  a  young  man  to  see  something 
of  life  from  time  to  time." 

"  Precisely,  Madame,  precisely!  That 
is  just  my  argument.  Exactly  what  I 
observed  to  Mademoiselle  here,  as  we 
walked.  '/£'  I  said  to  Mademoiselle, 
— '  if  one  is  not  to  enjoy  one's  self 
isometimes,  if  one  is  not  to  see  a  tittle 
of  the  world,  of  life,  of  society,  of  the 
,town  in  fact,  mais,  mon  Dieu !  one 
might  as  well  be  a  good  religieiix  at 
jonce  !  Mademoiselle  agrees  with  me, 
n'est  ce  pas  ?  "  —  turning  towards  Ma- 
ie.  • 

"  I  —  I  detest  the  country  !  "  replied 
Marie,  glancing  sidewise  at  her  neigh- 
bor, whose  expression  of  bland  content- 
ment deepened  and  broadened  under 
the  momentary  flash. 
"  You  see  a  good  deal  of  the  world, 
'iirself,  Neighbor  Bouffle,"  said  Ma- 
ame  Farge  ;  "  your  bathing-houses 
ive  you  great  opportunity  of  seeing 
ic  gay  people  in  the  season." 

:.idame  is  right,"  said  Monsieur 
oufile  ;  "  my  little  property  on  the 
lage  introduces  me,  I  may  say,  to  all 
ic  world.  Indeed,  what  a  life  does 
ne  not  have  in  the  season  !  With  the 
athcrs  what  trouble !  When  one  has 
36  confidence  of  the  public,  one  is 
slave  of  the  public.  I  go  down  to 
he  beach  early  in  the  morning,  to  find 
crowd  there  already.  The  most  beau- 
ifully  dressed  ladies  are  on -every  side, 
vho  call  me,  and  gather  round  me  to 


drive  me  to  despair.  '  Have  you  a 
house  for  me,  Monsieur  Bouffle  ? ' 
'  Monsieur  Bouffle,  you  have  not  for- 
gotten me  ! '  '  Dear  Monsieur  Bouffle, 
you  must  not  refuse  us  a  bathing- 
house,'  they  all  cry.  And  I  —  I  do  my 
best,  but  I  cannot  serve  all.  Some 
must  always  be  disappointed.  Then  in 
the  balls  one  must  do  one's  possible 
to  accommodate  the  public  also.  Ma- 
demoiselle knows  not,  perhaps,  that  I 
am  the  proprietor  of  two  hundred  and 
ten  chairs,  to  let  in  the  Etablissement 
where  are  held  the  balls  ! " 

"  Can  you  see  the  dancing  ?  "  said 
Marie,  eagerly. 

"  Certainly !  one  can  see  admira- 
bly through  the  end-windows  of  the 
fitablissement,  when  one  has  interest, 
it  must  be  understood,  sufficient  to  get 
the  places,"  said  Monsieur  Bouffle,  with 
impressive  distinctness,  —  ""when  one 
has  interest." 

Marie  gave  a  sigh  of  mingled  satis- 
faction and  envy  over  the  recital.  "  Ce 
serait  magnifique  ! "  she  said. 

"  Bagatelles,  Mademoiselle,  baga- 
telles !  "  said  Monsieur  Bouffle.  "  I 
will  not  say  that  Dieppe  is  the  finest 
watering-place  in  France,  but  we  do 
things  very  well  here,  I  will  not  deny." 

"  I  was  here  at  the  Fete  of  the  Great 
Cross  on  the  Plage,"  said  Marie  ;  "  but 
that  was  beautiful ! " 

"  Hum  ! "  said  Monsieur  Bouffle,  in 
a  tone  of  quiet  tolerance,  "a  religious 
ceremony  is  very  well,  and  I  know  the 
country  people  always  come  in  to  see 
it ;  but  in  what  does  it  consist  ?  Mon- 
sieur le  vicaire  with  the  priests,  the 
Religieuses  from  the  Hotel  de  Dieu, 
sixty  jeunes  gens  from  the  college  com- 
munal, some  young  persons  from  the 
Seminaire,  a  few  flowers,  —  viola  tout  ! 
But  when  their  Majesties,  the  Emperor 
and  Empress,  honor.  Dieppe  with  a 
visit,  c'est  une  chose  a  voir  !  Mon- 
sieur le  prcfet,  Monsieur  le  maire,  all 
the  municipal  council,  are  engaged  to 
arrange  the  affair.  \Ve  have  then  a 
ball  at  the  Etablissement,  or  the  Hotel 
Royal,  the  cliffs  illuminated  with  red 
and  blue  lights,  fireworks,  cannons  fir- 
ing at  each  instant ;  but,  Mademoi- 


288 


Michael's  Night. 


[September, 


selle,"  says  Monsieur  Bouffle,  impress- 
ively, "without  being  a  resident  in 
Dieppe,  one  can  have  no  idea  of  it." 

Marie  laughed  coquettishly,  and  gave 
her  head  a  little  toss.  Madame  Farge 
lifted  her  bright  old  face.  "  Ah,  ha ! 
Marie,"  she  said  to  herself;  "so  that 
is  the  way  it  is  going, — is  it?  Voisin 
Bouffle  has  long  been  looking  out  for 
a  wife,  they  say.  Hum,  hum,  hum ! 
Well,  I  wish  him  well  with  his  bar- 
gain !  But  they  do  not  make  a  bad 
pair  after  all."  But  aloud  she  simply 
said,  being  a  wise  woman,  "  And  when 
are  you  going  home,  Marie  ?  " 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Marie;  "I 
have  not  made  up  my  mind  yet."  And 
for  some  reason  her  eyes  wandered 
over  to  Gabriel.  He  had  taken  no  part 
in  the  conversation,  being  busy  enough 
with  his  own  thoughts.  He  sat  in  the 
window,  with  one  arm  spread  on  the 
window-sill,  and  his  eyes  wandering 
continually  to  the  scene  on  the  wharf 
outside. 

Marie  Robbe  was  something  more 
than  a  mere  coquette  ;  she  was  shrewd 
and  discerning  as  far  as  her  own  inter- 
ests were  concerned,  and  far  from  be- 
ing carried  away  by  impetuous  feeling 
either  in  speech  or  action.  She  usu- 
ally had,  at  least,  two  meanings  in 
everything  she  said  or  did.  She  had  a 
natural  dislike  of  truth,  as  some  people 
have  of  cold  water.  She  was  afraid  of 
a  clear  statement  of  facts.  It  might 
get  her  into  trouble,  it  might  lead  to 
such  unforeseen  circumstances.  "  As 
long  as  you  represent  things  in  your 
own  way,"  she  argued,  "  you  have  a 
hold  on  them,  as  it  were,  and  they  can- 
not get  the  better  of  you.  And  then, 
without  positively  lying  (which  has  its 
drawbacks,  it  must  be  owned),  think 
how  many  natural  means  of  getting  out 
of  scrapes,  and  of  managing  things  to 
suit  your  purposes,  a  kind  Providence 
has  given  you!  Can  you  not  shake 
your  head,  or  open  your  eyes  wide,  or 
laugh  in  the  right  place,  or  shrug  your 
shoulders,  when  hearing  or  telling 
things,  and  then  let  ignorant  people 
take  the  responsibility  of  believing 
what  they  like  ?  " 


That  was  Marie's  logic,  and  one,  it 
must  be  owned,  calculated  to  produce 
great  serenity  of  character  and  assured 
self-trust.  It  is  true,  in  emergencies, 
she  usually  committed  her  affairs  to  the 
care  of  the  saints,  and  had  a  general 
belief  that  they  helped  her  as  well  as 
they  could.  In  case  of  her  schemes 
failing,  however,  she  did  not  hesitate 
*  to  lay  the  blame  where  she  considered 
it  due,  and  limited  the  number  of  her 
votive  offerings  at  their  shrines,  and 
probably,  had  she  been  sufficiently  en- 
lightened, might  have  turned  Protestant 
out  of  pure  spite ! 

While  Monsieur  Bouffle  was  descant- 
ing on  the  glories  of  Dieppe,  and  the 
privilege  of  being  a  resident  in  that  fa- 
vored centre  of  worldly  splendor,  Ma- 
rie was  turning  over  one  or  two  ques- 
tions in  her  judicious  mind.  Why  was 
Gabriel  Ducre's  still  in  Dieppe  when 
his  uncle  and  Jeanne  had  both  left? 
Perhaps  he  did  not  care  to  go  with 
Jeanne  after  all ;  one  does  not  care 
for  people  one  has  in  the  house  with 
one  all  day;  and  there  was  so  little 
variety  about  Jeanne  Defe're.  She 
wondered  what  Gabriel's  plans  were. 
She  wished  he  would  ask  her  to  go 
back  to  Verangeville  with  him  now, 
while  Monsieur  Bouffle  was  by.  Not 
that  she  had  any  intention  of  leaving 
Dieppe  for  several  days  to  come. 

"  I  don't  know  when  I  shall  go,"  re- 
peated Marie,  getting  up,  and  slowly 
crossing  the  room  towards  the  little 
mirror  that  hung  between  the  two  win- 
dows. "  Some  of  the  Verangeville  folk 
are  going  back  to-morrow,  and  two  or 
three  have  asked  me  to  go  with  them." 

"  But  I  suppose  thou  wilt  prefer  to 
stay  in  town,"  said  Madame  Farge. 
"  Eh  ?  " 

"  That  depends,"  said  Marie,  "  wheth- 
er I  find  town  as  pleasant  as  they  say 
it  is  "  ;  and  she  flung  a  glance  towards 
the  bench  and  Monsieur  Bouffle. 
am  not  in  such  a  hurry  to  run  away  as  ' 
some  are,"  she  continued,  looking  at  j 
herself  first  over  one  shoulder  and  then  j 
over  the  other.     "  This  detestable  wind 
blows  one  all  to  pieces  !     I  met  Jeanne  j 
Defe're  this  morning,"  —  looking  down; 


1 868.] 


St.  Michael's  Nig/it. 


289 


at  Gabriel,  who  leaned  his  elbow  on 
the  little  table  below  the  looking-glass, 
and  watched  her  somewhat  listlessly  ; 
"she  was  mounted  upon  her  donkey, 
and  looked  as  solemn  as  Mid-lent ; 
and  when  I  said,  quite  pleasantly,  '  I 
suppose  you  have  got  some  great  busi- 
ness on  hand,  Jeanne,  that  you  are  in 
such  a  hurry  to  leave  Dieppe,'  she  turns 
quite  sharply,  and  says,  '  Yes  ;  I  am 
going  to  look  after  my  own  business, 
and  I  advise  you  to  do  the  same  by 
yours.'  Mais,  grace  a  Dieu  !  "  contin- 
ued Marie,  devoutly,  "  I  have  no  busi- 
ness to  occupy  me  for  a  week  or 
more  !  " 

"  Neighbor  Souffle  will,  without 
doubt,  do  what  he  can  to  amuse  thee 
while  thou  art  here,  Marie,"  said  Ma- 
dame Farge. 

"  Most  certainly,"  replied  the  loqua- 
cious Bouffle  ;  "  and  there  is  always 
amusement  here  for  those  who  under- 
stand how  to  arrive  at  it.  People  come 
here  from  the  country ;  they  walk  up 
and  down  the  streets.  What  is  that  ? 
Nothing  at  all.  They  wander  here, 
they  wander  there.  '  Where  is  the  Cita- 
tlelle  ? '  they  inquire  ;  they  are  informed. 
They  walk,  walk,  walk.  Behold  them 
tired,  in  despair,  arrive  at  the  steep  as- 
cent of  the  Citadelle  at  the  wrong  side  ! 
On  the  contrary,  one  who  knows  makes  a 
^charming  little  course  down  the  Grande 
Rue,  sees  the  handsomest  shops  where 
one  may  buy  this  or  that  by  the  way, 
then  along  the  Plage  to  see  the  new 
fort  and  the  Emperor,  the  Hotel  Royal, 
and  the  new  residences.  A  little  re- 
view of  the  troops  takes  place  while  we 
are  there;  bieii.!  we  see  that.  And 
then,  a  little  cup  of  coffee,  a  morsel  of 
sucre  de  pomme,  and  we  are  refreshed. 
We  ascend,  we  arrive  at  the  Citadelle 
with  a  heart  gay  —  content." 

During  this  speech  Marie  continued 
to  smooth  and  plume  herself  with  quick, 
ungraceful  movements.  She  twisted 
the  chain  about  her  throat ;  she  retied 
the  ribbons  of  her  bodice  and  pulled  out 
the  bows  ;  then,  bending  towards  the 
glass  as  if  to-examine  them  more  close- 
ly, but  with  her  black  eyes  bent  full  on 
Gabriel,  she  said,  u  And  when  are  you 
VOL.  xxn.  —  NO.  131.  19 


going  to  Verangeville,  Gabriel  Ducres  ? 
Are  you  going  alone  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Gabriel ;  "  I 
am  going  to  Arques  to-day, — or  may 
be  I  shall  not  go  till  to-morrow,  —  and 
that  will  keep  me  a  day  longer  in 
Dieppe,  and  I  shall  go  on  Sunday  to 
Verangeville." 

"  Perhaps  I  may  go  then,"  she  said. 
"  I  have  not  made  up  my  mind  alto- 
gether." 

Monsieur  Bouffle  was  by  this  time 
beginning  to  show  signs  of  uneasiness 
at  the  low-toned  conversation  at  the 
window,  and  every  moment  that  foolish 
Marie  lingered  there  a  cloud  was  draw- 
ing nearer  and  nearer  that  threatened 
to  bring  a  tempest  into  the  peaceful 
kitchen  of  Madame  Farge.  She  stood 
still,  leaning  awkwardly  against  the  ta- 
ble, and  said  :  — 

"You  are  going  to  Arques  !  And 
that  was  the  reason  you  stayed  after  the 
others.  Eh,  Gabriel  Ducrds  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Gabriel,  with  provoking 
dulness  of  apprehension.  "  But  there 
will  still  be  several  going  then.  Was 
any  one  going  with  Jeanne,  Marie  ?  " 

"  How  should  I  know  ?  "  said  Marie, 
sharply.  "  Yes,  there  was,"  she  added, 
with  an  instinctive  flash  of  feeling  that 
it  might  be  disagreeable  news  to  Ga- 
briel. "When  I  saw  her  she  had  with 
her  fipipbanie  Milette  and  Pierre  Len- 
nct !  "  and  she  flung  herself  from  him, 
and  was  turning  to  go  to  her  place  on 
the  bench  by  Monsieur  Bouffle,  when 
she  was  stopped  half-way. 

There -was  a  sound  of  feet  on  the 
steps,  a  brisk  knock  at  the  door,  and, 
before  Madame  Farge  had  time  to  say 
"  Entrez,"  the  door  opened,  and  Fran- 
gois  Milette  burst  in.  In  his  haste  he 
tripped  his  foot  in  the  doorway,  and 
stumbled  forward  towards  Marie,  who 
jumped  back  with  a  little  scream.  The 
rest  of  the  company  thought  she  was 
afraid  of  being  jostled  by  the  clumsy 
young  man  who  plunged  in  so  uncere- 
moniously ;  but  the  fact  is,  that  Fran- 
gois  Milette,  appearing  in  any  way  at 
that  moment,  would  have  wrung  a  cry 
of  impatience  from  Marie  Robbe  ;  and 
his  awkwardness  in  this  case  was  the  on- 


290 


Michael's  Night. 


[September, 


ly  thing  she  had  to  thank  him  for,  inas- 
much as  it  furnished  a  cause  for  her  sud- 
den dismay  at  the  sight  of  him.  Fran- 
gois's  face  flushed  as  he  caught  sight  of 
Marie  ;  and  it  must  be  confessed  her 
cheeks  glowed  with  a  deeper  color  as  the 
young  man,  regaining  his  balance,  quick- 
ly said,  with  a  pleasant  laugh,  "Here 
thou  art,  after  all !  " 

But  it  was  no  honest  emotion  that 
tinged  her  cheeks,  as  we  know.  She, 
for  some  reason  best  known  to  herself, 
became  suddenly  cross.  She  pouted, 
hardly  looked  at  Frangois,  and  saun- 
tered back  to  her  place  on  the  bench  by 
Monsieur  Souffle. 

u  Ah,  Francois,"  said  the  old  woman, 
after  the  first  greetings  were  over,  "  thou 
art  not  in  luck  to  stumble  at  the  thresh- 
old !  Where  hast  thou  been  ?  "  • 

But  Francois  stood  dumbfoundered 
by  Marie's  manner,  and  looked  with 
much  perplexity  and  discomfiture  at 
her  and  little  fat  Monsieur  BoufHe  by 
turns. 

"  I  have  been  looking  for  Marie 
Robbe,"  h'e  said.  "  I  went  up  to  thy 
uncle's,  Marie,"  he  continued,  turning 
to  her  with  a  smile,  —  he  was  begin- 
ning to  persuade  himself  that  he  was 
mistaken  already,  and  that  Marie's  pout- 
ing meant  nothing  after  all,  —  "  but 
they  could  tell  me  nothing  of  thee  but 
that  thou  hadst  gone  out.  Where  in 
the  world  hast  thou  been  all  the  morn- 
ing ?  "  and  he  went  towards  her. 

There  was  no  room  on  the  bench, 
and  no  seat  near  ;  so  Francois,  totally 
unconscious  of  the  indignant  glances  of 
Monsieur  Bouffie,  seated  himself  on  the 
arm  of  the  settle  by  Marie,  leaning  to- 
wards her  as  he  rested  his  hand  on  the 
back. 

"  We  found  it  was  not  necessary  to 
go  down  to  Verangeville,"  said  Fran- 
gois in  a  cheerful  tone,  "so  I  have  an- 
other day  in  Dieppe  after  all." 

"  O,"  replied  Marie. 

"What  made  you  come  down  here, 
Marie  ? "  said  Francois,  lowering  his 
voice;  "and  who  is  that?'1''  he  said, 
indicating  the  scowling  Bouffle  with  his 
thumb,  but  without  looking  at  him. 

Marie  tilted  her  shoulder  awav  from 


Francois,  and  listened  attentively  to- 
Madame  Farge,  who  was  discussing  the 
\vholesomeness  of  some  dish  with  Mon- 
sieur Bouffle.. 

"  What  is  the  matter,  Marie  ?  "  said 
Frangois.  "  What  ails  thee  ?  Art  thou 
angry  with  me  ?  " 

No  answer. 

"  Marie,  what  have  I  done  to  vex 
thee  ?  "  he  said,  gently.  Marie  laughed 
vivaciously  at  a  remark  of  Bouffle,  but 
took  no  notice  of  Frangois. 

"  Diantre,  Marie  !  Must  I  stay  here 
like  a  donkey  outside  the  stable-door  ? " 
said  Frangois  in  an  angry  whisper. 

"Just  as  you  please,"  she  said,  v/ith 
a  quick  glance,  —  the  first  she  had 
vouchsafed  him.  If  he  had  been  cool, 
enough  to  read  its  meaning,  he  would 
have  seen  little  in  it  to  flatter  the  heart 
of  a  lover.  The  black  eyes  were  bright, 
cold,  and  hard  as  flint  stones. 

"  Thou  art  treating  me  badly,"  said 
he.  "  I  cannot  bear  it !  " 

No  answer,  except  as  much  as  is  con- 
veyed in  a  one-sided  shrug  of  the  shoul- 
der nearest  to  him. 

Frangois's  impatience  rose.  "Betise!" 
he  said.  "  Who  is  that  fat  man,  Marie  ?' 
He  looks  like  a  porpoise.  Is  it  because 
of  him  that  thou  art  so  little  amiable 
towards  me  ? " 

"  Little  amiable  !  "  said  Marie,  regard- 
ing him  with  a  cold  stare.  "  Indeed, 
Frangois  Milette,  you  are  polite,  —  very 
polite  and  very  obliging  !  " 

"  So  is  thy  new  friend,  I  observe ; 
very  polite  and  very  obliging,  and 
thou  also,  but  only  towards  one  side,  I 
perceive,"  said  Francois.  "Dost  thou 
do  this  merely  to  torment  me,  or  not?" 
he*  continued,  with  a  sudden  gust  of 
impatience  and  anger. 

Marie  looked  up  at  him  again.  Tears 
of  vexation  had  sprung  to  her  eyes,  for 
the  unsubdued  tone  in  which  Francois 
had  made  this  last  remark,  and  the  un- 
controllable state  upon  which  it  showed 
'him  to  be  verging,  was  most  exasperat- 
ing, and  filled  her  with  dismay.  For- 
tunately, tears  do  not  always  betray  the 
exact  emotions  from  which  they  spring  ; 
and  Marie's  tears,  trembling  in  her  up- 
turned eyes,  only  gave  a  softened  and. 


1 868.] 


St.  Mickstl's  Night. 


291 


supplicating  expression  to  her  face,  and 
Francois,  though  by  no  means  satisfied, 
was  entirely  disarmed  by  this  tearful 
glance. 

Madame  Farge  was  now  talking  ear- 
nestly to  Souffle,  who  turned  his  head, 
first  to  one  side  and  then  to  the  other, 
anxious  to  catch  the  first  pause  in  the 
old  woman's  talk,  tHat  he  might  take 
the  lead  in  the  conversation  himself, 
and  at  the  same  time  tormented  by  the 
desire  to  listen  to  the  whispered  remarks 
passing  between  Marie  and  this  auda- 
cious young  man,  who  sat  down  on  the 
arm  of  the  bench  in  such  an  uncon- 
cerned manner,  behaving  as  if  Marie 
belonged  to  him  entirely,  and  as  if  7ie, 
BoufHe,  proprietor  of  bathing-machines, 
two  hundred  and  ten  chairs  to  let,  and 
an  interest  in  the  Etablissement,  existed 
no  more  ! 

Marie  sat  now  with  her  eyes  cast 
down,  and  tapping  her  foot  impatiently 
on  the  floor.  She  longed  to  be  gone. 
She  wished  she  had  never  come  to 
Madame  Farge's  to  get  herself  into 
this  detestable  trap.  It  was  Monsieur 
Bouffle's  fault.  Did  he  not  insist  upon 
coming  ?  And  Gabriel  Ducre's,  —  a 
stupid,  awkward  fellow  without  sense, 
who  could  not  say  a  word  to  occupy 
Monsieur  BoufHe  or  divert  Francois  ! 
Why  could  not  Madame  Farge  listen 
with  civility  to  Bouffle,  and  mind  her 
spinning,  instead  of  keeping  her  sharp 
old  eyes  so  constantly  on  her  and  Fran- 
gois  ?  And  what  right  had  Francois  to 
come  down  there  just  at  this  time,  to 
upset  all  one's  plans,  instead  of  keeping 
his  word  of  going  to  Verangeville  ? 
Liar  ! 

In  Marie,  feelings  of  animosity  to- 
wards each  person  in  the  company 
were  rapidly  rising,  as  you  see.  She 
had  reasons  for  disliking  them  all.  Ga- 
briel, because  he  was  a  fool ;  Madame 
Farge,  because  she  was  not  a  fool ;  and 
Francois,  —  any  one  can  see  that  she 
had  reason  enough  for  regarding  him 
somewhat  malevolently,  it  being  always 
hard  to  feel  humanely  towards  those 
whom  we  have  wronged. 

I'rancois  sat  for  several  minutes, 
swinging  his  foot  listlessly,  and  whis- 


tling softly  to  himself  (that  unfailing 
sign  of  a  troubled  spirit  in  man).  He 
had  had  some  uneasy  suspicions  as  to 
Marie's  constancy,  but  never  before  of 
her  temper.  If  she  had  seemed  to  him 
occasionally  too  amiable  towards  others, 
she  had  never  been  anything  but  hon- 
eyed sweetness  to  himself.  He  was 
troubled  and  perplexed  and  angry; 
sickening  misgivings  were  creeping  in- 
to his  heart,  which  he  tried  manfully 
to  smother  with  sophisms. 

Marie  was  angry,  without  doubt ;  she 
was  vexed  at  him  for  something  he  had 
done,  or  not  done,  and  she  was  simply 
using  that  obnoxious  fat  man  as  a  means 
of  punishment.  He  could  not  have 
done  so  by  hew,  he  said  to  himself,  but 
then  people  are  different,  and  she  her- 
self had  said  she  did  not  take  things  so 
"  exactly  "  as  he  did.  In  what  could  it 
be  that  he  had  offended  her  ?  Could  it 
be  anything  he  had  said  last  night  ? 
Could  it  be,  —  but  no  !  that  was  impos- 
sible. She  could  not  have  said  "  Good 
night "  so  pleasantly,  as  she  turned  into 
the  house,  if  she  had  been  offended  at 
that !  She  looked  troubled  at  this  mo- 
ment, and  there  were  tears  in  her  eyes 
when  she  looked  up  just  now,  pauvrc 
petite  ! 

So  he  went  on,  deluding  himself  with 
what  he  half  knew  were  delusions  ;  for, 
without  doubt,  he  loved  the  little  black 
head  with  its  shining  hair,  turned  so 
obstinately  away  from  him  and  towards 
the  loquacious  BoufHe,  and,  at  this  mo- 
ment of  insanity,  would  have  given  any 
good  thing  he  possessed  to  have  had 
the  little  faithless  face  turned  towards 
him,  and  the  black  eyes  looking  up  to 
him,  and  Marie,  with  all  her  smiles  and 
deceitful  blushes,  and  glances,  his  own 
once  more,  spite  of  her  crossness,  spite 
of  his  doubts  of  her  good  faith  and  all 
his  suspicions.  So,  instead  of  going 
out  and  thinking  it  over  like  a  sen- 
sible fellow,  he  leaned  down  towards 
her  once  more,  and  said  softly  and 
gently :  — 

"  If  I  have  offended  thee,  Marie,  I 
ask  thy  pardon.  Make  it  up  now,  and 
say  thou  wilt  go  to  the  Citadelle  with 
me  this  evening.  Eh,  Marie?"  And 


292 


MicliaeVs  Night. 


[September, 


he  tried  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  her  face. 
But  she  turned  farther  away  from  him, 
and  unfortunately  Monsieur  Bouffle  was 
just  beyond,  and  naturally  and  fatally 
Frangois's  eager  gaze  fell  upon  that 
portly  form,  and  a  very  singular  change 
took  place  in  the  expression  of  his  face 
as  it  did  so.  His  eyes  expanded,  his 
lips  opened ;  it  was  as  if  he  saw  a 
ghost. 

"  Diantre  !  "  shouted  Francois,  spring- 
ing to  his  feet,  —  an  expression  which 
made  the  company  generally  start  and 
look  at  each  other,  and  the  young  man, 
who,  on  his  part,  seemed  to  care  very 
little  what  the  direction  of  their  eyes 
might  be.  His  own  were  fixed,  strange 
.to  say,  not  upon  the  face  ef  the  amazed 
and  gasping  Bouffle,  but  upon  his  black 
satin  waistcoat !  He  even  took  a  step 
towards  the  object  of  his  scrutiny,  as  if 
uncertain  of  the  testimony  of  his  own 
eyes  at  the  distance  of  two  yards. 
Then  he  turned  upon  Marie  :  "  I  ad- 
mire your  economy,  — your  good  econo- 
my in  making  gifts  to  your  friend,  Marie 
Robbe  !  Take  this  also,  and  use  it  in 
the  same  way ;  it  will  probably  do  to 
be  worn  on  Sunday  when  you  go  to 
Argues  /  I  have  no  further  use  for  it." 
And  he  tore  .from  his  button-hole  a 
little  knot  of  ribbon  that  the  faithless 
Marie  had  tied  there  herself,  and  flung 
it  at  her  feet. 

"  Mais  ma  foi !  what  is  this  ?  Voila 
un  beau  venez-y-voir ! "  said  the  aston- 
ished Bouffle.  "  Is  Monsieur  in  his 
right  senses,  or  is  he  mad  ?  " 

"  Less  mad  than  he  has  been  for  some 
time,"  said  Francois,  looking  straight  at 
Marie,  with  a  laugh  which  seemed  ready 
to  end  in  something  else,  poor  fellow  ! 
Marie  had  turned  pale,  and  sat  trem- 
bling before  this  outburst ;  but  at  these 
last  words  of  Francois  she  looked  up 
at  him,  and  certainly  the  expression  of 
her  countenance  contained  as  much 
anger  as  fear,  and  was  unsoftened  by 
even  a  gleam  of  pity. 

"  Never  fear,"  said  Frangois,  "  that  I 
will  disturb  such  pleasant  company  fur- 
ther. I  am  going."  And  he  rushed 
out,  and  Gabriel  jumped  up  and  ran 
after  him. 


"  Mechant !  "  said  Marie,  in  a  burst 
of  tears,  holding  her  apron  to  her  eyes. 

"  This  is  very  extraordinary,"  said 
Monsieur  Bouffle,  shaking  his  head,  — 
"  very  extraordinary  !  I  must  beg  of 
Mademoiselle  to  give  me  some  explana- 
tion of  this." 

*'  I  hate  him  !  "  was  Marie's  not  very 
satisfactory  reply. 

"  I  should  have  imagined  that  he  hated 
you,  Mademoiselle,  from  his  manner, 
and  me  also,"  said  Monsieur  Bouffle. 

"  Gamin  !  "  sobbed  Marie,  behind  her 
apron. 

"  His  manner  of  regarding  my  per- 
son was  most  extraordinary.  It  made 
my  blood  run  cold  !  What  an  expres- 
sion !  An  eye  of  savage,  a  laugh  of 
devils  ! " 

"  What  was  it  that  made  him  angry  ? " 
said  Madame  Farge. 

"  Because  I  would  not  go  to  the  Cita- 
delle  with  him,  and  was  tired  of —  of 
his  foo-foo-lish  talk,"  sobbed  Marie. 

"  Hadst  thou  promised  to  go  with 
him  ?  "  said  shrewd  Madame  Farge. 

"  Promised !  "  said  Marie,  quickly, 
and  snatching  her  apron  from  her  face, 
"he  always  thinks  I  promise  him 
things ;  and  Monsieur  knows  I  am 
going  with  him  to  take  supper  with 
Mesdemoiselles  his  sis-sis-sisters,  and 
when  he  heard  that,  he  began  to  —  to 
call  Monsieur  names,  and  — 

"  Started  up  and  rushed  towards  me," 
burst  in  the  little  man,  —  "  me,  who  sat 
here  tranquil,  without'  offence  to  any 
one ;  shouts  like  a  madman  ;  regards 
my  person,"  says  Monsieur  Bouffle, 
striking  his  black  satin  waistcoat  with 
a  dignified  violence,  "as  if  I  were  some- 
thing very  astounding.  Ma  foi,  Ma- 
dame !  and  this  impertinent  is  one 
whom  you  cherish,  whom  you  load 
with  favors  !  "  fumed  Monsieur  Bouffle, 
who  somehow  concluded  that  Madame 
Farge  was  in  sympathy,  if  not  in  league, 
with  Frangois. 

The  old  woman  nodded  her  head  with 
some  vivacity.  "  He  is  a  good  lad," 
she  said,  and  her  eyes  flashed  threaten- 
ingly under  her  bushy  eyebrows,— 
good  lad,  and  may  be  he  has  had  good 
cause  to  be  angry  !  " 


1 868." 


S/.  Michael's  Night. 


293 


Monsieur  Bouffle  wiped  his  brow,  and 
looked  with  a  distracted  countenance 
first  at  Madame  Farge  and  then  at 
Marie,  in  the  hope  of  receiving  some 
explanation.  Marie  knew  it  was  wisest 
not  to  array  herself  against  Madame 
Farge,  so  she  merely  continued  to  cry, 
which  was  simply  a  defensive  measure, 
calculated  to  ward  off  attacks  and  af- 
ford a  reason  for  silence.  But  if  it  did 
anything  to  conciliate  the  old  woman, 
this  mode  of  defence  had  quite  a  con- 
trary effect  on  Monsieur  Bouffle.  He 
was  in  the  dark.  What  did  it  all  mean  ? 
There  was  something  going  on  which 
he  could  not  understand.  Marie  cer- 
tainly knew  all  about  it,  and  Madame 
Farge  showed  by  her  remarks  that  she 
had  some  ideas  on  the  subject,  and,  as 
Monsieur  Bouffle  had  not,  he  naturally 
felt  impatient. 

"  Voila  les  femmes,"  said  Monsieur 
Bouffle,  in  the  depths  of  his  harassed 
spirit,  "  elles  se  fachent  toujours  de 
rien.  If  Mademoiselle  would  but  say 
something,  —  give  some  explanation," 
he  continued  aloud,  "  to  let  one  know 
what  all  this  stamping,  shouting,  call- 
ing of  names,  and  —  crying  (Monsieur 
•Bouffle,  like  a  person  of  delicacy,  hesi- 
tated a  moment  before  the  word  crying, 
but  he  said  it  at  last,  though  it  might 
'sound  a  little  severe)  —  and  crying  is 
about." 

"  I  don't  know  at  all,"  said  Marie, 
looking  up  over  her  apron. 

"  But  who  is  this  young  man  ?  that 
is  what  I  demand,  Mademoiselle,"  said 
Monsieur  Bouffle,  with  some  heat  and 
categorical  distinctness. 

"  Francois  Milette  ;  he  is  a  neighbor 
of  ours  at  Verangeville.  He  knows  my 
father,  and  comes  sometimes  to  our 
house.  But  why  he  was  so  enraged  just 
now  I  know  not.  I  simply  wanted  to 
listen  to  what  you,  Monsieur,  were  say- 
ing, when  he  begins  to  talk  at  the  same 
time,  and  when  I  do  not  answer  him, — 
one  cannot  listen  to  two  at  the  same 
time,"  says  Marie,  looking  up  with  an 
expression  of  innocent  appeal,  —  "he 
becomes  at  once  enraged." 

"  Ah  !  "    said    Monsieur     Bouffle, 
thoughtfully. 


"  Makes  himself  a  lion  to  devour 
me  when  I  say  I  prefer  to  go  with 
Monsieur." 

"  C'est  ga,  —  c'est  c,a  !  I  divine  the 
meaning  of  this  little  affair.  When  one 
has  a  little  penetration  it  is  no  longer 
mysterious,"  said  Monsieur  Bouffle  to 
himself,  nodding  his  head,  while  some- 
thing like  a  relenting  smile  softened  the 
severity  of  his  countenance. 

"  When  I  said  I  tired  myself  of  his 
betise,  he  began  to  call  Monsieur 
names  —  to  —  " 

"  I  comprehend  —  I  comprehend  — 
calm  yourself,  my  friend,"  said  the  little 
man,  laying  his  hand  on  her  shoulder, 
"  dry  your  tears,  and  we  will  continue 
our  way." 

And  Monsieur  Bouffle  positively  prof- 
fered the  use  of  his  red  cotton  pocket- 
handkerchief  to  his  friend,  who  accepted 
this  singular  token  of  good-will,  and 
after  wiping  her  eyes,  and  generally 
smoothing  her  ruffled  plumes,  folded  it 
neatly  into  a  square,  and  returned  it  to 
him  again.  After  this  little  scene  of 
mutual  regard  and  confidence,  the  pair 
went  out  together. 

Now,  though  Marie's  explanation  of 
Francois's  violent  behavior  was  entirely 
satisfactory  to  Monsieur  Bouffle,  we 
know  that  it  was  not  her  refusal  to 
go  to  the  Citadelle  with  him  that  had 
caused  this  outbreak  on  Francois's  part. 
And  however  angry  her  bad  treatment 
of  him  during  this  interview  might  have 
made  him,  it  need  not  have  caused  a 
breach  impassable  by  the  bridge  of  rec- 
onciliation. There  was  probably  much 
combustible  matter  in  the  way  of  sus- 
picion and  misgiving  already  filling  his 
mind,  but  that  sudden  explosion  was 
caused  by  something  more  positive,  a. 
red-hot  flash  of  conviction  and  of  pain 
that  set  him  in  a  blaze,  and  burst  from 
his  lips  in  that  mad  "  Diantrc  /  "  that  had 
startled  the  company,  as  we  have  seen. 

Two  months  before,  one  pleasant 
summer  evening,  Francois  gave  Marie 
a  chain  which  he  had  carved  for  her  out 
of  the  smooth,  hard  shells  of  hazel-nuts. 
The  work  was  delicate  and  pretty,  and 
Marie  was  pleased  enough  with  it,  and 
wore  it  constantly  for  a  time.  After  one 


294  On  the  Modern  Methods  of  studying  Poisons.     [September, 


of  her  recent  visits  to  Dieppe,  however, 
she  had  returned  with  a  silver  chain,  • —  a 
gift  from  her  well-to-do  uncle,  no  doubt, 
who  had  no  children  of  his  own,  and 
always  made  much  of  his  pretty  niece, 
and  frequently  gave  her  presents.  After 
this,  Francois  saw  no  more  of  his  chain  ; 
and  though  he  was  too  proud  to  ask 
Marie  anything  about  it,  he  felt  a  little 
sore  in  observing  that  even  on  working 
days,  when  the  gayer  ornament  was 
laid  by,  his  poor  little  gift  was  still  slight- 
ed. Now,  as  he  sat  on  the  end  of  the 
settle  by  Marie,  and  made  a  last  attempt 
to  get  a  friendly  glance  or  word  from 
her,  his  eyes  fell  upon  Monsieur  Bouffle. 
In  that  moment  down  toppled  all  poor 


Francois's  simple  fabric  of  faith  and 
happiness  in  one  heap  of  ruin ;  for 
there  across  the  black  satin  waistcoat, 
attached  to  a  big  silver  watch,  was  his 
own  little  nutshell  chain,  —  identical, 
unmistakable,  —  hopelessly  convincing 
of  treachery  !  And  now  we  know  why 
it  was  that  he  made  such  a  scene,  and 
behaved  so  badly  ;  and  perhaps  we  may 
forgive  him,  and  feel  some  sympathy 
with  him,  even  though,  like  those  far- 
sighted  moralists  who  are  always  able 
to  find  some  consoling  lesson  in  the 
misfortunes  cf  their  friends,  we  can 
easily  see  that  this  painful  opening  of 
poor  Frangois's  eyes  was  "  all  for  his 
good." 


ON   THE   MODERN   METHODS   OF   STUDYING   POISONS. 


A  POISON  has,  for  people  in  gen- 
eral, the  interest  which  belongs  to 
all  things  that  combine  the  qualities  of 
mystery  and  power.  With  this  concep- 
tion is  also  associated  the  idea  of  abil- 
ity for  good  as  well  as  for  evil,  and  the 
not  unjust  belief  that  such  agents,  like 
fire,  are  good  slaves,  but  bad  masters, 
and  may  be  as  useful  in  small  amounts 
as  they  are  hurtful  in  large  ones. 

Among  civilized  people,  therefore, 
deadly  substances,  such  as  opium,  ar- 
senic, and  nux  vomica,  have  been  rec- 
ognized as  means  of  good  when  rightly 
employed  ;  and  although  held  in  dread 
as  medicines  by  many,  are  yet  among 
the  safest  of  all  drugs,  because,  when 
they  begin  to  cause  evil  in  the  body, 
they  announce  their  effects  in  the  shape 
of  symptoms  so  decisive  as  at  once  to 
lead  to  their  abandonment.  At  the 
same  time,  it  may  be  said  of  them 
again,  that,  like  fire,  or  rather  heat,  they 
so  vary  in  influence  according  to  the 
quantity  used,  that  with  one  or  another 
dose  they  become,  as  it  were,  altogeth- 
er different  in  the  results  they  bring 
about ;  for  just  as  heat  may,  according 
to  amount,  warm  your  hands,  cook  your 


meats,  or  burn  your  house  clown,  so 
arsenic  is  in  minute  dose  an  efficient 
tonic,  in  larger  dose  a  powerful  altera- 
tive, and  in  still  greater  amount  a  hor- 
rible poison  ;  while  just  the  same  ac- 
count may  be  rendered  of  nux  vomica, 
or  its  active  principle,  strychnia. 

Barbarous  nations  seem  to  know  of 
these  agents  only  for  the  chase,  or  for 
evil  in  some  shape,  and  use  them  to 
make  deadly  their  arrows,  to  destroy  a 
foe,  or  in  the  trial  by  ordeal,  of  which 
Mr.  Lea  has  given  so  admirable  a  de- 
scription in  his  recent  work  on  "Su- 
perstition and  Force." 

These  uses  of  poisons  by  savages 
have  been  the  chief  means  of  attracting 
the  attention  of  travellers  to  certain 
substances  which,  in  one  way  or  anoth- 
er, have  proved  of  the  utmost  value, 
when,  from  the  hands  of  the  barbarian, 
they  have  passed  into  the  busy  fingers, 
and  under  the  acute  eye,  of  the  civilized 
man  of  science.  As  instances  of  this, 
the  famous  woorara  of  South  America, 
and  the  Calabar  bean,  may  be  cited. 
The  first,  an  arrow  poison,  used  through- 
out Brazil  and  Guiana,  has  come  to  be 
an  indispensable  agent  in  the  physio- 


1 868.] 


On  tJic  Modern  Methods?  of  studying  Poisons. 


295 


logical  laboratory;  and  the  latter,  an 
ordeal  poison,  has  been  shown  to  pos- 
sess, almost  alone,  the  power  to  con- 
tract the  pupil  of  the  eye,  just  as  bella- 
donna has  been  longer  known  to  have 
the  ability  to  cause  its  dilatation  or  en- 
largement, —  both  being  thus  of  value 
in  certain  diseases  of  the  eye. 

A-vast  amount  of  ingenious  care  has 
been  spent  upon  the  definition  of  poi- 
sons ;  and  with  every  descriptive  phrase 
of  them  all  it  is  easy  enough  to  find  a 
cause  of  quarrel,  while  few  will  really 
differ  as  to  what  are  truly  poisons.  As 
a  general  rule,  the  body  contains,  in 
uncombined  form,  none  of  the  poison- 
ous substances  known  to  outside  na- 
ture. Phosphorus  exists  as  phosphor- 
ic acid  in  union  with  alkaline  bases, 
and  is  only  poisonous  when  isolated. 
Carbonic  acid,  a  poison  when  inhaled, 
is  found  in  limited  amount  in  the  body ; 
but  with  these  exceptions,  and  that  of 
a  minute  quantity'of  the  salts  of  copper 
in  the  bile,  or  of  this  metal  and  of  lead 
in  the  blood,  the  rule  holds  good ;  so 
that  a  poison  might  be  aptly  denned 
as  an  agent  which  has  no  normal  exist- 
-ence  in  the  body  of  man. 

If  any  reader  be  curious  enough  to 
look  at  the  older  classifications  of  poi- 
sons, he  will  find  that  the  more  ancient 
toxicologies  divide  them  into  irritants, 
narcotics,  and  aero-narcotics. 

This  answered  well  enough  when  but 
little  was  known  as  to  these  agents, 
except  that  they  gave  rise  to  certain 
general  effects,  which  are  rudely  indi- 
cated in  the  arrangements  above  re- 
\  to.  Modern  toxicology,  of  which 
Ornla  and  Christison  were  the  parents, 
has  utterly  destroyed  the  value  of  these 
!;;cations  ;  but,  while  it  lias  brought 
to  light  a  vast  amount  of  fruitful  knowl- 
.  it  has  only  introduced  confusion 
into  every  new  effort  at  so  relating 
them  to  one  another  as  to  make  possi- 
ble a  distinct  classification.  The  chief 
cle.  lies  in  the  fact,  that  almost 
every  poison  acts,  not  on  one,  but  on 
numerous  organs  of  the  body ;  so  that 
it  is  anything  but  easy  to  decide  either 
the  order  in  which  different  vital  parts 
undergo  attack,  or  which  organ  when 


injured  is  most  potent  in  occasioning 
the  fatal  result.  Besides  this,  so  small 
a  number  of  poisons  have  been  thor- 
oughly studied,  that  it  is  only  a  very 
few  as  to  which  we  are  at  all  well  in- 
formed. The  difficulties  to  which  I 
allude  will  be  much  more  readily'  un- 
derstood, as  I  proceed  to  describe  how 
certain  poisons  have  been  investigated, 
and  the  results  of  these  researches  ;  so 
that  I  shall  not  attempt  to  point  out 
further  the  annoyances  of  the  classifier. 

My  chief  object  is  briefly  to  sketch 
the  history  of  three  well-known  poisons, 
and  to  explain,  as  clearly  as  may  be, 
the  methods  by  which  the  modern  tox- 
icologist  attempts  to  discover  upon 
what  organs  they  act,  and  how  they 
affect  them. 

For  this  purpose,  let  us  select  a  nerve 
poison,  a  muscle  poison,  and  a  blood 
poison. 

Nerve  poisons  may  very  well  be  rep- 
resented by  the  most  famous  of  them 
all,  —  the  well-known  woorara,  or  wou- 
rali,  of  South  America.  The  ever-bless- 
ed adventurer  who  is  said  to  have  given 
to  Europe  the  potato  and  the  pipe  was 
also  the  first  to  describe  woorara,  which 
he  speaks  of  as  follows  :  — 

"  There  was  nothing  whereof  I  was 
more  curious,  than  to  finde  out  the  true 
remedies  of  these  poisonous  arrowes  ; 
for  besides  the"  mortalitie  of  the  wound 
they  make,  the  partie  shot  indureth  the 
most  insufferable  torment  in  the  world, 
and  abideth  a  most  uglie  and  lamenta- 
ble death,  sometimes  dying  starke  mad, 
sometimes  their  bowels  breaking  out  of 
their  bellies,  and  are  presently  dis- 
coloured as  blacke  as  pitch,  and  so  un- 
savoury as  no  man  can  endure  to  cure 
or  attend  them,  and  it  is  more  strange 
to  know  that  in  all  this  time  there  was 
never  Spaniard,  either  by  gift  or  tor- 
ment that  could  attaine  to  the  true 
knowledge  of  the  cure,  although  they 
hav-e  martyred  and  put  to  invented 
torture  I  know  not  how  many  of  them. 
But  every  one  of  these  Indians  know  it 
not,  no,  not  one  among  thousands,  but 
their  soothsaiers  and  priests  who  do 
conceale  it  and  only  teache  it  from  the 
father  to  the  sonne." 


296 


On  the  Modern  Methods  of  studying  Poisons.     [September,. 


Later  travellers,  as  De  la  Condamine 
and  Bancroft,  gave  more  explicit  ac- 
counts of  this  agent ;  but,  as  usual,  Hum- 
boldt's  statements  have  been  proved  to 
be  the  most  reliable. 

All  over  South  America  and  the 
Isthmus  the  natives  employ  certain 
weeds  whose  juices  they  boil,  in  combi- 
nation with  numerous  inert  materials, 
until  a  thick  extract  is  obtained,  which 
is  known  as  woorara,  curare,  wourali, 
and  the  like.  That  made  on  the  Isth- 
mus is  a  poison  for  the  muscular  tissue 
of  the  heart,  and  is  also  called  corroval, 
whilst  all  of  the  Brazilian  arrow  poisons 
are  of  a  different  nature,  and  act  chiefly 
on  the  nerves  of  motion.  It  is  with 
these  latter  poisons  that  we  propose 
first  to  deal.  They  reach  Europe  in 
gourds  or  little  earthen  pots,  some  of 
which  are  now  before  me,  as  well  as  on 
the  points  of  arrows  or  spears  dipped 
in  the  fresh  extract  and  allowed  to  dry. 
The  extract  itself  is  a  resinous-looking 
substance,  in  appearance  resembling 
aloes. 

Let  us  suppose  such  a  material  to 
have  been  placed  in  our  hands  for  ex- 
amination. How  shall  we  treat  it  in 
order  to  discover  its  powers  as  a  poi- 
son ?  —  a  simple  matter  it  may  seem  to 
some  of  my  readers,  but  one  as  regards 
this  agent  which  has  occupied  the  care- 
ful attention  of  several  of  the  first  in- 
tellects of  the  day.  Let  us  see  how  our 
present  knowledge  about  it  was  reached. 
De  la  Condamine,  and  all  the  observers 
up  to  the  time  of  Fontana,  merely  re- 
corded the  obvious  external  effects  on 
animals,  and  this  was  what  they  saw. 

A  morsel  of  woorara  is  introduced 
under  the  skin  of  an  animal,  as  a  rabbit. 
In  a  minute  the  creature  lies  down,  too 
weak  to  walk,  then  the  head  falls,  the, 
hind  legs  become  useless  ;  the  fore  legs 
are  next  palsied,  the  rabbit  rolls  over. 
The  breath  becomes  quick  and  labored, 
and  within  a  few  minutes  the  animal 
dies,  usually  without  convulsions,  more 
rarely  with  them.  The  outward  phe- 
nomena tell  us  only  that  we  are  deal- 
ing with  an  active  and  probably  a  pain- 
less poison. 

Fontana  began  to  analyze  the  symp- 


toms more  closely,  but  was  wrong  in 
his  final  conclusion,  that  it. destroys  the 
power  of  the  muscles  to  respond  by 
movement  to  stimulus,  or,  as  we  would 
say,  deprives  them  of  irritability.  In 
iSirthe  famous  Sir  Benjamin  Brodie 
discovered  that,  if  an  animal  be  poisoned 
with  woorara,  the  heart  continues  to 
beat  for  a  time  after  other  movements 
cease ;  and  that,  if  then  we  imitate 
breathing  by  blowing  air  at  intervals  into- 
the  lungs,  the  heart  may  keep  on  pulsat- 
ing for  hours,  or  even  so  long  that,  the 
poison  being  filtered  out  of  the  body  by 
the  excretions,  life  may  finally  be  pre- 
served. Now  here  was  the  needed 
clew,  since  it  thus  became  clear  that 
the  heart  ceased  to  beat  in  this  poison-  , 
ing,  not  because  it  was  directly  attacked, 
but  because  something  had  interfered 
with  the  power  to  breathe,  which  in 
warm-blooded  beings  is  instantly  essen- 
tial to  the  motion  of  the  heart. 

Two  German  physicians,  one  of  whom, 
Virchow,  is  now  among  the  first  savans 
and  politicians  of  Prussia,  next  pointed 
out  that  \voorara  destroys  primarily  the 
activity  of  the  voluntary  muscles,  but 
leaves  untouched  that  of  the  involuntary 
ones,  as  the  heart.  This  was  only  a 
step  towards  generalizing  the  facts  ;  it 
brought  nothing  new. 

Kolliker,  and,  about  the  same  time, 
Claude  Bernard,  the  greatest  name  in 
living  physiology,  at  length  solved  the 
problem,  and  showed  that  in  reality  thi& 
poison  only  seems  to  palsy  the  muscles 
because  it  kills  the  nerves  of  motion. 

Let  us  run  over  the  evidence  which 
has  brought  us  to  this  point.  The  in- 
strument we  use,  if  I  may  so  call  it,  is 
the  frog,  which  possesses  a  value  for 
physiological  investigation  quite  incal- 
culable. Depopulate  the  frog-ponds  of 
Europe,  and  the  toxicologist  would  al- 
most lose  his  science.  This  little  crea- 
ture has  for  him  these  useful  peculiari- 
ties,—  it  is  cold-blooded  and  tenacious 
of  life  ;  its  functions  are  more  indepen- 
dent than  those  of  warm-blooded  ani- 
mals, so  that  when  one,  as  breathing,, 
ceases,  the  others  are  not  at  once  anni- 
hilated. There  are  three  reasons  for 
this  :  first,  the  individuality  of  function- 


1 868.] 


On  the  Modern  Methods  of  studying  Poisons. 


•97 


which  is  shown  by  the  heart  continuing 
to  beat  for  hours  after  excision  ;  and 
second,  as  I  think  the  fact,  that  where- 
as in  mammals  all  the  blood  goes  from 
the  heart  through  the  lungs,  and  is 
checked  more  or  less  when  breathing 
stops,  in  reptiles  only  a  part  takes  this 
channel,  so  that  we  have  a  possible  cir- 
culation, even  when  respiration  is  at 
an  end.  Finally,  in  the  frog,  the  skin 
is  an  active  agent  in  carrying  on  res- 
piration, and  enables  it  to  survive  a 
long  time  the  loss  of  its  lungs.  The 
extent  to  which  these  peculiarities  pro- 
tect is  seen  best  in  the  snapping-turtle, 
which  can  hardly  be  killed  by  woorara. 
Respiration  stops,  but  the  heart  goes 
on  acting,  and  after  several  days  the 
flaccid  mass  becomes  alive  and  vicious 
as  before. 

A  recent  writer  has  shown,  that,  com- 
paring the  rabbit  and  turtle,  it  takes 
only  one  ninety-sixth  of  a  grain  of 
woorara  per  pound  of  the  animal  to 
insure  death  in  the  rabbit,  whilst  in  the 
turtle  not  less  than  the  seventh  of  a  grain 
per  pound  of  the  reptile's  weight  must 
be  directly  injected  into  the  veins  in 
order  to  make  very  improbable  its  re- 
turn to  life.  On  one  occasion  three 
grains  having  been  cast  into  the  blood 
of  a  snapper  weighing  twenty -two 
pounds,  it  suddenly  became  feeble,  and, 
extending  its  claws,  lay  still.  During 
fifty-nine  hours  it  was  supposed  to  be 
dead  ;  but  at  the  close  of  this  time,  to 
.the  observers'  amazement,  feeble  mo- 
tions were  seen,  and  within  a  few  hours 
it  was  to  appearance  as  well  as  ever, 
and  both  able  and  willing  to  justify  its 
fame  as  the  most  sayage  of  the  dwellers 
in  creek  or  mill-pond. 

If,  then,  we  stop  the  heart  of  a  warm- 
blooded creature,  respiration  ceases. 
Let  breathing  terminate,  and  the  heart 
quits  beating.  Whereas  in  a  reptile 
only  the  former  is  true,  and  that  not 
always,  or  of  necessity,  since  in  the 
alligator  respiration  may  go  on  lono- 
after  the  heart  is  at  rest.  Mindful  of 
these  facts,  we  take  a  frog,  and  put  un- 
der its  skin  a  morsel  of  woorara.  The 
symptoms  are  the  same  as  in  the  rab- 
bit; but  if,  just  before  a  general  relax- 


ation of  the  limbs  announces  the  com- 
ing of  death,  we  open  the  chest,  and 
expose  the  heart,  we  shall  see  it  beat- 
ing quietly,  and  continuing  to  do  so  for 
one  or  more  hours  after  breathing  has 
ceased.  We  are  thus  at  once  made 
•sure  that  woorara  does  not  act  pri- 
marily on  the  heart.  To  vary  the  proof, 
we  may  blow  now  and  then  a  little  air 
into  the  lungs,  and  we  shall  find  the 
flagging  heart,  under  the  influence  of  a 
properly  aerated  blood,  at  once  quicken- 
ing its  beat  anew ;  so  that  we  are  now 
doubly  certain  that  the  poison  has  not 
hurt  this  organ  at  least.  Let  us  next 
expose  in  the  hind  legs  the  large  nerve 
which  conveys  from  the  brain  to  the 
muscles  the  excitations  which  induce 
motion.  We  pinch  or  galvanize  the 
nerve,  but  cause  no  muscular  twitch- 
ings,  as  we  may  do  for  many  hours  in 
a  frog  killed  by  some  other  means, 
such  as  decapitation.  We  have  learned 
thus  that  woorara  poisons  the  nerves 
of  motion,  so  that,  as  it  assumes  con- 
trol, all  movements  except  those  of  tha 
heart  at  once  cease  and  the  will  in  vfcin 
calls  upon  the  muscles  to  act  when  the 
nerves  are  made  unable  to  carry  its 
orders.  Breathing  depends  on  tha 
regular  action  of  muscles,  to  which 
an  order  to  move  is  momently  conveyed 
by  nerves  from  certain  parts  of  the 
brain.  The  poison  cuts  these  nerve 
wires,  if  you  like  so  to  call  them,  and 
presently. the  breath  goes  in  and  out  no 
longer,  and  the  animal  dies. 

Meanwhile  if  we  apply  to  the  mus- 
cles  themselves  the  irritations  which 
have  failed  to  influence  them  through 
their  nerves,  we  see  the  part  on  a 
sudden  convulsed.  If  we  touch  them, 
they  move;  if  we  galvanize  them,  they 
twitch  ;  so  that  the  muscles,  it  would 
seem,  are  themselves  unpoisoned.  We 
have  learned,  therefore,  that  the  nerves 
of  motion  have  been  injured  so  as  to 
act  no  longer,  and  that  the  muscles  are 
intact.  A  little  closer  examination 
makes  us  suspect  also  that  the  irrita- 
bility of  the  muscular  fibres  is  in- 
creased and  prolonged,  rather  than  les- 
sened. 

We  want  next  to  ascertain  if  the 


298  On  t!ic- Modern  Methods  of  studying  Poisons.     [September, 


nerves  of  sensation,  or  those  of  touch 
arid  pain,  be  altered  as  are  the  nerves 
of  movement;  but  this  is  not  easy  to 
do,  because  the  only  mode  of  express- 
ing pain  is  by  some  form  of  motion,  as 
a  leap  or  a  cry,  and  these  are  impossi- 
ble, owing  to  the  palsy  of  the  motor, 
nerves.  The  brain  may  be  clear,  the 
power  of  feeling  perfect,  and  even  the 
muscles  healthy,  but  if  you  have  not 
a  channel  for  conveying  messages  of 
movement  to  the  latter,  there  is  left  no 
means  of  outwardly  expressing  pain. 

We  reach  a  certainty  in  the  follow- 
ing way :  The  arteries  in  one  hind  leg, 
we  will  say  the  left,  having  been  tied 
so 'that  it  has  no  communication  by 
bloodvessels  with  the  rest  of  the  body, 
we  put  under  the  skin  of  the  back  a 
morsel  of  woorara.  Presently  the  ani- 
mal becomes  paralyzed;  all  its  motor 
nerves  being  out  of  action  excepting 
those  of  the  left  leg,  into  which  none 
of  the  poison  can  enter.  Now  it  is 
known  that  this  agent  acts  from  with- 
out inwards,  so  that  the  spinal  centres 
and  those  of  the  brain  die  last.  We  ir- 
ritate the  spine  with  a  needle,  and  the 
left  leg  twitches,  showing  that  its  nerves 
of  motion  are  healthy.  But  there  is 
another  less  direct  way  to  excite  the 
spine,  riamely,  by  irritating  a  nerve  of 
sensation ;  and  if  this  be  unpoisoned, 
and  able  to  carry  a  message,  we  shall 
find  that  the  spine  will  show  the  irrita- 
tion* by  making  the  unpalsied  left  leg 
move.  We  pinch,  therefore,  the  right 
leg,  and  suddenly  the  left  leg  jumps  or 
moves ;  and  so  we  learn  that  in  the 
right  leg  (poisoned)  the  nerves  of  sense 
can  carry  to  the  spine  and  brain  the 
irritation,  and  that  this  expresses  itself 
by  motion  in  the  left  leg,  the  only  un- 
poisoned part. 

The  condition  of  a  creature  thus  af- 
fected seems  to  us  to  touch  the  extreme 
of  horror,  since  for  a  time  the  brain 
may  remain  clear,  the  power,  to  feel 
be  perfect,  and  the  capacity  for  escape 
or  expression  of  feeling1  absolutely  an- 
nihilated. In  man  this  would  hardly 
be  the.case,  because  the  loss  of  breath- 
ing power  would  almost  immediately 
kill  by  interfering  with  the  heart's  ac- 


tion. We  have  learned,  then,  that  this 
potent  poison  first  kills  the  nerves  of 
motion;  that  this  soon  in  a  warm- 
blooded, and  much  later  in  a  cold- 
blooded animal  stops  the  heart ;  that 
the  nerves  of  feeling  do  not  suffer  from 
the  poison,  but  only  after  a  time  from 
the  checked  circulation  and  the  conse- 
quent want  of  blood  to  nourish  and 
vivify  them ;  and,  finally,  that  the  poi- 
son kills  from  circumference  to  centre. 
It  only  remains  for  the  chemist  to  ana- 
.  lyze  the  material  used,  and  to  extract 
a  crystalline  alkaloid,  which  is  easily 
proved  to  be  its  active  principle,  and 
we  shall  have  learned  all  that  is  now 
known  as  regards  this  most  interesting 
poison. 

We  turn  next,  of  course,  to  ask  what 
uses  this  knowledge  may  be  put  to. 
The  physiologist's  answer  is  satisfac- 
tory, the  physician's  rather  less  so. 
There  are  many  occasions  in  the  labo- 
ratory where  it  is  highly  useful  to  pos- 
sess an  agent  which  has  power  to  kill 
without  disturbing  the  heart,  —  as  when, 
for  instance,  we  desire  to  exhibit  the 
action  of  this  organ  to  a  class.  All  we 
have,  then,  to  do  is  to  give  woorara, 
and  keep  up  artificial  breathing.  We 
may  then  open  the  chest,  and  demon- 
strate the  heart's  motions  in  such  a 
way  as  forever  to  impress  upon  the 
memory  of  the  student  most  important, 
nay,  vital  truths  in  medicine. 

As  to  the  use  of  woorara  as  a  drug, 
there  is  in  our  minds  a  good  deal  of 
doubt.  Given  to  persons  who  have  lock- 
jaw, it  certainly  stops,  or  may  be  made 
to  stop,  the  awful  convulsions  of  that 
disease  ;  but  as  their  cause  lies  only  in 
the  spine,  and  as  woorara  palsies  the 
motor  nerves  alone,  it  seems  likely  that 
we  are  merely  suppressing  a  symptom, . 
and  not  altering  the  malady  itself.  If, 
however,  as  sometimes  is  the  case, 
lockjaw  proves  fatal  by  the  spasm  it 
causes  in  the  muscles  with  which  we 
breathe,  it  seems  possible  that  a  limited 
use  of  the  drug  might  so  diminish  this 
evil  as  to  allow  life  to  go  on,  and  thus 
give  added  chances  to  the  sufferer. 
Hitherto  our  experience  is  inconclusive, 
and  the  right-minded  doctor,  being  of 


1 868.] 


On  the  Modern  Methods  of  studying  Poisons. 


299 


all  folks  the  most  sceptical,  is  thus  far 

I   unconvinced  of  its  value,  and  awaits  the 

results  of  a  larger  number  of  cases  ; 

feeling,  meanwhile,  at  full   freedom  to 

test  its  possible  utility  in  a  disease  so 

:   unconquerable  by  ordinary  methods. 

The  poisonous  agents  which  have 
power  to  destroy  life  by  acting  directly 
on  the  heart  are  numerous.  Among 
i  them  we  find  aconite  and  digitalis  well 
known  as  medicines,  and  useful  to  con- 
i  trol  tumultuous  or  over-excited  activity 
in  this  essential  organ.  Several,  also, 
of  the  Eastern  arrow  poisons  belong 
to  this  class,  —  as  the  upas,  of  Borneo  ; 
and,  finally,  the  corroval,  an  arrow  poi- 
son of  the  Isthmus  of  Panama. 

To  point  out  precisely  in  what  way 
these  various  agents  influence  the  heart 
would  require  us  to  explain  at  length 
the  whole  physiology  of  this  organ,  and 
to  discuss  the  function  of  the  different 
nerves  which  enter  it.  We  shall  there- 
fore content  ourselves-  with  relating 
what  is  known  in  regard  to  corroval, 
—  a  poison  which  thus  far  has  been 
investigated  only  by  two  American  tox- 
icologists.  Like  woorara,  this  sub- 
stance is  a  resinous-looking  material, 
which  is  certainly  of  vegetable  origin. 
It  is  used  as  an  arrow  poison  by  the 
dwellers  on  the  Rio  Darien.  but  of  "the 
nature  of  the  plants  which  yield  it  we 
.  absolutely  nothing.  Thus  far  it 
is  known  only  to  savages,  and  to  two 
or  three  students  of  poisons,  nor,  if  it 
were  iised  to  kill  man,  would  it  be  pos- 
sible to  detect  it  in  the  tissues.  As  in 
the  case  of  woorara,  let  us  relate  briefly 
the  toxic  characters  of  corroval 
first  investigated. 

A   frog  was  held    while    the   opera- 
ted ;i  morsel  of  poison  in  a  wound 
in  the  back.       In  ten  or  twelve 
s   it    showed  signs    of  lassitude, 
and  in    half  an    hour   was    totally  mo- 
tionless and  dead.     Nothing  was  seen 
to    lead  to  the    belief    that    the    toxi- 
cologist  was  dealing-  with  a  substance 
differing  from  common  woorara.     The 
ird  signs  were    alike.      A  second 
was  then    poisoned,    after  a  little 
<;>ed  opening  had  been  so  made  as 
to  expose  the  heart,  whose  natural  beat 


was  noted  as  being  forty-five  to  the 
minute.  In  three  minutes  it  was  unal- 
tered as  to  number,  but  had  become  ir- 
regular. Then  it  began  to  fail,  beating 
thirty  at  the  fifth  minute,  and  ceasing 
half  a  minute  later,  the  auricles  con- 
tinuing somewhat  longer.  As  the  organ 
failed,  a  strange  fact  was  noted ;  at  the 
instant  when  the  great  cavity  of  the 
heart  —  the  ventricle  —  contracted  so 
as  to  expel  the  blood  into  the  arteries,  it 
was  observed  that  here  and  there  on  its 
surface  little  prominences  arose,  which 
were  presumed  to  be  due  to  these  parts 
being  palsied  so  that  they  yielded  un- 
.  der  the  pressure  from  within.  That 
this  was  a  true  view  of  the  case  was 
shown  by  pinching  -or  galvanizing 
minute  portions  of  a  healthy,  active 
heart,  when  the  same  appearances  were 
noted  at  the  points  enfeebled  by  the 
over-stimulation  to  which  they  had  been 
thus  mechanically  subjected.  When 
the  heart  stopped,  it  could  not  be  re-ex- 
cited by  a  touch,  or  by  electric  currents, 
as  was  the  case  in  woorara  poisoning, 
or  in  death  from  violence. 

During  all  of  this  time,  and  for  twenty 
minutes  after  the  heart  ceased  to  beat, 
the  frog  leaped  about  with  readiness  and 
ease,  so  that  it  seemed  pretty  clear  that 
corroval  was  a  poison  which  paralyzed 
directly  the  tissues  of  the  heart,  without 
at  first  influencing  any  other  portion 
of  the  economy.  To  put  this  beyond 
doubt,  the  experimenter  tried  to  keep 
up  the  circulation  by  causing  artificial 
breathing,  which  in  the  case  of  woorara 
was  competent  to  sustain  the  heart's  ac- 
tion. Here,  however,  the  heart  stopped 
as  though  no  such  means  had  been  used. 
The  same  observation  may  be  better 
made  on  the  young  alligator,  because 
in  this  creature  the  breathing  continues 
for  some  twenty  minutes  after  the  heart 
has  ceased  to  pulsate,  thus  making  it 
still  more  clear  that  the  heart  does 
not  die  owing  to  defect  of  respiration. 
Lastly,  it  was  shown  that  when  in  a 
healthy  frog  the  heart  is  cut  out,  or  its 
vessels  tied,  voluntary  and  reflex  motion 
disappear  at  about  the  same  period  as 
they  do  when  corroval  has  been  given  ; 
whence  it  was  inferred  that  this  agent 


300 


On  the  Modern  Methods  of  studying  Poisons.     [September, 


destroys  the  general  movements  only 
because  it  first  interrupts  the  circulation 
of  the  blood,  without  which  they  soon 
cease  to  be  possible. 

The  contrast  between  woorara  and 
corroval  is  very  striking,  since  in  the 
former  the  heart  dies  last,  and  in  the 
latter  it  is  the  first  organ  to  suffer. 

We  are  aware  thus  far  of  scarcely  a 
poison  which  acts  entirely  on  a  single 
organ.  In  every  case  it  has  been  found 
that  the  noxious  effects  are  finally  felt 
by  other  parts  in  turn  ;  and,  so  far  as  we 
can  gather,  these  secondary  poisonings 
are  direct  effects  of  the  poison  in  many 
cases,  and  not  merely  results  of  the 
death  of  the  organs  first  injured.  Thus, 
while  pointing  out  that  in  the  reptile 
voluntary  motion  exists  after  the  heart 
stops,  but  soon  ceases  on  account  of 
the  arrest  of  circulation,  we  might  have 
added,  that,  by  a  variation  in  the  mode 
of  experimenting,  it  can  be  made  clear, 
that  where,  owing  to  a  small  dose  of 
the  poison,  death  comes  slowly,  the 
sensitive  nerves  first,  and  then  the  mo- 
tor nerves,  and  last  the  muscles,  are  all 
directly  and  in  turn  affected  by  the  poi- 
son. Finally  let  us  add,  that,  given  by 
the  mouth,  this  agent  usually  causes 
convulsions,  such  as  do  not  appear  if 
the  poison  be  put  under  the  skin,  —  a 
fact  for  which  we  cannot  in  any  way  ac- 
count, but  which  aptly  illustrates  how 
easy  it  is  to  deceive  one's  self  where 
such  variations  may  arise  in  the  symp- 
toms caused  by  one'  and  the  same 
poison. 

As  an  apt  illustration  of  the  difficul- 
ties which  surround  this  study,  it  may 
not  be  out  of  place  to  mention  the  fol- 
lowing incident.  During  the  study  of 
corroval  it  became  desirable  to  learn 
the  rate  at  which  this  material  could 
be  absorbed  from  the  stomach.  Accord- 
ingly a  weighed  morsel  was  pushed 
down  the  wide  gullet  of  a  large  frog  and 
into  its  stomach.  The  animal  being  left 
in  a  vase  with  a  half-inch  of  water,  the 
next  day  it  was  alive  and  well,  to  the 
operator's  surprise.  Repeating  the  ex- 
periment, the  frog  was  left  under  a  bell- 
glass,  on  a  dry  plate.  This  time  the 
corroval  was  found  on  the  plate,  so  that 


it  seemed  to  have  been  vomited,  as  to 
which  operation  as  possible  in  a  frog 
nothing  had  been  hitherto  known.  The 
following  day  a  full  dose  of  corroval  in 
a  little  alcohol  and  water  was  poured 
through  a  tube  into  the  stomach,  when 
instantly  this  organ  was  inverted,  and 
pushed  up  through  the  wide  gullet  and  « 
outside  of  the  mouth,  where  the  frog 
presently  cleaned  it  most  expertly  with 
jts  fore  legs.  Its  return  was  gradual, 
and  over  this  act  the  creature  seemed 
to  possess  no  voluntary  control. 

As  the  power  to  turn  the,  stomach 
inside  out  is  rarely  exercised,  and  there- 
fore not  anticipated,  the  reader  may 
understand  how  easily  it  might  deceive, 
if  a  poison  having  been  given  it  were 
thus  disposed  of  in  the  experimenter's 
absence. 

A  favorite  mode  of  suicide  in  France 
is  to  breathe  a  confined  atmosphere  in 
which  is  burning  a  pan  of  charcoal. 
For  a^long  time  it  was  supposed  that, 
under  these  circumstances,  the  death 
which  ensued  was  due  to  the  carbonic 
acid  set  free  as  one  of  the  products  of 
combustion,  in  which  case  we  should 
have  asphyxia  from  deficiency  of  oxygen 
and  excess  of  carbonic  acid, —  a  mode  of 
death  as  well  understood  as  any  death 
can  at  present  be. 

When,  however,  attention  was  called 
to  the  presence  of  another  gas,  in  the 
mixed  products  of  incomplete  combus- 
tion, the  toxic  characters  of  this  agent, 
now  known  as  carbonic  oxide,  became 
subjects  of  inquiry.  After  several  the- 
ories had  been  set  forth,  only  to  be 
pushed  aside  by  the  next  comer,  Claude 
Bernard  re -investigated  the  matter, 
and,  with  his  usual  happiness  in  dis- 
covery, pointed  out  what  is,  at  least 
for  the  present,  a  well-accepted  expla- 
nation of  the  mode  in  which  this  gas 
poisons. 

Here  for  the  first  time  we  deal  with 
an  agent  which  enters  the  blood  through 
the  lung.  Six  hundredths  of  the  vol- 
ume of  an  atmosphere,  the  rest  of  which 
is  common  air,  is  fatal  to  a  bird  con- 
fined within  it.  The  death  is  rapid,  and 
usually  convulsive.  Upon  examining 
the  body  of  the  poisoned  animal,  wre  are 


1 868.] 


On  the  Modern  Methods  of  studying  Poisons. 


301 


struck  with  the  brilliant  red  color  of  the 
blood ;  and  if  at  the  same  time  we  com- 
pare the  appearances  seen  in  a  bird 
killed  by  carbonic-acid  gas,  we  shall 
be  still  more  impressed  with  the  differ- 
ence, because  this  latter  gas  colors  the 
blood  of  a  very  dark  hue. 

To  make  clear  what  is  to  follow,  the 
'  reader  should  carry  in  mind  the  follow- 
ing facts.  The  blood,  in  circulating, 
;  goes  through  the  lung,  and  there  gives 
l|  up  carbonic  acid,  and,  receiving  oxygen 
from  the  air,  becomes  bright  red.  Thus 
altered  it  is  forced  by  the  heart  along 
the  great  arteries,  until,  finally  entering 
the  minute  vessels  called  capillaries,  it 
has  between  it  and  the  tissues,  only 
wails  of  the  utmost  thinness.  This 
vast  mesh  of  tiny  tubes  makes  the 
great  markets  of  the  body,  in  which 
occur  a  host  of  exchanges,  of  givings 
and  .gettings  on  the  part  alike  of  blood 
and  tissues,  such  as  muscle,  nerve, 
and  bone.  The  most  important  of 
these  is  the  taking  of  oxygen  by  the 
tissues,  and  the  giving  up  of  carbonic- 
acid  gas  to  the  blood.  The  first  gas  is 
needful  for  a  multitude  of  purposes, 
without  which  life  must  cease  ;  the  sec- 
ond, when  retained,  is  poisonous  ;  and,  as 
the  interchange  depends  for  existence 
upon  there  being  two  gases,  the  loss  of 
a  hurtful  one  is  made  subservient  to  the 
getting  of  a  useful  one.  Moreover,  as 
the  little  blood  rivers  flow  by  nerve  and 
bone,  the  materials  which  these  must 
get  rid  of  as  the  results  of  their  waste 
are  cast  for  the  most  part  into  the  gen- 
eral volume  of  these  streams  ;  but,  as 
regards  the  gases,  we  find  them  trans- 
ported chiefly  on  or  in  the  blood-glob- 
ules, which  float  in  myriads  along  these 
tiny  streamlets.  In  the  tissues  they 
each  get  a  load  of  carbonic  acid,  of 
which  they  lose  the  most  in  the  lungs, 
replacing  it  with  oxygen,  and  so  are 
continually  voyaging  to  and  fro  betwixt 
the  sources  of  supply  and  demand. 
Imagine  for  a  moment  these  millions 
of  little  carriers  become  incapable  of 
transporting  their  destined  freights, 
and  such  precisely  is  what  occurs  when 
an  animal  is  made  to  breathe  carbonic 
oxide  gas. 


Healthy  blood  shaken  with  carbonic 
acid  becomes  dark,  and  fresh  contact 
with  the  air  will  redden  it  again.  When 
once  it  has  been  poisoned  by  carbonic 
oxide,  such  changes  are  no  longer  pos- 
sible, simply  because  the  blood-globules 
have  grown  incapable  of  taking  up  any 
gas  but  the  one  which  has  poisoned 
them. 

Neither  can  we  cause  them  in  any 
way  to  give  up  the  hurtful  carbonic  ox- 
ide which  has  taken  possession  of  them. 
A  fatal  attachment  has  been  formed, 
and  they  refuse  to  return  to  their  every- 
day duty. 

The  careful  and  elaborate  series  of 
analyses  and  experiments  which  brought 
Bernard  to  this  conclusion  it  would  be 
folly  to  attempt  to  make  clear  to  any 
but  the  physiological  chemist.  So  far 
they  have  not  been  set  aside  by  any 
more  authoritative  verdict. 

Here,  then,  we  have -the  curious  case 
of  asphyxia,  or  death  from  want  of  oxy- 
gen, not  because  the  lungs  have  ceased 
to  present  it  to  the  blood,  but  because 
that  fluid  has  become  unable  to  accept 
the  gift.  Hence  results  sudden  cessa- 
tion of  every  function  which  demands 
for  its  continuance  unceasing  change  in 
the  tissues  which  effect  it,  and  so  death 
follows  as  a  matter  of  course. 

I  cannot  hope  that  to  any  but  very 
careful  readers  I  may  have  been  so 
happy  as  to  make  clear  the  history  of 
these  three  poisons,  as  they  act  within 
the  body,  and  sunder  one  or  another  of 
the  many  essential  links  which  make  the 
complete  chain  of  life.  One  abolishes 
the  power  of  the  nerves  of  motion; 
one  palsies  the  muscles  of  the  heart, 
and  one  annihilates  the  function  of 
the  red  blood-globules.  These  diverse 
modes  of  destructive  activity  are  but 
instances  of  the  wonderful  variety  of 
modes  in  which  the  fortress  of  life  may 
be  assailed. 

The  reader  will  not  fail  to  have  no- 
ticed that  two  of  the  three  poisons  here 
discussed  are  of  comparatively  recent 
introduction.  The  same  statement  ap- 
plies to  the  two  best-known  kinds  of 
upas,  and  to  a  third,  admirably  studied 
by  Dr.  William  A.  Hammond,  while  the 


302 


In    Vacation. 


[September, 


same  may  be  said  of  Calabar  bean  and 
other  poisons  used  by  savage  tribes. 
Scarcely  one  of  these  could  as  yet  be 
detected  in  the  body  of  man,  were  it 
employed  to  destroy  life  ;  so  that  it  is 
as  well  that  these  dangerous  agents 
should  be  carefully  guarded  by  the  toxi- 
cologists  into  whose  hands  they  may 
chance  to  fall.  A  recent  writer  in  these 
pages,  alluding  to  this  subject,  also 
points  out  that  the  same  difficulty  in  de- 
tection applies  to  many  of  the  poison- 
ous substances  which  every  year  are 
made  by  chemists  engaged  in  the  study 
of  complex  organic  compounds.  Some 
of  the  bodies  thus  discovered  are  of  the 
most  deadly  character  ;  so  that  here 
again  it  is  well  that  the  awful  power 
which  they  give  should  rest  in  the  keep- 
ing of  the  trustworthy  men  of  science 
whose  industry  has  brought  them  to 
light.  Poisoning,  as  a  rule,  has  been  a 
crime  of  the  intelligent  classes,  rather 
than  of  the  poor,  or  of  those  whose 
passions,  being  under  less  certain  gov- 
ernment, are  apt  to  seek  gratification 
by  the  most  direct  means.  Of  late, 
however,  it  has  become  so  well  known 
to  educated  persons,  that  the  more  ac- 


cessible poisons  are  sure  to  be  detected 
by  the  chemist,  that  I  have  no  doubt 
this  alone  has  tended  to  lessen  their 
fatal  use.  The  question  of  the  relative 
ease  with  which  poisonous  drugs  may 
be  obtained  leads  to  some  reflections 
which  have  especial  application  in  our 
own  country. 

In  Europe,  and  particularly  on  the 
Continent,  the  sale  of  poisons  is  sur- 
rounded by  the  most  stringent  precau- 
tions, so  that  it  is  very  difficult  to  pro- 
cure them  without  a  physician's  pre- 
scription ;  the  doctor,  as  it  were,  coming 
between  the  apothecary  and  the  public, 
to  guard  the  latter  from  crime  or  injury. 
Here,  however,  the  utmost  laxity  pre- 
vails, and  although  in  some  "States  rigid 
laws  on  the  subject  exist,  they  are  daily 
disobeyed  by  almost  every  druggist, 
—  the  slightest  excuse  enabling  almost 
any  one  to  buy  corrosive  sublimate,  ar- 
senic, or  opium.  It  is  time  that  some 
effective  measures  be  taken  to  check 
this  evil,  which  not  only  invites  to, 
crime  but  removes  all  restraint  from 
those  who  desire  to  intoxicate  them- 
selves with  opiates,  ether,  or  chloro- 
form. 


IN     VA  CATION. 

THE  sun  has  marked  me  for  his  own ; 
I  'm  growing  browner  day  by  day : 
I  cannot  leave  the  fields  alone ; 
I  bring  their  breath  away. 

I  put  aside  the  forms  of  men, 

And  shun  the  world's  consuming  care. 
Come,  green  and  honest  hills  again ! 

For  ye  are  free  and  fair. 


How  wonderful  this  pilgrimage ! 

On  every  side  new  worlds  appear. 
I  weigh  the  wisdom  of  the  sage, 

And  find  it  wanting  here. 


1 868.]  In    Vacation.  303 

I  crave  the  tongues  that  Adam  knew, 
To  question  and  discourse  with  these, — 

To  taunt  the  jay  with  jacket  blue, 
And  quarrel  with  the  bees. 

To  answer  when  the  grossbeak  calls 

His  mate ;   to  mock  the  catbird's  screech  ; 

The  sloven  crow's,  with  nasal  drawls, 
The  oriole's  golden  speech. 

Now  through  the  pasture,  and  across 
The  brook,  while  flocks  of  sparrows  try 

To  quit  the  world,  and  wildly  toss 
Their  forms  against  the  sky. 

A  small  owl  from  the  thistle-tops 

Makes  eyes  at  me,  with  blank,  distrust, 
Tips  off  upon  the  air,  and  drops, 

Flat-footed,  in  the  dust. 

The  meadow-lark  lifts  shoulder-high 

Above  the  sward,  and,  quivering 
With,  broken  notes  of  ecstasy, 

Slants  forth  on  curved  wing. 

The  patient  barn-fowls  strut  about, 

Intent  on  nothing  every  one. 
A  tall  cock  hails  a  cock  without, 

A  grave  hen  eyes  the  sun. 

The  gobbler  swells  his  shaggy  coat, 

Portentous  of  a  conquest  sure  ; 
His  houris  pipe  their  treble  note, 

Round-shouldered  and  demure. 

The  clear-eyed  cattle  calmly  stop 

To  munch  the  dry  husk  in  the  rack  ; 
Or  stretch  their  solid  necks,  and  crop 

The  fringes  of  the  stack. 

But  night  is  coming,  as  I  think ; 

The  moving  air  is  growing  cool  ; 
I  hear  the  hoarse  frog's  hollow  chink 

Around  the  weedy  pool. 

The  sun  is  down,  the  clouds  are  gray, 

Tke  cricket  lifts  his  trembling  voice. 
Come  back  again,  O  happy  day, 

And  bid  my  heart  rejoice  ! 


304 


Sidney  and  Raleigh. 


[September, 


SIDNEY     AND     RALEIGH. 


r~PHE  characteristic  of  a  good  prose 
JL  style  is,  that,  while  it  mirrors  or 
embodies  the  mind  that  uses  it,  it  also 
gives  pleasure  in  itself.  The  quality 
which  decides  on  its  fulfilment  of  these 
conditions  is  commonly  called  taste. 

Though  taste  is  properly  under  law, 
and  should,  if  pressed,  give  reasons  for 
its  decisions,  many  of  its  most  authori- 
tative judgments  come  from  taste  de- 
ciding by  instinct,  or  insight,  rather  than 
taste  deciding  by  rule.  Indeed,  the 
fine  feeling  of  the  beauty,  melody,  fit- 
ness, and  vitality  of  words  is  often  want- 
ing in  men  who  are  dexterous  in  the 
application  of  the  principles  of  style ; 
and  some  of  the  most  philosophic 
treatises  on  aesthetics  betray  a  lack  of 
that  deep  internal  sense  which  directly 
perceives  the  objects  and  qualities 
whose  validity  it  is  the  office  of  the  un- 
derstanding laboriously  to  demonstrate* 

But  whether  we  judge  of  style  by 
our  perceptions  or  by  principles,  we  all 
feel  that  there  is  a  distinction  between 
persons  who  write  books,  and  writers 
whose  books  belong  to  literature.  There 
is  something  in  the  mere  wording  of  a 
description  of  a  triviality  of  dress  or 
manner,  by  Addison  or  Steele,  which 
gives  greater  mental  delight  than  the 
description  of  a  campaign  or  a  revolu- 
tion by  Alison.  The  principle  that  style 
is  thus  a  vital  element  in  the  expression 
of  thought  and  emotion,  that  it  not  only 
measures  the  quality  and  quantity  of 
the  mind  it  conveys,  but  has  a  charm  in 
itself,  makes  the  task  of  an  historian  of 
literature  less  difficult  than  it  at  first 
appears.  Among  the  prose-writers  of 
the  Age  of  Elizabeth  we  accordingly 
do  not  include  all  who  wrote  in  prose, 
but  those  in  whom,  prose  composition 
was  laboring  to  fulfil  the  conditions 
of  art.  In  many  cases  this  endeavor 
resulted  in  the  substitution  of  artifice  for 
art ;  and  the  bond  which  connects  the 
invisible  thought  with  the  visible  word, 
and  through  which  the  word  is  sur- 


charged with  the  life  of  the  thought,  be- 
ing thus  severed,  the  effect  was  to  pro- 
duce a  factitious  dignity,  sweetness,  and 
elegance  by  mental  sleight  of  hand,  and 
tricks  of  modulation  and  antithesis. 

In  one  of  the  earliest  prose-writers 
of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  John  Lylye, 
we  perceive  how  easily  the  demand  in 
the  cultivated  classes  for  what  is  fine 
in  diction  may  degenerate  into  admira- 
tion of  what  is  superfine  ;  how  elegant 
imbecility  may  pass  itself  off  for  ele- 
gance ;  and  how  hypocrisy  and  grimace 
may  become  a  fashion  in  that  high  so- 
ciety which  constitutes  itself  the  arbi- 
ter of  taste.  Lylye,  a  scholar  of  some 
beauty,  and  more  ingenuity,  of  fancy, 
was  especially  calculated  to  corrupt  a 
language  whose  rude  masculine  vigor 
was  beginning  to  be  softened  into  har- 
mony and  elegance  ;  for  he  was  one  of 
those  effeminate  spirits  whose  felicity 
it  is  to  be  born  affected,  and  who  can 
violate  general  nature  without  doing 
injustice  to  their  own.  The  Court  of 
Elizabeth,  full  of  highly  educated  men 
and  women,  were  greatly  pleased  with 
the  fopperies  of  diction  and  sentiment, 
the  dainty  verbal  confectionery  of  his 
so-called  classic  plays  ;  and  they  seem 
to  have  been  entirely  carried  away  by 
his  prose  romance  of  "  Euphues  and 
his  England,"  first  published  in  1579. 
Here  persons  of  fashion  might  con- 
gratulate themselves  that  they  could 
find  a  language  which  was  not  spoken 
by  the  vulgar.  The  nation,  Sir  Henry 
Blunt  tells  us,  were  in  debt  to  him  for  a 
new  English  which  he  taught  them  ; 
"  all  our  ladies  were  his  scholars  "  ;  and 
that  beauty  in  court  was  disregarded 
"  who  could  not  parley  Euphuism,  that 
is  to  say,  who  was  unable  to  converse 
in  that  pure  and  reformed  English." 
Those  who  have  studied  the  jargon  of 
Holofernes  in  Shakespeare's  "  Love's 
Labor's  Lost,"  of  Fastidious  Brisk  in 
Ben  Jonson's  "  Every  Man  out  of  his 
Humour,"  and,  later  still,  of  Sir  Piercie 


1 868.] 


Sidney  and  Raleigh. 


305 


Shafton,  in  Scott's  novel  of  "  The  Mon- 
astery," can  form  some  idea  of  this 
*'  jiure  and  reformed  English,"  the  pe- 
culiarities of  which  have  been  happily 
characterized  to  consist  in  "pedantic 
and  far-fetched  allusion,  elaborate  in- 
directness, a  cloying  smoothness  and 
monotony  of  diction,"  and  great  fertility 
in  "  alliteration  and  punning."  Even 
when  Lylye  seems  really  sweet,  elegant, 
and  eloquent,  he  evinces  a  natural  sus- 
picion of  the  graces  of  nature,  and  con- 
trives to  divorce  his  rhetoric  from  all 
.sincerity  of  utterance.  There  is  some- 
thing pretty  and  puerile  even  in  his  ex- 
pression of  heroism  ;  and  to  say  a  good 
thing  in  a  way  it  ought  not  to  be  said 
was  to  realize  his  highest  idea  of  art. 
His  attitude  towards  .what  was  natural 
had  a  touch  of  that  condescending  com- 
miseration which  Colman's  perfumed, 
embroidered,  and  mannered  coxcomb 
extended  to  the  blooming  country  girl 
he  stooped  to  admire  :  "  Ah,  my  dear  ! 
Nature  is  very  well,  for  she  made  you  ; 
but  then  Nature  could  not  have  made 
me!" 

This  infection  of  the  superfine  in 
-composition  was  felt  even  by  writers 
for  the  multitude  ;  and  in  the  romances 
•of  Greene  and  Lodge  we  have  euphu- 
ism as  an  affectation  of  an  affectation. 
Even  their  habits  of  vulgar  dissipation 
could  not  altogether  keep  them  loyal  to 
the  comparative  purity  of  the  vulgar 
language.  The  fashion  subtly  affected 
•even  the  style  of  Sidney,  conscious  as 
he  was  of  its  more  obvious  fooleries  ; 
and  to  this  day  every  man  who  has  any- 
thing of  the  coxcomb  in  his  brain,  who 
desires  a  dress  for  his  thought  more 
•splendid  than  his  thought,  slides  natu- 
rally into  euphuism. 

The  name  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney  stands 
in  the  English  imagination  for  more 
than  his  writings,  more  than  his  actions, 
more  than  his  character,  —  for  more, 
we  had  almost  said,  than  the  qualities 
of  his  soul.  The  English  race,  com- 
pound of  Saxon  and  Norman,  has  been 
fertile  in  great  generals,  great  statesmen, 
great  poets,  great  heroes,  saints,  and 
•yrs,  but  it  has  not  been  fertile  in 
great  gentlemen;  and  Mr.  Bull,  ple- 

VOL.  xxii.  —  NO.  131.  20 


thoric  with  power,  but  scant  in  courtesy, 
recognizes,  with  mingled  feelings  of  sur- 
prise and  delight,  his  great  ornamental 
production  in  Sidney.  He  does  not 
read  the  sonnets  or  the  Arcadia  of  his 
cherished  darling ;  he  long  left  to  an 
accomplished  American  lady  the  grate- 
ful task  of  writing  an  adequate  biog- 
raphy of  the  phenomenon  ;  but  he  gazes 
with  a  certain  pathetic  wonder  on  the 
one  renowned  gentleman  of  his  illus- 
trious house  ;  speculates  curiously  how 
he  came  into  the  family  ;  and  would 
perhaps  rather  part  with  Shakespeare 
and  Milton,  with  Bacon  and  Locke,  with 
Burleigh  and  Somers,  with  Marlborough 
and  Wellington,  with  Latimer  and  Rid- 
ley, than  with  this  chivalrous  youth, 
whose  "  high-erected  thoughts  "  were 
"seated  in  a  heart  of  courtesy."  It  is 
not  for  superior  moral  or  mental  quali- 
ties that  he  especially  prizes  his  favor- 
ite, for'  he  has  had  children  who  have 
exceeded  Sidney  in  both  ;  but  he  feels 
that  in  Philip  alone  has  equal  genius 
and  goodness  been  expressed  in  be- 
havior. 

Sidney  was  born  on  the  2Qth  of  No- 
vember, 1554.  His  father  was  Sir  Hen- 
ry Sidney,  a  statesman  of  ability  and  in- 
tegrity. His  mother  was  Mary,  sister 
of  Robert  Dudley,  afterwards  Earl  of 
Leicester.  .  No  care  was  spared  in  the 
harmonious  development  of  his  powers, 
physical,  mental,  and  moral  ;  and  his 
instructors  were  fortunate  in  a  pupil 
blessed,  no*  only  with  the  love  of  knowl- 
edge, but  with  the  love  of  that  virtue 
which  he  considered  the  proper  end  of 
knowledge.  He  was  intended  for  pub- 
lic life  ;  and,  leaving  the  university  at 
the  age  of  seventeen,  he  shortly  after 
was  sent  abroad  to  study  the  lan- 
guages, observe  the  manners,  and  min- 
gle in  the  society  of  the  Continent. 
He  went  nowhere  that  he  did  not  v/in 
the  hearts  of  those  with  whom  he  asso- 
ciated. Scholars,  philosophers,  artists, 
and  men  of  letters,  all  were  charmed 
with  the  ingenuous  and  high-spirited 
English  youth,  who  visited  foreign 
countries,  not  like  the  majority  of  his 
young  countrymen,  to  partake  of  their 
dissipations  and  become  initiated  in 


306 


Sidney  and  Raleigh. 


[September,. 


their  vices,  but  to  fill  and  enlarge  his 
understanding,  and  ennoble  his  soul. 
Hubert  Languet,  a  scholar  of  whom  it 
is  recorded  "  that  he  lived  as  the  best 
of  men  should  die,"  was  especially  cap- 
tivated by  Philip,  became  through  life 
his  adviser  and  friend,  and  said,  "  That 
day  .on  which  I  first  beheld  him  with 
my  eyes  shone  propitious  to  me  !  " 

After  about  three  years'  absence  Sid- 
ney returned  to  England  variously  ac- 
complished beyond  any  man  of  his 
years  :  brave,  honorable,  and  just ;  am- 
bitious of  political,  of  military,  of  liter- 
ary distinction,  and  with  powerful  con- 
nections, competent,  it  might  be  sup- 
posed, to  aid  him  in  any  public  career 
on  which  his  energies  should  be  con- 
centrated. But  his  very  perfections 
seem  to  have  stood  in  the  way  of  his 
advancement.  Such  a  combination  of 
the  .scholar,  the  poet,  and  the  knight- 
errant,  one  so  full  of  learning,  of  lofty 
imagination,  of  chivalrous  sentiment, 
was  too  precious  as  a  courtier  to  be 
employed  as  a  man  of  affairs  ;  and 
Elizabeth  admired,  petted,  praised,  but 
hesitated  to  promote  him.  So  fine  an 
ornament  of  the  nation  could  not  be 
spared  for  its  defence.  Even  his  uncle 
Leicester,  all-powerful  as  he  seemed, 
failed  in  his  attempts  to  aid  the  kins- 
man who  was .  perhaps  the  only  man 
that  could  rouse  in  his  dark  and  schem- 
ing soul  the  feeling  of  affection.  Sid- 
ney, who  did  not  lack  the  knowledge  — 
I  had  almost  said  the  conceit — of  his 
own  merits,  and  whose  temper  was  nat- 
urally impetuous,  was  far  from  being 
contented  with  the  lot  which  was  to 
make  him  the  "  mirror  of  courtesy,"  the 
observed  and  loved  of  all  beholders, 
the  Beau  Brummel  of  the  Age  of  Eliz- 
abeth, but  which  was  to  shut  him  out 
from  the  nobler  ambitions  of  his  manly 
and  ardent  nature,  and  prevent  his  tak- 
ing that  part  which,  both  as  a  Protes- 
tant and  patriot,  he  ached  to  perform 
in  the  stirring  contests  and  enterprises 
of  the  time.  Still,  he  submitted  and 
waited  ;  and  the  result  is,  that  the  inci- 
dents of  the  career  of  this  man,  born  a 
hero  and  educated  a  statesman,  were 
ludicrously  disproportioned  to  his  own 


expectations  and  to  his  fame.  In  1576 
he  was  sent  on  an  ornamental  embassy 
to  the  Emperor  of  Germany.  S6on 
after  his  return  he  successfully  vindi- 
cated his  father,  who  was  Governor  of 
Ireland,  from  some  aspersions  which 
had  excited  the  anger  of  Elizabeth  ; 
and  threatened  his  father's  secretary, 
whom  he  suspected  of  opening  his  own 
letters  to  Sir  Henry,  that  he  would 
thrust  his  dagger  into  him  if  the  treach- 
ery was  repeated;  "and  trust  to  it,"  he 
adds,  "  I  speak  it  in  earnest"  He 
wrote  a  bold  letter  to  the  Queen, 
against  her  projected  matrimonial  alli- 
ance with  the  little  French  duke,  on 
whose  villanous  person,  and  still  more 
villanous  soul,  this  "imperial  votaress,"' 
so  long  walking  the  earth 

"  In  maiden  meditation,  fancy  free," 

had  pretended  to  fix  her  virgin  affec- 
tions. He  was  shortly  after,  while  play- 
ing tennis,  called  a  puppy  by  the  Earl  of 
Oxford  ;  and  it  is  a  curious  illustration 
of  the  aristocratic  temper  of  the  times, 
that  our  Philip,  who  saw  no  obstacles 
in  the  way  of  thrusting  his  dagger, 
without  the  form  of  duel,  into  the  sus- 
pected heart  of  his  father's  secretary, 
could  not  force  this  haughty  and  inso- 
lent Earl  to  accept  his  challenge  ;  and"  • 
the  Queen  put  an  end  to  the  quarrel  by 
informing  him  that  there  was  a  great, 
difference  in  degree  between  earls  and 
private  gentlemen,  and  that  princes  were 
bound  to  support  the  nobility,  and  to 
insist  on  their  being  treated  with  proper 
respect. 

Wearied  with  court  life,  he  now  re- 
tired to  Wilton,  the  seat  of  his  famous 
sister,  the  Countess  of  Pembroke,  and 
there  embodied  in  his  romance  of  the 
Arcadia  the  thoughts,  sentiments,  and 
aspirations  he  could  not  realize  in  prac- 
tice. Campbell  has  said  that  Sidney's 
life  "was  poetry  expressed  in  action"; 
but  up  to  this  time  it  had  been  poetry 
expressed  in  character,  and  denied  an 
outlet  in  action.  It  now  found  an  out- 
let in  literature.  Day  after  day  he  | 
wrote  under  the  eye  of  his  beloved  sis- 
ter, with  no  thought  of  publication,  the 
pages  of  this  goodly  folio.  The  form 


1 868.} 


Sidney  and  RalcigJi. 


307 


of  the  Arcadia,  it  must  be  confessed,  is 
somewhat  fantastic,  and  the  story  te- 
dious ;  but  it  is  still  so  sound  at  the 
core,  so  pure,  strong,  and  vital  in  the 
soul  that  animates-  it,  and  so  much  in- 
ward freshness  and  beauty  are  revealed 
the  moment  we  pierce  its  outward  crust 
of  affectation,  that  no  changes  in  the 
fashions  of  literature  have  ever  been 
able  to  dislodge  it  from  its  eminence  of 
place.  There  we  may  still  learn  the 
sweet  lore  of  friendship  and  love  ;  there 
we  may  still  feed  the  heart's  hunger, 
equally  for  scenes  of  pastoral  innocence 
and  heroic  daring.  A  ray  of 

"The  light  that  never  was,  on  sea  or  land," 

gleams  here  and  there  over  its  descrip- 
tions, and  proclaims  the  poet.  The 
style  of  the  book,  in  its  good  elements, 
was'  the  best  prose  style  which  had  yet 
appeared,  —  vigorous,  harmonious,  fig- 
urative, and  condensed.  In  the  charac- 
terizations of  feminine  beauty  and  ex- 
cellence Spenser  and  Shakespeare  are 
anticipated,  if  not  sometimes  rivalled. 
But  all  these  merits  are  apt  to  be  lost 
on  the  modern  reader,  owing  to  the  fact 
that,  though  Sidney's  thoughts  were 
noble  and  his  feelings  genuine,  his  fan- 
cy was  artificial,  and  incessantly  labored 
to  provide  his  rhetoric  with  stilts.  It 
will  not  trust  Nature  in  her  "  homely 
russet  brown,"  but  bedizens  her  in 
court  trappings,  belaces  and  embroiders 
her,  is  sceptical  of  everything  in  senti- 
ment and  passion  which  is  easily  great, 
and  sometimes  so  elaborates  all  life 
out  of  expression,  that  language  is  con- 
verted from  the  temple  of  thought  into 
its  stately  mausoleum.  It  cannot,  we 
fear,  be  doubted  that  Sidney's  court  life 
had  made  him  a  little  affected  and  con- 
ceited on  the  surface  of  his  fine  nature, 
if  not  in  its  substance.  The  Arcadia 
is  rich  in  imagery,  but  in  the  same  sen- 
tence we  often  find  images  that  glitter 
like  dew-drops  followed  by  images  that 
glitter  like  icicles  ;  and  there  is  every 
evidence  that  to  his  taste  the  icicles 
were  finer  than  the  dew-drops. 

It  may  not  here  be  out  of  place  to 
say,  that  though  we  commonly  think  of 
Sidney  as  beautiful  in  face  no  less  than 


in  behavior,  he  was  not,  in  fact,  a  comely 
gentleman.  Ben  Jonson  told  Drum- 
mond  that  he  "  was  no  pleasant  man  in 
countenance,  his  face  being  spoiled  with 
pimples,  of  high  blood,  and  long." 

In  1581  we  find  Sidney  in  Parliament. 
Shortly  after  he  wrote  his  "  Defence  of 
Poesy,"  in  which,  assuming  that  the 
object  of  knowledge  is  right  action,  he 
attempted  to  prove  the  superiority  of 
poetry  to  all  other  branches  of  knowl- 
edge, on  the  ground  that,  while  the  other 
branches  merely  coldly  pointed  the  way 
to  virtue,  poetry  enticed,  animated,  in- 
spired the  soul  to  pursue  it.  Fine  as 
this  defence  of  poetry  is,  the  best  de- 
fence of  poetry  is  to  write  that  which 
is  good.  In  1583  he  was  married  to 
the  daughter  of  Sir  Francis  Walsing- 
ham.  As  his  whole  heart  and  imagi- 
nation were  at  this  time  absorbed  by 
the  Stella  of  his  sonnets,  the  beautiful 
Penelope  Devereux,  sister  of  the  Earl 
of  Essex,  and  as  his  passion  does  not 
appear  to  have  abated  after  her  mar- 
riage with  Lord  Rich,  Sidney  must  be 
considered  to  have  failed  in  love  as  in 
ambition,  marrying  the  woman  he  re- 
spected, and  losing  the  woman  he 
adored.  And  it  is  curious  that  the  wo- 
man he  did  marry,  soon  after  his  4eath, 
married  the  Earl  of  Essex,  brother  of 
the  woman  he  so  much  desired  to 
marry. 

In  1585  the  Queen,  having  decided 
to  assist  the  United  Provinces,  in  their 
war  against  Philip  of  Spain,  with  an 
English  army,  under  the  command  of 
Leicester,  gratified  Sidney's  long  thirst 
for  honorable  action  by  appointing  him 
Governor  of  Flushing.  In  this  post, 
and  as  general  of  cavalry,  he  did  all 
that  valor  and  sagacity  could  do  to  re- 
pair the  blunders  and  mischiefs  which 
inevitably  resulted  from  the  coward- 
ice, arrogance,  knavery,  and  military 
impotence  of  Leicester.  On  the  22d 
of  September,»i586,  in  a  desperate  en- 
gagement near  Zutphen,  he  was  dan- 
gerously wounded  in  attempting  to  res- 
cue a  friend  hemmed  in  by  the  enemy  ; 
and,  as  he  was  carried  bleeding  from  the 
field,  he  performed  the  crowning  act  of 
his  life.  The  cup  of  water,  which  his 


308 


Sidney  and  Raleigh. 


[September, 


lips  ached  to  touch,  but  which  he  passed 
to  the  dying  soldier  with  the  words, 
"  Thy  necessity  is  greater  than  mine,"  — 
this  beautiful  deed,  worth  a  thousand 
defences  of  poetry,  will  consecrate  his 
memory  in  the  hearts  of  millions  who 
will  never  read  the  Arcadia. 

Sidney  lay  many  days  in  great  agony. 
The  prospect  of  his  death  stirred  Lei- 
cester into  unwonted  emotion.  "  This 
young  man,"  he  writes,  "  he  was  my 
greatest  comfort,  next  her  Majesty,  of 
all  the  world  ;  and  if  I  could  buy  his 
life  with  all  I  have,  to  my  shirt,  I  would 
give  it."  The  account  of  his  death,  by 
his  chaplain,  is  inexpressibly  affecting. 
When  the  good  man,  to  use  his  own 
words,  "  proved  to  him  out  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, that,  though  his  understanding  and 
senses  should  fail,  yet  that  faith  which 
he  had  now  could  not  fail,  he  did,  with 
a  cheerful  and  smiling  countenance,  put 
forth  his  hand,  and  slapped  me  softly 
on  the  cheeks.  Not  long  after  he  lifted 
up  his  eyes  and  hands,  uttering  these 
words,  'I  would  not  change  my  joy 
for  the  empire  of  the  world.'  .... 
Having  made  a  comparison  of  God's 
grace  now  in  him,  his  former  virtues 
seemed  to  be  nothing ;  for  he  wholly 
condemned  his  former  life.  'All  things 
in  it,'  he  said,  '  have  been  vain,  vain, 
vain.' " 

His  sufferings  were  brought  to  a.  close 
on  the  1 7th  of  October,  1586.  Among 
the  throng  of  testimonials  to  his  excel- 
lence called  forth  by  his  death,  only  two 
were  worthy  of  the  occasion.  The  first 
was  the  simple  remark  of  Lord  Buck- 
hurst,  that  "  he  hath  had  as  great  love 
in  this  life,  and  as  many  tears  for  his 
death,  as  ever  any  had."  The  sec- 
ond is  a  stanza  from  an  anonymous 
poem,  usually  printed  with  the  elabo- 
rate, but  cold  and  pedantic,  eulogy  of 
Spenser,  whose  tears  for  his  friend 
and  patron  seemed  to  freeze  in  their 
passage  into  words.  The  stanza  has 
been  often  quoted,  but  rarely  in  con- 
nection with  the  person  it  character- 
izes :  — 

"  A  sweet,  attractive  kind  of  grace, 
A  full  assurance  given  by  looks, 
Continual  comfort  in  a  face, 
The  lineaments  of  Gospel  Books." 


In  passing  from  Sidney  to  Raleigh, 
we  pass  to  a  less  beautiful  and  engaging, 
but  far  more  potent  and  comprehensive 
spirit.  We  despair  of  doing  justice  to 
the  various  efficiency  of  this  most  splen- 
did of  adventurers,  all  of  whose  talents 
were  abilities,  and  all  of  whose  abilities 
were  accomplishments  ;  whose  vigorous 
and  elastic  nature  could  adapt  itself  to  all 
occasions  and  all  pursuits,  and  who  as 
soldier,  sailor,  courtier,  colonizer,  states- 
man, historian,  and  poet,  seemed  spe- 
cially gifted  to  do  the  thing  which  ab- 
sorbed him  at  the  moment.  Born  in 
1552,  and  the  son  of  a  Devonshire  gen- 
tleman of  ancient  family,  straitened  in- 
come, and  numerous  children,  fortune 
denied  him  wealth,  only  to  lavish  on 
him  all  the  powers  by  which  wealth  is 
acquired.  In  his  case,  one  of  the  most 
happily  constituted  of  human  intellects 
was  lodged  in  a  physical  frame  of  per- 
fect soundness  and  strength,  so  that  at 
all  periods  of  his  life,  in  the  phrase  of 
the  spiteful  and  sickly  Cecil,  he  could 
"  toil  terribly."  Action,  adventure,  was 
the  necessity  of  his  being.  Imagina- 
tive and  thoughtful  as  he  was,  the  vis- 
ion of  imagination,  the  suggestion  of 
thought,  went  equally  to  enlighten  and 
energize  his  will.  Whatever  appeared 
possible  to  his  brain  he  ached  to  make 
actual  with  his  hand.  Though  distin- 
guished at  the  university,  he  left  it  on 
the  first  opportunity  for  active  life  pre- 
sented to  him,  and  at  the  age  of  seven- 
teen joined  the  band  of  gentleman  vol- 
unteers who  went  to  France  to  fight  on 
the  Protestant  side  in  the  civil  war  by 
which  that  kingdom  was  convulsed.  In 
this  rough  work  he  passed  five  educat- 
ing years.  Shortly  after  his  return,  in 
1580,  an  Irish  rebellion  broke  out ;  and 
Raleigh,  as  captain  of  a  company  of 
English  troops,  engaged  in  the  ruthless 
business  of  putting  it  down.  A  dispute 
having  occurred  between  him  and  the 
Lord  Deputy  Grey,  it  was  referred  to- 
the  Council  Board  in  England.  Raleigh, 
determined,  if  possible,  to  escape  from 
the  squalid,  cruel,  and  disgusting  drudg- 
ery of  an  Irish  war,  exerted  every  re- 
source of  his  pliant  genius  to  ingratiate 
himself  with  Elizabeth ;  and  urged  his 


1868.] 


Sidney  and  RaleigJi. 


own  views  with  such  consummate,  art 
that  he  got,  says  the  chronicler,  "the 
Queen's  ear  in  a  trice."  His  graces  of 
person  took  her  fancy,  as  much  as  his 
ready  intelligence,  his  plausible  elocu- 
tion, and  his  available  union  of  the 
large  conceptions  of  the  statesman  with 
the  intrepidity  of  the  soldier,  impressed 
her  discerning  mind.  Here,  at  least, 
was  a  thoroughly  able  man.  The  story 
that  he  first  attracted  her  regard  by 
casting  his  rich  cloak  into  a  puddle 
to  save  the  royal  feet  from  contaminat- 
ing mud,  though  characteristic,  is  one 
of  those  stories  which  are  too  good 
to  be  true.  His  promotion  was  as  rapid 
as  Sidney's  was  slow ;  for  he  had  a 
mind  which,  on  all  occasions,  darted 
at  once  to  the  best  thing  to  be  done  ; 
and  not  content  with  deserving  to  be 
advanced,  he  outwitted  all  who  in- 
trigued against  his  advancement.  He 
was  knighted,  made  Captain  of  the 
Guard,  Seneschal  of  the  County  of 
Cornwall,  Lord  Warden  of  the  Stanne- 
ries,  and  received  a  large  grant  of  land 
in  Ireland,  in  less  than  three  years  after 
his  victorious  appearance  at  the  Coun- 
cil Board.  Though  now  enabled  to 
gratify  those  luxurious  tastes  which 
poverty  had  heretofore  mortified,  and 
though  so  susceptible  to  all  that  can 
charm  the  senses  through  the  imagina- 
tion, that  his  friend  Spenser  described 
him  as  a  man 

"  In  whose  high   thoughts   Pleasure  had  built  her 
b'ower," 

still  pleasure,  though  intensely  enjoyed, 
had  no  allurements  to  weaken  the  in- 
satiable activity  of  his  spirit,  or  moder- 
ate the  audacity  of  his  ambition.  Pa- 
triot as  well  as  courtier,  and  statesman 
as  well  as  adventurer,  with  an  intelli- 
gence so  flexible  that  it  could  grasp  great 
designs  as  easily  as  it  could  manage 
petty  intrigues,  and  stirred  with  an  im- 
patient feeling  that  he  was  the  ablest 
man  of  the  nation,  in  virtue  of  individu- 
alizing most  thoroughly  the  spirit  and 
aspirations  of  the  people  and  the  time, 
he  now  engaged  in  those  great  mari- 
time enterprises,  inseparably  associated 
with  his  name,  to  found  a  colonial  em- 
pire for  England,  and  to  break  down  the 


power  and  humble  the  pride  of  Spain. 
In  1585  he  obtained  a  patent  frorn  the 
Queen  "  to  appropriate,  plant,  and  gov- 
ern any  territorial  possessions  he  might 
acquire  in  the  unoccupied  portions  of 
North  America."  The  result  was  the 
first  settlement  of  Virginia,  which  failed 
from  the  misconduct  of  the  colonists 
and  the  hostility  of  the  Indians.  He 
then  engaged  extensively  in  those  pri- 
vateering—  those  somewhat  buccaneer- 
ing—  expeditions  against  the  commerce 
and  colonies  of  Spain  which  can  be 
justified  on  no  general  principles,  but 
which  the  instinct  of  English  people, 
hating  Spaniards,  hating  Popery,  and 
conscious  that  real  war  existed  under 
formal  peace,  both  stimulated  and  sanc- 
tioned. Spain,  to  Raleigh,  was  a  nation 
to  be  detested  and  warred  against  by 
every  honest  Englishman,  for  —  to  use 
his  own  words  —  "  her  bloody  and  inju- 
rious designs,  purposed  and  practised 
against  Christian  princes,  over  all  of 
whom  she  seeks  unlawful  and  ungod- 
ly rule  and  empiry." 

In  the  height  of  Raleigh's  favor  with 
the  Queen  the  discovery  of  his  intrigue 
with  one  of  her  maids  of  honor,  and 
subsequent  private  marriage,  brought 
down  on  his  head  the  full  storm  of  the 
royal  virago's  wrath.  He  was  deprived 
of  all  the  offices  which  gave  him  admis- 
sion to  her  august  presence,  and  im- 
prisoned with  his  wife  in  the  Tower. 
Any  other  man  would  have  been  hope- 
lessly ruined  ;  but  by  counterfeiting  the 
most  romantic  despair  at  the  Queen's 
displeasure,  and  by  representing  his 
whole  misery  to  proceed  from  being 
deprived  of  the  sight  of  her  divine  per- 
son, he  was,  in  two  or  three  weeks,  re- 
leased.from  imprisonment.  When  free, 
he  performed  such  important  parliamen- 
tary services  that  he  partially  regained 
her  favor,  and  he  managed  so  well  as 
to  induce  her  to  grant  him  the  manor 
of  Sherborne.  As  this  was  church 
property,  and  as  Raleigh  was  accused 
by  his  enemies  of  being  an  atheist,  the 
grant  occasioned  great  scandal.  His 
disgrace  and  imprisonment  had  filled 
his  rivals  with  hope.  They  naturally 
thought  that  his  offence,  which  morti- 


3IO 


Sidney  and  RaleigJi. 


[September, 


fied  the  coquette's  vanity  as  well  as  the 
sovereign's  pride,  was  of  such  a  nature 
that  even  Raleigh's  management  could 
not  gloss  it  over ;  but  now  they  trem- 
bled with  apprehensions  of  his  com- 
plete restoration  to  favor.  One  of  them 
writes :  "  It  is  feared  of  all  honest 
men,  that  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  shall 
presently  come  to  court ;  and  yet  it  is 
well  withstood.  God  grant  him  some 
further  resistance,  and  that  place  he 
better  deserveth  if  he  had  his  right." 
Raleigh,  unsuccessful  in  regaining 
the  affection  and  esteem  of  his  roy- 
al mistress,  now  thought  to  dazzle 
her  imagination  with  a  shining  enter- 
prise. He  believed,  with  millions  of 
others,  in  the  fable  of  El  Dorado,  and 
conceived  it  to  lie  somewhere  in  Gui- 
ana, in  the  region  between  the  Orinoco 
and  the  Amazon.  His  imagination  was 
fired  with  the  thought  of  penetrating  to 
the  capital  city,  where  the  houses  were 
roofed  with  gold,  where  the  common 
sand  glistened,  and  the  very  rocks 
shone,  with  the  precious  deposit. 
Should  he  succeed,  the  consequences 
would  be  immense  wealth  and  fame  for 
himself,  and  immense  addition  to  the 
power  and  glory  of  England ;  and  as 
he  purposed  to  induce  the  native  chiefs 
to  swear  allegiance  to  the  Queen,  and 
eventually  to  establish  an  English  colo- 
ny in  the  country,  he  flattered  himself, 
in  Mr.  Napier's  words,  "  that  he  would 
be  able,  by  the  acquisition  of  Guiana, 
vastly  to  Extend  the  sphere  of  English 
industry  and  commerce,  to  render  Lon- 
don the  mart  of  the  choicest  productions 
of  the  New  World,  and  to  annex  to  the 
Crown  a  region  which,  besides  its  great 
colonial  recommendations,  would  enable 
it  to  command  the  chief  possessions 
of  its  greatest  enemy,  and  from  which 
his  principal  resources  were  derived." 
Possessed  by  these  kindling  ideas,  and 
with  the  personal  magnetism  to  make 
them  infectious,  Raleigh  does  not  seem 
to  have  found  any  difficulty  in  obtaining 
money  and  men  to  carry  them  out ;  and 
in  February,  1595,  with  a  fleet  -of  five 
ships,  he  set  out  for  the  land  of  gold. 
The  enterprise  was,  of  course,  unsuc- 
cessful, for  no  El  Dorado  existed  ;  but 


on  his  return,  at  the  close  of  the  sum- 
mer, he  published  his  account  of  "  The 
Discovery  of  the  Large,  Rich,  and  Beau- 
tiful Empire  of  Guiana,"  in  which  the 
failure  of  the  expedition  is  recorded  in 
connection  with  a  profession  of  undis- 
turbed faith  in  the  reality  of  its  object ; 
and  some  astounding  stories  are  told 
concerning  which  it  is  now'  difficult  to 
decide  whether  they  belong  to  the  class 
of  credulous  beliefs  or  deliberate  lies. 
It  was  his  intention  to  renew  the  search 
at  once ;  but  the  Queen,  having  by  this 
time  nearly  forgiven  his  offence,  his  am- 
bition was  stimulated  by  objects  nearer 
home,  and  the  quest  of  El  Dorado  was 
postponed  to  a  more  convenient  season. 
In  1596  he  won  great  fame  for  his  in- 
trepidity and  skill  as  Rear  Admiral  of 
the  fleet  which  took  Cadiz ;  and  in 
1597  he  further  distinguished  himself 
by  the  capture  of  Fayal.  Restored  to 
his  office  of  Captain  of  the  Guard,  he 
was  again  seen  by  envious  rivals  in 
personal  attendance  on  the  Queen. 
Between  the  court  'factions  of  Essex 
and  Cecil  he  first  tried  to  mediate  ;  but 
being  hated  by  Essex,  he  joined  Cecil 
for  the  purpose  of  crushing  the  enemy 
of  both.  The  intention  of  Cecil  was  to 
use  Raleigh  to  depress  Essex,  and  then 
to  betray  his  own  instrument.  Essex 
fell;  but,  as  long  as  Elizabeth  lived, 
Raleigh  was  safe.  Cecil,  however,  took 
care  to  poison  in  advance  the  mind  of 
her  successor  with  suspicions  of  Ra- 
leigh ;  and,  on  James's  accession  to  the 
throne,  Raleigh  discovered  that  he  was 
distrusted,  and  would  probably  be  dis- 
graced. Such  a  man  was  not  likely  to 
give  up  his  offices  and  abdicate  his 
power  without  a  struggle ;  and,  as  he 
could  hope  for  no  favor,  he  tried  the 
desperate  expedient  of  making  himself 
powerful  by  making  himself  feared.  In 
our  time  he  would  "have  gone  into 
opposition  "  ;  in  the  time  of  James  the 
First  "  His  Majesty's  Opposition  "  did 
not  exist ;  and  he  became  connected 
with  a  mysterious  plot  to  raise  Arabella 
Stuart  to  the  English  throne,  —  trusting, 
as  we  cannot  but  think,  in  his  own  sa- 
gacity to  avoid  the  appearance  and  evi- 
dence of  treason,  and  to  use  the  folly 


1 868.] 


Sidney  and  Raleigh. 


of  the  real  conspirators  as  a  means  of 
forcing  his  claims  on  the  attention  of 
James.  In  this  game,  however,  Cecil 
proved  himself  a  more  astute  and  un- 
scrupulous politician  than  his  late  ac- 
complice. The  plot  "was  discovered  ; 
Raleigh  was  tried  on  a  charge  of  trea- 
son ;  the  jury,  being  managed  by  the 
government,  found  him  guilty,  and  he 
was  sentenced  to  death.  The  sentence, 
however,  was  so  palpably  against  the 
law  and  evidence  that  it  was  not  exe- 
cuted. By  the  exceeding  grace  of  the 
good  King,  Raleigh  was  only  plundered 
of  his  estate,  sent  to  the  Tower,  and 
confined  there  for  thirteen  years. 

The  restless  activity  of  his  mind  now 
found  a  vent  in%experi  mental  science 
and  in  literature ;  and,  taking  a  theme 
as  large  as  the  scope  of  his  own  mind, 
he  set  himself  resolutely  to  work  to 
write  the  History  of  the  World.  Mean- 
while he  spared  no  arts  of  influence, 
bribery,  and  flattery  of  the  King  to  get 
his  liberty;  and  at  last,  in  March,  1615, 
was  released,  without  being  pardoned, 
on  his  tempting  the  cupidity  of  James 
with  circumstantial  details  of  the  min- 
eral wealth  of  Guiana,  and  by  offering 
to  conduct  an  expedition  there  to  open 
a  gold-mine.  With  a  fleet  of  thirteen 
ships  he  set  sail,  arrived  on  the  coast 
in  November,  and  sent  a  large  party 
up  the  Orinoco,  who,  after  having  at- 
tacked and  burnt  the  Spanish  town  of 
St.  Thomas, — an  engagement  in  which 
Raleigh's  eldest  son  lost  his  life,  — 
returned  to  their  sick  and  mortified 
commander  with  the  intelligence  that 
they  had  failed  to  discover  the  mine. 
The  accounts  of  what  afterwards  oc- 
curred in  this  ill-fated  expedition  are 
so  confused  and  contradictory,  that  it 
is  difficult  to  obtain  a  clear  idea  of  the 
facts.  It  is  sufficient  that  Raleigh  re- 
turned to  England,  laboring  under  im- 
putations of  falsehood,  treachery,  and 
contemplated  treason  and  piracy  ;  and 
that  he  there  found  the  Spanish  ambas- 
sador clamoring  in  the  court  of  James 
for  his  life.  His  ruin  was  resolved  up- 
on ;  and,  as  he  never  had  been  par- 
doned, it  was  thought  more  convenient 
-to  execute  him  on  the  old  sentence  than 


to  run  the  risk  of  a  new  trial  for  his  al- 
leged offences  since.  In  other  words, 
it  was  resolved  to  use  the  technicalities 
of  law  to  violate  its  essence,  and  to  em- 
ploy certain  legal  refinements  as  instru- 
ments of  murder.  On  the  29th  of  Oc- 
tober, 1618,  he  was  accordingly  behead- 
ed. His  behavior  on  the  scaffold  was 
what  might  have  been  expected  from 
the  dauntless  spirit  which,  in  its  expe- 
rience of  nearly  the  whole  circle  of  hu- 
man emotions,  had  never  felt  the  sen- 
sation of  fear.  After  vindicating  his 
conduct  in  a  manly  and  dignified  speech 
to  the  spectators,  he  desired  the  heads- 
man to  show  him  the  axe,  which  not 
being  done  at  once,  he  said,  "  I  pray 
thee  let  me  see  it.  Dost  thou  think  that 
I  am  afraid  of  it  ?  "  After  he  had  taken 
it  in  his  hand,  he  felt  curiously  along 
the  edge,  and  then  smilingly  remarked 
to  the  sheriff:  "This  is  a  sharp  med- 
icine, but  it  is  a  physician  for  all  dis- 
eases." After  he  had  laid  his  head  on 
the  block,  he  was  requested  to  turn  it 
on  the  other  side.  "  So  the  heart  be 
right,"  he  replied,  "it  is  no  matter 
which  way  the  head  lieth."  After  for- 
giving the  headsman,  and  praying  a 
few  moments,  the  signal  was  made, 
which  not  being  immediately  followed 
by  the  stroke,  Raleigh  said  to  the 
executioner :  "  Why  dost  thou  not 
strike  ?  Strike,  man  !  "  Two  strokes 
of  the  axe,  under  which  his  frame  did 
not  shrink  or  move,  severed  his  head 
from  his  body.  The  immense  effusion 
of  blood,  in  a  man  of  sixty-six,  amazed 
everybody  that  saw  it.  "  Who  would 
have  thought,"  King  James  might  have 
said,  with  another  distinguished  orna- 
ment of  the  royal  house  of  Scotland, 
"  that  the  old  man  had  so  much  blood 
in  him ! "  Yes,  blood  enough  in  his 
veins,  and  thought  enough  in  his  head, 
and  heroism  enough  in  his  soul,  to  have 
served  England  for  twenty  years  more, 
had  folly  and  baseness  not  otherwise 
willed  it ! 

"The  superabundant  physical  and 
mental  vitality  of  this  extraordinary 
man  is  seen  almost  equally  in. his  ac- 
tions and  his  writings.  A  courtier, 
riding  abroad  with  the  Queeji  in  his 


12 


Sidney  and  Raleigh. 


[September, 


suit  of  silver  armor,  or  in  attendance  at 
her  court,  dressed,  as  the  antiquary  tells 
us,  in  "  a  white  satin  doublet  all  em- 
broidered with  white  pearls,  and  a 
mighty  rich  chain  of  great  pearls  about 
his  neck,"  he  was  still  not  imprisoned 
by  these  magnificent  vanities,  but 
could  abandon  them  joyfully  to  encoun- 
ter pestilential  climates,  and  lead  des- 
perate maritime  enterprises.  As  an 
orator  he  was  not  only  powerful  in  the 
Commons,  but  persuasive  with  indi- 
viduals. Nobody  could  resist  his 
tongue.  The  Queen,  we  are  told,  "  was 
much  taken  with  his  elocution,  loved  to 
hear  his  reasons,  and  took  him  for  a  kind 
of  oracle."  To  his  counsel,  more  than 
to  any  other  man's,  England  was  indebt- 
ed for  the  destruction  of  the  Spanish 
Armada.  He  spoke  and  wrote  wisely 
and  vigorously  on  policy  and  govern- 
ment, on  naval  architecture  and  naval 
tactics.  Among  his  public  services  we 
may  rank  his  claim  to  be  considered  the 
introducer  into  Europe  of  tobacco  and 
the  potato.  In  political  economy,  he 
anticipated  the  modern  doctrine  of 
free  trade  and  freedom  of  industry  ;  he 
first  stated  also  the  theory  regarding 
population  which  is  associated  with  the 
name  of  Malthus ;  and,  though  himself 
a  gold-seeker,  he  saw  clearly  that  gold 
had  no  peculiar  preciousness  beyond 
any  other  commodity,  and  that  it  was 
the  value  of  what  a  nation  derived  from 
its  colonies,  and  not  the  kind  of  value, 
which  made  colonies  important.  In 
intellectual  philosophy  Dugald  Stewart 
admits  that  he  anticipated  his  own 
leading  doctrine  in  respect  to  "  the  fun- 
damental laws  of  human  belief."  His 
curious  and  practical  intellect,  stung  by 
all  secrets,  showed  also  an  aptitude  for 
the  experimental  investigation  of  nat- 
ural phenomena. 

And  he  was  likewise  a  poet.  It  was 
one  of  his  intentions  to  write  an  Eng- 
lish epic  ;  but  his  busy  life  only  allowed 
him  leisure  for  some  miscellaneous 
pieces.  Among  these,  his  sonnet  on 
his  friend  Spenser's  "  Faery  Oueene  " 
would  alone  be  sufficient  to  demonstrate 
the  depth  of  his  sentiment '  and  the 
strength  of  his  imagination  :  — 


"  Methought  I  saw  the  grave  where  Laura  lay, 
Within  that  Temple  where  the  vestal  flame 
Was  wont  to  burn  ;  and  passing  by  that  way 
To  see  that  buried  dust  of  living  fame, 
Whose  tomb  fair  Love  and  fairer  Virtue  kept, 
All  suddenly  I  saw  the  Faery  Queen  : 
At  whose  approach  the  soul  of -Petrarch  wept, 
And  from  thenceforth  those  Graces  were  not  seen  \, 
(For  they  this  Queen  attended) ;  in  whose  stead 
Oblivion  laid  him  down  on  Laura's  hearse  ; 
Hereat  the  hardest  stones  were  seen  to  bleed", 
And  groans  of  buried  ghosts  the  heavens  did  perse  ." 
Where  Homer's  spright  did  tremble  all  for  grief, 
And  cursed  the  access  of  that  celestial  thief." 

But  his  great  literary  work  was  his 
"  History  of  the  World,"  written  dur- 
ing his  imprisonment  in  the  Tower.  As 
might  be  supposed,  his  restless,  insati- 
able, capacious,  and  audacious  mind- 
could  not  be  content  with  the  modern 
practice,  even  as  followed  by  philosophi- 
cal historians,  of  narrating  events  and 
elucidating  laws.  He  began  with  the 
Creator  and  the  creation,  pressing  inta 
his  service  all  the  theology,  the  philoso- 
phy, and  the  metaphysics  of  his  time, 
and  boldly  grappling  with  the  most  in- 
soluble problems,  even  that  of  the  Di- 
vine Essence.  Nearly  a  half  of  the  im- 
mense folio  is  confined  to  sacred  his- 
tory ;  and  though  the  remaining  por- 
tions, devoted  to  the  Assyrians,  the 
Persians,  the  Greeks,  and  the  Romans, 
are  commonly  considered  the  most 
readable,  inasmuch  as  they  exhibit  Ra- 
leigh, the  statesman  and  warrior,  so- 
ciably treating  of  statesmen  and  war- 
riors, —  Raleigh,  who  had  lived  history, 
penetrating  into  the  life  of  historical 
events,  —  we  must  confess  to  be  more 
attracted  by  the  earlier  portions,  which 
show  us  Raleigh  the  scholar,  philoso- 
pher, and  divine,  in  his  attempts  to 
probe  the  deepest  secrets  of  existence, 
his  brain  crowded  with  all  the  fool- 
ish and  all  the  wise  sayings  of  Pagan 
philosophers  and  Christian  fathers  and 
schoolmen,  and  throwing  his  own  judg- 
ments, with  a  quaint  simplicity  and  a 
quaint  audacity,  into  the  general  mass 
of  theological  and  philosophical  guess- 
ing he  has  accumulated.  The  style  of 
the  book  is  excellent,  —  clear,  sweet,, 
flexible,  straightforward  and  business- 
like, discussing  the  question  of  the  lo- 
cality of  Paradise  as  he  would  have 
discussed  the  question  of  an  expedition 


1 868.] 


and  Joe. 


313 


against  Spain  at  the  council-table  of 
Elizabeth.  There  is  an  apocryphal 
story  of  his  having  completed  another 
volume  of  the  "  History  of  the  World," 
but  on  learning  that  his  publisher  had 
lost  money  by  the  first,  he  burnt  his  man- 
uscript, not  willing  that  so  good  a  man 
should  suffer  any  further  harm  through 
him.  But  the  story  must  be  false  ;  for 
such  tenderness  to  a  publisher  is  equalr 
ly  against  human  nature  and  author 
nature. 

The  defect  of  Raleigh's  character, 
even  when  his  ends  were  patriotic  and 
noble,  was  unscrupulousness,  —  a  flash- 
ing impatience  with  all  moral  obstacles 
obtruded  in  the  path  of  his  designs. 
He  had  a  too  confident  belief  in  the  re-' 
sources  of  his  wit  and  courage,  in  the 
infallibility  of  his  insight,  foresight,  and 
power  of  combination,  in  the  unflagging 
vigor  by  which  he  had  so  often  made 


his  will  march  abreast  of  his  swiftest 
thought ;  and  in  carrying  out  his  pro- 
jects he  sometimes  risked  his  con- 
science with  almost  the  same  joyous 
recklessness  with  which  he  risked  his 
life.  The  noblest  passage  in  his  "  His- 
tory of  the  World,"  that  in  which  he 
condenses  in  the  bold  and  striking  im- 
age of  a  majestic  tree  the  power  of 
Rome,  has  some  application  to  his  own 
splendid  rise  and  terrible  fall.  "We 
have  left  Rome,"  he  says,  "  flourishing 
in  the  middle  of  the  field,  having  rooted 
up  or  cut  down  air  that  kept  it  from  the 
eyes  and  admiration  of  the  world.  But 
after  some  continuance,  it  shall  begin  to 
lose  the  beauty  it  had ;  the.  storms  of 
ambition  shall  beat  her  great  boughs 
and  branches  one  against  another ;  her 
leaves  shall  fall  off ;  her  limbs  wither  ; 
and  a  rabble  of  barbarous  nations  enter 
the  field  and  cut  her  down." 


BILL    AND     JOE. 

COME,  dear  old  comrade,  you  and  I 
Will  steal  an  hour  from  days  gone  by, — 
The  shining  days  when  life  was  new, 
And  all  was  bright  with  morning  dew,  — 
The  lusty  clays  of  long  ago, 
When  you  were  Bill  and  I  was  Joe. 

Your  name  may  flaunt  a  titled  trail, 
Proud  as  a  cockerel's  rainbow  tail ; 
And  mine  as  brief  appendix  wear 
As  Tam  O'Shanter's  luckless  mare ; 
To-day,  old  friend,  remember  still 
That  I  am  Joe  and  you  are  Bill. 

You  've  won  the  great  world's  envied  prize, 
And  grand  you  look  in  peoples'  eyes, 
With  HON.  and  L  L.  D. 
In  big  brave  letters,  fair  to  see,  — 
Your  fist,  old  fellow  !    off  they  go  !  — 
How  are  you,  Bill  ?     How  are  you,  Joe  ? 


You  've  worn  the  judge's  ermined  robe  ; 
You  've  taught  your  name  to  half  the  globe  ;• 


Bill  and  Joe.  [September, 

You  've  sung  mankind  a  deathless  strain ; 
You  've  made  the  dead  past  live  again  : 
The  world  may  call  you  what  it  will, 
But  you  and  I  are  Joe  and  Bill. 

The  chaffing  young  folks  stare  and  say, 

"  See  those  old  buffers,  bent  and  gray,  — 

They  talk  like  fellows  in  their  teens ! 

Mad,  poor  old  boys  !     That 's  what  it  means,"  — 

And  shake  their  heads  ;    they  little  know 

The  throbbing  hearts  of  'Bill  and  Joe  !  — 

How  Bill  forgets  his  hour  of  pride, 
While  Joe  sits  smiling  at  his  side; 
How  Joe,  in  spite  of  time's  disguise, 
Finds  the  old  schoolmate  in  his  eyes,  — 
Those  calm,  stern  eyes  that  melt  and  fill 
As  Joe  looks  fondly  up  at  Bill. 

Ah,  pensive  scholar,  what  is  fame  ? 

A  fitful  tongue  of  leaping  flame  ; 

A  giddy  whirlwind's  fickle  gust, 

That  lifts  a  pinch  of  mortal  dust ; 

A  few  swift  years,  and  who  can  show 

Which  dust  was  Bill  and  which  was  Joe  ? 

The  weary  idol  takes  his  stand, 

Holds  out  his  bruised  and  aching  hand, 

While  gaping  thousands  come  and  go, — 

How  vain  it  seems,  this  empty  show  !  — 

Till  all  at  once  his  pulses  thrill ;  — 

'T  is  poor  old  Joe's  "  God  bless  you,  Bill  ! " 

And  shall  we  breathe  in  happier  spheres 
The  names  that  pleased  our  mortal  ears, 
In  some  sweet  lull  of  harp  and  song 
For  earth-born  spirits  none  too  long, 
Just  whispering  of  the.  world  below 
Where  this  was  Bill,  and  that  was  Joe? 

No  matter;    while  our  home  is  here 
No  sounding  name  is  half  so  dear ; 
When  fades  at  length  our  lingering  day, 
Who  cares  what  pompous  tombstones  say  ? 
Read  on  the  hearts  that  love  us  still, 
Hie  jacet  Joe.     Hie  jacet  Bill. 


1 868.] 


The  Impossibility  of  CJiance. 


315 


THE    IMPOSSIBILITY    OF    CHANCE. 


FEW  words,  as  commonly  used,  are 
so  entirely  false  and  misapplied  as 
the  word  "chance."  Sorrow  and  joy, 
health  and  sickness,  success  and  fail- 
ure, life  and  death,  the  most  trifling  as 
well  as  the  most  important  events*  of 
life,  are  familiarly  referred  to  chance. 
To  the  same  cause  the  gamester  as- 
cribes his  gains  or  losses,  and  the  un- 
believer the  origin  and  continuance  of 
the  universe.  I  chanced,  he  chanced, 
it  chanced,  —  all  the  inflections  of  the 
word  are  among  the  most  common  ex- 
pressions of  the  language.  Yet  there 
is,  there  can  be,  no  such  thing  as 
chance.  Nothing  ever  chanced  to  hap- 
pen. Whatever  occurs  is  due  to  the 
antecedent  operations  of  immutable 
law.  Whatever  takes  place  is  the  re- 
sult of  a  cause,  and  can,  therefore,  in 
*  no  way,  be  a  chance  occurrence.  For 
an  event  to  chance  implies  at  once  no 
cause.  If  it  had  a  cause,  it  did  not 
chance.  The  inquiring  minds  of  this 
age  are  earnestly  engaged  in  exploring 
natural  law,  and  in  tracing  out  its  mo- 
dus operandi.  But  the  unphilosophic, 
or  rather  the  unthinking,  do  not  con- 
nect man's  actions,  sensations,  emo- 
tions, and  thoughts  with  the  same  far- 
reaching  causes  which  make  the  earth 
revolve  and  the  dew  fall.  Prepossessed 
with  the  idea  of.  man's  free-will,  they 
arc  unable  to  connect  his  passions,  ap- 
petites, aspirations,  conceptions,  with 
co-relations  of  forces  in  nature.  All 
this  is  physical,  earthy,  belonging  to 
matter ;  but  man's  mind,  his  impulses, 
his  actions  resulting  from  the  impulses, 
are  something  very  different  and  quite 
apart  from  such  physical  law. 

Supposing  this  to  be  the  case,  that 
all  these  exhibitions  of  human  power 
m-e  sui  generis,  they  are  all  as  direct- 
ly traceable  to  a  cause  as  rain-drops 
to  the  cloud  whence  they  fall,  —  direct- 
ly, but  not  always  readily  traceable. 
The  apparently  causeless  occurrence  of 
events  gives  rise  to  the  familiar  thought 


of  chance.  The  hidden  causes  from 
which  those  events  result  may  extend 
far  into  the  past,  may  be  manifold  and 
vast  in  their  workings.  Human  intelli- 
gence may  not  be  able  to  trace  them  ; 
their  wonderful  complexity  and  scope 
may  altogether  transcend  man's  limited 
comprehension.  But  the  simplest,  the 
most  apparently  fortuitous  event  is  di- 
rectly the  result  of  forces  coexistent 
with  the  universe.  This  may  be  called 
fatalism ;  but,  style  it  as  we  may,  such 
is  the  simple  truth,  and  fatalism  is  only 
an  equivalent  term  for  the  working  of 
inevitable  law  governing  the  universe. 
Whatever  man  may  reserve  to  himself 
as  the  motive  of  his  own  actions,  cer- 
tainly the  events  which  occur  without 
him,  not  emanating  from  him,  result 
from  the  laws  of  nature,  and  are  inevi- 
table, because  beyond  his  control.  And 
these  outer  events  influence  him  in 
every  way:  they  are  incentives  to  his 
actions,  they  sway  his  thoughts,  im- 
pulses, and  emotions. 

Let  us  take  a  simple  instance,  and  fol- 
low up  a  few  of  the  antecedent  causes 
of  what  seems  to  be  mere  chance.  I 
chance  to  be  struck  on  the  head  and 
killed  by  a  brick  falling  from  the  hand 
of  a  mason,  as  I  walk  along  the  street. 
Here  is  certainly  what  may  be  called  a 
chance  occurrence.  But  what  a  multi- 
plicity of  causes  combine  directly  ar^cl 
indirectly  to  produce  this  result.  The 
brick  fell  because  the  support  of  the 
mason's  hand  was  removed  from  be- 
neath it,  —  one  instance  of  the  ever- 
acting  law  of  gravitation.  The  mason 
dropped  it  because  of  the  previous 
night's  excess,  which  made  him  trem.-0 
bling  and  uncertain,  —  and  here  I  might 
follow  up  the  causes  which  led  him  to 
commit  excesses,  such  as  example,  suf- 
fering, disappointments  ;  and  the  causes 
which  led  the  builder  to  undertake  the 
erection  of  that  house.  I  might  go  far 
back  and  trace  the  causes  which  led 
men  to  build  brick  houses.  I  was  there 


The  Impossibility  of  Chance. 


[September, 


at  that  unfamiliar  spot,  at  that  time, 
because  I  was  seeking  a  doctor  for  my 
child,  who  had  slipped  on  an  orange- 
peel  and  had  broken  his  arm.  Here  is 
another  series  of  secondary  causes. 
The  cause  of  his  fall  was  the  importa- 
tion of  a  certain  orange  from  Sicily.  It 
was  imported  because  oranges  are  edi- 
ble, and  he  slipped  because  orange-peel 
is  soft  and  yielding.  I  might  go  further 
than  this,  and  trace  the  causes  of  ship- 
building, and  thence  to  the  cause  of  th-e 
turning  of  the  magnetic  needle  to  the 
north.  Certainly  the  falling  of  the  brick 
results  from  the  force  of  gravity,  the 
use  of  bricks  in  house-building,  the  use 
t>f  the  compass  in  sailing  vessels.  All 
these  causes,  which  might  be  indefi- 
nitely extended,  combine  to  make,  a 
direct  series,  without  which  the  event 
could  never  have  occurred.  I  was  not 
there  by  chance,  the  mason  was  not 
there,  the  brick  was  not  there,  the 
orange-peel  was  not  there,  by  chance. 
Their  existence  and  influence,  extend- 
ing to  the  results  of  my  death,  were  due 
to  a  wonderfully  complex  and  far-reach- 
ing action  of  natural  laws. 

This  is  an  event  occurring  outside 
of  man's  individuality,  resulting  in  a 
consequence  to  him.  When  a  similar 
occurrence  results  in  protection  or 
preservation  of  life,  it  is  called  provi- 
dential. That  is,  Providence,  the  De- 
ity, is  supposed  to  come  to  rescue  a 
human  being  from  the  results  of  his 
own  laws.  A  boat's  company  is  upset. 
All  are  drowned  but  one  man,  who 
has  made  a  providential  escape.  The 
safety  of  that  man  is  as  directly  due  to 
laws  governing  the  action  of  matter  as 
the  death  resulting  from  the  fall  of  the 
brick.  But  no  one  ever  says  providen- 
tial death.  An  oar,  being  made  of  wood 
lighter  than  water,  floats,  —  gravity 
( again.  The  man  was  taught  by  his  fa- 
ther to  swim,  because  that  father  had 
lost  a  father  by  drowning,  —  other  in- 
stances of  gravity.  He  swims  to  the  oar, 
and  is  buoyed  up  thereby.  A  vessel  sails 
by,  likewise  enabled  to  sail  by  the  force 
of  gravity.  The  vessel  was  despatched 
by  a  merchant  to  a  foreign  port,  the 
cause  of  the  voyage  being  the  deposi- 


tion of  guano  on  a  Peruvian  island. 
Guano  is  wanted  because  ammonia  fer- 
tilizes plants.  Now  the  safety  of  that 
man  is  directly  traceable  to  the  visits 
of  certain  sea-birds,  years  before,  to  a 
desert  is^nd.  The  laws  which  saved 
him  were  a  combination  of  the  differ- 
ent gravities  of  certain  substances,  the 
chemical  action  of  ammonia  on  vegeta- 
tion, the  force  of  the  wind  that  bore  on 
the  vessel,  the  desire  of  gain  in  the 
merchant,  the  nervous  shock  of  the 
father  who  suffered  the  loss  of  his 
parent,  and  all  the  mingling  ramifica- 
tions, which  might  be  traced  indefinite- 
ly. The  providential  escape,  that  is, 
the  chance  safety,  is  as  simply  a  result 
of  cause  as  sunlight  is  the  result  of  the 
sun.  If  these  things  be  readily  ac- 
counted for,  it  is  because  we  can  easily 
trace  the  primal  influences  to  those 
ends.  If  we  cannot  explain  others,  it 
is  because  our  imperfect  powers  fail  to 
detect  the  antecedent,  hidden  causes, 
which  are  too  complex,  remote,  and  in- 
appreciable. Cause  is  only  antecedent 
action  of  persistent  force,  and  nothing 
can  take  place  which  is  not  the  result 
of  it.  Were  it  not  so,  every  event 
would  be  something  outside  of  and 
apart  from  nature,  and  therefore  mirac- 
ulous. We  need  scarcely  recur  to  mir- 
acles, however,  to  explain  occurrences 
which  are  obviously  natural  in  their 
sequences.  The  more  we  know  of  Na- 
ture, the  better  we  comprehend  her 
workings,  the  more  we  discard  the  pos- 
sibility of  miracles.  But,  with  all  of  our 
knowledge,  the  ignorance  of  men  is 
surprising.  In  our  own  day  recourse 
is  had  to  the  supernatural  to  account 
for  novel  phenomena,  which,  could  we 
only  trace  them  to  their  origin,  would 
be  found  to  be  as  simply  natural  as  any 
familiar  occurrence.  From  the  earliest 
period  of  recorded  history,  ignorant  men 
have  looked  outside  of  nature  for  the 
cause  of  what  they  could  not  understand. 
The  savages  were  terrified  at  an  eclipse, 
and  thought  their  Great  Spirit  was  an- 
gry. We  might  just  as  well  say  that  the 
earth  chances  to  come  between  the  sun 
and  the  moon,  every  now  and  then,  as 
to  maintain  that  any  of  the  co-ordina- 


1868.] 


The  Impossibility  of  Chance. 


317 


tions  of  events  in  life  chance  to  occur. 
Had  Adam  possessed  the  necessary 
powers,  he  could  have  calculated  the  fall 
of  that  brick  and  the  overturning  of  that 
boat  as  accurately  as  an  astronomer 
to-day  will  calculate  an  eclipse  which 
will  be  seen  by  the  inhabitants  of  the 
earth  thousands  of  years  hence.  We 
are  able  to  calculate  the  orbits  of  the 
heavenly  bodies  ;  but  the  inconceivably 
complex  workings  of  the  forces  of  mat- 
ter are  infinitely  beyond  our  petty  pow- 
ers. Yet,  being  eternal,  they  must  ever 
work  undeviatingly ;  and,  consequent- 
ly, their  results  are  calculable,  though 
not  by  finite  human  faculties. 

Do  these  laws  then  rule  over  the 
minds  of  men  as  they  do  over  their 
bodies  ?  Is  the  will  of  man  an  excep- 
tion to  the  influence  of  those  far-reach- 
ing forces  which  sway  matter  with  im- 
mutable certainty  ?  Does  a  man  chance 
to  think,  chance  to  feel,  chance  to  de- 
sire ?  Free-will  is  chance.  Because  if 
thoughts,  feelings,  and  desires  do  not 
arise  from  some  stimulus,  some  incen- 
tive, some  outer  influence,  then  they 
chance  to  occur.  As  in  the  physical 
world  nothing  occurs  without  antece- 
dent impulse,  so  mind  must  remain 
inert,  or  else  be  moved  by  either  ante- 
cedent impulse  or  chance.  If  those 
thoughts  and  feelings  have  no  cause, 
then  they  certainly  chance  to  exist. 
Let  us,  as  before,  take  an  example.  I 
am  asked  to  take  a  glass  of  wine.  Cer- 
tainly, if  I  have  free-will,  I  can  elect  to 
say  yes  or  no.  No  simpler  exercise  of 
free-will  could  well  be  given.  And  yet 
the  answer  will  be  a  direct,  irresistible 
result  of  antecedent  cause  utterly  be- 
yond my  control.  My  head  aches  bad- 
ly ;  I  say  no.  I  am  perfectly  well ;  I 
say  yes.  I  dislike  wine  ;  I  say  no.  I 
like  it,  and  say  yes.  Here  my  differing 
physical  state  dictates  the  reply.  I 
have  an  engagement,  and  cannot  stop  ; 
I  say  no.  I  am  at  leisure,  and  say  yes. 
I  am  fond  of  wine,  but  my  brother  was 
a  drunkard,  and  the  trouble  I  have  en- 
dured influences  me  to  shun  the  temp- 
tation ;  I  say  no.  I  never  saw  a  man 
drunk,  and  say  yes.'  I  have  promised 
my  parents  not  to  drink  wine;  I  say 


no.  My  parents  offer  it  to  me  freely ; 
I  say  yes.  Here  previous  pain  and 
previous  resolution,  my  connection  with 
others,  compel  the  negative  answer.  I 
neither  dislike  nor  like  wine,  I  am  not 
biassed  in  any  way,  I  have  perfect 
freedom  to  decide  ;  but  I  dislike  you, 
and  do  not  wish  to  accept  your  polite- 
ness. My  enmity  overbears  my  cour- 
tesy, or  I  don't  like  wine,  but  I  wish  to 
please  you ;  I  have  a  motive  for  being 
agreeable.  My  impulse  of  friendship 
towards  you  is  stronger  than  my  im- 
pulse of  aversion  to  the  wine.  In  all 
these  cases,  and  they  might  be  exten- 
sively multiplied,  my  simple  yes  or  no 
is  directly  determined  by  some  phys- 
ical status,  some  antecedent  impulse, 
some  mental  stimulus.  My  feeling,  my 
thought,  and  my  decision  are  results 
which  may  go  far  back  in  time  and  to 
remote  place  to  seek  their  cause.  In- 
deed, we  cannot  imagine  a  state  of  the 
mind  or  body  not  the  direct  result  of 
long  antecedent  influence. 

All  thought  is  a  result.  It  is  never 
original,  never  self-existent,  self-begin- 
ning. More  delicate  than  grosser  phys- 
ical phenomena,  thought  and  its  conse- 
quent action  are  as  directly  derivative 
from  incident  stimulus  as  the  electric 
current  is  from  chemical  dissolution. 
Though  it  is  difficult,  impossible,  to 
trace  thought  back  to  its  remote  or 
immediate  stimulus,  it  is  evident,  from 
the  manifold  cases  in  which  such  tra- 
cing can  be  made,  that  the  impossible 
cases  are  those  in  which  the  stimulus 
is  recondite  and  hidden.  Free-will  is 
either  a  chance  mental  impulse,  having 
no  dependence  upon  antecedent  stimu- 
lus or  impulse,  or  else  it  creates  itself 
out  of  nothing  with  a  motive.  If  it 
have  a  motive,  it  is  no  longer  free-will ; 
for  it  is  the  result  of  something  impel- 
ling the  impulse.  Thus  free-will  is  an 
impossible  thing  in  a  being  whose 
mental,  as  well  as  physical,  attributes 
are  derivative,  and  are  swayed  in 
their  slightest  action  by  the  influences 
of  inheritance  and  environment.  All 
thought  is  but  a  reflex  of  previous  sen- 
sation. The  wildest  fancy,  the  most 
soaring  imagination,  only  reproduce  in 


318 


The  Impossibility  of  Chance. 


[September, 


memory  sensations  previously  experi- 
enced. Such  faculties  never  create, — 
they  reassemble.  The  reassemblage 
may  be  heterogeneous  ;  parts  of  many 
images  may  be  combined  in  a  new 
whole  ;  but  the  new  images  are  all  made 
up  of  previously  experienced  cerebral 
sensations.  If  it  were  not  so,  the  poet's 
page  and  the  painter's  canvas  would 
be  utterly  incomprehensible  to  others. 
An  object  portrayed  and  a  thought  ex- 
pressed must  represent  what  is  known, 
to  possess  any  meaning.  The  mind 
cannot  conceive  anything  which  has 
not,  in  its  ultimate  detail,  a  prototype 
iri  nature.  We  cannot  imagine  any- 
thing out  of  nature.  The  Devil  may  be 
figured  with  horns,  hoofs,  and  tail.  No 
such  creature  is  known  to  exist ;  but 
horns,  hoofs,  and  tails  are  all  common 
in  the  animal  creation.  We  may  col- 
lect in  strang-e  groupings  the  images  of 
things  which  are  novel  in  such  group- 
ings;  but  analyze  them,  and  we  shall 
find  that  the  component  parts  are  all 
reproductions  of  more  or  less  familiar 
forms.  It  is  the  same  with  abstract 
thought,  which  we  cannot  free  from 
its  dependence  on  memory.  Without 
memory  there  is  no  thought.  What 
is  memory,  but  a  cerebral  sensation 
reiterated  under  the  same  repeated 
stimulus,  or  awakened,  secondarily,  by 
a  chain  of  stimuli  which  act  mnemoni- 
cally  ?  Thought  and  memory  are,  to  a 
certain  extent,  identical ;  a  reproduc- 
tion of  cerebral  sensations  previously 
felt,  but  mingling  in  new  combinations. 
Insanity  furnishes  many  illustrations 
of  a  confused  memory  assembling  a 
strange,  incoherent,  because  unnatural, 
combination  of  previously  experienced 
brain  motions.  Dreams  are  likewise 
unnatural  series  of  faint  sensations 
occurring  in  meaningless  sequence, — 
meaningless,  because  different  from 
their  combination  in  the  actual  occur- 
rences which  they  distortedly  repro- 
duce. An  insane  fancy  and  a  strange 
dream  are  like  the  scrap-work,  once 
common,  in  which  all  sorts  of  figures 
are  pasted  together  in  every  conceiva- 
ble position,  having  no  natural  connec- 
tion with  each  other,  and  mingled  in  a 


chaotic  manner.  Thought  is  a  cerebral 
sensation,  of  an  infinitely  delicate  and 
mobile  character,  responding  to  the 
touch  of  some  stimulus,  often  recog- 
nized, oftener  hidden.  Long  trains  of 
sequential  thoughts  are  as  directly  ini- 
tiated by  a  sight,  a  sound,  or  an  odor,  as 
a  magnetic  current  is  by  the  touch  of  a 
magnet ;  the  sequences  being  identical 
with  those  which  before  answered  to 
the  same  influence.  Memory  thus  be- 
comes a  reiteration  of  previously  expe- 
rienced sensations.  Our  thoughts  are' 
often  so  strongly  sensations  that  we 
cannot  rid  ourselves  of  them,  any  more 
than  we  can  of  disease.  They  infest 
us,  and  defy  our  will.  They  well  up 
within  us  like  spasms  of  pain.  They 
sway  our  bodies  with  their  sympathetic 
action.  Fear,  love,  jealousy,  and  an- 
ger are  thoughts,  and  the  influence 
they  exert  on  our  bodies,  by  communi- 
cated nervous  force,  is  as  powerful  .as 
that  produced  by  drugs.  We  sit  alone 
in  solitude,  and  memory  is  aroused, 
not  from  outer  stimulus,  but  from 
coincident  brain  motion.  We  feel 
the  same  as  we  previously  felt,  our 
nerves  are  vibrated  as  they  were  at  the 
sight  of  the  loved  or  the  hated.  As 
time  elapses,  these  sensations  become 
fainter,  from  the  inability  of  the  brain 
to  react  upon  the  impulse,  until  they 
are  only  experienced  at  wide  intervals, 
as  some  more  powerful  stimulus  than 
usual  is  applied,  which  may  come  in  a 
sight  or  a  sound  or  ah  odor.  Finally, 
utter  forgetfulness  ensues,  when  the 
brain  refuses  to  respond  to  the  stimu- 
lus. What  our  brains  have  recently 
felt,  they  are  readiest  to  repeat.  We 
therefore  remember  distinctly  a  re- 
cently seen  or  often-seen  object.  For 
an  instant  after  an  object  is  removed 
we  see  it  almost  as  clearly  as  before. 
If  we  shut  our  eyes  suddenly,  after 
gazing  at  it,  we  retain  the  full  sensation 
that  it  makes  on  our  brain  for  a  recog- 
nizable time ;  this  continuance  being 
the  unexpired  motion  of  the  nerves, 
originating  in  the  light  from  the  ob- 
ject which  touches  them.  So  with  our 
thoughts.  They  fade  away  with  the 
lapse  of  time ;  and,  if  some  remain 


1 868.] 


The  Impossibility  of  Chance. 


319 


more  permanently  than  others,  it  is 
because  the  brain,  for  some  unknown 
reason,  answers  longer  and  more  readi- 
ly to  the  stimulus  which  awakens  them. 
We  retain  the  sensations  aroused  by 
an  exciting  scene  with  great  freshness, 
and  recall  it  with  great  vividness ;  but 
gradually  the  newer  sensations,  aroused 
by  later  influences,  occupy  the  brain. 
Gradually  our  ability  to  experience 
them  passes  away,  and  no  stimulus  can 
recall  them.  The  poignant  grief  of 
youth  cannot  be  reawakened  in  age  by 
any  mnemonic  stimulus.  The  time  ar- 
rives when  all  ability  to  recall  the  event 
which  caused  it  disappears.  When  we 
reflect  upon  the  myriad  brain  sensa- 
tions, the  thoughts  and  emotions  of  our 
past  lives,  of  which  so  few  now  remain 
or  can  be  recalled,  and  what  a  vast 
number  have  passed  away,  utterly  be- 
yond the  power  of  repetition,  we  can 
understand  that  these  thoughts  and 
emotions  ate  states  of  our  nervous 
structures,  which  disappear  when  their 
causes  are  removed,  which  reappear 
when  those  causes  are  repeated,  —  if 
our  structure  remains  identical,  if  we 
have  not  too  much  changed,  —  and 
which  cannot  be  reiterated  when  our 
substance  has  so  far  differentiated  that 
the  same  incident  force  cannot  produce 
the  same  result  as  at  first. 

The  incident  force  which  initiates  all 
these  changes  of  thought,  as  well  as 
the  vast  ramifications  of  all  the  phys- 
ical and  psychical  phenomena  of  na- 
ture, is  fixed  in  immutable  law.  As  no 
change  in  the  physical  status  of  nature 
takes  place  without  a  cause,  so  no 


change  in  the  mind  of  man  occurs  with- 
out a  cause.  We  may  not  detect  it; 
but  it  exists.  The  action  of  the  human 
brain  is  no  exception  to  the  laws  which 
govern  matter.  If  it  thinks,  it  is  be- 
cause something  made  it  think.  It 
answers  to  some  direct  stimulus,  and 
the  answer  is  thought. 

It  may  be  said  that  chance  exists  in 
the  reference  of  one  event  to  another. 
The  falling  of  the  brick  had  no  connec- 
tion with  the  child's  broken  arm ;  it 
was  therefore  a  chance  occurrence  in 
that  relationship  of  events.  But  this  is 
merely  our  finite  ignorance.  If  I  had 
perceptions  and  power  to  grasp  all  the 
ramifications  of  all  the  forces  of  nature, 
I  should  have  traced  out  the  coincident 
fall  of  the  brick  with  my  unusual  walk 
as  readily  as  I  trace  the  passing  of  the 
earth  between  the  sun  and  the  moon 
on  such  a  year,  hour,  minute,  second. 
The  only  difference  is  that  in  the  first 
case  the  workings  of  those  laws  are  far 
beyond  the  measure  of  my  faculties. 
The  great  motive-powers  of  the  uni- 
verse all  move  in  obedience  to  eternal 
law,  out  of  the  action  of  which  has 
arisen  the  present  status  of  that  uni- 
verse. There  is  no  exception.  •  If  there 
seem  to  be,  it  is  because  of  human 
ignorance  and  weakness.  The  deeper 
we  examine  into  these  laws,  the  more 
wonderfully  comprehensive  they  ap- 
pear, holding  the  great  host  of  suns 
in  their  orbits,  and  inciting  the  human 
brain  to  a  thought  of  love.  The  idea 
of  chance  vanishes  from  us  in  the  con- 
templation of  their  vast  complexity  and 
invariable  action. 


(20 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


[September, 


THE    FACE    IN    THE    GLASS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

IN  the  year  of  our  Lord  1845,  I,  Wil- 
liam Ayres,  formerly  Surgeon  of 
the  — th  Regiment  H.  E.  I.  C.  S.,  re- 
signed my  commission  ;  packed  up  my 
worldly  possessions,  which  are  few ; 
bade  farewell  to  my  friends,  who  are 
numerous  ;  and  sailed  in  the  steamer 
Vivid,  Belknap  commander,  for  London. 
The  cause  of  my  departure  was  three- 
fold: firstly,  I  was  too  old  for  the 
service  ;  secondly,  I  was  weary  of  it ; 
thirdly,  it  was,  as  I  had  good  reason  to 
suppose,  weary  of  me.  And  I  had  seen 
enough  of  life  to  enable  me  to  appre- 
ciate the  advantages  to  be  derived  from 
a  graceful  withdrawal  from  office,  while 
still  capable  of  doing  some  good  and 
inspiring  some  regret ;  I  had  a  very 
strong  dislike  and  dread  of  lingering 
until  younger  and  better  men  were  im- 
patient to  step  into  my  shoes,  and  even 
my  best  friends  were  led  to  wish  that  I 
could  realize  my  advancing  infirmities. 

Such,  briefly  stated,  were  the  reasons 
for  my  resignation.  I  landed  in  Eng- 
land in  the  summer  of  1845,  and  in  the 
following  autumn  took  up  my  abode  at 
No.  9  Lansdowne  Crescent,  Chelten- 
ham, in  company  with  my  old  friend 
and  comrade,  Major  Buckstone,  also 
of  the  — th,  who  is,  like  myself,  verg- 
ing upon  seventy,  gray-haired,  and  a 
bachelor. 

We  live  very  comfortably  together  ; 
so  comfortably  that  we  are  no  more 
inclined  than  was  that  most  genial  of 
bachelors,  Charles  Lamb,  to  go  out  upon 
the  mountains  and  bewail  our  celibacy. 
I  have  not  taken  up  my  pen  to-day, 
however  (and  for  the  convenience  of  the 
reader  I  will  inform  him  that  I  am  writ- 
ing on  the  fourth  day  of  August,  1846), 
—  I  have  not  taken  up  my  pen  to-day,  I 
repeat,  for  the  purpose  of  dwelling  upon 
the  history  or  habits  oij  two  quiet  old 
men,  neither  of  whom  can  make  any 
pretensions  to  a  claim  upon  public  in- 


terest. But  I  was  reminded,  not  long 
since,  of  a  singular  event  in  my  life, 
which  I  have  often  thought  of  commit- 
ting to  paper,  when  I  had  the  leisure 
and  the  disposition  to  do  so  ;  and  just 
now  I  have  both. 

I  was  strolling  leisurely  about  town 
the  other  day,  enjoying  my  cigar  and 
the  shop  windows,  when  I  was  attracted 
by  a  water-color  drawing  of  the  quaint 
old  town  and  Abbey  of  Tewkesbury. 
How  familiar  to  me  were  those  gray 
walls  ;  the  tall  tower,  on  the  very  top  of 
which  the  wall-flowers  wave,  just  as 
those  others  did,  upon  which,  as  a  boy, 
I  often  cast  a  longing  eye ;  those  low, 
moss-grown  headstones,  slanting  in  all 
possible  and  impossible  directions  ;  and, 
beyond,  the  sunny  meadows.  A  fair, 
peaceful  spot,  but  one  which  I  will  never 
willingly  visit  again,  easy  of  access  and 
pleasant  as  it  is. 

Writing  on  this  quiet  summer  morn- 
ing, with  the  sun  shining  through  the 
open  windows,  and,  distinctly  audible, 
the  shrill  chattering  of  old  Lady  Scramp- 
ton's  parrot  two  doors  off,  and  the 
scarcely  less  shrill  voices  of  two  dowa- 
gers who  have  stopped  their  Bath  chairs 
beneath  my  window,  and  are  arguing 
volubly,  —  even  now  a  strange  terror 
possesses  me  as  I  recall  what  I  once 
saw  and  heard  in  Tewkesbury  more 
than  forty  years  ago.  Those  scenes 
have  been  long  absent  from  my  memory. 
I  have  striven  to  forget  them  altogether, 
but  in  vain ;  and  I  will  no  longer  hesitate 
about  giving  them  to  the  world. 

Early  on  the  morning  of  the  4th  of 
December,  1799,  I  arrived  at  Tewkes- 
bury in  a  violent  snow-storm,  and  put  up 
at  the  Angel,  intending  to  remain  there 
through  the  day,  and  go  on  to  Glouces- 
ter by  the  night  mail.  From  Glouces- 
ter I  intended  to  go  to  Laceham  on  a 
visit  to  a  married  sister  who  lived  there, 
and  from  Laceham  to  London,  where  I 
had  already  begun  life  as  a  surgeon.  I 
had  business  to  transact  which  took  me 


1 868.] 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


321 


to  a  certain  village  near  Tewkesbury, 
and  it  was  late  in  the  day  when  I  began 
my  walk  back.  As  I  made  my  way 
through  the  deep  snow,  however,  I  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  it  would  be  im- 
passable for  a  coach  and  four  ;  and  I  was 
confirmed  in  my  opinion  by  the  land- 
lord of  the  Angel,  who  was  evidently 
much  relieved  by  my  arrival,  and  who 
at  once  declared  that  there  was  small 
prospect  of  my  getting  away  from  the 
•1  for  two  days  at  least. 

"  I  never  saw  such  a  storm  in  my 
life,  sir,"  he  concluded.  "  The  snow 
is  near  two  feet  deep  already,  and  fall- 
ing fast" 

After  spending  two  hours  in  pacing 
the  bar-room,  looking  at  my  watch, 
comparing  it  with  the  inn  clock,  and  then 
running  to  the  door  to  see  if  these  were 
any  signs  of  the  coach,  by  which  means 
I  increased  my  impatience  tenfold,  I 
decided  to  make  the  best  of  my  situa- 
tion, and  retired  to  a  private  room, 
called  for  some  gin  and  hot  water,  put 
my  feet  into  slippers,  and  settled  myself 
comfortably  for  the  evening.  I  was  the 
more  disposed  to  be  contented,  as  the 
storm  had  increased  in  violence,  the 
snow  was  deepening  fast,  and  it  was  so 
bitterly  cold  and  dreary  without  as  to 
enhance  my  sense  of  the  warmth  and 
comfort  within.  The  room  in  which  I 
was  seated  was  a  small  parlor  on  the 
ground-floor  of  the  Angel,  with  case- 
ment windows,  a  tolerably  large  fire- 
place in  which  a  generous  fire  was 
blazing,  a  dining-table,  a  large  easy- 
chair,  and  last,  though  not  least,  an  am- 
ple screen,  so  placed  as  to  exclude  the 
draughts  of  air  which  swept  under  the 
door.  I  was  comfortable  enough,  with 
one  exception.  I  had  neglected  to  put 
a  book  in  my  portmanteau,  and  an  ex- 
amination of  the  stores  of  the  Angel  re- 
sulted in  the  discovery  of  a  torn  copy  of 
"  The  Mysteries  of  Udolpho,"  which  I 
had  read  several  times,  and  a  soiled  file 
of  country  newspapers,  none  less  than  a 
year  old.  I  looked  them  over  carelessly, 
as  they  lay  on  the  table,  and  was  pushing 
them  away  in  disgust,  when  it  occurred 
to  me  that  they  might  at  least  serve  to 
keep  me  awake,  and  I  accordingly  se- 

VOL.   XXII.  —  XO.    131.  21 


lected  one  and  began  to  read.  But  the 
comfortable  fire,  the  good  dinner,  and 
the  gin  I  had  taken  were  too  much  for 
me,  and  in  five  minutes  I  was  asleep. 
I  woke  up  in  about  half  an  hour  with  a 
sudden  start,  and,  highly  disgusted  with 
myself  for  my  weakness,  fixed  my  eyes 
on  the' paper,  determined  to  read  steadi- 
ly for  an  hour.  But  my  mind  wandered, 
and  my  eyelids  drooped  in  spite  of  my 
efforts.  I  did  indeed  keep  my  eyes 
open,  but  they  fixed  themselves  vaguely 
on  the  paper,  and  for  five  minutes  I  had 
been  staring  at  the  same  column,  when 
a  paragraph  caught  my  eye,  and  I  was 
suddenly  roused  to  a  full  consciousness 
of  what  I  had  been  reading.  It  was 
headed  "Shocking  Occurrence,"  and 
ran  as  follows  :  "  The  distinguished 
member  for  Cumberland,  the  Right 
Honorable  Harrington  Carteret  Hunt- 
ingdon of  Huntingdon  Hall  and  Avern- 
dean  Manor,  Cumberland,  was  found 
murdered  at  the  latter  residence  on 
the  24th  of  September  last.  It  will 
doubtless  be  recollected  that  for  the 
past  two  weeks  public  curiosity  has 
been  much  excited  relative  to  the  dis- 
appearance of  the  unfortunate  gentle- 
man, and  it  may  be  a  melancholy  satis- 
faction to  his  numerous  friends  and  ad- 
mirers to  be  informed  of  the  few  partic- 
ulars connected  with  his  disastrous  fate. 
On  Friday,  the  8th  of  September,  Mr. 
Huntingdon  left  home  on  horseback, 
to  attend  a  public  meeting  at  Cleveham, 
ten  miles  away.  He  declined  the  at- 
tendance of  his  groom,  saying  that  he 
should  probably  not  be  at  home  until 
late,  and  that  he  preferred  to  ride  alone. 
He  arrived  at  Cleveham  at  eight  o'clock, 
took  the  chair  of  tbe  meeting,  and,  after 
having  discharged  the  business  of  the 
evening  with  his  accustomed  clearness 
and  despatch,  delivered  a  brief  but  forci- 
ble address,  and  left  early,  alleging,  as 
an  excuse  for  his  abrupt  departure,  the 
fact  that  he  had  business  at  home,  and 
wished  to  return  as  early  as  possible. 
That  home  he  never  again  entered. 
His  horse  was  found  the  next  morning 
wandering  on  Maxon  Moor,  on  the 
other  side  of  the  county;  and  no  one,  it 
seems,  had  seen  Mr.  Huntingdon  after 


322 


The  Face  in  tJie  Glass. 


[September,, 


he  quitted  Cleveham  on  the  previous 
night.  The  animal,  though  spirited  and 
powerful,  was  completely  under  the  con- 
trol of  his  distinguished  -master,  who 
possessed  in  a  remarkable  degree  the 
rare  and  enviable  suaviter  in  modo, 
fortiter  in  re.  Any  supposition,  there- 
fore, that  Mr.  Huntingdon  was  killed  by 
a  fall  from  his  horse  was  groundless ; 
and  although  a  search  was  at  once  in- 
stituted, and  conducted  by  Messrs. 
Smith  and  Belrow,  of  London,  with  their 
usual  skill  and  perseverance,  nothing 
whatever  was  discovered,  and  his  un- 
timely fate  might  ever  have  remained 
a  mystery,  had  it  not  been  discovered 
by  an  accident.  A  laborer  employed  on 
the  Clareville  estate,  which  joins  Avern- 
dean  Manor,  had  occasion  to  pass 
through  Averndean,  and,  on  passing  the 
manor-house,  noticed,  to  his  surprise, 
that  the  hall  door  was  open,  and  had 
evidently  been  open  for  some  time,  as 
a  quantity  of  dried  leaves  had  Drifted 
in,  and  were  strewed  over  the  hall.  He 
was  the  more  surprised  as  he  recollect- 
ed the  fact  that  the  manor-house  had 
been  closed  for  many  years,  having 
never  been  occupied  during  the  lifetime 
of  the  present  possessor  or  his  father. 
The  man,  influenced  by  the  curiosity 
peculiar  to  his  class,  proceeded  to  ex- 
amine the  house.  At  the  end  of  one  of 
the  four  corridors  which  lead  from  the 
great  hall  of  Averndean  to  different 
parts  of  the  house,  he  perceived  an 
open  door.  As  he  approached  nearer, 
he  saw  Mr.  Huntingdon  seated  at  a 
table,  and  apparently  engaged  in  writ- 
ing. His  horror  may  be  imagined 
when  the  lamented  gentleman  was 
found  to  be  a  corpse.  The  table  was 
strewed  with  writing-materials,  and  the 
unfortunate  gentleman  had  been  en- 
gaged in  writing  a  notice  of  the  death 
of  his  wife,  who  expired,  it  seems, 
on  the  2oth  of  August,  at  Hyeres,  in 
France.  In  all  probability  the  assassin 
approached  from  behind,  £nd  struck  Mr. 
Huntingdon  while  absorbed  in  writing. 
The  wound  was  in  the  jugular  vein, 
and  the  weapon  with  which  it  was  in- 
flicted—a small  Italian  stiletto  — was 
found  in  the  corridor,  having  evidently 


been  thrown  away  by  the  assassin  in 
his  flight.  The  house  was  searched, 
but  no  further  trace  of  the  murderer  was 
discovered,  nor  did  there  seem  to  have 
been  any  attempt  to  rifle  the  body,  which, 
though  much  decomposed,  was  found 
evidently  in  the  attitude  which  Mr. 
Huntingdon  had  assumed  before  he  was 
struck,  and  one  which  was  very  common 
with  him.  His  right  hand  still  held  the 
pen,  and  rested  on  the  table ;  the  left 
was  thrust  into  his  breast.  Everything 
seems  to  indicate  the  fact  that  the  mur- 
derer fled  the  moment  the  horrible 
deed  was  committed,  probably  alarmed 
by  some  sound.  •  A  purse  containing 
forty  sovereigns  was  found  in  the  pock- 
et of  Mr.  Huntingdon's  coat ;  and  his 
signet-ring,  a  large  and  valuable  emer- 
ald, with  the  Huntingdon  coat  of  arms 
deeply  engraven  upon  it,  on  the  little 
finger  of  his  right  hand.  His  overcoat, 
hat,  and  whip  were  thrown  on  a  chair, 
near  the  door,  together  with  the  report 
of  a  benevolent  society  in  which  he  was 
interested,  and  which  Mr.  Barton  of 
Cleveham  recollects  having  handed 
him  on  the  evening  he  was  last  seen. 
Mr.  Huntingdon  appears  to  have  used 
this  room  —  the  only  one  at  Averndean 
which  bears  any  traces  of  habitation  — 
as  a  place  where  he  could  write,  undis- 
turbed by  the  interruptions  to  which  he 
was  liable  at  Huntingdon.  The  table 
was  littered  with  the  proof-sheets  of  a 
political  pamphlet,  written  with  his  ac- 
customed ability.  The  deepest  inter- 
est has  been  felt  in  his  unhappy  end, 
and  immense  rewards  are  offered  for 
the  discovery  of  the  murderer.  The 
funeral  is  to  take  place  on  Monday  next, 
and  a  large  concourse  of  the  nobility 
and  gentry  of  the  county  will  probably 
be  present.  Mr.  Huntingdon  was  par- 
ticularly distinguished  for  his  interest 
in  benevolent  pursuits,  and  for  the  re- 
markable, we  had  almost  said  magical 
influence  which  he  obtained  over  indi- 
viduals as  well  as  masses.  Death  has 
put  an  untimely  end  to  his  illustrious, 
useful,  and  honorable  career.  His  late 
wife  was  the  only  child  of  the  Right 
Honorable  Charles  Huntingdon  Carte- 
ret,  of  Carteret  Castle,  and  Branthope 


1 868.] 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


323 


Grange,  Cumberland,  and  of  the  Count- 
ess Alixe  La  Baume  de  Lascours.  She 
was  her  husband's  first-cousin,  and  by 
her  death  he  became  her  heir.  As  the 
unfortunate  couple  have  left  no  chil- 
dren, the  vast  estates  of  Huntingdon 
and  Carteret,  in  default  of  heirs,  pass  to 
the  Crown." 

By  the  time  I  had  finished  this  ex- 
tract I  was  thoroughly  awake.  I  sat 
leaning  over  the  soiled,  crumpled  paper, 
and  mentally  living  over  the  horrible 
tragedy  which  it  depicted  in  such  set 
and  stilted  phrases.  I  thought  of  the 
murdered  man  waiting  .in  his  dreary, 
empty  house,  —  waiting  through  long 
days  and  nights,until  some  one  came  to 
give  rest  to  his  dishonored  dust  and 
avenge  his  death.  I  pictured  to  myself 
the  assassin  creeping  stealthily  down  the 
dark  corridor,  and  nearer  and  nearer 
the  unconscious  victim,  whom  a  glance, 
a  l|*eath,  a  footfall,  might  have  saved. 
I  was  dwelling  upon  all  this  with  an  in- 
'v  which  was  far  from  soothing  to 
my  nerves,  when  a  light  tap  on  the  win- 
dow behind  me  brought  me  to  my  feet 
with  a  bound.  I  went  to  the  window,  lift- 
ed the  curtain,  and  looked  out,  but  saw 
nothing  but  the  snow  already  piled  on 
the  outer  sill,  and  the  fast-falling  flakes 
driven  against  it  by  the  violence  of  the 
wind.  I  dropped  the  curtain,  and  after 
walking  round  the  room  on  a  tour  of 
inspection,  of  which  I  was  somewhat 
ashamed,  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
my  nerves  had  played  me  a  trick,  and, 
taking  my  post  before  the  fire,  resolute- 
ly turned  my  thoughts  in  a  different 
channel.  Some  fifteen  minutes  elapsed, 
during  which  time  I  had  (mentally)  ar- 
rived in  London,  become  a  distin- 
•Mctitioner,  and  was  just  about 
setting  un  a  genteel  brougham,  with  a 
\:\  livery,  when  the  silence  of  the 
house  wns  suddenly  broken.  Steps 
stamped  along  the  narrow  passage 
which  led  to  my  room.  There  was  a 
confusion  of  voices,  a  rush,  a  sharp, 
terrified  cry;  then  the  slamming  of  a 
door,  and  silence  once  more.  Soon 
after,  the  landlord  presented  himself  at 
my  door,  candle  in  hand. 

"  I    beg   pardon  for  disturbing  you, 


Doctor,  I  'm  sure,"  he  began  in  rather 
a  tremulous  tone  ;  "  but  there  's  a  poor 
cretur  in  the  kitchen,  —  Lord  knows 
where  she  's  come  from,  but  she  seems 
quite  wild  like,  —  and  being  as  how 
she  's  unwilling  to  let  the  women  come 
anigh  her,  perhaps  you  would  see  what 
you  can  do." 

I  went  forthwith  to  the  kitchen.  A 
group  of  servants  were  huddled  near 
the  door,  and  in  the  farthest  corner  of 
the  room,  crouched  down  with  her  back 
to  the  wall,  and  her  pale  face  and  terri- 
fied dark  eyes  turned  with  a  mixture  of 
fear  and  menace  towards  them,  was  a 
tall  and  powerfully  formed  woman.  Her 
profuse  dark  hair,  already  streaked  with 
gray,  clung  wet  and  dishevelled  about 
her  shoulders.  Her  features  —  finely 
moulded  and  beautiful  they  must  have 
been  once  —  were  sharpened  by  an  ag- 
ony of  fear  which  I  have  never  seen  be- 
fore or  since  in  any  human  creature.  I 
did  not  wonder  that  the  landlady,  half 
compassionate  and  half  frightened,  stood 
near  the  door,  dreading  the  menace 
which  such  supreme  terror  invariably 
conveys,  and  that  the  maids  and  men 
were  equally  afraid  to  approach. 

As  I  advanced,  followed  by  the  land- 
lord, she  rose  slowly  from  her  crouch- 
ing attitude  and  surveyed  me.  I  paused 
within  a  few  steps  of  her,  that  she  might 
see  that  I  had  no  evil  intentions  regard- 
ing her,  and  spoke. 

"  Do  not  be  frightened,"  said  I,  gen- 
tly, "we  mean  you  no  harm;  but  you 
must  not  crouch  in  the  corner  there  : 
come  out  and  let  the  landlady  make 
you  comfortable.  You  are  cold  and 
wet,  and  must  be  hungry  too,  I  'm 
sure." 

She  still  gazed  at  me  without  speak- 
ing, or  relaxing  in  the  least  her  look  of 
terror. 

"Come,"  said  I,  gently,  approaching 
still  nearer,  and  extending  my  hand, — 
"  come,  let  me  take  you  to  the  fire." 

She  made  no  reply ;  and,  as  I  again 
paused,  I  had  a  full  opportunity  to  ob- 
serve her.  She  was.  as  I  have  said, 
remarkably  tall,  large,  and,  as  I  now 
saw,  symmetrically  formed.  Her  feet 
were  bare  and  bleeding,  but  so  delicate 


324 


The  Face  in  tJie  Glass. 


[September, 


and  beautiful  as  alone  to  give  an  idea 
of  her  rank,  even  if  that  had  not  been 
already  visible  in  every  attitude  and 
feature.  Her  dress  hung  in  rags  about 
her,  \vet,  soiled,  and  defaced,  but  enough 
of  its  former  character  remained  to 
show  that  it  had  been  rich  and  dainty  ; 
and  over  her  shoulders  hung  a  coarse 
black  cloak,  like  those  worn  by  the  Sis- 
ters of  Mercy  in  Belgium  ;  her  right 
hand  was  busily  searching  among  the 
folds  of  her  dress. 

"  Come,"  I  repeated,  approaching  still 
nearer,  and  laying  my  hand  on  her 
shoulder. 

A  wild  cry  burst  from  her  lips,  and 
with  a  bound  she  eluded  my  grasp  and 
made  for  the  door;  but  the  landlord 
placed  himself  in  her  way,  and,  sudden- 
ly turning  back,  she  sprang  upon  me, 
clasping  me  close  with  her  left  hand, 
while  her  right  still  sought  something 
in  the  folds  of  her  dress. 

"It  is  gone!'1''  she  screamed,  sud- 
denly relaxing  her  hold  of  me  and  sink- 
ing down  on  the  floor,  —  "it  is  gone! 
I  remember  I  threw  it  away,  —  it  is 


Now  that  she  had  spoken,  I  felt  that 
it  was  safe  to  proceed  to  action :  and, 
with  the  help  of  the  landlord  and  Boots, 
I  lifted  and  carried  her,  still  struggling 
and  •  screaming,  to  a  room  which  had 
been  hastily  prepared  for  her.  It  was 
a  small  room  with  a  fireplace,  a  man- 
tel-piece, over  which  hung  a  small  oval 
looking-glass,  a  window,  and  a  low 
flock-bed.  Plain  and  simple  as  it  was, 
and  so  small  as  to  be  fully  lit  by  the 
fire,  and  the  lamp  which  burned  on  the 
mantel-piece,  it  seemed  to  inspire  the 
poor,  delirious  creature  with  new  terror. 
We  laid  her  upon  the  bed,  where  pres- 
ently she  had  to  be  held  by  two  strong 
men ;  and  I  took  my  position  beside  her 
to  wait  and  watch.  As  her  ravings  and 
delirious  strength  increased,  her  terror 
of  us  visibly  diminished.  Soon  she 
was  blind  to  everything  but  the  dark 
shadows  of  her  own  tortured  fancy,  and 
deaf  to  any  voice  from  the  outer  world  ; 
but  she  struggled  with  fearful  strength, 
and  her  restless,  disjointed  talk,  made 
up  of  French  and  English,  and  with  a 


continual,  agonized,  terrified  reference 
to  the  something  she  had  lost,  —  what  it 
was  she  never  mentioned,  —  went  on 
unceasingly  through  the  long  winter 
night.  I  soon  saw  plainly  enough  that 
she  was  no  maniac.  Hers  was  as  clear 
a  case  of  brain-fever  as  I  ever  saw  in 
my  life ;  brought  on,  doubtless,  in  the 
first  instance,  by  some  shock,  and  ag- 
gravated by  subsequent  privation,  ex- 
posure, and  an  habitual  dread,  which 
was  plainly  evident  in  all  she  dropped 
in  her  delirium.  I  have  said  that  it  was 
a  clear  case  of  brain-fever  ;  it  was  also 
the  most  acute  that  I  have  ever  seen  in 
my  life.  Since  then  I  have  seen  some 
terrible  cases,  though  then  it  was  the 
first  I  had  ever  come  in  contact  with, 
of  any  severity  at  least,  and  I  was  pro- 
portionably  interested  in  it.  I  doubted 
my  power  to  save  this  poor  wanderer, 
but  she  was  an  interesting  study  to  me, 
and  I  was  not  quite  free  from  a  desire 
to  know  something  of  her  history ;  so 
that  when  the  cold  gray  dawn  of  the 
winter  morning  drew  on,  and  showed  no 
abatement  of  the  storm,  I  was  rather 
relieved  than  otherwise  by  the  land- 
lord's prophecy  that  the  coach  would 
not  be  able  to  come  through  that  day. 
His  prophecy  proved  correct ;  and,  be- 
fore the  day  drew  to  its  close,  I  was  far 
too  much  interested  to  relinquish  my 
patient.  I  resolved,  therefore,  to  aban- 
don my  visit  to  Laceham,  and  to  remain 
at  Tewkesbury  until  forced  to  fulfil  my 
engagements  in  London.  Henceforth, 
for  several  days  and  nights,  my  inter- 
ests were  bounded  by  the  narrow  pal- 
let where  the  poor  stricken  wanderer 
tossed  and  raved.  The  fever  burned 
fiercely  for  ten  days,  and  before  they 
had  passed  I  had  abandoned  all  hope 
of  saving  her ;  but  I  knew  that  when 
the  fire  had  burned  out,  when  the  de- 
lirium was  spent,  when  the  storm  was 
lulled,  some  calm  moments  would  fol- 
low before  the  final  silence,  and  for 
those  I  resolved  to  wait.  For  this  wo- 
man, coming  out  of  the  darkness  on 
that  dreary  December  night,  must  have 
had  a  history,  and  a  tragical  one.  Some 
terrible  grief  had  driven  her  forth  upon 
the  wide  world,  pursued  by  —  WHAT? 


1 868.] 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


325 


That  I  could  not  yet  discover.  At  last, 
after  the  tenth  day,  when  the  fever  had 
spent  itself,  and  she  lay  still  and  silent, 
the  nurse  came  to  me  as  I  sat  dozing 
from  sheer  fatigue  in  my  chair  by  the 
fire. 

"  She  's  awake,  sir,  now,  and  sensi- 
ble, I  think." 

I  went  to  the  bed  ;  the  patient  lay 
quite  still,  her  dark  eyes  wide  open, 
and  calm  save  for  the  hovering  fear 
which  always  dwelt  there. 

"  Where  am  I  ?  "  said  she,  as  I  ap- 
proached her.  "  Where  are  the  Sis- 
ters ?  » 

"  They  are  not  here,"  said  I,  gently. 
"  I  am  your  physician,  and  I  am  glad  to 
see  you  looking  so  well." 

The  dread  already  visible  in  her  face 
increased  ;  she  made  an  ineffectual  ef- 
fort to  raise  her  head  from  the  pillow, 
but,  rinding  herself  too  weak,  let  it  fall 
back  with  an  impatient  sigh,  still  look- 
ing at  me  with  parted  lips,  as  if  longing, 
yet  fearing,  to  speak. 

"  You  may  go  now,"  I  said,  turning 
to  the  nurse,  "  and  I  will  send  for  you 
if  I  want  you." 

She  went,  closed  the  door,  and  left 
us  alone  together. 

"  You  wanted  to  ask  me  some  ques- 
tion ? "  said  I,  turning  back  to  the 
bed. 

"  Yes  ;  sit  down,  if  you  please  "  ;  and 
she  motioned  to  the  chair  beside  her. 

"  Where  am  I  ?  "  she  repeated. 

"  At  the  Angel,  in  Tewkesbury,  Glou- 
cestershire," said  I,  surprised,  in  spite 
of  myself,  at  her  evident  ignorance  of 
the  locality. 

"  Who  brought  me  here  ?  "  she  con- 
tinued. 

"  No  one,"  said  I.  "You  were  found 
wandering  in  the  streets  on  the  night 
of  the  4th  of  December,  nearly  two 
weeks  ago." 

Again  she  opened  her  lips  to  speak, 
and    again   closed    them ;    finally   she 
4 'Who  are  you?" 

"  Your  physician,  Dr.  Ayres,"  said 
I,  reassuringly;  for  I  saw  that  she  still 
felt  a  certain  dread  of  me.  "  I  hap- 
pened to  be  staying  here  when  you 
were  brought  in,  and  you  have  since 


been  so  ill  that  I  have  not  been  dis- 
posed to  leave  you." 

Her  brows  contracted,  and  her  dark 
eyes  dilated,  as  I  said  this. 

"  Did  he  send  you  ?  "  she  asked,  rais- 
ing herself  on  her  elbow,  and  looking 
me  full  in  the  face  with  a  sudden  return 
of  the  terror  I  had  witnessed  on  the 
night  of  her  arrival. 

"  No,"  said  I,  "  certainly  not ;  I  do 
not  know  whom  you  mean.  You  forget 
that  I  neither  know  your  name,  nor 
anything  about  you." 

She  had  lain  down  again  as  I  spoke. 

"Ah!  but  he  has  been  here,"  she 
murmured  half  to  herself.  "  He  is 
never  long  away.  I  can  never,  never, 
never  escape  ! "  Her  voice  nfse  to  a 
hoarse  shriek  as  she  said  this. 

"  You  only  do  yourself  harm  by  such 
excitement,"  said  I,  authoritatively. 
"Lie  down  again,  and  I  promise  that 
he  shall  not  hurt  you.  You  are  quite 
safe  here." 

"  Safe  ! "  she  repeated  with  the  stran- 
gest laugh,  —  "safe !  Charlotte  Carte- 
ret  will  never  be  safe  or  quiet  even  in 
the  grave.  Have  you  not  seen  him  ?  he 
has  been  here,  —  he  is  gone  now,  but 
he  will  come  again.  O,  he  will,  —  he 
will, — or  is  he  dead?" 

"  He  shall  not  see  you,  he  shall  not 
hurt  you,"  I  answered  ;  "  I  promise  to 
protect  you." 

"  Protect  me  !  "  she  repeated,  witli 
a  sigh  as  dreary  as  her  laugh  had 
been  strange.  "  None  living  can  do 
that." 

I  was  about  to  reply,  but  she  stopped 
me  by  a  slight  wave  of  the  hand,  and, 
fixing  her  dark  eyes  on  the  opposite 
wall,  seemed  to  make  an  effort  to  recall 
something.  She  lay  a  long  time  thus. 
At  length  she  murmured,  "  I  see  now  ; 
Irememberall, — all.  I  know — "  Then 
suddenly  interrupting  herself,  and  bend- 
ing a  calm,  intelligent  glance  upon  me, 
"  I  have  been  very  ill,  —  have  I  not  ? " 

"  Very  ill." 

"Am  I  better  now?  I  feel  quite 
calm  and  free  from  pain." 

I  paused ;  there  was  no  hope  of  re- 
covery for  her,  no  prospect  even  of 
lingering  on  the  journey  on  which  she 


326 


The  Island  of  Maddalena. 


[September, 


was  bound ;  a  few  hours,  a  day  or  two 
at  most,  was  all  left  to  her  of  life,  but  I 
shrank  from  saying  so. 

My  patient  aided  me.  "  Must  I  die  ? 
Am  I  dying  now  ?  " 

She  answered  my  silence,  "  I  must." 
"How  soon,  Doctor  ?  " 

"  You  may  live  several  days  yet." 

"  Then  I  have  something  to  do.  Get 
pen  and  paper,  Doctor." 

I  went  to  my  portfolio,  which  lay 
in  the  window-seat,  selected  some 
writing-materials,  and  sat  down  beside 
her. 

"What  time  is  it  ?  "  said  she. 

"  It  is  late  in  the  afternoon." 

**  And  how  long  can  I  live  ?  —  until 
midnight  ?  " 

"Yes." 

"  Proceed  then,  Doctor ;  write  as  I 
tell  you ;  put  the  date." 

I  wrote  it. 

u  Now  write,  This  is  my  true  confes- 
sion. Now,  Doctor,  give  me  the  paper, 
—  no,  not  this  sheet,  but  all.  I  will 
write  my  name  here  at  the  end ;  my 


hand  may  not  be  strong  enough  by  and 
by." 

I  held  "the  paper  for  her,  but  her 
hand,  already  weak  and  trembling,  re- 
fused to  perform  its  office.  "  Lift  me 
higher,"  she  said,  impatiently  ;  "  give 
me  some  cordial,  Doctor.  I  must  write 
my  name  there,  —  I  must,  I  tell  you." 

I  brought  more  pillows,  lifted  her  up, 
and,  after  administering  a  strengthening 
draught,  again  held  the  paper  for  her, 
while  she  slowly  and  painfully  wrote 
her  name.  Bending  over  her  shoulder 
I  read  :  — 

"Charlotte  Alixe  La  Baume  Huntingdon, 
nee  De  Lascours  Carteret." 

"  Now,"  she  said,  when  she  had  re- 
linquished the  pen  and  lain  down  again, 
—  "  now  write,  —  write  quickly  ;  it  is  a 
long  story  and  the  time  is  short,  —  very 
short ;  make  haste,  Doctor." 

I  began  to  write  at  once ;  and  every 
word  of  that  story,  and  the  tones  of  her 
voice  as  she  told  it,  are  fresh  in  my 
memory  still. 


THE     ISLAND     OF    MADDALENA. 


WITH   A   DISTANT   VIEW    OF   CAPRERA. 


"OEFORE  leaving  Florence  for  a 
JLJ  trip  to  Corsica,  in  which  I  intended 
to  include,  if  possible,  the  island  of 
Sardinia,  I  noticed  that  the  Rubattino 
steamers  touched  at  Maddalena,  on  their 
way  from  Bastia  to  Pprto  Torres.  The 
island  of  Maddalena,  I  knew,  lay  direct- 
ly over  against  Caprera,  separated  by  a 
strait  not  more  than  two  or  three  miles 
in  breadth,  and  thus  a  convenient  op- 
portunity was  offered  of  visiting  the 
owner  and  resident  of  the  latter  island, 
the  illustrious  General  Giuseppe  Gari- 
baldi. I  have  no  special  passion  for 
making  the  personal  acquaintance  of 
distinguished  men,  unless  it  happens 
that  there  is  some  point  of  mutual  inter- 


est concerning  which  intelligence  may 
be  given  or  received.  In  this  case,  I 
imagined  there  was  such  a  point  of  con- 
tact. Having  followed  the  fortunes  of 
Italy  for  the  past  twenty  years,  with  the 
keen  sympathy  which  springs  from  a 
love  for  the  land,  and  having  been  so 
near  the  events  of  the  last  unforti. 
expedition  against  Rome  as  to  feel  from 
day  to  day  the  reflection  of  those  event-- 
in the  temper  of  the  Italian  people,  1 
had  learned,  during  a  subsequent  resi- 
dence in  Rome,  certain  facts  which 
ed  to  the  interest  of  the  question,  while 
they  seemed  still  more  to  complicate  its 
solution.  There  were  some  things  1  felt 
an  explanation  of  which  (so  far  as  he 


1868.] 


The  Island  of  Maddalcna. 


327 


would  be  able  to  give  it)  might  be  asked 
of  Garibaldi  without  impropriety,  and 
which  he  could  communicate  without 
any  necessity  of  reserve. 

Another  and  natural  sentiment  was 
mingled  with  my  desire  to  meet  the  hero 
of  Italian  unity.  I  knew  how  shame- 
fully he  had  been  deceived  in  certain 
respects,  before  undertaking  the  expe- 
dition which  terminated  so  fruitlessly 
at  Mentana,  and  could,  therefore,  guess 
the  mortification  which  accompanied 
him  in  his  imprisonment  (for  such  it  vir- 
tually is)  at  Caprera.  While,  therefore, 
I  should  not  have  sought  an  interview 
after  the  glorious  Sicilian  and  Calabrian 
campaign,  or  when  the  still  excited 
world  was  reading  Nelaton's  bulletins 
from  Spezzia,  —  so  confounding  myself 
with  the  multitude  who  always  admire 
the  hero  of  the  day,  and  risk  their  necks 
to  shake  hands  with  him,  —  I  felt  a 
strong  desire  to  testify  such  respect  as 
the  visit  of  a  stranger  implies,  in  Gari- 
baldi's day  of  defeat  and  neglect. 

"  I  did  not  praise  thee,  when  the  crowd, 

Witched  with  the  moment's  inspiration, 

Vexed  thy  still  ether  with  hosannas  loud, 

And  stamped  their  dusty  adoration."  * 

Of  all  the  people  who  crowded  to  see 
him  at  Spezzia  in  such  throngs  that  a 
false  Garibaldi,  with  bandaged  foot,  was 
arranged  to  receive  the  most  of  them, 
there  is  no  trace  now.  The  same  Amer- 
icans who  come  from  Paris  chanting 
preans  to  Napoleon  III.,  go  to  Rome 
and  are  instantly  stricken  with  sympathy 
for  Pius  IX.,  and  a  certain  respect  for 
the  Papacy,  temporal  power  included. 
They  give  Caprera  a  wide  berth.  Two 
or  three  steadfast  English  friends  do 
what  they  can  to  make  the  hero's  soli- 
tude pleasant,  and  he  has  still,  as  always, 
the  small  itroop  of  Italian  followers,  who 
never  forsake  him,  because  they  live 
from  his  substance. 

Before  deciding  to  visit  Caprera,  I 
asked  the  candid  advice  of  some  of  the 
General's  most  intimate  friends  in  Flor- 
ence. They  assured  me  that  scarcely 
any  one  had  gone  to  see  him  for  months 
past;  that  a  visit  from  an  American, 
who  sympathized  with  the  great  and 

*  Lowell,  Ode  to  Laiuartine. 


generous  aims  to  which  he  has  devoted 
his  life,  could  not  be  otherwise  than 
welcome  ;  and,  while  offering  me  cordial 
letters  of  introduction,  declared 
this  formality  was  really  unnecessary. 
It  was  pleasant  to  hear  him  spoken  of 
as  a  man  whose  refined  amiability  of 
manner  was  equal  to  his  unselfish  pa- 
triotism, and  who  was  as  simple,  un- 
pretending, and  accessible  personally, 
as  he  was  rigorously  democratic  in  his 
political  utterances. 

I  purposely  shortened  my  tour  in  Cor- 
sica, in  order  to  take  the  Italian  steam- 
er which  touches  at  Bastia,  on  its  way 
to  Maddalena.  Half  smothered  in  the 
sultry  heat,  we  watched  the  distant 
smoke  rounding  the  rocks  of  Capraja, 
and  the  steamer  had  no  sooner  anchored 
outside  the  mole,  than  we  made  haste 
to  embark.  The  cloth  was  already 
spread  over  the  skylight  on  the  quarter- 
deck, and  seven  plates  denoted  six  fel- 
low-passengers. Two  of  these  were 
ladies,  two  Italians,  with  an  old  gentle- 
man, who  proved  to  be  English,  al- 
though he  looked  the  least  like  it,  and 
an  unmistakable  Garibaldian,  in  a  red 
shirt.  The  latter  was  my  vis-a-^'s  at 
table,  and  it  was  not  long  before  he 
startled  the  company  by  exclaiming : 
"  In  fifty  years  we  shall  have  the  Uni- 
versal Republic  ! " 

After  looking  around  the  table,  he 
fixed  his  eyes  on  me,  as  if  chalk- 
assent. 

"  In  five  hundred  years,  perhaps,''  I 
said. 

"  But  the  priests  will  go  down  soon  !  " 
he   shouted  ;    "  and  as  for  that  I.  r 
(pointing  with  his  fork  towards  Cor 
"  who  rules  there,  his  time  is  soor. 

As  nobody  seemed  inclined  to  reply, 
he  continued  :     "Since  the  com;: 
the  second  Jesus  Christ,  Garibaldi,  the 
work  goes  on  like  lightning.     As  soon 
as  the  priests  are  down,  the 
will  come." 

This  man,  so  one  of  the   passer 
informed  me,  had  come  on  bo:;: 

.  but,  as  the  steamer  approached 
Corsica,  he  suddenly  appeared  on  deck 
in  his  red  shirt.  After  we  left  Bastia, 
he  resumed  his  former  costume.  In 


328 


The  Island  of  Maddalena. 


[September, 


the  capacity  to  swagger,  he  surpassed 
any  man  I  had  seen  since  leaving  home. 
His  hair  hung  about  his  ears,  his  nose 
was  long,  his  beard  thick  and  black,  and 
.he  had  the  air  of  a  priest  rather  than  a 
soldier, —  but  it  was  an  air  which  pom- 
pously .announced  to  everybody  :  "  Gar- 
ibaldi is  the  Second  Christ,  and  I  am 
his  Prophet!" 

Over  the  smooth  sea  we  sped  down 
the  picturesque  Corsican  coast.  An 
indentation  in  the  grand  mountain 
chain  showed  us  the  valley  of  the  Golo  ; 
then  came  the  heights  of  Vescovato, 
where  Filippini  wrote  the  history  of 
the  island,  and  Murat  took  refuge  after 
losing  his  Neapolitan  kingdom  ;  then, 
Cervione,  where  the  fantastic  King  The- 
odore, the  First  and  Last,  held  his  cap- 
ital ;  after  which  night  fell  upon  the 
shores,  and  we  saw  only  mountain  phan- 
toms in  the  moonlight. 

At  sunrise  the  steward  called  me. 

"  We  are  passing  the  bocca,  "  —  the 
Straits  of  Bonifacio, —  said  he,  "and 
will  soon  be  at  Maddalena." 

It  was  an  archipelago  of  rocks  in 
which  the  steamer  was  entangled.  All 
around  us,  huge  gray  masses,  with 
scarcely  a  trace  of  vegetation,  rose  from 
the  wave ;  in  front,  the  lofty,  dark- 
blue,  serrated  mountains  of  Sardinia 
pierced  the  sky,  and  far  to  the  right 
faded  the  southern  shores  of  Corsica. 
But,  bleak  and  forsaken  as  was  the 
scene,  it  had  a  curious  historical  inter- 
est. As  an  opening  between  the  islands 
disclosed  the  white  rocks,  citadel,  and 
town  of  Bonifacio,  some  fifteen  miles 
distant,  I  remembered  the  first  impor- 
tant episode  in  the  life  of  Napoleon*.  It 
\vas  in  the  year  1792,  while  Pascal  Paoli 
was  still  President  of  Corsica.  An  ex- 
pedition against  Sardinia  having  been 
determined  upon  by  the  Republic,  Na- 
poleon, after,  perhaps,  the  severest  strug- 
gle of  his  life,  was  elected  second  in 
command  of  the  battalion  of  Ajaccio. 
A  work*  written  by  M.  Nasica,  of  the 
latter  place,  gives  a  singular  picture  of 
the  fierce  family  feuds  which  preceded 
the  election.  It  was  the  commence- 

*  Mcmoires  sur  Fenfance  et  la  jeunesse  de  Napo- 
leon.    Ajaccio,  1853. 


ment  of  that  truly  Corsican  vendetta 
between  Pozzo  di  Borgo  and  the  future 
emperor,  which  only  terminated  when 
the  latter  was  able  to  say,  after  Water- 
loo :  "  I  have  not  killed  Napoleon,  but  I 
have  thrown  the  last  shovelful  of  earth 
upon  him." 

The  first  attempt  of  the  expedition 
was  to  be  directed  against  the  island  of 
Maddalena.  A  battery  was  planted  on 
the  uninhabited  rock  of  S'anta  Teresa 
(beside  which  we  passed),  and  Madda- 
lena was  bombarded,  but  without  effect. 
Napoleon  prepared  a  plan  for  its  cap- 
ture, but  Colonna,  the  first  in  command,' 
refused  to  allow  him  to  make  the  at- 
tempt. A  heated  discussion  took  place 
in  the  presence  of  the  other  officers, 
and  Napoleon,  becoming  at  last  in- 
dignant and  impatient,  turned  to  the 
latter,  and  said :  "  He  does  n't  know 
what  I  mean." 

"  You  are  an  insolent  fellow,"  retorted 
Colonna. 

Napoleon  muttered,  as  he  turned 
away :  "  We  have  only  a  cheval  de  pa- 
rade for  commander." 

At  Bonifacio,  afterwards,  his  career 
came  near  being  suddenly  terminated. 
Some  Marseilles  marines  who  landed 
there  provoked  a  quarrel  with  the  sol- 
diers of  the  Corsican  battalion.  Na- 
poleon interfered  to  restore  order,  where- 
upon he  was  seized  by  the  fierce  Mar- 
seillaise, who  would  have  hung  him  to  a 
lamp-post,  but  for  the  timely  aid  of  the' 
civil  authorities.  The  disfavor  of  Paoli, 
who  was  at  that  time  under  the  control' 
of  Pozzo  di  Borgo,  finally  drove  Napo- 
leon from  Corsica ;  so  that  the  machi- 
nations of  his  bitterest  enemy  really 
forced  him  into  the  field  where  he  was 
so  suddenly  and  splendidly  success- 
ful. 

While  we  were  recalling  this  fateful 
fragment  of  history,  the  steamer  entered 
the  narrow  strait  between  Maddalena. 
and  the  main-land  of  Sardinia,  and  at 
the  same  moment  two  stately  French 
vessels  made  their  appearance,  crossing 
tracks  on  the  route  between  Marseilles 
and  the  Orient.  The  rocky  island  of 
San  Stefano,  lying  opposite  Maddalena, 
forms  a  sheltered  harbor,  which  Caprera,. 


1 868.] 


The  Island  of  Maddalena. 


329 


rising  east\vard  against  the  sea,  ren- 
ders completely  landlocked.  But  what 
a  v.'ild,  torn,  distorted,  desolate  pano- 
rama! A  thin  sprinkling  of  lavender, 
rosemary,  and  myrtle  serves  but  to  set 
off  the  cold  gray  of  the  granite  rocks  ; 
the  summits  rise  in  natural  bastions,  or 
thrust  out  huge  fangs  or  twisted  horns. 
There  is  nowhere  any  softening  of  these 
violent  outlines.  They  print  themselves 
on  the  farthest  distance,  and  one  is  not 
Surprised  that  the  little  village  of  Mad- 
dale  aa,  the  white  house  on  Caprera,  and 
two  or  three  fishing-huts  on  the  Sardin- 
-ian  shore,  are  the  only  signs  of  human 
habitation. 

Beside  the  village,  however,  there 
was  a  little  valley,  near  the  head  of 
which  a  cool,  white  villa,  perched  on  a 
mass  of  rocks,  shone  against  the  rug- 
ged background. 

"  That  is  my  place,"  said  the  old  Eng- 
lishman, "  and  I  shall  be  happy  to  see 
you  there." 

"  I  shall  certainly  come,  if  we  have 
time  enough  after  visiting  Caprera,"  I 
replied.  • 

The  Englishman,  an  entire  stranger, 
was  very  kind  in  his  offers  of  service  ; 
the  Garibaldian  was  so  pompous  and 
arrogant  in  his  manner,  that  I  soon  per- 
ceived that  no  assistance  could  be  ex- 
pected from  him.  Nevertheless,  chance 
threw  us  into  the  same  boat,  on  landing 
in  the  little  harbor.  I  had  ascertained 
that  there  was  a  hotel,  kept  by  one  Re- 
migio,  in  Maddalena;  and  although  one 
of  "  our  mutual  friends  "  had  advised 
me  to  go  directly  to  Caprera,  —  Gari- 
baldi's hospitality  being  as  certain  as 
sunrise,  or  the  change  of  the  tide,  —  I 
determined  to  stop  with  Remigio,  and 
forward  my  letters.  When  the  Prophet 
of  the  Second  Coming  stepped  on  shore, 
is  accosted  by  an  old  veteran,  who 
wore  a  red  shirt  and  blue  goggles.  They 
embraced  and  kissed  each  other,  and 
ntly  came  up  another  weather- 
beaten  person,  with  an  unmistakably 
honest  and  amiable  face,  who  was  hailed 
the  name  of  "  Basso  !  " 

I  knew  the  name  as  that  of  one  of 
Garibaldi's  most  faithful  followers,  and 
as  the  boat,  meanwhile,  had  been  re- 


tained to  convey  the  party  to  Caprera, 
I  stepped  up  to  Basso  and  the  Prophet 
and  asked  :  "  Will  one  of  you  be  good 
enough  to  take  these  letters  to  Gen- 
eral Garibaldi,  and  let  the  boatman 
bring  me  word  when  it  will  be  con- 
venient for  him  to  receive  me  ?  " 

"  Certainly,"  said  the  Prophet,  taking 
the  letters,  and  remarking,  as  he  pointed 
to  Basso,  "this  is  the  General's  sec- 
retary." 

The  latter  made  a  modest  gesture, 
disclaiming  the  honor,  and  said  :  "  No  ; 
you  know  that  you  are  really  his  secre- 
tary." 

The  boat  shoved  off  with  them.  "  It- 
is  a  queer  company,"  I  said  to  myself, 
"  and  perhaps  I  ought  not  to  have  in- 
trusted the  letters  to  their  care,"  One 
letter  was  from  a  gentleman  in  a  high 
diplomatic  position,  whose  reputation  as 
a  scholar  is  world-wide,  and  who  possess- 
es the  most  generous,  and  at  the  same 
time  the  most  intelligent,  sympathy  with 
the  aspirations  of  the  Italian  people. 
The  other  was  from  a  noble  woman, 
who  has  given  the  best  energies  of 
her  life  to  the  cause,  — who  shared  the 
campaigns  of  Sicily  and  Calabria,  and 
even  went  under  fire  at  Monte  Rotondo 
and  Mentana  to  succor  the  wounded. 
Probably  no  two  persons  had  a  better 
right  to  claim  the  courtesy  of  Garibaldi 
in  favor  of  one,  who,  though  a  stranger, 
was  yet  an  ardent  friend. 

The  Hotel  Remigio  directly  fronted 
the  quay.  No  sign  announced  its  char- 
acter, but  the  first  room  we  entered  had 
a  billiard-table,  beyond  which  was  a 
kitchen.  Here  we  found  La  Remigia, 
who  conducted  us  up  a  sumptuous  stair- 
case of  black  and  white  marble  (un- 
washed) into  a  shabby  dining-room,  and 
then  left  us  to  prepare  coffee.  A  door 
into  an  adjoining  apartment  stood  half- 
open.  I  looked  in,  but  seeing  a  naked 
leg  stretched  out  upon  a  dirty  blanket, 
made  a  speedy  retreat.  In  a  quarter  of 
an  hour  coffee  came,  without  milk,  but 
with  a  bottle  of  rum  instead.  The  ser- 
vitress  was  a  little  girl,  whose  hands 
were  of  so  questionable  a  complexion, 
that  we  turned  away  lest  we  should  see 
her  touch  the  cups.  I  need  not  say 


330 


The  Island  of  Maddalcna. 


[September, 


that  the  beverage  was  vile  ;  the  reader 
will  have  already  guessed  that. 

We  summoned  La  Remigia,  to  ascer- 
tain whether  a  breakfast  was  possible. 
"£/i,  die  vuole  ?  "  ("  What  can  you  ex- 
pect ?  ")  said  she.  "  This  is  a  poor  lit- 
tle island.  What  would  you  like  to 
have  ?  " 

•Limiting  our  wishes  to  the  probabili- 
ties of  the  place,  we  modestly  suggest- 
ed eggs  and  fish,  whereat  La  Remigia 
looked  relieved,  and  promised  that  we 
should  have  both.  Then,  although  the 
heat  was  furious,  I  went  forth  for  a 
stroll  along  the  shore.  A  number  of 
bronze  boys  had  pulled  off  their  tow 
shirts, -and  were  either  sitting  naked  on 
the  rocks,  or  standing  in  the  shallow 
coves,  and  splashing  each  other  with 
scallop-shells.  Two  or  three  fishing- 
boats  were  lazily  pulling  about  the 
strait,  but  the  greater  part  of  the  popu- 
lation of  Maddalena  sat  in  the  shade 
and  did  nothing. 

The  place  contains  about  fifteen  hun- 
dred inhabitants,  but  scarcely  one  half 
that'  number  were  at  home.  The  oth- 
ers were  sailors,  or  coral  fishers,  who 
are  always  absent  during  the  summer 
months.  The  low,  bright-colored  hous- 
es are  scattered  along  the  shore,  in  such 
order  as  the  huge,  upheaved  masses  of 
granite  will  allow,  and  each  street  ter- 
minates in  a  stony  path.  In  the  scanty 
garden-enclosures,  bristling  masses  of 
the  fruit-bearing  cactus  overhang  the 
walls,  repellant  as  the  rocks  from  which 
they  spring.  Evidently  the  place  sup- 
plies nothing  except  the  article  of  fish  ; 
all  other  necessaries  of  life  must  be 
brought  from  Sardinia.  The  men  are 
principally  pensioned  veterans  of  the 
Italian  navy,  who  are  satisfied  with  the 
sight  of  blue  water  and  passing  vessels  ; 
the  women  (rock-widows,  one  might  call 
them),  having  the  very  simplest  house- 
hold duties  to  perform,  usually  sit  at 
their  doors,  with  some  kind  of  knitting 
or  netting,  and  chatter  with  their  near- 
est neighbors.  I  had  scarcely  walked 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  before  the  sleepy 
spirit  of  the  place  took  hold  of  my  feet, 
and  I  found  myself  contemplating  the 
shadowy  spots  among  the  rocks,  much 


more  than  the  wild  and  rugged  island 
scenery  across  the  strait. 

Garibaldi's  house  on  Caprera  flashed 
in  the  sun,  and  after  a  while  I  saw  a 
boat  pulling  away  from  the  landing- 
place  below  it.  I  returned  to  the  har- 
bor to  meet  the  boatman,  and  receive 
the  answer  which  my  letters  required. 
It  was  a  red-headed  fellow,  with  a  face 
rather  Scotch  than  Italian,  and  a  blunt, 
direct  manner  of  speech  which  corre- 
sponded thereto. 

"  The  General  says  he  is  not  well,  and 
can't  see  you,"  said  he. 

"  Have  you  a  letter  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  No  ;  but  he  told  me  so." 

"He  is  sick,  then?" 

"  No,"  said  the  boatman,  "he  is  not 
sick." 

"  Where  did  you  see  him  ?  " 

"  Out  of  doors.  He  went  down  to  the 
sea  this  morning  and  took  a  bath. 
Then  he  worked  in  the  garden." 

The  first  sensation  of  a  man  who  re- 
ceives an  unexpected  blow  is  incredu- 
lity, and  not  exasperation.  It  required 
a  slight  effort  to  believe  the  boatman's 
words,  and  the  next  impression  was  that 
there  was  certainly  some  misunderstand- 
ing. If  Garibaldi  were  well  enough  to 
walk  about  his  fields,  he  was  able  to  re- 
ceive a  visitor  ;  if  he  had  read  the  letters 
I  forwarded,  a  decent  regard  for  the  writ- 
ers would  have  withheld  him  from  send- 
ing a  rude  verbal  answer  by  the  mouth 
of  a  boatman.  The  whole  proceeding 
was  so  utterly  at  variance  with  all  I 
had  heard  of  his  personal  refinement 
and  courtesy,  that  I  was  driven  to  the 
suspicion  that  his  followers  had  sup- 
pressed the  letters,  and  represented  me, 
perhaps,  as  a  stranger  of  not  very  repu- 
table appearance. 

Seeing  that  we  were  stranded  for 
three  days  upon  Maddalena,  — until  the 
steamer  returned  from  Porto  Torres,  — 
I  determined  to  assure  myself  whether 
the  suspicion  was  just.  I  could,  at  least, 
give  the  General  a  chance  to  correct  any 
misunderstanding.  I  therefore  wrote 
a  note,  mentioning  the  letters  and  the 
answer  I  had  received  through  the  boat- 
man ;  referring  to  other  friends  of  his 
in  America  and  Italy,  whom  I  knew; 


1 868.] 


The  Island  of  Maddalena. 


331 


assuring  him  that  I  had  had  no  inten- 
tion of  thrusting  myself  upon  his  hos- 
pitality, but  had  only  meant  to  desire  a 
brief  personal  interview,  I  abstained, 
of  course,  from  repeating  the  request, 
as  he  would  thus  be  able  to  grant  it 
more  gracefully,  if  a  misrepresentation 
had  really  been  made.  Summoning  the 
red-headed  boatman,  I  gave  him  the 
note,  with  the  express  command  that 
he  should  give  it  into  Garibaldi's  own 
hands,  and  not  into  those  of  any  of  the 
persons  about  him. 

La  Remigia  gave  us  as  good  a  break- 
fast as  the  house  could  furnish.  The 
wine  was  acutely  sour,  but  the  fish  were 
fresh  and  delicate.  Moreover,  the  room 
had  been  swept,  and  the  hands  of  the 
little  servant  subjected  to  a  thorough 
washing.  There  was  a  dessert  of  cher- 
ries, brought  all  the  way  from  Genoa, 
and  then  the  hostess,  as  she  brought 
the  coffee,  asked  :  "  When  will  your 
Excellencies  go  to  Caprera  ?  " 

"  If  the  General  is  sick,"  I  remarked, 
"  we  shall  probably  not  be  able  to  see 
him." 

"  He  was  not  well  two  or  three 
weeks  ago,"  said  she ;  "  he  had  the 
rheumatism  in  his  hands.  But  now 
he  goes  about  his  fields  the  same  as 
before." 

A  second  suspicion  came  into  my 
head.  What  if  the  boatman  should  not 
go  to  Caprera  with  my  letter,  but  mere- 
ly sleep  two  or  three  hours  in  the  shade, 
and  then  come  back  to  me  with  an  in- 
vented verbal  answer?  It  was  now 
high  noon,  and  a  truly  African  sun  beat 
clown  on  the  unsheltered  shores.  The 
ins  had  been  chased  from  their 
seats  on  the  quay,  and  sat  in  dozing, 
silent  rows  on  the  shady  sides  of  the 
houses.  A  single  boat,  with  sail  spread, 
y  moved  ov^r  the  dazzling  blue  of 
; arbor.  There  was  no  sign  of  ac- 
tive life  anywhere,  except  in  the  fleas. 

Leaving  my  wife  in  La  Remigia's 
1  took  one  of  the  rough  paths  be- 
the  town,  and  climbed  to  a  bold 
i  of  rocks,  which  commanded  a 
view  of  the  strait  from  Caprera  to  Sar- 
dinia. Far  off,  beyond  the  singular 
horns  and  needles  of  rock,  cresting  the 


mountains  of  the  latter  island,  a  thun- 
der-gust was  brewing;  but  the  dark, 
cool  shadows  there  only  served,  by 
contrast,  to  make  the  breathless  heat  on 
Maddalena  more  intense.  Nevertheless, 
a  light  wind  finally  came  from  some- 
where, and  I  stretched  myself  out  on  the 
granite,  with  Caprera  before  my  eyes, 
and  reflected  on  the  absurdity  'of  any 
one  human  being  taking  pains  to  make 
the  acquaintance  of  any  other  particular 
human  being,  while  I  watched  the  few 
boats  visible  on  the  surface  of  the  water 
below.  One,  rowing  and  sailing,  round- 
ed the  point  of  San  Stefano,  and  disap- 
peared ;  another  crept  alon'g  the  nearer 
shore,  looking  for  fish,  coral,  or  sponges  ; 
and  a  third,  at  last,  making  a  long  tack, 
advanced  into  the  channel  of  La  Mone- 
ta,  in  front  of  Garibaldi's  residence.  It 
was  Red-head,  honestly  doing  his  duty. 
Two  or  three  hours  went  by,  and  he  did 
not  return.  When  the  air  had  been 
somewhat  cooled  by  the  distant  thunder, 
we  set  forth  to  seek  the  English  recluse. 
The  path  followed  the  coast,  winding 
between  rocks  and  clumps  of  myrtle  in 
blossom,  until  the  villa  looked  clown 
upon  us  from  the  head  of  a  stony  dell. 
On  three  sides,  the  naked  granite  rose 
in  irregular  piles  against  the  sky,  while 
huge  blocks,  tumbled  from  above,  lay 
scattered  over  the  scanty  vineyards  be- 
low. In  sheltered  places  there  were  a 
few  pines  and  cedars,  of  stunted  growth. 
The  house,  perched  upon  a  mass  of 
rock  forty  or  fifty  feet  high,  resembled 
a  small  fortress.  As  we  approached  it, 
over  the  dry,  stony  soil,  the  bushes  rus- 
tling as  the  lizards  darted  through  them, 
the  place  assumed  an  air  of  s:; 
loneliness.  No  other  human  dwelling 
was  visible  on  any  of  the  distant  shores 
and  no  sail  brightened  the  intervening- 
water. 

The  Englishman  came  forth  and  wel- 
comed us  with  a  pleasant,  olcl-fashioned 
courtesy.  A  dark-eyed  Sardinian  l.irly, 
whom  he  introduced  to  us  as  his  daugh- 
ter-in-law, and  her  father,  were  his  tem- 
porary guests.  The  people  after \\ 
told  me,  in  Maddalena,  that  he  had 
adopted  and  educated  a  Neapolitan  boy, 
who,  however,  had  turned  out  to  be  a 


332 


The  Island  of  Maddalcna. 


[September, 


mauvais  snjct.  We  were  ushered  into 
a  large  vaulted  room,  the  walls  of  which, 
to  my  astonishment,-  were  covered  with 
admirable  paintings,  —  genuine  works 
of  the  Flemish  and  Italian  masters. 
There  was  a  Cuyp,  a  Paul  Potter,  a 
Ruysdael,  a  Massimo,  and  several  ex- 
cellent pictures  of  the  school  of  Cor- 
reggio.  A  splendid  library  filled  the  ad- 
joining hall,  and  recent  English  and 
Italian  newspapers  lay  upon  the  table. 
I  soon  perceived  that  our  host  was  a 
man  of  unusual  taste  and  culture,  who 
had  studied  much  and  travelled  much, 
before  burying  himself  in  this  remote 
corner  of  the  Mediterranean.  For 
more  than  twenty  years,  he  informed  us, 
the  island  had  been  his  home.  He  first 
went  thither  accidentally,  in  his  search 
for  health,  and  remained  because  he 
found  it  among  those  piles  of  granite 
and  cactus.  One  hardly  knows  whether 
to  admire  or  commiserate  such  a  life. 

Our  host,  however,  had  long  outlived 
his  yearning  for  the  busy  world  of  men. 
His  little  plantation,  wrung  from  Nature 
with  immense  labor  and  apparently 
great  expense,  now  absorbed  all  his  in- 
terest. He  had  bought  foreign  trees  — 
Mexican,  African,  and  Australian  —  and 
set  them  in  sheltered  places,  built  great 
walls  to  break  the  sweep  of  the  wind 
which  draws  through  the  Straits  of 
Bonifacio,  constructed  tanks  for  collect- 
ing the  rains,  terraces  for  vineyards, 
and  so  fought  himself  into  the  posses- 
sion of  a  little  productive  soil.  But  the 
winds  kept  down  the  growth  of  his 
pines,  the  islanders  cut  his  choicest 
trees  and  carried  them  off  for  firewood, 
and  it  was  clear  that  the  scanty  begin- 
nings we  saw  were  the  utmost  he  would 
be  able  to  keep  and  hold  against  so 
many  hostile  influences. 

After  we  had  inspected  the  costly 
picture-gallery,  and  partaken  of  refresh- 
ments, he  took  us  to  his  orange-garden, 
a  square  enclosure,  with  walls  twenty 
feet  high,  at  the  foot  of  the  rocks.  The 
interior  was  divided  by  high  ramparts 
of  woven  brushwood  into  compartments 
about  thirty  feet  square,  each  of  which 
contained  half  a  dozen  squat,  battered- 
looking  trees.  I  should  have  imagined 


the  outer  walls  high  enough  to  break 
the  strongest  wind,  but  our  host  in- 
formed me  that  they  merely  changed  its 
character,  giving  to  the  current  a  spiral 
motion  which  almost  pulled  the  trees 
out  of  the  earth.  The  interior  divisions 
of  brushwood  were  a  necessity.  Above 
the  house  there  was  a  similar  enclosure 
for  pear  and  apple  trees.  The  vines, 
kept  close  to  the  earth,  and  tied  to 
strong  stakes,  were  more  easily  tended. 
But  the  same  amount  of  labor  and  ex- 
pense would  have  created  a  little  para- 
dise on  the  shores  of  Sorrento,  or  the 
Riviera  di  Ponente,  —  in  fact,  as  many 
oranges  might  have  been  raised  in  Min- 
nesota, with  less  trouble. 

According  to  the  traditions  of  the 
people,  the  whole  island  was  wooded 
a  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  But,  as 
savage  tribes  worship  trees,  so  the  first- 
inclination  of  the  civilized  man  is  to  de- 
stroy them.  I  still  hold  to  the  belief 
that  the  disforested  Levant  might  be 
reclothed  in  fifty  years,  if  the  people 
could  be  prevented  from  interfering 
with  the  young  growth. 

When  we  reached  Maddalena,  the 
boatman  had  returned  from  Caprera. 
This  time  he  brought  me  a  note,  in 
Garibaldi's  handwriting,  containing  two 
or  three  lines,  which,  however,  were 
not  more  satisfactory  than  the  previous 
message.  "Per  motivo  de*  miei  in- 
comodi"  (on  account  of  my  ailments), 
said  the  General,  he  could  not  receive 
me.  This  was  an  equivocation,  but 
no  explanation.  His  motive  for  slight- 
ing the  letters  of  two  such  friends,  and 
refusing  to  see  one  who  had  come  to 
Maddalena  to  testify  a  sympathy  and 
respect  which  had  nothing  in  common 
with  the  curiosity  of  the  crowd,  re- 
mained a  mystery.  In  the  little  fish- 
ing-village, where  nothing  could  long 
be  kept  secret,  the  people  seemed  to  be 
aware  of  all  that  had  occurred.  They 
possessed  too  much  natural  tact  and 
delicacy  to  question  us,  but  it  was  easy 
to  see  that  they  were  much  surprised. 
Red-head  made  quite  a  long  face  when 
I  told  him,  after  reading  the  letter,  that 
I  should  not  need  his  boat  for  a  trip  to 
Caprera. 


1 868.] 


The  Island  of  Maddalcna. 


333 


After  allowing  all  possible  latitude  to 
a  man's  individual  right  to  choose  his 
visitors,,  the  manner  in  which  my  appli- 
cation had  been  received  still  appeared 
to  me  very  rude  and  boorish.  Perhaps 
one's  first  experience  of.  the  kind  is 
always  a  little  more  annoying  than  is 
necessary ;  but  the  reader  must  con- 
sider that  we  had  no  escape  from  the 
burning  rocks  of  Maddalena  until  the 
third  day  afterwards,  and  the  white 
house  on  Caprera  before  our  eyes  was 
a  constant  reminder  of  the  manner  or 
mood  of  its  inmate.  Questions  of  cour- 
tesy are  nearly  as  difficult  to  discuss  as 
questions  of  taste,  each  man  having  his 
own  private  standard  ;  yet,  I  think,  few 
persons  will  censure  me  for  having 
then  and  there  determined  that,  for  the 
future,  I  would  take  no  particular  pains 
to  seek  the  acquaintance  of  a  distin- 
guished man. 

We  were  fast  on  Maddalena,  as  I 
have  said,  and  the  most  we  could  make 
of  it  did  not  seem  to  be  much.  I 
sketched  a  little  the  next  morning,  un- 
til the  heat  drove  me  indoors.  To- 
wards^ evening,  following  La  Remigia's 
counsel,  we  set  forth  on  a  climb  to  the 
Guardia  Vecchia,  a  deserted  fortress  on 
the  highest  point  of  the  island.  Thun- 
der-storms, as  before,  growled  along 
the  mountains  of  Sardinia,  without 
overshadowing  or  cooling  the  rocks  of 
the  desert  archipelago.  The  masses  of 
granite,  among  which  we  clambered, 
still  radiated  the  noonday  heat,  and  the 
clumps  of  lentisk  and  arbutus  were 
scarcely  less  arid  in  appearance  than 
the  soil  from  which  they  grew.  Over 
the  summit,  however,  blew  a  light 
breeze.  We  pushed  open  the  door  ol 
the  port,  mounted  to  a  stone  platform 
with  ramparts  pierced  for  six  cannon, 
and  sat  down  in  the  shade  of  the  watch- 
r.  The  view  embraced  the  whole 
it  of  Bonifacio  and  its  shores,  from 
the  peak  of  Incudine  in  Corsica,  to  the 
land  of  Terranova,  on  the  eastern 
coast  of  Sardinia.  Two  or  three  vil- 
.  high  up  on  the  mountains  of  the 
latter  island,  the  little  fishing-town  at 
our  feet,  the  far-off  citadel  of  Bonifacio, 
and  —  still  persistently  visible  —  the 


house  on  Caprera,  rather  increased  than 
removed  the  loneliness  and  desolation 
of  the  scenery.  Island  rising  behind 
island  thrust  up  new  distortions  of 
rock  of  red  or  hot-gray  hues  which 
became  purple  in  the  distance,  and  the 
dark-blue  reaches  of  sea  dividing  them 
were  hard  and  lifeless  as  plains  of  glass. 
Perhaps  the  savage  and  sterile  forms 
of  the  foreground  impressed  their  char- 
acter upon  every  part  of  the  panorama, 
since  we  knew  that  they  were  every- 
where repeated.  In  this  monotony  lay 
something  sublime,  and  yet  profoundly 
melancholy. 

As  we  have  now  the  whole  island  of 
Caprera  full  and  fair  before  us,  let  us 
see  what  sort  of  a  spot  the  hero  of  Ital- 
ian Unity  has  chosen  for  his  home.  I 
may  at  the  same  time,  without  impro- 
priety, add  such  details  of  his  life  and 
habits,  and  such  illustrations  of  his 
character,  as  were  freely  communicated 
by  persons  familiar  with  both,  during 
our  stay  in  Maddalena. 

Caprera,  as  seen  from  the  Guardia 
Vecchia,  is  a  little  less  forbidding  than 
its  neighbor  island.  It  is  a  mass  of 
reddish-gray  rock,  three  to  four  miles 
in  length  and  not  more  than  a  mile  in 
breadth,  its  axis  lying  at  a  right  angle 
to  the  course  of  the  Sardinian  coast. 
The  shores  rise  steeply  from  the  water 
to  a  central  crest  of  naked  rock,  some 
twelve  hundred  feet  above  the  sea. 
The  wild  shrubbery  of  the  Mediterra- 
nean —  myrtle,  arbutus,  lentisk,  and  box 
—  is  sprinkled  over  the  lower  slopes, 
and  three  or  four  lines  of  bright,  even 
green,  betray  the  existence  of  terraced 
grain-fields.  The  house,  a  plain  white 
quadrangle,  two  stories  in  height,  is 
seated  on  the  slope,  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
from  the  landing-place.  Behind  it  there 
are  fields  and  vineyards,  and  a  fertile 
garden-valley  called  the  Fontanaccia, 
which  are  not  visible  from  Maddalena. 
The  house,  in  its  present  commodious 
form,  was  built  by  Victor  Emanuel, 
during  Garibaldi's  absence  from  the 
island,  and  without  his  knowledge. 
The  latter  has  spent  a  great  deal  of 
money  in  wresting  a  few  fields  from  the 
unwilling  rock,  and  his  possession, 


334 


The  Island  of  Maddalena. 


[September, 


even  yet,  has  but  a  moderate  value. 
The  greater  part  of'  the  island  can  only 
be  used  as  a  range  for  cattle,  and  will 
nourish  about  a  hundred  head. 

Garibaldi,  however,  has  a  great  ad- 
vantage over  all  the  political  person- 
ages of  our  day,  in  the  rugged  simpli- 
city of  his  habits.  He  has  no  single 
expensive  taste.  Whether  he  sleeps  on 
a  spring-mattress  or  a  rock,  eatsy£/<?/  or 
fish  and  macaroni,  is  all  the  same  to 
him,  —  nay,  he  prefers  the  simpler  fare. 
The  persons  whom  he  employs  eat  at 
the  same  table  with  him,  and  his  guests, 
whatever  their  character  or  title,  are  no 
better  served.  An  Englishman  who 
went  to  Caprera  as  the  representative 
of  certain  societies,  and  took  with  him, 
as  a  present,  a  dozen  of  the  finest  hams 
and  four  dozen  bottles  of  the  choicest 
Chateau  Margaux,  was  horrified  to  find, 
the  next  day,  that  each  gardener,  herds- 
man, and  fisherman  at  the  table  had  a 
generous  lump  of  ham  on  his  plate  and 
a  bottle  of  Chateau  Margaux  beside 
it !  Whatever  delicacy  comes  to  Gari- 
baldi is  served  in  the  same  way;  and 
of  the  large  sums  of  money  contributed 
by  his  friends  and  admirers,  he  has  re- 
tained scarcely  anything.  All  is  given 
to  "  The  Cause." 

Garibaldi's  three  prominent  traits  of 
character  —  honesty,  unselfishness,  and 
independence — are  so  marked,  and  have 
been  so  variously  illustrated,  that  no 
one  in  Italy  (probably  not  even  Pius 
iX.  or  Antonelli)  dares  to  dispute  his 
just  claim  to  them.  Add  the  element 
of  a  rare  and  inextinguishable  enthusi- 
asm, and  we  have  the  qualities  which 
have  made  the  man.  He  is  wonderfully 
adapted  to  be  the  leader  of  an  impul- 
sive and  imaginative  people,  during 
those  periods  when  the  rush  and  swell 
of  popular  sentiment  overbears  alike  di- 
plomacy and  armed  force.  Such  a  time 
came  to  him  in  1860,  and  the  Sicilian 
and  Calabrian  campaign  will  always 
stand  as  the  climax  of  his  achieve- 
ments. I  do  not  speak  of  Aspromonte 
or  Mentana  now.  The  history  of  those 
attempts  cannot  be  written  until  Gari- 
baldi's private  knowledge  of  them  may 
be  safely  made  known  to  the  world. 


It  occurred  to  me,  as  I  looked  upon 
Caprera,  that  only  an  enthusiastic,  im- 
aginative nature  could  be  content  to' 
live  in  such  an  isolation.  It  is  hardly 
alone  disgust  with  the  present  state  of 
Italy  which  keeps  him  from  that  seat  in 
the  Italian  Parliament,  to  which  he  is 
regularly  re-elected.  He  can  neither 
use  the  tact  of  the  politician,  nor  em- 
ploy the  expedients  of  the  statesman. 
He  has  no  patience  with  adverse  opin- 
ion, no  clear,  objective  perception  of 
character,  no  skill  .to  calculate  the  re- 
ciprocal action  and  cumulative  force  of 
political  ideas.  He  simply  sees  an  end, 
and  strikes  a  bee-line  for  it.  As  a  mili- 
tary commander  he  is  admirable,  so 
long  as  operations  can  be  conducted 
under  his  immediate  personal  control 
In  short,  he  belongs  to  that  small  class 
of  great  men,  whose  achievements, 
fame,  and  influence  rest  upon  excel- 
lence of  character  and  a  certain  mag- 
netic, infectious  warmth  of  purpose, 
rather  than  on  high  intellectual  ability. 
There  may  be  wiser  Italian  patriots 
than  he;  but  there  is  none  so  pure 
and  devoted. 

From  all  that  was  related  to  me  of 
Garibaldi,  I  should  judge  that  his  weak 
points  are,  an  incapacity  to  distin- 
guish between  the  steady  aspirations 
of  his  life  and  those  sudden  impulses 
which  come  to  every  ardent  and  pas- 
sionate nature,  and  an  amiable  weak- 
ness (perhaps  not  disconnected  from 
vanity)  which  enables  a  certain  class  of 
adventurers  to  misuse  and  mislead  him. 
His  impatience  of  contrary  views  natu- 
rally subjects  him  to  the  influence  of 
the  latter  class,  whose  cue  it  is  to  flat- 
ter and  encourage.  I  know  an  Ameri- 
can general  whose  reputation  has  been 
much  damaged  in  the  same  way.  The 
three  men  who  were  his  companions 
on  Caprera  during  my  stay  in  Mad- 
dalena  were  Basso,  who  occasionally 
acts  as  secretary;  he  whom  I  termed 
the  Prophet,  a  certain  Dr.  Occhipintt 
(Painted-Eyes),  a  maker  of  salves  and 
pomatums,  and  Guzmaroli,  formerly  a 
priest,  and  ignominiously  expelled  from 
Garibaldi's  own  corps.  There  are  other 
hangers-on,  whose  presence  from  time 


1 868.] 


The  Island  of  Maddalena. 


335 


to  time  in  Caprera  is  a  source  of  anx- 
iety to  the  General's  true  friends. 

Caprera  formerly  belonged  to  an  Eng- 
lish gentleman,  a  passionate  sportsman, 
who  settled  there  thirty  years  ago  on 
account  of  the  proximity  of  the  island 
to  the  rich  game  regions  of  Sardinia. 
Garibaldi,  dining  with  this  gentleman 
at  Maddalena  in  1856,  expressed  his 
desire  to  procure  a  small  island  on  the 
coast  for  his  permanent  home,  where- 
upon the  former  offered  to  sell  him  a 
part  of  Caprera,  at  cost  The  remain- 
der was  purchased  by  a  subscription 
made  in  England,  and  headed  by  the 
Duke  of  Sutherland.  I  was  informed 
that  Garibaldi's  faithful  and  noble- 
hearted  friends,  Colonel  and  Mrs. 
Chambers  of  Scotland,  had  done  much 
towards  making  the  island  productive 
and  habitable,  but  I  doubt  whether  its 
rocks  yet  yield  enough  for  the  support 
of  the  family. 

The  General's  oldest  son,  Menotti, 
his  daughter  Teresa,  her  husband  Ma- 
jor Canzio,  and  their  five  children,  Ma- 
meli,  Anzani,  Lincoln,  Anita,  and  John 
Brown,  have  their  home  at  Caprera. 
Menotti  is  reported  to  be  a  good  sol- 
dier and  sailor,  but  without  his  father's 
abilities.  The  younger  son,  Ricciotti, 
spends  most  of  his  time  in  England. 
Teresa,  however,  is  a  female  Garibaldi, 
full  of  spirit,  courage,  and  enthusiasm. 
She  has  great  musical  talent,  and  a 
voice  which  would  give  her,  were  there 
need,  a  prima  donna's  station  in  any 
theatre.  Her  father,  also,  is  an  excel- 
lent singer,  and  the  two  are  fond  of 
making  the  rocks  of  Caprera  resound 
with  his  Inno  ai  Romcuri. 

Garibaldi  was  born  at  Nice  in  1807, 
and  is  therefore  now  sixty-one  years 
old.  His  simple  habits  of  life  have 
preserved  his  physical  vigor,  but  he 
suffers  from  frequent  severe  attacks  of 
rheumatism.  The  wound  received  at 
Aspromonte,  I  was  told,  no  longer  oc- 
casions him  inconvenience.  In  features 
and  complexion  he  shows  his  Lombard 
and  German  descent.  His  name  is 
simply  the  Italian  for  Hcribald,  "bold 
in  war."  In  the  tenth  century  Gari- 
balcl  I.  and  II.  were  kings  of  Bavaria. 


In  fact,  much  of  the  best  blood  of 
Italy  is  German,  however  reluctant  the 
Italians  may  be  to  acknowledge  the 
fact.  The  Marquis  D'Azeglio,  whose 
memoirs  have  recently  been  published, 
says  in  his  autobiographical  sketch, 
"  Educated  in  the  hatred  of  the  Tedcs- 
chi  (Germans),  I  was  greatly  astonished 
to  find,  from  my  historical  studies,  that 
I  was  myself  a  Tedesco"  The  "  pride 
of  race"  really  is  one  of  the  absurdest 
of  human  vanities.  I  have  heard  half- 
breed  Mexicans  boast  of  their  "  Gothic 
blood,"  born  Englishmen  who  settled 
in  Virginia  talk  of  their  "  Southern 
blood,"  and  all  the  changes  rung  on 
Cavalier,  Norman,  or  Roman  ancestry. 
The  Slavic  Greeks  of  Athens  call  them- 
selves "  Hellenes,"  and  Theodore  of 
Abyssinia  claimed  a  direct  descent 
from  Solomon.  Garibaldi  might  have 
become  purely  Italian  in  name,  as 
Duca  di  Calatafimi,  if  he  had  chosen. 
His  refusal  was  scarcely  a  virtue,  be- 
cause the  offer  of  the  title  was  no 
tem'ptation. 

While  upon  the  rocky  summits  of 
Maddalena,  we  made  search  for  the 
former  dwellings  of  the  inhabitants, 
but  became  bewildered  in  the  granite 
labyrinth,  and  failed  to  find  them.  The 
present  village  on  the  shore  owes  its 
existence  to  Nelson.  Previous  to  his 
day  those  waters  were  swept  by  Bar- 
bary  corsairs,  and  the  people  of  the 
island,  being  without  protection,  lived 
almost  like  troglodytes,  in  rude  hovels 
constructed  among  the  rocks.  Nelson, 
while  in  the  Mediterranean,  at  the  end 
of  the  last  century,  made  Maddalena 
one  of  his  stations,  and  encouraged  the 
inhabitants  to  come  forth  from  their 
hiding-places.  On  the  altar  of  the 
church  in  the  town  which  they  then 
began  to  build  there  are  still  the  sil- 
ver candlesticks  which  he  presented. 
This,  and  Napoleon's  previous  attempt 
to  gain  possession  of  the  island,  are  the 
two  incidents  which  connect  Madda- 
lena with  history. 

We  made  a  few  other  scrambles  dur- 
ing our  stay,  but  they  simply  repeated 
the  barren  pictures  we  already  knew  by 
heart.  Although,  little  by  little,  an  in- 


136 


T/ic  Island  of  Maddalena. 


[September, 


terest  in  the  island  was  awakened,  the 
day  which  was  to  bring  the  steamer 
from  Porto  Torres  was  hailed  by  us 
almost  as  a  festival.  But  the  comedy 
(for  such  it  began  to  seem)  was  not  yet 
at  an  end.  I  had  procured  the  return 
tickets  to  Leghorn,  and  was  standing 
in  Remigia's  door,  watching  the  pen- 
sioners as  they  dozed  in  the  shade, 
when  two  figures  appeared  at  the  end 
of  the  little  street.  One  was  Painted- 
Eyes,,  the  maker  of  salves,  and  I  was 
edified  by  seeing  him  suddenly  turn 
when  he  perceived  me,  and  retrace  his 
steps.  The  other,  who  came  forward, 
proved  to  be  one  of  Garibaldi's  stanch- 
est  veterans,  —  a  man  who  had  been  in 
his  service  twenty-five  years,  in  Mon- 
tevideo, Rome,  America,  China,  and 
finally  in  the  Tyrol. 

"  Where  is  the  man  who  was  with 
you  ?  »  I  asked. 

"  He  was  coming  to  the  locanda," 
said  he  ;  "  but  when  he  saw  you,  he 
left  me  without  explaining  why." 

The  veteran  knew  so  much  of  what 
had  happened  that  I  told  him  the  rest. 
He  was  no  less  grieved  than  surprised. 
His  general,  he  said,  had  never  acted 
so  before ;  he  had  never  refused  to 
see  any  stranger,  even  though  he  came 
without  letters,  and  he  was  at  a  loss  to 
account  for  it. 

There  was  a  stir  among  the  idlers  on 
the  quay ;  a  thread  of  smoke  arose 
above  the  rocky  point  to  the  west- 
ward, and  —  welcome  sight !  —  the 
steamer  swept  up  and  anchored  in  the 
roadstead.  La  Remigia,  who  had  been 
unremitting  in  her  attentions,  present- 
ed a  modest  bill,  shook  hands  with  us 
heartily,  and  Red-head,  who  was  in 
waiting  with  his  boat,  carried  us  speed- 
ily on  board.  The  steamer  was  not  to 
leave  for  two  hours  more,  but  now  the 
certainty  of  escape  was  a  consolation. 
The  few  islanders  we  had  known  parted 
from  us  like  friends,  and  even  the  boat- 
man returned  to  the  deck  on  purpose 
to  shake  hands,  and  wish  us  a  pleasant 
voyage.  I  found  myself  softening  to- 
wards Maddalena,  after  all. 

In  one  of  the  last  boats  came  the 
same  Occhipinti  again,  accompanied  by 


Guzmaroli,  the  ex-priest.  The  former 
was  bound  for  Leghorn,  and  the  pros- 
pect of  having  him  for  a  fellow-passen- 
ger was  not  agreeable.  He  avoided 
meeting  us,  went  below,  and  kept  very 
quiet  during  the  passage.  I  felt  sure, 
although  the  supposition  was  disparag- 
ing to  Garibaldi,  that  this  man  v/as 
partly  responsible  for  the  answer  I  had 
received. 

A  fresh  breeze  blew  through  the  Strait 
of  Bonifacio,  and  we  soon  lost  sight  of 
the  rocks  which  had  been  the  scene  of 
our  three  days'  Robinsoniad.  The  only 
other  passenger,  by  a  singular  coinci- 
dence, proved  to  be  "  the  Hermi tress 
of  La  Moneta,"  as  she  is  called  on 
Maddalena,  —  the  widow  of  the  gentle- 
man who  sold  Caprera  to  Garibaldi, 
and  herself  one  of  the  General's  most 
trusted  friends.  Through  her,  the  isl- 
and acquired  a  new  interest.  In  the 
outmost  house  on  the  spur  which  forms 
the  harbor  lay  an  English  captain, 
eighty  years  old,  and  ill ;  in  the  sterile 
glen  to  the  north  lived  another  English- 
man alone  among  his  books  and  rare 
pictures ;  and  under  a  great  reck,  two 
miles  to  the  eastward,  was  the  lonely 
cottage,  opposite  Caprera,  where  this 
lady  has  lived  for  thirty  years. 

In  the  long  twilight,  as  the  coast  of 
Corsica  sped  by,  we  heard  the  story  of 
those  thirty  years.  They  had  not  dulled 
the  keen,  clear  intellect  of  the  lady,  nor 
made  less  warm  one  human  feeling  in 
her  large  heart.  We  heard  of  travels 
in  Corsica  on  horseback,  nearly  forty 
years  ago  ;  of  lunching  with  bandits  in 
the  mountains  ;  of  fording  the  floods 
and  sleeping  in  the  caves  of  Sardinia ; 
of  farm-life  (if  it  can  be  so  called)  on 
Caprera,  and  of  twenty  years  passed  in 
the  cottage  of  La  Moneta,  without  even 
a  journey  to  the  fishing-village.  Then 
came  other  confidences,  which  must  not 
be  repeated,  but  as  romantic  as  any- 
thing in  the  stories  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
—  yet  in  all,  there  was  no  trace  of  mor- 
bid feeling,  of  unused  affection,  of  re- 
gret for  the  years  that  seemed  lost  to 
us.  Verily,  though  these  words  should 
reach  her  eyes,  I  must  say,  since  the 
chances  of  life  will  scarcely  bring  us  to- 


1 868.] 


TJie  Man  and  Brother. 


337 


gether  again,  that  the  freshness  and 
sweetness  with  which  she  had  pre- 
served so  many  noble  womanly  quali- 
ties in  solitude,  was  to  me  a  cheering 
revelation  of  the  innate  excellence  of 
human  nature. 

"Yet,"  she  said,  at  the  close,  "I 
would  never  advise  any  one  to  attempt 
the  life  I  have  led.  Such  a  seclusion 
is  neither  natural  nor  heathy.  One 
may  read,  and  one  may  think  ;  but  the 
knowledge  lies  in  one's  mind  like  an 
inert  mass,  and  only  becomes  vital  when 
it  is  actively  communicated  or  com- 
pared. This  mental  inertness  or  dead- 
ness  is  even  harder  to  bear  than  the 
absence  of  society.  But  there  always 
comes  a  tj^me  when  we  need  the  face  of 
a  friend,  —  the  time  that  comes  to  all. 
No,  it  is  not  good  to  be  alone." 

After  all,  we  had  not  come  to  Mad- 
•dalena  in  vain.  We  had  made  the  ac- 


quaintance of  a  rare  and  estimable  na- 
ture, which  is  always  a  lasting  gain,  in 
the  renewed  faith  it  awakens.  The 
journey,  which  had  seemed  so  weari- 
some in  anticipation,  came  rapidly  to 
an  end,  and  there  was  scarcely  a  re- 
gret left  for  Caprera  when  we  parted 
with  the  Hermitress  of  Maddalena  at 
Leghorn,  the  next  afternoon.  A  few 
days  afterwards  she  sent  me  the  original 
manuscript  of  Garibaldi's  "  Hymn  to 
the  Romans,"  which  he  had  presented 
to  her.  I  shall  value  it  as  much  for  the 
giver's,  as  for  the  writer's,  sake. 

Our  friends  in  Florence  received  the 
news  of  our  adventure  with  astonish- 
ment and  mortification ;  but,  up  to  the 
time  of  this  present  writing,  the  matter 
remains  a  mystery.  One  conjecture 
was  made,  yet  it  seemed  scarcely  credi- 
ble, —  that  Garibaldi  was  getting  up  a 
new  expedition  against  Rome. 


THE    MAN     AND     BROTHER. 


I. 


WHEN  Major  Niles,  of  the  de- 
funct Veteran  Reserve  Corps, 
was  Sub- Assistant  Commissioner  in  the 
Freedmen's  Bureau,  he  was  confronted 
one  morning,  on  emerging  from  his  ho- 
tel, by  a  venerable  trio. 

There  stood  a  paralytic  old  negress, 
leading  by  the  hand  a  blind  old  negro, 
to  whom  was  attached  by  a  string  a 
sore-eyed,  limping,  and  otherwise  de- 
crepicl  bulldog.  The  aunty  asserted 
that  the  dog  sucked  her  hens'  eggs,  and 
wanted  him  killed ;  the  uncle  denied 
the  animal's  guilt,  and  insisted  on  pro- 
longing his  days ;  and  the  trio  had 
walked  eight  miles  "  to  leave  it  out  to 
de  Burow." 

"  Ef  she  kin  prove  it  agin  him,  let 
him  be  hung  right  up  yere,"  said  the 
uncle,  excitedly.  "  But  she  can't  prove 
flo  sech  tiling  ;  no,  she  can't." 

The  Major  had  been  pestered  during 

VOL.   XXII.  —  NO.    131.  22 


his  term  of  office  with  many  absurd 
complaints,  and  he  was  annoyed  now 
by  the  grinning  and  chaffing  of  several 
unreconstructed  village  jolcers.  Instead 
of  issuing  an  order  that  a  hen  should 
lay  an  egg,  and  that  the  same  should  be 
set  before  the  dog  to  test  his  proclivities 
in  the  matter  of  suction,  he  broke  out 
impatiently, — 

"  Go  away  with  your  stupid  quarrel. 
Go  home,  and  settle  it  between  your- 
selves. Pretty  business  to  bring  be- 
fore a  United  States  officer  !  " 

To  the  Major's  labors  and  perplexi- 
ties I  succeeded,  and  thereby  acquired 
some  knowledge  concerning  the  Man 
and  Brother. 

That  the  freedmen  should  be  igno- 
rant and  unintelligent  does  not  appear 
strange  when  it  is  considered  that  they 
were  brought  to  us,  not  so  very  long 
ago,  in  the  condition  of  savages,  and 


338 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


[September, 


that  since  they  have  been  among  us 
they  have  been  kept  down  as  bonds- 
men or  cast  out  as  pariahs.  Walking 
in  a  wood  a  mile  or  so  from  the  village 
where  I  held  sway,  I  came  upon  a  ne- 
gro cemetery  of  the  times  of  slavery. 
A  headstone  of  coarse  white  marble, 
five  or  six  of  brick,  and  forty  or  fifty 
wooden  slabs,  all  grimed  and  moul- 
dering with  the  dampness  of  the  forest, 
constituted  the  sordid  sepulchral  pomps 
of  the  "nameless  people."  On  the 
marble  monument  I  read  the  following 
inscription  :  — 

"  This  stone  is  placed  here  by  James 
M.  Burden,  in  memory  of  his  wife,  Vi- 
ney,  who  died  Dec.  21,  1860,  Aged 
29  years.  —  A  good  wife  £  faithful  ser- 
vant." 

Painted  in  black  letters  on  the  white 
ground  of  a  wooden  headpiece  was  the 
following :  — 

"  to  the  memory  of  Claraca  M.  Ceth 
died  on  the  25  September  1850  Bless- 
ed are  the  dead  who  die  in  the  Lord 
for  they  rest  from  their  labors." 

It  is  a  wonder  that  the  word  "  ser- 
vant "  and  the  word  "  labors  "  were  not 
put  in  italics.  How  much  knowledge, 
or  activity  of  brain,  or  high  moral  feel- 
ing can  be  fairly  claimed  of  a  race  which 
has  been  followed  into  the  grave's 
mouth  with  reminders  that  its  life  was 
one  of  bondage  and  travail  ? 

Nevertheless,  I  brought  away  from 
the  South  some  fine  reminiscences  of 
the  negro.  Among  the  elders  of  the 
colored  people  at  my  station  —  one  of 
the  persons  to  whom  I  trusted  for  in- 
formation concerning  the  character  of 
applicants  for  official  favor  —  was  a 
short,  square-built,  jet-black,  decently 
dressed,  well-mannered,  industrious, 
worthy  man  of  sixty-five  or  seventy, 
named  Dudley  Talley,  commonly  known 
as  Uncle  Dudley.  Between  him  and 
Professor  Charles  Hopkins,  the  colored 
school-teacher,  I  was  pretty  sure  to 
learn  whether  a  negro  who  asked  for 
rations  was  a  proper  object  of  charity, 
or  whether  another  who  brought  a  com- 
plaint was  worthy  of  credence. 

"  Did  you  ever  hear  of  Uncle  Dud- 
ley's misfortunes  in  business  ?"  asked 


a  white  citizen  of  me.  "  Poor  Dudley  ! 
He  bought  the  freedom  of  a  son,  and 
the  son  died ;  then  he  bought  another 
boy's  freedom,  and  the  boy  was  eman- 
cipated. Dudley  will  tell  you  that  he 
has  had  heavy  licks  in  his  time." 

Yes,  Dudley  had  sunk  three  thousand 
dollars  in  emancipating  himself,  his 
child,  and  another  youth,  only  to  see 
death  anc^President  Lincoln  render  his 
labors  nugatory,  leaving  him  dependent 
for  his  living  upon  a  poor  mule  and  cart, 
and  scarcely  able  to  pay  his  taxes.  The 
story  of  his  own  manumission  is  a  fine 
instance  of  the  kindly  relations  which  of- 
ten existed  between  white  and  black  dur- 
ing the  days  of  slavery.  Long  ago,  when 
his  old  master,  Dr.  Long,  was  living, 
Dudley  was  a  pet  servant.  Hired  out 
at  the  Goodlett  House,  he  had  charge 
of  the  stables,  and  was,  moreover,  al- 
lowed to  keep  his  own  bar,  —  a  demijohn 
of  corn- whiskey,  whereat  to  quench 
the  thirst  of  such  tavern-haunters  as 
might  not,  on  account  of  their  color, 
get  drunk  like  gentlemen  in  the  hotel. 
Those  were  his  days  of  ignorance,  at 
which  we  must  do  some  charitable 
winking.  From  this  elysian  existence, 
in  a  healthy  mountain  district,  sur- 
rounded by  friends  who  had  grown  up 
beside  him,  he  was  awakened  by  the 
death  of  his  master,  the  sale  of  the  es- 
tate under  letters  of  administration,  and 
the  appearance  of  negro-traders  from 
Arkansas  and  Louisiana.  It  was  ru- 
mored that  Dudley  was  an  object  of 
especial  desire  to  these  gentlemen,  and 
that  his  remaining  days  in  the  land  of 
his  birth  were  numbered.  Terrified  at 
the  thought  of  separation  from  home 
and  family,  he  looked  about  for  some 
citizen  of  the  village  to  buy  him.  His 
choice  fell  upon  a  gentleman  whom  he 
had  always  known,  a  lawyer  by  profes- 
sion, Colonel  Towns. 

"  Dudley,  I  don't  like  it,"  said  the 
Colonel.  "  I  never  have  bought  a  slave, 
and  I  have  a  sentiment  against  it." 

"  But  won't  you  save  me  from  being 
carried  off,  Colonel?"  implored  Dud- 
ley. 

"I  don't  like  the  idea  of  owning 
you,"  was  the  answer  ;  then,  after  some 


i86S.] 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


339 


reflection,  "but  I  will  manage  it  so  that 
you  shall  own  yourself.  I  will  bid 
you  off;  you  shall  repay  me,  principal 
and  interest,  at  your  convenience  ;  and, 
when  the  money  is  refunded,  you  shall 
be  free.  The  law  will  not  let  me  eman- 
cipate you ;  but  you  shall  not  be  my 
property,  nor  that  of  my  heirs.  We 
will  call  it  an  investment,  Dudley." 

The  purchase  was  made  ;  the  agree- 
ment between  the  two  was  drawn  up 
and  signed  ;  the  Anglo-Saxon  waited, 
and  the  African  worked.  This  bond 
between  an  honorable  gentleman  and 
an  honorable  slave  was  kept  to  the  end. 
Every  payment  which  Dudley  made  was 
indorsed  upon  the  note,  and,  when  the 
debt  was  extinguished,  he  received  a 
quittance  in  full.  From  that  time,  al- 
though nominally  and  by  law  the  prop- 
erty of  Colonel  Towns,  he  was  practi- 
cally his  own  master,  and  did  what  he 
pleased  with  his  earnings.  It  was  truly 
unfortunate  for  him  that  he  should  have 
invested  them  so  as  to  be  ruined  pre- 
cisely in  the  same  manner  as  if  he  had 
been  a  slaveholding  Rebel. 

If  all  freedmen  had  the  persevering 
industry  of  Dudley  Talley,  the  race 
would  have  no  cause  to  fear  for  its 
existence  under  the  crucial  test  of  free 
labor.  But  myriads  of  women  who 
once  earned  their  own  living  now  have 
aspirations  to  be  like  white  ladies,  and, 
instead  of  using  the  hoe,  pass  the  days 
in  dawdling  over  their  trivial  housework, 
or  gossiping  among  their  neighbors.  In 
scores  of  instances  I  discovered  that 
my  complaining  constituents  were  go- 
ing astern  simply  because  the  men 
alone  were  laboring  to  support  the  fami- 
lies. When  I  told  them  that  they  must 
make  their  wives  and  daughters  work, 
they  looked  as  hopeless  as  would  Mr. 
Potiphar,  should  any  one  give  him  the 
same  wholesome  counsel.  Of  course, 
I  do  not  mean  that  all  the  women  are 
thus  idle  ;  the  larger  proportion  are 
stiil  laboring  afield,  as  of  old  ;  rigid 
necessity  is  keeping  them  up  to  it.  But 
this  evil  of  female  loaferism  is  growing 
among  the  negroes,  as  it  has  grown,  and 
is  growing,  among  us  white  men  and 
brethren. 


Another  cause  of  trouble  for  the 
freed  people  is  their  disposition  to  seek 
the  irregular  employment,  and  small, 
bartering  ways  of  the  city  and  the  vil- 
lage. Now  and  then  one  establishes 
himself  as  a  drayman,  or  does  a  flour- 
ishing business  as  a  barber  or  shop- 
keeper; but  what  kind  of  success  they 
generally  attain  in  the  towns  may  be 
pretty  fairly  inferred  from  the  history  of 
Cox,  Lynch,  and  Company. 

Edward  Cox,  an  elderly  mulatto  who 
boasted  F.  F.  V.  blood,  and  Thomas 
Lynch,  a  square-headed,  thorough-bred 
negro,  formed  a  mercantile  partnership 
with  two  other  freedmen.  The  "  store  " 
was  a  single  room  in  a  deserted  hotel, 
and  the  entire  stock  in  trade  might 
have  been  worth  forty  dollars.  On  this 
chance  of  business  four  families  pro- 
posed to  live.  By  the  time  the  United 
States  license  of  twenty  dollars,  the 
town  license  of  five  dollars,  and  certain 
other  opening  expenses  had  been  paid, 
the  liabilities  of  the  firm  were  nearly 
sufficient  to-cover  its  assets.  In  a  week 
or  so,  the  community  were  startled  by 
a  report  that  Cox,  Lynch,  and  Company 
were  in  difficulties.  The  two  minor 
partners  sold  out  for  nothing,  and  two 
others  were  taken  in.  Unfortunately, 
our  merchant  princes  were  ignorant  of 
the  Revenue  Law,  and  formed  a  new 
partnership,  instead  of  continuing  the 
old  one,  thus  exposing  themselves  to 
another  tax  for  a  fresh  license.  This 
mistake  was  fatal,  and  Cox,  Lynch,  and 
Company  went  to  pieces. 

Tom  Lynch  had  meanwhile  been 
studying  at  the  freedmen's  school,  and 
had  acquired  an  intermittent  power  of 
writing  his  name.  Sometimes  he  could 
lay  it  fairly  out  on  paper,  and  sometimes 
it  would  obstinately  curl  up  into  an  am- 
persand. He  occasionally  called  on  me 
to  write  letters  for  hi  in,  —  mai  nly,  as  I  be- 
lieve, to  show  that  he  could  sign  them  ; 
and  I  had  become  somewhat  restive 
under  these  demands,  holding  that  I 
could  employ  my  time  more  profitably 
and  agreeably.  When  the  firm  went 
down,  however,  and  when  Tom  wanted 
me  to  indite  an  epistle  for  him  to  his 
late  partner,  Edward  Cox,  concerning 


340 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


[September, 


certain  articles  in  dispute  between  them, 
I  reflected  that  such  opportunities  do 
not  present  themselves  twice  in  a  man's 
life,  and  I  consented  to  the  labor. 

It  appears  that  Tom  had  borrowed  a 
table,  a  balance,  and  a  set  of  weights, 
wherewith  to  commence  the  business ; 
and  that,  when  the  crisis  came,  Edward 
had  impounded  these  articles,  and  sold 
them  for  his  own  profit,  leaving  partners 
and  creditors  and  lender  to  whistle. 
Such,  at  least,  was  the  case  which  Tom 
stated  to  me,  and  which  I  wrote  out  in 
the  letter.  The  day  after  the  sending 
of  the  epistle  Tom  reappeared  with  it, 
explaining  that  he  had  forwarded  it  to 
Edward  by  a  messenger,  and  that  Ed- 
ward, having  had  it  read  to  him,  had  put 
it  in  a  clean  envelope,  and  returned  it 
without  note  or  comment. 

"  I  should  like  to  know  what  he 
means  ?  "  observed  the  puzzled  Thomas. 

"  So  should  I,"  said  I,  much  amused 
at  this  method  of  managing  a  dunning 
letter. 

"  It 's  mighty  curous  conduct,"  per- 
sisted Thomas.  "  'Pears  to  me  I  'd  like 
to  get  you  to  write  another  letter  to 
him  for  me." 

"  Suppose  he  should  send  that  back 
in  a  fresh  envelope  ?  "  I  suggested,  not 
fancying  |he  job.  "  I  think  you  had 
better  see  him,  and  ask  him  what  it 
means." 

What  it  did  mean  I  never  learned. 
But  Edward  Cox,  to  whom  I  subse- 
quently spoke  on  the  general  subject  of 
justice  in  regard  to  those  weights  and 
balances,  assured  me  that  Tom  Lynch 
was  a  liar  and  rascal.  In  short,  the 
history  of  Cox,  Lynch,  and  Company  is 
as  much  of  a  muddle  as  if  the  firm  had 
failed  for  a  million,  under  the  manage- 
ment of  first-class  Wall-Street  finan- 
ciers. Such  is  trade  in  the  hands  of 
the  average  freedman. 

One  great  trouble  with  the  negroes 
is  lack  of  arithmetic.  Accustomed  to 
have  life  figured  out  for  them,  they  are 
unable  to  enter  into  that  practical  calcu- 
lation which  squares  means  with  neces- 
sities. Cox,  Lynch,  and  Company,  for 
instance,  had  not  the  slightest  idea  how 
large  a  business  would  be  required  to 


support  four  families.  As  farm  laborera 
the  freedmen  fail  to  realize  the  fact  that 
it  is  needful  to  work  entirely  through 
spring,  summer,  and  fall,  in  order  ta 
obtain  a  crop.  They  do  admirably  in 
the  planting  season,  and  are  apt  to  sow 
too  much  ground  ;  then  comes  a  reac^ 
tion,  and  they  will  indulge  in  a  succes- 
sion of  day  huntings  and  night  frolics, 
and  the  consequence  is  a  larger  crop 
of  weeds  than  of  corn.  If  the  planters 
were  forehanded  enough  to  pay  their 
people  day  wages,  and  discharge  a  man 
as  soon  as  he  turns  lazy,  things  would 
go  better.  But  the  general  custom, 
dictated  by  habit  and  by  lack  of  capital, 
is  to  allow  the  negro  a  share  of  the 
crop  ;  and  as  he  thus  becomes  a  part- 
ner in  the  year's  business,  he  is  dis- 
posed to  believe  that  he  has  a  right  to 
manage  it  after  his  own  pleasure. 

It  was  enough  to  make  one  both 
laugh  and  cry  to  go  out  to  Colonel  Ir- 
vine's fine  plantation,  and  look  at  the 
result  of  his  farming  for  1867,  on  land 
which  could  produce,  without  manure, 
an  average  of  thirty  bushels  of  corn  to 
the  acre.  A  gang  of  negroes,  counting 
thirteen  field  hands,  had  taken  a  large 
part  of  his  farm ;  and,  as  the  produce 
of  one  field  of  thirty-five  acres,  they 
had  to  show  about  a  hundred  bushels 
of  wretched  "nubbins";  the  weeds 
meanwhile  standing  four  feet  high 
among  the  cornstalks. 

"  They  neglected  it  during  the  hoeing 
season,"  said  the  Colonel,  "  and  they 
never  could  recover  their  ground  after- 
wards. It  was  of  no  use  to  order  or 
scold ;  they  were  disobedient,  sulky, 
and  insolent.  As  for  frolicking,  why, 
sir,  from  fifty  to  seventy  darkies  pass 
my  house  every  night,  going  into  the 
village.  The  next  day  they  are,  of 
course,  fit  for  nothing." 

And   now,  after  the  land  had  been 
used  for  naught,  these  negroes  did  not 
want  to  repay  the  advances  of  rations    i 
upon  which  they  had  lived  during  the 
summer ;  they  were  determined  to  take 
their  third  of  the  crop  from  the  fields,    i 
and  leave  the  Colonel  to  sue  or  whistle,   \ 
as  he  pleased,  for  what  was  due  him  in   } 
the  way  of  corn,  bacon,  molasses,  and  ! 


1868.] 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


341 


tobacco.  Fortunately  for  him,  I  had 
an  order  from  the  Assistant  Commis- 
sioner to  the  effect  that  all  crops  should 
be  stored,  and  accounts  for  the  expense 
of  raising  the  same  satisfactorily  set- 
tled, before  the  parties  should  come  to  a 
division.  When  I  read  this  to  the  as- 
sembled negroes,  they  looked  blasphe- 
mies at  the  Freedmen's  Bureau. 

It  must  not  be  understood,  however, 
that  all  freedmen  are  indolent  and  dis- 
honest. A  large  number  of  them  do 
their  work  faithfully  and  with  satisfac- 
tory results.  But  with  these  I  seldom 
came  in  contact;  they  had  no  com- 
plaints to  make,  and  seldom  suffered 
injustice.  My  duties  very  naturally  led 
me  to  know  the  evil  and  the  unlucky 
among  both  blacks  and  whites. 

To  show  the  simple  notions  of  this 
untaught  race  as  to  what  constitutes 
wealth,  or,  at  least,  a  sufficiency  of 
worldly  goods,  I  will  relate  a  single 
incident.  A  gaunt  negress,  named  Aunt 
Judy,  called  on  me  with  a  complaint 

that   Mrs.  F ,  an  impoverished  old 

white  lady,  owed  her  a  dollar,  and 
would  not  pay  it. 

"  Come,  aunty,  you  must  not  be  hard 

on   Mrs.  F ,"  I  said.     "You  must 

give  her  time.     She  is  very  poor." 

"  O,  she  ain't  poor,  —  don't  you  be- 
lieve that,"  responded  the  aunty.     "  No 
longer  'n  two  months  ago  my  sons  paid 
her  eight  dollars  for  rent     O,  go  'way 
she  ain't  poor  ;  she 's  got  money." 

Still  convinced,  in  spite  of  this  start- 
ling fact  to  the  contrary,  that  Mrs.  F 

was  not  wealthy,  I  continued  to  plead 
that  she  might  not  be  pressed,  until 
Aunt  Judy  was  graciously  pleased  to 
say,— 

"  Wai,  I  won't  be  hard  on  her.  I  'se 
a  square  nigger,  I  is.  I  don't  want  to 
do  no  hardness." 

The  actual  state  of  the  case  was  this. 
Aunt  Judy  had  hired,  for  five  dollars  a 

month,  a  cabin  attached  to  Mrs.  F 's 

tumble-down  house,  and  had  paid  up 
two  months' rent,  but  at  this  very  time 
owed  for  half  a  month.  Having,  how- 
ever, clone  washing  and  "  toting  "  for 
her  landlady  to  the  value  of  a  dol- 
lar, she  wanted  to  collect  the  money  at 


once,  instead  of  letting  it  go  on  the  ac- 
count. 

Five  months  later,  I  found  that  this 
"  square  nigger  "  had  not  settled  for  the 
rent  since  the  payment  made  by  her  sons, 
and  was  in  debt  twenty-four  dollars  to 

poor  old  Mrs.  F ,  who  meanwhile 

had  nearly  reached  the  point  of  starva- 
tion. I  was  obliged  to  threaten  Aunt 
Judy  with  instant  eviction,  before  I  could 
induce  her  to  put  her  mark  to  a  due-bill 
for  the  amount  of  her  arrears,  and  enter 
into  an  arrangement  by  which  the  wages 
of  a  son-in-law  became  guaranty  for 
regular  liquidations  in  future. 

It  would  probably  be  unfair  to  suppose 
that  this  "square  nigger"  seriously 
meant  to  be  lopsided  in  her  morals. 
But  she  had  two  or  three  small  children  ; 
the  washing  business  was  not  very  brisk 
nor  very  remunerative  ;  she  had  benevo- 
lently taken  in,  and  was  nursing,  a  sick 
woman  of  her  own  race  ;  and,  finally,  it 
was  so  much  easier  not  to  pay  than  to 
pay !  My  impression  is  that  she  was 
a  pious  woman,  and  disposed  to  be 
"  square  "  when  not  too  inconvenient 
I  should  not  have  interfered  to  bring 
her  to  terms,  had  it  not  been  a  case  of 
life  and  death  with  the  venerable  lady 
who  let  her  the  cabin,  and  had  not, 
moreover,  this  evasion  of  rent-dues  been 
a  very  common  sin  among  the  negroes. 
Indeed,  I  aided  her  to  the  amount  of 
a  dollar  and  a  half,  which  was  desirable 
for  some  small  matter,  conscious  that  I 
owed  her  at  least  that  amount  for  the 
amusement  which  I  had  derived  from 

her  statement  that  Mrs.  F "had 

money." 

The  thoughtless  charity  of  this  pen- 
niless negress  in  receiving  another 
poverty-stricken  creature  under  her 
roof  is  characteristic  of  the  freedrnen. 
However  selfish,  and  even  dishonest, 
they  may  be,  they  are  extravagant  in 
giving.  The  man  who  at  the  end  of 
autumn  has  a  hundred  or  two  bushels 
of  corn  on  hand  will  suffer  a  horde  of 
lazy  relatives  and  friends  to  settle  upon 
him,  and  devour  him  before  the  end  of 
the  winter,  leaving  him  in  the  spring  at 
the  mercy  of  such  planters  as  choose 
to  drive  a  hard  bargain.  Among  the 


342 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


[September, 


freedmen,  as  among  the  whites,  of  the 
South,  the  industrious  are  too  much 
given  to  supporting  the  thriftless. 

As  I  have  already  hinted,  the  negroes 
waste  much  of  their  time  in  amuse- 
ment. What  with  trapping  rabbits  by 
day  and  treeing  'possums  by  night, 
dances  which  last  till  morning,  and 
prayer-meetings  which  are  little  better 
than  frolics,  they  contrive  to  be  happier 
than  they  have  "  any  call  to  be,"  con- 
sidering their  chances  of  starving  to 
death.  It  is  not  entirely  without  foun- 
dation that  the  planters  and  the  reac- 
tionary journals  complained  that  the 
Loyal  Leagues  were  an  injury  to  both 
whites  and  blacks.  As  an  officer,  I 
wanted  to  see  reconstruction  furthered, 
and  as  a  Republican  I  desired  that  the 
great  party  which  had  saved  the  Union 
should  prosper  ;  but,  believing  that  my 
first  duty  was  to  prevent  famine  in  my 
district,  I  felt  it  necessary  to  discourage 
the  zeal  of  the  freedmen  for  political 
gatherings.  I  found  that  they  were 
travelling  ten  and  twenty  miles  to 
League  meetings,  and,  what  with  com- 
ing and  going,  making  a  three  days'  job 
of  it,  leaving  the  weeds  to  take  care  of 
the  corn.  The  village  was  an  attraction ; 
and,  moreover,  there  was  the  Bureau 
school-house  for  a  place  of  convoca- 
tion ;  there,  too,  were  the  great  men 
and  eloquent  orators  of  the  party,  and 
the  secret  insignia  of  the  League.  I 
remonstrated  strenuously  against  the 
abuse,  and  reduced  the  number  of 
meetings  in  the  school-house  to  one  a 
week. 

"Go  home,  and  get  up  your  own 
League,"  I  exhorted  a  gang  who  had 
come  fifteen  miles  from  a  neighboring 
district  for  initiation.  "  Let  your  pa- 
triotism come  to  a  head  in  your  own 
neighborhood.  Do  you  suppose  the 
government  means  to  feed  you,  while 
you  do  nothing  but  tramp  about  and 
hurrah  ?  " 

My  belief  is  that  nearly  all  my  broth- 
er officers  pursued  the  same  policy,  and 
that  there  is  little  or  no  foundation  for 
the  charge  that  the  Bureau  was  prosti- 
tuted to  political  uses.  On  the  whole, 
no  great  harm  resulted  from  the 


Leagues,  so  far  as  my  observation  ex- 
tended. The  planters  in  my  neighbor- 
hood made  few  complaints,  and  my  dis- 
trict raised  more  than  enough  corn  "  to 
doit." 

On  the  way  from  Charleston  to  my 
station  I  was  amused  at  a  conversation 
which  went  on  behind  me  between  a 
rough,  corpulent,  jolly  old  planter  of 
the  middle  class,  and  a  meek-looking 
young  Northerner,  apparently  a  "  drum- 
mer "  from  New  York.  The  old  fellow 
talked  incessantly,  sending  his  healthy, 
ringing  voice  clean  through  the  car,  and 
denouncing  with  a  delightful  fervor  the 
whole  "  breed,  seed,  and  generation  of 
niggers." 

"  They  're  the  meanest,  triflingest 
creeturs  agoin',"  said  he.  "  Thar  ain't 
no  good  side  to  'em.  You  can't  find  a 
white  streak  in  'em,  if  you  turn  'em 
wrong  side  outwards  and  back  again/' 

The  six  or  eight  Southerners  in  the 
car  seemed  mightily  taken  with  the  old 
man,  and  laughed  heartily  over  his- pliil- 
lipic.  Addressing  one  who  sat  in  front 
of  me,  a  tall,  powerful,  sunburnt  young 
fellow,  with  a  revolver  peeping  out  from 
beneath  his  homespun  coat,  I  said,  — 

"  Do  you  consider  that  a  fair  judg- 
ment ?  » 

"  Well,  middlin'  fair,"  he  answered  ; 
"  it  ain't  no  gret  out  of  the  way,  I 
reckon." 

"  I  tell  you  the  nigger  is  a  no-account 
creetur,"  went  on  the  old  planter.  "  All 
the  men  are  thieves,  and  all  the  women 
are  prostitutes.  It 's  their  natur  to  be 
that  way,  and  they  never  '11  be  no  other 
way.  They  ain't  worth  the  land  they 
cover.  They  ought  to  be  improved  off 
the  face  of  the  earth." 

Here  the  New-Yorker  spoke  for  the 
first  time  in  an  hour. 

"  You  are  improving  'em  off  pretty 
fast,"  he  said,  meekly.  "  Got  some  of 
'em  'most  white  already." 

So  unfair  is  the  human  mind  that  no- 
body but  myself  laughed  at  this  retort. 
The  planter  turned  the  conversation  on 
crops,  and  the  audience  looked  out  of 
the  windows. 

During  the  same  journey  I  fell  into 
conversation  with  an  elderly  Carolinian, 


1 868.] 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


343 


a  doctor  by  profession,  and  planter  by 
occupation,  who,  it  seems,  resided  in 
the  village  to  which  I  was  ordered,  and 
whom  I  afterwards  learned  to  respect 
for  his  kindly  and  worthy  qualities. 
We  talked  of  the  practice  of  whipping 
slaves,  and  he  assured  me  that  the  re- 
port of  it  had  been  much  exaggerated. 

"  Multitudes  of  planters  never  had 
a  negro  whipped,"  he  said.  "  I  have 
owned  twenty  or  thirty,  and  I  never 
punished  but  one.  I  '11  tell  you  the 
whole  story,  and  I  believe  you  '11  allow 
that  I  did  right.  It  was  a  girl  named 
Julia,  who  was  brought  up  in  our  house, 
a  regular  pet  of  the  family.  Finally 
she  went  wrong  somehow,  and  had  a 
mulatto  child  ;  they  would  do  that,  you 
know,  no  matter  what  pains  you  took 
with  them.  After  that,  I  noticed  that 
Julia  did  n't  have  no  more  children ; 
would  n't  have  nothing  to  say  to  her 
own  color;  wouldn't  take  a  husband. 
At  last,  I  thought  I  ought  to  talk  to 
her,  and  says  I,  '  Julia,  what  does  this 
mean  ?  '  Says  she,  '  Doctor,  I  've  had 
one  white  man's  child,  and  I  ?m  never 
going  to  have  no  black  man's  child.' 
Says  I,  'Julia,  that's  wrong,  and  you 
ought  to  know  it.'  Says  she, '  Well,  Doc- 
tor, wrong  or  not,  I  feel  that  way,  and 
I  'm  bound  to  stick  to  it.'  Now,  I  knew 
she  was  wrong,  you  see,  and  I  couldn't 
let  the  thing  go  on  so.  I  felt  in  duty 
bound  to  get  such  ideas  out  of  her  head. 
I  whipped  her.  I  took  her  out,  and  I  give 
her  one  right  good  switching  with  a 
hickory.  I  thought  I  ought  to  do  it, 
and  I  did  it." 

Whether  the  hickory  reformed  Julia 
of  her  wicked  and  unfruitful  pride,  so 
deleterious  to  the  growth  of  the  Doc- 
tor's planting  population,  I  was  too 
fastidious  to  inquire.  Whether  Julia's 
morals  would  have  been  in  better  hands 
than  the  Doctor's,  had  her  forefathers 
remained  in  Africa,  is  a  question  more 
important  to  my  present  purpose,  and 
i  must  probably  be  decided  in  the 
negative. 

First  savages,  and  then  slaves,  it  is 
evident  that  the  negroes  have  had  little 
chance  to  keep  all  the  Commandments. 
They  are  now  precisely  what  might  be 


expected,  considering  their  history.  Il- 
legitimate offspring  are  less  common 
than  formerly,  but  still  disastrously 
abundant.  A  large  proportion  of  the 
colored  applicants  for  Bureau  rations 
were  young  women  with  three  or  four 
children,  and  without  the  pretence  of 
a  husband, — 'this,  although  bigamy  is 
fearfully  frequent ;  although  the  average 
woman  is  apt  to  marry  again  if  her 
"old  man"  is  absent  for  a  year;  al- 
though the  average  man  will  perhaps 
take  a  wife  in  every  place  where  he 
stays  for  six  months.  If  I  exaggerate 
in  this  matter,  it  is  because,  like  most 
omcers  of  justice,  I  saw  chiefly  the 
evil  side  of  my  public,  —  all  the  deserted 
ones  coming  to  me  for  the  redress  of 
their  grievances,  or  for  help  in  their 
poverty. 

An  emigration  agent,  named  Pass- 
more,  who  collected  a  large  gang  of  ne- 
groes in  my  sub-district  for  work  in 
Louisiana,  told  me  that  one  of  his  re- 
cruits had  asked  him  to  write  a  letter  for 
him  to  "  his  Cousin  Jane."  The  man 
went  on  dictating,  "  Give  howdy  to 
little  Cousin  Abel,  and  little  Cousin 
Jimmy,  and  little  Cousin  Dinah."  Sud- 
denly Passmore  looked  up  :  — 

"You  rascal,  those  are  your  children; 
are  n't  they  your  children  ?  " 

After  some  stammering,  the  man  con- 
fessed it. 

"  Then  why  did  n't  you  say  your  wife, 
instead  of  your  cousin?  " 

"  Bekase  I  did  n't  want  the  ole  wo- 
man yere  to  git  to  know  about  it." 

General  Howard  distributed  a  large 
number  of  ruled  forms  for  temper- 
ance pledges  to  his  officers,  with  in- 
structions that  they  should  endeavor  to 
found  total-abstinence  societies  among 
the  freedmen.  I  soon  discovered  that 
if  I  wanted  to  raise  a  "  snicker,"  end- 
ing, when  out  of  doors,  in  a  hearty 
guffaw,  I  had  only  to  exhibit  one  of 
these  documents  and  explain  its  pur- 
pose to  a  party  of  my  constituents. 
The  blacks  are  unquestionably  less  ad- 
dicted to  ardent  spirits  than  the  South- 
ern whites  ;  but  I  suspect  that  it  is 
mainly  because,  up  to  the  emancipation, 
they  were  kept  from  it  in  a  measure  by 


344 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


[September, 


police  regulations,  and  because  they  are 
as  yet  too  poor  to  purchase  much  of  it. 
Like  all  uncultured  peoples,  they  have 
a  keen  relish  for  the  sense  of  freedom 
and  grandeur  which  it  gives  to  man, 
and  already  many  of  them  have  learned 
"  to  destroy  a  power  of  whiskey."  Of 
General  Howard's  temperance  pledges 
they  certainly  thought  very  small  beer. 
I  never  got  a  signature  ;  nothing  but 
snickers  and  guffaws,  —  irrepressible 
anti-temperance  laughter.  If  anything 
is  done  in  this  way,  it  must  be  through 
the  medium  of  secret  societies,  with 
passwords,  ceremonies,  processions,  in- 
signia, —  something  to  strike  the  imagi- 
nation. To  the  Good  Templars  and 
the  Sons  of  Temperance  I  recommend 
this  missionary  labor.  It  is  needed,  or 
will  be. 

In  the  matter  of  honesty  the  freed- 
men  are  doing  as  well  as  could  be  expect- 
ed, considering  their  untoward  educa- 
tion, first  as  savages  and  then  as  slaves. 
Stealing,  although  as  yet  more  common 
among  them  than  even  among  the  low- 
down-whites,  is  far  less  known  than 
when  they  held,  not  without  reason, 
that  it  was  no  harm  "  to  put  massa's 
chicken  into  massa's  nigger."  Free- 
dom has  developed  a  sense  of  self- 
respect  which  makes  the  prison  more 
terrible  than  was  the  whip  or  the 
paddle.  Planters  still  complain  that 
their  hogs  and  hens  disappear;  and, 
during  my  official  term  of  fifteen  months, 
I  procured  the  liberation  of,  perhaps, 
twenty  negro  thieves  from  jail,  on  con- 
dition that  they  should  take  contracts 
to  go  to  Florida  or  Louisiana  ;  while  at 
least  as  many  more  were  sentenced  by 
the  courts  for  various  forms  and  grades 
of  dishonesty.  But,  except  where  the 
population  has  been  pinched  by  famine, 
this  vice  has  diminished  steadily  and 
rapidly  since  the  emancipation. 

As  for  driving  sharp  bargains,  and 
downright  swindling,  I  am  reminded  of 
the  story  of  Dick  Ross  and  Caroline 
Gantt.  Caroline's  husband  died  to- 
ward the  close  of  1866,  but  not  until  he 
had  harvested,  and  left  to  his  widow, 
fifty-five  bushels  of  corn.  Dick  Ross, 
a  jet-black,  shiny-faced  fellow  of  twenty, 


saw  a  chance  of  providing  himself  with 
"  something  to  go  upon,"  and  went  to 
Caroline  with  a  specious  story  that  he 
was  about  to  set  up  a  store,  that  he  had 
several  boxes  of  goods  on  the  way  from 
Charleston,  and  that  he  could  do  well 
by  her  if  she  would  put  her  corn  into 
his  business.     The  widow  was  led  away 
by  his  smooth  talk,  and  soon  found  that 
she  had  made  a  permanent  investment. 
Dick  wagoned  the  corn  to  the  village, 
sold  it,  and  bought  himself  some  "store 
close."     Patient  waiting  and  inquiry  de- 
veloped the  facts,  that  no  goods  had  ar- 
rived for  him  by  railroad,  and  that  he 
had  hired  no  stand  for  business.    Then 
Caroline  came  to   me  for  redress.      I 
sent  for  Dick,  and  bullied  him  until  he 
refunded  five  dollars.     As  he  had  no« 
property  beyond  what  was  on  his  back, 
nothing  more  could  be  collected ;  and, 
as  imprisonment  for  debt  had  been  done 
away  with  by  order  of  General  Sickles, 
he   could  not  be  punished.     Caroline, 
however,  sued  him,  obtained  judgment 
against  him  for  sixty-five  dollars,  and, 
when  I  left,  had  got  two  dollars  and  a  half 
more,  which  had  gone  to  pay  her  lawyer. 
In  short,  I  found  that  the  negroes 
not  only  swindled  the  whites  quite  as 
much  as  they  were  swindled  by  them,  but 
that  they  cheated  each  other.    The  same 
man  who  would  spend  his  whole  sub- 
stance in  feeding  a  host  of  relatives  and 
friends  would   circumvent  whatsoever 
simple  brother  or  sister  darkey  might 
fall   in   his  way.      I  was   more  edified 
than  astonished  by  the  discovery  of  this 
seeming  clash  of  virtues  and  vices,  for 
I     had     seen    the    same    mixture    of 
thoughtless    generosity  and  dishonest 
cupidity  among  the  Syrians,  and  other 
semi-civilized  races.      The  explan; 
of  the  riddle  is  an  imperfect  moral  edu- 
cation  as   to   the   distinction  between 
mcum  and  tmtm  :  the   negro  does 
feel  that  he  has  a  full  right  to  his 
property,  nor  that  his  neighbor  has  a 
full  right  to  his. 

As  for  lying,  I  learned  not  to  put- 
faith  in  any  complaint  until  I  had  heard 
both  sides,  and  examined  into  the 
proofs.  But  this  is  a  good  general  rule  'r 
I  recommend  it  to  all  officers  of  justice; 


1 868.] 


The  Man  and  BrotJier. 


345 


I  presume  that  every  lawyer  has  arrived 
at  the  same  judgment.  '  The  human 
plaintiff,  whether  black  or  white,  sees 
his  trouble  from  his  own  point  of  view, 
and  does  not  mean  that  you  shall  see 
it  from  any  other.  If  he  varies  at  all 
from  the  exact  truth,  it  will  surely  be  to 
exaggerate  his  griefs. 

So  fluent  and  brazen-faced  in.  false- 
hood were  many  of  my  constituents, 
that  it  was  generally  impossible  to  de- 
cide by  personal  appearances  between 
the  blameless  and  the  guilt}-.  A  girl 
of  eighteen,  charged  with  obtaining 
goods  on  false  pretences,  displayed  such 
a  virtuous  front,  and  denied  her  identity 
with  the  criminal  with  such  an  air  of 
veracity,  that  I  confidently  pronounced 
her  innocent ;  yet,  by  dint  of  keeping 
her  for  an  hour  in  a  lawyer's  office,  put- 
ting the  charge  to  her  persistently,  and 
threatening  her  with  prosecution,  she 
was  brought  to  own  her  knavery,  and 
point  out  the  spot  where  she  had  se- 
creted her  plunder. 

Another  day  I  was  kept  in  a  ferment 
of  uncertainty  for  a  couple  of  hours  by 
two  boys  of  about  twelve,  —  a  black  and 
a  mulatto,  —  one  or  other  of  whom  had 
stolen,  a  valuable  pocket-knife  from  a 
little  white  boy.  The  plundered  youth, 
and  his  father,  —  a  farmer,  —  agreed  in 
stating  that  the  black  boy  had  borrowed 
the  knife  "  to  look  at  it,"  and  had  never 
returned  it. 

"  Yas,  so   I   did  bony  it,"  admitted 

the   accused,  a  shiny-faced  youngster, 

glib,  loud-tongued,  and  gesturing  wildly 

in  his  excitement.     "  But  I  did  n't  steal 

it.     Yerc  's  a  good  knife  of  my  own,  an' 

why  should  I   steal  another   knife  ?      I 

jes'  borry'd  it  to  see  it,  cos  it  had  so 

many  blades.      Then,  this  yere  yaller 

:sked  me  to  let  him  take  it  to  cut  a 

•-million.      So  I  handed  it  over  to 

and    that's  the   last    I  see  of  it. 

's  so,  jes'  as  suah  as  you's  bohn." 

The  mulatto,  a  handsome,  dignified 
little  fellow,  faced  this  accusation  in 
the  calmness  of  innocence.  A  citizen 
;-ci-ed  to  me,  "  The  black  boy  is  the 
thief,"  and  I  also  felt  pretty  sure  of  it. 
I  had  both  the  youngsters  searched, 
but  without  result.  Then,  finding  that 


the  property  had  disappeared  near  the 
farmer's  wagon,  I  told  him  to  take  the 
accused  back  there  to  search  for  it,  and, 
if  they  did  not  find  it,  to  bring  them  to 
me  again,  to  be  sent  to  jail.  In  ten 
minutes  the  party  returned  without  the 
knife.  The  mulatto  still  wore  his  calm, 
front  of  innocence,  while  the  negro  was 
now  quite  wild  with  excitement. 

"  I  shall  have  to  confine  you  both  for 
trial,"  I  said,  "if  you  don't  give  up 
the  knife." 

"  'Fore  God,  I  dunno  whar  't  is,"  ex- 
claimed the  darkey.  "  I  'd  lose  a  hun- 
dred knives  'fore  I  'd  go  to  jail.  He 
don't  care  'bout  jail,  he  's  been  thar 
so  often." 

"  Oho !  "  said  I,  turning  to  the  mu- 
latto. "  You  have  been  in  jail,  —  have 
you  ?  Then  you  are  the  thief.  If  you 
don't  find  that  knife  in  ten  minutes,  I 
will  have  you  severely  punished." 

There  was  another  search  ;  the  crimi- 
nal was  still  obdurate,  but  his  mother 
arrived  on  the  scene  of  action,  and  "got 
after  him  "  with  a  broomstick  ;  and  the 
result  was  that  he  pointed  out  the  miss- 
ing article  amidst  a  pile  of  straw  where 
he  had  contrived  to  secrete  it.  Yet  so 
blameless  had  been  his  countenance 
during  the  whole  transaction,  that  prob- 
ably not  one  person  in  ten  would  have 
selected  him  as  the  guilty  party. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  negroes 
as  truthful  as  the  sunlight,  —  negroes 
who  will  bear  honest  testimony  in  a  mat- 
ter, though  it  be  against  their  interest,  — 
negroes  whose  word  passes  for  as  much 
as  that  of  a  white  man.  I  have  often 
heard  Southerners  say,  "  I  would  much 
sooner  believe  a  decent  nigger  than  one 
of  these  low-down  white  fellows."  As 
witnesses  before  the  courts,  the  freed- 
men  have  astonished  their  friends,  as 
well  as  their  detractors,  by  the  honesty 
and  intelligence  with  which  they  give 
their  testimony.  They  feel  that  they  are 
put  upon  honor  by  the  privilege,  and 
they  are  anxious  to  show  themselves 
worthy  of  it.  Great  was  the  wonder  and 
amusement  of  the  community  in  which 
I  was  stationed  at  the  superiority 
which  Aunt  Chloe,  the  first  negro  ever 
placed  upon  the  stand  there,  exhibited 


^46 


TJic  Man  and  Brother. 


[September, 


over  her  former  master  and  present  em- 
ployer, a  wealthy  old  planter,  whom  we 
will  call  McCracken. 

Mr.  McCracken  had  brought  suit 
against  a  so-called  Union  man,  named 
Bishop,  for  plundering  his  house  after 
the  proclamation  of  peace.  The  indict- 
ment was  for  theft ;  the  case  was  tried 
before  the  Court  of  Common  Pleas  ;  the 
counsel  for  defence  was  the  well-known 
Governor  Perry.  Mr.  McCracken,  a 
sanguine,  voluble  old  gentleman,  who 
had  held  such  public  trusts  as  magis- 
trate, foreman  of  a  jury,  and  commis- 
sioner of  the  poor,  was  called  and  sworn 
as  the  first  witness. 

"  Well,  -Mr.  McCracken,  what  do  you 
know  about  this  case  ?  "  inquired  the 
solicitor. 

"  I  know  all  about  it,"  answered  Mc- 
Cracken, smiling  in  his  confident  style. 
He  then  stated  that  he  was  away  from 
home  when  the  theft  happened,  but 
that  on  his  return  he  missed  two  hams 
and  some  bunches'  of  yarn,  and  was  told 
that  Mr.  Bishop  had  taken  them. 

"  But  did  you  see  Mr.  Bishop  take 
them  ?  "  demanded  the  counsel  for  the 
defence. 

"No,  sir." 

"Did  you  see  Mr.  Bishop  at  your 
house  that  day  ?  " 

"  No,  sir." 

"  Did  you  ever  see  those  hams  and 
bunches  of  yarn  in  his  possession  ?  " 

"  No,  sir." 

"Then,  Mr.  McCracken,  it  appears 
that  you  don't  know  anything  about 
this  case." 

McCracken  fidgeted  and  made  no 
reply. 

"  Mr.  McCracken,  you  may  come 
clown,"  was  the  next  remark.  "  Sher- 
iff, call  Chloe  McCracken." 

Amidst  suppressed  tittering  from  the 
audience,  Aunt  Chloe  took  her  place 
on  the  witness-stand.  She  gave  •  a 
straightforward,  simple  story,  —  told 
v.'hat  she  had  seen,  and  no  more,  — 
said  nothing  which  was  not  to  the  point. 
When  she  came  down,  there  was  a  gen- 
tle buzz  of  admiration  and  wonder,  and 
the  question  of  believing  negro  testi- 
mony was  no  longer  a  mooted  one  in 


that  community.  Surely  we  may  hope 
something  for  a  race  which,  in  spite  of 
its  great  disadvantages  of  moral  educa- 
tion, has  already  shown  that  it  appre- 
ciates the  solemnity  of  an  oath.  We 
could  not  fairly  have  expected  thus 
much  virtue  and  intelligence  from  man- 
umitted slaves,  under  half  a  century  of 
freedom  and  exercise  of  civil  rights. 

Of  course,  such  new  acquaintance  as 
the  negro  and  law  do  not  always  agree. 
Wat  Thompson,  when  called  on  to  tes- 
tify against  a  brother  freedman,  who 
\tfas  charged  with  assault  and  battery 
upon  a  white  man,  refused  to  say  any- 
-  thing  at  all,  holding  that  he  was  not 
bound  "to  swear  agin  a  friend."  The 
judge  dissented  from  this  opinion,  and 
sent  Wat  to  jail  for  contempt  of  court. 
Lame  Ben,  a  black  busybody  who  had 
put  Wat  up  to  his  blunder,  took  excep-' 
tions  to  this  mode  of  treating  it,  and 
wanted  me  to  interfere.  I  advised 
Lame  Ben  that  he  would  make  a  repu- 
tation for  better  sense  by  minding  his 
O'.YII  business.  Another  freedman,  a 
spectator  in  this  same  case,  came  to  me 
in  great  indignation,  complaining  that 
the  jury  had  believed  the  evidence  of 
the  prosecutor,  and  not  that  of  the  de- 
fendant ;  and  that  the  court  had  sen- 
tenced the  latter  to  jail,  and  done  noth- 
ing at  all  to  the  former.  I  was  obliged 
to  explain  that  the  prosecutor  had  not 
been  on  trial,  and  that  the  jury  had  a 
right  to  decide  what  testimony  seemed 
most  credible. 

As  chief  of  a  sub-district  I  made  a 
monthly  report  headed,  "  Outrages  of 
Whites  against  Freedmen  "  ;  and  anoth- 
er, headed  "  Outrages  of  Freedmen 
against  Whites."  The  first  generally, 
and  the  second  almost  invariably,  had  a 
line  in  red  ink  drawn  diagonally  across 
it,  showing  that  there  were  no  outrages 
to  report.  After  three  small  gangs  of 
white  robbers,  numbering  altogether  ten 
or  twelve  persons,  had  been  broken  up 
by  the  civil  and  military  authorities,  few 
acts  of  serious  violence  were  committed 
by  either  race  against  the  other.  The 
"  high-toned  gentlemen,"  a  sufficiently 
fiery  and  pugnacious  race,  were  either 
afraid  of  the  garrisons,  or  scorned  to 


1868.] 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


347 


come  to  blows  with  their  inferiors.  The 
"  low-downers "  and  small  farmers, 
equally  pugnacious,  far  less  intelligent, 
and  living  on  cheek-by-jowl  terms  with 
the  negroes,  were  thet persons  who  gen- 
erally committed  what  were  called  out- 
rages. They  would  strike  with  what- 
ever came  handy ;  perhaps  they  would 
run  for  their  guns,  cock  them,  and 
swear  to  shoot ;  but  there  was  no  mur- 
der. There  had  been  shootings,  and 
there  had  been  concerted  and  formal 
whippings ;  but  that  was  during  the 
confusion  which  followed  the  close  of 
the  war;  that  was  mainly  before  my 
time.  Such  things  were  still  known  in 
other  districts,  but  mine  was  an  excep- 
tionally quiet  one. 

The  negroes  themselves  were  not 
disposed  to  violence.  They  are  a  peace- 
able, good-tempered  set,  and,  except 
when  drunk,  are  no  more  likely  to  pick 
a  fight  than  so  many  Chinamen.  Wheth- 
er it  is  a  virtue  to  be  pacific  I  cannot 
say.  Anglo-Saxons  are  the  most  bel- 
ligerent race,  whether  as  individuals  or 
as  peoples,  that  the  world  now  contains  ; 
and  yet  they  have  been  of  far  greater 
service  in  advancing  the  interests  of 
humanity  than  negroes  or  Chinamen; 
at  least  they  will  tell  you  so,  and  whip 
you  into  admitting  it.  But  if  peaceable- 
ness  is  a  virtue,  and  has  any  promise 
of  good  in  it,  the  negro  is  so  far  admira- 
ble, and  gives  hopes. 

Now  and  then  there  was  a  bad  boy  of 
this  stock  in  my  district.  There  was 
one  such  called  Wallace,  a  bright,  rest- 
less mulatto  of  seventeen  or  eighteen, 
who  stole  hens,  overcoats,  &c.,  and  oc- 
casionally fought.  Tom  Turner,  a  low- 
down  white  man,  getting  jocosely  drunk 
one  day,  thought  it  a  fine  thing  to  slap 
this  youth  in  the  face  with  a  meal-bag. 
Wallace  collected  a  party  of  his  com- 
rades, chased  Turner  nearly  half  a 
mile,  dragged  him  from  his  wagon, 
stabbtd  him  in  the  shoulder  with  a  jack- 
knife,  and  was  hardly  prevented  from 
killing  him.  All  the  parties  in  the  scuffle, 
including  the  white  man,  were  arrested, 
fined,  and  sentenced  to  various  terms 
of  imprisonment.  Wallace  became  a 
convert  to  the  Baptist  Church,  and  was 


let  out  of  jail  one  Sunday  to  undergo 
immersion. 

"  Well,  have  you  got  the  wickedness 
all  out  of  you  ?  "  I  heard  an  unbeliev- 
ing citizen  say  to  him.  "  I  reckon  you 
ought  to  have  hot  water." 

"  O  yes  !  all  out  this  time,"  returned 
Wallace,  with  a  confidence  which  I 
thought  foreshadowed  a  speedy  falling 
from  grace. 

Whether  many  Wallaces  will  arise 
among  the  negroes,  whether  the  stock 
will  develop  aggressive  qualities  as  it 
outgrows  the  timidity  of  long  servitude, 
is  not  only  an  interesting,  but  a  very  im- 
portant question.  If  so,  then  there  will 
be  many  riots  and  rencontres  between 
them  and  their  old  masters  ;  for  the  lat- 
ter are  as  bellicose  as  Irishmen,  and  far 
more  disposed  than  Irishmen  to  draw 
the  life-blood.  It  is  desirable,  in  my 
opinion,  that  the  freedmen  may  be  mod- 
erate in  their  claims,  and  grow  up  with 
some  meekness  into  their  dignity  of  cit- 
izens. Their  worst  enemies  are  such 
leaders  as  Bradley  and  Hunnicutt. 

Meanwhile  most  negroes  are  over- 
fearful  as  to  what  the  whites  may  do  to 
them.  A  freedman  from  St.  George's 
Creek,  Pickens  District,  shut  himself 
uj)  with  me  in  my  office,  and  related  in 
a  timorous  murmur,  and  with  trembling 
lips,  how  he  had  been  abused  by  two 
low-down  fellows,  named  Bill  and*  Jim 
Stigall. 

