preeenteo to
Sbe Xibran?
of tbe
University of Toronto
bs Miss helen E. Nelles
ityrailt
DINC \
' -rax.
•
. *
Photogravure — From an etching hy Johnston. Specially engraved for the Ridpath1 library.
ia-r
BMtton
TWBffTY-FlVR VOLV * CIV.
MUE LIBK NEW YORK
m
• •
— -OF
A BIOGRAPHICAL AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY OF THE WORLD'S MOST EMI- NENT AUTHORS, INCLUDING THE CHOICEST EXTRACTS AND MASTER. PIECES FROM THEIR WRITINGS .'. .'.
CAREFULLY REVISED AX» ARRANGED BY A CORPS OF THE MOST CAPABLE SCHOLARS
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
John Clark Ridpath, A.M., LLD.
Editor of "The Arena." Author of" Ridpath's
History of the United States," " Encyclo-
pedia of Universal History," "Great
Races of Mankind," etc., etc.
EMtion &e Xuxc
TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES VOL. XXIV.
FIFTH AVENUE LIBRARY SOCIETY NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1899
THK GLOBE PUBLISHING COMPANY
PN
R.5
KEY TO PRONUNCIATION.
B as in fat, man, pang.
a as in fate, mane, dale.
a as in far, father, guard.
a as in fall, talk.
a as in ask, fast, ant.
a as in fare.
e as in met, pen, bleat.
e as in mete, meet.
e as in her, fern.
i as in pin, it.
i as in pine, fight, file.
o as in not, on, frog.
o as in note, poke, floor.
8 as in move, spoon.
0 as in nor, song, off. u as in tub.
u as in mute, acute.
u as in pull.
u German u, French u.
01 as in oil, joint, boy. ou as in pound, proud.
A single dot under a vowel in an unaccented syllable indicates its ab- breviation and lightening, without ab- solute loss of its distinctive quality. Thus:
3 as in prelate, courage. f as in ablegate, episcopal, o as in abrogate, eulogy, democrat fl as in singular, education.
A double dot under a vowel in 'an un- accented syllable indicates that, even in the mouths of the best speakers, it*
sound is variable to, and in ordinary ut- terance actually becomes, the short u- sound (of but, pun, etc.). Thus: a as in errant, republican. e as in prudent, difference. i as in charity, density. o as in valor, actor, idiot 3 as in Persia, peninsula, e as in the book, g as in nature, feature.
A mark (~}under the consonants t, d, s, z indicates that they in like manner are variable to c h, j, sh, zh. Thus : t as in nature, adventure. d as in arduous, education. * as in pressure, z as in seizure. y as in yet B Spanish b (medial). ch as in German ach, Scotch loch. G as in German Abensberg, Hamburg. H Spanish g before e and i; Spanish j ;
etc. (a guttural h).
h French nasalizing n, as in ton, en. s final s in Portuguese (soft), th as in thin. TH as in then.
D = TH.
' denotes a primary, " a secondary ac- cent. (A secondary accent is not marked if at its regular interval of two syllables from the primary, or from another sec- ondary.)
LIST OF AUTHORS, VOL. XXIV.
(WITH PRONUNCIATION.)
Warburton (wSr'ber ton), Eliot Barthol- omew George.
Warburton, William.
Ward (w^lrd), Artemus. See Browne, Charles Farrar.
Ward, Elizabeth Stuart (Phelps).
Ward, Mrs. Humphry.
Ward, Nathaniel.
Ware (war), William.
Warner (waVner), Charles Dudley.
Warner, Susan and Anna.
Warren (wor'en), Samuel.
Warton (waVton), Joseph.
Warton, Thomas.
Washington (wosh'ing ton), George.
Wasson (wos'on), David Atwood.
Waters (wa'terz), Clara Erskine (Clem- ent).
Watson (wot'son), Henry Clay.
Watson, Rev. John.
Watson, William.
Watterson (wot'er son), Henry.
Watts (wots), Anna Mary. See Howitt, Anna Mary.
Watts, Isaac.
Wayland (wa'land), Francis.
Webb (web), Charles Henry.
Webster (web'ster), Daniel. .
Webster, John.
Webster, Noah.
Welhaven (vel'ha-ven), Johan Sebas- tian Cammermeyer.
Wells (welz), David Ames.
Wells, H. G.
Wergeland (ver'ge-lSnd), Henrik Ar- nold.
Warner (ver'ner), Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias.
Wesley (wes'li or wez'li), Charles.
Wesley, John.
Wessel (ves'sel), Johan Hermann. Wetherell (weTH'er el), Elizabeth. S«e
Warner, Susan. Weyman (wi'man), Stanley J. Whately (hwat'li), Richard. Whewell (hiVel), William. Whipple (hwipl), Edwin Percy. Whitcher (hwitch'er), Frances Miriam. White (hwit), Gilbert. White, Henry Kirke. White, Richard Grant. Whitefield (hwit'feld), George. Whitman (hwit'man), Sarah Helen. Whitman, Walt. Whitney (hwit'ni), Adeline Dutton
Train.
Whitney, William Dwight. Whittier (hwit'i er), John Greenleaf. Whymper (hwim'per), Edward. Wiclif (wik'lif ), John de. Widow Bedott (be dot'). See Whitcher
Frances Miriam. Wieland (weland; Ger. pron., ve'lant),
Christoph Martin. Wilberforce (wil'ber fors), Samuel. Wilcox (wil'koks), Ella (Wheeler). Wilkinson (wil'kin son), Sir John Gard
ner.
Wilkinson, William Cleaver. Willard (wil'ard), Emma Hart Willard, Frances Elizabeth. Williams (wil'yamz), Roger. Williams, Samuel Wells. Willis (wil'is), Nathaniel Parker. Willson (wil'son) Byron Forceythe. Wilson (wil'son), Alexander. Wilson, Augusta J. Evans. Wilson, James Grant. Wilson, John. Wilson, Thomas Woodrow.
LIST OF AUTHORS, VOL. XXIV.
Win. hell (wln'i lii-lt. Alexander.
Wimlow ( win/'l..), Edward.
Wiimir (win'ior). Justin.
Winlcr (win'ler), William.
Winlhrup (win'throp), John.
Winthrop, Hubert Charles.
Winthrop, Theodore.
Win (wert). William.
Wiseman (wix'man), Nicholas.
Wolcot (wuMcot), John.
Wolfe (wulf), Charles.
Wood (wud), Ellen (Price).
Wood, Mrs. Henry. See Wood, Ellen
Price.
Wood worth (wud'werth), Samuel. Woolsey (wiil'si), Sarah C'hauncey. Woolsey, Theodore Dwight, Woolson (wul'sen). Constance Feni-
more. Wordsworth (werdz'werth), William.
Work (werk). Henry Clay.
Wotton (wot'on), Sir Henry.
Wyatt (wi'at). Sir Thomas.
Wyclif (wiklif), John. See Wiclif,
John. Wyss (vis), Johann Rudolph.
Xenophon (zen'o ffin).
Yates ( y.its), Edmund Hodgson. Yonge, Charlotte Mary. Young, Edward.
Zangwill (zang'wil), Israel.
Zola (z5la), 6mile.
Zoroaster (zo ro as'ter).
Zorrilla, y Moral (thor-rel'ya e mS-ral'),
Jose. Zschokke (tshok'ke), Johann Heinrich
Daniel. Zwingli (zwing7!!), Ulric.
WARBURTON, ELIOT BARTHOLOMEW GEORGE, an Irish writer of travels, memoirs, and novels, was born near Tullamore, Ireland, in 1810; died at sea, January 4, 1852. He was educated at Queen's College, and at Trinity, Cambridge, and became a member of the Irish bar, but gave up law for travel and literature. His book The Cres- cent and the Cross (1844), first published as Episodes of Eastern Travel in the Dublin University Mag- azine, made him widely known as a sparkling writer. Following this, he published Hochelaga, or England in the New World (American edition, 1846), the title being the ancient name of Canada, but Part II. pertaining to the United States ; Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers (1849); Darien, or the Merchant Prince, and Memoirs of Horace Walpole and His Contemporaries (185 1) ; also Reginald Hastings, a Tale of 164.0-50. The author perished in the destruction of the West Indian mail-steamer Amazon, lost off Land's End. In Hochelaga there is a sketch of the rebellions and invasions of Canada in 1837-38.
Of his Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, the AthetKEum says: "The story of the Cavaliers is told in these volumes with much spirit — we wish we could add, with impartiality."
His Crescent and the Cross, parts of which were first published in the Dublin University Magazine^
(7)
EUOT BARTHOLOMEW GEORGE WARBURTON
under the title Episodes of Eastern Travel, attracted wide-spread attention, and received praise from the highest literary authorities, Sir Archibald Allison saying that the descriptions rivalled those of William Beckford and that they were indelibly engraven on the national mind.
MOOSE-HUNTING.
We pressed on rapidly over the brow of the hill, in the direction of the dogs, and came upon the fresh track of several moose. In my eagerness to get forward, I stumbled repeatedly, tripped by the abominable snow- shoes, and had great difficulty in keeping up with the Indians, who, though also violently excited, went on quite at their ease. The dogs were at a standstill, and, as we emerged from the thick part of the wood, we saw them surrounding three large moose, barking viciously, but not daring to approach within reach of their hoofs or antlers. When the deer saw us, they bolted away, plunging heavily through the deep snow, slowly and with great difficulty ; at every step sinking to the shoulder, the curs at their heels as near as they could venture. They all broke in different directions ; the captain pur- sued one, I another, and one of the Indians the third ; at first they beat us in speed ; for a few hundred yards mine kept stoutly on, but his track became wider and more irregular, and large drops of blood on the pure, fresh snow showed that the poor animal was wounded by the hard, icy crust of the old fall. We were pressing down the hill through very thick "bush" and could not see him, but his panting and crashing through the under- wood were plainly heard. On, on, the branches smash and rattle, but just ahead of us the panting is louder and closer, the track red with blood ; the hungry dogs howl and yell almost under our feet. On, on, through the deep snow, among rugged rocks and the tall pines, we hasten, breathless and eager. Swinging around a close thicket, we open in a swampy valley with a few patriarchal trees rising from it, bare of branches to a hundred feet in height ; in the centre stands the moose*
ELIOT BARTHOLOMEW GEORGE WARBURTON 9
facing us ; his failing knees refuse to carry him any further through the choking drifts ; the dogs press upon him ; whenever his proud head turns, they fly away yelling with terror, but with grinning teeth and hungry eyes rush at him from behind.
He was a noble brute, standing at least seven feet high ; his large, dark eye was fixed, I fancied almost imploringly, upon me as I approached. He made no further effort to escape, or resist ; I fired, and the ball struck him in the chest. The wound roused him ; in- furiated by the pain, he raised his huge bulk out of the snow, and plunged toward me. I fired the second bar- rel; he stopped, and staggered, stretched out his neck, and blood gushed in a stream from his mouth, his tongue protruded, then slowly, as if lying down to rest, he fell over in the snow. The dogs would not yet touch him ; nor would even the Indians ; they said that this was the most dangerous time — he might struggle yet ; so we watched cautiously till the large, dark eye grew dim and glazed, and the sinewy limbs were stiffened out in death ; then we approached and stood over our fallen foe.
When the excitement which had touched the savage chord of love of destruction, to be found in every nat- ure, was over, I felt ashamed, guilty, self-condemned like a murderer ; the snow defiled with the red stain ; the meek eye, a few moments before bright with healthy life, now a mere filmy ball ; the vile dogs, that had not dared to touch him while alive, licked up the stream of blood, and fastened on his heels. I was thoroughly disgusted with myself and the tame and cruel sport.
The Indians knocked down a decayed tree, rubbed up some dry bark in their hands, applied a match to it, and in a few moments made a splendid fire close by the dead moose; a small space was trampled down, the saplings laid as usual, for a seat, from whence I inspected the skinning and cutting up of the carcass ; a part of the proceeding which occupied nearly two hours. The hide and the most valuable parts were packed on the toboggans, and the remnant of the noble brute was left for the wolves ; then we returned to the cabin. — Hoche laga.
.TKTtTJCT.ICT.VJf.y.V.V.Y.V.V.Y.inf.
WARBURTON,WlLLlAM,an English criticand theologian, Bishop of Gloucester, born at Newark, December 24, 1698 ; died at Gloucester, June 7, 1779. He was the son of an attorney at Newark, and adopted his father's profession, but forsook it for the clerical, becoming rector of Brand Brough- ton, Lincolnshire, and rising by preferments to the office of bishop. In his time, he was regard- ed as a formidable defender of the faith ; but his great learning and force were not always wisely employed, and his works have fallen into oblivion. Among these were The Alliance between Church and State (1723), a defence of the same ; The Di- vine Legation of Moses ( 173 8-41), a ponderous work of learning, assuming and defending an omission of immortality in the Old Testament, in reply to deists; Remarks on Rutherforth's Essay on Virtue (1747); a defence of Pope's Essay on Man, The Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion, and a View of Bolingbroke 's Philosophy (1755); a review of Hume's Natural History of Religion, and an edi- tion of Shakespeare with comments. Pope be- queathed to him the copyright of his poems and other works, valued at £4,000. A volume of the bishop's letters was published anonymously by Bishop Hurd (American edition, 1809), entitled Letters from a Prelate.
" His Divine Legation of Moses" says Lord Jef-
(10)
WILLIAM WARBURTON II
fry, in the Edinburgh Review, " is the most learned, most arrogant, and most absurd work which has been produced in England for a century.
" The Divine Legation of Moses" says Edward Gibbon, " is a monument, already crumbling into dust, of the vigor and the weakness of the human mind. If Warburton's new argument proved any- thing, it would be a demonstration against the legislator who left his people without the knowl- edge of a future state. But some episodes of the work — on the Greek philosophy, the hieroglyphics of Egypt, etc. — are entitled to the praise of learn- ing, imagination, and discernment."
" Of all Warburton's works, The Doctrine of Grace" says Rev. T. D. Whitaker, " is that which does least honor to his heart, and perhaps, though written with all his native spirit, to his head."
" Mr. Warburton is the greatest general critic I ever knew," says Alexander Pope ; " the most capable of seeing through all the possibilities of things."
" His style is copious without selection," says Dr. Johnson, " and forcible without neatness; he took the words that presented themselves ; his diction is coarse and impure, and his sentences are un- measured."
IS LUXURY A PUBLIC BENEFIT ?
To the lasting opprobrium of our age and country, we have seen a writer publicly maintain, in a book so entitled, that private vices were public benefits. . . . In his proof of it, he all along explains it by vice only in a certain measure, and to a certain degree. . . . The author, descending to the enumeration of his proofs, appears plainly to have seen that vice in general was
12 WILLIAM WARBURTON
only accidentally productive of good : and thereto^' avoids entering into an examination of particulars ; but selects, out of his favorite tribe, luxury, to support his execrable paradox ; and on this alone rests his cause. By the assistance of this ambiguous term, he keeps something like an argument on foot, even after he hath left all the rest of his city-crew to shift for them- selves. . . .
First, in order to perplex and obscure our idea of lux- ury, he hath labored, in a previous dissertation, on the origin of moral virtue, to destroy those very principles, by whose assistance we are only able to clear up and ascertain that idea : where he decries and ridicules the essential difference of things, the eternal notions of right and wrong ; and makes virtue, which common moralists deduce from thence, the offspring of craft and pride.
Nothing now being left to fix the idea of luxury but the positive precepts of Christianity, and he having stript these of their only true and infallible interpreter, the principles of natural religion, it was easy for him to make those precepts speak in favor of any absurdities that would serve his purpose, and as easy to find such absurdities supported by the superstition and fanaticism of some or other of those many sects and parties of Christianity, who, despising the principles of the relig- ion of Nature as the weak and beggarly elements, soon came to regard the natural appetites as the grace- less furniture of the old man, with his affections and lusts.
Having got Christianity at this advantage, he gives us for Gospel that meagre phantom begot by the hy- pocrisy of monks on the misanthropy of ascetics : which cries out, An abuse ! whenever the gifts of Provi- dence are used further than for the bare support of nature. So that by this rule everything becomes lux- ury which is more than necessary. An idea of luxury exactly fitted to our author's hypothesis : for if no state can be rich and powerful while its members seek only a bare subsistence, and, if what is more than a bare sub- sistence be luxury, and luxury be vice, the conse- quence, we see, comes in pat — private vices are
WILLIAM WARBURTON 13
benefits. Here you have the sole issue of all this tumor of words. . . .
But the Gospel is a very different thing from what bigots and fanatics are wont to represent it. It en joins and forbids nothing in moral practice but what natural religion had before enjoined and forbid. Neither could it, because one of God's revelations, whether ordinary or extraordinary, cannot contradict another ; and be- cause God gave us the first, to judge the others by it. ...
The religion of nature, then, being restored, and made the rule to explain and interpret the occasional precepts of Christianity ; what is luxury by natural religion, that, and that only, must be luxury by revealed. So a true and precise definition of it, which this writer (triumph- ing in the obscurity which, by these arts, he hath thrown over the idea) thinks it impossible to give, so as not to suit with his hypothesis, is easily settled. Luxury is the using of the gifts of Providence to the injury of the user, either in his person or his fortune ; or to the in- jury of any other, toward whom the user stands* in any relation, which obliges him to aid and assist.
Now it is evident, even from the instances this writer brings of the public advantages of consumption, which he indiscriminately, and therefore falsely, calls luxury, that the utmost consumption may be made, and so all the ends of a rich and powerful Society served, and without injury to the user, or anyone, to whom he stands related : consequently without luxury, and with- out vice. When the consumption is attended with such injury, then it becomes luxury, then it becomes vice. But then let us take notice that this vice, like all others, is so far from being advantageous to Society, that it is the most certain ruin of it. It was this luxury which destroyed Rome. — The Divine Legation of Moses, Vol. /., Book I.
WARD, ELIZABETH STUART (PHELPS), an American novelist, born at Andover, Mass., Au- gust 13, 1844. Her grandfather, Moses Stuart, and her father, Austin Phelps, were professors in the Theological Seminary at Andover, and both contributed largely to religious literature. Her mother, likewise Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1815- 52), wrote several popular books, among which is Sunny Side (1851). The daughter commenced writin* at an early age. Her works— some of which had already appeared in periodicals, are : Ellens Idol (1864) ; Up /ft// (1865) ; Mercy Gliddons Work (1866); Tiny Stories (4 vols., 1866-69); Gipsy Stories (4 vols., 1866-69); The Gates Ajar (1868); Men, Women, and Ghosts (1869); The Silent Partner (1870); Trottys Wedding Tour (1873); The Good- Aim Series (1874) ; Poetic Studies (1875) ; The Story of Avis (1877) ; My Cousin and I (1879) ! Old Maid's Paradise (1879) ; Sealed Orders (1879); friends, a Duet(iSSi); Beyond the Gates (iSSj); Songs of the Silent World (1884); Dr. Zay (1884); Burglars in Paradise (i 886) ; Ttie Gates Between ( 1 887) ; Jack the Fisherman (1887); The Struggle for Immortality ( 1 889) ; Memoirs of A ustin Phelps, her father ( 1 89 1 ) ; Donald Marcy (1893); Hedged In; The Supply at Saint Agatha s ; A Singular Life (1896), and The Life of Christ (1897). In 1888 Miss Phelps married (14)
ELIZABETH STUART WARD 15
Mr. Herbert D. Ward. They have published two novels in collaboration, The Master of the Magicians and Come Forth (1890).
Reviewing Mrs. Ward's recent books A Singu- lar Life and The Supply at Saint Agatha 's, a writer in the Bookman says : " I believe it is George Eliot who said that the success of a woman novelist lies in her ability to feel and write like a woman, in emancipation from the masculine literary influ- ence. Miss Phelps is forever the woman, and I suppose that is why she gives us the novel of emotion rather than the novel of manners or so- ciological report, and that her highest gift of pas- sion is spiritual. And as emotion is a subordinate quality, at any rate with the present American novel of repute, we feel grateful that an author of quite subtle intellectual power does not rest her success onintellectualism. Miss Phelps's technique goes without saying ; it has the power of an in- spired rather than a studied effect. Perhaps that is because the great emotion — the chief end of her book — is always what she is feeling most deeply. From this results a certain unconsciousness on her part as to literary ways and means, which in turn diverts the reader from an appreciation of tech- nicalities in her work. He feels himself subject, first and last, to the emotional appeal."
THE "HANDS" AT HAYLE AND KELSO'S.
If you are one of the " hands " in the Hayle and Kelso Mills, you go to your work, as is well known, from the hour of half-past six to seven, according to the turn of the season. Time has been when you went
16 ELIZABETH STUART WARD
at half-past four. The Senior forgot this the other day in a little talk which he had with his Silent Partner : very naturally, the time having been so long past. But the time has been, is now yet, in places. Mr. Hayle can tell you of mills he saw in New Hampshire, where they ring them up, winter and summer, in and out, at half-past four in the morning. Oh, no, never let out before six as a matter of course. Mr. Hayle disapproves of this ; Mr. Hayle thinks it not human ; Mr. Hayle is confident that you would find no mission Sunday-school connect- ed with that concern.
If you are one of the " hands," you are so dully used to this classification that you were never known to cul- tivate an objection to it, are scarcely found to notice either its use or disuse : being neither head nor heart, what else remains ? Scarcely conscious from bell to bell, from sleep to sleep, from day to dark, of either head or heart, there seems a singular appropriateness of the word with which you are dimly struck. Hayle and Kelso label you. There you are. The world thinks, aspires, creates, enjoys. There you are. You are the fingers of the world. You take your patient place. The world may have read of you ; but only that it may think, aspire, create, enjoy. It needs your patience as well as your place. You take both, and the world is used to both ; and so, having put the label on for safety's sake, lest you should be mistaken for a thinking, aspiring, creating, enjoying compound, and so someone be poisoned, shoves you into your place upon its shelf, and shuts its cupboard door upon you.
If you are one of the "hands," then, in Hayle and Kelsos, you have a breakfast of bread and molasses probably ; you are apt to eat it while you dress. Some- body is heating the kettle, but you cannot wait for it. Somebody tells you that you have forgotten your shawl ; you throw it over one shoulder and step out, before it is fastened, into the sudden raw air. You left lamplight indoors, you find moonlight without. The night seems to have overslept itself ; you have a fancy for trying to wake it — would like to shout at it or cry through it. but feel very cold, and leave that for the bells to do by and by. You and the bells are the only waking things in
ELIZABETH STUART WARD 17
life. The great brain of the world is in serene repose ; the great heart of the world lies warm to the core with dreams ; the great hands of the world, the patient, the perplexed — one almost fancies at times, just for fancy — seeing you here by the morning moon, the dangerous hands alone are stirring in the dark.
You hang up your shawl and your crinoline, and understand, as you go shivering by gaslight to your looms, that you are chilled to the heart, and that you were careless about your shawl, but do not consider carefulness worth your while, by nature or by habit ; a little less shawl means a few less winters in which to require shawling. You are a godless little creature, but you cherish a stolid leaning, in those morning moons, toward making an experiment of death and a wadded coffin.
By the time the gas is out, you cease perhaps — though you cannot depend upon that — to shiver, and incline less and less to the wadded coffin, and more to a chat with your neighbor in the alley. Your neighbor is of either sex and any description, as the case may be. In any event — warming a little with the warming day — you incline more and more to chat.
If you chance to be a cotton-weaver, you are presently warm enough. It is quite warm enough in the weaving- room. The engines respire into the weaving-room ; with every throb of their huge lungs you swallow their breath. The weaving-room stifles with steam. The win- dow-sills are guttered to prevent the condensed steam from running in streams along the floor ; sometimes they overflow, and the water stands under the looms. The walls perspire profusely ; on a damp day drops will fall from the roof. The windows of the weaving-room are closed. They must be closed ; a stir in the air will break your threads. There is no air to stir ; you inhale for a substitute a motionless, hot moisture. If you chance to be a cotton-weaver it is not in March that you think most about your coffin.
Being a " hand " in Hayle and Kelso's, you are used to eating cold luncheon in the cold at noon ; or you walk, for the sake of a cup of soup or coffee, half a mile, three-quarters, a mile and a half, and back. You are
18 ELIZABETH STUART WARD
allowed three-quarters of an hour to do this. You go and come upon the jog-trot.
You grow moody, being a " hand " at Hayle and Kel- so's, with the declining day, are inclined to quarrel or to confidence with your neighbor in the alley ; find the overseer out of temper, and the cotton full of flaws ; find pains in your feet, your back, your eyes, your arms ; feel damp and sticky lint in your hair, your neck, your ears, your throat, your lungs ; discover a monotony in the process of breathing hot moisture. You lower your window at your risk ; are bidden by somebody whose threads you have broken to put it up ; and put it up. You are conscious that your head swims, your eyeballs burn, your breath quickens. You yield your preference for a wadded coffin, and consider whether the river would not be the comfortable thing. You cough a little, cough a great deal ; lose your balance in a coughing-fit, snap a thread, and take to swearing roundly.
From swearing you take to singing ; both, perhaps, are equal relief — active and diverting. There is some- thing curious about that singing of yours. The time, the place, the singers, characterize it sharply : the wan- ing light, the rival din, the girls with tired faces. You start some little thing with a refrain, and a ring to it. A hymn, it is not unlikely ; something of a River, and of Waiting, and of Toil and Rest, or Sleep, or Crowns, or Harps, or Home, or Green Fields, or Flowers, or Sor- row, or Repose, or a dozen things ; but always it will be noticed, of simple, spotless things, such as will surprise the listener who caught you at your oath of five minutes past. You have other songs, neither simple nor spot-, less, it may be ; but you never sing them at your work when the waning day is crawling out from spots be- neath your loom, and the girls lift up their tired faces to catch and keep the chorus in the rival din.
You like to watch the contest between the chorus and the din ; to see — you seem almost to see — the struggle of the melody from loom to loom, from dark- ening wall to darkening wall, from lifted face to lifted face ; to see — for you are very sure you see — the ma- chinery fall into a fit of rage ; that is a sight ! You would never guess, unless you had watched it just as
ELIZABETH STUART WARD 19
many times as you have, how that machinery will rage ; how it throws its arms about ; what fists it can clench ; how it shakes at the elbows and knees ; what teeth it knows how to gnash ; how it writhes and roars ; how it clutches at the leaky gas-lights ; and how it bends its impudent black head ; always, at last without fail, and your song sweeps triumphant over it ! With this you are very much pleased, though only a " hand " in Hayle and Kelso's.
You are singing when the bell strikes, and singing still when you clatter down the stairs. Something of the simple spotlessness of the little song is on your face when you dip into the wind and dusk. Per- haps you have only pinned your shawl or pulled your hat over your face, or knocked against a stranger on the walk. But it passes ; it passes, and is gone. It is cold and you tremble, direct from the morbid heat in which you have stood all day ; or you have been cold all day, and it is colder and you shrink. Or you are from the weaving-room, and the wind strikes you faint ; or you stop to cough, and the girls go on without you. The town is lighted, and the people are out in their best clothes. You pull your dingy veil about your eyes. You are weak and heart-sick all at once. You don't care to go home to supper. The pretty song creeps back for the engine in the deserted dark to crunch. You are a miserable little factory-girl with a dirty face. — The Silent Partner.
AFTERWARD.
There is no vacant chair. The loving meet — A group unbroken — smitten who knows how?
One sitteth silent only, in his usual seat ; We gave him once that freedom. Why not now ?
Perhaps he is too weary, and needs rest ;
He needed it too often, nor could we Bestow. God gave it, knowing how to do so best.
Which of us would disturb him ? Let him be. VOL. XXIV.— 2
20 ELIZABETH STUART WARD
There is no vacant chair. If he will take
The mood to listen mutely, be it done. By his least mood we crossed, for which the heart must ache,
Plead not nor question 1 Let him have this one.
Death is a mood of life. It is no whim
By which life's Giver mocks a broken heart.
Death is life's reticence. Still audible to Him, The hushed voice, happy, speaketh on, apart.
There is no vacant chair. To love is still To have. Nearer to memory than to eye,
And dearer yet to anguish than to comfort, will We hold him by our love, that shall not die.
For while it doth not, thus he cannot. Try !
Who can put out the motion or the smile ? The old ways of being noble all with him laid by ?
Because we love, he is. Then trust awhile.
— Song of the Silent World.
NEW NEIGHBORS.
Within the window's scant recess, Behind a pink geranium flower,
She sits and sews, and sews and sits, From patient hour to patient hour.
As woman-like as marble is,
Or as a lovely death might be —
A marble death condemned to make A feint at life perpetually.
Wondering, I watch to pity her ;
Wandering, I go my restless ways ; Content, I think the untamed thoughts
Of free and solitary days,
Until the mournful dusk begins
To drop upon the quiet street, Until, upon the pavement far,
There falls the sound of coming feet :
ELIZABETH STUART WARD 21
A happy, hastening, ardent sound,
Tender as kisses on the air — Quick, as if touched by unseen lips
Blushes the little statue there ;
And woman-like as young life is,
And woman-like as joy may be, Tender with color, lithe with love,
She starts, transfigured gloriously.
Superb in one transcendent glance — Her eyes, I see, are burning black —
My little neighbor, smiling, turns, And throws my unasked pity back.
I wonder, is it worth the while,
To sit and sew from hour to hour —
To sit and sew with eyes of black, Behind a pink geranium flower ?
— Songs of the Silent Land.
WARD, MRS. HUMPHRY, an English novelist, born at Hobart, Tasmania, in 1851. Her maiden name was Mary Augusta Arnold. Her father, Thomas — a younger brother of Matthew Arnold — was a government officer in Tasmania. He be- came afterward a professor in the Roman Catho- lic University of Dublin, but, losing faith, settled at Oxford, edited books, and wrote a manual of English Literature. The daughter married Thomas Humphry Ward, author of English Poets, Men of the Reign, The Reign of Queen Victoria, etc. Mrs. Ward is the author of Milly and Oily, or a Holiday among the Mountains ( 1 880) ; Miss Bretherton (i 884) ; a translation of Amiel's Journal (1885); a critical estimate of Mrs. Browning ; Robert Elsmere, a novel (1888), by which she is best known ; David Grieve ( 1 892) ; Marcella ( 1 894) ; Sir George Tressady and The Story of Bessie Costrell (1895).
Of Robert Elsmere, William Sharp says : " All that the critic of fiction commonly looks to — inci- dent, evolution of plot, artistic sequence of events, and so forth — seems secondary when compared with the startlingly vivid presentment of a human soul in the storm and stress incidental to the re- nunciation of past spiritual domination and the acceptance of new hopes and aspirations. . . . Merely as a tale of contemporary English life, a fictitious record of the joys and sorrows, loves
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD 23
and antagonisms, fortune and misfortune, of men and women more or less like individuals whom most of us know, it is keenly interesting. . . . Mrs. Ward's literary method is that of George Eliot; indeed, there is a curious affinity in Rob- ert Elsmere to Adam Bede — though there is per- haps not an incident, possibly no play of charac- ter, or acute side-light or vivifying suggestion that could be found in both, while the plot and gener- al scheme are entirely dissimilar."
OXFORD.
The weather was all that the heart of man could de- sire, and the party met on Paddington platform with every prospect of another successful day. Forbes turned up punctual to the moment, and radiant under the combined influence of the sunshine and of Miss Bretherton's presence ; Wallace had made all the ar- rangements perfectly, and the six friends found them- selves presently journeying along to Oxford. . . . At last the " dreaming spires " of Oxford rose from the green, river-threaded plain, and they were at their journey's end. A few more minutes saw them alighting at the gate of the new Balliol, where stood Herbert Sartoris looking out for them. He was a young don with a classical edition on hand which kept him work- ing up after term, within reach of the libraries, and he led the way to some pleasant rooms overlooking the in- ner quadrangle of Balliol, showing in his well-bred look and manner an abundant consciousness of the enormous good fortune which had sent him Isabel Bretherton for a guest. For at that time it was almost as difficult to obtain the presence of Miss Bretherton at any social fes- tivity as it was to obtain that of royalty. Her Sundays were the objects of conspiracies for weeks beforehand on the part of those persons in London society who were least accustomed to have their invitations refused, and to have and to hold the famous beauty for more than an hour in his own rooms, and then to enjoy the
9A MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
privilege of spending five or six long hours on the rivet with her, were delights which, as the happy young man felt, would render him the object of envy to all — at least of his fellow-dons below forty.
In streamed the party, filling up the book-lined rooms and starting the two old scouts in attendance into un- wonted rapidity of action. Miss Bretherton wandered around, surveyed the familiar Oxford luncheon-table, groaning under the time-honored summer fare, the books, the engravings, and the sunny, irregular quad- rangle outside, with its rich adornings of green, and threw herself down at last on to the low window-seat with a sigh of satisfaction.
" How quiet you are ! how peaceful ; how delightful it must be to live here ! It seems as if one were in an- other world from London. Tell me what that building is over there ; it's too new, it ought to be old and gray like the colleges we saw coming up here. Is everybody gone away — ' gone down,' you say ? I should like to tee all the learned people walking about for once."
" I could show you a good many if there were time," laid young Sartoris, hardly knowing, however, what he fcras saying, so lost was he in admiration of that mar- vellous changing face. " The vacation is the time they show themselves ; it's like owls coming out at night. You see, Miss Bretherton, we don't keep many of them ; they are in the way in term-time. But in vacation they have the colleges and the parks and the Bodleian to themselves and their umbrellas, under the most favor- able conditions."
"Oh, yes," said Miss Bretherton, with a little scorn, "people always make fun of what they are proud of. But I mean to believe that you are all learned, and that everybody here works himself to death, and that Oxford is quite, quite perfect ! "
" Did you hear what Miss Bretherton was saying, Mrs. Stuart ? " said Forbes, when they were seated at lunch- eon. "Oxford is perfect, she declares already ; I don't think I quite like it ; it's too hot to last."
" Am I such a changeable creature, then ? " said Miss Bretherton, smiling at him. " Do you generally find my enthusiasms cool down ?"
OXFORD. Drawing by R. Puettner.
MRS. HUMPHRY WARD 25
" You are as constant as you are kind," said Forbes, bowing to her. ..." Oh ! the good times I've had up here — much better than he ever had " — nodding across at Kendal, who was listening. " He was too properly behaved to enjoy himself; he got all the right things, all the proper first-classes and prizes, poor fel- low ! But, as for me, I used to scribble over my note- books all lecture-time, and amuse myself the rest of the day. And then, you see, I was up twenty years earlier than he was, and the world was not as virtuous then as it is now, by a long way."
Kendal was interrupting, when Forbes, who was in one of his maddest moods, turned around upon his chair to watch a figure passing along the quadrangle in front of the bay-window.
" I say, Sartoris, isn't that Camden, the tutor who was turned out of Magdalen a year or two ago for that atheistical book of his, and whom you took in, as you do all the disreputables ? Ah, I knew it !
" ' By the pricking of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes."
That's not mine, my dear Miss Bretherton ; it's Shake- speare's first, Charles Lamb's afterward. But look at him well — he's a heretic, a real, genuine heretic. Twen- ty years ago it would have been a thrilling sight ; but now, alas ! it's so common that it's not the victim but the persecutors who are the curiosity."
" I don't know that," said young Sartoris. " We liber- als are by no means the cocks of the walk that we were a few years ago. You see, now we have got nothing to pull against, as it were. So long as we had two or three good grievances, we could keep the party together, and attract all the young men. We were Israel going up against the Philistines, who had us in their grip. But now, things are changed ; we've got our way all round, and it's the Church party who have the grievances and the cry. It is we who are the Philistines, and the oppressors in our turn, and, of course, the young men as they grow up are going into the opposition."
"And a very good thing, too ! " said Forbes. "It's the only thing that prevents Oxford becoming as dull as
9t MRS. HUMPHRY WARD
the rest of the world. All your picturesqueness, so to speak, has been struck out of the struggle between the two forces. The Church force is the one that has given you all your buildings and your beauty, while as for you liberals, who will know such a lot of things that you're none the happier for knowing — well, I suppose you keep the place habitable for the plain man who doesn't want to be bullied. But it's a very good thing the other side are strong enough to keep you in order." . . .
Then they strolled into the quiet cathedral, delighted themselves with its irregular, bizarre beauty, its unex- pected turns and corners, which gave it a capricious, fanciful air, for all the solidity and business-like strength of its Norman framework ; and as they rambled out again, Forbes made them pause over a window in the northern aisle — a window by some Flemish artist of the fifteenth century, who seems to have embodied in it at once all his knowledge and all his dreams. In front sat Jonah under his golden-tinted gourd — an ill-tem- pered Flemish peasant — while behind him the indented roofs of the Flemish town climbed the whole height of the background. It was probably the artist's native town ; some roof among those carefully outlined gables sheltered his household Lares. But the hill on which the town stood, and the mountainous background and the purple sea, were the hills and the sea not of Bel- gium, but of a dream-country — of Italy, perhaps, the mediaeval artist's paradise.
" Happy man ! " said Forbes, turning to Miss Brether- ton ; " look, he put it together four centuries ago — all he knew and all he dreamt of. And there it is to this day, and beyond the spirit of that window there is no getting. For all our work, if we do it honestly, is a compound of what we know and what we dream." . . .
They passed out into the cool and darkness of the cloisters, and through the new buildings, and soon they were in the Broad Walk, trees as old as the Common- wealth bending overhead, and in front the dazzling green of the June meadows, the shining river in the dis- tance, and the sweep of cloud-flecked blue arching iy the whole. — Miss Bretherton.
WARD, NATHANIEL, an English clergyman and satirist, born, probably at Haverhill, in 1578; died at Shenfield, England, in 1653. He was the son of John Ward, a famous Puritan minister, was graduated at Cambridge in 1603, studied law, which he practised in England, and travelled ex- tensively. He entered the ministry, and on his return to England held a pastorate in Sussex. In 1631 he was tried for nonconformity by Arch- bishop Laud, and, though he escaped excommuni- cation, was deprived of his charge. In 1634 he sailed for New England, and became colleague to the Rev. Thomas Parker at Ipswich. He re- signed in 1636, but resided at Ipswich and com- piled for the colony of Massachusetts The Body of Liberties, which was adopted by the General Court in 1641, and which was the first code of laws es- tablished in New England. In 1646 he returned to England, and became pastor of a church in Shenfield, which post he held until his death. While in America he published The Simple Cobbler of Agawam, in America, Willing to Help Mend his Native Country, Lamentably Tattered both in the Up- per-Leather and the Sole. His Simple Cobbler's Boy with his Lap-full of Caveats, was written in Am er- ica and published under the pen-name of Theodore de la Guard in 1646. Two American editions have been issued, one in Boston in 1718, the other, edited by David Pulsifer, in 1843.
(27)
aS NATHANIEL WARD
TO THE NEEDLESSE TAYLOR,
From his working (im — ")posture»
Let him beware that his dispositions be not more crosse than his legges or sheeres.
If he will be a Church member, he must remember to away with his crosse + members. For Churches must have no Crosses, nor kewcaws. Againe,
He must not leap from the Shop-board into the Pul- pit to make a sermon without tayle or head, nor with a Taylor's head.
From the patch.
Let him take heed he make not a Sermon like a Beg- gar's cloak pacht up of a thousand ragges, most dou- terty, nor, like his own fundamentall Cushion, boch't up of innumerable shreds, and every one of a several colour (not a couple of parishioners among them) and stuft with nothing but bran, chaffe, and the like lumber, scarce fit for the streete.
Let him not for a Needle mistake a Pen, and write guil-lets, making a Goose of himself.
Take heede of the hot Iron there.
Let him not insteed of pressing cloth oppresse truth, nor put errors into the Presse.
The Hand and Sheeres do speak this cutting lan- guage.
Keep to thy Calling Mr. and cut thy coat according to thy cloth. Neglect not to use thy brown thread, lest thy Family want browne bread, and suffer a sharp stitch.
The Breeches with wide nostrils do Promulgate this Canon-law.
That the Taylor (when he preaches) be sure to ex- claim against the new Fashions (a disease incident unto Horses and Asses) that so he live not b\ others pride, while he exhorts to humility. The Tub of shreds ut- ters Ferking advice That he do not filch Cloths, Silkes, Velvets, Sattins, etc., in private nor pilfer Time from
NATHAKTEL WARD 20
others in publike, nor openly rob Ministers of their em- ployment, nor secretly tell any secret lye.
From the out (side) facings counsaile that he do not cloak-over any tattered suit of hypocritical knavery with a fair-facing of an outside profession.
Well to the Point.
That he consider that as a Needle, the thread or silk, so a Schismatick, drawes a long traine of folly- followers after him, when he deales in points by the dozen.
From the Seame-rippings.
That Hereticall opinions, unlesse they be ript open, are of as dangerous consequence as an hempen collar, etc., a man were better be hanged, than to have his im- mortal soul stifled therewith. — The Simple Cobbler's Boy.
MINISTERS.
A profound Heretick is like a huge Tub full of sir- rup, his followers are like Wasps and Gadflies that buz and frisk about him, and sting at them that would keep them off : but at last they are so entangled in the slimy pap, that it is a thousand unto one if ever they returne safe, but there they dye and make the sirrup of their Tenets to stink intolerably.
But a Godly and learned Minister is like a Master- Bee, the Word and the World are his Garden and Field, the works of God and his Divine truths are his Flow- ers ; Peace of Conscience, Joy in the Holy-Ghost, the consolations of Christ are his Honey ; his Heart is an Hive, his Head is an Honey-Comb ; reproof is his sting wherewith he spurs on, or spumes away the sluggish Drone, Ignavum fucos Pecus, etc. The Bee was born a Confectioner, and though he make but one sort of con- fection, yet it easily transcends all the Art of man :
For,
The Bees' work is pure, unmixt, Virgin honey ; man's knick-knacks are jumbled and blended. I apply it God's Word is pure, man's invention is mixt.
XATPTAN'TEL WARD
Then if in Manna you will trade, You must boyle no more Marmolade. Lay by your Diet-bread and slicing-knife, If you intend to break the Bread of Life.
— Simple Cobbler's Boy.
ON THE FRIVOLITIES OF FASHION.
Should I not keep promise in speaking a .little to women's fashions, they would take it unkindly. I was loath to pester better matter with such stuff ; I rather thought it meet to let them stand by themselves, like the Qua Genus in the grammar, being deficients, or re- dundants, not to be brought under any rule : I shall therefore make bold for this once, to borrow a little of their loose-tongued Liberty, and misspend a word or two upon their long-waisted, but short-skirted Patience : a little use of my stirrup will do no harm.
Ridentem dicere verum, quid ' prohibet ' ?
Gray Gravity itself can well beteem, That language be adapted to the theme. He that to parrots speaks must parrotise : He that instructs a fool may act th' unwise.
It is known more than enough that I am neither nig- gard, nor cynic, to the due bravery of the true gentry. I honor the woman that can honor herself with her at- tire ; a good text always deserves a fair margin ; I am not much offended if I see a trim far trimmer than she wears it. In a word, whatever Christianity or civility will allow, I can afford with London measure : but when I hear a nugiperous gentledame inquire what dress the Queen is in this week : what the nudiustertian fashion of the Court, with egg to be in it in all haste, whatever it be, I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cipher, the epitome of noth- ing, fitter to be kicked, if she were of a kickable sub- stance, than either honored or humored.
To speak moderately, I truly confess it is beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive how these women should have any true grace, or valuable virtue, that have so little wit, as to disfigure themselves with such
NATHANIEL WARD 31
exotic garbs, as not only dismantles their native lovely lustre, but transclouts them into gantbar-geese, ill- shapen, shell-fish, Egyptian hieroglyphics, or at least into French flurts of the pastery, which a proper Eng- lish woman should scorn with her heels. It is no mar- vel they wear drailes on the hinder part of their heads, having nothing, as it seems, in the fore-part, but a few squirrels' brains to help them frisk from one ill-favored fashion to another.
These whimm* Crown'd shees, these fashion-fancying wits, Are empty thin brained shells, and fiddling Kits,
the very troublers and impoverishers of mankind. I can hardly forbear to commend to the world a saying of a Lady living some time with the Queen of Bohemia ; I know not where she found it, but it is a pity it should be lost.
The world is full of care, much like unto a bubble, Women and care, and care and women, and women and care and trouble.
The verses are even enough for such odd pegma. I can make myself sick at any time, with comparing the dazzling splendor wherewith our gentlewomen were embellished in some former habits, with the gutfoun- ered goosedom, wherewith they are now surcingled and debauched. We have about five or six of them in our colony ; if I see any of them accidentally, I cannot cleanse my fancy of them for a month after. I have been a solitary widower almost twelve years, purposed lately to make a step over to my native country for a yoke-fellow : but when I consider how women there have tripe-wifed themselves with their cladments, I have no heart for the voyage, lest their nauseous shapes and the sea should work too sorely upon my stomach. I speak sadly ; methinks it should break the hearts of English men, to see so many goodly English women imprisoned in French cages, peering out of their hood holes for some of mercy to help them with a little wit, and nobody relieves them.
It is a more common than convenient saying, that nine tailors make a man : it were well if nineteen
32 NATHANIEL WARD
could make a woman to her mind. If tailors were men indeed well furnished but with mere moral principles, they would disdain to be led about like apes by such mimic marmosets. It is a most unworthy thing for men that have bones in them to spend their lives in making fiddle-cases for futilous women's fancies ; which are the very pettitoes of infirmity, the giblets of perquisquilian toys. I am so charitable to think that most of that mystery would work the cheerfuller while they live, if they might be well discharged of the tiring slavery of mistiring women. It is no little labor to be continually putting up English women into outlandish casks ; who if they be not shifted anew, once in a few months, grow too sour for their husbands. What this trade will an- swer for themselves when God shall take measure of tailors' consciences is beyond my skill to imagine. There was a time when
The joining of the Red Rose with the White, Did set our State into a Damask plight.
But now our roses are turned to flore de lices, our carnations to tulips, our gillyflowers to daisies, our city dames to an indenominable quaemalry of overturcased things. He that makes coats for the moon had need take measures every noon : and he that makes forworn- en, as often, to keep them from lunacy.
I have often heard divers ladies vent loud feminine complaints of the wearisome varieties and chargeable changes of fashions : I marvel themselves prefer not a Bill of redress. I would Essex ladies would lead the chore, for the honor of their country and persons ; or rather the thrice honorable ladies of the court, whom it best beseems : who may well presume of a Le Roy le veult from our sober king, a Les Seigneurs ont assentus from our prudent peers, and the like assentus, from our considerate, I dare not say wife-worn Commons ; who I believe had much rather pass one such bill than pay so many tailors' bills as they are forced to do.
Most dear and unparalleled Ladies, be pleased to at- tempt it : as you have the precellency of the women of the world for beauty and feature, so assume the honor to give, and not take law from any, in matter of attire.
NATHANIEL WARD 33
If ye can transact so fair a motion among yourselves unanimously, I dare say they that most renite will least repent. What greater honor can your Honors desire than to build a promontory precedent to all foreign ladies, to deserve so eminently at the hands of all the English gentry present and to come : and to confute the opinion of all the wise men in the world ; who never thought it possible for women to do so good a work.
If any man think I have spoken rather merrily than seriously, he is much mistaken, I have written what I write with all the indignation I can. and no more than I ought. I confess I veered my tongue to this kind of language de industria, though unwillingly, supposing those I speak to are uncapable of grave and rational arguments.
I desire all ladies and gentlewomen to understand that all this while I intend not such as, through neces- sary modesty to avoid morose singularity, follow fash- ions slowly, a flight shot or two off, showing by their moderation that they rather draw countermont with their hearts than put on by their examples.
I point my pen only against the light-heeled beagles that lead the chase so fast that they run all civility out of breath, against these ape-headed pullets which invent antique fool-fangles, merely for fashion and novelty sake.
In a word, if I begin once to declaim against fash- ions, let men and women look well about them, there is somewhat in the business ; I confess to the world, I never had grace enough to be strict in that kind ; and of late years, I have found syrup of pride very whole- some in a due dose, which makes me keep such store of that drug by me, that if anybody comes to me for a question-full or two about fashions, they never com- plain of me for giving them hard measure, or under weight.
But I address myself to those who can both hear and mend all if they please : I seriously fear, if the Pious Parliament do not find time to state fashions, as ancient Parliaments have done in a part, God will hard- ly find a time to state religion or peace. They are the surquedryes of pride, the wantonness of idleness, pro- voking sins, the certain prodromies of assured judg- ment.— Zeph. i. 7, 8.
34 NATHANIEL WARD
It is beyond all account how many gentlemen's and citizens' estates are deplumed by their feather-headed wives, what useful supplies the pannage of England would afford other countries, what rich returns to itself, if it were not sliced out into male and female frip- peries : and what a multitude of misemployed hands might be better improved in some more manly manu- factures for the public weal. It is not easily credible, what may be said of the preterpluralities of tailors ia London : I have heard an honest man say that net long since there were numbered between Temple-bar and Charing-Cross eight thousand of that trade ; let it be conjectured by that proportion how many there are in and about London, and in all England they will ap- pear to be very numerous. If the Parliament would please to mend women, which their husbands dare not do, there need not so many men to make and mend as there are. I hope the present doleful estate of the realm will persuade more strongly to some considerate course herein than I now can.
Knew I how to bring it in, I would speak a word to long hair, whereof I will say no more but this : if God proves not such a barber to it as he threatens, unless it be amended, Isai. vii. 20, before the peace of the State and Church be well settled, then let my prophecy be scorned, as a sound mind scorns the riot of that sin, and more it needs not. If those who are termed rattle- heads and impuritans would take up a resolution to be- gin in moderation of hair to the just reproach of those that are called Puritans and Roundheads, I would honor their manliness as much as the others' godliness, so long as I knew what man or honor meant : if neither can find a barber's shop, let them turn in, to Psalm Ixviii. 21, Jer. 7, 29, i Cor. xi. 14. If it be thought no wisdom in men to distinguish themselves in the field by the scissors, let it be thought no injustice in God not to distinguish them by the sword. I had rather GoJ should know me by my sobriety than mine enemy not know me by my vanity. He is ill kept that is kept by his own sin. A short promise is a far safer god than a long lock : it is an ill distinction which God is loath to look at. — The Simple Cobbler of Agawam,
NATHANIEL WARD 35
SIX HOBNAILS.
I pray let me drive in half a dozen plain honest country hobnails, such as the martyrs were wont to wear, to make my work hold the surer, and I have done :
There lives cannot be good,
There faith cannot be sure Where truth cannot be quiet,
Nor ordinances pure.
Itfo King can king it right,
Nor rightly sway his rod, Who truly loves not Christ,
And truly fears not God.
He cannot rule a land,
As lands should ruled been, That lets himself be rul'd
By a ruling Roman Queen.
No earthly man can be
True subject to this State, Who makes the Pope his Christ,
An heretic his mate,
There Peace will go to war,
And Silence make a noise, Where upper things will not
With nether equipoise.
The upper world shall rule,
While stars will run their race :
The nether World obey, While people keep their place.
THE CLENCH.
If any of these come out
So long's the world do last Then credit not a word Of what is said and past.
— The Simple Cobbler of Agawam. Vot. XXIV.— 3
WARE, WILLIAM, an American historical nov- elist, born at Hingham, Mass., August 3, 1797; died at Cambridge, February 19, 1852. He was the grandson of Henry Ware, prominent in the Unitarian controversy, and was one of a family of authors. Graduating at Harvard in 1816, and the Divinity School in 1819, he was pastor in Northboro, Waltham, and West Cambridge, Mass., and from 1821-36 in New York City. His Letters from Palmyra (1837) were published in 1868, as Zenobia, or the Fall of Palmyra. Probus (1838), was afterward entitled Aurelian. These, with Julian, or Scenes in Judea (1841), gained him much repu- tation as an historical novelist. His other works are American Unitarian Biography (1850-51); Sketches of European Capitals (1851); Lectures on the Works and Genius of Washington Allston(\^2] ; Memoir of Nathaniel Bacon in Sparks's American Biography (1841). From 1839 to 1844 he edited the Christian Examiner.
Of his Zenobia, Andrews Norton, in the North American Review, says : " The scene, the charac- ters, and the historical events are finely selected ; for they abound with striking images and associa- tions. . . . It is not a work of an ordinary character. It is the production of a thought- ful, able, imaginative, and, above all, a oure and
WILLIAM WAbE 37
right-minded author, of clear thoughts and sound sense."
" There is not a trace of modern habits or modes of thinking," says Miss Mitford, of Aurelian ; "and if Ware had been possessed by the monomania of Macpherson or Chatterton, it would have rested with himself to produce these letters as a close and literal version of manuscripts of the third century."
PALMYRA.
It was several miles before we reached the city, that we suddenly found ourselves — landing as it were from a sea upon an island or continent — in a rich or thickly peopled country. The roads indicated an approach to a great capital, in the increasing numbers of those who thronged them, meeting and passing us, overtaking us, or crossing our way. Elephants, camels, and the drom- edary, which I had before seen only in the amphithe- atres, I here beheld as the native inhabitants of the soil. Frequently villas of the rich and luxurious Palmyrenes, to which they retreat from the greater heats of the city, now threw a lovely charm over the scene. Nothing can exceed the splendor of those sumptuous palaces. Italy itself has nothing which surpasses them. The new and brilliant costumes of the persons whom we met, together with the rich housings of the animals they rode, served greatly to add to all this beauty. I was still entranced, as it were, by the objects around me, and buried in reflection ; when I was roused by the shout of those who led the caravan, and who had attained the summit of a little rising ground, saying, " Palmyra ! Palmyra ! " I urged forward my steed, and in a moment the most wonderful prospect I ever beheld — no, I cannot except even Rome — burst upon my sight. Flanked by hills of considerable elevation on the east, the city filled the whole plain below as far as the eye could reach, both toward the north and toward the south. This immense plain was all one vast and boundless city. It seemed to me to be larger than Rome. Yet I knew very well
38 WILLIAM WARE
that it could not be — that it was not. And it was some time before I understood the true character of the scene before me, so as to separate the city from the country, and the country from the city, which here wonderfully interpenetrate each other and so confound and deceive the observer. For the city proper is so studded with groups of lofty palm-trees, shooting up among its tem- ples and palaces, and on the other hand, the plain in its immediate vicinity is so thickly adorned with magnifi- cent structures of the purest marble, that it is not easy, nay, it is impossible, at the distance at which I contem- plated the whole, to distinguish the line which divided the one from the other. It was all city and all country, all country and all city. Those which lay before me I was ready to believe were the Elysian Fields. I im- agined that I saw under my feet the dwellings of purified men and of gods. Certainly they were too glorious for the mere earth-born. There was a central point, however, which chiefly fixed my attention, where the vast Temple of the sun stretched upward its thousand columns of polished marble to the heavens, in its matchless beauty casting into the shade every other work of art of which the world can boast. I have stood before the Parthenon, and have almost worshipped that divine achievement of the immortal Phidias. But it is a toy by the side of this bright crown of the Eastern capital. I have been at Milan, at Ephesus, at Alexandria, at Antioch ; bat in neither of these renowned cities have I beheld anything that I can allow to approach in united extent, grandeur, and most consummate beauty this almost more than work of man. On each side of this, the central point, there rose upward slender pyramids — pointed obelisks — domes of the most graceful proportions, columns, arches, and lofty towers, for numbers and for form, beyond my power to describe. These buildings, as well as the walls of the city, being all either of white marble, or of some stone as white, and being everywhere in their whole ex- tent interspersed, as I have already said, with multitudes of overshadowing palm-trees, perfectly filled and satis- fied my sense of beauty, and made me feel, for the mo- ment, as if in such a scene I should love to dwell, and there end my days.
WILLIAM WARE
ZENOBIA THE CAPTIVE.
And it was the ninth hour before the alternate shouts and deep silence of the multitudes announced that the conqueror was drawing near the capitol. As the first shout arose, I turned toward the quarter whence it came, and beheld, not Aurelian, as I expected, but the Gallic Emperor Tetricus — yet slave of his army and of Victoria — accompanied by the prince his' son, and fol- lowed by other illustrious captives from Gaul. All eyes were turned with pity upon him, and with indignation too that Aurelian should thus treat a Roman, and once a Senator. But sympathy for him was instantly lost in a stronger feeling of the same kind for Zenobia, who came immediately after. You can imagine, Fausta, better than I can describe them, my sensations, when I saw our beloved friend — her whom I had seen treated never otherwise than as a sovereign Queen, and with all the imposing pomp of the Persian ceremonial — now on foot, and exposed to the rude gaze of the Roman populace — toiling beneath the rays of a hot sun, and the weight of jewels such as both for richness and beauty, were never before seen in Rome — and of chains of gold, which, first passing around her neck and arms, were then borne up by attendant slaves. I could have wept to see her go — yes, and did. My impulse was to break through the crowd and support her almost faint- ing form — but I well knew that my life would answer for the rashness on the spot. I could only, therefore, like the rest, wonder and gaze. And never did she seem to me, not even in the midst of her own court, to blaze forth with such transcendent beauty — yet touched with grief. Her look was not that of dejection, of one who was broken and crushed by misfortune — there was no blush of shame. It was rather one of profound, heart-breaking melancholy. Her full eyes looked as if privacy only was wanted for them to overflow with floods of tears. But they fell not. Her gaze was fixed on vacancy, or else cast toward the ground. She seemed like one unobservant of all around her, and bur- ied in thoughts to which all else were strangers, and
40 WILLIAM WARE
had nothing in common with. They were in Palmyra, and with her slaughtered multitudes. Yet though she wept not, others did ; and one could see all along, wherever she moved, the Roman hardness yielding to pity, and melting down before the all-subduing pres- ence of this wonderful woman. The most touching phrases of compassion fell constantly upon my ear. And ever and anon as in the road there would happen some rough or damp place, the kind souls would throw down upon it whatever of their garments they could quickest divest themselves of, that those feet, little used to such encounters, might receive no harm. And as when other parts of the procession were passing by, shouts of triumph and vulgar joy frequently arose from the motley crowds, yet when Zenobia appeared a death- like silence prevailed, or it was interrupted only by ex- clamations of admiration or pity, or of indignation at Aurelian for so using her. But this happened not long. For when the Emperor's pride had been sufficiently gratified, and just there where he came over against the steps of the capitol, he himself, crowned as he was with the diadem of universal empire, descended from his chariot, and unlocking the chains of gold that bound the limbs of the Queen, led and placed her in her own chariot — that chariot in which she had fondly hoped her- self to enter Rome in triumph — between Julia and Livia. Upon this the air was rent with the grateful acclama- tions of the countless multitudes. The Queen's coun- tenance brightened for a moment as if with the ex- pressive sentiment, " The gods bless you ! " and was then buried in the folds of her robe. And when after the lapse of many minutes it was again raised and turned toward the people, everyone might see that tears burning hot had coursed her cheeks, and relieved a heart which else might well have burst with its re- strained emotion. — Zenobia.
ZENOBIA SAVED.
A sound as of a distant tumult, and the uproar or a multitude, caught the ears of all within the tent.
" What mean these tumultuous cries ?" inquired Aure-
WILLIAM WARE 41
lian of his attending guard. " They increase and ap- proach."
" It may be but the soldiers at their game with An- tiochus," replied Probus.
But it was not so. At the moment a Centurion, breathless, and with his head bare, rushed madly into the tent.
"Speak," said the Emperor ; "what is it?"
" The legions ! " said the centurion, as soon as he could command his words, "the legions are advancing, crying out for the Queen of Palmyra ! They have broken from their camp and from their leaders, and in one mixed body come to surround the Emperor's tent."
As he ended, the fierce cries of the enraged soldiery were distinctly heard, like the roaring of a forest torn by a tempest. Aurelian, bearing his sword, and calling upon his friends to do the same, sprang toward the en- trance of the tent. They were met by the dense throng of the soldiers, who now pressed against the tent, and whose savage yells could now be heard :
" The head of Zenobia." " Deliver the Queen to our will." "Throw out the head of Zenobia, and we will return to our quarters." " She belongs to us."
At the same moment the sides of the tent were thrown up, showing the whole plain filled with the heav- ing multitude, and being itself instantly crowded with the ringleaders and their more desperate associates. Zenobia, supporting the Princess, who clung to her, and pale through a just apprehension of every horror, but otherwise firm and undaunted, cried out to Aurelian, " Save us, O Emperor, from this foul butchery ! "
" We will die else ! " replied the Emperor ; who with a word sprang upon a soldier making toward the Queen, and with a blow clove him to the earth. Then swing- ing round him that sword which had drunk the blood of thousands, and followed by the gigantic Sandarion, by Probus, and Carus, a space around the Queen was soon cleared.
" Back, ruffians," cried Aurelian, in a voice of thunder, "for you are no longer Romans ! back to the borders of the tent. There I will hear your complaints." The soldiers fell back and their ferocious cries ceased.