"  I  never  done  nothin'  to  'em,"  said 
he.  "  They  jes'  come  on  me  yesterday 
for  nothin'.  I  'd  finished  my  day's  job 
on  my  Ian',  an'  was  gone  in  to  git  my 
supper,  —  for  I  lives  alone,  ye  see,  — 
when  I  heerd  a  yell,  an'  they  come 
along.  Bill  Stigall  rode  his  mewl  right 
squar'  inter  the  house.  Then  Jim  come 
in,  an'  they  tole  me  to  git  'em  some 
supper,  an'  take  care  of  the  mewl. 
While  I  was  out  takin'  care  of  the 
mewl,  they  eat  their  supper,  an'  then 
begun  to  thrash  roun'  and  break  things. 
I  stayed  outside  when  I  heerd  that. 
But  my  brother  Bob  come  clown  that 
day  to  visit  me,  an'  walked  inter  the 
house  ;  an'  then  they  got  kinder  skrim- 
magen  with  him,  an'  wanted  to  put  him 
out.  But  when  Bob  pulled  out  his 


348 


American  Diplomacy. 


[September, 


pistil,  they  clar'd  out,  an'  as  they  were 
gwine  away  they  threatened  me.  Says 
they,  '  You  leave  this  settlement,  or 
we  '11  shoot  your  brother  an'  you  too.7 
An'  sence  then,  they's  been  hangin' 
roun'  my  place,  an'  I  'm  afeard  to  stay 
thar." 

"  Have  they  done  anything  to  you  ?  " 
I  asked,  doubtful  whether  the  affair 
was  more  than  a  rough  frolic. 

"  Yes.  They  sont  word  to  me  sence, 
how  they  was  gwine  ter  shoot  me  ef  I 
did  n't  leave  the  settlement." 

"  But  they  have  n't  shot  ? " 

"  No.  But  I  'm  afeard  of  'em.  An' 
some  of  the  folks  thar  tole  me  to  come 
over  yere  an'  name  it  to  the  Bureau." 

Thinking  that  some  harm  might 
come  if  I  did  not  interfere,  I  wrote 
a  note  to  the  magistrate  at  St.  George's 
Creek,  requesting  him  to  examine 
into  the  complaint,  and,  if  it  seemed 
important,  to  bind  the  Stigalls  over 
to  keep  the  peace.  The  negro  went 
off  with  it,  evidently  disappointed  that 
I  had  not  used  the  military  force  against 
his  persecutors,  and  fearful  of  venturing 
back  into  their  "settlement."  Three 
days  later  the  magistrate  called,  and 
stated  that  these  Stigalls  were  a  nui- 


sance to  his  neighborhood  ;  that  they 
had  persecuted  whites  as  well  as  blacks 
with  their  rowdyism ;  that  he  had  is- 
sued a  warrant  for  their  apprehension  ; 
and  that  they  had  taken  refuge  in  the 
swamps.  In  a  day  or  two  more  the  ne- 
gro reappeared  in  a  state  of  great  ter- 
ror. 

"  Well,  what  is  the  news  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  I  took  your  ticket  to  the  Square," 
he  said ;  "  but  he  don't  seem  to  do 
nothin'." 

"  But  he  tells  me  that  he  has  done  all 
he  can.  The  fellows  have  run  away, 
haven't  they?" 

"  Yes,"  he  admitted,  sheepishly  ;  "  not 
to  say  run  clear  away.  They  's  thar 
somewhar,  lyin'  out,  an'  waitin'  roun'  ? 
Las'  night  I  heerd  a  gun  fired  in  the 
woods  back  o'  my  house." 

"  Come,  you  are  too  much  of  a  cow- 
ard," I  protested.  "You  want  more 
protection  than  there  is  to  give.  Do 
you  suppose  that  I  can  send  a  guard  of 
soldiers  to  watch  over  you  ?  " 

He  probably  had  supposed  that  I  could 
and  would  do  it.  Very  unwillingly  and 
fearfully  he  retraced  his  steps  to  St. 
George's  Creek,  and  I  heard  no  more 
of  Jim  and  Bill  Stigall. 


AMERICAN    DIPLOMACY. 


AN  American  artist  who,  for  many 
years,  has  pursued  his  vocation 
with  honor  and  success  in  an  inland 
Italian  city,  and  whose  love  of  country 
has  been  intensified  by  foreign  experi- 
ence and  long  exile,  was  accustomed  to 
escape  at  intervals  from  the  treasonable 
prognostics  of  his  apostate  countrymen, 
and  the  covert  sneers  of  monarchical 
sycophants,  during  the  sanguinary  strug- 
gle now  triumphantly  closed,  and,  has- 
tening to  the  nearest  seaport,  revive  his 
patriotic  faith  and  hopes  by  visiting  one 
of  our  national  vessels.  The  sight  of  the 
flag,  the  order  and  beauty  of  the  craft, 
the  gallant  and  courteous  companionship 


of  the  officers,  were  all  full  of  welcome 
and  encouragement ;  and  he  returned  to 
his  work  with  renewed  national  senti- 
ment. If  is  thus  that  true  men  and  loyal 
citizens,  all  the  world  over,  regard  the 
official  insignia  and  representatives  of 
their  country  in  a  foreign  land  ;  it  is  thus 
that  ships  of  war  and  accredited  agents 
carry  round  the  earth  the  eloquent  ex- 
pression of  distant  nationalities,  winning 
for  them  the  respect  of  aliens,  and  bring- 
ing to  the  hearts  of  their  children  a  sense 
of  protection  and  an  evidence  of  sympa: 
thy  alike  cheering  and  sublime.  •  And 
yet  there  are  those  who  fail  to  appre- 
ciate the  worth  of  these  vital  links  be- 


1 868.] 


American  Diplomacy. 


349 


tween  far-away  lands  and  our  own, 
whereby  our  character  and  career  as 
a  nation,  to  say  nothing  of  our  welfare, 
are  manifest  with  "victorious  clear- 
ness." Men  of  purely  local  experience 
and  limited  sympathies  are  apt  to  im- 
agine that  society  and  government  have 
outgrown  what  the  spirit  of  the  age  has 
modified  ;  they  mistake  transition  for 
extinction,  and  would  have  us  summa- 
rily forego  that  which  we  have  merely 
changed  relations  with ;  because  science 
has,  to  so  large  an  extent,  conquered 
superstition,  they  think  the  need  of  or- 
ganized religion  has  ceased ;  because 
hygienic  discoveries  have  revealed  the 
abuses  of  the  healing  art,  they  believe  the 
profession  of  medicine  is  an  imposition  ; 
and  because  the  old  mystery  and  elab- 
orate formulas  of  diplomacy  have,  with 
the  advance  of  true  principles,  lost  their 
original  influence,  they  declare  legisla- 
tive provision  for  foreign  representation 
superfluous.  Especially  is  this  latter 
idea  proclaimed  by  our  own  shallow 
demagogues  ;  to  us,  they  argue,  the 
"  balance  of  power,"  so  long  the  ideal 
of  European  diplomacy,  is  of  no  conse- 
quence, and  the  very  name  of  a  Holy 
Alliance  an  impertinence ;  and  from 
such  premises,  infer  that  we  are  ab- 
solved from  national  duties  in  this 
regard.  Unfortunately,  the  moral  sen- 
sibility of  such  charlatans  in  civic  phi- 
losophy is  as  deficient  as  their  mental 
scope  is  narrow ;  otherwise,  noting  the 
superior  charm  and  social  ministry  of  the 
class  of  gentlemen  who  represent  foreign 
governments  among  us,  they  would  in- 
stinctively recognize  the  civilizing  ele- 
ment of  modern  diplomacy  —  feel  that 
the  intercourse  of  nations  was  never  be- 
fore so  vital  an  interest  as  now,  that 
mutual  objects  transcend  the  range  of 
politics  and  economy,  and  include  the 
diffusion  of  knowledge,  the  amenities  'of 
social  progress,  and  the  welfare  of  hu- 
manity. With  the  renewal  of  our  na- 
tional life  on  the  basis  of  universal  free- 
dom, an  opportunity  and  aa  impulse  for 
special  reforms  have  arisen  among  all 
who  feel  the  obligations,  and  recognize 
the  scope  of  enlightened  citizenship. 
And  the  increased  influence  we  have  at- 


tained abroad  suggests  and  necessitates 
ameliorations  in  American  diplomacy. 
The  intercourse  of  nations,  like  all  oth- 
er vital  interests,  has  been  essentially 
expanded  and  modified  by  the  spirit  of 
the  age.  Unification  in  Italy  and  Ger- 
many has  done  away  with  the  necessity 
for  those  perpetual  arrangements  to 
equalize  the  power  and  maintain  the 
integrity  of  small  states,  such  as,  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  made  the  alliances  of  the 
Italian  Republics  with  Papal  and  Im- 
perial governments,  and,  in  earlier  times, 
the  oities  of  Greece  with  each  other,  a 
great  sphere  of  political  astuteness. 
Grote  and  Sismondi  have  ably  illus- 
trated this  prolific  chapter  in  the  civic 
history  of  the  Old  World ;  and  every 
popular  annalist  of  our  day  has  derived 
from  its  records  the  most  valuable 
materials,  so  that  the  archives  of  Eu- 
rope furnish,  in  the  correspondence  of 
ambassadors,  the  best  data  of  national 
development,  especially  in  such  records 
as  those  of  the  Venetian  envoys.  While 
the  guarded  and  sagacious  relations  of 
small  communities  thus  formed  an  ex- 
cellent school  of  diplomatic  discipline, 
the  Reformation  and  the  French  Rev- 
olution introduced  so  many  new  and 
conflicting  elements  into  European 
state-craft,  that  the  very  name  of  for- 
eign ambassador  became  synonymous 
with  disingenuousness,  if  not  dupli- 
city. The  isolation  of  the  United  States, 
long  after  their  independence,  rendered 
it  comparatively  easy  to  follow  the  part- 
ing advice  of  Washington,  and  keep 
free  from  entanglements  with  the  coun- 
tries of  the  Old  World.  We  had  but 
one  great  interest  to  protect  abroad, 
and  that  was  our  commercial  welfare. 
The  vast  tide  of  foreign  immigration, 
the  increase  of  travel  incident  to  the 
new  facilities  of  communication,  the 
political  and  social  sympathies  awa- 
kened by  a  great  experiment  of  free  gov- 
ernment on  this  side  of  the  ocean,  and 
the  prestige  acquired  by  a  civil  war 
waged  to  overthrow  an  enormous  na- 
tional wrong,  and  consolidate  an  im- 
mense territory,  have  given  an  entirely 
fresh  force  and  feeling  to  our  foreign 
relations.  We  have  principles  to  rep- 


350 


American  Diplomacy. 


[September, 


resent,  migratory  colonies  to  protect, 
mutual  interests  to  cherish,  and  a  nation- 
al life  to  vindicate  and  honor  all  over 
the  world.  Meantime  Diplomacy  has, 
like  all  other  human  institutions,  grad- 
ually shared  the  transitions  of  society 
and  science ;  these  peerless  agencies 
have  emancipated  that  vocation  from 
the  trammels  of  conventional  and  insin- 
cere methods ;  integrity  is  now  more 
effective  than  intrigue ;  justice  recog- 
nized as  more  auspicious  than  cunning; 
to  consult  the  tides  of  humanity  rather 
than  the  mirage  of  ambition,  to  deal 
with  the  facts  of  the  time  rather  than 
with  'the  schemes  of  power,  to  recog- 
nize the  rights  instead  of  taking  advan- 
tage of  the  weakness  of  states,  is  felt  to 
be  the  path,  not  only  of  wisdom  but  of 
success.  Before  the  days  of  steam  and 
the  telegraph,  there  was  excuse  for  tedi- 
ous negotiation,  —  a  reason  for  evasion 
and  indirectness  ;  but  now  that  every 
incident  in  the  life  of  nations,  every 
official  act,  every  political  opinion,  civic 
aspiration,  and  administrative  resource, 
is  promulgated  by  the  press,  sped  along 
the  chambers  of  the  sea,  discussed  in 
salon  and  mart  as  well  as  in  cabinet  and 
parliament,  only  by  frank  and  free 
utterance  can  the  prosperity  of  a  people 
be  assured,  their  interests  promoted, 
and  their  dignity  preserved. 

Science  has  made  public  opinion,  — 
national  sentiment,  —  a  power  which 
princes  respect ;  arbitrary  will,  though 
sustained  by  bayonets,  is  obliged  to 
yield  to  moral  and  social  influences, 
which,  in  feudal  times,  were  compara- 
tively ineffective ;  hence  special  plead- 
ing and  unscrupulous  deceit  have,  in 
a  great  measure,  lost  their  effect  as 
diplomatic  agencies.  The  system  rep- 
resented by  such  names  as  Kaunitz, 
Metternich,  and  Talleyrand  is,  to  a 
great  degree,  obsolete ;  liberal  inter- 
pretation of  rights,  enlightened  esti- 
mates of  duty  in  national  affairs,  have 
more  and  more  superseded  the  intense 
and  subtle  self-seeking  of  states  ;  tra- 
ditional policies  have  lost  their  signifi- 
cance, and  the  spirit  of  the  age,  so  per- 
vasive and  triumphant,  has  altered  the 
*  game  by  exalting  the  motives  and  en- 


larging the  sphere  of  diplomacy.  Even 
Austria,  so  long  the  synonyme  of  des- 
potic perversity,  gives  way  to  the  pro- 
test and  the  plea  of  progress.  Cavour 
obtained  for  Italy,  so  long  the  spoil  of 
the  stranger,  the  sympathetic  recogni- 
tion of  Europe,  not  by  shrewd  manceu- 
vres,  but  through  manly  and  confident 
use  of  modern  enlightened  and  humane , 
aspirations  ;  the  vast  Middle  Kingdom, 
whose  stationary  civilization  and  tradi- 
tional exclusiveness  had,  for  ages,  iso- 
lated her  people*  and  territory  from  con- 
tact with  the  western  world,  throws 
open  the  gates  of  her  capital  to  Chris- 
tian envoys,  and  sends  an  Embassy  to 
all  the  governments  of  the  earth,  to 
establish  free  intercourse  therewith ; 
the  flag  of  every  nation  is  welcomed  to 
the  long  -  sealed  ports  of  Japan ;  and 
the  Turk  is  dragged  along  in  the  pro- 
cession of  reform.  The  byways  as 
well  as  the  highways  of  the  world  are 
thus  opened  to  enterprise,  to  curiosity, 
to  co-operative  association  ;  and  Social 
Science,  however  inadequate  in  special 
experiments,  has  inaugurated  a  new 
era  in  the  life  of  nations,  that  renders 
their  old  laws  and  limits  in  relation  to 
each  other  a  mere  tradition. 

Shakespeare  hints  the  essential  scope 
of  diplomacy,  —  "  take  with  you  free 
power  to  ratify,  augment,  and  alter"; 
he  alludes  to  those  "who  know  not 
how  to  use  ambassadors,"  adjures  the 
authority  thus  addressed  to  receive 
them  "according  to  the  honor  of  the 
sender,  "  and  gives  the  admirable  coun- 
sel "  to  fight  with  gentle  words  till  time 
lends  friends." 

The  philosophy  of  diplomatic  agency 
is  also  well  stated  by  Lord  Bacon :  *'  It 
is  better  to  deal  by  speech  than  by  let- 
ter and  by  the  medium  of  a  third  than 
by  a  man's  self" ;  but  his  maxims  set 
forth  in  the  Essay  on  Negotiating  are 
more  remarkable  for  worldly  wisdom 
than  comprehensive  insight.  Mon- 
taigne suggests  the  necessity  of  discre- 
tionary power,  when  he  says  that  "  the 
functions  of  an  ambassador  are  not  so 
fixed  and  precise  but  that  they  must, 
in  the  various  and  unforeseen  occur- 
rences and  accidents  that  may  fall  out 


1868.] 


American  Diplomacy. 


35* 


in  the  management  of  a  negotiation,  be 
wholly  left  to  their  own  discretion. 
They  do  not  simply  execute  the  will  of 
their  master,  but,  by  their  wisdom,  form 
and  model  it  also."  Precepts  like  these 
indicate  how  special  and  limited  com- 
paratively the  function  of  the  diplouiate 
was  of  old.  Now  it  includes  much  vol- 
untary service,  and  is  subject  to  gen- 
erous interpretation,  owing  to  the  social 
and  scientific  range  it  has  attained. 
The  courtly  smile,  the  sagacious  nod, 
the  contravention,  conciliation,  and  con- 
cealment associated  with  the  office,  are 
no  longer  essential,  and  the  snuff-box, 
parchment,  and  ribbon  have  little  sym- 
bolic meaning.  Beyond  and  often  above 
his  specific  duties,  the  ambassador  of  our 
day  is  expected  to  furnish  his  country 
with  facts  of  interest  in  every  sphere  of 
knowledge,  to  represent  not  merely  au- 
thority but  culture,  and  to  illustrate,  in 
his  own  person  and  influence,  progress 
and  the  arts  of  peace  as  well  as  the 
dicta  of  Power.  More  or  less  of  this  gen- 
ial ministry  has  been  always  recognized. 
Hence  men  of  letters  and  science  are 
wisely  selected,  for  the  double  purpose 
of  doing  honor  to  their  country's  repu- 
tation and  enjoying  the  best  oppor- 
tunity for  research  and  observation. 
In  English  literature  many  illustrious 
names  are  associated  with  these  ap- 
pointments, from  those  of  Sir  Kenelm 
Digby  to  Addison,  and  from  Sir  Wil- 
liam Temple  to  Mackintosh,  Sir  Henry 
Bulwer,  and  Sir  Francis  Head.  It 
is  incalculable  what  indirect,  but  none 
the  less  memorable,  influence  such 
a  foreign  representative  as  Baron 
Bunsen  may  exert;  the  prestige  and 
even  the  official  service  being  subordi- 
nate to  the  social  mission.  And  a  recent 
English  writer  has  well  said  that  "to 
know  thoroughly  the  history,  literature, 
and  politics  of  different  countries,  so 
far  as  the  length  of  their  residences  in 
each  permits,  has  become  the  ideal  of 
diplomatists  of  the  new  school."  Such 
an  exercise  of  the  authority  and  im- 
provement of  the  opportunities  incident 
to  the  diplomatic  career  elevates  it  as 
a  medium  of  civilization  and  a  mission 
$f  humanity;  the  life  of  nations  is  thus 


made  to  nourish  the  sentiment  of  broth- 
erhood, to  promote  the  cause  of  science, 
and  to  weave  alliances  from  the  "rec- 
ords of  the  mind"  ;  it  accords  with  the 
benign  aspirations  and  responds  to  the 
latent  appeals  of  intelligence,  culture, 
and  character;  and,  when  associated 
with  benevolent  sympathies  and  high 
convictions,  renders  the  national  repre- 
sentative a  social  benefactor.  Bunsen, 
when  ambassador  at  Rome,  became  a 
disciple  of  Niebuhr,  and  was  one  of 
the  few  to  appreciate  and  encourage 
Leopardi ;  and,  in  England,  he  was  the 
ally  of  Arnold  and  Hare  ;  ostensibly  a 
Prussian  envoy,  in  reality  he  was  an 
apostle  of  knowledge,  freedom,  and 
truth,  ever  intent  upon  diffusing  the 
eternal  elements  of  progress  and  hu- 
manity, by  the  magnetic  earnestness 
and  noble  spirit  of  a  Christian  scholar; 
and  in  his  quality  of  ambassador  he  did 
not  regard  himself,  according  to  the  sar- 
castic definition  of  Sir  Henry  Wotton,  as 
one  "  sent  to  lie  abroad  for  his  country." 
The  foreign  representatives  of  nations 
to-day  are  social  rather  than  selfish 
agents,  purveyors  of  knowledge,  minis- 
ters of  civilization,  auspicious  to  their 
own,  without  being  antagonistic  to  alien, 
nationalities.  Their  office  is  urbane, 
their  spirit  cosmopolitan ;  and  if  intrepid 
in  the  performance  of  national  duty,  they 
are  none  the  less  genial  in  the  observ- 
ances of  international  courtesy.  The 
"  smooth  barbarity  of  courts  "  and  the 
"insolence  of  office"  are  not  indeed 
extinct ;  but  the  ameliorations  of  mod- 
ern society  have  harmonized  and  hu- 
manized them.  Vast  mutual  interests 
have  developed  in  the  consciousness, 
and  are  recognized  in  the  foreign  policy, 
of  nations  ;  and  the  history,  the  posi- 
tion, the  resources,  and  the  destiny  of 
the  United  States  give  them  a  promi- 
nence and  a  part  therein  too  evident  to 
be  ignored.  Unfortunately,  many  of  our 
members  of  Congress  arc  men  of  purely 
local  affinities,  devoid  of  the  compre- 
hensive views  born  of  travel  and  cul- 
ture, and  therefore  prone  to  treat  with 
indifference  and  ignorance  the  diplo- 
matic interests  of  the  government, — 
apparently  unconscious  of  their  renewed 


352 


American  Diplomacy. 


[September, 


importance  to  the  national  dignity  and 
honor,  and  their  social  necessity  and 
possible  elevation  and  utility. 

When  an  important  treaty  is  nego- 
tiated, a  national  right  vindicated,  the 
country  honored  by  the  conduct  or  in- 
fluence of  her  representative  abroad, 
or  even  an  American  citizen  protected 
when  in  peril  of  life,  liberty,  or  prop- 
erty, in  a  foreign  country,  these  legis- 
lators acknowledge  that  an  efficient  and 
respected  agent  of  the  Republic  abroad 
is  very  useful  and  desirable  ;  that  his 
salary  is  a  profitable  investment,  and 
his  office  no  sinecure.  But,  apart  from 
these  'exceptional  occasions,  they  are 
apt  to  regard  foreign  missions  as  the 
best  sphere  for  economical  experiments, 
—  as  a  branch  of  the  government  rather 
ornamental  than  requisite,  and  chiefly 
valuable  as  affording  convenient  means 
of  rewarding  partisan  services.  In- 
deed, this  latter  abuse  of  a  class  of 
appointments  which,  more  than  any 
other,  should  be  based  on  disinter- 
ested motives,  regulated  by  absolute 
considerations  of  capacity  and  charac- 
ter, has  brought  our  diplomatic  ser- 
vice into  disrepute.  During  the  war 
for  the  Union,  when  so  much  depended 
on  the  intelligence  and  patriotism  of 
our  foreign  representatives,  —  when  the 
national  honor  was  assailed,  and  trea- 
son to  the  flag  stalked,  with  arrogant 
front,  through  the  aristocratic  ranks  of 
Europe,  —  the  nation  felt  to  her  heart's 
core  the  vital  necessity  of  selecting  for 
these  duties  and  dignities  men  of  hon- 
or, ability,  and  national  sentiment ;  such 
men,  indeed,  saved  the  country  at  that 
memorable  crisis,  and  their  services 
endear  their  names,  and  should  perma- 
nently exalt  their  office,  to  the  American 
heart. 

One  who  has  been  a  wanderer  on  the 
face  of  the  earth,  who  has  known  what 
it  is  to  be  alone  in  a  foreign  land,  learns 
to  appreciate  the  signal  benefit  of  citi- 
zenship when  he  encounters  the  flag  or 
escutcheon  of  his  country,  and  experi- 
ences the  protection  and  advantages 
afforded  by  an  accredited  agent  of  her 
authority.  Especially  in  every  exigen- 
cy and  vicissitude  he  finds  support  and 


defence  in  this  representative  of  his 
nation  ;  when  sick  and  alone,  or  when 
grasped  by  the  power  of  an  alien  gov- 
ernment, or  when  desirous  of  promot- 
ing an  enterprise,  or  exploring  a  region, 
or  searching  the  arcana  of  Nature  or 
the  archives  of  History,  or  forming  re- 
sponsible social  relations,  —  in  all  the 
varied  occasions  when  he  needs  official 
sanction  or  social  indorsement,  there  is 
one  spot  as  sacred  to  his  rights  as  his 
native  soil,  one  friend  upon  whom  he 
has  a  legitimate  claim,  one  watchword 
that  enables  him  to  assert  his  individ- 
uality and  exercise  his  birthright.  And 
there  are  circumstances  incident  to 
every  stranger's  lot,  and  every  absen- 
tee's interest,  when  the  embassy  of  his 
country  becomes  a  sanctuary,  a  court 
of  justice,  or  a  shrine  before  which  the 
marriage  vow,  the  funeral  rite,  or  the 
weekly  worship  have  the  hallowed  in- 
fluence, if  not  the  local  associations,  of 
home.  In  times  of  war  he  seeks  and 
finds  security  beneath  the  recognized 
and  respected  flag  of  his  native  land ; 
his  nationality  has  a  significance  never 
before  realized,  for  it  is  upheld  and 
guarded  by  the  law  of  nations  ;  and, 
when  adequately  and  worthily  repre- 
sented, links  him,  by  a  permanent  and 
powerful  agency,  to  all  the  honors  and 
privileges  of  his  country. 

Much  of  the  usefulness  of  diplomatic 
relations  is  negative,  the  advantages 
whereof  are  not  like  those  of  official 
duties  nearer  home,  constantly  record- 
ed and  announced ;  obligations  thus 
conferred  on  the  citizen  often  have  no 
testimony  but  that  of  private  gratitude, 
and  hence  inexperienced  legislators  are 
apt  to  ignore  them.  Yet  many  a  pil- 
grim never  knows  how  much  of  love 
and  pride  are  associated  with  the  land 
of  his  birth,  how  much  of  latent  patriot- 
ism glows  in  his  heart,  until  such  far- 
away tribute  and  triumph  are  accorded 
by  the  deference  of  foreign  governments, 
and  enjoyed  by  the  errant  children  of 
his  own.  This  personal  gratification  is, 
however,  but  an  incidental  good,  com- 
pared to  the  prestige,  the  consideration, 
and  the  influence  thus  obtained  for  a 
nation,  the  facilities  of  intercourse, 


1 868.] 


American  Diplomacy. 


353 


advancement  of  mutual  interests,  the 
desirable  knowledge  and  faith  propa- 
gated by  intelligent  and  faithful  rep- 
resentative agents.  Herein  the  so- 
cial amelioration  of  the  world  has  a 
civic  demonstration  ;  the  brotherhood 
of  man  is  recognized  as  a  political  fact, 
the  supremacy  of  lav;  is  illustrated  as  a 
cosmopolitan  principle,  and  the  primi- 
tive virtue  of  hospitality  rises  to  na- 
tional significance,  In  this  broad  and 
social  light,  Diplomacy  is  a  great  ele- 
ment of  Civilization  ;  and  just  in  pro- 
portion as  our  country  is  exempt  from 
the  dynastic  necessities  which  have 
dwarfed  and  perverted  it  in  Europe,  is 
she  bound,  in  the  interests  of  freedom 
and  education,  to  contribute  generously 
•and  graciously  thereto. 

And    this    conviction    suggests    the 
sity  of  a  more   liberal  provision 
for  our  diplomatic  system,  which  is  due 
to  the  honor  of  a  vast  and  prosperous 
country,  to  a  just  American  pride,  to 
the  increased  costliness   of  living  and 
entertainment    abroad.      It    has    long 
been   a  matter  of  publicity,   that  the 
ng  missions  of  the  United  States 
can,  with  the  present  salaries,  be  filled 
only  by  men  of  large  private  means  ;  in 
those  of  the  second  class  the  salaries 
are  rarely  equal  to  the   expenses.     It 
is  a  paltry  economy,  unworthy  a  great 
nation,  to  deny  foreign  representatives 
the  means  to  maintain  their  households 
-with  dignity  and  comfort,  or  to  exercise 
a  liberal  hospitality.     Whatever  places 
them  on  a  basis  inferior  to  that  of  their 
:;er  diplomates   should    be   depre- 
cated by  every  true  patriot.     If  repre- 
sented at  all,  let  our  nation  be  repre- 
sented in  no  niggardly  fashion  ;  without 
vngauce    or    ostentation,    but,    at 
.  in   that   refined   and   prosperous 
•  which  should  characterize  a  peo- 
in  whom  self-respect  is  engendered 
ireedom   and   industry  ;    otherwise 
iy  an  equivocal  compliment  to  the 
rnmcnt  with  whom   we   exchange 
amenities    of   official    intercourse. 
On  the  same  principle,  the  absurd  cav- 
illings in  regard  to  diplomatic  costume 
n-ed  by  virtue  of  the  law 
•escribed  in  our  instruc- 
vc:.  -32.  13 


tions  to  envoys,  that,  in  matters  of 
etiquette,  the  minister,  charge*,  or  consul 
shall  conform  to  the  customs  of  the  court 
or  country  to  which  he  is  accredited ;  it 
is  simply  vulgar  to  insist  on  intruding 
one's  idea  of  dress,  as  a  guest,  in  the 
face  of  precedent. 

An  American  sojourning  along  the 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  thirty 
years  ago,  had  a  memorable  experience 
of  the  incongruities  of  our  diplomatic 
system.  At  one  post  he  found  a  gen- 
tleman of  alien  birth  exercising  con- 
sular functions,  with  hospitable  cour- 
tesy, merely  to  enjoy  the  opportunities 
thus  secured  of  frequent  association 
with  the  citizens  of  a  land  he  hon- 
ored and  loved.  At  another  the  in- 
temperate habits  or  ignorant  assump- 
tion of  a  consul  of  native  birth  made 
him  blush  for  kis  citizenship  ;  while, 
as  he  looked  from  a  consular  mansion 
on  the  destructive  feats  of  a  Sicilian 
mob,  goaded  to  revolution  by  ] 
lence,  ascribed,  in  their  savage  igno- 
rance, to  wells  poisoned  by  their  rul- 
ers, or  walked  amid  the  batteries  of  a 
British  fort,  side  by  side  with  his  na- 
tion's official  representative,  a  glow  of 
pride  and  a  consciousness  of  security 
under  the  honored  flag  of  his  distant 
home  made  him  realize,  as  never  be- 
fore, its  auspicious  significance.  But 
too  often  such  honest  elation  was  sub- 
dued by  the  contrast  between  the  intel- 
ligent efficiency,  the  personal  accom- 
plishments, and  the  thorough  fitness  of 
the  other  members  of  the  diplomatic 
corps  and  our  own.  If  the  necessity  of 
reform  was  then  so  apparent,  it  is  in- 
finitely more  so  now,  when  the  standard 
of  official  culture  is  higher,  the  num- 
ber of  our  errant  countrymch  so  much 
larger,  and  the  fusion  of  states,  as  well 
as  social  interests,  so  continuous  and 
prevalent,  as  to  make  enlightened  and 
humanitarian  diplomatists  the  vanguard 
in  the  "federation  of  the  world." 

It  requires  no  elaborate  argument  to 
prove  that  the  normal  benefits  and  the 
legitimate  utility  of  Diplomacy,  in  the 
actual  condition  of  the  world,  depends 
mainly  upon  the  character  and  equip- 
ment of  national  representatives.  What- 


354 


American  Diplomacy. 


[September,. 


ever  may  have  been  the  requisites  of 
the  past,  those  of  the  present  are  obvi- 
ous. Probity,  knowledge,  and  patriot- 
ism are  essential  qualifications  ;  a  cer- 
tain sympathy  with  liberal  studies,  and 
some  grace  of  manner  and  accomplish- 
ment of  mind,  are  indispensable.  His- 
torical acquisitions,  in  order  to  be  en 
rapport  with  previous  relations,  self- 
respect,  and  broad  views  are  implied  in 
such  a  position.  "  Steady  and  impartial 
observation,  free  though  cautious  cor- 
respondence, friendly,  social  relations 
with  the  members  of  the  diplomatic 
body  at  the  place  of  residence,"  are 
designated  in  the  regular  instructions  to 
envoys  ;  and  the  duty  is  prescribed  of 
"transmitting  such  information  relating 
to  the  government,  finances,  commerce, 
arts,  sciences,  and  condition  of  the  coun- 
tries where  they  reside  as  they  may  deem 
useful."  Such  functions  are  only  pos- 
sible for  men  of  education,  judgment, 
industry,  and  tact ;  and  to  secure  these, 
the  system  should  be  progressive.  The 
superiority  of  European  diplomats  is 
owing  to  their  vocation  being  a  recog- 
nized official  career  with  grades,  ad- 
vancement, and  preparation,  as  well  as 
permanence  assured.  Legal  and  lin- 
guistic training  and  social  efficiency 
are  more  than  ever  desirable.  Lord 
Clarendon  has  shown  that  the  impor- 
tance of  the  diplomatic  branch  of  gov- 
ernment has  increased  within  the  last 
decade ;  that  its  standard  has  risen, 
and  its  capabilities  grown  with  the 
progress  of  science  and  society  ;  and 
the  time  has  arrived  when  its  higher 
claims  should  be  practically  realized  in 
our  country. 

The  needed  reforms  and  the  argu- 
ment therefor  are  clearly  stated  by  the 
representative  in  Congress  who  advo- 
cated and  reported  the  bill  to  "  regulate 
the  civil  service  of  the  United  States, 
and  promote  the  efficiency  thereof.  A 
brief  extract  will  illustrate  his  reason- 
ing:— 

"  We  see  at  every  change  of  admin- 
istration over  fifty  thousand  persons 
removed  from  office  to  make  way  for 
others  of  a  different  partisan  creed, 
every  one  of  whom  will  owe  his  ap- 


pointment to  something  other  than 
personal  merit.  And  again,  all  these 
are  liable  to  be  removed,  and  a  similar 
class  of  successors  appointed,  at  the 
next  change  of  party.  If  patriotism 
ever  prompted  the  desire  for  office, 
such  a  system  would  tend  to  eradicate 
that  sentiment.  It  tends  to  weaken  all 
the  obligations  of  society  for  the  pur- 
pose of  strengthening  a  mere  party  ;  it 
elevates  private  interests  above  the 
welfare  of  the  state  ;  it  tends  to  disin- 
tegrate the  political  fabric  ;  and  at  last, 
as  we  have  felt  in  our  bitter  experience, 
it  destroys  allegiance  itself.  That  ele- 
ment which  invigorates  a  monarchy 
corrupts  the  life  of  a  republic. 

"  Social  standing  and  consideration, 
by  reason  of  such  employment,  is  not 
thought  of.  The  administration  is 
always  saying,  in  effect,  to  each  of  its 
civil  servants  :  '  Your  skill,  your  expe- 
rience, your  long  and  faithful  service, 
are  as  nothing  to  us  ;  we  can  discharge 
you  to-morrow,  and  at  once  find  a  hun- 
dred others  who  will  answer  our  pur- 
poses as  well.'  Each  one  thus  suffers- 
a  standing  discredit.  His  place  is  clue 
to  accident,  and  gives  him  no  title  to 
respect.  It  implies,  rather,  a  damaged 
reputation,  and  a  character  that  can  be- 
tampered  with.  A  tide-waiter  can  be 
nothing  more,  nor  is  he  sure  of  even 
being  that,  although  he  proves  to  be 
the  most  faithful  and  capable  of  tide- 
waiters.  If  he  does  not  bury  his  talent 
himself,  it  is  buried  for  him,  and  his 
possible  skill  in  making  usance  by  it 
can  avail  him  nothing.  No  grades,  no 
promotions,  no  hopes,  no  honors,  no 
rewards,  are  open  to  the  most  faithful, 
diligent,  and  honest  officer,  and  while 
the  incentive  to  excellence  in  service 
which  these  might  give  is  wholly  lost, 
his  office  itself  gives  him  no  character 
or  social  position.  But  if  by  merit  and 
fidelity  the  tide  -  waiter  can  win  the 
higher  places  in  the  customs,  his  place, 
himself,  and  the  service  itself  acquire 
respectability.  The  cadet  of  either  of 
the  warlike  services  has  a  prestige  in 
this  regard  over  even  the  higher  grades 
of  the  civil  service.  All  doors  may  b 
open  to  him,  for  his  uniform  is  evidence 


i868.] 


American  Diplomacy. 


355 


of  his  education,  character,  and  of  an 
opening  career.  Although  the  lowest 
subaltern,  he  may  become  a  general  or 
an  admiral.  A  lieutenant  or  an  ensign 
has  a  standing  in  society,  by  virtue  of 
his  being  in  the  service  of  the  govern- 
ment, but  there  is  no  element  of  re- 
spectability in  the  service  of  a  clerk, 
inspector,  or  special  agent,  which  would 
entitle  him  to  be  recognized,  even  by  a 
member  of  Congress.  I  cannot  believe 
that  the  reason  of  this  is  that  the  civil 
service  is  in  itself  less  worthy  of  re- 
spect than  the  military,  but  is  it  not 
because  the  element  of  honor,  which  is 
inherent  in  the  one,  has  not  hitherto 
been  added  to  the  other  ?  All  serve 
alike  under  the  flag ;  and  while  the 
glory  cannot  be  equal,  no  discredit 
should  be  cast  on  either  class  of  public 
servants  by  reason  of  their  service."  * 

The  bill,  the  necessity  and  advantages 
of  which  are  thus  ably  set  forth,  pro- 
vides for  the  appointment  by  the  Presi- 
dent, with  the  consent  of  the  Senate,  of 
a  Board  of  Four  Commissioners,  with 
the  Vice-President  as  their  head,  who 
shall  prescribe  the  qualifications  for  civil 
offices,  provide  for  the  examination  of 
candidates  therefor,  and  periods  and 
conditions  of  probation,  and  report  rules 
and  precedents  ;  the  candidate  who 
.stands  highest  to  have  the  preference. 

No  one  unfamiliar  with  the  diplomatic 
correspondence  of  the  United  States 
can  estimate  the  great  conveniences 
and  facilities  which  faithful  government 
agents  afford  American  citizens.  The 
legal  guaranties  in  the  transaction  of 
business  abroad,  the  immense  saving  of 
time  and  money  in  cases  of  contested 
local  rights  and  personal  claims,  the 
maintenance  of  the  national  influence 
and  honor,  and  the  suggestions  and  in- 
formation of  vital  importance  only  to  be 
obtained  at  head-quarters  and  through 
official  authority,  are  fruits  of  diplo- 
matic service  that  make  the  record  one 
of  patriotic  interest  and  practical  value 
of  which  few  of  our  citizens  are  aware. 
In  some  cases,  where  the  official  repre- 
sentative is  not  of  adequate  rank  to  ar- 

*  Speech  of  Hon.  Thomas  A.  Jenckes  of  Rhode 
Island,  May  i/,th,  1868. 


range  disputes  and  decide  questions  in 
his  own  person,  the  voluminous  corre- 
spondence of  interested  parties,  and  the 
expense  of  sending  a  ship  of  war  to 
the  scene,  emphatically  indicate  the 
false  economy  which,  in  failing  to  pro- 
vide a  minister,  incurs,  in  a  few  weeks, 
an  expense  which  would  have  main- 
tained him  for  years.  Occasionally, 
also,  when  grave  international  problems 
are  discussed,  or  political  changes,  and 
military  or  commercial  facts  cited  or 
described,  these  reports  abound  in  lu- 
minous expositions  and  interesting  de- 
tails, alike  creditable  to  the  vigilance, 
ability,  and  humane  sympathies  of  the 
writers,  and  of  rare  worth  and  interest 
to  our  government  and  people.  When 
a  foreign  war  is  being  waged,  a  treaty 
under  consideration,  a  revolution  immi- 
nent or  in  progress,  —  when  a  citizen  is 
despoiled  of  liberty,  a  fugitive  from  jus- 
tice is  ruifning  the  gauntlet  of  our  lega- 
tions,—  when  an  equitable  pecuniary 
claim  is  withheld,  or  the  decease  of  an 
eminent  or  wealthy  fellow-countrymen 
demands  the  active  protection  of  the 
law  of  nations,  or  when  this  law  is  vio- 
lated, and  only  prompt  and  judicious 
explanation  can  ward  off  serious  con- 
sequences, and  when  scientific  or  mer- 
cantile enterprise  or  emigration  calls  for 
special  arrangements,  with  the  sanction 
of  foreign  rulers,  —  in  these  and  other 
exigencies  the  labors  and  influence  of 
the  diplomatist  impress  the  public  as  an 
invaluable  civil  economy,  and  benignant 
as  well  as  indispensable  provision  of  civ- 
ilization ;  but  it  should  be  remembered 
that,  beyond  these  conspicuous  duties 
and  sometimes  brilliant  achievements, 
which  attain  historical  prominence, 
there  are  the  less-known  but  equally  im- 
portant ministries  to  the  country's  wel- 
fare, fulfilled  in  obedience  to  private 
needs,  in  the  use  of  social  privileges  only 
attainable  through  official  claims,  in  the 
protective  and  hospitable  exercise  of 
diplomatic  functions,  so  requisite  for 
the  stranger,  and  so  grateful  to  the  citi- 
zen, to  whom  his  passport  is  not  only  a 
shield  but  thus  becomes  the  most  au- 
spicious letter  of  introduction  and  a 
national  indorsement. 


356 


American  Diplomacy. 


[September, 


The  increased  interest  in,  and  more 
accurate  knowledge  of,  our  country  in 
Europe  of  late  is  apparent  from  the 
greater  attention  and  sympathy  accorded 
the  United  States  by  the  foreign  press  ; 
it  is  evidenced  by  the  enthusiastic  wel- 
come bestowed  in  every  port  and  city 
upon  our  naval  hero,  and  the  honors 
lavished  on  our  household  poet ;  it  is 
manifest  in  the  candid  and  cordial  ac- 
knowledgment of  .official  merit  and 
private  enterprise,  whether  expressed 
in  the  parting  compliments  paid  a  re- 
tiring minister,  or  the  prandial  honors 
offered  to  the  patient  and  persistent 
American  actuary  of  the  Atlantic  tele- 
graph ;  and  it  finds  expression  in  hos- 
pitality on  one  side  of  the  Channel, 
and  the  liberal  interpretation  of  our  na- 
tional proclivities  by  publicists  on  the 
other.  All  these  signs  of  the  times  give 
emphasis  to  our  diplomatic  influence, 
attest  its  renewed  importance,  and  sug- 
gest its  improvement.  The  London 
Spectator,  alluding  to  our  late  minister 
at  the  Court  of  St.  James,  remarks  :  — 

"  We  can  conceive  of  no  career  more 
likely  to  impress  upon  a  public  which  is 
apt  at  times  to  talk  with  silly  fluency  of 
the  superfkiousness,  in  these  days  of 
popular  government,  of  embassies  and 
ambassadors,  than  the  career  of  the 
Ambassador  who  for  seven  years  has 
had  to  manage  the  relations  of  the 
two  most  popular  governments  on  the 
globe,  and  but  for  whose  personal  wis- 
dom and  tact  those  two  popular  govern- 
ments would  probably  at  this  moment 
be  peppering  each  other  with  proclama- 
tions, orders  in  council,  general  orders, 
turret  guns,  and  all  the  elaborate  mis- 
siles of  scientific  war." 

A  leading  British  statesman,  in  a  re- 
cent discussion  of  the  English  diplo- 
matic system,  declared  in  Parliament 
that,  for  every  pound  sterling  paid  to 
their  foreign  ministers,  tens  of  thousands 
of  pounds  were  saved  to  the  treasury,  by 
the  avoidance  of  entangling  disputes 
and  misunderstandings  between  sub- 
jects abroad,  which,  through  personal 
interviews  between  the  ministers,  in 
ninety-nine  cases  out  of  every  hundred, 
were  arranged  amicably,  and  by  the 


strengthening  of  national  good-will  and 
developing  commercial  relations.  In  a 
subsequent  debate, '  it  was  shown  that 
the  increased  facilities  of  intercourse 
had  added  largely  to  the  labor  and  ex- 
pense of  foreign  representatives,  while 
they  increased  the  need  and  enlarged 
the  sphere  of  their  duties. 

"After  the    acquisition   of   Russian 
America,"  says  La  Pressc,  "which  in- 
creases their  domains  on  the  Pacific,  the 
Americans  have  purchased  from  Den- 
mark the  island  of  St.  Thomas.     They 
annex,  also,  by  the   same  process,  the 
Bay  of  Samana.      Then,  as  to  Mexico,    < 
it  is  indisputable  that  one  of  the  causes    \ 
of  the  fall  of  Maximilian  was,  at  first 
the  covert,  and  afterwards  open  opposi- 
tion of  the  Washington  Cabinet;  quite  j 
lately,  General  Prim  was  in  treaty  there- 
with to  cede  the  pearl  of  the  Antilles,  — 
Cuba.      Even  in  South   America,   the 
Starry  Banner  presents  itself  as   the 
guardian   of. the   little   local  republics 
against  European  pretensions.     There, 
also,  the  Monroe  doctrine  will  produce   '••! 
its  effects.      The  impartial  America  of 
Washington  is  dead.     There  is,  no\v-a- 
days,  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  J 
a  people  that  wishes  to  extend  its  ac-  j 
tion  over  the  whole  world,  and  which, 
with  this  object,  tends  to  become  more   '.'' 
and  more  Unitarian."      Thus,  increase 
of  territory- and  neighborhood  seems  to 
necessitate  fresh  wisdom  in  our  diplo- 
matic system,  and  to  render  it  alike  ex- 
pedient, and  morally  as  well  as  politi-  I 
cally  desirable  that  in  this,  as  in  every 
other  national  sphere  of  action,  the  sol- 
emn purpose  and  earnest  aim  of  our 
government  and  people  should   be  to 
have,  always  and  everywhere,  the  right 
man  in  the  right  place. 

Our  brief  diplomatic  history  opened 
most  auspiciously  with  the  name,  char- 
acter, and  influence  of  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin, who,  to  this  day,  is  the  most  com- 
plete representative  American,  and  is 
regarded  abroad  as  the  peerless  ex- 
positor of  the  genius  of  our  institu- 
tions ;  the  philosopher  and  republican 
gaze  fondly  on  his  portrait  at  Ver- 
sailles ;  young  Italy  buys  his  autobiog- 
raphy at  a  bookstall  in  Florence ;  and 


1868.] 


American  Diplomacy. 


357 


the  London  printer  and  Berlin  savant 
cherish  the  memory  of  his  eminent 
success,  attained  through  frugality  and 
self-reliance,  and  his  experimental  re- 
search in  a  sphere  of  natural  phe- 
nomena whose  later  developments  are 
among  the  greatest  marvels  of  science. 
The  eulogies  of  Turgot  and  Helretius 
of  old  are  echoed  by  those  of  Brougham 
and  Laboulaye  to-day.  To  the  bold 
attacks'  on  superstition  whereby  Vol- 
taire opened  the  way  for  the  reception 
of  vital  truths  and  to  the  vindication  of 
the  original  and  pervasive  sentiments 
of  humanity,  which  made  Rousseau 
the  pioneer  of  social  reform,  Franklin 
added  the  practical,  common-sense,  and 
humanitarian  element  which  gave  to 
these  efficiency ;  his  discoveries  as  a 
natural  philosopher,  his  example  as  a 
free  citizen,  and  his  bonhomie  and  sim- 
ple personal  habits  gave  prestige  and 
effect  to  his  services  as  an  ambas- 
sador. As  agent  for  the  Colonies  in 
London,  as  one  of  the  Committee  of 
Secret  Correspondence  during  the  Rev- 
olution, as  the  medium  of  the  French 
Alliance,  by  his  vigilance,  his  moder- 
ation, his  patience,  wisdom,  firmness, 
and  loyalty,  he  secured  us  European 
recognition  and  the  sinews  of  war ; 
while  his  social  attractiveness  and  so- 
lidity of  character  were,  with  rare  sin- 
gleness of  purpose,  made  to  subserve 
patriotic  ends.  The  elder  Adams  with 
his  assiduous  energy,  Jay  with  his  intrep- 
id rectitude,  Gouverneur  Morris  with 
his  comprehensive  mind  and  high  tone, 
and  Deane  with  his  conciliatory  tact, 
ushered  in  our  foreign  representation 
with  dignity  and  moral  emphasis.  These 
men  of  intellectual  scope  and  culture, 
of  disinterested  self-devotion,  of  legal 
acumen,  republican  faith,  and  courteous 
manners,  gained  for  America,  at  the 
hour  of  her  civic  birth,  the  confidence 
and  respect  of  the  world.  Nor  were 
their  immediate  successors  unworthy 
of  such  illustrious  forerunners,  for  on 
the  rolt  of  our  early  ambassadors  we 
read  with  justifiable  pride  such  names 
as  Rufus  King,  William  Pinckney?  Al- 
bert Gallatin,  and  Edward  Livingston, 
followed  at  a  subsequent  era  by  those 


of  John  Quincy  Adams  and  Henry 
Clay,  —  names  enshrined  in  the  national 
heart  and  radiant  on  the  page  of  his- 
tory. Thenceforth  the  list  becomes  in- 
congruous ;  here  and  there,  now  and 
then,  preserving  its  original  distinction, 
as  worthily  representative  of  a  free  and 
intelligent  people,  but  too  often  de- 
graded by  mere  political  fortune-hunt- 
ers, whose  careers  reflect  no  credit  and 
whose  appointments  accuse  the  integ- 
rity of  those  in  power.  Not  without 
memorable  exceptions,  however,  is  this 
perversion  of  diplomatic  opportunities  ; 
we  have  fortunately  had  men  always  on 
the  floor  of  Congre'ss,  and  in  the  Execu- 
tive chair  and  the  Department  of  State, 
who  "have  kept  steadily  in  view  the 
honor  and  prosperity  of  the  whole 
country,"  and,  rising  above  partisan  ob- 
jects, have  had  the  civic  wisdom  and 
courage  to  select  as  American  ambas- 
sadors, envoys,  and  official  agents,  citi- 
zens of  approved  character  and  devoted 
to  liberal  studies,  whose  personal  influ- 
ence abroad  has  been  auspicious,  and 
whose  diplomatic  station  has  gained 
lustre  and  utility  from  their  renown  as 
intellectual  benefactors.  In  this  noble 
phalanx  we  can  rank  with  patriotic  sat- 
isfaction such  men  as  Webster  and 
Wheaton,  Legare  and  the  Everetts, 
Bancroft,  Irving,  Motley,  Walsh,  Fay, 
Marsh,  and  Hawthorne  ;  and  while  the 
social  and  official  eminence  of  Bow- 
doin,  Middleton,  Rush,  McLean,  and 
others  is  gratefully  remembered,  the 
later  and  essential  services  of  Charles 
Francis  Adams  and  his  national  com- 
peers in  the  diplomatic  corps,  during 
the  late  war,  have  already  an  historical 
recognition. 

In  what  may  be  called  the  incidental 
fruits  of  diplomatic  opportunities  we 
are  not  without  gratifying  evidence, 
where  these  appointments  have  been 
judiciously  made.  Thus  our  graceful 
pioneer  author  gathered  materials  for 
his  cherished  bequest  of  literature  ;  offi- 
cial position  in  England  and  Spain  was 
of  great  practical  value  to  Irving  as  an 
author  ;  while  the  scholarship  of  Alex- 
ander H.  Everett  made  him,  when  Amer- 
ican minister  in  the  latter  country,  an 


358 


American  Diplomacy. 


[September, 


excellent  purveyor  for  Prescott.  The 
standard  treatise  on  International  Law 
perhaps  would  never  have  been  under- 
taken, and  certainly  not  so  ably  achieved, 
but  for  Wheaton's  diplomatic  position 
at  Copenhagen  and  Berlin.  Soon  after 
the  Revolution  the  public  spirit  of  such 
men  as  Humphreys  and  Barlow,  .while 
holding  office  abroad,  made  them  be- . 
nign  coadjutors  in  many  desirable  en- 
terprises ;  the  former  first  imported  our 
best  breed  of  sheep,  and  the  latter 
promoted  the  success  of  Fulton's  inven- 
tions. Bancroft  gleaned  an  historical 
harvest  while  at  the  Court  of  St.  James  ; 
Hawthorne  gave  us  the  most  finished 
picture  of  England  since  the  Sketch- 
Book  while  consul  at  Liverpool ;  Kin-  - 
ney  held  counsel  with  Cavour  and 
D'Azeglio  at  Turin,  during  the  auspi- 
cious epoch  of  Italian  unification,  bring- 
ing to  their  encouragement,  not  only 
republican  sympathy,  but  many  educa- 
tional and  civic  precedents  to  guide 
the  experimental  state  reforms.  From 
Peru,  South  America,  China,  the  East, 
and  many  parts  of  Western  Europe, 
interesting  and  valuable  researches 
and  records  of  observation^  have  em- 
ployed the  leisure,  and  honored  the  of- 
fices, of  our  diplomatic  representatives  ; 
while  one  of  the  most  popular  and  cred- 
itable histories  which  has  enriched  the 
literature  of  the  day  owes  its  existence 
in  no  small  degree  to  the  facilities  af- 
forded its  accomplished  author,  by  his 
residence  and  position  abroad  as  a  Min- 
ister of  the  United  States.  These  and 
similar  facts  point  to  the  expediency 
and  desirableness,  other  things  being 
equal,  of  selecting  for  such  appoint- 
ments scholars  and  men  of  science  or 
lettered  aptitudes.  It  is  one  of  the  few 
methods  incident  to  our  institutions, 
whereby  not  only  a  race  of  gentlemen, 
but  a  class  of  disinterested,  social,  artis- 
tic, and  literary  men  can  be  fostered 


and  become  intellectual  benefactors  as 
well  as  patriotic  representatives  of  our 
country. 

As  we  write,  a  gifted  native  sculptor 
is   putting   the   finishing   touches  to  a 
statue  of  Commodore  Matthew  Perry, 
to    commemorate    the   Expedition    by 
which  Japan  was  opened  to  the  com- 
merce of  the  world ;  and   a  group  of 
Orientals  are   on  a  pilgrimage  to  the 
nations,   with   treaties   of   comity  and 
trade,  under  the  guidance  and  guardian- 
ship of  an  American  selected  for  the 
office  by  their  government  from  among 
the   diplomatists   of  Europe,   not  less 
because  of  his  personal  qualifications, 
than  in  recognition  of  the  independent 
position,  harmonious  relations,  and  lib- 
eral policy  of  his  country ;  while    the 
educational  and  economical  progress  of 
Greece,  so  dear  to  the  American  schol- 
ar, and  so  identified  with  our  Chn 
enterprise,  have  just  received  the  na- 
tional recognition  which  the  last  and 
noblest  offspring  of  Time  owes  to  the 
primeval  source  of  its  culture,  by  the 
establishment  of  a  mission  at  Athens, 
and  the  cordial  reception  of  a  minister 
from  that  classic  land.     In  view  of  such 
facts,  and  in  the  recent  efforts  to  elevate 
and  systematize  our  diplomacy,  we  have 
reason  to  hope  that  the  abuses  which 
have   succeeded  its   brilliant  initiation 
will  be  reformed  ;   that  the   more   en- 
lightened interpretations  of  the  princi-  » 
pies  of  international  law,  and  the  fresh 
sense  of  national  responsibility  induced 
by  the  costly  sacrifices  and  second  birth 
of  the  Republic,  will  inspire  our  legis- 
lators to  aim  at  securing  in  the  future, 
what  the  historian  of  our  early  diploma- 
cy claimed   therefor,  that  "  we  entered 
into  the   old  and  venerable   circle  of 
nations  in  no  vulgar  spirit,  but  calmly, 
as  conscious  of  right,  resolutely,  as  con- 
scious of  strength,  gravely,  as  conscious 
of  duty." 


1868.] 


The  Genius  of  Hawthorne. 


359 


THE    GENIUS    OF    HAWTHORNE. 


TO  understand  the  Marble  Faun,  or, 
as   the   English   publishers   com- 
pelled Hawthorne  to  call  their  edition, 
"  Transformation,"  it  should  be  read  in 
the  atmosphere  of  Rome.     Everything 
an   that   moral,  or   rather   entirely  im- 
'moral,  atmosphere  serves   to  interpret 
the  artistic  work  of  an  author  in  whom 
intellect  and   sensibility  are   one  to  a 
degree  that  scarcely  can  be  predicated 
of  any  other  ;  and  whose  power  to  ex- 
-,  what  he  felt  with  his  miiid,  and 
•'it  with   his  heart  (we  use    these 
expressions  advisedly),  are  unsurpassed, 
if  not  unsurpassable. 

Every  one,  whether  cultivated  or  un- 
ated,  acknowledges  the  charm  of 
Hawthorne's  style  ;  but  the  most  culti- 
vated best  appreciate  the  wonder  of 
that  power  by  which  he  wakes  into 
clear  consciousness  shades  of  feeling 
and  delicacies  of  thought,  that  perhaps 
have  been  experienced  by  us  all,  but 
were  never  embodied  in  words  before. 

We  are  not  prepared  to  fully  adopt  the 
dogmatic  statement  of  a  recent  critic, 
who  declared  prose  composition  a  high- 
er kind  of  expression  than  that  which 
the  world  has  hitherto  united  in  calling 
poetry  ;  but  Hawthorne  goes  far  to  prove 
that  language  even  without  rhythm  is 
an  equal  organ  of  that  genius  which, 
whether  it  speak  in  music,  sculpture, 
painting,  or  measured  words,  is  a  still 
more  ethereal  image  of  the  Infinite  in 
the  finite ;  an  utterance  of  the  divine  by 
the  human  which  may  not  always  be 
understood  at  once,  but  which  creates 
.standing  within  us  more  and  more 
forever. 

Judging  by  this  standard,  —  the  power 
of  creating  understanding  within  those 
whom  he  addresses, — •Hawthorne  takes 
rank  with  the  highest  order  of  artists. 
It  is  not  the  material  in  which  a 
man  works  that  determines  his  place  as 
an  artist,  but  the  elevation  and  fineness 
of  the  truth  his  work  communicates. 
Was  ever  a  more  enduring  house  built 
by  architectural  genius,  or  made  more 


palpable  to  the  senses  of  men,  than 
The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables  ?  Or 
did  any  sculptor  ever  uncover  a  statue 
of  marble  that  will  last  longer  than  the 
form  of  Judge  Pyncheon,  over  whose 
eyeball  the  fly  crawls  as  he  sits  dead  ? 
And  what  painted  canvas  or  frescoed' 
wall  by  any  master  of  color  has  pre- 
served a  more  living,  breathing  image 
of  the  most  evanescent  moods  of  sensi- 
bility and  delicacies  of  action  than  are 
immortalized  in  the  sketches  of  Alice 
and  of  Clifford,  and  the  tender  nursing 
of  the  latter  after  the  arrival  of  Phoebe  ? 
The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables  is 
a  tragedy  that  takes  rank  by  the  side 
of  the  Trilogy  of  the  Agamemnon,  Cho- 
ephoroi,  and  Eumenides,  without  the 
aid  of  the  architecture,  sculpture,  verse, 
dancing, and  music  which  yEschylus  sum- 
moned to  his  aid  to  set  forth  the  operation 
of  the  Fury  of  the  house  of  Atrides  that 
swept  to  destruction  four  generations 
of  men.  It  takes  two  hundred  years 
for  the  crime  which  the  first  Pyncheon 
perpetrated  against  the  first  Maule  to 
work  itself  off,  —  or,  we  should  rather 
say,  for  the  forces  of  the  general  hu- 
manity to  overcome  the  inevitable  con- 
sequences of  one  rampant  individuality, 
that  undertook  to  wield  the  thunderbolts 
of  Omnipotence  against  a  fellow-mortal 
possessing  gifts  not  understood,  and 
therefore  condemned.  The  peaceful 
solution  of  the  problem  of  fate  in  the 
modern  tragedy  is  undoubtedly  due  to 
the  Christian  light  which  the  noble 
heathen  lacked ;  it  is  love,  in  every 
pure  and  unselfish  form,  that  trr 
the  horrible  spell  which  pride  of  pos- 
session and  place  and  a  pharisaic  lust 
of  rule  laid  upon  the  house  of  Pyncheon. 
As  soon  as  the  father  of  Phoebe  freely  . 
followed  out,  in  his  own  individual  case, 
the  genial  impulse  of  nature,  which  con- 
sumed in  its  passionate  glow  the  fainily 
pride  that  had  proved  so  fatal,  am! 
admitted  the  general  humanity  into 
equality,  or  rather  sued,  as  lovers  wont, 
to  be  allied  to  it,  even  at  the  expense 


36° 


Tlie  Genius  of  Hawthorne. 


[September, 


of  all  the  external  advantages  of  his 
birthright,  the  good  providence  of  God 
accepted  and  justified  the  deed,  by 
sending  into  the  first  real  home  that  a 
Pyncheon  had  made  for  himself  one  of 
those  "angels  that  behold  the  face  of 
the  Father,"  who,  in  process  of  time, 
goes  back  to  the  desolate  old  house  to 
bless  it,  without  consciousness  of  the 
high  place  she  holds  among  ministering 
spirits,  or  what  a  mighty  deed  she  does 
by  simply  being  the  innocent,  sweet, 
loving  creature  she  is  ;  while  the  cor- 
responding last  Maule  in  the  light  of 
the  science  which  the  general  progress 
of  society  has  given  him  finds  an  ex- 
planation of  the  peculiar  power  which 
the  exceptional  organization  of  his  line- 
age had  made  hereditary ;  and,  exercis- 
ing it  in  a  common-sense  way,  and  with 
simple  good  feeling,  the  curse  of  the 
first  Maule  upon  the  first  Pyncheon  is 
at  last  replaced  by  a  marriage  blessing 
and  bond,  laying  to  sleep  the  Fury  of 
Retribution,  attendant  on  the  crime 
which  is  the  key-note  of  the  whole  story, 
and  which  had  reappeared  through  so 
many  generations,  —  for  it  makes  the 
two  families  one. 

In  The  Marble  Faun  we  have  a 
picture  of  Rome,  not  only  as  it  appears 
to  the  senses  and  to  the  memory,  but 
also  to  the  spiritual  apprehension  which 
penetrates  the  outward  show.  Genius 
in  Hawthorne  was  limited,  as  that  of 
all  men  must  be,  by  his  temperament, 
but  less  than  that  of  most  men  by  his 
will.  To  "  give  his  thought  act  "  was 
not  his  impulse,  but  to  represent  it  to 
other  men.  He  was  not,  therefore,  so 
much  an  effective  power  among  other 
powers  in  the  current  life,  as  the  quiet, 
open  eye  that  gathers  truth  for  other 
men  to  enact.  His  vocation  was  to 
set  forth  what  he  saw  so  clearly  with 
such  accuracy  of  outline,  fulness  of  col- 
oring, and  in  such  dry  light  as  would 
enable  other  men  to  interpret  the  phe- 
nomena about  them  as  he  did.  He 
does  not  invent  incidents,  much  less  a 
dramatic  narrative.  He  loved  best  to 
take  some  incident  ready  made  to  his 
hand,  and  to  work  out  in  thought  the 
generation  of  it  from  eternal  principles, 


or  the  consequences  of  it  in  the  spiritual 
experience  of  those  concerned  in  it, 
whether  actively  or  passively.  Most 
writers  of  fiction  not  only  tell  you  what 
their  heroes  and  heroines  do,  but  why  ; 
dogmatically  stating  how  they  feel  and 
what  they  think.  Hawthorne  seldom 
does  this.  He  does  not  seem  to  know 
much  more  about  his  heroes  and  hero- 
ines than  he  represents  them  to  kno\v 
of  each  other;  but,  recognizing  the  fact 
that  most  outward  action  is  from  mixed 
motives,  and  admits  of  more  than  one 
interpretation,  he  is  very  apt  to  suggest 
two  or  three  quite  diverse  views,  and, 
as  it  were,  consult  with  his  readers 
upon  which  may  be  the  true  one  ;  and 
not  seldom  he  gives  most  prominence 
to  some  interpretation  which  we  feel 
pretty  sure  is  not  his  own. 

This  characteristic  peculiarity  is  no- 
where more  conspicuous  than  in  The 
Marble  Faun.  He  does  not  seem  to 
know  whether  Donatello  has  pointed 
and  furry  ears  or  not.  He  touches  the 
story  of  Miriam  with  such  delicacy  that 
those  readers  who  are  more  interested 
in  the  gossip  of  temporary  life  than  in 
the  eternal  powers  which  underlie  it, 
generating  a  spiritual  being  which  is 
never  to  pass  away,  are  angry  with  the 
author,  and  accuse  him  of  trifling  with 
their  feelings  by  raising  curiosities 
which  he  does  not  gratify,  and  exciting 
painful  sympathies  which  he  does  not 
soothe  ;  they  even  call  it  a  malicious 
use  of  a  power  which  he  ought  to  con- 
secrate to  increasing  the  enjoyment  cf 
his  readers. 

But  few  authors   are  really  so  little 
guilty  as  Hawthorne  of  any  wanton  use 
of  their  power  over  other  minds.    A 
work  of  literary  art  he  did  not  vie 
merely  an  instrument  for  giving  pleas- 
ure, but  as  a  means  to  discover  truth, 
or,  rather,  to  put  his  readers   or. 
track  of  discovering  it  in  company  with 
himself.     What  he  especially  seek 
are  those  great  laws  of  human  thought, 
feeling,  and  action  w^hich   are   apt 
be  covered  from  self-consciousness 
transient  emotions,   and   the   force 
outward  circumstances    of   habit   ai 
general  custom.     In  The  Scarlet 


1868.] 


TJie  Genius  of  HawtJiorne. 


;6r 


ter,  for  Instance,  he  is  plainly  inquir- 
ing into  the  law  of  repentance,  or  the 
human  being's  sober  second  thought 
upon  his  own  action,  after  it  has  be- 
come an  irrevocable  fact  of  nature  ; 
and  he  also  asks  what  is  the  part  that 
the  social  whole  has  to  do,  or  does  do, 
to  make  this  sober  second  thought 
work  the  cure  of  the  sinning  soul  and 
of  wounded  society.  In  one  of  the 
Twice-told  Tales  (Endicott  and  his 
men)  he  brings  before  our  eyes,  by 
the  magic  of  his  art,  a  day  of  the  Puri- 
tan life  of  New  England  which  was  his- 
torical ;  for  the  dry  chronicles  tell  us 
of  Endicott's  cutting  the  Red  Cross  out 
of  the  English  banner  on  a  "training- 
day,"  when  the  news  suddenly  reached 
him  from  England  of  some  untoward 
act  of  Charles  I.  As  usual,  Hawthorne 
gives  a  framework  to  this  historical 
incident  from  the  characteristic  phe- 
nomena of  Puritan  life  as  it  appeared 
at  that  period  in  New  England.  "Train- 
ing-day "  was  always  the  afternoon  of 
"lecture-day,"  when  all  the  people  were 
required  to  assemble  for  a  sermon, 
and  the  militia  were  in  their  uniforms. 
It  was  on  this  day  that  all  the  wrong- 
doers were  punished.  Among  these 
he  mentions  a  woman  standing  on  the 
"  meeting-house  "  steps,  with  the  letter 
A  on  her  breast,  which,  he  adds,  she 
was  condemned  to  wear  all  her  life  be- 
fore her  children  and  the  townspeople. 
For  our  fathers,  he  observes  (we  quote 
from  memory),  thought  it  expedient  to 
give  publicity  to  crime  as  its  proper 
punishment.  .  And  then  he  queries 
whether  the  modern  mode  of  keeping 
certain  kinds  of  crime  out  of  sight 
were  better,  or  even  more  merciful,  to 
the  criminal  and  society.  A  friend 
asked  Hawthorne  if  for  this  particular 
punishment  he  had  documentary  evi- 
dence ;  and  he  replied  that  he  had 
actually  seen  it  mentioned  in  the  town 
records  of  Boston,  but  with  no  attend- 
ant circumstances.  This  friend  said  to 
another  at  that  time,  "  We  shall  hear  of 
that  letter  A  again  ;  for  it  evidently  has 
made  a  profound  impression  on  Haw- 
thorne's mind."  And  in  eight  or  ten 
years  afterwards  appeared  the  romance 


of  The  Scarlet  Letter,  throwing  its 
lurid  glare  upon  the  Puritan  pharisa- 
ism  and  self-righteous  pride,  and  en- 
graved with  spiritual  fire  on  the  naked 
breast  of  the  unsuspected  sinner. 

If  the  musty  chronicles  of  New  Eng- 
land history  could  afford  an  artist  ma- 
terial for  such  a  sharp-cut  high-relief 
of  real  life  .as  excited  him  to  a  study 
of  its  meaning  so  earnest  that  it  has 
drawn  into  sympathetic  interest  tens  of 
thousands  of  readers,  who  feel  as  if 
they  were  living  in  the  midst  of  that 
terribly  bleak  locality  and  day,  we  can- 
not wonder'  that  Rome,  whose  very 
aspect  is  so  picturesque,  and  whose 
history  combines  such  varieties  of  hu- 
man experience,  should  have  awakened 
emotions  and  suggested  questions  of 
a  kindred  depth.  Many  such  ques- 
tions are  certainly  asked  and  answered, 
at  least  hypothetically,  in  The  Marble 
Faun.  It  is  rather  remarkable  that 
criticism  has  not  yet  attempted  to  an- 
alyze the  power  of  this  book,  or  even 
to  pluck  out  the  heart  of  Miriam's 
mystery,  —  the  key  to  which,  as  we 
apprehend,  is  to  be  found  in  the  con- 
versation over  the  copy  of  Beatrice 
Cenci's  portrait  in  Hilda's  studio. 

It  is  entirely  characteristic  of  Haw- 
thorne's genius  to  take  up  such  a  sub- 
ject as  the  history  of  Beatrice  Ccnci, 
and  to  inquire  what  was  her  internal 
experience ;  how  a  temperament  so 
delicate  and  a  spirit  so  innocent  as 
Guido's  portrait  shows  Beatrice's  to 
have  been  stood  before  herself,  whether 
as  a  victim  or  as  a  participator  in  the 
bloody  deed  for  which  she  suffered 
death.  Still  more  would  he  be  apt  to 
inquire  what  would  be  the  spiritual 
result  of  the  same  outrage  upon  quite 
another  temperament  and  cast  of  mind, 
—  Miriam's,  for  instance.  And  again 
it  was  inevitable,  as  we  have  already 
intimated,  that  Rome  should  have  sug- 
gested to  his  mind  questions  upon  the 
efficacy  or  inefficacy  of  ritualistic  con- 
fession and  penance  on  the  various  de- 
grees of  criminal  consciousness.  Hilda 
says  of  Beatrice  Cenci,  that  "sorrow 
so  black  as  hers  oppresses  very  nearly 
as  sin  would,"  for  she  was  innocent  in 


362 


The  Genius  of  Hawthorne. 


[September, 


her  own  eyes  until  her  misfortune  had 
driven  her  into  parricide;  which,  trust- 
ing to  the  fidelity  of  Guide's  portrait 
of  her  remembered  face,  and  comparing 
that  with  the  portrait  of  the  stepmother, 
may  be  believed  to  have  been  not  the 
suggestion  of  her  own  mind,  though 
"  that  spotless  flower  of  Paradise 
trailed  over  by  a  serpent,"  as  Beatrice 
has  been  well  described,  was  too  much 
bewildered  by  the  incomprehensible 
woe  in  which  she  found  herself  in- 
volved, and  her  will  was  too  much  par- 
alyzed to  do  other  than  obey  the  impulse 
given  by  the  only  less  outraged  wife. 
The  same  calamity  met  by  the  clearer 
reason  and  stronger  character  of  Miri- 
am would  not  only  suggest  means  of 
escape,  especially  if  she  had,  as  is  in- 
timated, wealth,  and  other  easily  imag- 
ined favoring  circumstances,  but  would 
give  energy  to  accomplish  a  certain  mor- 
al independence  of  her  most  unnatural 
enemy,  and  would  excite  her  intellect 
and  creative  imagination,  rather  than 
"oppress  her  whole  being."  It  would 
seem  from  the  sketches  which  Donatello 
found  in  Miriam's  portfolio,  that  her 
hideous  circumstances  had  not  failed  to 
arouse  thoughts  of  murderous  revenge 
which  had  governed  her  artistic  creative- 
ness  in  the  selection  and  treatment  of 
subjects,  but  that  she  had  not  thought 
of  any  more  harmful  realization  of  the 
dark  dreams  that  haunted  her  than 
upon  canvas.  Until  the  fatal  "look" 
passed  from  her  eyes,  which  tempted 
Donatello  to  give  free  way  to  the  im- 
pulse of  hatred,  with  which  his  love  for 
her  had  inspired  him,  towards  one  who 
was  evidently  her  enemy,  —  and  no 
common  enemy,  —  the  author  plainly 
accounts  her  not  only  actually  innocent, 
but  a  most  humane  person,  and,  like 
Beatrice,  "  if  a  fallen  angel,  yet  without 
s'n.''  Thus  he  speaks  of  her  ''natural 
language,  her  generosity,  kindliness, 
and  native  truth  of  character,"  as  ban- 
ishing all  suspicions,  and  even  ques- 
tions, from  the  minds  of  Hilda  and 
Kenyon,  to  both  of  whom  he  ascribes 
the  fine  poetic  instincts  that  intimate 
more  truths  concerning  character  than 
we  can  account  for  by  phenomena. 


These  traits  insured  to  her  their  warm 
friendship  and  confidence,  though  her 
history  was  no  less  unknown  and  myste- 
rious to  them  than  to  the  public,  who  had 
speculated  on  it  so  wildly.  They  there- 
fore acquiesced  in  the  generally  received 
opinion,  that  "  the  spectre  of  the  cata- 
comb "  was  her  model ;  nor  ever  asked 
why  it  was  that  he  followed  her  so 
pertinaciously.  Any  relation  between 
Miriam  and  him  other  than  the  most 
superficial  and  accidental  one  was  ef- 
fectually forbidden  by  their  sense  of 
her  character,  which  also  annulled  in 
the  mind  of  Kenyon  the  strange  signifi- 
cance of  the  u  Spectre's  "  own  words  :  — 

"  '  Inquire  not  what  I  am,  nor  wherefore 
I  abide  in  the  darkness,'  said  he,  in  a  1; 
harsh  voice,  as  if  a  great  deal  of  damp  were 
clustering  in  his  throat.  '  Henceforth  I  am 
nothing  but  a  shadow  behind  her  footsteps. 
She  came  to  me  when  I  sought  her  not. 
She  has  called  ine  forth,  and  must  abide 
the  consequences  of  my  reappearance  in 
the  world.' " 

But  the  reflective  reader,  not  being, 
like  Kenyon,  under  the  spell  of  Miriam's 
individuality,  will  hardly  fail  of  detect- 
ing the  relations  between  her  and  the 
so-called  model,  if  he  will  compare  this 
not  unmeaning  speech  with  the  conver- 
sation in  Hilda's  study,  to  which  we 
have  already  referred,  when  that  inex- 
perienced child  pronounced  the  parri- 
cide an  "  inexpiable  crime  "  :  — 

"'  O  Hilda!  your  innocence  is  like  a 
sharp  steel  sword,'  exclaimed  her  friend. 
'Your judgments  are  often  terribly  severe, 
though  you  seem  all  made  up  of  gentleness 
and  mercy.  Beatrice's  sin  may  not  have  been 
so  great ;  perhaps  it  was  no  sin  at  all,  cut 
the  best  virtue  possible  in  the  circumstances. 
If  she  viewed  it  as  a  sin,  it  may  have  been 
because  her  nature  tuas  too  feeble  for  t>.  < 
imposed  upon  her.  Ah,'  continued  Miriam, 
passionately,  '  if  I  could  only  get  within  her 
consciousness  I  —  if  I  could  only  clasp  Bea- 
trice Cenci's  ghost,  and  draw  it  into  my- 
self! I  would  give  ^tp  my  life  to  ki 
whether  she  thought  herself  innocent,  or 
one  great  criminal  since  time  began.'' 
Miriam  gave  utterance  to  these  wore 
Hilda  looked  from  the  picture  into  her 
and  was  startled  to  observe  that  her  friend's 
expression  had  become  almost  exactly  the 


1868.] 


The  Genius  of  Hawthorne. 


363 


of  the  portrait,  as  if  her  passionate  wish 
and  struggle  to  penetrate  poor  Beatrice's 
mystery  had  been  successful.  '  O,  for 
Heaven's  sake,  Miriam,  do  not  look  so  ! '  she 
cried.  '  What  an  actress  you  are  !  and  I 
never  guessed  it  before.  Ah  !  now  you  are 
yourself  again,'  she  added,  kissing  her. 
'Leave  Beatrice  to  me  in  future.' 

"  '  Cover  up  your  magical  picture  then,' 
replied  her  friend,  '  else  I  never  can  look 
away  from  it.'  " 

And  again,  further  on  in  the  same 
chapter  :  — 

"  Hilda  read  the  direction ;  it  was  to 
r  Luca  Barboni,  at  the  Cenci  Palace, 
third  piano. 

"  '  I  will  deliver  it  with  my  own  hand,' 
said  she,  'precisely  four  months  from  to- 
day, unless  you  bid  me  to  the  contrary. 
Perhaps  I  shall  meet  the  ghost  of  Beatrice 
in  that  grim  old  palace  of  her  forefathers.' 

"  '  In  that  case,'  rejoined  Miriam,  '  do  not 
fail  to  speak  to  her,  and  win  her  confidence. 
Poor  thing  !  she  would  be  all  the  better  for 
pouring  her  heart  out  freely,  and  would 
feglad  to  do  it  if  she  were  sure  of  sympathy. 
It  irks  my  brain  and  heart  to  think  of  her 
all  shut  nt>  within  herself. '  She  withdrew 
the  cloth  that  Hilda  had  drawn  over  the 
picture,  and  took  another  long  look  at  it. 
'  Poor  sister  Beatrice !  for  she  was  still  a 
woman,  Hilda,  —  still  a  sister,  be  her  sins 
what  they  might.'  " 

And  still  further  on  in  the  same  chap- 
ter she  says  :  — 

"  '  After  all,  if  a  woman  had  painted  the 
original  picture,  there  might  have .  been 
something  in  it  we  miss  now.  I  have  a  great 
mind  to  undertake  a  copy  myself,  and  try  to 
give  it  what  it  lacks.' " 

And  p.gain,  having  in  a  touching  man- 
ner alluded  to  Hilda's  devout  habits  of 
mind,  she  says  :  — 

"  '  When  you  pray  next,  dear  friend,  re- 
member me.'  " 

These  significant  sentences  may  be 
compared  with  others  in  Chapter  XXI 1 1. 
when  Miriam,  after  the  catastrophe  of 
the  Tarpeian  rock,  seeks  Hilda  ;  who, 
with  the  unconscious  pharisaism  of  a 
child's  innocence,  repulses  her  because 
she  knows  her  to  have  consented  to  a 
murder.  Here  the  author  makes  Hilda 
appeal  to  Miriam  for  advice  in  her  own 
uncertainty  as  to  what  she  should  do 


with    her    distressing  knowledge,   and 
adds : — 

"  This  singular  appeal  bore  striking  testi- 
mony to  the  impression  Miriam's  natural 
uprightness  and  impulsive  generosity  had 
made  on  the  friend  who  knew  her  best" 

He  also  makes  Miriam's  answer  jus- 
tify Hilda's  instinctive  confidence  :  — 

"  '  If  I  deemed  it  for  your  peace  of  mind,' 
she  said,  '  to  bear  testimony  against  me  for 
this  deed,  in  the  face  of  all  the  world,  no 
consideration  of  myself  should  weigh  with 
me  an  instant.  But  I  believe  that  you 
would  find  no  relief  in  such  a  course.  What 
men  call  justice  lies  chiefly  in  outward  for- 
malities, and  has  never  the  close  applica- 
tion and  fitness  that  would  be  satisfactory 
to  a  soul  like  yours.  I  cannot  be  fairly 
tried  and  judged  before  an  earthly  tribunal ; 
and  of  this,  Hilda,  you  would  perhaps  be- 
come fatally  conscious  when  it  was  too 
late.  Roman  justice,  above  all  things,  is  a 
byword.' " 

It  is  certain  that  Hilda's  narration  of 
the  scene  of  the  murder  had  "settled 
a  doubt  "  in  Miriam's  mind.  She  took 
it,  gladly  perhaps,  as  collateral  evidence 
that  Donatello  had  not  been  mistaken 
when  he  said  she  had  commanded  his 
action  with  her  eyes  ;  for  then  she  had 
all  the  responsibility  of  it.  But  how  was 
it,  then,  that  she  was  not  crushed  by 
remorse,  seemed  to  feel  no  remorse  ? 
Was  it  not  that  she  felt  herself  "  in  the 
circumstances"  that  made  the  crime 
"  her  best  possible  virtue  "  ?  The  "  sor- 
row that  was  so  black  as  to  oppress  (Bea- 
trice) very  much  as  sin  would  "  (which 
was  the  limit  of  Hilda's  view  of  her 
case)  did  actually,  in  Miriam's  case,  not 
only  excite  to  artistic  expression,  but 
drove  her  further  ;  and  she  was  not 
"  too  feeble  for  her  fate,"  as  she  proved 
in  the  Chapel  of  the  Cappucini,  when  — 

"  She  went  back,  and  gazed  once  more  at 
the  corpse.  Yes,  these  were  the  features 
that  Miriam  had  known  so  well ;  this  was 
the  visage  that  she  remembered  from  a  far 
longer  date  than  the  most  intimate  of  her 
friends  suspected ;  this  form  of  clay  had 
held  the  evil  spirit  which  blasted  her  sweet 
youth,  and  compelled  her,  as  it  were,  to  stain 

her  womanhood  with  crime There  had 

been  nothing  in  his  lifetime  viler  than  this 
man ;  there   was   no   other  fact  within  hef 


364 


TJis  Genius  of  Hawthorne. 


[September, 


consciousness  that  she  felt  to  be  so  certain  ; 
and  yet,  because  her  persecutor  found  him- 
self safe  and  irrefutable  in  death,  he  frowned 
upon  his  victim,  and  threw  back  the  blame 
0:1  her.  '  Is  it  thou  indeed  ? '  she  murmured, 
under  her  breath.  '  Then  thou  hast  no 
right  to  scowl  upon  me  so  !  But  art  thou 
real  or  a  vision  ? ' 

"  She  bent  down  over  the  dead  monk  till 
one  of  her  rich  curls  brushed  against  his 
forehead.  She  touched  one  of  his  folded 
hands  with  her  finger.  '  It  is  he,'  said  Mir- 
iam, '  there  is  the  scar  which  I  know  so  well 
on  his  brow.  And  it  is  no  vision,  he  is  pal- 
pable to  my  touch.  I  will  question  the  fact 
no  longer,  but  deal  with  it  as  I  best  can.  It 
was  wonderful  to  see  how  the  crisis  devel- 
oped in  Miriam  its  own  proper  strength 
and  the  faculty  of  sustaining  the  demand 
which  it  made  on  her  fortitude.  She  ceased 
to  tremble ;  the  beautiful  woman  gazed 
sternly  at  her  dead  enemy,  endeavoring  to 
meet  and  quell  the  look  of  accusation  that 
he  threw  from  between  his  half- closed  eye- 
lids. '  No,  thou  shalt  not  scowl  me  down,' 
said  she,  '  neither  now,  nor  when  we  stand 
together  at  the  judgment-seat.  I  fear  not 
to  meet  tJiee  there  !  Farewell  till  that  next 
encounter.' " 

Surely  there  is  but  one  interpreta- 
tion that  can  be  put  upon  the  power  this 
vile  wretch  had  over  the  noble  Miriam, 
more  than  once  bringing  her  to  her 
knees : — 

"  She  must  have  had  cause  to  dread  some 
unspeakable  evil  from  this  strange  persecu- 
tor, and  to  know  that  this  was  the  very  cri- 
sis of  her  calamity  ;  for,  as  he  drew  near, 
such  a  'cold,  sick  despair  crept  over  her, 
that  it  impeded  her  natural  promptitude  of 
thought.  Miriam  seemed  dreamily  to  re- 
member falling  on  her  knees  ;  but  in  her 
whole  recollection  of  that  wild  moment, 
she  beheld  herself  in  a  dim  show,  and  could 
not  well  distinguish  what  was  done  and  suf- 
fered ;  no,  not  even  whether  she  were  real- 
ly an  actor  and  sufferer  in  the  scene." 

But  Hilda  had  settled  all  doubts  by 
her  narration  :  — • 

<c '  He  approached  you,  Miriam  ;  you 
knelt  to  him.'  " 

The  hardly  bestead,  noble  Miriam  ! 
Was  there  ever  pictured  a  more  tragic 
moment  of  human  life  than  that  brief 
one  in  which  she  knelt  on  the  verge 
cf  the  Tarpeian  rock  in  spiritless  dep- 


recation ?  Only  in  Rome  does  natu- 
ral innocence  and  virtue  kneel  in 
helplessness  before  personified  vice, 
clad  in  the  sacramental  garments,  and 
armed  with  the  name  and  prestige  of  a 
Father  ! 

And  did  not  the  genius  of  humanity 
hover  over  its  priest  when  he  gave  that 
master-stroke  to  his  picture,  —  making 
Miriam  a  symbol  of  Italy,  beautiful  in 
form,  with  the  natural  language  of  all 
nobleness  ;  true  to  herself  with  all  the 
unspent  energies  of  her  youth  ;  and,  in 
spite  of  outrage  ineffable,  reduced  by 
the  stress  of  her  natural  relationship 
to  beg  as  a  mercy,  not  the  protection 
she  has  a  right  to  demand,  but  mere 
immunity  from  its  extreme  opposite? 
Italy!  outraged  so  beyond  credibility 
that  no  one  dares  to  tell  the  tale,  lest 
humanity  should  be  too  much  discour- 
aged by  the  knowledge  of  the  hideous 
moral  disabilities  her  misfortunes  in- 
volve ;  leaving  her  no  path  to  purity 
and  peace  but  through  violence  and 
civil  war,  which  are  apparently  her 
"best  possible  virtue  in  the  circum- 
stances," or  certainly  not  to  be  ac- 
counted as  sin. 

An  aesthetic  critic  must  needs  shrink 
from  the  work  of  elucidating  the  dark 
shadow  which  seems  to  be  Miriam's 
evil  fate ;  for  the  author  himself  seems 
to  endeavor  to  hide  its  secret,  as  Hilda 
says  Beatrice  seemed  to  try  "  to  escape 
from  (her)  gaze."  There  is  a  delicate 
moral  sentiment  in  the  author,  which 
shrinks  from  giving  definite  outlines 
and  name  to  a  crime  that  is  an  unnatu- 
ral horror.  He  says  in  Chapter  XI. :  — 

"Of  so  much  we  are  sure,  that  there 
seemed  to  be  a  sadly  mysterious  fascination 
in  the  influence  of  this  ill-omened  person 
over  Miriam ;  it  was  such  as  beasts  and 
reptiles  of  subtle  and  evil  nature  sometimes 
exercise  upon  their  victims.  Marvellous  it 
was  to  see  the  hopelessness  with  which,  be- 
ing naturally  of  so  courageous  a  spirit,  she 
resigned  herself  to  the  thraldom  in  which 
he  held  her.  That  iron  chain,  of  which 
some  of  the  massive  links  were  round  her 
feminine  waist  and  the  others  in  his  ruth- 
less hand,  or  which  perhaps  bound  the 
pair  together  by  a  bond  equally  torturing 
to  each,  must  have  been  forged  in  some 


1868.] 


The  Genius  cf  Hawthorne. 


365 


such  unhallowed  furnace  as  is  only  kindled 
by  evil  passions  and  fed  by  evil  deeds. 
"  Yet  let  us  trust  there  may  have  been 
,;rne  in  Miriam,  but  only  one  of  those 
fatalities  which  are  among  the  most  insolu- 
'  Jdles  propounded  to  mortal  compre- 
hension ;  the   fatal  decree  by  which  every 
crime  is  made  to  be  the  agony  of  many  inno- 
^rsolis,  as  well  as  of  the  single  guilty 
one." 

Again,  when  in  pity  for  her  torment- 
or, she  suggests  prayer  and  penance :  — 

"  In  this  man's  memory  there  was  some- 
thing that  made  it  awful  for  him  to  think  of 
prayer,  nor  would  any  torture  be  more 
intolerable  than  t'o  be  reminded  of  such 
divine  comfort  and  success  as  await  pious 
souls  merely  for  the  asking.  This  torment 
was  perhaps  the  token  of  a  native  tempera- 
dcepiy  susceptible  of  religious  im- 
ons,  but  which  he  had  wronged,  vio- 
and  debased,  until  at  length  it  wtas 
capable  only  of  terror  from  the  sources  that 
were  intended  for  our  purest  and  loftiest 
consolation.  He  looked  so  fearfully  at  her, 
and  with  such  intense  pain  struggling  in  his 
eyes,  that  Miriam  felt  pity.  And  now  all 
at  once  it  struck  her  that  he  might  be  mad. 
It  was  an  idea  that  had  never  before  seri- 
ously occurred  to  her  mind,  although,  as 
soon  as  suggested,  it  fitted  marvellously  into 
circumstances  that  lay  within  her 
:cdge.  But  alas !  such  was  her  evil 
fortune,  that,  whether  mad  or  no,  his  pow- 
er over  her  remained  the  same,  and  was 
likely  to  be  used  only  the  more  tyrannously 
if  exercised  by  a  lunatic." 

This  chapter  of  "fragmentary  sen- 
tences "  has  suggested  to  some  readers 
the  idea  that  a  mutual,  or  at  least  a 
shared  crime,  was  "the  iron  link  that 
rl "  these  two  persons  together. 
But  a  careful  reading  will  find  no  proof 
of  this  in  any  word  of  the  author  or 
of  Miriam  ;  and  the  "  immitigable  will " 
which  she  tells  him  he  mistook  for  an 
"iron  necessity"  is  quite  sufficient  to 
.in  the  identification  which  the  pos- 
sible madman  insists  on  at  that  time, 
and  intimates  afterwards,  by  beckoning 
her  lo  wash  her  hands  in  the  Fountain 
of  Trevi  when  he  did  so  himself. 

To  all  those  who  ask  if  the  author 
meant  to  represent  Miriam,  previous  to 
the  fatal  night  on  the  Tarpcian  rock,  as 
guilty  of  any  crime,  we  commend  a  con- 


sideration of  her  words  in  her  last  con- 
versation with  Kenyon,  when  she  tells 
him  her  history  and  name. 

" '  You  shudder  at  me,  I  perceive,'  said 
Miriam,  suddenly  interrupting  her  narra- 
tive. 

<; '  No,  you  were  innocent,'  replied  the 
sculptor.  '  I  shudder  at  the  fatality  that 
seems  to  haunt  your  footsteps,  and  throws  a 
shadow  of  crime  about  your  path,  you  being 
guiltless? 

" '  There  was  such  a  fatality,'  said  Mir- 
iam ;  '  yes,  the  shadow  fell  upon  me  inno- 
cent, but  I  went  astray  in  it,  —  as  Hilda 
could  tell  you,  -—  into  crime.'  " 

What  crime  it  was  that  first  threw 
the  shadow  the  author  does  not  tell. 
It  was  unspeakable  ;  and  yet  it  is  "an 
open  secret"  to  his  readers,  after  all 
the  indications  that  he  has  given.  It 
took  place  "some  time  after"  she  had 
repudiated  the  proposed  marriage  with 
a  man 

"  So  evil,  so  treacherous,  so  wild,  and  yet 
so  strangely  subtle,  as  could  only  be  ac- 
counted for  by  the  insanity  which  often 
develops  itself  in  old  close-kept  races  of 

men." 

Yet  it  is  plain  that  this  intended  hus- 
band was  not  "  the  spectre  of  the  cata- 
comb," any  more  than  that  Miriam  was 
an  accomplice  in .  the  .crime  of  which 
she  was  suspected.  When  she  refers 
to  this  suspicion  in  her  narrative  :  • — 

"  '  But  you  know  that  I  am  innocent,'  she 
cried,  interrupting  herself  again,  and  look- 
ing Kenyon  in  the  face. 

" '  I  know  it  by  my  deepest  conscious- 
ness,' he  answered,  '  and  I  know  it  by  Hil- 
da's trust  and  entire  'affection,  which  you 
never  could  have  won  had  you  been  capa- 
ble of  guilt.' 

" '  That  is  sure  ground,  indeed,  for  pro- 
nouncing me  innocent,'  said  Miriam,  with 
the  tears  gushing  into  her  eyes.  'Yet  I 
have  since  become  a  horror  to  your  saint- 
like Hilda  by  a  crime  which  she  herself 
saw  me  help  to  perpetrate.' 

The  fatal  word  which  Miriam  so 
dreaded  was  unquestionably  that  which 
would  prove  that  she  had  not  "com- 
mitted suicide,"  and  so  expose  her, 
like  Beatrice  Cenci,  to  an  ignominious 
death,  notwithstanding  her  innocence. 


The  Genius  of  Hawthorne. 


[September, 


" '  Looking  back  upon  what  had  hap- 
pened,' Miriam  observed,  she  now  consid- 
ered him  '  a  madman.  Insanity  must  have 
been  mixed  up  with  his  original  composi- 
tion, and  developed  by  those  very  acts  of  de- 
pravity which  it  suggested,  and  still  more 
intensified,  by  the  remorse  that  ultimately 
followed  them.  Nothing  was  stranger  in 
his  dark  career  than  the  penitence  which 
often  seemed  to  go  hand  in  hand  with  crime. 
Since  his  death  she  had  ascertained  that  it 
finally  led  him  to  a  convent,  where  his  se- 
vere and  self-inflicted  penance  had  even  ac- 
quired him  the  reputation  of  unusual  sanc- 
tity, and  had  been  the  cause  of  his  enjoying 
greater  freedom  than  is  commonly  allowed 
to  monks. 

"  '  Need  I  tell  you  more  ? '  asked  Miriam, 
after  proceeding  thus  far.  '  It  is  still  a  dim 
and  dreary  mystery,  a  gloomy  twilight  into 
which  I  guide  you ;  but  possibly  you  may 
catch  a  glimpse  of  much  that  I  myself  can 
explain  only  by  conjecture.  At  all  events, 
you  can  comprehend  what  my  situation 
must  have  been  after  that  fatal  interview 
in  the  catacomb.  My  persecutor  had  gone 
thither  for  penance,  but  followed  me  forth 
with  fresh  impulses  to  crime.'  " 

What  a  fine  sarcasm  it  is  to  put  this 
man,  than  whom,  whether  mad  or  not, 
"nothing  was  viler,"  into  the  brown  frock 
and  cowl  of  a  Capuchin,  and  bury  him 
in  earth  of  the  Holy  Land  in  all  the 
odor,  such  as  it  is,  of  Capuchin  sanc- 
tity !  Why  not  ?  He  had  said  prayers 
at  all  the  shrines  of  the  Coliseum,  going 
on  his  knees  from  one  to  another,  until 
his  devotions  (?)  were  interrupted  by 
Miriam's  unexpected  and  unintentional 
appearance  before  his  eyes,  awakening 
in  him  "fresh  impulses"  of  the  passion 
in  which  he  was  lost. 

It  is  not  unlikely,  however,  that  Haw- 
thorne, who,  like  Kenyon,  "  was  a  devout 
man  in  his  way,"  was  half  unconscious 
of  the  sarcasm,  in  the  deep  religious 
earnestness  with  which  he  was  treating 
those  problems,  inevitably  presented  to 
his  mind  in  the  place  where  he  certainly 
first  conceived  the  idea  of  this  romance. 
As  we  have  already  intimated,  how  could 
such  a  man  be  in  Rome,  which  pretends 
to  be  the  centre  of  the  spiritual  uni- 
verse, without  having  perpetually  pre- 
sented to  his  mind  spiritual  and  moral 
problems  deeper  than  all  questions  of 


ritualism  without  asking  what  is  the 
nature  of  sin  ?  what  is  its  relation  to 
crime  ?.  and  for  what  were  men  put  on 
the  earth  by  God?  Was  it  to  outrage 
and  lead  each  other  astray  ;  to  domi- 
nate, and  punish,  and  make  each  other 
suffer  ?  or  was  it  to  "  honor  all  men," 
to  "  further  one  another "  in  worthy 
action,  "  preferring  one  another  in 
love  "  ? 

Or  was  it  the  Divine  idea,  that  men 
should  get  into  relation  with  God  by 
becoming  isolated  from  each  other; 
denying  the  nearest  relations  in  which 
they  find  themselves  with  each  other  as 
well  as  with  outward  nature  ?  Is  hu- 
man existence  a  curse  or  a  blessing? 
Is  dying  the  business  that  God  has 
given  men  to  do  ?  Is  self-denial  the 
substantial  essence  of  human  life,  in- 
stead of  the  pruning  of  an  exuberant 
tree,  in  order  to  its  more  beautiful 
growth  ?  W7here  is  the  life  of  God  to 
be  seen?  —  in  the  exuberant  sport  of 
happy  childhood  ;  in  the  rush  together 
of  young  hearts  in  love  ;  in  the  subjection 
of  stone  and  marble  to  beautiful  forms 
that  flow  from  the  thinking  mind ;  in 
the  transfiguration  of  earths  and  min- 
erals into  the  seven  colors  of  light,  to 
symbolize  the  glowing  affections  of  the 
heart;  in  the  heroic  virtue,  that,  con- 
scious of  its  own  immortality  and  divin- 
ity, imperially  gives  away  the  lesser  life 
of  the  senses,  whenever  it  interferes 
with  the  larger  life  of  the  spirit  ?  Is  it, 
in  short,  in  all  manner  of  manifestation 
of  the  inner  man  to  kindred  men,  in 
humble  imitation,  as  it  were,  of  God 
creating  the  outward  universe  to  man- 
ifest himself  to  his  rational  and  sensi- 
ble creatures  ?  Or  is  it  in  the  ascet- 
icism of  all  these  religious  orders  ;  in 
some  of  which  the  members  make  it 
their  specialty  never  to  speak  to 
oilier,  much  less  do  each  other  any  ser- 
vice ;  who  indulge  in  no  natural  sympa- 
thies ;  who,  even  when  they  actually  do 
serve  each  other,  eliminate  all  the  spon- 
taneity of  love  from  the  service,  super- 
seding it  with  a  ritual  by  which  they 
are  earning  a  curtailment  of  the  pangs 
of  purgatory,  or  an  immunity  from  ever- 
lasting suffering?  This  is  not  decla- 


The  Genius  of  Hawthorne. 


367 


mation.  Vincent  de  St.  Paul,  in  his 
manual  for  the  Sisters  of  Charity,  tells 
them  that  if  they  do  the  deed  of  the 
good  Samaritan  from  compassion  for 
the  poor  man  who  has  fallen  among 
thieves,  and  bind  up  his  wounds  with 
an  absorption  of  heart  and  mind  in  the 
relief  of  his  suffering  which  shall  make 
them  forget  themselves  ;  if  their  out- 
gushing  sympathies  for  him  cause  a 
momentary  oblivion  of  those  church 
formulas  to  which  are  attached  indul- 
gences, and  the  pater-nosters  and  ave 
Marias  are  not  consciously  repeated  as 
they  do  their  charitable  work,  —  their 
deed  gains  no  indulgences,  nor  forms 
any  part  of  their  own  divine  life  (which 
is  the  only  meaning  of  being  accepted 
of  God). 

The  highest  human  activity,  that 
which  has  a  more  spiritual  quarry  than 
marble,  color,  or  whatever  is  the  mate- 
rial of  the  so-called  fine  arts,  is  entirely 
unknown  in  Rome.  Instead  of  a  state 
which  receives  the  coming  generation 
as  the  father  of  a  future  age,  leaving  it 
free  as  a  son  to  find  "  the  business 
which  God  has  given  it  to  do,"  ponder- 
ing all  its  expressed  intuitions,  and 
nurturing  it  with  all  means  of  develop- 
ment ;  giving  it  to  eat  of  the  fruit  of  all 
the  trees  of  the  Garden  of  Life,  and  only 
restraining  it  by  the  warning  of  love 
from  the  poisonous  influence  which  will 
lead  it  into  a  lower  plane  of  existence, 
—  in  short,  instead  of  a  state  such  as 
might  be  composed  of  men  with  the 
freedom  to  will,  tender  to  nature,  en- 
couraging to  spirit,  cherishing  infinite 
varieties  of  harmonizing  and  harmon- 
ized power,  the  Church  gives  this  whited 
sepulchre  of  the  Papacy,  in  which  ghast- 
ly skeletons  of  humanity,  or,  what  is 
worse,  half-corrupted  bodies,  like  those 
filthy  Capuchins,  —  in  their  loathsome 
dresses  (\vhich  they  are  compelled  to 
wear  three  or  four  years  without  laying 
them  off  for  the  purposes  of  cleanli- 
ness), and  hardly  less  disgusting  Fran- 
ciscans, doing  nothing  for  the  welfare 
of  themselves  and  other  men,  but  walk- 
ing about  idly,  and  begging,  —  alternate 
with  magnificently  arrayed  ecclesiasti- 
cal princes,  expending  upon  their  own 


pleasures  and  pompous  environment 
whatever  of  wealth  flows  to  this  centre 
of  Christendom  from  all  parts  of  the 
world,  over  which  it  preposterously 
claims  a  dominion  in  the  name  of  God, 
exacting  taxes  wrung  from  the  fear  of 
everlasting  punishment,  which  it  has 
made  it  its  great  business  of  fifteen 
centuries  to  exasperate  to  madness, 
until  that  base  and  selfish  passion  has 
wellnigh  swallowed  up  all  the  noble- 
ness, as  well  as  beauty,  of  human  na- 
ture. 

It  was  in  this  mockery  of  a  Church 
and  State  that  Hawthorne  seized  the 
idea  of  his  chef  dec uvre;  and  the  more 
we  shall  see  into  his  multifarious  mean- 
ings, the  more  we  shall  acknowledge 
that  he  has  uttered  no  idle  word  from 
the  beginning  to  the  end.  In  the  whole 
sweep,  from  the  nameless  miscreant 
whose  blackness  makes  the  shadow  of 
the  picture,  up  through  Miriam,  Kenyon, 
Hilda,  to  Donatello,  his  imagination  does 
not  fail  him  in  the  effort  to  grasp  and 
represent  the  common  life,  whose  ac- 
tions and  reactions  within  itself  kindle 
the  fire  that  purifies,  till,  as  the  prophet 
says,  the  Refiner  may  see  his  own  image 
in  the  furnace.  Deeply  as  Hawthorne 
was  impressed  with  "  what  man  has 
made  of  man  "  in  Rome,  his  own  ex- 
quisitely endowed  organization  opened 
every  pore  to  the  revelations  of  the 
nature  in  the  midst  of  which  Rome  ' 
had  grown  up.  Nothing  is  more  won- 
derful than  the  power  with  which,  in 
the  whole  delineation  of  Donatello,  he 
withdraws  himself  from  the  present  of 
Rome,  heavy  as  it  is  with  the  ponder- 
ous ruins  of  time,  and  looks  back  to  the 
original  Italy,  and  even  still  further  to 
the  age  of  the  world  before  this  sin- 
shadowed  human  experience  began. 
The  innocence  of  Donatello  is  as  far 
above  the  ordinary  human  experience 
as  the  evil  of  the  so-called  model  is 
below  it.  If  the  latter  is  the  nadir,  the 
former  is  the  zenith,  of  the  natural  uni- 
verse ;  and  yet  we  observe  that  the 
model  is  not  treated  as  out  of  the  pale 
of  hunjan  sympathy,  much  as  his  own 
unnatural  depravity  has  done  to  put 
him  out.  By  a  single  stroke  of  genius, 


368 


The  Genius  of  Hawthorne. 


[September, 


he  is  associated  with  "  the  lost  wretch  " 
who  betrayed  the  early  Christians,  but 
*'  pined  for  the  blessed  sunshine  and  a 
companion  to  be  miserable  with  him," 
which,  as  Kenyon  is  made  to  playfully 
suggest,  "  indicates  something  amiable 
in  the  poor  fellow."  And  when  he  is 
dead,  the  author  says  that 

"  A  singular  sense  of  duty  ....  impelled 
(Miriam)  to  look  at  the  final  resting-place 
of  the  being  whose  fate  had  been  so  disas- 
trously involved  with  her  own,  ....  and  to 
put  money  into  the  sacristan's  hand  to  an 
amount  that  made  his  eyes  open  wide  and 
glisten,  requesting  that  it  might  be  expended 
in  masses  for  the  repose  of  Father  Antonio's 
soul." 

Besides  the  artistic  balance  of  Dona- 
tello's  innocence  and  joyousness  with 
this  monster's  guilt  and  wretchedness, 
there  is  another  fine  contrast  of  his 
indescribable  gayety  with  Miriam's  un- 
utterable sorrow,  all  the  more  touching 
because  we  see  that  in  her  proper  na- 
ture she  has  an  equal  gayety.  Her 
occasional  self-abandonment  to  the  pure 
elixir  of  mere  existence,  —  witness  the 
wild  dance  in  the  Borghese  villa ;  the 
intellectual  freedom  that  lifts  her  above 
her  fate  into  creative  genius,  —  witness 
her  sporting  with  it  in  her  pictures,  her 
petulant  criticisms  on  Guide's  arch- 
angel, and  the  stories  she  invents  to 
connect  herself  with  the  spectre  of  the 
catacomb;  above  all,  the  balm  she  finds 
for  her  wounded  soul  in  Donatello's  un- 
qualified devotion  to  her,  although  for 
his  sake  she  will  not  encourage,  but 
even  deprecates  it,  —  all  go  to  prove 
that  her  suffering  has  a  source  essen- 
tially out  of  herself,  but  yet  so  intimately 
connected  with  herself,  that,  as  Hilda 
had  said  of  Beatrice  Cenci, 

" '  She  knows  that  she  ought  to  be  solitary 
forever,  both  for  the  world's  sake  and  her 
own.' " 

In  Chapter  XXIII.  the  author  has 
said  of  the  portrait :. — 

"  Who  can  look  at  that  mouth,  with  its 
lips  half  apart  as  innocent  as  a  baby's  that 
has  been  crying,  and  not  pronounce  Bea- 
trice sinless  ?  //  was  the  intimate  conscious- 
ness of -fur  fatter*  5  sin  that  threw  its  shadow 


over  her,  and  frightened  her  into  a  remote 
and  inaccessible  region,  where  no  sympathy 
could  come." 

Miriam  had  at  one  moment  looked 
so  like  that  picture  "of  unutterable 
grief  and  mysterious  shadow  of  guilt" 
that  Hilda  had  exclaimed,  "What  an 
actress  you  are  !"  (Chap.  VIII.)  But, 
for  all  the  difference  between  Miriam's 
powerful  and  Beatrice's  feebler  temper- 
ament, she  could  only  momentarily 
dwell  in  the  mood  of  mind  that  would 
give  that  expression  of  face,  and  imme- 
diately afterwards  feel  that  there  was 
something  missed  in  Guide's  portrait 
which  she  could  have  given  to  it. 

No  one  can  say  that  Hawthorne  does 
not  appreciate  "the  night  side"  of  hu- 
man nature.  Many  have  maintained 
that  he  is  morbid  in  the  intensity  of  the 
shadows  thrown  over  his  delineations  of 
character.  So  much  the  more,  then,  do 
we  see  and  feel  the  inspiration  of  an 
insight  which  goes  back  beyond  all  his- 
toric memory,  and  sees  men  as  they 
came  forth  from  the  creating  breath, 
bound  to  one  another  by  flesh  and 
blood,  instinct  with  kindly  affections, 
and  commanding  all  animated  nature 
below  him  with  a  voice  "soft,  attrac- 
tive, persuasive,  friendly";  and  lying 
upon  the  universe  like  the  smile  of  God 
which  created  it. 

Donatello,  like  Undine,  like  Ariel,  is 
a  new  creation  of  genius.  As  Haw- 
thorne himself  says,,  in  the  Postscript 
that  his  philisline  English  publishers 
compelled  him  to  append  to  their  sec- 
ond edition :  — 

"  The  idea  of  the  modern  Faun  loses  all 
the  poetry  and  beauty  which  the  author 
fancied  in  it,  and  becomes  nothing  better 
than  a  grotesque  absurdity,  if  we  bring  it 
into  the  actual  light  of  day.  He  had  hoped 
to  mystify  this  anomalous  creature  between 
the  real  and  fantastic  in  such  a  manner 
that  the  reader's  sympathies  might  be  ex- 
cited to  a  certain  pleasurable  degree,  with- 
out impelling  him  to  ask  how  Cuvicr  would 
have  classified  poor  Donatello,  or  to  insist 
upon  being  told,  in  so  many  words,  whether 
he  had  furry  ears  or  no.  As  respects  all 
\vho  ask  such  questions,  the  hank  is  to  that 
extent  a  failure/' 


1 868.] 


The  Genius  of  Hawthorne. 


But  there  are  other  questions  which 
he  intended  his  readers  should  ask,  of 
a  different  nature,  and  whose  answers 
are  suggested  in  the  representation  of 
Donatello :  What  is  or  was  man  be- 
fore he  was  acted  upon  from  without 
by  any  moral  circumstances,  —  a  blank 
paper,  an  evil  propensity,  or  the  perfec- 
tion of  passive  nature,  every  one  of 
whose  parts,  including  the  phenomenon 
man,  are  so  many  words  of  God's  con- 
versation with  all  men  ?  Donatello  first 
comes  upon  us  in  the  passive  form  of 
his  existence,  —  a  healthy  sensibility, 
—  when,  as  Madame  de  Stae'l  has  said 
of  the  child,  "The  Deity  takes  him  by 
the  hand,  and  lifts  him  lightly  over  the 
clouds  of  life."  His  soul  lives  in  the 
vision  of  natural  beauty,  and  his  whole 
expression  is  joy.  He  sympathizes  with 
all  harmless  forms  of  animal  life,  and 
the  innocent  animal  life,  in  its  turn, 
recognizes  his  voice.  Woman,  the  cita- 
del and  metropolis  of  beauty,  so  com- 
pletely fulfils  his  conscious  identity, 
that  he  seems  to  himself  only  to  have 
lived  since  he  knew  Miriam,  in  whose 
"bright  natural  smile"  he  was  blest; 
but  whose  sadder  moods  disturbed 
him  with  a  presentiment  of  pain  he 
did  not  understand ;  and  whose  ex- 
tremity of  suffering  inspired  him  with  a 
"fierce  energy"  to  annihilate  its  mani- 
fest cause,  that  "  kindled  him  into  a 
man."  For  it  is  certain  that  his  spir- 
itual life  began  in  the  deed  revealing 
to  him  that  the  law  it  broke  came  from 
a  profounder  and  wider  love  than  that 
which  impelled  him  to  its  commission. 
If  the  reader  asks  then,  with  Hilda, 
"  Was  Donatello  really  a  faun  ?  "  he  is 
referred  for  an  answer  to  the  words  of 
Kenyon,  in  the  original  conversation  in 
the  Capitol,  on  the  immortal  marble  of 
Praxiteles,  where  he  says  of 
"That  frisky  thing.  .  .  .  neither  man  nor 
animal,  and  yet  no  monster,  but  a  being  in 
whom  both  races  meet  on  friendly  ground. 
(Chap.  II.)  In  some  long  past  age  he  really 
must  have  existed.  Nature  needed,  and 
still  needs,  this  beautiful  creature  ;  standing 
betwixt  man  and  animal,  sympathizing  with 
each,  comprehending  the  speech  of  cither 
race,  and  interpreting  the  whole  existence 
of  one  to  the  other." 

VOL.   XXII. —NO.    131.  24 


It  was  nothing  less  unsophisticated 
that  could  have  served  the  author's 
purpose  of  simplifying  the  question  of 
the  origin  of  sin,  which  both  etymolog- 
ically  and  metaphysically  means  sepa- 
ration,—  conscious  separation  from  the 
principle  of  life.  It  was  the  perfected 
animal  nature  that  revealed  to  his  hith- 
erto unreflecting  mind,  that  an  action 
which  certainly  originated  in  his  "lev- 
ing  much  "  was  a  crime.  In  one  of  his 
conversations  with  Kenyon  he  reveals 
this  unawares.  That  "  long  shriek  wa- 
vering all  the  way  down,"  that  "thump 
against  the  stones,"  that  "  quiver 
through  the  crushed  mass,  and  no  more 
movement  after  that,"  of  a  "felloXv- 
creature  (but  just  before)  living  and 
breathing  into  (his)  face, "-awakened  the 
idea  in  poor  Donatello,  —  who  himself 
clung  to  the  life  which  he  had  felt  to 
be  "so  warm, -so  rich,  so  sunny,"  — 
that  there  is  a  bond  which  antedates  all 
the  attractions  of  personal  affinity,  and 
whose  violation  takes  the  joy  out  of  all 
narrower  relations,  however  close  they 
may  be,  startling  the  spirit  into  moral 
consciousness  with  the  question  de  pro- 
fimdis,  "  Am  /  my  brother's  keeper  ? " 

It  is  true  that  for  a  moment  the  ex- 
citement of  the  action  which  took  him 
so  completely  out  of  himself  was  felt 
both  by* him  and  •Miriam  to  have  "ce- 
mented" their  union  "with  the  blood 
of  one  worthless  and  wretched  life,"  — 
for  that  moment  when  they  felt  that 
neither  of  them  could  know  any  more 
loneliness ;  that  they  "drew  one  breath  " 
and  "  lived  one  life."  But  immediately 
afterwards  they  began  to  see  that  they 
had  joined  another  mighty  company, 
and  "  melted  into  a  vast  mass  of  human 
crime"  with  a  sense  of  being  "guilty  of 
the  whole  "  ;  and  the  next  day,  the  sight 
of  the  corpse  in  the  Chapel  of  the  Capu- 
chins, and  the  sound  of  the  chant  for  the 
dead,  made  Donatello's  "heart  shiver," 
and  put  "a  great  weight"  in  his  breast ; 
and  the  love  which  he  had  felt  to  be  his 
life  was  disenchanted  !  When  Miriam 
saw  that  this  was  so,  and,  in  spite  of 
her  warmly  declared  affection,  which 
he  iKid  hitherto  so  passionately  craved, 
that  he  "shuddered"  at  her  touch,  and 


370 


The  Genius  of  Hawthorne. 


[September, 


confessed  that  "nothing  could  ever 
comfort"  him,  "with  a  generosity  char- 
acteristic alike  of  herself  and  true  lo\re  " 
she  bade  him  leave  and  forget  her :  — 

"'Forget  you,  Miriam,'  said  Donatello, 
roused  somewhat  from  his  apathy  of  de- 
spair. '  If  I  could  remember  you  and  be- 
hold you  apart  from  that  frightful  visage 
which  stares  at  me  over  your  shoulder,  that 
were  a  consolation  and  a  joy.'  " 

But,  as  he  could  not  do  this,  he  re- 
ciprocated her  farewell  with  apparent 
insensibility :  — 

"  So  soon  after  t&e  semblance  of  such 
mighty  love,  and  after  it  had  been  the  im- 
pulse to  so  terrible  a  deed,  they  parted  in 
all  outward  show  as  coldly  as  people  part 
whose  mutual  intercourse  has  been  encir- 
cled within  an  hour." 

This  parting,  with  all  the  reaction 
upon  Donatello  of  what  he  had  impul- 
sively done,  whether  in  the  "  fiery  in- 
toxication which  sufficed  to  carry  them 
triumphantly  through  the  first  moments 
of  their  doom,"  or  in  the  blind  gropings 
of  his  remorse,  when  he  had  returned 
to  the  old  castle  of  Monte  Beni,  Haw- 
thorne would  evidently  have  us  see,  as 
in  a  pure  mirror,  that  the  fundamental 
principle  of  humanity,  the  brotherhood 
in  which  God  created  all  souls,  is  af- 
firmed in  the  law  inscribed  in  our 
hearts,  and  handed  down  in  all  civil- 
ized tradition,  which  forbids  an  individ- 
ual to  assume  over  his  fellows  the  office 
of  judge  and  executioner ;  for  that  is 
the  inherent  prerogative  of  the  social 
whole,  which,  and  nothing  less,  is  the 
image  of  God  created  to  sit  at  his  own 
right  hand. 

As  long  as  Donatello  fulfilled  the 
law  of  impartial  humanity  by  his  ge- 
niality, easy  persuadability,  and  glad 
abandonment  of  himself  to  friendship 
and  love,  though  there  might  be  "no 
atom  of  martyr's  stuff  in  him  "  consid- 
ered as  u  the  power  to  sacrifice  himself 
to  an  abstract  idea,"  yet  there  was  no 
discord  in  all  the  echoes  of  his  soul. 
As  soon  as  he  had  made  an  exception 
to  the  universality  of  his  good-will  by 
executing  on  his  sole  responsibility  a 
capital  judgment  on  a  fellow-pensioner 
of  the  Heavenly  Father,  he  felt  him- 


self to  be  mysteriously  and  powerless- 
ly  drifting  towards  perdition,  and  his 
voice  was  no  longer  sterling  in  nature. 
Hawthorne  is  perhaps  the  only  moral 
teacher  of  the  modern  time  who  has 
affirmed  with  power,  that  the  origin  of 
sin  is  in  crime,  and  not  vice  versa.  But 
it  was  affirmed  of  old  by  the  most  ven- 
erable scripture  of  the  Hebrew  Bible, 
in  the  statement  that  the  first  murderer 
was  also  the  first  who  "  went  out  from 
the  presence  of  the  Lord,"  and  began 
the  dark  record  of  fallen  humanity. 

It  was,  therefore,  an  inconsiderate 
reader  of  the  romance  of  Monte  Beni, 
who  said:  "But  Donatello,  with  his 
unappeasable  remorse,  was  no  Italian  ; 
for,  had  he  been  one,  he  would  at  once 
have  gone  and  confessed,  received  ab- 
solution, and  thought  never  again  of 
'  the  traitor  who  had  met  his  just 
doom.'  "  Hawthorne  was  not  painting 
in  Donatello  an  Italian  such  as  the 
Church  has  made  by  centuries  of  a 
discipline  so  bewildering  to  the  mind 
as  to  crush  the  natural  conscience  by 
substituting  artificial  for  real  duties,  yet 
not  restraining  men,  or  itself  refrain- 
ing, from  bursting  into  God's  holy  of 
holies,  the  destined  temple  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  —  an  Italian  incapable  of  dream- 
ing of  anything  holier  than  a  passion- 
ate deprecation  of  that  punishment  for 
his  crimes  which  he  should  crave  as 
their  expiation,  —  life  for  life.  Dona- 
tello is  an  original  inhabitant  of  Italy, 
as  yet  "  guiltless  of  Rome." 

In  the  genealogy  of  the  Counts  of 
Monte  Beni,  historic  vistas  open  up 
beyond  recorded  memory  to 

"  A  period  when  man's  affinity  with  na- 
ture was  more  strict,  and  his  fellowship 
with  every  living  thing  more  intimate  and 
dear."' 

But  of  this  the  author  himself  may 
have  been  unconscious  ;  for  it  was  not 
historic  facts,  but  the  eternal  truths 
they  embody,  on  which  his  eye  was 
fixed  ;  and  in  the  intimation  that  the 
Church  ritual  to  which  Donatello  re- 
sorted to  heal  the  wound  of  his  soul, 
and  which  all  his  earnest  sincerity  of 
purpose  found  as  ineffectual  for  that 
end  as  it  had  proved  to  the  lost  sinner 


1 868.] 


The  Genius  of  Hawthorne. 


371 


whom  the  sight  of  the  object  of  his  vile 
passion  had  driven  forth  alike  from  the 
Catacombs  he  had  sought  as  a  penance 
and  the  shrines  of  the  Coliseum  which 
he  was  visiting  on  his  knees,  we  have 
hints  of  an  interpretation  of  Christian- 
ity more  vital  than  has  yet  been  sym- 
bolized by  any  ritual,  or  systematized 
by  any  ecclesiasticism.  This  is  gen- 
erally put  into  the  mouth  of  Kenyon, 
who  seems  to  be  the  keystone  of  the 
arch  of  characters  in  this  story,  com- 
bining in  his  own  healthy  affections 
and  clear  reason,  and  comprehending 
in  his  intelligent  and  discriminating 
sympathy  all  the  others. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  make  ex- 
tracts from  the  chapters  describing  the 
summer  in  the  Apennines  with  his 
saddened  friend,. to  whom  he  ministers 
with  such  unpretending  wisdom  and 
delicate  tenderness.  Quoting  almost 
at  random,  his  words  .seem  to  be  ora- 
cles. For  instance,  in  Chapter  II.  of 
the  second  volume  :  — 

" '  What  I  am  most  inclined  to  murmur 
at  is  this  death's  head.  It  is  absurdly 
monstrous,  my  dear  friend,  thus  to  fling  the 
dead  weight  of  our  mortality  upon  our  im- 
mortal hopes.  While  we  live  on  earth,  'tis 
true  we  must  needs  carry  our  skeletons 
about  with  us ;  but,  for  Heaven's  sake,  do 
not  let  us  burden  our  spirits  with  them  in 
our  feeble  efforts  to  soar  upwards  !  Believe 
me,  it  will  change  the  whole  aspect  of 
,  if  you  can  once  disconnect  it  in  your 
idea  with  that  corruption  from  which  it  dis- 
engages our  higher  part.' " 

And   when    Donatello    subsequently 

says  :  — 

"  '  My  forefathers  being  a  cheerful  race  of 
men  in  their  natural  disposition  found  it 
needful  to  have  the  skull  often  before  their 
eyes,  because  they  clearly  loved  life  and  its 
enjoyments,  and  hated  the  very  thought  of 
death.'  'I  am  afraid,'  said  Kenyon,  'they 
liked  it  none  the  better  for  seeing  its  face 
under  this  abominable  mask.'  " 

Again,  in  Chapter  III.  of  the  same 
•volume,  Kenyon  says  :  — 

"  '  Avoid  the  convent,  my  clear  friend,  as 

you  \vouM  shun  the  death  of  the  soul.     T'.tit 

v  own  part,  if  T  had  an  insupportable 

burden,  if  for   any  cause    I  were  bent  on 


sacrificing  every  earthly  hope  as  a  peace- 
offering  towards  heaven,  I  would  make 
the  wide  earth  my  cell,  and  good  deeds  to 
mankind  my  prayer.  Many  penitent  men 
have  done  this,  and  found  peace  in  it.' 

" '  Ah !  but  you  are  a  heretic,'  said  the 
Count.  Yet  his  face  brightened  beneath 
the  stars,  and,  looking  at  it  through  the 
twilight,  the  sculptor's  remembrance  went 
back  to  that  scene  in  the  Capitol  where 
both  in  features  and  expression  Donatello 
had  seemed  identical  with  the  Faun,  and 
still  there  was  a  resemblance;  for  now, 
when  first  the  idea  was  suggested  of  living 
for  his  fellow-creatures,  the  original  beauty, 
which  sorrow  had  partly  effaced,  came  back, 
elevated  and  spiritualized.  In  the  black 
depths  the  Faun  had  found  a  soul,  and 
was  struggling  with  it  towards  the  light  of 
heaven." 

Afterwards,  in  Chapter  IV.  of  the 
second  volume,  we  find  this  wise  ad- 
vice :  — 

"  '  Believe  me,-'  said  he,  turning  his  eyes 
towards  his  friend,  full  of  grave  and  tender 
sympathy,  *  you  know  not  what  is  requisite 
for  your  spiritual  growth,  seeking,  as  you 
do,  to  keep  your  soul  perpetually  in  the 
unwholesome  region  of  remorse.  It  was 
needful  for  you  to  pass  through  that  dark 
valley,  but  it  is  infinitely  dangerous  to  lin- 
ger there  too  long  ;  there  is  poison  in  the 
atmosphere  when  we  sit  down  and  brood 
in  it,  instead  of  girding  up  our  loins  to 
press  onward.  Not  despondency,  not  sloth- 
ful anguish,  is  what  you  require,  but  effort ! 
Has  there  been  an  unutterable  evil  in  your 
young  life  ?  Then  crowd  it  out  with  good, 
or  it  will  lie  corrupting  there  forever,  and 
cause  your  capacity  for  better  things  to  par- 
take its  noisome  corruption.' " 

It  is  an  originality  of  the  religious 
teaching  of  Hawthorne,  that  he  really 
recognizes  the  inherent  freedom  of 
man,  that  is,  his  freedom  to  good  as 
well  as  to  evil.  While  he  shows  forth 
so  powerfully  that  "  grief  and  pain  " 
have  developed  in  Donatello  "a  more 
definite  and  nobler  individuality,"  he 
does  not  generalize  the  fact,  as  is  so 
common,  but  recognizes  that  "  some- 
times the  instruction  comes  without 
the  sorrow,  and  oftener  the  sorrow 
teaches  no  lesson  that  abides  with 
us "  ;  in  finet  that  love  like  Ken- 
yon's  and  Hilda's  reveals  the  same 


372 


The  Genius  of  Hawthorne. 


[September, 


truth  much  more  fully  and  certainly 
than  did  the  crime  which  is  made  so 
cunningly  to  lie  between  Miriam  and 
Donatello,  that  they  become  one  by  it 
in  sorrow,  as  Hilda  and  Kenyon  be- 
come one  in  joy  ineffable,  by  their 
mutual  recognition  of  each  other's  hu- 
mility and  purity. 

Yet  Hilda  is  not  put  above  that  "  com- 
mon life"  which  is  never  to  be  lost  sight 
of,  being  God's  special  dwelling-place, 
into  any  superhuman  immunity  from 
the  "  ills  that  flesh  is  heir  to."  She 
suffers,  as  well  as  Miriam,  from  u  the  fa- 
tal decree  by  which  every  crime  is  made 
to  be  the  agony  of  many  innocent  per- 
sons." Hence  we  are  told  of 

"  That  peculiar  despair,  that  chill  and 
heavy  misery,  -which  only  the  innocent  can 
experience,  although  it  possesses  many  of 
the  gloomy  characteristics. of  guilt.  It  was 
that  heartsickness  which,  it  is  to  be  hoped, 
we  may  all  of  us  have  been  pure  enough 
to  feel  once  in  our  lives,  but  the  capacity 
for  which  is  usually  exhausted  early,  and 
perhaps  with  a  single  agony.  It  was  that 
dismal  certainty  of  the  existence  of  evil 
in  the  world  which,  though  we  may  fancy 
ourselves  fully  assured  of  the  sad  mystery 
long  before,  never  becomes  a  portion  of  our 
practical  belief  until  it  takes  substance  and 
reality  from  the  sin  of  some  guide  whom 
we  have  deeply  trusted  and  revered,  or 
some  friend  whom  we  have  dearly  loved." 

And,  besides,  Hilda  is  indirectly  de- 
veloped into  a  larger  sphere  of  duty  and 
more  comprehensive  practical  humanity, 
by  the  share  she  necessarily  has  in  the 
misfortunes  and  sorrows  of  Miriam  and 
Donatello. 

Her  conversation  with  Kenyon,  after 
the  relief  experienced  by  her  communi- 
cation of  the  cause  of  her  long-pent 
sorrow,  leaves  on  her  mind  the  painful 
doubt,  whether  in  her  struggle  to  keep 
"  the  white  robe  "  God  had  given  her, 
"  and  bade  her  wear  it  back  to  him  as 
white  as  when  she  put  it  on,"  "  a  wrong 
had  not  been  committed  towards  the 
friend  so  beloved  "  ; 

"  Whether  a  close  bond  of  friendship,  in 
which  we  once  voluntarily  engage,  ought  to 
be  severed  ori  account  of  any  unworthiness 
which  we  subsequently  detect  in  our  friend." 

Here  we  have  Hawthorne's  judgment 


upon  a  subject  which  is  often  an  impor- 
tunate practical  problem  in  our  daily 
conversation  :  — 

"  In  these  unions  of  hearts  —  call  them 
marriage  or  whatever  else  —  we  take  each 
other  for  better,  for  worse.  Availing  our- 
selves of  our  friend's  intimate  affection, 
we  pledge  our  own  as  to  be  relied  on 

in   every   emergency Who   need   the 

tender  succor  of  the  innocent  more  than 
wretches  stained  with  guilt  ?  And  must  a 
selfish  care  for  the  spotlessness  of  our  own 
garments  keep  us  from  pressing  the  guilty 
ones  close  to  our  hearts,  wherein,  for  the 
very  reason  that  we  are  innocent,  lies  their 
securest  refuge  from  further  ill.  .  .  .  .  '  Miri- 
am loved  me  well,'  thought  Hilda,  remorse- 
fully, *  and  I  failed  her  in  her  utmost  need.' " 

This  adjustment  of  the  contending 
claims  of  the  law  of  individuality  and 
the  law  of  our  common  nature  frequent- 
ly solicited  Hawthorne's  attention  ;  and 
in  The  Blithedale  Romance  he  has  dis- 
cussed it  with  earnestness.  That  Ro- 
mance was  intended  to  meet  a  peculiar 
and  transient  mood  of  mind  in  a  special 
locality  when  there  seemed  to  spread 
abroad  a  sudden  doubt  of  those  natural 
social  unions  growing  out  of  the  inevi- 
table instincts  and  wants  of  human  be- 
ings, which  insure  the  organization  of 
families.  In  The  House  of  the  Seven 
Gables  he  had  shown  how  the  tendency 
of  families  to  isolation  results,  when  un- 
checked by  a  liberal  humanity,  in  phys- 
ical deterioration,  morbid  affections, 
and  malignant  selfishness.  In  The 
Blithedale  Romance,  on  the  other  hand, 
he  teaches  that  by  wilfully  adopting 
schemes  of  social  organization,  based 
on  abstractions  of  individual  intellects, 
—  however  great  and  with  whatever 
good  motives, —  we  are  liable  ruthless- 
ly, even  if  unconsciously,  to  immolate 
thereto  living  hearts  that  are  attracted 
to  us  by  profound  affinities  and  gener- 
ous imaginations.  Zenobia,  —  was  she 
not  murdered  by  Hollingsworth  as  cer- 
tainly, though  not  as  obviously, 
was  Father  Antonio  by  Donatello; 
No  real  philanthropy  can'  grow  out 
social  action  that  ignores  the  persor 
duties  of  parents,  children,  broths 
sisters,  husbands,  wives,  friends,  and 
lovers. 


1 868.] 


The  Genius  of  Hawthorne. 


373 


The  last  conversation  between  Hilda 
and  Kenyon  upon  Donatello  is  one  of 
those  great  touches  of  art  by  which 
Hawthorne  is  accustomed  to  lead  his 
readers  to  a  point  of  view  from  which 
they  can  see  what  the  personages  of 
his  story,  who  seem  to  see  and  say  all, 
certainly  do  not  say,  if  they  see :  — 

" '  Here  comes  my  perplexity,'  continued 
Kenyon.  '  Sin  has  educated  Donatello, 
and  elevated  him.  Is  sin,  then,  which  we 
deem  such  a  dreadful  blackness  in  the  uni- 
verse, —  is  it  like  sorrow,  merely  an  element 
of  human  education  through  which  we 
struggle  to  a  higher  and  purer  state  than 
we  could  otherwise  have  attained  ?  Did 
Adam  fall  that  we  might  ultimately  rise  to 
a  far  loftier  paradise  than  his  ? ' 

"'O,  hush!'  cried  Hilda,  shrinking  from 
him  with  an  expression  of  horror  which 
wounded  the  poor  speculative  sculptor  to 
the  soul.  '  This  is  terrible,  and  I  could 
weep  for  you  if  you  indeed  believe  it  Do 
not  you  perceive  what  a  mockery  your 
creed  makes,  not  only  of  all  religious  senti- 
ment, but  of  moral  law,  and  how  it  annuls 
and  obliterates  whatever  precepts  of  Heaven 
are  written  deepest  within  us  ?  You  have 
shocked  me  beyond  words.' 

"  '  Forgive  me,  Hilda  ! '  exclaimed  the 
sculptor,  startled  by  her  agitation  ;  '  I  never 
did  believe  it !  But  the  mind  wanders  wild 
and  wide  ;  and,  so  lonely  as  I  live  and  work, 
I  have  neither  polestar  above,  nor  light  of 
cottage  window  here  below,  to  bring  me 
home.  Were  you  my  guide,  my  counsellor, 
rny  inmost  friend,  with  that  white  wisdom, 
which  clothes  you  as  a  celestial  garment,  all 
would  go  well.  O  Hilda,  guide  me  home.' ;' 

We  must  bring  this  protracted  article 
to  a  close,  though  we  have  by  no  means 
made  an  exhaustive  analysis  of  the 
Romance  of  Monte  Beni.  The  mere 
drama  of  it  is  wonderfully  knit  together, 
all  its  incidents  growing  directly  out  of 
the  characters,  and  their  interaction  with 
universal  laws.  As  Hilda's  imprison- 
ment is  the  direct  consequence  of  her 
faithful  execution  of  Miriam's  commis- 
sion, and  complicated  with  her  involun- 
tary knowledge  of  Donatello's  crime,  so 
her  deliverance  is  the  immediate  motive 
of  the  self-surrender  of  Donatello,  which 
Miriam  makes  to  bear  this  fruit  of  prac- 
tical justice.  He  is  no  martyr,  there- 
fore, even  at  last,  "  to  an  abstract  idea," 


but  sacrifices  himself  for  a  substantially 
beneficent  end.  And  it  is  left  probable 
that  the  sacrifice  proved  by  Divine 
Providence  no  immolation  ;  for  the  last 
words  of  the  original  romance  are,  after 
asking,  "  What  was  Miriam's  life  to  be  ? 
and  Where  was  Donatello  ?  .  .  .  .  Hilda 
had  a  hopeful  soul,  and  saw  sunlight  on 
the  mountain-tops."  Thus  we  are  led 
to  hope  that  "  the  bond  between  them," 
which  Kenyon  had  pronounced  to  be 
"  for  mutual  support,  ....  for  one  an- 
other's final  good,  ....  for  effort,  for 
sacrifice,"  and  which  they  had  accept- 
ed •"  for  mutual  elevation  and  encour- 
agement towards  a  severe  and  painful 
life,"  "but  not  for  earthly  happiness," 
did  at  last  conciliate  "  that  shy,  subtle 
thing "  as  "  a  wayside  flower  spring- 
ing along  a  path  leading  to  higher 
ends." 

We  shall  have  done  quite  as  much  as 
vk'e  had  proposed  to  ourselves  in  this 
review,  if  we  shall  induce  any  of  our 
readers  to  recur  to  the  book  and  study 
it;  for  in  it  they  will  find  earnestly 
treated  the  highest  offices  and  aims, 
as  well  as  the  temptations  and  limita- 
tions, of  art,  in  its  well-disqriminatecl 
and  fairly  appreciated  varieties  of  mode  ; 
they  will  find  there  delicate  criticisms 
on  pictures  and"  statues,  ancient  and 
modern,  with  original  thoughts  on  near- 
ly every  subject  of  moral,  intellectual, 
and  aesthetic  interest  presenting  itself 
to  a  sojou«ier  in  Italy,  to  whose  richest 
meanings,  whether  sad  or  glad,  the  ro- 
mance will  prove  the  best  of  guide- 
books. But  we  must  not  close  without 
observing  that  whatever  short  comings 
in  theory  or  iniquities  in  practice  the 
author  hints  at  or  exposes  in  the  Ro- 
man Catholic  Church  and  state,  he  ex- 
hibits no  narrow  Protestantism.  In 
many  time-honored  customs,  in  "  the 
shrines  it  has  erected  at  the  waysides, 
as  reminders  of  the  eternal  future  im- 
bosomed  in  the  present "  ;  and  especial- 
ly in  the  description  of  the  "world's  ca- 
thedral "  where  he  makes  the  suffering 
Hilda  find  relief,  he  does  not  fail  to 
recognize  whatever  Romanism  has  ap- 
propriated of  the  methods  of  universal 
love. 


374 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices, 


[September, 


But  he  puts  the  infallible  priesthood 
to  school,  as  it  were,  to  the  pure  soul 
which  has  preserved  by  humble  reli- 
gious thought  "  the  white  robe  "  of 
pristine  innocence  God  had  bid  her 
"  wear  back  to  him  unstained,"  and  has 
faithfully  increased  in  the  knowledge  of 
Cod  by  the  study  and  reproduction  of 
beauty,  without  making  into  stumbling- 
blocks,  as  the  merely  instinctive  too  gen- 
erally do,  the  stepping-stones  given  for 
our  advancement  from  the  glory  of  the 
natural  to  the  glory  of  the  spiritual  life. 

Hilda's  rebuke  to  the  priest,  who 
would  narrow  the  sacred  confidences  of 
his  office  to  orthodox  ritualism  and 
her  confession,  which  she  tells  Kenyon 
would  have  been  made  to  him  if  he  had 
been  at  hand,  express  the  idea  that 
in  the  loneliness  created  by  sin,  not 


only  in  the  guilty,  but  in  the  guiltless 
soul,  it  is  at  once  inevitable  and  legit- 
imate to  claim  human  sympathy  ;  also 
that "  it  is  not  good  for  man  to  be  alone," 
because  God  created  us  in  countless 
relations,  which  it  is  our  salvation  to 
discover  and  fulfil,  as  is  revealed  by  the 
very  etymology  of  the  word  conscience. 
In  fine,  may  we  not  say  that  The  Mar- 
ble Faun  takes  a  high  place  in  that 
library  of  sacred  literature  of  the  mod- 
ern time  which  is  the  prophetic  intima- 
tion of  the  Free  Catholic  Christian 
Church,  "whose 'far-off  coming' shines," 
—  a  Church  whose  credo  is  not  abstract 
dogma,  but  the  love  of  wisdom  and  the 
wisdom  of  love ;  whose  cathedral  is 
universal  nature,  and  whose  ritual  is 
nothing  short  of  virtue,  truth,  and  char- 
ity, the  organs  of  piety  ? 


REVIEWS   AND    LITERARY   NOTICES. 


Life  in  the  Argentine  Republic  ;  or,  Civiliza- 
tion and  Barbarism.  From  the  Spanish 
of  Domingo  F.  Sarmiento,  with  a  Bio- 
graphical Sketch  of  the  Author,  by  MRS. 
MARY  MANX.  New  York:  Hurd  and 
Houghton. 

DOMINGO  F.  SARMIENTO  isf  known  to 
our  public  as  the  Minister  to  the  United 
States  from  the  Argentine  Republic,  and  as 
the  author  of  a  Spanish  life  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  heretofore  noticed  in  these  pages. 
Many  also  are  aware  of  the  cordial  and 
intelligent  interest  he  takes  in  our  free-school 
system,  and  of  the  efforts  he  has  made  for 
its  introduction  and  adoption  in  his  own 
country,  where,  after  a  long  life  of  services 
and  sacrifices,  he  now  occupies  the  first 
place  in  the  popular  esteem,  and  where 
the  recent  elections  have  actually  placed 
him  at  the  head  of  the  state,  as  President. 
Few  of  our  readers,  however,  whose  curi- 
osity has  not  been  directed  specially  to  him, 
can  justly  appreciate  the  greatness  of  his 
character  and  career.  In  any  civilization 
these  would  be  very  remarkable  :  appealing 
as  a  part  of  the  history  of  a  Spanish- Ameri- 
can republic,  and  involved  with  that  tale  of 


barbaric  intrigue,  violence,  and  revolution 
which  has  always  greeted  us  in  the  "latest 
advices  from  South  America,"  they  have-  a; 
value  of  the  highest  kind  to  the  student  as 
well  as  the  lover  of  men. 

In  the  early  circumstances  of  Senor 
Sarmiento's  life  there  is  much  to  remind 
us  of  Lincoln's  humble  beginnings,  though 
there  is  of  course  the  ineffaceable  difference 
between  the  two  men  of  race,  religion,  and 
traditions.  Lincoln  doubtfully  derived  his 
origin  from  an  unknown  Quaker  family  of 
Pennsylvania  :  the  blood  of  an  ancient  Span- 
ish line  mixed  with  that  of  a  noble  Arabic 
stirp  in  the  veins  of  Sarmiento.  But  the 
parents  of  both  were  very  poor  ;  arid 
were  alike  in  their  heritage  of  privation  and 
hard  work.  The  Lincolns  began  as  pio- 
neers :  the  Sarmiento-Albarracines  a- 1 
at  the  same  condition  after  centuries  en 
station  and  wealth  in  the  Old  World,  and 
some  generations  of  adventure  and  impov- 
erishment in  our  own  hemisphere. 

The   story    of   his    boyhood,    as    Sef 
Sarmiento   relates   it   in  one   of  his   vi\ 
and  picturesque  boc*ks, —  half  politics,  half 
history   and   personal   narrative,  —  and 
Mrs.  Mann   transfers   and   compiles   it   in 


1 868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


375 


the  work  before  us,  is  in  all  respects  at- 
tractive and  instructive.  It  depicts  a  family 
of  South  American  pioneers  struggling  for 
bare  subsistence,  but  cherishing  their  mem- 
ories of  the  past  and  their  vague  ambition 
for  the  future,  —  a  hard-working  father  re- 
solved that  his  son  shall  be  a  scholar  and  a 
great  man  ;  a  mother  who  toils  all  day  at 
her  loom  to  help  supply  the  necessaries  of 

md  still  aspires  for  her  son-;  sisters 

hare  her  labors;  and  the  boyish  hope 
of  the  house  who  hesitates  whether  to  be 

:ier  or  a  priest,  who  makes  and  wor- 

an  army  of  mud  saints  in  the  morn- 
xl  in  the  afternoon  leads  to  the  fight 
a  battalion  of  clay  warriors.  The  charac- 
ter of  Sarmiento's  mother  is  portrayed  by 
her  son  with  touching  affection,  and  he  takes 
the  reader's  heart,  as  he  tells,  with  mingling 
humor  and  pathos,  of  her  conscientious 
industry,  her  old-fashioned  faith  and  preju- 
dices, and  her  grief  at  the  progress  of  mod- 
ern ideas  in  her  children.  She  was  a 
woman,  however,  not  only  of  ths  best  heart, 
but  of  strong  mind,  and  her  son  piously 
acknowledges  her  excellent  influence  upon 
his  whole  life.  He  was  put  to  school  in  his 
fifth  year,  and  remained  at  his  studies  till  he 
was  fifteen,  the  family  meanwhile  denying 
itself  the  aid  of  his  services,  and  supporting 
him  in  the  career  marked  out  for  him.  His 
parents,  his  teacher,  and  his  friends  ex- 
pected him  to  be  chosen  for  public  educa- 
tion among  the  six  youth  selected  in  those 

by  the  Argentine  government  from 
each  of  its  provinces ;  local  influences  de- 
feated this  hope,  and  so  young  Domingo 
became  a  grocer's  clerk,  but  in  the  inter- 
vals of  business  he  continued  his  studies, 
and  devoured  books  with  an  inappeasable 
hunger.  "  In  the  mornings  after  sweeping 
the  shop,  I  read,  and  as  a  certain  senora 

'1  by  on  her  way  from  church,  and  her 
fs  fell  day  after  day,  month  after 

'i,  upon  that  boy,  immovable,  insensi- 
ble  to   every   disturbance,    his   eyes    fixed 
a  book,  one  day,  shaking  her  head, 
•  her  family,  '  That  lad  cannot  be 
good  ;  if  thoiie  books  were  good,  he  would 
i  cad  them  so  eagerly ! '  "     It  is  inter- 

;  to  know  that  the  favorite  book  of  this 

young  Spanish  American  was  the  "  Life  of 

Franklin,"  and   that   in   all    his   ambitious 

•  ;f  Franklin's  fame  that  he 

•iost  emulous. 
At  sixteen  he  had  advanced  so  far  ; 

.'.'urn  as  to  be  imprisoned  for  a  politi- 
cal offence  against  one  of  the  local  despots 
\vho  had  already  begun  in  the  new  republic 


to  substitute  their  atrocities  for  the  mis- 
government  of  Spain.  He  was  among  the 
first  to  take  arms  against  these  on  the  side 
of  liberty  and  civilization  ;  and  when  his 
party  was  crushed  he  fled  to  Chili.  Re- 
turning to  his  native  state  of  San  Juan  in 
1836,  when  twenty-five  years  old,  he  re- 
newed his  studies  with  the  help  of  several 
languages  acquired  during  his  exile,  and 
issued  a  few  numbers  of  a  newspaper,  which 
the  government  presently  suppressed.  Of 
course,  he  was  in  opposition  to  this  govern- 
ment ;  he  was  imprisoned  again,  and  his 
life  was  often  in  danger  ;  but  he  remained 
four  years  in  San  Juan,  expressing  by  every 
word  and  act  his  unconquerable  zeal  for 
letters  and  civilization.  He  spent  the  two 
succeeding  years  in  Chili,  where  he  em- 
ployed himself  in  literature  and  politics, 
with  a  view  to  promoting  friendship  between 
the  people  of  all  the  Spanish  states,  and  in 
1841  went  back  to  his  own  country  to  par- 
ticipate in  a  revolt  against  Rosas  the  tyrant. 
The  movement  failed,  and  his  residence  in 
Chili  was  thus  prolonged.  He  established 
a  literary  journal  in  Santiago,  wrote  school- 
books,  founded  the  first  normal  school  in 
America,  and  devoted  himself  to  elevating 
the  intellectual  and  social  condition  of 
teachers  in  a  country  where  a  man  had 
been  sentenced,  for  robbing  a  church,  "  to 
serve  three  years  as  a  schoolmaster."  He 
published  several  works  of  a  biographical 
and  political  nature  at  this  time,  and  sub- 
stituted in  the  schools  such  books  as  the 
'  Life  of  Franklin '  for  the  monkish  legends 
from  which  the  children  once  learned  to 
read.  But  he  met  with  annoying  opposi- 
tion as  a  foreigner,  and  Chili  never  fully 
acknowledged  the  good  he  did  till  long 
after  he  had  quitted  her  soil.  In  1847  he 
set  out  on  his  travels  through  Europe  and 
the  United  States,  of  which  he  has  written 
a  spirited  and  charming  narrative,  and  which 
he  put  to  the  most  practical  use,  devoting 
his  close  observation  of  communities  and 
governments  everywhere  to  the  benefit  of  his 
own  countrymen.  In  the  United  States  he 
made  the  acquaintance  of  the  late  Horace 
Mann,  and  thoroughly  studied  our  free- 
school  system,  which  after  great  difficulty 
he  caused  to  be  adopted  in  Buenos  Ayres. 
He  helped  to  overthrow  Rosas  in.  1851, 
but  again  left  his  country  when  he  found 
that  the  general  of  the  insurgents  only  de- 
sired to  become  another  Rosas.  He  went  to 
live  in  Buenos  Ayres,  however,  in  1857,  ar.d 
soon  re-entered  the  public  service,  on  the 
side  of  liberty,  education,  and  moderation. 


376 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[September, 


He  carried  through  the  Senate  a  measure 
for  building  two  model  schools  in  the  cap- 
ital, and  in  1860  there  were  17,000  children 
receiving  free  instruction  in  the  city ;  he 
also  advocated  perfect  religious  equality, 
and  there  are  now  as  many  Protestant  as 
Catholic  churches  in  Buenos  Ayres.  Hav- 
ing always  detested  cattle-rearing  as  bar- 
barizing, through  the  isolation  and  idle- 
ness in  which  it  maintained  the  farmers, 
he  procured  from  the  government  the  right 
to  survey  public  lands  in  small  farms,  and 
sell  these  cheaply  to  actual  settlers  ;  and, 
in  a  single  province,  the  lands  once  belong- 
ing to  thirty-nine  individuals  now  sup- 
port a  happy  and  industrious  population  of 
twenty  thousand  freeholders.  These  and 
other  benevolent  measures  engaged  his 
attention  during  intervals  of  revolution  at 
Buenos  Ayres,  and  they  have  never  ceased  to 
have  his  sympathy  and  co-operation  during 
the  years  he  has  represented  his  country 
at  Washington.  Any  book  by  such  a  man 
would  demand  attention  from  us  ;  the  book 
which  of  all  others  seems  to  teach  us  Span- 
ish America,  which  exhibits  the  struggles  of 
a  convulsed  and  unhappy  state  now  at  last 
entering  upon  a  period  of  just  and  tranquil 
government,  and  which  explains  the  causes 
contributing  for  so  long  a  time  to  the  misery 
and  oppression  of  her  people,  has  singu- 
lar claims  upon  our  interest.  No  difference 
of  race  or  faith  can  separate  our  fate  wholly 
from  that  of  the  other  American  republics. 
Self-government  if  good  in  itself  is  good 
for  every  people.  Its  failure  anywhere  is  a 
blow  at  cur  prosperity :  its  endeavors  have 
a  perpetual  hold  upon  our  sympathies. 

Scfior  Sarmiento's  work  was  first  pub- 
lished in  Chili,  in  1841  ;  the  French  trans- 
lation which  attracted  the  flattering  notice 
of  the  Parisian  critics  (especially  those  of 
the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes),  at  the  time 
of  its  publication,  was  printed  in  1846.  It 
merited  this  notice,  aside  from  the  inter- 
est of  its  subject,  by  its  clear  and  graphic 
style,  and  its  comprehensive  and  confi- 
dent philosophy.  It  is  the  story  of  that 
strange  yet  logical  succession  of  events,  by 
which,  in  Buenos  Ayres  and  the  Argen- 
,  tine  States,  the  cities  collected  within  their 
gates  the  civilization  of  the  country,  and 
the  people  who  dwelt  without  on  the  great 
plains,  and  isolated  from  all  humanizing 
influences,  lapsed  into  barbarism.  Our 
author  continually  likens  these  terrible 
peasants  to  the  Bedouins,  whose  appear- 
ance and  usages  when  he  beheld  them  in 
years,  for  the  first  time,  were  familiar 


to  him  through  their  similarity  to  those  of 
the  gauchos.  The  gaucho  never  learned 
anything  but  the  lasso  and  the  knife  ;  with 
the  one  he  ruled  over  his  vast  herds,  with 
the  other  he  defended  himself  against  wild 
beasts,  and  fought  out  his  personal  feuds 
to  the  death.  There  was  no  law  for  him, 
and  scarcely  anything  like  religion  ;  there 
was  no  society  but  that  of  his  fellow- herds- 
men, when  they  met  at  the  country  stores 
which  here  and  there  dotted  the  plains, 
and  supplied  the  few  necessaries  and  lux- 
uries of 'the  barbarous  inhabitants.  For 
amusement  he  drank  and  danced,  or  lis- 
tened to  the  rude  songs  of  the  cantor  es,  — 
a  race  of  minstrels,  whose  life  and  office  re- 
flected a  faint  and  distorted  image  of  those 
of  the  feudal  troubadors,  and  who  cele- 
brated the  deeds  and  characters  of  the 
gauchos.  'These  poets  had  so  deep  a  hold 
upon  the  affections  of  the  gauchos,  that 
they  made  the  name  of  minstrel  sacred,  and 
caused  even  a  poet  from  the  hated  cities, 
who  once  fell  into  their  hands,  to  be  treated 
with  respect  and  tenderness.  But  nearly 
all  the  circumstances  of  the  gaucho's  life 
fostered  his  savage  egotism,  his  pride  and 
faith  in  personal  prowess,  and  his  desire  to 
excel  by  violence.  When  in  an  evil  hour 
they  began  to  talk  politics  at  the  country 
stores,  this  cruel  and  fearless  animal  was 
filled  with  the  lust  of  rapine  and  dominion  ; 
and  when  Facundo  Quiroga,  a  gaucho  fa- 
mous throughout  the  plains  for  his  strength, 
his  courage,  and  his  homicides,  proposed 
an  invasion  of  the  cities,  and  a  subversion 
of  settled  government,  an  irresistible  force 
of  gauchos  was  ready  to  follow  him. 

Senor  Sarmiento  tells  the  tale  of  Quiroga's 
success  with  vivid  minuteness,  and  presents, 
in  a  series  of  pictures  and  studies  of  char- 
acter, an  idea  of  one  of  the  strangest  politi- 
cal convulsions  known  to  history.  At  this 
time,  and  at  this  distance  from  the  scene  of 
the  events,  the  reader  feels  the  want  of 
some  general  outline  of  narrative,  but  this 
Mrs.  Mann  has  supplied  in  a  Preface  to  the 
work ;  and  in  accepting  the  author's  . 
ments,  it  is  only  necessary  to  account  for 
the  warmth  and  color  with  which  a  partisan 
of  the  cities  must  speak  of  the  gai 
and  their  leaders.  There  is  no  reason 
doubt  his  truth.  It  at  once  explains 
character  of  such  tyrants  as  Rosas  of 
nos  Ayres,  and  Lopez  of  Paraguay,  wl 
they  are  described  as  gaucho  chiefs, 
heirs  of  Quiroga's  system  and  ideas. 

It    is    needless   to   follow  in   detail   the 
adventures  of  this  leader,  who  employed 


1868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


377 


the  most  unscrupulous  guile  where  force 
did  not  serve  him  to  capture  the  cities. 
The  plains  triumphed  through  him ;  the 
towns  one  after  another  fell  before  him,  and 
were  desolated  by  the  punishments  he  or- 
dered, sometimes  for  their  resistance,  but 
often  merely  to  strike  terror  into  them. 
Men  were  shot  by  scores ;  women  were 
subjected  to  every  insult  and  outrage ;  com- 
merce was  paralyzed  by  exactions  that  took 
every  coin  from  circulation,  and  heaped  the 
gaming-tables  with  the  stakes  for  which 
Quiroga  and  his  gauchos  played.  Savage 
and  treacherous  caprice  ruled  instead  of 
law  ;  churches  were  desecrated  ;  schools 
were  destroyed ;  whatever  bore  the  mark 
of  civilization  or  refinement  was  trampled 
under  foot.  The  triumph  of  barbarism  was 
complete. 

Quiroga's  .career  is  one  of  several  very 
fully  portrayed  in  this  interesting  book, 
and  scarcely  surpasses  in  its  curious  fas- 
cination that  of  Aldao,  the  monk  turned 
gaucho  leader,  or  that  of  either  of  Aldao's 
brothers.  Rosas  and  Lopez  are  introduced 
only  incidentally,  though  sufficiently  to 
identify  them  with  the  gaucho  movement ; 
but  a  multitude  of  subordinate  actors  in 
the  scenes  of  that  singular  tragedy  are 
sketched  with  an  effect  of  making  us  know 
the  political  and  social  life  of  Spanish 
America  as  it  has  never  appeared  before  in 
literature. 


The  History  of  the  Nary  during  tfa  Rebel- 
lion. By  CHARLES  B.  BOYNTON,  D.  D., 
Chaplain  of  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives, and  Assistant  Professor  at  the  U.  S. 
Naval  Academy.  Illustrated  with  nu- 
•ous  engravings.  2  Vols.  New  York : 
Appleton  &  Co. 

THE  false  impressions  conveyed  by  this 
work  begin  with  the  title-page.  The  author 
has  never  reported  at  the  Naval  Academy. 
Probably  he  has  been  appointed  Assistant 
Professor,  and  assigned  to  Huty  as  an  his- 
torian. 

Of  the  numerous  engravings  with  which 
these  volumes  are  illustrated,  three  are 
heads  of  naval  officers,  and  six  of  politicians 
or  contractors.  The  frontispiece  is  the 
venerable  countenance  of  Mr.  Secretary 
Welles.  The  original  appointment  of  this 
gentleman  was  a  piece  of  poetical  justice. 
Mr.  Secretary  Toucey  having  betrayed  his 
trust,  his  successor  was  chosen  from  the 
same  rural  town.  President  Lincoln  had 


humor,  and  a  good-natured  confidence  that 
any  man  could  do  anything  if  he  tried.  He 
himself  became  the  embodiment  of  North- 
ern public  sentiment,  with  all  its  faithful 
courage  and  cheerful  justice.  During  the 
President's  lifetime,  Mr.  Welles  displayed 
a  measure  of  the  same  spirit.  At  the  out- 
set of  the  war  he  sustained  Commodore 
Stringham  in  protecting  and  employing  col- 
ored refugees  ;  and,  although  the  veteran 
sailor  soon  shared  the  fate  of  General  Fre- 
mont) the  government  vessels  continued  to 
be  a  safe  refuge  for  runaway  slaves.  In 
the  navy  it  was  hardly  an  innovation  for 
blacks  and  whites  to  sail  and  fight  side  by 
side  in  the  same  ship  ;  while,  in  the  army, 
the  utmost  that  was  done  at  any  period  of 
the  war  was  to  enroll  the  blacks  in  separate 
regiments,  which  were  usually  assigned  to- 
separate  service. 

On  the  legal  questions  which  arose  in  the 
administration  of  the  Navy  Department 
Mr.  Welles  was  frequently  mistaken.  He 
desired  the  President  to  close  the  Southern 
ports  instead  of  blockading  them.  He  sus- 
tained Captain  Wilkes  in  the  Trent  case. 
And,  to  this  day,  gallant  officers  are  de- 
prived of  prize  money,  on  the  ground  that  the 
statute  at  the  time  of  capture  regulates  the 
distribution.  It  is  true  that  prize-money  is 
a  relic  of  more  barbarous  times.  It  is  also 
a  lottery  tainted  with  favoritism.  The  Ad- 
miralty can  send  whom  it  pleases  to  watch 
the  rich  avenues  of  hostile  trade.  There  is 
a  premium  laid  upon  sufficient  connivance 
to  keep  the  golden  current  flowing ;  and, 
at  best,  low  motives  are  substituted  for 
sterling  patriotism.  Good  pay  at  all  times, 
and  good  work  everywhere  required,  are 
the  conditions  of  sound  service.  Profits 
and  perquisites  belong  to  the  Republic. 
So  long,  however,  as  prize-money  is  given, 
it  should  follow  well-known  rules  ;  and  no 
rule  is  better  settled  than  that  the  statute 
at  the  time  of  adjudication  determines  the 
distribution. 

Dr.  Boynton's  history  and  Mr.  Bcecher's 
late  novel  resemble  each  other  in  consist- 
ing largely  of  bits  of  sermons  afloat  in  a 
war-story ;  but  Dr.  Boyntou  nowhere  al- 
ludes to  the  sin  of  nepotism.  Whatever 
becomes  the  ordinary  way  of  the  world 
ceases  to  appear  objectionable  ;  and  yet  we 
punish  crimes,  not  for  their  novelty,  but  for 
their  criminality.  Perhaps,  however,  we 
ought  to  thank  Mr.  Welles  for  his  mod- 
eration with  such  a  wide  field  for  jobbery 
before  him.  The  whole  commercial  marine 
was  driven  from  the  seas  just  when  the 


378 


Rcvieivs  and  Literary  Notices. 


[September, 


government  wanted  a  large  extemporane- 
ous force  to  blockade  the  Southern  coast. 
It  is  not  in  political  human  nature  to  man- 
age such  a  vast  transaction  without  enrich- 
ing one's  friends. 

In  the  construction  of  new  ships  for  the 
permanent  fleet,  both  Mr.  Welles  and  Mr. 
Assistant  Secretary  Fox  deserve  credit  for 
accepting  the  monitor  scheme.  The  ele- 
mentary principles  of  building  war  steam- 
ships are  even  now  so  dimly  discerned,  and 
so  much  involved  in  costly  and  various 
experiments,  that  the  sole  success  of  the 
new  fleet  might  easily  have  been  missed. 
The  wooden  clipper  ship  was  the  latest 
triumph  cf  American  ship-building.  The 
appropriate  application  of  steam  to  this 
model  was  the  side-wheel,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Adriatic ;  and  the  natural  armament 
consisted  of  broadside  batteries  of  moder- 
ate-sized rifled  guns.  Instead  of  the  long 
and  high  lines  of  the  clipper,  the  screw  re- 
quires a  broad  and  low  ship,  which  affords 
great  buoyancy  and  lateral  steadiness.  This 
suggests  a  central  battery  of  heavy  shell- 
guns,  and  the  iron-clad  turret  follows.  The 
single-turret  monitor  of  moderate  size,  for 
coast  service,  is  right  in  principle  and  prac- 
tice. The  large,  sea-going,  iron-clad,  screw 
man-of-war  is  yet  to  seek. 

Neither  Mr.  Welles  nor  the  historian  of 
his  administration  has  clearly  set  forth  the 
valuable  lessons  taught  by  the  Confederate 
naval  operations,  namely,  how  to  encounter 
steam  and  cuirass.  First,  with  regard  to 
steam,  the  simplest  resource  was  submarine 
obstruction,  which  at  least  detains  the  ene- 
my under  fire  of  shore-batteries,  and  pre- 
vents that  rapid  running  of  the  gantlet 
which  is  one  of  the  capital  advantages  of 
steam.  The  next  question  is,  If  the  enemy 
will  not  come  to  the  snag,  how  can  the  snag 
be  launched  against  the  eiiemy  ?  The  prac- 
tical answer  is  the  steam  ram ;  and  how 
effective  this  may  prove  against  long  and 
high  ships  at  rest  was  seen  at  Lissa.  Sec- 
ondly, with  reference  to  cuirassed  ships,  the 
first  observation  is,  that  they  are  virtually 
impregnable  above  the  water-line.  Can 
they  not,  then,  be  assailed  from  below,  as 
the  negro  kills  the  shark  ?  The  rebels 
were  not  slow  in  trying  the  experiment ; 
and  more  than  one  of  our  stoutest  monitors 
lie  at  the  bottom  of  Southern  bays,  blown 
up  by  electrical  torpedoes.  The  five  mili- 
tary ports  of  France  are  already  defended 
with  these  terrible  engines  ;  while  Austria 
is  making  them  more  deadly  by  using  gun- 
cotton,  and  Prussia  is  experimenting  in  nitro- 


glycerine. The  problem  not  yet  satisfac- 
torily solved,  in  this  method  of  warfare,  is 
how  to  send  out  a  torpedo  to  assail  the 
enemy,  in  case  he  will  not  approach  the 
channel  where  the  earthquake  lies.  The 
rebels  were  bold,  and  sometimes  successful 
in  their  attempts  to  do  this  with  submarine 
boats,  or  "  Davids,"  as  they  were  called,  in 
allusion  to  our  Goliaths  in  armor. 

Mr.  Welles  was  naturally  more  attentive 
to  the  positive  introduction  of  steam  and 
armor  than  to  the  methods  of  resisting 
them ;  but  the  results  of  his  labors  are  by 
no  means  commensurate  with  the  great  ex- 
penditure of  money.  We  have  a  number 
of  wooden  ships,  whose  delicate  clipper 
hulls  are  tortured  with  monstrous  ordnance, 
propelled  by  screws,  and  encumbered  with 
a  full  cargo  of  fanciful  machinery  burning 
prodigious  quantities  of  coal,  and  1; 
rates  of  speed  very  properly  descril 
fabulous.  For  iron  ships,  we  have  a  large 
assortment  of  monitors,  some  of  them  cost- 
ing a  million  apiece,  half  of  them  totally 
unserviceable,  and  thirty  or  forty  cf  them 
incapable  of  floating.  The  real  state  of  the 
case  would  become  manifest,  if  the  good 
monitors  were  designated  by  numbers,  and 
the  senseless  jargon  of  Algonquin  names 
was  reserved  for  those  which  are  virtually 
extinct.  In  view  of  these  facts,  it  is  not 
strange  that  the  "line"  of  the  navy  c:ul 
with  singular  unanimity  for  a  Board  of  Sur- 
vey, composed  of  naval  officers,  to  control 
naval  construction.  The  creation  of  such  a 
board  is  perhaps  wrong  in  theory,  but  ap- 
parently necessary  under  present  circum- 
stances, just  as  the  State  of  New  Yc: ' 
found  it  necessary  to  put  the  most  impor- 
tant interests  of  the  city  into  commission. 
Under  President  Grant,  however,  the  Board 
may  cease  to  be  required.  With  his  master- 
ly eye  for  men,  he  may  be  expected  to  man 
the  Navy  Department  with  a  view  to  thor- 
ough efficiency ;  and. the  only  innovat' 
may  then  desire  is  an  admiral  corarn;:. 
the  navy,  and  residing  at  Washington,  like 
the  General  commanding  the  army. 

The   most   animated    opposition   to 
Board  of  Survey  has  come  from  the 
of  naval  engineers.    This  corps  has  ris 
into   importance   during   the   war, 
influence  in  Congress,  and  favor  with 
Department.     They  aspire  to  the  posit 
of  the  engineer  corps  in  the  army,  but 
fortunately  in   many  cases  without  cor 
spending   social   qualifications  or  scienfi 
attainments.     Latterly,  however,  they  h 
endeavored  to  secure  young  graduates 


1 868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


379 


scientific  schools,  and  to  make  the  exami- 
nations foi-  promotion  more  stringent.     But 
the  surest  way  to  create  a  scientific  corps 
in  harmony  with  the  rest  of  the  service  is 
to  assign  annually,  from  the  best  graduates 
at  the  Naval  Academy,  a  certain  number, 
who  shall  then  enjoy  the  advantage  of  two 
or  three  years'  technical  training.    Of  course 
young  gentlemen  would  not  expect  to 
engines,  at  the  termination  of  this  ex- 
!  course  of  study.     The  engine-driver 
1  be  a  master-mechanic  and  a  warrant 
.     Moreover,  there  is  no  reason  why 
rs  of  the  marine  corps,  and  also  of  the 
.ing  and  revenue  services,  should  not 
iwn  from  the  Naval  Academy. 
The  Secretary  has  done  well  in  establish- 
.c  system  of  school-ships,  where  ap- 
jrentices  are  taught  the   mariner's  trade, 
or  the  supply  of  the  navy ;  but  at  present 
the  boys  have  too  much  the  air  of  galley- 
slaves,    and   the   schooling  is   said    to   be 
merely  nominal.     They  ought  to  be  quar- 
tered   ashore,    like    the    midshipmen,    six 
nonths  in  the  year,  and  receive  a  thorough 
common-school  education.    Considering  the 
great  demand  made  upon  the  merchant  ser- 
vice, during  the  war,  for  ships,  men,  and 
officers,  something  should  be  done  to  pro- 
mote   the    efficiency   of  this    grand    naval 
reserve.      In   every  considerable  maritime 
country  but  ours,  masters   and  mates  are 
subjected    to    examination.      The    perfect 
working  of  this  system  would   call   for   a 
marine    college    at    every    large    seaport, 
where  aspirants  for  the  merchant   service 
might  receive  professional  training. 

Passing  from  the  discussion  of  naval  con- 
struction  and  administration  to  the  more 
stirring  record   of  naval   achievement,  we 
ind  in  these  volumes  a  popular  sketch  of 
important   events,   but   we    are    soon    im- 
'1  with  the  belief  that  some  abler  and 
.:i  hand  is  wanted  to  complete 
ture.     For  instance,  we  find  no  men- 
f  the  important  service  rendered  by 
vy  just  after  the  battle  of  Bull  Run, 
1  to  be  a  second  Bladens- 
to  lay  the  capital  at  the  feet  of 
•:'..-my.     A  disciplined  naval  force  un- 
i'jutenant  Foxhall  A.  Parker  quickly 
•  occupied   Fort  Ellsworth,  got 
heavy  guns  into  position,  SJ 

on  Alexandria,  and  prob- 
ably  saved'  that  city,   if  not  Washington. 
c  no  mention  of  Rodgers's  agency  in 
organizing  the  navrfl  force  on  the  Western 
,    previously   to   Foote's    taking   the 
command  there;  nor   of  the   service   ren- 


dered by  the  navy  about  the  time  of  the 
seven  days'  fight,  when  the  enemy,  alluding 
to  the  size  of  the  navy  missiles,  said  we 
pitched  Dutch-ovens  at  them,  and  the  rebel 
historian  Pollard  says,  that  the  gunboats 
prevented  the  march  of  their  forces  along 
the  river-banks. 

No  mention  is  made  of  the  fights  with  the 
Fort  on  Drury's  Bluif,  May  15,  1862 ;  nor 
of  the  gale  weathered  by  the  Weehawken,' 
in  which  the  sea-going  capabilities  of  a  mon- 
itor were  first  well  ascertained.  Aixl  in 
the  account  of  the  Weehawken's  fight  with 
the  Atlanta,  where  the  fifteen-inch  gun  \vas 
first  practically  proved  efficient,  no  mention 
is  made  of  the  name  of  Captain  John  Rod- 
gers,  the  commander  of  the  Weehawken, 
although  he  received  the  thanks  of  Con- 
gress for  that  action,  and  was  promoted  to 
the  rank  of  Commodore. 

The  case  of  Commander  Preble,  who  was 
hastily  dismissed  the  service  for  not  pre- 
venting the  Oreto  (or  Florida)  from  running 
into  Mobile,  is  not  fairly  stated  in  this  work. 
It  was  not  known  off  Mobile  that  the  rebels 
had  a  man-of-war  afloat,  and  the  Oreto  had 
the  appearance  of  a  large  English  gunboat. 
The  blockading  squadron  had  accidentally 
been  reduced  to  two  vessels,  one  of  which 
was  the  Oneida,  commanded  by  Preble. 
One  of  the  Oneida's  boilers  had  been  under- 
going necessary  repair,  and  steam'  was 
hardly  raised  in  it  when  the  Oreto  hove  in 
sight.  She  was  steering  directly  for  the 
Oneida's  anchorage  ;- and  when  she  had 
approached  within  about  five  miles,  the 
Oneida  was  got  under  way,  and  went  out  to 
meet  her.  The  Oneida  rounded  to  across 
the  bow  of  the  Oreto,  hailed  her,  fired  three 
guns  in  as  rapid  succession  as  possible 
across  her  bow,  the  last  to  graze  her  stem ; 
and  then,  three  minutes  after  the  first  gun 
was  fired,  and  when  she  was  only  about 
four  hundred  yards  distant,  the  whole 
broadside  was  fired  into  her.  After  t!-.at 
broadside,  the  Oreto  hauled  down  her  Eng- 
lish colors,  and  rapidly  gained  on  the  >' 
da,  which  pursued  the  chase  until  the  Ore- 
to was  under  cover  of  Fort  Morgan,  and 
the  rapid  shoaling  of  the  water  showed  that 
another  minute's  continuance  c'. 
would  put  the  Oneida  aground  on  the  south- 
east shoal.  Dr.  Boynton  says  the  « 
ran  in  unscathed;  the  rebel  accour.: 
that  slvj  was  struck  several  times,  four  men 
killed,  and  several  wounded.  She  : 
ran  out  through  a  squadron  of  : 
!s,  and  no  oliker  was  punished. 

After  Commander  Preble  was  reinstated, 


380 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[September, 


he  led  the  fleet  brigade,  which  was  organ- 
ized from  the  officers,  seamen,  and  marines 
of  the  South  Atlantic  Blockading  Squadron, 
and  which  did  good  service  in  preparing 
for  the  arrival  of  General  Sherman  from 
his  celebrated  march,  participating  in  all 
the  actions,  which  were  often  severe.  Dr. 
Boynton  makes  no  mention  of  this  brigade. 
He  says  that  he  had  not  time  or  space  to 
give  a  full  account  of  the  doings  of  the 
South  Atlantic  Squadron. 

The  account  of  the  Fort  Fisher  attack 
and  capture  is  very  meagre.  Only  the 
names  of  the  iron-clads  and  of  their  com- 
manding officers  are  given.  There  is  no 
list  of  vessels  composing  the  squadron,  or 
of  their  commanders  ;  and  the  names  of  the 
commodores  who  commanded  divisions  are 
not  mentioned. 

The  account  of  the  cruise  of  the  Kear- 
sarge  is  also  meagre  and  inaccurate.  Cap- 
tain Winslow  was  not  placed  in  command 
of  the  Kearsarge  "  in  the  early  part  of  1862." 
The  Rappahannock  was  not  blockaded  by 
the  Kearsarge.  Semmes  did  not  send  Wins- 
low  a  challenge.  The  Kearsarge  had  no 
intention  to  close  with  the  Alabama.  The 
reason  for  fighting  in  circles  seems  to  have 
been  simply  the  accident  that  both  vessels 
had  pivoted  to  starboard.  The  name  of 
the  only  person  whose  death  resulted  from 
the  action  was  not  "  Gorrin,"  but  Go  wan. 
No  shots  were  fired  by  the  Kearsarge  after 
the  white  flag  had  been  seen,  although  the 
Alabama  did  fire  two  shots  after  she  had 
surrendered.  Mr.  Lancaster,  of  the  Deer- 
hound,  was  asked  to  assist  in  rescuing  the 
drowning  men.  The  Kearsarge  was  close 
by,  and  made  no  objection  to  his  departure. 
The  officer  who  came  aboard  the  Kearsarge 
stated  that  he  was  an  Englishman,  and  mas- 
ter's mate  aboard  the  Alabama ;  that  Cap- 
tain Semmes  did  not  instruct  him  to  sur- 
render the  Alabama,  but  ordered  him  to 
urge  the  Kearsarge  to  hasten  to  the  rescue 
of  the  former  vessel's  crew.  It  is  true  that 
this  officer  was  allowed  to  depart  with  his 
boat's  crew,  and  he  sought  the  protection 
of  the  English  flag. 

We  are  forced  to  conclude  that  a  good 
history  of  the  navy  during  the  Rebellion 
is  still  to  be  desired.  Our  next  war  will 
very  possibly  be  a  naval  one,  inasmuch  as 
France  and  England  are  not  likely  to  relin- 
quish the  Pacific  to  the  American  and  Rus- 
sian flags  without  a  struggle.  There  arc 
four  points  which  we  require :  San  Francisco 
and  the  Sandwich  Islands  in  the  south, 
Victoria  and  Sitka  in  the  north.  Of  those 


we  have  already  two.  We  shall  need  a  first- 
class  yard  with  ample  docks  and  shops,  at 
San  Francisco,  and  eventually  another  at 
Victoria.  We  shall  need  a  thoroughly  cS- 
cient  Navy  Department,  and  a  large  list  of 
brave,  sensible,  and  scientific  officers.  And 
we  want  to  see  the  service  ckeered  by  a 
wise,  impartial,  and  patriotic  history  of  its 
past  achievements,  which  have,  perhaps, 
been  only  preliminary  to  the  grand  contest 
of  the  future. 


The  Spanish  Gypsy.    A  Poem.    By  GEORGE 
ELIOT.     Boston  :   Ticknor  and  Fields. 

IT  is  disagreeable  and  mistaken  criticism 
which  attempts  to  prescribe  some  particu- 
lar form  of  expression  as  the  best  for  a 
given  author ;  and* we  do  not  concern  our- 
selves with  the  wisdom  of  Miss  Evans's 
choice  of  the  poetic  form  for  the  story  told 
in  The  Spanish  Gypsy,  nor  with  the  possi- 
bilities and  limitations  of  her  genius,  when 
we  say  that  up  to  this  moment  we  think 
she  has  scarcely  proved  herself  a  poet. 
The  fact  is  felt  in  nearly  every  part  of  her 
present  work,  and  is  noticeable  in  its  dra- ; 
matic  and  descriptive  passages,  no  less 
than  in  the  lyrics  with  which  it  is  inter- 
spersed. She  betrays  her  unfamiliarity 
with  the  mere  letter  as  well  as  the  spirit 
of  poetic  art,  and  makes  blunders  in  v|H 
sincation,  which  cannot  be  blamed  without 
some  apparent  petulance  in  the  critic ;  for 
perfection  of  mechanical  execution  in  a 
modern  poem  is  so  entirely  taken  for 
granted,  that  the  charge  of  failure  in  th 
spect  looks  much  like  ungenerous  carpioflB 
and  is  received  with  liberal  incredulity.  But 
even  a  careless  reader  of  The  Spanisffl 
Gypsy  could  not  fail  to  note  how  many 
lines  have  but  four  feet,  or  four  feet  and  a 
half,  and  how  little  is  done  to  restore  the 
lost  balance  by  giving  other  lines  five  and  a 
half,  six,  and  even  seven  feet.  It  was  alto- 
gether hardy  in  s.o  imperfect  a  versifier  as 
Miss  Evans  to  attempt  to  make  English  ears 
acquainted  with  the  subtile  music  of  the 
Spanish  asoimntc,  and  it  is  not  surprising 
that  the  effort  should  have  failed,  although 
sense,  movement,  everything,  is  sacrificed 
to  the  asonants,  which  obstinately  remains 
at  last  as  little  like  the  peculiar  Spanish 
rhyme,  as  the  lyrics  are  like  poetry,  espe- 
cially the  poetry  of  Spanish  condones.  The 
inequality  of  the  versification  infects  the  ex- 
pression of  ideas,  which  is  sometimes  null, 
and  quite  often  confused  and  imperfect. 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices, 


381 


Jntil  we  read  The  Spanish  Gypsy,  nothing 
fould  have  persuaded  us  that  Miss  Evans 
ould  write  lines  so  absolutely  discharged 
f  meaning  as  these  :  — 

"  For  strong  souls 

Live  like  fire-her.rtcd  suns  to  spend  their  strength 
In  furthest  striving  action." 

Or  so  turgid  and  obscure  as  these  :  — 

'Sweeping  like  some  pale  herald  from  the  dead, 
Whose  shadow-nurtured  eyes,  dazed  by  full  light. 
ight  without  but  give  reverted  sense 
nil's  imagery,  Silva  came." 

Cr  burdened  with  such  confused  and  hud- 
rgures  as  these  :  — 

1  hesitating,  all  his  frame  instinct 
With  high-born  spirit  never  used  to  dread, 
Or  crouch  for  smiles,  yet  stung,  yet  quivering 
With  helpless  strength,  and  in  his  soul  convulsed 

re  pale  horror  held  a  lamp 
Over  wide-reaching  crime." 

In  fact,  this  reluctant  and  deceitful  poetic 
form  always  seems  to  seek  unfair  advan- 
over  the  author's  thoughts,  and  to  get 
them  where,  as  it  appears  to  us,  prose 
would  be  entirely  subject  to  her  will.  We 
cannot  suppose,  for  example,  that  if  she 
had  not  been  writing  the  first  lines  of  the 
poem  in  verse,  she  would  have  permitted 
any  such  tumult  of  images  as  now  appears 
'in  them  :  — * 
'  'T  is  the  warm  South,  where  Europe  spreads  her 

Like  fretted  leaflets  breathing  on  the  deep  : 
Broad-breasted  Spain,  leaning  with  equal  love 
A  calm  earth-goddess  crowned  with  corn  and  vines, 
On  tiie  mid-sea  that  moans  with  memories, 
And  on  the  untravelled  ocean,  whose  vast  tides 
Pant  dumbly  passionate  with  the  dreams  of  youth." 

We  can  hardly,  however,  attribute  to  un- 
familiarity  with  metrical  expression  the  fol- 
|  lowing  very  surprising  lyric  :  — 

"Day  is  dying  !    Float,  O  song, 

Down  the  westward  river, 
Requiem  chanting  to  the  Day,  — 
Day,  the  mighty  (liver. 

"  Pierced  by  shafts  of  Time  he  bleeds, 

Melted  rubies  sending 
Through  the  river  and  the  sky, 
Earth  and  heaven  blending  ; 

"All  the  long-drawn  earthy  banks 
Up  to  cloud-land  lifting  ; 

between  them  drifts  the  swan, 
' Tvvixt  two  heavens  drifting. 

-  half  open,  like  a  flower 
Inly  deeper  flushing, 
Neck  and  bvo:i  t  as  virgin's  pure,  — 

Virgin  proudly  blushing. 
"  Day  is  dying  !     Float,  O  swan, 
Down  the  ruby  river  ; 
v,  song,  in  requiem 
To  the  mighty  Giver." 

This   5s   the  worst,  we   think,  —  though 


we  are  not  sure,  —  of  the  lyrics,  which 
are  all  bad.  Commonly  Miss  Evans  is  a 
poet  of  the  kind  described  in  the  fortunate 
jest  made  of  her  minstrel  Juan,  and  is 

"  Crazed  with  finding  words 
May  stick  to  things  and  seem  like  qualities." 

The  splendor  of  her  performance  is  an 
intellectual  polish,  not  a  spiritual  translu- 
cence,  and  its  climax  is  eloquence,  with 
the  natural  tendency  of  eloquence  to  pass 
into  grandiloquence  ;  though  Miss  Evans 
does  at  least  in  one  place  express  the 
quality  of  things  in  words  which  reveal 
poetry  of  thought.  It  is  where  Fedalma 
says  to  her  lover  :  — 

"  Do  you  know 

Sometimes  when  we  sit  silent,  and  the  air 
Breathes  gently  on  us  from  the  orange-trees, 
It  seems  that  with  the  whisper  of  a  word 
Our  souls  must  shrink,  get  poorer,  more  apart. 
Is  it  not  true?" 

And  Don  Silva  answers  :  — 

"  Yes,  dearest,  it  is  true. 
Speech  is  but  broken  light  upon  the  depth 
Of  the  unspoken  ;  even  your  loved  words 
Float  in  the  larger  meaning  of  your  voice 
As  something  dimmer." 

We  recall  fine  effects  in  the  poem,  though 
none  of  them  owe  their  success  to  the  poetic 
form,  and  one  of  the  best  is  in  prose.  It 
is  a  good  scene,  where  the  people  of  Don 
Silva's  household  attend  the  old  soldier 
as  he  reads  from  the  book  of  Alfonso  the 
Wise,  that  "  a  noble  is  more  dishonored 
than  other  men  if  he  does  aught  dishonora- 
ble "  ;  and  the  page  "who  doubts  and  dis- 
putes the  precept  puts  it  in  a  question  to 
Don  Silva,  at  that  moment  entering  with  a 
purpose  of  treason  in  his  heart.  It  is  also 
fine  where  Don  Silva,  having  renounced 
rank  and  creed  and  country,  and  turned 
Gypsy  for  love's  sake,  is  tormented  by  his 
o^vn  remorse,  and  by  the  suspicion  of  those 
fierce  adoptive  brothers  of  his,  as  they 
chant  around  their  camp  -  fire  the  curse 
which  shall  fall  upon  the  recreant  to  their 
tribe.  Usually,  however,  the  best  points 
to  the  poem  are  in  the  descriptions ;  and 
though  descriptive  poetry  is  of  the  same 
grade  in  art  as  landscape-painting,  yet  it  is 
poetry,  and  it  includes  about  all  that  can 
be  so  called  in  The  Spanish  Gypsy.  It  is 
great  praise  to  say  of  the  picture  of  the 
mountebank's  performance  in  the  plaza  at 
Bcdmar,  (where  the  scene  of  the  drama  for 
the  most  part  is,)  that  it  is  not  surpassed 
by  anything  in  Miss  Evans's  romances; 
and  we  think  any  reader  who  has  known  a 
southern  evening  of  summer,  and  has  seen 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[September, 


a  southern  population  in  its  unconscious, 
intense  enjoyment  of  it,  must  exult  to  feel 
the  truth  and  beauty  of  such  passages  as 
these : — 

"  'Tis  daylight  still,  but  now  the  golden  cross 
Uplifted  by  the  angel  on  the  dome 
Stands  rayless  in  calm  color  clear-defined 
Against  the  northern  blue  ;  from  turrets  high 
The  flitting  splendor  sinks  with  folded  wing 
Dark-hid  till  morning,  and  the  battlements 
Wear  soft  relenting  whiteness  mellowed  o'er 
By  summers  generous  and  winters  biar.d. 
Now  in  the  east  the  distance  casts  its  veil, 
And  gazes  with  a  deepening  earnestness. 

And  within  Bedmar 
Has  come  the  time  of  sweet  serenity 
When  color  glows  unglittering,  and  the  soul 
Of  visible  things  shows  silent  happiness, 
As  that  of  lovers  trusting  though  apart. 
The  ripe-cheeked  fruits,  the  crimson-petalled  flow- 
ers ; 

The  winged  life  that  pausing  seems  a  gem 
Cunningly  carven  on  the  dark  green  leaf: 
The  face  of  man  with  hues  supremely  blent 
To  difference  fine  as  of  a  voice  'mid  sounds  :  — 
Each  lovely  Light-dipped  thing  seems  to  emerge 
Flushed  gravely  from  baptismal  sacrament. 
All  beauteous  existence  rests,  yet  wakes, 
Lies  still,  yet  conscious,  with  clear  open  eyes 
And  gentle  breath  and  mild  suffused  joy. 
'T  is  day,  but  day  that  falls  like  melody 
Repeated  on  a  string  with  graver  tones,  — 
Tones  such  as  linger  in  a  long  farewell. 

From  o'er  the  roofs, 

And  from  the  shadowed  patios  cool,  there  spreads 
The  breath  of  flowers  and  aromatic  leaves 
Soothing  the  sense  with  bliss  indefinite,  — 
A  baseless  hope,  a  glad  presentiment, 
That  curves  the  lip  more  softly,  fills  the  eye 
With  more  indulgent  beam.     And  so  it  soothes, 
So  gently  sways  the  pulses  of  the  crowd 
Who  make  a  zone  about  the  central  spot 
Chosen  by  Roldan  for  his  theatre. 
Maids  with  arched  eyebrows,  delicate  -  pencilled, 

dark, 

Fold  their  round  arms  below  the  kerchief  full ; 
Men  shoulder  little  girls  ;  and  grandames  gray, 
But  muscular  still,  hold  babies  on  their  arms  ; 
While  mothers  keep  the  stout-legged  boys  in  front 
Against  their  skirts,  as  the  Greek  pictures  old 
Show  the  Chief  Mother  with  the  Boy  divine. 
Youths  keep  the  places  for  themselves,  and  roll 
Large  lazy  eyes,  and  call  recumbent  dogs 
(For  reasons  deep  below  the  reach  of  thought). 
The  old  men  cough  with  purpose,  wish  to  hint 
Wisdom  wkhin  that  cheapens  jugglery, 
Maintain  a  neutral  air,  and  knit  their  brows 
In  observation.     None  are  quarrelsome, 
Noisy,  or  very  merry  ;  for  their  blood 
Moves  slowly  into  fervor,  —  they  rejoice 
Like  those  dark  birds  that  sweep  with  heavy  wing, 
Cheering  their  mates  with  melancholy  cries. 

The  winge*d  sounds  exalt  the  thick-pressed  crowd 
With  a  new  pulse  in  common,  blending  all 
The  gazing  life  into  one  larger  soul 
With  dimly  widened  consciousness  :  as  waves 
In  heightened  movement  tell  of  waves  far  off. 
And  the  light  changes;  westward  stationed  clouds, 


The  sun's  ranged  outposts,  luminous  message  spread, 
Rousing  quiescent  things  to  doff  their  shade 
And  show  themselves  as  added  audience. 
Now  Pablo,  letting  fall  the  eager  bow, 
Solicits  softer  murmurs  from  the  strings. 

And  still  the  light  is  changing  :  high  above 
,     Float  soft  pink  clouds  ;  others  with  deeper  flush 
Stretch  like  flamingoes  bending  toward  the  south. 
Comes  a  more  solemn  brilliance  o'er  the  sky, 
A  meaning  more  intense  upon  the  air,  — 
The  inspiration  of  the  dying  day." 

Good  as  this  is,  there  is  a  picture  of  Juan 
the  poet,  with  his  audience  at  the  inn,  which 
is  equally  good,  with  like  richness  of  color, 
and  like  felicity  of  drawing  :  — 

"  While  Juan  sang,  all  round  the  tavern  court 
Gathered  a  constellation  of  black  eyes. 
Fat  Lola  leaned  upon  the  balcony 
With  arms  that  might  have  pillowed  Hercules 
(Who  built,   'tis  known,  the   mightiest   Spanish 

towns)  ; 

Thin  Alda's  face,  sad  as  a  wasted  passion, 
Leaned  o'er  the  coral-biting  baby's ;  'twixt  the  rails 
The  little  Pepe  showed  his  two  black  beads, 
His  flat-ringed  hair  and  small  Semitic  nose 
Complete  and  tiny  as  a  new-born  minnow; 
Patting  his  head  and  holding  in  her  arms 
The  baby  senior,  stood  Lorenzo's  wife 
All  negligent,  her  kerchief  discomposed 
By  little  clutches,  woman's  coquetry 
Quite  turned  to  mother's  cares  and  sweet  content 
These  on  the  balcony,  while  at  the  door 
Gazed  the  lank  boys  and  lazy-shouldered  men." 

It  is  the   sort  of  people  here  pictured 
with  whom  we  think  Miss  Evans  has  her 
only  success  with  character   in  her  poem, 
and  they  are  true  both  to  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury and  to  human  nature,  which  is  not  the 
case  with  their  betters.     We  desire  nothing 
racier,  more   individual,  than   the   talk  of 
Blasco,   the   Arrogonese    silversmith,   and 
that  new-baptized  Christian,  the  jolly  host 
of  the  inn,  as  well  as  some  of  their  inter- 
locutors, leaving  out  Juan  the  poet,  who  is 
not  much  better  when  he  talks  than  when  he 
sings.     We  imagine  that  these  characters, 
so  strongly  and  so   distinctively  Spanish, 
as  well  as  the  happy  local  color  of  the  de- 
scriptions, are  the  suggestion  of  that  vis;! 
which  the  author  made  to  Spain  after  the 
story  of  the  poem  was  written.    The  Middle 
Ages  linger  yet  in  Spain,  and  the  seen 
the  plaza  and  inn,  though  so  enchanting  as 
pictures  of  the  past,    must   have   been  in 
great  part  painted  from  life  in  our  own  time, 
and  Blasco,  Lopez,  the  Host,  Roldan  and 
Roldan's  monkey,  remodelled  if  not  created 
from  actual  knowledge  of  Spanish  men  and 
manners.     But  admirable  as  these  charac- 
ters are  in  themselves  and  in  association, 
they  do  nothing  to  advance  the  action   o 
the  story,  and  they  belong  to  that  promise 


1 868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


383 


of  interest  which  dwindles  rapidly  after  the 
first  books  of  the  poem,  and  is  never  wholly 
fulfilled. 

There  is  grandeur  in  the  conception  of 
the  work.  The  intention  of  representing  a 
conflict  between  national  religions  and  prej- 
udices and  personal  passions  and  aspira- 
tions, which  should  interpret  the  life  of  a 
period  so  marvellous  and  important  as  the 
close  of  the  fifteenth  century,  was  a  great 
one,  and  Miss  Evans  has  indicated  it  almost 
worthily  in  the  prologue  of  the  first  book  of 
her  poem,  recurring  to  it  with  something  of 
like  strength  in  the  prologues  of  each  suc- 

r.g  book.  In  these  we  are  aware  of 
the  far-reaching  imagination  and  fine  syn- 

•  power  which  are  so  notable  in  the 
proem  to  "  Romola  "  ;  and  in  those  minor 

cters  of  the  drama  which  we  have 
mentioned  we  recognize  success  not  inferior 
to  that  which  delights  in  the  people  of  the 
great  romance.  But  nothing  could  be  in 

cr  contrast  than  the  distinct  impres- 
sion left  upon  the  mind  by  the  chief  ideas 
rmd  personages  of  Romola,  and  by  the 

illy  recollected  intent  and  the  figures 

;  develop  it  in  The  Spanish  Gypsy. 
In  cither 'Case  the  author  deals  with  a  dis- 
tant period,  and  with  people  and  conditions 
equally  strange  to  her  experience  and  ob- 
servation. In  either  case  it  is  a  psychical 
problem  she  proposes  to  solve  or  at  least 
to  consider.  In  either  case  the  chief  char- 
acters about  which  the  action  revolves  ap- 
pear as  human  beings,  with  positive,  per- 
sonal desires  and  purposes.  But  while  in 
'Romola  they  retain  this  personal  entity  to 
the  last,  with  the  hold  which  nothing  else 
can  keep  upon  the  reader's  sympathies,  and 
ineffaceably  imprint  the  lesson  of  their  lives 
in  his  memory,  in  The  Spanish  Gypsy  the 
personal  principle  is  soon  removed,  and 
they  all  disappear  from  us,  dry,  rattling  as- 
semblages of  moral  attributes  and  inevita- 
ble results.  It  is  especially  to  this  effect 
that  poets  never  work,  and  Miss  Evans  does 
•not  attain  it  by  creating  new  and  original 
characters.  On  the  contrary,  she  adopts 
dresses  and  figures  more  or  less  familiar 
in  romance,  and  evolves  allegoric  circum- 
stances and  actions  from  a  plot  smelling 
curiously  of  the  dust  of  libraries  and 
the  smoke  of  foot-lights.  We  have  the 
daughter  of  a  Gypsy  chief  stolen  in  earliest 
childhood  by  the  Spaniards,  and  bred  in 
ignorance  of  her  origin,  who  becomes  the 
affianced  of  a  Spanish  grandee  ;  we  have  a 
monkish  inquisitor,  fierce  with  the  pride  of 
family  and  of  faith,  who  hates  this  Fedalma 


both  as  a  new  Christian  and  as  the  accom- 
plice of  his  cousin  the  grandee  in  the  pur- 
pose of  an  ignoble  marriage,  and  who  ar- 
ranges for  her  seizure  by  the  holy  office  on 
the  eve  of  her  marriage ;  then  we  -have 
Zarca,  Fedalma's  father,  who  escapes  the 
same  night  from  Christian  captivity,  and 
who,  revealing  himself  to  his  daughter,  per- 
suades her  to  fly  with  him,  and  share  his 
aspirations  and  labors  for  the  redemption  of 
the  Gypsy  race.  Her  lover,  desiring  to  win 
her  back,  applies  to  his  friend,  a  Jewish  phy- 
sician, who  knows  enough  of  astrology  to 
doubt  it,  as  a  learned  and  liberal-minded  Jew 
of  the  Middle  Ages  naturally  would.  We  are 
'not  so  clear  of  any  positive  part  this  He- 
brew has  in  the  drama,  as  of  the  contrast 
to  the  inquisitor  which  he  forms ;  and 
doubtless  the  author  values  the  two  less  as 
persons  than  as  the  opposite  principles  of 
liberal  science  working  to  truth,  and  piti- 
less faith  constituting  itself  a  divine  pur- 
pose. But  for  this  use,  Sephardo,.  whose 
talk  is  rather  like  a  criticism  and  explana- 
tion of  his  attributive  character  than  an 
expression  of  character,  might  with  his 
speculative  and  philosophical  turn  be  more 
naturally  employed  in  writing  for  the  re- 
views. 

In  Zarca  we  have  a  modern  reformer  a 
little  restricted  and  corrected  at  first  by 
costume  and  tradition,  as  all  his  fellow- 
characters  are,  but  early  declaring  himself 
a  principle  and  not  a  person,  as  all  his  fel- 
low-characters do.  He  appears  as  an  em- 
bodiment of  those  aspirations  for  indepen- 
dent national  existence,  which  now  more 
than  ever  before  are  stirring  the  true  peoples, 
but  which  probably  existed  in  all  ages  ;  and 
if  he -does  not  act  very  wisely,  nor  discourse 
very  entertainingly,  perhaps  it  is  because 
men  of  one  idea  are  very  apt  to  be  short- 
sighted and  tedious,  unless  skilfully  man- 
aged, in  fiction  as  in  real  life.  Morally, 
Zarca  comes  to  be  a  theatrical  kind  of 
Hollingsworth,  though  we  imagine  nothing 
could  be  farther  from  the  author's  con- 
sciousness than  such  a  development.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  a  purpose  and  grandeur 
such  as  his  are  predicable  of  the  Gypsy 
race  in  any  age  ;  but  in  his  daughter's  case 
we  must  grant  even  more  to  the  author  with 
less  effect.  In  Fedalma  is  portrayed  the 
conflict  which  would  arise  in  the  nature  of 
a  woman  held  to  her  betrothed  by  love,  and 
identity  of  civilization  and  social  custom, 
and  drawn  toward  her  father  by  the  attrac- 
tion of  kindred,  and  race,  and  by  vague 
sympathy  with  a  devoted  and  heroic  pur- 


384 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[September. 


pose;  and  in.  accounting  for  her  desertion 
of  her  lover  Don  Silva,  all  is  confided  to 
the  supposition  that  these  remote  instincts 
and  sudden  sympathies  are  stronger  than 
the  jzse  of  a  lifetime.  Fedalma  is  a  Gypsy 
by  birth  ;  and  it  is  poetic,  if  not  probable, 
that,  yielding  to  the  wild  motions  of  her 
ancestral  blood,  she  should  wander  with 
her  duenna  through  the  streets  of  Bedmar, 
and,  forgetting  the  jealous  decorums  of  her 
station,  and  the  just  claims  of  her  lover's 
pride,  should  dance  in  the  circle  drawn 
about  the  mountebank,  that  lovely  evening 
in  the  plaza.  At  any  rate,  this  escapade 
wins  us  the  fine  effect  of  her  encounter  with 
Zarca,  her  father,  before  whom  she  pauses, 
touched  by  some  mysterious  influence,  as 
he  passes  through  the  circle  with  the  other 
captive  Gypsies.  Yet  this  scarcely  pre- 
pares us  for  her  renunciation,  at  her  father's 
bidding,  of  Don  Silva,  Spain,  and  Chris- 
tianity ;  nor  is  the  act  sufficiently  accounted 
for  by  the  fact  that  if  she  had  remained,  she 
would  have  been  seized  by  the  Inquisition, 
for  she  did  not  know  this ;  or  by  the  other  fact 
that,  as  is  afterwards  intimated,  she  never 
was  true  Spaniard  or  quite  Christian.  True 
lover  she  was,  and  believed  in  love,  and  she 
never  believed  in  the  purpose  for  which  she 
sacrificed  love.  That  she  should  act  as 
she  did  was  woman's  weakness,  perhaps,  — 
the  weakness  of  Miss  Evans.  The  read- 
er cannot  help  resenting  that  the  author 
throws  the  whole  burden  of  remorse  for  the 
ensuing  calamities  and  crimes  upon  Don 


Silva,  who  is  at  least  faithful  to  love  when 
he  forsakes  his  command  at  Bedmar,  fol- 
lows Fedalma  to  the  Gypsy  camp,  and,  to 
win  her  from  her  father,  renounces  every- 
thing, and  becomes  himself  a  Gypsy.  He 
is  also  true  at  least  to  Spanish  and  human 
nature  of  the  fifteenth  century  when,  tor- 
tured by  the  cruel  sight  cf  his  slaughtered 
friends,  on  re-entering  Bedmar  with  its 
Gypsy  captors,  he  asks  of  Zarca  the  life  of 
his  cousin,  the  Inquisitor,  and,  being  denied 
it,  stabs  Zarca  to  death,  —  who,  remember- 
ing his  duty  to  the  nineteenth  century,  com- 
mands with  his  dying  brcatb  that  Don  Silva 
shall  go  unharmed.  He  accordingly  goes 
unharmed — towards  Rome,  willing  to  as- 
sume any  penance  which  may  be  laid  upon 
him  for  his  sins  ;  and  the  poor  soul,  who 
never  loses  our  sympathy,  has  a  kind  of 
sublimity  in  his  honest  recognition  of  his 
crimes  and  his  honest  remorse  for  i. 
while  Fedalma,  bidding  him  adieu  in  sol- 
emn impertinences  that  betray  much  dcubt 
and  regret,  but  dim  sense  of  error,  is  a  very 
unedifying  spectacle.  As  she  departs  with 
the  Gypsies  whom  she  distrusts,  to  fulfil  a 
purpose  which  she  never  thought  possible, 
her  last  care  is  explicitly  to  state  the  po- 
em's insufficiency  of  motive,  and  to  put  in 
the  wrong  the  chief  good  that  was  in  her  by 
saying  to  Don  Silva :  — 

"  Our  dear  young  love,  —  its  breath  was  hr.ppiness  ! 
But  it  had  grown  upon  a  larger  life 
Which  tore  its  roots  asunder.     We  rebelled, 
The  larger  life  subdued  us." 


THE 


ATLANTIC    MONTHLY. 

A   Magazine   of  Literature,   Science,   Art, 
and  Politics. 


VOL.    XXII.  —  OCTOBER,    1868.  — NO.    CXXXII. 


INEBRIATE  ASYLUMS,   AND   A   VISIT  TO   ONE. 


HPHERE  are  two  kinds  of  drunkards, 
•i-  —  the  Regular  and  the  Occasional. 
Of  each  of  these  two  classes  there  are 
several  varieties,  and,  indeed,  there  are 
no  two  cases  precisely  alike  ;  but  every 
drunkard  in  the  world  is  either  a  per- 
son who  has  lost  the  power  to  refrain 
from  drinking  a  certain  large  quantity 
of  alcoholic  liquor  every  day,  or  he  is 
one  who  has  lost  the  power  to  refrain 
from  drinking  an  uncertain  enormous 
quantity  now  and  then. 

Few  get  drunk  habitually  who  can  re- 
frain. If  they  could  refrain,  they  would ; 
for  to  no  creatures  is  drunkenness  so 
loathsome  and  temperance  so  engaging, 
as  to  seven  tenths  of  the  drunkards. 
There  are  a  few  very  coarse  men,  of 
heavy,  stolid,  animal  organization,  who 
almost  seem  formed  by  nature  to  absorb 
alcohol,  and  in  whom  there  is  not  enough 
.uihood  to  be  ashamed  of  its  degra- 
dation. These  Dr.  Albert  Day,  the  su- 
perintendent of  the  New  York  State 
Inebriate  Asylum,  sometimes  calls  Nat- 
ural Drunkards.  They  like  strong  drink 
i  is  own  sake ;  they  have  a  kind  of 
sulky  enjoyment  of  its  muddling  effect 
upon  such  brains  as  they  happen  to 


have  ;  and  when  once  the  habit  is  fixed, 
nothing  can  deliver  them  except  stone 
walls  and  iron  bars.  There  are  also  a 
few  drunkards  of  very  light  calibre,  tri- 
fling persons,  incapable  of  serious  re- 
flection or  of  a  serious  purpose,  their 
very  terrors  being  trivial  and  transitory, 
who  do  not  care  for  the  ruin  in  which 
they  are  involved.  Generally  speaking, 
however,  drunkards  hate  the  servitude 
into. which  they  have  had  the  misfor- 
tune to  fall ;  they  long  to  escape  from 
it,  have  often  tried  to  escape,  and  if 
they  have  given  up,  it  is  only  after  hav- 
ing so  many  times  slidden  back  into 
the  abyss,  that  they  feel  it  would  be  of 
no  use  to  climb  again.  As  Mrs.  H.  B. 
Stowe  remarks,  with  that  excellent  char- 
ity of  hers,  which  is  but  another  name  for 
refined  justice,  "  Many  a  drunkard  has 
expended  more  virtue  in  vain  endeav- 
ors to  break  his  chain  than  suffices  to 
carry  an  ordinary  Christian  to  heaven." 
The  daily  life  of  one  of  the  steady 
drunkards  is  like  this:  upon  getting 
up  in  the  morning,  after  a  heavy,  rest- 
less, drunkard's  sleep,  he  is  miserable 
beyond  expression,  and  almost  help- 
less. In  very  bad  cases,  he  will  see 


according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1868,  by  TiCKNOR  AND  FIELDS,  in  the  Clerk's  Office 

of  the  District  Court  of  the  DL.trkt  of  Massachusetts. 
VOL.   XXII.'  —  NO.    132.  25 


386 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One. 


October, 


double,  and  his  hands  will  tremble  so 
that  he  cannot  lift  to  his  lips  the 
glass  for  which  he  has  a  desire  amount- 
ing to  mania.  Two  or  three  stiff  glasses 
of  spirituous  liquor  will  restore  him  so 
far  that  he  can  control  his  muscles, 
and  get  about  without  betraying  his 
condition.  After  being  up  an  hour, 
and  drinking  every  ten  or  fifteen  min- 
utes, he  will  usually  be  able  to  eat  a 
pretty  good  breakfast,  which,  with  the 
aid  of  coffee,  tobacco,  and  a  compara- 
tively small  quantity  of  liquor,  he  will 
be  able  to  digest.  After  breakfast,  for 
some  hours  he  will  generally  be  able  to 
transact  routine  business,  and  associate 
with  his  fellows  without  exciting  their 
pity  or  contempt.  As  dinner-time  draws 
near,  he  feels  the  necessity  of  creating 
an  appetite ;  which  he  often  accom- 
plishes by  drinking  some  of  those  in- 
fernal compounds  which  are  advertised 
on  the  eternal  rocks  and  mountain- 
sides as  Bitters,  —  a  mixture  of  bad 
drugs  with  worse  spirits.  These  bit- 
ters do  lash  the  torpid  powers  into 
a  momentary,  morbid,  fierce  activity, 
which  enables  the  victim  to  eat  even  a 
superabundant  dinner.  The  false  ex- 
citement subsides,  but  the  dinner  re- 
mains, and  it  has  to  be  digested.  This 
calls  for  an  occasional  drink  for  three 
or  four  hours,  after  which  the  system  is 
exhausted,  and  the  man  feels  dull  and 
languid.  He  is  exhausted,  but  he  is 
not  tranquil ;  he  craves  a  continuation 
of  the  stimulant  with  a  craving  which 
human  nature,  so  abused  and  perverted, 
never  resists.  By  this  time  it  is  even- 
ing, when  all  the  apparatus  of  tempta- 
tion is  in  the  fullest  activity,  and  all  the 
loose  population  of  the  town  is  abroad. 
He  now  begins  his  evening  debauch, 
and  keeps  up  a  steady  drinking  until 
he  can  drink  no  more,  when  he  stum- 
bles home  to  sleep  off  the  stupefying 
fumes,  and  awake  to  the  horror  and 
decrepitude  of  a  drunkard's  morning. 

The  quantity  of  spirituous  liquor  re- 
quired to  keep  one  of  these  unhappy 
men  in  this  degrading  slavery  varies 
from  a  pint  a  day  to  two  quarts.  Many 
drunkards  consume  a  quart  of  whiskey 
every  day  for  years.  The  regular  al- 


lowance of  one  gentleman  of  the  highest 
position,  both  social  and  official,  who 
made  his  way  to  the  Inebriate  Asylum, 
had  been  two  quarts  of  brandy  a  day- for 
about  five  years.  The  most  remark- 
able known  case  is  that  of  a  hoary- 
headed  man  of  education  and  fortune, 
residing  in  the  city  of  New  York,  who 
confesses  to  taking  "fifty  drinks  a  day" 
of  whiskey,  —  ten  drinks  to  a  bottle, 
and  five  bottles  to  a  gallon.  One  gal- 

.lon  of  liquor,  he  says,  goes  down  his 
old  throat  every  day  of  the  year.  Be- 
fore he  is  fit  to  eat  his  breakfast  in  the 
morning  he  has  to  drink  twelve  glasses 
of  whiskey,  or  one  bottle  and  one  fifth. 
Nevertheless,  even  this  poor  man  is 

'  able,  for  some  hours  of  the  morning,  to- 
transact  what  people  of  property  and 
leisure  call  business,  and,  during  a  part 
of  the  evening,  to  converse  in  such  a 
way  as  to  amuse  persons  who  can  look 
on  and  see  a  human  being  in  such 
bondage  without  stopping  to  think  what 
a  tragedy  it  is.  This  Old  Boy  never  has 
to  be  carried  home,  I  believe.  He  is  one 
of  those  most  hopeless  drunkards  who 
never  get  drunk,  never  wallow  in  the 
gutter,  never  do  anything  to  scare  or 
startle  them  into  an  attempt  to  reform. 
He  is  like  a  certain  German  "  puddler  " 
who  was  pointed  out  to  me  in  a  Pitts- 
burg  iron-works,  who  consumes  ex- 
actly seven  dollars'  worth  of  lager-beer 
every  seven  days,  —  twenty  glasses  a 
day,  at  five  cents  each.  He  is  also  like 
th$  men  employed  in  the  dismal  work 
of  the  brewery,  who  are  allowed  as  much 
beer  as  they  can  drink,  and  who  gener- 
ally do  drink  as  much  as  they  can.  Such 
persons  are  always  fuddled  and  stupid, 
but  seldom  drunk  enough  to  alarm  their 
neighbors  or  themselves.  Perhaps  they 
are  the  only  persons  in  all  the  world 
who  are  in  any  degree  justified  in  pass- 
ing their  lives  in  a  state  of  suspended 
intelligence  ;  those  of  them  at  least 
whose  duty  it  is  to  get  inside  of  enor- 
mous beer-barrels,  and  there,  in  dark- 
ness and  solitude,  in  an  atmosphere 
reeking  and  heavy  with  stale  ale,  scrape 
and  mop  them  out,  before  they  are  re- 
filled. When  you  see  their  dirty,  pale 
faces  at  the  "  man-hole  "  of.  the  barrel, 


1 368.] 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One. 


38; 


down  in  the  rumbling  bowels  of  the 
earth,  in  one  of  those  vast  caves  of 
beer  in  Cincinnati,  you  catch  yourself 
saying,  "  Drink,  poor  devils,  drink ! 
Soak  what  brains  you  have  in  beer ! " 
What  can  a  man  want  with  brains  in  a 
beer-barrel  ?  But,  then,  you  think  again, 
even  these  poor  men  need  their  brains 
when  they  get  home ;  and  we  need 
that  they  should  have  brains  on  the 
first  Tuesday  in  November. 

It  is  that  going  home  which  makes 
drunkenness  so  dire  a  tragedy.  If  the 
drunkard  could  only  shut  himself  up 
with  a  whiskey-barrel,  or  a  pipe  of 
Madeira,  and  quietly  guzzle  himself  to 
death,  it  would  be  a  pity,  but  it  could 
be  borne.  He  never  does  this ;  he 
goes  home  to  make  that  home  perdition 
to  some  good  souls  that  love  him,  or 
depend  upon  him,  and  cannot  give  him 
up.  There  are  men  at  the  Asylum 
near  Binghamton,  who  have  admira- 
ble wives,  beautiful  and  accomplished 
daughters,  venerable  parents,  whose 
portraits  are  there  in  the  patient's 
trunks,  and  who  write  daily  letters  to 
cheer  the  absent  one,  whose  absence 
now,  for  the  first  time  in  years,  does  not 
terrify  them.  They  are  the  victims  of 
drunkenness,  —  they  who  never  taste 
strong  drink.  For  their  deliverance, 
this  Asylum  stands  upon  its  hill  justified 
in  existing.  The  men  themselves  are 
interesting,  valuable,  precious,  worth 
every  rational  effort  that  can  be  made 
to  save  them;  but  it  is  those  whom 
they  have  left  at  home  anxious  and  des- 
olate that  have  the  first  claim  upon  our 
consideration. 

With  regard  to  these  steady,  regular 
drunkards,  the  point  to  be  noted  is  this  : 
very  few  of  them  can  stop  drinking 
while  they  continue  to  perform  their 
daily  labor  ;  they  absolutely  depend  up- 
on the  alcohol  to  rouse  their  torpid  en- 
ergies to  activity.  Their  jaded  consti- 
tutions will  not  budge  without  the  spur. 
Everything  within  them  gapes  and  hun- 
gers for  the  accustomed  stimulant.  This 
is  the  case,  even  in  a  literal  sense  ;  for  it 
seems,  from  Dr.  Day's  dissections,  that 
the  general  effect  of  excessive  drinking 
is  to  enlarge  the  globules  of  which  the 


brain,  the  blood,  the  liver,  and  other  or- 
gans are  composed,  so  that  those  glob- 
ules, as  it  were,  stand  open-mouthed, 
empty,  athirst,  inflamed,  and  most  eager 
to  be  filled.  A  man  whose  every  organ 
is  thus  diseased  cannot  usually  take 
the  first  step  toward  cure  without  ceas- 
ing for  a  while  to  make  any  other  de- 
mands upon  himself.  This  is  the  great 
fact  of  his  condition.  If  he  is  a  true 
drunkard,  i.  e.  if  he  has  lost  the  power 
to«do  his  work  without  excessive  alco- 
holic stimulation,  then  there  is  no  cure 
possible  for  him  without  rest.  Here  we 
have  the  simple  explanation  of  Mrs. 
Stowe's  fine  remark  just  quoted.  This 
is  why  so  many  thousand  wives  spend 
their  days  in  torment  between  hope  and 
despair,  —  hope  kindled  by  the  hus- 
band's efforts  to  regain  possession  of 
himself,  and  despair  caused  by  his  re- 
peated, his  inevitable  relapses.  The 
unfortunate  man  tries  to  do  two  things 
at  once,  the  easiest  of  which  is  as  much 
as  he  can  accomplish  ;  while  the  hardest 
is  a  task  which,  even  with  the  advantage 
of  perfect  rest,  few  can  perform  without 
assistance. 

The  Occasional  Drunkard  is  a  man 
who  is  a  teetotaler  for  a  week,  two 
weeks,  a  month,  three  months,  six 
months,  and  who,  at  the  end  of  his  peri- 
od, is  tempted  to  drink  one  glass  of  alco- 
holic liquor.  That  one  glass  has  upon 
him  two  effects  ;  it  rouses  the  slumber- 
ing demon  of  Desire,  and  it  perverts 
his  moral  judgment.  All  at  once  his 
honor  and  good  name,  the  happiness 
and  dignity  of  his  family,  his  success  in 
business,  all  that  he  held  dearest  a  mo- 
ment before,  seem  small  to  him,  and  he 
thinks  he  has  been  a  fool  of  late  to  con- 
cern himself  so  much  about  them.  Or 
else  he  thinks  he  can  drink  without  be- 
ing found  out,  and  without  its  doing  him 
the  harm  it  did  the  last  time.  Whatev- 
er may  be  the  particular  delusion  that 
seizes  him,  the  effect  is  the  same  ;  he 
drinks,  and  drinks,  and  drinks,  keeping 
it  up  sometimes  for  ten  days,  or  even 
for  several  weeks,  until  the  long  debauch 
ends  in  utter  exhaustion  or  in  delirium 
tremens.  He  is  then  compelled  to  sub- 
mit to  treatment ;  he  must  needs  go  to 


388 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One.          [October, 


the  Inebriate  Asylum  of  his  own  bed- 
room. There,  whether  he  raves  or 
droops,  he  is  the  most  miserable  wretch 
on  earth ;  for,  besides  the  bodily  tortures 
which  he  suffers,  he  has  to  endure  the 
most  desolating  pang  that  a  decent  hu- 
man being  ever  knows,  —  the  loss  of  his 
self-respect.  He  abhors  himself  and  is 
ashamed ;  he  remembers  past  relapses 
and  despairs  ;  he  cannot  look  his  own 
children  in  the  face  ;  he  wishes  he  had 
never  been  born,  or  had  died  in  the 
cursed  hour,  vividly  remembered,  when 
this  appetite  mastered  him  first.  As  his 
health  is  restored,  his  hopes  revive;  he 
renews  his  resolution  and  he  resumes  his 
ordinary  routine,  subdued,  distrustful 
of  himself,  and  on  the  watch  against 
temptation.  Why  he  again  relapses  he 
can  hardly  tell,  but  he  always  does. 
Sometimes  a  snarl  in  business  perplexes 
him,  and  he  drinks  for  elucidation. 
Sometimes  melancholy  oppresses  him, 
and  he  drinks  to  drive  dull  care  away. 
Sometimes  good  fortune  overtakes  him, 
or  an  enchanting  day  in  June  or  Octo- 
ber attunes  his  heart  to  joy,  and  he  is 
taken  captive  by  'the  strong  delusion 
that  now  is  the  time  to  drink  and  be 
glad.  Often  it  is  lovely  woman  who 
offers  the  wine,  and  offers  it  in  such  a 
way  that  he  thinks  he  cannot  refuse 
without  incivility  or  confession.  From 
conversation  with  the  inmates  of  the 
Inebriate  Asylum,  I  am  confident  that 
Mr.  Greeley's  assertion  with  regard  to 
the  wine  given  at  the  Communion  is 
correct.  That  sip  might  be  enough  to 
awaken  the  desire.  The  mere  odor  of 
the  wine  filling  the  church  might  be 
too  much  for  some  men. 

There  appears  to  be  a  physical  cause 
for  this  extreme  susceptibility.  Dr. 
Day  has  once  had  the  opportunity  to 
examine  the  brain  of  a  man  who,  after 
having  been  a  drunkard,  reformed,  and 
lived  for  some  years  a  teetotaler.  He 
found,  to  his  surprise,  that  the  globules 
of  the  brain  had  not  shrunk  to  their 
natural  size.  They  did  not  exhibit  the 
inflammation  of  the  drunkard's  brain, 
but  they  were  still  enlarged,  and  seemed 
ready  on  the  instant  to  absorb  the 
fumes  of  alcohol,  and  resume  their  for- 


mer condition.  He  thought  he  saw  in 
this  morbid  state  of  the  brain  the  phys- 
ical part  of  the  reason  why  a  man  who 
has  once  been  a  drunkard  can  never 
again,  as  long  as  he  lives,  safely  take  one 
drop  of  any  alcoholic  liquor.  He  thought 
he  saw  why  a  glass  of  wine  puts  the 
man  back  instantly  to  where  he  was 
when  Re  drank  all  the  time.  He  saw 
the  citadel  free  from  the  enemy,  swept 
and  clean,  but  undefended,  incapable  of 
defence,  and  its  doors  opened  wide  to  the 
enemy's  return  ;  so  that  there  was  no 
safety,  except  in  keeping  the  foe  at  a 
distance,  away  beyond  the  outermost 
wall. 

There  are  many  varieties  of  these 
occasional  drunkards,  and,  as  a  class, 
they  are  perhaps  the  hardest  to  cure. 
Edgar  Poe  was  one  of  them ;  half  a 
glass  of  wine  would  set  him  off  upon  a 
wild,  reckless  debauch,  that  would  last 
for  days.  All  such  persons  as  artists, 
writers,  and  actors  used  to  be  particu- 
larly subject  to  this  malady,  before  they 
had  any  recognized  place  in  the  world, 
or  any  acknowledged  right  to  exist  at 
all.  Men  whose  labors  are  intense,  but 
irregular,  whose  gains  are  small  and 
uncertain,  who  would  gladly  be  gen- 
tlemen, but  are  compelled  to  content 
themselves  with  being  loafers,  are  in 
special  danger  ;  and  so  are  men  whose 
toil  is  extremely  monotonous.  Print- 
ers, especially  those  who  work  at  night 
upon  newspapers,  are,  perhaps,  of  all 
men  the  most  liable  to  fall  under  the 
dominion  of  drink.  Some  of  them  have 
persuaded  themselves  that  they  rest 
under  a  kind  of  necessity  to  "go  on  a 
tear  "  now  and  then,  as  a  relief  from 
such  grinding  work  as  theirs.  On  the 
contrary,  one  "  tear  "  creates  the  temp- 
tation to  another  ;  for  the  man  goes 
back  to  his  work  weak,  depressed,  and 
irritable  ;  the  monotony  of  his  labor  is 
acroravated  by  the  incorrectness  with 

t)fc5  J 

which  he  does  it,  and  the  longing  to 
break  loose  and  renew  the  oblivion  of 
drink  strengthens  rapidly,  until  it  mas- 
ters him  once  more. 

Of  these  periodical  drunkards  it  is  as 
true  as  it  is  of  their  regular  brethren, 
that  they  cannot  conquer  the  habit 


1 868.] 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One. 


389 


without  being  relieved  for  a  while  of 
their  daily  labor.  This  malady  is  so 
frequent  among  us,  that  hardly  an  in- 
dividual will  cast  his  eyes  over  these 
pages  who  cannot  call  to  mind  at  least 
one  person  who  has  struggled  with  it 
for  many  years,  and  struggled  in  vain. 
They  attempt  too  much.  Their  peri- 
odical "sprees,"  "benders,"  or  "tears  " 
are  a  connected  series,  each  a  cause 
and  an  effect,  an  heir  and  a  progenitor. 
After  each  debauch,  the  man  returns 
to  his  routine  in  just  the  state  of  health, 
in  just  the  state  of  mind,  to  be  irritated, 
disgusted,  and  exhausted  by  that  rou- 
tine ;  and,  at  every  moment  of  weak- 
ness, there  is  always  present  the  temp- 
tation to  seek  the  deadly  respite  of 
alcohol.  The  moment  arrives  when  the 
desire  becomes  too  strong  for  him,  and 
the  victim  yields  to  it  by  a  law  as  sure, 
as  irresistible,  as  that  which  makes  the 
apple  seek  the  earth's  centre  when  it  is 
disengaged  from  the  tree. 

It  is  amazing  to  see  how  helpless 
men  can  be  against  such  a  habit,  while 
they  are  compelled  to  continue  their 
daily  round  of  duties.  Not  ignorant 
men  only,  nor  bad  men,  nor  weak  men, 
but  men  of  good  understanding,  of  rare 
gifts,  of  the  loftiest  aspirations,  of  char- 
acters the  most  amiable,  engaging,  and 
estimable,  and  of  will  sufficient  for 
every  purpose  but  this.  They  know 
the  ruin  that  awaits  them,  or  in  which 
they  are  already  involved,  better  than 
we  other  sinners  know  it ;  they  hate 
their  bondage  worse  than  the  most  un- 
charitable of  their  friends  can  despise 
it ;  they  look  with  unutterable  envy  upon 
those  who  still  have  dominion  over 
themselves  ;  many,  very  many  of  them 
would  give  all  they  have  for  deliverance ; 
and  yet  self-deliverance  is  impossible. 
There  are  men  among  them  whe  have 
been  trying  for  thirty  years  to  abstain, 
and  still  they  drink.  Some  of  them 
have  succeeded  in  lengthening  the  sober 
interval,  and  they  will  live  with  strictest 
correctness  for  six  months  or  more, 
and  then,  taking  that  first  fatal  glass, 
will  immediately  lose  their  self-control, 
and  drink  furiously  for  days  and  nights  ; 
drink  until  they  arc  obliged  to  use 


drunken  artifice  to  get  the  liquid  into 
their  mouths,  —  their  hands  refusing 
their  office.  Whether  they  take  a  large 
quantity  of  liquor  every  day,  or  an  im- 
mense quantity  periodically,  makes  no 
great  difference,  the  disease  is  essen- 
tially the  same ;  the  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  cure  are  the  same  ;  the  remedial 
measures  must  be  the  same.  A  drunk- 
ard, in  short,  is  a  person  so  diseased  by 
alcohol,  that  he  cannot  get  through  his 
work  without  keeping  .his  system  satu- 
rated with  it,  or  without  such  weariness 
and  irritation  as  furnish  irresistible 
temptation  to  a  debauch.  He  is,  in 
other  v/ords,  a  fallen  brother,  who  can- 
not get  upon  his  feet  without  help,  and 
who  can  generally  get  upon  his  feet 
with  help. 

Upon  this  truth  Inebriate  Asylums 
are  founded ;  their  object  being  to  afford 
the  help  needed.  There  are  now  four 
such  institutions  in  the  United  States  : 
one  in  Boston,  opened  in  1857,  called 
the  Washingtonian  Home  ;  one  in  Me- 
dia, near  Philadelphia,  opened  in  1867, 
called  the  Sanitarium  ;  one  at  Chicago, 
opened  in  1868  ;  and  one  at  Bingham- 
ton,  New  York,  called  the  New  York 
Inebriate  Asylum.  The  one  last  named 
was  founded  in  1858,  if  the  laying  of 
the  corner-stone  with  grand  ceremonial 
can  be  called  founding  it ;  and  it  has 
been  opened  some  years  for  the  recep- 
tion of  patients  ;  but  it  had  no  real 
existence  as  an  asylum  for  the  cure  of 
inebriates  until  the  year  1867,  when  the 
present  superintendent,  Dr.  Albert  Day, 
assumed  control. 

The  history  of  the  institution  previ- 
ous to  that  time  ought  to  be  related 
fully  for  the  warning  of  a  preoccupied 
and  subscribing  public,  but  space  can- 
not be  afforded  for  it  here.  The  sub- 
stance of  it,  as  developed  in  sundry  re- 
ports of  trials  and  pamphlets  of  testi- 
mony, is  this  :  Fifteen  or  twenty  years 
ago,  an  English  adventurer  living  in 
the  city  of  New  York,  calling  himself  a 
doctor,  and  professing  to  treat  unnam- 
able  diseases,  thought  he  saw  in  this  no- 
t&n  of  an  Inebriate  Asylum  (then  much 
spoken  of)  a  chance  for  feathering  his 
nest.  He  entered  upon  the  enterprise 


390 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One.          [October, 


without  delay,  and  he  displayed  a  good 
deal  of  nervous  energy  in  getting  the 
charter,  collecting  money,  and  erecting 
the  building.  The  people  of  Bingham- 
ton,  misled  by  his  representations,  gave 
a  farm  of  two  hundred  and  fifty-two 
acres  for  the  future  inmates  to  cultivate, 
which  was  two  hundred  acres  too  much  ; 
and  to  this  tract  farms  still  more  super- 
fluous have  been  added,  until  the  Asy- 
lum estate  contains  more  than  five  hun- 
dred acres.  An  edifice  was  begun  on 
the  scale  of  an  imperial  palace,  which 
will  have  cost,  by  the  time  it  is  finished 
and  furnished,  a  million  dollars.  The 
restless  man  pervaded  the  State  raising 
money,  and  creating  public  opinion  in 
favor  of  the  institution.  For  several 
years  he  was  regarded  as  one  of  the 
great  originating  philanthropists  of  the 
age  ;  and  this  the  more  because  he  al- 
ways gave  out  that  he  was  laboring  in 
the  cause  from  pure  love  of  the  inebri- 
ate, and  received  no  compensation. 

But  the  time  came  when  his  real  ob- 
ject and  true  character  were  revealed. 
In  1864  he  carried  his  disinterestedness 
so  far  as  to  offer  to  give  to  the  institu- 
tion, as  part  of  its  permanent  fund,  the 
entire  amount  to  which  he  said  he  was 
entitled  for  services  rendered  and  ex- 
penses incurred.  This  amount  was  two 
hundred  and  thirty-two  thousand  dol- 
lars, which  would  certainly  have  been 
a  handsome  gift.  When  he  was  asked 
for  the  items  of  his  account,  he  said  he 
had  charged  for  eighteen  years'  services 
in  founding  the  institution,  at  thirty-five 
hundred  dollars  a  year,  and  the  rest  was 
travelling-expenses,  clerk  hire,  and  sal- 
.aries  paid  to  agents.  The  trustees  were 
puzzled  to  know  how  a  man  who,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  enterprise,  had  no  visi- 
ble property,  could  have  expended  so 
much  out  of  his  private  resources, 
while  exercising  an  unremunerated  em- 
ployment. Leaving  that  conundrum 
unsolved,  they  were  able  at  length  to 
conjecture  the  object  of  the  donation. 
One  of  the  articles  of  the  charter  pro- 
vided that  any  person  giving  ten  dol- 
lars to  the  institution  should  be  a  stock- 
holder, and  entitled  to  a  vote  at  the 
election  of  trustees.  Every  gift  of  ten 


dollars  was  a  vote  !  If,  therefore,  this 
astounding  claim  had  been  allowed,  and 
the  gift  accepted,  the  audacious  villain 
would  have  been  constituted  owner  of 
four  fifths  of  the  governing  stock,  and 
the  absolute  controller  of  the  entire 
property  of  the  institution !  It  was  a 
bold  game,  and  the  strangest  part  of  the 
story  is,  that  it  came  near  succeeding. 
It  required  the  most  arduous  exertions 
of  a  public-spirited  board  of  trustees, 
headed  by  Dr.  Willard  Parker,  to  oust 
the  man  who,  even  after  the  discovery 
of  his  scheme,  played  his  few  last  cards 
so  well  that  he  had  to  be  bought  oft"  by 
a  considerable  sum  cash  down.  An  in- 
cident of  the  disastrous  reign  of  this 
individual  was  the  burning  of  one  of 
the  wings  of  the  building,  after  he  had 
had  it  well  insured.  The  insurance  was 
paid  him  ($81,000) ;  and  there  was  a  trial 
for  arson,  —  a  crime  which  is  easy  to 
commit,  and  hard  to  prove.  Bingham- 
ton  convicted  the  prisoner,  but  the  jury 
was  obliged  to  acquit  him.  The  man 
and  his  confederates  must  have  carried 
off  an  enormous  booty.  The  local  trus- 
tees say,  in  their  Report  for  1867  :  — 

"  Less  than  two  years  ago  the  Asy- 
lum received  about  $81,000  from  in- 
surance companies  for  damage  done  by 
fire  to  the  north  wing.  About  $  20,000 
have  since  been  received  from  the  coun- 
ties ;  making  from  these  two  sources 
about  $  100,000  ;  and,  although  the 
buildings  and  grounds  remain  in  the 
same  unfinished  state  as  when  the 
fire  occurred,  except  a  small  amount  of 
work  done  in  one  or  two  wards  in  the 
south  wing,  the  $  100.000  have  nearly 

disappeared Aside  from  lh'_ 

ment   of  interest   and    insurance,   this 
money  has  been  expended  by  Dr.  — 
and  in  just  such  ways  as  he   thought 
proper  to  use  it. 

"  It  may  well  be  asked  why  this  is  so  ? 

The   answer  is,  that  Dr. assumes 

and  exercises  supreme  control,  and  al- 
lows no  interference,  at  least  on  the 
part  of  the  resident  trustees 

"His  control  and  management  of  e^ 
erything  connected  with  the  institution 
has  been  as  absolute  in  fact,  if  not  in 
form,  as  if  he  were  its  sole  proprieto 


1868.] 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One. 


391 


He  goes  to  Albany  to  obtain  legislation 
giving  him  extraordinary  police  powers, 
without  as  much  as  even  informing  the 
trustees  of  his  intentions.  When  the 
iron  grates  for  the  windows  of  the  lower 
ward  were  obtained,  the  resident  trus- 
tees knew  nothing  of  the  matter,  until 
they  were  informed  that  the  patients 
were  looking  through  barred  windows. 
Everything  has  been  done  in  the  same 
way.  He  is  not  known  to  have  had  any 
other  official  relation  to  the  institution  by 
regular  appointment  than  that  of  corre- 
sponding secretary,  and  yet  he  has  exer- 
cised a  power  over  its  affairs  which  has 
defied  all  restraint.  He  lives  there  with 
his  family,  without  a  salary,  and  without 
individual  resources,  and  dispenses  hos- 
pitality or  charity  to  his  kindred  with 
'as  much  freedom  and  unreserve  as  if 
he  owned  everything,  and  had  unlimited 
means  at  his  command.  In  fact,  in- 
credible as  it  may  seem,  he  claims  that 
he  is  virtually  the  owner  of  the  institu- 
tion. And  his  claim  might  have  chal- 
lenged contradiction,  had  his  plans  suc- 
ceeded." 

Such  things  may  be  done  in  a  com- 
munity where  almost  every  one  is  be- 
nevolent enough  to  give  money  towards 
an  object  that  promises  to  mitigate  hu- 
man woe,  but  where  scarcely  any  one 
has  leisure  to  watch  the  expenditure  of 
that  sacred  treasure ! 

The  institution,  after  it  was  open,  re- 
mained for  two  years  under  the  blight 
of  this   person's  control.      Everything 
he  did  was  wrong.    Ignorant,  obstinate, 
passionate,  fussy,  and  false,  —  plausible 
and  obsequious   at  Albany,   a  violent 
despot  at  the  Asylum,  —  he  was,  of  all 
the  people  in  the  world,  the  precisely 
t  man  to  conduct  an  experiment  so 
1,  and  so  abounding  in  difficulties. 
If  he  had  a  theory,  it  was  that  an  ingbri- 
ate  is   something  between  a  criminal 
a  lunatic,  who  is  to  be  punished 
like   the   one  and  restrained   like   the 
other.     His  real  object  seemed  to  be, 
,   after  having  received  payment  for  a  pa- 
tient six  months  in  advance,  to  starve 
and  madden  him  into  a  sudden  depart- 
ure.    The  very  name  chosen  by  him 
for  the  institution  proves  his  hopeless 


incompetency.  "  Inebriate  Asylum  !  " 
That  name  to-day  is,  perhaps,  the  great- 
est single  obstacle  to  its  growth.  He 
began  by  affixing  a  stigma  to  the  unfor- 
tunate men  who  had  honored  themselves 
by  making  so  gallant  an  effort  at  self- 
recovery.  But  let  the  man  and  his  do- 
ings pass  into  oblivion.  There  never 
yet  was  a  bad  man  who  was  not,  upon 
the  whole,  a  very  stupid  ass.  All  the 
genuine  intelligence  in  the  world  resides 
in  virtuous  minds.  When,  therefore,  I 
have  said  that  this  individual  was  an 
unprincipled  adventurer,  I  have  also 
said  that  he  was  signally  incapable  of 
conducting  an  institution  like  this. 

While  we,  in  the  State  of  New  York, 
were  blundering  on  in  this  way,  per- 
mitting a  million  dollars  of  public  and 
private  money  to  be  lavished  in  the  at- 
tempt to  found  an  asylum,  a  few  quiet 
people  in  Boston,  aided  by  a  small  an- 
nual grant  from  the  Legislature,  had 
actually  established  one,  and  kept  it 
going  for  nine  years,  during  which  three 
thousand  inebriates  had  been  received, 
and  two  thousand  of  them  cured  !  The 
thing  was  accomplished  in  the  simplest 
way.  They  hired  the  best  house  for 
the  purpose  that  chanced  to  be  vacant, 
fitted  it  up  at  the  least  possible  expense, 
installed  in  it  as  superintendent  an  hon- 
est man  whose  heart  was  in  the  busi- 
ness, and  opened  its  doors  for  the  re- 
ception of  patients.  By  and  by,  when 
they  had  results  to  show,  they  asked 
the  Legislature  for  a  little  help,  which 
was  granted,  and  has  been  renewed 
from  year  to  year  ever  since.  The 
sum  voted  has  never  exceeded  five  thou- 
sand dollars  in  any  year,  and  there  are 
three  men  in  Boston  at  this  moment 
reclaimed  from  drunkenness  by  the 
Washingtonian  Home  who  pay  taxes 
enough  to  support  it. 

In  an  enterprise  for  the  management 
of  which  no  precedents  exist,  everything 
of  course  depends  upon  the  chief. 
When  you  have  got  the  right  man  at 
the  head  you  have  got  everything,  and 
until  you  have  got  the  right  man  there 
you  have  got  nothing.  "  Albert  Day, 
the  superintendent  for  nine  years  of  the 
Washingtonian  Home  at  Boston,  and, 


392 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One. 


[October, 


during  the  last  year  and  a  half  the 
superintendent  of  the  Asylum  at  Bing- 
hamton,  has  originated  nearly  all  that 
is  known  of  the  art  of  curing  the  mania 
for  alcohol.  He  struck  into  the  right 
path  at  once,  guided  by  instinct  and 
sympathy,  rather  than  by  science  or 
reflection.  He  was  not  a  professional 
person  ;  he  was  simply  a  business  man 
of  good  New  England  education,  who 
had  two  special  qualifications  for  his 
new  position,  —  first,  a  singular  pity  for 
drunkards  ;  and,  secondly,  a  firm  belief 
that  with  timely  and  right  assistance, 
a  majority  of  them  could  be  restored  to 
self-control.  This  pity  and  this  faith 
he  had  possessed  for  many  years,  and 
they  had  both  grown  strong  by  exercise. 
When  he  was  a  child  upon  his  father's 
farm  in  Maine,  he  saw  in  his  own  home, 
and  all  around  him,  the  evils  resulting 
from  the  general  use  of  alcoholic  liquors, 
so  that  when  the  orators  of  teetotalism 
came  along,  he  was  ready  to  receive 
their  message.  He  is  one  of  the  very 
few  persons  now  living  in  the  world  who 
never  partook  of  an  alcoholic  beverage, 
—  so  early  was  he  convinced  of  their  pre- 
posterous inutility.  Losing  his  father 
at  thirteen,  he  at  once  took  hold  of  life 
in  the  true  Yankee  way.  He  tied  up 
his  few  worldly  effects  into  a  bundle, 
and,  slinging  it  over  his  shoulder,  walked 
to  a  farmer's  house  not  many  miles 
away,  and  addressed  to  him  a  plain 
question,  "  Do  you  want  to  hire  a 
boy  ? "  to  which  the  farmer  with  equal 
directness  replied,  "  Yes."  From  hoe- 
ing corn  and  chopping  wood  the  lad 
advanced  to  an  apprenticeship,  and 
learned  a  mechanical  trade  ;  and  so 
made  his  way  to  early  marriage,  decent 
prosperity,  and  a  seat  in  the  Legisla- 
ture of  Massachusetts.  From  the  age 
of  sixteen  he  was  known,  wherever  he 
lived,  as  a  stanch  teetotaler,  and  also 
as  one  who  would  befriend  a  drunkard 
after  others  had  abandoned  him  to  his 
fate. 

I  once  heard  Dr.  Day  relate  the  oc- 
currence which  produced  in  his  mind 
the  conviction  that  drunkards  could  be 
rescued  from  the  domination  of  their 
morbid  appetite.  One  evening,  when 


he  came  home  from  his  work,  he  heard 
that  a  certain  Jack  Watts,  the  sot  of 
the  neighborhood,  was  starving  with 
his  wife  and  three  young  children. 
After  tea  he  went  to  see  him.  In 
treating  this  first  patient,  Albert  Day 
hit  upon  the  very  method  he  has  ever 
since  pursued,  and  so  I  beg  the  reader 
will  note  the  manner  in  which  he  pro- 
ceeded. On  entering  his  cottage  he 
was  as  polite  to  him,  as  considerate  of 
his  dignity  as  head  of  a  household,  as 
he  could  have  been  to  the  first  man 
of  the  village.  "Mr.  Watts,"  said 
he,  after  the  usual  salutations,  "  I  hear 
you  are  in  straitened  circumstances." 
The  man,  who  was  then  quite  sober, 
replied  :  "  I  am  ;  my  two  youngest  chil- 
dren went  to  bed  crying  for  food,  and 
I  had  none  to  give  them.  I  spent  my 
last  three  cents  over  there,"  pointing  to 
a  grog-shop  opposite,  "  and  the  bar- 
keeper said  to  me,  as  he  took  the  mon- 
ey, says  he,  '  Jack  Watts,  you  're  a  fool,' 
and  so  I  am."  Here  was  a  chance  for 
a  fine  moral  lecture.  Albert  Day  in- 
dulged in  nothing  of  the  kind.  He 
said,  "  Mr.  Watts,  excuse  me  for  a  few 
minutes  "  ;  and  he  went  out,  returning 
soon  with  a  basket  containing  some 
flour,  pork,  and  other  materials  for  a 
supper.  "  Now,  Mrs.  Watts,  cook  some- 
thing and  wake  your  children  up,  and 
give  them  something  to  eat.  I  '11  call 
again  early  in  the  morning.  Good 
night." 

Perfect  civility,  —  no  reproaches,  — 
no  lecture,  — practical  help  of  the  kind 
needed  and  at  the  time  needed.  Ob- 
serve, too,  that  the  man  was  in  the  con- 
dition of  mind  in  which  patients  usually 
are  when  they  make  the  confession  im- 
plied in  entering  an  asylum.  He  was 
at  the  end  of  his  tether.  He  was  —  to 
use%the  language  of  the  bar-room  — 
"dead  beat." 

When  Mr.  Day  called  the  next  morn- 
ing, the  family  had  had  their  breakfast, 
and  Jack  Watts  smiled  benedictions  on 
the  man  whom  he  had  been  wont  to 
regard  as  his  enemy,  because  he  was 
the  declared  enemy  of  Jack  Watts'* 
enemy.  Now  the  time  had  come  for 
a  little  talk.  Jack  Watts  explained  his 


1 868.] 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One. 


393 


circumstances ;  he  had  been  out  of 
work  for  a  long  time,  and  he  had  con- 
sumed all  his  substance  in  drink.  Mr. 
Day  listened  with  respectful  attention, 
spoke  to  him  of  various  plans  for  the 
future,  and  said  that  for  that  day  he 
could  give  him  a  dollar's  worth  of  wood- 
chopping  to  do.  Then  they  got  upon 
the  liquor  question.  In  the  softened, 
receptive  mind  of  Jack  Watts  Albert 
Day  deposited  the  substance  of  a  ra- 
tional temperance  lecture.  He  spoke 
to  him  kindly,  respectfully,  hopefully, 
strongly ;  Jack  Watts's  mind  was  con- 
vinced ;  he  said  he  had  done  with  drink 
forever.  He  meant  it,  too  ;  and  thus  he 
was  brought  to  the  second  stage  on  the 
road  to  deliverance.  In  this  particular 
case,  resting  from  labor  was  out  of  the 
question  and  unnecessary,  for  the  man 
had  been  resting  too  long  already,  and 
must  needs  to  go  to  work.  The  wood 
was  chopped.  The  dollar  to  be  paid  for 
the  work  at  the  close  of  the  day  was  a 
fearful  ordeal  for  poor  Jack,  living  fifteen 
yards  from  a  bar-room.  Mr.  Day  called 
round  in  the  evening,  paid  him  the  dol- 
lar without  remark,  fell  into  ordinary 
conversation  with  the  family,  and  took 
leave.  John  stood  the  test ;  not  a  cent 
of  the  money  found  its  way  into  the  till 
of  the  bar-keeper.  Next  morning  Mr. 
Day  was  there  again,  and,  seeing  that 
the  patient  was  going  on  well,  spoke  to 
him  further  about  the  future,  and  glided 
again  into  the  main  topic,  dwelling  much 
upon  the  absolute  necessity  of  total  and 
eternal  abstinence.  He  got  the  man  a 
place,  visited  him,  held  him  up,  fortified 
his  mind,  and  so  helped  him  to  com- 
plete and  lasting  recovery.  Jack  Watts 
never  drank  again.  He  died  a  year  or 
t\vo  ago  in  Maine  at  a  good  age,  having 
brought  up  his  family  respectably. 

This  was  an  extreme  case,  for  ,the 
man  had  been  a  drunkard  many  years  ; 
it  was  a  difficult  case,  for  he  was  poor 
and  ignorant ;  and  it  made  upon  the 
mind  of  Albert  Day  an  impression  that 
nothing  could  efface.  He  was  living  in 
Boston  in  1857,  exercising  his  trade, 
when  the  Washingtonian  Home  was 
opened.  He  was  indeed  one  of  the 
originators  of  the  movement,  and  took 


the  post  of  superintendent,  because  no 
one  else  seemed  capable  of  conducting 
the  experiment.  Having  now  to  deal 
with  the  diseased  bodies  of  men,  he 
joined  the  medical  department  of  Har- 
vard University,  and  went  through  the 
usual  course,  making  a  particular  study 
of  the  malady  he  was  attempting  to  cure. 
After  nine  years'  service  he  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  Asylum  at  Binghamton, 
where  he  pursues  the  system  practised 
with  success  at  Boston. 

I  visited  the  Binghamton  Asylum  in 
June  of  the  present  year.  The  situation 
combines  many  advantages.  Of  the 
younger  cities  that  have  sprung  into 
importance  along  the  line  of  leading 
railroads  there  is  not  one  of  more  vig- 
orous growth  or  more  inviting  appear- 
ance than  Binghamton.  Indications 
of  spirit  and  civilization  meet  the  eye  at 
every  turn.  There  are  long  streets  of 
elegant  cottages  and  villas,  surrounded 
by  nicely  kept  gardens  and  lawns,  and 
containing  churches  in  the  construction 
of  which  the  established  barbarisms 
have  been  avoided.  There  is  a  general 
tidiness  and  attention  to  appearances 
that  we  notice  in  the  beautiful  towns 
and  villages  of  New  England ;  such 
as  picturesque  Northampton,  romantic 
Brattleboro',  and  enchanting  Stock- 
bridge,  peerless  among  villages.  The 
Chenango  River  unites  here  with  the 
Susquehanna ;  so  that  the  people  who 
have  not  a  river  within  sight  of  their 
front  doors  are  likely  to  have  one  flow- 
ing peacefully  along  at  the  back  of  their 
gardens.  It  is  a  town,  the  existence  of 
which  in  a  State  governed  as  New  York 
is  governed  shows  how  powerless  a 
government  is  to  corrupt  a  virtuous  and 
intelligent  people,  and  speaks  of  the 
time  when  governments  will  be  reduced 
to  their  natural  and  proper  insignifi- 
cance. Such  communities  require  little 
of  the  central  power  ;  and  it  is  a  great 
pity  that  that  little  is  indispensable,  and 
that  Albany  cannot  be  simply  wiped  out 

Two  miles  from  Binghamton,  on  a 
high  hill  rising  from  the  bank  of  the 
Susquehanna,  and  commanding  an  ex- 
tensive view  of  the  beautiful  valleys  of 
both  rivers,  stands  the  castellated  palace 


394 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One.          [October, 


which  an  adventurer  had  the  impudence 
to  build  with  money  intrusted  to  him 
for  a  better  purpose.  The  Erie  Rail- 
road coils  itself  about  the  base  of  this 
eminence,  from  the  summit  of  which 
the  white  puffs  of  the  locomotive  can  be 
descried  in  one  direction  nine  miles, 
and  in  the  other  fifteen  miles.  On 
reaching  this  summit  about  nine  o'clock 
on  a  fine  morning  in  June,  I  found  my- 
self in  front  of  a  building  of  light-col- 
ored stone,  presenting  a  front  of  three 
hundred  and  sixty-five  feet,  in  a  style 
of  architecture  that  unites  well  the  use- 
ful and  the  pleasing.  Those  numerous 
towers  which  relieve  the  monotony  of 
so  extensive  a  front  serve  an  excellent 
purpose  in  providing  small  apartments 
for  various  purposes,  which,  but  for 
them,  could  not  be  contrived  without 
wasting  space.  At  present  the  first 
view  of  the  building  is  not  inviting,  for 
the  burnt  wing  remains  roofless  and 
void,  —  the  insurance  money  not  hav- 
ing been  applied  to  refitting  it,  —  and 
the  main  edifice  is  still  unfinished.  Not 
a  tree  has  yet  been  planted,  and  the 
grounds  about  the  building  are  little 
more  pleasing  to  the  eye  than  fifty  acres 
of  desert.  On  a  level  space  in  front  of 
the  edifice  a  number  of  young  men 
were  playing  a  game  of  base-ball,  and 
playing  it  badly.  Their  intentions  were 
excellent,  but  their  skill  was  small. 
Sitting  on  the  steps  and  upon  the 
blocks  of  stone  scattered  about  were 
fifty  or  sixty  well-dressed,  well-looking 
gentlemen  of  various  ages,  watching  the 
game.  In  general  appearance  and  bear- 
ing these  persons  were  so  decidedly  su- 
perior to  the  average  of  mortals,  that  few 
visitors  fail  to  remark  the  fact.  Living 
up  there  in  that  keen,  pure  air,  and 
living  in  a  rational  manner,  amusing 
themselves  with  games  of  ball,  rowing, 
sailing,  gardening,  bowling,  billiards, 
and  gymnastic  exercises,  they  are  as 
brown  and  robust  as  David  Copperfield 
was  when  he  came  home  from  the 
Continent  and  visited  his  friend  Trad- 
dies.  Take  any  hundred  men  from  the 
educated  classes,  and  give  them  a  few 
months  of  such  a  life  as  this,  and  the 
improvement  in  their  appearance  will 


be  striking.  Among  these  on-lookers 
of  the  game  were  a  few  men  with  gray 
hairs,  but  the  majority  were  under 
thirty,  perhaps  thirty-two  or  thirty-five 
was  about  the  average  age. 

When  I  looked  upon  this  most  unex- 
pected scene,  it  did  not  for  a  moment 
occur  to  me  that  these  serene  and 
healthy-looking  men  could  be  the  in- 
mates of  the  Asylum.  The  insensate 
name  of  the  institution  prepares  the 
visitor  to  see  the  patients  lying  about 
in  various  stages  of  intoxication.  The 
question  has  sometimes  been  asked  of 
the  superintendent  by  visitors  looking 
about  them  and  peering  into  remote 
corners,  "But,  Doctor,  where  do  you 
keep  your  drunkards  ? "  The  aston- 
ishment of  such  inquirers  is  great  in- 
deed when  they  are  informed  that  the 
polite  and  well-dressed  gentlemen  stand- 
ing about,  and  in  whose  hearing  the 
question  was  uttered,  are  the  inmates 
of  the  institution  ;  every  individual  of 
whom  was  till  very  recently,  not  mere- 
ly a  drunkard,  but  a  drunkard  of  the 
most  advanced  character,  for  whose 
deliverance  from  that  miserable  bond- 
age almost  every  one  had  ceased  to 
hope.  A  large  majority  of  the  present 
inmates  are  persons  of  education  and 
respectable  position,  who  pay  for  their 
residence  here  at  rates  varying  from 
ten  to  twenty  dollars  a  week,  and  who 
are  co-operating  ardently  with  the  su- 
perintendent for  their  recovery.  More 
than  half  of  them  were  officers  of  the 
army  or  navy  during  the  late  war,  and 
lost  control  of  themselves  then.  One 
in  ten  must  be  by  law  a  free  patient ; 
and  whenever  an  inebriate  really  de- 
sires to  break  his  chain,  he  is  met  half- 
way by  the  trustees,  and  his  board  is 
fixed  at  a  rate  that  accords  with  his 
circumstances.  A  few  patients  have 
been  taken  as  low  as  five  dollars  a  week. 
When  once  the  building  has  been  com- 
pleted, the  grounds  laid  out,  and  the 
farms  disposed  of,  the  trustees  hope 
never  to  turn  from  the  door  of  the  in- 
stitution any  proper  applicant  who  de- 
sires to  avail  himself  of  its  assistance. 
The  present  number  of  patients  i 
something  less  than  one  hundred, 


is 
ed, 


1868.] 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One. 


395 


which  is  about  fifty  less  than  can  be 
accommodated.  When  the  burnt  wing 
is  restored,  there  will  be  room  for  four 
hundred.  , 

Upon  entering  the  building,  we  find 
ourselves  in  a  spacious,  handsome, 
well-arranged,  and  well-furnished  ho'tel. 
The  musical  click  of  billiard-balls,  and 
the  distant  thunder  of  the  bowling-alley, 
salute  the  ear  ;  one  of  the  inmates  may 
be  performing  brilliantly  on  the  piano, 
or  trying  over  a  new  piece  for  next 
Sunday  on  the  cabinet  organ  in  the 
temporary  chapel.  The  billiard-room, 
we  soon  discover,  contains  three  tables. 
There  is  a  reading-room  always  open, 
in  which  the  principal  periodicals  of 
both  continents,  and  plenty  of  news- 
papers, are  accessible  to  all  the  pa- 
tients. A  small  library,  which  ought 
to  be  a  larger  one,  is  open  at  a  certain 
hour  every  day.  A  conservatory  is 
near  completion,  and  there  is  a  garden 
of  ten  acres  near  by  in  which  a  number 
of  the  inmates  may  usually  be  seen  at 
work.  A  croquet-ground  is  not  want- 
ing, and  the  apparatus  of  cricket  is 
visible  in  one  of  the  halls.  The  chapel 
is  still  far  from  being  finished,  but 
enough  is  done  to  show  that  it  will  be 
elegant  and  inviting  soon  after  the  next 
instalment  of  excise-money  comes  in. 
The  dining-room  is  lofty  and  large,  as 
indeed  are  all  the  public  rooms.  The 
private  rooms  are  equal,  both  in  size 
and  furniture,  to  those  of  good  city 
hotels.  The  arrangements  for  warm- 
ing, lighting,  washing,  bathing,  cook- 
ing, are  such  as  we  should  expect  to 
find  in  so  stately  an  edifice.  We  have 
not  yet  reached  the  point  when  house- 
v.-ork  will  do  itself;  but  in  great  es- 
tablishments like  this,  where  one  man, 
vrorking  ten  minutes  an  hour,  warms 
two  or  three  hundred  rooms,  menial 
is  hopefully  reduced.  In  walking 
about  the  wide  halls  and  airy  public 
apartments,  the  visitor  sees  nothing  to 
destroy  the  impression  that  the  build- 
ing is  a  very  liberally  arranged  summer 
hotel.  To  complete  the  illusion,  he 
will  perhaps  see  toddling  about  a  lovely 
child  with  its  beautiful  mother,  and  in 
the  large  parlor  some  ladies  visiting 


inmates  or  officers  of  the  institution. 
The  table  also  is  good  and  well  served. 
A  stranger,  not  knowing  the  nature  of 
the  institution,  might,  however,  be  puz- 
zled to  decide  whether  it  is  a  hotel  or  a 
college.  No  one,  it  is  true,  ever  saw 
a  college  so  handsomely  arranged  and 
provided ;  but  the  tone  of  the  thing 
is  college-like,  especially  when  you  get 
about  among  the  rooms  of  the  inmates, 
and  see  them  cramming  for  next  Mon- 
day's debate,  or  writing  a  lecture  for 
the  Asylum  course. 

This  institution  is  in  fact,  as  in 
appearance,  a  rationally  conducted  ho- 
tel or  Temporary  Home  and  resting- 
place  for  men  diseased  by  the  exces- 
sive use  of  alcoholic  drinks.  It  is  a 
place  where  they  can  pause  and  reflect, 
and  gather  strength  and  knowledge  for 
the  final  victorious  struggle  with  them- 
selves. Temptation  is  not  so  remote 
that  their  resolution  is  not  in  continual 
exercise,  nor  so  near  that  it  is  tasked 
beyond  its  strength.  There  lies  Bing- 
hamton  in  its  valley  below  them  in 
plain  sight,,  among  its  rivers  and  its 
trees,  with  its  thousand  pretty  homes 
and  its  dozen  nasty  bar-rooms.  They 
can  go  down  there  and  drink,  if  they 
can  get  any  one  to  risk  the  fifty  dollars' 
fine  imposed  by  the  law  of  the  State 
upon  any  one  who  sells  liquor  to  an 
inmate  of  the  Asylum.  'Generally,  there 
is  some  poor  mercenary  wretch  who 
will  do  it.  Until  it  has  been  proved 
that  the  sight  of  Binghamton  is  too 
much  for  a  patient,  the  only  restraint 
upon  his  liberty  is,  that  he  must  not 
enter  the  town  without  the  consent  of 
the  superintendent.  This  consent  is 
not  regarded  in  the  light  of  a  permis- 
sion, but  in  that  of  a  physician's  opin- 
ion. The  patient  is  supposed' to  mean: 
"  Dr.  Day,  would  you,  as  my  medical 
adviser,  recommend  me  to  go  to  Bing- 
hamton this  morning  to  be  measured 
for  a  pair  of  shoes  ?  Do  you  think  it 
would  be  salutary  ?  Am  I  far  enough 
advanced  in  convalescence  to  trust  my- 
self to  breathe  the  air  of  the  valley  for 
an  hour  ?"  The  doctor  gives  his  opin- 
ion on  the  point,  and  it  is  etiquette  to 
accept  that  opinion  without  remark. 


,96 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a.  Visit  to  One.          [October, 


Not  one  patient  has  yet  visited  the 
town,  with  the  consent  of  the  superin- 
tendent, who  has  proved  unequal  to 
the  temptation.  If  an  inmate  steals 
away  and  yields  to  his  craving,  he  is 
placed  in  confinement  for  a  day  or  two, 
or  longer  if  necessary.  It  occasionally 
happens  that  a  patient,  conscious  of 
the  coming  on  of  a  paroxysm  of  desire, 
as'ks  to  have  the  key  of  his  room  turned 
upon  him  till  it  is  over.  It  is  desired 
that  this  turning  of  the  key,  and  those 
few  barred  rooms  in  one  of  the  wards, 
shall  be  regarded  as  mere  remedial 
appliances,  as  much  so  as  the  bottles 
of  medicine  in  the  medicine-chest.  It 
is,  however,  understood  that  no  one  is 
to  be  released  from  confinement  who 
does  not  manifest  a  renewed  purpose 
to  refrain.  Such  a  purpose  is  some- 
times indicated  by  a  note  addressed  to 
the  superintendent  like  the  following, 
which  I  happened  to  see  placed  in  his 
hands : — 

"  DR.  DAY  :  — 

"  DEAR  Sm :  I  cannot  let  the  cir- 
cumstance which  happened  yesterday 
pass  by  without  assuring  you  that  I 
am  truly  sorry  for  the  disgrace  I  have 
brought  on  the  institution,  as  well  as 
myself.  I  certainly  appreciate  your 
efforts  to  guide  us  all  in  the  right  di- 
rection, and  more  especially  the  inter- 
est that  you  have  taken  in  my  own 
welfare.  Let  me  assure  you  now,  that 
hereafter,  as  long  as  I  remain  with  you, 
I  shall  use  every  endeavor  to  conduct 
myself  as  I  should,  and  cause  you  no 
further  trouble." 

Lapses  of  this  kind  are  not  frequent, 
and  they  are  regarded  by  the  super- 
intendent as  part  of  the  means  of  res- 
toration which  the  institution  affords  ; 
since  they  aid  him  in  destroying  a  fatal 
self-confidence,  and  in  inculcating  the 
idea  that  a  patient  who  lapses  must 
never  think  of  giving  up  the  struggle, 
but  renew  it  the  instant  he  can  gain 
the  least  foothold  of  self-control. 

The  system  of  treatment  pursued 
here  is  founded  on  the  expectation  that 
the  patient  and  the  institution  will  co- 
operate. If  a  man  does  not  desire  to 


be  reclaimed,  and  such  a  desire  cannot 
be  awakened  within  him,  the  institution 
can  do  no  more  than  keep  him  sober 
while  he  remains  an  inmate  of  it. 
There  will,  perhaps,  one  day  be  in 
every  State  an  asylum  for  incurable 
drunkards,  wherein  they  will  be  per- 
manently detained,  and  compelled  to 
live  temperately,  and  earn  their  sub- 
sistence by  suitable  labor.  But  this  is 
not  such  an  institution.  Here  all  is 
voluntary.  The  co-operation  of  the  pa- 
tient is  assumed ;  and  when  no  desire 
to  be  restored  can  be  roused,  the  ex- 
periment is  not  continued  longer  than 
a  few  months. 

The  two  grand  objects  aimed  at  by 
the  superintendent  are,  to  raise  the 
tone  of  the  bodily  health,  and  to  fortify 
the  weakened  will.  The  means  em- 
ployed vary  somewhat  in  each  case. 
The  superintendent  designs  to  make  a 
particular  study  of  each  individual ;  he 
endeavors  to  win  his  confidence,  to 
adapt  the  treatment  to  his  peculiar  dis- 
position, and  to  give  him  just  the  aid 
he  needs.  As  the  number  of  patients 
increases,  this  will  become  more  diffi- 
cult, if  it  does  not  become  impossible. 
The  more  general  features  of  the  sys- 
tem are  all  that  can  be  communicated 
to  others,  and  these  I  will .  endeavor 
briefly  to  indicate. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  the  ap- 
plicants for  admission,  when  they  enter 
the  office  of  the  Asylum,  accompanied 
generally  by  a  relative  or  friend.  Some 
reach  the  building  far  gone  in  intoxica- 
tion, having  indulged  in  one  last  fare- 
well debauch  ;  or  having  drunk  a  bottle 
of  whiskey  for  the  purpose  of  screwing 
their  courage  to  the  sticking-point  of 
entering  the  Asylum.  A  clergyman 
whom  this  institution  restored  told  me 
that  he  reached  Binghamton  in  the 
evening,  and  went  to  bed  drunk  ;  and 
before  going  to  the  Asylum  the  next 
morning  he  had  to  fortify  his  system 
and  his  resolve  by  twelve  glasses  of 
brandy.  Sometimes  the  accompanying 
friend,  out  of  an  absurd  kind  of  pity  for 
a  poor  fellow  about  to  be  deprived  of 
his  solace,  will  rather  encourage  him  to 
drink;  and  often  the  relatives  of  an 


1 868.] 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One. 


397 


inebriate  can  only  get  him  into  the 
institution  by  keeping  him  intoxicated 
until  he  is  safe  under  its  roof.  Fre- 
quently men  arrive  emaciated  and  worn 
out  from  weeks  or  months  of  hard 
drinking ;  and  occasionally  a  man  will 
be  brought  in  suffering  from  delirium 
tremens,  who  will  require  restraint  and 
watching  for  several  days.  Some  enter 
the  office  in  terror,  expecting  to  be 
immediately  led  away  by  a  turnkey  and 
locked  up.  All  come  with  bodies  dis- 
eased and  minds  demoralized ;  for  the 
presence  of  alcohol  in  the  system  low- 
ers the  tone  of  the  whole  man,  body 
and  soul,  strengthening  every  evil  ten- 
dency, and  weakening  every  good  one. 
And  this  is  the  reason  why  men  who 
are  brought  here  against  their  will  are 
not  to  be  despaired  of.  Alcohol  may 
only  have  suspended  the  activity  of 
their  better  nature,  which  a  few  weeks 
of  total  abstinence  may  rouse  to  new 
As  the  health  improves,  ambition 
often  revives,  the  native  delicacy  of  the 
soul  reappears,  and  the  man  becomes 
polite,  docile,  interested,  agreeable,  who 
on  entering  seemed  coarse,  stupid,  ob- 
stinate, and  malign. 

The  new-comer  subscribes  to  the 
rules,  pays  his  board  three  months  in 
advance,  and  surrenders  all  the  rest  of 
his  money.  The  paying  in  advance  is 
a  good  thing ;  it  is  like  paying  your 
passage  on  going  on  board  ship  ;  the 
voyager  has  no  care,  and  nothing  to 
think  of,  but  the  proposed  object.  It  is 
also  one  more  inducement  to  remain 
until  other  motives  gain  strength. 

Many  hard  drinkers  live  under  the 
conviction  that  if  they  should  cease 
drinking  alcoholic  liquors  suddenly,  they 
would  die  in  a  few  days.  This  is  a  com- 
plete error.  No  "  tapering  off"  is  al- 
lowed here.  Dr.  Day  discovered  years 
ago  that  a  man  who  has  been  drinking 
a  quart  of  whiskey  a  day  for  a  long 
time  suffers  more  if  his  allowance  is 
reduced  to  a  pint  than  if  he  is  put  at 
once  upon  the  system  of  total  absti- 
nence. He  not  only  suffers  less,  but 
for  a  shorter  time.  The  clergyman  be- 
fore referred  to  informed  me  that,  for 
two  years  and  a  half  before  entering 


the  Asylum,  he  drank  a  quart  of  brandy 
daily,  and  he  felt  confident  that  he  would 
die  if  he  should  suddenly  cease.  He 
reached  Binghamton  drunk  ;  he  went 
to  bed  that  evening  drunk  ;  he  drank 
twelve  glasses  of  brandy  the  next  morn- 
ing before  eleven  o'clock  ;  he  went  up 
to  the  Asylum  saturated  with  brandy, 
expecting  to  make  the  preliminary  ar- 
rangements for  his  admission,  then  re- 
turn to  the  hotel,  and  finish  the  day 
drinking.  But  precisely  at  that  point 
Albert  Day  laid  his  hand  upon  him,  and 
marked  him  for  his  own.  Dr.  Day 
quietly  objected  to  his  return  to  the 
town,  sent  for  his  trunk,  caused  the 
tavern  bill  to  be  paid,  and  cut  off  his 
brandy  at  once  and  totally.  For  forty- 
eight  hours  the  patient  craved  the  ac- 
customed stimulant  intensely,  and  he 
was  only  enabled  to  sleep  by  the  as- 
sistance of  bromide  of  potassium.  On 
the  third  day  the  craving  ceased,  and 
he  assured  me  that  he  never  felt  it 
again.  Other  morbid  experiences  he 
had,  but  not  that ;  and  now,  after  two 
years  of  abstinence,  he  enjoys  good 
health,  has  no  desire  for  drink,  and 
is  capable  of  extraordinary  exertions. 
Other  patients,  however,  informed  me 
that  they  suffered  a  morbid  craving  for 
two  or  three  weeks.  But  all  agreed  that 
the  sudden  discontinuance  of  the  stim- 
ulant gave  them  less  inconvenience  than 
they  had  anticipated,  and  was  in  no  de- 
gree dangerous.  It  is,  indeed,  most 
surprising  to  see  how  soon  the  system 
begins  to  rally  when  once  it  is  relieved 
of  the  inimical  influence.  Complete 
recovery,  of  course,  is  a  slow  and  long 
effort  of  nature  ;  but  the  improvement 
in  the  health,  feelings,  and  appearance 
of  patients,  after  only  a  month's  resi- 
dence upon  that  breezy  hill,  is  very  re- 
markable. 

There  is  an  impression  in  the  country 
that  the  inmates  of  such  asylums  as  this 
undergo  some  mysterious  process,  and 
take  unknown  medicines,  which  have 
power  to  destroy  the  desire  for  strong 
drink.  Among  the  quack  medicines  of 
the  day  is  a  bottled  humbug,  pretend- 
ing to  have  such  power.  It  is  also  sup- 
posed by  some  that  the  plan  which  Cap- 


398 


Inebriate  Asyhims,  and  a  Visit  to  One.         [October, 


tain  Marryat  mentions  is  efficacious, 
—  that  of  confining  a  drunken  sailor  for 
several  days  to  a  diet  of  beef  and  bran- 
dy. Accounts  have  gone  the  rounds  of 
the  papers,  of  another  system  that  con- 
sists in  saturating  with  brandy  every 
article  of  food  of  which  the  inebriate 
partakes.  Patients  occasionally  arrive 
at  the  Asylum  who  expect  to  be  treated 
in  some  such  way ;  and  when  a  day  or 
two  passes  without  anything  extraordi- 
nary or  disagreeable  happening,  they  in- 
quire, with  visible  apprehension, "  When 
the  treatment  is  going  to  begin."  In 
this  sense  of  the  word,  there  is  no 
treatment  here.  In  all  nature  there  is 
no  substance  that  destroys  or  lessens  a 
drunkard's  desire  for  intoxicating  liq- 
uors ;  and  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
permanently  disgusting  him  with  bran- 
dy by  giving  him  more  brandy  than  he 
wants.  A  drunkard's  drinking  is  not 
a  thing  of  mere  appetite  ;  his  whole  sys- 
tem craves  stimulation ;  and  he  would 
drink  himself  into  perdition  while  loath- 
ing the  taste  of  the  liquor.  This  Asy- 
lum simply  gives  its  inmates  rest,  regi- 
men, amusement,  society,  information. 
It  tries  to  restore  the  health  and  renew 
the  will,  and  both  by  rational  means. 

Merely  entering  an  establishment  like 
this  is  a  long  step  toward  deliverance. 
It  is  a  confession  !  It  is  a  confession  to 
the  patient's  family  and  friends,  to  the 
inmates  of  the  Asylum,  and,  above  all, 
to  himself,  that  he  has  lost  his  self-con- 
trol, and  cannot  get  it  back  without  as- 
sistance. He  comes  here  for  that  assist- 
ance. Every  one  knows  he  comes  for 
that.  They  are  all  in  the  same  boat. 
The  pot  cannot  call  the  kettle  black. 
False  pride,  and  all  the  thin  disguises  of 
self-love,  are  laid  aside.  The  mere  fact 
of  a  man's  being  an  inmate  of  an  ine- 
briate asylum  is  a  declaration  to  all 
about  him  that  he  has  been  a  drunkard, 
and  even  a  very  bad  drunkard ;  for  the 
people  here  know,  from  their  own  bitter 
experience,  that  a  person  cannot  bring 
himself  to  make  such  a  confession  until, 
by  many  a  lapse,  he  has  be.en  brought 
to  despair  of  self-recovery.  Many  of 
these  men  were  thinking  of  the  asylum 
for  years  before  they  could  summon 


courage  to  own  that  they  had  lost  the 
power  to  resist  a  physical  craving.  But 
when  once  they  have  made  the  agonizing 
avowal  by  entering  the  asylum,  it  costs 
them  no  great  effort  to  reveal  the  details 
of  their  case  to  hearers  who  cannot  re- 
proach them  ;  and,  besides  relating  their 
own  experience  without  reserve,  they 
are  relieved,  encouraged,  and  instructed 
by  hearing  the  similar  experience  of 
others.  All  have  the  same  object,  the 
same  peril,  the  same  dread,  the  same 
hope,  and  each  aids  the  rest  as  students 
aid  one  another  in  the  same  college. 

In  a  community  like  this,  Public 
Opinion  is  the  controlling  force.  That 
subtle,  resistless  power  is  always  aid- 
ing or  frustrating  the  object  for  which 
the  community  exists.  Public  Opinion 
sides  with  a  competent  superintendent, 
and  serves  him  as  an  assiduous,  omni- 
present police.  Under  the  coercive 
system  once  attempted  here,  the  public 
opinion  of  the  Asylum  applauded  a 
man  who  smuggled  a  bottle  of  whiskey 
into  the  building,  and  invited  his  friends 
into  his  room  to  drink  it.  An  inmate 
who  should  now  attempt  such  a  crime 
would  be  shunned  by  the  best  two- 
thirds  of  the  whole  institution.  One 
of  their  number,  suddenly  overcome  by 
temptation,  who  should  return  to  the 
Asylum  drunk,  they  would  all  receive 
as  cordially  as  before  ;  but  they  would 
regard  with  horror  or  contempt  a  man 
who  should  bring  temptation  into  the 
building,  and  place  it  within  reach  of 
those  who  had  fled  hither  to  avoid  it.  | 

The  French  have  a  verb, — se  de- 
fiayser,  —  to  uncountry  one's  self,  to  get 
out  of  the  groove,  to  drop  undesirable 
companions  and  forsake  haunts  that  are 
too  alluring,  by  going  away  for  a  while, 
and,  in  returning,  not  resuming  the  old 
friends  and  habits.  How  necessary 
this  is  to  some  of  the  slaves  of  alcohol 
every  one  knows.  To  many  of  them 
restoration  is  impossible  without  it, 
and  not  difficult  with  it.  To  all  such, 
what  a  refuge  is  a  well-conducted  asy- 
lum like  this  !  Merely  being  here,  out 
of  the  coil  of  old  habits,  haunts,  pleas- 
ures, comrades,  temptations,  which  had 
proved  too  much  for  them  a  thousand 


1 868.] 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One. 


times,  —  merely  being  away  for  a  time, 
so  that  they  can  calmly  survey  the 
scenes  they  have  left  and  the  life  they 
have  led,  —  is  itself  half  the  victory. 

Every  Wednesday  evening,  after 
prayers,  a  kind  of  temperance  meeting 
is  held  in  the  chapel.  It  is  the  inten- 
tion of  the  superintendent,  that  every 
inmate  of  the  Asylum  shall  become  ac- 
quainted with  the  nature  of  alcohol, 
and  with  the  precise  effects  of  alcoholic 
drinks  upon  the  human  system.  He 
means  that  they  shall  comprehend  the 
absurdity  of  drinking  as  clearly  as  they 
know  its  ruinous  consequences.  He 
accordingly  opens  this  meeting  with  a 
short  lecture  upon  some  one  branch  of 
the  subject,  and  then  invites  the  pa- 
tients to  illustrate  the  point  from  their 
own  experience.  At  the  meeting  which 
I  happened  to  attend  the  subject  of 
Dr.  Day's  remarks  was  suggested  (as 
it  often  is)  by  an  occurrence  which  had 
just  taken  place  at  the  institution,  and 
had  been  the  leading  topic  of  conversa- 
tion all  that  day.  At  the  last  meeting, 
a  young  man  from  a  distant  State,  who 
had  been  in  the  Asylum  for  some 
months  and  was  about  to  return  home, 
delivered  an  eloquent  farewell  address 
to  his  companions,  urging  them  to  ad- 
here to  their  resolution,  and  protesting 
his  unalterable  resolve  never,  never, 
never  again  to  yield  to  their  alluring 
and  treacherous  foe.  He  spoke  with 
unusual  animation  and  in  a  very  loud 
voice.  He  took  his  departure  in  the 
morning  by  the  Erie  Road,  and  twelve 
after  he  was  brought  back  to  the 
Asylum  drunk.  Upon  his  recovery  he 
related  to  the  superintendent  and  to 
his  friends  the  story  of  his  lamentable 
fall.  When  the  train  had  gone  three 
hours  on  its  way,  there  was  a  detention 
of  three  hours  at  a  station  that  offered 
little  entertainment  to  impatient  trav- 
.  The  returning  prodigal  paced 
latform  ;  found  it  dull  work  ;  heard 
'istance  the  sound  of  billiard  balls  ; 
and  played  two  games,  losing 
both  ;  returned  tCfcthe  platform  and  re- 
d  his  walk;  and  there  fell  into  the 
.  of  thought  that  led  to  the  ca- 
tastrouhe.  His  reflections  were  like 


these:  "How  perfect  is  my  cure!  I 
have  not  once  thought  of  taking  a 
drink.  Not  even  when  I  saw  men 
drinking  at  the  bar  did  it  cross  my 
mind  to  follow  their  example.  I  have 
not  the  least  desire  for  whiskey,  and  I 
have  no  doubt  I  could  take  that  'one 
glass '  which  Dr.  Day  keeps  talking 
about,  without  a  wish  for  a  second.  In 
fact,  no  man  is  perfectly  cured  till  he 
can  do  that.  I  have  a  great  mind  to 
put  it  to  the  test.  It  almost  seems  as 
if  this  opportunity  of  trying  myself  had 
been  created  on  purpose.  Here  goes, 
then,  for  the  last  glass  of  whiskey  I 
shall  take  as  long  as  I  live,  and  I  take 
it  purely  as  a  scientific  experiment." 
One  hour  after,  his  friend,  who  was  ac- 
companying him  home,  found  him  lying 
in  a  corner  of  a  bar-room,  dead  drunk. 
He  had  him  picked  up,  and  placed  in 
the  next  train  bound  for  Binghamton. 

This  was  the  text  of  Dr.  Day's  dis- 
course, and  he  employed  it  in  enforcing 
anew  his  three  cardinal  points :  I.  No 
hope  for  an  inebriate  until  he  thor- 
oughly distrusts  the  strength  of  his 
own  resolution  ;  2.  No  hope  for  an  ine- 
briate except  in  total  abstinence  as 
long  as  he  lives,  both  in  sickness  and 
in  health  ;  3.  Little  hope  for  an  ine- 
briate unless  he  avoids,  on  system  and 
on  principle,  the  occasions  of  tempta- 
tion, the  places  where  liquor  is  sold, 
and  the  persons  who  will  urge  it  upon 
him.  Physicians,  he  said,  were  the 
inebriate's  worst  enemies  ;  and  he  ad- 
vised his  hearers  to  avoid  the  tinctures 
prepared  with  alcohol,  which  had  often 
awakened  the  long-dormant  appetite. 
During  my  stay  at  Binghamton,  a  cler- 
gyman resident  in  the  town,  and  re- 
cently an  inmate  of  the  Asylum,  had  a 
slight  indisposition  resulting  from  riding 
home  from  a  meeting  ten  miles  in  the 
rain.  One  of  the  physicians  of  the 
place,  who  knew  his  history,  knew  that 
he  had  been  an  inebriate  of  the  most 
pronounced  type  (quart  of  liquor  a  day), 
prescribed  a  powerful  dose  of  brandy 
and  laudanum.  "I  dare  not  take  it, 
doctor,"  he  said,  and  put  the  damnable 
temptation  behind  him.  "  If  I  had 
taken  it,"  said  he  to  me,  "I  should 


400 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One.          [October, 


have  been  drunk  to-day."  The  case, 
too,  required  nothing  but  rest,  rice,  and 
an  easy  book.  No  medicine  was  neces- 
sary. Dr.  Day  has  had  under  his  care 
a  man  -who,  after  being  a  confirmed 
drunkard,  had  been  a  teetotaler  for 
eighteen  years,  and  had  then  been  ad- 
vised to  take  wine  for  the  purpose  of 
hastening  a  slow  convalescence.  His 
appetite  resumed  its  old  ascendency, 
and,  after  drinking  furiously  for  a  year, 
he  was  brought  to  the  Asylum  in  delir- 
ium tremens.  Dr.  Day  expressed  a 
strong  hope  and  belief  that  the  re- 
turned inmate  mentioned  above  had 
now  actually  taken  his  last  glass  of 
whiskey;  for  he  had  discovered  his 
weakness,  and  was  in  a  much  more 
hopeful  condition  than  he  had  been  be- 
fore his  lapse.  The  Doctor  scouted 
the  idea  that  a  man  who  has  the  mis- 
fortune to  break  his  resolution  should 
give  up  the  struggle.  Some  men,  he 
said,  must  fall,  at  least  once,  before  the 
last  rag  of  self-confidence  is  torn  from 
them ;  and  he  had  had  patients  who, 
after  coming  back  to  him  in  Boston 
four  times,  had  conquered,  and  had 
lived  soberly  for  years,  and  were  still 
living  soberly. 

When  the  superintendent  had  fin- 
ished his  remarks,  he  called  upon  his 
hearers  to  speak.  Several  of  them  did 
so.  One  young  gentleman,  an  officer 
of  the  army  during  the  war,  made  his 
farewell  speech.  He  thanked  his  com- 
panions for  the  forbearance  they  had 
shown  him  during  the  first  weeks  of 
his  residence  among  them,  when  he 
was  peevish,  discontented,  rebellious, 
and  had  no  hope  of  ever  being  able  to 
conquer  his  propensity,  so  often  had 
he  tried  and  failed.  He  would  have 
left  the  Asylum  in  those  days,  if  he  had 
had  the  money  to  pay  his  fare  on  the 
cars.  He  felt  the  importance  of  what 
Dr.  Day  had  advanced  respecting  the 
occasions  of  temptation,  and  especially 
what  he  had  said  about  physicians' 
prescriptions,  which  he  knew  had  led 
men  to  drink.  "  If,"  he  added,  "  I  can- 
not live  without  alcohol,  I  would  rather 
die.  For  my  part,  I  expect  to  have  a 
struggle  all  my  life ;  I  don't  think  the 


time  will  ever  come  when  it  will  be  safe 
for  me  to  dally  with  temptation,  and 
I  feel  the  necessity  of  following  Dr. 
Day's  advice  on  this  point"  He  spoke 
in  a  simple,  earnest,  and  manly  man- 
ner. He  was  followed  by  another  in- 
mate, a  robust,  capable-looking  man  of 
thirty-five,  who  also  spoke  with  direct- 
ness and  simplicity.  He  hoped  that 
fear  would  help  him  to  abstain.  If  be 
could  only  keep  sober,  he  had  the  best 
possible  prospects ;  but  if  he  again 
gave  way,  he  saw  nothing  before  him 
but  infamy  and  destruction.  He  spoke 
modestly  and  anxiously,  evidently  feel- 
ing that  it  was  more  than  a  matter  of 
life  and  death  to  him.  When  he  had 
concluded,  a  young  gentleman  rose, 
and  delivered  a  fluent,  flowery  address 
upon  temperance ;  just  such  a  dis- 
course as  might  precede  a  lapse  into 
drinking. 

On  Monday  evening  of  every  week, 
the  Literary  Society  of  the  institution 
holds  its  meeting,  when  essays  are 
read  and  lectures  delivered.  The 
course  of  lectures  delivered  last  win- 
ter are  highly  spoken  of  by  those  who 
heard  them,  and  they  were  all  written 
by  inmates  of  the  Asylum.  Among  the 
subjects  treated  were :  Columbus,  a 
Study  of  Character;  Goldsmith;  The 
Telegraph,  by  an  Operator ;  Resources 
of  Missouri ;  Early  English  Novelists ; 
The  Age,  and  the  Men  for  the  Age; 
Geology ;  The  Passions,  with  Poetical 
Illustrations ;  The  Inebriate  Asylum, 
under  the  Regime  of  Coercion.  It  oc- 
casionally happens,  that  distinguished 
visitors  contribute  something  to  the 
pleasure  of  the  evening.  Mrs.  Stowe, 
the  newspapers  inform  us,  was  kind 
enough  some  time  since  to  give  them 
a  reading  from  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin; 
and  the  copy  of  the  book  from  which 
she  read  was  a  cheap  double-columned 
pamphlet  brought  from  the  South  by  a 
freedman,  now  the  porter  of  the  Asy- 
lum. He  bought  it  and  read  it  while 
he  was  still  a  slave,  little  thinking  when 
he  scrawled  his  nam^across  the  dingy 
title-page  that  he  should  ever  have  the 
honor  of  lending  it  to  the  authoress. 

Nearly  twelve  years  have  now  elapsed 


Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a  Visit  to  One. 


401 


since  Dr.  Day  began  to  accumulate  ex- 
perience in  the  treatment  of  .inebriates, 
during  which  time  he  has  had  nearly 
four  thousand  patients  under  his  care. 
What  proportion  of  these  were  perma- 
nently cured  it  is  impossible  to  say,  be- 
cause nothing  is  heard  of  many  patients 
•after  they  leave ;  but  it  is  reasonably 
conjectured  that  two  thirds  of  the  whole 
number  were  restored.  It  is  a  custom 
with  many  of  them  to  write  an  annual 
letter  to  Dr.  Day  on  the  anniversary  of 
their  entering  the  Home  under  his  man- 
agement, and  the  reading  of  such  letters 
is  a  highly  interesting  and  beneficial 
feature  of  the  Wednesday  evening  tem- 
perance meetings.  The  alcoholic  ma- 
nia is  no  respecter  of  rjersons.  Dr. 
Day  has  had  under  treatment  twenty- 
one  clergymen,  one  of  whom  was  a 
Catholic  priest  (who  had  delirium  tre- 
inens),  and  one  a  Jewish  Rabbi.  He 
has  had  one  old  man  past  seventy,  and 
one  boy  of  sixteen.  He  has  had  a 
Philadelphia  "  killer,"  and  a  judge  of  a 
supreme  court.  He  has  had  steady 
two-quarts-a-day  men,  and  men  who 
were  subject  only  to  semi-annual  de- 
bauches. He  has  had  men  whose 
"tears"  lasted  but  forty-eight  hours, 
and  one  man  who  came  in  of  his  own 
-accord  after  what  he  styled  "  a  general 
spree  "  of  three  months'  continuance. 
He  has  had  drunkards  of  two  years' 
islanding,  and  those  who  have  been 
-slaves  of  strong  drink  for  thirty  years. 

Some  of  his  successes  have  been 
striking  and  memorable.  There  was 

Dr.  X of  Tennessee,  at  thirty-five  a 

physician  of  large  practice,  professor  in 
a  medical  college,  happy  in  an  excel- 
lent wife  and  seven  children.  Falling 
into  drink,  he  lost  at  length  his  prac- 
tice, his  professorship,  his  property,  his 
home  ;  his  family  abandoned  him  to  his 
fate,  and  went  to  his  wife's  father's  in 
•another  State  ;  and  he  became  at  last  a 
helpless  gutter  sot.  His  brother,  who 
heard  by  chance  of  the  Home  in  Boston, 
picked  him  up  one  day  from  the  street, 
•where  he  lay  insensible,  and  got  him 
•upon  the  train  for  the  East.  Before  he 
roused  from  his  drunken  stupor,  he  was 
half-way  across  Virginia.  "  Where  am 

VOL,  XXII.  — SO.  132.  26 


I  ?  "  he  asked.  "  In  Virginia,  on  your 
way  to  Boston."  "All  right,"  said 
he,  in  a  drunkard's  drunkenest  man- 
ner, —  "  all  right !  give  me  some  whis- 
key." He  was  carried  into  the  Home 
in  the  arms  of  men,  and  lay  for  some 
weeks  miserably  sick.  His  health  im- 
proved, and  the  man  revived.  He 
clutched  at  this  unexpected  chance  of 
escape,  and  co-operated  with  all  his 
heart  with  the  system.  Dr.  Day  wrote 
a  hopeful  letter  to  his  wife.  "  Speak 
not  to  me  of  a  husband,"  she  replied  ; 
"  I  have  no  husband  ;  I  buried  my  hus- 
band long  ago."  After  four  months'  stay 
in  the  institution,  the  patient  returned 
home,  and  resumed  his  practice.  A 
year  after,  his  family  rejoined  him.  He 
recovered  all  his  former  standing,  which 
to  this  day,  after  nine  years  of  sobriety, 
he  retains.  His  ninth  annual  letter  to 
his  deliverer  I  have  read.  "  By  the 
way,"  he  says,  in  a  postscript,  "did 
you  receive  my  letters  each  year  of  the 
war  ? "  Yes,  they  reached  Dr.  Day 
months  after  they  were  written  ;  but 
they  always  reached  him.  The  secret 
of  this  cure,  as  the  patient  has  often 
asserted,  was  total  abstinence.  He  had 
attempted  to  reduce  his  daily  quantity 
a  hundred  times  ;  but  never,  until  he 
entered  the  Home,  was  he  aware  of  the 
physical  impossibility  of  a  drunkard's 
becoming  a  moderate  drinker.  From 
the  moment  when  he  had  a  clear,  intel- 
lectual comprehension  of  that  truth,  the 
spell  was  broken  :  abstinence  was  easy ; 
he  was  himself  again. 

Then  there  was  Y ,  a  Philadelphia 

street  savage,  —  one  of  those  firemen 
who  used  to  sleep  in  the  engine-house, 
and  lie  in  wait  for  rival  companies,  and 
make  night  and  day  hideous  with 
slaughter.  Fearful  beings  were  those 
Philadelphia  firemen  of  twenty  years 
ago  !  Some  of  them  made  a  nearer  ap- 
proach to  total  depravity  than  any  crea- 
tures I  have  ever  seen  that  wore  the 
form  of  man,  —  revelling  in  blood,  ex- 
ulting in  murder,  and  glorying  in  hell- 
ish blows  with  iron  implements,  given, 
and  received.  It  was  difficult  to  say 
whether  it  gave  them  keener  delight  to 
wound  or  to  be  wounded.  In  all  com- 


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Inebriate  Asylums,  and  a -Visit  to  One.          [October, 


munities  where  external  observances 
and  decorums  become  tyrannical,  and 
where  the  innocent  pleasures  of  youth 
are  placed  under  a  ban,  there  is  sure  to 
be  a  class  which  revolts  against  the  invis- 
ible despot,  and  goes  to  a  horrid  extreme 

of  violence  and  vice.  ThisY was  one 

of  the  revolters.  Once  in  many  weeks 
he  would  return  to  his  decent  home, 
ragged  and  penniless,  to  be  reclothed. 
It  is  only  alcohol  that  supports  men  in 
a  life  of  wanton  violence  like  this  ;  and 
he,  accordingly,  was  a  deep  and  reck- 
less drinker.  His  sister  prevailed  upon 
him,  after  many  months  of  persuasion, 
to  go  to  the  Home  in  Boston,  and  he 
presented  himself  there  one  morning, 
black  all  over  with  coal-dust.  He  ex- 
plained his  appearance  by  saying  that 
he  had  come  from  Philadelphia  in  a 
coal-vessel.  Dr.  Day,  who  had  been 
notified  of  his  coming,  received  him 
with  that  emphatic  politeness  which 
produces  such  magical  effects  upon 
men  who  have  long  been  accustomed  to 
see  an  enemy  in  every  one  who  behaves 
decently  and  uses  the  English  language 
in  its  simplicity.  He  was  exceedingly 
astonished  to  be  treated  with  considera- 
tion, and  to  discover  that  he  was  not  to 
be  subjected  to  any  disagreeable  pro- 
cess. He  proved  to  be  a  good,  simple 
soul,  very  ignorant,  not  naturally  intelli- 
gent, and  more  capable,  therefore,  of 
faith  than  of  knowledge.  The  Doctor 
won  his  confidence  ;  then  his  good-will ; 
then  his  affection.  Something  that  was 
read  in  the  Bible  attracted  his  attention 
one  day,  and  he  asked  to  be  shown  the 
passage  ;  and  this  was  the  beginning 
of  his  reading  the  Bible  regularly.  It 
was  all  new  to  him  ;  he  found  it  highly 
interesting;  and,  this  daily  reading  be- 
ing associated  in  his  mind  with  his 
reform,  the  book  became  a  kind  of  tal- 
isman to  him,  and  he  felt  safe  as  long 
as  he  continued  the  practice.  After  a 
six-months'  residence,  he  went  to  work 
in  Boston,  but  always  returned  to  spend 
the  evening  at  the  Home.  At  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war  he  enlisted.  He  was 
in  Colonel  Baker's  regiment  on  the 
bloody  day  of  Ball's  Bluff,  and  was  one 
of  the  gallant  handful  of  men  who  res- 


cued from  the  enemy  the  body  of  their 
slain  commander.  He  was  one  of  the 
multitude  who  swam  the  Potomac  amid 
a  pattering  rain  of  bullets,  and  walked 
barefoot  seven  miles  to  camp.  The 
first  man  that  met  him  there  offered  him 
whiskey.  Mistaken  kindness !  Sense- 
less offer  !  A  man  who  is  sinking  with 
fatigue  wants  rest,  not  stimulation ; 
sleep,  not  excitenient.  "  Don't  offer 
me  that"  he  gasped,  shuddering.  "  I 
dread  that  more  than  bullets."  Instead 
of  the  whiskey,  he  took  twelve  hours' 
sleep,  and  consequently  awoke  re- 
freshed, and  ready  for  another  day's 
hard  service.  At  Antietam  he  had  the 
glory  and  high  privilege  of  giving  his 
life  for  mankind.  A  bullet  through  the 
brain  sent  him  to  heaven,  and  stretched 
his  body  on  the  field  in  painless  and 
eternal  sleep.  It  lies  now  in  a  ceme- 
tery near  his  native  city ;  a  monument 
covers  it ;  and  all  who  were  connected 
with  him  are  proud  to  point  to  his  grave 
and  claim  him  for  their  own.  What  a 
contrast  between  dying  so,  and  being 
killed  in  a  motiveless  street-fight  by  a 
savage  blow  on  the  head  with  a  speak- 
ing-trumpet ! 

Perhaps,  long  as  this  article  already 
is,  I  may  venture  to  give,  with  the  ut- 
most possible  brevity,  one  more  of  the 
many  remarkable  cases  with  which  I 
became  acquainted  at  the  Asylum. 

One  Sunday  morning,  a  loud  ringing 
of  the  front-door  bell  of  the  Home  in 
Boston  induced  Dr.  Day  himself  to 
answer  the  summons.  He  found  a  man 
at  the  door  who  was  in  the  most  com- 
plete state  of  dilapidation  that  can  be 
imagined,  — ragged,  dirty,  his  hat  awry, 
torn  and  bent,  spectacles  with  one  eye 
gone  and  the  other  cocked  out  of  place, 
the  perfect  picture  of  a  drunken  sot  who 
had  slept  among  the  barrels  and  cotton- 
bales  for  six  months.  He  was  such  a 
person  as  we  thoughtless  fools  roar  at 
in  the  theatre  sometimes,  about  10.30 
p.  M.,  and  who  makes  the  lives  of  sundry 
children  and  one  woman  a  long  and 
hopeless  tragedy  up  in  some  dismal  gar- 
ret, or  down  in  some  pestilential  cellar. 

"What  can  I  do  for  you?"  inquired 
the  superintendent. 


1 868.] 


Inebriate  Asylums^  and  a  Visit  to  One. 


403 


"  My  name   is  A.  B ;    will  you 

take  me  in  ?  " 

"  Have  you  a  letter  of  introduction 
from  any  one  ?  " 

"No." 

"We  must  have  something  of  the 
kind ;  do  you  know  any  one  in  Bos- 
ton?" 

"  Yes  ;  there  is  Dr.  Kirk  ;  7  've 
preached  in  his  church;  he  ought  to 
know  me  ;  I  '11  see  if  he  does." 

In  a  few  minutes  he  returned,  bearing 
a  note  from  that  distinguished  clergy- 
man, saying  that  he  thought  he  knew 
the  man;  and  upon  this  he  was  ad- 
mitted. 

He  was  as  complete,  though  not  as 
hopeless  a  wreck  as  he  appeared.  He 
had  been  a  clergyman- in  good  standing 
and  of  ability  respectable  ;  but  had  in- 
sensibly fallen  under  the  dominion  of  a 
mania  for  drink.  For  ten  years  he  had 
been  a  downright  sot.  He  had  not  seen 
his  family  in  that  time.  A  benevolent 
man  who  chanced  to  meet  him  in  New 
York  described  to  him  the  Washing- 
tonian  Home,  made  him  promise  to  go 
to  it,  and  gave  him  money  for  the  pur- 
pose. He  immediately  spent  the  money 
for  drink ;  but  yet,  in  some  forgotten 
\vay,  he  smuggled  himself  to  Boston, 
and  made  his  appearance  at  the  Home 
on  that  Sunday  morning.  Such  cases  as 
this,  hopeless  as  they  seem,  are  among 
the  easiest  to  cure,  because  there  are 
knowledge,  conscience,  and  pride  latent 
in  the  man,  which  begin  to  assert  them- 
selves as  soon  as  the  system  is  freed 
from  the  presence  of  alcohol.  This 
man  was  easily  made  to  see  the  truth 
respecting  his  case.  He  soon  came  to 
understand  alcohol ;  and  this  alone  is 
a  surprising  assistance  to  a  man  at  the 
instant  of  temptation.  He  remained  at 
the  Home  six  months,  always  improv- 
ing in  health,  and  regaining  his  former 
character.  He  left  Boston  twenty-two 
months  ago,  and  has  since  lived  with 
perfect  sobriety,  and  has  been  restored 
to  his  family  and  to  his  profession. 

Inebriate  asylums,  rationally  con- 
ducted, cannot  fail  to  be  worth  their 
cost.  They  are  probably  destined  to  be- 
come as  generally  recognized  a  neces- 


sity of  our  diseased  modern  life  as  asy- 
lums for  lunatics  and  hospitals  for  the 
sick.  It  is  not  necessary  to  begin  with* 
a  million-dollar  palace,  though  it  is  de- 
sirable that  the  building  should  be 
attractive,  airy,  and  large  enough  to 
accommodate  a  considerable  number  of 
patients.  When  the  building  has  been 
paid  for,  the  institution  maybe  self-sus- 
taining, or  even  yield  a  profit.  It  is 
possible  that  the  cure  of  inebriates  may 
become  a  specialty  of  medical  practice, 
to  which  men,  gifted  with  the  requisite 
talent,  will  devote  their  lives.  The  sci- 
ence of  the  thing  is  still  most  incomplete, 
and  only  one  individual  has  had  much 
success  in  the  practice.  Albert  Day  is  a 
good  superintendent  chiefly  because  he 
is  a  good  Yankee,  not  because  he  is  a 
great  scientific  healer.  It  seems  in- 
stinctive in  good  Yankees  to  respect 
the  rights  and  feelings  of  others ;  and 
they  are  accustomed  to  persuade  and 
convince,  not  drive,  not  compel.  Al- 
bert Day  has  treated  these  unfortunate 
and  amiable  men  as  he  would  have 
treated  younger  brothers  taken  captive 
by  a  power  stronger  than  themselves. 
His  polite  and  respectful  manner  to  his 
patients  on  all  occasions  must  be  balm 
to  men  accustomed  to  the  averted  look 
and  taunting  epithet,  and  accustomed, 
too,  to  something  far  harder  to  bear,  — 
distrust  and  abhorrence  of  themselves. 
Others,  of  course,  will  originate  im- 
proved methods,  and  we  shall  have,  at 
length,  a  Fine  Art  of  assisting  men  to 
overcome  bad  habits ;  but  this  charac- 
teristic of  Dr.  Day  will  never  be  want- 
ing to  an  asylum  that  answers  the  end 
of  its  establishment. 

The  disease  which  such  institutions 
are  designed  to  cure  must  be  very  com- 
mon ;  for  where  is  the  family  that  has 
not  a  drunkard  in  its  circle  of  connec- 
tions ?  It  is  true  that  an  ounce  of  pre- 
vention is  worth  a  pound  of  cure  ;  but 
not  on  that  account  must  the  pou^d  of 
cure  be  withheld. 

The  railroad  which  connects  New 
York  and  Binghamton  is  the  Erie, 
which  is  another  way  of  saying  that  I 
was  detained  some  hours  on  the  journey 
home ;  and  this  afforded  me  the  novel 


404 


Petroleum  in  Bunnah. 


[October, 


experience  of  working  my  way  up  town 
in  a  New  York  street-car  an  hour  or 
two  before  daylight.  The  car  started 
from  the  City  Hall  at  half  past  two  A.  M., 
and  received,  during  the  first  three  miles 
of  its  course,  twenty-seven  persons.  It 
so  happened  that  nearly  every  individ- 
ual of  them,  including  the  person  com- 
ing home  from  the  Asylum,  was  out 
of  bed  at  that  hour  through  alcohol. 
There  were  three  drunken  vagabonds 
asleep,  who  were  probably  taking  a 
cheap  lodging  in  the  car  by  riding  to 
Harlem  and  back,  —  two  hours  and  forty 
minutes'  ride  for  fourteen  cents.  In  one 
corner  was  coiled  away  a  pale,  dirty, 
German  Jew  of  the  Fagin  type,  very 
drunk,  singing  snatches  of  drinking 
choruses  in  broken  English.  Next  to 
him  was  his  pal,  a  thick-set  old  Charley 
Bates,  also  drunk,  and  occasionally  join- 
ing in  the  festive  songs.  A  mile  of  the 
ride  was  enlivened  by  an  argument  be- 
tween C.  Bates  and  the  conductor,  on 
the  subject  of  a  cigar,  which  Mr.  Bates 
insisted  on  smoking,  in  violation  of  the 
rule.  The  controversy  was  carried  on 
in  "  the  English  language."  Then 
there  were  five  German  musicians,  per- 
fectly sober  and  very  sleepy,  with  their 
instruments  in  their  hands,  returning, 
I  suppose,  from  some  late  saloon  or 


dance-house.  One  woman  was  in  the 
car,  a  girl  of  twenty,  who  appeared- to 
be  a  performer  in  a  saloon,  and  was 
now,  after  having  shed  her  spangles 
and  her  ribbons,  going  home  in  dirty 
calico  drawn  tight  over  a  large  and  ob- 
vious hoop,  under  the  protecting  care  of 
a  nice  young  man.  There  were  several 
young  and  youngish  men,  well-dressed, 
in  various  stages  of  intoxication,  who 
had  probably  been  at  the  lawless  "  late 
houses,"  singing  and  drinking  all  night, 
and  were  now  going  home  to  scare  and 
horrify  mothers,  sisters,  or  wives,  who 
ruay  have  been  waiting  five  hours  to 
hear  the  scratch  of  their  latch-key 
against  the  front  door. 

What  a  picture  did  the  inside  of  that 
car  present,  when  it  was  filled  upon 
both  sides  with  sleepy,  bobbing  drunk- 
ards and  servants  of  drunkards,  the 
girl  leaning  sleepily  upon  her -neighbor's 
shoulder,  the  German  musicians  crouch- 
ing over  their  instruments  half  dead 
with  sleep,  old  Fagin  bawling  a  line  of 
a  beery  song,  and  the  conductor,  strug- 
gling down  through  the  midst,  vainly 
•  endeavoring  to  extract  from  boozy 
passengers,  whether  they  were  going 
"  through,"  or  desired  to  be  dropped  on 
the  way.  It  was  a  fit  ending  to  a  week 
at  the  Inebriate  Asylum. 


PETROLEUM    IN    BURMAH. 


ON  the  east  bank  of  the  Irrawaddi 
River,  about  six  hours  by  a  war- 
boat,  above  the  great  barbaric  town  of 
Mahgwe,  and  nearly  midway  between 
the  northern  frontier  of  the  new  British- 
Indian  possessions  and  Amarapoora, 
the  "Throne  of  the  Golden  Foot,"  is 
the  tconsiderable  village  of  Ye-nan- 
gyoung,  or  "Fetid-water  Rivulet,"  of 
which  the  name  explains  the  fame.  It 
is  an  odd,  rather  than  picturesque  little 
town,  its  lack  of  beauty  being  offset  by 
the  aspect  of  fantastic  remoteness,  that 
sort  of  Chinese  wall-paper  pattern, 


which  it  derives  from  the  numerous  pa- 
godas and  multi-roofed  kyoungs,  or 
Buddhist  monasteries,  that  crown  the 
eminences  round  about  it.  Between 
these  eminences,  in  shady  holm-like 
hollows,  the  flimsy  bamboo  houses  are 
scattered  irregularly  ;  and  below  them 
creeps  sluggishly  the  oily-looking  stream 
from  which  the  town  derives  its  appel- 
lation,—the  internal  supply  of  water 
being  quite  cut  off  through  all  the  dry 
season,  though  the  stream  then  borrows 
enough  from  the  Irrawaddi  to  form, 
for  a  short  distance  above  its  mouth,  a 


1 868.] 


Petroleum  in  Burmak. 


405 


convenient  harbor  for  war-boats  and  the 
lighter  trading  craft.  A  narrow  stretch 
of  alluvial  slope,  skirting  the  sandy 
%  channel,  nourishes  an  oasis  of  noble 
mango-trees,,  interspersed  with  palms, 
and  affords  a  refreshing  contrast  to  the 
desert  of  sterile,  burning  heights,  drear- 
ily relieved  by  grim  euphorbias  in  the 
background  and  on  either  hand.  On 
these  heights,  and  as  far  as  the  eye  can 
reach  from  them  eastward,  the  face  of 
the  land  is,  for  the  most  part,  gray  and 
naked,  hard  and  hot, — the  soil  sandy 
and  stony,  with  no  more  herbage  be- 
tween the  "  thin  bandith  "  of  scraggy 
bush  than  may  pitifully  serve  to  redeem 
the  surface  from  absolute  desertness. 
Substantial  trees,  with  comely  foliage, 
appear  only  in  the  bottoms  ;  but  on 
every  side  fossil  wood  abounds,  and  as 
late  as  1856  there  was  a  ruined  temple 
on  a  hill-top,  surrounded  by  posts  of 
that  material. 

As  for  the  town  itself,  an  all-pervad- 
ing coal-tarry  fragrance  proclaims  its 
rich  and  nasty  staple,  while  innumera- 
ble potters'  kilns  dotting  the  outskirts, 
and  piles  of  earthen  jars  lining  the 
beach,  relate  to  the  eye  the  same  golden 
story  which  the  unctuous  abomination 
of  odor  so  triumphantly  imparts  to  the 
nose.  "  Fetid-water  Rivulet  "  (what  a 
perfect  nitrous-oxide  of  a  name  to  set 
before  the  mind's  nose  of  an  imagina- 
tive stock-taker !)  is  eminently  a  place 
for  surfeited  and  blase  Petroleans  to  get 
away  to  ;  if  for  such  there  be  an  oily 
Eden  outside  of  Venango  County,  it  is 
this. 

The  principal  wells  are  about  three 
miles  from  the  town,  near  the  village 
of  Twen-goung.  You  ride  to  them  no 
small,  tough  ponies,  generally  very 
pretty,  but  very  perverse,  and  equipped 
with  a  tolerable  saddle,  somewhat  Eng- 
lish-looking, except  for  an  unsightly 
hump  on  the  pommel,  and  distressingly 
small  stirrups,  made  to  be  gripped  with 
the  great  toe  of  the  naked  foot,  and 
rudely  hitched  to  the  two  ends  of  a 
piece  of  rope,  which  is  twisted  into  the 
girth  on  the  seat  of  the  saddle.  Thus 
grotesquely  mounted,  you  wind  through 
the  ravines  and  climb  the  steep  sides 


of  the  rotten  sandstone  hills,  till'  you 
reach  the  plateau  where  the  wells  are,  — 
"an  irregular  table,  with  a  gently  slop- 
ing surface,  forming  a  sort  of  peninsula 
among  the  ravines."  * 

The  wells,  of  which  there  are  said 
to  be  about  a  hundred,  all  told  (though 
nearly  twenty  are  exhausted,  or  no 
longer  worked),  are  most  numerous 
along  the  upper  surface  of  this  plateau, 
and  on  the  sides  and  spurs  of  the  ra- 
vines that  bound  it  on  the  north  and 
southeast.  The  area,  within  which  all 
these  wells  are  included  does  not  ex- 
ceed half  a  square  mile,  —  though 
there  is  another  and  smaller  group  in  a 
valley  about  a  mile  to  the  southward ; 
in  some  places  they  are  less  than  a  hun- 
dred feet  apart.  The  oil  appears  to  be 
found  in  a  bed  of  impure  lignite,  with 
much  sulphur.  In  one  of  the  valleys 
a  stratum  of  this  was  observed  out- 
cropping, with  the  petroleum  oozing 
from  between  the  lamince  ;  and  Captain 
Yule  concludes  that  it  was  in  this  way 
that  the  oil  was  originally-discovered, — 
"some  Burman,  with  a  large  inductive 
faculty,  having  been  led  to  sink  a  shaft 
from  above." 

There  are  no  diversities  in  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  wells ;  all,  without  ex- 
ception, are  rectangular  orifices  about 
four  and  a  half  feet  by  three  and  a  half, 
and  lined  with  horizontal  timbers  to  the 
bottom.  Their  depth  varies  in  notice- 
able proportion  with  the  height  of  the 
well-mouth  above  the  river  level,  but  all 
are  sunk  much  below  the  level  of  the 
ravine  bottoms  that  bound  the  plateau  ; 
some  of  those  on  the  top  of  the  pla- 
teau are  one  hundred  and  eighty,  one 
hundred  and  ninety,  and  even  two  hun- 
dred and  seventy  feet  deep,  to  the  oil,  — 
the  deepest  of  all  about  three  hundred 
and  six  feet. 

The  machinery  used  in  drawing  the 
oil  is  of  the  most  primitive  description, 
—  simply  a  rude  attempt  at  a  windlass, 
mounted  on  the  trunk  of  a  small  tree, 

*  So  described  by  Captain  Henry  Yule,  of  tha 
Bengal  Engineers,  late  Secretary  to  the  Governor- 
General's  Envoy,  and  to  whose  superb  work,  A 
Narrative  of  a  Mission  to  the  Court  of  Ava  in 
1855,  the  writer  of  this  paper  is  largely  indebted 
for  his  materials. 


406 


Petroleum  in  Burmah. 


[October, 


laid  across  two  forked  uprights  ;  a  gur- 
rah,  or  earthen  pot,  is  let  down  and 
filled,  and  then  a  man  or  woman  walks 
down  the  slope  of  the  hill  with  the  rope. 

In  this  northern  group  there  were,  in 
1855,  about  eighty  wells  yielding  oil; 
in  the  southern  (the  only  other  group 
known  to  foreigners),  not  more  than 
fifty,  if  so  many,  and  the  oil  obtained 
from  them  was  of  inferior -quality,  and 
mixed  with  water.  In  both  groups 
there  are  many  exhausted  wells. 

The  Burmese  have  no  record  or 
tradition  of  the  original  discovery  of 
petroleum,  no  note  of  the  time,  or  of 
the  flow,  since  the  first  shaft  was  sunk. 
The  wells  are  private  property.  Twen- 
ty-three families  of  Ye-nan-gyoung  are 
supposed  to  be  the  representatives  and 
natural  heirs  of  the  "  mute,  inglorious  " 
explorers  who  first  found  and  drew  the 
oil ;  to  these  the  ground  belongs,  and 
chief  among  them  is  the  myo-thoo-gyee 
of  Ye-nan-gyoung,  who  lately  was  also 
myit-tsin-woon,  or  chief  magistrate  of 
the  great  river".*  The  twenty-three  pro- 
prietors constitute  a  kind  of  corporate 
body  for  the  protection  of  their  joint 
interests  in  the  land,  but  each  holds  in- 
dividual and  exclusive  rights  in  his  own 
wells.  When  any  one  proprietor  has 
sunk  a  well,  no  other  member  of  the 
association  may  dig  within  thirty  cubits 
of  it,  —  hence  much  protracted  litigation 
on  boundary  questions  ;  but  neither  can 
any  member  sell  or  mortgage  to  parties 
outside  of  the  association.  Not  only  do 
they  mortgage,  but  formerly  they  inter- 
married, only  among  the  stockholders  ; 
cf  late  years,  however,  this  exhausting 
custom  has  not  been  honored  by  those 
most  nearly  concerned. 

No  stranger  is  allowed  to  dig  a  well ; 
for  though  the  incorporated  proprietors 
hold  no  written  grant  or  confirmation 

*  "  TJioo-gyce  (great  man)  is  the  head  man  of  a 
small  circle  of  villages.  Myo  is  properly  a  fortified 
place,  and  hence  a  city,  or  chief  town,  of  a  district. 
The  Myo-thoo-gyee  is  the  Mayor,  or  town  magis- 
tratCj  and  may  be  the  deputy  of  the  Myo-woon,  who 
is  the  Governor,  or  Lord  Lieutenant  of  the  District. 
The  Myo-tsa  is  the  '  Eater,'  a  prince,  princess,  or 
court  official,  to  whom  the  revenues  of  the  district 
have  been  assigned  as  an  apanage.  Myo-ok  is  a 
subordinate  town  magistrate  under  the  myo-thoo- 
gyee."  —  YULE. 


of  their  exclusive  privilege,  they  are 
recognized  and  upheld  in  it  by  the  Bur- 
mese authorities..  But  aside  from  the 
influence  they  can  thus  bring  to  bear 
against  interlopers,  to  prevent  them 
from  sinking  wells  on  or  near  their 
"  claims,"  there  are  also  the  great  ex- 
pense, the  dearth  of  capital,  and  the 
uncertainty  of  returns,  to  deter  any  in- 
truding speculator  from  competing  with 
them.  The  cost  of  digging  a  well  150 
cubits  deep  is,  at  least,  2,000  tikals,  — 
about  eleven  hundred  dollars,  the  tikal 
being  equivalent  to  a  trifle  more  than  a 
rupee  and  a  quarter;  2,000  tikals  is  a 
great  sum  in  Burmah,  and,  after  all,  the 
money  may  be  lost  in  an  empty  hole  ; 
for  it  often  happens  that  a  well-dug 
within  a  few  yards  of  others  that  are 
flowing  freely  is  found  to  be  quite  dry. 
The  work  of  excavation,  as  it  approach- 
es the  oily  stratum,  becomes  dangerous, 
and  the  laborers  are  often  rendered 
senseless  by  the  exhalations;  even  in 
wells  that  have  been  long  worked  this 
sometimes  happens.  "  If  a  man  is 
drawn  up  with  his  tongue  hanging  out," 
said  a  Burmese  overseer,  "  the  case  is 
hopeless.  If  his  tongue  is  not  hang- 
ing out,  he  may  be  brought  round  by 
hand-rubbing  and  kneading  his  whole 
body."  Captain  Macleod,  in  1838,  saw 
a  gang  engaged  in  sinking  a  well  which 
had  reached  a  depth  of  125  cubits; 
each  workman  in  his  turn  remained 
below  only  from  fifteen  to  thirty  seconds, 
and  appeared  dangerously  exhausted  on 
coming  to  the  surface. 

The  yield  of  the  wells  varies  remark- 
ably ;  some  afford  no  more  than  five  or 
six  viss  (the  viss  being  equivalent  to 
3_6_5_  pounds),  while  others  give  700, 
800,  1,000,  and  even  1,5.00  viss  daily. 
The  average  yield  in  the  northern  group 
may  be  stated  at  220,  and  in  the  south- 
ern at  40  viss.  If  a  well  be  allowed  t 
lie  fallow  for  a  time,  the  yield  is  found 
to  be  diminished  when  work  on  it  is 
resumed.  The  oil  is  described,  by  the 
Burmese  overseers,  as  gushing  like  a 
fountain  from  openings  in  the  earth. 
accumulates  in  the  well  in  the  after- 
noon and  night,  is  drawn  off  in  the 
morning,  and  then  carted  in  earthen 


1 868.] 


Petroleum  in  Burmah. 


407 


pots,  of  ten  viss  each,  to  the  river-side, 
where  it  is  sold.  Formerly  it  brought 
one  tikal  the  hundred  viss,  or  about 
sixteen  shillings  English  the  ton.  Since 
the  annexation  of  Pegu,  the  demand  at 
Rangoon  has  carried  it  up  to  thirty-five 
shillings. 

Burmese  jealous^  and  suspicion  are 
so  easily  excited  that  it  is  impossible 
to  pursue  a  careful  train  of  inquiry  con- 
cerning even  the  most  insignificant  of 
their  interests  without  giving  umbrage 
to  officials  and  provoking  an  ingen- 
ious conspiracy  of  false  information. 
But  from  notes  taken  on  the  spot  from 
time  to  time,  under  the  most  favorable 
circumstances,  the  inquirers  being  vis- 
itors, extraordinary  and  honored  guests 
of  the  King,  and  the  monopolizing  gen- 
tlemen in  the  oil  line  correspondingly 
amiable  and  confiding,  it  is  fair  to  co*n- 
clude  that  from  the  eighty  wells  yielding 
oil  in  the  northern  group,  at  the  daily 
average  of  220  viss  from  each  well,  the 
annual  product  is  not  less  than  6,424,000 
viss  ;  and  from  the  fifty  wells  of  the 
southern  group,  at  an  average  of  40 
viss,  730,000  viss  in  the  year ;  making 
the  total  annual  yield  from  the  two 
groups  7,154,000  viss,  or  about  11,690 
tons.  This  estimate  agrees  at  all  points 
with  the  statement  made  to  Major 
Phayre,  the  British  Envoy,  by  the  Myo- 
ok  of  Ye-nan-gyoung,  a  man  of  sound 
information,  intelligent,  candid,  without 
dissimulation  or  reserve.  He  further- 
more explained  that  out  of  27,000  viss, 
which  formed  the  whole  monthly  yield 
of  his  wells,  9,000  went  in  the  form  of 
wages  to  his  workpeople,  1,000  to  the 
King,  and  1,000  to  the  Myo-tsa  or  "  Eat- 
er "  —  happily  titled  !  —  of  the  district. 

Mr.  Crawford,  in  the  Journal  of  his 
Embassy  (1827),  estimated  the  annual 
exportation  of  petroleum  at  17,568,000 
viss,  basing  his  calculations  upon  the 
number  of  boats  employed  in  transport- 
ing it.  He  makes  the  number  of  wells 
200,  and  the  average  daily  yield  of  each 
235  viss.  But  Mr.  Crawford's  accuracy 
is  not  a  thing  to  take  for  granted  ;  in 
one  place  he  describes  the  pits  as 
"  spread  over  a  space  of  sixteen  square 
miles."  To  carry  from  the  wells  to 


the  river  seventeen  and  a  half  millions 
of  viss  a  year,  at  the  average  ascer- 
tained cart-load  of  120  viss,  would  re- 
quire 400  carts  a  day ;  but  the  carts 
seldom  make  more  than  one  trip  in  the 
day  between  Ye-nan-gyoung  and  the 
wells,  and  from  160  to  170  is  the  usual 
number  of  loads.  The  carts  are  small, 
and  the  compact  and  sturdy  cattle  that 
.draw  them  share  with  their  masters  a 
comfortable  exemption  from  overwork. 

The  most  common  mode  of  shipping 
the  oil  to  Rangoon  is  in  the  singular 
craft  called  pein-go.  This  is  an  awk- 
ward-looking sloop,  flat-bottomed,  or 
nearly  so,  having  no  solid  canoe  or 
keel-piece,  as  in  the  splendid  but  fan- 
tastic hnau,  but  entirely  composed  of 
planks,  which  extend  throughout  the 
length  of  the  vessel,  —  wide  in  the  mid- 
dle, and  tapering  to  stem  and  stern, 
like  the  staves  of  a  cask.  A  wide  gal- 
lery or  sponson  of  bamboo,  doubling 
the  apparent  beam  of  the  boat,  runs  the 
entire  circuit  of  the  gunwale.  The  pern- 
go  is  usually  propelled  with  oars  or 
poles,  though  occasionally  .carrying  sail, 
but  never  that  great  bellying  spread  of 
light  cotton  cloth  which  makes  a  fleet 
of  hna2is  before  the  wind,  with  their 
vast  gleaming  wings  and  almost  invisi- 
ble hulls,  resemble  a  flight  of  monster 
butterflies  skimming  the  silver  surface 
of  the  Irrawaddi. 

The  oil  is  often  shipped  in  bulk.  Amid- 
ships the  boat  is  left  empty,  to  permit 
the  baling  of  water,  which,  as  heavier 
than  the  oil,  settles  into  this,  the  lowest 
part  of  the  hull.  Forward  and  aft,  the 
hold  is  divided  into  two  great  cisterns, 
and  into  these  the  oil  is  "clumped," 
like  grain.  Such  a  boat  can  carry 
10,000  viss  of  oil,  or  about  fifteen  tons, 
very  much  more  than  could  be  stowed 
by  means  of  earthen  pots.  Eight  men, 
paid  at  the  rate  of  six  tikals  a  month, 
compose  the  crew,  and  the  craft  may  be 
chartered  for  the  run  to  Rangoon  for 
one  hundred  tikals. 

In  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  wells, 
embedded  in  shaley  layers,  are  many 
small,  irregular  patches  of  coaly  matter, 
obviously  the  remains  of  mineralized 
fragments  of  wood,  which  have  been 


403 


deposited  in  the  silty  drift,  and  subse- 
quently fossilized.*  Portions  of  this 
are  a  true  jet  coal  with  a  brilliant  lustre 
and  perfectly  conchoidal  fracture  ;  other 
parts  are  powdery,  friable,  and  like 
charcoal ;  and  every  intermediate  state 
may  be  seen.  In  conjunction  with  these 
little  seams  and  patches  of  coaly  matter 
there  is  invariably  a  thick  inflorescence 
of  sulphur,  imparting  a  well-marked  . 
color  to  all  about  it.  Traces  of  this 
may  be  found  in  many  other  parts  also, 
and  not  in  connection  with  the  patches 
of  coal ;  but  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten 
the  development  of  sulphur  accompa- 
nies the  appearance  of  the  coal.  In  sev- 
eral localities  along  the  banks  of  the 
watercourse  the  petroleum  is  observed 
actually  oozing  out  from  the  rock  ;  and 
in  one  place  it  is  very  clearly  seen  to 
exude  along  the  walls  of  a  crack  or 
break  which  has  been  filled  up  with 
calcareous  sand. 

No  complete  section  of  any  of  the 
wells  has  been  obtained.  In  all  cases 
they  are  carefully  lined  with. timbers  as 
the  sinking  proceeds  ;  and  as  this  pro- 
cess is  continued  from  the  very  top  to 
the  very  bottom,  no  examination  of  the 
sides  of  a  well  or  pit  can  be  made.  The 
soft  and  insecure  nature  of  the  materi- 
als through  which  the  sinkings  are  car- 
ried renders  this  precaution  necessary  ; 
and  where  the  adventure  has  been  un- 
successful, or  when  the  well  seems  ex- 
hausted, all  the  timbering  is  removed, 
and  the  sides  allowed  to  fall  in.  The 
natives  say  that,  after  passing  through 
the  sandstones  and  shales  visible  at 
the  surface  and  in  the  ravines  adjoining, 
they  sink  through  what  they  term  a 
black  soil  or  "black  rock,"  about  ten 
feet  thick.  This  is  evidently  their  name 
for  the  dark  bluish-gray  or  blackish 
shales,  or  clunchy  clays.  Under  this 
they  cut  through  a  yellow  soil,  from 
which  they  say  the  petroleum  flows. 
Between  the  black  and  the  yellow 
"rocks  "  there  is  commonly,  though  not 
always,  a  greenish  bed,  oily,  and  strong- 
ly impregnated  with  petroleum,  —  which, 

*  Notes  on  the  Geological  Features  of  the  Banks 
of  the  Irravvaddi.  By  T.  Oldham,  Esq.,  Superintend- 
«nt  of  the  Geological  Survey  of  India. 


Petroleum  in  Bunnah. 


[October,, 


in  all  probability,  is  but  the  ordinary 
shaley  clay,  charged  with  the  oil.  Mr. 
Oldham  supposed  the  "  yellow  rock  " 
to  be  clayey  beds,  from  which,  or  on 
which,  sulphur  has  been  segregated  or 
thrown  out,  as  an  efflorescence. 

The  wells,  which  are  sunk  vertically,. 
and  are  in  all  casls  rectangular,  are 
invariably  provided  with  the  rude  cross- 
beam supported  on  ruder  stanchions  ;. 
this,  in  its  turn,  supports  the  small 
wooden  drum  or  cylinder  over  which 
slides  the  rope  used  in  hauling  up- 
the  oil.  In  all  probability  this  is  the 
same  contrivance,  without  improvement,, 
which  was  devised  when  the  first  well 
was  dug.  The  oil  thus  raised  is  poured 
into  a  greater  gurrah,*  or  into  a  small 
basin  or  tank  excavated  close  to  the 
well-mouth,  from  which  it  is  again 
potted,  and  so  carted  to  Ye-nan-gyoung 
for  shipment.  Each  gurrah  holds  about. 
ten  viss  of  oil,  and  ten  or  twelve  gur- 
rah s  constitute  a  load.  When  first 
drawn,  it  presents  in  mass  a  peculiar 
yellowish-green  color,  is  watery  rather 
than  oily,  and  of  the  consistence  of 
common  cream." 

The  wells  do  not  range  in  any  par- 
ticular line  or  direction;  there  is  noth- 
ing rto  point  to  the  occurrence  of  any 
fault  or  disturbance  along  the  line  of 
which  the  petroleum  might  issue ;  and 
the  varying  depths  of  the  wells  them- 
selves, according  to  their  position  (those 
on  the  top  of  the  plateau  being  in  all 
cases  deeper  than  those  on  the  slope  of 
the  hillside,  and  this  approximately  in 
the  same  ratio  as  the  surface  of  the 
ground  is  higher  in  the  one  place  than 
in  the  other),  indicate  a  decided  hori- 
zontality  in  the  source  of  supply.  This,. 
says  Mr.  Oldham,  is  a  question  of  con- 
siderable importance  ;  for  if  it  be  the 
case  that  one  bed  or  layer  of  peculiar 
mineral  character  is  the  source  of  the 
petroleum,  the  probability  —  nay,  the 

*  There  was  formerly  a  kind  of  gurrah,  stronff 
and  glazed,  manufactured  at  Martaban,  Paghan,  at 
Monchoboo,  and  known  in  Western  India  as  P< 
jars,  which  were  of  the  enormous  capacity  of  200  ^ 
or  about  182  gallons.     Queer  storres  are  told  of  r 
dent  foreigners  smuggling  their  little  daughte 
of  the  country  in  Pegu  jars,  to  elude  the  Burmes 
law,  which  imposes  a  heavy  penalty  on  the  exporta- 
tion of  native  females  of  every  kind. 


1 868.] 


Petroleum  in  Bunnah. 


409 


certainty  —  is  that  the  supply  must  be 
gradually  diminishing.  It  does  not  ap- 
pear that  the  number  of  wells  has  in- 
creased of  late  years,  while  the  demand 
for  the  «51  has  certainly  multiplied  more 
than  fourfold,  and  is  still  increasing.* 

The  temperature  of  some  of  the  oil, 
drawn  up  .quickly  from  a  depth  of '270 
feet,  was  99°,  —  the  air  being  79.25°  at 
the  time.  This  temperature  would  ap- 
pear to  indicate  a  deeper  source  for  the 
petroleum  than  the  bed  from  which  it 
actually  issues.  Mr.  Oldham  is  not, 
however,  with  those  who  think  that 
such  conclusions,  based  solely  on  ther- 
mometrical. observations,  can  be  admit- 
ted as  against  the  other  clear  proofs, 
that  the  supply  is  actually  from  the  beds 
from  which  the  oil  issues  ;  he  thinks  the 
j  increase  of  temperature  must  be  con- 
sidered as  due  to  chemical  changes  in 
progress  in  those  beds,  and  resulting  in 
the  production  of  petroleum  from  the 
vegetable  matter  embedded  in  the  rocks. 
Each  head  of  the  twenty-three  fam- 
ilies in  whom  the  proprietorship  of  the 
wells  was  supposed  to  be  vested  was 
registered  by  sovereign  edict  as  a  Thu- 
the  or  "rich  man,"  almost  the  only 
hereditary  title  in  Burmah  out  of  the 
royal  family.  A  woon  or  a  thoo-gyee 
is  made  or  unmade  with  a  nod,  and  not 
only  the  rank  and  title  and  emoluments, 
but  in  many  cases  even  the  private  pos- 
sessions, of  the  incumbent  disappear 
with  the  office.  Any  subject  of  the 
"  Lord  of  the  Celestial  Elephant "  (so 
that  he  be  not  of  the  class  of  slaves 
or  outcasts)  may  aspire  to  the  first 
office  in  the  state,  and  such  offices  are 
often  held  by  persons  of  the  meanest 
origin.  The  first  woman  who  ever  sat 


"The  ordinary  price   of  petroleum,  before  the 
annexation   of  Pegu,  was,  at  the  village  of 
.  ,-gyo'j.ng,  from  10  to  14  annas  per  100  viss.     It 
has  since  increased  from  i  rupee  to  i  rupee  8  annas ; 
and  an  agent  for  a  mercantile  house  at  Rangoon,  who 
was  there  at  the  time  of  ov.r  visit  (1855),  stated  that 
he  had  to  pay  even  so  much  as  2  rupees  4  annas  for 
100  viss.     At  Rangoon  the  price  used  to  be  from  2 
rupees  to  2.8  ;  it  now  is  never  less  than  5  rupees,  and 
has  been  so  high  as  25  rupees  per  100  viss.     An  ex- 
port duty  of  10  per  cent  is  now  charged  on  this  oil  ; 
the    r.urmcse   government  charge   also  3  per  cent. 
Under  the  former  system,  it  is  stated,  the  charges 
including  the  established  douceurs  to  brokers,  vxc., 
:  less."  —  OLUHAM. 


on  the  throne  of  Burmah,  side  by  side 
with  the  awful  "  Master  of  the  Super- 
natural Weapon,"  and  shared  his  title 
of  "  Sovereign  Lord,"  was  the  daughter 
of  a  jailer  ;  and  her  brother,  Men-tha- 
gyee,  "  The  Great  Prince,"  had  been  a 
fishmonger.  With  every  new  promo- 
tion in  office  a  new  title  is  conferred  ; 
but,  without  office,  no  title. 

To  the  order  of  Thu-the  certain 
privileges  of  questionable  advantage 
are  attached.  The  title  being  hered- 
itary, the  son  or  grandson  of  a  thu-the 
may  be  a  "rich  man"  without  a  tikal  to 
tickle  a  poonghee  with.  Being  under 
the  protection  of  the  court,  he  is  sub- 
ject only  to  regular  extortion ;  it  may 
be  frequent,  but  it  must  be  periodical. 
He  enjoys  the  exalted  privilege  of  mak- 
ing presents  to  the  King  on  public 
holidays  and  "  Beg-pardon  Days  "  ;  and 
especially  of  lending  money  (when  he 
has  any)  to  the  princes  and  high  offi- 
cers of  state,  who  cannot  return  it  with- 
out offending  against  an  ancient  and 
irrevocable  custom.  If  he  happens  to- 
be  the  proud  possessor  of  one  fair  and 
dainty  daughter,  she  may  be  compli- 
mented with  an  invitation  to  the  palace 
"  for  adoption  and  instruction  "  ;  and 
the  right  to  decline  the  honor  shall  not 
cost  the  paternal  thu-the  more  than  a 
couple  of  thousands  of  tikais  or  so. 

Thu-the  is  not  without  education. 
When  he  was  as  yet  scarce  ten  years 
old,  his  father  sent  him  to  the  monas- 
tery, v/here  he  was  taught  to  read, 
write,  and  cipher  ;  in  consideration  of 
wrhich  he  served  the  priests  in  a  menial 
capacity,  and  shared  his  noble  drudg- 
eries with  a  stripling  of  the  blood  royal. 
He  has  the  Then-pong-Kyee,  or  spell- 
ing-book, by  heart,  can  repeat  and  copy 
the  Men-ga-la-thok,  or  moral  lessons, 
is  advancing  to  the  study  of  astrology, 
and  the  Thaddu-Kyau  or  Pali  gram- 
mar ;  and  even  looks  forward  with  pre- 
sumptuous aspirations  to  the  day  when 
the  Then-gyo,  or  book  of  metaphysicsy 
may  be  unsealed  to  him. 

As  for  his  standing  in  the  Church,  he 
devoutly  worships  the  Buddha ;  keeps 
his  commandments,  and  honors  his 
priests ;  refrains  from  intemperance, 


410 


Petroleum  in  Bimnah. 


[October, 


falsehood,  theft,  adultery,  and  murder  ; 
regards  the  images  and  the  temples 
more  dearly  than  himself;  hearkens  to 
the  precepts  of  religion  at  full  moon, 
new  moon,  and  quarters  ;  makes  offer- 
ings for  the  support  of  the  poonghees  ; 
and  assists  at  funerals  and  pious  pro- 
cessions. Thu-the  is  respectable. 

When  the  Myo-ok  of  Ye-nan-gyoung 
told  Major  Phayre  that  of  the  monthly 
yield  of  the  wells  9,000  viss  went  in 
wages  to  the  laborers,  it  was  the  free 
laborers  he  meant  j  if  any  labor  can  be 
termed  free  under  a  government  which 
claims  every  subject  —  of  either  sex  or 
any  age,  and  from  the  most  illustrious 
woon-gyee  to  the  abjectest  crawling 
leper  —  as  the  slave  of  the  sovereign, 
in  mind,  body,  and  estate,  with  life, 
services,  and  possessions,  and  as  com- 
pletely a  property  of  the  King  as  the 
awful  fly-flapper  or  the  sublime  spit- 
toon. Still  it  is  a  sort  of  technical 
freedom  which  is  enjoyed  in  Burmah 
by  those  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers 
of  water,  or  oil,  who  belong  to  the  King 
alone,  —  the  freedom  of  being  forgot- 
ten by  their  capricious  and  besotted 
owner ;  and  to  such  as  these  exclu- 
sively, we  must  suppose,  the  Myo-ok's 
9,000  viss  a  month  were  paid.  For  of 
the  drawers  of  oil  the  greater  number, 
no  doubt,  were  of  those  who  are  not 
free,  even  by  so  much  as  a  figure  of 
speech  ;  slaves,  not  of  the  King  alone, 
but  of  other  slaves,  by  whom  they 
are  never  forgotten,  —  "  slave-debtors," 
whose  services  are  held  in  mortgage 
for  their  own  debts  or  the  debts  of 
their  fathers,  or,  if  not  their  services, 
perhaps  their  charms,  —  since  among 
them  are  found  pretty  and  tender 
daughters,  who  never  owed  a  tikal  in 
their  lives  ;  and  hereditary  slaves,  pris- 
oners of  war  or  their  children,  be- 
sto\ved  by  royal  grant  on  their  captors, 
or  sold  for  a  price  in  open  bazaar,  — 
but  these  latter  are  not  very  common, 
custom  in  Burmah  dealing  mildly  with 
such  captives,  and  willingly  converting 
them  into  slave-debtors,  with  the  right 
to  work  out  their  own  ransom.  That 
ugly  old  woman,  who  walks  off  so  sul- 
lenly down  the  slope  with  the  end  of 


the  windlass  rope,  is  the  wife  of  a  stub- 
born Peguan,  caught  on  the  English 
side  in  1853,  when  Captain  Loch's  force 
was  taken  in  ambuscade  at  Doonoobyoo 
by  Nya-Myat-Toon,  the  jungle  chief, 
and  almost  cut  to  pieces.  That  pretty 
young  maima  who  coquets  so  archly 
with*  her  betel-box,  idling  among  the 
gurrahs,  is  daughter  to  the  master  of 
an  oil-boat,  who  owed  the  Myo-ok's 
father  five  hundred  tikals  before  she 
was  born  ;  and  the  Myo-ok  has  in- 
herited the  claim.  The  provoking 
jauntiness  of  the  white  jacket  that 
she  calls  an  engi  hides  but  little,  and 
the  barbaric  naivete  of  the  skimped 
petticoat  (thabi),  open  at  the  side,  in- 
genuously discloses  much,  of  her  supple 
form.  Hers  is  the  true  modesty  of 
nature,  —  else  the  superior  decency  of 
the  Myo-ok's  putso,  drawn  about  his 
loins  like  a  shawl,  and  falling  in  broad, 
deep  folds  to  the  knee,  even  concealing 
the  elaborate  and  expensive  tattooing 
which  vanity  and  custom  alike  prompt 
him  to  display,  would  put  her  to  the 
blush.  The  cumbrous  cylinders  of  sil- 
ver that  so  monstrously  deform  the 
dainty  lobes  of  her  ears  are  a  gift  from 
the  Myo-ok;  and  the  witching  lotos, 
that  with  the  skilful  simplicity  of  an 
intuitive  refinement  adorns  her  raven 
hair,  she  found  in  the  weird  tank  down 
by  tfie  Kyoung. 

At  Ye-nan-gyoung,  as  at  Boston, 
there  are  seven  days  to  the  week.  Ta- 
nen-ganwa,  Ta-neng-Ia,  Eu-ga,  Bud- 
da-hu,  Kyatha-bada,  Thaok-kya,  and 
Chaua.  The  day  begins  with  the  dawn, 
and  has  a  natural  division  into  sixty  or 
more  parts  called  nari.  The  longest 
day  or  night  has  thirty-six  naris  ;  the 
shortest,  twenty-four.  There  is  also  a 
popular  division  for  the  allotment  of  la- 
bor and  rest,  into  eight  watches  of  three 
hours  each,  —  four  for  the  day  and 
as  many  for  the  night.  A  copper  cup 
with  a  perforated  bottom,  set  in  a  vase 
of  water,  serves  for  a  timekeeper.  A 
certain  mark  to  which  it  sinks  in  a 
certain  time  stands  for  a  nari,  and 
naris  and  watches  are  struck  on  a  bell. 

The  Burmese  month  is  divided  into 
the  waxing  and  the  waning  moon.  The 


1868.] 


Petroleum  in  Burmah. 


411 


first  day  of  their  increasing  moon  cor- 

.  responds  to  the  first  of  our  month,  and 

'the  first  of  their  waning  moon  to  our 

sixteenth.     The  new  moon,  the  eighth 

of  the  increase,  the  full  moon,  and  the 

eighth  of  the  wane,  are  days  of  public 

worship,  when  the  people  meet  for  de- 

^votion  in  the  temples  ;  but  the  days  of 

'the  new  and  the  full  moon   are  -kept 

,  holy  with  peculiar  respect. 

On  the  west  side  of  the  river,  close  to 
the  village  of  Memboo,  and  nearly  op- 
posite Mahgwe,  are  some  curious  "  mud 
volcanoes."  As  you  approach  them 
from  the  huts,  the  first  "  signs  "  you 
meet  with  are  several  little  streams  of 
bluish  muddy  water,  which  now  and 
then  smokes,  and  is  decidedly  saline. 
On  topping  a  trifling  rise  in  the  road,  a 
little  more  than  a  mile  from  Memboo, 
you  have  before  you  a  vast  lake  of  blue 
mud,  with  here  and  there  a  projecting 
hump,  looking  soft  and  sloshy.  Gradu- 
ally the  scene  opens  a  little,  and  from 
the  expanse  of  mushiness  several  queer 
conical  hills  are  seen,  rearing  their 
heads  boldly.  From  these,  in  radiating 
lines,  flows  of  the  mud  can  be  traced, 
marked  by  the  different  degrees  of  con- 
solidation they  have  acquired,  and  the 
consequently  different  modes  in  which 
they  reflect  the  light,  as  well -as  by  the 
peculiar  manner  in  which  the  drying  of 
the  mass  has  produced  jointing  or  "  di- 
vision planes  "  on  it.  At  short  inter- 
vals a  hollow,  gurgling  sound  is  heard, 
followed  by  a  kind  of  stuffed  flop  in 
the  mucl. 

Passing  to  these  hills  across  the 
mud,  which  to  your  surprise  you  find 
tolerably  firm  and  foot-worthy,  you 
mount  the  side  of  one  which  appears 
more  active  than  the  others,  and  per- 
ceive that  the  conical  hollow,  or  crater, 
of  the  volcano  is  filled  nearly  to  the 
brim  v/iih  bluish-gray,  oily-looking  mud, 
—  liquid  mud,  —  about  as  stiff  as  heated 
pitch,  although,  of  course,  less  sticky. 
This  crateriform  hollow  is  not  exactly 
at  the  top  of  the  cone,  but  at  one  side, 
and  a  little  below  the  summit. 

As  you  watch  it,  all  the  surface  of  the 
liquid  mud  within  heaves  and  swells 
upward  like  the  throes  of  the  human 


chest  in  laborious  inspiration ;  then 
suddenly  a  great  bladder-like  expan- 
sion is  thrown  up,  and,  breaking,  falls 
back  into  the  caldron  below  with  a  sul- 
len flop.  At  one  side  is  a  narrow 
channel,  the  bottom  of  which  is  just 
above  the  level  of  the  mucilaginous 
mass  when  at  rest,  but  through  which, 
at  each  successive  eructation,  a  portion 
is  ejected,  and  comes  flowing  down  the 
side  of  the  cone  in  a  regular  sewer  it 
has  formed  for  itself,  its  course  marked 
by  thin  filmy  flakes  of  earth-oil,  with 
which  it  is  partially  associated.  These 
thin  films  follow  the  curved  bands  of 
the  quasi-viscous  mass,  and  so  produce 
regular  scallops  of  color  on  the  surface 
of  the  stream  of  mud.  The  mixture  of 
mud  and  muddy  water  thus  thrown  out 
is  only  slightly  saline  to  the  taste,  but 
is  largely  used  in  the  preparation  of  salt 
near  by;  the  process  being  similar  to 
that  employed  elsewhere  in  Burmah, 
and  consisting  simply  of  lixiviating  the 
mud,  collecting  the  water  thus  passed 
over  it,  and  concentrating  it  to  crystal- 
lization over  slow  fires. 
.  All  the  while  a  strong  odor  of  petro- 
leum is  emitted,  and  that  oil  is  continu- 
ally thrown  out  in  small  quantities  with 
the  mud  ;  but  there  is  no  smell  of  sul- 
phuretted hydrogen  or  of  carbonic  acid. 

Of  the  many  cones,  the  highest  stands 
about  fifteen  feet  above  the  general  lev- 
el of  the  mud  around,  and  is  of  very 
regular  form.  From  the  very  summit, 
of  this,  Mr.  Oldham  saw  a  little  jet  of 
mud  projected  at  intervals  to  the  height 
of  a  foot  or  more.  The  most  active 
cone  is  not  more  than  twelve  feet  high; 
the  "  crater  "  being  about  four  feet  wide 
at  top,  and  a  little  below  the  summit. 
Another  principal  cone,  of  from  twelve 
to  fifteen  feet,  stands  to  the  south  of 
these  ;  and  remains  of  others,  now  in- 
active and  partially  washed  away,  are 
near  it.  The  people  of- the  village  say 
that  occasionally  one  of  these,  which 
has  been  for  months  or  years  extinct  or 
inactive,  will  again  begin  to  heave  and 
discharge  mfd  ;  while  frequently,  in  oth- 
ers which  are  in  operation,  the  position 
of  the  discharging  orifice  will  be  altered. 

The   eructations,   or  heaves,  of  the 


412 


Petroleum  in  BimnaJi. 


[October, 


most  active  of  these  vents  are  very  ir- 
regular as  to  time,  as  well  as  force. 
They  are  governed  by  no  law  which  can 
be  traced  with  accuracy,  although  there 
does  appear  to  be  an  uncertain  approxi- 
mation to  some  law  by  which  the  most 
vigorous  outbursts  occur  at  intervals 
of  about  thirty  seconds  ;  these  greater 
shocks  being  accompanied  and  followed 
by  many  slighter  motions,  or  the  burst- 
ing of  small  bubbles  in  the  interval. 

The  channel,  or  canal,  raised  above 
the  general  level,  is  very  quickly  formed 
by  the  mud  flowing  down  the  side  of 
the  cone.  The  mud  on  the  edges  and 
sides  drying  more  rapidly  than  toward 
the  centre,  small  raised  banks  are 
formed,  between  which  the  still  fluid 
mud,  ejected  at  each  strong  burst, 
flows  in  a  more  or  less  continuous 
stream.  Occasionally  the  side  bursts, 
or  is  broken  down,  and  then  the  fluid 
finds  an  outlet,  and  cuts  a  side  or 
branch  channel  in  which  the  same  phe- 
nomena are  repeated.  While  the  mud 
is  yet  fluid  and  in  motion,  curved  lines 
of  structure,  produced  by  the  more  rap- 
id flow  of  the  centre,  as  compared  with 
that  of  the  sides,  can  readily  be  traced. 
But  when  dried  and  solid,  the  desicca- 
tion of  the  mass  of  mud  containing  so 
large  a  quantity  of  moisture  results  in 
numerous  wide  cracks,  and  open  joints* 
or  fissures,  traversing  the  mud,  with 
comparatively  definite  direction  in  the 
lines,  —  the  most  marked  being  at  right 
angles  to  the  sides  of  the  channel  in 
which  the  mud  has  flowed  ;  and  others, 
again,  nearly  at  right  angles  to  those, 
"  diceing  up  "  the  whole  mass  rudely 
into  square  fragments. 

Half  a  mile  northward  from  these 
mud  cones  there  is  a  group  of  petrole- 
um springs,  rising  out  of  the  level  flats 
at  the  foot  of  the  small  range  of  hills. 
Mr.  Oldham  found  one  in  lively  opera- 
tion in  a  pool,  or  hole,  about  three  feet 
six  inches  wide  ;  it  was  continually 
bubbling  up.  There  is  a  free  discharge 
of  gas  or  air;  and,  after  the  bubbles 
have  burst,  the  oil  can  befseen  floating 
on  the  surface  of  the  water  in  flaky 
thin  coatings,  displaying  the  most  beau- 
tiful prismatic  colors.  The  wall  of  this 


particular  pool,  or  spring,  was  on  a 
level  with  the  ground  around,  or  barely 
raised  above  it;  but  to  the  north,  about 
twenty  yards  off,  there  was  a  mound 
which  at  first  sight  was  supposed  to  ba 
a  kind  of  coaly  lignite,  but  which  on 
examination  proved  to  be  a  cone  of 
mud,  originally  thrown  out  by  springs 
similar  to  those  described  above,  but* 
which  must  have  brought  with  it  a 
much  larger  proportion,  relatively,  of 
petroleum  than  the  springs  then  in  op- 
eration. The  petroleum  had  impreg- 
nated the  muddy  mass,  and  formed  a 
brown-black  substance,  readily  inflam- 
mable, and  in  fact  an  earthy-brown 
coal.  Fragments  of  vegetables,  leaves, 
£c.  were  embedded  in  it,  and  in  some 
of  the  smaller  cavities  were  portions  of 
the  petroleum  consolidated  into  a  hard, 
black,  pitchy  substance.  This  conical 
heap  was  between  eight  and  ten  feet 
high,  and  about  twenty-five  feet  in  di- 
ameter at  the  base.  Other  small  springs 
are  found  to  the  north  of  this,  and  in 
the  same  line.  The  villagers  say  no 
flame  is  ever  seen  to  burst  from  these 
springs,  but  that  occasionally  smoke  is; 
but  as  they  said  this  only  occurred  in 
cold  weather,  the  "  smoke  "  was  proba- 
bly no  more  than  the  heated  air  of  the 
spring  coming  suddenly  in  contact  with 
the  colder  atmosphere,  and  so  pro- 
ducing a  cloud. 

The  petroleum  of  Burmah  always 
resembles  a  thin  treacle  of  a  greenish 
color;  and  in  the  open  air  its  odor  is 
not  unpleasant.  It  is  universally  used 
as  a  lamp-oil  all  over  the  Empire, 
for  domestic  purposes  and  public  illu- 
minations. The  poonghees,  or  priests, 
who  are  the  only  physicians,  also  apply 
it  abundantly  as  a  liniment  for  bruises, 
swellings,  and  sores,  and  even  aclrnin- 
"ister  it  internally  in  cholera,  and  as  a 
"pain-killer"  generally.  In  the  Chi- 
nese Geography,  translated  in  Thcve- 
not's  Voyages  Curiciix,  it  is  recom- 
mended as  a  sovereign  remedy  for 
itch,*  —  a  statement  which  its  sul- 

*  "To   the   north  lies  Zorzania  [the  kingdom  of 
Georgia,  bordering  on  Armenia],  near  the  confines 
of  which  there  is  a  fountain  of  oil,  which  di.-; 
so  great  a  quantity  as  to  furnish  loading  for  many 
camels.     The  use  made  of  it  is  not  for  the  purpose 


1 868.] 


Petroleum  in  Burmah. 


413 


phurous  affinities  render  highly  proba- 
ble. 

The  wood- work  and  planking  of 
houses,  especially  the  fine  fantastic 
carvings  which  so  profusely  adorn  the 
rcofs  and  porticos  of  the  Kyoungs,  are 
painted  with  petroleum  almost  to  the 
point  of  saturation,  to  preserve  them 
from  the  ravages  of  insects.  And  in 
this  connection  it  may  not  seem  irrele- 
vant to  help  the  reader  to  a  just  idea  of 
the  opulent  magnificence,  the  marvel- 
lous delicacy,  and  bewildering  elabo- 
rateness of  Burmese  wood-carving,  gild- 
ing, and  mirror-blazoning,  by  transcrib- 
ing a  passage  from  Captain  Yule's 
description  of  the  Maha  Oomiyepuina, 
a  royal  monastery  at  Amarapoora  :  — 

"  In  this  second  building  the  three 
spires  remain  ungilt,  the  work  probably 
having  been  interrupted  by  the  civil 
commotions  of  1852.  The  contrast 
thus  arising  between  the  mellow  color 
of  the  teak  and  the  brilliant  mass  of 
gold  is  no  detriment  to  the  effect.  The 
posts  of  the  basement,  instead  of  being 
wholly  gilt,  are  covered  with  scarlet 
lacker,  banded  with  gilded  carving. 
From  post  to  post  run  cusped  arches 
in  open  filigree-work  of  gilding,  very 
delicate  and  beautiful. 

"  The  corbels  bearing  the  balcony 
are  more  fantastic  and  less  artistic  than 
those  of  the  Toolut  Boungyo.*  Instead 
of  dragons,  they  here  consist  of  human 
figures  in  rich  dresses,  with  the  scallop 
wings  of  the  Burman  military  costume, 
and  wearing  the  heads  of  various  ani- 
mals,—  elephants,  bulls,  &c.  These 
figures  are  all  in  different  dancing  atti- 

of  food,  but  as  an  unguent  for  the  cure  of  cutaneous 
distempers  in  men  and  cattle,  as  well  as  other  com- 
plaints;  and  it  is  also  good  for  burning.  In  the 
oring  country  no  other  is  used  in  their  lamps, 
and  people  come  from  distant  parts  to  procure  it." 
—  MARCO  POLO. 

'•Kear  to  this  place   [Baku  in   Shlrvan,  on   the 

border  of  the  Caspian]  is  a  very  strange  and  won- 

knintain   under  ground,  out   of  which   there 

-..-th  and  issueth  a  marvellous  quantity  of  black 

lucli  serveth  all  the  parts  of  Persia  to  burn  in 

their  houses  ;  and  they  usually  carry  it  all  over  the 

country  upon  kine  and  asses,  whereof  you  shall  often- 

tnnus  meet  three  or  four  hundred  in  company."  — 

JOHN  CARTWRK-.HT,   TLc  "  J'twc/icr's  Travels." 

*  The  Maha  Toolut  Doungyo  is  the  residence  of 
the  Tha-thana  Ilain,  "The  Defender  of  the  Faith," 
High-Priest  and  Patriarch  of  all  \.\\z  poonghces. 


tudes,  and  all  jewelled  and  embellished 
in  sparkling  mosaic  of  mirror  and  gild- 
ing." 

[In  the  Toolut  Boungyo  the  corbels, 
or  brackets,  represent  griffins  or  drag- 
ons with  the  head  downward,  the  feet 
grasping  the  post,  and  the  tail  rising  in 
alternate  flexures,  which  seem  almost 
to  writhe  and  undulate.] 

"The  balcony  balustrade  is  quite 
unique.  Instead  of  the  usual  turned 
rails,  or  solid  carved  panels,  it  is  a  bril- 
liant openwork  of  interlacing  scrolls ;  the 
nuclei  of  the  compartments  into  which 
the  scrolls  arrange  themselves  being 
fanciful,  fairy-like  figures  in  complete 
relief,  somewhat  awkward  in  drawing, 
but  spirited  in  action.  Below  this  bfel- 
cony  is  an  exquisite  drooping  eaves- 
board,  in  shield-like  tracery,  with  inter- 
lacing scrolls  cut  through  the  wood,  like 
lace-work. 

"  The  staircase  parapets  (gilt  mason- 
ry) are  formed  in  scrolls  of  snakes, 
scaled  with  green  looking-glass,  and 
each  discharging  from  its  mouth  a 
wreath  of  flowers  in  white  mirror  mo- 
saic. The  posts  are  crowned  with  ta- 
pering htees*  inferior  in  effect  to  the 
imperial  crowns  of  the  other  monastery. 
The  panels  of  the  walls  in  the  upper 
stories  are  exquisitely  diapered  and 
flowered  in  mosaic  of  looking-glass, 
while  the  eaves-crests  and  ridge-crest 
(the  latter  most  delicate  and  brilliant) 
are  of  open  carving  in  lattice-work,  and 
flame-points  tipped  with  sparkling  mir- 
ror. The  indispensable  religious  pin- 
nacles or  finials,  with  their  peculiar 
wooden  vanes  or  flags,  are  of  unusu- 
ally fanciful  and  delicate  carving,  each 
crowned  with  its  miniature  golden  htee 
and  bells." 

Yet  in  all  the  generations  since  that 
Burman  with  a  large  inductive  faculty 
sank  the  first  shaft,  these  Pathan-like 
artificers,  "  designing  like  Titans  and 
executing  like  jewellers,"  have  not  been 
able  to  devise  anything  better  to  draw 
their  petroleum  with  than  a  rude  earth- 
en pot,  —  anything  better  to  burn  it 
in  than  another  pot,  with  some  cotton- 
seeds for  a  wick. 

*  Umbrellas,  or  canopies,  of  g;lt  iron  filigree.     ** 


414 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


[October, 


THE    MAN    AND    BROTHER. 


II. 


"pvIALOGUES  similar  in  nature  to 
-L>^  the  following  were  quite  frequent 
in  the  office  of  the  Bureau  Major. 

"  I  wants  to  know  ef  I  can't  hev  my 
little  gal,"  explains  a  ragged  freedwo- 
man  of  an  uncertain  age. 

"  I  suppose  you  can,  if  you  can  prove 
that  she  is  yours,  and  if  you  have  not 
bound  her  out  as  an  apprentice." 

"  I  ha'  n't  bound  her  out.  I  let  Mr. 
Jack  Bascom,  up  to  Walhalla,  have  her 
to, stay  with  him  awhile,  an' -now  I 
wants  her  back,  an'  I  sont  to  Mr.  Bas- 
com more 'n  a  month  ago  to  fotch  her 
back,  an'  'pears  like  he  ain't  gwine  to 
fotch  her." 

"  Perhaps  she  is  very  well  off  with 
Mr.  Bascom  ;  I  understand  that  he  is 
a  man  of  property.  What  do  you  want 
her  back  for  ?  " 

"  I  wants  to  see  her.  She 's  my  little 
gal,  an'  I  has  a  right  to  hev  her,  an'  I 
wants  her." 

Here  a  citizen  who  was  lounging  in 
the  office  took  part  in  the  conversation. 

"  Look  here,  aunty,  you  had  better 
leave  your  girl  with  Mr.  Bascom  ;  he  is 
a  very  kind,  honorable  man.  Besides, 
he  made  twenty-five  hundred  bushels 
of  corn  this  last  season,  and  it  stands 
to  reason  that  she  won't  suffer  there, 
while  you,  probably,  don't  know  wheth- 
er you  '11  have  enough  to  go  upon 
through  the  winter.  It 's  going  to  be  a 
hard  winter  for  poor  folks,- aunty,  and 
you  'd  better  take  as  light  a  load  into  it 
as  you  can." 

"  I  don't  keer  for  all  that,"  persists 
the  short-sighted,  affectionate  creature. 
"Yes,  I  does  keer.  But  I  can't  go 
without  seein'  my  little  gal  any  longer. 
I  ha'  n't  sot  eyes  on  her  for  nigh  four 
months,  an'  I  can't  stan'  it  no  longer. 
'Pears  like  I  don't  know  how  she 's 
gettin'  on." 

"  But  you  must  have  faith,"  I  said, 
attacking  her  on  the  religious  side, 
always  an  open  one  with  the  negroes. 


However  sinful  their  lives  may  chance 
to  be  in  practice,  they  feel  bound  to  admit 
the  authority  of  certain  doctrines.  "  It's 
your  duty  to  have  faith,"  I  repeat.  "  If 
you  have  put  your  child  into  the  hands 
of  a  decent  man,  well  off  in  this  world's 
goods,  —  if  you  have  done  by  her  to  the 
best  of  your  intelligence,  —  you  must 
trust  that  God  will  do  the  rest.  You 
are  bound  to  believe  that  he  will  take 
just  as  good  care  of  her  as  if  you  were 
there  and  saw  it  all." 

"  Yes,  that 's  so  ;  that 's  true  preach- 
in',"  responded  the  woman,  nonplussed 
at  discovering  that  preaching  could 
be  made  so  practical  as  to  apply  to 
Bureau  business.  "  But  I  don't  keer 
for  all  that.  Yes,  I  does  keer,  but  II 
wants  to  see  my  little  gal." 

"Suppose  you  should  move  up  to 
Walhalla  yourself?  Then  your  child 
could  keep  her  good  place,  and  still  you 
could  see  her." 

"  No,  no,  I  can't  do  that,"  she  affirmed,  | 
shaking  her  head  with  energy. 

"  Ah,  aunty !  I  see  through  you  now,*! 
said  I.  "  You  have  a  lot  of  old  cronies 
here  ;  you  love  to  gossip  a^id  smoke 
pipes  with  them  ;  you  care  more  for 
them  than  for  your  girl.  All  you  want 
of  her  is  to  wait  on  you  while  you  sit 
and  tattle.  You  just  want  her  to  go  for 
water  and  to  put  a  chunk  of  fire  on 
your  pipe." 

"  No,  no,  no ! "  denied  the  aunty, 
but  she  looked  dreadfully  guilty,  as 
though  my  charge  were  at  least  half 
true.  The  result  was,  that,  by  dint  of 
ridicule,  coaxing,  and  arguing,  I  pre- 
vailed upon  her  to  leave  her  child  with 
Mr.  Jack  Bascom,  in  whose  care  the 
pickaninny  was  of  course  far  better  off 
than  she  could  have  been  with  her 
poverty-stricken  parent. 

Other  women  wanted  their  children, 
male  and  female,  big  and  little,  brought 
backfrom  Florida,  Louisiana,Tennessee, 
and  Arkansas.  It  was  useless  to  say, 


1868.] 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


415 


"  They  have  but  just  gone  ;  they  have 
not  fulfilled  a  quarter  of  their  year's 
contract ;  besides,  they  are  earning  far 
more  than  they  can  here."  A  combina- 
tion of  affection,  stupidity,  and  selfish- 
ness easily  responded,  "I  don't  keer 
for  all  that,  an'  I  wants  to  see  'em." 
The  only  effective  opposition  which 
the  Bureau  Major  could  raise  consisted 
in  declaring  with  official  firmness  and 
coldness,  "  I  have  no  transportation  for 
such  purposes." 

A  middle-aged  freedwoman  came  to 
me  with  a  complaint  that  her  son-in- 
law  would  do  nothing  for  the  support  of 
his  wife  and  children. 

"  He  's  down  on  the  railroad  twenty- 
five  miles  below  yere,  an'  he  's  git'n' 
good  wages,  an'  I  can't  keep  'em  no 
longer." 

"  Won't  he  have  them  with  him  ?  "  I 
inquired. 

"  Yes,  he  's  sont  for  'em  once  or  twice ; 
but  I  ain't  gwine  to  let  'em  go  so  fur 
off.  Ef  he  wants  my  da'ter,  he  's  got 
to  live  with  her,  and  she  's  got  to  live 
with  me." 

"Very  well;  then  you  may  continue 
to  support  her,"  was  of  course  my  de- 
cision. 

Another  granny  pestered  me  by  the 
hour  for  a  week  together  to  induce  me 
to  save  her  youngest  son  Andy  from 
being  deported.  Andy  had  stolen  a 
pig  ;  as  a  consequence  he  was  in  jail, 
a\vaiting  trial ;  but  the  sheriff  was  will- 
ing to  release  him  on  condition  that 
he  would  take  a  contract  out  of  the 
State  ;  and  consequently  a  planter  who 
was  going  to  Florida  had  hired  him, 
paid  his  jail  fees,  and  secured  his  lib- 
eration. 

"  He  must  go,"  said  I.  "  If  he  breaks 
his  bargain,  I  '11  have  him  shut  up 
again." 

"  O,  I  wouldn't  keer  for  that,"  whim- 
pered the  old  creature.  "'Pears  like 
I  'd  rather  hev  him  in  jail  all  his  life 
than  go  away  from  me." 

Andy  did  break  his  bargain,  lurked 
in  the  neighborhood  a  few  days,  and 
then,  being  pursued  by  the  sheriff,  ab- 
sconded to  parts  unknown. 

These  aged  freedwomen,  and  many 


also  of  the  aged  freedmen,  had  the 
bump  of  locality  like  old  cats.  No  place 
in  the  world  would  answer  for  them 
except  the  very  place  in  which  they  had 
been  brought  up  and  had  formed  their 
little  circle  of  now  venerable  gossips. 
If  all  their  sons  and  grandsons  went  to 
Florida  or  Louisiana,  they  would  stay 
with  the  ancients  with  whom  they  were 
accustomed  to  smoke  and  tattle. 

And  yet  the  negroes  have  a  great 
love  for  children ;  it  is  one  of  the  most 
marked  characteristics  of  the  race. 
Allowing  for  their  desire  to  have  some- 
body to  wait  on  them,  and  somebody  at 
hand  over  whom  they  can  exercise  au- 
thority ;  allowing  also  for  their  preju- 
dice against  everything  which  in  any 
manner  recalls  their  ancient  burden  of 
slavery,  —  they  must  still  be  credited 
with  a  large  amount  of  natural  affection. 
One  of  the  strongest  objections  to  the 
apprenticing  of  colored  children  lies  in 
the  fact  that  the  relatives  soon  sicken 
of  their  bargain,  and  want  to  regain 
possession  of  the  youngsters.  If  the 
father  and  mother  are  not  alive  to  worry 
in  the  matter,  it  will  be  taken  up  by 
grandparents,  aunts,  and  cousins.  They 
coax  the  pickaninny  to  run  away,  and 
they  bring  horrible  stories  of  cruel  treat- 
ment to  the  Bureau  officer.  Finding,  in 
every  case  which  I  investigated,  that 
these  tales  were  falsifications,  I  invari- 
ably refused  to  break  the  bond  of  ap- 
prenticeship, and  instructed  the  appli- 
cants that  their  only  resource  was  a 
trial  for  the  possession  of  the  orphan 
before  the  Judge  of  the  District  Court. 
I  did  this  partly  from  a  sense  of  justice 
to  the  master,  partly  because  he  was 
always  better  able  to  care  for  the  ap- 
prentice than  the  relatives,  and  partly 
because  I  considered  it  my  duty  to  aid 
in  setting  the  civil  law  on  its  legs  and 
preparing  the  community  to  dispense 
with  military  government.  As  an  ap- 
plication for  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus 
costs  money,  I  never  knew  mother, 
grandmother,  aunt,  or  cousin  to  make 
it. 

One  might  think  that  apprentices 
thus  furiously  sought  for  would  be 
gladly  let  go  by  their  masters  ;  but  the 


416 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


[October, 


Southern  whites  are  themselves  notice- 
ably fond  of  children,  and  even  of  ne- 
gro children.  I  have  known  two  small 
farmers  to  carry  on  a  long  war,  involv- 
ing fights,  drawing  of  knives,  suits  for 
assault  and  battery,  and  writs  of  habeas 
corpus,  for  the  possession  of  a  jet  black 
girl  only  seven  years  of  age,  and  almost 
valueless  except  as  a  plaything.  I  have 
known  a  worthy  old  gentleman  of  the 
higher  class  to  worry  away  tin%e  and 
money  in  endeavoring  to  recover  a  pet 
little  octoroon  from '  her  relatives. 

If  the  negro  younglings  are  well 
loved,  they  are  also  well  whipped  ;  the 
parents  have  no  idea  of  sparing  the 
rod  and  spoiling  the  child  ;  and  when 
they  do  flog,  it  is  in  a  passion  and  with 
a  will.  Passing  a  cabin,  I  heard  a  long- 
drawn  yell  of  anguish  from  within,  and 
then  saw  a  little  freedinan  rush  out, 
rubbing  his  rear  violently  with  both 
hands,  his  mouth  wide  open  to  emit  a 
scream  of  the  largest  calibre  and  the 
longest  range.  In  the  language  of  a 
spectator,  he  looked  "  powerful  glad  to 
git  out  o'  do'." 

One  of  the  teachers  of  the  Bureau 
school  at  my  station  having  dismissed 
a  girl  for  bad  behavior,  the  mother  ap- 
peared to  remonstrate.  "  What  you 
turn  her  out  for  ?  "  she  demanded.  "  Ef 
she 's  naughty,  why  don'  you  whip 
her?5' 

"  I  don't  approve  of  whipping  chil- 
dren," was  the  reply.  "  It  is  a  punish- 
ment that  I  don't  wish  to  inflict." 

"  It 's  your  business,"  screamed  the 
•mother,  —  "it's  your  business  to  whip 
''em.  That's  what  you's  sont  here  for." 

The  most  hopeful  sign  in  the  negro 
is  his  anxiety  to  have  his  children  edu- 
cated. The  two  or  three  hundred  boys 
•and  girls  whom  I  used  to  see  around , 
the  Bureau  school-house  —  attired  with 
r.  decency  which  had  strained  to  the 
utmost  the  slender  parental  purse, 
ill  spared  from  the  hard  labor  neces- 
sary to  support  their  families,  gleeful 
and  noisy  over  their  luncheons  of  cold 
roasted  sweet-potato  —  were  proofs  that 
the  race  has  a  chance  in  the  future. 
Many  a  sorely  pinched  woman,  a  wid- 
ow, cr  deserted  by  her  husband,  would 


not  let  her  boy  go  out  to  service,  "be- 
kase  I  wants  him  to  have  some  school- 
in'."  One  of  the  elder  girls,  a  remarka- 
bly handsome  octoroon  with  Grecian 
features  and  chestnut  hair,  attended 
recitations  in  the  morning,  and  worked 
at  her  trade  of  dress-making  in  the 
afternoon.  There  were  some  grown 
men  who  came  in  the  evening  to  wres- 
tle, rather  hopelessly  than  otherwise, 
with  the  depravities  of  our  English 
spelling.  One  of  them,  a  gray-headed 
person  with  round  spectacles,  bent  on 
qualifying  himself  for  the  ministry,  was 
very  amusing  with  his  stereotyped  re- 
mark, when  corrected  of  a  mistake,  "  I 
specs  likely  you  may  be  right,  mum." 

It  is  a  mooted  point  whether  colored 
children  are  as  quick  at  learning  as 
white  children.  I  should  say  not ;  cer- 
tainly those  whom  I  saw  could  not 
compare  with  the  Caucasian  youngster 
of  ten  or  twelve,  who  is  "  tackling " 
French,  German,  and  Latin ;  they  are 
inferior  to  him,  not  only  in  knowledge, 
but  in  the  facility  of  acquisition.  In 
their  favor  it  must  be  remembered,  that 
they  lack  the  forcing  elements  of  highly 
educated  competition  and  of  a  refined' 
home  influence.  A  white  lad  gets  much 
bookishness  and  many  advanced  ideas 
from  the  daily  converse  of  his  family. 
Moreover,  ancestral  intelligence,  trained 
through  generations  of  study,  must  tell, 
even  though  the  rival  thinking  ma- 
chines may  be  naturally  of  the  same 
calibre.  I  am  convinced  that  the  negro 
as  he  is,  no  matter  how  educated,  is 
not  the  mental  equal  of  the  European. 
Whether  he  is  not  a  man,  but  merely, 
as  "  Ariel  "  and  Dr.  Cartwright  would 
have  us  believe,  "  a  living  creature,"  is 
quite  another  question,  and  of  so  little 
practical  importance  that  no  wonder 
Governor  Perry  has  written  a  political 
letter  about  it.  Human  or  not,  there 
he  is  in  our  midst,  four  millions  strong; 
and  if  he  is  not  educated  mentally  and 
morally,  he  will  make  us  trouble. 

By  way  of  interesting  the  adherents 
of  the  "living-creature"  hypothesis,  I 
offer  the  following  letter,  which  I  re- 
ceived from  a  negro  "  pundit,"  probably 
to  be  forwarded  to  his  relatives :  — 


•I868J 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


417 


PITTSBCKG,  PENNSYLVANIA, 
the  14  March  1867 

To  the  freedmen  Bureau  in  Green  ville  S.  C. 

Dear  freinds  the  deep  crants  of  riv- 
ous  ceprate  ous  but  i  hope  in  God  for 
hours  prasous  agine  and  injoying  the 
same  injoyment  That  we  did  before  the 
war  begun  and  i  am  tolbile  know  but 
much  trubbel  in  mind  and  i  hope  my 
truble  Will  not  Be  all  Ways  this  Ways 
for  which  enlist  the  roused  up  energies 
of  nation  and  Which  Would  Be  fol- 
lowed by  the  most  disastrous  conse- 
quences but  for  these  master  spirits 
That  reign  over  the  scene  of  their 
troubled  birth  thare  are  no  tampests  in 
a  tranquil  atmosphere  no  maountain 
Waves  upon  a  great  sea  no  cataracts 
in  an  even  stream  and  rarely  does  a 
man  of  pereminent  po  Wars  burst  upon 
our  admiration  in  the  ever  undisturbed 
flow  of  human  affairs  those  men  Who 
rise  to  sway  the  opinions  or  control  the 
energies  of  a  nation  to  move  the  great 
master  springs  of  human  action  are 
developed  By  events  of  infinite  mo- 
ment they  appear  in  those  conflicts 
Where  pollical  or  religious  faith  of 
nation  is  agitated  and  Where  the  tem- 
poral and  eternal  Welfare  of  millions  is 
at  issue  if  on  please  to  inquire  for  Cal- 
'ine  then  inquire  for  marther  live  at 
Jane  Ransom  and  Harriett  that  live  at 
doctor  Gant  and  if  you  heir  from  tham 
let  me  know  if  you  Plese  soon  Writ 
to  Pittsburg  Pa  to  Carpenters  No  28 

Robard  Rosemon  that  lived  in  Andi- 
son  Destrect  my  farther  and  Carline 
my  mother  i  remien  your  refactorate 
son  SAM  ROSEMON. 

It  will  be  observed  that  Sam  has 
•tackled  some  large  subjects,  if  he  has 
not  satisfactorily  thrown  them.  I  rec- 
ommend to  him  the  "living  creature" 
hypothesis,  as  being  perhaps  worthy  of 
his  attention. 

I  took  much  pride  in  the  Greenville 
colored  school,  for  I  had  aided  to  es- 
tablish it.  Its  real  founder,  the  person 
who  can  boast  that  without  him  it 
would  not  have  existed,  is  Charles 
•Hopkins,  a  full-blooded  black  from  the 
low  country,  for  many  years  a  voluntary 

VOL.  xxn.  —  xo.  132.  27 


exhorter  among  his  people,  and  now 
an  ordained  preacher  of  the  Methodist 
Church.  His  education,  gathered  in 
the  chance  opportunities  of  a  bondage 
of  fifty  years,  is  sufficient  to  enable 
him  to  instruct  in  the  lower  English 
branches.  He  is  a  meek,  amiable,  ju^ 
dicious,  virtuous,  godly  man,  zealous 
for  the  good  of  the  freedmen,  yet  so 
thoroughly  trusted  by  the  whites,  that 
he  was  able  to  raise  a  subscription  of 
two  hundred  and  sixty  dollars  among 
the  impoverished  citizens  of  Green- 
ville. 

During  the  summer  of  1866  Hopkins 
obtained  a  room  in  a  deserted  hotel 
which  had  been  seized  by  the  govern- 
ment, and,  aided  by  two  others  of  his 
race,  gave  spelling  and  reading  lessons 
to  sixty  or  seventy  scholars.  For  this 
labor  he  eventually  received  a  mod- 
est remuneration  from  the  New  York 
Freedmen's  Union  Association.  When 
I  assumed  command  of  the  sub-district 
the  school  had  closed  for  the  autumn, 
the  hotel  had  been  restored  to  its  own- 
ers, and  a  schoolroom  was  needed.  The 
officer  whom  I  relieved  had  much  to 
say  concerning  plans  of  rent  or  pur- 
chase, and  earnestly  recommended 
Hopkins  to  my  consideration.  It  was 
at  this  time  that  the  enthusiastic  old 
man  raised  his  'subscription.  Mean- 
while I  wrote  to  the  Bureau  Superin- 
tendent of  Education,  and  received  as- 
surances of  help  in  case  a  school  was 
established. 

His  private  purse  reduced  to  a  few 
dollars,  his  remaining  means  pledged 
for  the  support  of  his  assistants,  Hop- 
kins purchased  a  storehouse  belonging 
to  the  defunct  State-arsenal  works,  and 
took  a  three  years'  lease  of  a  lot  of 
ground  in  the  outskirts  of  the  village. 
A  mass  meeting  of  freedmen  tore  the 
building  to  pieces,  moved  it  nearly  two 
miles,  and  set  it  up  on  the  new  site. 
Then  came  much  labor  of  carpenters, 
masons,  and  plasterers,  and  much  ex- 
pense for  new  materials.  By  the  time 
the  school-house  was  completed  it  had 
cost,  together  with  the  rent  of  the  land, 
five  hundred  and  sixty  dollars,  or  more 
than  twice  the  amount  of  the  subscrip- 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


[October, 


tion.  Hopkins  was  substantially  bank- 
rupt, and,  moreover,  he  was  drawing  no 
salary. 

It  must  be  understood  that  the  Bu- 
reau had  no  funds  for  the  payment  of 
teachers  ;  by  the  act  of  Congress  it  is 
limited  in  the  matter  of  education  to 
the  renting  and  repairing  of  school- 
houses.  Teachers  are  supported  by 
generous  individuals  or  by  benevolent 
societies  at  the  North,  which  converge 
into  various  larger  organizations,  and 
these  into  the  Bureau.  For  instance,  a 
sewing  -  circle  in  Lockport  raises  five 
hundred  dollars  for  the  blacks,  or  a 
wealthy  gentleman  in  Albany  gives  the 
same  sum  from  his  private  purse,  and 
both  forward  their  contributions  to  the 
Freedmen's  Union  Association  in  New 
York  City.  But  each  of  these  subscrib- 
ers naturally  wishes  to  know  by  whom 
the  money  will  be  used,  or  has  in  view 
a  worthy  person  who  deserves  a  mission 
of  some  small  profit  and  much  useful- 
ness. The  consequence  is  that  the 
Freedmen's  Union  and  the  Bureau  re- 
ceive few  unappropriated  contributions, 
and  are  not  able  to  do  much  toward  the 
payment  of  negro  teachers. 

Application  on  application  was  for- 
warded, but  Hopkins  Avas  grievously 
bullied  by  his  creditors  before  he  re- 
ceived a  penny  of  salary.  For  his  two 
colored  assistants  I  could  obtain  noth- 
ing, and  they  left,  after  two  months  of 
unrequited  labor,  indebted  to  Hopkins 
and  others  for  their  support.  The  spirit 
of  the  Freedmen's  Union  was  willing, 
but  its  purse  was  weak.  The  Bureau 
supplies,  on  the  other  hand,  were  easily 
obtained,  the  cost  of  land  and  building 
slipping  nicely  into  the  appropriation 
for  "rent  and  repairs,"  and  the  money 
arriving  promptly  enough  to  save  Hop- 
kins froin» falling  into  the  hands  of  the 
sheriff.  Eventually,  too,  he  secured 
payment  for  all  his  services  at  the  rate 
of  twenty-five  dollars  a  month ;  and 
when  I  last  saw  him  he  was  as  nearly 
square  with  the  world  as  the  majority 
of  his  white  fellow-citizens. 

Meantime  he  had  received  ordination 
from  the  Charleston  missionary  branch 
of  the  Methodist  Church  North.  With 


a  commission  as  "  Professor  "  from  the 
Freedmen's  Union  Association,  with 
the  title  of  clergyman  from  one  of  the 
great  branches  of  the  Christian  Church, 
with  the  consciousness  of  having  found- 
ed the  Greenville  Elementary  Freed- 
men's School,  he  was  a  gratified  man, 
and  worthy  of  his  happiness. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  he  is 
rolling  in  pelf.  As  the  school  keeps 
open  only  eight  months  in  the  year,  as 
the  Methodist  missionary  society  is 
short  of  funds,  and  has  never  paid  him 
the  promised  annual  salary  of  one  hun- 
dred dollars,  and  as  the  voluntary  con- 
tributions of  his  congregation  amount 
to  perhaps  seven  dollars  a  quarter,  his 
income  is  less  than  he  could  get  by 
superintending  a  plantation.  If  any 
benevolent  person  will  send  a  small 
check  to  the  Rev.  Charles  Hopkins  of 
Greenville,  South  Carolina,  he  will  aid 
an  excellent  man  who  has  not  been 
properly  remunerated  for  his  share  in 
the  good  work  of  this  world. 

Two  white  teachers  joined  the  school 
toward  the  close  of  1866,  and  the  force 
has  been  gradually  increased  to  five; 
Hopkins  remaining  in  charge  of  the 
lower  classes.  The  number  of  scholars 
on  the  rolls  is  something  like  three 
hundred.  The  higher  classes  are  in  .' 
geography,  arithmetic,  English  gram- 
mar and  written  exercises,  and  declama- 
tion. Class-books  of  the  latest  issue 
are  gratuitously  supplied  by  a  leading 
New  York  publishing-house.  The  dis- 
cipline is  admirable ;.  the  monotony  of 
study  is  relieved  by  gleesome  singing; 
there  is  a  cheerful  zeal,  near  akin  to 
hilarity;  it  is  a  charming  spectacle. 
Most  of  the  leading  scholars  thus  far 
are  from  one  family,  —  a  dozen  or  so  of 
brothers,  sisters,  and  cousins,  —  all  of 
mixed  blood  and  mostly  handsome. 
When  I  first  saw  those  hazel  or  blue 
eyes,  chestnut  or  flaxen  heads,  and 
clear  complexions,  I  took  it  for  granted 
that  some  of  the  white  children  of  the 
village  had  seized  this  chance  for  a 
gratuitous  education.  I  had  met  the 
same  persons  before  in  the  streets, 
without  suspecting  that  they  were  of 
other  than  pure  Anglo-Saxon  race. 


I86S.] 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


419 


The  superior  scholarship  of  these 
octoroons,  by  the  way,  is  not  entirely 
owing  to  their  greater  natural  quick- 
ness of  intellect,  but  also  to  the  fact 
that  before  the  emancipation  they  were 
petted  and  encouraged  by  the  family  to 
which  they  belonged.  A  man's  chances 
go  very  far  towards  making  up  the 
actual  man. 

What  is  the  negro's  social  status, 
and  what  is  it  to  be  ?  I  was  amused 
one  Sunday  morning  by  a  little  tableau 
which  presented  itself  at  the  front  door 
of  my  hotel.  The  Bureau  Superintend- 
ent of  Education  having  arrived  on  an 
inspecting  tour,  my  venerable  friend 
Hopkins  had  called  to  take  him  to 
church,  and  was  waiting  in  his  meek 
fashion  under  the  portico,  not  choosing 
to  intrude  upon  the  august  interior  of 
the  establishment.  Having  lately  been 
ordained,  and  conceiving  himself  en- 
titled to  the  insignia  of  his  profession, 
he  had  put  on  a  white  neckcloth,  which 
of  course  contrasted  brilliantly  with  his 
face  and  clothing.  In  the  door- 
tood  a  citizen,  a  respectable  and 
y  man,  excellently  well  recon- 
structed too,  and  with  as  few  of  the 
:ern  prejudices  as  one  could  have 
in  Greenville.  But  he  was  lost  in  won- 
.t  this  novel  spectacle ;  he  had  a 
smile  of  mingled  curiosity  and  amuse- 
ment on  his  face  to  which  I  cannot  do 
justice  ;  he  seemed  to  be  admitting  that 
here  was  indeed  a  new  and  most  comi- 
cal era  in  human  history.  A  nigger  in 
r  clerical  raiment  was  evidently 
a  phenomenon  which  his  imagination 
never  could  have  depicted,  and  which 
fact  alone  —  so  much  stranger  than  fic- 
tion —  could  have  brought  home  to 
him  as  a  possibility.  Whether  he  be- 
3  at  this  day  that  he  actually  did 
see  Hopkins  in  a  black  coat  and  white 
cravat  is  more  than  doubtful. 

Not  for  generations  will  the  respecta- 
ble whites  of  the  South,  any  more  than 
those  of  the  North,  accept  the  negroes 
as  their  social  equals.  That  pride  of 
race  which  has  marked  all  distinguished 
peoples,  —  which  caused  the  Greeks  to 
style  even  the  wealthy  Persians  and 
Egyptians  barbarians,  —  which  made 


the  Romans  refuse  for  ages  the  boon  of 
citizenship  to  other  Italians,  —  which  led 
the  Semitic  Jew  to  scorn  the  Hamitic 
Canaanite,  and  leads  the  Aryan  to  scorn 
the  Jew,  —  that  sentiment  which  more 
than  anything  else  has  created  nation- 
ality and  patriotism,  —  has  among  us 
retreated  to  the  family,  but  it  guards 
this  last  stronghold  with  jealous  care. 
Whether  the  applicant  for  admission 
be  the  Chinaman  of  California  or  the 
African  of  Carolina,  he  will  for  long  be 
repulsed.  The  acceptance  of  the  negro 
as  the  social  equal  of  the  white  in  our 
country  dates  so  far  into  the  future,  that, 
practically  speaking,  we  may  consider 
it  as  never  to  be,  and  so  cease  concern- 
ing ourselves  about  it.  Barring  the 
dregs  of  our  population,  as,  for  instance, 
the  poor  white  trash  of  the  South,  the 
question  interests  no  one  now  alive. 

I  had  not  been  long  in  Greenville 
before  I  was  invited  to  what  Mr.  Hop- 
kins styled  "a  concert."  Repairing  in 
the  evening  to  the  Bureau  school-house, 
and  seating  myself  amid  an  audience 
of  freed-people,  I  found  that  the  "con- 
cert "  consisted  not  of  singing  or  other 
music,  but  of  tableaux-vivans.  At  one 
end  of  the  room  there  was  a  stage  of 
chestnut  boards,  with  a  curtain  of  calico 
and  an  inner  curtain  of  white  gauze  to 
assist  the  illusion.  Presently  the  calico 
was  withdrawn,  and  I  beheld  a  hand- 
some Pocahontas,  her  face  reddened  to 
the  true  Indian  color  as  seen  in  colored 
woodcuts,  a  wealth  of  long  black  hair 
falling  down  her  back,  saving  the  life 
of  a  Captain  John  Smith  with  Grecian 
features  and  Caucasian  complexion. 
Powhatan  and  his  warriors  were  paint- 
ed up  to  a  proper  ferocity,  and  attired 
with  a  respectable  regard  to  the  artistic 
demands  of  savageness.  The  scene 
was  hardly  uncovered  before  it  was 
hidden  again.  I  whispered  to  Hop- 
kins that  the  spectators  were  not  al- 
lowed a  fair  chance,  and  the  conse- 
quence was  a  repetition.  This  time 
the  curtain  was  kept  open  so  long  that 
Pocahontas,  unable  to  bear  the  length- 
ened publicity,  gave  a  nervous  start 
which  amazingly  tickled  the  beholders. 

Then  came  the  Goddess  of  Liberty, 


420 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


[October, 


a  charming  girl  of  seventeen,  with  wavy 
chestnut  hair,  rosy  cheeks,  and  laugh- 
ing eyes,  quite  imposingly  draped  in 
stars  and  stripes.  Next  followed  a 
French  family  scene  :  one  black  face 
here  as  servant,  and  one  or  two  mulatto 
ones  as  old  folks  ;  but  the  grandeur  and 
grace  of  the  scene  represented  by  blue 
eyes,  auburn  hair,  and  blond  com- 
plexions. I  was  puzzled  by  this  free 
mingling  of  the  African  and  Caucasian 
races,  and  repaired  to  Hopkins  for  an 
explanation.  He  informed  me  that  the 
"  concert  "  had  been  got  up  by  the  oc- 
toroon family  which  I  have  heretofore 
mentioned,  and  that  its  members  had 
furnished  nearly  all  of  the  performers. 

Great  is  color,  and  patrician  is  race. 
I  have  heard  a  mulatto  candidate  for 
the  Convention  declare  to  an  assemblage 
of  negroes  :  "  I  never  ought  to  have 
been  a  slave,  for  my  father  was  a  gen- 
tleman." I  have  heard  him  declaim : 
"  If  ever  there  is  a  nigger  government 
—  an  unmixed  nigger  government  —  es- 
tablished in  South  Carolina,  I  shall 
move." 

It  may  well  be  supposed  that  the 
pure  blacks  do  not  listen  to  such  as- 
sumptions with  satisfaction.  Although 
this  speaker  was  the  most  notable  col- 
ored man  in  his  district,  although  he 
was  (for  his  opportunities)  a  person  of 
remarkable  intellect,  information,  and 
high  character,  he  ran  behind  all  the 
white  candidates  on  his  ticket. 

In  Greenville  there  was  deep  and  in- 
creasing jealousy  between  the  blacks 
and  mulattoes.  To  some  extent  they 
formed  distinct  cliques  of  society,  and 
crystallized  into  separate  churches. 
When  the  mulattoes  arranged  a  series 
of  tableaux-vivans  for  the  benefit  of 
their  religious  establishment,  the  far 
more  numerous  blacks  kept  at  a  dis- 
tance, and  made  the  show  a  pecuniary 
failure.  When  the  mulattoes  asked 
that  they  might  hold  a  fair  in  the  Bu- 
reau school-house  for  the  above-men- 
tioned purpose,  some  of  the  blacks  in- 
trigued against  the  request,  and  were 
annoyed  at  my  granting  it. 

This  fair,  by  the  way,  was  a  pleasing 
sight.  As  Bureau  officers  and  guar- 


dian of  the  freedmen,  I  of  course  went ; 
so  did  all  the  dignitaries  of  the  United 
States  District  Court  then  sitting  in 
Greenville  ;  so  also  did  three  or  four  of 
the  wiser  and  kindlier  white  citizens. 
The  room  was  crowded,  for  the  blacks 
had  been  unableto  resist  the  temptations 
of  a  spectacle,  and  had  forgotten  tempo- 
rarily their  jealousy  of  the  mixed  race. 
As  usual  on  such  occasions,  the  hand- 
somest and  brightest  girls  sat  behind 
the  counters,  and  were  extortionate  in 
their  prices.  Wishing  to  make  a  gay 
present  to  my  friend  Hopkins,  I  was  a 
little  astonished  at  being  called  upon  to 
pay  five  dollars  for  a  frosted  cake,  and 
at  learning  that  another,  of  extra  size 
and  grandeur,  had  been  sold  for  twelve 
dollars.  There  were  ice-creams  and 
oysters  and  solider  viands  ;  there  were 
fans,  perfumeries,  and  jim-crackeries  for 
the  ladies  ;  there  were  candies  and  toys 
for  the  children,  slippers  for  the  lords 
of  creation.  What  the  proceeds  of  the 
entertainment  were  I  do  not  know  ;  but 
the  treasurer  of  the  occasion  had  a  roll 
of  greenbacks  which  excited  my  envy. 

One  incident  was  comical  in  its 
results.  Standing  with  the  Hon.  Mr. 
Blank,  a  benevolent  and  liberal-minded 
Southerner,  near  one  of  the  prettiest  of 
the  octoroon  sisters,  I  called  his  atten- 
tion to  her  Greek  purity  of  profile.  He 
replied  that  the  circumstance  was  no- 
ways singular,  and  that  one  of  the  most 
notedly  beautiful  women  in  the  State 
had  been  of  that  mixed  race.  A  little 
colored  tailor,  who  was  at  our  elbows, 
half  understood  this  statement,  applied 
it  to  the  girl  behind  the  counter,  and 
reported  through  the  assemblage  that 
the  Hon.  Mr.  Blank  had  called  Jenny 

W the  handsomest  girl  in   South 

Carolina.  A  certain  wicked  young  gen- 
tleman got  hold  of  the  story,  and  spread 
it  all  over  town  in  the  following  out- 
rageous fashion.  Whatsoever  belle  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  race  he  might  encoun- 
ter, he  would  say  to  her,  "  Well, - 
hum,  —  you  are  very  pretty,  —  but  you 
are  not  as  pretty  as  Miss  Jenny  W— 

"  Who  is  Miss  Jenny  W- 
be  the  benighted  and  curious  response. 

Then  would   this   intolerable  young 


1 868.] 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


421 


gentleman  maliciously  tell  his  tale,  and 
go  on  his  way  laughing.  The  result 
was  high  excitement  among  the  belles 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  and  much 
feminine  chaffing  of  the  Hon.  Mr. 
Blank.  What  made  the  matter  worse 
was,  that  on  the  day  of  the  fair  he  had 
accepted  an  invitation  to  a  young  la- 
dies' reading -society,  and  then  had 
withdrawn  it,  because  of  the  invitation 
from  the  humble  race  which  held  fes- 
tivity at  the  Bureau  school-house. 

"  What !  going  to  disappoint  us  for 
those  people !  "  a  fair  patrician  had  said 
to  him.  "We  ought  to  cut  your  ac- 
quaintance." 

"  My  dear,  I  can't  disappoint  them" 
he  had  replied,  very  wisely  and  nobly. 
"When  people  whom  God  has  placed 
so  far  beneath  me  ask  for  my  pres- 
ence, I  must  give  it.  It  is  like  an 
invitation  from  the  queen.  It  is  a 
command." 

That  had   been   comprehended  and 

pardoned  ;   but   to   call  Jenny   W 

handsomer  than  them  all!  The  Hon. 
Mr.  Blank  was  bullied  into  making 
explanations. 

But  this  gossip  was  matter  of  laugh- 
ter, without  a  shade  of  serious  umbrage 
or  jealousy,  so  secure  is  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race  in  its  social  pre-eminence. 
Between  the  mulattoes  and  negroes  the 
question  is  far  different;  the  former  are 
already  anxious  to  distinguish  them- 
selves from  the  pure  Africans ;  the 
latter  are  already  sore  under  the  su- 
periority thus  asserted.  Were  the  two 
breeds  more  equally  divided  in  num- 
bers, there  would  be  such  hostility 
between  them  as  has  been  known  in 
Hayti  and  Jamaica.  The  mixed  race 
in  our  country  is,  however,  so  small, 
and  its  power  of  self-perpetuation  so 
slight,  that  it  will  probably  be  absorbed 
in  the  other.  Meantime  it  holds  more 
than  its  share  of  intelligence,  and  of 
those  qualities  which  go  to  the  acquisi- 
tion of  property. 

With  a  Bureau  officer  who  was  sta- 
tioned in  the  lowlands  of  South  Caro- 
lina, I  compared  impressions  as  to  the 
political  qualifications  and  future  of  the 
negro.  "  In  my  district,"  he  said,  «« the 


election  was  a  farce.  Very  few  of  the 
freedmen  had  any  idea  of  what  they 
were  doing,  or  even  of  how  they  ought 
to  do  it.  They  would  vote  into  the 
post-office,  or  any  hole  they  could  find. 
Some  of  them  carried  home  their  bal- 
lots, greatly  smitten  with  the  red  let- 
tering and  the  head  of  Lincoln,  or  sup- 
posing that  they  could  use  them  as 
warrants  for  land.  Others  would  give 
them  to  the  first  white  man  who  offered 
to  take  care  of  them.  One  old  fellow 
said  to  me,  *  Lord,  marsr  !  do  for  Lord's 
sake  tell  me  what  dis  yere  's  all  about.' 
I  explained  to  him  that  the  election 
was  to  put  the  State  back  into  the 
Union,  and  make  it  stay  there  in  peace. 

*  Lord  bless  you,  marsr  !     I  'se   might 
glad    to    un'erstan'    it,'    he    answered. 

*  I  'se  the  only  nigger  in  this  yere  dis- 
trick  now  that  knows  what  he 's   up 
ter.'  » 

In  my  own  district  things  were  bet- 
ter. A  region  of  small  farmers  mainly, 
the  negroes  had  lived  nearer  to  the 
whites  than  on  the  great  plantations 
of  the  low  country,  and  were  propor- 
tionately intelligent.  The  election  in 
Greenville  was  at  least  the  soberest 
and  most  orderly  that  had  ever  been 
known  there.  Obedient  to  the  instruc- 
tions of  their  judicious  managers,  the 
freedmen  voted  quietly,  and  went  imme- 
diately home,  without  the  reproach  of  a 
fight  or  a  drunkard,  and  without  even 
a  hurrah  of  triumph.  Their  little  band 
of  music  turned  out  in  the  evening  to 
serenade  a  favorite  candidate,  but  a 
word  from  him  sent  them  home  with 
silent  trumpets,  and  the  night  was  re- 
markable for  tranquillity.  Even  the 
youngsters  who  sometimes  rowdied  in 
the  streets  seemed  to  be  sensible  of 
the  propriety  of  unusual  peace,  and 
went  to  bed  early.  Judging  from  what 
I  saw  that  day,  I  should  have  halcyon 
hopes  for  the  political  future  of  the 
negro. 

My  impression  is,  although  I  cannot 
make  decisive  averment  in  the  matter, 
that  a  majority  of  the  Greenville  freed- 
men had  a  sufficiently  intelligent  sense 
of  the  purport  of  the  election.  The 
stupidest  of  them  understood  that  he 


422 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


[October, 


was  acting  "  agin  de  rebs,"  and  "  for  de 
freedom."  None  of  them  voted  into 
the  post-office  or  into  hollow  trees. 

But  more  delicate  and  complicated 
questions  will  some  day  arise  than  a 
simple  choice  between  slaveholding 
rebellion  and  emancipating  loyalty. 
How  then  ?  It  is  an  unveiled  future  ; 
shooting  Niagara  —  and  after  ?  I  defy 
any  one  to  prophesy  with  certainty 
whether  more  good  or  harm  will  come 
of  this  sudden  enfranchisement  of  ig- 
norant millions.  For  the  present  it 
works  well,  by  contrast  with  what 
might  have  been  ;  we  had  but  a  choice 
of  evils,  and  we  have  unquestionably 
taken  the  least.  If  it  is  not  satisfac- 
tory to  have  manumitted  ignoramuses 
voting  on  amendments  to  the  Constitu- 
tion, it  is  better  than  to  leave  the  South 
in  the  hands  of  unreconstructed  rebels, 
led  by  traitorous  old  rats  of  politicians. 
But  every  good  is  purchased  at  the 
expense  of  attendant  evils,  and  this 
may  demand  more  than  we  can  con- 
veniently pay  for  it. 

There  was  a  tragedy  in  my  satrapy 
during  the  autumn  of  1867.  A  meeting 
of  Union-Leaguers,  composed  chiefly 
of  negroes,  but  presided  over  by  a 
white  man,  was  held  one  evening  in  an 
inconsiderable  hamlet  near  the  south- 
ern border  of  Pickens  District.  Ac- 
cording to  an  absurd  and  illegal  fashion 
too  common  with  such  convocations, 
armed  sentinels  were  posted  around 
the  building,  with  orders  to  prevent 
the  approach  of  uninitiated  persons. 
In  a  school-house  not  far  distant  the 
whites  of  the  neighborhood  had  met  in 
a  debating-society. 

A  low-down  white  named  Smith  ap- 
proached the  League  rendezvous,  —  as 
the  sentinels  declared,  with  threats  of 
forcing  an  entrance  ;  as  he  stated,  by 
mistake.  Either  by  him  or  by  one  of 
the  negroes  a  pistol  was  fired  ;  and 
then  arose  a  cry  that  a  "  reb  "  was 
coming  to  break  up  the  meeting.  A 
voice  within,  said  by  some  to  be  that  of 
the  president,  Bryce,  ordered,  "Bring 
that  man  a  prisoner,  dead  or  alive." 

The  negroes  rushed  out ;  Smith  fled, 
hotly  pursued,  to  the  school  -  house  ; 


the  members  of  the  debating-club  broke 
up  in  a  panic,  and  endeavored  to  es- 
cape ;  a  second  pistol  was  fired,  and  a 
boy  of  fourteen,  named  Hunnicutt,  the 
son  of  a  respectable  citizen,  fell  dead. 
The  ball  entered  the  back  of  his  head, 
showing  that,  when  it  struck  him,  he 
was  flying. 

Then  ensued  an  extraordinary  drama. 
The  negroes,  unaware  apparently  that 
they  had  done  anything  wrong,  believ- 
ing, on  the  contrary,  that  they  were  re- 
establishing public  order  and  enforcing 
justice,  commenced  patrolling  the  neigh- 
borhood, entering  every  house,  and 
arresting  numbers  of  citizens.  They 
marched  in  double  file,  pistol  in  belt 
and  gun  at  the  shoulder,  keeping  step 
to  the  "  hup,  hup  !  "  of  a  fellow  called 
Lame  Sam,  who  acted  as  drill-sergeant 
and  commander.  By  noon  of  the  next 
day  they  had  the  country  for  miles' 
around  in  their  power,  and  a  majority 
of  the  male  whites  under  guard.  What 
they  meant  to  do  is  uncertain  ;  prob- 
ably they  did  not  know  themselves. 
Their  subsequent  statement  was  that 
they  wanted  to  find  the  disturber  of 
their  meeting,  Smith,  and  also  the  mur- 
derer of  Hunnicutt,  whom  they  asserted 
to  be  a  "reb." 

On  the  arrival  of  a  detachment  from 
the  United  States  garrison  at  Ander- 
son the  whites  were  liberated,  and  the 
freedmen  handed  over  to  the  civil  au- 
thorities for  trial  before  the  next  Dis- 
trict Court.  The  Leaguers  exhibited 
such  a  misguided  loyalty  to  their  order 
and  each  other,  that  it  was  impossible 
to  fix  a  charge  for  murder  on  any  one 
person,  or  to  establish  grounds  for  an 
indictment  of  any  sort  against  Bryce. 
Eighteen  were  found  guilty  of  riot,  and 
sentenced  to  imprisonment ;  eight  of 
homicide  in  the  first  degree,  and  sen- 
tenced to  death. 

Still  no  confessions ;  the  convicted 
men  would  not  believe  that  they  would 
be  punished ;  they  were  sure  that  the 
Yankees  would  save  them,  or  that  the 
Leaguers  would  rescue  them  ;  they  re- 
fused to  point  out  either  the  instigator 
or  the  perpetrator  of  the  murder, 
was  not  until  the  United  States  mar- 


1 868.] 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


423 


shal  of  South  Carolina  assured  them  of 
the  fallacy  of  their  hopes  that  they  dis- 
missed them.  Admissions  were  then 
made ;  nearly  all  coincided  in  fixing 
the  fatal  pistol-shot  upon  one;  and 
that  one  was  hung. 

This  affair  is  mainly  important  as 
showing  how  easily  the  negroes  can  be 
led  into  folly  and  crime.  Themselves 
a  peaceful  race,  not  disposed  to  rioting 
and  murder,  they  were  brought  with- 
out trouble  to  both  by  the  counsels  of 
the  ignorant  and  pugnacious  whites 
who  became  their  leaders  in-  the  Loyal 
Leagues.  Not  three  days  after  the 
Hunnicutt  tragedy,  a  farmer  from  Pick- 
ens  District  called  on  me  to  obtain  a 
permit  for  an  armed  meeting  of  Union 
men,  and  seemed  quite  dumbfoundered 
when  I  not  only  refused  the  permit, 
but  assured  him  that,  if  he  attempted  to 
hold  such  a  meeting,  I  would  have  him 
arrested.  In  justice  to  the  Union  men 
and  the  negroes,  however,  it  must  be 
remembered  that  they  have  been  gov- 
•erned  by  the  mailed  hand ;  and  that,  in 
.seeking  to  enforce  their  political  ideas 
by  steel  and  gunpowder,  they  are  but 
following  the  example  of  the  high-toned 
gentlemen  who  formerly  swayed  the 
South.  On  the  whole,  we  must  admit 
that,  although  they  have  committed 
more  follies  and  crimes  than  were  at 
all  desirable,  they  have  committed  few- 
er than  might  reasonably  have  been  ex- 
pected, considering  the  nature  of  their 
political  education.  In  their  rule  thus 
far  there  has  been  less  of  the  vigilance 
committee  than  in  that  which  preceded 
it. 

At  least  one  of  the  political  privileges 
of  the  negroes  is  already  a  heavy  bur- 
den to  them.  Every  day  or  two  some 
ragged  fellow  stepped  into  my  office 
with  the  inquiry,  "  I  wants  to  know  ef 
I  've  got  to  pay  my  taxes." 

"Certainly,"  I  was  bound  to  reply, 
for  the  general  commanding  had  de- 
clared that  the  civil  laws  were  in  force, 
and  moreover  I  knew  that  the  State 
was  tottering  for  lack  of  money- 

"  But  the  sheriff,  he  's  put  it  up  to 
eight  dollars  now,  air  when  he  first 
named  it  to  me  he  said  it  was  three, 


an'  when  I  went  to  see  him  about  it 
arterward  he  said  it  was  five.  'Pears 
like  I  can't  git  at  the  rights  of  the  thing 
nohow,  an'  they  's  jes  tryin'  to  leave 
me  without  anything  to  go  upon." 

"•  My  dear  fellow,  you  should  have 
paid  up  when  you  were  first  warned. 
The  additions  since  then  are  charges 
for  collection.  The  longer  you  put  it 
off,  the  more  it  will  cost  you.  You  had 
better  settle  with  the  sheriff  without 
any  further  delay,  or  you  may  be  sold 
out." 

"  Wai,  'pears  like  it 's  mighty  hard  on 
us,  an'  we  jes  a  startin'.  I  was  turned 
off  year  befo'  las'  without  a  grain  o' 
corn,  an'  no  Ian'.  Boss,  is  they  comin' 
on  us  every  year  for  these  yere  taxes  ?  " 

"  I  suppose  so.  How  else  are  the 
laws  to  be  kept  up,  and  the  poor  old 
negroes  to  be  supported  ?  " 

Exit  freedman  in  a  state  of  profound 
discouragement,  looking  as  if  he  wished 
there  were  no  laws  and  no  poor  old 
negroes. 

The  taxes  were  indeed  heavy  on  la- 
bor, especially  as  compared  with  wages. 
Eight  dollars  a  month,  with  rations  and 
lodging,  was  all  that  the  best  field  hand 
could  earn  in  Greenville  District ;  and 
those  freedmen  who  took  land  on  shares 
generally  managed,  by  dint  of  unintelli- 
gent cultivation  and  of  laziness,  to  ob- 
tain even  less.  I  knew  of  able-bodied 
women  who  were  working  for  nothing 
but  their  shelter,  food,  and  two  suits  of 
cheap  cotton  clothing  per  annum. 

As  a  result  of  this  wretched  remu- 
neration there  was  an  exodus.  During 
the  fall  of  1866  probably  a  thousand 
freed-people  left  my  two  districts  of 
Pickens  and  Greenville  to  settle  in 
Florida,  Louisiana,  Arkansas,  and  Ten- 
nessee. Only  a  few  had  the  enterprise 
or  capital  to  go  by  themselves ;  the 
great  majority  were  carried  off  by  plant- 
ers and  emigration  agents.  Those  who 
went  to  Florida  contracted  for  twelve 
dollars  a  month,  a  cabin,  a  garden- 
patch,  fuel,  and  weekly  rations  consist- 
ing of  one  peck  of  meal,  two  pounds  of 
bacon,  and  one  pint  of  molasses ;  but 
on  reaching  their  destination,  and  see- 
ing the  richness  of  the  land,  they  some- 


424 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


[October, 


times  flew  from  their  bargains  and  se- 
cured a  new  one,  giving  them  one  third 
of  the  crop  in  place  of  wages,  and  in- 
creasing the  quantity  and  quality  of 
their  rations.  The  emigrants  to  Louis- 
iana and  Arkansas  went  on  the  basis 
of  fifteen  dollars  a  month,  lodgings, 
patch,  fuel,  and  food ;  and  then  kept 
their  contracts  if  they  pleased,  or  vio- 
lated them  under  the  temptation  of 
thirty,  forty,  and  even  fifty  dollars  a 
month.  The  negroes  having  never 
been  taught  the  value  of  honesty  by 
experience,  nor  much  of  its  beauty  by 
precept,  are  frequently  slippery.  The 
planters,  pressingly  in  need  of  labor, 
were  generally  obliged  to  accede  to 
their  demands. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  emigration 
agents  were  accused  of  some  sharp 
practice,  and  particularly  of  leaving 
their  emigrants  at  points  whither  they 
had  not  agreed  to  go.  A  freedman  who 
had  contracted  to  work  at  Memphis 
might  be  landed  at  Franklin  in  Louis- 
iana without  knowing  the  difference. 
In  short,  the  matter  went  on  more  or 
less  smoothly,  with  some  good  results 
and  some  evil.  Labor  was  transferred 
in  considerable  masses  from  where  it 
was  not  wanted  to  where  it  was.  The 
beneficent  effects  of  the  migration  were 
of  course  much  diminished  by  the  acci- 
dental circumstances  of  the  overflows 
in  Louisiana,  and  the  fall  in  the  value 
of  the  cotton  crop  everywhere.  More- 
over;, these  negroes  of  the  mountains 
suffered  nearly  as  much  from  lowland 
fevers  as  if  they  were  white  men  from 
our  Northern  frontiers. 

Will  the  freedmen  acquire  property 
and  assume  position  among  the  man- 
agers of  our  national  industry  ?  Al- 
ready a  division  is  taking  place  among 
them  :  there  are  some  who  have  clearly 
benefited  by  emancipation,  and  others 
who  have  not ;  the  former  are  becom- 
ing what  the  Southerners  term  "decent 
niggers,"  and  the  latter  are  turning  into 
poor  black  trash.  The  low-down  negro 
will  of  course  follow  the  low-down  white 
into  sure  and  deserved  oblivion.  His 
more  virtuous  and  vital  brother  will 
struggle  longer  with  the  law  of  natural 


selection  ;  and  he  may  eventfully  hold 
a  portion  of  this  continent  against  the 
vigorous  and  terrible  Caucasian  race; 
that  portion  being  probably  those  low- 
lands where  the  white  cannot  or  will., 
not  labor.  Meantime  the  negro's  ac- 
quisition of  property,  and  of  those  qual- 
ities which  command  the  industry  of 
others,  will  be  slow.  What  better  could 
be  expected  of  a  serf  so  lately  manumit- 
ted ? 

When  I  first  took  post  in  Greenville,. 
I  used  to  tell  the  citizens  that  soon  their 
finest  houses  would  be  in  possession  of 
blacks  ;  but  long  before  I  left  there  I 
had  changed  my  opinion.  Although 
land  in  profusion  was  knocked  down, 
for  a  song  on  every  monthly  sale  day,, 
not  more  than  three  freedmen  had  pur- 
chased any,  and  they  not  more  than  an 
acre  apiece.  What  little  money  they 
earned  they  seemed  to  be  incapable  of 
applying  to  solid  and  lasting  purpose  ; 
they  spent  it  for  new  clothes  and  other 
luxuries,  or  in  supporting  each  other's 
idleness;  they  remained  penniless,, 
where  an  Irishman  or  German  would 
thrive.  Encumbered  with  debt  as  are 
many  of  the  whites  of  Greenville,  defi- 
cient as  they  may  be  in  business  faculty. 
and  industry,  they  need  not  fear  that 
black  faces  will  smile  out  of  their  par- 
lor windows.  The  barbarian  and  serf 
does  not  so  easily  rise  to  be  the  em- 
ployer and  landlord  of  his  late  master. 

What  is  to  become  of  the  African  in 
our  country  as  a  race  ?  Will  he  com- 
mingle with  the  Caucasian,  and  so  dis- 
appear ?  It  is  true  that  there  are  a  few 
marriages,  and  a  few  cases  of  illegal 
cohabitation,  between  negro  men  and 
the  lowest  class  of  white  women.  For  - 
example,  a  full-blooded  black  walked 
twenty  miles  to  ask  me  if  he  could  have 
a  white  wife,  assuring  me  that  there 
was  a  girl  down  in  his  "settlement" 
who  was  "  a  teasin'  every  day  about 
it." 

He  had  opened  his  business  with 
hesitation,  and  he  talked  of  it  in  a  trem- 
ulous undertone,  glancing  around  for 
fear  of  listeners.  I  might  have  told 
him  that,  as  it  was  not  leap  year,  tiie 
woman  had  no  right  to  propose  to  him ; 


1 868.] 


The  Man  and  Brother. 


425 


but  I  treated  the  matter  seriously.  Bear- 
ing in  mind  that  she  must  be  a  disrep- 
utable creature,  who  would  make  him 
a  wretched  helpmeet,  I  first  informed 
him  that  the  marriage  would  be  legal, 
and  that  the  civil  and  military  authori- 
ties would  be  bound  to  protect  him  in 
it,  and  then  advised  him  against  it,  on 
the  ground  that  it  would  expose  him  to 
a  series  of  underhanded  persecutions 
which  could  not  easily  be  prevented. 
He  went  away  evidently  but  half  con- 
vinced, and  I  presume  that  his  Delilah 
had  her  will  with  him,  although  I  heard 
no  more  of  this  odd  love  affair.  But 
such  cases  are  as  yet  rare,  and  further- 
more the  low-downers  are  a  transient 
race.  Free  labor  and  immigration  from 
the  North  or  Europe  will  extirpate  or 
elevate  them  within  half  a  century. 

Miscegenation  between  white  men 
and  negresses  has  diminished  under  the 
new  order  of  things.  Emancipation 
has  broken  up  the  close  family  contact 
in  which  slavery  held  the  two  races, 
and.  moreover,  young  gentlemen  do  not 
want  mulatto  children  sworn  to  them  at 
a  cost  of  three  hundred  dollars  apiece. 
In  short,  the  new  relations  of  the  two 
stocks  tend  to  separation  rather  than  to 
fusion.  Consequently  there  will  be  no 
amalgamation,  no  merging  and  disap- 
pearance of  the  black  in  the  white,  ex- 
cept at  a  period  so  distant  that  it  is  not 
worth  while  now  to  speculate  upon  it. 
So  far  as  we  and  our  children  and 
grandchildren  are  concerned,  the  negro 
will  remain  a  negro,  and  must  be  proph- 
esied about  as  a  negro. 

But  will  he  remain  a  negro,  and  not 
rather  become  a  ghost?  It  is  almost 
ludicrous  to  find  the  "  woman  question  " 
intruding  itself  into  the  future  of  a  being 
whom  we  have  been  accustomed  to  hear 
of  as  a  "  nigger,"  and  whom  a  ponder- 
ous wise  man  of  the  East  persists  in 
abusing  as  "  Ouashee."  There  is  a  grow- 
ing disinclination  to  marriage  among 
the  young  freedmen,  because  the  girls 
are  learning  to  shirk  out-of-door  work,  to 
demand  nice  dresses  and  furniture,  and, 
in  short,  to  be  fine  ladies.  The  youths 


have,  of  course  no  objection  to  the 
adornment  itself;  indeed,  they  are,  like 
white  beaux,  disposed  to  follow  the 
game  which  wears  the  finest  feathers; 
but  they  are  getting  clever  enough  to 
know  that  such  game  is  expensive,  and. 
to  content  themselves  with  looking  at  it. 
Where  the  prettiest  colored  girls  in 
Greenville  were  to  find  husbands  was- 
more  than  I  could  imagine. 

There  are  other  reasons  why  the 
blacks  will  not  increase  as  rapidly  as 
before  the  emancipation.  The  young 
men  have  more  amusements  and  a  more 
varied  life  than  formerly.  Instead  of 
being  shut  up  on  the  plantation,  they 
can  spend  the  nights  in  frolicking  about 
the  streets  or  at  drinking-places  ;  in- 
stead of  the  monotony  of  a  single  neigh- 
borhood, they  can  wander  from  village 
to  village  and  from  South  Carolina  to 
Texas.  The  master  is  no  longer  there 
to  urge  matrimony,  and  perhaps  other 
methods  of  increasing  population.  Ne- 
groes, as  well  as  whites,  can  now  be 
forced  by  law  to  support  their  illegiti- 
mate offspring,  and  are  consequently 
more  cautious  than  formerly  how  they 
have  such  offspring. 

In  short,  the  higher  civilization  of  the 
Caucasian  is  gripping  the  race  in  many 
ways,  and  bringing  it  to  sharp  trial  be- 
fore its  time.  This  new,  varied,  costly 
life  of  freedom,  this  struggle  to  be  at 
once  like  a  race  which  has  passed 
through  a  two  thousand  years'  growth  in 
civilization,  will  unquestionably  dimin- 
ish the  productiveness  of  the  negro,  and 
will  terribly  test  his  vitality. 

It  is  doubtless  well  for  his  chances  of 
existence  that  his  color  keeps  him  a 
plebeian,  so  that,  like  the  European 
peasant  held  down  by  caste,  he  is  less 
tempted  to  destroy  himself  in  the  strug- 
gle to  become  a  patrician. 

What  judgment  shall  we  pass  upon 
abrupt  emancipation,  considered  merely 
with  reference  to  the  negro?  It  is  a 
mighty  experiment,  fraught  with  as 
much  menace  as  hope. 

To  the  white  race  alone  it  is  a  cer- 
tain and  precious  boon. 


426  The  Two  Rabbis.  [October, 


THE    TWO     RABBIS. 

THE  Rabbi  Nathan,  twoscore  years  and  ten, 
Walked  blameless  through  the  evil  world,  and  then, 
Just  as  the  almond  blossomed  in  his  hair, 
Met  a  temptation  all  too  strong  to  bear, 
And  miserably  sinned.     So,  adding  not 
Falsehood  to  guilt,  he  left  his  seat,  and  taught 
No  more  among  the  elders,  but  went  out 
From  the  great  congregation  girt  about 
With  sackcloth,  and  with  ashes  on  his  head, 
Making  his  gray  locks  grayer.     Long  he  prayed, 
Smiting  his  breast ;  then,  as  the  Book  he  laid 
Open  before  him  for  the  Bath-Col's  choice, 
Pausing  to  hear  that  Daughter  of  a  Voice, 
Behold  the  royal  preacher's  words  :  "  A  friend 
Loveth  at  all  times,  yea,  unto  the  end  ; 
And  for  the  evil  day  thy  brother  lives." 
Marvelling,  he  said :  "  It  is  the  Lord  who  gives 
Counsel  in  need.     At  Ecbatana  dwells 
Rabbi  Ben  Isaac,  who  all  men  excels 
In  righteousness  and  wisdom,  as  the  trees 
Of  Lebanon  the  small  weeds  that  the  bees 
Bow  with  their  weight.     I  will  arise,  and  lay 
My  sins  before  him." 

And  he  went  his  way 

Barefooted,  fasting  long,  with  many  prayers ; 
But  even  as  one  who,  followed  unawares, 
Suddenly  in  the  darkness  feels  a  hand 
Thrill  with  its  touch  his  own,  and  his  cheek  fanned 
By  odors  subtly  sweet,  and  whispers  near 
Of  words  he  loathes,  yet  cannot  choose  but  hear, 
So,  while  the  Rabbi  journeyed,  chanting  low 
The  wail  of  David's  penitential  woe, 
Before  him  still  the  old  temptation  came, 
And  mocked  him  with  the  motion  and  the  shame 
Of  such  desires  that,  shuddering,  he  abhorred 
Himself;  and,  crying  mightily  to  the  Lord 
To  free  his  soul  and  cast  the  demon  out, 
Smote  with  his  staff  the  blankness  round  about. 

At  length,  in  the  low  light  of  a  spent  day, 
The  towers  of  Ecbatana  far  away 
Rose  on  the  desert's  rim  ;  and  Nathan,  faint 
And  footsore,  pausing  where  for  some  dead  saint 
The  faith  of  Islam  reared  a  dome'd  tomb, 
Saw  some  one  kneeling  in  the  shadow,  whom 
He  greeted  kindly  :   "  May  the  Holy  One 
Answer  thy  prayers,  O  stranger  !  "     Whereupon 


1 868.]  The  Two  Rabbis.  427 

The  shape  stood  up  with  a  loud  cry,  and  then, 
Clasped  in  each  other's  arms,  the  two  gray  men 
Wept,  praising  Him  whose  gracious  providence 
Made  their  paths  one.     But  straightway,  as  the  sense 
Of  his  transgression  smote  him,.  Nathan  tore 
Himself  away  :  "  O  friend  beloved,  no  more 
Worthy  am  I  to  touch  thee,  for  I  came, 
Foul  from  my  sins,  to  tell  thee  all  my  shame. 
Haply  thy  prayers,  since  naught  availeth  mine, 
May  purge  my  soul,  and  make  it  white  like  thine. 
Pity  me,  O  Ben  Isaac,  I  have  sinned  !  " 

Awestruck  Ben  Isaac  stood.     The  desert  wind 

Blew  his  long  mantle  backward,  laying  bare 

The  mournful  secret  of  his  shirt  of  hair. 

"  I  too,  O  friend,  if  not  in  act,"  he  said, 

"  In  thought  have  verily  sinned.     Hast  thou  not  read, 

*  Better  the  eye  should  see  than  that  desire 

Should  wander  ? '     Burning  with  a  hidden  fire 

That  tears  and  prayers  quench  not,  I  come  to  thee 

For  pity  and  for  help,  as  thou  to  me. 

Pray  for  me,  O  my  friend  ! "     But  Nathan  cried, 

"  Pray  thou  for  me,  Ben  Isaac  !  " 

Side  by  side 

In  the  low  sunshine  by  the  turban  stone 
They  knelt;  each  made  his  brother's  woe  his  own, 
Forgetting,  in  the  agony  and  stress 
Of  pitying  love,  his  claim  of  selfishness  ; 
Peace,  for  his  friend  besought,  his  own  became ; 
His  prayers  were  answered  in  another's  name ; 
And,  when  at  last  they  rose  up  to  embrace, 
Each  saw  God's  pardon  in  his  brother's  face  ! 

.  Long  after,  when  his  headstone  gathered  moss, 
Traced  on  the  targum-marge  of  Onkelos 
In  Rabbi  Nathan's  hand  these  words  were  read: 
"  Hope  not  the  cure  of  sin  till  Self  is  dead; 
Forget  it  in  lovers  service,  and  the  debt 
Thou  canst  not  pay  the  angels  shall  forget; 
Heaven's  gate  is  shut  to  him  who  comes  alone; 
Save  thou*  a  soul,  and  it  shall  save  thy  own  /  " 


428 


Kings'  Crowns  and  Fools'  Caps. 


[October, 


KINGS'    CROWNS    AND    FOOLS'    CAPS. 


"  C  HE  went  to  the  hatter's   to  buy 

vD  him  a  hat,"  and  three  days  later, 
when  he  was  caught  in  a  shower,  the 
hat  shrunk  an  inch  in  circumference, 
and  assumed  a  pyramidal  or  monu- 
mental appearance,  more  peculiar  than 
pleasing. 

The  Baron  was  naturally  dissatisfied, 
Miselle  was  discomfited,  and  Caleb  was 
mildly  triumphant. 

"Another  of  your  favorite  economies, 
my  dear,"  said  he.  "  You  should  have 
known  by  the  price  that  this  can  only 
be  a  wool  hat,  and  the  inevitable  des- 
tiny of  wool  hats  is  to  terminate  like 
this,  —  in  a  cone." 

"  Wool !  why  it  is  a  felt  hat,  and  all 
felt  is  made  of  wool,"  replied  Miselle, 
in  a  lofty  manner. 

"  Indeed  !  I  was  under  the  impres- 
sion that  the  best  felt  hats  are  made  of 
fur,  and  never  shrink  or  lose  their 
shape  like  this." 

And  Caleb,  picking  up  the  unfortu- 
nate subject  of  discussion,  set  it  lightly 
upon  the  head  of  the  Venus,  whose 
marble  neck  seemed  to  curve  anew  at 
the  indignity.  The  Baron  forgot  his 
woes,  and  laughed  outright ;  but  Mi- 
selle insisted  upon  calling  the  question. 

"  Oh  !  Felt  made  of  fur !  I  never 
heard  of  such  a  thing,  and  I  don't  be- 
lieve it,"  said  she. 

"  Seeing  is  believing,"  tranquilly  re- 
plied Caleb.  "  Mentor  was  speaking 
of  hats  to-day,  and  professed  an  inten- 
tion of  visiting  a  factory  in  Boston.  I 
will  get  him  to  take  you  over  it,  and 
you  shall  afterward  convince  me,  if 
you  choose,  that  you  are,  as  usual,  in 
the  right,  and  that  all  felt  is  made  of 
wool." 

"  I  am  not  always  in  the  right," 
magnanimously  conceded  Miselle,  "but 
I  should  like  to  visit  the  hat-factory." 

Mentor  proved  willing  to  make  good 
his  sobriqiict,  and  a  few  days  later  con- 
ducted Miselle  to  a  large  establishment 
in  Boston. 

They  were  received  by  the  heads  of 


the  concern,  to  whom  Mentor,  after 
some  conversation,  presented  Miselle 
as  "  A  lady  anxious  to  learn  of  what 
material,  and  in  what  manner,  hats  are 
made." 

The  heads  smiled,  bowed,  and  pro- 
fessed themselves  pleased  to  give  all 
possible  information  upon  the  desired 
points ;  and  Miselle  rushed  at  once  to 
the  great  question,  propounding  it  in  a 
manner  essentially  feminine. 

"  Felt  hats  are  made  of  wool,  —  are 
they  not  ?  "  asked  she. 

The  heads  smiled  benevolently. 

"  Not  ours,"  said  they.  "  There  are 
plenty  of  wool  hats  manufactured,  but 
they  are  only  bought  by  those  who 
cannot  afford,  or  do  not  know  enough 
to  choose,  fur  ones.  We  do  not  use  a  » 
fibre  of  wool  in  our  establishment,  but. 
consume,  instead,  about  eighteen  thou- 
sand pounds  of  fur." 

"What  sort  of  fur?"  inquired  Mi- 
selle, somewhat  hurriedly. 

"  Several  sorts,  or  rather  several  va- 
rieties of  one  sort,"  replied  the  heads. 
"  For  although  it  is  all,  in  point  of  fact, 
rabbits'  fur,  the  highest  quality  is  called 
Russia  hares'  fur,  and  the  lower  grades 
Scotch  and  French  cony.  Then  we 
occasionally  get  a  small  quantity  of 
domestic  rabbits'  fur,  brought  mostly 
from  the  South  ;  and  some  nutria,  a  fur 
obtained  from  the  coypou,  a  smaller 
species  of  beaver." 

"  Do  you  get  any  genuine  beaver 
now  ?  "  inquired  Mentor. 

"  Sometimes.  But  beaver  fur  is 
worth  fifty  dollars  the  pound  to-day, 
while  the  best  Russia  and  German 
hares'  fur  commands  only  five,  and  the 
Scotch  and  French  cony  from  two  to 
four  dollars.  We  will  show  you  some 
specimens  of  the  principal  grades." 

Some  square  paper  packages,  accom- 
panied by  a  subterraneous  odor,  were 
here  brought  in,  and  laid  upon  the  table. 

"  This  is  Russia  A.  H.,"  said  one  of 
the  heads,  unfastening  the  whity-brown 
foreign-looking  envelope,  and  display- 


1 868.] 


Kings'  Crowns  and  Fools1  Caps. 


429 


ing  a  pile  of  pretty  little  fleeces,  as  one 
might  call  them,  of  a  golden  brown 
color,  so  carefully  cut  from  the  skin  as 
to  leave  them  quite  whole,  although 
not  adhesive  enough  to  admit  of  hand- 
ling. 

"  This  is  from  the  back  of  the  ani- 
mal. The  fur  of  the  other  portions  of 
the  body  is  considered  inferior.  All 
this  is  carotted  fur,"  saicl  one  of  the 
heads. 

"  What  is   carotted   fur  ?  "  inquired 
.-lie  of  Mentor,  who  of  course  re- 
plied, — 

"Did  you  never  hear  of  carroty  hair? 
This  is  the  fur  of  a  carroted  hare,  don't 
you  see  ?  " 

Without  deigning  reply,  Miselle  re- 
peated her  question  aloud,  and  was 
informed  that  the  carotted  fur  had  been 
subjected  to  a  mercurial  or  quicksilver 
bath,  the  effect  of  which  process  was  to 
facilitate  the  subsequent  amalgamation 
of  the  fibre. 

"This  effect,  however,"  explained  the 
head,  "  is  obtained  at  the  expense  of 
a  certain  amount  of  strength.  A  felt 
made  entirely  of  carotted  fur  would 
have  very  little  consistence  ;  but,  with- 
out a  certain  proportion  of  it,  the  raw 
fur  would  not  felt  at  all. 

This  next  package  is  Scotch  cony. 
It  is  entirely  white,  you  perceive,  and 
is  used  for  ladies'  white  hats  without 
requiring  any  bleaching  process.  This 
other  is  French  cony,  dark-colored,  like 
the  Russia,  but  not  as  glossy  or  heavy. 
Here  is  a  package  of  German  fur  very 
like  the  Russia ;  in  fact  it  generally 
goes  by  that  name  among  the  trade, 
although  not  in  reality  so  valuable  ;  for 
as  a  general  rule  the  richest  furs  come 
from  the  coldest  climates." 

Miselle  took  up  the  label  dropped 
from  this  German  package,  and  read  :  — 

"Carotted  Ilarcsfur 
Manufactured  by  W.  Kugler  Zim. 
Offenbach,  near  Frankfort,  •%." 

"Frankfort  on  the  Main,"  translated 
Mentor,  looking  over  her  shoulder. 
"Yes,  there  are  large  warrens  near 
Frankfort,  where  rabbits  are  bred  ex- 
pressly for  this  trade.  But  why  the 


accident  of  death  should  transform  a 
German  rabbit  into  a  Russian  hare  I 
do  not  understand." 

"  Besides  these  varieties  of  fur,"  pro- 
ceeded the  head,  "the  felt  contains 
another  ingredient  called  '  roundings.' 
This  substance  is  the  trimmings  of  the 
Imts  cut  off  in  the  finishing-room, — 
pieces  of  felt,  in  fact,  ground  and  picked 
fine  again.  The  effect  of  this  roundings 
is  to  give  a  softer  and  finer  finish  to  the 
completed  work,  as  in  the  process  of 
felting  ;  its  tendency  is  to  work  up  to 
the  surface,  and  closely  connect  the 
cruder  fibres  of  the  new  fur.  Too  large 
a  proportion  of  roundings,  however, 
would  have  a  tendency  to  weaken  the 
consistency  of  the  felt." 

"  In  what  proportions  do  you  mix 
the  different  varieties  of  fur,  and  the 
roundings  ?  "  inquired  Mentor. 

"  That  depends  altogether  upon  the 
style  of  work  we  have  in  hand,"  replied 
the  head.  "  For  men's  felt  hats  we  use 
about  equal  proportions  of  the  whole. 
For  ladies'  hats,  which  are  thinner, 
smaller,  and  not  so  high-priced,  we  use 
less  of  the  hare's  fur,  and  also  less  of 
the  roundings,  making  them  principally 
of  the  medium  grades.  White  hats,  as 
we  before  mentioned,  are  made  alto- 
gether of  white  cony. 

"  And  now,  having  shown  you  the 
material  in  all  its  varieties,  we  will 
proceed  to  the  first  process  of  its  man- 
ufacture into  hats." 

So  saying  the  heads  led  the  way 
from  their  comfortable  office  to  a  large 
upper  room  containing  boxes  and  bales 
of  fur  and  trimmings  waiting  to  be 
ground  into  roundings,  and  several 
large  machines.  One  of  these  was  a 
picker  much  like  those  used  in  wool- 
factories.  Into  this  the  mixed  fur  is 
introduced  by  means  of  an  endless 
leathern  apron  and  feed  rollers,  is  next 
passed  between  two  sets  of  toothed 
rollers  revolving  with  great  rapidity, 
and  finally  escapes  through  a  square 
opening  into  a  large  closet,  where  it 
lies  in  a  soft  pearly  heap. 

"From  this  picker  the  fur  goes  di- 
rectly to  the  blower,"  said  one  of  the 
heads,  shutting  the  door  upon  the. 


430 


Kings'  Crazy  us  and  Fools    Caps. 


[October, 


heap,  and  leading  the  way  to  a  curi- 
ous machine  about  twenty  feet  long, 
and  seven  or  eight  high,  furnished 
with  little  windows  all  along  its  sides, 
and  altogether  extremely  like  a  second- 
class  railway  car  ;  a  resemblance  aided 
by  the  whir  of  steam-driven  wheels 
and  bands,  and  the  heated  smell  of  oily 
machinery. 

"  This,"  explained  the  head,  "  is 
the  blower;  and  the  fur,  after  passing 
through  the  picker,  is  placed  upon  this 
endless  apron  at  the  end  of  the  blower, 
and  fed  in  between  these  rollers  to  a 
toothed  cylinder  just  beyond.  This 
cylinder,  revolving  at  the  rate  of  thirty- 
five  hundred  times  in  a  minute,  seizes 
the  fur,  and,  while  tossing  the  lighter 
part  violently  upward  and  forward,  car- 
ries the  heavier  hairs,  and  the  bits  of  pelt 
or  dirt  which  may  still  remain  among 
it,  downward  through  the  opening  in 
which  it  revolves.  The  heavier  portion 
of  the  remainder  falls  presently  upon 
the  grated  or  sieve-like  floor  of  the 
blower,  to  which  floor  a  constant  jar- 
ring motion  is  imparted  by  the  ma- 
chinery, so  that  most  of  the  refuse  is 
shaken  through.  The  rest,  with  the 
finer  portions  still  floating  in  the  air,  is 
blown  forward  to  the  next  set  of  roll- 
ers, the  next  cylinder,  and  the  next 
sieve,  and  so  on.  In  this  blower  there 
are  eight  compartments  thus  divided. 
In  that  other  one,  used  for  coarser  work, 
there  are  only  four  compartments." 

"  Why  should  not  the  fur  for  coarse 
hats  be  as  well  blown  as  that  for  nice 
ones  ?  "  asked  Miselle. 

"  Because  in  each  compartment  it 
loses  weight,  and  the  quantity  suffi- 
cient for  a  hat,  after  passing  through 
four  compartments,  would  only  be  half 
enough  after  passing  eight,"  said  the 
head,  as  patiently  as  if  the  question 
had  been  a  wiser  one. 

The  process  thus  explained,  the 
blower  was  set  in  motion,  and  Miselle 
was  invited  to  look  through  the  little 
glass  windows,  and  watch  its  opera- 
tions. This  she  did  so  eagerly,  that, 
while  one  head  kindly  shouted  expla- 
nations and  information  into  her  ear, 
the  other,  with  Mentor,  was  fully  occu- 


pied in  preventing  her  limbs  and  dra- 
peries from  coming  to  hopeless  «rief 
among  the  machinery. 

"What  makes  all  that  smoke  in- 
side ?  "  inquired  she,  after  several  mo- 
ments of  breathless  contemplation. 

"  That  smoke  is  the  fur,  or  rather 
the  lightest  portions  of  it,"  replied  the 
head  ;  and  Miselle,  looking  again,  tried 
hard  to  believe  that  the  graceful  and 
fantastic  cloud- wreaths  floating  through 
the  dome-roofed  chamber  of  the  blow- 
er could  be  anything  so  substantial  as 
even  the  downiest  of  down. 

"  Here  is  some  of  the  siftings,"  said 
the  head,  taking  up  a  handful  of  the 
accumulation  beneath  the  blower,  and 
showing  that  it  consisted  principally  of 
the  hair,  so  soft  and  glossy  upon  the 
original  pelt,  but  so  harsh,  wiry,  and 
unmanageable  when  separated  from  it 
This  hair,  so  far  as  ascertained,  is  not 
adapted  to  any  use,  and  offers  a  wide 
and  untrodden  field  for  Yankee  inven- 
tion and  speculation. 

From  the  eighth  chamber  the  fur, 
now  thoroughly  separated  from  every 
impurity,  issues  between  a  pair  of  roll- 
ers like  those  which  carry  it  into  the 
blower,  and  falls  into  a  box.  It  now 
looks  and  feels  very  like  eider-down, 
and  is  ready  for  use. 

"  The  next  process,"  pursued  one  of 
the  obliging  heads,  "is  to  weigh  out 
the  fur  into  quantities  sufficient  for  one 
hat,  and  then  to  carry  it  to  the  forming- 
machine.  For  men's  felt  hats,  upon 
which  we  are  at  present  running,  the 
weight  of  fur  is  six  ounces  ;  for  the 
bodies  of  silk  hats  it  is  often  no  more 
than  three,  and  for  ladies'  and  chil- 
dren's hats  it  varies  from  two  to 
four." 

Revolving  this  information,  Miselle 
followed  her  conductors  to  a  lower 
room,  where  she  was  presently  intro- 
duced to  the  "  Wells's  Patent  Hat-Form- 
ing Machine,"  and  assured  that  the 
specimens  before  her  were  the  only 
ones  to  be  found  in  Massachusetts. 

"And  a  very  pretty  specimen  of 
American  ingenuity  it  is,"  said  one  of 
the  heads,  contemplating  the  machine 
with  affectionate  interest ;  and,  so  soon 


1 868.] 


Kings    Crowns  and  Fools    Caps. 


431 


as  Miselle  could  comprehend  its  intri- 
cacies, she  was  more  than  willing  to 
agree  with  him.  But,  like  most  won- 
derful contrivances,  the  principle,  when 
explained,  is  very  simple. 

The  body  of  this  machine  was  a  cop- 
per box,  perhaps  four  feet  in  height, 
with  concave  sides  widely  separated  at 
the  rear,  but  converging  at  the  front  to 
a  very  narrow  aperture  much  wider  at 
the  base  than  the  apex.  Opposite  this 
aperture  slowly  revolved  a  cone  of  per- 
forated copper,  whose  use  will  present- 
ly appear.  At  the  rear  of  the  machine 
was  a  form  supporting  a  box  divided 
into  small  compartments,  each  of  these 
compartments  containing  the  six  ounces 
of  fur  requisite  for  one  hat. 

A  boy,  taking  the  contents  of  one  of 
these  compartments  in  his  hands,  spread 
it  thinly  and  evenly  upon  a  leathern 
apron,  whose  forward  motion  carried 
the  fur  between  a  pair  of  feed-rollers, 
and  into  the  body  of  the  machine,  where 
it  fell  upon  a  cylinder  fitted  with  several 
longitudinal  lines  of  stiff  bristles.  The 
rapid  revolutions  of  this  cylinder  tossed 
the  downy  fur  upward  and  forward,  cre- 
ating at  the  same  time  a  powerful  cur- 
rent of  air  which  swept  it  forward  to 
the  mouth  of  the  box,  whence  it  issued 
in  a  light  cloud,  and,  as  if  drawn  by 
magnetism,  attached  itself  at  once  to 
the  revolving  copper  cone. 

As  Miselle  looked,  a  workman,  com- 
ing forward,  lifted  this  cone  off  the 
frame  upon  which  it  stood,  and  re- 
placed it  by  another,  dripping  wet,  from 
a  tank  of  water  close  at  hand.  To  this 
the  cloud  of  fur  attached  itself  as  before  ; 
and  it  was  now  explained  that  beneath 
the  cone,  and  beneath  the  floor  of  the 
room,  was  a  steam  fan,  moving  at  the 
rate  of  four  thousand  revolutions  in  a 
minute.  This  fan,  exhausting  the  air 
beneath  the  perforated  cone,  created  a 
strong  current  toward  it  from  every  di- 
rection, —  a  maelstrom,  in  fact,  which 
simply  drew  in  the  floating  fur  as  it 
would  have  anything  else,  and  in  fact 
did  draw  all  sorts  of  motes  and  specks 
from  the  surrounding  atmosphere,  which 
motes  and  specks  were,  if  of  any  tangible 
size,  picked  away  by  a  second  workman, 


standing  close  beside  the  cone,  and  at- 
tentively watching  its  surface. 

The  six  ounces  of  fur  are  taken  up 
in  eight  revolutions  of  the  cone  ;  and  as 
the  supply  ceases,  the  first  workman, 
coming  forward  with  a  large  wet  cloth 
in  his  hands,  carefully  wraps  it  about 
the  cone,  lifts  it  from  the  frame,  re- 
places it  with  another,  and  plunges  the 
first  into  a  tank  of  hot  water.  Remov- 
ing it  after  a  moment,  he  sets  it  upon- 
a  bench,  carefully  unwraps  it,  turns  it 
upon  the  point  with  a  sharp  concussion, 
and  then  cautiously  disengages  and 
peels  off  a  conical,  felted  cap,  very 
weak,  thin,  and  unreliable  as  yet,  but 
still  the  whole  substance  and  essence 
of  the  hat  to  be.  Folding  it  with  a 
peculiar  twist,  the  workman  lays  this 
shadowy  hat-body  upon  a  pile  of  oth- 
ers, again  exchanges  the  cones,  and 
proceeds  to  manipulate  a  new  subject. 

"  The  sides  of  this  tunnel  through 
which  the  fur  flies  upon  the  cone,"  said 
the  head,  "  are,  as  you  perceive,  made 
of  thin  sheet-copper,  and  can  be  bent 
closer,  or  pressed  farther  apart,  as  the 
operator  chooses,  thus  directing  more 
of  the  fur  to  one  part  or  another  of  the 
cone.  In  forming  the  bodies  of  silk 
hats,  we  press  in  the  upper  part  of  the 
sides,  so  that  more  of  the  fur  is  thrown 
toward  the  base,  and  the  brim  of  the  hat 
is  nearly  twice  as  heavy  as  the  crown." 

"You  employ  cones  of  different  sizes, 
I  perceive,"  said  Miselle,  pointing  to  a 
set  of  shelves  upon  which  were  ar- 
ranged several  of  these  articles. 

"Yes  ;  the  finer  qualities  of  fur  shrink 
much  more  than  the  poorer  sorts,  and 
so  need  to  be  formed  upon  a  larger 
cone  in  the  first  place.  The  largest 
one  measures  about  three  feet  in  height, 
and  the  smallest  about  two  by  eighteen 
inches  diameter  at  the  base." 

"  Have  n't  you  seen  enough  of  this  ? 
You  are  desperately  in  the  way  of  these 
workmen,"  murmured  Mentor,  as  Mi- 
selle stood  absorbed,  watching  the 
fleecy  cloud  flying  from  the  mouth  of 
the  tunnel,  and  spreading  itself  as  if  by 
magic  over  the  surface  of  the  cone.  A 
hasty  glance  showed  the  suggestion  to 
be  founded  in  fact,  and  she  hurriedly 


432 


Kings'  Crowns  and  Fools    Caps. 


[October, 


removed  herself  to  the  neighborhood  of 
a  bench  on  which  lay  a  pile  of  the 
steaming  and  flimsy  hat-bodies  just 
from  the  forming-machine,  a  box  of 
fur,  and  a  vessel  of  water.  A  workman, 
carefully  unfolding  one  of  the  hat-bod- 
ies, laid  it  upon  a  large  coarse  cloth, 
rolled  it  up,  patted  it  with  his  hands, 
unrolled  it,  patted  and  pressed  it  a  little, 
then  opened  it  out,  and,  holding  it  upon 
his  two  hands  between  himself  and  the 
window,  looked  attentively  into  the  in- 
side. Then  laying  it  down,  he  took  a 
lock  of  the  dry  fur,  slightly  wetted  it  in 
the  vessel  of  water,  and  pressed  it  upon 
a  spot  in  the  hat-body,  patting  it  on 
with  his  fingers. 

"  He  looks  to  find  any  thin  places  or 
-flaws  left  by  the  forming-machine,  and 
mends  them,  as  you  see,"  remarked  the 
head  ;  "and  this  rolling  up  and  press- 
ing in  the  cloth  is  to  give  a  little  more 
substance  to  the  body  before  it  goes  to 
be  felted.  You  see  these  that  he  has 
done  with  are  considerably  more  solid 
than  they  were  at  first.  Next  they  go 
to  the  sizing  or  planking  room  ;  but 
that  is  such  a  wet  and  steamy  place  that 
a  lady  can  hardly  go  through  it  com- 
fortably." 

Terrified  at  this  suggestion  of  omit- 
ting any  part  of  the  process,  Miselle 
fastened  to  declare  herself  passionately 
addicted  to  visiting  wet  and  steamy 
places,  an  assertion  supported  by  Men- 
tor with  a  shrug  of  comic  resignation  ; 
and  the  heads  led  the  way  across  a 
sloppy  court-yard  to  a  vague  and  misty 
chamber,  its  confines  hid  in  the  reeking 
clouds  issuing  from  half  a  dozen  boiling 
caldrons.  Several  windows  were  open, 
but  the  heavy  November  air,  instead  of 
stirring  the  fog,  only  seemed  to  render 
it  denser  and  .more  unbreathable. 
Vaguely  looming  through  it  were  seen 
the  forms  of  men  arranged  in  circles 
about  the  caldrons,  and  bending  de- 
voutly over  them.  Closely  approaching 
one  of  these  groups,  Miselle  discovered 
that  the  caldron  was  surrounded  by  a 
bench,  or  frame,  about  two  feet  in  width, 
and  that  upon  this  bench,  in  front  of 
each  workman,  lay  a  little  pile  of  the 
hat-bodies,  which  he  constantly  dipped 


into  the  boiling  water,  rolled  up  in  a 
cloth,  patted,  pressed,  opened  out  upon 
his  hands,  folded  anew,  and  finally 
dipped  again  into  the  boiling  water,  re- 
commencing the  whole  process.  Some 
of  these  hat-bodies  appeared  to  have 
just  come  from  the  former,  and  some 
were  shrunk  to  one  third  or  one  fourth 
of  their  original  size,  although  retaining 
the  same  conical  shape.  Those  arrived 
at  this  stage  were  handled  one  at  a 
time,  instead  of  in  groups,  and  the 
workman  frequently  applied  a  gradu- 
ated round  roller  to  their  surface  to  as- 
certain if  they  had  reached  the  desired 
proportions. 

"  This  process,"  explained  the  head, 
"  is  called  sizing,  because  it  is  to  bring 
the  hat  down  to  the  required  size,  not 
with  any  reference  to  stiffening,  which 
is  quite  another  affair.  After  shrink- 
ing, the  hat-body  is  called  a  '  shell.'  A 
smart  workman  can  turn  off  about  four 
dozen  shells  in  a  day." 

"  It  must  be  a  very  unhealthy  em- 
ployment," suggested  Miselle,  compas- 
sionately. "  Standing  in  this  hot  steam, 
and  handling  these  things  wet  with  boil- 
ing water,  and  then  going  out  of  doors, 
must  give  the  men  terrible  colds." 

"  O,  I  do  not  think  there  is  any 
trouble  about  that,"  replied  the  head 
whom  she  addressed.  "  How  is  it, 
Brown  ?  do  you  call  this  unhealthy 
work  ?  " 

"  Not  a  bit  of  it,  sir,  if  a  fellow  puts 
his  coat  on  before  he  goes  out,  and  gets 
enough  of  it  to  do,"  said  Brown,  con- 
tentedly, as  he  splashed  a  shell  in  and 
out  of  the  boiling  water. 

"  The  next  process  is  shaving,"  said 
the  head,  opening  a  door,  above  which 
Miselle  looked  to  see  a  striped  red  and 
white  pole,  but,  finding  none,  followed 
with  some  curiosity  into  a  little  room, 
where  sat  a  remarkably  jolly  old  man 
representing  the  barber,  and  flourish- 
ing, by  way  of  razor,  a  long,  thin,  and 
exceedingly  sharp  knife.  Beside  him 
lay  a  pile  of  shells,  and,  with  another 
upon  his  knee,  the  jolly  old  man  was 
scraping  away  at  its  surface,  whistling 
merrily  the  while,  it  may  be  with  a  view 
of  keeping  the  cloud  of  pungent  and 


1 868.] 


Kings    Crowns  and  Fools'  Caps. 


433 


choking  dust  that  surrounded  him  from 
entering  his  lungs. 

"You  see  some  hairs  will  make  their 
way  into  the  felt  in  spite  of  all  our  care 
to  prevent  it,"  explained  the  head ;  "  and 
this  process  is  to  remove  them  from  the 
outside.  The  inside  is  of  no  conse- 
quence, as  the  hat  is  to  be  lined,  and 
that  is  one  mode  of  distinguishing  a  fur 
from  a  wool  felt  hat.  The  fur  has  al- 
ways some  long  hairs  upon  the  inner 
surface  ;  the  wool,  of  course,  has  none. 
.  "  And  what  comes  after  shaving  ?  " 
inquired  Miselle,  retreating  from  the 
impracticable  atmosphere. 

"  Blocking.  This  way,  if  you  please  "  ; 
and  the  unwearied  head  led  the  way 
back  to  the  caldrons,  beside  one  of 
which  stood  a  workman,  dipping  the 
shaved  "shells  "  into  the  boiling  water, 
and  then  fitting  them,  by  means  of  his 
hands  and  a  piece  of  curved  wood,  upon 
blocks  shaped  like  the  crown  of  a  hat. 
After  remaining  for  a  moment  upon  the 
block,  the  hat  was  slipped  off,  moulded 
-permanently  into  the  shape  it  was  to 
retain,  and  cured  forever  of  the  pyram- 
idal tendencies  hitherto  distinguish- 
ing it. 

A  number  of  blocks  lay  upon  a  bench 
at  hand,  and  the  head  pointed  out  their 
several  shapes  and  purposes.  These 
were  various,  comprising  tall  and  awk- 
ward ones  for  gentlemen's  stove-fun- 
nels, odd  little  ones  for  ladies'  and  chil- 
dren's head-gear,  a  huge  and  massive 
one  for  shaping  a  Quaker's  broad-brim, 
and  finally  a  conical  hollow-tipped  one 
designed  for  the  traditional  chapeau 
of  a  stage-brigand.  This  was  at  the 
moment  in  use,  and  Miselle  had  the 
satisfaction  of  watching  the  manufac- 
ture of  a  villanous-looking  hat,  des- 
tined, perhaps,  to  figure,  before  her  eyes, 
m  time  to  come,  amid  the  scenes  of 
Lucrezia  or  Ernani. 

"Blocking  is  very  trying  work  for  the 
hands,"  remarked  the  head  ;  "  they  gen- 
erally skin  at  first,  and  become  quite 
sore  ;  but  after  a  while  they  callous,  and 
hardly  feel  the  difference  between  hot 
and  cold  water.  The  palms  of  this 
i  man's  hands  are  calloused  half  an  inch 
|  deep." 

VOL.  XXII.  —  NO.    132.  28 


Considering  within  herself  the  mer- 
ciful dispensation  by  which  the  callous 
always  comes  at  last  to  those  who 
have  strength  to  endure  the  torture, 
Miselle  followed  her  companions  into 
the  drying  -  room,  where,  laid  upon 
frames  and  hung  upon  pegs,  the  hats 
remain  for  twenty-four  hours  in  a  tem- 
perature of  about  100°. 

"  From  this,"  went  on  the  head, 
"  they  are  taken  to  the  dye-room, 
black  or  dark  hats  are  colored,  but  the 
white,  pearl-colors,  and  light  grays  r.re 
left  in  the  natural  color  of  the  fur. 
After  dyeing  they  are  blocked  again, 
and  then  brought  back  here  for  another 
drying.  After  this  they  are  stiffened 
by  dipping  the  brims  into  a  solution  of 
gum  shellac,  and  sponging  the  inside 
with  a  dilution  of  the  same.  Light- 
colored  hats  are  stiffened  with  white 
shellac,  and  ladies'  white  hats  are  often 
merely  starched.  The  shellac  is  re- 
moved from  the  outside  of  the  hat  by 
immersion  in  a  vitriol  bath.  When 
imperfectly  removed,  it  causes  the  shiny 
and  spotted  appearance  sometimes  no- 
ticed upon  a  hard-finished  felt.  "Would 
you  like  to  look  into  our  carpenter's 
shop  ?  " 

Expressing  an  eager  desire  to  in-* 
spect  the  carpenter's  shop,  and  won- 
dering what  possible  use  it  could  serve 
in  such  an  establishment,  Miselle  was 
led  up  a  short  flight  of  steps  to  a 
room  charmingly  fresh  and  clean,  after 
the  sloppiness  of  the  steam-bath  just 
quitted,  and  containing  a  wheel,  a  man, 
a  bench,  many  shavings,  and  several 
piles  of  pieces  of  wood. 

"  You  are  familiar  with  the  lathe,  I 
suppose,"  suggested  the  head. 

Miselle  shook  her  own  head,  vaguely, 
but  Mentor,  quietly  touching  the  wheel, 
remarked  :  "  Turning-lathe.  You  make 
your  own  blocks,  then,  sir  ?  " 

*'  O  yes.  They  are  turned  in  several 
pieces,  and  then  fitted  together  with 
great  accuracy.  Those  used  in  finish- 
ing are  in  five  pieces,  those  used  in 
blocking  only  in  two.  The  material  is 
white- wood." 

"  <  Cuts  like  cheese,'  "  quoted  Men- 
tor, watching  the  block  in  progress 


434 


Kings    Crowns  and  Fools    Caps. 


[October, 


beneath  the  hands  of  the  silent  work- 
man. 

"  And  now,  if  you  please,  we  will  go 
up  to  the  finishing-rooms,"  remarked 
the  heads ;  and  again  Miselle  followed, 
up  a  long  flight  of  stairs  to  a  large  up- 
per chamber  fitted  with  benches  around 
the  sides  and  through  the  middle.  At 
one  end  was  an  intense  coal  fire  in  a 
sort  of  furnace,  and  at  the  back  of  the 
room  a  row  of  boilers  with  steam  issu- 
ing from  around  the  covers. 

"  The  first  operation  of  finishing," 
blandly  proceeded  the  head,  "is  to 
dip  the  hat  into  boiling  water,  and  to 
stretch  it  upon  a  finishing-block,  where 
it  is  confined  by  means  of  a  string  tied 
tightly  around  the  base  of  the  crown, 
and  another  around  the  edge  of  the 
brim  ;  for  these  blocks,  you  perceive, 
have  brims  as  well  as  crowns.  As 
soon  as  the  hat  is  snugly  fitted  upon 
the  block,  it  is  pounced,  —  an  operation 
you  will  see  here."  And  the  head 
pointed  to  a  workman,  who,  with  a 
black  hat  secured  upon  a  block  in 
the  manner  described,  was  vigorously 
scrubbing  away  at  it  with  a  piece  of 
paper,  causing  a  cloud  of  dust  and  an 
odor  of  dye-stuff  highly  displeasing  to 
'the  unprofessional  nose. 

"  The  paper  he  uses,"  continued  the 
head,  presenting  a  scrap  of  it  to  Mi- 
selle, "  is  the  finest  of  emery-paper, 
hardly  rougher  to  the  touch  than  or- 
dinary paper,  but  still  with  sufficient 
power  to  remove  all  the  trifling  ine- 
qualities of  the  surface,  and  give  it  the 
rich  velvety  look  and  feeling  peculiar 
to  first-class  felt.  When  the  outside  of 
the  hat  is  done,  he  will  remove  it  from 
the  block,  and  lay  it  in  one  of  these 
circular  openings  in  the  bench,  —  thus 
bringing  the  under  side  of  the  brim 
uppermost,  to  receive  its  proper  share 
of  attention.  The  next  thing  with  the 
ordinary  style  of  hats  is  to  press  them 
with  a  hot  iron.  That  man  is  about  to 
get  a  slug  out  of  the  furnace  for  this 
purpose." 

The  individual  thus  pointed  out  had 
been  for  some  moments  gazing  into 
the  furnace  as  attentively  as  if  he  ex- 
pected to  find  a  salamander  there,  and 


now  appeared  to  have  discovered  him  ; 
for,  diving  a  pair  of  long  tongs  into  the 
white-hot  coals,  he  brought  out  a  spark- 
ling mass  of  something,  securely  im- 
prisoned it  in  a  box-iron,  and,  coining 
back  to  his  bench,  began  vigorously 
pressing  and  smoothing  another  black 
hat,  twin-brother  to  the  one  still  suf- 
fering under  the  pouncer's  hands,  oc- 
casionally facilitating  the  process  by 
wetting  his  work  with  a  bit  of  sponge 
dipped  in  water. 

"  That  is  for  a  smooth-finished  hat," 
continued  the  head;  "but  we  have 
invented  a  new  style  in  which  we  fancy 
ourselves  unrivalled.  It  is  called  vel- 
vet finish,  and  is  effected  by  the  use  of 
steam  without  hot  iron.  You  will  see 
the  process  by  watching  this  operator." 

This  operator,  having  by  much  coax- 
ing induced  a  small  and  very  pretty 
feminine  ;hat  to  allow  itself  to  be  fitted 
to  a  block,  raised  the  cover  of  one  of 
the  steaming  boilers,  and  placed  the  per- 
verse little  beauty  across  the  top.  After 
a  few  moments'  steaming  he  took  it  offj 
rubbed  and  pressed  it  with  his  hands, 
steamed  it  again,  and  finally  finished 
by  pouncing. 

"  You  see  what  a  surface  they  get  by 
this  steaming  process,"  remarked  the 
head,  taking  up  a  coquettish  little 
"  breakfast  -  plate  "  from  the  bench, 
where  it  lay  completed.  Miselle  passed, 
her  fingers  across  the  crown,  and  saw, 
or  rather  felt,  the  propriety  of  the  term 
velvet-finish,  for  never  mouse's  back 
or  baby's  cheek  presented  a  softer 
surface. 

"Velvet-finish  hats  are  never  touched 
by  a  hot  iron,"  repeated  the  head,  ten- 
derly smoothing  another  specimen  of 
the  same  style.  "That  would  spoil 
their  peculiar  effect,  both  to  the  eye  and 
touch.  They  are  rubbed  into  shape  by 
the  hand,  or  at  most  by  these  little 
blocks  of  wood  shaped,  as  you  perceive, 
to  fit  closely  into  the  angle  of  the  crown 
and  brim.  When  a  hat,  of  whatever 
style,  comes  off  the  block  here  in  the 
finishing-room,  its  future  shape  is  com- 
pletely fixed.  No  further  alteration  can 
take  place,  except  the  new  process  of 
curling  the  brim,  and  that  is  not  done 


1 868.] 


Kings    Crowns  and  Fools    Caps. 


435 


until  the  very  last  thing.  First  the 
hat  must  be  trimmed  ;  and  we  will  look 
at  that  process  before  going  farther,  if 
you  please." 

The  trimming -room  was  a  large, 
cheerful  apartment,  lighted  by  sunshine 
and  pretty  faces,  for  the  operators  here 
were  all  girls  ;  some  seated  at  sewing- 
machines,  and  some  at  low  tables  cov- 
ered with  scraps  of  bright-colored  silks, 
strips  of  enamelled  leather,  and  imple- 
ments of  needle-work. 

As  the  visitors  went  their  rounds, 
some  of  these  girls  leaned  demurely 
over  their  work,  some  looked  brightly 
up,  or  glanced  slyly  at  Mentor,  but  all 
without  exception  appeared  so  respect- 
able, so  cheerful,  and  so  prosperous, 
that  Miselle  in  her  heart  thanked  God 
and  the  noble  institutions  of  her  native 
land  that  these  her  sisters  were  saved 
from  the  harsh  labor  or  degrading  asso- 
ciations by  which  women  of  their  class 
in  other  countries  are  forced  to  earn 
their  daily  bread. 

Pausing  beside  one  of  the  tables,  the 
indefatigable  conductor  took  up  a  stiff 
black  hat  of  the  half-pumpkin  style,  so 
universal  upon  the  manly  head  at  the 
present  moment. 

"  The  first  thing  toward  trimming  a 
hat  of  this  sort,"  said  he,  "  is  to  sew 
round  of  finely  split  whalebone 
around  the  'outer  edge  of  the  brim. 
Then  a  piece  of  black  cloth  is  stitched 
on  for  an  under-brim,  the  '  tip  '  of  silk 
with  a  label  stamped  in  gilt  letters  upon 
it  is  placed  inside  the  crown,  the  sides 
are  lined,  the  'sweat,'  or  strip  of  enam- 
elled leather,  is  put  around  the  base  of 
the  crown,  and  finally  the  edge  is 
bound,  and  the  band  and  buckle  put 
on.  Of  course,  however,  the  different 
styles  of  hat  require  different  treat- 
ment. A  soft  hat  is  only  lined  and 
bound,  sometimes  not  lined  except  with 
a  '  sweat' ;  and  ladies'  hats  are  finished 
in  a  c:o::e:i  different  styles,  according  to 
the  shape  and  fashion.  The  present 
le  style,  however,  for  men's  hats, 
if  round  crown  and  curled 
The  hats  on  this  table,  you 
ivc,  are  all  finished  even  to  the 
band  and  buckle,  while  the  edge  of  the 


brim  is  left  raw  and  ragged.  They  are 
going  to  be  curled,  and  after  that  will 
come  back  to  be  bound.  Shall  we 
follow  them?" 

And  they  followed  a  boy  carrying  the 
hats  up  or  down  stairs  to  a  little  room, 
where  a  workman  just  leaving  his  bench 
was  induced  to  return  and  curl  a  brim, 
"just  once  more,"  for  Miselle's  espe- 
cial benefit. 

The  first  step  in  this  process,  as  it 
appeared,  was  to  open  a  box-iron,  throw 
out  the  lump  of  cold  metal  within,  and 
replace  it  by  a  freshly  captured  sala- 
mander. The  next  was  to  lay  a  hat 
upon  the  bench,  wet  the  brim  with  cold 
water,  pass  the  iron  round  it,  and, 
while  it  was  still'  steaming,  to  lay  upon 
it  a  thin  semicircle  of  steel  about  half 
as  wide  as  the  brim.  The  edge  of  the 
brim  thus  left  exposed  was  then  turned 
back  upon  the  steel  semicircle,  wetted 
again,  pressed  again,  and  never  let 
alone  until  it  had  consented  to  its  new 
condition,  and  lay  back  upon  the  steel 
semicircle  as  flat  and  stiff  as  if  it  had 
been  its  original  intention  so  to  appear. 
This  operation  complete,  the  hat  was 
passed  to  another  workman,  who  with 
a  curious  little  gauge,  fitted  with  a  keen 
blade  upon  its  under  side,  carefully 
trimmed  the  brim  to  its  required  pro- 
portions,—  that  is-  to  say,  cut  it  nearly 
away  at  the  front  and  back,  and  left  it 
of  the  full  width  at  the  sides. 

"  This  trimming  process  used  to  be 
regulated  by  the  workman's  own  eye," 
said  the  head.  "  But  this  little  gauge, 
recently  invented,  does  the  business 
more  neatly,  more  quickly,  and  far  more 
certainly.  This  is  the  latest  thing  in 
curling,  and  makes  a  very  stylish  arti- 
cle," continued  he,  taking  up  the  hat, 
and  surveying  it  proudly.  "After  this 
it  only  requires  to  be  bound,  before  it 
will  be  ready  for  use.  The  curve  in 
the  brim  of  a  soft  hat  is  made  upon  the 
block  in  the  process  of  finishing,  and  the 
same  process  is  used  to  form  the  ct>n- 
vex  brims  of  some  styles  of  ladies'  hats. 

"  When  entirely  finished,  the  hats, 
nicely  papere'd,  are  packed  in  cases 
to  be  forwarded  to  the  West,  the  South, 
Down  East,  or  to  our  city  customers. 


436 


Kings'  Crowns  and  Footi  Caps. 


[October, 


If  you  will  step  into  the  office  once 
more,  we  will  show  you  specimens  of 
our  various  styles." 

With  weary  feet,  eyes,  ears,  and  brain, 
but  with  unabated  interest,  Miselle  gladly 
returned  to  the  pleasant  office,  and  was 
shown  a  perfect  museum  of  hats,  ar- 
ranged upon  shelves  protected  by  glass 
doors.  Conspicuous  among  the  rest 
were  two  broad-brimmed,  drab-colored, 
velvet-finish,  soft  hats,  measuring  eight 
inches'  diameter  in  the  crown,  and 
eighteen  from  front  to  back  of  the 
brim.  These  had  been  moulded  upon  a 
block  turned  especially  for  them,  in  an-" 
swer  to  an  order  from  a  distant  city. 
Besides  these.were  all  the  ordinary  styles 
of  men's  hats,  stage  hats,  military  and 
naval  hats,  boys'  and  infants'  hats,  and 
every  caprice  of  feminine  fantasy  with 
which  Fashion  at  present  adorns  her 
pretty  head.  Among  these  were  the 
dazzling  white  croquet-hats,  made  of 
pure  white  fur,  and  pounced  with  chalk, 
which  leaves  the  surface  looking  like  a 
new-fallen  snow-bank. 

"  I  understand  that  yours  is  the  lar- 
gest establishment  in  Massachusetts," 
said  Mentor  to  one  of  the  heads. 

"  Almost  the  only  one,"  replied  he, 
with  modest  pride.  "  There  are,  I  be- 
lieve, two  others  in  Boston  making  fur 
hats  in  small  quantities,  but  they  have 
to  buy  their  hat-bodies  of  us,  or  send 
out  of  the  State  for  them.  Ours  is  the 
only  right  to  use  the  Forming-Machine 
in  Massachusetts." 

"  And  what  is  the  extent  of  your 
business  ?  "  pursued  Mentor. 

"  When  we  are  running  our  full  force, 
we  finish  fifty  dozen  of  hats  in  a  day,  — 
that  is  to  say,  a  hat  a  minute  for  the  ten 
hours.  We  employ  a  hundred  and  fifty 
hands,  and  manufacture  eighteen  thou- 
sand pounds  of  imported  fur  a  year." 

"That  is  doing  a  good  business,  —  is 
it  not  ?  " 

"  Yes,  it  is  very  well  for  this  section 
of  the  country,  but  a  leading  -house  in 
New  York  turns  off  as  many  as  ten  thou- 
sand hats  in  a  day  when  it  chooses. 
New  York  and  New  Jersey  are  the 
hatters  of  the  Union,  after  all.  We  can- 
not compete  with  them." 


"  Not  perhaps  in  covering  heads,  but, 
when  it  comes  to  furnishing  them,  I 
fancy  Massachusetts  need  yield  to  no 
one,"  said  Mentor,  consolingly  ;  and  the 
heads  smiled  approval  of  the  leading 
article  of  faith  in  the  creed  of  a  New- 
Englander. 

"Are  there  any  silk  hats  manufac- 
tured in  Boston  ?  "  asked  Mentor,  put- 
ting on  his  own  hat  with  a  new  appre- 
ciation of  its  meaning. 

"Yes,  here  is  the  address  of  a  house 
which  manufactures  silk  hats,  and  also 
felt  of  similar  styles  to  those  you  have 
just  seen.  You  had  better  give  the  firm 
a  call." 

Mentor  looked  doubtfully  at  his  weary 
companion,  but  she  declaring  herself  in 
the  first  flush  and  vigor  of  morning 
strength,  it  was  resolved  to  act  upon  the 
suggestion ;  and,  after  thanking  the  cour- 
teous heads  for  their  sacrifice  of  time, 
breath,  and  trouble,  Mentor  and  Miselle 
took  leave,  and  shortly  after  presented 
themselves  upon  their  new  field  of  ob- 
servation. 

Here  they  were  politely  received,  and 
readily  admitted  to  the  penetralia  of 
the  establishment,  in  spite  of  several 
staring  announcements  of  "  No  Admit- 
tance "  upon  the  various  doors. 

Glancing  through  the  rooms  devoted 
to  the  manufacture  of  felt  hats,  they 
found  the  processes  nearly  identical 
with  those  they  had  just  seen,  with  the 
exception  of  forming  the  hat-bodies, 
which  were  bought  of  the  house  they 
had  just  left.  Ascending  to  the  top  of 
the  building,  they  found  two  large  cham- 
bers devoted  to  silk  hats,  and  were  in 
the  first  place  shown  the  bodies,  made 
in  the  same  manner  as  the  fur  or  felt 
hat,  but  much  thinner  and  lighter,  —  a 
silk  hat  for  city  wear  not  generally  ex- 
ceeding three  ounces  in  weight,  al- 
though those  intended  for  the  country, 
where  a  hat  is  expected  to  meet  with 
rougher  usage  and  last  a  longer  time, 
are  more  substantial.  Still  more  fragile 
than  the  three-ounce  hat  is  the  gossa- 
mer, where  the  foundation,  instead  of 
felt,  is  only  stiffened  cambric,  and  is  in- 
capable of  enduring  the  slightest  hard- 
ship. 


1 868.] 


Kings    Crowns  and  Fools    Caps. 


437 


The  felted  body,  dipped  in  hot  water, 
is  stretched  upon  a  block  of  the  shape 
at  that  moment  in  fashion,  and,  when 
dry,  is  stiffened  with  a  solution  of  gum 
shellac  and  alcohol.  This  is  covered  with 
a  coating  of  varnish  to  prevent  it  from 
subsequently  striking  through  to  the 
surface,  and  this  again  is  washed  over 
with  liquid  glue ;  when  this  is  thoroughly 
dry,  the  cover  of  fine  silk  plush,  cut  and 
sewed  to  fit  the  hat-body,  is  carefully 
drawn  on,  brought  into  place,  and  then 
smoothed  all  over  with  a  hot  iron.  The 
warmth,  penetfating  to  the  glue,  dis- 
solves it;  and  in  drying  again  it  connects 
the  plush  above  and  the  felt  beneath  in 
a  union  only  to  be  dissolved  by  a  severe 
wetting. 

The  hat  is  next  placed  upon  a  revolv- 
ing cylinder,  where  it  is  polished  with  soft 
cloths  to  the  required  brilliancy.  Next 
it  is  lined,  generally  with  watered  or 
embossed  paper,  a  strip  of  enamelled 
leather  is  sewed  about  the  edge,  it  is 
fitted  with  an  under-brim  of  cloth  or 
silk,  and  finally  bound  and  banded. 

The  plush  covering  of  these  hats  is 
imported,  the  best  coming  from  Martin, 
of  Paris.  It  is  cut  to  fit  the  body  in 
three  pieces  ;  the  tip,  or  crown,  and  the 
covering  of  the  brim  being  sewn  to  the 
upright  piece  so  carefully  that  the  point 
of  junction  is  almost  invisible  in  the 
detached  cover,  quite  so  after  it  has  been 
fitted  and  glued  to  the  body.  Equally 
invisible  upon  the  completed  hat  is  the 
diagonal  line  of  junction  down  the  side, 
where  one  edge  of  the  cover  is  lapped 
over  the  other  and  pressed  together 
with  the  hot  irons  and  revolving  brushes 
of  the  finishing  process. 

Completed,  the  hat  is  nicely  envel- 
oped in  tissue  paper,  packed,  and  for- 
warded to  the  retail  dealer,  who  may,  if 
he  choose,  style  it  either  French  or  Eng- 
lish, although  the  American  hat  is  fully 
equal  to  the  French,  and  superior  to 
the  English,  which,  like  some  other  Bri- 
tannic growths,  is  heavy  and  clumsy. 
To  be  sure,  however,  the  humidity  of 
the  English  atmosphere  would  prevent 
the  use  of  a  hat  as  light  as  those  worn 
in  America. 

"  Beaver  hats  have  become  quite  ob- 


solete, I  suppose,"  remarked  Mentor, 
to  the  pleasant  young  gentleman  who 
had  shown  the  silk-hat  rooms  and 
imparted  much  of  the  above  infor- 
mation. 

"  O  no,"  replied  he  to  this  query ; 
"we  made  some  last  year.  Those 
white  hats,  with  long  silky  fur,  so  much 
worn  last  summer,  were  beaver  hats. 
The  body  is  made  like  that  of  any  other 
hat,  and,  while  it  is  still  soft  and  wet,  the 
beaver  fur  is  laid  on  in  flakes,  and  felted 
in  by  means  of  a  bow." 

"  Of  a  bow  !  "  exclaimed  Miselle,  in- 
credulously. 

"Yes.  A  long  bow  is  strung  with 
catgut,  and  this  string  is  gently  snapped 
across  the  fur  after  it  is  laid  upon  the 
body.  The  jar  of  the  blow  causes  it  to 
adhere,  and  it  finally  becomes  incor- 
porated with  the  felt." 

"  I  believe  the  '  long-bow '  part  of  it," 
murmured  Miselle  in  spite  of  Mentor's 
warning  glances  ;  but  subsequent  in- 
quiry proved  not  only  the  truth  of  this 
statement,  but  the  fact  that,  until  within 
a  few  years,  the  fur  hats  now  replaced 
by  silk  ones  were  made  in  the  same 
manner. 

Full  fed  with  information,  facts,  the- 
ories, and  speculations,  Mentor  and  his 
charge  at  last  bade  farewell  to  their 
obliging  guide,  and  to  the  study  of  hats, 
and  returned  to  the  minor  pursuits  of 
life. 

The  next  day  Miselle  found  herself 
in  company  with  the  Philosopher  and 
Captain  Sentry,  who  pelted  each  other 
with  Hegel  and  Social  Science. 

"You  will  not  deny  that  something 
and  nothing  are  identical,"  argued  the 
Philosopher. 

"  No.  But  as  for  being  and  becom- 
ing constituting  the  same  principle  —  " 

But  Miselle,  who  had  listened  until 
she  felt  tempted  to  jump  up  and  scream,  • 
here  interposed  :  "  O,  please  don't  say 
those  dreadful  things  any  more.     Tell 
me  about  hats  instead." 

The  superior  beings  smiled  with  that 
air  of  good-humored  forbearance  so 
soothing  to  the  feminine  spirit,  and 
Captain  Sentry  said :  "  I  do  not  know 
much  about  hats,  but  the  other  day  I 


438 


Kings    Crowns  and  Fools    Caps. 


[October, 


was  upon  a  commission,  when  it  be- 
came in  order  to  inquire  concerning 
the  character  of  hatters  as  a  class. 
One  master-hatter  gave  his  evidence 
with  great  energy  to  the  effect  that 
they  were  by  nature  a  reckless  and 
dissipated  set  of  men,  earning  large 
wages,  and  spending  them  freely  in 
various  ill-advised  fashions.  Against 
this  we  received  the  rebutting  testi- 
mony of  another  employer,  who  declared 
that  the  Boston  hatters,  at  any  rate,  are 
as  sober,  well-behaved,  and  respectable 
a  class  of  men  as  are  to  be  found  in 
any  mechanical  guild.  The  last  man 
was  a  Bostonian,  the  first  from  New 
Jersey,  however ;  and  it  is  possible  that 
the  influences  of  Social —  " 

"  Thank  you,"  hastily  interposed  Mi- 
selle,  "  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  Boston 
man  was  perfectly  correct.  I  have  seen 
more  than  two  hundred  hatters  within 
the  last  two  days,  and  noticed  them  par- 
ticularly as  a  very  intelligent  and  well- 
appearing  set  of  men.  I  am  quite  sure 
at  least  that' the  men  in  the  sizing-room 
are  good  men,  for  they  are  constantly 
subjecting  themselves  to  the  ordeal  of 
boiling  water,  and  endure  it  wonder- 
fully." 

She  spoke  with  conviction,  and  as 
Captain  Sentry  only  smiled  in  reply, 
she  thought  him  convinced,  and  turned 
to  the  Philosopher,  who,  shading  his 
eyes  with  his  hand,  and,  apparently 
unconscious  of  the  vicinity  of  any 
human  being,  remarked  in  a  dreary 
manner:  "Hats!  why,  the  world  has 
always  been  hatted  more  or  less.  The 
ancient  Romans,  to  be  sure,  went  bare- 
headed as  a  rule  ;  but  at  sacred  rites,  at 
games,  festivals,  in  war,  or  on  a  jour- 
ney, tne  head  was  covered,  sometimes 
with  a  helmet,  sometimes  with  a  woollen 
cap  or  bonnet  called  the  pileus,  also 
worn  under  the  helmet,  or  with  a  nar- 
row-brimmed felt  hat  called  the  petasus, 
and  resembling  the  modern  hat  much 
more  than  modern  men  resemble  the 
Romans.  Caligula  permitted  these  hats 
to  be  worn  at  the  theatre  as  screens 
from  the  direct  rays  of  the  sun.  Old 
persons  wore  the  pileus,  or  woollen 
cap,  for  the  sake  of  warmth,  and  manu- 


mitted slaves  as  a  badge  of  freedom. 
In  fact,  they  received  a  cap  with  their 
freedom-papers  as  we  call  them  at  the 
South." 

"  Then  the  cap  has  always  been  a 
badge  of  freedom  ?  " 

"  Yes.  After  Cesar's  death,  Brutus 
and  Cassius  issued  coins  bearing  a  cap 
between  two  daggers,  and  after  Nero's 
death  many  Romans  assumed  caps  in 
token  of  having  recovered  their  liberty. 
Of  course  you  know  all  about  the  Swiss 
liberty-cap,  with  Tell,  Gessler,  and  all 
that  sort  of  thing;  and  next  door  to 
them  are  the  Netherlanders,  who,  upon 
liberating  themselves  from  the  Span- 
ish yoke,  added  a  hat  to  their  national 
insignia." 

"  As  for  the  cap-and-dagger  coins  is- 
sued after  the  murder  of  Caesar,  it  was 
adding  insult  to  injury  ;  for  he,  poor  fel- 
low !  was  bald,  and,  of  all  the  honors 
heaped  upon  him  by  the  Senate,  chiefly 
valued  the  laurel  crown,  because  it  con- 
cealed his  infirmity,"  suggested  Cap- 
tain Sentry. 

"  Mrs.  S.  A.  Allen  not  being  of 
Roman  renown,"  irreverently  added 
Miselle,  while  the  Philosopher  went 
dreamily  on  :  "  Caesar,  in  dying,  wrapped 
his  mantle  about  his  head,  and  the  ac- 
tion, though  pathetic,  was  probably  in- 
stinctive ;  for  the  mantle  cape  or  toga 
was  used  by  the  men  of  his  time  as  a 
covering  to  the  head  as  well  as  the 
body.  In  later  days  the  Romans  wore 
a  sort  of  great-coat  with  a  hood  to  it 
when  on  a  journey  or  in  stormy  or 
chilly  weather.  This  hood  was  often 
covered  with  a  rough  shag,  or  pile,  for 
the  sake  of  warmth,  and  was  of  various 
colors.  The  garment  itself  was  worn 
by  both  sexes,  and  was  sometimes 
made  of  skins.  The  Romans  — 

"Never  mind  about  the  Romans  any 
more,  please,"  interposed  the  audacious 
Miselle,  "but  tell  me,  instead,  how  long 
has  there  been  such  a  race  as  hatters, 
and  when  did  they  begin  the  present 
style  of  manufacture  ?  " 

"The  first  guild  or  trade-association 
of  hatters,"  promptly  replied  the  Phi- 
losopher, "was  in  Nuremburg  in  136°- 
They  were  called  Felzkappenmachers. 


1 868.] 


St.  Michael's  Night. 


439 


We  find  them  in  France  under  Charles 
IV.  from  1380  to  1442,  and  in  Bavaria 
in  1401.  Charles  VII.  of  France  is  de- 
picted as  wearing  a  round  felt  hat  while 
entering  Rome  in  1449. 

"  No  more  Rome,  please  ! "  implored 
Miselle.  "  When  did  the  hatters  get  to 
England  and  America  ?  " 

"  Hats  are  supposed  to  have  appeared 
in  England  during  the  eighth  century, 
and  were  made  at  that  time  of  hide 
with  the  hair  left  on.  These  were  both 
round  and  conical  in  shape.  Felt  hats 
came  later.  Froissart  mentions  hats  in 
the  fourteenth  century  as  made  of  fine 
hair  netted  together  and  dyed  red,  and 
about  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  century 
a  nobleman  is  described  as  adorned 
with  'a  hat  of  biever.' 

"Stubbs  in  his  'Anatomic  of  Abuses' 
published  in  1585,  says:  — 

"  '  Sometimes  they  use  them  sharp  in 
the  crown,  standing  up  like  a  spire  or 
steeple  a  quarter  of  a  yard,  sometimes 
flat  like  the  battlements  of  a  house,  and 
other  some  round.  With  them  are 
worn  bands  of  black,  white,  green,  yel- 
low, russet,  or  divers  colors.  These 
hats  are  made  of  silk,  of  velvet,  teffetie, 
sarsnet,  wool,  or,  which  is  the  most 
curious  of  all,  of  a  fine  kind  of  hair. 
These  are  called  biever  hats,  and  fetch 
twenty,  thirty,  or  forty  shillings.  They 
came  from  beyond  seas,  whence  also 


are  brought  enough  of  other  follies  and 
vanities.' 

"  Then  there  is  the  cardinal's  red  hat, 
its  color  supposed  to  typify  his  readi- 
ness to  shed  his  blood  in  the  cause  of 
Christ ;  and  there  are  the  Pope's  tiara, 
—  and  the  king's  crown,  merely  dif- 
ferent forms  of  such  head-gear  as  we  all 
wear.  There  also  is  the  pointed  and 
tasselled  fool's  cap,  much  resembling 
in  shape  the  hoods  I  notice  ladies  wear- 
ing sewed  to  the  necks  of  their  cloaks 
at  the  present  time." 

"  But  when  did  they  begin  to  make 
hats  here  in  America?"  interposed  Mi- 
selle, hastily. 

The  Philosopher  grimly  smiled,  as 
he  replied:  "In  1732  the  London  hat- 
ters made  formal  complaint  to  the 
House  of  Commons  of  the  extent  to 
which  the  manufacture  of  hats  was  car- 
ried in  New  England  and  New  York, 
thereby  injuring  their  monopoly  of 
the  trade.  But  I  believe  the  Yankees 
proved  as  irrepressible  in  that  matter  as 
in  several  similar  ones,  and  the  trade 
i  has  gone  briskly  on  ever  since. 

"I  do  not  think  I  know  anything 
more  about  hats." 

"  Does  any  one  ?  "  asked  Miselle ; 
and  she  left  the  Philosopher  and  Cap- 
tain Sentry  to  Hegel  and  Social  Science, 
herself  retiring  to  inspect  the  interior  of 
the  Baron's  new  fur  felt  hat. 


ST.    MICHAEL'S    NIGHT. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE  storm  of  St.  Michael's  Night 
had  detained  the  Newhaven  steamer,  as 
we  have(scen;  but  at  ten  o'clock  the 
next  morning  she  lay  alongside  the 
wharf,  blowing  off  steam,  and  ready  to 
take  her  departure.  There  was  the 
usual  bustle  and  hurry  about  the  door 
of  the  Custom-house,  and  on  the  wharf. 
Cabs  were  driving  down  in  hot  haste, 
disgorging  excited  passengers  and  piles 
There  was  the  usual  incon- 


gruous mass  of  people,  whom  strangely 
different  interests  are  perpetually  waft- 
ing to  and  fro  across  the  Channel, — 
newly  married  people  on  their  wedding 
tour,  commercial  travellers,  French 
Jews,  English  tourists  returning  after 
the  summer's  wanderings,  detective 
police-officers,  family  parties  with  chil- 
dren, servants,  carriages,  and  intermi- 
nable succession  of  trunks,  and  dingy- 
looking  men  with  much  jewelry  and 
diminutive  carpet-bags. 
Porters  were  receiving  emphatic  di- 


440 


6V.  MicJiaeVs  Night. 


[October, 


rections  in  broken  English  and  broken 
French  ;  here  and  there  a  gendarme,  sto- 
ical and  polite,  stood  like  a  light-house 
in  the  midst  of  the  surging  sea  of  con- 
fusion ;  and,  beyond  the  chain  that  ran 
along  from  the  Custom-house  to  the 
landing-place  of  the  steamers,  a  score 
or  so  of  sailors  and  fishwomen  idling 
and  watching.  The  last  bell  rings,  the 
passengers  are  all  on  board,  the  last 
porter  staggers  up  the  plank,  execrated 
in  English  and  French.  The  puffing  of 
steam  suddenly  ceases.  The  gangway 
is  withdrawn,  the  ropes  loosened,  and 
the  "Alliance"  steams  slowly  out  of 
dock  in  the  pleasant  morning  sunshine. 

The  mate  of  that  admirable  vessel, 
as  he  goes  round  closing  the  cabin  win- 
dows, stands  and  waves  his  cap  high 
over  his  head,  —  a  parting  signal  to  a 
pretty  young  woman  with  a  child  in  her 
arms,  who  stands  and  watches  the  de- 
parture of  the  steamer.  Her  eyes  look 
seaward  long  after  the  fishwomen  have 
turned  to  their  baskets  again,  and  the 
sailors  lounged '  off  to  more  exciting 
scenes,  and  the  great  doors  of  the 
Custom-house  have  rolled  to  with  a 
slam.  Then  she  turns  and  walks 
thoughtfully  away. 

Early  as  it  was,  fipiphanie  had  al- 
ready been  up  as  far  as  the  Faubourg 
de  la  Barre  to  speed  Jeanne  on  her 
homeward  journey,  and  had  met  Marie 
Robbe  and  Monsieur  Bouffle  on  their 
way  down  to  Madame  Farge's.  After 
that,  till  he  waved  his  signal,  she  had 
been  with  Pierre.  But  there  was  still 
that  important  purchase  to  make  which 
had  detained  her  in  town.  Before  go- 
ing up  into  the  Grande  Rue,  however, 
she  again  crossed  the  dock  bridge,  and 
dropped  in  to  say  a  neighborly  "good 
day  "to  Madame  Legros,  and  to  inquire 
about  Frangois,  whom  she  had  not  seen 
since  the  night  before. 

Could  Madame  Legros  tell  her  where 
Frangois  and  Gabriel  Ducre's  were,  for 
to  be  sure  they  are  together. 

"•  O  yes,  both  went  out  a  good  two 
hours  ago.  Frangois,  when  he  found 
the  boat  need  not  return  to  Verange- 
ville,  had  come  in,  and,  after  changing 
his  jacket,  had  gone  out,  saying  he  had 


business  in  the  Rue  St.  Remi.  Gabriel 
Ducre's  had  gone  to  Arques ;  he  had 
passed  •  the  door  but  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  ago,  and  said  he  was  just  on  his 
way." 

"  It  is  a  long  journey  to  Arques,  no 
doubt  ?  "  said  Epiphanie,  who  evidently 
had  some  interest  in  that  young  man's 
movements  also. 

"  O,  not  so  far,  if  you  take  the  short 
way  by  the  river,  and  through  the  fields. 
A  good  walker  will  do  it  in  an  hour  and 
a  half.  He  said  something  about  being 
back  again  by  two  o'clock,  as  he  had 
to  start  for  home  to-night." 

"  To  Vallee  d'Allon  !  "  said  £pipha- 
nie. 

"  I  don't  know.;  he  said  simply 
'home,'  and  I  asked  him  no  more 
questions  :  to  speak  the  plain  truth,  I 
was  tired  of  his  eternal  '  yes '  or  '  no.' 
I  have  never  seen  a  young  man  like 
him.  Ma  foi,  chere  amie  !  when  I  have 
cooked  a  good  meal  I  like  a  man  to  say 
his  grace  and  eat  it  with  an  appetite, 
not  push  it  away  as  if  it  were  medicine. 
Pere  Defere  I  have  known  all  my  life  ; 
a  better  man  does  not  live ;  he  greets 
one  pleasantly,  has  always  some  little 
news  to  tell  one,  and  takes  an  interest 
like  a  Christian  in  the  little  concerns  of 
the  neighbors  that  one  has  to  relate. 
He  does  n't  stare  at  one  when  one 
speaks  to  him,  as  if  one  was  an  image, 
or  sit  with  his  head  bent  down  as  if  at 
the  confessional,  just  like  a  purple  corn- 
poppy  in  August,  eating  nothing,  drink- 
ing nothing,  saying  nothing.  But,"  con- 
tinued Madame  Legros,  whose  pent-up 
irritation  on  the  subject  of  her'  unsatis- 
factory visitor  had  found  considerable 
relief  in  this  little  explosion,  "  I  packed 
him  up  a  good  dinner,  —  though  I  dare 
say  he  will  not  touch  a  morsel  of  it,  and 
bring  it  all  back,  dried  up  and  stale,  — 
for,  as  I  said  to  my  husband  just  now, 
.\vho  knows  but  that  being  on  the  water 
so  long  yesterday  has  upset  his  stom- 
ach ;  for  a  landsman  is  but  a  poor 
creature,  after  all." 

That  afternoon,  when  Jean  Farge  had 
gone  out,  and  old  Madame  Farge  sat 
spinning  by  the  fire,  fipiphanie  took  her 
work  and  seated  herself  in  the  sunny 


at 

* 

" 


1 868.] 


St.  Michael's  Night. 


441 


little  window  overlooking  the  wharf. 
The  child  was  mounted  on  a  chair  at 
the  window-sill,  playing  with  great  con- 
tentment with  three  or  four  pebbles,  a 
spoon,  a  small  tin  cup,  and  his  mother's 
thimble.  From  time  to  time  his  de- 
light in  his  play  burst  forth  in  shouts 
of  "  Voie  da  !  voie  da  !  "  accompanied 
by  a  pattering  dance  of  the  pudgy  little 
feet,  as  he  leaned  on  the  back  of  the 
'chair  with  his  hands.  He  was  answered 
in  all  his  demands  for  sympathy  by  a 
ready  smile  from  his  mother,  who  sat 
knitting,  the  flickering  shadows  of  the 
geraniums  that  stood  on  the  window- 
sill  dancing  over  her  as  she  rocked 
herself  gently  to  and  fro.  fipiphanie, 
though  shy,  was  not  unsociable.  Her 
mind  and  character  in  the  general 
warmth  of  kindness  and  companionship 
bloomed  out  into  a  sort  of  pungent  sweet- 
ness, and  her  talk  had  certain  touches 
of  wisdom  that  pleased  the  older  wo- 
man, and  made  her  feel  a  quiet  satisfac- 
tion in  the  presence' of  the  young  widow 
such  as  people  usually  feel  only  with 
those  whom  they  have  long  known  and 
loved,  and  learned  to  trust. 

So  the  two  women  sat  and  chatted 
together  over  their  work,  the  humming 
of  the  spinning-wheel  and  the  ticking 
of  the  clock  on  the  wall  filling  the 
pauses  in  their  talk,  —  a  subdued  and 
pleasant  refrain. 

"  Marie  Robbe  was  here  this  morn- 
ing," said  Madame  Farge,  after  a  few 
minutes'  silence.  "  She  came  here  to 
make  me  a  visit.  She  is  a  coquette, 
I  -m  afraid." 

fipiphanie  sighed.  "Perhaps  so," 
she  said.  "  But  she  is  young,  and  has 
been  spoiled  by  her  father  ever  since 
she  was  a  child.  She  has  never  helped 
much  in  the  work  at  home,  and  that 
has  made  her  think  of  gay  clothes  and 
pleasure-making  more  than  she  should, 
perhaps.  Poor  child  !  Her  father  has 
always  encouraged  her  in  it." 

"  Her  mother  works  hard  enough  for 
the  two,  I  suppose,"  said  Madame 
Farge,  dryly. 

"  It  must  be  confessed  so,"  said  £pi- 
phanie,  reluctantly. 

A  bad  daughter  makes  a  bad  wife," 


said    Madame    Farge.     "Thy  brother 
knows  her  also,  it  seems." 

fipiphanie's  eyelids  trembled  a  mo- 
ment, but  she  did  not  look  up.  Ma- 
dame Farge  surely  knew,  then,  that 
Marie  would  probably  be  her  sister-in- 
law.  She  did  not  reply  to  the  implied, 
question,  but  said  :  "  I  try  to  think  the 
best  of  Marie.  If  she  has  won  the 
heart  of  a  good,  honest  youth,  there 
must  surely  be  something  of  good  in 
her,  which  we  cannot  see,  perhaps,  but 
which  notre  bon  Dieu  who  created  her 
knows,  and  has  revealed  alone  to  this 
man  who  loves  her." 

Madame  Farge  shrugged  her  shoul- 
ders. "  My  child,  a  man  is  blind  who  is 
in  love,  and  he  cannot  distinguish  be- 
tween faults  and  virtues  ;  and  it  is  well 
for  him  to  have  those  that  see  clearly 
to  look  after  him  and  prevent  him  from 
making  a  fool  of  himself.  If  my  son 
wants  to  marry  a  girl,  and  I  see  he 
loves  her  truly,  be  she  poor  or  a  stran- 
ger, if  she  have  nothing  but  the  clothes 
on  her  back,  but  there  be  an  honest, 
simple  heart  inside  them,  I  say,  with  all 
my  heart,  Bien  venue,  viafille  !  But  if 
his  heart  is  set  on  one  like  Mademoi- 
selle Marie,  who  will  bring  him  grief 
and  trouble,  I  have  one  word  alone 
for  him,  —  simply  no,  and  always  no  /  " 

£piphanie  shook  her  head.  "  But 
yet  it  is  God  who  joins  people's  hearts 
together ;  and  it  is  a  fearful  thing  to 
part  those  who  love  each  other,  because 
we  think  one  is  not  wisely  chosen." 

Madame  Farge  crossed  herself. 
"  My  dear,  if  the  Holy  Church  has 
blessed  them,  and  they  are  man  and 
wife,  I  have  nothing  to  say.  I  may  cry 
in  my  own  pocket,  but  I  hold  my  tongue. 
But  before  this,  when  there  is  still  time 
to  stop  such  mischief,  one  must  do 
what  one  can  to  stop  it.  One  does  not 
give  a  sick  child  all  he  cries  for." 

"Sometimes  the  sick  know  better 
what  is  good  for  them  than  the  doctors," 
said  £piphanie,  smiling. 

"  I  don't  know,"  she  went  on  ;  "per- 
haps you  are  right.  It  is  hard  to  see  one 
whom  one  loves  choosing  sorrow  for 
himself,  and  yet,  if  le  bon  Dieu.  makes 
a  man  love  one  woman  alone  of  all  those 


442 


Michael's  Night. 


[October, 


in  the  world,  He  knows  best,  and  per- 
haps He  yokes  unequally  sometimes 
the  bad  and  the  good,  the  weak  and 
the  strong,  that  the  bad  may  be  made 
better,  and  the  weak  may  be  made 
stronger." 

.  "  No,"  continued  fipiphanie,  with  in- 
creasing earnestness,  "  it  is  best  not  to 
oppose,  but  to  pray  night  and  day  for 
such,  that  the  good  saints  would  watch 
and  guard  them,  and  that  God  would 
sunder  them  or  join  them  according  to 
his  pleasure  !  " 

Madame  Farge  remained  silent. 
"Thou  art  a  good  girl,"  she  said  to 
herself,  "and  hast  learned  much  from 
thy  troubles,  and  art  wiser,  perhaps, 
than  an  old  woman  who  has  had  -an 
easy  life.  One  must  be  prudent,  how- 
ever. As  for  Marie  Robbe,"  she  said 
aloud,  "  in  her  case,  there  is  no  one  to 
be  sorry  for,  I  suppose,  —  a  stupid,  hot- 
headed man  like  Voisin  Bouffle  is  not 
thrown  away  upon  her  at  least." 

"  Bouffle  !  "  cried  fipiphanie,  "  who 
is  he  ?  And  what  has  he  to  do  with 
Marie  ? " 

Madame  Farge  then  briefly  related 
the  scene  of  the  morning.  As  we  have 
witnessed  it  ourselves,  and  know  what 
Madame  Farge's  conclusions  on  .  the 
subject  were,  we  will  not  repeat  her 
story,  nor  the  conversation  which  fol- 
lowed. 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

AFTER  sitting  silently  for  a  while, 
£piphanie,  still  occupied  with  her  own 
grievous  thoughts,  rose,  rolled  up  her 
knitting,  and  lifted  the  child  from  his 
chair. 

"  I  will  go  and  seek  Francois,"  she 
said  ;  and,  taking  the  child  in  her  arms, 
she  went  out.  She  went  down  first  to 
Voisin  Legros's,  but  could  get  no  tidings 
of  Francois  there.  After  pondering  for 
a  few  moments  at  the  Legros  thresh- 
old, she  turned  and  walked  briskly 
along  the  wharf,  and,  passing  out  of 
the  Pollet,  continued  her  way  by  the 
path  that  runs  along  the  river-side. 
The  pathway  winds  along,  following 
the  course  of  the  stream,  through  low 


meadows  and  copses,  the  shortest  and 
pleasantest  way  to  Arques.  There  was 
at  that  time,  just  beyond  the  last  houses 
of  the  Pollet,  a  disused  ropewalk,  raised 
above  the  river  and  the  footpath,  and 
shaded  by  fine  old  trees.  The  grass 
grew  thick  over  the  nearly  obliterated 
walks,  and  "crimson-tipped  "  daisies  by 
the  hundred  raised  their  heads  among 
the  fallen  leaves.  The  afternoon  sun- 
light, warm  and  still,  glinted  through 
the  trees,  that,  russet  and  yellow,  glowed 
with  the  dusky  splendor  of  the  Norman 
autumn. 

fipiphanie  set  the  child  down,  and 
walked  on  slowly,  when  she  reached 
the  ropewalk,  while  the  little  fellow 
toddled  beside  her  or  tumbled  on  the 
dry  leaves.  Every  now  and  then  she 
raised  her  eyes  and  looked  down  the 
pathway  by  the  river's  edge,  as  if  in 
expectation.  And  thus  for  half  an  hour 
she  watched  and  walked  and  lingered. 
Many  people  passed,  —  country  people, 
townsfolk,  and  sailors  ;  but  Epiphanie 
still  looked  wistfully  down  the  road. 
Her  attention  is  caught  for  a  moment 
by  a  group  of  English  tourists  with 
Alpine  sticks,  sketch-books  slung  over 
their  shoulders,  plaids,  and  umbrellas,  — 
a  young  girl  and  two  young  men  with 
blue  ribbons  on  their  straw  hats,  and 
an  elderly  lady  mounted  on  a  donkey. 
"O  mamma,"  cries  the  young  lady, 
"look  at  that  picturesque  creature  un- 
der the  trees,  and  that  pretty  child 
playing  among  the  leaves  ! " 

"Jolly  bit  of  color,  isn't  it?"  says 
one  of  the  Cantabs,  looking  admiringly 
through  a  one-eyed  lorgnette.  "My 
dear  mother,  how  would  you  like  to  see 
the  rural  female  population  of  our  parts 
going  about  the  country  in  a  dress  like 
that  ?  I  give  you  my  filial  word  of 
honor  I  will  subscribe  to  your  petticoat 
club,  I  will  come  to  your  next  village 
tea-drinking,  if  you  will  banish  those 
brown  bombazines,  and  introduce  an 
'effect 'like  that!" 

"My  dear!"    replies   the   venerable 
rider  of  the  donkey,  with  some  severity 
of  tone,  "  I  consider  such  a  dress  for 
a  young  woman  in  that  station  of  li 
absolutely  wrong.    A  scarlet  petticoat, 


1868.] 


St.  Michael's  Night. 


443 


and  that  frightful  cap  and  all  that  gilt 
finery  !  My  cousin  Gresham  —  she  's 
very  good-natured,  but  full  of  fantastic 
ideas,  and  very  revolutionary,  I  fear  — 
sent  me  two  pieces  of  scarlet  flannel  to 
make  shirts  and  Garibaldi  bodies  —  she 
actually  proposed  Garibaldi  bodies  her- 
self—  for  my  rheumatic  old  men  and 
women  !  My  dear,  I  did  not  even 
make  petticoats  of  the  stuff,  I  was  so 
afraid  of  some  of  those  foolish  girls  get- 
ting- them  and  converting  them  into 
cloaks,  and  then  coming  to  church  in 
them  under  my  very  eyes,  that  I  posi- 
tively put  it  by,  and  shall  have  it  dyed 
brown  for  next  winter." 

The  young  man  drops  his  eye-glass 
from  his  eye  with  a  comical  smile,  and 
they  pass  on.  fipiphanie's  eyes  follow 
them  after  the  sound  of  their  voices  has 
died  away,  little  thinking  that  she  is 
serving  as  a  text  to  their  discourse. 
When  they  reach  the  turn  in  the  road, 
they  stop  and  speak  to  a  man,  who 
points  with  his  hand,  raises  his  cap, 
and  then  comes  on  at  a  steady  swinging 
pace,  with  a  stick  and  basket  slung 
over  his  shoulder,  fipiphanie's  eye 
brightens.  She  recognizes  the  young 
countryman,  who  is  none  other  than 
Gabriel  Ducrcfs  returning  from  Arques 
the  nearest  way,  along  the  river's  bank. 
But  he  is  alone  !  There  is  no  Franqois 
with  him  !  Still,  they  went  out  from 
,tme  Farge's  in  company.  Gabriel 
can  certainly  tell  her  where  Frangois  is, 
if  any  one  can.  So,  taking  the  child's 
hand,  fipiphanie  goes  slowly  forward 
to  meet  him. 

"  Bon  jour,  Gabriel  Ducrds  ! "  she  said, 

as  she  approached  him.     Gabriel  looked 

up  quickly,  returned  her  greeting,  and 

as  though  he  would  have  passed 

ining  in  no  humor  for  talking. 

'•  Ah,    Gabriel    Ducre's,    wait    a   mo- 
ment/'said  fipiphanie.     "  I  would  ask 
mething." 

lot  his  stick  slide  from  his 
shoulder.  "  Well,  Epiphanie  !"  he  said 
with  \\ 

./as  disconcerted  for  a 
moment  by  his  ungraciousness,  and 
her  color  rose  slightly.  "Are  you  in 
haste  ? ''  she  said  gently. 


"  No,  no,  I  am  in  no  haste  ;  I  will  do 
anything  to  serve  thee  willingly,  £pi- 
phanie." 

"It  is  only  to  tell  me  where  is  my 
brother;  I  want  much  to  speak  with 
him,  and  in  this  strange  place  I  know 
not  where  to  seek  him." 

Gabriel  looked  at  her  anxious  face, 
and  turned  away  his  eyes.  "  I  cannot 
tell  thee.  I  do  not  know  where  he  is." 

But  fipiphanie  still  questioned. 
"Thou  wast  with  him  this  morning, 

—  wast  thou  not  ?    At  Madame  Farge's, 

—  you  went  out  together  ?  " 

"  But  we  parted  company  soon  after 
we  left  the  house." 

"  Did  he  speak  of  going  home,  —  of 
Verangeville  ?  O  Gabriel  Ducres!  if 
thou  canst,  tell  me  something  of  him  !  " 

"  In  good  truth,  I  cannot  tell  thee. 
Francois  said  but  a  few  words,  and 
broke  from  me,  and  was  gone." 

"And  thou  knowest  not  where  he 
went  ?  "  said  fipiphanie,  mournfully. 

"  No.  Thou  needst  not  seek  him  in 
the  Rue  St.  Remi,  however." 

"Alas  !  my  poor  Francois!  It  is 
even  so  then,"  sighed  out  fipiphanie. 

"Mademoiselle  Marie  has  cheated 
him,  —  voilatout!  It  is  no  great  mat- 
ter. It  is  often  done,  it  seems." 

There  was  such  a  tender,  pitiful  look 
in  the  woman's  eyes,  as  they  encoun- 
tered his,  that  Gabriel  stopped. 

"  It  is  the  will  of  God,"  said  fipipha- 
nie,  "and  for  his  soul's  good;  but  he 
will  have  many  a  sad  day  for  all  this ; 
sleep  and  work,  meat  and  drink,  are 
spoiled  to  one  who  has  a  heavy  heart. 
But  I  will  not  hold  thee  longer  here, 
Gabriel  Ducres  ;  thou  art  doubtless  in 
haste,  and  I  go  but  slowly  with  the 
child." 

"No,  no,  fipiphanie,  I  am  in  no 
haste  ;  let  me  walk  by  thy  side.  I  will 
help  thee  to  find  Francois ;  he  is  prob- 
ably somewhere  about  the  docks." 

"Ah  !"  said  Epiphanie,  starting  quick- 
ly, "dost  thou  think  he  may  run  away 
to  sea?" 

"  It  would  not  be  strange,"  said  Ga- 
briel, "with  twenty  ships  lying  in  har- 
bor ready  to  take  fresh  sailors,  that  he 
should  offer  himself." 


444 


Michael's  Night. 


[October, 


"  Bon  Dieu !  that  might  easily  be, 
just  now  while  his  anger  and  misery 
are  heavy  and  hot  within  him." 

"  Why  should  he  not  go  ?  " 

"It  would  break  his  mother's  heart 
to  lose  him.  He  is  the  beginning  and 
end  of  all  things  to  her.  She  would 
think  of  him  in  those  far-away  coun- 
tries, and  fret  night  and  day,  fancying 
him  sick  or  dying  where  she  could 
never,  never  reach  him.  O,"  said  £pi- 
phanie  with  a  shudder,  "  it  is  a  terrible 
thing  to  have  the  sea  between  us  and 
some  one  who  is  dear  to  us ! " 

"All  ships  don't  go  to  the  distant 
countries  though,"  suggested  Gabriel. 
"There  are  ships  that  go  to  England, 
vessels  that  run  to  Bordeaux,  to  —  "  but 
Gabriel  was  suddenly  checked  in  the 
midst  of  his  propositions  by  fipiphanie, 
who  cried  suddenly,  eagerly,  "Ah,  if 
I  could  but  find  him !  yes,  certainly  I 
could  persuade  him  !  I  could  show  him 
how  excellent  it  would  be.  He  would 
not  be  at  the  old  work  and  at  home 
exactly,  and  yet  he  never  would  be  far 
away,  and  if  he  were  sick  he  could  al- 
ways come  back  to  his  mother  and  me." 

"  Ah  !  "  said  Gabriel,  somewhat  blank- 
ly, not  having  the  clearest  view  in  the 
world  of  her  meaning. 

"I  —  I  think  —  that  is  to  say,  I  have 
just  thought  that  he  might  get  a  place 
on  the  Newhaven  steamer." 

"  That  would  be  excellent,  certainly," 
said  Gabriel ;  "  but  it  cannot  be  easy 
to  get  such  places." 

"  I  heard  last  night  that  one  of  the 
first  places  on  board  the  new  steam- 
er will  be  vacant  soon,  —  indeed  quite 
soon." 

"  Ma  foi !  "  said  Gabriel,  who  was  al- 
ready becoming  excited  about  the  suc- 
cess of  the  plan,  "this  is  a  stroke  of 
good  fortune.  If  this  —  dost  thou  know 
the  sailor's  name,  fipiphanie  ?  " 

"  O,"  said  fipiphanie,  "  he  is  the  first 
mate." 

"  Well,"  continued  Gabriel,  "  if  this 
first  mate  leaves  in  good-will  with  the 
captain,  no  doubt  but  he  may  be  able 
to  say  a  good  word  for  a  friend,  and  get 
Francois  the  situation.  This  man  has 
not  been  discharged,  has  he  ?  " 


"  O  no,"  said  fipiphanie  ;  "  he  leaves 
of  his  own  free  will.  He  was  tired,  — 
that  is  to  say,  he  wanted  to  start  in  the 
fishing  business." 

"  Thou  know'st  him  then  ? "  said 
Gabriel,  with  business-like  precision. 

"  Yes,  I  know  him." 

"So  much  the  better!  Then  thou 
canst  go  to  him  and  speak  to  him  at 
once,  and  I  will  go  and  seek  Francois. 
Such  a  piece  of  good  luck  shall  not  slip 
through  one's  fingers.  I  will  say  what 
I  can  to  him  against  his  going  to  sea, 
if  I  find  his  mind  bent  on  that,  and  tell 
him  how  well  it  will  be  for  him  to  take 
this  situation,  and  then  I  will  conduct 
him  to  thee ;  or,  perhaps,  he  may  as 
well  go  and  see  this  man  himself.  But 
stay,"  continued  Gabriel,  who  had  al- 
ready shouldered  his  stick  to  start  on 
his  search  for  Frangois,  "  I  had  best 
know  the  man's  name,  that  I  may  tell 
Frangois." 

Epiphanie  hesitated  a  moment.  It 
is  difficult  sometimes  to  bring  to  the 
lips  a  name  that  runs  forever  in  the. 
thoughts.  "  It  is  —  it  is  Pierre  Len- 
net." 

"  Diable  ! "  was  the  polite  response, 
after  which  there  was  a  pause.  "  C'est 
ga ;  I  comprehend  at  last,"  said  Ga- 
briel. "  So  it  is  Pierre  Lennet  that  is 
the  man !  that  was  the  reason  you 
could  not  tell  me  his  name,  I  suppose. 
He  it  is  that  is  going  to  give  up  his 
place,  and  take  to  the  fishing  business, 
and  marry ,  no  doubt.  Seven  devils  !  " 
burst  out  Gabriel  afresh,  "  make  your 
own  business  among  yourselves  ;  I  will 
never  go  !  "  And  he  threw  his  stick 
and  basket  down  on  the  ground,  and 
crammed  his  hands  down  into  his 
breeches  pockets. 

Epiphanie  was  silent  from  pure 
amazement ;  Gabriel,  who  a  moment 
before  was  all  kindness  and  good-will, 
to  storm  in  this  way !  And  simply  at 
the  name  of  Pierre  too.  Had  Pierre 
angered  him?  Her  mind  ran  rapidly 
over  the  events  of  the  night  before, 
and  then  she  remembered  suddenly 
how  Gabriel  had  refused  to  come  up  to 
supper  when  Pierre  called  him.  Poor 
Gabriel !  he  was  angry  and  vexed  abc 


1 868.] 


St.  Michael's  Night. 


445 


Jeanne  last  night,  —  for  had  they  not 
quarrelled  just  before?  —  and  had  tak- 
en Pierre's  joke  amiss,  and  could  not 
forget  it  even  now.  "  He  has  a  good 
heart,  —  this  cousin  Gabriel ;  but  one 
can't  say  he  has  no  temper,"  thought 
fipiphanie.  Still  her  heart  was  pitiful, 
and  she  longed  —  without  betraying 
Jeanne  —  to  say  some  \\»ord  of  peace, 
to  drop  some  balm  into  the  wound  that 
she  knew  caused  this  testiness  in  her 
companion. 

"  I  know  not  why  thou  shouldst  feel 
so  hardly  towards  Pierre  Lennet,"  said 
she,  after  a  pause,  during  which  they 
both  walked  on  in  silence  ;  "  he  speaks 
nothing  but  praise  of  thee." 

"  I  do  not  want  his  praise,"  said  Ga- 
briel, sulkily. 

"  It  was  only  this  morning,"  con- 
tinued fipiphanie,  "  that  he  was  telling 
Jeanne  and  me  of  your  going  out  in  the 
bad  weather  together  last  night  to  take 
out  the  rope,  and  he  said  that  thou 
haclst  a  strong  arm  and  ,a  brave  heart, 
and  that  without  thee  the  boat  could 
not  have  been  saved.  And  Jeanne, 
when  he  said  that,  held  out  her  hand  in 
gratitude  to  Pierre  for  his  good  words 
of — her  cousin." 

Gabriel  bent  his  head,  but  said  nothing. 

"  Jeanne  speaks  her  mind  out  boldly, 
if  one  does  not  please  her ;  but  from 
others  she  will  hear  nothing  but  the 
praises  of  those  she  loves,"  continued 
Epiphanie. 

But  Gabriel  seemed  hardly  to  hear 
her.  He  walked  on  absorbed  in  his 
own  thoughts.  Suddenly  he  stopped 
and  turned  upon  her. 

"  Thou  thinkest  well  of—  of  this 
Pierre  Lennet  ?  "  he  said. 

"  Ye-es,"  said  Epiphanie,  startled, 
and  with  heightening  color. 

"  That  he  is  brave,  good,  religious," 
continued  Gabriel,  speaking  quickly 
and  shortly  like  one  who  suffers,  but 
controls,  a  sharp  internal  pain.  "  Such 
i  woman  would  think  well  of — 
could  easily  love  —  could  be  happy 
with  —  having  him  for  a  husband  ?  " 

"  Happy  ?  yes,"  repeated  fipiphanie, 
amazed  and  fluttered.  "  Why  dost  thou 
ask  me  this  ?  " 


"Thou  believest  this  truly?"  said 
Gabriel,  paying  no  heed  to  her  ques- 
tion. 

"  In  the  bottom  of  my  heart." 

"  I  believe  it,  too ! "  he  said  with  a 
groan.  "  It  is  enough.  Forgive  me, 
fipiphanie,  for  my  hard  words.  A  dog 
that  is  wounded  bites  more  from  pain 
than  ill-will.  I  will  seek  Frangois,  and 
say  what  I  can  to  make  him  follow  thy 
counsel.  Adieu!"  And  he  turned  to 
go.  fipiphanie  was  in  despair.  What 
did  he  mean  by  asking  her  all  these 
questions  about  Pierre  ?  What  had 
she  said  to  draw  forth  all  this  ?  She 
who  would  have  spoken  the  words  of 
peace  and  comfort  had  seemed  but  to 
make  the  matter  worse.  Gabriel  in 
leaving  her  now  was  more  unhappy 
than  half  an  hour  ago,  when  they  met. 
In  another  moment  he  would  be  gone, 
—  passed  beyond  her  reach,  —  and 
Jeanne's  dismal  prophecy  of  estrange- 
ment, and  general  confusion,  and  mis- 
ery might  come  true,  after  all.  She 
made  three  hasty  steps,  and  gained  his 
side. 

"  Thou  art  going  to  Verangeville  to- 
night," she  cried. 

"To  Verangeville,  no.  It  is  —  too 
late  to  start  this  evening." 

"  But  to-morrow  morning  ?  " 

"  I  shall  go  home." 

«  To  Valle'e  d' Alton  ?  " 

"  Yes." 

"Thou  wilt  go  to  Verangeville  on 
thy  way  ;  stay  the  night  at  the  cottage, 
and  then  go  on  the  next  day,  and  so 
break  the  journey.  Surely  thou  wilt  do 
this,  Gabriel?" 

"  I  have  wasted  too  much  time  there 
already.  I  shall  go  straight  home." 

"  Thou  wilt  at  least  say  good-by  to 
Jeanne  thyself.  It  would  be  ill-man- 
nerly not  to  do  that." 

"  She  has  other  things  to  think  of 
than  my  manners.  Say  good-by  to  her 
forme,  though,  and  tell  her  —  no,  tell  her 
nothing.  I  have  no  more  to  say  to  her." 

"  You  will  repent  it  all  your  life,  per- 
haps, if  you  do  not  go  to  Verangeville," 
pleaded  Epiphanie.  "Do  not  let  the 
last  words  be  words  of  anger  between 
those  who  —  who  are  relations.  Jeanne 


446 


MicJiaeVs  Night. 


[October, 


will  watch  for  thee,  will  wait  for  thy 
coming,  I  know,  to-night !  " 

"  I  will  not  go  to  Verangeville  ! " 
burst  out  Gabriel.  "  Do  not  tempt  me  ! 
let  me  be !  I  am  going  home  ;  and  I 
will  never  see  Dieppe  nor  Verangeville 
nor  her  again  as  long  as  I  live  !  " 

"  Stay,"  said  fipiphanie,  constraining 
him  to  stop  with  pleading  tones  and 
hands  that  clasped  his.  "Thou  shalt 
not  go,  still  feeling  anger  towards 
Jeanne.  It  is  an  error.  Thou  hast 
seen  things  wrongly.  Thou  hast  mis- 
judged her.  She  is  not  soft  and  smil- 
ing always,  but  I  know  her  heart.  O,  I 
was  alone  in  the  world  but  for  Jeanne  ; 
she  is  true,  she  is  warm  ;  her  heart  is 
deep,  and  her  love  never  dies  !  " 

"  Mon  Dieu  !  "  said  Gabriel,  fiercely. 
"  Why  do  you  say  this  to  me  ?  Don't 
I  know  this  already  ?  O,  I  am  a  fool, 
a  fool !  "  he  groaned.  "  She  must  love 
where  she  loves,  I  know  that.  I  have 
no  quarrel  with  her,  I  have  no  quarrel 
even  with  her  Pierre,  though  he  has 
stolen  her  from  me  !  O,  I  try  to  curse 
her  with  my  lips  sometimes,  but  my 
heart  rises  up  to  bless  her.  And  this 
will  last  to  the  end  ! "  He  dropped  his 
head  on  his  breast,  and  ground  the  dry 
leaves  under  his  heel  in  very  bitterness 
of  spirit. 

Epiphanie  had  listened  to  the  out- 
burst of  the  young  man  with  dilating 
eyes.  She  dropped  her  knitting  into 
the  large  pocket  of  her  apron,  and 
moved  a  step  nearer  to  him,  laying  her 
hand  on  the  post  against  which  he 
leaned.  Her  soft  eyes  were  full  of  light 
as  she  looked  up  into  his  face  ;  she 
trembled,  but  her  voice  was  low  and 
clear. 

"You  think  —  you  think  —  "  then,  as 
her  color  rose  and  fell,  she  said,  "  It 
is  I  who  love  Pierre  Lennet,  and  I  am 
g.oing  to  be  his  wife." 

Gabriel  sprang  erect,  and  stared  her 
in  the  face.  The  blood  rushed  to  his 
cheeks. 

"  Thou  —  thou,"  he  repeated,  as  if 
bewildered  by  the  sudden  revelation. 
"  Did  she  know  this  ?  —  does  Jeanne 
know  this  ?  "  Tell  me,  — tell  me  quick- 
ly, fipiphanie ! " 


"  But  for  her  I  should  not  have  been 
so  happy,"  she  replied. 

And  after  that  Madame  itpiphanie 
would  say  little  more  to  satisfy  the  im- 
patient young  man,  naturally  thinking 
she  had  done  quite  enough  for  him  in 
the  way  of  consolation,  and  might  now 
safely  leave  him  to  the  guidance  of  his 
own  instincts.  She  was  discreet  and 
honorable,  and  her  reticence,  and  the 
doubts  and  misgivings  which  she  re- 
fused to  allay,  seasoned  her  balms  with 
a  wholesome  bitter  of  uncertainty.  She 
said  enough  and  left  enough  unsaid  to 
make  her  companion  happy,  but  to 
leave  him  penitent,  with  a  general 
sense  of  having  been  a  fool,  which  as 
an  occasional  conviction,  it  must  be 
owned,  is  good  for  all  of  us. 

"Epiphanie,"  said  Gabriel,  at  last, 
"  I  go  at  once  to  Verangeville  to  —  to 
explain  —  at  least  to  say  good-by  before 
I  go  to  Vallee  d'Allon  ;  I  can,  as  thou 
hast  suggested,  stop  there  on  my  way 
homewards." 

"  To-night?"  said  Iipiphanie,  smil- 
ing ;  "  you  said  it  was  too  late  to  start 
half  an  hour  ago." 

But  Gabriel  had  swung  his  bundle 
over  his  shoulder,  and,  catching  up  the 
child,  set  him  on  the  other,  with  a 
laugh. 

"  Stop,  stop  !  what  will  become  of 
your  turkey-eggs  at  that  rate,  —  I  saw 
them  through  the  lid  of  the  basket  just 
now,"  said  Epiphanie,  and  she  stood 
on  tiptoe,  and  reached  to  his  shoulder, 
and  unhooked  the  basket  from  his 
stick.  The  child  screamed  and  shout- 
ed with  delight,  as  the  young  man 
strode  on  through  tl  e  leaves.  The 
sun  shone  through  tae  boy's  tossing 
yellow  curls,  and  glo\\  d  on  his  rosy 
cheeks,  as,  riding  like  a  king,  he  turned 
and  laughed  and  shoutec.  to  his  mother, 
who  walked  more  slowly  >ehind. 

When   they  reached   t  ;e  wharf-side, 
Gabriel  joined  Epiphanie  .and  walked 
by.  her  side.     At  the  foot  c  H;he  steps  2 
the  Farges  he  turned  to  her,  the  col 
deepening  in   his    cheeks,    "  I   was  a 
blockhead,  was  I  not  ?  " 

"  Ah  ?  "  replied  Epiphanie,  interroga- 
tively and  dubiously. 


1 368.] 


Michael's  Night. 


447 


"  I  have  seen  all  things  wrong :  but 
dost  thou  think,  —  dost  thou  think?  "  — 
and  he  looked  with  eyes  full  of  pas- 
sionate \vistfulness  into  her  face. 

itpiphanie  raised  her  eyebrows.  "  Give 
me  the  child,"  she  said.  "  Ah,  mori  pe- 
tit! mon  roitelet!"  and  she  stretched 
up  her  arms  to  take  him  from  his  high 
perch. 

But  Gabriel  held  himself  at  his  full 
height,  that  she  should  not  reach  the 
child.  "  Give  me  an  answer,"  he  said, 
or  thou  shalt  not  have  him." 

"  Mechant !  "  said  she,  half  pouting. 
"  Well,  what  is  your  question  ?  " 

"  If  thou  thinkest  that  —  that  —  " 

The  child,  who  had  already  testified 
his  growing  impatience  at  being  with- 
held from  his  mother's  arms  by  sundry 
slaps  and  kicks,  here  made  a  sudden 
spring  towards  her,  and  was  caught  to 
her  bosom,  laughing  in  triumph. 

"  And  thy  question,  Gabriel,"  said 
£piphanie,  demurely,  as  she  turned  to 
enter  the  house,  "thou  must  ask  that 
of  Jeanne,  I  think!" 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

GABRIEL  was  as  good  as  his  word  ; 
he  spent  one  precious  hour  of  the  short 
autumn  afternoon  in  his  search  for 
Francois ;  and  when  he  found  the  poor 
fellow,  and  had  given  him  the  words  of 
good  counsel  proposed  by  fipiphanie, 
he  sent  him  to  his  sister.  As  he  passed 
along  the  Dieppe  side  of  the  dock  he 
waved  his  cap  to  fipiphanie,  and  saw 
Francois  seated  by  her  side  in  the 
doorway  of  Jean  Farge's  house.  This 
duty  accomplished,  he  started  on  his 
journey  with  a  Ught  heart.  He  strode 
on  at  an  unusu  .ily  good  pace,  but  still 
his  eager  mind  ran  on  before  him,  and 
reached  Vcrangeville  a  score  of  times 
before  he  got  there. 

"  Remembc  ••  the  Fairy  way,"  had 
been  £piphanie's  last  words  as  they 
parted.  "  ^.  2  highway  over  the  cliff 
is  but  a  snort  two  miles  farther,  and 
within  the  octave  of  St.  Michael  the 
Fairy  walks.  Beware,  Gabriel,  and 
take  the  highway." 

But   Gabriel  laughed  aloud   at   her 


'warning.  What  cared  he  for  the  Fairy 
and  all  her  greetings  to-night  ?  Would 
he  lengthen  his  walk  by  a  single  mile 
to-night  ?  By  the  most  holy  St.  Ga- 
briel,—  no!  Who  would  put  another 
long  mile  between  himself  and  rest 
when  he  is  weary,  or  distance  by  an 
hour  the  spring  when  he  is  parched 
with  thirst  ?  Gabriel  was  happy  ;  and 
when  one  is  happy  one  fears  no  evil. 
Superstitious  fancies  can  have  no  room 
while  the  thoughts  and  the  imagination 
are  glowing  with  the  warmth  and  vi- 
tality of  positive  emotions  of  delight. 
How  can  Fear  spread  her  dark  wings  in 
a  heart  where  Hope  and  Joy  have  taken 
up  their  dwelling,  where  the  Imagina- 
tion is  building-  its  fairy  palace,  and 
spreading  out  its  bright  pictures,  and 
there  are  lights  and  singing  and  feast- 
ing within  ?  No  ;  she  waits  till  these 
guests  are  departed,  till  Joy  and  Love 
have  gone  out  together,  and  Hope,  after 
lingering  awhile,  has  shivered  off  into 
the  darkness ;  when  the  music  is  silent, 
and  the  lights  are  all  put  out,  then  Fear 
can  have  her  day.  Then  it  is  that  she 
enters  with  a  crowd  of  hideous  attend* 
ants,  and  runs  riot  with  a  thousand 
horrors,  and  converts  every  faculty  and 
sense  into  a  means  of  torture. 

Gabriel  trolled  out  a  song,  and,  as  he 
thought  again  of  £piphanie's  warning, 
he  caught  up  a  stone,  worn  flat  and 
smooth  by  the  tide,  and  hurled  it  far  up 
in  air ;  not  watching  to  see  how  it 
swept  over  the  beach  in  a  long  curve, 
and  dipped  with  a  sudden  light  into  the 
sea.  He  strode  gayly  onward  over  the 
shingles,  that  rung  beneath  his  hasty 
footsteps.  The  twilight  was  gathering 
over  the  fields  and  the  sea,  and  it  was 
almost  dusk  when  he  reached  the  nar- 
row steps  cut  in  the  cliff-side  that  led 
upward  to  the  Fairy  pathway.  It  was 
nightfall,  and  the  last  day  of  September, 
but  he  neither  halted  nor  -listened  for 
the  soft,  fatal  footfall.  He  sprang  light- 
ly up  the  steps,  and  gained  the  narrow 
ledge;  and,  as  he  passed  upward,  he 
looked  down  upon  the  rising  tide,  that 
already  lapped  the  foot  of  the  cliff  be- 
low. 

How  still  the  sea  lay  !  —  as  still  as 


448 


Michael's  Night. 


[October, 


the  quiet  heavens,  with  its  host  of  stars* 
above.  Where  was  the  storm  of  yes- 
terday, the  rage,  and  the  tumult  ?  The 
stormy  winds  had  fulfilled  the  word  of 
the  Great  Ruler,  and  were  once  more 
withdrawn  to  their  secret  dwelling- 
places  ;  and  now  behold,  —  peace.  —  a 
new  heaven  and  a  new  earth,  fresh 
and  pure  as  in  the  beginning,  when 
they  were  pronounced  good.  And 
those  storms  within,  those  tempests  of 
grief  and  passion,  with  their  vain  long- 
ings and  frantic  tears,  —  these  also 
have  their  day  ;  the  storm  dies  away,  the 
clouds  unroll,  and  if  the  sun  has  already 
set,  and  it  is  too  late  to  hope  for  sun- 
shine, there  are  at  least  the  stars,  and 
rest  and  the  silence  of  a  quiet  night. 

Gabriel  looked  out  to  sea,  and  then 
upward  to  the  beetling  summit  of  the 
cliff.  A  few  steps  more  and  the  sandy 
lane  would  be  reached,  and  his  heart 
gave  a  bound  as  he  thought  of  the  open 
doorway,  the  flickering  firelight,  and  the 
woman's  figure  by  the  hearth.  Hush  ! 
a  footstep  above,  light  and  firm,  ap- 
proaching swiftly  !  He  drew  himself 
instinctively  against  the  cliff-side,  and 
held  his  breath,  as  a  figure  emerged 
from  the  darkness,  and  for  a  moment 
seemed  to  float  between  him  and  the  sky. 

"Jeanne!" 

Once  more  face  to  face,  and  on  the 
narrow,  dizzy  edge  of  the  precipice. 

"  Gabriel !  "  she  sighed  out. 

"Yes,  it  is  I.  O  Jeanne,  I  have 
come ! "  he  burst  out.  "  I  could  not 
stay  one  moment  in  Dieppe !  I  have 
spoken,  I  have  acted,  like  a  fool  during 
these  weeks.  I  come  to  confess  it. 
Ah  !  Thou  wilt  forgive  me,  my  cousin  : 
it  was  because  I  loved  thee, — loved 
thee  so  well." 

He  caught  her  hands,  and  sought  to 
draw  her  against  his  bosom  as  he 
spoke ;  but  she  suddenly  and  swiftly 
freed  them  from  his  grasp,  and  wound 
them  about  his  neck,  and  clung  to  him, 
laying  her  head  upon  his  breast. 

"Let  be— let  be!"  she  said,  in  a 
broken  voice  ;  "it  is  I  who  have  been 
wrong,  and  I  thought  I  had  lost  thee, 
Gabriel,  — lost  thee  — " 

An  hour  later,  and  they  still  stood 


leaning  against  the  cliff-side,  with  the 
night  gathering  like  a  purple  veil  over 
the  sea.  The  tide  was  at  the  full,  and 
boomed  below  against  the  shelving  cliff. 
There  was  so  much  for  these  two  to 
talk  of,  with  the  untried  future  lying  so 
full  of  promise  before  them  ;  there  was 
still  more  that  silence  alone  could  ex- 
press, in  the  first  blissful  peace  of  per- 
fect reconciliation. 

"  Thou  wilt  marry  a  farmer  after  all," 
said  Gabriel,  after  a  while.  "  I  wish  I 
had  been  born  by  the  sea  for  thy  sake. 
But  perhaps,  when  thou  comest  to 
know  country  life  better,  thou  wilt  like 
it  better  also,  Jeanne.  One  should  not 
make  up  one's  mind  to  dislike  this  or 
that  without  reason.  I  thought  very 
ill  of  all  sailors  once,  till  very  lately. 
I  —  indeed  I  hated  the  very  name  '  ma- 
rin'with  all  my  heart,  I  assure  thee, 
and  now  I  confess  that  I  was  wrong.  I 
find  them  brave,  true-hearted, —  in  short, 
all  that  good  Christians  should  be." 

"  Ah  !  "  said  Jeanne,  "  it  is  Pierre 
Lennet  who  has  made  thee  think  better 
of  sailors,  for  he  is  all  these.  Eh, 
Gabriel  ?  " 

"Yes,"  said  Gabriel,  with  a  laugh. 
"  But,  if  the  truth  must  be  spoken,  it 
was  also  he  that  made  me  detest  the 
very  name  of 'marin'at  one  time.  I 
confess  it." 

"I  have  been  thinking,"  said  Jeanne, 
thoughtfully,  "  how  it  was  that  I  was 
so  angry  that  night,  and  told  thee  I 
would  marry  none  but  a  sailor.  I  think 
it  was  because  thou  wast  not  a  sailor, 
and  I  feared  I  should  marry  thee. 
Now  I  no  longer  dislike  the  thought 
of  a  farmer's  life  at  all,  and  it  is  be- 
cause thou  art  a  farmer,  and  I  know  I 
am  to  be  thy  wife.  It  is  strange,"  said 
Jeanne,  with  a  little  sigh,  "  comme  on 
change  d'avis  !  —  n'est  ce  pas,  Ga- 
briel ? " 

Then  they  talked  of  the  Valldc 
d'Allon,  and  Gabriel  pictured  the  joy  of 
that  day  when  he  should  bring  Jeanne 
home  to  the  old  farm-house.  He  knew 
how  his  mother  loved  Jeanne,  and  how 
long  her  heart  had  yearned  towards 
her  young  kinswoman  as  towards 
daughter.  And  Jeanne's  eyes  brimmed 


: 


1 868.] 


St.  Michael's  Night. 


449 


over  with  happy  tears  in  the  darkness, 
as  she  thought  of  receiving  a  mother's 
kiss  and  benediction  from  Madame 
Ducres.  Uncle  Defere,  urged  Gabriel 
with  his  usual  impetuosity,  must  leave 
his  fishing-nets  now,  and  come  to  the 
farm  also,  and  take  care  of  his  rheuma- 
tism, and  spend  the  rest  of  his  days 
at  ease,  and  telling  stories  of  the  coast 
and  his  fishing  days  to  the  neighbors, 
as  they  sit  round  the  fire  on  winter's 
evenings.  Then  how  pleasant  it  was  to 
go  back  to  the  old  days  when  they  were 
children  together,  —  the  joyous  times 
of  the  lavender  harvest ;  the  nut-pick- 
ings in  the  old  beech-wood  beyond  the 
farm  ;  the  walks  together  by  the  stream- 
side,  or  as  they  came  up  hand  in  hand 
in  the  twilight,  through  the  dewy  mead- 
ows, driving  the  cows  back  to  pasture 
after  evening  milking.  So  the  future 
and  the  past  greeted  each  other  joyous- 
ly in  the  present ;  and  time  stood  still 
for  these  happy  people,  as  it  does  for  us 
all  once  or  twice  in  a  lifetime. 

At  last  Jeanne  said,  "  Come,  Gabriel, 
T  must  go  home  ;  I  want  to  see  my 
father.  He  went  out  to  set  some  nets 
after  supper,  but  he  will  have  'come  in 
by  this  time  ;  for,  see,  it  is  late  ;  the 
stars  are  all  out,  and  the  tide  is  at  its 
height." 

"Where  wast  thou  going,  Jeanne," 
said  Gabriel,  detaining  her,  "  when  I 
met  thee  ? " 

*'  O,  I  was  going  down  the  beach  to 
meet  fipiphanie.  She  told  me  she 
was  coming  back  this  evening  with 
Nannette  Planche.  I  was  with  Veuve 
Milette  most  of  the  afternoon,  keeping 
her  company  while  £piphanie  was  away, 
and  as  I  was  coming  home,  I  met  Nan- 
nette, who  said  she  and  Marie  Bignard 
had  left  Dieppe  earlier  than  she  had  said 
the  night  before,  and  had  seen  nothing 
of  fipiphanie.  Then  I  thought  Epipha- 
nie  must  have  missed  them,  and  would 
be  coming  home  alone  ;  and  after  supper, 
when  father  went  out  to  his  nets,  I  start- 
ed out  to  mee*t  her.  The  child  is  heavy 


to  carry,  and  fipiphanie  is  timorous,  and 
does  not  like  to  be  alone  after  nightfall." 

"And  thou  earnest  down  the  Fairy 
way,  Jeanne,  and  thou  wast  not  afraid  ?  " 

"  Yes,  I  was  afraid,  I  will  not  deny ; 
but  I  thought  I  could  run  so  swiftly 
down  here,  and  climb,  by  a  way  I  know, 
to  the  cliffs  again,  and  so  miss  all  the 
long  round  one  takes  by  the  highway, 
and  have  so  much  more  chance  of  meet- 
ing Epiphanie,  that,  after  I  considered 
a  moment  at  the  churchyard  wall,  I  re- 
peated apater-noster,  and  ran  down,  and 
met  thee." 

"  Ah,  Jeanne  !  "  after  a  pause,  he  said, 
"dost  thou  know  what  I  thought  as  I 
came  up  the  path  and  heard  thy  foot- 
step ?  " 

"  Ouoi  done,"  said  Jeanne,  —  "  that  it 
was??" 

"  Not  at  all.  I  heard  a  step,  and  saw 
a  gown  fluttering,  and  I  thought  it  is 
the  Fairy  of  Fallaise  who  approaches, 
to  give  me  an  evil  greeting  perhaps.  I 
confess  to  thee  my  heart  stood  still  in 
my  body  for  fear  !  " 

Jeanne  laughed.  "  Grand  lache  !  "  she 
said,  "thou  shouldst  have,  shouted  at 
the  bottom  of  the  steps  to  have  cleared 
the  way,  and  I  should  have  heard  thee, 
and  waited  till  thou  hadst  reached  the 
top  of  the  cliff.  That  is  the  custom 
here.  One  must  always  call  before  one 
comes  up  the  Fairy  way,  so  that  any 
one  going  down  may  wait  till  the  one  be- 
low has  ascended,  for  the  ledge  is  too 
narrow  for  two  to  pass  each  other  with- 
out danger." 

"  But  if  one  does  not  call,  or  if  one 
does  not  hear  the  shout,  and  meets  a 
traveller  in  the  middle,  as  thou  and  I  — 
what  then  ?  " 

"  I  know  not,"  said  she.  "  I  suppose 
they  must  then  arrange  it  between 
themselves,  and  one  must  turn  back 
again." 

"  In  this  case,"  said  Gabriel,  drawing 
her  towards  himself,  "thou  goest  with 
me.  Eh,  my  Jeannette  ?  " 

"Yes,"  said  Jeanne,  "with  thee!" 


VOL.  xxn.  —  NO.  13: 


29 


450 


Edmund  Brook, 


[October, 


EDMUND     BROOK. 


EDMUND  BROOK  departed  this 
life  in  February,  1866,  aged  twen- 
ty-eight years  and  four  months.  He 
was  lamented  by  all  his  friends,  having 
sustained  an  excellent  character  in  ev- 
ery relation  of  life,  having  been  a  faith- 
ful servant,  a  devoted  husband,  and  a 
kind  and  tender  father.  He  was  at- 
tended to  his  last  home  by  every  mem- 
ber of  his  late  master's  family,  who 
showed  for  his  memory  every  possible 
mark  of  mourning  and  respect.  His 
last  request  to  the  writer  was  that  she 
would  put  his  own  account  of  himself, 
given  during  the  last  month  of  his  life, 
and  written  down  at  his  request,  into  cor- 
rect language  ;  and  though  his  idioms 
might  better  have  expressed  his  mean- 
ing, yet  she  could  not  refuse  in  some 
degree  to  comply  with  this  last  request. 

"  I  remember  myself  first,"  said  Ed- 
mund, "  as  a  little  woolly-headed  fellow 
about  three  feet  high.  I  remember  my 
looks  particularly  at  this  time,  because 
I  used  to  stand  behind  my  master  while 
he  was  shaving,  and  watch  him  in  the 
glass,  keeping  always  so  exactly  behind 
him  that  it  was  a  long  time  before  he 
discovered  my  presence.  When  he  did 
this,  and  observed  also  that  I  was  mak- 
ing faces  behind  his  back  in  imitation 
of  him,  he  took  a  hearty  laugh.  I  did 
not  know  what  was  the  matter  until  he 
turned  round  and  caught  me. 

"  He  seemed  chiefly  struck  with  the 
remarkable  height  to  which  my  hair 
grew  on  the  top  of  my  head.  '  Hallo  ! ' 
he  cried.  *  Come  here,  Jerry,  Bill,  June, 
December,  —  come  and  shear  this  black 
sheep.  Shear  him,  and  bring  him  back 
to  me.'  This  order  was  but  too  liter- 
ally complied  with,  and  my  head  was 
sheared  so  close  that  I  was  a  laughing- 
stock to  the' whole  plantation  until  my 
wool  grew  out  again. 

"This  punishment 'effectually  cured 
me  of  stealing  behind  my  master  to 
imitate  him  while  shaving. 

"  But  I  will  only  take  up  your  time 


and  my  own  breath  with  one  more  in- 
•  cident  of  my  childhood.  When  I  was 
about  twelve  years  old,  I  was  dressed 
in  a  smart  livery  suit,  and  brought  in 
to  brush  at  master's  table.  My  busi- 
ness was  to  set  the  table,  and  then  to 
stand  ready,  with  a  long  brush  of  pea- 
cock feathers,  and  keep  off  the  flies  as 
the  head  waiter  brought  in  and  arranged 
the  dishes.  There  was  always  fish  or 
poultry  for  dinner ;  for  we  lived  in 
Beaufort  in  summer,  if  we  were  not 
travelling,  and  on  the  plantation  during 
the  winter  ;  and  fish  were  always  to  be 
had  merely  for  the  taking  them,  and 
oysters,  if  you  only  picked  them  up. 
I  am  sorry  to  say  that  the  post  at  which 
I  was  then  placed  proved  one  of  temp- 
tation to  me.  When  three  or  four 
o'clock  came,  and  dinner  was  served,  I 
used  to  be  pretty  hungry.  To  be  sure, 
I  could  have  got  corn-bread  and  butter- 
milk all  the  time  ;  but  I  did  not  want 
corn-bread  and  buttermilk  when  I  daily 
saw  before  me  turkeys,  roast  fowls,  and 
ducks,  or  else  drum,  cavallie,  or  bass. 
My  master  was  particularly  fond  of 
drum-roe,  and  so  was  I.  Therefore  it 
chanced  that  half  of  the  drum-roe  used 
constantly  to  disappear  before  the  other 
dishes  came  in.  Now  the  head  waiter 
was  the  son  of  the  cook,  and  I  was  the 
grandson  of  the  head  nurse,  who  had 
nursed  my  master  himself.  My  mother 
had  also  nursed  all  the  elder  children 
of  the  family ;  so  that  my  family  was 
one  of  far  more  consequence  and  dig- 
nity than  that  of  Dinah  the  cook.  Yet 
Dinah  claimed  that  her  mother  had 
minded  master's  father,  and  that  her 
family,  therefore,  were  of  superior  and 
more  ancient  descent  than  ours. 

"  Thus  there  was  a  constant  rivalry 
and  jealousy  between  us,  and,  had 
recollected  these  circumstances.  I  would 
have  been  more  careful  about  taking 
the  drum-roes.  But  at  tv/elve  years  of 
age  I  had  not  learned  the  prudence  to 
which  I  afterwards  attained,  and  mj 


1868.] 


Edmund  Brook. 


451 


indiscretion  gave  every  advantage  to 
my  enemies  against  me.  One  day  my 
master  sent  for  Dinah,  and  told  her 
that  if  she  wanted  to  keep  back  any 
part  of  the  dinner,  and  really  did  not 
get  enough  without  it,  to  cut  off  part  of 
the  fish,  but  not  to  keep  the  roe.  Di- 
nah told  him  that  she  sent  in  all  the 
roe,  and  she  called  her  son  Caesar  to 
prove  this. 

"Caesar,  then,  instead  of  warning  my 
innocent  youth  of  the  trouble  which 
was  preparing  for  me,  — although  I  had 
seen  him  keep  many  things,  and  had 
not  told  on  him,  —  immediately  devised 
a  plan  by  which  to  disgrace  me  and 
to  give  my  place  to  his  brother.  He 
therefore  told  my  master  that  if  he 
would  consent  to  lose  the  roe  for  one 
day  more,  he  would  show  him  who  took 
it.  My  master  agreed  ;  but  of  all  this 
I  knew  nothing  until  afterwards. 

"  The  next  day,  as  usual,  I  helped 
myself  to  a  large  piece  of  the  roe,  and 
crammed  it  all  into  my  mouth  at  once. 
But  it  was  at  least  half  red  pepper  and 
mustard.  I  threw  down  the  brush,  and 
ran  out  of  the  back  door,  roaring  at  the 
top  of  my  voice.  Every  one,  white  and 
black,  ran  to  see  what  was  the  matter. 

"  My  master  laughed  until  the  tears 
ran  down  his  cheeks  ;  the  children 
laughed  and  capered  around  me,  re- 
gardless of  my  distress,  which  was  real 
enough.  I  was  almost  suffocated.  But 
my  grandmother  was  infuriated ;  she 
seized  me  by  my  hair,  which  had  grown 
out,  and  administered  such  a  series  of 
boxes  as  speedily  relieved  my  feelings, 
and  turned  my  sorrows  into  a  different 
channel. 

" '  You  see  yourself,  maumer,'  said 
my  master  to  my  grandmother,  who 
had  heard  his  explanation  of  the  busi- 
ness, addressed  to  the  children,  —  'you 
see  yourself  now.' 

"  '  Yes,  sir,  I  see,'  she  replied,  with 
dignity  ;  '  and  if  missus  will  excuse  me 
for  a  while,  I  will  make  Edmund  see 
too.' 

"  At  this  I  set  up  a  fresh  roar,  and  I 
begged  master  to  punish  me  himself. 
But  master  said  he  could  not  be  trou- 
bled with  it  when  grandma  was  there  to 


do  it,  and  so  she   hauled   me  to  the 
negro  quarter. 

"  Arrived  there,  she  first  whipped  me, 
then  she  called  my  father  and  mother, 
and  they  whipped  me  again.  Then 
they  held  a  council  over  me. 

" '  If  you  had  told  me  you  was  taking 
the  roe,  I  would  never  have  let  master 
find  you  out ;  but  why  did  you  not  tell 
me  ? '  said  my  mother,  crying  herself. 
I  was  comforted  by  this,  and,  kneeling 
down  by  her,  I  felt  that  I  had  one 
friend  left.  They  discoursed  to  me  a 
long  time  ;  but  I  principally  remember 
my  grandmother's  closing  exhorta- 
tion :  — 

" '  Now  you  are  in  the  house,  Edmund,' 
she  said,  '  you  must  remember  that 
you  are  not  a  field-nigger,  but  a  person 
of  family  and  character.  When  I  used 
to  attend  mistress  to  parties,  there  was 
not  a  lady  in  the  shawl-room  who  was 
above  speaking  to  me,  and  they  all  left 
everything  they  had  under  my  charge. 
Now  I  think  we  have  a  right  to  take 
from  our  own  master  when  he  got  plen- 
ty ;  but  I  never  take  so  that  they  can 
catch  me.  I  have  seen  missus  leave  pies 
and  cakes  in  her  open  closet  for  the  chil- 
dren. I  nor  Louisa  (my  mother)  never 
touch  one,  for  missus  would  know  that 
minute  it  was  us.-  But  she  never  misses 
sugar  out  of  the  barrels,  or  a  piece  of 
meat  out  of  the  smoke-house.  If  I  am 
wanting  anything,  I  take  it  when  she 
sends  me  for  soap  or  candles.  But  do 
you  take  nothing;  you  do  not  know  how. 
If  I  catch  you  taking  a  single  thing, 
this  is  what  you  will  get,  and  more 
too.'  * 

"  These  were  the  only  indiscretions 
which  I  can  recollect  of  my  boyhood. 
I  never  took  anything  again  from  my 
master  and  mistress,  —  at  least,  this 
mistress. 

"  I  will  therefore  pass  on  to  the  pe- 
riod of  my  mistress's  illness  and  death. 
At  that  time  I  was  the  acknowledged 
favorite,  next  to  my  mother  and  grand- 
mother, of  all  the  family. 

"  My  mistress  had  consumption,  and 

*  It  was  a  universally  received  maxim  among  the 
negroes,  that  they  had  a  right  to  steal  from  their 
owners  \{ tht'v  kit-.?  f>!(>ity.  On  the  other  hand,  that 
they  should  help  them  if  they  needed  help. 


452 


Edmund  Brook. 


[October, 


she  was  therefore  ill  for  a  long  time. 
My  grandmother  and  mother,  my  mas- 
ter and  myself,  used  to  take  it  by  turns 
to  sit  up  with  her.  My  post  was  in  the 
dining-room,  which  was  next  to,  and 
opened  into,  her  room.  If  she  wanted 
anything,  she  rang  a  small  bell,  placed 
on  a  table  by  her.  She  was  too  weak 
to  speak  aloud.  I  used  to  doze,  but 
never  went  fast  to  sleep,  while  sitting 
up  with  her.  I  always  heard  the  bell, 
and  was  instantly  at  her  side.  If  she 
desired  food  or  cordial,  I  raised  her  on 
the  pillows,  and  fed  her  as  tenderly 
as  my  master  could  have  done.*  If 
she  wanted  my  mother,  —  she  slept 
in  the  hall  during  all  my  mistress's 
illness,  and  I  summoned  her.  If  the 
summer's  night  was  warm,  I  set  open 
all  the  blinds  and  doors.  Many  a  night 
I  have  sat  by  her  and  fanned  her  until 
sunrise.  My  master  used  to  sleep  on  a 
lounge  in  the  dressing-room.  My  move- 
ments never  disturbed  her  or  woke 
him. 

"  Her  own  children  were  young  and 
thoughtless,  and  she  seemed  to  prefer 
my  services  to  theirs. 

"  At  length  she  died,  and,  sorry  as  I 
was,  I  was  proud  to  see  the  long  train 
of  carriages  which  attended  her  funeral. 
I  walked  by  the  hearse  in  a  suit  of 
black.  My  young  mistress  tied  crape 
around  my  hat  herself,  saying,  as  she 
did  so,  'Edmund,  I  shall  never  forget 
you.'  I  heard  all  the  company  remark- 
ing upon  the  faithfulness  of  myself  and 
family  to  my  dear  mistress  ;  and  I  felt, 
as  well  I  might,  that  I  was  now  adding 
to  the  distinction  of  my  family,  and 
conducting  myself  as  a  worthy  and  ex- 
cellent member  of  society. 

"  My  grandmother  had  now  the  man- 
agement of  the  family.  My  young  mis- 
tress completed  one  more  winter  at 
boarding  -  school  in  Charleston  after 
her  mother's  death.  But  when  she  did 
come  home  to  manage  the  house,  she 
found  it  easier  to  amuse  herself  with 
her  young  companions,  and  leave  the 
management  of  everything  to  us. 

"  Thus  matters  went  on  for  two  years. 
The  whole  town  of  Beaufort  talked 

*  Fact. 


about  the  intelligence  and  faithfulness 
of  our  family.  My  sister  had  grown 
up,  and  had  charge  of  the  children  and 
their  clothes.  Miss  Caro  had  not  time 
to  trouble  with  them.  She  was  much 
admired  at  all  the  balls  and  parties,  and 
often  made  trips  to  Charleston  with  her 
young  friends.  The  only  complaint 
which  any  of  us  made  was  that  of  my 
sister  Kate,  when  Miss  Caro  would  not 
leave  her  time  to  make  the  children's 
clothes,  but  kept  her  making  dresses 
all  the  spring  for  herself.  Kate  w?.s 
the  children's  best  friend.  She  could 
not  bear  to  see  them  running  about  the 
quarter  on  Sunday,  and  kept  out  of 
their  pa's  sight  because  their  clothes 
were  not  made  for  them  to  go  to 
church  or  come  to  the  table.  And  one 
day,  instead  of  telling  master  that  the 
boys  were  gone  hunting,  as  Miss  Caro 
had  ordered  her,  she  told  him  that 
their  clothes  were  not  in  order  for  them 
to  come  to  the  table. 

'"And  why  are  they  not  in  order, 
when  you  have  nothing  else  to  do?' 
roared  my  master.  This  put  him  in  a 
passion. 

"  But  Kate  was  not  afraid  of  master 
himself  when  her  blood  was  up,  and 
she  answered  right  off, — 

" '  Because  Miss  Caro  keeps  me 
working  all  the  time  for  her,  and  won't 
leave  me  time  to  do  the  children's 
clothes.' 

"'Let  me  see  what  you  have  been 
doing,'  said  master,  and  he  walked 
right  into  Miss  Caro's  room,  where 
Kate  always  sat.  Miss  Caro  had  that 
very  morning  gone  to  Charleston,  which 
made  Kate  the  bolder,  for  Miss  Caro 
did  not  mind  telling  a  story  when  she 
got  ready. 

"She  showed  master  a  whole  piece 
of.  long-cloth,  and  another  of  cambric, 
which  last  Miss  Caro  had  ordered  her 
to  make  up  into  tucked  and  pointed 
skirts  by  the  time  she  got  back.  'And 
I  can't  do  it  and  keep  the  children  de- 
cent, —  I  can't ! '  said  Kate,  '  and  I 
told  her  so,  and  she  told  me  to  let  the 
children  run  until  they  were  done ;  and 
I  just  tell  you,  sir,  everybody  says  I  do 
as  if  I  was  white  by  those  children,  and 


1868.] 


Edmund  Brook. 


453 


Miss  Caro  won't  let  me  do  for  them, 
sir!' 

"Here  Kate  began  to  cry.  She  al- 
ways cried  when  she  was  in  a  passion, 
and  I  walked  in.  'Master,'  I  said,  'you 
know  Kate  would  work  her  fingers  to 
the  bone  to  see  the  children  brought 
up  genteel  and  becoming  to  the  family ; 
but  please,  sir,  not  to  let  Miss  Caro 
know  that  she  has  told  you.' 

"  '  I  will  not,'  he  said  ;  '  Kate,  you  are 
perfectly  right  to  tell  me,  and  I  will  not. 
But  go,  Edmund,  and  bring  the  chil- 
dren to  me  just  as  they  are,  —  go,  and 
bring  them.' 

"  I  was  getting  ashamed  of  the  way 
the  children  were  sometimes  seen,  and 
I  did  so.  Such  sights  as  they  were  ! 
It  was  then  June,  and  they  were  wear- 
ing winter  clothes,  and  they  had  not 
cared  how  they  did  them.  No  summer 
clothing  was  in  a  fit  condition  to  be  put 
on.  He  hollered  till  he  brought  the 
whole  house  around  him.  He  told 
Kate  to  bring  the  cloth  he  had  bought 
them,  which  she  did.  Two  whole  pieces 
were  there,  waiting  to  be  made  up. 
Three  more  women  besides  my  mother 
had  come  to  see  what  was  the  matter. 
He  ordered  them  all  to  sit  down,  and 
not  get  up  until  the  children  had 
clothes  to  put  on. 

"  Kate  was  ready  to  cry  again,  find- 
ing herself  blamed  as  well  as  the  rest. 
Seeing  that,  he  gave  her  a  gold  piece, 
and  told  her  to  cut  out.  The  long- 
cloth  he  ordered  made  into  shirts,  and 
the  cambric  he  locked  up. 

"But  we  all  had  reason  to  rue  the 
day  when  master  found  out  how  Miss 
Caro  did  by  the  children.  That  very 
evening  he  called  me  to  black  his 
boots  and  help  him  dress.  I  never 
saw  master  take  so  much  pains  with 
his  dress  before  ;  and  out  he  went. 
Grandmother  told  me  to  watch  where 
he  went ;  and  where  should  it  be  but 
to  see  a  young  lady.  And,  more  than 
all,  she  was  a  Northern  young  lady, 
and  had  about  her  all  the  mean  ways 
of  those  Northern  people.  Not  but  that 
she  was  clever  in  some  things  too,  but 
I  did  delight  to  get  ahead  of  her. 

"The  upshot  of  it  all  was   that  in 


three  months  from  that  time  we  had  a 
new  mistress ;  her  name  was  Miss 
Lucy  Dearing.  She  was  just  from 
school,  and  knew  nothing  out  of  her 
books.  She  was  spending  that  year  in 
Beaufort.  When  we  found  out  that 
master  was  going  to  see  her,  grand- 
mother sent  me  to  go  and  sit  in  the 
kitchen,  and  find  out  all  about  her. 
The  cook  told  me  she  would  not  give 
us  trouble  ;  that  she  sat  in  her  room 
and  sewed  muslin,  and  read  her  books, 
and  did  not  know  what  biscuits  were 
made  of.  So  this  made  us  better  satis- 
fied. We  said  if  master  had  taken  mar- 
rying into  his  head,  he  would  be  certain 
to  marry  somebody,  and  we  would  rath- 
er him  marry  a  young  girl  who  would 
not  interfere  with  us. 

"But,  when  Miss  Caro  heard  it,  she 
was  just  raging.  She  never  had  been 
to  mistress's  grave  since  the  summer 
she  died.  But  now  she  was  dressing 
up  the  children,  and  taking  them  to  the 
grave,  and  covering  it  with  flowers,  all 
in  sight  of  the  congregation  every  Sun- 
day ;  and  she  had  me  there  to  wash  off 
the  tombstone,  and  to  plant  vines  and 
all  manner  of  flowers  around  it.  And 
she  kept  telling  the  children  that  now 
they  would  be  beat,  and  sent  away,  and 
that  their  pa  would  not  care  for  them 
or  her  any  longer,  and  that  their  moth- 
er was  forgotten  ;  and  when  any  com- 
pany talked  to  her  about  it  she  began 
to  cry. 

"At  last  grandmother  thought  that 
Miss  Caro  was  overdoing  the  matter ; 
she  told  her  that  master  would  marry 
again,  and  she  did  not  think  he  could 
do  better.  There  was  a  certain  hand- 
some widow  in  Beaufort  that  we  had 
always  been  afraid  of;  and  we  knew 
that,  if  master  married  her,  she  would 
know  about  everything.  So  we  had  a 
great  deal  rather  have  the  young  lady, 
and  we  told  her  so. 

"When  Miss  Caro  heard  that,  she 
agreed  to  it,  and  she  went  to  see  Miss 
Dearing ;  but  the  boys  could  not  be  got 
to  go  near  her.  They  had  got  it  in 
their  heads  that  she  would  make  their 
pa  whip  them,  and  so  they  said  they 
hated  her,  and  would  not  go  to  see  her. 


454 


Edmund  Brook. 


[October 


"  Master  told  us  that  Miss  Lucy  had 
been  brought  up  at  a  boarding-school, 
and  had  never  had  a  home,  and  she 
thought  now  she  would  have  a  home, 
and  would  find  a  sister  and  brothers 
in  his  children ;  and  that  she  did  not 
know  how  to  keep  house,  and  did  not 
wish  to  take  charge  of  anything  except- 
ing to  teach  the  children. 

'•'-  Miss  Caro  told  us  this  was  her 
mean  Yankee  blood,  that  was  made  for 
teachers,  and  was  fit  for  nothing  else. 

"  At  last  the  wedding-day  came  round. 
The  first  thing  she  asked  master  was 
that  we  should  all  come  to  the  wedding, 
and  so  we  did.  It  was  in  the  morning 
in  the  parlor,  and  we  crowded  all  the 
doors  and  windows.  She  did  look  pretty 
and  innocent,  and  I  did  not  blame  mas- 
ter so  much.  I  felt  sorry  for  her,  for  I 
knew  Miss  Caro  would  worry  her  life 
out  of  her. 

"  She  came  home  the  next  day,  and 
Miss  Caro  offered  her  the  head  of  the 
table  and  the  keys  ;  but  she  took  the 
seat  next  to  master,  and  said  that  she 
would  rather  have  her  keep  on,  as  she 
had  been,  for  that  she  did  not  know  how 
to  keep  house. 

"If  she  had  only  kept  to  that,  we 
would  all  have  worshipped  her. 

"The  boys  would  not  come  to  the 
table  or  go  near  her  for  some  days  ;  but 
they  would  stand  behind  the  door  and 
watch  her.  At  last  she  spied  them,  and 
ran  into  the  pantry  and  caught  them. 
One  she  drew  on  her  lap,  and  she  put 
her  arm  round  the  other  and  kissed 
them. 

"In  two  minutes  they  went  back  to 
the  parlor  with  her  ;  and  after  that  they 
followed  her  everywhere,  and  never 
wanted  to  be  parted  from  her  any 
more. 

"  About  three  months  after  she  was 
married  I  fell  in  love  myself,  and  then 
I  did  not  blame  master  at  all.  When 
I  first  saw  my  dear  Sally,  she  was  as 
pretty  a  girl  as  ever  was.  Her  hair  was 
beautifully  curled  and  plaited  into  puffs, 
her  brown  cheeks  were  fat  and  round, 
her  eyes  black  and  shining,  her  feet 
and  hands  pretty  as  any  lady's.  She 
was  brought  up  in  the  house,  like  my- 


self, and  belonged  to  a  superior  and 
ancient  family.  Therefore  my  family 
made  no  objection  ;  but  she  lived  five 
miles  off,  and  I  was  afraid  master  would 
object  because  he  would  not  want  to 
spare  me. 

"  My  grandmother  opened  the  sub- 
ject "to  him,  and  he  said,  as  I  expected, 
(I  was  listening  under  the  window,) 
*  Tut,  tut !  I  cannot  spare  Edmund  to 
be  always  running  away  so  far.  I  want 
him  right  here.  I  cannot  do  without 
him.' 

"  My  grandmother  was  coming  away, 
she  knew  that  master  would  come  round 
after  a  while,  but  Miss  Lucy  said,  '  Mr. 
Harrington,  I  don't  think  it  is  right  to 
look  at  our  convenience  only  in  this 
matter.  They  have  the  same  feelings 
as  ourselves.  How  would  you  like  to 
have  been  prevented  from  marrying 
me?' 

"  Master  always  did  whatever  Miss 
Lucy  said.  *  Tell  him  to  go  along  and 
get  married,'  he  called  after  my  grand- 
mother. I  heard  under  the  window.  I 
knew  all  was  settled. 

"The  Sunday  after  the  wedding  I 
brought  Sally  to  see  the  family.  Miss 
Lucy  gave  her  a  dress,  Miss  Caro  a 
bonnet,  and  we  had  a  grand  dinner  in 
the  kitchen ;  and  master  allowed  me  to 
drive  her  home  in  his  buggy,  which  es- 
pecially pleased  me,  because  I  wanted 
Sally  to  see  into  what  a  high  family  she 
had  married,  and  the  consideration  in 
which  I  was  held  by  all  my  owners. 

"  Soon  after  this  Miss  Caro  went  to 
Charleston  again,  and,  when  she  went, 
Miss  Lucy  took  the  keys.  The  first 
morning  that  she  went  to  give  out 
breakfast  she  followed  Maum  Dinah 
into  a  pantry  where  the  flour  was  kept, 
then  to  the  smoke-house  ;  then  to  the 
store-room,  where  were  rice,  flour,  meal, 
&c. ;  finally  to  a  closet  where  sugar,  cof- 
fee, pickles,  spices,  £c.  were.  When 
Miss  Lucy  was  done  giving  out,  she 
called  me,  and  told  me  to  call  another 
man  to  help. 

"  I  thought  what  was  coming,  but  I 
could  not  openly  disobey.  In  the  room 
where  flour  was  kept,  the  window  was 
fastened  only  with  a  rail  leaning  against 


1 868.] 


Edmund  Brook. 


455 


it.  The  light  wood  and  soap  were  kept 
in  the  smoke-house,  as  well  as  the 
meat,  which  of  course  gave  us  constant 
access  to  it.  This  Miss  Lucy  saw.  It 
was  master's  wish.  He  was  satisfied, 
and  that  gave  us  a  right  to  the  things. 
But  her  mean  notions  did  not  agree  to 
this.  She  made  me  move  the  flour  into 
the  store-room,  and  the  light  wood  into 
the  woodshed,  which  deprived  us  of 'our 
excuse  to  be  constantly  in  the  smoke- 
house. These  things  had  always  been 
our  right.  Master  could  not  but  know 
it,  and  he  had  always  allowed  it;  the 
things  were  his,  and  not  hers.  My  first 
mistress  had  never  come  looking  and 
looking  to  see  what  we  took,  and  I  was 
not  going  to  stand  it  now. 

"  I  could  not  help  moving  the  things, 
but  I  was  determined  to  be  even  with 
her.  When  she  came  in,  grandmother 
showed  her,  a  nail  by  the  closet  door. 
'This  is  where  the  keys  always  hang,' 
said  she. 

"Miss  Lucy  coolly  put  all  the  keys 
into  her  work-box,  and  locked  it." 

"  Miss  Lucy  then  undertook  to  look 
over  the  boys'  clothes.  She  observed 
in  a  moment  what  Miss  Caro  and  mas- 
ter had  never  found  out.  There  were 
no  last  summer,  or  last  winter,  or  out- 
grown clothes  on  hand.  Kate  had 
talked  about  these  things  being  gone 
several  times.  She  really  was  so  at- 
tached to  the  children,  and  so  anxious 
to  see  them  look  well,  that  she  was  glad 
to  see  Miss  Lucy  take  account  of  their 
clothes.  She  helped  her,  and  showed 
her  everything,  and  where  all  was 
kept. 

"  But  what  I  hated  was  to  see  her 
take  out  a  little  paper  book,  and  set 
down  all  the  articles  and  the  numbers 
of  each. 

"I  thought  we  still  had  means  of  get- 
ting ahead  of  her,  for  she  did  not  know 
how  much  rice,  flour,  sugar,  or  any- 
thing else  to  give  out.  I  had  noticed 
in  the  morning  that  she  let  Maum 
Dinah  take  just  what  she  said  was 
usual  of  everything. 

"But  that  evening  she  took  the  boys 
Tvith  her,  and  went  to  see  some  one. 
In  the  morning  she  appeared  with  a  list 


set  down  on  paper  of  everything  to  be 
given  out.  The  quantity  of  rice,  bacon, 
flour,  &c. 

"  In  a  day  or  two  more  she  had 
measures  and  weights.  Then  she  took 
to  counting  out  the  clothes  for  the 
wash,  which  no  real  lady  would  have 
thought  of. 

"  Of  course  we  could  not  appear  to 
care  for  all  this,  and  we  could  do  noth- 
ing until  Miss  Caro  came  back.  We 
thought  that  she  would  have  the  keys 
again,  for  she  was  the  oldest  of  the 
two. 

"At  length  Miss  Caro  did  come. 
The  next  morning,  after  breakfast.  Miss 
Lucy  handed  her  the  keys,  but  master 
said  that  he  wished  Miss  Lucy  to  keep 
them.  'Your  management,  my  dear,' 
he  said,  '  is  so  much  the  best,  and  the 
expense  so  much  less,  that  I  must  beg 
of  you  to  continue.' 

'"Then,  dear  Caro,'  said  Miss  Lucy, 
'we  will  divide  the  labor  between  us. 
If  you  please  you  shall  keep  Kate  un- 
der your  direction,  and  the  children's 
clothes,  and  I  will  do  the  housekeep- 
ing.' 

"  Miss  Caro  never  forgave  Miss 
Lucy  for  this.  But  I  will  not  dwell 
upon  these  affairs;  it  is  my  own  life 
that  I  am  telling. 

"Matters  went  on  thus  for  a  year. 
As  grandmother  had  always  been  looked 
upon  as  the  head  of  our  family,  and  a 
person  of  the  highest  character  and 
standing,  she  could  not  bear  to  be  thus 
imposed  upon  by  Miss  Lucy,  who 
might  have  been  her  grandchild  in 
years. 

"  As  for  me,  I  had  by  that  time  for- 
given her,  and  begun  to  feel  reconciled. 
Master  was  much  in  debt,  and  Miss 
Lucy  saved  so  much  money  that  he 
was  paying  off  fast.  We  had  seen, 
some  ten  years  before  this,  twenty  of 
our  fellow-servants  sold  off  to  pay  debts. 
It  was  a  dreadful  day  that  saw  them 
go.  But  debt  did  it,  and  master  could 
not  help  it.  We  knew  that  Miss  Lucy 
was  the  means  of  paying  master's 
debts.  I  considered  that  some  of  us 
would  have  to  go  for  them  if  they  were 
not  paid. 


456 


Edmund  Brook. 


[October, 


"  But  grandmother  always  boasted 
that  she  had  Indian  blood  in  her  veins, 
and  she  was  determined  to  be  revenged. 
I  always  told  grandmother  never  to  do 
anything  to  Miss  Lucy,  and  I  had  noth- 
ing to  do  with  what  she  did.  I  had 
a  young  sister  by  the  name  of  Elsie, 
about  fifteen  years  old  ;  she  was  Miss 
Lucy's  special  favorite  ;  she  loaded  her 
with  presents,  and  really,  I  believe, 
loved  her  dearly.  Grandmother  did  not 
let  Elsie  know  that  she  had  any  spite 
against  Miss  Lucy. 

"  One  morning  Miss  Lucy  was  sick ; 
she  did  not  get  up  nor  have  her  break- 
fast until  eleven  o'clock.  Then  fresh 
tea  was  to  be  made  for  her.  Elsie  had 
helped  her  to  dress,  and  came  to  ar- 
range *the  table  for  her,  and  to  wait 
upon  her.  I  was  away  that  morning; 
grandmother  knew  I  would  not  have 
let  her  do  it  had  I  been  there,  nor 
would  Maum  Dinah  ;  but  Miss  Lucy, 
taking  her  breakfast  after  eleven  o'clock, 
she  had  gone  to  get  vegetables.  I  was 
gone  for  beef,  and  no  one  was  about 
but  Elsie  and  grandmother.  When 
Elsie  gave  her  the  tea  to  make,  she  put 
something  in  it.  I  don't  know  what 
it  was. 

"  When  Miss  Lucy  poured  out  her 
tea,  it  tasted  to  her  badly.  She  put 
more  milk  and  sugar  in  it;  still  it 
tasted  so  badly  that  a  suspicion  came 
into  her  mind.  She  heard  grandmoth- 
er's voice  in  the  pantry.  She  said  to 
Elsie,  'You  can  have  this  cup  of  tea,  I 
will  make  another.'  Elsie  took  the  tea 
into  the  pantry,  and  Miss  Lucy  was 
listening ;  there  was  only  a  screen  be- 
tween. When  grandmother  saw  Elsie 
going  to  drink  it,  she  forgot  herself, 
dashed  it  from  her  hand,  and  broke  cup 
and  saucer  on  the  floor.  Of  course  Miss 
Lucy  heard  this  ;  she  knew  that  grand- 
mother would  not  let  Elsie  drink  it  if 
anything  was  in  it. 

"  But  she  kept  cool.  She  said  noth- 
ing, but  gave  Elsie  another  teapot,  and 
made  her  heat  water,  and  make  more 
tea  in  her  sight.  This  she  drank,  for 
she  was  sick  and  faint  already ;  but  she 
locked  up  the  teapot,  and  went  on  to 
the  store-room  as  usual.  Then  grand- 


mother knew  what  was  before  her  if 
that  tea  was  shown  to  any  doctor. 
While  Miss  Lucy  was  at  the  store- 
room, she  opened  the  door  with  a 
chisel,  threw  out  the  tea,  and  put  the 
fresh  leaves  and  tea,  which  Miss  Lucy 
had  left,  into  it.  But  the  teapot  was 
turned  black  inside.  Miss  Lucy  knew 
how  it  was,  but  grandmother  had  got 
ahead  of  her.  She  could  show  no  proof 
against  her. 

"  But  she  was  ordered  by  master  to 
go  to  her  house,  and  never  to  set  her 
foot  in  his  yard  again.  And  thus 
grandmother  was  disgraced  on  account 
of  Miss  Lucy  ;  for,  if  it  had  not  been 
for  her,  no  difficulty  would  have  ever 
happened.  This  affair  was  never  known 
off  of  the  plantation.  I  heard  Miss 
Lucy  say  to  master,  *  I  cannot  take 
away  her  character  without  proof;  the 
closet  door  was  open  when  I  came  in, 
but  suppose  the  possibility  that  I  had 
left  it  open.  It  is  enough  that  you  for- 
bid her  the  yard.5 

"  The  next  December  we  were  living 
as  usual  on  the  plantation.  Master 
used  to  give  frequent  dinner-parties, 
and  I  used  to  hear  the  gentlemen 
drinking  toasts  over  their  wine  to  the 
Lone  Star,  and  making  a  fuss  about  the 
North.  But  I  had  heard  a  fuss  about 
the  North  ever  since  I  could  remem- 
ber, and  I  thought  it  was  no  more  than 
usual. 

"But  one  day  I  drove  the  carnage  • 
into  Beaufort.  There  was  a  great  fuss. 
All  the  bells  were  ringing,  and  all  the 
men  and  boys  shouting.  Miss  Lucy 
asked  what  was  the  matter.  '  The  State 
has  seceded,'  somebody  said. 

"Now  the  white  people  did  not  think 
we  knew,  but  we  knew  very  well,  that 
the  quarrel  was  about  us.  We  knew 
that  the  Northern  men  were  trying  to 
set  us  free,  and  the  South  would  not  let 
us  go.  White  men,  sometimes  blacked 
as  negroes,  had  been  among  us,  over 
and  over,  to  try  and  set  -us  against  our 
owners.  But  in  Beaufort  most  all  of  us 
were  members  of  the  Baptist  Church, 
and  we  knew  very  well  it  was  not  right 
to  murder  our  masters.  Besides,  w 
knew  what  the  white  men  were  whe 


: 


1 868.] 


Edmund  Brook. 


457 


they  got  in  a  passion.  They  were  very 
good-natured  till  you  made  them  vexed. 
I  had  rather  have  seen  the  Devil  than 
my  master  in  a  passion  and  me  rebel- 
ling against  him.  I  'd  have  fallen  on 
my  knees,  I  know,  the  minute  he  or- 
dered me.  And  I  do  love  my  master, 
and  Miss  Caro,  and  the  children.  I 
would  rather  have  worked  for  them  all 
my  days  than  seen  them  have  to  work. 

"  But,  though  we  could  do  nothing 
(I  am  truly  glad  that  we  never  raised 
our  hands  against  those  who  had  fed 
and  provided  for  us,  and  cared  for  us  in 
sickness  ever  since  we  were  born),  it 
has  pleased  Providence  to  set  us  all 
free. 

"  The  next  thing  was  building  forts 
at  Hilton  Head  and  Bay  Point.  And 
O,  how  the  white  gentlemen  bragged, 
over  their  wine,  that  no  Yankee  ships 
could  enter  between  the  batteries  ! 

"  Colonel came  to  Beaufort  to 

see  the  batteries,  and  he  kept  drinking 
toasts  to  South  Carolina,  and  declaring 
how  splendid  the  batteries  were,  and 
how  much  the  Beaufort  gentlemen  knew 
about  fortifications  and  war. 

"  There  was  one  gentleman  there 
that  they  called  a  West-Pointer,  —  what 
that  was  I  can't  tell,  but  he  looked  just 
like  the  other  men,  for  all  the  world. 
He  talked  bigger  than  all,  and  he  took 
all  the  hands,  and  was  the  head  man 
in  building  the  forts.  One  day  a  little 
ship  belonging  to  us  brought  into  the 
harbor  a  big  ship  belonging  to  the 
Yankees. 

"  I  have  heard  that  there  is  a  country 
somewhere  t'  other  side  of  the  earth, — 
under  this  country,  I  suppose,  —  and, 
though  they  live  underneath  other  peo- 
ple, the  people  there  think  that  they 
are  celestial  people,  —  which  means 
heavenly  people,  —  and  that  other  peo- 
ple are  only  put  on  top  of  the  earth  to 
shade  them  from  the  sun.  And  they 
think  that  they  stand  still,  and  the  sun, 
the  earth,  and  the  moon  go  round  them. 
And  the  Beaufort  people  thought  just 
so.  But,  as  I  take  it,  the  whole  earth 
stands  still,  and  the  sun  and  moon  go 
round  it.  .  It  is  not  only  Beaufort  that 
stands  still,  but  the  whole  earth.  I 


know  this  because  it  is  against  common 
sense  to  suppose  that  grass  and  trees 
and  cotton  could  grow  if  the  ground 
moved.  I  have  heard  people  say  dif- 
ferent, but  I  had  the  natural  sense  to 
know  better. 

"  And  the  Beaufort  people  did  not 
go  anywhere  else  much.  I  have  heard 
them  say  often  that  there  was  not  such 
a  place  from  Canada  to  Mexico  as 
Beaufort.  But  I  had  been  to  Philadel- 
phia with  master  when  I  was  a  boy, 
and  I  had  been  to  Charleston,  and  I 
knew  that  other  people  lived  just  as 
they  did,  except  that  they  did  not  drink 
so  much  wine  nor  so  many  toasts  after 
dinner.  The  drinking  toasts  did  not 
help  South  Carolina  one  bit,  though  they 

drank  them  to  help  her.  Colonel , 

he  drank  so  many  that  when  he  went  to 
the  forts  he  thought  them  pretty  hard 
to  get  up,  and  he  thought  the  Yankees 
would  find  it  pretty  hard  too. 

"  All  were  sure  and  certain  that  no 
enemy  could  get  into  Beaufort  harbor. 
But  law  !  when  the  Yanks  got  ready, 
they  came  right  in.  One  day  the  ene- 
my were  reported  in  sight ;  the  West- 
Pointer  (whatever  that  may  be,  he  only- 
looked  like  a  fat,  big,  middle-aged  man) 
sent  word  to  the  town  of  Beaufort  for 
nobody  to  be  scared. 

"  But  the  next  morning  the  ships 
took  the  middle  passage,  knocked  the 
forts  to  pieces,  and  sailed  past  them 
quite  fair  and  easy.  Then  the  men 
landed  all  in  blue,  with  a  large  flag  fly- 
ing, and  headed  by  three  or  four  more 
West-Pointers,  who  were  little  slim 
men,  with  little  waists,  and  red  sashes 
to  show  how  little  they  were,  —  the  slim- 
mest waist  ones  were  the  highest  offi- 
cers,—  they  scrambled  over  the  ditches 
and  embankments.  Our  men  cut  across 
through  the  mud,  and  over  the  marsh 
to  Ladies'  Island,  so  fast  that  it  'most 
made  them  think  that  the  Yanks  were 
men  as  well  as  themselves. 

"But  this  was  nothing  to  the  town 
of  Beaufort  when  the  news  came.  The 
old  ladies  lifted  up  their  hands,  and 
said  that  Satan  was  let  loose,  and  these 
were  the  evil  days. 

"  Wagons,  carriages,  carts,  and  every- 


458 


Edmund  Brook. 


[October, 


thing  else  were  got  ready  ;  everything 
was  loaded  with  people,  sick  and  well ; 
they  all  went,  only  one  white  man  re- 
mained in  the  town.  Many  of  the 
house-servants  went  with  their  masters. 
Among  these  was  Elsie  and  me,  and 
Sally,  who  was  staying  in  the  town  at 
the  time. 

"  I  always  treated  Sally's  family 
(owners)  with  the  greatest  possible  po- 
liteness and  consideration.  Master 
was  a  perfect  gentleman  in  his  manners, 
and  I  had  the  advantage  of  seeing  the 
best  society  always  before  me,  and  I 
had  learned  to  model  my  behavior  ac- 
cordingly. 

"  The  shell  road  from  Beaufort  to 
Port  Royal  Ferry  was  crowded  with 
carriages,  wagons,  foot-passengers  and 
even  wheelbarrows,  all  fleeing  into  the 
interior.  We  had  a  carriage,  a  buggy, 
and  two  wagons.  Mrs.  Brocktin  (Sally's 
mistress)  and  her  family  travelled  in 
company  with  us  ;  she  had  a  carriage 
and  wagon.  Mrs.  Brocktin  had  no  son, 
but  only  daughters.  I  therefore  begged 
my  master  to  excuse  me  as  much  as 
possible,  that  I  might  help  her  at  all 
the  stopping-places.  In  crossing  the 
ferry,  the  road  was  blocked  up  by  the 
wagons  and  carriages  in  waiting. 

"  Many  passed  the  night  on  both  sides 
of  the  ferry.  We  found  shelter  with  a 
friend  of  master's  on  the  main  for  that 
night.  Miss  Caro  wished  to  go  on  to 
Charleston,  and  master  therefore  went 
on  there.  Master  had  relations  there  to 
stop  with  until  he  could  rent  a  house. 
Fortunately  we  had  some  bales  of  Sea 
Island  cotton  at  our  factor's.  We  ex- 
perienced no  want  of  money,  and  I  soon 
found  myself  quite  at  home  ;  though 
master  moaned  dismally  about  his  plan- 
tation and  house  that  he  was  obliged 
to  leave. 

"  Master  sent  me  back  to  Beaufort 
at  one  time  to  see  what  they  were  all  do- 
ing there.  The  field-negroes  had  come 
into  the  town,  and  overrun  it.  They 
were  living  in  all  their  masters'  houses, 
sleeping  in  piles  on  the  carpets  and 
beds,  and,  too  lazy  to  go  and  cut 
wood,  they  were  splitting  up  the  garden 
fences  and  even  chairs  to  make  fires. 


The  little  ones  were  running  over  the 
streets,  blowing  the  pipes  broken  out 
of  the  church  organ. 

"  I  went  into  our  parlors.  Six  field- 
niggers  were  asleep  on  the  carpet,  in 
broad  daylight.  Grandmother  sat  in  the 
rocking-chair  smoking ;  some  strange 
woman  was  drumming  on  the  piano. 
'Grandmother,'  I  said,  'are  you  having 
all  this  done  ? ' 

"'No,'  she  said;  'Edmund,  I  am 
keeping  them  from  burning  master's 
house.  I  did  not  care  how  much  they 
took  Miss  Lucy's  things,  but  I  won't 
let  them  burn  master's  house.' 

"  I  was  not  so  much  surprised  at  this 
behavior  of  the  field-negroes,  but  I  saw 
a  white  man  with  them,  whom  I  had 
always  taken  to  be  a  gentleman,  and  I 
was  astonished  at  him.  He  had  a  queer 
name,  which  I  have  forgotten  ;  he  had 
been  spying  out  every  creek  and  inlet 
along  the  coast  for  some  time.  He  had 
been  received  by  all  the  planters  along 
the  coast  with  unbounded  hospitality. 
I  had  often  seen  him  dining  at  master's 
table,  and  master  used  to  leave  orders 

that  whenever  Mr. 's  (why  can  I 

not  call  his  name  ?)  vessel  came  off  the 
place,  or  he  came  ashore,  should  be 
supplied  with  whatever  the  plantation 
afforded,  —  fresh  beef,  mutton,  poultry, 
butter,  eggs,  not  even  forgetting  to 
leave  out  wine  and  cigars  for  his  use. 
Other  Beaufort  planters  had  treated 
him  in  the  same  manner.  He  had  now 
joined  the  soldiers  in  Beaufort,  and  was 
showing  them  all  the  different  planta- 
tions, and  telling  them  who  had  the 
best  wine,  horses,  stock,  and  everything 
else. 

"  I  have  a  brown  skin,  to  be  sure,  and 
I  never  thought  it  harm  to  lift  a  little, 
if  master  had  plenty ;  but  I  could  not 
have  found  it  in  my  heart  to  carry  and 
show  the  Yankees  the  very  places 
where  I  had  been  entertained  and 
treated  kindly,  and  never  allowed  to  be 
at  any  expense.  He  showed  them  mas- 
ter's plantation,  his  cellar,  his  horses 
and  mules,  cattle  and  sheep.  They 
took  possession  there,  and  after  a  while 
the  house  was  burned,  and  all  the  stand- 
ing furniture,  pictures,  &c.,  and  every- 


1868.] 


Edmund  Brook. 


459 


thing  which  had  not  been  taken  away, 
was  burned  too.  But  this  was  not  until 
some  time  afterwards. 

"  I  came  back  to  Charleston,  and  told 
master  all  that  they  were  doing.  The 
people  in  Charleston  had  already  got 
the  news  of  all  this  foreign  man's  doings, 
and  it  made  a  great  talk  there. 

"All  this  time  a  young  man  of 
Charleston  was  visiting  Miss  Caro.  He 
was  a  very  clever  young  man  too,  but 
he  was  not  of  a  noble  and  ancient  family 
like  ours.*  I  heard  him  telling  Miss 
Caro  one  day  that  Miss  Lucy  looked  so 
good,  and  that  the  children  were  so 
fond  of  her.  Miss  Caro  told  him  that 
Miss  Lucy  just  talked  so  before  him  for 
deceitfulness.  She  made  him  think  that 
Miss  Lucy  was  really  very  bad  to  her, 
and  she  pretended  to  hurry  her  mar- 
riage on  that  account.  She  said  master 
had  married  to  please  himself,  and  she 
should  do  the  same.  Master  was  so 
worn  out  with  Miss  Caro's  complaints 
against  Miss  Lucy,  and  the  jealousies 
between  them,  and  losing  his  property 
and  all,  that  he  did  not  have  any  heart 
left  to  contend  with  any  of  them.  So 
Miss  Caro  just  did  as  she  pleased. 

"But,  as  it  turned  out,  Mr.  Baron 
really  is  a  very  clever  gentleman.  He 
belonged  to  the  company  of  those  that 
ran  the  blockade,  and  made  a  great 
deal  of  money.  My  sister  Kate  went 
with  Miss  Caro  when  she  married,  but 
Elsie  and  I  stayed  with  Miss  Lucy. 

"Soon  after  the  fire  in  Charleston 
(I  was  in  Beaufort  at  that  time),  master 
found  rent  and  living  so  high  that  he 
removed  to  the  upper  part  of  the  State. 
Miss  Caro  wrote  that  old  Mrs.  Brocktin 
was  dead,  and  that  there  was  to  be  a 
sale  and  division  of  all  her  property. 
This  included  Sally  too,  and  our  two 
little  children,  —  for  we  had  two  by  this 
time.  A  few  clays  afterwards  I  came 
to  ask  master  to  let  me  go  to  Charles- 
ton to  see  her,  and  to  see  what  I  could 
do  for  her.  Master  allowed  me  to  go, 
and  also  trusted  me  with  an  order  to 
his  old  factor  to  sell  his  carriage  and 

*  The  negroes  always  called  everything  belonging 
to  their  master  theirs.  For  instance,  it  would  be  <ntr 
parlor,  our  piano,  our  carriage,  and  our  young  ladies, 
our  ancient  family,  and  our  estate. 


horses,  wagons,  and  mules,  all  which 
he  had  left  with  Mr.  Baron  when  he 
came  to  the  up-country.  I  was  to  bring 
him  back  the  money,  and  return  after  a 
fortnight's  stay.  Before  I  went,  I  had 
a  conversation  with  master  and  Miss 
Lucy  about  buying  Sally.  Master  was 
willing  to  buy  in  her  and  the  children, 
on  a  credit,  and  Miss  Lucy  was  willing 
too.  I  must  say  that  this  was  clever 
of  Miss  Lucy ;  for  she  saw  so  plainly 
that  I  disliked  her,  and  was  unwilling 
to  serve  her,  that  for  a  long  time  past 
she  had  been  content  that  I  should 
wait  on  master ;  she  never  required  any- 
thing of  me  herself.  Yet,  when  Sally 
was  to  be  sold,  she  seemed  to  feel  a 
great  deal  for  me,  and  was  quite  will- 
ing that  master  should  buy  her  in.  But 
I  told  master  that  I  did  not  care  about 
his  buying  her,  that  I  thought  Sally 
wanted  to  go  to  her  own  young  mistress. 
I  said  this  out  of  politeness,  but  my 
real  reason  was  that  I  did  not  want 
Sally  to  belong  to  a  lady  who  was  so 
mean,  and  who  locked  up  everything 
and  took  account  of  everything  as  Miss 
Lucy  did.  We  felt  mean  to  come  to 
ask  for  everything,  and  we  did  not 
like  to  do  it. 

"  When  I  got  to  Charleston,  I  went 
first  to  see  Sally ;  she  was  very  much 
grieved  for  her  old  mistress,  but  so 
glad  to  see  me  that  she  nearly  got  over* 
it.  She  said  that  her  young  mistress 
would  buy  her  in,  as  I  expected.  I 
then  went  to  see  Miss  Caro,  and  told 
her  that  master  wished  the  things  sold 
which  he  had  left  with  Mr.  Baron. 
Miss  Caro  was  using  the  carriage,  and 
she  said  that  master  had  not  given  her 
any  other  property,  and  that  they  were 
little  enough  for  her  to  have.  Mr. 
Baron  said  he  felt  grieved  about  master, 
and  that  he  might  be  in  much  need. 
I  told  him  that  master  was  then  with- 
out any  other  means  of  getting  food 
except  by  the  sale  of  these  articles. 
Mr.  Baron  said  that  they  should  be 
immediately  sold;  but  Miss  Caro  so 
worked  around  him,  in  the  course  of  a 
week,  as  to  persuade  him  that  this  call 
came  from  Miss  Lucy's  influence,  who 
was  only  jealous  of  her  retaining  any 


460 


Edmund  Brook. 


[October, 


part  of  her  father's  property,  and  only 
wanted  to  deprive  her  of  it. 

"  I  was  waiting  on  the  supper-table 
.  one  evening,  and  heard  them  talking 
over  the  matter,  and  agreeing  that  Miss 
Lucy  did  not  choose  to  let  master  part 
with  any  property  but  what  was  to  be 
taken  from  Miss  Caro.  I  was  so  bold 
as  to  put  in  and  assure  them  that  mas- 
ter was  really  in  need,  and  could  not 
get  sale,  in  the  up-country,  for  the  few 
articles  of  value  which  remained  to  him. 

" '  I  see  that  Lucy  has  won  you 
over,  and  set  you  against  me,  as  she 
did  my  father  and  the  children,'  said 
Miss  Caro. 

"  '  I  do  not  like  Miss  Lucy  any  more 
than  you  do,  Miss  Caro,'  said  I  ;  *  but 
my  dear  master  is  anxious  and  suffer- 
ing.' 

•  "  '  How,  then,  did  he  offer  to  buy  in 
Sally  and  your  children  ?  You  don't 
make  me  believe  any  such  thing  ! '  said 
Miss  Caro. 

" '  Master  was  to  get  them  on  credit,' 
I  answered  ;  '  but  I  let  Miss  Lucy  know 
that  I  did  not  wish  them  under  her.' 

"  Miss  Caro  said  no  more  then  ;  but 
she  kept  me  driving  her  out  in  the  car- 
riage, and  I  saw  that  she  did  not  mean 
to  give  it  up.  In  the  mean  time  I  was 
afraid  master  was  suffering. 

"  So  one  day,  after  I  had  set  Miss 
Caro  down  at  her  own  door,  I  very 
coolly  drove  the  carriage  and  horses 
to  Mr.  Brodee,  the  factor,  gave  it  up  to 
him,  and  gave  him  masters  order  for 
the  sale  of  wagons,  mules,  and  all.  I 
did  not  choose  to  let  him"  into  our  fami- 
ly affairs,  but  I  knew,  when  he  presented 
the  order,  Miss  Caro  would  be  ashamed 
to  make  objections,  or  to  refuse  to  give 
up  the  things  to  him. 

"  Mr.  Brodee  made  a  fine  sale  of  the 
carriage  and  horses,  and  sent  me  with 
a  check  for  gold  for  master,  and  a  mes- 
sage that  he  would  look  out  until  he 
could  do  the  same  by  the  other  things. 

"  When  I  came  back,  I  found  master 
really  in  need.  He  was  overjoyed  to 
get  the  check,  and  allowed  me  to  return 
immediately  to  be  with  Sally,  making 
me  a  handsome  present  besides. 

"  I   cannot  say  that   I    felt  as   our 


Northern  brethren  would  suppose  when 
I  saw  Sally  and  my  children  put  upon 
the  block.  I  knew  already  that  Mrs. 
Allenby  (Mrs.  Brocktin's  daughter) 
would  buy  them  in,  whatever  price  they 
went  at ;  and  I  had  rather  they  should 
be  away  from  me  part  of  the  time  dur- 
ing master's  stay  in  the  up-country,  than 
be  under  so  close  a  mistress  as  Miss 
Lucy.  Besides,  I  knew  that  in  the 
wretched,  poor  little  place  where  mas- 
ter had  gone,  and  without  carriage  and 
horses,  I  was  more  expense  than  use 
to  him  ;  and  I  intended  to  ask  Mrs. 
Allenby  to  hire  me.  This  arrangement 
was  entered  into  for  a  few  months ;  but, 
on  the  reserves  being  ordered  out,  mas- 
ter was  obliged  to  go  too.  So  he  sent 
for  me  to  attend  him  in  camp,  and  I 
instantly  went. 

lt  I  joined  my  master  in  a  camp  near 
the  Georgia  line  ;  here  were  a  few  tents, 
which  had  been  erected  to  hold  camp- 
meetings  in.  One  Sunday  evening  we 
heard  distant  cannonading  ;  it  proved 
to  be  the  fall  of  Atlanta.  At  that  very 
time  the  reserves  of  South  Carolina 
and  Georgia  were  in  camp.  My  master 
prayed  and  entreated  the  major  to 
march  there,  when  we  heard  the  can- 
nonading, but  he  could  not  move  with- 
out orders.  At  length,  after  the  fall  of 
Atlanta,  some  of  the  reserves  were  or- 
dered home  again,  and  some  to  guard 
the  Yankee  prisoners  near  Columbia. 
My  poor  master  seemed  to  forget  all  his 
own  troubles  in  his  indignation  at  not 
being  ordered  to  Georgia ;  for  we  could 
now  hear  how  General  Hood  had  gone 
to  the  West,  and  Sherman  was  marching 
through  all  the  lower  part  of  Georgia. 

"  We  knew  that,  if  our  masters  were 
conquered,  we  would  be  likely  to  be  set 
free  ;  yet  I  cannot  say  that  I  used  to 
wish  the  success  of  the  Yankee  army. 
It  brought  with  it  ruin  and  distress  to 
those  whom  I  loved  and  served ;  and 
though  slavery  did  cause  among  us  the 
evils  of  deceit,  lying,  and  stealing,  as  I 
feel  now  (when  I  am  dying),  yet  it  also 
caused  a  deep  interest  and  affection  for 
our  master's  families,  and  an  unselfish 
devotion  to  them,  which  I  fear  our  chil- 
dren will  never  know. 


1 868.] 


Edmund  Brook. 


461 


"  When  we  were  ordered  to  guard  the 
prison  camp  in  Columbia,  I  asked  mas- 
ter's permission  to  return  home  for  a 
while.  Elsie  was  going  to  be  married. 
Her  mother  had  been  left  in  Beaufort 
with  grandmother,  and  there  was  no 
one  to  act  a  father's  and  mother's  part 
by  her  but  me.  A  very  respectable 
colored  gentleman,  by  the  name  of 
Richard  Williams,  had  been  coming 
to  see  her  above  a  year.  He  did  not 
belong  to  one  of  the  old  families  of  the 
State,  to  be  sure,  but  to  the  parvenus, 
as  master  called  them.  But  his  family 
(owners)  were  getting  rich.  I  had 
dreadful  misgivings  that  ours  were  go- 
ing down.  One  reason  with  me  for 
leaving  master  in  camp  for  a  while  was, 
that  I  knew  Miss  Lucy  did  not  feel  a 
proper  pride  in  family  distinction.  If 
she  only  had  bread  and  tea  for  dinner, 
she  did  not  mind  saying  so  at  all.  She 
had  made  us  all  very  angry  with  her 
more  than  once,  in  Beaufort,  by  saying 
to  company  that  master  was  much  in 
debt,  and  that  she  was  trying  to  econo- 
mize. 

"  And,  now  that  Elsie  was  going  to 
be  married,  I  procured  a  relation  of 
mine  to  wait  on  my  master  in  my  place 
until  I  came  back,  and  I  went  home  to 
the  wedding. 

"  The  very  evening  that  I  got  home, 
Mr.  Williams  was  coming  to  ask  Miss 
Lucy's  consent  to  the  marriage.  She 
had,  in  fact,  given  it  already,  for  she 
had  allowed  Elsie  every  opportunity  to 
walk  out  with  him,  and  to  see  him  all 
the  time  ;  but  it  was  proper  that,  in 
master's  absence,  her  consent  should 
be  asked. 

"  Elsie  told  me  that  Miss  Lucy  had 
not  a  candle  in  the  house  ;  that  she 
used  light-wood  entirely,  which  the  boys 
picked  up.  I  had  one  piece  of  silver  in 
my  pocket.  I  instantly  went  out  and 
purchased  two  candles,  and  sent  Elsie 
to  put  them  in  the  candlesticks,*  and  to 
see  that  everything  looked  nice  in  the 
parlor  before  Richard  should  arrive. 

"  Miss  Lucy  had  been  sitting  on  a 
low  seat,  near  the   chimney-place,  all 
the  evening.     I  think  she  was  crying. 
*  Fact. 


She  did  not  seem  to  think  it  of  any  im- 
portance how  to  receive  Richard,  though 
she  knew  that  he  was  coming. 

"  We  did  not  know  how  to  manage 
getting  her  to  dfess ;  but  Elsie  at 
length  begged  Mass  Lawrence  to  go 
and  tell  her  that  Richard  was  coming ; 
and  the  children  managed  to  tell  her 
that  we  wanted  her  to  put  on  a  silk 
dress,  and  some  gold  rings  and  brooches, 
that  Richard  might  not  say  that  his  fami- 
ly were  superior  to  ours.  She  stopped 
crying  when  she  heard  this,  and  smiled  ; 
and  Elsie  said,  '  If  you  please,  ma'am.' 

"  '  I  did  not  know  that  it  was  of  any 
consequence  how  I  looked,  Elsie,'  she 
said ;  '  I  thought  the  matter  was  now 
how  you  looked.' 

"  «  Yes,  ma'am,'  said  Elsie  ;  «  Richard 
thinks  already  that  his  master  drives  a 
handsome  carriage  and  horses,  and  that 
we  have  none.  But  master  did  have 
everything  very  handsome.' 

"When  Miss  Lucy  came  down,  I 
had  'put  cedar  in  the  parlor  chimney, 
and  lighted  the  candles  ;  I  did  not  like 
Richard  to  think  that  we  used  light- 
wood  in  the  parlor. 

"  When  Richard  spoke  to  Miss  Lucy, 
she  gave  her  consent  very  graciously 
and  kindly,  and  agreed  that  the  mar- 
riage should  take  place  while  I  was  at 
home. 

"But  I  could  still  see  about  Miss 
Lucy  the  same  lamentable  want  of  pride 
and  consequence  which  I  had  always 
noticed.  To  be  sure,  she  took  Elsie  up 
stairs  to  her  wardrobe  ;  and,  though  she 
had  but  few  dresses  left,  she  gave  her 
a  white  and  a  colored  one.  She  really 
did  spare  her  what  she  could  ;  but  she 
seemed  to  take  no  manner  of  interest 
about  the  supper.  She  even  said  she 
thought  we  had  better  have  the  wed- 
ding in  daylight  and  at  church.  I  had 
no  idea  of  such  a  thing,  and  yet  was  at 
my  wit's  end  to  furnish  a  large  sup- 
per. 

"  I  recollected  master's  wagon  and 
mules  in  Charleston,  which  I  had  left 
with  the  factor  to  be  sold.  I  thought, 
too,  that  Miss  Caro  might  help  me  a 
little ;  and  then  I  remembered  that  my 
wages  were  still  due  from  Mrs.  Allenby. 


462 


Edmund  Brook. 


[October, 


So  I  went  to  Miss  Lucy,  and  asked  her 
to  give  me  a  pass  to  go  to  Charleston 
on  the  cars  ;  telling  her  that  I  would 
collect  the  money  for  the  wagon  and 
mules  for  her,  and  admitting  that  I 
wished  to  collect  something  myself  to 
furnish  Elsie's  wedding-supper. 

•  "  Miss  Lucy  consented,  and  thanked 
me  for  going  for  her,  adding  that  she 
was  willing  to  furnish  all  that  she  could  ; 
for,  through  all  her  troubles,  Elsie  had 
been  like  a  dear  friend  to  her. 

"  I  collected  the  money  for  Miss 
Lucy  from  Mr.  Brodee,  and  I  collected 
my  wages  from  Mrs.  Allenby.  I  told 
her  that  master  allowed  me  the  wages 
to  furnish  Elsie's  wedding ;  and  so  he 
did,  when  he  knew  about  it.  I  got 
from  her  —  for  she  lived  on  a  farm 
above  the  city  —  a  pair' of  turkeys,  a 
ham,  plenty  of  lard,  flour,  and  molasses. 
I  took  upon  myself  to  ask  Mr.  Brodee 
to  send  some  sugar  and  coffee  to  Miss 
Lucy.  He  did  so,  and  I  made  sure  of 
enough  out  of  that. 

"  Thus  we  had  a  splendid  supper.  I 
arranged  and  .ordered  everything,  and 
did  most  of  the  cooking  myself;  for  I 
knew  much  more  about  cakes  and  pas- 
try than  Miss  Lucy  did. 

"  Elsie  was  married  in  Miss  Lucy's 
parlor  about  nine  o'clock.  I  did  not 
choose  to  have  the  hour  early  like  the 
crackers  (poor  whites).  The  white  min- 
ister and  his  family  were  invited  to  re- 
main to  take  tea  with  Miss  Lucy.  After 
handing  tea,  which  Richard  and  I  did, 
we  danced  in  a  hall  near  by  until  one 
o'clock.  Then  the  company  were  asked 
to  supper.  We  had  everything  hand- 
some, complete,  and  served  in  the  nicest 
manner. 

"  But  my  mind  troubled  me  so  much 
about  master,  that  I  determined  to  go  to 
the  depot  that  very  night,  and  start  for 
Columbia  at  sunrise.  When  I  reached 
master,  I  found  that  the  man  whom  I 
had  engaged  to  wait  on  him  in  my  ab- 
sence had  left  him ;  so  I  was  glad 
enough  that  I  had  come  immediately 
on.  My  poor  master  was  trying  to 
cook  for  himself.  I  arrived  about  three 
o'clock,  and  William  had  left  the  day 
before,  though  he  promised  me  not  to 


leave  master  until  I  came  back.  I 
wasted  no  time,  but  rushed  to  the 
colonel's  quarters.  As  I  expected, 
they  were  at  dinner.  I  told  the  colonel 
I  wanted  a  place  as  waiter.  I  showed 
myself  so  smart  that  he  engaged  me  on 
the  spot.  After  dinner,  I  made  friends 
with  the  cook,  got  everything  I  wanted, 
and  hurried  back  to  master  with  an  ele- 
gant plate  of  hot  dinner,  and  some 
whiskey  and  tobacco. 

"  I  had  not  said  anything  to  Miss 
Lucy  about  my  coming  away  so  imme- 
diately ;  and  I  now  felt  sorry  for  this, 
because  she  would  have  sent  master 
some  money  if  she  had  known  it.  I 
found  him  now  without  any  ;  but  when 
I  proposed  that  he  should  send  for 
some  part  of  the  money  which  Mr.  Bro- 
dee had  sent,  he  declined,  declaring 
that  he  would  do  with  his  rations,  and 
that  he  would  rather  leave  that  to  Miss 
Lucy  and  the  children. 

"  The  Yankee  prisoners  (all  officers) 
were  placed  within  the  walls  of  the  lu- 
natic asylum.  There  was  a  considera- 
ble space  enclosed  by  these  walls,  and 
there  were  many  booths  and  tents  erected 
there  for  their  temporary  shelter.  The 
soldiers  appointed  to  guard  these  pris- 
oners were  encamped  in  canvas  tents 
across  the  street  opposite  the  asylum. 
The  officers  occupied  a  church  on  the 
corner,  and  the  colonel's  quarters  were 
in  a  handsome  house  near  by. 

"  I  was  successful  in  ingratiating  my- 
self so  much  with  these  officers,  that  I 
made  handsomely  by  waiting  on  them. 
My  master  received  only  the  rations  of 
a  common  soldier.  One  pint  of  corn 
meal,  with  the  husk  in  it,  a  gill  of  sor- 
ghum, and  sometimes  a  little  beef,  was 
all  that  was  served  out  to  him.  I 
to  rise  at  daylight,  prepare  his  break- 
fast, and  make  his  fire  before  the 
colonel's  breakfast  was  ready.  I  had 
supplied  him  with  everything  that  he 
required  for  the  day.  I  then  waited  on 
the  officers'  breakfast,  and  they  left 
everything  in  my  charge.  I  did  not 
mind  taking  what  I  wanted  for  myselt 
at. all;  but  I  thought  it  might  go 
against  my  master's  honor  and  re- 
spectability afterwards,  that  he  should 


1 868.] 


Edmund  Brook. 


463 


share  in  anything  taken.  So  I  asked 
the  colonel,  plainly,  '  Sir,  am  I  to  put 
up  what  you  leave  on  the  table  ?  or  is 
it  for  me  ?  ' 

"  *  No,'  said  he,  '  my  good  fellow  ;  as 
long  as  you  please  us  so  well,  do  what 
you  like  with  it.' 

"  This  suited  me  exactly  ;  for  they 
lived  well,  and  I  was  able  every  day  to 
save  abundance  for  my  master  out  of 
the  dishes  which  had  been  cut.  I  also 
kept  him  in  tobacco,  did  his  cooking, 
and  found  time  to  do  his  washing. 

"  When  his  time  came  to  be  on 
guard  duty,  I  offered  to  take  his  place. 
This  was  not  allowed  ;  but  I  kept  fire 
for  him,' and  always  had  something  hot 
for  him  when  he  came  off.  My  poor 
I  master,  who  had  been  delicately  brought 
|  up,  and  accustomed  to  have  every  lux- 
ury and  delicacy,  without  work,  used 
now  to  stand  guard  on  some  nights  of 
rain  and  cold,  —  such  that,  when  he 
I  came  in,  his  clothes  were  stiff  with  ice, 
and  his  very  hair  and  beard  frozen. 

"  Then  I  had  fire  made  for  him,  and 
his  other  suit  of  clothes  dry  and  warm. 
I  often  carried  him,  while  on  guard, 
a  hot  toddy.  I  always  had  one  ready 
for  him  early  in  the  morning. 

"But  these  were  not  all  the  resources 
at  my  command.  The  Yankee  prison- 
ers were  allowed  to  receive  everything 
sent  them  by  way  of  Hilton  Head. 
They  frequently  received  boxes  of  ev- 
erything good,  from  their  friends  at  the 
North,  and  many  of  them  had  plenty 
;  of  gold  too. 

'•  I  will  here  acknowledge  one  trans- 
Action  in  which  I  was  engaged  without 
master's  knowledge,  and  for  which  he 
id  have  blamed  me  if  he  had  known 


"  I  had  access  to  the  prisoners  at  all 
times  during  the  day ;  and  they  more 
than  once  paid  me  gold  and  provisions 
to  buy  whiskey  for  them,  and  smuggle 
it  to  them.  I  could  not  see  any  harm 
in  their  comforting  themselves  with  it, 
and  the  money  did  me  plenty  of  good. 

"  There  was  one  young  officer  among 
them,  who  was  frantic  to  get  out  of  the 
enclosure.  He  was  quite  a  young  and 
handsome  man,  and  he  wore  a  seal 


ring,  with  the  likeness  of  a  young  lady 
in  it.  I  suspected  that  this  young  fel- 
low was  engaged  to  some  beautiful 
lady,  and  that  this  was  the  reason 
he  was  so  anxious  to  get  away.  He 
constantly  gave  me  money  as  I  was 
passing  in  and  out. 

"  At  length  he  begged  me  to  slip  into 
his  tent  one  night,  and  see  him,  and  I 
agreed  to  do  so.  My  master  was  on 
guard  that  night,  and  he  always  thought 
that  what  I  was  about  must  be  all  right. 
I  brought  him  some  hot  toddy  and  a 
cracker,  and,  as  I  expected,  he  took  no 
notice  in  what  direction  I  disappeared. 
When  his  back  was  turned  the  farthest, 
I  seized  upon  a  rope  lowered  over 
the  wall,  and,  being  very  light  and 
active,  I  quickly  landed  inside  of  the 

prison  bounds.  Captain was  on 

the  other  side.  We  stooped  down,  un- 
der the  shadow  of  the  wall,  and  he 
showed  me  five  gold-pieces.  I  followed 
him  to  his  tent,  and  there  he  showed 
me  five  more,  and  a  large  box  of  cloth- 
ing and  provisions,  which  had  just  ar- 
rived a  few  days  before.  'All  these,' 
said  he, '  are  yours,  Edmund,  if  you  will 
get  me  out  of  this  place.' 

" '  I  am  afraid,'  I  replied,  '  it  will  get 
my  master  into  trouble.' 

"  '  No,'  he  said  ;  ^  he  will  know  noth- 
ing of  it,  and  can  never  be  suspected. 

"  At  length  he  persuaded  me  that  it 
could  not  be  laid  on  master,  and 
then  I  was  more  ready  to  enter  into 
his  schemes. 

"  I  was  cunning  enough  to  see  (which 
he  did  not)  that,  if  I  was  seen  with  his 
clothing,  I  would  be  suspected  of  hav- 
ing helped  him  to  get  away.  He  was  to 
sell  his  clothing  and  provisions  himself. 
I  would  be  seen  to  have  nothing  to  do 
with  him.  He  was  to  pay  me  the  ten 
gold -pieces,  and  what  the  clothing 
brought.  I  was  to  take  the  place 
of  one  of  the  guard,  some  dark,  rainy 
night,  and  let  him  pass.  I  also  put  him 
up  to  not  showing  any  gold  to  the  coun- 
try people  above  Columbia,  but  to  get 
enough  Confederate  money  to  take  him 
along.  I  advised  him  to  pretend  he  was 
a  Confederate  soldier  making  his  way 
through  the  country  to  Virginia,  not 


464 


Edmund  Brook. 


[October, 


to  show  much  money,  to  wear  an  old 
uniform  of  master's,  and  appear  very 
poor. 

"  Now,  I  must  say  for  myself  that  I 
was  as  much  trusted  in  camp  as  any 
white  man  there.  The  command  was 
made  up  of  old  men  and  boys  from  the 
up-country.  The  boys  were  as  simple 
as  if  they  had  on  their  first  frocks  ;  no 
matter  what  I  told  them,  they  believed 
every  word  of  it.  I  used  to  tell  them, 
that  my  master  had  been  the  king  of 
the  largest  sea  island  south  of  Beaufort, 
and  also  that  he  was  a  judge  down 
there,  —  how  he  sat  in  a  pulpit  in  the 
court-room,  and  had  a  long  switch  in  his 
hand  to  touch  up  the  lawyers  when  they 
did  not  plead  right. 

"  This  and  much  more  I  used  to  tell 
them,  just  to  see  them  open  their  eyes 
and  mouths,  and  say  '  I  wonder.' 

"  For  about  a  fortnight  I  was  watch- 
ing my  opportunity,  and  at  length  it 
occurred. 

"  These  poor  boys,  often  without 
overcoat  or  blanket,  sometimes  with 
broken  shoes,  and  no  clothing  to  change, 
living  on  a  pint  of  meal  a  day,  used  to 
suffer  ;  the  prisoners  inside  were  far 
better  off,  and  were  not  exposed  to  the 
weather. 

"  I  was  waiting  until  the  turn  of  one 
more  calfish  and  stupid  than  the  rest 
came  to  stand  guard.  At  the  very  time 
two  of  these  poor  children  had  died, 
and  three  more  were  sick.  I  brought 
a  message  to  this  fellow  (David  Green), 
that  a  boy  in  the  hospital  who  was  dy- 
ing wanted  to  see  him.  He  was  dread- 
fully distressed,  but  no  way  occurred  to 
him  of  leaving  his  post. 

"'Mass  Da,'  I  said,  'I  will  watch 
here  till  you  come  back.' 

"'You  won't  go  to  sleep,  Edmund,' 
he  said.  This  was  the  only  danger  he 
seemed  to  think  of. 

"  «  O  no,'  I  said,  '  Mass  Da.  I  not 
sleepy  at  all ;  I  have  just  carried  master 
some  hot  whiskey  toddy,  and  had  some 
myself.' 

"  He  got  down  and  I  got  up  ;  there 
were  at  intervals  high  scaffoldings, 
against  the  brick  walls,  which  enabled 
the  sentinels  to  overlook  the  prison 


encampments  within.  I  took  nis  place. 
The  young  captain  was  not  far  off,  and, 
when  I  whistled  a  tune  agreed  upon,  he 
appeared  ;  with  the  help  of  a  rope  he 
was  soon  on  the  scaffolding  by  my  side, 
and  in  less  than  two  minutes  he  was 
out  of  sight  in  the  darkness  and  rain. 

"Back  came  Mass  David  Green  in 
ten  minutes,  but  that  time  had  been 
quite  enough. 