42 WILLIAM WARL
" Now," cried the Emperor, addressing them, " what is your will that thus in wild disorder you throng my tent?"
One from the crowd replied : " Our will is that the Queen of Palmyra be delivered to us as our right, in- stantly. Thousands and thousands of our bold com- panions lie buried upon these accursed plains, slain by her and her fiery engines. We demand her life. It is but justice, and faint justice, too."
" Her life ! " " Her life ! " arose in one shout from the innumerable throng.
The Emperor raised his hand, waving his sword, dripping with the blood of the slain soldier ; the noise subsided ; and his voice, clear and loud like the tone of a trumpet, went to the farthest bounds of the multitude.
" Soldiers," he cried, " you ask for justice ; and jus- tice you shall have." "Aurelian is ever just!" cried many voices. " But you shall not have the life of the Queen of Palmyra " — he paused ; a low murmur went through the crowd — ''•or you must first take the life of your Emperor, and of those who stand with him." The soldiers were silent. " In asking the life of Zeno- bia," he continued, "you know not what you ask. Are any here who went with Valerian to the Persian war?" A few voices responded, " I was there — and I — and I." " Are there any here whose parents, or brothers, or friends, fell into the tiger clutches of the* barbarian Sa- por, and died miserably in hopeless captivity?" Many voices everywhere throughout the crowd were heard in reply, " Yes, yes ; mine were there, and mine." " Did you ever hear it said," continued Aurelian, " that Rome lifted a finger for their rescue, or for that of the good Valerian ? " They were silent, some crying, " No, no." " Know then, that when Rome forgot her brave sol- diers and her Emperor, Zenobia remembered and avenged them ; and Rome, fallen into contempt with the Persian, was raised to her ancient renown by the arms of her ally, the brave Zenobia, and her dominions throughout the East saved from the grasp of Sapor only by her valor. While Gallienus wallowed in sensu- ality and forgot Rome, and even his own great father, the Queen of Palmyra stood forth, and with her royal
WILLIAM WARE
43
husband, the noble Odenatus, was in truth the savior of the empire. And is it her life you would have? Were that a just return? Were that Roman magna- nimity? And grant that thousands of your brave com- panions lie buried upon these plains : it is but the fort- une of war. Were they not slain in honorable fight, in the siege of a city, for its defence unequalled in all the annals of war ? Cannot Romans honor courage and conduct, though in an enemy ? But you ask for justice. I have said you shall have justice. You shall. It is right that the heads and advisers of this revolt, for such the Senate deems it, should be cut off. It is the min- isters of princes who are the true devisers of a nation's acts. These, when in our power, shall be yours. And now, who, soldiers ! stirred up with mutiny, bringing in- expiable shame upon our brave legions — who are the leaders of the tumult?"
Enough were found to name them :
"Firmus ! Carinus ! the Centurions Plancus ! Tatius! Burrhus ! Valens! Crispinus!"
" Guards ! seize them and hew them down. Soldiers ! to your tents." The legions fell back as tumultuously as they had come together ; the faster, as the dying groans of the slaughtered ringleaders fell upon their ears.
The tent of the Emperor was once more restored to order. After a brief conversation, in which Aurelian expressed his shame for the occurrence of such dis- orders in the presence of the Queen, the guard were commanded to convey back to the palace of Seleucus, whence they had been taken, Zenobia and the Princess. — Zenobia.
WARNER, CHARLES DUDLEY, an American journalist and miscellaneous writer, born at Plain- field, Mass., September I2th, 1829; died at Hart- ford, Conn., October 2Oth, 1900. His widowed mother removed to Central New York in 1842. He studied at the Oneida Conference Seminary at Cazenovia, and entered Hamilton College, where he was graduated in 1851. Subsequently he studied law at Philadelphia in 1856, and practised his profession at Chicago until 1860. But the bent of his mind was toward literary rather than legal pursuits, and just before the breaking out of the civil war he became assistant editor of the Evening Post, at Hartford, Conn. This journal was in 1867 united with the Hartford Courant, of which he became editor and part proprietor. Still re- taining this position, he became in 1884 editorially connected with Harper's Magazine. His principal works are: My Summer in a Garden (1870); Saun- terings, reminiscences of a European trip (1872); Backlog Studies (\%J 2); Baddeck and That Sort of Thing (1874) ; My Winter on the Nile (1876) ; In the Levant (1877) ; Being a Boy (1877) ; Life of Captain John Smith (1877); In the Wilderness (1878); Life of Washington Irving (1880); Roundabout Journey (1883) ; Their Pilgrimage (1886) ; Book of Eloquence (1886) ; On Horseback (1888) ; A Little Journey in the World and Studies in the South and West (1889); As We Were Saying (1*92) \ As We Go (1893); The (44)
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 45
Work of Washington Irving (1893); The Golden House (1895). In 1873 he wrote The Gilded Age, in. conjunction with " Mark Twain."
THE MORAL QUALITIES OF VEGETABLES.
I am more and more impressed with the moral quali- ties of vegetables, and contemplate forming a science which will rank with comparative philology — the science of Comparative Vegetable Morality. We live in an age of Protoplasm. And, if life-matter is essentially the same in all forms of life, I propose to begin early, and ascertain the nature of the plants for which I am re- sponsible. I will not associate with any vegetable which is disreputable, or has not some quality which can contribute to my moral growth. .
Why do we respect some vegetables, and despise others, when all of them come to an equal honor or ig- nominy on the table ? The bean is a graceful, confiding, engaging vine ; but you can never put beans into poetry, nor into the highest sort of prose. There is no dignity in the bean. Corn — which in my garden grows along- side the bean, and, so far as I can see, with no affecta- tion of superiority — is, however the child of song. It waves in all literature. But ix it with beans, and its high tone is gone. Succotas' is vulgar. It is the bean in it. The bean is a vulgar \ Actable, without culture, or any flavor of high society i*tnong vegetables.
Then there is the cool cucumber — like so many peo- ple, good for nothing when it is ripe, and the wildness has gone out of it. How inferior to the melon, which grows upon a similar vine, is of a like watery consist- ency, but is not half so valuable. The cucumber is a sort of low comedian in a company where the melon is a minor gentleman. I might also contrast the celery With the potato. The associations are as opposite as the dining-room of the duchess and the cabin of the peasant. I admire the potato both in vine and blos- som ; but it is not aristocratic. . . .
The lettuce is to me a most interesting study. Let- tuce is like conversation • it must be fresh and crisp, so
46 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitter in it. Let- tuce, like most talkers, is however apt to run rapidly to seed. Blessed is that sort which comes to a head, and so remains — like a few people I know — growing more solid and satisfactory and tender at the same time, and whiter at the centre, and crisp in their maturity. Let- tuce, like conversation, requires a good deal of oil, to avoid friction, and keep the company smooth ; a pinch of Attic salt, a dash of pepper, a quantity of mustard and vinegar, by all means — but so mixed that you will notice no sharp contrasts — and a trifle of sugar. You can put anything — and the more things the better — into salad, as into conversation ; but everything depends upon the skill in mixing. I feel that I am in the best society when I am with lettuce. Tt is in the select circle of vegetables. The tomato appears well on the table ; but you do not want to ask its origin. It is a most agreeable parvenu.
Of course, I have said nothing about the berries. They live in another and more ideal region ; except perhaps the currant. Here we see that even among berries there are degrees of breeding. The currant is well enough, clear as truth, and exquisite in color ; but I ask you to notice how far it is from the exclusive hauteur of the aristocratic strawberry, and the native refinement of the quietly elegant raspberry.
I do not know that chemistry, searching for proto- plasm, is able to discover the tendency of vegetables. It can only be found out by outward observation. I confess that I am suspicious of the bean, for instance. There are signs in it of an unregulated life. I put up the most attractive sort of poles for my Li mas. They stand high and straight like church-spires, in my theo- logical garden — lifted up ; and some of them have even budded, like Aaron's rod. No church-steeple in a New England village was ever better fitted to draw to it the rising generation on Sunday than those poles to lift up my beans toward heaven. Some of them did run up the sticks seven feet, and then straggled off into the air in a wanton manner ; but more than half of them went gallivanting off to the neighboring grape-trellis, and wound their tendrils with the tendrils of the grape, with
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 47
a disregard of the proprieties of life which is a satire upon human nature. And the grape is morally no bet- ter. I think the ancients, who were not troubled with the recondite mysteries of protoplasm, were right in the mythic union of Bacchus and Venus.
Talk about the Darwinian theory of development, and the principle of natural selection ! I should like to see a garden let to run in accordance with it. If I had left my vegetables and weeds to a free fight, in which the strongest specimens only should come to maturity, and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly see that I should have had a pretty mess of it. It would have been a scene of passion and license and brutality. The " pus- ley " would have strangled the strawberry ; the upright corn, which has now ears to hear the guilty beating of the hearts of the children who steal the raspberries, would have been dragged to the earth by the wander- ing bean ; the snake-grass would have left no place for the potatoes under ground ; and the tomatoes would have been swamped by the lusty weeds. With a firm hand I have had to make my own " natural selection."
Nothing will so well bear watching as a garden, ex- cept a family of children next door. Their power of selection beats mine. If they could read half as well as they can " steal awhile away," I should have put up a notice — " Children, beware ! There is Protoplasm here ! " But I suppose it would have no effect. I be- lieve that they would eat protoplasm as quick as any- thing else, ripe or green. I wonder if this is going to be a cholera-year. Considerable cholera is the only thing that would let my apples and pears ripen. Of course, I do not care for the fruit ; but I do not want to take the responsibility of letting so much " life-matter," full of crude and even disreputable vegetable-human tendencies pass into the composition of the neighbor's children, some of whom may be as immortal as snake- grass. — My Summer in a Garden.
A COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION IN ORANGES.
One of our expeditions illustrates the Italian love of bargaining, and their notion of a sliding scale of prices.
48 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
One of our expeditions to the hills was making its long, straggling way through the narrow streets of a little village, when I lingered behind my companions, attracted by a hand-cart with several large baskets of oranges. The cart stood in "ic middle of the street ; and select- ing a large orange, which would measure twelve inches in circumference, I turned to look for the owner. After some time the fellow got from the neighboring cobbler's shop, where he sat with his lazy cronies, listening to the honest gossip of the follower of St. Crispin, and saun- tered toward me.
" How much for this ? " I ask.
" One franc, Signor," says the proprietor, with a polite bow, holding up one finger.
I shake my head, and intimate that this is altogether too much. The proprietor is very indifferent, and shrugs his shoulders in an amiable manner. He picks up a fair, handsome orange, weighs it in his hands, and holds it up temptingly. That also is one franc. I sug- gest one sou as a fair price — a suggestion which he only receives with a smile of slight pity, and, I fancy, a little disdain. A woman joins him, and also holds up this and that gold-skinned one for my admiration.
As I stand sorting over the fruit, trying to please my- self with the size, color, and texture, a little crowd has gathered round ; and I see by a glance that all the occu- pations in that neighborhood, including loafing, are temporarily suspended to witness the trade. The in- terest of the circle visibly increases ; and others take such a part in the transaction, that I begin to doubt if the first man is, after all, the proprietor.
At length I select two oranges, and again demand the price. There is a little consultation and jabber, when I am told that I can have both for a franc. I, in turn, sigh, shrug my shoulders, and put down the oranges amid a chorus of exclamations over my graspingness. My offer of two sous is met with ridicule, but not with indifference. I can see that it has made a sensation. These simple, idle children of the sun begin to show a little excitement. I at length determine upon a bold stroke, and resolve to show myself the Napo4eon of or- anges, or to meet my Waterloo. I pick out four of the
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 49
largest oranges in the basket, while all eyes are fixed upon me intently, and for the first time pull out a piece of money. It is a two-sous piece. I offer it for the four oranges.
" No, no, no, Signer ! Ah, Signer ! Ah, Signor ! " in a chorus from the whole crowd.
I have struck bottom at last, and perhaps got some- where near the value ; and all calmness is gone. Such protestations, such indignation, such sorrow, I have never seen before from so small a cause. " It cannot be thought of ! It is mere ruin ! " I am, in turn, as firm, and nearly as excited in seeming. I hold up the fruit, and tender the money.
" No, never, never ! The Signor cannot be in earnest ! "
Looking round me for a moment, and assuming a theatrical manner befitting the gestures of those about me, I fling the fruit down, and with a sublime renuncia- tion stalk away. There is instantly a buzz and a clamor. I have not proceeded far when a skinny old woman runs after me and begs me to return. I go back, and the crowd parts to receive me.
The proprietor has a new proposition, the effect of which upon me is intently watched. He proposes to give me five big oranges for four sous. I receive it with utter scorn, and a laugh of derision. I will give two sous for the original four and not a centissimo more. That I solemnly say, and am ready to depart. Hesita- tion, and renewed conference ; but at last the proprietor relents ; and, with the look of one who is ruined for life, and who yet is willing to sacrifice himself, he hands me the oranges. Instantly the excitement is dead; the crowd disperses ; and the street is as quiet as ever when I walk away, bearing my hard-won treasures.
A little while after, as I sat upon the Camaldoli, with my feet hanging over, these same oranges were taken from my pockets by Americans ; so that I am prevented from making any moral reflections upon the honesty of the Italians. — Saunterings.
A YANKEE PHILOSOPHER.
I confess that I have a soft place in my heart for that rare character in our New England life who is content
50 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
with the world as he finds it ; and who does not at- tempt to appropriate any more of it to himself than he absolutely needs from day to day. He knows from the beginning that the world could get on without him, and he has never had any anxiety to leave any result behind him — any legacy for the world to quarrel over. He is really an exotic in our New England climate and so- ciety ; and his life is perpetually misunderstood by his neighbors, because he shares none of their anxiety about " getting on in life." He is even called " lazy," " good-for-nothing," and " shiftless " — the final stigma that we put upon a person who has learned to wait without the exhausting process of laboring.
I made his acquaintance last summer in the country ; and I have not for a long time been so well pleased with any of our species. He had always been from boyhood of a contented and placid mind ; slow in his movements, slow in his speech. I think he never cherished a hard feeling toward anybody, nor envied anyone — least of all the rich and prosperous, about whom he liked to talk. Indeed, his talk was a good deal about wealth, especially about his cousin who had been down South, and " got fore-handed " within a few years. But he had no envy in him, and he evinced no desire to imitate him. I inferred from all his conversation about "piling it up " (of which he spoke with a gleam of enthusiasm in his eye), that there were moments when he would like to be rich himself ; but it was evident that he would never make the least effort to be so ; and I doubt if he could even overcome that delicious inertia of mind and body called laziness, sufficiently to inherit.
Wealth seemed to have a far and peculiar fascination for him ; and I suspect he was a visionary in the midst of his poverty. Yet I suppose he had hardly the per- sonal property which the law exempts from execution. He had lived in a great many towns, moving from one to another with his growing family by easy stages, and was always the poorest man in the town, and lived on the most niggardly of its rocky and bramble-grown farms, the productiveness of which he reduced to zero in a couple of years by his careful neglect of culture. The fences of his hired domain always fell into ruins nn«
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 51
der him, perhaps because he sat upon them so much - and the hovels he occupied rotted down during his placid residence in them. He moved from desolation to desolation ; but carried always with him the equal mind of a philosopher. Not even the occasional tart remarks of his wife about their nomadic life, and his serenity in the midst of discomfort, could ruffle his smooth spirit.
He was in every respect a most worthy man ; truth- ful, honest, temperate, and, I need not say, frugal. He had no bad habits ; perhaps he never had energy enough to acquire any. Nor did he lack the knack of the Yan- kee race. He could make a shoe, or build a house, or doctor a cow ; but it never seemed to him, in this brief existence, worth the while to do any of these things. He was an excellent angler, but he rarely fished ; partly because of the shortness of the days, partly on account of the uncertainty of bites, but principally because the trout-brooks were all arranged lengthwise, and ran over so much ground. But no man liked to look at a string of trout better than he did ; and he was willing to sit down in a sunny place and talk about trout-fishing half a day at a time ; and he would talk pleasantly and well, too, though his wife might be continually interrupting him by a call for firewood.
I should not do justice to his own idea of himself if I did not add that he was most respectably connected, and that he had a justifiable though feeble pride in his family. It helped his self-respect, which no ignoble circumstance could destroy. He was — as must appear by this time — a most intelligent man, and he was a well- informed man. That is to say, he read the weekly newspapers when he could get them ; and he had the average country information about Beecher, and Gree- ley, and the Prussian war (" Napoleon is gittin' on't. ain't he ") and the general prospect of the election cam- paigns. Indeed, he was warmly — or, rather, lukewarmly — interested in politics. He liked to talk about the "inflated currency"; and it seemed plain to him that his condition would somehow be improved if we could get to a " specie basis." He was, in fact, a little troubled about the National Debt ; it seemed to press You
52 CfiAKLES DUDLEY WARNRR
on him somehow, while his own never did. He exhib- ited more animation over the affairs of the government than he did over his own — an evidence at once of his disinterestedness and his patriotism.
He had been an old Abolitionist, and was strong on the rights of " free labor " ; though he did not care to exercise his privilege much. Of course he had the proper contempt for the " poor whites " down South. I never saw a person with more correct notions on such a variety of subjects. He was perfectly willing that churches (being himself a member), and Sunday-schools, and missionary enterprises should go on. In fact, I do not believe he ever opposed anything in his life. No one was more willing to vote town-taxes and road- repairs and school-house than he. If you could call him spirited at all, he was public-spirited.
And with all this, he was never " very well " ; he had from boyhood " enjoyed poor health." You would say he was not a man who would ever catch anything — not even an epidemic ; but he was a person whom diseases would be likely to overtake — even the slowest of slow fevers. And he wasn't a man to shake off anything. And yet sickness seemed to trouble him no more than poverty. He was not discontented ; he never grumbled. I am not sure but that he relished a " spell of sickness " in haying-time.
An admirably balanced man, who accepts the world as it is, and evidently lives on the experience of others. I have never seen a man with less envy or more cheer- fulness, or so contented, with as little reason for being so. The only drawback to his future is that rest be- yond the grave will not be much change for him, and he has no works to follow him. — Backlog Studies.
WARNER, SUSAN, an American novelist, born in New York, July 11, 1819; died at Highland Falls, near West Point, N. Y., March 17, 1885. Her first novel, The Wide, Wide World, was pub- lished in 1851, under the pseudonym of " Eliza- beth Wetherell." Her other works are Quee- chy (1852); The Law and the Testimony (1853); The Hills of the Shatemuc (1856); The Old Helmet (i 863) ; Melbourne House (1864) ; Daisy (1868) ; A Story rf Small Beginnings (1872); the Say and Do series (1875) ; Diana (1876) ; My Desire (1877) ; The Broken Walls of Jerusalem (1878); The Kingdom of Judah (1878); The End of a Coil (1880); The Letter of Credit (1881); Stephen, M.D. (1883). In conjunc- tion with her sister she wrote Say and Seal (1860); Ellen Montgomery's Book-Shelf (1863-69) ; j&?0&y of Blessing ( 1 868) ; Wych-Hazel ( 1 876).
Her sister, ANNA BARTLETT WARNER, born at New York in 1820, has written much under the pseudonym of " Amy Lothrop." Besides the works written in conjunction with her sister, Su- san Warner, she is the author of several novels, and many works designed for juvenile readers. Among these are Dollars and Cents (1853) ; My Brother's Keeper (1855) ; Three Little Spades (1870); Stories of Vinegar Hill (1871); The Fourth Watch (1872); Gardening by Myself (1872); The Othei Short (1873) ; Miss Titter's Vegetable Garden (1875) ; (53)
54 SUSAN" WARNER
A Bag of Stories (1883) ; Daisy Plains (\$&6) ; Cross Corners (1887); Patience (1891) ; Up and Down the House (1892), and several volumes of poems.
AUTUMN NUTS AND LEAVES.
In a hollow, rather a deep hollow — behind the crest of the hill, as Fleda had said, they came at last to a noble group of large hickory-trees, with one or two chestnuts standing in attendance on the outskirts ; and also, as Fleda had said, or hoped, the place was so far from convenient access that nobody had visited them ; they were thick hung with fruit. If the spirit of the game had been wanting or failing in Mr. Carleton, it must have been roused again into full life at the joyous heartiness of Fleda's exclamations. At any rate, no boy could have taken to the business better. He cut, with her permission, a long, stout pole in the woods ; and swinging himself lightly into one of the trees, showed that he was master of the art of whipping them. Fleda was delighted, but not surprised ; for from the first mo- ment of Mr. Carleton's proposing to go with her she had been privately sure that he would not prove an inactive or inefficient ally. By whatever slight tokens she might read this, in whatever fine characters of the eye or speech or manner, she knew it ; and knew it just as well before they reached the hickory-trees as she did afterward.
When one of the trees was well stripped, the young gentleman mounted into another, while Fleda set her- self to hull and gather up the nuts under the one first beaten. She could make but little headway, however, compared with her companion ; the nuts fell a great deal faster than she could put them in her basket. The trees were heavy laden, and Mr. Carleton seemed de- termined to have the whole crop ; from the second tree he went to the third. Fleda was bewildered with her happiness ; this was doing business in style. She tried to calculate what the whole quantity would be, but it went beyond her ; one basketful would not take it, nor two, nor three. " It wouldn't begin to," said Fleda to herself. She went on hulling and gathering with all possible industry.
SUSAN WARNER 55
After the third tree was finished, Mr. Carleton threw down his pole, and resting himself upon the ground at the foot, told Fleda he would wait a few moments before he began again. Fleda thereupon left off her work, too, and going for her little tin pail presently offered it to him, temptingly stocked with pieces of apple-pie. When he had smilingly taken one, she next brought him a sheet of white paper with slices of young cheese.
" No, thank you," said he.
"Cheese is very good with apple-pie," said Fleda, competently.
"Is it?" said he, laughing. "Well, upon that, I think you would teach me a good many things, Miss Fleda, if I were to stay here long enough."
" I wish you would stay and try, sir," said Fleda, who did not know exactly what to make of the shade of seriousness which crossed his face. It was gone almost instantly.
" I think anything is better eaten out in the woods than it is at home," said Fleda.
" Well, I don't know," said her friend. "I have no doubt that this is the case with cheese and apple-pie, and especially under hickory-trees which one has been contending with pretty sharply. If a touch of your wand, Fairy, could transform one of these shells into a goblet of Lafitte or Amontillado we should have nothing to wish for."
" Amontillado " was unintelligible to Fleda, but " gob- let " was intelligible.
" I am sorry," she said, " I don't know where there is any spring up here ; but we shall come to one going down the mountain."
" Do you know where all the springs are ? "
" No, not all, I suppose," said Fleda, " but I know a good many. I have gone about through the woods so much, and I always look for the springs." . . .
They descended the mountain now with hasty step, for the day was wearing well on. At the spot where he had stood so long when they went up, Mr. Carleton paused again for a minute. In mountain scenery every hour makes a change. The sun was lower now, and the lights and shadows more strcngly contrasted ; the
56 SUSAN WARNER
sky of a yet calmer blue, cool and clear toward the horizon. The scene said still the same thing it had said a few hours before, with a touch more of sadness ; it seemed to whisper, " All things have an end ; thy time may not be forever ; do what thou wouldst do ; ' while ye have light, believe in the light that ye may be chil- dren of the light." '
Whether Mr. Carleton read it so or not, he stood for a minute motionless, and went down the mountain look- ing so grave that Fleda did not venture to speak to him till they reached the neighborhood of the spring.
"What are you searching for, Miss Fleda?" said her friend.
She was making a busy quest here and there by the side of the little stream.
" I was looking to see if I could find a mullein-leaf," said Fleda.
"A mullein-leaf? What do you want it for?"
"I want it to make a drinking-cup of," said Fleda, her intent bright eyes peering keenly about in every direction.
" A mullein-leaf ! that is too rough ; one of these golden leaves — what are they — will do better, won't it?"
" That is hickory," said Fleda. " No ; the mullein- leaf is the best, because it holds the water so nicely. Here it is."
And folding up one of the largest leaves into a most artist-like cup, she presented it to Mr. Carleton.
" For me was all that trouble ?" said he. " I don't de- serve it."
" You wanted something, sir," said Fleda. " The wa- ter is very cold and nice."
He stooped to the bright little stream, and filled his rural goblet several times.
" I never knew what it was to have a Fairy for my cup-bearer before," said he. " That was better than anything Bordeaux or Xeres ever sent forth."
He seemed to have swallowed his seriousness, or thrown it away with the mullein-leaf.
" This is the best spring in all grandpa's ground," said Fleda. "The water is as good as can be."
SUSAN WARNER
57
" How came you to be such a wood and water spirit ? You must live out of doors. Do the trees ever talk to you ? I sometimes think they do to me."
" I don't know. I think I talk to them," said Fleda.
" It's the same thing," said her companion, smiling. " Such beautiful woods ! "
" Were you never in the country in the fall, sir ? "
"Not here; in my own country often enough. But the woods in England do not put on such a gay face, Miss Fleda, when they are going to be stripped of their summer dress ; they look sober upon it ; the leaves wither and grow brown and the woods have a dull russet color. Your trees are true Yankees — they ' never say die ! ' " — Queechy.
THE FLOWER GIFTS.
Nothing had been heard of little Dick's garden for some time, and though Clover had been very anxious to see it, she had not dared to say a word. But one day, after the dry weather had passed by, and the showers had come to make everything look fresh, Sam proposed that they should take a walk that way, and see Dick's balsams.
" We'll see if they look like yours, Clover," said little Primrose.
" But has Dick got any heart's-ease, Sam ?" said little Primrose.
" I think not."
" Then I'd better take him some," said Print, with a very grave face.
" But you'll kill the plants, dear, if you take them up now, when they are all full of flowers," said Clover ; " or at least kill the flowers. '
" It's only the flowers I mean to take," replied Prim- rose, as gravely as before. " I'll take Dick a bunch of 'em."
" What's that for ? " said Sam, putting his hand un- der her chin, and bringing her little sober face into view.
" Because," said Prim, " I've been thinking about it a great deal — about what mamma said. And if God asked
5l SUSAN WARNER
me what I had done with my heart's-ease, I shouldn't like to say I'd never given Dick one."
"Oh, if that's all," said Lily, " I can pick him a great bunch of petunias. Do 'em good, too — they want cut- ting."
While Lily flew down to her garden and began to pull off the petunias with an unsparing hand, Primrose crouched down by her patch of heart's-ease, carefully cutting one of each shade and tint that she could find, putting them lovingly together, with quite an artistic arrangement of colors.
" Exquisite I " said Sam, watching her. Prim started up and smiled.
" Dear me, how splendid I " said Lily, running up, with her hands full of petunias ; " but just look at these I What will you take, Clover ? "
" I think — I shall not take anything," said Clover, slowly.
" Nothing I out of all your garden I " satf Lily. Clover flushed crimson.
" I'm not sure that Dick would care to have me bring any of my flowers," she said, in a low voice. " Maybe I can find " And she hurried off, coming back pres- ently with a half-open rosebud, which she quietly put in Prim's hand, to go with the heart's-ease. Then they set off.
Dick, of course, was in his garden — he was always there when it did not rain, and sometimes when it did ; and visitors were a particularly pleasant thing to him now that he had flowers to show. He welcomed them very joyfully, beginning at once to display his treas- ures. Great was the surprise of Lily and Primrose to see the very same flowers in Dick's garden that there were in Clover's — the beautiful camelia-flowered balsams and the graceful amaranths and the showy zinnias ; even a canary-vine was there, fluttering over the fence.
" But where did you get them all ? " cried Lily.
" A lady," said Dick. " She's a good one ; and that's all I know."
" Where does she live ? " inquired Sam.
"Don't know, sir," said Dick. "Nobody didn't tell me that. Man that fetched 'em — that's the seeds and
SUSAN WARNER
59
little green things — he said, says he, ' These be out of the young lady's own garden,' says he."
" Young lady ! " said Lily. " Oh, I dare say it was Maria Jarvis. You know, Clover, she's got such loads of flowers in her garden, and a man to take care of 'em and all."
But Clover did not answer, and seemed rather in haste to get away, opening the little gate, and stepping out upon the road, and when Sam looked at her he saw that she was biting her lips very hard to keep from laughing. It must have pleased him — Clover's face, or the laughing, or the flowers, or something — for the first thing he did when they were all outside the gate was to put his arm around Clover and give her a good hearty kiss. Little Prim all this while had said scarce- ly a word, looking on with all her eyes, as we say. But when Prim was going to bed that night, and Mrs. May bent over her for a parting embrace, Prim said :
"Mamma, I don't think God will ever ask Clover what she's done with her flowers."
"Why not ?" asked her mother.
" Because," answered Primrose, sedately, " I think He told her what to do with 'em — and I think she's done it."— Three Little
WARREN, SAMUEL, an English jurist, novel- ist, and miscellaneous writer, born in Denbigh- shire, Wales, May 23, 1807; died in London, July 29, 1877. He began the study of medicine in Edinburgh, but entered Lincoln's Inn, London, as a student of law ; was called to the bar in 1837, and made a queen's counsel in 1851. In 1854 he became Recorder of Hull, retaining that position until 1874. In 1856 he was returned to Parliament for Medhurst, but resigned his seat in 1859 upon accepting the appointment of one of the two Mas- ters in Lunacy. His first notable work was the Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician, which appeared in Blackwood"s Magazine in 1830-31. These narratives were told with such apparent verisimilitude that they were generally supposed to be records of the actual experience of the au- thor, and it is not easy to believe but that some of them at least had a foundation in fact. They cer- tainly bear traces of the early medical studies of the young lawyer, and are of higher value than any of his later writings. The long novel, Ten Thousand a Year (1839), contains many strik- ing delineations of legal and aristocratic life, but is marred by broad caricature of the lower classes. The shorter novel, Now and Then (1847), on which he prided himself, met with less favor than it deserved, and was his last work of fiction. (60)
SAMUEL WARREN 6l
In 1851, upon occasion of the great exhibition in London, he put forth a rhapsodical apologue, The Lily and the Bee, of very slight merit. He also published at various times many works upon legal and social topics. Among these are Introduction to Law Studies (1835); an annotated edition of a portion of Blackstone's Commentaries (1836); The Opium Question (1840); Moral y Social, and Profes- sional Duties of Attorneys and Solicitors (1848) ; The Intellectual and Moral Improvement of the Present Age (1853) ; Labor, Its Rights, Difficulties, Dignity, and Consolations (1856).
A SLIGHT COLD.
Consider a " Slight Cold " to be in the nature of a chill, caught by a sudden contact with your grave ; or as occasioned by the damp finger of Death laid upon you, as it were, to mark you for his, in passing to the more immediate object of his commission. Let this be called " croaking," and laughed at as such by those who are " awearied of the painful round of life," and are on the lookout for their dismissal from it ; but let it be learnt by heart, and be remembered as having the force and truth of gospel by all those who would " measure out their span upon the earth," and are conscious of any constitutional flaw or feebleness ; who are distin- guished by any such tendency deathward as long necks, narrow chicken-chests, fair complexions, exquisite sym- pathy with atmospheric variations ; or, in short, exhibit any symptoms of an asthmatic or consumptive character — if they choose to neglect a Slight Cold.
Let not those complain of being bitten by a reptile which they have cherished to maturity in their very bosoms, when they might have crushed it in the egg ! Now if we call a " Slight Cold," the egg, and Pleurisy, Inflammation of the Lungs, Asthma, Consumption, the venomous reptile, the matter will be no more than cor- rectly figured. There are manv ways in which this
fc SAMUEL WARREN
"egg" may be deposited and hatched : Going suddenly, slightly clad, from a heated into a cold atmosphere — especially if you can contrive to be in a state of per- spiration ; sitting or standing in a draught, however slight — it is the breath of Death, reader, and laden with the vapors of the grave. Lying in damp beds — for there his cold arms shall embrace you ; continuing in wet clothing, and neglecting wet feet — these, and a hundred others, are some of the ways in which you may, slowly, imperceptibly, but surely, cherish the creature that shall at last creep inextricably inward, and lie roiled about your very vitals. Once more — again — again — again — I would say, Attend to this all ye who think it a small matter to neglect a Slight Cold. — Pas- sages from the Diary of a Late Physician.
WARTON, JOSEPH, D.D., an English critic and poet, born at Dunsford, Surrey, in 1722, and died at Wickham in 1800. He was educated at Win- chester and Oxford. He was successively curate at Basingstoke, rector of Winslade, then of Tun- worth, master at Winchester, prebendary of St. Paul's and of Winchester. Besides translations of Virgil, he wrote an Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope (Vol. I., 1756; Vol. II., 1782) and numerous critical papers in The Adventurer ; he also edited the works of Pope and of Dryden. His Odes on Various Subjects (1746) show how slight a foundation was required in his day for a poetic reputation. The following extract from what is regarded as the best of his odes illustrates his de- gree of pictorial ability, and also the versifying affectations that were then termed " elegant."
" Warton's translation [of the Georgics] may in many instances be found more faithful and concise than Dryden's," says Thomas Campbell ; " but it wants that elastic and idiomatic freedom by which Dryden reconciles us to his faults, and exhibits rather the diligence of a scholar than the spirit of a poet."
" To every classical reader Warton's Virgil will afford the richest fund of instruction and amuse* ment," says the Rev. John Wool.
JOSEPH WARTON
TO FANCY.
O lover of the desert, hail I Say in what deep and pathless vale, Or on what hoary mountain's side, 'Midst falls of water, you reside ; 'Midst broken rocks a rugged scene, With green and grassy dales between ; 'Midst forests dark of aged oak, Ne'er echoing with the woodman's stroke, Where never human heart appeared, Nor e'er one straw-roofed cot was reared, Where Nature seemed to sit alone, Majestic on a craggy throne ; Tell me the path, sweet wand'rer, tell, To thy unknown, sequestered cell, Where woodbines cluster round the door,, Where shells and moss o'erlay the floor, And on whose top a hawthorn blows, Amid whose thickly woven boughs Some nightingale still builds her nest, Each evening warbling thee to rest ; Then lay me by the haunted stream, Rapt in some wild, poetic dream, In converse while methinks I rove With Spenser through a fairy grove ; Till suddenly awaked, I hear Strange whispered music in my ear, And my glad soul in bliss is drowned By the sweetly soothing sound. . . .
Yet not these flowery fields of joy Can long my pensive mind employ ; Haste, Fancy, from these scenes of folly, To meet the matron Melancholy, Goddess of the tearful eye, That loves to fold her arms and sigh 1 Let us with silent footsteps go To charnels and the house of woe, To Gothic churches, vaults, and tombs, Where each sad night some virgin comes, With throbbing breast, and faded cheek.
JOSEPH WARTOtf 65
Her promised bridegroom's urn to seek ; Or to some abbey's mouldering towers, Where to avoid cold winter's showers, The naked beggar shivering lies Whilst whistling tempests round her rise, And trembles lest the tottering wall Should on her sleeping infants fall.
Now let us louder strike the lyre, For my heart glows with martial fire ; I feel, I feel, with sudden heat, My big, tumultuous bosom beat ! The trumpet's clangors pierce my ear, A thousand widows' shrieks I hear ; "Give me another horse," I cry, Lo ! the base Gallic squadrons fly. ...
When young-eyed Spring profusely throws From her green lap the pink and rose ; When the soft turtle of the dale To summer tells her tender tale ; When Autumn cooling caverns seeks, And stains with wine his jolly cheeks \ When Winter, like poor pilgrim old, Shakes his silver beard with cold — At every season let my ear Thy solemn whispers, Fancy, hear,.
WARTON, THOMAS, historian of English po. etry, born at Basingstoke in 1728; died, May 21, 1790. He was a son of Thomas Warton, a profes- sor of poetry at Oxford, and a brother of Joseph, and was himself appointed to the same professor- ship in 1 757, also occupying a curacy and vicarship. His great work was a learned History of English Poetry, from the Eleventh to the Seventeenth Century (1774-78). Besides this, he wrote an elaborate essay on Spenser's Faerie Queene, and edited the minor poems of Milton, with abundant notes. He enjoyed the distinction of being poet-laureate.
" Every lover of Greek literature is under great obligations to the very learned and ingenious Mr. Warton for this magnificent edition of Theocritus," says Dr. Harwood, in his View of the Classics.
Of his History of English Poetry, Sir Walter Scott says : " A work of great size, and, poetically speaking, of greit interest, from the perusal of which we rise, our fancy delighted with beautiful imagery and with the happy analysis of ancient tale and song, but certainly with very vague ideas of the history of English poetry. The error seems to lie in a total neglect of plan and system ; for, delighted with every interesting topic which oc- curred, the historical poet pursued it to its utmost verge, without considering that these digressions, however beautiful and interestin in themselves.
THOMAS WARTON 67
abstracted alike his own attention and that of the reader from the professed purpose of his book. Accordingly Warton's History of English Poetry has remained, and will always remain, an immense commonplace book of memoirs to serve for such an history."
" He rendered great service to literature by his agreeable but unfinished History of English Poetry" says Professor Shaw, " which unfortunately comes to an abrupt termination just as the author is about to enter upon the glorious period of the Elizabethan era ; but the work is valuable for re- search and a warm tone of appreciative criticism. Thomas Warton exhibited his knowledge of and fondness for Milton in an excellent edition of that poet, enriched with valuable notes. The best of his own original verses are sonnets, breathing a peculiar tender softness of feeling and showing much picturesque fancy.'*
ON REVISITING THE RIVER LODDON.
Ah ! what a weary race my feet have run
Since first I trod thy banks, with alders crowned, And thought my way was all through fairy ground,
Beneath the azure sky and golden sun —
When first my muse to lisp her notes begun I While pensive memory traces back the round
Which fills the varied interval between ;
Much pleasure, more of sorrow, marks the scene.
Sweet native stream ! those skies and suns so pure, No more return to cheer my evening road I
Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure Nor useless, all my vacant days have flowed
From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature, Nor with the muse's laurel unbestowed. VOL. XXIV.— 5
68 THOMAS WARTOIf
WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF DUGDALE 8 MONASTICON.
Deem not devoid of elegance the sage,
By Fancy's genuine feelings unbeguiled
Of painful pedantry, the poring child, Who turns of these proud domes the historic page, Now sunk by time, and Henry's fiercer rage.
Think'st thou the warbling muses never smiled On his lone hours ? Ingenious views engage
His thoughts on themes unclassic, falsely styled, Intent. While cloistered piety displays
Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores New manners, and the pomp of elder days,
Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores. Not rough nor barren are the winding ways
Of hoar antiquity, but strewn with flowers.
ANCIENT ENGLISH ROMANCE.
The most ancient English metrical romance which I can discover is entitled the Geste of King Home. It was evidently written after the crusades had begun, is mentioned by Chaucer, and probably still remains in its original state. I will first give the substance of the story, and afterward add some specimens of the com- position. But I must premise, that this story occurs in very old French metre in the MSS. of the British Mu- seum, so that probably it is a translation : a circum- stance which will throw light on an argument pursued hereafter, proving that most of our metrical romances are translated from the French. [But notice Saxon names.]
Mury, King of the Saracens, lands in the king- dom of Suddene, where he kills the king named Allof. The queen, Godylt, escapes ; but Mury seizes on her son Home, a beautiful youth aged fifteen years, and puts him into a galley, with two of his playfellows, Achulph and Fykenyld : the vessel being driven on the coast of the kingdom of Westnesse, the young prince is found by Aylmar, king of that country, brought to court, and delivered by Athelbrus his steward, to be
THOMAS WARTON
69
educated in hawking, harping, tilting, and other courtly accomplishments. Here the princess Rymenild falls in love with him, declares her passion, and is betrothed. Home, in consequence of this engagement, leaves the princess for seven years, to demonstrate, according to the ritual of chivalry, that by seeking and accomplish- ing dangerous enterprises he deserved her affection. He proves a most valorous and invincible knight ; and at the end of seven years, having killed King Mury, re- covered his father's kingdom, and achieved many signal exploits, recovers the Princess Rymenild from the hands of his treacherous knight and companion Fyken- yld. . . .
The poem itself begins and proceeds thus :
Alle hes ben blythe, that to my songe ylythe :
A songe yet ulle ou singe of Allof the god kynge,
Kynge he was by weste the whiles hit y leste ;
And Godylt his gode quene, no feyrore myhte bene,
And huere sone hihte Home, feyrore childe ne myht be borne :
For reyne ne myhte by ryne ne sonne myhte shine
Feyror childe than he was, bryht so ever eny glas.
So whyte so eny lilye floure, so rose red was his colour ;
He was feyre ant eke bold, and of fyfteene wynter old,
This non his yliche in none kinges ryche.
— History of English Poetry;,
WASHINGTON, GEORGE, first President of
the United States, born in Westmoreland County, Va., February 22, 1732 ; died at Mount Vernon, on the Potomac, December 14, 1799. The Life of Washington has been ably written by John Mar- shall (1805), succinctly by Jared Sparks, as a pre- fix to The Writings of Washington (1834), and best of all, upon the whole, by Washington Irving (1855). There are numerous other Lives of Wash- ington, among which is a curious Vita Washing- tonii, written in Latin by Francis Glass, an obscure schoolmaster in Ohio (1835). Washington de- serves a place in the history of literature, although he wrote nothing especially designed for publica- tion except his " Farewell Address " to the Amer- ican people, and this, though drawn up from his own memoranda, submitted to his revisal, and copied out by himself, was, as a composition, es- sentially the work of Alexander Hamilton. The Writings of George Washington, selected and edited by Jared Sparks (12 vols., 1838-40), consist in great part of letters of a public or private nature, and are of special historical and biographical value. The Writings of George Washington, Including His Diaries and Correspondence, edited by Worthiflg- ton C. Ford, appeared in 1889.
(70)
GEORGE WASHINGTON
RESPECTING HIS STEP-SON, JOHN PARK CUSTIS.
I write to you on a subject of importance, and of no small embarrassment to me. My son-in-law and ward, Mr. Custis, has, as I have been informed, paid his ad- dresses to your second daughter; and, having made some progress in her affections, has solicited her in marriage. How far a union of this sort may be agreeable to you, you best can tell ; but I should think myself wanting in candor were I not to confess that Miss Nelly's amiable qualities are acknowledged on all hands, and that an alliance with your family will be pleasing to his. This acknowledgment being made, you must permit me to add, sir, that at this, or in any short time, his youth, inexperience, and unripened education are, and will be, insuperable obstacles, in my opinion, to the completion of the marriage.
As his guardian, I conceive it my indispensable duty to endeavor to carry him through a regular course of education (many branches of which, I am sorry to say, he is totally deficient in), and to guide his youth to a more advanced age, before an event on which his own peace and the happiness of another depend takes place. .
If the affection which they have avowed for each other is fixed upon a solid basis, it will receive no dim- inution in the course of two or three years ; in which time he may prosecute his studies, and thereby render himself more deserving of the young lady, and useful to society. If, unfortunately — as they are both young — there should be an abatement of affection on either side, or both, it had better precede than follow marriage.
Delivering my sentiments thus freely will not, I hope, lead you into a belief that I am desirous of breaking off the match. To postpone it is all I have in view ; for I shall recommend to the young gentleman, with the warmth that becomes a man of honor, to consider him- self engaged to your daughter as if the indissoluble knot were tied ; and as the surest means of effecting this, to apply himself closely to his studies ; by which he will in a great measure avoid those little flirtations
72 GEORGE WASHINGTON
with other young ladies, that may, by dividing the at- tention, contribute not a little to divide the affection. — - To Mr. Calvert : 1773.
ON THE EARLY DISPUTES WITH GREAT BRITAIN.
At a time when our lordly masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American freedom, it seems necessary that something should be done to avert the stroke, and maintain the liberty which we have derived from our ancestors. But the manner of doing it, to answer the purpose effectu- ally, is the point in question. That no man should scruple or hesitate a moment in defence of so valuable a blessing, is clearly my opinion ; yet arms should be the last recourse — the dernier ressort. We have already, it is said, proved the inefficacy of addresses to the throne, and remonstrances to Parliament. How far their attention to our rights and interests is to be awakened, or alarmed, by starving their trade and manufactures, remains to be tried. The Northern Col- onies, it appears, are endeavoring to adopt this scheme. In my opinion, it is a good one, and must be attended with salutary effects, provided it can be carried pretty generally into execution. . . .
That there will be a difficulty attending it everywhere from clashing interests, and selfish, designing men ever attentive to their own gain and watchful of every turn that can assist their designing views ; and in the tobacco colonies, where the trade is so diffused, and in a man- ner wholly conducted by factors for their principals at home, these difficulties are considerably enhanced, but I think not insurmountably increased, if the gentlemen in their several counties will be at some pains to ex- plain matters to the people, and stimulate them to pur- chase none but certain enumerated articles out of any qf the stores, after a definite period, and neither import <jr purchase any themselves. . . .
\ can see but one class of people — the merchants ex- cepted — who will not, or ought not, to wish well to the scheme : namely they who live genteelly and hospitably s>n their estates. Such as these, were thev not to con-
GEORGE WASHINGTON 73
sider the valuable object in view, and the good of others, might think it hard to be curtailed in their living and enjoyments. — To Geffrge Mason : 1769.
ACCEPTING THE COMMAND OF THE ARMY.
You may believe me, when I assure you in the most solemn manner that, so far from seeking this employ- ment, I have used every effort in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity ; and I should enjoy more real happiness in one month with you at home than I have the most distant prospect of finding abroad, if my stay were to be seven times seven years. But as it has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking it is designed to answer some good purpose. . . .
I shall rely confidently on that Providence which has heretofore preserved and been bountiful to me, not doubting but that I shall return safe to you in the fall. I shall feel no pain from the toil or danger of the cam- paign ; my unhappiness will flow from the uneasiness I know you will feel from being left alone. I therefore beg that you will summon your whole fortitude, and pass your time as agreeably as possible. Nothing will give me so much sincere satisfaction as to hear this, and to hear it from your own pen. — To His Wife: June, 1773.
ON PROFANITY IN THE ARMY.
That the troops may have an opportunity of attend- ing public worship, as well as to take some rest after the great fatigue they have gone through, the General in future excuses them from fatigue-duty on Sundays, except at the ship-yards, or on special occasions, until further orders. The General is sorry to be informed that the foolish and wicked practice of profane swear- ing—a vice heretofore little known in an American army — is growing into fashion. He hopes the officers will, by example as well as influence, endeavor to check it ; and that both they and the men will reflect that we can have little hope of the blessing of Heaven upon
74 GEORGE WASHINGTON
our arms if we insult it by our impiety and folly. Added to this, it is a vice so mean and low, without any temp- tation, that every man of sense and character detests it. — General Order, August j, 1775.
GOD RULING THE AFFAIRS OF NATIONS.
It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being Who rules over the universe, Who presides in the councils of nations, and Whose Providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a government instituted by them- selves for these essential purposes ; and may enable every instrument employed in the administration to ex- ecute with success the functions allotted to its charge.
In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent na- tion seems to have been distinguished by some token of Providential agency, and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united govern- ment the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted, cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established with- out some return of pious gratitude, along with an hum- ble anticipation of the future blessing which the past seems to presage. — Inaugural Address, April jo, 1789.
TO LAFAYETTE, ON SLAVERY.
The scheme which you propose, as a precedent to* encourage the emancipation of the black people in this country from the state of bondage in which they are neld, is a striking evidence of the benevolence of your keart, and I shall be happy to join you in so laudable a work. Your purchase of an estate in the colony ol
GEORGE WASHINGTON 75
Cayenne, with a view of emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit might diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country ! But I despair of seeing it. There is not a man living who wishes more earnestly than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it. But there is only one proper and ef- fectual mode by which it can be accomplished ; and that is by legislative authority ; and th' - as far as my suf- frage will go, shall never be wanting. I never mean, unless some particular circumstances should compel me to it, to possess another slave by purchase ; it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.
TESTAMENTARY EMANCIPATION OF HIS SLAVES.
I, George Washington, of Mount Vernon, a citizen of the United States, and lately President of the same, do make, ordain, and declare this instrument, which is written with my own hand, and every page thereof sub- scribed with my name, to be my last Will and Testa- ment, revoking all others. . . .
Item. Upon the decease of my wife, it is my will and desire that all the slaves whom I hold in my own right shall receive their freedom. To emancipate them during her life would, though earnestly wished by me, be attended by such insuperable difficulties, on account of their intermixture by marriage, with the dower negroes, as to excite the most painful sensations, if not disagreeable consequences to the latter, while both descriptions are in the occupancy of the same proprie- tor ; it not being in my power, under the tenure by which the dower negroes are held, to emancipate them. And whereas, among those who will receive freedom according to this devise, there may be some who, from old age or bodily infirmities, and others on ac- count of their infancy, be unable to support them- selves, it is my will and desire that all who come under the first and second description shall be comfortably clothed and fed by my heirs while they live ; and that such of the latter description as have no parents living,
76 GEORGE WASHINGTON
or, if living, are unable or unwilling to provide for them, shall be bound by the Court until they arrive at the age of twenty-five years ; and, in cases where no record can be produced whereby their ages can be as- certained, the judgment of the court, upon its own view of the subject, shall be adequate arid final.
The negroes thus bound are (by their masters or mis- tresses) to be taught to read and write, and to be brought up to some useful occupation, agreeably to the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, providing for the sup- port of orphan and other poor children. And I do ex- pressly forbid the sale or transportation out of the said Commonwealth of any slave I may die possessed of, under any pretence whatsoever. And so I do, more- over, most pointedly and most solemnly enjoin it upon my executors hereafter named, or the survivors of them, to see that this clause respecting slaves, and every part thereof, be religiously fulfilled at the epoch at which it is directed to take place, without evasion, neglect, or de- lay, after the crops which are then on the ground are harvested, particularly as respects the aged or infirm ; seeing that a regular and permanent fund be established for their support, as long as there are subjects requir- ing it ; not trusting to the uncertain provision to be made by individuals.
And to my mulatto man, William, calling himself William Lee, I give immediate freedom, or, if he should prefer (on account of the accidents which have befallen him, and which have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment), to remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional in him to do so ; in either case, however, I allow him an annuity of thirty dollars, during his natural life, which shall be independent of the victuals and clothes he has been accustomed to re- ceive, if he chooses the last alternative ; but in full with his freedom, if he prefers the first ; and this I give him as a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me, and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War.
Besides the slaves which Washington held in his own right there were some thirty or forty be- longing to the estate of Bartholomew Dandridge-i
GEORGE WASHINGTON 77
the deceased brother of Mrs. Washington ; these had been levied upon by execution, and bought in by Washington, who had suffered them to remain in the possession of Bartholomew's widow during her life ; upon her death they were also to be manumitted in a manner similar to those already provided for. The will is a very long one, as there was much property of various kinds to be devised; and the will had been drawn up by him- self, " no professional character having been con- sulted, or having had any agency in the draft." It closes with a provision designed to prevent any possible litigation in respect to its provisions.
FORESTALLING LITIGATION.
I hope and trust that no disputes will arise. But if, contrary to expectation, the case should be otherwise, from the want of legal expressions or the usual technical terms, or because too much has been said on any of the devises to be consonant with law, my will and direction expressly is, that all disputes (if unhappily any should arise) shall be decided by three impartial and intelligent men, known for their probity and good understanding, *wo to be chosen by the disputants, each having the choice of one, and the third by those two ; which three men, thus ihosen, shall, unfettered by law or legal constructions, declare their sense of the testator's intention ; and such decision is, to all intents and purposes, to be as binding on the parties as if it had been given in the Supreme Court of the United States.
This will, which, as Washington says, "had oc- cupied many of my leisure hours," was executed on July 9, 1799. He had entered upon his sixty- seventh year; but there was every reason to antic- ipate for him several years more of earthly life, in- stead of the six months which were allotted to him.
WASSON, DAVID ATWOOD, a Unitarian minis- ter, essayist, and poet, born at Brooksville, Me., May 14, 1823; died, January 21, 1887. Curiously, the family name is remotely connected with that of Gustavus Vasa and George Washington. The subject of this notice was educated at North Yar- mouth, Phillips Academy at Andover, Bowdoin College, and the Theological Seminary at Bangor. In 1851 he became pastor at Groveland, Mass. The next year, having departed from the ancient faith, he undertook a new independent church in the same place. Several years after this he be- came colleague of the Rev. T. W. Higginson at Worcester, then travelled abroad, resided in Concord, was minister of Theodore Parker's So- ciety in Boston (1865-67), passed some years in Germany, and retired to West Medford, Mass. His remarkably vigorous essays and reviews ap- peared mostly in the Christian Examiner and Atlantic Monthly. A selection, with Memoir, has been published by the Rev. O. B. Frothingham (1889), also a volume of Poems.
" Mr. Wasson," says Octavius Brooks Frothing, ham, " was a conscientious and industrious but fastidious writer. . . . The book — or books, for there seems to have been two on social and political subjects — on which he had labored for several years apparently never satisfied his taste,
(78)
DAVID ATWOOD WASSON 79
and the sections were not completed, though chapters were published as essays, from time to time. His sermons — plain, direct, sincere — contain, in parenetical form, his leading ideas. They are singularly frank and modern. His correspondence was never large, . . . though such letters as remain are models of that kind of composition, combining ease of personal allusion with com- ments on public men, and criticism on current affairs. . . . He was heroic, brave, patient, aspiring. He was proud, with a praiseworthy pride ; angry, with a righteous indignation. He was, if possible, too prevailingly intellectual — not a common infirmity, an exceedingly rare one, in fact.'1
SUFFRAGE A TRUST.
The moral right to assume any controlling or im. portant function in society cannot be rationally con. ceived of otherwise than as contingent upon the ability to exercise it with good effect to all concerned. Doubt- less there may be a natural right of every man to put a written or printed name into a wooden box, if such be his pleasure ; but that which distinguishes a vote is its acknowledged power to bind the community as a whole ; and this power is no property of the individual simply as such. Whence this power ? To answer the ques- tion were to write or recite a primary chapter in politi- cal philosophy, for which this is not the place. But the upshot of the matter is simply this : Suffrage is a means to an end, and legitimate only as it serves toward an end. Moreover, it is an instituted means, one part of the entire political system, and grounded, like every other part, in the Constitution of the State. It implies, not indeed a formal contract, but a moral engagement, to which the corporate community in its wholeness, in- cluding men, women, and minors, is one party, the in- dividual voter another. He is engaged to promote the
8o DAVID ATWOOD WASSON
public welfare, and the corporate community is engaged to acknowledge his expression of choice as authorita- tive. Hence the voter is a political functionary, and in a place cf trust, no less truly than the governor of the Commonwealth. Governor Butler is in his place to act under the Constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to the end that it may be ordered in justice, and wisely provided for ; and every man who voted for or against him was at the polls to act under the same Constitution for the same corporate body and to the same end. One of the remonstrants before the committee said that suffrage is not a private right, but a political privilege. He was thinking toward the truth, but "privilege " is not the word, for it signifies a some- what conferred or conceded for the particular benefit of the recipient. Suffrage is a functional trust, insti- tuted and assigned not for the particular benefit of the voter, or the voting class, but for that of the civil com- munity in its present wholeness and historic continuity. No other conception of it is either rational or mor- al. When, therefore, someone comes forward to say, " I claim suffrage as my right," let our legislators re- member that there is another right, of which they are the present custodians, and which is not merely puta- tive or asserted, but as unquestionable as it is impor- tant. It is the grand right of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to be ordered and ruled in the best way without injurious or needless costs. Here is a right worth talking of, a right to which every possible right to vote is subsidiary, and one, too, which appertains to the infant in the cradle no less than to any adult, male or female.
IDEALS.
Angels of growth, of old, in that surprise Of your first vision, wild and sweet,
I poured in passionate sighs
My wish unwise That ye descend my heart to meet-—
My heart so slow to rise.
DAVID ATWOOD WASSON 8l
Now thus I pray : Angelic be to hold In heaven your shining poise afar,
And to my wishes bold
Reply with cold, Sweet invitation, like a star
Fixed in the heavens old.
Did ye descend, what were ye more than I ? Is't not by this ye are divine —
That, native to the sky,
Ye cannot hie Downward, and give low hearts the wine
That should reward the high ?
Weak, yet in weakness I no more complain Of your abiding in your places :
Oh, still, howe'er my pain
Wild prayers may rain, Keep pure on high the perfect graces
That stooping could but stain.
Not to content your lowness, but to lure And lift us to your angelhood,
Do your surprises pure
Dawn far and sure Above the tumult of young blood,
And starlike there endure.
Wait there ! wait, and invite me while I climb For, see, I come ! but slow, but slow !
Yet ever as your chime,
Soft and sublime, Lifts at my feet, they move, they go
Up the great stair of Time.
WATERS, MRS. CLARA ERSKINE (CLEMENT), an American novelist and writer on art topics, born in St. Louis, Mo., August 28, 1834. Clement was the name of her first husband, and her books still bear that name ; she afterward married Edwin F. Waters, and went to live in Cambridge, Mass. She travelled much in Europe and the Orient, and made a voyage around the world. Her Simple Story of the Orient appeared in 1869 ; Eleanor Mait- land, a novel, and Egypt in 1881 ; Charlotte Cush- man,in 1882; The Queen of the Adriatic (1893); Naples the City of Parthenope (1894). Her valuable publications on the Fine Arts are Handbook of Legendary and Mythological Art (1871); Painters, Sculptors, Architects, Engravers, and Their Works (1873) ; Artists of the Nineteenth Century, Lawrence Hutton, co-author (1879) '•> Outline History of Paint- ing for Young People and Students (1883); Outline History of Sculpture for Young People and Students (1885); Christian Symbols and Stories of the Saints (1886) ; Stories of Art and Artists (1866); Handbook of Christian Symbols, Katherine E. Conway, co- author. Besides these works, Mrs. Waters has translated a volume of R6nan's lectures, and Henri Greville's Dosia's Daughter, and edited Carl yon Lutzow's Treasures of Italian Art.
SIR EDWIN LANDSEER.
John Landseer taught his son to look to Nature above all else as his model, and Haydon, the painter,
(.82)
CLARA ERSKIWE WATERS 83
who instructed his brothers, advised Edwin to dissect animals as other artists dissected their subjects. These two pieces of advice may be said to have been the only important teaching which Edwin Landseer received ; he followed them both faithfully, and when thirteen years old made his first exhibition at the Royal Acad- emy. During fifty-eight years there were but six in which he did not send his pictures there. When four- teen he entered the Academy schools, and divided his time between sketching from the wild beasts at Exeter Change and drawing in the classes. He was a hand- some, manly boy, and the keeper, Fuseli, was very fond of him, calling him, as a mark of affection, " My little dog-boy."
He was very industrious, and painted many pictures ; the best one of what are known as his early works is the " Cat's-Paw," and represents a monkey using the paw of a cat to push hot chestnuts from the top of a stove : the struggles of the cat are unavailing. . . .
Up to this time the master seems to have thought only of making exact likenesses of animals, just as other painters had done before him ; but he now began to put something more into his works and to show the peculiar power which made him so remarka- ble— a power which he was the first to manifest in his pictures. I mean that he began to paint animals in their relation to man, and to show how they are his imitators, his servants, friends, and companions. . . .
Sir Walter Scott was in London when the " Cat's- Paw " was exhibited, and was so pleased by the picture that he sought out the young painter and invited him to go home with him. Sir Walter's well-known love for dogs was a foundation for the intimate affection which grew up between himself and Landseer. In 1824 the painter first saw Scotland, and during fifty years he studied its people, its scenery, its customs ; he loved them all, and could ever draw new subjects and new en- thusiasm from the breezy North. Sir Walter wrote in his journal : " Landseer's dogs are the most magnifi- cent things I ever saw ; leaping and bounding and grin- ning all over the canvas." The friendship of Sir Walter had a great effect upon the young painter; it devel- VOL. XXIV.— 6
84 CLARA ERSKINE WATERS
oped the imagination and romance of his nature, and he was affected by the human life of Scotland, so that he painted the shepherd, the gillie, and the poacher, and made his pictures speak the tenderness and truth, as well as the fearlessness and the hardihood, of the Gaelic race. The free, vigorous Northern life brought to the surface that which the habits of a London gentle- man in brilliant society never could have developed. One critic has said : " It taught him true power ; it freed his imagination ; it braced up all his loose abil- ity ; it elevated and refined his mind ; it developed his latent poetry ; it completed his education." . . .
Between 1835 and 1866 he painted almost numberless pictures of the Queen, of various members of her family, and of the pets of the royal household. In 1850 he was knighted, and was at the very height of his popularity and success.
An anecdote of Sydney Smith relates that when some- one asked him to sit to Landseer for his portrait, he re- plied : " Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing I " . . .