"  My  own  idea  is  that  the  Yankees 
ought  to  pension  very  handsomely  some 
of  the  very  Southerners  whom  they  are 
most  set  against,  —  some  of  the  com- 
missaries who  drank  and  gambled  away 
the  provisions,  clothing,  and  shoes  of 
the  private  soldiers.  I  do  not  speak  of 
any  particular  part  of  the  army  now. 
I  have  a  cousin  and  an  uncle  both 
who  served  their  two  young  masters, 
through  all  the  campaigns  in  Virginia, 
from  the  first  battle  of  Manassas  until, 
having  buried  one  at  Seven  Pines,  and 
the  other  having  lost  a  leg,  they  con- 
ducted and  assisted  him  home,  shortly 
before  the  surrender,  and  received  for 
their  reward  a  house  and  land. 

"Those,  too,  who  ran  the  blockade,    ! 
—  who   made   the  Confederate  money    | 
worthless  but  they?     Who  raised  the 
price  of  everything  until  the  soldiers' 
money  was  worthless  but  they  ?    Were    ! 
they  not  armies  of  men  who  stayed  at 
home  and  speculated  ?     They  have  now 
everything  about  them  that  they  ever 
had,  while  my  poor  master  never  received 
anything  but  his  pint  of  meal  and  a  little 
beef.     Uncle  Gabe  and  I  have  talked  it 
over  many  a  night.     It  pleased  Provi- 
dence  to   make  everything  go  against 
them  at  the  last,  and  to  set  us  free. 

"  Yet  how  was  my  poor  master  to 
blame  ?  I  am  thankful  that  slavery  is 
now  over  forever.  I  have  heard  him 
and  Miss  Lucy  say  so  too.  I  heard 
master  say  that  he  is  thankful  that  his 
children  will  never  be  exposed  to  the 
temptations  of  so  many  being  depend- 
ent upon  the  will  of  one.  I  am  thank- 
ful that  the  children  whom  I  leave  \i 
be  educated,  and  will  never  be  obliged  j 
and  brought  up  to  steal  and  lie. 

"Sometimes  it  looks  to  me  thus,  j 
Sometimes  I  wish  that  I  had  never. 


1 868.] 


Edmund  Brook. 


465 


touched  anything  belonging  to  another. 
And  then  again  it  seems  to  me  that 
\ve  had  a  right,  that  what  our  masters 
liad  was  in  a  manner  ours. 

"  But,  I  say  again,  how  was  it 
master's  fault?  He  was  brought  up 
among  his  slaves.  He  got  them  from 
his  father.  He  was  always  kind  and 
generous  to  us  all,  and  it  grieves  me 
now  that  in  his  old  age  I  can  never 
work  for  him  any  more. 

"  At  length  came  the  news  that  Sher- 
man was  marching  upon  Columbia. 
The  moment  that  this  news  came  the 
Yankee  officers  were  ordered  to  be  put 
on  board  the  cars,  and  hurried  away  to 
North  Carolina.  In  the  hurry  and  con- 
fusion five  officers  got  out,  and  were 
retaken.  Miss  Lucy  had  at  that  very 
time  come  to  Columbia,  and  brought 
the  boys  with  her  to  see  master,  and  to 
comfort  him  for  a  while  ;  for  master 
loved  her,  and  was  always  happy  and 
cheerful  if  she  were  near  him.  She 
•was  staying  with  a  relation  of  master's 
in  town  a  little  way  off,  when  these  offi- 
cers were  brought  back.  It  was  a  sort 
of  mob  that  had  them,  —  three  or  four 
deserters  that  were  always  about  some 
mischief,  five  or  six  low-down  men  from 
the  mountains.  I  don't  know  who  the 
rest  were,  but  I  understood  from  their 
talk  that  they  intended  to  make  short 
work  with  these  prisoners.  I  was  sorry 
for  them,  for  I  had  eaten  their  bread 
many  a  time. 

"  Everything  was  in  the  wildest  con- 
fusion. There  was  no  officer  on  the 
spot,  and  I  was  at  a  loss  what  to  do. 

"The  poor  fellows  did  not  seem  to 
apprehend  any  danger.  They  thought 
Jthey  would  lounge  about  in  their  old 
quarters  until  Sherman  came  in,  and 
then  join  him.  But  the  approach  of 
Sherman  made  the  Confederates  raging, 
and  they  talked  murder. 

"  I  was  sitting  down  against  the  asy- 
lum wall  listening  to  them,  when  who 
should  I  see  but  Miss  Lucy.  I  could 
hardly  believe  my  eyes,  but  it  was  her, 
and  Mass  Lawrence  with  her.  Her 
face  was  very  pale,  but  she  looked  pret- 
tier than  ever.  She  walked  up  to  these 
rough  men.  I,  who  knew  her  face,  could 
VOL.  XXII,  — NO.  132.  .  30 


tell  that  she  was  frightened,  but  they 
could  not. 

"  *  I  have  a  cousin  here,  a  prisoner,' 
she  said  ;  '  I  am  anxious  to  see  him.' 

"  Not  a  man  objected.  They  even 
opened  the  asylum  gate,  and  allowed 
her  to  walk  in.  Mass  Lawrence  went 
with  her,  and  I  followed.  The  prison- 
ers were  smoking  and  playing  cards. 
quite  unconcerned. 

"  She  walked  up  to  one  of  them,  and 
said  a  few  words  in  some  language  (I 
suppose  French)  which  I  did  not  un- 
derstand. The  man  could  not  understand 
her,  but  he.  called  the  others.  She 
spoke  the  same  language  again,  and  one 
of  them  answered.  A  few  words  more 
passed,  which  only  she  and  him  could 
understand.  But  I  looked  at  the  one 
who  understood  her.  His  countenance 
changed  so  much  that  I  knew  what  she 
had  been  telling  him.  They  all  knew 
me  well.  I  was  afraid  to  speak  out, 
lest  the  guards  at  the  gates  should  hear 
me,  but  I  nodded  and  confirmed  her 
words. 

"  In  a  few  minutes  she  took  leave, 
the  one  who  understood  French  ac- 
companying her  to  the  gate. 

"'May  my  cousin  come  and  spend 
the  day  with  me  ?  '  she  said  to  the  guard. 
I  spoke  up,  telling  the  guard  that  this 
lady  was  my  master's  wife,  and  Mass 
Lawrence  his  son.  They  all  knew  my 
master,  and  did  not  refuse  her. 

"  '  Mr.  Harrington  and  I  will  see  him 
safe  back  this  evening,'  said  Miss  Lucy, 
smiling,  and  placing  her  arm  within 
that  of  the  prisoner. 

"These  men  looked  as  if  they  had 

seen  an  angel ;  not  one  could  refuse  her. 

"  She  took  his  arm,  and  I  followed. 

I  thought  I  was  some  protection  to  her, 

and  she  was  my  master's  wife. 

"  They  walked  two  squares,  speaking 
in  French,  and  met  my  master.  '  Good 
heavens,  Lucy  ! '  he  said. 

"Miss  Lucy  introduced  the  gentle- 
man as  her  cousin,  and  then  whispered 
to  my  master,  *  I  was  afraid  you  would 
not  let  me,'  was  all  I  could  hear.  Mas- 
ter turned  back,  and,  before  long,  here 
came  the  rest  of  them  with  him. 
"  Mass  Lawrence  fell  back  with  me, 


466 


The  Pace  in  the  Glass. 


[October, 


and  I  heard  from  him,  that  one  of  the 
boys  from  the  up-country,  who  was  ac- 
quainted with  Miss  Lucy,  had  run  to 
tell  her,  that  the  deserters  were  going 
to  murder  some  escaped  prisoners. 

"  My  master  was  only  a  private  sol- 
dier, but  they  understood  that  he  was 
a  person  of  consideration-  and  conse- 
quence for  all  that  ;  and  therefore, 
when  he  ordered  them  to  give  him  up 
charge  of  the  prisoners,  they  supposed 
him  sent  by  the  officers,  and  made  no 
resistance. 

"  Master  kept  these  men  in  a  little 
shed-room  in  the  house  where  he  and 
Miss  Lucy  were  staying,  until  Sher- 
man's army  entered. 

"They  fully  understood  that  they 
owed  their  lives  to  him  and  Miss  Lucy; 
and  they  in  turn  protected  the  house, 
their  friends,  and  all  their  property  dur- 
ing Sherman's  stay. 

"The  one  who  spoke  French  went 
to  Sherman,  immediately  on  his  en- 
trance, and  procured  a  guard  for  the 
house  and  property. 

"  They  pressed  master  and  Miss 
Lucy  to  go  North  with  them,  assuring 
them  that  their  conduct  would  insure 
them  a  welcome  ;  but  master  said  he 
could  never  desert  South  Carolina  when 
she  was  unfortunate  ;  that  he  was  born 
in  South  Carolina,  as  were  his  ancestors 
before  him ;  and  that  he  would  abide 
by  her  fortunes,  and  die  here  too. 


"  My  master  and  Miss  Lucy  returned 
to  the  up-country  after  the  surrender. 
When  I  came  with  them,  I  was  hale  and 
hearty.  When  freedom  came,  I  asked 
master's  permission  to  go  clown  the 
country  for  Sally  and  the  children.  I 
too  could  not  bear  to  desert  rr.y  master 
when  he  was  unfortunate,  and  to  take 
that  hour  to  turn  against  him. 

"  '  You  are  as  free  as  I  am,  Edmund,' 
my  master  replied. 

"  '  No,  master,'  I  said  ;  '  you  brought 
me  up  and  supported  me  ;  I  have  now 
my  wife  and  children  to  care  for,  and  I 
cannot  work  all  the  time  for  you  as  for- 
merly ;  but  I  wish  to  keep  near  you,  and 
do  everything  I  can  to  help  you. 

"  I  went  down  for  them,  and  brought 
them.  I  felt  well  when  I  did  so,  but  con- 
sumption had  even  then  set  in.  Very 
soon  I  became  unable  to  work,  and  my 
master  has  had  to  divide  with  me  the 
little  that  remained  to  him. 

"After  the  peace,  I  received  some 
help  from  Beaufort;  and,  Sally  being 
able  to  work  and  make  wages,  I  have 
been  so  far  supplied. 

"  I  know  that  it  is  impossible  for  me 
to  live  long.  Master  and  Mass  Law- 
rence have  promised  me  never  to  forsake 
Sally  and  the  children  ;  and  a  young 
lady  in  the  neighborhood  (Miss  Violet) 
has  been  good  enough  to  write  down 
this  account,  to  be  kept  for  my  chil- 
dren." 


THE    FACE    IN    THE    GLASS. 


CHAPTER    II. 

MY  name  is  Charlotte  Alixe  La 
Baume  de  Lascours  Carteret.  I 
was  born  and  educated  in  France,  at 
a  chateau  belonging  to  my  mother's 
family  in  the  province  of  Bain  Le  Due, 
where  the  De  Lascours  family  once  had 
large  possessions.  I  am,  however,  of 
a  noble  English  family  on  my  father's 
side,  and  the  heiress  of  an  immense  es- 
tate. Both  my  parents  died  during  my 


infancy  ;  and  my  father  bequeathed  me 
to  the  care  of  his  nephew,  Mr.  Hunting- 
don, with  the  proviso  that  I  was  never 
to  marry  without  his  consent,  and  was 
not  to  go  to  England  until  I  had  at- 
tained my  eighteenth  year.  I  lived, 
therefore,  in  the  chateau  with  my  aunt, 
Madame  de  Renneville,  and  the  Abbe 
Renauld,  to  whom  my  guardian  (Mr. 
Huntingdon)  had  confided  my  educa- 
tion. 

I  had  no  relations  in  the  world  ex- 


1 868.] 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


467 


cept  my  aunt  and  this  English  cousin, 
who  was  the  son  of  my  father's  only 
and  elder  brother.  I  never  saw  him 
during  my  childhood,  nor  did  my  aunt ; 
and,  as  he  never  held  any  communica- 
tion whatever  with  either  of  us,  ad- 
dressing the  only  letters  he  ever  wrote 
to  our  avocat  in  Paris,  M.  Baudet,  he 
scarcely  seemed  to  me  a  real  personage, 
or  one  who  possessed  so  strong  a  claim 
upon  me  as  that  with  whicl\  our  rela- 
tionship and* my  father's  commands 
had  invested  him. 

Life  had  gone  on  very  happily  with 
me  for  fourteen  years,  —  very  happily, 
and   very   quietly   also;   and   so    little 
was    said    to    me    about    my   English 
possessions  and  my  English  guardian, 
that    I    had   almost   forgotten   the   ex- 
istence   of    any   ties    out    of    France, 
when,    on    my  fourteenth  birthday,  an 
t    occurred    which,    for    the    first 
.  made  me  feel  how  strong  they 

I  had  been  spending  the  day  (a  love- 
ly one  in  the  latter  part  of  October)  in 
the  forest,  at  some  distance  from  the 
chateau,  and  was  returning  late  in  the 
afternoon,  laden  with  nuts,  pebbles, 
wild-flowers,  and  other  rural  treasures, 
when  I  was  met  by  a  servant,  who  had 
come  to  tell  me  that  my  aunt  desired 
my  presence,  and  that  of  M.  1'Abbe 
(who  was  with  me)  in  the  dra wing-room. 
I  went  thither  hastily,  and  with  some 
curiosity.  My  aunt  was  seated  in  her 
chair  by  the  fire  ;  a  table  covered  with 
parchments  and  writing  materials  stood 
before  her,  and  on  the  opposite  side  of 
the  fireplace,  with  his  weazen  face  and 
sharp  eyes  directed  to  the  door,  was 
a  little  old  gentleman,  whom  I  at  once 
supposed  to  be  M.  Baudet. 

t;  This,"  said  my  aunt,  as  I  approached 
her,  "  is  Mademoiselle  Carteret.  Char- 
lotte, you  remember  M.  Baudet,  —  do 
you  not?  " 

I  courtesied  to  M.  Baudet,  and  sat 
down,  wondering  very  much  what  he 
could  possibly  have  to  say  to  me.  My 
aunt  continued :  — 

"  You  must  reply,  my  dear,  to  all  the 
questions  put  to  you  by  M.  Baudet." 
^  M.  Baudet  now  sat  down.     "It  ap- 


pears, Mademoiselle,"  said  he,  "that 
your  cousin  and  guardian,  M.  Hunting- 
don, has  had  a  letter  in  his  possession 
ever  since  the  death  of  Monsieur  your 
father,  which,  in  accordance  with  cer- 
tain instructions,  he  was  to  open  on  the 
first  day  of  the  month  in  which  you 
would  attain  your  fourteenth  year.  M. 
Huntingdon  accordingly  opened  it  on 
that  clay,  and  found  it  to  contain,  among 
sundry  business  charges  with  which  I  will 
not  trouble  you,  an  especial  command 
that  you  should  be  kept  absolutely  seclud- 
ed from  all  society  until  M.  Huntingdon 
should  see  fit  to  present  you.  Another 
command  is  that  you  are  never  to  see 
or  converse  with  any  gentlemen  except 
myself,  M.  1'Abbe,  and  such  reverend 
fathers  as  you  may  have  to  consult  in 
regard  to  your  spiritual  welfare,  until 
M.  Huntingdon  presents  to  you  men  of 
your  own  rank.  Now,  Mademoiselle, 
I  am  directed  by  M.  Huntingdon  to  ask 
you  certain  questions  to  which  you  will, 
if  you  please,  reply  without  fear." 

He  rose,  and,  taking  from  the  hand 
of  M.  PAbbe'  a  copy  of  the  Gospels, 
extended  it  to  me.  I  clasped  it  in  my 
hands,  and  waited  for  the  questions. 

"  Mademoiselle,  recollect,  if  you 
please,  that  you  are  answering  before 
your  God.  Have  you  passed  your  en- 
tire life  in  this  chateau  ?  " 

"Yes,  Monsieur." 

"Have  any  visitors  ever  been  resi- 
dent here  ? " 

"  No,  Monsieur." 

"  Have  you  ever  had  any  playmates 
of  your  own  age  ?" 

"  No,  Monsieur." 

"Have  your  only  companions  been 
Madame  de  Renneville,  M.  1'Abbe,  and 
your  bonne ?  " 

"Yes,  Monsieur." 

"  Have  any  young  gentlemen  ever 
been  presented  to  you?" 

"  No,  Monsieur." 

"  Do  you,  Mademoiselle,  know  any 
gentlemen  by  sight  or  otherwise  ?  " 

"  No,  Monsieur." 

"  That  is  enough,  Mademoiselle ;  re- 
sume your  seat." 

I  sat  down. 

"  Now,  Mademoiselle,"  said  M.  Bau- 


468 


TJie  Face  in  the  Glass. 


[October, 


det,  rustling  the  papers  which  lay  on 
the  table,  and  finally  selecting  one,  "  I 
am  about  to  put  to  you  a  very  important 
question,  and  that  is  whether  you  will  so 
far  conform  to  the  wishes  of  Monsieur 
your  father  as  to  sign  this  paper,  which 
has  been  drawn  up  by  M.  Huntingdon, 
and  which  contains  a  promise  on  your 
part  never,  voluntarily  or  otherwise,  to 
accept  the  attentions  of  any  gentleman, 
or  to  permit  the  present  seclusion  of 
your  life  to  be  in  any  way  broken  in 
upon,  until  you  are  released  from  your 
pledge  by  M.  Huntingdon  himself.  I 
am  also  charged  with  a  letter  from  M. 
Huntingdon,  Mademoiselle,  enclosing 
one  from  Monsieur  your  father,  which 
it  seems  he  wrote  and  delivered  into 
M.  Huntingdon's  keeping  shortly  be- 
fore his  death."  Saying  this,  he  put 
his  hand  into  the  pocket  of  his  coat, 
and,  after  some  difficulty,  selected  from 
thence  a  thick  packet,  with  armorial 
bearings  on  the  seal. 

"  Pour  vous,  Mademoiselle,"  said  he, 
bowing. 

I  opened  the  letter,  —  my  first,  —  and 
read :  — 

MY  DEAR  COUSIN,  — 

M.  Baudet,  your  solicitor,  will  ac- 
quaint you  with  the  peculiar  and  painful 
nature  of  the  subject  upon  which  I  am 
reluctantly  compelled  to  address  you. 
You  are  aware  that  I,  then  a  lad  of 
eighteen,  had  the  melancholy  and  ines- 
timable privilege  of  closing  my  uncle's 
eyes  in  death.  It  was  but  a  few  mo- 
ments before  he  died,  and  shortly  after 
the  news  of  your  birth  reached  him,  that 
he  declared  his  intention  of  making  me 
your  guardian  when  I  should  come  of 
age,  and  wrote,  with  the  last  effort  of 
his  failing  strength,  two  letters,  —  one 
addressed  to,  and  to  be  opened  by,  me 
when  you  should  have  attained  your 
fourteenth  year ;  the  other,  and  the  last, 
to  yourself,  with  the  request  that  I 
would  retain  it  in  my  possession  until 
I  opened  and  read  my  own.  Having 
done  so,  I  have  arrived  at  a  very  defi- 
nite idea  of  my  duty,  which  is  to  for- 
ward to  you  the  enclosed  epistle,  and 
to  express  to  you  my  regrets  that  your 


dear  father's  anxiety  on  your  account 
should  have  led  him  to  place  me  in  a  po- 
sition which  is  so  painful  to  myself,  and 
which  can  scarcely  be  less  so  to  you. 
Yet  I  should  be  false  to  my  trust  were  I 
to  conceal  from  you  the  fact  that  I  hold 
myself  bound  to  fulfil  his  injunctions  to 
the  letter ;  and,  in  the  event  of  your 
declining  to  comply  with  the  demands 
which  M.  Baudet  will  make  of  you  in 
my  name,  J[  shall  be  compelled  unwill- 
ingly, but  also  unhesitatingly,  to  resort 
to  legal  measures  to  secure  your  ac- 
quiescence. I  am,  of  course,  aware  that 
the  latter  alternative  will  not  be  forced 
upon  me  by  a  Carteret,  and  that  your 
reverence  for  the  memory  of  your  par- 
ents, and  the  confidence  which  I  trust 
you  feel  in  my  devotion  to  your  inter- 
ests, will  induce  you  to  affix  your  signa- 
ture to  the  paper  in  M.  Baudet's  pos- 
session. I  ought  further  to  add,  that  I 
am  fully  aware  of  the  fidelity  with  which 
Madame  de  Renneville  has  observed 
the  instructions  of  your  late  father  in 
regard  to  your  education  ;  and  that,  al- 
though at  so  great  a  distance,  I  have 
been,  and  am,  so  perfectly  informed  of 
your  mode  of  life,  that  the  questions 
which  M.  Baudet  will  put  fo  you  by  my 
direction  are  a  mere  form,  and  no  more. 
It  is  otherwise  with  the  paper  which  he 
will  submit  for  your  signature. 

I  am,  my  dear  Charlotte, 

Your  attached  cousin, 

HARRINGTON  CARTERET  HUNTINGDON. 

To  Mademoiselle  de    Lascours   Carteret, 
Chateau  Lascours,  Province  Bain  le  Due. 

I  read  this  letter  through,  once,  twice, 
and  was  folding  it  up,  when  my  eye  fell 
upon  that  of  my  father,  which  lay  un- 
opened in  my  lap.  The  ink  in  which  it 
was  superscribed  was  faded,  the  paper 
yellow  with  age,  and  a  strange  chill 
crept  through  my  heart  as  my  fingers 
trembled  on  the  seal.  That  father 
whose  face  I  had  never  seen,  whose 
voice  I  had  never  heard,  whose  very 
existence  seemed  to  me  a  dream,  was 
to  speak  to  me  now  from  his  far-off 
grave.  I  opened  it.  It  was  dated  i 
Castle  Carteret  on  the  loth  of  Novem- 
berj  17—,  and  was  written  in  a  trembling 


1 868.] 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


469 


irregular  hand.     It  consisted  of  only 
three   lines :  — 

CHARLOTTE,  — 

Obey  the  wishes  of  your  cousin, 
Harrington  Carteret  Huntingdon,  in  all 
things.  Never  deviate  from  his  com- 
mands ;  if  you  do,  I  cannot  rest  in  my 
grave. 

Your  father, 
CHARLES  HARRINGTON  CARTERET. 

I  rose,  when  I  had  finished  reading 

Pthis  letter,  and  walked  to  the  window. 
The  setting  sun  bathed  the  ruined  wing 
of  the  chateau,  which  was  opposite,  and 
the  woods,  in  a  golden  glow.  A  few  late 
flowers  were  blooming  in  the  court, 
a  brown  bee  hovering  over  them,  and, 
a  little  beyond,  my  greyhounds  were 
gayly  gambolling.  I  looked  at  this  pret- 
ty, peaceful  scene  through  the  rising 
tears  which  filled  my  eyes,  looked  with- 
out seeing  it  then,  though  I  have  re- 
membered it  ever  since,  as  I  suppose 
the  sailor  who  goes  down  among  the 
sea  waves  would,  if  there  were  remem- 
brance in  death,  recall,  even  in  his  wa- 
tery grave,  every  blade  of  grass  on  the 
hillock  which  he  last  saw.  I  stood  there 
long,  weeping  silently,  and  with  an 
overpowering  dread  of  the  fate  which 
seemed  closing  round  me,  and  from 
which  I  saw  no  escape.  I  felt  all  this 
then  without  at  all  defining  my  sensa- 
tions ;  for  I  was  too  young,  and  had  led 
too  happy  and  sheltered  a  life,  to  ap- 
prehend the  possibility  of  all  that 
awaited  me.  I  never  dreamed,  either, 
refusing  my  signature  to  the  paper 
hich  M.  Baudet  held  in  his  hand,  for 
knew  that  there  was  no  alternative 
r  me  ;  but  I  wanted  to  delay  the  de- 
isjve  moment,  and  therefore  I  contin- 
to  weep. 

CHAPTER  III. 

BUT  I  could  not  linger  long;  already 
the  gates  of  childhood  were  closing 
behind  me,  already  its  joyous  careless- 
ness had  faded  from  my  heart ;  and  as 
I  obeyed  my  aunt's  summons,  and 
turned  reluctantly  from  the  window, 
I  took  the  first  step  to  meet  my  doom. 


M.  Baudet  looked  up  as  I  approached 
the  fireplace. 

"Well,  Mademoiselle,"  said  he,  dry- 
ly, "  are  you  prepared  to  hear  the  pa- 
per?" 

"  I  must  listen  to  it,  I  suppose,"  said 
I,  bitterly. 

"It  certainly  is  necessary  that  you 
should,  Mademoiselle,"  and  he  read  it. 

I  cannot  now  remember  how  it  was 
worded,  although  it  was  in  substance 
what  my  father  had  distinctly  stated  in 
his  letter,  and  what  Mr.  Huntingdon 
had  hinted  in  his,  and  comprised  a 
very  careful,  minute,  and  complete  re- 
nunciation of  my  will  in  favor  of  that  of 
my  guardian,  and  made  me  a  prisoner 
within  the  chateau  and  grounds  of  Las- 
cours.  When  he  had  finished  reading, 
M.  Baudet  laid  it  before  me. 

"Are  you  prepared  to  sign  it,  Ma- 
demoiselle ? "  said  he. 

I  looked  at  my  aunt,  but  her  face 
was  averted.  She  was  gazing  gloomily 
into  the  fire. 

"  I  suppose  I  mtist  sign  it,"  said  I, 
bursting  into  fresh  tears  as  I  took  up 
the  pen  ;  "  but  I  think  papa  was  very 
cruel,  and  I  hate  my  cousin  Hunting- 
don." 

As  soon  as  I  had  signed  it,  M.  Bau- 
det gathered  up  his  papers,  summoned 
his  carriage,  took  a  ceremonious  leave 
of  my  aunt,  M.  1'  Abb<£,  and  myself,  and 
departed.  Many  years  passed  by  be- 
fore I  again  saw  him.  When  he  had 
departed,  my  aunt  went  to  her  oratory, 
M.  I'Abbe*  to  the  chapel,  and  I  ran  into 
the  court,  and  summoned  my  grey- 
hounds for  a  game  of  play  before  the 
night  closed  in. 

From  that  day  my  life  was  changed. 
Secluded  I  had  always  been,  but  free 
as  air ;  now  I  was  so  no  longer ;  my 
guardian's  commands,  my  dead  father's 
wishes,  closed  me  in  day  by  day.  Sub- 
tle and  strong,  —  strong  as  death,  — my 
general  promise  seemed  to  apply  to 
every  action  of  my  life.  I  seemed  to 
have  lost,  all  in  a  moment,  the  feelings, 
the  hopes,  the  happiness  of  childhood  ; 
and,  as  was  natural,  I  grew  restless, 
irritable,  and  morbid. 

No  captive  pining  in   his    cell,  no 


470 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


[October, 


slave  toiling  in  the  galleys,  ever  longed 
for  liberty  as  I  did.  I  watched  the  peas- 
ants at  their  work,  the  shepherds  on 
the  hillside,  the  very  beggars  at  the  door, 
with  bitter  envy  and  pain  ;  and  thus  in 
solitude,  weariness,  and  restlessness 
my  young  years  dragged  slowly  on. 
No  sharp  pain  tortured,  no  tangible 
grief  oppressed  me  ;  but  I  would  have 
welcomed  even  an  agony  if  it  would 
have  broken  in  upon  the  monotony  of 
my  life,  —  a  life  which  admitted  of  no 
hope  since  my  guardian's  control  might 
extend  to  its  end.  Miserable  days 
those  were,  —  days  in  which  I  learned 
much  of  woe,  but  they  were  bright  com- 
pared with  what  has  passed  since.  I 
have  heard  of  the  torture  which  was 
inflicted  in  ancient  times  by  letting 
water  fall  drop  by  drop  on  the  victim's 
head  ;  I  have  felt  that.  The  chateau 
where  we  lived  was  ancient  and  beauti- 
ful, the  lands  were  wide,  and  I  was  free 
to  wander  through  them,  —  everything 
was  mine  but  liberty ;  and  that  liberty 
seemed  insensibly  to  remove  itself  fur- 
ther and  further  from  me.  Day  by  day 
the  choking  sense  of  stagnation  in- 
creased. Day  by  day,  side  by  side  with 
the  undefined  dread  of  my  guardian, 
grew  the  burning  wish  to  propitiate  one 
who  held  such  boundless  power  over 
me ;  yet  sometimes,  when  I  thought  of 
his  coming,  I  mounted  the  tower,  and 
looked  out  upon  the  valley  and  far  dis- 
tant hills,  and  wished,  and  longed,  and 
almost  determined,  to  leave  name  and 
fame  and  wealth  behind  me,  and  be  a 
beggar,  if  need  be,  but  free ;  and  then 
like  a  gloomy  refrain  came  my  father's 
warning,  "  Never  deviate  from  his  com- , 
mands  ;  if  you  do,  I  cannot  rest  in  my 
grave."  I  dared  not  violate  his  last 
sleep,  and  so  I  waited  and  endured. 

No  one  can  have  an  idea  of  the 
deep  solitude  of  those  days  ;  no  visitors 
ever  came  near  us  ;  the  old  servants 
went  noiselessly  about  the  house  ;  it 
seemed  to  me,  at  times,  as  if  the  very 
birds  sang  lower  since  that  fatal  day 
when  M.  Baudet  took  away  my  free- 
dom. 

At  the  close  of  my  eighteenth  year 
M.  1'Abbd  died,  and  was  succeeded  by 


Father  Romano,  — an  old  and  devout 
Italian  priest  whom.  I  had  known  all  my 
life.  His  age  and  infirmities  prevented 
his  accompanying  me  as  regularly  in  my 
walks  as  M.  FAbbe  had  done,  and  left 
me,  therefore,  something  like  freedom, 
though  I  was  still  a  prisoner  within  the 
grounds  immediately  surrounding  the 
chateau. 

So  quietly  and  wearily  the  years  crept 
on  until  the  summer  of  17 — ,  in  the  au- 
tumn of  which  year  I  was  to  complete 
my  twenty-first  year.  The  3oth  of  Au- 
gust was  my  aunt's  fete,  and  it  had  al- 
ways been  my  custom  to  decorate  her 
oratory  with  flowers.  I  therefore  went 
out  quite  early  in  the  day  to  gather 
them,  and  was  returning,  laden  with 
them,  when  I  was  attracted  by  some 
climbing  roses  which  grew  in  the  ave- 
nue. I  could  not  reach  them,  however, 
and,  after  several  futile  efforts,  pursued 
my  way  to  a  gate  which  led  into  anoth- 
er part  of  the  grounds.  Here  I  met 
with  another  disappointment,  as  the 
gate  resisted  ail  my  attempts  to  open 
it ;  and  I  was  just  turning  away,  when 
a  hand  appeared  from  behind  me,  and 
threw  it  open.  I  turned  hastily. 

Behind  me  stood  a  tall  and  noble- 
looking  man,  whose  air  and  dress  alike 
indicated  his  high  rank.  With  one 
hand  he  removed  his  hat;  the  other 
was  full  of  wild  roses. 

"  Pardon,  Mademoiselle,"  said  he,  in 
good  French,  but  with  a  slight  foreign 
accent ;  "  I  have  alarmed  you,  I  fear, 
but  it  was  impossible  to  resist  coming 
to- your  assistance." 

I  faltered  out  some  confused  thanks. 

The  stranger  smiled  slightly,  as  he 
replied  :  "  Indeed,  I  must  confess  to 
having  been  a  spy  upon  your  move- 
ment for  some  moments,  Mademoiselle. 
I  had  but  just  entered  the  park,  hoping 
to  see  this  fine  old  chateau,  when  I  be- 
held you  in  the  avenue,  seeking  to 
gather  some  roses.  I  ventured  to  steal 
some  in  your  behalf;  will  you  do  mo 
the  honor  to  accept  them  ?  " 

I  hesitated  a  moment,  but  then  took 
them  from  his  outstretched  hand. 

**  Allow  me  to  suggest,  Mademoi- 
selle," he  continued,  "that  you  at  once 


1 863.] 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


471 


add  them  to  your  wreath.  These  wild 
roses  fade  quickly,  and  are  already 
drooping." 

I  looked  down  at  my  flowers,  and, 
while  I  was  wavering  between  the  de- 
sire to  go  and  the  equally  strong  desire 
to  stay,  he  had  taken  the  basket  from 
my  hand,  had  placed  me  on  the  bank, 
.  and  stood  before  me,  holding  my  flowers. 
As  I  fastened  them  one  by  one  into  my 
•wreath,  I  took  several  furtive  glances 
;  at  the  stranger's  face.  He  \vas  still 
|  uncovered,  and  his  blond  hair  —  not 
golden,  or  flaxen,  but  blond  —  was 
closely  cut,  and  fell  in  one  large  wave 
across  his  forehead.  His  complexion 
was  fair  and  pale,  his  features  perfectly 
.regular,  his  eyes  a  clear,  cold  blue.  A 
calm,  relentless,  cruel  face  it  was ;  but 
I  did  not  see  that  then.  I  thought  only 
how  tall,  how  graceful,  and  handsome 
he  was,  as  I  put  the  last  rose  in  my 
wreath,  and  turned  to  go. 

"  Will  Mademoiselle  grant  me  a  fa- 
vor ?  "  said  the  soft  voice  again,  as  he 
held  the  gate  open  for  me. 

"  If  I  can,  Monsieur,"  said  I,  pausing. 

"  Mademoiselle  has  already  granted 
me  the  honor  of  plucking  some  roses 
for  her  wreath  ;  will  she  grant  me  the 
still  greater  honor  of  beholding  it  upon 
her  head?" 

My  straw  hat  was  hanging  from  my 
neck  by  the  strings,  and,  as  I  began 
involuntarily  to  loosen  them,  with  a 
bow  and  a  "  Permit  me,"  he  lifted  my 
wrc;;th,  and  dropped  it  lightly  on  my 
head.  I  felt  myself  blush  deeply  as  I 
met  his  glance  of  admiration,  and 
longed  to  escape  from  it,  but  still  lin- 
1  in  spite  of  it. 

"  Thanks,  Mademoiselle,"  said  he, 
a  profound  bow.  "  I  have  seen 
several  queens,  but  none  so  lovely  as 
the  queen  of  the  Chateau  Lascours." 

"  I  must  go  now,  I  think,"  said  I, 
ibarrassed  than  ever.  "  Adieu, 
ietir." 

"Au  rcvoir  only,  I  hope,  Mademoi- 
selle," said  he,  with  a  slight  smile  ;  but 
he  made  no  further  effort  to  detain  me, 
and  I  returned  to  the  chateau,  dwelling 
all  the  way  upon  this  strange,  exciting, 
rr.c  delightful,  interview.  I 


spent  most  of  the  morning  in  arranging 
my  flowers,  and  then  read  to  my  aunt 
until  it  was  time  to  dress  for  dinner. 
After  I  was  dressed,  I  went,  as  I  usu- 
ally did,  to  the  window  looking  into  the 
court;  and,  as  I  stood  there,  I  saw  a 
travelling-carriage,  laden  with  luggage, 
drive  in,  and  stop  at  the  grand  entrance. 
M.  Baudet —  I  recognized  him  instantly 
—  alighted  ;  and,  with  a  miserable  feel- 
ing of  terror  and  dread,  I  turned  away 
from  the  window. 

A  few  moments  after,  my  aunt's  maid 
entered.  "  Dinner  is  deferred  an  hour, 
Mademoiselle,  and  Madame  begs  that 
you  will  put  on  your  white  muslin  and 
your  pearls,  and  come  as  soon  as  possi- 
ble to  the  drawing-room  ;  M.  Baudet  is 
here,  and  he  remains  to-day  for  din- 
ner." 

All  the  while  Jeannette  was  dressing 
me  I  pondered  upon  the  means  of  con- 
cealing the  morning's  interview  from 
M.  Baudet ;  and  it  was  with  the  ques- 
tion still  undecided  that  I  at  length 
descended,  and  entered  the  drawing- 
room. 

"You  remember  Mademoiselle  Car- 
teret,  —  do  you  not,  M.  Baudet?"  said 
my  aunt,  as  I  paused  before  him  and 
courtesied. 

"  Mademoiselle  has  become  very 
beautiful  since  I  last  had  the  pleasure 
of  beholding  her,"  said  he,  bowing,  and 
handing  me  a  chair  ;  and,  as  I  sat  down, 
he  added,  "  Before  we  go  to  dinner, 
Mademoiselle,  I  must  ask  you  a  few 
questions." 

"  Yes,  Monsieur,"  said  I,  in  a  low 
voice. 

"  We  will  then  proceed  to  business," 
he  answered,  drawing  a  paper  from  his 
pocket  as  he  spoke.  "  This,  you  per- 
ceive, Mademoiselle,  is  the  paper  signed 
by  your  own  hand,"  he  continued,  turn- 
ing it  over  so  that  I  could  see  the  sig- 
nature. 

"Yes,  Monsieur." 

"  You  remember  the  several  injunc- 
tions contained  in  this  paper,  Mademoi- 
selle ? " 

"  Yes,  Monsieur." 

"  You  have  fulfilled  your  promises, 
Mademoiselle,  to  the  letter  ?  " 


472 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


[October,. 


"  Yes,  Monsieur,"  said  I ;  a  burning 
blush  rising  to  my  cheeks  as  I  spoke. 

"  No  visitors  have  been  received  at 
the  chateau  ?  " 

"  None,  Monsieur." 

"  You  have  confined  your  walks  to 
the  limits  of  the  estate,  Mademoi- 
selle?" 

"  Yes,  Monsieur." 

"  Your  acquaintances  are  confined  to 
Madame  de  Renneville,  Father  Roma- 
no, and  myself?  " 

''Yes,  Monsieur."  I  rose  from  my 
seat  as  I  said  this,  for  I  felt  an  actual 
oppression  at  my  heart,  and  as  if  the  at- 
mosphere were  stifling ;  and  I  dreaded 
inexpressibly  any  reference  to  my  morn- 
ing's adventure. 

"  Pardon,  Mademoiselle,"  said  M. 
Baudet,  fixing  his  small  keen  eyes  upon 
me,  as  if  he  would  read  to  my  very  soul, 
"  I  have  yet  a  few  questions  to  ask  be- 
fore I  shall  have  fulfilled  the  instruc- 
tions of  M.  Huntingdon." 

'•'  I  detest  the  name  of  Mr.  Hunting- 
don," said  I,  in  a  burst  of  anger.  "  I 
think  he  is  very  cruel,  and  you  too,  M. 
Baudet." 

';  Calm  yourself,  Charlotte,  I  entreat 
you,"  said  my  aunt,  hastily.  "  Such  a 
display  of  temper  may  result  in  making 
you  even  more  unhappy  than  you  are  at 
present." 

"  I  cannot  be  so,"  said  !,  sullenly ; 
"  I  am  a  slave." 

"  Mademoiselle,"  interrupted  M.  Bau- 
de •;,  "  I  must  still  trouble  you  for  a  mo- 
ment." 

I  looked  at  him.  I  longed  to  defy 
him,  to  leave  him ;  but  I  dared  do 
neither,  and  I  remained  silent. 

"  My  questions  have  so  far  been  an- 
swered satisfactorily.  I  have  but  one 
more,"  he  continued:  "Are  you,  Ma- 
demoiselle, prepared  to  swear  that  you 
have  never  seen,  spoken  to,  or  been 
addressed  by  any  man  of  your  own 
rank  ? " 

I  dared  not  reply  to  this  ;  I  dared  not 
tell  the  truth,  and  I  still  less  dared  to 
tell  a  lie. 

«  Well,  Mademoiselle,"  said  M.  Bau- 
det, after  a  moment's  pause,  "you 
cannot  answer  that  question  ?  You 


have  violated  that  part  of  your  agree- 
ment ? " 

I  glanced  up  for  some  sign  of  relent- 
ing in  his  face,  and  almost  involuntarily 
faltered  out:  "No,  Monsieur;  I  have 
not." 

M.  Baudet  hesitated.  "Are  you  quite 
sure,  Mademoiselle  ?  Shall  I  not  re- 
peat my  question  in  a  different  form  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  I,  resolutely,  "  I  have  no 
other  answer  to  give." 

"This  then  is  the  truth,  the  whole 
truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth,  Ma- 
demoiselle ?  You  are  prepared  to  swear 
that  it  is  so?" 

"Yes,"  stammered  I,  almost  in.ra- 
dibly. 

"  You  are  quite  sure,  Mademoiselle  ? " 
said  M.  Baudet,  regarding  me  doubt- 
fully. "  I  regret  to  say  that  I  —  " 

"  M.  Baudet,  we  will  suspend  any 
further  questioning,"  said  a  clear  and 
low  voice  behind  me.  "  Mademoiselle. 
has  already  been  sufficiently  annoyed, 
and  for  any  violation  of  her  agreement 
I  alone  am  responsible." 

I  recognized  those  musical  tones, 
that  slight  foreign  accent ;  and  as  I 
turned,  the  blood  rushing  over  my  face 
and  neck,  I  saw,  through  the  tears  of 
shame  and  mortification  which  filled  my 
eyes,  the  gentleman  whom  I  had  met  in 
the  morning.  He  had  exchanged  his 
travelling-suit  of  gray  cloth  for  evening 
dress,  but  still  wore  a  wild  rosebud  in 
his  button-hole.  Alarmed  and  confound- 
ed, believing  not  only  that  my  lie  was 
discovered,  and  the  violation  of  my 
agreement  known,  but  that  some  dread- 
ful punishment  would  follow,  I  stood 
silent  and  motionless. 

The  stranger  had  already  bowed  to 
my  aunt,  and  kissed  her  hand.  He  now 
turned  to  M.  Baudet,  saying,  "Will  you. 
present  me  to  my  ward  ?  " 

"Mademoiselle  Carteret,"  said  M. 
Baudet,  advancing,  "  I  have  the  hono; 
to  present  to  you  your  cousin  and  guar- 
dian, M.  Huntingdon." 

"  Pardon  me,"  said  Mr.  Huntingdpi 
drawing  my  arm  within  his,  and  leading 
me  to  a  window  at  the  farther  end  of 
the  drawing-room,  —  "  pardon  me,  i* 
fair  cousin,  the  annoyance  I  have  caused 


1 868.] 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


473 


you.  As  for  me,  I  cannot  feel  otherwise 
than  flattered  by  your  reception  of  me 
this  morning,  nor  can  I  regret  that  I 
myself  proved  stronger  than  my  own 
commands." 

"You  must  believe,  Mr.  Hunting- 
don," said  I,  haughtily,  "that  I  only 
yield  obedience  to  those  commands  as 
to  my  father's." 

"  I  am  but  too  happy  to  find  that  you 
so  entirely  understand  me,"  said  he, 
bowing;  "  I  cannot  tell  you,  Charlotte, 
how  much  I  have  feared  lest  your  natural 
dislike  to  orders  so  stringent  should 
have  led  you  to  blame  me  only ;  I 
have  been  your  fellow-sufferer,  I  as- 
sure you." 

The  conversation  was  most  unpleas- 
ant to  me,  and  I  was  perversely  resolved 
not  to  continue  it.  I  therefore  rose, 
and  leaned  out  of  the  window.  Mr. 
Huntingdon,  bending  over  me,  gazed  out 
also.  How  I  longed  to  escape  from 
him  !  but  as  I  put  my  hand  on  the  win- 
dow, intending  to  step  out  on  the  terrace, 
he  spoke. 

"  A  lovely  night  indeed,  Charlotte ; 
you  are  still  agitated,  I  see,  and  I  know 
the  surprise  of  seeing  me  must  have 
been  great ;  you  need  a  turn  on  the 
terrace,  and  I  am  never  weary  of  breath- 
ing the  soft  air  of  your  native  France. 
Come."  Hg  pushed  back  the  window 
as  he  spoke,  and  offered  his  arm.  What 
I  indeed  most  wished  was  to  escape 
from  his  presence  ;  but  I  took  his  arm, 
and  walked  out  into  the  calm  starlit 
night. 

He  did  not  speak  at  first,  and  after 
several  moments  I  looked  up  at  him. 
We  were  standing  at  the  end  of  the 
terrace  then,  and  the  silver  light  of  the 
moon  shone  full  upon  his  pale  face  and 
clearly  chiselled  lineaments.  How  cold 
they  were  !  How  like  a  statue  he  stood, 
his  relentless  blue  eyes  looking  straight 
before  him  ! 

"  Mr.  Huntingdon,"  said  I,  at  length, 

<c  j •>•> 

"  Speak  in  English,"  said  he,  looking 
at  me  with  a  smile.  "You  look  alto- 
gether away  from  England,  Charlotte ; 
and  yet  your  future  life  lies  there  ;  and 
do  you  call  me  Mr.  Huntingdon  ?  You 


do  not  recognize  me  as  a  cousin,  it 
seems,  and  —  "  he  paused  for  a  moment,, 
and  then  added,  "  your  father's  dearest 
friend,  you  know." 

"I  cannot  accustom  myself  to  call 
you  —  " 

"  Harrington  ?  It  was  your  father's 
name,  Charlotte.  No,"  he  added  as  I 
made  a  movement  to  re-enter  the  draw- 
ing-room, "you  must  not  enter,  ma. 
belle  cousine,  until  you  have  granted 
me  this  favor." 

"And  suppose  I  do  not  choose  to 
grant  it  ?  "  I  replied. 

"  In  that  case  I  must  avail  myself  of 
the  authority  vested  in  me,  and  remind 
you  that  I  am  your  guardian,  and  —  " 

"  That  is  unnecessary,"  said  I,  coldly- 
"  I  have  not  been  a  prisoner  for  so- 
many  years  in  vain.  I  must  call  you 
Harrington,  since  you  wish  it." 

"  Let  us  take  another  turn,"  said  Mr. 
Huntingdon,  again  offering  his  arm. 
Then,  fixing  his  eyes  on  me,  he  said, 
"  I  have  at  least  been  gratified,  Charlotte, 
by  seeing  that  that  imprisonment  has 
told  so  little  on  you  that  you  are  able 
to  receive  strangers  with  such  singular 
openness  and  ease." 

"  Indeed,  indeed,"  said  I,  bursting 
into  tears,  — "  indeed,  it  was  the  first 
time." 

A  smile,  beautiful  as  contemptuous, 
curled  his  finely  chiselled  lips  as  he 
answered,  "  O,  you  need  not  tell  me 
that ;  I  am  perfectly  aware  of  that  fact, 
Charlotte." 

"  You  believe  me,  —  do  you  not  ?  " 
said  I,  looking  up. 

"  Do  I  believe  you  ?  "  said  he  ;  "  cer- 
tainly I  believe  you,  but  your  assurance 
was  unnecessary;  I  was  previously 
perfectly  well  informed  of  the  truth  of 
what  you  say." 

A  shudder  passed  over  me  as  he  said 
this,  — just  such  an  involuntary,  unde- 
fined feeling  of  dread  as  I  had  experi- 
enced when  I  read  his  first  letter  years 
before. 

"  You  are  not  angry,  Harrington  ? " 
I  persisted. 

"I  am  never  angry,"  he  answered, 
coldly ;  "  and  this  I  can  promise,  Char- 
lotte, that  you  will  never  make  me  so." 


474 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


[October, 


He  raised  the  window  as  he  spoke, 
and  admitted  me  into  the  drawing-room 
just  as  dinner  was  announced.  All 
through  dinner  he  addressed  his  con- 
versation principally  to  me,  invariably 
speaking  in  English. 

I  cannot  describe  the  peculiar  fas- 
cination of  his  quiet  manner,  for  it  was 
fascinating  ;  nor  can  I  explain  the  im- 
mediate control  he  acquired  over  all 
who  approached  him.  It  was  magnet- 
ism, I  suppose,  which  subdued  even  M. 
Bauclet,  who  in  his  presence  was  no 
longer  his  quick  and  keen  self,  but  silent, 
and,  if  I  may  so  express  it,  tarnished. 

When  my  aunt  and  I  were  in  the 
drawing-room  alone  again,  and  I  sat  at 
my  embroidery-frame,  I  saw  still  before 
me  the  face  of  my  cousin,  his  soft  mu- 
sical tones  still  vibrated  on  my  ear,  and 
I  seemed  still  to  breathe  the  delicate 
perfume  which  his  dress  exhaled.  At 
length  I  heard  a  rustle  in  the  dining- 
room,  and,  a  moment  after,  the  gentle- 
men entered.  Mr.  Huntingdon  came 
first ;  and,  as  he  approached  me,  I 
again  experienced  the  strange  sensa- 
tion of  the  morning, — a  sort  of  terror 
or  repulsion  which  prompted  me  to 
avoid,  and  an  attraction  which  drew 
me  toward  him.  I  rose  to  meet  him, 
however,  with  a  question  which  had 
been  hovering  on  my  lips  ever  since  he 
had  made  himself  known. 

"  Harrington  !  "  I  began. 

"  You  wish  to  ask  me  why  I  accosted 
3'ou  in  the  park  this  morning,  instead 
of  waiting  until  the  evening,  and  then 
presenting  myself  in  form  ?  " 

"  I  did,"  said  I,  astonished  ;  "  but  —  " 

"  The  answer,  Charlotte,  I  am  not 
yet  prepared  to  give,  although  the  day 
is  not  far  distant  when  I  may  do  so." 

There  was  something  in  his  manner 
which  repelled  any  further  questioning, 


and  I  sat  quietly  down  to  my  embroid- 
ery. 

u  Ah,  Mademoiselle  !  "  said  M.  Bau- 
det,  as  he  came  and  bent  over  me,  "  your 
work  is  really  superb  ;  and  you  are  so 
diligent  that  I  doubt  not  that,  if  I  should 
have  the  happiness  of  coming  to  Las- 
cours  in  December,  I  should  find  that 
you  had  completed  several  pieces  like 
that." 

"  Mademoiselle  Carteret  will  not  be 
at  Lascours  next  December,"  said  Mr. 
Huntingdon,  calmly;  "she  will  be  in 
England  at  that  time." 

Now,  just  before,  I  had  told  my  aunt 
that  I  should  not  go  to  England  ;  but  I 
only  looked  up  in  his  face,  and  said, 
"  When  am  I  to  go  ?  " 

"Very  shortly,"  he  replied,  as  he 
walked  away,  and  sat  down  by  my  aunt. 
I  noticed  that  she  asked  him  no  ques- 
tions about  my  departure  for  England. 
Although  he  had  been  so  short  a  time 
at  Lascours,  he  was  already  felt  to  be 
absolute.  He  did  not  again  address 
me  until  the  close  of  the  evening,  when 
he  approached  ine,  and,  raising  my 
hand  to  his  lips,  said,  "  We  part  to- 
night, Charlotte,  for  some  time ;  when  I 
next  return,  it  will  be  to  conduct  you  to 
England.  Meanwhile  bear  a  little  long- 
er with  your  father's  commands." 

"I  will,  indeed,"  said  ].;  "but  will 
you  not  tell  me  when  you  will  re- 
turn ?  " 

"  I  cannot  tell  you  at  present ;  but 
your  affairs  will  be  in  perfect  train  by 
that  time,  —  indeed,  they  are  almost  so 
now.  Au  revoir." 

u  Au  revoir." 

And  we  parted.  At  five  o'clock  the 
next  morning  I  was  awakened  by  a 
noise  in  the  court-yard,  and,  going  to 
the  window,  saw  M.  Baudet  and  Mr. 
Huntingdon  drive  away. 


Loves  Queen. 


LOVE'S     QUEEN. 

HE  loves  not  well  whose  love  is  bold : 
I  would  not  have  thee  come  too  nigh : 
The  sun's  gold  would  not  seem  pure  gold 
Unless  the  sun  were  in  the  sky. 
To  take  him  thence,  and  chain  him  near, 
Would  make  his  beauty  disappear. 

He  keeps  his  state  ;   do  thou  keep  thine,  — 

And  shine  upon  me  from  afar; 
So  shall  I  bask  in  light  divine 
That  falls  from  love's  own  guiding-star. 
So  shall  thy  eminence  be  high, 
And  so  my  passion  shall  not  die. 

But  all  my  life  shall  reach  its  hands 

Of  lofty  longing  toward  thy  face, 
And  be  as  one  who  speechless  stands 
In  rapture  at  some  perfect  grace. 
My  love,  my  hope,  my  all,  shall  be 
To  look  to  heaven  and  look  to  thee. 

Thine  eyes  shall  be  the -heavenly  lights, 

Thy  voice  shall  be  the  summer  breeze, 
What  time  it  sways,  on  moonlit  nights, 
The  murmuring  tops  of  leafy  trees. 
And  I  will  touch  thy  beauteous  form 
In  June's  red  roses,  rich  and  warm. 

But  thou  thyself  shall  come  not  down 

From  that  pure  region  far  above  ; 
But  keep  thy  throne  and  wear  thy  crown, — 
Queen  of  my  heart  and  queen  of  love ! 
A  monarch  in  thy  realm  complete, 
And  I  a  monarch  —  at  thy  feet. 


476 


Bacon. 


[October, 


BACON. 


I. 


NEXT  to  Shakespeare,  the  greatest 
name  of  the  Elizabethan  age  is 
that  of  Bacon.  His  life  has  been  writ- 
ten by  his  chaplain,  Dr.  Rawley,  by 
Basil  Montagu,  by  Lord  Campbell,  and 
by  Macaulay ;  yet  neither  of  these  bi- 
ographies reconciles  the  external  facts 
of  the  man's  life  with  the  internal  facts 
of  the  man's  nature. 

Macaulay's  vivid  sketch  of  Bacon's 
career  is  the  most  acute,  the  most  mer- 
ciless, and  for  popular  effect  the  most 
efficient,  of  all ;  but  it  deals  simply  with 
external  events,  evinces  in  their  inter- 
pretation no  deep  and  detecting  glance 
into  character,  and  urges  the  evidence 
for  the  baseness  of  Bacon  with  the 
acrimonious  zeal  of  a  prosecuting  at- 
torney, eager  for  a  verdict,  rather  than 
weighs  it  with  the  candor  of  a  judge 
deciding  on  the  nature  of  a  great  bene- 
factor of  the  race,  who  in  his  will  had 
solemnly  left  his  memory  to  "  men's 
charitable  speeches."  When  he  comes 
to  treat  of  Bacon  as  a  philosopher,  he 
passes  to  the  opposite  extreme  of  pane- 
gyric. The  impression  left  by  the  whole 
representation  is  not  the  impression  of 
a  man,  but  of  a  monstrous  huddling  to- 
gether of  two  men,  —  one  infamous,  the 
other  glorious,  —  which  he  calls  by  the 
name  of  Bacon. 

The  question  therefore  arises,  Is  it 
possible  to  harmonize,  in  one  individu- 
ality, Bacon  the  courtier,  Bacon  the 
lawyer,  Bacon  the  statesman,  Bacon  the 
judge,  with  Bacon  the  thinker,  philoso- 
pher, and  philanthropist  ?  The  antith- 
esis commonly  instituted  between  them 
is  rather  a  play  of  epigram  than  an  ex- 
ercise of  characterization.  The  "  mean- 
est of  mankind  "  could  not  have  written 
The  Advancement  of  Learning ;  yet 
everybody  feels  that  some  connection 
there  must  be  between  the  meditative 
life  which  produced  The  Advancement 
of  Learning  and  the  practical  life  de- 
voted to  the  advancement  of  Bacon. 


Who,  then,  was  the  man  who  is  so 
execrated  for  selling  justice,  and  so  ex- 
alted for  writing  the  Novum  Orga- 
ni tin  ? 

This  question  can  never  be   intelli- 
gently answered,   unless  we   establish 
some  points  of  connection  between  the 
spirit  which   animates   his  works  and 
the   external   events   which    constitute 
what  is  called  his  life.     As  a  general 
principle,   it  is  well   for  us   to  obtain 
some  conception  of  a  great  man  from 
his  writings,  before  we  give  much  heed 
to  the  recorded  incidents  of  his  career ; 
for  these  incidents,  as  historically  nar- 
rated, are  likely  to  be  false,  are  sure 
to    be   one-sided,   and    almost    always 
need  to  be  interpreted  in  order  to  con- 
vey real  knowledge  to  the  mind.     It  is 
ever  for  the  interest  or  the  malice  of 
some  contemporary,  that  every  famous 
politician,  who  by  necessity  passes  into 
history,  should  pass  into  it  stained  in    j 
character;  and  it  is  fortunate  that,  in 
the  case  of  Bacon,  we  are  not  confined 
to  the  outside  records  of  his  career,  but    j 
possess   means   of   information   which    j 
conduct  us  into  the  heart  of  his  nature.    : 
Indeed,  Bacon  the  man  is  most  clearly   | 
seen  and  intimately  known   in   Bacon 
the  thinker.      Bacon   thinking,   Bacon 
observing,    Bacon    inventing,  —  these 
were  as  much  acts  of  Bacon  as  Bacon 
intriguing  for  power  and  place.     "  I  ac- 
count," he  has  said, "  my  ordinary  course 
of  study  and  meditation  more   painful 
than   most  parts  of  action  are." 
his  works   do  not  merely  contain  his 
thoughts  and  observations  ;  they  are  all 
informed   with   the  inmost  life  of  his 
mind  and  the  real  quality  of  his  nature ; 
and,  if  he  was  base,  servile,  treacherous,  j 
and  venal,  it  will  not  require  any  great  . 
expenditure  of  sagacity  to  detect  the 
taint  of  servility,  baseness,   treachery,  ! 
and  venality  in  his  writings.     For  what 
was  Bacon's  intellect  but  Bacon's  na- 
ture in  its  intellectual  expression  ?    - 


1 863.] 


Bacon. 


477 


erybody  remembers  the  noble  com- 
mencement of  the  Novuin  Organum, 
"  Francis  of  Verulam  thought  thiis." 
Ay !  it  is  not  merely  the  understand- 
ing of  Francis  of  Verulam,  but  Fran- 
cis himself  that  thinks  ;  and  we  may 
be  sure  that  the  thought  will  give  us 
the  spirit  and  average  moral  quality 
of  the  man ;  for  it  is  not  faculties,  but 
persons  using  faculties,  persons  behind 
faculties  and  within  faculties,  that  in- 
vent, combine,  discover,  create  ;  and  in 
the  whole  history  of  the  human  intel- 
lect, in  the  department  of  literature, 
there  has  been  no  exercise  of  live  cre- 
ative faculty  without  an  escape  of  char- 
acter. The  new  thoughts,  the  novel 
combinations,  the  fresh  images,  are  all 
enveloped  in  an  atmosphere,  or  borne 
on  a  stream,  which  conveys  into  the 
recipient  mind  the  fine  essence  of  indi- 
vidual life  and  individual  disposition. 
It  is  more  difficult  to  detect  this  in 
comprehensive  individualities  like  Ba- 
con and  Shakespeare,  than  in  narrow 
individualities  like  Ben  Jonson  and 
Marlowe  ;  but  still,  if  we  sharply  scru- 
tinize the  impression  which  Bacon  and 
Shakespeare  have  left  on  our  minds,  we 
shall  find  that  they  have  not  merely 
enlarged  our  reason  with  new  truth, 
and  charmed  our  imagination  with  new 
beauty,  but  that  they  have  stamped  on 
our  consciousness  the  image  of  their 
natures,  and  touched  the  finest  sensi- 
bilities of  our  souls  with  the  subtile  but 
potent  influence  of  their  characters. 

Now  if  we  discern  and  feel  this 
image  and  this  life  of  Bacon,  derived 
from  his  works,  we  shall  find  that  his 
individuality  —  capacious,  flexible,  fer- 
tile, far-reaching  as  it  was  —  was  still 
deficient  in  heat,  and  that  this  deficiency 
was  in  the  very  centre  of  his  nature  and 
sources  of  his  moral  being.  Leaving 
out  of  view  the  lack  of  stamina  in  his 
bodily  constitution,  and  his  consequent 
want  of  those  rude,  rough  energies 
and  that  peculiar  Teutonic  pluck 
which  seem  the  birthright  of  every 
Englishman  of  robust  health,  we  find 
in  the  works  as  in  the  life  of  the  man 
no  evidence  of  strong  appetites  or 
fierce  passions  or  kindling  sentiments. 


Neither  in  his  blood  nor  in  his  soul  can 
we  discover  any  of  the  coarse  or  any  of 
the  fine  impulses  which  impart  intensity 
to  character.  He  is  without  the  vices 
of  passion,  —  voluptuousness,  hatred, 
envy,  malice,  revenge  ;  but  he  is  also 
without  the  virtues  of  passion,  —  deep 
love,  warm  gratitude,  capacity  of  un- 
withholding  self-committal  to  a  great 
sentiment  or  a  great  cause.  This  de- 
fect of  intensity  is  the  source  of  that 
weakness  in  the  actions  of  his  life  which 
his  satirists  have  stigmatized  as  base- 
ness ;  and,  viewing  it  altogether  apart 
from  the  vast  intellectual  nature  modi- 
fying and  modified  by  it,  they  have  tied 
the  faculties  of  an  angel  to  the  soul  of 
a  sneak.  While  narrating  the  events 
of  his  career,  and  making  epigrams  out 
of  his  frailties,  they  have  lost  all  vision 
of  that  noble  brow,  on  which  it  might 
be  said,  "  shame  is  ashamed  to  sit." 
Shame  may  be  there,  but  it  is  shame 
shamefaced,  —  aghast  at  its  position,  not 
glorying  in  it ! 

With  this  view  of  the  intellectual 
character  of  Bacon,  let  us  pass  to  the 
events  of  his  life.  He  was  born  in  Lon- 
don on  the  22d  of  January,  1561,  and 
was  the  youngest  son  of  Sir  Nicholas 
Bacon,  Keeper  of  the  Great  Seal.  His 
mother,  sister  to  the  wife  of  Lord  Treas- 
urer Burleigh,  possessed  uncommon 
accomplishments  even  in  that  age 
of  learned  women.  "  Such  being  his 
parents,"  quaintly  says  Dr.  Rawley, 
"you  may  easily  imagine  what  the  issue 
was  likely  to  be  ;  having  had  whatso- 
ever nature  or  breeding  could  put  into 
him."  Sir  Nicholas  was  a  capable,  sa- 
gacious, long-headed,  cold-blooded,  and 
not  especially  scrupulous  man  of  the 
world,  who,  like  all  the  eminent  states- 
men of  Elizabeth's  reign,  acted  for  the 
public  interest  without  prejudicing  his 
own.  Lady  Bacon  had,  among  other 
works,  translated  from  the  Italian  some 
sermons  on  Predestination  and  Elec- 
tion, written  by  Ochinus,  a  divine  of 
that  Socinian  sect  which  Othodox  re- 
ligionists, who  hated  each  other,  could 
still  unite  in  stigmatizing  as  pre-emi- 
nently wicked;  and,  if  we  may  judge 
from  this  circumstance,  she  must  have 


478 


Bacon. 


[October, 


had  a  daring  and  discursive  as  well  as 
learned  spirit.  The  mind  of  the  son, 
if  it  derived  its  weight,  moderation,  and 
strong  practical  bent  from  the  father, 
derived  no  less  its  intellectual  self-reli- 
ance and  audacity  from  the  mother ; 
and  as  Francis  was  the  favorite  child, 
we  may  presume  that  the  parents  saw 
in  him  their  different  qualities  exquis- 
itely combined.  As  a  boy,  he  was 
weak  in  health,  indifferent  to  the  sports 
of  youth,  of  great  quickness,  curiosity, 
and  flexibility  of  intellect,  and  with  a 
sweet  sobriety  in  his  deportment  which 
made  the  Queen  call  him  "the  young 
Lord  Keeper."  He  was  a  courtier, 
too,  at  an  age  when  most  boys  care  as 
little  for  queens  as  they  do  for  nursery- 
maids. Being  asked  by  Elizabeth  how 
old  he  was,  he  replied  that  he  "  was  two 
years  younger  than  her  Majesty's  hap- 
py reign,"  with  which  answer,  says  the 
honest  chronicler,  "the  Queen  was 
much  taken."  Receiving  his  early 
education  under  his  mother's  eye,  and 
freely  mixing  with  the  wise  and  great 
people  who  visited  his  father's  house, 
he  was  uncommonly  mature  in  mind 
when,  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  he  was 
sent  to  the  University  of  Cambridge. 
With  his  swiftness,  and  depth  of  appre- 
hension, it  was  but  natural  that  he 
should  easily  master  his  studies  ;  but 
he  did  more,  he  subjected  them  to  his 
own  tests  of  value  and  utility,  and  de- 
spised them.  Before  he  had  been  two 
years  at  college,  this  smooth,  decorous 
stripling,  who  bowed  so  low  to  Dr. 
Whitgift,  and  was  so  outwardly  respect- 
ful to  the  solemn  trumpery  about  him, 
was  still  inwardly  unawed  by  the  au- 
thority of  traditions  and  accredited 
forms,  and  coolly  removed  the  mask 
from  the  body  of  learning,  to  find,  as  he 
thought,  nothing  but  ignorance  and 
emptiness  within.  The  intellectual  dic- 
tator of  forty  generations,  Aristotle 
himself,  was  called  up  before  the  judg- 
ment-seat of  this  young  brain,  the  pre- 
tensions of  his  philosophy  silently  sifted, 
and  then  dismissed  and  disowned,  — 
not,  he  condescended  to  say,  "for  the 
worthlessness  of  the  author,  to  whom 
he  would  ever  ascribe  all  high  attributes," 


but  for  the  barrenness  of  the  method, 
"  the  unfruitfulness  of  the  way."  By  pro- 
found and  self-reliant  meditation,  he 
had  already  caught  bright  glances  of  a 
new  path  for  the  human  intellect  to 
pursue,  leading  to  a  more  fertile  and 
fruitful  domain,  —  its  process  experi- 
ence, not  dogmatism ;  its  results  dis- 
coveries, not  disputations  ;  its  object 
"  the  glory  of  God  and  the  relief  of  man's 
estate."  This  aspiring  idea  was  the  con- 
stant companion  of  his  mind  through  all 
the  vicissitudes  of  his  career,  —  never 
forgotten  in  poverty,  in  business,  in  glory, 
in  humiliation,  —  the  last  word  on  his 
lips,  and  in  the  last  beat  of  his  heart ;  and 
it  is  this  which  lends  to  his  large  reason 
and  rich  imagination  that  sweet  and  per- 
vasive beneficence,  which  is  felt  to  be  the 
culminating  charm  of  his  matchless  com- 
positions, and  which  refuses  to  allow  his 
character  to  be  deprived  of  benignity, 
even  after  its  pliancy  to  circumstances 
may  have  deprived  it  of  respect. 

Before  he  was  sixteen,  he  left  the 
university  without  taking  a  degree ;  and 
his  father,  who  evidently  intended  him 
for  public  life,  sent  him  to  France,  in 
the  train  of  the  English  ambassador,  in 
order  that  he  might  learn  the  arts  of 
state.  Here  he  resided  for  about  two 
years  and  a  half,  enjoying  rare  oppor- 
tunities for  observing  men  and  affairs, 
and  of  mingling  in  the  society  of  states- 
men, philosophers,  and  men  of  letters, 
who  were  pleased  equally  by  the  origi- 
nality of  his  mind  and  the  amenity  of 
his  manners.  He  purposed  to  stay 
some  years  abroad,  and  was  studying 
assiduously  at  Poitiers,  when  in  Febru- 
ary, 1579,  an  accident  occurred  which 
ruined  his  hopes  of  an  early  entrance 
upon  a  brilliant  career,  converted  him 
from  a  scholar  into  an  adventurer,  and, 
in  his  own  phrase,  made  it  incumbent 
on  him  "  to  think  how  to  live,  instead 
of  living  only  to  think."  A  barber  it 
was  who  thus  decided  the  fate  of  a  phi- 
losopher. His  father,  while  undergoing 
the  process  of  shaving,  happened  to  fa 
asleep  ;  and  so  deep  was  the  reverence 
of  the  barber  for  the  Lord  Keeper  of 
the  Great  Seal,  that  he  did  not  pre- 
sume to  shake  into  consciousness  so 


1 868.] 


'Bacon. 


479 


august  a  personage,  but  stood  gazing 
at  him  in  wondering  admiration.  Un- 
fortunately a  draft  of  air  from  an  open 
window  was  blowing  all  the  while  on 
"the  second  prop  of  the  kingdom," 
and  murdering  him  by  inches.  Sir 
Nicholas  awoke  shivering ;  and,  on 
being  informed  by  the  barber  that  re- 
spect for  his  dignity  was  the  cause  of 
his  not  having  been  roused,  he  quietly 
said,  "  Your  politeness  has  cost  me  my 
life."  In  two  days  after  he  died.  A 
considerable  sum  of  money,  which  he 
hacl  laid  by  in  order  to  purchase  a  land- 
ed estate  for  Francis,  was  left  unappro- 
priated to  that  purpose  ;  and  Francis, 
on  his  return  from  France,  found  that 
he  had  to  share  with  four  others  the 
amount  which  his  father  had  intended 
for  himself  alone.  Thus  left  compara- 
tively poor,  he  solicited  his  uncle,  the 
Lord  Treasurer,  for  some  political  of- 
:ind,  had  his  abilities  been  less 
splendid,  he  doubtless  would  have  suc- 
ceeded in  his  suit ;  but  Burleigh's 
penetrating  eye  recognized  in  him  tal- 
ents, in  comparison  with  which  the  tal- 
ents of  his  own  favorite  son,  Robert 
Cecil,  were  dwarfed ;  and,  as  his  heart 
war;  set  on  Cecil's  succeeding  to  his 
own  great  offices,  he  is  suspected  to 
have  systematically  sacrificed  the  neph- 
ew in  order  that  the  nephew  should 
not  have  the  opportunity  of  being  a 
powerful  rival  of  the  son. 

Bacon,  therefore,  had  no  other  re- 
source but  the  profession  of  law;  and 
for  six  years,  between  1580  and  1586, 
he  bent  his  powerful  mind  to  its  study. 
He  then  again  applied  to  Burleigh,  hop- 
ing, through  the  latter's  influence,  to  be 
called  within  the  bar,  and  to  be  able  at 
once  to  practise.  He  was  testily  de- 
nied. Two  years  afterwards,  however, 
:is  made  counsel  learned  extraor- 
dinary to  the  Oueen.  This  was  an  office 
of  honor  rather  than  profit ;  but,  as  it 
gave  him  access  to  Elizabeth,  it  might 
have  led  to  his  political  advancement, 
had  not  his  good  Cousin  Cecil,  ever  at 
her  ear,  represented  him  as  a  specula- 
tive man,  "  indulging  in  philosophic 
reveries,  and  calculated  more  to  per- 
plex than  promote  public  business." 


Probably  he  obtained  this  idea  from  a 
letter  written  by  Bacon  to  Burleigh,  in 
1591,  in  which  —  wearied  with  waiting 
on  fortune,  troubled  with  poverty,  and 
haunted  by  the  rebuking  vision  of  his 
grand  philosophical  scheme  —  he  so- 
licits for  some  employment  adequate 
for  his  support,  and  which  will,  at  the 
same  time,  leave  him  leisure  to  become 
a  "pioneer  in  the  deep  mines  of  truth." 
"Not  being  born,"  he  says,  "under 
Sol,  that  loveth  honor,  nor  under  Jupi- 
ter, that  loveth  business,  but  being 
wholly  carried  away  by  the  contempla- 
tive planet,"  he  proceeds  to  follow  up 
this  modest  disclaimer  of  the  objects 
which  engrossed  the  Cecils  with  the 
proud,  the  imperial  declaration,  that  he 
has  "vast  contemplative  ends,  though 
moderate  civil  ends,"  and  "  has  taken 
all  knowledge  for  his  province."  This 
appeal  had  no  effect ;  and  as  the  re- 
version he  held  of  the  registrarship 
of  the  Star  Chamber,  worth  £  1,600  a 
year,  did  not  fall  in  until  twenty  years 
afterwards,  he  was  still  fretted  with 
poverty,  and  had  to  give  to  law  and 
politics  the  precious  hours  on  which 
philosophy  asserted  but  a  divided  claim. 
But  politics,  and  law  as  connected 
with  politics,  were,  in  Bacon's  time, 
occupations  by  which  Bacon  could  suc- 
ceed only  at  the  "expense  of  discredit- 
ing himself  with  posterity.  Whatever 
may  have  been  his  motives  for  desiring 
power, — and  they  were  doubtless  neither 
wholly  selfish  nor  wholly  noble,  — power 
could  be  obtained  only  by  submitting  to 
the  conditions  by  which  power  was  then 
acquired.  In  submitting  to  these  con- 
ditions, Bacon  the  politician  may  be 
said  to  have  agreed  with  Bacon  the 
philosopher,  as  the  same  objectivity  of 
mind  which,  as  a  philosopher,  led  him 
to  seek  the  law  of  phenomena  in  nature, 
and  not  in  the  intelligence,  led  him  as 
a  politician  to  seek  the  law  of  political 
action  in  circumstances,  and  not  in  con- 
science. "  Nature  is  commanded  by 
obeying  her,"  is  his  great  philosophical 
maxim.  Events  are  commanded  by 
obeying  them,  was  probably  his  guiding 
maxim  of  civil  prudence.  In  each  case 
the  principle  was  derived  from  without, 


480 


Bacon. 


[October, 


and  not  from  within ;  and  he  doubtless 
thought  that,  as  one  led  to  power  over 
nature,  so  the  other  would  lead  to  power 
over  states.  As  his  political  life  must 
be  considered  an  immense  mistake  ;  as 
the  result  of  his  theory  in  civil  affairs 
was  to  make  him  the  servant,  and  not 
the  master,  of  his  intended  instruments; 
as  he  was  constantly  inferior  in  power 
to  persons  inferior  to  him  in  mind ;  as 
he  had  to  do  the  bidding  of  masters  who 
would  not  profit  by  his  advice  ;  and  as 
his  wisdom  was  no  match,  in  the  real 
tug  of  affairs,  for  men  who  acted  either 
from  good  or  from  bad  impulses  and 
instincts,  —  it  is  well  to  trace  his  failure 
to  its  source.  The  fault  was  partly  in 
Bacon,  partly  in  his  times,  and  partly 
inherent  in  politics.  He  thought  he 
possessed  the  genius  of  action,  because, 
in  addition  to  his  universality  of  mind 
and  universality  of  acquirement,  he  was 
the  deepest  observer  of  men,  had  the 
broadest  comprehension  of  affairs,  and 
could  give  the  wisest  counsel,  of  any 
statesman  of  his  time.  He  was  practi- 
cally sagacious  beyond  even  the  Cecils ; 
for  if  they  could,  better  than  he,  see  an 
inch  before  the  nose,  he  could  see  the 
continuation  of  that  inch  along  a  line 
of  a  thousand  miles.  Still  his  was 
not  specially  the  genius  of  action,  but 
the  genius  which  tells  how  wisely  to 
act.  In  the  genius  of  action,  the  mind 
is  passionately  concentrated  in  the  will ; 
in  the  genius  which  tells  how  to  wisely 
act,  the  force  of  the  will  is  somewhat 
expended  in  enlarging  the  area  over 
which  the  mind  sends  its  glance.  In 
the  genius  of  action,  there  is  commonly 
more  or  less  effrontery,  wilfulness,  cun- 
ning, narrowing  of  the  mind  to  the 
mere  business  of  the  moment,  with  little 
foresight  of  consequences  ;  in  the  gen- 
ius which  tells  how  to  wisely  act  there 
is  true,  practical  wisdom.  Unhappily, 
principles  are,  in  politics,  so  compli- 
cated with  passions,  and  power  is  so 
often  the  prize  of  insolent  demerit, 
that  the  two  have  rarely  been  combined 
in  one  statesman  ;  and  history  exhibits 
scores  of  sterile  and  stunted  intellects, 
pushed  by  rough  force  into  ruling  posi- 
tions, for  one  instance  of  comprehen- 


sive intelligence  impelled  by  audacious 
will. 

As  a  politician,  Bacon  had  to  play  a 
difficult  game.     Entering  the  House  of 
Commons  in  1593,  he  at  once  showed 
himself  the  ablest  speaker  and  debater 
of  his  time.     It  is  said  that  Lord  Eldon, 
the  stanchest  of  Tories,  declared  in  his 
old  age,  that,  if  he  could  recommence 
his  political  career,  he  would  begin  "in 
the  sedition  line  "  ;  and  Bacon  at  first 
tried    the    expedient    of   attacking    a 
government  measure,  in  order  to  force 
his  abilities  on  the  notice  of  Burleigh, 
and  perhaps   obtain   by  fear  what  he 
could   not  obtain   by  favor.     But  the 
reign  of  the  haughty  and  almost  abso- 
lute Elizabeth  was  not  the  period  for 
such  tactics,  and  he  narrowly  escaped 
arrest  and  punishment.     He   then  re- 
curred to  a  design,  formed  three  years 
before,  of  opposing-  the  Lord  Treasurer 
by  means  of  a  rival ;  for  at  the  Court 
and  in  the  councils  of  the  Queen  there 
were  two  factions,  —  one  devoted  to  Bur- 
leigh, the  counsellor  of  Elizabeth ;  the 
other  to  the  Earl  of  Essex,  her  lover. 
These   factions    were    divided    by  no 
principle  ;  the  question  was  not,  how 
should  the  government  be  carried  on, 
but  by  whom  should  the  government  be 
carried  on  ;  and  the  object  of  each  was 
to   engross  the  favor  of  Elizabeth,  in 
order  to  engross  the  power  and  pat- 
ronage of  office.     Bacon  judging  that 
Essex,  who  held  the  Queen's  affections, 
would  be  successful  over  Burleiglj,  who 
only   held  her  judgment,  had  already 
attached   himself   to   the    fortunes    of 
Essex.     It  may  be  added  that,  as  his 
grand  philosophical  scheme  for  the  in- 
terpretation of  nature  depended  on  the 
patronage  of  government  for  its  com- 
plete success,  he  saw  that,  if  Essex  tri- 
umphed, he  might  be  able  to  gratify  his 
philosophic  as  well   as  political  ambi- 
tion;   for  the   Earl,   with   every  fault 
that  can  coexist  with  valor,  generosi- 
ty, and  frankness,  —  fierce,  proud,  w 
ful,   licentious,  and   headstrong,  —  had 
still  a  soul  sensitive  to  literary  as  to 
military  glory  ;  while  Burleigh  was  in- 
different to  both.     It  may  be  doubted 
if  Bacon  was  capable  of  intense  all- 


1 868.] 


Bacon. 


481 


sacrificing  friendship  for  anybody,  es- 
pecially for  a  man  like  Essex.  It  is 
probable  that  what  his  sagacity  detected 
as  the  rule  which  governed  the  political 
friendships  of  Csesar  may  to  some  ex- 
tent apply  to  his  own.  "  Cossar,"  he 
says,  "  made  choice  of  such  friends  as 
a  man  might  easily  see  that  he  chose 
them  rather  to  be  instruments  to  his 
ends  than  for  any  good-will  to  them." 
But  it  is  still  certain  that  for  ten  years 
he  was  the  wisest  counsellor  of  Essex, 
by  his  admirable  management  kept  the 
Earl's  haughty  and  headlong  spirit  un- 
der some  control  of  wisdom,  and  never 
allowed  him  to  take  a  false  step  without 
honestly  pointing  out  its  folly. 

Essex,  on  his  part,  urged  the  claims 
of  Bacon  with  the  same  impetuosity 
with  which  he  threw  himself  into  every- 
thing he  undertook.  But  he  constantly 
failed.  In  1594  he  tried  to  get  Bacon 
appointed  Attorney-General,  and  he 
failed.  He  then  tried  to  get  Bacon  ap- 
pointed Solicitor-General,  and  failed, 
—  failed  not  because  the  Queen  was 
hostile  to  Bacon,  but  because  she  de- 
sired to  show  that  she  was  not  enslaved 
by  Essex.  He  then  urged  Bacon's 
suit  to  Lady  Hatton,  whom  Bacon  de- 
sired to  marry,  not  for  her  temper, 
which  was  that  of  an  eccentric  terma- 
gant, but  for  her  fortune ;  and  here, 
fortunately  for  Bacon,  he  again  failed. 
He  then  gave  Bacon  a  landed  estate, 
which  Bacon  sold  for  £  1,800  ;  and  soon 
afterwards  Bacon  was  in  such  pecuni- 
ary distress  as  to  be  arrested  and  sent 
to  a  sponging-house,  fora  debt  of  £  500. 
Such  were  the  obligations  of  Bacon  to 
Essex.  What  were  the  obligations  of 
Essex  to  Bacon  ?  Ten  years  of  faith- 
ful service,  ten  years  of  the  "  time  and 
talents  "  of  the  best  head  for  large  af- 
fairs in  Europe.  At  last  the  Queen  and 
Essex  quarrelled.  Bacon,  himself  se- 
renely superior  to  passion,  but  adroit 
in  calming  the  passions  of  others,  ex- 
erted infinite  skill  and  address  to  rec- 
oncile them,  but  the  temper  of  each  was 
too  haughty  to  yield.  The  occasion  of 
the  final  and  deadly  feud  between  them 
looks  ludicrous  as  the  culminating 
event  in  the  life  of  a  hero.  Essex  held 

VOL.  xxn.  —  NO.  132.  31 


a  monopoly  of  sweet  wines ;  that  is,  the 
Queen  had  granted  to  him,  for  a  certain 
period,  the  exclusive  privilege  of  plun- 
dering all  her  subjects  who  drank  sweet 
wines.  He  asked  for  a  renewal  of  his 
patent,  and  was  refused.  He  then,  taking 
this  refusal  as  a  proof  that  his  enemies 
were  triumphant  at  court,  organized  a  for- 
midable conspiracy  against  the  govern- 
ment, and  for  a  purely  personal  object, 
without  the  pretence  of  any  public  aim, 
attempted  to  seize  the  Queen's  person, 
overturn  her  government,  and  convulse 
the  kingdom  with  civil  war.  He  was 
arrested,  tried,  and  executed.  Bacon, 
as  Queen's  counsel,  appeared  against 
him  on  his  trial,  and,  by  the  Queen's 
command,  wrote  a  narrative  of  the  facts 
which  justified  the  government  in  its 
course.  For  this  most  of  his  biogra- 
phers represent  him  as  guilty  of  the 
foulest  treachery,  ingratitude,  and  base- 
ness. Let  us  see  how  it  probably  ap- 
peared to  Bacon.  The  association  of 
politicians  of  which  Essex  was  the  head, 
and  to  which  Bacon  belonged,  was  an 
association  to  obtain  power  and  office 
by  legal  means  ;  treason  and  insurrec- 
tion were  not  in  the  "platform" ;  and 
the  rule  of  honor  which  applies  to  such 
a  body  is  plain.  It  is  treacherous  for 
any  of  the  followers  to  betray  the  leader, 
but  it  is  also  treacherous  for  the  leader 
to  betray  any  of  the  followers.  Nobody 
pretends  that  Bacon  betrayed  Essex, 
but  it  is  very  evident  that  Essex  be- 
trayed Bacon  ;  for  Bacon,  the  confidant, 
as  he  supposed,  of  the  most  secret 
thoughts  and  designs  of  Essex,  liable 
to  be  compromised  by  his  acts,  and  al- 
ready lying  under  the  suspicion  and  dis- 
pleasure of  Elizabeth  on  account  of  his 
strenuous  advocacy  of  the  Earl's  claims 
to  her  continued  favor,  suddenly  discov- 
ers that  Essex  has  given  way  to  passions 
as  selfish  as  they  were  furious  ;  that  he 
has  committed  high  treason,  and  reck- 
lessly risked  the  fortunes  of  his  political 
friends,  as  well  as  personal  confederates, 
on  the  hazard  of  an  enterprise  as  wicked 
as  it  was  mad.  Henry  Wotton,  who  was 
private  secretary  to  Essex,  but  not  en- 
gaged in  the  conspiracy,  still  thought  it 
prudent  to  escape  to  the  Continent,  and 


482 


Bacon. 


[October, 


not  trust  to  the  chances  of  a  trial ;  and 
Bacon  was  more  in  the  confidence  of 
Essex  than  Wotton.  If  Essex  had  no 
conscience  in  extricating  himself  from 
his  difficulties  by  treason,  why  blame 
Bacon  for  extricating  himself  from  com- 
plicity with  Essex  by  censuring  his 
treason  ?  To  the  indignation  that  Ba- 
con must  have  felt  in  finding  himself 
duped  and  betrayed  by  the  man  whose 
interests  he  had  identified  with  his  own 
must  be  added  his  indignation  at  the 
treason  itself;  for  the  politician  had 
not  so  completely  absorbed  the  patriot 
but  that  he  may  have  felt  genuine 
horror  at  the  idea  of  compassing  per- 
sonal ends  by  civil  war.  In  the  case 
of  Essex,  the  crime  was  really  aggra- 
vated by  the  ingratitude  which  Bacon's 
critics  charge  on  himself.  Bacon,  it 
seems,  was  a  mean-spirited  wretch, 
because  he  did  not  see  the  friend,  who 
had  given  him  £  1,800  in  the  public 
enemy.  But  is  it  to  be  supposed  that 
a  friend  will  be  more  constant  than  a 
lover?  And  Essex,  the  lover  of  the 
Queen,  made  war  upon  her,  —  upon  her 
who,  frugal  as  she  was  in  dispensing 
honors  and  money,  had  lavished  both  on 
him.  She  had  given  him  in  all  what 
would  now  be  equivalent  to  ,£300,000  ; 
and  then,  on  her  refusal  to  allow  him 
to  continue  cheating  those  of  her. sub- 
jects who  drank  sweet  wines,  the  ex- 
asperated hero  attempted  to  overthrow 
her  government.  But  Essex  acted 
from  his  passions,  —  and  passions,  it 
seems,  atone  for  more  sins  than  even 
charity  can  cover.  History  itself  has 
here  sided  against  reason  ;  and  Bacon, 
the  intellectual  benefactor  of  the  world, 
will  probably,  through  all  time,  be  sac- 
rificed to  this  hot-blooded,  arrogant,  self- 
willed,  and  greedy  noble.  Intellect  is 
often  selfish  ;  but  nothing  is  more  fright- 
fully selfish,  after  all,  than  passion. 

It  would  be  well  if  the  character  of 
Bacon  were  justly  open  to  no  severer 
charge  than  that  founded  on  his  connec- 
tion with  Essex.  But  "  worse  remains 
behind."  In  1603  Elizabeth  died,  and 
James,  King  of  Scotland,  succeeded  to 
the  English  throne.  Bacon  at  once  de- 
tected in  him  the  characteristic  defect 


of  all  the  Stuarts.  "  Methought,"  he 
wrote  to  a  friend,  "his  Majesty  rather 
asked  counsel  of  the  time  past  than  of 
the  time  to  come."  To  James,  how- 
ever, he  paid  assiduous  court,  and  espe- 
cially won  his  favor  by  advocating  in 
Parliament  the  union  of  England  and 
Scotland.  By  a  combination  of  hard 
work  and  soft  compliances  he  gradually 
obtained  the  commanding  positions, 
though  not  the  commanding  influence, 
of  his  political  ambition.  In  1609  he 
was  made  Solicitor-General ;  in  1613, 
Attorney-General ;  in  1616,  Privy  Coun- 
cillor ;  in  1617,  Lord  Keeper;  in  1618, 
Lord  Chancellor  and  Baron  Verulam  ; 
in  1621,  Viscount  St.  Albans.  These 
eighteen  years  of  his  life  exhibit  an 
almost  unparalleled  activity  and  fertil- 
ity of  mind  in  law,  politics,  literature, 
and  philosophy ;  but  in  the  reign  of 
James  I.  no  man  could  rise  to  the  posi- 
tions which  Bacon  reached  without 
compromises  with  conscience  and  com- 
promises with  intelligence  which  it  is 
doubtless  provoking  that  Bacon  did  not 
scorn.  Even  if  we  could  pardon  these 
compromises  on  the  principle  that  events 
must  be  obeyed  in  order  to  be  com- 
manded, it  is  still  plain  that  his  obedi- 
ence did  not  lead  to  real  command.  He 
unquestionably  expected  that  his  posi- 
tion in  the  government  would  enable 
him  to  draw  the  government  into  his 
philosophical  scheme  of  conducting  a 
systematic  war  on  Nature,  with  an  army 
of  investigators,  to  force  her  to  deliver 
up  her  secrets  ;  but  the  Solomon  who 
was  then  king  of  England  preferred  to 
spend  his  money  for  quite  different  ob- 
jects ;  and  Bacon's  compliances,  there- 
fore, led  as  little  to  real  power  over  Na- 
ture as  to  real  power  in  the  direction  of 
affairs. 

As  it  is  not  our  purpose  to  excuse, 
but  to  explain,  Bacon's  conduct,  —  to 
identify  the  Bacon  who  within  this  pe- 
riod wrote  The  Advancement  of  Learn- 
ing, The  Wisdom  of  the  Ancients, 
and  the  Noviun  Organwn,  with  the 
Bacon  who  within  the  same  period  was 
connected  with  the  abuses  of  James's 
administration,  —  let  us  survey  his  char- 
acter in  relation  to  his  times.  He  lived 


1 868.] 


Bacon. 


483 


in  an  epoch  when  the  elements  of  the 
English   Constitution  were   in   a   state 
of  anarchy.      The  King  was   following 
that   executive    instinct  which  brought 
the  head  of  his  son  to  the  block.     The 
House  of  Commons  was  following  that 
legislative  instinct  which  eventually  gave 
it  the  control  of  the  executive  adminis- 
tration.    James  talked,  and  feebly  acted, 
in  the  spirit  of  an  absolute  monarch  ; 
looked  upon  the  House  of  Commons  as 
but  one  mode  of  getting  at  the  money 
of  his  subjects ;  and  when  it  occupied 
itself  in  presenting  grievances,  instead 
of  voting  subsidies,  he  either  dissolved 
it  in  a  pet  or  yielded  to  it  in  a  fright. 
Had  Bacon's  nature  been  as  intense  as 
it  was  sagacious,  had  he  been  a  resolute 
statesman  of  the  good  or  bad  type,  this 
was  the  time  for  him  to  have  anticipated 
Hampden  in  the  Commons,  or  StrafFord 
in  the  Council,  and  given  himself,  body 
and   soul,  to  the  cause  of  freedom  or 
the  cause  of  despotism.     He  did  nei- 
ther j  and  there  is  nothing  in  his  writ- 
ings which  would  lead  us  to  suppose 
that  he  would  do  either.     The  written 
advice  he  gave  James  and  Buckingham 
on   the   improvement  of   the   law,   on 
church  affairs,  and  on  affairs  of  state, 
would,  if  it  had  been  followed,  have  saved 
England  from  the  necessity  of  the  Long 
Parliament,  of  Oliver  Cromwell,  of  Wil- 
liam of  Orange.     As  it  was,  he  prob- 
ably prevented  more  evil  than  he  was 
made   the   instrument    of    committing. 
But,  after   counselling   wisely,  he,  like 
other  statesmen  of  his  time,  consented 
to  act  against  his  own  advice.     He  lent 
the  aid  of  his  professional  skill  to  the 
court,  rather  as  a  lawyer  who  obeys  a 
client  than  as  a  statesman  responsible 
to  his  country.     And  the  mischief  was, 
that  his   mind,  like  all  comprehensive 
minds,  was  so  fertile  in  those  reasons 
which  convert  what  is  abstractly  wrong 
into  what  is   relatively  right,    that   he 
could  easily  find  maxims  of  state  to  jus- 
tify the  attorney-general  in  doing  what 
the   statesman  in  the  attorney-general 
condemned,  especially  as  the   practice 
of  these  maxims  enabled  the  attorney- 
general  to  keep  his  office  and  to  hope 
for  a  higher.     This  was  largely  the  cus- 


tom with  all  English  public  men  down 
to  the  time  when  "  parliamentary  gov- 
ernment "  was  thoroughly  established. 
Besides,  Bacon's  attention  was  scat- 
tered over  too  many  objects  to  allow  of 
an  all-excluding  devotion  to  one.  He 
could  not  be  a  Hampden  or  a  Strafford 
because  he  was  Bacon.  Accomplished 
as  a  courtier,  politician,  orator,  lawyer, 
jurist,  statesman,  man  of  letters,  phi- 
losopher, with  a  wide-wandering  mind 
that  swept  over  the  domain  of  positive 
knowledge  only  to  turn  dissatisfied  into 
those  vast  and  lonely  tracts  of  medita- 
tion where  future  sciences  and  inven- 
tions slept  in  their  undiscovered  prin- 
ciples, it  was  impossible  that  a  man 
thus  hundred-eyed  should  be  single- 
handed.  He  also  lacked  two  elements 
of  strength  which  in  that  day  lent  vigor 
to  action  by  contracting  thought  and 
inflaming  passion.  He  was  without 
political  and  theological  prejudice,  and 
he  was  without  political  and  theological 
malignity. 

But,  it  may  be  asked,  if  he  was  too 
broad  for  the  passion  of  politics,  why- 
did  he  become  a  politician  at  all  ?  First, 
because  he  was  an  Englishman,  the  son 
of  the  Keeper  of  the  Great  Seal,  and 
had  breathed  an  atmosphere  of  politics 
—  and  not  of  very  scrupulous  politics  — 
from  his  cradle  ;  second,  because,  well 
as  he  thought  he  understood  nature, 
he  understood  human  nature  far  better, 
and  was  tempted  into  affairs  by  con- 
scious talent ;  and  third,  because  he 
was  poor,  dependent,  had  immense 
needs,  and  saw  that  politics  had  led  his 
father  and  uncle  to  wealth  and  power. 
And,  coming  to  the  heart  of  the  matter, 
if  it  be  asked  why  a  mind  of  such  grand- 
eur and  comprehensiveness  should  sac- 
rifice its  integrity  for  such  wealth  as 
office  could  give,  and  such  titles  as 
James  could  bestow,  we  can  only  an- 
swer the  question  intelligently  by  look- 
ing at  wealth  and  titles  through  Bacon's 
eyes.  His  conscience  was  weakened 
by  that  which  gives  such  splendor  and 
attractiveness  to  his  writings,  —  his  im- 
agination. He  was  a  philosopher,  but  a 
philosopher  in  whose  character  imagina- 
tion was  co-ordinated  with  reason.  This 


484 


Bacon. 


[October, 


imagination  was  not  merely  a  quality  of 
his  intellect,  but  an  element  of  his  na- 
ture ;  and  as,  through  its  instinctive 
workings,  he  was  not  content  to  send 
out  his  thoughts  stoically  bare  of  adorn- 
ment, or  limping  and  ragged  in  cynic 
squalor,  but  clothed  them  in  purple  and 
gold',  and  made  them  move  in  majestic 
cadences,  so  also,  through  his  imagina- 
tion, he  saw,  in  external  pomp  and  afflu- 
ence and  high  place,  something  that 
corresponded  to  his  own  inward  opu- 
lence and  autocracy  of  intellect ;  recog- 
nized in  them  the  superb  and  fitting 
adjuncts  and  symbols  of  his  internal 
greatness  ;  and,  investing  them  with  a 
glory  not  their  own,  felt  that  in  them  the 
great  Bacon  was  clothed  in  outward  cir- 
cumstance, that  the  invisible  person  was 
made  palpable  to  the  senses,  embodied 
and  expressed  to  all  eyes  as  the  man 

"Whom  a  wise  king  and  Nature  chose 
Lord  Chancellor  of  both  their  Laws." 

So  strong  was  this  illusion,  that,  when 
hurled  from  power  and  hunted  by  cred- 
itors, he  refused  to  raise  money  by  cut- 
ting down  the  woods  of  his  estate.  "  I 
will  not,"  he  said,  "be  stripped  of  my 
fine  feathers."  He  had  so  completely  en- 
souled the  accompaniments  and  "com- 
pliment extern  "  of  greatness,  that  he 
felt,  in  their  deprivation,  as  if  portions 
of  the  outgrowth  of  his  being  had  been 
rudely  lopped. 

But  a  day  of  reckoning  was  at  hand, 
which  was  to  dissipate  all  this  vision- 
ary splendor,  and  show  the  hollowness 
of  all  accomplishments  when  unaccom- 
panied by  simple  integrity.  Bacon  had 
idly  drifted  with  the  stream  of  abuses, 
until  at  last  he  partook  of  them.  It  is 
to  his  credit,  that,  in  1621,  he  strenu- 
ously advised  the  calling  of  the  Parlia- 
ment by  which  he  was  impeached.  The 
representatives  of  the  people  met  in  a 
furious  mood,  and  exhibited  a  menacing 
attitude  to  the  court ;  and  the  King, 
thoroughly  cowed,  made  haste  to  give 
up  to  their  vengeful  justice  the  culprits 
at  whom  they  aimed.  Bacon  was  im- 
peached for  corruption  in  his  high  of- 
fice, and,  in  indescribable  agony  and 
abasement  of  spirit,  was  compelled  by 
the  King  to  plead  guilty  to  the  charges, 


of  a  large  portion  of  which  he  was  cer- 
tainly innocent.  The  great  Chancellor 
has  ever  since  been  imaged  to  the  hon- 
est English  imagination  as  a  man  with 
his  head  away  up  in  the  heaven  of  con- 
templation, seemingly  absorbed  in  sub- 
lime meditations,  while  his  hand  is  held 
stealthily  out  to  receive  a  bribe!  Of 
the  degree  of  his  moral  guilt  it  is  dif- 
ficult at  this  time  to  decide.  The  proba- 
bility seems  to  be  that,  in  accordance 
with  a  general  custom,  he  and  his  de- 
pendants received  presents  from  the 
suitors  in  his  court.  The  presents 
were  given  to  influence  his  decision  of 
cases.  He  —  at  once  profuse  and  poor 
—  took  presents  from  both  parties,  and 
then  decided  according  to  the  lav/. 
He  was  exposed  by  those  who,  having 
given  money,  were  exasperated  at  re- 
ceiving "killing  decrees"  in  return; 
who  found  that  Bacon  did  not  sell 
injustice,  but  justice.  He  was  sen- 
tenced to  pay  a  fine  of  £  40,000  ;  to  be 
imprisoned  in  the  Tower  during  the 
King's  pleasure ;  to  be  forever  incapa- 
ble of  any  office,  place,  or  employment 
in  the  state  or  commonwealth  ;  and  for- 
bidden to  sit  in  Parliament  or  come 
within  the  verge  of  the  court.  Bacon 
seems  himself  to  have  considered  that 
a  notorious  abuse,  in  which  other  chan- 
cellors had  participated,  was  reformed 
in  his  punishment.  He  is  reported  to 
have  said,  afterwards,  in  conversation, 
"  I  was  the  justest  judge  that  was  in 
England  these  fifty  years  ;  but  it  was  the 
justest  censure  in  Parliament  that  was 
these  two  hundred  years."  The  courts  of 
Russia  are  now  notoriously  corrupt ;  in 
some  future  time,  when  the  nation  may 
imperatively  demand  a  reformation  of 
the  judicial  tribunals,  some  great  Rus- 
sian, famous  as  a  thinker  and  man  of 
letters,  as  well  as  judge,  will,  though 
comparatively  innocent,  be  selected  as 
a  victim,  and  the  whole  system  be  ren- 
dered infamous  in  his  condemnation. 

Bacon  lived  five  years  after  his  dis- 
grace ;  and,  during  these  years,  though 
plagued  by  creditors  and  vexed  by  do- 
mestic disquiet,  he  prosecuted  his  lit- 
erary and  scientific  labors  with  singular 
vigor  and  success.  In  revising  old 


1 868.] 


Free  Produce  among  the  Quakers. 


485 


works,  in  producing  new,  and  in  project- 
ing even  greater  ones  than  he  produced, 
he  displayed  an  energy  and  opulence 
of  mind  wonderful  even  in  him.  He 
died  on  the  9th  of  April,  1626,  in  con- 
sequence of  a  cold  caught  in  trying  an 
experiment  to  ascertain  if  flesh  might 
not  be  preserved  in  snow  as  well  as 
salt ;  and  his  consolation  in  his  last 
hours  was,  that  the  "  experiment  suc- 
ceeded excellently  well."  There  are 
two  testimonials  to  him,  after  he  was 
hurled  from  power  and  place,  which 
convey  a  vivid  idea  of  the  benignant 
stateliness  of  his  personal  presence,  — 
of  the  impression  he  made  on  those 
contemporaries  who  were  at  once  his 
intimates  and  subordinates,  and  who, 
in  the  most  familiar  intercourse,  felt 
and  honored  the  easy  dignity  with 
which  his  greatness  was  worn.  "  My 
conceit  of  his  person,"  says  Ben  Jon- 


son,  "  was  never  increased  towards  him 
by  his  place  or  honors ;  but  I  have  and 
do  reverence  him  for  the  greatness  that 
was  only  proper  to  himself;  in  that  he 
seemed  to  me  ever,  by  his  work,  one  of 
the  greatest  men,  and  most  worthy  of 
admiration,  that  had  been  in  many  ages. 
In  his  adversity,  I  ever  prayed  that 
God  would  give  him  strength  ;  for  great- 
ness he  could  not  want."  And  Dr., 
Rawley,  his  domestic  chaplain,  who 
saw  him  as  he  appeared  in  the  most 
familiar  relations  of  his  home,  remarks, 
with  quaint  veneration,  "  I  have  been 
induced  to  think  that  if  there  were  a 
beam  of  knowledge  derived  from  God 
upon  any  man  in  these  modern  times, 
it  was  upon  him." 

In  our  next  paper,  we  propose  to 
consider  Bacon's  literary  and  philo- 
sophical works  in  connection  with  his 
personal  character. 


FREE    PRODUCE    AMONG    THE    QUAKERS. 


THE  war,  which  affected  all  interests, 
building  up,  creating,  and  tearing 
down,  involved  in  the  overthrow  of 
slavery  the  humble  interest  of  one  man 
who  had  the  least  possible  complicity 
with  the  system,  who  had  no  fellow  in 
his  disaster,  and  yet  must  have  watched 
the  approach  of  emancipation  with 
something  of  the  feelings  of  those  who 
manufactured  osnaburgs  and  cowhides 
for  the  Southern  market.  But  the  re- 
bellion had  been  suppressed  for  two 
years,  and  four  years  had  elapsed  since 
the  Proclamation,  when  George  Taylor, 
in  the  spring  of  1867,  put  up  the  shut- 
ters for  the  last  time  on  his  free-pro- 
duce store  in  Philadelphia,  and  went 
back  to  the  paternal  farm,  his  occupa- 
tion gone.  Already  customers  of  a 
dozen  years,  grudging  the  extra  price 
he  charged  for  indulging  a  harmless 
sentiment,  had  said  they  no  longer  felt 
bound  to  patronize  him  ;  and  our  Or- 
thodox Friend  would  reply,  "Ah,  all 


of  slavery  's  not  gone  yet."  That  plea 
served  him  while  it  might,  —  as  it  has 
served  those  devoted  Abolitionists  who 
would  not  disband  their  society  when 
there  were  no  more  slaves,  but  a  nation 
of  Abolitionists.  Had  he  owned  their 
logic,  he  would  have  continued  at  his 
post  so  long  as  any  product  of  human 
industry  was  tainted  with  injustice, 
hardship,  suffering,  or  oppression.  But 
he  took  a  narrow  view  of  the  meaning 
of  "  free-produce,"  and  when  he  could 
not  decently  pretend  to  be  singular,  he 
took  down  his  sign,  and  joined  the  un- 
broken ranks  of  free  laborers  and  cul- 
tivators. He  could  at  least  congratu- 
late himself  that  he  had  shown  no 
unseemly  haste  to  abandon  his  princi- 
ples, and  that  he  had  never  omitted  an 
opportunity,  in  antislavery  meetings, 
to  declare  the  importance  of  his  mode 
of  warfare  against  the  common  enemy. 
And  when  this  speaker  had  exposed 
the  proslavery  character  of  the  Con* 


486 


Free  Produce  among  the  Quakers. 


[October, 


stitution,  and  that  speaker  had  recited 
the  latest  instance  of  plantation  cruelty, 
and  a  third  had  called  for  -renewed  en- 
ergy in  rousing  the  nation  to  a  con- 
sciousness of  its  sinfulness  and  its 
peril,  Friend  Taylor  was  wont  to  ask 
with  solicitude,  "  Cannot  something  be 
clone,  cannot  something  be  done,  to 
make  people  buy  free-labor  sugar  ?  " 

It  was  not  a  new  question  to  the 
people  of  Philadelphia.  In  August, 
1827,  in  his  Genius  of  Universal 
Emancipation,  Lundy  had  announced, 
"with  pleasure,"  that  a  Rhode  Island 
manufacturer  had  adopted  the  system 
of  working  cotton  produced  by  free 
labor,  and  that  the  muslins  made  from 
such  cotton  could  be  had  by  the  bale 
of  James  Mott  &  Co.,  in  Philadelphia; 
and  the  editor  earnestly  recommended 
the  encouragement  of  this  enterprise. 
TJhe  same  Lundy,  in  the  course  of  the 
following  year,  called  a  meeting  in  the 
Quaker  City  to  consider  the  subject  of 
encouraging' free-labor  products, —  the 
first  of  the  kind,  it  is  believed,  ever 
held  in  America  ;  and  it  was  about 
this  time  that  Baldwin  and  Thompson 
opened  the  store  which  George  Taylor 
was  to  close.  They  were  succeeded  by 
Lydia  White,  and  she  by  Joel  Fisher, 
from  York ;  after  him  came  Taylor. 
Lundy  was  also  the  first  to  urge  the 
formation  of  societies  to  give  consis- 
tency to  the  movement  ;  but  the  Free 
Produce  Society  of  Philadelphia  was 
riot  formed  before  1837,  having  for  its 
organ  the  Non-Slaveholder,  of  which 
Samuel  Rhoads  and  Abraham  L.  Pen- 
nock,  both  Friends,  and  able  and  most 
estimable  men,  were  the  editors. 

The  free-produce  doctrines  were 
never  adopted  by  the  Abolitionists  as 
a  body.  At  a  time  when  —  as  now,  in 
the  transition  period  of  our  govern- 
ment—  all  questions,  and  social  ques- 
tions particularly,  were  discussed,  and 
men  sought  to  square  their  conduct 
daily  as  if  for  the  millennium  ;  when  the 
diet,  the  dress,  the  mode  of  wearing  the 
beard,  the  theories  of  medicine,  the  rights 
of  property,  the  equality  of  the  sexes, 
the  true  nature  of  marriage,  the  plenary 
inspiration  of  the  Scriptures,  were  seri- 


ously laid  to  men's  consciences, — the 
scruple  of  using  slave-products  could 
not  fail  to  arise  and  to  prevail  with  many. 
In  the  Abolitionist  of  March,  1833,  is 
printed  an  address  from  W.  J.  Snelling 
before  the  New  England  Antislavery 
Society,  in  which  this  passage  occurs  :  — 

"  Do  we  not  offer  the  South  a  market 
for  the  produce  of  the  toil  of  her  slaves  ? 
Could  the  system  of  slavery  subsist  for 
another  year,  nay,  for  a  single  clay,  were 
that  market  closed  ?  Every  one  who 
buys  a  pound  of  Southern  sugar  or  a 
yard  of  Southern  cotton  virtually  ap- 
proves and  sanctions  an  hour  or  more 
of  slave-labor." 

And  it  was  out  of  homage  to  this 
sentiment  that  the  committee  who  con- 
ducted the  paper  reprinted  these  lines 
(by  u Margaret")  from  the  Genius  of 
Universal  Emancipation  :  — 

"  '  No,  no,  pretty  sugar- plums  !   Stay  where  you  are  ! 
Though  my  grandmother  sent  you  to  me  from  so 

far; 

You  look  very  nice,  you  would  taste  very  sweet, 
And  I  love  you  right  well,  —  yet  not  one  will  I  eat. 

"  '  For  the  poor  slaves  have  labored,  far  down  in  the 

South, 

To  make  you  so  sweet  and  so  nice  for  my  mouth  ; 
But  I  want  no  slaves  toiling  for  me  in  the  sun, 
Driven  on  with  the  whip,  till  the  long  clay  is  done.' 

"  Thus  said  little  Fanny,"  etc. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  remember,  among 
the  gifts  which  British  friends  of  the 
cause  sent  over  to  antislavery  fairs  — 
among  the  yellow  card-boxes  for  anti- 
slavery  pennies,  and  inkstands  and  tea- 
cups stamped  with  "Am  I  not  a  man 
and  a  brother  ?  "  —  a  brown-stone  bowl, 
of  which  the  cover  was  early  broken  in 
a  certain  family,  and  whose  rim  bore 
the  delusive  legend,  — EAST  INDIA  SU- 
GAR, NOT  MADE  BY  SLAVES.  Alas! 
they  had  forgotten  to  send  the  sugar  to 
make  good  the  profession,  and  we  ate 
from  the  pretty  bowl  whatever  Cuban 
or  Louisianian  sweetness  a  large  h< 
hold  and  a  moderate  purse  could  com- 
promise upon;  for  that  was  one  oJ 
compromises  which  Abolitionists  h:ui 
often  to  make  in  spite  of  themselves. 
And  we  ate  sugar-plums  when  we  could 
get  them,  and  bought  cotton  cloths  the 
day  after  Mr.  Snelling's  address,  and 
made  them  into  pocket-handkerchiefs 


1 868.] 


Free  Produce  among  the  Quakers. 


487 


printed  with  antislavery  mottoes  or 
"  Margaret's  "  verses.  For  we  lived 
not  in  Pennsylvania,  but  where  people 
say  shall  once  in  a  while  instead  of  will 
always,  and  eat  codfish  instead  of  terra- 
pin, and  chicken  as  rarely  as  they  call 
it  chicken,  and  grow  squashes,  and  as- 
sociate wooden  shutters  with  country 
groceries.  Yet  we  did  our  share  of 
employing  colored  dentists  because 
they  were  colored,  and  colored  painters 
and  carpenters  for  the  same  reason, 
though  sometimes  against  the  grain. 
The  Quakers  not  alone,  but  distinctive- 
ly, cherished  the  sacred  flame  of  free 
produce. 

Penn,  we  all  know,  was  a  slaveholder 
in  his  province  in  1685,  having  followed 
the  fashion  of  his  Virginia  neighbors 
without  much  thought  of  the  matter, 
except  to  make  the  yoke  easy.  In  a 
will  dated  1701  he  liberated  his  slaves  ; 
but  still  for  three  quarters  of  a  century 
the  Friends  forbore  to  make  slavehold- 
ing  a  disciplinable  offence,  and  it  was 
long  after  1776  that  those  of  Great 
Britain  went  to  the  half-breeds  of  Brazil 
for  cotton  which  freemen  had  tilled  and 
of  which  Pernambuco  is  now  the  busy 
mart. 

Clarkson,  in  his  History  of  the  Ab- 
olition of  the  Slave-Trade,  names  1791 
as  the  year  in  which  the  feelings  of  the 
English  people  in  regard  to  the  exist- 
ence of  this  evil  "  which  was  so  far 
removed  from  their  sight,  began  to  be 
insupportable."  The  entire  passage  is 
worth  reproducing  here,  for  the  sake  of 
comparing  the  free-produce  movement 
in  the  two  countries.  "  Many  of  them," 
he  continues,  "  resolve  to  abstain  from 
the  use  of  West  India  produce.  In  this 
state  of  things  a  pamphlet,  written  by 
William  Bell  Crafton  of  Tewksbury,  and 
called  '  A  Sketch  of  the  Evidence,  with 
a  Recommendation  on  the  Subject  to 
the  serious  Attention  of  People  in  gen- 
eral,' made  its  appearance  ;  and  another 
followed  it  written  by  William  Fox  of 
London,  '  On  the  Propriety  of  abstain- 
ing from  West  India  Sugar  and  Rum.' 
These  pamphlets  took  the  same  ground. 
They  inculcated  abstinence  from  these 
articles  as  a  moral  duty ;  they  incul- 


cated it  as  a  peaceful  and  constitutional 
measure ;  and  they  laid  before  the 
reader  a  truth  which  was  sufficiently 
obvious,  that,  if  each  would  abstain,  the 
people  would  have  a  complete  remedy 
for  this  enormous  evil  in  their  own 
power."  In  an  extended  tour  which 
Clarkson  made,  "there  was  no  town," 
he  remarks,  "  through  which  I  passed, 
in  which  there  was  not  some  one  indi- 
vidual who  had  left  off  the  use  of  sugar. 
In  the  smaller  towns  there  were  from 
ten  to  fifty  by  estimation,  and  in  the 
larger  from  two  to  five  hundred,  who 
made  this  sacrifice  to  virtue.  These 
were  of  all  ranks  and  parties.  Rich 
and  poor,  Churchmen  and  dissenters, 
had  adopted  the  measure.  Even  gro- 
cers had  left  off  trading  in  the  article 
in  some  places.  In  gentlemen's  fami- 
lies, where  the  master  had  set  the  ex- 
ample, the  servants  had  often  voluntarily 
followed  it ;  and  even  children  who  were 
capable  of  understanding  the  history  of 
the  sufferings  of  the  Africans,  excluded 
with  the  most  virtuous  resolution  the 
sweets  to  which  they  had  been  accus- 
tomed from  their  lips.  By  the  best  com- 
putation I  was  able  to  make  from  notes 
taken  down  in  my  journey,  no  fewer  than 
three  hundred  thousand  persons  had 
abandoned  the  use  of  sugar." 

Penn  was  still  lingering  under  his 
fatal  paralysis  when  Anthony  Benezet, 
born  across  the  Channel  in  Pi  card  y, 
was  brought  to  London  by  his  Hugue- 
not parents  fleeing  their  confiscated 
estates.  Embracing  the  Friends'  doc- 
trine in  1727,  he  again  accompanied  his 
parents  when  they  emigrated  to  Penn- 
sylvania in  1731.  Dissatisfied  with  a 
mercantile  life,  and  having  sought  con- 
tentment in  vain  as  a  cooper,  he  turned 
school-teacher,  holding  ideas  of  instruc- 
tion to  which  Rousseau  and  Pestalozzi 
afterwards  gave  a  definite  shape  and  a 
reforming  vitality.  It  was  in  1750  that 
he  began  to  be  struck  with  the  enormi- 
ties of  the  slave-trade,  and  to  lift  up  his 
voice  against  it,  and  to  begin  a  career 
of  antislavery  activity  which  has  been 
seldom  surpassed.  He  established  an 
evening  school  for  colored  girls,  wrote 
in  Franklin's  almanacs  and  in  the  news- 


488 


Free  Produce  among  the  Quakers. 


[October, 


papers,  published  innumerable  tracts 
and  solid  works  on  the  slave-trade,  and 
corresponded  with  crowned  heads  and 
eminent  philanthropists  in  all  parts  of 
Europe.  Especially  did  he  labor  for  the 
conversion  of  Friends.  As  a  French- 
man, Benezet  had  received  and  com- 
forted the  exiled  Acadians  who  had 
drifted  to  Philadelphia ;  not  less  as  a 
Frenchman  at  yearly  meeting  on  one 
occasion  did  he  carry  the  clay  against 
those  who  would  have  temporized  with 
slavery.  At  the  critical  juncture,  says 
one  account,  he  "left  his  seat,  which 
was  in  an  obscure  part  of  the  house, 
and  presented  himself,  weeping,  at  an 
elevated  door,  in  the  presence  of  the 
whole  congregation,  whom  he  addressed 
in  the  words  of  the  Psalmist,  '  Ethiopia 
shall  soon  stretch  out  her  hands  unto 
God.'  "  Veritable  coup  de  theatre  !  In 
1775  he  was  free  to  turn  his  attention 
to  outside  organization,  and,  in  compa- 
ny with  Dr.  Rush,  James  Pemberton, 
and  others,  he  founded  the  Society  for 
the  Relief  of  Free  Negroes  unlawfully 
held  in  Bondage,  and  was  instrumental 
in  rescuing  a  body  of  negroes  who  had 
been  kidnapped  from  New  Jersey,  and 
were  being  taken  South  through  Phila- 
delphia. The  law  enacted  in  1780  for 
gradual  abolition  in  Pennsylvania  was 
due  in  great  measure  to  his  zealous 
initiative. 

Benezet  died  in  1784.  He  had  adopt- 
ed conscientiously  the  Quaker  severity 
of  attire,  which  had  come  in  since  Ell- 
wood  and  Penn,  but  was  concerned 
only,  so  far  as  we  know,  for  the  out- 
ward style,  —  little,  if  at  all,  for  the  his- 
tory of  the  material  as  produced  by  free 
labor  or  by  slave.  Towards  the  close 
of  his  life,  at  the  sacrifice  of  his  strength, 
he  relinquished  animal  food,  from  a 
feeling  of  mercy  for  the  brute  creation, 
though  he  probably  thought  none  the 
worse  of  George  Fox  for  having  worn 
a  suit  of  leather.  It  remained  for  anoth- 
er Friend  —  whose  life  was  contained 
within  the  limits  of  Benezet's,  and  who 
was  one  of  three  belonging  to  the  same 
society  and  natives  of  the  same  State,* 

*  John  Woolman,  born  at  Northampton,  Burling- 
ton County,  New  Jersey ;  Isaac  T.  Hopper,  born  in 


that  distinguished  themselves  in  oppo- 
sition to  slavery  —  to  feel  and  avow  his 
repugnance  to  the  use  of  slave-grown 
products,  and  to  avoid  them  as  he  was 
able.  John  Woolman  was  born  in 
1720.  The  testimony  of  the  Monthly 
Meeting  of  Friends  in  Burlington  (ist 
8th  month,  1773)  says  of  him  that  he 
was  "for  many  years  deeply  exercised 
on  account  of  the  poor  enslaved  Afri- 
cans, whose  cause,  as  he  sometimes 
mentioned,  lay  almost  continually  upon 
him,"  and  "  particularly  careful  as  to 
himself  not  to  countenance  slavery 
even  by  the  use  of  those  conveniences 
of  life  which  were  furnished  by  their 
labor."  In  his  Diary,  which  can  never 
be  read  without  profit  by  any  genera- 
tion, Woolman  has  left  a  circumstantial 
record  of  his  rise  to  the  high  moral 
plane  in  which  the  maturity  of  his  life 
was  spent. 

"Through  weakness,"  as  he  says, 
when  twenty-three  years  of  age,  he 
wrote  a  bill  of  sale  of  a  negro  woman 
for  his  employer,  who  sold  her  to  an 
elderly  Friend  ;  but  he  said,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  both  purchaser  and  seller,  that 
he  "believed  slave-keeping  to  be  a. 
practice  inconsistent  with  the  Christian 
religion."  Twelve  years  later  (presuma- 
bly in  consequence  of  Benezet's  agita- 
tion) he  was  so  much  strengthened  in 
this  belief  that  he  would  not  write  a  will, 
disposing  of  slaves,  for  an  "  ancient 
man  of  good  esteem  in  the  neighbor- 
hood " ;  and  when,  still  later,  the  same 
testator  applied  to  him  to  write  a  fresh 
will,  Woolman  again  declined  unless 
the  slaves  were  set  free,  which  was 
done  accordingly.  On  another  occa- 
sion he  wrote  part  of  a  will,  rather  than 
afflict  the  person  desiring  it,  who  was 
very  ill ;  but  declined  pay  for  his  ser- 
vices, or  to  finish  out  the  document 
except  a  negro  mentioned  therein  were 
set  free ;  and  this  too  was  done.  In 
1746,  making  a  tour  in  South  Pennsyl- 
vania, Maryland,  Virginia,  and  North 
Carolina,  he  remarks  :  "  When  I  ate, 

Deptford   Township,    near    Woodbury,    Gloucester 
County,  New  Jersey ;  and  Benjamin   Lundy,  born 
at  Handwich,  Sussex  County,  New  Jersey,  —  all, 
may  add,  belonging  to  the  last  century  in  point 
birth. 


we 


1868.] 


Free  Produce  among  the  Quakers. 


489 


drank,  and  lodged  free-cost  with  people 
I   who  lived  in  ease  on  the  hard  labor  of 
I  their  slaves,  I  felt  uneasy."  Where,  how- 
•  ever,  the  master  did  his  portion  of  the 
i  work,  and  lived  frugally,  neither  over- 
j  tasking  his  slaves,  nor  providing  ill  for 
them,  he  was  less  disturbed  in  mind. 
}  But   he   discerned   on    this   trip,   with 
great  spiritual   clearness  for  his  time, 
the  real  nature  of  slavery :  "  I  saw  in 
these  Southern  provinces  so  many  vices 
and  corruptions,  increased  by  this  trade 
|  and  this  way  of  life,  that  it  appeared  to 
j  me  as  dark  gloominess   hanging  over 
;  the  land ;  and  though  now,"  he  adds, 
i  prophetically,  "  many  willingly  run  into 
!  it,  yet  in  future  the  consequences  will 
1  be  grievous  to  posterity.     I  express  it 
as  it  hath  appeared  to  me,  not  at  once, 
nor  twice,  but  as  a  matter  fixed  on  my 
mind."     He   experienced   similar   pre- 
monitions in  June,  1763,  when  among 
the  Indians  in  the  Blue  Ridge  and  Great 
Lehigh  wilderness  (whither  Benezet  fol- 
lowed in  1776):  "Here  I  was  led  into 
a  close,  laborious  inquiry  whether  I,  as 
an  individual,  kept  clear  from  all  things 
which  tended  to  stir  up  or  were  con- 
nected with  wars,  either  in  this  land  or 
Africa ;  .  .  .  .  and  I  felt  in  that  which  is 
immutable  that  the  seeds  of  great  ca- 
lamity and    desolation  are   sown   and 
growing   fast   on   this    continent."     (A 
hundred  years   pass,  and   slavery  has 
been  abolished  by  proclamation  ;   but 
the  doubtful  scale  has  still  to  be  turned 
at  Gettysburg.)    The  passage  is  inter- 
esting as  connecting  the  free-produce 
movement  among  the  Quakers  immedi- 
ately with  their  peace  doctrines,  rather 
than  with  their  general  philanthropy. 

"  Until  this  year,"  writes  John,  of 
1756,  "  I  continued  to  retail  goods,  be- 
sides following  my  trade  as  a  taylor; 
about  which  time  I  grew  uneasy  on  ac- 
count of  my  business  growing  too  cum- 
bersome." He  had  begun,  it  appears, 
with  selling  trimmings  for  garments, 
then  cloths  and  linens,  and  so  was  in  a 
fair  way  to  do  a  large  business.  "  But 
I  felt  a  stop  in  my  mind,"  he  says ;  and, 
heeding  it,  he  returned  more  to  "  tay- 
loring,"  with  no  apprentice,  and  looked 
also  after  his  apple-trees.  We  cannot 


say  positively  that  he  made  from  these 
the  famous  Jersey  cider,  but  the  infer- 
ence will  serve  to  connect  the  mention 
of  them  with  that  which  follows  in  the 
context.  He  had  noticed,  as  one  of  his 
storekeeping  experiences,  the  "great 
inconveniences "  which  some  people 
were  led  into  by  the  "  too  liberal  use  of 
spirituous  liquors,"  with  which  he  as- 
sociated "  the  custom  of  wearing  too 
costly  apparel." 

We  should  ask  pardon  here  for  a 
seeming  digression,  if  our  object  were 
not  to  exhibit  the  sensitive  conscience 
of  Woolman,  and  to  compare  it  with 
that  of  others  of  whom  in  this  rambling 
sketch  we  are  obliged  to  speak.  In 
the  autumn  of  1769  he  had  a  strong  de- 
sire to  visit  the  West  Indies;  but  so- 
many  scruples  stood  in  his  way  that  he 
had  to  unbosom  himself  to  the  owner  of 
the  ship  on  which  he  purposed  taking 
passage  for  Barbadoes.  In  this  letter 
we  find  another  allusion  to  his  store- 
keeping,  which  had  grown  less  agree- 
able to  him  to  think  of  the  farther  he 
got  away  from  it.  "  I  once,"  he  writes 
to  the  ship-owner,  "some  years  ago, 
retailed  rum,  sugar,  and  molasses,  the 
fruits  of  the  labor  of  slaves  ;  but  then 
had  not  much  concern  about  them, 
save  only  that  the  rum  might  be  used 
in  moderation,*  nor  was  this  concern 
so  weightily  attended  to  as  I  now  be- 
lieve it  ought  to  have  been;  but  of 
late  years,  being  further  informed  f  re- 
specting the  oppressions  too  generally 
exercised  in  these  islands,"  £c.,  he 
wanted  to  apply  the  "  small  gain  "  he 
"got  by  this  branch  of  trade  to  promot- 
ing righteousness  on  earth."  He  was 
to  promote  righteousness,  i.  e.  pursue 
his  function  of  preacher,  by  going  to 
Barbadoes,  paying  his  way,  and  living 
on  a  lowly  subsistence.  But  the  doubt 
arose,  whether  he  could  take  passage 
on  a  vessel  engaged  in  the  West  India 
trade,  for  which  he  was  yearning  to  do 
penance.  "To  trade  freely  with  op- 

*  Was  it  about  this  time,  or  later,  that  in  North- 
boro',  Massachusetts,  three  groceries  consumed  reg- 
ularly per  month  a  hogshead  of  rum  each  ? 

t  "  By  Anthony  Benezet's  Caution  [and  Warning] 
to  Great  Britain  and  her  Colonies  relative  to  en- 
slaved Negroes  in  the  British  Dominions,  1767." 


490 


Free  Produce  among  the  Quakers. 


[October, 


pressors,  and,  without  laboring  to  dis- 
suade from  such  unkind  treatment, 
seek  for  gain  by  such  traffic,  tends, 
I  believe,  to  make  them  more  easy 
respecting  their  conduct."  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  "  the  number  of  those 
who  decline  the  West  India  produce 
on  account  of  the  hard  usage  of  the 
slaves  who  raise  it  appears  small,  even 
amongst  people  truly  pious  ;  and  the 
labors  in  Christian  love,  on  that  sub- 
ject, of  those  who  do,  not  very  exten- 
sive." And  "were  the  trade  from  this 
continent  to  the  West  Indies  to  be 
quite  stopped  at  once,  I  believe  many 
there  would  suffer  for  want  of  bread." 
Moreover,  a  small  trade  with  the  West 
Indies  might  be  right  if  ourselves  and 
their  inhabitants  generally  dwelt  "  in 
pure  righteousness  "  ;  but  then  the  pas- 
sage-money would  "  for  good  reasons," 
i.  e.  owing  to  the  diminished  freight, 
be  higher  than  now.  So  having  dis- 
missed the  thought  of  "  trying  to  hire  a 
vessel  to  go  under  ballast,"  believing 
"  that  the  labors  in  gospel  love,  yet  be- 
stowed in  the  cause  of  universal  right- 
eousness, are  not  arrived  to  that  height," 
Woolman  proposed  to  protest  against  a 
"great  trade  and  small  passage-money," 
and  in  favor  of  less  trading,  by  paying 
more  than  common  for  his  passage. 

The  argument  is  a  little  intricate,  but 
it  is  worth  following  to  what  we  must 
call  its  preposterous^end.  It  is  a  most 
curious  instance  of  a  morbidly  sensitive 
conscience  directing  to  an  act  the  only 
result  of  which  could  have  been  to  ex- 
tend the  trade  in  slave  products  by  add- 
ing to  the  capital  of  a  trader.  The  let- 
ter probably  had  its  effect  upon  the 
members  of  his  own  denomination,  to 
whom  he  therein  submitted  the  propo- 
sition that  "  the  trading  in,  or  frequent 
use  of,  any  produce  known  to  be  raised 
by  the  labors  of  those  who  are  under 
such  lamentable  oppression,  hath  ap- 
peared to  be  a  subject  which  may  yet 
more  require  the  serious  consideration 
of  the  humble  followers  of  Christ,  the 
Prince  of  Peace."  After  all,  he  did 
nothing  more  in  the  matter,  being 
shortly  attacked  with  pleurisy.  For 
Woolman  was  a  saint  with  a  traditional 


body.  One  reason  for  his  taking  a  sea- 
voyage  is  implied  in  his  entry  for  the 
1 2th  3d  month  of  the  same  year  :  "  Hav- 
ing for  some  years  past  dieted  myself 
on  account  of  a  lump  gathering  on  my 
nose,  under  this  diet  I  grew  weak  in 
body,  and  not  of  ability  to  travel  by  land 
as  heretofore."  During  the  attack  of 
pleurisy  in  the  winter  of  1769-70,  he 
considered  himself  sufficiently  "  weaned 
from  the  pleasant  things  of  life  "  to  die 
acceptably  ;  yet  if  God  wanted  him  for 
further  service,  he  desired  to  live.  "  I 
may  with  thankfulness  say  that  in  this 
case  I  felt  resignedness  wrought  in  me, 
and  had  no  inclination  to  send  for  a 
doctor;  believing  that  if  it  was  the 
Lord's  will,  through  outward  means,  to 
raise  me  up,  some  sympathizing  friends 
would  be  sent  to  minister  to  me  ;  which 
were  "  —  he  continues,  we  must  not  say 
with  Quaker  slyness  —  "  which  were  ac- 
cordingly.'''1 Meanwhile  his  feet  grew 
cold,  and  death  seemed  near,  yet  he 
would  not  for  some  time  ask  the  nurse  to 
warm  them  ;  but  the  desire  for  life  and 
further  service  set  in  strongly  upon  him, 
and  "  I  requested  my  nurse  to  apply 
warmth  to  my  feet,  and  I  revived  ;  and 
the  next  night,  feeling  a  weighty  exercise 
of  spirit,  and  having  a  solid  friend  sitting 
up  with  me,  I  requested  him  to  write 
what  I  said,"  —  an  empty  manifesto. 

The  pious  Woolman  was  never  ill 
but  he  must  endeavor  to  guess  for  what 
he  was  punished  ;  and  it  would  seem  as 
if,  when  a  "  concern "  fastened  upon 
him,  his  mind  worked  over  it  till  his 
health  gave  way.  "The  use  of  hats 
and  garments  dyed  with  a  dye  hurtful 
to  them,  and  wearing  more  clothes  in 
summer  than  are  useful,  grew  more  un- 
easy to  me,  believing  them  to  be  cus- 
toms which  have  not  their  foundation 
in  pure  reason."  Thereupon,  May  31, 
1761,  he  was  taken  down  with  fever, 
and  conformity  to  customs  was  revealed 
to  him  as  the  cause  of  his  affliction. 
He  "lay  in  abasement  and  brokenness 
of  spirit,"  and  presently  felt,  "as  in  an 
instant,  an  inward  healing  in  his  [my] 
nature."  "Though  I  was  thus  settled 
in  mind  in  relation  to  hurtful  dyes,  I  felt 
easy  [the  thrifty  Friend  1  ]  to  wear  my 


1868.] 


Free  Produce  among  tlie  Quakers. 


491 


garments  heretofore  made  ;  and  so  con- 
tinued about  nine  months."  Then  he  got 
him  a  hat  "  the  natural  color  of  the  furr," 
which  "savored  of  singularity,"  as  he 
was  still  wearing  his  dyed  stuffs ;  and 
as  those  "who  knew  not  on  what  mo- 
tives I  wore  it  carried  shy  of  me,  I  felt," 
he  says,  "  my  way  for  a  time  shut  up  in 
the  exercise  of  the  ministry." 

The  time  came  when  Woolman  was 
to  make  a  voyage  to  England,  —  a  long 
voyage,  from  which  he  never  returned. 
His  beloved  friend,  Samuel  Ernler,  Jr., 
had  taken  passage  in  the  cabin  of  the 
ship  "Mary  and  Elizabeth,"  "and  I, feel- 
ing a  draft  in  my  mind  toward  the  steer- 
age of  the  same  ship,  went  first  and 
opened  to  Samuel  the  feeling  I  had  con- 
i  cerningit."  Samuel  wept  for  joy,  though 
;  John's  "  prospect  was  towards  the  steer- 
age." 

"  I  told  the  owner  that,  on  the  outside 

i  of  that   part  of   the   ship  where    the 

i  cabin  was,  I  observed  sundry  sorts  of 

carved  work  and  imagery,  and  that  in 

the  cabin  I  observed  some  superfluity 

i  of  workmanship  of  several  sorts  ;  and 

that,  according    to  the  ways  of  men's 

reckoning,    the  sum   of  money  to    be 

paid  for   a   passage  in   that  apartment 

hath   some    relation    to    the    expense 

in  furnishing  it  to  please  the  minds  of 

such  who  give  way  to  conformity  to  this 

world  ;  and  that  in  this  case,  as  in  other 

cases,  the   moneys  received   from   the 

passengers    are   calculated   to    answer 

expense  relating  to  their  passage, 

and,  amongst  the  rest,  of  those  super- 

luities  ;  and  that  in  this  case  I  felt  a 

icruple  with  regard  to  paying  my  money 

-iy  such  expenses." 
So  he  cast  his  lot  among  the  seamen, 
incl  only  stayed  in  the  cabin,  as  he  is 
careful  to  state,  about  seventeen  hours, 
;  particularly  heavy  storm  (May 
S,  1772),  having  been  frequently  invited, 
l   believing   the   poor  wet   mariners 
all  the  room  of  the  steerage. 
He  suffered  not  a  little  by  his  choice  of 
a  berth,  and  could  have  crowed  with  the 
dunghill  fowls,  which,  he  had  observed, 
11  dumb  since  they  left  the  Del- 
\\hcn    the   shores   of    England 
hove  in   sight. 


Woolman  did  not  share  the  scruples 
of  Benezet  about  the  eating  of  meat. 
At  Nantucket,  in  1760,  he  remarks  with- 
out comment,  "  I  understood  that  the 
whales,  being  much  hunted,  and  some- 
times wounded  and  not  killed,  grew 
more  shy  and  difficult  to  come  at." 
But  when  he  and  a  friend  were  riding 
on  a  hot  day  "  a  day's  journey  eastward 
from  Boston,"  they  dismissed  their 
guide,  who  was  "  a  heavy  man,"  "  believ- 
ing the  journey  would  have  been  hard 
to  him  and  his  horse,"  —  as  it  unques- 
tionably would  have  been,  had  they 
gone  due  east  from  Boston.  In  Eng- 
land, Woolman  learned  that  the  stage-- 
coach horses  were  overdriven,  and  often 
killed  or  else  made  blind,  and  that  the 
postboys  often  froze  in  winter ;  there- 
fore he  cautioned  Friends  at  Philadel- 
phia and  at  London  yearly  meetings 
"  not  to  send  any  letters  to  him  [me]  on 
any  common  occasion  by  post."  The 
self-denial  of  this  counsel  may  be  judged 
from  the  fact  that  he  was  thus  cut  off 
from  news  of  his  family.  In  effect,  no 
protracted  correspondence  would  have 
been  possible.  In  September,  Wool- 
man took  the  small-pox,  and  was  to 
offer  his  last  testimony  against  slave 
labor  upon  his  death-bed.  He  would 
not  send  for  a  physician,  but  when  a 
young*  apothecary  had  happened  in, 
"  he  said  he  found  a  freedom  to  confer 
with  him  and  the  other  friends  about 
him ;  and  if  anything  should  be  proposed 
as  to  medicine,  that  did  not  come 
through  denied  channels  or  oppressive 
hands,  he  should  be  willing  to  consider 
and  take  it,  so  far  as  he  found  freedom." 
It  is  doubtful,  though,  whether  "a  treat- 
ment in  accordance  with  "  pure  reason  " 
could  have  availed  against  his  feeble 
constitution. 

A  more  impressive  death-bed,  though 
not  more  true  to  conviction,  was  that 
of  the  Long  Island  schismatic,  Elias 
Hicks.  As  he  lay  shivering,  a  few  hours 
before  his  decease,  a  comfortable  was 
thrown  over  him,  and  he,  after  feeling 
of  it,  made  a  strong  effort  to  push  it 
away.  Too  weak  to  succeed  in  the 
first  attempt,  he  made  another,  with  a  re- 
newed show  of  abhorrence.  And  when 


492 


Free  Produce  among  the  Quakers. 


[October, 


his  friends  asked,  "  Is  it  because  it  is 
made  of  cotton  ?  "  he  nodded  ;  where- 
upon a  woollen  blanket  was  substituted, 
and  he  died  satisfied  and  with  composure 
(February  27,  1830).  As  Benezet  had 
stimulated  by  his  writings  Sharp  and 
W'ilberforce  and  Clarkson  to  their  anti- 
slavery  zeal,  and  had  confirmed  Wool- 
man  in  his  original  aversion  to  human 
servitude,  so  both  Benezet  and  Wool- 
man  must  have  done  much  to  shape 
the  sentiments  and  belief  of  Elias  Hicks, 
born  later  than  they,  in  1748.  Preach- 
ing in  the  Free  States,  he  exhorted  all 
the  people  to  abstain  from  slave  pro- 
duce. "  These  views,"  says  Mrs.  Child, 
in  her  Life  of  Isaac  T.  Hopper,  "  were 
in  accordance  with  the  earliest  and 
strongest  testimonies  of  the  Society  of 
Friends."  We  have  seen,  however, 
that  the  facts  do  not  warrant  so  unqual- 
ified a  statement.  So  little,  indeed, 
were  they  respected  as  traditional  that 
they  formed  a  corpus  delicti  against  the 
religious  doctrines  of  Hicks ;  and  a 
sermon  preached  by  him  against  slave- 
produce  in  1819  precipitated  that  open 
hostility  which  has  left  an  unhealed 
and  unhealable  wound  in  the  bosom  of 
the  Friends'  Society,  and  gave  rise  to 
scandalous  quarrels,  in  which  the  Or- 
thodox sought  to  exclude  the  Hicksites 
from  the  meeting,  and  even  from  the 
burying  -  ground.  Two  anecdotes  of 
Elias  Hicks  we  cannot,  as  faithful  chron- 
iclers, omit  in  this  place.  Among  his 
own  followers  he  was  always  received 
and  entertained  with  a  sort  of  venera- 
tion, yet,  being  at  the  house  of  one  of 
them  in  Southern  Pennsylvania,  he  was 
proffered  sugar  in  his  tea. 

"Is  it  free-labor  sugar?"  he  in- 
quired. 

"  Elias,"  said  the  son  of  the  matron, 
"  why  don't  thee  do  as  Paul  advised, — 
'  eat,  asking  no  question  for  conscience' 
sake ' ? " 

"  Paul  was  only  a  man,"  answered  the 
unwary  Hicks. 

"  Well,  is  thee  anything  more  ?  " 

When  Charles  Collins  was  keeping 
a  free-produce  store  in  New  York, 
the  story  goes  that  Elias  one  day 
brought  him,  with  great  satisfaction, 


his  pamphlet  denouncing  the  use  of 
slave  products.  Collins,  who  was  an 
ardent  disciple,  but  something  of  a 
wag,  cautiously  received  the  document, 
not  with  his  hand,  but  with  a  pair 
of  tongs,  and  immediately  thrust  it 
into  the  open  fire.  "  Friend  Hicks," 
he  said,  roguishly,  "  I  can't  defile  my 
store  with  slavery-cursed  paper  "  ;  and, 
in  fact,  his  own  stock  was  made  of  linen 
rags.  The  preacher  found  himself 
much  in  the  condition  of  the  Pope, 
when  he  used  the  press  to  circulate  his 
encyclicals  against  general  enlighten- 
ment and  modern  civilization,  of  which 
the  press  is  the  main  element. 

More  practical  than  any  of  the  fore- 
going was  Benjamin  Lundy,  who  was 
born  in  1789,  in  New  Jersey.     Both  his 
parents,   their  ancestors,  and  most  of 
their  connections,  were  members  of  the 
Society  of  Friends,  and  were  derived 
from  England  and  Wales.     His  great- 
grandfather   settled    at     Buckingham,. 
Berks    County,    Pennsylvania.      They 
had  connections  also  in  North   Caro- 
lina,  and   Lundy  formed   in   a  certain 
town  of  that   State  an  antislavery  so- 
ciety, with  a  militia  captain  for  presi- 
dent and  a  Friend  for  secretary.     We 
shall  not  pretend  to  follow  him  in  his. 
early  migrations,  full  as  they  were  of  ro- 
mance and  earnest  purpose.    At  Mount 
Pleasant,  Ohio,  in  1821,  he  established 
the  Genius  of  Universal  Emancipation, 
which    he   afterwards   had    printed  at 
Steubenville,    twenty    miles    off. 
went,"    he    says,   "  to    and    from   that 
place  on  foot,  carrying  my  papers,  when 
printed,  on  my  back."     He  fought  slav- 
ery "on  that  line"   for  eight  months, 
and  abandoned  it  only  to  take  an  ad- 
vanced position  in  the  South.     From 
Tennessee   Lundy  removed  his  paper  \ 
to  Baltimore,  in  1824,  and  there,  open-  ; 
ing   a  free-produce   store,   he   worked  i 
w.ith  a  journeyman  on  his  paper  by  da] 
and  wrote  nights  and   Sundays  for 
In    1825  he   took  eleven   slaves  fron 
North  Carolina  to  Hayti  as  freemen 
afterwards,  through  his  advice,  a  Vir- 
ginian settled  eighty-eight  slaves  there 
North  Carolina  Friends  were  persuadec 
to    send    one   hundred   and    nineteen 


1 868.] 


Free  Produce  among  tlic  Quakers. 


493 


slaves;  and  in  1829  he  himself  made  a 
.second  visit  to  the  island  in  company 
with  twelve  slaves  from  Maryland.  His 
object  was  to  build  up  in  Hayti  a  free- 
negro  State  to  rival  the  cotton-growing 
South,  and  to  make  her  labor  system 
unprofitable.  Between^  his  first  and  his 
last  trip  he  visited  Boston,  and  there 
got  eight  clergymen,  of  various  sects, 
together.  "  Such  an  occurrence,  it  was 
said,  was  seldom  if  ever  before  known 
in  that  town."  It  was  during  this  visit 
(1828)  that  he  chanced  upon  William 
Lloyd  Garrison,  in  the  house  at  which 
he  put  up.  Going  Lynnward,  our 
"moderate  Quaker,"  as  he  described 
himself,  found  sectarianism  a  great 
stumbling-block  to  his  progress  among 
Friends.  At  Albany  he  was  moved  to 
declare  that  "philanthropists  are  the 
slowest  creatures  breathing.  They 
think  forty  times  before  they  act."  His 
great  journeys  in  Canada  (winter  of 
1830-31)  and  Texas  and  Mexico  (sum- 
mer of  1831-32;  1833-35),  performed 
almost  entirely  on  foot,  —  for  Lundy 
was  an  indefatigable  pedestrian,  — were 
solely  with  a  view  to  extend  on  the 
main,  on  the  then  borders  of  the  United 
States,  a  cordon  of  free-labor  colonies 
composed  of  blacks,  after  the  Haytien 
example.  It  was  a  fair  dream ;  and 
Lundy  actually  obtained  of  the  gover- 
nor of  Tamaulipas  a  grant  of  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty-eight  thousand  acres  of 
land,  on  condition  of  his  introducing 
two  hundred  and  fifty  settlers  with  their 
families.  Returning  to  the  North,  he 
began  to  invite  persons  to  join  his 
colony,  and  among  those  who  at  first 
consented  to  go  were  David  Lee  and 
Lyclia  Maria  Child.  Many  colored 
persons  applied  to  be  admitted,  —  some 
of  them  slaves  who  were  promised  their 
freedom.  The  first  shipment  was  fixed 
for  February,  1836  ;  but  meanwhile  the 
Texas  conspiracy  had  burst  into  vio- 
lence, and  the  friends  of  the  negro1  in 
the  United  States  were  compelled  to 
ward  off,  while  it  was  yet  possible,  the 
accession  of  more  slave  territory  and 
war  with  Mexico.  In  the  midst  of  this 
desperate  controversy,  Lundy  lost,  in 
the  burning  by  a  mob  of  Pennsylvania 


Hall  (May,  1838),  his  papers,  books, 
clothes,  and  everything  of  value  except 
his  journal  in  Mexico,  —  "a  total  sac- 
rifice on  the  altar  of  Universal  Eman- 
cipation." 

It  is  an  honorable  history,  —  this  of 
the  free-produce  movement  in  America, 
—  and  embraces  leaders  who  would 
have  shed  lustre  upon  any  reform.  To 
those  who  were  always  taking  an  ob- 
servation of  their  consciences,  the  doc- 
trine embodied  in  the  extract  from  Mr. 
Snelling's  address  seemed  simple,  logi- 
cal, irresistible.  If  an  error,  it  was 
"  upon  the  right  side,"  and  those  who 
sincerely  held  to  it  were  neither  to  be 
reproached  nor  despised.  Not  one*  of 
them,  however,  —  not  Elias  Hicks  him- 
self, as  we  have  seen,  —  was  ever  con- 
sistent ;  and  if  they  flattered  themselves 
that  they  could  escape  using  the  tech- 
nical fruits  of  slave  labor,  they  never 
could  escape  dependence  on  oppres- 
sion in  some  form  or  other.  They  were 
sentimentalists  trying  to  subtract  them- 
selves from  mundane  necessities ;  and 
the  value  of  this  part  of  their  lives  was 
not  in  the  eschewing  of  certain  fabrics 
and  grains,  but  in  the  conspicuousness 
of  their  testimony  against  slavery,  and 
its  undoubtedly  powerful  influence  in 
opening  the  understandings  of  others 
to  the  inhumanity  of  that  barbarism. 
What  is  called  the  common-sense,  as 
well  as  the  indifference  and  conven- 
ience, of  the  generality  of  men  was  op- 
posed to  their  plan  of  overcoming  an 
evil  so  gigantic  as  slavery,  as  it  was 
also  opposed  to  the  Quaker  modes  of 
suppressing  frivolity  and  vanity  in  dress, 
and  of  correcting  a  false  deference  be- 
tween men  who  were  all  equal  in  the 
sight  of  God.  The  Abolitionists  proper, 
we  repeat,  although  always  stigmatized 
as  impracticable,  never  mounted  this 
hobby  as  if  the  battle-horse  of  victory. 
They  did  acknowledge  the  justice  of 
John  Woolman's  scruples  against  trad- 
ing freely  with  oppressors,  "  without  la- 
boring to  dissuade  "  them  from  their 
crime  ;  and  they  claimed  for  themselves, 
almost  in  the  name  of  the  slaves,  the 
right  above  all  others  to  wear  the  prod- 
uct of  their  blood  and  travail.  If  it  be 


494 


The  Finances  of  the  United  States. 


[October, 


said  that  the  Abolitionists  might  have 
used  this  excuse  in  voting  under  a  pro- 
slavery  Constitution,  instead  of  idly  as- 
sailing it  from  without,  it  may  be  replied 
that  there  was  no  necessity  for  them  to 
swear  to  support  an  instrument  which 
they  abhorred ;  that  they  despaired,  and, 
as  events  have  proved,  justly,  of  reconcil- 
ing under  the  Constitution  irrepressible 
antagonisms,  and  that  they  sought  by  a 
political  divorce  to  clear  the  North  of 
complicity  with  the  villany  of  the  South. 
And,  in  order  to  be  free  from  suspicion 
of  ambitious  motives,  they  had  to  with- 
draw themselves  from  all  share  in  the 
government,  to  decline  all  offices,  and 
to'endure  to  be  called  fanatics,  because 
they  were  content  to  be  independent 
critics.  It  may  be  said  that  common- 


sense  people  left  them  aside  to  join  the 
Republican  party.  War,  having  cut 
short  a  peaceful  experiment,  the  com- 
mon-sense of  the  Abolitionists  cannot 
be  tested  by  their  success  in  proselyt- 
ing; but  it  is  fully  vindicated  by  the 
wrathful  acknowledgment  of  the  South, 
that  they  were  aiming  at  the  vitals  of 
slavery,  as  aiming  not  from  within, 
but  through  and  over  the  Constitution 
and  the  Union.  The  attempt,  thirty 
years  ago,  to  educate  the  people  into  a 
greater  regard  for  justice  and  human 
brotherhood  than  for  the  national  char- 
ter, traditions,  and  unity,  was  bold,  per- 
haps preposterous  ;  but  if  any  one  had 
undertaken  then  to  prepare  the  North 
to  resist  the  encroachments  of  slavery 
by  force  of  arms  !  .  .  .  . 


THE   FINANCES    OF    THE   UNITED   STATES. 


ONE  of  the  most  striking  features 
in  our  great  conflict  was  the 
financial  power  of  the  Northern  States. 
Relying  chiefly  on  their  own  innate, 
strength,  they  were  enabled  for  five 
successive  years  to  put  into  the  field 
armies  increasing  and  expanding  grad- 
ually to  a  million  of  men,  admirably 
equipped  with  the  most  effective  weap- 
ons ;  they  were  able  also  to  fill  their 
arsenals  with  rifles,  artillery,  and  mil- 
itary stores ;  to  command  horses  for 
their  cavalry  and  transportation ;  to 
provide  fleets  of  steamships,  and  block- 
ade a  coast  of  three  thousand  miles ; 
arid  to  place  under  the  guns  of  Fort 
Fisher  forty  iron-clads  impervious  to 
shot,  while  they  destroyed  the  ram- 
parts, mines,  and  armaments  of  that 
bulwark  of  the  Confederacy.  The  con- 
flict began  with  empty  coffers  and  a 
failing  credit,  but  the  treasury  was  soon 
replenished,  and  the  credit  of  the  na- 
tion restored  so  that  it  raised  more 
than  three  thousand  millions  by  loans, 
and,  during  the  last  year  of  the  war, 
more  than  a  thousand  millions,  half 


by  loans  and  half  by  taxes,  in  a  sin- 
gle season,  —  the  greatest  achievement 
in  finance  which  history  records.     Nor 
was  the  country  exhausted.     The  loyal   ! 
States  could  have  continued  the  strug- 
gle for  years.     So  far  were  they  from   | 
debility,  that,  in  the  three  years  which 
have    succeeded,    they    have    reduced 
their   funded   debt   three  hundred  and 
fifty  millions,  their  floating  debt  at  least 
one   hundred   and   fifty  millions  more, 
and  their  interest  fifty  millions  in  add 
tion,  and  paved  the  way  for  a  further 
diminution.     Such  is  still  our  affluence, 
that,  after  repealing  half  the  imposts  c 
the  war,  the  nation  finds  revenues  suffi- 
cient to  meet  the  interest  of  the  del 
the  bounties  for  the  volunteers,  and  I 
pensions  for  the  wounded  and  the  < 
phans  and  widows  of  the  honored  des 

Providence  favored  our  country. 
sent  up  .the  oil  springs  from  their  rock} 
cells  to  sustain  our  commerce  and  rev 
enue  ;  it  gave   us    the   placers   of  1 
Pacific,  rich  in  gold  and  silver ;  proli 
wheat-fields  and  pastures  west   of 
Mississippi,  and  new  exports  in  pla 


1868.] 


The  Finances  of  the  United  States. 


495 


of  cotton  ;  and  brought  fortune  to  our 
manufactures  in  the  diminished  supply 
of  cotton.  Issuing  our  loans  at  par 
during  the  war  and  floating  them  on  our 
expanding  currency,  \ve  could  reduce 
our  interest,  and  change  the  option  of 
renewal  which  we  gave  the  creditor  to 
options  in  favor  of  the  nation. 

Having  shown  our  ability  to  raise  one 
thousand  millions  in  a  single  year, 
having  preserved  the  unity  and  pres- 
tige of  the  nation,  we  have  reduced 
our  interest  and  expenses  the  present 
year  to  less  than  one  third  of  the  ex- 
penditure during  the  war,  and  may  re- 
duce it  to  a  fourth  of  that  amount 
in  the  coming  year,  while  our  growing 
population  and  wealth  will  lighten  still 
further  the  charges  of  the  war.  Indeed, 
\ve  may  well  hope  that  taxes  on  our 
vices,  —  as  imposts  on  liquors  and  to-' 
bacco,  —  will  alone  meet  the  interest 
on  our  debt,  and  extinguish  the  prin- 
cipal before  the  close  of  the  century. 

In  the  long  contest  of  England  with 
Napoleon,  she  resorted,  as  we  did,  to  a 
paper  money,  and  nearly  doubled  her 
consols  by  issues  at  fifty  to  sixty-five 
per  cent  in  a  depreciated  currency. 
We  took  the  opposite  course,  issuing 
our  loans  at  par  in  the  shape  of  com- 
pound-interest notes, —  seven-thirties, 
five-twenties,  and  certificates  of  indebt- 
edness, —  reserving  the  privilege  of pay- 
ng  at  an  early  day ;  and  we  may  return  to 
jolcl  with  a  reduction  of  twenty  percent 
on  the  amount  of  our  debt.  Although 
we  have  realized  more  money  than  Eng- 
ancl,  having  diminished  our  debt  since 
the  war  by  taxes  imposed  during  its  con- 
tinuance, we  may  now,  in  place  of  forty- 
;vvo  hundred  millions,  exhibit  but  twen- 
ty-five hundred  millions  of  debt,  one 
seventh  of  which  bears  no  interest. 

The  South  has  suffered  severely,  but 
it  already  finds  in  the  price  of  its  cotton 
a  return  larger  than  it  realized  from 
both  cotton  and  rice  before  the  war ; 
while  the  North,  strong  in  its  wool, 
wheat,  corn,  petroleum,  minerals,  rail- 
.  and  factories,  feels  the  effects  of 
the  war  chiefly  in  the  diminution  of  its 
shipping  and  in  an  irredeemable  curren- 
cy, —  incidental  effects  of  a  protracted 


contest.  In  this  posture  of  affairs  the 
nation,  after  restoring  the  Southern 
States  and  giving  equal  rights  to  all  its 
people,  is  about  to  enter  upon  the 
election  of  its  rulers. 

There  naturally  has  been,  and  still  is, 
a  solicitude  to  lighten  our  taxes  and  to 
equalize  our  burdens  ;  and  doubtless,  in 
some  of  the  States,  a  few  penurious 
men  have  sought  to  escape  their  just 
share  of  the  taxes  by  investments  in 
the  public  bonds.  This  solicitude  and 
these  evasions  supply  a  little  capital  to 
the  recreants  who  forsook  our  flag  dur- 
ing the  war,  but  now  readily  volunteer 
to  fill  the  offices  of  the  State,  and  ex- 
clude those  who  risked  life  and  fortune 
for  their  country.  They  propose  to  the 
country,  while  it  still  wears  the  laurels 
it  has  won  in  war  and  finance,  to  rob 
the  men  who  trusted  it  in  its  hour  of 
trial,  to  withhold  the  interest  it  has 
promised  them,  or  to  pay  in  paper  which 
it  has  reduced  to  a  discount  of  twenty- 
four  per  cent,  and  which  it  can  depre- 
ciate at  its  pleasure.  It  may  well  be 
presumed  that  the  men  who  propose 
these  steps  have  no  confidence  that 
either  the  House  or  the  Senate  will 
sanction  such  disreputable  measures  ; 
they  are  doubtless  designed  to  win  the 
votes  of  the  ignorant  and  degraded, 
and  to  carry  them  or  their  friends  into 
office ;  but  as  they  have  been  adopt- 
ed by  a  party,  and  find  some  counte- 
nance among  Radical  leaders,  it  is  well 
to  glance  at  the  arguments  by  which 
their  baseness  is  defended  :  — 

"  In  law  what  plea  so  tainted  and  corrupt 
But,  being  seasoned  with  a  gracious  voice, 
Obscures  the  show  of  evil.     In  religion 
What  damned  error  but  seme  sober  brow 
Vvill  bless  it,  and  approve  it  with  a  text." 

The  men  who  favor  such  disgraceful 
measures  urge  that  our  bonds  were 
issued  in  a  depreciated  currency  ;  that, 
while  they  promise  to  pay  the  interest 
in  gold,  they  are  silent  as  to  the  way  in 
which  the  principal  shall  be  met ;  that 
other  nations  borrow  at  reduced  rates 
of  interest  and  impose  taxes  on  their 
coupons.  Let  us  examine  the  strength 
of  these  positions.  If  the  currency  was 
depreciated,  by  whom  was  it  depreci- 


496 


The  Finances  of  the  United  States. 


[October, 


ated  ?  Was  it  the  act  of  the  debtor 
or  of  the  creditor  which  depressed  it  ? 
and  who  should  suffer,  the  debtor,  com- 
pelled by  impending  danger  to  make  a 
discount  on  his  notes,  or  the  friend 
who  took  the  risk  of  his  paper  ?  Can 
the  man  who  has  saved  his  life  and  for- 
tune by  the  aid  of  his  friend  properly 
say  to  him  ?  —  I  am  greatly  obliged  to 
you  for  your  aid,  but  I  propose  to  de- 
duct twenty-five  per  cent  from  my  debt ; 
it  is  true  I  am  rich  enough  to  pay  ten 
times  that  amount,  that  no  one  else 
would  trust  me  when  you  did,  and  that 
I  fixed  the  rate  of  interest  myself;  still, 
you  made  your  advances,  not  in  gold, 
but  in  my  own  depreciated  paper.  — 
Is  it  a  fact  that  gold  or  its  equivalent 
was  not  given  for  most  of  the  bonds 
of  the  United  States  ?  Of  the  whole 
amount  of  our  national  loans,  there  is 
reason  to  believe  that  two  thousand 
millions  were  taken  by  the  following 
classes,  viz. :  — 

By  Mortgagees, $  600, 000,000 

"  Banks, • 600,000,000 

;  "  Savings  Banks, 200,000,000 

"  Officers  and  Soldiers, 200,000,000 

"  Ship-owners, 100,000,000 

"  Owners  of  horses,  mules,  and  stores, 

,           early  in  the  war,    ...*...  300,000,000 

$  2,000,000,000 

If  this  be  so,  two  thirds  of  the  loans 
xvere  taken  by  men  w.ho  gave  either 
gold  or  gold  values  for  their  securities. 
At  the  commencement  of  the  war  a 
large  portion  of  our  community  was 
deeply  indebted,  and  large  amounts 
were  lying  in  mortgages  then  overdue 
at  six  and  seven  per  cent.  As  business 
contracted,  and  greenbacks  came  into 
use,  the  currency  began  to  be  affected, 
there  was  a  wish  to  pay  the  mortgages 
with  legal-tenders.  The  party  who  de- 
clined a  tender  risked  his  debt.  To 
preserve  his  capital  and  income  he  in- 
vested the  proceeds  of  his  mortgages 
in  government  obligations. 

In  1860  there  were  in  the  United 
States  at  least  six  million  heads  of 
families  in  a  population  of  thirty-two 
millions.  If  we  assume  that  they  owed 
on  the  average  two  hundred  dollars,  or 
that  every  tenth  man  owed  two  thou- 
sand, the  -aggregate  would  exceed 


twelve  hundred  millions  ;  and,  if  half 
these  mortgages  were  paid  during  the 
war,  the  amount  would  be  six  hundred 
millions.  This  is,  of  course,  but  an  ap- 
proximation ;  it  is,  however,  supported 
by  the  fact  that  the  trustees  of  one  es- 
tate in  Ne\\;  York,  holding  in  1861  ten 
or  fifteen  mortgages,  were  required  to 
receive  more  than  half  their  loans,  and 
invested  the  legal-tenders  they  received 
in  national  obligations. 

There  is  good  ground  for  the  conclu- 
sion that  six  hundred  millions  lent  in 
gold  on  mortgages  was  paid  in  green- 
backs, and  the  proceeds  invested  in 
government  securities. 

As  respects  the  banks  :  At  the  com- 
mencement of  the  war,  their  capital 
exceeded  four  hundred  millions,  and 
their  loans,  made  in  gold  or  its  equiva- 
lent, were  more  than  twice  that  amount. 
At  least  three  fourths  of  these  loans, 
when  the  national  banks  were  organ- 
ized, were  called  in,  and  reinvested  at 
par  in  government  securities.  In  this 
case  the  equivalent  of  gold  was  given 
for  the  national  bonds  to  the  extent  of 
six  hundred  millions.  Again,  the  Sav- 
ings Banks,  whose  investments  in  two 
States,  —  New  York  and  Massachu- 
setts, —  alone  exceed  two  hundred  mil- 
lions, called  in  their  loans,  and  invested 
at  least  that  sum  in  national  securities. 

An  equal  amount  was  taken  by  offi- 
cers and  soldiers  from  the  coffers  of  the 
nation  in  compound-interest  notes,  or 
was  invested  by  them  in  other  securi- 
ties ;  they  gave,  often  with  their  lives,  a 
full  equivalent.  At  least  a  hundred  mil- 
lions more  were  taken  by  the  ship-own- 
ers, who  were  obliged,  early  in  the  war, 
to  sell  their  ships  abroad  and  invest  the 
proceeds  in  bonds,  because  the  nation 
gave  them  no  adequate  protection. 
From  these  the  nation  had  its  equiva- 
lent. And  finally,  in  the  early  stages 
of  the  war,  before  paper  had  been 
seriously  depreciated,  tents,  harnesses, 
provisions,  mules,  horses,  and  other 
necessaries  were  furnished,  to  at  least 
the  amount  of  three  hundred  millions, 
—  or  more  than  one  twelfth  of  our 
whole  expenditure,  —  and  the  proceeds 
invested  in  bonds. 


1 368.] 


The  Finances  of  the  United  States. 


497 


There  is  good  reason  to  presume  that 
two  thousand  millions  of  our  whole  debt, 
a  sum  equal  to  the  whole  amount  now 
funded,  was  issued  for  a  full  equiva- 
lent, while  the  residue,  chiefly  to  con- 
tractors, was  issued  in  compound  notes 
•or  certificates  of  indebtedness,  since  in 
great  part  paid,  while  much  of  the  re- 
mainder is  outstanding  in  greenbacks, 
or  has  gone  into  the  hands  of  our  friends 
abroad.  Most  of  our  debt  is  held  by 
banks  or  small  capitalists,  little  by  cor- 
porations or  manufacturers  enriched  by 
the  war.  They  took  certificates  of  in- 
debtedness, and,  requiring  their  capital 
for  their  business,  sold  their  securities. 
Mercantile  credit  was  paralyzed  by  the 
^var,  and  those  who  bought  their  certifi- 
cates or  compound  notes  have  been 
already  paid.  The  small  capitalists, 
who  have  generally  paid  full  prices,  who 
have  been  compelled  to  live  upon  their 
•interest  and  pay  the  high  prices  of  the 
Avar,  would  be  defrauded  and  impover- 
ished, were  they  required  to  reduce  the 
values  they  have  paid  to  the  depreciated 
rates  of  the  government  paper.  How 
can  these  classes  be  made  whole  or 
requited,  unless  they  are  paid  in  a  spe- 
cie currency?  and  are  they  to  suffer 
because  manufacturers  and  contractors 
have  realized  profits  in  their  transac- 
tions with  government?  Upon  what 
ground  are  they  to  be  classed  as  spec- 
ulators in  a  depreciated  currency  ? 

But,  were  it  true  that  the  loans  were 
made  in  a  depreciated  paper,  was  not 
the  depreciation  due  to  over-issues  and 
to  the  war,  and  did  not  the  lender  take 
the  risk  of  the  war  ?  were  not  the  issues 
of  greenbacks  limited  ?  and  had  we  not 
a  right  to  presume  that  a  currency  no- 
where expressly  sanctioned  by  the  Con- 
stitution, and  of  questionable  character, 
a  mere  temporary  expedient,  would 
cease  with  the  struggle  in  which  it  orig- 
inated ? 

Great  Britain,  when  she  returned  to 
specie,  not  only  carried  her  consols 
from  fifty  to  par  or  gold,  but  has  paid 
them  at  par  in  sovereigns  ;  and  this,  too, 
with  half  the  population,  and  less  than 
one  half  the  resources,  the  United  States 
possess  at  the  present  moment.  Pen- 

VOL.  xxn.  —  xo.  132.  32 


dleton  and  his  associates,  Hampton, 
Hill,  Forrest,  and  Belmont,  who  have 
made  a  platform  of  cypress  and  cotton- 
wood  for  the  Democratic  party,  say 
there  is  no  express  promise  to  pay  ihe 
principal  of  the  five-twenties  in  gold, 
although  the  interest  was  thus  paya- 
ble. 

The  reason  for  this  distinction  was 
obvious ;  the  interest  was  payable  at 
once,  while  the  principal  would  not  be 
paid  until  the  close  of  the  war.  The 
creditor  was  anxious  that  his  interest 
should  be  paid  in  gold,  not  in  green- 
backs, the  currency  of  the  war.  The 
Secretary  of  State  had  repeatedly  prom- 
ised that  the  war  should  be  finished  in 
less  than  six  months.  The  agents  of 
the  loans  and  the  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury  assured  them  that  the  govern- 
ment would  pay  in  gold,  that  the  green- 
backs were  a  temporary  expedient. 

Relying  on  these  assurances  and  on 
the  unvarying  usage  of  the  government 
for  the  last  eighty  years  to  pay  in  gold, 
people  took  the  bonds  ;  and  the  nation 
is  now  estopped  from  saying  that  it  has 
a  right  to  pay  in  paper  which  it  can 
depreciate  to  such  extent  as  a  political 
faction  may  determine.  It  is  urged 
that  other  nations  pay  less  interest,  and 
impose  taxes  on  their  coupons ;  but  how 
does  Holland  obtain  money  at  three  and 
England  at  three  and  a  quarter  per 
cent  ?  It  is  not  by  taxing  interest ; 
they  have  never  resorted  to  such  injus- 
tice, or  allowed  the  debtor  to  reduce  in- 
terest without  the  consent  of  his  cred- 
itor. England  exempts  even  from  her 
light  income  tax  of  one  and  two  thirds 
per  cent  the  coupons  of  every  man  who 
resides  out  of  Great  Britain.  And 
what  is  the  condition  of  Austria  and 
Italy,  which  have  taxed  their  coupons, 
and  justify  the  act  upon  the  plea  of 
necessity?  While  one  taxes  her  five- 
per-cent  bonds  fifteen  per  cent,  and  the 
other  imposes  ten  per  cent  on  hers, 
the  bonds  of  Italy  sell  at  fifty-five,  and 
those  of  Austria  at  sixty-five  per  cent 
in  the  London  Exchange,  —  a  just  pun- 
ishment for  such  tergiversations.  Do 
we  wish  to  put  ©ur  nation,  which  has 
preserved  its  honor  untarnished  for 


498 


The  Finances  of  the  United  States. 


[October, 


eighty  years,  through  five  wars,  in  the 
same  financial  category  with  that  Aus- 
trian Empire  which  Webster  so  vividly 
portrayed  ?  Will  it  be  worldly  wisdom 
for  us,  who  have  two  thousand  millions 
of  debt  to  renew,  to  reduce  it  in  value 
to  fifty-five  or  even  sixty-five  per  cent  ? 
How  much  shall  we  gain  by  paying  in 
paper  worth  seventy-four  in  gold,  if  we 
bring  down  our  loans  from  one  hundred 
and  ten  to  fifty-five  per  cent  ?  And  if, 
like  Massachusetts,  during  the  most 
trying  period  of  the  war,  we  can  by  a 
strict  regard  to  honor,  by  a  rigid  ad- 
herence to  punctuality  in  the  payment 
of  interest  and  principal  in  gold,  obtain 
money  at  three  and  three  fourths  in 
gold,  is  this  not  preferable  to  taxing  six 
per  cent  coupons  unjustly  and  dis- 
gracefully down  to  five  and  forty  one- 
hundredths  ?  Does  not  simple  honesty 
pay  better  than  fraud  or  hypocrisy  ?  Is 
it  not  painful  to  see  a  distinguished 
Senator  resorting  to  compulsion,  and 
proffering  to  the  creditor,  in  discharge 
of  his  five-twenties,  a  bond  at  four  or 
five  per  cent,  payable  in  specie  ?  Is 
it  not  humiliating  to  see  the  United 
States,  in  the  flush  of  their  youth  and  of 
a  prosperity  that  surpasses  that  of 
any  nation  of  the  past  or  present  age, 
placed  for  a  moment  in  the  attitude  of 
an  insolvent  debtor  in  their  dealing  with 
the  friends  and  supporters  who  stood 
by  them,  in  the  day  of  their  trial  ?  What 
else,  however,  should  we  expect  from 
those  who  conspired  to  effect  our  ruin  ? 
The  condition  of  dismembered  Aus- 
tria, with  an  accumulating  debt,  is  doubt- 
less similar  to  that  of  impoverished 
Italy  ;  and  let  us  draw  a  parallel,  for  a 
moment,  between  the  condition  of  Italy 
and  that  of  the  United  States.  In  Italy, 
with  twenty-eight  millions  of  people, 
the  imports  are  one  hundred  and  nine- 
ty-five millions  ;  the  exports,  one  hun- 
dred and  forty  millions.  In  the  United 
States,  the  exports,  reduced  to  gold  val- 
ues, exceed  the  imports,  and  are  triple 
those  of  Italy.  In  Italy,  the  average 
interest  is  seven  and  three  fourths  per 
cent.  In  the  United  States,  the  five 
per  cents  are  at  one  hundred  and  seven 
dollars.  In  Italy,  the  revenue  has  been 


one  hundred  and  sixty  millions  ;  the  ex- 
pense, two  hundred  millions  ;  while  the 
deficit  in  time  of  peace  has  been  as 
large  as  one  hundred  millions.  In 
Italy,  the  average  income  of  two  and  a 
half  millions  of  families  is  from  fifty  to 
one  hundred  dollars.  In  the  United 
States  the  average  income  of  eight  mil- 
lion families  exceeds  one  thousand  dol- 
lars in  gold. 

For  four  years  past  our  Minister  of 
Finance  has  been  a  statesman.  He 
has  educed  order  from  the  confusion  of 
the  war,  husbanded  our  means,  stud- 
ied our  sources  of  income,  and  aided 
in  removing  those  temporary  burdens 
which,  however  necessary  in  the  hour 
of  peril,  on  the  return  of  peace  bore 
heavily  on  the  commerce  of  the  nation. 
He  has  paved  the  way  for  a  return  to 
specie.  Fie  has  faithfully  fulfilled  the 
obligations  of  the  nation.  He  has 
urged  the  withdrawal  of  our  depreciated 
paper,  and  an  early  return  to  gold. 
Under  his  administration  our  debt 
has  been  reduced  a  fifth,  our  interest  a 
third,  our  taxes  nearly  or  quite  a  half; 
and,  under  his  guidance,  the  nation 
will  soon  reduce  its  tariff,  and  meet  its 
interest  with  diminished  taxes  on  liq- 
uors and  tobacco.  With  a  religious 
adherence  to  our  engagements,  our  in- 
terest is  fast  falling  to  four  and  one  half 
per  cent  and  to  an  aggregate  of  one 
hundred  millions.  In  this  posture  of 
affairs,  the  Pendletonians  come  forward 
with  a  new  programme,  as  unsound  as 
their  other  theory,  that  the  debt  is  to 
be  taxed,  'and  both  principal  and  in- 
terest to  be  paid  in  depreciated  paper. 
The  Pendletonian  policy  is  developed 
in  the  Sunday  Courier  of  Boston,  a 
Democratic  paper,  as  well  as  on  the 
Democratic  platform.  The  first  step  is 
to  be  the  suppression  of  the  Freec 
men's  Bureau ;  but  this  has  already  per- 
formed its  mission  of  mercy  in  guiding 
the  colored  race,  suddenly  raised  fron 
servitude  to  freedom,  through  a  stat 
of  transition,  and  terminates  with  ihe 
current  year,  before  the  Pendieton 
party,  if  successful,  can  be  placed 
power.  The  second  measure  shadowed 
forth  is  the  extinction  of  the  right  of 


1 863.] 


The  Finances  of  the  United  States. 


499 


suffrage  on  the  part  of  the  negro,  and 
his  exclusion  from  the  militia. 

It  may  well  be  asked  whether  it  will 
be  politic  for  the  nation  to  disarm  and 
disfranchise  a  race  thoroughly  loyal, 
because  they  have  been  prevented  by 
their  masters  from  acquiring  education 
or  property,  and  to  allow  them  no  voice 
in  the  choice  of  their  rulers,  or  in  the 
defence  of  their  homes,  when  we  have 
within  ten  years  seen  the  rulers  of 
Louisiana  reduce  to  slavery  the  free 
French  and  Spanish  Creoles,  whose 
rights  were  guaranteed  under  our  trea- 
ties with  France  ;  when  we  have  seen 
South  Carolina  send  to  prison  the  col- 
ored freemen  of  both  Old  England  and 
New  England,  because  an  African  sun 
had  given  a  dark  shade  to  their  complex- 
ion ;  when  we  have  seen  ail  access  to 
the  courts  denied  to  the  black  prisoner  ; 
when  our  highest  court  of  judicature 
has  determined  that  a  black  was  not  a 
man,  but  a  chattel.  Such  questions 
will  be  discussed  elsewhere.  Let  us 
confine  this  discussion  to  measures  of 
finance. 

According  to  the  Courier,  Mr.  Pen- 
dleton  proposes  to  issue  three  hundred 
millions  more  of  depreciated  paper,  and 
with  this  to  extinguish  the  bank-notes, 
and  cancel  an  equal  amount  of  bonds, 
pledged  for  the  bank-notes.  He  prom- 
ises thus  to  save  twenty  millions  yearly. 
Let  us  analyze  this  measure,  and  point 
out  the  fallacies  on  which  it  rests.  In 
the  first  place,  a  large  portion  of  these 
bonds  are  at  five  per  cent,  and  the  ag- 
gregate interest  is  but  sixteen  and  a  half 
millions  ;  here  is  a  deficit  of  more  than 
three  millions  annually  in  the  amount 
of  saving.  Again,  these  bonds  are  not 
due,  and  they  command,  on  the  aver- 
age, ten  per  cent  premium  ;  and  here 
we  find  a  further  deficiency  of  thirty 
millions,  or  at  least  a  million  and  a  half 
of  interest  yearly.  Thus  the  apparent 
saving  is  reduced  to  fifteen  millions 
yearly ;  and,  if  we  remove  all  unneces- 
sary taxes,  as  Congress  proposes,  in  the 
interest  of  commerce,  we  extinguish 
Mr.  Pendleton's  surplus  of  forty-eight 
millions  more,  which  he  would  convert, 
with  his  twenty  millions,  into  a  hundred 


million  of  currency  by  selling  gold  at 
forty  per  cent  premium.  But  his  sixty- 
eight  millions  —  did  they  exist  —  would, 
at  forty  per  cent,  produce  but  ninety- 
five  millions  ;  and  here  we  have  a  fur- 
ther deficit  of  five  millions  annually. 
By  this  process,  the  whole  hundred 
millions  a  year,  with  which  he  proposes 
in  fourteen  years  to  extinguish  the  debt, 
subsides  to  fifteen  millions  a  year  in, 
gold,  or  twenty  millions  a  year  for  the'' 
present  in  currency.  Let  us  pursue  his 
fallacies  a  little  further.  He  assumes 
that,  for  fourteen  years  to  come,  we  are 
to  have  an  irredeemable  currency,  and 
to  sell  our  gold  at  forty  per  cent  pre- 
mium, when  intelligent  merchants  and 
skilful  financiers  believe  that  within  two 
years  we  may  return  to  specie.  Is  the 
Pendleton  era  to  be  the  golden  age  of 
Democracy,  of  which  Old  Bullion  used 
to  write  and  speak  ?  Is  irredeemable 
paper  the  same  currency  for  the  cred- 
itor and  the  people  set  forth  in  the  new 
platform  ?  We  have  funded  our  float- 
ing debt,  except  the  greenbacks,  within 
a  year,  and  might  fund  them  in  com- 
pound notes  at  three  per  cent.  We 
are  throwing  our  whole  interest  on  liq- 
uors and  tobacco,  and  our  pensions  on 
stamps  and  licenses.  What  impedi- 
ment, then,  remains  to  be  surmounted 
on  the  way  to  specie  ?  Before  specie 
payments,  the  fourteen  years'  term  of 
national  insolvency  —  the  dream  of  Air. 
Pendleton  —  will  vanish,  and  leave  him 
with  but  fifteen  millions  of  possible  an- 
nual saving.  But  if  the  bank  circula- 
tion is  redeemed  as  Air.  Pendleton  pro- 
poses, what  becomes  of  the  tax  of  one 
per  cent  on  bank  circulation,  or  three 
million  dollars,  which  the  nation  has 
for  some  years  collected  ?  or  the  addi- 
tional tax  of  one  per  cent  more,  which 
the  House  has  voted,  making  an  ag- 
gregate of  six  million  dollars  ?  If  we 
deduct  these,  the  saving,  which  was  in 
fourteen  years  to  pay  our  debt,  falls  to 
nine  million  dollars  a  year.  But  this 
is  not  all ;  if  the  bonds  are  cancelled, 
we  lose  also  the  five  per  cent  which  the 
fifteen  millions  pay  to  the  income  tax, 
and  thus  reduce  the  imaginary  saving 
to  eight  and  a  quarter  millions.  And 


500 


The  Finances  of  the  United  States. 


[October, 


how  insignificant  does  this  saving,  ac- 
complished by  harsh  and  unjust  meas- 
ures, appear,  when  we  contrast  it  with 
the  saving,  which  the  punctual  payment 
of  our  interest  in  gold  will  effect,  by 
reducing  the  annual  interest  on  eigh- 
teen hundred  millions  from  six  to  four 
and  a  half  per  cent,  —  a  legitimate  an- 
nual saving  of  twenty-seven  millions  in 
place  of  eight  and  a  quarter  millions. 
The  difference  alone  would,  before  the 
close  of  the  century,  nearly  extinguish 
our  indebtedness. 

But  the  Pendleton  theory  is  based 
on  another  fallacy,  —  the  fallacy  of  con- 
tinuing onerous  taxes,  like  those  on  in- 
comes, railways,  premiums  of  insurance, 
and  excessive  duties,  —  serious  checks 
to  our  comfort  and  commerce,  —  during 
fourteen  years  to  come,  for  the  mere  pur- 
pose of  paying  the  principal  of  our  debt. 
Why  pay  this  debt  with  such  unequal 
taxes,  when  the  reduced  taxes  on  liq- 
uors and  tobacco  alone  will,  in  the  last 
three  decades  of  the  present  century, 
pay  both  interest  and  principal.  But 
then  it  is  proposed,  on  the  Pendleton 
platform,  to  tax  the  debt  ten  per  cent. 
How  are  such  taxes  to  be  imposed  ? 
By  the  express  terms  of  the  loan  acts, 
the  States  are  forbidden  to  tax  the  pub- 
lic debt,  and  the  Supreme  Court  has 
sustained  the  prohibition. 

The  States  cannot  tax ;  and  how  is 
the  nation,  after  making  an  express 
contract  with  its  creditors,  —  who  may 
reside  in  some  foreign  country,  —  to  pay 
a  specific  rate  of  interest,  at  liberty  as 
a  debtor  to  reduce  it,  by  tax  or  legisla- 
tion, to  either  five,  four,  three,  two,  or 
one  per  cent,  or  to  extinguish  it  alto- 
gether ?  If  it  is  at  liberty  to  do  the 
one,  it  is  free  to  do  the  other.  Who 
shall  prescribe  the  limits  ?  When  it 
contracted,  did  it  receive  the  power 
either  to  reduce  the  standard  of  value 
or  the  rate  of  interest  ?  If  local  courts 
have  no  power  to  restrain,  —  and  this 
is  by  no  means  conceded,  —  would  it 
be  justified  in  the  court  of  nations, 
or  before  Heaven,  or  in  the  eyes  of 
its  own  subjects,  in  such  repudiation  ? 
Let  us  personify  the  United  States  by  a 
prosperous  merchant,  carried  through 


adverse  times  by  friends,  both  at  home 
and  abroad,  who  have  poured  their 
treasures  into  his  lap,  and  taken  his 
notes  of  uncertain  value  at  his  own  of- 
fers. Let  us  imagine  him  restored  to 
prosperity,  in  affluent  circumstances, 
and,  while  placed  himself  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  sheriff,  forgetful  of  honor 
and  of  future  contingencies,  insisting, 
like  a  fraudulent  debtor,  that  his  friends 
shall  reduce  the  interest  he  volunteered 
to  pay,  and  lose  a  fourth  of  their  princi- 
pal. This  is  the  Pendleton  theory,  the 
cypress  or  cottonwood  plank,  of  the  new 
platform.  The  cry  of  "  Tax  the  national 
debt ;  pay  the  bonds  in  paper  !  "  may, 
like  a  passing  breeze,  fill  the  sails  of  a 
few  time-serving  politicians,  and  may 
delude  the  ignorant,  and  float  incompe- 
tency  into  office ;  but  this  can  never  be 
the  policy  of  a  great  nation,  which,  for 
eighty  years,  has  preserved  its  honor 
and  its  prestige,  and,  from  the  days  of 
Hamilton  to  the  present  hour,  has  been 
faithful  to  its  creditors.  The  country 
cannot  afford  to  lose  its  financial  credit; 
it  is  an  element  of  power,  —  its  great 
corps  de  reserve  in  the  future.  We  may 
expect  insidious  attacks  on  our  credit 
from  those  who  have  felt  the  weight  of 
this  power ;  but  the  true  patriot  would 
resign  our  rifles  and  iron-clads  sooner 
than  our  national  credit. 

Payment  of  the  Debt. 

There  is  no  occasion  at  present  to 
pay  the  debt  bearing  interest.  For 
twenty  years  to  come  we  have  the  op- 
tion to  pay  most  of  it  at  our  pleasure, 
at  rates  averaging  five  and  three  fourths 
per  cent;  while  Austria  and  Italy,  on 
whose  level  our  Pendleton  politicians 
would  place  us,  pay  seven  and  three 
fourths  per  cent,  —  not  levied  on  a  rich 
population  like  ours,  but  on  a  people 
impoverished  by  ages  of  oppression. 

The  silent  operation  of  our  imposts 
on  liquors  and  tobacco  will,  without 
effort  on  our  part,  soon  meet  our  inter- 
est, and  provide  a  sinking  fund  for  the 
principal.  Stamps,  licenses,  and  bank 
circulation  will  pay  for  pensions  and 
the  instruction  of  the  negro ;  and  cus- 
toms under  a  reduced  tariff  will  meet, 


1863.] 


The  Finances  of  the  United  States. 


as  before  the  war,  the  current  expenses 
of  the  nation.  We  require  our  growing 
capital,  not  for  the  extinction  of  our 
debt,  but  for  the  development  of  our 
industry  and  for  diversity  of  employ- 
ment. 

The  war  has  injured  certain  branches 
of  industry  which  require  renovation. 
It  has  swept  away  horses  and  mules  for 
cavalry,  artillery,  and  wagons  ;  it  has 
diminished  our  animal  force,  while  it 
has  increased  our  mechanism.  It  has 
taken  for  rations  many  of  our  Western 
cattle,  replacing  them  by  twelve  mil- 
lions of  sheep,  and  converting  grass 
land  into  wheat-fields.  Consequently, 
horses  are  dear,  and  beef  and  dairy 
products  command  unwonted  prices, 
while  our  wheat  product  is  exuberant. 
It  has  checked  the  construction  of  ships, 
steamers,  factories,  houses,  piers,  and 
public  improvements.  Agriculture  and 
commerce  demand  more  facilities,  and 
Young  America  requires  new  homes 
and  workshops.  While  the  war  has 
given  an  impulse  to  mining,  and  low- 
ered the  price  of  coal  —  if  we  reduce 
paper  to  gold  —  to  the  prices  current 
before  the  war ;  while  it  has  nearly 
doubled  the  manufacture  of  wool,  and 
given  us  mills  and  machinery  sufficient 
to  spin  and  to  weave  as  much  wool 
as  England  converts  into  cloth,  it  has 
given  a  check  to  cotton.  While  it  has 
opened  the  ore-beds  of  Lake  Superior, 
that  now  yield  seven  hundred  thousand 
tons  of  rich  magnetic  ore,  and  has  car- 
ried the  yearly  manufacture  of  pig-iron 
from  one  to  two  millions  of  tons,  and 
extended  our  railways  to  forty  -  four 
thousand  miles,  and  convinced  us  that 
we  may  pursue  successfully  the  manu- 
facture of  linen,  worsteds,  silks,  alpacas, 
and  fabrics  of  jute  and  mohair,  it  has 
shown  us  the  necessity  of  many  more 
public  improvements  to  carry  food  and 
raw  material  to  our  factories  or  to  points 
of  shipment. 

The  great  object  of  the  statesman 
now  should  be,  not  to  trifle  with  the 
debt,  but  to  remove  burdens,  to  extend 
our  agriculture,  cherish  and  diversify 
our  manufactures,  revive  commerce  and 
ship-building  by  a  return  to  specie,  and 


the  extinction  of  those  war  duties  which 
were  imposed  to  counterbalance  the 
taxes  we  have  removed  from  manufac- 
tures. 

This  is  the  province  of  the  true  states- 
man, —  this  is  what  the  true  interest  of 
the  nation  imperatively  demands.  First, 
lej:  us  have  no  national  taxes  that  can 
be  dispensed  with,  no  taxes  on  locomo- 
tion or  on  insurance,  and  no  invasions 
of  our  privacy  to  tax  the  incomes  of 
trades  and  professions,  with  which  our 
industry  creates  taxable  capital.  Sec- 
ond, let  us,  instead  of  increasing  our 
war  tariff,  at  once  remove  all  prohibitory 
and  excessive  duties. 

Before  the  war,  our  tariff  averaged 
less  than  fifteen  per  cent  on  all  our  im- 
portations. It  has  been  raised  to  an 
average  of  more  than  forty-five  per  cent. 
How  has  this  been  effected?  First,  by 
new  taxes  on  tea  and  coffee,  and  by 
increased  imposts  on  other  groceries, 
which  now  yield  nearly  sixty  millions, 
—  nearly  as  much  as  our  whole  return 
from  customs  before  the  insurrection. 
These  doubtless  carried  the  average  of 
our  duties  to  nearly  thirty  per  cent ;  and 
most  of  those  which  have  been  Judi- 
ciously fixed  by  our  Revenue  Commis- 
sioner, Mr.  Wells,  it  will  doubtless  be 
politic  to  retain,  although  it  might  be 
well  to  reduce  the  duties  on  tea  and 
spices  to  specific  rates,  not  exceeding 
sixty  per  cent,  for  both  tea  and  spices 
are  coming  in  free  from  Canada. 

Duties  on  fruits  and  raw  materials, 
and  counteracting  duties  on  manufac- 
tures to  aid  the  home  produce,  have 
carried  the  average  of  our  tariff  from 
thirty  to  more  than  forty-five  per  cent, 
and  most  of  this  excess  should  be  re- 
pealed. Let  us  refer  for  illustration  to 
the  duties  on  fruit,  salt,  wool,  woollens, 
coal,  and  iron.  We  have  many  ships, 
and  should  have  more,  in  the  trade  with 
the  Mediterranean.  Liverpool  alone, 
in  the  last  twenty  years,  abandoning  a 
fleet  of  schooners,  has  put  eighty  thou- 
sand tons  of  screw  steamers  into  the 
Mediterranean  trade,  and  her  imports 
and  exports  in  this  commerce  now  ex- 
ceed a  million  of  tons  yearly.  We  send 
from  Boston  and  New  York  many 


502 


The  Finances  of  the  United  States. 


[October, 


barks  and  brigs  through  the  Straits, 
laden  with  fish,  flour,  alcohol,  oil,  lard, 
provisions,  cotton  goods,  dye-woods,  su- 
gar, and  coffee,  and  returning  with  fruit, 
salt,  wool,  dye-stuffs,  saltpetre,  and  ma- 
terials for  our  manufactures.  The  fruit 
and  the  salt  are  sent  westward  as  far  as 
the  Missouri,  and  are  of  great  value 
both  to  health  and  agriculture. 

Is  it  politic  to  tax  either  of  these  arti- 
cles, on  which  we  now  place  duties 
ranging  from  twenty-five  to  two  hun- 
dred per  cent  ?  The  return  freight  on 
fruit  and  salt  lightens  the  charges  on 
exports  of  our  own  products,  and  our 
imports  enable  us  to  export.  If  salt  in 
Sicily  or  Spain  is  made  by  solar  heat 
at  ten  cents  per  hundred  pounds,  is  it 
our  true  policy  to  tax  it  two  hundred 
per  cent,  to  enable  a  few  owners  of  salt- 
springs  to  convert  a  weak  lime  into  an 
inferior  salt,  for  preserving  beef  and 
pork,  by  the  waste  of  our  forests  and 
coal-beds  ?  Do  not  our  railways  thus 
also  lose  an  important  item  of  return 
freight  ?  and  is  it  not  the  policy  of  our 
nation,  instead  of  forcing  these  springs 
into  an  unnatural  production,  to  keep 
them  as  reserves  for  time  of  war,  and 
to  stimulate  our  farms,  railways,  ships, 
exports  and  imports,  by  a  natural  and 
enriching  commerce  ? 

As  respects  coal,  iron,  wool,  and  wool- 
lens, we  have  tried  the  experiment  of 
excessive  duties,  and  what  is  the  result  ? 
We  have  over-stimulated  coal  by  a  duty 
of  a  hundred  per  cent  on  the  foreign 
article,  and  thus  made  our  coal-mines 
unprofitable.  We  are  doing  the  same 
with  iron.  The  ore  of  Michigan  is 
crowding  that  of  Pennsylvania.  The 
wages  of  her  iron-workers  have  been 
carried  above  those  of  judges  and  gov- 
ernors, and  the  manufacturers  and  ship- 
wrights of  the  East,  who  require  iron 
at  the  lowest  price  for  their  boilers  and 
engines  to  compete  with  those  of  Eu- 
rope, and  can  best  supply  their  wants 
from  the  iron  which  returns  in  the  ves- 
sels carrying  out  our  wheat,  flour,  and 
provisions,  are  deterred,  by  the  high 
price  of  iron,  from  building  ships  and 
factories.  Last  year,  we  unwisely  placed 
a  duty  on  wool  and  a  compensating 


duty  on  woollens.  What  is  the  result  ? 
We  have  lost  and  are  losing  our  export 
trade  in  flour,  fish,  lumber,  and  pro- 
visions to  Africa,  Australia,  and  the  val- 
ley of  the  La  Plata,  while  the  tailors 
of  Canada,  New  Brunswick,  and  Nova 
Scotia  supply  the  wardrobes  of  a  large 
part  of  New  York  and  New  England; 
the  high  prices  of  cheese  and  butter 
are  thinning  the  flocks  of  Vermont  and 
Ohio,  while  neither  Texas  nor  California, 
where  the  sheep  roam  through  the  year 
in  rich  pastures,  demand  protection. 
Indeed,  the  idea  of  protecting  agricul- 
tures by  duties,  in  a  country  which  gives 
its  land  to  settlers,  contrasts  strangely 
with  the  policy  of  England,  France,  and 
Belgium,  which  have  repealed  all  duties 
on  wool,  although  they  maintain  twice 
as  many  sheep  ns  we  do,  and  this,  too, 
on  land  worth  four  hundred  dollars  per 
acre.  Let  us  repeal  all  duties  on  salt. 
fruit,  and  raw  material,  and  impose  no 
duties  on  manufactures  exceeding  thirty- 
five  per  cent,  and  make  those  spe- 
cific. 

Third,  let  us  return  to  specie  and 
welcome  again  a  gold  currency,  assim- 
ilated to  that  of  France  as  recommended 
by  that  distinguished  statesman,  the 
Hon.  S.  B.  Ruggles, — to  whom  we  owe 
the  enlargement  of  the  Erie  Canal,  — 
and  let  us  have  the  French  system  of 
weights  and  measures.  The  war  is 
over,  and  it  is  time  to  discard  an 
irredeemable  currency  debased  and 
degraded  by  our  over -issues.  Why 
should  we  'wear  longer  the  badge  of 
insolvency,  and  be  at  the  mercy  of  the 
Jews  of  the  gold-board  to-day  and  of 
the  sales  of  the  Treasury  to-morrow  ? 
We  pay  for  the  risk  of  a  decline  in  gold 
in  all  our  purchases.  The  accountant, 
the  clerk,  the  clergyman,  and  often  the 
laborer,  suffer  from  the  depreciation. 
Why  are  rents  and  goods  so  dear?  and 
why  do  we  abandon  our  mission  on  the 
ocean  ?  It  is  because  we  dare  not  build 
the  houses,  stores,  factories,  «ind  ships 
that  are  required,  for  fear  of  a  fall  in 
value  when  the  currency  rises  to  par. 
Our  traditions  are  all  in  favor  of  an 
early  return  to  specie  ;  for  when  in  for- 
mer days  the  banks  suspended,  Boston 


1 868.] 


The  Finances  of  the  United  States. 


503 


and  New  York,  by  an  early  resumption 
recovered  their  prosperity,  while  Balti- 
more, Philadelphia,  and  Cincinnati  were 
seriously  injured  by  a  continued  sus- 
pension. The  return  to  specie  within 
a  reasonable  period  can  be  effected  by 
contraction,  and  that  contraction  would 
be  almost  imperceptible  were  Congress 
to  impose  a  tax  of  two  per  cent  on  bank 
circulation,  and  for  a  year  to  come,  as 
the  internal  taxes  are  paid,  convert 
each  greenback  into  a  compound-inter- 
est note  at  three  per  cent,  payable  in 
three  years,  in  cash  or  five  per  cent 
securities,  and  convertible  into  four  per 
cent  bonds  at  thirty  years,  free  from  all 
taxation.  Such  compound  notes  like 
those  issued  during  the  war,  for  which 
we  may  thank  the  Hon.  Amasa  Walker, 
would  be  self-funding,  and  almost  im- 
perceptibly carry  us  back  to  a  specie 
.standard,  while  the  tax  on  bank  circu- 
lation and  deposits  would  meet  the 
three  per  cent  interest. 

Subsidies  and  Remission  of  Duty. 

We  must  recover  our  navigation,  the 
loss  of  which  is  one  of  the  painful  inci- 
dents of  the  war,  and  of  the  unfriendly 
policy  of  England.  Had  England  dis- 
charged the  duties  which  international 
law  imposes  on  neutral  nations,  had 
she  stopped  the  cruisers  built  in  her 
ports  or  arrested  them  when  they  took 
refuge  in  her  colonies,  our  shipping, 
which  once  equalled  that  of  the  whole 
British  Empire,  would  not  to-day  be 
reduced  to  one  half  of  the  tonnage  of 
Great  Britian.  We  cannot  resign  our 
strength  upon  the  ocean.  Without  it 
we  could  not  have  preserved  the  unity 
of  the  nation  :  it  was  one  of  the  chief 
elements  of  our  power  ;  but  now,  while 
Great  Britain  has  seven  and  a  quarter 
million  tons  of  shipping,  we  have  less 
than  three  and  a  half  millions,  though 
it  is  true  that  we  have  sold  many  of 
our  ships,  most  of  which  sail  under 
the  British  flag.  We  must  remember 
that  iron  and  coal  are  cheap  in  Great 
Britain  and  dear  with  us,  that  Great 
Britain  holds  a  million  tons  of  fast 
steamers,  each  of  which  is  equivalent 
to  four  or  five  ships  in  its  freight- carry- 


ing power  ;  and,  if  we  do  not  intend  to 
wean  our  masters,  mates,  and  sailors 
from  the  sea,  we  must  begin  at  once 
the  construction  of  new  steamers.  How 
is  this  to  be  done  ?  How  has  it  been 
done  by  England  and  France  ?  It  has 
been  accomplished  by  subsidies,  by  a 
very  trifling  annual  expenditure  for  the 
carriage  of  the  mails,  to  which  we  con- 
tribute largely,  and  which  has  not  in  the 
case  of  either  nation,  thus  far,  much 
exceeded  ihe  receipts  from  foreign 
letters,  and  in  the  case  of  England 
has  been  met  by  the  profits  of  the 
penny  postage.  Great  Britain  thus 
maintains  more  than  two  hundred  and 
fifty  fine  steamships,  averaging  two 
thousand  tons,  has  seventeen  lines  run- 
ning to  America,  making  thirteen  hun- 
dred and  twenty-two  passages  yearly, 
and  holds  them  always  officered,  manned, 
and  equipped,  and  ready  for  conversion 
into  steam  frigates.  During  the  war  of 
the  Crimea  and  her  difficulties  with  this 
country,  and  her  recent  war  with  Abys- 
sinia, she  actually  used  a  large  part  of 
them  as  despatch-frigates  and  steam- 
transports  for  troops  and  military  stores, 
and  other  naval  offices.  They  consti- 
tute the  vanguard,  the  most  efficient 
fleet  of  the  British  navy.  We  must, 
and  soon,  have  such  steamships.  Great 
Britain  pays  from  one  dollar  to  two  and 
a  half  dollars,  and  France  three  dollars, 
per  mile  for  her  mail  service.  By  pay- 
ing less  than  France  has  found  it  ne- 
cessary to  pay,  and  giving  the  effective 
protection  Great  Britain  gives  to  her 
shipping  in  freedom  from  taxes  by  a 
remission  of  five  to  ten  dollars  per  ton 
in  gold  on  each  new  ship,  to  cover 
the  extra  cost  due  to  duties,  we  may 
compete  with  European  steamers.  On 
the  ocean  there  can  be  no  protection  ; 
we  must  enter  the  contest  on  equal 
terms,  and  then  we  may  safely  rely  on 
the  genius,  education,  and  courage  and 
inventive  power  of  our  mariners  for 
success.  The  West  is  most  deeply 
interested  in  this  question.  To  con- 
struct, maintain,  and  navigate  a  ton- 
nage equal  to  that  of  the  British 
Empire  would  require  a  maritime  pop- 
ulation of  four  millions,  who  would 


5°4 


The  Finances  of  the  United  States. 


[October,. 


consume  the  surplus  products  of  at 
least  six  millions  devoted  to  agricul- 
ture. But  if  \ve  resign  the  ocean  to 
Europe,  would  not  most  of  the  four 
millions  be  absorbed  by  agriculture  ? 
and  where  would  the  ten  millions  find 
a  market  for  their  surplus  ? 

Agriculture,  manufactures,  and  public 
safety  demand  the  restoration  of  our 
shipping. 

Relations  with  Great  Britain. 
The  restoration  of  amity  with  Great 
Britain  is  of  the  utmost  importance  to 
both  nations.  It  is  not  merely  the 
amount  of  our  claim  and  interest,  now 
seven  millions  sterling,  a  large  portion 
of  which  is  held  by  English  Insurance 
Companies,  that  is  involved,  but  great 
interests  oj  both  nations  suffer  from  the 
questions  between  them,  and  the  British 
Provinces  suffer  more  than  either  na- 
tion. While  Great  Britain  asserts  her 
claim  to  San  Juan,  denies  compensa- 
tion for  all  our  losses,  even  for  the  ships 
of  our  whalemen,  burned  in  time  of 
peace  by  her  cruisers  in  the  Arctic  Sea, 
and  declines  to  punish  any  of  her  pi- 
rates, who  return  to  her  ports  after  their 
ravages  on  the  deep  ;  while  she  seeks 
to  awe  the  United  States  by  military 
roads  and  new  batteries  at  Halifax  and 
Victoria  ;  while  she  arrests  our  natu- 
ralized citizens,  and  claims  their  alle- 
giance after  she  has  banished  them 
from  her  soil  and  we  have  adopted 
them,  —  hostile  tariffs,  consular  fees, 
and  interdicts  must  succeed  to  moder- 
ate duties  and  treaties  of  reciprocity. 
Great  Britain  requires  the  wheat  of 
California  and  Minnesota,  the  corn, 
beef,  and  pork  of  Illinois,  the  petro- 
leum, bark,  and  clover-seed  of  Penn- 
sylvania, at  least  thirty  thousand  tons 
of  the  cheese  of  New  York  and  New 
England,  and  the  market  which  eight 
millions  of  prosperous  families  afford. 
We  require  her  metals,  chemicals, 
and  other  products.  We  need  the 
fisherman's  salt,  wood,  and  timber, 
the  herrings,  alewives,  salmon,  eggs, 
cattle,  wool,  barley,  white  wheat,  and 
potatoes  of  Canada  ;  and  Canada  needs 
our  corn,  tobacco,  pork,  carriages, 


coal,  and  manufactures.  The  townships 
which  lie  between  the  St.  Lawrence 
and  New  England  can  best  supply 
our  factory  towns  with  hay,  oats,  bar- 
ley, cattle,  horses,  and  potatoes  in  ex- 
change for  the  products  of  New  Eng- 
land. England  has  ever  held  her  colo- 
nies with  tenacity,  but  her  American 
Provinces  have  now  grown  to  man's 
estate ;  she  has  abandoned  her  coloni- 
nal  system,  and  draws  her  pine  and 
spruce  chiefly  from  Norway;  she  gives 
her  colonists  no  priority  in  her  markets.. 
They  have  few  interests  in  common 
with  her  ;  for  the  last  decade  their  trade 
has  been  chiefly  with  us,  and  not  with 
each  other.  Nova  Scotia  is  commer- 
cial; New  Brunswick  is  devoted  to- 
ship-building  and  lumber  ;  Canada  and 
Prince  Edward  Island  are  agricultural. 
While  they  might  easily  enter  as  States 
into  our  republic,  they  are  not  homo- 
geneous, and  Nova  Scotia  and  New 
Brunswick  would  be  powerless  in  Can- 
ada. At  the  present  moment  Great 
Britain  incurs  an  annual  expense  of 
four  or  five  millions  sterling  to  protect 
them  from  the  Fenians,  and  derives 
from  their  trade  no  equivalent  for  the 
outlay.  As  members  of  our  Union 
they  would  partake  of  a  coasting-trade, 
we  cannot  concede  to  British  subjects, 
and  enjoy  the  free  trade  of  a  continent. 
If  our  debt  is  larger  than  theirs,  our 
wealth,  population,  and  resources  are. 
proportionate  to  our  interest.  The 
possession  of  the  Provinces  weakens 
Great  Britain :  it  would  add  to  the 
strength  and  commerce  of  our  Union. 
It  would  bring  to  us  an  amount  of 
shipping  which  would  compensate  for 
two  thirds  of  our  losses  by  the  war. 
In  the  century  which  expires  in  18691 
our  population  will  have  increased  from 
two  and  a  half  millions  to  forty  millions, 
or  sixteen  fold.  In  another  century,  at 
this  rate  of  increase,  our  population  will 
exceed  that  of  China  and  require  the 
entire  continent.  We  now  hold  Maine 
and  Alaska,  which  overlap  the  territory 
of  Great  Britain,  and  we  already  require 
the  forests  and  arable  lands  of  British 
America. 

Nearly  the  whole  of  British  America 


1868.] 


The  Finances  of  the  United  States. 


505 


from  Lake  Superior  to  the  Pacific  is 
now  held  by  the  Hudson  Bay  Company 
as  a  hunting-field,  and  yields  it  a  reve- 
nue of  two  hundred  and  seventy-five 
thousand  dollars  only,  or  five  per  cent 
less  than  the  cost  of  Alaska.  What  a 
field  is  there  found  for  Secretary  Sew- 
ard  !  Were  British  America  annexed, 
\ve  should  require  no  barriers  or  cus- 
tom-houses from  Quebec  to  Sitka,  and 
should  save  in  the  revenue  we  now 
lose  by  smuggling  and  custom-house 
expenses  the  interest  of  twice  the  cost 
of  Alaska.  Is  not  the  acquisition  of 
British  America  and  the  admission  of 
the  Provinces  as  States  of  our  Union 
the  true  solution  of  our  questions  with 
Great  Britain  ?  Were  the  Provinces 
members  of  our  Union,  we  should  at 
once  relinquish  the  Intercolonial  Rail- 
way through  the  wilds  of  New  Bruns- 
wick, and  complete  the  European  and 
American  line  from  Halifax  and  Louis- 
burg  to  Bangor,  and  thus  reduce  to  six 
days  the  run  from  the  Cove  of  Cork 
to  Boston,  and  reach  Japan  in  four 
weeks  from  London.  We  should  at 
once  deepen  the  canals  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence, make  a  ship-canal  around  Niag- 
ara, carry  the  navigable  waters  of  the 
St.  Lawrence  into  Lake  Champlain,  and 
join  hand  in  hand  with  the  people  of 
the  Provinces  in  opening  the  railway 
from  Lake  Superior  to  the  Red  River 
of  the  North  and  the  forks  of  the  Mis- 
souri. Thus  should  we  open  to  com- 
merce the  great  wheat-fields  of  the 
Assiniboin,  Saskatchewan,  and  Peace 
Rivers,  where  the  elk  and  buffalo  of 
the  plains  now  resort  to  calve  and  win- 
ter. 

A  ton  of  sugar  is  now  carried  from 
Boston  to  Chicago,  via  Ogdensburg, 
for  six  dollars,  and  may  be  taken  for 
the  same  rate  to  the  head  of  Lake  Su- 
perior ;  with  a  direct  railway  finished 
to  the  Red  River,  wheat  may  at  this 
rate  be  taken  from  the  valley  of  the 
Saskatchewan  to  Boston  or  New  York 
for  twenty-five  cents  a  bushel.  The 
prolific  West  requires  new  avenues  to 
the  seaboard  ;  and  the  cheapest  route  is 
by  propellers  to  the  foot  of  Lake  Onta- 
rio, and  thence  by  rail  to  the  sea-shore. 


Export  of  Wheat. 

Under  the  census  of  1860,  our  annual 
yield  of  Indian  corn  was  returned  as 
eight  hundred  and  thirty-six  millions 
of  bushels  ;  while  wheat  was  compara- 
tively deficient,  —  actually  less  by  one 
third  than  the  yield  of  France,  as  it  was. 
but  one  hundred  and  seventy-two  mil- 
lions of  bushels  in  1859,  tne  year  pre- 
ceding the  census.  It  gave  us,  how- 
ever, seventeen  millions  of  bushels  in 
grain  and  Hour  for  exportation  in  1860. 
Since  1859,  the  high  price  of  flour  has 
stimulated  production  ;  new  farms  have 
been  opened,  and  new  railways  built  in 
Iowa,  Wisconsin,  and  Minnesota,  and 
the  culture  of  wheat  has  become  more 
profitable  than  the  gold-mines  in  Cali- 
fornia ;  and  this  year,  with  a  propitious 
season,  our  crop  of  wheat  is  rated  at 
nearly  three  hundred  millions  of  bush- 
els, which  should  give  a  surplus  of 
one  hundred  millions  of  bushels  for 
exportation.  Nor  have  we  yet  reached 
the  maximum  of  production.  The  land 
and  climate  of  Minnesota,  on  the  route 
of  the  North  Pacific,  the  valleys  of  the 
Red  River  of  the  North,  the  Assini- 
boin and  Saskatchewan  Rivers  are 
adapted  to  winter  wheat,  and  give  larger 
and  surer  crops  than  Ohio  or  Illinois. 
A  short  railway  of  two  hundred  and 
fifty  miles  from  the  head  of  Lake  Su- 
perior to  the  Red  River,  which  may  be 
built  for  half  the  money  paid  out  in 
dividends  at  Boston  on  the  first  of  July, 
would  open  to  commerce  those  valleys, 
and  permit  the  delivery  of  their  wheat 
at  a  freight  of  thirty  cents  a  bushel  in 
Boston.  In  the  rich  valleys  and  on 
the  fertile  hillsides  of  California,  wheat 
yields,  without  fertilizers,  more  than 
fifty  bushels  to  the  acre  ;  and  a  single 
man,  with  the  aid  of  improved  mechan- 
ism,—  reapers,  drums,  and  threshers, 
—  raises  five  thousand  bushels.  There 
ten  farmers,  or  one  farmer  with  nine 
assistants,  can  load  a  ship  of  a  thousand 
tons  with  wheat  costing  the  farmer  but 
twenty-five  cents  per  bushel;  and,  at 
one  time  last  spring,  there  v;erc  one 
hundred  and  fifty  ships  on  their  way 
from  San  Francisco  to  the  Atlantic 


506 


TJic  Finances  of  the  United  States. 


[October, 


ports,  laden  with  seven  million  bushels 
of  wheat:  the  only  check  to  produc- 
tion being  a  deficiency  of  ships,  and  the 
circuit  by  Cape  Horn,  which  allows  a 
ship  to  make  but  one  voyage  to  the 
year.  Were  a  canal  cut  through  the 
Isthmus,  each  ship  could  make  two 
voyages  in  a  year,  and,  with  the  screw, 
each  ship  could  make  five  voyages,  in 
place  of  two,  each  season  to  New  York. 
So  large  is  the  area  fit  for  wheat-fields 
in  California  and  Oregon,  that,  after 
reserving  ample  space  for  vineyards 
and  sheep-walks,  which  nearly  equal 
the  culture  of  wheat  in  importance, 
twenty  thousand  men,  — actually  less 
than  the  emigration  of  a  single  year,  — 
could  produce  there  annually  a  hun- 
dred millions  of  bushels,  on  three  thou- 
sand square  miles,  near  navigable  wa- 
ters, and  load  two  thousand  ships,  of 
one  thousand  tons,  with  wheat.  One 
fourth  of  these  ships  might  be  built 
annually  on  the  coasts  of  California, 
Oregon,  the  Straits  of  Fuca  and  Alas- 
ka ;  for  there  the  towering  pines  and 
cedars  stand  waiting  for  the  shipwrights 
on  the  very  sea-shore,  and  the  first 
freight  of  wheat  would  suffice  to  pay 
one  third  of  the  cost  of  construction. 
A  nation  like  ours,  with  a  front  on 
each  ocean,  and  such  resources,  should, 
by  due  concessions  and  subsidies,  set 
the  shipwright  in  motion,  and  should 
connect  the  two  oceans.  As  far  back  as 
the  seventeenth  century  Scotland  found- 
ed the  Colony  of  Darien,  and  raised  five 
hundred  thousand  pounds  to  open  a  ship- 
canal.  The  route  was  traced  by  Patter- 
son, the  founder  of  the  Bank  of  England, 
and  here,  he  wrote,  was  "  the  Gate  of 
the  Universe  "  ;  but  the  colony  and  the 
enterprise  were  ruined  by  the  jealousy 


of  both  Spain  and  England.  Here,  as 
Admiral  Davis  reports  to  Congress,  is 
the  true  route  for  a  ship-canal  of  but 
twenty  miles,  between  deep  and  spa- 
ous  harbors,  where  neither  tunnels  nor 
lockage  are  required,  and  where  but  a 
single  ridge,  whose  ravines  rise  to  an 
elevation  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet, 
intervenes  between  ocean  and  ocean. 
It  can  in  all  probability  be  made  for 
less  than  one  third  the  cost  of  the  ship- 
canal  which  France  and  Egypt  are 
opening  across  the  Isthmus  of  Suez,  a 
hundred  miles  long,  a  hundred  yards 
wide,  and  ten  in  depth  ;  and  the  whole 
cost  might  be  defrayed  by  the  light  tax 
on  oil,  which  the  House  voted  a  few 
days  since,  or  by  the  assessment  pro- 
posed on  bank  circulation  as  a  com- 
pensation for  exclusive  privileges. 

The  Pacific  Railway  is  a  reproductive 
investment.  It  makes  dividends  to  its 
originators  even  before  it  is  finished, 
and  will  carry  hosts  of  travellers,  specie, 
silks,  teas,  spices,  dry  goods,  boots  and 
shoes,  and  local  freight.  The  Panama 
Railway  earns  regularly  twenty  per 
cent.  The  canal  will  pay  at  least  as 
well  as  the  railways.  The  nation  will 
derive  more  benefit  from  its  expendi- 
tures on  such  enterprises  than  from 
any  pitiful  attempt  to  compel  its  cred- 
itors to  take  paper  in  place  of  gold,  or 
to  force  a  reduction  of  interest.  It  is 
preposterous  for  the  nation,  after  its 
triumph,  in  its  hour  of  prosperity,  to  as- 
sume the  attitude  of  the  insolvent, — 
as  preposterous  as  it  would  be  for 
Belmont,  Stewart,  or  Astor,  after  hav- 
ing made  a  little  discount  on  paper  dur- 
ing a  revulsion  which  had  ended,  to  call 
their  creditors  together,  if  they  have 
any,  and  propose  a  compromise. 


1 868.] 


Pandora. 


507 


PANDORA. 

ITALY,  loved  of  the  sun, 
Wooed  of  the  sweet  winds  and  wed  by  the  sea, 
When,  since  the  nations  begun, 
Was  other  inheritance  like  unto  thee  ? 

Splendors  of  sunshine  and  snows 

Flash  from  thy  peaks  to  thy  bath  in  the  brine  ; 

Thine  are  the  daisy  and  rose, 

The  grace  of  the  palm  and  the  strength  of  the  pine : 

Orchard  and  harvested  plain  ; 

Lakes,  by  the  touch  of  the  tempest  unstirred ; 

Dells  where  the  Dryads  remain, 

And  mountains  that  rise  to  a  music  unheard  ! 

Generous  gods,  at  thy  birth, 

Heaped  on  thy  cradle  with  prodigal  hand 

Gifts,  and  the  darling  of  earth 

Art  thou,  and  v/ast  ever,  O  ravishing  land ! 

Strength  from  the  Thunderer  came, 

Pride  from  the  goddess  that  governs  his  board; 

While,  in  his  forges  of  flame, 

Hephsestus  attempered  thine  armor  and  sword. 

Lo  !     Aphrodite  her  zone, 

Winning  all  love  to  thy  loveliness,  gave  ; 

Leaving  her  Paphian  throne 

To  breathe  on  thy  mountains  and  brighten  thy  wave. 

Bacchus  the  urns  of  his  wine 

Gave,  and  the  festivals  crowning  thy  toil; 

Ceres,  the  mother  divine, 

Bestowed  on  thee  bounties  of  corn  and  of  oil. 

Phoebus  the  songs  that  inspire, 

Caught  from  the  airs  of  Olympus,  conferred ; 

Hermes,  the  sweetness  and  fire 

That  pierce  in  the  charm  of  the  eloquent  word. 


So  were  thy  graces  complete  ; 

Yea,  and,  though  ruined,  they  fascinate  now  : 

Beautiful  still  are  thy  feet, 

And  girt  with  the  gold  of  lost  lordship  thy  brow. 


508  Pandora.  [October, 

Ah  !  but  the  gods,  the  malign, 

Cruel  in  bounty  and  blessing  to  smite, 

Mixed  with  thy  do \vries  divine 

The  gifts  that  dethrone  and  the  beauties  that  blight. 

Thine  was  the  marvellous  box, 

Filled  with  the  evils  let  loose  in  the  past: 

Thine  is  the  charm  that  unlocks 

The  spirits  that  flatter  and  cheat  us  at  last. 

Life,  from  thy  symmetry  fed, 

Shrinks  from  encounter  that  makes  it  supreme ; 

Gropes  in  the  dust  of  thy  dead 

Till  Faith  is  a  legend,  and  Freedom  a  dream ! 

Mysteries  flow  from  thy  lips, 

Subtle  to  fetter  the  soul,  and  betray  : 

Lieth  the  world  in  eclipse 

Of  thy  shadow,  and  not  in  the  light  of  thy  day! 

Thou,  that  assumest  to  lead, 

Holding  the  truth  and  the  keys  of  the  skies, 

Art  the  usurpress  indeed, 

And  rulest  thy  sons  with  a  sceptre  of  lies. 

Spirit  of  beauty  and  woe, 

Clad  with  delusions  more  lovely  than  truth, 

In  thy  decrepitude  show 

The  ills  that  were  hid  in  thy  splendor  of  youth. 

Teach  us  thy  charms  to  resist, 
Siren,  so  potent  to  bind  and  control : 
Stain  not  the  lips  thou  hast  kissed, 
But  let  us  enjoy  thee  in  freedom  of  soul ! 

Let  us  accept  what  thou  hast,  — 

Sovereign  beauty,  and  phantoms  of  fame, — 

Choose  from  thy  Present  and  Past 

The  noblest  and  purest,  nor  share  in  thy  shame. 

Thus  shall  we  yield,  and  o'ercorne  ; 

Conquer  while  loving  thee, — love,  but  withstand: 

Then,  though  thy  children  be  dumb, 

Our  songs  shall  remember  thee,  ravishing  land ! 


IS6S.J 


and  Literary  Notices. 


509 


REVIEWS   AND    LITERARY   NOTICES. 


The  Myths  of  the  New  World:  a  Treatise 
on  the  Symbolists  and  Mythology  of  the 
Red  Race  of  America.  By  DANIEL  G. 
BLUXTON,  A.  M.,  M.  D.,  Member  of  the 

»in.-;torical  Society  of  Pennsylvania,  etc. 
Xc-.v  York  :  Leypoldt  and  Holt. 
THE  thoughtful  general  reader,  for  whom, 
rather  than  the  antiquary,  Dr.  Brinton  pro- 
•  fesses  to  have  written  his  book,  must  be 
pleased  with  the  sensibleness  which  is  one 
of  its  prominent  characteristics.  In  the 
treatment  of  the  myths  of  the  Xew  World 
there  was  occasion  for  so  great  critical  dry- 
ness,  and  so  much  uncritical  and  credulous 
sentimentality,  that  we  confess  ourselves 
rather  surprised  than  otherwise  to  find 
them  handled  entertainingly,  and  discussed 
with  sympathy  and  candor,  and  in  a  tone  at 
once  moderate  and  confident.  The  field  of 
inquirv  extends  over  the  whole  hemisphere, 
but  it  has  been  so  conscientiously  and  care- 
fully wrought,  that  there  is  little  confusion 
in  the  presentation  of  results ;  all  extrane- 
ous growths  have  been  weeded  out,  and  the 
Red  Race's  idea  of  the  supernatural  is  given 
as  distinctly  and  fully  as  it  can  be  evolved 
from  the  vague  and  varying  traditions  and 
records  of  the  past.  Of  course,  an  end  is 
made  of  many  popular  illusions  concerning 
the  religion  of  the  aborigines,  and  there  is 
sad  havoc  of  authorities  :  the  Great  Spirit 
turns  out  an  effort  of  the  native  imagination 
to  conceive  of  the  white  man's  God,  and 
Mr.  Schoolcraft  is  mentioned  as  a  man  of 
"deficient  education  and  narrow  prejudices, 
pompous  in  style  and  inaccurate  in  state- 
ment," and  his  famous  work  as  a  "monu- 
ment of  American  extravagance  and  super- 
ficiality," while  Hiawatha  appears  a  recent 
and  "  wholly  spurious  myth."  These  great 
landmarks  in  Indian  symbolism  being  over- 
thrown, the  general  reader  drifts  helplessly 
upon  the  course  of  their  fables,  and  quite  at 
iJr.  Brinton's  mercy. 

A  very  large  part  of  their  supernatural- 
ism  is  the  reverberation  of  the  misunder- 
stood sermons  of  missionaries ;  but  when 
this  is  rejected  the  indigenous  mythology 
still  makes  a  respectable  figure.  Much 
of  what  remains  is  very  beautiful,  and 
some  of  it  very  significant ;  but  as  it  was 
usually  distinct  from  ideas  and  systems  cf 


morality,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the 
burden  of  his  own  proof  is  not  against  the 
proposition  that  Dr.  Brinton  seeks  to  estab- 
lish, and  whether  any  of  its  qualities  did 
much  to  elevate  the  red  race ;  though  there 
is  no  question  that  its  cruel  and  revolting 
forms  of  worship  tended  to  degrade  them. 
For  the  most  part  the  weak  ethical  instincts 
of  humanity  seem  to  have  been  powerless 
before  superstitions  pointing  to  a  future  in 
which  the  place  of  the  soul  was  fixed,  not 
by  its  good  or  bad  acts,  but  by  the  nature 
of  the  body's  last  sickness,  and  teaching 
gods  who  ruled  in  fear,  and  knew  neither 
right  nor  wrong,  but  only  offerings  and  self- 
sacrifice  in  their  worshipper ;  and  even 
where  the  Indians,  as  in  Peru  and  Mexico, 
had  a  civic  life  better  than  their  creed,  their 
creed  still  stained  their  civilization  with 
horrible  crimes  and  infamies,  or  prepared 
it  to  fall  at  the  first  blow  from  without. 

According  to  Dr.  Brinton,  there  never 
was  a  race  so  universally  and  so  cunningly 
priest  -  ridden  as  our  aborigines.  These 
savages  who  had  so  vague  and  intangible 
a  theology  that  it  has  often  been  doubted 
whether  they  believed  at  all  in  a  future 
state,  had  a  very  complex  supernaturalism, 
and  a  priesthood  -skilled  far  beyond  our 
revivalists  in  appealing  to  the  imagination 
and  emotions.  But  in  establishing  this  fact 
Dr.  Brinton  is  very  far  from  assenting  to 
the  doubt  which  chiefly  renders  it  remarka- 
ble. On  the  contrary,  he  asserts  in  the 
most  decided  terms  the  belief  of  all  the 
American  tribes  in  a  hereafter,  and  denies 
that  it  was  really  wanting  even  in  those 
poor  Pend  d'Oreilles  to  whom  the  Catholic 
missionaries  could  convey  an  idea  of  the 
soul  only  by  describing  it  as  "a  gut  that 
never  rotted,"  while  other  Oregon  tribes, 
who  attribute  a  spirit  to  every  member 
of  the  body,  the  Algonkins  and  Iroquois, 
who  give  each  man  two  souls,  and  those 
Dakotas  who  give  him  four,  afford  our  au- 
thor almost  a  riotous  abundance  of  proof  for 
his  argument.  Indeed,  unless  we  are  to 
hold  as  utterly  meaningless  the  burial  cus- 
toms of  all  the  tribes,  and  as  wholly  false 
all  the  accounts  of  Peruvian  and  Mexican 
ceremonies  pertaining  to  the  dead  and  dy- 
ing, we  must  grant  Dr.  Brinton's  claim  on 
behalf  of  the  existence  of  an  aboriginal 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[October, 


hereafter,  with  its  paradise  in  the  sun,  and 
its  curious  subdivisions  into  heavens  and 
hells  appropriate  to  the  complaint  or  act 
by  which  the  soul  was  separated  from  the 
body. 

A  very  interesting  part  of  this  book  is 
that  in  which  the  author  treats  of  the  origin 
of  the  world  and  of  man  as  he  finds  the 
idea  in  the  uncorrupted  myths  of  the 
aborigines.  The  native  imagination  never 
grasped  the  notion  of  creation.  Matter,  for 
them,  always  existed ;  but  there  was  a  fabu- 
lous period  when  a  flood  of  waters  hid  ev- 
erything, and  when  the  dry  land  began  to 
emerge.  Back  of  this  period  they  could 
not  go ;  yet  they  had  no  trouble  in  sup- 
posing an  end  of  matter,  and  they  had  no 
clearer  belief  than  that  of  the  destruction  of 
the  world,  of  a  last  day,  and  of  a  resurrec- 
tion of  the  dead.  All  their  myths  teach 
more  or  less  directly  that  man  was  not 
growth  from  lower  animal  life  or  from  veg- 
etable life,  but  "  a  direct  product  from  the 
great  creative  power." 

Dr.  Brinton  examines  at  length  into  the 
nature  of  those  myths  by  virtue  of  which 
the  cardinal  points  of  the  compass  and  the 
number  four  became  sacred  to  the  aborigi- 
nes, and  by  which  the  Cross  became  the 
symbol  of  the  east,  west,  north,  and  south, 
as  widely  and  universally  employed  as  the 
knowledge  of  these  points. 

"  The  Catholic  missionaries  found  it  was 
no  new  object  of  adoration  to  the  red  race, 
and  were  in  doubt  whether  to  ascribe  the 
fact  to  the  pious  labors  of  Saint  Thomas  or 
the  sacrilegious  subtlety  of  Satan.  It  was 
the  central  object  in  the  great  temple  of 
Cozumel,  and  is  still  preserved  on  the  bas- 
reliefs  of  the  ruined  city  of  Palenque.  From 
time  immemorial  it  had  received  the  prayers 
and  sacrifices  of  the  Aztecs  and  Toltecs, 
and  was  suspended  as  an  august  emblem 
from  the  walls  of  temples  in  Popoyan  and 
Cundinamarca.  In  the  Mexican  tongue  it 
bore  the  significant  and  worthy  name  '  Tree 
of  our  Life,'  or  '  Tree  of  our  Flesh '  (Tona- 
caquahuitl}.  It  represented  the  god  of  rains 
and  of  health,  and  this  was  everywhere  its 
simple  meaning.  '  Those  of  Yucatan,'  say 
the  chroniclers,  '  prayed  to  the  cross  as  the 
god  of  rains  when  they  needed  water.'  The 
Aztec  goddess  of  rains  bore  one  in  her 
hand,  and  at  the  feast  celebrated  to  her 
honor  in  the  early  spring  victims  were 
nailed  to  a  cross  and  shot  with  arrows. 
Quetzalcoatl,  god  of  the  winds,  bore  as  his 
sign  of  office  '  a  mace  like  the  cross  of  a 
bishop ' ;  his  robe  was  covered  with  them 


strown  like  flowers,  and  its  adoration  was 
throughout  connected  with  his  worship. 
When  the  Muyscas  would  sacrifice  to  the 
goddess  of  waters,  they  extended  cords 
across  the  tranquil  depths  of  some  lake, 
thus  forming  a  gigantic  cross,  and  at  their 
point  of  intersection  threw  in  their  offerings 
of  gold,  emeralds,  and  precious  oils.  The 
arms  of  the  cross  were  designed  to  point  to 
the  cardinal  points  and  represent  the  four 
winds,  the  rain-bringers.  To  confirm  this 
explanation,  let  us  have  recourse  to  the 
simpler  ceremonies  of  the  less  cultivated 
tribes,  and  see  the  transparent  meaning  of 
the  symbol  as  they  employed  it. 

"When  the  rain-maker  of  the  Lenni 
Lenape  would  exert  his  power,  he  retired 
to  some  secluded  spot  and  drew  upon  the 
earth  the  figure  of  a  cross,  (its  arms  toward 
the  cardinal  points  ?)  placed  upon  it  a  piece 
of  tobacco,  a  gourd,  a  bit  of  some  red  stuff, 
and  commenced  to  cry  aloud  to  the  spirits 
of  the  rains.  The  Creeks  at  the  festival  of 
the  Busk  celebrated,  as  we  have  seen,  to 
the  four  winds,  and,  according  to  their  le- 
gends instituted  by  them,  commenced  with 
making  the  new  fire.  The  manner  of  this 
was  '  to  place  four  logs  in  the  centre  of  the 
square,  end  to  end,  forming  a  cross,  the 
outer  ends  pointing  to  the  cardinal  points ; 
in  the  centre  of  the  cross  the  new  fire  is 
made.' 

"  As  the  emblem  of  the  winds  who  dis- 
pense the  fertilizing  showers  it  is  emphati- 
cally the  tree  of  our  life,  our  subsistence, 
and  our  health.  It  never  had  any  other 
meaning  in  America,  and  if,  as  has  been 
said,  the  tombs  of  the  Mexicans  were  cruci- 
form, it  was  perhaps  with  reference  to  a 
resurrection  and  a  future  life  as  portrayed 
under  this  symbol,  indicating  that  the  buried 
body  would  rise  by  the  action  of  the  four 
spirits  of  the  world,  as  the  buried  seed  takes 
on  a  new  existence  when  watered  by  the 
vernal  showers.  It  frequently  recurs  in  the 
ancient  Egyptian  writings,  where  it  is  in- 
terpreted life ;  doubtless,  could  we  trace 
the  hieroglyph  to  its  source,  it  would  like- 
wise prove  to  be  derived  from  the  four 
winds." 

Throughout  Dr.  Brinton's  work  there  i 
a  prevalent  synthetic  effort,  by  which  tf 
varying  forms  of  the  aboriginal  myths  are 
brought  to  one  expression,  and  the  ruclei 
traditions  are  made  to  approach  their  intei 
pretation  through  the  perfected  symbol!: 
of  the   civilized   Mexicans  and  Peruvians. 
Here,  as  nearly  everywhere  else,  the  author 
has  most  readers  in  his  power;  but  we 


1868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


have  a  conviction  that  he  does,not  abuse  his 
power.  In  any  case,  the  result  is  in  many 
respects  absolutely  satisfactory.  Some- 
thing is  evoked  from  chaos,  that  commends 
itself  both  to  the  reason  and  the  fancy,  and 
makes  Dr.  Brinton's  book  a  very  entertain- 
ing one  ;  and  that  doubt,  scarcely  more 
merciful  than  atheism,  whether  man  might 
not  somewhere  be  destitute  of  belief  in  God 
and  his  own  immortality,  is  removed,  so  far 
as  concerns  the  Americans.  Their  super- 
naturalism  included  both  ideas,  and  from  it 
all  our  author  evolves  his  opinion  that  the 
supreme  deity  of  the  red  race  was  a  not 
less  pure  and  spiritual  essence  than  Light. 
Their  God,  however,  destroyed  them,  for 
always  connected  with  belief  in  him  was 
their  faith  in  that  immemorable  tradition 
.  taught  that  out  of  his  home,  the  east, 
should  come  a  white  race  to  conquer  and 
possess  their  land,  and  to  which  Dr.  Erin- 
ton  is  not  alone,  nor  too  daring,  in  attribut- 
ing the  collapse  of  powers  and  civilizations 
like  those  of  Peru  and  Mexico  before  a 
handful  of  Spanish  adventurers. 


Breitmami's  Party.  With  other  Bal- 
lads. Philadelphia :  T.  B.  Peterson  and 
Brothers. 

THE  reader  laughs  at  the  fantastic  droll- 
cry  of  these  ballads,  and,  acknowledging 
the  genuineness  of  the  humor,  cannot  help 
wishing  that  it  had  a  wider  range  and  a 
securer  means  of  expression.  Its  instru- 
ment is  not  a  dialect  or  patois  characteriz- 
ing a  race  or  locality,  but  merely  the  broken 
English  of  the  half-Americanized  German 
fellow-citizen,  which  varies  according  to  ac- 
cident or  individual  clumsiness,  and  is  not 
nearly  so  fixed  in  form,  or  so  descriptive  of 
generic  facts  and  ideas,  as  the  Irish  brogue. 
We  own  it  is  funny ;  and  for  once  it  did 
very  well.  Indeed,  few  American  poems 
have  been  held  in  better  or  more  constant 
remembrance  than  the  ballad  of  Hans  Breit- 
mann's  Party.  It  is  one  of  those  peren- 
nials, which,  when  not  blossoming  in  the 
newspapers,  are  carefully  preserved  in  many 
scrap-books,  and,  worn  down  to  the  quick 
with  handling,  and  with  only  enough  paper 
and  print  about  them  to  protect  the  im- 
mortal germ,  are  carried  round  in  infinite 
oat-pockets.  The  other  ballads  here 
printed  with  it  arc  a  good  deal  like  it,  and 
betray  not  so  much  a  several  inspiration,  as 
'Wth  from  its  success.  They  celebrate 
chiefly  the  warlike  career  of  Hans  Breit- 


mann,  who,  many  years  after  his  famous 
"  Barty,"  is 

"All  goned  afay  mit  de  Lager  Beer 
Afay  in  de  ewigkeit," 

appears  in  a  personal  combat  with  a  repro- 
bate son  among  the  rebels,  and  as  a  raider 
in  Maryland,  and  finally  as  a  bummer  in 
the  train  of  Sherman's  army.  While  doing 
duty  in  the  latter  quality,  he  is  "  goppled 
oop  "  by  the  rebels  ;  and 

"  In  de  Bowery  each  bier-haus  mit  crape  was  ocp- 

done 
Ven   dey  read  in   de  papers  dat  Breitmann  vas 

gone; 

And  de  Dutch  all  cot  troonk  oopon  lager  and  \vein 
At  the  great  Trauer-fest  of  de  Tooner-Verein." 

But  the  gobbled  bummer  suddenly  reap- 
pears among  his  comrades. 

"  Six  bistols  beschlagen  mit  silver  he  wore 
Und  a  gold-mounted  sword  like  an  Kaisar  he  bore  ; 
Und  ve  dinks  dat  de  ghosdt  —  or  votever  he  be  — 
Moost  hafe  broken  some  panks  on  his  vay  to  de 
sea. 

Und  ve  roosh  to  embrace  him,  und  shtill  more  ve 

find 

Dat  wherever  he  'd  peen,  he  'd  left  noding  pehind. 
In  bofe  of  hispootsdere  vas  porte-moneys  crammed, 
Mit  creen-packs  stoof  full  all  his  haversack  jammed ; 
In  hisbockets  cold  dollars  vere  shingiin'  deirdoons, 
Mit  dwo  doozen  votches,  und  four  doozen  shpoons, 
Und  dwo  silber  tea-pods  for  makin'  his  dea, 
Der  ghosdt  haf  bring  mit  him,  en  route  to  de  sea." 

This  is  true  history  as  well  as  good  fun, 
we  imagine ;  and  we  suspect  that  the  tri- 
umphal close  of  the  ballad  of  "  Breitmann 
in  Kansas,"  whither  he  went,  after  peace 
came,  on  one  of  those  Pacific  Railroad 
pleasure-parties,  which  people  somehow 
understand  to  be  civilizing  influences  im- 
pelled by  great  moral  engines,  is  more  ac- 
curately suggestive  of  the  immediate  objects 
of  such  expeditions  :  — 

"  Hans  Breitmann  vent  to  Kansas  ; 

He  have  a  pully  dime  ; 
Bu  'tvas  in  oldt  Missouri 

Dat  dey  rooshed  him  up  sublime. 
Dey  took  him  to  der  Bilot  Nob, 

Und  all  der  nobs  around  : 
Dey  spreed  him  und  dey  tea'd  him 

Dill  dey  roon  him  to  de  ground. 

"  Hans  Breitmann  vent  to  Kansas 

Troo  all  dis  earthly  land  ; 
A  vorkin'  out  life's  mission  here 

Soobyectifly  und  grand. 
Some  beoblesh  runs  de  beautiful, 

Some  works  philosophic, 
Der  Breitmann  solfe  de  Infmide 

Ash  von  eternal  shpree  !  " 

The  ballad  of  Die  Schone  Wittwe,  and 
mock-romantic  ballad  at  the  end,  are  the 
poorest  of  all,  yet  they  make  you  laugh ; 
and  "Breitmann  and  the  Turners"  is  as 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[October. 


good  as  any  of  the  war-ballads,  with  a  pe- 
culiarly wild  movement  of  spirit,  and  a  jolly 
breadth  of  drollery  :  — 

"  Ha:is  Breitmann  choined  de  Toorners, 

Dev  all  set  oop  some  shouts, 
Dey  took'd  him  into  deir  Toorner  Hall 

Und  poots  him  a  course  of  sphrouts. 
Boy  poots  him  on  de  barrell-hell  bars 

Und  shtands  him  oop  on  his  head, 
Und  dey  pcomps  de  beer  mit  an  engine-hose 

la  his  niout'  dill  he  's  'pout  half  tead  ! 

"  Hans  Breitmann  choin  de  Toorners, 

Mit  a  Limburg  cheese  he  coom  : 
Yen  he  open  de  box  it  smell  so  loudt 

It  knock  de  music  doomb. 
Ven  de  Deutschers  kit  de  flavor 

It  coorl  de  haar  on  dere  head  ; 
But  dere  vas  dwo  Amerigans  dere, 

Und  by  tam  !  it  kilt  dem  dead  !  " 

Throughout  all  the  ballads,  it  is  the 
same  figure  presented, — an  honest  Deut- 
scher  drunk  with  the  new  world  as  with 
new  wine,  and  rioting  in  the  expression  of 
purely  Deutsch  nature  and  half-Deutsch 
ideas  through  a  strange  speech.  It  is  a 
true  figure  enough,  and  recognizable ;  but 
it  was  fully  developed  in  the  original  ballad, 
and  sufficiently  portrayed  there. 

Cannot  Mr.  Leland,  who  is  in  every  way 
so  well  qualified  to  enjoy  and  reproduce 
the  peculiarities  of  Pennsylvania  Dutch, 
give  us  some  ballads  in  that  racy  and  char- 
acteristic idiom  ? 


Appleton's  Short-Trip  Guide  to  Europe. 
(1868.)  Principally  devoted  to  England, 
Scotland,  Ireland,  Switzerland,  France, 
Germany,  and  Italy ;  ivith  Glimpses  of 
Spain,  Short  Routes  in  the  East,  etc.  ;  and 
a  Collation  of  Travellers'  Phrases  in 
French  and  German.  By  HENRY  MOR- 
FORD.  New  York  :  D.  Appleton  &  Co. 

THE  short-trip  American  —  as  Mr.  Mor- 
ford  calls  the  kind  of  tourist  for  whom 
this  book  is  written  —  will  ask  for  "  Oon 
cohto  "  and  "  Oon  fcrchet "  in  Parisian 
restaurants  where  the  waiter  has  failed  to 
give  him  a  knife  and  fork;  and  generally 


he  will  take  care  in  speaking  the  French 
tongue  to  place  the  words  in  "  the  exact 
reverse  of  the  English  "  order,  and  will  re- 
member that  "  the  more  they  are  chopped 
up,  mangled,  swallowed,  and  ejected  through 
the  nose  (like  tobacco-smoke  by  old  smok- 
ers), the  more  possibility  will  exist  of  their 
being  understood  by  a  Frenchman."  Whiic 
travelling  at  the  frightful  speed  of  fifteen 
miles  an  hour  on  the  recklessly  managed 
German  railways,  he  can  profitably  cmplov 
his  leisure  in  committing  to  memory  the 
phrases,  "  Ich  habe  mich  das  Bein  —  den 
Arm  zerbrochen  "  ;  but  we  hope  nothing 
free  and  enlightened  —  not  even  a  short- 
trip  American,  —  will  ever  be  brought  so 
low  in  strange  lands  as  to  stand  in  need  of 
the  German  for  "  I  am  very  poor  !  Give  me 
an  alms  for  God's  sake!  or,  For  the  Holy 
Virgin's  sake !  "  and  we  should  be  very 
sorry  if  any  traveller  came  into  possession 
of  those  obsolete  Italian  coinages  which 
Mr.  Morford  is  at  the  pains  to  reduce  into 
United  States  money. 

The  author  devotes  eighty  of  his  three 
hundred  and  thirty  pages  to  advice  for  the 
exigencies  of  a  sea-voyage,  and  the  con- 
duct of  short-trip  citizens  abroad ;  twenty 
to  those  remarkably  "  Useful  Phrases  in 
French  and  German,"  of  which  we  will 
own  that  we  have  not  given  the  most  use- 
ful, —  though  we  have  to  add  that  we  have 
but  faintly  hinted  the  general  absurdity  of 
Mr.  Morford's  ideas  of  language,  —  and  ten 
to  puffs  of  American  hotels  and  watering- 
places.  Consequently  {here  are  but  two 
thirds  of  the  book  given  to  actual  informa- 
tion, which  is  always  of  the  meagerest  and 
scrappiest  kind,  and  delivered  with  an  air 
of  indescribable  vulgar  jauntiness,  and  the 
accompaniment  of  silly  and  irrelevant  sto- 
nes. We  must  complain  particularly  of 
our  author  for  advising  his  short-trip  Amer- 
icans to  practise  corruption  of  European 
customs-officers.  The  advice  is  not  only 
immoral,  but,  as  addressed  to  citizens  of  a 
country  offering  the  largest  inducements  in 
the  world  to  smuggling  and  bribery,  ap- 
pears to  us  quite  superfluous. 


THE 


ATLANTIC    MONTHLY. 

Magazine  of  Literature,   Science,   Art, 
and  Politics. 


VOL.    XXII.  —  NOVEMBER,    1868.  — NO.    CXXXIII. 


CO-OPERATIVE     HOUSEKEEPING. 


I. 


[E  YOUXG  AMERICAN  HOUSEKEEPER. 

MY  dear,"  said  I  last  autumn  to 
a  young  married  lady  friend, 
whom  in  the  spring  I  had  seen  brilliant- 
ly blooming  and  handsome,  "  it  strikes 
me  you  are  looking  a  little  careworn." 

"  I  am"  returned  she,  with  great  ani- 
mation, "and  I  have  been  giving  it  as 
my  opinion  that  quite  too  much  is  ex- 
pected of  women.  First,  I  had  all  the 
packing  and  moving  of  going  down  to 
the  sea-shore  to  attend  to.  Then,  my 
house  was  full  of  visitors  all  summer ; 
and  I  had  to  take  breath  as  well  as  I 
could  between  hurrying  a  cake  into  the 
oven  and  being  in  the  parlor  to  receive 
or  entertain  them.  Of  course  there  was 
any  quantity  of  sewing  to  do  ;  and,  as 

if  all  this  were  not  enough,  Mr. 

would  come  in  daily  to  know  if  I  had 
learned  my  French  lesson,  and  whether 
I  had  given  my  regular  hour  to  my 
piano  ;  and  now  I  have  just  got 
through  with  the  pleasant  experience 
of  selling  and  stowing  our  furniture 
preparatory  to  going  to  Europe.  So  it 
is  no  wonder  if  I  have  grown  a  little 
thin  ;  and,  in  fact,  as  I  said  before,  I 


have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  en- 
tirely too  much  is  expected  of  women  ! " 

Whether  the  conclusion  be  just  or 
otherwise,  nothing  could  more  perfectly 
represent  the  plight  of  a  multitude  of 
intelligent  and  ambitious  young  ma- 
trons of  moderate  means  than  the  lively 
complaint  of  my  beautiful  friend.  For 
in  these  days  of  strain  and  struggle 
and  desire,  who  of  us  is  there  that  un- 
derstands how  to  live  ?  who  that  pos- 
sesses a  domestic  machinery  so  perfect- 
ly balanced,  so  nicely  adjusted,  so  ex- 
quisitely oiled  and  polished,  that  every 
duty  and  every  pleasure  glide  from  it 
noiseless  and  complete  as  do  the  sep- 
arate marvels  that  fall  from  the  crafty 
wheels  and  lathes  of  this  modern  era  ? 

THE  OLD-FASHIONED  HOUSEKEEPER. 
That  the  art  of  living,  so  far  as  the 
body  and  its  surroundings  are  con- 
cerned, can  be,  and  often  is,  carried  to 
a  very  high  degree  of  perfection,  the 
superlative  housekeepers  we  all  have 
known  are  ample  proof.  My  whole 
girlhood  was  spent  just  across  the 
street  from  the  greatest  genius  in  this 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1868,  by  TICKNOR  AND  FIELDS,  in  the  Clerk's  Office 
of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 

VOL.  xxii.  — NO.  133.  33 


514 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


[November, 


respect  that  I  have  ever  met.  The 
fresh  exterior  of  her  square  white  dwell- 
ing, with  its  immaculate  board  walk 
crossing  her  greenest  sward,  and  its 
shining  windows,  through  which  smiled 
her  roses  and  carnations  upon  the  pas- 
ser-by, gave  pleasant  promise  of  the  ab- 
solute spotlessness  of  everything  within. 
She  was  not  one  of  that  dismal  type  of 
housekeepers  who  exclude  the  light  and 
muffle  everything  into  shapelessness  lest 
damask  and  carpets  should  fade.  On 
the  contrary,  her  house  was  flooded 
with  the  brightest  sunshine,  challenged 
to  find  a  speck  of  dust  if  it  could.  The 
air,  laden  with  the  perfume  of  cut 
flowers  or  house-plants,  seemed  purer 
than  that  outside,  and,  whatever  the 
weather,  its  temperature  was  perfect. 
Nothing  was  for  show,  and  but  little 
for  pure  ornament,  but  everything  was 
the  best  of  its  kind  and  in  true  taste  and 
keeping.  As  for  her  table,  "  never,  till 
life  and  mem'ry  perish,  can  I  forget " 
the  vision  of  that  tea-cloth,  far  whiter 
than  snow,  with  its  gleaming  silver  and 
glass  and  china,  displaying  incompar- 
able viands,  whose  delicacy  and  per- 
fection were  all  her  own,  —  that  sweet 
and  solid  cube  of  golden  butter;  the 
foam-light  and  foam-white  biscuit,  each 
a  separate  thought ;  the  cake,  crowned 
with  every  ideal  attribute  that  cake  can 
possess  ;  the  ruby  and  topaz  of  her  pre- 
served strawberries  and  plums  ;  and  O, 
O,  the  flavor  of  that  deep-red  tongue, — 
the  meltingness  of  her  cold  corned-beef! 
At  this  ambrosial  board  she  sat,  a  lady 
of  sixty  or  seventy,  upright  as  an  ar- 
row, wearing  no  cap,  nor  needing  any, 
with  her  beautiful  chestnut  hair  braided 
in  almost  as  thick  a  tress  as  a  quarter 
of  a  century  ago  ;  low- voiced,  intelligent, 
self-contained  ;  with  a  comprehension 
in  her  eye,  a  firmness  in  her  mouth,  a 
concentrated  and  disciplined  energy 
speaking  from  her  whole  quiet  person, 
that  convinced  one  that  she  could  have 
administered  the  affairs  of  an  empire 
with  the  same  ease  and  exactness  that 
she  did  those  of  her  household.  With 
one  elderly  servant  she  did  it  all ;  and 
as  she  was  never  in  a  hurry,  nor  ever 
unprepared,  she  seemed  to  accomplish 


it  with  no  more  effort  than  the  glit- 
tering engine  which  one  finds  stowed 
away  in  some  lower  corner  of  a  great 
building,  playing  easily  and  noiselessly 
as  if  for  its  own  pleasure,  while  in  real- 
ity it  is  driving  with  mighty  energy  a 
hundred  wheels,  and  employing  cease- 
lessly a  hundred  hands. 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  AGE. 
Now,  such  housewifery  as  this  seems 
to  me  perfect,  but  I  seldom  observe 
any  approach  to  it  in  the  homes  of  my 
young  married  friends,  nor,  though  it 
worries  me,  and  in  my  secret  mind 
often  makes  me  unhappy,  do  I  attempt 
anything  like  it  myself.  Yet  what  a 
contrast  appears  in  the  success  of  two 
women,  both  of  whom  were  perhaps 
equally  endowed  by  nature  with  talent, 
ambition,  and  the  artistic  sense !  The 
one  rushing  in  feverish  haste,  over- 
tasked, inaccurate,  anxious  ;  the  other 
walking  in  cool  quiet,  her  whole  life 
stretching  behind  and  before  her  in 
fair  order  and  freshness,  milestoned 
with  gracious  duties  remembered  afar  off 
and  beautifully  finished  with  love  and 
care,  each  in  its  own  time  and  for  its 
own  sake.  The  contrast  cannot  be 
explained  by  the  difference  in  years 
and  temperament,  for  in  sketching  one 
I  have  meant  to  typify  us  all.  It  is  the 
CENTURY  that  speaks  as  loudly  in  the 
transformation  of  us  young  matrons  as 
in  any  of  its  more  obtrusive  revolu- 
tions;  and  all  our  domestic  imperfec- 
tions are  chargeable  upon  the  modern 
feminine  education,  which  differs  so 
entirely  from  that  of  fifty  years  ago, 
that  the  housewifely  devotion  of  our 
grandmothers  is  as  difficult  and  disa- 
greeable to  us  as  our  accomplishments 
and  extravagance  would  be  impossible 
to  them.  In  a  general  way,  we  feel 
that  we  ought  to  look  after  our  house- 
holds, and,  since  we  earn  nothing  for 
our  families,  to  save  what  hired  labor 
we  can.  But  our  fragile  American 
physique,  as  well  as  the  fastidious 
taste  born  of  school-day  studies  and 
fanciful  young-lady  pursuits,  makes  us 
shrink  from  kitchen  and  storeroom  ; 
nor  can  we  bear  to  lose  our  hold,  feeble 


1 868.] 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


515 


as  it  may  be,  upon  the  music,  the  draw- 
ing, the  varied  culture  of  books,  travel, 
and  society,  that  made  the  interest  and 
happiness  of  our  girlish  years.  Pulled 
one  way  by  necessity  and  another  by 
inclination,  we  try  to  pay  an  equal 
homage  to  opposing  and  jealous  gods. 
But  we  have  not  reconciled  the  quarrel 
between  mind  and  matter.  Our  smat- 
tering of  the  arts  and  sciences  does  not 
emancipate  us  from  the  old  feminine 
slavery  to  manual  labor.  Cooking,  sew- 
ing, dusting,  .arranging,  it  still  stands 
there  to  be  done ;  and,  slight  it  as  we 
may,  we  are  yet  compelled  to  attend  to 
it  just  sufficiently  to  prevent  our  doing 
anything  else  ivell.  So  we  accept  su- 
perficiality in  everything,  and,  as  a 
consequence,  find  ourselves  at  many  a 
turn  unequal  to  the  situation.  Goaded 
by  her  aspirations  and  fretted  by  her 
imperfections,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the 
young  American  matron  grows  thin, 
nervous,  even  prematurely  old ;  for 
she  hurries  along  in  the  general  rush, 
thorough  neither  as  cook,  seamstress, 
musician,  student,  or  fine  lady,  but  a 
yfitch-work  apology  for  them  all ! 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  HOUR. 

Thus  the  feminine  paradox  remains, 
that,  though  never  before  our  time  were 
so  many  privileges  and  advantages 
accorded  to  the  sex,  yet  never  was 
feminine  work  so  badly  done,  never 
was  there  so  much  frivolity,  so  much 
complaint,  so  much  sadness,  anxiety, 
and  discouragement,  among  women  as 
now.  Easy  as  modern  housekeeping, 
modern  child-rearing,  and  even  (owing 
to  ether)  modern  child-bearing  are,  com- 
pared with  those  of  former  times,  wo- 
men seem  to  hate  them  and  to  want  to 
get  away  from  them  more  and  more  every 
day.  The  evil  is  so  great  that  men  are 
growing  afraid  to  marry  even  in  this 
country,  while  those  that  are  married 
are  so  uncomfortable  that  they  have 
begun  to  talk  in  the  papers  about  the 
necessity  of  establishing  cook-shops 
and  laundries,  in  order  to  rescue  the 
delicate  American  wife  from  the  un- 
equal conflict  with  pans,  and  kettles, 
and  impudent  servants  ! 


But  shall  men  do  all  the  work  of  the 
world  ?  Are  we  indeed  come  to  be 
made  of  porcelain,  that  we  must  be 
shelved  from  all  practical  utility,  and 
stand  like  the  painted  figures  of  the 
mantel-piece,  looking  down  from  our 
narrow  perch  at  the  toiling  and  earnest 
multitudes  at  our  feet  ?  It  is  time  that 
faithful  women  ask  themselves  these 
questions,  and  try  to  find  out  what  is  the 
matter  with  our  work  that  we  cannot 
do  it  well,  with  ourselves  that  we  can- 
not take  delight  in  it.  We  seem  to 
have  allowed  the  grand  and  simple  out- 
lines of  the  old  feminine  idea  to  escape 
us,  and  now  toil  confused  at  a  meaning- 
less and  elaborate  pattern  of  existence 
whose  microscopic  details  develop  ever 
faster  than  the  hand  can  follow  or  the 
weary  spirit  master  them. 

THE  HOUSEWIFE  IN  HISTORY. 

What  was  the  old  feminine  function, 
and  what  was  its  value  ?  —  for  how  im- 
mensely the  condition  of  women  in 
these  latter  days  has  changed  from  the 
immemorial  woman-life  of  tradition  and 
history,  few  of  the  sex  know  or  real- 
ize. Throughout  long  millenniums  the 
feminine  duties,  occupations,  and  sur- 
roundings were  the  same,  —  the  ideal 
woman  of  every  successive  period  of 
the  old  bygone  world  being  still  found 
in  the  masterpiece  of  character-paint- 
ing for  all  time, — the  "virtuous  wo- 
man "  of  King  Solomon. 

That  wise  and  gracious  lady  is  repre- 
sented not  only  as  "bringing  her  food 
from  afar,  rising  while  it  is  yet  night, 
and  giving  meat  to  her  household  and 
a  portion  to  her  maidens,"  but  also  as 
spinning  and  weaving  at  home  all  the 
clothing  of  the  family,  and  such  a  surplus 
besides  of  "  girdles  "  and  "fine  linen," 
that  with  the  sale  of  them  she  can  buy 
fields  and  plant  vineyards.  "  She  is  not 
afraid  of  the  snow  for  her  household  ; 
for  all  her  household  are  clothed  in  scar- 
let "  woollen,  dyed,  spun,  and  woven 
under  her  direction.  Her  own  gar- 
ments were  rich  and  beautiful  as  be- 
came her  state  and  dignity.  "  She 
maketh  for  herself  coverings  of  tapes  • 
try ;  her  clothing  is  silk  and  purple  "  ; 


516 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


[November, 


while  the  conspicuous  elegance  of  the 
robes  worn  by  her  husband  makes  him 
"known  when  he  sitteth  among  the 
elders  in  the  gates."  Five  hundred 
years  after  the  date  of  this  description, 
we  hear  of  a  fearful  tragedy  at  the  court 
of  Persia,  that  grew  out  of  a  magnifi- 
cent robe  made  for  Xerxes  the  king 
by  his  chief  queen  Amestris  ;  and  still 
five  centuries  later,  we  find  the  Emper- 
or Augustus,  lord  of  all  the  wealth  of 
Rome,  refusing  to  wear  any  stuffs  ex- 
cepting those  woven  for  him  by  his  wife 
and  daughters.  The  ancient  kingdoms 
and  nations  crumble  into  dust ;  but  as 
the  new  peoples  spring  up,  we  find  the 
women,  from  the  queen  to  the  peasant, 
still  at  the  distaff  and  the  loom.  The 
four  sisters  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  King 
Ethelstan  were  famous  for  their  skill  in 
spinning,  weaving,  and  embroidery  ; 
and  the  Saxon  ladies  in  general  were 
so  accomplished  in  needle-work,  that  it 
was  celebrated  on  the  Continent  under 
the  name  of  opus  Anglicanum.  Mr. 
Wright,  in  his  History  of  the  Domestic 
Manners  and  Sentiments  in  England, 
informs  us  that,  down  to  about  the  close 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  "  women  as  a 
rule  were  closely  confined  to  their  do- 
mestic labors,  in  spinning,  weaving, 
embroidering,  and  other  work  of  a  simi- 
lar kind  ;  a  hand-loom  was  almost  a  ne- 
cessary article  of  furniture  in  a  well-reg- 
ulated household  ;  and  spinning  was  so 
universal  that  we  read  sometimes  of 
an  apartment  in  the  house  especially 
devoted  to  it,  —  a  family  spinning-room. 
Even  to  the  present  day,  in  legal  lan- 
guage, the  only  occupation  acknowl- 
edged as  that  of  an  unmarried  woman 
is  that  of  a  spinster.  The  young  la- 
dies, even  of  great  families,  were 
brought  up  not  only  strictly,  but  even 
tyrannically,  by  their  mothers,  —  who 
kept  them  constantly  at  work,  exacted 
from  them  almost  slavish  deference  and 
respect,  and  even  counted  upon  their 
earnings." 

Finally,  we  may  complete  the  picture 
by  glancing  at  our  own  countrywomen 
of  only  a  hundred  years  ago  as  sketched 
by  the  Rev.  Lyman  Beecher  in  his  ac- 
count of  his  boyhood.  Among  their 


other  crops,  he  and  his  uncle  raised 
"  an  acre  or  two  of  flax,  though  it  was 
impossible  to  keep  Aunt  Benson  and 
niece  in  spinning  for  the  winter."  "  In 
June  we  sheared  the  sheep  ;  the  fleece 
was  washed,  carded,  and  spun  ;  Aunt 
Benson  spun  it  in  the  house.  Flax  in 
winter,  wool  in  summer,  —  woman's 
work  is  never  done."  "  They  made  all 
sorts  of  linen- work,  table-cloths,  shirt- 
ing, sheets,  and  cloths.  If  it  had  n't 
been  for  this  household  manufactory, 
we  never  should  have  .succeeded  in 
the  Revolution."  "  I  can  see  Aunt 
Benson  now  as  plain  as  I  see  you  j 
she  and  Annie  got  breakfast  very  early. 
Our  living  was  very  good,  rye-bread, 
fresh  butter,  buckwheat  cakes,  and  pie 
for  breakfast.  After  the  dishes  were 
washed,  Annie  and  I  helped  aunt  milk. 
Then  they  made  cheese,  and  spun  till 
dinner.  We  dined  on  salt  pork,  vegeta- 
bles, and  pies,  corned  beef  also ;  and 
always,  on  Sunday,  a  boiled  Indian  pud- 
ding. We  made  a  stock  of  pies  at 
Thanksgiving,  froze  them  for  winter's 
use,  and  they  lasted  till  March." 

Now  the  various  industries  that 
"Aunt  Benson  and  niece  "  thus  carried 
on  alone  were,  before  the  Reformation, 
the  common  occupations^of  all  women; 
and  not  only  the  farmer's  wife,  but 
every  noble  lady,  every  gentlewoman, 
in  her  own  house,  "was  a  manufacturer 
on  a  scale  proportioned  to  the  number 
of  her  servants.  She  probably  could 
not  read  or  write  ;  and  in  those  peril- 
ous days  she  never  dared  to  travel  un- 
less for  the  solemn  purpose  of  a  pilgrim- 
age. Before  the  age  of  Henry  VIII., 
ladies  never  even  went  to  court ;  hence 
there  was  no  great  centre  of  feminine 
fashion,  and  one  or  two  handsome 
gowns  lasted  a  woman  of  rank  a  life- 
time, without  change  of  cut  or  orna- 
ment. The  rooms  of  her  hall  or  castle 
were  so  few  and  so  gloomy,  and  their 
furniture  so  scanty  and  uncomfortable, 
that  a  modern  housekeeper  would  be 
frightened  almost  at  the  description  of 
it,  while  the  single  neighborhood  in 
which  she  lived  generally  contained  all 
her  interests,  and  bounded  all  the  sphere 
of  her  ideas.  Nevertheless,  in  spite  of 


1868.] 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


517 


her  ignorance,  her  limitations,  and  her 
deprivations,  the  woman  of  all  those 
twilight  generations  lived  a  life  of  be- 
neficent activity.  "  Lady,"  that  is, 
"  Loaf-giver,"  because  from  the  time 
when  the  Princess  Sara,  Abram's  wife, 
baked  cakes  for  his  guests,  down  to 
the  age  of  the  great  Elizabeth,  to  pre- 
pare and  distribute  food  was  one  of 
woman's  noble  trinity  of  industrial  offi- 
ces. She  superintended  the  salting  tubs 
of  beef  and  pork  ;  she  brewed  great 
casks  of  ale  ;  she  saw  to  the  making 
of  butter,  cheese,  soap,  and  candles  ; 
she  directed  the  spinning  and  weaving 
of  linen  and  woollen  fabrics,  from  car- 
pets and  wall-hangings  down  to  shifts 
and  kerchiefs  ;  she  distilled  essences 
and  flavors,  and  compounded  medicines 
and  ointments  ;  *  she  delighted  her 
guests  with  the  fantastic  elaborations  of 
her  cookery ;  and  the  splendors  of  her 
intricate  embroidery  shone  on  holy  al- 
tar and  priestly  vestment  quite  as  often 
as  on  her  own  person. 

Woman  in  history,  then,  appears  in 
general  as  preparing  the  food,  making 
the  clothing,  and  ordering  the  house- 
holds of  the  race.  The  practical  value 
of  these  vocations  will  be  taught  us  by 
Political  Economy. 

SOCIETY  AS  CLASSIFIED  BY  POLITICAL 
ECONOMY. 

This  science  separates  mankind  into 
two  chief  classes,  viz.  those  who  pro- 
duce  the  wealth  and  supplies  of  a  com- 
munity, and  those  who  consume  them. 
Consumers  are  divided  again  simply 
into  productive  and  unproductive  con- 
sumers, but  producers  f  are  of  various 
types,  the  three  principal  being  as  fol- 
lows :  — 

ist.  Agricultural  and  mining  pro- 
ducers, or  those  who  obtain  from  nature 
the  raw  materials  of  food,  clothing,  and 
shelter. 

2cl  Manufacturing  producers,  or 
those  who  prepare  these  materials  for 
human  use. 

3d.  Distributing  producers,  or  those 

*  In  those  days  it  was  not  "  unfeminine  "  to  heal 
the  sick. 

t  I  endeavor  to  follow  Mr.  Mill  here. 


who  convey  the  raw  material  to  the  man- 
ufacturer, and  the  manufactured  arti- 
cle to  the  consumer,  —  comprehending 
the  commission  merchants,  wholesale 
dealers,  importers,  grocers,  butchers, 
and  shop-keepers  of  every  description  ; 
their  vast  machinery  being  the  ships, 
railroads,  highways,  wagons,  houses, 
and  men  by  which  this  distribution  is 
effected. 

PLACE  OF  THE  HISTORICAL  HOUSE- 
WIFE IN  POLITICAL  ECONOMY. 
Such  is  a  rough  classification  of  the 
great  army  of  workers  by  whom  all 
mankind  are  clothed  and  fed  and  shel- 
tered, and  some  made  rich  ;  and  from 
what  we  have  just  seen  to  have  been 
the  former  occupations  of  women,  it  is 
evident  that  production,  of  the  second 
of  these  types,  —  namely,  manufactur- 
ing production,  —  once  constituted  the 

TRUE  FEMININE  SPHERE,  for  throughout 

unnumbered  centuries  woman  assumed 
and  adequately  fulfilled  the  task  of  pre- 
paring the  food  and  clothing  of  the  race, 
out  of  the  raw  materials  that  man  laid 
at  her  feet.  It  is  true  that  this  domes- 
tic manufacture  was  carried  on  in  the 
privacy  of  her  own  home,  and  in  a  rude 
and  simple  way  ;  but  that  does  not  alter 
the  value  of  the  performance.  Human 
knowledge  and  human  needs  go  hand 
in  hand.  Our  ancestors  knew  nothing 
better,  and  wanted  nothing  better,  than 
what  their  wives  and  daughters  could 
do  for  them.  In  that  day,  therefore, 
women  must  have  created  nearly  half 
the  wealth  and  supplies  of  the  world,  be- 
cause they  did  one  half  of  its  necessary 
work.  Hence  every  woman  in  her  own 
house  was  self-supporting,  that  is,  earned 
her  own  living  there  by  virtue  of  her 
indispensable  labor ;  not  only  so,  she 
contributed  with  her  husband  to  the 
support  of  their  children,  and,  if  she 
chose  to  extend  her  enterprise,  was  able, 
like  the  virtuous  woman  of  King  Sol- 
omon, to  exchange  the  fruit  of  her 
hands  for  fields  and  vineyards,  and  so 
help  to  make  her  family  rich. 

THE  FEMININE  PRODUCERS  OF  TO-DAY. 
Now  the  women  who  do  all  the  cook- 
ing, washing,  and  sewing  of  their  fami- 


518 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


[November, 


lies,  the  wives  of  small  farmers,  mechan- 
ics, and  laborers,  as  well  as  those  who 
hire  out  their  time,  servants,  mill-hands, 
shop-girls,  seamstresses,  etc.,  are  still 
self-supporting,  still  producers,  because 
they  perform  a  large  part  of  all  the 
lighter  manual  labor  needed  for  the 
sustenance  and  well-being  of  the  com- 
munity. 

THE  FEMININE  CONSUMERS  OF  TO-DAY. 

But  the  whole  class  of  women  who 
keep  servants,  —  a  class  which  is  intel- 
ligent and  refined,  and  many  of  whose 
members  are  cultivated,  accomplished, 
and  intellectual,  —  this  immense  femi- 
nine host,  I  say,  has  sunk  from  its  for- 
mer rank  of  manufacturing  producers 
into  that  of  unproductive  consumers, 
i.  e.  of  persons  who  do  not  pay  back 
in  mental  or  manual  labor  an  equiva- 
lent for  the  necessaries  they  use  or 
the  luxuries  they  enjoy.  Children,  the 
aged,  and  the  infirm  are  the  only  per- 
sons that  in  a  well-regulated  commu- 
nity by  right  compose  this  class,  —  the 
first,  because,  if  nourished  and  educated 
during  their  period  of  helplessness,  they 
will  grow  up  producers  of  material  or 
intellectual  values  ;  the  others,  because 
they  may  have  once  been  such  produ- 
cers, and,  were  they  not  disabled,  would 
still  be  so.  But  for  healthy,  educated, 
intelligent  adults  by  millions  to  be  sup- 
ported by  the  extra  toil  of  the  rest  of 
the  community,  as  educated  women  are 
now,  is  a  state  of  things  entirely  con- 
trary to  the  natural  division  of  labor,  —  is 
one  of  the  monstrous  defects  of  modern 
civilization,  and  perhaps  the  most  fruit- 
ful source  of  disorder,  suffering,  and 
demoralization  that  could  possibly  be 
devised. 

If  the  mere  necessaries  of  life  were 
given  to  us,  as  to  an  army  of  soldiers, 
even  this  would  be  a  heavy  burden 
upon  society,  as  we  learned  during  our 
war,  when  it  cost  the  North  one  or  two 
thousand  millions  to  provide  our  troops 
with  coarse  food  and  clothing  and  rude 
shelter  for  four  years  only.  But  upon 
us  are  lavished  the  wealth  and  luxury 
of  the  world  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion. The  expensive  residences,  the 


costly  furniture,  the  rich  jewels,  silks, 
and  laces,  the  dainty  or  dashing  equi- 
pages, the  delicate  tables,  the  thousand 
articles  for  comfort,  convenience,  or  de- 
light that  one  sees  in  even  every  mod- 
est home,  —  for  whom  are  they  created, 
by  whom  are  they  enjoyed,  so  much  as 
by  the  women  of  the  middle  and  upper 
classes  ?  And  the  only  return  that 
the  most  industrious  of  us  know  how 
to  make  for  it  all  is  to  sew,  —  a  few 
hours  out  of  the  twenty-four  !  That  is 
to  say,  after  our  education  has  cost  the 
country  millions,  we  sit  down  amid  sur- 
roundings worth  hundreds  of  millions, 
to  compete  with  the  illiterate  Irish 
needle-woman  to  whom  we  only  give  a 
dollar  and  a  half  a  day.  For  plain  sew- 
ing we  will  allow  her  but  seventy-five 
cents,  scarcely  enough  to  pay  her  board 
in  an  Irish  tenement,  and  yet  few  of  us 
will  pretend  to  accomplish  as  much  as 
she  does,  since,  even  if  we  would,  our 
countless  interruptions  and  distractions 
prevent  us.  If,  then,  we  value  so  low 
the  continuous  toil  of  our  sewing-women, 
what  should  we  be  willing  to  pay  for  our 
own  fitful  industry  ?  It  would  indeed 
be  curious  to  know  what  one  lady  would 
give  another  for  the  actual  labor  per- 
formed between  Monday  morning  and 
Saturday  night,  and  yet  even  this  little 
we  are  losing.  Hitherto  men  have  al- 
lowed us  at  least  to  make  up,  if  we 
would,  the  fabrics  they  sell  us.  But 
this  last  corner  of  our  once  royal 
feminine  domain  they  are  determined 
now  to  wrest  from  us.  They  have  in- 
vented the  sewing-machine,  and  already 
it  takes  from  us  not  far  from  five  hun- 
dred million  dollars'  worth  of  sewing 
annually.  Our  husbands  are  clothed 
entirely  from  the  shops,  and  in  all  the 
large  dry-goods  firms  they  have  mar- 
shalled the  pale  armies  of  sewing-girls 
to  ply  the  wheel  from  morning  till  night 
in  the  production  of  ready-made  gar- 
ments for  feminine  wear  also.  Those 
who  set  the  fashions  are  in  their  league, 
and  help  them  to  put  down  private  com- 
petition by  making  the  designs  more 
and  more  complicated  and  artificial,  so 
that  professionals  only  can  perfectly 
execute  them,  while  they  have  so  mul- 


1 868.] 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


519 


tiplied  the  lt  necessary  "  articles  of  dress 
and  housekeeping,  and  so  raised  the 
standard  of  their  adornment,  that  no 
woman  who  does  all  her  own  sewing 
can  do  anything  else.  Glad  and  almost 
forced  to  save  ourselves  time  and  trou- 
ble, we  purchase  at  our  husband's  ex- 
pense, as  usual,  and  put  not  only  the 
,  profit  of  the  cloth  into  the  pocket  of  the 
•  store-keeper,  but  the  profit  also  that  he 
has  made  on  the  wretched  wages  of  his 
seamstresses.  Meantime,  our  daugh- 
ters are  scarcely  taught  sewing  at  all, 
and  in  fifty  years  the  needle  will  be  well- 
nigh  as  obsolete  as  the  spinning-wheel. 

MASCULINE   PREJUDICES  ON  THIS 

SUBJECT. 

One  might  think  that  men  would  re- 
flect on  what  they  have  done  by  their 
machinery  in  thus  degrading  women 
from  the  honorable  rank  of  manufactur- 
ing producers  into  the  dependent  posi- 
tion of  unproductive  consumers,  and, 
seeing  the  exhaustive  drain  that  such 
an  army  of  expensive  idlers  must  inevi- 
tably be  upon  society,  that  they  would 
be  glad  to  encourage  them  in  every  way 
to  find  new  paths  for  their  energies 
that  might  replace  the  old.  Instead  of 
this,  however,  they  all  by  common 
consent  frown  on  our  attempts  to 
support  ourselves,  or  on  our  being 
anything  whatever  but  "wives  and 
mothers."  The  egotism  of  the  French 
"king  who  said  to  his  subj'ects,  "  I  am 
the  state,"  is  far  surpassed  by  that  of 
educated  gentlemen  toward  the  ladies 
•of  their  families,  —  "  Be  contented  at 
home  with  what  I  can  give  you,"  say 
they  all, — which,  translated,  means, — 
"  As  far  as  you  are  concerned,  I  am  the 
universe,  and  whatever  portion  of  it 
you  cannot  find  in  me,  or  in  the  four 
walls  wherewith  I  shelter  you,  you 
must  do  without,"  and  they  manage 
very  adroitly  to  keep  the  feminine  as- 
pirations within  these  bounds  without 
appearing  to  exercise  any  coercion 
whatever.  Does  a  young  girl  love 
study  or  charity  or  art  better  than  dress 
or  dancing  ?  The  young  men  simply 
neglect  her,  and  she  is  deprived  of 
-social  enjoyment.  Has  a  wife  an  ea- 


ger desire  to  energize  and  perfect  some 
gift  of  which  she  is  conscious,  her  hus- 
band "will  not  oppose  it,"  but  he  is 
sure  that  she  will  fail  in  her  attempt,  or 
is  uneasy  lest  she  make  herself  con- 
spicuous and  neglect  her  housekeeping. 
Or  if  a  daughter  wishes  to  go  out  into 
the  world  from  the  narrow  duties  and 
Stirling  air  of  her  father's  house,  and 
earn  a  living  there  by  some  talent  for 
which  she  is  remarkable,  he  "  will  not 
forbid  her,"  perhaps,  but  still  he  thinks 
her  unnatural,  discontented,  ambitious, 
unfeminine  ;  her  relatives  take  their 
tone  from  him  ;  nobody  gives  her  a  help- 
ing hand;  so  that  if  she  accomplish 
anything  it  is  against  the  pressure  —  to 
her  gigantic  — of  all  that  constitutes  her 
world.  If  her  strength  and  courage  fail 
under  the  disapproval,  they  rejoice  at  the 
discomfiture  which  compels  her  to  be- 
come what  they  call  a  "  sensible  woman." 

CONSEQUENCES  OF  THIS  PREJUDICE. 
Thus  the  strongest  influence  in  the 
feminine  life,  the  masculine,  combines 
with  our  own  timidity  and  self-distrust 
to  make  us  cherish  the  false  and  base 
theory  that  women  always  have  been, 
always  will  be,  and  always  ought  to  be, 
supported  by  the  men ;  and  hence  the 
perfect  good  faith  with  which  even  the 
noblest  women  trifle  away  their  time  in 
shopping,  visiting,  embroidering,  ruf- 
fling, tucking,  and  frilling,  and  spend 
without  scruple  on  dress  and  furniture, 
pleasure  and  superficial  culture,  all  the 
money  that  their  husbands  will  allow 
them.  From  early  girlhood  we  are  told 
that  "to  please  is  our  vocation,  —  not 
to  act "  ;  and  so  we  have  come  to  be- 
lieve and  to  live  as  though  personal 
adornment  were  our  only  legitimate 
ambition,  personal  vanity  our  only  le- 
gitimate passion. 

In  England  and  France,  owing  to  the 
multitude  of  trained  servants,  and  their 
low  rate  of  wages,  the  baleful  work 
seems  completely  accomplished  of  ren- 
dering the  educated  part  of  the  sex, 
from  the  princess  to  the  shop-keeper's 
daughter,  thoroughly  useless.*  And 

*  See  Miss  Ingelow's  story  of"  Laura  Richmond," 


520 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


[November, 


having  driven  every  noble  ambition  out 
of  women's  minds,  and  crowded  them 
all  into  the  narrow  arena  of  social  com- 
petition, the  lords  of  creation  are  turn- 
ing round  upon  the  victims  of  their  own 
encroachment  and  selfishness  with  the 
most  frightful  abuse.  It  is  horrible  to 
read  that  article  in  the  Saturday  Review 
called  Foolish  Virgins  ;  and  malicious 
satire  or  contemptuous  rage  against  the 
sex  seem  to  be  the  only  utterances  pos- 
sible to  a  formidable  portion  of  the  most 
brilliant  writers  of  Europe.  Judging 
from  the  newspapers  and  reviews,  how- 
ever, the  practical  position  of  European 
gentlemen  toward  women  is  greater 
wrong  and  contumely  still.  Men,  by 
the  forces  and  influences  themselves 
have  put  in  motion,  have  made  women 
vain,  they  have  made  them  frivolous, 
they  have  made  them  extravagant,  they 
have  made  them  burdens  to  society, 
and  now  they  are  repudiating  them.f 
"  Unless  you  possess  a  fortune  that 
will  support  you,  we  will  not  have  you. 
The  perquisites  and  privileges  of  wife- 
hood  are  too  great  for  such  expensive 
fools.  We  prefer  to  take  mistresses 
from  the  humbler  walks  of  life,  who  will 
be  less  exacting."  Such  is  said  to  be 
the  tone  and  practice  of  large  classes 
of  men  both  in  France  and  in  "  Chris- 
tian England  "  ;  to-day,  over  a  million 
of  the  marriageable  ladies  of  the  latter 
country  are  living  in  enforced  celibacy, 
while  for  every  one  so  deprived  of  her 
birthright  of  wifehood,  some  girl  in  a 
lower  rank  is  given  over  to  dishonor. 

Thus  the  evil  takes  root  frightfully 
downward  and  spreads  correspondingly 
upward.  Nor  is  it  with  us,  even,  a 
thing  of  the  future.  It  is  here  among 
ourselves.  The  respect  and  deference 

where  it  is  kept  as  a  profound  family  secret,  and  felt 
as  a  family  disgrace,  that  one  of  the  daughters  of  a 
village  widow  lady,  on  the  diminution  of  her  moth- 
er's income,  should  choose  to  take  care  of  the  silver 
and  glass  and  china,  and  to  clear-starch  her  own  and 
her  sister's  muslins,  rather  than  go  out  as  a  govern- 
ess. One  does  not  wonder  that  the  authoress  rewards 
such  astonishing  virtue  with  a  rich  husband,  when  it 
is  impossible  to  discover  from  their  novels  what  Eng- 
lishwomen are  born  for  except  to  sketch,  play  cro- 
quet, ride,  drive,  dress  for  dinner,  and  read  to  the  poor. 
t  See  the  opening  chapter  of  Michelet's  lamenta- 
ble book  "  La  Femme." 


so  long  accorded  by  American  men  to 
their  countrywomen  is  perceptibly  on 
the  wane.  It  is  an  inheritance  which 
came  down  to  us  from  the  religious  de- 
votion, courage,  and  industry  of  our 
grandmothers  and  great-grandmothers 
who  encountered  with  true  feminine 
fidelity  the  perils  of  wilderness  and  war 
by  the  side  of  the  fathers  of  the  nation.* 
But  like  every  other  inheritance  it  must 
be  kept  up  by  effort  similar  to  that 
which  created  it,  or  it  will  be  lost  for- 
ever to  us  as  it  seems  now  to  be  lost  to 
the  women  of  India,  of  Greece,  of  Rome, 
of  Gaul,  of  Germany,  of  England,  who 
can  be  proved  to  have  once  possessed  it 
proportionally  with  ourselves,  and  from 
the  same  causes,  —  the  virtue  and  high 
spirit  of  the  primitive  maidens  and 
wives  of  each  nation.  As  they  emerged 
from  barbarism  into  civilization,  how- 
ever, all  of  them  in  turn  have  made  the 
fatal  mistake  of  trying  to  fashion  them- 
selves after  the  wayward  masculine 
fancy,  instead  of  striving  to  be  true  to 
the  eternal  feminine  ideal,  and  hence 
in  the  end  they  have  largely  become 
but  slaves  and  panders  to  masculine 
passion.  God  gave  unto  woman  grace 
and  fascination  wherewith  to  allure 
man,  her  natural  enemy,  into  her  homage 
and  allegiance,  but  these  alone  cannot 
suffice  to  keep  him  there.  Feeble  and 
suffering  as  she  often  is,  for  this  the 
very  highest  qualities  of  human  and 
of  feminine  nature  are  necessary;  and' 
there  is  now  too  much  in  the  lives  of 
American  women  that  is  false  both  to 
God  and  to  womanhood  to  cause  any 
surprise  should  men  waver  in  their 
loyalty.  That  they  are  thus  wavering, 
the  unrebuked  and  increasing  immoral- 
ity of  the  young  men,  their  selfish  lux- 
ury, their  later  marriages,  the  thinly 
veiled  sarcasms  of  the  press,  the  licen- 
tious spectacles  of  the  stage,  all  pro- 
claim loudly  enough.  The  English 
club-house,  stronghold  of  intensest  ego- 
tism, built  of  women's  hearts  and  ( 
mented  with  their  tears,  — the  living 
tomb  of  love,— is  beginning  to  r 
against  us  all  over  the  land;  so  that, 

*  As  an  example,  read  the  heroic  history  of  Mary 
Nealy  in  Harper's  Monthly  for  February,  1868 


1 868.] 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


521 


utterly  excluded  as  we  are  from  their 
business  and  their  politics,  men  may 
shut  us  out  also  from  their  pleasures 
and  their  society,  and  even  from  their 
hearts,  —  for  club  -  men,  as  is  well 
known,  easily  dispense  with  matrimony. 
In  short,  all  the  signs  of  the  time  are 
against  us,  and  the  question  simply  is, 
Shall  we  float  blindly  down  the  current 
of  unearned  luxury  and  busy  idleness,  as 
our  Asiatic  and  European  sisters  have 
done,  until  we  find  ourselves,  like  them, 
valued  principally  for  our  bodies?  or 
shall  we  determine  by  earnest  effort  to 
keep  at  least  the  relative  positions  with 
which  the  sexes  started  in  the  Ameri- 
can wilderness, —  to  catch  up  quickly 
with  our  winged-footed  brother,  and 
render  ourselves  so  dear,  so  indispensa- 
ble to  him,  that  he  not  only  cannot,  but 
would  not,  leave  us  behind  ? 

If  this  latter,  what  then  is  the  real 
root  of  the  matter  ? 

AN  ANSWER. 

It  is  that  the  times  are  changed  and 
women  are  changed,  but  the  Old  World 
masculine  and  feminine  prejudices  and 
conventionalities  have  not  changed  with 
them.  Because  women  once  found  an 
ample  sphere  and  an  absorbing  voca- 
tion within  the  walls  of  their  homes,  it 
is  believed  that  they  can  find  them 
there  still,  though  that  vocation  has 
been  taken  almost  entirely  away,  and  to 
their  larger  mental  growth  that  sphere 
is  narrowing  fearfully  round  them.  A 
great  revolution  has  come  about  inward- 
ly in  ourselves  and  outwardly  in  our 
surroundings,  but  we  have  not  attempted 
any  adjustment  of  the  new  conditions. 
Hence  society  has  lost  its  balance,  and 
everything  is  dislocated.  There  is  no 
well-ordered  and  comfortable  arrange- 
ment for  us,  no  definite  and  necessary 
work  at  once  suited  to  our  taste  and 
commensurate  with  our  ability.  The 
favorite  theory  of  our  nature  and  des- 
tiny, and  the  one  on  which  the  current 
unsystem  of  feminine  education  is  prin- 
cipally based,  is  that  "a  true  woman" 
should  be  a  harmonious  melange  of 
everything  in  general  and  nothing  in 


particular,  —  a  sort  of  dissolving  view, 
which  at  the  least  adverse  criticism 
from  the  masculine  spectator  can  softly 
melt  into  something  exactly  sympa- 
thetic with  his  particular  requirements. 
Social  opinion  hardly  leaves  one  a 
choice  between  eccentricity  and  trivi- 
ality. Thus  every  year  it  is  harder  for 
thoughtful  and  earnest  women  to  find 
their  true  places  in  life,  and  half  the  time 
they  are  discouraged,  and  wonder  what 
they  were  made  for. 

A  PROTEST  AND  A  SEARCH. 

For  one,  I  say  that  this  state  of 
things  is  no  longer  to  be  endured. 
There  must  be  some  work  in  the  world 
for  educated  women  !  Why,  then,  do 
we  not  search  for  it  day  and  night  until 
we  find  it  ? 

Ah,  if  the  finding  it  were  all,  we 
should  not  have  very  far  to  look  ;  for 
let  us  consider  only  the  three  great 
types  of  production  before  mentioned, 
—  agricultural  production,  manufactur- 
ing production,  and  distributing  pro- 
duction. 

It  is  evident  that  the  first  of  these 
affords  no  sphere  for  educated,  nor 
indeed  for  any  women.  Out-of-door 
labor,  except  a  little  of  the  least  and 
lightest,  —  gardening,  —  destroys  wo- 
manly beauty  and  delicate  proportions, 
and  with  these  the  very  essence  of  the 
feminine  idea.  Not  brawny  strength, 
but  subtile  grace,  harmony,  and  skill, 
contain  the  secret  of  our  influence ;  and 
hence,  in  those  countries  where  women 
work  in  the  fields,  they  are  observed  to 
receive  but  little  masculine  respect  and 
consideration. 

The  second  type  of  production, 
though  once  our  own,  ought  also  to 
be  out  of  the  question  ;  for  though  all 
women  who  sew  are  in  so  far  manufac- 
turing producers,  yet,  as  sewing  can- 
not possibly  employ  the  higher  faculties 
of  the  mind,  for  an  educated  woman  to 
make  herself  a  factory  operative  or  a 
seamstress  is  as  great  a  waste  as  if  an 
educated  man  were  to  devote  his  life 
to  digging  or  wood-sawing.  The  most 
precious  labor  to  society  is  brain  la- 


522 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


[November, 


bor,  because  thought  alone  can  energize 
matter  and  muscle,  and  wield  the  forces 
of  nature  for  the  increase  of  human 
comfort  and  happiness.  The  man  or 
woman,  therefore,  who  from  talent  or 
education  is  capable  of  giving  brain 
labor  to  the  world,  and  chooses  in- 
stead to  give  the  muscular  or  manual 
labor  that  ignorant  persons  can  per- 
form equally  well,  robs  society  of  the 
thought-power  that  it  needs,  and  the 
great  unthinking  mass  of  the  only  work 
that  it  can  do.  Educated  women, 
then,  should  seek  to  produce,  not  with 
their  hands,  but  with  their  heads,  by 
the  better  organization  of  the  millions 
of  ignorant  women  who  are  already 
manufacturing  producers,  —  the  factory 
operatives,  seamstresses,  and  servants 
of  the  civilized  world.  It  should  be 
a  social  axiom,  that,  wherever  women 
work,  there  certainly  is  a  feminine 
sphere ;  and  in  accordance  with  this 
idea  all  the  feminine  productions  of 
the  farm  —  butter,  cheese,  the  canning, 
preserving,  and  pickling  of  fruits  and 
vegetables,  and  the  making  of  domestic 
wines  —  should  appropriately  be  super- 
intended by  women,  because  women 
are  the  workers.  The  same  is  true  of 
sewing  in  every  department,  and  also 
of  much  of  the  spinning  and  weaving 
in  the  large  mills.  The  melancholy 
deterioration  observable  in  the  women 
operatives  of  England  and  the  Conti- 
nent could  never  have  taken  place  if 
the  refined  and  Christian  wives  and 
daughters  of  the  mill-owners  had,  from 
the  beginning  of  the  system,  watched 
over  the  moral  and  physical  welfare 
of  these  poor  workers  as  they  should 
have  done  ;  moving  among  their  roaring 
looms  and  spindles,  a  beneficent  pres- 
ence of  wise  and  tender  charity,  and 
weaving  bright  glimpses  of  comfort  and 
a  golden  thread  of  beauty  in  the  sordid 
pattern  of  their  toilsome  lives.  But 
educated  women  have  at  present  no 
capital  wherewith  to  start  farms  or 
manufacturing  enterprises,  nor  money 
to  buy  stock  in  those  already  estab- 
lished, sufficient  to  enable  them  to  gain 
any  control  over  the  management  of 
the  operatives ;  and  so  manufacturing, 


like  agricultural  production,  is,  for  the 
moment,  out  of  our  reach. 

DISTRIBUTING     PRODUCTION     LOOKS 

MORE  ENCOURAGING. 
We  need  not  fold  our  hands,  howev- 
er, nor  devote  them  to  the  futilities  of 
worsted  work,  because  into  two  of  the 
great  armies  of  the  world's  wealth-mak- 
ers we  can  find  no  admittance.  That 
division  of  productive  labor  which  con- 
sists in  direct  distribution  to  the  con- 
sumer will  afford  "ample  room  and 
verge  enough "  for  the  energies  and 
powers  of  most  of  us,  if  we  only  have 
spirit  to  undertake  it.  The  RETAIL 
TRADE  of  the  world  is,  'in  my  opinion, 
and  at  this  present  stage  of  its  progress, 
the  true  and  fitting  feminine  sphere, 
the  only  possible  function  open  where- 
by the  mass  of  educated  women  may 
cease  from  being  burdens  to  society, 
may  become  profitable  to  themselves 
and  to  their  families,  and,  above  all, 
helpful  to  the  great  host  of  women- 
workers  beneath  them,  whom  now  their 
vast  superincumbent  wreight  crushes 
daily  more  hopelessly  to  the  earth. 

ARGUMENTS  FOR  AND  AGAINST  THIS 
SOLUTION  OF  THE  DIFFICULTY. 

"The  retail  trade!"  I  think  I 
hear  the  two  millions  of  American 
ladies  protesting  with  one  voice,  "  why, 
even  in  the  country,  the  wives  and 
daughters  of  the  village  shop-keep- 
ers think  it  beneath  them  to  stand  be- 
hind the  counter,  and  are  those  of  our 
city  merchants,  of  our  professional  men, 
to  condescend  to  the  sordid  employ- 
ment ?  " 

Yes,  and  for  various  reasons. 

ist.  There  is  nothing  else  that  we 
can  do. 

2d.  It  requires  much  conscientious- 
ness, accuracy,  tact,  taste,  and  prudence, 
—  all  eminently  feminine  characteristics. 

3d.  It  is  a  peculiarly  feminine  em- 
ployment because  it  needs  little  physi- 
cal strength,  and  because  the  immense 
majority  of  retail  purchasers  are  women. 

4th.  It  now  withdraws  from  the  true 
fields  of  masculine  effort  aa  immense 
number  of  men  who  would  otherwise 


1 868.] 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


523 


be  forced  to  add  to  the  supplies  and 
wealth  of  the  community  by  agricultural 
and  other  productive  enterprises.  Thus 
the  community  loses  enormously  in  two 
ways  :  it  is  deprived,  on  the  one  hand, 
of  an  army  of  producers  (the  retail  mer- 
chants and  their  clerks) ;  and  on  the 
other  it  has  to  support  an  army  of  un^ 
productive  consumers,  —  the  women 
who  might,  but  do  not,  carry  on  the 
retail  trade. 

5th.  While  it  is  a  vocation  wholly 
suited  to  women,  it  is  just  in  so  far  im- 
proper for  men,  taking  them  from  their 
natural  vocations,  herding  them  togeth- 
er in  towns  and  cities  where  they  live 
unmarried  on  small  salaries,  shrink 
physically  and  mentally  amid  their  ef- 
feminate surroundings,  and  degenerate 
morally  through  the  lying  and  cheating 
they  unblushingly  practise,  and  the  dis- 
sipation that  is  often  the  only  excite- 
ment of  their  vacant  hours. 

Finally,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that 
by  so  much  as  we  pay  the  retail  traders 
and  their  clerks  for  doing  expensively 
what  we  could  do  cheaply,  by  so  much 
we  deprive  ourselves  and  our  families 
of  the  comforts  and  luxuries  of  life  and 
of  its  higher  influences  and  pleasures 
as  connected  with  education,  with  art, 
and  with  beneficence.  Why  can  many 
of  us  not  have  the  beautiful  dresses 
and  surroundings  that  our  fastidious 
taste  longs  for  ?  Because  we  cannot 
earn  them.  Why  are  the  colleges  shut 
against  us  ?  Because  we  cannot  knock 
at  their  doors  with  half  a  million  in  our 
hands.  Why  do  the  churches  and 
charities  that  we  love  languish?  Be- 
cause we  have  no  means  of  our  own 
wherewith  to  sustain  them.  Why  are 
working-women  only  paid  half  as  much 
as  working-men  ?  Because  it  is  impos- 
sible for  men  to  furnish  the  whole  sup- 
port of  one  half  the  feminine  commu- 
nity and  pay  the  industrial  half  justly 
too.  Why  is  our  vote  a  matter  of  con- 
tempt and  indifference  to  the  country  ? 
Because  we  are  poor,  dependent  on 
our  fathers  and  husbands  for  food  and 
shelter,  and  our  vote,  therefore,  could 
represent  neither  physical  strength  nor 
money,  —  the  two  "  powers  behind  the 


throne "  that  uphold  all  governments, 
and  the  only  two  that  give  the  vote  its 
value  or  even  its  meaning.  I  am  not 
one  of  those  who  desire  "  manhood 
suffrage  "  for  women,  but  I  confess  I 
am  painfully  impressed  with  the  impo- 
tence and  insignificance  of  my  sex, 
when  I  see  that  "  laughter"  is  all  that 
generally  greets  the  discussion  of  its 
enfranchisement,  even  in  the  graver 
hall  of  Congress  ! 

If  now  there  are  any  out  of  our  two 
million  "  ladies  "  who  are  convinced 
from  these  reasons  that  it  would  be  well 
if  they  could  carry  on  the  retail  trade  of 
the  country,  it  is  probable  that  several 
difficulties  will  present  themselves  to 
their  minds  as  tending  to  make  the 
thing  impossible  :  — 

i  st.  The  want  of  capital  wherewith  to 
start  retail  stores ; 

2d.  The  want  of  time,  for  daily  house- 
hold duties,  trifling  as  they  individually 
are,  would  wholly  interfere  with  busi- 
ness; 

3d.  The  social  prejudice,  felt  equally 
by  both  sexes,  against  women's  pub- 
licly engaging  in  trade,  even  if  in  its 
present  demoralized  state  it  were  de- 
sirable that  they  should  do  so. 

WHERE  THERE  is  A  WILL  THERE  is 
A  WAY. 

There  is  only  one  method  of  over- 
coming these  objections,  and  of  making 
the  transition  at  once  practicable  and 
agreeable. 

This  method  is  by  an  entire  reor- 
ganization of  the  domestic  interior  on 
the  basis  of  the  great  modern  idea  of 
Co-operation,  —  in  short,  by  CO-OPERA- 
TIVE HOUSEKEEPING. 

THE  ROCHDALE  EQUITABLE  PIONEERS. 
Nearly  all  the  world  now  knows  the 
story  of  the  twelve  poor  weavers  of 
Rochdale,  England,  who  twenty-four 
years  ago  met  together  to  consult  how 
they  might  better  their  wretched  condi- 
tion. Their  wages  were  low,  provisions 
were  extravagantly  high  and  adulterated 
besides.  One  man  thought  that  voting 
was  what  they  needed  to  right  them,  — 
another,  that  strikes  would  do  it,  and 


524 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


[November, 


still  other  theories  were  propounded, 
when  one  immortal  genius  of  common 
sense  suggested  that  they  should  not 
strive  for  what  might  be  out  of  their 
reach,  but  simply  try  to  make  a  bet- 
ter use  of  what  they  had.  They  decided 
to  pay  each  twenty  pence  a  week  into  a 
common  stock,  until  they  got  enough  to 
buy  a  few  necessary  groceries  at  whole- 
sale. It  took  them  nearly  a  year,  and 
then  they  elected  one  of  their  number 
as  clerk,  and  opened  the  first  co-opera- 
tive store.  Their  stock  in  trade  con- 
sisted only  of  about  seventy-five  dollars' 
worth  of  flour,  sugar,  and  butter.  Their 
plan  was,  First,  to  sell  to  each  other 
and  to  outsiders  at  the  usual  retail  prices, 
but  to  give  &  good  article.  Second,  to  sell 
only  for  cash  down.  Third,  to  make 
a  quarterly  dividend  of  the  clear  profits 
to  the  subscribing  members,  or  stock- 
holders of  the  association,  the  share  of 
profit  being  determined  in  each  case  by 
the  amount  the  stockholder  or  his  fami- 
ly purchased  at  the  co-operative  store. 
Thus,  whatever  a  man's  household  con- 
sumed, whether  much  or  little,  he  got 
back  the  third  that  would  otherwise 
have  gone  to  enrich  some  cheating 
grocer.  Co-operative  stores  and  socie- 
ties of  all  kinds  have  been  started  in 
many  parts  of  Europe,  and  are  springing 
up  in  this  country  also  in  every  direc- 
tion ;  but  this  one  of  the  "  Rochdale 
Equitable  Pioneers,"  as  they  called 
themselves,  still  stands  at  the  head  of 
the  movement,  and  is  the  most  signal 
instance  of  its  success.  Its  stockhold- 
ers now  number  six  or  seven  thou- 
sand, its  capital  is  over  a  million  of 
dollars,  and  the  yearly  profits  of  its  busi- 
ness between  three  and  four  hundred 
thousand  ;  it  has  clothing,  dry  goods, 
and  shoe  stores,  as  well  as  groceries 
and  butcher-shops ;  it  carries  on  a 
farm,  a  cotton-factory,  a  corn-mill,  a 
building  society,  a  life-insurance  and 
burial  society  ;  it  owns  a  reading-room, 
and  a  library  ;  it  has  lately  taken  a  con- 
spicuous part  in  the  public  improve- 
ments of  the  town  of  Rochdale,  and  as 
its  proudest  monument  can  point  to  a 
whole  community  raised  in  morals  and 
intelligence  no  less  than  in  comfort. 


THE  WEAK   SIDE  OF   CO-OPERATIVE 
STORES,  AND  ITS  CAUSE. 

But  there  is  another  side  to  the  pic- 
ture. The  opponents  of  the  movement 
can  tell  us  of  many  co-operative  stores 
and  associations  that  \\wzfailed.  The 
members  have  lost  their  interest ;  their 
'  agents  and  clerks  have  been  dishonest, 
careless,  incapable,  etc.  But  this  is  not 
surprising.  The  only  reason  that  retail 
traders  find  business  at  all  is,  that  they 
save  the  working  community  trouble 
by  collecting,  from  the  different  places 
where  they  are  produced,  the  silks, 
woollens,  cottons,  the  meats,  vegetables, 
and  grains,  that  it  needs  for  its  food 
and  clothing.  If  the  retail  trader,  either 
singly  or  in  league  with  the  manufac- 
turer, adulterate  his  goods,  or  if  he 
make  an  intolerable  profit  upon  them, 
the  community,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Rochdale  Pioneers,  may  combine  against 
him  and  supersede  him.  But  the  at- 
tempt is  contrary  to  the  modern  idea  of 
the  division  of  labor.  The  men  who 
compose  the  working  community  have 
each  their  particular  craft  or  profession 
to  attend  to.  One  is  a  carpenter,  an- 
other a  doctor,  etc.  To  organize  and 
look  after  a  co-operative  store  is,  in 
fact,  to  undertake  another  business,  and 
most  men  would  rather  pay  the  differ- 
ence than  be  distracted  from  their  own 
pursuits,  and  have  the  trouble  of  think- 
ing about  it.  Thus,  I  think,  that,  in  the 
long  run,  co-operative  store-keeping  will 
fail,  and  things  come  round  again  to 
just  where  they  are  now,  unless  co- 
operative housekeeping  steps  in  to  take 
its  place,  and  to  carry  the  idea  to  com- 
plete and  noble  fulfilment.  Our  hus- 
bands and  fathers  are  already  over- 
worked in  this  mad  American  rush  of 
ours.  They  cannot  stop,  too,  to  mend 
the  holes  made  in  their  pockets  by 
the  relentless  family  expenses, 
the  wives  and  daughters,  who  enjoy  the 
fruits  of  their  thought  and  toil,  can  do 
it  for  them  most  daintily,  if  they  will 
only  lay  their  white  hands  together,  and 
give  to  it  a  few  hours  of  every  day. 

How  this  can  be  done  I  shall  submit 
to  the  judgment  of  practical  women  in 
the  next  number  of  the  Atlantic. 


1 868.] 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


525 


WHAT    FIVE    YEARS    WILL    DO. 


I. 


I  KNOW  of  no  one  in  this  unrhythmi- 
cal age  who  can  better  play  the  part 
in  a  love-story,  taken  by  the^  chorus  in 
the  Greek  plays,  the  Deus  ex  machind 
in  the  old  epics  or  the  fairy  godmother 
in  the  legends  of  the  Middle  Ages,  than 
a  single-woman  of  forty  or  fifty,  or  there- 
abouts (not  eVen  here  will  I  tell  the 
exact  whereabouts),  who  has  done  with 
love  and  sentiment  in  her  own  person, 
but  has  not  quite  yet  lost  her  sympathy 
with  such  childishness  or  her  faith  in  it. 
It  is  not,  however,  necessary  to  my 
role  of  Chorus  to  tell  you  where  I  got 
the  letters  I  send  you.  Was  it  Grand- 
mamma Shirley,  who  played  false  to 
JMiss  Harriet  Byron,  and  gave  up  the 
secrets  of  her  darling's  heart  to  the  edi- 
tor ?  We  shall  never  know,  and  no 
one  will  ever  know,  how  I  came  by 
Horace  Thayer's  letter  to  his  brother. 
One  thing  I  will  say,  it  was  not  Isaac 
[Thayer  who  gave  it  to  me.  He  is  as 
reticent  and  as  rctitient  as  a  sensible 
man  —  a  middle-aged  Yankee  farmer  — 
(always  is,  and  ought  to  be.  I  don't 
{believe  he  showed  it  even  to  his  Lucy, 
who  loves  a  bit  of  romance  and  a  little 
mystery  as  well  now  as  she  did  twenty 
roars  ago,  when  she  read  Hawthorne's 
[Twice- Told  Tales  and  wondered  over 
[Emerson's  Lectures. 

Horace  wrote  the  letter  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1860,  when  we  were  both  down 
he  Northern  Neck  in  Eastern  Vir- 
;  he    as  a  tutor   to   Major  John- 
's two  boy-cubs,  and  I  governess 
oloncl    Ridgeley's  only   daughter, 
a  brave,  pretty  girl  of  seventeen, 
though  in  my  eyes  not  exactly  the 
'.  that  the  letter  makes  her  out  to 
as,  and  is  yet,  the  darling  of  my 
',   who  watched   every  look   from 
er  father's  eyes,  and  who  petted,  like 
11  the  rest  of  us,  her  foolish,  kindly  lit- 
'f  |e  goose  of  a  mother. 

It  was  in  the    early  summer,  before 
ie  ground  began  to  tremble  beneath 


my  feet,  before  the  storm  of  electioneer- 
ing passion  arose,  which  made  Colonel 
Riclgeley  advise  me  to  take  my  vacation 
earlier  than  usual,  and  to  make  no  plans 
about  returning  till  things  looked  more 
settled.  I  laughed  at  his  gravity.  What 
had  I  to  fear  ?  —  an  inoffensive  old  maid, 
a  Northern  woman  to  be  sure,  with  my 
own  notions  about  slavery,  but  I  had 
never  talked  of  them  except  to  him,  to 
whom  everybody  told  everything.  As 
to  the  comparative  claims  of  the  gen- 
eral and  the  State  governments,  about 
which  the  gentlemen  of  the  neighbor- 
hood seemed  to  be  crazy,  what  were 
they  to  me,  who  had  no  vote  to  give  and 
no  husband  to  influence  ? 

Why  should  a  woman  have  a  politi- 
cal theory  when  she  has  no  political 
practice  ?  For  my  part,  I  shake  off  the 
useless  responsibility,  and  I  have  fairly 
passed  through  the  last  five  years  with- 
out knowing  exactly  where  State's  rights 
end  and  our  duty  to  the  central  gov- 
ernment begins.  And  yet,  in  spite  of 
my  eminent  neutrality,  I  never  went 
back  to  the  Northern  Neck,  never  saw, 
and  never  shall  see  again,  the  pleasant 
house  of  Ridgeley  Manor,  with  its  wide 
porches,  its  grand  old  avenue  of  trees, 
its  cheerful  negro-quarters,  and  its  neg- 
lected, worn-out  "old  fields."*  Nor  did 
I  ever  get  my  big  chest  of  winter  cloth- 
ing that  I  left  behind  me  ;  but  that  was 
not  Colonel  Ridgeley's  fault,  nor  poor, 
darling  Mrs.  Ridgeley's  either.  It  gives 
me  pleasure  to  think  that  some  aguish 
Confederate  soldier  made  a  blanket 
out  of  my  quilted  petticoat,  and  cov- 
ered his  blistered  feet  with  the  wool- 
len stockings  that  my  aunt  Mehi table 
knit  for  me,  and  that  I  never  could  find 
a  time  to  wear.  But  the  Chorus  is  get- 
ting garrulous,  and  you  are  anxious  for 
the  entrance  of  the  dramatis  persona. 

RIDGELEY  MANOR,  June,  1860. 

MY  DEAR  BROTHER  :  —  I  leave  here 
for  Boston  next  week,  and  shall  be  with 
you  in  Keene  on  the  farm  the  week 


526 


WJiat  Five  Years  will  do. 


[November, 


after.  This  is  rather  sooner  than  I 
expected,  but  circumstances  have  some- 
what hurried  me. 

That  three  years  have  passed  since  I 
saw  you  seems  to  me  almost  incompre- 
hensible. But  I  shall  realize  the  changes 
that  time  has  made  when  I  see  you  in 
your  own  home,  with  your  wife  and 
baby  by  your  side.  Tell  Lucy  to  prepare 
for  a  troublesome  guest,  for  I  shall  pass 
my  opinion  on  everything,  —  on  her 
management  of  my  little  nephew,  and 
on  your  management  of  house  and  farm. 
I  shall  argue  with  Joel  as  I  did  in  old 
times,  and  I  promise  him  that  he  shall 
find  me  as  disputatious  as  ever  ;  and  I 
shall  demolish  as  many  of  good  Mrs. 
Partridge's  pumpkin-pies  as  I  did  long 
ago  when  I  was  the  troublesome  boy 
whom  Lucy  used  to  pet.  I  never  under- 
stood till  lately  why  Lucy  used  to  take 
so  much  notice  of  me.  There  is  no 
knowing  how  long  you  may  be  troubled 
with  me,  for  I  have  pretty  much  made 
up  my  mind  to  give  up  my  situation 
here.  I  have  done  Major  Johnstone's 
boys  some  good  since  I  have  been  here, 
and  might  do  them  more,  but  there  is 
something  here  that  I  do  not  like,  —  an 
indefinable  something  oppressive  in  the 
air. 

In  short,  a  Northern  man  is  not  in 
his  place  here  now,  unless  he  is  an  older 
man  than  I  am,  —  a  man  with  some- 
thing at  stake,  with  some  interest  in  the 
country,  'and  then,  indeed,  he  has  a 
great  work  before  him.  I  fancy,  too, 
that  Major  Johnstone  does  not  care  for 
my  return  ;  on  all  hands  things  look 
strange,  politics  run  very  high  ;  in  short, 
there  is  a  good  deal  that  I  must  talk 
over  with  you. 

You  will  know  how  sorry  I  shall  be  to 
leave  Colonel  Ridgeley  and  his  family. 
Colonel  Ridgeley  is  unchanged,  the 
same  noble,  considerate,  and  generous 
friend,  the  same  true  gentleman  and 
chivalrous  protector,  that  he  always 
was.  With  him,  at  least,  the  chivalry  of 
Virginia  is  something  more  than  a  name. 

What  do  I  not  owe  him  for  his  con- 
stant kindness,  and  for  the  generosity 
which  has  allowed  me,  so  much  young- 
er, so  inferior  to  him,  to  call  him  friend, 


and  to  find  him  unchanging  in  his 
friendship  ?  What  contempt  would  be 
too  great  for  me  if  I  abused  his  gener- 
osity ? 

But  of  Mrs.  Ridgeley  I  have  only  sad 
news  to  tell.  She  is  feeble  and  worn, 
a  little  thing  tires  her,  I  see  every  cause 
to  be  anxious  for  her  health  ;  and  when 
I  think  of  her  gentle  and  loving  nature, 
of  her  constant  kindness  to  me,  to  all, 
I  could  almost  lay  down  my  life  for  her 
sake.  Her  husband  evidently  does  not 
realize  her  situation  ;  he  is  harassed  by 
anticipations  of  the  election,  —  more 
harassed  than  I  see  any  reason  for  him 
to  be  ;  then  he  sees  her  every  day,  and 
cannot  mark  the  change  in  her  appear- 
ance, and  Ida  is  so  young,  so  inexperi- 
enced— 

My  dear  brother,  my  almost  father, 
you  to  whom  I  owe  all  that  I  am  and 
all  that  I  ever  shall  be,  and  you  who 
have  a  right  to  know  my  inmost  heart, 
do  you  know  that  I  am  not  writing  truly 
to  you  ?  I  would  gladly  go  on,  send- 
ing page  after  page  of  current  news  or 
pleasant  remembrance,  merely  to  put 
off  the  moment  when  I  must  speak  the 
truth.  I  did  not  know  I  was  such  a 
coward ;  I  will  force  myself  to  be  brave, 
and  speak  at  once. 

I  love  Ida  Ridgeley.  It  is  said. 
And  now  what  do  you  think  of  me,  my 
dear  brother,  —  you  who  judge  me  so 
gently,  so  lovingly  ?  I  can  speak  the 
whole  truth  now.  I  love  her  with  a 
strength,  with  a  passion,  that  I  never 
dreamed  my  nature  was  capable  of. 
How  or  when  this  love  began  I  cannot 
tell ;  it  seems  to  me  that  it  has  sprung 
full-armed  in  my  breast.  And  yet,  on 
looking  back,  it  seems  that  I  have  loved 
her  always. 

I  remember  the  merry,  dancing,  hap-  i 
py  girl  whom  I  first   saw  three  years 
ago,  bringing  light  as  if  from  Heaven  \ 
upon  my  dreary  homesickness,  the  kind- 
ly welcome  I  met  from   her  eyes  and  , 
hand.     I  remember  what  I  wrote  you 
about  the   almost  idolatrous  affectit 
with   which   she   regarded  her  father, 
the  watchful  care  with  which  she  stud- 
ied his  happiness,  and  then  —  holiest, 
most  beautiful  of  all  —  her  shielding 


1 868.] 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


527 


and  hiding  her  mother's  weaknesses 
with  that  tender  love,  like  an  elder  sis- 
ter's in  its  protecting  kindness,  like  a 
daughter's  in  its  true-hearted  reverence. 

I  feel  now  that  I  must  have  loved 
her  then,  and  yet,  looking  back,  I  seem 
to  see  myself  almost  regardless  of  her 
presence.  Still  in  these  happy  years, 
when  I  have  seen  her  every  day,  and 
did  not  know  how  happy  I  was,  have 
been  sown  the  seeds  of  that  great  love 
which  has  taken  root,  sprung  up,  and 
blossomed  without  my  knowledge.  Now 
that  my  eyes  are  opened,  I  see  her,  not 
changed,  but  glorified,  idealized,  —  the 
loving  girl,  —  grown  into  the  gentle, 
dignified  woman.  There  are  the  same 
laughing  eyes,  but  so  deepened  and 
darkened  in  their  glorious  light ;  the 
same  dewy  lips,  but  —  in  short,  I  am  a 
fool  and  you  will  think  I  have  gone 
crazy.  I  only  know  this,  —  that  I  love 
her  with  my  whole  soul  and  with  my 
whole  mind  ;  with  a  strength  of  love 
which  I  did  not  think  was  in  me,  with  a 
reverence  of  her  womanliness  which 
sometimes  takes  my  very  breath  from 
me. 

And  now  what  right  have  I  to  love 
her  ?  How  could  I  lift  up  my  eyes  to 
her  father,  and  tell  him  that  the  boy 
whom  he  took  into  his  heart  and  home, 
the  youth  whom  his  teachings,  his  hon- 
ored friendship,  has  lifted  from  a  rough, 
uncultivated  country  boy,  inflated  with 
the  conceit  of  his  own  little  learning, 
into  —  well,  at  least  into  one  who  feels 
himself  a  man  among  men  ;  that  that 
boy,  that  man,  has  stolen  into  his  house 
with  the  ungrateful  longing  to  take  from 
him  the  very  heart  of  his  heart,  the 
daughter  who  makes  his  life  bright  and 
holy  to  him. 

You  know  what  Ida  is  to  Colonel 
Ridgeley,  what  she  has  always  been. 
I  do  not  believe  the  thought  of  her  leav- 
ing him  has  ever  been  allowed  to  cross 
his  mind  ;  but  if  it  should  be  forced  upon 
him,  as  it  will  be,  is  he  not  justified  in 
being  ambitious  for  her?  With  his 
wealth,  with  his  position,  with  his  influ- 
ence, would  he  be  satisfied  with  anything 
short  of  the  most  brilliant  marriage  for 
her? 


I  believe  Colonel  Ridgeley  respects 
me,  —  even  more,  has  a  true  and  earnest 
friendship  for  me;  but  I  am  simply  a 
young  man  with  my  way  all  to  make  in 
the  world,  not  a  little  indebted  to  him 
for  my  present  position  ;  and  for  my 
family,  dear  as  they  are  to  me,  and  justly 
as  I  am  proud  of  them,  I  know  that 
Colonel  Ridgeley,  from  the  force  of 
birth,  education,  and  circumstance,  could 
not  prevent  himself  from  looking  down 
upon  them. 

But  these  are  idle  words  ;  you  know  as 
well  as  I  do  what  is  the  course  that  hon- 
or, that  gratitude,  that  justice  require  me 
to  pursue,  and  I  hope  you  know  me  well 
enough  to  be  sure  that  I  shall  not  shrink 
from  it.  I  shall  leave  here  at  once.  I 
shall  come  to  you,  and  be  happy  in  your 
happiness.  I  will  spend  with  you  the 
few  months  that  must  pass  before  I  can 
establish  myself  in  my  profession,  and 
it  cannot  be  but  that  I  have  sufficient 
command  over  myself  to  overthrow  this 
love  which  has  seized  upon  me  "  like  a 
strong  man  armed,"  and  to  put  again  in 
its  place  the  tender,  brotherly  friendship 
which  has  made  these  three  years  in 
which  she  has  been  daily  before  my 
eyes,  in  all  her  heavenly  goodness  and 
beauty,  the  happiest  of  my  life. 

For  Ida  herself,  —  thank  Heaven  ! 
(yes,  I  am  strong  enough  still  to  thank 
Heaven  for  it,)  her  feelings  towards  me 
are  the  same  that  they  ever  were.  She 
shows  me  the  same  frank  kindness,  and 
almost  sisterly  affection.  She  still  looks 
up  to  what  she  pleases  to  call  and  to 
think  my  stronger  judgment,  and  my  su- 
perior knowledge ;  she  still  comes  to  me 
with  the  difficult  passage  to  translate, 
the  knotty  question  to  unravel;  she 
still  talks  freely  to  me  of  her  little  cares 
and  anxieties,  still  lets  me  watch  her 
father's  moods  with  her,  still  calls  upon 
me  to  rejoice  with  her  in  his  happiness, 
to  grieve  for  and  soothe  his  anxiety,  still 
looks  to  me  for  help  to  hide  or  to  gratify 
her  mother's  little  unreasonablenesses, 
and  still  shows  me  as  freely  as  ever  that 
frank  and  loving  but  most  strong  and 
noble  heart.  And  I  have  strength 
enough  to  meet  all  this  without  shrink- 
ing, to  give  her  the  sympathy  she  asks 


528 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


[November, 


for,  and  which    in   time   it  will   again 
satisfy  me,  make  me  happy,  to  give. 

I  have  had  strength  for  all  this,  but  I 
do  not  know  how  long  it  will  hold  out, 
—  indeed,  I  feel  that  I  must  go  at  once. 
Will  you  take  me  home  to  your  heart, 
my  dear  brother,  after  I  have  shown 
you  how  weak  I  have  been,  how  weak 
I  am  ?  Let  me  come  to  you ;  let  me 
stay  with  you  and  with  Lucy  till  I  am 
strong  again.  I  promise  you  that  you 
shall  hear  no  weak  complainings  ;  let 
me  throw  my  heart  and  mind  again 
into  your  labors  and  cares,  let  me  work 
for  you,  let  me  think  for  you.  For  the 
few  months  that  remain  before  I  face 
the  world  for  myself,  take  back  to  his 
old  place  in  your  heart 

Your  brother 

HORACE. 

I  shall  be  sorry  that  this  letter  has 
gone  out  of  my  hands,  if  you  have  lived 
long  enough  to  forget  the  times  when 
heaven  and  earth  seemed  falling  apart 
because  our  little  loves  did  not  meet. 
We  know  now  that  it  made  no  great  dif- 
ference how  it  all  turned  out.  We  are, 
even  in  this  life,  half  convinced  that  all 
is  for  the  best ;  we  acknowledge  with  a 
languid  acknowledgment  that  we  should 
have  been  no  happier,  no  better  now, 
had  all  gone  as  we  would  have  had  it* 
but  how  whole  destinies  apart  seemed 
the  difference  then  !  Looking  at  Horace 
Thayer's  letter  in  the  perspective  given 
by  my  quarter  of  a  century's  removal 
from  those  times,  I  see  that  his  magna- 
nimity was  a  little  too  grand  for  the  oc- 
casion. But  none  the  less  was  it  great 
and  good  ;  he  will  be  a  better  man  for  it. 

Let  him  go,  and  let  us  wait  quietly  for 
what  the  future  may  bring.  I,  t\\o.Deus 
e.r  machindy  the  fairy  godmother,  will 
not  lift  a  finger  to  help  him,  though  I 
know  that  Randolph  Ridgeley  could  do 
nothing  better  for  his  daughter  than  to 
trust  her  to  the  care  of  this  brave  and 
honest  son  of  a  New  Hampshire  farmer. 
But  he  would  not  think  so.  The  blood 
of  the  Randolphs  and  the  Ridgeleys,  of 
the  good-for-nothing  Charles  the  Second 
cavaliers  from  whom  he  traces  his  de- 
scent, would  rise  up  against  his  own 


common  sense.  "  Blood  is  stronger 
than  water,"  though  the  Swedenbor- 
gians  tell  us  that  water  corresponds  to 
truth.  I,  with  my  Northern  lights,  laugh 
under  my  breath,  and  wonder  that 
Thackeray  did  not  put  all  the  old  Vir- 
ginia families  in  his  Book  of  Snobs ; 
and  yet  no  one  ever  sits  down  in  the 
clumsy  wooden  chair,  with  the  carved 
arms,  that  stands  in  our  wide  entry  at 
Newburyport,  but  I  want  to  tell  him 
that  this  chair  came  over  in  the  May- 
flower, and  this,  too,  when  I  don't  quite 
believe  it  myself;  it  is  such  a  queer 
chair  to  have  on  shipboard. 

Well,  Horace  Thayer  has  gone  away 
from  us,  and  the  Manor  seems  dull  to 
me.  Colonel  Ridgeley  looks  worn  and 
anxious,  poor  Laura  Ridgeley  is  half 
frightened  about  her  health,  so  fright- 
ened that  she  will  not  see  the  doctor, 
and  greets  me  every  morning  with,  "  I 
am  a  great  deal  stronger  to-day,  Miss 
Gardiner ! "  Mammy  Clary  wonders 
why  her  "  young  missus,"  her  "chile," 
does  not  get  well  with  the  pleasant 
weather,  and  "  what  Massa  Randolph 
think  of,  that  he  not  see  she  grow  weak 
as  a  baby."  I  wonder  too,  and  ask  my- 
self if  it  be  not  my  duty  to  speak  to  him 
about  his  wife's  health.  I  shall  go  in 
August,  and  I  must  say  a  word  before  I 
leave. 

For  my  little  pupil,  her  merry  face  is 
often  clouded  now,  but  I  do  not  think 
that  Horace  Thayer  has  anything  to  do 
with  the  clouds.  -  I  was  wicked  enough, 
the  day  after  I  read  his  letter,  to  ask 
her  if  she  missed  him,  and  her  answer 
came  very  frankly  :  "  Certainly,  I  miss 
Horace;  but  I  think  I  miss  more  the 
good  times  we  all  had  a  year  ago,  we 
are  all  so  sober  now.  Everybody  seems 
to  have  a  weight  hanging  over  him ; 
even  Major  Johnstone's  broad,  jolly 
face  looks  half  anxious,  half  important ; 
and  papa  — dear  Miss  Gardiner,  what 
do  you  suppose  is  the  matter  with 
papa?"  So  I  may  thank  Heaven,  will- 
Horace,  that  Ida's  love  troubles  are  all 
before  her,  like  the  trials  of  the  young 
bears. 

Poor,  happy,  little  child  !  I  have  1 
a  mind  to  say  that  I  will  come  back  to 


1-868.] 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


529 


her,  to  stand  by  her  and  help  her,  if 
her  mother's  health  is  really  failing ;  if 
Colonel  Ridgeley  is  right  in  foretelling 
mysterious  political  troubles  here  this 
winter.  But  all  that  is  nonsense.  This 
country  has  been  on  the  brink  of  ruin 
before  every  Presidential  election  within 
my  memory,  and  this  one,  go  as  it  may, 
will  leave  us  comfortably  reconciled  to 
its  results.  Will  there  not  be  cakes 
and  ale  whether  Douglas  or  Lincoln 
head  the  squabbles  in  Washington  ? 

It  is  a  week  since  I  wrote  this  last 
•sentence,  and  I  have  changed  my  mind 
about  the  cakes  and  ale.  Colonel 
Ridgeley  last  night  did  me  the  honor, 
—  I  am  right  to  use  that  word,  for  a 
confidence  from  him  is  an  honor, — he 
did  me  the  honor,  I  repeat,  to  hold  a 
long  confidential  conversation  with  me. 
It  began  by  my  talking  of  coming  back. 
I  said  that  Ida's  education  was  not  fin- 
ished, that  I  could  still  do  a  great  deal 
for  her,  and  that,  while  Mrs.  Ridgeley's 
health  was  feeble,  I  could  be  useful 
about  the  house ;  it  was  too  much  for 
Ida  to  have  the  whole  charge  of  the 
house  and  the  servants. 

"Walk  down  the  avenue  with  me, 
Miss  Gardiner,"  said  he;  "let  us  talk 
this  over  where  we  are  sure  not  to  be 
interrupted." 

We  stopped  under  the  glorious  old 
horse-chestnut,  and  as  I  looked  in  his 
face  I  thought  I  should  hear  how  anx- 
ious he  was  about  his  wife's  health. 
He  took  away  my  breath,  when  he 
said :  — 

"  It  is  not  on  our  account,  on  Ida's, 
that  I  think  it  would  not  be  well  for  you 
to  come  back,  but  it  is  on  your  own. 
You  may  hardly  be  safe  here  next 
winter." 

"Safe!"  I  exclaimed;  "what  could 
possibly  hurt  me  ?  " 

"Nothing  while  you  were  in  my  house, 
under  my  protection,  but  I  might  not 
be  always  able  to  give  you  that  protec- 
tion. I  am  going  to  repose  great  confi- 
dence in  you,  Miss  Gardiner ;  I  am 
going  to  say  to  you  that  the  feeling  of 
jealousy  of  Northerners  has  reached  a 
terrible  height  here ;  you  are  better 
away,  —  at  least,  until  this  election  is 

VOL.  xxn.  —  NO.  134.  34 


over.  If  it  goes  for  us,  all  may  be  well, 
and  we  may  welcome  you  back  again  ; 
but  if  Lincoln  is  elected,  there  are  poli- 
ticians among  us  mad  enough  in  their 
blind  ambition  to  hurry  the  South  into 
some  irretrievable  step,  perhaps  even 
to  try  to  separate  us  from  the  North. 
It  is  in  speaking  freely  of  this  chance 
in  the  future  as  something  not  impos- 
sible that  I  show  my  confidence  in  you. 
Should  such  a  thing  be  attempted,  and 
the  North  refuse  to  accept  it  quietly, 
you  should  be  with  your  own  people." 

"  But  you, —  what  would  become  of 
you  in  such  a  case  ?" 

Colonel  Ridgeley  answered  in  that 
deliberate  manner  which  showed  that 
the  question  was  no  new  one  to  his 
mind. 

"There  are  occasions  in  life,  and 
very  sad  ones  they  are,  when  a  man 
perceives  and  has  to  choose  between 
several  duties ;  I  hope  no  such  occa- 
sion is  coming  to  me  but,  if  it  comes,  I 
must  follow  that  course  which  seems  to 
me  to  involve  the  least  wrong." 

"There  cannot  be  two  rights,"  said  I. 
"It  has  always  been  my  curse  in 
life,"  he  answered,  "  to  see  a  great  many 
rights.  Every  party,  every  opinion,  has 
some  right  on  its  side,  and  while  I 
am  weighing  their  different  claims  the 
time  for  action  has  generally  passed  for 
me.  But  this  time,  if  the  crisis  comes, 
I  shall  be  forced  into  action." 

"  I  cannot  believe  it  will  come,  but 
if  if  should,  in  so  terrible  a  matter,  so 
vital,  you  need  not  decide ;  you  could 
leave,  go  North,  go  to  Europe." 

"  No,  that  I  could  not  do,  because 
there  are  some  clearly  defined  duties 
that  keep  me  here.  My  duty  to  my 
people,  ignorant  and  helpless  as  they 
are,  is  very  plain  to  me.  If  trouble- 
some times  come,  my  responsibility  to 
them  will  be  even  greater  than  it  is  now, 
and  you  know  how  great  I  have  always 
felt  it  to  be.  You  know,  Miss  Gardiner, 
that  I  am  not  a  man  of  action  ;  looking 
back  at  my  past  life,  I  see  many  duties 
neglected,  some  things  left  undone  that 
it  is  too  late  now  to  mend  ;  but  at 
least  I  am  not  a  coward,  I  will  not 
desert  my  post.  I  trust  this  conversa- 


530 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


[November,.. 


tion  with  your  good  judgment.  Do 
not  let  it  go  for  more  than  it  is  worth, 
but  believe  that  I  feel  it  my  duty  to 
give  you  this  advice  this  morning." 

I  left  Colonel  Ridgeley,  and,  walking 
directly  to  my  own  room,  sat  down  by 
the  window,  determined  to  think  well  of 
what  I  had  heard,  and  to  decide  my 
course  of  action.  I  began  by  watching 
the  trees  as  they  moved  their  leaves 
lazily  in  the  wind,  then  wondered  what 
chance  there  was  that  those  two  little 
negroes  would  succeed  in  driving  that 
obstinate  little  pig  through  the  hole 
made  in  the  fence  by  the  broken  rail, 
and  then  fell  to  dreaming  about  those 
duties  which  Randolph  Ridgeley  had 
left  undone.  Of  course,  my  mind  ran 
off  to  his  married  life.  About  what  else 
does  a  single-woman  speculate  when 
she  thinks  of  her  married  friends  ?  I 
had  tried  before  to  measure  the  disap- 
pointment of  a  man  of  earnest,  thought- 
ful character,  when  he  finds  that  the 
companion  whom  he  has  chosen  for 
life  is  capable  only  of  a  childlike  affec- 
tion,—  pure  and  beautiful,  indeed,  so 
far  as  it  goes,  but  satisfying  so  little  of 
his  nature.  And  yet  who  had  he  to 
blame  but  himself?  He  has  everything 
he  asked  for.  Is  a  man  to  complain 
that  his  wife  is  after  marriage  just  what 
made  her  so  charming  before  ;  that  she 
is  too  young,  too  gay,  too  gentle,  too 
amiable,  too  yielding,  too  ready  to  be 
pleased  ?  I  suppose  Laura  Christie 
was  lovely  in  his  eyes  just  for  these 
very  things,  and  perhaps  it  is  his 
fault  as  much  as  hers  that  she  is  noth- 
ing different  now.  I  see  how  it  has  all 
been.  He  had  six  months  or  so  of  a 
fool's  paradise ;  and  then  perhaps  six 
months  more  of  struggles  to  find  a 
woman  where  there  was  only  a  child  ; 
and  after  that  he  threw  the  whole  thing 
up,  and  contented  himself  with  being 
very  kind  and  very  just  to  her,  for 
he  piques  himself  very  much  on  his 
justice.  At  any  rate,  she  does  not 
grow  peevish  and  fretful  in  growing 
old,  as  most  silly  women  do.  No,  in- 
deed, she  is  a  darling,  loving,  kindly 
little  thing  ;  and  I  shall  go  and  sit  with 
her  all  the  evening,  and  admire  the 


pretty  fancy-work  which  she  calls  sew- 
ing. 

So  that  was  the  end  of  my  careful 
thinking  over  my  plans,  a  quiet,  merry 
chat  over  Mrs.  Ridgeley's  light-wood 
fire.  What  a  thing  a  light- wood  fire  is  !" 
the  nearest  approach  to  sunshine  that- 
human  hands  can  make.  I  see  Sam 
now  laying  the  pieces  of  wood  artis- 
tically across  each  other ;  then  one 
touch  of  the  candle  sends  a  sharp  tongue 
of  flame  shooting  up  between  them, 
crackling  and  leaping  from  piece  to 
piece,  until  the  whole  chimney  roars, 
and  the  room  shines  out  into  cheerful- 
lest  light.  I  agree  with  the  settler  on 
the  Carolina  pine  barren,  the  despised 
"Cracker"  who  says,  "Well,  stran- 
ger, I  reckon  you  call  this  a  poor  coun- 
try, but  there  's  not  such  a  district  for 
light-wood  to  be  found  for  miles  around." 
But  it  is  idle,  all  this  lingering  ;  the  ist 
of  August  is  here,  and  I  must  go.  I 
pretend  it  is  only  for  a  longer  vacation 
than  usual,  say  till  the  Christmas  holi- 
days ;  but  since  my  talk  with  Colonel 
Ridgeley  I  have  grown  nervous,  and 
fancy  I  feel  thunder  in  the  air.  I  wish 
Mammy  Clary  would  throw  a  shoe  after 
me  for  good  luck,  instead  of  saying, 
"  'Pears  like  things  is  all  changing,  Miss. 
Gardiner." 

II. 

IT  is  the  early  summer  of  1862,  and  I 
am  still  in  Newburyport,  cut  off  from 
my  Virginia  friends  by  an  impassable 
wall  of  struggling,  fighting  men.  Mc- 
Clellan's  army  lies  between  us  and 
Richmond,  and  the  Northern  Neck  is- 
only  a  camping-ground  for  his  soli" 

Since  we  cannot  see  into  the  future, 
like  the  old  gods  of  Olympus,  let  us 
never  dream  of  meddling  with  their 
province. 

Suppose  I  had  told  Colonel  Ridgeley 
to  secure  Ida's  happiness  by  giving  her 
to  a  brave,  manly  fellow  like  Horace 
Thayer,  who  would  be  everything  to 
her  that  a  man  should  be  to  a  woman,  — 
a  shield,  a  support,  a  tender  and  rever- 
ential guide.  It  was  in  Colonel  Ridge- 
ley  to  feel  this,  and  he  might  have 
followed  my  advice.  Suppose  I  had 


1 868.] 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


531 


wakened  up  Ida's  heart  by  giving  her 
one  hint — just  alittle  one  —  of  Horace's 
feelings  towards  her  and  turned  her 
great  admiration  and  affectionate  friend- 
ship into  a  trembling,  maidenly  love 
which  would  have  leaped  up  into 
strength  like  the  flame  through  my 
crossed  sticks  of  light-wood.  —  Why, 
since  those  quiet  days  they  have  been 
separated  as  far  as  in  a  lifetime  of 
common  years  ! 

Horace  is  Major  Thayer  of  the 

Massachusetts,  in  the division  of 

the  Army  of  the  Potomac;  and  Colonel 
Ridgeley,  we  have  heard,  is  command- 
ing a  regiment  of  Virginia  soldiers 
under  Lee.  I  know  nothing  of  Mrs. 
Ridgeley  or  of  Ida,  —  a  little  note  a  year 
ago,  and  nothing  more.  My  own  occu- 
pation has  gone  too,  and  that  of  a  large 
class  of  women  like  me.  There  are  no 
calls  for  private  governesses  at  the 
North  ;  all  learning  and  all  teaching  is 
done  in  the  public  schools  and  the 
academies,  and  one  look  at  the  list  of 
studies  was  enough  to  make  me  despair. 
What  do  I  know  of  the  Higher  Mathe- 
matics, of  Logic,  of  Electro-Chemistry  ? 
I  claim  only  a  tolerable  knowledge  of 
English,  a  moderate  grammatical  pro- 
ficiency in  French  and  Italian,  with  an 
accent  not  quite  shocking,  a  facility  in 
sketching  any  pretty  bit  of  landscape 
that  catches  my  eye,  and  music  enough 
to  detect  my  pupils'  mistakes.  What 
should  I  do  in  a  High  School  ?  The 
A  grade  would  look  down  upon  me. 
So  I  have  stayed  quietly  at  home  and 
made  "  havelocks  "  and  needle-cases  for 
the  soldiers.  Lately,  as  their  wants  have 
seemed  more  pressing,  we  have  worked 
hard  on  their  summer  clothing,  and  by 
August  we  shall  begin  on  their  winter 
socks  and  shirts.  It  is  a  wearying, 
anxious  time,  —  nothing  but  eating  your 
heart  out  with  waiting  for  news  ;  and  I 
do  not  wonder  that  the  women  around 
me  look  old,  that  I  feel  old  and  worn 
myself.  I  almost  wish  I  had  gone  into 
the  hospitals,  it  would  have  kept  my 
heart  and  mind  alive  ;  but  what  did  I 
know  of  nursing  sick  people  ?  One 
must  have  a  genius  for  it,  like  some 
women  I  know,  or  else  be  apprenticed 


to  It  by  such  an  experience  of  whoop- 
ing-cough, measles,  scarlet  fever,  and  so 
forth,  as  does  not  naturally  come  in  the 
way  of  an  old  maid  schoolmistress. 
But  I  shall  rust  out  here.  I  must  hear 
something,  know  something.  I  shall 
write  to  Lucy  Thayer,  and  tell  her  that 
I  am  coming  to  spend  a  week  with  her. 
Isaac  promised  to  send  me  news  of 
Horace,  —  does  he  never  get  any  ?  I 
believe  I  am  too  old  to  change  interests 
as  I  used  to  do  in  the  days  when  a  vear 
was  long  enough  for  a  school  engage- 
ment ;  when  a  winter  as  governess  in 
Georgia,  a  school  session  as  drawing 
teacher  in  that  humbug  of  an  academy 
in  Alabama,  was  my  way  of  seeing  the 
world,  —  the  only  way  open  to  a  poor 
Yankee  girl.  Then  it  was  great  fun  to 
see  new  people,  to  make  new  friends ; 
but  somehow  I  am  tired  of  it  all  now. 
The  three  years'  care  of  Ida  Ridgeley 
makes  me  feel  as  though  I  had  a  claim 
on  her  which  cannot  be  broken  by  all 
the  storms  of  rebellion  and  war  that 
have  come  between  us.  And  Horace 
Thayer  too,  —  have  I  given  him  so  much 
laughing  advice,  so  much  friendly  con- 
sideration, so  much  really  admiring  re- 
spect for  nothing,  that  he  should  drift 
away  from  me  into  a  life  that  I  know 
nothing  about  ?  I  shall  go  to  Keene 
next  week. 

All  this  grumbling  in  my  little  room, 
the  hall  chamber,  up  stairs,  where  I  sat 
with  my  feet  up,  and  a  shawl  drawn 
close  over  my  shoulders,  looking  out 
on  an  easterly  storm  which  made  the 
streets  look  gray  and  dreary.  "If  it 
would  rain  something  like  rain,"  I  said, 
"  and  not  drizzle,  drizzle  for  three 
whole  days.  I  shall  go  wild  with  rest- 
lessness ;  and  what  a  nervous  noise 
that  door-knocker  makes  !  I  suppose 
it 's  the  butcher." 

I  fairly  jumped  when  Margaret 
opened  my  door,  a  handkerchief  over 
her  head,  dust-pan  and  brush  in  one 
hand,  and  a  letter  in  the  other. 

"  From  Washington,  from  the  army, 
I  do  believe,  Mary ;  open  it  quick ; 
there  's  no  bad  news,  I  hope." 

"It  is  from  Horace  Thayer,  from  the 
Manor.  How  could  he  be  there  ?  Sit 


532 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


[November, 


down,  never  mind  the  sweeping,  let  me 
read.  At  any  rate,"  I  continued  under 
my  voice,  "this  letter  comes  to  me 
legitimately." 

THE  MANOR,  June,  1862. 

MY  DEAR  Miss  GARDINER  :  —  Colo- 
nel Ridgeley  asks  me  to  write  to  you  by 
the  express  that  goes  up  to  Washing- 
ton to-morrow,  to  tell  you  the  sad  news 
that  our  dear,  kind  friend,  Mrs.  Ridge- 
ley,  is  dead.  She  died  last  night,  — just 
quietly  sank  away  without  any  suffering. 
Thank  Heaven,  she  had  all  that  she 
loved  around  her,  —  her  husband,  her 
daughter,  her  old  "  Mammy  Clary," 
and  even  the  best  attendance  and  nurs- 
ing. She  sent  a  message  to  you  a  few 
days  ago.  It  was  that  she  wished  this 
horrid  war  had  never  taken  you  away  ; 
she  wished  you  were  here  now ;  and 
so  do  I,  though  I  know  how  impossible 
it  is.  I  wish  you  were  here  for  Miss 
Ridgeley's,  for  Ida's  sake.  You  will 
wonder  that  I  should  be  here.  I  was 
ordered  a  week  ago,  with  a  company 
of  men,  to  the  Green  Spring  Station, 
to  remain  there  and  forward  army 
stores.  You  know  the  station  is  only 
ten  miles  from  Ridgeley  Manor,  yet  it 
was  two  days  before  I  had  time  to  ride 
over,  or  even  any  chance  to  inquire 
about  them.  But  on  Tuesday  evening, 
Sam,  Colonel  Ridgeley's  own  boy,  you 
remember,  came  to  my  quarters.  The 
negroes  know  everything  that  happens, 
and  he  had  found  out  that  morning 
that  I  was  there,  and  came  to  ask  for 
me.  He  told  me  that  Colonel  Ridgeley 
was  at  home,  having  passed  our  lines 
with  a  flag  of  truce,  bearing  a  letter 
from  Lee  himself  to  the  commanding 
officer  of  our  division,  requesting  per- 
mission for  him  to  visit  his  home,  where 
his  wife  was  dying.  Sam  said  that 
Mrs.  Ridgeley  could  live  only  a  few 
days,  and  that  they  wanted  everything, 
—  medicine,  wine,  but  especially  some 
one  to  take  care  of  her.  Their  house- 
servants  had  left  them,  except  Mammy 
Clary  and  himself,  and  her  long  illness 
had  worn  out  Mammy  Clary's  and  Ida's 
strength.  I  knew  that  Miss  Betsy 
Partridge  was  m  Washington,  waiting 


for  admission  to  some  hospital ;  and  I 
ventured  to  send  for  her  at  once,  simply 
telling  her  that  I  wanted  her  for  a  case 
of  severe  sickness.  I  loaded  Sam  with 
everything  I  could  give  him  from  my 
slender  stock  of  luxuries  (luckily  I  had 
some  good  sherry),  and  sent  him  home 
with  a  note  to  Colonel  Ridgeley,  saying 
that  I  should  be  at  the  Manor  the  next 
day,  and  that  I  hoped  to  bring  an 
experienced  nurse  with  me.  But  I 
dreaded  to  see  Miss  Betsy,  and,  indeed, 
her  indignation,  when  she  heard  what  I 
wanted  her  for,  was  almost  beyond  my 
power  of  calming. 

"  Have  you  sent  for  me,  Horace 
Thayer,"  she  said,  — "sent  for  me  from 
Washington,  where  our  poor  boys  are 
suffering,  that  I  may  nurse  a  rebel 
soldier's  wife  ?  I  shall  go  back  by  the 
next  train." 

I  told  her  what  they  had  been  to  me, 
what  kind  friends,  how  much  I  owed  to 
them,  begged  her  only  to  ride  over  and 
see  for  herself,  she  would  so  pity  that 
poor  sick  woman  and  her  daughter, 
worn  out  by  such  cares. 

"I  believe  you  are  a  fool,"  she  an- 
swered at  last,  "  or  at  least  you  must 
think  I  am  one  ;  but  I  '11  go  with  you, 
and  do  what  I  can,  since  I  am  here." 

And  from  that  moment  I  never  got  a 
word  more  of  reproach  from  her.  God 
bless  her !  I  never  can  be  grateful 
enough  to  her  for  what  she  has  done 
for  us.  She  encloses  a  letter  to  you  in 
this.  I  am  sure  her  clear  head  and 
kind  heart  have  led  her  to  value  our 
friends  as  they  deserve. 

We  reached  the  Manor  the  next 
evening,  and  I  could  hardly  recognize 
the  place.  The  glorious  avenue  that 
led  to  Major  Johnstone's  is  gone,  cut 
down  for  firewood  or  defence  ;  the  ne- 
gro-quarters are  deserted,  and  their 
pretty  gardens  pulled  to  pieces;  the 
house  itself  has  lost  its  portico,  the 
lawn  is  trampled  over,  and  the  Osage 
orange-hedge  broken  away.  Colonel 
Ridgeley  was  at  the  door,  and  wel- 
comed us  eagerly.  You  know  how 
cordial  he  can  be,  but  I  wish  you  had 
seen  how  he  met  Miss  Betsy,  witf 
such  an  earnest  gratitude  to  her  for 


i868.] 


WJiat  Five  Years  will  do. 


533 


coming.  Mrs.  Ridgeley  was  expecting 
us,  and  wanted  to  see  me  at  once.  I 
could  scarcely  endure  seeing  her  so 
wasted  and  pale,  white  as  her  pillow; 
but  the  change  in  her  looks  was  not  so 
hard  to  bear  as  the  frightened  look  in 
her  face,  the  manner  in  which  she 
clung  to  everybody  around  her  as  if 
for  help.  She  held  her  husband's  hand 
tight  as  she  spoke  to  me,  clinging  to 
him  with  an  eager  hold,  as  if  life  would 
pass  away  without  his  help.  Her  eyes 
seemed  to  ask  aid  from  everybody,  and, 
when  she  fixed  them  upon  her  husband, 
you  could  read  her  thoughts  in  them  as 
well  as  if  she  had  spoken  :  "  You  are 
so  strong,  so  wise,  you  have  always 
helped  me,  always  held  me  up.  O, 
help  me  now  !  " 

No  one  ever  called  Colonel  Ridgeley 
a  religious  man,  but  I  believe  he  has 
in  his  heart  a  living,  personal  trust  in 
God,  like  that  of  a  child  in  its  father, 
which  is  life  and  strength  in  the  time 
of  trial,  though  hardly  felt  when  all 
goes  well.  It  could  have  been  only 
such  a  trust  which  gave  him  power  to 
meet  her  imploring  look  with  one  of 
love  and  encouragement.  You  know 
Ida's  place  without  my  telling  you. 
It  has  been  the  long  habit  of  her  life 
to  care  for  every  want  of  her  mother's, 
to  anticipate  those  wants  from  her 
looks.  She  shows  the  calmness  and 
self-control  natural  to  her  on  serious 
occasions,  but  she  is  terribly  worn  by 
all  she  has  gone  through,  and  I  think 
my  coming  was  a  relief  to  her.  I  am 
sure  Miss  Betsy's  was. 

That  was  Wednesday  night,  and  I 
could  only  stay  an  hour,  —  long  enough 
to  see  Miss  Betsy  at  home  in  the  sick- 
room, and  to  find  out  what  was  most 
needed  that  I  could  supply.  They 
have  suffered  from  a  great  many  priva- 
tions like  everybody  here.  It  is  the 
story  that  you  have  heard  so  often, — 
the  soldiers  of  both  armies  passing 
over  the  country,  comfort  after  comfort 
taken  away  from  them  as  their  commu- 
nication with  the  North  was  cut  off. 
Their  people  have  gone  one  by  one, 
followed  our  army,  straggled  into  the 
woods,  taken  care  of  themselves  in  the 


various  ways  in  which  we  used  to  think 
them  so  wise.  Never  but  once  has  a 
word  about  the  situation  of  the  country 
or  his  present  position  passed  between 
Colonel  Ridgeley  and  myself,  and  that 
was  that  first  night,  as  I  was  waiting 
for  Sam  to  bring  my  horse. 

He  pointed  over  to  the  quarters  and 
said  :  "  You  will  not  be  sorry  for  the 
change  there  ;  but  my  care  for  them, 
my  anxiety  as  to  what  would  become 
of  them  if  they  were  left,  was  almost 
the  turning  weight  which  made  me  go 
with  the  Confederacy.  Well,  '  man 
proposes  and  God  disposes ' ;  but,  let 
things  turn  out  as  they  may,  you  and  I, 
Mr.  Thayer,  will  believe  that  each  of 
us  has  done  what  he  thought  was  his 
duty." 

Miss  Betsy's  letter  will  tell  you  more 
about  the  next  few  days  than  I  can. 
I  could  be  there  only  an  hour  every 
evening,  but  on  Sunday  I  got  away 
early,  and  reached  the  Manor  before 
sundown.  Mrs.  Ridgeley  always  want- 
ed to  see  me,  and  that  day  I  went  in  at 
once.  Ida  was  asleep  in  her  own  room, 
and  Mammy  Clary  had  gone  to  prepare 
some  refreshment  for  her  mistress. 
Mrs.  Ridgeley  spoke  to  the  Colonel. 

"Go  and  rest  a  little  while,  Ran- 
dolph ;  I  want  to  "talk  to  Horace." 

He  looked  a  little  surprised,  but  went, 
and  Miss  Betsy  withdrew  herself  out 
of  sight  in  the  little  dressing-room. 

"  My  dear  Horace,"  she  said,  "  I 
want  to  ask  you  something.  You  think 
I  shall  get  well,  —  do  you  not  ?  Ran- 
dolph used  to  say  so,  but  I  am  afraid 
to  ask  him  now.  You  will  not  tell  me 
if  you  do  not  think  so,"  she  continued, 
her  face  bearing  the  scared  expression 
of  a  child  dreading  the  dark;  "do  not 
say  anything  if  you  don't  want  to." 

Miss  Betsy  looked  out  from  her  re- 
cess and  fixed  her  eyes  sternly  on  my 
face.  "  You  've  come  of  a  godly  stock, 
Horace  Thayer,  speak  the  truth  ;  it 's  no 
time  to  deceive  that  poor  thing  now." 

So    I    could  only  say,  "You  would, 
not  be  afraid  to  go  home  to  your  Fa- 
ther's house,  dear  Mrs.  Ridgeley ;  you 
remember  who    died    that  we    might 
come  to  Him." 


534 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


[November, 


"  I  do  not  know,  let  me  hear,"  and 
her  voice  took  a  deeper,  more  earnest 
tone  than  ever  in  her  life. 

Miss  Betsy  reached  out  her  Bible, 
opened  at  the  fourteenth  chapter  of 
John,  and  once  more,  as  so  many  thou- 
sand times  before,  were  those  words  of 
healing  heard  in  the  chamber  of  grief, 
"  Let  not  your  heart  be  troubled,  nei- 
ther let  it  be  afraid."  Her  husband  had 
returned  at  the  sound  of  the  reading, 
and  stood  by  her  pillow  as  she  opened 
her  eyes. 

"  That  is  very  pleasant  to  me."  she 
said,  whilst  there  stole  over  her  face 
a  look  of  repose,  like  a  tired  child 
just  going  to  sleep.  Yes,  in  those  last 
hours  God  had  sent  his  angels  to  bear 
her  through  the  valley  of  darkness,  and 
gradually  the  holy  presence  which  she 
was  entering  seemed  to  send  its  radi- 
ance through  the  mists  of  death.  The 
struggle  which  she  had  so  dreaded  was 
mercifully  spared  her,  for  she  sank  to 
sleep  so  quietly  that  nobody  knew 
when  she  left  them,  until  a  burst  of 
sobs  from  Mammy  Clary,  who  was  gaz- 
ing at  her  from  between  the  curtains, 
told  that  it  was  all  over.  Colonel 
Ridgeley  laid  her  down  from  his  arms 
slowly  and  tenderly,  and  turned  to  take 
his  daughter  into  them.  He  carried 
her  out  into  her  own  room,  and  as  he 
closed  the  door  behind  him  we  heard 
from  the  bedside  the  grief  of  the  poor 
black  woman  who  had  lost  the  darling 
of  her  life. 

"  O  my  chile,  my  chile ! "  she  said, 
rocking  herself  backward  and  forward 
in  her  sobs  and  cries,  "  you  ?se  gone 
away  from  me  to  be  wid  de  Lord  Jesus, 
and  who  '11  I  take  care  of  now  ?  You 
was  always  my  chile.  I  knows  dar  's 
Miss  Ida,  but  she  'pears  always  to  take 
care  of  herself,  and  you  was  my  own 
darling  chile,  and  never  was  away  from 
your  Mammy  Clary.  O  Lord,  you  'se 
taken  her  to  yourself,  but  what  will 
she  do  without  me  ?  " 

I  shall  be  here  to-day,  and  do  all  that 
can  be  done.  She  will  be  buried  on 
the  plantation  where  fhe  family  are 
laid  ;  and  to-morrow  Ida  goes  with  her 
father,  —  goes  to  the  Christies  in  the 


southern  countries  beyond  the  two 
armies,  while  her  father  joins  his  com- 
mand. We  shall  be  separated  perhaps 
forever,  and  I  can  say  nothing,  I  have 
nothing  to  say.  This  war  makes  us 
live  fast.  Ida  has  changed  ;  she  is  not 
what  she  was  two  years  ago,  but  she 
has  only  grown  so  womanly,  so  lovely! 
How  I  wish  you  could  see  her ! 

I  am  to  join  my  regiment  next  week, 
as  soon  as  the  next  supply  of  stores  is 
forwarded.  We  are  to  go  to  the  front. 
You  will  always  hear  of  me  through 
Isaac.  Will  you  send  him  this  letter? 
and  believe  me  always  your  grateful 
friend, 

HORACE  THAYER. 

Miss  Betsy's  letter  had  fallen  at  my 
feet,  and  Margaret  picked  it  up  for  me. 
I  had  been  crying  very  gently  and 
quietly  while  I  read  Horace's  to  her, 
but  somehow  Miss  Betsy's  made  me 
hysterical,  and  I  broke  down  into  a 
nervous  laugh  which  would  have  fright- 
ened Margaret  if  it  had  not  ended  in 
a  sob.  "  Let  me  read,"  she  said,  and 
began  it  over  again.  The  beginning 
was  abrupt  enough,  and  like  Miss 
Betsy. 

I  suppose,  Mary  Gardiner,  that  you 
'd  be  glad  to  hear  what  Horace  Thayer 
has  made  me  do,  even  if  these  folks 
were  not  your  friends,  for  I  believe  you 
are  more  than  half  a  rebel  yourself.  I 
always  thought  so  when  I  used  to  hear 
you  talk  of  the  need  of  our  being  gentle 
in  our  judgment  of  these  mistaken  peo- 
ple, and  of  our  allowing  for  the  force  of 
early  training  and  putting  ourselves  in 
their  place.  Well,  I  came  here  for  no 
grand  reasons  at  all,  not  because  they 
were  fellow-creatures  and  needed  me, 
but  just  because  I  saw  that  Horace 
Thayer's  heart  was  set  upon  it,  and 
I  could  n't  bear  to  thwart  the  boy. 
guessed  it  was  the  daughter  before  I 
got  here,  and  now  I  know  it  as  well 
you  do.  He  loves  her  so  completely 
that  I  should  be  sorry  for  him,  wit 
everything  against  him  in  the  future,  if 
I  did  "not  know  that  such  a  real  feeling 
will  make  more  of  a  man  of  him. 


1 868.] 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


535 


I  like  the  girl  too  ;  she  has  something 
in  her;  she  never  could  be  like  that 
poor  little  pitiful  thing  lying  up  stairs, 
even  if  Horace  were  not  too  much  of  a 
Christian  to  treat  her  as  your  grand 
rebel  colonel  has  treated  his  wife.  I 
see  it  all  as  plainly  as  if  I  had  lived 
here,  and  it 's  one  of  the  things  that 
make  me  angry.  A  woman  is  a  woman, 
.and  ought  to  be  treated  like  one,  and 
not  like  a  baby,  even  if  she  has  a  lean- 
ing that  way,  for  you  see  what  comes  of 
it  in  the  end.  Here  is  the  man  that  I  've 
heard  you  praise  up  to  the  skies  as  the 
model  Christian  gentleman,  —  and  I  '11 
not  say  but  he  is  grand  and  wise,  andgood 
too,  I  suppose.  Well,  he  marries  a  wo- 
man, the  woman  whom  he  chose,  —  for 
I  don't  suppose  anybody  forced  him  to 
marry  her.  A  poor  little  thing,  to  be 
sure,  but  a  good  little  thing,  and  one 
that  loved  him  and  nobody  else  ;  and 
then,  after  he  married  her,  because  she 
was  not  grand  enough  or  wise  enough 
to  suit  his  fancies,  what  does  he  do  but 
content  himself  with  being  kind  to  her, 
and  making  her  comfortable,  and  then 
go  about  with  his  own  thoughts  and 
occupations  until  she  is  no  more  a  part 
of  his  life  than  you  and  I  are. 

Now,  what  a  man  ought  to  do  if  he 
finds  the  wife  he  has  chosen  is  not 
quite  all  he  would  wish  her  is  to  give 
his  life  to  making  her  so ;  to  help  her 
to  be  as  wise  and  as  strong  as  her  na- 
ture will  let  her  be,  and  not  just  pet 
her  because  it  is  too  much  trouble  to 
teach  her  to  be  a  woman. 

You  call  Colonel  Ridgeley  a  religious 
man,  —  do  you  ?  I  won't  gainsay  it,  but 
he  has  not  so  lived  his  life  as  to  make 
that  poor  child  religious.  She  lay  there 
on  the  very  borders  of  death,  and  she 
knew  it  too,  and  where  did  she  look  for 
help  ?  Not  to  the  Lord,  not  once  did  I 
see  her  turn  there  in  all  her  fears  ;  but 
she  used  to  watch  the  doctor's  face 
when  he  came  in  the  morning,  and 
mine  when  I  had  been  with  her  all 
night,  and  her  husband's  when  he  stood 
by  her  bedside,  and  say,  "  I  am  better 
than  I  was  yesterday,"  "To-morrow  I 
can  have  my  bed  made,"  or  "  Next 
week  I  shall  be  clown  stairs  "  ;  and  he 


would  tell  her  she  was  better,  or  talk 
about  her  getting  well,  and  bid  us  all 
keep  up  her  spirits.  It  was  the  same 
kindness  that  I  suppose  he  has  always 
shown  to  her,  but  I  call  it  a  selfish 
kindness ;  and  I  don't  call  that  man  a 
Christian  who  does  not  "  so  let  his 
light  shine  before  men,"  that  his  near- 
est and  dearest  may  learn  to  "glorify 
their  Father  which  is  in  heaven." 

Poor  little  thing !  nobody  could  be 
cruel  to  her  after  all.  I  was  almost  as 
much  afraid  as  any  of  them  that  she 
would  find  out  the  truth  one  night 
when  she  asked  me  to  bring  her  a  look- 
ing-glass, that  she  might  see  if  she  was 
much  changed.  If  I  had  not  known 
that  it  was  a  crying  sin  for  that  poor 
creature  to  go  to  her  grave  unprepared, 
I  would  not  have  brought  her  the  glass. 
She  only  said,  locking  up  at  me  so  pit- 
eously,  "  Do  I  look  very  badly  ?  am  I 
very  pale  ?  No,  I  cannot  look  at  my- 
self, it  would  frighten  me  so  much  ;  and 
then  Randolph  does  not  want  me  to 
agitate  myself,  he  would  not  like  it ; 
take  away  the  glass,  Miss  Partridge." 

Well,  she  has  gone  now,  and  I  am. 
glad  I  had  the  chance  to  be  kind  to 
her.  The  daughter  is  made  of  a  differ- 
ent stuff;  such  stuff  as  you'd  put  in 
storm  stay-sails.-  She  will  come  out  of 
this  storm  ail  right,  and,  if  she  and  Hor- 
ace ever  get  together,  she  '11  not  be  one 
for  his  friends  to  be  ashamed  of. 

I  have  nothing  more  to  do  here, 
and  shall  go  back  to  Washington  to- 
morrow. 

Give  my  love  to  Margaret ;  she  is  a 
capable  person,  and  had  better  come 
here  and  help  us, 

Yours, 

BETSY  PARTRIDGE. 

P.  S.  —  You  can  do  as  you  think 
best  about  sending  my  letter  to  Isaac 
and  Lucy. 

Margaret  went  away  quietly  when 
she  had  finished  the  letter,  and  came 
back  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  with  a 
quaint  little  round  waiter  in  her  hand, 
holding  an  India  teapot  such  as  you 
see  only  in  Newburyport ;  and  as  she 
poured  out  my  tea  she  said  sympathiz- 


536 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


[November, 


ingly,  "It  is  a  pity  you  are  not  with 
them." 

I  turned  sharp  upon  her.  "  How  can 
I  be  with  them,  with  two  armies  be- 
tween us  ?  I  wonder  if  the  politicians 
who  made  the  war  ever  think  how  they 
are  keeping  people  apart  as  well  as 
making  them  miserable.  There  are  no 
two  people  in  the  world  better  suited 
to  each  other  than  Ida  and  Horace 
Thayer,  but  who  knows  when  they  will 
ever  come  together  again.  He  will 
come  back  with  a  wooden  leg,  I  sup- 
pose, and  she  —  at  this  rate  I  don't  see 
how  she  is  to  find  enough  to  eat,  or 
anybody  to  cook  it.  If  their  negroes 
have  run  away,  there  is  nobody  left 
down  there  capable  of  cooking  what 
they  call  '  a  meal's  victuals.' " 

My  little  burst  of  temper  did  me  good ; 
and,  after  I  had  swallowed  my  first  cup 
of  tea,  I  began  to  sip  the  second  and  to 
talk  more  reasonably.  But  something 
certainly  was  the  matter  with  me  ;  for, 
after  my  evening's  reasonable  talk,  af- 
ter deciding  that  our  two  young  people 
were  worthy  of  each  other,  after  assur- 
ing Margaret  that  I  had  the  best  of 
reasons  for  knowing  Horace  Thayer's 
feelings  ;  after  wondering  whether  Miss 
Betsy  was  of  my  opinion  that  Ida's  love 
for  him  had  never  been  awakened  ;  af- 
ter speculating  on  what  this  meeting 
at  such  a  time  would  do  for  her ;  after 
a  full  tribute  to  Laura  Ridgeley's  gen- 
tle nature  and  affectionate  heart,  and  a 
confession  that,  noble  and  conscien- 
tious as  Colonel  Ridgeley  was,  he*  had 
not  done  quite  all  his  duty  as  regarded 
his  wife,  —  I  went  to  my  own  room  in 
hopes  of  a  quiet  night,  in  which  I  was, 
Margaret  said,  "  to  sleep  off  my  ner- 
vousness." 

But  scarcely  had  I  put  my  feet  on  the 
fender,  and  taken  out  my  hair-pins,  when 
my  excitement  all  came  back  again.  I 
could  not  help  a  kind  of  exasperation 
when  I  thought  of  the  woman  who  had 
lived  her  life,  been  bride,  wife,  and 
mother  without  so  much  as  knowing  it ; 
who  had  had  such  chances  of  living 
the  fullest  life,  to  whom  every  source 
of  happiness,  of  blissfulness  had  been 
opened,  and  all  for  nothing,  —  whilst  I  — 


"Oh  !  "  thought  I,  shutting  my  haniSs  up 

tight,  "if  I  had  only  been  in  her  place," 
and  yet,  not  exactly  in  her  place,  for, 
much  as  I  honor  Randolph  Ridgeley, 
he  is  not  my  notion  of  a  husband. 
The  first  thing  I  ask  of  a  man  is  that 
he  should  be  a  man,  and  act  out  his 
manliness,  not  be  always  stopped  by 
"  some  craven  scruple  of  thinking  too 
precisely  on  the  event "  ;  besides,  old 
maid's  husbands  —  their  dream  hus- 
bands—  are  always  young.  I  would 
rather  marry  Horace  Thayer,  if  there 
were  any  question  of  my  marrying  in 
the  matter. 

So  I  went  on,  fretting  over  the  im- 
possible, wishing  to  take  things  into  my 
own  hands  and  play  Providence,  long- 
ing for  the  old  times  when  fairy  god- 
mothers had  power,  when  the  good 
genius  carried  the  princess  through  the 
air  and  laid  her  by  the  side  of  the 
prince,  till  I  had  used  up  half  the  night, 
and  unfitted  myself  for  anything  better 
than  the  troubled,  starting  sleep  which 
left  me  in  the  morning  gray,  pinched, 
and  wrinkled,  with  a  dilapidated  look 
under  the  eyes  and  round  the  chin  that 
did  not  comfort  me  at  all.  But  there 
was  nothing  for  it  but  patience,  so  I 
made  havelocks  all  that  week,  and  the 
next ;  and  then  came,  like  a  thunder- 
clap to  clear  up  my  leaden  atmosphere, 
this  note  from  Lucy  Thayer  :  — 

"  I  send  you  the  telegram  which  we 
received  last  night.  Isaac  started  this 
morning  for  Washington,  and  will  bring 
him  home  if  possible.  We  want  you  to 
come  here  at  once,  and  help  me  to  get 
ready  for  them.  There  is  no  one  who 
can  take  care  of  Horace  as  you  can." 

The  telegram  was  from  the  colonel 
of  his  regiment. 

"Major  Thayer,  severely  wounded  in 
the  side  in  the  fight  at  Malvern  Hill 
July  2.  Is  on  his  way  to  Washing- 
ton." 

And  the   telegraph   operator  is  the 
kindly  genius,  the  Deus  ex  machi 
our  times.     Let  us  be  thankful  for  what 
he  does  for  us. 

I  leave  for  Keene  to-night. 


1 868.] 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


537 


III. 

THE  war  is  over ;  the  claps  of  thun- 
der which  came  upon  us  in  such  rapid 
succession  —  Sherman's  march,  Lee's 
surrender,  the  assassination,  —  have 
passed  from  over  our  heads,  and  noth- 
ing is  left  of  them  but  low,  distant  rum- 
blings. We  breathe  again ;  indeed, 
more  than  that ;  we  go  about  our  daily 
work  as  we  did  before,  we  are  hungry 
and  thirsty,  we  want  new  clothes,  we 
buy  bargains  of  cheap  lawns  to  be 
made  into  gored  dresses,  we  call  Mrs. 
A's  tea-party  a  bore,  and  wonder  that 
Mrs.  B  did  not  invite  us  to  dinner. 
That  I,  Mary  Gardiner,  should  have 
seen  four  years  of  civil  war,  should  have 
felt  the  foundations  of  the  earth  shake 
under  me  and  the  heavens  seem  about 
to  fall  upon  my  head,  and  that  I  can 
still  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry,  —  still 
talk  my  little  talk  and  fret  my  little  frets, 
look,  act,  and  speak  as  I  did  in  the  old 
times,  is  perhaps  the  most  mysterious 
lesson  I  have  learned.  What  are  these 
clashing  events  but  "the  garment  thou 
seest  Him  by"  ?  nothing  in  themselves. 

I  take  up  my  little  role  of  sympa- 
thizer in  my  love-story,  just  where  I  left 
it  two  years  ago,  when.  I  sat  by  Horace 
Thayer's  bedside  and  listened  while  he 
talked  of  Ida.  What  a  terrible  puller 
do\vn  of  pride  is  sickness  !  Nothing 
but  loss  of  blood  and  its  consequent 
childlike  weakness  would  have  opened 
Horace  Thayer's  heart ;  nothing  else 
would  have  made  the  undemonstrative 
New-Englander,  whose  warmest  caress 
had  been  a  brotherly  shake  of  the  hand, 
whose  confidences  were  as  shy  and  as 
hard  to  surprise  as  a  young  girl's,  speak 
of  himself  and  his  feelings  to  the  nurse, 
who  sat  quietly  by,  ready  to  hand  the 
drink,  to  move  the  pillow,  to  read  the 
newspaper,  and,  best  of  all,  to  listen 
when  talking  was  at  last  allowed. 

So  i  heard  everything,  soothed  and 
sympathized  and  hoped,  and  when  he 
grew  strong  enough  to  walk  about,  and 
I  went  back  to  Newburyport,  sent  him 
the  letter  I  received  from  Colonel 
Ridgeley  in  May,  1865,  saying  that  he 
and  his  daughter  were  to  sail  at  once 


for  Paris,  and  highly  approved  the 
Doctor's  decision,  that  change  of  air 
and  a  sea-voyage  were  needed  for 
Horace  ;  a  decision  which  sent  him  to 
Paris  in  June,  —  solely  for  his  health, 
he  said  to  his  friends. 

And  now  the  postman  brings  me  two 
letters.  We  must  have  the  lady's  first. 
Place  aux  dames,  when  the  question  is 
of  something  from  Paris. 

RUE  DE  LISLE,  July,  1865. 

MY  DEAR  Miss  GARDINER  :  —  This 
is  the  first  half-hour  that  I  have  been 
able  to  call  mine  since  we  arrived,  — 
the  first  half-hour  which  I  could  give 
you  with  a  clear  conscience  ;  anxious  as 
I  have  been  that  you  should  have  early 
news  of  us,  —  news  which  you  certainly 
deserve,  since  we  owe  to  you  so  much 
of  our  present  comfort.  I  wish  you 
could  see  us  in  this  little  appartement, 
Rue  de  Lisle,  on  the  wrong  side  of  the 
Seine,  among  the  old  houses,  in  the 
narrow  streets.  You  could  hardly  find 
us  without  a  guide,  even  if  you  were  set 
down  in  the  street  itself,  and  told  to  stop 
at  No.  71.  First,  you  would  see  71,  — 
then  71  fa's,  and  after  a  doubting  look 
at  the  two  numbers,  you  would  see  no 
possible  entrance  but  a  big  gateway 
which  might  belong  to  either  of  them, 
then  a  long,  narrow  passage  would  car- 
ry you  into  a  court,  in  one  corner  of 
which  you  would  find  the  snuffy  old 
concierge,  in  her  stiff  black  gown,  white 
apron  and  cap,  with  her  face  wrinkled 
as  only  an  old  Frenchwoman's  face 
can  be.  I  made  papa  laugh  last  night 
by  asking  him  what  became  of  all  the 
middle-aged  Frenchwomen  ;  they  are 
all  either  pleasantly  young,  or  horribly 
old,  —  a  mixture  of  snuff  and  wrinkles 
and  funny  gray  curls. 

But  our  old  concierge  will  tell  you  that 
the  stairs  in  the  left-hand  corner  of 
the  court  lead  to  Monsieur  Ridgeley's 
apartments,  au  troisuinc;  and  you  may 
follow  their  windings  up  the  legitimate 
three  stories,  only  to  see  such  names 
as  Mdlle.  Silvestre,  Modiste  ;  Steinfels, 
Peintre,  £c.,  &c.,  on  the  little  visiting- 
cards  which  are  tacked  on  the  doors. 
You  must  go  a  story  higher  before  you 


538 


WJiat  Five  Years  will  do. 


[November, 


are  au  troisieme,  and  straight  before 
you  will  be  "  Randolph  Ridgeley,"  in 
papa's  own  clear  handwriting,  under 
the  little  door-bell  O,  if  you  could 
really  ring  that  door-bell !  if  it  were  any- 
where but  in  my  fancy  that  I  open  the 
door  to  you,  and  show  you  our  tiny 
rooms,  — our  antechamber,  which  serves 
for  a  dining-room  ;  our  little  salon  with 
its  long  French  windows,  pretty  chintz 
curtains  and  cushions ;  the  two  bed- 
rooms opening  out  of  it ;  and,  queerest 
of  all,  the  little,  little  kitchen  about  as 
big  as  a  small-sized  Virginia  pantry,  with 
nothing  more  like  a  fireplace  than  four 
holes  where  you  may  burn  charcoal, 
and  no  water  except  what  is  'f  toted  "  up 
in  buckets  every  morning  on  a  man's 
shoulder. 

And  yet  our  little  French  servant 
Therese  manages  to  give  us  good  coffee 
for  breakfast,  and  the  baker  brings  the 
wonderful  French  rolls,  the  milkman 
the  tiny  can  of  milk.  Indeed,  if  you 
want  anything  in  Paris,  you  have  only 
to  lean  out  of  the  window,  and  present- 
ly somebody  will  call  it  out.  My  little 
canary,  that  you  said  I  could  never 
bring  safely  through  a  voyage,  but  who 
sings  here  as  merrily  as  he  did  in  dear 
old  Virginia,  has  his  own  special  man, 
who  calls  out  three  times  a  week,  "  de 
bon  mouron,  du  mouron  frais,  pozir  les 
petits  oiseaux"  and  I  do  believe  the 
little  fellow  knows  his  voice. 

Yes,  we  are  contented  here,  dear 
Mary ;  papa  is  cheerful,  and  I  am  more 
than  cheerful,  I  am  hopeful.  We  did 
right  to  come.  We  could  do  nothing 
at  home  until  things  had  time  to  settle 
down,  and  the  money  that  papa  invested 
here  in  dear  mamma's  name  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war  brings  enough  to 
live  upon  as  we  are  living  now,  but 
would  do  nothing  for  us  in  America. 
And  I  do  not  believe  it  would  have  been 
possible  for  papa  to  stay  in  Virginia  after 
all  he  has  gone  through,  at  least  without 
some  rest,  some  quiet.  We  have  not 
deserted  our  country,  —  do  not  think  it. 
That  would  seem  to  me  cowardly,  and 
I  am  sure  papa  would  feel  it  so.  We 
shall  go  back  again  some  time,  when  we 
can  forget,  when  some  of  the  bitterness 


has  worn  off;  and  then  we  shall  settle 
down  on  what  is  left  at  the  Manor,  and 
try  to  be  good  citizens.  We  see  South- 
erners here  every  day  who  say  they 
never  want  to  see  America  again,  \vho 
are  trying  to  find  occupation  here,  try- 
ing to  make  homes  for  themselves  here 
or  in  England.  I  do  not  blame  them, 
I  try  not  to  judge  them,  but  I  cannot 
understand  it. 

Do  you  remember  Colonel  Christie  ? 
He  has  entered  himself  as  a  lawyer 
in  the  Middle  Temple,  London.  We 
stayed  at  his  house  at  Bayswater  as 
we  came  through.  He  says  he  never 
intends  to  go  back,  and  Mrs.  Christie 
looks  sad,  and  says,  "Yes,  my  baby 
shall  be  a  little  English  girl."  But  that 
would  be  impossible  for  me,  impossible 
for  papa.  Let  us  stay  here  quietly  till 
we  can  breathe  again,  till  the  old  wounds 
have  healed  over,  and  then  we  shall  go 
back  to  be  good  Union  people  !  You 
know  I  was  always  a  bit  of  a  Northerner, 
and  how  many  times  before  the  war 
have  we  heard  papa  accused  of  being 
tainted  with  abolitionism  when  he  used 
to  talk  of  his  plans  for  bettering  the 
condition  of  our  people.  To  be  sure, 
when  the  war  came,  nobody  doubted 
his  being  a  Virginian  to  his  very  heart. 

This  is  such  weary  work,  —  the  going 
over  it  all  again.  I  never  want  to  think 
of  it,  and  I  won't.  I  '11  tell  you  some- 
thing of  our  life  here,  something  of  my 
hopes,  —  for  I  have  hopes,  hopes  of 
earning  a  little  money  by  my  pictures 
before  long.  Do  you  know  that  Miss 
Bartlett  has  had  an  offer  of  three  thou- 
sand francs  for  her  fine  copy  of  the  pic- 
ture in  the  Luxembourg  Gallery,  the  one 
she  copied  last  year,  and  that  Couture 
himself  said  was  "joliment  bien  peint." 

I  work  very  hard,  and  some  of  the 
artists  say  that  I  improve.  That  this 
should  come  of  the  little  studies  you 
used  to  give  me  years  ago  at  the  Ma- 
nor !  I  am  far  enough  from  satisfying 
myself;  but  sometimes  I  feel  as  if  there 
was  something  not  altogether  poor 
about  my  work. 

We  have  our  quiet  breakfast  in  the 
morning ;  at  ten  o'clock,  I  go  to  Miss 
Bartlett's  room,  and  either  work  there 


1 868.] 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


539 


or  go  with  her  to  the  galleries  ;  then  at 
four  we  meet  papa  at  some  cafe,  and 
take  our  dinner;  after  that  a  stroll  in 
the  gardens,  and  home  to  a  cup  of  tea, 
either  alone  or  brightened  up  by  some 
American  face,  —  some  artist  with  funny 
stories  of  Bohemian  life,  some  new- 
comer, who  does  not  know  where  to  find 
cheap  apartments,  and  whose  rooms  at 
the  hotel  are  too  much  for  his  purse. 

We  are  sometimes  very  merry  over 
our  troubles,  and  the  Mondays  when 
the  galleries  are  closed  are  always  holi- 
days. We  make  cheap  excursions  to 
St.  Cloud  by  the  American  Tramway, 
to  Auteuiel  in  the  omnibus,  to  Versailles 
by  the  chemin  de  fer,  rive  gauche,  and, 
best  of  all,  through  the  streets  of 
Paris. 

WTe  had  the  most  delicious  time  yes- 
terday, going  over  Madame  de  Sevigne's 
'old  home,  the  Hotel  Canaveral,  —  Miss 
Bartle'tt  told  me  of  it,  —  a  quaint  French 
house,  not  a  palace  (it  is  so  nice  to  be 
shown  something  that  is  not  a  palace), 
off  in  the  old  part  of  the  city,  among  the 
narrow  streets.  There  they  show  you 
the  very  room  where  so  many  witty 
things  have  been  said,  Mme.  de  Se- 
vigne's salon,  all  filled  with  little  white, 
dimity-spread  cots,  for  the  Hotel  Cana- 
veral is  a  boarding-school  for  boys  now. 
I  saw  the  portrait  which  hangs  in  her 
boudoir,  —  a  recitation-room  now,  —  the 
very  portrait  from  which  the  vignette  in 
the  edition  at  the  Manor  was  taken. 
You  remember  it,  with  the  curls  tied  to- 
gether at  the  temples  and  hanging  out 
from  the  face. 

How  like  old  times  it  seemed !  —  the 
times  when  we  used  to  have  our  even- 
ing readings  at  home ;  when  a  good 
translation  of  one  of  those  stupid,  witty 
letters  in  the  morning  made  you  prom- 
ise me  some  little  bits  for  the  evening, 
picked  out  of  the  French  memoirs  and 
histories  in  the  library  ;  when  poor,  dear 
mamma  would  beg  for  something  more 
amusing,  and  Major  Thayer  would  bring 
the  last  novel  that  Mr.  Johnstone  had 
sent  from  Richmond.  Who  thought 
then  that  he  would  be  Major  Thayer  ? 
We  had  majors  and  colonels  all  around 
us,  but  that  Horace  Thayer  would  have 


anything   to   do  with   the  army  would 
have  been  like  a  fairy-story  to  us. 

How  many  things  that  have  happened 
since  that  would  have  sounded  like 
a  sad  story  if  we  had  heard  of  them 
then.  I  feel  old  enough  when  I  think  of 
the  last  five  years  ;  they  seem  like  fifty. 

Papa  wants  me  to  ask  you  to  tell  us 
something  of  Mr.  Thayer.  That  he 
reached  home  safely,  in  spite  of  his  ter- 
rible wound,  we  know;  that  he  was 
slowly  getting  better  in  his  quiet  New 
Hampshire  home,  of  which  he  used  to 
talk  sometimes,  we  know  too,  but  noth- 
ing else.  How  was  it  possible  to  hear 
anything  with  the  armies  between  us, 
and  then,  that  terrible  last  spring,  Gen- 
eral Lee's  surrender,  and  all  that  hap- 
pened around  us,  with  our  hurried 
journey  to  New  York,  and  the  ocean 
voyage,  that  seemed  to  put  an  end  to 
our  former  life,  and  bring  us  a  new  one 
in  this  old  world  which  is  a  new  world 
to  us!  Yes,  I  am  so  old  now  that  I 
look  back  wondering  at  myself  as  I  re- 
member the  old  times,  they  seem  so  far 
removed  from  me.  And  yet  the  duties 
are  the  same,  —  the  same  save  a  greater 
necessity  to  cheer  papa,  to  make  things 
bright  for  him  here  in  this  new  place, 
where  everything  is  so  strangely  differ- 
ent from  our  old  life.  It  is  terrible  for 
him,  —  a  terrible  past  to  look  back  upon, 
and  a  sad  future  to  look  forward  to. 
I  think  poor  dear  mamma  was  kindly 
spared  all  this.  How  could  she  have 
borne  it  ?  As  it  was,  our  troubles  killed 
her,  —  she,  made  only  for  prosperous 
times,  so  good,  so  sweet,  so  gentle  as 
she  was.  One  thing  I  must  say,  —  if  I 
lived  a  thousand  years  I  could  never 
forget  Horace  Thayer's  thoughtfulness 
for  her,  nor  all  that  he  did  for  us  at  that 
terrible  time  when  the  Northern  armies 
were  upon  us,  and  she  was  dying. 

How  foolish  I  am  to  talk  to  you  of  all 
this,  when  I  only  meant  to  satisfy  your 
kind  friendship  by  telling  of  our  life 
here  ;  not  a  sad  life  for  me,  —  do  not 
think  so  ;  I  am  too  busy,  my  heart  and 
my  head  are  too  full,  —  only  sad  for 
papa  because  he  has  no  one,  nothing. 
He  can  have  no  associates  ;  the  Ameri- 
cans here,  the  Northerners,  cannot  look 


540 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


[November, 


kindly  upon  him,  and  the  few  Confed- 
erates who  are  living  poorly  here  are 
not  friendly  either. 

It  is  not  a  happy  thing  to  be  so  clear- 
sighted, so  gentle  in  judgment,  as  papa 
is.  To  see  both  sides  of  a  question,  to 
be  able  to  put  yourself  in  the  place  of 
either  party,  to  understand  how  each 
may  be  right  from  his  stand-point,  to  be 
free  from  prejudice,  not  carried  away  by 
feeling,  what  is  it  but  to  lay  one's  self 
open  to  distrust  from  both  sides,  to  ac- 
cusations of  lukewarmness  ;  and  then 
at  last  to  be  obliged  to  choose  almost 
against  one's  conscience  ?  Poor  papa  ! 
sometimes  I  am  proud  that  he  chose 
the  losing  side,  for  seeing  so  clearly  as 
he  did  that  it  would  be  so ;  sometimes  I 
wonder  still  what  course  would  have 
been  the  right  one.  And  this  is  the 
sting  for  him.  He  has  never  known, 
never  been  able  to  see  clearly,  which 
was  the  right  path.  I  suppose  partisans 
on  both  sides  will  say  this  is  impossible, 
but  it  is  true.  I  have  thought  that 
such  a  life  as  papa's  —  a  student's  life, 
quiet  and  introverted,  with  his  simple 
duties  as  a  Virginia  gentleman  marked 
out  for  him,  and  his  literary  tastes  keep- 
ing him  apart  from  all  around  him  —  was 
a  poor  preparation  for  the  rush  of  events 
that  swept  us  all  before  them.  To  go 
with  his  State,  with  his  friends,  with  the 
people  he  was  so  proud  of  belonging  to, 
it  seemed  easy  enough,  straightforward 
enough,  to  Mr.  Johnstone,  to  the  Chris- 
ties, to  mamma,  to  me  then  ;  but  now, 

—  now  I  can  see  what  it  was  to  papa, 
a  struggle  for  light  when  there  was  no 
light,  a  terrible  conflict  of  duties.     I  do 
believe,  I  always  shall  believe,  that  the 
turning-point,  the   weight   that   turned 
the  scale,  was  a  chivalrous  feeling  that 
led  him  to  throw  himself  with  the  weak- 
er side,  —  who   but   he   thought    then 
that  it  was  the  weaker? 

What  a  rambling  letter  I  am  writing 
to  you  !  Here  is  Therese  with  the  wai- 
ter of  tea,  and  papa  with  some  old  en- 
gravings he  has  picked  up  on  the  quays, 

—  such  wonderful  things,  and  for  a  few 
francs.  You  drag  them  out  from  under  a 
pile  of  dingy  things,  —  and  dingy  enough 
they  are    themselves,   but    sometimes 


they  are  prizes.     They  are  cheap  luxu- 
ries, almost  the  only  ones  we  can  afford. 

Think  only,  dear  Miss  Gardiner,  that 
we  are  not  unhappy  ;  homesick  some- 
times, sad  enough  sometimes,  but  not 
unhappy,  and  always  grateful  for  what 
you  have  done  to  make  it  easier  for  us 
here.  What  would  have  become  of  us 
in  our  first  bewilderment,  in  our  present 
loneliness,  without  the  help  you  secured 
for  us  by  your  letter  to  Miss  Bartlett. 
She  has  been  very  kind,  helping  in 
every  way,  —  to  find  our  apartments,  to 
arrange  all  our  housekeeping  details, 
and,  best  of  all,  to  give  me  a  hope  for 
the  future  by  seeing  something  more 
than  a  school-girl's  scrawls  in  the  rude 
pencil-sketches  and  sepia  daubings 
which  I  flung  into  my  trunks  as  clear 
remembrances  of  the  old  Manor  which 
we  can  never  see  again  as  it  was. 

Does  Miss  Bartlett  write  to  you? 
She  has  some  ideas  that  cannot  be  real, 
—  it  is  all  her  imagination,  and  nothing 
but  nonsense.  I,  with  papa's  happiness 
in  my  hand,  I  hope  no  one  who  knows 
me  could  believe  that  I  can  have  any 
thought  nearer  than  him.  And  then 
I  know  what  a  man  ought  to  be  ;  I  have 
seen  papa's  life,  and  others  ;  I  know 
what  sacrifice  and  self-denial  mean, 
how  a  man  may  do  his  duty  first  and 
not  think  of  himself. 

I  have  read  over  my  last  sentence 
since  I  gave  papa  his  tea.  It  sounds 
like  girlish  nonsense,  and  so  it  is.  A 
woman  of  twenty-two  should  be  above 
such  affectation  ;  if  I  could  do  it  with- 
out mutilating  my  letter,  I  would  tear  it 
off, — as  it  is,  it  simply  means  that  a 
pleasant  artist  friend  of  Miss  Bartlett's 
has,  Miss  Bartlett  thinks,  a  higher  opin- 
ion of  Ida  Ridgeley  than  she  deserves 
or  desires.  Love  to  all,  to  your  sister, 
to  all  your  friends,  from  your  loving 

PUPJ1>  IDA. 

Well,  the  last  page  of  this  letter  is  c 
frank,  and  bears  its  meaning  as  plain] 
on  the  face  of  it,  as  can  be  expected 
from  a  young  woman  of  two-and-twenty. 
Let  us  see  what  the  young  gentleman 
"simply  means."      His    letter 
Isaac  Thayer :  — 


1868.] 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


541 


PARIS,  July,  1865. 

MY  DEAR  BROTHER  :  —  I  post  this 
letter  at  Paris,  where  I  arrived  this 
morning  after  a  voyage  not  all  delight- 
ful. Our  passengers  suffered  all  the 
disagreeable  consequences  of  tossing 
weather,  but  my  visits  to  the  Folgers, 
and  my  boyish  trips  in  their  fishing- 
sloops,  made  me  ready  to  help  or  to 
laugh  as  the  humor  took  me,  and  the 
ocean  gave  me  plenty  to  look  at.  I 
will  not  bore  you  with  any  of  my  sky 
and  sea  experiences.  One  thing,  how- 
ever, would  have  interested  you,  who 
watch  the  sky  as  carefully  as  a  mer- 
chant does  the  stock  exchange.  It  was 
the  woolly,  fleecy  look  of  the  clouds 
as  we  neared  this  side.  Everything 
seemed  softened  and  near  ;  great  heaps 
of  white  wool  rolled  up  from  the  horizon, 
and  seemed  to  touch  the  mast-head. 
You  may  account  for  it  philosophically ; 
I  looked  at  it  with  a  curious  wonder 
whether  the  earth  was  to  be  as  strange 
as  the  sky.  And  strange  it  was  ;  the 
little  old-fashioned  Boulogne-sur-Mer, 
the  queer  French  watering-place,  with 
its  quaint  bathing-machines  on  the 
beach,  its  market  square  in  front  of  the 
cathedral,  and  the  breezy,  shaded  walks 
on  the  walls,  were  sufficiently  unlike 
Rye  Beach,  Nantasket,  or  the  Maine 
coast  to  make  me  realize  that  I  was  in 
a  foreign  country,  if  the  heavy-looking 
men  in  blouses,  the  stout  women  in 
short  petticoats  and  white  caps,  did  not 
contrast  enough  with  our  wide-awake, 
shambling,  lean  countrymen  and  our 
anxious-looking,  intelligent  women. 

A  most  melancholy  country  it  is,  that 
the  railroad  carries  you  through,  be- 
tween Boulogne  and  Paris,  —  a  country 
which  would  make  you  despair  more 
than  did  the  old  fields  of  Virginia  in  the 
far-off  times.  Long,  dreary  stretches  of 
sand,  glaring  in  the  sunshine,  with  here 
and  there  a  cluster  of  stone  huts,  —  an 
irretrievable  country  ;  I  wondered  what 
had  become  of  la  belle  France. 

But  Paris,  —  I  am  in  Paris,  safe 
through  the  octroi,  the  cabmen,  the 
porters,  and  on  the  second  floor  of 
the  snug  little  Hotel  des  fitats  Unis, 
Rue  d'Outin,  that  Frank  Richards  rec- 


ommended, well  cared  for  by  the  kindly 
Madame  Robin,  who  piques  herself  on 
her  English,  and  who  thinks  so  much 
of  Americans. 

Lucy  asks  why  I  say  nothing  about 
my  side.  My  dear  sister,  I  have  noth- 
ing to  say.  So  far,  the  wound  has  given 
me  no  trouble,  and,  should  it  break  out 
again,  I  am  in  good  hands  here.  Do 
not  be  anxious  about  me,  I  shall  do 
well  enough.  Colonel  Ridgeley  is  my 
most  anxious  thought  at  present.  I 
shall  go  to  the  American  bankers,  and 
among  them  I  must  find  his  address  ; 
but  I  cannot  throw  off  the  weight  which 
lies  upon  me  when  I  think  of  what  may 
have  happened.  It  is  two  years  since 
we  have  heard  anything  direct,  nothing 
but  Miss  Gardiner's  note  to  Lucy,  telling 
of  the  going  to  Europe  last  spring.  I 
shall  find  them,  however,  for  we  know 
they  are  in  Paris  unless  they  have  en- 
tirely changed  their  plans. 

No,  I  have  not  forgotten  all  that  we 
said  to  each  other  the  evening  before  I 
left  you.  There  is  now  no  reason  but 
my  want  of  means  to  prevent  me  from 
trying  to  win  Miss  Ridgeley ;  and  that, 
please  God  to  give  me  good  health, 
cannot  long  stand  in  my  way,  with  the 
whole  West  before  me,  with  my  educa- 
tion, and  with  the  .helping  hand  which 
you,  my  dear  brother,  have  held  out  for 
me  to  put  mine  into  ever  since  the  day 
you  took  up  your  duty  of  elder  brother. 

Who  would  not  be  an  American  with 
the  future  in  his  own  hands  ?  I  shall 
not  hesitate,  I  shall  speak  at  once,  at 
whatever  risk  to  myself.  I  hold  it  cow- 
ardly for  a  man  who  knows  his  own 
mind  to  keep  silence  from  a  selfish  fear 
of  a  repulse.  He  has  no  right  to  keep 
a  woman  ignorant  of  his  intentions  ; 
nothing  seems  to  me  more  unmanly 
than  the  "  caution  which  waits  to  be  as- 
sured of  success,"  which  will  not  com- 
mit itself  to  the  chances  of  defeat,  which 
gives  all  risks  and  takes  none. 

Shall  I  ever  cure  myself  of  writing  to 
you  of  my  own  nearest  concerns  ?  It 
is  your  fault,  you  have  taught  me  to 
do  it;  and,  because  you  know  me  so 
well,  others  know  little  of  me. 

The   city  has   waked    up  now,  the 


542 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


[November, 


shops  are  opening,  and  the  carriages 
beginning  to  rattle  at  an  hour  when  the 
day  is  half  over  at  home,  and  Madame 
Robin  offers  a  valet  de  place  to  show 
me  the  wonders  of  Paris.  I  thank  the 
broken-down  seedy-looking  individual, 
who  stands  hat  in  hand  assuring  me 
that  nobody  can  show  me  what  he  can, 
Paris  a  fondj  but  I  am  too  poor  for 
such  a  troublesome  luxury,  and  I  prefer 
making  my  own  mistakes  and  being 
cheated  in  my  own  way. 

II  P.  M. 

Tired  out  and  disappointed  !  I  have 
tried  all  the  prominent  American  bank- 
ers, seen  their  books,  their  letter- 
boxes, but  no  clew.  Of  course  it  is 
only  a  question  of  time  ;  the  police  can 
give  me  a  list  of  all  residents,  but  I 
had  hoped  to  see  them  to-day. 

Since  banking  hours  I  have  been  in 
the  gardens  of  the  Tuileries,  looking  at 
the  French  bonnes  flirting  with  the 
Zouaves  ;  the  wonderfully  dressed  little 
children  feeding  the  birds  ;  the  shaky 
old  gentlemen  sitting  on  the  benches, 
for  which  you  do  not  pay  ;  and  the  well- 
to-do  shop-women  on  the  chairs  for 
which  you  do  pay.  I  wondered,  with 
the  children,  at  the  elegant  pony  car- 
riage drawn  by  a  team  of  goats  ;  and 
gave  a  poor  boy  two  sous,  that  he  might 
ride  on  one  of  the  wooden  ponies  which 
whirl  around  so  fast.  Then  I  witnessed 
the  astonishing  performances  of  Punch 
and  Judy,  whose  witticisms  and  allusions 
were  lost  upon  me.  We  have  read  of 
all  these  things  so  often,  and  pictured 
them  to  ourselves  in  such  a  perversely 
wrong-headed,  left-handed  way,  that 
seeing  them  as  they  really  are  is  like 
rubbing  our  eyes  to  find  ourselves 
awake  and  the  things  around  us  changed 
from  dreams  to  realities.  And  yet  Miss 
Betsy  would  be  glad  to  believe  that 
the  cafe  chantant  where  I  took  my 
supper  to-night  was  no  reality,  but  only 
a  bad  dream.  Poor  Miss  Betsy  — 

Wednesday  night. 

I  think  I  can  write  steadily  when  I 
once  get  started ;  but  how  to  begin  with 
every  nerve  alive,  every  sense  acute; 
with  my  blood  tingling  through  my 


veins  in  a  way  to  make  all  life  that  I 
have  known  before  only  a  dull  sleep  ! 
I  have  found  them,  — found  them  in  the 
easiest  way  ;  after  all  my  search  at  the 
bankers,  my  application  to  the  police 
registry,  —  found  them  by  the  merest 
chance,  let  me  say  by  the  happiest 
luck.  I  believe  in  luck,  and  in  my  own 
luck  from  this  time  forth. 

Did  you  ever  hear  of  the  Pare  Mon- 
ceau,  the  prettiest  little  place  in  Paris  ? 

—  a  bit  of  the  country  let  into  the  town, 
lovely  with   trees    and  lake    and  foun- 
tain ;  a  place  to  come   upon   as  I  did 
last  Monday  at  the  end  of  a  tiresome, 
sight-seeing  day  ;  strolling  around  it  in 
a  listless,  stupid  way,  not t  knowing,  not 
dreaming  that  my  happiness  lay  before 
me.     How  we  grope  like  blind  people 
for  what   is   just    beside    us !     I   had 
looked  nervously  into  the  faces  of  every 
group   of    foreigners    I    had    met   that 
day  ;    the    galleries,   the  palaces   were 
passed    through    in   a   way  that   must 
have   distracted    my  guides.     I    could 
not  have  sworn  to  having  seen  a  pic- 
ture.    I  was   sure  of  nothing  but  the 
Venus  of  Milo,  and  a  disappointing  suc- 
cession of  English  and  American  faces, 
into  which  I   had   rudely  stared.     But 
here,  when    I   had  given  up   all  hope, 
when  I  was  thinking  only  of  the  mor- 
row's chances  ;  here,  quietly  seated  in 
the   shade   of  a  little  cluster  of  trees, 

—  I  play  with  my  happiness,  it  seems 
so  beyond  my  deserts  as  not  to  belong 
to  me,  —  here  they  were  both,  Colonel 
Ridgeley  and  his  daughter  ;  he  looking 
older,  careworn,  but  still  himself,  and  she 
all  that  I  knew  she  would  be,  —  all  that 
even  in  the  darkest  times,  when  I  could 
promise    myself  nothing,  it   made   me 
happy  to  think  that  she  would  be.     She 
was  startled,  and  as  I  saw  it  I  tried  to 
reason  myself  into  quietness,  and  say 
that  it  was    only  the    sight   of  an   old 
friend,  and  that  I  was  a  fool  to  think  i 
anything  else  ;    but,  with  this  dancing 
happiness  going  through  me,  how  could 
I  listen  to  anything  reasonable  ? 

We  talked  through  the  surprise  of 
meeting,  asked  and  answered  the  hun- 
dred questions  that  rose;  spoke  of 
friends  left  behind,  and  thought  of  those 


1 868.] 


What  Five  Years  will  do. 


543 


\vho  were  never  to  be  seen  again  ;  then 
we  walked  home  through  the  gay 
streets  to  their  quaint  little  rooms. 

To  sit  there  by  Colonel  Ridgeley's 
side,  and  see  Ida  busying  herself  with 
the  little  preparations  for  tea,  while  I 
told  of  you  and  of  Lucy,  and  heard  of 
their  daily  life,  their  plans  for  the  future  ! 
—  I  think  I  am  a  little  crazy  to-night,  I 
shall  not  write  you  any  more. 

Yes,  Colonel  Ridgeley  walked  to  the 
bridge  with  me,  and  we  stood  looking 
over  the  parapet  at  the  great  pile  of 
the  Louvre,  which  stretched  out  before 
us,  while  he  spoke  for  the  first  time  of 
the  war,  of  himself  in  connection  with 
it.  He  said  very  little,  but  that  little 
was  said  with  an  earnestness  that 
makes  every  word  stand  out  before  me. 
"  I  have  lived  to  feel  that  in  the  most 
important  decision  of  my  life  I  decided 
wrongly ;  I  have  lived  to  be  glad  that 
events  have  proved  me  in  the  wrong  ; 
but,  believe  me,  Major  Thayer,  utterly 
blinded  to  our  country's  claims  as  we 
may  have  seemed  to  you,  the  dupes  of 
intriguing  politicians  as  we  certainly 
were,  I  am  not  the  only  Southerner 
who  thought  he  was  doing  his  duty  in 
standing  by  his  State.  Not  for  slavery, 
—  you  know  what  my  feeling  has  al- 
ways been  there,  —  but  because  we  real- 
ly believed  that  our  first  duty  was  to  our 
State,  —  to  go  with  her,  right  or  wrong. 
Does  this  seem  impossible  to  you  ? 
When  you  have  lived  as  long  as  I  have, 
you  may  come  to  know  what  it  is  to  be 
torn  by  doubt  as  to  the  right." 
"But  now  — ''said  I. 
"Yes,  now  I  see  my  way  clearly, 
hard  as  that  way  may  be,  to  stay  here 
a  few  months,  —  long  enough  to  give 
myself  breathing  time,  and  to  allow  some 
bitter  feelings  at  home  to  pass  away, 
and  then  to  go  back  and  follow  the  ex- 
ample set  by  some  of  our  best  men  in 
;  to  reconcile  our  people  to  what 
is  and  must  be.  Nor  am  I  unhappy ; 
I  see  hope  for  us  in  the  future,  I  see  a 
clear  path  of  duty  before  me.  I  am 
not  to  be  pitied,"  he  continued,  shaking 
my  hand  as  he  said  good  night :  "  those 
are  to  be  pitied  who  will  not  accept  the 
inevitable,  —  those  of  my  countrymen 


who  have  exiled  themselves  forever  in 
a  cowardly  despair." 

Yesterday  morning  found  me  as  de- 
sponding as  the  day  before  I  had  been 
hopeful,  but  I  would  not  send  my  letter 
till  I  knew  my  fate  ;  and  now  — •  that 
blessed  little  Pare  Monceau  —  I  have 
seen  it  again,  seen  it  with  Ida  alone. 
I  think  there  is  a  broken  colonnade 
there,  which  stretches  beside  the  love- 
liest of  walks,  along  which  go  wander- 
ing the  merriest  of  children  and  the 
archest  of  bonnes,  who  bent  knowing 
glances  toward  the  young  foreign 
couple,  one  of  whom  never  saw  them  till 
he  knew  how  happy  he  was.  I  do  not 
know  how  soon  I  took  her  home  to  her 
father,  —  a  man  in  a  three-cornered  hat 
came  to  say  that  the  gates  were  shut  at 
dark,  —  but  Colonel  Ridgeley  did  not 
look  surprised  when  I  told  him  how 
long  I  had  loved  her.  He  said,  there 
on  that  same  bridge  where  we  had 
talked  two  nights  before,  "It  is  true 
that  there  was  a  time  when  the  thought 
of  my  daughter's  marrying  out  of  her 
own  circle,  out  of  my  own  peculiar  con- 
nections, would  have  been  a  very  pain- 
ful thing  to  me  ;  perhaps  I  should  even 
have  thought  such  a  connection  an  un- 
equal one ;  but  a  larger  knowledge,  a 
more  extended  experience,  have  taught 
me  a  truer  wisdom.  And  for  yourself, 
you  must  not  think  that  I  have  been  so 
careless  a  father  as  to  trust  my  daugh- 
ter so  entirely  and  so  intimately  to  your 
society  without  remembering  that  this 
might  be  the  result.  I  know  you,  Hor- 
ace, very  thoroughly,  I  believe ;  and 
there  is  no  one  to  whom  I  would  give 
her  more  readily.  My  dear  boy,  there 
is  nothing  so  strange  in  all  this  ;  is  the 
friendship  of  years  to  go  for  nothing? 
did  you  not  believe  it  to  be  sincere  ?  " 
After  that,  my  dear  brother,  do  you 
wonder  that  I  came  home  happy  ? 
Your  brother, 

HORACE. 

After  these  letters  I  have  only  one 
thing  to  say.  I  am  glad  it  was  not 
the  police  that  brought  them  together. 
That  would  have  been  more  prosaic 
than  even  the  telegraph  official. 


544  ^%y  DwtingS'  [November, 


MY     DARLINGS. 

MY  Rose,  so  red  and  round, 
My  Daisy,  darling  of  the  summer  weather, 
You  must  go  down  now,  and  keep  house  together, 
Low  underground  ! 

O  little  silver  line 

Of  meadow  water,  ere  the  cloud  rise  darkling 
Slip  out  of  sight,  and  with  your  comely  sparkling 

Make  their  hearth  shine. 

Leaves  of  the  garden  bowers, 
The  frost  is  coming  soon,  —  your  prime  is  over; 
So  gently  fall,  and  make  a  soft,  warm  cover 

To  house  my  flowers. 

Lithe  willow,  too,  forego 

The  crown  that  makes  you  queen  of  woodland  graces, 
Nor  leave  the  winds  to  shear  the  lady  tresses 

From  your  drooped  brow. 

Oak,  held  by  strength  apart 

From  all  the  trees,  stop  now  your  stems  from  growing, 
And  send  the  sap,  while  yet  'tis  bravely  flowing, 

Back  to  your  heart. 

And  ere  the  autumn  sleet 
Freeze  into  ice,  or  sift  to  bitter  snowing, 
Make  compact  with  your  peers  for  overstrowing 

My  darlings  sweet. 

So  when  their  sleepy  eyes 
Shall  be  unlocked  by  May  with  rainy  kisses, 
They  to  the  sweet  renewal  of  old  blisses 

Refreshed  may  rise. 

Lord,  in  that  evil  day 

When  my  own  wicked  thoughts  like  thieves  waylay  me, 
Or  when  pricked  conscience  rises  up  to  slay  me, 

Shield  me,  I  pray. 

Ay,  when  the  storm  shall  drive, 

Spread  thy  two  blessed  hands  like  leaves  above  me, 
And  with  thy  great  love,  though  none  else  should  love  me, 

Save  me  alive  ! 

Heal  with  thy  peace  my  strife  ; 
And  as  the  poet  with  his  golden  versing 
Lights  his  low  house,  give  me,  thy  praise  rehearsing, 

To  light  my  life. 

Shed  down  thy  grace  in  showers, 
And  if  some  roots  of  good,  at  thy  appearing, 
Be  found  in  me,  transplant  them  for  the  rearing 

Of  heavenly  flowers. 


1868.] 


Foreign  Faces. 


545 


FOREIGN     FACES. 


rT*HE  value  and  significance  of  the 
-I  human  face  is  hardly  appreciated 
in  our  industrial  life.  So  many  of  us 
are  intent  upon  the  same  thing  that  all 
our  faces  have  but  one  meaning ;  so 
much  monotony,  very  often  ignoble,  is 
tiresome.  We  are  classified  by  our 
life,  and  fall  under  a  type,  —  either  the 
clerical,  the  mercantile,  or  the  politi- 
cal type.  The  unending  succession  of 
variations  of  these  types  is  not  stimu- 
lating to  artists  or  poets.  The  novel- 
ist, to  find  a  subject  that  interests  him, 
has  to  go  down  to  the  picturesque  and 
vagabond  classes.  He  carefully  avoids 
the  respectable  ;  they  may  point  his 
moral,  but  cannot  adorn  his  tale. 

In  that  great  period  of  modern  Eu- 
rope which  succeeded  to  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  called  man  from  renuncia- 
tions and  asceticisms  to  his  natural 
life,  which  completely  set  aside  me- 
diaeval inspirations,  and  gave  us  the 
natural  and  humanizing  works  of  Da 
Vinci,  Michael  Angelo,  Titian,  and 
Tintoret,  of  Rabelais,  Montaigne,  Cor- 
neille,  Cervantes,  Chaucer,  and  Shake- 
speare, —  spirits  that  fed  themselves  at 
those  twin  sources  of  all  good  and  all 
beauty,  nature  and  Greek  antiquity,  — 
the  human  face  was  a  poem,  individual, 
charged  with  its  own  burden  of  mean- 
ing, marked  with  the  character  of  its 
personal  and  uncommon  experience. 
But  to-day  we  have  so  systematized 
everything,  our  social  life  is  so  per- 
fectly organized,  we  are  in  such  public 
and  close  communion,  that  we  have 
obliterated  all  striking  differences  ;  w^e 
resemble  each  other.  All  of  us  have 
the  same  story  to  tell ;  we  tell  it  in  the 
same  language;  we  carefully  avoid  a 
peculiar  experience  and  an  uncommon 
expression.  The  press  and  the  pulpit 
have  given  the  people  fade  phrases  and 
trite  sentiment  in  place  of  the  racy  and 
fresh  expressions  which  were  the  out- 
come of  their  occupation  and  of  their 
idiosyncrasies  of  character. 

VOL.  xxii.  —  NO.  133,  35 


In  our  country,  which  is  the  most 
perfect  result  of  modern  ideas,  the 
uniformity  of  life,  and  consequent  uni- 
formity of  faces,  is  more  apparent  than 
in  continental  Europe  ;  for  in  Europe 
there  are  whole  populations  not  yet 
out  of  mediaeval  ideas,  others  that  yet 
remain  bound  to  those  of  the  First 
Empire.  There  are  provinces  in  the 
middle  of  France  that  live  by  the  ideas 
and  passions  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
In  Bretagne,  for  example,  it  is  said 
that  the  peasants  have  the  naive  faith 
of  the  time  of  the  good  king  Saint 
Louis,  and  live  entirely  in  the  thir- 
teenth century.  Among,  such  people 
you  find  the  average  face  is  not  to  be 
classed  as  clerical,  political,  or  mer- 
cantile ;  as  that  of  trader,  gambler,  or 
grasper. 

From  the  provinces  of  France,  from 
the  heart  of  the  solitary  and  simple 
life  of  the  country,  young  men  go  to 
Paris.  They  make  the  glory  of  France. 
They  are  not  modelled  after  common 
types  ;  they  have  not  been  made  by 
newspapers  and  pulpits  ;  they  are 
themselves.  One  day  it  was  Rabelais 
from  Chinnon,  Montaigne  from  Peri- 
gorcl.  Napoleon  from  Corsica,  Lamen- 
nais  from  Saint-Malo,  Lamartine  from 
Macon,  Millet  from  Greville.  Although 
Moliere,  Rousseau,  and  George  Sand, 
three  great  personalities,  three  remark- 
able faces,  were  born  in  cities,  the  life 
of  Rousseau  derived  all  its  beauty  and 
all  its  literary  charm  from  his  experi- 
ence in  the  country  ;  the  same  may  be 
said  of  George  Sand.  As  for  Moliere, 
he  lived  at  a  time  when  Paris,  still  a 
mediaeval  city,  occupied  by  the  pow- 
dered and  ruffled  and  ribboned  gallants 
of  the  court  of  Louis  XIII.,  was  varied 
and  picturesque. 

We  build  so  rapidly  to-day,  that, 
unlike  our  ancestors,  who  always  lived 
in  the  houses  of  their  forefathers,  we 
live  in  our  own  shells,  and  our  cities 
always  correspond  with  the  actual  gert- 


546 


Foreign  Faces. 


[November, 


eration.  The  monotony  and  system  of 
our  life  does  not  produce  individuals, 
but  general  types  of  a  common  char- 
acter. What  we  call  the  American 
face  is  high-browed,  cold-eyed,  thin- 
lipped  ;  it  has  a  dry  skin,  long  nose, 
high  cheek-bones  ;  it  is  a  face  wholly 
devoid  of  poetry,  of  sentiment,  of  ten- 
derness, of  imagination  ;  it  is  a  keen, 
sensible,  calculating,  aggressive  face, 
certainly  not  a  face  to  fascinate  or  love. 
It  is  most  interesting  when  it  is  most 
ugly,  like  the  good  Lincoln's.  Happily, 
he  was  an  individual  that  no  system, 
no  routine,  no  official  life,  could  destroy 
or  make  negative.  But  how  many  pub- 
lic functionaries  thought  he  had  a  poor 
face  !  The  average  American  face  has 
not  the  interest  to  me  of  Lincoln's  ;  it 
is  not  so  noble,  so  good.  Lincoln's 
face,  full  of  rude  forms,  expressed  a 
simple,  benevolent,  thoughtful  spirit. 

On  the  Continent  you  will  meet  with 
a  vast  variety  of  physiognomies,  indi- 
vidual, suggestive,  and  often  full  of 
charm.  The  ugliest  faces,  I  suppose, 
are  to  be  found  at  Bale.  The  Swiss 
women  of  the  lower  classes  are  ab- 
surdly ugly.  A  walk  through  Bale 
explained  to  me  why  Holbein  was  the 
greatest  painter  of  ugly  faces  that  the 
world  has  produced,  or  is  likely  ever  to 
produce.  But  I  am  to  speak  especially 
of  faces  seen  at  Paris. 

In  a  students'  restaurant  of  the  Oitar- 
tier  Latin,  for  example,  I  have  ob- 
served romantic  and  beautiful  faces  of 
young  men.  One,  perhaps  from  the 
South  of  France,  had  a  warm,  bronzed 
skin,  warm  eyes,  abundant  black  hair 
falling  upon  either  side  of  a  low, 
square,  white  forehead.  He  had  a 
dreamy,  brooding  face.  It  had  no  trace 
of  trade  or  machinery  ;  it  was  like  a 
troubadour's  song  ;  his  hair  reminded 
me  of  the  curls  of  Antinous  in  the 
Louvre.  Certainly  I  enjoyed  taking 
my  dinner  opposite  to  him.  He  was 
far  better  to  me  than  one  of  the  million 
duplicates  of  Young  America,  whose 
face  is  bare  of  poetry,  romance,  and 
sentiment.  The  face  of  the  young 
American,  regular,  handsome,  full  of 
energy,  will,  decision,  shows  too  much 


the     domination     of    purely     material 
things. 

At  one  time  I  became  interested  in 
two  brothers.  They  were  twins,  about 
twenty -five,  with  comical,  libidinous 
faces.  They  always  dined  with  com- 
pany, bubbled  with  laughter  and  fun, 
and  sang  half  the  time.  They  were 
law  students.  When  they  ate  and 
drank  and  sang,  in  spite  of  their  very 
proper  clothes  they  seemed  like  two 
fauns  strayed  into  modern  Paris.  If 
they  were,  happy  for  the  jury  that  shall 
listen  to  their  pleading,  and  happy  the 
judge  who  shall  hear  their  citations. 
They  revived  a  chapter  of  pagan  my- 
thology, and  suggested  all  the  sport  of 
their  ancestors.  Nature  was  in  full 
force  in  their  great  awkward  bodies. 

The  women  faces  of  Paris  are  of  an 
indescribable  variety.  Paris  draws  to 
herself,  at  one  time  or  another,  the 
most  beautiful  women  of  the  provinces. 
Paris  is  the  gallery  in  which  they  are 
best  seen,  the  salon  where  they  will  be 
the  most  admired.  The  gay  and  unre- 
strained Parisian  does  not  withhold  the- 
expression  of  his  feeling  as  the  Eng- 
lishman does. 

At  the  public  balls  you  will  remark 
the  rare  beauty  of  the  girls,  —  girls  and 
women  of  the  people.  The  black-eyed 
or  blond  Parisian,  slender,  graceful, 
nervous,  all  fire  and  action ;  or  the 
peasant-girl,  large,  round,  soft,  ruddy, 
quiet.  One  obscure  Paris  model,  I 
knew,  was  a  tall  blond  Lombard  girl, 
with  luxuriant  tawrv  hair,  which,  al- 
ways in  "admired  c Border,"  was  sim- 
ply drawn  back  and  twisted  on  the  head. 
She  loved  Victor  Hugo's  books,  was  a 
Red  Republican,  and  would  have  fought 
and  sung  on  the  barricades  like  an 
Amazon  of  Liberty,  with  the  same  care- 
less spirit  that  she  sang  and  sat  in 
Parisian  studios.  She  had  eyes  blue 
as  her  own  Adriatic,  a  finely  formed 
full  mouth,  a  fair  skin,  and  a  superb 
neck,  well  placed.  She  carried  her  head 
like  a  swan.  Although  poor,  almost 
homeless,  no  social  slavery  had  touched 
her.  Her  face  was  wild  and  free  like 
a  Bacchante's.  A  great  painter  could 
have  found  an  immortal  type  in  her 


1 868." 


Foreign  Faces. 


547 


large  noble  face  and  heroic  figure, — 
could  have  seen  under  the  rags  of  her 
poverty  an  antique  virgin,  sister  of  the 
Venus  of  Milo.  How  long  would  an 
artist  have  to  hunt  in  New  Yofk  or 
Boston  for  such  a  type !  We  produce 
one  type,  —  "  the  girl  of  the  period,"  — 
who  generally  overdresses,  who  is  pert 
and  trivial,  who  is  intelligent  and  viva- 
cious, but  dreams  just  as  little  as  her 
brother  the  clerk  or  her  father  the 
banker.  They  have  but  one  idea,  —  it 
is  to  advance.  The  girl  of  the  Conti- 
nent dreams,  feels  poetry,  is  impres- 
sionable, naive,  and  has  sentiment ;  if 
of  the  people,  she  is  generous,  and  re- 
spects her  impulses.  I  have  seen  in 
Paris,  at  the  public  concerts,  French 
girls,  white  and  blond,  demure  and 
frail,  delicate  like  New  England  Sun- 
day-school teachers  ;  looking  at  them, 
you  could  not  expect  anything  but  a 
tract  or  a  hymn,  but  they  give  you 
something  very  different. 

A  type  very  often  seen  is  the  beau- 
tiful dark  woman,  with  an  oval  face, 
dead  olive  skin,  very  pale,  Oriental  eyes 
stained  with  henna,  hair  in  great  flat 
bands  on  the  temples,  coiled  and  twist- 
ed behind,  —  a  type  admired  by  Gau- 
tier,  Baudelaire,  and  De  Musset;  the 
kind  of  woman  of  whom  De  Musset 
wrote,  "  Two  destroying  angels,  sweet 
and  cruel,  walk  invisible  at  her  side  ; 
they  are  Voluptuousness  and  Death.5' 

But  let  us  look  upon  celebrated  faces ; 
there  is  Nillson,  she  who  is  loved 
and  admired  by  all  Paris.  I  have  seen 
her  modest  and  girlish  face,  heard  her 
sweet  voice.  Such  a  face  makes  crit- 
ics eloquent  and  versifiers  poets.  The 
French  commit  excesses  in  describing 
her.  A  writer,  in  one  of  the  first  Re- 
views, tried  to  express  the  meaning 
of  her  eyes,  and  wrote  :  "  The  eye  of 
Christine  Nillson,  now  green,  now  of  a 
limpid  blue  with  gold  reflections,  has 
the  cold  and  cruel  beauty  of  the  blind- 
ing and  shivering  suns  of  the  Falberg, 
always  crowned  with  snow  and  ice  ; 
and  it  also  resembles  that  gulf  of  the 
Maelstrom  about  which  Edgar  Poe 
speaks  to  us,  —  the  strange  and  ravish- 
ing sensation  with  which  it  confounds 


the  spectator,  —  strange  indeed  !  From 
afar,  vague  and  fleeting  apparition,  night 
crowned  with  stars,  —  that  slender  fig- 
ure from  the  North,  when  you  see  her 
close  by,  shows  features  largely  cut  as 
in  the  antique  statues  ;  -the  cheeks  and 
the  chin  are  solid  and  reassuring  like 
strength."  This  interesting  verbal  ex- 
travagance has  some  meaning,  and 
helps  me  to  appreciate  the  suggestive- 
ness  of  the  Swedish  face  of  Christine 
Nillson. 

Another  remarkable  face  at  Paris 
was  Charles  Baudelaire's.  At  twenty- 
one,  rich,  handsome,  having  written  his 
first  verses,  —  his  face  was  said  to  have 
been  of  a  rare  beauty.  The  eyebrow 
pure,  long,  of  a  great  sweep,  covered 
warm  Oriental  eyes,  vividly  colored  ; 
the  eye  was  black  and  deep,  it  em- 
braced, questioned,  and  reflected  what- 
ever surrounded  it ;  the  nose  grace- 
ful, ironical,  with  forms  well  defined, 
the  end  somewhat  rounded  and  pro- 
jecting, made  me  think  of  the  cel- 
ebrated phrase  of  the  poet :  My  soul 
flutters  over  perfumes,  as  the  souls  of 
other  men  flutter  over  music.  The 
mouth  was  arched,  and  refined  by  the 
mind,  and  made  one  think  of  the  splen- 
dor of  fruits.  The  chin  was  rounded, 
but  of  a  proud  relief,  strong  like  that  of 
Balzac.  The  brow  was  high,  broad, 
magnificently  designed,  covered  with 
silken  hair,  which,  naturally  curly,  fell 
upon  a  neck  like  that  of  Achilles. 

Theodore  Rousseau  had  a  face  that 
was  said  to  resemble  one  of  the  black 
bulls  of  his  own  Jura ;  Courbet,  called 
handsome,  resembles  an  Assyrian,  Gau- 
tier,  a  Turkish  Pacha  ;  Ingres's  face  re- 
sembled that  of  a  civilized  gorilla.  He 
was  probably  the  ugliest  and  most  ob- 
stinate man  in  Europe,  —  obstinate  like 
Thiers.  The  noble  and  beautiful  head 
of  George  Sand,  so  superbly  drawn  by 
Couture,  resembles  the  Venus  of  Milo. 
Her  large,  tranquil  eyes  are  almost  as 
celebrated  as  her  romances  ;  they  are 
brooding  and  comprehensive  ;  they  sug- 
gest sacred  and  secret  things.  Liszt 
had  an  uncommon  face  ;  "  nervous, 
floating  loose,  all  the  emotions  of  his 
music,  all  the  fantasies  of  his  impro- 


548 


Foreign  Faces. 


[November, 


visation  passed  upon  his  countenance, 
quick  as  his  fingers  ran  upon  the  keys, 
—  a  moved,  strange,  and  always  inspired 
face."  A  French  portrait-painter,  who 
had  the  talent  of  an  antique  medalist, 
abstracted  all  the  fleeting  expressions 
from  Liszt's  face,  and  "  in  place  of  an 
ephemeral  man  seemed  to  have  copied 
an  immortal  statue." 

French  artists  have  painted  some  of 
the  greatest  modern  heads.  Lamennais 
by  Scheffer,  Napoleon  III.  by  Flan- 
drin,  George  Sand  by  Couture,  Cher- 
ubim by  Ingres,  —  what  American 
faces  and  portraits  shall  we  place  be- 
side these  ?  Lincoln  by  Marshall  ? 
Chief  Justice  Shaw  by  Hunt  ?  and  the 
late.  Mr.  Furness's  portraits  of  women  ? 
they  do  not  represent  so  much  science 
nor  so  much  art  as  the  foreign  work. 

Flandrin's  Napoleon  is  extraordinary. 
It  expresses  a  still  intensity.  It  is  a 
"  grav>  sad,  stern,  heavy,  tiresome,  bad 
face."  Not  as  art,  but  as  character, 
we  place  by  the  side  of  it  Napoleon's 
immortal  American  contemporary,  Mar- 
shall's engraving  of  the  good  Lincoln  ; 
it  is  a  sad,  kind,  simple,  generous  face. 

Delacroix  had  "  a  rude,  square  face, 
small  vivid  black  eyes,  that  shot  their 
glance  from  under  projecting  brows  and 
reminded  one  of  an  etching  of  Rem- 
brandt. He  had  a  profound  and  mel- 
ancholy smile,  a  thin,  open,  trembling 
nostril ;  his  mouth  was  firmly  formed, 
was  like  a  bent  bow  ;  from  it  he  lanced 
his  bitter  words.  He  was  not  beauti- 
ful in  the  eyes  of  good  citizens,  but  he 
had  a  radiant  and  spiritual  face,  intense 
with  emotion  and  thought.  Storms  had 
passed  over  it." 

The  only  two  French  faces  that  re- 
semble Americans  that  I  know  are 
those  of  Favre  and  Ollivier.  Emile  Olli- 
vier  looks  like  a  Bostonian,  and,  at  the 
first  glance,  Jules  Favre  like  a  New 
England  clergyman.  But  as  you  look 
at  Favre's  bold  and  aggressive  face, 
you  find  in  it  that  indescribable  some- 
thing which  all  foreign  faces  have,  which 
scarcely  any  American  face  has,  which 
I  suppose  is  the  result  of  sentiments 
and  pictures,  and  statues  and  music, 
and  of  things  that  never  touch  an 


American's  life,  but  which  are  the 
habitual  experience  of  a  Frenchman. 
His  face  has  not  the  hardness  and  cold- 
ness of  our  own,  it  seems  to  have  a 
greatA  range  of  expression,  is  more 
mobile,  and  fuller  in  gradation  ;  even 
Guizot's,  thin  and  poor  like  a  parson's, 
severe  like  a  theologian's,  has  a  look 
that  assures  you  he  has  not  spent  his 
life  upon  local  things. 

The  variety  of  the  type  of  face  upon 
the  Continent,  and  especially  in  Paris,  is 
not  only  to  be  attributed  to  the  greater 
play  of  the  social  life,  but  also  to  the 
greater  variety  of  aesthetic  influences 
that  act  upon  individuals.  There  can 
be  no  question  but  that  women,  when 
most  impressionable,  fix  and  repeat  the 
impressions  which  they  receive ;  and 
that  a  population  daily  familiarized  with 
the  most  beautiful  forms  and  heads  of 
antiquity,  the  most  beautiful  paintings 
of  the  Italian  masters,  must  reproduce 
some  of  the  fine  traits  which  they  have 
contemplated  while  walking  in  the 
Louvre  or  in  the  public  gardens. 

The  "influence  of  art"  is    either  a 
beautiful  fiction  or   an  impressive  and 
beautiful    reality;    the    population     of 
Paris  makes  me   believe   it  is   a  real- 
ity.    Walking  the  streets,  I  have  seen 
just   such   faces   as   glow   in   color   or 
shine  in  the  marble  of  statues  in  the 
galleries  of  the  Louvre.    The  low  brows 
and  full  lips  of  the  Egyptian  sphinxes, 
the  faces  of  Assyrian  kings,  the  slender 
and   elegant   forms   of  the    Etruscans, 
preserved  with  costly  care  in  the  public 
museums,  free   to   the   people,  are  re- 
peated by  French  mothers.     It  is  well 
that  a  race  so  mobile,  so   impression- 
able, surround   themselves  with   grand 
and   beautiful   forms,  with   things  that 
enrich    the  life.     If  their   habitual  life 
were    as     bare    of    such     objects     of 
enthusiastic   contemplation    as    is   the 
life    of   most    American    mothers,   fa- 
cial   traits   would    inevitably  degener- 
ate to  flat  monotony,  become  debased, 
and  poor  in  suggestion.     When  you  ob- 
serve  a   beautiful  face   in    Paris,  it  is 
generally  classic,  or  at  least  you  can 
refer  it  back  to  some  historic  type.     It 
may  be   a  living  illustration   of  some 


1 868.] 


Foreign  Faces. 


549 


Greek  or  Italian  form,  perhaps  it  is 
light,  —  charming,  pleasant,  like  Wat- 
teau's  dames,  all  sunny  gayety ;  or  it 
is  a  sweet,  soft,  innocent,  voluptuous 
face,  like  one  of  Greuze's  girls. 

In  going  through  our  portrait-gal- 
leries, the  annual  array  of  the  Academy 
of  Design,  we  encounter  insignificant 
and  pretentious  faces,  vulgar  faces,  hard 
faces,  stupid  faces,  faces  of  men  sitting 
to  be  looked  at,  rarely  one  that  looks 
at  you  and  holds  you  with  the  glance, 
like  Titian's  grand  heads.  We  do  not 
admire  our  fellow-citizens  on  canvas 
or  in  photographs.  Seldom  do  we  find 
a  face  so  forceful  as  that  of  Parke 
Godwin's,  worthy  model  for  Rembrandt, 
or  like  Sandford  R.  Gifford's,  worthy 
model  for  Titian  or  Velasquez,  or  Dr. 
Brownson's  face,  which  was  so  vigor- 
ously painted  by  Healy.  These  are 
exceptions,  for  S.  R.  Gifford  looks  more 
like  one  of  Titian's  portraits  than  like 
an  average  American  ;  Parke  Godwin 
looks  like  a  Tintoret,  and  Bryant  like 
one  of  Fuseli's  bards  civilized. 

Be'ranger  had  a  beautiful  face ;  it 
beamed  with  a  genial  and  fatherly 
spirit ;  Lamennais,  with  his  immense 
brow  and  piercing  eyes,  looked  like 
a  converted  Mephistopheles  still  trou- 
bled with  questions,  the  most  pure- 
ly intellectual  and  intense  of  human 
faces,  —  to  me  a  terrible  face  ;  then  there 
was  the  extraordinary  face  of  Michel 
the  advocate,  described  by  George  Sand 
in  Histoire  de  ma  Vie,  looking  as  if 
he  had  two  craniums,  one  soldered 
upou  the  other  ;  the  sign  of  all  the  high 
faculties  of  the  soul  not  more  prominent 
at  the  prow  than  the  generous  instincts 
were  at  the  stern  of  the  strong  vessel. 
At  the  first  glance,  although  but  thirty, 
he  looked  sixty  years  old. 

When  you  enter  the  French  Cham- 
ber of  Deputies,  you  are  struck  with 
the  resemblance  to  American  faces, 
but  they  are  more  refined.  The  men 
of  state  all  over  the  world  have  the 
same  general  traits.  It  is  only  by 
watching  the  play  of  emotion  and  the 
movement  of  thought  that  you  notice 
the  difference.  Then  you  see  that 
they  have  thoughts  that  are  not  our 


thoughts,  and  are  qualified  by  fine  and 
exquisite  things.  In  one  word,  they 
have  a  refined  scale  of  emotions  un- 
known to  us. 

The  human  face  is  a  sublime,  a  beau- 
tiful, a  mysterious  revelation.  The  life 
experience  traces  itself  upon  the  living 
clay,  and  for  a  brief  moment  the  soul 
looks  through  a  splendid  mask  of  time, 
transfigured  or  disfigured  by  bodily 
habits,  vices,  or  passions.  Most  faces 
are  bad  imitations  of  animals  ;  I  say 
bad,  because  the  animal  type  is  con- 
fused, not  in  its  perfection  when  mixed 
with  the  human.  The  most  animal 
types  are  the  Roman  heads. 

It  is  a  great  misfortune  to  be  preoc- 
cupied with  vulgar  or  trivial  things ; 
they  cannot  make  the  heroic  face.  The 
reason  that  poets  have  such  beautiful 
faces,  in  spite  of  habits  like  Burns's 
and  Poe's,  is  that  they  contemplate 
beautiful  things  and  think  grand  and 
generous  thoughts.  All  the  great  paint- 
ers have  been  handsome  and  remarka- 
ble looking  men  ;  Titian,  and  Raphael, 
and  Rubens,  and  Vandyke  readily  illus- 
trate my  statement.  Tintoret  had  a 
solemn  and  grand  face ;  Da  Vinci,  a 
noble  and  beautiful  face  ;  Rembrandt, 
a  sagacious,  honest,  profound  face. 
Our  fine  sculptors,  Brown,  Ward,  Palm- 
er, and  Thompson,  have  something  Con- 
tinental about  their  faces,  and  do  not 
look  narrow,  but  as  if  illuminated  by  £ 
ray  of  the  'ideal.  The  finest  faces  in 
Europe  were  the  faces  of  Shakespeare, 
Moliere,  and  Goethe.  Their  faces 
prove  to  us  that  just  in  the  measure  that 
we  escape  sordid  thoughts  and  material 
cares,  and  occupy  our  minds  with  the 
beauty  of  nature,  the  wit  of  men,  the 
poetry  of  life,  we  set  to  work  a  skilful 
sculptor,  who  day  by  day  models  with 
an  imperceptible  and  sure  hand  the 
heavy,  expressionless  clay  ;  and  in  time 
the  rude  features  become  almost  grand 
with  goodness  like  Lincoln's,  beautiful 
with  tranquillity  like  Washington's,  or 
Titanic  like  Webster's. 

Let  us  imitate  the  Greeks,  the  most 
beautiful  of  all  the  historic  races,  or 
the  Etruscans,  which  were  the  most 
elegant,  and  recommend  to  the  women 


550 


My  Visit  to  the  Gorilla. 


[November, 


of  the  land  to  place  in  their  houses  the 
statues  of  antique  heroes,  the  pictures 
of  beautiful  women.  Each  generation 
should  be  the  perfected  illustration  of 
all  that  we  admire  or  ought  to  admire. 
But  let  us  dispense  with  cast-iron  dogs, 
deer,  and  nymphs,  manufactured  by  en- 
terprising Americans  for  our  country 
homes.  The  worse  than  barbarous 
taste  shown  in  these  hideous  imitations 
of  reality  must  make  a  lover  of  the 
beautiful  despair.  We  have  got  to 
learn  that  statues  and  fountains  and 
vases  cannot  be  made  as  we  make  sew- 
ing-machines and  steam-ploughs  ;  that  a 
cast-iron  dog,  from  a  poor  model,  does 
not  take  the  place  of  the  antique  boar  of 
the  Tuileries  or  the  Lion  of  Barye. 

It  is  because  poets  and  painters  and 
men  of  science  are  admitted  into  the 
universal  life  that  their  faces  lose  mean, 
local  traits  and  resemble  each  other. 
The  noblest  men  are  not  national,  but 
universal.  When  we  think  great  ac- 


tions, we  look  them;  when  we  enter- 
tain dreams  and  have  sentiment,  we 
look  it,  as  Hawthorne,  as  Shellev,  as 
Keats.  The  face  betrays  the  thought. 
What  would  Whittier's  face  be  without 
the  poetry  that  has  flown  over  it  ?  What 
is  any  face  that  has  not  been  touched, 
shaped,  developed  by  those  invisible 
influences  which  come  to  us  from  the 
ideal  world  and  nature,  which  we 
call  art,  science,  music  ?  If  we  spend 
our  days  monotonously,  like  fabricators 
of  pins,  we  must  drain  our  faces  of  even 
what  we  bring  from  our  anterior  life  ; 
and  how  soon  most  of  us  lose  the  traces 
of  that  life  which  in  childhood  gives  such 
a  magic  and  innocent  depth  to  the  eye, 
which  remains  sometimes  in  boyhood 
and  youth,  —  a  wide-eyed,  bewildered 
expression,  as  if  to  say  the  soul  does 
not  yet  understand  why  it  is  subjected 
to  the  enormous  pressure  of  prosaic 
and  deadening  circumstances  accumu- 
lated by  the  machinery  of  social  life. 


MY    VISIT    TO    THE    GORILLA: 


DO  not  expect,  fastidious  reader,  to 
be  regaled  with  a  dish  of  spicy 
adventure  from  the  wilds  of  Africa, 
where  the  gorilla  is  "at  home"  to  all 
inquiring  friends  ;  for  I  am  sorry  to  say 
that  I  have  never  visited  that  most 
delightful  region.  My  exploits  as  a 
hunter  have  been  neither  numerous 
nor  wonderful,  and  I  have  never  been 
able  to  fare  sumptuously  every  day  on 
stewed  tigers  and  rhinoceros  steaks. 
To  be  sure,  I  have  had  many  imaginary 
adventures  in  which  all  the  pleasures 
of  the  chase  were  experienced  without 
any  of  the  perils,  and  in  fancy  I  have 
often  bagged  a  hippopotamus  and  throt- 
tled a  giraffe.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
however,  I  have  seldom  slaughtered 
any  game  more  dangerous  than  tom- 
cats ;  and  my  weapons  in  those  exciting 
combats  were  neither  rifles  nor  revolv- 
ers, but  simply  brickbats.  However,  it 


is  the  spirit  in  which  warfare  is  con- 
ducted that  determines  its  character 
and  dignity,  and  I  am  convinced  that 
as  much  courage  may  be  shown  in  a 
struggle  with  a  tom-cat  as  in  an  en- 
counter with  a  lion. 

The  most  trivial  circumstances  often 
develop  a  hardihood  which  will  prove 
itself  equal  to  the  most  terrible  emer- 
gencies. It  was  the  pursuit  of  hares 
and  foxes  which  produced  in  the 
perfumed  loungers  of  Pall  Mall  the 
dauntless  heroism  that  scaled  the  Re- 
dan. And  the  simple  out-door  sports, 
the  athletic  exercises,  and  the  mimic 
conflicts  of  the  gymnasium,  did  much 
to  nurture  the  unrivalled  valor  which 
shone  so  conspicuously  on  the  battle- 
fields of  the  Rebellion.  As  for  quick- 
ness of  eye  and  steadiness  of  nerve, 
so  essential  to  the  hunter  whether  of 
beasts  or  men,  there  is  no  comparison 


1868.] 


My  Visit  to  the  Gorilla. 


551 


between  the  complete  self-mastery  re- 
quired in  skilfully  firing  a  revolver  and 
in  successfully  shying  a  brickbat.  The 
dead-shot  who  can  snufF  a  taper  with 
his  rifle,  would  find  it  no  easy  matter 
to  hit  a  tom-cat  on  the  wing  with  a 
brickbat,  or  bring  down  a  gutter-snipe 
with  a  paving-stone.  Have  you  ever 
seen  a  tom-cat  at  bay,  Mr.  Tompkins  ? 
If  not,  your  education  has  been  sadly 
neglected.  To  confront  that  infuriated 
beast  with  his  breast  swelling  with  the 
unbridled  passions  of  a  Bengal  tiger, 
his  back  arching  fearfully,  his  hair 
bristling  like  quills  upon  the  fretful 
porcupine,  his  jaws  disclosing  teeth 
of  quite  tremendous  power,  and  spit- 
ting rage  and  fury  at  every  breath, 
might  well  appall  the  heroic  soul  of  a 
Wallace  or  shake  the  iron  nerves  of  a 
Gerard. 

It  was  said  of  that  mighty  hunter, 
that  modern  Nimrod,  Gordon  Gum- 
ming, who  left  as  many  bones  to  bleach 
on  the  forest  floor  of  the  tropics  as 
whitened  any  of  the  battle-fields  of 
Napoleon,  that  he  quitted  Great  Britain 
to  take  part  in  a  war  against  savages, 
and  abandoned  that  kind  of  amusement 
because  "  warring  with  mere  men  yield- 
ed no  relish  to  his  splendid  and  bloody 
ambition."  At  last  he  returned  home, 
"weeping  because  there  were  no  more 
animals  to  vanquish,  and  desolate  be- 
cause the  megatherium  was  disposed 
of  before  he  took  to  shooting."  Cir- 
cumstances have  prevented  me  from 
imitating  his  illustrious  example,  and, 
instead  of  hunting  wild  beasts  in  the 
wilderness,  I  have  been  obliged  to 
moralize  over  them  in  the  menagerie. 
That  institution  is  my  pet  fancy,  and 
as  George  Selwyn  was  certain  to  be 
in  attendance  at  an  execution,  so  I 
am  always  present  whenever  there 
is  any  excitement  among  the  animals. 
I  have  punched  the  lordly  lion  in  the 
superb  collection  at  Regent's  Park, 
snubbed  the  sagacious  elephant  in 
the  Jardin  cles  Plantes,  fluttered  the 
eagles  in  the  Prater  at  Vienna,  and 
been  hugged  by  the  affectionate  bears 
at  Bcrnc.  My  greatest  happiness 
consists  in  seeing  some  new  specimen 


of  animated  nature,  and  I  would  travel 
far  to 

"  Behold  the  naturalist  that  in  his  teens 
Found  six  new  species  in  a  dish  of  greens." 

When  Mr.  Barnum  announced  that 
he  had  a  live  gorilla  on  exhibition  at 
his  Museum,  I  was  seized  with  an  irre- 
sistible, and,  as  my  friends  said,  a  fever- 
ish desire  to  see  it,  partly  because  it 
was  a  decided  novelty,  but  principally 
on  account  of  its  affinity  to  the  human 
species.  As  a  student  of  Monboddo, 
as  a  follower  of  Lamarck,  as  a  disciple 
of  Darwin,  I  have  availed  myself  of 
every  opportunity  to  trace  the  connec- 
tion between  man  and  the  monkey,  and 
to  ascertain  the  exact  point  at  which 
the  lower  animal  assumes  the  functions 
of  the  higher.  I  must  confess,  how- 
ever, that  in  my  investigations  I  have 
met  with  many  disappointments.  At 
last  I  have  been  forced  to  the  conclu- 
sion that,  although  there  are  many  men 
possessing  the  qualities  of  monkeys, 
there  are  no  monkeys  with  the  higher 
faculties  of  men.  It  may  be  difficult 
to  decide  whether  it  is  easier  to  lift  a 
monkey  up  or  to  drag  a  mortal  down, 
but  I  am  satisfied  that  the  millennium 
of  monkeys  is  yet  in  the  distant  future. 
When  the  lamb  can  lie  down  with  the 
lion  without  being  inside  of  him,  the 
grotesque  parody  on  human  nature  may 
become  its  perfect  counterpart. 

Everybody  remembers  the  lines  in 
Pope's  Essay  on  Man  in  which  the 
poet  represents  the  inhabitants  of  the 
celestial  regions  as  so  pleased  with  the 
discoveries  of  Sir  Isaac  that  they 

"Admired  such  \visdom  in  an  earthly  shape, 
And  showed  a  Newton  as  we  show  an  ape." 

I  have  always  regarded  this  as  rather  a 
dubious  compliment  to  the  philosopher, 
but  not  without  value  as  an  indication 
of  the  esteem  in  which  the  little  hunch- 
back of  Twickenham  held  the  members 
of  the  apish  family  with  whom  the  scur- 
rilous dunces  of  Grub  Street  delighted 
to  compare  him. 

As  it  was  impossible  for  me  to  meet 
the  gorilla  on  his  "native  heath,"  to 
waylay  him  in  the  jungle  or  entrap  him 
on  the  mountain,  I  thought  the  next 
best  thing  was  to  confront  him  at  Bar- 


552 


My  Visit  to  the  Gorilla. 


[November, 


Hum's.  Being  in  New  York  soon  after 
his  arrival,  I  walked  down  Broadway, 
and,  on  approaching  the  Museum,  my 
attention  was  attracted  by  a  large  pic- 
ture suspended  over  the  street  in  front 
of  that  renowned  establishment.  It 
represented  the  gorilla  carrying  off  a 
female  African  under  one  arm,  while 
with  the  other  he  brandished  a  club  at 
a  hunter,  who  was  discharging  his  rifle 
at  this  ruthless  destroyer  of  domestic 
happiness.  At  the  same  time  another 
gorilla  was  overpowering  an  unfortu- 
nate darkey,  —  perhaps  the  husband  of 
the  wretched  female  previously  men- 
tioned. The  painting  seemed  to  me 
very  striking  and  impressive,  and  well 
calculated,  as  the  play-bills  felicitously 
say,  to  convey  a  great  moral  lesson.  It 
is  true  that  a  severe  critic  might  have 
found  fault  with  it  as  a  work  of  art,  and 
pronounced  the  coloring  gaudy,  the 
drawing  defective,  and  the  attitudes 
unnatural.  But  the  enthusiastic  admi- 
ration of  the  multitude  outweighs  the 
censorious  judgment  of  the  connois- 
seur. The  picture  was  certainly  very 
attractive  to  crowds  of  coon-faced  coun- 
trymen and  ragged  newsboys,  whose 
encomiums  were  earnest,  if  not  elegant. 
"  That  big  monkey  must  be  a  stunner," 
said  an  admiring  urchin  in  my  pres- 
ence ;  "just  see  how  jimmy  he  grabs 
that  nigger-woman  !  "  The  rhetoric  of 
Ruskin  could  hardly  add  force  to  that 
crude  but  comprehensive  criticism. 

Doubtless  not  a  few  of  the  rude  rus- 
tics who  gazed  so  intently  on  the  picto- 
rial gorilla  cheerfully  paid  their  thirty 
cents  in  the  expectation  of  seeing  the 
animal  as  he  was  depicted  on  the  glow- 
ing canvas,  but  they  were  doomed  to 
disappointment.  So  were  the  confiding 
creatures  who  read  and  believed  the 
accounts  in  the  newspapers  of  the  ex- 
ploits of  the  gorilla,  when  he  was  first 
taken  to  the  Museum,  in  bending  a 
solid  bar  of  iron  two  and  a  half  inches 
in  diameter,  and  in  performing  various 
other  surprising  feats  of  strength.  They 
undoubtedly  expected  to  see  a  huge 
creature,  whom  one  could  hardly  look 
at  without  fainting,  securely  fastened 
by  an  enormous  chain-cable,  and  con- 


fined in  a  cage  with  iron  bars  at  least 
six  inches  thick,  —  the  said  bars  having 
deep  indentations  made  by  the  teeth  of 
the  gorilla,  and  twisted  into  uncouth 
shapes  by  his  relentless  paws.  They 
were  probably  prepared  to  find  him 
chewing  cast-iron  instead  of  spruce- 
gum  or  "  Century,"  and  nibbling  steel 
nails  to  keep  his  teeth  sharp  and  his 
digestion  sound.  Readers  of  Du  Chaillu, 
who  remembered  how  that  adventurous 
traveller  heard  the  roar  of  the  gorilla 
three  miles  off,  and  the  noise  of  beat- 
ing his  breast  with  his  fists  at  a  dis- 
tance of  a  mile,  must  have  expected  'to 
be  almost  deafened  by  the  yells  and 
appalled  by  the  hideous  appearance  of 
the  horrid  insect.  To  be  sure,  this  was 
said  to  be  but  a  baby  gorilla,  a  mere 
infant  only  two  and  a  half  years  old ; 
although  the  advertisement  mentioned 
its  height  as  five  feet  two  inches,  which, 
according  to  the  best  authorities,  is  not 
far  from  the  average  height  of  the  full-- 
grown animal. 

On  entering  the  Museum  and  making 
the  necessary  preliminary  inquiries,  I 
proceeded,  not  without  some  trepida- 
tion, to  the  hall  of  the  gorilla.  As  I 
approached  his  cage,  the  first  object 
that  caught  my  eye  was  a  sign,  OR 
which  were  these  warning  words,  "On 
account  of  the  fierce  nature  of  the  go- 
rilla, he  must  not  be  disturbed."  This 
was  to  me  a  very  provoking  announce.- 
ment,  for  I  brought  my  cane  with  me 
on  purpose  to  stir  him  up  and  make 
him  lively.  As  he  sat  on  his  haunches, 
looking  idiotically  at  the  spectators,  it 
was  evident  to  every  unprejudiced  ob- 
server that  he  needed  the  healthy  stim- 
ulus which  a  stick  is  so  well  calculated 
to  afford.  Although  my  cane  \vas  a 
valuable  one,  I  was  prepared  to  sacri- 
fice it,  if  necessary,  for  the  good  of  the 
gorilla,  and  would  actually  have  seen  it 
shivered  to  splinters  without  a  pang. 
In  the  cause  of  science,  in  the  interest 
of  humanity,  who  would  not  cheerfully 
part  with  the  fripperies  of  fashion  and 
the  superfluities  of  society?  As  a 
member  of  the  Association  for  the  Pre- 
vention of  Cruelty  to  Animals,  I  have 
always  been  in  favor  of  giving  caged 


1 868.] 


My  Visit  to  the  Gorilla. 


553 


beasts  this  kind  of  excitement.  It 
quickens  their  sluggish  circulation, 
rouses  them  from  their  savage  leth- 
argy, and  lends  a  pleasing  variety  to 
the  dismal  monotony  of  their  weari- 
some confinement. 

But,  as  the  French  say,  let  us  return 
to  our  monkeys,  and  examine  the  go- 
rilla, which  I  barely  got  a  glimpse  of 
on  my  arrival  on  account  of  the  crowd 
around  his  cage.  I  remember  read- 
ing an  anecdote  of  a  young  man  who, 
while  visiting  a  menagerie  in  some 
Western  town,  amused  himself  by  pok- 
ing a  rather  quiet  orang-outang  with 
his  cane.  The  animal  seemed  unus- 
ually restive  under  this  treatment,  and 
at  last  exclaimed,  much  to  the  aston- 
ishment of  the  spectators,  "  If  you 
punch  me  any  more,  Jim  Wilson,  I  '11 
come  out  and  whip  you  out  of  your 
boots."  Anywhere  but  in  Mr.  Bar- 
num's  establishment  the  printed  warn- 
ings about  not  disturbing  the  gorilla 
might  have  excited  suspicion  that  they 
were  designed  to  prevent  an  examina- 
tion which  might  reveal  a  power  behind 
the  throne,  or,  to  speak  more  plainly,  a 
man  in  the  gorilla's  skin.  Whether  it 
was  a  real  gorilla  or  not  was  quite 
another  question.  Though  not  of  a 
sceptical  turn  of  mind,  I  found  it  hard 
to  believe  that  I  stood  in  the  pres- 
ence of  what  the  enthusiastic  Du 
Chaillu  calls  "  the  king  of  the  African 
forest,"  and  what  even  his  detractors 
admit  to  be  the  most  powerful  and 
ferocious  of  the  simian  kind.  An  ani- 
mal that,  according  to  Du  Chaillu,  is 
feared  by  the  tiger,  and  has  no  peer 
but  in  the  crested  lion  of  Mount  Atlas, 
ought  to  have  pride  in  his  port,  defiance 
in  his  eye,  and  really  look  the  great 
sublime  he  is.  To  be  sure,  this  speci- 
me$  was  called  a  baby,  though  he 
seemed  to  me  an  enormous  infant,  and, 
as  the  boys  say,  extremely  large  for  his 
size.  He  was  confined  in  an  ordinary 
cage  with  iron  bars  of  about  one  half 
inch  in  diameter,  which  seemed  rather 
a  frail  barrier  to  those  who  remem- 
bered the  newspaper  reports  which 
represented  the  gorilla  on  his  first 
appearance  at  the  Museum  as  bending 


with  ease  bars  of  five  times  the  thick- 
ness. He  also  had  an  ornamental 
chain  about  his  graceful  neck.  Let  me 
frankly  confess,  at  the  outset,  that  I  am 
not  an  indiscriminate  monkey-fancier, 
or  amateur  in  apes,  although  I  know  a 
thing  or  two  about  them.  Even  if  I 
can  tell  a  Ring-tailed  Squealer  from  a 
Red  Howler,  a  Malbrouck  from  a  Dou- 
roucouli,  and  a  Cacajao  from  a  Chim- 
panzee, it  by  no  means  follows  that  I 
make  any  pretensions  to  a  profound 
and  exhaustive  knowledge  of  the  whole 
subject. 

It  is  sagaciously  remarked  by  an 
eminent  naturalist,  Professor  Huxley, 
in  his  interesting  and  suggestive  work 
on  "Evidence  as  to  Man's  Place  in 
Nature,"  that  "any  one  who  cannot 
see  the  posterior  lobe  in  an  ape's  brain 
is  not  likely  to  give  a  very  valuable 
opinion  respecting  the  posterior  cornu 
or  the  hippocampus  minor."  This 
lucid  observation  suggests  one  of  the 
limitations  of  my  own  knowledge.  The 
learned  professor  has,  unconsciously 
perhaps,  described  my  personal  predic- 
ament. I  frankly  confess  that  I  can't 
see  it,  i.  e.  the  posterior  lobe,  and 
therefore  refrain  from  expressing  any 
opinion  on  the  hippocampus  minor, 
which  I  really  could  n't  distinguish 
from  a  drum -major.  But  although 
VI  know  little  or  nothing  of  the  inter- 
nal organization  of  the  simian  kind, 
I  am  tolerably  familiar  with  their  ex- 
ternal appearance.  It  was  with  con- 
siderable confidence,  therefore,  on  first 
beholding  the  so-called  gorilla,  that 
I  pronounced  him  an  unmitigated 
humbug.  From  numerous  descriptions 
and  illustrations,  I  felt  myself  as  well 
acquainted  with  the  genuine  animal  as 
if  I  had  been  introduced  to  the  whole 
family,  and  hob-a-nobbed  with  them  in 
the  most  friendly  manner.  From  the 
absence  of  the  bony  frontal  ridge  and 
of  the  peculiarly  projecting  nose  bone 
which  are  distinguishing  features  of  the 
gorilla,  the  size  and  shape  of  the  head 
and  body,  the  appearance  of  the  hands 
and  feet,  the  dog-like  face,  the  length 
of  the  limbs,  the  inferior  muscular  de- 
velopment, the  mild  expression  of  the 


554 


My  Visit  to  the  Gorilla. 


[November, 


countenance,  so  different  from  the  fero- 
cious aspect  of  the  gorilla,  and  various 
other  indications  which  it  is  unneces- 
sary to  enumerate,  I  was  satisfied  that 
this  was  an  animal  of  an  inferior 
kind. 

It  is  well  known  that  the  adult  gorilla 
is  utterly  untamable.  Du  Chaillu,  who 
had  four  young  ones  in  custody  at  a 
very  early  age,  found  them  perfectly 
intractable  ;  and  although  Mr.  Win- 
wood  Reade  saw  one  in  captivity  as 
docile  as  a  young  chimpanzee,  this 
appears  to  be  an  exceptional  instance. 
The  animal  at  Mr.  Barnum's  was  as 
quiet  as  a  kitten  and  as  silly  as  a  sheep. 
He  was  only  too  glad  to  eat  anything 
that  was  given  to  him,  while  it  is  well 
known  that  the  real  gorilla  refuses  to 
eat  anything  but  the  fruits  and  juicy 
plants  of  his  own  wilds  ;  and  Du  Chail- 
lu, in  his  Journey  to  Ashango  Land, 
remarks  that  this  repugnance  to  any 
other  food  will  always  be  a  difficulty  in 
the  way  of  bringing  him  to  a  foreign 
country  alive.  The  longer  I  looked  at 
the  animal  in  the  Museum,  the  more  I 
became  convinced,  not  only  that  it  was 
not  a  gorilla,  but  that  it  was  not  even 
one  of  the  anthropoid  apes.  The 
reader  who  is  interested  in  the  sub- 
ject will  find  a  Diagram  in  Professor 
Huxley's  book,  representing  in  order 
the  skeletons  of  the  Gorilla,  Chim- 
panzee, Orang- Outang,  and  Gibbon; 
these  four  are  the  anthropoid  or  man- 
like apes,  —  the  cr&me  dc  la  creme  of 
the  fraternity,  —  and  it  was  with  un- 
feigned regret  that  I  could  not  admit 
Mr.  Barnum's  animal  to  their  select 
fellowship. 

For  some  time  the  "gorilla"  rested 
quietly  on  his  haunches,  and  seemed 
indisposed  to  move,  so  that  I  could  not 
get  a  satisfactory  view  of  him.  At  last 
he  ceased  to  squat,  and  got  upon  all- 
fours,  when,  to  my  mingled  sorrow  and 
delight,  he  switched  out  from  under  him 
a  long  tail.  This  was  enough  for  me, 
and  confirmed  my  previous  impressions 
as  to  his  character ;  for,  though  all 
other  signs  might  fail,  the  presence  of 
this  caudal  continuation  proved  conclu- 
sively that  he  was  not  a  gorilla  or  any 


manlike  ape.  None  of  this  higher 
class  of  apes  are  cursed  with  this  Sa- 
tanic* appendage,  which  is  the  mark 
of  a  greatly  inferior  type.  A  gorilla 
with  a  tail  would  be  a  monstrosity  con- 
founding all  canons  of  anthropoidal  or- 
ganization, and  confusing  all  theories 
of  natural  selection.  A  six-legged  calf 
may  be  regarded  as  a  harmless  varia- 
tion, but  a  tailed  gorilla  would  be  as 
alarming  and  preposterous  a  creation 
as  a  griffin  or  a  centaur,  and  almost  as 
unnatural  as  a  Yahoo  or  a  Houyhnhnm. 
As  is  well  known  to  the  learned, 
men  originally  had  tails  ;  but  that  was 
in  the  primitive  condition  of  the  race, 
when,  as  geologists  inform  us,  the  deli- 
cate megatherium  crawled  upon  the 
land,  and  the  festive  icthyosaurus  gam- 
bolled in  the  water.  The  invention  of 
chairs  is  supposed  by  some  ingenious 
writer  to  have  had  the  effect  of  gradu- 
ally wearing  them  down,  until  at  last 
they  disappeared  entirely.  -Ill-natured 
punsters,  however,  have  been  heard  to 
declare  that  man  is  still  a  tale-bearing 
animal.  The  precise  time  when  man 
lost  the  last  vestige  of  caudal  creation, 
when,  in  legal  phrase,  he  ceased  to  be 
"seized  in  tail,"  is  lost  in  the  twilight 
of  fable,  and  all  my  researches  in  the 
geological  records,  as  well  as  among 
Egyptian  papyric  and  Assyrian  manu- 
scripts, have  led  to  no  satisfactory  con- 
clusion in  regard  to  it.  But  though  tails 
probably  went  out  of  fashion  at  an  early 
period  in  the  history  of  the  primeval 
man,  if  indeed  they  were  not  worn  off 
by  rubbing  against  the  Old  Red  Sand- 
stone, yet  reports  of  their  reappearance 
have  occasionally  startled  the  curious. 
In  fact,  it  was  once  believed  by  intelli- 
gent foreigners  that  all  Englishmen 
were  thus  distinguished  ;  and  John  Bale, 
Bishop  of  Ossory,  a  zealous  refo^ner 
in  the  time  of  Edward  VI.,  complains 
in  his  Actes  of  English  Votaries,  "  that 
an  Englyshman  now  cannot  travayle  in 
another  land  by  way  of  marchandyse 
or  any  other  honest  occupyinge,  but 

*  "And  pray  how  was  the  Devil  drest? 
Oh  !  he  was  in  his  Sunday's  best ; 
His  coat  was  red,  and  his  breeches  were  blue, 
With  a  hole  behind  that  his  tail  came  thro'." 
SOUTHEY,  T lie  Davit's  ll'alk. 


1 868.] 


My  Visit  to  the  Gorilla. 


555 


it  is  most  contumeliously  thrown  in  his 
tethe  that  all  Englyshmen  have  tails." 
I  am  inclined  to  regard  as  equally  un- 
worthy of  belief  the  stories  of  tailed 
men  told  by  Struys,  D'Abbaclie,  Wolf, 
and  other  travellers  in  Abyssinia  and 
Formosa.  Whatever  ingenious  theo- 
rists or  imaginative  travellers  may  say 
to  the  contrary,  it  is  one  of  the  plainest 
of  physiological  truths,  that  a  caudal 
elongation  of  the  spinal  vertebras  is  a 
physical  impossibility  in  the  present 
condition  of  mankind.  The  os  sacrum, 
or  sacred  bone,  which  terminates  the 
spine,  prevents  "  the  human  form  di- 
vine"  from  being  profaned  by  that 
brutal  appendage  popularly  called  a 
tail.  It  is  true  that  no  less  a  philoso- 
pher than  Lord  Monboddo  entertained 
a  contrary  opinion,  and  regarded  a  tail 
as  essential  to  the  perfect  man,  and  in- 
valuable as  an  index  of  emotion  ;  but 
this  was  one  of  his  lordship's  weak 
points.  "  Other  people,"  said  Dr.  John- 
son, ''  have  strange  notions,  but  they 
conceal  them.  If  they  have  tails,  they 
hide  them  ;  but  Monboddo  is  as  jealous 
of  his  tail  as  a  squirrel." 

My  experience  with  the  "gorilla" 
was  indeed  disheartening.  With  a 
person  of  my  sensitive  and  confiding 
nature  such  a  shock  is  not  easily  over- 
come, and  it  naturally  resulted  in  a 
severe  sickness.  None  of  my  friends 
knew  the  cause  of  the  malady,  and  my 
liver  received  the  blame  which  right- 
fully belonged  to  the  amorphous  ape. 
Let  me  make  a  brief  statement  of  that 
day's  experience.  I  went  to  the  Muse- 
um as  a  philanthropist  and  philosophi- 
cal observer,  expecting  to  see  an  animal 
who  in  structure  is  nearer  akin  to  man 
than  he  is  to  the  lower  apes,  and  who, 
as  the  representative  of  the  advanced  de- 
velopment of  his  race,  is,  in  the  opinion 
of  many  eminent  naturalists,  the  pro- 
genitor of  our  poor  humanity,  the  type 
of  the  primeval  Adam.  I  went  to  greet 
him  as  a  man  and  a  brother,  and,  dis- 
carding all  traditional  notions  and  un- 
worthy prejudices,  to  extend  to  him  the 
right  hand  of  fellowship,  —  figuratively, 
urse,  for  I  confess  that  I  thought  I 
might  possibly  be  overpowered  by  the 


warmth  of  his  reception,  and  should  be 
afraid  to  trust  my  feeble  fingers  in  his 
friendly  but  tremendous  gripe. 

I  found  a  creature  of  a  much  lower 
kind,  who  can  hardly  be  said  to  have 
any  standing  among  his  fellows,  inas- 
much as  he  does  not  stand  at  all,  but 
grovels  in  the  dust,  and  goes  upon  all- 
fours.  In  brief,  instead  of  a  glorious 
gorilla,  I  found  a  maudlin  monkey,  a 
bloated  baboon.  Indeed,  I  almost  fan- 
cied that  the  soi-disant  gorilla  had  a 
sneaking  consciousness  that  he  was 
not  what  he  was  represented  to  be,  that 
in  fact  he  was  a  shameless  impostor. 
How  else  account  for  the  furtive  glances 
and  the  uneasy  demeanor,  which  it  is 
impossible  to  simulate,  of  one  who 
dreads  detection  and  yet  repels  re- 
pentance ? 

In  despair  of  ever  being  able  to  see 
the  gorilla  in  a  menagerie,  I  have  al- 
most determined  to  seek  for  him  in  his 
native  \vilds,  and  meet  Bombastes  face 
to  face  ;  but  I  am  afraid  my  stern  re- 
solve will  gradually  fade  away,  and  I 
shall  die  without  the  sight.  It  is  some- 
what singular  that,  though  the  gorilla 
was  one  of  the  earliest  known  apes,  it 
should  be  the  last  to  be  scientifically 
investigated,  and  that  there  still  exists 
so  much  difference  of  opinion  in  regard 
to  its  character  and  habits.  Whether 
the  gorilla  is  the  wild  man  seen  by 
Hanno,  the  ancient  Carthaginian  voy- 
ager ;  whether  it  belongs  to  the  nation 
of  wood-eaters,  who  had  no  arms  but 
sticks,  mentioned  by  Diodorus  Siculus, 
and  referred  to  by  Monboddo  in  his 
curious  treatise  On  the  Origin  and 
Progress  of  Language  ;  or  whether  it 
is  the  Pongo  seen  by  the  adventurous 
soldier,  Andrew  Battell,  who,  in  a  pas- 
sage quoted  in  that  quaint  old  book, 
Purchas  his  Pilgrimes,  describes  it  as 
engaged  in  the  pleasant  occupation 
of  clubbing  elephants  and  killing  ne- 
groes, —  is  by  no  means  easy  to  deter- 
mine. 

It  is  certain,  however,  that  the  stories 
told  by  the  natives  of  its  carrying  off 
females  from  their  villages,  of  its  clutch- 
ing travellers  in  its  claws,  pulling  them 
up  into  trees,  and  choking  them  to 


556 


My  Visit  to  the  Gorilla. 


[November, 


death,  are  mere  fanciful  inventions. 
That  the  gorilla  does  not  build  a  house 
of  leaves  and  twigs  in  the  trees,  and  sit 
on  the  roof  yelling  like  a  howling  der- 
vish, may  be  affirmed  with  confidence. 
He  is  no  such  fool.  Neither  does  he 
speculate  in  stocks,  nor  attend  masked 
balls.  He  is  wofully  deficient  in  use- 
ful knowledge,  and  many  a  little  child 
knows  more  of  the  multiplication- 
table  and  the  cookery-book  than  he. 
Neither  is  he  distinguished  for  genius 
nor  for  philanthropy.  His  great  head 
cannot  boast  the  Titanic  brain  of  a 
Cuvier  or  the  moral  force  of  a  Howard. 
We  must  go  far  below  these  exalted 
natures,  to  the  gibbering  idiot,  for  a  fit 
subject  for  comparison.  It  may  be 
added  that  he  is  a  confirmed  vegetarian, 
and  never  hankers  after  the  flesh-pots 
of  Egypt.  That  eminent  comparative 
anatomist,  Professor  Owen,  regards  him 
as  having  a  nearer  affinity  to  man 
than  any  of  the  anthropoid  apes,  though 
that  honor  has  been  claimed  by  others 
for  the  chimpanzee. 

But  whatever  may  be  the  position  of 
the  gorilla  in  the  simian  ranks  or  in 
the  scale  of  humanity,  every  candid 
mind  must  sympathize  with  Mr.  Bar- 
num  for  having  paid  eight  thousand 
dollars  for  a  wretched  counterfeit,  a 
miserable,  second-class  monkey.  And 
although  I  have  actually  heard  persons 
say  that  that  enterprising  individual 
was  consciously  deceiving  a  confiding 
public,  yet,  of  course,  I  never  doubted 
his  entire  good  faith  in  the  matter.  His 
reputation  as  a  showman  is  too  firmly 
established  to  be  shaken  by  the  doubts 
of  the  incredulous  or  the  sneers  of  the 
malevolent.  The  man  who  with  peer- 
less public  spirit,  and  at  untold  ex- 
pense, procured  for  the  instruction  and 
amusement  of  his  countrymen  such 
rare  and  curious  specimens  of  animated 
nature  as  Joyce  Heth  and  the  woolly 
horse,  such  a  marvellous  creation  as 
the  Feejee  mermaid,  to  say  nothing  of 
an  array  of  wax  "  riggers  "  that  Ma- 
dame Tussaud  might  have  envied  and 
Artemas  Ward  not  have  despised,  can 
look  down  with  a  serene  contempt  on 
the  envious  calumniators  of  a  well- 


earned  fame.  The  beneficence  which 
produced  the  "  Happy  Family,"  and 
from  the  most  warring  and  discor- 
dant elements  evoked  harmony  and 
peace,  can  afford  to  disregard  the  sense- 
less clamor  of  a  few  silly  sceptics.  And 
although  in  his  graphic  autobiography 
he  does  not  hesitate  to  declare  that 
those  wonderful  curiosities  were  really 
humbugs,  yet  I  am  convinced  that  this 
is  either  the  dark  imagining  of  a  too 
sensitive  nature,  and  of  a  conscience 
which  over-scrupulous  integrity  has 
rendered  morbidly  acute,  or  is  the 
playful  extravagance  of  a  frolicsome 
and  sprightly  fancy. 

When  Barnum's  Museum,  with  so 
many  precious  monstrosities,  natural 
and  artificial,  was  burnt  up,  I  looked  in 
vain  through  the  published  list  of  the 
animals,  destroyed  or  saved,  for  the 
"  gorilla."  It  was  supposed  by  many 
persons,  whose  ideas  of  his  character 
were  far  from  accurate,  that  he  had 
set  fire  to  the  Museum  in  emulation 
of  "the  aspiring  youth  that  fired  the 
Ephesian  dome,"  and  there  were  grave 
suspicions  that  he  had  availed  him- 
self of  the  confusion  of  the  scene 
.to  consume  the  "  Happy  Family." 
Other  reports,  not  less  startling  and 
authentic,  represented  that  his  pre- 
vious prolonged  lethargy  and  stupor, 
which  were  caused  by  powerful  drugs 
administered  to  him  by  his  keepers, 
had  been  dissipated  by  the  intense  heat 
to  which  he  had  been  subjected;  and 
that  he  was  now  rushing  through  the 
streets  in  a  state  of  uncontrollable  excite- 
ment, seeking  whom  he  might  devour. 
It  was  said  that  the  Lightning  Calculator 
—  the  mathematical  prodigy  employed 
by  Mr.  Barnum  to  figure  the  profits  of 
the  Museum  —  had  estimated  the  time 
which  it  would  take  the  "gorilla "to 
lay  waste  New  York  as  inconceivably 
short;  and  the  thought  that  he  might  at 
at  any  moment  appear  in  Broadway, 
flushed  with  success,  and  bent  upon  ' 
extermination  of  the  inhabitants,  natu- 
rally caused  great  trepidation  among 
nervous  and  timid  persons.  It  is  per- 
haps unnecessary  to  say  that  these 
gloomy  anticipations  proved  to  be  with- 


1 868.] 


My  Visit  to  tJie  Gorilla. 


557 


;  out  foundation.    A  few  clays  afterwards, 
when  the  survivors  of  the  conflagration 
'  narrated   its    exciting  incidents  in  the 
newspapers,   one  enterprising  reporter 
obtained  from  the  "gorilla"  a  thrilling 
:  account  of  the  fire  which  surpassed  in 
graphic  power  the  truthful  and  touch- 
ing statements  of  Zuleima,  the  beautiful 
Circassian  (from  the  wilds  of  New  Jer- 
sey) ;  of  Jemima,  the    fascinating    Fat 
|  Woman  whose  ponderous  charms  are 
i  familiar  to  every  visitor  to  the  Muse- 
j  urn  ;    and   last,    though   not   least,    the 
I  pathetic  narrative  of  the   Nova  Scotia 
|  Giantess,  and  the  Living  Skeleton.     It 
is  proper  to  say,  however,  that  grave 
|  doubts  of  the  authenticity  of  this  "brief 
j  relation  "  have  been  expressed  by  cau- 
r  tious  inquirers,    and  an  impartial  esti- 
imate   of  its  value  must  be  left  to  the 
Ifuture  historian. 

The  present  position  and  prospects 
jof    the    "  gorilla "    are    not    generally 
jknown ;  but  it  is  said  that  Mr.  Barnum, 
,|nowthathe  has  retired  from  the  gen- 
eral show  business,  intends  to  devote  his 
time  and  talents  to  the  intellectual  and 
moral  culture  of  that  ungainly  ape.    Be- 
neath his  unpromising  exterior  the  pen- 
etrating  eye    of  the   veteran   manager 
rns  exalted  capacity  for  usefulness 
incl  honor.     As  many  eminent  philoso- 
s  of  the  last  century  regarded  that 
•-.hed  idiot,  "  Peter,  the  Wild  Boy," 
with  admiration  and  wonder,  it  is  not 
uirprising  that  the  great  inventor,  curi- 
collector,  and  moralist  of  our  own 
ime  should  behold  in  his  latest  protege 
in  incipient  Chesterfield  or  a  budding 
Burke. 

lUit  while  admiring  the  benevolent 
; lions  of  the  philanthropist,  every 
nprejudiced  observer  must  deplore  the 
listaken  judgment  of  the  man.  To 
ie  anthropological  student  especially 
t  seems  extremely  absurd  to  attempt 


to  elevate  the  condition  of  a  creature 
flaunting  the  caudal  appendage,  which 
is  the  mark  of  his  inferiority,  and  which 
disqualifies  him  from  holding  the  honor- 
able position  of  a  "  connecting  link" 
between  man  and  the  lower  animals. 
In  view  of  this  humiliating  fact,  I  can- 
not forbear,  in  closing,  to  offer  a  word 
of  friendly  advice  to  the  great  show- 
man, and  I  shall  charge  him  nothing 
for  it.  I  advise  him  to  unscrew  the 
tail  of  the  bogus  gorilla,  and,  if  that  is 
impossible,  to  cut  it  off,  regardless  of 
expense.  Let  him  clutch  it,  as  the 
butcher  man  in  Holmes's  poem  clasped 
the  tail  of  the  spectre  pig.  Even  then 
his  sleep  may  be  disturbed  by  the 
phantom  forms  and  dismal  groans  of 
outraged  gorillas,  but  he  will  retain  the 
confidence  of  The  Great  American 
People.  They  may  not  be  educated 
up  to  the  belief  that  man  is  a  sublimated 
monkey  ;  they  may  not  agree,  with  Mon- 
boddo,  that  the  orang-outang  is  of  the 
human  species,  or  hold,  with  Huxley, 
that  man  is  a  member  of  the  same  or- 
der as  the  apes  and  lemurs,  and  that 
in  substance  and  in  structure  he  is  one 
with  the  brutes.  They  may  not  assent 
to  the  "  Development  "  theory  of  La- 
marck, or  the  "  Natural  Selection  "  hy- 
pothesis of  Darwin,  and  may  even 
think  that  they  can  justly  claim  a 
higher  origin  than  any  denizen  of  the 
forest  or  any  inmate  of  a  menagerie. 
But  although  they  may  have  a  poor 
opinion  of  the  gorilla,  and  hardly  care 
to  put  him  in  their  family-tree  or  admit 
him  to  their  social  circle,  yet  they  will 
not  submit  to  have  him  insulted  by  a 
low-lived  creature  who  has  assumed  his 
name.  They  will  not  condemn  him  in 
his  absence,  and  on  hearsay  evidence 
merely,  but  will  await  his  arrival  before 
they  presume  to  pronounce  upon  his 
merits. 


558 


Sculptitre  in  the  United  States. 


[November, 


SCULPTURE    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES. 


A  CURIOUS  debate  in  the  Senate, 
during  the  first  session  of  the  Thir- 
ty-ninth Congress,  resulted  in  the  ap- 
propriation of  ten  thousand  dollars  for 
a  statue  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  It  might 
have  been  believed  that  our  represent- 
atives, buying  in  behalf  of  the  people 
the  statue  of  so  great  an  American, 
would  have  taken  pains  to  procure  it 
from  the  wisest  and  ablest  statuary  the 
country  affords ;  and  would  rather  have 
given  such  a  man  twenty  thousand  dol- 
lars for  his  labor  than  one  half  the  sum 
to  an  inferior  artist,  or  to  one  whose 
ability  had  not  been  proved.  But  after 
much  discussion  the  work  was  intrusted 
to  a  mere  novice  in  art,  a  young  person 
who  had  not  received  even  the  training 
of  an  apprentice  in  the  handling  of  clay 
or  bronze  or  marble.  It  is,  perhaps, 
doubtful  whether  even  this  small  ap- 
propriation would  have  been  made,  had 
the  applicant  been  a  sculptor  of  repute  ; 
for  the  youth  and  inexperience  of  the 
artist  seemed  to  affect  the  minds  of  Sen- 
ators as  advantages,  rather  than  as  draw- 
backs, in  the  way  of  attaining  a  satis- 
factory result. 

This  disposition  of  the  public  money, 
however  trivial  in  itself,  illustrates  the 
condition  of  the  plastic  art  in  this  coun- 
try. Various  explanatory  suggestions 
were  offered.  It  was  said  that  the 
hearts  of  the  lawgivers  were  won  by 
sympathy  with  struggling  genius.  Pos- 
sibly the  debate  was  a  little  joke.  Con- 
gress looked  over  the  list  of  American 
sculptors,  and,  finding  none  worthy,  gave 
money  and  fame,  in  a  spirit  of  whole- 
some satire,  to  a  giovinetta.  Or,  since 
so  little  money  could  be  spared  from 
the  country's  need,  the  government 
modestly  refrained  from  offering  it  to 
a  sculptor  of  experience,  knowing  that 
he  could  get  much  better  wages  from 
private  citizens.  There  are  many  ways 
in  which  we  may  console  ourselves,  and 
avoid  the  conclusion  that  our  repre- 
sentatives are  unwise  in  matters  of  art. 


A  sanguine  pre-Raphaelite,  having  at 
heart  the  reverent  rendering  of  Mr. 
Lincoln's  neck-tie  and  the  wart  on  his 
cheek,  may  persuade  himself  that  the 
young  artist,  failing  to  comprehend  the 
whole,  will  give  more  careful  study  to 
the  parts,  and  do  the  buttons  nicely. 
The  true  realist  cares  little  about  the 
matter  for  itself,  knowing  that  Wash- 
ington is  unlikely  to  encourage  pure 
art,  and  that  Congress  will  not  adopt 
his  scheme  of  reformation,  at  least  until 
it  is  established.  But  those,  who  look 
for  results  assert  that  two  hundred 
years  of  civilization  on  this  continent 
have  not  produced  an  essential  differ- 
ence between  the  work  of  the  experi- 
enced sculptor  and  the  crude  efforts  of 
youth,  or  that,  the  difference  existing, 
Americans  are  not  wise  enough  to  es- 
timate it.  It  is  perhaps  somewhere 
between  these  humiliating  assertions 
that  the  truth  may  be  found  ;  they  are 
worth  the  consideration  of  those  who 
believe  that  sculpture  in  America  is  not 
necessarily  an  anachronism,  and  that  it 
may  yet  bear  an  important  part  in  our 
civilization  and  culture. 

Rejecting,  as  biassed,  the  judgment 
of  Congress,  can  it  then  be  made  to 
appear  that  our  sculptors  have  clone 
anything  which  bears  the  stamp  of  na- 
tional excellence  ?  Is  there  a  first-class 
portrait-statue  in  the  United  States  i 
Our  plastic  artists  are  famous  men 
abroad,  as  well  as  here  ;  they  rank  as 
high  in  Florence  and  Rome  as  those 
of  any  nation,  —  we  are  prone  to  think 
a  trifle  higher,  —  but  can  we  properly 
call  them  American  sculptors,  or  their 
works  American  works  ?  Ward's  fine 
statue  of  the  Indian  Hunter  belongs  to 
us,  and  a  few  other  meritorious  statues; 
the  quaint  little  people  of  John  Rogers 
are  ours,  and  the  productions  of  Clark 
Mills  and  Vinnie  Ream  ;  but  may  \ 
claim  the  Lybian  Sibyl,  the  Greek  Slave 
the  Zenobia  ?  The  subjects  of  thesi 
are  strange  to  the  people,  and  the 


1 868.] 


Sculpture  in  the  United  States. 


559 


workmanship  is  foreign.  American 
artists  dwelling  in  Europe  are  in 
some  degree  denationalized.  While 
in  Rome  they  must  do  much  as  the 
Romans  do,  and  they  cannot  respond 
fully  to  our  needs  and  sympathies  at 
home.  Our  best  sculptors,  devoted  to 
what  we  call  classic  art,  and  loving  the 
flesh-pots  of  Italy,  which  take  the  tempt- 
ing shape  of  beautiful  marble  and  excel- 
lent workmen,  join  themselves  at  last 
to  their  idols  abroad,  and  come  to  care 
little  for  popular  appreciation  in  Amer- 
ica. Those  who  emigrate,  attaining 
wider  fame,  seriously  influence  those 
who  remain.  Few  of  these  are  inter- 
ested in  our  national  art  Being  per- 
suaded that  their  work  will  be  judged 
by  a  foreign  or  classic  standard,  they  al- 
most inevitably  render  foreign  themes, 
as  well  as  imitate  foreign  style;  and 
surrounded  by  casts  of  the  antique,  and 
nothing  else,  the  beginner  is  led  to  be- 
lieve that  he  must  produce  something 
equal  to  the  Quoit-thrower  of  Myron  or 
the  Apollo  Belvedere.  The  absurdity  of 
the  attempt  is  concealed  from  him  ;  he 
forgets  that  he  has  no  faith  in  Apollo 
or  any  heathen,  and  that  his  own  gods 
are  remarkably  different  from  those  of 
Greece.  Few  students  are  able  to 
perceive,  the  ages  of  school  that  lie 
hidden  in  the  masterpieces  of  Greek 
art.  Without  thorough  anatomical 
knowledge  and  without  anything  like 
a  fair  opportunity  to  study  the  nude 
figure  in  action,  the  sculptor  here  often 
attempts  to  reproduce  a  kind  of  art 
which  could  develop  only  in  the  most 
favorable  climate  and  under  the  aus- 
pices of  a  poetic  religion.  It  is  clear 
that  this  is  labor  thrown  away.  Noth- 
ing valuable  to  the  American  people 
comes  of  it.  The  work  has  already 
been  thoroughly  done  ;  the  best  Greek 
modelling  of  the  human  figure  is  cer- 
tainly well  enough.  Sensible  men  will 
hardly  expect  it  to  be  done  over  again. 
I  We,  at  least,  cannot  do  it,  because  the 
people  do  not  want  it,  and  for  many 
other  reasons.  Compare  the  model- 
ling of  the  Torso  with  the  work  of 
the  best  English  and  American  sculp- 
tors, and  the  difference  still  seems  infi- 


nite. Gibson,  who  spent  nearly  all  his 
life  in  the  study  of  the  antique,  with  no 
lack  of  facilities,  was  newly  amazed  by 
some  fragment  of  ancient  sculpture  ex- 
humed at  Rome,  and  declared  that  he 
could  do  nothing  approaching  it  in  ex- 
cellence. What  modern  Venus,  or  oth- 
er ideal  female  statue,  shall  be  placed 
with  the  Venus  of  Melos  ?  The  nude 
figure  in  its  antique  grandeur  being  im- 
possible to  us,  it  is  still  more  absurd  to 
try  to  revive  the  empty  drapery,  and 
labor  upon  the  folds  of  the  extinct  toga 
and  tunic,  clothing  even  the  busts  of 
private  individuals  with  the  robes  of 
Roman  senators  or  Greek  philosophers. 
Yet  the  copying  of  the  antique,  nude 
and  draped,  is  one  of  the  principal 
means  of  teaching  adopted  by  the  mod- 
ern schools,  if  they  may  be  called 
schools,  of  sculpture.  Study  from  life 
in  this  country  is  so  limited  that  it  must 
be  considered  as  comparatively  useless. 
Such  being  the  course  chosen  by 
nearly  all  our  plastic  artists,  time  and 
money  are  expended  without  worthy 
result.  Among  the  increasing  number 
of  modellers  in  and  for  America,  the  ear- 
nest students,  believing  in  the  present, 
and  working  directly  from  nature,  are 
far  too  few  to  develop  the  popular  taste. 
Good  judgment  in  the  formative  art, 
which  would  seem  to  be  easily  acquired, 
is  almost  unknown.  There  is  little  to 
serve  as  a  basis.  Perhaps  the  work  of 
Crawford  at  Richmond  and  Washing- 
ton is  quite  as  much  admired  as  any  in 
the  country  ;  and  it  is  not  to  be  doubted 
that  he  was  an  artist  of  great  energy, 
some  invention,  and  skilful  hand  ;  but 
his  statues,  both  portrait  and  ideal, 
sometimes  overstep  the  modesty  of  na- 
ture in  excess  of  action  or  execution, 
and  lose  the  dignity  which  belongs  to 
any  proper  subject  of  sculpture,  and  in 
some  sense  to  the  material  employed. 
One  is  forced  to  the  conclusion  that 
such  work  is  not  all  sculpture,  but  is 
alloyed  with  acting.  The  statue  of 
Beethoven  in  the  Boston  Music  Hall  is 
a  very  noble  example  of  the  exceptions 
in  Crawford's  work.  Perhaps  even  here 
the  best  taste  would  have  omitted  the 
book  which  the  master  is  holding,  and 


560 


Sculpture  in  the  United  States. 


[November, 


left  him  entirely  independent  of  acces- 
sories ;  if  any  man  may  be  given  the 
immutability  of  the  gods,  it  is  Beet- 
hoven. The  likeness  of  a  great  man  at 
rest  presents  the  theme  of  his  life  upon 
which  the  imagination  may  build  ;  but 
if  the  figure  is  distorted,  it  preserves 
only  a  moment  of  his  life  employed  in 
some  transient  action,  and  gives  the 
beholder  but  one  idea  or  class  of  ideas. 
This  is  the  nature  of  the  cardinal  fault 
in  the  Boston  statue  of  Edward  Ever- 
ett, —  the  arm  being  lifted  high  and  the 
fingers  spread  apart,  in  excitement,  — 
representing  only  a  passing  emotion 
instead  of  the  greater  thought  which 
underlies  all  worthy  action.  Inaccurate 
modelling  of  the  figure  and  details  is  of 
little  importance  after  this.  Reference 
to  the  deviations  from  the  law  of  repose 
shown  in  good  Greek  work  affords  no 
satisfactory  excuse  in  this  case  ;  for 
these  deviations  were  always  suited  to 
the  subject,  and  the  need  of  tranquillity 
was  invariably  recognized  in  likenesses 
of  great  men  as  well  as  in  the  statues 
of  the  gods.  Nearly  all  modern  sculp- 
ture seems  designed  to  produce  an  im- 
mediate effect,  like  that  of  the  instan- 
taneous stereoscope  ;  there  is  little 
patience  in  it,  and  less  in  the  spectator. 
It  is  humiliating  to  compare  such  stat- 
ues as  this  of  Everett  with  that  of  De- 
mosthenes in  the  Vatican ;  and,  in  view 
of  the  fact  that  our  sculptor  is  a  man  of 
culture  and  acknowledged  ability  in  his 
art,  it  seems  evident  that  the  study  of 
classicism  in  Italy  does  not  give  the 
modern  artist  the  power  of  the  ancients, 
or  else  that  it  does  not  make  that  power 
available  for  present  needs.  Instead  of 
taking  root  in  the  new  soil,  and  growing 
healthily  and  vigorously  from  it,  the 
artist  who  gives  himself  up  to  the  clas- 
sic influence  flourishes  bravely  as  a  par- 
asite on  the  firm  old  trunk,  but  yields 
us  no  fruit. 

If  modern  sculpture,  by  patient  fol- 
lowing of  the  antique,  could  attain  its 
marvellous  perfection  in  the  represen- 
tation of  the  human  figure,  could  the 
art  by  such  means  hold  a  rank  in  our 
culture  equal  with  that  which  it  held  in 
Greece  ?  If  subjects  worthy  of  such  vast 


science  and  nice  handiwork  cannot  be 
found,  the  acquirement  of  this  branch 
of  technical  power  is  useless.  By  repe- 
tition of  antique  subjects,  sculpture 
cannot  re-establish  its  proper  relation 
to  the  people.  Statues  of  the  gods 
cannot  inform  the  American  mind, 
except  through  its  sympathy  with  the 
ancient  Greeks  and  their  mythology, 
—  a  remote  and  vague  influence.  The 
masses  regard  such  marbles  as  work- 
manship or  ornamentation,  and  art  is 
more  than  that.  Something  must  be 
done  to  carry  the  mind  beyond  externals. 
Zeus  was  a  vital  force  to  the  Greek, 
he  is  only  a  shadow  to  the  American. 
The  ancients  saw  the  ruling  god  ;  the 
moderns,  only  the  historic  representa- 
tion. These  themes  belong  to  litera- 
ture. This  may  also  be  said  of  sub- 
jects chosen  from  the  common  life  of 
the  ancients.  It  was  no  more  worthy 
than  our  own,  and  our  people  care  infi- 
nitely less  about  it.  There  is  at  New- 
port, Rhode  Island,  a  splendid  copy  in 
marble  of  the  Dying  Gladiator,  very 
beautiful  and  significant ;  but  its  pres- 
ence in  this  country  is  known  by  but 
very  few,  and  it  is  not  likely  to  be  appre- 
ciated by  more  than  a  few  connoisseurs. 
The  fine  collections  of  casts  from  the 
antique  in  the  large  cities  experience 
something  of  the  same  neglect ;  the  ar- 
tists study  them,  but  the  people  look  at 
them  curiously,  as  they  regard  objects 
in  the  galleries  of  Natural  History,  and 
often  with  a  real  or  affected  horror  of 
their  nudity. 

Those  who  desire  the  encouragement 
of  classic  art  sometimes  assume  that  it 
is  folly  for  the  artist  to  try  to  maintain 
a  direct  relation  to  the  general  public, 
which  cannot  appreciate  fine  art,  and 
that  he  should  model  or  paint  only 
for  those  whose  culture  and  taste  fi 
them  to  be  connoisseurs.  Here  a  di- 
rect issue  may  be  stated  ;  for  the  real- 
ists, who  also  claim  the  best  culture, 
believe  that  it  is  vain  to  model  or  paint 
for  anybody  else  but  the  people.  They 
say  that  if  art  is  but  the  language  of 
the  learned,  or  the  toy  of  the  rich,  it 
may  as  well  die  utterly,  having  become 
a  useless  luxury.  History  sustains  this 


1868.] 


Sculpture  in  the  United  States. 


561 


position.  No  really  great  art  has  exist- 
ed, which  did  not  in  some  degree  reflect 
the  inner  life  of  the  people  ;  and  no  art 
•can  help  us  in  America,  unless  it  is 
based  upon  the  sympathy  and  criticism 
of  the  public.  Had  there  been  only 
half  a  dozen  Athenians  who  knew  what 
was  fitting  and  beautiful  in  a  statue  of 
Zeus,  it  is  improbable  that  Phidias 
would  have  given  his  time  and  toil  to 
the  great  Parthenon  statue  for  their 
pleasure.  It  is  even  less  likely  that  the 
splendid  figures  of  athletes,  done  by 
the  brass-casters  of  that  period,  were 
wrought  for  the  appreciation  of  a  select 
few,  when  the  games  had  made  the 
people  so  familiar  with  the  human  form 
that  every  man  of  ordinary  perceptive 
power  must  have  been  a  true  critic. 
The  best  Greek  work  left  to  us  is  from 
the  exterior  of  buildings,  where  it  was 
placed  for  the  instruction  and  delight' 
of  the  nation.  That  magnificent  school 
of  art,  so  far  excelling  all  other  known 
in  the  history  of  the  world,  though  re- 
fined to  the  utmost  by  the  wisdom  of 
the  learned,  had  its  foundation  in  the 
hearts  of  the  people.  Happily,  our  artists 
are  not  often  forced  to  decide  between 
the  support  of  their  wise  and  wealthy 
patrons  and  that  of  the  masses;  but 
where  such  a  choice  becomes  necessary, 
there  can  be  little  hesitation  in  the 
minds  of  those  who  respect  their  call- 
ing. To  model  or  paint  for  a  person  of 
wealth  is  comfortable,  and  to  be  con- 
scious of  the  sympathy  of  a  few  choice 
souls  is  very  pleasant ;  but  to  model  or 
paint  for  a  nation  raises  the  artist  to  his 
true  place  of  a  great  teacher. 

This  rank  the  modern  sculptor  does 
not  yet  hold.  When  called  upon  to 
prophesy,  he  has  only  old  stories  to 
tell.  Many  of  these  are  stories  of 
ghosts,  and  most  of  them  are  not 
cheerful.  The  people  are  seldom  wiser 
or  happier  for  them,  and  do  not  care 
to  listen.  Among  the  dozen  locally 
notorious  portrait-statues  at  Boston, 
there  are  none  likely  to  attain  fame 
beyond  a  narrow  limit,  or  to  serve  as 
models  for  future  workmanship.  But 
it  is  apparent  that  such  of  them  as 
are  most  real,  most  nearly  literal  tran- 

VOL.  XXII.  —  NO.  133.  36 


scriptions  of  life,  attract  most  attention 
from  the  public,  whether  such  attention 
results  in  praise  or  blame.  The  classic 
statues  are  severely  let  alone.  The 
extraordinary  effigy  of  George  Jupiter 
Washington,  at  the  national  Capitol,  is 
very  classic  and  fine  and  heroic  ;  but 
these  qualities  cannot  compensate  for 
the  utter  confusion  of  ideas  involved  in 
it.  Nobody  can  get  from  it  any  notion 
of  Washington  as  he  was,  and  the  in- 
scription alone  will  show  posterity  what 
the  marble  intends.  Take  any  good 
specimen  of  modern  classic  or  Roman 
plastic  art,  by  an  American  artist,  and 
set  it  quietly  in  the  Park  at  New  York 
or  Boston,  without  any  advertising,  and 
it  will  encounter  very  little  criticism,, 
and  excite  but  the  most  transitory  ad- 
miration. Give  the  full  history  of  the 
subject  in  the  public  prints,  and  a  bio- 
graphical sketch  of  the  sculptor,  and 
it  would  attract  much  more  attention  ; 
yet  the  influence  of  the  figure  upon  pop- 
ular thought  would  be  inappreciable, 
and  would  lessen  year  by  year.  This  is 
not  the  case  with  the  humblest  model- 
ling from  life  of  the  patient  and  literal 
kind.  If  the  subject  is  a  public  man, 
the  public  is  immediately  a  sympathetic 
and  a  correct  critic.  It  is  the  same  if 
the  subject  is  taken  from  our  common 
life.  The  little  groups  by  John  Rogers, 
simplest  realism  as  they  are,  and  next 
to  the  lowest  orders  of  true  art,  carry 
more  significance  than  all  the  classic 
sculpture  in  the  country,  and  will  pos- 
sess historic  value  which  we  cannot 
overestimate.  Though  the  classicists 
and  the  realists  are  almost  equally  help- 
less in  the  great  ebb  of  formative  art, 
—  the  former  in  lack  of  anything  to 
say,  and  the  latter  in  lack  of  ability  to 
say  anything,  —  their  positions  relative 
to  the  future  are  different  and  oppos- 
ing—the realists  enjoying  possibili- 
ties. 

It  is  among  the  things  hoped  for  that 
the  plastic  art  may  be  and  will  be  re- 
vived in  America,  and  that  it  will  attain 
here  as  good  development  as  it  had  in 
Greece,  under  entirely  different  condi- 
tions, and,  of  course,  in  a  widely  dif- 
ferent direction.  While  the  influence 


562 


Sculpture  in  the  United  States. 


[November, 


of  foreign  art  prevailed  in  Greece,  what 
was  clone  was  comparatively  insignifi- 
cant ;  it  was  not  until  the  transition 
had  been  made,  and  sculpture  thor- 
oughly nationalized,  that  the  marvellous 
gods  came  forth  from  the  mines  and 
quarries.  Such  a  transition  from  for- 
eign influence  must  of  course  be  made 
here  before  the  true  growth  begins. 
It  is  only  a  question  of  the  time  when 
the  change  can  be  made.  Study  of 
Greek  art,  especially  its  history  and 
relation  to  the  people,  must  always 
retain  great  influence  in  the  educa- 
tion of  our  artists  ;  but  the  time  will 
come  when  it  cannot  denationalize 
them.  The  successful  sculptors  of  the 
future  will  carefully  appraise  the  work 
of  the  ancients,  but  they  will  not  try  to 
reproduce  it.  They  will  know  the  se- 
cret of  its  power  in  the  land  where  it 
was  native,  and  will  therefore  be  able 
to  gauge  their  own  work  by  a  noble 
standard,  worthiest  after  that  of  nature 
and  contemporary  criticism.  They  will 
admit  the  limits  of  the  plastic  art,  and 
not  attempt  to  combine  with  it  forces 
which  belong  to  painting  or  acting.  If 
truth  requires  the  rendering  of  harsh 
and  uncomely  costumes,  they  will  pa- 
tiently deal  with  these  until  the  much- 
needed  reform  is  accomplished  ;  believ- 
ing that,  however  ugly  our  garments 
may  be,  it  is  better  to  represent  them 
as  they  are,  than  to  trick  out  our  mar- 
bles with  the  shreds  and  patches  of 
antiquity.  They  will  discriminate  be- 
tween facts  that  are  vital  and  those 
which  are  merely  accessory  ;  giving  but 
its  due  share  of  time  to  the  work  of  the 
tailor  and  shoemaker,  yet  taking  care 
to  tell  the  truth  about  such  work  as  far 
as  they  go.  They  will  not  spend  their 
lives  in  copying  the  work  of  other 
artists,  nor  will  they  seek  beauty  in 
systematic  lines  or  symmetrical  pro- 
portions, but  they  will  find  it  in  the 
significance  of  nature.  And,  in  order 
to  realize  it,  they  will,  if  necessary,  ex- 
pend study  and  labor  upon  the  smallest 
objects,  provided  those  objects  are  first- 
hand ;  for  it  cannot  be  doubted  that 
the  great  artists  of  the  future  will  take 
their  models  from  the  best  school,  with 


whose  works  the  whole  people  are  fa- 
miliar. These  works  they  will  not 
blindly  try  tp  imitate  with  their  poverty 
of  means  ;  but  they  will  seek  to  repre- 
sent truly,  to  interpret  in  art's  beautiful 
dialect,  the  glorious  handwriting  of  na- 
ture. From  the  least  matters  of  leaves 
and  flowers,  and  from  the  grandest  life 
of  the  world,  the  new  school  will  strive 
to  draw  the  best  meaning ;  and  it  will 
be  conscious  that  this  best  meaning, 
or  foreshadowing,  can  only  be  attained 
from  a  firm  foundation  of  facts.  Know- 
ing that  the  essence  of  all  art  for  man  is 
in  form,  the  sculptor  will  reverence  his 
art  as  the  simplest  and  most  immediate 
interpretation  of  nature  ;  and  though 
he  may  feel  that  in  some  respects  his. 
limits  are  narrower  than  those  of  the 
poet  or  the  painter,  he  will  be  con- 
scious that  in  an  upward  direction  he 
has  no  limitation. 

Results  so  remote  from  the  tendency 
of  prevailing  art,  it  is  easy  to  see,  will 
not  be  attained  in  little  time.  The  ex- 
periment of  realism  in  sculpture  has  not 
been  fairly  tried  since  the  Christian  era, 
but  the  opportunity  seems  to  be  with, 
us.  It  is  not  impossible  that  the  pres- 
ent generation  may  see  the  beginning 
of  good  formative  art.  Two  thousand 
years  of  subjection  to  classicism  has 
not  produced  half  a  dozen  great  sculp- 
tors;  and  when  the  grand  old  Torso 
has  been  warmed  by  the  life  of  the 
greatest  artists,  little  real  advancement 
of  art  has  been  achieved.  The  inevita- 
ble consequence  of  Buonarotti  is  Ber- 
nini ;  of  Bernini,  Borromini.  It  can- 
not be  a  vain  hope  that  the  transition 
from  the  old  school  with  its  spasmodic 
revivals  to  the  ever-new  school  of  life 
is  at  hand.  The  American  people  r.re 
capable  of  giving  realism  in  art  a  iair 
trial.  They  are  comparatively  untram- 
melled by  established  styles.  Loving 
all  kinds  of  art  ardently,  and  eager  t< 
avail  themselves  of  its  help,  they  fill 
their  dwellings  with  cheap  daubs  from 
auctions  and  with  plaster  casts,  rather 
than  allow  them  to  be  vacant ;  but  the 
tendency  is  in  itself  sufficient  to  insure 
the  final  success  of  art  in  a  country 
whose  thought  and  criticism  are  com- 


1 868.] 


Sculpture  in  tlie  United  States.  - 


563 


parativety  independent,  and  whose  me- 
chanical means  are  unlimited. 

While  everything  pertaining  to  sculp- 
ture is  in  its  present  chaotic  state,  any 
attempt  to  indicate  precisely  its  future 
course  would  be  presumptuous ;  but 
allusion  may  be  made  to  the  most 
obvious  means  for  its  development. 
Among  these  its  union  with,  architec- 
ture is  of  the  first  importance.  Interior 
ornamentation  of  buildings  generally 
includes  work  only  on  a  flat  surface,  in 
light  and  shade,  with  or  without  color, 
though  the  formative  art  might  well  be 
combined  with  it ;  but  the  refinement 
of  the  exterior  depends  almost  wholly 
upon  raised  forms.  If  ever  the  laws 
of  fine  art  have  been  set  utterly  at  defi- 
ance, it  is  in  the  so-called  decoration 
of  modern  architecture.  Gross  forms, 
like  nothing  on  earth  of  in  heaven,  me- 
chanically multiplied  in  plaster  or  wood 
or  iron  or  zinc,  and,  worse  still,  some- 
times in  clean  stone,  flaunt  from  sill 
to  cornice  throughout  the  cities  of  the 
United  States,  —  cheap,  showy,  and 
senseless.  With  few  exceptions  of  re- 
cent design,  there  is  scarcely  a  building 
between  the  Lakes  and  the  Gulf  worth 
a  second  glance  for  the  art  employed 
upon  it.  Many  public  edifices,  of 
course,  deserve  the  builder's  attention 
as  examples  of  good  construction  or  as 
reproduction  of  Old  World  styles,  but  of 
invention  or  significant  decoration  there 
is  an  utter  dearth.  Here  the  work  of 
the  sculptor  is  wanting,  and  that  only. 
The  meaningless  forms  should  be  abol- 
ished, and  the  finer  thought  of  the  prac- 
tised artist  woven  in.  He  alone  can 
fill  the  empty  niches,  and  cover  the 
vacant  spaces  with  intelligible  history ; 
he  can  make  the  walls  respond  to  the 
love  of  nature  imprisoned  and  dying  in 
crowded  cities.  When  the  sculptor 
fairly  at  work  on  the  exterior  of 
buildings  he  is  in  a  certain  sense  the 
agent  of  the  whole  people,  and  may 
express  his  thought  in  the  freest  and 
boldest  manner,  unfettered  by  the  pat- 
ronage of  individuals  or  cliques.  He 
will  not  be  forced  to  represent  forgot- 
ten myths.  The  source  whence  the 
people  draw  their  ideas  of  the  true  and 


beautiful  will  also  furnish  his  themes. 
The  realist  sculptor  and  the  architect 
of  the  so-called  Gothic  or  unlimited 
school  having  joined  hands,  good  work 
is  at  once  possible.  For  such  union 
some  sacrifice  is  necessary,  the  archi- 
tect being  too  often  not  a  sculptor,  and 
the  sculptor  not  an  architect ;  but  the 
one  must  not  hesitate  to  avow  his  want, 
and  the  other  must  not  hold  himself 
above  supplying  it.  The  plan  is  so  far 
from  being  impracticable,  that,  wher- 
ever tried,  it  has  been  immediately  suc- 
cessful ;  and  of  those  who  have  given 
thought  to  the  subject  nearly  all  are 
convinced  of  its  feasibility  and  neces- 
sity. 

Reform  in  art  also,  like  all  other  re- 
forms, depends  upon  education.  False 
and  vague  ideas  regarding  the  imitative 
arts  are  so  common  and  so  little  resist- 
ed that  progress  must  be  necessarily 
slow.  The  vulgar  idea  of  genius  is  that 
it  achieves  without  effort  and  without 
consciousness  of  its  means  ;  that  in  art 
it  evokes  statues  from  marble  and  pic- 
tures from  pigments  by  some  unknown 
process  and  without  labor.  This  is 
a  mischievous  and  hindering  notion. 
Though  art  is  sometimes  called  a  sport, 
the  definition  is  inadequate  ;  and  the 
science  of  art  is  certainly  a  matter  of 
labor  and  patience.  It  is  in  this  science 
that  we  need  education.  If  a  sculptor 
wishes  to  represent  a  wreath  of  ivy  in 
marble,  and  has  never  seen  an  ivy-leaf, 
all  the  genius  in  the  world  will  not  ena- 
ble him  to  make  his  work  acceptable  to 
those  who  know  the  form  of  ivy ;  and, 
if  he  copies  the  work  of  another  artist, 
his  own  is  second-hand  and  valueless. 
Patient  study  of  nature,  and  the  ac- 
quired knowledge  of  representing  form 
in  different  materials,  are  just  as  essen- 
tial in  his  work  as  the  inventive  power 
which  enables  him  to  make  a  pleasant 
adjustment  of  his  facts.  Imagination 
in  some  degree  is  given  to  every  one  ; 
but  to  nobody  is  given  trained  sight, 
which  is  the  chief  part  of  the  science 
of  art,  and  which  may  be  acquired  to  a 
little  or  great  extent  by  all.  Confused 
and  misty  ideas  in  the  popular  mind 
regarding  art  seem  unnecessary,  if  the 


564 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


[November, 


subject  be  approached  in  a  com- 
mon-sense way,  and  treated  like  any 
other  subject.  The  science  of  art  is 
like  all  other  science  ;  the  whole  of  art 
is  in  the  union  of  science  and  imagina- 
tion. But  it  is  in  the  first  division  that 
our  education  must  begin,  and  the  im- 
agination must  be  allowed  to  take  care 
of  itself.  If  it  does  not  keep  in  advance 
of  the  work  of  the  hand,  the  worker  is 
no  longer  an  artist.  But  the  child  must 
be  taught  the  alphabet  before  he  can 
read.  Exhibition  in  marble  of  genius 
without  facts  would  be  rather  a  vain 
show.  Imagination  is  not  injured  by  a 
proper  training  of  the  eye  and  hand ; 
on  the  contrary,  it  can  only  be  revealed 
and  cultivated  in  imitative  art  by  these 
means  ;  and  when  the  value  of  such  art 
in  our  culture  is  apprehended,  drawing 
and  modelling  will  be  taught  the  chil- 
dren as  one  of  the  elementary  branches 
of  knowledge.  There  is  "genius" 
enough  in  America  to  furnish  a  school 


equal  to  the  Greek  ;  but  of  general  cul- 
ture in  the  science  of  art  there  is  very 
little,  and  of  artists  carefully  trained  in 
the  school  of  nature  there  are  very  few. 
Drawing  from  natural  objects  should 
be  taught  in  the  public  schools,  not 
only  for  the  benefit  of  those  who  wish 
to  become  artists,  but  as  an  admirable 
exercise  of  the  eye  and  hand,  and  likely 
to  add  greatly  to  future  culture  and  en- 
joyment of  life.  The  knowledge  thus 
gained  would  soon  change  the  char- 
acter of  plastic  art  in  this  country. 
Endowing  the  public  with  power  to 
appreciate  what  is  now  obscure  in  the 
best  art,  and  also  to  detect  blunders  in 
means  and  execution,  it  would  soon 
do  away  with  meaningless  puffery,  and 
obstinate  fault-finding,  substituting  for 
these  kind  and  careful  criticism.  Then 
the  great  power  cflf  artists  like  Greenough, 
Crawford,  Story,  and  Powers  would  be 
utilized,  and  sculpture  could  no  longer 
be  called  an  anachronism  in  America. 


THE    FACE    IN    THE    GLASS. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

A  FTER  this  brief  interval  the  monot- 
/!•  ony  of  olden  days  returned,  as  it 
seemed  to  me,  with  tenfold  dreariness. 
I  fought  in  vain  with  the  depression 
which  it  produced,  and  now,  except  my 
walks  on  the  terrace,  I  had  no  longer 
any  amusement,  for  my  aunt's  health 
failed  daily.  For  the  next  two  months, 
between  prayers  in  the  chapel,  her  bed- 
side, and  that  solitary  terrace  forever 
haunted  by  the  memory  of  my  guar- 
dian's stately  figure,  my  days  passed 
slowly  away.  My  aunt  suffered  much  ; 
and  the  dull  stagnation  which  settled 
on  my  mind  was  quickened  by  my 
growing  anxiety  about  her,  —  an  anx- 
iety which  wore  daily  upon  me.  And 
daily,  gathering  force  with  every  pass- 
ing moment,  swelled  a  longing  more  in- 
tense than  I  had  yet  known  to  be  free, 


—  free  as  I  might  have  been  but  for  my 
father's  commands  and  my  courteous 
guardian's  relentless  rule.  Since  I  had 
seen  my  cousin  I  feared  him  more  than 
ever ;  the  softness  of  his  voice  and 
manner,  the  irresistible  fascination  of 
his  presence,  lingered  no  longer  about 
me,  but  I  recalled  the  fixed  coldness, 
the  iron  resolve,  which  his  courtly  man- 
ner graced  rather  than  concealed,  and 
sighed  and  shuddered  when  I  recalled 
his  absolute  power  over  me. 

I  was  walking  one  evening  on  the 
terrace,  musing  on  the  sad  past  and 
veiled  future  of  my  life,  when  I  heard  a 
voice  calling  me.  It  was  Father  Ro- 
mano, whom  I  had  left  with  my  aunt. 
He  stood  in  a  low  archway  which  led  to 
a  private  staircase  communicating  with 
the  chapel,  the  crucifix  in  his  hand. 
Something  in  his  face,  as  I  approached 
him,  made  my  heart  leap  into  my 


1 868.] 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


565 


mouth,  but  the  new-born  fear  kept  me 
silent ;  I  asked  no  question. 

"  My  daughter,"  said  he,  in  his  calm 
voice,  "  hasten  to  your  aunt ;  her  hours 
are  numbered,  the  time  of  her  depart- 
ure is  at  hand,  but  she  cannot  be  at 
peace  until  she  makes  a  disclosure  to 
you  ;  hasten,  my  daughter." 

I  sprang  past  him,  and  hurried  up 
stairs,  and  when  I  reached  the  room 
where  she  lay  I  saw  indeed  that  death 
was  close  at  hand ;  and,  kneeling  by 
her  side,  I  watched  her  agonies  for  the 
next  two  hours,  and  heard  her  constant, 
terrified  warnings  against  my  guardian, 
and  at  last  promised  that,  when  she  had 
departed,  I  would  leave  all,  all,  and  hide 
myself  from  him  forever.  When  I  had 
whispered  this  promise  again  and  again 
into  her  ear,  she  permitted  me  to  call 
Father  Romano,  and  while  he  was  per- 
forming the  last  rites  of  the  Church  she 
died. 

"  Daughter,"  said  Father  Romano,  a*s 
I  sank  sobbing  on  that  cold  bosom  which 
had  for  so  many  years  beat  warm  for 
me,  —  "  daughter,  she  whom  you  loved 
is  here  no  longer ;  pray  for  the  repose 
of  her  soul."  I  rose  at  last;  I  left  the 
servants  to  perform  the  last  offices  for 
her,  and,  going  to  my  lonely  room,  I  sat 
down  to  think.  I  was  quite  determined 
to  go  away.  My  aunt's  warnings  ;  her 
evident  horror  of  Mr.  Huntingdon ; 
most  of  all,  the  promises  she  had  ex- 
acted from  me,  that  I  would  sacrifice 
everything  rather  than  be  again  under 
his  control,  —  all  combined  to  urge  me  to 
escape  from  a  future  which  I  dreaded. 
I  dared  tell  no  one,  not  even  Father 
Romano,  nor  did  I  know  where  to  go  ; 
but  the  next  morning  I  looked  at  the 
map,  and,  after  carefully  examining  it, 
selected  a  far  distant  town  in  the  heart 
of  Germany,  where  I  knew  there  was  a 
convent,  in  which  I  hoped  to  hide  my- 
.self  from  all  pursuit.  I  determined  to 
go  as  soon  as  my  aunt  was  buried,  and 
for  the  next  three  days  I  thought  of 
little  else.  I  had  few  preparations  to 
make,  money  I  had  in  plenty ;  luggage 
I  dared  not  take,  farewells  it  was  safest 
not  to  make,  as  I  wished  above  all 
things  to  keep  the  fact  of  my  flight  a 


secret.  I  had  not  written  to  M.  Bau- 
det,  for  I  wished  to  depart  before  my 
cousin  could  possibly  hear  of  my  aunt's 
death.  The  days  before  her  funeral 
wore  themselves  slowly  away.  At  the 
close  of  the  last,  which  was  strangely 
and  unnaturally  warm  for  the  time  of 
year,  I  was  sitting  at  the  window  of  my 
aunt's  room.  Not  a  breath  of  air  fresh- 
ened the  hot  stillness,  and  through  it 
the  ticking  of  the  clock  in  my  dressing- 
room,  and  even  the  guttering  and  flick- 
ering of  the  candles  which  burned  in 
the  chapel  round  the  corpse,  were  dis- 
tinctly audible. 

I  sat  weeping  silently,  and  almost 
chiding  the  lagging  hours  which  would 
intervene  before  my  departure.  They 
were  very  few  now,  for  my  aunt  was  to 
be  buried  the  next  day,  and  early  on 
the  following  morning  I  meant  to  leave 
Lascours.  As  I  thus  sat,  so  still  that  I 
scarcely  breathed,  I  heard  a  sound 
which  I  at  first  supposed  was  the  dis- 
tant roll  of  thunder  in  the  storm-laden 
air,  but  as  it  grew  louder  I  perceived  it 
to  be  the  rumble  of  wheels.  Nearer 
and  nearer  they  came,  until  I  could 
distinguish  the  clatter  of  hoofs ;  in  at 
few  moments  there  entered  the  court 
a  travelling  carriage,  drawn  by  four- 
horses,  and,  as  I  distinctly  saw  by  the 
light  of  the  lamps,  bearing  the  arms. 
of  Huntingdon  emblazoned  on  the 
panels. 

I  descended  instantly,  without  wait- 
ing to  think,  and  as  I  reached  the  great 
door  my  guardian  alighted. 

He  approached  me  with  all  his  court- 
ly deference  of  manner,  bii'c  there  was 
a  change.  Instead  of  taking  my  hand, 
as  before,  he  clasped  me  in  his  arms. 

"You  are  entirely  mine  now,  you 
know,"  said  he,  as  he  touched  my  fore- 
head with  his  lips  ;  and,  drawing  my  arm 
within  his,  he  led  me  through  the  draw- 
ing-room to  the  terrace. 

"  Madame  de  Renneville  is  dead," 
said  he,  anticipating  what  I  was  about 
to  say.  "  I  regret  that  she  suffered  so 
much,  and  rejoice  for  her  sake  that  her 
sufferings  are  at  an  end." 

"I  regret  still  more,"  he  continued, 
after  a  moment's  pause,  "  that  it  is  ne- 


566 


TJic  Face  in  the  Glass. 


[November, 


cessary  for  me  to  take  you  to  England 
at  once.  Had  Madame  de  Renneville 
lived,  I  might  indeed  have  waited  ;  now 
it  is  impossible,  as  I  can  neither  leave 
you  at  Lascours  alone  nor  delay  my 
departure  for  England ;  unfortunately, 
therefore,  we  must  go  immediately." 

"  To-morrow,  you  mean,"  said  I,  hop- 
ing to  gain  time. 

"To-night,"  he  replied;  "at  once"; 
and  his  sweet  voice  grew  colder  as  he 
spoke.  "  If  it  were  possible  I  would 
leave  you  here  until  after  the  burial  of 
Madame  de  Renneville,  but  I  have  no 
alternative ;  go  I  must,  and  speedily, 
and,  Charlotte,  you  go  with  me." 

"  O  Harrington  !  "  said  I,  plucking 
my  hand  away  from  his,  and  bursting 
into  tears  of  rage  and  disappointment, 
"  I  cannot,  —  indeed,  I  cannot.  Let 
me  stay  until  to-morrow,  I  entreat  you. 
I  can  follow  you  to  England." 

"  My  dear  Charlotte,"  replied  he, 
calm)*,  "  you  waste  my  time,  and  I  as- 
sure you  that  I  have  no  power  to  act  in 
any  other  way.  Entreaties  cannot,  and 
ought  not,  to  avail  with  me  ;  it  is 
enough  that  they  cannot,  and  it  is  bet- 
ter for  you  to  prepare  for  your  journey. 
You  will  not,  I  am  sure,  compel  me 
to  use  force  in  removing  you.  You 
know  that  I  alone  of  all  the  world  have 
any  claim  upon  you  ;  I  alone  am  allied 
to  you  by  blood,  I  alone  am  vested  with 
any  power  concerning  you,  and  you 
kjiow  by  whom  that  power  was  given 
-£0  me.  You  cannot  disregard  your 
father- 1s  commands, —  I  say  cannot,  for 
I  am  firm  in  obeying  them." 

As  he  pauJ'ed>  the  silence  seemed  la- 
tlen  to  my  ear  with  the  burden  of  my 
father's  first  and  la».t  letter. 

"  Never  deviate  from  his  commands. 
If  you  do,  I  cannot  rest  in  my  grave." 

But  I  rose.  Angry  and  impatient,  I 
burst  into  fresh  tears  of  rage  and  ter- 
ror. "  I  will  not  go,"  I  said  passionate- 
ly,  "  I  will  not  obey  you.  I  think  you 
are  bitterly  cruel,  cold,  pitiless.  I  can- 
not go,  I  will  not  go,  until  my  aunt  is 
laid  in  her  grave  ;  that  will  be  to-mor- 
row ;  O,  be  compassionate,  Harrington, 
and  let  me  stay  until  then  !  " 

I  fell  on   my  knees  as  I  spoke  ;  my 


guardian  bent  over  me,  he  folded  my 
hot  hands  in  his  cool  silken  clasp,  and 
in  tones  whose  gentleness  was  far  more 
powerful  than  harshness  he  said :  '•  I 
have  listened,  Charlotte,  but  I  can 
change  nothing.  I  must  entreat  you 
not  to  spend  your  strength  in  such 
excitement  as  this.  The  moments  I 
have  allotted  for  your  fore  wells  are 
passing  away,  and  I  must  beg  you  to 
begin  your  preparations  at  once." 

"  I  will  not  go,"  I  reiterated. 

"  In  that  case,"  said  he  as  calmly, 
though  more  sternly,  than  before,  "  I  will 
act  for  you." 

In  two  strides  he  had  gained  the 
drawing-room  window,  and  rung  a  bell 
which  stood  there. 

"  Mademoiselle  is  compelled  to  de- 
part at  once  for  England,"  I  heard  him 
say  ;  "  but  half  an  hour  will  be  given  for 
preparation.  M.  Baudet  will  be  here 
to-morrow,  and  will  make  all  payments 
zfnd  necessary  arrangements.  Let  all 
the  servants  be  assembled  in  the  hall 
immediately,  to  bid  mademoiselle  fare- 
well." 

I  listened,  speechless  with  anger  and 
astonishment ;  yet  when  he  again  re- 
turned to  my  side,  I  made  one  more 
effort  to  change  his  determination. 

"  Listen  to  me,"  I  said  ;  "  but  this 
once  yield  to  me  in  this  one  thing,  and 
I  will  yield  in  all  other  things." 

"  Yield  to  you,  Charlotte,"  he  replied 
gently,  —  "  yield  to  you,  —  would  that  I 
had  the  power  to  yield,  and  the  cha- 
teau Lascours  should  still  be  your  home 
if  you  so  wished  ;  must  I  again  repeat 
that  I  have  no  such  power,  and  that  I 
cannot  yield  to  you  ?  Rise,  Charlotte, 
the  ground  is  damp,  and  you  shiver 
even  in  this  warm  air  ;  and,  since  you 
will  not  change  your  dress,  it  is  better 
for  you  to  remain  in  the  drawing-room 
until  we  go." 

I  said  not  another  word.  I  rose,  al- 
lowed him  to  fold  my  shawl  about  me, 
and  entered  the  drawing-room  in  si- 
lence. I  made  no  further  attempt  to 
change  his  determination  ;  I  saw  already 
that  he  was  changeless.  But  what  en- 
treaties could  not  effect,  stratagem,  I 
thought,  might;  and,  having  thought 


1 868.] 


TJie  Face  in  tJie  Glass. 


567 


of  a  plan  of  escape,  I  awaited  the  op- 
portunity to  put  it  into  execution. 

My  guardian  waited  for  some  mo- 
ments, and  then  said  :  "  Charlotte,  you 
weep,  you  rebel,  you  detest  this  coer- 
cion, as  you  call  it,  —  a  coercion  which 
has  not  given  you  more  pain  than  me. 
You  have  already  more  than  once 
called  yourself  a  prisoner,  yet  your  im- 
.  prisonment  has  perhaps  spared  you 
much,  as  your  father  left  the  control  of 
your  marriage  in  my  hands,  and  had 
you  contracted  (as  in  this  solitary  spot 
was  not  unlikely)  an  attachment  for  any 
one  not  your  equal  in  rank,  it  might 
have  resulted  unhappily.  But  all  that 
danger  is  over  now  ;  all  pain  of  that  na- 
ture, —  and  you  are  yet  too  young  to 
know  what  it  would  have  been,  —  is 
spared  you.  The  future  before  you  is 
brilliant,  and,  if  the  dangers  are  great,  I 
have  the  power  to  protect  you  from 
them." 

"  What  dangers  ?  "  I  asked,  involun- 
tarily. 

"  Dangers  which  you  cannot  under- 
stand as  yet,  —  dangers  awaiting  all  who 
are  young  and  beautiful,  dangers  espe- 
cially awaiting  heiresses  of  your  vast 
expectations." 

Something  strangely  ominous  in  his 
clear  low  tones  made  me  tremble.  He 
paused  for  a  moment,  and  then  contin- 
ued, "  Your  marriage  will  be  your  best 
protection." 

"  I  do  not  wish  to  marry,"  I  rejoined. 

"  But  it  is  my  wish  that  you  should 
do  so,"  — and  as  he  said  this  he  placed 
me  in  a  seat,  and  stood  before  me,  —  "  it 
is  my  wish  that  you  should  do  so,  Char- 
lotte." 

"  But  if  I  do  not  wish  it  —  " 

"  It  is  precisely  in  this  respect  that 
the  dangers  of  which  I  have  spoken 
will  be  greatest ;  it  is  necessary  that 
you  should  marry  a  man  whose  rank 
.  and  wealth  are  equal  to  your  own,  that 
you  may  not  become  the  prey  of  the 
adventurers,  who  already  know  that 
Miss  Carteret  is  possessed  of  the  best 
Mood  of  England  and  France  and  of  vast 
wealth  ;  lastly,  it  is  necessary  that  you 
should  marry  a  man  whose  honor  is  a 
-sufficient  guaranty  for  your  protection." 


"  I  do  not  wish  to  marry,"  I  reiter- 
ated. 

"  Have  I  not  told  you  that  you  must 
marry,  Charlotte  ?  It  was  your  father's 
wish." 

I  remained  silent ;  my  marriage,  I 
saw,  was  decided  upon ;  and  as  I  had 
been  educated  in  the  belief  that  Mr. 
Huntingdon  was  to  choose  my  husband, 
I  really  cared  very  little,  thinking  that, 
if  I  should  not  succeed  in  escaping  from 
Lascours,  my  marriage  would  at  least 
separate  me  from  him. 

My  guardian  continued  :  "  I  am,  as  I 
have  said,  in  possession  of  your  father's 
wishes  on  this  subject,  and  am  about  to 
propose  to  you  the  husband  whom  he 
selected  and  whom  I  wish  you  to  ac- 
cept. In  birth  and  fortune  he  is  your 
equal ;  as  to  his  other  qualities  I  shall 
say  nothing.  The  moment  has  ar- 
rived which  I  have  been  anticipating 
for  so  many  )^ears." 

He  paused,  and  I  looked  at  him  with 
a  wildly  beating  heart.  Standing  op- 
posite to  me,  the  perfect  symmetry  of 
his  figure,  the  exquisite  grace  of  his  at- 
titudes, the  paleness  of  his  fine  features, 
even  his  white  hands  and  the  elegance 
of  his  dress,  were  admirably  shown  by 
the  light  of  the  chandelier  beneath 
which  he  stood,  and  which  only  par- 
tially illumined  the  vast  and  sombre 
room  in  which  we  were. 

After  a  moment's  silence  he  resumed  : 
"  He  whom  I  am  about  to  propose  to 
you  has  long  cared  for  you.  He 
would  have  chosen  you  had  yours  been 
a  humble  lot,  for  to  his  rank  yours  and 
your  possessions  can  add  nothing." 

"  He  has  your  consent  ?  "  I  stam- 
mered ;  "  Harrington,  who  is  he  ?  " 

He  smiled,  and  taking  my  hand  said : 
"  Charlotte,  the  coercion  which  so  pains 
you,  the  guardianship  you  so  detest,  the 
control  from  which  you  so  revolt,  end 
here.  Not  as  Miss  Carteret,  the  ward 
of  a  stern  guardian,  do  I  propose  to  take 
you  back  to  England,  but  as  my  wife. 
I  offer  you,  Charlotte,  my  hand,  my 
heart,  and  my  fortune,  —  I  who  have 
never  before  so  spoken  to  any  woman  ; 
answer  me  now,  and  answer  as  your 
father  would  have  wished." 


The  Face  in  tJic  Glass. 


[November,. 


He  ceased,  but  those  tones,  the  sin- 
gular melody  of  which  lent  a  charm  to  his 
lightest  vVord,  yet  echoed  in  my  ear,  and 
I  had  no  power  to  resist  them,  no  power 
to  draw  back  from  his  encircling  arms  as 
he  folded  me  to  his  breast.  But  a  few 
days  before  my  aunt  had  whispered  in . 
her  agony,  "  See  him  no  more.  If  you 
see  him,  you  are  undone."  Alas,  I 
had  seen  him,  I  had  listened  to  his 
voice,  had  felt  the  mysterious  magnet- 
ism of  his  presence,  and  I  was  indeed 
undone ! 

"  Come  now,  my  Charlotte,"  he  said. 
"  I  have  already  overstayed  my  time. 
Your  farewells  must  be  spoken,  and  we 
must  spend  some  moments  at  the 
church." 

"  Why  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  We  must  be  married  at  once. 
Father  Romano  is  there  now,  and 
M.  Baudet  waits  there  to  give  you 
away." 

"  To-night  ?  "  I  said,  recoiling. 

Mr.  Huntingdon  smiled.  "  Yes, 
Charlotte,  at  once.  You  must  return 
to  England  as  my  wife." 

We  had  by  this  time  reached  the  hall 
where  the  servants  were  assembled ; 
and  when  I  had  bidden  them  farewell 
I  turned  to  Mr.  Huntingdon,  saying 
that  I  wished  to  go  to  the  chapel,  and 
wished  him  to  wait  for  me.  He  as- 
sented, and  I  ascended  the  staircase 
alone. 

The  chapel  where  my  aunt  lay  was 
quite  at  the  other  end  of  the  chateau, 
and  as  I  walked  along  the  long  gal- 
leries the  recollection  of  all  that  she 
had  said  rushed  over  me.  The  dread 
of  my  guardian,  none  the  less  painful 
because  so  indefinable,  returned.  I 
thought  of  my  promise  to  my  aunt,  of 
the  hope  of  escape  to  which  I  still  clung, 
until  I  came  to  the  rooms  which  had 
once  been  my  father's.  The  door  which 
led  to  them  was  open,  and  as  I  crept 
past  it,  trembling,  I  almost  expected  to 
hear  a  voice  saying  :  "  Never  deviate 
from  his  commands.  If  you  do,  I  can- 
not rest  in  my  grave." 

I  reached  the  chapel  at  last.  All 
draped  in  black  it  was,  except  that  stiff 
•white  figure  about  which  the  tall  can- 


dles were  burning.  I  advanced,  I  knelt 
at  the  foot  of  the  bier,  and,  gazing  at 
the  pale  and  rigid  face  of  the  dead,  I 
thought  of  my  promise  to  her  ;  I  dared 
not  break  it  then.  I  thought  if  I  did 
those  fast-closed  lids  would  open,  those 
folded  hands  unlock  themselves  and 
beckon  me  away  from  the  man  she  so 
hated,  and  whom  I  had  sworn  to  avoid. 
And  now  I  was  to  be  his  wife !  When 
I  thought  of  that  I  almost  screamed, 
and  the  wind  rustled  the  folds  of  the 
pall.  Could  the  dead  come  back  ? 
Should  I  wake  her  from  that  last  sleep 
if  I  returned  to  my  guardian's  side  ? 
He  was  waiting,  he  bade  me  take  my 
farewell  speedily. 

I  knelt  thus  tortured  by  conflicting 
doubts  and  fears,  wavering  between  my 
promise  to  my  aunt  and  my  duty  to* 
my  father ;  but  I  rose  at  length,  deter- 
mined to  escape.  Behind  the  altar 
was  a  secret  door,  which  led  to  the 
ruined  wing  of  the  chateau,  and  once 
there  I  was  safe.  I  knew  where  the 
key  of  the  staircase  was  kept,  and  took 
it ;  then  wrapping  my  veil  and  mantle 
about  me,  I  returned  to  the  chapel,  and, 
bending  over  the  corpse,  kissed  its  cold 
blue  lips,  and  whispered  a  farewell  in 
those  unheeding  ears. 

Would  she  wake,  I  thought.  No; 
I  stood  one  moment  gazing  on  her  still 
face,  then,  gliding  softly  behind  the 
altar,  I  touched  the  panel,  which  after 
some  difficulty  yielded  to  my  hand,  and, 
having  closed  it  carefully  behind  me,  I 
began  to  descend  the  steps.  At  the 
foot  of  the  staircase  was  a  narrow  pas- 
sage, which  led  to  another  secret  door, 
opening  on  a  small  stone  staircase 
which  descended  toward  a  long-deserted 
part  of  the  woods.  The  stairs  were  part- 
ly in  ruins,  and  the  stones  loose  ;  and  I 
crept  down  very  carefully  at  first,  paus- 
ing and  listening  at  every  step,  though- 
I  felt  tolerably  secure,  as  the  ruins  were 
in  such  an  entirely  different  direction 
from  the  chapel  that  I  did  not  antici- 
pate that  any  search  would  be  made 
there  for  me.  WThen  I  paused  for  the 
last  time,  I  was  upon  the  last  turn  of 
the  staircase,  and  within  a  few  steps  of 
the  bottom;  it  was  quite  dark,  and  ] 


1 868.] 


TJie  Face  in  the  Gl&ss. 


569 


listened  intently, — listened  in  vain;  for 
never  was  there  a  stillness  more  pro- 
found. I  was  alone  and  safe.  Reas- 
sured and  eager,  I  hastened  on  ;  but 
on  the  last  step  but  one  my  foot  turned 
on  a  loose  stone,  and  I  stumbled  and 
fell,  —  almost,  but  not  quite,  for  my 
guardian's  arms  received  me.  Against 
his  bosom  he  stifled  the  shriek  which 
burst  from  my  lips,  and,  lifting  me  in 
his  arms,  he  carried  me  across  the 
court,  and  placed  me  on  a  stone  seat. 
He  stood  by  me  in  silence  until  I  had 
somewhat  recovered  myself,  and  then 
said :  "  Are  you  sufficiently  rested  to 
walk  across  the  park  ?  I  have  directed 

•  the  carriage  to  be  in  waiting  at  the 
door  of  the  church,  and  it  is  already 
past  nine." 

I  rose  at  once.  Never  again,  I  well 
knew,  would  I  dare  to  dispute  his  com- 

I  mands  ;  and  as  I  drew  my  mantle  about 
me  the  keys  of  the  secret  staircase 
fell  to  the  ground.  Mr.  Huntingdon 
stooped,  and,  taking  them  up,  flung 
them  with  a  strong  hand  and  unerring 
aim  into  a  well  on  the  other  side  of  the 
court ;  then,  taking  my  hand,  he  said : 
"  Are  you  ready,  Charlotte  ?  we  have 
no  time  to  lose." 

Supported  by  his  firm  clasp  I  reached 
the  church.  The  door  was  open,  and  by 
the  light  of  the  tapers  dimly  burning  on 
the  high  altar  I  could  see  the  servants 
assembled  near  it,  and  Father  Romano 
on  his  knees.  As  I  expected,  he  was 
at  his  vigils.  He  rose  as  we  approached 
the  altar,  and  Monsieur  Baudet,  advan- 
cing, took  his  place  behind  me,  and  the 
service  began.  I  opened  the  white 
bridal  prayer-book  which  Mr.  Hunting- 
don placed  in  my  hand  ;  but  the  words 
swam  before  my  eyes,  and  I  listened 
and  responded  like  one  in  a  dream.  It 
seemed  indeed  all  a  dream  to  me,  —  the 
old  church  dimly  lighted  by  the  tapers 
burning  on  the  high  altar ;  the  monot- 
onous tones  of  Father  Romano,  which 
I  had  last  heard  in  the  offices  for  the 
dying  ;  the  clear  responses  prono'unced 
at  my  side.  I  realized  nothing  until 
the  rite  was  over,  and  I  was  in  the  car- 
riage, when  AT.  Baudet,  taking  my  hand, 
wished  "  madainc  a  pleasant  journey." 


Then,  and  as  the  order  for  departure 
was  given,  I  covered  my  face,  and  burst 
into  tears.  Mr.  Huntingdon  had  takea 
his  seat  opposite  me  ;  he  bent  forward 
to  let  down  the  window,  and  to  inquire 
whether  I  liked  the  air,  but  did  not 
again  address  me,  and  I  sobbed  myself 
to  sleep  unheeded. 

At  break  of  day  we  reached  a  small 
town,  where  we  halted  to  rest  for  a 
short  time,  and  it  was  yet  early  when 
we  resumed  our  journey.  Not  once 
during  all  that  day  did  Mr.  Hunting- 
don address  me ;  he  sat  absorbed  in 
thought,  and  I  was  equally  absorbed  in 
watching  him,  though  no  change  ever 
swept  across  his  calm  countenance, 
and  though  he  never  glanced  at  me 
except  to  wrap  my  shawl  about  me,  to 
close  or  open  the  window,  or  to  per- 
form some  slight  courtesy  of  that  kind. 

On  the  fifth  day  after  our  departure 
from  Lascours  we  sailed  from  Calais 
for  England.  We  landed  at  Dover  on 
a  rainy,  dreary  November  day ;  and  as 
Mr.  Huntingdon  placed  me  in  the  car- 
riage which  was  in  waiting  for  us,  I 
asked  if  we  were  expected  at  Carteret  ? 

"  They  are  prepared  for  us  both  at 
Carteret  and  at  Huntingdon,  but  we 
shall  go  to  neither  place.  I  propose 
going  to  a  small  estate  of  mine  on  the 
borders  of  Scotland." 

"I  would  rather  go  to  Carteret,"  I 
answered,  —  not  so  much  that  I  cared, 
for  indeed  I  now  cared  for  very  little. 
I  was  confused  and  mentally  wearied 
by  the  excitement  I  had  undergone, 
but  I  felt  that  I  wished  to  say  some- 
thing, express  some  desire,  irritate,  if  I 
could  not  please,  this  man  of  marble. 
"  I  would  rather  go  to  Carteret,"  I  re- 
peated. 

He  only  smiled  in  answer,  and  six 
days  after,  though  no  word  had  been 
spoken  by  him  on  the  subject,  we  ar- 
rived at  Banmore.  It  was  a  gloomy 
place,  enclosed  with  yew-trees,  and  kept 
in  a  sort  of  stiff  repair  which  was  more 
dreary  than  dilapidation  or  decay  ;  and 
when  I  went  to  my  rooms,  which  were 
newly  and  well  furnished,  I  dismissed 
my  silent  English  maid,  and  sat  down 
oppressed  and  sad.  From  that  night 


570 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


[November, 


began  a  life  of  which  I  could  not  speak 
if  I  would,  so  nameless  were  its  tor- 
tures. No  visitors  were  ever  admitted, 
Mr.  Huntingdon  saying  that  respect  to 
the  memory  of  my  aunt  required  that 
we  should  live  in  the  strictest  seclu- 
sion ;  we  paid  no  visits  for  the  same 
reason.  The  servants,  though  obsequi- 
ous and  attentive,  were  strangely  silent 
and  quiet ;  Mr.  Huntingdon  so  devoted 
that  I  was  never  for  one  moment  un- 
conscious of  his  observation,  yet  he 
hardly  ever  addressed  me. 

The  monotony  of  my  life  at  Lascours 
was  as  nothing  compared  with  that  at 
Banmore.  Every  day  at  the  same  hour 
we  entered  the  carriage,  and  took  a 
long  and  dreary  drive ;  every  day,  at 
Mr.  Huntingdon's  side,  I  paced  the 
same  walk  in  a  long,  deserted  avenue 
in  the  park.  I  cannot  separate  those 
hours,  days,  weeks,  from  one  another. 
They  were  all  alike  ;  and  then  at  that 
time  I  felt — I  began  to  feel,  I  mean  — 
that  my  mind  was  going,  was  shaken 
from  its  equilibrium.  I  began  to  doubt 
my  powers,  my  memory,  my  percep- 
tions. I  often  wished  to  be  alone,  which 
I  never  was  ;  for  my  husband  never  left 
me,  and  my  morning-room  opened  into 
the  library  where  he  sat,  when  not  walk- 
ing or  driving  with  me,  engaged  in 
reading  or  writing. 

I  say  he  never  left  me.  If  I  rose  to 
leave  the  room,  he  rose  also  and  fol- 
lowed me.  I  began  at  length  to  trem- 
ble, if  but  a  moment  alone,  lest  he 
should  come  and  find  me.  To  avoid 
being  followed,  1  followed  him ;  to 
avoid  being  watched,  I  sat  close  to 
him,  usually  at  his  feet ;  and  so  perfect 
was  his  calm  politeness,  his  complete 
courtesy,  that  I  frequently  upbraided 
myself  for  my  undutifulness  and  want 
of  affection.  Sometimes,  actuated  by 
those  strange  moods  which  sway  the 
maniac,  I  caressed  him  passionately; 
I  did  not  then  hate,  I  wished  to  love 
him. 

Kisses  as  cold  as  those  of  the  dead 
he  gave  me,  embraces  as  loveless  ;  and 
I  flung  away  in  mingled  rage  and  terror 
from  his  passionless  calm. 

Sometimes  as  I  sat  at  his  feet,  luxu- 


riously cushioned,  —  for  he  always  in- 
sisted on  giving  me  the  softest  seat,  — 
sometimes  so  sitting,  looking  alternate- 
ly at  the  low  fire  and  cold  landscape, 
and  listening  to  the  only  sound  ever 
heard  in  that  house,  the  ceaseless  scrap- 
ing of  his  pen  on  the  paper,  —  fierce 
impulses  would  seize  me  to  shriek  aloud, 
to  spring  upon  him  ;  and  always,  just  as 
the  cry  trembled  upon  my  lips,  as  the 
convulsion  seemed  about  to  seize  my 
limbs,  his  cool  hand  touched  my  head, 
his  calm,  considerate  voice  said,  "You 
can  no  longer  sit  still,  I  see.  I  will 
ring  for  your  maid,  and  then  walk  with 
you  "  ;  and  the  thought  that  he  was 
thus  intuitively  conscious  of  my  silent  » 
inward  struggles  filled  me  with  vague 
dread,  and  heightened  the  growing 
restlessness  which  was  fast  making  my 
life  a  physical  as  well  as  a  mental  tor- 
ture. 


CHAPTER  V. 

BEYOND  the  fact  that  he  thus 
watched  and  followed  me,  and  that  he 
seemed  to  know  my  thoughts  and  im- 
pulses, my  husband  gave  no  sign  which 
could  lead  me  to  think  that  he  was 
aware  of  the  misery  I  suffered, — a 
misery  which  was  none  the  less  intol- 
erable because,  when  I  strove  to  an- 
alyze it,  I  could  not  define  in  what  it 
consisted. 

But  it  increased  so  rapidly  that  I 
began  at  length  to  doubt  whether  I  ex- 
isted at  all,  whether  my  surroundings 
were  real ;  if  the  past,  as  I  recollected 
it,  had  ever  been,  nothing  seemed  to  me 
real  or  actual  except  Mr.  Huntingdon 
and  his  hold  upon  my  life. 

Towards  the  close  of  the  winter  lie 
announced  his  intention  of  going  to 
London  to  attend  the  opening  of  Par- 
liament. I  expected  to  be  left  alone, 
and  something  like  hope  shot  through 
my  mind  as  I  thought.  It  was  dispelled 
as  he  added,  "We  shall  leave  next 
week." 

"  Am  I  to  go  ?"  I  said,  sullenly- 

"  Certainly,"  he  replied,  calmly. 

"  I  do  not  wish  to  go  to  London,"  I 


1868.] 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


571 


answered  ;  "  I  prefer  to  spend  the  time 
of  your  absence  at  Carteret." 

'•  That  cannot  be,"  he  said  after  a 
moment's  pause.  "  I  cannr»t  leave  you 
alone  for  so  long,  and  I  cannot  leave 
London  while  Parliament  is  sitting." 

"  I  wish  to  be  alone,"  I  sobbed,  in  a 
burst  of  tears  ;  "  I  wish  to  do  as  I 
please." 

He  made  no  reply  to  this,  but,  draw- 
ing up  his  desk,  began  to  write  steadily 
and  rapidly  as  usual. 

I  continued  to  sob,  first  with  anger 
and   disappointment,    afterwards    from 
nervousness  ;  and  as  I    wept  the  par- 
oxysm   increased  in  violence,  until   at 
length    I   became    utterly  incapable  of 
controlling    myself,    and    stamped   and 
[shrieked  aloud.     Mr.  Huntingdon  then 
[raised  his  eyes  for  the  first  time,  and  sur- 
Mffced  me.      There  was    neither   scorn 
anger  nor  agitation  in  his  glance  ;  it 
only,  u  I  was  prepared  for  this." 
e  rose  and  opened  the  window,  and 
.,  returning  to  his  seat,  began  to  fold 
id  seal  the  letter  he  had  written. 
His  composure  irritated  me  beyond 
urance.     I  redoubled  my  cries,  and, 
wing  myself  on  the  ground,  began 
:ar  my  hair. 

I  lay  thus,  convulsed  and  disor- 
,  the  door  opened,  and  the  butler 
ippeared  with  some  water.  Mr.  Hun- 
dngdon  took  a  glass  from  the  tray,  and 
Bred  it  to  me  ;  the  unruffled  courtesy 
rf  his  manner  and  the  curious  glances 
tf  the  servant  transported  me  with 
•age.  I  took  the  glass,  and  flung  it  with 
ill  my  strength  against  the  marble 
:himney-piece. 

"  Leave   the  room,"  said  Mr.   Hun- 

,n  to  the  servant.    "Madame,"  he 

Lied,  turning  to  me,  "rise  imme- 

ly  "  ;  and  as  I  refused  he  lifted  and 

1  me,  still  struggling  and  scream- 

.ito  my  morning-room  ;  then  clos- 

''.e   door,  and    placing   me  before 

•Irrcr,  he  availed  the  result  in  si- 

ence. 

hat  a  sight  I  saw  !  what  a  hideous, 

i  ! — my  flushed  and  swol- 

en   face,    dishevelled   hair,  and   disor- 

s,  a  torn  handkerchief  in  one 

•  the  other  cut  with   the   broken 


glass,  and,  standing  behind  me,  with  a 
contemptuous  smile  upon  his  lips,  my 
husband,  serene  and  cold,  with  his  per- 
fectly arranged  hair  and  dress  in  as  ex- 
quisite order  as  usual.  I  was  calmed  in 
a  moment.  I  saw,  with  a  keen  anguish 
which  I  can  even  now  recall,  how  I 
must  have  appeared,  and  I  sat  motion- 
less and  silent. 

I  do  not  know  how  long  we  remained 
thus,  —  my  eyes  fixed  upon  the  mirror 
and  my  husband's  also.  We  outstayed 
my  languor,  stayed  until  the  dreadful 
restlessness,  which  was  my  almost  con- 
stant companion,  beset  me  again  and 
tormented  me  grievously  ;  for  I  dared 
not  move  while  my  husband's  hand 
rested  upon  my  shoulder,  nor  close  my 
eyes  while  he  gazed  upon  me.  At  last 
he  spoke  :  "  It  is  best  for  you  to  lie 
down,  Charlotte  ;  you  must  be  exhaust- 
ed." 

A  disclaimer  rose  to  my  lips,  but  I 
withheld  it,  and  obeyed  in  silence. 

All  that  night  he  sat  beside  me,  read- 
ing ;  and  whenever  I  opened  my  eyes 
he  met  them  with  his  calm,  attentive, 
watchful  gaze,  until  I  wished  myself 
dead,  and  buried  deep  out  of  that  cease- 
less scrutiny. 

At  the  close  of  the  following  week 
we  arrived  in  London.  The  house 
which  Mr.  Huntingdon  had  selected 
was  vast  and  sombre,  standing  in  a 
small  court,  and  surrounded  by  a  wall 
so  high  that  the  windows  of  my  apart- 
ments, which  were  on  the  second  floor, 
commanded  nothing  beyond. 

Closed  within  those  walls  I  dragged 
out  four  wearisome  months.  The  fact 
that  Mr.  Huntingdon  was  absent  a 
great  deal  of  the  time  was  no  relief  to 
me,  as  I  soon  found  that  in  his  absence 
I  was  a  prisoner. 

I  need  not  dilate  on  those  days  ;  they 
were  all  alike, — solitary,  dreary,  hope- 
less. Attacks  of  frenzy,  like  the  one  I 
had  had  at  Banmore,  came  on  frequent- 
ly ;  and  while  they  were  upon  me  I 
destroyed  everything  within  my  reach. 
My  husband  never  remonstrated  or 
complained.  Often  when  my  paroxysm 
was  at  its  height  did  the  door  open 
noiselessly,  and  his  calm  face  look  in, 


572 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


[November, 


but  he  never  spoke ;  usually  he  stood 
with  folded  arms,  and  silently  surveyed 
the  scene.  The  next  day  I  invariably 
found  that  the  articles  I  had  destroyed 
were  replaced  without  comment  of  any 
kind. 

Conduct  so  forbearing,  so  cool,  so 
patient,  failed  to  soothe  ;  it  irritated 
me  beyond  endurance  ;  it  intensified  the 
dislike  and  dread  I  felt  for  him,  —  a 
dislike  which  was  fast  deepening  into 
hate,  and  which  my  fear  of  him  alone 
kept  in  check. 

Such  was  my  condition  when  we 
left  London  for  Huntingdon  Hall,  early 
in  July.  We  stopped  at  Carteret  Castle 
and  Branthope  Grange  on  the  way,  and 
were  magnificently  entertained  at  both 
places.  When  we  entered  the  village 
of  Carteret,  bonfires  were  blazing  on 
the  surrounding  hills,  triumphal  arches 
spanned  the  streets,  the  castle  and  park 
were  illuminated,  and  all  the  tenants 
and  servants  assembled  to  welcome  us. 

Never  shall  I  forget  passing  through 
that  long  line  of  eager  and  curious 
faces  ;  how  the  desire  to  control  myself 
made  me  tremble ;  how  I  raised  my 
head  defiantly  and  eyed  them  all  curi- 
ously ;  how,  long  before  we  reached 
the  end  of  the  hall,  my  assumed  com- 
posure gave  way,  and  I  hid  my  face, 
and  whispered  to  my  husband  to  take 
me  away.  I  could  not  listen  to  the 
speech  with  which  the  old  steward  wel- 
comed me,  and  twice  endeavored  to 
break  away  from  my  husband's  detain- 
ing arm  ;  and  it  was  a  relief  to  me  when 
the  speech  was  ended,  and  he  respond- 
ed briefly,  alleging  my  ill  health  as  a  rea- 
son for  my  retirement. 

Our  reception  at  Huntingdon  was 
equally  formal,  and  my  want  of  self- 
control,  as  I  was  painfully  aware,  still 
more  apparent ;  I  was  fatigued  by  the 
motion  of  the  carriage,  by  the  excite- 
ment of  my  visit  to  Carteret,  and  by  the 
fruitless  efforts  I  had  made  to  control 
what  I  now  know  must  have  been  a 
disease.  As  I  descended  the  grand 
staircase,  after  I  was  dressed,  each  of 
the  lights  with  which  the  hall  was  illu- 
minated seemed  to  me  a  curious  eye, 
and  all  the  magnificence  displayed  in 


my  honor  intolerably  oppressive.  Din- 
ner was  always  a  tedious  ceremonial  to 
me,  and  on  this  occasion  it  was  even 
more  so  than  usual ;  the  great  dining- 
room  was  blazing  with  lights  and  silver, 
and  gay  with  flowers  and  the  superb 
liveries  of  the  servants,  Mr.  Hunting- 
don handsomer  and  more  graceful  than 
ever.  I  was  the  skeleton  at  that  feast, 
—  I  who  carried  an  aching  head  and 
disappointed  heart  beneath  my  tiara 
and  necklace  of  diamonds  ;  who  felt  the 
jewels  with  which  I  was  loaded  to  be 
heavier  than  a  prisoner's  chains;  who 
saw  a  jailer  in  the  husband  sitting 
opposite  to  me,  and  spies  in  the  atten- 
tive servants  hovering  about  my  chair. 

Mr.  Huntingdon  glanced  at  me  once 
or  twice.  I  saw  that  he  was  prepared 
for  an  outburst,  and  this,  while  it 
chafed,  made  me  the  more  anxious  to 
control  myself.  I  averted  my  face,  and 
bit  my  lips  to  restrain  the  hysterical 
laughter  which  trembled  upon  them, 
but  in  vain.  The  consciousness  that  I 
was  closely  watched  irritated  and  con- 
fused me.  I  raised  my  head  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  as  I  met  the  curious  peering 
glances  of  the  line  of  servants  opposite 
my  chair  I  lost  all  command  of  myself. 

"  How  dare  you  look  at  me  in  that 
way  ?  "  I  exclaimed.  "  Am  I  a  monster, 
that  I  should  be  thus  watched  and  ex- 
amined?" 

As  I  spoke,  all  the  hysterical  emotion 
which  I  had  so  long  pent  up  burst 
forth.  "  Go,  go ! "  I  screamed,  —  stamp- 
ing furiously  as  I  saw  the  servants  had 
made  no  attempt  to  leave  the  room,  — 
"go,  I  tell  you!" 

All  this  time  Mr.  Huntingdon  had 
been  occupied  with  his  dinner ;  he  now 
rose,  and,  signing  the  servants  to  leave 
the  room,  approached  me,  saying  sim- 
ply :  "  You  are  not  well,  I  see.  Let  me 
take  you  to  your  room." 

He  conducted  me  up  stairs  in  silence  ; 
and,  as  the  door  of  my  apartments 
closed  behind  us,  he  said,  in  his  calmest 
voice,  "  After  this  scene  it  will  be  best 
for  you  not  to  attempt  to  appear  in  pub- 
lic." 

So  began  the  fourth  era  of  my  im- 
prisonment. 


1 868,] 


Bacon. 


573 


BACON. 


II. 


WE  propose  in  this  paper  to  give 
some  account  of  Bacon's  writ- 
ings :  and  the  first  place  in  such  an 
account  belongs  to  his  philosophical 
Yv-orks  relating  to  the  interpretation  of 
Nature. 

As  Bacon,  from  his  boyhood,  was  a 
thinker  living  in  the  thick  of  affairs, 
with  a  discursive  reason  held  in  check 
by  the  pressure  of  palpable  facts,  he 
equally  escaped  the  narrowness  of  the 
secluded  student  and  the  narrowness  of 
the  practical  man  of  the  world.  It  was 
therefore  but  natural  that,  early  in  his 
collegiate  life,  he  should  feel  a  contempt 
for  the  objects  and  the  methods  of  the 
philosophy  current  among  the  scholars 
of  his  time.  The  true  object  of  philos- 
ophy must  be  either  to  increase  our 
knowledge  or  add  to  our  power.  The 
ancient  and  scholastic  systems  seemed 
to  him  to  have  failed  in  both.  They 
had  not  discovered  truths,  they  had  not 
invented  arts.  Admitting  that  the  high- 
est use  of  knowledge  was  the  pure  joy 
it  afforded  the  intellect,  and  that  its 
lowest  use  was  its  ministration  to  the 
practical  wants  of  man,  it  seemed  to 
him  evident  that  their  method  led  as 
little  to  knowledge  that  enriched  the 
mind  as  to  knowledge  that  gave  cun- 
ning to  the  hands.  Aiming  at  self- 
culture  by  self-inspection,  rather  than 
by  inspection  of  Nature,  they  neglect- 
ed the  great  world  of  God  for  the  little 
world  of  man  ;  so  that  at  last  it  seemed 
as  if  the  peculiar  distinction  of  knowl- 
edge consisted  in  knowing  that  noth- 
ing could  be  known.  But  the  ques- 
tion might  arise,  Was  not  the  barren- 
ness of  their  results  due  to  the  selfish 
littleness,  rather  than  disinterested  ele- 
vation, of  their  aim?  Introduce  into 
philosophy  a  philanthropic  motive,  make 
man  the  thinker  aid  man  the  laborer, 
unite  contemplation  with  a  practical 
purpose,  and  discard  the  idea  that 
knowledge  was  intended  for  the  exclu- 


sive gratification  of  a  few  selected  spirits, 
and  philosophy  would  then  increase  in 
largeness  and  elevation  as  much  as  it 
would  increase  in  usefulness ;  for  if 
such  a  revolution  in  its  spirit,  object, 
and  method  could  be  made,  it  would 
continually  furnish  new  truths  for  the 
intellect  to  contemplate  from  the  im- 
petus given  to  the  discovery  of  new 
truths  by  the  perception  that  they  could 
be  applied  to  relieve  human  necessities. 
If  it  were  objected  that  Philosophy 
could  not  stoop  from  her  ethical  and 
spiritual  heights  to  the  drudgery  of 
investigating  natural  laws,  it  might  be 
answered  that  what  God  had  conde- 
scended to  create  it  surely  was  not 
ignoble  in  man  to  examine  ;  "  for  that 
which  is  deserving  of  existence  is  de- 
serving of  knowledge,  the  image  of  ex- 
istence." If  philosophers  had  a  higher 
notion  of  their  dignity,  Francis  Bacon 
did  not  share  it ;  and,  accordingly,  early 
in  life  he  occupied  his  mind  in  devising 
a  method  of  investigating  the  secrets 
of  Nature  in  order  to  wield  her  powers. 

The  conception  was  one  of  the  noblest 
that  ever  entered  the  mind  of  man  ; 
but  was  it  accomplished  ?  As  Bacon's 
name  seems  to  be  stereotyped  in  pop- 
ular and  scientific  speech  as  the  "  father 
of  the  Inductive  Sciences,"  and  as  all 
the  charity  refused  to  his  life  has  been 
heaped  upon  his  philosophical  labors, 
it  may  seem  presumptuous  to  answer 
this  question  in  the  negative  ;  yet  noth- 
ing is  more  certain  than  that  the  induc- 
tive sciences  have  not  followed  the 
method  which  he  invented,  and  have 
not  arrived  at  the  results  which  he  pro- 
posed to  accomplish. 

The  mistake,  as  it  regards  Bacon, 
has  risen  principally  from  confounding 
Induction  with  the  Baconian  method  tf. 
Induction.  If  we  were  to  tell  our  read- 
ers that  there  were  great  undiscovered 
laws  in  Nature,  and  should  strongly 
advise  them  to  examine  particular  facts 


574 


Bacon. 


[November, 


with  great  care,  in  order  through  them 
to  reach  the  knowledge  of  those  laws, 
we  should  recommend  the  practice  of 
induction  ;  but  even  if  they  should  heed 
and  follow  the  advice,  we  much  doubt 
if  any  scientific  discoveries  would  en- 
sue. Indeed,  if  Bacon  himself  could 
hear  the  recommendation  made,  and 
could  adopt  the  modern  mode  of  spirit- 
ual communication,  there  would  be  a 
succession  of  indignant  raps  on  the 
editorial  table,  which,  being  interpreted, 
would  run  thus :  "  Ladies  and  gentle- 
men, the  mode  of  induction  recom- 
mended to  you  is  radically  vicious  and 
incompetent.  Truth  cannot  be  discov- 
ered in  that  way ;  but  if  you  will  select 
any  given  matter  which  requires  inves- 
tigation, and  will  follow  the  mechanical 
mode  of  procedure  laid  down  in  my 
method  of  induction,  Novum  Organum, 
Book  II.,  you  will  be  able,  without  any 
special  scientific  genius,  to  hunt  the 
very  form  and  essence  of  the  nature 
you  seek  to  its  last  hiding-place,  and 
compel  it  to  yield  up  its  innermost  se- 
cret. All  that  is  required  is  common 
capacity,  united  with  persevering  labor 
and  combination  of  purpose."  This  is 
not  exactly  Bacon's  rhetoric,  but  as 
spirits,  when  they  leave  the  body,  seem 
somehow  to  acquire  a  certain  pinched 
and  poverty-stricken  mode  of  expres- 
sion, it  will  do  to  convey  his  idea. 

Bacon,  the  philosopher,  is  therefore 
to  be  considered,  not  as  a  man  who  in- 
vented and  recommended  Induction,  for 
Induction  is  as  old  as  human  nature,  — 
was,  in  fact,  invented  by  Adam,  —  and,  as 
practised  in  Bacon's  time,  was  the  mark 
of  his  especial  scorn  ;  but  he  is  to  be 
considered  as  one  who  invented  and 
recommended  a  new  method  of  Induc- 
tion ;  a  system  of  precise  rules  to  guide 
induction  ;  a  new  logic  or  organ  which 
was  to  supersede  the  Aristotelian  logic. 
He  proudly  called  it  his  art  of  invent- 
ing sciences.  A  method  of  investiga- 
tion presupposes,  of  course,  some  con- 
ception of  the  objects  to  be  investigated  ; 
and  of  the  infinite  variety  and  complex- 
ity of  nature  Bacon  had  no  idea.  His 
method  proceeds  on  the  notion  that  all 
the  phenomena  of  nature  are  capable 


of  being  referred  to  combinations  of 
certain  abstract  qualities  of  matter, 
simple  natures,  which  are  limited  in 
number  if  difficult  of  access.  Such  are 
density,  rarity,  heat,  cold,  color,  levity, 
tenuity,  weight,  and  the  like.  These 
are  the  alphabet  of  nature  ;  and  as 
all  words  result  from  the  combina- 
tion of  a  few  letters,  so  all  phenomena 
result  from  the  combination  of  a  few 
elements.  What  is  gold,  for  example, 
but  the  co-ordination  of  certain  quali- 
ties, such  as  greatness  of  weight,  close- 
ness of  parts,  fixation,  softness,  &c.  ? 
Now,  if  the  causes  of  these  simple 
natures  were  known,  they  might  be 
combined  by  man  into  the  same  cr  a 
similar  substance;  "for,"  he  says,  "if 
anybody  can  make  a  metal  which  has 
ah1  these  properties,  let  men  dispute 
whether  it  be  gold  or  no."  But  these 
qualities  are  not  ultimate  ;  they  are  the 
effects  of  causes,  and  a  knowledge  of 
the  causes  will  enable  us  to  superin- 
duce the  effects.  The  connection  be- 
tween philosophy  and  practice  is  this, 
that  what  "  in  contemplation  stands  for 
cause,  in  operation  stands  for  means 
or  instrument ;  for  we  know  by  causes 
and  operate  by  means."  The  object  of 
philosophy,  therefore,  is  the  investiga- 
tion of  the  formal  causes  of  the  primary 
qualities  of  body,  of  those  causes 
which  are  always  present  when  the 
qualities  are  present,  always  absent 
when  the  qualities  are  absent,  increase 
with  their  increase,  and  decrease  with 
their  decrease.  Facts,  then,  are  the 
stairs  by  which  we  mount  into  the 
region  of  essences  ;  anfl,  grasping  and 
directing  these,  we  can  compel  Nature 
to  create  new  facts,  as  truly  natural  as 
those  she  spontaneously  produces,  for 
Art  simply  gives  its  own  direction  to 
her  working. 

From  this  exposition  it  will  be  seen 
how  little  foundation  there  is  for  Du- 
gald  Stewart's  remark,  that  Bacon 
avoided  the  fundamental  error  of  the 
ancients,  according  to  whom  "philoso 
phy  is  the  science  of  causes "  ;  and 
also  for  the  assertion  of  Corate  p.nd  his 
school,  that  Bacon  was  the  father  of 
positive  science.  There  is  nothing 


1 868.] 


Bacon. 


575 


more  repugnant  to  a  positivist  than* the 
introduction  into  science  of  causes  and 
essences,  yet  it  was  after  these  that 
Bacon  aimed.  "  The  spirit  of  man,"  he 
says,  "is  as  the  lamp  of  God,  where- 
with he  searcheth  the  inwardness  of  all 
secrets."  The  word  he  uses  is  "  Form," 
but  Form  with  him  is  both  cause  and 
essence,  an  immanent  cause,  a  cause 
that  creates  a  permanent  quality.  If 
he  sometimes  uses  form  as  synonymous 
with  law,  the  sense  in  which  he  under- 
stands law  is  not  merely  the  mode  in 
which  a  force  operates,  but  the  force 
itself.  Indeed,  there  is  reason  to  sup- 
pose that,  much  as  he  decries  Plato,  he 
was  still  willing  to  use  Form  as  iden- 
tical with  Idea,  in  the  Platonic  sense 
of  Idea;  for  in  an  aphorism  in  which 
he  severely  condemns  the  projection  of 
human  conceits  upon  natural  objects, 
he  remarks  that  "  there  is  no  small  dif- 
ference between  the  idols  of  the  human 
mind  and  the  ideas  of  the  Divine  Mind, 
that  is  to  say,  between  certain  idle  dog- 
mas, and  the  real  stamp  and  impres- 
sion of  created  objects  as  they  are 
found  in  Nature."  Coleridge  had  prob- 
ably this  aphorism  in  mind  when  he 
called  Bacon  the  British  Plato. 

The  object  of  Bacon's  philosophy, 
then,  is  the  investigation  of  the  forms 
of  simple  natures  ;  his  method  is  the 
path  the  understanding  must  pursue  in 
order  to  arrive  at  this  object.  This 
method  is  a  most  ingenious  but  cum- 
brous machinery  for  collecting,  tabling, 
sifting,  testing,  and  rejecting  facts  of 
observation  and  experiment  which 
have  any  relation  to  the  nature  sought. 
It  begins  with  inclusion  and  proceeds 
.elusion.  It  has  affirmative  tables, 
negative  tables,  tables  of  comparison, 
tables  of  exclusion,  tables  of  preroga- 
' '.stances.  From  the  mass  of  indi- 
vidual facts  originally  collected  every- 
thing is  eliminated,  until  nothing  is  left 
but  the  form  or  cause  which  is  sought. 
The  field  of  induction  is  confined,  as  it 
within  a  triangular  space,  at  the 
of  which  are  the  facts  obtained 
by  observation  and  experiment.  From 
these  the  investigator  proceeds  in- 
wards, by  comparison  and  exclusion, 


constantly  narrowing  the  field  as  he 
advances,  until  at  last,  having  rejected 
all  non  -  essentials,  nothing  is  left  b,ut 
the  pure  form. 

Nobody  can  read  the  details  of  this 
method,  as  given  at  length  in  the  sec- 
ond boof:  of  the  Novum  Grganuni, 
without  admiration  for  the  prodigious 
constructive  power  of  Bacon's  mind. 
The  twenty-seven  tables  of  prerogative 
instances,  or  "the  comparative  value 
of  facts  as  means  of  investigation," 
would  alone  be  sufficient  to  prove  the 
comprehension  of  his  intellect  and  its 
capacity  of  ideal  classification.  But 
still  the  method  is  a  splendid,  unreal- 
ized, and,  we  may  add,  incompleted 
dream.  He  never  himself  discovered 
anything  by  its  use  ;  nobody  since  his 
time  has  discovered  anything  by  its 
use.  And  the  reason  is  plain.  Apart 
from  its  positive  defects,  there  is  this 
general  criticism  to  be  made,  that  a 
true  method  must  be  a  generalization 
from  the  mental  processes  which  have 
been  followed  in  discovery  and  inven- 
tion ;  it  cannot  precede  them.  If  Bacon 
really  had  devised  the  method  which 
succeeding  men  of  science  slavishly 
followed,  he  would  deserve  more  than 
the  most  extravagant  panegyrics  he 
has  received.  Aristotle  is  famous  as 
a  critic  for  generalizing  the  rules  of 
epic  and  dramatic  poetry  from  the  prac- 
tice of  Homer  and  the  Greek  trage- 
dians ;  what  fame  would  not  be  his,  if 
his  rules  had  preceded  Homer  and  the 
Greek  dramatists  ?  Yet  Macaulay,  and 
many  others  who  have  criticised  Bacon, 
while  pretending  to  undervalue  all  rules 
as  useless,  still  say  that  Bacon's  analy- 
sis of  the  inductive  method  is  a  true 
and  good  analysis,  and  that  the  method 
has  since  his  time  been  instinctively  fol- 
lowed by  all  successful  investigators  of 
Nature,  — as  if  Bacon  did  not  construct 
his  inductive  rules  from  a  deep-rooted 
distrust  of  men's  inductive  instincts. 
But  it  is  plain  to  everybody  who  has 
read  Comte  and  Mill  and  Whewell, 
that  the  method  of  discovery  is  still  a 
debatable  question,  and,  with  all  our  im- 
mense superiority  to  the  age  of  Bacon 
in  facts  on  which  to  build  a  method,  we 


576 


Bacon. 


[November, 


have  settled  as  yet  on  no  philosophy  of 
the  objects  or  the  processes  of  science. 
There  are  many  disputed  methods,  but 
no  accepted  method ;  the  anarchy  of 
opinions  corresponds  to  the  anarchy 
of  metaphysics  ;  and  the  establishment 
of  a  philosophy  of  discovery  and  inven- 
tion must  wait  the  establishment  of  a 
philosophy  of  the  mind  which  discovers 
and  invents. 

But  we  know  enough  to  give  the  rea- 
sons of  Bacon's  failure.  The  defects  of 
his  Method  can  be  collected  from  the 
separate  judgments  of  his  warmest  eu- 
logists. First,  Bacon  was  no  mathe- 
matician, and  Playfair  admits  that  "  in 
all  physical  inquiries  where  mathemat- 
ical reasoning  has  been  employed,  after 
a  few  principles  have  been  established 
by  experience,  a  vast  multitude  of 
truths,  equally  certain  with  the  princi- 
ples themselves,  have  been  deduced 
from  them  by  the  mere  application  of 
geometry  and  algebra."  Bacon's,  pre- 
vision, then,  did  not  extend  to  the  fore- 
sight of  the  great  part  that  mathemati- 
cal science  was  to  play  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  Nature.  Second,  Sir  John 
Herschel,  who  follpws  Playfair  in  mak- 
ing Bacon  the  father  of  experimental 
philosophy,  still  gives  a  deadly  blow  to 
Bacon's  celebrated  tables  of  prerogative 
instances,  considered  as  real  aids  to 
the  understanding,  when  he  admits 
that  the  same  sagacity  which  enables 
an  inquirer  to  assign  an  instance  or 
observation  to  its  proper  class,  en- 
ables him,  without  that  process,  to 
recognize  its  proper  value.  Third,  Sir 
James  Mackintosh,  who  claims  for 
Bacon,  that,  if  he  did  not  himself  make 
discoveries,  he  taught  mankind  the 
method  \>y  which  discoveries  are  made, 
and  who  asserts  that  the  physical  sci- 
ences owe  all  that  they  are  or  ever  will 
be  to  Bacon's  method  and  spirit,  refers 
to  the  1 04th  aphorism  of  the  first  book 
of  the  Novum  Organum,  as  containing 
the  condensed  essence  of  his  philoso- 
phy. This  aphorism  affirms  that  the 
path  to  the  most  general  truths  is  a 
series  of  ascending  inductive  steps; 
that  the  lowest  generalizations  must 
first  be  established,  then  the  middle 


principles,  then  the  highest.  It  is  cu- 
rious that  Mackintosh  should  praise  a 
philosopher  of  facts  for  announcing  a 
theory  which  facts  have  disproved. 
The  merest  glance  at  the  history  of  the 
sciences  shows  that  the  opposite  prin- 
ciple is  rather  the  true  one  ;  that  the 
most  general  principles  have  been  first 
reached.  Mill  can  only  excuse  Bacon 
for  this  blunder  by  saying  that  he 
could  not  have  fallen  into  it  if  there  had 
existed  in  his  time  a  single  deductive 
science,  such  as  mechanics,  astronomy, 
optics,  acoustics,  &c.,  now  are.  Of 
course  he  could  not ;  but  the  fact  re- 
mains that  he  did  not  foresee  the  course 
or  prescribe  the  true  method  of  science, 
and  that  he  did  not  even  appreciate 
the  way  in  which  his  contemporaries, 
Kepler  and  Galileo,  were  building  up 
sciences  by  processes  different  from 
his  own.  It  is  amazing,  however,  that 
Mackintosh,  with  the  discovery  of  the 
law  of  gravitation,  the  most  universal 
of  all  natural  laws,  as  an  obvious  in- 
stance against  the  theory,  should  have 
adopted  Bacon's  error. 

Fourth,  Bacon's  method  of  exclusion, 
the  one  element  of  his  system  which 
gave  it  originality,  proceeds,  as  John 
Mill  has  pointed  out,  on  the  assump- 
tion that  a  phenomenon  can  have  but 
one  cause,  and  is  therefore  not  applica- 
ble to  coexistences  as  to  successions  of 
phenomena. 

Fifth,  Bacon's  method,  though  it 
proceeds  on  a  conception  of  nature 
which  is  an  hypothesis  exploded,  and 
though  it  is  itself  an  hypothesis  which 
has  proved  sterile,  still  does  not  admit 
of  hypotheses  as  guides  to  investiga- 
tion. The  last  and  ablest  editor  of  his 
Philosophical  Works,  Mr.  Ellis,  con- 
cedes the  practical  inutility  of  his 
method  on  this  ground,  that  the,  pro- 
cess by  which  scientific  truths  have 
been  established  "involves  an  element 
to  which  nothing  corresponds  in  Ba- 
con's tables  of  comparison  and  exclu- 
sion, namely,  the  application  to  the 
facts  of  observation  of  a  principle  of 
arrangement,  an  idea,  existing  in  the 
mind  of  the  discoverer  antecedently  to 
the  act  of  induction." 


1 868.] 


Bacon. 


577 


Indeed,  Bacon's  method  was  dis- 
proved by  his  own  contemporaries. 
Kepler  tried  twenty  guesses  on  the 
orbit  of  Mars,  and  the  last  proved  cor- 
rect. Galileo  deduced  important  prin- 
ciples from  assumptions,  and  then 
brought  them  to  the  test  of  experiment. 
Gilbert's  hypothesis,  that  "  the  earth  is 
a  great  natural  magnet  with  two  poles," 
is  now  more  than  an  hypothesis.  The 
Novum  Organum  contains  a  fling  at 
the  argument  from  final  causes  ;  and 
the  very  year  it  was  published,  Har- 
vey, the  friend  and  physician  of  Bacon, 
by  reasoning  on  the  final  cause  of  the 
valves  in  the  veins,  discovered  the  cir- 
culation of  the  blood.  All  these  men 
had  the  scientific  instinct  and  scientific 
genius  that  Bacon  lacked.  They  made 
no  antithesis  between  the  anticipation 
of  nature  and  the  interpretation  of  na- 
ture, but  they  anticipated  in  order  to 
interpret.  It  is  not  the  disuse  of 
hypotheses,  but  the  testing  of  hypothe- 
ses by  facts,  and  the  willingness  to 
give  them  up  when  experience  decides 
against  them,  which  characterizes  the 
scientific  mind. 

Sixth,  Bacon,  though  he  aimed  to 
institute  a  philosophy  of  observation, 
and  gave  rules  for  observing,  was  not 
himself  a  sharp  and  accurate  observer  of 
Nature,  —  did  not  possess,  as  has  often 
been  remarked,  acuteness  in  propor- 
tion to  his  comprehensiveness.  His 
Natural  History,  his  History  of  Life  and 
Death,  of  Density  and  Rarity,  and  the 
like,  all  prove  a  mental  defect  dis- 
qualifying him  for  the  business.  His 
eye  roved  when  it  should  have  been 
patiently  fixed.  He  caught  at  resem- 
blances by  the  instinct  of  his  wide- 
ranging  intellect ;  and  this  peculiarity, 
constantly  indulged,  impaired  his  pow- 
er of  distinguishing  differences.  He 
spread  his  mind  over  a  space  so  large 
that  its  full  strength  was  concentrated 
on  nothing.  He  could  not  check  the 
discursive  action  of  his  intellect,  and 
hold  it  down  to  the  sharp,  penetrating, 
dissecting  analysis  of  single  appear- 
ances ;  and  his  brain  was  teeming  with 
too  many  schemes  to  allow  of  that 
mental  fanaticism,  that  fury  of  mind, 

VOL,  xxii,  — NO,  133.  37 


which  impelled  Kepler  to  his  repeated 
assaults  on  the  tough  problem  of  the 
planetary  orbits.  The  same  compre- 
hensive multiplicity  of  objects  which 
prevented  him  from  throwing  his  full 
force  into  affairs,  and  taking  a  decided 
stand  as  a  statesman,  operated  likewise 
to  dissipate  his  energies  as  an  explorer  of 
Nature.  The  analogies,  relations,  like- 
nesses of  things  occupied  his  attention 
to  the  exclusion  of  a  searching  exami- 
nation of  the  things  themselves.  As  a 
courtier,  lawyer,  jurist,  politician,  states- 
man, man  of  science,  student  of  uni- 
versal knowledge,  he  has  been  practi- 
cally excelled  in  each  department  by 
special  men,  because  his  intellect  was 
one  which  refused  to  be  arrested  and 
fixed. 

And,  in  conclusion,  the  essential  de- 
fect of  the  Baconian  method  consisted 
in  its  being  an  invention  of  genius  to 
dispense  with  the  necessity  of  genius. 
It  was,  as  Mr.  Ellis  has  well  remarked, 
"a  mechanical  mode  of  procedure, 
pretending  to  lead  to  absolute  certainty 
of  result."  It  levelled  capacities,  be- 
cause the  virtue  was  in  the  instrument 
used,  and  not  in  the  person  using  it. 
Bacon  illustrates  the  importance  of  his 
method  by  saying  that  a  man  of  ordi- 
nary ability  with  a  pair  of  compasses 
can  describe  a  better  circle  than  a  man 
of  the  greatest  genius  without  such 
help  ;  that  the  lame,  in  the  path,  out- 
strip the  swift  who  wander  from  it ; 
indeed,  the  very  skill  and  swiftness  of 
him  who  runs  not  in  the  right  direction 
only  increases  his  aberration.  With 
his  view  of  philosophy,  as  the  investi- 
gation of  the  forms  of  a  limited  number 
of  simple  natures,  he  thought  that,  with 
"  the  purse  of  a  prince  and  the  assist- 
ance of  a  people,"  a  sufficiently  copi- 
ous natural  history  might  be  formed, 
within  a  comparatively  short  period,  to 
furnish  the  materials  for  the  working 
of  his  method  ;  and  then  the  grand  in- 
stauration  of  the  sciences  would  be  rap- 
idly completed.  In  this  scheme  there 
could,  of  course,  be  only  one  great 
name,  —  the  name  of  Bacon.  Those 
who  collected  the  materials,  those  who 
applied  the  method,  would  be  only  his 


578 


Bacon. 


[November, 


clerks.  His  office  was  that  of  Secretary 
of  State  for  the  interpretation  of  Nature  ; 
Lord  Chancellor  of  the  laws  of  exist- 
ence, and  legislator  of  science  ;  Lord 
Treasurer  of  the  riches  of  the  universe  ; 
the  intellectual  potentate  equally  of 
science  and  art,  with  no  aristocracy 
round  his  throne,  but  with  a  bureauoc- 
racy  in  its  stead,  taken  from  the  middle 
class  of  intellect  and  character.  There 
was  no  place  for  Harvey  and  Newton 
and  Halley  and  Dalton  and  La  Place 
and  Cuvier  and  Agassiz,  for  genius  was 
unnecessary  ;  the  new  logic,  the  Novum 
Organum,  Bacon  himself,  mentally 
alive  in  the  brains  which  applied  his 
method,  was  all  in  all.  Splendid  dis- 
coveries would  be  made,  those  discov- 
eries would  be  beneficently  applied, 
but  they  would  be  made  by  clerks 
and  applied  by  clerks.  All  were  la- 
tent in  the  Baconian  'method,  and  over 
all  the  completed  intellectual  globe  of 
science,  as  in  the  commencement  of  the 
Novum  Organum,  would  be  written, 
"  Francis  of  Verulam  thought  thus  !  " 
And  if  Bacon's  method  had  been  really 
followed  by  succeeding  men  of  science, 
this  magnificent  autocracy  of  understand- 
ing and  imagination  would  have  been 
justified  ;  and  round  the  necks  of  each 
of  them  would  be  a  collar,  on  which 
would  be  written,  "  This  person  is  so  and 
so,  'born  thrall  of  Francis  of  Verulam.'  " 
That  this  feeling  of  serene  spiritual 
superiority,  and  consciousness  of  being 
the  founder  of  a  new  empire  in  the 
world  of  mind,  was  in  Bacon,  we  know 
by  the  general  tone  of  his  writings,  and 
the  politic  contempt  with  which  he 
speaks  of  the  old  autocrats,  Aristotle 
and  Plato  ;  and  Harvey,  who  knew  him. 
well,  probably  intended  to  hit  this  im- 
perial loftiness,  when  he  described  him 
as  "writing  philosophy  like  a  Lord 
Chancellor."  "  The  guillotine  governs  ! " 
said  Barrere,  gayly,  when  some  friend 
compassionated  his  perplexities  as  a 
practical  statesman  during  the  Reign 
of  Terror.  "  The  Method  governs  !  " 
would  have  been  the  reply  of  a  Bacon- 
ian underling,  had  the  difficulties  of  his 
attempts  to  penetrate  the  inmost  mys- 
teries of  nature  been  suggested  to  him. 


Thus  by  the  use  of  Bacon's  own 
method  of  exclusion  we  exclude  him 
from  the  position  due  of  right  to  Gali- 
leo and  Kepler.  In  the  inquiry  respect- 
ing the  father  of  the  inductive  sciences, 
he  is  not  "the  nature  sought."  What, 
then,  is  the  cause  of  his  fame  among  the 
scientific  men  of  England  and  France  ? 
They  certainly  have  not  spent  their 
time  in  investigating  the  forms  of  sim- 
ple natures  ;  they  certainly  have  not 
used  his  method  ;  why  have  they  used 
his  name  ? 

In  answer  to  this  question,  it  may  be 
said  that  Bacon,  participating  in  the 
intellectual  movement  of  the  higher 
minds  of  his  age,  recognized  the  para- 
mount importance  of  observation  and 
experiment  in  the  investigation  of  Na- 
ture ;  and  it  has  since  been  found  con- 
venient to  adopt,  as  the  father  and 
founder  of  the  physical  sciences,  one 
whose  name  lends  to  them  so  much 
dignity,  and  who  was  undoubtedly  one 
of  the  broadest,  richest,  and  most 
imperial  of  human  Intellects,  if  he 
were  not  one  of  the  most  scientific. 
Then  he  is  the  most  eloquent  of  all 
discoursers  on  the  philosophy  of  sci- 
ence, and  the  general  greatness  of  his 
mind  is  evident  even  in  the  demonstra- 
ble errors  of  his  system.  No  other 
writer  on  the  subject  is  a  classic,  and 
Bacon  is  thus  a  link  connecting  men 
of  science  with  men  of  letters  and  men 
of  the  world.  Whewell,  Comte,  Mil], 
Herschel,  with  more  abundant  material, 
with  the  advantage  of  generalizing  the 
philosophy  of  the  sciences  from  their 
history,  are  instinctively  felt  by  every 
reader  to  be  smaller  men  than  Bacon. 
As  thinkers,  they  appear  thin  and  un- 
fruitful as  compared  with  his  fulness 
of  suggestive  thought ;  as  writers,  they 
have  no  pretension  to  the  mas-si  veness, 
splendor,  condensation,  and  regal  dig- 
nity of  his  rhetoric.  The  Advancement 
of  Learning,  and  the  first  book  of  the 
•Novum  Organum,  are  full  of  quotable 
sentences,  in  which  solid  wisdom  i; 
clothed  in  the  aptest,  most  vivid, 
most  imaginative,  and  most  executive 
expression.  If  a  man  of  science  at  the 
present  day  wishes  for  a  compact  state- 


1 868.] 


Bacon. 


579 


ment  in  which  to  embody  his  scorn  of 
bigotry,  of  dogmatism,  of  intellectual 
conceit,  of  any  of  the  idols  of  the  human 
understanding  which  obstruct  its  per- 
ception of  natural  truth,  it  is  to  Bacon 
that  he  goes  for  an  aphorism. 

And  it  is  doubtless  true  that  the 
spirit  which  animates  Bacon's  philo- 
sophical works  is  a  spirit  which  in- 
spires effort  and  infuses  cheer.  It  is 
impossible  to  say  how  far  this  spirit  has 
animated  inventors  and  discoverers. 
But  we  know  from  the  enthusiastic  ad- 
miration expressed  for  him  by  men  of 
science,  who  could  not  have  been  blind 
to  the  impotence  of  his  method,  that 
all  minds  his  spirit  touched  it  must 
have  influenced.  One  principle  stands 
plainly  out  in  his  writings,  that  the  in- 
tellect of  man,  purified  from  its  idols,  is 
competent  for  the  conquest  of  nature  ; 
and  to  this  glorious  task  he,  above  all 
other  men,  gave  an  epical  dignity  and 
loftiness.  His  superb  rhetoric  is  the 
poetry  of  physical  science.  The  hum- 
blest laborer  in  that  field  feels,  in  read- 
ing Bacon,  that  he  is  one  of  a  band  of 
heroes,  wielding  weapons  mightier  than 
those  of  Achilles  and  Agamemnon,  en- 
gaged in  a  siege  nobler  than  that  of 
Troy ;  for,  in  so  far  as  he  is  honest 
and  capable,  he  is  "  Man,  the  minister 
and  interpreter  of  Nature,"  engaged, 
"'not  in  the  amplification  of  the  power  of 
one  man  over  his  country,  nor  in  the  am- 
plification of  the  power  of  that  country 
over  other  countries,  but  in  the  ampli- 
fication of  the  power  and  kingdom  of 
mankind  over  the  universe."  And,  while 
Bacon  has  thus  given  an  ideal  elevation 
to  the  pursuits  of  science,  he  has  at  the 
same  time  pointed  out  most  distinctly 
those  diseases  of  the  mind  which  check 
or  mislead  it  in  the  task  of  interpretation. 
.As  a  student  of  nature,  his  fame  is 
greater  than  his  deserts  ;  as  a  student 
of  human  nature,  he  is  hardly  yet  appre- 
ciated ;  and  it  is  to  the  greater  part  of 
the  first  book  of  the  A"oint 'ui  Orgauuni, 
where  he  deals  in  general  reflections 
on  those  mental  habits  and  dispositions 
which  interfere  with  pure  intellectual 
conscientiousness,  and  where  his  bene- 
ficent spirit  and  rich  imagination  lend 


>.  sweetness  and  beauty  to  the  homeliest 
practical  wisdom,  that  the  reader  impa- 
tiently returns,  after  being  wearied  with 
the  details  of  his  method  given  in  the 
second  book.  His  method  was  anti- 
quated in  his  own  lifetime ;  but  it  is 
to  be  feared  that  centuries  hence  his 
analysis  of  the  idols  of  the  human  un- 
derstanding will  be  as  fresh  and  new 
as  human  vanity  and  pride. 

It  was  not,  then,  in  the  knowledge  of 
Nature,  but  in  the  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  that  Bacon  pre-eminently  ex- 
celled. By  this  it  is  not  meant  that  he 
was  a  metaphysician  in  the  usual  sense 
of  the  term,  though  his  works  contain 
as  valuable  hints  to  metaphysicians  as 
to  naturalists  ;  but  these  hints  are  on 
matters  at  one  remove  from  the  central 
problems  of  metaphysics.  Indeed,  for 
ah1  those  questions  which  relate  to  the 
nature  of  the  mind  and  the  mode  by 
which  it  obtains  its  ideas,  for  all  ques- 
tions which  are  addressed  to  the  spec- 
ulative reason  alone,  he  seems  to  have 
felt  an  aversion  almost  irrational.  They 
appeared  to  him  to  minister  to  the  de- 
light and  vain-glory  of  the  thinker,  with- 
out yielding  any  fruit  of  wisdom  which 
could  be  applied  to  human  affairs. 
"Pragmatical  man,"  he  says,  "should 
not  go  away  with  an  opinion  that  learn- 
ing is  like  a  lark,  that  can  mount, 
and  sing,  and  please  herself,  and  noth- 
ing else ;  but  may  know  that  she 
hcldeth  as  well  of  the  hawk,  that  can 
soar  aloft,  and  can  also  descend  and 
strike  upon  the  prey."  Not,  then,  the 
abstract  qualities  and  powers  of  the 
human  mind,  considered  as  special  ob- 
jects of  investigation  independent  of 
individuals,  "but  the  combination  of 
these  into  concrete  character,  interest- 
ed Bacon.  He  regarded  the  machinery 
in  motion,  the  human  being  as  he 
thinks,  feels,  and  lives,  men  in  their  re- 
lations with  men  ;  and  the  phenomena 
presented  in  history  and  life  he  aimed 
to  investigate  as  he  would  investigate 
the  phenomena  of  the  natural  world. 
This  practical  science  of  human  nature, 
in  which  the  discovery  of  general  laws 
seems  hopeless  to  every  mind  not 
ample  enough  to  resist  being  over- 


58o 


Bacon. 


[November, 


whelmed  by  the  confusion,  complica- 
tion, and  immense  variety  of  the  details, 
and  which  it  will  probably  take  ages  to 
complete,  —  this  science  Bacon  palpa- 
bly advanced.  His  eminence  here  is 
demonstrable  from  his  undisputed  su- 
periority to  other  prominent  thinkers 
in  the  same  department.  Hallam  justly 
remarks,  that  "  if  we  compare  what  may 
be  found  in  the  sixth,  seventh,  and 
eighth  books  De  Augmentis ;  in  the 
Essays,  the  History  of  Henry  VII., 
and  the  various  short  treatises  con- 
tained in  his  works  on  moral  and  po- 
litical wisdom,  and  on  human  nature, 
from  experience  of  which  all  such  wis- 
dom is  drawn,  —  if  we  compare  these 
works  of  Bacon  with  the  rhetoric, 
ethics,  and  politics  of  Aristotle,  or  with 
the  histories  most  celebrated  for  their 
deep  insight  into  civil  society  and  hu- 
man character,  —  with  Thucydides,  Ta- 
citus, Philip  de  Comines,  Machiavel, 
Davila,  Hume,  —  we  shall,  I  think,  find 
that  one  man  may  be  compared  with  all 
these  together." 

The  most  valuable  peculiarity  of  this 
wisdom  is,  that  it  not  merely  points  out 
what  should  be  done,  but  it  points  out 
how  it  can  be  done.  This  is  especially 
true  in  all  his  directions  for  the  culture 
of  the  individual  mind ;  the  mode  by 
which  the  passions  may  be  disciplined, 
and  the  intellect  enriched,  enlarged,  and 
strengthened.  So  with  the  relations 
of  the  individual  to  his  household,  to 
society,  to  government,  he  indicates  the 
method  by  which  these  relations  may 
be  known  and  the  duties  they  imply 
performed.  In  his  larger  speculations 
regarding  the  philosophy  of  law,  the  prin- 
ciples of  universal  justice,  and  the  or- 
ganic character  of  national  institutions, 
he  anticipates,  in  the  sweep  of  his  in- 
tellect, the  ideas  of  the  jurists  and  his- 
torians of  the  present  century.  Vol- 
umes have  been  written  which  are 
merely  expansions  of  this  statement  of 
Bacon,  that  "  there  are  in  nature  certain 
fountains  of  justice,  whence  all  civil 
laws  are  derived  but  as  streams  ;  and 
like  as  waters  do  take  tinctures  and 
tastes  from  the  soils  through  which 
they  run,  so  do  civil  laws  vary  accord- 


ing to  the  regions  and  governments 
where  they  are  planted,  though  they 
proceed  from  the  same  fountain." 
The  Advancement  of  Learning,  af- 
terwards translated  and  expanded  into 
the  Latin  treatise  De  Augmentis,  is 
an  inexhaustible  storehouse  of  such 
thoughts, — thoughts  which  have  con- 
stituted the  capital  of  later  thinkers, 
but  which  never  appear  to  so  much 
advantage  as  in  the  compact  imagina- 
tive form  in  which  they  were  originally 
expressed. 

It  is  important,  however,  that,  in  ad- 
mitting to  the  full  Bacon's  just  claims 
as  a  philosopher  of  human  nature,  we 
should  avoid  the  mistake  of  supposing 
him   to   have   possessed   acuteness   in 
the  same  degree  in  which  he  possessed 
comprehensiveness.     Mackintosh  says 
that  he  is  "  probably  a  single  instance  of 
a  mind  which  in  philosophizing  always 
reaches  the  point  of  elevation  whence 
the    whole     prospect    is    commanded, 
without   ever    rising  to   that   distance 
which   prevents   a   distinct    perception 
of  every  part  of  it."     This  judgment  is 
accurate  as  far  as  regards  parts  consid- 
ered as- elements  of  a  general  view,  but 
in  the  special  view  of  single  parts  he 
has  been  repeatedly  excelled  by  men 
whom  it  would  be  absurd  to  compare 
to  him  in  general  wisdom.     His  mind 
was  contracted  to  details  by  effort;  it 
dilated  by  instinct.      It  was  telescopic 
rather  than  microscopic;  its   observa- 
tion of  men  was  extensive  rather  than 
minute.    "  Were  it  not  better,"  he  says, 
"  for  a  man  in  a  fair  room  to  set  up  one 
great  light,  or  branching  candlestick  of 
lights,  than  to  go  about  with  a  small 
watch-candle  into  every  corner  ? "    Cer- 
tainly, but   the   small  watch-candle  in 
some  investigations  is  better  than  the 
great  central  lamp  ;  and  his  genius  ac- 
cordingly does  not  include  the  special 
genius  of  such  observers  as  La  Bruyere, 
Rochefoucauld,    Saint -Simon,    Balsac, 
and  Shaftesbury,  —  the  detective  police 
of  society,  politics,  and  letters,  —  men 
whose  intellects  were  all  contracted  into 
a  sharp,  sure,  cat-like  insight  into  the 
darkest  crevices  of  individual  natures, 
—  whose    eyes    dissected    what    they 


1 868.] 


Bacon. 


581 


looked  upon,  —  and  to  whom  the  slight- 
est circumstance  was  a  key  that  opened 
the  whole  character  to  their  glance. 
For  example :  Saint-Simon  sees  a  lady, 
whose  seemingly  ingenuous  diffidence 
makes  her  charming  to  everybody.  He 
peers  into  her  soul,  and  declares,  as 
the  result  of  his  vision,  that  "modesty 
is  one  of  her  arts."  Again,  after  the 
death  of  the  son  of  Louis  XIV.,  the 
court  was  of  course  overwhelmed  with 
decorous  grief;  the  new  dauphin  and 
dauphiness  were  especially  inconsolable 
for  the  loss  ;  and,  to  all  witnesses  but 
one,  were  weeping  copiously.  Saint- 
Simon  simply  says,  "  Their  eyes  were 
wonderfully  dry,  but  well  managed." 
Bacon  might  have  inferred  hypocrisy ; 
but  he  would  not  have  observed  the 
lack  of  moisture  in  the  eyes  amid  all 
the  convulsive  sobbing  and  the  ago- 
nized dips  and  waves  of  the  handker- 
chief. Take  another  instance :  The 
Duke  of  Orleans  amazed  the  court  by 
the  diabolical  recklessness  of  his  con- 
duct. St.  Simon  alone  saw  that  ordi- 
naiy  vices  had  no  pungency  for  him  ; 
that  he  must  spice  licentiousness  with 
atheism  and  blasphemy  in  order  to  de- 
rive any  pleasure  from  it ;  and  solves 
the  problem  by  saying  that  he  was 
"born  bored,"  —  that  he  took  up  vice 
at  the  point  at  which  his  ancestors  had 
left  it,  and  had  no  choice  but  to  carry 
it  to  new  heights  of  impudence  or  to 
reject  it  altogether.  Again,  to  take  an 
example  from  a  practical  politician : 
Shaftesbury,  who  played  the  game  of 
faction  with  such  exquisite  subtlety  in 
the  reign  of  Charles  II.,  detected  the 
fact  of  the  secret  marriage  between  the 
king's  brother  and  Anne  Hyde  by  no- 
ticing at  dinner  that  her  mother,  Lady 
Clarendon,  could  not  resist  expressing 
a  faint  deference  in  her  manner  when 
she  helped  her  daughter  to  the  meat ; 
and  on  this  slight  indication  he  acted 
as  confidently  as  if  he  had  learned  the 
fact  by  being  present  at  the  wedding. 

Now  neither  in  his  life  nor  in  his 
•writings  does  Bacon  indicate  that  he 
had  studied  individuals  with  this  keen 
attentiveness.  His  knowledge  of  hu- 
man nature  was  the  result  of  the  tran- 


quil deposit,  year  after  year,  into  his 
receptive  and  capacious  intellect,  of  the 
facts  of  history  and  of  his  own  wide 
experience  of  various  kinds  of  life. 
These  he  pondered,  classified,  reduced 
to  principles,  and  embodied  in  sen- 
tences which  have  ever  since  been 
quotable  texts  for  jurists,  moralists, 
historians,  and  statesmen  ;  and  all  the 
while  his  own  servants  were  deceiving 
and  plundering  him,  and  his  followers 
enriching  themselves  with  bribes  taken 
in  his  name.  The  "small  watch-can- 
dle "  of  the  brain  would  have  been  val- 
uable to  him  here. 

The  work  by  which  his  wisdom  has 
reached  the  popular  mind  is  his  collec- 
tion of  Essays.  As  originally  published 
in  1597,  it  contained  only  ten;  in  the 
last  edition  published  in  his  lifetime, 
the  number  was  increased  to  fifty- 
seven.  The  sifted  result  of  much  ob- 
servation and  meditation  on  public  and 
private  life,  he  truly  could  say  of  their 
matter,  that  "  it  could  not  be  found  in 
books."  Their  originality  can  hardly 
be  appreciated  at  present,  for  most  of 
their  thoughts  have  been  incorporated 
with  the  minds  which  have  fed  on 
them,  and  have  been  continually  repro- 
duced in  other  volumes.  Yet  it  is  prob- 
able that  these  short  treatises  are  rare- 
ly thoroughly  mastered,  even  by  the 
most  careful  reader.  Dugald  Stewart 
testifies  that  after  reading  them  for  the 
twentieth  time  he  observed  something 
which  had  escaped  his  attention  in  the 
nineteenth.  They  combine  the  great- 
est brevity  with  the  greatest  beauty  of 
expression.  The  thoughts  follow  each 
other  with  such  rapid  ease ;  each 
thought  is  so  truly  an  addition,  and  not 
an  expansion  of  the  preceding;  the 
point  of  view  is  so  continually  changed, 
in  order  that  in  one  little  essay  the 
subject  may  be  considered  on  all  its 
sides  and  in  all  its  bearings ;  and  each 
sentence  is  so  capable  of  being  devel- 
oped into  an  essay,  —  that  the  work  re- 
quires long  pauses  of  reflection,  and 
frequent  reperusal,  to  be  estimated  at 
its  full  worth.  It  not  merely  enriches 
the  mrncl,  it  enlarges  it,  and  teaches  it 
comprehensive  habits  of  reflection.  The 


58-' 


Bacon. 


[November, 


disease  of  mental  narrowness  and  fa- 
naticism it  insensibly  cures,  by  show- 
ing that  every  subject  can  be  complete- 
ly apprehended  only  by  viewing  it  from 
various  points  ;  and  a  reader  of  Bacon 
instinctively  meets  the  fussy  or  furious 
declaimer  with  the  objection,  '*  But, 
sir,  there  is  another  side  to  this  mat- 
ter." 

It  was  one  of  Bacon's  mistakes  to 
believe  that  he  would  outlive  the  Eng- 
lish language.  Those  of  his  works, 
therefore,  which  were  not  written  in 
Latin  he  was  eager  to  have  translated 
into  that  tongue.  The  "  Essays,"  com- 
ing home  as  they  did  to  "  men's  business 
and  bosoms,"  he  was  persuaded  would 
"  last  as  long  as  books  should  last "  ; 
and  as  he  thought,  to  use  his  own 
words,  "  that  these  modern  languages 
would  at  some  time  or  other  play  the 
bankrupt  with  books,"  he  employed 
Ben  Jonson  and  others  to  translate  the 
Essays  into  Latin.  A  Drr  Willmott 
published,  in  1720,  a  translation  of  this 
Latin  edition  into  what  he  called  re- 
formed and  fashionable  English.  We 
will  give  a  specimen.  Bacon,  in  his 
Essay  on  Adversity,  says :  "  Pros- 
perity is  the  blessing  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, adversity  is -the  blessing  of  the 

New Yet  even  in  the  Old  Testament, 

if  you  listen  to  David's  harp,  you  shall 
hear  as  many  hearse-like  airs  as  carols." 
Dr.  Willmott  Englishes  the  Latin  in 
this  wise :  "  Prosperity  belongs  to  the 
blessings  of  the  Old  Testament,  adver- 
sity to  the  beatitudes  of  the  New 

Yet  even  in  the  Old  Testament,  if  you 
listen  to  David's  harp,  you  '11  find  more 
lamentable  airs  than  triumphant  ones." 
This  is  translation  with  a  vengeance  ! 

Next  to  the  Essays  and  the  Advance- 
ment of  Learning,  the  most  attractive 
of  Bacon's  works  is  his  Wisdom  of  the 
Ancients.  Here  his  reason  and  imagi- 
nation, intermingling  or  interchanging 
their  processes,  work  conjointly,  and 
produce  a  magnificent  series  of  poems, 
while  remorselessly  analyzing  imagina- 
tions into  thoughts.  He  supposes  that, 
anterior  to  the  Greeks,  there  were 
thinkers  as  wise  as  Bacon  ;  that  the 
heathen  fables  are  poetical  embodi- 


ments of  secrets  and  mysteries  of  policy, 
philosophy,  and  religion  ;  truths  folded 
up  in  mythological  personifications  ; 
"  sacred  relics,"  indeed,  or  "abstracted, 
rarefied  airs  of  better  times,  which  by 
tradition  from  more  ancient  nations 
fell  into  the  trumpets  and  flutes  of  the 
Grecians."  He,  of  course,  finds  in 
these  fables  what  he  brings  to  them, 
the  inductive  philosophy  and  all.  The 
bock  is  a  marvel  of  ingenuity,  and  ex- 
hibits the  astounding  analogical  power 
of  his  mind,  both  as  respects  analogies 
of  reason  and  analogies  of  fancy.  Had 
Bacon  lived  in  the  age  of  Plato  and 
Aristotle,  and  written  this  work,  he- 
would  have  fairly  triumphed  over  those 
philosophers  ;  for  he  would  have  recon- 
ciled ancient  philosophy  with  ancient 
religion,  .and  made  faith  in  Jupiter  and 
Pan  consistent  with  reason. 

But  the  work  in  which  Bacon  is  most 
pleasingly  exhibited  is  his  philosophi- 
cal romance,  The  New  Atlantis.  This 
happy  island  is  a  Baconian  Utopia,  a 
philosopher's  paradise,  where  the  No- 
vujn  Orgamim  is,  in  imagination,  real- 
ized, and  utility  is  carried  to  its  loftiest 
idealization.  In  this  country  the  kingr 
is  good,  and  the  people  are  good,  be- 
cause everything,  even  commerce,  'is, 
subordinated  to  knowledge.  "Truth" 
here  "  prints  goodness."  All  sensual  and 
malignant  passions,  all  the  ugly  defor- 
mities of  actual  life,  are  sedately  expelled 
from  this  glorious  dream  of  a  kingdom 
where  men  live  in  harmony  with  each 
other  and  with  nature,  and  where  observ- 
ers, discoverers,  and  inventors  are  in- 
vested with  an  external  pomp  and  dig- 
nity and  high  place  corresponding  to 
their  intellectual  elevation.  Here  is  a 
college  worthy  of  the  name,  Solomon's 
House,  "the  end  of  whose  foundation 
is  the  knowledge  of  causes  and  the 
secret  motions  of  things,  and  the  en- 
larging the  bounds  of  human  empire  to 
the  effecting  of  all  things  possible  " ; 
and  in  Solomon's  House  Bacon's  ideas 
are  carried  out,  and  man  is  in  the  pro- 
cess of  "being  restored  to  the  sover- 
eignty of  nature."  In  this  fiction,  too, 
the  peculiar  beneficence  of  Bacon's 
spirit  is  displayed  ;  and  perhaps  the 


1 868.] 


Bacon. 


583 


finest  sentence  in  his  writings,  certainly 
the  one  which  best  indicates  the  essen- 
tial feeling  of  his  soul  as  he  regarded 
human  misery  and  ignorance,  occurs  in 
his  description  of  one  of  the  fathers  of 
Solomon's  House.  "  His  countenance," 
he  says,  "  was  as  the  countenance  of 
one  who  pities  men." 

But,. it  may  still  be  asked,  how  was 
it  that  a  man  of  such  large  wisdom, 
with  a  soul  really  of  such  pervasive 
beneficence,  was  so  comparatively  weak 
and  pliant  in  his  life  ?  This  question 
touches  his  mind  no  less  than  his  char- 
acter ;  and  it  must  be  said  that,  boih 
in  the  action  of  his  mind  and  the  actions 
of  his  life,  there  is  observable  a  lack 
both  of  emotional  and  moral  intensity. 
He  is  never  impassioned,  never  borne 
away  by  an  overmastering  feeling  or  pur- 
pose. There  is  no  rush  of  ideas  and 
passions  in  his  writings,  no  direct  con- 
tact and  close  hug  of  thought  and 
thing.  Serenity,  not  speed,  is  his  char- 
acteristic. Majestic  as  is  the  move- 
ment of  his  intellect,  and  far-reaching 
its  glance,  it  still  includes,  adjusts, 
feels  into  the  objects  it  contemplates, 
rather  than  darts  at  them  like  Shake- 
speare's or  pierces  them  like  Chaucer's. 
And  this  intelligence,  so  wise  and  so 
worldly  wise,  so  broad,  bright,  confi- 
dent, and  calm,  with  the  moral  element 
pervading  it  as  an  element  of  insight 
rather  than  as  a  motive  of  action,  —  this 
"was  the  instrument  on  which  he  equally 
relied  to  advance  learning  and  to  ad- 
vance Bacon.  As  a  practical  politician, 
he  felt  assured  of  his  power  to  compre- 
hend as  a  whole,  and  nicely  to  dis- 
cern the  separate  parts,  of  the  most 
complicated  matter  which  pressed  for 
judgment  and  for  volition.  Exercising 
insight  and  foresight  on  a  multitude  of 
facts  and  contingencies  all  present  to 
his  mind  at  once,  he  aimed  to  evoke 
order  from  confusion,  to  read  events 
in  their  principles,  to  seize  the  salient 
point  which  properly  determines  the 
judgment,  and  then  act  decisively  for 
his  purpose,  safely  for  his  reputation 
and  fortune.  Marvellous  as  this  pro- 
cess of  intelligence  is,  it  is  liable  both  to 
corrupt  and  mislead  unless  the  moral 


sentiment  is  strong  and  controlling. 
The  man  transforms  himself  into  a  sort 
of  earthly  providence,  and  by  intelli- 
gence is  emancipated  from  strict  integ- 
rity. But  the  intellectual  eye,  though 
capable,  like  Bacon's,  of  being  dilated  at 
will,  is  no  substitute  for  conscience,  and 
no  device  has  ever  yet  been  invented 
which  would  do  away  with  the  useful- 
ness of  simple  honesty  and  blind  moral 
instinct.  In  the  most  comprehensive 
view  in  politics  something  is  sure  to 
be  left  out,  and  that  something  is  apt 
to  vitiate  the  sagacity  of  the  whole 
combination. 

Indeed,  there  is  such  a  thing  as  be- 
ing over  wise  in  dealing  with  practical, 
affairs,  and  the  defect  of  Bacon's  intel- 
lect is  seen  the  moment  we  compare  it 
with  an  intellect  like  that  of  Luther. 
Bacon,  with  his  serene  superiority  to 
impulse,  and  his  power  of  giving  his 
mind  at  pleasure  its  close  compactness 
and  fan-like  spread,  could  hardly  have 
failed  to  feel  for  Luther  that  compas- 
sionate contempt  with  which  men  pos- 
sessing many  ideas  survey  men  who 
are  possessed  by  one  ;  yet  it  is  cer- 
tain that  Luther  never  could  have  got 
entangled  in  Bacon's  errors,  for  his 
habit  was  to  cut  knots  which  Bacon  la- 
bored to  untie.  Men  of  Luther's  stamp 
never  aim  to  be  wise  by  reach  but  by 
intensity  of  intelligence.  They  catch  a 
vivid  glimpse  of  some  awful  spiritual 
fact,  in  whose  light  the  world  dwindles 
and  pales,  and  then  follow  its  inspira- 
tion headlong,  paying  no  heed  to  the 
insinuating  whispers  of  prudence,  and 
crashing  through  the  glassy  expedien- 
cies which  obstruct  their  path.  Such 
natures,  in  the  short  run,  are  the  most 
visionary;  in  the  long  run,  the  most 
practical.  Bacon  has  been  praised  by 
the  most  pertinacious  revilers  of  his 
character  for  his  indifference  to  the 
metaphysical  and  theological  contro- 
versies which  raged  around  him.  They 
do  not  seem  to  see  that  this  indiffer- 
ence came  from  his  deficiency  in  those 
intense  moral  and  religious  feelings  out 
of  which  the  controversies  arose.  It 
would  have  been  better  for  himself  had 
he  been  more  of  a  fanatic,  for  such  a 


584 


Sea-Gulls. 


[November, 


stretch  of  intelligence  as  he  possessed 
could  be  purchased  only  at  the  expense 
of  dissolving  the  forces  of  his  person- 
ality in  meditative  expansiveness,  and 
of  weakening  his  power  of  dealing 
direct  blows  on  the  instinct  or  intuition 
of  the  instant. 

But  while  this  man  was  without  the 
austerer  virtues  of  humanity,  we  must 
not  forget  that  he  was  also  without 
its  sour  and  malignant  vices  ;  and  he 
stands  almost  alone  in  literature,  as  a 
vast  dispassionate  intellect,  in  which 
the  sentiment  of  philanthropy  has  been 
refined  and  purified  into  the  subtile 
essence  of  thought.  Without  this 
philanthropy  or  goodness,  he  tells  us, 
"  man  is  but  a  better  kind  of  vermin  "  ; 
and  love  of  mankind,  in  Bacon,  is  not 
merely  the  noblest  feeling  but  the 
highest  reason.  This  beneficence,  thus 
transformed  into  intelligence,  is  not  a 
hard  opinion,  but  a  rich  and  mellow 
spirit  of  humanity,  which  communicates 
the  life  of  the  quality  it  embodies  ;  and 
\ve  cannot  more  fitly  conclude  than  by 
quoting  the  noble  sentence  in  which 


Bacon,  after  pointing  out  the  mistakes 
regarding  the  true  end  of  knowledge, 
closes  by  divorcing  it  from  all  selfish 
egotism  and  ambition.  "  Men,"  he  says, 
"  have  entered  into  a  desire  of  learning 
and  knowledge,  sometimes  upon  a  natu- 
ral curiosity  and  inquisitive  appetite  ; 
sometimes  to  entertain  their  minds 
with  variety  and  delight;  sometimes 
for  ornament  and  reputation ;  and 
sometimes  to  enable  them  to  vic- 
tory of  wit  and  contradiction  ;  and 
most  times  for  lucre  and  profession ; 
and  seldom  sincerely  to  give  a  true 
account  of  their  gift  of  reason,  to  the 
benefit  and  use  of  man  ;  as  if  there  were 
sought  in  knowledge  a  couch  where- 
upon to  rest  a  searching  and  restless 
spirit ;  or  a  terrace,  for  a  wandering 
and  variable  mind  to  walk  up  and 
down  with  a  fair  prospect ;  or  a  tower 
of  state,  for  a  proud  mind  to  raise  it- 
self upon  ;  or  a  fort  or  commanding- 
ground  for  strife  or  contention ;  or  a 
shop  for  profit  and  sale  ;  and  not  a  rich 
storehouse,  for  the  glory  of  the  Creator 
and  the  relief  of  man's  estate." 


SEA-GULLS. 

THE  salt  sea-wind  is  a  merry-maker, 
Rippling  the  wild  bluff's  daisied  reach  ; 
The  quick  surf  glides  from  the  arching  breaker, 
And  foams  on  the  tawny  beach. 

Out  where  the  long  reef  glooms  and  glances, 
And  tosses  sunward  its  diamond  rain, 

Morn  has  pierced  with  her  golden  lances 
The  dizzy  light-house  pane. 

Gladdened  by  clamors  of  infinite  surges, 
Heedless  what  billow  or  gale  may  do, 

The  white  gulls  float  where  the  ocean-verges 
Blend  with  a  glimmer  of  blue. 

I  watch  how  the  curtaining  vapor  settles 
Dim  on  their  tireless  plumes  far  borne, 

Till  faint  they  gleam  as  a  blossom's  petals, 
Blown  through  the  spacious  morn. 


1868.] 


The  Traditional  Policy  of  Russia. 


THE    TRADITIONA^    POLICY    OF    RUSSIA. 


AT  this  moment,  when  the  Pan- 
Slavic  and  Greco-Catholic  Propa- 
ganda gathers  all  its  strength  to  aid  the 
Czar's  government  in  making  another 
push  at  the  East,  and  when  the  Mus- 
covite armies,  as  a  preparatory  move, 
have  taken  possession  of  the  Khanates 
of  Tartary,  thus  nearing  the  British 
possessions  of  India,  the  traditional 
policy  of  Russia,  as  exhibited  in  her 
ancient  history,  acquires  a  peculiar 
importance. 

Current  events  are  often  the  outcome 
of  deep-rooted  tendencies.  In  the  case 
of  Russia,  everybody  talks  fluently  of 
her  "traditional  policy";  yet  how  few 
are  there  who  have  even  a  faint  knowl- 
edge of  the  political  and  social  conditions 
through  which  that  empire  has  passed 
during  and  after  the  Middle  Ages  ! 
There  is  a  wellnigh  general,  but  with- 
al fallacious,  belief  that  Russia  is  "  a 
young  state,"  in  the  prime  of  life, 
whose  political  organization  dates  only 
from  the  last  century.  Hence  those 
comparisons  with  the  youthful  Trans- 
atlantic Republic,  arising  out  of  a  few 
accidental,  and  no  doubt  transitory, 
similarities,  with  omission  of  the  deep 
and  characteristic  diversities. 

It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  even 
in  England,  which  is  the  rival  Asiatic 
power  with  Russia,  one  might  as  well 
ask  for  a  general  knowledge  of  what 
the  Aztecs  of  Tenochtitlan  did  a  thou- 
sand years  ago  as  for  an  acquaintance 
with  ancient  Muscovite  history.  As 
the  existence  of  the  human  race  is  re- 
corded to  have  had  its  origin  with 
"  Adam,"  so  Russian  existence  is  often 
thought  to  have  begun  with  a  certain 
"  Peter."  As  to  what  occurred  in  the 
fabulous  times  before  the  appearance 
of  that  historical  Czar  scarcely  any  one 
cares  to  inquire.  Ere  the  "  Shipwright 
of  Saardam  "  connected  his  empire  with 
Western  civilization,  Russia  is  usually 
assumed  to  have  been  a  terra  incognita 
to  Europe.  Since  his  time  only  —  so 


many  believe  —  the  Northern  Colossus 
has  acted  a  part  as  an  aggressive  pow- 
er in  the  East. 