Landseer had an extreme fondness for studying and making pictures of lions ; and from the time when, as a boy, he dissected one, he tried to obtain the body of every lion that died in London. Dickens was in the habit of relating that on one occasion, when he and others were dining with the artist, a servant entered and asked : " Did you order a lion, sir ? " as if it were the most natu- ral thing in the world. The guests feared that a living lion was about to enter ; but it turned out to be only the body of the dead " Nero " of the Zoological Gardens, which had been sent as a gift to Sir Edwin.
His skill in drawing was marvellous, and was once shown in a rare way at an evening-party. Facility in drawing had been the theme of conversation, when a lady declared that no one had yet drawn two objects at the same moment. Landseer would not admit that this could not be done, and immediately took two pencils and drew a horse's head with one hand, and at precisely the same time a stag's head with antlers with the other, '—Stories of Art and Artistr
WATSON, HENRY CLAY, an American jour- nalist and historian, born at Baltimore in 1831 ; died in California in 1869. He was an editor of the Philadelphia North American and the Phila- delphia Evening Journal ; and, in his last days, of the Sacramento Times. Besides some volumes of hunting-scenes, he published Camp-Fires of the Revolution (1851) ; Nights in a Block-House (1852) ; The Old Bell of Independence (\^2\ revised as No- ble Deeds of Our Fathers (1888) ; The Yankee Teapot (1853) » Lives of the Presidents of the United States (1853); Heroic Women of History (1853); The La- dies' Glee-Book (1854) ; The Masonic Musical Manual (1855), a°d The Camp- Fires of Napoleon (1856).
THE YOUNG SENTINEL.
As he approached, the captain was in the act of call- ing Arthur Stewart, a beardless boy then, from the ranks, to act as a sentinel during the night. The gener- al, with mingled emotions of surprise and anger, stepped up to the captain, and taking him a little to one side, said: " Captain Wetherbe, what is the meaning of this ? Are you so thoughtless and imprudent as to select a boy for a sentinel ? . . . You know that the British army is almost within musket-shot of the American lines. Are we not in imminent danger of being attacked to-night ? "
Stewart had taken his post as sentinel during the first part of the night. It so happened that General Putnam had occasion to pass outside the lines. On his way he did not encounter Arthur Stewart, but another sentinel ; who, ascertaining that it was the general, im- (85)
86 HENRY CLAY WATSON
mediately allowed him to pass. After being absent a short time, he made toward the lines, as though he in- tended to return. In his course he encountered Stew- art. " Who goes there?" inquired the sentinel. "Gen- eral Putnam," was the reply. " We know no General Putnam here," Stewart answered. "But /am Gener- al Putnam," returned that person, by this time grow- ing somewhat earnest. " Give the countersign," re- turned Stewart. It so happened that the general had forgotten what the countersign was ; or at least could not, at the moment, call it to mind. " I have forgotten it," was the reply. "This is a pretty story from the lips of General Putnam. You are a British officer, sent over here as a spy," returned Stewart, who was well aware that he was addressing Putnam ; for the moon was shin- ing brightly, and revealed the features of the general ; but he had the staff in his own hand, and he meant to use it. " I warrant you I am not," said the general ; and he attempted to pass on. " Pass that line, sir, and you are a dead man ! " exclaimed Stewart, at the same time cocking his gun. " Stop where you are, or I'll make you stop," continued the sentinel, as the general disregarded his first notice. Hastily raising his gun to his shoulder and taking a somewhat deliberate aim, he pulled the trigger ; but, for some reason or other, the discharge did not follow. " Hold ! hold ! " exclaimed Putnam. " I do hold," was the reply ; " the gun holds its charge a great deal better than I intended it should ; " immediately priming his musket for a second trial " You are not priming that gun for me ? " asked Putnam anxiously. " That depends entirely upon the circum stances. I warn you, once more, not to pass thosj lines." " But I am your general," continued Putnam " I deny it, unless you give the countersign." Here thq general was at fault. He strove to recall the important word ; but all was in vain. " Boy," said he, " do you not know me ? I am General Putnam." " A British officer, more like. If you are Putnam, as you say, why don't you give me the countersign ? So sure as I am my mother's son, if you attempt to pass those lines, I'll make cold meat of you. I'm a sentinel. I know my duty ; though there are some people in the world who
HENRY CLAY WATSON 87
are marvellously inclined to question it" At this, Put- nam, finding that further parley would be useless, de- sisted ; and the boy, deliberately shouldering his mus- ket, began, with a great deal of assumed haughtiness, to pace the ground as before.
Here was the redoubtable General Putnam, the hero of a hundred battles, kept at bay by a stripling of seven- teen. This scene, in my humble judgment, would have been a fine subject for a painter's pencil. Putnam, find- ing that the boy was in earnest — for he had alarming proof of it— durst not, for his life, proceed a step further. He waited until Stewart was relieved ; when the other sentinel, finding he was, in truth, General Putnam, al- lowed him to pass without giving the countersign. But the general's feelings were terribly excited. ... A sense of honor and justice returned ; and, sending for the boy on the morrow, he thus addressed him: . . . " Did you know the man who encountered you, while at your post ? " "I suspected whom he might be," returned the boy. . . . "That's right," said the general ; "you did just as I myself would have done, had I been in your place. We have nothing to fear from the British, or any other enemy, with such soldiers as you. Discipline is the soul of the army." . . . Arthur was, shortly afterward, promoted to the rank of ensign. — Camp-Fires of the Revolution.
WATSON, REV. JOHN (Ian Maclaren), a Scottish clergyman and novelist; born in Manningtree, Essex, England, in 1849. Though born in Eng- land, he is of pure Scotch blood. He was edu- cated at Edinburgh University, and studied for the ministry at New College, Edinburgh. While at New College he made the acquaintance of such men as Dr. James Stalker, Professor Henry Drummond, Dr. George Adam Smith, and others. His first pastorate was in the Free Church in Logiealmond, Perthshire, now known as Drum- tochty. He is now the minister of a Presbyterian church in Sefton Park, Liverpool. It was not until 1893 that Mr. Watson became known as a writer. He has published Beside the Bonnie Brier- Bush and The Days of Auld Lang Syne.
" Translate his tales and sketches wholly into English," says a noted critic, "and they will lose more than half theL fl:.v^r ; but even so, something would be left — more than goes to the making of most books of the sort. * The cunning speech of Drumtochty ' — the village which he has seized for his own — has moulded his speech in passages of description and exposition, and the Drumtochty habit of alluding carefully to its ' pints ' has stood him in good stead all through his book. Mr. Maclaren's characters are, we fear, a trifle too good to be qui^e true. Drumtochty, we gather.
JOHN WATSON 89
is neither Highland nor Lowland, but lies some- where in the foot-hills of the Grampians ; so pos- sibly its citizens may combine the virtues and avoid the faults of both sections."
AS A LITTLE CHILD.
The minister asked Burnbrae to pray, and the Spirit descended on that good man, of simple heart :
"Almichty Father, we are a* Thy puir and sinfu' bairns, wha wearied o' hame and gaed awa' intae the far country. Forgive us, for we didna ken that we were leavin' or the sair hert we gied oor Father. It was weary wark tae live wi' oor sins, but we wud never hev come back had it no been for oor Elder Brither. He cam' a long road tae find us, and a sore travail He had afore He set us free. He's been a gude Brither tae us, and we've been a heavy chairge tae Him. May He keep a firm haud o' us and keep us in the richt road, and bring us back gin we wander, and tell us a* we need tae know till the gloamin' come. Gither us in then, we pray Thee, and a' we luve, no a bairn missin', and may we sit doon for ever in oor ain Father's House. Amen."
As Burnbrae said Amen, Carmichael opened his eyes, and had a vision which will remain with him until the day break and the shadows flee away.
The six elders — three small farmers, a tailor, a stone- mason, and a shepherd — were standing beneath the lamp, and the light fell like a halo on their bent heads. That poor little vestry had disappeared, and this present world was forgotten. The sons of God had come into their heritage. " For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eter- nal."— Beside the Bonnie Brier-Buih,
WATSON, WILLIAM, an English poet, born in Wharfedale, Yorkshire, in 1 85 5. He was educated privately, on account of the delicacy of his health. After his twelfth year, however, when his family removed to Southport, his health gradually bet- tered. In 1876 he began his literary work by contributions of verse and prose to the Liverpool Argus. In 1880 appeared The Prince's Quest (verse), which attracted little attention. It was not until Wordsworth's Grave appeared in 1891 that he began to be looked upon as a poet of promise. He be- came famous by his Lachrymce Musarum, an elegy on the death of Alfred Tennyson, and containing many touches of Milton's Lycidas. The poetry- reading world at once declared this poem the finest of the many tributes paid to the dead lau- reate, and a cash gift of $1,000 was tendered to the young author (November, 1892) by the Glad- stone Government. He had already been eagerly spoken of for the laureateship, and some of his' friends, thinking the proffered bounty was in- tended to dismiss his claim to the successorship of Tennyson, advised against its acceptance. He re- ceived assurances however, that nothing of the kind was intended, and accepted the gift. The laureateship remained vacant until Salisbury re, sumed the government. Late in 1 892, the poet, ow, ing to illness and overwork, became temporarily
(90)
WILLIAM WATSON 91
deranged, and was confined for some time in the Roehampton Asylum. He was soon himself again, and the year 1893 saw a large addition to his pub- lished work. In March, 1895, the Government granted him an annuity of $500. In 1896 ap- peared his sonnets on the Armenian massacres and the refusal of the nations to intervene, pub- lished under the title The Purple East. These made his name common property wherever the English tongue is spoken. His other works are Epigrams of Art, Life, and Nature (1884) ; Ver Ten- ebrosum (a sonnet series attacking the English oc- cupation of Egypt, 1885); The Eloping Angels, Poems, and Excursions in Criticism (1893) ; Odes, and Other Poems (1894); The Father of the Forest, and Other Poems (1895) ; The Year of Shame (including The Purple East, 1897).
There is scarcely a dissenting voice to the chorus that has hailed Mr. Watson as the foremost living English poet, next to Swinburne. Even be- fore 1892 Tennyson had picked him out for com- mendation. " Only a great poet," says the Spec- tator, " could have written that line [the last line in the Prelude to the Hymn of the Sea]. The line seems to us the greatest which even great poets have written. Milton never conceived a more delicate and exquisite symbol of the awakening of youth to the beauty of a world, to which it con- tributes almost as much loveliness as it perceives in it, than the ' wondering rose ' of Mr. Watson's."
" This poet is the foremost among his contem- poraries," says the Critic. " He has imagination, he is thoughtful; he has a gift of expression and a
92 WILLIAM WATSON
freshness of phrase which give a delightful charm to his work, and make one wonder whether he is not a student and admirer of our own Aldrich; he has style, and, above all, a poet's high regard for the rules governing his art"
WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE.
The old, rude church, with bare, bald tower, is here ;
Beneath its shadow high-born Rotha flows ; Rotha, remembering well who slumbers near,
And with cold murmur lulling his repose.
Rotha, remembering well who slumbers near.
His hills, his lakes, his streams are with him yet. Surely the heart that read her own heart clear
Nature forgets not soon : 'tis we forget.
We that with vagrant soul his fixity
Have slighted ; faithless, done his deep faith wrong ; Left him for poorer loves, and bowed the knee
To misbegotten, strange new gods of song.
Yet, led by hollow ghost or beckoning elf Far from her homestead to the desert bourn,
The vagrant soul returning to herself Wearily wise, must needs to him return.
To him and to the power that with him dwell — Inflowings that divulged not whence they came ;
And that secluded spirit unknowable,
The mystery we make darker with a name ;
The somewhat which we name but cannot know,
Ev'n as we name a star and only see His quenchless flashings forth, which ever shew
And ever kkle him, and wkiofc are got ke.
WILLIAM WATSON 93
LACHRYM/E MUSARUM.
(October 6,
Low, like another's, lies the laurelled head : The life that seemed a perfect song is o'er : Carry the last great bard to his last bed. Land that he loved, thy noblest voice is mute. Land that he loved, that loved him ! nevermore Meadow of thine, smooth lawn or wild sea-shore Gardens of odorous bloom and tremulous fruit, Or woodlands old, like Druid couches spread, The master's feet shall tread. Death's little rift hath rent the faultless lute : The singer of undying songs is dead.
So, in this season pensive-hued and grave,
While fades and falls the doomed, reluctant leaf
From withered Earth's fantastic coronal,
With wandering sighs of forest and of wave
Mingles the murmur of a people's grief
For him whose leaf shall fade not, neither fall.
He hath fared forth, beyond these suns and sho\»«rs,
For us, the autumn glow, the autumn flame,
And soon the winter silence shall be ours :
Him the eternal spring of fadeless fame
Crowns with no mortal flowers.
Rapt though he be from us, Virgil salutes him, and Theocritus; Catullus, mightiest-brained Lucretius, each Greets him, their brother, on the Stygian beach; Proudly a gaunt right hand doth Dante reach ; Milton and Wordsworth bid him welcome home : Bright Keats to touch his raiment doth beseech : Coleridge, his locks aspersed with fairy foam ; Calm Spenser, Chaucer suave, His equal friendship crave : And godlike spirits hail him guest, in speedi Of Athens, Weiaiar, Stratford,
94 WILLIAM WATSOff
What needs his laurel our ephemeral tears,
To save from visitation of decay ?
Not in this temporal sunlight, now, that bay
Blooms, nor to perishable mundane ears
Sings he with lips of transitory clay ;
For he hath joined the chorus of his peers
In habitations of the perfect day :
His earthly notes a heavenly audience hears,
And more melodious are henceforth the spheres,
Enriched with music stol'n from earth away.
He hath returned to regions whence he came.
Him doth the spirit divine
Of universal loveliness reclaim.
All nature is his shrine.
Seek him henceforward in the wind and sea,
In earth's and air's emotion or repose,
In every star's august serenity,
And in the rapture of the flaming rose.
There seek him, if ye would not seek in vain,
There, in the rhythm and music of the Whole ;
Yea, and forever in the human soul
Made stronger and more beauteous by his strain.
For lo i creation's self is one great choir,
And what is nature's order but the rhyme
Whereto the worlds keep time,
And all things move with all things from their prime ?
Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre ?
In far retreats of elemental mind
Obscurely comes and goes
The imperative breath of song, that as the wind
Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows.
Demand of lilies wherefore they are white,
Extort her crimson secret from the rose,
But ask not of the Muse that she disclose
The meaning of the riddle of her might :
Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite,
Save the enigma of herself she knows.
The master could not tell, with all his lore,
Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped :
Ev'n as the linnet sings, so I. he said —
WILLIAM WATSON1 95
Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale,
That held in trance the ancient Attic shore,
And charms the ages with the notes that o'er
All woodland chants immortally prevail 1
And now, from our vain plaudits greatly fled,
He with diviner silence dwells instead,
And on no earthly sea with transient roar,
Unto no earthly airs, he trims his sail,
But far beyond our vision and our hail
Is heard for ever and is seen no more.
No more, oh, never now,
Lord of the lofty and the tranquil brow
Whereon nor snows of time
Have fall'n, nor wintry rime,
Shall men behold thee, sage and mage sublime.
Once, in his youth obscure,
The maker of this verse, which shall endure
By splendor of its theme that cannot die,
Beheld thee eye to eye,
And touched through thee the hand
Of every hero of thy race divine,
Ev'n to the sire of all the laurelled line,
The sightless wanderer on the Ionian strand,
Wide as his skies and radiant as his seas,
Starry from haunts of his Familiars nine,
Glorious Mseonides.
Yea, I beheld thee, and behold thee yet :
Thou hast forgotten, but can I forget ?
The accents of thy pure and sovereign tongue,
Are they not ever goldenly impressed
On memory's palimpsest ?
I see thy wizard locks like night that hung,
I tread the floor thy hallowing feet have trod ;
I see the hands a nation's lyre that strung,
The eyes that looked through life and gazed on God.
The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer ;
The grass of yesteryear
Is dead ; the birds depart, the groves decay :
Empires dissolve and peoples disappear :
Song passes not away.
Captains and conquerers leave a little dust,
And kings a dubious legend of their reign ;
95 WILLIAM WATSON
The swords of Caesars, they are less than rust :
The poet doth remain.
Dead is Augustus, Maro is alive ;
And thou, the Mantuan of our age and clime,
Like Virgil, shalt thy race and tongue survive,
Bequeathing no less honeyed words to time,
Embalmed in amber of eternal rhyme,
And rich with sweets from every Muse's hive ;
While to the measure of the cosmic rune
For purer ears thou shalt thy lyre attune,
And heed no more the hum of idle praise
In that great calm our tumults cannot reach,
Master who crown'st our immelodious days
With flower of perfect speech.
HOW WEARY IS OUR HEART
Of kings and courts, of kingly, courtly ways In which the life of man is bought and sold ; How weary is our heart these many days !
Of ceremonious embassies that hold Parley with Hell in fine and silken phrase, How weary is our heart these many days !
Of wavering counsellors neither hot nor cold, Whom from His mouth God speweth, be it told How weary is our heart these many days !
Yea, for the ravelled night is round the lands,
And sick are we of all the imperial story.
The tramp of power, and its long trail of pain ;
The mighty brows in meanest arts grown hoary ;
The mighty hands,
That in the dear, affronted name of Peace
Bind down a people to be racked and slain ;
The emulous armies waxing without cease,
All-puissant all in vain ;
The facts and leagues to murder by delays,
And the dumb throngs that on the deaf throne's gaze;
The common, loveless lust of territory ;
The lips that only babble of their mart,
While to the night the shrieking hamlets blaze ;
The bought allegiance, and the purchased praise.
WILLIAM WATSON
97
False honor, and shameful glory —
Of all the evil whereof this is part,
How weary is our heart,
How weary is our heart these many days !
— The Year of Shame.
ENGLAND TO AMERICA.
O towering daughter, Titan of the West, Behind a thousand leagues of foam secure ; Thou toward whom our inward heart is pure Of ill intent ; although thou threatenest With most unfilial hand thy mother's breast, Not for one breathing-space may earth endure The thought of war's intolerable cure For such vague pains as vex to-day thy rest !
But if thou hast more strength than thou canst spend In tasks of peace, and find'st her yoke too tame, Help us to smite the cruel, to befriend The succorless, and put the false to shame. So shall the ages laud thee, and thy name Be lovely among nations to the end.
PRELUDE TO THE "HYMN TO THE SEA."
Grant, O regal in bounty, a subtle and delicate largess ;
Grant an ethereal alms out of the wealth of thy soul ;
Suffer a tarrying minstrel who finds and fashions his numbers,
Who, from the commune of air, cages the volatile song,
Here to capture and prison some fugitive breath of thy descant,
Thine and his own as thy roar lisped on the lips of a shell ;
Now while the vernal impulsion makes lyrical all that hath language,
While, through the veins of the Earth, riots the ichor of Spring,
While, with throes, with raptures, with loosing of bonds, with unsealings,
Arrowy pangs of delight, piercing the core of the world,
Tremors and coy unfoldings, reluctances, sweet agita- tions,
Youth, irrepressibly fair, wakes like a wondering rose.
WATTERSON, HENRY, an American orator and journalist, born at Washington, D. C., Feb- ruary 1 6, 1840. He became editor of the Demo- cratic Review, in that city, in 1858, and of the Nashville Republican Banner in 1861. During the war he served as a staff-officer and as chief of scouts in the Confederate army. In 1868 he founded the Louisville Courier- Journal, where he soon became a national figure in American jour- nalism. He sat for a short time (1876-77) in Con- gress to fill a vacancy. He has been a prolific contributor to periodicals, and is author of Oddi- ties of Southern Life and Character.
THE BLUE AND THE GRAY.
That promissory note, executed by me, subject to the endorsement of the city of Louisville, and discounted by you in the city of Pittsburg a year ago — it has ma- tured— and we are here to cancel it ! You, who were so prompt and so generous about it, will not be displeased to learn that it puts us to no inconvenience to pay it. On the contrary, it having been one of those obliga- tions on which the interest compounding day by day was designed to eat up the principal, its discharge leaves us poor only in the regret that we may not re- peat the transaction every twelve months and convert this central point of the universe into a permanent En- campment for the Grand Army of the Republic.
Except that historic distinctions have long been ob- literated here, it might be mentioned that I appear be- fore you as the representative alike of those who wore the blue and of those who wore the gray in that greax,
(98)
HENRY WATTERSON 99
sectional combat, which, whatever else it did or did not, left no shadow upon American soldiership, no stain upon American manhood. But, in Kentucky, the war ended thirty years ago. Familiar intercommunication be- tween those who fought in it upon opposing sides ; mar- riage and giving in marriage ; the rearing of a common progeny ; the ministrations of private friendship ; the all-subduing influence of home and church and school, of wife and child, have culminated in such a closely knit web of interest and affections that none of us cares to disentangle the threads that compose it, and few of us could do so if we would.
Here, at least, the lesson has been taught and learned that
" You cannot chain the eagle, And you dare not harm the dove { But every gate Hate bars to hate Will open wide to love J "
And the flag ! God bless the flag ! As the heart of McCallum More warmed to the tartan, do all hearts warm to the flag ! Have you, upon your round of sight- seeing, missed it hereabout? Does it make itself on any hand conspicuous by its absence ? Can you doubt the loyal sincerity of those who from house-top and roof-tree have thrown it to the breeze ? Let some sac- rilegious hand be raised to haul it down, and see how many gray beards who wore gray coats will rally to it I No, no, comrades ; the people en masse do not deal in subterfuges ; they do not stoop to conquer ; they may be wrong ; they may be perverse ; but they never dis- semble. These are honest flags, with honest hearts be- hind them. They are the symbols of a nationality as precious to us as to you. They fly at last as Webster would have had them fly, bearing no such mottoes as " What is all this worth ? " or " Liberty first and union afterward," but blazing in letters of living light upon their ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, those words dear to every American heart, " Union and Liberty, now and forever, one and insepa- rable."
VOL. XXIV.— 7 _
loo HENRY WATTERSON
And why not ? What is left for you and me to cavil about, far less to fight about? When Hamilton and Madison agreed in supporting a Constitution wholly acceptable to neither of them, they compromised some differences and they left some other differences open to double construction ; and among these latter, was the exact relation of the States to the General Government. The institution of African slavery, with its irreconcila- ble conditions, got between the North and the South,
and But I am not here to recite the history of the
United States. You know what happened as well as I do, and we all know that there does not remain a shred of those old issues to divide us. There is not a South- ern man to-day who would recall slavery if he could. There is not a Southern man to-day who would lightly brook the effort of a State to withdraw from the Union. Slavery is gone. Secession is dead. The Union, with its system of Statehood still intact, survives ; and with a power and glory among men passing the dreams of the fathers of the Republic. You and I may fold our arms and go to sleep, leaving to younger men to hold and defend a property tenfold greater than that re- ceived by us, its ownership unclouded and its title-deeds recorded in Heaven.
It is, therefore, with a kind of exultation that I fling open the gates of this gateway to the South ! I bid you welcome in the name of the people, whose voice is the voice of God. You came, and we resisted you ; you come, and we greet you ; for times change and men change with them. You will find here scarcely a sign of the battle ; not a reminiscence of its passions. Grim- visaged war has smoothed his wrinkled front, and whichever way you turn on either side, deepening as you advance — across the Chaplin Hills, where Jackson fell, to Stone's River, where Rosy fought — and on to Chattanooga and Chickamauga and over Missionary Ridge, and down by Resaca and Kennesaw, and Alla- toona, where Corse " held the fort," as a second time you marched to the sea — pausing awhile about Atlanta to look with wonder on a scene risen as by the hand of enchantment — thence returning by way of Franklin and Nashville — you shall encounter, as you pass those moul-
HENRY WATTERSON 101
dering heaps, which remind you of your valor and trav- ail, only the magnanimous spirit of dead heroes, with Grant and Sherman, and Thomas and McPherson and Logan looking down from the happy stars as if repeat- ing the words of the Master — " Charity for all — malice toward none."
We, too, have our graves, we too had our heroes ! All, all are comrades now upon the other side, where you and I must shortly join them ; blessed, thrice blessed, we who have lived to see fulfilled the Psalmist's prophecy of peace :
" Peace in the quiet dales, Made rankly fertile by the blood of men ; Peace in the woodland and the lonely glen, Peace in the peopled vales.
" Peace in the crowded town ; Peace in a thousand fields of waving grain ; Peace in the highway and the flow'ry lane, Peace o'er the wind-swept down.
" Peace on the whirring marts, Peace where the scholar thinks, the hunter roams, Peace, God of peace, peace, peace in all our homes,
And all our hearts ! "
— Speech Delivered at the National G. A. R. Encampment ', at Louisville, Ky.t in Septem- ber, 1895.
THE NEW SOUTH.
ft was not, however, to hear of banks and bankers and banking that you did me the honor to call me be- fore you. I am told that to-day you are considering that problem which has so disturbed the politicians — the South — and that you wish me to talk to you about the South. The South ! The South ! It is no problem at all. I thank God that at last we can say, with truth, it is simply a geographical expression. The whole story of the South may be summed up in a sentence : She was rich, and she lost her riches ; she was poor and in bondage ; she was set free and she had to go to work ; she went to work, and she is richer than ever be-
104 HENRY WATTE RSON
fore. You see it was a ground-hog case. The soil was here, the climate was here, but along with them was a curse — the curse of slavery. God passed the rod across the land and smote the people. Then in his goodness and mercy, he waved the wand of enchantment and lo, like a flower, his blessing burst forth ! Indeed may the South say, as in the experience of men it is rare for any to say with perfect sincerity: "Sweet are the uses of adversity."
The South never knew what independence meant un- til she was taught by subjection to subdue herself. We lived from hand to mouth. We had our debts and our niggers. Under the old system we paid our debts and walloped our niggers. Under the new system we pay our niggers and wallop our debts. We have no longer any slaves, but we have no longer any debts, and can exclaim, with the old darkey at the camp-meeting, who, whenever he got happy went about snouting, " Bless the Lord ! I'm gittin' fatter an' fatter ! "
The truth is, that behind the great ruffle the South wore to its shirt there lay concealed a superb manhood. That this manhood was perverted there is no doubt. That it wasted its energies upon trifles is beyond dis- pute. That it took a pride in cultivating what are called " the vices of a gentleman," I am afraid must be ad- mitted. But, at heart, it was sound ; from that heart flowed honest Anglo-Saxon blood, and when it had to lay aside its " store-clothes " and put on the homespun, it was equal to the emergency ; and the women of the South took their place by the side of the men of the South, and, with spinning-wheel and ploughshare, to- gether they made a stand against the wolf at the door. That was fifteen years ago, and to-day there is not a reward offered in a single Southern State for wolf- skins. The fact is, the very wolves themselves have got ashamed and gone to work.
I beg you to believe that, in saying this, my purpose is neither to amuse nor mislead you. Although my words may seem to carry with them an unbusiness-like levity, I assure you that my design is wholly business-like. You can see for yourselves what the South has done ; what the South can do. If all this has been achieved
HENRY WATTERSON Ioj
without credit, and without your powerful aid — and I am now addressing myself to the North and East, which have feared to come South with their money — what might not be achieved if the vast aggregation of capital in the fiscal centres should add this land of wine, milk, and honey to their field of investment, and give us the same cheap rates which are enjoyed by nearer but not safer borrowers 1 The future of the South is not a wh»t less assured than the future of the West. Why should- money which is freely loaned to Iowa and Illinois be refused to Alabama and Mississippi ? I perfectly un- derstand that business is business, and that capital is as unsectional as unsentimental. I am speaking from nei- ther spirit. You have money to loan ; we have a great country to develop.
We need the money ; you can make a profit off the development. When I say that we need money, I do mean the sort of money once demanded by an old Georgia farmer, who in the early days came up to Mil- ledgeville to see General Robert Toombs, at the time a director of the State Bank. " Robert," says he, " the folks down our way air in need of more money." The pro- fane Robert replied : " Well, how in are they going
to get it ? " " Why," says the farmer, " can't you stomf it ? " " Suppose we do stomp it, how are we going to re' deem it?" " Exactly, Robert, exactly. That was just what I was coming to. You see the folks down our way air agin redemption." We want good money, honest money, hard money, money that will redeem itself.
We have given hostages to fortune and our works are before you. I know that capital is proverbially timid. But what are you afraid of ? Is it our cotton that alarms you ? or our corn ? or our sugar ? Perhaps it is our coal and iron. Without you, in truth, many of these products must make slow progress, whilst others will continue to lie hid in the bowels of the earth. With you the South will bloom as a garden, and sparkle as a gold-mine; for, whether you tickle her fertile plains with a straw, or apply a more violent titillation to her fat mountain-sides, she is ready to laugh a har- vest of untold riches.
I am not a banker, and it would be an affectation in
104 HENRY WATTERSON
me to undertake to advise you in your own business. But there is a point which relates to the safe invest- ment of money, on which I can venture to express an opinion with some assurance — that is the political stability, involving questions of law and order in the South. My belief is that life and property are as secure in the South as they are in New England. I am cer- tain that men are at least as safe in Kentucky and Ten- nessee as women seem to be in Connecticut. The truth is, the war is over and the country is whole again. The people, always homogeneous, have a common National interest. For my own part, I have never believed in isothermal lines, air-lines, and water-lines separating distinct races. I no more believe that that river yon- der, dividing Indiana and Kentucky, marks off two dis- tinct species, than I believe that the great Hudson, flow- ing through the State of New York, marks off distinct species. Such theories only live in the fancy of morbid minds. We are all one people. Commercially, finan- cially, morally, we are one people. Divide as we will into parties, we are one people. It is this sense which gives a guarantee of peace and order at the South, and offers a sure and lasting escort to all the capital which may come to us for investment. — From a Speech De- livered Before the National Bankers' Convention at Louis- ville, -£>., October n, 1883.
WATTS, ISAAC, an English dissenting clergy- man and hymnologist, born at Southampton, July 17, 1674; died near London, November 25, 1748. He was a precocious child; composed verses, as we are told, before he was three years old, began to study Latin at four, and could read easy authors at five. Being a Dissenter he could not enter one of the Universities, but received a thorough edu- cation, and became tutor in a private family. In 1698 he was chosen assistant minister of the Inde- pendent congregation in Mark Lane, London, of which he became pastor in 1702. Owing to feeble health he resigned this charge, and in 1712 was in- vited by Sir Thomas Abney, of Abney Park, near London, to enter his family circle. Here he lived during the remaining thirty-six years of his life, preaching not unfrequently, and writing many books in prose and verse. His works com- prise about a dozen octavo volumes. The greater portion of his prose writings consists of sermons and theological treatises. He, however, wrote several short treatises on astronomy and geog- raphy ; and his Logic, and its continuation in The Improvement of the Mind, are still esteemed as standard works. His poems are all of the religious character, many of them written for children. He versified the entire Book of Psalms, and many of his Hymns find a place in the hymn-books of all denominations of Christians. tio&l
io6
ISAAC WATTS
A PROBLEM IN ETHICS.
In many things which we do, we ought not only to consider the mere naked action itself, but the persons toward whom, the time when, the place where, the manner how, the end for which the action was done, together with the effects that must or may follow ; and all other surrounding circumstances must necessarily be taken into our view in order to determine whether the action, which is indifferent in itself, be either lawful or unlawful, good or evil, wise or foolish, decent or in- decent, proper or improper, as it is so circumstantiated. Let me give a plain instance for the illustration of this matter :
Mario kills a dog — which, considered in itself, seems to be an indifferent action. Now, the dog was Ti- mon's, and not his own : this makes it look unlawful. But Timon bade him do it : this gives it an appearance of lawfulness. Again, it was done at church, and in time of divine service : these circumstances, added, cast on it an air of irreligion. But the dog flew at Mario, and put him in danger of his life : this relieves the seeming impiety of the action. Yet Mario might have escaped thence : therefore the action appears to be im- proper. But the dog was known to be mad : this further circumstance makes it almost necessary that the dog should be slain, lest he should worry the assem- bly, and do much mischief. Yet again, Mario killed him with a pistol which he happened to have in his pocket since yesterday's journey ; now hereby the whole congregation was terrified and discomposed, and divine worship was broken off : this carries an appear- ance of great indecency and impropriety in it. But after all, when we consider a further circumstance, that Mario, being thus violently assaulted by a mad dog, had no way of escaping, and had no other weapon about him, it seems to take away all the color of impropriety, indecency, or unlawfulness, and to allow that the pres- ervation of one or many lives will justify the act as wise and good. Now all these concurrent appendices of the action ought to be surveyed in order to pro-
ISAAC WATTS 107
nounce with justice and accuracy concerning it. — The Improvement of the Mind.
A CRADLE HYMN. (Abbreviated from the original.)
Hush ! my dear, lie still, and slumber ;
Holy angels guard thy bed ! Heavenly blessings without number
Gently falling on thy head.
Sleep, my babe ; thy food and raiment, House and home, thy friends provide ;
All without thy care or payment, All thy wants are well supplied.
How much better thou'rt attended
Than the Son of God could be, When from heaven He descended,
And became a child like thee.
Soft and easy is thy cradle :
Coarse and hard thy Saviour lay :
When His birthplace was a stable, And His softest bed was hay.
See the kinder shepherds round Him,
Telling wonders from the sky 1 There they sought Him, there they found Him,
With His virgin mother by.
See the lovely Babe a-dressing ;
Lovely Infant, how he smiled ! When He wept, the mother's blessing
Soothed and hushed the holy Child.
Lo, He slumbers in His manger,
Where the horned oxen feed ; Peace, my darling, here's no danger.
Here's no ox anear thy bed.
May'st thou live to know and fear Him, Trust and love Him all thy days ;
Then go dwell forever near Him, See His face and sing His praise !
I08 ISAAC WATTS
I could give thee thousand kisses, Hoping what I most desire ;
Not a mother's fondest wishes Can to greater joys aspire.
THE EARNEST STUDENT.
" Infinite Truth, the life of my desires,
Come from the sky, and join thyself to me : I'm tired with hearing, and this reading tires ;
But never tired of telling thee, Tis thy fair face alone my spirit burns to see.
" Speak to my soul, alone ; no other hand
Shall mark my path out with delusive art ; All nature, silent in His presence, stand ;
Creatures, be dumb at His command, And leave His single voice to whisper to my heart.
" Retire, my soul, within thyself retire,
Away from sense and every outward show ; Now let my thoughts to loftier themes aspire ;
My knowledge now on wheels of fire, May mount and spread above, surveying all below."
The Lord grows lavish of His heavenly light, And pours whole floods on such a mind as this
Fled from the eyes, she gains a piercing sight,
She dives into the infinite, And sees unutterable things in that unknown abyss.
TRUE RICHES.
I am not concerned to know What to-morrow fate will do ; Tis enough that I can say I've possessed myself to-day ; Then if haply midnight death Seize my flesh, and stop my breath, Yet to-morrow I shall be Heir of the best part of me.
Glittering stones and golden things, "Wealth and honors, that have wings
ISAAC WATTS
Ever fluttering to be gone, I could never call my own. Riches that the world bestows, She can take, and I can lose ; But the treasures that are mine Lie afar beyond her line. When I view my spacious soul, And survey myself a whole, And enjoy myself alone, I'm a kingdom of my own.
I've a mighty part within That the world hath never seen, Rich as Eden's happy ground, And with choicer plenty crowned. Here on all the shining boughs Knowledge fair and useful grows. Here are thoughts of larger growth Ripening into solid truth ; Fruits refined of noble taste — Seraphs feed on such repast, Here, in green and shady grove, Streams of pleasure mix with love ; There, beneath the smiling skies, Hills of contemplation rise ; Now upon some shining top Angels light, and call me up ; I rejoice to raise my feet. Both rejoice when there we meet.
There are endless beauties more, Earth has no resemblance for ; Nothing like them round the pole ; Nothing can describe the soul. . . Broader 'tis and brighter far Than the golden Indies are ; Ships that trace the watery stage Cannot coast it in an age ; Harts or horses strong and fleet, Had they wings to help their feet, Could not run it half-way o'er In ten thousand days and more.
Yet the silly, wandering mind, Loath to be too much confined,
109
Tto ISAAC WATTS
Roves and takes her daily tours, Coasting round the narrow shores — Narrow shores of flesh and sense — Picking shells and pebbles thence ; Or she sits at Fancy's door, Calling shapes and shadows to her ; Foreign visits still receiving, And to herself a stranger living. Never, never would she buy Indian dust or Tyrian dye, Never trade abroad for more, If she saw her native shore ; If her inward worth were known, She might ever live alone.
INSIGNIFICANT EXISTENCE.
There are a number of us creep Into this world, to eat and sleep ; And know no reason why we're born, But only to consume the corn, Devour the cattle, fowl, and fish, And leave behind an empty dish. The crows and ravens do the same — Unlucky birds of hateful name ; Ravens or crows might fill their place And swallow corn and carcasses. Then if their tombstone, when they die. Be n't taught to flatter and to lie, There's nothing better will be said Than that " they've eat up all their bread Drunk up their drink, and gone to bed."
THERE IS A LAND OF PURE DELIGHT.
There is a land of pure delight, Where saints immortal reign ;
Infinite day excludes the night, And pleasures banish pain.
There everlasting Spring abides, And never-withering flowers ;
Death, like a narrow sea, divides This heavenly land from ours.
ISAAC WATTS
Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood Stand dressed in living green ;
So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between.
But timorous mortals start and shrink
To cross this narrow sea, And linger, shivering, on the brink,
And fear to launch away.
Oh ! could we make our doubts remove — Those gloomy doubts that rise —
And see the Canaan that we love With unbeclouded eyes ;
Could we but climb where Moses stood,
And view the landscape o'er, Not Jordan's stream nor Death's cold flood
Should fright us from the shore.
MY DEAR REDEEMER.
My dear Redeemer, and my Lord ! I read my duty in Thy word ; But in Thy life the law appears, Drawn out in living characters.
Such was Thy truth, and such Thy zeal, Such deference to Thy Father's will, Such love, and meekness so divine, I would transcribe, and make them mine.
Cold mountains, and the midnight air, Witnessed the fervor of Thy prayer ; The desert Thy temptations knew — Thy conflict, and Thy victory, too.
Be Thou my pattern ; make me bear More of Thy gracious image here ; Then God, the judge, shall ow,n my name Among the followers of the Lamb.
112 ISAAC WATTS
FROM ALL THAT DWELL.
From all that dwell below the skies Let the Creator's praise arise ; Let the Redeemer's name be sung Through every land by every tongue !
Eternal are Thy mercies, Lord ;
Eternal truth attends Thy word ;
Thy praise shall sound from shore to shore,
Till suns shall rise and set no more.
BEFORE JEHOVAH'S AWFUL THRONE.
Before Jehovah's awful throne, Ye nations, bow with sacred joy ;
Know that the Lord is God alone ; He can create, and He destroy.
His sovereign power, without our aid, Made us of clay, and formed us men ;
And when, like wandering sheep, we strayed, He brought us to His fold again.
We are His people ; we His care, — Our souls and all our mortal frame ;
What lasting honors shall we rear, Almighty Maker, to Thy name ?
We'll crowd Thy gates with thankful songs ;
High as the heaven our voices raise ; All Earth, with her ten thousand tongues,
Shall fill Thy courts with sounding praise.
Wide as the world is Thy command ;
Vast as eternity Thy love ; Firm as a rock Thy truth shall stand
When rolling years shall cease'to move.
UNVEIL THY BOSOM, FAITHFUL TOMB.
Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb ;
Take this new treasure to thy trust, And give these sacred relics room
To slumber in the silent dust.
ISAAC WATTS
Nor pain, nor grief, nor anxious fear Invade thy bounds; nor mortal woes
Can reach the peaceful sleeper here, While angels watch thy soft repose.
So Jesus slept ; God's dying Son
Passed through the grave, and blest the bed : Rest here, blest saint, till from his throne
The morning break, and pierce the shade.
Break from His throne, illustrious morn ;
Attend, O Earth, His sovereign word ; Restore Thy trust ; a glorious form
Shall then arise to meet the Lord.
A SUMMER EVENING.
How fine has the day been ! how bright was the sun I How lovely and joyful the course that he run, Though he rose in a mist when his race he begun,
And there followed some droppings of rain ! But now the fair traveller's come to the west, His rays are all gold, and his beauties are best : He paints the sky gay as he sinks to his rest,
And foretells a bright rising again.
Just such is the Christian ; his course he begins, Like the sun in a mist, when he mourns for his sins, And melts into tears ; then he breaks out and shines.
And travels his heavenly way : But when he comes nearer to finish his race, Like a fine setting sun, he looks richer in grace, And gives a sure hope, at the end of his days,
Of rising in brighter array.
113
WAYLAND, FRANCIS, an American educatoi and miscellaneous writer, President of Brown University, born in New York, March u, 1796; died at Providence, R. I., September 30, 1865. He was graduated at Union College in 1813, and studied medicine, but soon after pursued a theo- logical course at Andover. After a four years' tutorship at Union College, and a pastorate in Boston, he was elected, in 1826, Professor of Mathematics and Natural History at Union, and the next year assumed the presidency of Brown University, retiring, after twenty-eight years of service, to a pastorate in Providence. He pub- lished Elements of Moral Science (1835); Elements of Political Economy (1837) ; Limitations of Human Reason (1840); Thoughts on the Collegiate System in the United States (1842), recommending a modern- ization of the old curriculum; Christianity and Slavery (1845); Life of Adoniram Judson (1853); Intellectual Philosophy ( 1 854) ; Letters on the Ministry (1863), also occasional sermons and addresses.
" As a thinker and expounder Dr. Wayland ig justly regarded as the head of his denomination," says Henry T. Tuckerman. " In many essentia) particulars he is to the American what John Fos, ter was to the English Baptists."
" Few works which have so little ornament are as attractive and agreeable as those of this able ("4)
FRAMCIS WAYLAND 115
thinker," says R. W. Griswold. " They have the natural charm which belongs to the display of ac- tive, various, and ready strength. Everything that proceeds from his pen has a character of originality."
Of The Duties of an American Citizen, Jared Sparks says: " It is seldom that we have met with sounder views, or with sentiments more just and liberal on some important topics than are con- tained in these discourses. . . . They are the production of a vigorous mind and a good heart, creditable to the talents and religious motives of the author, and form a valuable addition to the stock of our literature."
The following extract is from a sermon com- memorating Hon. Nicholas Brown, after whom Brown University was named.
LIVING WORTHILY.
As the stranger stands beneath the dome of St. Paul's, or treads, with religious awe, the silent aisles of West- minster Abbey, the sentiment which is breathed in every object around him is the utter emptiness of sublunary glory. The most magnificent nation that the world has ever seen has here exhausted every effort to render illustrious her sons who have done worthily. The fine arts, obedient to private affection or public gratitude, have embodied, in every form, the finest conceptions of which their age was capable. In years long gone by, each one of these monuments has been watered by the tears of the widow, the orphan, or the patriot. But generations have passed away, and mourners and mourned have sunk together into forgetfulness. The aged crone, or the smooth-tongued beadle, as now he hurries you through aisle and chapel, utters with meas- ured cadence and unmeaning tone, for the thousandth VOL. XXIV.— 8
Ii6 FRANCIS WAYLAND
time, the name and lineage of the once honored dead ; and then gladly dismisses you, to repeat again his well- conned lesson to another group of idle passers-by. Such, in its most august form, is all the immortality that matter can confer. Impressive and venerable though it be, it is the impressiveness of a solemn and mortifying failure. It is by what we ourselves have done, and not by what others have done for us, that we shall be re- membered by after ages. It is by thought that has aroused my intellect from its slumbers, which has " given lustre to virtue, and dignity to truth," or by those ex- amples which have inflamed my soul with the love of goodness, and not by means of sculptured marble, that I hold communion with Shakespeare and Milton, with Johnson and Burke, with Howard and Wilberforce.
It is then obvious, that if we desire to live worthily, if we wish to fulfil the great purposes for which we were created, we must leave the record of our existence inscribed on the ever-during spirit. The impression there can never be effaced. " Time, which obliterates nations and the record of their existence," only renders the lineaments which we trace on mind deeper and more legible. From the very principles of our social nature, moral and intellectual character multiplies indefinitely its own likeness. This, then, is the appropriate field of labor for the immortal and ever-growing soul.
I know that the power thus given to us is frequently abused. I am aware that the most gifted intellect ha? frequently been prostituted to the dissemination of error and that the highest capacity for action has been de- voted to the perpetration of wrong. It is melancholy beyond expression to behold an immortal spirit, by pre- cept and example, urging forward its fellows to rebel- lion against God. But it is some alleviation to the pain of such a contemplation to remember that in the con- stitution of our nature a limit has been fixed to the triumph of evil. Falsity in theory is everywhere con- fronted by the facts which present themselves to every man's observation. A lie has not power to change the ordinances of God. Every day discloses its utter worth- lessness, until it fades away from our recollection, and is numbered among the things that were. The indissol-
FRANCIS WAYLAND TT7
uble connection which our Creator has established be- tween vice and misery tends also continually to arrest the progress of evil, and to render odious whatever would render evil attractive. The conscience of man himself, when once the storm of passion has subsided, stamps it with moral disapprobation. The remorse of his own bosom forbids him to reveal to another his own atrocious principles. The innate affections of the heart teach us to shield those whom we love from the con- taminations of vice. Hence, the effect of wicked ex- ample and of impure conceptions, meeting with cease- less resistance in the social and moral impulsions of the soul, becomes from age to age less apparent. Men are willing that such examples should be forgotten, and they sink into oblivion. Thus is it that, in the words of inspiration, " the memory of the just is blessed, but the name of the wicked shall rot."
It is then manifest that we accomplish the highest purposes of our existence, not merely by exerting the power which God has given us upon the spirit of man, but by exerting that power for the purpose of promot- ing his happiness and confirming his virtue. — Discourse in Brown University, November j, 1841.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANALOGY.
You observe that I speak of the science of analogy as something which is yet to be. It does not now ex- ist, but it must exist soon. He who shall create it will descend to posterity with a glory in nowise inferior to that of Bacon or of Newton. He who would complete such a work must be acquainted with the whole circle of the sciences, and be familiar with their history ; he must examine and analyze all the circumstances of every important discovery, and, from the facts thus developed, point out the laws by which is governed the yet unex- plained process of original investigation. When God shall have sent that genius upon earth who was born to accomplish this mighty labor, then one of the greatest obstacles will have been removed to our acquiring an unlimited control over all the agents of nature.
But, passing this first part of the subject, I remark
Ii8 FRANCIS WAYLAND
that, whenever the laws of such a science shall have been discovered, I think that they will be found to rest upon the following self-evident principles :
First — A part of any system which is the work of an intelligent agent is similar, so far as the principles which it involves are concerned, to the whole of that system.
And, secondly — The work of an intelligent and moral being must bear, in all its lineaments, the traces of the character of its author. And, hence, he will use an- alogy the most skilfully who is most thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the system, and at the same time most deeply penetrated with a conviction of the attributes of the First Cause of all things.
To illustrate this by a single remark : Suppose I should present before you one of the paintings of Raph- ael, and, covering by far the greater part of it with a screen, ask you to proceed with the work and designate where the next lines should be drawn. It is evident that no one but a painter need even make the attempt; and of painters he would be the most likely to succeed who had become best acquainted with the genius of Raphael, and had most thoroughly meditated upon the manner in which that genius had displayed itself in the work before him. So, of the system of the universe we see but a part. All the rest is hidden from our view. He will, however, most readily discover where the next lines are drawn who is most thoroughly acquaint- ed with the character of the author, and who has ob- served, with the greatest accuracy, the manner in which that character is displayed, in that portion of the system which he has condescended to reveal to us.
All this is confirmed by the successive efforts of mind which resulted in the greatest of Sir Isaac Newton's discoveries. ... I think it self-evident that this first germ of the system of the universe would never have been suggested to any man whose mind had not been filled with exalted views of the greatness of the Creator, and who had not diligently contemplated the mode in which those attributes were displayed in that part of his works which science had already discovered to us.
FRANCIS WAYLAND II5
And if this distinction be just, it will lead us to di- vide philosophers into those who have been eminent in attainment in those sciences which are instruments of investigation ; and those who, to these acquisitions, have added unusual skill in foretelling where these instruments could, with the greatest success, be applied. Among the ancients, probably, Aristotle belonged to the former, and Pythagoras and Archimedes to the latter class. Among the moderns I think the infidel philosophers gener- ally will be found to have distinguished themselves by the accurate use of the sciences, and Christian philoso- phers by the additional glory of foretelling when and how the sciences may be used. I am not aware that infidelity has presented to the world any discoveries to be compared with those of Boyle and Pascal, and Bacon and Newton, or of Locke, and Milton, and Butler.
And I here may be allowed to suggest that, often as the character of Newton has been the theme of admi- ration, it has seemed to me that the most distinctive element of his greatness has commonly escaped the notice of his eulogists. It was neither in mathematical skill nor in mathematical invention that he so far sur- passed his contemporaries ; for in both these respects, he divided the palm with Huygens, and Kepler, and Leibnitz. It is in the wide sweep of his far-reaching analogy, distinguished alike by its humility and its boldness, that he has left the philosophers of all previ- ous and all subsequent ages so immeasurably behind him. Delighted with his modesty and reciprocating his confidence, nature held communion with him as with a favorite son ; to him she unveiled her most recondite mysteries ; to him she revealed the secret of her most subtle transformations, and then, taking him by the hand, she walked with him abroad over the wide ex- panse of universal being. — Occasional Discourses.
WEBB, CHARLES HENRY, an American humor- ist, born at Rouse's Point, N. Y., January 24, 1834. In early youth he ran away to sea, and on his re- turn went to Illinois. From 1860 to 1863 he was editorially connected with the New York Times, in 1863-64 the San Francisco Bulletin, and in 1864 became editor of the Californian. He also wrote in the New York Tribune and other papers under the well-known name of "John Paul." His books are Laffith Lank, or Lunacy, a travesty of Charles Reade's Griffith Gaunt (1867); St. Twer mo, or the Cuneiform Cyclopedist of Chattanooga, a travesty of Mrs. Wilson's St. Elmo (1868); John Paul's Book (1874); The Wickedest Woman in New York (1875); Parodies, Prose and Verse (1876); Sea-wee dt and What We Seed: My Vacation at Long Branch and Saratoga (1876); Vagrom Verses (1888). He is also the author of two plays: Our Friend from Victoria (1865), and Arrah-na-Poke, a burlesque of Dion Boucicault's Arrah-na-Pogue (1865). He also edited The Celebrated Jumping Frog.
GOING UP THE HUDSON.
One of the greatest pleasures of steaming up the North River is that of leaving the red-walled city be- hind you. It enables you to turn your back on it in a contemptuous way ; or if perchance you look back at the retreating houses and fading streets, it is only with a quick glance of dislike, not the lingering look of affec-
(.120)
CHARLES HENRY WEBB 121
tion. There is a feeling of unspeakable relief when you get beyond the confines of the city, opposite the blessed part of Manhattan where no streets are graded and where the grass has not yet forgotten how to grow. It is the same feeling of relief that comes over one on emerging from a crowded room into the open air. The lungs expand and the muscles of the heart have a broader play.
It has been urged against the river route that the scenery becomes monotonous ; that after having been once seen it is " rather a bore than otherwise.'* Monot- onous, indeed ! The man who made that remark must have got sadly wearied of his mother's face in infancy, possibly he tired of hearing the same step always around the cradle, and considered the old lady " rather a bore than otherwise." But the scenery of the Hudson is never the same — hourly and daily it changes. Anthony's Nose is every day growing redder, and you never saw the trees wear the same shade of green two hours in succession. It is true, that going up the river by night you do not see much of the scenery, after all — but then you have the satisfaction of knowing it is there.
It is pleasant, too, to see the moon rise on the water ; to watch her fair face when she peers over the hill- tops, blushing at first, as though aware that profane eyes are gazing on her unveiled beauties ; and then gliding with quiet grace to her canopied throne, the zenith. The face of Miss Moon was freckled the last night I went up the river. I suspect that she had been kissing the sun behind the curtains down yonder, and this supposition would also account for her late rising. Although not given to making overtures to strangers, I could not forbear remarking to a rather gruff-looking gentleman — the pilot, I think — that the moonlight was beautiful. . . .
It had been a beautiful day and was then a beautiful night. And between the beauties of a June day, and the witcheries of a June night, it is hard to choose. While the one woos you with blonde loveliness, the other comes with brunette beauty, dark-eyed and dark- tressed, her tresses woven with diamonds and her brow bound by a tiara of stars. If it is pleasant to see Day
122 CHARLES HENRY WEBB
look through the windows of the East, and then come tripping over the meadows ; it is .grand to see Night come down in her simple majesty, muffling the hill-tops beneath her hood, and spreading her robes of velvet over the conscious evergreens. On the whole, I give my heart and hand to the brunette beauty.
By the way, there is one feature of the river that I nearly forgot to mention ; it is quite as prominent a feature as Anthony's Nose, yet you look for it in " Hand-Books of the Hudson," in vain. The inventors of various hair-lotions, liniments, aperients, and other abominations, have turned the rocks along the river-side into a medium for advertising their wares. The High- lands declare the glory of some wretched cough-syrup, the Palisades are vocal with the praises of pills, and unless some happy deluge washes off the inscriptions they will remain to puzzle the geologists and archaeolo- gists of a remote generation. There is no saying when this style of advertising was initiated. It is not im- probable that it has existed from a very early day, and that the inscriptions on the pyramids, which have occa- sioned so many conjectures, are simply the handiwork of an Egyptian Barnum, setting forth the attractions of some fossil " fat boy," or calling on everyone to come and see a nondescript from the interior of Mesopotamia. Our brick walls will perhaps puzzle posterity in this way quite as much as the pyramidical piles of Cheops and his people have puzzled us. — John Paul's Book.
THE LAY OF DAN'L DREW.
It was a long, lank Jerseyman,
And he stoppeth one or two : 44 1 ain't acquaint in these here parts :
I'm a-lookin' for Dan'l Drew.
" I'm a lab'rer in the Vinnard ;
My callin* I pursue At the I nst i toot at Madison,
That was built by Dan'l Drew.
••I'm a lab'rer in the Vinnard ; My worldly wants are few ;
CHARLES HENRY WEBB
But I want some pints on these here sheers— I'm a-lookin' for Dan 'I Drew."
Again I saw that laborer,
Corner of Wall and New ; He was looking for a ferry-boat,
And not for Dan'l Drew.
Upon his back he bore a sack
Of stuff that men eschew ; Some yet moist scrip was in his grip,
A little " Waybosh," too.
He plain was long of old R. L, And short of some things " new."
There was never another laborer Got just such " pints " from Drew.
At the ferry-gate I saw him late,
His white cravat askew, A-paying his fare with a registered share
Of stock " preferred " — by Drew.
And these words came back from the Hackensack: "If you want to gamble a few,
Just get in your paw at a game of ' draw,' But don't take a hand at Drew ! "
123
WEBSTER, DANIEL, an American statesman and orator, born at Salisbury, N. H., January 18, 1782; died at Marshfield, Mass., October 24, 1852. He was graduated at Dartmouth in 1801; commenced the study of law, was admitted to the bar in 1805, and the next year entered upon prac- tice at Portsmouth, N. H. In 1812 he was elected to Congress from New Hampshire, and was re- elected in 1814. In 1816 he removed to Boston, and soon acquired an extensive legal practice. In 1822 he was elected to Congress from Boston, and in 1827 was chosen to the United States Sen- ate, and held that position until 1841, when he became Secretary of State in the administration of Mr. W. H. Harrison, retaining that place during a portion of the administration of Mr. Tyler, who became President upon the death of Mr. Hard- son. In 1850 he again became Secretary of State in the administration of Mr. Fillmore. His health beginning visibly to decline, he tendered his resig- nation of the secretaryship, which was declined by the President. The closing months of his life were passed at his residence of Marshfield, a few miles from Boston. The Works of Daniel Web- ster consist of Orations, Discourses, and Addresses on various occasions; Legal Arguments, Speeches and Debates in Congress, and Diplomatic Papers. Two volumes of his Private Correspondence, edited
(124)
DANIEL WEBSTER
125
by his son, were published in 1858. His Life has been written by several persons, notably by George Ticknor Curtis (1869). Many personal details are given in Daniel Webster and His Contemporaries^ by C. W. March (1850).
In 1830 Webster made what the popular heart, if not the orator's own mind, has always con- sidered his greatest effort — the reply to Hayne. Its delivery was a memorable scene in the an- nals of Congress. The old Senate-chamber was crowded to overflowing with notables of every grade, party, and nationality, kept spellbound for hours by the speaker's eloquence. This speech was regarded, at the time, as settling forever, as a matter of argument, the nullification doctrine. Bitter subsequent experience has shown that both the doctrine of secession and the love for the Union were too deeply rooted for mere forensic argument.
Brilliant, however, as Webster's Congressional speeches are, they do not fully equal his set ora- tions. Three of these — the Plymouth Rock dis- course, the Bunker Hill Monument discourse, and the Eulogy on Adams and Jefferson — are among the very choicest masterpieces of all ages and all tongues. Nothing in the palmy days of Greece or Rome or England or France has ever surpassed these orations in unity and harmony of structure, or in simple but majestic diction. The genius of Webster here reveals itself, unfettered by the needs of party and untainted by the heat of de- bate, in all its depth, its sweetness, and its origi- nality. We cannot analyze these orations. Each
126 DANIEL WEBSTER
seems to pour itself forth as the single, spontane- ous utterance of a great, creative mind. It is the voice of a man who has something grand to say to his fellow-men. To the student, these ora- tions, and indeed all of Webster's speeches, may be recommended as models of style to be carefully considered.
It is especially true of Webster that the style is the man. His style is the plain, straightforward expression of a clear and earnest mind. The sen- tences are singularly free from the tricks of rhet- oric in which most orators delight to deal, and the words are the living embodiment of the ideas which they are intended to convey, while back of all we seem to see the tallr gravely impassioned form of the orator himself, arousing us, convinc- ing us, swaying us at his will.
" Webster has not shaped the political destinies of his country as directly or as permanently, per- haps, as Jefferson and Hamilton have done," says Professor Hart ; " but he had a wider range of intellect and culture than either, and he is, on the whole, the most attractive figure in the American political arena next to Washington. With all his mistakes and shortcomings he was a man to be loved and respected. The nickname of ' Black Dan' only indicates the familiar affection with which he was regarded by his followers. He stood alone in his generation — a tall, commanding figure, with swarthy complexion, sonorous voice, deep-seated, lustrous eye, overhanging brows, and a grand, majestic head whose size has be* pome proverbial."
DANIEL WEBSTER 127
In private life Mr. Webster was genial and en. tertaining, and he lived and died an enthusiastic sportsman and disciple of Izaak Walton. Amid all his greatness he was never so happy as when rambling, gun in hand, over the shooting-grounds at Marshfield or patting the necks of his favorite cattle.
FIRST SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND.
Let us rejoice that we behold this day. Let us be thankful that we have lived to see the bright and happy breaking of the auspicious morn which commences the third century of the history of New England. Auspi- cious indeed — bringing a happiness beyond the common allotment of Providence to men — full of present joy, and gilding with bright beams the prospect of futurity, is the dawn that awakens us to the commemoration of the Landing of the Pilgrims. . . .
We have come to this Rock to record here our homage for our Pilgrim Fathers ; our sympathy in their suffer- ings; our gratitude for their labors ; our admiration for their virtues ; our veneration for their piety ; and our attachment to those principles of civil and religious lib- erty which they encountered, the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and to establish. And we would leave here, also, for the generations that are ris- ing up rapidly to fill our places, some proof that we have endeavored to transmit the great inheritance unim- paired ; that in our estimate of public principles and private virtue, in our veneration of religion and piety, in our devotion to civil and religious liberty, in our regard for whatever advances human knowledge or improves human happiness, we are not altogether unworthy of our origin.
There is a local feeling connected with this occasion too strong to be resisted — a sort of genius of the place which inspires and awes. We feel that we are on the spot where the first scene of our history was laid ; where the hearths and altars of New England were first
128 DANIEL WEBSTER
where Christianity, and civilization, and letters made their first lodgement in a vast extent of country covered with a wilderness, and peopled by roving barbarians. We are here at the season of the year at which the event took place. The imagination irresistibly draws around us the principal features and the leading characters in the original scene. We cast our eyes abroad on the ocean, and we see where the little bark, with the inter, esting group on its deck, made its slow progress to the shore. We look around us, and behold the hills and prom- ontories where the anxious eyes of our fathers first saw the places of habitation and of rest. We feel the cold that benumbed, and listen to the winds that pierced them. Beneath us is the Rock on which New England received the feet of the Pilgrims.
We seem even to behold them as they struggle with the elements, and, with toilsome efforts, gain the shore. We listen to the chiefs in council ; we see the unexam- pled exhibition of female fortitude and resignation ; we hear the whisperings of youthful impatience ; and we see — what a painter of our own has also represented by his pencil — chilled and shivering childhood, houseless but for a mother's arms, couchless but for a mother's breast, till our blood almost freezes. The mild dignity of Carver and of Bradford ; the decision and soldier- like air and manner of Standish ; the devout Brewster ; the enterprising Allerton ; the general firmness and thoughtfulness of the whole band ; their conscious joy for dangers escaped ; their deep solicitude about dan' gers to come ; their trust in Heaven ; their high relig- ious faith, full of confidence and anticipation : all of these seem to belong to this place, and to be present upon this occasion to fill us with reverence and admira- tion. , . .
The morning that beamed on the first night of their repose saw the Pilgrims already at home in their coun- try. There were political institutions, and civil liberty, and religious worship. Poetry has fancied nothing in the wanderings of heroes so distinct and characteristic. Here was man, indeed, unprotected and unprovided for on the shore of a rude and fearful wilderness ; but it was politic, intelligent, and educated man. Everything
DANIEL WEBSTER 13$
was civilized but the physical world. Institutions, con- taining in substance all that ages had done for human governments, were organized in a forest. Cultivated Mind was to act on uncultivated Nature ; and, more than all, a government and a country were to com- mence, with the very first foundations laid under the divine light of the Christian religion. Happy aus- pices of a happy futurity ! Who would wish that his country's existence had otherwise begun ? Who would desire the power of going back to the age of fable ? Who would wish for an origin obscured in the darkness of antiquity ? Who would wish for other emblazoning of his country's heraldry, or other ornaments of her genealogy, than to be able to say that her first exist- ence was with intelligence, her first breath the inspira- tion of liberty, her first principle the truth of divine religion ? . : .
We would leave for the consideration of those who shall occupy our places some proof that we hold the blessings transmitted from our fathers in just estima- tion ; some proof of our attachment to the cause of good government, and that of civil and religious lib- erty ; some proof of a sincere and ardent desire to pro- mote everything which may enlarge the understandings and improve the hearts of men. And when from the long distance of a hundred years they shall look back upon us, they shall know at least that we are possessed of affections which, running backward and warming with gratitude for what our ancestors have done for our happiness, run forward also to our posterity, and meet them with cordial salutation, ere yet they have arrived on the shore of being.
Advance, then, ye future generations ! We would hail you as you rise, in your long succession, to fill the places which we now fill, and to taste the blessings of existence where we are passing, and soon shall have passed, our own human duration. We bid you welcome to this pleasant land of the Fathers. We bid you wel- come to the healthful skies and verdant fields of New England. We greet your accession to the great inherit- ance which we have enjoyed. We welcome you to the blessings of good government and religious liberty.
ijo DANIEL WEBSTER
We welcome you to the treasures of science and the de- lights of learning. We welcome you to the transcen- dent sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred, and parents, and children. We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of rational existence, and the immortal hope of Christianity, and the light of ever- lasting truth. — Discourse at Plymouth, December 22, 1820.
REPLY TO MR. HAYNE*S STRICTURES ON NEW ENGLAND. THE GAGE ACCEPTED.
It was put as a question for me to answer, and so put as if it were difficult for me to answer, whether I deemed the member from Missouri an overmatch for myself in debate here. It seems to me, sir, that this is extraor- dinary language, and an extraordinary tone, for the discussions of this body.
Matches and overmatches ! Those terms are more applicable elsewhere than here, and fitter for other as- semblies than this. Sir, the gentleman seems to forget where and what we are. This is a Senate, a Senate of equals, of men of individual honor and personal charac- ter, and of absolute independence. We know no mas- ters, we acknowledge no dictators. This is a hall for mutual consultation and discussion ; not an arena for the exhibition of champions. I offer myself, sir, as a match for no man ; I throw the challenge of debate at no man's feet. But then, sir, since the honorable mem- ber has put the question in a manner that calls for an answer, I will give him an answer ; and I tell him, that, holding myself to be the humblest of the members here, I yet know nothing in the arm of his friend from Mis- souri, either alone or when aided by the arm of his friend from South Carolina, that need deter even me from espousing whatever opinions I may choose to es- pouse, from debating whenever I may choose to debate, or from speaking whatever I may see fit to say, on the floor of the Senate. Sir, when uttered as matter of commendation or compliment/ 1 should dissent from nothing which the honorable member might say of his friend. Still less do I put forth any pretensions of my own. But when put to me as a matter of taunt, I throw
DANIEL WEBSTER 131
it back, and say to the gentleman that he could possi- bly say nothing less likely than such a comparison to wound my pride of personal character. The anger of its tone rescued the remark from intentional irony, which otherwise, probably, would have been its general acceptation. But, sir, if it be imagined that by this mutual quotation of commendation ; if it be supposed that, by casting the characters of the drama, assigning to each his part, to one the attack, to another the cry of onset ; or if it be thought that, by a loud and empty vaunt of anticipated victory, any laurels are to be won here ; if it be imagined, especially, that any, or all these things, will shake any purpose of mine, I can tell the honorable member, once for all, that he is greatly mis- taken, and that he is dealing with one of whose temper and character he has yet much to learn. Sir, I shall not allow myself, on this occasion, I hope on no occa- sion, to be betrayed into any loss of temper ; but if provoked, as I trust I never shall be, into crimination and recrimination, the honorable member may perhaps find that, in that contest, there will be blows to take as well as blows to give ; that others can state compari- sons as significant, at least, as his own, and that his im- punity may possibly demand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may possess.
I commend him to a prudent husbandry of his re- sources. . . . — From the Second Speech on Foot's Reso- lution^ United States Senate, January 26, 1830.
THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT : ITS ORIGIN, AND THE SOURCE OF ITS POWER.
What the gentleman contends for is that it is con- stitutional to interrupt the administration itself, in the hands of those who are chosen and sworn to administer it, by the direct interference, in the form of law, of the States, in virtue of their sovereign capacity. The in- herent right of the People to reform their Government I do not deny ; and they have another right, and that is, to resist unconstitutional laws without overturning the Qovernment. It is no doctrine of mine that unconstitu* VOL. XXIV.-*
IS» DANIEL WEBSTER
tional laws bind the People. The great question is, Whose prerogative is it to decide on the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the laws? On this the main debate hinges. The proposition that, in case of a sup- posed violation of the Constitution by Congress, the States have a constitutional right to interfere and annul the law of Congress, is the proposition of the gentle- man. I do not admit it.
If the gentleman had intended no more than to as- sert the right of revolution for justifiable cause, he would have said only what all agree to. But I cannot conceive that there can be a middle course between submission to the laws, when regularly pronounced con- stitutional, on the one hand, and open resistance — which is revolution or rebellion — on the other. I say the right of a State to annul a law of Congress cannot be maintained but on the ground of the unalienable right of man to resist oppression : that is to say, upon the ground of revolution. I admit that there is an ulti- mate violent remedy, above the Constitution, and in de- fiance of the Constitution, which may be resorted to when a revolution is to be justified. I do not admit that, under the Constitution, and in conformity with it, there is any mode in which a State Government, as a member of the Union, can interfere and stop the progress of the General Government, by force of her own laws, under any circumstances whatever.
This leads us to inquire into the origin of this Govern- ment and the source of its power. Whose agent is it ? Is it the creature of the State Legislatures, or the creat- ure of the People ? If the Government of the United States be the agent of the State Governments, then they may control it — provided they can agree upon the manner of controlling it. If it is the agent of the Peo- ple, then the People can control it, restrain it, modify, or reform it. It is observable enough that the doctrine for which the honorable gentleman contends leads him to the necessity of maintaining not only that this General Government is the creature of the States, but that it is the creature of each of the States severally ; so that each may assert the power for itself of determining wnether it acts within the limits of its authority. It
DANIEL WEBSTER TSJ
is the servant of four-and-twenty masters, of different wills and different purposes ; and yet bound to obey all.
This absurdity (for it seems no less) arises from a misconception of the origin of this Government, and its true character. It is the People's Constitution, the People's Government, made for the People, made by the People, and answerable to the People. The Peo- ple of the United States have declared that this Consti- tution shall be the supreme law. We must either admit this proposition, or dispute their authority. The States are undoubtedly sovereign, so far as their sovereignty is not affected by this supreme law. The State Legis- latures, as political bodies — however sovereign — are yet not sovereign over the People. So far as the People have given power to the General Government, so far the grant is unquestionably good ; and the Government holds of the People, and not of the State Governments. We are all agents of the same supreme power — the Peo- ple. The General Government and the State Govern- ments derive their authority from the same source. Neither can, in relation to the other, be called primary ; though one is definite and restricted, and the other general and residuary.
The National Government possesses those powers which it can be shown the People have conferred upon it — and no more. All the rest belong to the State Governments, or to the People themselves. So far as the People have restrained State sovereignty by the ex- pression of their will in the Constitution of the United States, so far, it must be admitted, State sovereignty is effectively controlled. I do not contend that it is, or ought to be, controlled further. The sentiment to which I have referred propounds that State sovereignty is only to be controlled by its own " feeling of justice." That is to say, it is not to be controlled at all ; for one who is to follow his feelings is under no legal control.
Now — however we may think this ought to be — the fact is that the People of the United States have chosen to impose control on State sovereignties. The Consti- tution has ordered the matter differently, from what this opinion announces. To make war, for instance, is an exercise of sovereignty ; but the Constitution declares
134 DANIEL WEBSTER
that no State shall make war. To coin money is an- other exercise of sovereign power ; but no State is at liberty to coin money. Again : the Constitution says that no State shall be so sovereign as to make a treaty. These prohibitions, it must be confessed, are a control on the State sovereignty of South Carolina, as well as the other States, which does not arise " from her own feelings of honorable justice." Such an opinion, there- fore, is in defiance of the plainest provisions of the Constitution. . . .
The People have wisely provided, in the Constitution itself, a proper, suitable mode and tribunal for settling questions of constitutional law. There are in the Con- stitution grants of powers to Congress, and restrictions on those powers. There are also prohibitions on the States. Some authority must therefore necessarily ex- ist, having the ultimate jurisdiction to fix and ascertain the interpretation of these grants, restrictions, and pro- hibitions. The Constitution itself has pointed out, or- dained, and established that authority. How has it accomplished this great and essential end ? By declar- ing that " The Constitution, and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
This was the first great step. By this the supremacy of the Constitution and laws of the United States is declared. The People so will it. No State law is to be valid which comes in conflict with the Constitution or any law of" the United States. But who shall decide this question of interference ? To whom lies the last appeal ? This the Constitution itself decides also, by declaring that " The judicial power shall extend to all questions arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States."
These two provisions cover the whole ground. They are, in truth, the key-stone of the arch. With these it is a Constitution ; without them it is a Confederacy. In pursuance of these clear and express provisions, Congress established at its very first session, in the Ju- dicial Act, a mode for carrying them into full effect, and for bringing all questions of constitutional power to the
DANIEL WEBSTER 135
final decision of the Supreme Court. It then became a Government. It then had the means of self-protection ; and but for this, it would, in all probability, have been now among the things which are now past. Having constituted the Government, and declared its powers, the People have further said that, since somebody must decide on the extent of these powers, the Government itself must decide — subject always — like other popular governments — to its responsibility to the People.
And now, I repeat, how is it that a State Legislature acquires any right to interfere ! Who, or what, gives them the right to say to the People, " We, who are your agents and servants for one purpose, will undertake to decide that your other agents and servants, appointed by you for another purpose, have transcended the au- thority you gave them ?" The reply would be, I think, not impertinent, " Who made you a judge over another's servants ? To their own masters they stand or fall." I deny this power of State Legislatures altogether. It cannot stand the test of examination.
Gentlemen may say that, in an extreme case, a State Government might protect the people from intolerable oppression. In such a case People might protect them- selves without the aid of the State Governments. Such a case warrants revolution. It must make — when it comes — a law for itself. A Nullifying Act of a State Legislature cannot alter the case, nor make resistance any more lawful. In maintaining these sentiments, I am but asserting the rights of the People. I state what they have declared, and insist on their right to declare it. They have chosen to repose this power in the Gen- eral Government ; and I think it my duty to support it, like other constitutional powers. — From a Speech in the United States Senate, January 27, 1830, in reply to Mr. Hayne.
IMAGINARY SPEECH OF JOHN ADAMS.
It was for Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like these. We know his opinions, and we know his charac- ter. 'He would commence, with his accustomed direct- ness and earnestness :
I36 DANIEL WEBSTER
" Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at independence. But there's a Divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms ; and, blinded to her own interest for our good, she has obsti- nately persisted till independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why, then, should we defer the Declaration ? Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England which shall leave either safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own life and his own honor ? Are not you, sir, who sit in that chair ; is not he, our venerable colleague, near you ; are you not both already the proscribed objects of punishment and of vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal clemency, what are you, what can you be, while the power of England remains, but outlaws? If we postpone inde- pendence, do we mean to carry on, or to give up, the war? Do we mean to submit to the measures of Parlia- ment, Boston Port bill, and all ? Do we mean to sub- mit, and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to powder, and our country and its rights trodden down in the dust ? I know we do not mean to submit. We never shall submit. Do we intend to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by men, that plight- ing, before God, of our sacred honor to Washington, when, putting him forth to incur the dangers of war, as well as the political hazards of the times, we promised to adhere to him, in every extremity, with our fortunes and our lives? I know there is not a man here who would not rather see a general conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than one jot or tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground. For myself, hav- ing, twelve months ago, in this place, moved you that George Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised, or to be raised, for defence of American liberty, may my right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support I give him.
"The war, then, must go on. We must fight it through. And if the war must go on, why put off
DANIEL WEBSTER
137
longer the Declaration of Independence? That meas- ure will strengthen us. It will give us character abroad. The nations will then treat with us, which they never can do while we acknowledge ourselves subjects in arms against our sovereign. Nay, I maintain that England herself will sooner treat for peace with us on the foot- ing of independence than consent, by repealing her acts, to acknowledge that her whole conduct toward us has been a course of injustice and oppression. Her pride will be less wounded by submitting to that course of things which now predestinates our independence than by yielding the points in controversy to her re- bellious subjects. The former she would regard as the result of fortune ; the latter she would feel as her own deep disgrace. Why, then, why then, sir, do we not as soon as possible change this from a civil to a national war ? And since we must fight it through, why not put ourselves in a state to enjoy all the benefits of victory ? " If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail. The cause will raise up armies; the cause will create navies. The people, the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, and will carry themselves, gloriously, through this struggle. I care not how fickle other people have been found. I know the people of these Colonies, and I know that resistance to British ag- gression is deep and settled in their hearts and cannot be eradicated. Every Colony, indeed, has expressed its willingness to follow, if we but take the lead. Sir, the Declaration will inspire the people with increased cour- age. Instead of a long and blood;* ""»r f~tr the restora- tion of privileges, for redress of griev^Aces, for char- tered immunities, held under a British king, set before them the glorious object of entire independence, and it will breathe into them anew the breath of life. Read this Declaration at the head of the army ; every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered to maintain it, or to perish on the bed of honor. Pub- lish it from the pulpit ; religion will approve it, and the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to stand with it or fall with it. Send it to the public halls ; proclaim it there ; let them hear it who heard the first roar of the enemy's cannon ; let them see it who saw
138 DANIEL WEBSTEK
their brothers and their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support.
" Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I see, I see clearly, through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to the time when this Declaration shall be made good. We may die — die colonists ; die slaves ; die, it may be, igno- miniously, and on the scaffold. Be it so. Be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall re- quire the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready, at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free country.
" But whatever may be our fate, be assured, be as- sured that this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood ; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present I see the brightness of the future, as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires, and illumi- nations. On its annual return they will shed tears, copi- ous, gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude, and of joy. Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that ' have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it ; and I leave off as I begun, that, live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living senti- ment, and, by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment — Independence NOW, and INDEPENDENCE FOR- EVER."— From a Discourse on the Lives and Services of Adams and Jefferson.
THE SHAFT AT BUNKER HILL.
We know, indeed, that the record of illustrious actions is most safely deposited in the universal remembrance
DANIEL WEBSTER 139
of mankind. We know that if we could cause this structure to ascend, not only till it reached the skies, ,but, till it pierced them, its broad surfaces could still contain but part of that which, in an age of knowledge, hath already been spread over the earth, and which his- tory charges itself with making known to all future times. We know that no inscription or entablatures less broad than the earth itself can carry information of the events we commemorate where it has not already gone ; and that no structure which shall not outlive the letters and duration among men can prolong the memorial. But our object is, by this edifice, to show our own deep sense of the value and importance of the achievements of our ancestors ; and, by presenting this work of gratitude to the eye, to keep alive similar sen- timents, and to foster a constant regard for the princi- ples of the Revolution. Human beings are composed, not of reason only, but of imagination also, and senti- ment ; and that is neither wasted nor misapplied which is appropriated to the purpose of giving right direction to sentiments, and opening proper springs of feeling in the heart. Let it not be supposed that our object is to perpetuate national hostility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit. It is higher, purer, nobler. We conse- crate our work to the spirit of national independence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest upon it forever. We rear a memorial of our conviction of that unmeasured benefit which has been conferred on our own land, and of the happy influences which have been produced, by the same events, on the general interests of mankind. We come, as Americans, to mark a spot which must forever be dear to us and our posterity. We wish that whosoever, in all coming time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not undistin- guished where the first great battle of the Revolution was fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from maternal lips, and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the recollections which it suggests. We wish that labor may look up here, and be proud, in the midst of
140 DANIEL WEBSTER
its toil. We wish that, in those days of disaster which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to come upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be assured that the foundations of our national powers are still strong. We wish that this column, rising toward heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of depen- dence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last ob- ject to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be some- thing which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise ! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming ; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit. — Address at the Laying of the Corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument, June //, 1825.
APOSTROPHE TO THE VETERANS OF 1775-
Venerable men ! you have come down to us from a former generation Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered ! The same heavens are indeed over your heads ; the same ocean rolls at your feet ; but all else, how changed ! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying ; the impetuous charge ; the steady and successful repulse ; the loud call to re- peated assault ; the summoning of all that is manly to repeated resistance ; a thousand bosoms freely and fear- lessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death — all these you have witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have
DANIEL WEBSTER 141
presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country's own means of distinction and defence. All is peace ; and God has granted you the sight of your country's happiness ere you slumber in the grave. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the reward of your patriotic toils ; and he has allowed us, your sons and country- men, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you !
But, alas ! you are not all here ! Time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge ! our eyes seek for you in vain amid this broken band. You are gathered to your fathers, and live only to your country in her grateful remembrance and your own bright example. But let us not too much grieve that you have met the common fate of men. You lived at least long enough to know that your work had been nobly and success- fully accomplished. You lived to see your country's independence established, and to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of Liberty you saw arise the light of Peace, like
" another morn, Risen on mid-noon ; "
and the sky on which you closed your eyes was cloud- less.— From the Bunker Hill Speech.
MURDER WILL OUT.
The deed was executed with a degree of self-posses, sion and steadiness equal to the wickedness with which it was planned. The circumstances now clearly in evi- dence spread out the whole scene before us. Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all be- neath his roof. A healthful old man, to whom sleep was sweet, the first sound slumbers of the night held
142
DANIEL WEBSTER
him in their soft but strong embrace. The assassin enters, through the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half-lighted by the moon ; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this, he moves the lock, by soft and con- tinued pressure, till it turns on its hinges without noise ; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him. The room is uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the innocent sleeper is turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, show him where to strike. The fatal blow is given ! and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death ! It is the assassin's pur- pose to make sure work ; and he plies the dagger, though it is obvious that life has been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and re- places it again over the wounds of the poniard ! To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse ! He feels for it, and ascertains that it beats no longer. It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder. No eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe !
Ah ! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which pierces through all disguises, and beholds every- thing as in the splendor of noon, such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men. True it is, generally speaking, that "murder will out." True it is that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of Heaven by shedding man's blood seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later.
A thousand eyes turn at cnce to explore- every man,
DANIEL WEBSTER 143
every thing, every circumstance, connected with the time and place ; a thousand ears catch every whisper ; a thousand minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circum- stance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself ; or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty posses- sion, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhab- itant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth.
The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him ; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstances to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed ; there is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession. — Argument on the Trial of F. J. Knapp for the Murder of Joseph White.
HAMILTON, THE FINANCIER.
He was made Secretary of the Treasury ; and how he fulfilled the duties of such a place at such a time the whole country perceived with delight and the whole world saw with admiration. He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of the Pub- lic Credit, and it sprang upon its feet. The fabled birth of Minerva, from the brain of Jove, was hardly more sudden or more perfect than the financial system
144 DANIEL WEBSTER
of the United States as it burst forth from the concep- tion of Alexander Hamilton. — From a Speech Delivered at a Public Dinner in New York, March 10, 1831.
THE MEMORY OF THE HEART.
If stores of dry and learned lore we gain,
We keep them in the memory of the brain ;
Names, things, and facts — whate'er we knowledge
call- There is the common ledger for them all ; And images on this cold surface traced Make slight impression, and are soon effaced. But we've a page, more glowing and more bright, On which our friendship and our love to write ; That these may never from the soul depart, We trust them to the memory of the heart. There is no dimming, no effacement there ; Each new pulsation keeps the record clear ; Warm, golden letters all the tablet fill, Nor lose their lustre till the heart stands still.
WEBSTER, JOHN, an English dramatist, born, probably, in 1582; died in 1638. Little is known concerning his life. He wrote in collaboration with Ford and Dekker between 1601 and 1624. His individual plays are the Duchess of Malfi ; Guise, or the Massacre of France ; The Devil's Law- Case ; Appius and Virginia, and The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona, The first of these was pro- duced in 1612, the last in 1623. Webster has been called the " dramatist of terror and of pity." Hazlitt calls him " the noble-minded." His plays were first published collectively by Dyce in 1830.
" Webster possessed very considerable powers," says Hallam, " and ought to be ranked, I think, the next below Ford. With less of poetic grace than Shirley, he had incomparably more vigor ; with less of nature and simplicity than Heywood, he had a more elevated genius and a bolder pencil. But the deep sorrows and terrors of tragedy were peculiarly his provinces. Webster is not without comic wit, as well as power of imagination. ''
" In his pictures of wretchedness and despair," says Dr. Drake, " he has introduced touches of ex- pression which curdle the very blood with terror and make the hair stand erect. Of this, the death of the Duchess of Malfi, with all its preparatory sorrows, is a most distinguishing proof. The fifth act of his Vittoria Corombona shows also with (US)
I46 JOHN WEBSTER
what occasional skill he could imbibe the imagi- nation of Shakespeare, particularly where its feat- ures seem to breathe a more than earthly wildness." " His terrible and funereal Muse was Death," says Professor Shaw ; " his wild imagination rev- elled in images and sentiments which breathe, as it were, the odor of the charnel : his plays are full of pictures recalling with fantastic variety all as- sociations of the weakness and futility of human hopes and interests, and dark questionings of our future destinies. His literary physiognomy has something of that dark, bitter, and woful expres- sion which makes us thrill in the portraits of Dante. In the majority of his subjects he worked by preference on themes which offered a congenial field for his portraiture of the darker passions and of the moral tortures of their victims. In select- ing such revolting themes as abounded in the black annals of mediaeval Italy, Webster followed the peculiar bent of his great and morbid genius ; in the treatment of these subjects we find a strange mixture of the horrible with the pathetic. In his language there is an extraordinary union of com- plexity and simplicity ; he loves to draw his il- lustrations not only from ' skulls, and graves, and epitaphs,' but also from the most attractive and picturesque objects in nature, and his occasional intermingling of the deepest and most innocent emotion and of the most exquisite touches of nat- ural beauty produces the effect of the daisy spring- ing up amidst the festering mould of a graveyard. Like many of his contemporaries, he knew the secret of expressing the highest passion through
JOHN1 WEBSTER 147
the most familiar images ; and the dirges and fu- neral songs which he has frequently introduced into his pieces possess, as Charles Lamb eloquent- ly expresses it, that intensity of feeling which seems to resolve itself into the very elements they contemplate."
LAMENTATION FOR MARCELLO.
Francisco de Medicis. — I met even now with the most piteous sight.
Flamineo. — Thou meet'st another here, a pitiful, de- graded courier.
Fran, de Med. — Your reverend mother Is grown a very old woman in two hours. I found them winding of Marcello's corse ; And there is such a solemn melody, 'Tween doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies — Such as old grandams watching by the dead Were wont to outwear the nights with — that, believe me, I had no eyes to guide me forth the room, They were so o'ercharged with water.
Flam. — I will see them.
Fran, de Med. — 'Twere much uncharity in you ; for
your sight Will add unto their tears.
Flam. — I will see them, They are behind the traverse ; I'll discover Their superstitious howling. \Drawsthecurtain.
CORNELIA, ZANCHE, and three other Ladies discovered winding MARCELLO'S corse.
Cornelia. — This rosemary is withered ; pray get fresh, I would have these herbs grow up in his grave, When I am dead and rotten. Reach the bays, I'll tie a garland here about his head ; 'Twill keep my boy from lightning. This sheet I have kept this twenty year, and every day Hallowed it with my prayers : I did not think He should have wore it. VOL. XXIV.— 10 .
I48 JOHN WEBSTER
Zanche. — Look you who are yonder.
Cor. — Oh, reach me the flowers.
Zanche. — Her ladyship's foolish.
Lady. — Alas, her grief Hath turned her child again !
Cor. — You're very welcome ; There's rosemary for you, and rue for you ;
\To FLAMINEO.
Heart's-ease for you ; I pray make much of it : I have left more for myself.
Fran, de Med. — Lady, who's this?
Cor. — You are, I take it, the grave-maker.
Flam. — So.
Zanche. — Tis Flamineo.
Cor. — Will you make me such a fool ? Here's a whiw
hand;
Can blood so soon be washed out ? Let me see ; When screech-owls croak upon the chimney-tops, And the strange cricket i' the oven sings and hops, When yellow spots upon your hands appear, Be certain then you of a corse shall hear. Out upon 't, how 'tis speckled ! 't has handled a toac
sure,
Cowslip-water is good for the memory : Pray, buy me three ounces of 't.
Flam. — I would I were from hence.
Cor. — Do you hear, sir ?
I'll give you a saying which my grandmother Was wont, when she heard the bell toll, to sing o'er Unto her lute.
Flam. — Do, an you will, do.
Cor. — "Call for the robin redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men. Call unto his funeral dole The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole, To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm, And (when gay tombs are robbed) sustain no harm : But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men, For with his nails he'll dig them up again." They would not bury him 'cause he died in a quarrel ;
JOHN WEBSTER
149
But I have an answer for them :
" Let holy Church receive him duly,
Since he paid the Church tithes truly."
His wealth is summed, and this is all his store,
This poor men get, and great men get no more.
Now the wares are gone, we may shut up shop.
Bless you all, good people.
\Exeunt CORNELIA, ZANCHE, and Ladies. Flam. — I have a strange thing in me, to the which I cannot give a name, without it be Compassion. I pray, leave me.
— The White Devil.
INTEGRITY.
These wretched eminent things Leave no more fame behind 'em than should one Fall in a frost, and leave his print in snow ; As soon as the sun shines, it ever melts Both form and matter. I have ever thought Nature doth nothing so great for great men As when she's pleased to make them lords of truth : Integrity of life is fame's best friend, Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end.
— The Duchess of Malfi
WEBSTER, NOAH, an American lexicographer and philologist, born at West Hartford, Conn., October 16, 1758; died at New Haven, May 28, 1843. He was graduated at Yale in 1778 ; taught a school at Hartford, at the same time studying law, and was admitted to the bar in 1781. He did not, however, enter upon practice, but became prin- cipal of an academy at Goshen, N. Y., where he prepared his Spelling-Book, which appeared in 1783, and was followed by a Grammar (1785) and a Read- ing-Book (1787). In 1789 he took up his residence in Stratford, Conn., where he practised law until 1793. He then removed to New York, where he established the Minerva, a daily newspaper de- voted to the support of Washington's administra- tion. In 1798 he removed to New Haven, where, in 1806, he published a compendious Dictionary of the English Language and set about the prepa- ration of his great American Dictionary of the English Language. This work occupied him fully twenty years, during half of which he resided at Amherst, Mass., his income being wholly derived from the sale of his Spelling-Book, of which numer- ~-us editions were published. The dictionary was mblished in England in 1828, in two octavo vol- umes. Among his other notable works are a de- fensive History of the Hartford Convention and a Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral Subjects (1843).
NOAff WEBSTER 151
THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF HUMAN LANGUAGE.
If we admit — what is the literal and ^vious interpre- tation of the Scriptural narrative — that ocal sounds or words were used in the communication, between God and the progenitors of the human race, i results that Adam was not only endowed with intelle*. . for under- standing his Maker, or the signification 01 words, but was furnished both with the faculty of speech and with speech itself, or the knowledge and use of words as signs of ideas, and this before the formation of the woman. Hence we may infer that language was conferred upon Adam, in the same manner as all his other faculties and knowledge, by supernatural power ; or, in other words, was of divine origin. For supposing Adam to have had all the intellectual powers of any adult individual of the species who has ever lived, we cannot admit as probable, or even possible, that he should have invented even a barren language, as soon as he was created, without supernatural aid.
It may indeed be doubted whether without such aid men would ever have learned the use of the organs of speech so far as to form a language. At any rate the invention of words and the construction of a language must have been a slow process, and must have required a much longer time than that which passed between the creation of Adam and of Eve. It is therefore probable that language, as well as the faculty of speech, was the immediate gift of God. We are not, however, to sup- pose the language of our first parents in paradise to have been copious, like most modern languages ; or the iden- tical language they used to be now in existence. Many of the primitive radical words may, and probably do, exist in various languages ; but observation teaches that languages must improve and undergo great changes as knowledge increases, and be subject to continual al- terations from other causes incident to men in society. — Preface to Dictionary.
WOMAN'S EDUCATION IN THE LAST CENTURY.
In all the nations a good education is that which ren- ders the ladies correct in their manners, respectable in
*52 NOAH WEBSTER
their families, and agreeable in society. That educa tion is always wrong which raises a woman above the duties of her station.
In America, female education should have for its ob- ject what is useful. Young ladies should be taught to speak and read their own language with purity and ele- gance ; an article in which they are often deficient. The French language is not necessary for ladies. In some cases it is convenient, but in general it may be considered as an article of luxury. As an accomplish- ment, it may be studied by those whose attention is not employed about more important concerns.
Some knowledge of arithmetic is necessary for every lady. Geography should never be neglected. Belles- lettres learning seems to correspond with the disposi- tions of most females. A taste for poetry and fine writing should be cultivated ; for we expect the most delicate sentiments from the pens of that sex which is possessed of the finest feelings.
A course of reading can hardly be prescribed for all ladies. But it should be remarked that this sex can- not be too well acquainted with the writers upon human life and manners. The Spectator should fill the first place in every lady's library. Other volumes of peri- odical papers, though inferior to The Spectator, should be read ; and some of the best histories.
With respect to novels, so much admired by the young, and so generally condemned by the old, what shall I say ? Perhaps it may be said with truth that some of them are useful, many of them pernicious, and most of them trifling. A hundred volumes of modern novels may be read without acquiring a new idea. Some of them contain entertaining stories, and where the descriptions are drawn from nature, and irom characters and events in themselves innocent, the peru- sal of them may be harmless.
Where novels are written with a view to exhibit only one side of human nature, to paint the social viitues, the world would condemn them as defective : but I should think them more perfect. Young people, espe- cially females, should not see the vicious part of mankind. At best, novels may be considered as the toys of youth ;
NOAH WEBSTER I53
the rattle-boxes of sixteen. The mechai ic gets his pence for his toys, and the novel-writer for his books, and it would be happy for society if the latter were in ail cases as innocent playthings as the former.
In the large towns in America, music, drawing, and dancing constitute a part of female education. They, however, hold a subordinate rank ; for my fair friends will pardon me when I declare that no man ever mar- ries a woman for her performance on a harpsichord, or her figure in a minuet. However ambitious a woman may be to command admiration abroad, her real merit is known only at home. Admiration is useless when it is not supported by domestic worth. But real honor and permanent esteem are always secured by those who preside over their own families with dignity. Nothing can be more fatal to domestic happiness in America than a taste for copying the luxurious manners and amusements of England and France. Dancing, drawing, and m isic are principal articles of education in those kingdoms, therefore every girl in America must pass two or three years at a boarding-school, though her father cannot give her a farthing when she marries. This ambition to educate females above their fortunes pervades every part of America. Hence the dispropor- tion between the well-bred females and males in our large towns. A mechanic or shopkeeper in town, or a farmer in the country, whose sons get their living by their father's employments, will send their daughters to a boarding-school, where their ideas are elevated, and their views carried above a connection with men in those occupations. Such an education, without fortune or beauty, may possibly please a girl of fifteen but must prove her greatest misfortune. This fatal mistake is illustrated in every large town in America. In the country, the number of males and females is nearly equal ; but in towns, the number of genteelly bred women is greater than of men ; and in some towns the proportion is as three to one.
The heads of young people of both sexes are often turned by reading descriptions of splendid living, of coaches, of plays, and other amusements. Such de- scriptions «xcite & d«*ire to enjoy the same pleasures.
T54 NOAH WEBSTER
A fortune becomes the principal object of pursuit ; fortunes are scarce in America, and not easily acquired ; disappointment succeeds, and the youth who begins life with expecting to enjoy a coach, closes the prospect with a small living, procured by labor and economy.
Thus a wrong education, a taste for pleasures which our fortunes will not enable us to enjoy, often plunge the Americans into distress, or at least prevent early marriages. Too fond of show, of dress and expense, the sexes wish to please each other ; they mistake the means, and both are disappointed. — Essays and Writings.
ENGLISH CORRUPTION OF THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE.
Our language was spoken in purity about eighty years ago ; since which time, great numbers of faults have crept into practice about the theatre and court of Lon- don. An affected, erroneous pronuncia aon has in many instances taken the place of the true ; and new words or modes of speech have succeeded the ancient correct English phrases.
Thus we have in the modern English pronunciation their natshures, conjunctshures, constitshutions, and tshumultshuous legislatshures ; and a catalogue of fash- ionable improprieties. These are a direct violation of the rules of analogy and harmony ; they offend the ear, and embarrass the language. Time was when these errors were unknown ; they were little known in Amer- ica before the Revolution. I presume we may safely say that our language has suffered more injurious changes in America since the British army landed on our shores than it had suffered before in the period of three centuries. The bucks and bloods tell us that there is no proper standard in language ; that it is all arbitrary. The assertion, however, serves but to show their ignorance. There are, in the language itself, de- cisive reasons for preferring one pronunciation to another ; and men of science should be acquainted with these reasons. But if there were none, and everything rested on practice, we should never change a general practice without substantial reasons : no change should be introduced which is not an obvious improvement.
NOAH WEBSTER
155
But our leading characters seem to pay no regard to idles, or their former practice. To know and embrace every change made in Great Britain, whether right or wrong, is the extent of their inquiries and the height of their ambition. It is to this deference we may ascribe the long catalogue of errors in pronunciation and of false idioms which disfigure the language of our mighty fine speakers. And should this imitation continue, we shall be hurried down the stream of corruption, with older nations, and our language, with theirs, be lost in an ocean of perpetual changes. The only hope we can entertain is that America, driven by the shock of a revolution from the rapidity of the current, may glide along near the margin with a gentler stream, and some- times be wafted back by an eddy. — Essays and Writings.
WELHAVEN, JOHAN SEBASTIAN CAMMER- MEYER, a Norwegian poet and critic, born at Bergen, December 20, 1807; died at Christiania, October 21, 1873. He was contemporary with Henrik Wergeland, a student at Christiania Uni- versity, and a member of " studentersamfundet " with him. Wergeland had already a considerable reputation as a poet, and was very influential in the society, where his radical views were generally adopted. Welhaven first attracted attention as a clever and powerful opponent of Wergeland and his views, first within the society, and later out- side of it. His first published work was entitled Wergeland1 s Poetry and Polemics, and, being a de- fence of the " official " or aristocratic class which was still dominant, it gave the author much pres- tige. He improved the opportunity to make a reputation by opposing Wergeland, and withdrew from " studentersamfundet," founding an oppo- sition society under the name of " studenterbun- det," to which all the opponents of Wergeland among the students were attracted. From that day until the untimely death of Wergeland at the age of thirty-eight, Welhaven's chief distinction was that of an adversary of Wergeland. He be- came the editor of a literary journal called Vidar, and also in 1832 published a volume of sonnets, entitled Norges Daemring, which in the bitterest
JOHAN SEBASTIAN CAMMERMEYER WELHAVEN
manner assailed what he called the crime against culture of the " studentersamfundet" and its leader. The book was so witty and satirical that, although it aroused a very storm of protests, it established the author's repute as a poet. In 1835 and 1836 he spent much time in Denmark, France, and Germany, during which time he wrote many short lyric poems, no longer wholly of a controversial character. In 1839 these appeared in his first volume of collected poems. In 1840 he was given the chair of philosophy in the Uni- versity of Christiania, and from that time through- out practically the whole of his long life he was a professor in that seat of learning. He occupied at various times the chairs of philosophy, literary history, archaeology, and aesthetics. He published many critical essays and wa's a frequent contrib- utor of verse to the literary periodicals. Another and completer collection of his verses appeared in 1867.
After the death of Wergeland in 1845, naturally the virulence of the attacks upon him moderated. The disagreement between the two however was not personal at bottom, but one necessarily aris- ing from radical differences of temperament and political belief. In political matters, Wergeland was a radical democrat and a strong advocate of everything Norwegian, as distinguished both from Danish and Swedish. Welhaven, on the other hand, espoused the cause of the official class, which was Danish in tradition, and, being aristo- cratic in tendency, was now strongly favorable to the absolute sway of the Swedish-Norwegian King.
JOHAN SEBASTIAN CAMMERMEYER WELHAVEN
In literary matters, the contrast was scarcely less complete. The Danish and Norwegian roots being closely similar, the people of Norway had during the occupation used the Danish written language, but in ordinary matters their own spoken language. Danish was the language of literature, and Danish precedents and traditions governed what was good taste, both in the man- ner and matter of literary productions. One of Wergeland's contentions was for a genuinely Norse literature, a movement which had been inaugu- rated by Wessel, though living and writing in Denmark. This movement was destined to pro- duce the great Norwegian poets of this genera- tion, among whom are numbered Ibsen and Bjornson. But in that day, although warmly supported by many of the younger men, it was distasteful in the extreme to all the conservatives. Though he died before it came, the victory was with Wergeland. ' Liberal and even demo- cratic ideas got the upper hand in Norway, and. in literature the Norwegian people achieved a thoroughly independent life. Now, except by the few ultra-conservatives, Welhaven is admired only for his poetic abilities, and his controversial liter- ature, whether in prose or verse, is neglected.
The style of Welhaven partakes of the usual imperfections of professional literary critics. It betrays the self-consciousness of the artist who thought rather more of how he was to say a thing than of what he should say. His long al- legiance to essentially foreign ideas and traditions did not improve this. As a poet he is not ranked
JO HAN SEBASTIAN CAMMERMEYER WELHAVEN
so high as his life-long adversary and rival, Wergeland.
Nothing of Welhaven's has been translated into English, so far as we can ascertain ; therefore we have had two of his shorter poems translated by Miles Menander Dawson especially for this woik. These two poems illustrate both that bitter satire which first earned him a reputation and that vein of pure poetry which alone secures that repu- tation which will not entirely fade. The first of these, being on the same subject, may be con- trasted with Burns's Tree of Liberty.
1848.
That lofty tree of liberty
Which all the world is dancing round, Whose paper leaves no shelter give,
And whose false fruit is empty found ; It is the same old pole,
With tinsel and with garlands hung, About which once before men thronged
And in a short-lived revel swung.
It has no root, it bears no bud,
Although in fertile soil it stands ; 'Tis hewed and planed to measure and
Stuck in the ground by human hands. The signs of life upon it that
Forecast of summer and adorn it Are paper leaves or evergreen,
Withered since the pine has worn it.
And, when I note the confidence
That this tree is the real palm That shall be like a temple-vault
O'er a contented people's calm,
fOHAN SEBASTIAN CAMMERMEYER WELHAVEN
Then do I test my sight again, But find no reason, on the whole,
To change my first conclusion that The tree is only a May-pole.
From the world's ancient Ygdrasil
Shall many a pole be hewed, I fear, Before, with glory and acclaim,
The golden era shall be here. For Adam's sons there must be made
Another earth and heaven first ; Then will that palm tower to the sky
And then be slaked man's freedom-thirst
A MEMORY.
I sat, a light tune humming,
Within a chimney-nook, And was content and happy,
A-reading in my book.
Then to me rushed the mem'ries Of childhood's joys and woes :
Many that lay forgotten, From their dim shores arose.
My father in the garden
Sat, watching my glad game ; Bearing a man to burial,
With chant and bell, men came.
Two children sorely weeping
Beside the bier walked on ; One sobbed as if his heart would break,
The other was so wan.
And then my father took me
Into his arms and said : " Give thanks to God, my daning,
Your father is not dead."
Then sank into my spirit
A vision of such dread That down my cheeks a river
Of shining tear-drops sped. i6f
JOHAN SEBASTIAN CAMMERMEYER WELHAVMN
There wept I long, embracing
My father, then I knelt A.nd prayed for the poor children,
Their loss as mine I felt.
Far from that garden am I ;
Its green leaves it has lost ; And, oh, so far, too, from the grare
That holds my father's dust.
This winter evening, silent,
I sit in chimney-nook And read ; but tears unbidden
Are falling on my book
WELLS, DAVID AMES, an American political economist, born at Springfield, Mass., June i/th, 1828; died at Norwich, Conn., November 5th, 1898. He was graduated at Williams College and then engaged in scientific studies at Harvard under Agassiz. From 1850 to 1860 he edited a number of compiled works on the natural sciences, and in 1864 issued a political tract entitled OUT Burden and Our Strength, which had an enormous circulation. He held several public offices from 1866 to 1873. He was at first a protectionist, but later became a free-trader and wrote numerous books and pamphlets advocating free trade. Be- sides his reports as Government and State Com- missioner there have appeared The Creed of the Free-Trader (1875) ; Why We Trade, and How We Trade (1878) ; Our Merchant Marine (1882) ; Practical Economics (1885), and Relation of the Tariff to Wages (1888).
" Mr. Wells would have us believe," says Mayo W. Hazeltine, in his reply to Mr. Wells regarding American feeling toward Great Britain, " that the minority of which he is the spokesman is what Matthew Arnold used to call ' the saving remnant,' meaning by the phrase a body of men, numerically weak, but strong in intellect and virtue, who may be relied upon eventually to clarify and elevate the whole community. We have seldom seen a
more extraordinary perversion of recent history
(162)
DAVID AMES WELLS 163
than is presented in Mr. Wells's account of Great Britain's relations with the Transvaal. Assuming that through British Guiana's absorption of the whole of Venezuela our commodities would be ad- mitted duty free to that vast region, are we on that account to justify the extinction of a Latin Ameri- can nationality ? In a word, if the remarkable opin- ions propounded by Mr. Wells last April are pushed to their logical conclusions, we should ar- rive at the assertion that a free-trade country can do no wrong, while, on the other hand, protec- tionist countries have no rights that anybody need respect."
THE OLD AND THE NEW IDEAS IN TAXATION.
The first attempt made to tax money at interest was instigated against money-lenders because they were Jews ; but the Jew was sufficiently shrewd to charge the full tax over to the Christian borrower, including a per- centage for annoyance and risk ; and now most Chris- tian countries, as the result of early experience, compel or permit the Jew to enter the money-market, and submit, without let or hindrance, his transactions to the " high- er law " of trade and political economy. But a class yet exist who would persecute a Jew if he is a money- lender, and they regret that the good old times of roasting him have passed away. They take delight in applying against him, in taxation, rules of evidence ad- missible in no court since witches have ceased to be tried and condemned. They sigh at the suggestion that all inquisitions shall be abolished ; they consider oaths, the rack, the iron boot, and the thumb-screw as the visible manifestations of equality. They would tax primarily everything to the lowest atom ; first, for na- tional purposes, and then for State and local purposes, through separate boards of assessors. They would re- quire every other man to be an assessor or collector ; and it is not probable that the work could then be ac- VOL. XXIV.— «
164 DAVID AMES WELLS
complished with accuracy. The average consumption of every inhabitant of this State (New York), annually, is at least, $200, or in the aggregate, $800,000,000 ; and this immense amount would fail to be taxed if the as- sessment was made at the end of the year, and not daily, as fast as consumption followed production. All this complicated machinery of infinitesimal taxation and mediaeval inquisition is to be brought into requisi- tion for the purpose of taxing " money property," which is nothing but a myth. The money-lender parts with his property to the borrower, who puts it in the form of new buildings, or other improvements, upon which he pays a tax. Is not one assessment on the same prop- erty sufficient ? But if you insist upon another assess- ment on the money-lender, it requires no prophetic power to predict that he will add the tax in his transac- tions with the borrower. If a tax of ten per cent, were levied and enforced on every bill of goods, or note given for goods, the tax would be added to the price of the goods ; and how would this form of tax be different from the tax on the goods ?
" Money property," except in coin, is imaginary, and cannot exist. There are rights to property, of great value. The right to inherit property is valuable ; and a mortgage on land is a certificate of right or interest in the property, but it is not the property. Land under lease is as much " money property " as a mortgage on the same land ; both will yield an income of money. Labor will command money, and is a valuable power to acquire property, but is not property. If we could make property by making debts it cannot be doubted that a national debt would be a national blessing. At- tacking the bugbear of "money property " is an assault on all property ; for " money property " is the mere representative of property. If we tax the representa- tive, the- tax must fall upon the thing represented.
A traveller in the Okefinokee Swamp slaps the mos- quitoes off his right cheek only to find that they imme- diately alight upon his left cheek ; and that when he has driven them from thence, they return and alight on his nose ; and that all the time he loses blood as a genuine primary or secondary tax-payer. And so it is with tax-
DAVID AMES WELLS T65
ation. If we live in any country not wholly barbarous, we cannot escape it ; and it is the fate of man to bear his proportion of its burdens in proportion to his ex- pense, property, and consumption. The main question of interest and importance in connection with the sub- ject, therefore, is, Shall we have an economical system (and hence a species of labor-saving machine), and a uniform and honest system ; or one that is expensive and encourages dishonesty, and is arbitrary and inquisi- torial ? In either case the tax-collector will act the part of the mosquito, and will get blood from all ; but in an honest and economical system he will get no un- necessary blood. — Report of Commissioners to Revise the Laws for Assessment and Collection of Taxes in the State. of New York) 1872.
WELLS, H. G., an English novelist, born at Bromley in 1866. After a course at the Royal College of Science, wherein he received high hon- ors, he became a school-master. Then he entered journalism, his brilliant articles attracting the at- tention of W. E. Henley. Persuaded to turn his talents to fiction, he produced in 1895 The Time Machine, which achieved a great success for him. The same year appeared The Stolen Bacillus and The Wonderful Visit. In 1896 appeared The Island of Doctor Moreau, and The Wheels of Chance, a cy- cling romance. In 1897 appeared The Invisible Man, The Plattncr Story, and the work which has attracted a greater attention than any of his other productions, The War of the Worlds.
" Mr. Wells has a remarkable faculty of in- vention," says the Illustrated London News, " and a still more remarkable gift of persuasion. You may read stories quite as original as The Invisible Man, but when the excitement of the narrative is over the glamor vanishes, and common-sense re- sumes its sway. Mr. Wells's peculiarity is that he not only claims your attention when you are actu- ally reading him, but exercises the same fascina- tion over your subsequent reflections."
" Not for a long time," says The Bookman, re. viewing The Wheels of Chance, " have we run across a more striking instance of fresh and spon-
(166)
ff. G. WELLS 167
taneous humor. The characters, though extreme- ly amusing, are not exaggerated by caricature, and the result is a collection of personages so de- lightfully and convincingly human as to be al- most too unorthodox for a book — on the same principle as that which prompts artists to conven- tionalize what they see about them, for fear that their pictures will be regarded as untrue tc nature."
The idea of the time-machine is that a man in- vented a machine by which he could travel back, ward and forward in time, and describes what he sees and hears when he projects himself several millions of years into the future, and marks the fate of our planet in its last day. At the time of his first trip mankind had developed backward on two lines — the well-to-do and aristocratic section becoming weak, helpless, amiable, and refined creatures, who lived in the light of day on flowers and fruits, while the working-class, relegated to underground caverns, had grown into loathsome vampire fiends, who at nightfall came to the sur- face of the earth and killed the delicate, civilized race that lived in the sunlight, and carried them below to stock their larder. On his second trip he projects himself many more millions of years ahead. All trace of civilization has disappeared, and the world is given over, so far as he can see, to degenerate men and monstrous insects.
THE MAN OF THE FUTURE.
I became aware of a number of faint-gray things, colored to almost the exact tint of the frost-bitten soil, which were browsing here and there upon its scanty
168 ff. G. WELLS
grass, and running to and fro. I saw one jump with a sudden start, and then my eye detected perhaps a score of them. At first I thought they were rabbits or some small breed of kangaroo. Then, as one came hopping near me, I perceived that it belonged to neither of these groups. It was plantigrade, its hind legs rather the longer ; it was tailless, and covered with a straight grayish hair that thickened about the head into a Skye terrier's mane.
Seizing a stone I knocked one of them on the head, and on taking it up was horrified on discovering that it was indeed a degenerate and miniature man. The thing had five feeble digits to both its fore and hind feet — the fore feet, indeed, were also as human as the fore feet of a frog. It had, moreover, a roundish head, with a projecting forehead and forward-looking eyes, obscured by its lank hair.
When studying the miserable little object I heard a sound as of the clanging of armor, and looking round I saw a monster approaching which filled me with horror, and no wonder. I can only describe it by com- paring it to a centipede. It stood about three feet high and had a long segmented body, perhaps thirty feet long, with curiously overlapping greenish-black plates. It seemed to crawl upon a multitude of feet, looping its body as it advanced. It had a blunt, round head, with a polygonal arrangement of black eye-spots.
All the decadent men fled like rabbits. I also fled on my machine, and when I returned there was not even a trace of the bones of the miserable man, whom the colossal centipede had devoured.
Evidently the physiological difficulty that at present keeps all the insects small had been surmounted at last, and this division of the animal kingdom had arrived at the long-awaited supremacy which its enormous energy and vitality deserve. — From The Time Machine.
After this he comes upon no more traces of hu- manity in the world. His machine carries him forward some more millions of years, and then he alights again.
H. G. WELLS 169
A LAND OF ENDLESS DAY.
The sun had ceased to set — it simply rose and fell in the West, and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had given place to creeping points of light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction, At one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen red-heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal-drag was done. The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth.
I found myself on the shore of a slumbering sea, the rocks overgrown with dark-green, lichenous vegetation, and the shore alive with monster crabs, one of which made a vicious attack upon me. Forward again for another vast space, and I once more find myself on the shore of the silent sea, but all the crabs have disappeared, and the sun, which glows continuously, its great red dome shutting out half the western sky, is temporarily eclipsed. [This is his last picture of the end of the world.]
The darkness grew apace ; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent ? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives — all that was over. As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant, dancing before my eyes, and the cold of the air more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping toward
170
H. G. WELLS
me. In another moment the pale stars alone were vis- ible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was ab- solutely black.
A horror of the great darkness came on me. The cold that smote to my marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I shivered and a deadly nau- sea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky ap- peared the edge, of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood, sick and confused, I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal — there was no mistake now that it was a moving thing — against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football, perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it ; it seemed black against the wel- tering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I was fainting. — From The Time Machine.
WERGELAND, HENRIK ARNOLD, a celebrated Norwegian poet, born at Christiansand, June 17, 1808; died at Christiania, July 12, 1845. He evinced genius as a child, and was the author of verses and caricatures even as a school-boy. In 1821, when but thirteen years of age, his first work, a story entitled Blodstenen (The Bloodstone), was printed in Morgenbladet, the leading daily paper of Chris- tiania. In 1825, at the age of seventeen, he was admitted to Christiania University, and during his student years produced a number of small dramas and farces, the first of which especially attracted attention. At this period he wrote under a pseu- donym. He became a radical democrat, and a yet more radical advocate of all that was distinctively Norse as against Danish. Not long before, Nor- way had emerged from the dominion of Denmark, to become associated with Sweden under one crown but as an independent state. The national feeling ran high, but was met and partially re- pressed by the official class, which had so long looked to Denmark for all authority that its tradi- tional influence was yet most powerful in all that related to art, literature, and culture. Wergeland plunged into all the issues that arose, taking ever the side of the distinctively Norwegian, and of the masses against the classes. He produced a great epic poem, entitled Creation, Humanity, and the
172 HENRIK ARNOLD WERGELAND
Messiah, which appeared in 1830. The publication of this aroused the public criticism of Welhaven, who was from that day forth destined to be his most important opponent and rival. Up to this time, although drifting in opposite directions, these two men were members of the " studentersamfun- det " together, and their battles were fought out there. Welhaven now withdrew and assumed the leadership of the aristocratic opposition, organiz- ing another club among the students, known as the " studenterbundet." Wergeland was not deterred by opposition, and became more and more the champion of the weak against the strong, and of the peasantry against the official class. He was so active and enthusiastic that he was involved in several long and expensive law- suits. He spent the summer of 1831 in Paris, and in 1833, having completed his studies as a theo- logical student, applied for an appointment as a priest, but his foes were influential enough to pre- vent his being called to any parish. Thereupon he took up the study of medicine. This he forsook when the post of amanuensis for the university library was tendered him. In 1839, as a result of his growing repute, he was granted a pension by the King. He published a newspaper, entitled For A rbeidsclassen (For the Working-Class).
His pen was never idle ; dramas, lyric poems, epic poems, polemics, and a volume on The Consti- tutional History of Norway followed one another in rapid succession. He was for a time also the editor of Statsborgeren, the chief journal of the lib- eral opposition. One cause wnich he took up and
HENRIK ARNOLD WERGELAND 173
carried to success would have rendered his name memorable, even though he had done no more. He opened the doors of Norway to the Jews. The Norwegians had more than snared the ordinary Christian prejudice against the despised race; they had excelled all others, not even excepting the Spaniards. The prohibition against the residence of Jews in Norway was absolute. Wergeland be- came impressed with the injustice and inhumanity of such a prohibition, and he attacked the law by every possible means. Some of his greatest poems dealt with the Jews, and were evidently intended to influence the people of Norway to remove their offensive statutes. As a token of their gratitude and honor, the Jews of Europe have built a monu- ment to him over his grave. There is also a statue to his memory in Kragerat, his birthplace ; it was unveiled May 17, 1881.
The poetry of Wergeland excels in eloquence. He was the forerunner of Bjornson especially, but of all subsequent Norwegian literature in fact. He it was who first made the people of Norway feel that they could have and ought to have a distinc- tive literature. The Pro-Norsk movement, of which he was the champion, is essentially the same movement which, not many years after his death, Bjornstjerne Bjornson and Henrik Ibsen took up and carried to victory. He sought to rescue the Norwegian stage from the prevailing Danish in- fluence, and to create a taste on the part of the Norwegian people for literature in the language which they really spoke, and dealing with things which really belonged to the life about them. The
174 HENRIK ARNOLD WERGELAND
Danish and Norwegian languages are so nearly alike in their roots that it had been possible for the people to speak one tongue and read another, and even the common people spoke of the Danish as " real Norsk." The Danish was the official lan- guage of the courts and of the church, and there- fore it was also the shibboleth of the cultured and the aristocratic, there being no titular nobility in Norway.
Inasmuch as Norway has in the latter half of the nineteenth century contributed two of the great- est poets of the age, and inasmuch as the trend of the Norwegian Government has been continually toward liberty and democracy, it follows that Wergeland was a true poet. He was at once a prophet of the day to be and a real maker of that day.
His chief fame rests now upon his accomplish- ments in active life, such as his crusade in favor of the Jews, and upon his lyric verses. His dramas have not outlived his own day as acting plays, and his epic poems are only read by the cultured few of his own countrymen ; but many of his lyrics are part of the common heritage of every Norwegian child. The eloquence of his style made him un- usually effective as a writer of descriptive and in- terpretative poetry about the scenery of his na- tive land, and the beautiful things of nature. He has been called the " Byron of Norway," a com- mon enough appellation for poets of his day ; one received the name in nearly every country. But in the one faculty of remarkable eloquence, almost oratorical rather than poetic*,! merely, he ap-
HENRTK ARNOLD WERGELAND 175
proaches the author of Childe Harold very closely. His work was so thoroughly national that little of his verse has been translated. The age for literary work which, while national in spirit, should be world-wide in theme, had not yet arrived in Nor- way. It was reserved for the next generation. We have had translated especially for this work by the Scandinavian scholar and poet, Miles Me- nander Dawson, the following selections from Wergeland's lyric poems :
SOGNE-FJORD.
He has been of death the guest, He has sailed on waves of thunder And all terrors has dipped under, Who has ploughed the seas asunder
Inland unto Sogne-faest.
Hast forgotten — every word —
The Lord's Prayer ? Then in God's anger Learn it and — not said with languor ! Think thyself lost in the clangor
Of the storm on Sogne-fjord.
Sogne-fjord's the ocean's son.
Cain-like, he is inland driven
By his father, unforgiven.
Gloomed by mountains, high as heaven, Of your prayers he harks to none.
But your voice in prayer to raise
Better he than priests can teach you ; Make your inmost heart beseech, you Recollect the pleading speech you
Learned to use in childhood's days.
Sogne-fjord its billows holds
To their path, used to commanding,
176 HEKRIK ARNOLD WERGELAND
And all mortal's prayers withstanding ; Even his own storms remanding Like a sword 'neath garment's folds.
Doth he still more blackness crave
From th' o'ershadowing cliff's dominions ? Shoots he forth then the black pinions Of the sea-gull from the minions
Hovering o'er his jagged wave.
As if chased by ravens then,
Where the fjord in black cloud closes, Does it speed and there reposes, Sates its thirst for blackness, dozes
Till 'tis time to come again.
Then one hour of peace is reckoned, Peace which ends when the gulls scurry Back once more. Then if one hurry, He that hour may o'er it ferry,
But — the fjord sleeps not a second.
Without respite or delay
Hastes he to his sire once more, To the ocean who before Drave his son thus far ashore,
Wroth at his demoniac play.
Thus to endless hurry doomed, Forth and back in wild commotion He between the cliff and ocean Is perpetually in motion
Till time's portion is consumed.
TO MY WALLFLOWER.
My wallflower, ere thy bloom shall fade, I shall be that of which all is made, Yea, ere thou losest thy crown of gold, I shall be mould.
When I shall call : "Put the window up," I shall gaze last on thy golden cup.
HENR7K ARNOLD WERGELAND
My soul shall kiss thee as hence it flies To freer skies.
Thy fragrant petals I twice shall kiss, Thine own and only the first one is : The second, give it — forget not, dear— My rose-bush here.
The roses blooming I shall not see. So give my message when that shall be, And say I wish that above my tomb My rose would bloom.
Ay, say I wish that the rose might be Laid on my breast which you kiss for me. Its nuptial torch in death's house that hour Be thou, wallflower !
'77
WERNER, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG ZACHARIAS, a German dramatic poet, born at Konigsberg, November 18, 1768; died at Vienna, January 17, 1823. Friedrich held civil office in several places, travelled, became a Roman Catholic priest in 1811, and was a popular preacher at Vienna. Much impressed by the death of his mother and of a friend, both on February 24th, he wrote a tragic piece with that date as title, and this led to a series of fatalistic tragedies, written by him and others, termed Destiny Dramas. Some of his weird dramas relate to mystical societies and the initia- tion of candidates into spiritual arcana.
" Werner," says Longfellow, " was a poet of a rich and fertile, though eccentric genius. He was particularly distinguished as the author of some of the most remarkable of the German Destiny Dramas." "The highest summit of this poetry was reached by Werner," says Menzel, " who strove to elevate it to tragical dignity. Werner endeavored to bring about this eleva- tion and improvement by converting the magical powers, or mystical societies, upon whom the guidance and probation of the uninitiated should be dependent, into God's delegates, and brought the whole subject of the marvellous under the religious ideas of Providence and predestination. This man oossessed the firs of poetry, and still
FR1EDRICH LUDWIG Z AC H ARIAS WERNER r?g
more of passion, but, perhaps, too dry a brain — for who can deny that his brain was a little scorched ? "
STORY OF THE FALLEN MASTER.