Yet,  in  what  a  different  light  would 
"  youthful "  Russia  be  regarded,  were 
it  kept  in  mind  that,  centuries  before 
Czar  Peter,  —  nay,  at  the  very  epoch 
when  Alfred  the  Great  founded  the 
power  of  the  English  realm,  —  the  an- 
cient Russian  Grand-Princes  had  al- 
ready made  themselves  hateful  to  the 
Eastern  world  as  barbarian  sovereigns 
of  the  most  grasping  ambition.  Opin- 
ions with  respect  to  Muscovite  "  ortho- 
dox" policy  would  be  altered,  if  the 
fact  were  remembered  that,  more  than 
nine  hundred  years  ago,  when  Russia 
was  still  sunk  in  paganism,  the  Danu- 
bian  Principalities,  the  countries  of  the 
Black  Sea,  the  Balkan,  and  the  Bospho- 
rus,  and  the  gates  of  Constantinople 
itself,  were  already  the  theatre  of  Rus- 
sian invasion  and  attack  !  What  would 
be  thought  of  the  "  religious  mission  " 
the  autocrats  have  attributed  to  them- 
selves, were  it  remembered  that,  in  those 
far-distant  times,  the  name,  not  only  of 
the  heathen,  but  even  of  the  Greco- 
Catholic  'Poos  (Russian),  was  pronounced 
with  feelings  of  terror  within  the  walls 
of  Greco-Catholic  Byzance  long  before 
that  city  of  world-wide  importance  had 
become  the  capital  of  the  "  Padishah 
and  Caliphe  of  all  the  Mussulman  be- 
lievers  "  ? 

If  we  would  keep  to  real  historical 
truth,  we  must  reverse  many  current 
notions  and  preconceived  ideas.  WTe 
must  not  seek  in  the  so-called  evidently 
forged  "  Testament  of  Peter  I."  for  the 
text-book  of  Russian  attempts  at  univer- 
sal dominion,  or  for  the  first  indices  of 
Russian  movements  against  Constan- 
tinople; this  encroaching  tendency 
must  be  traced  ten  centuries  back  ! 

In  the  ninth  century,  when  the  Rus- 
sians still  revered  the  idols  of  Perun 
and  Yurru,  while  Constantinople  was 
ruled  by  an  orthodox  imperator,  their 


586 


The  Traditional  Policy  of  Russia.          [November, 


Grand-Princes,  as  they  were  then 
called,  made  war  against  Constantino- 
ple, holding  the  savage  doctrine  that 
*'  Byzantium  must  become  their  capital 
because  the  Greeks  were  women  and 
the  Russians  '  blood-men.'  " 

In  the  tenth  century,  when  the  Rus- 
sian Grand-Prince  had  embraced  the 
same  faith  to  which  the  Byzantine  Em- 
pire adhered,  another  pretext  had  to 
be  framed  for  aggression.  Constantino- 
ple was  then  to  become  the  residence 
of  the  barbarian,  "  because  it  suits  the 
dignity  of  the  Russian  monarch  to 
receive  baptism  in  the  capital  of  East- 
ern Christendom." 

In  the  eleventh  century,  another  tri- 
fling occasion  was  eagerly  caught  at  by 
Russia  to  make  an  attempt  for  the 
conquest  of  Constantinople  with  one 
hundred  thousand  men.  And  when 
subsequently  the  Byzantine  Emperors 
were  relieved  from  further  attacks  on 
the  part  of  Russia,  it  was  only  because 
she  had  become  weakened  by  internal 
feuds  and  ultimately  subjected  to  Mon- 
gol rule. 

All  this,  we  ought  to  note  here,  hap- 
pened at  a  time  when  Russia  was  not 
yet  so  much  of  a  Slavonian  power  as 
she  at  present  is.  Finnish  and  Tar- 
taric  populations  occupied,  in  those 
early  centuries,  a  larger  area  within  the 
confines  of  the  empire  than  they  at 
present  do.  Superposed  on  those  three 
great  national  divisions  —  the  Fins,  the 
Slavonians,  and  the  Tartars  —  was  a 
dynasty  and  a  military  aristocracy  of 
*  Northern,  Germanic  descent,  which 
probably  came  from  Scandinavia,  and 
which  gave  the  empire  it  founded  a 
name  imported  from  its  Northern 
home. 

The  Mongol  invasion  wiped  out  for 
several  centuries  the  existence  of  a 
Russian  Empire.  On  the  revival  of 
the  latter  a  spark  of  the  old  ambition 
reappears.  In  the  fifteenth  century 
the  Muscovite  autocrats  return  to  the 
old  designs.  They  were  certainly  un- 
able then  to  try  the  chance  of  arms 
against  the  powerful  Osmanlee,  who  in 
the  mean  time  had  planted  the  Crescent 
on  the  cupola  of  St.  Sophia.  But  by  and 


by  they  sought  to  gain  influence  among 
the  Greco-Slavonians  of  what  now  had 
become  Turkey ;  basely  asserting  that 
at  no  distant  date  the  Czar  would  be 
able  to  seize  upon  Constantinople  as 
his  inheritance,  "because  the  marriage 
of  Ivan  Vassiljevitcli  with  the  niece  of 
the  last  Paleologus  gives  to  Russia  a 
title  to  the  possession  of  the  Lower 
Empire." 

Time  passed  on  ;  the  Porte  lost  its 
military  prestige,  and  the  moment  at 
last  appeared  propitious  to  revive 
ancient  pretensions  by  force  of  arms. 
So  Peter  I.  propounded  the  doctrine 
that  Constantinople  must  become  the 
capital  of  Russia  because  "the  relig- 
ious supremacy  of  the  Czar  is  entitled 
to  sway  the  whole  East." 

In  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, French  philosophy  penetrated  in- 
to the  Cabinet  of  Catherine  II.  The 
grand  seigneurs  and  roues  of  her  volup- 
tuous court  coquetted  with  the  ideas  of 
liberalism  and  classic  humanism  ;  con- 
sequently the  world  had  to  be  told 
that  Constantinople  ought  to  become  a 
Muscovite  fief  "  because  the  republics 
of  ancient  Hellas  must  be  re-established  - 
under  Russian  protection." 

But  philosophy  and  classicism  got 
out  of  fashion  at  St.  Petersburg  when 
the  revolutionary  storm  thundered  in 
France.  The  old  dictum  was  therefore 
reproduced,  that  Stamboul  cannot  re- 
main under  Ottoman  dominion  "  be- 
cause the  infidel  Turk  is  a  disgrace  to 
the  Holy  City  from  whence  Russia 
received  the  light  of  Christianity." 
This  argument  was  strongly  in  favor 
with  the  late  Czar  Nicholas,  who,  how- 
ever, had  still  another  in  reserve,  —  not 
this  time  of  a  religious  character,  — 
namely,  that  Russia  had  a  right  of  suc- 
cession to  Turkey,  "  because  the  Turk 
is  a  sick  man."  Let  us  add  that  even 
this  medical  dictum  is  a  traditional  one, 
already  in  vogue  at  the  time  of  Cath- 
erine II.,  who  was  indebted  for  it  to  the 
wit  of  Voltaire. 

Thus  the  spirit  of  encroachment  lias, 
with  certain  compulsory  interruptions, 
always  existed  in  Russia  since  the  for- 
mation of  the  Empire.  Not  in  the 


1 868.] 


The  Traditional  Policy  of  Russia. 


587 


eighteenth,  but  in  the  ninth  century, 
was  the  organization  of  Russia  as  a 
military  monarchy  first  undertaken. 
Not  under  Peter  I.,  but  immediately 
after  the  introduction  of  the  Rurik 

|  dynasty,  do  the  pretensions  of  Russia 
to  the  domination  over  Constantinople 
appear.  Not  with  the  establishment 

j  of  the  "Holy  Directing  Synod,"  but 
in  the  very  first  year  of  the  general 
spread  of  Christianity  into  Russia, 
under  Vladimir,  in  988,  are  the  theo- 
cratical  tendencies  of  the  Russian  sov- 
ereigns to  be  remarked.  In  the  reigns 
of  Oleg,  Igor,  Sviatoslaf,  Vladimir,  and 
Yaroslaf,  Russia  has  already  her  proto- 
types of  princely  absolutism,  military 
conquest,  and  ecclesiastical  ambition. 
The  later  czars  continued,  they  did  not 
originate,  this  policy. 
I  Nothing,  consequently,  can  be  more 
erroneous  than  to  say  that  under  Peter, 
son  of  Alexis,  Russia  for  the  first  time 
emerged  from  a  chaotic  state  into  the 
proportions  of  a  realm,  and  that  since 
his  time  she  has  been  continually  devel- 
oping her  "juvenile  vigor."  History 
unfolds  a  view  diametrically  opposed  to 
this  theory.  Russia  is  an  old  empire. 
And,  unlike  other  European  countries 
which  have  had  their  rise,  growth, 

|  and  decline,  or  transformation,  she  has 
for  a  thousand  years  oscillated  between 
the  existence  as  a  military  empire  of 
menacing  aspirations  and  a  state  of 
total  political  eclipse.  She  can  hardly 
boast  of  a  steady  internal  development. 
Warlike,  aggressive  despotism  in  one 
epoch,  total  prostration  in  another,  have 
been  her  characteristics.  In  the  mean 
while,  through  all  these  jerking  changes, 
her  people  have  unfortunately  ever  re- 
mained servile  and  uncultivated,  her 
princes  ever  unduly  ambitious.  There 
were  only  two  germs  of  freedom  in 
Russia  at  the  two  farther  ends  of  the 
Empire.  We  allude  to  the  city  of  Novo- 
gorod,  at  one  time  a  member  of  the 
German  Hanseatic  League,  and  to  the 
city  of  Kiev.  Both  fell  before  the  on- 
slaught o(  czarism.  There  was  no 
force  in  all  the  vast  extent  of  the  Em- 
pire to  support  the  good  cause  of  Novo- 
gorod  ;  and  it  would  seem  as  if  the 


abject  spirit  of  slavery  in  so  many  mil- 
lions of  subjects  had  continually  tended 
to  produce  a  vertigo  of  ambition  in 
the  minds  of  the  monarchs.  Finding 
at  home  no  impediment  to  their  most 
extravagant  wishes,  they  indulged  in 
the  wildest  dreams  of  conquest  of  other 
nations.  In  this  manner  they  brought 
forward  schemes  of  universal  dominion, 
and  stretched  out  their  hands  —  they, 
the  barbarian  chieftains  !  —  towards  the 
sceptre  of  Eastern  Rome.  But  when 
they  failed,  the  nations  that  had  been 
wronged  took  a  great  revenge  ;  and  so 
Russia  often  sank  to  almost  entire  an- 
nihilation under  the  shock  of  foreign 
coalitions.  In  this  way,  exaggerated 
aspirations  were  followed  by  terrible 
catastrophes.  But  after  a  period  of 
prostration,  the  insatiate  spirit  of  con- 
quest regularly  reappeared  ;  and  this, 
we  apprehend,  will  continue  until  Eu- 
rope has  succeeded  in  pushing  the  fron- 
tiers of  civilization  farther  into  Mus- 
covy. 

As  the  view  above  given  of  Russian 
history  is  not  quite  in  accordance  with 
the  recognized  notions,  it  may,  perhaps, 
be  as  well  to  add  an  outline  of  the  chief 
epochs  with  regard  to  the  autocratic 
foreign  policy  of  the  grand-princes  and 
czars. 

In  the  first  century  of  its  foundation, 
the  Russian  Empire  treads  the  stage, 
so  to  speak,  in  full  armor.  From  the 
disorder  of  a  host  of  not  very  warlike 
tribes,  the  foreign  —  Germanic  —  dy- 
nasty of  the  Ruriks  calls  a  realm  into 
existence,,  ready  armed  for  offence  ; 
and  forthwith  a  despotism  is  developed, 
"born  with  teeth  in  its  head."  This 
earliest  epoch  dates  from  the  ninth  to 
the  eleventh  century.  During  it,  the 
Rurik  dynasty  unites  the  Finnish  and 
Slavonian  tribes  of  what  is  now  North- 
ern and  Central  Russia  into  one  empire, 
overthrows  in  the  southeast  the  high- 
ly cultivated  Tartar  Kingdom  of  the 
Khazans,*  who  inhabited  the  countries 

*  The  history  of  the  Khazan  Kingdom,  errone- 
ously confounded  with  that  of  the  Khanates  of  rude 
nomadic  hordes,  almost  remains  to  be  written.  Al- 
though a  Tartar  (or  Turkish '  steppe-tribe  by  origin, 
the  Kh.-r/.rms  of  the  ninth  century  turned  their  atten- 
tion to  Greek  culture  and  refinement,  and  acted  as 


588 


The  Traditional  Policy  of  Russia.          [November, 


of  the  Don,  the  Dnieper,  and  the  Tau- 
ric  peninsula,  and  for  two  centuries 
wages  war  against  the  government  of 
Constantinople,  in  order  to  unite  the 
crowns  of  the  Russo- Varangian  prin- 
ces with  the  golden  tiara  of  Byzantium. 
The  most  monstrous  designs  were  set 
on  foot  at  this  period  by  the  northern 
despots.  They  strove  for  the  annexa- 
tion of  the  Balkan  peninsula,  the  do- 
minion over  the  Black  Sea,  the  subju- 
gation of  the  Crimea  and  the  Caucasus. 
Thus,  from  865  to  1043,  the  provinces 
of  the  Byzantine  Empire  were  sub- 
jected to  incessant  inroads  from  the 
North.  •  The  Grand-Princes  marched 
their  Germanic,  Finnish,  Slavonian,  and 
Tartar  hosts  along  the  Dnieper  into 
the  Danubian  countries,  or  transported 
them  in  fleets  of  small  craft  across  the 
Euxine  to  appear  as  besiegers  before 
the  "  City  of  the  World."  The  waters 
of  the  Pontus,  the  provinces  which  we 
now  call  Moldo-Wallachia,  Bulgaria,  the 
Haemus  passes,  and  the  coasts  of  Rou- 
melia,  were  the  battle-grounds  for  the 
armies  and  navies  of  Russia  and  of  the 
Lower  Empire.  In  these  contests,  the 
"  Russian  capital,"  as  a  proud  Rurik 
chieftain  called  it,  was  for  a  time  estab- 
lished at  the  foot  of  the  Balkan,  at 
Praejeslavety.  But,  not  satisfied  with 
this  conquest,  the  invader  pointed  with 
his  lance  to  Constantinople  as  the  future 
seat  of  his  government.  It  affords  a  sin- 
gular spectacle  to  behold  in  the  mir- 
ror of  this  ancient  history  the  forecast 
of  modern  events.  The  treaties  then 
agreed  upon  between  the  Byzantines 
and  the  Russians  vividly  recall  to 

the  pioneers  of  progress  in  Southern  Russia.  In 
those  tracts  of  land  where  the  hideous  Kalmuk  and 
Kirghiz  people  now  swarm  the  Khazans  created 
wealthy  towns  and  fruitful  fields.  The  highway  from 
Derbent  to  Suir  was  adorned  by  them  with  flourish- 
ing cities,  such  as  Atel,  Sarkel,  Kuram,  Gadran, 
Segekan,  Samandar,  Albaida,  Ferus-Kapad ;  the 
plans  of  most  of  which  towns  had  been  traced  out, 
and  the  chief  buildings  erected,  by  Byzantine  archi- 
tects. Khazan  fleets  traded  up  the  Don,  along  the 
Black  Sea,  and  in  the  Mediterranean  as  far  as  France 
and  Spain.  Unfortunately,  this  remarkable  nation, 
•which  first  began  to  ameliorate  the  savage  habits  of 
the  Slavonians  of  the  Dnieper,  was  weakened  in  its 
power  by  Russian  invasions,  and  afterwards  over- 
powered by  nomadic  inroads  ;  thus  these  Eastern 
countries  were  again  handed  back  to  the  darkness 
of  barbarism. 


mind  the  conventions  of  Kutjuk-Kai- 
nardji,  Adrianople,  and  others.  With 
the  Grand-Princes  of  the  ninth  and 
eleventh  centuries,  as  with  the  czars  of 
the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth,  it  was 
the  practice  to  look  upon  treaties 
as  upon  convenient  conjurer's  caskets 
from  whence  to  extract  a  sophistical 
justification  for  fresh  aggression.  With 
the  Russian  rulers  of  eight  hundred 
years  ago  it  was  already  good  policy  to 
"  protect  "  the  government  of  Constan- 
tinople against  internal  seditions,  in 
order  to  degrade  it  into  vassalage. 
Then  already  the  Danubian  provinces 
were  seized  upon  by  Russia  as  a  "  ma- 
terial guaranty " ;  then  already  the 
government  of  Constantinople  was  de- 
clared to  be  only  encamped  in  Europe ; 
and  then  already  the  Grand-Princes 
—  scarcely  weaned  from  idolatry !  — 
claimed  a  certain  supremacy  over  the 
Eastern  Church. 

Such  was  Russian  dynastic  policy 
eight  hundred  and  nine  hundred  years 
ago.  We  say  "  dynastic,"  because  the 
people  played  no  part  in  these  events 
save  one  of  passive  obedience.  Those 
mighty  plans  of  a  domineering  North- 
ern monarchy  were  fostered  only  in 
the  brains  of  the  Varangian  rulers. 

But  after  these  vast  exertions,  Russia, 
by  a  sort  of  historical  retribution,  col- 
lapsed under  internal  convulsions.  Her 
political   unity    was   torn   asunder    by 
quarrels  among  the  different  branches 
of  the  reigning  family  ;  and  when  at  last 
the  nomadic  hordes  of  Genghis-Khan 
and  Batou  appeared  on  the  confines  of 
the    Empire,   there   was   no  centre  of 
resistance,  no  strength,  no  patriotism 
to  oppose  them.     Within  a  few  years, 
Russia  became  the  slave  of  the  Golden 
Horde.     The  Tartar  flood  broke  forth 
from  the  depths  of  Asia,  sweeping  in 
its  stormy  course  towards  the  West, 
and,  being  stayed  by  the  rock  of  Ger- 
man and  Polish  valor,  settled  down  ovei 
the  Scytho-Sarmatian   plains  from  tl 
Volga  to  the  Valdai  Hills.      For  t 
hundred  and  fifty  years,  from  the  n 
die  of  the   twelfth   to  the    end  of 
fifteenth  century,  the  Mongols  governe 
the   kingdom    of    the   proud   Rurilis 


1 868.] 


The  Traditional  Policy  of  Russia. 


589 


Russia  was  now  Mongolized  in  spirit, 
and  even  in  the  physical  appearance  of 
her  people.  Her  very  name  became 
confused  in  the  memory  of  Europe.  A 
line  of  Kalmuk  frontier-guards  drew, 
so  to  speak,  a  Chinese  wall  round  the 
boundaries  of  the  empire. 

But  when  the  sovereignty  which  the 
Mongol  Kaptchak  had  exercised  over 
Russia  was  at  last  destroyed  (not  by 
Russian  bravery,  but  by  conflicts  among 
the  wandering  Asiatic  tribes  them- 
selves), the  Muscovite  Grand-Princes, 
assuming  the  title  of  Czar  and  Em- 
peror, again  ran  riot  in  ambition.  The 
chief  field  of  their  activity  lay  this 
time,  not  to  the  south,  but  to  the  north 
and  the  west.  Their  sword  was  pointed, 
not  to  Constantinople,  but  to  Sweden, 
Poland,  and  the  German  provinces  of 
the  Baltic. 

V/hilst  it  had  been  the  aim  of  the 
early  Ruriks  to  establish  Russia  as  a 
great  Oriental  power,  the  czars,  subse- 
quently to  the  fifteenth  century,  en- 
deavored to  found  Russian  supremacy 
in  Baltic  quarters.  So  strenuous  were 
their  efforts  in  that  direction,  that  one 
might  say  they  anticipated  in  thought 
j  the  later  foundation  of  the  modern 
Russian  capital  at  the  Neva.  But, 
although  directing  their  chief  energy 
towards  Baltic  quarters,  the  autocrats 
of  that  period  did  not  wholly  lay  aside 
the  "  Byzantine  "  policy  of  their  prede- 
cessors. By  the  ties  of  marriage  and 
state-craft,  the  hospodars  of  Moldo- 
Wallachia  were  drawn  into  the  Musco- 
vite interests,  and  the  zeal  of  the  Greek 
population  of  Turkey  kept  up  by  showy 
demonstrations,  which  the  agents  of 
one  of  those  czars  contrived  to  per- 
brm  in  the  very  streets  of  Stamboul. 
Thus  an  embassy  was  sent  by  Ivan  IV. 
to  the  Sultan,  which,  in  the  details  of 
ts  get-up,  astonishingly  reminds  us  of 
the  Menchikoff  embassy  of  some  fif- 
teen years  ago.  At  that  time,  also, 
the  double  eagle  of  Byzance,  symbol  of 
sovereignty  over  the  east  and  the  west, 
vas  adopted  as  the  Russian  escutch- 
on,  so  as  to  exhibit  the  Czar  in  the 
f  the  chosen  champion  of  Chris- 
iunity  against  the  unbeliever.  This  at 


an  epoch  when  the  Moslem   stood   at 
the  zenith  of  his  power. 

Such  was  Russia  in  the  fifteenth  and 
sixteenth  centuries.  But  this  renewed 
attempt  at  an  ascendency  was  not  of 
long  duration.  It  ended  suddenly  with 
the  extinction  of  the  Rurik  family. 
Scarcely  had  the  last  tyrant  of  that 
race  expired,  when  another  catastrophe 
hurled  down  the  Muscovite  Empire  into 
the  depths  of  humiliation.  Poles,  Ger- 
mans of  the  Baltic  provinces,  Swedes, 
Tartars  of  Astrakhan,  and  other  nations 
that  resented  the  former  encroachments 
of  Russia,  make  a  simultaneous  attack 
upon  her.  The  situation  is  'compli- 
cated, too,  by  internal  dissensions.  Pre- 
tenders arise  on  all  sides,  and  wars 
of  succession  break  completely  the 
strength  of  Russia.  The  capital  falls 
into  the  hands  of  the  Poles,  whose 
princes  dispose  of  the  throne  of  Mos- 
cow. Conspiracies  are  rife  all  over  the 
country,  in  the  sacristies  of  the  clergy 
and  in  the  castles  of  the  nobles,  until 
at  last  the  tumult  subsides  into  the 
election  of  the  new  dynasty  of  Roman- 
off. During  this  state  of  confusion, 
the  attention  of  Europe  had  gradually 
again  been  diverted  from  those  north- 
ern regions.  Russia  once  more  be- 
came to  the  West  a  hyperborean  ultima 
TJmle. 

At  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury Czar  Peter  appeared.  He  com- 
bined the  schemes  of  the  Russo-Nor- 
man  Grand-Princes  Oleg,  Igor,  Svia- 
toslaf,  Vladimir,  and  Yaroslaf,  with 
those  of  the  semi-Mongol  czars  Ivan 
III.  and  Ivan  IV.  His  ambition  em- 
braced the  north  and  the  south,  the 
Black  Sea  and  the  Baltic,  Asia  and 
Europe  ;  and  since  his  time  the  march 
of  Russian  aggression  was  again  on- 
ward, until  a  check  was  offered  to  it 
in  the  Crimean  War. 

From  this  brief  summary  it  will  be 
perceived  what  importance  must  be 
attached  to  the  history  before  Peter  I. 
Nor  are  we  wanting  in  authentic 
sources.  Not  to  speak  of  the  regular 
(chiefly  Byzantine,  Arabic,  and  Rus- 
sian) chronicles,  there  exists,  if  we 
may  say  so,  a  whole  series  of  "  voyage 


590 


The  Traditional  Policy  of  Russia.          [November, 


literature "  concerning  Russia,  begin- 
ning with  the  ninth  century,  and  con- 
sisting of  travel  memoirs,  ambassa- 
dorial reports,  and  so  forth. 

From  Ohthere,  a  Norman  native  of 
Heligoland,  who  in  890  gave  an  account 
of  his  voyage  to  Northern  Russia  by 
order  of  Alfred  of  England  ;  and  from 
Ahmed-ben-Fosylan,  the  plenipotenti- 
ary of  an  Abas-side  Khalif,  who  in  921 
drew  up  a  report  of  his  journey,  —  there 
are,  down  to  modern  times,  compara- 
tively a  great  number  of  documents. 
Taking  only  the  two  centuries  before 
Peter  I.,  we  come  to  the  surprising 
fact  that,  nearly  four  hundred  years  ago, 
Germany  sent  her  scientific  commis- 
sions to  Moscow,  with  a  view  to  study- 
ing the  situation  of  Russia,  which  had 
then  just  emerged  from  Mongol  slavery. 
The  reports  of  these  commissions  still 
exist.  Unfortunately,  they  are  hidden 
in  the  dust  of  Austrian  archives.  More 
accessible  are  the  documents  of  a  polit- 
ical nature,  such  as  the  letters  and 
memoirs  of  German  ambassadors  at 
the  court  of  Moscow.*  Of  these  latter 
-we  name  only  the  accounts  given  by 
George  Thurn,  who  had  a  mission 
from  the  German  Emperor  Maximilian 
to  negotiate  for  a  marriage  with  the 
daughter  of  the  Czar  (14.92) ;  then  the 
work  of  Sigismund  von  Herberstein,  a 
Councillor  and  President  of  the  Board 
.of  Revenues  of  the  German  Empire, 
who,  in  1516,  went  as  envoy  extraor- 
dinary to  Moscow  (Reruui  Moscovita- 
rum  Commentarii,  Vienna,  1549)-  In 
the  sixteenth  century  Russia  was  much 
travelled  through  by  men  of  all  nations, 

*  These  are,  however,  not  the  earliest  traces  of 
intercourse  between  Russia  and  the  West.  There 
were  Russian  embassies  to  Germany,  and  vice  versa, 
during  the  reign  of  the  German  emperor  Henry  II. 
(1003-24).  Projects  of  intermarriage  at  that  epoch 
were  discussed  or  carried  out  between  German,  Hun- 
garian, Polish,  English,  and  French  princes  or  prin- 
cesses on  the  one  hand,  and  members  of  the  Rurik 
family  on 'the  other.  In  the  eleventh  century,  a  de- 
throned Russian  sovereign  made  a  personal  pilgrim- 
age to  Mayence,  to  solicit  aid  against  a  rival,  —  the 
exiled  Russian  pretender  promising  that,  if  Henry 
IV.  of  Germany  would  reinstate  him  on  the  throne, 
he  would  engage  "  to  hold  Russia  only  as  a  vassal 
fief  of  the  German  empire."  Henry  IV.,  being  in- 
volved in  a  struggle  both  with  his  own  vassals  and 
the  Holy  See,  was  unable  to  do  more  than  to  make 
an  inefficient  diplomatic  intervention. 


trades,  and  stations  of  life.  Of  their 
numerous  reports  we  will  single  out 
those  of  a  few  Englishmen:  Thomas 
Aldcocke,  factor  of  an  English  com- 
mercial company,  who  made  the  voyage 
from  Jaroslaw  to  Astrakhan  (1564) ; 
Arthur  Edwards  (1565);  Thomas  South- 
am,  in  the  service  of  the  Anglo-Russian 
Company  in  London  (1566);  Thomas 
Randolfe,  ambassador  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth (1568) ;  Giles  Fletcher,  also  am- 
bassador at  Moscow  (1588),  etc. 

Unquestionably,  one  of  the  most  in- 
teresting memoirs  is  that  of  the  French 
Captain  Margeret,  originally  published 
in  1607  at  Paris.  To  assign  their  right 
place  to  the  reports  of  this  leader  of 
free  lands,  we  will  observe  that  his 
sojourn  iri  Muscovy,  where  he  rose  to 
great  dignity,  occurred  during  the  be- 
ginning of  a  period  which  we  called 
"eclipse."  His  work,  therefore,  can- 
not, properly  speaking,  serve  as  a  con- 
temporary authority  for  the  traditional 
policy  of  Russia.  Yet  so  constant  has 
been  the  tendency  towards  territorial 
extension  and  absolute  government, 
that  even  Margeret,  though  writing  at 
a  time  when  the  country  was  hastening 
to  decline,  felt  deeply  impressed,  not 
only  by  the  vastness  of  its  geographical 
extent  .and  its  military  resources,  but 
also  by  the  restless  ambition  which 
prompted  the  barbarian  autocrats  to 
aspire  to  imperial  honors  and  Euro- 
pean importance. 

If  we  were   to  draw  any  inferences 
from  the  more  than  secular  —  because 
almost   millenary  —  policy   of  Russian 
czars,  we    should  come  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  appropriation  of  Constan- 
tinople by  them  may,  after  all,  be  still 
averted.      Sometimes   the   accomplish- 
ment  of  the    design  has  seemed  near 
enough,  but  a  gigantic  catastrophe  h 
as  often  averted  it.     Autocratic  polic; 
was  powerful  enough  to  move  the  stoli 
mass  of  the  Muscovite  population  for. 
the  purpose  of  conquest,  and  unscrupu- 
lous enough  to  hurl  the  savage  t 
of  the  farthest  Asiatic  deserts  agai 
the  rich  countries  of  Eastern  Europe. 
But   what   the    czars    were    unable 
inspire   their  subjects   with   has  t 


1 868.] 


Calico-Printing  in  France. 


591 


the  noble  instinct  of  enterprising  migra- 
tion and  colonization,  the  intelligence 
of  mind  necessary  for  fertilizing  territo- 
rial conquests,  and  converting  them  in- 
to valuable  possessions.  Even  in  the 
mere  warlike  spirit  required  for  a  sys- 
tem of  encroachment  the  Muscovite 
people  have  ever  been  deficient  Their 
great  successes  have  generally  been 
won  more  by  fostering  dissensions 
among  the  enemy,  by  diplomatic  in- 
fluences, by  the  lavish  use  of  gold,  and 
by  the  skill  of  foreigners  taken  into 
Russian  service,  rather  than  by  native 
Muscovite  prowess.  When  invaded  on 
\vn  soil,  Russia  had  recourse  to 
id  of  nature's  forces,  availing  her- 
.self  of  the  barrenness  of  the  country 
and  the  rigor  of  the  climate.  As  to  the 
•test  contained  in  the  spurious  "  Last 
Htti  of  Peter  I.,"  that  the  vigorous 
Bees  of  Russia,  similar  to  the  Ger- 
manic tribes,  will  inundate  the  coun- 
tries of  the  west,  east,  and  north,  we 
need  only  point  to  the  thinness  of  the 
•pulation  of  Muscovy  proper,  and  to 
:lter  absence  of  a  wandering  im- 
pulse among  them.  The  most  super- 
ficial observer  must  see  through  the 
fallaciousness  of  a  pretended  similarity 
ibet\veen,  on  the  one  hand,  the  youth- 


ful, freedom-loving,  adventurous  Ger- 
manic races  of  the  migrations,  who 
scarcely  knew  kingly  authority  ;  and,  on 
the  other,  that  enthralled  mass  of  Mus- 
covite subjects  who  have  successively 
submitted  to  Khazan,  Varangian,  and 
Mongol  supremacy,  and  whose  govern- 
ment not  unfrequently  reminded  one 
of  the  worst  era  of  Roman  imperators. 
A  comparison  between  Russia  and  the 
United  States  is  therefore  certainly  out 
of  the  question. 

Latterly,  Russia  has  made  some  steps 
in  advance  in  internal  improvement, 
mainly  in  consequence  of  her  defeat  by 
the  allied  Western  Powers.  The  eman- 
cipation of  the  serfs  is  a  great  move, 
at  which  all  friends  of  humanity  must 
rejoice,  though  it  is  no  secret  that  the 
Czar  carried  it  out  from  a  desire  of 
diminishing  the  wealth  of  those  nobles 
who,  in  common  with  a  portion  of  the 
town's  population,  were  striving  for  the 
introduction  of  some  sort  of  parliament- 
ary government.  No  sooner,  however, 
has  Russia  made  those  steps  in  ad- 
vance than  her  rulers  have  resumed 
their  aggressive  policy  in  Central  Asia, 
thus  trying  once  more  to  divert  the 
attention  of  the  nation  from  progress  at 
home  to  territorial  conquests  abroad. 


CALICO-PRINTING    IN    FRANCE.* 


IN  this  age  of  liberty  and  of  individ- 
ual enterprise,  when  every  one  can 
xeely  choose  his  occupation  and  pursue 
ut   let   or  hindrance,   we   with 
difficulty  appreciate  the  all  but  insur- 
jnountable  obstacles  which    restrictive 
nd  prohibitory  laws,   and  the  jealous 
xclusiveness  of  trade  corporations,  once 
>resented  to  a  young  and  aspiring  me- 
hanic. 

In  the  early  ages  of  their  history, 
hese  trade  corporations  were  indeed 
he  first  rallying-points  of  liberty  for 


the  mechanic.  They  were,  at  first, 
secret  societies,  formed  for  mutual  de- 
fence against  the  lawless  and  tyrannical 
exactions  of  the  feudal  lords,  so  contin- 
ually engaged  in  private  warfare  with 
each  other;  but,  as  each  trade  nat- 
urally clustered  together,  these  societies 
soon  became  trade  corporations.  Their 
numbers  and  discipline  made  them  for- 
midable. Privileges  were  granted  them, 
and  free  towns  established,  in  the  gov- 
ernment of  which  they  took  an  active 
part ;  and  the  feudal  lords  were  grad- 


"  Manufacturers  and  Inventors."    By  URBAIN  PAGES. 


592 


Calico-Printing  in  France. 


[November, 


ually  forced  to  refrain  from  the  cruel 
and  ruinous  oppression  they  had  so 
long  practised.  But  the  oppressed 
readily  become  oppressors,  and  these 
corporations  did  not  escape  the  general 
law.  They  became  jealous,  tyrannical, 
and  exclusive.  Improvement,  progress, 
or  innovation  of  any  nature,  \vas  re- 
jected by  them  with  indignation  and 
alarm  ;  and  time-honored  customs  and 
vexatious  regulations  met  the  mechanic 
in  every  direction.  All  that  his  father 
had  done  the  son  might  do,  but  no  more. 
His  pay,  his  hours  of  work,  the  num- 
ber of  his  apprentices,  indeed,  every 
detail,  was  strictly  regulated  by  his  cor- 
poration. From  these  trammels  there 
was  no  escape,  for  an  independent  work- 
man could  not  find  employment.  He 
was  even  forbidden  to  exercise  his  call- 
ing, and  frequently  was  banished  from 
town  or  village  for  insubordination.  In 
a  word,  he  was  excluded  from  the  right 
of  earning  his  bread.  It  is,  however, 
but  fair  to  add,  that,  during  illness  or 
accidental  incapacity,  the  workman  and 
his  family  received  from  the  corpora- 
tion of  which  he  was  a  member  all  the 
necessaries,  and  many  of  the  comforts, 
of  life.  We  cannot,  therefore,  be  sur- 
prised that  the  domineering  influence 
of  these  corporations  or  trade-unions 
continued  long  after  the  causes  that  led 
to  their  formation  had  disappeared. 

The  arbitrary  laws  and  customs  of 
trade  corporations  we  can  readily  as- 
cribe to  jealous  and  unenlightened  self- 
ishness ;  but  how  can  we  explain,  or 
even  conceive,  that  patriotic  and  en- 
lightened statesmen  have  clung  with  so 
much  tenacity,  through  so  many  ages, 
to  restrictive  and  prohibitory  enact- 
ments and  to  sumptuary  laws  ?  the 
first  forbidding  industry,  the  other  for- 
bidding consumption  !  and  yet  every 
page  of  history  tells  us  that  such  laws 
were  enforced  even  to  our  own  times. 

Calico  -  printing  in  France  suffered 
from  all  these  causes  ;  for,  when  these 
goods  were  first  introduced,  the  exten- 
sive and  powerful  corporation  of  the 
weavers,  and  the  corporation  of  the  dy- 
ers, were  greatly  alarmed.  They  made 
every  effort  to  suppress  them,  and  pos- 


itively forbade  any  member  of  their 
corporations  to  engage  in  this  work. 
Through  their  clamor  and  influence 
they  at  length  induced  the  government 
to  issue  decrees  strictly  prohibiting  the 
printing  of  calicoes  in  France. 

Notwithstanding  the  prohibitions  and 
the  heavy  duties  exacted  at  the  frontiers, 
printed  calicoes  became  fashionable ; 
but  the  demand  was  almost  wholly  sup- 
plied by  smugglers,  who,  in  the  very 
high  prices  obtained,  found  ample  re- 
muneration for  the  risks  incurred. 

The  constant  increase  of  smuggling, 
and  the  consequent  decline  of  the  rev- 
enue, together  with  the  great  number  of 
persons  continually  condemned  for  this 
offence  to  the  galleys,  and  even  to  death, 
at  length  alarmed  the  Council  of  Trade, 
and  induced  them  to  propose  more  lib- 
eral  measures.      But   such    measures, 
then  as  now,  met  with  violent  opposi- 
tion.    Committees   and   deputies  were 
despatched  from  Tours,  Rouen,  Rheims, 
Beauvais,  and  many  other  manufactur- 
ing towns,  to  remonstrate  with  the  min- 
isters.    They  did  not  hesitate  to  affirm 
that  foreign  competition  would  utterly 
annihilate  commerce  and  manufactures, 
and  they  conjured  their  sovereign  not 
to  take  the  bread  of  life  from  the  poor 
weavers  and  their  wives  and  children ! 
The  evil  was,  however,  serious  and  in- 
creasing ;  for  partial  combats  and  loss 
of  life  were  continually  occurring  near 
the  frontiers.     After  a  laborious  exam- 
ination and  long  hesitation,  the  council 
decided  in  favor  of  liberty  ;  and  Louis 
XV.,  in  the  year  1759,  issued  a  roya 
decree,  permitting  the  printing  of  cal-  I 
icoes  in  his  kingdom  of  France.     These  j 
decrees  at  once  called  individual  enter- 
prise  into  action  ;  but  it  was  principally 
to   a   German   and   a    Protestant  — to 
Christopher  Philippe  Oberkampf  —  that 
France  is  indebted  for  one  of  its  most 
productive     manufactures,    which    has 
given    profitable    employment  to  v 
numbers    of  its    inhabitants,    and 
markedly  advanced   the   prosperity  of 
the    nation. 

The  history   of  this  intelligent 
indefatigable  mechanic  is,  indeed,  ^th< 
history  of  the  first  successful  establish 


- 1 868.] 


Calico-Printing-  in  France. 


593 


ment  of  calico-printing  in  France  ;  and 
we  are  greatly  indebted  to  the  family 
and  descendants  of  this  extraordinary 
man  for  having  confided  the  archives  of 
their  family  to  Mr.  Urbain  Pages,  and 
to  this  distinguished  author  for  his  val- 
uable and  interesting  history. 

Christopher  Philippe  Oberkampf  was 
born  on  the  nth  of  June,  1738,  at  Wis- 
sembach,  a  small  town  of  Wiirtemburg. 
His  father  was  a  dyer,  — an  expert  and 
laborious  workman,  and  withal  a  strict 
Lutheran.  In  his  youth  he  had  made 
long  peregrinations  from  town  to  town, 
supporting  himself,  as  was  then  the  cus- 
tom, by  working  at  his  trade  in  every 
place  he  visited  ;  employment  being 
obtained  for  him  by  the  dyer's  corpora- 
tion of  each  locality. 

In  this  excellent  school  of  experience 
he  learned  many  new  processes  and  new 
combination  of  colors,  and  acquired  the 
art  of  dyeing  in  reserve,  —  that  is  to  say, 
dyeing  cloths  in  any  color,  but  reserving 
the  design  in  the  ground-color  of  the 
material,  which  was  generaMy  white. 
He  also  learned  to  print  on  woollen 
goods. 

After  his  return  home,  he  discovered 
a  method  of  producing  a  new  color. 
This  discovery  gave  him  the  well-mer- 
ited reputation  of  being  an  expert  and 
intelligent  dyer  and  printer,  and  induced 
a  large  manufacturer  of  Bale,  in  Swit- 
zerland, to  make  Jiim  an  advantageous 
offer  of  employment.  These  offers  he 
accepted,  with  the  express  r 'ipulation 
that  his  son,  then  eleven  ;  ears  old, 
should  be  received  as  an  ;  -oprentice, 
and  be  instructed  in  drawing  and  en- 
graving. The  family  made  their  journey 
to  Bale  on  foot,  and  young  Christopher 
marched  quite  proudly  beside  his  father, 
with  his  bundle  tied  to  a  stick  over  his 
shoulder,  thinking  himself  already  quite 
a  man,  and  soon  to  become  a  smart 
workman.  He  was  a  bright,  courageous 
boy,  full  of  good-humor  and  of  all  the 
happy  confidence  of  youth. 

At  Bale  his  father  at  once  began 
work,  and  his  son  commenced  his  ap- 
prenticeship with  the  humble  occupa- 
tion of  spreading  colors  upon  the  blocks 
his  father  used.  The  bright,  inquisitive 

VOL.  xxii.  —  NO.  133.  38 


boy,  ever  ready  to  be  useful,  and  anx- 
ious to  learn,  amused  the  workmen  with 
his  ready  wit  and  cheerfulness,  and  soon 
made  so  favorable  an  impression  that 
all  were  willing  to  explain  to  him  the 
mysteries  of  their  profession  and  to 
initiate  him  into  the  secrets  of  their  art. 
These  mysteries  consisted  principally 
of  valuable  receipts  for  making  or  mix- 
ing of  colors,  and  were  universally  held 
as  profound  secrets.  During  the  three 
years  of  his  father's  engagement  at 
Bale  young  Christopher  made  rapid  pro- 
gress in  designing  and  engraving, — 
studies  to  which  he  devoted  himself 
with  unusual  constancy. 

The  engagement  ended,  his  father 
removed  to  Larrach,  near  Bale,  and 
then  to  Schaffsheim,  when,  having  by 
industry  and  economy  laid  by  a  small 
sum,  but,  above  all,  by  strict  religious 
honesty  having  acquired  the  confidence 
of  all  about  him,  he  established  (in  1755) 
small  print-works  at  Aarau,  Switzerland. 
He  was  then  principally  occupied  in 
printing  calicoes.  He  was  moderately 
successful,  and  the  magistrates  of  the 
canton,  anxious  to  encourage  this  new 
industry,  which  gave  occupation  to  its 
citizens,  and  thus  retained  them  at  home, 
bestowed  upon  him  the  distinction  and 
advantages  of  citizenship.  This  was 
no  slight  favor,  for  it  was  then  more 
difficult  to  obtain  than  the  more  aristo- 
cratic titles  bestowed  by  kings  and 
princes. 

Young  Oberkampf  was  now  an  ex- 
pert workman,  for  he  had  learned  prac- 
tically every  operation,  whether  impor- 
tant, or  secondary,  and  theoretically,  all 
that  Switzerland  could  teach  him.  The 
field  his  father  had  chosen  soon  became 
too  narrow  and  limited  for  him,  and  he 
longed  ardently  to  see  the  world.  This 
desire  grew  stronger  with  his  strength, 
and,  after  long  hesitation,  he  informed 
his  father  of  his  wishes.  The  father 
would  not  listen  to  the  proposition,  for 
young  Christopher  was  now  a  valuable 
aid  to  him,  and  he  had  destined  him  to 
be  his  successor.  A  century  ago  pa- 
rental authority  was  quite  absolute,  and 
it  was  not  only  sustained  by  public 
sentiment,  but  also  was  amply  enforced 


594 


•Calico-Printing  in  France. 


[November,. 


by  legal  enactments.  There  seemed, 
therefore,  for  young  Oberkampf  no 
other  course  but  to  resign  himself  to 
his  hard  fate.  His  imagination,  how- 
ever, still  dwelt  upon  the  attractions  of 
the  outer  world,  and  at  length  obtained 
the  mastery  ;  for,  having  secured  the 
implied  consent  of  his  mother,  he  fur- 
tively quitted  his  father's  house,  and 
launched  himself  into  the  great  world. 
He  first  went  to  Mulhouse,  already 
celebrated  for  its  beautiful  productions. 
Mulhouse  was  then  a  free  city,  and  a 
firm  ally  of  the  Swiss  Cantons.  There 
he  obtained  employment  as  an  engraver 
in  the  celebrated  print-works  of  Sam- 
uel Koechlin  and  Henri  Dolfus.  Forty 
years  later,  in  1798,  Mulhouse  was 
incorporated  into  France. 

The  elder  Oberkampf  was  naturally 
indignant  at  his  conduct ;  but  time 
wore  away  the  sharp  edge  of  his  fa- 
ther's anger,  and  the  influence  of  his 
mother  finally  obtained  his  pardon. 
After  an  absence  of  six  months,  he 
returned  home,  but  with  the  express 
understanding  that  he  might  leave 
again  at  his  pleasure. 

His  restless  desires  soon  returned, 
and  in  October,  1798,  when  twenty 
years  old,  he  determined  to  visit  Paris, 
and  from  there  go  to  Spain,  where  he 
had  been  told  a  new  field  was  open  to 
him.  Once  more  he  journeyed  on  foot, 
and  reached  the  great  city  with  his 
purse  nearly  empty,  but  with  a  strong 
heart  full  of  courage,  energy,  and  con- 
fidence. 

Calico-printing  in  France  was  still 
strictly  prohibited,  but,  from  some  un- 
explained reason,  a  small  section  of 
Paris,  called  the  "  Clos  of  St.  Ger- 
main," enjoyed  an  exclusive  privilege 
for  printing.  This  privilege  was  proba- 
bly a  remnant  of  some  ancient  conces- 
sions made  to  the  monastery  of  St. 
Germains,  for  in  feudal  times  the 
monks  alone  gave  protection  to  honest 
industry. 

Under  the  protection  of  this  privi- 
lege, a  person  named  Cotin  had  estab- 
lished print-works.  He  was  already 
known  to  Oberkampf,  for  Cotin  had 
frequently  sent  to  Switzerland  for  work- 


men, and  to  him  Oberkampf  now  ap- 
plied for  employment  to  help  him  on 
his  way.  A  designer,  engraver,  colorist, 
and  printer,  all  united  in  one  person, 
was  a  godsend  to  Cotin,  and  he  at  once 
secured  the  prize  by  a  long  engage- 
ment. The  print-works  soon  felt  the 
impulse  given  to  it  by  the  laborious 
and  ardent  young  workman.  It  was 
while  thus  occupied  that  rumors  of  a 
change  of  policy  on  the  part  of  the 
government,  of  its  intention  to  repeal 
the  prohibitory  laws,  were  circulated, 
and  naturally  attracted  the  attention 
and  excited  the  hopes  of  Oberkampf; 
and  when  at  length  the  Decrees  were 
published,  he  was  exceedingly  anxious 
to  profit  by  them.  He  was  intelligent, 
laborious,  and  a  complete  master  of  his 
trade  ;  but  the  one  thing  needful,  cap- 
ital, he  did  not  possess,  and  could  not 
command.  He  had  indeed  amassed  by 
strict  economy,  almost  privation,  the 
sum  of  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
dollars  ;  but  this  was  not  capital,  and 
yet  it  was  the  grain  of  mustard-seed 
which  developed  itself  into  wide-spread 
prosperity. 

The  print-works  of  Cotin  had  long 
been  in  embarrassment,  and  were  now 
sustained  by  mere  expedients.  Pay-' 
ments  were  made  with  great  difficulty, 
and  then  only  by  heavily  loading  the- 
future.  Cotin  lost  credit,  and  in  con- 
sequence purchased  his  white  cloths 
and  dye-stuffs  under  great  disadvan- 
tages. At  length  he  was  unable  to 
pay  his  workmen  regularly  ;  and  one 
by  one  they  deserted  him,  until  Ober- 
kampf found  himself  almost  alone. 
Although  Oberkampf  obtained  with 
difficulty  and  delay  the  payment  of  his 
wages,  a  strong  sentiment  of  probity, 
which  in  after  life  never  deserted  him, 
prevented  him  from  breaking  an  en- 
gagement by  which  he  still  felt  himself 
bound.  Poor  Cotin  could  not  replace 
the  absent  workmen,  and  at  the  very 
moment  when  the  recently  publi 
Decrees  were  about  to  give  new  life 
his  enterprise  he  was  forced  to  close 
his  works,  and  Oberkampf  was  free  to 
form  a  new  connection. 

One   of  his  countrymen  named  Ta- 


i868.] 


Calico-Printing-  in  France. 


595 


vanne,  who  held  a  small  post  under  the 
Comptroller-General  of  Finance,  had  ob- 
tained early  notice  of  the  Decrees,  and, 
full  of  confidence  in  the  brilliant  pros- 
pect about  to  be  opened,  had  realized 
!   a  small  capital,  and  had  employed  it  in 
establishing   small   print-works   in   the 
I  Rue    de    Seine    St.    Marcel.      He   was 
I  well   acquainted  with    Oberkampf,  and 
j  had  made  great  efforts  to  induce    him 
to  join  him,  but  Oberkampf  refused  so 
long  as  his  engagement  with  Cotin  con- 
tinued.     He    had,    however,   promised 
to  join  him  as  soon  as  he  was  free  to 
do  so  ;  and  in  the  mean  time  had  given 
valuable  indications  and  advice  to  Ta- 
vanne,   who   thought    it    indispensable 
I  to  be  the  first  in  the  field.     As  soon  as 
ithe  Decrees  were   published,  he  com- 
menced work.     Oberkampf  now  joined 
Tavanne,  who  had  impatiently  waited 
for  him.    A  short  experience  convinced 
Oberkampf  that  the  works  were  badly 
located.     Why  remain    in    the  city,  to 
I  be   continually  overshadowed  by  dust 
(and  smoke,  where  land  was  dear,  and 
water  at  a  distance?  and,  above   all, 
where  the  bustle,  excitement,  and  temp- 
jtations  of  city  life  were  continually  dis- 
tracting the  attention  of  the  workmen  ? 
-kampf  insisted  upon  removing  to 
the   country,   and  at   length   prevailed 
upon  Tavanne  to  seek  for  a  favorable 
position.     This   was    soon   discovered, 
and,  after  several  visits,  a  new  location 
rcvas  selected. 

out  three  miles  from  Versailles, 
and  fifteen  miles  from  Paris,  lies  the 
peaceful  village  of  Jouy-en-Josas.  It 
|\vas  a  small  hamlet,  composed  of  a  few 
.res  grouped  around  the  church, 
bnd  placed  in  a  deep  valley,  —  the  hills 
ich  side  being  covered  with  woods. 
r  it  flowed  the  river  Bievre,  which 
watered  the  green  prairies  at  the 
ottorn  of  the  valley.  The  position 
eemed  to  unite  every  advantage.  The 
/ater  was  excellent  and  abundant,  the 
reen  field  could  be  had  at  a  moderate 
rice,  and  the  seclusion  of  the  valley 
ecured  it  from  the  interruptions  and 
he  attractions  of  city  life. 
Oberkampf  at  once  decided  his  part- 
er  in  its  favor,  and  noticing  a  small 


unoccupied  house,  having  a  grass-field 
attached  to  it,  he  proposed  to  Tavanne 
to  secure  it  at  once.  After  long  bar- 
gaining, it  was  leased  for  nine  years  at 
a  moderate  rent.  A  few  days  after- 
wards, in  the  spring  of  1760,  Ober- 
kampf, with  his  brother  Fritz,  whom  he 
had  called  to  him,  and  two  workmen, 
transferred  to  this  new  scene  of  labor 
the  implements  of  their  trade,  where  a 
house-carpenter  put  them  in  place.  It 
was  a  narrow  field,  for  the  house  was  so 
small  that  it  was  impossible  to  place  in 
it  the  large  kettle  used  for  heating  and 
mixing  the  colors  employed.  Like  the 
camp-kettle  of  a  regiment,  it  was  brave- 
ly placed  in  the  open  air  in  the  yard. 
The  remainder  of  the  implements  filled 
the  house,  leaving  no  place  for  furni- 
ture of  any  kind.  In  consequence,  the 
printing-table  was  required  to  do  triple 
duty ;  for,  after  a  laborious  day,  a  mat- 
tress placed  upon  it  served  for  a  bed ; 
and  upon  it  was  spread  their  frugal 
meals  brought  from  the  village,  at  the 
moderate  price  of  eight  cents  each. 

This  was  the  humble  origin  of  one 
of  the  most  extensive  and  prosperous 
manufactures  of  France. 

Work  commenced  with  great  ardor, 
and,  on  the  ist  of.  May,  1760,  Ober- 
kampf printed  the  first  piece  of  calico. 
There  could  b'e  no  division  of  labor 
among  the  four  workmen  ;  each  became 
designer,  colorist,  or  printer,  as  occa- 
sion required  ;  and  at  the  end  of  two 
months  a  sufficient  quantity  of  calicoes 
had  been  printed  to  be  sent  to  market. 
Unfortunately,  the  commercial  partner 
was  not  in  any  way  equal  to  the  manu- 
facturer. Tavanne,  having  furnished 
the  funds,  had  reserved  for  himself  the 
sale  of  the  goods ;  but  unluckily  he 
was  quite  incompetent.  He  could  not 
effect  sales  nor  provide  funds  to  pay 
the  notes  he  had  given  for  the  white 
cloths  purchased,  and  which  were  fast 
falling  due.  Perplexed  and  alarmed, 
he  informed  Oberkampf  of  his  unfortu- 
nate dilemma.  By  his  letters  of  co- 
partnership Oberkampf  was  not  re- 
sponsible for  any  losses  incurred  ;  but 
he  at  once  gave  his  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five  dollars  to  Tavanne,  and 


596 


Calico-Printing  in  France. 


[November, 


then,  with  his  usual  energy,  sought  for 
aid  to  meet  the  difficulties  of  the  situa- 
tion. 

An  acquaintance  of  Tavanne,  a  Mr. 
Parent,  first  clerk  of  the  Comptroller  of 
finance  at  Versailles,  had  often  visited 
the  print-works,  and  had  remarked  the 
intelligence  and  industry  of  Oberkampf. 
To  him  Oberkampf  applied  for  counsel. 
Mr.  Parent  received  him  in  a  friendly 
manner,  and,  as  his  position  placed  him 
in  frequent  communications  with  the 
merchants  of  Paris,  he  offered  to  apply 
to  one  of  them  for  aid.  He  explained 
the  affairs  of  Jouy  to  a  silk-merchant  of 
Paris  (whose  name  is  not  mentioned), 
and  induced  him  to  make  the  necessary 
advances  to  meet  the  engagements  of 
Tavanne,  upon  the  condition  that  all 
the  printed  goods  should  be  consigned 
to  him  for  sale,  and,  in  addition,  that 
he  should  have  a  share  in  the  profits. 
The  merchant  soon  discovered  that  the 
print-works  were  profitable,  and  that 
Oberkampf  was  the  cause  of  its  suc- 
cess. Being  a  keen,  shrewd  man,  he 
manoeuvred  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
disgust  Tavanne  with  the  whole  affair, 
and  finally  bought  of  him  all  his  interest 
in  the  business  for  the  small  sum  of 
twelve  hundred  dollars.  Not  content 
with  this,  he  further  induced  the  candid 
and  confiding  Oberkampf  to  convey  to 
him  a  part  of  his  share  of  the  profits. 
A  drone  had  entered  the  hive,  and  was 
taking  to  himself  the  honey  collected 
by  the  working  bees. 

The  friendly  interest  of  Mr.  Parent 
had  been  excited,  and  he  soon  per- 
ceived, with  regret,  that  the  interests 
of  Oberkampf  were  being  sacrified  by 
the  grasping  shrewdness  of  the  mer- 
chant. He  now  cast  about  for  a  rem- 
edy. He  proposed  another  partner, 
who  was  ready  to  embark  the  large 
sum  of  ten  thousand  dollars  in  the 
business,  for  one  third  of  the  profits. 
This  capital  would  place  the  print- 
works upon  a  solid  basis,  and  Ober- 
kampf accepted  the  proposition  with 
great  joy.  The  silk  -  merchant  was 
greatly  annoyed,  but,  fearing  he  might 
lose  Oberkampf,  he  was  forced  to  con- 
sent. 


The  new  partner  was  Mr.  Sarasin 
Demaraise,  an  advocate  of  Grenoble, 
who  had,  however,  long  resided  in 
Paris.  He  was  a  learned  and  success- 
ful advocate,  but  had  always  felt  a 
strong  inclination  for  commerce,  which 
he  preferred,  indeed,  to  his  own  occu- 
pation. He  was  an  excellent  man; 
and  Oberkampf  and  himself  naturally 
drew  together,  and  soon  became  warm 
friends.  With  the  consent  of  the  part- 
ners, the  books  and  countability  of  the 
print-works  were  confided  to  Mr.  Deraa- 
raise,  and  the  manufactory  of  Jouy  now 
boasted  of  an  office  in  Paris.  The  sale 
of  the  merchandise  still  remained  in 
the  hands  of  the  merchant. 

Erelong,  Mr.  Demaraise  discovered 
that  the  merchant  had  secured  to  him- 
self undue  advantages ;  and  the  legal 
acumen  of  the  advocate  soon  detected 
flaws  and  omissions  in  the  original  con- 
tract with  Tavanne,  and  in  the  trans- 
fer to  the  merchant.  This  Demaraise 
communicated  to  Oberkampf,  showing 
him  conclusively  that  he  was  working 
for  another.  He  proposed  to  him  to 
unite,  and  drive  the  drone  from  the 
hive.  With  some  reluctance  and  hesi- 
tation, Oberkampf  consented.  The 
merchant  positively  refused  to  sell  to 
them  his  share  of  the  business,  even 
after  the  irregularities  in  his  contract 
had  been  explained  to  him,  and  a  suit 
at  law  was  commenced. 

To  the  advocate,  Mr.  Demaraise,  a 
lawsuit  was  a  pleasant  matter ;  but  to 
Oberkampf  it  seemed  full  of  care,  un- 
certainty, and  alarm.  Other  cause  of 
anxiety  had_arisen.  He  and  his  work- 
men were  Protestants,  and  the  inhabi- 
tants of  the  village  were  ill  disposed 
towards  this  little  colony  of  strangers 
and  heretics. 

These  causes  of  preoccupation  and 
anxiety  weighed  heavily  upon  Ober- 
kampf, when,  unluckily,  a  freshet  of  the 
river  laid  his  drying-field  under  water 
at  the  moment  when  his  cloths  were 
exposed.  Oberkampf  and  his  work- 
men plunged  into  the  water  to  rescue 
the  cloths.  The  next  morning  sharp 
pains  and  fever  confined  him  to  his 
bed;  and  there  he  remained  several 


1 868.]  * 


Calico-Printing  in  France. 


597 


weeks,  suffering  all  the  pangs  of  severe 
nervous  rheumatism.  The  vigor  of 
youth  and  the  strength  of  his  constitu- 
tion, aided  by  a  short  visit  to  Switzer- 
land, with  the  gentle  care  of  his  mother, 
at  length  gave  him  the  victory. 

In  the  mean  while,  the  lawsuit  made 
slow  progress ;  but  the  friendly  Mr. 
Parent  once  more  offered  his  services, 
and  at  length  effected  a  compromise. 
The  belligerent  advocate,  Mr.  Dema- 
raise,  was  very  unwilling  to  accede  to 
it,  but  the  influence  of  Mr.  Parent  and 
the  urgent  solicitations  of  Oberkampf 
at  length  prevailed.  The  drone  was 
permitted  to  withdraw  from  the  hive, 
well  laden  with  honey. 

A  new  co-partnership  was  now  formed 
under  the  name  of  Sarasin  Demaraise, 
Oberkampf,  and  Co. ;  and  the  partners, 
relieved  from  all  embarrassments,  de- 
termined to  carry  out  their  plans  with 
activity  and  energy. 

It  is  well  known  that  cotton  cloths 
have  been  printed  in  India  from  time 
immemorial ;  but  there  the  outline  of 
the  design  alone  was  printed ;  all  the 
colors  were  afterwards  painted  in  by 
hand.  For  this  reason,  these  goods,  in 
France,  were  called  "  toiles  peints,"  or 
painted  cloths,  and  they  still  retain  the 
name.  This  industry  was  therefore  in  • 
India  more  that  of  an  artist  than  of  a 
printer,  and  could  be  carried  on  only 
in  a  country  when  the  price  of  labor 
was  reduced  to  its  lowest  limits.  In 
Europe  all  the  colors  were  printed  in 
the  same  manner  as  the  outline  ;  but  for 
a  long  time  the  result  was  very  imper- 
fect and  unsatisfactory,  and  at  the  same 
time  slow  and  expensive.  The  colors 
were  difficult  to  manage,  for  chemistry 
had  not  yet  lent  its  aid.  Nor  had  me- 
chanics been  applied,  for  block-printing 
alone  was  practised. 

It  may  be  well  to  explain  to  the  un- 
initiated this  simple  process.  A  design 
was  drawn  upon  a  block  of  wood,  of 
which  the  surfaces  had  been  accurately 
smoothed,  and  repeated  upon  as  many 
blocks  as  there  were  colors  in  the  de- 
sign ;  suppose  three  colors,  —  red,  blue, 
and  green.  On  the  surface  of  the  first 
block  all  but  the  red  color  was  cut 


away,  and  the  red  printed  on  the  cloth. 
On  the  second  block,  all  but  the  blue 
was  cut  away,  and  this  block  was  ap- 
plied precisely  to  the  place  where  the 
red  block  had  been  placed,  and  printed 
the  blue  color ;  and  so  with  the  green. 
If  the  blocks  were  applied  with  pre- 
cision, the  result  would  be  the  design 
printed  in  three  colors.  It  will  be 
readily  perceived,  that,  if  each  block  is 
not  applied  with  mathematical  precision, 
the  design  will  be  awry,  and  very  im- 
perfect, if  not  destroyed,  and  thus  occa- 
sion great  loss  of  labor,  materials,  and 
cloth. 

A  few  colors,  such  as  indigo  blue  and 
some  others,  were  still  applied  by  hand, 
—  generally  by  women,  with  small  hair 
brushes. 

It  was  all-important,  therefore,  to 
secure  the  best  workmen.  This  was 
very  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  in 
France,  where  the  corporations  of  the 
weavers  and  of  the  dyers  exerted  so 
much  authority,  and  Oberkampf  was 
forced  to  seek  them  in  Germany  and  in 
Switzerland.  He  supplied  his  father 
and  his  brother-in-law  Widmer,  at 
Aarau,  with  the  necessary  funds  to 
make  advances  to  any  good  workman 
who  was  willing  to  come  to  Paris.  In 
this  way  he  secured  the  services  of 
Rohrdorf  and  Hapner,  both  excellent 
designers ;  and  of  Bossert,  a  talented 
engraver.  These  three  remained  with 
him  until  their  death,  and  formed  a 
very  superior  staff  of  foremen.  The}* 
always  lived  in  friendly  fellowship  with 
Oberkampf,  —  taking  their  meals  with 
him  at  the  printing- table,  —  and  shared 
his  recreations  whenever  opportunities 
occurred.  When  more  prosperous  times 
came,  they  always  resided  at  his  house, 
and  dined  at  his  more  luxurious  table. 

Every  one  now  worked  with  ardor, 
and  all  were  soon  rewarded  by  evident 
success.  Their  designs  were  greatly 
admired,  and  the  printing  was  so  very 
superior  that  their  goods  met  with  a 
ready  sale.  The  profits,  too,  augmented 
rapidly.  The  first  year  gave  but  $  1,500 
to  $  i, 800,  but  the  second  year  showed 
a  gain  of  nearly  $  12,000.  This  great 
success  determined  the  partners  to  en- 


598 


Calico-Printing  in  France. 


[November, 


large  their  premises.  The  small  house 
had  indeed  received  many  additions, 
but  it  was  still  too  small  and  •  incon- 
venient. The  capitalist.  Demaraise,  was 
ready  to  invest  more  of  his  fortune  in 
so  profitable  an  affair,  and  their  credit 
was  excellent;  but  this  success  was 
troubled  by  local  annoyances. 

The  pious  susceptibilities  of  the  cu- 
rate of  Jouy  were  alarmed  by  the  influx 
of  Swiss  workmen,  most  of  whom  were 
Protestants,  and  complaints  had  been 
made  to  the  local  authorities.  Good- 
humored  patience  and  generous  con- 
tributions gradually  enlightened  the 
curate  and  the  mayor  to  their  true  in- 
terests, and  their  opposition  subsided  ; 
but  a  more  difficult  obstacle  remained. 
The  partners  required  more  land  ; 
but  the  seigneur  of  the  village,  the 
Marquis  of  Beuvron,  had  been  much 
annoyed  by  the  establishment  of  the 
print-works  in  the  quiet  valley  of  which 
he  was  the  principal  proprietor,  and  so 
near  to  the  chateau  which  he  occupied. 
He  coldly,  but  positively,  refused  to 
sell  or  let  a  prairie  near  the  print-works, 
which  had  now  become  indispensable 
to  its  extension.  He  was,  however,  a 
generous  and  enlightened  gentleman, 
and  soon  learned  to  respect  the  in- 
dustry, integrity,  and  intelligence  of  his 
unwelcome  neighbors.  Nor  could  he 
refuse  to  acknowledge  that  the  neigh- 
borhood and  his  own  estate  had  profit- 
ed by  their  presence.  At  length,  after 
long  solicitation,  seconded  by  the  lib- 
eral price  offered,  and  by  a  generous 
present  to  the  Marchioness,  as  was  the 
custom  of  the  age,  he  consented  to  al- 
low them  to  take  the  land  they  so  ear- 
nestly desired. 

The  new  building  was  commenced  in 
1764,  and  completed  two  years  after- 
wards. Among  other  improvements 
made,  a  canal  was  dug  from  the  river, 
the  sides  and  bottom  of  which  were 
well  puddled  with  clay,  and  then  in- 
cased with  thick  oaken  planks.  In  this 
basin  the  cloths  could  be  washed  in 
perfect  safety. 

The  establishment  now  assumed 
large  proportions  ;  for  Oberkampf,  while 
making  great  exertions  to  produce 


beautiful  designs,  enriched  with  bril- 
liant colors,  did  not  neglect  to  produce 
less  expensive  goods  at  a  moderate 
price,  within  the  reach  of  the  great 
mass  of  consumers.  These  goods  were 
called  Mignonettes,  from  the  nature  of 
the  designs,  which  consisted  of  small 
running  flowers  and  vines,  varied  in 
disposition  and  colors  according  to  the 
taste  of  the  moment  or  of  the  market 
to  which  they  were  destined.  The  sale 
of  this  class  of  goods  was  immense,  for 
they  penetrated  into  the  most  secluded 
corners  of  France. 

The  prosperity  of  the  new  establish- 
ment soon  extended  to  the  village, 
where  houses  were  built,  and  waste 
lands  cultivated,  to  supply  the  require- 
ments of  the  increasing  population, 
attracted  by  good  wages  and  certain 
employment. 

The  reputation  of  the  print-works 
was  now  fully  established ;  but  it  is 
an  old  maxim,  that  reputation  can  be 
maintained  only  by  constant  progress. 
To  this  end  Oberkampf  directed  all 
his  energy.  He  established  a  wash- 
ing-mill to  replace  hand  labor,  and 
continually  simplified  and  perfected  ev- 
ery operation.  When  his  brother  Fritz 
brought  from  Switzerland  a  design  en- 
'  graved  upon  copper,  he  did  not  hesitate 
to  adopt  this  innovation  for  fine  work, 
notwithstanding  the  great  additional 
expense. 

This  constant  labor  of  mind  and  body 
could  not,  however,  be  sustained  without 
recreation  and  relaxation.  He  built  for 
himself  and  friends  a  rnoderate  house, 
and  at  times  indulged  his  passion  for 
horses.  He  had  two  or  more  always 
in  his  stable,  and  a  sharp  canter,  in  com- 
pany with  one  of  his  foremen,  over  the 
neighboring  hills,  was  a  favorite  diver- 
sion. Upon  one  occasion,  the  baying 
of  hounds  gave  notice  that  the  royal 
hunt  was  near.  Louis  XV.,  surrounded 
by  a  brilliant  cortege  of  nobles,  hunts- 
men, and  servants,  swept  by  ;  and  Ober- 
kampf and  his  companion,  carried  away 
by  the  excitement,  and  thinking  no 
harm,  followed  after  at  a  respectful  dis- 
tance. Louis  XV.  remarked  them,  and 
inquired,  "Who  are  those  gentlemen  so 


1868.1 


Calico-Printing  in  France. 


599 


well  mounted  ?  "  Upon  being  told,  he 
coldly  observed  they  would  do  better 
to  remain  at  their  factory,  rather  than 
lose  their  time  in  following  his  hunt. 
The  observation  was  at  once  carried  to 
Oberkampf,  who,  with  his  usual  good 
sense,  without  any  sign  of  anger,  re- 
plied, "  His  Majesty  is  right,  and  we 
•will  profit  by  his  counsel,"  and  at  once 
-withdrew. 

Oberkampf  had  remained  unmarried  ; 
but  he  now  decided  to  share  his  pros- 
perity with  another.  He  had  long  been 
acquainted  with  a  Protestant  family  of 
Sancerre,  and  in  that  family  he  chose 
his  wife.  His  dwelling-house  and 
grounds  were  enlarged  and  improved, 
but  his  marriage  with  Miss  Palineau 
was  celebrated  in  Paris.  Mrs.  Ober- 
kampf was  an  accomplished  musician, 
many  of  his  Swiss  foremen  were  good 
performers,  and  in  the  royal  band  at 
Versailles,  near  by,  there  were  many 
Germans,  who  were  soon  in  friendly 
relations  with  Jouy.  The  liberal  hospi- 
tality of  Oberkampf  attracted  them  to 
his  house,  and  upon  Sundays  and  fete 
days,  indeed  upon  every  occasion,  his 
house  was  crowded  with  musicians  and 
artists  ;  and  music  and  the  dance  al- 
ternated with  more  serious  theatricals 
and  conversation. 

Upon  one  occasion  the  tutor  of  the 
royal  princes  brought  them  to  visit 
the  establishment,  and  Oberkampf  ex- 
plained the  divers  operations  to  the 
future  Louis  XVI.,  Louis  XVIII.,  and 
Charles  X.,  who  successively  occupied 
the  throne  of  France.  The  last,  then 
called  Count  d'Artois,  attempted  to 
print,  but  the  blocks  were  too  heavy  for 
his  hand. 

In  1782  Oberkampf  met  with  a  cruel 
misfortune.  His  wife,  while  attending 
one  of  her  children,  ill  with  the  small- 
pox, contracted  the  disease,  and  became 
its  victim. 

In  the  mean  while,  the  unfortunate 
Louis  XVI.  had  succeeded  to  the 
throne  of  France.  Ever  anxious  to 
-encourage  national  industry,  and  to  re- 
ward merit,  he  conferred,  in  1783,  the 
title  of  Royal  Manufactory  upon  the 
print-works  of  Jouy;  and,  four  years 


later,  he  granted,  without  solicitation,  a 
patent  of  nobility  to  Oberkampf,  the 
German  mechanic  whom  Louis  XV. 
had  not  permitted  to  follow  the  royal 
hunt. 

Two  years  later,  when  the  Revolu- 
tion began,  this  noble  distinction  be- 
stowed upon  Oberkampf  became  a  se- 
rious danger.  The  recent  date  of  his 
parchments,  and  his  simple  good  sense 
and  frank  character,  averted  the  evil; 
and  he  was  permitted  to  hide  away, 
and  forget  his  title  of  nobility  with  its 
emblazoned  coat  of  arms.  "  Liberty 
and  Fraternity "  could  not  well  be 
alarmed  by  the  sturdy  mechanic  who 
had  risen  by  his  own  industry  and 
merit. 

In  1789  his  copartnership  with  De- 
maraise  expired.  It  had  lasted  twenty- 
five  years,  and  Demaraise  now  wished 
to  retire  from  active  life.  His  fortune 
was  ample,  for  the  profits  to  be  divided 
amounted  to  the  large  sum  of  $  1,800,000. 
The  intercourse  between  the  partners 
had  always  been  confiding  and  friendly, 
and  they  separated  with  mutual  esteem. 

This  period  marked  an  epoch  in  the 
history  of  the  establishment,  for  it  was 
the  moment  of  transition  from  the  old 
system  to  new  progress.  Improvements 
of  every  nature  had  indeed  been  effected, 
but  now  science  was  to  perform  its 
wonders  ;  chemistry  and  mechanics,  so 
long  confined  to  the  laboratory,  were 
now  to  be  applied  to  active  industry. 

Prosperity  had  not  alienated  the  af- 
fections of  Oberkampf  from  his  family. 
When  his  parents,  his  brother-in-law, 
and  a  married  sister  died,  he  called 
their  young  families  around  him,  and 
gave  them  the  advantages  of  a  careful 
education.  To  each  of  his  nephews  he 
gave  successively  an  interest  in  the 
manufactory,  and  was  rewarded  by  their 
intelligence  and  devotion, —more  espe- 
cially in  the  case  of  his  eldest  nephew, 
Samuel  Widmer,  who  became  a  dis- 
tinguished chemist  and  mechanic,  and 
rendered  important  services  to  his 
uncle. 

The  great  chemists  of  the  age,  Ber- 
thollet,  Chaptal,  Monge,  and  Chevreul, 
were  in  constant  communication  with 


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[November, 


Jouy,  and  Gay-Lussac  was  employed  to 
give  courses  of  lectures  upon  chemistry 
and  physics  to  the  foremen  and  work- 
men of  the  print-works.  They  would 
come  to  Jouy,  when  any  new  combina- 
tion or  new  process  was  conceived  by 
them,  with  their  pockets  filled  with 
samples  ;  and  Oberkampf  and  Widmer 
were  ever  ready  to  test  them  upon  a 
large  scale,  and  thus  ascertain  their  ap- 
plication and  value.  Many,  very  many, 
were  worthless  ;  but  many  brilliant  ex- 
ceptions served  to  mark  the  constant 
progress  obtained  by  the  application  of 
science  to  industry.  The  system  of 
bleaching  with  chlorine,  discovered  by 
Berthollet,  was  here  first  applied,  and 
Widmer  at  once  established  a  labora- 
tary  to  produce  this  useful  material. 

The  sanguinary  Revolution  still  pur- 
sued its  course,  and  the  excitement 
spread  in  every  direction.  Partly  to 
obey  the  instinct  of  the  moment,  and 
partly  as  a  politic  precaution,  Ober- 
kampf caused  a  large  design  of  the 
"  Fete  of  the  Federation  "  at  the  Champs 
de  Mars  to  be  engraved  with  great  care 
for  furniture  -  hangings.  The  success 
was  extraordinary,  and  gave  a  some- 
what new  direction  to  the  print-works. 
Eminent  artists,  such  as  Huet,  Lebas, 
and  Demarne,  were  employed  to  pro- 
duce a  series  of  large  designs ;  but 
Oberkampf,  with  good  sense  and  pru- 
dence, abandoned  political  subjects. 
The  Wolf  and  the  Lamb,  The  Lion 
in  Love,  Psyche  and  Cupid,  Don 
Quixote,  and  others,  were  produced  in 
succession  with  marked  success.  In 
smaller  designs,  natural  flowers  were 
copied  with  care  and  precision  ;  and  the 
flora  of  distant  lands  contributed  their 
curious  and  graceful  flowers,  decked  in 
all  the  gorgeous  colors  of  the  tropics. 

Oberkampf  again  found  himself 
crowded  for  room,  and  decided  to  erect 
an  immense  building,  in  which  his  work- 
men would  be  more  at  ease,  and  in  con- 
sequence produce  still  more  perfect 
work.  A  plan  by  an  architect  of  Paris 
was  adopted,  and  at  once  carried  into 
execution.  An  immense  hall  on  the 
lower  floor,  lighted  by  eighty-eight  win- 
dows, was  devoted  to  printing.  In  the 


first  story 'were  the  offices,  and  the 
rooms  occupied  by  the  engravers  and 
designers  upon  wood  and  copper,  as 
well  as  printing-rooms  for  shawls. 
Here,  too,  was  the  store-room  for  blocks, 
where  all  were  carefully  preserved,  for 
many  were  found  worthy  of  several 
editions.  In  the  next  story  were  placed 
the  finishers,  where  three  hundred  wo- 
men were  seated  at  long  tables  com- 
pleting or  correcting  the  coloring  of  the 
rich  designs.  Over  all  was  an  immense, 
lofty  garret,  open  upon  every  side,  which 
served  as  a  drying-room.  Here  the  long 
depending  cloths  of  every  hue,  swaying 
back  and  forth  in  the  wind,  gave  a  bril- 
liant and  picturesque  appearance  to  the 
building.  They  were  called  the  banners 
of  Jouy.  This  building  was  finished 
in  1792,  and  during  the  year  the  pros- 
perity of  the  establishment  continued 
unabated,  notwithstanding  the  vast  po- 
litical agitation  of  the  moment ;  but 
soon  misery  crept  slowly  but  surely 
upon  the  people,  and  the  demand  rap- 
idly declined. 

The  excitement  and  madness  of  the 
Revolution  had  long  since  reached  the 
quiet  village  of  Jouy.  Public  meetings 
had  been  called,  clubs  had  been  formed, 
and  political  festivities  been  celebrated, 
but  fortunately  all  the  municipal  au- 
thority of  the  place  was  concentred  in 
the  hands  of  Oberkampf.  He  was  him- 
self the  mayor ;  two  of  his  foremen  were 
sub-mayor  and  secretary  ;  and  his  neph- 
ew, Samuel  Widmer,  was  the  comman- 
der of  the  militia.  Oberkampf  did  not 
attempt  to  oppose  the  torrent  of  public 
excitement,  but  wisely  allowed  it  to  ex- 
pend itself  in  violent  speeches,  and  still 
more  violent  resolutions,  but  he  care- 
fully watched  their  development  into 
active  operation,  and  was  thus  enabled 
to  protect  society  and  himself. 

He  was,  of  course,  obliged  to  contrib- 
ute largely  of  his  wealth,  as  we  may 
judge  by  a  few  notes  found  among  his 
papers.  He  first  made  a  patriotic  gift 
of  $  10,000,  then  gave  $  1,600  to  equip 
and  pay  ten  volunteers,  then  a  forced  loan 
to  the  nation  of  $  5,000,  then  a  so-called 
voluntary  loan  of  $  15,000,  then  $600 
to  equip  a  cavalry  soldier,  then  a  war- 


1868.] 


Calico-Printing  in  France. 


60 1 


contribution  of  $  3,500,  —  all  these  in 
addition  to  the  very  heavy  taxes  im- 
posed upon  his  property  and  upon  his 
manufactory.  By  acceding  promptly 
and  cheerfully  to  these  exactions,  he 
maintained  the  character  of  a  good 
citizen  and  a  friend  of  the  country,  but 
this  did  not  secure  him  from  occasional 
alarm.  On  the  igth  February,  1794,  a 
gendarme  brought  him  a  summons  to 
appear  the  next  day,  at  eleven  o'clock, 
before  a  committee  at  the  Hotel  de 
Toulouse  (now  the  Bank  of  France). 
At  the  foot  was  written  the  ominous  no- 
tice, "Exactitude  rigorously  required." 
Oberkampf  at  once  obeyed.  A  scheme 
for  raising  ten  millions  of  dollars  "to 
save  the  country  "  was  laid  before  him. 
It  was  in  the  form  of  sixty  notes,  the 
payment  of  which  was  to  be  guaranteed 
by  forty-four  of  the  principal  bankers 
and  merchants.  Oberkampf 's  signature 
was  required.  He  did  not  hesitate  to 
sign  the  bonds,  —  indeed,  it  would  have 
been  dangerous  to  manifest  any  unwill- 
ingness,—  and  then  returned  to  Jouy 
calmly  to  await  the  result.  A  long 
while  afterwards  he  learned  that  these 
notes  could  not  be  employed,  and  that 
they  had  been  finally  destroyed. 

Two  months  later,  Oberkampf  was 
denounced  as  a  suspected  moderate,  a 
hidden  royalist,  a  monopolizer,  —  in  a 
word,  a  rich  man.  These  charges  were 
more  than  sufficient  to  bring  him  before 
the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  and  lead 
him  to  the  scaffold.  Fortunately,  a 
member  of  the  committee  was  friendly 
to  Oberkampf,  and,  although  a  violent 
Jacobin,  he  defended  him  with  courage, 
and  succeeded  in  averting  the  blow. 
The  first  intimation  to  Oberkampf  of 
the  clanger  he  had  run  was  made  by  a 
communication  from  the  terrible  Com- 
mittee of  Public  Safety,  who  sent  him  a 
certificate  of  civism,  declaring  the  man- 
ufactory useful  to  the  Republic,  and 
requiring  Oberkampf,  his  wife,  and 
children,  to  continue  it.  The  hand  of 
a  friend  was  visible  in  this  certificate, 
for  the  "wife  and  children"  protected 
by  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  fac- 
tory, which,  indeed,  had  never  sus- 
pended operation.  Many  of  the  work- 


men had  been  drawn  away,  either  to 
Paris  or  to  the  army  ;  but  every  good 
workman  found  employment  at  the 
print-works,  and,  what  was  more,  was 
paid  in  coin  so  long  as  it  was  possible  to 
procure  it.  When  this  could  no  longer 
be  obtained,  the  agent  in  Paris  sent 
down  whole  bales  of  bank-bills,  fresh 
from  the  press,  and  on  pay-day  three 
women  were  employed  in  cutting  them 
apart. 

A  few  months  afterwards,  Oberkampf 
received  an  alarming  visitor.  In  June, 
1794,  a  carriage  drove  into  the  court- 
yard, and  a  tall,  elegant  young  man 
sprang  lightly  to  the  ground,  and  gave 
his  hand  to  a  young  and  beautiful  lady 
to  aid  her  to  descend ;  a  robust  servant 
immediately  stretched  himself  into  the 
carriage,  and  withdrew  in  his  arms  a 
third  person,  whom  he  carried  into  the 
saloon.  This  person  was  the  redoubt- 
able George  Couthon,  a  monster  of 
cruelty,  who,  with  Robespierre  and  St. 
Just,  governed  and  instigated  the  terri- 
ble atrocities  of  the  Committee  of  Pub- 
lic Safety.  The  "  virtuous  and  tender- 
hearted Couthon,"  as  his  adherents 
were  pleased  to  call  him,  took  an  active 
part  in  spreading  spies  and  informers 
in  every  direction,  and  with  their  aid 
covered  France  with  guillotines.  His 
personal  appearance  was  not  at  all  fear- 
ful, for  his  pale,  regular  features  ex- 
pressed calm  confidence,  if  not  benig- 
nity and  dignity.  He  was  dressed  with 
care,  for  the  Jacobins  did  not  affect 
roughness  either  in  manner  or  dress. 
He  wore  powder,  and  his  manners  were 
polite,  although  cold  and  formal.  He 
appeared  to  be  of  medium  height,  but  his 
bust  alone  existed, — the  lower  part  of  his 
body  being  completely  paralyzed.  Ober- 
kampf received  h?m  with  quiet  self-pos- 
session, but  with  difficulty  suppressed 
a  sentiment  of  detestation  and  fear. 
Citizen  Couthon  was,  of  course,  invited 
to  visit  the  manufactory,  and  Widmer 
carried  him  in  his  arms  from  story  to 
story,  while  Oberkampf  explained  to 
him  all  the  interesting  processes  of 
manufacture.  The  party  then  returned 
to  the  house,  where  refreshments  were 
offered.  Great  care  was  taken  that 


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[November, 


the  repast  should  be  extremely  simple 
and  frugal  ;  for  famine  was  abroad, 
and  sumptuous  living  was  not  merely 
an  impropriety,  it  was  crime  which  led 
directly  to  the  scaffold.  Wheat  flour 
was  extremely  scarce,  and  the  bread 
served  was  coarse  and  dark.  To 
the  surprise  of  every  one,  Couthon 
directed  the  servant  to  bring  a  small 
basket  from  the  carriage,  in  which,  care- 
fully enveloped  in  a  napkin,  lay  a  few 
delicate  white  loaves,  with  their  rich 
brown  crust,  for  which  Paris  is  re- 
nowned. Couthon  made  no  remark 
upon  this  aristocratic  luxury,  in  which 
he  alone  dare  indulge,  but  politely  of- 
fered it  to  all.  Commerce  and  the  feats 
of  the  great  army  of  the  nation  were 
the  only  subjects  of  conversation,  which 
was  constrained  and  guarded.  It  was 
therefore  with  a  sensation  of  great  relief 
that  Widmer  once  more  placed  Couth- 
on in  his  carriage,  who,  after  having 
briefly  expressed  his  satisfaction  and  his 
thanks,  drove  away,  leaving  behind  him 
distrust  and  apprehension.  To  the  sur- 
prise of  all,  no  disastrous  results  ensued 
from  this  visit. 

The  overthrow  of  Robespierre  brought 
peace  and  partial  security,  and  active 
operations  recommenced  at  Jouy.  In 
the  year  1797  this  activity  received  an 
immense  impulse  by  the  invention  of 
printing  with  rollers.  The  principal 
honor  of  this  invention  is  due  to  Wid- 
mer, but  he  was  greatly  aided  by  the 
counsel  and  encouragements  of  Ober- 
kampf.  Widmer  had  long  dreamed  of 
substituting  rollers  for  blocks,  and  at 
length,  after  many  failures,  succeeded 
in  realizing  his  dream  by  establishing 
his  machine  at  Jouy.  The  progress 
was  immense,  for  the  machine  printed 
fifty-five  hundred  yards  per  day,  the 
work  of  forty-five  printers. 

The  engraving  of  the  rollers  was  a 
difficult,  costly,  and  long  process,  and 
Widmer  set  himself  at  work  to  over- 
come this  objection.  After  three  years 
of  laborious  thought  and  costly  experi- 
ence, he  at  last  succeeded,  and  pro- 
duced a  machine  which  greatly  aided  in 
engraving  the  rollers.  This  was  estab- 
lished in  the  year  1800.  The  successes 


of  Napoleon  and  the  establishment  of 
the  Empire  gave  a  strong  impulse  to 
the  activity  of  the  print-works,  which 
now  employed  fourteen  hundred  work- 
men. It  had  been  intimated  to  Ober- 
kampf  that  he  might  aspire,  under  the 
new  rcgijne,  to  the  dignity  of  senator. 
But  the  simplicity  of  his  character  re- 
mained unchanged,  and  he  positively 
refused  the  high  honor. 

In  the  month  of  June,  1806,  a  Garde 
de  Chasse  in  the  Imperial  livery  en- 
tered Jouy  at  a  sharp  gallop,  and  rode 
at  once  to  the  manufactory.  He  an- 
nounced the  visit  of  the  Emperor.  The 
news  spread  with  rapidity,  and  every 
one  quitted  his  occupation  to  rush  to 
the  court-yard.  A  few  moments  later 
the  Emperor,  accompanied  by  the  Em- 
press Josephine,  drove  into  the  same 
court-yard  where,  a  few  years  since, 
Couthon  had  brought  fear  and  dismay. 
But  now  a  dense  crowd  of  workmen 
and  villagers  received  their  visitor  with 
unbounded  enthusiasm.  Addressing  a 
few  words  to  Oberkampf,  with  his  cus- 
tomary rapidity,  he  proposed  at  once 
to  visit  the  printing  machine.  It  was 
put  in  operation,  and,  to  the  sur- 
prise and  admiration  of  all,  the  white 
cloth  was  drawn  under  the  rollers  and 
printed  at  the  rate  of  eight  yards  per 
minute.  At  a  signal  the  rollers  were 
changed,  and  a  new  design  printed. 
Napoleon  frequently  expressed  his  sat- 
isfaction, and  then  visited  every  part  of 
the  manufactory,  asking  with  great  rap- 
idity the  most  searching  questions,  which 
taxed  all  the  attention  of  his  host  to  an- 
swer. With  ready  tact  he  conversed 
with  the  foremen  and  workmen,  and  ex- 
cited the  enthusiasm  of  all  about  him. 
He  then  returned  to  the  court-yard, 
and  was  again  surrounded  by  the 
crowd,  while  every  window  of  the  im- 
mense building  was  filled  by  the  work- 
men. The  favorable  moment  had  come. 
Napoleon  detached  the  Cross  of  the 
Legion  of  Honor  which  he  wore,  and 
placed  it  with  his  own  hand  upon  the 
breast  of  Oberkampf,  exclaiming,  in  a 
firm  voice,  that  none  were  so  worthy  to 
wear  it.  This  high  military  honor,  be- 
stowed in  so  marked  and  public  a  man- 


1 868.] 


Calico-Printing  in  France. 


60 


ner  upon  a  civilian,  gave  great  satisfac- 
tion, not  only  to  the  friends  of  Ober- 
kampf,  but  to  the  whole  commerce  of 
the  country,  which  claimed  its  share 
on  this  occasion,  and  felicitations  from 
every  province  were  addressed  to  Ober- 
kampf. 

The  fourth  Exposition  of  National 
Industry  took  place  in  the  year  1806, 
and  for  the  first  time  the  manufactory 
of  Jouy  sent  a  brilliant  collection  of 
its  products,  and  received  the  gold 
medal. 

The  succeeding  years  were  marked 
by  two  important  inventions.  The 
method  of  printing  a  solid  green  color 
in  one  application,  and  the  heating  of 
colors  by  steam. 

In  the  year  1810  the  Emperor  Napo- 
leon invited  Oberkampf,  the  "  patriarch  " 
or  the  "  seigneur  "  of  Jouy,  as  he  famil- 
iarly called  him,  to  visit  him  at  the 
Palace  of  St.  Cloud.  Oberkampf  was 
accompanied  by  Samuel  Widmer,  who 
wished  to  solicit  a  favor  from  the  Em- 
peror. Napoleon  received  them  in  his 
usual  manner,  addressing  rapid,  search- 
ing, almost  offensive  questions  to  Ober- 
kampf and  to  Widmer.  "  They  tell  me 
you  are  wealthy, — was  not  the  first 
million  the  most  difficult  to  gain  ?  Have 
you  children  ?  Will  your  son  continue 
your  business,  or  will  he.  as  is  more 
usual,  dissipate  your  fortune  ?  "  £c.,  £c. 
He  discussed  the  tariff,  and  when  Ober- 
kampf remarked  that  the  duty  on  cotton 
was  excessive,  "  O,"  replied  the  Empe- 
ror, "  I  only  take  what  the  smugglers 
would  get,"  and  added,  in  an  excited 
voice,  "  I  will  have  all  the  English  and 
Swiss  cotton  goods  burned.  I  have 
given  three  millions  to  plant  cotton  in 
the  plains  of  Rome.  Is  not  that  better 
than  giving  them  a  Pope  ?  "  In  his 
memoirs,  dictated  by  himself  at  St.  Hel- 
ena, speaking  of  the  Continental  system, 
he  remarks,  "  I  consulted  Oberkampf." 
So  indeed  he  did,  but  he  did  not  listen 
to  his  advice. 

The  interview  was  brought  to  a  close 
by  the  usual  question,  "  Have  you  any- 
thing to  ask?"  Oberkampf  replied 
that  his  nephew,  Widmer,  was  very  de- 
sirous to  visit  the  manufactories  of  Eng- 


land. The  Continental  system  was 
strictly  applied  at  that  moment,  and  no 
one  could  visit  England  without  a  pass- 
port signed  by  the  Emperor's  own  hand. 
Napoleon  replied  with  some  impatience, 
"What  can  he  see  there?  What  can 
he  learn?  Well,  well,  I  will  send  him 
a  passport."  A  few  days  afterwards 
the  desired  document  was  received. 

In  the  midst  of  this  honorable  but 
laborious  prosperity,  Oberkampf  did 
not  escape  the  trials  and  afflictions  of 
life.  Illness  and  death  had  visited  his 
family  and  his  friends,  taking  from  him 
his  child  in  its  early  years  and  his 
devoted  friends  in  their  old  age.  In 
1 8 ro  he  lost  Ludwig  Rohrdorf,  the  last 
of  his  early  associates  around  the  print- 
ing-table of  Jouy.  He,  like  the  rest, 
had  shared  in  the  prosperity  of  the  fac- 
tory, and  left  a  fair  property.  Being 
unmarried,  his  heirs,  who  resided  in 
Switzerland,  proved  their  unlimited 
confidence  in  the  probity  of  Oberkampf 
by  requesting  him  to  liquidate  the  suc- 
cession without  process  at  law. 

The  sturdy  Oberkampf  himself  did 
not  appear  to  feel  the  fatigues  of  ad- 
vancing age.  He  had  long  wished  to 
free  himself  from  dependence  upon  the 
manufactories  of  printing-cloths,  and  to 
convert  the  bale  of  raw  cotton  into 
pieces  of  printed  calicoes  within  his 
own  works.  His  son-in-law,  Mr.  Louis 
Feray,  being  fully  competent  to  direct 
a  mill,  Oberkampf  established  one  at 
Essonne,  and  another  at  Corbeil  for  his 
brother  Fritz,  both  for  the  manufacture 
of  printing- cloths.  His  brother  pre- 
ferred to  retire  from  commerce ;  Ober- 
kampf received  back  the  mill,  and 
maintained  it  in  activity. 

The  fall  of  Napoleon  in  1814,  and 
the  invasion  of  the  Allied  armies,  sus- 
pended work  at  Jouy.  For  the  first 
time  the  manufactory  was  closed.  A 
recommencement  of  activity  was  ar- 
rested by  the  return  of  Napoleon  from 
Elba  in  1815,  when  Jouy  was  once  more 
occupied  by  foreign  troops.  Many 
farms  with  their  buildings  had  been 
destroyed,  and  every  one  was  anxious 
for  the  safety  of  the  manufactory  ;  for, 
although  work  had  again  ceased,  yet 


604 


Calico-Printing'  in  France. 


[November, 


the  building  had  never  before  been  so 
crowded  with  occupants.  All  the  poor 
families  of  the  outskirts,  who  had  the 
most  to  fear,  were  permitted  to  bring 
their  furniture  and  worldly  goods  to  the 
manufactory,  and  there  they  found  pro- 
tection and  support. 

The  buildings  escaped  destruction, 
and,  when  peace  returned,  active  opera- 
tions were  again  commenced.  But 
anxiety,  distress,  and  severe  labor  could 
no  longer  be  borne  with  impunity  by 
Oberkampf  at  his  advanced  age.  He 
became  feeble,  and  his  health  began  to 
fail,  when  a  severe  cold  brought  on  a 
fever  which  proved  fatal.  He  expired 
on  the  4th  of  October,  1815,  and  ended 
an  honorable  and  useful  life  of  seventy- 
seven  years,  surrounded  by  his  family 
and  by  his  numerous  friends.  A  son 
and  three  daughters  (all  married)  sur- 
vived their  parent. 

The  manufactory  was  continued  six 
years  longer  by  the  son,  Emile  Ober- 
kampf, and  by  the  nephew,  S.  Widmer. 
Upon  the  death  of  Widmer,  Emile 
Oberkampf  associated  with  him  a  new 
partner,  to  whom  he  was  soon  obliged 
by  ill-health  to  cede  the  paternal  estab- 
lishment. The  prosperity  of  the  manu- 
factory seemed,  however,  to  be  attached 
to  the  name  and  family  of  Oberkampf; 
for,  when  separated  from  them,  it  lan- 
guished and  declined.  It  was  converted 
into  a  joint-stock  company,  but  without 
success,  and  a  few  years  afterward  was 
discontinued,  and  the  property  sold. 
The  principal  building  alone  now  re- 
mains. 

The  decline  of  the  manufactory  at 
Jouy  does  not  in  any  way  indicate  the 
decline  of  calico-printing  in  France,  for 


the  impulse  given  by  Oberkampf  has 
been  fully  sustained  by  the  great  pro- 
gress continually  made.  One  examines 
with  surprise  the  wonderful  printing  of 
Mulhouse,  upon  the  gossamer,  airy  tis- 
sue of  muslin,  which  one  would  think 
incapable  of  bearing  the  rich  colors 
and  designs  with  which  it  is  impreg- 
nated. The  town  of  Mulhouse  is  now  the 
seat  of  the  perfection  of  calico-printing, 
but  Rouen  and  many  other  towns  can 
well  boast  of  their  productions. 

The  family  of  Oberkampf  did  not 
desert  the  humble  village  of  Jouy. 
They  retained  the  dwelling-house,  and 
constantly  visited  the  village  and  the 
families  of  the  old  workmen,  who  long 
experienced  their  active  and  generous 
charity. 

The  small  building  called  the  House 
by  the  Stone  Bridge,  in  which  Ober- 
kampf printed  the  first  piece  of  calico 
at  Jouy,  was  offered  for  sale,  and  the 
daughters  of  Oberkampf  hastened  to 
purchase  it.  They  enlarged  and  im- 
proved it,  and  converted  it  into  an  asy- 
lum for  young  children.  All  the  children 
of  the  village  were  here  collected  for  the 
day,  and  received  the  care  and  the  in- 
struction their  age  required.  They  were 
provided  with  meals,  and  even  those 
living  at  a  distance  were  brought  to  the 
asylum  in  an  omnibus,  and  carried 
home  at  night.  Assuredly  this  was  a 
noble  monument  of  gratitude  and  char- 
ity to  the  memory  of  their  father. 

We  need  not  add  that  his  name  will 
never  be  forgotten  in  the  village  of 
Jouy.  The  principal  street  bears  the 
name  of  Oberkampf,  and  the  patriarchs 
of  the  village  recall  with  pride  the  splen- 
dors of  the  times  of  the  great  factory. 


1 868.] 


M ay  den-v alley,  Spinsterland. 


605 


MAYDENVALLEY,  SPINSTERLAND. 


"A  ND  what  do  you  study  in  your 
x\  school  ?  "  I  asked  the  blue-eyed 
little  stranger  whom  I  had  lifted  into  my 
lap  as  a  defence  against  woman's  claim 
to  my  seat  in  a  street  car. 

"Jography,  'rithmitic,  readin',  and 
spellin'." 

She  could  spell  "rhinoceros,"  but  not 
"hippopotamus,"  and  could  multiply 
twelve  by  three,  but  not  by  one  with 
success.  In  "jography"  my  examina- 
tion was  more  thorough.  It  com- 
menced as  we  were  crossing  the  Back 
Bay,  in  full  view  of  the  Mill-Dam,  the 
Dome  of  the  State-House,  and  Bunker 
Hill  Monument. 

"  Can  you  tell  me  where  East  Cam- 
bridge is  ? " 

"  We  don't  learn  such  things  at  our 
school." 

"  How  is  Boston  bounded  ?  " 

"We  don't  study  that  kind,"  half 
contemptuously. 

"  WThere  is  the  Atlantic  Ocean  ?  " 

"East  of  Asia;  no,  —  it's  west  of 
Africa." 

The  little  scholar  had  not  been  taught 
home  geography,  but  she  knew  where 
the  Red  Sea  was,  knew  there  was  no 
Blue  Sea  anywhere,  and  could  tell  more 
than  it  is  worth  while  to  know  about 
the  Cape  of  Good  Hope-  I  expressed 
my  surprise  that  a  body  only  nine  years 
old  should  be  so  wise,  adding  that  I 
should  like  to  go  to  her  school. 

"  Why  don't  you,  then  ?  " 

"  Could  I  go  into  your  class  ? " 

"  No,  you  would  have  to  go  into  the 
infant  class." 

I  was  saved  from  further  mortifica- 
tion by  our  arrival  at  the  end  of  the 
route.  As  I  made  my  bow  to  my 
learned  friend,  I  fell  to  wondering  how 
many  children  of  a  larger  growth  know 
where  Spinsterland  is,  and  how  many 
of  the  travellers  who  pass  through  May- 
denvalley  in  the  course  of  the  summer 
acquaint  themselves  with  its  name,  its 
residents,  or  its  magical  properties. 


Yet  Spinsterland  comprises  62,116 
square  miles,  and  has  a  population  of 
over  three  millions,  of  whom  consid- 
erably less  than  half  are  males.  It 
is  bounded  to  the  west  by  a  river 
and  lake  ;  to  the  north  and  northeast 
by  a  forest  still  traversed  by  moose, 
Indians,  trout-brooks,  and  lumbermen  ; 
and  to  the  east  and  south  by  the 
ocean.  Its  principal  products  are  rocks, 
ice,  machinery,  and  the  fabrics  of  ma- 
chinery. The  farmer  can  rarely  ex- 
tort a  reward  for  his  industry  from  an 
unwilling  soil ;  but  he  raises  all  the 
vegetables  and  coarser  cereals  required 
for  home  consumption.  Along  the 
coast  reside  a  hardy  race,  who  furnish 
America  with  its  Friday  dinner  and 
Spinsterland  with  its  Sunday  breakfast 
also.  In  ancient  times,  a  considerable 
foreign  commerce  was  carried  on  ;  but 
a  city, 'once  the  centre  of  the  India 
trade,  now  imports  little  but  peanuts ; 
another,  which  used  to  have  direct 
steam  communication  with  Europe,  has 
lived  to  see  its  harbor  filling  up,  and 
those  of  its  wharves,  which  are  not 
frequented  by  coasting-vessels,  grass- 
grown.  The  mariners  of  a  third,  who 
during  the  Golden  Age  of  Spinsterland 
supplied  a  large  part  of  the  world  with 
oil,  still  bring  from  distant  seas  the 
flexible  bones  within  which  many  of 
the  inhabitants  pass  their  days. 

The  government  of  Spinsterland  is 
in  pretension  and  form  republican,  but 
in  fact  aristocratic,  the  majority  of  the 
adults  being  denied  the  right  of  suffrage. 
Members  of  the  disfranchised  class 
usually,  however,  spend  at  their  pleas- 
ure the  earnings  of  the  minority,  and 
often  teach  voters  their  duties.  They 
might  have  the  ballot,  as  many  believe, 
if  they  should  insist  upon  having  it, 
but  they  seem  to  prefer  the  pleasure  of 
power  to  its  burdens  and  responsibili- 
ties. They  may  be  distinguished  from 
their  self-styled  lords  and  masters  by 
superior  tact,  a  more  flowing  costume, 


6o6 


M ay denv alley,  Spinsterland. 


[November, 


and  a  singular  fashion  of  wearing  other 
people's  hair  superimposed  upon  their 
own. 

Notwithstanding  the  marked  dispro- 
portion between  the  sexes,  polygamy 
is  frowned  upon  by  the  laws  and  by 
public  opinion.  Years  ago  the  ruler 
of  one  province  proposed  to  export 
several  thousand  women  to  the  distant 
land  of  Celibaton  ;  but  the  suggestion 
was  coolly  received,  and  has  not  been 
acted  upon,  although  all  the  world 
knows  that  the  voyage  would  surely 
end  in  the  harbor  of  Matrimony.  It 
must  not  be  inferred,  however,  that  the 
people  of  Spinsterland  are  averse  to 
marriage.  Every  proper  inducement, 
on  the  contrary,  is  held  out  to  young 
men  ;  and  woe  be  to  him  who,  having 
plighted  his  troth,  withdraws  it !  He  is 
mulcted  in  heavy  damages  by  an  indig- 
nant jury,  and  would  be  stripped  of  his 
property  if  tried  by  twelve  women. 

In  the  cities  of  Spinsterland,  a  sort 
of  Vanity  Fair  is  held  on  several  even- 
ings of  each  week  during  the  winter,  at 
which  unmarried  persons  are  exposed 
to  public  competition  ;  the  mother  usu- 
ally defraying  the  expenses  of  the  day 
on  which  her  daughter  "comes  out," 
as  it  is  technically  termed.  Dancing, 
dress,  music,  flowers,  champagne,  splen- 
dor for  the  eyes,  soft  words  for  the 
ears,  delight  in  the  display  of  one's 
taste  or  in  the  exercise  of  one's  faculty 
of  pleasing,  unite  with  love  of  excite- 
vment  to  attract  young  people  to  the  gay 
booths  of  pleasure.  But  while  some  go 
to  the  Rialto,  that  they  may  see  the 
pretty  things  exposed  to  view,  or  may 
chat  with  their  friends,  most  mount  the 
steps  in  order  to  cross  the  Grand  Canal. 

Yet  a  growing  disinclination  to  mar- 
riage has,  of  late,  manifested  itself 
among  the  young  men  of  Spinsterland, 
which  has  never  been  satisfactorily 
explained,  and  which  has  thus  far, 
except  in  isolated  instances,  resisted 
efforts  to  overcome  it.  Under  these 
adverse  circumstances,  sensible  women 
are  abandoning  an  unequal  contest 
with  the  decrees  of  fate  and  the  whims 
of  mankind,  and  are  asking  themselves 
whether  a  solitary  life  need  be  misera- 


ble. They  recall  Queen  Elizabeth,  Rosa 
Bonheur,  Florence  Nightingale,  Harriet 
Martineau,  Frederika  Bremen  They 
bethink  them  of  nuns,  vowed  to  the 
service  of  the  Virgin  Mary ;  of  Sisters 
of  Charity,  going  about  to  do  good ;  of 
nurses  in  whom  sick  and  wounded  sol- 
diers have  found  tender  reminiscences 
of  home  ;  of  teachers,  who  break  the 
bread  of  a  higher  life  ;  of  the  Cousin 
Grace  of  the  family  circle  in  which 
their  childhood  was  passed ;  of  the  ir- 
reparably single-women,  known  to  them 
in  after  life,  —  the  good  souls  who  visit 
the  poor  and  the  sorrowing,  into  whose 
patient  ear  the  lover  whispers  his  story 
or  the  maiden  her  hopes,  the  favorite 
aunt,  the  skilful  housekeeper,  the  sure 
to  be  present  when  wanted,  and  the 
sure  to  be  absent  when  not  wanted  , 
cultivated,  but  not  learned  ;  quiet,  yet 
not  unapt  at  conversation ;  and  with  a 
smile  that  transfigures  features  upon 
which  Time  has  set  his  mark.  They 
bethink  them,  too,  of  marriage  as  it  is 
depicted  by  keen  observers  like  Thack- 
eray or  Balzac,  of  the  grief  of  dispelled 
illusions,  of  the  misery  of  being  obliged 
to  live  with  a  stranger,  of  the  base  de- 
ceptions necessary  to  keep  up  appear- 
ances, of  shattered  health  and  ruined 
fortune,  of  all  the  chances  that  a  number 
in  the  great  lottery  will  not  draw  a 
prize.  The  sight  of  a  pretty  child  may, 
sometimes,  cause  a  woman's  longing ; 
but  they  will  close  their  hearts  with  the 
thought  that  the  bliss  of  maternity  is 
not  always  unalloyed.  Aching  for  love 
as  they  may,  they  dread  its  counterfeits, 
and  prefer  the  clear,  steady  light  of 
friendship  to  the  flicker  of  passion  or 
the  will-o'-the-wisp  of  a  fancy.  They 
will  marry,  if  the  true  lover  comes:  but 
they  will  await  his  coming  in  the  seclu- 
sion of  maidenly  reserve;  not  spending 
their  days  in  looking  even  privily  from 
the  window  for  him,  but  seeking  in 
single  life  such  opportunities  for  hap- 
piness and  for  usefulness  as  a  cheerful 
and  active  nature  can  find  there. 

In  the  winter  such  women  go  into 
society  perhaps,  and  dance  and  talk, 
and  use  their  weapons  of  defence  and 
offence  ;  but  they  rarely  find  a  man 


1868.] 


Maydenvalley,  Spinsterland. 


607 


worthy  of  their  steel,  and  they  welcome 
the  summer  as  a  release  from  the  fret 
and  burden  of  fashionable  life.  In 
June  they  prepare  for  a  long  estivation, 
and  on  the  first  warm  day  take  the 
wings  of  a  railroad,  and  fly  to  the  sea 
or  the  mountains.  The  traveller  in 
July  will  find  bevies  of  them  in  the 
most  lovely  spots  he  visits.  He  will 
see  them  coming  into  the  morning  out 
of  farm-houses  or  rural  hotels,  with 
roses  in  their  cheeks  and  smiles  in- 
terpreting their  words.  He  will  meet 
them  in  the  afternoon,  two  by  two, 
in  country  wagons,  or  by  twenties  load- 
ing down  a  vehicle  drawn  by  four 
horses.  Should  he  climb  up  to  Prince- 
ville,  he  may  trace  upon  the  village 
green  below  the  meeting-house  the 
lines  of  ten  or  twelve  games  of  croquet, 
in  which  every  player  is  a  spinster  save 
one,  whose  black  coat  spots  the  picture, 
as  a  bare  twig  juts  from  a  cloud  of 
apple-blossoms.  And  if  a  happy  chance 
leads  him  within  the  gates  of  Mayden- 
valley,  and  gives  him  the  eyes  to  see 
what  is  there,  he  will  enjoy  a  spectacle 
such  as  can  be  found  nowhere  outside 
of  Spinsterland. 

"  I  have  been  to  all  the  places  most 
praised  by  travellers,"  said  one  whose 
manners  at  thirty-three  —  shall  I  guess  ? 
—  proved  more  in  favor  of  single-bless- 
edness than  St.  Paul's  logic  ;  "but 
I  find  only  two  whose  charms  can 
never  fly,  as  George  Herbert  has  it,  — 
Rome  and  Maydenvalley.  At  Rome 
I  had  to  drink  of  the  fountain  of  Trevi 
to  insure  my  return  ;  but  one  full 
draught  of  the  air  of  this  valley  is  an 
amulet  against  the  temptation  to  spend 
my  summers  elsewhere."  The  visitor 
in  Maydenvalley  may  complain  of  his 
small  chamber,  of  sour  bread,  stringy 
meat,  inefficient  service,  a  thousand 
and  one  discomforts  known  to  board- 
ers with  people  who  live,  like  the  mos- 
quitoes of  their  groves,  upon  visitors  ; 
but  these  petty  annoyances  are  forgot- 
ten as  he  watches  the  shadows  chasing 
each  other  over  Beam  Mountain,  the 
rosy  cloud  that  lingers  upon  Mount 
Ironington,  the  curves  of  the  river  Pro- 
way,  or  the  elms  grouped  in  the  intervale 


through  which  it  flows.  He  will  never 
tire  of  v/andering  in  that  intervale  ;  for 
every  moment  will  show  him  a  new 
picture,  and  every  cloud  will  change 
the  aspect  of  familiar  objects,  —  a  little 
earth  and  water  are  susceptible  cf  so 
many  combinations.  Rising,  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life,  perhaps,  with  the 
sun,  he  will  catch  Nature  coming  from 
the  embrace  of  Night  more  fresh  and 
rosy  than  ever;  or,  rambling  in  the 
pine  woods,  five  hours  later,  he  may 
surprise  her  asleep  under  a  tree,  and 
dreaming  that  the  sun  has  pushed  aside 
the  branches  to  get  near  her.  Days  of 
soft  rain  will  hide  the  mountains,  but 
their  drop-curtain  has  a  peculiar  beauty, 
and  its  folds  are  caught,  as  it  gradually 
lifts,  upon  crag  and  peak,  until,  at 
length,  the  tops  of  Beam  and  Ironing- 
ton  show  him  clear  sunshine  above  the 
fog  clinging  to  their  sides.  Then  will 
come  days  during  which  his  petty  I 
goes  from  him  "like  an  ache,"  and  he 
becomes  a  part  of  the  mountain  wind  in 
his  hair ;  and  other  days,  when  the 
eastern  breeze  is  as  salt  as  if  the  sea 
had  come  sixty  miles  to  look  upon  a 
lovelier  valley  than  northern  tides  can 
enter. 

Maydenvalley  is  walled  from  the 
world  by  mountains  rising  from  one 
to  six  thousand  feet  above  the  level  of 
the  sea,  and  is  some  six  miles  long, 
and  at  no  point  more  than  three  miles 
in  width.  The  northern  half  alone  is 
inhabited,  the  southern  half  being  cov- 
ered with  forests,  except  in  the  river- 
bottoms,  where  a  few  farmers  live  in 
neat  white  houses  that  look  down  on 
broad  acres  of  grass  and  corn.  These 
are  all  situated  upon  the  western  side 
of  the  Proway,  and  have  little  commu- 
nication with  the  eastern  side,  —  there 
being  no  bridge  across  the  river. 
About  three  miles  from  the  northern 
extremity  of  the  valley  stands  the  first 
and  one  of  the  pleasantest  of  the  spin- 
ster homes,  where  the  wit  and  beauty 
of  Maydenvalley  once  focalized.  For 
here  lived  the  most  brilliant  woman 
whom  young  Spinsterland  remembers, 
—  she  whose  sayings  are  still  repeated, 
though  her  voice  has  for  years  been 


6o8 


Maydenvalley,  Spinsterland. 


[November, 


silent ;  who  was  called  heartless,  be- 
cause her  quick  wit  flashed  from  among 
the  flowers  of  her  speech,  pinning  but- 
terflies, piercing  conventionalities,  and 
warding  off  questions  that  might  have 
gone  too  deep  ;  who  recalled  Undine, 
sometimes  as  she  was  before  she  had 
found  her  soul,  and  sometimes  as  she 
was  afterwards.  We  think  of  her  as  of 
a  longing,  lonely  soul,  who  might  have 
loved, — how  intensely !  —  but  who  nev- 
er did  love  ;  who  might  have  sacrificed 
herself  to  an  idol,  had  she  had  one, 
but  who  caused  the  sacrifice  of  others  ; 
to  whom  everybody  told  her  story, 
and  who  confided  to  more  than  one  all 
she  could  put  into  words  —  but  not 
the  inner  truth  —  about  herself ;  a  less 
learned,  less  thoughtful,  less  sentimen- 
tal, but  more  brilliant  and  far  more 
beautiful  Margaret  Fuller,  exercising, 
like  her,  a  fascination  upon  both  men 
and  women,  and  keeping  the  best  part 
of  her  womanhood  out  of  sight  almost 
always,  but  out  of  reach  never.  With 
her  dwelt  in  the  same  little  house  sev- 
eral radiant  beings,  who  still  visit  the 
haunts  where  they  learned  to  love  her, 
and  still  account  Maydenvalley  the 
most  delightful  place  in  the  world. 
Fairy  feet  follow  the  path  traced  by  her, 
along  the  bank  that  crumbles  fifty  feet 
down  to  the  intervale,  to  the  rustic -seat 
from  which  the  eye  takes  in  at  a  glance 
the  ranges  of  mountains  from  Shock- 
arua  to  Shearkarge,  the  sweep  of  the 
meadows  wearing  June  green  in  Au- 
gust, the  drooping  elms,  the  flashing 
river,  and  the  pines  darkening  the 
ledges  above  it. 

Following  the  road  to  the  north,  you 
are  hardly  out  of  sight  of  this  house 
before  the  sharp  peak  of  Shockarua 
disappears  behind  Beam  Mountain. 
Soon  the  village  of  North  Proway  be- 
gins, and  thenceforward  every  rod  of 
the  route  blossoms  with  memories. 
Here  is  O'Miller's  House,  with  its 
broad  veranda,  and  its  beautifully  shad- 
ed croquet-ground  ;  here  Sunset  Hill, 
with  the  tree  under  which  Shamp- 
reigh  made  his  latest  sketches,  as  the 
droppings  from  his  easel  testify,  with 
the  rock  at  the  summit,  every  lichen  in 


whose  crevices  has  witnessed  a  flirta- 
tion ;  here  the  road  is  crossed  by  Art- 
ists' Brook,  up  which  memory  runs  to 
the  wild  ravine,  enlivened  by  cascades, 
and  softened  by  the  moss  on  its  rocks 
or  hanging  from  the  trees  over  it ; 
here  are  the  circulating  library,  the 
photograph  saloon,  the  country  stores, 
the  cross-road  leading  to  the  shop 
of  the  mender  of  umbrellas  and  of 
watches,  and  to  the  bridle  -  path  up 
Shearkarge,  the  frequent  Spinster  cot- 
tages from  the  Elms  to  the  North  Pro- 
way  House,  from  bluff  John  Whitaker's 
cottage,  —  known  for  its  kind  host,  its 
clean  linen,  its  comely  little  waiter,  and 
the  store  opposite,  where  women  in 
impossible  bonnets  come  in  wagons  of 
the  last  century  to  buy  their  groceries, 
and  whence,  in  the  absence  of  cus- 
tomers, the  nasal  sound  of  psalm-sing- 
ing emerges,  —  to  Parquetteman's  Ho- 
tel at  the  upper  extremity  of  the  valley. 
Last  summer,  when  a  spirit  in  my 
feet  led  me  —  who  knows  how?  —  to 
Maydenvalley,  it  contained,  in  addition 
to  the  five  or  six  hundred  permanent 
residents,  who  supplied  the  rest  of  the 
population  with  food  and  shelter,  not 
less  than  a  thousand  spinsters,  and 
perhaps  a  hundred  and  fifty  other  per- 
sons. In  some  houses  the  proportion 
of  women  to  men  was  as  sixty  to  one  ; 
to  others  only  "  old  maids  "  —  as  the 
brides  of  quietness  are  irreverently 
called  —  were  admitted  ;  and  in  none 
did  the  men  form  a  respectable  minor- 
ity. Not  only  the  towns  of  Spinster- 
land,  but  the  banks  of  the  Hudson,  the 
Schuylkill,  the  Ohio,  and  the  Missis- 
sippi contributed  their  contingents  to 
the  Amazonian  army  of  occupation, 
which  foraged  for  health  and  pleasure 
to  the  remotest  points.  There  were  few 
walkers,  but  not  one  denied  herself  the 
afternoon  drive ;  few  readers,  but  many 
who  carried  a  volume  of  poetry  into 
the  grove,  for  "  I  must  have  something 
in  my  hands."  Almost  all  were  fond  of 
music,  and  some  sang  or  played  well,  — 
and  of  conversation,  and  some  knew 
the  last  word  of  coquetry ;  but  every 
one  found,  in  nature,  books,  music,  or 
society  exactly  fitting  her  mood.  Every 


1868.] 


Maydenvalley,  Spinsterland. 


609 


one  was  strengthened,  refined,  elevated, 
in  some  way  rendered  better  or  happier, 
by  the  influences  of  Maydenvalley.  Not 
a  spinster  but  found,  next  winter,  the 
flowers  from  the  Proway  meadows  the 
sweetest  that  were  pressed  between 
the  leaves  of  her  memory.  These  hap- 
py souls  were  of  every  age  and  temper- 
ament, from  tranquil  Charity,  whose 
hair  in  some  lights  showed  lines  of 
gray,,  and  for  whom  the  angels  long 
since  rolled  away  the  stone  from  the 
door  of  the  sepulchre  where  her  sor- 
rows were  buried,  to  Eugenia,  whose 
history  is  yet  to  be  composed. 

Born  to  wealth  and  position,  Eugenia 
makes  no  display.  Educated  at  the 
best  schools  in  Spinsterland,  — and  wo- 
men find  better  teachers  nowhere,  —  she 
thinks  herself  ignorant.  Looking  at 
life  through  a  clear  atmosphere,  she  la- 
ments her  occasional  inability  to  agree 
with  received  opinions.  The  favorite 
poets  of  her  young-lady  friends  do  not 
attract  her  ;  but  she  finds  something  to 
like  in  the  Brownings,  in  Keats,  and  in 
Emerson.  She  understands  the  thought 
of  the  best  music,  and  possesses  the 
rare  accomplishment  of  not  playing 
upon  the  piano.  She  is  so  well  gov- 
erned by  a  conscience  that  the  ruler's 
presence  is  never  perceived.  Delicate 
as  a  harebell,  her  nature,  like  that 
flower,  is  rooted  in  eternal  rock,  and 
can  resist  all  winds.  Her  eye  has 
caught  the  harebell's  hue,  and  is  as  pel- 
lucid as  the  water  of  Diana's  Baths, 
near  which  we  dismounted. 

Diana's  Baths  — Dinah's  Baths  the 
country  people  call  them  —  belong  to  a 
slender  stream  that  descends  from 
Beam  Mountain  to  the  Proway,  — jump- 
ing from  rock  to  rock  or  slipping  down 
gently ;  stopping  under  the  shadow  of 
every  tree  ;  lifting  a  shining  face,  before 
taking  another  leap,  toward  Shearkarge 
and  the  first  Adder  Mountain ;  and 
hollowing  the  rock  into  deep  baths  in 
which  the  clear  water  is  never  quiet. 
What  a  place  to  rest  in  after  a  gallop  ! 
The  smooth  granite  for  a  seat,  the 
moss  for  a  carpet,  the  brook  for  society 
that  does  not  intrude  ! 

"  How  beautiful !  "  exclaimed  Euge- 

VOL.  xxii.  —  NO.  133.  39 


nia,  as  the  evening  sun  emerged  from  a 
cloud,  and  threw  the  long  shadow  of  an 
elm  upon  the  emerald  intervale,  hun- 
dreds of  feet  below  us. 

"  Beautiful  indeed !  "  I  answered, 
glancing  at  the  tremulous  eyelids  of  my 
companion,  and  at  the  faint  flush  called 
into  her  cheek  by  her  sensibility  to 
natural  beauty. 

It  is  not  easy  to  talk  sentiment  on 
horseback,  for  the  intelligent  quadru- 
peds overhear  what  is  said,  and  one 
catches  only  the  spoken  portions  of  the 
conversation,  —  usually  the  least  signifi- 
cant portions.  Besides,  Eugenia  would 
gallop,  merrily  laughing  at  every  hint 
that  she  should  slacken  her  pace,  and 
defying  me  to  keep  up  with  her.  So 
we  galloped  by  the  home  of  the  teacher 
of  the  village  school,  and  through  the 
wood  of  little  pines,  hardly  noticing  the 
yellow  carpet  made  by  their  needles, 
which  we  had  admired  on  our  way  to 
the  Baths.  Eugenia  did  not  draw  rein 
till  we  had  reached  the  steep  bank  at 
the  ford  of  the  Proway. 

"  Will  you  cross  the  Rubicon  with 
me  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  This  is  the  Proway.  We  are  not  in 
Italy,  and  you  are  not  Caesar.  You  may 
follow  me."  And  she  rode  into  the  water. 

"  We  have  .had  a  pleasant  ride,"  said 
she,  as  I  assisted  her  to  dismount. 

"We"  inspired  hope.  How  little 
inspires  hope  when  the  heart  is  made 
up! 

Eugenia  was  away  when  I  called 
next  day,  —  a  piece  of  formal  politeness 
I  performed,  though  the  etiquette  of 
Maydenvalley  dispenses  with  it.  I  did 
not  see  her  again  until  we  met  at  a  pic- 
nic on  Horn  Mountain. 

Nine  ladies  and  one  gentleman  be- 
side myself  formed  the  party,  which 
filled"  a  stout  mountain  wagon,  with  as 
little  spring  to  it  as  a  Spinsterland 
year.  Up  and  up  we  rode,  with  an 
occasional  sharp  descent,  —  by  farm- 
houses with  the  front  door  and  blinds 
closed,  after  the  fashion  of  Spinster- 
land,  but  with  the  back  doorway  fram- 
ing a  sharp-faced  woman,  with  red  arms 
akimbo ;  by  barns,  which  opened  a 
broad  side  upon  the  road ;  by  fields  of 


6io 


Maydenvalley,  Spinsterland. 


[November, 


wheat,  not  inferior  to  that  harvested  in 
our  Western  Egypt;  through  fragrant 
pine  forests ;  between  rows  of  rasp- 
berry-bushes untouched  by  men  or 
bears.  Here  and  there  a  wild  rose 
retained  the  summer;  here  and  there, 
as  we  ascended,  a  blazing  branch  an- 
nounced the  autumn.  Distant  brooks 
murmured  and  distant  sheep-bells  tin- 
kled. A  colt  escorted  us  to  the  limits 
of  his  pasture,  and  bade  us  farewell  with 
both  hind  heels.  Half  a  dozen  cows  in 
another  enclosure  regarded  us  demure- 
ly, and  in  a  moment  resumed  their 
milk-making.  At  every  turn,  a  glance 
backwards  gave  a  new  view  of  Mayden- 
valley,  or  a  glance  forwards,  a  new 
aspect  to  the  mountain  we  were  ap- 
proaching. Out  of  the  high-road  at 
last,  and  through  the  fields  to  a  tenant- 
less  house  and  a  hospitable  barn,  where 
the  road  ended.  Out  of  the  wagon  and 
among  the  sugar-maples,  the  inanimate 
portion  of  the  picnic  carried  upon  the 
back  of  the  animate  portion  ;  up  a  nar- 
row path,  half  a  mile  up  to  the  summit, 
—  to  a  prospect  twenty-five  miles  in 
radius,  to  air  that  fed  the  blood  with 
fire,  to  eager  appetites. 
There  we 

"  Ate  and  drank,  and  saw  God  also." 

There  we  served  to  one  another  the 
lightest  of  light  conversation,  and  float- 
ed puns  with  laughter.  Our  gran- 
ite dinner-table  was  screened  from  the 
sun,  and  in  the  shadiest  corner  Eu- 
genia sat.  Her  thoughts  were  not 
with  the  company,  for  her  eyes  had 
the  expression  which  made  our  visit 
to  Diana's  Baths  memorable  for  me. 
Clear  and  pure  as  ever,  they  were  un- 
fathomable as  the  sky  above  us  ;  and 
it  seemed  no  less  impossible  to  find 
a  thought  of  me  in  them  than  in  that 
sky.  I  could  only  venture  to  offer  her, 
as  we  came  down  the  mountain,  a  few 
wild-flowers  and  the  brightest  branch 
from  the  brightest  maple,  and  to  draw 
dreams  from  her  gentle  good-night. 

There  was  little  satisfaction  in  visit- 
ing Eugenia  at  her  boarding-house. 
In  Maydenvalley  private  parlors  are 
unknown,  and  though  tete-a-tctes  may 
not  be  equally  unknown,  I  was  rarely 


able  to  secure  one  with  Eugenia,, 
partly  because  of  the  abiding  generosity 
of  her  nature,  — "I  like  Eugenia,"  re- 
marked Maria  ;  "  she  is  n't  stingy  with, 
her  young  men,"  —  and  partly  because 
she  was  under  the  charge  of  an  unmar- 
ried aunt,  who  never  found  a  pretext 
for  going  out  of  the  room.  I  ought  not 
to  harbor  ill-will  against  the  good  old 
lady,  for  she  was  a  friend  of  my  father, 
and  it  was  through  her  that  I  made 
the  acquaintance  of  Eugenia  ;  but  my 
gratitude  to  a  bridge  that  takes  me 
over  a  river  is  never  excessive,  particu- 
larly when  it  is  so  ungainly  a  structure 
as  was  Aunt  Susan.  Sometimes,  how- 
ever, when  her  gold  eye-glasses  and 
her  ear-trumpet  were  not  upon  duty, 
she  was  an  aid  to  conversation,  —  the 
click  of  her  knitting-needles  forming 
an  accompaniment  to  what  was  said. 
I  should  thank  her,  too,  for  the  glimpses 
she  enabled  me  to  get  of  the  true  heart 
which  beat  under  the  girlishness  of 
Eugenia.  Nothing  could  surpass  her 
devotion  to  this  aged  relative,  who 
seemed  to  live  upon  the  sunshine 
of  her  presence.  She  followed  her 
counsels,  yielded  to  her  whims,  gave 
up  darling  plans  for  her  sake,  answered 
her  sudden  words  gently,  read  to  her 
by  the  hour  in  a  voice  necessarily 
pitched  so  high  as  to  mar  its  sweetness, 
and  smoothed  her  white  hair  with  a 
daughter's  hand.  If  she  took  any  re- 
ward, it  was  in  teasing  Aunt  Susan 
about  the  old  days  when  she  too  was 
a  girl. 

"  Every  woman,"  I  happened  to  ob- 
serve, not  thinking  of  Aunt  Susan  at 
all,  "  has,  at  least,  one  opportunity  to 
marry,  they  say." 

"  I  never  had  any,"  broke  in  the  old 
lady,  straightening  herself  up. 

"  Why,  aunt !  "  exclaimed  Eugenia, 
with  a  twinkle  in  her  eye. 

"  No,  Jenny,  I  never  did." 

"  But,  aunt,  father  has  tolcl  me  over 
and  over  again,  how  pretty  you  were 
when  — 

"  Tut,  tut,  child  !  don't  be  silly.  Be- 
sides, it  is  n't  the  prettiest  that  get  the 
most  offers.  Perhaps  I  was  n't  enough 
of  a  fool  to  please  the  men." 


1 868.] 


The  Land  of  Paoli. 


611 


"  But  father  says,"  went  on  Eugenia, 
leaving  the  high-road  of  argument  for 
the  short  cut  of  statement  direct,  —  "  fa- 
ther says  that  you  used  to  have  lots  of 
attention." 

"  Nonsense,  girl ;  but  no  man  of  them 
all  ever  said,  '  Marry  me  ' ;  though  — 
Do  you  really  care  to  go  on  that  wild- 
goose  chase  up  Beam  Mountain  to-mor- 
row ? " 

"  Ever  and  ever  so  much,  dear  aunt. 
They  say  the  view  is  the  finest  in  North 


Proway  ;  and  there  '11  be  five  gentlemen 
to  take  care  of  three  ladies,  and  Mrs. 
Osbaldistone  will  matronize  us,  and  I'll 
wear  my  thickest  shoes  and  that  moun- 
tain dress  you  think  so  unbecoming." 

"Why,  Eugenia,  how  you  talk!" 
cried  Aunt  Susan.  "  It 's  the  only 
sensible  costume  in  Proway." 

But,  Eugenia  remembered,  with  a 
blush  which  did  not  escape  me,  that  it 
was  not  her  aunt  who  had  pretended 
to  criticise  her  convenient  dress. 


THE    LAND    OF    PAOLI. 


HPHE  Leghorn  steamer  slid  smoothly 
J-  over  the  glassy  Tyrrhene  strait,  and 
some  time  during  the  night  came  to  an- 
chor in  the  harbor  of  Bastia.  I  sat  up 
in  my  berth  at  sunrise,  and  looked  out 
the  bull's  eye  to  catch  my  first  near 
glimpse  of  Corsican  scenery ;  but,  in- 
stead of  that,  a  pair  of  questioning  eyes, 
set  in  a  brown,  weather-beaten  face, 
met  my  own.  It  was  a  boatman  wait- 
ing on  the  gangway,  determined  to  se- 
cure the  only  fare  which  the  steamer 
had  brought  that  morning.  Such  per- 
sistence always  succeeds,  and  in  this 
case  justly;  for  when  we  were  landed 
upon  the  quay,  shortly  afterwards,  the 
man  took  the  proffered  coin  with  thanks, 
and  asked  for  no  more. 

Tall,  massive  houses  surrounded  the 
little  circular  port.  An  old  bastion  on 
the  left, — perhaps  that  from  which  the 
place  originally  took  its  name,  —  a 
church  in  front,  and  suburban  villas 
and  gardens  on  the  shoulders  of  the 
steep  mountain  in  the  rear,  made  a  cer- 
tain impression  of  pride  and  stateliness, 
notwithstanding  the  cramped  situation 
of  the  city.  The  Corsican  coast  is  here 
very  bold  and  abrupt,  and  the  first  ad- 
vantage of  defence  interferes  with  the 
present  necessity  of  growth. 

At  that  early  hour  few  persons  were 
stirring  in  the  streets.  A  languid  offi- 
cer permitted  us  to  pass  the  douanc 


and  sanitary  line ;  a  large-limbed  boy 
from  the  mountains  became  a  porter 
for  the  nonce ;  and  a  waiter,  not  fully 
awake,  admitted  us  into  the  Hotel 
d'Europe,  a  building  with  more  space 
than  cleanliness,  more  antiquated  furni- 
ture than  comfort.  It  resembled  a  dis- 
mantled palace,  —  huge,  echoing,  dusty. 
The  only  tenants  we  saw  then,  or  later, 
were  the  waiter  aforesaid,  who  had  not 
yet  learned  the  ordinary  wants  of  a 
traveller,  and  a  hideous  old  woman,  who 
twice  a  day  deposited  certain  oily  and 
indescribable  dishes  upon  a  table  in 
a  room  which  deserved  the  name  of 
manger,  in  the  English  sense  of  the 
word. 

However,  I  did  not  propose  to  remain 
long  in  Bastia;  Corte,  the  old  capital 
of  Paoli,  in  the  heart  of  the  island,  was 
my  destination.  After  ascertaining  that 
a  diligence  left  for  the  latter  place  at 
noon,  we  devoted  an  hour  or  two  to 
Bastia.  The  breadth  and  grandeur  of 
the  principal  streets,  the  spacious  new 
place  with  a  statue  of  Napoleon  in  a 
Roman  toga,  the  ample  harbor  in  pro- 
cess of  construction  to  the  northward, 
and  the  fine  coast-views  from  the  upper 
part  of  the  city,  were  matters  of  sur- 
prise. The  place  has  grown  rapidly 
within  the  past  fifteen  years,  and  now 
contains  twenty-five  thousand  inhabit- 
ants. Its  geographical  situation  is 


612 


The  Land  of  Paoli. 


[November, 


good.  The  dagger-shaped  Cape  Corso, 
rich  with  fruit  and  vines,  extends  forty 
miles  to  the  northward ;  westward,  be- 
yond the  mountains,  lie  the  fortunate 
lands  of  Nebbio  and  the  Balagna,  while 
the  coast  southward  has  no  other  har- 
bor for  a  distance  of  seventy  or  eighty 
miles.  The  rocky  island  of  Capraja, 
once  a  menace  of  the  Genoese,  rises 
over  the  sea  in  the  direction  of  Leg- 
horn ;  directly  eastward,  and  nearer,  is 
Elba,  and  far  to  the  southeast,  faintly 
seen,  Monte  Cristo,  —  the  three  repre- 
senting mediaeval  and  modern  history 
and  romance,  and  repeating  the  triple 
interest  which  clings  around  the  name 
of  Corsica. 

The  growth  of  Bastia  seems  to  have 
produced  but  little  effect,  as  yet,  in  the 
character  of  the  inhabitants.  They 
have  rather  the  primitive  air  of  moun- 
taineers ;  one  looks  in  vain  for  the 
keenness,  sharpness,  and,  alas  !  the  dis- 
honesty, of  an  Italian  seaport  town. 
Since  the  time  of  Seneca,  who,  soured 
by  exile,  reported  of  them,  — 

"  Prima  est  ulcisci  lex,  altera  vivere  raptu, 
Tertia  mentiri,  quarta  negare  Deos,"  — 

the  Corsicans  have  not  been  held  in 
good  repute.  Yet  our  first  experience 
of  them  was  by  no  means  unprepossess- 
ing. We  entered  a  bookstore,  to  get 
a  map  of  the  island.  While  I  was  ex- 
amining it,  an  old  gentleman,  with  the 
Legion  of  Honor  in  his  button-hole, 
rose  from  his  seat,  took  the  sheet  from 
my  hands,  and  said:  "What's  this? 
what 's  this  ?  "  After  satisfying  his  cu- 
riosity, he  handed  it  back  to  me,  and 
began  a  running  fire  of  questions : 
"  Your  first  visit  to  Corsica  ?  You  are 
English  ?  Do  you  speak  Italian  ?  your 
wife  also  ?  Do  you  like  Bastia  ?  does 
she  also  ?  How  long  will  you  stay  ? 
Will  she  accompany  you  ? "  &c.  I 
answered  with  equal  rapidity,  as  there 
was  nothing  obtrusive  in  the  old  man's 
manner.  The  questions  soon  came  to 
an  end,  and  then  followed  a  chapter  of 
information  and  advice,  which  was  very 
welcome. 

The  same  naive  curiosity  met  us  at 
every  turn.  Even  the  rough  boy  who 
acted  as  porter  plied  me  with  questions, 


yet  was  just  as  ready  to  answer  as  to 
ask.  I  learned  much  more  about  his 
situation  and  prospects  than  was  really 
necessary,  but  the  sum  of  all  showed 
that  he  was  a  fellow  determined  to  push 
his  way  in  the  world.  Self-confidence 
is  a  common  Corsican  trait,  which  Na- 
poleon only  shared  with  his  fellow- 
islanders.  The  other  men  of  his  time 
who  were  either  born  upon  Corsica  or 
lived  there  for  a  while  —  Pozzo  di  Bor- 
go,  Bernadotte,  Massena,  Murat,  Se- 
bastiani  —  seem  to  have  caught  the 
infection  of  this  energetic,  self-reliant 
spirit. 

In  Bastia  there  is  neither  art  nor 
architecture.  It  is  a  well-built,  well- 
regulated,  bustling  place,  and  has  risen 
in  latter  years  quite  as  much  from  the 
growth  of  Italian  commerce  as  from  the 
favor  of  the  French  government.  From 
the  quantity  of  small  coasting  craft  in 
the  harbor,  I  should  judge  that  its 
trade  is  principally  with  the  neighbor- 
ing shores.  In  the  two  book-shops  I 
found  many  devotional  works  and 
Renucci's  History,  but  only  one  copy 
of  the  Storiche  Corse^  which  I  was  glad 
to  secure. 

When  the  hour  of  departure  came, 
we  found  the  inquisitive  old  gentleman 
at  the  diligence  office.  He  was  our 
companion  in  the  coup^  and  apparent- 
ly a  personage  of  some  note,  as  at  least 
a  score  of  friends  came  to  bid  him 
adieu.  To  each  of  these  he  announced 
in  turn  :  "  These  are  my  travelling  com- 
panions, —  an  American  gentleman  and 
his  wife.  They  speak  French  and 
Italian ;  they  have  never  been  in  Cor- 
sica before ;  they  are  going  to  Corte ; 
they  travel  for  pleasure  and  informa- 
tion." Then  there  were  reciprocal  sal- 
utations and  remarks ;  and  if  the  pos- 
tilion had  not  finally  given  the  signal 
to  take  our  places,  we  should  soon 
have  been  on  speaking  terms  with  half 
Bastia. 

The  road  ran  due  south,  along  the 
base  of  the  mountains.  As  we  passed 
the  luxuriant  garden-suburbs,  our  com- 
panion pointed  out  the  dusky  glitter  of 
the  orange-trees,  and  exclaimed  :  "  You 
see  what  the  Corsican  soil  produces. 


1 868.] 


The  Land  of  Paoli. 


6l 


But  this  is  nothing  to  the  Balagna. 
There  you  will  find  the  finest  olive  cul- 
ture of  the  Mediterranean.  I  was  pre- 
fect of  the  Balagna  in  1836,  and  in  that 
year  the  exportation  of  oil  amounted  to 
six  millions  of  francs,  while  an  equal 
quantity  was  kept  for  consumption  in 
the  island." 

Brown  old  villages  nestled  high  up 
in  the  ravines  on  our  right ;  but  on  the 
left  the  plain  stretched  far  away  to  the 
salt  lake  of  Biguglia.  the  waters  of 
which  sparkled  between  the  clumps  of 
poplars  and  elms  studding  the  mead- 
ows. The  beds  of  the  mountain  streams 
were  already  nearly  dry,  and  the  sum- 
mer malaria  was  beginning  to  gather 
on  the  low  fields  through  which  they 
wandered.  A  few  peasants  were  cut- 
ting and  tedding  hay  here  and  there,  or 
lazily  hauling  it  homewards.  Many  of 
the  fields  were  given  up  to  myrtle  and 
other  wild  and  fragrant  shrubs ;  but 
there  were  far  too  few  workers  abroad 
for  even  the  partial  cultivation. 

Beyond  the  lake  of  Biguglia,  and 
near  the  mouth  of  the  Golo  River,  is 
the  site  of  Mariana,  founded  by  Marius. 
Except  a  scattering  of  hewn  stones, 
there  are  no  remains  of  the  Roman 
town  ;  but  the  walls  of  a  church  and 
chapel  of  the  Middle  Ages  are  still  to 
be  seen.  The  only  other  Roman  colony 
on  Corsica  —  Aleria,  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Tavignano  —  was  a  restoration  of  the 
more  ancient  Alalia,  which  tradition 
ascribes  to  the  Phoceans.  Notwith- 
standing the  nearness  of  the  island  to 
the  Italian  coast,  and  its  complete  sub- 
jection to  the  Empire,  its  resources 
were  imperfectly  developed  by  the  Ro- 
mans, and  the  accounts  of  it  given  by 
the  ancienfwriters  are  few  and  contra- 
dictory. Strabo  says  of  the  people : 
"  Those  who  inhabit  the  mountains  live 
from  plunder,  and  are  more  untamable 
than  wild  beasts.  When  the.  Roman 
commanders  undertake  an  expedition 
against  the  island,  and  possess  them- 
selves of  the  strongholds,  they  bring 
back  to  Rome  many  slaves ;  and  then 
one  sees  with  astonishment  the  savage 
animal  nature  of  the  people.  For  they 
either  take  their  own  lives  violently,  or 


tire  out  their  masters  by  their  stubborn- 
ness and  stupidity;  whence,  no  matter 
how  cheaply  they  are  purchased,  it  is 
always  a  bad  bargain  in  the  end." 

Here  we  have  the  key  to  that  fierce, 
indomitable  spirit  of  independence 
which  made  the  Genoese  occupation 
one  long  story  of  warfare  ;  which  pro- 
duced such  heroes  as  Sambucuccio, 
Sampieri,  and  Paoli ;  and  which  ex- 
alted Corsica,  in  the  last  century,  to  be 
the  embodiment  of  the  democratic  ideas 
of  Europe,  and  the  marvellous  forerun- 
ner of  the  American  Republic.  Verily, 
Nature  is  "  careful  of  the  type."  After 
the  Romans,  the  Vandals  possessed 
Corsica  ;  then  the  Byzantine  Greeks  ; 
then,  in  succession,  the  Tuscan  Barons, 
the  Pisans,  and  the  Genoese,  —  yet 
scarcely  one  of  the  political  forms 
planted  among  them  took  root  in  the 
character  of  the  islanders.  The  origin 
of  the  Corsican  Republic  lies  back  of 
all  our  history ;  it  was  a  natural  growth, 
which  came  to  light  after  the  suppres- 
sion of  two  thousand  years. 

As  we  approached  the  gorge  through 
which  the  Golo  breaks  its  way  to  the 
sea,  the  town  of  Borgo,  crowning  a 
mountain  summit,  recalled  to  memory 
the  last  Corsican  victory,  when  Clement 
Paoli,  on  the  ist  of  October,  1768,  de- 
feated and  drove  back  to  Bastia  a 
French  force  much  greater  than  his 
own.  Clement,  the  brooding  monk  in 
his  cloister,  the  fiery  leader  of  desperate 
battle,  is  even  a  nobler  figure  than  his 
brother  Pascal  in  the  story  of  those 
day*. 

We  changed  horses  at  an  inn  under 
the  mountain  of  Borgo,  and  then  en- 
tered the  valley  of  the  Golo,  leaving 
the  main  road,  which  creeps  onward  to 
Bonifacio  through  lonely  and  malarious 
lands.  The  scenery  now  assumed  a 
new  aspect.  No  more  the  blue  Tyr- 
rhene Sea,  with  its  dreams  of  islands  ; 
a  valley  wilder  than  any  infolded 
among  the  Appenines  opened  before 
us.  Slopes  covered  with  chestnut 
groves  rose  on  either  side ;  slant  ra- 
vines mounted  between  steep  escarp- 
ments of  rock ;  a  village  or  two,  on  the 
nearer  heights,  had  the  appearance  of 


614 


The  Land  of  Paoli. 


[November, 


refuge  and  defence,  rather  than  of  quiet 
habitation,  and  the  brown  summits  in 
the  distance  held  out  no  promise  of 
softer  scenes  beyond. 

Our  companion,  the  prefect,  pointed 
to  the  chestnut  groves.  "  There,"  said 
he,  "  is  the  main  support  of  our  people 
in  the  winter.  Our  Corsican  name  for 
it  is  *  the  bread-tree.'  The  nuts  are 
ground,  and  the  cakes  of  chestnut-flour, 
baked  on  the'  hearth,  and  eaten  while 
fresh,  are  really  delicious.  We  could 
not  live  without  the  chestnut  and  the 
olive." 

The  steep  upper  slopes  of  the  moun- 
tains were  covered  with  the  macchia,  — 
a  word  of  special  significance  on  the 
island.  It  is  equivalent  to  "jungle  "  or 
"  chaparral "  ;  but  the  Corsican  macchia 
has  a  character  and  a  use  of  its  own.  Fan- 
cy an  interminable  thicket  of  myrtle,  ar- 
butus, wild  laurel,  lentisk,  box, and  heath- 
er, eight  to  twelve  feet  in  height,  inter- 
laced with  powerful  and  luxuriant  vines, 
and  with  an  undergrowth  of  rosemary, 
lavender,  and  sage.  Between  the  rigid, 
stubby  stems  the  wild  boar  can  scarcely 
make  his  way ;  thorns  and  dagger-like 
branches  meet  above,  — yet  the  richest 
balm  breathes  from  this  impenetrable 
wilderness.  When  the  people  say  of  a 
man,  "he  has  taken  to  the  macchia," 
every  one  understands  that  he  has 
committed  a  murder.  Formerly,  those 
who  indulged  in  the  fierce  luxury  of  the 
'vendetta  sometimes  made  their  home 
for  years  in  the  thickets,  communicating 
privately,  from  time  to  time,  with  their 
families.  But  there  is  now  no  scent  of 
blood  lurking  under  that  of  the  myrtle 
and  lavender.  Napoleon,  who  neglect- 
ed Corsica  during  his  years  of  empire 
(in  fact,  he  seemed  to  dislike  all  men- 
tion of  the  island),  remembered  the 
odors  of  the  macchia  upon  St.  Helena. 

Our  second  station  was  at  a  saw- 
mill beside  the  river.  Here  the  pre- 
fect left  us,  saying  :  "I  am  going  to 
La  Porta,  in  the  country  of  Morosaglia. 
It  is  a  beautiful  place,  and  you  must 
come  and  see  it.  I  have  a  ride  of  three 
hours,  on  horseback  across  the  moun- 
tains, to  get  there." 

His  place  in  the  coupe  was  taken  by 


a  young  physician  bound  for  Poate- 
nuovo,  further  up  the  valley.  I  was 
struck  by  the  singular  loneliness  of  the 
country,  as  we  advanced  further  into 
the  interior.  Neither  in  the  grain-fields 
below,  nor  the  olive-orchards  above, 
was  any  laborer  to  be  seen.  Mile  after 
mile  passed  by,  and  the  diligence  was 
alone  on  the  highway.  "  The  valley  of 
the  Golo  is  so  unhealthy,"  said  the  phy- 
sician, "  that  the  people  only  come 
down  to  their  fields  at  the  time  for 
ploughing,  sowing,  and  reaping.  If  a 
man  from  the  mountains  spends  a  sin- 
gle night  below  here,  he  is  likely  to 
have  an  attack  of  fever." 

"  But  the  Golo  is  a  rapid  mountain 
stream,"  I  remarked ;  "  there  are  no 
marshes  in  the  valley,  and  the  air  seems 
to  me  pure  and  bracing.  Would  not 
the  country  become  healthy  through 
more  thorough  cultivation  ?  " 

•"  I  can  only  explain  it,"  he  answered, 
"by  the  constant  variation  of  tempera- 
ture. During  the  day  there  is  a  close 
heat,  such  as  we  feel  now,  while  at 
night  the  air  becomes  suddenly  chill 
and  damp.  As  to  agriculture,  it  don't 
seem  to  be  the  natural  business  of  the 
Corsican.  He  will  range  the  mountains 
all  day,  with  a  gun  on  his  shoulder,  but 
he  hates  work  in  the  fields.  Most  of 
the  harvesting  on  the  eastern  coast  of 
the  island,  and  in  the  Balagna,  is  done 
by  the  Lucchese  peasants,  who  come 
over  from  the  main-land  every  year. 
Were  it  not  for  them,  the  grain  would 
rot  where  it  stands." 

This  man's  statement  may  have  been 
exaggerated,  but  further  observation 
convinced  me  that  there  was  truth  in  it. 
Yet  the  people  are  naturally  active  and 
of  a  lively  temperament,  an%  their  re- 
pugnance to  labor  is  only  one  of  the 
many  consequences  of  the  vendetta. 
When  Paoli  suppressed  the  custom 
with  an  iron  hand,  industry  revived 
in  Corsica ;  and  now  that  the  French 
government  has  succeeded  in -doing 
the  same  thing,  the  waste  and  pes- 
tilent lands  will  no  doubt  be  gradually 
reclaimed. 

The  annals  of  the  Corsican  vendetta 
are  truly  something  terrible.  Filippini 


1868.] 


The  Land  of  Paoli. 


615 


(armed  to  the  teeth  and  protected  by  a 
stone  wall,  as  he  wrote)  and  other  na- 
tive historians  estimate  the  number  of 
murders  from  revenge  in  the  three  and 
a  half  centuries  preceding  the  year  1729 
at  three  hundred  and  thirty-three  thou- 
sand, and  the  number  of  persons 
wounded  in  family  feuds  at  an  equal 
figure  !  Three  times  the  population 
of  the  island  killed  or  wounded  in  three 
hundred  and  fifty  years  !  Gregorovius 
says  :  "  If  this  island  of  Corsica  could 
vomit  back  all  the  blood  of  battle  and 
vendetta  which  it  has  drunk  during  the 
past  ages,  its  cities  and  towns  would  be 
overwhelmed,  its  population  drowned, 
and  the  sea  be  incarnadined  as  far  as 
Genoa.  Verily,  here  the  red  Death 
planted  his  kingdom."  France  has  at 
last,  by  two  simple,  practical  measures, 
4  stayed  the  deluge.  First,  the  popula- 
tion was  disarmed ;  then  the  bandits 
and  blood-outlaws  were  formed  into  a 
body  of  Voltigeurs  Corses,  who,  know- 
ing all  the  hiding-places  in  the  macchia, 
easily  track  the  fugitives.  A  few  execu- 
tions tamed  the  thirst  for  blood,  and 
within  the  past  ten  years  the  vendetta 
has  ceased  to  exist. 

While  we  were  discussing  these  mat- 
ters with  the  physician,  the  diligence 
rolled  steadily  onwards,  up  the  valley 
of  the  Golo.  With  every  mile  the 
scenery  became  wilder,  browner,  and 
more  lonely.  There  were  no  longer 
villages  on  the  hill-summits,  and  the 
few  farm-houses  perched  beside  the 
chestnut-orchards  appeared  to  be  unten- 
anted.  As  the  road  crossed  by  a  lofty 
stone  arch  to  the  southern  bank  of  the 
river,  the  physician  said  :  "  This  is  Pon- 
tenuovo,  and  it  is  just  a  hundred  years 
to-day  since  the  battle  was  fought." 
He  was  mistaken  ;  the  battle  of  Pon- 
tenuovo,  fatal  to  Paoli  and  to  the  in- 
dependence of  Corsica,  took  place  on 
the  9th  of  May,  1769.  It  was  the  end 
of  a  struggle  all  the  more  heroic  be- 
cause it  was  hopeless  from  the  start. 
The  stony  slopes  on  either  side  of  the 
bridge  are  holy  ground  ;  for  the  Corsi- 
cans  did  not  fight  in  vain.  A  stronger 
people  beyond  the  sea  took  up  the 
torch  as  it  fell  from  their  hands,  and 


fed  it  with  fresh  oil.  History  (as  it  has 
hitherto  been  written)  deals  only  with 
events,  not  with  popular  sympathies 
and  enthusiasms  ;  and  we  can  there- 
fore scarcely  guess  how  profoundly  the 
heart  of  the  world  was  stirred  by  the 
name  of  Corsica,  between  the  years 
1755  and  1769.  To  Catharine  of  Rus- 
sia as  to  Rousseau,  to  Alfieri  as  to  Dr. 
Johnson,  Paoli  was  one  of  the  heroes 
of  the  century. 

Beyond  Pontenuovo  the  valley  widens, 
and  a  level  road  carried  us  speedily  to 
Ponte  alia  Leccia,  at  the  junction  of 
the  Golo  with  its  principal  affluent  the 
Tartaglia.  Pontaletch  and  Tartatch  are 
the  Corsican  words.  Here  the  scen- 
ery assumes  a  grand  Alpine  character. 
High  over  the  nearer  mountains  rose 
the  broken  summits  of  Monte  Padro 
and  Capo  Bianco,  the  snow-filled  ra- 
vines glittering  between  their  dark  pin- 
nacles of  rock.  On  the  south,  a  by-road 
\vandered  away  through  the  chestnut- 
woods  to  Morosaglia ;  villages  with 
picturesque  belfries  overlooked  the 
valley,  and  the  savage  macchia  gave 
place  to  orchards  of  olive.  Yet  the  char- 
acter of  the  scenery  was  sombre,  almost 
melancholy.  Though  the  myrtle  flow- 
ered snowily  among  the  rocks,  and  the 
woodbine  hung  from  the  banks,  and  the 
river  filled  the  air  with  the  incessant 
mellow  sound  of  its  motion,  these 
cheerful  features  lost  their  wonted  ef- 
fect beside  the  sternness  and  solitude 
of  the  mountains. 

Towards  the  end  of  this  stage  the  road 
left  the  Golo,  and  ascended  a  narrow 
lateral  valley  to  the  village  of  Omessa, 
where  we  changed  horses.  Still  follow- 
ing the  stream  to  its  sources,  we  reached 
a  spur  from  the  central  chain,  and  slowly 
climbed  its  sides  to  a  higher  region,  — 
a  land  of  rocks  and  green  pasture- 
slopes,  from  the  level  of  which  a  wide 
sweep  of  mountains  was  visible.  The 
summit  of  the  pass  was  at  least  two 
thousand  feet  above  the  sea.  On  at- 
taining it,  a  new  and  surprising  vista 
opened  to  the  southward,  into  the  very 
heart  of  the  island.  The  valley  before 
us  dropped  in  many  windings  into  that 
of  the  Tavignano,  the  second  river  of 


6i6 


The  Land  of  Paoli. 


[November, 


Corsica,  which  we  overlooked  for  an 
extent  of  thirty  miles.  Eastward  the 
mountains  sank  into  hills  of  gentle  un- 
dulation, robed  with  orchards  and  vine- 
yards, and  crowned  with  villages ; 
westward  they  towered  into  dark,  for- 
bidding ranges,  and  the  snows  of  the 
great  central  peaks  of  Monte  Rotondo 
and  Monte  d'  Oro,  nearly  ten  thousand 
feet  in  height,  stood  gray  against  the 
sunset.  Generally,  the  landscapes  of 
an  island  have  a  diminished,  contracted 
character  ;  but  here  the  vales  were  as 
amply  spread,  the  mountains  as  grandly 
planted,  as  if  a  continent  lay  behind 
them. 

For  two  leagues  the  road  descended, 
following  the  bays  and  forelands  of  the 
hills.  The  diligence  sped  downward 
so  rapidly  that  before  it  was  quite  dusk 
we  saw  the  houses  and  high  rock  for- 
tress of  Corte  before  us.  A  broad 
avenue  of  sycamores,  up  and  down 
which  groups  of  people  were  strolling, 
led  into  the  town.  We  were  set  down 
at  a  hotel  of  primitive  fashion,  where 
we  took  quarters  for  the  night,  leaving 
the  diligence,  which  would  have  carried 
us  to  Ajaccio  by  the  next  morning. 
Several  French  officials  had  possession 
of  the  best  rooms,  so  that  we  were  but 
indifferently  lodged  ;  but  the  mountain 
trout  on  the  dinner-table  were  excellent, 
and  the  wine  of  Corte  was  equal  to  that 
of  Tuscany. 

While  the  moon,  risen  over  the  east- 
ern mountains,  steeps  the  valley  in 
misty  silver,  and  a  breeze  from  the  Al- 
pine heights  deliciously  tempers  the 
air,  let  us  briefly  recall  that  wonderful 
episode  of  Corsican  history  of  which 
Pascal  Paoli  is  the  principal  figure. 
My  interest  in  the  name  dates  from 
the  earliest  recollections  of  childhood. 
Near  my  birthplace  there  is  an  inn  and 
cluster  of  houses  named  Paoli,  —  or,  as 
the  people  pronounce  it,  P<?oli.  Here 
twenty-three  American  soldiers  were 
murdered  in  cold  blood  by  the  British 
troops,  in  September,  1777.  Wayne's 
battle-cry  at  the  storming  of  Stony 
Point  was,  "  Remember  Paoli !"  The 
old  tavern-sign  was  the  half-length  por- 
trait of  an  officer  (in  a  red  coat,  I  think), 


whom,  I  was  told,  was  "General 
Paoli,"  but  I  knew  nothing  further  of 
him,  until,  some  years  later,  I  stumbled 
on  Boswell's  work  ;  my  principal  au- 
thority, however,  is  a  recent  volume,* 
and  the  collection  of  Paoli's  letters  pub- 
lished by  Tommaseo. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  review  the  long 
struggle  of  the  Corsicans  to  shake  off 
the  yoke  of  Genoa  ;  I  need  only  allude 
to  the  fact.  Pascal,  born  in  1724  or 
1725,  was  the  son  of  Hyacinth  Paoli, 
who  was  chosen  one  of  the  chiefs  of  the 
people  in  1734,  and  in  connection  with 
the  other  chiefs,  Ceccaldi  and  GiafFori, 
carried  on  the  war  for  independence 
with  the  greatest  bravery  and  resolu- 
tion, but  with  little  success,  for  two 
years.  In  March,  1736,  when  the  Cor- 
sicans were  reduced  to  the  last  extrem- 
ity, the  Westphalian  adventurer,  Theo-* 
dore  von  Neuhoff,  suddenly  made  his 
appearance.  The  story  of  this  man, 
who  came  ashore  in  a  caftan  of  scarlet 
silk,  Turkish  trowsers,  yellow  shoes,  a 
Spanish  hat  and  feather,  and  a  sceptre 
in  his  right  hand,  and  coolly  announced 
to  the  people  that  he  had  come  to  be 
their  king,  is  so  fantastic  as  to  be 
scarcely  credible  ;  but  we  cannot  dwell 
upon  it.  His  supplies  of  money  and 
munitions  of  war,  and  still  more  his 
magnificent  promises,  beguiled  those 
sturdy  republicans  into  accepting  the 
cheat  of  a  crown.  The  fellow  was  not 
without  ability,  and  but  for  a  silly  van- 
ity, which  led  him  to  ape  the  state  and 
show  of  other  European  courts,  might 
have  kept  his  place.  His  reign  of  eight 
months  was  the  cause  of  Genoa  calling 
in  the  aid  of  France ;  and,  after  three 
years  of  varying  fortunes,  the  Corsicans 
were  obliged  to  submit  to  the  conditions 
imposed  upon  them  by  the  French  com- 
mander, Maillebois. 

Hyacinth  Paoli  went  into  exile,  and 
found  a  refuge  at  the  court  of  Naples 
with  his  son  Pascal.  The  latter  was 
carefully  educated  in  the  school  of  Gen- 
ovesi,  the  first  Italian  political-econo- 
mist of  the  last  century,  and  then  en- 
tered the  army,  where  he  distinguished 

*  Histoire  de  Pascal  Paoli.     Par  M.  BAUTOLI.. 
Largentiere.    1866. 


1868.] 


The  Land  of  Paoli. 


himself  during  campaigns  in  Sicily  and 
Calabria.  Thus  sixteen  years  passed 
away. 

The  Corsicans,  meanwhile,  had  con- 
tinued their  struggle,  under  the  leader- 
ship of  Giaffori,  another  of  the  many 
heroes  of  the  island.  When,  in  1753, 
he  was  assassinated,  the  whole  popula- 
tion met  together  to  celebrate  his  obse- 
quies, and  renewed  the  oath  of  resist- 
ance to  death  against  the  Genoese 
rule.  Five  chiefs  (one  of  whom  was 
.Clement  Paoli,  Pascal's  elder  brother) 
were  chosen  to  organize  a  provisional 
government  and  carry  on  the  war.  But 
at  the  end  of  two  years  it  was  found 
prudent  to  adopt  a  more  practical  sys- 
tem, and  to  give  the  direction  of  affairs 
into  the  hands  of  a  single  competent 
man.  It  was  no  doubt  Clement  Paoli 
who  first  suggested  his  brother's  name. 
The  military  experience  of  the  latter 
gave  him  the  confidence  of  the  people, 
and  their  unanimous  voice  called  him 
to  be  their  leader. 

In  April,  1755,  Pascal  Paoli,  then 
thirty  years  old,  landed  at  Aleria,  the 
very  spot  where  King  Theodore  had 
made  his  theatrical  entry  into  Corsica 
nineteen  years  before.  Unlike  him, 
Paoli  came  alone,  poor,  bringing  only 
his  noble  presence,  his  cultivated  intel- 
ligence, and  his  fame  as  a  soldier,  to 
the  help  of  his  countrymen.  "It  was  a 
singular  problem,"  says  one  of  the  his- 
torians of  Corsica ;  "  it  was  a  new  ex- 
periment in  history,  and  how  it  might 
succeed  at  a  time  when  similar  experi- 
ments failed  in  the  most  civilized  lands 
would  be  to  Europe  an  evidence  that 
the  rude  simplicity  of  nature  is  more 
capable  of  adapting  itself  to  democratic 
liberty  than  the  refined  corruption  of 
culture  can  possibly  be." 

Paoli,  at  first  reluctant  to  accept  so 
important  a  post,  finally  yielded  to  the 
solicitations  of  the  people,  and  on  the 
1 5th  of  July  was  solemnly  invested  with 
the  Presidency  of  Corsica.  His  first 
step  shows  at  once  his  judgment  gnd 
his  boldness.  He  declared  that  the 
vendetta  must  instantly  cease  ;  whoever 
committed  blood-revenge  was  to  be 
branded  with  infamy,  and  given  up  to 


the  headsman.  He  traversed  the  island, 
persuading  hostile  families  to  bury  their 
feuds,  and  relentlessly  enforced  the  new 
law,  although  one  of  his  relatives  was 
the  first  victim.  But  he  was  not  al- 
lowed to  enter  upon  his  government 
without  resistance.  Matra,  one  of  the 
Corsican  chiefs,  was  ambitious  of  Pa- 
oli's  place,  and  for  a  year  the  island 
was  disturbed  with  civil  war.  Matra 
claimed  and  received  assistance  from 
Genoa,  and  Paoli,  defeated  and  besieged 
in  the  monastery  of  Bozio,  was  almost 
in  the  hands  of  his  rival,  when  rein- 
forcements appeared,  headed  by  Clem- 
ent and  by  Carnoni,  a  blood-enemy  of 
the  Paolis,  forced  by  his  noble  mother 
to  forswear  the  family  enmity,  and  de- 
liver instead  of  slay.  Matra  was  killed,, 
and  thenceforth  Paoli  was  the  undis- 
puted chief  of  Corsica. 

It  was  not  difficult  for  the  people, 
once  united,  to  withstand  the  weakened 
power  of  Genoa.  That  republic  pos- 
sessed only  Bastia,  Ajaccio,  and  Calvi ; 
the  garrisoning  of  which  fortresses,  by 
a  treaty  with  France  in  1756,  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  latter  power,  in  order  to- 
prevent  them  from  falling  into  the  hands 
of  the  Corsicans.  Trie  French  pro- 
claimed a  neutrality  which  Paoli  per- 
force was  obliged  to  respect.  He 
therefore  directed  his  attention  to  the 
thorough  political  organization  of  the 
island,  the  development  of  its  resources, 
and  the  proper  education  of  its  people. 
He  had  found  the  country  in  a  lament- 
able condition  when  he  returned  from 
his  exile.  The  greater  part  of  the  peo- 
ple had  relapsed  into  semi-barbarism 
in  the  long  course  of  war ;  agriculture 
was  neglected,  laws  had  fallen  into  dis- 
use, the  vendetta  raged  everywhere, 
and  the  only  element  from  which  order 
and  industry  could  be  evolved  was 
the  passionate  thirst  for  independence, 
which  had  only  been  increased  by  de- 
feat and  suffering. 

Paoli  made  the  completest  use  of  this 
element,  bending  it  to  all  the  purposes 
of  government,  and  his  success  was 
truly  astonishing.  The  new  seaport 
of  Isola  Rossa  was  built  in  order  to 
meet  the  necessity  of  immediate  com- 


6i8 


The  Land  of  Paoli. 


[November, 


merce  ;  ^nanufactories  of  all  kinds,  even 
powder-mills,  were  established;  or- 
chards of  chestnut,  olive,  and  orange 
trees  were  planted,  the  culture  of  maize 
introduced,  and  plans  made  for  drain- 
ing the  marshes  and  covering  the  island 
with  a  network  of  substantial  highways. 
An  educational  system  far  in  advance 
of  the  time  was  adopted.  All  children 
received  at  least  the  rudiments  of  edu- 
cation, and  in  the  year  1765  the  Univer- 
sity of  Corsica  was  founded  at  Corte. 
One  provision  of  its  charter  was  the 
education  of  poor  scholars,  who  showed 
more  than  average  capacity,  at  the  pub- 
lic expense. 

Paoli  was  obliged  to  base  his  scheme 
of  government  on  the  existing  forms. 
He  retained  the  old  provincial  and  mu- 
nicipal divisions,  with  their  magistrates 
and  elders,  making  only  such  changes 
as  were  necessary  to  bind  the  scattered 
local  jurisdictions  into  one  consistent 
whole,  to  which  he  gave  a  national 
power  and  character.  He  declared  the 
people  to  be  the  sole  source  of  law 
and  authority;  that  his  office  was  a 
trust  from  their  hands,  and  to  be  exer- 
cised according  to  their  will  and  for 
their  general  good;  and  that  the  cen- 
tral government  must  be  a  house  of 
glass,  allowing  each  citizen  to  watch 
over  its  action.  "Secrecy  and  mystery 
in  governments,"  he  said,  "not  only 
made  a  people  mistrustful,  but  favored 
the  growth  of  an  absolute  irresponsible 
power." 

Ail  citizens  above  the  age  of  twenty- 
five  years  were  entitled  to  the  right  of 
suffrage.  Each  community  elected  its 
own  magistrates,  but  the  voters  were 
obliged  to  swear  before  the  officials 
already  in  power,  that  they  would  nom- 
inate only  the  worthiest  and  most  capa- 
ble men  as  their  successors.  These  local 
elections  were  held  annually,  but  the 
magistrates  were  not  eligible  to  imme- 
diate re-election.  A  representative 
from  each  thousand  of  the  population 
was  elected  to  the  General  Assembly, 
which  in  its  turn  chose  a  Supreme  Ex- 
ecutive Council  of  nine  members,  —  one 
from  each  province  of  the  island.  The 
latter  were  required  to  be  thirty-five 


years  of  age,  and  to  have  served  as 
governors  of  their  respective  provinces. 
A  majority  of  two  thirds  gave  the  de- 
cisions of  the  General  Assembly  the 
force  of  law  ;  but  the  Council,  in  certain 
cases,  had  the  right  of  veto,  and  the 
question  was  then  referred  for  final 
decision  to  the  next  Assembly.  Paoli 
was  President  of  the  Council  and  Gen- 
eral-in-Chief of  the  army.  Both  he  and 
the  members  of  the  Council,  however, 
were  responsible  to  the  nation,  and  lia- 
ble to  impeachment,  removal,  and  pun-. 
ishment  by  the  General  Assembly. 

Paoli,  while  enforcing  a  general  mili- 
tia system,  took  the  strongest  ground 
against  the  establishment  of  a  standing 
army.  "  In  a  free  land,"  he  said,  "  ev- 
ery citizen  must  be  a  soldier,  and  ready 
to  arm  at  any  moment  in  defence  of  his 
rights.  But  standing  armies  have  al- 
ways served  Despotism  rather  than 
Liberty."  He  only  gave  way  that  a 
limited  number  should  be  enrolled  to 
garrison  the  fortified  places.  As  soon 
as  the  people  were  sufficiently  organized 
to  resist  the  attempts  which  Genoa 
made  from  time  to  time  to  recover  her 
lost  dominion,  he  devoted  his  energies 
wholly  to  the  material  development  of 
the  island.  The  Assembly,  at  his  sug- 
gestion, appointed  two  Commissioners 
of  Agriculture  for  each  province.  The 
vendetta  was  completely  suppressed  ; 
with  order  and  security  carne  a  new 
prosperity,  and  the  cities  held  by  the 
neutral  French  began  to  stir  with  de- 
sires to  come  under  Paoli's  paternal 
rule. 

The  resemblance  in  certain  forms  as 
in  the  general  spirit  and  character  of 
the  Constitution  of  the  Corsican  Repub- 
lic to  that  of  the  United  States,  which 
was  framed  more  than  thirty  years 
afterwards,  is  very  evident.  Indeed, 
v/e  may  say  that  the  latter  is  simply  an 
adaptation  of  the  same  political  princi- 
ples to  the  circumstances  of  a  more 
advanced  race  and  a,  broader  field  of 
action.  But  if  we  justly  venerate  the 
courage  which  won  our  independence 
and  the  wisdom  which  gave  us  our 
institutions,  how  shall  we  sufficiently 
honor  the  man  and  the  handful  of  half- 


1 868.] 


The  Land  of  Paoli. 


619 


barbarous  people  who  so  splendidly 
anticipated  the  same  great  work !  Is 
there  anything  nobler  in  history  than 
this  Corsican  episode  ?  No  wonder 
that  the  sluggish  soul  of  Europe,  then 
beginning  to  stir  with  the  presentiment 
of  coming  changes,  was  kindled  and 
thrilled  as  not  for  centuries  before. 
What  effect  the  example  of  Corsica 
had  upon  the  American  Colonies  is 
something  which  we  cannot  now  meas- 
ure. I  like  to  think,  however,  that  the 
country  tavern-sign  of  "  General  Paoli," 
put  up  before  the  Revolution,  signified 
more  than  the  mere  admiration  of  the 
landlord  for  a  foreign  hero. 

At  the  end  of  ten  years  the  Genoese 
Senate  became  convinced  that  the  re- 
covery of  Corsica  was  hopeless  ;  and 
when  Paoli  succeeded  in  creating  a 
small  fleet,  under  the  command  of  Pe- 
rez, Knight  of  Malta,  they  saw  their 
Mediterranean  commerce  threatened 
with  destruction.  In  the  year  1767  the 
island  of  Capraja  was  captured  by  the 
Corsicans  ;  then  Genoa  set  the  example 
which  Austria  has  recently  followed  in 
the  case  of  Venetia.  A  treaty  was 
signed  at  Versailles  on  the  i5th  of 
May,  1768,  between  the  French  Minis- 
ter, the  Duke  de  Choiseul,  and  the 
Genoese  Ambassador,  whereby  Genoa 
transferred  to  France  all  her  right  and 
title  to  the  island  of  Corsica.  This 
was  a  death-blow  to  the  Republic  ;  but 
the  people  armed  and  organized,  deter- 
mined to  resist  to  the  end.  The  splen- 
did victory  at  Borgo  gave  them  hope. 
They  asked  and  expected  the,assistance 
of  England  ;  but  when  did  England 
ever  help  a  weak  and  struggling  people  ? 
The  battle  of  Pontenuovo,  on  the  gth 
of  May,  1769,  sealed  the  fate  of  the 
island.  A  month  afterwards  Paoli  went 
into  exile  with  three  hundred  of  his 
countrymen.  Among  those  who  fled, 
after  the  battle,  to  the  wild  Alpine  fast- 
nesses of  Monte  Rotondo,  was  his  sec- 
retary, Carlo  Bonaparte,  and  the  lat- 
ter's  wife,  Letitia  Ramolino,  then  seven 
months  enceinte  with  the  boy  who  a£ 
terwards  made  Genoa  and  France 
suffer  the  blood-revenge  of  Corsica. 
Living  in  caves  and  forests,  drenched 


with  rain,  and  almost  washed  away  by 
the  mountain  torrents,  Letitia  bore  her 
burden  to  Ajaccio,  and  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte was  one  of  the  first  Corsicans 
who  were  born  Frenchmen. 

Paoli's  journey  through  Italy  and 
Germany  to  England  was  a  march  of 
triumph.  On  reaching  London  he  was 
received  by  the  king  in  private  audi- 
ence ;  all  parties  joined  in  rendering 
him  honor.  A  pension  of  two  thou- 
sand pounds  a  year  was  granted  to  him 
(the  greater  part  of  which  he  divided 
among  his  fellow-exiles),  and  he  took 
up  his  residence  in  the  country  from 
which  he  still  hoped  the  liberation  of 
Corsica.  For  twenty  years  we  hear  of 
him  as  a  member  of  that  society  which 
included  Burke,  Reynolds,  Johnson, 
Garrick,  and  Goldsmith  ;  keeping  clear 
of  parties,  yet.  we  may  be  sure,  follow- 
ing with  an  interest  he  hardly  dared 
betray  the  events  of  the  American 
struggle. 

But  the  French  Revolution  did  not 
forget  him.  The  Corsicans,  in  Novem- 
ber, 1789,  carried  away  by  the  republi- 
can movement  in  France,  had  voted 
that  their  island  should  be  an  integral 
part  of  the  French  nation.  There  was 
a  general  cry  for  Paoli,  and  in  April, 
1790,  he  reached  Paris.  Lafayette  was 
his  friend  and  guide  ;  the  National  As- 
sembly received  him  with  every  mark 
of  respect;  the  club  of  the  Amis  de  la 
Constitution  seated  him  beside  its  Pres- 
ident, —  Robespierre  ;  Louis  XVI.  gave 
him  an  audience,  and  he  was  styled  by 
the  enthusiastic  populace  "the  Wash- 
ington of  Europe."  At  Marseilles  he 
was  met  by  a  Corsican  deputation,  two 
of  the  members  of  which  were  Joseph 
and  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  who  sailed 
with  him  to  their  native  island.  On 
landing  at  Cape  Corso,  he  knelt  and 
kissed  the  earth,  exclaiming,  "  O  my 
country,  I  left  thee  enslaved,  and  I  find 
thee  free  ! "  All  the  land  rose  to  re- 
ceive him  ;  Te  Dennis  were  chanted  in 
the  churches,  and  the  mountain  villa- 
ges were  depopulated  to  swell  his  tri- 
umphal march.  In  September  of  the 
same  year  the  representatives  of  the 
people  elected  him  President  of  the 


62O 


The  Land  of  Paoli. 


[November, 


Council  and  General  of  the  troops  of 
the  island. 

Many  things  had  been  changed  dur- 
ing his  twenty  years'  absence,  under 
the  rule  of  France.  It  was  not  long 
before  the  people  divided  themselves  in- 
to two  parties,  —  one  French  and  ultra- 
Republican  ;  the  other  Corsican,  work- 
ing secretly  for  the  independence  of 
the  island.  The  failure  of  the  expedi- 
tion against  Sardinia  was  charged  to 
Paoli,  and  he  was  summoned  by  the 
Convention  to  appear  and  answer  the 
charges  against  him.  Had  he  complied, 
his  head  would  probably  have  fallen 
under  the  all-devouring  guillotine  :  he 
refused,  and  his  refusal  brought  the  two 
Corsican  parties  into  open  collision. 
Paoli  was  charged  with  being  ambitious, 
corrupt,  and  plotting  to  deliver  Corsica 
to  England.  His  most  zealous  defender 
•was  the  young  Napoleon  Bonaparte, 
who  wrote  a  fiery,  indignant  address, 
which  I  should  like  to  quote.  Among 
other  things  he  says,  "  We  owe  all  to 
him,  —  even  the  fortune  of  being  a  Re- 
public !  " 

The  story  now  becomes  one  of  in- 
trigue and  deception,  and  its  heroic  at- 
mosphere gradually  vanishes.  Pozzo  di 
Borgo,  the  blood-enemy  of  Napoleon, 
alienated  Paoli  from  the  latter.  A  fresh, 
cunning,  daring  intellect,  he  acquired  a 
mischievous  influence  over  the  gray- 
haired,  simple-hearted  patriot.  That 
which  Paoli's  enemies  charged  against 
him  came  to  pass  ;  he  asked  the  help  of 
England,  and  in  1794  the  people  ac- 
cepted the  sovereignty  of  that  nation, 
on  condition  of  preserving  their  insti- 
tutions, and  being  governed  by  a  vice- 
roy, who  it  was  presumed  would  be 
none  other  than  Pascal  Paoli.  The 
English  fleet,  under  Admiral  Hood, 
speedily  took  possession  of  Bastia, 
Calvi,  Ajaccio,  and  the  other  seaports. 
But  the  English  government,  con- 
temptuously ignoring  Paoli's  services 
and  claims,  sent  out  Sir  Gilbert  Elliott 
as  viceroy ;  and  he,  jealous  of  Paoli's 
popularity,  demanded  the  latter's  recall 
to  England.  George  III.  wrote  a  com- 
mand under  the  form  of  an  invitation  ; 
and  in  1795,  Paoli  —  disappointed  in 


all  his  hopes,  disgusted  with  the  treat- 
ment he  had  received,  and  recognizing 
the  hopelessness  of  healing  the  new  dis- 
sensions among  the  people  — left  Corsi- 
ca for  the  last  time.  He  returned  to  his 
former  home  in  London,  where  he  died 
in  1807,  at  the  age  of  eighty-two  years. 
What  little  property  he  had  saved  was 
left  to  found  a  school  at  Stretta,  his 
native  village ;  and  another  at  Corte, 
for  fifteen  years  his  capital.  Within  a 
year  after  his  departure  the  English 
were  driven  out  of  Corsica. 

Paoli  rejoiced,  as  a  Corsican,  at  Na- 
poleon's ascendency  in  France.  He 
illuminated  his  house  in  London  when 
the  latter  was  declared  Consul  for  life, 
yet  he  was  never  recalled.  During  his 
last  days  on  St.  Helena  Napoleon  re- 
gretted his  neglect  or  jealousy  of  the  old 
hero ;  his  lame  apology  was,  "  I  was  so 
governed  by  political  considerations, 
that  it  was  impossible  for  me  to  obey 
my  personal  impulses  !  " 

Our  first  object,  on  the  morning  after 
our  arrival  in  Corte,  was  to  visit  the 
places  with  which  Paoli's  name  is  as- 
sociated. The  main  street  conducted 
us  to  the  public  square,  where  stands 
his  bronze  statue,  with  the  inscription 
on  the  pedestal :  "  A  PASCAL  PAOLI 
LA  CORSE  RECONNAISSANTE."  On 
one  side  of  the  square  is  the  Palazza, 
or  Hall  of  Government ;  and  there  they 
show  you  his  room,  the  window-shutters 
of  which  still  keep  their  lining  of  cork, 
as  in  the  days  of  assassination,  when  he 
founded  the  Republic.  Adjoining  it  is 
a  chamber  where  the  Executive  Council 
met  to  deliberate.  Paoli's  school,  which 
still  flourishes,  is  his  best  monument. 

High  over  the  town  rises  the  bat- 
tered citadel,  seated  on  a  rock  which 
on  the  western  side  falls  several  hun- 
dred feet  sheer  down  to  the  Tavignano. 
The  high  houses  of  brown  stone  climb 
and  cling  to  the  eastern  slope,  rough 
masses  of  browner  rock  thrust  out 
among  them  ;  and  the  place  thus  has 
an  irregular  pyramidal  form,  which  is 
wonderfully  picturesque.  The  citadel 
was  last  captured  from  the  Genoese  by 
Paoli's  forerunner,  Giaffori,  in  the  year 
1745.  The  Corsican  cannon  were  be- 


1 868.] 


1  he  Land  of  Paoli. 


621 


ginning  to  breach  the  walls,  when  the 
Genoese  commander  ordered  Giaffori's 
son,  who  had  been  previously  taken  pris- 
oner, to  be  suspended  from  the  ramparts. 
For  a  moment  —  but  only  for  a  moment 
—  Giaffori  shuddered,  and  turned  away 
his  head  ;  then  he  commanded  the  gun- 
ners, who  had  ceased  firing,  to  renew 
the  attack.  The  breach  was  effected, 
and  the  citadel  taken  by  storm  :  the 
boy,  unhurt  amidst  the  terrible  cannon- 
ade, was  restored  to  his  father. 

We  climbed  towards  the  top  of  the 
rock  by  streets  which  resembled  stair- 
cases. At  last  the  path  came  to  an 
end  in  some  unsavory  back-yards,  if 
piles  of  shattered  rock  behind  the 
houses  can  be  so  called.  I  asked  a 
young  fellow  who  was  standing  in  a 
doorway,  watching  us,  whether  any 
view  was  to  be  had  by  going  farther. 

"Yes,"  said  he,  "but  there  is  a  better 
prospect  from  the  other  house,  —  yon- 
der, where  you  see  the  old  woman." 

We  clambered  across  the  intervening 
rocks,  and  found  the  woman  engaged 
in  milking  a  cow,  which  a  boy  held  by 
the  horns.  "Certainly,"  she  said,  when 
I  repeated  the  question;  "come  into 
the  house,  and  you  shall  look  from  the 
windows." 

She  led  us  through  the  kitchen  into 
a  bright,  plainly  furnished  room,  where 
four  women  were  sewing.  They  all 
greeted  us  smilingly,  rose,  pushed  away 
their  chairs,  and  then  opened  the  south- 
ern window.  "  Now  look  !  "  said  the 
old  woman. 

We  were  dazzled  by  the  brightness 
and  beauty  of  the  picture.  The  house 
was  perched  upon  the  outer  angle  of 
the  rock,  and  the  valley  of  the  Tavi- 
gnano,  with  the  gorge  through  which  its 
affluent,  the  Restonica,  issues  from  the 
mountains,  lay  below  us.  Gardens, 
clumps  of  walnut  and  groves  of  chest- 
nut trees,  made  the  valley  green  ;  the 
dark  hues  of  the  mountains  were  sof- 
tened to  purple  in  the  morning  air,  and 
the  upper  snows  shone  with  a  brilliancy 
which  I  have  rarely  seen  among  the 
Alps.  The  breeze  came  down  to  us 
with  freshness  on  its  wings,  and  the 
subdued  voices  of  the  twin  rivers. 


"Now  the  other  window!"  the  wo- 
men said. 

It  opened  eastward.  There  were, 
first,  the  roofs  of  Corte,  dropping  away 
to  the  water-side  ;  then  a  wide,  boun- 
teous valley,  green,  flecked  with  har- 
vest-gold ;  then  village-crowned  hills, 
and,  behind  all,  the  misty  outlines  of 
mountains  that  slope  to  the  eastern 
shore.  It  is  a  fair  land/  this  Corsica, 
and  the  friendly  women  were  delighted 
when  I  told  them  so. 

The  people  looked  at  us  with  a  nat- 
ural curiosity  as  we  descended  the  hill. 
Old  women,  invariably  dressed  in  black, 
gossiped  or  spun  at  the  doors,  girls 
carried  water  on  their  heads  from  the 
fountains  below,  children  tumbled  about 
on  the  warm  stones,  and  a  young  moth- 
er, beside  her  cradle,  sang  the  Corsican 
lullaby:  — 

"  Ninni  ninni,  ninni  nanna, 
Ninni  ninni,  ninni  nolu, 
Allegrezza  di  la  mamma, 
Addormentati,  o  figliolu  !  " 

There  is  another  Corsican  cradle- 
song  which  has  a  singular  resemblance 
to  Tennyson's,  yet  it  is  quite  unlikely 
that  he  ever  saw  it.  One  verse  runs :  — 

"  A  little  pearl-laden  ship,  my  darling, 
Thou  carriest  silken  stores, 
And  with  the  silken  sails  all  set 
Com'st  from  the  Indian  shores, 
And  wrought  with  the  finest  workmanship 
Are  all  thy  golden  oars. 
Sleep,  my  little  one,  sleep  a  little  while, 
Ninni  nanna,  sleep  1 " 

The  green  waters  of  the  Tavignano, 
plunging  and  foaming  down  their  rocky 
bed,  freshened  the  warm  summer  air. 
Beyond  the  bridge  a  yein  of  the  river, 
led  underground,  gushes  forth  as  a  pro- 
fuse fountain  under  an  arch  of  masonry  ; 
and  here  a  number  of  people  were  col- 
lected to  wash  and  to  draw  water.  One 
of  the  girls,  who  gave  us  to  drink,  re- 
fused to  accept  a  proffered  coin,  until  a 
countryman  who  was  looking  on  said, 
"You  should  take  it,  since  the  lady 
wishes  it."  A  few  paces  farther  a 
second  bridge  crosses  the  Restonica, 
which  has  its  source  in  some  small 
lakes  near  the  summit  of  Monte  Ro- 
tondo.  Its  volume  of  water  appeared 
to  me  to  be  quite  equal  to  that  of  the 
Tavignano. 


622 


The  Land  of  Paoli. 


[November, 


The  two  rivers  meet  in  a  rocky  glen 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  below  the  town  ;  and 
thither  we  wandered  in  the  afternoon, 
through  the  shade  of  superb  chestnut- 
trees.  From  this,  as  from  every  other 
point  in  the  neighborhood,  the  views 
are  charming.  There  is  no  threat  of 
malaria  in  the  pure  mountain  air  ;  the 
trees  are  of  richest  foliage,  the  water 
is  transparent  beryl,  and  the  pleasant, 
communicative  people  one  meets  im- 
press one  with  a  sense  of  their  honest 
simplicity.  We  wandered  around  Corte,' 
surrendering  ourselves  to  the  influences 
of  the  scenery  and  its  associations,  and 
entirely  satisfied  with  both. 

Towards  evening  we  climbed  the  hill 
by  an  easier  path,  which  brought  us 
upon  the  crest  of  a  ridge  connecting 
the  citadel-rock  with  the  nearest  moun- 
tains. Directly  before  us  opened  the 
gorge  of  the  Tavignano,  with  a  bridle- 
path notched  along  its  almost  precip- 
itous sides.  A  man  who  had  been 
sitting  idly  on  a  rock,  with  a  pipe  in  his 
mouth,  came  up,  and  stood  beside  me. 
"  Yonder,"  said  he,  pointing  to  the 
bridle-path,  —  "yonder  is  the  road  to 
the  land  of  Niolo.  If  you  follow  that, 
you  will  come  to  a  forest  that  is  four 
hours  long.  The  old  General  Arrighi 
—  the  Duke  of  Padua,  you  know  — 
travelled  it  some  years  ago,  and  I  was 
his  guide.  I  see  you  are  strangers  ; 
you  ought  to  see  the  land  of  Niolo.  It 
is  not  so  rich  as  Corte  here  ;  but  then 
the  forests  and  the  lakes,  —  ah,  they 
are  fine ! " 

Presently  the  man's  wife  joined  us, 
and  we  sat  down  together,  and  gos- 
siped for  half  an  hour.  They  gave  us 
the  receipt  for  making  broccio,  a  kind 
of  Corsican  curd,  or  junket,  which  we 
had  tasted  at  the  hotel,  and  found  deli- 
cious. I  also  learned  from  them  many 
details  of  the  country  life  of  the  island. 
They,  like  all  the  Corsicans  with  whom 
I  came  in  contact,  were  quite  as  ready 
to  answer  questions  as  to  ask  them. 
They  are  not  so  lively  as  the  Italians, 
but  more  earnestly  communicative, 
quick  of  apprehension,  and  gifted  with 
a  rude  humor  of  their  own.  In  Bastia 
I  bought  a  volume  of  Pruverbj  Corse, 


which  contains  more  than  three  thou- 
sand proverbs  peculiar  to  the  island, 
many  of  them  exceedingly  witty  and 
clever.  I  quote  a  single  one  as  a 
specimen  of  the  dialect :  — 

"  Da  gattivu  calzu  un  ne  piglia  magliolu, 
Male  u  babbu  e  pegghiu  u  figliolu." 

During  our  talk  I  asked  the  pair, 
"  Do  you  still  have  the  vendetta  in  this 
neighborhood  ?  " 

They  both  professed  not  to  know 
what  I  meant  by  "  vendetta,"  but  I  saw 
plainly  enough  that  they  understood 
the  question.  Finally  the  man  said, 
rather  impatiently,  "There  are  a  great 
many  kinds  of  vendetta." 

"  I  mean  blood-revenge,  —  assassina- 
tion,—murder." 

His  hesitation  to  speak  about  the 
matter  disappeared  as  mysteriously  as 
it  came.  (Was  there,  perhaps,  a  stain 
upon  his  own  hand?)  "  O,"  he  an- 
swered, "  that  is  all  at  an  end.  I  can 
remember  when  five  persons  were  killed 
in  a  day  in  Corte,  and  when  a  man 
could  not  travel  from  here  to  Ajaccio 
without  risking  his  life.  But  now  we 
have  neither  murders  nor  robberies  ; 
all  the  roads  are  safe,  the  people  live 
quietly,  and  the  country  everywhere  is 
better  than  it  was." 

I  noticed  that  the  Corsicans  are  proud 
of  the  present  Emperor  on  account  of 
his  parentage  ;  but  they  have  also  some 
reason  to  be  grateful  to  his  government. 
He  has  done  much  to  repair  the  neglect 
of  his  uncle.  The  work  of  Paoli  has 
been  performed  over  again  ;  law  and 
order  prevail  from  the  sea-shore  to  the 
highest  herdsman's  hut  on  Monte  Ro- 
tondo ;  admirable  roads  traverse  the 
island,  schools  have  been  established 
in  all  the  villages,  and  the  national 
spirit  of  the  people  is  satisfied  by  hav- 
ing a  semi-Corsican  on  the  throne  of 
France.  I  saw  no  evidence  of  discon- 
tent anywhere,  nor  need  there  be  ;  for 
Europe  has  nearly  reached  the  Corsi- 
can ideal  of  the  last  century,  and  the 
pride  of  the  people  may  well  repose  for 
a  while  upon  the  annals  of  their  heroic 
past. 

It  was  a  serious  disappointment  that 


1 868.] 


The  Land  of  Paoli. 


623 


we  were  unable  to  visit  Ajaccio  and  the 
Balagna.  We  could  only  fix  the  in- 
spiring scenery  of  Corte  in  our  memo- 
ries, and  so  make  its  historical  associa- 
tions vital  and  enduring.  There  was 
no  other  direct  way  of  returning  to 
Bastia  than  the  road  by  which  we 
came ;  but  it  kept  a  fresh  interest  for 
us.  The  conductor  of  the  diligence 
was  one  of  the  liveliest  fellows  living, 
and  entertained  us  with  innumerable 
stories  ;  and  at  the  station  of  Omessa 
we  met  with  a  character  so  original 
that  I  wish  I  could  record  every  word 
he  said. 

The  man  looked  more  like  a  Yankee 
than  any  Italian  I  had  seen  for  six 
months.  He  presented  the  conductor 
with  what  appeared  to  be  a  bank-note 
for  one  thousand  francs  ;  but  it  proved 
to  be  issued  by  the  "  Bank  of  Content," 
and  entitled  the  holder  to  live  a  thou- 
sand years.  Happiness  was  the  presi- 
dent, and  Temperance  the  cashier. 

"I  am  a  director  of  the  bank,"  said 
the  disseminator  of  the  notes,  address- 
ing the  passengers  and  a  group  of 
countrymen,  "  and  I  can  put  you  all  in 
the  way  of  being  stockholders.  But 
you  must  first  bring  testimonials.  Four 
are  required,  —  one  religious,  one  medi- 
cal, one  legal,  and  one  domestic.  What 
must  they  be  ?  Listen,  and  I  will  tell. 
Religious,  —  from  a  priest,  vouching  for 
four  things  :  that  you  have  never  been 
baptized,  never  preached,  don't  believe 
in  the  Pope,  and  are  not  afraid  of  the 
Devil.  lYledical,  —  from  a  doctor,  that 


you  have  had  the  measles,  that  your 
teeth  are  sound,  that  you  are  not  flatu- 
lent, and  that  he  has  never  given  you 
medicine.  Legal,  —  from  a  lawyer,  that 
you  have  never  been  accused  of  theft, 
that  you  mind  your  own  business,  and 
that  you  have  never  employed  him.  Do- 
mestic,—  from  your  wife,  that  you  don't 
lift  the  lids  of  the  kitchen  pots,  walk  in 
your  sleep,  or  lose  the  keyhole  of  your 
door !  There  !  can  any  one  of  you 
bring  me  these  certificates  ?  " 

The  auditors,  who  had  roared  with 
laughter  during  the  speech,  became 
suddenly  grave,  —  which  emboldened 
the  man  to  ply  them  with  other  and 
sharper  questions.  Our  departure  cut 
short  the  scene  ;  but  I  heard  the  con- 
ductor laughing  on  his  box  for  a  league 
farther. 

At  Ponte  alia  Leccia  we  breakfasted 
on  trout,  and,  speeding  down  the  grand 
and  lonely  valley  of  the  Golo,  reached 
Bastia  towards  evening.  As  we  steamed 
out  of  the  little  harbor  the  next  day  we 
took  the  words  of  our  friend  Grego- 
rovius,  and  made  them  ours :  — 

"Year  after  year,  thy  slopes  of  olives  hoar 
Give  oil,  thy  vineyards  still  their  bounty  pour  1 
Thy  maize  on  golden  meadows  ripen  well, 
And  let  the  sun  thy  curse  of  blood  dispel, 
Till  down  each  vale  and  on  each  mountain-side 
The  stains  qf  thy  heroic  blood  be  dried  ! 
Thy  sons  be  like  their  fathers,  strong  and  sure, 
Thy  daughters  as  thy  mountain  rivers  pure, 
And  still  thy  granite  crags  between  them  stand 
And  all  corruptions  of  the  older  land. 
Fair  isle,  farewell !  thy  virtues  shall  not  sleep  ; 
Thy  fathers'  valor  shall  their  children  keep, 
That  ne'er  this  taunt  to  thee  the  stranger  cast,  — 
Thy  heroes  were  but  fables  of  the  Past !  " 


624 


Kentucky  s  Ghost. 


[November, 


THE     HARVESTER. 

MY  harvest  strews  the  white  sea-sand ; 
The  storm-wind  is  my  scythe  and  flail ; 
Though  skies  be  dark,  and  wild  the  strand, 
My  harvests  never  fail. 

I  roam  at  large  in  greener  fields, 
Where  clover-beds  are  smoothly  mown, 

And  learn  my  bitter  fruitage  yields 
A  glory  all  its  own. 

I  need  not  pray  fair  wind  and  showers, 
Nor  long  for  white  or  purple  bloom; 

The  tempest  brings  me  varied  flowers, 
Torn  from  the  deep  sea's  womb. 

Dark  is  their  hue  to  others'  eye, 
And  shattered  is  their  plumy  head ; 

I  only  know  for  life  they  die, 
And  live  for  others,  dead. 


KENTUCKY'S     GHOST. 


HPRUE  ?    Every  syllable. 

J-  That  was  a  very  fair  yarn  of  yours, 
Tom  Brown,  very  fair  for  a  landsman, 
but  I  '11  bet  you  a  doughnut  I  can  beat 
It ;  and  all  on  the  square  too,  as  I  say,  — 
which  is  more,  if  I  don't  mistake,  than 
you  could  take  oath  to.  Not  to  say 
that  I  never  stretched  my  yarn  a  little 
on  the  fo'castle  in  my  younger  days,  like 
the  rest  of  'em  ;  but  what  with  living 
under  roofs  so  long  past,  and  a  call  from 
the  parson  regular  in  strawberry  time, 
and  having  to  do  the  flogging  conse- 
quent on  the  inakkeracies  of  statement 
follering  on  the  growing  up  of  six  boys, 
a  man  learns  to  trim  his  words  a  little, 
Tom,  and  no  mistake.  It's  very  much 
as  it  is  with  the  talk  of  the  sea  growing 
strange  to  you  from  hearing  nothing  but 
lubbers  who  don't  know  a  mizzen-mast 
from  a  church-steeple. 


It  was  somewhere  about  twenty  years 
ago  last  October,  if  I  recollect  fair, 
that  we  were  laying  in  for  that  particu- 
lar trip  to  Madagascar.  I  've  done 
that  little  voyage  to  Madagascar  when 
the  sea  was  like  so  much  burning  oil, 
and  the  sky  like  so  much  burning  brass, 
and  the  fo'castle  as  nigh  a  hell  as  ever 
fo'castle  was  in  a  calm  ;  I  've  done  it 
when  we  came  sneaking  into  port  with 
nigh  about  every  spar  gone  and  pumps 
going  night  and  day  ;  and  I  've  done  it 
with  a  drunken  captain,  on  starvation 
rations,  — duff  that  a  dog  on  land  would 
n't  have  touched  and  two  teaspoonfuls 
of  water  to  the  day,  — but  some  ways  or 
other,  of  all  the  times  we  headed  for  the 
East  Shore  I  don't  seem  to  remember 
any  quite  as  distinct  as  this. 

We  cleared  from  Long  Wharf  in  the 
ship  Madonna,  —  which  they  tell  me 


1 868.] 


Kentucky  s  Ghost. 


625 


means,  My  Lady,  and  a  pretty  name  it 
was  ;  it  was  apt  to  give  me  that  gentle 
kind  of  feeling  when  I  spoke  it,  which 
is  surprising  when  you  consider  what 
a  dull  old  hull  she  was,  never  logging 
over  ten  knots,  and  oncertain  at  that. 
It  may  have  been  because  of  Moll's 
coming  down  once  in  a  while  in  the 
days  that  we  lay  at  dock,  bringing  the 
boy  with  her,  and  sitting  up  on  deck  in 
a  little  white  apron,  knitting.  She  was 
a  very  good-lookmg  woman,  was  my 
wife  in  those  days,  and  I  felt  proud  of 
her,  —  natural,  with  the  lads  looking  on. 

"  Molly,"  I  used  to  say,  sometimes, 
—  "Molly  Madonna!" 

"  Nonsense  ! "  says  she,  giving  a  clack 
to  her  needles,  —  pleased  enough  though, 
I  warrant  you,  and  turning  a  very  pret- 
ty pink  about  the  cheeks  for  a  four- 
years'  wife.  Seeing  as  how  she  was 
always  a  lady  to  me,  and  a  true  one, 
and  a  gentle,  though  she  was  n't  much 
at  manners  or  book-learning,  and  though 
I  never  gave  her  a  silk  gown  in  her  life, 
she  was  quite  content,  you  see,  and  so 
was  I. 

I  used  to  speak  my  thought  about 
the  name  sometimes,  when  the  lads  were 
n't  particularly  noisy,  but  they  laughed  at 
me  mostly.  I  was  rough  enough  and  bad 
enough  in  those  days  ;  as  rough  as  the 
rest,  and  as  bad  as  the  rest,  I  suppose, 
but  yet  I  seemed  to  have  my  notions  a 
little  different  from  the  others.  "Jake's 
poetry,"  they  called  'em. 

We  were  loading  for  the  East  Shore 
trade,  as  I  said,  did  n't  I  ?  There  is  n't 
much  of  the  genuine,  old-fashioned 
trade  left  in  these  days,  except  the 
whiskey  branch,  which  will  be  brisk,  I 
take  it,  till  the  Malagasy  carry  the  pro- 
hibitory law  by  a  large  majority  in  both 
houses.  We  had  a  little  whiskey  in 
the  hold,  I  remember,  that  trip,  with  a 
good  stock  of  knives,  red  flannel, 
hand-saws,  nails,  and  cotton.  We  were 
hoping  to  be  at  home  again  within  the 
year.  We  were  well  provisioned,  and 
Dodd,  —  he  was  the  cook,  —  Dodd  made 
about  as  fair  coffee  as  you  're  likely  to 
find  in  the  galley  of  a  trader.  As  for  our 
officers,  when  I  say  the  less  said  of  them 
the  better,  it  ain't  so  much  that  I  mean 

VOL.   XXII.  —  NO,    133.  40 


to  be  disrespectful  as  that  I  mean  to 
put  it  tenderly.  Officers  in  the  mer- 
chant service,  especially  if  it  happens 
to  be  the  African  service,  are  brutal 
men  quite  as  often  as  they  ain't.  At 
least,  that 's  my  experience  ;  and  when 
some  of  your  great  ship-owners  argue 
the  case  with  me,  —  as  I  'm  free  to  say 
they  have  done  before  now,  —  I  say, 
"  That 's  my  experience,  sir,"  which  is 
all  I  've  got  to  say ;  brutal  men,  and 
about  as  fit  for  their  positions  as  if 
they  'd  been  imported  for  the  purpose 
a  little  indirect  from  Davy  Jones's 
Locker.  Though  they  do  say  that  the 
flogging  is  pretty  much  done  away  with 
in  these  days,  which  makes  a  differ- 
ence. 

Sometimes  on  a  sunshiny  afternoon, 
when  the  muddy  water  showed  a  little 
muddier  than  usual,  on  account  of  the 
clouds  being  the  color  of  silver,  and  all 
the  air  the  color  of  gold,  when  the  oily 
barrels  were  knocking  about  on  the 
wharves,  and  the  smells  were  strong 
from  the  fish-houses,  and  the  men 
shouted  and  the  mates  swore,  and  our 
baby  ran  about  deck  a-play  with  every- 
body, —  he  was  a  cunning  little  chap 
with  red  stockings  and  bare  knees, 
and  the  lads  took  quite  a  shine  to  him, 
—  "Jake,"  his  mother  would  say,  with 
a  little  sigh,  —  low,  so  that  the  captain 
never  heard,  —  "  think  if  it  was  him, 
gone  away  for  a  year  in  company  the 
like  of  that ! " 

Then  she  would  drop  her  shining 
needles,  and  call  the  little  fellow  back 
sharp,  and  catch  him  up  into  her  arms. 

Go  into  the  keeping-room  there, 
Tom,  and  ask  her  all  about  it.  Bless 
you !  she  remembers  those  days  at 
dock  better  than  I  do.  She  could  tell 
you  to  this  hour  the  color  of  my  shirt, 
and  how  long  my  hair  was,  and  what 
I  ate,  and  how  I  looked,  and  what  I 
said.  I  did  n't  generally  swear  so  thick 
when  she  was  about. 

Well ;  we  weighed,  along  the  last  of 
the  month,  in  pretty  good  spirits.  The 
Madonna  was  as  stanch  and  seaworthy 
as  any  eight-hundred-tonner  in  the  har- 
bor, if  she  was  clumsy  ;  we  turned  in, 
some  sixteen  of  us  or  thereabouts,  into 


626 


Kentucky 's  GJiost. 


[November, 


the  fo'castle,  —  a  jolly  set,  mostly  old 
messmates,  and  well  content  with  one 
another;  and  the  breeze  was  stiff  from 
the  west,  with  a  fair  sky. 

The  night  before  we  were  off,  Molly 
and  I  took  a  walk  upon  the  wharves 
after  supper.  I  carried  the  baby.  A 
boy,  sitting  on  some  boxes,  pulled  my 
sleeve  as  we  went  by,  and  asked  me, 
pointing  to  the  Madonna,  if  I  would  tell 
him  the  name  of  the  ship. 

"Find  out  for  yourself,''  said  I,  not 
over-pleased  to  be  interrupted. 

"  Don't  be  cross  to  him,"  says  Molly. 
The  baby  threw  a  kiss  at  the  boy,  and 
Molly  smiled  at  him  through  the  dark. 
I  don't  suppose  I  should  ever  have  re- 
membered the  lubber  from  that  day 
to  this,  except  that  I  liked  the  looks- 
of  Molly  smiling  at  him  through  the 
dark. 

My  wife  and  I  said  good  by  the  next 
morning  in  a  little  sheltered  place 
among  the  lumber  on  the  wharf;  she 
was  one  of  your  women  who  never  like 
to  do  their  crying  before  folks. 

She  climbed  on  the  pile  of  lumber 
and  sat  down,  a  little  flushed  and  quiv- 
ery,  to  watch  us  off.  I  remember  see- 
ing her  there  with  the  baby  till  we 
were  well  down  the  channel.  I  re- 
member noticing  the  bay  as  it  grew 
cleaner,  and  thinking  that  I  would 
break  off  swearing ;  and  I  remember 
cursing  Bob  Smart  like  a  pirate  within 
an  hour. 

The  breeze  held  steadier  than  we  'cl 
looked  for,  and  we  'd  made  a  good  off- 
ing and  discharged  the  pilot  by  nightfall. 
Mr.  Whitmarsh  —  he  was  the  mate  — 
was  aft  with  the  captain.  The  boys  were 
singing  a  little  ;  the  smell  of  the  coffee 
was  coming  up,  hot  and  homelike,  from 
the  galley.  I  was  up  in  the  maintop,  I 
forget  what  for,  when  all  at  once  there 
came  a  cry  and  a  shout ;  and,  when  I 
touched  deck,  I  saw  a  crowd  around 
the  fore-hatch. 

"  What 's  all  this  noise  for  ?  "  says 
Mr.  Whitmarsh,  coming  up  and  scowl- 
ing. 

"  A  stow-away,  sir !  A  boy  stowed 
away  !  "  said  Bob,  catching  the  officer's 
tone  quick  enough.  Bob  always  tested 


the  wind  well,  when  a  storm  was  brew- 
ing. He  jerked  the  poor  fellow  out  of 
the  hold,  and  pushed  him  along  to  the 
mate's  feet. 

I  say  "poor  fellow,"  and  you  'd  never 
wonder  why  if  you  'd  seen  as  much  of 
stowing  away  as  I  have. 

I  'd  as  lief  see  a  son  of  mine  in  a 
Carolina  slave-gang  as  to  see  him  lead 
the  life  of  a  stow-away.  What  with  the 
officers  from  feeling  that  they  've  been 
taken  in,  and  the  men,  who  catch  their 
cue  from  their  superiors,  and  the  spite 
of  the  lawful  boy  who  hired  in  the 
proper  way,  he  don't  have  what  you 
may  call  a  tender  time. 

This  chap  was  a  little  fellow,  slight 
for  his  years,  which  might  have  been 
fifteen,  I  take  it.  He  was  palish,  with 
a  jerk  of  thin  hair  on  his  forehead. 
He  was  hungry,  and  homesick,  and 
frightened.  He  looked  about  on  all 
our  faces,  and  then  he  cowered  a  lit- 
tle, and  lay  still  just  as  Bob  had  thrown 
him. 

"  We — ell,"  says  Whitmarsh,  very 
slow,  "  if  you  don't  jepent  your  bargain 
before  you  go  ashore,  my  fine  fellow, 

me,  if  I  'm  mate  of  the  Madonna  ! 

and  take  that  for  your  pains  !  " 

Upon  that  he  kicks  the  poor  little 
lubber  from  quarter-deck  to  bowsprit, 
or  nearly,  and  goes  down  to  his  supper. 
The  men  laugh  a  little,  then  they  whis- 
tle a  little,  then  they  finish  their  song 
quite  gay  and  well  acquainted,  with  the 
coffee  steaming  away  in  the  galley. 
Nobody  has  a  word  for  the  boy,  —  bless 
you,  no  ! 

I  '11  -  :nture  he  would  n't  have  had 
a  mouthful  that  night  if  it  had  not  been 
for  me  ;  and  I  can't  say  as  I  should 
have  bothered  myself  about  him,  if 
it  had  not  come  across  me  sudden, 
while  he  sat  there  rubbing  his  eyes 
quite  violent,  with  his  face  to  the 
west'ard  (the  sun  was  setting  reddish), 
that  I  had  seen  the  lad  before  ;  then  I 
remembered  walking  on  the  wharves, 
and  him  on  the  box,  and  Molly  saying 
softly  that  I  was  cross  to  him. 

Seeing  that  my  wife  had  smiled  at 
him,  and  my  baby  thrown  a  kiss  at 
him,  it  went  against  me,  you  see,  not  to 


1868.] 


Kentucky  s  Ghost. 


627 


look  after  the  little  rascal  a  bit  that 
night. 

"  But  you  've  got  no  business  here,  you 
know,"  said  I  ;  "  nobody  wants  you." 

"  I  wish  I  was  ashore  !  "  said  he,  — 
"  I  wish  I  was  ashore  !  " 

With  that  he  begins  to  rub  his  eyes 
so  very  violent  that  I  stopped.  There 
was  good  stuff  in  him  too ;  for  he  choked 
and  winked  at  me,  and  did  it  all  up  about 
the  sun  on  the  water  and  a  cold  in  the 
head  as  well  as  I  could  myself  just 
about. 

I  dopn't  know  whether  it  was  on  ac- 
count of  being  taken  a  little  notice  of 
that  night,  but  the  lad  always  kind  of 
hung  about  me  afterwards  ;  chased  me 
round  with  his  eyes  in  a  way  he  had, 
and  did  odd  jobs  for  me  without  the 
asking. 

One  night  before  the  first  week  was 
out,  he  hauled  alongside  of  me  on  the 
windlass.  I  was  trying  a  new  pipe 
(and  a  very  good  one,  too),  so  I  did  n't 
give  him  much  notice  for  a  while. 

"  You  did  this  job  up  shrewd,  Kent," 
said  I,  by  and  by ;  "  how  did  you  steer 
in  ?  "  —  for  it  did  not  often  happen  that 
the  Madonna  got  fairly  out  of  port  with 
a  boy  unbeknown  in  her  hold. 

"  Watch  was  drunk  ;  I  crawled  down 
ahind  the  whiskey.  It  was  hot,  you  bet, 
and  dark.  I  lay  and  thought  how  hun- 
gry I  was,"  says  he. 

"  Friends  at  home  ?  "  says  I. 

Upon  that  he  gives  me  a  ^nod,  very 
short,  and  gets  up  and  walks  off  whis- 
tling. 

The  first  Sunday  out,  that  chap 
did  n't  know  any  more  what  to  do  with 
himself  than  a  lobster  just  put  on  to 
boil.  Sunday  Js  cleaning  day  at  sea, 
you  know.  The  lads  washed  up,  and  sat 
round,  little  knots  of  them,  mending 
their  trousers.  Bob  got  out  his  cards. 
Ale  and  a  few  mates  took  it  comforta- 
ble under  the  topgallant  fo'castle  (I 
being  on  watch  below),  reeling  off  the 
stiffest  yarns  we  had  in  tow.  Kent 
looked  on  at  euchre  awhile,  then  lis- 
tened to  us  awhile,  then  walked  about 
oneasy. 

By  and  by  says  Bob,  "  Look  over 
there,  —  spry  !  "  and  there  was  Kent, 


sitting  curled  away  in  a  heap  under  the 
stern  of  the  long-boat.  He  had  a 
book.  Bob  crawls  behind  and  snatches 
it  up,  unbeknown,  out  of  his  hands  ; 
then  he  falls  to  laughing  as  if  he  would 
strangle,  and  gives  the  book  a  toss 
to  me.  It  was  a  bit  of  Testament, 
black  and  old.  There  was  writing  on 
the  yellow  leaf,  this  way  :  — 

"  Kentucky  Hodge. 

"  from  his  Affecshunate  mother 
who  prays,  For  you  evry  day,  Amen." 

The  boy  turned  fust  red,  then  white, 
and  straightened  up  quite  sudden,  but 
he  never  said  a  word,  only  sat  down 
again  and  let  us  laugh  it  out.  I  've  lost 
my  reckoning  if  he  ever  heard  the  last 
of  it.  He  told  me  one  day  how  he  came 
by  the  name,  but  I  forget  exactly. 
Something  about  an  old  fellow  —  uncle, 
I  believe  —  as  died  in  Kentucky,  and 
the  name  was  moniment-like,  you  see. 
He  used  to  seem  cut  up  a  bit  about  it 
at  first,  for  the  lads  took  to  it  famously ; 
but  he  got  used  to  it  in  a  week  or  t\vo, 
'and,  seeing  as  they  meant  him  no  un- 
kindness,  took  it  quite  cheery. 

One  other  thing  I  noticed  was  that 
he  never  had  the  book  about  after  that. 
He  fell  into  our  ways  next  Sunday- 
more  easy. 

They  don't  take  the  Bible  just  the 
way  you  would,  Tom,  —  as  a  general 
thing,  sailors  don't ;  though  I  will  say 
that  I  never  saw  the  man  at  sea  who 
did  n't  give  it  the  credit  of  being  an 
uncommon  good  yarn. 

But  I  tell  you,  Tom  Brown,  I  felt 
sorry  for  that  boy.  It 's  punishment 
bad  enough  for  a  little  scamp  like  him 
leaving  the  honest  shore,  and  folks  to 
home  that  were  a  bit  tender  of  him 
maybe,  to  rough  it  on  a  trader,  learning 
how  to  slush  down  a  back-stay,  or  tie 
reef-points  with  frozen  fingers  in  a 
snow-squall. 

But  that 's  not  the  worst  of  itr  by  no 
means.  If  ever  there  was  a  cold-blooded, 
cruel  man,  with  a  wicked  eye  and  a  fist 
like  a  mallet,  it  was  Job  Whitmarsh, 
taken  at  his  best.  And  I  believe,  of  all 
the  trips  I  've  taken,  him  being  mate  of 
the  Madonna,  Kentucky  found  him  at 


628 


Kentucky's  Ghost. 


[November, 


his  worst.  Bradley  —  that 's  the  sec- 
ond mate  —  was  none  too  gentle  in  his 
ways,  you  may  be  sure;  but  he  never 
held  a  candle  to  Mr.  Whitmarsh.  He 
took  a  spite  to  the  boy  from  the  first, 
and  he  kept  it  on  a  steady  strain  to  the 
last,  righ't  along,  just  about  so. 

I  've  seen  him  beat  that  boy  till  the 
blood  ran  down  in  little  pools  on  deck  ; 
then  send  him  up,  all  wet  and  red,  to 
clear  the  to'sail  halliards  ;  and  when, 
what  with  the  pain  and  faintness,  he 
dizzied  a  little,  and  clung  to  the  rat- 
lines, half  blind,  he  would  have  him 
down  and  flog  him  till  the  cap'n  in- 
terfered, —  which  would  happen  occa- 
sionally on  a  fair  day  when  he  had 
taken  just  enough  to  be  good-natured. 
He  used  to  rack  his  brains  for  the 
words  he  slung  at  the  boy  working 
quiet  enough  beside  him.  It  was  odd, 
now,  the  talk  he  would  get  off.  Bob 
Smart  could  n't  any  more  come  up  to 
it  than  I  could :  we  used  to  try  some- 
times, but  we  had  to  give  in  always. 
If  curses  had  been  a  marketable  article, . 
Whitmarsh  would  have  taken  out  his 
patent  and  made  his  fortune  by  invent- 
ing of  them,  new  and  ingenious.  Then 
he  used  to  kick  the  lad  down  the  fo'- 
castle  ladder ;  he  used  to  work  him,  sick 
or  well,  as  he  would  n't  have  worked  a 
dray-horse ;  he  used  to  chase  him  all 
about  deck  at  the  rope's  end  ;  he  used 
to  mast-head  him  for  hours  on  the 
stretch  ;  he  used  to  starve  him  out  in 
the  hold.  It  did  n't  come  in  my  line  to 
be  over-tender,  but  I  turned  sick  at 
heart,  Tom,  more  times  than  one,  look- 
ing on  helpless,  and  me  a  great  stout 
fellow. 

I  remember  now  —  don't  know  as 
I  've  thought  of  it  for  twenty  years  — 
a  thing  McCallum  said  one  night ; 
McCallum  was  Scotch,  —  an  old  fellow 
with  gray  hair ;  told  the  best  yarns  on 
the  fo'castle  always. 

"Mark  my  words,  shipmates,"  says 
he,  "  when  Job  Whitmarsh's  time  comes 
to  go  as  straight  to  hell  as  Judas,  that 
boy  will  bring  his  summons.  Dead  or 
alive,  that  boy  will  bring  his  sum- 
mons." 

One  day  I  recollect  especial  that  the 


lad  was  sick  with  fever  on  him,  and 
took  to  his  hammock.  Whitmarsh  drove 
him  on  deck,  and  ordered"  him  aloft. 
I  was  standing  near  by,  trimming  the 
spanker.  Kentucky  staggered  for'ard 
a  little  and  sat  down.  There  was  a 
rope's-end  there,  knotted  three  times. 
The  mate  struck  him. 

"  I  'm  very  weak,  sir,"  says  he. 

He  struck  him  again.  He  struck  him 
twice  more.  The  boy  fell  over  a  little, 
and  lay  where  he  fell. 

I  don't  know  what  ailed  me,  but  all 
of  a  sudden  I  seemed  to  be  lying  off 
Long  Wharf,  with  the  clouds  the  color 
of  silver,  and  the  air  the  color  of  gold, 
and  Molly  in  a  white  apron  with  her 
shining  needles,  and  the  baby  a-play  in 
his  red  stockings  about  the  deck. 

"  Think  if  it  was  him  !  "  says  she,  or 
she  seems  to  say,  —  "  think  if  it  was 


And  the  next  I  knew  I  'd  let  slip  my 
tongue  in  a  jiffy,  and  given  it  to  the 
mate  that  furious  and  onrespectful  as 
I  '11  wager  Whitmarsh  never  got  before. 
And  the  next  I  knew  after  that  they 
had  the  irons  on  me. 

"  Sorry  about  that,  eh  ?  "  said  he,  the 
day  before  they  took  'em  off. 

"  No,  sir,"  says  I.  And  I  never  was. 
Kentucky  never  forgot  that.  I  had 
helped  him  occasional  in  the  beginning, 

—  learned  him  how  to  veer  and  haul  a 
brace,  let  go  or  belay  a  sheet,  —  but  let 
him  alone,  generally  speaking,  and  went 
about  my  own  business.     That  week  in 
irons  I  really  believe  the  lad  never  for- 
got. 

One  time  —  it  was  on  a  Saturday 
night,  and  the  mate  had  been  oncom- 
mon  furious  that  week  —  Kentucky 
turned  on  him,  very  pale  and  slow  (I 
was  up  in  the  mizzen-top,  and  heard 
him  quite  distinct). 

"  Mr.  Whitmarsh,"  says  he,  —  "  Mr. 
Whitmarsh,"  —  he  draws  his  breath  in, 

—  "  Mr.  Whitmarsh,"  —  three  times,  — 
"you've  got  the  power  and  you  know 
it,  and  so  do  the  gentlemen  who  put 
you  here  ;   and  I  'm  only  a  stow-away 
boy,  and  things  are  all  in  a  tangle,  but 
you  Ulbe  sorry  yet  for  every  time  you  've 

laid  your  hands  on  me  !  " 


1 868.] 


Kentucky  s  Ghost. 


629 


He  had  n't  a  pleasant  look  about  the 
eyes  either,  when  he  said  it. 

Fact  was,  that  first  month  on  the 
Madonna  had  done  the  lad  no  good. 
He  had  a  surly,  sullen  way  with  him, 
some'at  like  what  I  've  seen  about  a 
chained  dog.  At  the  first,  his  talk  had 
been  clean  as  my  baby's,  and  he  would 
blush  like  any  girl  at  Bob  Smart's  sto- 
ries ;  but  he  got  used  to  Bob,  and 
pretty  good,  in  time,  at  small  swear- 
ing. 

I  don't  think  I  should  have  noticed 
it  so  much  if  it  had  not  been  for  seem- 
ing to  see  Molly,  and  the  sun,  and  the 
knitting-needles,  and  the  child  upon  the 
deck,  and  hearing  of  it  over,  "  Think 
if  it  was  hint  ! "  Sometimes  on  a 
Sunday  night  I  used  to  think  it  was 
a  pity.  Not  that  I  was  any  better 
than  the  rest,  except  so  far  as  the 
married  men  are  always  steadier.  Go 
through  any  crew  the  sea  over,  and  it 
is  the  lads  who  have  homes  of  their 
own  and  little  children  in  'em  as  keep 
the  straightest. 

Sometimes,  too,  I  used  to  take  a  fan- 
cy that  I  could  have  listened  to  a  word 
from  a  parson,  or  a  good  brisk  psalm- 
tune,  and  taken  it  in  very  good  part 
A  year  is  a  long  pull  for  twenty-frfe 
men  to  be  becalmed  with  each  other 
and  the  devil.  I  don't  set  up  to  be 
pious  myself,  but  I  'm  not  a  fool,  and 
I  know  that  if  we  'd  had  so  much  as 
one  officer  aboard  who  feared  God  and 
kept  his  commandments,  we  should 
have  been  the  better  men  for  it.  It 's 
very  much  with  religion  as  it  is  with 
cayenne  pepper, —  if  it's  there,  you 
know  it. 

If  you  had  your  ships  on  the  sea  by 
the  dozen,  you  'd  bethink  you  of  that. 
Bless  you,  Tom  !  if  you  were  in  Rome 
you  'd  do  as  the  Romans  do.  You  'd 
have  your  ledgers,  and  your  children, 
and  your  churches  and  Sunday  schools, 
and  freed  niggers,  and  'lections,  and 
what  not,  and  never  stop  to  think 
whether  the  lads  that  sailed  your  ships 
across  the  world  had  souls,  or  not  — 
and  be  a  good  sort  of  man  too.  That 's 
the  way  of  the  world.  Take  it  easy, 
Tom,  —  take  it  easy. 


Well,  things  went  along  just  about 
so  with  us  till  we  neared  the  Cape.  It 's 
not  a  pretty  place,  the  Cape,  on  a  win- 
ter's voyage.  I  can't  say  as  I  ever  was 
what  you  may  call  scar't  after  the  first 
time  rounding  it,  but  it 's  not  a  pretty 
place. 

I  don't  seem  to  remember  much 
about  Kent  along  there  till  there  come 
a  Friday  at  the  first  of  December.  It 
was  a  still  day,  with  a  little  haze,  like 
white  sand  sifted  across  a  sunbeam  on 
a  kitchen  table.  The  lad  was  quiet- 
like  all  day,  chasing  me  about  with  his 
eyes. 

"  Sick  ?  "  says  I. 

"  No,"  says  he. 

"  Whitmarsh  drunk  ? "  says  I. 

"  No,"  says  he. 

A  little  after  dark  I  was  lying  on  a 
coil  of  ropes,  napping  it.  The  boys 
were  having  the  Bay  of  Biscay  quite 
lively,  and  I  waked  up  on  the  jump  in 
the  choruses.  Kent  came  up  while 
they  were  telling 

"  How  she  lay 

On  that  day 
In  the  Bay  of  BISCAY  O  !  " 

He  was  not  singing.  He  sat  down 
beside  me,  and  first  I  thought  I  would 
n't  trouble  myself  about  him,  and  then 
I  thought  I  would. 

So  I  opens  one  eye  at  him  encour- 
aging. He  crawls  up  a  little  closer  to 
me.  It  was  rather  dark  where  we  sat, 
with  a  great  greenish  shadow  dropping 
from  the  mainsail.  The  wind  was  up 
a  little,  and  the  light  at  helm  looked 
flickery  and  red. 

"  Jake,"  says  he  all  at  once,  "  where  's 
your  mother  ?  " 

"In  —  heaven!"  says  I,  all  taken 
aback ;  and  if  ever  I  came  nigh  what 
you  might  call  a  little  disrespect  to 
your  mother  it  was  on  that  occasion, 
from  being  taken  so  aback. 

"  Oh  !  "  said  he.  "  Got  any  women- 
folks to  home  that  miss  you  ?  "  asks  he, 
by  and  by. 

Said  I,  "  Should  n't  wonder." 

After  that  he  sits  still  a  little  with 
his  elbows  on  his  knees  ;  then  he  speers 
at  me  sidewise  awhile  ;  then  said  he, 


630 


Kentucky  s  Ghost. 


[November, 


"I  s'pose  /'ve  got  a  mother  to  home. 
I  ran  away  from  her." 

This,  mind  you,  is  the  first  time  he 
has  ever  spoke  about  his  folks  since  he 
came  aboard. 

"  She  was  asleep  down  in  the  south 
chamber,"  says  he.  "I  got  out  the 
window.  There  was  one  white  shirt 
she  'd  made  for  meetin'  and  such.  I  've 
never  worn  it  out  here.  I  had  n't  the 
heart.  It  has  a  collar  and  some  cuffs, 
you  know.  She  had  a  headache  making 
of  it.  She  's  been  follering  me  round 
all  day,  a  sewing  on  that  shirt.  When 
I  come  in  she  would  look  up  bright- 
like  and  smiling.  Father 's  dead.  There 
ain't  anybody  but  me.  All  day  long 
she  's  been  follering  of  me  round." 

So  then  he  gets  up,  and  joins  the  lads, 
and  tries  to  sing  a  little  ;  but  he  comes 
back  very  still  and  sits  down.  We 
could  see  the  nickery  light  upon  the 
boys'  faces,  and  on  the  rigging,  and  on 
the  cap'n,  who  was  damning  the  bo'sen 
a  little  aft. 

"Jake,"  says  he,  quite  low,  "look 
here.  I  've  been  thinking.  Do  you 
reckon  there  's  a  chap  here — just  one, 
perhaps  —  who  's  said  his  prayers  since 
he  came  aboard  ?  " 

"Nofn  said  I,  quite  short:  for  I'd 
have  bet  my  head  on  it. 

I  can  remember,  as  if  it  was  this 
morning,  just  how  the  question  sounded, 
and  the  answer.  I  can't  seem  to  put 
it  into  words  how  it  came  all  over  me. 
The  wind  was  turning  brisk,  and  we  'd 
just  eased  her  with  a  few  reefs  ;  Bob 
Smart,  out  furling  the  flying  jib,  got 
soaked ;  me  and  the  boy  sitting  silent, 
were  spattered.  I  remember  watching 
the  curve  of  the  great  swells,  mahogany 
color,  with  the  tip  of  white,  and  think- 
ing how  like  it  was  to  a  big  creature 
hissing  and  foaming  at,the  mouth,  and 
thinking  all  at  once  something  about 
Him  holding  of  the  sea  in  a  balance, 
and  not  a  word,  bespoke  to  beg  his  favor 
respectful  since  we  weighed  our  anchor, 
and  the  cap'n  yonder  calling  on  Him 
just  that  minute  to  send  the  Madonna 
to  the  bottom,  if  the  bo'sen  had  n't  dis- 
obeyed his  orders  about  the  squaring 
of  the  after-yards. 


" '  From  his  AfFecshunate  mother  who 
prays,  For  you  evry  day,  Amen,'  "  whis- 
pers Kentucky,  presently,  very  soft. 
"  The  book  's  tore  up.  Mr.  Whitmarsh 
wadded  his  old  gun  with  it.  But  I 
remember." 

Then  said  he:  "It's  'most  bedtime 
to  home.  She  's  setting  in  a  little  rock- 
ing-chair, —  a  green  one.  There  's  a 
fire,  and  the  dog.  She  sets  all  by  her- 
self." 

Then  he  begins  again  :  "She  has  to 
bring  in  her  own  wood  now.  There  's 
a  gray  ribbon  on  her  cap.  When  she 
goes  to  meetin'  she  wears  a  gray  bun- 
net.  She 's  drawed  the  curtains  and 
the  door  is  locked.  But  she  thinks  I  '11 
be  coining  home  sorry  some  day,  —  I  'm 
sure  she  thinks  I  '11  be  coming  home 
sorry." 

Just  then  there  comes  the  order: 
"Port  watch  ahoy!  Tumble  up  there 
lively !  "  so  I  turns  out,  and  the  lad 
turns  in,  and  the  night  settles  down  a 
little  black,  and  my  hands  and  head 
are  full.  Next  day  it  blows  a  clean,  all 
but  a  bank  of  gray,  very  thin  and  still, 
—  about  the  size  of  that  cloud  you  see 
through  the  side  window,  Tom,  —  which 
lay  just  abeam  of  us. 
'  The  sea,  I  thought,  looked  like  a 
great  purple  pin-cushion,  with  a  rnast 
or  two  stuck  in  on  the  horizon  for  the 
pins.  "Jake's  poetry,"  the  boys  said 
that  was. 

By  noon  that  little  gray  bank  had 
grown  up  thick,  like  a  wall.  By  sun- 
down the  cap'n  let  his  liquor  alone, 
and  kept  the  deck.  By  night  we  were 
in  chop-seas,  with  a  very  ugly  wind. 

"Steer  small,  there!"  cries  Whit- 
marsh,  growing  hot  about  the  face,  —  for 
we  made  a  terribly  crooked  wake,  with 
a  broad  sheer,  and  the  old  hull  strained 
heavily,  —  "  steer  small  there,  I  tell  you  ! 
Mind  your  eye  now,  McCallum,  with 
your  foresail !  Furl  the  royals  !  Send 
down  the  royals !  Cheerily,  men ! 
Where  's  that  lubber  Kent  ?  Up  with 
you,  lively  now  !  " 

Kentucky  sprang  for'ard  at  the  or- 
der, then  stopped  short.  Anybody  as 
knows  a  royal  from  an  anchor  would  n't 
have  blamed  the  lad.  I  '11  take  oath 


1 868.] 


Kentucky  s  Ghost. 


to  't  it 's  no  play  for  an  old  tar,  stout 
and  full  in  size,  sending  down  the  royals 
in  a  gale  like  that ;  let  alone  a  boy  of 
fifteen  year  on  his  first  voyage. 

But  the  mate  takes  to  swearing  (it 
would  have  turned  a  parson  faint  to 
hear  him),  and  Kent  shoots  away  up,  — 
the  great  mast  swinging  like  a  pendu- 
lum to  and  fro,  and  the  reef-points 
snapping,  and  the  blocks  creaking,  and 
the  sails  flapping  to  that  extent  as 
you  would  n't  consider  possible  un- 
less you  'd  been  before  the  mast  your- 
self. It  reminded  me  of  evil  birds 
I  've  read  of,  that  stun  a  man  with 
their  wings  ;  strike  you  to  the  bottom, 
Tom,  before  you  could  say  Jack  Rob- 
inson. 

Kent  stuck  bravely  as  far  as  the 
cross-trees.  There  he  slipped  and  strug- 
gled'and  clung  in  the  dark  and  noise 
awhile,  then  comes  sliding  down  the 
back- stay. 

"  I  'm  not  afraid,  sir,"  says  he  ;  "but 
I  cannot  do  it." 

For  answer  Whitmarsh  takes  to  the 
rope's-end.  So  Kentucky  is  up  again, 
and  slips  and  struggles  and  clings 
again,  and  then  lays  down  again. 

At  this  the  men  begin  to  grumble  a 
little,  low. 

"Will  you  kill  the  lad?"  said  I.  I 
get  a  blow  for  my  pains,  that  sends  me 
off  my  feet  none  too  easy  ;  and  when  I 
rub  the  stars  out  of  my  eyes  the  boy 
is  up  again,  and  the  mate  behind  him 
with  the  rope.  Whitmarsh  stopped 
when  he  'd  gone  far  enough.  The 
lad  climbed  on.  Once  he  looked  back. 
He  never  opened  his  lips ;  he  just 
looked  back.  If  I  've  seen  him  once 
since,  in  my  thinking,  I  've  seen  him 
twenty  times,  —  up  in  the  shadow  of 
the  great  gray  wings,  a  looking  back. 

After  that  there  was  only  a  cry,  and 
a  splash,  and  the  Madonna  racing 
along  with  the  gale  twelve  knots.  If  it 
had  been  the  whole  crew  overboard, 
she  could  never  have  stopped  for  them 
that  night. 

"Well,"  said  the  cap'n,  "you've 
done  it  now." 

Whitmarsh  turns  his  back. 

By  and  by,  when  the  wind  fell,  and 


the  hurry  was  over,  and  I  had  the  time 
to  think  a  steady  thought,  being  in  the 
morning  watch,  I  seemed  to  see  the 
old  lady  in  the  gray  bunnet  setting  by 
the  fire.  And  the  dog.  And  the  green 
rocking-chair.  And  the  front  door,  with 
the  boy  walking  in  on  a  sunny  after- 
noon to  take  her  by  surprise. 

Then  I  remember  leaning  over  to 
look  down,  and  wondering  if  the  lad 
were  thinking  of  it  too,  and  what  had 
happened  to  him  now,  these  two  hours 
back,  and  just  about  where  he  was,  and 
how  he  liked  his  new  quarters,  and 
many  other  strange  and  curious  things. 

And  while  I  sat  there  thinking,  the 
Sunday-morning  stars  cut  through  the 
clouds,  and  the  solemn  Sunday-morn- 
ing light  began  to  break  upon  the 
sea. 

We  had  a  quiet  run  of  it,  after  that, 
into  port,  where  we  lay  about  a  couple 
of  months  or  so,  trading  off  for  a  fair 
stock  of  palm-oil,  ivory,  and  hides. 
The  days  were  hot  and  purple  and  still. 
We  had  n't  what  you  might  call  a  blow, 
if  I  recollect  accurate,  till  we  rounded 
the  Cape  again,  heading  for  home. 

We  were  rounding  that  Cape  again, 
heading  for  home,  when  that  happened 
which  you  may  believe  me  or  not,  as 
you  take  the  notion,  Tom  ;  though  why 
a  man  who  can  swallow  Daniel  and  the 
lion's  den,  or  take  down  t'other  chap 
who  lived  three  days  comfortable  into 
the  inside  of  a  whale,  should  make 
faces  at  what  I  've  got  to  tell  I  can't 
see. 

It  was  just  about  the  spot  that  we 
lost  the  boy  that  we  fell  upon  the  worst 
gale  of  the  trip.  It  struck  us  quite 
sudden.  Whitmarsh  was  a  little  high. 
He  was  n't  apt  to  be  drunk  in  a  gale, 
if  it  gave  him  warning  sufficient. 

Well,  you  see,  there  must  be  some- 
body to  furl  the  main-royal  again,  and 
he  pitched  onto  McCallum.  McCallum 
had  n't  his  beat  for  fighting  out  the 
royal  in  a  blow. 

So  he  piled  away  lively,  up  to  the 
to'-sail  yard.  There,  all  of  a  sudden, 
he  stopped.  Next  we  knew  he  was 
down  like  heat-lightning. 

His  face  had  gone  very  white. 


632 


Kentucky  s  Ghost. 


[November, 


"  What 's  to  pay  with  you  ?  "  roared 
Whitmarsh. 

Said  McCallum,  "  There  's  somebody 
up  there,  sir" 

Screamed  Whitmarsh,  "You're  gone 
an  idiot !  " 

Said  McCallum,  very  quiet  and  dis- 
tinct :  "  There  's  somebody  up  there, 
sir.  I  saw  him  quite  plain.  He  saw 
me.  I  called  up.  He  called  down ; 
says  he,  '  Don't  you  come  up  / '  and 
hang  me  if  I  '11  stir  a  step  for  you  or 
any  other  man  to-night !  " 

I  never  saw  the  face  of  any  man  alive 
go  the  turn  that  mate's  face  went.  If 
he  would  n't  have  relished  knocking 
the  Scotchman  dead  before  his  eyes, 
I  've  lost  my  guess.  Can't  say  what 
he  would  have  done  to  the  old  fellow, 
if  there  'd  been  any  time  to  lose. 

He'd  the  sense  left  to  see  there 
was  n't  overmuch,  so  he  orders  out 
Bob  Smart  direct. 

Bob  goes  up  steady,  with  a  quid  in 
his  cheek  and  a  cool  eye.  Half-way 
amid  to'-sail  and  to'-gallant  he  stops, 
and  down  he  comes,  spinning. 

"  Be  drowned  if  there  ain't ! "  said 
he.  "  He 's  sitting  Square  upon  the 
yard.  I  never  see  the  boy  Kentucky, 
if  he  is  n't  sitting  on  that  yard.  '  Don't 
you  come  -up  ! '  he  cries  out,  — '  don't 
yoii  come  up  /  '  ' 

"  Bob 's  drunk,  and  McCallum  's  a 
fool !  "  said  Jim  Welch,  standing  by. 
So  Welch  wolunteers  up,  and  takes 
Jalofife  with  him.  They  were  a  couple 
of  the  coolest  hands  aboard,  —  Welch 
and  Jaloife.  So  up  they  goes,  and 
down  they  comes  like  the  rest,  by  the 
back-stays,  by  the  run. 

"  He  beckoned  of  me  back  !  "  says 
Welch.  "  He  hollered  not  to  come  up  ! 
not  to  come  up  !  " 

After  that  there  was  n't  a  man  of  us 
would  stir  aloft,  not  for  love  nor  money. 

Well,  Whitmarsh  he  stamped,  and 
he  swore,  and  he  knocked  us  about 
furious ;  but  we  sat  and  looked  at 
one  another's  eyes,  and  never  stirred. 
Something  cold,  like  a  frost-bite,  seemed 
to  crawl  along  from  man  to  man,  look- 
ing into  one  another's  eyes. 

"  I  'II  shame  ye   all,  then,  for  a  set 


of  cowardly  lubbers  !  "  cries  the  mate  ; 
and  what  with  the  anger  and  the  drink 
he  was  as  good  as  his  word,  and  up  the 
ratlines  in  a  twinkle. 

In  a  flash  we  were  after  him,  —  he 
was  our  officer,  you  see,  and  we  felt 
ashamed,  —  me  at  the  head,  and -the 
lads  following  after. 

I  got  to  the  futtock  shrouds,  and 
there  I  stopped,  for  I  saw  him  my- 
self,—  a  palish  boy,  with  a  jerk  of  thin 
hair  on  his  forehead  ;  I  'd  have  known 
him  any  where  in  this  world  or  t'  other. 
I  saw  him  just  as  distinct  as  I  see  you, 
Tom  Brown,  sitting  on  that  yard  quite 
steady  with  the  royal  flapping  like  to 
flap  him  oft. 

I  reckon  I  've  had  as  much  experi- 
ence fore  and  aft,  in  the  course  of  fifteen 
years  aboard,  as  any  man  that  ever  tied 
a  reef-point  in  a  nor'easter  ;  but  I  never 
saw  a  sight  like  that,  not  before  nor 
since. 

I  won't  say  that  I  did  n't  wish  myself 
well  on  deck ;  but  I  will  say  that  I 
stuck  to  the  shrouds,  and  looked  on 
steady. 

Whitmarsh,  swearing  that  that  royal 

should  be  furled,  went  on  and  went  up. 

It  was  after  that  I  heard  the  voice. 

It  came  straight  from  the  figure  of  the 

boy  upon  the  upper  yard. 

But  this  time  it  says,  "  Come  up ! 
Come  up  /  "  And  then,  a  little  louder, 
"  Co7ne  ^lp  !  Come  up  !  Come  up  /  " 
So  he  goes  up,  and  next  I  knew  there 
was  a  cry,  —  and  next  a  splash, — and 
then  I  saw  the  royal  flapping  from  the 
empty  yard,  and  the  mate  was  gone, 
and  the  boy. 

Job  Whitmarsh  was  never  seen  again, 
alow  or  aloft,  that  night  or  ever  after. 

I  was  telling  the  tale  to  our  parson 
this  summer,  —  he  's  a  fair-minded  chap, 
the  parson,  in  spite  of  a  little  natural 
leaning  to  strawberries,  which  I  always 
take  in  very  good  part,  —  and  he  turned 
it  about  in  his  mind  some  time. 

"  If  it  was  the  boy,"  says  he,  —  "  and 
I  can't  say  as  I  see  any  reason  especial 
why  it  should  n't  have  been,  —  I  've  been 
wondering  what  his  spiritooal  condition 
was.  A  soul  in  hell,"  —  the  parson 
believes  in  hell,  I  take  it,  because  he 


1868.] 


Kentucky's  Ghost. 


'633 


can't  help  himself;  but  he  has  that 
solemn,  tender  way  of  preaching  it  as 
makes  you  feel  he  would  n't  have  so 
much  as  a  chicken  get  there  if  he  could 
help  it,  —  "a  lost  soul,"  says  the  par- 
son (I  don't  know  as  I  get  the  words 
exact),  —  "a  soul  that  has  gone  and 
been  and  got  there  of  its  own  free  will 
and  choosing  would  be  as  like  as  not 
to  haul  another  soul  alongside  if  he 
could.  Then  again,  if  the  mate's  time 
had  come,  you  see,  and  his  chances 
were  over,  why,  that 's  the  will  of  the 
Lord,  and  it's  hell  for  him  whichever 
side  of  death  he  is,  and  nobody's  fault 
but  hisn  ;  and  the  boy  might  be  in  the 
good  place,  and  do  the  errand  all  the 
same.  That's  just  about  it,  Brown," 
says  he.  "  A  man  goes  his  own  gait, 
and,  if  he  won't  go  to  heaven,  he  woift^ 
and  the  good  God  himself  can't  help  it. 
He  throws  the  shining  gates  all  open 
wide,  and  he  never  shut  them  on  any 
poor  fellow  as  would  have  entered  in, 
and  he  never,  never  will." 

Which  I  thought  was  sensible  of  the 
parson,  and  very  prettily  put. 

There  's  Molly  frying  flapjacks  now, 
and  flapjacks  won't  wait  for  no  man, 
you  know,  no  more  than  time  and  tide, 
else  I  should  have  talked  till  midnight, 
very  like,  to  tell  the  time  we  made  on  that 
trip  home,  and  how  green  the  harbor 
looked  a  sailing  up,  and  of  Molly  and 
the  baby  coming  down  to  meet  me  in  a 
little  boat  that  danced  about  (for  we 
cast  a  little  down  the  channel),  and  how 
she  climbed  up  a  laughing  and  a  crying 
all  to  once,  about  my  neck,  and  how 
the  boy  had  grown,  and  how  when  he 
ran  about  the  deck  (the  little  shaver 
had  his  first  pair  of  boots  on  that  very 
afternoon)  I  bethought  me  of  the  other 


time,  and  of  Molly's  words,  and  of  the 
lad  we  'd  left  behind  us  in  the  purple 
days. 

Just  as  we  were  hauling  up,  I  says 
to  my  wife  :  "  Who  's  that  old  lady 
setting  there  upon  the  lumber,  with  a 
gray  bunnet,  and  a  gray  ribbon  on  her 
cap  ?  " 

For  there  was  an  old  lady  there,  and 
I  saw  the  sun  all  about  her,  and  all  on 
the  blazing  yellow  boards,  and  I  grew 
a  little  dazed  and  dazzled. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Molly,  catching 
onto  me  a  little  close.  "  She  comes 
there  every  day.  They  say  she  sits 
and  watches  for  her  lad  as  ran  away." 

So  then  I  seemed  to  know,  as  well 
as  ever  I  knew  afterwards,  who  it  was. 
And  I  thought  of  the  dog.  And  the 
green  rocking-chair.  And  the  book 
that  Whitmarsh  wadded  his  old  gun 
with.  And  the  front  door,  with  the  boy 
a  walking  in. 

So  we  three  went  up  the  wharf, — 
Molly  and  the  baby  and  me,  —  and  sat 
down  beside  her  on  the  yellow  boards. 
I  can't  remember  rightly  what  I  said, 
but  I  remember  her  sitting  silent  in 
the  sunshine  till  I  had  told  her  all  there 
was  to  tell. 

"Dorft  cry  !  "  says  Molly,  when  I  got 
through,  —  which  it  was  the  more  sur- 
prising of  Molly,  considering  as  she 
was  doing  the  crying  all  to  herself. 
The  old  lady  never  cried,  you  see. 
She  sat  with  her  eyes  wide  open  under 
her  gray  bunnet,  and  her  lips  a  moving. 
After  a  while  I  made  it  out  what  it 
was  she  said  :  "  The  only  son  —  of  his 
mother  —  and  she  —  " 

By  and  by  she  gets  up,  and  goes  her 
ways,  and  Molly  and  I  walk  home  to- 
gether, with  our  little  boy  between  us. 


634 


Revieius  and  Literary  Notices. 


[November, 


REVIEWS    AND    LITERARY    NOTICES. 


If,  Yes,  and  Perhaps.  Four  Possibilities 
and  Six  Exaggerations,  with  some  Bits  of 
Fact.  By  EDWARD  E.  HALE.  Boston  : 
Ticknor  and  Fields. 

IT  is  one  of  the  sad  offices  of  criticism 
oftentimes  to  say  self-evident  things,  to 
discover  obvious  facts,  to  enforce  undis- 
puted opinions.  We  had  an  idea  of  refer- 
ring to  Mr.  Hale  as  a  most  charming  writer, 
with  a  gift  of  invention  so  original  that  it 
might  almost  be  pronounced  novel,  and 
a  verve  and  spirit  that  we  do  not  know 
exactly  where  to  match :  but  it  has  occurred 
to  us  that  this  can  scarcely  be  a  secret  to 
the  readers  of  the  Atlantic ;  and  we  own 
that  we  should  be  very  glad  to  let  his  little 
book  speak  for  itself,  except  that  we  do  not 
allow  any  one  but  the  Reviewer  to  repeat 
himself  in  these  pages,  from  which  Mr. 
Hale  has  taken  some  of  the  best  things  in 
the  present  volume.  Our  readers  need  only 
to  be  reminded  of  "  My  Double,  and  how  he 
undid  me,"  "  The  Man  without  a  Countr)'," 
"  The  Last  of  the  Florida,"  to  be  able  to 
form  a  just  notion  of  the  quality  of  this  col- 
lection, which  includes  papers  from  various 
sources,  and  of  such  remote  dates  as  1842, 
1851,  and  1852;  and  he  need  only  look 
over  the  earliest  of  these  —  "  The  South 
American  Editor"  —  in  order  to  see  how 
real  a  gift  is  Mr.  Hale's  extraordinary 
power  of  utilizing  the  improbable,  and 
of  turning  exaggeration  to  the  best  and 
pleasantest  account.  The  charm  in  his 
things  is  —  as  nearly  as  we  can  get  at  it  — 
that  the  characters,  in  no  matter  what  ab- 
surdity of  attitude  or  situation  they  find 
themselves,  always  act  in  the  most  probable 
manner ;  the  plot  is  as  bizarre  or  grotesque 
as  you  like,  but  the  people  are  all  true  to  na- 
ture, and  are  exactly  our  friends  and  neigh- 
bors, or  what  our  friends  and  neighbors 
would  be  if  they  were  a  little  livelier.  The 
Rev.  Frederick  Inghain  and  his  man  Den- 
nis, so  wildly  fantastic  in  their  relation  to 
each  other,  are  never  anything  but  New 
England  clergyman  and  Irishman  in  them- 
selves ;  Philip  Nolan,  amidst  all  the  sad 
impossibilities  of  his  fate,  was  so  veritable 
a  man,  that  many  have  claimed  to  know 
his  history  apart  from  Mr.  Hale's  narrative. 
You  have  granted  the  author's  preposter- 


ous premises  almost  before  he  asks  you, 
and  thereafter  he  has  you  quite  at  his  dis- 
posal ;  you  are  to  laugh  or  sigh  as  he  bids 
you,  and  not  to  concern  yourself  with  the 
probable  or  improbable.  Perhaps  his  pe- 
culiar gift  is  most  skilfully  employed  in  that 
lovely  love-story,  "The  Children  of  the 
Public,"  in  which  every  incident  appears 
the  most  likely  thing  that  could  have 
happened  —  in  the  circumstances.  Carter 
is  so  truly  and  thoroughly  an  honest-hearted 
young  adventurer,  come  to  New  York  to 
attend  the  distribution  of  Mr.  Burrham's 
cyclopaedias,  and  Fausta — cast  upon  his 
poverty  and  ignorance  by  the  theft  of  her 
trunk  and  all  her  money,  and  the  address  of 
the  lady  she  is  come  to  visit  —  is  so  sweetly 
and  naturally  trustful  of  him  and  fate,  that  it 
does  not  seem  in  the  least  strange  that 
they  should  dine  and  sup  together  for  six 
cents,  should  while  away  their  time  on  the 
streets,  in  hotel  parlors,  and  public  libraries 
till  night,  and  should  sleep  at  the  public 
charge,  —  she  in  a  church-pew,  and  he  in  a 
station-house,  —  or  should  next  day  both 
draw  prizes  in  Mr.  Burrham's  gift  enterprise, 
and  get  married  shortly.  You  do  not  per- 
ceive till  the  end  that  these  events  belong, 
perhaps,  to  the  range  of  fact,  but  not  to  that 
of  probability  ;  and  the  interest  of  the  pretty 
love-story  is  so  artfully  thrown  over  all, 
that  you  do  not  understand  at  first  what 
a  lesson  in  modern  civilization  you  have 
been  taking.  On  the  whole,  though  this 
paper  lacks  the  daring  and  delightful  hu- 
mor of  "  My  Double,  and  how  he  undid 
me,"  we  are  inclined  to  rank  it  first  among 
those  in  the  book,  which  is  rating  it  very 
high.  In  some  of  the  others,  the  concep- 
tion being  not  so  happy,  the  art  is  less,  and 
the  artifice  is  more  :  in  "  The  Skeleton  in 
the  Closet  "  the  construction  is  felt  almost 
unpleasantly,  —  even  the  humor  of  it  does 
not  save  it  from  being  a  little  scadente.  "  A 
Piece  of  Possible  History,"  in  which  Homer 
and  David  are  brought  together,  and  "  The 
Old  and  the  New,  Face  to  Face,"  in  which 
Paul  and  Seneca  are  confronted,  are  not 
strongly  wrought ;  but  "  Christmas  Waits 
in  Boston  "  is  a  very  charming  bit  of  cheer- 
ful and  ingenious  suggestion  and  inven- 
tion. 

Mr.  Hale,  indeed,  after  Dr.  Holmes,  is 


Revieivs  and  Literary  Notices. 


635 


the  writer  tiie  most  deeply  imbued  with 
local  colors  and  flavors.  His  experience, 
no  less  than  his  taste,  is  such  as  to  make 
him  know  Boston  character  to  the  core, 
and  his  people  are  nearly  always  Bostonian. 
It  is  quite  the  same  whether  they  live  in 
Richmond  or  Naguadavick  ;  and  this  pecu- 
liarity, of  which  the  author  is  doubtless  as 
perfectly  conscious  as  any  other,  enhances 
the  unique  and  delightful  ideality  of  all  the 
sketches. 


Familiar  Quotations:  being  an  Attempt  to 
Trace  to  their  Source  Passages  and 
Phrases  in  Common  Use.  By  JOHN 
BARTLETT.  Fifth  Edition.  Boston  :  Lit- 
tle, Brown,  &  Co. 

WE  think  this  book  may  be  accurately 
described  as  the  book  with  which  it  is  the 
easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  find  fault.  Ev- 
ery man  has  some  passage  of  some  author 
which,  from  long  repetition  and  frequent 
quotation,  he  has  come  to  consider  a  phrase 
in  common  use,  and  for  him  it  is  sufficient 
condemnation  of  Mr.  Bartlett's  work  not 
to  find  in  it  that  line  from  The  Columbiad, 
or  whatever.  Besides,  the  field  of  litera- 
ture being  so  vast,  it  might  well  happen 
that  phrases  really  in  common  use  have 
been  now  and  then  omitted  from  the  col- 
lection, which,  being  vainly  sought  there, 
appear  the  only  quotations  worth  remem- 
bering. We  confess  that  we  imagine  this 
case,  and  that  we  have  not  tried  to  think 
of  any  one  familiar  quotation  with  the  pur- 
pose of  convicting  Mr.  Bartlett  of  its  omis- 
sion. He  has  had  the  help  of  Mr.  Rezin 
A.  Wright  of  New  York,  in  editing  the 
present  edition,  and  has  greatly  enlarged 
it  since  the  last  issue  of  the  work  in  1863, 
through  the  researches  of  others  interested 
in  its  completeness.  He  and  his  assistants 
must  of  course  be  the  judges  of  the  degree 
of  use  in  which  a  quotation  becomes  famil- 
iar. Completeness,  which  in  this  compila- 
tion is  the  great  desideratum,  can  only  be 
attained  by  frequent  revision  and  addition; 
but  the  editors  of  the  book  might  do  much 
to  effect  it  by  inviting  contribution  from 
every  one  who  considers  himself  the  pro- 
prietor or  repository  of  a  familiar  quotation. 
A  good  deal  of  trash  would  thus  be  got 
together,  but  it  would  be  worth  going  over. 

In  the  meantime,  the  book  is  a  peculiarly 
entertaining  as  well  as  useful  one,  and  has 
much  of  the  strange  fascination  belonging 
to  unabridged  dictionaries,  which,  we  main- 


tain, are  more  agreeable  reading  than  most 
modern  romances  and  poems  constructed 
from  them.  If  there  is  a  certain  pleasant 
novelty  in  seeing  for  the  first  time  a  fa- 
miliar quotation  in  the  circumstances  where 
its  creator  placed  it,  there  is  also  something 
interesting  in  looking  on  a  famous  passage, 
hitherto  known  with  the  context,  as  a  quo- 
tation. It  is  a  very  trifling  enjoyment,  but 
it  is  well  not  to  reject  any  sort  of  small  de- 
light ;  and  the  pursuit  of  this  may  lead  one 
to  some  comparative  observation  of  the 
amount  of  quotation  from  different  authors 
in  Mr.  Bartlett's  ingenious  volume.  The 
passages  are  arranged  chronologically,  be- 
ginning with  Chaucer  and  ending  with 
Lowell,  and  including  familiar  quotations 
from  a  few  un-English  sources,  though 
these  are  exceptional.  Naturally,  Shake- 
speare has  the  largest  place,  —  a  hundred 
and  eighteen  pages  ;  next  to  him  is  Milton, 
then  Byron,  then  Pope,  then  Wordsworth, 
then  Dryden,  then  Cowper,  then  Goldsmith. 
Humanity  has  given  the  first  of  these  his 
great  vogue  in  parlance  ;  but  moods,  senti- 
ments, and  conditions  have  had  much  to 
do  with  the  familiarity  of  the  others  in  quo- 
tation, and  it  is  curious  to  find  Milton  and 
Wordsworth  just  holding  their  own  against 
Pope  and  Byron.  Cowper,  Goldsmith,  and 
Dryden  are  almost  equally  quoted,  though 
the  latter  is  probably  far  less  read ;  and 
Butler  has  furnished  many  weapons  to  those 
who  never  penetrated  to  his  armory  of  wit, 
—  or  museum  of  armor  as  it  has  now  well- 
nigh  become. 

Tennyson  is  first  among  quotation-bear- 
ing authors  of  ouv  own  time,  and  first  after 
him  is  Longfellow,  —  neither  being  quoted 
at  his  best.  We  suppose  it  was  in  despair 
of  representing  Charles  Dickens  with  any 
sort  of  adequacy  that  he  was  given  only  one 
page  in  this  book.  It  is  certain  that  he, 
more  than  any  living  author,  —  perhaps 
more  than  Shakespeare  himself,  —  has  sup- 
plied current  phrases  and  expressions.  He 
has,  indeed,  become  so  habitually  quoted, 
that  his  phraseology  has  modified  that  of 
the  whole  English-speaking  world,  and  his 
sayings  are  in  every  mouth ;  a  book  of 
"  Familiar  Quotations,"  conscious  and  un- 
conscious, could  be  gathered  from  his  ro- 
mances alone. 

The  usefulness  of  Mr.  Bartlett's  volume 
is  greatly  enhanced  by  the  very  complete 
index  of  subjects,  and  by  the  appendix,  con- 
taining proverbial  sayings  and  expressions, 
as  well  as  the  most-quoted  passages  from 
the  Bible  and  Prayer- Book. 


636 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[November, 


The  Ever-victorious  Army  :  a  History  of  the 
Chinese  Campaign  under  Lieutenant- Colo- 
nel Gordon,  and  of  the  Suppression  of  the 
Taiping Rebellion.  By  ANDREW  WILSON. 
Blackwood  and  Sons  :  Edinburgh.  1868. 

THE  Taiping  rebellion,  which  was  im- 
agined to  be  opening  China  to  Christianity, 
and  which  promised  at  one  time  to  revolu- 
tionize the  empire,  grew  out  of  the  contact 
with  foreigners  and  the  loss  of  Imperial 
prestige  by  collisions  with  England.  The 
distress  of  the  rebels  hurled  their  armies 
upon  the  neighborhood  of  the  European 
settlements,  and  compelled  the  English  and 
French  to  fence  them  out  from  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Shanghai  by  force  of  arms. 
Before  the  American  adventurer,  Ward,  had 
organized  the  little  army  which,  under  Gor- 
don, gave  the  finishing  stroke  to  the  civil 
war,  the  Taipings  had  proved  their  incapa- 
city to  hold  their  conquests,  or  to  substitute 
a  better  government  for  that  which  they 
would  overthrow.  Great  bands  of  maraud- 
ers had  swept  over  the  Flowery  Land, 
and  marked  their  progress  in  the  night 
by  the  glare  of  burning  villages,  in  the 
day  by  the  smoke  of  consuming  towns. 
When  the  pretender  died,  at  the  capture 
of  Nanking,  he  must  have  felt  that  he 
had  changed  busy  cities  into  heaps  of  ruin, 
fruitful  fields  into  utter  wilderness.  The 
success  of  the  Europeanized  army  led  by 
Colonel  Gordon,  after  the  fall  of  General 
Ward  at  the  capture  of  Tseki,  was  due  to 
its  compactness,  alertness,  and  enterprise, 
—  its  steamers  and  its  artillery, — its  taking 
the  initiative  everywhere,  —  and  the  intui- 
tive perception  of  its  commanding  officer. 
This  remarkable  man  was  no  adventurer, 
but  a  regular  officer  of  engineers,  perfectly 
calm,  thoroughly  in  earnest,  and  so  abso- 
lutely disinterested,  that  he  was  discharged 
at  his  own  request  from  the  service  poorer 
than  when  he  entered.  His  genius  multi- 
plied his  three  thousand  men  tenfold  with- 
out a  commissariat ;  under  a  scorching  sun, 
he  burst  through  vast  lines  of  fortification, 
utterly  routed  a  relieving  army  of  immense 
numbers,  forced  his  steamers  through  every 
impediment ;  and  displayed  such  gallantry 
to  the  resisting,  and  such  mercy  to  the  van- 
quished, such  neglect  of  personal  advan- 
tage, and  such  singular  regard  to  the  inter- 
ests of  the  Imperial  government,  that  the 
very  highest  honors  the  Chinese  can  bestow 
were  heaped  upon  him. 

No  doubt  this  Taiping  rebellion  has 
"worked  for  the  development  of  China,  and 


led  remotely  to  the  liberal  measures  by 
which  it  is  now  entering  into  commercial 
and  fraternal  relations  with  the  rest  of  the 
world.  It  is  a  sad  reality,  however,  that 
the  multiplication  of  free  ports  does  not 
affect  the  tea  question  favorably  at  first. 
Since  the  opening  of  the  Chinese  ports 
tea  has  deteriorated  in  quality  and  expanded 
in  price  ;  so  that  the  third  rates  fifteen  years 
ago  were  equal  to  the  first  quality  now. 
The  quantity  demanded  by  commerce  has 
doubled ;  the  old  trees  have  been  plucked 
too  freely,  and  the  same  kind  is  not  only 
one  half  dearer  than  ever  before,  but  is  raised 
by  the  intense  competition  to  a  higher  rate 
at  times  in  China  than  in  London.  Still, 
this  must  be  only  temporary ;  trade  inevi- 
tably finds  a  healthy  level;  and  increase  of 
international  intercourse  ameliorates  the 
condition  of  the  world  at  lame. 


The  Opium- Habit,  -with  Suggestions  as  to 
the  Remedy.  New  York :  Harper  and 
Brothers. 

NOTHING  from  this  book  appears  more 
certain  than  that  if  the  burnt  child  does 
dread  the  fire,  he  cannot  keep  out  of  it. 
It  is  the  unburnt  child  who  shuns  it ;  and 
reform  is  for  the  most  part  confined  to  those 
who  have  not  gone  astray.  In  other  words, 
the  chief,  if  not  the  sole  use  of  the  book, 
which  recounts  in  many  experiences,  and 
in  the  moving  language  of  its  victims,  the 
horrible  effects  of  the  opium  habit,  is  to 
terrify  from  its  formation,  not  to  persuade 
to  its  relinquishment.  Yet  even  here  the 
good  to  be  clone  is  of  limited  degree,  if  we 
are  to  believe,  as  the  compilation  teaches, 
that  in  most  if  not  in  all  cases  the  opium 
habit  is  formed  upon  the  physician's  pre- 
scription ;  that  the  drug  is  rarely  or  never 
taken  in  the  first  or  even  second  place 
for  the  delight  it  gives,  but  for  the  relief  it 
affords  from  intense  physical  pain.  The 
remedy  seems  to  lie  in  the  substitution  of 
some  other  alleviative  for  opium,  or  in  strict 
warning  from  the  physician  to  his  patient 
that  he  must  never  prescribe  opium  for  him- 
self. It  is  of  course  possible  that,  \vith  the 
habit  of  deceit  and  self-deceit  which  opium- 
eating  creates  in  its  victims,  they  romance 
the  beginning  of  their  ruin,  and  that  they 
take  the  drug  more  for  pleasure  than  they 
allow  in  their  confessions.  Southey  sus- 
pected this  of  Coleridge.  But  whatever  is 
the  cause  of  the  opium  habit,  the  effect  is 
ineffably  tragic,  no  doubt.  This  book,  where 


1 868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


637 


so  many  dreadful  facts  are  grouped,  is  to  be 
read  with  thrilling  nerves,  and  the  excite- 
ment is  not  to  be  allayed  even  by  Mr. 
Ludlow's  "What  shall  they  do  to  be 
saved  ? "  though  if  anything  could  soothe 
the  reader,  that  gentleman's  gift  of  making 
truth  appear  stronger  than  fiction  would  do 
it.  There  is  very  much  in  his  letter,  which 
ends  the  book,  sketching  the  outlines  of 
an  opium-cure  to  be  operated  in  an  opium- 
eater's  asylum,  which  must  strike  every  one 
as  very  sensible ;  but  every  one  is  not  a 
judge  of  this  part  of  the  business.  Inveter- 
ate opium-eaters  generally  cannot  be  cured  ; 
their  attempts  at  reformation  end  in  death, 
if  persevered  in  beyond  the  capacity  to 
resume  the  habit,  which  if  resumed  duly 
kills.  Among  the  cases  here  presented  at 
less  or  greater  length  there  is  one  "  Suc- 
cessful Attempt  to  abandon  Opium"  and 
one  "  Morphine  Habit  overcome."  In  the 
first,  the  patient  succeeded  in  breaking  the 
habit  by  gradual  reduction  of  his  potion  of 
laudanum,  after  De  Quincey's  method  ;  in 
the  second,  the  drug  seems  to  have  been 
abruptly  and  totally  relinquished.  But  in 
the  one  case,  the  writer  addresses  himself 
almost  entirely  to  those  who  have  only 
briefly  and  moderately  indulged  their  fatal 
appetite,  and,  in  giving  advice  for  their  cure, 
confesses  that  the  best  advice  is  never  to 
begin  the  habit ;  in  the  other  case,  the  cure 
is  of  but  two  months'  standing. 


John  Warcfs  Governess.  A  Novel.  By 
ANNIE  L.  MCGREGOR.  Philadelphia : 
J.  B.  Lippincott  &  Co. 

FROM  the  life  of  a  young  gentleman,  who 
marries  an  Italian  singer  of  great  beauty 
and  unsettled  principles,  and  survives  her 
elopement  and  death,  with  two  young  chil- 
dren and  a  poor  opinion  of  women,  no 
surprising  event  is  to  be  expected  by  the 
veteran  novel-reader,  and  one  understands 
almost  from  the  title-page  that  John  Ward's 
Governess  will  become  John  Ward's  second 
wife.  Incidents  and  most  characters  bear 
proof  of  evolution  from  inner  conscious- 
ness, rather  than  experience  of  the  world, 
in  this  little  book  ;  yet  we  see  how  it  could 
have  been  made  so  much  worse  than  it  is 
that  we  are  half  inclined  to  praise  it.  At 
least  one  character  is  almost  well  done,  — 
the  excellent,  tender-hearted,  loving,  over- 
anxious elderly  sister.  She  does  annoy 
and  bore  her  brother  in  a  natural  way  ; 
if  she  sometimes  also  bores  the  reader,  we 


must  concede  so  much  to  art,  and  suffer  in 
patience.  We  mean  to  say  something  bet- 
ter than  this,  namely,  that  the  character 
shows  a  real  feeling  for  human  nature,  and 
gives  us  the  hope  that  if  the  author  would 
turn  her  attention  to  human  nature  as  she 
sees  it  about  her,  and  eschew  it  as  she 
finds  it  in  fiction,  she  could  do  something, 
after  a  while,  that  we  should  all  read  with 
pleasure.  Even  in  this  book  there  are 
great  negative  merits  ;  the  people  are  all 
in  a  pretty  fair  state  of  physical  health ; 
none,  that  we  recollect,  has  any  unpleasant 
personal  blemish  or  defect;  and  we  are 
legitimately  asked  to  be  interested  in  the 
fortunes  of  men  and  women  whose  individ- 
uality is  not  eked  out  by  entire  social  disa- 
bility or  desperate  pecuniary  circumstances. 
This  is  a  great  step,  a  very  great  step,  in 
the  right  direction. 


Smoking  and  Drinking.     By  JAMES   PAR- 
TON.     Boston  :  Ticknor  and  Fields. 

MR.  PARTON,  who  always  carries  inter- 
est with  him,  has  here  the  help  of  facts 
which  carry  conviction  with  them.  We  do 
not  see  how  any  one  but  a  smoker  could 
hold  out  against  the  arguments  proving  the 
unremunerative  nature  of  his  habit ;  and 
teetotalers,  we  think,  must  own  that  wine- 
bibbing  is  entirely  bad,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  the  one  element  of  wine  which  makes 
it  wine  is  of  an  indeterminable  character, 
and  may  be  so  generous  and  wholesome  as 
to  counterbalance  all  its  other  evil  proper- 
ties. In  fact,  we  have  a  faint  hope  that 
these  admirable  essays  may  persuade  some 
user  of  alcohol  and  tobacco  to  abandon 
them  ;  or  if  not  that,  then  warn  those  whom 
it  is  not  too  late  to  warn  never  to  indulge 
in  these  harmful  pleasures.  But  it  is  a 
good  deal  to  hope  for  even  faintly.  Mr. 
Parton  does  not,  apparently,  hold  out  a 
strong  inducement  of  reform  to  a  wicked 
world  when  he  tells  it  that  its  bottle  "  en- 
ables us  to  violate  the  laws  of  nature  with- 
out immediate  suffering  and  speedy  destruc- 
tion." With  vantage-ground  like  this  given 
him,  it  would  seem  that  the  sinner  must  be 
greatly  tempted  to  continue  in  his  sin. 
Grant  a  misdoer  time,  and  eternity  is  always 
an  infinite  way  off.  Nevertheless,  we  like 
Mr.  Parton's  candid  fashion  of  treating  these 
matters,  which  brings  into  their  popular 
consideration  something  of  the  impartiality 
of  science.  The  world  is  too  old  to  be 
frightened  into  goodness  and  wisdom,  and 


638 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[November, 


must  be  approached  as  if  it  could  be  per- 
suaded to  give  up  what  would  probably  re- 
sult in  evil.  The  strongest  of  all  arguments 
against  slavery  was  that  it  was  in  spirit  com- 
patible with  all  possible  crimes. 

Even  if  what  Mr.  Parton  writes  did  not 
always  make  a  vivid  impression,  we  think 
the  readers  of  the  Atlantic  could  scarcely 
have  forgotten  the  three  essays,  "Does  it 
Pay  to  Smoke?"  "Will  the  Coming  Man 
drink  Wine  ?  "  and  "  Inebriate  Asylums  and 
a  Visit  to  One,"  which  form  this  volume. 
We  need  not  comment  upon  the  excellent 
manner  in  which  good  material  is  utilized 
in  them,  or  advert  again  to  their  author's 
well-known  gift  of  making  all  his  facts 
entertaining.  But  we  can  speak  of  the 
very  sensible  and  felicitous  Preface  to  their 
republication,  near  the  close  of  which  he 
strikes  the  key-note  of  all  successful  protest 
against  vice.  When  the  Devil  suggests 
that  perhaps  evil-doing  does  n't  hurt  much, 
it  is  the  triumphant  answer  of  reason,  that, 
if  you  refrain  from  a  possible  evil,  you  are 
not  only  absolutely  safe,  but  more  a  man 
through  your  self-denial.  "During  those 
seven  months,"  says  our  author  of  one  who 
had  given  up  tobacco  for  that  length  of 
time,  "  he  was  a  man.  He  could  claim  fel- 
lowship with  all  the  noble  millions  of  our 
race  who  have  waged  a  secret  warfare  with 

Desire  all  the  days  of  their  lives It 

is  surprising  what  a  new  interest  is  given  to 
life  by  denying  ourselves  one  vicious  indul- 
gence. What  luxury  so  luxurious  as  self- 
denial  !  .  .  .  .  The  cigar  and  bottle  are  often 
replaced  by  something  not  sensual." 


A  Personal  History  of  Ulysses  S.  Grant,  Il- 
lustrated by  Twenty-six  Engravings ; 
Eight  Fac*similes  of  Letters  from  Grant, 
Lincoln,  Sheridan,  Buckner,  Lee,  crv.,  &>c., 
and  Six  Maps.  With  a  Portrait  and 
Sketch  of  Schuyler  Colfax.  By  ALBERT 
D.  RICHARDSON,  Author  of"  Field,  Dun- 
geon, and  Escape,"  and  "  Beyond  the 
Mississippi."  Hartford :  American  Pub- 
lishing Company.  [Published  by  sub- 
scription.] 

WE  cannot  find,  from  an  examination  of 
Mr.  Richardson's  book,  that  a  Personal 
History  of  General  Grant  differs  from  most 
other  histories  of  him,  except  in  being  a 
great  deal  more  entertaining.  To  be  sure, 
there  is  an  effort  made  throughout  to  fix 
the  reader's  attention  upon  General  Grant's 
character  rather  than  his  performance  ;  but 


the  two  are  not  to  be  separated,  and  the 
only  perceptible  result  is  the  accumulation 
of  anecdote.  A  larger  proportion  of  the 
work  is  given  to  the  record  of  his  life  an- 
terior to  the  Rebellion  than  is  usual  in  bi- 
ographies of  our  matter-of-fact  hero ;  but 
he  is  not  more  studied  here  than  in  his 
subsequent  history.  In  fact,  we  get  no  fresh 
impressions  of  the  man  from  his  personal 
historian,  except  that  the  most  and  the 
worst  has  been  made  of  those  early  lapses 
from  sobriety,  of  which  we  hear  less  and  less 
now  every  day.  Commonly  Mr.  Richardson 
is  frank  enough  in  the  treatment  of  all  points 
in  Grant's  career,  and  we  cannot  suspect 
him  of  uncandor  when  he  describes  him  as 
peculiarly  susceptible  to  a  little  wine ;  but 
we  are  loath  to  be  reminded  in  that  way  of 
the  great  public  character  whose  innocent 
habits  rendered  him  such  an  easy  victim, 
and  we  prefer  to  believe  that  Grant's  tem- 
perance is  a  virtue,  —  that  he  may  once 
have  yielded  to  drink  as  other  men  do,  and 
reformed  as  other  men  do.  It  appears  to 
us  that  Lincoln  set  this  whole  affair  right  in 
the  answer  which  Mr.  Richardson  says 
he  made  to  a  "persistent  grumbler,"  de- 
manding Grant's  removal.  "  For  what  rea- 
son ?  "  asked  the  President,  "  Because  he 
drinks  so  much  whiskey."  "  Ah-  yes  !  " 
(thoughtfully).  "By  the  way,  can  you  tell 
me  where  he  gets  his  whiskey  ?  He  has  given 
us  about  all  our  successes  ;  and  if  his  whis- 
key does  it,  I  should  like  to  send  a  barrel 
of  the  same  brand  to  every  general  in  the 
field."  We  cheerfully  accept  Grant  upon 
this  method  of  valuation ;  and  if  the  habit 
of  taking  strong  waters  breeds  so  much  good 
sense,  energy,  modesty,  and  correct  princi- 
ple in  prospective  Presidents,  we  hope  the 
coming  man  of  the  people  will  always  drink 
wine  —  to  excess. 

A  very  interesting  part  of  Mr.  Richard- 
son's work  is  that  describing  General 
Grant's  boyhood,  and  the  state  of  society 
in  which  he  grew  up.  Here,  however,  the 
field  of  anecdote  has  been  pretty  well 
gleaned,  and  Mr.  Richardson  achieves  new 
effects  rather  by  the  carefulness  with  which. 
he  gives  circumstances  and  conditions  than 
with  novelty  of  material.  We  get  a  clear 
idea  of  Grant's  home-life,  and  the  local  in- 
fluences which  went  to  form  his  character. 
Among  the  latter,  a  lack  of  local  apprecia- 
tion was  doubtless  useful  to  him.  A  boy 
from  whom  not  much  is  expected  has  al- 
ready a  fair  start  in  the  world,  and  Grant 
always  had  the  assistance  of  a  good  deal  of 
neighborly  doubt.  His  first  advance  in  life 


1 868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


639 


gave  dissatisfaction  to  the  neighbors,  and 
when  it  became  known  that  he  was  ap- 
pointed to  West  Point,  one  of  them  said  to 
his  father  :  "  So  Hamer  has  made  Ulyss  a 
cadet?"  "Yes."  "I  am  astonished  that 
he  didn't  appoint  some  one  with  intellect 
enough  to  do  credit  to  the  district." 
Improving  snubs  have  attended  many 
steps  of  Grant's  life,  civil  and  military ; 
but  nothing  has  soured  him,  and  he  is  so 
far  from  •'  a  good  hater,"  that  he  probably 
cherishes  enmity  against  no  man  alive.  He 
is  in  fact  a  good  forgiver,  —  as  good  a  for- 
giver  as  Lincoln  himself,  who  could  have 
said  nothing  better  than  Grant  did  when 
the  insolent  Rebel  officers  at  Vicksburg 
failed  to  offer  him  a  chair,  during  the  visit 
he  made  them  after  their  surren:L.  :  "  Well, 
if  Pemberton  can  stand  it,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, I  can,"  Here  is  the  large 
allowance  for  human  nature  so  eminently 
characteristic  of  Lincoln  ;  and  in  some  of 
the  other  stories  Mr.  Richardson  gives 
there  are  touches  of  humor  which  remind 
us  of  Lincoln's  peculiar  pleasantry. 

At  Vicksburg,  "  a  young  Rebel  officer,  an 
aid  of  Bowen's,  was  brought  in  prisoner. 
He  rode  a  beautiful  horse,  with  a  quilted 
saddle  and  costly  trappings.  He  answered 
a  few  questions,  and  then  manifested  the 
assurance  of  his  class  :  — 

"  PRISONER.  —  *  General  Grant,  this  horse 
and  saddle  don't  belong  to  the  Confederate 
government,  but  are  my  private  property, 
presented  by  my  father.  I  should  be  glad 
if  I  might  retain  them.' 

"GRANT. — 'I  have  got  three  or  four 
horses,  which  are  also  my  private  property, 
meandering  about  the  Confederacy.  I  '11 
make  an  exchange  with  you.  We  '11  keep 
yours,  and  when  you  find  one  of  mine,  just 
take  it  in  his  place  ! '  " 

There  are  notices  of  nearly  all  of  Grant's 
associates  and  many  of  his  contemporaries 
in  this  personal  histopy,  and,  on  the  whole, 
it  might  have  been  called  a  history  of  the 
war  with  no  great  presumption.  Necessarily, 
perhaps,  in  making  a  book  for  strictly  popu- 
lar sale,  a  big  one  is  desirable,  and  bigness  is 
the  greatness  that  comes  of  "stuffing  out 
with  straw."  We  must  not  conceal  that 
the  present  work  is  considerably  padded, 
not  only  with  irrelevant  narrative,  but  with 
any  little  story  of  Frederick  the  Great,  or 
Napoleon,  or  Daniel  Webster,  or  anybody, 
or  any  little  quotation  that  happens  to  take 
Mr.  Richardson's  passing  fancy.  Yet  it  is 
an  entertaining  book ;  it  is  a  valuable  book 
in  so  far  as  the  writer  is  eye  and  ear  witness 


of  many  things  Grant  did  and  said,  and 
has  his  material  at  first-hand.  V/e  readily 
conceive  of  its  outliving  the  political  cam- 
paign. 


Modern  Women  and  "what  is  said  of  them. 
A  Reprint  of  a  Series  of  Articles  in  the 
Saturday  Review.  With  an  Introduc- 
tion by  MRS.  LUCIA  GILBERT  CALHOUN. 
New  York  :  J.  S.  Redfield. 

THE  general  impression  received  from 
these  varying  and  very  unequal  essays  is 
that  the  Girl  of  the  Period  is  entirely  worthy 
of  the  Critic  of  the  Period.  In  him  the  fine 
elements  of  satire  are  as  degenerate  as 
those  of  dressing  and  pleasing  in  her ;  ex- 
travagance, coarseness,  and  commonness 
characterize  them  both ;  and  if  the  girl  has 
taken  her  costume  and  manners  from  Anony- 
ma,  it  appears  that  the  critic  has  formed  his 
ideas  and  opinions  upon  the  same  authority. 
We  give  a  passage  from  a  paper  entitled 
"  Costume  and  its  Morals,"  which  is  offered 
as  a  sketch  of  fashionable  life,  and  which 
will  illustrate  our  meaning  very  well :  — 

"  A  white  or  spotted  veil  is  thrown  over 
the  visage,  in  order  that  the  adjuncts  that 
properly  belong  to  the  theatre  may  not  be 
immediately  detected  in  the  glare  of  day- 
light ;  and  thus,  with  diaphanous  tinted  face, 
large  painted  eyes,  and  stereotyped  smile, 
the  lady  goes  forth  looking  much  more 
as  if  she  had  stepped  out  of  the  green-room 
of  a  theatre,  or  from  a  Haymarket  saloon, 
than  from  an  English  home.  But  it  is  in 
evening  costume  that  our  women  have 
reached  the  minimum  of  dress  and  the 
maximum  of  brass.  We  remember  a  ven- 
erable old  lady  whose  ideas  of  decorum 
were  such,  that  in  her  speech  all  above  the 
foot  was  ankle,  and  all  below  the  chin 
was  chest ;  but  now  the  female  bosom  is 
less  the  subject  of  a  revelation  than  the  fea- 
ture of  an  exposition,  and  charms  that 
were  once  reserved  are  now  made  the  com- 
mon property  of  every  looker-on.  A  cos- 
tume which  has  been  described  as  consist- 
ing of  a  smock,  a  waistband,  and  a  frill ' 
seems  to  exceed  the  bounds  of  honest  lib- 
erality, and  resembles  most  perhaps  the 
attire  mentioned  by  Rabelais,  'nothing 
before  and  nothing  behind,  with  sleeves  of 
the  same.'  Not  very  long  ago  two  gentle- 
men were  standing  together  at  the  Opera. 
'  Did  you  ever  see  anything  like  that  ? ' 
inquired  one,  with  a  significant  glance,  di- 
recting the  eyes  of  his  companion  to  the 


640 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[November. 


uncovered  bust  of  a  lady  immediately 
below.  *  Not  since  I  was  weaned,'  was 
the  suggestive  reply.  We  are  not  aware 
whether  the  speaker  was  consciously  or 
unconsciously  reproducing  a  well-known 
archiepiscopal  mot.'" 

We  imagine  the  late  Miss  Menken,  if  she 
had  taken  to  satire  instead  of  serious  poetry, 
treating  the  same  subject  in  exactly  this 
manner,  —  a  little  more  decently,  perhaps  ; 
and  we  are  not  unjust  to  very  many  papers 
in  this  collection  in  offering  the  quoted  pas- 
sages as  characteristic.  It  is  not,  of  course, 
to  be  supposed  that  they  depict  any  but  the 
most  exceptional  phases  of  English  society; 
and  if  anything  is  to  be  argued  from  the 
notoriety  these  essays  from  the  Saturday 
Review  have  attained,  it  is  an  intellectual, 
not  a  moral  decay.  It  is  very  sad  to  reflect 
that  the  ideas  of  brilliancy  in  our  generation 
.are  derived  from  sarcasms  like  the  follow- 
ing :  — 

"  There  is  a  certain  melancholy  in  tracing 
further  the  career  of  the  Fading  Flower. 
We  long  to  arrest  it  at  each  of  these  pic- 
turesque stages,  as  we  long  to  arrest  the 
sunset  in  its  lovelier  moments  of  violet  and 
gold.  But  the  sunset  dies  into  the  gray  of 
eve,  and  woman  sets  with  the  same  fatal 
persistency.  The  evanescent  tints  fade  into 
the  gray.  Woman  becomes  hard,  angular, 
colorless.  Her  floating  sentiment,  so  grace- 
ful in  its  mobility,  curdles  into  opinions. 
Her  conversation,  so  charmingly  impalpa- 
ble, solidifies  into  discussion.  Her  charac- 
ter, like  her  face,  becomes  rigid  and  osseous. 
She  intrenches  herself  in  the  'ologies.  She 
works  pinafores  for  New-Zealanders  in  the 
May  Meetings,  and  appears  in  wondrous 
bonnets  at  the  Church  Congress.  She 
adores  Mr.  Kingsley  because  he  is  earnest, 
and  groans  over  the  triviality  of  the  litera- 
ture of  the  day.  She  takes  up  the  griev- 
ances of  her  sex,  and  badgers  the  puzzled 
overseer  who  has  omitted  to  place  her  name 
on  the  register.  She  pronounces  old  men 
fogies,  and  young  men  intolerable.  She 
throws  out  dark  hints  of  her  intention  to 
•compose  a  great  work  which  shall  settle 
everything.  Then  she  bursts  into  poetry, 
and  pens  poems  of  so  fiery  a  passion  that 
her  family  are  in  consternation  lest  she 


should  elope  with  the  half-pay  officer  who 
meets  her  by  moonlight  on  the  pier.  Then 
she  plunges  into  science,  and  cuts  her  hair 
short  to  be  in  proper  trim  for  Professor 
Huxley's  lectures." 

It  strikes  us  that  the  ideas  and  sarcasms 
here  are  of  about  equal  value  with  the 
Girl  of  the  Periods'  pinchbeck  gauds  and 
ornaments,  and  that  the  satirist  has  not  even 
the  poor  advantage  of  displaying  them  at 
first-hand.  We  have  all  seen  this  dreary, 
dreary  stuff  before ;  it  is  inexpressibly  cheap 
and  poor. 

We  have  already  hinted  a  distinction  be- 
tween the  two  classes  of  essays  in  this  book, 
which  are  apparently  by  several  hands. 
Thoss  studying  modern  women's  minds, 
as  "  Worrier's  Heroines,"  "  Interference," 
"  Plain  Girls,"  "  Ambitious  Minds,"  "  Pret- 
ty Preachers,"  etc.,  are  much  better  than  the 
pictures  of  women's  manners.  But  there  is 
throughout  the  book  an  air  of  brutality  and  of 
savage  excess  as  far  from  true  satire  as  from 
truth  ;  and  the  dull,  industrious  pounding  of 
denunciation  in  the  worse  papers,  unrelieved 
by  any  flash  of  humor  or  wit,  is  to  the  last 
degree  tedious. 


The  Story  of  the  Kearsarge  and  Alabama. 
San  Francisco  :  Henry  Payot  &  Co. 

THE  author,  who  has  been  induced  to 
publish  this  narrative  of  the  famous  combat 
between  the  Kearsarge  and  the  Alabama, 
by  the  want  that  existed  of  a  popular, 
detailed,  and  yet  concise  account  of  the 
affair,  may  congratulate  himself  on  having 
exactly  met  this  want.  We  have  read 
his  clear,  full,  brief  history  of  an  action  al- 
ready so  familiar  with  fresh  interest  and 
fresh  intelligence.  With  no  feeble-minded 
impulses  to  be  dramatic  or  picturesque,  he 
is  graphic  in  the  best  way,  and  brings  the 
whole  occurrence  before  his  reader  with 
the  simplicity  of  a  sensible  man,  and  the 
quie-t  power  of  an  artist.  •  We  think  we 
could  have  read  even  a  duller  narrative 
with  pleasure  in  the  exquisite  print  which 
the  publishers  have  given  his  little  book, 
and  which  is  noticeable  as  characteristic  of 
the  California  press. 


THE 


ATLANTIC    MONTHLY. 

A   Magazine  of  Literature,  Science,   Art, 

and  Politics. 


VOL.    XXII.  — DECEMBER,    1868.  — NO.    CXXXIV. 


OUR     PAINTERS. 


I. 


NOT  so  much  criticism  as  personal 
recollections  of  the  men  who  have 
"painted  and  passed  away,"  and  of 
some  who  are  still  working  out  the 
great  problem  of  life  among  us,  would 
seem  to  be  wanted  just  now. 

Let  us  begin,  therefore,  with  GIL- 
BERT STUART,  one  of  the  best  painters 
for  male  portraiture  since  the  days  of 
Titian,  Velasquez,  Rubens,  Vandyck, 
and  Rembrandt.  A  man  of  noble  type 
himself,  robust  and  hearty,  with  a 
large  frame,  and  the  bearing  of  one 
who  might  stand  before  kings,  all 
Stuart's  men  look  as  if  they  were  pre- 
destined statesmen,  or  had  sat  in  coun- 
cil, or  commanded  armies,  —  their  very 
countenances  being  a  biography,  and 
sometimes  a  history  of  their  day; 
while  his  women,  often  wanting  in  the 
grace  and  tenderness  we  look  for  in 
the  representations  of  Reynolds,  Gains- 
borough, and  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence 
or  Sully,  are  always  creatures  of  flesh 
and  blood,  —  like  Mrs.  Madison,  or 
Polly  Madison  as  they  still  persist  in 
calling  her,  —  though  somewhat  too 
strongly  individualized  perhaps  for 
female  portraiture. 


At  our  first  interview,  which  hap- 
pened nearly  fifty  years  ago,  when  Stu- 
art was  not  far  from  sixty-five,  this  fresh- 
looking,  old-fashioned,  large-hearted 
man,  reminding  you  constantly  of  Wash- 
ington himself,  and  General  Knox  or 
Greene,  or  perhaps  of  the  late  Mr.  Per- 
kins, —  Thomas  H.,  —  who  were  all  in 
their  look  and  bearing  rather  more 
English  than  American,  insisted  on 
my  emptying  a  tumbler  of  old  East 
Indian  Madeira,  which  he  poured  out 
from  a  half-gallon  ewer,  like  cider  or 
switchel  in  haying-time.  And  this  at 
an  early  hour  of  the  day,  when  cider 
itself  or  switchel  might  have  been 
too  much  for  a  youngster  like  me, 
brought  up,  if  not  on  bread  and  milk, 
at  least  on  the  plainest  of  wholesome 
food. 

At  first,  having  heard  much  of  his 
propensity  for  hoaxing,  I  could  hardly 
believe  him  when  he  threw  off  about 
half  a  tumblerful,  and,  smacking  his 
lips,  told  me  it  was  Madeira  which  had 
been  twice  round  the  Cape  ;  nor  did  he 
believe  me,  I  am  afraid,  when  I  told  him 
I  never  did  anything  of  the  sort,  for  he 
winked  at  me  as  much  as  to  say,  "  Can't 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congre>>,  in  the  year  1868,  by  TICKNOR  AND  FIELDS,  in  the  Clerk's  Office 

of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 
VOL.   XXII.  —  XO.    134.  41 


642 


Our  Painters. 


[December,, 


you  trust  me  ? "  and  then  hoped  for  a 
better  acquaintance. 

In  the  course  of  an  hour's  chat  that 
followed,  he  told  me  story  after  story  of 
himself,  some  of  which  are  well  worth 
repeating.  First,  he  tried  me  with  a 
pun,  which  he  had  let  off  in  a  high  wind, 
for  the  sake  of  saying  dc  gustibiis  non 
disputandum,  and  which  I  swallowed 
without  a  wry  face,  though  it  went  sad- 
ly against  my  stomach  ;  and  then  he 
launched  out  into  a  severe  though  pleas- 
ant criticism  upon  our  social  habits, 
our  Pilgrim  Fathers,  the  blue  laws,  and 
what  he  called  the  bigotry  and  fanati- 
cism of  the  day,  intermingled  with 
anecdotes  of  a  rather  startling  charac- 
ter, and  then  followed  some  of  his  own 
personal  experiences  over  the  bottle. 

At  Philadelphia  he  had  once  be- 
longed to  a  club  of  a  dozen  or  twenty 
good  fellows,  who  were  a  law  to  them- 
selves. Once  a  year  they  came  togeth- 
er, bringing  with  them  twelve  or  twenty 
bottles  apiece,  according  to  their  num- 
ber, every  drop  of  which  it  was  a  point 
of  honor  with  them  to  drink  off  before 
they  separated. 

At  one  of  these  gatherings,  —  the  very 
last,  I  believe,  —  a  large  hamper  was  set 
down  between  him  and  a  neighbor  who 
was  reckoned  a  prodigious  gourmet, 
and  from  whose  decision  about  wines 
and  vintages  there  was  no  appeal ;  and 
Stuart  was  urged,  with  a  sly  wink  and 
a  tap  on  the  elbow,  to  "  dip  in  " ;  his 
friend  assuring  him  in  a  whisper,  that 
a  certain  oddly  shaped  bottle,  which  he 
pointed  out,  contained  the  finest  claret 
he  had  met  with  for  years,  —  a  down- 
right purple  nectar,  indeed,  —  "  bottled 
velvet,"  a  compound  of  sunshine,  ripe- 
ness, and  aroma.  Others  of  the  com- 
pany who  sat  near  Stuart,  and  who 
had  been  favored  in  the  same  way,  nod- 
ded assent,  looked  mischievous,  and 
smacked  their  lips  with  decided  em- 
phasis in  confirmation. 

But  while  they  were  praising  it 
Stuart  stooped  down,  without  being 
observed,  and  drew  out  a  bottle  of 
another  shape,  with  a  different  seal, 
and  amused  himself  with  tasting  it, 
until  his  friend,  the  connoisseur,  hap- 


pening to  look  that  way,  told  him  he  had 
got  hold  of  the  wrong  article,  and  then 
went  on  to  say  that  he  had  lately 
bought  several  hampers  at  auction  at 
such  a  bargain  that  he  could  well  afford 
to  throw  away  the  doubtful  portion,  such 
as  Stuart  had  been  dabbling  with.  But 
being  a  very  obstinate  man,  as  every- 
body knew,  Stuart  persisted  until  he  had. 
nearly  finished  the  second  bottle,  when 
he  "  let  the  delicious  secret  out."  On 
being  asked  why  he  continued  drug- 
ging himself  with  that  detestable  stuff, 
when  he  had  a  bottle  of  the  finest 
claret  before  him,  he  said,  "  Simply 
because,  on  the  whole,  I  prefer  Bur- 
gundy." 

"Burgundy!  Burgundy!"  they  ex- 
claimed; "are  you  mad,  Stuart,  or  is 
this  only  another  of  your  jokes  ?  "  every 
man  catching  up  a  bottle,  and  pouring 
out  a  glass  for  himself,  as  the  tumult 
increased.  "Burgundy!  and  how  hap- 
pened you  to  know  that  it  was  Burgun- 
dy, Stuart  ?  " 

"By  tasting.  I  took  it  for  granted, 
from  the  shape  and  size  of  the  seal  and 
the  fashion  of  the  bottle  that  it  was 
something  out  of  the  common  way ; 
for,"  added  he,  "  the  seals  were  empha- 
sised, and  had  not  been  tampered  with." 
Of  course  there  was  nothing  more  to 
be  said  after  the  verification  that  fol- 
lowed. 

At  another  time  he  was  dining  with 
Gouverneur  Morris,  after  that  gentle- 
man's return  from  Portugal.  There 
was  a  large  party  of  handsome  women 
and  fashionable  men,  who  occupied  high 
positions  in  Church  or.State,  and  carried 
their  honors  bravely.  The  conversa- 
tion was  chiefly  about  wines,  and  es- 
pecially port  wine  and  vintages;  their 
host  maintaining,  as  well  he  might,  that 
in  this  country  we  never  saw  any  real 
port  wine  ;  and,  among  other  pleas- 
ant things,  he  averred  that  more  port 
wine,  or  what  passed  for  port  wine, 
was  drank  in  London  than  was  ever 
made  in  Portugal ;  that  even  there  the 
genuine  article  was  never  to  be  had  for 
love  or  money,  except  under  peculiar 
circumstances,  —  even  the  "old  port  "  of 
the  London  docks  being,  at  best,  but  a. 


1 868.] 


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643 


decoction  of  logwood  and  elder-berries 
or  grape-cuttings  ;  and  that,  in  fact, 
the  real  Simon  Pure  was  so  utterly 
unlike  what  passes  for  port  wine  here 
and  elsewhere,  that  our  best  judges 
would  call  it  insipid,  having  neither 
body  nor  soul.  Nevertheless,  he  had 
managed  while  in  Portugal  to  make  an 
arrangement  whereby  he  could  obtain  a 
quarter-pipe  now  and  then  for  himself 
or  a  friend  as  a  special  favor,  the  gov- 
ernment itself  being  afraid  to  allow  the 
exportation  of  unadulterated  wines,  lest 
they  should  injure  the  sale  of  the  rest. 

"  And  now,"  said  he,  "  to  show  you 
all  how  you  have  been  abused  in  this 
matter,  I  must  beg  of  you  to  try  a  glass 
of  what  /  call  port  wine,  —  old  port.  — 
Here,  George  "  (to  a  waiter  behind  his 
chair),  "bring  us  up, — let  me  see,"  — 
and  here  he  glanced  up  and  down  the 
long  table,  as  if  counting  noses,  — 
"  bring  us  up  three  bottles,  not  more,  — 
I  cannot  afford  more,  till  my  stock  is 
replenished,  —  of  the  vintage  I  have 
been  telling  you  of,  —  and  give  us  clean 
glasses." 

The  waiter  soon  appeared  with  just 
three  bottles,  fat  and  chunky,  and 
covered  with  dust  and  cobwebs.  The 
clean  glasses  were  rather  undersized,  it 
must  be  acknowledged  ;  but  they  were 
filled,  and  held  up  to  the  light,  and  looked 
through,  and  then  there  was  a  deal  of 
talk  about  the  aroma,  —  the  bouquet,  — 
and  what  they  called  the  body,  as  if 
it  were  condensed  sunshine,  flashing 
through  a  live  grapery.  Stuart  was 
just  raising  the  glass  to  his  lips,  when 
he  caught  a  whiff  of  the  aroma,  and  set 
it  clown,  without  tasting  it,  and  without 
being  observed.  The  talk  went  on.  The 
ladies  began  to  chirp  and  chatter  like 
sparrows  on  the  house-tops,  —  I  give 
Stuart's  language,  not  my  own,  —  and 
the  sparkle  of  their  eyes,  and  the  un- 
common freshness  of  their  lips,  by  the 
time  they  had  managed  the  second  tflass, 
only  served  to  strengthen  his  cxnvic- 
tions. 

At  last,  after  collecting  the  suffrages, 
which  were  not  only  unanimous  but 
enthusiastic,  the  host  turned  to  Stuart, 
and,  seeing  a  full  glass  before  him, 


asked  what  he  had  to  say  for  himself, 
and  whether  he  had  ever  met  with  such 
old  port  in  all  his  life  before.  "  Never  !  " 
said  Stuart ;  and  then  the  host  nodded 
and  smiled,  and  looked  about  with  a 
triumphant  air,  as  much  as  to  say,  What 
did  I  tell  you  ?  "  Never !  "  but  still 
there  was  something  in  the  look  or 
tone  of  his  guest  which  puzzled  Mr. 
Morris,  and  seemed  to  call  for  ex- 
planation. "  Come,  come,  Stuart !  " 
said  he,  "  none  of  your  tricks  upon 
travellers.  We  want  your  honest  opin- 
ion, for  we  all  know  you  are  the  best 
judge  of  wines  to  be  found  on  this  side 
of  the  water  ;  and  therefore  I  ask  you 
once  more,  in  all  seriousness,  if  you 
ever  drank  such  old  port  in  all  your 
life,  either  at  home  or  .abroad,  'pon 
your  honor,  now  ?  " 

"Never"  said  Stuart,  —  " never!" 
And  then  there  was  a  dead  silence,  and 
the  host  himself  began  to  look  uneasy, 
not  knowing  how  to  understand  what  he 
believed  to  be  one  of  Stuart's  jokes ; 
and  then  Stuart  added  in  his  own  pecu- 
liar way  :  "  You  must  excuse  me,  my 
friend,  and  you,  ladies  and  gentlemen ; 
but  I  assure  you  that  what  you  have 
all  been  taking  for  old  port  wine  is  not 
v/ine  at  all:" 

"  Not  wine  at  all,"  exclaimed  Moms, 
almost  jumping  out  of  his  chair,  — 
"  why  what  the  —  plague  —  is  it  then  ?  " 

"  I  should  call  it  —  excuse  me,"  —  tak- 
ing a  sniff,  as  he  passed  it  back  and 
forth  before  his  nose,  —  "I  should  call 
it  cherry  bounce  !  " 

For  a  moment  the  host  appeared 
thunder-struck,  wellnigh  speechless 
with  amazement ;  but  then,  as  if  sud- 
denly recollecting  himself,  his  counte- 
nance underwent  a  change,  and,  calling 
the  waiter,  he  said,  "  George,  you 
scoundrel ! ''  in  a  sort  of  stage  \\\\. 
that  could  be  heard  all  over  the  i 
—  •'  George,  tell  me  where  you  found 
these  bottles."  The  poor  fellow  trem- 
bled and  shock  ;  but  after  a  few  words 
of  explanation,  Morris  threw  himself 
back  in  his  chair,  and  laughed  and 
laughed  until  it  seemed  as  if  he  would 
never  stop  ;  and  it  turned  out  that  this 
port  wine,  so  carefully  selected  by  him 


644 


Our  Painters. 


[December, 


in  Oporto,  and  sent  home  years  before, 
as  he  thought,  was  indeed  nothing  but 
cherry  bounce,  which  had  been  put  up 
and  set  aside  for  family  use  on  special 
occasions  long  before  he  went  abroad, 
till  it  was  entirely  forgotten. 

Other  conversation  followed  between 
us,  about  West  and  Trumbull,  and  about 
Washington  and  his  wife,  whose  por- 
traits were  leaning  against  the  wall. 
They  were  the  originals  from  which  he 
had  painted  all  the  copies  he  had  fur- 
nished to  the  Marquis  of  Lansdown, 
Mr.  Coke  of  Norfolk,  the  great  com- 
moner of  our  day,  and  others  over  sea. 
They  were  so  unnaturally  fresh,  that,  if 
he  had  not  told  me  otherwise,  I  should 
have  supposed  they  had  been  painted 
within  a  year  or  two  at  furthest.  He 
talked  freely  of  Washington,  of  his  large 
features  and  stately  bearing,  and  of  the 
signs  he  saw,  in  the  massive  jaw,  the 
wide  nostrils,  and  large  eye-sockets, 
that  he  was  a  man  of  almost  ungovern- 
able passions  and  indomitable  will,  — 
such  as  would  carry  him  not  only  into, 
but  out  of,  many  a  terrible  crisis,  like 
that  when  he  headed  his  troops,  after  the 
disastrous  battle  of  Brooklyn  Heights, 
and  would  have  led  them  against  the 
British  at  Kipp's  Bay,  if  they  would 
have  followed  him,  and  when  he  held 
on  his  way  with  a  loosened  rein,  cut- 
ting at  the  fugitives  right  and  left  as 
they  hurried  past,  and  snapping  his  pis- 
tols at  the  foremost,  and  would  have 
been  taken  prisoner  but  for  one  of  the 
faithful  few  about  him,  who  seized  the 
bridle  and  turned  him  back  ;  or  like 
that  where,  after  the  battle  of  Trenton, 
he  came  unexpectedly  upon  a  body  of 
Hessians,  and  leaped  his  horse  between 
them  and  his  own  troops,  and  received 
the  fire  of  both,  like  General  Scott  at 
Lundy's  Lane  ;  or  like  that  where  he 
crossed  the  North  River  in  an  open  boat 
with  only  two  or  three  officers,  and  act- 
ually landed  on  the  other  side,  while 
the  British,  who  had  carried  Fort 
Washington  by  assault,  were  bayonet- 
ing our  poor  fellows  without  mercy. 
Washington  could  not  bear  this,  and 
for  a  time  he  thought  his  personal  ap- 
pearance on  the  ground  might  change 


the  face*  of  affairs.  It  was  a  terrible 
rashness,  though  generous  and  heroic, 
and  more  like  Napoleon  at  the  bridge 
of  Lodi  than  like  George  Washington. 

—  WTe   had    no    phrenologists   at   this 
time,  or  Stuart  would  have  been  a  pro- 
fessor of  that  science,  —  for  science  it 
certainly  is  :    he    believed  in  Lavater, 
or  at  least  in   the   leading  principles 
of  physiognomy. 