So now, when the foundation-stone was laid, The Lord called forth the Master, Baffometus, And said to him, " Go and complete thy temple ! " But in his heart the Master thought : " What boots it Building Thee a temple ? " and took the stones, And built himself a dwelling ; and what stones Were left he gave for filthy gold and silver. Now after forty moons the Lord returned, And spake : " Where is thy temple, Baffometus ? " The Master said : " I had to build myself A dwelling ; grant me other forty weeks." And after forty weeks, the Lord returns, And asks : " Where is thy temple, Baffometus ? " He said : " There were no stones" (but he had sold them For filthy gold) ; " so wait yet forty days." In forty days thereafter came the Lord, And cried : "Where is thy temple, Baffometus?" Then like a millstone fell it on his soul, How he for lucre had betrayed his Lord ; But yet to other sin the fiend did tempt him, And he answered, saying, " Give me forty hours ! " And when the forty hours were gone, the Lord Came down in wrath : " My temple, Baffometus ?" Then fell he, quaking, on his face, and cried For mercy ; but the Lord was wroth, and said : " Since thou hast cozened me with empty lies, And those the stones I lent thee for My temple Hast sold them for a purse of filthy gold, Lo ! I will cast thee forth, and with the mammon Will chastise thee, until a Saviour rise Of thy own seed, who shall redeem thy trespass." Then did the Lord lift up the purse of gold ; And shook the gold into a melting-pot, And set the melting-pot upon the sun, So that the metal fused into a fluid mass. VOL. XXIV.— 12
l8o FRIEDRICH LUDW1G ZACHARIAS WERNER
And then He dipped a finger in the same,
And, straightway, touching Baffometus,
Anoints him on the chin and brow and cheeks.
Then was the face of Baffometus changed :
His eyeballs rolled like fire-flames ;
His nose became a crooked vulture's bill ;
The tongue hung bloody from his throat ; the flesh
Went from his hollow cheeks ; and of his hair
Grew snakes, and of the snakes grew Devils' horns.
Again the Lord put forth His finger with the gold,
And pressed it upon Baffometus' heart ;
Whereby the heart did bleed and wither up,
And all his members bled and withered up,
And fell away, the one and then the other.
At last his back itself sunk into ashes :
The head alone continued gilt and living ;
And instead of back, grew dragons' talons,
Which destroyed all life from off the earth.
Then from the ground the Lord took up the heart,
Which, as He touched it, also grew of gold,
And placed it on the brow of Baffometus ;
And of the other metal in the pot
He made for him a burning crown of gold,
And crushed it on his serpent-hair, so that
E'en to the bone and brain the circlet scorched him ;
And round the neck he twisted golden chains,
Which strangled him and pressed his breath together.
What in the pot remained He poured upon the ground,
Athwart, along, and there it formed a cross ;
The which He lifted and laid upon his neck,
And bent him that he could not raise his head.
Two Deaths, moreover, He appointed warders
To guard him : Death of Life and Death of Hope.
The sword of the first he sees not, but it smites him ;
The other's palm he sees, but it escapes him.
So languishes the outcast Baffometus
Four thousand years and four and forty moons,
Till once a Saviour rise from his own seed,
Redeem his trespass, and deliver him.
This is the story of the Fallen Master.
— The Templars in Cyprus.
Copyright, 1895, by HUNT & EATON, New York.
WESLEY, CHARLES, an English clergyman and hymnologist, born at Epworth, Lincolnshire, De- cember 28, 1708; died in London, March 29, 1788. He was a younger brother of John Wesley, with whom he studied at Christ Church, Oxford, and with whom he went to Georgia in 1735, returning with him to England after about two years. He was an earnest colaborer with John Wesley in the so-called " Methodist " movement, was an elo- quent preacher, and a voluminous writer on theo- logical topics. Charles Wesley is distinctively known as the hymnist of the Methodists, and many of his hymns rank among the best in our language. From his mother he inherited a high musical genius, which he transmitted to his own children, two of whom — Samuel and Charles — became emi- nent composers.
ETERNAL BEAM OF LIGHT DIVINE.
Eternal beam of light divine,
Fountain of unexhausted love, In whom the Father's glories shine
Through earth beneath, and heaven above- Jesus, the weary wanderer's rest,
Give me Thy easy yoke to bear ; With steadfast patience arm my breast,
With spotless love and lowly fear.
Be Thou, O Rock of Ages, nigh !
So shall each murmuring thought begone ; And grief, and fear, and care shall fly,
As clouds before the mid day gun.
j82 CHARLES WESLEY
Speak to my warring passions — " Peace ! " Say to my trembling heart — " Be still !"
Thy power my strength and fortress is, For all things serve Thy sovereign will.
O Death ! where is thy sting ? Where now Thy boasted victory, O Grave ?
Who shall contend with God ? or who Can hurt whom God delights to save ?
ON JORDAN S STORMY BANKS.
On Jordan's stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wishful eye To Canaan's fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie.
Oh, the transporting, rapturous scene
That rises to my sight ! Sweet fields arrayed in living green,
And rivers of delight.
There generous fruits, that never fail,
On trees immortal grow ; There rock, and hill, and brook, and vale
With milk and honey flow.
O'er all those wide-extended plains
Shines one eternal day ; There God the Son forever reigns,
And scatters night away.
No chilling winds, or poisonous breath, Can reach that healthful shore ;
Sickness and sorrow, pain and death, Are felt and feared no more.
When shall I reach that happy place,
And be forever blest ? When shall I see my Father's face,
And in His bosom rest ?
CHARLES WESLEY 183
Filled with delight, my raptured soul
Would here no longer stay : Though Jordan's waves around me roll,
Fearless I'd launch away.
JESUS, LOVER OF MY SOUL.
Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly, While the nearer waters roll,
While the tempest still is high! Hide me, O my Saviour, hide,
Till the storm of life is past ; Safe into the haven guide,
0 receive my soul at last !
Other refuge have I none ;
Hangs my helpless soul on Thee : Leave, oh, leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me : All my trust on Thee is stayed,
All my help from Thee I bring ; Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of Thy wing !
Thou, O Christ, art all I want ;
More than all in Thee I find ; Raise the fallen, cheer the faint,
Heal the sick, and lead the blind. Just and holy is Thy name,
1 am all unrighteousness : False and full of sin I am,
Thou art full of truth and grace.
Plenteous grace with Thee is found,
Grace to cover all my sin : Let the healing streams abound ;
Make and keep me pure within. Thou of life the fountain art,
Freely let me take of Thee : Spring Thou up within my heart,
Rise to all eternity.
WESLEY, JOHN, an English divine, founder of Methodism, born at Epworth, June 28, 1703 ; died in London, March 2, 1791. His father, Samuel Wesley (1662-1735), for forty years rector of Ep- worth, was the author of several works, among which are a Life of Christ and a ponderous folio in Latin, of Dissertations on the Book of Job. His mother, Susannah Wesley (1669-1742), a woman of much talent and devoted piety, had a strong influence in the development of her seventeen children, several of whom attained considerable eminence.
John Wesley, the fourth son, was placed, at the age of eleven, in the Charterhouse School at London. At sixteen he was elected to Christ Church College, Oxford, and at twenty-three was chosen a Fellow of Lincoln College, and soon afterward was made Master of Arts and Greek Lecturer and Moderator of the Classes. At this period he is described as " a superior clas- sical scholar, a thoughtful and polished writer, and a skilful logician." He was admitted to dea- con's orders in the Anglican Church in 1725, to priest's orders in 1728, and acted for some time as curate to his father, but was subsequently summoned back to his official duties at Oxford. While here, John Wesley, his brother Charles, and
Copyright, 1895. by HDNT & EATON, New York.
^
JOHN WESLEY 185
several other students formed themselves into a club, for religious study, the members of which were jeeringly styled " Methodists," on account of the strict mode of life which they adopted. This name has been adopted by the followers of Wes- ley in the United States, but in Great Britain they usually style themselves " Wesleyans." In 1735 he was invited by General Oglethorpe to go out with him as missionary chaplain to his colony of Georgia.
He remained here more than two years, when he returned to England. In London he fell in with Peter Bohlen, a Moravian preacher, from whose discourse he became convinced of the pos- sibility of a far higher state of religious life than he had ever known. Indeed, he considers himself to have been an " unconverted " man until May, 1748, when, listening to the reading of Luther's comments upon "justification by faith," he " felt his heart strangely warmed " by an altogether new religious feeling. He soon afterward visited Herrnhut, the chief seat of the Moravians, in Ger- many, and on his return began what was to be the work of his life. He did not propose to sepa- rate himself from the Anglican Church ; and never did formally leave it. He claimed it to be his right, and felt it to be his duty, to preach the Gospel whenever and wherever he could find an audience — out of doors or indoors — and that no incumbent or bishop had a right to inhibit his ministrations within their respective parishes or dioceses.
The Bishoo of Bristol having loftily announced
186 JOHN WESLEY
that Wesley had " no business to preach within his diocese," Wesley replied :
WESLEY, TO THE BISHOP OF BRISTOL.
My business on earth is to do what good I can ; wherever, therefore, I think I can do most good, there I must stay, so long as I think so. At present I think I can do most good here ; therefore here I stay. Being ordained a priest, by the authority I then received, I am a priest of the Church Universal ; and being or- dained Fellow of a College, I was not limited to any particular cure, but to have an indeterminate commis- sion to preach the Word of God in any part of the Church of England. I conceive not therefore that in preaching here by this commission I break any human law. When I am convinced I do, then it will be time to ask, Shall I obey God or man ? But should I be con- vinced in the meanwhile that I could advance the glory of God and the salvation of souls in another place more than in Bristol, in that hour, by God's help, I will go hence, which till then I may not do.
He was soon convinced upon this point. He had organized a church at Bristol as early as April, 1739. In July, 1740, he made a formal or- ganization in London, and began his work as a minister without the supervision of the bishops of the Established Church. He indeed considered himself, in virtue of his ordination, as much a bishop of the Church as any other man, with as much authority to confer ordination as any other bishop. This ministry of his continued for fully fifty years, during which he travelled about 4,500 miles every year, generally preached two, three, or even four times a day, supervised all the de- tails of his " bishopric," which comprehended all
JOHN WESLEY 187
the British Islands ; carried on an immense cor- respondence, and conducted a great publishing business, all the profits of which inured to his Society, which at his death numbered more than 120,000 enrolled members, besides which were at least four times as many regular attendants upon Wesleyan ministrations. He continued his active labors to the very close of his life ; his last ser- mon being delivered only eight days before his death, in his eighty-eighth year. He naturally extended his spiritual jurisdiction over the Brit- ish colonies. This supervision was continued after the colonies in America had achieved their independence; and in 1784 he proceeded to or- ganize the Methodists in the United States into a separate Episcopal body, for whose use he com- piled a liturgy, and ordained Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury as missionary bishops.
To Asbury, who had been for several years laboring in America, and to Coke, who was just to embark thither, Wesley addressed a formal statement of the reasons which had induced him to take this step.
WESLEY, TO THE METHODIST BISHOPS.
Lord King's Account of the Primitive Church con- vinced me many years ago that Bishops and Presbyters are the same Order, and consequently have the same right to ordain. For many years I have been impor- tuned from time to time to exercise this right by or- daining a part of our travelling preachers. But I have still refused ; not only for peace's sake, but because I was determined as little as possible to violate the es- tablished order of the national Church to which I be- long.
188 JOHN WESLEY
But the case is widely different between England and North America. Here there are Bishops who have a legal jurisdiction. In North America are none, neither any parish minister ; so that for hundreds of miles to- gether there is none either to baptize or administer the Lord's Supper. Here, therefore, my scruples are at an end ; and I conceive myself at full liberty, as I violate no order, and invade no man's rights, by appointing and sending laborers into the harvest. . . .
If anyone will point out a more rational and script- ural way of feeding and guiding these poor sheep in the wilderness, I will gladly embrace it. At present I cannot see any better method than that I have taken.
It has been indeed proposed to invite the English Bishops to ordain part of our preachers for America. But to this I object : (i) I desired the Bishop of London to ordain one, but could not prevail. (2) If they con- sented, we know the slowness of their proceedings ; but the matter admits of no delay. (3) If they would ordain them now, they would likewise expect to govern them. And how grievously would this entangle us ! (4) As our American brethren are now totally disen- tangled both from the State and from the English hier- archy, we dare not entangle them again either with the one or the other. They are now at full liberty to fol- low the Scriptures and the Primitive Church. And we judge it best that they should stand fast in that liberty wherewith God hath so strangely made them free.
Viewed in the light of its results, this act of Wesley, performed at the age of fourscore, was the most important of his life. From it resulted the form taken by the Methodist Church in Am- erica, which differs materially from that estab- lished by him in Great Britain, and has far out- stripped it in numbers and efficiency.
Wesley discouraged the marriage of his preach- ers; but at the age of fifty -four he himself was married to Mrs. Vazeille, the widow of a wealthy
JOHN WESLEY 189
London merchant. The connection proved a most uncongenial one, and in a few years a formal sep- aration took place. She survived this separation for twenty years ; he for thirty. The Life of Wes- /<?7has been well written by Robert Southey (1820), and in very minute detail by the Rev. Luke Tyer- man (1857). The works of Wesley are very nu- merous. They embrace sermons, essays, transla- tions, and abridgments, many of them designed for text-books in the schools of his societies. He also wrote many hymns, in part free translations from German hymnists. In theology he belonged to the Arminian as distinguished from the Cal- vinistic school. Of his dogmatic productions the most notable is his sermon on " Free Grace," from the text Romans viii. 32. Several of Wesley's as- sociates, notably Whitefield, were extreme Calvin- ists, and to him the sermon was addressed upon its publication. At the close Wesley thus sums up his arraignment of the Calvinistic doctrine of Predestination:
THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION.
Though you use softer words than some, you mean the selfsame thing : and God's decree concerning the Election of Grace, according to your account of it, amounts to neither more nor less than what others call " God's Decree of Reprobation." Call it therefore by what name you please — Election, Pretermission, Predes- tination, or Reprobation — it comes in the end to the same thing. The sense of all is plainly this : By virtue of an eternal, unchangeable, irresistible decree of God, one part of mankind are infallibly saved, and the rest in- fallibly damned ; it being impossible that any of the former should be damned, or that any of the latter should be saved.
190 JOHN WESLEY
This doctrine is full of blasphemy, for it represents our blessed Lord as a hypocrite and dissembler in say- ing one thing and meaning another ; in pretending a love which He has not. It also represents the most Holy God as more false, more cruel, and more unjust than the Devil : for in point of fact it says that God has condemned millions of souls to everlasting fire for con- tinuing in sin which, for want of grace He gives them not, they are unable to avoid. . . .
This is the blasphemy clearly contained in the horrible decree of Predestination. And here I fix my foot. On this I join issue with every asserter of it. You repre- sent God as worse than the Devil. But you say you will prove it by Scripture. Hold ! What will you prove by Scripture ? That God is worse than the Devil ? It cannot be. Whatever the Scripture proves, it can never prove this. Whatever its true meaning may be, this cannot be its true meaning. Do you ask, "What is its true meaning, then ? " If I say, " I know not," you have gained nothing; for there are many Scriptures the true sense whereof neither you nor I shall know till death is swallowed up in victory.
DIVINE LOVE.
Thou hidden Love of God ! whose height, Whose depth unfathomed, no man knowi,
I see from far Thy beauteous light, Only I sigh for Thy repose.
My heart is pained, nor can it be
At rest till it finds rest in Thee.
Thy secret voice invites me still
The sweetness of Thy yoke to prove ;
And fain I would ; but though my will Seem fixed, yet wide my passions rove,
Yet hindrances strew all the way ;
I aim at Thee, yet from Thee stray.
'Tis mercy all, that Thou hast brought My mind to seek her peace in Thee !
Yet while I seek, but find Thee not, No peace my wandering soul shall see.
JOHN WESLEY 191
Oh, when shall all my wanderings end, And all my steps to Theeward tend ?
Is there a thing beneath the sun
That strives with Thee my heart to share ? Ah, tear it thence, and reign alone,
The Lord of every motion there ! Then shall my heart from earth be free, When it hath found repose in Thee.
Oh, hide this self from me, that I
No more — but Christ in me — may live!
My vile affections crucify,
Nor let one darling lust survive!
In all things nothing may I see,
Nothing desire or seek but Thee !
O Love ! Thy sovereign aid impart To save me from low-thoughted care ;
Chase this self-will through all my heart, Through all its latent mazes there ;
Make me Thy duteous child, that I
Ceaseless may " Abba, Father," cry.
Ah, no ! ne'er will I backward turn —
Thine, wholly Thine, alone I am ; Thrice happy he who views with scorn
Earth's toys, for Thee his constant flame. Oh, help, that I may never move From the blest footsteps of Thy love !
Each moment draw from earth away My heart, that lowly waits thy call ;
Speak to my inmost soul, and say, "I am thy Love, thy God, thy All!"
To feel Thy power, to hear Thy voice,
To taste Thy love, be all my choice.
— From the German of GERHARD TERSTEEGEN
WESSEL, JOHAN HERMANN, a Norwegian poet, born near Christiania, 1742; died in Copenhagen, December 29, 1785. He lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, throughout his literary life, Norway then being a province of Denmark. He was one of thirteen children. His father was a curate for an uncle, a priest at Westby, two Norwegian miles south of Christiania, on the fjord. On his uncle's death his father succeeded him as priest. Wessel was educated first at an academy at Chris- tiania, and then at the University of Copenhagen. He was very apt, but of weak physique, indo- lent, irregular in his habits, and improvident to the last degree. He was a frequenter of public- houses and fond of jovial company. His first and greatest work was a satirical drama, entitled Kaer- ligheden uden Stromper (Love without Stockings). It was a satire upon the stilted, foreign tragedies of the time which dominated the Danish stage, to the exclusion of all native themes. The play was written within a period of six weeks, and was pub- lished in 1772 before being offered for stage pres- entation. It was at once popular, and about six months later, in March, 1773, it appeared upon the boards and was immediately successful. The great men of the day were delighted with it. Among others, the famous sculptor, Thorwaldsen, learned it by heart, and many years afterward could repeat, with apparent pleasure, the best
JOHAN HERMANN' IVESSEL 193
passages. Wessel's Norwegian biographer says of it : " Wessel won suddenly within a few months a reputation unparalleled in Danish literary history."
Although living and working in Denmark, Wessel was true to Norwegian traditions. The collective Scandinavian traditions and language as well had been preserved in greater purity in Norway than in either Denmark or Sweden, be- cause less exposed to foreign influences. Wessel was perhaps the most active founder in that day of what was to become the distinctive Norwegian literature. Thus, with talented associates, he or- ganized the Norwegian Society at Copenhagen, which, in opposition to the Danish Literary Soci- ety, stood for a literature which smacked of the genuine, unspoiled Scandinavian quality. In con- junction with other members of this society, Wes- sel wrote many occasional poems which added to his fame, but he was so careless concerning them that much rubbish was written and given out. He wrote a farce, Luck without Brains, which was unsuccessfully produced.
He underwent a long illness that completely undermined his strength, and became addicted to drinking to excess. For some time he was in ex- treme poverty. An appointment as official trans- lator for the theatre was secured for him, he hav- ing excelled in modern languages. On the hopes of income raised by this appointment, he married a portionless Norwegian lady of good family. The income turned out to be about $150 a year. His irregular and destructive habits continued after the marriage, th* issue of which was one
*94 JO HAN HERMANN W ESS EL
son. In 1784 he started a weekly paper in verse, which was at first popular and bade fair to be suc- cessful, but he put into it any nonsense that came into his head, and after fifty-four numbers it had to be abandoned. His last work was Anno 7603, a play in seven acts, which was a failure. After his death money was raised by subscription to support and educate his son.
His great satirical drama Kaerligheten uden Stromper turns upon the fancy which a young woman gets into her head that unless she weds that very day, she will never wed at all. The solution of her difficulties is complicated by the fact that the suitor whom she prefers is absent. The haste brings about many ridiculous situations. But the charm of the work lay mainly in the poet's ability to imitate the stilted language of the tragic stage. The play has not so much interest nowadays, the thing then satirized being com- paratively unfamiliar. Wessel's long popularity, which is exceptional, rests principally on his shorter poems ; because of which, as well as his dissipated life and unpolished language, he is called the Burns of Scandinavia, although he never reached the heights which the Scotch bard attained. His vein of humor, however, bears a marked resemblance to that of Burns. This ap- pears especially in poems in character and in epi- taphs. For instance, this, which was written as his own epitaph :
" He ate and drank, was happy never; He ran his boot-heels over ever.
JOHAN HERMANN WESSEL 195
He nothing worth the while could do : At last he gave up living, too."
No translations of his poems have been pub- lished in English, so far as can be ascertained. But many of his conceits have reached us in an adapted form. For instance, the apocryphal story about Lincoln which runs: Lincoln, in defending a man who had killed a dog with a pitchfork, was met with the argument that his client ought to have presented the butt of the handle instead of the tine ; to which Lincoln replied that so he would have done, if the dog had also presented that end. This is merely a version of Wessel's famous poem " Hundcmordet " (The Dog's Murder).
We have secured and here present to our read- ers a metrical translation into English by the Scandinavian scholar, Miles Menander Dawson, of Sweden and Bageren (The Blacksmith and Baker), which is considered one of Weasel's most characteristic poems :
THE BLACKSMITH AND THE BAKER.
A little country village a mighty blacksmith had, A dangerous curmudgeon whenever he got mad. He made an enemy (a thing not hard to do, Though I have none and you, Friend, have of course none, too). Unfortunately for them they Met in the public-house one day. They took a dram. (I, too, drink at the ina. And for no other purpose go therein. Observe, dear reader, this of me : I always do things openly.) As I remarked, they took a dram. Then they began to curse and damn : VoL.XXIV.-i3.
196 JO HAN HERMANN W ESS EL
The blacksmith smacked his foeman's noddle And knocked him flat — he could not toddle Nor ope his eyes again, Nor has he, friend, since then.
Straightway the blacksmith was arrested,
Locked up, arraigned, identified.
The coroner sat on him that died
And to his violent end attested.
The smith's sole outlook was to go
Where he might get forgiveness from his foe.
But hear my tale ! The day before
The sentence was to be pronounced,
Into the court came burghers four
And through their spokesman this announced
" We know, your honor, in all you do The city's welfare you have in mind. Therefore we now petition you Our blacksmith back to us to give. His death won't make the dead man live, And such a smith we'll never find. Too dear for his offence pay we If there's no way to get him free."
" Remember, friend, the good book says : •Life for life.'"
"Ay, sire, always. But we've a poor, old baker now Who's doomed to die soon anyhow. There's two of them — so one to spare. Take him ; thus life for life is had."
" Well, well ! " did the sage judge declare J " That last suggestion isn't bad. I will postpone the case ; in such Grave matters one must ponder much. Oh, that our blacksmith I could free ! Farewell I What can be done, I'll see."
"Farewell, your honor! "
JOHAN HERMANN WESSEL 19?
Assiduously
Through all the statutes searches he And finds there nothing to dispute A judge's power to substitute The baker for the blacksmith ; so His judgment on that fact he grounded, And thus this sentence wise propounded : (Attend all ye who wish to know!)
** Here, blacksmith Jens, before the bar The murderer who to his rest Sent Anders Pedersen, you are, Without excuse, and self-confessed. But we of blacksmiths have but one, And I would be out of my head To want to see that blacksmith hung While there are two men baking bread. Therefore do I pronounce this sentence : The oldest baker shall be sent hence ; His life shall forfeit to expiate The wrongful taking of another's, As well-deserving of that fate And as a warning unto others."
The baker wept most grievously That he must hang vicariously.
Moral.
Be ye ever prepared to die ; Death comes when least you think him nigh
WEYMAN, STANLEY J., an English novelist, born at Ludlow, Shropshire, in 1855. He was edu- cated at Shrewsbury and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1878 he was classical instructor in the King's School, Chester, read law, and was admitted to the bar in 1 88 1 , and practised until 1 890. His first writ- ings appeared in the Corn/nil Magazine in 1883. Among his principal works are : The House of the lV<}/f(iSgd) ; Francis Cludde(\%^\) ; The New Rector (1891); A Gentleman of France (1893) ; Under the Red Robe (1894) ; My Lady Rot ha (1894) ; The Red Cockade (1895) ; From the Memoirs of a Minister of France (1895).
" Mr. Stanley Weyman's stories are greedily and unthinkingly devoured," says the Bookman. "Any reader who stops to think must respect them. There is an evenness about the workmanship which can only be the result of great care. And though the average English sentiment on histori- cal matters is generally reflected — which adds, of course, to their chance of popularity — the charac- ters are never the puppets that the conventional adventure-story is content with. Mr. Weyman does not write of another age than his own to shelter his ignorance of human nature among the imposing circumstances of famous events. There is a group of characters here \The Red Cockade] that not only look well when seen in motion in a
STANLEY WEYMAN.
STANLEY J. WEYMAN 199
crowd, but are real and living, no matter how closely you examine them. The hero is no great hero, though he is brave enough. Circumstances are unkind ; and at different times, and always for good reasons, he dons the white, the tricolor, and the red cockades. But that he is driven to deal- ing with so many factions makes him, perhaps, all the better as the central personage of the story."
THE ROAD TO PARIS.
I remember hearing Marshal Bassompierre, who, of all men within my knowledge, had the widest experi- ence, say that not dangers, but discomforts, prove a man, and show what he is ; and that the worst sores in life are caused by crumpled rose-leaves and not by thorns.
I am inclined to agree with this. For I remember that when I came from my room on the morning after the arrest, and found hall and parlor and passage empty, and all the common rooms of the house deserted, and no meal laid, and when I divined anew from this dis- covery the feeling of the house toward me — however natural and to be expected — I felt as sharp a pang as when, the night before, I had had to face discovery and open rage and scorn. I stood in the silent, empty par- lor, and looked round me with. a sense of desolation ; of something lost and gone, which I could not replace. The morning was gray and cloudy, the air sharp ; a shower was falling. The rose-bushes at the window swayed in the wind, and where I could remember the hot sunshine lying on the floor and table, the rain beat in and stained the boards. The main door flapped and creaked to and fro. I thought of other days, and meals I had taken there, and of the scent of flowers, and I fled to the hall in despair.
But here, too, was no sign of life or company, no comfort, no attendance. The ashes of the logs, by whose blaze Mademoiselle had toid me the secret, lay on the hearth white and cold ; and now and then a drop
aoo
STANLEY J. WEYMAN
of moisture, sliding down the great chimney, pattered among them. The great door stood open as if the house had no longer anything to guard. The only liv- ing thing to be seen was a hound which roamed about restlessly, now gazing at the empty hearth, now lying do^n with pricked ears and watchful eyes. Some leaves which had been blown in rustled in a corner.
I went out moodily into the garden, and wandered down one path, and up another, looking at the dripping woods and remembering things, until I came to the stone seat. On it, against the wall, trickling with rain-drops, and with a dead leaf half filling its narrow neck, stood a pitcher of food. I though how much had happened since Mademoiselle took her hand .off it and the ser- geant's lanthorn disclosed it to me. And sighing grimly, I went in again through the parlor door.
A woman was on her knees, kindling the belated fire. I stood a moment, looking at her doubtfully, wondering how she would bear herself, and what she would say to me ; and then she turned and I cried out her name in horror, for it was Madame. — Under the Red Robe.
am
LAAAAAAAAAAAAAA4J
WHATELY, RICHARD, an English prelate and theologian, Archbishop of Dublin, born in Lon- don, February i, 1787 ; died in Dublin, October 8, 1863. He finished his studies at Oxford, and had a fellowship there, after which he was rector of Halesworth in Suffolk, principal of St. Albans Hall, Oxford, and, in 1830, professor of political economy. In 1831 he became Archbishop of Dublin. He did much to forward the cause of general education, and to promote liberal views in the English Church. Among his numerous works are : Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bona- parte (1819), a burlesque aimed at the " destructive school " of criticism ; Essays on the Peculiarities of the Christian Religion (1825) ; Elements of Logic (1826); Elements of Rhetoric (1828); Difficulties in the Writings of St. Paul (1828); Political Economy (1831); Introduction to the Study of St. Paul's Epistles (1849) ; English Synonyms (1851) ; Scripture Doctrine Concerning the Sacraments (1857) ; Lessons on Mind (1859) 5 Lessons on the British Constitution (1859); Lectures on the Parables (1860) ; Lectures on Prayer (i&6o); Rise, Progress, and Corruption of Christianity (1860) ; Miscellaneous Lectures and Re- views (1861) ; Remains (1864).
" Among the English prelates with whom I be- came acquainted," says Guizot, the French his- torian, " the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Whately,
(201)
ao2 RICHARD WHATELY
a correspondent of our Institute, both interested and surprised me. His mind appeared to me original and well cultivated ; startling and ingen- ious, rather than profound, in philosophic and social science ; a most excellent man ; thorough- ly disinterested, tolerant and liberal ; and in the midst of his unwearying activity and exhaustless flow of conversation, strangely absent, familiar, confused, eccentric, amiable, and engaging, no matter what impoliteness he might commit or what propriety he might forget."
" We venture to express our conviction," says Henry Rogers, "... that though this lucid and eloquent writer may, for obvious reasons, be most widely known by his Logic and Rhetoric ; the time will come when his theological works will be, if not more widely read, still more highly prized."
" Whately had a mind of great logical power, with little imagination or fancy," says Professor Shaw. " His clear, unanswerable arguments pro- duce conviction in his readers. He says of him- self that he was personally of no influence among men ; but he was able so conclusively to exhibit his processes of reasoning and arguments, that he produced a great impression upon the circles which they affected. His views of questions are often shallow, but always practical. His style is luminous, easy, and well adorned with every-day illustrations. A moralist of much higher tone than Paley — which fact arose from the general spirit of his time — he is the best representative of Paley in the present age. He is, as Paley was,
RICHARD WHAT ELY 203
clear rather than profound, vigorous rather than subtle; with little speculation he unites much practical sense."
LEARNED IGNORANCE.
Though Bacon dwelt on the importance of setting out from an accurate knowledge of facts, and on the absurdity of attempting to substitute the reasoning process for an investigation of nature, it would be a great mistake to imagine that he meant to disparage the reasoning process, or to substitute for skill and correctness in that a mere accumulated knowledge of a multitude of facts. And anyone would be far in- deed from being a follower of Bacon who should de- spise logical accuracy, and trust to what is often called experience ; meaning by that an extensive but crude and undigested observation. For, as books, though indispensably necessary for a student, are of no use to one who has not learned to read, though he distinctly sees black marks on white paper, so is all experience and acquaintance with facts unprofitable to one whose mind has not been trained to read rightly the volume of nature and of human transactions spread before him.
When complaints are made — often not altogether without reason — of the prevailing ignorance of facts on such and such subjects, it will often be found that the parties censured, though possessing less knowledge than is desirable, yet possess more than they know what to do with. Their deficiency in arranging and applying their knowledge, in combining facts, and cor- rectly deducing, and rightly employing, general princi- ples, will be perhaps greater than their ignorance of facts. Now, to attempt remedying this defect by im- parting to them additional knowledge — to confer the advantage of wider experience on those who have not skill in profiting by experience — is to attempt enlarging the prospect of a short-sighted man by bringing him to the top of a hill. Since he could not, on the plain, see distinctly the objects before him, the wider horizon from the hill-top is utterly lost on him. ... If Bacon had lived in the present day, I am convinced he would
204 RICHARD WHAT ELY
have made his chief complaint against unmethodized inquiry and careless and illogical reasoning.^ — Lecture on Bacons Essays.
ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION.
You may hear plausible descriptions given of a sup- posed race of savages subsisting on wild fruits, herbs, and roots, and on the precarious supplies of hunting and fishing ; and then, of the supposed process by which they emerged from this state, and gradually invented the various arts of life, till they became a decidedly civilized people. One man, it has been supposed, wish- ing to save himself the trouble of roaming through the woods in search of wild fruits and roots, would bethink himself of collecting the seeds of these, and cultivating them in a plot of ground cleared and broken up for the purpose. And finding that he could thus raise more than enough for himself, he might agree with some of his neighbors to exchange a part of his produce for some of the game or fish taken by them. Another man again, it has been supposed, would contrive to save him- self the labor and uncertainty of hunting, by catching some kinds of wild animals alive, and keeping them in an enclosure to breed, that he might have a supply al- ways at hand. And again others, it is supposed, might devote themselves to the occupation of dressing skins for clothing, or of building huts or canoes, or of mak- ing bows and arrows, or various kinds of tools ; each exchanging his productions with his neighbors for food. And each, by devoting his attention to some one kind of manufacture, would acquire increased skill in that, and strike out new inventions. . . .
Such descriptions as the above, of what it is supposed has actually taken place, or of what possibly might take place, are likely to appear plausible, at the first glance, to those who do not inquire carefully and reflect at- tentively. But, on examination, all these suppositions will be found to be completely at variance with all his- tory, and inconsistent with the character of such beings as real savages actually are. Such a process of inven- tions and improvements as that just described is what
RICHARD WHAT ELY
205
we may safely say never did, and never possibly can, take place in any tribe of savages left wholly to them- selves.
As for the ancient Germans, and the Britons and Gauls, all of whom we have pretty full accounts of in the works of Caesar and Tacitus, they did indeed fall considerably short, in civilization, of the Greeks and Romans, who were accustomed to comprehend under one sweeping term of " barbarians " all nations but themselves. But it would be absurd to reckon as savages nations which, according to the authors just mentioned, cultivated their land, kept cattle, employed horses in their wars, and made use of metals for their weapons and other instruments. A people so far ad- vanced as that would not be unlikely, under favorable circumstances, to advance further still, and to attain, step by step, to a high degree of civilization.
But as for savages, properly so styled — that is, people sunk as low, or anything near as low, as many tribes that our voyagers have made us acquainted with — there is no one instance recorded of any of them rising into a civilized condition, or indeed, rising, at all, without instruction and assistance from a people already civil- ized. We have numerous accounts of various savage tribes, in different parts of the globe — in hot countries and in cold, in fertile and in barren, in maritime and in inland situations — who have been visited from time to time, at considerable intervals, by navigators, but have had no settled intercourse with civilized people ; and all of them appear to have continued, from age to age, in the same rude condition. Of the savages of Tierra del Fuego, for instance, it is remarked by Mr. Darwin, the naturalist (who was in the " Beagle " on its second voyage of discovery) that they, " in one re- spect, resemble the brute animals, inasmuch as they make no improvements." As birds, for instance, which have an instinct for building nests, build them, each species, just as at first, after countless generations ; so it is, says he, with this people. " Their canoe, which is their most skilful work of art — and a wretched canoe it is — is exactly the same as it was two hundred and fifty years ago." The New Zealanders, again, whom
-^ RICHARD WHAT ELY
200
Tasman first discovered in 1642, and who were visited for the second time by Cook one hundred and twenty- seven years after, were found by him exactly in the same condition. And yet these last were very far from being in as low a state as the New Hollanders ; for they cultivated the ground, raising crops of the Cumera (or sweet potato), and clothed themselves, not with skins, but with mats woven by themselves. . . .
Then, again, if we look at ancient historical records and traditions concerning nations that are reported to have risen from a savage to a civilized state, we find that in every instance they appear to have had the advantage of the instruction and example of civilized men living among them. They always have some tradition of some foreigner, or some Being from heaven, as having first taught them the arts of life. . . . But there is no need to inquire, even if we could do so with any hope of success, what mixture there may be of truth and fable in any of these traditions. For our present pur- pose it is enough to have pointed out that they all agree in one thing, in representing civilization as having been introduced (whenever it has been introduced) not from within, but from without. . . .
When you try to fancy yourself in the situation of a savage, it may perhaps occur to you that you would set your mind to work to contrive means for bettering your condition, and that you might hit upon such and such useful and very obvious contrivances ; and hence you may be led to think it natural that savages should do so, and that some tribes of them may have advanced themselves in the way above described, without any external help. But what leads some persons to fancy this possible (though it appears to have never really occurred) is, that they themselves are not savages, but have some degree of mental cultivation, and some of the habits of thought of civilized men. And they im- agine themselves merely destitute of the knoivledge of some things which they actually know ; but they can- not succeed in divesting themselves, in imagination, of the civilized character. And hence they form to them- selves an incorrect notion of what a savage really is. — Lecture on the Origin of Civilization.
RICHARD WHATELY 207
CIVILIZATION FAVORABLE TO MORALITY.
On the whole, then, there seems every reason to be- lieve, that, as a general rule, that advancement in na- tional prosperity which mankind are, by the Governor of the universe adapted, and impelled to promote, must be favorable to moral improvement. Still more does it appear evident, that such a conclusion must be acceptable to a pious and philanthropic mind. It is not probable, still less is it desirable, that the Deity should have fitted and destined society to make a continual progress, im- peded only by slothful and negligent habits, by war, rapine, and oppression (in short, by violation of divine commands), which progress inevitably tends toward a greater and greater moral corruption.
And yet there are some who appear not only to think, but to wish to think, that a condition but little removed from the savage state — one of ignorance, grossness, and poverty — unenlightened, semi - barbarous, and station- ary, is the most favorable to virtue. You will meet with persons who will be even offended if you attempt to awaken them from their dreams about primitive rural simplicity, and to convince them that the spread of civ- ilization, which they must see has a tendency to spread, does not tend to increase depravity. Supposing their notion true, it must at least, one would think, be a mel- ancholy truth.
It may be said as a reason, not for wishing, but for believing this, that the moral dangers which beset a wealthy community are designed as a trial. Undoubt- edly they are, since no state in which man is placed is exempt from trials. And let it be admitted, also, if you will, that the temptations to evil to which civilized man is exposed are absolutely stronger than those which exist in a ruder state of society : still, if they are also relatively stronger — stronger in proportion to the coun- teracting forces, and stronger than the augmented mo- tives to good conduct — and are such, consequently, that, as society advances in civilization, there is less and less virtue, and a continually decreasing prospect of its being attained — this amounts to something more than
208
RICHARD WHAT ELY
a state of trial ; it is a distinct provision made b/ the Deity for the moral degradation of His rational creat- ures.
This can hardly be a desirable conclusion ; but if it be, nevertheless, a true one (and our wishes should not be allowed to bias our judgment), those who hold it, ought at least to follow it up in practice, by diminish- ing, as far as is possible, the severity of the trial. . . . Let us put away from us " the accursed thing." If na- tional wealth be, in a moral point of view, an evil, let us, in the name of all that is good, set about to diminish it. Let us, as he advises, burn our fleets, block up our ports, destroy our manufactories, break up our roads, and betake ourselves to a life of frugal and rustic sim- plicity ; like Mandeville's bees, who
" flew into a hollow tree, Blest with content and honesty."
Sara
WHEWELL, WILLIAM, an English scientist and philosopher, born at Lancaster, May 24, 1794; died at Cambridge, March 6, 1866. Of humble parentage, he was educated at Heversham School and at Trinity, Cambridge. From 1828 to 1832 he was Professor of Mineralogy, from 1838 to 1855 of Moral Theology, and from 1841 to his death he was Master of Trinity College. In the learned societies of Great Britain he was active and distinguished ; his wonderful variety and amount of knowledge were spoken of by Sir John Herschel as unsurpassed. His great works were A History of the Inductive Sciences (1837), and the Philosophy of the same (1840); other works were the Bridgewater Treatise on Astronomy and Gen- eral Physics (1833); Architectural Notes on German Churches (1835); Principles of English University Education (1837); Liberal Education (3 parts, 1845- 52); The Plurality of Worlds (1853); Elements of Morality (1845); Systematic Morality (1846); His- tory of Moral Philosophy in England (1852); Platonic Dialogues (1859-61) ; Political Economy (1863), trans- lations from German verse, and English hexam- eters (1847), besides numerous scientific papers, sermons, etc. A volume of his correspondence was printed in 1876.
THE BEAUTY OF NATURE.
The copiousness with which properties, as to us it seems, merely ornamental, are diffused through the (309)
210 WILLIAM WHEWELL
creation, may well excite our wonder. Almost all have felt, as it were, a perplexity, chastened by the sense of beauty, when they have thought of the myriads of fair and gorgeous objects that exist and perish without any eye to witness their glories — the flowers that are born to blush unseen in the wilderness — the gems, so won- drously fashioned, that stud the untrodden caverns — the Jiving things with adornments of yet richer work- manship that, solitary and unknown, glitter and die. Nor is science without food for such feelings. At every step she discloses things and laws pregnant with unob- trusive splendor. She has unravelled the web of light in which all things are involved, and has found its text- ure even more wonderful and exquisite than she could have thought. This she has done in our own days — and these admirable properties the sunbeams had borne about with them since light was created, contented, as it were, with their unseen glories. What, then, shall we say? These forms, these appearances of pervading beauty, though we know not their end and meaning, still touch all thoughtful minds with a sense of hidden delight, a still and grateful admiration. They come over our meditations like strains and snatches of a sweet and distant symphony — sweet, indeed, but to us distant and broken, and overpowered by the din of more earthly perceptions — taught but at intervals — eluding our attempts to learn it as a whole, but ever and anon returning on our ears, and elevating our thoughts of the fabric of this world. We might, indeed, well be- lieve that this harmony breathes not for us alone — that it has nearer listeners — more delighted auditors. But even in us it raises no unworthy thoughts — even in us it impresses a conviction, indestructible by harsher voices, that, far beyond all that we can know and con- ceive, the universe is full of symmetry and order and beauty and life.
FACT AND THEORY.
The distinction between Theory (that is, true Theory) and Fact, is this : that in Theory the Ideas are con- sidered as distinct from the Facts ; in Facts, though Ideas may be involved, they are not, in our apprehen-
WILLIAM WHEW ELL 211
sion, separated from the sensations. In a fact, the ideas are applied so readily and familiarly, and incorpo- rated with the sensations so entirely, that we do not see them, we see through them. ... A person who, knowing the Fact of the earth's annual motion, refers it distinctly to its mechanical cause, conceives the sun's attraction as a Fact, just as he conceives as a Fact the action of the wind which turns the sails of a mill. He cannot see the force in either case ; he supplies it out of his own ideas. And thus, a true Theory is a Fact ; a Fact is a familiar Theory. That which is a Fact un- der one aspect is a Theory under another. The more recondite Theories when firmly established are Facts ; the simplest Facts involve something of the nature of a Theory. Theory and Fact correspond, in a certain de- gree, with ideas and sensations, as to the nature of their opposition. But the Facts are Facts so far as the Ideas have been combined with the Sensations and absorbed in them ; the Theories are Theories so far as the Ideas are kept distinct from the Sensations, and so far as it is considered still a question whether those can be made to agree with these. . . .
Even in the case in which our perceptions appear to be most direct, and least to involve any interpretations of our own — in the simple process of seeing — who does not know how much we, by an act of the mind, add to that which our senses received ? Does anyone fancy that he sees a solid cube ? It is easy to show that the solidity of the figure, the relative position of its faces and edges to each other, are inferences of the spectator, no more conveyed to his conviction by the eye alone than they would be if he were looking at a painted representation of a cube. The scene of nature is a picture without depth of substance, no less than the scene of art ; and in the one case as in the other, it is the mind which, by an act of its own, discovers that color and shape denote distance and solidity. Most men are unconscious of this perpetual habit of reading the language of the external world, and translating as they read. The draughtsman, indeed, is compelled, for his purposes, to return back in thought from the solid bodies which he has inferred, to the shapes of the VOL. XXIV.— 14
212 WILLIAM WHEWELL
surface which he really sees. He knows that there is a mask of theory over the whole face of nature, if it be a theory to infer more than we see. But other men, un- aware of this masquerade, hold it to be a fact that they see cubes and spheres, spacious apartments and wind- ing avenues. And these things are facts to them, be- cause they are unconscious of the mental operation by which they have penetrated nature's disguise.
And thus we have an intelligible distinction of Fact and Theory, if we consider Theory as a conscious, and Fact as an unconscious, inference, from the phenomena which are presented to our senses. . . .
The terms of this antithesis are often used in a vehe- ment and peremptory manner. Thus we are often told that such a thing is a Fact ; A FACT and not a Theory, with all the emphasis which, in speaking or writing, tone, or italics or capitals can give. We see, from what has been said, that when this is urged, before we can estimate the truth, or the value of the assertion, we must ask to whom is it a Fact ? what habits of thought, what previous information, what Ideas does it imply,-to conceive the Fact as a Fact ? Does not the apprehen- sion of the Fact imply assumptions which may with equal justice be called Theory, and which are, perhaps, false Theory ? — in which case, the Fact is no Fact. — History of Scientific Ideas.
WHIPPLE, EDWIN PERCY, an American critic and essayist, born at Gloucester, Mass., March 8, 1819; died in Boston, June 16, 1886. He was ed- ucated in the High School of Salem, and began to write for newspapers at the age of fourteen. From his fifteenth year he lived in Boston, and at times was editorially connected with the Globe and the Transcript. His masterly critique on Macaulay made him known, and he soon entered on his career as a prominent lecturer throughout the United States. His published volumes are: Essays and Reviews (2 vols., 1848-49) ; Literature and Life (1849) ; Character and Characteristic Men (1866) ; Success and its Conditions (1870) ; Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (1876), and, published after his death, Recollections of Eminent Men (1887); American Literature, and Other Papers (1887) ; Out- looks on Society, Literature, and Politics (1888).
The following extract is from a severe review that enforces prime truths and exhibits the au- thor's power of expression, but overlooks the value of Roget's Thesaurus of English Words, first in reminding one of a word/i?// in the memory, but not at the moment recalled, and secondly, in re- minding one of synonyms that may be used when there is a tendency to the repetition of a word^ uses that render the book a very desirable addi- tion to handy volumes for occasional reference.
2*4 EDWIN PERCY WII1PPL&
MISUSE OF WORDS.
It is supposed that the development and the disci- pline of thought are to be conducted apart from the de- velopment and discipline of the power of expressing thought. Fill your head with words, and when you get an idea fit it to them — this is the current mode, pro- lific in famished intellects and starveling expressions. Hence the prevailing lack of intellectual conscientious- ness, or closeness of expression to the thing — a palpa- ble interval between them being revealed at the first probe of analysis. Words and things having thus no vital principle of union, being, in fact, attached or tied together, they can be easily detached or unbound, and the expression accordingly bears but the similitude of life.
But it is honorable to human nature that men hate to write unless inspired to write. As soon as rhetoric become a mechanical exercise it becomes a joyless drudgery, and drudgery ends in a mental disgusf which impairs even the power to drudge. There is conse- quently a continual tendency to rebel against common- place, even among those engaged in its service. But the passage from this intellectual apathy to intellectual character commonly lies through intellectual anarchy. The literature of facts connected by truisms, and the literature of things connected by principles, are divided by a wide, chaotic domain, appropriated to the litera- ture of desperation ; and generally the first token that a writer has become disgusted with the truisms of the understanding is his ostentatious parade of the para- doxes of sensibility. He begins to rave the moment he ceases to repeat.
Now the vital processes of thought and expression are processes of no single faculty or impulse, but of a whole nature, and mere sensibility, or mere understand- ing, or mere imagination, or mere will, can never of itself produce the effects of that collected, concen- trated, personal power, in which will, intellect, and sensibility are all consolidated in one individuality. The utmost strain and stir of the impulses can but
EDIV1N PERCY WHIPPLE 215
mimic strength, when they are disconnected from char- acter. Passion, in the minds of the anarchists of let- ters, instead of being poured through the intellect to stimulate intelligence into power, frets and foams into mere passionateness. It does not condense the faculty in which it inheres, but diffuses the faculty to which it coheres. It makes especial claim to force; but the force of simple sensibility is a pretentious force, evinc- ing no general might of nature, no innate, original, self- centred energy. It blusters furiously about its per- sonal vigor, and lays a bullying emphasis on the " ME," but its self-assertion is without self-poise or self-might. The grand object of its tempestuous conceit is to make a little nature, split into fragmentary faculties and im- pulses, look like a great nature, stirred by strong pas- sions, illumined by positive ideas, and directed to defi- nite ends. And it must be admitted that, so far as the public is concerned, it often succeeds in the deception. Commonplace, though crazed into strange shapes by the delirium trcmens of sensibility, and uttering itself in strange shrieks and screams, is essentially common- place still, but It often passes for the fine frenzy and up- ward, rocket-like rush of impassioned imagination. The writer, therefore, who is enabled, by a felicitous de- formity of nature, to indulge in it, contrives to make many sensible people guilty of the blasphemy of calling him a genius ; if he have the knack of rhyming, and can set to music his agonies of weakness and ecstasies of imbecility, he is puffed as a great poet, superior to all the restraints of artistic law ; and he is allowed to huddle together appetite and aspiration, earth and heaven, man and God, in a truculent fashion peculiarly his own. Hence such "popular " poems as Mr. Bailey's Festus and Mr. Robert Montgomery's Satan.
The misuse of words in this literature of ungoverned or ungovernable sensibility has become so general as to threaten the validity of all definitions. The connection between sign and thing signified has been so severed that it resembles the logic of that eminent master of argumentation of whom it was said "that his premisef might be afflicted with the confluent small-pox without his conclusion being in any danger of catching it."
216 EDWIN PERCY WHIFFLE
Objects are distorted, relations disturbed, language put upon the rack to torment it into intensity, and the whole composition seems, like Tennyson's organ, to be " groaning for power," yet the result, both of the men- tal and verbal bombast, is simply a feverish feebleness, equally effecting thought and style. Big and passion- ate as are the words, and terrible as has been their ex- ecution in competent hands, they resolutely refuse to do the work of dunces and maniacs. The spirits are called, but they decline to come.
Yet this resounding emptiness of diction is not with- out popularity and influence, though its popularity has no deep roots, and its influence is shallow. Its super- ficial effectiveness is indicated, not more by the success of the passionate men who fall naturally into it, than by the success of the shrewd men who coldly imitate it. Thus Sheridan, who of all orators had the least sensibility and the most wit and cunning, adopted in many of his speeches a style as bloated as his own face, full of fustian deliberately manufactured, and rant be- traying the most painful elaboration. Our own legis- lative eloquence is singularly rich in speeches whose diction is a happy compound of politic wrath and flimsy fancies, glowing with rage worthy of Counsellor Phil- lip's philippics, and spangled with flowers that might have been gathered in the garden of Mr. Hervey's Meditations. But we should do great injustice to these orators if we supposed them as foolish as they try to make themselves appear in their eloquence ; and it is safe to impute more than ordinary reptile sagacity, and more than ordinary skill in party management, to those politicians who indulge in more than ordinary nonsense in their declamations. The incapacity to feel which their bombast evinces proves they are in no dan- ger of being whirled into imprudences by the mad emo- tions they affect. Such oratory, however, has a brassy taint and ring inexpressibly distasteful both to the physical and intellectual sense, and its deliberate hy- pocrisy of feeling is a sure sign of profligacy of mind.
It is only, however, when sensibility is genuine and predominant that it produces that anarchy of the in- tellect in which the literature of desperation, as con-
EDWIN' PERCY WHIPPLE 217
trasted with the literature of inspiration, has its source. The chief characteristic of this literature is absence of restraint. Its law is lawlessness. It is developed ac- cording to no interior principle of growth ; it adapts it- self to no exterior principle of art. In view of this, it is somewhat singular that so large a portion of its prod- ucts should be characterized by such essential medi- ocrity, since it might be supposed that an ordinary nat- ure, disordered by passion, and unrestrained by law, with a brain made irritable, if not sensitive, by internal rage, would exhibit some hysteric burst of genius. But a sharp inspection reveals, in a majority of cases, that it is the old commonplace galvanized. Its heat is not that of fire, but of hot water, and no fusing-power is perceptible in its weltering expanse. . . .
Even in those writers in whom this sensibility is con- nected with some genius, and the elements of whose minds exhibit marks of spontaneous power, we are con- tinually impressed with the impotence of anarchy to create, or combine, or portray. They never present the thing itself about which they rave, but only their feel- ings about the thing. They project into nature and life the same confusion of objects and relations which exists in their own minds, and stir without satisfying. That misrepresentation is a mental as well as moral of- fence, and that no intellect is sound unless it be consci- entiously close to the truth of things in perception and expression, are maxims which they scorn to allow as checks on their freedom of impulse. But, with all their bluster, they cannot conceal the limitation of their natures in the impudence of their claims. — Literature and Life.
THE SHAKESPEARIAN WORLD.
In his deep, wide, and searching observation of man- kind, Shakespeare detects bodies of men who agree in the general tendencies of their characters, who strive after a common ideal of good and evil, and who all fail to reach it. Through these indications and hints he seizes, by his philosophical genius, the law of the class ; by his dramatic genius, he gathers up in one concep- tion the whole multitude of individuals comprehended
2i8 EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE
in the law, and embodies it in a character ; and by his poetical genius he lifts this character into an ideal re- gion of life, where all hindrances to the free and full development of its nature are removed. The character seems all the more natural because it is perfect of its kind, whereas the actual persons included in the con- ception are imperfect of their kind. Thus, there are many men of the type of Falstaff, but Shakespeare's Falstaff is not an actual Falstaff. Falstaff is the ideal head of the family, the possibility which they dimly strive to realize, the person they would be if they could. Again, there are many lagoish men, but only one lago, the ideal type of them all ; and by studying him we learn what they would all become if circum- stances were propitious, and their loose, malignant tendencies were firmly knit together in positive will and diabolically alert intelligence. And it is the same with the rest of Shakespeare's great creations. The immense domain of human nature they cover is due to the fact, not merely that they are not repetitions of individuals, but that they are not repetitions of the same types or classes of individuals. The moment we analyze them, the moment we break them up into their constituent elements, we are amazed at the wealth of wisdom and knowledge which formed the materials of each individual embodiment, and the in- exhaustible interest and fulness of meaning and appli- cation revealed in the analytic scrutiny of each. Com- pare, for example, Shakespeare's Timon of Athens — by no means one of Shakespeare's mightest efforts of characterization — with Lord Byron, both as man and poet, and we shall find that Timon is the highest logi- cal result of the Byronic tendency, and that in him, rather than in Byron, the essential misanthrope is im- personated. The number of poems which Byron wrote does not affect the matter at all, because the poems are all expansions and variations of one view of life, from which Byron could not escape. Shakespeare, had he pleased, might have filled volumes with Timon's poetic misanthrophy ; but, being a condenser, he was content- ed with concentrating the idea of the whole class in one grand character, and of putting into his mouth the
EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE 219
truest, most splendid, most terrible things which have ever been uttered from the misanthropic point of view ; and then, victoriously freeing himself from the dread- ful mood of mind he had imaginatively realized, he passed on to occupy other and different natures. Shakespeare is superior to Byron on Byron's own ground, because Shakespeare grasped misanthropy from its first faint beginnings in the soul to its final result on character — clutched its inmost essence — dis- cerned it as one of a hundred subjective conditions of mind — tried it thoroughly, and found it was too weak and narrow to hold him. Byron was in it, could not escape from it, and never, therefore, thoroughly mas- tered the philosophy of it. Here, then, in one corner of Shakespeare's mind, we find more than ample space for so great a poet as Byron to house himself.
But Shakespeare not only in one conception thus in- dividualizes a whole class of men, but he communicates to each character, be it little or colossal, good or evil, that peculiar Shakespearean quality which distinguishes it as his creation. This he does by being and living for the time the person he conceives. What Macaulay says of Bacon is more applicable to Shakespeare; name- ly, that his mind resembles the tent which the fairy gave to Prince Ahmed. " Fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady. Spread it, and the armies of powerful sultans might repose beneath its shade." Shakespeare could run his sentiment, passion, reason, imagination, into any mould or personality he was ca- pable of shaping, and think and speak from that. The result is that every character is a denizen of the Shakespearean world ; every character, from Master Slender to Ariel, is in some sense a poet ; that is, is gifted with imagination to express his whole nature, and to make himself inwardly known ; yet we feel throughout that the " thousand-souled " Shakespeare is still but one soul, capable of shifting into a thousand forms, but leaving the peculiar birth-mark on every in- dividual it forms. — The Literature of the Age of Queen Elizabeth.
WHITCHER, FRANCES MIRIAM, an American humorous writer, born at Whitesboro, N. Y., No- vember i, 1811 ; died there, January 4, 1852. She was the daughter of Lewis Berry, was educated in village-schools, and in 1847 was married to the Rev. Benjamin W. Whitcher, pastor of a Protes- tant Episcopal Church at Elmira, N. Y., where she resided until 1850. She contributed to maga- zines and journals, and illustrated some of her works. Her writings were published collectively after her death. These are: The Widow Bedott Papers, with an Introduction by Alice B. Neal (1855), and Widoiv Spriggins, Mary Elmer, and Other Sketches, edited, with a Memoir, by Mrs. M. L. Ward Whitcher (1867).
HEZEKIAH BEDOTT.
He was a wonderful hand to moralize, husband was, "specially after he begun to enjoy poor health. He made an observation once, when he was in one of his poor turns, that I never shall forget the longest day I live. He says to me one winter evenin' by the fire — I was knittin' (I was always a wonderful great knitter) and he was smokin* (he was a master hand to smoke, though the doctor used to tell him he'd be better off to let tobacker alone ; when he was well, used to take his pipe and smoke a spell after he'd got the chores done up, and when he wa'n't well, used to smoke the biggest part o' the time). Well, he says to me, says he, " Silly," (my name, was Prissilly naterally, but he ginerally called
(220)
FRANCES MIRIAM WHITCHER 22I
me " Silly," 'cause 'twas handier, you know). Well, he says to me, says he, " Silly," and he looked pretty sollem, I tell you; he had a sollem countenance naterally — and after he got to be deacon 'twas more so, but since he'd lost his nealth he looked sollemer than ever, and certingly you wouldn't wonder at it if you knowed how much he underwent. He was troubled with a wonderful pain in his chest, and amazin' weakness in the spine of his back, besides the pleurissy in the side, and having the ager a considerable part of the time, and bein' broke of his rest o' nights 'cause he was so put to 't for breath when ne laid down. Why, it is an onaccountable fact that when that man died he hadn't seen a well day in fifteen year, though when he was married and for five or six year after I shouldn't desire to see a ruggeder man than what he was. But the time I'm speakin' of he'd been out of health nigh upon ten year, and O dear sakes ! how he had altered since the first time I ever see him ! That was to a quiltin' to Squire Smith's a spell afore Sally was married. I'd no idee then that Sal Smith was a gwine to be married to Sam Pendergrass. She'd ben keepin' company with Mose Hewlitt for better'n a year, and everybody said that was a settled thing, and lo and behold ! all of a sudding she up and took Sam Pender- grass. Well, that was the first time I ever see my hus- band, and if anybody'd told me then that I should ever
marry him, I should a said
But I was a gwine to tell you what my husband said. He says to me, says he, " Silly "; says I, " What ? " I didn't say " What, Hezekier ? " for I didn't like his name. The first time I ever heard it I near killed myself a laffin'. " Hezekier Bedott," says I, " well, I would give up if I had sich a name ; " but then you know I had no more idee o' marryin' the feller than you had this minute o' marryin' the governor. I s'pose you think it's curus we should a named our oldest son Hezekier. Well, we done it to please father and mother Bedott. It's father Bedott's name, and he and mother Bedott both used to think that names had ought to go down from ginera- tion to gineration. But we always called him Kier, you know. Speakin' o' Kier, he is a blessin', ain't he ? and I ain't the only one that thinks so, I guess. Now don't
222 FRANCES MIRIAM WHITCHER
you never tell nobody that I said so, but between you and me I rather guess that if Kezier Winkle thinks she is a gwine to ketch Kier Bedott she is a leetle out of her reckonin'. But I was going to tell what husband said. He says to me, says he, " Silly," I says, says I, " What ?" If I didn't say "What," when he said "Silly," he'd a kept on saying " Silly," from time to eternity. He al- ways did, because, you know, he wanted me to pay par- ticular attention, and I ginerally did ; no woman was ever more attentive to her husband than what I was. Well, he says to me, says he, "Silly." Says I " What ?" though I'd no idee what he was gwine to say, didn't know but what 'twas something about his sufferings, though he wa'n't apt to complain, but he frequently used to remark that he wouldn't wish his first enemy to suffer one minnit as he did all the time, but that can't be called grumblin' — think it can ? Why, I've seen him in sitivations when you'd a thought no mortal could a helped grumblin', but he didn't. He and me went once in the dead o'winter in a one-hoss slay out to Boonville to see a sister o' hisen. You know the snow is amazin' deep in that section o' the kentry. Well, the hoss got stuck in one o' them are flambergasted snow-banks, and there we sot, enable to stir, and to cap all, while we was a sittin' there husband was took with a dretful crick in his back. Now that was what I call a perdickerment, don't you ? Most men would a swore, but husband didn't. He only said, said he, " Consarn it." How did we get out, did you ask ? Why we might a been sittin' there to this day, fur as /know, if there hgdn't a hap- pened to come along a mess o' men in a double team end they hysted us out. But I was gwine to tell you that observation o' hisen. Says he to me, says he, "Silly " (I could see by the light o' the fire, there didn't happen to be no candle burnin', if I don't disremember, though my memory is sometimes ruther forgitful, but I know we wa'n't apt to burn candles exceptin' when we had company). I could see by the light of the fire that his mind was oncommon solemnized. Says he to me, says he, " Silly." Says I, " What ? " He says to me, says he, " We're all Poor critters ! " — Widow Bedott Papers.