Let  us  now  call  up  another,  who, 
after  a  long  life  spent  in  the  service  of 
sincere  and  high  art,  has  gone  to  his 
rest,  —  REMBRANDT  PEALE.  Of  him, 
notwithstanding  his  labors  and  success 
in  historical  painting,  it  must  be  ac- 
knowledged that  he  failed  in  portrait- 
ure :  his  portrait  of  Charles  Matthews, 
the  comedian,  was  almost  a  likeness  of 
the  great  William  Pinkney ;  and  his 
portrait  of  Washington,  though  a  bet- 
ter likeness  of  the  man  himself  than 
Stuart's,  if  we  may  trust  Chief  Justice 
Marshall  and  others  among  his  con- 
temporaries, yet  wanted  that  which 
gives  the  greatest  value  to  a  likeness,  — 
individuality,  inwardness,  or  glimpses 
of  the  inner  man,  a  subdued  though  im- 
pressive ideality ;  a  grandeur,  not  of 
the  stage,  nor  the  studio,  but  of  the 
audience -chamber,  the  battle-field,  or 
the  closet. 

Truthfulness  we  should  have,  or  the 
likeness  vanishes  ;  but  with  this  truth- 
fulness we  want  something  more  than 
the  every-day  or  even  the  average  ex- 
pression :  we  want  the  acknowledged 
capabilities,  and  even  the  possibilities, 
of  the  original  either  demonstrated  or 
at  least  clearly  indicated.  We  are  to 
choose  between  the  countenance  or  ex- 
pression that  everybody  is  familiar  with, 

—  a  business-face   or  a  street-face, — 
and  that  which  is  never  seen  but  on 
great  occasions,   and  by  the   few,   in- 
stead of  the  many,  when  all  the  hidden 
or  hoarded  characteristics  of  the  man 
break  forth  in  a  tempest  of  eloquence, 
perhaps,  or  self-assertion,  or  it  may  be 
in  a  gush  of  unspeakable   tenderness. 
The  great  multitude  who  have  seen  the 
original   year  after  year   in   his   daily 
walk  and  conversation  are  acquainted 
only  with  the  outer  man,  the  husk  or 


1 868.] 


Our  Painters. 


645 


shell,  and  often  cry  out  before  a  likeness 
which  the  wife  or  a  dear  friend  of  the 
original,  who  remembers  him  in  the 
hour  of  inspiration,  when  he  may  have 
seemed  almost  a  disembodied  transfig- 
uration of  himself,  would  not  bear  pa- 
tiently with  for  a  moment. 

That  everybody  recognizes  the  like- 
ness at  a  glance,  that  comparative 
strangers  are  delighted  with  it,  is  no 
evidence  that  a  portrait  is  what  it 
should  be.  Ask  those  who  are  not 
comparative  strangers,  and  hear  what 
they  have  to  say,  before  you  make  up 
your  mind. 

Stuart's  Washington,  though  untruth- 
ful, is  grand,  simple,  and  satisfying  as  a 
revelation.  Peale's,  though  truthful  in 
every  feature  and  lineament  —  a  fac- 
simile indeed  —  so  far  as  the  distin- 
guishing peculiarities  and  every-day 
expression  are  concerned,  is  so  unsat- 
isfactory that  you  cannot  help  feeling 
uncomfortable  on  account  of  the  re- 
semblance. Stuart's  Washington  is  a 
downright  American ;  Peale's,  a  French- 
man in  ruffles  and  powder,  elaborated 
for  the  occasion,  and  painted  —  like  a 
Frenchwoman  —  to  kill. 

Undoubtedly,  if  Washington  himself 
should  reappear  to-morrow,  and  stand 
side  by  side  with  Stuart's  picture,  he 
would  be  called  an  impostor;  and  yet 
we  cling  to  the  magnificent  shadow, 
and  let  the  substance  go,  willing  that 
Stuart  himself  should  go  down  to  after 
ages,  instead  of  Washington. 

As  an  historical  painter  Peale  has 
never  had  justice  done  him,  and  one 
cannot  help  wishing  he  had  been  al- 
lowed to  finish  the  "  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,"  where  the  Saviour  was  repre- 
sented sitting,  as  he  ought  always  to 
be,  when  preaching  to  the  multitude  ; 
but  he  never  got  beyond  the  composi- 
tion, grouping,  and  outline  drawing,  — 
which,  by  the  way,  was  worthy  of  West 
himself,  and  smacked  of  the  old  mas- 
ters, —  for  want  of  reasonable  encour- 
agement. The  reception  his  "  Court  of 
Death  "  met  with,  after  the  first  twelve- 
month or  so,  and  the  embarrassments 
and  cares  of  a  large  museum  in  Balti- 
more, and  his  costly  experiments  with 


gas,  which  he  was  the  first  to  introduce 
to  our  people,  so  completely  discour- 
aged him,  that,  after  trying  New  York 
and  Boston,  he  betook  himself  to  Phila- 
delphia, where  of  course,  in  due  time,  he 
was  gathered  to  his  fathers  —  and  for- 
gotten, simply  because  Benjamin  West 

—  or  Sir  Benjamin  West  as  they  love 
to  call  him  there,  though  he  was  never 
knighted  —  was  their  only  standard. 

My  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Peale  be- 
gan oddly  enough.  I  had  been  scrib- 
bling in  the  papers  about  his  gallery, 
and  criticising  some  of  the  pictures, 
from  sheer  instinct  and  without  any 
knowledge  of  painting.  Among  these 
I  remember  a  portrait  of  Napoleon, 
painted  by  Peale  one  day  when  the 
Emperor  sat  hour  after  hour  without 
moving,  to  receive  a  procession  of  dep- 
uties in  the  Champ  de  Mars.  It  was 
then  believed  that  he  had  taken  lessons 
of  Talma  for  the  occasion  ;  but,  however 
that  may  be,  he  sat  as  if  cast  in  bronze, 

—  the  enthroned  Mysteries,  while  prin- 
cipalities and  powers  passed  in  review 
before  him,  —  the  shadows  of  coming 
empire,  crowned  and  sceptred  Phantoms 
on  their  way  to   Moscow.     The  occa- 
sion was  eminently  favorable,  and  the 
portrait,   although    wholly  unlike    any 
other  I  ever  saw,  especially  about  the 
lower  part  of  the  face,  with  the  ponderous 
jaw  and  pallid  complexion,  was  said  to 
be  the  best  likeness  of  that  wonderful 
man  ever  painted,  in  two  or  three  par- 
ticulars, and  especially  in  the  parts  I 
have   mentioned.     Such,  at  least,  was 
the  testimony  of  Gerard,  Lefevre,  and 
two  or  three  more,  who  had  been  tried 
by  his  Imperial   Majesty.     It  was  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  portraits  I  ever 
saw,  —  pale,   earnest,   and    thoughtful, 
with  a  mixture  of  sadness  and  solem- 
nity, such  as  you  would   expect  from 
one  who  could  see  far  into  the  future. 
The  general   contour  was   not  obtru- 
sively classical,   as   if  modelled   for  a 
Roman  bust  or  a  cameo  ;  and  the  com- 
plexion,   though    strongly  tinted,   was 
something  between  the  cadaverous  and 
the  swarthy  ;  and  altogether  as  unlike 
anything   I    ever  saw  that  passed  for 
Napoleon,  as  the  portrait  of  Byron  by 


646 


Our  Painters. 


[December, 


West  the  Kentuckian  was  unlike  all 
that  you  ever  see  in  the  galleries  and 
print-shops  of  the  age. 

I  was  invited  to  the  first  private  ex- 
hibition of  the  Court  of  Death,  while  it 
was  yet  unfinished.  On  entering  the 
large  hall,  used  by  the  artist  for  phil- 
osophical experiments  and  lectures  un- 
til he  began  his  great  picture,  I  found 
a  small  man,  of  about  forty-live  or  fifty, 
I  should  say,  with  a  mild,  pleasant  ex- 
pression, and  eyes  that  seemed  looking 
beyond  this  and  into  another  world. 
He  stood  as  if  studying  the  effect  of 
certain  touches  just  laid  on. 

The  picture  was  by  far  the  largest  I 
had  ever  seen,  —  large  enough,  indeed, 
to  nearly  cover  the  whole  end  wall  of 
the  apartment,  and,  though  crowded 
with  figures  of  heroic  size,  did  not  seem 
either  huddled  or  confused.  Every- 
thing was  clear  and  well  pronounced, 
and  the  groupings  were  admirable. 
Not  being  well  acquainted  with  the 
poem  of  Bishop  Proteus,  which  Mr. 
Peale  had  translated  with  his  pencil, 
and  transferred  to  canvas,  I  questioned 
him  about  the  general  drift  of  the  au- 
thor, and  must  acknowledge  myself 
profoundly  impressed  with  the  .chief 
personage,  —  Death,  —  occupying  the 
centre;  not  Death  as  we  see  him  on 
the  pale  horse  of  West,  from  the  Apoc- 
alypse, with  Hell  following  after  him, 
nor  the  raw  -  head  -  and  -  bloody  -  bones 
of  the  nursery,  but  Death  as  it  must 
have  appeared  to  the  priesthood  of 
Thebes,  or  to  the  Babylonian  sooth- 
sayers,—  a  majestic  figure,  of  the  old 
Egyptian  type,  and  countenance  fixed 
and  unchangeable  as  that  of  the  sphinx, 
and  sitting  with  the  waters  of  oblivion 
flowing  over  its  feet,  and  all  about  it 
the  dead  and  the  dying,  with  War, 
Pestilence,  and  Famine,  Fever,  Mad- 
ness, Intemperance,  Old  Age,  and 
Pleasure,  holding  high  carnival  in  its 
dread  presence,  and  Old  Age  and  Filial 
Piety  working  out  the  great  problem  of 
life  in  the  foreground.  Peale's  father 
stood  for  Old  Age,  and  Filial  Piety  and 
Pleasure  were  pretty  fair  likenesses  of 
two  daughters  he  had  been  blessed  with. 

Seeing  my  attention   fixed    on    the 


principal  figure,  Peale  came  up  to  my 
side,  and  stood  still,  as  if  waiting  for 
me  to  speak  first. 

"Is  that  yard-stick  in  the  poem  ?  " 
said  I. 

"Yard-stick,  sir!" 

I  pointed  to  what  he,  and  the  Bishop 
too,  had  called,  not  a  yard-stick,  to  be 
sure,  but  a  wand,  like  that  of  a  Pros- 
pero,  stretching  toward  -the  spectator 
out  of  the  dim,  distant  shadow,  and 
foreshortened  so  that  really  it  might 
have  passed  for  a  two-foot  carpenter's 
rule  somewhat  lengthened  with  a  slide. 

"  Ah  !  "  said  he,  with  a  smile,  after  a 
few  moments  of  rather  embarrassing 
silence,  "  I  don't  much  wonder  that  you 
should  call  it  a  yard-stick."  Was  he 
getting  personal,  or  had  he  never 
been  told  that  I  had  once  kept  a  retail 
haberdashery  ?  "  It  has  given  me  more 
trouble,"  he  added,  "  than  almost  any 
other  accessory  of  the  picture;  but 
what  am  I  to  do  ?  It  is  a  part  of  the 
poem.  I  dare  not  abridge  or  interpo- 
late ;  and,  moreover,  it  is  the  symbol  of 
power,  and  by  common  consent  would 
seem  to  be  indispensable." 

"What  are  you  to  do?"  I  replied, 
pointing  to  the  outstretched  hand,  which 
was  admirably  drawn,  and  boldly  pro- 
jected from  a  heavy  mass  of  drapery. 
"  If  you  will  but  cover  up  that  hand 
with  a  fold  of  that  drapery,  you  will 
have,  not  the  wand  nor  the  yard-stick, 
which  for  supreme  power  would  be 
but  a  symbol  of  weakness,  —  for  no  such 
instrumentality  can  be  needed  by  such 
a  being,  any  more  than  it  would  have 
been  at  first,  when  the  decree  went 
forth,  "  Let  there  be  light !  "  —  but  the 
calm  expression  of  latent  or  hidden 
power,  —  irresistible,  inexorable  power, 
—  alike  mysterious  and  awful,  because 
you  see  only  the  outlines  of  a  gigantic 
hand  shrouded  in  darkness." 

The  idea  took  with  him,  and  he  lost 
no  time  in  painting  out  the  hand,  yard- 
stick antl  all,  and  giving  the  drapery 
that  grand  expression  of  inward  power 
now  to  be  seen  in  the  picture. 

After  this  we  grew  intimate,  and  I 
was  with  him  day  after  day  till  he  had 
finished  the  picture  ;  and  it  was  gener- 


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647 


ally  reported  and  believed  that  I  had 
stood  for  the  figure  of  War,  —  certainly 
the  least  original  and  the  most  melo- 
dramatic of  the  whole  ;  a  very  strange 
mistake,  though  I  saw  it  circumstan- 
tially set  forth  in  a  printed  circular  not 
long  ago,  issued  by  the  family,  with  the 
engraving.  But  perhaps  this  may  be 
explained ;  for,  although  I  did  not 
stand  for  the  warrior  in  his  Court  of 
Death*  I  did  stand  for  another  histori- 
cal personage,  —  even  Virginius,  —  in 
the  Death  of  Virginia.  It  happened 
thus  :  One  day  Dr.  John  Godman,  the 
celebrated  anatomist  and  lecturer,  who 
afterward  married  Angelica,  Peale's  sec- 
ond daughter,  and  who  had  seen  me 
with  my  right  arm  bare,  after  I  had 
been  sparring  or  fencing,  I  forget  which,' 
asked  me,  if  I  would  consent  to  help 
Peale  in  a  desperate  emergency.  He 
wanted  a  leg  or  two,  and  a  right  arm, 
and  knew  not  where  to  find  them. 
I  consented  ;  and  soon  after  stood  for 
the  Roman  father  till  I  was  ready  to 
drop ;  after  peeling  me,  he  transferred 
my  right  arm,  uplifted  and  brandishing 
the  bloody  knife,  and  one  of  my  legs, 
or  both  of  them,  to  the  canvas. 

One  day,  when  he  was  giving  me 
some  account  of  his  past  life,  he  told 
me  that  his  father,  Charles  W.,  was  a 
painter,  —  a  painter  by  trade,  he  might 
have  added,  —  indefatigable  and  labori- 
ous to  a  degree,  until  he  had  crowded 
the  Philadelphia  Museum  with  por- 
traits of  all  our  Revolutionary  fathers 
worth  mentioning ;  and  all  so  much 
alike,  owing  perhaps  to  their  military 
costume  and  powdered  hair,  that  some- 
times you  could  hardly  tell  one  from 
another.  Up  to  the  age  of  ninety  or 
ninety-two,  if  I  remember  aright,  this 
patriarch  of  the  brush  labored  at  the 
business  of  portraiture,  and  even  went 
so  far  at  that  great  age,  like  another 
Titian,  as  to  undertake  a  full-length  of 
himself,  with  his  pallet  on  his  thumb, 
going  through  a  dim  passage-way,  and 
just  lifting  his  foot  to  ascend  a  step, 
with  his  head  turned  over  the  shoulder 
to  see  who  is  following,  —  and  with 
such  success  that  strangers  were  con- 
stantly mistaking  the  picture  for  a  liv- 


ing man.  And  I  well  remember  the 
portrait  of  Colonel  Burd,  painted  by 
him,  without  spectacles,  at  the  age  of 
eighty-three. 

So  enthusiastic  was  he,  that  he  named 
all  four  of  his  sons  after  some  of  the 
great  masters,  —  Rembrandt,  Rubens, 
Raphael,  and  Titian  ;  and  his  example 
was  followed  by  the  eldest,  Rembrandt, 
who  named  his  first-born  Rosalba,  after 
Rosalba  Carriera,  whose  portrait  of 
herself  she  copied  with  astonishing 
faithfulness  ;  and  the  second,  Angelica, 
after  Angelica  Kauffmann,  —  to  little 
purpose,  it  would  seem,  for  she  never 
manifested  any  liking  for  the  art ;  and 
the  youngest,  Michael  Angelo,  which  is 
about  all  we  know  of  him.  His  uncle 
Titian,  however,  who  went  with  Lewis 
and  Clarke  on  their  expedition  to  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  and  made  all  the 
drawings,  might  have  been  distin- 
guished as  a  painter,  —  he  had  it  in 
him ;  and  then  there  was  Anna,  who 
painted  miniatures,  by  no  means  re- 
markable for  resemblance,  though  beau- 
tifully treated  ;  and  Sarah,  who  con- 
fined herself  to  portraiture. 

While  yet  a  youth,  or  just  entering 
on  his  early  manhood,  Rembrandt  and 
his  father  and  his  uncle  James  deter- 
mined to  get  up  a  Washington  in  part- 
nership. The  great  man  was  over- 
whelmed with  the  cares  of  state,  and 
could  ill  spare  the  time,,  but  consented 
to  sit  nevertheless.  Three  different 
views  were  taken  at  the  same  time ; 
and  out  of  these  —  a  full  front,  a  three- 
quarter  face,  and  a  profile  —  the  cele- 
brated portrait  of  Washington,  lately 
purchased  of  the  family  with  a  Congres- 
sional appropriation,  was  made  up  after 
a  lapse  of  thirty  or  forty  years. 

Before  Peale  settled  in  Baltimore, 
and  established  a  museum  almost  a 
match  for  that  of  his  father  in  Phila- 
delphia, and  a  gallery  by  far  the  best 
in  our  country,  unless  we  except  the 
Philadelphia  Academy,  he  had  been 
twice  abroad,  —  once  with  the  skeleton 
of  a  mammoth,  before  mammoths  were 
called  mastodons  ;  and  once  in  the  hope 
of  turning  an  honest  penny,  if  not  of 
making  a  fortune,  by  what  he  called  en- 


€48 


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[December, 


caustic  or  enamelled  miniatures,  which 
were  to  be  not  only  incombustible,  but 
imperishable.  Both  enterprises  were 
failures,  —  disastrous  failures. 

On  his  last  visit  to  England  one  of 
the  most  extraordinary  incidents  of  his 
life  occurred.  He  was  on  short  allow- 
ance, and  troubled  and  anxious  about 
the  morrow  ;  but  still  he  could  not  bear 
the  idea  of  giving  up,  and  going  back 
to  his  father  in  Philadelphia,  before  he 
had  achieved  something  of  a  reputation 
at  least.  This,  I  should  say,  was  be- 
fore he  had  painted  his  Jupiter  and  lo, 
afterward  rechristened  the  Dream  of 
Love,  with  the  head  of  Jupiter  painted 
out;  or  the  Roman  Daughter  nursing 
her  father  in  prison,  —  the  best  thing 
he  ever  did  in  that  way ;  or  Napoleon 
crossing  the  Alps  —  on  a  stuffed  horse ; 
and  while  at  best  he  was  only  a  por- 
trait-painter, and  had  never  meddled 
with  history,  but  made  faithful  and  la- 
borious likenesses,  though  wanting 
the  charm  of  individuality,  or,  in  other 
words,  inspiration  and  exaltation. 

At  last,  without  knowing  how  it  came 
to  pass,  he  found  himself  on  board  a 
packet-ship,  and  half  across  the  Atlan- 
tic on  his  way  home,  with  no  one  thing 
he  had  gone  abroad  for  and  set  his 
heart  upon  accomplished.  But  how 
came  he  there  ?  What  had  finally  de- 
cided him  ?  And  what  had  become  of 
his  wife  and  children  ?  and  the  bones 
of  the  mammoth  he  had  blundered  upon 
along  the  Ohio?  and  the  encaustic 
miniatures,  which  he  had  long  before 
made  up  his  mind  to  go  down  with 
to  future  ages  ?  He  could  remember 
nothing  of  all  that  must  have  happened  ; 
perhaps  he  had  lost  his  senses  and 
wandered  away,  nobody  knew  whither. 
In  the  midst  of  this  distressing  self- 
examination,  happening  to  turn  over  in 
his  berth,  heart-sick  and  utterly  discour- 
aged, he  caught  a  glimpse  through  the 
parted  curtains  of  something  which 
made  him  almost  shout  for  joy  as  he 
sprang  out  of  bed.  It  was  a  familiar 
article  of  furniture,  and  lo !  he  found 
himself,  when  fully  awake,  in  his  own 
little  snuggery,  with  all  his  family  about 
him,  and  all  London  roaring  in  his  ears. 


So  strong  had  been  the  delusion,  how- 
ever, and  so  unexpected  the  sudden 
change,  that  he  could  hardly  believe 
his  own  eyes  ;  and  it  required  several 
minutes  to  satisfy  him  that  he  was  not 
still  dreaming,  and  that,  of  a  truth,  he 
was  not  half-seas  over,  on  his  way  home, 
with  all  his  hopes  unfulfilled,  and  all 
his  anticipations  blasted  forever,  and 
his  whole  future  life  clouded  with  dis- 
appointment, remorse,  and  self-reproach. 
It  was,  after  all,  not  so  much  a  dream, 
he  thought,  as  an  "open  vision";  but 
when  fully  awake,  was  he  not  the  hap- 
piest man  alive  ? 

But  Peale  was  never  the  man  to 
give  up.  He  married  anew,  and  settled 
down  to  his  work  in  Philadelphia,  long 
•after  the  majority  of  old  men  give  up 
altogether,  and  begin,  not  only  to  build, 
but  to  occupy,  their  sepulchres.  When 
"fourscore  and  upwards,"  like  Lea?, 
and  like  Lear,  too,  "  mightily  abused," 
instead  of  saying,  "  I  do  confess  that  I 
am  old :  age  is  unnecessary"  he  went 
about  the  business  of  life  with  the  face 
of  an  angel,  and  a  heart  overflowing 
with  kindness  and  sympathy.  His 
labors  are  beginning  to  tell  on  a  new 
generation.  A  little  book  he  published 
twenty  or  twenty-five  years  ago,  where- 
in he  undertook  to  show  that  drawing 
should  be  a  part  of  our  common-school 
education,  and  might  be  taught  with 
writing,  and  as  easily  as  writing,  has 
borne  fruit,  and  now  the  question  is 
beginning  to  be  settled  in  his  favor  all 
over  the  country. 

And  here  another  little  incident  oc- 
curs to  me,  which  the  good  man  always 
believed  providential,  strengthening  his 
constitutional  predisposition  to  kind- 
ness, and  obliging  him  to  set  a  watch 
upon  his  hasty  temper.  While  yet  a 
child,  he  threw  something  at  a  little 
kitten  he  was  very  fond  of,  and  broke 
its  back.  The  poor  thing  suffered  cru- 
elly and  might  have  died,  though  she 
had  "as  many  lives  as  Plutarch,"  but 
for  the  boy's  father,  who  nursed  her 
with  especial  care,  and  helped  her  to 
live,  that  his  child  might  be  reminded 
as  often  as  the  poor  little  thing  crept 
up  to  him,  dragging  her  hind  legs  after 


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her  so  piteously,  what  irreparable  mis- 
chief may  be  done  by  giving  way  to  a 
hasty  temper.  The  lesson  was  effec- 
tual. He  never  needed  another  ;  and 
I  must  say  that  during  all  the  time  I 
knew  him,  —  and  our  acquaintance  lasted 
for  years,  —  I  never  saw  him  ruffled  or 
flurried  or  impatient  or  querulous ; 
his  fine,  clear  eyes  would  flash,  and  his 
handsome  mouth  tremble  with  indigna- 
tion sometimes,  when  "  much  en- 
forced," but  he  never  showed  "the 
hasty  spark." 

Had  Peale  been  permitted,  or  en- 
couraged rather,  to  finish  his  "Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount,"  I  do  believe  it 
would  have  astonished  everybody.  The 
whole  arrangement,  grouping,  and  com- 
position, and  the  drawing,  were  alto- 
gether beyond  anything  to  be  found  in 
the  "  Court  of  Death."  It  was  of  the 
same  size,  and  may  still  be  in  existence 
for  aught  I  know.  But  who  shall  bring 
it  forth  from  its  hiding-place  and  carry 
out  the  author's  magnificent  conception  ? 

And  now  for  another  of  these  de- 
parted worthies,  whom  we  "  would  not 
willingly  let  die" :  JARVIS,— JOHN  WES- 
LEY JARVIS,  —  named  after  the  cele- 
brated preacher,  who  was  a  relative. 

Jarvis,  like  Sully,  was  of  English 
birth,  but  came  over  in  his  boyhood, 
and  lived  and  died  here.  Neverthe- 
less, our  brethren  over  sea  claim  all 
American  painters  for  Englishmen,  if 
they  were  either  born  or  bred  in  Eng- 
land. West,  Allston,  Stuart,  Morse, 
Newton,  Leslie,  and  King,  though  Amer- 
icans by  birth,  learned  their  trade  in 
England,  and  of  course  are  English 
painters,  if  not  Englishmen ;  while  Jar- 
vis  and  Sully,  being  born  in  England, 
though  educated  here,  of  course  are 
Englishmen. 

Beyond  all  question,  Jarvis  was  the 
best  portrait-painter  of  his  day,  within  a 
limited  sphere,  —  that  of  character  when 
there  was  in  it  anything  of  the  humorist. 
Being  himself  a  humorist  in  the  broad- 
est and  richest  sense  of  the  word,  all 
his  men  were  so  distinctly  individual-- 
i/.ed,  and,  as  it  were,  branded,  that  there 
was  no  mistaking  them.  I  never  saw 
any  cf  his  women,  but  have  an  idea 


from  what  I  knew  of  the  man  and  saw 
in  his  pictures,  that  they  were  too  man- 
ly by  half,  and  would  not  have  been 
much  distressed  if  they  had  been  set 
off  with  a  riding- whip  and  spurs. 

In  stature  he  was  about  five  feet 
seven,  with  large  features,  a  dark,  tur- 
bid complexion,  a  full  chest,  and  a  pro- 
digious head,  according  to  my  present 
recollection,  and  when  I  knew  him  he 
was  not  far  from  forty-five  years  old. 
He  was  a  man  of  imperturbable  grav- 
ity on  common  occasions,  and  the 
best  story-teller  that  ever  lived.  To- 
him  Charles  Matthews  wras  indebted 
for  "Uncle  Ben"  and  "that  'ere  tri- 
fle," and  for  many  touches  and  into- 
nations full  of  grotesque  humor  and 
astonishing  truthfulness.  Well  do  I 
remember  an  evening  he  passed  with 
our  Delphian  Club,  when  he  told  us 
about  the  Kilkenny  cats,  and  their  fight- 
ing until  there  was  nothing  left  but  the 
tips  of  their  tails,  —  a  story  older  than 
Joe  Miller,  and  one  wre  had  all  been  fa- 
miliar with  from  our  earliest  boyhood. 
And  yet,  with  his  embellishments,  and 
the  running  accompaniment  of  growling 
and  sputtering  and  flashing,  he  threw 
us  all,  even  the  gravest  of  our  number, 
Mr.  Pierpont  and  Paul  Allen  and  my- 
self, into  convulsions,  though  some  had 
heard  him  tell  the  story  before,  and 
William  Gwynn  and  General  Winder 
more  than  once;  I  drove  Brecken- 
ridge,  author  of  "Views  in  Louisiana," 
and  a  History  of  the  War,  from  one 
side  of  a  large  open  fireplace  to  the 
other,  with  my  manifestations  of  ua- 
governable  delight,  and  that,  too,  with- 
out being  aware  of  the  fact,  until  he 
was  fairly  cornered,  and  could  not  move 
his  chair  another  inch,  that  I  had  been 
pounding  him  black  and  blue.  Some 
of  the  club  actually  shouted  until  they 
lost  their  breath,  and  tears  stood  in 
their  eyes.  And  yet  the  stories  Jarvis 
told  were  nothing  of  themselves,  not 
even  new  in  most  cases,  and  seldom  of 
greater  length  than  five  minutes. 

But  he  was  a  sad  dog  at  the  best. 
In  Audubon's  Ornithological  Biogra- 
phy—  which  he  might  as  well  have 
named  the  Autobiography  of  American 


650 


Our  Painters. 


[December, 


Birds  —  we  have  a  capital  sketch  of 
Jarvis,  with  an  account  of  his  painting 
and  shooting  and  naturalising,  well 
worth  a  place  here.  "  As  I  was  loung- 
ing," says  Audubon,  "  one  fair  and  very 
warm  morning,  on  the  levee  at  New  Or- 
leans, I  chanced  to  observe  a  gentle- 
man whose  dress  and  other  accompa- 
niments greatly  attracted  my  attention. 
I  wheeled  about  and  followed  him  for 
a  short  space,  when,  judging  by  every- 
thing about  him  that  he  was  a  true 
original,  I  accosted  him.  But  here  let 
me  give  you  some  idea  of  his  exterior. 
His  head  was  covered  with  a  straw  hat, 
the  brim  of  which  might  cope  with 
those  worn  by  the  fair  sex  in  1830  ;  his 
neck  was  exposed  to  the  weather ;  the 
broad  frill  of  a  shirt,  then  fashionable, 
flapped  about  his  breast,  whilst  an  ex- 
traordinary collar,  carefully  arranged, 
fell  over  the  top  of  his  coat.  The  lat- 
ter was  of  a  light  gree?i  color,  harmon- 
ising well  with  a  pair  of  flowing  nan- 
keen trousers  and  a  pink  waistcoat, 
from  the  bosom  of  which,  amidst  a 
large  bunch  of  splendid  flowers  of  the 
magnolia,  protruded  part  of  a  young 
alligator,  which  seemed  more  anxious  to 
glide  through  the  muddy  waters  of  some 
retired  swamp  than  to  spend  its  life 
swinging  to  and  fro  among  the  folds  of 
the  finest  lawn.  The  gentleman  held 
in  his  hand  a  cage  full  of  richly  plumed 
nonpareils,  whilst  in  the  other  he  sported 
a  silk  umbrella,  on  which  I  could  plainly 
read  '  Stolen  from  J.,'  in  large  white  let- 
ters. He  walked  as  if  conscious  of  his 
own  importance,  —  that  is,  with  a  good 
deal  of  pomposity,  singing  '  My  love  is 
but  a  lassie  yet,'  and  that "  —  observe 
this  little  touch  —  "  and  that,  with  such 
a,  thorough  imitation  of  the  Scotch  em- 
phasis, that,  had  not  his  physiognomy 
brought  to  my  mind  a  denial  of  his  being 
born  '  within  a  mile  of  Edinboro','  / 
should  have  put  him  down  in  my  jour- 
nal for  a  true  Scot''1  And  so  would 
Charles  Matthews,  I  dare  say;  for  he 
borrowed  largely  from  Jarvis  in  that 
department,  as  well  as  in  that  which 


not  only  passed  for,  but  was  of  a  truth, 
unequalled  and  unadulterated  Yankee. 
"But  no,"  continues  our  ornithologist, 
"his  tournure,  nay,  the  very  shape  of 
his  visage,  pronounced  him  an  Ameri- 
can, from  the  further  part  of  our  East- 
ern Atlantic  shores"  Not  only  a  gen- 
uine Yankee,  therefore,  but  a  Down- 
Easter  !  How  admirable  must  have 
been  the  acting  of  this  Englishman, 
who  was  never  Down  East  in  all  his 
life,  and  never  much  in  any  part  of  New 
England,  to  deceive  such  a  close  ob- 
server. 

Another  free  witness  once  told  me 
that  he  saw  Jarvis  in  New  Orleans  with 
a  hat  full  of  snakes,  lizards,  and  cock- 
roaches, or  other  abominations,  —  not 
in  his  hand,  but  on  his  head,  in  a  hot, 
sultry  day. 

He  was  an  atrocious  punster,  and 
used  to  keep  a  large  nutmeg-grater  on 
the  mantel-piece  in  his  painting-room, 
to  which,  when  he  was  asked  by  a 
sitter  if  such  or  such  a  person  —  a 
preacher  perhaps  or  a  painter,  a  states- 
man or  a  player —  was  not  a  great  man, 
he  would  point,  saying  "  There  'j  a 
greater "  ;  and  this  he  did  year  after 
year,  as  a  sort  of  standing  joke. 

One  day,  when  he  was  painting 
Archbishop  Carrol,  that  amiable  and 
excellent  man,  who  had  long  intended 
to  have  a  little  serious  talk  with  Jarvis, 
if  he  could  get  a  chance,  began  a  long 
way  off  with  a  word  or  two  which  set 
the  free-thinker,  or  atheist,  on  his 
guard.  "  Shut  your  mouth,  sir,"  said 
Jarvis,  leaving  the  forehead,  upon  which 
he  was  at  work,  and  coming  clown  to 
the  lower  part  of  the  face.  After  a  few 
minutes,  the  good  prelate  made  another 
attempt,  but  with  no  better  success. 
"  Keep  your  mouth  shut,  if  you  please," 
said  Jarvis,  without  looking  up.  And 
there  the  matter  ended,  and  the  simple- 
hearted  churchman  went  away  without 
a  suspicion  of  the  trick,  as  he  himself 
acknowledged,  when  speaking  of  the 
painter  and  of  his  uncouth  manners 
and  strange  eccentricities. 


1 868.]  Autumnal. 


AUTUMNAL. 


CAN  this  be  sadness  ?  this  forebode  decay  ? 
Are  these  the  vestments  of  funereal  woe  ? 

Sure,  hues  that  pale  like  these  the  dawning's  glow 

The  rather  deck  some  dryad's  festal  day  ! 
Hail,  radiant  hour  !  thrice  welcome,  gladsome  ray, 

That  kindling  through  these  boughs,  with  golden  flow, 

Streams  joy  and  summer  to  the  shades  below ! 

And  thou,  brown-dappled  Oak,  and  Maple  gay, 
In  rippling  waves  of  many-tinted  flame, 

Lithe  Birch  gold-hued,  thin  Ash,  whose  dyes  might  shame 

The  trodden  vintage  reeking  on  the  lees, 
And  ivied  Beech  with  sanguine  cinctures  fair:  — 

As  in  the  long  days  past,  fraternal  trees, 

With  you,  whate'er  your  gladness,  let  me  share  ! 

n. 

O'er  banks  of  mossy  mould  how  lightly  strewn 
All  the  wan  summer  lies  !     The  heedless  tread 
Awakes  no  sound ;  and,  had  not  pale  leaves  fled, 
As  soft  it  came,  the  low  wind  were  not  known. 

How  strange  the  sharp  and  long-drawn  shadows  thrown 
From  lank  and  shrivelled  branches  overhead, 
While  from  their  withered  glories,  spoiler-shed, 
The  earthy  autumn-scents  are  faintly  blown  ! 

Ah  !  reft  and  ravaged  bowers,  the  garish,  day 

Flaunts  through  the  hidings  of  your  dewy  glooms  ! 
And  thou,  in  leafy  twilights  wont  to  be, 

Shy  maid,  sweet-thoughted  Sadness,  come  away, 
And  here  beneath  this  hemlock's  drooping  plumes 
With  pensive  retrospection  muse  with  me. 

in. 

Why  holds  o'er  all  my  heart  this  dreamy  hour 
A  sway  that  spring  or  summer  never  knew  ? 
Why  seems  this  ragged  gentian,  wanly  blue, 
Of  all  the  circling  year  the  fairest  flower  ? 

Whence  has  each  wandering  leaf  this  mystic  power 
That  all  my  secret  being  trembles  through, — 
Or  sounds  the  blackbird's  note  more  human-true 
Than  all  the  songs  of  June  from  greenwood  bower  ? 

Deep  meanings  haunt  the  groves  and  sunny  glades, 
Strange  dearness  broods  along  the  hazy  slopes, 
A  vague  but  tender  awe  my  breast  pervades, 

That  hints  of  shadowy  doubt,  yet  is  not  fear  ; 
While  musing  quiet  stirs  with  drowsy  hopes, 
And  Nature's  loving  heart  seems  doubly  near. 


652 


Caleb's  Lark. 


[December, 


CALEB'S     LARK. 


UT>  doctor,  what  shall  we  do  for 
him  ?  He  laughs  at  medicine, 
dieting,  and  rest,  and,  like  the  late 
lamented  Confederacy,  only  desires  to 
be  let  alone,  —  a  treatment  likely  to  be 
as  fatal  in  this  case  as  in  that.  What 
can  \  do  for  him  ?  " 

"  Try  a  lark,"  sententiously  replied 
the  family  physician,  with  a  twinkle  of 
his  honest  eyes, 

"  A  lark ! "  dubiously  echoed  Miselle. 
"  But  where  is  one  to  be  found  ?  How 
would  a  robin  answer  ?  " 

"  Pho,  child  !  not  a  lark  to  eat,  but 
a  lark  to  do,  to  be,  and  to  suffer.  Rec- 
reation," said  the  doctor ;  and  Miselle 
put  on  her  considering-cap. 

"  \  have  it !  "  exclaimed  she,  present- 
ly. "  Not  a  cent  for  himself,  millions 
for  some  one  else,  —  that 's  Caleb  ! 
Doctor,  tell  him  confidentially  that  my 
health  is  suffering  for  want  of  rest  and 
change.  Advise  him  to  take  me  some- 
where directly,  and  leave  the  rest  of 
the  case  to  me." 

The  doctor  nodded,  smiled,  and  took 
his  leave. 

That  evening  Caleb  casually  re- 
marked to  the  wife  of  his  bosom  :  "Mi- 
selle, \  have  been  thinking  that  \  should 
enjoy  a  little  trip  to  the  mountains  or 
the  sea-shore.  What  do  you  say  to 
the  idea  ?  " 

"  Anything  that  pleases  you,  my 
dear,"  meekly  replied  Miselle.  "When 
would  you  like  to  go  ?  \  have  just 
been  reading  a  glowing  account  of 
Mount  Desert,  a  little  island  off  the 
coast  of  Maine,  which  seems  to  com- 
bine everything  desirable  in  a  holi- 
day-ground,—  lofty  mountains,  deep 
ravines,  forests,  precipices,  gorges, 
echoes,  fresh  mackerel,  and  no  end  of 
blueberries  ;  in  fact,  all  the  delicacies 
of  the  season,  including  the  prettiest 
women  in  the  Union,  who  are  there  col- 
lected." 

"  What  magnificent  combinations  !  " 
exclaimed  Caleb,  in  enthusiasm. — 


"Mackerel  and  sunset  skies,  blueber- 
ries and  ocean,  alike  unlimited,  pretty 
women  and  nature  !  The  antitheses 
are  irresistible.  Miselle,  go  pack  your 
trunk."  Which  command  was  obeyed 
with  such  zeal,  that  at  6  p.  M.  upon  the 
succeeding  evening  the  pleasure-seek- 
ers left  Boston  by  rail  for  Portland, 
there  to  take  boat  for  Mount  Desert ; 
preferring  this  mode  of  transit  to  mak- 
ing the  entire  passage  by  water,  as 
some  persons  choose  to  do.  Reaching 
Portland  at  10  P.M.,  travellers  and  lug- 
gage were  quietly  transferred  to  the 
steamer  Lewiston,  a  pretty  and  com- 
modious boat  under  admirable  man- 
agement. 

"  Sit  here  while  I  look  for  our  state- 
room," directed  Caleb,  leaving  Miselle 
plante  before  a  divan  divided  by  arms 
into  sections  like  a  pie.  Most  of  these 
sections  were  occupied  by  persons  wear- 
ing the  preternaturally  solemn  expres- 
sion of  incipient  sea -sickness,  and 
Miselle,  leaving  her  satchel  and  sun- 
shade to  keep  them  company,  made 
her  independent  way  to  the  forward 
deck,  when  a  sudden  tornado  snatched 
and  bore  away  her  hat,  whisked  her 
drapery  into  undignified  and  ungraceful 
festoons,  and  made  of  her  own  hair  a 
veil  to  cover  her  confusion,  as  she  has- 
tily retreated  from  the  group  of  smokers 
among  whom  she  had  plunged,  and 
penitently  sought  countenance  and  pro- 
tection among  her  discreeter  sisters 
upon  the  divan,  now  in  the  rigid  con- 
dition preceding  the  final  agony  of  t/ta- 
ladie-du-mer. 

Here  Caleb  presently  found,  won- 
dered at,  mildly  rebuked,  and  finally 
bore  away,  the  hatless  and  dishevelled 
aspirant  for  fresh  air,  for  once  quite 
subdued  and  silent. 

After  leaving  Rockland,  —  a  thriving 
town  at  the  mouth  of  the  Penobscot 
River,  where  the  passengers  coming 
from  Boston  by  boat  are  received  on 
board  the  Lewiston,  —  the  route  lies 


1868.] 


Caleb's  Lark. 


among  the  myriad  islands  of  the  coast 
of  Maine,  and  every  curve  of  the  sinu- 
ous course  opens  a  new  vista  of  com- 
bined land  and  ocean  view  positively 
startling  in  its  wild  beauty.  Many  of 
these  islands,  as  well  as  various  points 
upon  the  main-land,  perpetuate  in  their 
names  the  memory  of  French  discovery 
and  occupation, — as  Castine,  where  an 
old  French  fort  still  towers  above  an 
earthwork  not  yet  five  years  old;  the 
islands  of  Grand  and  Petit  Menan, 
Terre  Haute,  Belle  Isle,  Isle  au  Haut, 
Rosier  ;  and  Mount  Desert  itself,  origi- 
nally Mont  Desart,  although  some  an- 
tiquarians choose  to  derive  the  name 
from  that  of  Captain  Dessertes,  one 
-of  the  first  navigators  of  Frenchman's 
Bay. 

But  resolutely  closing  ears  and  eyes 
to  the  bewildering  and  bewitching  tra- 
ditions so  artfully  mingled  with  the 
history  of  this  island  that  one  knows 
not  whether  to  visit  first  Gold-Digger's 
(Hen,  where  several  enthusiastic  spec- 
ulators are  to-day  searching  for  Captain 
Kyd's  buried  treasure,  or  to  search  at 
Fernald's  Point  for  the  still  more  apoc- 
ryphal site  of  the  old  Jesuit  settlement 
established  under  the  patronage  of  the 
fair  and  discreet  Madame  de  Guerchville 
about  1613,  and  so  cruelly  destroyed  by 
an  English  governor  of  Virginia  named 
Argall,  some  years  later,  —  Miselle  re- 
turns to  her  simple  narrative  of  per- 
sonal experience,  leaving  the  glory  of 
research  and  compilation  to  more  in- 
dustrious historians. 

"  Come  and  see  Mount  Desert.  We 
are  just  going  into  Southwest  Harbor," 
said  Caleb,  and  Miselle,  closing  her 
book,  followed  to  the  bows  of  the  steam- 
er to  look  upon  a  view  wonderful  in  its 
savage  beauty  ;  for  the  great  mountains 
standing  sentry  at  either  side  the  port 
were  clothed  in  dense  evergreen  forest, 
and  the  valleys  between  them  seemed 
wells  of  darkness.  Black  thunder- 
clouds, gathering  upon  the  crests  of 
the  hills,  spread  rapidly  over  the  sky, 
until  now  so  smiling ;  so  that  at  last  the 
whole  island  lay  in  frowning  shadow, 
while  the  sea  far  to  southward  still 
glittered  in  summer  sunshine,  and  the 


Lewiston,  with  her  freight,  seemed  a 
veritable  Charon's  boat  bringing  hap- 
less souls  from  the  warmth  and  light 
of  life  to  some  dim,  horribly  beautiful 
purgatory,  beyond  which  might  lie 
heaven  or  hell. 

"  Only,  six  dollars  is  a  good  deal  more 
than  an  obolus,"  remarked  Miselle,  the 
nineteenth  century  pressing  hard  upon 
her. 

"  What  is  that  ?  Why,  it  is  raining, 
as  sure  as  I  'm  a  sinner  ! "  responded 
Caleb. 

"  Don't  speak  of  it  now,  if  you  are," 
murmured  Miselle,  following  him  across 
the  gangway  plank  to  a  wharf  sur- 
rounded by  lobster-canning  factories, 
and  redolent  of  fish.  Here  stood  sun- 
dry remarkable  vehicles,  into  one  of 
which  Miselle  found  herself  hastily ' 
packed,  in  company  with  a  jolly  cripple, 
two  limp  and  despairing  women,  and  a 
driver  ;  while  Caleb,  who  had  four  times 
secured  a  seat  and  relinquished  it  to 
whoever  would  accept  it,  plodded  cheer- 
fully along  in  the  rain,  and  stood  wait- 
ing, like  an  aqueous  angel,  to  receive 
his  charge  upon  the  steps  of  Deacon 
Clark's  Hotel.  Beside  him  was  the 
Deacon  himself,  grave,  benevolent,  and 
patriarchal,  while  behind  them  appeared 
the  cheery  faces  of  the  Friend  from 
Philadelphia,  and  the  Count  all  the  way 
from  Germany;  for  —  again  like  Hades 
—  Mount  Desert  collects  its  visitors 
from  all  the  world. 

"Very  glad  to  see  you.  Dinner  is 
ready,"  said  the  Deacon  with  a  nice 
adaptation  of  the  topic  to  the  mood  of 
his  guests  ;  and  the  rest  of  the  day- 
was  devoted  to  a  blazing  fire,  conver- 
sation, both  merry  and  grave,  tea-time, 
and  plans  for  the  morrow.  But  Miselle 
closed  her  weary  eyes  to  the  lullaby  of 
the  rain  upon  the  roof,  and  awoke  to 
the  same  melody.  A  breakfast,  graced 
by  the  freshest  of  mackerel  and  the 
sweetest  of  blueberries,  mitigated,  but 
could  not  conceal,  the  fact  that  the 
rainy  morning  was  likely  to  continue 
into  a  rainy  day.  From  the  table  the 
party  adjourned  to  the  piazza. 

'•  What  a  pity  that  we  must  lose  the 
walk  to  Big  Pond  this  morning  ! "  said 


654 


Caleb's  Lark. 


[December, 


the    Friend,    mildly   appealing    to    the 
uncompromising  clouds. 

"  I  am  going,"  announced  Miselle ; 
"I  shall  be  ready  in  fifteen  minutes." 

'f  But  it  rains,"  remonstrated  the 
Count. 

"So  I  see." 

"  You  will  get  awfully  wet,"  suggested 
Caleb. 

"Far  up  the  height"  of  the  steep 
stairs  Miselle's  voice  replied,  "In  fif- 
teen minutes." 

But  "fortune  favors  the  brave,"  and 
when,  in  less  than  the  prescribed  quar- 
ter of  an  hour,  the  party  set  forth, 
equipped  with  rubber  boots  and  over- 
coats, water-proof  cloaks  and  umbrellas, 
while  Caleb  paid  unusual  deference  to 
the  elements  by  fastening  one  button 
of  his  coat,  the  clouds  had  broken 
and  the  rain  had  ceased.  Three  miles 
of  bush  and  brake,  woodland  road,  and 
wood  without  road,  brought  the  ex- 
plorers to  Big  Pond,  or  Long  Lake,  the 
indigenous  and  imported  names  of  a 
lovely  sheet  of  water  shut  in  by  Beechill 
Mountain  on  the  right  and  Western  on 
the  left,  while  the  southern  end  is  fin- 
ished by  the  little  sandy  beach  to  be 
found,  as  the  Friend  asserts,  at  the 
southern  end  of  every  lake  upon  the 
island. 

Upon  this  beach  sat  down  the  four, 
breathless,  draggled,  and  happy.  Be- 
side them  crisped  and  murmured  a 
little  woodland  brook,  tumbling  across 
the  sands  toward  the  lake ;  above  them 
floated  the  clouds,  now  breaking  to  show 
a  watery  sun,  now  gathering  stern  and 
dark  upon  the  mountain  summits.  The 
evergreen  forests  clothing  the  hillsides 
were  full  of  mystery  and  gloom ;  but 
creeping  out  from  their  shadow,  and 
holding  the  middle  ground  between  for- 
est and  beach,  rioted  the  wild  convolvu- 
lus, the  brilliant  scarlet  bunch-berry, 
the  sweet  blue  harebells,  and  clusters 
of  the  loveliest  wild  roses  that  ever 
bloomed  on  earth.  Upon  the  beach 
lay  scattered  the  bleached  trunks  of 
trees  far  larger  than  the  present  growth 
of  the  hills  ;  and  the  Count  argued, 
with  much  show  of  reason,  that  they 
were  the  metamorphosed  remains  of 


Titanic  heroes  who  had  fought  and  died 
upon  these  shores,  upheaving  hills  and 
hollowing  lake-basins  in  the  ardor  of 
their  mighty  struggle. 

"  I  should  say,  rather,"  gravely  sug- 
gested Caleb,  "  that  these  smaller 
trunks  are  the  remains  of  the  heroes, 
while  the  larger  ones  represent  the 
hippogriffs,  sylants,  or  other  battle-, 
chargers  which  they  bestrode.  This 
upon  which  we  sit  would,  for  instance, 
have  served  as  steed  for  Hengist  him- 
self." 

"Yes,  it  is  without  doubt  the  Streit 
hengst  of  that  renowned  warrior."  re- 
plied the  Count,  examining  the  relic 
from  which  the  party  reverently  arose. 
"  The  theory  is  a  good  one,  but  does 
not  the  Streit  hengst  of  Hengist  sound 
rathejr  tautological  ?  "  mildly  inquired 
the  Friend. 

"Never  mind  tautology,  let  us  roll 
the  Streit  hengst  into  the  lake !  Let 
us  hasten  his  resolution  into  the  ele- 
ments !  Let  us  offer  him  a  sacrifice  to 
Odin  and  to  Thor  !  Above  all,  let  us 
amuse  ourselves  !  "  shouted  the  Count, 
throwing  off  his  coat,  and  picking  up  a 
small  stick. 

The  ribs  of  heroes  make  excellent 
levers,  their  mighty  vertebrae  serve 
capitally  as  fulcruras ;  and  in  a  few 
moments  the  whole  party,  Miselle  in- 
cluded, were  laboring  at  their  task  with 
might  and  main,  regardless  of  the 
clouds  mustering  yet  more  darkly  upon 
Beechill,  and  even  of  the  rain-drops  dim- 
pling the  bosom  of  the  lake  like  the 
bullets  of  sharp-shooters. 

"  There  !  "  cried  Caleb,  giving  the 
Streit  hengst  a  final  impetus,  and  fling- 
ing after  him  the  rib  of  Hengist  which 
had  effected  it,  "we  have  fulfilled  our 
duty  to  the  past,  now  let  us  think 
of  the  present.  Miselle,  child,  assert 
your  femininity,  and  be  afraid  of  the 
rain  directly." 

Such  a  merry  race  homeward  !  such 
scrambling  toilets  !  such  Homeric  ap- 
petites for  so  nice  a  dinner,  not  yet 
ended  when  Deacon  Clark  announced 
that  a  return  carriage  was  about  to 
start  for  Bar  Harbor,  and  would  be  glad 
of  passengers  !  The  opportunity  was  a 


Caleb's  Lark. 


655 


good  one,  so,  after  brief  consultation, 
the  travellers  abandoned  for  the  time 
the  remaining  lions  of  Southwest  Har- 
bor, bundled  their  wet  clothes  into  the 
trunks  with  their  dry  ones,  paid  the 
Deacon's  bill,  silently  wondering  to 
what  use  so  guileless  a  patriarch  could 
put  so  much  money,  and  set  forth  upon 
their  drive. 

The  road  from  Southwest  Harbor 
to  Bar  Harbor  is  set  down  as  sixteen 
miles  in  length.  To  this  may  be  added 
some  five  or  six  miles  of  perpendicular 
ascent  and  precipitous  descent ;  the 
latter  remarkably  exhilarating  for  strong 
nerves,  but  rather  trying  to  weak  ones, 
especially  as  the  horses  are  encouraged 
to  make  the  descents  at  full  speed, 
and  the  pitch  of  the  carriage  and  clatter 
of  rolling  stones  become  something 
really  awful. 

Upon  the  brink  of  one  of  these 
precipices  the  driver  checked  his  horses, 
and  looked  back  into  the  carriage  with 
an  expectant  grin. 

"  Oh  !  "  remarked  the  Friend,  "  hal- 
lo-o-o-o-o-o ! " 

"Has  he  gone  mad?"  whispered 
Miselle,  clinging  to  Caleb ;  but  the 
Count  held  up  his  finger,  imploring 
silence,  while  back  from  tlfe  broad 
breast  of  Beechill  Mountain,  and  over 
the  placid  lake  at  its  foot,  came  the  re- 
sponse, clear,  sweet,  and  powerful. 

Having  thus  summoned  the  nymph, 
the  Friend  gracefully  introduced  his 
friends,  and  withdrew,  leaving  them  to 
continue  the  conversation,  which  they 
did  with  great  satisfaction  ;  Echo  sweet- 
ly replying  to  every  appeal,  whether  it 
were  an  operatic  refrain  in  Caleb's  mel- 
low tones,  a  thunderous  German  apos- 
trophe from  the  Count,  a  bit  of  sisterly 
badinage  in  Miselle's  treble,  or  the 
bovine  bellow  of  the  driver. 

About  half-way  from  Southwest  to 
Bar  Harbor  lies  the  village  of  So: 
ville,  or,  as  the  post-office  will  have  it, 
the  town  of  Mount  Desert,  and  Miselle 
here  pauses  to  give  the  travelling  public 
a  hint  in  the  matter  of  mail  addresses 
upon  this  island.  A  letter  intended  for 
Southwest  Harbor  should  be  super- 
scribed Tremont,  Maine  ;  one  for  Somcs- 


ville,  Mount  Desert,  Maine ;  and  one 
for  Bar  Harbor,  East  Eden,  Maine,  — 
these  being  the  names  of  the  three 
towns,  while  the  others  are  mere  local 
sobriquets,  to  be  added  cr  omitted  at 
pleasure.  The  name  of  Mount  Desert, 
however,  should  never  be  added  unless 
it  is  desired  that  the  letters  should  arrive 
at  Somesville.  But  with  all  or  any  of 
these  precautions  the  subject  of  postal 
communication  is  enveloped  in  the 
same  romantic  cloud  shrouding  the  rest 
of  Mount  Desert  matters,  and  refuses 
to  be  reduced  to  arbitrary  rules  or  cer- 
tainties. 

The  principal  feature  of  Somesville 
is  Somes's  Sound,  an  arm  of  the  sea 
some  seven  miles  in  length  by  one  in 
width,  nearly  cutting  the  island  in 
halves,  and  so  straight  that  from  its 
head  one  may  look  down  its  shining 
path  to  the  sea-horizon  leagues  beyond. 
Besides  the  sound,  Somesville  boasts 
mountain  scenery  so  fine  that  the  little 
inn  is  always  filled  with  artists,  their 
portfolios  crammed  with  "  studies  "  for 
next  winter's  pictures,  and  their  faces 
beaming  with  wonder  and  delight. 
More  than  all,  Somesville  boasts  the 
aristocrat  of  the  island  in  the  person  of 
Captain  Somes,  who  with  his  pretty 
daughters  keeps  the  village  inn,  and 
reigns  patriarchally  to-day  over  the 
acres  his  fathers  possessed  and  named 
two  centuries  before  the  Shoddies,  the 
Gunnybags,  and  the  McFlimsies  ever 
heard  of  Mount  Desert.  Also,  may 
Somesville  boast  a  variety  store,  — 
where  hats  can  be  procured  for  such 
unfortunates  as  have  lost  their  own,  — 
a  town-pump,  and  a  very  promising 
and  observant  crop  of  future  presi- 
dents and  presidentesses. 

Leaving  Somesville,  the  travellers 
were  presently  called  upon  to  admire 
the  prospect  from  the  Saddle,  —  a  name 
bestowed  upon  the  highest  point  of  land 
crossed  by  the  road,  and  from  whence 
may  be  obtained  a  fine  view  of  nearly 
the  entire  island,  embracing  Marsh, 
Western,  Beechill,  Dog,  Sargent's, 
Wasgott,  and  Sharp  Mountains  at  the 
western  extremity,  and  Green,  Dry, 
Bubble,  and  Newport  at  the  eastern, 


656 


Caleb's  Lark. 


[December, 


not  to  mention  various  lovely  water- 
glimpses  of  ocean,  sound,  lake,  and 
brooklet,  and  some  of  the  finest  forest 
scenery  imaginable  ;  for  in  the  woods  of 
Maine  grow  and  thrive  in  lusty  beauty 
the  arbor-vitas,  the  fir-balsam,  the  hem- 
lock, the  hop-hornbeam,  moosewood, 
and  many  another  sylvan  treasure  only 
found  with  us  of  the  more  southern 
latitudes  in  nurseries  or  upon  carefully 
tended  lawns-. 

After  the  Saddle  came  a  hurried 
visit  to  Eagle  Lake,  —  a  beautiful  sheet 
of  water  lying  at  the  foot  of  Green 
Mountain,  and  reflecting  the  great  hill 
in  its  placid  waters. 

"  The  little  sandy  beach  at  the  south- 
ern end  still,  you  remark,"  said  the 
Friend,  as  the  party  returned  to  their 
carriage. 

Another  half-hour,  and  the  travellers, 
cold,  weary,  wet,  and  hungry,  arrived  in 
Bar  Harbor,  and  stiffly  dismounted  at 
the  door  of  Captain  Hamor's  hospitable 
house,  whereat  stood  the  gallant  Cap- 
tain himself,  who,  after  brief  survey, 
led  his  guests  to  the  only  fire  in  the 
house,  albeit  it  blazed  in  the  kitchen 
stove,  and,  seating  them  thereby,  com- 
manded, "  Some  warm  supper  for  these 
folks  right  away." 

An  epicurean  writer  advises  :  "  If  you 
would  eat  beefsteak,  sit  beside  the  fire 
with  a  warm  plate,  and  let  the  cook 
toss  the  meat  from  the  gridiron  into 
it." 

To  which  Miselle  appends  :  "  If  you 
would  eat  fish,  travel  all  day  in  a  north- 
easterly storm,  and  sit  beside  the  stove 
to  see  it  fried,  listening,  meanwhile, 
to  the  story  of  its  capture  within  the 
hour." 

Supper  over,  —  for  no  such  aesthetic 
title  as  "  tea  "  describes  the  banquet  of 
fish,  meat,  corn-bread,  white  biscuit, 
toast,  blueberries,  cake,  doughnuts,  and 
cheese,  spread  before  Caleb  and  his 
friends,  —  the  Captain  announced,  with 
some  hesitation,  that  the  accommoda- 
tions of  his  house  being  limited,  a  large 
number  of  his  guests  were  obliged  to 
lodge  out ;  and  that  for  this  particular 
party  had  been  secured  rooms  in  a 
certain  cottage  just  along  shore,  where 


it  was  hoped  they  might  be  comfort- 
able. 

"  <  A  cottage  by  the  sea,'  "  murmured 
Miselle,  quite  ready  to  be  charmed  with 
the  proposed  abode,  and  not  the  less 
so  for  finding  it  was  to  be  shared  by 
some  old  friends,  —  the  General  and 
his  wife,  just  from  Washington. 

"The  first  thing  to  do  is  to  visit 
Schooner  Head  and  Great  Head,"  an- 
nounced the  Friend  next  morning  at 
breakfast ;  and  the  party,  electing  him 
cicerone,  were  presently  packed  in  a 
big  wagon  in  company  with  Chibiabos 
the  sweet  singer,  and  Atalanta  his  wife, 
who  for  once  condescended  to  employ 
horse's  feet  instead  of  her  own  active 
members. 

Caleb  assumed  the  reins,  and  the 
roan  was  already  in  motion  when  a 
hail  from  the  artist  arrested  them. 

"Beg  pardon,  but  they  say  you  are 
going  to  Schooner  Head." 

"Yes." 

"Then  let  me  tell  you  the  road  is 
absolutely  impassable.  There  is  one 
gully  a  hundred  feet  long,  three  or  four 
deep,  and  extending  from  one  side  of 
the  road  to  the  other.  There  is  no  get- 
ting through,  by,  or  over  it." 

The  party  looked  at  each  other. 

"  I  suppose,  then,  we  must  give  it  up," 
said  the  men. 

"  What  fun  !  Let  us  go  on  !  "  ex- 
claimed the  women  ;  to  which  Miselle 
added  in  an  aside,  "This  is  where  the 
*  lark  '  comes  in,  Caleb." 

The  stronger  minds  prevailed,  as  they 
should  ;  and,  with  thanks  to  the  artist, 
the  party  drove  merrily  out  of  the  gate 
and  along  a  road  as  full  of  picturesque 
beauty  as  of  holes,  and  presenting  as 
startling  a  variety  of  scenery  as  of  im- 
pediment. Like  some  of  the  young 
gentlemen  who  finish  their  education 
abroad,  the  farther  it  went  the  worse  it 
grew,  until  all  minor  atrocities  ended  at 
the  mouth  of  the  gully,  which  in  appear- 
ance quite  justified  the  character  be- 
stowed upon  it  by  the  artist. 

A  council  of  war  was  held,  resulting 
in  the  roan's  bein'g  slipped  from  the 
shafts,  and  prevailed  upon  to  scramble 
down  and  through  the  gully  to  its  far- 


1 868.] 


Caleb's  Lark. 


657 


ther  termination,  where  he  was  in- 
trusted to  Atalanta  and  Miselle,  with 
strictest  orders  to  all  three  to  remain 
precisely  where  they  were  left,  and  at- 
tempt no  ambitious  operations  what- 
ever,—  orders  minutely  obeyed  by  both 
roan  and  his  keepers  until  the  control- 
ling element  was  out  of  sight,  when  they 
at  once  followed  to  a  point  commanding 
the  field  of  action,  which  they  contem- 
plated with  gleeful  satisfaction. 

"Just  fancy  those  men  laboring  in 
that  style  from  necessity  instead  of  for 
fun,"  suggested  Atalanta,  as  she  watched 
Chibiabos,  the  Friend,  the  Count,  and 
Caleb,  who,  literally  putting  their  shoul- 
ders to  the  wheel,  pushed,  pulled,  lifted, 
and  hoisted  the  "heavy  wagon  along, 
conclusively  proving  that  four  men  are 
abnost  equal  to  one  horse. 

The  gully,  however,  was  passed  ;  the 
picket-guard,  duly  chidden  for  disobedi- 
ence and  insubordinate  mirth,  was  re- 
lieved of  its  charge  ;  the  roan  rehar- 
nessed  ;  the  party  repacked  ;  and  the 
journey  continued  over  a  road  still  very 
bad,  but  leading  through  a  region  of 
such  wild  beauty  that  its  faults  were 
all  forgiven.  The  last  part  of  its  course 
lay  under  the  eastern  side  of  New- 
port Mountain,  which,  like  nearly  ev- 
ery othtr  mountain  upon  the  island, 
slopes  gradually  and  greenly  to  the 
west,  and  toward  the  east  presents  a 
precipitous  and  frowning  face  of  naked 
granite.  Another  curious  feature  in 
this  formation  is  the  fact  that  several 
of  these  precipitous  mountain-faces  ter- 
minate in  water,  —  either  lake,  sound,  or 
ocean.  On  a  sudden  the  broken  road 
disappeared  altogether,  and  we  came 
upon  a  grassy  plateau,  with  a  fisher- 
man's cottage  at  its  farther  extremity 
and  a  land-locked  harbor  beyond,  beau- 
tiful enough  to  have  sheltered  Cleop  '- 
tra's  galleys,  instead  of  the  unsavc;/ 
fishing-craft  riding  at  anchor  there. 

"  Do  you  see  that  sheer  precip';  c 
near  the  crest  of  Newport  ?  "  asked  the 
Friend,  helping  Miselle  from  the  wagon. 

"  Yes.     Has  it  a  story  ?  " 

"  Some  years  ago  two  girls  were 
scrambling  along  its  edge,  —  looking  for 
berries,  I  believe,  —  when  one  fell  over, 

VOL.  XXII.  —  NO.  134.  42 


dragging  her  comrade  after  her.  The 
first  crashed  straight  down  upon  the 
rocks,  two  hundred  feet  below,  and 
never  stirred  again.  The  other  fell 
upon  her,  and  escaped  with  broken 
limbs  and  terrible  bruises.  Her  shrieks 
were  heard  at  this  house,  and  some  men 
went  immediately  to  the  rescue  ;  but 
such  was  the  difficulty,  at  first  of  reach- 
ing, and  afterward  of  removing  her, 
that  it  was  eight  hours  before  she  was 
raised  to  the  edge  of  the  cliff.  Fancy 
those  eight  hours  !  " 

"But  did  she  live?" 

"  O  yes,  and  is  to-day  landlady  of  one 
of  the  Bar  Harbor  hotels.  Humanity 
is  so  absurdly  tenacious  of  life.  —  But 
the  roan  is  safely  stabled  in  the  fence- 
corner,  and  Atalanta  leads  the  way  to 
Schooner  Head." 

So  through  the  great  gate,  and  over 
the  oozy  meadow  path,  gay  with  hare- 
bells and  wild  roses,  up  a  sharp  ascent, 
and  along  a  slippery  crag-path,  trooped 
the  merry  party,  until,  reaching  the  brow 
of  a  mighty  cliff,  they  found  the  ocean 
at  their  feet,  filling  the  far  horizon  with 
his  splendor.  Beside  them  lay  the 
Spouting  Horn,  —  a  mighty  caldron,  a 
hundred  feet  or  more  in  depth,  into 
which  the  sea  has  worn  an  entrance 
through  a  layer  of  softer  rock  near  the 
base  of  the  dividing  cliff,  and  where, 
having  gained  admittance,  it  fights  and 
rages,  like  any  trapped  wild  thing,  to  re- 
gain its  liberty.  To  the  roar  of  the  ris- 
ing wave  succeeds  the  moan  and  swirl 
of  the  retreating  one,  and  then  the  wild 
struggle  between  the  incoming  and  out- 
going forces,  until  one  closing  his  eyes 
might  fancy  himself  lying  beside  the 
veritable  mouth  of  the  pit,  as  described 
by  Bunyan. 

"  Rameses,  as  you  call  him,"  said  the 
Friend,  "clambered  down  the  inside  of 
the  Horn  at  low  tide,  until  he  could 
look  through  the  arch  out  to  the  open 
sea." 

"  I  should  like  to  have  heard  his 
next  sermon,"  commented  Miselle,  gra- 
ciously allowing  Caleb  to  make  of  his 
knee  a  step  in  the  somewhat  perilous 
descent  from  the  Horn  to  the  cliff 
whence  one  may  see  the  outer  entrance 


658 


Caleb's  Lark. 


[December, 


of  the  cave.  Here,  seated  upon  a  con- 
venient shelf,  with  the  waters  now  swell- 
ing to  their  feet,  now  lapsing  until  the 
dripping  cliffs  lay  bare  and  black  be- 
neath, the  friends  spent  a  happy  hour 
before  they  thought  of  time.  Just  over 
the  surface  of  the  gulf,  where  the  waves 
flew  back  from  the  face  of  the  cliff  in 
showers  of  spray,  appeared  and  van- 
ished at  every  moment  the  ghost  of  a 
rainbow.  High  overhead  rose  the  cliffs, 
whose  resemblance,  as  viewed  from  sea- 
ward, to  a  schooner  with  all  sail  .set, 
has  given  the  place  its  name.  High 
in  the  blue  zenith  sailed  an  eagle,  his 
broad  vans  motionless,  while  far  below 
him  whirled  and  screamed  a  flock  of 
snow-white  gulls.  The  bright  waters 
of  the  bay  were  studded  with  sails, ';  and 
the  stately  ships  went  on  "  to  some  fair 
unknown  haven,  when  — 

"  Suppose  we  get  a  lunch  at  Norris's, 
and  take  the  whole  afternoon  for  Great 
Head  ? "  suggested  the  poet  of  the  party. 
The  proposition  was  hailed  as  a  brilliant 
one,  and,  the  spell  being  broken,  every 
one  found  himself  ready  to  return  to 
the  little  house  at  the  head  of  the  bay, 
where  the  lunch  was  ordered  ;  and  dur- 
ing its  preparation  a  part  of  the  com- 
pany found  time  to  visit  a  curious  cave 
upon  the  shore,  known  as  the  Devil's 
Oven,  and  celebrated  for  the  number 
and  variety  of  its  sea-anemones  and 
other  marine  treasures ;  while  their  more 
indolent  or  weary  companions  chose 
rather  to  sit  beside  the  open  fire,  watch 
the  manufacture  and  baking  of  cakes 
and  pies  in  a  "  tin  reflector,"  and  listen 
to  anecdotes  and  reminiscences  from 
the  elders  of  the  family  who  have  lived, 
married,  come  into  and  gone  out  of  the 
world  in  this  secluded  spot  for  many  a 
year  before  the  world  came  to  surprise 
them  with  the  news  that  it  was  famous. 

The  cakes  baked,  and  the  wanderers 
returned,  the  lunch,  or  rather  dinner, 
since  salted  fish  formed  one  of  its  ele- 
ments, was  served,  and  eaten  with  a 
relish  not  always  conceded  to  Blot's 
or  Soyer's  most  successful  efforts.  The 
roan,  having  also  dined,  was  favored 
with  a  draught  of  water  from  Atalanta's 
botanical  specimen  box;  and  the  party, 


resuming  their  places,  drove  merrily  on 
through  a  pretty  wood-road,  in  the  di- 
rection of  Great  Head.  Another  iso- 
lated house,  seated  at  the  head  of  a 
lovely  little  golden  beach,  marks  the 
end  of  the  carriage-road  ;  and  while  the 
gentlemen  once  more  unharnessed  and 
stabled  the  roan,  Atalanta  and  Miselle 
entered,  and  made  acquaintance  with 
the  hospitable  dame,  while  Capitoliana, 
Britomarte,  Hatty  Louise,  Wilfred,  and 
Conins  tumbled  about  the  floor,  or 
peered  in  at  the  guests  with  wide  eyes 
of  wonder  glowing  beneath  a  thatch  of 
sunburned  hair. 

"Your  children  have  quite  romantic 
names  ;  where  did  you  find  them  ? " 
inquired  Miselle,  mildly  resisting  Hatty 
Louise's  efforts  to  wrench  open  her 
watch-case. 

"Out  of  the  New  York  Ledger, 
ma'am,"  replied  the  complacent  mother- 
"Me  and  my  sister  and  another  lady 
club  together  and  take  it ;  and  I  think 
it 's  most  a  beautiful  paper,  — don't  you, 
ma'am  ?  " 

"Much  better  than  nothing,"  sensi- 
bly replied  Atalanta,  while  Miselle  hes- 
itated ;  and  then,  as  Caleb's  head  ap- 
peared at  the  open  window,  they  took 
leave,  and  followed  the  Friend,  who 
acted  as  guide,  through  about  a  mile  of 
flowery  woodland  path,  coming  at  last 
upon  the  black  crags  of  Great  Head, 
the  answering  promontory  to  Schooner 
Head,  and  yet  more  massive  and  im- 
posing in  its  structure.  The  party  scat- 
tered over  the  surface  of  the  cliff,  and 
Miselle,  finding  a  little  nook  close  at 
the  water's  edge,  sat  watching  in  silent 
delight  the  grand  march  of  the  waves, 
as  sweeping  up,  battalion  after  battalion, 
they  fearlessly  dashed  themselves  to 
foam  against  the  gray  old  rocks  which 
for  ages  have  borne  the  assault  as  un- 
flinchingly as  now,  and  shall  endure 
in  primeval  strength  and  majesty  when 
we  who  marvel  have  passed  on  to  meet 
yet  greater  marvels. 

One  noticeable  point  in  this  view  is 
its  primitive  character.  Seated  low  in 
the  amphitheatre  of  the  cliff,  nothing  is 
visible  but  sea,  sky,  and  rock  ;  not  one 
flower,  one  blade  of  grass,  or  even  the 


1 863.] 


Caleb's  Lark. 


659 


brown  earth,  is  to  be  seen.  It  is  a 
glimpse  of  the  era  before  the  lichens 
had  turned  to  moss,  or  the  parvenu 
man  had  yet  been  dreamed  of.  Near 
the  crest  of  the  cliff  is  a  profile  rock 
nearly  as  good  as  the  famous  Fnmco- 
nian  one  ;  but,  when  one  goes  so  far  to 
escape  the  constant  sight  of  real  pro- 
files, why  waste  time  or  enthusiasm 
upon  an  imperfect  imitation? 

"  Half  past  five,  and  a  bad  seven 
miles  between  us  and  the  tea-table," 
announced  Caleb  ;  and  with  many  a 
backward  look  the  friends  departed, 
leaving  the  gray  old  cliff  smiling  rosily 
in  the  light  of  .a  glorious  sunset,  while 
all  the  east  was  filled  with  the  silver 
and  azure  of  moonrise. 

With  the  morning  came  the  sisters, 
fresh,  sparkling,  and  energetic  as  morn- 
ing itself. 

*'  Gouldsboro' !  It  is  the  very  day  for 
it,  —  a  favorable  tide,  a  promising  wind, 
and  Captain  Royal  Higgins  disen- 
gaged," said  Roma,  while  Avoca  quiet- 
ly put  Miselle's  bow  straight,  adding, 
"and  we  will  dine  at  Captain  Hill's, 
and  drive  to  Sullivan." 

"  O,  sailing  !  How  can  anyone  speak 
of  sailing  at  Mount  Desert  after  that 
dreadful,  dreadful  accident  last  sum- 
mer !  Did  you  hear  of  it  ?  "  cried  Dame 
Partlett  with  an  anxious  glance  toward 
her  own  ducklings. 

"  But  we  are  going  with  Captain  Hig- 
gins," said  Roma,  in  a  sufficing  sort  of 
way;  and  while  the  dame  proceeded 
with  the  melancholy  tale  of  the  wreck 
and  loss  of  every  life  but  one  out  of  a 
party  of  eleven,  Roma  supplemented 
the  story  of  Captain  Higgins's  prompt 
and  courageous  action  in  the  matter, 
resulting  in  the  saving  of  that  one  life, 
and  establishing  an  enviable  reputation 
as  man  and  sailor  for  himself. 

So  the  voyage  to  Gouldsboro'  was 
arranged,  and  a  party  made  up,  in- 
cluding the  four  friends,  the  General, 
his  wife,  and  Dick,  the  sisters,  the  am- 
bassador, the  two  English  ladies,  the 
fiance  and  Mephistopheles.  A  party 
selected  as  it  should  be,  with  every  one 
capable  of  contributing  something  to 
the  general  enjoyment ;  "  for  even  I  can 


serve  as  ballast,"  remarked  Caleb,  seat- 
ing himself  with  much  satisfaction  be- 
tween Roma  and  Avoca,  while  Miselle, 
with  Captain  Higgins's  quiet  conni- 
vance, established  herself  in  the  little 
skiff  towing  behind  the  Petrel  and  en- 
joyed the  atom  of  danger  and  full 
draught  of  exhilaration  incident  to  her 
position  hugely. 

Gouldsboro'  upon  the  map  means  a 
town  some  twelve  miles  east  of  Mount 
Desert,  occupying  a  peninsula  between 
Frenchman's  and  Gouldsboro'  Bays. 
But  Gouldsboro'  in  the  annals  of  Caleb's 
Lark  means  a  quaint  old-fashioned 
farm-house,  buried  in  riotous  wood- 
bine, and  framed  in  a  border  of  lilac  and 
syringa  bushes,  sweet-peas  and  mari- 
golds, hollyhocks,  sunflowers,  poppies, 
southernwood,  Ragged  Robin,  Love- 
lies-bleeding, and  Johnny-jump-up-and- 
kiss-me,  while  from  house  and  garden 
slopes  to  the  water's  edge  a  green  and 
blossomy  lawn.  Seated  in  the  porch  of 
this  old  house,  and  feeding  your  senses 
with  the  perfume  of  the  flowers,  the  songs 
of  birds,  and  hum  of  bees,  and  wash  of 
waves  upon  the  shore,  you  may  satisfy 
your  soul  with  such  a  glorious  view  as 
hundreds  of  miles  of  travel  cannot  rival. 
Description  could  but  do  it  injustice  ; 
and  Miselle  leaves  to  some  future  Mur- 
ray the  catalogue  of  islands  studding 
the  blue  bay,  —  some  dark  with  ever- 
greens, some  bright  with  birch  and 
alder  growths, —  the  mountain  peaks 
crowding  the  horizon,  the  sails  of  every 
variety  of  craft,  the  soft  pastoral  beauty 
of  the  foreground.  Or,  pending  the 
Murray,  she  introduces  with  pleasure 
to  an  appreciative  public  the  genius 
of  the  spot,  Captain  Barney  Hill,  who 
"  man  and  boy,  has  lived  here  and  here- 
abouts this  sixty  year,"  and  knows  its 
story  thoroughly. 

From  this  feast  Miselle  was  sum- 
moned to  the  less  satisfying,  but  yet 
essential,  banquet  of  fish  and  lamb,  in- 
evitable at  the  sea-shore,  and  here  met 
with  a  delightful  surprise  in  the  per- 
son of  her  charming  kinswoman,  whose 
talk  of  the  last  book,  the  last  music, 
the  last  idea  of  the  thinkers,  and  lust 
whim  of  the  fashionists,  added  the  same 


66o 


Caleb's  Lark. 


[December, 


fanciful  charm  to  the  scene  that  her 
dainty  gloves  and  handkerchief  and  fan 
did  to  the  moss-grown  and  rough-hewn 
step  upon  which  they  lay. 

The  drive  to  Sullivan,  along  the 
shores  of  the  bay,  and  giving  a  fine 
view  of  Mount  Desert  and  the  other 
islands  upon  the  one  hand  and  the  in- 
land country  with  the  Schoodic  Moun- 
tains upon  the  other,  is  described  as 
something  wonderful  ;  but  Captain 
Hill's  horses  having  already  gone  in  an- 
other direction,  the  party  were  obliged  to 
content  themselves  with  a  pretty  walk, 
a  row  upon  the  pond,  and  a  harvest  of 
water-lilies.  Then  came  good-by  to 
Gouldsboro'  and  the  fair  cousin,  who 
remained  like  Ariadne  alone  upon  the 
shore,  while  the  Petrel,  sailing  out  into 
the  sunset,  carried  its  happy  crew  upon 
a  voyage  as  full  of  romance  and  beauty 
as  theirs  who  in  the  unremembered 
years  sought  for  the  Fortunate  Isles. 

Deep  in  the  moonlit  night  the  Pe- 
trel dropped  anchor  at  her  usual  berth  ; 
and  her  passengers,  full  of  content  and 
peace,  went  each  to  his  own  abode. 

The  next  day  was  devoted  to  the  as- 
cent of  Green  Mountain,  the  highest 
peak  upon  the  island,  —  measuring  very 
nearly  two  thousand  feet  by  actual  sur- 
vey, and  the  one  spot  of  all  others 
which  a  tourist  may  not  omit  visiting. 
After  this,  he  may,  if  strong  of  limb  and 
energy,  scramble  up  Newport,  and  get 
a  view  much  extolled  by  those  who 
have  seen  it;  or,  like  Atalanta,  cross 
half  a  dozen  mountains  and  valleys  to 
Jordan's  Pond,  —  a  spot  whose  beauty 
and  inaccessibility  are  matters  not  to  be 
put  in  words. 

For  pedestrians  of  moderate  powers, 
however,  the  road  up  Green  Mountain 
offers  sufficient  exertion  to  satisfy  either 
conscience  or  ^spinal  system.  It  can 
be  accomplished  by  horse-power,  if  one 
is  neither  timid  nor  sympathetic  with 
the  brute  creation  ;  but  the  wisest 
course  is  to  drive  along  the  southwest 
harbor  road  about  two  miles  to  the  be- 
gkining  of  the  mountain  road,  where 
stands  a  guide-board  to  inform  the 
public  with  suspicious  exactness  that 
the  "  Summit  House  "  is  distant  two 


miles  and  an  eighth,  —  the  eighth  being 
a  trope,  or  poetical  figure,  expressive  of 
unknown  and  illimitable  distance,  capa- 
ble of  mitigation,  however,  by  frequent 
rests  upon  mossy  logs  or  shaded  rocks, 
draughts  from  a  clear  cold  spring, 
hands ful  of  bunch-berries  and  blue- 
bells, and  mouthsful  of  blueberries  and 
mountain  cranberries. 

The  Summit  House,  reached  at 
length,  proved  to  be  a  very  comforta- 
ble cottage  of  primitive  construction, 
but  furnishing  tolerable  beds  and  a 
very  good  dinner. 

';  And  now,  Caleb,  you  may  show  me 
the  view,"  graciously  announced  Mi- 
selle  ;  and  Caleb,  who  had  employed  the 
hour  devoted  by  that  young  woman 
to  repose  in  getting  himself  up  as 
cicerone,  proceeded,  spy-glass  in  hand, 
to  do  the  honors  of  Green  Mountain. 

"  In  the  first  place  you  notice  that  we 
seem  to  be  in  the  hollow  of  a  great  ba- 
sin, with  the  sea  rising  in  a  blue  slope 
upon  every  side  until  the  horizon  line 
is  on  a  level  with  our  eyes.  This  is  on 
account  of  our  great  elevation  above  the 
sea-level  and  is  an  effect  often  men- 
tioned by  aeronauts  —  " 

"  Caleb  !  did  I  come  to  the  top  of 
Green  Mountain  to  imbibe  Learning- 
made-easy  ?  You  will  be  attempting 
next  to  teach  me  the  multiplication- 
table.'' 

"  Excuse  me,  my  dear,  I  never  should 
attempt  that ;  and  I  will  now  confine 
myself  to  obvious  facts,  leaving  their 
attendant  theories  to  you.  Do  you  see 
that  black  beetle  with  a  plume  upon  his 
head,  crawling  up  the  blue  slope  to- 
ward the  horizon  ?  " 

<;  Yes,  I  see  the  beetle." 

"Well,  his,  or  rather  her,  name  is 
Lewiston  ;  and  she  is  a  steamer  of  no 
matter  how  many  tons,  proceeding  from 
Southwest  Harbor  toward  Machias. 
Through  the  spy-glass  you  can  distin- 
guish the  people  upon  her  decks." 

"  Then  I  won't  look  through  the  spy- 
glass, for  I  much  prefer  the  black-bee- 
tle idea  to  the  steamer  idea.  But  where 
are  all  the  ships  gone  to-day  ?  " 

"  There  are  two  ships  and  a  good 
many  other  vessels  in  sight,"  replied 


1 868.] 


Caleb's  Lark. 


66 1 


Caleb  with  mild  accuracy,  "although  I 
dare  say  you  took  them  for  boats,  or 
even  sea-fowl ;  all  those  flashing  white 
specks  are  sails.  Now  look  at  the 
islands.  This,  with  a  great  bay  eating 
the  heart  out  of  it,  and  leaving  only  a 
circle  of  earth,  is  called  —  " 

"  The  Doge's  Ring,  —  is  it  not  ?  " 

"  No  more  than  Frenchman's  Bay  is 
called  Adriatic.  That  is  Great  Cran- 
berry,—  pronounced  Crarmb'ry  Island, 
—  and  the  nearer  ones  are  Little  Cran- 
berries. Beyond  is  Long  Island,  and 
just  above,  if  your  eyes  are  ver^  sharp, 
you  can  make  out  a  speck  called  Mount 
Desert  Rock.  Stay,  look  through  the 
glass  at  it.  There  is  no  danger  of  see- 
ing any  of  your  fellow-creatures,  al- 
though two  of  them  inhabit  it." 

'•  A  light-house  ?  O  yes  ;  I  make  out 
a  solitary  shaft  with  a  pedestal  of  rock 
and  the  foam  dashing  over  it.  Do  you 
say  two  men  live  there  ?  why,  it  is 
worse  than  Minbt  Light." 

ti;  More  lonely,  certainly  ;  for  it  is 
twenty-five  miles  from  land,  and  must 
be  frequently  quite  shut  in  by  fog  and 
storm.  Now  come  to  the  other  side  of 
the  house,  and  I  will  show  you  Katah- 
din,  one  hundred  and  thirty  miles  away, 
and  perhaps  Mount  Washington,  at  a 
distance  of  one  hundred  and  seventy. 
I  saw  it  just  now.'' 

So  Miselle  obediently  went,  saw  all 
the  lions,  and  then  wandered  away  with 
the  sweet-faced  Quakeress  to  a  little 
nook,  where,  with  the  world  before  them, 
they  enjoyed  themselves  in  a  desultory 
feminine  fashion,  careless  of  names  or 
distances,  but  vividly  conscious  of  ev- 
ery point  of  beauty  in  sky  or  sea  or 
land. 

"  I  think  this  will  do  us  £oocl  for  the 
whole  year,  — don't  thee  ?  *'  asked  Mi- 
selle's  companion  ;  and  out  of  a  full 
heart  she  could  answer  only  "  Yes." 

Then  came  '•  the  world's  people," 
joyous  and  noisy,  and  Miselle  retraced 
the  few  steps  she  had  reverently  taken 
into  the  pure,  sweet  chambers  of  that 
saintly  life,  and  joined  in  Chibiabos's 
merry  chorus,  and  emulated  Atalanta's 
daring  leaps  from  point  to  point  of  the 
rocky  ,path  leading  to  the  brow  of  the 


ravine,  —  a  precipitous  cleft  between 
Green  Mountain  and  its  easterly  spin- 
sometimes  called  Dry  Mountain.  Be- 
yond this  again  lies  Newport  Mountain, 
and  then  the  sea.  The  Green  Moun- 
tain, or  eastern  face  of  this  ravine,  is 
composed  of  bare,  storm-scattered  i\  ck, 
and  so  precipitous  that  a  stone  launched 
from  the  summit  drops  a  thousand  fcut 
to  the  valley  below,  striking  fire  from  a 
dozen  salient  points  of  the  precipice  as 
it  goes,  and  announcing  the  end  of  iis 
journey  by  a  faint  and  distant  crash, 
while  a  curious  double  echo  repeats  the 
sound  of  its  fall, — first  from  Otter 
Creek  to  the  west ;  and  some  seconds 
later  from  some  point  far  to  the  east, 
apparently  the  open  sea. 

'•'  Probably  our  friends  the  Titans 
came  here  to  repose  in  the  'lap  of  Na- 
ture,' "  suggested  the  Count.  "  Fancy 
one  of  them  resting  his  head  upon  the 
breast  of  Dry  Mountain,  and  his  body- 
in  the  wooded  valley  below,  while  his 
feet  dabbled  luxuriously  in  the  waters 
of  Otter  Creek." 

Here  Caleb  launched  a  fragment  of 
rock  so  large  that  its  thunderous  de- 
scent aroused  the  eagles  who  inhabit 
Newport,  and  who  now  rose,  scream- 
ing angrily,  from  their  eyrie. 

'•Nine  of  them,  as  I'm  a  sinner!" 
exclaimed  Caleb,  in  great  excitement. 

And  Miselle  remarked  to  Atalanta, 
"  How  fortunate  v.c  are  not  chickens,  or 
even  lambs  !  " 

"  Don't  be  afraid,  those  gentlemen 
have,  or  soon  will  have,  other  fish  tiian 
you  to  fry,"  remarked  Caleb ;  while 
the  Ambassador,  always  practical,  pro- 
claimed his  discovery  of  a  nook  filled 
with  the  largest  blueberries  ever  seen. 

"  There  is  a  lively  sympathy  bet\\.-i-:i 
us  and  the  lower  animals  after  all. 
They  arc  always  grabbing  round  for 
something  to  eat,  and  so  are  we."  sug- 
gested Atalanta,  meditatively  plucking 
the  blueberries. 

And  so  home  again. 

The  next  day  the  gentlemen,  headed 
by  the  General,  devoted  to  a  fishing 
excursion  ;  and  their  disconsolate  roi- 
icts,  left  to  themselves,  also  hired  a 
roomy  row-boat  with  the  two  sturdy 


662 


Caleb's  Lark. 


[December, 


mariners  appertaining,  and  set  forth 
upon  a  voyage  to  the  Ovens,  —  an  unro- 
mantic  name  given  to  certain  curious 
caves  worn  by  action  of  tjie  tide  in  the 
base  of  certain  picturesque  crags  upon 
the  shore  of  Saulsbury  Cove. 

"  Ovens  !  "  exclaimed  Mrs.  General, 
indignantly,  as  the  party  strolled  along 
the  beach,  looking  up  at  the  bold  cliffs 
toppling  above  their  heads,. their  wide 
seams  green  with  ferns  and  blue  with 
harebells,  while  from  the  crest  nodded 
birch  and  larch,  and  many  another 
graceful  growth, — "ovens  indeed!  This 
place  is  henceforth  to  be  called  Sauls- 
bury  Crags." 

"  It  is  a  vote,"  announced  the  Speak- 
er; and  Miselle  "  resp'y  submits  "  the 
idea. 

The  day  was  charming,  so  was  the 
company,  so  was  the  lunch,  eaten  in 
the  largest  "  oven,"  so  was  the  row 
homeward,  so  was  the  evening,  when 
the  fishermen  returned  wet  and  dirty 
beyond  belief,  hungry,  boastful,  and 
happy  beyond  expression. 

The  next  day  was  devoted  to  "  the 
long  drive,"  a  tour  embracing  the  village 
of  Seal  Cove,  Northeast  Harbor,  and 
Somesville,  a  curious  sea-wall  or  natural 
causeway  composed  of  pebbles,  thrown 
up  by  the  ocean,  but  not  equal  to  a 
similar  formation  at  the  other  side  of 
Somes's  Sound,  near  Southwest  Har- 
bor. 

But  the  limits  of  a  magazine  paper 
are  peremptory,  and  by  no  means  ad- 
mit narrations  of  all  the  wonderful  ad- 
ventures that  befell  the  party  in  this 
expedition,  —  of  how  they  lost  their  way, 
and  were  fain  to  send  out  an  exploring 
expedition  ;  of  how  they  sought  shelter 
and  advice  in  Rhoda  Wasgott's  Variety 
Store  at  Seal  Cove,  and  were  referred 
to  a  friendly  farm-house  close  at  hand, 
where  they  received  kindest  hospital- 
ity, much  new  milk,  bread,  butter, 
doughnuts,  and  apple-pie,  and  where,  to 
Miselle's  rapturous  delight,  she  found  a 
woman  spinning  real  bona  fide  yarn  to 
be  knitted  into  stockings,  and  learned, 
furthermore,  that  the  dwellers  in  this 
primitive  region  still  spin  and  v/eave 
and  wear  the  wool  of  their  own  sheep, 


precisely  as  all  our  grandmothers  once 
did. 

From  these  scanty  "  specimen  bricks  " 
let  the  reader  build  up  for  himself  the 
story  of  a  long  and  charming  day,  end- 
ing in  a  rattling  drive  homeward,  and 
an  impromptu  concert  at  "the  other 
house." 

The  following  morning  was  devoted 
to  a  scramble  up  a  perpendicular  moun- 
tain for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  what 
Atalanta  recommended  as  a  "  tidy  little 
view  "  ;  and  Miselle,  mentally  adjusting 
the  prfee  of  candles  to  the  pleasure  of 
such  a  game,  declined  accompanying 
her  friends  farther  than  a  cottage  at  the 
foot  of  the  mountain,  where  she  begged 
hospitality  until  their  return.  It  was 
granted  with  ready  kindness  ;  and  while 
the  hostess  continued  her  washing, 
Miselle  devoted  herself  to  a  large  rock- 
ing-chair, a  little  girl  named  Aqua,  and 
a  new  field  of  observation. 

"You  don't  feel  the  storms  here  as 
they  do  on  the  coast,  —  do  you  ?  "  asked 
she,  looking  out  at  the  surrounding 
mountains. 

"No,  it's  an  awful  sight  lee-er  here 
under  the  hills  than  right  out  on  shore, 
you  see  ;  but  then  it 's  dretful  lonesome 
come  to  die  here  in  the  winter,  and  a 
man  have  to  go  eight  mile  a-horseback 
through  the  mountains  'fore  he  can 
fetch  a  doctor,  and  you  mebbe  gone 
'fore  he  gets  back." 

It  was  a  handful  out  of  her  inmost 
heart  that  the  woman  thus  gave,  and 
Miselle  glanced  with  sudden  apprecia- 
tion at  her  hollow  cheeks  and  over- 
bright  eyes. 

Presently  the  hostess  wiping  her  arms, 
and,  sending  Anselm  for  "  kin'lin's," 
busied  herself  over  the  stove  for  a  few 
minutes,  and  returned  with  a  steaming 
cup  of  tea  and  a  cup  of  milk. 

"  Thought  mebbe  you'd  take  a  dish 
o'  tea  along  o'  me,"  said  she:  "you 
don't  look  so  dretful  rugged;  and  it'll 
kind  o'  rest  ye." 

And  Miselle,  sipping  the  tea,  thought 
of  certain  holy  words  :  ';  For  all  they 
did  cast  in  of  their  abundance,  but  she 
of  her  want  did  cast  in  all  that  she  had, 
even  all  her  living." 


1868.] 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


Before  the  lunch  was  ended,  the 
mountaineers  returned,  as  footsore, 
ragged,  tired,  and  cross  as  they  de- 
served to  be,  and  Miselle  bid  good  by 
to  her  new  friend  with  real  regret. 

"We  are  all  invited  to  a  bal  masque 
at  the  Bayview  House  this  evening," 
announced  Atalanta  at  dinner;  "and 
we  are  all  going,  which  is  more." 

So  the  afternoon  was  devoted  to  finery 
and  contrivance  ;  the  early  evening  to 
dressing  a  Benedictine  monk,  a  Calcutta 
baboo,  and  a  gypsy  fortune-teller  ;  and 
the  first  hours  of  the  night  to  dancing 
and  nonsense. 

"  The  moon  knows  better  than  to  go 
to  masquerades  ;  she  stays  out  of  doors, 
and  enjoys  herself  like  a  rational  crea- 
ture," said  Miselle,  between  two  yawns, 
as  she  walked  home. 

"  You  should  have  been  a  monk  and 
shrived  pretty  penitents,"  said  Caleb, 


laughing  with  much  apparent  satisfac- 
tion. 

But,  Halte-la !  cries  the  editorial 
voice,  and  Miselle  pauses,  saying,  with 
the  wily  Scheherezade,  "  However  curi- 
ous these  things  may  be,  what  I  have 
yet  to  tell  will  divert  you  infinitely 
more." 

"  Pooh  !  "  growls  the  philosopher. 
"  Because  you  like  a  thing,  why  expect 
all  the  world  to  like  it  also  ?  How  many 
unfortunate  tourists  now  may  be  be- 
guiled into  visiting  it  only  to  find  that 
your  swans  are  geese,  and  to  come 
away  railing  at  your  rose-colored  delu- 
sions." 

**  The  swans  may  be  geese,  and  the 
eagles  carrion  crows,"  serenely  replied 
Miselle  ;  "  but  the  larks  of  Mount 
Desert  are  not  to  be  doubted,  for  Caleb 
found  one  there,  and  it  did  him  a  world 
of  good." 


THE    FACE    IN    THE    GLASS. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

TWO  days  after  this,  while  I  was 
in  my  husband's  library,  he  writ- 
ing and  I  restlessly  pacing  from  wall 
to  wall,  the  door  opened,  and  the  groom 
of  the  chambers  announced  "  Sir  Thom- 
as Juxton,  of  London." 

Mr.  Huntingdon  advanced  to  greet 
the  stranger,  and  I  turned  to  leave  the 
room,  for  I  noticed  that  even  this  new- 
comer glanced  at  me  as  did  every  one, 
that  is,  watchfully  and  suspiciously. 
Mr.  Huntingdon,  however,  intercepted 
me,  and,  presenting  the  stranger  as  a 
physician  who  had  come  from  Lon- 
don to  see  me,  rolled  a  chair  to  me, 
and,  placing  me  in  it,  sat  down  oppo- 
site. 

Sir  Thomas  took  my  hand,  felt  my 
pulse,  and  then  ensued  a  long  cross- 
questioning  as  to  my  symptoms,  during 
which  I  preserved  an  obstinate  silence. 
I  was,  however,  so  irritated,  that  I  at 


length  dragged  my  hand  forcibly  away 
from  his,  and,  pushing  him  from  me, 
cried,  "  Leave  me  !  You  can  do  me  no 
good  unless  you  give  me  liberty."  No 
sooner  had  he  left  the  room  with  Mr. 
Huntingdon  than  I  bitterly  repented 
having  shown  such  impatience  ;  the 
more  I  raged  against  my  bonds  the 
closer  were  they  drawn, — gently,  and 
almost  imperceptibly,  it  is  true,  but 
most  securely.  I  therefore  resolved  to 
call  the  doctor  back,  apologize  for  what 
I  had  said,  and  submit  to  whatever  rem- 
edies he  might  propose.  The  sound 
of  voices  in  the  ante-room,  as  I  opened 
the  door,  made  me  pause.  Mr.  Hunt- 
ingdon was  standing  with  his  back  to 
me,  and  the  doctor  was  speaking.  "  I 
never  saw  a  clearer  case  in  my  life," 
he  was  saying.  "  In  fact,  when  I  saw 
your  lady  in  London,  I  anticipated 
nothing  else  ;  though  I  had  hopes  that 
your  unusual  devotion,  and  the  reme- 
dies which  I  proposed,  might  have  ar- 


664 


TJie  Face  in  the  Glass. 


[December, 


rested    in    some    degree   the   progress 
of  the  disease." 

"  You  consider  —  her—  incurable  ?  " 
interrupted  ?vlr.  Huntingdon. 

"  Entirely  so  ;  indeed,  my  dear  sir,  it 
is  best  that  I  should  not  conceal  the 
truth  from  you,  painful  as  it  is.  There 
is  absolutely  no  hope  for  your  wife, 
and  I  should  advise  her  immediate 
removal.  But  the  subject,  I  see,  is  an 
unpleasant  one  to  you,  and  I  have  no 
wish  to  prolong  it  unnecessarily.  Good 
morning." 

Mr.  Huntingdon  immediately  re- 
turned to  the  library,  and,  drawing  his 
chair  to  the  table,  began  to  write.  I, 
however,  was  determined  to  compel 
him  to  repeat  what  the  doctor  had  said, 
and  interrupted  him  with  the  request 
that  he  would  listen  to  me  for  a  mo- 
ment. He  assented  by  a  slight  inclina- 
tion of  the  head,  pushed  his  papers 
away,  and,  selecting  a  pen  from  the 
rack  before  him,  began  leisurely  to 
mend  it,  assuming  meanwhile  an  air  of 
patient  attention.  Need  I  repeat  that 
interview  ?  Enough  if  I  say  that  I,  as 
usual,  was  agitated  and  confused,  he 
calm  and  patient;  that  at  its  close  I 
really  believed  myself  the  prey  to  some 
dreadful  disease,  and  that  another  at- 
tack of  frenzy  was  the  result. 

I  was  more  closely  imprisoned  than 
ever  after  that  day,  and  never  was  my 
desire  for  liberty  so  strong.  Unceas- 
ingly and  cunningly  did  I  speculate 
upon  a  means  of  escaping  and  sailing 
for  some  distant  land,  where  he  who 
held  over  me  so  absolute  a  sway  could 
never  come.  It  was  on  the  5th  of 
August  that  I  at  length  found  means 
to  elude  the  vigilance  of  the  servants 
who  watched  me  in  Mr.  Huntingdon's 
absence.  I  remember  well  that  hot, 
starlit  night,  the  great  house  lit  up,  the 
deep,  cool  glades  of  the  park,  in  one 
of  which  I  concealed  myself  until 
deeper  night  should  come,  that  under 
cover  of  it  I  might  start  away  and  be 
lost 

Soon  after  ten  o'clock  I  proceeded 
on  my  way.  I  was  anxious  to  strike  a 
post  road,  and,  if  possible,  take  the  night 
coach,  and  I  walked  with  a  desperate 


haste  which  afterward  seemed  to  me 
miraculous.  I  literally  fled  along  the 
lonely  road,  and  before  long  left  the 
lights  of  Huntingdon  far  behind  me. 
I  began,  however,  to  grow  weary.  My 
shoes  were  thin  ;  I  was  unaccustomed 
to  walking;  and  the  mad  pace,  which 
at  first  was  a  relief  to  me,  at  last  be- 
came intolerably  wearisome.  Toiling 
on  thus,  I  was  overtaken  by  the  coach, 
and,  having  paid  a  liberal  fee  to  the 
guard,  was  taken  up.  Tired  as  I  was, 
I  dared  not,  could  not  sleep  ;  I  watched 
through  the  short  summer  night  for 
the  tramp  of  horses  in  pursuit,  and 
glowed  exultant  at  the  thought  that 
every  hour  bore  me  further  and  further 
away  from  my  hated  captivity. 

We  travelled  all  the  following  day, 
and  at  nightfall  reached  a  hamlet  in  a 
far  distant  country.  After  assuring 
myself  that  a  coach  would  pass  through 
early  in  the  morning,  I  prepared  to 
alight. 

It  was  too  dark  for  me  to  see  the 
group  gathered  round  the  coach,  and  I 
gave  my  hand  to  a  gentleman  who 
extended  his  to  assist  me.  Although 
I  could  not  see  his  face,  I  knew  that 
firm  velvet  clasp ;  and  a  chill  ran 
through  my  veins,  and  my  heart  paused 
in  beating,  as  it  closed  over  my  hand. 
Mr.  Huntingdon  was  there  before  me. 

"  I  have  been  waiting  here  some  time 
for  you,"  he  said ;  "and,  as  our  own  car- 
riage is  ready,  perhaps  we  had  better 
continue  our  journey  at  once." 

I  drew  back,  trembling  and  indig- 
nant ;  but,  taking  me  in  his  arms,  he 
placed  me  forcibly  in  the  carriage,  and 
signed  the  postilions  to  proceed. 

When  we  were  fairly  on  our  way,  he 
bent  towards  me,  and  said  :  ';  You  will 
not  find  a  repetition  of  last  night's  at- 
tempt for  your  advantage." 

Before  sunset  on  the  following  day 
I  was  once  more  in  my  apartments  at 
Huntingdon  Hall. 

On  the  third  day  after  our  return,, 
as  I  sat  listlessly  watching  the  fast- 
falling  rain,  the  door  of  my  room  sud- 
denly opened,  and  Mr.  Huntingdon 
appeared,  followed  by  my  maid,  who 
carried  my  shawl  and  travelling-cloak 


1 868.] 


The  Face  in  ilie  Glass. 


665 


on  her  arm.     I    noticed   that  she  was 
herself  dressed  for  travelling. 

" Where  are  we  going?"  said  I,  as 
she  approached  me. 

"  Poor  dear ! ;'  said  my  maid.  "  Think 
of  her  forgetting  that  now  ! " 

"I  have  forgotten  nothing,"  I  replied, 
as  calmly  as  I  could.  "  Where  are  we 
going,  Harrington  ?" 

Mr.  Huntingdon  was  engaged  in  giv- 
ing an  order  to  a  servant  who  had  fol- 
lowed him  into  the  room.  He  suffered 
me  to  repeat  my  question  before  he 
spoke.  "  You  know  that  we  are  going 
to  travel,"  said  he,  quietly. 
.  "I  did  not  know  it,"  I  replied,  indig- 
nantly, "and  you  know  that  I  did 
not." 

"  You  wished  to  travel  a  day  or  two 
since.  I  was  not  prepared  to  accom- 
pany you  then,  and  could  not  permit 
you  to  travel  alone.  Now  we  will 
travel,  as  I  am  anxious  to  gratify  you." 

I  laughed  scornfully  as  I  answered  : 
"  You  know  perfectly  that  I  am  a  pris- 
oner here,  and  that  my  wishes  are  little 
regarded  ;  now,  however,  I  insist  upon 
knowing  where  I  am  to  go." 

"You  know  already,  Mrs.  Hunting- 
don," interrupted  iny  maid,  officiously. 
"  Dear  me,  madam,  you  ;ve  been  all  for 
going  to  France,  I  'm  sure." 

I  had  always  disliked  this  woman, 
and  the  feeling  that  she  despised  me, 
and  that  she  had  seen  me  during  my 
attacks  of  passion,  —  attacks  the  rec- 
ollection of  which  mortified  me  deeply, 
—  was  not  calculated  to  mollify  my 
dislike.  Of  late  she  had  not  only 
watched  me  closely,  but  had  assumed 
a  patronizing,  officious  manner,  which 
seemed  to  me  insulting.  I  therefore 
replied,  with  some  temper  :  "  You  are 
impertinent,  and  you  at  least  shall  not 
go  with  me.  You  —  " 

"  Leave  the  room,"  said  Mr.  Hunt- 
ingdon.     She   obeyed   instantly ;   and, 
offering  his  arm  to  me,  he  said:   "The 
carriage  has  already  been  waiting  some 
time." 

"  Where  are  we  going  ? "  I  answered, 
still  lingering. 

"  To  France,  as  you  already  know," 
he  answered. 


I  took  his  arm  without  another  word, 
but  without  feeling  any  reluctance  with 
regard  to  the  visit  to  France.  Always 
and  everywhere  a  prisoner,  even  a 
change  of  captivity  was  welcome  to 
me  ;  and,  besides,  the  journey  offered 
another  possibility  of  the  escape  for 
which  I  cherished  an  undiminished 
longing.  We  walked  down  stairs, 
therefore,  and  through  the  long  cor- 
ridor leading  to  the  hall,  in  perfect  si- 
lence ;  and  as  we  approached  the  hall 
I  heard  a  voice  —  my  maid's  voice  — 
declaiming  loudly  :  "  Bless  your  heart, 
she 's  more  flighty  now  than  ever,  — 
quite  violent,  indeed,  and  master's  pa- 
tience with  her  is  something  wonderful ; 
and  when  she  's  at  her  worst,  screaming 
and  tearing  everything  like  a  fury,  he  's 
as  cool  and  patient  as  can  be.  She  's 
only  fit  for  the  mad-house,  and  I  hope 
she  '11  soon  go  there." 

I  paused  aghast  as  I  heard  this,  and 
looked  up  at  my  husband.  He  had 
involuntarily  slackened  his  pace  to 
listen,  and  a  slight,  scarcely  percept- 
ible, smile  curled  his  lips. 

"  Can  you  permit  your  servants  to 
speak  .thus  of  me  ?  "  I  said. 

"  Can  I  under  any  circumstances  pre- 
vent them  from  observing  your  con- 
duct ?  "  he  answered,  composedly. 

These  words  inflamed  my  already 
irritated  temper  to  the  utmost.  The 
moment  we  entered  the  hall,  I  insisted, 
in  the  presence  of  the  servants,  that  my 
maid  should  not  accompany  me  on  my 
journey,  and  that  she  should  be  in- 
stantly dismissed.  A  stormy  scene 
ensued,  which  was  ended  by  Mr.  Hunt- 
ingdon's speaking  for  the  first  time, 
and  saying  that  it  should  be  as  I 
wished.  Immediately  afterward  we  de- 
parted alone.  The  carriage,  I  saw, 
was  heavily  packed,  as  if  for  a  long 
journey  ;  and  during  that  journey,  op- 
pressed with  grief,  dread,  and  bodily 
fatigue,  I  addressed  not  one  word  to 
my  husband,  —  I  feared  to  ^do  so.  O, 
how  I  hated  and  feared,  —  how  I  fear 
him  still! 

And  how  he  watched  me  !  Those 
clear  sleepless  eyes  almost  maddened 
me ;  and  as  I  repeated  inwardly  to  my- 


666 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


[December, 


self  that  I  both  feared  and  hated  him, 
I  shuddered,  believing  that  he  would 
divine  my  thoughts,  and  punish  them 
as  he  alone  knew  how. 

Four  days  after  we  left  Huntingdon 
we  reached  a  small  seaport  town, 
whence  we  were  to  embark  for  France. 
Our  luggage  and  servants  had  gone  by 
a  different  route,  and  we  were  to  sail  on 
the  following  day.  As  we  were  walk- 
ing that  evening  on  the  cliffs  which 
overhung  the  sullen,  swelling  sea,  I 
thought  suddenly  that  there  was  the 
repose  I  had  coveted  so  long.  I  had 
never  thought  of  suicide  before,  though 
I  had  felt  that  loathing  of  existence 
which  makes  life  valueless  ;  but  now, 
as  I  thought,  Death  seemed  to  me  my 
only  friend,  the  grave,  and  its  solemn, 
inviolable  shelter,  my  last  refuge.  The 
white,  curling  waves  seemed  to  beckon 
me  with  strange  fascination,  and,  act- 
ing on  the  impulse  of  the  moment,  I 
dropped  Mr.  Huntingdon's  arm,  saying 
that  I  was  cold,  and  wanted  my  cloak. 
I  expected  that  he  would  at  once  leave 
me  to  seek  it,  as  he  rarely  failed  in 
any  office  of  courtesy ;  but  he  passed 
his  arm  about  me,  and  said,  "  Abandon 
the  thought  of  suicide,  Charlotte  ;  you 
will  never  have  an  opportunity  to  com- 
mit it,  though  your  French  blood  may 
make  the  temptation  a  strong  one." 

I  made  no  reply,  and  suffered  him  to 
convey  me  back  to  our  lodgings  in  si- 
lence ;  but  when  we  were  fairly  in  our 
apartments,  and  the  doors  were  closed, 
I  confronted  him. 

"  Why  did  you  not  let  me  die  ?  "  I 
asked. 

"It  was  my  duty  to  prevent  you,"  he 
answered,  calmly. 

"  You  do  not  love  me  ?  " 

"  Certainly  not,"  he  said,  with  some 
surprise ;  "  nor  do  I  think  that  I  ever 
pretended  to  do  so." 

"  You  once  said  you  did." 

"  At  Lascours  1  Pardon  me,  I  did 
not  say  so.  .1  have  not  once  violated 
the  truth  in  anything  I  ever  said  to 
you." 

"  You  hate  me  now." 

"  No,  I  assure  you." 

"  Then  why  did  you  not  let  me  die  ?  " 


"  I  have  already  answered  that  ques- 
tion," said  he,  looking  at  his  watch ; 
"  I  can  spare  no  more  time."  And  he 
opened  a  book.  For  once,  however,  my 
anger,  rather  than  my  fear,  prevailed. 
I  darted  forward,  and  snatched  it  from 
his  hand. 

"  You  must  not  read  now,"  I  said ; 
"  you  shall  listen  to  me." 

"  To  what  purpose  shall  I  listen  1 " 
he  replied.  **  Continue,  however,  to 
speak,  if  you  prefer  to  do  so." 

"You  know  well  all  that  I  have  to 
say  to  you,"  said  I,  struggling  to  re- 
strain my  tears. 

"It  is  possible;  but,  if  so,  why  do 
you  persist  in  saying  it  ?  " 

"  Harrington,"  I  answered,  rising, 
and  taking  his  hand,  "tell  me,  for  pity's 
sake  tell  me,  where  I  am  going.  Tell 
me  why  that  physician  came  to  see  me  ; 
tell  me  whether  —  "  I  hesitated;  the 
dark  fear  I  had  in  my  mind  I  could 
not  shape  in  words,  so  much  did  I 
dread  his  reply,  —  "  tell  me,"  I  contin- 
ued, "whether  you  believe  that  I  am 
what  —  that  woman  said." 

"  All  those  questions  can  be  easily 
answered,"  said  Mr.  Huntingdon.  "  You 
are  going  to  a  retre'at  which  I  have 
selected ;  that  physician  came  to  see 
you  by  my  desire,  and  what  I  think  of 
your  mental  condition  I  refuse  to  re- 
veal." 

"  But  I  will  know,"  I  replied.  "  I 
will  not  longer  submit  in  silence  to 
treatment  which  has  gone  far  toward 
making  me  what  you  perhaps  think  I 
am.  I  am  your  wife,  and  I  claim  to  be 
treated  as  such." 

To  this  he  vouchsafed  no  reply.  And 
I  went  on  :  "I  have  estates  of  my  own. 
I  have  a  right  to  leave  you,  and  live 
alone  if  I  choose  to  insist  on  a  separa- 
tion." 

"  Indeed,"  he  said  ;  "  and  on  what 
grounds  would  you  base  your  appeal 
for  a  separation  ?  "  As  he  said  this  he 
lifted  his  eyes,  and  surveyed  me  with  a. 
contemptuous  smile. 

"  On  what  grounds  ?  "  I  repeated. 
"  You  do  not  love  me,  you  are  cruel  to 
me,  and  I  am  weary  of  my  life." 

"  Very  graceful   and    romantic   rea- 


1 868.] 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


667 


sons,"  answered  Mr.  Huntingdon ;  "but 
they  would  not  stand  in  a  court  of  law, 
and  I  shall  never  consent  to  a  legal 
separation." 

"Let  me  go,  let  me  leave  you,"  I 
rejoined,  "and  you  may  have  my  es- 
tates." 

"  Your  estates  are  already  mine,"  he 
replied.  "  By  the  laws  of  this  ccuntry 
a  married  woman  possesses  no  proper- 
ty ;  and,  besides,  your  estates  are  en- 
tailed, and  I  am  your  heir.  You  see, 
therefore,  that  what  you  would  offer 
me  is  mine  §  by  a  double  right,  which  I 
shall  never  relinquish." 

"  You  bad,  cruel  man  !  "  I  burst  out. 
"  You  do  not  love  me,  you  never  loved 
me ;  you  do  not  hate  me,  but  you  tor- 
ture me  nevertheless.  You  know  that 
I  am  dying  by  inches,  that  your  pres- 
ence is  killing  me;  and  you  have  all 
that  you  want,  —  all  that  I  can  give 
you,  —  yet  you  deny  my  prayer  for  soli- 
tude and  rest ;  you  insist  upon  keeping 
me  in  your  presence  until  I  am  mad- 
dened by  your  ceaseless  surveillance. 
Ah !  let  me  go  away,  I  beseech  you, 
anywhere,  or  let  me  die.  Death  is  pref- 
erable to  such  a  life  as  mine." 

He  was  silent,  and  I  — fool  that  I  was 
—  thought  that  I  had  at  last  moved  him. 
I  looked  eagerly  up  in  his  face,  as  I 
waited  for  his  reply.  As  he  still  stood 
motionless,  I  retreated  step  by  step 
until  I  reached  the  door.  There,  see- 
ing that  he  made  no  movement,  I 
paused,  and  again  said :  "You  have  all, 
remember,  I  want  nothing ;  I  ask  noth- 
ing for  myself  but  liberty.  I  do  not 
ask  for  a  legal  separation.  I  only  want 
to  live  apart  from  you." 

Still  silence. 

"  Farewell,"  I  said. 

"  Farewell,"  he  replied. 

I  turned  the  handle  of  the  door 
gently  at  first,  then,  as  it  resisted  my 
efforts,  more  roughly,  shook  it  at  length 
violently ;  all  in  vain  ;  it  was  locked 
on  the  outside.  Mr.  Huntingdon 
smiled. 

"  Return  to  your  seat,"  said  he. 
"  That  door  is  locked  by  my  command. 
At  midnight  we  embark,  and  until  theji 
you  had  better  rest." 


"  Then  you  will  not  let  me  go  ?  you 
insist  on  prolonging  my  misery?"  said 
I,  with  a  choking  sense  of  despair,  as 
this  last  hope  was  wrenched  from 
me. 

"  I  had  already  decided  your  future," 
he  answered,  resuming  his  book. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

Ix  vain,  transported  by  rage  and  dis- 
appointment, did  I  lavish  threats,  en- 
treaties, and  expostulations  upon  him. 
He  was  alike  deaf  to  all,  and  sat  turn- 
ing the  leaves  of  his  book  as  coolly, 
and  with  as  much  apparent  interest,  as 
if  no  heart-broken,  indignant  soul  were 
pleading  to  him  so  pitifully. 

It  was  past  midnight  when  we  em- 
barked in  an  open  boat  for  the  packet 
which  was-  moored  in  the  bay.  I  was 
lashed  to  one  of  the  seats,  and,  as  the 
fisherman  who  had  engaged  to  row  us 
out  took  the  oars,  Mr.  Huntingdon  in- 
quired whether  he  would  be  able  to 
accomplish  the  distance  in  half  the 
usual  time. 

"  Because,"  he  added,  "  I  perceive 
that  we  are  already  late,  and,  in  case 
you  cannot  engage  to  take  us  out  with- 
in that  time,  I  will  buy  your  boat  of 
you,  row  my  wife  out,  and  set  it  adrift. 
I  cannot  afford  to  run  the  risk  of  losing 
the  packet." 

After  some  parleying  this  plan  was 
agreed  upon,  and  the  boat  shot  out 
upon  the  water  like  a  living  thing,  pro- 
pelled by  his  long,  steady  strokes.  As 
soon  as  we  were  fairly  out  of  sight  of 
the  town,  he  changed  his  course,  and, 
instead  of  making  for  the  packet,  rowed 
to  the  northward,  keeping  close  to  the 
shore. 

It  was  a  calm,  moonless  night,  and, 
exhausted  by  the  emotion  I  had  under- 
gone, and  lulled  in  spite  of  myself  by 
the  rhythmical  beat  of  the  oars,  I  fell 
asleep.  When  I  awoke  Mr.  Hunting- 
don was  bending  over  me,  unfastening 
the  lashing  which  bound  me  to  my  seat. 
The  boat  was  moored  on  a  solitary 
shore,  and  the  gray  dawn  of  the  sum- 
mer morning,  breaking  over  the  scene, 
showed  on  the  one  hand  the  grayer  sea, 


668 


TJic  Face  i)i  tJic  Glass. 


[December, 


and  on  the  other  a  low  shore,  marshes, 
and  a  distant  hamlet,  from  which  as 
yet  no  smoke  was  rising. 

As  I  stepped  out  of  the  boat  Mr. 
Huntingdon  set  her  adrift,  and,  taking 
my  hand,  began  to  walk  rapidly  toward 
this  hamlet.  After  a  few  steps  we 
reached  a  turn  in  the  road,  where  we 
sat  down  to  rest ;  and  while  we  were 
waiting  Mr.  Huntingdon  enveloped  the 
lower  part  of  his  face  in  a  scarf,  so  that 
it  was  impossible  to  distinguish  his 
features.  Not  long  afterward  a  coach 
came  in  sight,  and  we  hailed  it  and  en- 
tered. We  travelled  for  two  days,  and 
at  length,  at  nightfall  alighted  on  the 
edge  of  a  wide  moor.  No  human  hab- 
itation was  in  sight,  and  Mr.  Hunting- 
don, taking  my  arm,  plunged  into  a  deep 
wood.  We  had  not  gone  far  before  I 
perceived  that,  wild  and  desolate  as 
everything  looked,  it  had  once  formed 
part  of  a  gentleman's  grounds.  Stat- 
ues, moss-grown  and  broken,  glimmered 
in  the  deep  recesses  of  the  wood,  and  I 
soon  saw  that  we  were  approaching  a 
large  mansion.  It  stood  before  us  so 
gloomy,  dark,  and  ivy-grown  that  it 
was  almost  impossible  to  distinguish  it 
from  the  thickly  growing  trees  which 
surrounded  it.  Not  a  light  glimmered 
from  its  numerous  windows,  all  of  which 
were  closed  and  barred,  nor  did  the 
faintest  echo  break  the  deep  silence 
which  brooded  around.  We  ascended 
the  flight  of  stone  steps  which  led  to 
the  grand  entrance,  and  Mr.  Hunting- 
don, taking  a  key  from  his  pocket, 
opened  the  heavy  door,  and  closed  it 
noiselessly  behind  us.  He  then  again 
took  my  hand,  and  we  mounted  the 
staircase ;  it  was  long,  and  had  two 
landings.  Arrived  at  the  top,  I  was 
led  down  a  long  corridor,  then  through 
a  suite  of  rooms,  —  I  could  guess  this 
by  the  fact  that  Mr.  Huntingdon  opened 
the  doors  as  we  advanced.  At  length 
we  paused,  and  he  struck  a  light.  I 
was  at  first  so  dazzled  that  I  could  dis- 
tinguish nothing ;  but,  as  my  vision 
cleared,  I  perceived  that  we  were  in 
a  small  room,  hung  with  tapestry. 
There  were  no  windows  as  I  speedily 
observed,  and  the  fireplace  was  closed. 


The  room  was  abundantly  lighted  by  four 
wax-candles,  which  were  burning  in  sil- 
ver sconces  on  the  walls  ;  the  furniture 
consisted  of  two  lounging-chairs,  a  bed, 
cheval-glass,  and  a  table  already  laid 
for  supper.  Mr.  Huntingdon  mixed 
some  wine  and  water,  and  offered  it  to 
me;  but  I  pushed  it  away,  and  said, 
"  Where  am  I  ?  " 

"  At  Averndean  Manor,"  he  replied. 
"  You  wished  for  a  separate  residence, 
and  one  has  been  assigned  you  ;  you 
will  reside  here  alone,  but  I  shall  visit 
you  occasionally.  Averndean  Manor, 
as  you  are  aware,  is  one  of  my  estates  ; 
it  was  unoccupied  during  my  father's 
lifetime,  and  has  remained  so  imtjl  now. 
The  desire  for  solitude  which  you  ex- 
pressed so  passionately  will  be  fully 
gratified  here,  I  think  ;  here,  at  least, 
you  will  be  entirely  alone,  nor  shall  I 
ever  again  reside  with  you.  Our  sep- 
aration is  final  and  complete." 

"  Why  can  I  not  remain  at  Car- 
terfct?"  I  asked. 

"  Because  Averndean  Manor  is  with- 
in nine  miles  of  Huntingdon,  and  there- 
fore admits  of  frequent  visits  from  me. 
We  do  not  part  in  anger,  and  it  is  my 
intention  to  maintain  some  intercourse 
with  you/' 

"  But  Carteret  is  my  own  estate." 

"Have  I  not  already  told  you  that 
that  is  no  longer  the  case?  Indeed, 
even  admitting  that  view  of  the  subject, 
Averndean  Manor  is  also  yours.  When 
in  the  marriage  service  I  made  you  a 
sharer  in  all  my  worldly  goods,  I 
thought  especially  of  Averndean.  I  in- 
tended then  that  it  should  be  your  resi- 
dence." 

';  Who  live%s  here  ?  "  I  rejoined. 

"  You  only,"  he  replied.  "  You  de- 
manded solitude,  repose,  immunity  froirt 
observation,  and  from  the  surveillance 
which  you  stigmatized  as  cruel;  yor.r 
prayer  is  granted  without  reservation  ; 
the  solitude  of  Averndean  Manor  is 
absolute  ;  you  will  have  no  temptations 
to  lure  you  from  repose  ;  and  from  the 
observation  of  all  eyes  you  are  as 
completely  sheltered  as  you  would  be 
in  your  grave." 

"  What !  "  I  gasped,  ';  is  it  possible 


1 868.] 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


669 


that  you  intend  to  leave  me  here  alone, 
—  utterly  alone  ?  I  shall  go  mad.  It  is 
base,  cruel,  murderous." 

"  That  is  a  harsh  term,"  he  said, 
with  a  slight  smile.  "  It  is  in  fact  a 
matter  of  some  difficulty  for  me  to  ar- 
range matters  in  accordance  with  your 
wishes.  You  demand  a  separation,  a 
demand  which  you  cannot  legally  justi- 
fy, but  I  grant  it ;  you  demand  solitude, 
I  grant  that  also  ;  you  demand  immunity 
from  observation,  —  a  singular  demand 
for  so  young  and  beautiful  a  woman,  — 
but  that  is  yours ;  and,  having  at  con- 
siderable loss  of  time,  gratified  all  these 
whims  my  conduct  is  stigmatized  as  — 
However,  I  will  not  repeat  your  words. 
Doubtless  it  has  already  occurred  to 
you  that  they  are  ill  adapted  to  me." 

"  No,  no,  no  !  "  I  cried.  "  All  the  vile 
epithets  in  the  world  would  not  do 
justice  to  conduct  such  as  yours,  to 
cruelty  so  refined,  to  injustice  so  unde- 
served. If  you  have  brought  me  here 
to  murder  me,  do  it  now.  Spare 
me—." 

"Murder  you!"  he  interrupted,  in 
his  softest  tones,  and  with  a  deprecating 
wave  of  his  white  hand.  —  "  ;/*v//Y&;-you  ! 
Such  an  idea  is  far  from  me  ;  such  a 
crime  I  have  no  motives  to  commit, 
nor,  if  I  had  the  motives,  have  I  a  tem- 
perament which  would  permit  me  to 
act  upon  them.  No,  I  shall  neither 
murder  you,  nor  allow  you  to  murder 
yourself.  Suicide,  although  it  has,  as  I 
before  remarked,  a  certain  attraction 
for  the  French  nature,  is  quite  unworthy 
of  a  daughter  of  the  Carterets  and  of 
my  wife.  I  shall  therefore  guard  you 
safely  in  this  respect." 

"  Guard  me  !  "  I  repeated  scornfully, 
"your  guardianship  has  ruined  my  life, 
broken  my  heart,  shattered  my  mind. 
May  God  in  mercy  preserve  any  other 
poor  creature  from  guardianship  such 
as  yours,  which,  after  driving  me  to 
despair,  would  drag  me  back  from  the 
grave  where  I  might  forget  you  and 
your  cruelty." 

"  I  see,"  said  Mr.  Huntingdon,  slight- 
ly shrugging  his  shoulders,  "that  I  am 
Jittle  understood.  Sit  down,"  he  con- 
tinued, pushing  a  chair  toward  me,  "and 


I  will  admit  you  into  the  confidence 
which  you  some  time  since  so  bitterly 
complained  that  I  withheld  from  you. 
Compose  yourself  and  listen. 

"  I  assure  you,  in  the  first  place,  that 
the  guardianship  of  which  you  are  so 
weary  has  been  equally  wearisome  to 
me.  I  determined  long  since  to  relin- 
quish it  when  the  proper  time  arrived, 
and  it  has  arrived.  There  is  but  one 
more  scene  in  the  drama  which  we  have 
enacted  together  since  your  birth,  — 
then  the  curtain  drops,  and  severed,  not 
by  death,  but  by  my  will,  which  is  as 
potent,  you  will  be  to  me,  and  I  to  you, 
as  if  we  had  never  been." 

He  paused  for  a  moment  to  look  at 
his  watch,  but  I  still  listened,  breathless. 
What  was  he  about  to  tell  me  ?  A 
dreadful  fascination  held  me. 

"  I  believe,"  he  resumed,  glancing  at 
me  with  the  contemptuous  smile  I  so 
hated,  "  that  you  have  hardly  appreci- 
ated my  character  and  talents,  and,  to 
make  them  quite  clear  to  you,  I  must 
tell  you  something  of  my  history.  You 
are  aware,  of  course,  that  your  father 
was  my  favorite  uncle  and  dearest 
friend  ;  perhaps  if  I  were  to  reverse  that 
proposition,  and  say  that  I  was  his  fa- 
vorite nephew  and  dearest  friend,  I 
should  approach  more  nearly  to  the 
truth.  I  was  ever  conscious  that  he 
stood  between  me  and  Carteret  Castle. 
You  observe  that  I  am  frank  with  you, 
and  it  affords  me  pleasure,  I  assure  you, 
to  be  so.  I  was,  of  course,  the  heir  to 
Carteret,  as  well  as  Huntingdon,  for  my 
uncle  constantly  assured  me  that  he 
had  given  up  all  thought  of  marrying. 
Nothing,  therefore,  occurred  to  render 
my  prospects  dubious  until  my  seven- 
teenth year,  when  J  accompanied  my 
uncle  to  France.  Among  other  visits 
we  paid  one  to  the  Chateau  Lascours, 
then  inhabited  by  your  grandfather, 
who  died  a  few  months  afterward,  and 
your  mother,  who  was  somewhat  young- 
er than  you  are  now,  and  at  the  height 
of  her  Very  remarkable  beauty.  Your 
father  was  much  confined  to  his  room 
by  ill  health  at  that  time,  and  the 
Countess  devoted  herself  to  me.  She- 
was  extremely  fascinating  and  beautiful 


670 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


[December, 


and,  though  I  cannot  now  say  that  I 
loved  her,  she  had  a  great  charm  for  me, 
and  we  were  secretly  affianced.  Judge, 
therefore,  of  my  surprise  when,  shortly 
after  my  return  to  England,  I  received  a 
letter  from  your  father  announcing  his 
nuptials  with  Mademoiselle  de  Lascours. 
I  think  it  will  be  granted  that  I  then 
had  just  cause  for  murder,  but  that  has 
never  been  at  all  a  temptation  cf-mine. 
Revenge,  my  dear  Charlotte,  to  be 
thoroughly  enjoyed,  should  not  be  ille- 
gal. But  to  return  to  my  story.  Shortly 
after  the  marriage  your  father's  health 
began  to  fail.  He  returned  to  Eng- 
land to  die  ;  and  it  was  while  I  was 
watching  his  last  agonies  that  the  news 
of  your  birth  and  of  your  mother's  death 
arrived.  I  communicated  both,  and  had 
the  satisfaction  of  receiving  his  last  in- 
junctions. I  decided  then  and  there 
upon  the  course  I  have  since  adopted 
in  regard  to  you.  I  have  watched 
carefully  over  all  your  interests,  and 
would  be  willing  to  display  my  man- 
agement of  them  before  England  and 
the  world.  I  educated  you  to  be  my 
wife,  and,  in  accordance  with  my  deter- 
mination, you  in  time  became  so;  as 
to  the  devotion  I  have  since  shown 
you,  and  which  I  assure  you  others 
appreciate  if  you  do  not,  I  have  had  my 
reasons  for  that  also,  though  it  has 
been  irksome  at  times,  and  is  relin- 
quished with  pleasure.  Your  inher- 
itance has  been  preserved  inviolate, 
your  life  has  been  calm,  nor  have  you 
ever  received  unkindness  at  my  hands. 
You  complain  that  you  have  not  been 
happy,  and  I  reply  that  it  never  was  my 
intention  that  you  should  be. 

"  One  thing  more  and  I  have  done. 
You  asked  me,  not  long  since,  the  opin- 
ion of  your  physician  in  regard  to  your 
case.  He  declared  you  to  be  an  incura- 
ble maniac,  and  advised  your  immedi- 
ate removal  to  a  Maison  de  Sante  on 
the  Continent.  In  compliance  with  his 
directions  I  made  arrangements  for 
your  admittance,  engaged  your  apart- 
ments, and  forwarded  your  luggage,  but 
it  was  never  my  intention  to  permit  you 
to  reside  there :  I  had  selected  Avern- 
dean  as  a  retreat  better  suited  to  your 


rank,  and  here  you  will  reside  for  a 
time.  Have  no  fear,  however,  of  per- 
sonal violence  ;  that  will  never  be 
offered  you." 

He  ceased,  and,  leaning  gracefully 
against  the  mantel-piece,  contemplated 
me  with  a  cold  serenity  which  inflamed 
to  the  utmost  the  stormy  passions  at 
war  within  me,  —  passions  so  intense 
that  they  could  not  at  first  find  a  vent 
in  words.  I  began  to  see  the  past 
clearly,  to  comprehend  all  that  had 
seemed  so  mysterious,  and  I  shuddered 
as  I  thought.  One  question,  the  reply 
to  which  I  felt  a  horror  of,  and  was, 
nevertheless,  resolved  to  hear,  I  must 
ask. 

"Tell  me,"  I  said,  rising  from  my 
chair  as  I  spoke,  —  "tell  me — that  let- 
ter of  my  father's  —  did  he  —  when  did 
he  write  that  ?  " 

"When  ?     Surely  you  have  heard." 

"  Is  it  his  handwriting?" 

"You  have  seen  other  letters  of  his ; 
any  one  familiar  with  his  handwriting 
would  swear  to  the  signature  of  that 
letter  to  you." 

"Is  it  his  own  handwriting?  Did 
he  write  it  ?  "  I  persisted,  my  hideous, 
half-formed  suspicions  gathering  cer- 
tainty. 

Mr.  Huntingdon  surveyed  me  with  a 
mocking  smile.  "  It  is  my  desire  to  be 
quite  frank  with  you,"  he  answered. 
"  That  letter  was  —  All  stratagems  are 
fair  in  love,  you  know,  or  war,  and  our 
marriage  was,  perhaps,  a  combination 
of  both." 

"  Then,"  I  said,  my  voice  issuing 
from  my  lips  in  a  hoarse  shriek,  "  that 
letter  was  a  forgery !  my  father  never 
wrote  it ! " 

"  Forgery  is  an  ugly  term,"  Mr.  Hunt- 
ingdon answered.  "Call  it,  however, 
what  you  will,  that  letter  was  neither 
written  nor  dictated  by  your  father,  al- 
though I  flatter  myself  that  it  did  no 
more  than  express  his  wishes." 

The  room  seemed  to  whirl  round  me 
as  he  spoke.  I  remember  snatching  a 
knife  from  the  table  and  springing  to- 
wards him  ;  then  darkness  swept  over 
all  my  senses,  and  I  remember  no 
more. 


1868.] 


The  Face  in  the  Glass. 


671 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

WHEN  I  came  to  myself,  I  was  lying 
on  the  sofa,  the  knife  had  been  wrenched 
from  my  grasp,  and  Mr.  Huntingdon 
was  gone. 

The  night  must  have  been  far  ad- 
vanced, for  the  tall  candles  were  burned 
almost  to  their  sockets.  There  was  a 
liberal  supply  upon  the  mantel-piece, 
however,  and  I  soon  lit  others,  and  then 
I  had  leisure  to  examine  my  apartment. 
It  had,  as  I  have  before  said,  no  win- 
dows, although  it  was  well  ventilated, 
apparently  by  some  aperture  in  the 
lofty  ceiling.  To  my  horror,  I  soon 
found  that  there  was  no  door,  and  the 
truth  was  clear  to  me  that  I  was  a  pris- 
oner in  a  secret  chamber  of  the  long- 
deserted  Averndean  Manor, — a  pris- 
oner, and  evidently  to  be  so  for  some 
length  of  time,  as  there  was  an  abun- 
dance of  provisions  and  clothing.  All 
that  I  had  before  endured  was  as  noth- 
ing compared  with  the  horror  of  that 
moment,  —  a  dull  horror,  through  which 
my  fierce  hatred  of  the  man  who  had 
thus  ruined  me  glared  like  a  lurid 
torch.  When,  after  repeated  examina- 
tions of  every  rent  in  the  tapestry,  of 
every  crack  in  the  floor  and  panelling, 
I  became  aware  that  all  was  useless, 
and  that  escape  was  for  me  a  thing 
impossible,  I  gave  myself  up  unre- 
strainedly to  the  fury  which  possessed 
my  soul.  The  lofty  roof,  the  long  gal- 
leries, the  many  silent  rooms  of  that 
deserted  house,  tossed  back  my  shrieks 
in  a  thousand  mocking  echoes ;  but 
no  human  voice  replied,  no  step  ap- 
proached, no  hand  was  extended  to  aid 
me. 

When  I  was  literally  exhausted,  I 
threw  myself  down  and  slept.  Slept ! 
that  sleep  was  a  dream  of  hell,  and 
from  it  I  woke  to  deeper  misery.  I 
sought  everywhere  for  some  means  of 
putting  an  end  to  my  wretched  exist- 
ence, but  in  vain  ;  he  who  had  locked 
me  there  had  well  kept  his  promise  of 
guarding  me  from  suicide. 

After  that,  I  cannot  remember  much  ; 
I  do  not  even  know  how  the  time  passed, 
although  I  remember  that,  when  the 


candles  burned  out,  I  replaced  them. 
The  dread  of  utter  darkness  was  alive  in 
me  still,  and  sometimes  I  ate  and  drank. 
I  do  not  know  how  long  I  had  been 
there  when  I  woke  out  of  a  kind  of 
stupor  which  yet  was  not  sleep.  The 
candles  were  flickering  and  guttering, 
and,  strangely  enough,  reminded  me  of 
those  other  candles  fur  away,  which  had 
burned  round  the  corpse  in  the  Chateau 
Lascours. 

I  rose  from  the  side  of  my  bed,  where 
I  must  have  been  sitting,  and  looked 
round  the  room.  It  was  all  dismantled 
now.  The  tapestry  hung  (as  I  had 
torn  it)  in  strips  from  the  walls,  the 
furniture  was  broken  and  disordered. 
I  looked  slowly  round,  feeling  that  it 
was  my  last  sight  of  earth  and  earthly 
things.  My  last  trial,  I  thought,  had 
come,  for  I  had  resolved  to  beat  myself 
to  death  against  a  sort  of  abutment  in 
the  panelled  wall. 

I  advanced.  Once,  twice  I  hurled 
myself  against  it  with  a  sort  of  fierce 
delight,  as  I  thought  that  he  would 
come  and  find  me  dead.  The  third 
time  the  panel  yielded,  and  I  fell  for- 
ward into  the  room  beyond. 

My  first  emotion  was  one  of  dread 
lest  Mr.  Huntingdon  should  be  near; 
my  next,  the  determination  to  seize  this 
opportunity  ~  of  escape  without  delay. 
I  returned  to  my  room  for  a  moment, 
to  fold  my  veil  and  mantle  about  me ; 
then,  taking  my  purse,  I  crept  out,  care- 
fully closing  the  panel  behind  me.  I 
was  in  total  darkness,  but  rightly  con- 
jecturing that  the  room  in  which  I  found 
myself  was  the  last  of  the  suite  through 
which  I  remembered  to  have  passed, 
I  groped  my  way  on  slowly,  opening 
and  closing  the  doors  noiselessly.  At 
last  I  felt  that  I  was  in  the  corridor  or 
gallery  leading  to  the  staircase.  I  found 
it  at  last,  and  descended,  my  heart  beat- 
ing audibly  as  I  remembered  who  had 
once  met  me  at  the  foot  of  a  staircase. 
He  was  not  there,  however,  and  I  found 
myself  in  a  large,  octagonal  hall,  with 
many  corridors  diverging  from  it.  From 
one  of  these  a  light  gleamed,  and  I  ad- 
vanced toward  that  light,  swiftly  and 
silently.  As  I  approached  it,  I  saw 


The  Face  in  tJic  Glass. 


[December, 


that  it  proceeded  from  a  large  room,  in 
the  centre  of  which  stood  a  table  upon 
which  four  wax-candles  were  burning. 
It  was  littered  with  papers,  and  sitting 
writing  with  his  back  to  me  was  Mr. 
Huntingdon.  He  had  evidently  been 
riding,  for  his  coat,  hat,  and  whip  lay 
upon  a  chair  near  the  door,  together 
with  a  small  Italian  stiletto  which  he 
always  carried  about  him.  I  took  that 
up  as  I  passed,  and  crept  toward  him. 

He  was  dressed,  as  he  often  was,  in  a 
coat  of  gray  cloth  with  ruffles  of  the 
finest  lace.  One  hand  was  thrust  into 
his  breast,  the  other  was  travelling 
steadily  over  the  paper.  I  crept  nearer, 
nearer  still,  —  so  near  that,  had  I  not 
held  my  breath,  it  would  have  stirred 
his  blond  silken  hair.  I  saw  what  he 
had  written  :  — 

"  Died  at  Hyeres,  France,  on  the 
r»oth  of  August,  1798,  Charlotte  Alixe  la 
Baume,  wife  of  the  Right  Honorable 
Harrington  Carteret  Huntingdon,  of 
Huntingdon  Hall  and  Averndean  Ma- 
nor, Cumberland,  and  daughter  of  the 
Hon.  Charles  Huntingdon  Carteret  of 
Carteret  Castle  and  Branthope  Grange." 

All  the  fierce  hatred  I  felt  for  him 
blazed  up  at  the  sight,  and  quivered 
through  every  fibre,  and  I  stabbed  him, 
—  stabbed  him  deeply  behind  the  ear. 

A  slight  shudder  shook  his  strong 
frame,  his  right  hand  dragged  f  itself 
along  the  paper,  then  —  all  was  still, 
and  I  turned  and  fled,  throwing  the 
stiletto  from  me  as  I  sped  along  the 
gallery.  I  opened  the  great  door,  and 
hastened  down  the  steps.  Mr.  Hunt- 
ingdon's horse  was  tied  there,  and  I 
unfastened  and  let  him  go  ;  then, 
plunging  into  the  woods,  I  rushed 
madly  on.  The  night  was  far  ad- 
vanced, and  I  was  on  a  distant  road, 
when  I  was  overtaken  by  the  coach  ; 
and  of  the  next  few  days  I  have  little 
recollection.  I  never  rested  for  a  mo- 
ment until  I  reached  Paris.  I  arrived 
there  in  the  morning ;  but  how  long 
after  I  left  England  1  do  not  know.  I 
had  some  difficulty  at  first  in  securing 
apartments ;  but,  being  liberally  pro- 
vided with  money,  I  at  length  succeeded 
in  finding:  them  in  the  Rue .  I  was 


worn  out  with  fatigue  and  hunger,  and 
slept  until  quite  late.  When  the  por- 
tress, whose  services  I  had  engaged, 
at  length  awoke  me,  it  was  dark.  She 
soon  brought  candles,  however,  and 
then  left  me,  after  placing  my  dinner  on 
the  table.  I  rearranged  my  dress  as 
well  as  I  was  able,  and  then,  seeing  a 
long  mirror  opposite,  I  lifted  my  eyes 
to  survey  the  effect.  Horror  !  horror  ! 
Bending  over  me,  his  left  hand  still  in 
his  bosom,  his  fair  hair,  his  rich  dress, 
all  unruffled,  save  for  the  blood  which 
dripped  from  the  wound  behind  his 
ear,  with  a  mocking  smile  on  his  lips, 
stood  Mr.  Huntingdon. 

I  could  not  have  turned,  I  could  not 
have  averted  my  eyes  for  worlds  ;  but, 
slowly  raising  my  right  hand,  I  thrust 
it  backward.  It  was  not  clasped,  it 
met  no  resisting  medium,  although 
//  did  not  stir.  No ;  I  thrust  it 
through  and  through  that  figure,  moved 
it  up  and  down,  and  then,  —  then 
I  knew  that  I  had  but  set  him  free 
that  he  might  follow  and  torment  me 
wherever  I  went,  and  I  tore  myself 
away,  and  rushed  out  of  the  room. 

On  the  first  landing  of  the  staircase 
down  which  I  hastened  was  a  tall  mir- 
ror, and  in  it  I  could  see  him  descend- 
ing at  my  side,  step  by  step,  his  wound 
dripping  redly  as  he  walked.  A  group 
of  servants  were  assembled  on  the 
landing,  and  as  one  of  them  advanced 
to  ask  if  I  wanted  anything,  I  paused, 
and  made  some  remark  about  the  gen- 
tleman with  me. 

"  Madame  ?  "  he  said,  gazing  first  at 
the  mirror  to  which  my  eyes  were  di- 
rected, and  then  at  me.  Evidently  he 
saw  nothing,  and  thought  me  mad,  and 
I  lingered  no  longer.  I  rushed  out ; 
and  since  then  I  have  been  a  wanderer, 
never  daring  to  rest,  and  knowing  al- 
ways that  he  was  near;  and  he  is. 
Not  only  in  mirrors,  but  in  solitary 
pools  and  watercourses,  ay,  even  in 
the  sea,  I  have  seen  him  as  I  saw  him 
that  night.  Everywhere  and  always  he 
is  with  me.  Even  in  the  convent  I 
knew  he  was  there ;  and  one  night 
when  I  kept  my  vigils  before  the  high 
altar,  I  saw  in  the  marble  floor  —  HIS 


1 868.] 


The  Face  m  the  Glass. 


673 


face.  I  knew  then  that  God  had 
forsaken  me,  and  I  tried  to  come 
back  to  England  to  confess,  if  per- 
haps then  I  might  have  rest.  But 
I  was  ill,  —  and  I  lost  my  way,  —  and 
now  —  now  I  am  dying,  and  he  is  here 
waiting,  —  waiting  for  me.  If  I  had 
strength  to  rise  and  look,  I  should 
see  him  smiling  mockingly  at  me.  He 
knows  I  must  come  soon ;  but  I  cannot 
stop  his  wound;  it  bleeds,  —  it  drips, 
drips  still.  Ah  !  lie  is  waiting,  and  I 
must  go.  Doctor,  this  is  my  confes- 
sion. When  I  am  gone,  publish  it,  — 
tell  it.  Perhaps  —  he  will  —  be  satis- 
fied —  then. 

She  paused.  Already  death  was  at 
hand  ;  the  strong  will,  which  alone  had 
kept  .her  alive  during  the  five  days 
which  had  elapsed  since  she  began  to 
dictate  her  confession,  had  yielded  at 
last ;  the  agony  of  haste  with  which  she 
had  spoken  was  all  spent ;  and,  as  she 
sank  down  among  her  pillows,  her  thin 
hands  began  to  pluck  restlessly  at  the 
coverlet,  —  busy  and  aimless,  as  the 
hands  of  the  dying  often  are.  Opening 
the  door,  I  called  the  nurse,  who  came 
speedily,  and,  bending  over  her,  began 
to  chafe  the  feet  which  were  already 
dipped  in  the  cold  waters  of  that  stream 
which,  sooner  or  later,  must  be  crossed 
by  all  who  are  born  of  woman.  I  raised 
her  head,  to  ease,  if  possible,  the  breath 
which  now  came  only  at  intervals, 
catching  and  rattling  in  her  throat ;  and 
then,  thinking  that  perhaps,  if  she  were 
able  to  swallow  it,  brandy  might  allevi- 
ate the  last  agony,  I  went  to  the  fire- 
place, where  a  bottle  stood,  and  was 
pouring  it  out,  when  I  raised  my  eyes 
involuntarily,  and  almost  unconsciously, 
to  the  looking-glass.  What  I  saw  froze 


my  blood.  It  may  be  doubted  —  will 
be  doubted  —  by  many.  I  can  only 
vouch  for  it  as  the  truth. 

I  saw  a  man,  tall  and  stately,  his 
dress  splashed  with  mud  as  if  from 
hard  riding.  One  hand  was  thrust  into 
his  breast,  the  other  hung  by  his  side. 
His  cold  blue  eyes  met  mine  with  a 
haughty  glance,  as  I  gazed  upon  him, 
and  a  mocking  smile  curled  his  lips.  I 
knew  those  fair  and  finely  chiselled  fea- 
tures, that  silky  blond  hair,  that  dress 
of  fine  cloth,  and  linen  and  lace ;  and  I 
shuddered  as  I  saw  the  blood  dripping 
warm  and  red  from  the  wound  behind 
his  ear. 

Motionless  I  stood,  lost  in  the  mortal 
terror  of  the  moment,  and  while  so 
standing  the  Abbey  clock  began  to 
strike.  The  deep  solemn  strokes  vi- 
brated through  the  room,  and  with  each 
that  figure  became  more  and  more 
indistinct,  or  receded.  As  the  twelfth 
stroke  pealed  forth  it  vanished  ;  and 
the  wild  wind,  rising,  moaned  and  wailed 
round  the  inn,  and  then  swept  howling 
away. 

I  turned  towards  the  bed.  The  nurse 
was  bending  over  the  still  form  which 
lay  there.  "  Poor  dear  !  "  she  said, 
drawing  back  as  I  approached ;  "  I 
didn't  think, she'd  go  so  easy  just  at 
the  last.  She  was  off  like  a  bird  at 
the  last  stroke  of  twelve.  Ah,  sir,  it's 
no  use  feeling  her  pulse  ;  it  '11  never 
beat  again." 

I  laid  the  dead  hand  back.  All  was 
over  indeed;  and  out  upon  the  wild 
winter  midnight  those  two  souls,  so 
strangely  linked  together  by  crime  and 
wrong,  had  gone,  —  together  still. 

"  One  step  to  the  death-bed, 
And  one  to  the  bier, 
And  one  to  the  charnel, 
And  one— O  where?" 


VOL.   XXII.  — XO.    134. 


43 


674 


Hooker. 


[December 


HOOKER. 


E  life  of  the  "learned  and  judi- 
J-  cious"  Mr.  Richard  Hooker,  by 
Izaak  Walton,  is  one  of  the  most  perfect 
biographies  of  its  kind  in  literature. 
But  it  is  biography  on  its  knees  ;  and 
though  it  contains  some  exquisite 
touches  of  characterization,  it  does  not, 
perhaps,  convey  an  adequate  impres- 
sion of  the  energy  and  enlargement  of 
the  soul  whose  meekness  it  so  tenderly 
and  reverentially  portrays.  The  indi- 
viduality of  the  writer  is  blended  with 
that  of  his  subject,  and  much  of  his 
representation  of  Hooker  is  an  uncon- 
scious idealization  of  himself.  The  in- 
tellectual limitations  of  Walton  are  felt 
even  while  we  are  most  charmed  by  the 
sweetness  of  his  spirit,  and  the  greatest 
thinker  the  Church  of  England  has  pro- 
duced is  not  reflected  on  the  page  which 
celebrates  his  virtues. 

Hooker's  life  is  the  record  of  the  up- 
ward growth  of  a  human  nature  into 
that  region  of  sentiments  and  ideas 
where  sagacity  and  sanctity,  intelligence 
and  goodness,  are  but  different  names 
for  one  vital  fact.  His  soul,  and  the 
character  his  soul  had  organized,  —  the 
invisible  but  intensely  and  immortally 
alive  part  of  him,  —  was  domesticated 
away  up  in  the  heavens,  even  while  the 
weak  visible  frame,  which  seemed  to 
contain  it,  walked  the  earth ;  and 
though  in  this  world  thrown  contro- 
versially, at  least,  into  the  Church  Mili- 
tant, the  Church  Militant  caught, 
through  him,  a  gleam  of  the  consecrat- 
ing radiance,  and  a  glimpse  of  the 
heaven-wide  ideas,  of  the  Church  Tri- 
umphant. There  is  much  careless  talk 
in  our  day  of  "  spiritual  "  communica- 
tion ;  but  it  must  never  be  forgotten 
that  the  condition  of  real  spiritual  com- 
munication is  height  of  soul ;  and  that 
the  true  "  mediums "  are  those  rare 
persons  through  whom,  as  through 
Hooker,  spiritual  communications 
stream  in  the  conceptions  of  purified, 
spiritualized,  celestialized  reason. 

Hooker  was   born  in  1553,  and  was 


the  son  of  poor  parents,  better  qualified 
to  rejoice  in  his  early  piety  than  to 
appreciate  his  early  intelligence.  The 
schoolmaster  to  whom  the  boy  was 
sent,  happy  in  a  pupil  whose  inquisitive 
and  acquisitive  intellect  was  accompa- 
nied with  docility  of  temper,  believed 
him,  in  the  words  of  Walton,  "  to  be 
blessed  with  an  inward  divine  light"; 
thought  him  a  little  wonder;  and  when 
his  parents  expressed  their  intention  to 
bind  him  apprentice  to  some  trade,  the 
good  man  spared  no  efforts  until  he 
succeeded  in  interesting  Bishop  Jewell 
in  the  stripling  genius.  Hooker,  at  the 
age  of  fourteen,  was  sent  by  Jewell  to 
the  University  of  Oxford  ;  and  after 
Jewell's  death  Dr.  Sandys,  the  Bishop 
of  London,  became  his  patron.  He 
partly  supported  himself  at  the  univer- 
sity by  taking  pupils  ;  and  though  these 
pupils  were  of  his  own  age,  they  seem 
to  have  regarded  their  young  instruc- 
tor with  as  much  reverence,  and  a  great 
deal  more  love,  than  they  gave  to  the 
venerable  professors.  Two  of  these  pu- 
pils, Edwin  Sandys  and  George  Cran- 
mer,  rose  to  distinction.  As  a  teacher, 
Hooker  not  merely  communicated 
the  results  of  study,  but  the  spirit  of 
study  ;  some  radiations  from  his  own 
soul  fell  upon  the  minds  he  informed  : 
and  the  youth  fortunate  enough  to  be 
his  pupil  might  have  echoed  the  grate- 
ful eulogy  of  the  poet :  — 

"  For  he  was  like  the  sun,  giving  me  light. 
Pouring  into  the  caves  of  my  young  brain 
Knowledge  from  his  bright  fountains." 

No  one,  perhaps,  was  better  pre- 
pared to  enter  holy  orders  than  Hook- 
er, when,  after  fourteen  years  of  llvj 
profoundest  meditation  and  the  most 
exhaustive  study,  he,  in  his  twenty- 
eighth  year,  was  made  deacon  and 
priest.  And  now  came  the  most  unfor- 
tunate event  of  his  life  ;  and  it  came  in 
the  shape  of  an  honor.  He  was  ap- 
pointed to  preach  at  St.  Paul's  Cross, 
a  pulpit  cross  erected  in  the  churchyard 
of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  and  from  which 


1 868." 


Hooker. 


675 


a  sermon  was  preached  every  Sunday 
by  some  eminent  divine,  before  an  as- 
semblage composed  of  the  Court,  the 
city  magistracy,  and  a  great  crowd  of 
people.  When  Hooker  arrived  in  Lon- 
don on  Thursday,  he  was  afflicted  with 
so  severe  a  cold  that  he  despaired  of 
being  able  to  use  his  voice  on  Sunday. 
His  host  was  a  linen-draper  by  the 
name  of  Churchman ;  and  the  wife  of 
this  man  took  such  care  of  her  clerical 
guest,  that  his  cold  was  sufficiently 
cured  for  him  to  preach  his  sermon. 
Before  he  could  sufficiently  express  his 
gratitude,  she  proposed  further  to  in- 
crease her  claim  upon  it.  Mrs.  Church- 
man —  unlike  the  rest  of  her  sex  —  was 
a  matchmaker  ;  and  she  represented  to 
him  that  he,  being  of  a  weak  constitution, 
ought  to  have  a  wife  who  would  prove 
a  nurse  to  him,  and  thus,  by  affection- 
ate care,  prolong  his  existence,  and 
make  it  comfortable.  Her  benevolence 
not  stopping  here,  she  offered  to  pro- 
vide such  a  one  for  him  herself,  if  he 
thought  fit  to  marry.  The  good  man, 
who  had,  in  his  sermon,  deemed  him- 
self capable  of  arguing  the  question  of 
two  wills  in  God,  "  an  antecedent  and 
a  consequent  will,  —  his  first  will  that  all 
men  should  be  saved  ;  his  second,  that 
those  only  should  be  saved  who  had 
lived  answerable  to  the  degree  of  grace 
afforded  them,"  —  a  subject  large 
enough  to  convulse  the  theological 
world,  —  the  good  man  listened  to  Mrs. 
Churchman  with  a  more  serene  trust- 
fulness than  he  would  have  done!  to  an 
Archbishop,  and  gave  her  power  to 
select  -such  a  nurse-wife  for  him  ;  he, 
the  thinker  and  the  scholar,  who,  in  the 
sweep  of  his  mind  over  human  learning, 
had  probably  never  encountered  an  in- 
telligence capable  of  deceiving  his  own, 
falling  blandly  into  the  toils  of  an  igno- 
rant, cunning,  and  low-minded  match- 
maker !  This  benevolent  lady  had  a 
daughter,  whose  manners  were  vulgar, 
whose  face  was  unprepossessing,  whose 
temper  was  irritable  and  exacting,  but 
who  had  youth  and  romance  enough  to 
discriminate  between  being  married  and 
going  out  to  service  ;  and  this  was  the 
Churchman  selected,  and  this 


was  the  wife  gratefully  and  guilelessly 
received  from  her  hands  by  the  "judi- 
cious Mr.  Hooker."  Izaak  Walton  mor- 
alizes sweetly  and  sedately  over  this 
transaction,  taking  the  ground  that  it 
was  providential,  and  that  affliction  is  a 
divine  diet  imposed  by  God  on  souls 
that  he  loves.  Is  this  the  right  way  to 
look  at  it  ?  Everything  is  providential 
after  it  has  happened  ;  but  retribution 
is  in  the  events  of  providence  as  well  as 
chastening.  Hooker,  in  truth,  had  un- 
consciously slipped  into  a  sin  ;  for  he 
had  intended  a  marriage  of  convenience, 
and  that  of  the  worst  soft  He  had 
violated  all  the  providential  conditions 
implied  in  the  sacred  relation  of  mar- 
riage. It  was  a  marriage  in  which  there 
was  no  mutual  affection,  no  assurance 
of  mutual  help,  no  union  of  souls  ;  and 
taking  his  wife,  as  he  did,  to  be  his  nurse, 
what  wonder  that  she  preferred  the  more 
natural  office  of  vixen  ?  And  though  ev- 
ery man  and  woman  who  reads  the  ac 
count  of  the  manner  in  which  she  torment- 
ed him  thinks  she  deserved  to  have  had 
some  mechanical  contrivance  attached 
to  her  shoulders,  which  should  box  her 
ears  at  every  scolding  word  she  uttered, 
it  seems  to  be  overlooked  that  great 
original  injustice  was  done  to  her.  \Ve 
take  great  delight  in  being  the  first  who 
has  ever  said- a  humane  word  for  the 
///judicious  Mrs.  Hooker.  Mated,  but 
not  united,  to  that  angelic  intellect  and 
that  meek  spirit,  —  taken  as  a  servant 
rather  than  as  a  wife,  —  she  felt  the  degra- 
dation of  her  position  keenly  ;  and,  there 
being  no  possibility  of  equality  between 
them,  she.  in  spiritual  self-defence,  estab- 
lished in  the  household  the  despotism  of 
caprice  and  the  tyranny  of  the  tongue. 

His  marriage  compelled  Hooker  to 
resign  his  fellowship  at  Oxford  ;  and  he 
accepted  a  small  parish  in  the  diocese 
of  Lincoln.  Here,  about  a  year  after- 
wards, he  was  visited  by  his  two  for- 
mer pupils,  Edwin  Sandys  and  George 
Cranmer.  It  was  sufficient  for  Mrs. 
Hooker  to  know  that  they  were  schol- 
ars, and  that  they  revered  her  husband. 
She  accordingly  at  once  set  in  motion 
certain  petty  feminine  modes  of  an- 
noyance, to  indicate  that  her  husband 


6;6 


I  looker. 


[December, 


was  her  servant,  and  that  his  friends 
were  unwelcome  guests.  As  soon  as 
they  were  fairly  engaged  in  a  conversa- 
tion, recalling  and  living  over  the  quiet 
ioys  of  their  college  life,  the  amiable 
lady  that  Mr.  Hooker  had  married  to 
be  his  nurse  called  him  sharply  to 
come  and  rock  the  cradle.  His  friends 
were  all  but  turned  out  of  the  house. 
Cranmer,  in  parting  with  him,  said : 
"  Good  tutor,  I  am  sorry  that  your  lot 
is  fallen  in  no  better  ground  as  to  your 
parsonage  ;  and  more  sorry  that  your 
wife  proves  not  a  more  comfortable 
companion,  after  you  have  wearied 
yourself  in  your  restless  studies."  "  My 
dear  George,"  was  Hooker's  answer, 
"if  saints  have  usually  a  double  share 
in  the  miseries  of  this  life,  I,  that  am 
none,  ought  not  to  repine  at  what  my 
wise  Creator  hath  appointed  for  me, 
but  labor  —  as  indeed  I  do  daily — to 
submit  mine  to  his  will,  and  possess 
my  soul  in  patience  and  peace."  Is  it 
not  to  be  supposed  that  John  Calvin, 
if  placed  in  similar  circumstances, 
would  have  shown  a  little  more  of  the 
ancient  Adam  ?  Would  it  not  have 
been  somewhat  dangerous  for  Cathe- 
rine, wife  of  Martin  Luther,  to  have 
screamed  to  her  husband  to  come  and 
rock  the  cradle  while  he  was  discours- 
i»g  with  Melancthon  on  the  insuffi- 
ciency of  works  ? 

One  result  of  this  visit  of  his  pupils 
was  that  Sandys,  whose  father  was 
Archbishop  of  York,  warmly  represent- 
ed to  that  dignitary  of  the  Church  the 
scandal  of  allowing  such  a  Combination 
of  the  saint  and  sage  as  Richard  Hook- 
er to  be  buried  in  a  small  country  par- 
sonage ;  and  the  mastership  of  the 
Temple  falling  vacant  at  this  time,  the 
Archbishop  used  his  influence  with  the 
judges  and  benchers,  and  in  March, 
1585.  obtained  the  place  for  Hooker. 
But  this  promotion  was  destined  to 
:;!ve  him  new  disquiets  rather  than 
diminish  old  ones.  The  lecturer  who 
preached  the  evening  sermons  at  the 
Temple  was  Walter  Travers,  —  an  able, 
learned,  and  resolute  theologian,  who 
preferred  the  Presbyterian  form  of 
church  government  to  the  Episcopal, 


and  who,  in  his  theological  belief, 
agreed  with  the  Puritans.  It  soon 
came  to  be  noted  that  the  sermon  by 
Hooker  in  the  morning  disagreed,  both 
as  to  doctrine  and  discipline,  with  the 
sermon  delivered  by  his  subaltern  in 
the  evening ;  and  it  was  wittily  said  that 
the  "forenoon  sermon  spake  Canter- 
bury and  the  afternoon  Geneva."  This 
difference  soon  engaged  public  atten- 
tion. Canterbury  stepped  in,  and  pro- 
hibited Geneva  from  preaching.  Tra- 
vers appealed  unsuccessfully  to  the  Privy 
Council,  and  then  his  friends  privately 
printed  his  petition.  Hooker  felt  him- 
self compelled  to  answer  it.  As  the 
controversy  refers  to  deep  mysteries  of 
religion,  still  vehemently  debated,  it 
would  be  impertinent  to  venture  a  judg- 
ment on  the  relative  merits  of  the  dis- 
putants ;  but  it  may  be  said  that  the 
reasoning  of  Hooker,  when  the  discus- 
sion does  not  turn  on  the  meaning  of 
authoritative  Scripture  texts,  insinuates 
itself  with  more  subtile  cogency  into  the 
natural  heart  and  brain,  and  is  incom- 
parably more  human  and  humane  than 
the  reasoning,  of  his  antagonist.  A 
fine  intellectual  contempt  steals  out  in 
'  Hooker's  rejoinder  to  the  charges  of 
Travers  in  regard  to  some  minor  cere- 
monies, for  which  the  Puritans,  in  their 
natural  jealousy  of  everything  that 
seemed  popish,  had,  perhaps,  an  irra- 
tional horror,  and  to  which  the  Church- 
men were  apt  to  give  an  equally  irra- 
tional importance.  Hooker  quietly  re- 
fers "to  other  exceptions,  so  like  these, 
as  but  to  name  I  should  have  thought 
a  greater  fault  than  to  commit  them." 
One  retort  has  acquired  deserved  ce- 
lebrity :  "Your  next  argument  consists 
of  railing  and  reasons.  To  your  railing 
I  say  nothing ;  to  your  reasons  I  say 
what  follows." 

It  was  unfortunate  for  Hooker's  logic 
that  it  was  supported  by  the  arm  of 
power.  Travers  had  the  great  advan- 
tage of  being  persecuted ;  and  his  nu- 
merous friends  in  the  Temple  found 
ways  to  make  Hooker  so  uncomfortable 
that  he  wished  himself  back  in  his  se- 
cluded parish,  with  nobody  to  torment 
him  but  his  wife.  He  was  a  great  con- 


1 868.] 


Hooker. 


677 


troversialist,  as  far  as  reason  enters 
into  controversies ;  but  the  passions 
which  turn  controversies  into  conten- 
tions, and  edge  arguments  with  in- 
vectives, were  foreign  to  his  serenely 
capacious  intellect  and  peaceable  dis- 
position. As  he  brooded  over  the 
condition  of  the  Church,  and  the  dis- 
putes ragihg  within  it,  he  more  and 
more  felt  the  necessity  of  surveying 
the  whole  controversy  from  a  higher 
ground,  in  larger  relations,  and  in  a 
more  Christian  spirit.  At  present  the 
dispute  raged  within,  and  had  not  rent 
the  Church.  The  Puritans  were  not 
dissenters,  attacking  the  Church  from 
without,  but  reformers,  attempting  to 
alter  its  constitution  from  within.  The 
idea  occurred  to  Hooker,  that  a  treatise 
might  be  written,  demonstrating  "  the 
power  of  the  Church  to  make  canons 
for  the  use  of  ceremonies,  and  by  law 
to  impose  obedience  to  them,  as  upon 
her  children,"  and  written  with  suf- 
ficient comprehensiveness  of  thought 
and  learning  to  convince  the  reason 
of  his  opponents,  and  with  sufficient 
comprehensiveness  of  love  to  engage 
their  affections.  This  idea  ripened  into 
the  "  Ecclesiastical  Polity,"  which  he 
began  at  the  Temple  ;  but  he  found  that 
the  theological  atmosphere  of  the  place, 
though  it  stimulated  the  mental,  was 
ungenial  to  the  loving  qualities  he 
intended  to  embody  in  his  treatise ; 
and  he  accordingly  begged  the  Arch- 
bishop to  transfer  him  to  some  quiet 
parsonage,  where  he  might  think  in 
peace.  Accordingly,  in  1591,  he  re- 
ceived the  Rectory  of  Boscum  ;  and 
afterwards,  in  1595,  the  Queen,  who 
seems  to  have  held  him  in  great  re- 
spect, presented  him  with  the  living  of 
Bourne,  where  he  remained  until  his 
death,  which  occurred  in  the  year  1600, 
in  his  forty-sixth  year.  In  1594  four 
books  of  the  "  Ecclesiastical  Polity " 
were  published,  and  a  fifth  in  1597  ; 
the  others  not  till  after  his  death. 
Walton  gives  a  most  beautiful  picture 
of  him  ia  his  parsonage,  illustrating 
Hooker's  own  maxim,  '•  that  the  life  of 
a  pious  clergymam  was  visible  rhetoric." 
His  humility,  benevolence,  self-denial^ 


devotion  to  his  duties,  the  innocent 
wisdom  which  marked  his  whole  inter- 
course with  his  parishioners,  and 
fasting  and  mortifications,  are  all  set 
forth  in  Walton's  blandest  diction. 
The  most  surprising  item  in  this  list  of 
perfections  is  the  last;  for  how,  with 
"  the  clownish  and  silly  "  Mrs.  Hooker 
always  snarling  and  snapping  below, 
while  he  was  looking  into  the  empy- 
rean of  ideas  from  the  summits  of  his 
intellect,  he  needed  any  more  of  the 
discipline  of 'mortification,  it  would  puz- 
zle the  most  resolute  ascetic  to  tell. 
That  amiable  lady,  as  soon  as  she  un- 
derstood that  her  husband  was  opposed 
to  the  Puritans,  seems  to  have  joined 
them  ;  spite,  and  the  desire  to  plague 
him,  appearing  to  inspire  her  with  an 
unwonted  interest  in  theology,  though 
we  have  no  record  of  her  theological 
genius,  except  the  apparently  erroneous 
report  that,  after  Hooker's  death,  she 
destroyed  or  mutilated  some  of  his 
manuscripts.  In  Keble's  Preface  to  his 
edition  of  Hookers  Works  will  be  found 
an  elaborate  account  of  the  publication 
of  the  last  three  books  of  the  '-"Ecclesi- 
astical Polity,"  and  an  examination  and 
approximate  settlement  of  the  question 
regarding  their  authenticity  and  com- 
pleteness. 

Hooker's  nature  was  essentially  an 
intellectual  nature  ;  and  the  wonder  ot 
his  mental  biography  is  the  celerity  and 
certainty  with  which  he  transmuted 
knowledge  and  experience  into  iniolli- 
gence.  It  may  be  a  fancy,  but  we  think 
it  can  be  detected,  in  an  occasional 
uncharacteristic  tartness  of  expression, 
that  he  had  carried  up  even  Airs.  Hooker 
into  the  region  of  his  intellect,  and  dis- 
solved her  termagant  tongue  into  a  fine 
spiritual  essence  of  gentle  sarcasm. 
Not  only  did  his  vast  learning  pa- 
successively  acquired,  from  memory  into 
faculty,  but  the  daily  beauty  of  his  life 
left  its  finest  and  last  result  in  his  brain. 
His  patience,  humility,  disinterested- 
ness, self-denial,  his  pious  and  humane 
sentiments,  every  resistance  to  tempta- 
tion, every  benevolent  act,  every  holy 
prayer,  were  by  some  subtile  chemistry 
turned  into  thought,  and  gave  his  intel- 


6?8 


Hooker. 


[December, 


lect  an  upward  lift,  increasing  the  range 
of  its  vision,  and  bringing  it  into  closer 
proximity  with  great  ideas.  We  cannot 
read  a  page  of  his  writings,  without  feel- 
ing the  presence  of  this  spiritual  power 
in  conception,  statement,  and  argument 
And  this  moral  excellence  which  has  thus 
become  moral  intelligence,  this  holiness 
which  is  in  perfect  union  with  reason, 
'this  spirit  of  love  which  can  not  only 
feel  but  see,  gives  a  softness,  richness, 
sweetness,  and  warmth  to  his  thinking, 
quite  as  peculiar  to  it  as  its  dignity, 
amplitude,  and  elevation. 

As  a  result  of  this  deep,  silent,  and 
rapid  growth  of  nature,  this  holding  in 
his  intelligence  all  the  results  of  his 
emotional  and  moral  life,  he  attaches 
our  sympathies  as  we  follow  the  stream 
of  his  arguments  ;  for  we  feel  that  he 
has  communed  with  all  the  principles 
he  communicates,  and  knows  by  direct 
perception  the  spiritual  realities  he'  an- 
nounces. His  intellect,  accordingly, 
does  not  act  by  flashes  of  insight :  "  but 
his  soul  has  sight "  of  eternal  verities, 
and  directs  at  them  a  clear,  steady,  di- 
vining gaze.  He  has  no  lucky  thoughts  ; 
everything  is  earned ;  he  knows  what 
he  knows  in  all  its  multitudinous  re- 
lations, and  cannot  be  surprised  by 
sudden  objections,  convicting  him  of 
oversight  of  even  the  minutest  appli- 
cations of  any  principle  he  holds  in  his 
oalm,  strong  grasp.  And  as  a  contro- 
versialist he  has  the  immense  advan- 
tage of  descending  into  the  field  of  con- 
troversy from  a  height  above  it,  and 
commanding  it,  while  his  opponents 
are  wrangling  with  minds  on  a  level 
with  it.  The  great  difficulty  in  the  man 
of  thought  is  to  connect  his  thought 
with  life;  and  half  the  literature  of  the- 
ology and  morals  is  therefore  mere 
satire,  simply  exhibiting  the  immense, 
unbridged,  ironic  gulf  that  yawns,  wide 
as  that  between  Lazarus  and  Dives, 
between  truth  and  duty,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  actual  affairs  and  conduct 
of  the  world  on  the  other.  But  Hooker, 
one  of  the  loftiest  of  thinkers,  was  also 
one  of  the  most  practical.  His  shining 
idea,  away  up  in  the  heaven  of  Contem- 
plation, sends  its  rays  of  light  and 


warmth  in  a  thousand  directions  upon 
the  earth,  illuminating  palace  and  cot- 
tage, piercing  into  the  crevices  and  cor- 
ners of  concrete  existence,  relating  the 
high  with  the  low,  austere  obligation 
with  feeble  performance,  and  showing 
the  obscure  tendencies  of  imperfect  in- 
stitutions to  realize  divine  laws. 

This  capacious  soul  was' lodged  in 
one  of  the  feeblest  of  bodies.  Physiol- 
ogists are  never  weary  of  telling  us 
that  masculine  health  is  necessary  to 
the  vigor  of  the  mind ;  but  the  vast 
mental  strength  of  Hooker  was  inde- 
pendent of  his  physical  constitution. 
His  appearance  in  the  pulpit  conveyed 
no  idea  of  a  great  man.  Small  in  stat- 
ure, with  a  low  voice,  using  no  gesture, 
never  moving  his  person  or  lifting  his 
eyes  from  his  sermon,  he  seemed  the 
very  impersonation  of  clerical  incapaci- 
ty and  dulness  ;  but  soon  the  thought- 
ful listener  found  his  mind  fascinated 
by  the  automaton  speaker ;  a  still,  de- 
vout ecstasy  breathed  from  the  pallid 
lips  ;  the  profoundest  thought  and  the 
most  extensive  learning  found  calm  ex- 
pression in  the  low  accents ;  and,  more 
surprising  still,  the  somewhat  rude 
mother  -  tongue  of  Englishmen  was 
heard  for  the  first  time  from  the  lips  of 
a  master  of  prose  composition,  demon- 
strating its  capacity  for  all  the  purposes 
of  the  most  refined  and  most  enl: 
philosophic  thought.  Indeed,  the  serene 
might  of  Hooker's  soul  is  peiijaps  most 
obviously  perceived  in  his  style,  —  in 
the  easy  power  with  which  lie  wields 
and  bends  to  his  purpose  a  language 
not  yet  trained  into  a  ready  vehicle  of 
philosophical  expression.  It  is  do 
ful  if  any  English  writer  since  his 
has  shown  equal  power  in  the  construc- 
tion of  long  sentences,  —  those  senten- 
ces in  which  the  thought,  and  tl; 
mosphere  of  the  thought,  and  the  mod- 
ifications of  the  thought,  are  all  included 
in  one  sweeping  period,  which  gathers 
clause  after  clause  as  it  rolls  melodi- 
ously on  to  its  foreseen  conclusion,  and 
having  the  general  gravity  and  grand- 
eur of  its  modulated  movement  per- 
vaded by  an  inexpressibly  sweet  under- 
tone of  individual  sentiment  And  the 


I 


J68.] 


Hooker. 


679 


strength  is  free  from  every  fretful  and 
morbid  quality  which  commonly  taints 
the  performances  of  a  strong  mind 
lodged  in  a  sickly  body.  It  is  as  se- 
rene, wholesome,  and  comprehensive 
as  it  is  powerful. 

The  Ecclesiastical  Polity  is  the  great 
theological  work  of  the  Elizabethan 
Age.  Pope  Clement,  having  said  to 
Cardinal  Allen  and  Dr.  Stapleton,  Eng- 
lish Roman  Catholics  at  Rome,  that  he 
had  never  met  with  an  English  book 
whose  writer  deserved  the  name  of  au- 
thor, they  replied  that  a  poor,  obscure 
English  priest  had  written  a, work  on 
Church  Polity,  which,  if  he  should  read, 
would  change  his  opinion.  At  the  con- 
clusion of  the  first  book,  the  Pope  is 
said  to  have  delivered  this  judgment : 
''There  is  no  learning  that  this  man 
hath  not  searched  into,  nothing  too 
hard  for  his  understanding.  This  man 
indeed  deserves  the  name  of  an  author  ; 
his  books  will  get  reverence  from  age  ; 
for  there  is  in  them  such  seeds  of  eter- 
nity, that,  if  the  rest  be  like  this,  they 
shall  last  until  the  last  fire  consume  all 
learning.'"' 

But  it  must  be  admitted  that  the 
rest,  however  great  their  merits,  are 
not  "like  this."  The  first  book  of  the 
Ecclesiastical  Polity  is  not  only  the 
best,  but  it  is  that  in  which  Hooker's 
mind  is  most  effectually  brought  into 
relations  with  all  thinking^  minds,  and 
that  in  virtue  of  which  he  takes  his 
high  place  in  the  history  of  literature 
and  philosophy.  The  theologians  he 
opposed  insisted  that  a  definite  scheme 
of  Church  polity  was  revealed  in  the 
Scriptures,  and  was  obligatory  on  Chris- 
tians. This,  of  course,  reduced  the  con- 
troversy into  a  mere  wrangle  about  the 
meaning  of  certain  texts  ;  and  as  this 
mode  of  disputation  does  not  make  any 
call  upon  the  higher  mental  and  spir- 
itual powers,  it  has  always  been  popu- 
lar among  theologians,  giving  every- 
body a  chance  in  the  textual  and  logical 
skirmish,  and  conducing  to  that  anarchy 
of  opinions  which  is  not  without  its 
charm  to  the  stoutest  champion  of  au- 
thority, if  he  has  in  him  the  belligerent 
instinct.  But  Hooker,  constitutionally 


averse  to  controversy,  and  looking  at 
it,  not  as  an  end,  but  a  means,  had  that 
aching  for  order  which  characterizes  a 
peaceable  spirit,  and  that  demand  for 
fundamental  ideas  which  characterizes 
a  great  mind.  Accordingly,  in  the  first 
book,  he  mounts  above  the  controversy 
before  entering  into  it,  and  surveys  the 
whole  question  of  law,  from  the  one 
eternal,  divine  law  to  the  laws  which 
are  in  force  among  men.  He  makes 
the  laws  which  God  has  written  in  the 
reason  of  man  divine  laws,  as  well  as 
those  he  has  supernaturally  revealed  in 
the  Scriptures  ;  and  especially  he  en- 
forces the  somewhat  startling  principle, 
that  law  is  variable  or  invariable,  not 
according  to  the  source  from  which  it 
emanates,  but  according  to  the  mat- 
ter to  which  it  refers.  If  the  matter  be 
changeable,  be  mutable,  the  law  must 
participate  in  the  mutability  of  that 
which  it  was  designed  to  regulate  ;  and 
this  principle,  he  insists,  is  independent 
of  the  fact  whether  the  law  originated 
in  God  or  in  the  divinely  constituted 
reason  of  man.  There  are  some  laws 
which  God  has  written  in  the  reason  of 
man  which  are  immutable  ;  there  are 
some  laws  supernaturally  revealed  in 
Scripture  which  are  mutable.  In  the 
first  case,  no  circumstances  can  justify 
their  violation  ;  in  the  other,  circum- 
stances necessitate  a  change.  The 
bearing  of  this  principle  on  the  right 
of  the  Church  of  England  to  command 
rules  and  ceremonies  which  might  not 
have  been  commanded  by  Scripture  rs 
plain.  Even  if  the  principle  were  de- 
nied by  his  opponents,  it  could  be 
properly  denied  only  by  being  con- 
futed ;  and  to  confute  it  exacted  the 
lifting  up  of  the  controversy  into  the 
region  of  ideas. 

But  it  is  not  so  much  in  the  concep- 
tion and  application  of  one  principle  as 
in  the  exhibition  of  many  principles 
harmoniously  related,  that  Hooker's 
largeness  of  comprehension  is  shown. 
No  other  great  logician  is  so  free  from 
logical  fanaticism.  His  mind  gravi- 
tates to  truth  ;  and  therefore  limits  and 
guards  the  application  of  single  truths, 
detecting  that  fine  point  where  many 


68o 


Hooker. 


[December, 


principles  unite  in  forming  wisdom, 
and  refusing  to  be  pushed  too  far  in 
any  one  direction.  He  has  his  hands 
on  the  reins  of  a  hundred  wild  horses, 
unaccustomed  to  exercise  their  strength 
and  fleetness  in  joint  effort ;  but  the 
moment  they  feel  the  might  of  his 
meekness,  they  all  sedately  obey  the 
directing  power  which  sends  them  in 
orderly  motion  to  a  common  goal.  The 
central  idea  of  his  book  is  law.  Even 
God,  he  contends,  "  works  not  only 
according  to  his  own  'will,  but  the  coun- 
sel of  his  own  will,"  —  according  "to 
the  order  which  he  before  all  ages  hath 
set  down  for  himself  to  do  all  things 
by."  A  self-conscious,  personal,  work- 
ing, divine  reason  is  therefore  at  the 
heart  of  things,  and  infinite /0ow  and 
infinite  love  are  identical  with  infinite 
intelligence.  Hooker's  breadth  of  mind 
is  evinced  in  his  refusing,  unlike  most 
theologians,  to  emphasize  and  detach 
any  one  of  these  divine  perfections, 
whether  it  be  power,  or  love,  or  intel- 
ligence. Intelligence  is  in  power  and 
love ;  power  and  love  are  in  intelli- 
gence. 

It  would  be  impossible,  in  our  short 
space,  to  trace  the  descent  of  Hooker's 
central  idea  of  law  to  its  applications 
to  men  and  states.  The  law  which  the 
angels  obey,  the  law  of  nature,  the  law 
which  binds  man  as  an  individual,  the 
law  which  binds  him  as  member  of  a 
politic  community,  the  law  which  binds 
him  as  a  member  of  a  religious  com- 
munity, the  law  which  binds  nations  in 
their  mutual  relations,  —  all  are  exhib- 
ited with  a  force  and  clearness  of  vis- 
ion, a  mastery  of  ethical  and  political 
philosophy,  a  power  of  dealing  with 
relative  as  well  as  absolute  truth,  and  a 
sagacity  of  practical  observatien,  which 
are  remarkable  both  in  their  separate 
excellence  and  their  exquisite  combi- 
nation. To  this  comprehensive  trea- 
tise Agassiz  the  naturalist,  Story  the 
jurist,  Webster  the  statesman,  Garrison 
the  reformer,  could  all  go  for  prin- 
ciples, and  for  applications  of  princi- 
ples. He  appreciates,  beyond  any  other 
thinker  who  has  taken  his  stand  on 
the  Higher  Law,  but  who  still  believes 


in  the  binding  force  of  the  laws  of  men, 
the  difficulty  of  making  an  individual, 
to  whom  that  law  is  revealed  through 
reason,  a  member  of  a  politic  or  relig- 
ious community  ;  and  he  admits  that 
the  best  men,  individually,  are  often 
those  who  are  apt  to  be  most  unman- 
ageable in  their  relations  to  state  and 
church.  The  argument  he  addresses 
to  such  minds,  though  it  may  not  be 
conclusive,  is  probably  the  best  that 
has  ever  been  framed,  for  it  is  pre- 
sented in  relations  with  all  that  he  has 
previously  said  in  regard  to  the  binding- 
force  of  tjie  divine  law. 

Of  this  divine  law,  —  the  law  which 
angels  obey,  the  law  of  love ;  the  law 
which  binds  in  virtue  of  its  power  to 
allure  and  attract,  and  which  weds 
obligation  to  ecstasy,  —  of  this  law  he 
thus  speaks  in  language  which  seems 
touched  with  a  consecrating  radi- 
ance :  — 

"  But  now  that  we  may  lift  up  our 
eyes  (as  it  were)  from  the  footstool  to 
tke  throne  of  God,  and,  leaving  these 
natural,  consider  a  little  the  state  of 
heavenly  and  divine  creatures- :  touch- 
ing angels,  which  are  spirits  immaterial 
and  intellectual,  the  glorious  inhab- 
itants of  those  sacred  palases,  where 
nothing  but  light  and  blessed  immor- 
tality, no  shadow  of  matter  for  tears, 
discontentments,  griefs,  and  uncomfort- 
able passions  to  work  upon,  but  all  joy, 
tranquillity,  and  peace,  even  for.  ever 
and  ever  doth  dwell :  as  in  number 
and  order  they  are  huge,  mighty,  and 
royal  armies,  so  likewise  in  perfection 
of  obedience  unto  that  law,  which  the 
Highest,  whom  they  adore,  love,  and 
imitate,  hath  imposed  upon  them,  such 
observants  they  are  thereof,  that  our 
Savi»ur  himself,  being  to  set  down  the 
perfect  idea  of  that  which  we  are  to 
pray  and  wish  for  on  earth,  did  not 
teach  to  pray  and  wish  for  more  than 
only  that  here  it  might  be  with  us  as- 
with  them  it  is  in  heaven.  God,  which 
moveth  mere  natural  agents  as  an  effi- 
cient only,  doth  otherwise  move  intel- 
lectual creatures,  and  especially  his 
holy  angels  :  for,  beholding  the  face  of 
God,  in-  admiration  of  so  great  excel- 


1 868.] 


Hooker. 


68 1 


lency  they  all  adore  him  ;  and  being 
rapt  v.'ith  the  love  of  his  beauty,  they 
cleave  inseparably  forever  unto  him. 
Desire  to  resemble  him  in  goodness 
maketh  them  unweariable,  and  even 
insatiable,  in  their  longing  to  do  by  all 
means  all  manner  of  good  unto  all  the 
creatures  of  God,  but  especially  unto 
the  children  of  men :  in  the  counte- 
nance of  whose  nature,  looking  down- 
ward, they  behold  themselves  beneath 
themselves  ;  even  as  upward,  in  God, 
beneath  whom  themselves  are,  they  see 
that  character  which  is  nowhere  but  in 
themselves  and  us  resembled An- 
gelical actions  may,  therefore,  be  re- 
duced unto  these  three  general  kinds  : 
first,  most  .delectable  love,  arising  from 
the  visible  apprehension  of  the  purity, 
glory,  and  beauty  of  God,  invisible  sav- 
ing ©nly  to  spirits  that  are  pure  ;  sec- 
ondly, adoration  grounded  upon  the 
evidence  of  the  greatness  of  God,  on 
whom  they  see  how  all  things  depend  ; 
thirdly,  imitation,  bred  by  the  presence 
of  his  exemplary  goodness,  who  ceaseth 
not  before  them  daily  to  fill  heaven  and 
earth  with  the  rich  treasures  of  most 
free  and  undeserved  grace/' 

And  though  the  concluding  passage 
of  the  first  book  of  the  Ecclesiastical 
Polity  has  been  a  thousand  times 
quoted,  it  would  be  unjust  to  Hooker 
not  to  cite  the  sentence  which  most 
perfectly  ombodies  his  soul:  — 

"Wherefore,  that  here  we  may  briefly 
end  :  of  law  there  can  be  no  less  ac- 
knowledged, than  that  her  seat  is  the 
bosom  of  God,  her  voice  the  harmony 
of  the  world  :  all  things  in  heaven  and 
earth  do  her  homage,  the  very  least  as 
feeling  her  oare,  and  the  greatest  as 
not  exempted  from  her  power  ;  both 
angels  and  men  and  creatures  of  what 
condition  soever,  though  each  in  differ- 
ent sort  and  manner,  yet  all  with  uni- 
form consent,  admiring  her  as  the 
mother  of  their  peace  and  their  joy." 

In  concluding  these  essays  on  the 
Literature  of  the  Age  of  Elizabeth, 
which  for  many  months  have  appeared 
with  more  or  less  regularity  in  this 
magazine,  let  us  pass  rapidly  in  review 


the  writers  to  whom  they  have  referred. 
And  first  for  the  dramatists,  whose 
works  —  in  our  day  on  the  dissecting- 
tables  of  criticism,  but  in  their  own  all 
alive  with  intellect  and  passion  —  made 
the  theatres  of  Elizabeth  and  James 
rock  and  roar  with  the  clanaors  or 
plaudits  of  a  mob,  too  excited  to  be 
analytic.  Of  these  professors  of  the 
science  of  human  nature  we  have  at- 
tempted to  portray  the  fiery  imagina- 
tion that  flames  through  the  fustian  and 
animal  fierceness  of  Marlowe  ;  the  blufF, 
arrogant,  and  outspoken  Jonson,  with 
his  solid  understanding,  caustic  humor, 
delicate  fancy,  and  undeviating  belief 
in  Ben,;  the  close  observation  and 
teeming  mother-wit  which  found  vent 
in  the  limpid  verse  of  Heywood ;  Mid- 
dleton's  sardonic  sagacity,  and  Mars- 
ton's  envenomed  satire  ;  the  suffering 
and  the  soaring  and  singing  cheer,  the 
beggary  and  the  benignity,  so  quaintly 
united  in  Dekkar's  vagrant  life  and 
sunny  genius  ;  Webster's  bewildering 
terror,  and  Chapman's  haughty  aspira- 
tion ;  the  Subtile  sentiment  of  Beau- 
mont ;  the  fertile,  flashing,  and  ebullient 
spirit  of  Fletcher;  the  easy  dignity  of 
Massinger's  thinking,  and  the  sonorous 
majesty  of  his  style  ;  the  fastidious  ele- 
gance and  melting  tenderness  of  Ford  ; 
and  the  one-souled,  "  myriad-minded  " 
Shakespeare,  who  is  transcendently 
beyond  them  all. 

Then,  recurring  to  the  undramatic 
poets,  we  have  endeavored  to  catch  a 
glimpse  of  the  Fairy  Land  of  Spenser's 
celestialized  imagination  ;  and  to  touch 
lightly  on  the  characteristics  of  the  po- 
ets who  preceded  and  followed  him  ;  on 
the  sternly  serious  and  ungenial  crea- 
tiveness  of  Sackville ;  the  pensive 
thoughtfulness  and  tender  fancy  of 
"  wcll-languaged  "  Daniel ;  the  enthu- 
siastic expansiveness  of  description  and 
pure,  bright,  and  vigorous  diction  of 
Dray  ton  ;  the  sententious  sharpness  of 
Hall ;  the  clear  imaginative  insight  and 
dialectic  felicity  of  Davies  ;  the  meta- 
physical voluptuousness  and  witty  un- 
reason of  Donne  ;  the  genial,  thought- 
ful, well-proportioned  soul  of  Wotton  ; 
the  fantastic  clevoutness  of  Herbert ; 


682 


Co-operative  Hottsekeeping, 

•*•  jT        o 


[December, 


and    the    coarsely    frenzied    common- 
places  of  Warner, 

"  Who  stood 
Up  to  the  chin  in  the  Pierian  "  — mud ! 

Again,  in  Sidney  we  have  striven  to 
exhibit  genius  and  goodness  as  ex- 
pressed in  behavior  ;  in  Raleigh,  genius 
and  audacity  as  expressed  in  insatiable, 
though  somewhat  equivocal,  activity  of 
arm  and  brain  ;  in  Bacon,  the  benefi- 
cence and  the  autocracy  of  an  intellect 
whose  comprehensiveness  needed  no 
celebration  ;  and  in  Hooker,  the  passage 
of  holiness  into  intelligence,  and  the 
spirit  of  love  into  the  power  of  reason. 

And  in  attempting-  to  delineate  so 
many  diverse  individualities,  w.e  have 
been  painfully  conscious  of  another  and 
more  difficult  audience  than  that  of 
the  readers  of  this  magazine.  The 
imperial  intellects  —  the  Bacons,  Hook- 
ers, Shakespeares,  and  Spensers,  the 
men  who  on  earth  are  as  much  alive 
now  as  they  were  two  hundred  years 
ago  —  are,  of  course,  in  their  assured 
intellectual  dominion,  blandly  careless 
of  the  judgments  of  individuals  ;  but 
there  is  a  large  class  of  writers, 
whose  genius  we  have  considered,  who 
have  mostly  passed  away  from  the 
protecting  admiration  and  affectionate 
memory  of  general  readers.  As  we 
more  or  less  roughly  handled  these,  as 


we  felt  the  pulse  of  life  throbbing  in 
every  time -stained  and  dust -covered 
volume,  —  dust  out  of  which  Man  was 
originally  made,  and  to  which  Man,  as 
author,  is  commonly  so  sure  to  return, 
—  the  books  resumed  their  original  form 
of  men,  became  personal  forces  to  re- 
sent impeachments  of  their  honor,  or 
misconceptions  of  their  genius  ;  and  a 
troop  of  spirits  stalked  from  the  neg- 
lected pages  to  confront  their  irreverent 
critic.  There  they  were,  —  ominous  or 
contemptuous  judges  of  the  person  who 
assumed  to  be  their  judge  ;  on  the  faces 
of  some,  sarcastic  denial ;  on  others, 
tender  reproaches  ;  on  others,  benev- 
olent pity ;  on  others,  serenely  beauti- 
ful indifference  or  disdain..  "  Who 
taught  you,"  their  looks  seemed  to  say, 
"  to  deliver  dogmatic  judgments  on  us  ? 
\Vhat  know  you  of  our  birth,  culture, 
passions,  temptations,  struggles,  ex- 
cuses, purposes,  two  hundred  years 
ago  ?  What  right  have  you  to  blame  ? 
What  qualifications  have  you  to  praise  ? 
Let  us  abide  in  our  earthly  oblivion,  — 
in  our  immortal  life.  It  is  sufficient 
that  our  works  demonstrated  on  earth 
the  inextinguishable  vitality  of  the  souls 
that  glowed  within  us ;  and,  for  the 
rest,  we  have  long  passed  to  the  only 
infallible,  the  Almighty,  critic  and  judge 
of  works  and  of  men  !  " 


CO-OPERATIVE     HOUSEKEEPING. 


II. 


A  GROUNDLESS    SUPPOSITION. 

T  ET  us  suppose  that  in  some  town 
\-~*  there  are  from  twelve  to  fifty  wo- 
men who  desire  to  associate  them- 
selves in  housekeeping,  for  the  double 
purpose  of  lessening  tJieir  current  ex- 
penses and  of  employing  their  time  prof- 
itably in  a  given  direction,  their  hus*- 
bands  being  willing  that  they  should 
try  the  experiment.  How  shall  they 
go  to  work  ? 


PRELIMINARIES    OF    CO-OPERATIVE 
HOUSEKEEPING. 

The  first  step  will  be  to  hold  a  meet- 
ing of  those  interested,  and,  after  some 
one  has  called  the  meeting  to  order 
and  stated  the  general  object  that 
has  brought  them  together,  namely,  the 
hope  of  devising  a  better  system  of 
housewifery  than  the  expensive  and 
unsatisfactory  one  now  prevailing,  — 
one  of  the  housekeepers  present  should 


1868.] 


Co-operative  Housekeep  ing. 


68 


be  elected  to  the  chair,  and  another 
chosen  as  secretary;  and  the  remain- 
der of  this  meeting,  as  well  as  every 
subsequent  one,  should  be  conduct- 
ed according  to  strict  parliamentary 
rules. 

It  should  next  be  moved  and  sec- 
onded, that  an  organizing  committee 
of  not  less  than  twelve  housekeepers, 
be  chosen  for  the  purpose  of  drawing 
up  a  constitution  and  by-laws  for  the 
proposed  Co-operative  Housekeeping 
Association,  and  of  preparing  the 
working-plans  for  its  different  depart- 
ments. If  this  motion  be  approved,  and 
the  committee  chosen,  all  the  business 
possible  to  the  preliminary  meeting 
will  be  over,  and  it  may  be  adjourned. 

The  burden  of  the  whole  undertak- 
ing now  falls  upon  the  organizing 
committee.  Its  first  work,  after  elect- 
ing its  chairman  and  secretary,  will  be 
to  draw  up  a'  constitution  and  by-laws  ; 
and  this,  fortunately,  has  lately  been 
rendered  very  easy  by  the  publication 
of  a  work  on  "  Co-operative  Stores," 
which  gives  the  latest  and  best  result 
of  the  movement  in  England  and  Ger- 
many. In  this  may  be  found  a  model 
for  the  constitution  of  a  Co-operative 
Store  Society,  which,  with  a  few  addi- 
tions and  alterations,  would  serve  per- 
fectly, it  seems  to  me,  for  the  organiza- 
tion of  an  association  of  co-operative 
housekeepers. 

THE  AUTHOR  ATTEMPTS   A    CONSTI- 
TUTION. 

Should  such  a  body  as  this  organizing 
committee  ever  come  into  being,  I  sup- 
pose, of  course,  that  they  will  all  provide 
themselves  with  copies  of  this  work.* 
and,  after  studying  it  thoroughly,  will 
draw  up  their  plan  for  themselves.  But 
as  I  regard  their  future  existence  as 
highly  problematical,  lest  co-operative 
housekeeping  should  never  boast  even 
a  ';  paper  constitution/'  I  will  give  here, 
in  small  type,  my  own  modification  of 
the  one  set  forth  in  the  book,  with  ex- 
planatory remarks,  many  of  which  also 
are  copied. 

I  by    Leypoldt  and    Holt,   Nc\v 
York,  and  sold  for  fifty  cents,  paper  cover. 


M:LE  I.  —  Gent;-. 

The  Co-operative  I  [ousekeepers'  Society 

of has   for   its   object   to   furnish  the 

households  of  its  members,  for  cash  on  de- 
livery, with  the  necessaries  of  life,  unadul- 
terated and  of  good  quality,  and  accurately 
prepared,  both  as  to  food  and  clothing,  for 
immediate  use  and  consumption,  and  from 
the  profits  of  this  sale  to  accumulate  capital 
for  each  individual  housekeeper  or  her  fain- 
ily. 

EXPLANATION  OF  ARTICLE  I. 

Several  general  and  indispensable 
principles  are  embodied  in  this  declara- 
tion. 

ist.  That  the  association  is  to  sell 
only  to  its  "  members."  This  excludes 
trade  with  outsiders  (which  would  com- 
plicate the  business  indefinitely)  and  in 
consequence  induces  more  housekeep- 
ers to  become  regular  members. 

2d.  No  goods  or  meals  being  deliv- 
ered except  for  "cash,"  the  pernicious 
credit  system  of  our  present  domestic 
economy,  by  which  good  and  trustwor- 
thy customers  are  made  (through  over- 
charging) to  pay  the  bad  debts  of  the 
unthrifty  and  dishonest,  is  swept  away  ; 
and,  moreover,  a  check  is  put  upon  the 
inevitable  extravagance  which  the  credit 
system  fosters  by  postponing  the  day 
of  settlement. 

3d.  The  article  sold  being  of  "good 
quality."  every  housekeeper  would  be 
sure  of  getting  her  money's  worth. 

4th.  As  they  would  be  "  accurately 
prepared  for  immediate  household  use 
and  consumption,"  she  would  be  saved 
all  the  expense  and  house-room  of 
separate  cooking  and  washing  conven- 
iences ;  all  the  waste  of  ignorant  and 
unprincipled  servaats  and  sewing-wo- 
men ;  all  the  dust,  steam,  and  smell 
from  the  kitchen,  and  all  the  fatigue 
and  worry  ef  mind  occasioned  by  hav- 
ing the  thousand  details  of  our  elabo- 
rate modern  housekeeping  and  dress  to 
remember  and  provide  for. 

5th.  As  all  the  clear  "profit"  on  the 
goods  the  housekeeper  buys  is  to  be 
paid  back  to  her,  —  and  this  profit  is 
about  a  third  on  everything  consumed 
by  her  household,  —  even  if  she  take  no 
active  part  whatever  in  the  executive 


684 


Co-op  era  tii  'e  Housekeeping. 


[December, 


duties  of  the  association,  she  will,  by 
merely  being  a  member,  receive  again 
S  300  from  every  .5  900  she  lays  out. 
Now  it  costs  hundreds  of  town  and  city 
families  of  moderate  means  for  food, 
kitchen  fuel,  and  servants'  wages  from 
S  900  to  $1,000  a  year  ;  nor  can  a  wo- 
man dress  with  mere  neatness  in  these 
times  for  less  than  $200  a  year.  Then, 
under  our  present  system,  about  $1,200 
a  year  passes  through  the  hands  of 
those  among  us  who  live  with  what 
is  called  moderation  and  economy. 
But  in  co-operative  housekeeping  a 
third  ef  this  sum  would  be  saved,  and 
we  should  have  as  much  for  $  800,  and 
get  it  more  easily  and  comfortably,  than 
we  do  now  for  $1,200.  If,  however,  the 
co-operative  housekeeper  were  qualified 
to  fill  one  of  the  offices  of  the  associa- 
tion, and  chose  to  do  so,  then,  beside 
her  dividend  of  profit,  she  would  have 
also  the  salary  of  her  office ;  both  salary 
and  dividend,  remember,  being  clear 
gain,  since  her  expenses  are  provided 
for  al«hg  with  those  of  her  husband 
and  children. 

REASONS  FOR  THE  ASSOCIATIONS  SELL- 
ING AT  RETAIL  PRICES,  INSTEAD  OF 
AT  COST. 

Since  the  association  would,  of  course, 
buy  everything  at  wholesale,  like  any 
other  store,  it  may  be  asked  why,  in- 
stead of  buying  at  the  usual  retail 
prices,  and  receiving  back  again  the 
third  that  constitutes  retail  profit,  the 
housekeepers  should  not  simply  pay  to 
the  association  the  cost  price  of  their 
family  food  and  clothing,  —  as  the  sav- 
ing in  the  end  would  be  about  the 
same.  I  answer,  because  in  Germany 
and  England  both  systems  have  been 
tried,  and  the  one  proposed  has  been 
found  by  far  the  most  successful.  It 
gives  greater  zeal  and  interest  to  the 
co-operator  to  feel  that,  without  the 
trouble  of  thinking  about  it  as  an  econ- 
omy, a  little  comfortable  sum  is  ac- 
cumulating for  him  or  her  which,  at 
the  end  of  the  quarter  or  the  year,  can 
either  be  used  for  some  household  com- 
fort or  invested  in  some  of  the  enter- 
prises for  the  benefit  of  the  association 


that,  as  in  Rochdale,  would  very  soon 
make  their  appearance  in  connection 
with  it. 

To  the  five  general  principles  of  the 
first  article  of  our  constitution  should 
be  added  two  others  of  hardly  less  im- 
portance which  I  will  embody  in  the 
second  article. 

ARTICLE  II.  —  Salaries  and  Wages. 

The  Co-operative  Housekeeper's  Sociciy 

of will    accept    no    voluntary    labor, 

hut  will,  as  far  as  possible,  fill  its  offices 
with  its  own  members  or  their  female  rela- 
tives and  friends,  ^.i  fixed  salaries  ;  and  these 
salaries,  as  well  as  the  wages  of  all  it.- 
clerks  and  servants,  shall  be  the  same  as 
would  be  paid  to  men  holding  similar  posi- 
tions. 

REASONS  FOR  ARTICLE  II. 

It  is  one  of  the  cherished  dogmas  of 
the  modern  lady,  that  she  must  not  do 
anything  for  pay ;  and  this  miserable 
prejudice  of  senseless  conventionality 
is  at  this  moment  the  worst  obstacle  in 
the  way  of  feminine  talent  and  energy. 
Let  the  co-operative  housekeepers  de- 
molish it  forever,  by  declaring  that  it 
is  just  as  necessary  and  just  as  honora- 
ble for  a  wife  to  earn  money  as  it  is  for 
her  husband;  let  them,  moreover,  re- 
solve that  time  and  skill  is  what  they 
will  pay  for,  and  not  sex,  and  the  age 
will  soon  see  what  efforts  women  can 
make  after  excellence  when  there  is 
hope  of  a  just  reward  for  it.  Then 
alone  shall  we  begin  to  walk  in  self- 
respect,  and  the  p®or,  wronged  work- 
woman throughout  the  world  to  raise 
her  drooping  head. 

ARTICLE  III.  —  Admission. 
Any  housekeeper  may  be  received  as  a 
member,  and  all  members  shall  be  in  equal 
relation  to  the  society. 

REASONS  FOR  ARTICLI-:  III. 
Women  being  at  present  essenti.illy 
aristocrats,  many  may  demur  to  this 
article  as  tending  to  introduce  into 
their  companionship  those  who  are  not 
"of  their  own  set."  But,  in  the  first 
place,  co-operative  housekeeping,  being- 
intended  largely  to  supplant  the  retail 
trade,  must  succeed,  if  it  succeed  at  all, 
on  sound  business  principles ;  and,  in 


1 868.] 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. . 


68=; 


business,  social  distinctions  are  not 
recognized.  Money  is  money,  whether 
it  come  from  the  poor  or  the  rich  ;  and 
if  a  mechanic's  wife  wishes  to  be  a 
co-operative  housekeeper,  though  she 
may  buy  less  and  simpler  food  and 
clothing  than  a  broker's  or  a  lawyers 
wife,  yet,  if  she  pay  as  punctually  for  it, 
she  has  as  good  a  business  standing  in 
the  association  as  they.  In  the  second 
place,  co-operative  housekeepers,  even 
if  rich  and  cultivated  ladies,  will  find 
themselves  largely  in  need  of  the  prac- 
tical assistance  of  the  middle  and  lower 
classes  of  women,  —  of  the  former  for 
matrons,  dress-makers,  confectioners, 
etc.,  and  of  the  latter  for  servants. 
Now  it  is  often  and  justly  urged  in  apol- 
ogy for  the  low  wages  given  to  women, 
that  they  do  not,  as  a  rule,  know  their 
trades  and  occupations  well,  and  will 
not  take  pains  to  master  them,  simply 
because  none  of  them  expect  to  "  work 
for  a  living  "  longer  than  the  time  be- 
tween girlhood  and  marriage.  To  get 
skilful  servants  and  workwomen  then, 
it  is  necessary  to  make  them  feel  that 
their  occupation  is  not  the  business  of 
a  few  months  or  years,  but  their  life- 
long vocation,  which,  the  better  they 
understood  and  practised,  the  higher 
would  be  their  pay  and  their  impor- 
tance ;  and  of  course  there  is  no  way 
of  doing  this,  except  by  making  it  pos- 
sible, for  them  to  continue  it  after  mar- 
riage, instead  of  giving  it  up,  as  they 
now  must  do,  in  order  to  cook,  wash, 
and  sew  for  their  husbands  and  fam- 
ilies. Admitting  them  into  the  asso- 
ciation as  co-operative  housekeepers, 
however,  would  solve  the  whole  prob- 
lem ;  for  then  their  cooking,  washing, 
and  sewing  would  all  be  done  for  them 
as  for  the  richer  members,  leaving  them 
free  to  give  to  the  association  their 
working  hours,  and  their  skill  in  that 
special  branch  of  household  duty  to 
which  they  had  devoted  themselves  in 
their  unmarried  years.  But,  after  all, 
the  amount  of  the  admission  fee,  like 
the  pew-rents  of  our  churches,  will 
decide  the  character  of  eath  co-opera- 
tive association.  Birds  of  a  feather 
have  never  hitherto  found  any  difficulty 


in  flocking  together  quite  exclusively  ; 
and  all  that  would  arrange  itself,  like 
the  different  quarters  of  a  city,  without 
the  necessity  of  invidious  clauses  in 
the  constitution. 

A  RT  i  c  r.E  I V.  —  Resignation. 
A  housekeeper  may  resign  her  member- 
ship after  the  third  settlement  subsequent 
to  her  written  notice  of  intention  to  resign. 
An  immediate  resignation  may  be  accepted 
by  a  vote  of  the  society,  either  in  case  of 
sudden  removal,  or  in  case  of  some  viola- 
tion of  the  housekeeper's  obligations  to  the 
society,  or  in  case  there  is  some  other 
housekeeper  %vho  is  ready  to  become  a 
member,  and  assume  r.ll  the  rights  and 
obligations  of  the  one  resigning. 

ROIARKS  ox  ARTICLE  IV. 
The  first  clause  of  this  article  is 
necessary  in  general,  in  order  to  pre- 
vent housekeepers  from  suddenly  and 
unexpectedly  resigning,  and  thus  with- 
drawing their  share  of  stock  when  the 
association  may  be  unprepared  for  it. 
The  second  clause  modifies  this  some- 
what, by  making  it,  in  peculiar  cases, 
depend  upon  the  vote  of  the  society. 
The  reason  why  a  housekeeper  who 
wishes  an  immediate  resignation  car>- 
not  transfer  her  stock  to  any  but  a 
new  member  coming  in  is,  that  if  she 
transferred- it  to  a  member  already  hold- 
ing a  share,  the  latter  would  then  have 
two,  and  the  regulations  concerning 
the  amount  to  be  held  by  each,  and  the 
dividends  to  be  declared  on  the  stock, 
would  be  impracticable ;  and  one  of 
the  first  principles  of  the  society,  which 
requires  that  there  shall  be  an  equality 
among  members  in  their  representation 
by  votes,  would  be  overturned. 

ARTICLE  V.  —  Payments. 
Each  housekeeper  shall  pay  the  sum  of 
$  10  per  week,  till  the  payments  amount  to 
a  share  of  $  100.     The  first  payment  shall 
be  made  on  entering  the  society.* 

ARTICLE  VI.  —  Ralancing  Accounts. 
A  balancing  of  accounts  shall  take  place 
four  times  per  annum,  on  the  first  Saturday 
after  the  end  of  the  quarter. 

*  This  may  be  thought  too  large  a  weekly  pay- 
ment, and  the  share  also  may  be  excessive.  Of 
course,  the  organizing  committee  would  make  its  own 
recommendation  in  this  matter. 


686 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


[December, 


ARTICLE  VII. — Distribution  of  Profits, 
The  profits,  as  ascertained  on  balancing 
the  books,  shall  be  divided  into  two  parts 
as  follows  :  I.  (Say  2)  per  cent  on  the 
amount  of  all  the  capital  standing  to  the 
credit  of  each  housekeeper  at  the  last  quar- 
terly settlement  shall  be  credited  to  such 
housekeeper's  account.  If  the  profits  are 
not  large  enough  to  admit  of  2  per  cent 
quarterly  (which  is  of  course  8  per  cent 
per  annum)  being  thus  credited,  there  shall 
be  a  credit  given  of  such  smaller  percentage 
as  will  consume  the  entire  profits.  II.  If, 
after  crediting  2  per  cent  on  the  capital  of 
each  housekeeper  as  ascertained  at  the  last 
quarterly  settlement,  any  portion  of  the 
profits  shall  remain  undisposed  of,  such 
remaining  portion  shall  be  credited  to  all 
the  housekeepers  in  proportion  to  the 
amount  of  each  housekeeper's  purchases 
during  the  quarter  in  which  said  profits 
were  accumulated. 

ARTICLE  VIII.  —  Apportionment  of  Losses. 
If,  on  balancing  the  books,  loss  shall  ap- 
pear to  have  occurred,  it  shall  be  charged 
to  all  the  housekeepers  equally ;  and  if 
such  charge  shall  make  the  balance  stand- 
ing to  the  credit  of  any  person  less  than 
the  amount  required  for  permanent  share 
of  stock  ($  100),  she  shall  at  once  begin 
weekly  payments  in  the  same  manner  as  a 
new  member,  and  shall  continue  them 
until  the  balance  to  her  credit  shall  equal 
the  amount  required  for  a  permanent  share 
of  stock  ($  i  oo). 

ARTICLE  IX.  —  Returns. 
"Whenever  a  housekeeper's  share  has 
doubled  itself,  and  reached  the  amount  of 
$200,  its  holder  shall  receive,  three  months 
after  the  settlement  next  ensuing,  the  sum 
of  $100.  When  a  housekeeper  resigns,  not 
transferring  her  stock  to  a  new  member,  the 
full  amount  of  her  stock  shall  be  paid  to 
her,  if  her  resignation  was  caused  by  any 
urgent  necessity ;  but  if  otherwise,  25  per 
cent  of  her  stock  shall  be  retained  to  the 
society's  capital. 

REMARKS  ON  THE  FOREGOING  ARTI- 
CLES.   • 

Several  of  these  provisions,  it  will  be 
seen,  have  special  reference  to  guard- 
ing the  permanent  capital  of  the  asso- 
ciation from  diminution.  Consisting, 
as  it  docs  only  of  the  hundred-dollar 


admission  fees  of  its  members,  it  is  so 
small  (for  an  association  of  fifty  fam- 
ilies being  only  £  5.000)  that  these  pre- 
cautions will  commend  themselves  to 
the  good  sense  of  everybody.  The  sev- 
enth and  ninth  articles,  containing  the 
rules  for  the  disposal  of  the  profits  of 
the  association,  provide  that  no  money 
shall  be  paid  over  to  the  co-operative 
housekeeper  until  her  dividend  equals 
the  amount  of  her  share  (jisioo).  This 
is  in  accordance  with  the  expressed 
object  of  the  society  as  laid  down  in 
the  last  clause  of  Article  I.,  "to  ac- 
cumulate capital  for  each  housekeeper 
out  of  the  profits  of  the  business."  If 
the  dividends  were  paid  over  to  the 
housekeeper  in  small  sums  as  fast  as 
they  came  in,  she  would  be  likely  to 
spend  them,  as  she  went  along,  in  grat- 
ification of  her  needs  or  fancy.  Where- 
as, receiving  them  always  in  sums  of  not 
less  than  $100  would  dispose  her  to 
turn  them  towards  the  formation  of  a 
steady  capital,  to  be  invested  for  her 
own  support  in  old  age,  or  for  the  ben- 
efit of  her  husband  and  children,  should 
they  survive  her. 

WHAT  MIGHT  BE  AVOIDED  IF  HOUSE- 
KEEPERS THUS  "  ACCUMULATED  CAP- 
ITAL." 

How  often  do  we  see  women  who 
have  lived  for  years  in  liberal  comfort 
and  wedded  state — the  mistresses  of 
pleasant  homes,  whose  varied  range  of 
floors  and  apartments  made  them  little 
worlds  in  themselves,  and  with  the  as- 
sured and  dignified  position  in  society 
that  nothing  but  "one's  own  house" 
can  give  —  suddenly  stripped  by  wid- 
owhood of  all  their  ample  surroundings, 
and  portioned  off  into  one  room,  or  at 
the  most  two,  in  some  son  or  daughter's 
house,  there  to  live  as  a  supernumerary 
all  the  rest  of  their  days.  No  doubt 
these  grandmothers,  saintly  and  sub- 
dued, often  exercise  a  precious  influence 
on  all  the  members  of  the  families  they 
live  with.  But  it  is  none  the  less  hard 
for  them  ;  and  if  women  could  save  and 
invest  all  the  profits  on  the  supplies  and 
clothing  consumed  by  their  families 
that  now  slip  through  their  fingers  into 


1 868.] 


Co-ope rath fe  Housekeeping. 


687 


the  pockets  of  the  retailers,  thousands 
of  lavish  housekeepers  who  are  march- 
ing straight  to  such  a  life-end  as  this 
would  be  spared  its  deprivations  and 
humiliations.  In  my  opinion,  a  woman 
that  has  once  had  a  house  of  her  own, 
in  which  she  has  borne  and  reared  chil- 
dren, regulated  servants,  and  played 
her  part  in  society,  should  never  be 
thrown  out  of  it  into  the  corner  of  some- 
body's else  family  except  from  choice, 
and  I  wonder  that  women  are  not  of- 
tener  apprehensive  of  this  than  they 
seem  to  be. 

It  may  be  said,  that  as  men  furnish 
all  the  means  for  our  housewifery,  so,  if 
we  are  able  to  save  anything,  it  ought 
properly  to  return  to  them.  This  is 
the  doctrine  of  the  old  Roman  law  in 
regard  to  the  peculium,  or  savings  of 
the  slave  from  the  allowance  made  him 
by  his  master.  In  law  it  belonged  to 
the  latter,  because  it  was  his  in  the 
first  place,  and  the  slave  was  his  also  ; 
hence  he  could  at  any  time  resume  it. 
And,  in  my  opinion,  this  would  be  tena- 
ble ground  in  regard  to  the  savings  of  co- 
operative housekeepers  ;  if  men  insisted 
upon  our  giving  such  savings  to  them 
we  could  not  help  ourselves.  But  this  is 
so  opposed  to  the  indulgent  American 
spirit  toward  women,  that  it  is  more 
than  probable  they  would  pass  a  law 
making  such  savings  by  any  housekeeper 
her  own.  Of  course,  the  contrary  action 
\  crush  all  independence  of  enter- 
among  us,  and  thus  injure  mas- 
culine business  interests  as  well  as  fem- 
inine. But,  this  aside,  would  it  not  be 
almost  an  amusement  to  the  men  to  see 
how  women  would  go  to  work  ?  I  think 
there  would  then  be  no  lack  of  some- 
to  talk  about  every  clay  at  the 
table  between  the  husband  and  his 
wife  and  daughters,  or  in  society  be- 
tween the  gentlemen  and  ladies  who 
now  are  so  often  at  a  loss  for  some 
common  interest  upon  which  to  .inter- 
change ideas  and  experiences. 

.  TICLK  X. —  The  Council. 

The  highest  authority  of  the  Co-operative 

Housekeepers'  Society  of shall  be  a 

COUNCIL  of  all  the  male  heads  of  the  families 


whose  housekeepers  are  members  of  the  so- 
ciety. The  Council  shall  be  called  by  send- 
ing a  printed  notice  to  each  of  its  members, 
four  weeks  after  the  second  and  fourth  quar- 
terly settlements  of  each  year. 

ARTICLE  XI.—  Frn<i!cgts  of  the  Council. 

The  Council  shall  have  absolute  power  of 
veto  in  all  the  moneyed  transactions  > 
society.  It  shall  hold  its  meetings  in  the 
presence  of  the  co-operative  houseki. 
or  of  their  chief  officers.  It  may  choose 
from  its  own  number  certain  auditors  for 
each  half-  yearly  settlement  of  accounts  ; 
but  these  gentlemen,  before  reporting,  must 
lay  their  statements  before  the  executive 
committee*  for  correction  and  verification. 
The  Council  may  not  elect  or  displace  any 
officer  or  employee  of  the  society,  but  it  may 
pass  votes  of  approbation  or  ceasure  upon 
the  regulations  of  the  different  departments 
or  their  divisions.  Finally,  it  shall  be  the 
highest  tribunal  for  cases  of  difficulty,  inex- 
tricable by  the  other  governing  bodies  of 
the  society,  and  from  its  decision  there 
shall  be  no  appeal. 

ARTICLE  XII.  —  The  Cejivtntion. 

The  Convention  shall  consist  of  the  whole 
body  of  co-operating  housekeepers.  It 
shall  be  called  by  sending  printed  notices 
eight  days  beforehand  to  all  the  co-opera- 
tive housekeepers,  which  shall  contain  the 
hour  and  date  of  the  meeting  and  a  state- 
ment of  the  matters  to  be  discussed.  In 
the  Convention,  every  housekeeper  present 
has  a  vote,  and  a  majority  of  votes  decides 
a  measure. 

ARTICLE  XIII.  —  Executive  Conn;;. 

The  Convention  shall  intrust  the  manage- 
ment of  affairs  for  a  year  to  an  executive 
committee  of  not  less  than  twelve- house- 
keepers chosen  by  ballot  from  its  o\vn  num- 
ber. 

I.E  XIV.  —  Mailers  r  ' :  Ac- 

i'  the  Contention.   : 

The  Convention  shall  deliberate 
amendments  or  alterations  of  the  constitu- 
tion ;  allotment  of  profits  and  losses  j  num- 
ber of  divisions  in  the  different  departments  ; 
investments  of  capital ;  receipts  and  expend- 
itures of  more  than  $500  ;  unperformed  con- 
tracts ;  amount  and  conditions  of  loans 
received ;  the  cautions  to  be  observed  by 

*  See  Art.  XI IT. 


688 


Co-operative  Housekeeping 


[December, 


the  treasurers  ;  and  indemnification  of  the 
members  of  the  committee  for  all  trouble. 

ARTICLE  XV.  —  Privileges  of  the  Convention. 
The  Convention  has  supreme  control  of 
the  business,  subject  to  the  veto  of  the 
Council,  and,  except  in  extraordinary  cases, 
is  the  highest  tribunal  for  all  complaints. 
It  chooses,  for  the  first  and  third  quarterly 
settlement  of  ascounts,  certain  auditors, 
who  must  lay  their  reports  before  the  exec- 
utive committee  before  presenting  them  to 
the  Convention. 

ARTICLE  XVI.  —  Committee  and  Officers. 
One  half  of  the  members  of  the  executive 
committee  shall  constitute  a  quorum,  and 
a  majority  of  votes  shall  decide.  It  shall 
choose  a  president  and  vice-president.  It 
shalf  be  the  president's  duty  to  call  a  meet- 
ing of  the  committee  at  least  once  every 
month,  and,  in  addition,  as  often  as  any 
three  members  may  desire  it. 

ARTICLE  XVII.  —  When  Conventions  are  to 
be  called. 

The  executive  committee  shall  issue  the 
call  for  the  Convention,  and  the  president 
of  the  executive  committee  shall  preside. 
The  call  must  be  within  three  weeks  after 
the  close  of  the  last  settlement,  and  as  often 
besides  as  twenty -live  ordinary  members,  or 
five  members  of  the  committee,  shall  express 
a  desire  for  such  meetings. 

ARTICLE  XVIII.  —  Boards  of  Directresses. 
The  executive  committee  shall  choose 
three  boards  of  directresses  corresponding 
to  the  three  principal  divisions  of  co-oper- 
ative housekeeping.  These  boards  shall 
severally  consist  of  four  directresses,  —  two 
to  be  chosen  from  the\executive  committee, 
and  two  from  the  Convention  ;  and  this 
choice  shall  be  subject  to  the  approval  of 
the  Convention.*  The  first  two  shall  be 
called,  respectively,  Directress  and  Vice- 
directress,  and  the  last  two  Assistant- 
directresses. 

ARTICLE  XIX.  —  Functions  of  Directresses, 
and  Functions  reserved  to  Committee. 

The  committee  shall  intrust  to  the  boards 
of  directresses  the  practical  management  of 
the  different  departments  of  co-operative 

:;!  I  have  imitated  this  manner  of  choosing  the  di- 
rectresses from  the  constitution  of  the  Co-operative 
Store  Society.  But  I  am  doubtful  as  to  whether  the 
directresses  should  go  out  annually  with  the  execu- 
tive committee. 


housekeeping,  but  shall  reserve  to  itself  the 
final  decision  in,  i.  The  expulsion  of  house- 
keepers, which  shall  require  a  unanimous 
vote  ;  2.  Receipts  and  expenditures  of  over 
S  250  ;  3.  Unfulfilled  contracts ;  and,  4.  The 
methods  of  keeping  the  books  of  the  society. 

ARTICLE  XX. — Further  Functions  of  the 
Committee. 

The  executive  committee  shall  exercise 
superintendence  over  the  boards  of  direc- 
tresses, and  decide  all  appeals  from  them. 
It  can  at  any  time  institute  an  investigation 
of  all  business  operations,  and  is  empowered 
to  remove  directresses  from  office,  subject 
to  the  decision  of  a  convention  to  be  imme- 
diately called,  and  to  appoint  members  from 
its  own  body  for  the  occasional  performance 
of  current  business.  In  the  decision  of 
matters  not  herein  mentioned  the  commit- 
tee shall  take  no  part. 

ARTICLE  XXI.  —  Special  Duties  of  Direc- 
tresses. 

The  boards  of  directresses  shall  meet  twice 
a  week  in  the  counting-room  of  their  several 
departments,  and  shall  decide,  by  majoritv 
of  votes,  on  the  receiving  and  distribution 
of  goods,  on  all  receipts  and  expenditures 
arising,  not  already  determined  or  brought 
before  the  convention  and  committee  ;  on 
the  admission  of  housekeepers,  and  the 
carrying  out  the  details  of  their  respective 
departments,  whether  by  themselves  or  by 
persons  appointed  by  them  for  the  purpose  ; 
subject,  however,  in  case  of  the  higher  of- 
ficers, t»  the  decision  of  the  executive  com- 
mittee. 

ARTICLE  XXII.  —  Legal  Signature  of  the 

Association. 

The  legal  signature  of  the  association 
shall  consist  of  the  signatures  of  the  Direc- 
tress and  Vice-direstress,  or  of  one  of  these 
with  that  of  one  of  the  Assistant-directresses. 

REMARKS  ON  THE  GOVERNING  ARTI- 
CLES OF  THE  CONSTITUTION. 

In  regard  to  Article  X.,  some  femi- 
nine readers  may  wonder  why  I  have 
placed  the  husbands  of  the  co-operative 
housekeepers  as  the  highest  authority 
of  the  whole  society.  For  one  thing, 
because  it  is  perfectly  evident  that,  in 
this  world  at  least,  "the  man  is  the 
head  of  the  woman,"  and  will  probably- 
con  tinue  so  for  some  time  to  come. 


1 868.] 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


689 


Being  our  governors,  no  such  enter- 
prise as  co-operative  housekeeping 
could  be  started  or  sustained  without 
their  sympathy  and  consent;  and  as 
they  have  now  the  power  of  veto  on 
our  housekeeping  arrangements  by 
virtue  of  being  also  our  bread-winners, 
so,  as  their  funds  alone  would  sustain 
co-operative  housekeeping,  they  should 
have  the  same  power  there.  We  should 
simply  have  to  trust,  as  we  do  now, 
that  our  reasonableness  and  good  judg- 
ment and  study  to  please  them  would, 
in  general,  be  such  as  to  shield  us  from 
blame  and  opposition ;  and  as  "  in 
the  multitude  of  counsellors  there  is 
safety,"  we  should  be  much  more  like- 
ly to  find  out  the  best  and  cheapest 
ways  of  doing  everything  than  we  are 
now,  when  each  must  experiment  upon 
the  whole  range  of  housewifely  duties 
for  herself. 

But,  beside  these,  I  will  admit,  rather 
slavish  and  material  grounds,  there  is  a 
higher  that  would  influence  me,  even  if 
these  did  not  exist.  It  is  that  I  be- 
lieve all  human  undertakings  would  be 
much  more  perfect  if  the  direct  judg- 
ment and  energy  of  both  sexes  were 
brought  to  bear  upon  them.  This,  of 
course,  is  not  the  opinion  of  men ;  for 
they  ask  our  advice  and  assistance  in 
nothing  but  what  they  hate  to  do  them- 
selves,—  i.e.  religious  and  charitable 
work.  But  I  should  be  sorry  to  have 
women  repeat  what  I  am  sure  is  their 
mistake.  Everybody  knows  how  much 
sweeter  and  easier  it  is  to  do  something 
for  the  opposite  sex  than  it  is  for  one's 
own  ;  and  co-operative  housekeepers, 
by  having  the  direct  masculine  influ- 
ence present  in  their  undertaking 
through  the  half-yearly  investigation  of 
their  husbands,  would  act  with  greater 
zeal,  energy,  and  accuracy,  give  way  to 
fewer  jealousies  among  themselves,  and 
take  much  more  genuine  pleasure  in 
their  work,  than  if  they  alone  were  the 
sole  arbiters  of  it. 

REMARKS  ON  CERTAIN  PROVISIONS  OF 
ARTICLES  XVIII.  AND  XIX. 

It  may  be  thought,  that,  to  allow  the 
executive  committee,  which  consists  of 

VOL.  xxii. —  NO.  134.  44 


only  twelve  members,  to  expel  house- 
keepers by  unanimous  vote,  is  a  func- 
tion that  only  belongs  to  the  Conven- 
tion, or  whole  body  of  housekeepers. 
But  a  housekeeper  who  ceases  to  pay 
cash  for  everything  she  daily  receives 
violates  the  vital  business  principle  of 
the  society,  besides  entailing  upon  it 
the  risk,  in  the  end,  of  her  not  paying 
at  all.  She  ought,  then,  if  upon  re- 
minder she  does  not  pay  up  at  once,  to 
be  expelled  at  once.  But,  as  the  Con- 
vention only  sits  quarterly,  this  could 
not  be  the  case  if  expulsion  were  left 
with  it.  This  power,  then,  properly 
resides  with  the  executive  committee, 
which  can  at  any  time  be  convened 
with  ease ;  and,  by  Article  XV.,  the 
expelled  housekeeper  can  appeal  to  the 
Convention,  at  its  next  sitting,  for  re- 
admission.  For  similar  reasons,  it  is 
proper  that  the  directresses,  though 
only  four  in  number,  should  be  able  to 
admit  housekeepers  as  members  of  the 
co-operative  society ;  for  if  they  wish 
to  enter  immediately,  to  wait  three 
months  for  a  sitting  of  the  Convention 
would  entail  loss  both  on  the  house- 
keeper and  on  the  society. 

THE  WORKING  PLAN  OF  CO-OPERATIVE 
HOUSEKEEPING  MUST  ORIGINATE 
WITH  THE  HOUSEKEEPERS  THEM- 
SELVES. 

At  this  point  ends  all  the  help  that 
the  organizing  committee  of  our  house- 
keeping association  can  gain  from  the 
book  on  co-operative  stores.  The 
fundamental  principles  of  co-operation 
have  been  laid  down  for  us  by  a  suc- 
cessful masculine  experience  of  twenty- 
five  years  ;  but  its  application  to  house- 
wifery we  must  develop  for  ourselves. 
To  prepare  the  working  plans  of  the 
different  departments  of  the  association, 
then,  will  be  the  hardest  task  of  the 
committee  ;  but,  if  the  hardest,  also  the 
most  creditable,  since  it  will  be  all  their 
own. 

The  race  being  considered  as  one 
great  family,  and  woman  the  mistress 
of  its  home,  what  more  beneficent  en- 
terprise can  be  imagined  than  one 
which  seeks  to  organize  that  home  so. 


690 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


[December, 


perfectly,  that  not  alone  the  few  in  its 
drawing-rooms,  but  also  the  many  in 
its  garrets  and  cellars,  will  be  clothed, 
fed,  and  sheltered  in  the  manner  most 
conducive  to  their  moral  and  intellec- 
tual progress  ?  For,  while  observation 
of  the  rich  shows  that  superfluity  and 
satiety  make  men  unprincipled  and 
women  worthless,  the  study  of  the 
criminal  classes  proves  that  physical 
comfort  and  well-being  have,  of  them- 
selves, a  vast  influence  in  predisposing 
both  sexes  to  virtue.  The  body  must 
be  satisfied  before  the  mind  and  soul 
can  rise  above  it  into  free  and  vigorous 
action  ;  and  when  we  think  of  the  in- 
tellectual and  artistic  and  moral  wealth 
of  which  mere  bodily  need  and  suffer- 
ing have  probably  deprived  the  world, 
it  ought  to  be  enough  for  women,  even 
if  no  higher  good  were  to  be  attained 
by  co-operative  housekeeping,  that  it 
would  enable  them  to  give  to  so  much 
larger  proportion  of  their  fellow-beings 
at  least  physical  comfort,  cleanliness, 
and  health.  And,  formidable  though  the 
undertaking  looks,  it  really  simplifies 
very  rapidly  when  one  begins  to  examine 
into  it.  I  believe  I  could  choose  from 
my  acquaintance  an  organizing  commit- 
tee of  able  and  experienced  housekeep- 
ers, who,  in  a  few  weeks  or  months, 
could  produce  almost  perfect  working 
plans  for  co-operative  housekeeping. 
But,  as  in  the  case  of  the  constitution, 
lest  no  organizing  committee  should 
ever  exist,  I  will,  without  attempting 
details  that  could  only  be  decided  upon 
in  consultation,  give  a  rough  sketch 
of  the  manner  in  which  I  suppose  the 
organizing  committee  would  proceed, 
and  of  the  working  plans  which  they 
would  probably  suggest. 

NATURAL    DIVISIONS    OF  CO-OPERA- 
TIVE HOUSEKEEPING. 

Our  households  contain  three  de- 
partments at  least  in  which  co-opera- 
tion is  possible  and  desirable,  —  the 
Kitchen,  the  Laundry,  and  the  Sewing- 
room.  Our  greatest  trouble  being,  that 
we  try  to  do  too  many  different  kinds 
of  things,  and  our  next  greatest,  the 
inefficiency,  insubordination,  and  fickle- 


ness of  our  servants,  the  ruling  idea 
of  co-operative  housekeeping  —  the  aim 
and  end,  indeed,  of  the  whole  move- 
ment —  should  be,  THE  DIVISION  AND 
ORGANIZATION  OF  FEMININE  LABOR, 
as  men  have  everywhere  divided  and 
organized,  and,  in  consequence,  control 
theirs. 

CORRESPONDING    DIVISIONS   OF    THE 

ORGANIZING  COMMITTEE. 
To  this  end  the  organizing  commit- 
tee must  recommend  the  association  to 
consolidate  its  twenty-five  or  fifty  kitch- 
ens and  laundries  into  one  central  es- 
tablishment, and  all  its  sewing  interests 
into  another.  The  committee  will  then 
divide  itself  into  three  smaller  bodies, 
corresponding  to  the  three  departments 
of  co-operative  housekeeping,  and  as- 
sign each  of  its  members  to  that  one 
wherein  her  special  taste  and  skill 
would  most  naturally  place  her.  The 
duties  of  these  minor  committees  will 
now  be  to  gain,  from  all  possible  sources, 
the  information  necessary  for  the  or- 
ganization of  each  division  of  their 
several  departments,  and  to  prepare 
their  reports  accordingly. 

WORKING  PLAN  OF  THE   CO-OPERA- 
TIVE LAUNDRY. 

It  is  evident  that  the  committee  on 
the  Co-operative  Laundry  will  have  the 
easiest  task  of  the  three,  since  all  it 
will  have  to  do  will  be  to  copy  just  what 
it  has  before  it  in  the  establishments  of 
that  kind  which  already  exist  for  indi- 
vidual profit. 

WORKING  PLAN  OF  THE  CO-OPERA- 
TIVE SEWING-ROOM  OR  CLOTHING- 
HOUSE. 

As  for  the  Co-operative  Sewing-room, 
so  many  women  of  means  and  position 
have,  of  late  years,  been  in  the  habit  of 
organizing  and  sustaining  sewing-cir- 
cles, and  of  acting  as  saleswomen  and 
waiters  at  promiscuously  crowded  fairs, 
that  the  wonder  is,  not  that  they  shoitld' 
co-operate  in  clothing  themselves  and 
their  families,  but  that  they  have  not 
long  ago  done  so.  A  co-operative  sew- 
ing-room or  clothing-house  would  be 


i868.] 


Co-op cratii -e  Hoiisekeeping. 


691 


in  effect  a  dry-goods  store,  owned  on 
shares  by  the  customer.1?,  instead  of  by 
one  or  several  individuals,  officered 
throughout  by  ladies,  and  where  all 
the  piece-goods  sold  could  be  made  up 
into  the  desired  garments  more  taste- 
fully, perfectly,  and  at  least  as  cheaply, 
as  they  can  now  be  done  at  home. 

Should  the  association  consist  of  no 
more  than  twelve  families,  three  rooms 
would  perhaps  afford  all  the  accom- 
modation necessary  for  the  above  pur- 
poses, namely,  a  salesroom,  a  fitting- 
room,  and  a  work-room.  But  I  am  so 
convinced  that  if  in  any  community  it 
were  known  that  twelve  responsible 
housekeepers  were  actually  about  to 
take  the  plunge  into  co-operative  sew- 
ing their  numbers  would  rapidly  swell 
to  fifty  at  least,  that  I  shall  sketch  a 
plan  for  a  sewing-house  suitable  for 
supplying  the  yearly  clothing  of  tw6 
hundred  persons,  since  the  mistresses, 
servants,  children,  and  infants  of  fifty 
families  would  probably  count  up  to 
that  number,  to  say  nothing  of  the  gen- 
tlemen's shirts  and  their  mending. 

ARRANGEMENT  OF  THE  BUILDING. 
It  should  occupy,  it  seems  to  me,  a 
good-sized  building  as  follows  :  on  the 
first  floor  should  be  the  counting-room, 
salesroom,  consulting-room,  and  fit- 
ting-room ;  on  the  second  floor  should 
be  the  working-rooms  ;  and  on  the  third 
a  dining-room  (with  dumb-waiter),  a 
gymnasium,  and  a  reading-room  :  all  of 
these  being  so  connected  that  they 
could  be  thrown  open  in  one  suite, 
when  the  co-operative  housekeepers 
wished  to  give  their  workwomen  a 
ball.  The  two  lower  floors  should  each 
have  a'comfortable  dressing-room,  with 
lounges,  easy-chairs,  and  toilet  con- 
venience's ;  and  not  only  health,  but 
beauty  and  cheerfulness,  should  be  con- 
sulted in  the  arrangement  of  the  whole 
establishment. 

MEALS    AND    HEALTH   REGULATIONS 
OF  THE  WORKWOMEN. 

The  meals  of  these  latter  should  be 
sent  them  from  the  co-operative  kitch- 
en, and  laid  upon  a  plain  but  well-ap- 


pointed table.  During  working  hours 
they  should  be  required  to  dress  in 
some  modification  of  the  gymnastic 
costume  adopted  by  Dr.  Dio  Lewis  for 
the  pupils  of  his  boarding-school,  —  a 
dress  which  can  very  easily  be  made  as 
pretty  and  coquettish  and  modest  as  any, 
and  which,  not  having  the  weight  or 
pressure  of  corset  and  crinoline,  leaves 
the  circulation  unimpeded,  and  there- 
fore lessens  very  much  the  fatigue  of 
working.  Being  loose,  and  short  also, 
it  would  permit  them,  once  or  twice  a 
day,  to  take  a  little  exercise  in  the  gym- 
nasium. In  my  opinion,  this  latter 
should  be  insisted  on  as  a  condition  of 
their  employment ;  for  constant  sewing, 
as  we  all  know,  is  the  most  killing  of 
all  feminine  employments  to  youth, 
health,  and  spirits.  As  a  class,  sewing- 
women  grow  prematurely  old,  both  in 
face  and  figure.  Their  chances  of  mar- 
rying favorably  seem  as  few  as  those  of 
the  schoolmistresses  in  the  ranlfs  above 
them.  Hand-sewing  predisposes  them 
to  lung  diseases,  and  machine-sewing 
to  affections  more  pitiable  still ;  and 
their  pay  for  it  all  is  miserable, — a 
shame  to  the  whole  race,  since  all  its 
clothing  and  adorning  come  through 
their  defrauded  fingers.  It  is  high  time 
that  the  free  and  favored  of  the  sex  — 
the  women  who  have  comfortable  homes 
provided  for  them  by  their  husbands 
or  fathers  —  should  feel  a  solicitude 
for  these  victims  of  the  needle,  and 
should  take  active  measures  for  their 
relief.  Benevolent  associations  cannot 
reach  them,  for  they  are  too  numerous. 
Nothing  can  reach  them,  save  some 
device  of  profitable  co-operative  action, 
which  shall  bring  the  whole  moneyed 
and  employing  class  among  women 
into  direct  and  responsible  relations 
with  the  whole  employed  or  industrial 
class. 

BUSINESS    HOURS     AND     WORKING 
HOURS. 

As  the  custom  of  our  cooperative 
housekeeping  establishment,  by  our 
constitution,  is  limited  to  members,  it 
would  be  no  object  to  keep  the  sales- 
room open  from  morning  until  night 


692 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


[December, 


for  the  convenience  of  every  chance 
buyer  that  came  along.  Women,  like 
cats,  love  their  ease  and  their  own  com- 
fortable and  peculiar  belongings  ;  and  to 
many,  as  I  confess  to  myself,  the  great- 
est objection  to  co-operative  house- 
keeping would  be  that,  in  case  one 
held  an  office  in  the  clothing-house  or 
kitchen,  one  would  be  obliged  to  leave 
home  at  a  stated  minute,  and  for  a 
stated  time,  every  day.  If  co-operation 
could  begin,  as  it  eventually  will,  with 
the  young  girls  just  leaving  school,  it 
would  not  be  so  great  a  hardship  in 
after  life,  as  the  habit  of  going  out 
daily  at  a  particular  time  is  already 
formed.  But  to  many  of  us,  with  our 
unsystematic  habits  and  our  national 
disinclination  to  facing  the  weather, 
the  loss  of  our  present  freedom  of 
choice  as  to  what  we  shall  do  from 
hour  to  hour  would  be  irksome  in  the 
extreme.  Of  course,  however,  in  an 
organization,  this  must  be  done ;  and 
the  only  way  to  manage  it  is  to  limit  our 
hours  of  business  strictly  to  three,  — 
say  from  nine  to  twelve,  or  from  ten  to 
one  in  the  morning,  —  which  is  just 
about  the  time  every  woman  now  ex- 
pects to  devote  t®  her  household  duties. 
All  orders  then  would  be  received,  sales 
made,  business  transacted,  and  gar- 
ments fitted  within  those  hours,  after 
which  the  rooms  on  the  first  floor 
should  be  closed,  and  the  officers  at 
liberty  to  return  to  their  families.  I 
should  further  recommend  that  every 
officer  be  allowed  to  have  an  assistant, 
in  case  she  desired  it,  chosen  and  paid 
by  herself  (but  subject  to  the  approval 
of  the  board  of  directresses),  who  could 
take  her  place  in  absence  or  illness, 
and  also  fill  it  temporarily  in  case 
of  her  resignation ;  and,  for  the  rest, 
we  must  only  hope  that  the  excitement 
and  interest  of  working  together,  and 
the  solid  satisfaction,  now  so  often 
missed,  of  having  something  to  show 
for  every  day,  would  compensate  the 
housekeepers  for  the  matutinal  bore  of 
having  to  be  punctual  and  unfailing  at 
their  offices. 

The   hours    for  the   workwomen,    I 
hope,  would  not  exceed  eight.    No  man 


or  woman  should  be  so  overworked 
that  he  or  she  will  not  have  time  and 
strength  every  day  for  a  little  self-cul- 
ture and  social  culture.  If  women,  by 
means  of  co-operative  housekeeping, 
should  "go  into  business,"  as  the 
phrase  is,  and  begin  making  and  saving 
money,  I  trust  they  may  be  preserved 
from  that  greed  and  fury  of  selfishness, 
that  unholy  eagerness  to  grasp  more 
than  a  fair  share  of  the  comforts  and 
luxuries  of  life,  that  in  all  ages  have 
made  men  so  willing  to  grind  down 
their  fellow-creatures  into  starvation  of 
body  and  brutishness  of  mind,  that 
they  may  reap  the  fruits  of  their  pro- 
longed and  unrequited  toil.  Indeed, 
is  not  the  typical  American  gentleman 
himself  rather  a  melancholy  object,  — 
with  his  intense  and  unremitting  devo- 
tion to  dollars  and  cents,  which  leaves 
^iim  no  time  for  reading,  drawing,  or 
music,  none  for  the  love  and  study  of 
out-door  nature,  none  for  communion 
with  himself  or  with  his  fellows,  so  that 
every  night  he  is  tired  to  death  with  his 
day's  work,  and  hates  society  because 
the  faculties  which  properly  come  into 
play  in  company  are  in  him  wholly  un- 
developed ?  "  Society  ?  "  In  this  coun- 
try there  is  none.  Boys  and  girls  meet 
together,  dance  and  flirt  until  they  are 
married,  and  that  is  all  there  is  of  it. 

STOCK  IN  TRADE  OF  THE  CO-OPERA- 
TIVE CLOTHING-HOUSE. 

The  goods  of  the  co-operative  sew- 
ing-rooms must,  of  course,  be  bought 
at  wholesale  ;  and  at  first,  while  the 
capital  is  small,  investment  will  be 
made  only  in  the  few  standard  kinds 
more  or  less  of  which  every  family 
uses,  —  such  as  shirtings,  nainsooks, 
jaconets,  linen  and  flannels  for  under- 
clothing, and  for  dresses,  black  silks 
and  black  alpacas,  white  piques  and 
white  alpacas,  linsey-woolsey,  thibets, 
calicoes,  lawns,  and  a  few  plaids  for 
children.  Numbered  dress  -  linings 
should  be  kept  ready  cut  and  basted, 
so  that  when  a  customer  buys  a  gown 
in  the  salesroom,  she  can  go  to  the 
fitting-room  and  have  the  lining,  cor- 
responding to  her  size,  shaped  to  her 


1 868.] 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


693 


figure  at  once.  The  dress-makers  and 
seamstresses  who  have  been  hitherto 
employed  by  the  co-operative  house- 
keepers should  be  consulted,  and  if 
possible  taken  into  the  service  and 
membership  of  the  association,  so  they 
may  not  lose,  but  rather  gain,  by  the 
new  order  of  things.  As  there  will  be 
rich  women  and  old-established  house- 
keepers in  town  who  will  not,  and  farm- 
ers' wives  in  the  country  who  cannot, 
give  up  their  private  kitchens  and  laun- 
dries, but  who  would  probably  take 
great  interest  in  a  co-operative  cloth- 
ing-house, the  constitution  might  pro- 
vide for  admission  to  partial  member- 
ship, thus  allowing  each  housekeeper 
to  choose  what  branch  of  co-operation 
is  to  herself  most  convenient. 

NUMBER  OF  OFFICERS  AND  EMPLOY- 
EES IN  THE  CO-OPERATIVE  SEW- 
ING-ROOMS. 

Of  course  the  four  directresses  stand 
first,  charged  with  the  functions  spe- 
cially allotted  to  them  by  Article  XXI. 
of  the  constitution.  The  post  of  the 
directress  and  vice-directress  should  be 
on  the  first  floor,  that  they  may  receive 
business  calls  and  answer  business 
letters  in  the  counting-room,  and  also 
keep  a  general  eye  upon  the  sales- 
room. The  other  officers  of  this  floor 
will  be  a  book-keeper  and  a  cashier  for 
the  counting-room,  buyers  and  sales- 
women for  the  salesroom,  a  costume- 
artist  for  the  consulting-room,  and  a 
dress-maker  for  the  fitting-room.  All 
of  these,  excepting  the  latter,  should 
be  chosen  from  among  the  co-operating 
housekeepers  themselves,  or  from  their 
widowed  and  unmarried  relatives  and 
friends ;  for  remember,  it  was  as  a 
means  of  enabling  "ladies"  in  a  per- 
fectly unobjectionable  way  to  carry  on 
the  retail  trade,  that  co-operative  house- 
keeping was  at  first  proposed. 

The  post  of  the  two  assistant  di- 
rectresses should  be  on  the  second 
floor.  One  of  them  will  superintend 
the*  dress-making  and  the  other  the 
plain-sewing  department.  In  the  for- 
mer, I  suppose,  there  would  be  two 


dress-cutters,  —  one  for  women  and 
one  for  young  girls  and  children  ;  and, 
in  the  latter,  two  plain-sewing  cutters, 
—  one  for  boys'  and  men's  shirts  and 
one  for  women's  and  children's  under- 
clothing. The  fitting  and  shaping  of 
all  dresses,  cloaks,  etc.  would  be  done 
in  the  fitting-room  down  stairs,  by  one 
or' two  accomplished  dress-makers,  who 
also  could  oversee  the  work-rooms  after 
the  officers  had  retired  for  the  day. 
How  many  trimmers,  embroiderers, 
seamstresses,  and  machines  would  be 
needed  I  can  form  no  idea  ;  for  ladies 
are  so  fond  of  sewing,  that  probably 
many  of  them  would  choose,  after  their 
garments  were  cut  out,  to  take  them 
home  and  make  them  themselves  ; 
though  it  is  to  be  hoped  .that  this 
would  disappear  more  and  more,  since, 
as  I  have  said  elsewhere,  the  true 
function  for  educated  women  is  the 
superintendence  and  organization  of 
manual  labor,  not  the  doing  it  them- 
selves.* '  Finally,  when  the  establish- 
ment was  complete,  it  would  include 
many  minor  departments,  each  of  which 
would  be  superintended  by  its  own 
lady  officer,  —  such  as  a  baby-clothing 
department,  a  fancy-work  department, 
a  tailoring  department  for  boys'  clothes, 
a  cuff  and  collar  department,  where, 
too,  not  only  these,  but  lace  waists, 
lace  sets,  and  all  the  "  airy  nothings  " 
could  be  made  up,  a  millinery  depart- 
ment, and  a  hair-dressing  department. 
Gloves  and  shoes,  if  not  made,  should 
be  kept  in  the  salesroom  as  part  of  the 
regular  stock  ;  and,  in  short,  a  perfect 
co-operative  clothing-house  should  be 
one  wherein  a  woman  might  enter,  so 
far  as  dress  was  concerned,  a  fright, 
and  come  out  a  beauty. 

FUNCTION  OF  THE  COSTUME-ARTIST. 
As  the  idea  of  this  officer  is  a  favor- 
ite one  with  me,  in  closing  my  remarks 
about  this  branch  of  co-operation  I 
should  like  to  enlarge  upon  it  a  little. 

*  This  need  not  exclude  us,  however,  from  the 
higher  kinds  of  artistic  sewing,  which  require  fancy 
and  invention,  and,  indeed,  might  not  unworthily 
employ  genius,  such  as  the  embroidering  of  stuffs  in 
rich  designs  for  altar-cloths,  vestments,  girdles, 
jackets,  etc. 


694 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


[December, 


All  women  know,  by  irritating  experi- 
ence, the  countless  days  and  hours  we 
spend  in  wandering  from  shop  to  shop 
to  find  things  a  few  cents  cheaper  or 
just  a  shade  prettier,  —  the  indescriba- 
ble small  tortures  of  doubt  and  anxiety 
we  suffer  in  long  balancing  between 
what  is  more  or  less  becoming,  or  bet- 
ter or  poorer  economy, — the  exasper- 
ating regrets  that  rend  us  when  we  find 
(as  in  five  cases  out  of  ten  we  do  find) 
that  we  have  made  a  mistake.  Now, 
all  this  could  be  saved  if  we  could  go 
to  a  person  for  advice,  who,  from  talent, 
study,  and  experience,  knew  better 
what  we  wanted  than  we  do  ourselves. 
Some  women  possess  the  special  instinct 
for,  and  insight  into,  dress  that  others 
enjoy  as  regards  cooking.  Its  combi- 
nations and  results  are  as  much  a  mat- 
ter of  course  to  them  as  are  these  of 
his  formulas  to  the  mathematician. 
With  unerring  judgment  they  select 
the  right  stuffs,  the  right  shapes,  and 
the  right  colors  ;  the  effect  they  see 
in  their  mind's  eye  they  reproduce  to 
the  eyes  of  others,  and  it  is  delicious 
and  satisfying  in  proportion  as  with 
the  boldness  of  originality  they  unite 
the  refinement  and  taste  diffused  by 
culture  through  the  educated  classes  of 
society.  Such  women  I  would  make 
Costume-Artists,  for  the}''  in  truth  pos- 
sess, in  this  direction,  the  creative 
quality  of  genius.  They  use  their  tal- 
ents now  only  for  themselves,  and 
within  very  narrow  and  conventional 
limits,  while  the  comprehensive  glance 
they  are  very  apt  to  give  one  from  head 
to  foot  is  enough  to  make  them  dreaded 
by  the  whole  circle  of  their  acquaint- 
ance. But  let  one  utilize  this  glance  ; 
convert  it  from  an  involuntary  men- 
tal comparison  between  what  one  is  and 
what  one  ought  to  be,  into  a  kindly 
professional  summing  up  and  decision 
of  what  one  can  be,  and  dress  for  most 
of  us  would  become  a  very  different 
matter. 

The  post  of  the  costume-artist  would 
be  in  the  consulting-room,  on  the  first 
floor  of  the  co-operative  clothing-house, 
whither  whoever  wanted  a  dress  could 
go,  if  she  chose,  and  be  advised  as  to 


the  fabric  she  had  best  select  for  her 
purpose,  and  in  what  mode  it  should  be 
made  and  trimmed.  But  as  every  wo- 
man might  not  care,  or  in  every  case 
be  able  to  afford,  to  pay  for  the  finished 
artistic  touch  or  "  air "  in  dress,  the 
costume-artist,  as  such,  need  have  no 
regular  salary,  but  should  ask  so  much 
for  every  consultation.  Thus  the  es- 
tablishment would  avoid  the  mistake 
made  by  fashionable  dress-makers  who 
irritate  their  customers  by  overcharg- 
ing- them  for  the  "  trimmings,"  instead  of 
having  it  understood  that  a  consultation- 
fee  of  from  three  to  fifty  dollars,  accord- 
ing to  the  brain-work  required  in  de- 
signing a  dress,  will  be  charged  to 
begin  with.  There  is  no  fear  but  that 
the  costume-artist  would  make  a  hand- 
some income,  when  we  consider  the 
need  women  have  of  dress  to  heighten 
their  charms  and  to  palliate  their  de- 
fects, and  the  little  knowledge  or  in- 
stinct that  many  of  them  possess  for 
the  successful  accomplishment  of  these 
results. 

WHY   DRESS-   is    XOT  A   FIXE  ART, 

AND    IIO\V    IT    MAY    UECOilE    SO. 

For  the  whole  subject  of  the  aesthet- 
ics of  dress  is  in  a  crude,  and  in  some 
respects  positively  savage,  state  among 
us.  What,  for  instance,  does  the  clerk 
who  urges  the  stuff  upon  the  buyer,  or 
the  dress-maker  who  cuts  and  trims  it, 
know  about  that  harmony  of  texture, 
color,  and  form  which  should  subsist 
between  the  wearer  and  her  robe  ? 
What  about  the  grace  of  outline  which 
should  control  its  fashion  ?  the  effec- 
tiveness of  inline  and  crossline  which 
should  guide  its  ornamentation,  and 
manifold  other  subtile  considerations  ? 
Nothing ;  and  therefore  nothing  could 
better  repay  the  co-operative  house- 
keepers than  to  offer  inducements  and 
facilities  to  those  two  or  three  in  ev- 
ery circle  who  are  distinguished  for 
taste  and  elegance  in  dress  to  make 
a  study  of  the  whole  matter,  with  a 
view  to  elevating  it  into  one  of  the 
finer  arts,  instead  of  perpetuating,  the 
coarse,  often  vulgar,  apology  for  beau- 
ty and  fitness  that  it  is  at  present. 


-i  868.] 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


695 


The  imperfect  adaptation  by  women  of 
the  means  of  dress  to  its  true  ends  is  a 
never-failing  subject  of  complaint  and 
ridicule  against  us  by  the  other  sex  ;  but 
it  is  not  surprising  that  the  fashions  are 
so  often  grotesque,  exaggerated,  incon- 
venient, and  even  physically  and  morally 
injurious,  when  it  is  known  who  sets 
them.  Not  the  ladies  of  the  French 
Court,  not  even  the  "  queens  of  the 
demi-monde "  that  the  newspapers  so 
love  to  talk  about,  design  the  things 
that  destroy  our  peace  ;  but  French 
and  German  men,  in  the  employ  of  the 
manufacturers,  and  for  their  benefit 
make  water-color  drawings  of  every 
novelty  and  extravagance  that  comes  in- 
to their  heads,  and  send  them,  with  the 
new  stuffs  and  trimmings  that  another 
set  of  men  have  invented,  to  the  Paris- 
ian modistes,  who,  in  conjunction  with 
their  rich  patronesses,  the  court  ladies 
and  courtesans,  contrive  to  modify  them 
into  something  wearable,  but  still  ab- 
surd enough,  as  a  suffering  sex  can  tes- 
tify. Toilets  at  once  healthful,  suitable, 
and  beautiful  for  women  of  every  age,  of 
every  grade  of  means  and  position,  and 
on  every  occasion,  will  never  be  at- 
tempted nor  so  much  as  dreamed  of, 
until  cultivated  ladies,  uniting  that 
special  talent  for  dress  which  is  one  of 
the  most  belied  and  abused  of  the  femi- 
nine attributes  to  an  accurate  knowledge 
of  the  structure  and  requirements  of  the 
feminine  physique,  a  fine  perception 
of  the  ideal  possibilities  of  all  its  types, 
and  a  historical  and  artistic  mastery 
of  all  the  resources  for  its  adornment, 
shall  make  the  attiring  of  their  fel- 
low-women their  special  vocation.  One 
or  two  such  costume-artists  in  every 
co-operative  sewing-room  ^ould  in 
the  end  effect  an  entire  revolution 
m  the  whole  idea  of  fashion  ;  for 
within  certain  limits  every  woman 
would  have  a  fashion  of  her  own.  Such 
distressing  anomalies  as  blond  hair 
smoothed  and  pomatumed  as  it  was 
twenty  years  ago,  and  dark  hair  curled 
and  frizzed  as  it  is  now,  with  a  thousand 
others  equally  melancholy,  would  dis- 
appear, and  every  assemblage  of  wo- 
men, instead  of  presenting  a  monotony 


at  once  bizarre  and  wearisome,  would 
afford  the  variety  and  beauty  that  now 
is  only  attempted  at  a  fancy  ball. 

THE  CO-OPERATIVE  KITCHEN. 

Beneficent  and  important  as  co-op- 
erative sewing-rooms  would  be  to  all  of 
us,  however,  to  my  view,  they  are  second- 
ary in  dignity  and  usefulness  to  the  CO- 
OPERATIVE KITCHEN,  since  good,  abun- 
dant, and  varied  food,  accurately  cooked 
and  freshly  served,  lies  at  the  very  foun- 
dation of  family  health  and  happiness, 
and  doubtless  has  an  incalculable  in- 
fluence both  on  physical  perfection  and 
intellectual  activity.  Probably  the  easi- 
est way  for  the  co-operative  housekeep- 
ers to  organize  their  kitchen  would  be 
to  send  for  Professor  Blot,  and  place 
themselves  under  his  direction.  Fail- 
ing in  this,  the  committee  on  the  co- 
operative kitchen  must  have  recourse 
to  hotels,  restaurants,  bakeries,  and  pro- 
vision stores,  and  from  these  will,  no 
doubt,  be  able  to  judge  what  kind  and" 
how  large  a  building  will  be  needed, 
whether  the  kitchen  can  be  combined 
with  the  laundry,  and  what  its  stoves, 
ranges,  ovens,  boilers,  general  arrange- 
ment, and  accompanying  cellars  and 
storerooms  must  be.  These  large  es- 
tablishments will  also  enable  the  com- 
mittee to  report  on  the  number  of  divis- 
ions, officers,  assistants,  servants,  carts, 
and  horses  that  would  be  necessary. 
For  the  method  of  conveying  the  meals 
hot  and  on  time  to  the  different  families 
of  the  association  they  will  probably 
have  to  go  to  France  or  Italy,  where 
cook-shops  have  long  been  an  institu- 
tion, —  though  whether  it  would  be  quite 
fair  to  take  from  a  hundred  Yankee  wits 
the  delicious  chance  of  inventing  a  Uni- 
versal Heat-generating  Air-tight  Family 
Dinner-Box  I  do  not  know.  How  many 
of  the  co-operative  housekeepers  would 
choose  to  be  connected  with  the  kitchen 
of  course  themselves  alone  could  de- 
cide. Obviously  it  must  have  a  super- 
intendent, a  treasurer,  a  book-keeper  ;  a 
caterer  to  contract  with  butchers,  gar- 
deners, farmers,  and  wholesale  dealers  ; 
a  stewardess  to  keep  the  storerooms 
and  cellars  and  give  out  the  supplies  ; 


696 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


[December, 


and  an  artist-cook  or  ehiefess  with  her 
assistants,  a  confectioner,  a  pastry-cook, 
and  a  baker,  to  preside  over  their  prep- 
aration. As  all  of  these  would  be  posi- 
tions of  peculiar  trust  and  responsibility, 
demanding  superior  judgment,  ability, 
and  information,  as  the  salaries  con- 
nected with  them  would  be  large,  and 
the  persons  filling  them  necessarily  of 
great  weight  and  consideration  in  the 
community,  I  cannot  imagine  any  wo- 
man, except  from  indolence,  ill  health, 
or  a  preference  for  some  other  employ- 
ment, unwilling  to  accept  of  either  of 
these  offices.  Regarding  cookery,  I 
believe  that,  like  dress,  it  will  never  be 
what  it  can  and  ought  to  become,  until 
women  of  social  and  intellectual  culture 
make  it  the  business  of  their  lives,  and, 
with  thoughts  unfettered  by  other 
household  cares,  devote  themselves, 
like  lesser  providences,  to  its  benign 
necromancy.  B,eing  one  of  the  great 
.original  functions  of  woman,  like  clothes- 
making  and  infant-rearing,  there  is  no 
doubt  that  she  has  a  special  gift  or  in- 
stinct for  it;  while  the  superior  keenness 
of  her  senses  and  fastidiousness  of  her 
taste  must  fit  her  peculiarly  for  all  its 
finer  and  more  complicated  triumphs. 
All  the  Paris  letters  lately  have  men- 
tioned Sophie,  cook  of  the  late  Dr.  Ve- 
ron  of  Paris,  —  only  a  woman,  and  prob- 
ably an  uneducated  woman  at  that.  Nev- 
ertheless, she  is  said  to  be  "  the  most 
consummate  culinary  artist  of  the  day ; 
looking  down  with  unspeakable  con- 
tempt on  Baron  Brisse,  and  even  on 
Rossini  and  Alexander  Dumas.  Min- 
isters, bankers,  artists,  men  of  letters, 
paid  obsequious  Court  to  this  divinity 
of  the  kitchen,  who  ruled  despotically 
over  her  master's  household  and  dining- 
room,  and  who  had  made  it  a  law  that 
no  more  than  fourteen  guests  should 
ever  sit  together  at  the  doctor's  table."* 
If  such  is  her  success,  what  an  artist 
was  lost  to  the  world  in  the  New  Eng- 
land housekeeper  I  attempted  to  de- 
scribe. Delicate  to  etherealness,  accu- 
rate to  mathematical  severity,  she  might 
have  wrought  marvels  indeed,  had  she 
been  initiated  into  the  mysteries  of  the 

*  Paris  Correspondent  of  The  Nation,  October  24. 


modern  cuisine.  Therefore,  above  all 
things,  let  the  co-operative  housekeep- 
ers appoint  one  of  their  number,  at  a 
liberal  salary,  to  the  office  of  cook-in- 
chief.  If  possible,  let  them  afford  her 
every  advantage  of  gastronomical  edu- 
cation, such  as  go  through  the  great 
French  c/iefs,  who  learn  sauces  from 
one  master,  entries  from  another,  con- 
fection from  a  third,  and  so  on.  If  the 
co-operative  kitchen  should  ever  be- 
come universal,  we  shall  probably  see 
American  ladies  by  dozens  going  out  to 
Paris  to  study  under  just  such  artists 
as  the  great  Sophie  above  mentioned, 
and  then  returning  home  to  benefit  the 
whole  country  with  their  accomplish- 
ments. It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  no 
nation  in  the  world  has  such  a  variety 
and  abundance  of  the  best  food  that 
Nature  gives  as  we  ourselves.  She 
teems  with  such  bounty  to  her  adopted 
children  that  it  has  often  seemed  to  me 
a  misnomer  to  call  our  country  "  Father- 
land,"—  Mother  -  land  she  is  for  the 
whole  earth,  with  her  broad  lap  of  plen- 
ty sloping  from  the  Rocky  Mountains 
down  to  the  very  Atlantic  shore,  as  ii7 
inviting  the  hungry  nations  to  come 
over  to  it  and  be  fed.  What  feasts  fit 
for  the  immortals  might  grace  every 
table,  if  we  only  knew  how  to  turn  our 
treasures  to  the  best  advantage,  —  and 
to  think  that  millions  of  us  live  on  salt 
pork,  sour  or  saleratus  bread,  and  hor- 
rible heavy  pies !  * 

WHAT  ACTION  SHOULD  FOLLOW  THE 
REPORTS  OF  THE  ORGANIZING  COM- 
MITTEE. 

When  the  co-operative  housekeepers 
have  heard  the  reports  of  their  various 
committees,  have  adopted  their  consti- 
tution and  decided  upon  their  working 
plans,  they  should  call  the  Council  of 
their  husbands,  and  submit  the  whole 
to  them  for  approval  or  final  amend- 
ment. These  gentlemen  must  also  de- 
cide whether  they  will  advance  the 
funds  wherewith  to  start  the  enterprise, 
or  whether,  like  the  Rochdale  Pioneers, 
their  wives  shall  save  up  small  sums 

*  This  is  the  ordinary  farmers'  diet  even  in  New. 
England ! 


1 868.] 


Co-operative  Housekeeping. 


697 


from  their  current  expenses,  —  say  ten 
dollars  a  month  each, — until  a  capital 
is  accumulated  sufficient  for  their  pur- 
poses. 

The  last  step  of  all  will  be,  immedi- 
ately after  the  ratification  of  the  consti- 
tution by  the  higher  powers,  to  proceed 
to  the  elections  under  it  of  the  execu- 
tive committee,  the  board  of  direc- 
tresses, and  the  officers  and  agents  of 
the  different  departments.  All  the  per- 
sons elected,  who  do  not  perfectly  un- 
derstand the  duties  to  which  they  are 
assigned,  will  have  to  qualify  themselves 
for  them  as  thoroughly  as  possible  ;  and 
it  would  be  better  to  spend  two  years 
in  fitting  every  officer  perfectly  to  her 
post,  than  to  attempt  so  great  a  revo- 
lution with  any  chance  of  failure. 

THE  AUTHOR  INTRENCHES  HERSELF. 
Here,  now,  dear  friends  and  fellow- 
sufferers  in  housewifery,  ends  my  plan 
for  your  and  my  relief.  Excepting  one, 
I  will  freely  admit  any  criticism  you 
may  pass  upon  it.  It  is  vague,  sketchy, 
unpractical,  extravagant,  —  any  adjec- 
tive you  choose.  But  what  can  you 
expect  of  a  single  mind  ?  Like  the  Ger- 
man in  the  story,  I  might  as  well  at- 
tempt to  evolve  a  camel  out  of  my  inner 
consciousness  as  to  construct  even  a 
tolerable  plan  of  anything  so  complicat- 
ed as  housekeeping  for  a  whole  com- 
munity must  be.  Every  single  clause 
of  the  constitution,  every  detail  of  ev- 
ery department,  would  have  to  be  dis- 
cussed in  committee,  submitted  to  the 
Convention,  carried  before  the  Coun- 
cil, perhaps  sent  back  again,  and,  af- 
ter all,  could  not  be  said  to  be  fairly 
decided  until  it  had  been  put  into  prac- 
tice and  tested  by  experience.  But,  in 
making  out  my  plan,  I  have  consulted 


nobody,  and,  in  truth,  I  submit  it  only 
to  provoke  your  minds  to  action.  One 
only  charge  against  the  conception  1 
will  not  suffer,  —  that  it  is  impossible. 
I  will  not  consent  that  this  first-born 
bantling  of  my  brain  be  murdered  be- 
fore it  has  had  a  chance  to  live.  Two 
things  only  can  make  co-operative  house- 
keeping impossible  :  — 

ist.  That  women  cannot  work  to- 
gether. 

2d.  That  men  will  not  let  them,  or, 
at  least,  will  not  encourage  them  to  do 
so. 

The  first  does  not  trouble  me.  Let 
the  world  slander  as  it  will,  I  know 
that  the  frivolous,  the  violent,  the  ob- 
stinate, the  mean,  the  malicious,  consti- 
tute but  a  small  minority  of  the  sex. 
The  great  mass  of  women  have  both 
Christianity  and  common  sense,  and 
these  are  the  only  two  influences  need- 
ed to  make  any  human  corporation 
work  smoothly  and  successfully.  As. 
for  the  second,  that  men  will  not  pro- 
mote it,  here,  indeed,  is  room  for  fears. 
Had  men  ever  done  anything  directly 
for  the  happiness  and  development  of 
women,  one  might  hope  that  they  would 
set  forward  this.  But  they  will  probably 
distrust  or  laugh  at  it,  and  women,  ac- 
customed to  take  them  for  God  and 
Bible  both,  will  accept  the  sneer  or  the 
doubt  with  unquestioning  faith,  will  not 
so  much  as  attempt  to  reflect,  to  rea- 
son, and  to  arrive  at  an  independent 
judgment  even  about  what  is  so  in- 
tensely their  own  concern  as  this  of 
housewifery.  Well,  be  it  so.  Perhaps 
my  baby  must  die ;  but  none  the  less 
for  this  shall  I  in  two  or  three  more 
numbers  of  the  Atlantic  go  on  to  tell 
the  world  what  might  have  been  the 
consequences  could  she  have  become 
there  a  Living  Power. 


Watch  in  the  Night.  [December, 


A    WATCH     IN     THE     NIGHT. 

i. 

WATCHMAN,  what  of  the  night?  — 
Storm  and  thunder  and  rain, 
Lights  that  waver  and  wane, 
Leaving  the  watch-fires  unlit. 
Only  the  balefires  are  bright, 

And  the  flash  of  the  lamps  now  and  then 
From  a  palace  where  spoilers  sit, 
Trampling  the  children  of  men. 

II. 
Prophet,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 

I  stand  by  the  verge  of  the  sea, 

Banished,  uncomforted,  free, 
Hearing  the  nois'e  of  the  waves 
And  sudden  flashes  that  smite 

Some  man's  tyrannous  head, 
Thundering,  heard- among  graves 

That  hide  the  hosts  of  his  dead. 

in. 
Mourners,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 

All  night  through  without  sleep 

We  weep,  and  we  weep,  and  we  weep. 
Who  shall  give  us  our  sons  ? 
Beaks  of  raven  and  kite, 

Mouths  of  wolf  and  of  hound, 
Give  us  them  back  whom  the  guns 

Shot  for  you  dead  on  the  ground. 

IV. 

Dead  men,  what  of  the  night?  — 

Cannon,  and  scaffold,  and  sword, 

Horror  of  gibbet  and  cord, 
Mowed  us  as  sheaves  for  the  grave, 
Mowed  us  clown  for  the  night. 

We  do  not  grudge  or  repent, 
Freely  to  freedom  we  gave 

Pledges,  till  life  should  be  spent. 

v. 
Statesman,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 

The  night  will  last  me  my  time. 

The  gold  on  a  crown  or  a  crime 
Looks  well  enough  yet  by  the  lamps. 
Have  we  not  fingers  to  write, 

Lips  to  swear  at  a  need  ? 
Then,  when  danger  decamps, 

Bury  the  word  with  the  deed. 


1 868.]  A    Watch  in  the  Night.  699 

VI. 

Warrior,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 

Whether  it  be  not  or  be 

Night  is  as  one  thing  to  me.  • 

I  for  one,  at  the  least, 
Ask  not  of  dews  if  they  blight, 

Ask  not  of  flames  if  they  slay, 
Ask  not  of  prince  or  of  priest 

How  long  ere  we  put  them  away. 

VII. 

Master,  what  of  the  night?  — 

Child,  night  is  not  at  all 

Anywhere,  fallen  or  to  fall, 
Save  in  our  star-stricken  eyes. 
Forth  of  our  eyes  it  takes  flight, 

Look  we  but'  once  nor  before 
Nor  behind  us,  but  straight  on  the  skies ; 

Night  is  not  then  any  more. 

VIII. 

Exile,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 

The  tides  and  the  hours  run  out, 

The  seasons  of  death  and  of  doubt, 
The  night-watches  bitter  and  sore. 
In  the  quicksands  leftward  and  right 

My  feet  sink  down  under  me  ; 
But  I  know  the  scents  of  the  shore 

And  the  broad-blown  breaths  of  the  sea. 

IX. 

Captives,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 

It  rains  outside  overhead, 

Always,  a  rain  that  is  red, 
And  our  faces  are  soiled  with  the  rain. 
Here,  in  the  seasons'  despite, 

Day-time  and  night-time  are  one, 
Till  the  curse  of  the  kings  and  die  chain 
Break,  and  their  toils  be  undone. 


Christian,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 

I  cannot  tell ;   I  am  blind, 

I  halt  and  hearken  behind. 
If  haply  the  hours  will  go  back 
And  return  to  the  dear  dead  light, 

To  the  watch-fires  and  stars  that  of  old 
Shone  where  the  sky  now  is  black, 

Glowed  where  the  earth  now  is  cold. 


700  A    Watch  in  the  Night.  [December, 


High-priest,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 
The  night  is  horrible  here 
With  haggard  faces  and  fear, 

Blood,  and  the  burning  of  fire. 

Mine  eyes  are  emptied  of  sight, 
Mine  hands  are  full  of  the  dust, 

If  the  God  of  my  faith  be  a  liar, 
Who  is  it  that  I  shall  trust  ? 

XII. 

Prvnces,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 
Night  with  pestilent  breath 
Feeds  us,  children  of  death, 

Clothes  us  close  with  her  gloom. 

Rapine  and  famine  and  fright 
Crouch  at  our  feet  and  are  fed ; 

Earth  where  we  pass  is  a  tomb, 
Life  where  we  triumph  is  dead. 

XIII. 

Martyrs,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 

Nay,  is  it  night  with  you  yet  ? 

We,  for  our  part,  we  forget 
What  night  was,  if  it  were. 
The  loud  red  mouths  of  the  fight 

Are  silent  and  shut  where  we  are. 
In  our  eyes  the  tempestuous  air 

Shines  as  the  face  of  a  star. 


England,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 

Night  is  for  slumber  and  sleep, 

Warm,  no  season  to  weep ; 
Let  me  alone  till  the  day. 
Sleep  would  I  still  if  I  might, 

Who  have  slept  for  two  hundred  years. 
Once  I  had  honor,  they  say  ; 

But  slumber  is  sweeter  than  tears. 


France,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 
Night  is  the  prostitute's  noon, 
Kissed  and  drugged  till  she  swoon, 

Spat  upon,  trod  upon,  whored. 

With  blood-red  rose-garlands  dight, 
Round  me  reels  in  the  dance 

Death,  my  savior,  my  lord, 

Crowned  ;  there  is  no  more  F ranee. 


1 868.]  A    Watch  i;i  the  Night.  701 


Italy,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 

Ah,  child,  child,  it  is  long ! 

Moonbeam  and  starbeam  and  song 
Leave  it  dumb  now  and  dark. 
Yet  I  perceive  on  the  height 

Eastward,  not  now  very  far, 
A  song  too  loud  for  the  lark, 

A  light  too  strong  for  a  star. 


Germany,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 

Long  has  it  lulled  me  with  dreams ; 

Now  at  midvvatch,  as  it  seems, 
Light  is  brought  back  to  mine  eyes, 
And  the  mastery  of  old  and  the  might 

Lives  in  the  joints  of  mine  hands, 
Steadies  my  limbs  as  they  rise, 

Strengthens  my  foot  as  it  stands. 


Europe,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 
Ask  of  heaven,  and  the  sea, 
And  my  babes  on  the  bosom  of  me, 

Nations  of  mine,  but  ungrown. 

There  is  one  who  shall  surely  requite 
All  that  endure  or  that  err : 

She  can  answer  alone  ; 
Ask  not  of  me,  but  of  her. 

XIX. 

Liberty,  what  of  the  night  ?  — 
I  feel  not  the  red  rains  fall, 
Hear  not  the  tempest  at  all, 

Nor  thunder  in  heaven  any  more. 

All  the  distance  is  white 

With  the  soundless  feet  of  the  sun. 

Night,  with  the  woes  that  it  wore, 
Night  is  over  and  done. 


702 


A  Day  at  a  Consiilate. 


[December, 


A    DAY    AT    A    CONSULATE. 


AN  American  consulate  is  a  verita- 
ble Mirza's  Hill,  where  human  life, 
in  its  various  phases,  with  its  sharps 
and  flats,  its  tragedy  and  comedy, 
passes  in  continuous  though  informal 
review.  Lexically  it  is  a  commercial 
agency,  but  practically  it  is  that  and  a 
great  deal  more  ;  in  an  accommodated 
sense,  it  is  a  police-station,  a  criminal 
court,  despatch  agency,  bank  of  depos- 
it, reading-room,  post-office,  —  in  fine, 
a  general  depository,  or  sort  of  omni- 
ana,  where  from  time  to  time  you  may 
find  everything,  from  a  love-letter  to  a 
Saratoga  trunk,  or  from  a  sailors  tar- 
pauling  to  a  lady's  trousseaii. 

So,  too,  a  consul  is  supposed  to  be 
a  commercial  agent ;  but  in  fact,  and  of 
necessity,  he  is  everything  by  turns, 
and  nothing  long.  What  with  deben- 
tures, invoices,  protests,  legalizations, 
and  the  rest  of  that  category,  his  official 
duties  are  sufficiently  numerous,  and 
often  perplexing  ;  but  his  unofficial  ser- 
vices, which  never  figure  in  the  de- 
spatches, are  still  more  multiform  and 
multiplied.  He  conducts  trials,  in 
which  he  is  at  once  advocate,  judge, 
and  jury.  He  draws  up  a  legal  in- 
strument as  a  notary,  signs  it  as  a  wit- 
ness, and  legalizes  it  as  a  consul.  Now 
he  is  engaged  in  the  humble  vocation 
of  an  interpreter,  or  valet  dc place,  and, 
presto  !  he  is  discharging  the  functions 
of  a  minister  extraordinary.  Now  he 
is  looking  after  the  stray  baggage  of 
some  unfortunate  tourist,  and  anon  he 
is  deciding  cases  involving,  not  only  the 
property  and  personal  liberty,  but  even 
the  lives,  of  his  countrymen. 

Then,  too,  as  the  recognized  agent  of 
Uncle  Sam,  —  that  benevolent  old  gen- 
tleman, with  a  great,  capacious  pocket 
full  of  double-eagles,  —  he  is  regarded 
as  a  sort  of  special  providence  to 
the  whole  tribe  of  improvident  scape- 
graces. If  some  peripatetic  vagabond, 
or  seedy  nobleman,  or  political  refugee, 
is  out  of  funds,  and  minus  credit,  espe- 
if  he  can  lay  claim  to  a  nationality 


that  has  figured  in  some  war  of  inde- 
pendence, no  matter  how  remote,  he 
calls  for  aid  upon  the  United  States 
Consul.  If  one  of  his  countrywomen 
contemplates  marriage,  she  consults  the 
consular  oracle.  If  she  is  married  and 
wishes  she  were  not,  or  if  she  is  not 
married  when  in  all  conscience  she 
ought  to  be,  she.  confides  the  terrible 
secret  to  the  consul.  If  a  male  child 
is  born  of  American  parentage,  the 
consul  is  forthwith  notified  of  the  hap- 
py event,  and  thereupon  issues  a  cer- 
tificate of  United  States  citizenship. 
Should  one  of  his  countrymen  conclude 
that  "  it  is  not  good  for  man  to  be 
alone,"  the  consul  may  solemnize  the 
rites  of  matrimony ;  or,  should  he  die 
intestate,  the  latter  becomes,  by  virtue 
of  his  office,  the  executor  or  administra- 
tor of  his  personal  estate. 

I  should  have  considered  the  fore- 
going an  exaggerated  statement  of  the 
case,  if  I  had  not  recently  had  occasion 
to  pass  a  day  at  one  of  the  principal 
Italian  consulates,  of  which  I  propose 
to  furnish  a  brief  record  from  notes 
taken  upon  the  spot.  Having  ordered 
a  small  box  of  sundries  sent  to  my 
address  by  steamer  from  Marseilles, 
I  called  at  the  consulate  to  ascertain 
its  whereabouts  and  to  inquire  for  let- 
ters. Antonio,  the  messenger,  soon 
arrived  with  the  mail.  By  way  of  pa- 
renthesis we  may  say,  that  Antonio  is 
a  fixture  of  the  office,  having  been  con- 
nected with  it  for  the  last  twenty  years. 
He  speaks  four  or  five  different  lan- 
guages, and  yet  is  in  blissful  ignorance 
of  his  own  age  and  surname.  He 
knows  that  everybody  calls  him  Anto- 
nio, and  that's  all  he  knows  about 
it.  He  is  slightly  at  fault  sometimes 
with  his  languages,  as  he  exclaimed,  on 
coming  into  the  office,  and  glancing  at 
the  stove  to  see  if  it  were  drawing  well, 
"  The  stufa  pulls  fust-rate." 

This  struck  me  as  being  rather  ex- 
traordinary, as  one  of  the  peculiarities  of 
an  Italian  fireplace  is,  as  Dickens  has 


1 868.] 


A  Day  at  a  Consulate. 


it,  that  "  everything  goes  up  the  chim- 
ney except  the  smoke." 

"  How  about  the  box,  Antonio  ?  " 

"All  right,  Signore." 

Though,  to  the  best  of  my  knowledge, 
it  contained  nothing  dutiable,  still,  as  I 
had  been  totally  oblivious  of  the  fact 
that  the  custom -house  "Cerberus 
loves  a  sop,"  I  anticipated  some  diffi- 
culty on  that  score,  and  inquired,  with  a 
little  nervous  anxiety,  "  Flow  did  you 
get  it  through,  Antonio  ?  " 

"  Why,  sir,  I  told  'em  it  was  only  a 
little  tapioca  for  the  consul,  who  has 
the  dyspepsy." 

^Birbante!"  exclaimed  that  worthy 
functionary  with  considerable  fervor,  as 
he  wheeled  around  upon  his  tripod, 
"  how  dared  you  tell  them  that  ?  " 

"  Why,  you  know,  Signore  Console, 
it  is  right  to  lie  for  my  padrone ;  so  I 
told  'em  a  lie  in  order  to  be  honest." 

\  very  singular  idea  of  honesty, 
certainly  !  "  rejoined  the  consul,  his  se- 
vere aspect  relaxing,  notwithstanding 
his  evident  displeasure,  into  an  involun- 
tary smile.  And  yet  not  so  singular 
either,  when  we  consider  the  moral 
possibilities  of  a  regime  under  which 
pious  brigands,  baptized  with  sacrile- 
gious rites  in  human  blood,  can  repeat 
with  sanctimonious  airs  the  Ave  Maria 
over  the  mutilated  corpses  of  their  foul- 
ly murdered  victims.  It  was  only  an 
efflorescence  of  Machiavelianism,  —  a 
rather  original  statement  of  the  old 
dogma,  that  "the  end  justifies  the 
means,"  enunciated  and  illustrated  by 
an  ignorant  Italian  porter. 

I  might  have  read  the  now  crestfallen 
messenger  a  homily  on  veracity,  but 
for  the  entrance  of  an  honest-looking 
peasant,  who  wished  to  procure  the 
consular  legalization  to  some  paper 
that  he  evidently  deemed  of  consider- 
able importance.  As  a  preliminary,  it 
was  necessary  that  he  should  be  sworn. 
The  consul,  after  explaining  the  nature 
of  an  oath,  requested  him  to  raise  his 
right  hand.  This  he  positively  refused 
to  do,  until  fully  assured  that,  whatever 
other  terrible  consequences  might  fol- 
low, he  would  probably  not  fall  down 
dead,  as  did  Ananias  and  Sapphira,  in  - 


the  event  of  his  failing  to  tell  the  truth. 
It  soon  became  further  evident  that  he 
was  superstitious  to  the  last  degree,  and 
in  this  respect  he  is  probably  a  fair 
representative  of  his  class.  As  from 
believing  too  much  we  end  by  believ- 
ing too  little,  so  the  natural  rebound 
of  superstition  is  infidelity.  This  is 
eminently  true  of  the  religious  meta- 
morphosis which  is  now  taking  place 
in  Italy. 

"  What  is  your  creed  ?  "  I  inquired,  a 
few  days  since,  of  a  professor  in  one  of 
the  universities. 

"  Credo  in  Dio  e  buon  vino,"  (I  be- 
lieve in  God  and  good  wine.) 

It  is  to  be  feared  that,  among  the 
more  intelligent  classes,  Epicurus  has 
more  disciples  than  Jesus. 

Meanwhile  the  consul  had  been  de- 
spatching the  mail  that  lav  upon  his 
desk. 

There  was  a  note  from  the  mayor, 
enclosing  an  invitation  to  attend,  on  the 
following  Sabbath,  a  military  review  in 
the  morning  and  a  grand  ball  in  the 
evening  ;  which,  as  the  consul  is  a  Prot- 
estant clergyman,  seemed  rather  incon- 
gruous. 

There  was  a  letter  in  a  feminine 
hand,  in  which  the  consul  is  informed 
that  velvets  and  human  hair  are  fright- 
fully high  in  the  United  States,  that 
she  understands  they  are  both  very 
cheap  in  Italy,  and  that  she  will  con- 
sider herself  under  lasting  obligations 
if  he  will  do  her  the  favor  of  sending 
a  quantity  for  herself  and  several  of 
her  lady  friends,  provided  he  can  do 
so  without  the  payment  of  the  du- 
ties, —  the  velvets,  no  doubt,  because 
the  duty  is  so  high  ;  and  the  hair,  I  sup- 
pose, on  the  ground  of  its  being  second- 
hand. 

There  is  one  in  Italian,  from  a  youth 
of  belligerent  proclivities,  who  proposes 
enlistment  in  the  United  States  Army 
on  condition  that  his  expenses  are  paid 
to  the  United  States  and  he  is  guaran- 
teed a  commission. 

There  is  another  in  French,  from  a 
Hungarian  refugee,  who  \s  desirous  of 
emigrating  to  America.  He  is  confi- 
dent that  the  United  States  government 


704 


A  Day  at  a  Consulate. 


[December, 


will  provide  him  with  transportation, 
but,  in  case  that  he  is  mistaken,  he  has 
no  doubt  but  that  the  consul  will  ad- 
vance the  money  for  the  expenses  of 
himself  and  family,  consisting  of  a  wife 
and  seven  children,  begging  him  to  ac- 
cept in  advance  his  most  distinguished 
consideration  and  hearty  thanks.  The 
consul  is  reluctantly  compelled  to  de- 
cline this  modest  request,  which  would 
take  the  greater  part  of  his  salary  for  a 
year,  notwithstanding  the  assurance  that 
every  cent  will  be  refunded  on  the  es- 
tablishment of  the  applicant  in  some 
lucrative  employment.  This  is  a  fair 
specimen  of  that  shabby-genteel  way 
of  begging  —  borrowing  without  the 
slightest  intention  of  paying  —  which 
is  so  common  on  the  Continent,  even 
among  those  who  lay  claim  to  rank  and 
respectability. 

There  is  a  note  from  a  representative 
of  Young  America  abroad,  hailing  from 
the  insane  hospital.  It  appears  that 
the  previous  evening  he  had  been 
mixing  up  claret  and  champagne  with 
something  stronger  at  a  cafe,  until, 
laboring  under  the  illusion  that  he  had 
been  transformed  into  a  Flying  Dutch- 
man, he  attempted  to  execute  a  pirou- 
ette upon  a  marble-topped  table,  to  the 
no  little  detriment  of  wine-glasses  and 
queen's-ware,  and  to  the  utter  amaze- 
ment of  the  more  sober  habitues  of 
the  establishment.  As  the  proprietor 
interfered,  Young  America,  whose  blood 
was  now  fully  up,  brought  one  of  his 
fists  in  rather  violent  collision  with  the 
right  eye  of  that  worthy  individual, 
which  did  not  dispose  him  to  see  this 
affair  in  the  most  favorable  light.  The 
natural  consequence  of  all  this  was  a 
polite  invitation,  on  the  part  of  a  couple 
of  policemen,  to  accompany  them  to  the 
guard-house.  But  as  the  belligerent 
youth  exhibited  some  rather  extraordi- 
nary symptoms  which  excited  suspi- 
cions of  temporary  insanity,  he  was 
subsequently  transferred  to  the  ward 
for  the  insane  in  the  hospital,  where, 
after  being  divested  of  every  article  of 
his  own  wardrobe  under  protest,  he 
was  furnished  with  a  wooden  spoon, 
a  soup-dish  of  the  same  material,  a 


narrow  cot-bed,  and  a  coarse  linen 
shirt.  He  besought  the  consul  to  come 
at  once,  and  extricate  him,  if  possible, 
from  this  most  embarrassing  situation  ; 
though  it  was  very  evident  from  the 
tenor  of  his  note,  either  that  he  had 
not  recovered  from  the  effect  of  last 
night's  potations,  or  else  was  really  in- 
sane. The  only  account  he  could  give 
of  this  ill-starred  adventure,  in  connec- 
tion with  the  singular  proceedings  on 
the  part  of  the  authorities,  was,  that, 
having  been  arrested  whilst  laboring 
•under  that  peculiar  mental  phenome- 
non denominated  double  consciousness, 
upon  the  false  charge  of  having  com- 
mitted an  assault  and  battery  upon  the 
Virgin  Mary,  he  was  fully  satisfied  that 
he  was  the  victim  of  a  most  atrocious 
conspiraay.  Poor  fellow !  he  is  the 
representative  of  an  unfortunately  large 
class  of  American  youth,  who,  like 
mountain  torrents,  live  too  fast  to  live 
long. 

Then  there  is  another  note  of  a  very 
different  character.  It  is  from  an  Ameri- 
can sailor  in  prison,  charged  with  the 
murder  of  a  shipmate  on  board  an  Ital- 
ian brig.  He  pleads  his  innocence,  begs 
the  consul  to  intercede  with  the  author- 
ities in  his  behalf,  and,  in  the  post- 
script, requests  him  to  send  him  any 
letters  from  his  poor  mother,  and,  if 
possible,  a  little  tobacco.  Thus  do  the 
comedy  and  tragedy  of  human  life  go 
hand  in  hand. 

A  consumptive  invalid  writes  from 
one  of  the  principal  hotels,  making  in- 
quiries relative  to  less  expensively  fur- 
nished apartments,  and  then  jocularly 
adds  that  he  can  hardly  afford  to  die  at 
an  Italian  hotel.  In  truth,  so  supersti- 
tious are  the  Italians  with  regard  to 
death,  that,  when  a  traveller  dies,  his 
friends  are  expected  to  indemnify  the 
landlord  for  the  expenses  of  thoroughly 
renovating  the  apartment  occupied  by 
the  deceased;  and  the  bill  too  often 
contains  the  following  item  for  renew- 
ing the  furniture,  scraping,  papering 
and  frescoing  the  walls  :  — 

"  Indemnity  pour  refaction  des  meii- 
bles,  et  de  la  chambre  occupe  par  k  de- 
funct ^  —  ^100  sterling." 


1 868.] 


A  Day  at  a  Consulate. 


705 


So,  too,  in  private  families,  upon  the 
death  of  a  member  of  the  household 
the  friends  of  the  deceased  immedi- 
ately desert  the  apartment,  sometimes 
even  before  life  is  extinct;  seldom,  if 
ever,  attending  the  funeral,  whilst  the 
apartment  is  either  thoroughly  reno- 
vated, as  indicated  above,  or,  if  pos- 
sible, is  exchanged  for  another.  Be- 
sides these,  there  were  sundry  notes 
relating  to  matters  of  minor  impor- 
tance, —  to  a  stray  Murray  or  Harper, 
that  had  gone  sight-seeing  on  its  own 
account;  to  a  truant  opera-glass,  that 
was  playing  "  hide  and  go  to  seek " 
among  the  palchi  of  the  theatre,  or  had 
found  another  proprietor ;  to  sundry 
trunks  that  were  making  excursions  in 
one  direction  whilst  their  owners  were 
travelling  in  another,  or  else  to  prime 
Havanas,  that  in  a  most  provoking 
manner  had  found  their  way  into  the 
capacious  pockets  of  custom-house 
officials,  and  were  doubtless  rapidly 
disappearing  in  volumes  of  smoke. 

"  Sprechen  sie  deutch  ?  " 

"  No,  Signore." 

"  Parla  1'  italiano  ? " 

"Si,  si." 

These  questions  were  hastily  ejacu- 
lated by  an  extraordinary-looking  indi- 
vidual, who,  striding  into  the  office  like 
an  English  grenadier,  announced  him- 
self as  a  Russian  ex-captain  from  Mon- 
tenegro, just  returning  from  the  Paris 
Exposition,  and  unfortunately  out  of 
funds.  His  singular  appearance,  no  less 
than  his  manner,  attracted  my  atten- 
tion, —  a  swarthy  complexion,  dark  hair 
and  eyes ;  an  enormous  mustache  hang- 
ing down  on  either  side  of  a  sufficiently 
large  mouth ;  dark  blue  Turkish  trou- 
sers ;  an  ex-white  tunic,  reaching  down 
below  the  knees,  and  embroidered  with 
gold  lace  ;  skull-cap,  or  fez  ;  a  silk  sash 
with  a  leathern  holster,  minus  the  pis- 
tols ;  and  a  riding-whip  of  undressed 
chamois,  minus  the  horse,  which  he  had 
pawned,  as  he  said,  to  "pay  his  expenses 
to  Paris. 

He  showed  a  scar  upon  his  right 
wrist,  and  another  upon  his  left  thumb, 
that  he  had  received,  according  to  his 
own  account,  in  the  war  of  '57,  with  the 

VOL.  xxii.  —  NO.  134.  45 


Turks  ;  spoke  of  the  entente  cordiale 
existing  between  Russia  and  the  United 
States,  and  then  came  to  the  main  point 
in  hand,  namely,  money. 

"  Have  you  been  to  see  the  Russian 
Consul  ?  " 

He  slightly  colored,  and  stammered, 
"  Yes."  His  manner  excited  suspicion. 

"  Bring  me  a  note  from  your  consul, 
and,  if  it  is  satisfactory,  I  will  do  some- 
thing for  you." 

"  No  !  impossible  !  I  ask  you  only 
for  twenty  francs,  and  that 's  not  worth 
writing  a  note  about." 

The  consul's  suspicions  were  con- 
firmed, and,  having  made  up  his  mind  to 
give  nothing,  to  repeated  solicitations 
he  resolutely  said  "  No."  The  ex-cap- 
tain's countenance  assumed  a  porten- 
tous longitude.  Rising  from  his  seat, 
he  began  to  pace  the  floor,  growing 
more  and  more  excited  all  the  while, 
until  he  resembled  nothing  so  much  as 
a  polar  bear  in  a  menagerie. 

"  Say  ten  francs,  then." 

"  No,  not  without  the  note." 

"  Five  francs." 

"  No." 

"  Per  P  amore  di  Dio,  solamente 
cinque  franchi,"  and  then,  in  the  midst 
of  a  passionate  invocation  to  the  Holy 
Virgin  and  all  the  saints,  he  went  down 
upon  one  knee,  gold  lace  and  all,  grasped 
fervently  one  of  the  consul's  hands  in 
both  of  his,  and  carried  it  passionately 
in  the  direction  of  his  lips.  Now,  of  all 
things  in  this  transitory  world  there  is 
nothing  more  transitory  than  a  kiss  ; 
and  yet  it  is  not  altogether  objection- 
able on  that  account,  provided  it  is 
tendered  by  the  lips  of  beauty  or  of 
love.  But  in  this  particular  instance 
the  consul  very  prudently  declined  the 
proffered  favor,  and,  resolutely  with- 
drawing his  hand,  executed  a  flank 
movement,  which  very  naturally  result- 
ed in  a  change  of  base  on  the  part  of 
the  suppliant  captain.  The  two  stood 
eying  each  other  rather  awkwardly  for 
a  moment,  when  the  latter,  gathering 
up  his  fez  and  riding-whip,  started  for 
the  door,  and,  growling  an  adieu,  disap- 
peared like  a  thunder-cloud. 

Footsteps  were  now  heard  in  the  hall, 


yo6 


A  Day  at  a  Consulate. 


[December, 


with  a  regular  Anglo-Saxon  accent,  the 
heels  being  brought  down  with  an  em- 
phasis that  denoted  energy  and  a  will. 
It  proved  to  be  the  captain  of  an  Amer- 
ican brig. 

"  Consul,  there  's  been  a  row  on 
board." 

"What  now?  " 

"  Two  of  my  men  have  nearly  killed 
the  mate." 

The  captain  then,  with  some  minute- 
ness of  detail,  gave  an  account  of  the 
bloody  affray.  He  warmed  up  as  he 
proceeded,  until  he  so  far  forgot  him- 
self as  to  indulge  in  some  "  percussion 
English,"  as  he  apologetically  styled 
it ;  and  though  he  spoke  of  the  uniform 
good  treatment  and  moral  influence  ex- 
ercised on  board,  it  must  have  been  pat- 
ent to  the  most  casual  observer,  that 
in  the  discipline  of  seamen  he  had 
very  little  faith  in  moral  suasion,  and 
was  better  versed  in  the  "  Fool's  Lit- 
any "  than  the  Apostles'  Creed. 

"  Where  are  the  seamen  ?  "  inquired 
the  consul. 

"  In  the  other  office." 

The  "  men  "  were  now  brought  in,  ac- 
companied by  two  policemen  in  uniform. 
They  gazed  doggedly  upon  the  floor  and 
said  nothing,  though  their  bloodshot 
eyes  and  blood-stained  shirts  spoke 
volumes.  Then  followed  the  examina- 
tion and  cross-examination,  when  it  ap- 
peared that  the  motive  for  committing 
this  deadly  assault  was,  as  one  of  the 
sailors  characteristically  expressed  it, 
cruel  treatment,  hard  work,  and  "  poor 
grub."  As  the  result  of  the  examination, 
the  seamen  were  remanded  to  prison. 

The  captain  subsequently  related  a 
number  of  amusing  passages  in  his  own 
experience  at  sea,  and,  among  others, 
how  Captain  Semmes,  on  his  return 
from  England  to  the  United  States,  af- 
ter the  destruction  of  the  Alabama, 
came  on  board  his  vessel  at  Havana 
under  the  assumed  name  of  John 
Smith  ;  and  that,  although  his  manner 
attracted  considerable  attention,  he  nev- 
er suspected  he  was  carrying  contra- 
band of  war  until  his  arrival  at  Mata- 
moras. 

"  Signor  Console,  I  pray  you  tell  me 


what  this  is  for  !  "  exclaimed  an  Italian 
shop-keeper,  as  he  entered  the  office, 
accompanied  by  a  boy  carrying  a  pat- 
ent clothes-wringer.  "  I  have  had  this 
in  my  establishment  for  nearly  a  year, 
and  I  should  like  to  know  certainly 
what  it  is." 

"  Why,  that 's  for  drying  clothes." 

"  Per  Bacco  !  " 

"  What  did  you  think  it  was  ?  " 

A  shrug  of  the  shoulders  was  the 
only  response,  but  it  afterward  ap- 
peared that  he  had  been  trying  to  sell 
it  to  the  artists  as  a  great  improvement 
in  photography. 

The  boy,  we  may  add,  by  way  of  sup- 
plement, was  a  very  necessary  part  of 
the  transaction.  A  gentleman  in  Italy, 
going  to  market  with  a  market-basket 
on  his  arm,  would  run  great  risk  of  be- 
ing mistaken  for  a  porter.  Even  the 
humblest  artisan  would  lose  caste  if  he 
could  not 'afford  to  keep  a  servant  to 
carry  his  tools.  If  a  mason  comes  to 
adjust  your  bell-rope,  or  a  glazier  to  re- 
pair a  broken  pane,  he  is  accompanied 
by  the  inevitable  boy.  The  consul  re- 
lated, in  this  connection,  that  on  the 
previous  day  a  poor  woman,  who  had 
formerly  been  a  signora,  but  was  now 
reduced  to  extreme  destitution,  called 
at  his  residence  to  beg  for  broken  vict- 
uals and  cast-off  clothing,  but  who  at 
the  same  time,  as  a  saving  clause  toiler 
respectability,  was  accompanied  by  an 
old  family  servant  to  carry  them  home 
to  her  desolate  garret. 

There  was  a  rustling  of  silks,  and,  a 
moment  after,  a  lady  who  had  evidently 
seen  better  days  was  ushered  into  the 
office,  and  announced  as  Signora  B . 

"A  veritable  countess,"  whispered 
the  consul  in  a  scarcely  audible  aside. 
It  soon  appeared  from  the  conversation 
that  she  was  one  of  that  unfortunate 
class  of  our  countrywomen  who  have 
bartered  wealth  for  a  title.  Her  per- 
sonal appearance  was  by  no  means  pre- 
possessing, but*  in  her  youth  she  had 
been  an  heiress  with  a  hundred  thou- 
sand in  her  own  right,  in  the  shape  of 
a  Southern  plantation,  with  its  chattels 
real  and  personal,  upon  which  she  her- 
self was  the  only  encumbrance.  During 


1868.] 


A  Day  at  a  Consulate. 


707 


a  European  tour  she  had  met  and  mar- 
ried an  Italian  count,  who  proved,  as  is 
generally  the  case  with  such  fortune- 
hunters,  a  worthless  adventurer,  and 
who,  after  having  squandered  a  large 
portion  of  her  property,  had  abandoned 
her  in  the  most  heartless  manner. 
Since  then  she  had  been  married  de 
facto,  if  not  de  jure,  several  times,  and 
had  led  an  altogether  irregular  life.  In 
a  state  of  society  where  so  much  lati- 
tude is  allowed  to  the  marriage  rela- 
tion, her  character  was  not  decidedly 
compromised  ;  but  it  had  reached  that 
equivocal  stage,  when  the  more  severe 
censors  of  social  morality  thought  it 
prudent  to  subject  it  to  a  sort  of  infor- 
mal quarantine. 

After  the  usual  civilities  her  conver- 
sation turned  upon  her  domestic  infe- 
licity, of  which  she  made  no  secret,  and 
which  appeared  to  have  become  hope- 
lessly chronic.  From  any  other  stand- 
point than  that  of  her  present  disrepu- 
table life,  her  story  of  domestic  wrongs 
—  though  related,  as  witches  say  their 
prayers,  backwards  —  would  have  been 
sufficiently  touching. 

As  it  was,  the  consul,  desirous  of  ter- 
minating anfinterview  which  had  already 
become  not  a  little  embarrassing,  inti- 
mated that  he  had  no  disposition  to  inter- 
fere in  domestic  controversies. 

"  It  is  your  duty,  as  an  officer  of  the 
government,  to  do  so,"  she  exclaimed, 
with  much  fervor. 

"  I  will  consult  my  consular  instruc- 
tions," he  replied,  in  a  vein  of  quiet  hu- 
mor ;  "  and,  in  case  I  find  this  duty 
imposed  upon  me,  I  will  not  shrink 
from  its  performance." 

"  I  '11  have  justice,"  she  continued, 
not  in  the  least  disconcerted  by  the  last 
remark,  —  "I  '11  have  justice,  or  I  '11  — 
non  manger  a piu  pane" 

Under  the  surface  of  this  mild  but 
expressive  form  of  denunciation  so  com- 
mon among  Italians,  —  "  He  shall  eat  no 
more  bread,"  —  there  lurks  a  terrible  sig- 
nificance, which  contemplates  nothing 
less  than  a  forcible  divorce  of  soul  and 
body. 

"  That  would  be  a  most  remarkable 
change  of  venue,  certainly,"  rather  solilo- 


quized than  said  the  genius  loci;  "  and 
yet  I  am  not  sure  but  that  she  would 
be  more  likely  to  procure  justice  in  that 
court  than  any  other." 

"What  court?"  she  inquired  rather 
abruptly,  and  slightly  coloring. 

"  Heaven's  Chancery." 

The  entrance  of  a  party  of  American 
tourists  interrupted  this  awkward  inter- 
view, and  changed  the  current  of  con- 
versation. Presently  there  was  heard 
the  heavy  discharge  of  cannon  in  the 
direction  of  the  harbor,  which  fell  upon 
the  ear  in  slow  and  measured  pulsa- 
tions. 

"  An  American  man-of-war !  "  cried 
Antonio,  who  was  ever  on  the  qui  vive 
for  the  old  flag. 

"  Papa,"  chimed  in  a  childish  treble, 
between  two  successive  discharges, 
"why  do  they  make  such  a  fuss  over 
men-of-war  ?  Is  it  because  they  kill 
people  ?  "  But  as  papa  only  sat  in  a 
fit  of  abstraction,  beating  the  devil's 
tattoo  upon  a  writing-desk,  the  poor 
child  turned  her  eyes,  full  of  interroga- 
tion-points, first  upon  one  and  then 
another  of  the  company,  but  there  was 
no  response. 