WHITE, GILBERT, an English clergyman and naturalist, borne at Selborne, Hampshire, July 18, 1720; died at Oxford, June 20, 1793. He received his education at Basingstoke, under the Rev. Thomas Warton, and at Oxford. He was a Fel- low of Oriel College, and was made one of the senior proctors of the university in 1752. He soon fixed his residence in his native village, where he passed a quiet life in study, especially in close observation of nature. His principal work, The Natural History of Selborne (1789 ; new " edition with notes by Frank Buckland," 1875), is a model of its kind, of enduring interest ; it was soon translated into German. It deals with a great variety of phenomena that came under the au- thor's notice, and is in the form of letters. Thomas Brown's edition (1875) contains Observations on Various Parts of Nature and The Naturalises Cal- endar, first published after the author's death. In 1876 appeared a volume of White's unpublished letters. " Who ever read without the most ex- quisite delight White's History of Selborne ? " says Blackwood 's. "It is, indeed, a Sabbath-book, with a whole library of sermons, nine-tenths of the Bampton Lectures included, and will make a Deist of an Atheist, of a Deist a Christian."
" A man the power of whose writings has im- mortalized an obscure village and a tortoise . » «, as long as the English language lives."
(223)
224 GILBERT WHITE
THE HOUSE-MARTEN.
SELBORNE, November 20, 1773.
DEAR SIR: In obedience to your injunctions, I sit down to give you some account of the house-marten, or mariet ; and, if my monography of this little domestic and familiar bird should happen to meet with your ap- probation, I may probably soon extend my inquiries to the rest of the British hirundines — the swallow, the swift, and the bank-marten.
A few house-martens begin to appear about the i6th of April ; usually some few days later than the swallow. For some time after they appear, the hirundines in gen- eral pay no attention to the business of nidification, but play and sport about, either to recruit from the fatigue of their journey, if they do migrate at all, or else that their blood may recover its true tone and, texture after it has been so long benumbed by the severities of win- ter. About the middle of May, if the weather be fine, the marten begins to think in earnest of providing a mansion for its family. The crust or shell of this nest seems to be formed of such dirt or loam as comes most readily to hand, and is tempered and wrought together with little bits of broken straws, to render it tough and tenacious. As this bird often builds against a perpen- dicular wall, without any projecting ledge under it, it requires its utmost efforts to get the first foundation firmly fixed, so that it may safely carry the superstruct- ure. On this occasion the bird not only clings with its claws, but partly supports itself by strongly inclining its tail against the wall, making that a fulcrum ; and, thus steadied, it works and plasters the materials into the face of the brick or stone. But then, that this work may not, while it is soft and green, pull itself down by its own weight, the provident architect has prudence and forbearance enough not to advance her work too fast ; but, by building only in the morning, and by ded- icating the rest of the day to food and amusement, gives it sufficient time to dry and harden. About half an inch seems to be a sufficient layer for a day. Thus careful workmen, when they build mud-walls (informed
THE HOUSE-MARTEN.
1 . . tnejr goon brcome impatient of confinement, and sit all day with their heads out."
Painting by G. Suess.
GILBERT WHITE 225
at first, perhaps, by this little bird), raise but a mod- erate layer at a time, and then desist, lest the work should become top-heavy, and so be ruined by its own weight. By this method, in about ten or twelve days, is formed an hemispheric nest, with a small aperture toward the top, strong, compact, and warm, and per- fectly fitted for all the purposes for which it was in- tended. But then, nothing is more common than for a house-sparrow, as soon as the shell is finished, to seize on it as its own, to eject the owner, and to line it after its own manner.
After so much labor is bestowed in erecting a man- sion, as Nature seldom works in vain, martens will breed on for several years together in the same nest, when it happens to be well sheltered and secure from the injuries of weather. The shell, or crust, of the nest is a sort of rustic work, full of knobs and protuberances or. the outside ; nor is the inside of those that I have examined smoothed with any exactness at all ; but is rendered soft and warm, and fit for incubation, by a lining of small straws, grasses, and feathers ; and some- times by a bed of moss, interwoven with wool. . . .
As the young of small birds presently arrive at their full growth, they soon become impatient of confine- ment, and sit all day with their heads out at the orifice, where the dams, by clinging to the nest, supply them with food from morning to night. For a time the young are fed on the wing by their parents ; but the feat is done by so quick and almost imperceptible a sleight that a person must have attended very exactly to their motions before he would be able to perceive it. As soon as the young are able to shift for themselves, the dams immediately turn their thoughts to the busi- ness of a second brood ; while the first flight, shaken off and rejected by their nurses, congregate in great flocks, and are the birds that are seen clustering and hovering, on sunny mornings and evenings, round towers and steeples, and on the roofs of churches and houses. These congregations usually begin to take place about the first week in August ; and, therefore we may conclude that by that time the first flight is pretty well over. The voung of this species do not
226 GILBERT WHITE
quit their abodes altogether ; but the more forward birds get abroad some days before the rest. These, approach- ing the eaves of buildings, and playing about before them, make people think that several old ones attend one nest. They are often capricious in fixing on a nesting-place, beginning many edifices, and leaving them unfinished ; but when once a nest is completed in a sheltered place, it serves for several seasons. Those that breed in a ready finished house get the start, in hatching, of those that build new, by ten days or a fort- night. These industrious artificers are at their labors in the long days before four in the morning : when they fix their materials, they plaster them on their chins, moving their heads with a quick, vibratory mo- tion. They dip and wash as they fly sometimes, in very hot weather, but not so frequently as swallows. It has been observed that martens usually build to a northeast or northwest aspect, that the heat of the sun may not crack and destroy their nests : but instances are also remembered where they bred for many years in vast abundance in a hot, stifled inn-yard against a wail facing to the south.
Birds in general are wise in their choice of situation ; but, in this neighborhood, every summer, is seen a strong proof to the contrary, at a house without eaves, in an exposed district, where sometimes martens build year by year in the corners of windows. But as the corners of these windows (which face to the southeast and southwest) are too shallow, the nests are washed down every hard rain ; and yet these birds drudge on to no purpose, from summer to summer, without changing their aspect or house. It is a piteous sight to see them laboring when half their nest is washed away, and bringing dirt "generis lapsi sarcire ruinas." Thus is in- stinct a most wonderfully unequal faculty ; in some in- stances so much above reason, in other respects so far below it ! Martens love to frequent towers, especially if there are great lakes and rivers at hand ; nay, they even Affect the close air of London. And I have not only seen them nesting in the Borough, but even in the Strand and Fleet Street ; but then it was obvious, from the diuginess of their aspect- that their feathers partook
GILBERT WHITE
227
of the filth of that sooty atmosphere. Martens are by far the least agile of the four species ; their wings and tails are short, and therefore they are not capable of such surprising turns, and quick-glancing evolutions as the swallow. Accordingly, they make use of a placid, easy motion, in a middle region of the air, seldom mounting to any great height, and never sweeping along together over the surface of the ground or water. They do not wander far for food, but affect sheltered districts, over some lake, or under some hanging wood, or in some hollow vale, especially in windy weather. They breed the latest of all swallow-kind : in 1772, they had nest- lings on to October 2ist, and are never without unfledged young as late as Michaelmas.
As the summer declines, the congregating flocks in- crease in numbers daily by the constant accession of the second broods : till at last they swarm in myriads upon myriads round the villages on the Thames, dark- ening the face of the sky as they frequent the aits of that river, where they roost. They retire, the bulk of them, I mean, in vast flocks together, about the begin- ning of October ; but have appeared of late years, in a considerable flight, in this neighborhood, for one day or two, as late as November the third or sixth, after they were supposed to have been gone for more than a fort- night. They, therefore, withdraw with us the latest of any species. Unless these birds are very short-lived, indeed, or unless they do not return to the district where there they are bred, they must undergo vast dev- astations somehow, or somewhere ; for the birds that return yearly bear no manner of proportion to the birds that retire. — Natural History of Selborne.
VOL. xxiv
WHITE, HENRY KIRKE, an English poet, born at Nottingham, March 21, 1785; died at Cam- bridge, October 19, 1806. He was the son of a butcher, and assisted in his father's shop until the age of fourteen, when he was apprenticed to a stocking-weaver, but was soon afterward placed ,« an attorney's office, where he applied his leis- ure hours to study, acquiring some knowledge of Latin, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Before he was sixteen he had gained several prizes offered by periodicals, and in 1803 he put forth a small volume of poems, with the hope, he says, that its publication would enable him "to pursue those inclinations which might one day place him in an honorable station in the scale of society." A sizarship was obtained for him at St. John's College, Cambridge, and friends furnished funds sufficient for his maintenance while prepar- ing himself for the Church. At the close of his 5rst term he was pronounced to be the first man of his year. His health broke down under his severe studies, and he died soon after entering upon his twenty-second year. His Remains were edited by Southey, with a touching Memoir, and a memorial tablet, with a medallion portrait by Chantrey, was placed in All Saints' Church, Cam- bridge. Kirke White's poems were, with the ex- ception of a few stanzas, written before his twen-
HENRY KIRKE WHITE 220
tieth year, and previous to his entering the Uni- versity. Clifton Grove, the longest of his poems, is somewhat after the manner of Goldsmith's De- serted Village. He left uncompleted a more ambi- tious effort — The Christian.
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM.
When marshalled on the nightly plain
The glittering host bestud the sky, One star alone, of all the train
Can fix the sinner's wandering eye. Hark I hark ! to God the chorus break*
From every host, from every gem ;"" But one alone the Saviour speaks :
It is the Star of Bethlehem.
Once on the raging seas I rode ;
The storm was loud, the sight was dark ; The ocean yawned ; and rudely blowed
The wind that tossed my foundering bark. Deep horror then my vitals froze,
Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem. When suddenly a star arose :
It was the Star of Bethlehem.
It was my guide, my light, my all,
It bade my dark forebodings cease, And through the storm and dangers' thrall,
It led me to the port of peace. Now safely moored — my perils o'er —
I'll sing, first in night's diadem, Forever and forevermore,
The Star—the Star of Bethlehem.
TO AN EARLY PRIMROSE.
Mild offspring of a dark and sullen sire ! Whose modest form, so delicately fine,
Was nursed in whirling storms,
And cradled in the winds I
330 HENRY KIRKE WHITE
Thee, when young Spring first questioned Winter's
sway And dared the sturdy blusterer to the fight,
Thee on this bank he threw
To mark the victory.
In this low vale, the promise of the year, Serene thou openest to the nipping gale.
Unnoticed and alone
Thy tender elegance.
So Virtue blooms, brought forth amid the storm Of chill adversity ; in some lone walk of life
She rears her head,
Obscure and unobserved,
While every bleaching breeze that on her blows, Chastens her spotless purity of breast,
And hardens her to bear
Serene the ills of life.
WHITE, RICHARD GRANT, an American essay, ist, critic, and Shakespearean scholar, born in New York, May 22, 1821 ; died there, April 8, 1885. He was graduated at the University of the City of New York ; studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1845. But he previously had turned his attention to literature, and never entered upon legal practice. Before he had reached his major- ity he published anonymously a fine sonnet upon Washington, which came to be attributed to more than one poet of note — among whom were Words- worth and Landor. Without being ostensibly the editor of any periodical, he was editorially con- nected with several newspapers and magazines. For more than twenty years — ending in 1878 — he held positions in the United States Revenue Ser- vice at New York. His works, while covering a wide range of topics, relate mainly to general philology, and especially to Shakespeare and his writings. His most important works are Hand- book of Christian Art (1853); Shakespeare's Scholar (1854); Three Parts of Henry VL (1859); National Hymns (1861); Life and Genius of Shakespeare (1865); The New Gospel of Peace ( 1 866) ; Words and Their Uses (1870); Every-day English (1880); Eng- land Without and Within (1881); The Fate of Mans- Jield Humphrey (1884); Studies in Shakespeare (1885), and History of Italian Opera in New York.
- uao.
232 RICHARD GRANT WHITE
WASHINGTON : PATER PATRIJE.
High over all whom might or mind made great, Yielding the conqueror's crown to harder hearts, Exalted not by politicians' arts, Yet with a will to meet and master Fate And skill to rule a young, divided state,
Greater by what was not than what was done, Alone on History's height stands Washington ;
And teeming Time shall not bring forth his mate.
For only he, of men, on earth was sent In all the might of mind's integrity ;
Ne'er as in him truth, strength, and wisdom blent ; And that his glory might eternal be,
A boundless country is his monument, A mighty nation his posterity.
SHAKESPEARE'S CREATIVE GENIUS.
Shakespeare used the skeletons of former life that had drifted down to him upon the stream of time, and were cast at his feet a heap of mere dead matter. But he clothed them with flesh and blood, and breathed in- to their nostrils ; and they lived and moved with a life that was individual and self-existent after he had once thrown it off from his own exuberant intellectual vital- ity. He made his plays no galleries of portraits of his contemporaries, carefully seeking his models through the social scale, from icing to beggar. His teeming brain bred lowlier beggars and kinglier kings than all Europe could have furnished as subjects for his por- traiture. He found in his own consciousness ideals, the like of which, for beauty or deformity, neither he nor any other man had ever looked upon. In his heart were the motives, the passions of all humanity ; in his mind the capability, if not the actuality, of all human thought. Nature, in forming him, alone of all the poets, had laid that touch upon his soul which enabled him to live at will throughout all time, among all peoples.
Capable thus, in his complete and symmetrical nat-
RICHARD GRANT WHITE 233
ure, of feeling with and thinking for all mankind, he found in an isolated and momentary phase of his own existence the law which governed the life of those to whom that single phase was their whole sphere. From the germ within himself he produced the perfect indi- vidual as it had been or might have been developed. The eternal laws of human life were his servants by his heaven-bestowed prerogative, and he was yet their in- strument. Conformed to them because instinct with them, obedient to yet swaying them, he used their sub- tle and unerring powers to work out from seemingly trivial and independent truths the vast problems of hu- manity ; and, standing ever within the limits of his own experience, he read and reproduced the inner life of those on the loftiest heights or in the lowest depths of being, with the certainty of the physiologist who from the study of his own organization re-creates the mon- sters of the ante-human world, or of the astronomer who, not moving from his narrow study, announced the place, form, movement, and condition of a planet then hid from earthly eyes in the abyss of space.
Shakespeare thus suffered not even a temporary ab- sorption of his personages ; he lost not the least con- sciousness of selfhood, or the creator's power over the clay he was moulding. He was at no time a murder- er in his heart because he drew Macbeth, or mad be- cause he made King Lear. We see that, although he thinks with the brain and feels with the soul of each of his personages by turns, he has the power of deliberate introspection during this strange metempsychosis, and of standing outside of his transmuted self, and regard- ing these forms which his mind takes on as we do ; in a word, of being at the same time actor and spectator. — Life and Genius of Shakespeare.
WAR IN THE LAND OF UNCLE SAM.
Now the war in the land of Unculpsalm was in this wise :
The people were of one blood, but the land was in many provinces. And the people of the provinces joined themselves together and cast off the yoke of a
234 RICHARD GRANT WHITE
stitf-necked king who oppressed them beyond the great sea. And they said, Let us have no king, but let us choose from ourselves a man to rule over us ; and let us no longer be many provinces, but one nation ; only in those things which concern not the nation let the peo- ple in each province do what is right in their own eyes.
And let it be written upon parchment and be for a covenant between us and our children, and our chil- dren's children forever — like unto a law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.
And they did so. And the Great Covenant became the beginning and the end of all things unto the men of Unculpsalm.
And the men of Unculpsalm waxed great and mighty and rich : and the earth was filled with the fame of their power and their riches ; and their ships covered the sea. And all nations feared them. But they were men of peace, and went riot to war of their own accord ; neither did they trouble nor oppress the men of other nations but sought, each man, to sit under his own vine and his own fig-tree. And there were no poor men and few that did evil born in that land ; except thou go southward of the border of Masunandicsun.
And this was noised abroad ; and it came to pass that the poor and the down-trodden and the oppressed of other lands left the lands in which they were born, and went and dwelt in the land of Unculpsalm, and pros- pered therein, and no man molested them. And they loved that land.
Wherefore the kings and the oppressors of other lands, and they that devoured the substance of the peo- ple, hated the men of Unculpsalm. Yet, although they were men of peace, they made not war upon them ; for they were many and mighty. Moreover, they were rich and bought merchandise of other nations, and sent them corn and gold.
Now there were in the land of Unculpsalm Ethiopians, which the men of Unculpsalm called Niggahs. And their skins were black, and for hair they had wool, and their shins bent out forward and their heels thrust out backward ; and their ill-savor went up.
Wherefore the forefathers of the men of Unculpsalm
RICHARD GRANT WHITE 235
had made slaves of the Niggahs, and bought them and sold them like cattle.
But so it was that when the people of Unculpsalm made themselves into one nation, the men of the North said, We will no longer buy and sell the Niggahs, but will set them free ; neither shall more be brought from Ethiopia for slaves unto this land.
And the men of the South answered and said, We will buy and sell our Niggahs ; and moreover we will beat them with stripes, and they shall be our hewers of wood and drawers of water forever ; and when our Niggahs flee into your provinces ye shall give them to us, every man his Niggah ; and after a time there shall no more be brought from Ethiopia, as ye say. And this shall be a part of the Great Covenant.
And it was a covenant between the men of the North and the men of the South.
And it came to pass that thereafter the men of the South and the Dimmichrats of the North and the Pah- dees gave themselves night and day to the preservation of this covenant about the Niggahs.
And the Niggahs increased and multiplied till they darkened all the land of the South. And certain of the men of Unculpsalm who dwelt in the South took their women for concubines and went in unto them, and be- gat of them sons and daughters. And they bought and sold their sons and daughters, even the fruit of their loins ; and beat them with stripes, and made them hew- ers of wood and drawers of water.
For they said, Are not these Niggahs our Niggahs ? Yea, even more than the other Niggahs ? For the other Niggahs we bought, or our fathers, with money ; but these, are they not flesh of our flesh, and blood of our blood, and bone of our bone ; and shall we not do what we will with our own ?
But there arose men in the northern provinces of Unculpsalm and in the countries beyond the great sea, iniquitous men, saying, Man's blood cannot be bought with money ; foolish men, saying, Though the Niggah's skin be black, and his hair woolly, and his shins like unto cucumbers, and his heels thrusting out backward, and though he has an ill-savor not to be endured by
236 RICHARD GRANT WHITE
those who get not children of Niggah women, yet is he a man ; men of Belial, which said, All things whatso- ever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them ; for this is the law and the prophets.
And the slaves were for a reproach throughout all the world unto the men of the South, and even unto the whole land of Unculpsalm. But by reason of the Great Covenant and the laws of the provinces, the men of the North had naught to do in this matter.
But the men of the South which had Niggahs (for there were multitudes which were of the tribe of Meen- ouites which had no Niggahs, and they were poor and oppressed) heeded it not ; for they were a stiff-necked generation. And they said, We will not let our Nig- gahs go free ; for they are even as our horses and our sheep, our swine and our oxen ; and we will beat them and slay them and sell them, and beget children of them, and no man shall gainsay us. We stand by the Great Covenant.
Moreover we are Tshivulree.
Now to be of the Tshivulree was the chief boast among the men of the South, because it had been a great name upon the earth. For of olden time he who was of the Tshivulree was bound by an oath to defend the weak and succor the oppressed, yea, even though he gave his life for them. But among the men of the South he only was of the Tshivulree who ate his bread in the sweat of another's face, who robbed the laborer of his hire, who oppressed the weak, and set his foot upon the neck of the lowly, and who sold from the mother the fruit of her womb and the nursling of her bosom. Wherefore the name of Tshivulree stank in the nostrils of all na- tions.
For they were in the darkness of a false dispensation, and had not yet learned the mystery of the new gospel of peace.
And when the Tshivulree found within their borders those men of the North, iniquitous men which said that man's blood cannot be bought, and men of Belial which said, Do ye unto all men as ye would have all men do unto you, they seized upon them and beat them with many stripes, and hanged them upon trees, and roasted
RICHARD GRANT WHITE 237
them with fire, and poured hot pitch upon them, and rode them upon sharp beams, very grievous to bestride, and persecuted them even as it was fitting such pesti- lent fellows should be persecuted.
And they said unto the men of the North, Cease ye now to send among us these men of Belial preaching iniquity, cease also to listen unto them yourselves, and respect the Great Covenant, or we will destroy this nation.
Then the men of Unculpsalm which called themselves Dimmichrats, and the Pahdees, seeing that the Tshivul- ree of the South had only one thought, and that was for the Niggah, said, We will join ourselves unto the Tshiv- ulree, and we will have but one thought with them, even the Niggah ; and we shall ru'.e the land of Unculpsalm, and we shall divide the spoil.
And they joined themselves unto the Tshivulree ; and the Tshivulree of the South, and the men of the North, which called themselves Dimmichrats, and the Pahdees, ruled the land of Unculpsalm for many years ; and they divided the spoil. And they had but one thought, even for the Niggah.
Wherefore he was railed the everlasting Niggah.
And the Tshivulree of the South saw that the men of the North feared their threats ; and they waxed bolder and said, We will rot only keep our Niggahs in our own provinces, but we will take them into all the country of Unculpsalm, which is not yet divided into provinces. And they went roaring up and down the land.
But in the process of time it came to pass that the spirit of their forefathers appeared among the men of the North, even the great spirit, Bak Bohn ; and he stiffened up the people mightily.
So that they said unto the men of the South, Hear us, our brethren ! We would live with you in peace, and love you, and respect the Great Covenant. And the Niggahs in your provinces ye shall keep, and slay, and sell, they and the children which ye begat of them, into slavery, for bondmen and bondwomen forever. Yours be the sin before the Lord, not ours ; for it is your doing, and we are not answerable for it. And your Niggahs that flee from your provinces they shall
238
RICHARD GRANT WHITE
be returned unto you, according to the Great Covenant. Only take care lest peradventure ye make captives the Niggahs of your provinces which we have made free men. Ye shall in no wise take a Niggah of them.
Thus shall it be with your Niggahs and in your prov- inces, and yours shall be the blame forever. But out of your provinces, into the common land of Unculpsalm, ye shall not carry your Niggahs except they be made thereby free. For that land is common, and your laws and the statutes of your provinces, by which alone ye make bondmen, run not in that land. And for all that is done in that land we must bear the blame with you. For that land is common ; and we share whatever is done therein ; and the power of this nation and the might of its banner shall no longer be used to oppress the lowly and to fasten the chain upon the captive. Keep ye, then, your bondmen within your own prov- inces.
Then the Tshivulree of the South waxed wroth, and foamed in their anger, and the air of the land was filled with their cursings and their revilings. And certain of them which were men of blood, and which were pos- sessed of devils, and had difficulties, and slew each other with knives and shooting-irons, did nothing all their time but rave through the land about the Niggah. — The New Gospel of Peace.
WHITEFIELD, GEORGE, an English clergy, man and apostle of Methodism, born at Glouces- ter, England, December 17, 1714; died at New- buryport, Mass., September 30, 1770. At an early age, he was given to fasting and to composing sermons. While in college at Oxford, he was a friend of Charles Wesley and one of the club called Methodists, from their religious habits. He was ordained by the Bishop of Gloucester in 1736, preached with great effect, and the next year visited America. Returning to England, he went about holding outdoor meetings and gather- ing immense crowds. He made seven voyages to America, preaching throughout the colonies with such power that he was called "the wonder of the age ; " as many as 20,000 people, it is said, listened to him on Boston Common. His few ex- tant sermons, given extempore and afterward written out by himself, " contain " he prefaced, " the sum and substance," on which, " according to the freedom and assistance given from above," he had enlarged. Aside from their earnest spirit, they do not seem remarkable, in cold type. In doctrine he was Calvinistic ; in charity abundant, as witnessed by his zeal in establishing an orphan asylum at Savannah, Ga. A collection of his sermons, tracts, and letters was published in six volumes, London, 1771 ; and his journals were
(239)
240 GEORGE WHITEFIELD
printed some years before his death. The follow- ing extract is from a volume of fifteen sermons (1740).
CHRIST OUR REDEMPTION.
The glories of the upper world crowd in so fast upon my soul that I am lost in the contemplation of them. Brethren, the redemption spoken of is unutterable ; we cannot here find it out — eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the hearts of the most holy men living, to conceive how great it is. Were I to entertain you whole ages with an account of it, when you come to heaven, you must say with Sheba, Not half, no, not one thousandth part was told us. All we can do here is to go to Mount Pisgah, and by the eye of faith, take a distant view of the promised land. We may see it, as Abraham did Christ, afar off, and rejoice in it, but here we only know in part. Blessed be God, there is a time coming when we shall know God, even as we are known, and God will be all in all. " Lord Jesus, accomplish the number of thine elect ! Lord Jesus, hasten thy kingdom."
And now, where are the scoffers of these last days, who count the lives of Christians madness, and their end to be without honor? Were your eyes open, and your sense to discern spiritual things, you would not speak all manner of evil against the children of God, but you would esteem them the excellent ones of the earth, and envy their happiness ; your souls would hun- ger and thirst after it — you also would become fools for Christ's sake. You boast of wisdom ; so did the philos- ophers of Corinth ; but your wisdom is the foolishness of folly in the sight of God. What does your wisdom avail you, if it does not make you wise unto salvation ? Can you, with all your wisdom, propose a more consist- ent scheme to build your salvation on, than what has been laid down before you ? Can you, with all the strength of natural reason, find out a better way of ac- ceptance with God, than by the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ? Is it right to think your own works can in any measure deserve or procure it ? If not, why will you not believe in Him ? Why will you not
GEORGE IVHITEFIELD
241
submit to His righteousness ? Can you deny that you are fallen creatures ? Do you not find that you are full of disorders, and that these disorders make you un- happy ? Do you not find that you cannot change your own hearts ? Have you not resolved many and many a time, and have not your corruptions yet dominion over you ? Are you not bond-slaves to your lusts, and led captive by the devil at his will ? Why, then, will you not come to Christ for sanctification ? Do you not de- sire to die the death of the righteous, and that your future state may be like theirs? I am persuaded you cannot bear the thought of being annihilated, much less of being miserable forever. Whatever you may pretend, if you speak truth, you must confess, that con- science breaks in upon you in your more sober intervals whether you will or not, and even constrains you to believe that hell is no painted fire. And why, then, will you not come to Christ ? He alone can procure you everlasting redemption. Haste, haste away to Him, poor, beguiled sinners. You lack wisdom, ask it of Christ ; who knows but He may give it you ? He is able. For He is the wisdom of the Father. He is that wisdom which was from everlasting ; you have no right- eousness ; away to Christ ; He is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. You are unholy, fly to the Lord Jesus ; He is full of grace and truth, and of His fulness all may receive that believe in Him. You are afraid to die, let this drive you to Christ ; He has the keys of death and hell. In Him is plenteous redemption ; He alone can open the door which leads to everlasting life. Let not the deceived reasoner boast any longer of his pretended reason. Whatever you may think, it is the most unreasonable thing in the world, not to believe on Jesus Christ, Whom God hath sent. Why, why will you die ? Why will you not come unto Him, that you may have life ? Oh, every one that thirsteth, come unto the waters of life and drink freely. Come, buy without money and without price. Were these blessed privileges in the text to be purchased by money, you might say, We are poor and cannot buy. Or if they were to be conferred only on sinners of such a rank or degree, then you might say, How can suck
GEORGE WHITEFIELD
sinners as we expect to be so highly favored ? But they are to be freely given of God to the worst of sinners — to us, says the apostle — to me a persecutor to you Corinthians, who were unclean, drunkards, covetous persons, idolaters. Therefore each poor sinner may say then, Why not unto me ? Has Christ but one bless- ing ? What if He has blessed millions, by turning them away from their iniquities ? yet He still continues the same. He lives forever to make intercession, and therefore will bless you, even you also, though, Esau- like, you have been profane, and hitherto despised your heavenly Father's birthright. Even now, if you believe, Christ will be made unto you of God, wisdom, righteous- ness, sane ti fie ation, and redemption.
But I must turn again to believers, for whose instruc- tion, as I observed before, this discourse was partic- ularly intended. You see, brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, what great blessings are treasured up for you in Jesus Christ, your Head, and what you are entitled to by believing on His name ; take heed, there- fore, that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called. Think often how highly you are favored, and remember you have not chosen Christ, but Christ hath chosen you. Put on (as the elect of God) humble- ness of mind, and glory, but oh, let it be only in the Lord. For you have nothing but what you have re- ceived of God ; by nature you were as foolish, as legal, as unholy, and in as damnable a condition as others ; be pitiful therefore, be courteous, and, as santification is a progressive work, beware of thinking you have al- ready attained. Let him that is holy, be holy still, knowing that he who is most pure in heart shall here- after enjoy the clearest vision of God. Let indwelling sin be your daily burden, and not only bewail and lament, but see that you subdue it daily by the power of divine grace, and look up to Jesus continually to be the Finisher as well as the Author of your faith. — Sermon on i. Cor. i., 30.
WHITMAN, SARAH HELEN, an American poet, born at Providence, R. I., in 1803; died there, June 27, 1878. She was the daughter of Nicholas Power, and in 1828 was married to John W. Whitman, a lawyer of Boston. He died in 1833, and in 1848 she was betrothed to Edgar Allan Poe, but the engagement was broken off on the eve of their intended marriage. Mrs. Whitman published a book entitled Edgar Poe and His Critics (1860). Two collections of her poems nave been published, Hours of Life, and Other Poems (1843), and Poems (1870).
" Mrs. Whitman's volume of poems," says Duyckinck, " is a book of a rare, passionate beauty, marked by fine mental characteristics. The chiet poem, Hours of Life, is a picture of the soul in its progress though time, and its search out ot dis- appointment and experience for peace and secur- ity. Its learned, philosophical spirit is not less remarkable than its tenderness and spiritual mel, ody."
A NIOHT IN AUGUST.
How softly coupes the summer wind
At evening o'er the hill, Forever murmuring of thee
When the busy crowds are still ; The way-side flowers seem to guess And whisper of my happiness. VOL. XXIV.— -10 (243)
244
The jasmine twines her snowy stars
Into a fairer wreath ; The lily lifts her proud tiars
More royally beneath ; The snow-drop with her fairy bells, In silver time, the story tells.
Through all the dusk and dewy hours,
The banded stars above Are singing, in their airy towers,
The melodies of love ; And clouds of shadowy silver fly All night, like doves, athwart the sky.
Fair Dian lulls the throbbing stars
Into Elysian dreams ; And, rippling through my latticed bars,
Her brooding glory streams Around me, like the golden shower That reigned through Danae's guarded tower.
And when the waning moon doth glide
Into the valleys gray ; When, like the music of a dream
The night-wind dies away ; When all the wayside flowers have furled Their wings with morning dews impearled,
A low, bewildering melody
Seems murmuring in my ear — Tones such as in the twilight wood
The aspen thrills to hear, When Faunus slumbers on the hill, And all the entranced boughs are still.
THE PORTRAIT.
After long years I raised the folds concealing That face, magnetic as the morning's beam :
While slumbering memory thrilled at its revealing Like Memnon wakening from his marble dream.
SARAH HELEN WHITMAN" 245
Again I saw the brow's translucent pallor, The dark hair floating o'er it like a plume ;
The sweet, imperious mouth, whose haughty valor Defied all portents of impending doom.
Eyes planet-calm, with something in their vision That seemed not of earth's mortal mixture born,
Strange, mythic faiths and fantasies Elysian, And far, sweet dreams of "faery 'lands forlorn."
Unfathomable eyes that held the sorrow Of vanished ages in their shadowy deeps,
Lit by that prescience of a heavenly morrow Which in high hearts the immortal spirit keeps.
Oft has that pale, poetic presence haunted
My lonely musings at the twilight hour, Transforming the dull earth-life it enchanted,
With marvel and with mystery and with power.
Oft have I heard the sullen sea-wind moaning Its dirge-like requiems on the lonely shore,
Or listening to the autumn woods intoning The wild, sweet legend of the lost Lenore ;
Oft in some ashen evening of October,
Have stood entranced beside a mouldering tomb
Hard by that visionary lake of Auber, Where sleeps the shrouded form of Ulalume ;
Oft in chill, star-lit nights have heard the chiming
Of far-off, mellow bells on the keen air, And felt their molten-golden music timing
To the heart's pulses, answering unaware.
Sweet, mournful eyes, long closed upon earth's sorrow. Sleep restfully after life's fevered dream !
Sleep, wayward heart ! till on some cool, bright morrow. Thy soul, refreshed, shall bathe in morning's beam.
Though cloud and sorrow rest upon thy story, And rude hands lift the drapery of thy pall,
Time, as a birthright, shall restore to glory, And Heaven rekindle all the stars that fall.
WHITMAN, WALT, an American poet, born at West Hills, Long Island, N. Y., May 31, 1819; died at Camden, N. J., March 26, 1892. He was educated at the public schools of Brooklyn and New York, and subsequently followed various occupations ; among which were those of printer, teacher, carpenter, and journalist, making in the meantime extended tours in the United States and Canada. During the greater part of the civil war he served as a volunteer nurse in the army hospitals ; and at its close was appointed a Gov- ernment clerk at Washington. In 1873 he had a severe paralytic attack. This was followed by others, which crippled him physically, and he took up his residence at Camden, N. J. His first not- able work, Leaves of Grass, was published in 1855. It was subsequently much enlarged by successive additions, up to 1881, when he pronounced it " now finished to the end of its opportunities and powers." Besides this, he wrote many poems for periodicals, some of which have been collected into volumes, among which are Drum-Taps (1865); Two Rivulets (1873) ; Specimen Days and Collect (1883); November Boughs (1885) ; Sands at Seventy (1888) ; Good-bye, My Fancy (1891), and Autobio- graphia (1892), his personal history gleaned from his prose writings. He also put forth in 1870 a volume of prose essays, entitled Democratic Vistas,
born
-
•
printer, the
States of the civil in the army ".nted a (
id a
WALT WHITMAN.
Photogravure— From a photograph.
Specially engraved for the Ridpath Library.-
•
WALT WHITMAN 247
which was republished in 1888, with a new Preface. His Complete Poems and Prose appeared in one vol- ume in the same year. Mr. Whitman's poems are marked by numerous idiosyncrasies in regard to the choice of topics, and to rhythmical form, which have furnished occasion for much criticism, favor- able and unfavorable.
IN ALL, MYSELF.
I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the
Soul, The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of
hell are with me ; The first I graft upon myself, the latter I translate into
a new tongue.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man, And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecation about enough,
I show that size is only development.
Have you outstript the rest ? are you the President ? It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there, every one,
and still pass on.
I am he that walks with the tender and growing night, I call to the earth and sea, half-held by the night,
Press close, bare-bosom'd night — press close, magnetic,
nourishing night !
Night of South winds — night of the large, few stars! Still, nodding night — mad, naked summer night.
Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breathed earth I Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees ! Earth of departed sunset — earth of the mountains mis- ty-topt !
248 WALT WHITMAN
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged
with blue !
Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river ! Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer
for my sake !
Far -swooping, elbow'd earth — rich, apple - blossom'd
earth !
Smile, for your lover comes. Prodigal, you have given me love — therefore to you I
give love ! Oh, unspeakable, passionate love.
THE P^EAN OF JOY.
Now, trumpeter ! for thy close,
Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet ;
Sing to my soul ! — renew its languishing faith and hope ;
Rouse up my slow belief — give me some vision of the
future ;
Give me, for once, its prophecy and joy. O glad, exulting, culminating song ! A vigor more than earth's is in thy notes 1 Marches of victory — man disenthralled — the conqueror
at last !
Hymns to the universal God from universal Man — all joy! A reborn race appears — a perfect world — all joy 1 Women and men in wisdom, innocence, and health — all
joy!
Riotous, laughing bacchanals, filled with joy ! War, sorrowing, suffering gone — the rank earth purged
— nothing but joy left !
The ocean filled with joy — the atmosphere all joy ! Joy ! joy ! in freedom, worship, love ! Joy in the ecstasy
of life !
Enough to merely be ! Enough to breathe ! Joy ! joy ! all over joy !
THE REALITIES OF LIFE AND DEATH.
Great is Life, real and mystical, wherever and whoever — Great is Death — sure as Life holds all parts together, Death holds all parts together :
WALT WHITMAN 249
Death has just as much purpose as Life has :
Do you enjoy what Life confers ?
You shall enjoy what Death confers.
I do not understand the realities of Death, but I know
that they are great : I do not understand the least reality of Life — how then
can I understand the realities of Death ?
UPON DEATH.
0 Death !
Oh, the beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumb- ing a few moments, for reasons !
Oh, that of myself, discharging my excrementitious body, to be burned, or reduced to powder, or buried,
My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,
My voided body, nothing more to me, returning to the purifications, further offices, eternal uses of the earth !
IMMORTALITY.
Whoever you are ! you are he or she for whom the
earth is solid and liquid ; You are he or she for whom the sun and the moon hang
in the sky ;
For none more than you are the present and the past ; For none more than you is immortality ! Each man to himself, and each woman to herself, is the
word of the past and present, and the word of
immortality :
No one can acquire for another — not one ! No one can grow for another — not one !
I HEAR AMERICA SINGING.
1 hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanic singing his as it should be, blithe
and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or
beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or
leaves off work,
250 WALT WHITMAN1
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deck-hand singing on the steam-boat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hat- ter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sun- down,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day — at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with melodious mouths their strong, melodious songs.
OLD IRELAND.
Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty.
Crouching over a grave an ancient, sorrowful mother,
Once a queen, now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,
Her old, white hair drooping, dishevel'd, round her shoulders,
At her feet, fallen, an unused royal harp,
Long silent, she, too, long silent, mourning her shroud- ed hope and heir,
Of all the earth most full of sorrow because most full of love.
Yet a word, ancient mother,
You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground,
with forehead between your knees, Oh, you need not sit there veil'd in your old, white hair
so dishevel'd,
For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave. It was an illusion, the son you love was not really dead, The Lord is not dead, He is risen again, young and
strong, in another country, What you wept for was translated, pass'd from the
grave.
The winds favor'd and the sea sail'd it, And now with rosy and new blood, Moves to-day in a new country.
WALT WHITMAN 251
YOUTH, DAY, OLD AGE, AND NIGHT.
Youth, large, lusty, loving — youth full of grace, force,
fascination, Do you know that Old Age may come after you with
equal grace, force, fascination ?
Day, full-blown and splendid — day of the immense sun —
action, ambition, laughter, The Night follows close with millions of suns, and sleep,
and restoring darkness.
DAREST THOU NOW, O SOUL?
Darest thou now, O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region, Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow ?
No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand, Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips nor eyes are in that land.
I know it not, O soul, Nor dost thou — all is a blank before us, All waits undream'd of in that region, that inaccessible land.
Till when the ties loosen, All but the ties eternal, Time and Space, Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bound- ing us.
Then we burst forth, we float, In Time and Space, O soul, prepared for them, Equal, equipt at last (O joy ! O fruit of all 1) them to fulfil, O soul.
WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH.
Whispers of heavenly death murmur'd I hear, Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals
252 WALT WHITMAN
Footsteps gently ascending, mystical breezes wafted soft and low,
Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, for- ever flowing,
(Or is it the plashing of tears ? the measureless waters of human tears ?)
I see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses.
Mournfully, slowly they roll, silently swelling and mix- ing,
With at times a half-dimm'd, sadden'd, far-off star
Appearing and disappearing.
(Some parturition, rather, some solemn, immortal birth ;
On the frontiers, to eyes impenetrable,
Some soul is passing over.)
TO THE MAN-OF-WAR BIRD.
Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm,
Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions
(Burst the wild storm ? above it thou ascended'st,
And rested on the sky, thy slave that cradled thee).
Now a blue point, far, far in heaven floating,
As to the light emerging here on deck I watch thee
(Myself a speck, a point on the world's floating vast).
Far, far at sea,
After the night's fierce drifts have strewn the shore
with wrecks,
With reappearing day as now so happy and serene, The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun, The limpid spread of air cerulean, Thou also reappearest.
Thou born to match the gale (thou art all wings), To cope with heaven and earth and sea and hurricane, Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy sails, Days, even weeks, untired and onward, through space's
realms gyrating,
At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn America, That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and thunder- cloud,
In them, in thy experiences, hadst thou my soul, What joys ! what joys were thine 1
WALT WHITMAN 253
TO THOSE WHO'VE FAIL'D.
To those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast,
To unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the lead,
To calm, devoted engineers — to over-ardent travellers
— to pilots on their ships, To many a lofty song and picture without recognition
— I'd rear a laurel-covered monument, High, high above the rest — to all cut off before their
time,
Possess'd by some strange spirit of fire, Quench'd by an early death.
DIRGE FOR ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
O captain ! my captain ! our fearful trip is done ; The ship has weathered every rock, the prize we sought
is won.
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exult- ing, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and
daring ;
But O heart ! heart ! heart ! Leave you not the little spot, Where on the deck my captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.
O captain ! my captain ! rise up and hear the bells ; Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle
trills ; For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths — for you the
shore a-crowding ; For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces
turning ;
O captain ! dear father ! This arm I push beneath you ; It is some dream that on the deck You've fallen cold and dead.
My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still ; My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
254 WALT WHITMAN
But the ship, the ship is anchored safe, its voyage closed
and done ; From fearful trip, the victor ship comes in with object
won.
Exult, O shore, and ring, O bells 1 But I, with silent tread, Walk the spot my captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.
JOY, SHIPMATE, JOY 1
Joy, shipmate, joy ! (Pleas'd to my soul at length I cryX Our life is closed, our life begins, The long, long anchorage we leave, The ship is clear at last, she leaps ! She swiftly courses from the shore. Joy, shipmate, joy I
HEROIC DEATHS.
The final use of the greatest men of a Nation is. after all, not with reference to their deeds in themselves, or their direct bearing on their times or lands. The final use of a heroic-eminent life — especially of a heroic- eminent death — is its indirect filtering into the nation and the race, and to give, often at many removes, but unerringly, age after age, color and fibre to the per- sonalism of the youth and maturity of that age, and of mankind. Then there is a cement to the whole peo- ple, subtler, more underlying than anything ;n written constitution, or courts or armies — namely, the cement of a death identified thoroughly with that people, at its head, and for its sake. Strange, (is it not ?) that bat- tles, martyrs, agonies, blood, even assassination, should so condense — perhaps only really, lastingly condense — a Nationality.
I repeat it — the grand deaths of the race — the dra- matic deaths of every nationality — are its most impor- tant inheritance value — in some respects beyond its literature and art — (as the hero is beyond his finest portrait, and the battle itself beyond its choicest song pr epic). — The Death of Abraham Lincoln,
WHITNEY, ADELINE BUTTON TRAIN, an American novelist, born in Boston, Mass., Septem- ber 15, 1824. After receiving her education in Boston, she was married to Seth D. Whitney in 1843. She has contributed to magazines, and is the author of Footsteps on the Seas, a poem (1857) ; Mother Goose for Grown Folks (1860; revised ed., 1882); Boys at Chequasset (1862); Faith Gartneys Girlhood (1863); The Gay wort hys (1865); A Sum- mer in Leslie Goldthwaites Life (1866); Patience Strong's Outings (1868) ; Hitherto (1869); We Girls (1870); Real Folks (1871); Pansies, poems (1872); The Other Girls (1873) ; Sights and Insights (1876) ; Just How : a Key to the Cook Books (1878) ; Odd or Even (1880) ; BonnyborougJi (1885) ; Plomespun Yarns (1886); Holly-Tides (1886); Daffodils (1887); Bird Talk (1887); Ascutney Street (1890); A Golden Gossip (i 892) ; White Memories : Three Poems (i 893).
" The most sympathetic of interpreters of the mixed and varied motives of our human hearts," says Henry W. Bellows in Old and New (January 1872), "and recognizing the infirmities and follies of the test, she never confounds right and wrong, nor conceals from herself the essential quality of human actions. . . . There is a noble severity in the moral tone of this writer which is rare and sanative. She never allows vice or folly or false- hood in her characters to escape chastisement ;
C255)
256 ADELINE DUTTON TRAIN WHITNEY
and she is as patient as Providence in waiting for the seeds of retribution to ripen. . . . The simplicity, naturalness, and exquisite delicacy of all the critical moments in the love-passages of our author's characters do the greatest honor to the insight, purity, and nobility of her nature. How full she can fill the shallowest words! How racy she can render the tamest phrases! "
SUNLIGHT AND STARLIGHT.
God sets some souls in shade, alone ; They have no daylight of their own : Only in lives of happier ones They see the shine of distant suns.
God knows. Content thee with thy night. Thy greater heave hath grander light. To-day is close ; the hours are small, Thou sit'st afar, and hast them all.
Lose the less joy that doth but blind ; Reach forth a larger bliss to find. To-day is brief : the inclusive spheres Rain raptures of a thousand years.
— Pansics. A VIOLET.
God does not send us strange flowers every year. When the spring wind blows o'er the pleasant places, The same dear things lift up the same fair faces, The violet is here.
It all comes back : the odor, grace, and hue ; Each sweet relation of its life repeated ; No blank is left, no looking-for is cheated ; It is the thing we knew.
So after the death-winter it must be. God will not put strange signs in the heavenly places : The old love shall look out from the old faces. Veilchen ! I shall have thee.
ADELINE DUTTON TRAIN WHITNEY 257
HALLOWEEN.
We hung wedding-rings — we had mother's, and Miss Elizabeth had brought over Madame Pennington's — by hairs, and held them inside tumblers ; and they vi- brated with our quickening pulses and swung and swung, until they rung out fairy chimes of destiny against the sides. We floated needles in a great basin of water, and gave them names, and watched them turn and swim and draw together — some point to point, some heads and points, some joined cosily side to side, while some drifted to the margin and clung there all alone, and some got tears in their eyes, or an interfering jostle, and went down. We melted lead and poured it into water, and it took strange shapes, of spears and masts and stars ; and some all went to money ; and one was a queer little bottle and pills, and one was pencils and artists' tubes, and — really — a little palette with a hole in it.
And then came the chestnut roasting, before the bright red coals. Each girl put down a pair ; and I dare say most of them put down some little secret, girlish thought with it. The ripest nuts burned steadiest and surest, of course ; but how could we tell these until we tried ? Some little crack, or unseen worm-hole, would keep one still, while its companion would pop off, away from it ; some would take flight together, and land in like manner, without ever parting company ; these were to go some long way off ; some never moved from where they began, but burned up, stupidly, peace- ably, side by side. Some snapped into the fire. Some went off into corners. Some glowed beautifully, and some burned black, and some got covered up with ashes.
Barbara's pair were ominously still for a time, when all at once the larger gave a sort of unwilling lurch, without popping, and rolled off a little way, right toward the blaze.
" Gone to a warmer climate," whispered Leslie, like a tease. And then crack ! the warmer climate, or some- thing else, sent it back again, with a real bound, just as
258 ADELINE DUTTOK TRAIN" WHITNEY
Barbara's gave a gentle little snap, and they both dropped quietly down against the fender together. . . . Who would be bold enough to try the looking-glass ? To go out alone with it into the dark field, walking backward, saying the rhyme to the stars which if there had been a moon ought by right to have been said to her : —
" Round and round, O stars so fair ! Ye travel, and search out everywhere. I pray you, sweet stars, now show to me, This night, who my future husband shall be ! "
Somehow we put it upon Leslie. She was the oldest ; we made that the reason.
" I wouldn't do it for anything ! " said Sarah Hobart. " I heard of a girl who tried it once, and saw a shroud ! "
But Leslie was full of fun that evening, and ready to do anything. She took the little mirror that Ruth brought her from upstairs, put on a shawl, and we all went to the front door with her, to see her off.
" Round the piazza, and down the bank," said Bar- bara, " and backwardiall the way."
So Leslie backed out of the door, and we shut it upon her. The instant after, we heard a great laugh. Off the piazza., she had stepped backward against two gen- tlemen coming in. Doctor Ingleside was one, coming to get his supper ; the other was a friend of his, just ar- rived in Z " Doctor John Hautayne," he said, intro- ducing him by his full name. — We Girls: a Home Story,
WHITNEY, WILLIAM DWIGHT, *a distin- guished American philologist, born at North, ampton, Mass., February 9, 1827; died at New Haven, Conn., June 7, 1894. He was graduated at Williams College in 1845, and studied three years in Germany. From 1854, he was pro- fessor of Sanskrit and comparative philology in Yale College. As a Sanskrit scholar he had a European reputation. His numerous learned papers and books, especially on the Vedas, need not to be named here. Many of the papers are included in Oriental and Linguistic Studies, three series (1872-5). Some of his metrical translations of the Vedas occur in these. Other works by him are ; Language and the Study of Language '1867) ; On the Material and Form, in Language (1872); Darwinism and Language (1874); Life and Growth of Language (1875); Logical Consistency in Views of Language (1880); Mixture in Language (1881) ; French Grammar (1886) ; and Max Miillers Science of Language (1893). His text-books, San- skrit, German, French, and English, are well known. He was the editor-in-chief of the Century Dictionary.
" Whitney's life-work shows three important lines of activity," says Charles Rockwell Lanman in the Atlantic Monthly ', " the elaboration of strict- ly technical works, the preparation of educational VOL. XXIV.— IT (259;
260 WILLIAM D WIGHT WHITNEY
treatises, and the popular exposition of scientific questions. The last two methods of public ser- vice are direct and immediate, and to be gainsaid of none ; yet even here the less immediate results are doubless the ones by which he would have set most store. As for the first, some may incline to think the value of an edition of the Vedas or of a Sanskrit grammar — to say nothing of a Prati- cakhya — extremely remote ; they certainly won for him neither money nor popular applause ; and yet, again, such are the very works in which we cannot doubt he took the deepest satisfaction. He realized their fundamental character, knew that they were to play their part in unlocking the treasures of Indian antiquity. . . . He labored, and other men shall enter into his labors. . . . Breadth and thoroughness are ever at war with each other in men, for that men are finite. The gift of both in large measure and at once — this marks the man of genius. That the gift was Whitney's is clear to anyone who considers the versatility of his mind, the variousness of his work, and the quality of his results."
THE ZOROASTRIAN RELIGION.
By the testimony of its own scriptures [the Avesta], the Iranian religion is with the fullest right styled the Zoroastrian : Zoroaster is acknowledged as its founder throughout the whole of the sacred writings ; these are hardly more than a record of the revelations claimed to have been made to him by the supreme divinity. It is not, then, a religion which has grown up in the mind of a whole people, as the expression of their concep- tions of things supernatural ; it has received its form in the mind of an individual ; it has been inculcated and
WILLIAM D WIGHT WHITNEY 26i
taught by a single sage and thinker. Yet such a re- ligion is not wont to be an entirely new creation.
We are able, by the aid of the Indian Vedas, to trace out with some distinctness the form of the original Aryan faith, held before the separation of the Indian and Persian nations. It was an almost pure nature-re- ligion, a worship of the powers conceived to be the producers of all the various phenomena of the sensible creation ; and, of course, a polytheism, as must be the first religion of any people who without higher light are striving to solve for themselves the problem of the universe. But even in the earliest Vedic religion ap- pears a tendency toward an ethical and monotheistic development, evidenced especially by the lofty and en- nobling attributes and authority ascribed to the god Varuna : and this tendency, afterward unfortunately checked and rendered inoperative in the Indian branch of the race, seems to have gone on in Persia to an en- tire transformation of the natural religion into an ethi- cal, of the polytheism into a monotheism ; a transfor- mation effected especially by the teachings of the religious reformer Zoroaster. It is far from improbable that Varuna himself is the god out of whom the Ira- nians made their supreme divinity : the ancient name, however, appears nowhere in their religious records ; they have given him a new title, Ahura-Mazdd, " Spirit- ual Mighty-one," or "Wise-one " {Aura-Mazda of the In- scriptions ; Oromasdes and Ormuzd of the classics and modern Persians). The name itself indicates the origin of the conception to which it is given ; a popular relig- ion does not so entitle its creations, if, indeed, it brings forth any of so elevated and spiritual a character. Ahura Mazda" is a purely spiritual conception ; he is clothed with no external form or human attributes ; he is the creator and ruler of the universe, the author of all good ; he is the only being to whom the name of God can with propriety be applied in the Iranian relig- ion. Other beings, of subordinate rank and inferior dignity, are in some measure associated with him in the exercise of his authority ; such are Mithra, an ancient sun-god, the almost inseparable companion of Varuna in the Vedic invocations, and the seven Amshaspands
26a WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY
(Ameska-fyenta, " Immortal Holy-ones "), whose iden- tity with the Adityas of the Veda has been conjectured ; they appear here, however, with new titles, expressive of moral attributes. The other gods of the original Aryan faith, although they have retained their ancient name of daeva (Sanskrit deva), have lost their individ- uality and dignity, and have been degraded into the demons. ... At their head, and the chief embod- iment of the spirit which inspires them, is Angura- Mainyus (Arimanius, Ahriman), the "Sinful-minded," or " Malevolent " ; his name is one given him as antith- esis to the frequent epithet of Ahura-Mazda, (^pento- Matnyus, " holy-minded," or " benevolent." This side of the religion came to receive, however, a peculiar de- velopment, which finally converted the religion itself into dualism. Such was not its character at the period represented by the Avesta ; then the demons were sim- ply the embodiment of whatever evil influences existed in the universe, of all that man has to hate, and fear, and seek protection against. This was the Persian or Zoroastrian solution of the great problem of the origin of evil. There was wickedness, impurity, unhappiness, in the world ; but this could not be the work of the holy and benevolent Creator Ahura-Mazda ; the mal- evolence of Angura-Mainyus and his infernal legions must have produced it. Later, however, a reasoning and systematizing philosophy inquires : how came there to be such a malevolent being in the fair world of a be- nevolent Creator ? can he have been produced by him ? and why, if an inferior and subject power, is he not an- nihilated, or his power to harm taken away ? and then arises the doctrine that the powers of good and of evil are independent and equal, ever warring with one an- other, neither able wholly to subdue its adversary. This latter phase of belief is known to have appeared very early in the history of the Zoroastrian religion ; the philosophers aided in its development by setting up an undefined being, Zervanakerene, " time unbounded," from which were made to originate the two hostile principles, and for which they sought to find a place among the original tenets of their religion by a misin- terpretation of certain passages in the sacred texts.
WILLIAM D WIGHT WHITNEY
263
Such being the constitution of the universe, such the powers by which it was governed, the revelation was made by the benevolent Creator to his chosen servant for the purpose of instructing mankind with reference to their condition, and of teaching them how to aid the good, how to avoid and overcome the evil. The gen- eral features of the method by which this end was to be attained are worthy of all praise and approval. It was by seduously maintaining purity, in thought, word, and deed ; by truthfulness, temperance, chastity ; by prayer and homage to Ahura-Mazda and the other be- nevolent powers ; by the performance of good works, by the destruction of noxious creatures ; by everything that could contribute to the welfare and happiness of the human race. No cringing and deprecatory worship of the powers of evil was enjoined ; toward them the attitude of the worshipper of Mazda was to be one of uncompromising hostility ; by the power of a pure and righteous walk he was to confound and frustrate their malevolent attempts against his peace. . . . Fire was kept constantly burning in an enclosed space ; not in a temple, for idols and temples have been alike un- known throughout the whole course of Persian history ; and before it, as in a spot consecrated by the special presence of the divinity, were performed the chief rites of worship. ... An object of worship, properly so called, it never was. — Oriental and .linguistic Studies, ~st Series.
WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF, an American poet, born at Haverhill, Mass., December 17, 1807; died at Hampton Falls, N. H, September 7, 1892. Of Quaker parentage, he always re- mained a member of the Society of Friends. Up to his eighteenth year he worked on the farm ; then attended an academy for two years, writing occasional verses for the local newspaper, and in 1829 became editor of the American Manufacturer, at Boston. In 1830 he become editor of the Con- necticut Mirror y at Hartford, and wrote a memoir of John G. C. Brainard, his predecessor. In 1836 he was elected Secretary of the newly formed American Anti-Slavery Society, and became ed- itor of the Pennsylvania Freeman, at Philadelphia. In 1840 he took up his permanent residence at Amesbury, Mass.
Whittier's poems appeared from time to time in separate volumes, sometimes made up mainly of pieces previously published in periodicals. The principal of the longer poems are : Legends of New England (183 1) ; MoggMegone (1836) ; The Bridal of Pennacook(\%T)'j)', In War Time (1864) ; Snow- Bound (1865); The Tent on the Beach (1867); Among the Hills (1868) ; The Vision of Echard, and Other Poems (1877). The smaller poems, something like four hundred in number, constituting the greater por- tion of the whole, have been arranged by the au- (264)
JOHN GREEN-LEAF WHTTTIER 265
thor under several heads, among which are : " Leg- endary," "Voices of Freedom," "Voices of La- bor," " Home Ballads," " Poems and Lyrics," and " Miscellaneous." Several volumes made up of his various prose writings have been published. The principal of these are : Old Portraits and Modern Sketches (1850), and Literary Recreations and Mis- cellanies, of a late date. The later productions of Whittier include The King's Missive (1881); Bay of Seven Islands (1883) ; Poems of Nature (1886) ; St. Gregory s Guest (1886) ; At Sundown (1892). His complete works up to that date were published in 1888-89.
The first collected edition of Whittier's poems was published in 1857. It includes forty stanzas addressed to an infant who had been named after him. In this poem, of which only a portion is here given, the poet gives a picture of himself as he had come to be at the age of fifty.*
MY NAMESAKE.
You scarcely need my tardy thanks, Who, self-rewarded, nurse and tend—
A Green-leaf on your own Green-banks— The memory of your friend.
For me, no wreath, bloom-woven, hides The sobered brow and lessening hair ;
For aught I know, the myrtled sides Of Helicon are bare.
Yet not the less I own your claim
To grateful thanks, dear friends of mine :
Hang, if it please you so, my name Upon your household line.
* Whittier's Poems, by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
266 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Still shall that name, as now, recall The young leaf wet with morning dew,
The glory where the sunbeams fall The breezy woodlands through.
And thou, dear child, in riper days When asked the reason of thy name,
Shalt answer : " One 'twere vain to praise Or censure bore the same.
" Some blamed him, some believed him good, The truth lay doubtless 'twixt the two ;
He reconciled as best he could Old faiths and fancies new.
" He loved his friends, forgave his foes ;
And, if his words were harsh at times, He spared his fellow-men ; his blows
Fell only on their crimes.
" He loved the good and wise ; but found
His human heart to all akin Who met him on the common ground
Of suffering and of sin.
"He had his share of care and pain ;
No holiday was life to him ; Still in the heirloom cup we drain
The bitter drop will swim.
"Yet Heaven was kind, and here a bird And there a flower beguiled his way ;
And cool, in summer noons, he heard The fountains plash and play.
" On all his sad or restless moods The patient peace of Nature stole ;
The quiet of the fields and woods Sank deep into his soul.
"He worshipped as his fathers did, And kept the faith of childish days ;
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid, He loved the good old ways.
" The simple tastes, the kindly traits, The tranquil air, and gentle speech,
The silence of the soul that waits For more than man can teach.
" The cant of party, school and sect, Provoked at times his honest scorn,
And Folly, in its gray respect, He tossed on satire's horn.
"But still his heart was full of awe And reverence for all sacred things ;
And, brooding over form and law, He saw the Spirit's wings.
" He saw the old-time's groves and shrines, In the long distance fair and dim ,
And heard, like sound of far-off pines, The century-mellowed hymn
" He dared not mock the Dervish whirl, The Brahmin's rite, the Lama's spell ;
God knew the heart, Devotion's pearl Might sanctify the shell.
" While others trod the altar-stairs,
He faltered like the publican ; And, while they praised as saints, his prayes*
Were those of sinful man.
" For, awed by Sinai's Mount of Law, The trembling faith alone sufficed,
That, through the cloud and flame, he saw The sweet, sad face of Christ.
"And listening, with his forehead bowed, Heard the divine compassions fill
The pauses of the trump and cloud With whispers small and still.
268 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
" The words he spake, the thoughts he penned Are mortal as his thoughts and brain ;
But, if they served the Master's end, He has not lived in vain."
Heaven make thee better than thy name, Child of my friends ! For thee I crave
What riches never brought, nor fame To mortal longing gave.
I pray the prayer of Plato old ;
God make thee beautiful within ; And let thine eyes the good behold
In everything save sin !
Imagination held in check
To serve, not rule, thy poised mind ;
Thy Reason, at the frown or beck Of Conscience, loose or bind.
No dreamer thou, but real all —
Strong manhood crowning vigorous youth ;
Life made by duty epical, And rhythmic with the truth.
So shall that life the fruitage yield
Which trees of healing only give, And, green-leafed in the Eternal field
Of God, forever live !
During the ensuing twenty years were written not a few of Whittier's best poems. A volume containing some of .the latest of these was pub- lished in 1877, concluding with the following re- trospect of his past life of threescore years and ten :
AT EVENTIDE.
Poor and inadequate the shadow-play
Of gain and loss, of waking and of dream,
Against Life's solemn background needs must seem
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 269
At this late hour. Yet not unthankfully I call to mind the fountains by the way, The breath of flowers, the bird-song on the spray,
Dear friends, sweet human loves, the joy of giving
And of receiving the great boon of living In grand, historic years when Liberty
Had need of word and work ; quick sympathies For all who fail and suffer ; song's relief ; Nature's uncloying loveliness ; and, chief, The kind, restraining hand of Providence ; The inward witness ; the assuming sense
Of an Eternal Good which overlies
The sorrow of the world ; Love which outlives All sin and wrong ; Compassion which forgives
To the uttermost ; and Justice, whose clear eyes Through lapse and failure look to the intent, And judge our frailty by the life we meant.
Whittier's day did not close with the eventide of threescore years ; there was a serene twilight of more than a half score of years. His career as a poet lasted for more than sixty years, begin- ning with the publication of his Legends of New England, in 1831.
SONG OF THE FREE.
Pride of New England ! Soul of our fathers ! Think we all craven-like, when the storm gathers ? What though the tempest be over us lowering, Where's the New-Englander shamefully cowering ? Graves green and holy around us are lying ; — Free were the sleepers all, living and dying.
Back with the Southerner's paddocks and scourges ! Go — let him fetter down ocean's free surges ! Go — let him silence winds, clouds, and waters : — Never New England's own free sons and daughters ! Free as our rivers are oceanward going — Free as the breezes are over us blowing.
270 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Up to our altars, then, haste we, and summon Courage and loveliness — manhood and woman ! Deep let our pledges be : Freedom forever ! Truce with oppression — never, oh, never! By our own birthright-gift, granted of Heaven — Freedom for heart and lip, be the pledge given !
If we have whispered truth, whisper no longer , Speak as the tempest does, sterner and stronger. Still be the tones of truth louder and firmer, Startling the haughty South with the deep murmur God and our charter's right, freedom forever ! Truce with oppression — never, oh, never !
ICHABOD !
So fallen ! So lost ! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore ! The glory from his gray hairs gone
Forever more !
Revile him not — the Tempter hath
A snare for all ; And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall.
Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage.
When he who might Have lighted up and led his age,
Falls back in night.
Scorn ! would the angels laugh to mark
A bright soul driven, Fiend-goaded down the endless dark,
From hope and heaven '
Let not the land, once proud of him,
Insult him now, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.
But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake, A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 27j
Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains : A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still strong in chains.
All else is gone ; from those great eyes
The soul has fled ; When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The Man is dead.
Then pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame ; Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame.
THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS.
We cross the prairie, as of old
The Pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free. We go to rear a wall of men
On Freedom's southern line, And plant beside the cotton-tree
The rugged Northern pine.
We're flowing from our native hills,
As our free rivers flow ; The blessing of our Mother-land
Is with us as we go. Upbearing, like the Ark of God,
The Bible in our van, We go to test the truth of God,
Against the fraud of Man.
No pause, nor rest, save where the streams
That feed the Kansas run, Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon
Shall flout the setting sun. We'll tread the prairie, as of old
Our fathers sailed the sea ; And make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free.
272 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE. — 1859.
John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dying day :
" I will not have to shrive my soul a priest in Sla- very's pay ;
But let some poor slave-mother whom I have striv'n to free,
With her children, from the gallows-stairs put up a prayer for me I "
John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him out to die ; And lo ! a poor slave-mother with her little child
pressed nigh. Then the bold, blue eyes grew tender, and the old, harsh
face grew mild, As he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed
the negro's child.
The shadows of his stormy life that moment fell apart ; And they who blamed the bloody hand forgave the
loving heart. That kiss from all its guilty means reclaimed the good
intent, And round the grisly fighter's hair the martyr's aureole
bent.
Perish with him the folly that seeks through evil good ! Long live the generous purpose unstained with human
blood ! Not the raid of midnight terror, but the thought which
underlies ; Not the Borderer's pride of daring, but the Christian's
sacrifice !
Never more may you, Blue Ridge, the Northern rifle
hear, Nor see the light of blazing homes flash on the negro's
spear ; But let the free-winged angel Truth their guarded passes
scale, To teach that right is more than might, and justice
more than mail !
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 273
So vainly shall Virginia set her battle in array ;
In vain her trampling squadrons knead the winter snow
with clay. She may strike the pouncing eagle, but she dares not
harm the dove ; And every gate she bars to Hate shall open wide' to
Love.
THE BATTLE AUTUMN OF 1862.
The flags of war like storm-birds fly,
The charging trumpets blow ; .Yet rolls no thunder in the sky,
No earthquake strives below. And, calm and patient, Nature keeps
Her ancient promise well, Though o'er her bloom and greenness sweeps
The battle's breath of hell.
And still she walks in golden hours
Through harvest-happy farms, And still she wears her fruits and flowers,
Like jewels on her arms. What mean the gladness of the plain,
The joy of eve and morn ; The mirth that shakes the beard of grain,
And yellow locks of corn ?
Ah ! eyes may well be full of tears,
And hearts with hate are hot ; But even-paced come round the years,
And Nature changes not. She meets with smiles our bitter grief,
With songs our groans of pain ; She mocks with tint of flower and leaf
The war-field's crimson stain.
Still in the cannon's pause we hear
Her sweet thanksgiving psalm ; Too near to God for doubt or fear,
She shares the eternal calm.
274 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
She knows the seed lies safe below The fires that blast and burn ;
For all the tears of blood we sow She waits the rich return.
Oh, give to us, in times like these,
•The vision of her eyes ; And make her fields and fruited trees
Our golden prophecies I Oh, give to us her finer ear !
Above this stormy din We, too, would hear the bells of cheer
Ring Peace and Freedom in.
BARBARA FRIETCHIE.
Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick stand Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Round about them orchards sweep, Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
Fair as a garden of the Lord
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde
On that pleasant morn of the early fall When Lee marched over the mountain-wall—
Over the mountains, winding down, Horse and foot into Frederick town.
Forty flags with their silver stars, Forty flags with their crimson bars,
Flapped in the morning wind : the sun Of noon looked down, and saw not one.
Up rose old Barbara. Frietchie then, Bowed with her fourscore years and ten :
Bravest of all in Frederick town,
She took up the flag the men hauled down ;
JOHN GRERNLEAF WHITTIER
In her attic window the staff she set, To show that one heart was loyal yet.
Up the street came the rebel tread, Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and right He glanced ; the old flag met his sight.
" Halt ! " — the dust-brown ranks stood fast " Fire ! " — out blazed the rifle blast.
It shivered the window, pane and sash ; It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick as it fell, from the broken staff Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf ;
She leaned far out on the window-sill, And shook it forth with a royal will.
" Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country's flag," she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, Over the face of the leader came ;
The nobler nature within him stirred To life at that woman's deed and word :
" Who touches a hair of yon gray head Dies like a dog ! March on ! " he said.
All day long through Frederick street Sounded the tread of marching feet :
All day long that free flag tost Over the heads of the rebel host.
Ever its torn folds rose and fell
On the loyal winds that loved it well ;
And through the hill-gaps sunset-light Shone over it with a warm good-night.
Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er, And the Rebel rides on his raids no more. VOL. XXJV — 18
276 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Honor to her ! and let a tear
Fall for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.
Over Barbara Frietchie's grave, Flag of Freedom and Union wave !
Peace and order and beauty draw Round thy symbol of light and law ;
And ever the stars above look down On thy stars below in Frederick town !
THE PEACE-AUTUMN : 1865.
Thank God for rest, where none molest,
And none can make afraid ; For Peace that sits at Plenty's quest
Beneath the homestead shade ! Bring pipe and gun, the sword's red scourge
The negro's broken chains, And beat them at the blacksmith's forge
To .ploughshares for our plains. Alike henceforth our hills of snow,
And vales where cotton flowers ; All winds that blow, all streams that flow,
Are Freedom's motive-powers.
Build up an altar to the Lord,
O grateful hearts of ours ; And shape it of the greenest sward
That ever drank the showers. There let our banners droop and flow,
The stars uprise and fall ; Our roll of martyrs, sad and slow,
Let sighing breezes call. There let the common heart keep time
To such an anthem sung As never swelled on poet's rhyme,
Or thrilled on singer's tongue ;
Song of our burden and relief,
Of peace and long annoy ; The passion of our mighty grief,
And our exceeding joy !
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 277
A song of praise to Him who filled
The harvests sown in tears, And gave each field a double yield
To feed our battle-years ! A song of faith that trusts the end
To match the good begun ; Nor doubts the power of Love to blend
The hearts of men as one !
SHUT IN.
The moon above the eastern wood Shone at its full ; the hill-range stood Transfigured in the silver flood, Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, Dead white, save where some sharp ravine Took shadow, or the sombre green Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black Against the whiteness at their back. For such a world and such a night Most fitting that unwarming light. Which only seemed, where'er it fell, To make the coldness visible.
Shut in from all the world without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat ; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed. The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall ; And for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' straddling feet, The mugr of cider simmered slow,
278 JOHN GKEE.VLEAF WHITTIER
The apples sputtered in a row, And close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood.
What matter how the night behaved?
What matter how the north-wind raved ?
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow.
O Time and Change ! — with hair as gray
As was my sire's that winter day,
How strange it seems, with so much gone
Of life and love, to still live on !
Ah, brother, only I and thou
Are left of all that circle now,
The dear home-faces whereupon
That fitful firelight paled and shone,
Henceforward listen as we will,
The voices of that hearth are still ;
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er,
Those lighted faces smile no more.
We tread the paths their feet have worn,
We sit beneath their orchard-trees,
We hear, like them, the hum of bees
And rustle of the bladed corn !
We turn the pages that they read,
Their written words we linger o'er, But in the sun they cast no shade, No voice is heard, no sign is made, No step is on the conscious floor ! Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, (Since He who knows our need is just), That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees ! Who hopeless lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play ! Who hath not learned in hours of faith The truth to flesh and sense unknown, That Life is ever Lord of Death, And Love can never lose its own !
— Snow Bound.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 27
MAUD MULLER.
Maud Muller, on a summer's day, Raked the meadow, sweet with hay.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beauty and rustic health.
Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee The mock-bird echoed from his tree.
But when she glanced to the far-off town, White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest And a nameless longing filled her breast —
A wish, that she hardly dared to own, For something better than she had known.
The Judge rode slowly down the lane, Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.
He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,
And ask a draught from the spring that flowed Through the meadow across the road.
She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up, And filled for him her small tin cup.
And blushed as she gave it, looking down On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.
" Thanks ! " said the Judge ; "a sweeter draught From a fairer hand was never quaffed."
He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees, Of the singing birds and the humming bees ;
Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.
And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown, And her graceful ankles, bare and brown ;
28o JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
And listened, while a pleased surprise Looked from her long-lashed, hazel eyes.
At last, like one who for delay Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
Maud Muller looked and sighed : " Ah me 1 That I the Judge's bride might be I
" He would dress me up ;n silks so fine, And praise and toast me at his wine.
" My father should wear a broadcloth coat ; My brother should sail a painted boat.
"I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,
And the baby should have a new toy each day.
" And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor. And all should bless me who left our door."
The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill. And saw Maud Muller standing still.
" A form more fair, a face more sweet, Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.
"And her modest answer and graceful air Show her wise and good as she is fair.
" Would she were mine, and I to-day, Like her, a harvester of hay :
" No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs, Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,
" But low of cattle and song of birds, And health and quiet and loving words."
But he thought of his sisters proud and cold, And his mother vain of her rank and gold.
So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on, And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon, When he hummed in court an old love-tune •,
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 281
And the young girl mused beside the well, Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
He wedded a wife of richest dower, Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, He watched a picture come and go ;
And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes Looked out in their innocent surprise.
Oft, when the wine in his glass was red, He longed for the wayside well instead ;
And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms, To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.
And the proud man sighed, with a secret "Ah, that I were free again !
" Free as when I rode that day,
Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."
She wedded a man unlearned and poor, And many children played round her door.
But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain, Left their traces on heart and brain.
And oft, when the summer sun shone hot On the new-mown hay in the meadow-lot,
And she heard the little spring brook fall Over the roadside, through the wall,
In the shade of the apple-tree again She saw a rider draw his rein,
And, gating down with timid grace, She felt his pleased eyes read her face.
Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls Stretched away into stately halls ;
The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, The tallow candle an astral burned,
aS2 JOHN CREENLEAF WH1TTIER
And for him who sat by the chimney lug, Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,
A manly form at her side she saw, And joy was duty, and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life again, Saying only, " It might have been."
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge !
God pity them both ! and pity us all, Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these : " It might have been ! "
Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes ;
And, in the hereafter, angels may Roll the stone from its grave away !
THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ.
On the isle of Penikese, Ringed about by sapphire seas, Fanned by breezes salt and cool, Stood the master with his school. Over sails that not in vain Wooed the west-wind's steady strain, Line of coast that low and far Stretched its undulating bar, Wings aslant along the rim Of the waves they stooped to skim, Rock and isle and glistening bay, Fell the beautiful white day.
Said the master to the youth :
" We have come in search of truth,
Trying with uncertain key
Door by door of mystery ;
We are reaching, through His laws,
To the garment-hem of Cause,
Him, the endless, unbegun,
The Unnameable, the One,
JOHN GKEENLEAF WHITTIER 2s3
Light of all our light the Source,
Life of life, and Force of force,
As with fingers of the blind,
We are groping here to find
What the hieroglyphics mean
Of the Unseen in the seen,
What the Thought which underlies
Nature's masking and disguise,
What it is that hides beneath
Blight and bloom and birth and death
By past efforts unavailing,
Doubt and error, loss and failing,
Of our weakness made aware,
On the threshold of our task
Let us light and guidance ask,
Let us pause in silent prayer ! "
Then the master in his place Bowed his head a little space, And the leaves by soft airs stirred, Lapse of wave and cry of bird, Left the solemn hush unbroken Of that wordless prayer unspoken, While its wish, on earth unsaid, Rose to heaven interpreted. As in life's best hours we hear By the spirit's finer ear His low voice within us, thus The All-Father heareth us ; And His holy ear we pain With our noisy words and vain. Not for Him our violence, Storming at the gates of sense, His the primal language, His The eternal silences ! Even the careless heart was moved And the doubting gave assent, With a gesture reverent, To the master well-beloved. As thin mists are glorified By the light they cannot hide, All who gazed upon him saw,
284 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
Through its veil of tender awe, How his face was still uplit By the old, sweet look of it, Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer, And the love that casts out fear. Who the secret may declare Of that brief, unuttered prayer ? Did the shade before him come, Of the inevitable doom, Of the end of earth so near, And Eternity's new year ? In the lap of sheltering seas Rests the isle of Penikese ; But the lord of the domain Comes not to his own again : Where the eyes that follow fail, On a vaster sea his sail Drifts beyond our beck and hail ! Other lips within its bound Shall the laws of life expound : Other eyes from rock and shell Read the world's old riddles well ; But when breezes light and blind Blow from summer's blossomed land, When the air is glad with wings, And the blithe song-sparrow sings, Many an eye with his still face Shall the living ones displace, Many an ear the word shall seek He alone could fitly speak. And one name forevermore Shall be uttered o'er and o'er By the waves that kiss the shore, By the curlew's whistle, sent Down the cool, sea-scented air ; In alt voices known to her Nature own her worshipper, Half in triumph, half lament. Thither love shall tearful turn, Friendship pause uncovered there, And the wisest reverence learn From the master's silent prayer.
WHYMPER, EDWARD, an English traveller, born in London, April 27, 1840. He was educated by private tutors and at the Clarendon House School ; and was trained by his father, a well-known en- graver and painter, as a draughtsman on wood, but, preferring out-door life, he undertook a series of journeys which eventually changed the course of his life. In 1861 he ascended Mont Pelvoux, then supposed to be the highest mountain in France. From its summit he discovered the Pointe des Ecrins, five hundred feet higher, which he ascended in 1864. Between 1861 and 1865 he ascended one mountain after another till then thought to be inaccessible. His ascent of the Matterhorn, when several companions lost their lives, occurred July 14, 1865. In 1867 he explored Greenland and discovered important vegetation in its high northern latitudes. In 1871 he pub- lished his Scrambles Among the Alps ; and the fol- lowing year he again explored Greenland in the interest of science. He travelled in Ecuador in 1879 and 1880, and measured the Great Andes on and near the equator ; on which journey he made the first ascents of Chimborazo, Sincholagua, An- tisana, Cayambe, and Cotocachi. In 1892 ap- peared his Travels Among the Great Andes of the Equator, with its Supplementary Appendix, and How to Use the Aneroid Barometer. The Royal Geo- graphical Society awarded him the Patron's (2*5)
286 EDWARD WHYMPER
medal, and the King of Italy decorated him a Chevalier of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus. Some of his best writings, accompanied with wood-cuts engraved by himself, 'have ap- peared as magazine articles, especially in the Leisure Hour.
THE TOP OF CHIMBORAZO.
We had scarcely mounted more than a thousand feet above our third camp, and as it was certain that we could not reach the summit that day, we came down again, holding ourselves in readiness to start again the following morning.
I started at 5.40 A.M., January 4, on a very fine and nearly cloudless morning. We followed the track made yesterday, and benefited by the steps which had been cut in the snow. At first the line of ascent was on the southern side of the mountain, but after the height of 18,500 feet had been attained, we commenced to bear round to the west, and mounted spirally, arriving on the plateau at the summit from a northerly direction.
The ascent was mainly over snow, and entirely so after 19,500 feet had been passed. Up to nearly 20,- ooo feet it was in good condition, and we sank in but slightly, and progressed at a reasonable rate. Until ii A.M. we had met with no great difficulties, and up to that time had experienced fine weather, with a good deal of sunshine.
We were now 20,000 feet high, and the summit seemed within our grasp. We could see the great pla- teau which is at the top of the mountain, and the two fine snowy domes, one on its northern and the other on its southern side. But, alas ! the sky became clouded all over, the wind rose, and we entered upon a large tract of exceedingly soft snow, which could not be traversed in the ordinary way, and it was found neces- sary to flog every yard of it down, and then to crawl over it on all-fours. The ascent of the last thousand feet occupied more than five hours, and it was 5 P.M before we reached the summit of the higher of the two domes of Chimborazo. — From The Ascent of Chimborazo, in the Leisure Hour* 1881.
rr / \
WICLIF, JOHN DE, a celebrated English patriot and religious reformer, born in Spreswell (sup- posed to be either Hipswell or Barford), near Richmond, Yorkshire, about 1330; died at Lut- terworth, Leicestershire, December 31, 1384. His name, variously written Wycliffe, Wicklif, etc., is Wiclif in official documents of his time. At the age of fifteen he entered Oxford, then in its glory, with at one time the astonishing number of 30,000 students. About 1 360, he became Master of Balliol College; and for a while was royal chaplain. His life was full of work and stirring events, in his support of the King against Papal claims, his publishing the principles of the Refor- mation (anterior to other reformers), opposing the ecclesiastical corruptions, sending forth preachers to the people, and giving to the people the Bible in their own tongue — the translation by him and his helpers, from the Latin Vulgate, having been finished about the time of his death. He was re- peatedly arraigned for heresy, and, finally pro- hibited from teaching in the university, retired to his, rectory of Lutterworth. His buried remains, by order of the rival pope, Clement VIII., were disinterred, burned, and the ashes cast into the Swift, a branch of the Avon River. In the follow- ing extracts from his polemical writings the an- cient spelling is modernized.
(287)
JOHN DE WICL1F
THE SCRIPTURES.
I have learned by experience the truth of what you say (with reference to my appeal to the Scriptures). The chief cause, beyond doubt, of the existing state of things is our want of faith in Holy Scripture. We do not sincerely believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, or we should abide by the authority of His Word, in particu- lar that of the Evangelists, as of infinitely greater weight than any other. Inasmuch as it is the will of the Holy Spirit that our attention should not be dis- persed over a large number of objects, but concen- trated on one sufficient source of instruction, it is His pleasure that the books of the Old and New Law should be read and studied, and that men should not be taken up with other books, which, true as they may be, and containing even Scripture truth, as they may by im- plication, are not to be confided in without caution and limitation. Hence St. Austin often enjoins on his readers not to place any faith in his word or writings, except in so far as they have their foundation in the Scriptures, wherein, as he often sayeth, all truth, either directly or implicitly, is contained. Of course we should judge in this manner with reference to the writings of other holy doctors, and much more with reference to the writings of the Roman Church, and of her doctors in these later times. If we follow this rule, the Script- ures will be held in due respect. . . .
We ought to believe in. the authority of no man, un- less he say the Word of God. It is impossible that any word or deed of the Christian should be of equal autnority with Holy Scripture. The right understand- ing of Holy Scripture is being taught to us by the Holy Ghost just as the Scriptures were opened to the Apos- tles by Christ. But while Holy Scripture includes in itself all truth, partly mediately, partly immediate- ly, reason is indispensable to the right understand- ing. . . .
The whole Scripture is one word of God ; also the whole Law of Christ is one perfect word proceeding from the mouth of God ; it is, therefore, not permitted
JOHN DE WICLIF
289
to sever the Holy Scripture, but to allege it in its in- tegrity according to the sense of the author. . . .
If God's word is the life of the world, and every word of God is the life of the human soul, how may any Antichrist, for dread of God, take it away from us that be Christian men, and thus suffer the people to die for hunger in heresy and blasphemy of men's laws, that corrupteth and slayeth the soul ? . . .
The fiend seeketh many ways to mar men in belief and to stop them by saying that no books are belief. For if thou speakest of the Bible, then Antichrist's clerks say, How provest thou that it is Holy Writ more than an- other written book ? Therefore men must use caution, and ask the question whether Christ left His Gospel here in order to comfort His Church. And if they say that He did, ask them which are these Gospels ? These we call Holy Writ. But as Christian men should speak plainly to Antichrist, we say that Holy Writ is com- monly taken in three manners. On the first manner Christ Himself is called in the Gospel Holy Writ. On the second manner Holy Writ is called the Truth, and this truth may not fail. On the third manner Holy Writ is the name given to the books that are written and made of ink and parchment. And this speech is not so proper as the first and second. But we take by belief that the second Writ, the truth written in the Book of Life, is Holy Writ, and God says it. This we know by belief, and this one belief makes us certain that these truths are Holy Writ. Thus though Holy Writ, on the third manner, be burnt or cast in the sea, Holy Writ on the second manner, may not fail, as Christ sayeth. — BUDDENSIEG'S /"<?/;« Wiclif's Life and Writings.
WIELAND, CHRISTOPH MARTIN, a German poet, born at Oberholzheim, Swabia, September 3, 1733; died at Weirnar, January 20, 1813. He composed German and Latin verses in his twelfth year; six years later he published Ten Moral Li- ters, and a poem, Anti-Ovid. After study at Tu- bingen, his epic on Arminius brought him ini:> association with Bodmer of Zurich. He trans- lated twenty-two of Shakespeare's plays (1762-66), In 1769 he became Professor of Philosophy at. Erfurt; and later preceptor of the Grand-Duke Charles Augustus, with title of Councillor. His collected works are voluminous, consisting c: poems, novels, and satires in verse and procc, The Geschichte der Abderitcn (1774) has been trans- lated into English as TJic Republic of Fools (1861). His principal poetic work was an epic, Oberon (1780), a canto of which, with an ethical defence Cv Wieland, is in Longfellow's Poetry of Europe. The following extracts, from W. Taylor's translation (1829), are curiously suggestive in form, though not in poetic genius, of Tennyson's later Idyls of the King. Geron (Gyron) the Courteous was the favorite romance of Francis I. of France. The motto on Geron's sword was, " Loyalty surpasses all, as falsity disgraces all."
GERON THE COURTEOUS.
A purpled canopy o'crhung the seat Of Arthur and his queen ; an ivory stool
CHRISTOPH MARTIN WIELAND 291
Was pla;ed between them for the worthy Branor. When these were seated, others took their places, In order due, beside the spacious board. Now twenty youths in pewter dishes brought The steaming food, and twenty others waited At the rich side-board, where from silver ewers Streamed ale, mead, wine ; and trumpets shook the hall, As often as the two-eared cup went round. . . .
King Arthur took the old man's hand, and said : " Until to-day my eyes have ne'er beheld, Sir Branor, one so stout and merciful : God help me, but I should have liked to know The fathers who begot such sons as these."
Him the old knight replied to in this wise : " Sire King, I've lived a hundred years and more ; Many a good man upon his nurse's lap I've seen, and many a better helped to bury. As yet there is no lack of doughty knights, Or lovely ladies worthy of their service ; But men like those of yore I see not now, So full of manhood, firmness, frankness, sense, To honor, right, and truth, so tied and steadfast, With hand and heart, and countenance, so open, So without guile, as were King Meliad, Hector the Brown, and Danayn the Red, And my friend Geron, still surnamed the Courteous."
Branor continued thus : " At that time lived In Brittany a noble knight, surnamed Danayn the Red, who dwelt at Malouen ; Geron the Courteous was his constant comrade And dearest friend ; together they had sworn The bond to die for one another, and Their fast affection was become a proverb. The dame of Malouen, the wife of Danayn, Was in all Brittany the fairest woman. . . . They travelled for adventures to the courts Of princes — where at tournaments and skurries Fame could be earned ; and when they were come back To Malouen, Sir Geron kept his way, Renewed the silent covenant with his eyes, VOL. XXIV.— 1»
5Q2 CHRISTOPH AJARTIN WIELAND
So that who saw him always would have fancied The lovely dame of Malouen to him Was nothing more than any other woman.
Unluckily, the lovely lady's heart Was not so guarded as his own. She thought At the first glance that Geron was the man, Above all other men, to whom a lady Could not refuse the recompense of her love.
And lo ! it somehow happened, That, just as Geron was approaching her, He brushed against the low wall of the well, Where he had piled his weapons on each other, And the good sword slid down into the water. Now, when he heard the splash, he quickly leaves The lovely lady, runs to save the sword, And draws it out, and wipes it dry ; And, as he looked along it narrowly To see if 'twas uninjured, his eye caught The golden letters on the blade inscribed By Hector's order. As he read, he trembled. He reads again ; it was as had the words Never before impressed him. All the spell At once was broke.
He stands with the good sword Bare in his hand, and sinks into himself :
" Where am I ? God in heaven ! what a deed I was come here to do ! " And his knees tottered Now at the thought. The sword still in his hand, He on the margin of the well sat down, His back toward the lady, full of sorrow, And sinking from one sad thought to another.
Now when the lady, who so late ago Beheld him blithe and gay, thus suddenly Perceived him falling in strange melancholy, She was alarmed, and knew not what to think, And came to him with gentle, timid step, And said, " What ails you, sir ; what are you planning ? :
Geron, unheeding her, still bent his eyes Steadfast upon his sword, and made no answer. She waited long, and, as he gave her none, She stepped still nearer, and with tendere?t voice
CHRISTOPH MARTIN WIELAND 293
Again repeated, " My dear sir, what ails you?" He, deeply sighing, answered, "What I ail — May God in heaven have mercy on my soul ! Against my brother Danayn I have sinned, And am not worthy now to live." He spoke And once again began to eye his sword, Then said, with broken voice : " Thou trusty blade, Into whose hands art thou now fallen ? He Was quite another man who used to wield thee. No faithless thought e'er came across his heart In his whole life. Forgive me : I no more Can now deserve to wear thee. I'll avenge Both thee and him, who once hoped better of me When to my keeping he intrusted thee." Arid now he raised his arm ; and, ere the lady, Helpless from terror, could attempt to hinder, He ran his body through and through, then drew The weapon out, and would have given himself Another stab, but that the dame of Malouen, With all the force of love and of despair Fell on his arm.
" Good knight, for God's sake spare Your precious life ; slay not yourself, and me, So cruelly for nothing."
" Lady," said he,
" Leave me my will. I don't deserve to live, And wish to perish, rather than be false." The lady sobbed aloud, and clung around him,
While this was passing, Danayn returned. . . , And as he passed this forest, near the well A shriek of woe assailed him, and he turned His horse, to seek the cause — when lo ! he saw, Stretched in his blood, Sir Geron, bleeding still ; And by him kneeled alone, in speechless anguish, Wringing her hands, the lady. Danayn, Instead of asking questions, from his horse Sprang, and proceeded to assist his friend.
Geron refuses to accept relief — He will not live — and to his friend accuses Himself most bitterly, hides nothing from him But his wife's weakness, takes upon himself The load of all his guilt, and, when he thus
294 CHRISTOPH MARTIN WIELAND
Had ended his confession, he held out
His hand, and said, " Now then forgive me, brother,
If you are able. But, oh, let me die,
And do not hate my memory ; for repentance
Did come before the deed. My faithlessness
Was only in my heart. Be my heart's blood
The fit atonement."
Noble Danayn
Conjures him, by their holy friendship, still To live — and swears to him, that more than ever He now esteems and loves him. Overcome By such affection, Geron then consents For his dear friend to live.
— TAYLOR'S Historical Survey of German Poetry.
THE PAIN OF SEPARATION.
On the marge of silent waters Lonely oft I sit and count, In the lagging, sluggish deep, All the moments which divide us, As they lonely onward creep.
My trembling feet then stray Through valley, mead, and grove, I think, by night and day, Of thee alone, my love.
At every whisper From dusky grove, When flaps her airy wing The turtle-dove, How beats my heart ! My ear I strain, And when I list and wait, Day after day — how great Is then my pain !
— Translation of A. BASKERVILLE.
WILBERFORCE, SAMUEL, an English prelate, born at Broomfield House, Clapham, near Lon- don, September 7, 1805; died at Dorking, July 19, 1873. He was one of the most accomplished and influential debaters in the House of Lords. Educated at Oxford, he was successively rector of Brightstone, Archdeacon of Surrey and chap- lain to Prince Albert, Canon of Westminster Ca- thedral, Dean of Westminster, Bishop of Oxford, and the same of Winchester. Among his writings are : Eucharista ( 1 839) ; Rocky Island, and Othe* Parables (1840) ; History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America (1844); Times of Secession and Times of Revival (1863) ; several volumes of Ser- mons and Essays (1874).
"The scope," says the Saturday Review, "of Bishop Wilberforce's public life as a churchman, though probably never so precisely formulated by himself, was to exhibit among the people of England the Church of England as an insti- tution about which there could be no dispute, but which, existing as it did in the unquestionable order of things, had to be improved and made the best of, for the sake, not only of itself, but ot the nation within which it ministered. In every de- tail a keen reformer, he recommended his projects of reform not by the defects, but by the theoretic perfection of the institution which he was labor- ing to improve."
096 SAMUEL WILBERFORCE
USE AND MISUSE OF SYMBOLS.
We find, then, the Early Church developing naturally its invisible vitality in certain outward forms and sym- bols. These when examined closely prove to be singu- larly simple and full of life ; to be fit for all times and countries ; to point all attention from themselves to the truths of which they are the shadow. They seem of themselves to proclaim, even aloud, that they were the offspring of a vigorous, healthy, loving, believing age, when — not without the direct guiding of the One Spirit — true faith and hearty love breathed out their own power into such holy forms. But as the Church lives on, the growth of outward symbols still continues ; and as they multiply, a general change comes over them ; still for a season they proceed from loving hearts, and from imaginative spirits, stirred to their lowest depths by the breath of mighty truths ; but they are less sim- ple ; less meet for universal adaptation ; fitting rather certain persons, certain modes of life, or certain na- tions, than man in his simplicity. Yet another change may in a while be felt : and soon the outward symbol bears the stamp of this mingled parentage — nay, in very many symbols the shadows of the error mark the fixed, external portrait more deeply than the lines of truth. This age is to be known by the abundance and the splendor of its outward symbols ; by their tendency to set forth themselves rather than the truths for which they ought to witness ; to draw to themselves admiring eyes, even from the very truths of which they still pro- fess to speak. They become indeed idols (eiSwXa), in- stead of media for revealing God. Full of peril is such a time, when holy aspirations are so wedded to the earth ; fuller still is that which follows ; for error, ever productive after its kind, here by the doubtful symbol propagates itself, and men are drawn away from Christ by that which professes to declare Him.
But to this period succeeds another which contents itself with maintaining and employing these creations of preceding ages. And this it may do until all is lost ; until the Divine Gift of the living Spirit is overlaid by
SAMUEL WILBERFORCE
297
these cumbrous embodiments of mingled truth and error ; until formality and utter death settle over all things. Or it may be that at such a time, God's great mercy raises up some champions of His truth who shall boldly break in upon the charmed circle, dissolve at once the foul enchantment, and restore all the mis- shaped and monstrous images around them to the sim- plicity of their primeval forms.
And what, after such a time, is the attempt to re- create the outward forms of earlier, and it may be, darker days ? What is it in any case but ignorantly to go against the universal law of being; and it may be, to bring back forms which have been at once the con- sequence and cause of former wanderings ?
WILCOX, ELLA (WHEELER), an American poet, born at Johnstown Centre, Wis., about 1845. She was educated at the University of Wisconsin. At an early age she began to write for newspapers and periodicals. She, has published Drops of Wa- ter (1872); Maurine(i%7$)\ Shells (1883) ; Poems of Passion (1883); Mai Momtie, a novel (1885) ; Poems of Pleasure (i888);^4 Double I-ife, a novel (1891); How Salvator Won, a poem for recitation (1891); Sweet Danger, a novel (1892); Men, Women and Emo- tion, forty-five chapters of advice to married folks (1893); Song of the Sandwich, a comic poem (1893) ; Was it Suicide ? a collection of stories (1893).
The passionateness on which she seems to pride herself is really less poetic, as well as less woman- ly, than her calmer song. When she writes thus, for instance, she strikes an obviously false note :
*' She touches my cheek, and I quiver—
I tremble with exquisite pains ; She sighs — like an overcharged river
My blood rushes on through my veins ; She smiles — and in mad tiger fashion,
As a she-tiger fondles her own, I clasp her with fierceness and passion,
And kiss her with shudder and groan."
This is not the passion of Rossetti or Browning, nor even of Gautier and Baudelaire ; it is a wom- an's crude imitation of these- But when Mrs.
(298)
ELLA WILCOX 299
Wilcox writes simply and calmly, keeping on her own ground of life and experience, she is strong, as in the really fine poem Loves Coming.
LOVE'S COMING.
She had looked for his coming as warriors come, With the clash of arms, and the bugle's call ;
But he came instead with a stealthy tread, Which she did not hear at all.
She had thought how his armor would blaze in the sun, As he rode like a prince to claim his bride ;
In the sweet, dim light of the falling night She found him at her side.
She had dreamed how the gaze of his strange, bold eye Would wake her heart to a sudden glow ;
She found in his face the familiar grace Of a friend she used to know.
She had dreamed how his coming would stir her soul, As the ocean is stirred by the wild storm's strife ;
He brought her the balm of a heavenly calm, And a peace which crowned her life.
OUR LIVES.
Our lives are songs. God writes the words, And we set them to music at pleasure ;
And the song grows glad, or sweet, or sad, As we choose to fashion the measure.
We must write the music, whatever the song,
Whatever its rhyme or metre ; And if it is sad, we can make it glad,
Or if sweet, we can make it sweeter.
One has a song that is free and strong,
But the music he writes is minor ; And the sad, sad strain is replete with pain,
And the singer becomes a repiner.
And he thinks God gave him a dirge-like ray, Nor knows that the words are cheery ;
300 ELLA WILCOX
And the song seems lonely and solemn — only Because the music is dreary.
And the song of another has through the words
An under current of sadness ; But he sets it to music of ringing chords,
And makes it a paean of gladness.
So whether our songs are sad or not, We can give the world more pleasure,
And better ourselves, by setting the words To a glad, triumphant measure.
GHOSTS.
There are ghosts in the room, As I sit here alone, from the dark corners there
They come out of the gloom. And they stand at my side, and they lean on my chair.
There's the ghost of a hope That lighted my days with a fanciful glow.
In her hand is the rope That strangled her life out. Hope was slain long ago.
But her ghost comes to-night With its skeleton face, and expressionless eyes,
And it stands in the light, And mocks me, and jeers me with sobs and with sighs.
There's the ghost of a joy, A frail, fragile thing, and I prized it too much,
And the hands that destroy Clasped it close, and it died at the withering touch.
There's the ghost of a love, Born with joy, reared with Hope, died in pain and unrest,
But he towers above All the others — this ghost : yet a ghost at the best.
I am weary, and fain Would forget all these dead : but the gibbering host
Make the struggle in vain. In each shadowy corner, there lurketh a ghost.
WILKINSON, SIR JOHN GARDNER, an English traveller and Egyptologist, born at Hardendale, Westmoreland, October 5, 1797; died October 29, 1875. He was educated at Harrow and Oxford. He went to Egypt, where he resided for twelve years, devoting himself to the study of Egyptology in its widest signification. Returning to England in 1839, ne received the honor of knighthood ; sub- sequently he travelled widely in various parts of Europe and the East. Besides several elaborate monographs on Egyptology, he wrote The Topog- rapJiy of Thebes (1835) ; The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (1837-41) ; Modern Egypt and Thebes (1843); The Architecture of Ancient Egypt (1850); The Egyptians in the Time of the Pharaohs (1857). He also furnished a valuable Dissertation on Egypt to Rawlinson's translation of Herodotus (1860).
" In the admirable work of Sir Gardner Wilkin- son," says A. H. Layard, in Nineveh and Its Re- mains, " he has availed himself of the paintings, sculptures, and monuments of the ancient Egyp- tians to restore their manners and customs, and to place their public and private life before us as fully as if they still occupied the banks of the Nile."
AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN REPAST.
While the guests were entertained with music and the dance, dinner was prepared ; but as it consisted of a considerable number of dishes, and the meat was killed
C3P1J
302 JOHN GARDNER WILKINSON
for the occasion, as at the present day in Eastern and tropical climates, some time elapsed before it was put upon the table. An ox, kid, wild goat, gazelle, or an oryx, and a quantity of geese, ducks, teal, quails, and other birds, were generally selected, but mutton was ex- cluded from a Theban table. Sheep were not killed for the altar or the table, but they abounded in Egypt, and even at Thebes, and large flocks were kept for their wool, particularly in the neighborhood of Memphis. Beef and goose constituted the principal part of the animal food throughout Egypt ; and by a prudent fore- sight, in a country possessing neither extensive pasture- lands nor great abundance of cattle, the cow was held sacred, and consequently forbidden to be eaten. Thus the risk of exhausting the stock was prevented, and a constant supply of oxen was kept for the table and for agricultural purposes. A similar fear of diminishing the number of sheep, so valuable for their wool, led to a preference to such meats as beef and goose.
A considerable quantity of meat was served up at these repasts, to which strangers were invited, as among people of the East at the present day. An endless succession of vegetables was required on all occasions ; and when dining in private, dishes composed chiefly of them were in greater request than joints, even at the tables of the rich ; and consequently the Israelites, who by their long residence there had acquired similar habits, regretted them equally with the meat and fish of Egypt. Their mode of dining was* very similar to that now adopted at Cairo, and throughout the East ; the party sitting around a table, and dipping their bread into a dish placed in the centre, removed by a sign made by the host, and succeeded by others, whose rotation depends on established rule, and whose num- ber was predetermined according to the size of the party or the quality of the guests.
As is the custom in Egypt and other hot climates at the present day, they cooked the meat as soon as killed, with the same view of keeping it tender which makes northern people keep it until decomposition is begin- ning. And this explains the order of Joseph to slay and make ready for his brethren to dine with him the
JOHN GARDNER WILKINSON
303
same day at noon. As soon, therefore, as this had been done, and the joints were all ready, the kitchen presented an animated scene, and the cooks were busy in their several departments. Other servants took charge of the pastry, which the bakers or confection- ers had made for the dinner-table ; and this depart- ment appears to have been even more varied than that of the cook. That dinner was served up at midday may be inferred from the invitation given by Joseph to his brethren ; but it is probable that, like the Romans, they also ate supper in the evening, as is still the cus- tom in the East.
The table was much the same as that of the present day in Egypt ; a small stool supporting a round tray, on which the dishes were placed ; but it differed from this in having its circular summit fixed on a pillar, or leg, which was often in the form of a man — generally a captive — who supported the slab upon his head ; the whole being of stone, or some hard wood. On this the dishes were placed, together with loaves of bread. It was not generally covered with any linen, but, like the Greek table, was washed with a sponge or napkin after the dishes were removed. One or two guests generally sat at a table ; though from the mention of persons seated in rows according to rank, it has been supposed the tables were occasionally of an oblong shape ; as may have have been the case when the brethren of Joseph " sat before him, the first-born ac- cording to his youth," Joseph eating alone at another table, where " they set on for him by himself." But even if round, they might -still sit according to rank, one place being always the post of honor, even at the present day, at the round table of Egypt. The guests sat on the ground, or on stools and chairs ; and having neither knives nor forks, nor any substitute for them answering to the chop-sticks of the Chinese, they ate with their fingers, like the modern Asiatics, and invari- ably with the right hand ; nor did the Jews and Etrus- cans, though they had forks for other purposes, use any at table. Spoons were introduced when required for soup or other liquids. The Egyptian spoons were of various forms and sizes ; they were principally of
304 JOfftf GARDNER WILKINSON
ivory, bone, wood, or bronze and other metals ; many were ornamented with the lotus-flower.
The Egyptians washed after, as well as before, dinner — an invariable custom throughout the East, as among the Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, and others. It was also a custom of the Egyptians, during and after their sup- pers, to introduce a wooden image of Osiris, from one foot and a half to three feet in height, in the form of a human mummy, standing erect or lying on a bier, and to show it to each of the guests, warning him of his mortality and the transitory nature of human pleas- ures. He was reminded that some day he would be like that figure ; that men ought to love one another ; to avoid those evils which tend to make them consider life long when in reality it was too short ; and, while enjoying the blessings of this world, to bear in mind that their existence was precarious ; and that death, which all must be prepared to meet, must eventually close their earthly career. Thus while the guests were permitted, and even encouraged, to indulge in conviv- iality, the pleasures of the table, and the mirth so con- genial to their lively disposition, they were exhorted to put a certain degree of restraint upon their conduct. And though this sentiment was perverted by other people, and used as an incentive to present excess, it was perfectly consistent with the ideas of the Egyptians to be reminded that this life was only a lodging or inn on their way ; and that their existence here was the preparation for a future state.
After dinner music and dancing were resumed ; hired men and women displayed feats of agility. The most usual games within doors were odd-and-even, draughts, and mora. The game of mora was common in ancient as well as modern times ; it was played by two persons, who each simultaneously threw out the fingers of one hand, while one party guessed the numbers of both. They were said, in Latin, micare digitis ; and this game, so common among the lower order of Italians, existed about four thousand years ago, in the reigns of the Osir- tasens. — Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians.
WILKINSON, WILLIAM CLEAVER, an Amer- ican literary critic, born at Westford, Vt., October 19, 1833. He was graduated at the University of Vermont in 1857, and at the Rochester, N. Y., Theological School in 1859, when he entered the Baptist ministry. In 1872 he became Professor of Homiletics in the theological department of Rochester University. His published volumes are, besides Greek and Latin text-books, The Dance of Modern Society (1869) ; A Free Lance in the Field of Life and Letters (1874), containing admirable critiques on George Eliot, Bryant, Erasmus, etc., and trenchant reviews of Lowell's prose and poetry ; Webster : an Ode (1882) ; Edwin Arnold as Poetizer and Paganizer (1885) ; The Baptist Prin- ciple, an examination of The Light of Asia, and sev- eral text-books on Greek, Latin, and German lit- erature for the Chautauqua Literary and Scien- tific Circle.
THE BUSINESS OF POETRY.
Mr. Longfellow comes nearest, among our American literary men, to being exclusively a poet. But Mr. Longfellow gave twenty years of his prime to the duties of an arduous college professorship, and we have good testimony that he did not shirk those duties as is the privilege of genius and of fame. The fact remains, that in the United States division of labor has riot yet reached the point of allowing our poets to devote themselves exclusively to poetry. The newness of our civilization
306 WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON
continues to exact of us all a roundabout savoir faire hostile to the highest perfection of those exclusive and meditative habits which alone enable the poet to secrete, in fruitful tranquillity, the precious substance of his verse, and silently and slowly crystallize it into supreme and ideal forms. We remember, some years ago, meet- ing a solid English tradesman, as he looked, driving his solid English horse, before a two-wheeled wagon, at a ringing trot around and down a sloping curve of the solid English road, on the Isle of Wight, in the neighbor- hood of Mr. Tennyson's residence. The ruddy roast beef of the man's complexion, his brown-stout corpu- lence, and the perfect worldliness of his whole appear- ance, whimsically suggested Mr. Tennyson's poetry to us under the circumstances. We could not resist the temptation to stop him, and enjoy the sensation of in- quiring the way to Mr. Tennyson's house of such a man. " If, now, you could tell me his business ? " responded he. Tennyson's business ! We were well-nigh dum- founded. We came near being in the case of Mr. John Smith, that absent-minded man who could not recall his own name on challenge at the post-office window. We recovered our presence of mind, however, and told our friend he "made verses," we believed. "Ah, yes ; the Queen's poet — Tennyson — that's the name. Yes ; he makes verses — you're right — that's his business ; and very clever at it he is, too, they say." This was the Old World. It could hardly have been the New.
And yet poetry, certainly as much as any other voca- tion of genius, is jealous of a divided devotion. Nothing short of the whole man, for his \*hole life, will satisfy her extortionate claim. It will n.;/t even do, generally, for the poet to indulge himself in coquetting with prose. The " poet's garland and singing-robes " are not an in- vestiture to be lightly donned and doffed at will. To wear them most gracefully one must wear them habitu- ally.
The difference between poetry and prose is an essen- tial difference. It can hardly be defined, but it may be illustrated. Poetry differs from prose, in part, as run- ning differs from walking. There is motion in both running and walking ; but in running the motion is
WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON1 307
continuous, while in walking the motion is a series of advances, separated by intervals, less or more appre- ciable, of rest. Poetry runs — prose walks. Again, poe- try differs from prose as singing differs from talking. The difference between singing and talking is not that singing is musical and talking not musical. The differ- ence is that singing is musical in one way, and talking musical, if musical, in another. Poetry sings — prose talks. Each has a rhythm ; but the rhythm of each is its own.
But there is yet a finer distinction between poetry and prose than has thus been illustrated — a finer one, we mean, this side of the finest one of all, which is far too fine to be expressed in any " matter-moulded forms of speech." There is a certain curiously subtle idiom of expression belonging to poetry, and another equally subtle idiom of expression belonging to prose. These two idioms of expression are as palpably distinct from each other as are the several idioms of different lan- guages. They defy definition ; they elude analysis. They do not depend on choice of words, they do not depend on collocation of words, although they depend partly on both these things. A man whose talent was that of prose-writer might make faultless verse from a vocabulary chosen out of the purest poetry of the language, and there should not be one poetical line in his work from beginning to end. On the other hand, there is hardly an intractable word in the language that a true poet could not weave into his verse without harm to the poetic effect. In the main, the diction of a true poet and the diction of a good prose writer will be identical. The order of the poet will not vary violently from the order of the prose-writer. Their subject may be the same, and even the mode of conception, and the figures of speech. All these points of coincidence be- tween poetry and prose may exist ; they generally do exist, and, notwithstanding them all, the inviolate idiom of poetic expression and the inviolate idiom of prose expression remain uninterchangeably distinct. — A .Free Lance.
VOL. XXIV.— ao
WILLARD, EMMA HART, an American edu- cator, historian, and poet, born at New Berlin, Conn., February 23, 1787; died at Troy, N. Y., April 15, 1870. She was educated in the Academy in Hartford, Conn., and at sixteen began to teach. She was principal of various schools in Vermont and New York until 1821, at which time she founded the Troy Female Seminary. In 1809, while in charge of a school in Middlebury, she was married to Dr. John Willard, United States Mar- shal for Vermont. She wrote many popular school books and lectured extensively on questions of educational interest. She was an active advocate of the improved education of women, and suc- ceeded in securing grants from the State of New York for the furtherance of her aims; the city of Troy also gave her a building in which to found a girls' school. She was the author of Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep, and much other verse. Among her educational works are History of the United States (1828); Universal History in Perspective (1837); Chronographer of English History (1845), and Astronomography, or Astronomical Geography. In 1825 her husband died, and in 1838 she was married to Dr. Christopher C. Yates, from whom she was divorced in 1843. In ^46 she made an 8,000-mile tour of the West and South, lecturing to teachers.
EMMA HART WILLARD 3°9
Mrs. Willard was the pioneer in the movement in this country for the better education of women. Her energy, enthusiasm, and strong intellect ex- erted a powerful effect upon the public. She lived to see, due largely to her own efforts, a complete reversal of the general ideas regarding the training of women.
ROCKED IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP.
Rocked in the cradle of the deep I lay me down in peace to sleep ; Secure I rest upon the wave, For Thou, O Lord ! hast power to save. I know Thou wilt not slight my call, For Thou dost mark the sparrow's fall, And calm and peaceful shall I sleep, Rocked in the cradle of the deep.
When in the dead of night I lie And gaze upon the trackless sky, The star-bespangled, heavenly scroll, The boundless waters as they roll — I feel Thy wondrous power to save From perils of the stormy wave : Rocked in the cradle of the deep, I calmly rest and soundly sleep.
And such the trust that still were mine, Though stormy winds swept o'er the brine, Or though the tempest's fiery breath Roused me from sleep to wreck and death. In ocean cave still safe with Thee, The germ of immortality ! And calm and peaceful shall I sleep, Rocked in the cradle of the deep.
WILLARD, FRANCES ELIZABETH, an American temperance reformer, born at Churchville, near Rochester, N. Y., September 28, 1839; died in New York City, February 17, 1898. After gradu- ation at the Northwestern Female College, Evan- ston, 111., in 1859, sne became Proiessor of Natu- ral Science there, and in 1866 principal of the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary. After travelling in Europe she was made Professor of ^Esthetics at the Northwestern University, and Dean of the Woman's College, where she developed a system of self-go vernment. In 1874 she identified herself with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of which she was president from 1879. She or- ganized the Home Protection movement, and founded many temperance societies. In addition to pamphlets and magazine articles, Miss Willard was the author of Nineteen Beautiful Years (1863); Woman and Temperance (1883) ; How to Win (1886) ; Woman in the Pulpit (1888), and Glimpses of Fifty Years (1889).
Under the title " The Uncrowned Queen of American Democracy," W. T. Stead says, in the Review of Reviews : " Even those who would deny her that proud title would not venture to assert that it could be more properly bestowed upon any other living woman. The worst they could say would be that America has no queens, crowned or uncrowned. ... A Britisher, however, has a
FRANCES ELIZABETH WILLARD 311
Britisher's privileges as well as his prejudices, and it may be permitted me to remark that ... it would certainly be difficult to find any more com- pletely typical and characteristic daughter of American democracy than she. The supreme im- portance of Miss Willard consists in the position which she holds to the two great movements which, born at the close of this century, are des- tined to mould the next century, as the movements born in the French Revolution have transfigured the century which is now drawing to its close. The emancipation of man and the triumph of free thought, which were proclaimed by the French Revolution, were not more distinctive of the eighteenth century than the emancipation of woman and the aspiration after a humanized and catholic Christianity are characteristic of our cen- tury."
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
An seolian harp is in my study window as I write. It seems to me the fittest emblem of him who has gone to live elsewhere and left our world in some sense lonely.
The compass of its diapason is vast as the scope of his mind ; its tenderness deep as his heart ; its pathos thrilling as his sympathy ; its aspiration triumphant as his faith. Like him, it is attuned to every faintest breath of the great world-life ; and like his, its voice searches out the innermost places of the human spirit. Jean Paul says of the aeolian harp, that it is, like nature, " passive before a divine breath," and in him who has gone from us there was this elemental receptivity of God. Other natures have doubtless developed that God-consciousness which is the sum of all perfections to a degree as wonderful as Mr. Beecher did, but what other, in our time, at least, has been en rapport so per- fectly with those about him that they could share with
312 FRANCES ELIZABETH WILLARD
him this blissful consciousness to a degree as great ? John Henry Newman says, " To God must be ascribed the radiation of genius." No great character of whom I can think illustrates that most unique and felicitous phrase so clearly as Henry Ward Beecher. He was the great, radiating spirit of our nation and our age. For fifty years his face shone, his tones vibrated, his pen was electric with the sense of a divine presence, not for his home only, not for his church or his nation, but for Christendom. He radiated all that he absorbed, and his capacious nature was the reservoir of all that is best in books, art, and life. But as fuel turns to fire, and oil to light, so, in the laboratory of his brain, the raw ma- terials of history, poetry, and science were wrought over into radiant and radiating forces which warmed and illumined human souls. Plymouth Church was the most home-like place that could be named ; its pulpit aglow- ing fireside ever ready to cheer the despondent and warm those hearts the world had chilled. No man ever spoke so often or wrote so much whose classic, historic, and poeticaf allusions were so few ; but the potency of every good thing ever learned by him, who was an in- satiable student of nature and an omnivorous reader of books, was all wrought, in the alembic of his memory, into new forms and combinations. He intersphered so perfectly with the minds and hearts about him, that he seemed to them a veritable possession.
The interpenetrative character of his mind has not been matched, for the reason that he was that doubly dowered phenomenon — a great brain mated to a heart as great. This royal gift of sympathy enabled him to make all lives his own ; hence, he so understood as to have charity for all. . . . For this reason he was born a patriot, a philanthropist, and a reformer. We read of " epoch-making books," but here was an epoch-mak- ing character. — Glimpses of Fifty Years.
WILLIAMS, ROGER, a Welsh- American mis- cellaneous writer and founder of the colony of Rhode Island, born in Wales in 1606; died at Providence, R. I., probably in March or April, 1684. He entered the University at Oxford in 1624, mastered not only Latin, Greek, and He- brew, but the French and Dutch languages, and took orders in the Anglican Church ; but having embraced extreme Puritan views, he emigrated to New England in 1631. He became a minister at Salem, from which he was driven in 1635 for setting forth " new and dangerous opinions against the authority of magistrates." Finding it expedi- ent to leave the limits of the Plymouth colony, he crossed Narragansett Bay, and established a settlement, to which he gave the name of Provi- dence. In 1643 he went to England in order to procure a charter for the new colony. During the voyage he wrote a curious Key into the Lan- guage of America. While in England he wrote his Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Con- science (1644). To this the Rev. John Cotton re- plied in his Bloody Tenent Washed and Made White in the Blood of the Lamb (1647). Williams rejoined in his Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody by Mr. Cotton s Endeavor to Wash It White (1652). Besides the foregoing, Williams was the author of several other works — among them a Letter to the People of
3T4 ROGER WILLIAMS
Rhode Island (1655), in which, as president of the colony, he sets forth his own views as to the rightful jurisdiction of the civil magistrate in sev- eral important respects.
In his American Literature, Mr. Moses Coit Tyler speaks thus of the celebrated Letter to the People of Providence : "The supreme intellectual merit of this composition is in those qualities that never obtrude themselves upon notice — ease, lu- cidity, completeness. Here we have the final result of ages of intellectual effort presented with- out effort — a long process of abstract reasoning made transparent and irresistible in a picture. With a wisdom that is both just and peaceable, it fixes, for all time, the barriers against tyranny on the one side, against lawlessness on the other. It has the moral and literary harmonies of a classic. As such, it deserves to be forever memorable in our American prose."
THE PROVINCE OF THE CIVIL MAGISTRATE.
There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth, or a human com- bination or society. It hath fallen out that both Pa- pists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship : upon which supposal I affirm that all the liberty of conscience that I ever pleaded for turns upon these two hinges : That none of the Papists or Prot- estants, Jews or Turks, be forced to come to the ship's prayers or worship, nor compelled from their own par- ticular prayers or worship, if they practise any.
I further add, that I never denied that, notwithstand- ing this liberty, the commander of this ship ought to command the ship's course ; yea, and also to command that justice, peace, and sobriety be kept and practised,
ROGER WILLIAMS 3T5
both among the seamen and all the passengers, /f any of the seamen refuse to perform their services, or pas- sengers to pay their freight ; if any refuse to help, in person or purse, toward the common charge or defence ; if any refuse to obey the common laws and orders of the ship concerning their peace or preservation ; if any shall mutiny and rise up against their commanders and officers ; if any should preach or write that there ought to be no commanders or officers, because all are equal in " Christ" — therefore no masters nor officers, no laws, nor orders, nor corrections, nor punishments ; I say I never denied but in such cases, whatever is pretended, the commander or commanders may judge, resist, com- pel, and punish such transgressors according to their deserts and merits. This, if seriously and honestly minded, may, if it so please the Father of Lights, let in some light to such as willingly shut not their eyes. I remain, studious of your common peace and liberty, Roger Williams. — Letter to the People of Providence.
Toward the close of his life, Roger Williams was involved in a controversy with some leaders of the Quakers, and in 1676 he put forth a large quarto volume embodying his version of a series of stormy debates held with them. Among the notable Quakers were George Fox and Edward Burrowes, whose names gave ready occasion for a punning title :
THE FOX AND HIS BURROWES.
George Fox digg'd out of his Burrowes, or an Offer of Disputation on fourteen Proposalls made this last Sum- mer, 1672 (so call'd), unto G. Fox then present on Rhode Island, in New England, by R. W. As also how (G. Fox slyly departing) the Disputation went on, be- ing managed three Dayes at Newport on Rhode Island, and one Day at Providence, between John Stubbs, John Burnet, and William Edmundson, on the one Part, and R. W., on the other. In which many Quotations out o/
316 ROGER WILLIAMS
G. Fox and Ed. Burrowes Book in Folio are alleged. With an Appendix, of some Scores of G. F., his simple lame answers to his Opposites in that Book quoted and replied to, by R. W. of Providence in N. E.
THE BLOODY TENENT OF PERSECUTION.
TRUTH. Dear peace, our golden sand is out, we now must part with an holy kiss of heavenly peace and love ; Mr. Cotton speaks and writes his conscience ; yet the Father of Lights may please to show him that what he highly esteems as a tenent washed white in the Lamb's blood is yet more black and abominable in the most pure and jealous eye of God.
PEACE. The blackamoor's darkness differs not in the dark from the fairest white.
TRUTH. Christ Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness, hath broke forth, and daily will, to a brighter and brighter discovery of this deformed Ethiopian. And for myself I must proclaim, before the most holy God, angels, and men, that (whatever other white and heav- enly tenents Mr. Cotton holds) yet this is a foul, a black, and a bloody tenent.
A tenent of high blasphemy against the God of Peace, the God of Order, Who hath of one blood made all mankind, to dwell upon the face of the earth, now all confounded and destroyed in their civil beings and subsistences by mutual flames of war from their several respective religions and consciences.
A tenent warring against the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus, denying His appearance and coming in the flesh, to put an end to and abolish the shadows of that cere- monial and typical land of Canaan.
A tenent fighting against the sweet end of His com- ing, which was not to destroy men's lives, for their re- ligions, but to save them by the meek and peaceable invitations and persuasions of his peaceable wisdom's maidens.
A tenent foully charging His wisdom, faithfulness, and love, in so poorly providing such magistrates and civil powers all the world over as might effect so great a charge pretended to be committed to them.
ROGER WILLIAMS
3T?
A tenent lamentably guilty of His most precious blood, shed in the blood of so many hundred thousands of His poor servants by the civil powers of the world, pretending to suppress blasphemies, heresies, idolatries, superstition, etc.
A tenent fighting with the spirit of love, holiness, and meekness, by kindling fiery spirits of false zeal and fury when yet such spirits know not of what spirit they are.
A tenent fighting with those mighty angels who stand up for the peace of the saints, against Persia, Grecia, etc., and so consequently, all other nations, who, fight- ing for their several religions, and against the truth, leave no room for such as fear and love the Lord on the earth.
A tenent, against which the blessed souls under the altar cry loud for vengeance, this tenent having cut their throats, torn out their hearts, and poured forth their blood in all ages, as the only heretics and blas- phemers in the world.
A tenent loathsome and ugly (in the eyes of the God of heaven, and serious sons of men) — I say, loathsome with the palpable filths of gross dissimulation and hy- pocrisy. Thousands of peoples and whole nations com- pelled by this tenent to put on the foul vizard of relig- ious hypocrisy, for fear of laws, losses, and punishments, and for the keeping and hoping for of favor, liberty, worldly commodity, etc.