The  silence  was  ominous.  Let  us 
consult  Victor  Hugo  ! 

"  That 's  a  fine  picture  you  have  there, 
Consul,"  observed  a  rather  titanic  speci- 
men of  feminine  humanity,  pointing  at 
the  same  time  to  an  indifferent  copy  of 
Titian's  Assumption  of  the  Virgin.  "  As 
we  are  thinking  some  of  investing  in 
the  fine  arts,  I  would  like  to  know 
the  name  of  the  artist." 

Other  considerations  aside,  you  would 
naturally  have  taken  the  fair  author  of 
the  preceding  remark,  whom  we  shall 
designate  as  Madame  Malaprop,  to  be 
a  lady  of  considerable  importance,  judg- 
ing from  the  size  of  her  chignon,  and 
the  profusion  of  jewelry  and  other  gim- 
cracks  with  which  her  person  was 
adorned.  You  could  not  say  that  she 
was  positively  attractive,  but  then,  like 
Miss  Crawley,  she  had  a  balance  at  her 
banker's,  which,  with  all  her  drawbacks, 
would  have  made  her  beloved  and  re- 
spected anywhere. 

"  I  am  unable  to  give  you  the  name 


;o8 


A  Day  at  a  Consulate. 


[December, 


of  the  artist,"  the  consul  replied,  after 
some  hesitation,  "but  the  painting  evi- 
dently belongs  to  the  Venetian  school." 

"  Ah  !  "she  exclaimed,  applying  her 
eye-glass,  and  observing  it  again  with 
the  air  of  a  connoisseur.  "  O,  I  see  ! 
the  schoolmarm  is  having  prayers  with 
the  scholars,"  —  doubtless  led  into  this 
very  innocent,  though  rather  ludicrous, 
mistake,  by  the  devout  attitude  of  the 
Virgin,  enveloped  in  an  aureola  of 
cherub  faces  in  the  act  of  adoration. 

There  was  a  very  significant  silence, 
which  really  .began  to  grow  embarrass- 
ing, when  she  again  commenced  and 
continued  in  a  strain  that  could  have 
reflected  credit  upon  Don  Eraclio  in 
the  Raggiatore,  which,  if  the  truth  must 
be  told,  was  much  more  amusing  than 
edifying. 

Madame  Malaprop  evidently  belonged 
to  that  worthy,  but  nevertheless  to  be 
commiserated  class,  whose  intelligence 
has  not  kept  pace  with  their  acquisition 
of  wealth.  Her  former  husband  had  the 
good  or  ill  fortune  to  strike  oil,  which 
had  rather  served,  however,  for  the  en- 
lightenment of  others  than  of  himself 
and  family.  When  apparently  just 
ready  to  enter  upon  the  enjoyment  of 
his  suddenly  acquired  wealth,  he  fell 
ill  and  died.  The  buxom  widow,  who 
was  by  no  means  a  proper  person  to 
grieve  over  what  she  termed  "  a  mer- 
ciful dispensation  of  Providence,"  re- 
signed herself  without  a  murmur.  Short- 
ly after  she  consoled  herself  with  an- 
other husband,  though  we  are  bound 
to  add,  by  way  of  extenuation,  that  he 
was  an  unusually  small  one,  which  she 
doubtless  considered,  a  very  plausible 
excuse  for  marrying  so  soon. 

He  was  a  dapper  little  gentleman  of 
apparently  her  own  age.  His  hair  and 
whiskers  were  of  the  most  formal  cut ; 
his  linen  was  unexceptionable,  and  even 
Beau  Brummel  could  not  have  objected 
to  the  tie  of  his  cravat.  Thefe  was 
withal  a  certain  stiffness  in  his  manner 
decidedly  suggestive  of  the  tincture  of 
ramrods,  whilst  his  slender  proportions 
reminded  one  constantly  of  Philetus 
and  his  leaden  sandals.  Either  he  was 
easily  disconcerted  or  slightly  absent- 


minded,  for  he  had  a  most  singular 
fashion  of  looking  for  his  spectacles 
when  they  were  upon  his  nose.  There 
was  one  other  striking  feature  in  the 
appearance  of  this  eccentric  personage. 
PI  is  hair  was  quite  gray  for  about  one 
half  of  its  natural  length,  whilst  the  re- 
maining half  appeared  to  be  of  no  very 
decided  color.  —  whether  from  the  effect 
of  disappointed  love,  domestic  infelicity, 
or  from  a  failure  in  his  supply  of  hair- 
restorative,  we  are  unable  to  decide. 
If  two  persons  would  ride  the  same 
horse,  as  Dogberry  would  say,  one  of 
them  must  ride  behind  ;  and  so  with 
this  amiable  couple,  though  it  was  very 
evident  that  it  was  the  husband  who 
occupied  this,  rather  unenviable  posi- 
tion. He  rarely  ventured  to  more  than 
echo  the  oracular  utterances  of  his 
titanic  spouse,  unless  he  occasionally 
presumed  to  modestly  suggest  a  modi- 
fication of  their  plans,  when  she  would 
abruptly  interpose. her  sic  volo,  and  then 
there  would  be  an  energetic  fumbling 
in  waistcoat  pockets  for  a  pair  of  lost 
spectacles,  and  that  was  the  end  of  the 
matter. 

Madame  Malaprop  and  her  husband 
were  evidently  in  quest  of  a  social  posi- 
tion. In  such  cases,  a  season  at  Sara- 
toga or  the  grand  tour  of  Europe  is 
the  Pons  Asinorum  on  the  other  side 
of  which  many  worthy  but  mistaken 
people  expect  to  find  respectability  and 
position  in  society. 

At  this  moment  an  American  officer 
in  full  uniform  entered  the  consulate, 
and  announced  the  arrival  in  port  of 

the  C ,  a  United  States  man-of-war, 

stating,  at  the  same  time,  that  the  cap- 
tain's gig  was  at  the  consul's  disposal 
whenever  it  suited  his  pleasure  or  con- 
venience to  pay  his  official  visit. 

"  I  will  go  at  once,"  the  latter  replied  ; 
and  fifteen  minutes  later  the  consular 
salute  of  seven  guns  announced  his 
arrival  on  board.  And  now  follow  the 
official  calls,  official  dinners,  official  ex- 
cursions, and  official  shopping,  in  which 
the  consul,  who  is  expected  to  officiate 
in  a  variety  of  capacities,  will  have  a 
most  excellent  opportunity  of  exhibit- 
ing the  versatility  of  his  talent,  no  less 


' 


1868.] 


A  Day  at  a  Consulate. 


709 


than  the  quality  of  his  hospitality. 
Meanwhile  the  locum  tenens  exercises 
a  little  brief  authority.  Just  as  we  were 
on  the  point  of  leaving,  a  whole  ship's 
crew,  having  been  paid  off  and  dis- 
charged, came  into  the  office  in  a  body, 
and,  being  in  various  stages  of  intox- 
ication, made  themselves  as  variously 
disagreeable.  Shortly  after,  several  po- 
licemen brought  in  an  American  sea- 
man, who,  having  succeeded,  whilst  un- 
der the  influence  of  liquor,  in  getting 
upon  the  roof  of  a  six-story  house,  mi- 
nus everything  but  his  shirt,  was  amus- 
ing himself  by  dancing  a  sailor's  jig,  to 
the  great  consternation  of  the  spectators 
below.  And  thus  ended  a  day,  such  as 
we  saw  it,  at  an  American  consulate. 

It  was  with  a  feeling  of  relief  that  we 
strolled  out  into  th$  public  square. 
The  day  was  superb,  such  a  one  as 
is  not  to  be  found  outside  of  "  Paradise 
or  Italy."  The  old  cathedral  with  its 
black-and-white  marble  front,  with  its 
colossal  lions  of  fierce  and  forbidding 
aspect  flanking  the  side  entrances,  with 
its  spiral  columns  and  antique  sculpture, 
constituted  an  admirable  background 
to  as  quaint  and  varied  a  picture  as  is 
to  be  found  anywhere  in  Europe.  There 
were  priests  with  their  long  black  cas- 
socks, cocked  hats,  and  silver  shoe- 
buckles  ;  Turks  with  their  white  tur- 
bans and  baggy  trousers ;  Bersaglieri 
sporting  their  flowing  crests  of  cocks' 
feathers ;  marines  with  their  broad 
blue  shirt-collars  and  glazed  tarpaulings 
set  jauntily  upon  their  heads  ;  gens- 
d'armes  who  might  be  taken  for  major- 
generals  in  full  dress,  —  great  strapping 
fellows,  strutting  about  in  showy  uni- 

*Xi-,ns,  that  poor  peasant- women  may 
have  an  oppuitu^v  ^  iaboring  in  the 
fields.  Then,  too,  there  were  muimo 
with  coarse  brown  cowls,  bare  feet,  and 
skull-caps,  in  all  the  odor  of  sanctity, 
which,  if  my  olfactories  do  not  deceive 
me,  is  certainly  not  a  very  agreeable 
one  ;  nurses  with  jaunty  white  caps, 
caressing  babies  swaddled  like  Egyp- 
tian mummies,  or  coquetting  gayly  with 
soldiers ;  and  everywhere  the  inevita- 
ble cavour,  —  a  cigar  that  makes  up  in 
length  what  it  lacks  in  body  and  flavor. 


Here  a  cabman  is  despatching  a  dish 
of  ministrone,  whilst  another  is  asleep 
upon  his  box,  his  horses  nodding  alter- 
nately to  the  pavement.  There  a  crip- 
ple hobbles  about  on  crutches,  with  a 
portable  variety-stand  suspended  from 
his  neck,  containing  —  I  was  about  to 
give  an  inventory,  though  I  see  no 
good  reason  for  advertising  his  goods  — 
but  his  quick  and  practised  glance  has 
detected  my  apparent  interest  in  his 
wares,  and  so,  bearing  down  upon  me 
with  his  crazy-looking  craft,  he  shouts 
out  in  auctioneer  style,  "Tre  per  un 
franco  ! "  at  the  same  time  shuffling  a 
package  of  cards,  among  which  I  no- 
ticed the  photograph  of  Booth,  which 
he  sold  as  President  Lincoln's,  along 
with  those  of  some  theatre  actresses, 
in  pieno  costume  d'1  Eva.  There  goes  a 
dandy  officer  with  laced  waist  and  del- 
icate kids,  bedizened  with  gold  lace  and 
redolent  of  lavender,  leading  a  poodle, 
—  a  fair  representative  of  those  draw- 
ing-room heroes  whose  theatre  of  con- 
quest has  ever  been  the  hearts  of  fool- 
ish, faithless  women,  who  from  time 
immemorial  have  had  a  penchant  for 
fine  feathers  and  brass  buttons,  — 
knightly  heroes  who  fence  with  a  fan, 
or  charge  with  a  parasol,  as  they  cry,  — 

"  To  arms  !  to  arms  !  so  they  be  woman's." 

And  then  the  numerous  street  cries, 
pitched  upon  every  possible  and  impos- 
sible key  from  A  sharp  to  X  flat,  —  this 
is  Bedlam  run  mad.  As  a  climax  to 
the  discord  of  sounds,  earthly  and  un- 
earthly, several  donkeys  commenced 
braying  in  lusty  style  for  the  further 
edification  of  the  passers-by. 

Now  there  is  infinite  pathos,  as  well 
as  irresistible  laughter,  in  the  braying  of 

"  a— i-«v.  It  ranges  all  the  way  from 
high  tragedy  to  low  eumv-uj  wt  o,  ^j. 

farce.  There  is  in  its  incipiency  the 
subdued  neighings  of  unoridled  love. 
Then  there  comes  a  solemn  protest 
against  the  hardship  and  aftuse  of  cen- 
turies. Then  it  culminates  in  a  climax 
of  despair,  —  in  utter  abandonment  to 
grief  like  that  of  a  mother  for  her  first- 
born. It  seems  as  if  some  lost  spirit 
had  taken  up  its  temporary  abode  in 


710 


A  Day  at  a  Consulate. 


[December, 


that  unpromising  tenement,  and  would 
wail  out  an  infinite  despair  were  it  not 
fdr  the  imperfection  of  the  instrument. 
And  then  there  is  an  anti-climax  ;  be- 
ginning with  a  sort  of  inarticulate  run- 
ning commentary  on  the  "Vanity  of 
Vanities,"  and  ending  in  a  reckless 
devil-may-care,  as  if  it  were  reconciling 
itself  to  its  hard  lot,  and  saying,  after  all 
a  little  provender  would  be  very  accept- 
able, though  it  may  be  somewhat  tran- 
sitory. 

We  continue  our  stroll  down  to  the 
sea-shore.  What  a  sky  and  sea  !  Who 
can  paint  the  dissolving  views  of  such 
a  landscape,  ever  varying,  ever  chang- 
ing !  Should  an  artist  succeed  in  catch- 
ing the  golden  glories  and  imperial 
splendors  of  yonder  sunset,  and  trans- 
ferring them  to  canvas,  no  one  would 
dream  that  the  picture  could  have  its 
counterpart  in  reality.  The  quaint  old 
city  with  its  semicircular  sweep,  its 
towers  and  palaces  and  gardens,  is  be- 
ginning to  bathe  itself  in  shadow.  The 
gayly  decorated  villas  with  their  grated 
windows,  dilapidated  gateways,  and 
faded  frescos,  each  a  sort  of  compro- 
mise between  a  prison  and  a  palace, 
have  just  enough  of  ruin  and  decay 
attaching  to  them  to  give  them  a  flavor 
of  romance  and  poetry.  The  valley 
beyond,  with  its  unfading  mantle  of 
green  in  the  presence  of  eternal  snows  ; 
the  antique  well-sweeps  ;  the  little  gar- 
den lodges,  from  which  is  kept  up  a  per- 
fect fusillade  against  the  little  songsters 


that  would  otherwise  fill  the  orange- 
groves  and  olive  -  orchards  with  the 
melody  of  their  song,  now  saddened 
into  singular  harmony  with  the  pensive 
music  of  the  monastery  bells.  You 
look  away  to  where  the  Mediterranean 
rolls  her  liquid  emerald,  now  dark  with 
shadow  or  resplendent  with  light,  as  it 
reflects  the  ever-changing  aspect  of  the 
sky,  or  else  kindles  in  the  sunlight,  —  a 
sea  of  glass  and  gold  and  glory.  Here 
the  clouds  nestle  in  the  valleys,  or  con- 
c£al  the  summits  of  the  mountains  so 
that  they  appear  like  truncated  cones  ; 
yonder  they  lift  and  betray  the  snow- 
clad  peaks,  bathed  in  sunlight  and  pure 
as  heaven.  In  the  clear  morning  light, 
villas  and  villages  gleamed  with  a  white 
radiance  through  the  crystalline  atmos- 
phere. Now,  a  tyue  haze  slumbers  up- 
on the  sides  and  summits  of  the  distant 
mountains,  investing  them  with  all  the 
inexpressible  charm  of  a  veiled  beauty. 
And  still  your  eye  wanders  away  to  the 
vanishing  point  of  the  fading  landscape, 
until  it  finds  repose  in  the  "  bridal  of 
sea  and  sky." 

Italia!  thou  art  Paradise  without 
the  angels.  And  yet  if  Momus  had 
given  us  a  charter  of  fault-finding  as 
large  as  the  wind,  we  could  not  find  it 
in  our  heart  to  chide  thee,  though  one 
of  thine  own  poets  has  sung  that  the 
straightest  thing  in  all  thy  fair  domains 
is  the  leaning  tower  of  Pisa  :  — 

"  Oggi  giorno  ogni  cosa  e  storta  in  guisa 
Che  la  piu  dritta  e  il  campanile  de  Pisa." 


1868.] 


A  Gothic  Capital. 


711 


A    GOTHIC    CAPITAL. 


WHEN  the  time  was  come  for 
building  the  Valerian  Way,  al- 
most due  eastward  from  Rome,  across 
the  mountains  to  the  Adriatic,  if  we  do 
not  know  precisely  the  measures  by 
which  it  was  brought  about,  we  may 
guess  pretty  confidently  what  was  not 
done.  It  is  hardly  likely  that  a  senatus- 
consultum  was  lobbied  through,  grant- 
ing peculiar  privileges  to  "  The  Grand 
Central  Trans-Apennine,  Tyrrhene,  and 
Adriatic  Valerian  Way  Company,"  with 
right  of  way  through  the  Volscian  reser- 
vations, and  liberal  grants  of  the  public 
domain.  It  does  not  seem  probable  that 
the  money-changers'  shops  along  the  Via 
Sacra  were  filledtwith  parchments  and 
charts  representing  the  importance  of 
the  enterprise  :  "  The  Valerian  Way  a 
Necessity  !  "  "  Growth  of  the  Adriat- 
ic Slope  !  "  "  Need  of  more  Direct 
Communication  with  Illyricum,  Epirus, 
and  the  East!"  —  showing  the  superi- 
ority of  the  proposed  route  over  the 
Flaminian  and  the  Appian,  for  direct- 
ness, facility  of  construction,  gentle 
gradients,  and  freedom  from  obstruc- 
tion by  snow  ;  —  and  finally  demonstrat- 
in0"  that  if^  ctooi*  (WK,VK  -^o.^  u^diiy 
all  taken)  could  hardly  pay  the  holder 
less  than  twenty  per  cent,  while  its 
bonds  (of  which  a  limited  number  "are 
for  sale  here ")  were  a  really  safer 
investment  than  city  lots  fronting  on 
the  Forum,  or  olive-orchards  among 
the  Tiburtine  hills.  This  would  have 
been  a  more  enlightened  way  of  doing 
it ;  but  the  Consul  Valerius  went  about 
it  with  a  more  soldier-like  directness. 
Having  determined  that  the  deepest 
notch  in  the  mountain  range  was  cut 
by  that  pass,  straight  beyond  Lake  Fu- 
cino,  which  is  now  called  La  Forca  Ca- 
ruso, he  sent  forth  his  simple  mandate, 
and  forthwith  the  grand  thoroughfare 
began  to  ascend  the  steeps  with  sinu- 
ous tourniquets,  to  twist  through  the 
bleak  summits  of  the  Apennines,  and 
to  find  its  way  downward,  on  the  oppo- 
site slope,  to  the  Adrian  wave. 


Through  this  pass,  along  this  route, 
I  trudged  alone,  towards  evening,  late 
in  March.  Not  a  trace  is  left  of  the 
pavement  of  broad,  smooth  stones  with 
which  the  Consul  covered  it ;  not  a 
fragment  of  the  columns  marking  the 
increasing  distances  from  the  Golden 
Milestone  in  the  Forum ;  and  through 
a  principal  highway  of  the  Kingdom  of 
the  Two  Sicilies  the  deep  snow  which 
buried  the  road  was  broken  only  by 
the  sharp  hoofs  of  an  occasional  mule. 
If  the  "  overseer  of  highways  "  of  old 
times  was  able  to  keep  clear  through 
the  winter  this  road,  which  almost  in 
April  was  thus  buried,  our  Pacific  Rail- 
road companies  might  be  glad  to  revive 
his  system  as  a  lost  art.  It  is  said  that 
out  of  such  a  Roman  road-master  a 
Romish  saint  once  happened  to  be 
made.  The  broken  milestone,  which 
showed  only  part  of  his  title  of  custoS. 
VI A  RUTH,  was  taken  for  a  sepulchral 
inscription,  and  Saint  Viar  was  there- 
upon canonized.  If  the  good  man  had 
been  in  charge  of  this  particular  line, 
much  might  be  said  for  his  claims  to 

the    llOnrkfc,    cvt   Iccxot,    of  11*0.1  (jrlUiml. 

From  Popoli,  the  first  town  beyond 
the  pass,  the  road  descends,  at  first 
rapidly,  through  a  narrow  valley  ;  and 
not  until  its  forty  miles  of  distance  to 
the  sea  are  nearly  accomplished  do  the 
enclosing  mountains  recede  enough  to 
suffer  the  torrent,  which  the  road  has 
followed,  to  disport  itself  over  a  sandy 
plain  of  no  great  width,  before  it  is  at 
rest  in  the  Adriatic.  Just  where  this 
broader  opening  is  entered,  salient  into 
it  like  the  bastion  of  a  fort  a  single 
mountain  springs  forward  and  upward, 
detached  almost  from  the  rugged  mass, 
wearing  on  its  very  summit,  for  a  mural 
crown,  the  provincial  capital,  Chieti. 
Up  its  steep  sides  —  so  steep  that  the 
battlements  which  enclose  the  city  are 
not  half  so  rigorous  a  limit  to  its  ex- 
pansion as  is  the  abrupt  plunge  of  the 
mountain-sides  from  the  city  walls  — 
twists  and  zigzags  a  broad  road,  with 


712 


A  Gothic  Capital. 


[December,. 


splendid  engineering,  to  reach  the  town 
with  hardly  a  sharper  grade  than  that 
over  which  a  horse  may  trot  easily.  As 
I  plodded  up  the  circuitous  ascent,  a 
squadron  of  a  hundred  brilliant  Neapol- 
itan lancers  came  winding  down  from 
far  above,  their  red  and  white  pennons 
fluttering  and  their  weapons  sparkling 
in  the  afternoon  sun,  —  a  long-drawn 
column  as  they  marched  by  twos,  beau- 
tiful to  look  upon,  and  then*  graceful 
captain  quite  charming  as  he  returned 
my  salute,  but  worthless  in  use,  as  no 
doubt  this  very  squadron  may  have 
shown  itself  against  Garibaldi  a  few 
weeks  later.  As  the  summit  was  neared, 
a  turn  in  the  road  brought  suddenly  into 
view  a  vast  blue  expanse,  whose  edge 
was  very  near ;  and,  looking  backward 
from  this  first  and  glorious  view  of  the 
Sea  of  Hadria,  the  majestic  range  of  the 
Apennines,  now  quite  left  behind,  pre- 
sented itself  in  a  coup  d?a>il  more  mag- 
nificent than  any  that  I  know  of,  ex- 
cepting the  views  of  the  Alps  from 
Turin  and  from  certain  points  in  Lom- 
bardy.  From  the  stupendous  mass  of 
La  Maiella,  near  the  left  of  the  scene, 
the  great  chain  of  snowy  peaks  stretched 
away  for  fifty  miles  to  the  northwest, 
until  the  tall  pyramid  of  Monte  Corno 
—  well  deserving  iu>  iuiiu«on««-  n^rne 
of  The  Great  Rock  of  Italy  (Gran  Sasso 
d  Italia),  and  shooting  its  slender  point 
more  than  ten  thousand  feet  above  the 
blue  sea  so  near  its  base  —  hides  all 
meaner  summits  from  sight ;  while  all 
over  their  lower  slopes,  and  sprinkling 
the '  valleys  which  opened  here  and 
there  among  them,  innumerable  white 
towns  and  villages  dotted  the  green. 
From  Genoa  around  to  Paestum  (what 
may  be  farther  than  Paestum  I  cannot 
say)  there  is  no  such  view  of  the  Apen- 
nines as  this  from  beyond  them. 

From  this  hill-city,  next  morning,  by 
a  three-hours'  walk  I  reached  the  very 
shore  of  the  sea,  where  the  odd  little 
walled  and  bastioned  town  of  Pescara 
bestrides  the  shallow  river  at  its  mouth. 
From  this  point  the  route  was  to  fol- 
low closely  the  unbending  shore  to 
Ravenna.  The  mountains,  crowding 
with  their  huge  bulk  upon  the  sea,  — 


not  sheer  cliffs,  as  sometimes' along  the 
Gulf  of  Genoa,  but  rugged  and  broken, 
and  sending  down  at  frequent  intervals 
terrific  torrents  from  their  snowy  reser- 
voirs, —  would  suffer  a  highway  almost 
as  well  along  their  summits  as  a  half- 
mile  inland  from  the  water's  edge. 

This  coast-road,  therefore,  is  the  only 
means  of  communication  between  this 
part  of  the  later  Kingdom  of  the  Two 
Sicilies  and  its  capital,  or  with  the  rest 
of  the  kingdom  and  the  rest  of  the  world, 
unless  two  or  three  such  snow-buried 
mule-tracks  as  I  had  just  traced  over 
the  mountains,  or  the  open  sea  at  hand, 
should  be  reckoned  as  travelled  roads. 
Nor  did  the  Bourbon-Farnese  govern- 
ment fail  to  recognize  the  primary  im- 
portance of  the  road.  The  exceedingly 
minute  and  accurate  map  of  the  Cava- 
liere  Marzolla,  of  the*  royal  topograph- 
ical bureau,  which  was  my  vade-mecum, 
distinguishes  this  by  a  strong  red  line 
as  one  of  the  highest  rank,  — a  Strada 
Regia  Postale.  Yet  of  all  the  violent 
streams  which  tear  across  the  road 
between  Pescara  and  the  Pontifical 
frontier,  —  streams  which  after  a  rain, 
and  especially  at  the  season  of  this 
journey,  are  swollen  to  such  torrents 
as  to  be  absolutely  impassable  by  any- 
thing without  wings,  —  not  more  than 
one  or  iwo  w^  a»ytki»s  resembling 
a  bridge.  At  such  times,  therefore,  all 
communication  with  the  rest  of  the 
world  is  suspended,  whatever  necessity 
for  it  may  exist,  even  for  ten  or  twelve 
days  together. 

Near  the  gate  of  exit  from  Pescara 
an  advantageous  bargain  with  the 
owner  of  an  open  wagon  gave  me  half 
the  seat,  of  which  the  other  part  had 
already  been  engaged  for  five  miles' 
distance.  The  elegant  Neapolitan  offi- 
cer who  soon  appeared  to  take  the 
other  place  was  apparently  not  over- 
joyed at  the  company  of  a  tramp  with 
his  knapsack.  But  that  universal  pass- 
port to  a  friendly  interest  —  Civis 
Americanus  sum  —  instantly  concili- 
ated his  military  dignity,  and  we  were 
not  only  friends,  but  confidants,  as  long 
as  we  were  together.  We  forded  a 
broad,  shallow  stream,  jolting  over  its 


1 868.] 


A   Gothic  Capital. 


713 


stony  bottom.  "  Why  don't  they  make 
bridges  ?"  I  asked.  Shrugging  his  shoul- 
ders, " Aron  si  sa! — Nobody  knows!" 
he  answered,  at  the  same  time  giving 
me  a  look  and  smile  which,  while  un- 
seen by  the  driver,  who  might  have 
reported  it  at  the  next  police  station, 
said  plainly  enough  to  me,  u  Every- 
body knows."  Then  he  must  know 
about  my  strange  travels,  alone,  and  in 
such  humble  guise.  Had  I  been  at 
Rome  ?  So  had  he  —  "  in  the  '48  "  ;  but 
not  then  (looking  down  at  his  uniform) 
as  a  Neapolitan  officer :  " Faceva  la 
guerra  sul  conto  mio,  —  I  was  making 
war  on  my  own  account" —  was  mak- 
ing war,  that  is,  under  tnat  same  Gari- 
baldi for  whose  coming  into  what  they 
called  "  the  kingdom  "  king  and  sub- 
jects were  looking  so  anxiously,  and 
who  came,  sure  enough,  only  six  weeks 
after  this,  and  was  not  very  stoutly 
opposed.  No  wonder  either,  if  his 
Sicilian  Majesty's  forces  were  made  up 
of  such  as  my  gentlemanly  friend  here, 
or  of  those  unsafe  men  of  whom  they 
arrested  two  hundred,  the  newspapers 
said,  in  this  same  army  of  the  Abruzzi 
only  a  few  weeks  before. 

Less  agreeable  was  the  ride  in  a 
rude  two-wheeled  cart  with  some  stolid 
clods  of  peasants,  with  which  the  day's 
walk  was  further  varied.  So  long  as 
wheels  were  available,  the  question  of 
Bossing  rivers  was  easily  solved.  But 
in  the  afternoon  1  readied,  ai^n^  o.«.d 
on  foot,  a  flood  of  portentous  width, 
without  bridge,  ferry,  or  ford  apparent, 
—  the  river  Tordino.  Within  reach 
was  no  man  nor  habitation ;  beyond 
was  a  humble  house  or  two.  No  re- 
source presented  itself  but  that  of  the 
captive  Hebrews  by  the  rivers  of  Baby- 
lon, —  to  sit  down  and  weep.  But  fortu- 
nately there  came  up  just  then  an  indi- 
gene, in  similar  case,  who  leisurely 
commenced  baring  his  feet  and  pulling 
up  the  garment  which  was  nearest  like 
trousers,  sending  forth  meanwhile  one 
or  two  vigorous  shouts.  A  speedy 
result  was  seen  on  the  opposite  bank, 
in  the  descent  to  the  water  of  a  muscu- 
lar native,  who  proceeded  by  devious 
ways  to  wade  across  to  us,  and  put 


himself  into  an  attitude  to  be  mounted. 
This  done,  the  legs  of  his  passenger 
well  twisted  around  his  neck,  he  cau- 
tiously retraced  the  perilous  path  he 
had  come  by,  the  bare  feet  of  the  rider 
dipping  at  times  in  the  flood  that  came 
breast-high,  and  returned  for  his  next 
fare.  Three  or  four  of  these  torrents, 
before  the  line  of  the  Papal  States  was 
reached,  could  be  crossed  only  in  this 
extraordinary  fashion  ;  —  this  on  a  royal 
post-road  'of  the  first  class,  and  the 
sole  connection  of  these  provinces  with 
the  capital.  The  streams  north  of  the 
Tronto  are  not  different  in  character 
from  these  ;  yet  on  crossing  that  fron- 
tier into  the  territories  of  what  I  had 
been  accustomed,  until  I  was  in  "  the 
kingdom,"  to  regard  as  the  meanest  of 
European  despotisms,  I  found  all  ad- 
mirably bridged ;  some  indeed  wi.th 
trestle-work,  which  presents  less  sur- 
face of  resistance  to  the  flood,  but 
several  more  solidly,  and  all  well.  It 
may  not  be  unreasonable  to  attribute 
this,  and  some  other  like  phenomena 
of  difference  which  one  observes  in 
comparing  the  Trans-Apennine  prov- 
inces of  the  two  powers,  not  so  much 
to  the  greater  beneficence  as  to  the 
greater  weakness  of  the  priestly  ad- 
ministration. In  these  Adriatic  pos- 
sessions of  the  Holy  See  there  has 
always  been  a  semblance  of  local  au- 
tonomy, of  provincial  life,  which  the 
priVctly  administration  was  not  strong 
enough  to  extinguish  as  the  royal  and 
Bourbon  has-  done,  and  which  does 
therefore  some  few  things  like  these 
for  the  provinces,  in  spite  of  the  cen- 
tral government. 

It  was  growing  dark  as  I  entered  the 
town  of  Giulia  Nuova,  set  upon  a  hill 
a  mile  back  from  the  highway.  It  was 
necessary  to  ask  for  the  "  inn "  the 
guide-book  mentioned  ;  but  the  person 
accosted  could  only  say  that  there  was 
no  such  thing,  but  that  a  certain  good 
woman  was  wont  to  entertain  strangers 
in  her  private  house  for  a  considera- 
tion, —  and  to  this  he  led  the  way.  See- 
ing that  this  town  of  three  thousand 
people  close  to  the  frontier  was  just 
then  crowded  with  fifteen  hundred 


714 


A   Gothic  Capital. 


[December, 


Neapolitan  soldiers,  no  one,  not  even 
the  respectable  old  lady  who  was  glad 
to  give  me  lodging,  had  much  room  to 
spare.  There  were  no  barracks  ;  there 
was  in  her  little  house,  she  said,  but 
one  spare  room  besides  the  one  she 
gave  me  ;  and  in.  the  other,  for  more 
than  a  year  past,  she  had  had  two  sol- 
diers quartered,  for  whom  she  never 
had  received  a  farthing,  and  never 
should  ;  and  as  long  as  I  could  listen 
by  the  dim  lamplight  she  recounted 
the  various  enormities  of  the  rough 
fellows,  who  soon  came  stumbling  in 
to  bed.  A  new  significance  and  value 
came  then  upon  that  half-forgotten  and 
uncared-for  article  of  our  Constitu- 
tion which  provides  that  "  No  soldier 
shall,  in  time  of  peace,  be  quartered  in 
any  house,  without  the  consent  of  the 
owner." 

Part  of  the  next  morning's  walk  was 
in  the  casual  company  of  a  gendarme 
off  duty.  He,  too,  like  his  superior 
who  had  ridden  with  me  yesterday, 
had  his  questions  to  ask,  —  some  of 
them  about  that  great  name  with  which 
Italy  has  rung  loudly  several  times 
since,  but  which  then  was  not  so  well 
known  in  Southern  Italy  but  that  its 
semivowels  were  commonly  twisted 
into  "  Gallibaldi."  He,  too,  had  seen 
service  "  in  the  '48."  He  was  at  Vel- 
letri,  where  Garibaldi,  sallying  south- 
ward from  Rome,  had  come  upon  the 
Neapolitan  army  for  restoring  tko 
Pope,  and  served  them  shortly  as 
Neapolitans  seem  always  to  be  served 
in  fight ;  and  where  this  worthy  fellow 
had  received  a  bullet-wound,  of  which 
he  showed  with  much  complacency  the 
scar  —  in  the  back  of  his  neck  !  At 
noon,  crossing  the  bridge  of  boats  over 
the  Tronto,  I  entered  once  more  the 
States  of  the  Church,  whose  frontier  I 
had  passed  on  my  southward  course  at 
Terracina.  Almost  instantly  the  change 
already  adverted  to  was  not  only  ob- 
vious, but  striking.  The  road  was 
charming,  though  very  hot.  Not  only 
were  villages  frequent,  but  the  hillsides 
were  sprinkled  with  gentlemen's  coun- 
try-seats, many  of  them  elegant,  and 
sometimes  approaching  the  stately 


splendor  of  the  villas  with  which  Rome 
and  Naples  are  surrounded.  Orange- 
gardens  loaded  the  air  with  their  ex- 
quisite perfume,  while  the  half-tropical 
effect  of  the  near  scenery,  and  of  the 
sun's  ardent  brilliancy,  was  heightened 
by  the  vistas  often  opened  up  by  some 
short  valley  of  the  snowy  mountains  at 
the  left.  There  was  no  more  borrow- 
ing the  aid  of  a  cart,  or  of  the  friend- 
ly shoulders  of  a  coniadino^  to  cross 
the  mountain  streams,  —  all  were  well 
bridged;  while  everything  in  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  country  and  of  the 
people  showed  a  difference  so  decided 
that  it  might  almost  be  called  a  con- 
trast with  all  that  was  visible  south  of 
the  frontier. 

So,  after  a  day  or  two  of  walking 
and  wagon-riding  along  this  pleasant 
coast,  I  climbed  the  steep  from  which 
there  shone  afar  the  goal  of  so  many 
other  pilgrimages,  the  holy  city  of 
Loreto.  It  was  doubtless  rather  curios- 
ity than  veneration  which  had  made  me 
look  forward  with  some  earnestness  of 
desire  to  this  visit ;  yet  it  was  a  disap- 
pointment that  it  should  be  so  difficult 
to  arouse  an  enthusiasm  of  whatever 
kind,  even  in  the  sanctuary  itself,  which, 
if  its  walls  did  not  in  very  truth  enclose 
the  sublime  events  of  the  Annunciation 
and  the  Incarnation,  has  yet  been  for 
many  centuries  the  object  of  the  ardent 
faith,  the  reverent  pilgrimage,  and  tV>» 
oaoiifiuicii  ufitnngs  ot  monarchs  and 
pontiffs,  and  of  their  subjects  by  tens 
of  millions. 

Facing  a  broad  piazza  upon  the  ut- 
most height  of  the  hill  city,  flanked  by 
a  stately  palace  and  a  convent  in  the 
magnificent  style  which  marks  the  date 
when  the  Papacy,  though  in  the  decline 
of  its  strength,  was  efflorescing  in  cor- 
ruption, stands  in  like  profuse  splendor 
the  church  of  the  Santa  Casa ;  and 
within  the  church,  small,  black,  and  din- 
gy, yet  at  once  the  centre  and  the 
cause  of  this  assemblage  of  church, 
palace,  and  city,  the  Holy  House  itself. 
Black,  I  have  said  ;  yet  of  its  outer 
surface  no  one  can  speak  but  by  con- 
jecture or  inference  ;  for  though  you 
face  the  sanctuary,  in  whatever  of  the 


1 868.] 


A   Gotfiic  Capital. 


715 


four  arms  of  the  cruciform  church  you 
stand,  if  only  you  look  inward  from  the 
entrance  (for  the  House  is  at  the  in- 
tersection of  them  all),  yet  so  closely 
incased  is  it  in  a  glittering  crust  of 
sculptured  marble,  that  the  undevout 
visitor  may  well  forget  the  doubtful 
miracle  within  for  the  sure  marvels 
which  are  outside.  The  architecture 
of  Bramante,  and  the  patient  sculpture 
of  such  as  John  of  Bologna  and  San- 
sovino,  and  whatever  there  was  greatest 
in  their  art  through  the  first  full  third 
of  the  cinque-cento,  have  hidden  from 
sight  the  simple  structure  of  Judcean 
shepherds,  while  they  represent  in  work 
almost  divine  the  events  of  which  the 
House  itself  was  witness,  or  the  won- 
derful passages  of  its  own  later  history. 
That  history,  too,  in  minute  detail,  in- 
cluding the  migration  from  Nazareth 
to  the  coast  of  Dalmatia,  and  at  last,  in 
1295,  to  the  spot  where  it  now  stands. 
is  inscribed  on  stone  tablets  in  various 
parts  of  the  church,  in  different  lan- 
guages, that  pilgrims  might  be  built  up 
in  the  faith  that  brought  them  here  :  yet 
the  only  languages  that  considerable 
search  discovered  were  English,  Welsh, 
and  what  purported  to  be  Scotch.  How 
justly  this  last  is  published  as  a  lan- 
guage distinct  from  the  English  may 
be  judged  from  the  heading :  l«  The 
Storie  of  the  Marvellous  Flyttynge  of 
ye  Holy  House  of  Our  Ladye  of  Lo- 
reto." 

Within,  a  simple  curiosity,  not  sharp- 
ened by  faith,  is  soon  sated.  A  mere 
cell,  or  cabin,  of  rough,  irregular  brick, 
less  than  twentv-pio-lit  Wf  i-"&>  "<-»t 
halt  so  high,  and  narrower  still  than 
its  height,  is  black  and  grimy  with  the 
smoke  of  six  centuries'  incense.  A 
single  door  gives  entrance  to  humanity; 
one  window,  to  all  the  light  but  what  is 
furnished  by  the  silver  lamps  that  hang 
burning  night  and  day  before  the 
shrine.  Over  a  little  altar  is  one,  per- 
haps the  most  famous  one,  of  those 
hideous  images  in  black  wood  of  which 
St.  Luke,  evangelist,  physician,  and 
sculptor,  has  the  unenviable  credit, 
which  have  been  deemed  the  most 
precious  treasures  of  more  than  one 


Italian  town ;  and  to  no  one  of  which 
can  this  Lady  and  Child,  of  half  life 
size,  be  reckoned  inferior,  whether  in 
ugliness  of  feature  or  in  splendor  of 
vestment.  But  whatever  be  one's  in- 
credulity in  respect  to  the  cabin  and 
the  doll,  there  is  no  room  to  doubt  the 
genuineness  of  the  jewels  that  adorn 
the  one,  or  of  the  treasures,  in  the  form 
of  votive  offerings,  that  fill  the  other ; 
nor,  better  yet,  of  the  wide  vista  over 
land  and  sea  which  the  declining  sun 
was  touching  with  a  more  splendid  glory 
when  I  left  the  shrine  of  superstition, 
and  looked  forth  from  the  lofty  ram- 
parts of  the  town. 

Charming,  but  with  something  other 
than  a  true  Italian  beauty,  is  the  region 
over  which  I  looked  that  evening  from 
the  walls  of  Loreto,  and  through  which 
I  walked  in  the  cool  and  cloudy  morn- 
ing: //  Giardino  d*  Italia,    as   others 
call   it  than  those  who  live  there  ;  La 
Marca,  —  the    March,  or    Marquisate, 
of  Ancona.     Undulating,  and  to  a  de- 
gree of  irregularity  sometimes  that  one 
should  almost  say  mountainous,  it  is 
yet  under  high  and  thorough  cultivation 
to  the  tops  of  its  highest  hills  ;  while 
hills  and  vales  and  the  winding  roads 
and  lanes  are  dotted  or  shaded  by  the 
young    foliage   of   innumerable    trees, 
which  would  alone  have  served  to  dis- 
pel the  illusion  to  which  I  was  tempted, 
to  fancy  myself  in  the  Massachusetts 
valley  of  the    Connecticut  River.     Al- 
mond-trees were  blossoming  in  peachy 
fragrance;    blue   violets   peeped    from 
the    grass    along   the   road:    "»-^an- 
Kee  boys  m   white   smocks  and  caps, 
from   the   crowns   of  which  hung  gay 
colored   tassels,  looked   up   from  their 
work,  and  helped  to  show  that  this  was 
not  New   England  :  but,  among   them 
all,  the  eighteen  miles  seemed  to  have 
been  no  long  walk,  when  at  one  o'clock 
I  passed  by  the  town  of  Ancona,  —  by 
houses,  on  the  landward  side,  in  whose 
walls  were  imbedded  Austrian  cannon- 
balls,  fired  in  its  twenty-six  days'  bom- 
bardment in  1849,  when  revolution  was 
suppressed  for  the   Pope's  benefit,  — 
around  to    the   only   entrance   of   the 
town,  where  its  north  wall  joins   the 


716 


A   Gothic  Capital. 


[December, 


port.  Along  the  little  strand,  within 
the  town,  beside  which  my  road  led, 
were  many  squads  of  soldiers  hard  at 
drill.  These,  too,  were  Austrians ; 
there  were  fifteen  hundred  of  them 
here,  besides  those  of  other  nativity ; 
their  flag  was  not  the  Emperor's,  how- 
ever, but  the  Pope's.  They  were  recent 
volunteers,  whom  the  annexation  of  the 
^Emilian  provinces,  just  north,  and  the 
threatening  movements  of  "  the  bloody 
Piedmontese"  upon  the  receding  Papal 
frontier,  had  lately  impelled  to  the  de- 
fence of  the  few  remaining  jewels  of  the 
tiara.  A  crowd  of  young  officers  of 
these  same  dark  green  fellows  spent 
the  next  morning,  being  Sunday,  at 
their  breakfast  in  my  hotel,  with  such 
enthusiasm  of  champagne  and  warlike 
clamor  as  to  belie  the  name  of  the 
Albergo  della  Pace.  It  was  only  a 
few  weeks  later  that  these  same  bloom- 
ing fields  through  which  I  had  just 
walked  were  reddened  by  the  blood  of 
the  hirelings  who  were  now  exercising 
or  carousing  about  me  ;  when  Lamo- 
riciere  had  collected  his  twenty  thou- 
sand mercenaries  about  that  very  hill 
of  Castel  Fidardo,  which  I  had  looked 
at  vyith  its  little  village  on  its  crest, 
only  to  be  overwhelmed  and  routed 
by  Cialdini,  and  to  see  this  strong- 
hold of  Ancona  pass  for  the  last  time 
from  the  hands  of  the  Roman  pontiff. 

Perhaps  this  Mount  of  Ancona,  in  a 
nook  or  "  elbow "  (ancdii)  of  whose 
northern  base  nestles  the  town,  may  be 
set  down  as  the  exact  point  where  the 
Apo«nine  range,  pushing  down  from 
the  northwest,  rainy  suixca  me  a^u., 
and  from  which  it  presses  against  the 
sea,  with  its  lofty  side  along  all  that 
coast  over  which  I  had  come.  From 
here  to  the  north,  the  coast  road  no 
longer  has  to  struggle  for  a  narrow 
footing  under  the  base  of  steep  moun- 
tains. If  it  still  keeps  close  to  the 
shore,  it  is  only  because  the  shore  is 
straight,  and  is  the  shortest  line  be- 
tween the  towns  upon  it.  As  I  set  out 
at  noon  in  the  lumbering  diligence,  the 
mountains  at  once  receded  on  the  left, 
and,  instead,  a  range  of  low,  monoto- 
nous hills  accompanied  us  at  a  little 


distance.  At  no  more  rapid  rate,  in- 
cluding frequent  stoppages,  than  if  I 
had  been  afoot,  the  melancholy  vehicle 
trundled  along  through  the  afternoon 
and  all  the  dismal  night.  Past  Sinigal- 
lia,  where  the  gloomy  palace  frowned 
over  the  road,  where  John-Mary  Mas- 
tai-Ferretti  began  that  life  which  he 
was  to  end,  perhaps,  as  the  last  Pope 
with  temporal  dominion,  and,  at  all 
events,  after  a  reign  surpassed  in  dura- 
tion even  now  by  not  more  than  five  of 
the  successors  of  Peter  ;  past  Fano,  with 
its  triumphal  arch  of  Augustus  ;  after 
night  had  fallen,  through  Pesaro,  and 
suffering  long  delay  at  the  post-station 
of  La  Cattolica,  which  marked  for  the 
time  the  extent  of  Piedmontese  ag- 
gression, and  where  the  gray  Sardinian 
uniform  looked  pleasantly  once  more 
under  the  light  of  the  lanterns  by  which 
we  were  inspected ;  and  in  full  day- 
light to  Rimini,  having  accomplished 
sixty  miles  in  seventeen  hours  of  pain- 
ful travel.  Here  were  thousands  of  the 
new  invaders  from  Cisalpine  Gaul,  who 
had  crossed  the  Rubicon  but  a  few 
miles  back,  and  had  passed  into  Rimini 
over  a  noble  Roman  bridge,  and  under 
a  magnificent  Augustan  arch  of  tri- 
umph, on  their  way  toward  the  Rome 
at  which  they  arrived,  but  who  were 
now  'busy  in  building  great  modern 
earthworks,  as  if  they  meant  only  to 
keep  what  they  had  got.  From  the 
ramparts,  looking  westward,  there  meets 
the  eye,  conspicuous  across  the  plain,  a 
dozen  miles  off,  a  long  black  cliff,  the 
highest,  apparently,  in  sight,  its  upper 

— ti:—  broken  against  the  sky  with 
towers,  its  summit  and  sides  suv.ciivcu 

all  over  with  snow,  which  is  all  the  ter- 
ritory of  the  Republic  of  San  Marino, 
with  its  army  of  forty  men,  and  its  pop- 
ulation of  seven  thousand. 

If  the  country  was  now  flat  and  unin- 
teresting, yet  even  in  such  a  region  the 
late  torment  of  the  diligence  was  not 
better  than  freedom  and  independence 
on  foot.  So  in  two  or  three  hours  next 
morning  I  reached  the  little  stream 
which  even  now  is  called  //  Riibicone, 
flowing  "ruddy"  with  clay  between 
hteh  banks,  and  spanned  by  a  wooden 


1 868.] 


A   GOTHIC  Capital. 


717 


bridge,  it  may  be  at  the  very  spot  where 
Caesar,  on  his  way  from  Ravenna  to 
seize  the  important  fortress  of  Rimini, 
made  that  plunge  upon  which  the  fate 
of  the  world  was  to  turn.  The  sea  was 
near  enough  to  the  road,  but  hidden 
behind  low  mounds  of  sand.  There 
were  two  or  three  little  towns  ;  Cer- 
via,  surrounded  by  a  turreted  wall,  a 
square  city  of  a  couple  of  thousand 
people,  through  which,  in  its  precise 
centre,  the  highway  passes,  broad  and 
clean,  and  just  three  minutes'  walk  from 
gate  to  gate.  Then,  for  ten  or  twelve 
miles,  the  road  skirts  the  Pineta,  —  the 
grove  of  umbrella  pines  stretching 
along  the  sea  in  a  narrow  belt  of  wil- 
derness. But  at  last  the  Pineta  falls 
into  the  rear ;  the  land  spreads  out  into 
an  utterly  desolate  low  marsh,  without 
house,  stick,  or  stone  to  break  its  mo- 
notony, out  of  the  midst  of  which  rises, 
in  solemn  isolation,  three  or  four  miles 
before  the  gates  of  Ravenna  are  reached, 
and  quite  as  far  from  the  sea,  the  noble 
basilica  of  San  Apollinare  in  Classe,  — 
stupendous  monument  of  that  Gothic 
empire  and  that  Arian  heresy  which 
came  near  to  universal  sway  over  the 
souls  and  bodies  of  Christendom,  and 
of  which  Ravenna  was  the  Rome,  the 
glorious  metropolis  and  capital.  In 
this  character  alone,  aside  from  all  oth- 
er claims,  this  lonely,  half-deserted  city, 
within  the  ample  circuit  of  whose  walls 
are  streets  overgrown  with  weeds  and 
lined  with  vacant  palaces,  could  never 
fail  to  excite  the  reverent  enthusiasm 
of  any  one  to  whom  ecclesiastical  or 
simply  historical  antiquities  are  of  in- 
terest, if  only  he  should  place  himself 
within  the  circle  of  its  attraction.  Yet 
this  is  not  all ;  for  before  the  Goths 
Ravenna  was  great ;  and  after  ortho- 
doxy had  restored  the  unity  of  the 
Western  Church,  it  needed  many  cen- 
turies of  combined  natural  and  ecclesi- 
astical and  political  causes  to  reduce  it 
from  a  splendid  rank  among  the  cities 
of  Christendom.  Before  Venice  rose 
upon  the  islands  that  cluster  about  the 
head  of  the  Adriatic,  but  a  few  miles  to 
the  northward,  Ravenna  was  Venice. 
This  inland  town,  from  which  the  sea 


is  distant  by  seven  miles  of  dreary 
marsh,  sat  like  Venice  upon  its  clus- 
tered islands ;  the  sea,  as  in  those  of 
Venice,  was 

"  In  its  broad,  its  narrow  streets, 
Ebbing  and  flowing  "  ; 

countless  bridges  maintained  commu- 
nication between  its  isolated  quarters ; 
like  Venice,  its  walls  were  impregnable 
and  unattainable  by  the  strong  defence 
of  the  lagunes  that  encompassed  it ; 
while  all  the  wealth  of  the  East,  that 
afterwards  built  the  palaces  of  Venice, 
flowed  into  its  lap,  to  be  distributed  by 
its  merchants  over  all  Western  Europe. 
When  Rome  was  shaking  under  the 
successive  shocks  of  Northern  invasion, 
the  degenerate  Caesars  fled  hither  to 
establish  the  still  splendid  court  of  the 
Western  Empire.  But  her  greatest 
magnificence  was  under  the  sway  of 
that  extraordinary  people,  that  blue- 
eyed,  fair-haired  race  whose  name  is  a 
synonyme  for  savage  brutality,  who  yet 
conquered  the  conquerors  of  the  world, 
and  who  from  this  capital,  which  they 
made  to  rival  in  splendor  the  city  of 
Constantine  itself,  exercised  a  dominion 
reaching  from  the  mouths  of  the  Dan- 
ube to  the  extremity  of  the  Italian 
peninsula,  and  to  the  Pillars  of  Her- 
cules and  the  Bay  of  Biscay.  In  that 
grand  process  which  never  ceases, 
however  imperceptible  to  our  vision,  by 
which  the  mountains  are  being  brought 
low  and  the  valleys  exalted,  the  Alps 
and  the  Apennines  have  been  robbed 
of  their  substance  to  raise  these  miles 
upon  miles  of  firm  land  from  the  bot- 
tom of  the  sea.  No  natural  landmark 
points  the  successive  stages  of  this 
vast  but  silent  and  constant  change  ; 
only  the  names  which  faithful  tradition 
has  kept  impressed  upon  the  local  to- 
pography serve  to  show  how  gradually 
the  Adriatic  retreated  from  the  steps  of 
the  throne  of  its  queen.  When  Rome 
was  a  republic,  and  Ravenna  a  town  in 
its  province  of  Cisalpine  Gaul,  the  ships 
of  Alexandria  and  Joppa  discharged 
their  cargoes  in  her  very  streets.  Two 
miles  from  her  walls,  the  lonely  church 
of  Sta.  Maria  in  Porto  shows  by  its 
name  that  at  some  early  time,  which 


7i8 


A   Gothic  Capital. 


[December, 


cannot  be  fixed,  the  harbor  had  retired 
so  far  from  the  city  which  had  been 
built  upon  it ;  and  the  square  light-house, 
which  then  had  guided  the  mariner  to 
his  destination,  was  many  centuries  ago 
turned  from  its  ludicrous  inutility  to 
pious  uses  as  the  bell-tower  of  the 
church.  At  nearly  twice  that  distance 
from  the  gates  there  is  nothing  but 
the  name  of  the  magnificent  church  of 
San  Apollinare  (in  Classe)  to  show  that 
its  site  was  once  that  of  the  suburb 
where  the  imperial  "  Fleet "  lay  moored ; 
while  between  it  and  the  sea  are  now 
four  miles  of  black  and  dreary  moor- 
land, or  of 

"  Ravenna's  immemorial  wood, 
Rooted  where  once  the  Adrian  wave  flowed  o'er." 

Thus,  when  the  queenly  city  had 
been  abandoned  by  her  handmaid  the 
sea,  her  commercial  greatness  fled  to 
upstart  Venice,  or  was  shared  by  Ven- 
ice with  Genoa  and  Pisa  ;  while,  the 
Gothic  sceptre  having  passed  from  the 
giant  arm  of  Theodoric  to  successors 
as  puny  as  the  latest  Cssars,  imperial 
power  and  ecclesiastical  primacy  were 
transported  to  the  Rome  which  had 
so  lately  lost  them,  or  went  wandering 
and  divided  to  Saxony  or  Franconia,  to 
Paris  or  Aix-la-Chapelle.  But  though 
her  dominion  is  long  ago  departed 
from  her,  Rome  herself  has  not  to-day 
such  monuments  of  the  period  from 
Constantine  to  the  death  of  Justinian,  a 
space  of  two  centuries  and  a  half,  as 
Ravenna  possesses  in  unimpaired  mag- 
nificence. Compare  these  dates,  for  ex- 
ample, of  all  existing  works  in  mosaic, 
up  to  the  time  last  named :  in  Rome, 
at  £>ta.  Sabina,  but  almost  wholly  de- 
stroyed, A.  D.  425  ;  part  of  the  mosa- 
ics at  Sta.  Maria  Maggiore,  432 ;  SS. 
Cosmo  and  Damian,  530  ;  —  at  Raven- 
na, at  the  tomb  of  Galla  Placidia,  440  ; 
at  San  Giovanni  in  Fonte,  451  ;  at  San 
Vitale,  547 ;  at  Sta.  Maria  in  Cosmedin, 
553 ;  at  San  Apollinare  in  Classe,  567 ; 
and  at  San  Apollinare  Nuovo,  570; 
while  the  superiority  of  these  to  the 
few  Roman  works  is  far  greater  in  ex- 
tent and  splendor  than  in  mere  num- 
ber. Something,  perhaps,  of  this  ine- 
quality is  due  to  the  fact  that  the 


returning  power  and  wealth  of  the 
Roman  episcopate  made  possible  a 
lavishness  of  reparation  and  improve- 
ment which  left  little  but  the  name  'to 
many  a  venerable  relic  of  the  earlier 
centuries,  while  deserted  and  declining 
Ravenna  had  hardly  the  vigor  even  to 
destroy  ;  but  it  cannot  be  doubted  that 
the  period  in  question  was  that  which 
came  nearest  to  a  total  eclipse  of  Ro- 
man splendor,  and  during  which  the 
heretical  supremacy  and  the  barbarian 
invasions  that  were  oppressing  her 
were  building  her  Trans- Apennine  rival 
into  a  gorgeous  seat  of  empire. 

Of  all  the  monuments  of  that  schis- 
matic faith  and  that  barbaric  empire, 
hardly  one  is  more  impressive  than  this 
lonely  basilica  of  San  Apollinare  in 
that  dismal  moorland,  which  was  once 
the  busy  suburb  of  the  Fleet.  More 
than  thirteen  hundred  years  ago,  the 
thin,  flat  bricks  —  as  Roman  in  their 
shape  and  the  fashion  of  their  putting 
together  as  if  they  had  not  been  laid  by 
those  Goths  whose  name  imports  all 
that  is  brutal  and  destructive — rose  into 
its  arcaded  sides  and  clerestory,  and  its 
lofty  circular  campanile.  Within,  it  is 
green  now  with  damp  and  mould,  and 
its  lower  chapels  swamped  in  water. 
No  worshipper  kneels  before  its  altar  ; 
a  sickly  looking  priest  or  two,  caring  for 
the  unused  utensils  of  church  service, 
is  the  only  living  thing  to  be  seen  by 
the  visitor,  except  the  spiritual  life  of 
thirteen  centuries  ago,  petrified  into  the 
deathless  colors  that  cover  the  great 
tribune  and  the  spandrels  of  the  arch 
before  it.  Here,  with  reverent  bold- 
ness, the  sacerdotal  artist  has  essayed 
the  wonderful  scene  of  the  Transfigura- 
tion. From  the  apex  of  the  half-dome 
which  roofs  the  tribune,  the  hand  of 
the  Almighty,  issuing  from  the  clouds, 
points  to  the  head  of  Christ,  in  the 
centre  of  a  great  gemmed  cross  just 
below.  Above  the  cross  are  the  Greek 
letters  IX0YC  ;  near  its  arms  the  Alpha 
and  Omega  ;  and  at  its  foot  the  words 
Salus  Mundi.  Resting  on  clouds  on 
either  side  of  the  cross,  and  point- 
ing to  it,  are  the  figures  of  Moses  and 
Elias,  their  names  inserted  near  them 


1868.] 


A  Gothic  .".^pital. 


719. 


in  strong  Roman  characters.  Below,  on 
the  green  earth  (and  how  brilliantly 
and  perennially  green  that  landscape  is, 
after  these  thirteen  centuries,  no  one 
who  has  seen  it  can  ever  forget),  the 
apost^s  Peter,  James,  and  John  gaze  up- 
wards in  the  guise  of  sheep,  surrounded 
by  flowers  and  rocks  and  pines  and  cy- 
presses. Below  the  cross  is  the  saint 
under  whose  invocation  the  church  is 
dedicated,  in  his  ancient  archbishop's 
robes,  his  arms  raised  in  the  act  of 
preaching,  his  congregation  symbolized 
by  a  flock  of  sheep  surrounding  him. 
Near  by,  upon  another  wall  of  the  pres- 
bytery, the  great  mystery  of  the  Atone- 
ment appears  under  its  several  Hebrew 
types,  —  the  sacrifices  of  Abel,  Melchiz- 
edek,  and  Abraham.  Above  the  arch 
of  the  tribune,  upon  the  broad  wall 
which  looks  down  the  nave,  are  still  oth- 
er and  various  subjects,  —  archangels, 
evangelists,  symbols  of  Christian  faith 
and  hope,  and  the  cities  of  Bethlehem 
and  Jerusalem,  with  processions  of  be- 
lievers, typified,  as  before,  by  flocks  of 
sheep  issuing  from  the  open  gates. 

Such  are  the  themes  which,  in  repre- 
sentations splendid  in  color  and  colossal 
in  grandeur,  are  spread -over  the  whole 
surface  of  that  altar-end  of  this  deserted 
church,  which  alone  has  preserved  its 
treasures  to  this  day.  But  if  we  enter 
the  silent  city,  its  almost  vacant  streets 
offer  still  richer  jewels  to  our  gaze. 
Here  is  that  other  church  of  the  same 
name  (San  Apollinare  Nuovd),  which, 
yet  half  a  century  earlier,  the  great 
Theodoric  himself  built  as  the  metro- 
politan cathedral  of  the  Arian  world,  — 
that  church  which  might  have  been  to- 
day what  St.  Peter's  is,  had  Clovis, 
instead  of  Alaric  the  Visigoth,  while 
its  walls  were  rising,  fallen  upon  the 
plain  of  Poitiers,  and  the  world  become 
a  universal  Gothic  empire,  and  Arian 
heresy  become  Catholic  orthodoxy. 
Not  merely  the  extremity  of  this 
"  Church  of  the  Golden  Roof,"  but  the 
walls  of  its  nave  from  end  to  end,  and 
up  to  the  gilded  ceiling  itself,  are  cov- 
ered with  these  pictures  in  stone  whose 
colors  never  fade.  On  one  side  a 
single  gigantic  composition  shows  the 


city  of  Ravenna  of  that  day,  in  which 
are  conspicuous  the  structures  which 
still  remain  to  us  ;  opposite,  that  su- 
burb of  the  Fleet,  with  harbor  and 
ships,  which  now  is  vanished,  —  ships, 
city,  and  port ;  both  rising  from  the 
round  arches  of  the  nave,  which  rest 
on  columns  borrowed  by  the  Gothic 
king  from  that  Constantinople  to  which 
he  owed  so  slight  an  allegiance,  up  to 
the  windows  of  the  clerestory  ;  while 
every  space  between  those  windows, 
and  above  them  to  the  roof,  contains  its 
separate  subject. 

If  it  is  thought  strange  that  a  period 
of  Gothic  domination  should  be  com- 
memorated by  such  structures  as  these, 
how  much  more  marvellous  is  it  that 
the  most  gorgeous  work  of  Christian 
art,  though  far  from  being  the  greatest 
of  the  earlier  centuries,  should  have 
been  going  steadily  on  through  precise- 
ly those  years  when  the  struggle  of 
Barbarian  and  Byzantine  for  final  dom- 
ination had  burst  out  afresh,  and  was 
raging  with  a  fury  unknown  in  the  first 
invasions,  and  when  Ravenna  itself,  as 
well  as  Rome,  was  held  alternately  by 
the  contending  hosts  !  Yet  such  was 
the  eventful  infancy  of  San  Vitale.  It 
is  rarely  that  the  date  of  so  ancient  a 
work  can  be  determined  so  precisely  as 
may  that  of  this  singular  structure  from 
the  marks  it  bears  upon  itself.  The 
most  brilliant  of  all  historical  records  in 
the  mosaics  covering  the  chair  and  trib- 
une, and  representing  the  consecration 
of  the  church,  fix  the  time  of  that  event 
as  nearly  as  may  be  at  the  year  547. 
On  opposite  walls  stand  the  Emper- 
or Justinian  and  his  wife  Theodora, 
"whose  vices  were  not  incompatible 
with  devotion,"  attended,  the  former  by 
the  consecrating  archbishop  St.  Maxi- 
mian  and  a  splendid  retinue  of  courtiers 
and  officers,  the  other  by  a  train  of 
ladies  from  the  Byzantine  court,  all  in 
such  vivid  distinctness  of  costume  and 
feature  that  one  does  not  think  of 
questioning  their  likeness,  while  the 
identity  of  every  principal  figure  is  es- 
tablished by  the  bold  lettering  of  a  name 
near  it.  As  the  disreputable  actress 
turned  empress  and  devotee  died  in 


720 


A  Gothic  Capital. 


[December, 


548,  the  limit  for  the  completion  of  the 
church  is  fixed  at  once.  For  its  com- 
mencement this  strange,  Oriental-look- 
ing octagon  could  have  been  suggested 
by  no  other  than  that  magnificent  tem- 
ple which  the  same  Emperor  had  begun 
at  Constantinople  in  532,  and  six  years 
later  had  dedicated  to  the  Eternal 
Wisdom ;  even  as  San  Vitale  itself, 
after  two  centuries  and  a  half,  sug- 
gested to  Charlemagne  the  ideal  which 
that  greater  than  Justinian  executed  in 
the  octagon  "  Chapelle  "  that  gave  a 
name  to  his  capital  and  afforded  him- 
self a  sepulchre.  Nothing,  therefore, 
seems  so  probable  as  that,  when  Beli- 
sarius  had  recovered  the  Gothic  capital 
in  539  for  his  imperial  master,  he 
should  at  once  have  begun,  a  votive  of- 
fering for  his  success,  the  gorgeous 
monument  which  eight  years  later  was 
completed.  Rarely,  in  any  age,  have 
the  arts  of  architecture,  sculpture,  and 
painting  (if  that  may  be  called  so  which 
uses  only  fragments  of  colored  stone  as 
the  vehicle  of  4ts  expression)  combined 
to  make  so  splendid  a  memorial  of  tri- 
umph or  devotion.  Unlike  as  it  is  in 
shape  to  the  basilica  or  the  later 
church,  yet  the  analogy  to  the  nave, 
aisles,  and  side-chapels  of  the  latter  is 
closely  maintained.  Above  the  two 
tiers  of  circular  arches,  resting  on  su- 
perb monolithic  columns  of  Grecian 
marbles  whose  capitals  are  cunningly 
undercut  with  vine-work  and  reticula- 
tion and  strange  devices,  bespeaking  far 
more  the  vigorous  play  of  a  young  and 
growing  art  than  the  decline  and  cor- 
ruption of  an  old  art,  rises  a  clerestory 
and  a  dome  ;  while  such  parts  of  the 
inner  fabric  as  are  not  covered  with 
costly  marbles  and  sculptures  blaze 
with  the  profuse  and  varied  pictures  of 
the  workers  in  mosaic,  as  bright  and 
clear  and  perfect  in  color,  as  well  as 
design,  as  on  the  day  when  St.  Maxi- 
mian  first  read  there  the  prayers  ot 
consecration.  It  would  be  a  wearisome 
task  to  reproduce  from  note-books  a 
catalogue  of  all  the  subjects  that  glitter 
on  the  walls  of  San  Vitale,  or  of  any 
one  of  the  greater  churches  of  Raven- 
na ;  a  sufficient  idea  of  their  character 


and  diversity  has  already  been  given 
by  examples.  Whatever  external  splen- 
dor these  structures  may  have  (and 
some  of  them  are  extremely  imposing) 
is  in  spite  of  the  simplicity  of  their 
material ;  for  this,  upon  that  great  allu- 
vial plain,  where  not  so  much  as  a  peb- 
ble can  be  found,  is  almost  uniformly 
the  broad,  flat,  Roman  brick,  an  inch 
and  a  half  in  thickness.  But  the  most 
distant  quarries  have  contributed  their 
wealth  to  the  adornment  of  their  interi- 
ors ;  while  these  mosaics,  which  glitter  in 
such  vast  extent  upon  their  inner  walls, 
whether  their  subjects  be  historical, 
symbolical,  or  dramatic,  are  not  merely 
inestimable  studies  of  the  costume  and 
the  whole  life  of  the  fifth  century,  but  as 
works  of  art  are  immensely  superior,  in 
color,  in  action,  in  expression,  and 
even  in  composition,  to  those  of  the 
thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries 
elsewhere  in  Italy. 

If  it  had  been  attempted  to  give  a 
summary  of  the  attractions  of  this 
Gothic  capital  to  a  student  of  early 
Christian  art,  it  would  still  be  incom- 
plete. Overreaching  in  antiquity  the 
final  Gothic  conquest,  the  mausoleum 
built  by  a  Roman  empress,  who  had 
.also  been  a  queen  of  the  Goths,  as  her 
own  sepulchre  and  that  of  an  emperor 
who  was  her  brother,  and  another 
who  was  her  son,  is  on  some  accounts 
of  singular  value.  Constructed  at  least 
before  the  death  of  Galla  Placidia  in 
450,  it  is  with  a  single  exception,  also 
at  Ravenna,  the  sole  example  remain- 
ing in  Italy  of  the  IWcinoritz  or  funeral 
chapels  which  once  covered  the  coun- 
try like  the  Santons'  tombs  in  Turkey, 
the  origin  of  which  may  be  traced,  if 
not  to  Byzantium  itself,  to  the  sepul- 
chral cells  of  the  Catacombs,  and  which 
seem  to  have  given  place  long  ago  to 
the  mortuary  chapels  that  were  annexed 
to  churches  and  cathedrals.  Its  three 
imperial  tombs  are,  perhaps,  the  earli- 
est specimens  of  Byzantine  sculpture 
now  remaining ;  the  mosaics  which 
cover  its  cupola  are  not  only  peculi- 
arly beautiful,  but  constitute,  with  the 
strict  harmony  of  its  architecture  and 
its  sculpture,  what  has  been  called  by 


1 868.] 


A   Gothic  Capital 


721 


one  of  the  most  philosophical  writers 
on  Christian  Art  (Lord  Lindsay)  "by 
far  the  most  perfect  and  interesting  ex- 
ample "  of  the  early  Byzantine  symbol- 
ism. Yet  this  monument,  too,  the  sep- 
ulchre of  a  Gothic  queen  and  of  that 
Roman  Emperor  who  diverted  him- 
self with  cock-fights  behind  the  walls 
and  ditches  of  Ravenna  while  Alaric 
was  taking  Rome,  helps  to  remind  one 
of  those  barbarians  under  whose  rule 
Ravenna  was  at  its  greatest.  "  Barba- 
rians "  the  world  has  agreed  to  call 
them,  and  to  name  "  Gothic  "  what- 
ever is  base,  brutal,  unspiritual,  and 
wantonly  destructive.  Perhaps  the 
world's  nomenclature  might  have  been 
different,  had  the  fortune  of  war  been 
other  th*an  it  was  with  Belisarius  in  the 
East  and  Clovis  in  the  West.  Les  vain- 
cus,  like  les  absens,  ont  loujours  tort. 
Looking  back  these  thirteen  hundred 
years,  through  the  false  medium  of  a 
literature  made  by  the  victors,  it  is  yet 
not  hard  to  see  that  these  barbarians 
had  in  them  much  of  all  in  the  world  at 
that  time  that  was  good,  that  was  gen- 
erous, that  was  liberal,  that  protected 
and  promoted  art,  learning,  jurispru- 
dence, and  religion.  The  Code  of  Jus- 
tinian, in  which  culminated  twelve  cen- 
turies of  Roman  juridical  learning  and 
a  national  life  devoted  in  some  measure 
to  the  arts  of  peace,  is  no  more  remark- 
able monument  of  enlightened  legisla- 
tion than  that  Visigothic  code  which  was 
struck  out  by  these  Teutonic  organ- 
izers, before  Justinian's  century,  in  the 
ferment  of  incessant  campaigning  and 
amid  the  daily  clash  of  arms.  Under 
the  undisputed  dominion  of  the  East 
Goths,  Saint  Benedict,  who  was  a  her- 
etic to  them,  was  suffered  to  found 
on  the  Monte  Cassino  that  monastery 
which  was  for  centuries  the  very  foun- 
tain-head of  all  manner  of  learning,  and 
Cassiodorus  established,  in  his  graceful 
retirement  at  Squillace  from  the  office 
of  prime  minister  of  the  Gothic  Em- 
pire, the  first  great  library  in  Italy  ; 
while  the  monarchs  themselves  invited 
from  all  the  world  whoever  excelled  in 
art  or  science,  and  promoted  the  culti- 
vation of  science  and  the  arts  among 

VOL.  XXII.  —  NO.   134.  46 


their  own  subjects  by  a  liberal  system 
of  rewards.  Dio  Cassius  could  no 
better  express  the  wisdom  and  refine- 
ment of  these  barbarian  rulers  than  by 
comparing  them  favorably  with  the 
Greeks  themselves.  Accustomed,  wher- 
ever they  were  subject  to  orthodox 
rule,  to  the  relentless  persecution  by 
which  orthodoxy  was  sure  to  vindicate 
itself,  no  sooner  did  these  gentle  bar- 
barians establish  their  own  domination 
than  they  showed  to  those  who  had 
"  despitefully  used  them  and  persecuted 
them  "  the  new  virtue  of  full  toleration 
for  differences  of  religious  opinion  ;  so 
that  during  the  great  Theodoric's  reign 
of  thirty-three  years  it  was  said  that  no 
Italian  Catholic  had  adopted,  either 
from  compulsion  or  choice,  the  religion 
of  his  monarch.  Then,  first  and  last 
in  all  the  centuries  from  the  time  of 
Constant! ne  almost  to  our  day,  did  a 
Christian  government  protect  even  the 
Jew  from  the  superstitious  or  avari- 
cious fury  of  the  mob,  and,  by  a  refined 
justice  which  only  our  latest  American 
statutes  have. expressed,  levied  upon  the 
community  responsible  for  the  outrages 
a  proper  compensation  for  the  injuries 
inflicted.  What  a  different  Europe  it 
might  have  been,  had  barbarism  like 
that  controlled  it  for  the  past  thousand 
years ! 

"  But  surely  the  Goths  and  Vandals 
pillaged  Rome  ?  "  —  Capture  Rome 
no  doubt  they  did.  So  have  British 
troops  in  our  day  taken  Pekin  and 
Delhi  and  Magdala,  and,  not  long  ago, 
Washington.  But  when  we  read  how 
our  cousins  plundered  and  sacked  and 
desecrated  temples,  and  destroyed  pub- 
lic monuments,  and  call  them  Goths 
and  Vandals,  we  do  the  barbarians  a 
wrong.  Their  enemies  have  told  their 
story  ;  yet  their  enemies  have  record- 
ed that  Alaric  protected  the  churches  of 
Rome,  and  all  who  might  tike  refuge 
in  them,  and  the  consecrated  vessels, 
even  in  the  fury  of  a  capture  by  as- 
sault ;  and  that  even, the  public  edifices 
suffered  rather  from  the  inevitable  dam- 
age of  the  occasion  than  from  wanton 
destructiveness.  Augustine  compares 
the  moderation  of  the  heretics  with  the 


722 


A   Gothic  Capital 


[December, 


wanton  barbarity  of  the  Romans  them- 
selves in  the  wars  of  Marius  and  Sylla, 
as  each  party  in  turn  gained  possession 
of  the  imperial  city;  and  a  later  histo- 
rian confidently  affirms  that  the  rav- 
ages of  these  barbarians  were  less  de- 
structive than  those  of  Charles  V.,  "a 
Catholic  prince,  who  styled  himself 
Emperor  of  the  Romans."  Orthodox 
piety  had  already  suffered  the  monu- 
ments of  paganism  to  fall  to  decay ;  and 
it  was  reserved  for  the  Gothic  Theodo- 
ric  to  protect  by  positive  edict,  by  the 
appointment  of  an  efficient  architectu- 
ral commission,  and  the  appropriation 
of  large  annual  revenues,  the  public 
edifices,  the  statues,  whatever  was  valu- 
able for  antiquity  or  art,  from  the  rav- 
ages of  time  and  the  depredations  of 
Roman  citizens.  As  Rome  grew  rich 
and  great  again,  her  own  princes  com- 
pleted the  ruin  of  her  most  glorious 
monuments,  content  to  see  their  own 
evil  work  charged  upon  the  Goths  who 
were  their  betters ;  so  that,  in  a  stronger 
sense  than  Pasquin  meant  it,  may  it  be 
said  in  Pasquin's  words,-  "  Ouod  non 
fecerunt  barbari,  fecere  Barberini." 

It  was  pleasant  to  visit  now,  at  the 
centre  of  that  imperial  power  of  Theo- 
dore, the  fabric  which  the  hero  built  for 
his  final  resting-place,  as  if  conscious 
that  those  who  should  come  after  him 
would  be  unworthy  to  make  his  sepul- 
chre. Beyond  the  noise  of  the  then 
busy  city,  in  the  midst  of  fruitful  fields 
a  mile  without  its  gates,  "upon  the 
sides  of  the  north,"  as  if  the  conqueror 
would  return  at  least  so  far  toward 
the  birthplace  of  his  nation,  he  built 
his  tomb  in  his  lifetime  of  massive 
blocks  of  Istrian  limestone,  brought 
from  beyond  the  sea  into  this  land  of 
clay  and  bricks.  Long  ago  a  pious 
fervor  has  expelled  and  scattered  the 
remains  of  the  great  heretic  who  pro- 
tected the  worship  of  his  Catholic  sub- 
jects, and  the  sepulchre  is  now  a  chapel 
of  the  orthodox  Santa  Maria  della 
Rotonda.  The  sole  remaining  example, 
except  the  mausoleum  of  Galla  Pla- 
cidia,  of  the  Funeral  Chapels  of  the 
earlier  ages,  it  rises  in  two  stories,  an 
equal-sided  decagon,  from  a  base  which. 


although  lately  uncovered  by  excava- 
tion, is  left  by  the  unceasing  rise  of  the 
land  several  feet  below  the  general  level. 
Each  of  its  ten  sides  is  occupied  by  a 
round  recessed  arch,  of  which  the  mem- 
bers are  curiously  notched  and  fitted 
into  each  other ;  and  around  the  whole 
runs  a  continuous  moulding  through 
the  imposts  of  all  the  arches,  which 
brought  at  once  to  recollection  a  similar 
feature  in  the  Terracina  palace.  But 
crowning  the  structure,  as  if  to  exhibit 
to  the  feebler  races  who  should  come 
after,  and  who  should  use  the  name  of 
"  Goth  "  in  scorn  or  derision,  a  feat  be- 
yond their  power  to  imitate,  the  mighty 
architect  has  placed  a  roof  which  the% 
resources  of  nineteenth-century  engi- 
neering might  be  inadequate  to  con- 
struct; —  one  single  block  from  the 
Istrian  coast,  forty  feet  in  its  diameter, 
a  rounded  dome  above  and  concave 
vault  within,  its  thickness  varying  from 
four  feet  at  the  centre  to  something 
less  at  the  edges,  and  its  weight  two 
hundred  tons.  A  mountain  covered  the 
grave  of  Theodoric,  as  a  river  flowed 
over  that  of  Alaric.  Equidistant  about 
the  side  of  this  mass  are  twelve  projec- 
tions pierced  with  holes,  which  the 
peasants  of  the  neighborhood  have 
called  by  the  names  of  the  twelve  apos- 
tles, as  if  they  had  once  furnished  sup- 
port to  their  statues  ;  but  no  statue 
could  have  stood  upon  their  downward- 
sloping  tops.  Perhaps  the  great  archi- 
tect left  them  there  to  aid  our  imagina- 
tion to  the  method  by  which  this  mass 
of  two  hundred  tons  was  moved  to  its 
position.  There,  at  all  events,  it  stands, 
and  has  stood  these  thirteen  centuries 
and  a  half,  as  firm  and  level  as  when 
the  Gothic  builder  lowered  it  to  its 
place,  defying  time,  defying  the  puny 
assaults  of  modern  men.  Orthodox 
fanaticism  has  availed  only  to  desecrate 
the  tomb  and  scatter  the  kingly  ashes. 
No  feebler  force  than  the  lightning  of 
heaven  has  rent  in  two  parts,  which 
yet  remain  unmoved  in  their  places, 
the  work  of  that  hero  whose  empire 
was  at  least  coextensive  with  Charle- 
magne's, and  whose  glory  deserves  to 
be  no  less. 


1 868.] 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


723 


OUR     PARIS     LETTER. 


DEAR  MAMMA:— 
I  fear  you  are  a  little  impatient  to 
know  why  it  was  that  Jean  Baptiste  and 
I  were  married  and  off  to  Paris  six 
weeks  before  the  time  fixed  for  our 
wedding,  according  to  your  latest  ad- 
vices. I  also  fear  you  were  not  quite 
satisfied  with  the  little  letter  I  sent  you 
the  morning  we  were  married.  I  do  not 
remember  one  word  of  that  letter,  but 
I  know  it  was  too  short  to  contain  any 
proper  explanation  of  the  affair.  I  as- 
sure you,  my  dear  mamma,  that  it  was 
impossible  for  me  to  be  any  more  ex- 
plicit then.  I  do  believe  that  no  other 
girl  was  ever  hurried  as  I  was  that 
morning  and  the  night  before. 

Only  seventeen  hours  before  the  wed- 
ding actually  took  place  Jean  Baptiste 
came  to  my  school-room  in  a  buggy, 
and  called  me  out.  He  said  that  a 
friend  of  the  family  had  lately  died  in 
Paris,  leaving  him  a  large  legacy,  — quite 
a  little  fortune,  in  fact ;  that  his  father 
had  just  received  intelligence  to  that 
effect  through  the  Atlantic  Cable  Tele- 
graph ;  that  this  rendered  it  necessary 
for  us  to  start  for  France  immediately, 
instead  of  waiting  till  August,  as  we 
had  intended  ;  and  that  it  had  been  de- 
cided, in  family  council,  that  the  wed- 
ding should  come  off  quietly  next  morn- 
ing at  eight  o* clock,  so  that  he  and  I,  and 
his  father  and  mother,  who  were  to  ac- 
company us,  could  take  the  9.15  train 
eastward. 

"Dismiss  your  school,"  said  he,  "if 
it  costs  you  half  a  year's  salary,  and  get 
into  the  buggy,  and  come  with  me. 
Father  and  mother  wish  to  explain  to 
you  our  relation  to  this  man  who  has 
just  died  in  Paris.  Father  and  he  were 
engaged  together  in  a  curious  affair  a 
great  many  years  ago,  which  laid  the 
foundations  of  both  their  fortunes. 
Father  thinks  you  ought  to  know  all 
about  it  before  we  are  married,  and  I 
quite  agree  with  him.  There  is  nothing 
criminal  nor  disgraceful  in  it,  and  it  there 


were,  it  all  happened  long  before  I  was 
born,  so  I  know  it  will  make  no  differ- 
ence with  your  willingness  to  marry 

'  me.  I  will  therefore  improve  the  time 
while  father  is  enlightening  you  with 

•this  scrap  of  family  history  by  driving 
around  to  the  school  authorities,*  and 
telling  them  all  about  the  matter." 

So  saying,  my  lord  and  master  elect 
handed  me  into  his  buggy,  after  I  had 
dismissed  my  wondering  pupils,  drove 
home  with  me,  and  turned  me  over  to 
his  father  and  mother,  who  received  me 
with  a  degree  of  kindness  that  ought  to 
have  put  me  at  my  ease.  But  I  was  so 
dazed  that  I  could  not,  and  did  not,  make 
any  objection  to  being  married  at  such 
short  notice,  nor  plead  for  even  one 
day's  delay,  but  sat  helplessly  repeat- 
ing to  myself,  "  To-morrow  morning 
at  eight  o'clock,  —  to-morrow  morning 
at  eight  o'clock." 

Father  Moran  said,  that,  in  his  early 
youth,  he  and  his  friend,  who  had  just 
died  in  Paris,  had  been  engaged  to- 
gether in  a  somewhat  extraordinary  ad- 
venture which  he  thought  ought  to  be 
related  to  me  before  I  united  myself 
irrevocably  with  a  member  of  his  family. 
The  story,  he  said,  had  been  confided 
to  many  of  his  friends,  and  was  now  no 
secret.  Still  he  preferred  that  I  should 
hear  it  from  his  own  lips  before  Jean 
Baptiste  and  I  were  married,  so  that  it 
might  not  appear  that  any  important 
fact  in  the  history  of  the  family  had 
been  concealed  from  me.  He  then  pro- 
ceeded to  give  me  an  outline  of  his 
early  history.  Since  that  time  he  and 
Mother  Moran  have  returned  to  the 
subject  so  freely  and  so  frequently,  that 
every  incident  and  every  situation  in 
the  story  is  impressed  upon  my  memory 
as  distinctly  and  vividly,  I  verily  be- 
lieve, as  it  is  upon  theirs. 

I  have  been  greatly  aided,  no  doubt, 
in  following  the  narrative,  by  my  own 
knowledge,  acquired  while  I  was  teach- 
ing in  Canada,  of  the  topography  and 


724 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


[December, 


the  local  habits  and  traditions  of  the 
neighborhood  where  Father  Moran  met 
with  his  main  adventure. 

Father  and  Mother  Moran  and  Jean 
Baptiste  all  think  that  I  ought  to  write 
to  you  a  full  account  of  the  matter. 
Father  Moran,  especially,  desires  me 
to  do  so.  He  says  that  if  I  neglect  it 
ten  days,  you  will,  in  the  mean  time, 
hear  from  some  source  that  I  am  mar- 
ried to  the  son  of  a  reformed  brigancU 
or  s*ome  such  character. 

I  have  promised  to  put  the  whole 
story  into  this  letter,  and  I  shall  do  so 
if  I  can  find  an  envelope  in  Paris  large 
enough  to  contain  it.  I  have  also  prom- 
ised —  and  I  renew  the  promise  to  you, 
mamma  —  not  to  draw  upon  my  imagi- 
nation any  more  than  my  nature  abso- 
lutely requires. 

Before  F begin  this  long  story,  let  me 
finish  what  I  started  to  write  about  my 
wedding. 

When  I  got  away  from  Father  and 
Mother  Moran,  it  was  almost  five 
o'clock.  I  was  to  be  married  early 
next  morning  to  the  best-dressed  man 
in  St.  Louis,  and  I  had  no  clothes  fit 
to  be  worn  at  a  drayman's  wedding. 

In  my  despair  I  went  straight  to  my 
dress-maker,  who  had  already  under- 
taken to  get  up  my  wedding  finery,  but 
had  not  as  yet  put  a  stitch  in  it,  and  told 
her  my  story  with  tears  in  my  eyes.  As 
soon  as  my  deplorable  situation  was 
known  in  the  shop,  I  commanded  the 
sympathy  of  the  whole  establishment. 
When  the  regular  hours  for  work  were 
past,  the  good  dress-maker  and  her  dear 
girls,  together  with  four  angels  from  an- 
other establishment,  took  me  in  hand ; 
and  it  is  but  simple  justice  to  say  that 
they  presented  me  at  the  altar  next 
morning  in  unexceptionable  attire,  and 
with  my  trunks  packed  as  became  a 
bride  starting  upon  her  wedding  tour. 

We  were  quietly  married  at  eight 
o'clock  (no  cards),  and  started  immedi- 
ately for  Paris,  and  here  we  are. 

Now  for  Father  Moran's  story  :  — 

Edward  Moran  was  born  in  Massa- 
chusetts, and  is  doubtless  related  to  the 
Morans  of  Springfield.  His  parents  re- 
moved to  Lower  Canada  while  he  was 


a  baby.  His  father  was  a  physician, 
and  a  poor  man  his  life  long.  His 
mother  died  when  he  was  twelve  years 
old.  At  fourteen  he  was  articled  — 
whatever  that  may  mean  —  to  an  archi- 
tect in  Montreal.  Shortly  after  that 
his  father  died,  leaving  less  than  prop- 
erty enough  to  pay  his  debts. 

It  would  have  gone  hard  with  poor 
Edward  in  his  poverty  and  his  orphan- 
age, if  the  architect  and  his  lady  had 
not  been  kind  and  generous  people. 
They  pretended  that  his  services  were 
worth  more  than  his  instruction,  and 
made  that  their  pretext  for  forcing  up- 
on him  what  money  and  other  things 
he  needed.  When  he  was  twenty-one, 
and  no  longer  a  student  or  apprentice, 
or  whatever  he  had  been,  the  good 
architect,  who  was  an  Englishman,  and 
whose  name  was  Nevins,  as  I  ought  to 
have  told  you  before,  gave  him  fifty 
pounds.  [Fifty  pounds  in  Canada 
equal  two  hundred  dollars.  The  Ca- 
nadians count  their  money  the  same 
as  the  English  do  theirs,  but  their 
pounds,  shillings^  and  pence  are  only 
about  four  fiftlfs  as  valuable  as  the  £, 
s.,  and  d.  sterling.  At  least,  it  was  so 
when  I  was  in  Canada.  From  this 
time  forth  even  unto  the  end  of  this 
letter,  I  shall  reduce  every  sum  I  am 
called  upon  to  mention  into  rational 
dollars  and  cents,  so  that  you  can  have 
some  notion  whether  the  sum  be  worth 
mentioning  or  not.]  Mrs.  Nevins  gave 
him  several  valuable  presents,  which 
she  called  keepsakes,  and  an  honest 
motherly  kiss  ;  and  little  Nellie  Nevins 
cried  till  her  eyes  were  very  red  when 
he  went  away.  Mr.  Nevins  had  pro- 
cured for  him  a  job,  or  order,  or  con- 
tract, or  whatever  else  an  architect 
would  call  it,  to  plan  and  superintend 
the  erection  of  a  big  house  above  Brock-, 
ville  in  Upper  Canada,  and  immediately 
opposite  the  Thousand  Islands  in  the 
St.  Lawrence. 

Of  course  Edward  was  very  much  in 
love  with  Nellie  Nevins.  She  must 
have  been  a  splendid  girl,  she  is  such 
a  superb  old  lady.  He  not  only  loved 
her  very  desperately,  but  felt  quite  sure 
that  she  loved  him.  But  he  was  quite 


1868.] 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


725 


penniless,  and  was,  or  thought  he  was,  a 
pensioner  on  her  father's  bounty;  so  it 
seemed  to  him  that  every  principle  of 
honor  and  gratitude  conspired  to  close 
his  lips,  and  he  and  Nellie  parted 
without  coming  to  any  understanding 
in  words.  The  true  state  of  the  case 
was  nevertheless  plain  enough  to  all 
concerned,  including  Nellie's  good  fa- 
ther and  mother. 

Young  Moran  went  to  his  new  field 
of  labor  with  a  vague  notion,  not  rea- 
sonable enough  to  be  called  an  idea, 
nor  definite  enough  to  be  called  a  wish, 
but  still  an  ever-present  lurking  fancy, 
of  making  some  sudden  and  signal  dis- 
play of  genius,  or  achieving  some  grand 
stroke  of  fortune  before  his  image  should 
quite  fade  out  of  Nellie's  tender  heart. 
His  aspirations  were  vague  and  dreamy, 
and  mixed  up  with  his  little  love  affair, 
as  the  heroic  tendencies  of  very  young 
people  always  are.  They  found,  how- 
ever, some  expression,  I  verily  believe, 
in  the  work  he  had  in  hand,  —  a  gentle- 
man's dwelling,  built  on  a  generous  and 
costly  scale.  I  well  remember  how 
proudly,  and  yet  how  tenderly,  it  crowned 
its  hill  when  I  saw  it,  and  was  never 
tired  of  gazing  at  it,  more,  than  twenty 
years  after  the  young  lover  and  dream- 
er had  built  it,  and  into  it  some  of  his 
lofty  day-dreams.  His  nature  was  not 
sordid,  but  his  imagination  frequently 
revelled  in  gorgeous  visions  of  wealth  ; 
and  many  of  his  ground-plans  of  life 
were  laid  out  for  a  solid  foundation  of 
gold  and  silver.  His  aspirations,  I  feel 
sure,  would  not  have  taken  this  form, 
poor  as  he  was,  if  his  imagination  had 
not  been  fired  by  stories  of  hidden  treas- 
ures among  the  islands. 

No  better  hiding-place  could  have 
been  found.  The  Thousand  Islands  are 
not  extravagantly  named.  There  are, 
it  is  said,  more  than  fifteen  hundred 
islands  in  the  group.  They  vary  in 
size  from  a  mere  point  of  rock  to  sev- 
eral hundred  acres.  The  St.  Law- 
rence here  abandons  the  solemn  role 
of  a  deep,  broad  river,  and  frolics  madly 
about  among  the  islands  in  a  perplexing 
maze  of  narrow,  devious  channels,  some 
of  them  mere  rivulets.  It  was  one  of 


the  mysteries  of  my  Canadian  days,  not 
yet  cleared  up,  how  the  pilots  ever  find 
their  way  through  this  labyrinth  of  wa- 
ters. 

Moran  was  protected  by  his  pure  love 
for  Nellie  from  running  into  any  ex- 
cesses which  would  make  him  unworthy 
of  her.  He  was,  at  the  same  time, 
driven  by  his  utter  loneliness  and  his 
hardy,  adventurous  spirit  into  much 
.  rough  company.  A  knot  of  hard-drink- 
ing, story-telling  cronies  who  assembled 
nightly  at  the  Tripe  and  Trotters  tavern 
had  a  special  attraction  for  him,  though 
he  never  joined  in  their  drunken  or- 
gies. 

Here  he  heard  the  story  of  O'Don- 
nel,  the  smuggler,  par  excellence,  of  the 
Thousand  Islands. 

This  worthy,  it  seemed,  was  a  native 
of  Kingston,  Upper  Canada.  His  moth- 
er was  a  wretched  creature  who  hung 
around  the  soldiers'  barracks  at  Fort 
Henry,  near  that  city.  He  was  awfully 
deformed,  there  being  such  an  inequal- 
ity in  the  length  of  his  legs  and  the 
height  of  his  shoulders  as  to  produce  a 
constant  distortion  of  his  countenance, 
when  walking  or  even  standing.  When 
he  was  sitting,  or  lying  quite  still,  how- 
ever, his  features  were  said  to  have  been 
singularly  regular  and  spirituelle,  and  to 
have  worn  a  sad  and  stern  expression. 
His  mother,  whose  name  he  bore,  died 
when  he  was  a  mere  lad.  From  his  in- 
fancy to  his  early  manhood  he  fought  a 
battle  without  a  truce  with  the  world  for 
his  daily  bread.  His  manner  was  surly 
and  unsocial.  He  was  a  miser  from  his 
boyhood  and  a  misanthrope  from  his 
cradle.  When  he  was  about  twenty- 
two  years  of  age  he  established  himself 
on  one  of  the  Thousand  Islands,  situ- 
ated about  midway  between  the  shores 
of  the  river,  far  away  from  the  route 
pursued  by  vessels  of  any  considerable 
burden,  washed  on  every  side  by  swift 
narrow  channels  and  fierce  eddies,  con- 
taining about  an  acre  and  a  half  of  rocky 
soil,  and  approachable  only  by  crooked 
and  unfrequented  channels.  This  de- 
lectable rfetreat  soon  came  to  be  known 
as  Smuggler's  Island,  for  reasons  that 
will  presently  appear. 


726 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


[December, 


O'Donnel  was  strong  and  resolute,  as 
many  deformed  men  are.  He  was  a 
skilful  trapper  and  hunter,  but  was 
chiefly  renowned  as  a  smuggler.  In 
Moran's  day  many  anecdotes  were 
afloat  of  the  cunning  and  prowess  with 
which  he,  time  and  time  again,  baffled 
the  custom-house  officers.  In  the  sum- 
mer he  transported  his  goods  across  the 
river  in  a  large  light  canoe.  In  the 
winter  he  used  for  the  same  purpose 
a  light  sleigh,  drawn  by  powerful  and 
fleet  horses,  some  of  them  almost  as 
celebrated  as  he  was.  Winter  and 
summer  alike,  his  route  of  transit  was 
only  known  to  himself.  He  confined 
his  traffic  to  valuable  articles  having 
but  little  weight  or  bulk,  so  that  he 
needed  no  assistance.  Many  of  the 
islands  were  wooded  with  large  forest 
trees  and  a  dense  growth  of  what  the 
natives  called  underbrush.  O'Donnel 
was  reputed  to  have  made  himself  fa- 
miliar with  many  secure  hiding-places, 
tortuous  channels,  and  blind  forest  paths 
which  no  other  man  could  find  or  trace, 
but  which  were  plain  to  him  in  the  dark- 
est night.  There  was  something  weird 
and  uncanny,  it  was  said,  in  the  sudden- 
ness and  unaccountableness  of  his  ap- 
pearances and  disappearances. 

Thus  he  flourished  some  twenty  years. 
Toward  the  latter  part  of  his  career  he 
seemed  a  little  more  amenable  to  the 
influences  of  civilization,  and  a  little 
more  attentive  to  his  own  comfort.  He 
built  himself  a  decent  "shanty,"  and,, 
what  astonished  the  people  still  more, 
he  invested  over  one  hundred  thousand 
dollars  in  lands.  This  last  operation, 
however,  exhibited  him  in  the  charac- 
ter of  an  ordinary  human  being  so  much 
that  he  soon  became  disgusted  with  it. 
Jxist  before  his  death  he  sold  all  his 
lands  for  cash,  some  of  them  at  a  small 
sacrifice,  but  most  of  them  at  a  consid- 
erable profit. 

After  his  haunt  was  revealed,  it  be- 
came the  settled  policy  of  the  revenue 
officers  to  make  a  descent  upon  Smug- 
gler's Island  once  in  about  three 
months.  These  raids  never  resulted 
in  the  discovery  of  any  contraband 
goods,  but  were  continued  from  mere 


force  of  habit,  which,  in  such  cases,  is, 
I  believe,  called  official  routine. 

One  morning  just  before  dawn,  the 
period  of  the  day  always  chosen  for 
these  visits,  a  party  of  three  officers 
landed  suddenly  and  silently  on  Smug- 
gler's Island,  as  they  had  done  many 
times  before.  They  first  explored  the 
island  outside  of  the  cabin,  as  was  their 
settled  practice.  They  then  -entered 
the  shanty  in  the  old  unceremonious 
way,  and  found  the  smuggler  dead.  He 
had  evidently  been  dead  as  much  as  a 
week.  Wretched  outcast  as  he  was, 
he  was  rich ;  and  so  his  remains  were 
taken  to  the  main  shore  and  buried  in 
consecrated  soil. 

Speculation  was  now  rife  as  to  the 
disposition  of  his  money.  He  had  no 
family.  No  man  had  ever  owned  him 
as  his  son,  nor  had  his  paternity  ever 
been  distinctly  charged  upon  any  man. 
Nothing  was  known,  nor  could  any- 
thing be  learned,  of  the  early  history 
or  family  connections  of  his  mother. 
Who  was  she  ?  Whence  came  she  ? 
Was  O'Donnel  her  family  name,  or  the 
name  of  some  deserted  husband  ?  or 
had  she  assumed  it,  as  most  of  her 
class  assume  some  name  other  than 
that  by  which  they  were  known  in  the 
days  of  their  purity  ?  These  questions 
had  gone  down  into  the  wretched  wo- 
man's grave  unanswered,  and  the  clay 
of  the  Potter's  Field  had  closed  over 
them  forever.  It  was  morally  certain 
that  no  rightful  heir  would  ever  appear 
to  claim  the  smuggler's  treasures.  They 
must  go  to  the  government,  unless  a 
will  should  be  found. 

But  these  treasures,  —  where  were 
they  ?  Every  cranny  of  the  shanty  was 
searched,  every  inch  of  Smuggler's 
Island  was  examined,  and  all  the  isl- 
ands immediately  surrounding  it  were 
carefully  explored,  under  the  super- 
vision of  two  magistrates ;  but  no 
money,  and  not  a  scrap  of  paper,  was 
found.  Unofficial  treasure  -  hunters, 
alone  and  in  parties,  kept  up  the  search 
for  years,  but  to  no  purpose. 

The  smuggler's  land  sales  just  before 
his  death  rendered  it  certain  that  he 
had  left  over  one  hundred  thousand 


1 868.] 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


727 


dollars.  This  was  probably  only  a 
small  part  of  his  riches  ;  for  smuggling 
was  then  very  profitable,  and  parsimony 
never  fails  to  lay  up  money.  O'Donnel 
had  been  a  most  successful  and  enter- 
prising smuggler,  and  a  life-long,  self- 
denying  miser.  Somewhere  along  the 
shores  or  among  the  islands  there  was 
hidden  a  treasure  well  worth  the  find- 
ing. These  facts  and  many  others,  and 
not  a  few  fancies  in  the  same  connec- 
tion, did  Moran  hear  discussed  nightly 
at  the  Tripe  and  Trotters. 

These  wild  stories  about  this  hidden 
hoard  conspired  with  his  poverty,  which 
stood  Jike  a  lion  in  the  path  between 
him  and  his  love,  to  fill  his  musings 
by  day  and  his  dreams  by  night  with 
gold,  gold,  gold,  until  at  last  the  future 
of  his  fancy  was  as  bright  and  rich  with 
treasure  as  it  was  sunny  and  musical 
with  love,  or  sublime  with  high  achieve- 
ments. 

It  was  then  about  ten  years  since  the 
smuggler's  death.  During  the  last  six 
years  of  that  time  Smuggler's  Island 
had  been  occupied  by  a  French  Cana- 
dian named  Jean  Baptiste  Boisvert. 

Of  course  you  foresee  that  this  is  the 
man  for  whom  my  Jean  Baptiste  was 
yarned.  I  beg  you  to  treat  the  name 
a  little  more  respectfully  than  you  did 
in  your  last  letter.  Please  don't  write 
it  "  J.  B."  any  more,  as  if  I  was  married 
to  Joey  Bagstock  or  James  Buchanan. 
I  Jm  sure  I  can't  comprehend  your  ob- 
jections to  the  name.  John  the  Baptist 
was  the  greatest .  of  all  the  prophets. 
His  character,  I  think,  stands  high 
above  that  of  the  patriarch  Joseph, 
,  after  whom  your  only  son  is  called  — 
Joe.  At  any  rate,  the  Baptist  did  not 
lose  his  raiment  of  camels'  hair  as 
Joseph  appears  to  have  lost  all  the  . 
coats  he  ever  had. 

This  Jean  Baptiste  Boisvert  was 
generally  called  simply  Baptiste,  or,  as 
it  was  oftener  pronounced,  "  Batteese." 

He  was  tall,  lean,  sinewy,  brown, 
hawk-eyed,  and  hook-nosed.  His  inner 
man  was  a  queer  compound  of  shrewd- 
ness and  simplicity,  fierce  passion  and 
easy  good-nature.  He  was  totally  il- 
literate. He  seemed  to  understand 


most  that  was  said  to  him  in  English, 
but  his  efforts  to  convey  his  ideas  in 
our  language  consisted  in  gesticula- 
tions, shrugs,  and  grimaces,  with  a 
little  broken  —  nay,  crushed  and  pul- 
verized —  English,  the  performance 
being  generally  more  entertaining  than 
intelligible.  He  drank  pretty  freely 
among  boon  companions,  but  was  nev- 
er known  to  get  drunk,  in  the  sense 
of  being  weakened  or  muddled.  The 
only  effect  which  liquor  seemed  to  have 
upon  him  was  to  improve  his  English. 
Under  the  inspiration  of  whiskey,  he 
would  arrange  his  limited  stock  of 
English  words  into  combinations  which 
no  uninspired  man  would  ever  venture 
upon.  His  grand  independence  of  all 
the  rules  of  English  syntax  on  such 
occasions  made  him  far  more  easily 
understood  than  when,  under  other  cir- 
cumstances, he  tried  to  conform  his 
speech  to  what  he  supposed  were  the 
laws  of  the  language. 

We  have  just  such  a  case  here.  An 
octogenarian  French  gentleman,  who 
was  an  attache  to  the  French  Embassy 
at  Washington  in  the  days  of  President 
John  Adams,  and  who  still  dresses  like 
the  signers  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, and  wears  his  hair  in  a 
queue,  frequently  visits  us  here  at  our 
hotel.  He  will  try  to  talk  English. 
At  first  his  anxiety  to  be  precise  and 
correct  renders  him  painfully  helpless, 
with  his  small  stock  of  English  words  ; 
but  when  he  has  sipped  away  half  a 
dozen  glasses  of  Father  Moran's  good 
wine,  then  —  to  quote  the  strong  lan- 
guage of  an  American  medical  student 
who  also  visits  us  —  "  old  pig  -  tail 
slings  English,  regardless  of  Lindley 
Murray  and  all  his  works." 

As  it  was  evident  that  Baptiste  had 
plenty  of  money,  and  as  he  lived  on 
Smuggler's  Island,  the  people  therea- 
bouts concluded  that  he  was  a  smuggler, 
as  his  predecessor  had  been.  The 
revenue  officers  shared  the  popular 
belief,  and  spent  much  valuable  time 
laying  snares  and  setting  traps  for  Bap- 
tiste and  his  smuggled  goods.  They 
visited  Smuggler's  Island  as  regularly 
as  t^iey  had  done  in  the  days  of  O'Don- 


728 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


[December, 


nel,  and  with  as  little  success  in  the 
way  of  finding  contraband  goods.  In 
other  respects  their  visits  were  now 
more  satisfactory  than  in  the  days  of 
the  miser,  for  Baptiste  always  met 
them  with  great  cordiality,  invariably 
persuaded  them  to  take  breakfast  with 
him,  and,  as  he  was  an  excellent  cook 
and  3,  generous  host,  never  failed  to 
send  them  away  in  the  best  of  humor. 

His  long-continued  impunity  from 
detection  gave  him  a  reputation  among 
the  people  and  at  the  custom-house  for 
almost  superhuman  shrewdness.  The 
official  and  the  public  mind,  having 
taken  up  the  theory  that  he  was  a 
smuggler,  steadily  refused  to  regard 
his  case  from  any  other  point  of  view. 
To  take  a  new  departure,  and  to  say, 
"This  fellow  can't  be  caught  smuggling 
because  he  don't  smuggle,"  would  have 
been  a  mode  of  reasoning  far  too  sim- 
ple and  elementary  for  these  sagacious 
officers  and  profound  people.  Baptiste 
rather  encouraged  his  questionable  rep- 
utation than  otherwise. 

He  was  good-natured  to  a  rare  de- 
gree, but  under  strong  provocation  had 
more  than  once  proved  himself  an  ugly 
customer  in  a  fight  There  was  one 
curious  peculiarity  about  his  fighting. 
After  one  desperate  and  damaging  on- 
set, which  was*sure  to  upset  his  antag- 
onist, —  or  half  a  dozen  antagonists,  if 
so  many  stood  in  his  way,  —  he  always 
ran  away  with  the  speed  of  a  grey- 
hound to  his  canoe,  escaped  with  all 
possible  expedition  to  his  island,  and 
there  secluded  himself  two  or  three 
days.  Nobody  ever  pursued  him.  It 
was  generally  understood  that,  cor- 
nered and  cut  off  from  all  retreat,  he 
would  be  an  uncommonly  dangerous 
man  ;  for  his  strength  and  agility  were 
incredible,  and  he  always  carried  in 
his  belt  a  heavy  hunting-knife.  This 
weapon,  however,  he  was  never  known 
to  draw  upon  a  human  being,  except 
in  the  single  instance  which  I  shall 
relate  by  and  by.  When  I  have  added 
that  he  was  occasionally  subject  to  vio- 
lent attacks  of  hypochondria,  which, 
while  they  lasted,  threw  a  glamour  of 
gloom  over  every  object  he  looked 


upon,  and  made  every  sound,  even  that 
of  his  own  voice,  seem  hollow  and 
sepulchral,  you  have  the  portrait  of 
Jean  Baptiste  Boisvert  as  well  as  I 
can  paint  it. 

Moran  first  became  acquainted  with 
Baptiste  in  this  wise.  He  happened 
one  day  into  a  store  in  the  neighbor- 
hood which  had  just  been  opened  by  a 
newly  arrived  Scotchman  from  Dum- 
fries. Baptiste  was  there,  and  had  been 
trying  to  sell  a  pack  of  beaver-skins  to 
the  new  merchant.  Beaver  fur  was  at 
that  time  very  valuable,  and  not  very 
scarce  in  Canada.  Every  country  mer- 
chant dealt  in  it  as  a  matter  of  course. 
Indeed,  it  was  regarded  almost  as  a  le- 
gal tender. 

Sandy  with  his  broad  Scotch,  and 
Baptiste  with  his  execrable  English,  had 
each  reduced  the  other  to  a  condition 
bordering  on  lunacy.  When  Moran 
entered  the  store,  Baptiste  was  tying 
up  his  bundle,  and  muttering  to  him- 
self. 

"Sacre  bleu!"  said  he.  "Zat  man 
not  onderstan  no  French,  and  he  know 
not  some  English.  How  sal  somebody 
wiz  heem,  vat  you  call  make  bargain, 
by  tonder  !  eh  ?  " 

This  he  said  as  if  to  himself,  but 
without  lowering  his  tones,  for  he  fully 
believed  that  the  merchant  could  not 
understand  anything  he  could  say.  The 
latter,  however,  took  him  up  warmly. 

"Hoot,  mon,"  said  he,  "gin  your 
French  be  like  your  Ennglish,  ye  canna 
parlevoo  for  the  twa  hurdies  of  a  frogue, 
nor  e'en  whustle  to  a  French  dogue  to 
ony  pourpose." 

Baptiste,  who  understood  nothing  of 
this,  shrugged  his  shoulders,  took  up 
his  pack  of  skins,  and  started  for  the 
door.  Moran  called  him  back  in  French, 
and  offered  to  interpret  for  him. 

With  his  aid  the  Frenchman  and 
Scotchman  soon  came  to  a  satisfactory 
understanding. 

After  that  Moran  and  Baptiste  fre- 
quently met,  and  soon  became  quite  in- 
timate. They  were  a  queerly  assorted 
pair,  but  their  friendship  grew  and 
strengthened  apace.  Each  found  in 
the  other  a  sort  of  supplement  to  his 


1 868.] 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


729 


own  character.  Baptiste  was  volatile, 
quick  of  resource  and  fertile  in  expedi- 
ents/but  singularly  wanting  in  persist- 
ence, except  when  some  powerful  pas- 
sion dragged  him  steadily  on.  Moran, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  clear-headed, 
slow  but  sure  in  his  mental  processes, 
and,  though  a  dreamer  of  wild  young 
dreams,  he  was  none  the  less  a  man  of 
firm  purpose  and  unyielding  decision 
of  character.  They  were  both  gener- 
ous fellows,  and  capable  of  strong 
friendship ;  and  so  it  happened  that 
they  became  constant  companions  dur- 
ing their  hours  of  leisure,  and  the  firm- 
est and  truest  of  friends. 

It  was  not  long  until  Baptiste  invited 
Moran  to  visit  him  at  his  home  on 
Smuggler's  Island.  The  time  fixed  for 
the  visit  was  one  Saturday  evening,  late 
in  the  fall.  Moran  was  to  stay  all 
night  at  the  shanty,  and  return  to  the 
main-land  in  the  morning.  At  the  ap- 
pointed hour  Baptiste  appeared  with 
his  canoe.  Moran  entered  it  boldly, 
but  was  immediately  afterwards  aware 
of  no  little  trepidation.  It  was  a  birch- 
bark  canoe  such  as  you  have  seen  de- 
scribed many  times.  Moran  had  been 
a  distinguished  member  of  a  boat-club 
in  Montreal,  but  this  craft  showed  such 
a  determined  tendency  to  escape  from 
beneath  its  burden,  and  was  withal  so 
slippery  on  the  water,  that  he  began  to 
lose  faith  in  the  law  of  gravitation  the 
moment  after  he  set  his  foot  in  it. 
Baptiste,  however,  held  the  restless 
vessel  firmly  until  his  passenger  was 
seated  near  the  bow.  He  then  stepped 
lightly  aboard,  and  pushed  off  with  as 
much  unconcern  as  though  he  had  been 
navigating  a  raft.  He  apologized  to 
Moran  for  the  clumsiness  of  his  craft, 
said  it  was  his  canoe  for  carrying  loads, 
answered  that  purpose  very  well,  but 
was  not  to  be  compared  to  his  hunting 
canoe,  which,  unfortunately,  would  not 
carry  two  men,  unless  they  were  both 
experienced  canoe-men. 

"Zat  leetle  canoe,"  said  he,  "ees  so 
light,  zat,  when  somebody  shoot  from 
heem,  he  mose  shoot  right  over  ze  bow, 
so,"  —  taking  aim  with  his  paddle. 
"Eef  he  shoot  ziz  vay,  " — taking  aim 


again  in  another  direction,  —  "ze  canoe 
vill  spill  ze  man,  before  ze  shot  sail  get 
out  of  ze  fusil,  —  vat  you  call  gone." 

"  You  must  excuse  me  from  hunting 
in  that  canoe  until  I  get  over  being 
nervous  in  this,"  said  Moran  in  French. 

Moran's  French  always  recalled  Bap- 
tiste from  his  raids  against  the  King's 
English.  So  he  went  on  extolling  his 
little  canoe  in  French.  He  gave  sev- 
eral instances  of  its  extraordinary  buoy- 
ancy and  sea-worthiness  ;  also  its  re- 
markable tendency  to  upset  with  inex- 
perienced navigators. 

He  dwelt  with  special  unction  upon 
the  case  of  an  old  lake  sailor,  wha 
swore  that  he  could  manage  any  craft 
that  ever  floated,  but  was  ignominiously 
upset  before  he  had  fairly  got  clear  of 
the  shore  witU  the  little  canoe  ;  and 
who  excused  his  mishap  by  averring, 
with  many  fearful  imprecations,  that  he 
had  careened  the  craft  by  carelessly 
shifting  his  tobacco  from  his  starboard 
cheek  to  the  port  side  of  his  face. 

When  they  had  landed  upon  Smug- 
gler's Island,  and  entered  the  shanty, 
they  found  a  great  wood-fire  blazing 
upon  the  hearth.  This  had  been  -kin- 
dled by  Baptiste  before  he  started  for 
his  guest,  and  so  built  up  with  green 
logs  that  it  was  sure  not  to  burn  down 
before  he  returned.  Its  warmth  was 
right  welcome  that  cold  November 
evening. 

The  shanty  was  built  of  logs  "  scored 
and  hewed,"  —  i.  e.  chipped  with  a 
common  axe,  and  partially  smoothed 
with  a  broad-axe  inside.  The  inter- 
stices between  the  logs  were  first  stopped 
with  strips  of  white  cedar,  then 
"  chinked,"  or  calked  with  moss,  and 
plastered,  or  "pointed  "  with  "  mud,"  — 
i.e.  clay  tempered  with  sand,  —  a  kind 
of  mortar  formerly  much  used  by  the 
common  people  in  Canada.  The  roof, 
which  was  also  the  ceiling,  was  nearly 
flat,  and  was  composed  of  "  troughs,"  - 
that  is,  logs  split  in  halves,  and  hol- 
lowed out,  so  that  each  piece  resembles 
a  great  slab  of  bark.  These  were  dis- 
posed in  two  layers,  so  that  the  upper 
layer  battened  the  lower.  This  form  of 
roof  is  quite  waterproof  and  very  dura- 


730 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


[December, 


ble.  Only  the  better  class  of  shanties 
boast  such  roofs.  The  inferior  sort  are 
covered  with  bark.  The  floor  of  rough 
plank  was  well  fitted,  or  "jointed,"  and 
securely  fastened  to  the  "  sleepers  " 
below  with  wooden  pins.  There  was 
but  one  room,  and  only  two  small  win- 
dows. The  great  feature  of  the  estab- 
lishment was  the  fireplace,  which  occu- 
pied at  least  one  third  of  the  north 
wall.  It  consisted  of  a  fire-back  of 
rough  stones  laid  up  in  mud,  built  into 
an  opening  left  in  the  side  of  the  build- 
ing for  that  purpose.  It  was  flush  with 
the  inside  face  of  the  wall,  and  extend- 
ed back,  out  of  doors,  some  four  feet. 
Above  the  stone  fire-back  the  chimney 
was  carried  up  entirely  outside  of  the 
shanty,  and  was  built  of  strips  of  cedar, 
laid  up  cob-house  fashion,  and  thickly 
daubed  inside  and  out  with  "  mud." 

Should  you  ask  me  how  I  happen 
To  be  so  well  versed  in  building, 
Roofing,  flooring,  warming  shanties, 
I  would  answer,  I  would  tell  you  : 
The  first  Winter  I  taught  school  in 
The  primeval,  hyperborean 
Backwoods  of  the  New  Dominion  ; 
I  and  my  Canadian  pupils 
Housed  were  we  in  such  a  shanty. 
Only  the  great  generous  fireplace 
Was  not  there,  —  was  sadly  wanting. 
And  its  place  was  meanly  taken 
By  a  dingy  stove  of  iron. 
Redolent  of  heat  and  headache. 

Baptiste's  domicile  was  furnished 
with  a  rough  pine  table,  three  stools,  a 
big  chest  banded  with  hoop-iron  and 
fastened  with  a  padlock.  A  few  cheap 
religious  prints  hung  on  the  walls,  also 
a  large  assortment  of  guns,  powder- 
horns,  and  other  hunting  implements. 
Bedstead  there  was  none  ;  but  there 
was,  instead,  a  big  pile  of  skins  and 
blankets  in  one  corner. 

Into  another  corner  there  were  fitted 
four  triangular  shelves,  upon  which 
rested  the  culinary  resources  of  the 
establishment,  also  a  plentiful  supply 
of  pipes  and  tobacco. 

Baptiste  was,  as  I  have  before  re- 
marked, a  good  cook  and  a  generous 
host.  He  soon  prepared  a  savory  sup- 
per, to  which  his  guest  did  ample  jus- 
tice. 

After  supper  the  two  friends  smoked 
and  talked  until  bedtime.  Their  con- 


versation consisted  of  ordinary  neigh- 
borhood gossip,  seasoned  by  a  few 
marvellous  hunting-stories  on  the -part 
of  Baptiste,  and  a  demonstration  by 
the  young  architect  that  the  defunct 
smuggler  could  have  erected  a  comfort- 
able stone  house  on  the  site  of  the 
shanty  for  less  than  the  cost  of  that 
rude  structure,  inasmuch  as  the  logs  of 
which  the  shanty  was  built  had  to  be 
brought  some  distance,  and  at  consid- 
erable expense,  while  the  materials  for 
a  good  stone  house  were  to  be  found  in 
great  abundance  on  the  island. 

After  this  they  retired  each  to  a  lib- 
eral pile  of  skins  and  blankets,  and 
slept  soundly  till  daylight. 

The  next  morning  turned  out  to  be 
windy  and  rainy,  and  miserably  cold 
withal,  and  Moran  was  easily  persuaded 
to  spend  the  Sunday  on  the  island. 

After  breakfast  Baptiste  amused  his 
guest  by  showing  him  some  astonishing 
tricks  with  playing-cards. 

Of  these  he  had  a  large  and  various 
assortment  in  his  big  chest.  Being 
unable  to  while  away  the  solitude  of 
his  home  with  books,  he  had  by  long 
practice  acquired  astonishing  dexterity 
and  skill  in  manipulating  cards.  He 
explained  each  trick  to  Moran  after  he 
had  exhibited  it.  Some  of  them  in- 
volved intricate  mathematical  calcula- 
tions, others  consisted  merely  in  rapid 
and  dexterous  handling  ;  but  the  most 
numerous  and  bewildering  of  his  feats 
were  due  solely  to  his  ability  to  distin- 
guish the  cards  by  their  backs.  Moran 
was  naturally  astonished  at  this  faculty, 
but  Baptiste  made  light  of  it. 

"Ze  gamblur,"  said  he,  "he  mark  ze 
carte  so,  and  so,  and  so ;  but  zat  ees 
vat  you  call  clomsy.  Ze  pack  of  carte, 
he  ees  all  make  on  von  big  sheet,  and 
zen  cut  in  pieces.  Ze  back  of  von 
carte  not  vill  like  ze  back  of  anozer 
carte  be  never.  You  mose  look  close 
at  ze  back  of  von  carte  and  remember 
heem,  zen  anozer  and  anozer.  'T  is  ver' 
easy.  You  can  learn  eet  to  make  queek 
in  two,  tree  year." 

"  I  should  think,"  said  Moran  in 
French,  "  you  might  win  all  the  money 
you  chose  at  cards." 


1 868.] 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


731 


"So  I  might,"  said  Baptiste  in  the 
same  language,  "  but  what  good  would 
it  do  me  ?  What  good  does  a  gam- 
bler's money  ever  do  him  ?  My  father 
used  to  say,  'It  is  more  comfortable 
to  pick  up  red-hot  pennies  bare-handed, 
than  to  win  cool  guineas  at  play.'  My 
father  was  right.  I  have  seen  a  few 
gamblers,  and  I  know  he  was  right. 

"  No,"  continued  Baptiste,  after  mus- 
ing awhile,  "  I  am  not  a  gambler,  thank 
God,  nor  a  smuggler  neither,  though 
the  stupid  people  think  I  am.  Bah  ! 
the  sots  !  Where  do  they  think  I  sell 
my  smuggled  goods  ?  I  never  go  away, 
except  sometimes  to  Brockville,  and 
once  in  a  great  while  to  Kingston,  and 
there  the  custom-house  officers  stick 
to  me  like  my  shadow.  No,  messieurs, 
I  am  obliged  to  you,  no  smuggling 
for  me.  'It  would  fatigue  me  too  much. 
Still,  you  must  not  tell  the  people  that 
I  am  not  a  great  smuggler.  They 
would  not  believe  you  if  you  did.  Be- 
sides, it  is  convenient  for  me  to  be 
thought  a  smuggler.  While  the  people 
and  the  officers  are  looking  out  for  my 
smuggled  goods,  they  are  blind  to  my 
real  faults.  I  have  enough  of  them, 
God  knows." 

The  day  wore  away  with  smoking, 
drowsy  talk,  and  downright  napping. 
In  short,  the  two  bachelors  spent  the 
Sunday  as  unprotected  males  are  apt 
to  do. 

After  supper,  when  they  were  once 
more  seated  before  the  big  fire,  Bap- 
tiste suddenly  exclaimed  :  "  Eet  ees  not 
von  beet  —  by  tender !  —  use  to  have  a 
man  for  your  fren,  or  be  hees  fren,  if  you 
can't  trose  heem.  My  boy,  tell  me  your 
leetle  story,  zen  I  sail  to  you  tell  eet 
mine.  You  beg'een,  for  yours  sail  be 
moche,  —  not  so  longer  as  mine." 

Moran  readily  complied,  and  frankly 
and  modestly  related  his  short  and 
simjMe  annals.  He  approached  the 
subject  of  his  passion  for  Nellie  Nev- 
ins  reluctantly.  But  he  felt  sure  that 
the  rough,  uncultivated  man  before  him 
was  as  pure-minded  and  chivalrous 
of  heart  as  the  proudest  chevalier  of 
them  all.  The  sacred  name  of  Nellie 
Nevins  he  knew  would  rest  in  the 


memory  of  this  semi-barbarian  as  free 
from  evil  associations  as  in  his  own. 
Besides,  he  was  anxious,  iftt  merely  to 
have,  but  to  deserve,  Baptiste's  entire 
confidence.  So  he  made  full  confession 
of  his  hopeless  love,  hopeless  because 
of  his  poverty. 

"  Ma  foi !  "  said  Baptiste,  in  his  moth- 
er-tongue, "  you  have  but  little  to  look 
back  upon.  You  are  ail  the  more  free 
to  look  forward.  At  your  age  my  story 
was  even  shorter  than  yours.  For  I 
was  then  living  with  my  father  and 
mother,  and  had  no  cares. 

"  My  father,  after  whom  I  am  named, 
and  his  brother  Cyril,  were  first  voy- 
ageurs,  and  afterwards  traders,  —  fac- 
tors they  called  them, — in  the  service 
of  the  Northwest  Company  of  fur-trad- 
ers. When  that  company  was  swal- 
lowed up  by  the  Hudson  Bay  Company 
my  father  returned  to  his  native  village, 
about  twelve  miles  from  Montreal, 
bought  a  house  in  the  village,  and  a 
farm  near  it,  married,  and  became  a 
quiet  citizen.  He  had  money  enough 
to  make  his  family  comfortable  and  re- 
spectable, and,  being  a  prudent,  sober 
man,  his  property  increased  to  the  day 
of  his  death.  My  father  and  mother 
had  but  two  children,  —  myself  and  my 
sister  Marie,  two  years  younger. 

"About  ten  years  after  my  father  left 
the  fur  trade,  my  uncle  Cyril  also  came 
out  of  the  woods,  and  settled  in  our 
village.  He,  too,  married,  and  his  wife 
was  a  dear  good  woman.  They  had 
no  children.  A  yellow  devil  possessed 
my  uncle.  He  was  rich  ;  but  the  more 
gold  he  had  the  more  he  toiled  and 
schemed  for  gold.  Give  him  a  chance 
to  do  a  good  deed  which  cost  no  money, 
and  he  was  a  good  man.  He  would  sit 
up  all  night,  and  many  nights,  with  a 
sick  neighbor.  Once,  when  a  feeble 
old  man  was  attacked  by  a  big  bully, 
my  uncle  defended  him  so  bravely  and 
so  stoutly  that  every  one  applauded 
him,  and  .  the  bully  never  showed  his 
face  in  the  village  again.  Another 
time,  when  a  fire  was  raging  in  our  vil- 
lage, he  rushed  into  the  very  flames, 
and  rescued  a  little  girl  who  would  have 
been  burned  in  her  bed  but  for  him. 


732 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


[December, 


That  little  girl  was  afterwards  my  wife. 
She  loved  ^id  trusted  my  uncle,  in 
spite  of  his  avarice,  as  long  as  she 
lived.  My  sister,  too,  always  defended 
him.  She  said  his  love  of  gold  was  a 
disease  rather  than  a  fault ;  and  that  he 
joiight  to  be  pitied  and  not  blamed  for 
it.  These  two  girls  could,  either  of 
them,  persuade  him  to  give  a  little 
money  for  a  good  object,  when  no  one 
else  could  get  a  sou  out  of  him. 

"  At  twenty-two  I  was  married  to  a 
dear  good  girl,  —  the  same  that  my  un- 
cle'had  saved  from  the  fire.  My  sister 
was  betrothed  to  an  excellent  young 
man,  and  we  were  all  happy.  My  fa- 
ther and  mother  had  never  been  taught, 
and  cared  nothing  for  learning.  There 
was  no  school  in  our  village.  We  had 
two  villages  in  one  parish.  The  parish 
school  was  in  the  other  village,  and 
more  than  four  miles  from  us.  So  I 
never  went  to  school,-  and  know  noth- 
ing. But  my  good  aunt  had  persuaded 
my  father  to  send  Marie  to  a  convent- 
school,  and  she  was  quite  a  scholar. 
So  was  my  wife. 

"  Now  comes  the  miserable  part  of 
my  story :  — 

"  There  came  to  our  village  a  terrible 
fever.  No  one  who  was  taken  down 
with  it  recovered.  More  than  half  the 
people  in  our  village  were  swept  away 
by  it.  First  my  mother  died,  then  my 
aunt,  then  my  father  was  taken  down 
at  my  uncle's  house,  where  he  hap- 
pened to  be  ;  and,  in  four  days  from  the 
time  he  took  to  his  bed,  he  died  there. 
My  wife  and  my  sister  were  worn  out 
with  watching  and  grief,  and,  two  days 
after  my  father's  death,  they  died,  both 
in  one  hour.  Then,  in  the  mids't  of  my 
wild  grief,  I  was  summoned  to  my  un- 
cle's to  hear  the  reading  of  my  father's 
will.  I  went.  My  uncle,  a  villanous 
little  notary,  and  I,  were  there  together. 
No  one  else  was  about  the  house.  The 
notary  produced  a  big  parchment,  which 
he  said  was  my  father's  last  will.  He 
explained  to  me,  before  he  commenced 
reading  it,  that,  two  days  before  my 
father's  death,  while  I  was  away  at 
Montreal  to  buy  medicine,  my  father 
had  sent  for  him ;  that  he  came  and 


drew  this  will  at  my  father's  request, 
and  after  his  dictation  ;  and  that  my  un- 
cle was  not  present  when  the  will  was 
drawn,  and  had  not  yet  been  informed 
of  its  contents.  The  will,  he  said,  was 
witneesed  by  my  wife  and  my  sister 
and  another  person,  whose  name  I  had 
never  heard  before.  He  then  read  the 
will.  It  left  all  my  father's  property  to 
my  uncle  to  dispose  of  as  he  pleased, 
except  a  miserable  little  tract  of  cedar 
swamp,  which  my  father  had  lately 
.bought  to  get  fencing- timber  from. 
This  was  willed  to  me.  The  will  then 
went  on  to  say  that  my  father  had  full 
confidence  in  his  brother  that  he  would 
treat  his  children  justly,  and  provide  for 
them  better  than  they  could  provide  for 
themselves. 

"  I  did  not  believe  that  my  father  had 
ever  made  or  intended  to  make  such  a 
will,  nor  that  my  wife  and  sister  had 
ever  signed  it  as  witnesses,  knowing 
what  it  meant,  and  I  do  not  now  be- 
lieve they  did.  '  I  was  mad  with  grief 
and  rage.  I  denounced  my  uncle  and 
the  notary  as  forgers,  swindlers,  rob- 
bers, and  every  other  evil  thing  I  could 
think  of.  My  uncle  coolly  said :  '  Neph- 
ew, you  are  not  well ;  you  had  better 
go  to  bed.'  The  little  notary  took  a 
pinch  of  snuff,  and  smiled  a  wicked 
smile.  This  so  inflamed  me,  that  I 
seized  my  uncle  and  the  notary  each 
by  the  throat,  and  rapped  their  heads 
together  till  they  saw  twenty  thousand 
stars.  I  then  became  frightened  at  my 
own  violence,  as  I  always  do  when  I 
hurt  a  man,  and  ran  away  and  hid  my- 
self in  my  swamp,  and  stayed  there  two 
days'and  two  nights  with  nothing  to  eat. 

"  While  I  was  there,  the  Devil,  who 
is  ever  at  the  elbow  of  an  angry  man, 
put  a  miserable  scheme  of  vengeance 
in  my  head,  which  it  took  me  nearly  a 
year  to  execute.  It  was  a  wretched 
fraud,  as  you  will  say  when  you  hear  it ; 
yet  I  swear  to  you,  Moran,  that,  during 
all  the  time  I  was  planning  and  carry- 
ing out  that  sneaking  business,  I  never 
once  thought  I  was  doing  wrong. 

"  I  sometimes  have  a  curious  disor- 
der which  is  not  sickness.  The  doc- 
tors call  it  a  disease  of  the  nerves,  and 


1868." 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


733 


give  it  a  long  name  which  I  cannot 
speak.  When  this  trouble  is  upon  me, 
everything  looks  blue  and  strange.  The 
fire  burns  blue  on  the  hearth.  The  air 
seems  full  of  smoke,  every  sound  seems 
to  come  from  an  empty  barrel.  Even 
my  own  voice  sounds  like  the  voice  of 
another  man,  and  a  very  surly  fellow  at 
that.  I  can  think  well  enough,  and  talk 
and  act  like  other  men  ;  but  it  all  seems 
like  the  thinking,  talking,  and  acting  of 
another  man.  When  I  am  very  bad, 
my  own  thoughts  and  words  sometimes 
take  me  by  surprise,  as  if  another  man 
had  said  something  I  had  never  before 
thought  of. 

"  The  first,  worst,  and  longest  attack 
of  this  kind  that  I  ever  had  came  upon 
me  while  I  was  hiding,  shivering,  and 
starving  in  the  swamp,  and  lasted  un- 
til I  had  been  some  two  months  on  this 
island.  Perhaps  it  was  this  that  pre- 
vented me  from  seeing  as  I  now  see 
the  wrong  I  was  doing. 

"  I  went  straight  from  my  swamp  to 
my  uncle,  told  him  that  I  had  been 
mad  with  grief  and  surprise  at  the  read- 
ing of  the  will ;  that  I  had  since  thought 
the  matter  over,  and  was  satisfied  that 
my  father  had  done  what  was  best  for 
me,  and  what  would  have  been  best  for 
my  poor  sister  if  she  had  lived ;  that  my 
wife  and  sister,  who  were  wiser  than  I, 
and  who  had  always  loved  and  trusted 
him,  my  uncle,  had,  no  doubt,  thought 
my  father  was  disposing  of  his  property 
wisely  and  well  when  they  signed  the 
will  as  witnesses.  I  begged  my  uncle 
to  forget  what  hau  passed,  to  excuse 
my  conduct  to  the  good  notary,  and  be 
my  friend. 

"This  he  readily  undertook  to  do, 
and  from  that  time  forward,  as  long  as  I 
stayed  there,  we  seemed  to  be  friends. 
Heaven  forgive  me ;  I  stayed  at  his 
house,  and  ate  his  bread  —  execrable 
black  bread  —  most  of  the  time. 

"  My  father  had  given  me  some  mon- 
ey, a  good  team  of  horses,  a  wagon,  and 
some  other  things,  when  I  was  married. 
My  mother  also  had  left  a  little  proper- 
ty, which  had  come  to  me,  so  that  I  was 
able  to  go  and  come,  and  work  and  play, 
as  I  pleased. 


"  When  I  was  hiding  in  the  swamp, 
I  discovered  a  black  pool  there,  which 
seemed  to  gather  in  water  from  every  di- 
rection, and  to  'have  no  outlet.  It  was 
very  deep  and  cold. 

"  Coarse  salt  was  then  very  cheap  at 
Montreal.  The  ships  that  came  from 
England  for  lumber  and  ashes  used  to 
come  ballasted  with  salt.  I  brought  a 
wagon-load  of  coarse  gray  salt  from 
the  city  in  the  night,  and  salted  the 
pool.  I  brought  three  other  loads,  and 
hid  them  near  it.  Why  did  I  do  this  ? 
I  had  heard,  when  I  was  a  little  boy,  of 
the  discovery  of  a  salt  spring  some- 
where, and  how  rich  men  with  piles  of 
money  had  come  to  buy  it. 

"  By  some  means  the  deer  found  my 
salted  pool,  and  came  to  it  in  great 
numbers,  so  that  the  ground  around  it 
was  beaten  like  a  path  with  their  feet. 

"  I  took  three  men,  one  at  a  time,  and 
showed  them  the  pool  and  the  deer- 
tracks,  and  let  them  taste  the  salted 
water.  I  charged  each  of  them  not  to 
tell  any  one  of  my  salt-spring,  —  told 
them  I  had  carried  some  of  the  water 
to  Montreal,  and  had  learned  from  one 
who  knew  all  about  such  things  that  it 
was  very  valuable  for  the  manufacture 
of  salt.  Of  course  the  news  spread 
fast,  that  I  had  discovered  a  salt-spring 
of  great  value  in-  my  swamp. 

"Soon  people  from  Montreal  and 
other  places  began  to  visit  this  new 
wonder.  One  evening  an  old  gentle- 
man who  wore  spectacles,  and  spoke  no 
French,  and  a  young  fellow  who  carried 
a  note-book  in  which  he  often  wrote 
with  a  pencil,  and  who  jabbered  all  the 
time  in  French  almost  as  bad  as  my 
English,  came  to  our  village,  and  stopped 
at  the  little  tavern  there.  They  in- 
quired for  me.  I  was  sent  for,  and  came. 
The  youngster  told  me  that  they  desired 
to  visit  and  test  my  salt-spring.  He  said 
that  the  old  gentleman  was  a  scientific 
man,  and  that  he  himself  was  the  editor 
of  a  newspaper  in  Montreal.  I  told  them 
I  should  be  happy  to  wait  upon  them  next 
morning,  and  show  them  the  spring. 

"All  this  time,  remember,  if  you 
please,  there  was  a  continual  buzzing 
in  my  head,  everything  looked  blue  and 


734 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


[December, 


dismal,  every  sound  seemed  hollow  and 
sad,  and,  worse  than  all,  I  seemed  to 
have  within  me  two  minds  at  the  same 
time,  —  one  thinking  and  planning  as 
usual ;  and  the  other  looking  on,  criti- 
cising, mocking.  The  doctors  may  say 
what  they  please,  I  believe  I  was  pos- 
sessed by  a  devil.  I  went  to  my 
swamp  that  night,  and  was  obliged  to 
hide  myself  until  three  hunters  had 
each  killed  a  deer  and  carried  it  away. 
Toward  morning  the  coast  was  clear, 
and  I  succeeded  in  putting  three  big 
sacks  of  salt  into  the  pool  unobserved. 

"  I  conducted  the  two  gentlemen  to 
the  swamp.  They  had  come  out  from 
the  city  in  a  light  wagon,  and  had 
brought  with  them  a  small  filter  and  a 
brass  kettle.  The  old  gentleman  fixed 
the  filter  so  that  the  water  would  run 
from  it  into  the  kettle.  We  then  built 
a  brisk  fire  under  the  kettle,  and  the 
old  gentleman  commenced  filtering  the 
water,  first  measuring  it  carefully  with 
a  quart  measure.  The  black  water 
came  from  the  filter  clear  and  beauti- 
ful. After  we  had  filtered  and  boiled 
down  I  don't  know  how  many  quarts, 
we  let  the  filter  run  dry,  and  kept  up  a 
slow  fire  under  the  kettle  until  the  thick 
brine  in  it  was  dried  down  into  about 
a  quarter  of  a  pound  of  salt.  I  was  as- 
tonished to  see  that  the  salt  in  the  ket- 
tle was  very  much  finer  and  whiter  than 
the  coarse  gray  salt  I  had  put  into  the 
pool. 

"  An  old,  red-nosed  Yankee  who 
loafed  about  our  village,  and  who  had 
been  a  schoolmaster  before  he  became 
a  common  drunkard,  plucked  my  sleeve, 
and  led  me  aside  when  I  had  returned 
with  the  two  salt-hunters  to  the  little 
tavern. 

"'Baptiste,'  said  he,  'if  you  know 
what  is  good  for  your  salt-spring,  you 
will  set  up  that  little  editor  with  some 
money.' 

"'  I'm  afraid,  Uncle  Dan,'  said  I, — 
everybody  called  him  Uncle  Dan, — 
'I'm  afraid  it  will  offend  him  to  offer 
him  money.' 

"  '  You  're  greener  than  cabbage,'  said 
Uncle  Dan.  *  Here,  you  fellow  with  the 
note-book,  come  here.' 


"  The  young  gentleman  came  to  us, 
and  asked  Uncle  Dan  what  he  want- 
ed.- 

"  '  This  young  man,'  said  Uncle  Dan, 
'knows  nothing  about  the  newspaper 
business.  Of  course  you  found  his 
spring  all  right,  and  a  big  thing.  Now, 
how  much  will  a  first-rate  puff  cost  ?  He 
is  n't  rich  unless  his  spring  turns  out  to 
be  a  fortune.  Do  the  fair  thing  by  him, 
and  I  '11  warrant  he  '11  do  the  fair  thing 
by  you.' 

" '  I  should  think,'  said  the  young 
gentleman,  'that  ten  pounds  ($  40)  would 
be  about  right.' 

"  I  paid  him  the  money  before  Uncle 
Dan  had  time  to  ask  him  to  take  less, 
as  I  saw  he  was  about  to  do. 

"  I  then  gave  Uncle  Dan  a  glass  of 
whiskey,  the  young  gentleman  gave 
him  another,  and  everything  was  satis- 
factory. 

"  A  day  or  two  afterwards  a  flaming 
account  of  my  salt-spring  appeared  in 
one  of  the  Montreal  newspapers.  Un- 
cle Dan  read  and  translated  it  to  me, 
and  borrowed  twenty-five  shillings  ($  5) 
of  me. 

"Then  people  began  to  offer  to  buy 
my  swamp  of  me.  I  always  answered  : 
'  You  do  not  offer  me  enough  ;  besides, 
I  intend  to  sell  to  my  uncle,  if  he  wants 
to  buy.' 

"At  last  a  gentleman  from  Ver- 
mont offered  me  five  thousand  pounds 
($20,000).  I  answered  him  as  I  had 
answered  the  others,  and  then  went  to 
my  uncle  and  said  :  — 

"'Uncle,  a  Yankee  has  offered  me 
five  thousand  pounds  for  my  land. 
Give  me  forty-five  hundred  pounds 
($18,000)  for  it.  I  will  take  the  money, 
and  go  away,  and  see  what  I  can  do 
with  it.  Everything  here  reminds  me 
of  my  dead.  I  shall  go  mad  if  I  stay 
here.' 

"  All  this  was  true.  If  you  want  to 
have  a  lie  believed,  always  tell  as  much 
truth  with  it  as  you  can  ;  or,  better  still, 
keep  the  lie  out  of  sight  altogether. 
The  truth  is  so  much  stronger  than  a 
lie,  that  I  believe  the  Devil  always  tells 
the  truth  when  he  can  make  it  answer 
his  purpose  by  any  means. 


1868.] 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


735 


"  '  You  speak  wisely,'  said  my  uncle  ; 
'but  how  am  I  to  get  forty-five  hundred 
pounds  ?  ' 

" '  Bah  ! '  said  I,  '  that  is  a  bagatelle 
for  you,  uncle.' 

"  '  I  am  going  to  Montreal  to-morrow,' 
said  he,  'and  I  will  see  if  I  can  get  the 
money.  If  I  can,  I  will  take  the  prop- 
erty.' 

"  He  went  to  the  city  the  next  day ; 
and,  the  day  after,  we  went  to  the  notary. 
My  uncle  became  the  owner  of  the 
swamp,  and  I  went  to  Montreal  with 
my  money. 

"I  knew  that  my  fraud  would  not  be 
discovered  at  once,  so  I  loitered  several 
days  at  Montreal.  I  intended  to  go  to 
New  Orleans,  where  I  had  a  cousin  who 
was  doing  well.  Before  I  got  ready  to 
leave  I  heard  that  my  uncle  had  sold 
the  swamp  to  the  Yankee  for  six  thou- 
sand pounds  ($  24,000). 

"  My  miserable  trick  was,  after  all, 
played  at  the  expense  of  an  innocent 
man.  My  uncle  had  made  a  cool  fif- 
teen hundred  pounds  ($  6,000)  out  of  the 
punishment  which  I  had  sneaked  and 
lied  so  much  to  prepare  for  him.  I  be- 
came disgusted  with  myself.  I  changed 
my  plans,  and  resolved  to  push  straight 
West  into  the  great  wilderness,  and 
hide  myself  among  the  savages. 

"  When  I  had  come  as  far  as  here  I 
said  to  myself,  Where  can  a  man  hide 
better  than  in  these  islands  ?  There  is 
no  proof  against  me.  I  am  in  no  dan- 
ger of  being  pursued  and  arrested.  My 
uncle  can  never  make  any  one  believe 
that  I  defrauded  him  as  he  defrauded 
the  Yankee.  His  reputation  for  sharp- 
ness is  too  good  for  that.  I  have  no 
one  to  please  but  myself.  These  isl- 
ands are  some  of  them  wild  and  lonely 
enough  for  the  greatest  wretch  alive. 
I  will  stay  here  awhile,  at  any  rate.  I 
found  this  shanty  »ot  claimed  by  any 
one,  and  took  possession  of  it.  I  have 
been  here  and  hereabouts  ever  since. 
A  banker  at  Kingston  pays  me  some 
interest  on  my  money.  That  "and  what 
I  can  make  by  hunting  and  trapping 
is  more  than  I  can  use  here.  I  have 
added  more  than  five  hundred  pounds 
($2,000)  to  the  money  I  brought  from 


Montreal.  I  have  never  heard  from  my 
uncle  since  I  came  here.  I  am  as  hap- 
py here  as  I  should  be  anywhere,  and 
so  I  stay.  The  people  think  I  am  a 
great  smuggler,  like  poor  O'Donnel, 
and  the  custom-house  officers  watch 
me  and  visit  me,  as  they  did  him.  But 
I  never  smuggle,  as  I  told  you  this 
morning.  That  is  my  story.  When 
you  have  reached  my  age,  you  will  have 
a  happier  story  than  mine,  for  you  are 
not  a  wild  man  like  me.  W7hether  you 
win  all  you  seek  or  not,  you  will  always 
know  what  you  are  doing,  and  will,  at 
least,  try  to  do  it  like  a  man." 

At  the  conclusion  of  Baptiste's  long 
recital,  the  two  friends  refilled  and  re- 
lighted their  pipes,  which  had  long  been 
cold  and  empty,  and  fell  into  a  desul- 
tory conversation  concerning  the  de- 
parted smuggler,  O'Donnel.  Moran's 
superior  knowledge  of  the  English  lan- 
guage had  enabled  him  to  pick  up 
more  of  the  traditions  afloat  upon  that 
subject  than  had  ever  come  to  the  ears 
of  Baptiste.  After  they  had  discussed 
the  affairs  of  the  dead  smuggler  about 
an  hour,  Baptiste  went  lazily  to  the  big 
chest,  remarking  as  he  went :  "  Dees 
big  box,  —  I  found  heem  here  ven  I 
come  here.  I  'm  s'pose  O'Donnel 
mose  forgot  to  hide  heem  before  he 
die." 

He  then  removed  a  large  and  varied 
assortment  of  bachelor's  dry  goods,  gro- 
ceries, hardware,  hats,  caps,  boots,  and 
shoes,  throwing  them  in  wild  confusion 
on  the  floor,  until  the  chest  seemed 
quite  empty.  He  then  stuck  the  point 
of  his  hunting-knife  deep  into  what  ap- 
peared to  be  the  bottom  of  the  chest, 
lifted  it  up,  and  disclosed  the  fact  that 
the  chest  had  a  false,  or,  more  properly 
speaking,  a  double  bottom.  The  false 
bottom  fitted  so  closely  to  the  true  one, 
that  there  was  no  room  for  anything  a 
quarter  of  an  inch  thick  between  them. 
The  removal  of  the  false  bottom  brought 
to  light  an  old  yellow  half-sheet  of  fools- 
cap paper. 

Baptiste  took  this  up,  and  handed  it 
to  Moran,  saying  in  French,  "  Read 
me  these  two  words,  if  they  are  words." 

Moran  instantly  read  the  words  point- 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


[December, 


ed  out  to  him.     They  were  "shanty" 
and  "  money." 

"  I  suspected  as  much,"  said  Bap- 
tiste. 

Moran  sat  down,  and  diligently 
scanned  the  paper,  which  had  on  one 
side  what  appeared  to  be  three  dia- 
grams. The  other  side  was  blank. 
The  diagrams  were  drawn  apparently 
with  a  blunt  lead -pencil.  The  two 
words  above  mentioned  were  inscribed 
in  rude  imitation  of  printed  letters,  evi- 
dently with  the  same  implement,  one 
at  each  end  of  one  of  the  diagrams. 

One  of  the  diagrams  seemed  to  rep- 
resent a  crooked  and  intricate  route 
among  islands,  —  the  smaller  islands 
being  fully  outlined,  and  the  larger  ones 
being  represented  only  by  so  much  of 
their  coast  lines  as  lay  along  the  sup- 
posed route.  This  diagram,  Baptiste 
said,  indicated,  in  his  opinion,  the  route 
by  which  O'Donnel  had  transported 
his  goods  from  shore  to  shore  during 
the  season  of  navigation.  Baptiste  felt 
sure  that  he  had  found  and  traced  it. 

The  second  diagram  corresponded 
with  the  one  above  described,  except 
that  the  supposed  route  sometimes 
went  across  the  islands.  Baptiste  sur- 
mised that  this  represented  the  track 
by  which  the  smuggler  had  transported 
his  goods  in  sleighs  when  the  river  was 
closed  with  ice.  He  was  sure  he  had 
traced  it.  The  road  across  the  islands, 
he  said,  was  still  visible  by  its  effect  on 
the  vegetation  to  one  who  observed  it 
closely.  He  said  it  came  ashore  at  each 
end  across  a  narrow  channel,  where  so 
much  of  the  sleigh-track  as  was  visible 
from  the  main-land  could  be  hidden 
in  two  minutes  by  covering  it  with 
snow. 

The  third  diagram  seemed  to  have 
been  made  purposely  obscure.  It  con- 
sisted of  a  long  and  crooked  series  of 
small  circles  of  uniform  size  placed  at 
uniform  distances.  All  the  circles  ex- 
cept the  first  and  last  had  dotted  lines 
across  them,  running  in  the  general  di- 
rection of  the  series.  The  first  and 
last  circles,  having  no  dotted  lines 
across  them,  were  marked  respectively 
•"  money  "  and  "  shanty." 


This  diagram  Baptiste  called  a  string 
of  devil's  beads,  and  said  it  had  baffled 
him  completely.  If  it  was  intended  to 
represent  islands,  it  showed  them  all  of 
one  size  and  shape,  and  at  uniform  dis- 
tances from  each  other,  which  made  it 
impossible  to  follow  it  among  the  real 
islands  of  the  group,  varying  as  they 
did  in  size,  shape,  and  position. 

"Besides,"  said  Baptiste,  "you  can- 
not tell  which  way  to  start.  There  are 
three  islands,  any  one  of  which  may  be 
meant  by  the  little  circle  next  to  the 
one  marked  '  shanty.'  I  fear  we  shall 
never  find  our  way  from  'shanty'  to 
'money.'" 

So  saying  he  replaced  the  paper  on 
the  bottom  of  the  chest,  put  the  false 
bottom  over  it,  tumbled  his'  miscel- 
laneous stores  back  into  the  chest,  and 
locked  it.  While  he  was  doing  this  he 
explained  to  Moran  that  it  was  only  a 
little  over  two  years  since  he  had  found 
the  false  bottom  and  the  paper  under  it. 
He  said  that  a  ball  of  shoemaker's  wax 
had  found  its  way  down  to  this  board, 
and  had  stuck  to  it.  In  his  efforts  to 
remove  the  wax  he  had  started  the 
board  from  its  place,  and  had  so  dis- 
covered it  to  be  a  false  bottom.  Upon 
removing  it,  he  had  found  under  it  this 
paper,  and  nothing  else. 

It  was  now  more  than  an  hour  after 
midnight.  The  two  men.  retired  to 
their  couches,  Baptiste  to  sleep,  Moran 
to  dream,  but  not  to  sleep.  The 
Frenchman's  strange  story,  and  the 
enigmatical  diagram,  kept  his  mind  in  a 
constant  ferment  of  wild  fancies,  until 
daylight,  and  long  afterwards. 

Some  two  months  afterwards,  when 
the  river  was  bridged  with  thick  ice, 
Moran  met  Baptiste  at  the  Tripe  and 
Trotters,  where  he  was  an  occasional, 
though  not  a  frequent  visitor. 

It  was  Saturday  evening,  and  a  good- 
ly company  were  there.  Baptiste  drank 
pretty  freely,  and  became  quite  lively 
and  chatty.  About  ten  o'clock  he  went 
to  the  bar  to  pay  his  reckoning,  also 
his  compliments  to  the  landlady,  pre- 
paratory to  going  home.  The  landlady 
was  a  blooming  English  widow  of  about 
thirty-five. 


1 868.] 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


737 


"W'y  do  you  come  so  seldom,  and 
leave  so  hearly,  Mr.  Batteese  ?  "  said 
the  landlady. 

"  Eh,  Madame  ?  "  said  Baptiste  with 
an  interrogative  grimace. 

"W'y  don't  you  come  hoffner  and 
stay  longer  ?  "  said  the  landlady,  repeat- 
ing her  question,  so  as  to  make  it  more 
easily  understood. 

This  time  Baptiste  caught  her  mean- 
ing, and,  not  wishing  to  be  outdone  in 
civility,  he  laid  his  hand  upon  his  heart 
in  a  very  impressive  manner,  saying, 
"  O  Madame,  eef  I  vill  come  here  ver 
moche,  and  ver  long  stay,  I  saH  ruin  ze 
Tripe  and  Trottair.  I  sail  like  von 
leetle  dog  all  ze  time  follow  you  roun', 
and  —  vat  you  call  —  quarrel  wiz  every 
zhontilman  zat  vill  say  two,  tree  word 
to  you." 

The  landlady,  who  was  not  at  all  averse 
to  Baptiste,  laughed  at  his  strangely 
worded  compliment,  called  him  a  hodd 
fish,  and  cordially  shook  hands  with 
him  as  he  bade  her  good  night. 

He  then  started  towards  the  door,  but 
paused  on  his  way  to  look  at  a  game  of 
cards  which  was  in  progress. 

Two  young  men,  sons  of  rich  parents, 
had  foolishly  come  into  this  rough  com- 
pany, and,  more  foolishly  still,  had  al- 
lowed themselves  to  be  drawn  into  a 
game  of  cards  with  two  strangers,  who 
were  professional  gamblers.  It  was 
this  game  which  Baptiste  stopped  to 
look  at.  The  gamblers  were  fleecing 
the  young  men  unmercifully,  the  victims 
being  by  this  time  excited  and  reck- 
less. One  of  the  gamblers  favored 
Baptiste  with  a  malignant  scowl.  Bap- 
tiste shrugged  his  shoulders,  and  stepped 
on  lightly  towards  the  door ;  as  he  was 
about  to  raise  the  latch,  he  seemed  to 
change  his  mind.  He  paused,  and 
an  ashy  pallor  overspread  his  swar- 
thy countenance  ;  he  walked  back  to 
the  card-table  with  unusual  deliberation, 
and  addressed  the  gamblers  in  a  tone 
so  low  and  soft  that,  judging  from  it 
alone,  one  would  have  thought  he  was 
asking  a  favor. 

"  Zhontilmen,"  said  he,  "  you  are  dam 
two  swindleurs.  You  are  robbing  the 
bigad  yong  men.  Your  carte  every  von 

VOL.  xxii.  —  NO.  134.  47 


of  heem  he  is  marrrk."  One  of  the 
gamblers  —  a  big,  truculent  bully  — 
sprang  to  his  feet  with  a  great  oath,  put 
himself  in  a  scientific  attitude,  and  struck 
a  quick,  powerful  blow  at  Baptiste. 
The  latter  avoided  the  blow  by  spring- 
ing lightly  aside,  and  then  greatly  as- 
tonished the  gambler  by  seizing  him 
with  both  hands,  raising  him  high  above 
his  head,  and  dashing  him  to  the  floor 
with  a  force  that  threatened  the  integ- 
rity of  bones  and  floor  alike.  He  then 
turned  upon  the  other  gambler,  for  it 
was  his  habit  on  such  occasions  to  pay 
his  respects  briefly  to  every  one  who 
stood  opposed  to  him  before  he  ran 
away.  The  other  gambler,  who  was  a 
spry  little  man,  had  retreated  into  a  cor- 
ner. When  the  enraged  Frenchman 
turned  upon  him,  he  quickly  drew  from 
his  vest  pocket  a  very  small  pistol,  and 
fired. 

Baptiste  staggered,  but  did  not  quite 
fall.  Instantly  he  stood  firm  upon  his 
feet  again,  and  then  for  the  first  and 
last  time  did  he  draw  the  big  hunting- 
knife  upon  a  human  being.  With  this 
weapon  in  hand  he  sprang  upon  the 
little  gambler  like  a  wounded  tiger. 
A  dozen  strong  hands  interposed  to 
save  the  little  reptile  from  being  cut  in 
pieces  ;  as  it  was  he  lost  his  left  ear,  and 
a  thin  slice  off  his  left  cheek,  besides 
receiving  a  severe  flesh  wound  in  his 
left  shoulder,  — all  from  one  half-arrest- 
ed sweep  of  the  'big  knife.  Baptiste 
then  staggered  back  into  the  arms  of 
Moran,  who  was  one  of  those  who  had 
interfered  to  prevent  him  from  killing 
the  gambler.  He  was  now  quite  faint, 
and  was  carried  to  a  bed  in  a  room  just 
back  of  the  bar.  Fortunately,  there 
was  a  surgeon  at  hand,  —  a  seedy, 
drunken,  but  skilful  man,  who  haunted 
the  Tripe  and  Trotters  nightly.  Him 
the  landlady  seized  by  main  force, 
dragged  him  behind  the  bar,  and  show- 
ered upon  his  head  copious  libations  of 
cold  water,  which  had  already  done  duty 
in  the  way  of  rinsing  glasses. 

"  Now,  Doctor,"  said  she,  "  do  your 
best,  and  your  scores  for  the  last  'alf- 
year,  and  the  next,  too,  you  may  con- 
sider paid." 


738 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


[December, 


Thus  refreshed  and  incited,  the  sur- 
geon examined  and  dressed  Baptiste's 
wound  promptly  and  skilfully.  The 
ball  had  entered  his  right  breast  ob- 
liquely, had  glanced  around  outside  of 
the  ribs,  and  was  found  lodged  in  the 
muscles  of  the  back,  whence  it  was 
easily  extracted. 

Everybody's  attention  having  been 
given  exclusively  to  Baptiste,  until  it 
was  ascertained  that  he  was  not  danger- 
ously wounded,  the  gamblers  had  been 
permitted  to  steal  away.  When  their 
absence  was  at  last  noticed,  search 
was  made  for  them  far  up  and  down 
the  road  that  ran  along  the  river- 
bank,  and  upon  another  road  which  ran 
back  northward  from  the  river.  When 
daylight  came,  the  blood-stained  tracks 
of  the  wounded  gambler  showed  that 
he  and  his  fellow  had  wallowed  through 
the  snow-drifts  to  the  ice,  and  then 
made  the  best  of  their  way  through  the 
islands  to  the  New  York  shore. 

It  was  well  for  them  that  they  es- 
caped, for,  if  they  had  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  the  crowd  at  the  Tripe  and 
Trotters,  they  would  have  been  roughly 
handled. 

In  about  a  week  Baptiste  was  well 
enough  to  go  to  his  cabin  ;  but  when  he 
got  there  he  over-exerted  himself  pro- 
viding firewood  for  his  big  chimney, 
and  was  taken  down  with  a  fever.  He 
had  good  medical  attendance,  and  the 
people  thereabouts  were  very  kind  to 
him.  Moran  was  with  him  every  hour 
that  he  could  spare  from  his  work. 

The  fever  was  very  severe,  and  lin- 
gered long.  It  was  early  in  May  when 
Baptiste  was  well  enough  to  take  his 
seat  in  his  hunting-canoe,  and  then  he 
was  too  weak  for  long  voyages  or  hard 
toil  of  any  kind. 

About  the  loth  of  May,  Moran  put  the 
finishing  stroke  to  the  building  he  had 
undertaken  to  plan  and  superintend, 
and  was  ready  to  go  and  seek  his  for- 
tune elsewhere. 

He  went  to  Smuggler's  Island,  in- 
tending to  make  a  long  farewell  visit. 
He  arrived  there  in  the  evening,  and 
found  Baptiste  much  improved  in  health 
since  he  had  last  seen  him,  but  still  fee- 


ble and  languid,  compared  with  his  for- 
mer self. 

They  were  sitting  outside  the  shanty, 
smoking  their  pipes,  and  fighting  mos- 
quitoes, after  sunset,  when  Baptiste, 
having  mused  a  little  while,  said  :  "  Mo- 
ran, you  remember  the  turning-point  in 
my  fever  last  winter, —  the  time  that 
the  doctor  called  the  crisis,  when  I  lay 
senseless  so  many  hours  ?  " 

"Yes.     I  was  here  then." 

"  Well,  I  had  a  strange  dream  then. 
I  dreamed  that  I  had  spread  out  before 
me  that  diagram  — as  you  call  it  —  with 
a  word  at  each  end  of  it.  I  thought 
the  little  circles  grew  and  grew,  and 
changed  their  shapes,  until  they  be- 
came islands,  many  of  them  well  known 
to  me.  Then  I  saw  that  the  dotted 
lines  were  made  of  little  stumps  of 
bushes,  cut  off  with  a  knife  about  an 
inch  from  the  ground.  Beside  every 
little  stump  there  lay  a  little  flat  peb- 
ble, such  as  they  find  on  the  shores  of 
Lake  Ontario,  and  in  some  places  along 
the  river-banks." 

"  That  was  a  very  strange  dream." 

u  It  will  not  seem  so  strange  when  I 
tell  you  that  I  had  often  seen  some  of 
these  little  stumps  and  pebbles  on  two 
of  the  islands  near  here,  where  I  get 
firewood.  I  suppose  that  in  my  deep 
sleep,  when  all  manner  of  memories 
were  mingling  in  my  brain,  the  old  yel- 
low paper  and  the  little  stumps  and 
pebbles  happened  to  stumble  against 
each  other,  and  each  took  its  proper 
place  beside  the  other,  as  would  have 
been  the  case  at  any  other  time  if  I 
had  happened  to  think  of  both  in  the 
same  hour." 

"  Do  you  think  there  is  anything  in 
the  dream  ?  "  said  Moran,  anxiously. 

"  I  don't  know  whether  there  is  any 
money  in  it  or  not,  but  I  have  found 
the  lines  of  stumps  and  pebbles  across 
three  islands,  corresponding  to  the 
dotted  lines  across  the  three  circles 
nearest  the  one  marked  "shanty."  If 
you  had  not  come  here  this  evening,  I 
should  have  gone  after  you  to-morrow 
morning.  Will  you  come  and  help  me 
find  out  whether  that  diagram,  as  you 
call  it,  tells  the  truth  or  a  lie  ?  " 


i868.] 


Our  Pans  Letter. 


739 


"  Certainly  I  will,"  said  Moran  with 
a  good  deal  of  excitement,  "  if  it  takes 
two  months  to  decide  the  question." 

"  It  may  take  longer  than  that,"  said 
Baptiste  ;  "  for  if  the  island,  '  money,' 
happen  to  be  a  large  island,  we  may 
have  to  hunt  there  a  long  time.  You 
remember  there  is  no  dotted  line  on 
that  island." 

Baptiste  seemed  tired  of  the  subject, 
and  abruptly  forced  the  conversation 
into  another  channel,  whereupon  Mo- 
ran  fell  into  the  habit,  for  the  first  time 
in  his  life,  of  being  inattentive  to  his 
friend's  remarks,  and  answering  them 
at  cross  purposes. 

They  retired  at  an  unusually  early 
hour,  but  Moran  could  get  no  sleep 
until  after  daylight. 

Then  he  fell  into  a  troubled  sleep, 
and  dreamed  that  the  Right  Reverend, 
the  Lord  Bishop  of  Montreal,  the  land- 
lady of  the  Tripe  and  Trotters,  Baptiste, 
and  himself  were  pitching  golden 
quoits  about  three  feet  in  diameter  at 
little  stumps  about  an  inch  high,  for  an 
immense  pile  of  bank-notes  of  the  de- 
nomination of  one  hundred  pounds 
each.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  game, 
while  the  landlady  was  putting  away 
the  quoits  in  her  snuff-box,  and  the 
bishop  and  Baptiste  were  each  lighting 
his  pipe  with  one  of  the  bank-notes, 
he  awoke  with  the  sun  shining  in  his 
eyes. 

After  breakfast  the  two  friends 
freighted  the  big  canoe  with  provisions 
for  three  days,  including  a  good  supply 
of  tobacco.  They  also  took  with  them 
two  spades,  two  axes,  a  rifle,  a  shot* 
gun,  a  good  supply  of  ammunition,  and 
two  pairs  of  blankets.  Thus  armed 
and  equipped  they  set  out  up«n  their 
voyage  of  discovery. 

Baptiste  steered  directly  for  the 
island  he  had  last  explored.  They 
landed,  and  Baptiste  pointed  out  the 
line  of  little  stumps  and  pebbles,  reach- 
ing straight  across  the  island. 

"Zis  trail,"  said  he,  "ees  more  as 
plain  as  a  vagon  road.  I  vas  an  idiot 
eet  not  for  find  wizout  ze  dream.  My 
poor  faser  vould  eet  find  in  von  min- 
ute, and  follow  heem  on  ze  ron,  so 


vould  mine  oncle.  Von  dronk  Indian 
scout  vould  find  heem  and  follow  heem 
in  ze  dark." 

"  Every  man  to  his  trade,"  said  Mo- 
ran in  French.  "  You  and  I  were  not 
educated  for  trail-hunters." 

"  You  have  reason,"  replied  Baptiste. 
"  Now  you  go  back,  if  you  please,  and 
bring  the  canoe  around  to  this  place. 
I  must  save  my  strength,  or  the  doc- 
tor will  be  feeding  me  on  bitter  bark 
again." 

All  that  and  the  next  day  they  toiled 
upon  this  trail.  The  little  stumps 
were  rotten,  and  many  of  them  gone 
altogether.  The  flat  pebbles,  being 
unlike  the  little  stones  that  belonged 
on  the  islands,  were  very  noticeable 
when  visible  :  but  most  of  them  were 
covered  with  dead  leaves,  and  had  to 
be  dug  up.  The  sun  was  still  visible, 
on  the  afternoon  of  the  third  day.  when 
they  reached  the  island  indicated  by 
the  circle  marked  "  money."  To  their 
great  relief,  it  turned  out  to  be  a  small 
island,  thinly  wooded.  It  was  situated 
only  about  thirty  rods  from  the  south 
bank  of  the  river,  but  was  hidden  from 
the  main-land  by  a  long  and  densely 
wooded  island. 

Baptiste  took  his  spade,  and  exam- 
ined the  soil  of  the  island  at  various 
points. 

"  Here  are,"  said  ke,  "  about  five  inch- 
es of  black  mould  below  the  leaves,  and 
under  that  there  is  gravel.  We  must 
find  a  place  where  the  mould  is  gone, 
or  thin,  or  mixed  with  gravel.  There 
is  no  use  hunting  among  the  roots  of 
the  big  trees,  for  they  were  here  before 
O'Donnel's  great  -  grandmother  was 
born  ;  but  if  we  find  a  root  that  has 
been  cut,  we  must  see  what  that 
means." 

They  then  went  systematically  to 
work,  examining  the  ground  with  the 
points  of  their  spades,  commencing  at 
the  west  end  of  the  island,  and  thor- 
oughly testing  the  ground,  clear  across 
the  island  as  they  advanced  eastward. 

They  had  thus  examined  perhaps 
one  tenth  of  the  surface  of  the  island, 
when  it  beaame  too  dark  to  work.  Then 
they  built  a  fire.  Baptiste  made  some 


740 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


[December, 


excellent  soup,  seasoned  with  all  man- 
ner of  weeds,  it  is  true,  but  so  propor- 
tioned and  harmonized  as  to  produce  a 
very  agreeable  and  appetizing  flavor. 
This,  with  the  cold  meat  and  bread 
which  they  had  brought  with  them, 
afforded  them  a  good  supper.  After 
supper  they  lighted  their  pipes,  and 
talked  an  hour  or  more  upon  every 
subject  but  treasure-hunting.  Baptiste 
then  wrapped  his  blanket  around  him, 
and  lay  down  for  the  night.  Moran 
essayed  to  follow  his  example,  but  no 
sooner  had  he  stretched  himself  upon 
the  ground  than  he  arose  hastily,  and 
went  and  lay  down  in  another  place. 

"  Vat 's  ze  mattair  ? "  said  Baptiste. 

"  There  were  some  little  stones  or 
something  under  my  blanket,"  said 
Moran. 

"  Leetle  stones,  eh  ?  —  leetle  stones," 
said  Baptiste,  springing  up  and  pawing 
away  the  dead  leaves  where  Moran 
had  first  lain  down,  "  vat  beezness 
leetle  stones  have  ope  here  among  ze 
leaves,  for  deesturb  zhontilmen's  rest, 
eh?" 

He  pursued  his  investigations  in  si- 
lence for  a  few  minutes  after  the  above 
remark.  Moran  looked  on,  and  felt 
humiliated  by  the  thought  that  he 
ought  to  have  been  as  well  aware  as 
Baptiste  that  gravel  above  the  vegeta- 
ble mould  was  not  the  normal  condition 
of  the  soil.  Baptiste  next  fetched  his 
spade,  and  marked  off  a  rectangular 
space  about  six  feet  long  and  two  and 
a  half  feet  wide. 

"  Dig  here,"  said  he  to  Moran,  "  if 
you  would  rather  dig  than  sleep.  I 
must  rest." 

So  saying,  he  wrapped  himself  in  his 
blanket  again,  and  was  soon  sound 
asleep. 

Moran  mended  the  fire  so  that  it 
would  afford  him  some  light,  and  then 
fell  to  digging  with  a  will.  The  spade 
was  a  new  implement  to  him,  and  he 
did  not  make  very  satisfactory  progress. 
But  towards  morning,  having  pene- 
trated the  gravel  to  the  depth  of  about 
five  feet,  and  having  blistered  his  hands 
and  lamed  his  shoulders,  and  being  on 
the  point  of  climbing  out  of  his  pit  to 


rest,  his  spade  struck  something  which 
returned  a  wooden  sound.  He  renewed 
his  efforts  with  redoubled  energy,  and 
with  no  sense  of  pain  or  weariness  left 
in  him.  In  less  than  an  hour  he  had 
laid  bare  the  top,  and  most  of  the  sides 
and  ends,  of  a  chest,  which  seemed  to 
be  a  fac-simile  of  Baptiste's  big  chest 
in  the  shanty,  padlock  and  all. 

He  then  awoke  Baptiste,  who  yawned 
and  stretched  himself  at  least  two  min- 
utes without  intermission,  and  then 
took  a  brand,  and  went  down  into  the 
pit,  and  examined  the  old  rusty  padlock. 
He  tried  it  with  the  key  of  his  own 
chest,  but  to  no  purpose.  He  then 
fetched  his  powder-horn,  and  deftly 
filled  the  old  lock  with  powder.  He 
then  lighted  a  small  bit  of  "punk"  (a 
kind  of  rotten  wood  which  takes  fire 
from  the  merest  spark,  and  then  burn? 
very  slowly).  He  put  the  punk  intc 
the  keyhole  so  that  when  nearly  con- 
sumed it  would  fall  into  the  lock  anft 
ignite  the  powder,  sprang  lightly  ouv 
of  the  pit,  and  retired  several  paces, 
taking  Moran  with  him  to  await  re- 
sults. In  about  two  minutes  there  was 
an  explosion,  which  blew  the  old  pad- 
lock into  fragments. 

"Now  open  ze  ole  box,  and  see  vat 
you  have  find,"  said  Baptiste.  "  I  mose 
sleep  von  more  leetle  hour.  I  am  no 
more  good  for  something  after  I  vas 
seek." 

So  saying,  he.  retired  to  his  blanket 
once  more,  and  was  almost  instantly 
asleep. 

Moran,  without  stopping  to  decide, 
a*t  that  time,  which  he  ought  to  admire 
most  in  the  Frenchman,  his  grand  in- 
difference to  the  contents  of  the  chest 
or  his  generous  confidence  in  him,  pro- 
ceeded to  open  the  chest,  and  examine  its 
contents  as  well  as  he  could  by  the  light 
he  had.  He  saw  that  there  was  in  one 
end  of  the  chest  a  considerable  pile  of 
silver  coins,  and  in  the  other  a  much 
larger  hoard  of  gold  coins.  He  had  n^o 
very  clear  notion  how  much  money 
there  was,  but  he  had  seen  and  counted 
money  enough  to  know  that  there  was 
not  one  hundred  thousand  dollars,  — the 
amount  which  the  smuggler  was  reputed 


1 868.] 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


741 


to  have  realized  by  his  land  sales.  It 
was  with  a  feeling  of  deep  disappoint- 
ment that  he  reflected  that  he  and 
Baptiste  would  find  no  difficulty  in  car- 
rying away  this  whole  hoard  of  gold 
and  silver.  He  sat  and  mused  some 
time  on  the  strange  adventure  in  which 
he  was  engaged.  The  result  of  his 
cogitations  was  that  the  gold  and  silver 
in  the  chest  did  not  constitute  the  sum 
total  of  the  treasures  left  by  the  de- 
ceased smuggler,  and  that  it  would  be 
childish  to  leave  the  island  without 
further  search.  He  was  aroused  from 
his  reveries  by  the  twittering  of  the 
early  birds,  and  the  appearance  of  day- 
light in  the  east.  He  then  set  about 
removing  the  coin  from  the  chest.  He 
wrapped  it  carefully  in  one  of  his 
blankets.  He  then  sat  down,  and, 
being  very  drowsy  and  tired,  he  fell 
asleep,  and  of  course  nodded  himself 
awake  again  instantly.  But  the  mo- 
mentary slumber  had  done  the  busi- 
ness. In  his  brief  sojourn  in-  dream- 
land the  box  he  had  just  rifled  meta- 
morphosed itself  into  its  fac-simile  in 
the  shanty,  with  the  false  bottom  full 
in  view.  All  that  he  remembered  of 
his  dream  when  he  awoke  was  that 
same  false  bottom.  He  rushed  to  the 
canoe,  seized  one  of  the  axes,  returned 
to  the  pit,  and  split  the  apparent  bot- 
tom of  the  chest  into  narrow  slits  so 
that  it  was  easily  removed,  although  it 
had  been  very  carefully  fitted  in.  The 
board  thus  ruthlessly  reduced  to  kin- 
dlings turned  out  to  be  a  false  bottom, 
and  beneath  it  there  lay  a  very  hand- 
some deposit  of  notes  of  the  Bank  of 
England,  in  a  perfect  state  of  preserva- 
tion. Of  these  Moran  speedily  took 
possession.  He  did  not  stop  to  count 
them,  but  could  readily  see  that  they 
were  far  more  valuable  than  the  hoard 
of  coin.  He  put  them  with  the  coin, 
and  resolved  to  emulate  the  generous 
confidence  of  his  sleeping  friend.  So 
he  wrapped  himself  in  his  remaining 
blanket,  and  composed  his  weary  limbs 
to  rest,  well  knowing  that  Baptiste 
would  be  awake  hours  before  he  would. 
When  he  awoke  it  was  afternoon. 
Baptiste  had  dragged  the  canoe  ashore, 


and  had  turned  it  over  the  pit  which 
contained  the  chest,  having  first  so 
arranged  the  fresh  earth  which  Moran 
had  thrown  out  of  the  pit,  that  it  was 
all  hidden  by  the  big  canoe. 

A  kettle  of  savory  soup  was  seething 
over  the  fire,  and  the  last  remaining 
fragments  of  bread  and  cold  meat  were 
laid  out  on  a  piece  of  white  birch-bark. 

Moran's  first  business  was  to  appease 
his  keen  appetite.  This  done,  he  ex- 
amined the  blanket  in  which  he  had 
wrapped  the  exhumed  treasures.  He 
found  the  money  just  as  he  had  left  it. 

"  You  are  a  better  scholar  than  I 
am,"  said  Baptiste  ;  "  count  this  money, 
if  you  please.  Let  us  each  take  half  of 
it,  and  be  gone  from  here  before  we 
starve  to  death,  with  money  enough  to 
buy  a  month's  provision  for  an  army." 

"But  that  is  not  fair,"  said  Morau. 
"  I  am  not  entitled  to  half  the  money. 
I  have  done  hardly  anything  towards 
finding  it." 

"  You  can  take  it,"  said  Baptiste, 
"  or  put  it  back  in  the  old  box,  just  as 
you  please  ;  I  shall  only  take  half  of 
it." 

Thus  overruled,  Moran  proceeded 
with  all  possible  expedition  to  count 
the  money  and  divide  it.  There  was 
four  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  dol- 
lars, and  it  was  nearly  dark  whea 
Moran  had  finished  counting  and  di- 
viding it. 

When  this  was  done,  Baptiste  said, 
with  an  air  of  great  seriousness,  "  Mo- 
ran, zis  money  —  belong  not  he  to  ze 
roy  —  vat  you  call  ze  —  ze  keeng  ?  " 

"  What  king  ? "  said  Moran  in 
French,  a  little  impatiently.  "  This 
island  is  in  the  State  of  New  York. 
The  Yankees  can  probably  take  care 
of  themselves." 

"True,"  said  Baptiste,  in  a  musing 
tone  in  French.  "  This  money  was  no 
doubt  buried  here  by  a  British  subject. 
We  find  it  in  Yankee  soil.  If  it  were 
known  that  we  had  found  it,  there 
would  be  a  dispute  about  it  between 
the  United  States  and  Great  Britain. 
Let  us  suppose  that  the  Yankees  win, 
—  then  it  must  be  settled  whether  it 
belongs  to  the  general  government  or 


742 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


[December, 


the  State  of  New  York.  On  the  con- 
trary, if  the  British  should  win,  then 
there  would  be  a  dispute  between  Eng- 
land and  Upper  Canada  about  it.  We 
had  better  keep  our  little  secret  and 
our  little  money,  and  let  the  big-wigs 
drink  their  wine  in  peace." 

"  What  do  you  propose  to  do,  now 
you  have  so  much  money  ? "  said 
Moran. 

"  I  shall  go  to  Paris,"  said  Baptiste. 
"  I  will  employ  masters,  and  learn  to 
read  and  write  the  beautiful  French 
language  in  its  purity.  In  a  word,  I 
will  become  a  Frenchman.  I  must 
leave  here  at  once.  If  I  stay  here,  I 
shall  meet  that  little  wretch  who  tried 
to  shoot  me.  He  will  again  try  to  kill 
me.  If  he  fails,  I  shall  kill  him.  There 
is  murder  in  that  little  scoundrel's  face. 
He  is  a  much  worse  man  than  the  big 
gambler  who  wa.s  with  him.  He  and  I 
will  be  safer  with  the  sea  between 
us." 

The  two  friends  went  to  Montreal. 
There  Baptiste  so  disguised  himself 
that  there  was  no  danger  of  his  being 
recognized. 

He  found,  upon  inquiry,  that  his 
uncle  was  in  good  health,  was  married 
again,  and  had  two  children.  With 
Moran's  assistance,  he  made  diligent 
inquiry  for  the  Yankee  who  had  pur- 
chased his  swamp.  He  found  that  this 
unfortunate  was  living  in  Boston,  and 
was  worth  half  a  million,  notwithstand- 
ing his  unlucky  salt  speculation.  Bap- 
tiste, however,  insisted  upon  remitting 
to  him  the  amount  he  had  paid  for  the 
salted  pool,  with  legal  interest  carefully 
computed.  He  also  caused  Moran  to 
prepare  for  publication  a  statement  of 
the  fraud  he  had  practised  in  the  mat- 
ter of  the  salt-spring,  the  reparation  he 
had  made  to  the  purchaser,  and  the 
fact  that  his  uncle  was  not  at  all  im- 
plicated in  the  fraud.  This  he  insisted 
was  due  to  his  uncle's  innocent  chil- 
dren, if  not  to  himself.  This  statement 
was  to  be  published  after  his  departure 
for  France.  He  then  employed  a  com- 
petent French  teacher,  and  set  out  for 
Europe  by  the  first  ship  that  left  Mon- 
treal. 


Of  course,  he  and  Moran  arranged  to 
correspond  regularly  and  frequently. 

As  for  Moran  he  went  to  the  house 
of  Mr.  Nevins  upon  his  arrival  at  Mon- 
treal. Baptiste  had  strongly  advised 
him  to  confide  to  his  old  instructor 
and  benefactor  the  whole  story  of  the 
treasure  he  had  found,  and  after  much 
hesitation  and  reflection  he  had  con- 
cluded to  do  so. 

When  Moran  arrived  at  Mr.  Nevins's 
house,  he  found  the  old  gentleman  in 
his  working-room,  the  garret  of  a  tall 
house.  Mrs.  Nevins  and  Nellie  were 
out  shopping.  The  old  architect  met 
his  late  pupil  with  unaffected  cordiality. 
Moran  had  made  up  his  mind  not  to 
delay  his  disclosures  an  hour,  lest  his 
resolution  to  make  them  should  be 
weakened.  So  he  dashed  into  the  sub- 
ject at  once,  and  greatly  astonished  his 
old  master  by  a  circumstantial  narra- 
tive of  his  treasure-hunting  and  its  re- 
sult. 

"  I  congratulate  y©u  most  sincerely," 
said  Mr.  Nevins,  when  Moran  had  fin- 
ished his  story.  "  You  are  one  of  the 
few  young  men  I  know  not  liable  to  be 
spoiled  by  such  a  piece  of  fortune,  and 
you  must  guard  yourself  well  against 
giddiness,  my  friend.  Your  course  is 
far  more  difficult  than  it  would  have 
been  if  you  had  remained  dependent 
upon  your  profession  for  your  bread. 

"  But,"  said  Moran,  "  ought  I  to  keep 
this  money  ?  There  can  never  be  found 
an  heir  of  O'Donnel,  that  is  morally 
certain ;  but  has  the  government  no 
claim?" 

"  Fiddlesticks  !  "  said  Mr.  Nevins. 
"  The  very  sensible  remarks  of  your 
French  friend  upon  that  subject  ought 
to  set  your  patriotic  scruples  at  rest. 
To  show  you  that  I  have  no  doubt  of 
your  right  to  this  money,  I  will  gladly 
accept  a  loan  of  a  thousand  pounds  of 
it  for  such  time  as  it  will  be  conven- 
ient for  you  to  spare  it.  I  have  an  op- 
portunity to  use  that  sum  very  profit- 
ably, and  I  can  give  you  the  best  of 
security." 

"  You  are  welcome  to  five  times  that 
sum,  and  I  will  not  hear  of  security," 
said  Moran.  "  I  owe  all  that  I  am  to 


1 868.] 


Our  Paris  Letter. 


743 


you.  But  for  your  generosity  I  should 
have  been  obliged  to  surrender  my  arti- 
cles and  go  into  service  very  soon  after 
my  father's  death." 

"  You  are  always  perfectly  absurd  up- 
on that  little  subject,"  said  Mr.  Nevins. 
"Your  poor  father  paid  for  your  arti- 
cles upon  the  reasonable  hypothesis 
that  you  would  develop  the  usual  de- 
gree of  stupidity,  and  give  the  average 
amount  of  trouble.  How  did  the  facts 
turn  out  ?  In  less  than  two  years  you 
had  mastered  the  theory  of  our  profes- 
sion, and  had  become  an  excellent 
draughtsman.  From  that  time  forward 
I  made  money  out  of  you  all  the  tim«. 
I  could  hardly  have  procured  at  any 
price  the  valuable  and  faithful  service 
you  rendered  me.  I  hope  that  my  wife 
and  I  would  have  had  the  grace  to  treat 
you  kindly,  if  you  had  been  ordinarily 
or  even  uncommonly  stupid.  Your  own 
professional  knowledge  must  teach  you 
that  you  earned  more  than  you  received 
during  the  last  five  years  you  were  with 
me.  I  will  borrow  one  thousand  pounds 
of  you,  and  n©  more,  if  you  will  lend  it  to 
me.  I  will  waive  giving  security  if  you 
insist  upon  it,  and  I  will  hear  no  more 
of  your  being  under  obligation  to  me. 
As  for  this  treasure  trove  of  yours,  I 
think  you  will  do  well  not  to  publish  it 
at  present.  Of  course  I  shall  tell  Mrs. 
Nevins  of  your  good  fortune,  but  we 
had  better  say  nothing  to  Nellie  about 
it.  Young  girls  find  it  hard  to  be  bur- 
dened with  a  secret.  I  hear  the  ladies 
down  stairs.  Let  us  go  down  to  them. 
They  will  be  very  glad  to  see  you." 

About  six  months  after  the  above 
conversation  Mr.  Moran  and  Nellie 
Nevins  were  married.  They  made  an 
extended  wedding  tour  in  Europe.  At 


Paris  Moran  renewed  his  intimacy  with 
Baptiste,  who  had  mastered  the  mys- 
teries of  reading  and  writing,  was  a  dil- 
igent student  of  French  literature,  and 
was  by  fits  and  starts  an  enthusiastic 
amateur  chemist. 

My  Jean  Baptiste  was  born  in  Paris. 
Baptiste  was  his  godfather  and  always 
promised  to  make  him  his  heir. 

When  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Moran  returned 
to  Montreal,  the  severe  climate  seemed 
to  irritate  the  lady's  lungs,  and  they  re- 
moved to  St.  Louis,  where  they  have 
ever  since  resided.  Mr.  Moran  is,  as 
you  know,  very  wealthy.  He  purchased 
a  large  tract  of  land  when  he  first  went 
to  St.  Louis,  which  is  now  in  the  best 
part  of  the  city. 

Father  Moran  has  looked  over  my 
version  of  his  story.  He  is  pleased  to 
say  that  I  have  been  quite  as  conscien- 
tious and  faithful  to  the  facts  of  the  case 
as  was  Mr.  Abbott  in  his  Life  of  Napo- 
leon. He  thinks  I  have  not  done  full 
justice  to  the  characters  of  Baptiste 
and  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Nevins.  We  must 
be  critical,  or  we  are  nothing,  here  in 
Paris. 

Jean  Baptiste  thinks  I  had  better  not 
attempt  to  describe  the  great  exposition 
of  last  year  in  this  brief  note.  He  ad- 
vises me  to  defer  that  task  till  I  have 
time  to  write  a  good  long  letter.  He 
sends  his  dutiful  respects  to  you.  Fa- 
ther and  Mother  Moran  also  salute  you, 
and  bid  me  add  that  we  shall  visit  you, 
and  take  you  to  St.  Louis  with  us,  if 
you  will  go,  upon  our  return  to  America 
next  fall. 

Dearest  mamma,  adieu. 

ELEANOR  MORAN. 

PARIS,  July  20. 

To  MRS.  W.  H.  WILMAN,  Lowell,  Mass. 


744 


The  First  and  the  Last, 


[December, 


THE    FIRST    AND    THE    LAST. 


I  SUPPOSE  that  both  the  beginning 
and  the  end  of  most  things  are 
clouded  or  unnoticed.  With  a  good 
index  or  two,  I  could  probably  look  up 
some  excellent  quotations  to  this  effect. 
Somebody  says,  for  instance,  that  epic 
poems  are  like  a  bass-relief  frieze,  at 
one  end  of  which  you  see  a  man's  leg, 
without  any  body,  and  at  the  other  end 
the  head  of  a  ram,  who  has  no  hind 
legs  nor  tail.  By  an  index,  I  say,  —  or 
at  worst  by  a  line  to  "  Notes  and  Que- 
ries," —  nay,  by  stopping  Fred  as  he 
drives  down  Lincoln  Street  in  his 
buggy,  we  could  find  out  who  said  this 
if  we  cared.  But  fortunately  we  do  not 
care  ;  for  the  remark  is  not  only  true 
of  epics,  but  of  most  things  in  life,  if 
they  ever  achieve  importance.  The 
meteor  goes  flaring '  across  the  sky, 
and  you  see  it ;  but  when  you  come 
to  compare  notes  as  to  where  it  began 
to  be  visible,  why,  none  of  you  hap- 
pened to  be  looking  ;  and  when  you 
inquire  where  it  ended,  why,  it  blew  up 
into  such  little  bits  that  none  of  you 
saw.  Most  human  transactions  have 
this  meteoric  quality. 

So  it  happens  that  the  horrible 
"  Middle  Passage,"  as  men  called  it,  — 
the  'slave-trade  from  Africa  to  America, 
which  had,  in  the  three  centuries  of  its 
endurance,  caused  such  untold  suffer- 
ing to  such  myriads  of  men,  women, 
and  children,  —  came  to  what  seemed 
its  end  so  gently  and  simply,  in  the 
midst,  indeed,  of  such  a  day-dawn  of 
brighter  light  for  the  world  than  the 
world  had  ever  known  before,  that 
it  proved  that  the  world's  great  audi- 
ence was  not  even  looking  on  at  the 
denouement  of  the  play.  The  audi- 


ence would  have  said  that  it  knew 
what  the  end  was  to  be.  Indeed,  the 
audience  was  a  little  tired  of  that  play, 
and  had  been  looking  up  its  cloaks  and 
canes,  that  it  might  go  and  see  another 
spectacle.  For  myself,  I  know  I  was 
not  looking  on,  —  I  was  looking  at  quite 
a  different  performance,  —  and  I  first 
knew  that  the  curtain  was  down  from 
a  little  word  of  dear  Old  Abe's  in  one 
of  his  last  messages.  In  1863  he  had 
announced  that  the  right-of-search  trea- 
ty had  been  carried  into  execution,  and 
expressed  the  belief  that,  for  American 
citizens,  "  that  inhuman  and  vicious 
traffic  had'  been  brought  to  an  end." 
Before  he  died  he  was  happy  enough  to 
be  able  to  announce  that  no  slave  had 
for  a  year  been  brought  from  Africa  to 
America.  There  was  nothing,  I  think, 
which  he  had  more  at  heart,  and  no 
success  of  which  he  was  more  proud. 
That  set  me  to  look  up  the  history  of 
its  last  decline  ;  and  two  or  three  years 
have  brought  along  the  documentary 
returns,  —  reports  written  by  hard-work- 
ing men,  who  are  dying  in  the  horrid 
climate  of  the  Western  African  bays 
and  harbors  so  that  this  trade  may 
come  to  an  end.  When  I  found  the 
last  return  of  the  year  1864,  it  seemed 
to  me  that  the  crime  of  crimes  had 
come  to  its  end  in  a  fitting  way.  The 
usual  blank  was  filled  out  just  as  it 
used  to  be  in  the  horrid  days  when 
perhaps  a  hundred  of  slaving  vessels 
slipped  through.  Commodore  Wilmot, 
of  the  English  navy,  had  this  same 
long  blank  to  fill ;  but,  thank  God,  he 
had  not  so  much  to  put  into  it.  And  see 
what  is  the  record  of  obscurity  in  which 
the  horror  of  horrors  seemed  to  end. 


ENCLOSURE  II.  IN  No.  151. 

Return  of  Vessels  which  are  said  to  have  escaped  with  Slaves  from  the  West  Coast 
of  Africa  bet-ween  January  i  and  December  31,  1864. 


Date  of 
sailing 
from  Port. 

Name  of 
Vessel. 

Nation. 

Riff- 

Tons. 

Owners. 

Cargo. 

Place  where 
Slaves  were 
shipped. 

Date  of 

Ship- 
ment. 

Remarks. 

Unknown. 

Unknown. 

Unknown. 

Brig. 

Unknown. 

Unknown. 

600 
Slaves. 

Moaucla. 

1864. 
Jan.  28. 

heard  of  since.  Being  in  a  very 
leaky  state  at  the  time  of  ship- 
ment, she  is  supposed  to  have 
foundered  at  sea. 

1 868.] 


The  First  and  the  Last. 


745 


Is  not  that  a  weird  bit  of  history? 
This  unknown  vessel,  on  a  devil's  er- 
rand, foundering  in  the  ocean,  carried 
wfth  her,  as  it  seemed,  the  end  of  the 
story.  Eighteen  months  after,  another 
vessel,  a  little  brigantine,  slipped  the 
blockade,  but  she  arrived  in  Cuba  only 
to  be  arrested  there.  The  last  "suc- 
cessful" slaver,  so  far,  as  yet  report- 
ed,—  the  last  slaver  who  ran  every  hu- 
man blockade,  —  is  the  unknown  man 
of  an  unknown  nation,  who  with  these 
unknown  blacks  slipped  out  from  Mo- 
auda  on  the  28th  of  January,  1864,  and 
foundered  in  an  unknown  sea.  Fit  in- 
scription is  Commodore  Wilmot's  rec- 
ord for  the  end ! 

Now  it  happens,  courtly  reader,  —  if 
indeed  you  exist,  —  always  an  inquiry 
so  curious  to  the  writer,  —  it  happens 
that  this  writer  has  a  personal  interest 
in  seeing  that  iniquity  thoroughly  end- 
ed. If  the  usual  hyperbole  of  expres- 
sion may  be  allowed,  the  blood  in 
these  veins,  —  namely,  in  the  veins  and 
even  the  arteries  which  pass  through 
the  fingers  which  drive  this  pencil  over 
the  blue  lines  of  this  writing-book, — 
is  blood  which,  according  to  the  hyper- 
bole, flowed  in  the  veins  of  John  Haw- 
kins, English  seaman,  born  about  1520, 
died  at  sea  1595,  who  invented  and  set 
in  being  the  English  slave-trade.  A 
great  sailor  and  a  brave  man,  and  I 
hope  my  boys  may  show  some  of  the 
traits  that  made  him  so  ;  'but  I  have 
always  wished  he  had  not  stumbled  on 
that  Guinea  trade,  and  had  not  initiat- 
ed this  business.  Let  us  hope  he  did 
it  more  kindly  than  his  successors, — 
as,  in  fact,  I  believe  he  did. 

You  will  find  it  said  in  the  books,  that 
Queen  Elizabeth  expressed  her  disgust 
at  the  sei/Aire  of  the  men  whom  this 
John  Hawkins  took  captive  in  Africa 
in  his  first  voyage,  and  that  he  prom- 
ised her  that  he  would  do  so  no  more. 
But  I  can  find  no  original  authority 
which  says  she  did  so,  and  I  do  not  be- 
lieve it.  If  she  did,  it  was  as  she  said 
a  good  many  other  things,  and  she  con- 
cealed her  disgust  pretty  well  after- 
wards, while  he  did  the  same  thing 
again  and  again,  —  and  when  she  made 


him  knight  for  doing  this  and  other 
things  in  the  same  line.  For  when,  years 
after,  she  made  him  a  knight,  the  crest 
her  heralds  permitted  him  to  wear  is 
this,  as  they  state  it  in  their  funny 
slang :  — 

"  CREST,  upon  his  Helm,  a  wreath 
argent  and  azure,  —  a  'Dtim-Moor  in 
his  proper  color,  bound  and  captive,  with 
annulets  on  his  arms  and  ears  or  ;  man- 
telled  gules,  doubled  argent." 

That  was  the  public  cognizance  of 
this  brave  gentleman  and  true  knight,  — 
a  black  man  captive  in  chains.  I  am 
afraid  that  meant  something.  Well  for 
me,  his  descendant,  I  can  have  no 
crest,  because  in  heraldry  clergymen 
bear  none  ;  but  I  have  told  my  anti- 
slavery  relations,  that,  if  my  children 
cut  this  crest  on  their  seal-rings,  I  will 
bid  them  add  the  motto,  "  Am  I  not  a 
man  and  a  brother  ?  "  That  is  the  way 
they  must  amalgamate  the  blood  which 
they  draw  from  Beecher  and  from  Haw- 
kins. 

No,  we  must  not  try  to  figure  off 
anything  from  what  Hawkins  was.  He 
set  in  operation  the  English  and  Amer- 
ican slave-trade.  The  origin  of  the 
trade  itself  was  in  the  Portuguese  and 
Spanish  commerce.  Clarkson  studied 
up  the  subject  with  care,  and  from  him 
I  take  the  dates  and  figures. 

As  early  as  1503  a  few  slaves  had 
been  sent  from  the  Portuguese  settle- 
ments in  Africa  into  the  Spanish  colo- 
nies in  America.  In  1511  Ferdinand 
V.,  king  of  Spain,  permitted  them  to  be 
carried  in  great  numbers.  But  he  must 
have  been  ignorant  of  the  piratical  way 
in  which  the  Portuguese  had  procured 
them.  He  could  have  known  nothing 
of  their  treatment  in  bondage,  nor  could 
he  have  considered  these  transporta- 
tions as  a  regular  trade.  After  his 
death,  a  proposal  was  made  by  Barthol- 
omew de  Las  Casas,  bishop  of  Chiapa, 
to  Cardinal  Ximenes,  who  governed 
Spain  till  Charles  V.  came  to  the 
throne,  for  the  establishment  of  a  reg- 
ular system  of  commerce  in  the  per- 
sons of  the  native  Africans.  The  ob- 
ject of  Las  Casas,  as  everybody  knows, 
was  to  save  the  American  Indians  from 


746 


The  First  and  the  Last. 


[December, 


the  cruel  treatment  which  he  had  wit- 
nessed when  he  lived  among  them.  He 
had  undertaken  a  voyage  to  the  Court 
of  Spain  in  their  behalf.  It  is  difficult 
to  reconcile  this  proposal  with  his  hu- 
mane and  charitable  spirit.  But  I  sup- 
pose he  believed  that  a  code  of  laws 
would  soon  be  established  in  favor  of 
both  Africans  and  the  natives,  and  he 
thought  that,  as  he  was  going  back  to 
live  in  the  country  of  their  slavery,  he 
could  see  that  the  laws  were  executed. 
The  Cardinal,  however,  refused  the  pro- 
posal. Ximenes,  therefore,  is  to  be  con- 
sidered as  one  of  the  first  great  friends 
of  the  Africans,  after  the  partial  begin- 
ning of  the  trade.  He  judged  it  unlawful 
to  consign  innocent  people  to  slavery, 
and  also  very  inconsistent  to  deliver 
the  inhabitants  of  one  country  from 
a  state  of  misery  by  plunging  into  it 
those  of  another. 

After  the  death  of  Ximenes  the  Em- 
peror Charles  V.  encouraged  the  trade. 
In  1517  he  granted  a  patent  to  one  of 
his  Flemish  favorites,  containing  an  ex- 
clusive right  of  importing  four  thousand 
Africans  into  America.  But  he  lived 
long  enough  to  repent  of  this  inconsid- 
erate act;  for  in  1542  he  made  a  code 
of  laws  for  the  better  protection  of  the 
unfortunate  Indians  in  his  foreign  do- 
minions, and  ordered  all  slaves  on  his 
American  islands  to  be  made  free.  This 
order  was  executed,  and  manumission 
took  place  in  Hispaniola  and  on  the 
continent ;  but  on  the  return  of  Gasca 
to  Spain,  and  the  retiring  of  Charles  to 
a  monastery,  slavery  was  revived. 

So  much  does  religion  gain  when 
emperors  retire  into  monasteries.  Ob- 
serve, dear  reader,  that,  when  Charles 
V.  steps  into  his  convent,  John  Haw- 
kins happens  to  be  stepping  out  of  his 
obscurity;  the  old  woman  goes  in, 
as  in  the  weather-glass,  and  the  fresh 
young  Englishman,  then  thirty-six  years 
old,  not  afraid  of  storms,  steps  out. 
And  many  things  follow. 

Hawkins  had  made  divers  voyages  to 
the  Canaries,  and  there  by  his  good  and 
upright  dealing  had  grown  in  love  and 
favor  with  the  people,  and  learned, 
among  other  things,  that  negroes  were 


very  good  merchandise  in  Hispaniola, 
and  that  store  of  negroes  might  easily 
be  had  on  the  coast  of  Guinea.  So,  in 
brief,  says  Hakluyt's  old  record.  Anfl 
he  resolved  to  make  trial  thereof,  and 
communicated  with  worshipful  friends  in 
London,  whose  names  I  could  commu- 
nicate to  you,  only  you  might  find  your 
own  and  your  next  friend's  among 
them,  and  there  is  not  at  best  a  great 
deal  in  a  name.  Three  ships  were  pro- 
vided, and  "Mr.  Hawkins"  went  as 
"general"  of  the  three.  They  sailed 
October,  1562.  They  touched  at  Ten- 
eriffe,  and  "  thence  he  passed  to  Sierra 
Leone,  upon  the  coast  of  Guinea,  which 
place  by  the  people  of  the  country  is 
called  Tagaim,  where  he  stayed  some 
good  time,  and  got  into  his  possession, 
partly  by  the  sword  and  partly  by  other 
means,  to  the  number  of  three  hundred 
negroes  at  least,  besides  other  merchan- 
dises which  the  country  yieldeth.  We 
must  do  better  by  Sierra  Leone  before 
we  are  done  with  it.  With  this  prey 
he  sailed  over  the  ocean  sea  unto  the 
island  of  Hispaniola,  and  arrived  first  at 
the  port  of  Isabella ;  and  there  he  had 
reasonable  utterance  of  his  English 
commodities,  as  also  of  some  part  of 
his  negroes,  trustijag  the  Spaniards  no 
further  than  that  by  his  own  strength 
he  was  able  still  to  master  them.  At 
Monte  Christi  he  made  vent  of  the 
whole  number  of  his  negroes,  for  which 
he  received  in  those  three  places,  by 
way  of  exchange,  such  quantity  of  mer- 
chandise that  he  did  not  only  lade  his 
own  three  ships  with  hides,  ginger,  sug- 
ars, and  some  quantity  of  pearls,  but 
he  freighted  also  the  other  hulks  with 
hides  and  other  like  commodities,  which 
he  sent  into  Spain.  And  thus  leaving  the 
island,  he  returned  and  disembogued, 
passing  out  by  the  islands  of  the  Caycos, 
without  further  entering  into  the  bay  of 
Mexico  in  this  his  first  voyage  to  the 
West  India.  And  so  with  prosperous 
success  and  much  gain  to  himself  and 
the  aforesaid  adventurers,  he  came  home, 
and  arriveth  in  the  month  of  September, 
1563." 

Thus  encouraged,  Hawkins  and  his 
friends  fitted  out  a  larger  fleet,  and  he 


1 868.] 


The  First  and  the  Last. 


747 


sailed  again  October  18,  1564.  Ob- 
serve, for  convenience  of  memory,  that 
this  barbarism  lasted  just  three  hun- 
dred years.  He  crossed  the  ocean  with 
his  first  slaves  in  the  early  part  of  1564. 
In  January,  1864,  that  brig  "  Unknown  " 
sailed  with  Mr.  "  Unknown "  in  com- 
mand, and  sank  in  an  unknown  sea. 
Names  are  not  much,  as  I  said  ; 
perhaps  "  Unknown "  is  that  brig's 
best  name.  Hawkins  began  —  shall 
we  confess  it?  —  in  the  Solomon", — 
fit  tribute  to  the  wisdom  of  the  time. 
The  second,  alas !  was  a  larger  fleet, 
and  his  flag-ship  a  larger  vessel,  and 
her  name  —  shall  we  confess  it?  —  was 
the  name  of  names.  The  successful 
African  admiral  sailed  there  on  his 
prosperous  venture,  in  the  Jesus  !  Fit 
tribute  to  the  religion  of  the  time  !  The 
Solomon  and  the  Tiger  and  the  Swal- 
low were  the  others  ;  the  Swallow,  alas  ! 
the  smallest  of  them  all. 

We  cannot  stop  to  trace  these  voy- 
ages, nor  is  it  a  History  of  the  Middle 
Passage  that  I  am  writing.  I  am  only 
dealing  with  the  first  of  it  and  the  last 
of  it,  the  beginning  and  the  end. 
There  is  rather  a  comfort  to  the  carnal 
mind,  and  perhaps  to  the  uncarnal,  to 
know  that,  when  Hawkins  came  home 
from  his  third  voyage,  he  wrote  that, 
11  If  all  the  miseries  and  troublesome  af- 
fairs of  this  sorrowful  voyage  should  be 
perfectly  and  throughly  written,  there 
should  need  a  painful  man  with  his  pen, 
and  as  great  time  as  he  that  wrote  the 
lives  and  deaths  of  the  martyrs."  Alas  ! 
alas  !  how  unconscious  was  the  blunt 
seaman's  prophecy !  martyrs,  indeed  ! 
Did  all  the  other  martyrs  from  the  be- 
ginning suffer  a  tithe  or  a  tithe's  tithe 
of  the  anguish  which  in  those  voyages 
of  his  he  set  in  motion  ?  He  talks  in 
this  way  only  of  his  own  miseries  and 
those  of  his  crew.  There  is  not  in  his 
journals,  nor  in  the  writing  of  any  man 
of  his  time,  so  far  as  I  know,  one  word 
of  feeling  for  the  slaves  whom  they 
carried  over.  But  with  that  wretched 
three  hundred  who  went  over  in  the 
Solomon,  and  the  larger  part  who 
followed  in  the  larger  fleets,  there  began 
such  a  horrible  procession  of  misery  as 


the  world  never  saw  beside,  —  of  which 
you  and  I,  dear  reader,  are  seeing  the 
last  traces  only  in  this  day. 

I  dare  not  try  to  count  the  numbers. 
Nobody  dares.  Nor  would  it  make  any 
difference  if  I  did.  Beyond  a  very  nar- 
row range,  dear  reader,  numbers  do  not 
affect  your  sensibilities  nor  any  man's. 
I  tell  you  that  one  hundred  thousand 
people  were  killed  in  the  earthquake  in 
Peru,  and  you  are  sorry  ;  if  I  tell  you 
that  ten  thousand  people  were  killed, 
and  I  can  give  you  some  little  account 
how  one  of  them  suffered,  you  are  much 
more  sorry;  if  I  tell  you  that  one  hun- 
dred were  killed,  and  that  I  saw  them 
killed,  and  heard  their  cries  as  they 
died,  and  have  here  the  orphan  of  one 
whom  I  brought  home  with  me,  you  begin 
for  the  first  time  to  feel  that  it  was  indeed 
a  terror  of  terrors  ;  and  if  there  were 
only  five  killed,  if  those  five  were  your 
own  Dick  and  Fanny  and  Frank,  and 
the  rest,  why  there  is  a  sorrow  that  you 
will  carry  with  you  to  your  grave.  So  I 
will  not  persecute  you  with  the  num- 
bers. There  were  three  hundred  years 
of  it ;  the  first  three  ships  that  sailed 
carried,  as  we  saw,  three  hundred  slaves ; 
and  the  last  that  sailed  carried  one 
hundred  and  fifty-two,  of  whom  one 
hundred  and  forty-nine  lived  to  reach 
Cuba  and  tp  be  set  free.  Many  and 
many  a  ship,  in  the  three  hundred  years 
between,  was  loaded  with  a  thousand 
and  more  of  the  poor  wretches.  Bux- 
ton's  estimate  in  1830  was  that  the 
Christian  slave-trade  —  Christian,  good 
God!  —  that  the  Christian  slave-trade 
then  carried  one  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand slaves  across  every  year,  or 
started  with  them ;  that  the  Mahom- 
etan slave-trade  of  Eastern  Africa  took 
fifty  thousand  more.  This  was  long 
after  the  trade  had  been  pronounced 
piracy  by  all  the  commercial  nations, 
and  even  after  England  and  America 
had  vessels  on  the  African  coast  to  ar- 
rest it.  What  it  had  been  before  no 
statistics  pretend  to  tell.  In  1753  the 
then  new  town  of  Liverpool  employed 
one  hundred  and  one  vessels  in  the 
trade.  Those  vessels  that  year  took 
thirty  thousand  slaves  to  the  British  col- 


748 


The  First  and  the  Last. 


[December, 


onies  ;  and  the  estimate  of  that  year 
was  that  London,  Bristol,  and  Liver- 
pool took  one  hundred  thousand.  The 
estimate  on  this  side  was  the  same,  — 
that  the  American  colonies  of  England 
received  one  hundred  thousand  slaves 
in  a  year.  Besides  these,  there  were 
the  French,  Spanish,  Dutch,  and  Por- 
tuguese American  colonies  to  be  sup- 
plied. Bonezet's  computation  is,  that 
thirty  per  cent  of  all  these  died  on  the 
passage  or  in  acclimation.  Then  the 
cruelties  of  the  system  of  slavery,  and 
the  opening  up  of  new  lands,  kept  up  a 
steady  demand  for  them,  so  that  I  do 
not  see  that  we  can  escape  the  infer- 
ence that  for  much  of  the  last  century 
the  number  of  negroes  annually  brought 
across  by  the  African  slave-trade  was 
as  great  as  is  no'w  the  number  of  emi- 
grants from  Europe  to  North  America, 
namely,  between  three  hundred  and 
four  hundred  thousand  every  year.  In 
the  preceding  century  the  English  alone 
carried  from  Africa  to  America  three 
hundred  thousand  slaves ;  and  the  Span- 
ish and  Portuguese  trade  must  have 
been  very  much  larger. 

Sad  enough  it  is,  that  our  old  friend 
Robinson  Crusoe  tried  his  hand  at  it. 
And  a  pity  that  all  the  undertakers  for 
it  could  not  have  had  just  his  measure 
of  success.  After  he  had  carried  on 
profitably  for  a  year  or  two  his  planta- 
tion in  the  Brazils,  some  of  his  neigh- 
bors came  to  him  and  told  him  they 
had  been  musing  very  much  upon  what 
he  had  discoursed  with  them  of  the  last 
night,  and  they  came  to  make  a  secret 
proposal  to  him;  and,  after  enjoining 
him  to  secrecy,  they  told  him  that  they 
had  a  mind  to  fit  out  a  ship  to  go  to 
Guinea ;  that  they  all  had  plantations 
as  well  as  he,  and  were  straitened  for 
nothing  so  much  as  servants  ;  that  it 
was  a  trade  that  could  not  be  carried 
on,  because  they  could  not  publicly  sell 
the  negroes  when  they  came  home,  so 
they  desired  to  make  but  one  voyage, 
to  bring  the  negroes  on  shore  privately, 
and  divide  them  among  their  own  plan- 
tations. And,  in  a  word,  the  question 
was,  whether  he  would  go  their  super- 
cargo in  the  ship,  to  manage  the  trading 


part  upon  the  coast  of  Guinea;  and 
they  oifered  him  that  he  should  have 
an  equal  share  of  the  tiegroes,  without 
providing  any  part  of  the  stock.  The 
plan  was,  you  see,  that  they  should 
smuggle  in  these  negroes,  and  not  pay 
the  high  prices  which  they  would  have 
to  pay  if  they  bought  from  the  govern- 
ment contractor. 

Is  it  not  a  singular  thing,  that  a  writ- 
er as  conscientious  as  Defoe,  describ- 
ing'' a  person  whom  he  represents  as 
being  before  his  death  a  thoroughly 
penitent  Christian  man,  like  Robinson 
Crusoe,  never  once  drops  a  hint  that, 
in  twenty-six  years  of  his  island  im- 
prisonment, he  ever  thought  of  anything 
wrong  in  this  project  of  seizing  and  sell- 
ing men?  Robinson  Crusoe  abases 
himself  to  the  dust  because  he  had 
wanted  to  grow  rich  too  fast ;  but  it 
seems  never  to  have  occurred  to  him, 
or  to  the  writer  who  created  him,  that 
there  was  anything  wrong  in  the  method 
by  which  he  was  to  do  it.  Fortunately 
for  him  and  for  us,  that  terrible  south- 
east gale  struck  him,  stranded  him  on 
his  island,  and  the  three  hundred  Con- 
goes  he  was  going  for  were  left  to  live 
and  die  in  their  homes. 

Of  the  horrible  horrors  of  the  trade, 
which  thus  carried,  in  three  hundred 
years,  more  than  fifty  million  Africans 
from  one  hemisphere  to  another,  from 
home  to  the  most  bitter  slavery,  it  is 
a  pity  to  have  to  speak.  What  it  was 
before  it  became  the  subject  of  inquiry 
will  only  be  known  to  you  and  me  when, 
with  the  sensitive  sight  and  hearing  of 
life  unencumbered  with  these  bodies, 
we  see  as  we  are  seen  and  know  as  we 
are  known.  "But  after  the  "  regulation  " 
of  the  trade  began,  the  space  between 
the  decks  of  a  slave-trader  was  but  two 
feet  six  inches  high.  Within  that  space 
as  many  men  were  packed  as  could  lie 
side  by  side  on  their  backs  upon  the 
floor.  Before  they  were  driven  on 
board  they  were  branded  on  the  breast ; 
then  they  were  handcuffed  in  couples, 
and  so  made  the  voyages  two  and  two, 
unless,  indeed,  one  died  or  was  killed. 
When  they  were  on  board,  the  hand- 
cuffs ,were  fastened  by  a  ring  to  long 


1868.] 


The  First  and  the  Last. 


749 


chains  which  ran  along  or  athwart  the 
vessel.  Constantly  it  happened  that 
men  killed  their  neighbors,  that  they 
might  have  air  and  room.  Constantly 
it  happened  that  when  a  couple  were 
brought  on  deck,  one  dead,  one  living, 
that  the  dead  body  might  be  thrown 
over,  the  living  man  leaped  with  him 
into  the  sea,  it  was  so  much  better  to 
die  than  live.  Once  and  again  it  hap- 
pened that  they  were  thrown  over  by 
masters  who  hoped  to  recover  insur- 
ance without  the  pains  of  carrying  them 
across.  Witness  upon  witness  testi- 
fies that  force  had  often  to  be  used  to 
compel  them  to  receive  their  wretched 
food.  Little  wonder,  indeed,  that  in 
such  voyages  untold  numbers  of  them 
died  before  they  reached  the  wretched 
shores  to  which  they  were  destined. 

Of  such  agonies,  yet  untold  to  you 
and  me,  Mr.  Babbage,  in  his  Bridge- 
water  treatise,  has  stated  one  of  the 
records  which  he  suggests  as  the  com- 
pensation, or  part  of  the  compensation, 
of  the  man  who  orders  it.  "  No  mo- 
tion," he  says,  "is  ever  obliterated. 
The  momentary  waves,  raised  by  the 
passing  breeze,  apparently  born  but  to 
die  on  the  spot  which  saw  their  birth, 
leave  behind  them  an  endless  progeny, 
which,  reviving  with  diminished  energy 
in  other  seas,  visiting  a  thousand  shores, 
reflected  from  each,  and  perhaps  again 
partially  concentrated,  will  pursue  their 
ceaseless  course  till  ocean  be  itself  an- 
nihilated. 

"  The  soul  of  the  negro  —  whose  fet- 
tered body,  surviving  the  living  charnel- 
house  of  his  infected  prison,  was  thrown 
into  the  sea  to  lighten  the  ship,  that  his 
Christian  master  might  escape  the  limit- 
ed justice  at  length  assigned  by  civilized 
man  to  crimes  whose  profit  had  long 
gilded  their  atrocity  —  will  need,  at  the 
last  great  day  of  human  account,  no  liv- 
ing witness  of  his  earthly  agony.  When 
man  and  all  his  race  shall  have  disap- 
peared from  the  face  of  our  planet,  ask 
every  particle  of  air  still  floating  over 
the  unpeopled  earth,  and  it  will  record 
the  cruel  mandate  of  the  tyrant.  Inter- 
rogate every  wave  which  breaks  unim- 
peded on  ten  thousand  desolate  shores, 


and  it  will  give  evidence  of  the  last 
gurgle  of  the  waters  which  closed  over 
the  head  of  his  dying  victim." 

Of  all  this  the  end  must  come,  in  a 
world  ruled  by  a  good  God,  though  the 
end  come  more  slowly  than  you  or  I 
would  have  fancied.  And  from  the  be- 
ginning, as  you  saw  in  Ximenes's  ex- 
ertions, there  has  been  steady  protest 
against  it.  Our  protest  here  in  Massa- 
chusetts was  made  promptly  and  fairly  ; 
but,  as  all  men  know,  our  shipping- 
merchants  could  not,  for  a  hundred 
years,  stand  true  against  temptation. 
In  1646  the  General  Court  of  Massa- 
chusetts passed  this  manly  vote:  "No- 
vember 4.  The  General  Court  —  con- 
ceiving themselves  bound  by  the  first 
opportunity  to  bear  witness  against  the 
heinous  and  crying  sin  of  man-stealing, 
as  also  to  prescribe  such  timely  redress 
for  what  is  past,  and  such  a  law  for  the 
future  as  may  sufficiently  deter  all  oth- 
ers belonging  to  us  to  have  to  do  in 
such  vile  and  most  odious  courses,  just- 
ly abhorred  of  all  good  and  just  men  — 
do  order  that  the  negro  interpreter, 
with  others  unlawfully  taken,  be,  by  the 
first  opportunity  (at  the  charge  of  the 
country  for  the  present),  sent  to  his 
native  country  of  Guinea,  and  a  letter 
with  him  of  the  indignation  of  the  Court 
thereabouts,  and  justice  hereof,  desiring 
our  honored  Governor  would  please  to 
put  this  order  in  execution." 

So  one  poor  fellow,  at  least,  got  safe 
home  again,  —  or  somewhere  where  it 
seemed  to  him  like  home. 

But  a  century  had  to  work  on.  Robin- 
son Crusoe  on  the  Island  of  Despair,  — 
a  hundred  and  one  slave-traders  in  a 
year  sailing  out  of  Liverpool,  —  no  man 
dares  say  how  many  from  Spanish  ports 
and  French  and  Portuguese,  —  make  the 
history  of  that  century.  The  beginning 
of  the  end  is  about  a  hundred  years 
ago.  Anthony  Benezet's  "  Caution  to 
Great  Britain  relative  to  Enslaved  Ne- 
groes "  was  published  in  1767. 

All  along,  indeed,  the  Quakers  of  this 
country  and  those  of  England  had  been 
true  in  bearing  their  testimony.  In  1776 
Jefferson  wrote  in  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  in  what  Mr.  Bancroft 


750 


The  First  and  the  Last. 


[December, 


calls  his  indictment  against  George  III., 
this  specification  :  — 

"He  has  waged  cruel  war  against 
human  nature  itself,  —  violating  its 
most  sacred  rights  of  life  and  liberty  in 
the  persons  of  a  distant  people  who 
never  offended  him,  captivating  and 
carrying  them  into  slavery  in  anoth- 
er hemisphere,  or  to  incur  miserable 
death  in  their  transportation  thither. 
This  piratical  warfare  —  the  opprobri- 
um of  infidel  powers  — is  the  warfare  of 
the  Christian  king  of  Great  Britain. 
Determined  to  keep  open  a  market 
where  men  should  be  bought  and  sold, 
he  has  prostituted  his  negative  for  sup- 
pressing every  legislative  attempt  to 
prohibit  or  to  restrain  this  execrable 
commerce." 

In  fact,  Virginia  and  other  Colonies 
had  steadily  attempted  to  repress  the 
trade,  but  had  been  overruled  by  the 
king's  veto.  Congress  had  already  de- 
clared the  slave-trade  piracy.  Mr.  Cary 
estimates  that  before  1770  about  two 
hundred  thousand  had  been  imported 
into  the  old  thirteen  Colonies ;  and  he 
says  that  if  the  slaves  of  the  British 
Islands  had  been  as  well  treated  as  the 
slaves  in  the  thirteen  Colonies,  their 
numbers  would  have  reached  seventeen 
millions  before  1850 ;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  if  the  slaves  in  the  thirteen 
Colonies  and  the  United  States  had  ex- 
perienced as  bard  treatment  as  their 
fellows  on  the  English  islands,  their 
numbers  in  1850  would  not  have  been 
more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand. At  the  period  of  the  peace  pub- 
lic opinion  was  steadily  set  against  the 
slave  traffic,  North  and  South,  in  Amer- 
ica. It  was  the  cotton  culture,  intro- 
duced afterwards,  which  gave  it,  for  us, 
any  new  vitality.  The  Constitution  of 
the  United  States,  in  1787,  prohibited  the 
introduction  of  slaves  into  the  United 
States  after  the  year  1808.  Meanwhile 
in  England  Clarkson,  in  1785,  won  the 
prize  offered  at  Cambridge  for  an  Essay 
on  the  Slave-Trade.  The  fact  that  the 
prize  was  offered  shows  that  attention 
had  been  then  arrested  by  its  horrors. 
From  this  moment  he  was  enlisted, 
heart  and  soul,  in  the  attack  on  the 


system ;  and  he  lived  to  see  it  branded 
by  the  legislation  of  almost  all  the  world. 
The  conservative  force  of  the  immense 
plantation  interests  was  against  them ; 
but  they  won  their  great  victory  in  1807, 
when  British  ports,  British  vessels,  and 
British  subjects  were  forbidden  to  lend 
to  the  trade  any  sort  of  complicity. 

But  legislation,  alas  !  in  a  finite  world, 
is  one  thing,  and  execution  is  another. 
In  face  of  some  assertions  to  the  con- 
trary, I  believe  that  on  this  side  the 
prohibition  of  the  importation  of  slaves 
was  steadily  maintained,  until  the  Wan- 
derer and  her  companion,  under  La- 
mar's  patronage,  ran  two  small  cargoes 
into  Florida  just  before  the  Rebellion. 
(Note,  in  passing,  if  you  please,  that  the 
main-mast  of  the  Wanderer  is  now  the 
flag-staff  from  which  floats  the  flag  of 
liberty  over  that  "Union"  Park  where 
Sunday  after  Sunday  it  is  my  place 
humbly  to  proclaim  the  Truth  which 
has  sent  the  Wanderer  to  her  place, 
and  the  flag-staff  to  its  place  as  well.) 
It  soon  became  the  interest  of  Virginia 
and  the  Northern  Slave  States  to  cut  off 
the  foreign  market  for  Louisiana  and  the 
other  States,  which  were  using  up  slave 
life  as  a  part  of  the  raw  material  in  mak- 
ing sugar  and  cotton.  But  the  market 
in  the  islands  and  in  South  America  only 
increased  with  the  increasing  demands 
for  tropical  commodities.  An  organized 
fleet  of  cruisers  was  eventually  put  on 
the  African  coast.  But  we  know  what 
blockade-running  is,  when  there  is  a 
coast  of  three  or  four  thousand  miles 
to  guard.  Then  diplomacy  had  to  step 
in  and  block  the  wheels.  There  came 
up  all  that  matter  about  the  right  of 
search.  All  the  world  recognized  the 
slave-trade  as  piracy.  O  yes,  horrir 
ble  piracy !  But  how  shall  we  find  out 
if  that  wicked-looking  little  schooner 
which  has  just  run  up  the  river,  with  no 
apparent  purpose  under  heaven  but  to 
get  slaves,  is  a  slave  -  trader  or  no  ? 
Find  that  out,  says  diplomacy,  at  your 
peril !  If  there  "  are  slaves  on  board, 
seize  her,  arid  welcome.  But  if  there 
are  none,  interfere  with  the  Stars  and 
Stripes,  or  the  Tricolor,  or  the  Pillars 
of  Hercules  floating  at  her  mast-head, 


1868.] 


The  First  arid  the  Last. 


751 


at  your  peril !  "  Might  we  not  have  a 
right  of  visit?"  said  somebody,  I  think 
a  Frenchman.  Much  good  did  the  "vis- 
it "  do.  A  smiling  captain  received  you 
on  deck,  and  gave  you  a  glass  of  wine. 
"  Shall  we  go  down  stairs,  Captain,  and 
see  what  you  have  there  ?  "  "  I  will  see 
you  hanged  first!"  says  your  smiling 
friend.  Actually,  it  was  not  till  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  got  the  helm  that  we  set- 
tled this  tomfoolery.  At  his  instance 
a  treaty  was  at  once  made,  which  the 
English  government  had  offered  hand- 
somely before,  giving  to  specified  ships 
on  each  side  —  being  in  fact  the  slave 
blockading  squadrons  of  each  power  — 
the  right  of  search  of  vessels  suspected 
in  slaving.  That  treaty  was  one  of  the 
last  nails  in  the  coffin. 

But  I  am  in  advance  of  my  story. 
Thanks  to  red  tape  and  national  jeal- 
ousy, and  to  general  indifference  and  to 
human  fatuity,  and  to  the  navies  of  the 
world  being  otherwise  occupied,  and  to 
what  is  everybody's  business  being  no- 
body's business,  and  to  all  other  con- 
ceivable motives,  the  trade  grew  and 
prospered  for  years  on  years  after  the 
prohibitory  legislation.  None  the  less, 
however,  was  its  doom  sealed.  Pro- 
hibitory legislation  can  do  what  you 
choose,  if  you  mean  to  make  it,  and 
will  hold  on  grimly.  By  the  time  that 
slavery  was  abolished  in  the  English 
dominions,  the  English  government  kept  . 
a  strong  squadron  oa  the  lookout ;  and 
whenever  we  had  anything  but  a  Demo- 
cratic administration  here,  we  kept  a 
weak  squadron  on  the  lookout.  Sierra 
Leone  and  Liberia  got  established,  and 
so  much  of  the  coast  was  safe.  Only 
small,  swift  vessels  could  be  used  for 
the  traffic.  The  old  days  of  stately 
merchantmen  of  seven  hundred  or  one 
thousand  tons  taking  over  their  dying 
cargoes  were  at  an  end.  But  the 
crowding  and  the  suffering  were  only 
the  more  terrible ;  and  as  the  risk  be- 
came greater  the  estimate  was  made, 
that,  if  the  trader  saved  one  cargo  out 
of  three,  he  made  money.  As  lately  as 
1830,  as  I  have  said  above,  Sir  Thomas 
Fowell  Buxton  estimated  that  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  thousand  slaves  were 


taken  every  year  in  the  "Christian" 
trade.  His  estimate  seems  to  be  fairly 
made  on  fair  grounds. 

I  suppose,  however,  that  the  publi- 
cation of  that  book  was  the  drop-scene 
before  the  fourth  act.  From  that  time 
the  net  grew  tighter  and  tighter.  I 
know  no  more  thrilling  reading  than 
the  annual  blue-books  of  Parliament, 
in  which  the  officers  England  put  on 
duty  in  the  disheartening  and  sickly 
service  of  that  Western  Coast  tell  of 
the  new  success  they  got  each  year 
in  drawing  up  its  cords.  And  at  the 
last  the  great  combatants,  really,  were 
the  government  of  England,  determined 
that  this  thing  should  end,  and  the 
administration  of  James  Buchanan  and 
the  rest,  passively  determined  that  the 
thing  should  outlast  their  time.  A 
swarm  of  pawns  on  the  board,  with  one 
white  queen  watching  her  chance,  and 
one  black  queen  bidding  her  stand  off 
at  her  peril.  Have  you  never  seen  the 
change  in  such  a  game  of  chess,  when, 
of  a  sudden,  the  black  queen  trips 
and  falls  ?  The  men  who  had  played 
our  game  thought  they  knew  a  better 
play,  and  moved  up  Beauregard  and 
Jeff  Davis  to  take  the  place  for  them 
of  "  the  old  concern."  Bad  play  for 
them,  as  it  proved !  Abe  Lincoln  had 
many  other  things  to  do,  but  he  did 
not  neglect  this  thing.  "  Right-of- 
search  treaty  first,"  said  he  and  Mr. 
Seward.  And  right-of-search  treaty 
we  had,  —  Jeff  Davis  and  the  rest,  who 
had  blocked  it  in*  the  Senate  for  thirty 
years,  and  would  have  blocked  it  for 
thirty  centuries,  being  now  far  away. 
"  Catch  us  some  slave-traders  next  "  ; 
and  one  and  another  "highly  respect- 
able gentleman  "  found  himself  in  the 
hands  of  United  States  marshals. 
Lots  of  money  to  get  him  off,  influ- 
ential friends,  and  so  on ;  but  Abe 
Lincoln  is  at  the  helm,  and  some  dis- 
trict attorneys  and  some  marshals  he 
had  named  at  the  fore.  Then  came  act 
fifth  and  last. 

As  the  game  had  gone,  New  York 
was  the  great  centre  where  the  slave- 
traders  of  the  world  bought  their  ves- 
sels. Havana  was  the  great  centre 


752 


The  First  and  the  Last. 


[December, 


where  they  laid  their  plans.  Boston, 
New  Bedford,  New  London,  Cadiz, 
Barcelona,  the  Western  Islands,  and  I 
know  not  where  else,  were  the  minor 
places  in  the  operation.  The  voyages 
were  arranged  at  Havana,  the  ships 
were  partly  fitted  in  New  York,  thence 
they  slipped  to  sea,  picked  up  the  rest 
of  their  equipment  and  the  right  papers 
elsewhere  if  New  York  would  not  an- 
swer, and  brought  up  on  the  Western 
Coast.  I  have  seen  the  record  which 
Mr.  Archibald,  the  English  Consul  and 
Commissioner  in  New  York,  kept  of 
one  hundred  and  seventy-one  of  these 
vessels  in  three  years'  time.  His  se- 
cret agents  boarded  them  in  New  York 
Harbor,  and  described  them  for  him  in 
detail,  even  down  to  the  brand  of  cigars 
which  the  captain  had  in  his  cabin. 
Mr.  Archibald  sent  the  description  to 
the  Admiralty,  and  they  to  the  Coast. 
"  Let  me  go  below,"  said  an  English 
officer,  on  board  a  slaver  in  one  of  the 
African  rivers.  "You  go  at  your  peril," 
said  the  captain,  brave  in  the  perfectly 
regular  papers  he  had,  in  the  Stars  and 
Stripes  over  his  head,  in  the  new  coat 
of  paint  he  had  taken  at  the  Western 
Islands,  and  in  the  fact,  perhaps,  that, 
though  he  sailed  a  bark,  he  was  now 
a  brig.  "  You  go  below. at  your  peril." 
"  I  will  take  the  risk,"  said  the  English- 
man ;  went  below,  and  found  all  the 
slave -fittings,  casks,  cooking -stove, 
handcuffs,  and  the  rest,  and  of  course 
seized  the  vessel.  The  outwitted  cap- 
tain, white  with  rage,  swore  between 
his  clenched  teeth,  "You  would  not 
have  known  me  but  for  your  bloody 
English  Counsel  in  New  York."  Al- 
most every  man  of  the  projectors  was 
known  to  the  English  government 
through  this  steady  secret  service. 
But  they  all  ran  riot  till  Mr.  Lincoln 
came  in,  and  then  one  fine  day  one 
Gordon  was  arrested  for  slave-trading, 
another  day  he  was  tried,  and  another 
he  was  hanged  ! 

Yes,  my  friend,  he  was  hanged.  I 
know  about  what  is  called  the  sacred- 
ness  of  human  life.  For  my  part,  I  be- 
lieve a  man's  life  is  as  sacred  as  his 
liberty,  and  no  more  so.  And  I  believe 


when  his  country  requires  either  his  life 
or  his  liberty  she  may  use  it,  if  she 
takes  the  responsibility.  In  this  case, 
I  am  very  glad  my  country  took  thiX. 
responsibility.  Whatever  Gordon's  Iir2 
may  have  been  worth  to  him  or  to  his 
friends,  I  think  this  country  put  it  to  a 
very  good  use  when  she  hanged  him. 
A  storm  of  protest  was  made  against 
his  death.  Twenty-five  thousand  peo- 
ple petitioned  Abraham  Lincoln  to 
spare  that  man's  life,  and  Abraham 
Lincoln  refused.  Gordon  was  hanged. 
And  all  through  the  little  ports  and'big 
ports  of  the  United  States  it  was 
known  that  a  slave-trader  had  been 
hanged.  And,  when  that  was  known, 
the  American  slave-trade  ended.  All 
up  and  down  little  African  rivers  that 
you  never  heard  the  names  of  it  was 
known  that  an  American  slave-trader 
had  been  hanged ;  and  cowardly  pi- 
rates trembled,  and  brave  seamen 
cheered,  when  they  heard  it.  Mothers 
of  children  thanked  such  gods  as  they 
knew  how  to  thank  ;  and  slaves  shut 
up  in  barracoons,  waiting  for  their  voy- 
age, got  signal  that  something  had  hap- 
pened which  was  to  give  them  freedom. 
That  something  was  that  Gordon  was 
hanged.  So  far  that  little  candle  threw 
its  beams. 

I  am  told,  and  I  believe,  that  when 
that  poor  wretch  was  under  sentence  of 
death,  his  "  friends  "  kept  him  in  liquor 
to  the  moment  of  his  death, — so  anx- 
ious were  they  lest  he  should  compli- 
cate some  of  them  by  a  confession. 
And  when  he  was  dead  they  cele- 
brated his  death  in  the  last  great  orgy 
of  the  slave-trade,  —  in  one  drunken 
feast  they  held  together,  —  so  rejoiced 
were  they  that  they  had  escaped  his 
testimony.  Such  is  the  honor  among 
thieves  ! 

The  demand  still  continued.  The 
Brazilian  trade  was  at  an  end.  But 
Cuba  and  Porto  Rico  used  up  men  and 
women  enough  to  support  a  very  active 
trade,  if  the  vessels  could  slip  through. 
I  do  not  dare  to  say  how  many  men 
were  caged  on  the  African  coast  in  the 
years  1864  and  1865,  waiting  for  a 
chance  when  they  might  be  shipped  to 


1 868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


753 


the  islands.  It  has  required  the  Span- 
ish revolution  of  October,  and  the  new 
Junta  there,  to  proclaim  the  end  of 
Spanish  slavery ! 

.But  every  report  of  the  next  year, 
from  every  quarter,  speaks  of  the 
healthy  influence  of  the  execution  of 
Gordon  and  the  imprisonment  of  the 
other  traders  convicted.  From  that 
moment  to  this  the  American  flag  has 
been  free  from  that  old  stain.  Since 
the  blockade  we  have  been  able  to 
send  back  our  squadron  to  the  Coast 
We  have  a  mixed  commission  of  Eng- 
lish and  American  judges  to  examine 
any  slavers  who  may  be  brought  in,  but 
there  is  nothing  for  them  to  do.  As  I 
prepare  these  sheets  for  the  press  the 
New  York  Herald  announces  that  the 
Dunbarton,  blockade-runner,  has  es- 
caped from  New  York,  and  gone  to 
the  Western  Coast  for  a  cargo  of  slaves. 
I  inquire  of  an  official  friend,  and  find 
he  knows  the  Dunbarton  and  all  her 
history.  She  sailed  from  New  York 
for  Quebec,  arrived  there,  and  is  now 
plying  between  Quebec  and  Pictou  as 


the  City  of  Quebec,  in  the  hands  of 
most  reputable  people.  Once  a  year 
the  mixed  courts  report  that  they  have 
nothing  to  adjudicate.  The  squadrons 
watch  and  watch  ;  snap  up  a  little  ras- 
cal here  and  another  there ;  but  the 
last  voyage,  which  none  of  them  have 
arrested,  is  still  the  Unknown's  voy- 
age to  the  Unknown,  when  an  Un- 
known captain  carried  those  Unknown 
negroes  to  the  bottom  of  an  Unknown 
sea. 

Let  us  rejoice  that  that  misery  seems 
to  be  over.  We  made  John  Hawkins  a 
knight,  at  the  hands  of  our  gracious 
Queen  Elizabeth,  for  starting  the  traffic 
for  Englishmen.  Has  Victoria,  more 
gracious,  no  honor  in  store  for  Wil- 
mot  and  Edmonstone  and  the  rest  of 
them  who  have  ended  it  ?  A  demi- 
Moor  with  gold  chains  was  the  knight- 
ly crest  of  the  one.  Let  our  new  bar- 
onets have  for  crests  a  bird  let  loose,  or 
a  Moor  unchained, — were  it  only  in 
token  of  the  resolution  with  which,  for 
sixty  years,  England  has  determined 
these  poor  wretches  should  be  free. 


REVIEWS    AND    LITERARY    NOTICES. 


•Our  Branch  and  its  Tributaries ;  being  a 
History  of  the  Work  of  the  N.  W.  Sani- 
tary Commission.  By  MRS.  SARAH  ED- 
WARDS HENSHAW.  Chicago :  Alfred 
L.  Sewell.  1868. 

THE  time  is  still  far  distant  when  it  will 
Le  possible  to  write  a  complete  and  philo- 
sophical history  of  the  people's  war  of 
1861-1865. 

When  the  hour  arrives,  the  coming  his- 
torian will  find  the  largest  and  most  impor- 
tant theme  ever  offered,  in  so  brief  a  period 
of  time,  to  the  student  of  human  progress. 

Civilization  in  America  has,  of  late  years, 
thrown  aside  so  much  of  the  cumbrous 
and  superstitious  trappings  by  which  its 
march  is  dignified  and  impeded  in  older 
countries,  that  it  begins  to  look  autochtho- 
nous. At  any  rate,  it  is  more  rapidly  devel- 

VOL.   XXII.  —  NO.    134.  48" 


oping  a  new  type'  than  seemed  possible  a 
quarter  of  a  century  ago. 

We  have  at  last  had  an  American  Presi- 
dent and  an  American  generalissimo.  There 
could  not  be  imagined  a  more  exact  person- 
ification of  the  American  Demos  in  all  its 
patience,  integrity,  wise  good-nature,  untir- 
ing energy,  simplicity,  and  perfect  faith  in 
its  own  manifest  destiny,  than  Abraham 
Lincoln  ;  and  General  Grant,  an  American  to 
the  core,  is  no  more  like  General  Washing- 
ton than  he  is  like  the  Duke  of  Wellington, 
while  certainly  inferior  to  neither  in  military 
capacity. 

Whenever  an  American  Aristophanes 
arrives,  we  may  be  sure  that  his  satire  will 
not  be  directed  against  the  People,  as  rep- 
resented by  its  first  citizen  during  the  war 
with  our  Sparta  ;  and  that  he  will  find  the 
leather-dresser  who  succeeded  him  as  head 


754 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices 


[December, 


of  our  commonwealth,  after  having  gained 
immortal  victories  in  the  field,  as  tempting 
a  theme  for  his  panegyric  as  the  tanner 
Cleon  was  for  the  wrathful  sarcasm  of  the 
Athenian. 

The  People  has  been  made  odious  and 
ludicrous  long  enough,  both  by  poets  and 
historians  ;  but  in  this  country  the  lion  is 
beginning  at  last  to  paint  his  own  picture. 
The  true  hero  of  the  civil  war,  whence  we 
are  slowly  emerging,  is  the  American  People ; 
and  by  the  side  of  that  People  will  stand,  in 
future  history  and  poetry,  those  two  heroic 
shapes,  —  as  they  will  seem  through  the  mist 
of  years,  —  the  great  martyr-magistrate  and 
the  great  soldier,  who  were  so  distinctly 
stamped  with  the  popular  impress.  Mean- 
time, although  it  is  too  soon  to  sing  the 
great  epic  or  reproduce  the  great  drama, 
collections  are  rapidly  making  of  materials 
for  the  work  which  will  one  day  be  written. 

The  artist  is  indeed  likely  to  be  embar- 
rassed with  the  riches  rapidly  accumulating. 
But  that  will  be  his  affair.  Meantime  we 
do  not  regret  this  almost  daily  contribution 
of  local  histories,  biographies,  reports,  and 
every  kind  of  official  and  unofficial  docu- 
ments. The  people,  having  done  in  the 
field  so  thoroughly  the  work  which  it 
was  so  loftily  defied  to  do,  having  proved 
the  enormous  strength  of  a  nationality  the 
very  existence  of  which  was  denounced  as 
a  delusion,  and,  having  destroyed  a  vile  in- 
stitution which  had  been  so  long  preying 
upon  its  vitals,  does  wisely  to  preserve 
every  possible  memorial  of  the  late  struggle 
for  life. 

And  no  more  important  lessons  in  Amer- 
ican civilization  have  been  given  by  the 
war  than  those  which  relate  to  the  origin, 
organization,  and  working  of  the  United 
States  Sanitary  Commission.  Even  this, 
as  a  whole,  has  not  yet  been  presented. 
The  admirable  general  History  of  the  Com- 
mission, however,  by  Charles  J.  Stille,  is 
already  a  noble  contribution  to  that  great 
end,  and  is  in  itself  an  attractive,  philo- 
sophical, and  important  work.  The  more 
this  institution  is  studied,  the  more  legiti- 
mate will  seem  the  admiration  and  the  sym- 
pathy with  which  we  have  all  of  us  instinc- 
tively regarded  it  from  the  beginning. 

Out  of  a  few  feeble  societies  of  ladies  to 
make  Havelocks  and  jellies,  —  such  as 
sprang  up  spontaneously  all  over  the  coun- 
try during  the  first  few  months  of  the  war, 
but  which,  through  want  of  organization, 
manifested  only  how  great  was  the  national 
sympathy  with  the  cause  and  the  men  who 


were  fighting  for  it,  and  how  little  sympathy 
and  energy  could  do  unless  with  order  and 
combination,  —  out  of  these  slight  begin- 
nings soon  sprang  forth  one  of  the  noblest 
and  most  intelligent  charities  ever  known 
to  mankind.  We  are  accused  in  this  coun- 
try of  a  tendency  to  glorify  our  own  deeds. 
Perhaps  the  charge  may  be  just.  Self-as- 
sertion is  the  natural,  although  not  very 
lovely,  characteristic  of  all  vigorous  and 
progressive  peoples;  but  we  are  not  sure 
that  those  nations  from  whom  we  receive 
the  sharpest  criticism  on  our  failing  in  this 
regard  are  absolutely  overburdened  with 
bashfulness,  when  alluding  to  their  own 
achievements. 

Nevertheless,  we  are  convinced  that  there 
are  many  things  which  we  do  not  over-praise. 
When  the  history  of  the  war  is  written, 
after  the  mists  of  passion,  prejudice,  and 
party,  which  now  obscure  the  clearest  eye- 
sight, shall  have  passed  away,  the  world 
will  find  out  that  there  was  a  good  deal 
more  than  superfluous  and  unmeaning  car- 
nage in  our  "  wicked,  causeless,  miserable, 
and  hopeless  war,"  as  it  used  to  be  called 
by  the  fine  folk  of  Europe,  who  played  the 
part  of  statesmen  and  critics  of  our  pro- 
ceedings during  those  four  prodigious  years. 
Perhaps  a  war,  in  which  a  people  cheerfully 
spent  four  thousand  million  dollars  and  half 
a  million  lives,  in  order  to  preserve  its 
national  existence,  and  to  destroy  the  most 
abominable  institution  that,  since  the  Holy 
Office,  has  existed  among  men,  and  trium- 
phantly accomplished  both  purposes,  will 
seem  to  later  generations  not  so  wicked, 
causeless,  and  hopeless  after  all.  It  will 
probably  be  thought  as  intelligible,  praise- 
worthy, and  successful  an  enterprise  as 
the  Crimean  war  will  seem  to  posterity, 
after  the  Russians  are  comfortably  estab- 
lished in  Constantinople. 

It  was  something  to  prove  beyond  all  per- 
adventure  that,  in  1789,  a  confederacy  made 
by  corporations  was  exchanged  for  a  nation 
founded  by  a  people ;  that  it  was  Washing- 
ton and  Franklin  and  Hamilton  who  made 
a  nation  at  the  close  of  the  last  century,  not 
Jefferson  Davis  in  the  middle  of  this,  ac- 
cording to  the  enthusiastic  Mr.  Gladstone. 

And  without  further  allusion  to  the  pic- 
turesque and  terrible  campaigns,  dreadful 
marches,  brilliant  assaults,  fearful  reverses, 
disappointments,  and  sufferings  through 
which  the  American  People  accomplished 
its  destiny,  displaying,  we  believe,  as  much 
courage  and  endurance  as  often  has  been 
exhibited  in  history,  let  us  throw  a  glance 


1 868.] 


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755 


upon  the  vast  Samaritanism  which  that  peo- 
ple organized  on  a  scale  never  imagined 
before.  For  the  Sanitary  Commission, 
which  grew  out  of  such  trifling  beginnings 
to  be  a  symmetrical  institution,  stretching 
over  quarter  of  a  continent,  disbursing  more 
than  thirty  millions  of  money,  and  moving, 
as  it  were,  steadily  on  a  parallel  course  to 
the  government,  never  interfering  with  it, 
but  constantly  rendering  it  invaluable  aid,  — 
such  an  institution  originated,  supplied,  and 
kept  in  constant  working  by  voluntary  char- 
ity alone,  would  be  impossible  except  in  a 
democracy.  Voluntary  organization  to  aid 
vast  armies  and  to  follow  constantly  on  their 
path  could  scarcely  be  permitted  by  any 
government  except  where  the  army  was  the 
people  and  the  people  was  king. 

And  the  immense  generosity  which  we 
firmly  believe  to  be  a  prominent  American 
characteristic  was  aided  in  this  great  enter- 
prise by  the  practical,  straightforward  en- 
ergy which  is  another  gift  of  this  nation. 
.  There  was  plenty  of  dismal  experience  to 
warn  us  at  the  outset  of  the  war.  The  death 
in  nine  months  of  three  quarters  of  all  the 
British  troops  sent  out  in  the  first  expedi- 
tion t©  the  Crimea  —  although  a  fleet  laden 
with  luxuries  for  them  was  lying  before 
their  eyes,  but  kept  from  them  by  an  impas- 
sable barrier  of  tape  —  was  enough  in  itself 
to  prove  that  Red  Tape  was  not  infallible. 

We  have  no  disposition  to  join  with- 
out qualification  in  the  shallow  sneers 
against  official  routine.  But  where  popular 
volunteer  organization  comes  to  the  side  of 
an  overburdened  popular  government,  even 
although  administered  with  the  vision  and 
energy  of  a  Stanton,  it  cannot  but  add 
much  to  the  general  efficiency. 

We  yield  to  none  in  admiration  for 
the  heroine  whose  name  is  a  household 
word  wherever  intelligent  benevolence  and 
energetic  female  sympathy  are  revered  ;  but 
we  firmly  believe  that  there  have  been  hun- 
dreds of  Florence  Nightingales  in  the  late 
war,  whose  names  will  never  be  heard  be- 
yond the  precincts  of  their  own  townships. 

.Sometimes  one  is  almost  in  doubt  wheth- 
er the  men  or  the  women  did  the  most  in 
carrying  this  war  to  its  fortunate  conclusion. 
In  the  words  of  Mrs.  E.  P.  Teale,  secretary 
of  the  Aid  Society  at  Allen's  Grove,  Wis- 
consin, "  every  loyal  soldier  was  regarded 
as  a  brother."  And  if  proof  is  wanted  of 
the  universality  of  this  sentiment,  we  need 
look  no  further  than  to  the  excellent  work, 
the  title  of  which  is  prefixed  to  this  article. 

We  learn  from  Mrs.  Henshaw's  History 


of  the  Northwest  Branch  of  the  Commis- 
sion that  thirty-five  thousand  women  were 
regularly  employed  in  working  for  this  Com- 
mission ;  that  the  "  Home  "  at  Cairo,  which 
was  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  monster 
hotel,  kept  free  of  all  charge,  for  soldiers 
going  to  the  front  or  returning  on  furlough 
or  invalided  from  the  seat  of  war,  enter- 
tained some  two  hundred  thousand  of  them 
from  first  to  last ;  and  that  it  was  impossible 
for  the  armies  to  advance  so  far  into  the  ene- 
my's country,  whether  in  the  famous  march 
of  Sherman,  or  among  the  precipitous  and 
perilous  mountain  passes  which  led  to  the 
beleaguered  Chattanooga,  but  that  the 
women  were  not  there  too,  in  charge  of  the 
locomotive  hospitnK  the  supplies,  medi- 
cines, and  innumerable  wants  of  soldiers 
suffering  in  march,  battle,  or  siege.  When 
it  is  recollected  that  all  this  work  and 
all  these  expen  s  were-  'voluntary,  and 
that  the  Sanitary  at  last  did  so  much  that  it 
was  supposed  to  be  doing  nothing  at  all, 
and  that  thousands  of  men,  stamped  all  over 
with  the  Sanitary,  with  its  mark  on  their 
shirts,  sheets,  mattresses,  food,  medicine, 
often  denied  having  received  anything  what- 
ever from  the  Commission,  simply  because 
its  benefits  came  to  be  considered  like  the 
blessings  of  light  and  air,  —  unrecognized 
because  unpaid  for, — we  are  enabled  to 
form  some  notion  of  the  vast  field  of  opera- 
tion covered  by  the  Commission,  and  the 
intellectual  energy  which  directed  and  ac- 
complished so-much. 

It  is  a  ghastly  but  heroic  indication  of 
the  practical  sagacity  of  the  "Sanitary," 
when  we  find,  for  example,  the  enormous 
preparation  made  beforehand  in  the  dark 
and  bloody  spring  days  of  1862  to  relieve 
the  men  who  were  to  be  wounded  in  the 
coming  battle  of  Corinth.  The  battle  came 
even  sooner  than  foreseen,  for  Sidney  John- 
ston, as  we  all  know,  moved  out  of 
Corinth  before  Grant  should  be  joined  at 
Shiloh  by  the  deliberate  Buel.  We  have 
all  shuddered  at  the  carnage  by  which  the 
victory  at  the  end  of  those  two  days'  des- 
perate fighting  was  purchased  ;  but  when 
twenty  thousand  dead  and  wounded  na- 
tional soldiers  and  rebels  lay  upon  the  field 
on  that  April  night,  there  stood  the  Com- 
mission with  its  efficient,  peripatetic  hos- 
pital, its  supplies,  its  surgeons,  its  nurses, 
ready  for  the  fearful  but  necessary  work, 
and,  to  the  honor  of  our  humanity,  to  know 
no  difference  between  Confederate  or  Na- 
tional soldier,  but  to  do  its  best  to  relieve 
the  wants  of  all. 


756 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[December 


The  work  of  Mrs.  Henshaw  deserves 
earnest  praise.  She  has  shown  facility  and 
grace  in  narrative,  with  thorough  and  con- 
scientious arrangement  of  her  materials. 
From  the  nature  of  the  work,  it  was  inevi- 
table that  much  space  should  be  allowed  Jo 
local  details,  which  give  it  great  interest  in 
the  regions  for  which  it  was  especially  de- 
signed ;  but  the  general  reader  will  find  in  it 
a  very  attractive  and  instructive  episode  in 
the  great  history  of  which  the  American 
people  will  never  be  weary.  Her  story  is 
lively  ;  many  of  the  anecdotes  are  good, 
and  she  has  skill  in  portraiture.  Mrs. 
Porter,  Mrs.  Bickerdyke,  the  venerable 
Thomas  Maddy,  are  all  very  lifelike. 

The  figure  of  the  ancient  gray-haired 
Maddy,  standing  among  the  hotel  touters  at 
the  railroad-station,  as  they  bawled,  "  This 
way  to  the  National  or  the  Spread-Eagle," 
and  so  on,  and  securing  a  couple  of  dozen 
weary  soldiers  at  a  time,  shouldering  their 
knapsacks,  and  "  arming  them,"  as  he 
called  it,  along  the  muddy  road  to  the  gra- 
tuitous and  excellent  hotel  called  the  San- 
itary's  "  Home,"  is  almost  pathetic. 

A  reader  of  poetry,  too,  was  Maddy,  and 
familiar  with  Sanscrit ;  for  from  that  tongue 
must  have  come  "  the  sentiment  expressed 
by  the  poet,"  to  which  as  he  tells  us  he 
always  tried  to  act  up,  "Never  use  the 
hasher  way  when  love  will  do  the  steed," 
—  a  noble  sentiment  doubtless,  for  Maddy 
could  act  up  to  no  other,  but  quite  unintel- 
ligible to  the  general  public. 

Gentle,  refined,  courageous,  energetic 
Mrs.  Porter  is  a  very  attractive  picture  ; 
but  of  all  the  characters,  strong-minded, 
boisterous  Mrs,  Bickerdyke  "  has  our  warm 
heart."  This  amazing  woman  might  have 
been  a  corps-commander,  certainly  a  quar- 
termaster-general, and  she  is  very  vividly 
portrayed.  Notwithstanding  that  she  is 
still  alive,  and  w^e  trust  in  health,  she  is  as 
real  and  lifelike  a  personage  as  any  char- 
acter in  Shalcespeare  or  Dickens. 

From  the  moment  when  she  makes  her 
first  appearance  at  midnight  on  the  battle- 
field after  the  victory  of  Fort  Donelson, 
looking  about  among  the  slain  with  a  lan- 
tern, to  save,  if  possible,  some  sufferers  that 
might  not  be  quite  dead,  and  seeming  to  an 
officer  looking  out  from  his  tent  like  a 
will-o'-the-wisp  flitting  over  the  ghastly 
scene,  —  from  that  moment  to  the  end  of 
the  book  we  find  her  always  sympathetic, 
courageous,  noisy,  patriotic,  of  irrepressi- 
ble energy,  and  with  superhuman  power  of 
work. 


Improvising  upon  one  occasion  a  gigantic 
laundry,  and  ordering  from  a  startled  but 
obedient  colonel  a  detail  of  soldiers  to  act 
as  washerwomen,  she  saves,  in  a  couple  of 
days,  we  should  be  afraid  to  say  how  many 
thousand  shirts  and  sheets  and  other  linen 
to  the  "  Sanitary,"  which  had  been  doomed 
to  the  fire  because  steeped  in  blood  from 
the  battle-field.  At  Memphis  she  shuts 
up  herself  alone  for  several  days  in  a  small- 
pox hospital,  that  she  may  work  there  with 
her  own  hands,  and  see  with  her  own  eyes 
that  it  is  thoroughly  purified.  When  the 
laconic  order  is-given  to  "  Rush  forward  anti- 
scorbutics for  General  Grant's  army,"  Mrs. 
Bickerdyke  scours  the  territory  of  half  a 
dozen  States,  and  sweeps  off  thousands  of 
bushels  of  onions,  potatoes,  and  pickles  ; 
doing  battle  as  bravely  with  the  scurvy 
as  "the  boys  "  —  so  she  invariably  calls  the 
soldiers  —  ever  fought  the  Rebels.  On  oc- 
casions she  even  mounts  the  pulpit  in  one 
church  after  another,  and  thunders  forth 
the  need  of  onions  in  tones  to  wake  the, 
dead. 

"It  is  a  shame  for  you,"  she  preached, 
"  to  live  here  in  idleness  and  comfort,  while 
the  boys  are  dying  for  vegetables.  (  : 
together  your  potatoes  and  onions,  and 
send  them  to  the  Sanitary  Commission." 

"  Did  you  do  that  ? "  inquired  Mrs.  Por- 
ter with  mild  surprise,  on  Mrs.  Bickerdyke's 
return. 

"  Yes,  I  did,"  she  said  ;  "  I  made  a  fool 
of  myself ";  but  she  added,  softening  "I 
would  do  it  again  for  the  boys." 

When  milk  and  eggs  are  wanted  in 
greater  quantity  and  freshness  than  at  the 
time  can  be  supplied,  this  heroine  makes 
a  raid  from  Memphis  beyond  St.  Louis, 
escorted  by  a  body-guard  of  several  hun- 
dred cripples,  —  not  a  man  of  them  but  had 
lost  a  leg  or  an  arm  in  the  battles,  — 
harries  the  country-side  for  a  time,  and 
returns  followed  by  hundreds  of  cows,  and 
thousands  of  hens  and  chickens,  most  will- 
ingly contributed  by  the  patriotic  farmers, 
who  would  rather  brave  '  z  wrath  of  For- 
rest than  resist  the  blut  mail  of  Mother 
Bickerdyke. 

But  her  crowning  exploii  was  to  order 
back  to  the  wharf  a  government  steamer  in 
full  career  for  Texas ;  and  this  story  is  so 
well  told,  that  we  shall  let  Mrs.  Henshaw 
repeat  it  in  her  own  words. 

"An  incident  occurred  at  Louisville  so 
characteristic  of  Mrs.  Bickerdyke,  that  it 
ought  not  to  be  omitted.  She  was  Mrs. 
Bickerdyke  to  the  last.  Some  of  the  troops 


1 868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


757 


were  about  starting  for  Texas,  and  word 
came  that  at  that  distant  outpost  scurvy 
was  making  fearful  ravages.  Mrs.  Porter 
and  Mrs.  .Bickerdyke  desired  to  forward, 
under  care  of  the  men  just  leaving,  a 
quantity  of  anti-scorbutics.  The  captain 
of  the  boat  promised  that,  if  the  articles 
were  on  the  wharf  by  a  certain  hour,  he 
would  take  them.  As  the  boat  was  not  to 
break  bulk  between  Louisville  and  Texas, 
it  was  a  golden  opportunity. 

"  It  was  Sunday,  and  raining  furiously. 
Through  the  pelting  storm  went  about 
Mrs.  Porter  and  Mrs.  Bickerdyke,  to  find 
teams  which  should  carry  the  potatoes  to 
the  boat.  With  the  utmost  difficulty  wag- 
ons were  found,  loaded,  and  hurried  off. 
The  driver  was  urged  to  drive  rapidly, 
which  he  did  as  well  as  he  could  amid  the 
rain  and  mud.  When  they  came  within 
sight  of  the  river  he  suddenly  slackened 
his  pace.  '  Why  don't  you  go  on  ? '  re- 
monstrated Mrs.  Porter.  '  It 's  of  no  use,' 
he  replied  ;  '  the  boat  is  gone.'  With  dis- 
may Mrs.  Porter  looked,  and  there,  true 
enough,  was  the  steamer  rapidly  retreating. 
T^he  hour  set  was  not  quite  passed,  but  the 
captain  felt  sure  that  so  many  obstacles 
could  not  be  overcome,  and  the  boat  had 
put  off.  'It  shall  come  back,'  said  Mrs. 
Bickerdyke,  decidedly. 

"  The  boat  was  in  the  stream  ;  in  the 
driving  rain  sat  the  two  resolute  women  ; 
behind  them  were  the  potatoes,  which  had 
co^  cso  much  labor  and  exposure.  Mrs. 
B^kerdyke  rose  to  her  feet  and  beckoned. 
The  conscious  captain  stood  observing. 
With  the  air  of  an  empress  she  beckoned 
again.  The  boat  evidently  slackened  its 
speed.  Again  she  beckoned  still  more 
emphatically.  The  boat  rounded  to,  and, 
in  response  to  what  had  now  become  a 
volley  of  signals,  actually  returned  and 
took  on  the  potatoes.  The  next  morning 
a  caricature  was  posted  up  in  the  streets  of 
Louisville,  representing  a  woman  ordering 
about  a  govern 'pent  steamer  with  a  wave 
of  her  ham'  icture  was  obtained  by 

Mrs.  Porter,  and  forwarded  to  Mr.  Blatch- 
ford  at  Chicago."  , 

In  conclusion^  we  congratulate  Mrs. 
Henshaw  for  her  animated  and  faithful 
narrative  of  a  noble  and  important  enter- 
prise. 

We  would  add,  that  the  volume  is  beau- 
tifully published,  and  as  a  specimen  of 
typography  is  an  honor  to  Chicago. 

The  proof-reader  has  occasionally  forgot- 
ten his  dutv,  and  has  let  such  indifferent 


spelling  as  "  irrefragible  "  and  "  incontesti- 
ble  "  on  a  single  page  (245)  escape  him. 

We  would  also  suggest  to  Mrs.  Henshaw 
that  there  are  no  such  words  as  "  tireless  " 
and  "mentality,"  and  we  would  implore 
her  on  our  bended  knees  not  to  call  a  sol- 
dier in  the  national  armies  a  "  federal."  It 
used  to  be  bad  enough  to  bear  this  from 
the  London  Times. 


The  Tragedian  ;  an  Essay  on  the  Histrionic 
Genius  of  Junius  Brutus  Booth.  By 
THOMAS  R.  GOULD.  New  York  :  Hurd 
and  Houghton.  i6mo.  pp.  190. 

THE  elder  Booth  —  the  father  of  the  dis- 
tinguished tragedian  now  so  popular  in  all 
American  theatres  —  had  a  certain  strange- 
ness of  character  which  discriminated  him 
from  all  other  actors,  and  almost  lifted  him 
out  of  the  operation  of  the  conventional 
rules  which  properly  regulate  ordinary  life. 
More  than  any  other  English  performer  of 
whom  we  possess  an  authentic  record,  he 
was  of  "imagination  all  compact."  His 
real  existence  was  passed  in  an  ideal  region 
of  thought,  character,  and  passion ;  and, 
however  feeble  he  may  have  been,  consid- 
ered simply  as  Mr.  Booth,  there  could  be 
no  questioffof  his  greatness,  considered  as 
Hamlet,  Othello,  Macbeth,  or  Lear.  To 
the  student  of  Shakespeare  his  acting  was 
the  most  suggestive  of  all  interpretative 
criticisms  of  the  poet  by  whose  genius  he 
had  been  magnetized.  Through  his  im- 
agination he  instinctively  divined  that 
Shakespeare's  world  represented  the  possi- 
bilities of  life  rather  than  its  actualities  ; 
into  this  ideal  region  of  existence  his  mind 
as  instinctively  mounted ;  and  the  essen- 
tially poetic  element  in  Shakespeare's  char- 
acters was  therefore  never  absent  from  his 
personations.  By  his  imagination,  also,  he 
passed  into  the  spiritual  depths  of  a  com- 
plex Shakespearean  creation  ;  grasped  the 
unity  which  harmonized  all  the  varieties  of 
its  manifestation ;  realized,  indeed,  the 
imagined  individual  so  completely  that  his 
own  individuality  seemed  to  melt  into  it 
and  be  absorbed.  Other  tragedians  ap- 
peared, in  comparison  with  him,  to  deduce 
the  character  from  the  text,  and  then  to  act 
the  deduction  ;  his  hold  was  ever  on  the  vi- 
tal fact,  and  he  thus  conceived  what  others 
inferred,  reproduced  what  others  deduced, 
ensouled  and  embodied  what  others  merely 
played.  Shakespeare's  words,  too,  were 
so  domesticated  in  his  mind,  so  associated 


758 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[December, 


with  the  character  they  expressed,  that  in 
uttering  them  he  did  not  seem  to  remember, 
but  to  originate.  All  the  peculiarities  of  a 
man  who  speaks  under  the  pressure  of 
impassioned  imagination  were  visible  in  his 
acting.  The  rapid  and  varied  gesture,  in- 
dicating or  shaping  each  one  of  the  throng 
of  contending  images  rushing  in  upon  his 
Blind  ;  the  gleam  and  glow  of  eye  and  cheek, 
as  words  struggled  impatiently  for  utter- 
ance in  his  throat,  hinting  the  physical  im- 
potence ©f  the  organ  to  keep  up  with  the 
swift  pace  of  the  soul's  passion,  —  these, 
and  scores  of  other  things  lying  between 
what  may  be  perfectly  expressed  and  what 
is  in  itself  inexpressible,  created  a  positive 
illusion  in  the  audience.  Perhaps  this  illu- 
sion was  most  complete  in  those  passages 
which  people  are  commonly  educated  to 
treat  as  general  reflections,  entirely  inde- 
pendent of  the  characters  by  whom  they 
are  uttered.  Booth  always  gave  these  as 
individual  experiences,  flashing  out,  in  the 
most  natural  way,  from  the  minds  of  the 
characters  in  the  varying  positions  in  which 
they  were  placed.  Thus  nothing  can  be 
more  general,  more  impersonal,  as  ordi- 
narily conceived,  than  Macbeth's  series  of 
questions  to  the  doctor,  beginning, 

"  Canst  thou  not  minister  to  a  mind  Diseased?" 

The  passage  is  so  stereotyped  in  all 
memories  as  the  authorized  expression  of  a 
troubled  conscience,  that  even  the  most 
careful  actors  are  apt  to  give  it  as  a  de- 
tached didactic  reflection,  rather  than  as  an 
intense  dramatic  experience.  As  Booth 
gave  it,  the  general  truth  was  all  swallowed 
up  in  the  perception  of  its  vital,  individual 
application  to  the  condition  of  Macbeth's 
mind  at  the  time  it  was  utt'-red.  Macbeth, 
it  will  be  remembered,  is  in  a  iiurry  oi  ac- 
tion and  meditation,  of  resolute  purpose 
and  agonized  remorse  :  — 

41  Send  out  more  horses,  skirr  the  country  round  ; 
Hang  those  that  talk  of  fear.  —  Give  me  mine  ar- 
mor. — 

How  does  your  patient,  doctor? 
"  Doct.    Not  so  sick,  my  lord, 
As  she  is  troubled  with  thick-caming-fancies, 
That  keep  her  from  her  rest." 

Nobody  that  ever  witnessed  it  can  forget 
the  convulsive  eagerness  with  which  Booth 
rushed  to  the  doctor  with  the  imploring 
demand, 

"  Cure  her  of  that  !  " 

And  then  came,  in  a  strange,  wild  blend- 
ing of  hope  and  despair, 

"  Canst  thou  not  minister  to  a  mind  diseased  ?  " 


The  auditor  felt  at  once  that  it  was  Mac- 
beth's own  mind,  and  not  the  mind  of  hu- 
manity in  general,  that  prompted  the  ques- 
tion. The  next  line, 

"  Pluck  from  the  memory  a  rooted  sorrow?  " 
was  accompanied  by  a  tearing  gesture  of 
both  hands  over  his  brow,  as  though  there 
might  possibly  be  some  physical,  external 
means  of  extracting  the  baleful  memory 
which  he  felt  was  rooted  in  his  own  moral 
being. 

"  Raze  out  the  -written  troubles  of  the  brain  ?  " 

His  gesture  in  this  line  was  indescribably 
pathetic,  —  a  motion  of  the  fingers  over  the 
forehead,  as  if  to  erase  the  "  characters  of 
blood  "  therein  inscribed.  Then  came  the 
tremendous  lines,  — 

"  And  with  some  sweet  oblivious  antidote 
Cleanse  the  stuffed  bosom  of  that  perilous  stuff 
That  weighs  upon  the  heart?  " 

It  would  be  impossible  to  describe  the 
gesture  and  accent  which  gave  reality  to 
the  "stuffed  bosom,"  and  especially  to  the 
suggestion  of  Alps  on  Andes  piled,  in  the 
terrible  enunciation  of  the  simple  expression 
"  weighs."  The  whole  cumulative,  remorse- 
ful reaction  of  Macbeth's  crimes  was  con- 
densed, as  it  were,  in  a  word. 

This  imaginative  realization  of  character 
in  all  its  ntoods,  and  in  all  the  situations  in 
which  it  might  be  placed,  extended  to  the 
minutest  particulars.  Booth  vitalized  every 
image,  allusion,  almost  every  word,  of  the 
text.  In  his  acting,  as  in  Shakespeare's 
writing,  nothing  was  dead  and  didactic,  and 
nothing  was  merely  passionate.  Shake- 
speare always  blends  the  emotional  with 
'the  mental  elements  of  his  characters,  so 
that  they  speak  as  individual  natures,  and 
. 'iiks  of  individual  natures. 
The  smiting  ehicicney  of  their  expression 
in  moments  of  excitement  is  owing  to  the 
fact  that  they  are  impassioned,  and  not  sim- 
ply passionate  ;  that  their  whole  intellect- 
ual and  moral  being  is  kindled  into  the 
greatest  possible  energy,  and  fused  into  the 
most  indissoluble  unity,  so  that  thought  in 
them  is  quickened  by  the  very  rush  of  rage 
or  rapture  which,  in  ordinary  persons,  ex- 
tinguishes mental  action.  Passion  in  Shake- 
speare is  thus  thoroughly  "intellectualized," 
and  his  great  characters  never  appear  so 
great  in  mind  as  when  their  thoughts  and 
imaginations  are  pushed  out,  as  it  were,  by 
the  pressure  of  the  emotional  forces  hun- 
gering for  expression  at  the  centre  of  their 
natures.  Booth  understood  this  both  by 
instinct  and  intuition.  The  most  impas- 


1 868.] 


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759 


sioned  of  actors,  he  was  the  least  passion- 
ate. You  could  almost  see  the  workings 
of  his  mind  in  his  face,  as  the  swift  thought 
shaped  itself  under  the  stimulus  of  the  swift 
feeling.  The  result  was,  that  his  expression 
under  strong  excitement  was  electric  and 
electrifying.  The  imaginative  element  in  it 
satisfied  the  sense  of  beauty  as  well  as  the 
sense  of  power,  for  it  was  the  passion  of  a 
poet,  and  not  merely  the  fury  of  an  unimagi- 
native man  in  a  rage.  Most  people  complain 
that  when  they  are  in  a  passion  they  do  not 
know  what  to  say,  and  are  therefore  com- 
pelled to  rely  on  such  stereotyped  terms  of 
profanity  or  abuse  as  chance  to  spring  to 
their  lips.  Shakespeare's  men  never  so 
well  know  what  to  say  as  when  they  are  in 
a  white  heat  of  passion,  for  Shakespeare 
lends  them  his  own  intellect  and  imagina- 
tion to  help  them  out.  And  in  Shakespeare, 
the  greater  the  character  the  greater  the 
poet.  As  Romeo  is  a  lover,  we  are  all 
ready  to  admit  him  to  be  a  poet ;  but  Ham- 
let, Macbeth,  Othello,  Lear,  are  as  much 
greater  poets  than  Romeo  as  they  are  much 
greater  men.  Shakespeare  enlarges  the  im- 
agination of  his  characters  in  just  the  pro- 
portion that  he  enlarges  the  other  qualities 
and  faculties  of  their  natures ;  and  Booth 
was  greatest  in  the  poet's  greatest  parts. 
He  did  not  make  so  many  "  points  "  as  oth- 
er actors,  because  he  properly  pointed  the 
entire  expression  of  the  person  he  embodied. 
He  illuminated  the  whole  text  as  his  mind 
moved  along  its  lines,  and  showed,  if  any 
actor  ever  could,  that  Shakespeare  does  nof, 
from  the  mere  surplus  stores  of  his  own 
mind,  overload  his  personages  with  need- 
less richness  of  thought  and  imagination. 
Their  opulence  of  nature  is  what  makes 
them  Shakespearian  men  and  women. 
They  are  really  natives,  not  of  England,  or 
Scotland,  or  Denmark,  or  Italy,  or  Africa, 
but  of  Shakespeare-land ;  and  it  was  in 
that  land  that  Booth  seemed  to  pass  his 
imaginative  existence. 

The  thoroughness  with  which  his  \vhole 
nature  was  impregnated  with  Shakespea- 
rian ideas  of  dramatic  character  was  pal- 
pably manifest  when  he  performed  in  the 
plays  of  more  prosaic  dramatists.  "The 
Stranger  "  is,  of  all  worthless  dramas  that 
keep  the  stage,  the  most  detestable  in  its 
combination  of  morbidness  with  mediocrity. 
There  is  not  a  ray  of  imaginative  relief  in 
all  its  many  scenes  of  maudlin  wretched- 
ness. It  is  pathetic  as  the  sight  of  a  man 
run  over  in  the  street  is  pathetic.  Nothing 
is  lifted  into  the  world  of  art.  When  Booth 


acted  the  principal  character,  he  uncon- 
sciously idealized  it ;  made  it  indeed  what 
Kotzebue  would  have  made  it,  had  he  pos- 
sessed sufficient  sentiment  and  imagination 
to  perceive  its  possibilities.  To  Reuben 
Glenroy,  an  essentially  prosaic  character 
as  conceived  by  Colman,  he  imparted  dig- 
nity, tenderness,  thoughtfulness,  and  a  cer- 
tain illusory  imaginative  charm.  In  Sir 
Edward  Mortimer  he  followed  Godwin 
the  novelist  rather  than  Colman  the  play- 
wright, and  put  into  certain  scenes  an  in- 
tensity of  imaginative  passion  which  would 
have  startled  Godwin  himself.  In  pas- 
sages of  Sir  Giles  Overreach  and  of  Luke 
he  carried  Massinger  almost  up  into  the 
lower  region  of  Shakespeare's  own  •  mind. 
In  truth,  whatever  was  the  character  that 
Booth  acted,  he  instinctively  made  of  it  a 
work  of  art.  Merely  prosaic  grief,  or 
rage,  or  suffering  did  not  suit  his  genius, 
and  did  not  suit  his  voice.  He  performed 
in  many  poor  plays,  but  we  do  not  remem- 
ber ef  him  any  poor  performance.  Kotze- 
bue, Colman,  Maturin,  Shiel,  could  not 
drag  him  down  from  his  pride  or  height  of 
place.  He  "  builded  better  than  they  knew." 
The  volume  which  has  betrayed  us  into 
these  extended,  but  still  incomplete,  re- 
marks is  the  production  of  Thomas  R.  Gould, 
a  sculptor  whose  ideal  busts  of* "  Imogen  " 
and  "  Michael  Angelo,"  and  whose  portrait 
busts  of  Governor  Andrew  and  the  elder 
Booth,  rightly  rank  among  American  works 
of  art.  Mr.  Gould  knew  Mr.  Booth  person- 
ally, witnessed  his  performances  through 
a  dozen  successive  engagements,  and  took 
notes  of  his  action,  gesture,  and  tones  in  spe- 
cial passages.  His  volume  is  introduced  by 
a  carefully  written  general  essay  on  the  gen- 
ius of  Booth,  in  which  he  is  compared  with 
Garrick  and  Edmund  Kean,  and  pronounced 
their  superior.  Then  follows  an  estimate  of 
him  in  eighteen  of  his  different  characters,  il- 
lustrated by  references  to  the  elusive  beau- 
ties of  his  acting,  its  subtilty,  grace,  and 
constant  suggestion  of  imaginative  insight, 
as  well  as  to  its  more  obvious  characteris- 
tics of  grandeur,  massiveness,  and  energy. 
The  most  extended  of  these  suggestive  and 
eloquent  essays  are  on  Richard  III.,  Hamlet, 
Shylock,  lago,  Othello,  Macbeth,  and  Lear. 
They  are  elaborately  written,  in  a  style 
which  is  equally  terse  and  glowing,  and 
give  continual  evidence  that  the  author's 
admiration  of  the  actor  is  based  on  his  in- 
tense appreciation  of  the  poet.  The  follow- 
ing description  of  Booth's  person  and  voice 
is  a  heightened  representation  of  what 


760 


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[December, 


many  persons  will  remember  as  substantial- 
ly true  :  — 

"  In  person  Mr.  Booth  was  short,  spare, 
and  muscular ;  with  a  head  and  face  of 
antique  beauty ;  dark  hair ;  blue  eyes  ;  a 
neck  and  chest  of  ample  but  symmetrical 
mould ;  a  step  and  movement  elastic,  as- 
sured, kingly.  His  face  was  pate,  with  that 
healthy  pallor  which  is  one  sign  of  a  mag- 
netic brain.  Throughout  this  brief,  close- 
knit,  imperial  figure  Nature  had  planted 
or  diffused  her  most  vital  organic  forces, 
and  made  it  the  capable  servant  of  the 
commanding  mind  that  descended  into  and 
possessed  it  in  every  fibre. 

"  The  airy  condensation  of  his  tempera- 
ment found  fullest  expression  in  his  voice. 
Sound  and  capacious  lungs,  a  vascular  and 
fibrous  throat,  clearness  and  amplitude  in 
the  interior  mouth  and  nasal  passages, 
formed  its  physical  basis.  Words  are 
weak,  but  the  truth  of  those  we  shall  em- 
ploy, in  an  endeavor  to  suggest  that  voice, 
will  be  felt  by  multitudes  who  have  been 
thrilled  by  its  living  tones.  Deep,  massive, 
resonant,  many-stringed,  changeful,  vast  in 
volume,  of  marvellous  flexibility  and  range  ; 
delivering  with  ease,  and  power  of  instant 
and  total  interchange,  trumpet-tones,  bell- 
tones,  tones  like  the  'sound  of  many  wa- 
ters,' like  the  muffled  and  confluent  'roar 
of  bleak-grown  pines.' 

"But  no  analogies  in  art  or  nature,  and 
especially  no  indication  of  its  organic  struc- 
ture and  physical  conditions,  could  reveal 
the  inner  secret  of  its  charm.  This  charm 
lay  in  the  mind,  of  which  his  v«ice  was  the 
organ  ;  a  '  most  miraculous  organ,'  under 
the  sway  of  a  thoroughly  informing  mind. 
The  chest  voice  became  a  fountain  of  pas- 
sion and  emotion.  The  head  register  gave 
the  'clear,  silver,  icy,  keen,  awakening 
tones'  of  the  pure  intellect.  And  as  the 
imagination  stands  with  its  beautiful  and 
comforting  face  between  heart  and  brain, 
and  marries  them  with  a  benediction,  giv- 
ing glow  to  the  thoughts  and  form  to  the 
emotions,  so  there  arose  in  this  intuitive 
actor  a  third  element  of  voice,  hard  to 
define,  but  of  a  fusing,  blending,  kindling 
quality,  which  we  may  name  the  imagina- 
tive, which  appeared  now  in  some  single 
word,  now  with  the  full  diapason  of  tones 
in  some  memorable  sentence,  and  which 
distinguished  him  as  an  incomparable 
speaker  of  the  English  tongue.  That  voice 
was  guided  by  a  method  which  defied  the 
•set  rules  of  elocution.  It  transcended 
music.  It  'brought  airs  from  heaven  and 


blasts  from  hell.'  It  struggled  and  smoth- 
ered in  the  pent  fires  of  passion,  or  darted 
from  them  as  in  tongues  of  flame.  It  was 
'  the  earthquake  voice  of  victory.'  It  was, 
on  occasion,  full  of  tears  and  heart-break. 
Free  as  a  fountain,  it  took  the  form  and 
pressure  of  the  conduit  thought ;  and,  ex- 
pressive beyond  known  parallel  in  voice  of 
man,  it  suggested  more  than  it  expressed." 

In  the  comparison  of  Booth  with  Edmund 
Kean,  Mr.  Gould,  after  referring  to  Macau- 
lay's  remark,  that  Kean  transformed  himself 
into  Shylock,  lago,  and  Othello,  says  :  — 

"We  think,  not  that  Kean  transformed 
himself  into  Shylock,  lago,  and  Othello, 
but  that  the  actor  transformed  those  char- 
acters respectively  into  Edmund  Kean; 
that  is,  that  he  took  just  those  words,  and 
lines,  and  points,  and  passages,  in  the 
character  he  was  to  represent,  which  he 
found  suited  to  his  genius,  and  gave  them 
with  electric  force.  His  method  was  lim- 
itary. It  was  analytic  and  passionate ;  not, 
in  the  highest  sense,  intellectual  and  im- 
aginative. 

"  Our  final  authority  is  Hazlitt,  who  has 
given,  in  his  work  on  the  '  English  Stage,' 
by  far  the  most  thorough  exposition  of 
Kean's  powers.  Hazlitt  learnt  him  by 
heart.  He  delved  him  to  the  root,  and  let 
in  on  his  merits  and  defects  the  irradiating 
and  the  'insolent  light'  of  a  searching 
criticism.  He  says,  with  fine  hyperbole, 
that  to  see  Kean  at  his  best  in  Othello 
'was  one  of  the  consolations  of  the  human 
mind  ' ;  yet  is  constrained  to  admit,  even  in 
his  notice  of  this  play,  that  '  Kean  lacked 
—  imagination.' 

"  Now  this  power  Booth  possessed  of  a 
subtile  kind,  and  in  magnificent  measure. 
It  lent  a  weird  expressiveness  to  his  voice. 
It  atmosphered  his  most  terrific  perform- 
ances with  beauty.  Booth  took  up  Kean 
at  his  best,  and  carried  him  further.  Booth 
was  Kean,  plus  the  higher  imagination. 
Kean  was  the  intense  individual ;  Booth, 
the  type  in-  the  intense  individual.  To  see 
Booth  in  his  best  mood  was  not '  like  read- 
ing Shakespeare  by  flashes  of  lightning,'  in 
which  a  blinding  glare  alternates  with  the 
fearful  suspense  of  darkness;  but  rather 
like  reading  him  by  the  sunlight  of  a  sum- 
mer's day,  a  light  which  casts  deep  shad- 
ows, gives  play  to  glorious  harmonies  of 
color,  and  shows  all  objects  in  vivid  life  and 
true  relation." 

There  are  a  number  of  passages  in  the 
criticism  of  Booth  "  as  transformed  into  " 
Macbeth  and  Lear,  which  we  would  like  to 


1 868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


quote  had  \ve  space.  It  is  exceedingly  dif- 
ficult, by  a  description  of  an  actor's  method 
of  uttering  certain  lines,  to  do  much  more 
than  to  recall  to  the  reader's  memory  what 
he  has  once  actually  witnessed;  but  Mr. 
Gould  puts  into  his  description  so  much 
clearness  of  perception,  enthusiasm  of  feel- 
ing, and  vividness  of  phrase,  that  the  diffi- 
culty is  relatively  overcome.  Certainly  by 
the  thousands  of  persons  still  living  who 
remember  Booth  as  the  source  of  the  great- 
est satisfaction  and  delight  they  ever  expe- 
rienced in  a  theatre,  this  keenly  apprecia- 
tive and  loving  tribute  to  his  genius  will  be 
warmly  welcomed. 


On  the  Stratification  of  Language.  Sir  Rob- 
ert Rede's  Lecture,  delivered  in  the  Senate 
House,  before  the  University  of  Cambridge, 
on  Friday,  May  29,  1868.  By  MAX  MiJL- 
LER,  M.  A.,  Professor  of  Comparative 
Philology  at  Oxford,  Hon.  Doctor  of  Laws 
in  the  University  of  Cambridge,  London  : 
Longmans,  Green,  Reader,  and  Dyer. 
1868.  8vo.  pp.  44. 

THIS  is  but  a  brief  essay,  an  hour's  dis- 
course, or  pamphlet  of  less  than  fifty  large- 
type  pages ;  but  the  name  of  its  distin- 
guished author,  and  the  circumstances  of 
its  delivery  as  a  lecture  before  one  of  the 
great  English  universities,  naturally  draw 
our  attention  toward  it,  and  lead  us  to  ex- 
pect to  find  in  it  new  light  upon  one  of  the 
most  engaging  subjects  of  the  day,  —  the  his- 
torical study  of  language.  Its  title,  too,  is 
quaintly  inviting,  and  hints  at  fresh  and 
inciting  aspects  of  familiar  truth.  Nor  will 
it,  in  truth,  altogether  disappoint  the  reader. 
Miiller's  style  is,  in  general,  truly  admirable, 
often  tinged  with  a  poetic  quality,  almost 
always  exhibiting  a  fervor  of  thought  and 
wealth  of  illustration  which  are  akin  with 
genius,  and  bear  witness  of  a  nature  and  a 
training  wherein  the  Muses  have  had  their 
share.  His  father  was  an  esteemed  poet, 
and  he  himself  began  his  literary,  even  his 
linguistic  career  in  verse.  With  these  ad- 
vantages, and  upborne  by  the  solid  struc- 
ture of  German  research,  to  whose  chief 
results  it  was  his  good  fortune  to  attract  the 
attention  of  the  English  public,  he  has  done, 
and  is  doing,  a  valuable  work  for  linguistic 
science.  But  for  a  master  in  the  science, 
for  the  founder  of  a  school,  he  lacks  some 
of  the  essential  qualifications.  He  is  incon- 
sequent ;  his  views  not  seldom  exclude  one 
another  ;  he  tarries  in  the  vague,  and  loves 


a  degree  of  imaginative  dimness  better  than 
the  full  light  of  practical  reality ;  logical 
connection  of  thought,  closeness  of  method, 
and  cogency  of  arguments  are  not  the  dis- 
tinguishing characteristics  of  his  works ; 
there  is  not  a  volume  he  has  written  which 
is  not  disappointing,  which  does  not  seem 
less  than  we'  have  a  right  to  expect  from  its 
author  ;  and  the  pamphlet  now  before  us 
falls,  upon  the  whole,  below  the  ordinary 
level  of  his  productions.  Even  its  style 
partakes  of  the  inferiority,  and  is  sometimes 
feeble,  sometimes  labored  and  turgid.  To- 
call  a  dictionary  an  "  herbarium  of  the  lin- 
guistic flora  of  England,"  to  speak  of  words 
as  "  welded  together  into  an  indistinguish- 
able mass  through  the  intense  heat  of 
thought,  and  by  the  constant  hammering  of 
the  tongue,"  or  of  agglutinative  language  as 
"  clinging  with  its  roots  to  the  underlying^ 
stratum  of  isolation,"  passes  the  bounds  of 
picturesqueness,  and  verges  on  the  gro- 
tesque. These,  it  is  true,  would  be  insignifi- 
cant blemishes  if  the  lecture  abounded  in- 
new  truths,  or  in  novel  and  striking  combi- 
nations of  truths  already  known.  But  it  isy 
on  the  contrary,  notably  deficient  in  point ; 
and,  what  is  yet  worse,  if  it  commanded  the 
continuous  attention  of  its  hearers,  and 
made  an  appreciable  effect  upon  their  opin- 
ions, we  fear  that  it  left  them  with  more 
wrong  views  than  right  ones.  Thus,  nearly 
at  the  outset,  the  author  conveys  the  im- 
pression that  a,n  undue  amount  of  attention 
has  been  hitherto  paid  to  studies  in  Indo- 
European  and  Semitic  language,  and  that 
linguistic  scholars  need  to 436  recalled  by 
him  to  the  examination  of  other  families 
of  tongues,  since  the  two  former  furnish  toa 
scanty  evidence  to  generalize  from  ;  while,  in 
fact,  men  have  simply  paid  their  first  and 
fullest  attention  to  w,hat  lay  nearest  themr 
and  was  richest  in  instruction,  and  have 
been  taking  into  account  the  rest  of  the 
material  as  fast  as  they  could  gather  and 
master  it.  Much  worse,  he  pronounces 
those  two  families  themselves  of  so  excep- 
tional, and  even  monstrous,  a  character  as  t® 
be  peculiarly  unfitted  to  instruct  us  respect- 
ing language  in  general ;  he  styles  them 
"  only  two  historical  concentrations  of  wild 
unbounded  speech,"  —  a  phrase  which 
needs  a  few  pages  of  exposition  to  make  it 
intelligible  ;  he  maintains  that,  unlike  other 
tongues,  they  were  "fixed  and  petrified," 
at  their  earliest  known  stage  of  develop- 
ment, by  literary  influences :  as  if  such  a 
thing  were  practicable  in  any  language,  or 
had  ever  taken  place  in  these ;  as  if  literary 


762 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[December, 


culture  had  done  aught  but  put  on  record 
here  and  there  a  single  phase  of  speech, 
more  or  less  ancient,  leaving  the  great  mass 
of  dialects  to  run  their  course  as  freely  as  if 
letters  had  never  been  invented.  All  this 
part  of  our  author's  discussion  shows,  in 
our  view,  a  very  radical  misapprehension  of 
,the  bearing  of  literature  upon  the  growth  of 
language.  In  treating  briefly  of  the  forces 
which  underlie  this  growth,  he  states  the 
two  main  opposing  views,  the  conventional 
and  the  vegetative,  that  which  makes  the 
consenting,  action  of  language -speakers  the 
spring  of  movement,  and  that  which  as- 
cribes an  organic  and  prolific  life  to  lan- 
guage itself  pronounces  them  both  almost 
absurd,  and  yet  intimates  that  no  other  and 
better  view  has  been  found  to  supersede 
them.  If  he  is  so  hopelessly  in  the  dark  as 
to  a  matter  of  such  fundamental  importance, 
he  .should  give  up  the  office  of  lecturer  on 
language  until  further  study  and  deeper  re- 
flection have  brought  him  enlightenment. 
By  a  course  of  loose  and  easy  etymologizing, 
he  finds  that  "  neuter,  denominative,  cau- 
sative, passive  verbs,  optatives  and  futures, 
gerundives,  adjectives,  and  substantives,  all 
are  formed  by  one  and  the  same  process, 
by  means  of  one  and  the  same  root," 
namely,  the  root  yat  "to  go."  It  will 
doubtless  be  long  before  the  details  of  word 
derivation  are  so  well  understood  that  we 
can  tell  which  of  these  various  classes  are 
truly  thus  produced  ;  and  meanwhile  their 
uncritical  and  wholesale  explanation  can 
only  breed  distrust  in  modern  etymological 
methods.  Professor  Miiller  has  found  one 
man,  Herrn  Scherer,  who  almost  under- 
stands his  theory  of  the  joint  and  mutual 
action  of  "  phonetic  decay  "  and  "  dialectic 
growth "  in  language ;  whether  any  one 
will  ever  come  nearer  to  it  may  be  doubted  ; 
and  the  fault  will  be  in  the  theory,  not  in 
those  who  endeavor  to  approach  its  com- 
prehension. Much  of  the  latter  part  of  the 
lecture  is  taken  up  with  a  rather  aimless 
and  inconclusive  inquiry  into  the  relation- 
ship of  Indo-European  and  Semitic  lan- 
guage,'in  the  course  of  which  he  makes  the 
statement  that  those  who  reject  it  do  so 
because  they  have  laid  down  as  an  axiom 
that  the  families  cannot  be  related.  No 
sensible  philologist,  we  presume,  is  guilty 
of  so  gross  a  prejudgment  of  the  case  ;  he 
only  criticises  the  evidences  offered  and  the 
methods  of  their  derivation,  holding  his 
opinion  meanwhile  in  reserve  ;  and  a  sound 
criticism  has  insured  thus  far  the  rejection, 
at  least  provisionally,  of  the  alleged  evi- 


dences. Miiller  would  have  done  better  if, 
instead  of  seeming  to  encourage  Chalmers 
and  Edkins  in  their  work  of  comparing 
Chinese  roets  with  those  of  other  great  fam- 
ilies, he  had  seriously  warned  them  that  the 
task  is  one  which  neither  they  nor  perhaps 
any  other  scholars  at  present  are  prepared 
to  deal  with ;  that,  before  it  can  be  profit- 
ably attempted,  the  science  of  language 
needs  to  make  no  little  progress.  He  quite 
mistakes  the  needful  tone  of  advice  when 
he  says,  at  the  end  :  "  I  do  not  defend  haste 
or  inaccuracy  ;  I  only  say,  we  must  venture 
on,  and  not  imagine  that,  all  is  done,  and 
that  nothing  remains  to  conquer  in  our  sci- 
ence." Or  can  it  be  that  such  vain  imagin- 
ings, such  complacent  and  monstrous  over- 
valuation of  the  little  that  has  yet  been  ac- 
complished in  linguistics,  should  threaten  to 
possess  the  minds  of  Cambridge  scholars  ? 

A  Christmas  Carol  in  Prose :  Being  a  Ghost 
Story  of  Christmas.  By  CHARLES  DICK- 
ENS.  With  illustrations  drawn  by  S. 
Eytinge,  Jr.,  and  engraved  by  A.  V.  S. 
Anthony.  Boston:  Fields,  Osgood,  & 
Co.  1869. 

THERE  is  not,  in  all  literature,  a  book 
more  thoroughly  saturated  with  the  spirit 
of  its  subject  than  Dickens's  "  Christmas 
Carol,"  and  there  is  no  book  about  Christ- 
mas that  can  be  counted  its  peer.  To 
follow  old  Scrooge  through  the  ordeal 
of  loving  discipline  whereby  the  ghosts 
arouse  his  heart  is  to  be  warmed  in  every 
fibre  of  mind  and  body  with  the  gentle, 
bountiful,  ardent,  affectionate  Christmas 
glow.  Read  at  any  season  of  the  year,  this 
genial  story  never  fails  to  quicken  the  im- 
pulses of  tender  and  thoughtful  charity. 
Read  at  the  season  of  the  Christian  festival, 
its  pure,  ennobling  influence  is  felt  to  be 
stronger  and  sweeter  than  ever.  As  you 
turn  its  magical  pages,  you  hear  the  mid- 
night moaning  of  the  winter  wind,  the  soft 
rustle  of  the  falling  snow,  the  rattle  of  the 
hail  on  naked  branch  and  window-pane, 
and  the  far-off  tumult  of  tempest-smitten 
seas  ;  but  also  there  comes  a  vision  of  snug 
and  cosey  rooms,  close-curtained  from  night 
and  storm,  wherein  the  lights  burn  brightly, 
and  the  sound  of  merry  music  mingles  with 
the  sound  of  merrier  laughter,  and  all  is 
warmth  and  kindness  and  happy  content , 
and,  looking  on  these  pictures,  you  feel  the 
full  reality  of  cold  and  want  and  sorrow  as 
contrasted  with  warmth  and  comfort,  and 
recognize  anew  the  sacred  duty  of  striving, 


1 868.] 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


763 


by  all  possible  means,  to  give  t®  every  hu- 
man  being   a  cheerful  home  and  a  happy 
fireside.     The  sanctity  of  that  duty  is  the 
moral  of  Christmas,  and  of  the  "  Christmas 
Carol."     That  such  a  book  should  find  an 
enduring  place  in  the  affectionate  admira- 
tion of  mankind  is  an  inevitable  result  of 
the  highest  moral   and  mental   excellence. 
Conceived  in  a  mood  of  large  human  sym- 
pathy, and  expressed  in  a  delicately  fanciful 
yet   admirably  simple    form   of  art,  it   ad- 
dresses alike  the  unlettered  and  the  culti- 
vated, it  touches  the  humblest  as  well  as 
the  highest  order  of  mind,  and  it  satisfies 
every  rational  standard  of  taste.     So  truly 
is  this  work  an  inspiration,  that  the  thought 
about  its  art  is  always  an  afterthought.     So 
faithfully  and  entirely  does  it  give  voice  to 
the  universal  Christmas  sentiment,  that  it 
seems   the  perfect  reflex  of  every  reader's 
ideas  and  feeh'ngs  thereupon.     There  are  a 
few  other  books  of  this  kind  in  the  world, 
—  in  which  Genius  does,  at  once  and  for- 
ever, what  ambling  Talent  had  always  been 
vainly  trying  to  do,  —  and  these  make  up 
the  small  body  of  literature  which  is  "  for 
all  time."     In  the  embellishment  of  these 
literary  treasures,  therefore,  there  is  a  wise 
economy  and  an  obvious  beneficence ;  and 
the  publishers  of  this  edition  have  made  a 
most  sagacious  and  kindly  choice  of  their 
principal   Christmas  book  for  the  present 
season.      Their    "  Illustrated    Edition    of 
Dickens's  Chfistmas  Carol "  comes  betimes 
with  the  first  snow  ;  and  its  beautiful  pages 
will  assuredly,   and   very   speedily,    be   lit 
up  by  a  ruddy  glow  from  many  a  Christmas 
hearth   throughout   the   land.      The   book 
is  a  royal  octavo,  containing  one  hundred 
and  twelve  pages,  printed  from  large,  neat, 
clear-faced  type,  on    satin-surfaced    paper, 
delicately  tinted    with  the  color  of  cream. 
It  was  printed  at  the  University  Press  by 
Messrs.  Welch,  Bigelow,  &  Co.,  and  is  an 
enduriHg  emblem  of  their  skill   and  taste, 
affording  as  it  does  the  best  of  proof  that 
they  have  done  their  work  with  heart  as 
well  as  hand.     Its  illustrations  —  thirty-six 
in  number  —  are  from  the  poetic  pencil  of 
Eytinge  ;  and  the  engraving  has  been  done 
by   Anthony.     These    pictures,    of  course, 
constitute  the   novel   feature  of  the  book. 
A  few  of  them  are  little  head  and  tail  pieces, 
which  may  briefly  be  dismissed  as  simple, 
neat,    and   appropriate.     Twenty  of  them, 
however,  are  full-page  drawings,  while  five 
smaller  ones  are  captions  for  the  five  chap- 
ters of  the  story.     Viewed  altogether,  they 
form  the  best  effort  and  fullest  expression 


that  the  public  has  yet  seen  of  Eytinge's 
genius.     They  show  the  heartiest  possible 
sympathy  with  the  spirit  of  the  "  Christmas 
Carol,"   and   a   comprehensive   and   acute 
perception  as  well  of  its  scenic  ideals  as  of 
its  character  portraits.    They  have  not  only 
the  merit  of  being  true  to  the  book,  but  the 
merit  of  representing  the  artist'^  individual 
thought  and  feeling  in  respect   to  its  mo- 
mentous themes,  —  love,  happiness,  charity, 
sorrow,  bereavement,  the  shocking  aspects 
of  vice  and  squalor,  the  bitterness  of  death, 
and   the   solemn   consolations   of  religion. 
He  has  put  his  nature  into  his  work,  and  it 
therefore  has  an  independent  and  abiding 
life.     How  deep  and  delicate  are  his  per- 
ceptions of  the  melancholy  side  of  things 
may  be  seen  in  such  drawings  as  that  which 
depicts   the  miserable    Scrooge,  crouching 
on  his  own  grave,  at  the  feet  of  the  Spirit, 
and  that  which  shows   poor  Bob  Cratchit 
kneeling    at   the    bedside,    and    mourning 
over  Tiny  Tim.     The  pictures  of  Scrooge, 
gazing  with  faltering  terror  on  the  covered 
corpse    upon    the   despoiled   bed,    and   of 
Want     and    Ignorance,    typified     by    the 
wretched  children  that  are  seen  to  wallow 
in   a  city  gutter,    have   a  kindred   signifi- 
cance.    In  striking*contrast  with  these,  and 
expressive  of  as  quick  a  sympathy  with  com- 
mon joys  as  with  common  sorrows,  are  the 
sketches  of  domestic  scenes,  at  the  hum- 
ble home  of  Bob   Cratchit,  —  a  character, 
by  the  way,  that  the  artist  has  intuitively 
realized  and  reproduced  from  a  mere  hint 
in   the   story.     The   sentiment,  the   family 
characteristics,  and  the  minute  elaboration 
of  accurate  detail,  in  these  Cratchit  pictures, 
are  conspicuous  and  admirable.     No  intel- 
ligent observer  can  miss  or  fail  to  like  them. 
The  life  of  the  drawings,  too,  is  abundant. 
In  looking  on  Bob's  face  you  may  hear  his 
question,  "  Why,  where  's   our   Martha  ?  " 
as  clearly  as  if  his  living  voice  sounded  in 
your  ears.     This  quality  is   evident   again 
in    the    character  -  portrait    entitled    "  On 
'Change,"    wherein     three     representative 
moneyed  men  are  commenting,  in  a  repul- 
sive vein  of  hard,  gross  selfishness,  on  the 
death  of  their  fellow  money-grubber.     This 
is  one  of  the  boldest  and  best  of  the  illus- 
trations.    Kindred  with  it  in  force  of  char- 
acter are  the  sketches  of  the  philanthropists 
soliciting   Scrooge's   charity,  and  ^thc  foul 
old   thieves   haggling    over    their    plunder 
from  the  miser's  bed  of  death.     Loathsome 
depravity  of  body  and   mind   has   seldom 
been  so  well  denoted  as  in  the  faces  in  this 
latter  drawing.     Here,  again,  the  artist  has 


764 


Reviews  and  Literary  Notices. 


[December. 


•^built  upon  a  mere  hint,  except  in  the  repro- 
duction of  the  accessories  of  the  dismal 
scene.  .The  habit  of  close  and  constant 
observation  of  actual  life,  as  well  as  of 
human  nature,  is  evinced  in  such  work  as 
this,  —  a  habit  clearly  natural  to  this  artist, 
and  as  clearly  strengthened  by  long,  care- 
ful, and  cherished  communion  with  the 
works  of  Dickens.  Perfect  distinctness  is 
one  of  the  great  virtues  of  those  works,  and 
that  virtue  reappears  in  these  pictures. 
Every  individual  has  been  clearly  conceived 
by  the  artist.  There  is  but  one  Scrooge, 
even  in  the  sketches  which  so  hilariously 
illustrate  his  wonderful  transformation. 
There  is  but  one  Bob  Cratchit,  whether 
carrying  his  little  child  along  the  wintry 
street,  or  sitting  at  his  Christmas  dinner,  or 
bending  beside  the  bare,  cold,  lonely  bed 
of  death,  or  staggering  backward  from  the 
frisky  presence  of  his  regenerated  employer. 
This  vivid  clearness  of  execution  shows  the 
essential  control  of  intellect  over  fancy,  — 
always  a  characteristic  of  the  true  artist. 
Fancy  has  none  the  less  its  full  play  in  these 
drawings,  and  a  genial  heart  beats  under 
them,  prompt  alike  to  pity  and  to  enjoy. 
The  appreciative  observer  will  also  perceive, 
with  cordial  relish,  their  frequent  poetic 
mood.  One  of  them  illustrates  the  single 
phrase,  "  They  stood  beside  the  helmsman 
at  the  wheel,"  and  is  a  very  vivid  reproduc- 
tion of  the  mystical,  awesome  presence  of 
darkness  on  the  waters.  The  moon  looks 
dimly  through  the  clouds.  The  light-house 
lamp  is  shining  over  the  dark  line  of  dis- 
tant coast.  On  speeds  the  vessel,  guided 
by  the  firm  hand  of  the  resolute  helms- 
man, with  whom,  as  you  gaze,  you  seem 
to  feel  the  rush  of  the  night-wind  and  hear 
the  sob  and  plash  of  the  wintry  waves. 
The  artist  who  labors  thus  does  not  labor 
in  vain.  Mr.  Eytinge  is  the  best  of  the 
illustrators  of  Dickens,  and  it  is  his  right 
that  this  fact  should  be  distinctly  stated. 
His  work  in  this  instance  has  received  the 
heartiest  co-operation  of  the  best  of  Ameri- 
can engravers ;  for  Mr.  Anthony  is  not  a 
mere  copyist  of  lines,  but  an  engraver 
•who,  in  a  kindred  mood  with  the  artist, 
preserves  the  spirit  no  less  than  the  form, 
and  who  has  won  his  highest  and  amplest 
success  in  this  beautiful  Christmas  book. 


Tablets.  By -A.  BRONSON  ALCOTT.  Bos- 
ton :  Roberts  Brothers,  i  vol.  i6mo. 
pp.  208. 

THIS  volume  is  divided- into  two  parts: 
one  containing  a  series  of  essays  marked 
"  Practical "  ;  the  other,  a  series  of  essays 
marked  "Speculative."  Taken  together 
they  give  a  fair  impression  of  the  author's 
character  and  philosophy  of  life.  They  are 
open  to  ridicule,  provided  the  critic  is  dis- 
posed to  think  that  difference  from  himself 
is  the  proper  test  of  the  ridiculous  ;  but  if 
he  enters  into  the  spirit  of  the  writer,  and 
condescends  to  take  Mr.  Alcott's  point  of 
view,  he  will  find  his  mind  in  contact  with 
another  intelligence  of  singular  freshness, 
serenity,  sweetness,  and  originality.  Mr. 
Alcott  is  an  idealist  by  disposition  as  well 
as  by  conviction.  Ideas  do  not  merely 
claim  his  assent,  they  suffice  for  his  exist- 
ence. He  seeks  them  as  other  persons 
seek  fortune,  social  position,  or  fame.  To 
him  they  are  all  in  all,  —  the  nutriment, 
comfort,  exaltation,  consolation  of  life, 
Over  every  essay  in  the  Tolume  there 
breathes  an  atmosphere  of  composure  and 
satisfaction,  as  if  the  writer  had  found  the 
one  thing  or  the  many  things  needful  for  a 
reasonable  being's  existence.  His  faith  in 
high  thinking  is  unshakable,  unmarred  by 
the  slightest  fretfulness,  or  impatience,  or 
combativeness,  or  greed  of  sympathy,  or 
anger  at  not  being  recognized.  He  seems 
to  have  continual  experience  of 

"  That  content  surpassing  wealth, 
The  sage  in  meditation  found,  • 
And  walked  with  inward  glory  crowned." 

This  character  of  Mr.  Alcott  is  impressed 
on  his  writings,  and  lends  them  a  certain 
beneficent  charm,  even  when  we  are  in- 
clined to  question  the  truth  or  the  novelty 
of  his  opinions.  His  amenity  of  manner  is 
a  kind  of  genius  in  itself,  and  in  his  essays 
on  "  The  Garden,"  "  Recreation,"  "  Friend- 
ship," "  Culture,"  "  Books,"  and  "  Coun- 
sels," it  is  specially  apparent.  In  these, 
also,  two  things  are  displayed  which  go  far 
to  make  up  the  happiness  of  life,  namely, 
fellowship  with  nature,  and  the  power  of 
connecting  high  thoughts  with  lowly  ob- 
jects. 


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