A tenent wofully guilty of hardening all false and deluded consciences (of whatsoever sect, faction, heresy, or idolatry, though never so horrid and blasphemous) by cruelties and violences practised against them ; all false teachers and their followers (ordinarily) contract- ing a brawny and steely hardness from their sufferings for their consciences.
A tenent that shuts and bars out the gracious prophe- cies and promises and discoveries of the most glorious Son of Righteousness, Christ Jesus, that burns up the holy Scriptures, and forbids them (upon the point) to be read in English, or that any trial or search, or (truly) free disquisition be made by them ; when the most able, diligent, and conscionable readers must pluck forth
3i8 ROGER WILLIAMS
their own eyes, and be forced to read by the (whichso- ever predominant) clergy's spectacles.
A tenent that seals up the spiritual graves of all men, Jews and Gentiles (and consequently stands guilty of the damnation of all men), since no preachers, nor trumpets of Christ Himself, may call them out but such as the several and respective nations of the world them- selves allow of.
A tenent that fights against the common principles of all civility, and the very civil being and combinations of men in nations, cities, etc., by commixing (explicitly or implicitly) a spiritual and civil state together, and so confounding and overthrowing the purity and strength of both.
A tenent that stunts the growth and flourishing of the most likely and hopefulest commonweals and countries, while consciences, the best, and the best deserving sub- jects are forced to fly (by enforced or voluntary ban- ishment) from their native countries ; the lamentable proof whereof England hath felt in the flight of so many worthy English into the Low Countries and New-Eng- land, and from New-England into old again and other foreign parts.
A tenent whose gross partiality denies the principles of common justice, while men weigh out to the consciences of all others that which they judge not fit nor right to be weighed out to their own. Since the persecutor's rule is to take and persecute all consciences, only him- self must not be touched.
A tenent that is but Machiavelism, and makes a re- ligion but a cloak or stalking horse to policy and pri- vate ends of Jeroboam's crown and the priest's bene- fice, etc.
A tenent that corrupts and spoils the very civil hon- esty and natural conscience of a nation. . . .
In the sad consideration of all which (dear Peace) let heaven and earth judge of the washing and color of this tenent. For thee, sweet, heavenly guest, go lodge thee in the breasts of the peaceable and humble witnesses of Jesus, that love the truth in peace. Hide thee from the world's tumults and combustions in the breasts of the truly noble children, who profess and endeavor to
ROGER WILLIAMS
319
break the irony and insupportable yokes upon the souls and consciences of any of the sons of men.
PEACE. Methinks (dear Truth) if any of the least of these deep charges be found against this tenent, you do not wrong it when you style it bloody. But since, in the woful proof of all ages past, since Nimrod (the hunter or persecutor before the Lord) these and more are lamentably evident and undeniable. It gives me wonder that so many and so excellent eyes of God's servants should not espy so foul a monster, especially considering the universal opposition this tenent makes against God's glory, and the good of all mankind.
TRUTH. There hath been many foul opinions, with which the old serpent hath infected and bewitched the sons of men (touching God, Christ, the Spirit, the Church, against holiness, against peace, against civil obedience, against chastity), insomucn that even sodomy itself hath been a tenent maintained in print by some of the very pillars of the Church of Rome. But this tenent is so universally opposite to God and man, so pernicious and destructive to both (as hath been de- clared) that, like the powder-plot, it threatens to blow up all religion, all civility, all humanity, yea, the very be- ing of the world, and the nations thereof at once.
PEACE. He that is the father of lies, and a murderer from the beginning, he knows this well, and this ugly blackamoor needs a mask or vizard.
TRUTH. Yea, the bloodiness and inhumanity of it is such, that not only Mr. Cotton's more tender and holy breast, but even the most bloody Bonners and Gardi- ners have been forced to arm themselves with the fair shows and glorious pretences of the glory of God, and zeal for that glory, the love of His truth, the gospel of C'lrist Jesus, love and pity to men's souls, the peace of the Church, uniformity, order, the peace of the com- monweal, the wisdom of the state, the King's, Queen's, and Parliament's proceedings, the odiousness of sects, heresies, blasphemies, novelties, seducers, and their in- fections, the obstinacy of heretics, after all means, dis- putations, examinations, synods, yea, and after convic- tion in the poor heretic's own conscience. Add to these the flattering sound of those glossing titles, the godly
320 ROGER WILLIAMS
magistrate, the Christian magistrate, the nursing fa- thers and mothers of the Church, Christian kings and queens. But all other kings and magistrates (even all the nations of the world over, as Mr. Cotton pleads) must suspend and hold their hands, and not meddle in matters of religion until they be informed, etc.
PEACE. The dreadful, righteous hand of God, the eternal and avenging God, is pulling off these masks and vizards, that thousands and the world may see this bloody tenent's beauty.
TRUTH. But see (my heavenly sister and true stran- ger in this sea-like, restless, raging world), see here what fires and swords are come to part us. Weil ; our meetings in the heavens shall not thus be interrupted, our kisses thus distracted, and our eyes and cheeks thus wet, unwiped. For me, though censured, threat- ened, persecuted, I must profess, while heaven and earth lasts that no one tenent that either London, Eng- land, or the world doth harbor, is so heretical, blasphe- mous, seditious, and dangerous to the corporal, to the spiritual, to the present, to the eternal good of all men, as the bloody tenent (however washed and whited) I say, as is the bloody tenent of persecution for cause of conscience. — The Bloody Tenent Yet More Bloody.
WILLIAMS, SAMUEL WELLS, an American lin- guist and traveller, born at Utica, N. Y., Septem- ber 22, 1812; died at New Haven, Conn., Feb- ruary 17, 1884. He studied at the Polytechnic School in Albany, and in 1833 went to Canton, China, to superintend the printing operations of the American Board of Commissioners for For- eign Missions. He was made assistant editor of the Chinese Repository, which had just been estab- lished, and which was continued for twenty years, finally under his editorial charge. In 1837 he paid a visit to Japan, in order to take home a number of shipwrecked sailors ; and mastered the language so as to translate into it the Book of Genesis and the Gospel of Matthew. In 1845 ne returned to America to procure a font of Chinese type, which was ordered from Germany. He delivered a course of lectures on China, which were in 1848 enlarged and published under the title of The Mid- dle Kingdom, He returned to China in 1848, hav- ing received from Union College the honorary degree of LL.D. In 1853-54 he accompanied, as interpreter, Commodore Perry's expedition to Japan. In 1851; he was made United States Sec- retary of Legation in Japan, being at the head of the embassy there until the arrival of the Minister. He was afterward employed as linguist to the United States Government in China until 1875,
322 SAMUEL WELLS WILLIAMS
when he returned to America, after an absence of more than forty years in China and Japan.
His principal works are Easy Lessons in Chinese (1842); Chinese Commercial Guide (1844); English and Chinese Vocabulary in the Court Dialect (1844) ; The Middle Kingdom ( 1 848) ; Syllable Dictionary of the Chinese Language (1874). After his final return to the United States, he undertook a revision of The Middle Kingdom, of which a much enlarged edition was published in 1883.
THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.
The entire length of the Great Wall, between its ex- tremities, is 22^ degrees of longitude, or 1,255 miles in a straight line ; but its turnings and doublings in- crease it to fully 1,500 miles. It would stretch from Philadelphia to Topeka, or from Portugal to Naples, on nearly the same latitude. The construction of this gigantic work is somewhat adapted to the nature of the country it traverses, and the material was taken on the spot where it was used. In the western part of its course it is merely a mud-and-gravel wall, and in other cases earth cased with brick.
The eastern part is generally composed of earth and pebbles faced with large bricks, weighing from 40 to 50 pounds each, supported on a coping of stone. The whole is about 25 feet thick at the base, and 15 feet wide at the top, and varying from 15 to 30 feet high. The top is protected with bricks, and defended with a straight parapet, the thickness of which has been taken as a proof that cannon were unknown at the time it was erected. There are brick towers at inter- vals, some of them more than 40 feet high, but not built upon the wall. These are independent structures, usually about 40 feet square at the base, diminishing to 30 feet at the top ; at particular spots the towers are of two stories.
The impression left upon the mind of a foreigner, on
*
SAMUEL WELLS WILLIAMS 3*3
seeing this monument of toil and unremunerative out- lay, is respect for a people that could in any manner build it. Standing on the peak at Ku-peh-kan (Old North Gate), one sees the cloud-capped towers extend- ing away over the declivities in single files, both east and west, until dwarfed by miles and miles of skyward perspective, as they divide into minute piles, yet stand with solemn stillness where they were stationed twenty centuries ago, as though condemned to wait the march of time till their builders returned. The crumbling dyke at their feet may be followed, winding, leaping across gorges, defiles, and steeps ; now buried in some chasm, now scaling the cliffs and slopes, in very ex- uberance of power and wantonness, as it vanishes in a thin, shadowy line at the horizon. Once seen, the Great Wall of China can never be forgotten.
At present, this remarkable structure is simply a geo- graphical boundary, and except at the gates nothing is done to keep it in repair. Beyond the Yellow River to its western extremity, the Great Wall, according to Gre- billon, is mostly a mound of earth or gravel, about 15 feet in height, with only occasional towers of brick or gateways made of stone. At Kalgan, portions of it are made of porphyry and other stones piled up in pyram- idal form between the brick towers — difficult to cross, but easy enough to pull down.
The appearance of this rampart at Ku-peh-kan is more imposing. The entire extent of the main and cross walls in sight from one of the towers there is over twenty miles. In one place it rises over a peak 5,225 feet high, where it is so steep as to make one wonder as much at the labor of erecting it on such a cliff, as on the folly of supposing it could be of any use there as a defence. The Wall is most visited at Nan-kan (South Gate), in the Ku-Yang Pass — a remarkable Thermop- ylae, fifteen miles in length, which leads from the plain at Peking up to the first terrace above it, and at one time was guarded by five additional walls and gates. From this spot the Wall reaches across Shan-si, and was built at a later period. — The Middle Kingdom.
Voi. XXIV.— aL
WILLIS, NATHANIEL PARKER, an American poet and miscellaneous writer, born at Portland, Me., January 20, 1806; died at Idlewild-on-the- Hudson, January 20, 1867. While a student at Yale College, where he was graduated in 1827, he wrote several poems, mainly of a religious character, which gained for him no little reputa- tion. For several years after leaving college he was engaged in literary work, finally forming a connection with the New York Mirror, to which he contributed a series of letters under the title of Pencilling* by the Way, describing his observations in Europe, whither he went in 1833. Returning to the United States he took up his residence at a. pretty little estate which he purchased in the val- ley of the Susquehanna, and named " Glenmary," for his wife, whom he had married in England. Here he wrote his Letters from Under a Bridge, which contains his best prose. After five years he was compelled to offer Glenmary for sale. He then, in conjunction with Dr. Porter, established the Corsair, a weekly journal of literature. Dur- ing a second stay in England he published Loiter- ings of Travel, produced two plays, Bianca Visconti and Tortesa the Usurer, and wrote the descriptive matter for an illustrated work, The Scenery of the United States. The publication of the Corsair
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 325
was abandoned, and Willis aided George P. Mor- ris in establishing the Evening Mirror, a daily newspaper. His health broke down, and he again went abroad, having been made an attache1 of the American Legation at Berlin. He now proposed to make Germany his permanent residence ; but finding the climate unfavorable to him, he re- turned to New York. The daily Evening Mirror was given up, and the weekly Home Journal took its place. He took up his residence at Idlewild- on-the-Hudson, near Newburgh, where he died on his sixty-first birthday.
The prose writings of Willis consist mainly of letters and other articles furnished to periodicals. They include Pencillings by the Way, Letters from Under a Bridge, Rural Letters, People I Have Met, Life Here and There, Hurry-graphs, A Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean, Fun-jottings, A Health Trip to the Tropics, Out-doors at Idlewild, Famous Persons and Places, The Rag Bag, Paul Fane, a novel ; The Convalescent — the last being written in 1859. His Poems, most of them being short pieces, of varying character, have been published collectively.
THE MISERERE.
The procession crept slowly up to the church, and 1 left them kneeling at the tomb of St. Peter, and went to the side chapel, to listen to the miserere. The choir here is said to be inferior to that in the Sistine chapel, but the circumstances more than make up for the differ- ence, which, after all, it takes a nice ear to detect. I could not but congratulate myself, as I sat down on the base of a pillar, in the vast aisle, without the chapel where the choir were chanting, with the twilight gather-
326 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS
ing in the lofty arches, and the candles of the various processions creeping to the consecrated sepulchre from the distant parts of the church.
It was so different in that crowded and suffocating chapel of the Vatican, where, fine as was the music, I vowed positively never to subject myself to such annoy- ance again.
It had become almost dark, when the last candle but one was extinguished in the symbolical pyramid, and the first almost painful note of the miserere wailed out into the vast church of St. Peter. For the next half hour, the kneeling listeners around the door of the chapel seemed spellbound in their motionless attitudes.
The darkness thickened, the hundred lamps at the far-off sepulchre of the saint looked like a galaxy of twinkling points of fire, almost lost in the distance, and from the now perfectly obscured choir poured, in ever- varying volume, the dirge-like music, in notes inconceiv- ably plaintive and affecting.
The power, the mingled mournfulness and sweetness, the impassioned fulness, at one moment, and the lost, shrieking wildness of one solitary voice at another, carry away the soul like a whirlwind. I never have been so moved by anything. It is not in the scope of lan- guage to convey an idea to another of the effect of the miserere.
It was not till several minutes after the music had ceased, that the dark figures rose up from the floor about me.
As we approached the door of the church, the full moon, about three hours risen, poured broadly under the arches of the portico, inundating the whole front of the lofty dome with a flood of light such as falls only in Italy.
There seemed to be no atmosphere between. Day- light is scarce more intense. The immense square, with its slender obelisk and embracing crescents of col- onnade, lay spread out as definitely to the eye as at noon, and the two famous fountains shot up their clear waters to the sky, the moonlight streaming through the spray, and every drop as visible and bright as a dia- mond.— Pencillings by the Way.
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 327
TWO WOMEN.
The shadows lay along Broadway,
'Twas near the twilight-tide, And slowly there a lady fair
Was walking in her pride. Alone walked she ; but, viewlessly,
Walked spirits at her side.
Peace charmed the street beneath her feet.
And Honor charmed the air ; And all astir looked kind on her,
And called her good as fair — For all God ever gave to her
She kept with chary care.
She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true, For her heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to woo — But honored well are charms to sell
If priests the selling do.
Now walking there was one more fair—
A slight girl, lily-pale ; And she had unseen company
To make the spirit quail. 'Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn
And nothing could avail.
No mercy now can clear her brow For this world's peace to pray ;
For as love's wild prayer dissolved in air Her woman's heart gave way ! —
But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven, By man is cursed alway !
TO A CITY PIGEON.
Stoop to my window, beautiful dove ! Thy daily visits have touched my love :
328 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS
I watch thy coming and list the note That stirs so low in thy mellow throat ;
And my joy is high
To catch the glance of thy gentle eye.
Why dost thou sit on the heated eaves,
And forsake the wood with its freshened leaves ?
Why dost thou haunt the sultry street,
When the paths of the forest are cool and sweet ?
How canst thou bear
This noise of people, this sultry air ?
Thou alone of the feathered race
Dost look unscared on the human face ;
Thou alone, with a wing to flee,
Dost love with man in his haunts to be ;
And the " gentle Dove "
Has become a name of Truth and Love.
A holy gift is thine, sweet bird ! Thou'rt named with childhood's earliest word ; Thou'rt linked with all that is fresh and wild In the prisoned thoughts of the city child ;
And thy glossy wings
Are its brightest image of moving things.
It is no light chance : thou art set apart Wisely by Him who has tamed thy heart, To stir the love for the bright and fair, That else were sealed in this crowded air ;
And I sometimes dream
Angelic rays from thy pinions stream.
Come then, ever, when the daylight leaves The page I read, to my humble eaves, And wash thy breast in the hollow spout, And murmur thy low, sweet music out.
I hear and see
Lessons of heaven, sweet bird, in thee.
THIRTY-FIVE.
"The years of a man's life are threescore and ten." O weary heart ! thou'rt half-way home !
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS 329
We stand on life's meridian height — As far from childhood's morning come,
As to the grave's forgetful night. Give Youth and Hope a parting tear ;
Look onward with a placid brow : Hope promised but to bring us here,
And reason takes the guidance now. One backward look — the last — the last ! One silent tear — for Youth is past !
Who goes with Hope and Passion back ?
Who comes with me and Memory on ? Oh ! lonely looks the downward track —
Joy's music hushed — Hope's roses gone ! To Pleasure and her giddy troop
Farewell, without a sigh or tear! But hearts give way, and spirits droop,
To think that Love may leave us here. Have we no charm when Youth has flown — Midway to death left sad and lone ?
Yet stay ! As 'twere a twilight star
That sends its thread across the wave, I see a brightening light, from far,
Steal down a path beyond the grave. And now — bless God ! — its golden line
Comes o'er, and lights my shadowy way And shows the dear hand clasped in mine. But list, what those sweet voices say : "The Better Land's in sight,
And, by its chastening light, All love from life's midway is driven, Save her whose clasped hand will bring thee on tc Heaven."
WILLSON, BYRON FORCEYTHE, an American poet, born at Little Genesee, N. YM April 10, 1837 ; died at Alfred, N. Y., February 2, 1867. He was educated at Harvard, but impaired health pre- vented his graduation. He became an editorial writer for the Louisville Journal, in which many of his poems were published. The best known of his writings is The Old Sergeant, a carrier's ad- dress, printed in that paper, January i, 1863, which is a true story. He published a volume of Poems in 1866.
" I believe many readers will agree with me in thinking that such poetry ... is the prod- uct of an unusually rare spirit," says J. J. Piatt in the Atlantic Monthly.
" In the Rhyme of the Master's Mate and In State, the simplest and most direct language, here and there, is thrilled with nerves of uncommon pas- sion and force ; in other poems there is gossamer- like, elusive grace ; elsewhere, throughout Will- son's poems, we find beauty, tenderness, and pathos, with pure and lofty habits of thought always observable."
THE OLD SERGEANT.
" Come a little nearer, Doctor ; thank you, — let me take
the cup : Draw your chair up — draw it closer — just another little
sup I
(330)
BYROff FORCEYTHE WILLS ON 33 1
Maybe you may think I'm better ; but I'm pretty well
used up — Doctor, you've done all you could do, but I'm just a
going up. ...
" Doctor Austin ! — what day is this ? " " It is Wednes- day night, you know."
" Yes, to-morrow will be New Year's, and a right good time below !
What time is it, Doctor Austin?" " Nearly twelve." " Then don't you go !
Can it be that all this happened — all this — not an hour ago!
" That was where the gun-boats opened on the dark,
rebellious host ; And where Webster semicircled his last guns upon the
coast ; There were still the two log-houses, just the same, or
else their ghost — And the same old transport came and took me over —
or its ghost !
" And the old field lay before me all deserted far and
wide ; There was where they fell on Prentiss — there McCler-
nand met the tide ; There was where old Sherman rallied, and where Hurl-
but's horses died — Lower down, where Wallace charged them, and kept
charging till he died.
" There was where Lew Wallace showed them he was of
the canny kin, There was where old Nelson thundered, and where
Rousseau waded in, There McCook sent 'em to breakfast, and we all began
to win — There was where the grape-shot took me, just as we
began to win.
332 BYRON FORCEYTHE WILLSON
" Now, a shroud of snow and silence over everything
was spread ; And but for this old blue mantle and the old hat on my
head I should not have even doubted, to this moment, I was
dead — For my footsteps were as silent as the snow upon the
dead !
" Death and silence ! — Death and silence ! all around
me as I sped !
And behold, a mighty TOWER, as if builded to the dead — To the Heaven of the heavens, lifted up its mighty head, Till the stars and stripes of Heaven all seemed waving
from its head !
" Round and mighty-based it towered — up into the in- finite—
And I knew no mortal mason could have built a shaft so bright ;
For it shone like solid sunshine ; and a winding stair of light
Wound around it and around it till it wound clear out of sight !
"And, behold, as I approached it — with a rapt and
dazzled stare — Thinking that I saw old comrades just ascending the
great Stair — Suddenly the solemn challenge broke of — 'Halt, and
who goes there !' ' I'm a friend,' I said, ' if you are.' ' Then advance, sir,
to the Stair.'
"I advanced ! — That sentry, Doctor, was Elijah Ballan-
tyne ! — First of all to fall on Monday, after we had formed the
line !— ' Welcome, my old Sergeant, welcome ! Welcome by
that countersign !•' And he pointed to the scar there, under this old cloak
of mine !
BYRON FORCED THE WILLSOK
333
" As he grasped my hand, I shuddered, thinking only of the grave ;
But he smiled and pointed upward with a bright and bloodless glaive :
' That's the way, sir, to Head-quarters.' ' What Head- quarters ? ' — ' Of the Brave.'
'But the great Tower?' — 'That,' he answered, 'is the way, sir, of the Brave ! '
" Then a sudden shame came o'er me at his uniform of
light ; At my own so old and tattered, and at his so new and
bright ; ' Ah ! ' said he, ' you have forgotten the New Uniform
to-night — Hurry back, for you must be here at just twelve o'clock
to-night ! '
"And the next thing I remember, you were sitting
there, and I — Doctor — did you hear a footstep ? Hark ! — God bless
you all ! Good-by ! Doctor, please to give my musket and my knapsack,
when I die, To my son — my son that's coming — he won't get here
till I die!
" Tell him his old father blessed him as he never did
before — And to carry that old musket — " Hark ! a knock is at
the door — " Till the Union—" See, it opens !— " Father ! Father !
speak once more ! " — "JBlessyou!" gasped the old, gray sergeant, and he lay
and said no more.
— The Old Sergeant, and Other Poems.
WILSON, ALEXANDER, a Scottish-American ornithologist and poet, born at Paisley, Scotland, July 6, 1766; died in Philadelphia, August 23, 1813. He was a weaver by trade, cultivated po- etry, came to America in 1794, and taught school in several places in Pennsylvania. By association with William Bartram he became interested in ornithology, and travelled much to collect birds. He was a competent pioneer in this work, and from 1808 he put forth his volumes of American Ornithology, himself drawing the faithful pictures. In 1814 the work was completed in nine volumes. It was issued in two volumes, after his death, and, with a continuation by C. L. Bonaparte, in four volumes in 1833. He published volumes of Poems at Paisley (1790 and 1791), and, in 1792, a poem, Watty and Meg, which was ascribed to Burns. His excursion to Western New York he described in a poem, The Foresters.
" The poems of Wilson," says Duyckinck, " re- flect his sympathies, his sensibilities, his love of humorous observation among men, as his prose, with its quick, lively step and minute description, so freshly pictures the animal world. In his hu- mor and feeling, Wilson, as a poet, belongs to the family of Burns."
THE BLUEBIRD.
Such are the mild and pleasing manners of the blue- bird, and so universally is he esteemed, that I have
(334)
ALEXANDER WILSON 335
often regretted that no pastoral muse has yet arisen in this western woody world to do justice to his name, and endear him to us still more by the tenderness of verse, as has been done to his representative in Britain, the robin redbreast. A small acknowledgment of this kind I have to offer, which the reader, I hope, will ex- cuse as a tribute to rural innocence.
When winter's cold tempests and snows are no more, Green meadows and brown-furrowed fields reappearing,
The fishermen hauling their shad to the shore, And cloud-cleaving geese to the lakes are a-steering ;
When first the lone butterfly flits on the wing, When red glow the maples, so fresh and so pleasing,
Oh, then comes the bluebird, the herald of spring ! And hails with his warblings the charms of the season.
Then loud-piping frogs make the marshes to ring ; Then warm glows the sunshine, and fine is the weather ;
The blue woodland flowers just beginning to spring, And spicewood and sassafras budding together :
Oh, then to your gardens ye housewives repair, Your walks border up, sow and plant at your leisure ;
The bluebird will chant from his box such an air, That all y»ur hard toils will seem truly a pleasure.
He flits through the orchard, he visits each tree, The red-flowering peach, and the apple's sweet blos- soms ;
He snaps up destroyers wherever they be, And seizes the caitiffs that lurk in their blossoms :
He drags the vile grub from the corn it devours, The worms from their webs, where they riot and welter ;
His songs and his services freely are ours, And all that he asks is — in summer a shelter.
The ploughman is pleased when he gleams in his train, Now searching the furrows — now mounting to cheer him ;
The gardener delights in his sweet, simple strain, And leans on his spade to survey and to hear him ;
336
ALEXANDER WILSON
The slow-ling'ring school-boys forget they'll be chid, While gazing intent as he warbles before them
In mantle of sky-blue, and bosom so red, That each little loiterer seems to adore him.
When all the gay scenes of summer are o'er, And autumn slow enters so silent and sallow,
And millions of warblers, that charmed us before, Have fled in the train of the sun-seeking swallow ;
The bluebird, forsaken, yet true to his home, Still lingers, and looks for a milder to-morrow,
Till, forced by the horrors of winter to roam, He sings his adieu in a lone note of sorrow.
While spring's lovely season, serene, dewy, warm, The green face of earth, and the pure blue of heaven,
Or love's native music have influence to charm, Or sympathy's glow to our feelings is given,
Still dear to each bosom the bluebird shall be ; His voice, like the thrillings of hope, is a treasure ;
For, through the bleakest storms, if a calm he but
see, He comes to remind us of sunshine and pleasure !
WILSON, AUGUSTA J. EVANS, an American novelist, born at Columbus, Ga., May 8, 1838. Her earlier novels were published under her maid- en name of Evans. In 1868 she was married to L. M. Wilson, of Mobile, Ala., where she has since resided. Her novels include Inez (1856); Beulah (1859); Macaria (1864); St. Elmo (1866); Vashti (1869) ; Infelice (1875), and At the Mercy of Tiberius (1889).
Mrs. Wilson's books have been very popular with romantic young women in and out of board- ing-schools for many a day. Her heroines are often marvels of learning, yet full of romance and ready to succumb to the fascinations of heroes generally superbly handsome, daring, and accom- plished, who are weighted down with "pasts " full of romantic mystery and unhappiness. But Mrs. Wilson does not write trash, withal ; her style, if a little strained and, again, heavy, is, on the whole, good ; her depiction of Southern plantation life in ante-bellum days is vividly correct, and her gen- tlemen and gentlewoman are such in the true sense of the words. The excerpt printed below il- lustrates the surroundings in which she loves to place her heroes, and explains the good-natured banter from reviewers who fully appreciate the sterling value of her work.
Mrs. Wilson's novels, according to Professor J.
(337)
338 AUGUSTA J. EVANS WILSON
S. Hart, " are characterized by great power of originality. Macaria and St. Elmo are admitted by all to show remarkable power."
" Everybody read Beulah" says Professor J. Wood Davidson. " It ran through ten or fifteen editions, possibly more, in a few months. Its fresh, vigorous style stimulated a lively interest."
THE LIBRARY AND THE "HERO."
When the echo of her retreating steps died away, St. Elmo threw his cigar out of the window, and walked up and down the quaint and elegant rooms, whose costly bizarrerie would more appropriately have adorned a vil- la of Parthenope or Lucanian Sybaris than a country- house in soi-disani " Republican " America. The floor, covered in winter with velvet carpet, was of white and black marble, now bare and polished as a mirror, re- flecting the figure of the owner as he crossed it. Oval ormolu tables, buhl chairs, and oaken and marqueterie cabinets, loaded with cameos, intaglios, Abraxoids, whose " erudition " would have filled Mnesarchus with envy, and challenged the admiration of the Samian lapi- dary who engraved the ring of Polycrates — these and numberless articles of virtu testified to the universality of what St. Elmo called his " world scrapings " and to the reckless extravagance and archaistic taste of the col- lector. . . . On a verd-antique table stood an ex- quisite white glass lamp, shaped like a vase and richly ornamented with Arabic inscriptions in ultramarine- blue — a precious relic of some ruined Laura in the Nit- rian desert, by the aid of whose rays the hoary hermits whom St. Macarius ruled had broken the midnight gloom, chanting " Kyrie eletson, Christe eleison" fourteen hun- dred years before St. Elmo's birth. Several handsome rosewood cases were filled with rare books — two in Pali — centuries old ; and moth-eaten and valuable manu- script— some in parchment, some in boards — recalled the days of astrology and alchemy and the sombre mys- teries of Rosicrucianism. . . . But expensive antf
AUGUSTA J. EVANS WILSON 339
rare as were these treasures, there was one other object for which the master would have given everything else in this museum of curiosities, and the secret of which no eyes but his own had yet explored. On a sculptured slab that had once formed a portion of the architrave of the Cave Temple at Elephanta was a splendid marble miniature, four feet high, of that miracle of Saracenic architecture, the Taj Mahal, at Agra. The elaborate carving resembled lace-work, and the beauty of the airy dome and slender, glittering minarets of this mimic tomb of Noor-Mahal could find no parallel, save in the superb and matchless original.
Filled though it was with sparkling bijouterie that would have graced the Barberini or Strozzi cabinets, the glitter of the room was cold and cheerless. No rosy memories of early, happy manhood lingered here ; no dewy gleams of the merry morning of life, when hope painted a peopled and smiling world ; no magic trifles that prattled of the spring-time of a heart that, in wan- dering to and fro through the earth, had fed itself with dust and ashes, acrid and bitter ; had studiously col- lected only the melancholy symbols of mouldering ruin, desolation, and death, and which found its best type in the Taj Mahal, that glistened so mockingly as the gas- light flickered on it. — St. Elmo.
VOL. XXIV.— 22
WILSON, JAMES GRANT, a Scottish-American biographer, born in Edinburgh, April 28, 1832. He was the son of the poet William Wilson, who in that year came to Poughkeepsie, N. Y., where the son was educated. Establishing at Chicago the first literary journal in the Northwest, he sold out, became a colonel, afterward a general, in the Civil War, and subsequently settled in New York. He has been on important Government boards, Presi- dent of the New York Genealogical Society, and has held other prominent offices. Besides ad- dresses and articles, he has published Biographical Sketches of Illinois Officers (1862) ; Love in Letters (1867); Life of U. S. Grant (1868); Life of Fitz- Greene Halleck (1869); Sketches of Illustrious Sol- diers (1874); Poets and Poetry of Scotland (1876); Centennial History of the Diocese of New York (1886); Bryant and His Friends (1886); Commodore Isaac Hull and the Frigate Constitution (1889) ; The Me- morial History of New York City (1891-93), and edited The Presidents of the United States (1894). In collaboration with Mr. John Fiske he has ed- ited Appletorfs Cyclopaedia of American Biography (6 vols., 1886-89).
THE "CROAKERS."
The amusing series of verses known as The Croak- ers, first published in 1819, were the joint produc-
, JAMES GRANT WILSON 341
lion of the attached friends and literary partners, Fitz- Greene Halleck and Joseph Rodman Drake — the " Da- mon and Pythias " of American poets. The origin of these sprightly jeux d1 esprit, as eagerly looked for each evening as were the war-bulletins of a later day, may not be without interest to the authors' troops of ad- mirers. Halleck and Drake were spending a Sunday morning with Dr. William Langstaff, an eccentric apoth- ecary and an accomplished mineralogist, with whom they were both intimate (the two last mentioned were pre- viously fellow-students in the study of medicine with Drs. Bruce and Romayne), when Drake, for his own and his friends' amusement, wrote several burlesque stanzas To Ennui, Halleck answering them in some lines on the same subject. The young poets decided to send their productions, with others of a similar character, to William Coleman, the editor of the Evening Post. If he published them, they would write more ; if not, they would offer them to M. M. Noah, of the National Advo- cate ; and, if he declined their poetical progeny, they would light their pipes with them. Drake accordingly sent Coleman three pieces of his own, signed " CROAK- ER," a signature adopted from an amusing character in Goldsmith's comedy of The Good-Nattered Man. To their astonishment, a paragraph appeared in the /to/ the day following, acknowledging their receipt, promising the insertion of the poems, pronouncing them to be the productions of superior taste and genius, and begging the honor of a personal acquaintance with the author. The lines To Ennui appeared March 10, 1819, and the others in almost daily succession ; those written by Mr. Halleck being sometimes signed " Croaker Junior," while those which were their joint composition generally bore the signature of " Croaker and Co."
The remark made by Coleman had excited public at- tention, and " THE CROAKERS " soon became a subject of conversation in drawing-rooms, book-stores, coffee- houses on Broadway, and throughout the city ; they were, in short, a town topic. The two friends contrib- uted other pieces ; and when the editor again expressed great anxiety to be acquainted with the writer, and used a style so mysterious as to excite their curiosity, the liter-
342 JAMES GRANT WILSON
ary partners decided to call upon him. Halleck ana Drake accordingly, one evening, went together to Coleman's residence in Hudson Street, and requested an interview. They were ushered into the parlor, the editor soon en- tered, the young poets expressed a desire for a few min- utes' strictly private conversation with him, and, the door being closed and locked, Dr. Drake said — " I am Croaker, and this gentleman, sir, is Croaker Junior." Coleman stared at the young men with indescribable and unaf- fected astonishment, at length exclaiming : " I had no idea that we had such talent in America ! " Halleck, with his characteristic modesty, was disposed to give to Drake all the credit ; but, as it chanced that Coleman alluded in particularly glowing terms to one of the Croakers that was wholly his, he was forced to be silent, and the delighted editor continued in a strain of com- pliment and eulogy that put them both to the blush. Before taking their leave, the poets bound Coleman over to the most profound secrecy, and arranged a plan of sending him the MSS., and of receiving the proofs, in a manner that would avoid the least possibility of the secret of their connection with " THE CROAKERS " being discovered. The poems were copied from the originals by Langstaff, that their handwriting should not divulge the secret, and were either sent through the mail, or taken to the Evening Post office by Ben- jamin R. Winthrop. . . .
Hundreds of imitations of "THE CROAKERS" were daily received by the different editors of New York, to all of which they gave publicly one general answer, that they lacked the genius, spirit, and beauty of the origi- nals. On one occasion Coleman showed Halleck fifteen he had received in a single morning, all of which, with a solitary exception, were consigned to the waste-basket. The friends continued for several months to keep the city in a blaze of excitement ; and it was observed by one of the editors, "that so great was the wincing and shrinking at ' THE CROAKERS,' that every person was on tenter-hooks ; neither knavery nor folly has slept quiet- ly since our first commencement." — Life and Letters of Fitz- Greene Halleck.
WILSON, JOHN, a Scottish essayist, poet, and novelist, born at Paisley, May 18, 1785 ; died at Edinburgh, April 3, 1854. He was the son of a prosperous manufacturer ; was educated at the University of Glasgow, and at Oxford, where he took his Bachelor's degree in 1807, having the pre- ceding year won the Newdigate Prize for a poem on " The Study of Greek and Roman Architect- ure." Soon afterward he married and purchased the pretty estate of Elleray, on the shore of Lake Windermere, where he resided for several years. He was noted for his imposing stature, physical strength, and fondness for athletic exercises. Pe- cuniary reverses came upon him, and he was com- pelled to look about for means of earning a liveli- hood. He went to Edinburgh, and entered himself as a member of the Scottish bar ; and in 1820 was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. In the meantime Will- iam Blackwood had in 1817 established at Edin- burgh the magazine which bears his name. Wil- son was from the first its leading spirit, though Blackwood was its actual editor. For the some- what mythical editor the name of " Christopher North " was adopted, and this name came to be applied to Wilson, and was in a manner adopted by him. Wilson's connection with Blackwood's Magazine continued from October, 1817, till Sep-
344 JOHN WILSON
tember, 1852, when appeared his last contribution, Christopher Under Canvas. His health failing in 1851, the Government granted him a literary pen- sion of £300.
Among his Blackwood articles are the series en- titled Nodes Ambrosiancz and Recreations of Chris- topher North. A collection of his Works, edited by his son-in-law, Professor Ferrier, has been made (1855-58). Besides the various Blackwood papers, the principal works of Wilson are The Isle of Palms, and Other Poems (1812); The City of the Plague, and Other Poems (1816) ; Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life (1822); The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay (1823); The Foresters ( 1 824).
YOUTHFUL FRIENDSHIPS.
Oh ! blame not boys for so soon forgetting one an- other in absence or in death. Yet forgetting is not just the very word. Call it rather a reconcilement to doom and destiny in thus obeying a benign law of nature that soon streams sunshine over the shadow of the grave. Not otherwise could all the ongoings of this world be continued. The nascent spirit outgrows much in which it once found all delight ; and thoughts delightful still — thoughts of the faces and the voices of the dead — perish not ; lying sometimes in slumber, sometimes in sleep. It belongs not to the blessed season and genius of youth to hug to its heart useless and unavailing .griefs. Images of the well-beloved, when they themselves are in the mould, come and go, no unfrequent visitants, through the meditative hush of solitude. But our main business — our prime joys and our prime sorrows — ought to be, must be, with the living. Duty demands it ; and Love, who would pine to death over the bones of the dead, soon fastens upon other objects ; with eyes and voices to smile and whisper an answer to all his vows.
So was it with us. Ere the midsummer sun had withered the flowers that Spring has sprinkled over our
JOHN WILSON
345
Godfrey's grave, youth vindicated its own right to hap- piness ; and we felt that we did wrong to visit too often that corner of the kirkyard. No fears had we of any too oblivious tendencies. In our dreams we saw him, most often all alive as ever, sometimes a phantom away from that grave. If the morning light was frequently hard to be endured, bursting suddenly upon us along with the feeling that he was dead, it more frequently cheered and gladdened us with resignation, and sent us forth a fit playmate to the dawn that rang with all sounds of joy. Again we found ourselves angling down the river or along the lock ; once more following the flight of the falcon along the woods, eying the eagle on the echo-cliff.
Days passed by without so much as one thought of Emilius Godfrey ; pursuing our pastime with all our passion, reading our books intently, just as if he had never been. But often and often, too, we thought we saw his figure coming down the hill straight toward us — his very figure — we could not be deceived. But the love-raised ghost disappeared on a sudden ; the grief- worn spectre melted into mist. The strength that for- merly had come from his counsels now began to grow up of itself within our own unassisted being. The world of nature became more our own, moulded and modified by all our own feelings and fancies ; and with a bolder and more original eye we saw the smoke from the sprinkled cottages, and saw the faces of the mountain- eers on their way to their work, or coming and going to the house of God. — Recreations of Christopher North.
WILSON, THOMAS WOODROW, an American historian, born at Staunton, Va., December 28, 1856. He was graduated from Princeton College in 1879; ne studied law and practised as an attor- ney at Atlanta, Ga., for two years. From 1883 to 1885 he studied history and politics at Johns Hop- kins University, and taught history at Bryn Mawr College, 1885-86, serving there as professor of history and political science, 1886-88. After a year as professor of the same studies at Wesleyan University he accepted the chair of jurisprudence at Princeton College (1890). Among his works are Congressional Government: A Study in Amer- ican Politics (1885) ; The State (1889) ; Division and Reunion, 1829-89 (one of the Epochs of American History series, 1893); An Old Master, and Other Political Essays (1893); George Washington (1896) ; Mere Literature, and Other Essays (1896).
Of his George Washington, a writer in the Book- man says : " It is clear the author is tracing the evolution of a hero rather than writing the biog- raphy of a man. This is indeed the tone of the book throughout, and the effect produced is a lit- tle unreal, as far as the personality of Washington is concerned. The epic style grows somewhat monotonous at times. . . . It is compact and forcible. Almost it persuades one to be a hero- worshipper."
THOMAS WOODROW WILSON 547
A CALENDAR OF GREAT AMERICANS.
Before a calendar of great Americans can be made out, a valid canon of Americanism must first be established. Not every great man born and bred in America was a great <: American." Some of the notable men born among us were simply great Englishmen ; others had in all the habits of their thought and life the strong flavor of a peculiar region, and were great New Englanders or great Southerners ; others, masters in the fields of science or of pure thought, showed nothing either dis- tinctively national or characteristically provincial, and were s'mply great men ; while a few displayed old cross- strains of blood or breeding. The great Englishmen bred in America, like Hamilton and Madison ; the great provincials, like John Adams and Calhoun ; the authors of such thought as might have been native to any clime, like Asa Gray and Emerson ; and the men of mixed breed, like Jefferson and Benton — must be ex- cluded from our present list. We must pick out men who have created or exemplified a distinctively Ameri- can standard and type of greatness.
To make such a selection is not to create an artificial standard of greatness, or to claim that greatness is in any case hallowed or exalted merely because it is Amer- ican. It is simply to recognize a peculiar stamp of character, a special make-up of mind and faculties, as the specific product of our national life, not displacing or eclipsing talents of a different kind, but supplement- ing them, and so adding to the world's variety. There is an American type of men. and those who have exhib- ited this type with a certain unmistakable distinction and perfection have been great " Americans." It has required the utmost variety of character and energy to establish a great nation, with a polity at once free and firm, upon this continent, and no sound type of manliness could here have been dispensed with in the effort. We could no more have done without our great Englishmen, to keep the past steadily in mind and make every change conservative of principle, than we could have done with- out the men whose whole impulse was forward, whose
348 THOMAS WOODROW WILSON
whole genius was for origination, natural masters of the art of subduing a wilderness.
We shall not in the future have to take one type of Americanism at a time. The frontier is gone : it has reached the Pacific. The country grows rapidly homo- geneous. With the same pace it grows various, and multiform in all its life. The man of the single or local type cannot any longer deal in the great manner with any national problem. The great men of our fut- ure must be of the composite type of greatness : sound- hearted, hopeful, confident of the validity of liberty, tenacious of the deeper principles of American institu- tions, but with the old rashness schooled and sobered, and instinct tempered by instruction. They must be wise with an adult, not with an adolescent wisdom. Some day we shall be of one mind, our ideals fixed, our purposes harmonized, our nationality complete and con- sentaneous : then will come our great literature and our greatest men.
WINCHELL, ALEXANDER, an American geol- ogist, born at North Ea'j.1, Dutchess County, N. Y., December 31, 1824; died at Ann Arbor, Mich., February 19, 1891. He was graduated at Wes- leyan University, Middletown, Conn., and was Professor of Physics and Civil Engineering in the University of Michigan, 1853-55 ; of Geology and Natural Science, 1855-72, holding also a like pro- fessorship in the Kentucky University, 1866-67. He was Chancellor of the Syracuse University, N. Y., from 1872-74, and professor of geology and zoology there in 1877. From 1879 ne was Professor of Geology and Palaeontology at Michi- gan University, and State Geologist, 1859-62 and 1869-71. Besides scientific papers and official re- ports, he wrote some very able books, considered both as scientific and literary productions, such as Sketches of Creation (1870) ; Geology of the Stars (1872); Doctrine of Evolution (1874) ; Thoughts on Causality (1875); Lay Theology (1876); Reconcilia- tion of Science and Religion (1877) ; Preadamites (1880); Sparks from a Geologist's Hammer (1881); World-Life (1883); Geological Excursions (1884); Walks and Talks in the Geological Field (1886); Shall We Teach Geology ? (1889).
Of Walks and Talks in the Geological Field, the Critic says : " It was no light task that Dr. Win- chell undertook when he proposed to popularize
350 ALEXANDER WINCHELL
geology, for although the subject is one that sug- gests poetry and the exercise of literary skill, there has been, and still is, such constant quarrelling among professional geologists that the greatest care was necessary to make use of such facts as all the 'professionals' admit, and avoid the bones of contention. In this Dr. Winchell succeeded. It is a good book, a truthful book, that will hold its own, however numerous the volumes akin to it that the near future may produce."
MIND IN MATTER.
A human organism with all its parts perfect, and all its parts in harmonious action, is a splendid mechanism which can never cease to awaken admiration and won- der. While we contemplate it, alas, its activities cease. A powerful current of electricity has passed through the frame, and a life is extinct. The change which we witness is appalling. The eye has lost its light ; the voice gives forth no more intelligence ; the muscles cease to grasp the implement ; the fabric of a man now lies prone, motionless, speechless, insensible, dead — a stu- pendous and total change. But what is changed ? Not the mechanism. The heart is still in its place, with all its valves ; the brain shows no lesion ; the muscles are all ready to act ; every part remains as it was in life. Neither chemistry nor the microscope detects, as yet, a material change. But something has gone out of the mechanism, for it is not as it was — something inscruta- ble, but yet something which ruled the mechanism — sustaining its action, lighting the eye, giving informa- tion to the tongue, making of this machinery absolutely all that which led us to say, " Here is a man." The man has gone out and left only his silent workshop be- hind.
Consider the life-powers in action. The organism is in process of growth. A common fund of assimilative material is provided by the digestive organs. Out of this, atom by atom is selected and built into the vari-
ALEXANDER WINCHELL 351
ous tissue-fabrics. Here such atoms are selected as the formation of bone requires ; there, the atoms suited for nerve or brain structure ; in another place, the material of which muscles are made. If, unfortunately, the lime should be brought to be worked up in the muscle-fac- tory, or the nerve-stuff to be made into bone, the whole organism would be thrown into disorder. Nice selec- tion of material is indispensable. Then notice the building of the bones. In one place the framework is so laid that the filling up will result in a flat bone. It is to be a shoulder-blade, or a portion of the skull. In another place the framework is elongated ; it is to be a long bone. The humerus is never built into the skull, nor the shoulder-blade into the sole of the foot. Every bone is constructed for its place and its function. The whole system of bones, moreover, is conformed to a definite fundamental plan of structure — it is accord- ing to the plan of a vertebrate. Now, selection of appropriate material is an act of intelligence. The determination of one form of structure rather than another implies discriminating intelligence and ex- ecutive will. The conformation of the total system of structures in the organism to an ideal plan implies, first, a conception of the plan ; secondly, a perception of fitness between the plan and each particular tissue in process of formation. Certainly, we must say that here mind is at work. But is it the mind of the animal or plant? Every person can answer for himself whether he made his own bones. The question is absurd. Is the mind evinced possessed by the matter? Do these atoms and molecules move and arrange themselves by an intelligence and choice of their own ? Has each one a conception of the plan to which they so consentane- ously work ? Do they intelligently maintain the proc- esses of digestion, blood purification, assimilation, anrf tissue-building? How do they conceive, think, and will without brain ? How select without eyes or hands ? Whoever knew intelligence acting without brain ? But, it is conceivable, you say. Yes, though it is not a brainless molecule. There is intelligence acting in the organism, which does not belong to the matter or the individual; whose intelligence is it? Intelligence is
352
ALEXANDER W1NCHELL
an attribute ; it belongs to being. What being, then, acts in the living organism ? It is the Omnipresent Being. . . .
Plan is the product of thought ; it is a demonstration of the existence and presence and activity of mind. If the material world is underlaid and pervaded and oper- ated by plan, method, law, then the world is a constant revelation of a present intelligence, an omnipresent and omniscient Being.
There is one plan which underlies all other plans. In a brief and condensed way, I have attempted to show that the plans exemplified in organic life and the plans exemplified in the formation of worlds are only special exemplifications of the all-embracing plan of evolution. — Walks and Talks in the Geological Ftiid.
WINSLOW, EDWARD, a British miscellaneous writer, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, born at Droit- wich, in Worcestershire, October 19, 1595; died at sea, near Jamaica, May 8, 1655. He was one of the voyagers on the Mayflower, and, in conjunc- tion with William Bradford, kept a journal of the events of the first year in the Plymouth Colony, In 1623 he went to England as agent of the Ply- mouth Colony, and while there put forth his pamphlet, Good Newes from New England. On his return he brought with him the first live stock introduced into New England. In 1633 he was elected Governor of the Colony. In 1635 he again visited England, and obtained a renewal of the right of self-government at Plymouth ; but Thomas Morton, the Episcopalian Royalist, procured his imprisonment on various charges. He was soon released, and was re-elected Governor in 1636, and again in 1644. He returned to England in 1649, was employed there under the Cromwellian Government, and in 1655 was sent to the West In- dies as one of the commissioners appointed to de- vise and superintend attack upon the Spanish set- tlements, but died on the voyage, and was buried in Jamaica.
" Winslow," says Professor C. F. Richardson, " was a sufficiently modest chronicler of his sights and doings, his best work, though not his most
354 EDWARD WINSLOW
ambitious, being the journal which he wrote in connection with William Bradford. . . . On the whole, it is well done, though with little pre- tence to fine or very careful writing. Truth is everywhere apparent in the record ; and the in- tensity of the writers seldom interfered with their common-sense and discretion. This journal con- tained many a vivid picture of savage life on the new shore."
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF NEW ENGLAND.
For the temper of the air here, it agreeth well with that in England ; and if there be any difference at all, this is somewhat hotter in summer. Some think it to be colder in winter, but I cannot of experience so say. The air is very clear, and not foggy, as hath been re- ported. I never in my life remember a more season- able year than we have here enjoyed ; and if we have once both kine, horses, and sheep, I make no question but men might live as contented here as in any part of the world. The country wanteth only industrious men to employ ; for it would grieve your hearts if, as I, you had seen so many miles together by goodly rivers un- inhabited ; and, withal, to consider those parts of the world wherein you live to be even greatly burthened with abundance of people. — Letter ; 1622.
FIRST INTERVIEW WITH MASSASOIT.
In his person he is a very lusty man, in his best years, an able body, grave of countenance, and spare of speech ; in his attire little or nothing differing from the rest of his followers, only in a great chain of white bone beads about his neck ; and at it, behind his neck, hangs a little bag of tobacco. His face was painted of a sad, red-like murrey, and oiled both head and face, that he looked greasily. All his followers likewise were in their faces, in part or in whole, painted, some black, some red, some yellow, and some white, some with crosses and other
EDWARD WINSLOW
355
antic works ; some had skins on them, and some naked ; all tall, strong men in appearance. . . .
One thing I forgot : The king had in his bosom, hang- ing in a string, a great, long knife. He marvelled much at our trumpet, and some of the men would sound it as well as they could. Samoset and Squanto, they stayed all night with us ; and the king and all his men lay all night in the woods, not above half an English mile from us, and all their wives and women with them. They said that within eight or nine days they would come and set corn on the other side of the brook, and dwell there all summer ; which is hard by us. That night [ March 22, 1621] we kept good watch, but there was no appear- ance of danger. — Winstow's Journal.
VOL. XXIV.— 23
WINSOR, JUSTIN, an American historian and bibliographer, born in Boston, January 2, 1831 : died at Cambridge, Mass., October 22, 1897. He studied at Harvard (which subsequently conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D.) and af- terward in Germany. In 1868 he was made Su- perintendent of the Boston Public Library, and in 1877 Librarian of Harvard College. From 1876 to 1886 he was President of the American Li- brary Association. Among the works which he wrote or edited were The History of Duxbury, Mass. (1849); Songs of Unity (1859) '•> Bibliography of the Original Quartos and Folios of Shakespeare (1876); Handbook of the Revolution (1880); Brad- ford's History of Plymouth (1881) ; Arnold's Expedi- tion Against Quebec (1886) ; The Manuscript Sources of American History (1887); Narrative and Critical History of the United States, written partly by himself (of which Vol. I. appeared in 1881, Vol. VII. in 1888); Review of the 2$oth Anniversary of the Founding of Harvard College (1887) ; Christopher Columbus ( 1 89 1 ) ; Cartier to Front enac ( 1 894). From 1877 on he prepared a large annual volume of the Harvard University Bulletin, from which we take a small part of an exhaustive paper on The Bibli- ography of Ptolemy s Geography. Some seventy editions of this are described, that of 1540 the most minutely.
JUSTIN W1NSOR 357
SEBASTIAN MONSTER AND HIS MAPS OF THE NEW WORLD.
Sebastian Miinster was born in 1489, and died of the plague in 1552. In 1532 he had already contributed a Map of the World and had described it in the Novus Orfa's, which was published at Basle in 1532, and is usu- ally ascribed to Grynaeus, because his name is signed to the Preface. Munster's 1532 map closely resembles the Schonen and Frankfort globes in the shape of North America, and in the placing of " Corterealis," as well as the severance of South America by a strait. The north- ern land is called "Terre de Cuba." The southern part is drawn broad in the northerly part, but it closely con- tracts, making the lower portion long and narrow ; and it bears these words : "Farias," "Canibali," " America," " Terra Nova," " Priscilia." This 1532 map, being so much behind the current knowledge of America, was not altogether creditable to Miinster, and in 1540 he undertook the editing of the edition of Ptolemy now under consideration. In this new edition he placed the following maps, which are of interest in the history of American cartography :
(i.) Typus Universalis, an elliptical map, with America on the left ; except that the western part of America, called " Temistatan," is carried to the Asia side of the map. In the north a narrow neck of land extending west, widens into " Islandia," with " Thyle," an island, south of it ; and still farther westward it becomes " Terra nova sine de Bacalhos." South of this is a strait marked " Per hoc fretum iter patet ad Molucas." The north- ern boundary of the western end of the strait is " India Superior." South of it, and opposite Bacalhos, is a tri- angular land, without name, but with an off-lying island, "Cortereal." Its western shore is washed by a " Ver- ranzano Sea," which nearly severs it from "Terra Flor- ida." South America is so vaguely drawn on its west- ern bounds that its connection with North America is uncertain. It is called "America, seu Insula Brazilii." " Magellan's Straits " separate it from the Antarctic «mds; and these straits are for the first time shown
358 JUSTIN W2KSOSt
on any Ptolemaic map. — (2.) Nova Insula xxvi. nova Tabula. This is No. 45 of the whole, or No. 17 of the twenty-two maps showing both Americas. Kohl delin- eates it, dating it erroneously 1530 ; and Hubert H. Ban- croft copies the error. A similar gulf, from the north- west, projects down North America, as in the other map. On South America is the legend, "Insula Atlantia, quam vocant Brazilii et Americam."
The title of this edition of 1540 is, Gcographia Untver- salts, Vetus et Nova^ complectens Claudii Alexandrini enna-' nationes, etc. This edition consists of forty-eight maps, of which twenty-six relate to the Old World, and twen- ty-two to the New. It is of interest now to inquire what explorations had been followed, and what maps had been produced since the edition of 1522 which could have been of assistance to Munster in drafting these new theories of the general contour of the Amer ican continent.
The distinctive feature of Miinster's map — the sea which nearly severs North America — is traced to the explorations of Giovanni de Verrezano, in 1524. Into the questions against the general credence imposed in these explorations, it is not necessary to enter here. The belief in the story first found public cartographical ex- pression in the map under consideration ; and Munster may possibly have used Verrezano's charts, which are now lost. . . .
The validity of the claims for Giovanni de Verrezano largely rests, however, on a planisphere of about 1529, made by Hieronymus de Verrezano, measuring 51 by 102 inches, which was discovered in the Collegio Ro- mano de Propaganda Fide, in the Museo Borgiano at Rome. It is not certain that this map is an originalr and it may be a copy. It was mentioned by Von Mur in 1801, referring to a letter of Cardinal Borgia of 1795. It was again mentioned by Million in 1807. General attention was first directed to it in 1852 in Thomassy's Les Papes G'eographes. Two imperfect pho- tographs of the map were procured for the American Geographical Society in 1871, and it was described by Mr. Brevoort in their Journal for 1873. Reductions of it are given in C. P. Daly's Early Cartography ; in the
JUSTIN WINSOR 359
opposing monographs of Brevoort, Verrezano, the Navi- gator (1874), and Murphy's Voyages of Verrezano (1875). Brevoort also gives an enlarged section of it, and for comparison the same coast from the Spanish Mappa Mundivi 1527. Brevoort is also of the opinion that Hieronymus Verrezano got his Western Sea from Ovie- do's Somario of 1526. Mr. De Costa, in the Magazine of American History, August, 1878, gives a reduction from Mr. Murphy's engraving, and an enlarged section, in which he inserted the names which were left obscure in the photograph from which Mr. Murphy worked. Mr. De Costa repeats his various maps, and sums up the subject in his Verrezano, the Explorer (1881). The last word on the subject is said by Mr. J. Carson Bre- voort in Magazine of American History, February and July, 1882. — Ifa Harvard University JSulletin, 1887.
WINTER, WILLIAM, an American dramatic critic and poet, born at Gloucester, Mass., July 15, 1836. After passing through the Cambridge High School he studied law at the Harvard Law School, and was admitted to the bar, but devoted himself to literature rather than to legal practice. In 1859 he took up his permanent residence in New York, and contributed to various peri- odicals, his specialty being literary reviews and dramatic criticism. Since 1865 he has been the dramatic editor of the New York Tribune. He has put forth the following small volumes of poems : The Convent, and Other Poems (1854) ; The Queen's Domain, and Other Poems (1858) ; My Wit- ness: a Book of Verse (1871) ; Thistledown : a Book of Lyrics (1878). A complete edition of his poems was published in 1881. His prose works mainly relate, directly or indirectly, to the dramatic art'- Edwin Booth in Twelve Characters (1871); A Trip to England (1879); The Jeff ersons (1881); English Rambles (1884) ; Henry Irving (1885) ; Shakespeare's England (1886) ; Gray Days and Gold, a volume of poems (1891) ; Old Shrines and Ivy (1892) ; Shadows of the Stage, three series (1892, 1893, 1895), and The Life and Art of Edwin Booth (1894). He has edited, with biographical sketches, the Remains of his early deceased associates, George Arnold and Fitz- James O'Brien.
(360)
WILLIAM WINTER 361
AFTER ALL.
The apples are ripe in the orchard,
And the work of the reaper is done, And the golden woodlands redden
In the blood of the dying sun. At the cottage door the grandsire
Sits pale in his easy-chair, While a gentle wind of twilight
Plays with his silver hair. A woman is kneeling beside him;
A fair young head is prest, In the first wild passion of sorrow,
Again^: his aged breast. And far' from over the distance
The faltering echoes come Of the flying blast of trumpet
And the rattling roll of drum. Then the grandsire speaks in a whisper —
" The end no man can see ; But we give him to our country,
And we give our prayers to Thee I "
The violets star the meadows,
The rose-buds fringe the door, And over the grassy orchard
The pink-white blossoms pour. But the grandsire's chair is empty,
And the cottage is dark and still ; There's a nameless grave on the battle-field,
And a new one under the hill ; And a pallid, tearless woman
By the cold hearth sits alone ; And the old clock in the corner
Ticks on with a steady tone.
AN EMPTY HEART. (Lines to a beautiful lady, sent with a heart-shaped jewel box.)
Well, since our lot must be to part
(These lots — how they do push and pull one !) I send you here an empty heart,
362
WILLIAM WINTER
But send it from a very full one. My little hour of joy is done,
But every vain regret I smother, With murm'ring, " When you see the one,
Think kindly sometimes of the other."
This heart must always do your will,
This heart your maid can fetch and carry, This heart will faithful be, and still
Will not importune you to marry. That other, craving hosts of things,
Would throb and flutter, every minute ; But this, except it hold your rings,
Will mutely wait with nothing in it.
Oh, happy heart ! that finds its bliss
In pure affection consecrated ! But happier far the heart, like this,
That heeds not whether lone or mated ; That stands unmoved in beauty's eyes,
That knows not if you leave or take it, That is not hurt though you despise,
And quite unconscious when you break it.
That other heart would burn, and freeze,
And plague, and hamper, and perplex you ; But this will always stand at ease,
And never pet and never vex you. Go, empty heart ! and if she lift
Your little lid this prayer deliver ; "Ah, look with kindness on the gift,
And think with kindness on the giver."
WINTHROP, JOHN, an American historian, first Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, born at Groton, England, January 12, 1587; died in Boston, Mass., March 26, 1649. His father and grandfather were eminent lawyers, and he himself was bred to the law. At eighteen he was made a Justice of the Peace, and was held in the highest repute for his learning and piety. In 1629 he was chosen head of a company to establish a new colony on Massachusetts Bay. He sold his considerable estate, and after a voy- age of two months landed at Salem, June 12, 1630. Five days afterward he set out through the forests, and selected the peninsula of Shaw- mut as the site of a settlement, to which was given the name of Boston in honor of their pastor, whose birthplace was Boston, England. Win- throp was elected Governor of the Colony in 1634, and by successi ye re-elections was Governor, with the exception of two short intervals, until his death. On his voyage out he wrote a short trac- tate, A Model of Christian Charity, and kept a mi- nute Journal of events — public, social, and private — extending from 1630 to 1649. This has been published under the some what inapposite title, The History of New England (2 vols., 1826). In 1645 he — 'then being Deputy-Governor — was arraigned before the General Court upon charge of having
(363)
364 JOHN WINTHROP
exceeded his authority. He was triumphantly acquitted, and the speech which he thereafter de- livered is the most notable part of his History.
His eldest son, also JOHN WINTHROP (1605-76), obtained from Charles II. a charter for the Colony of Connecticut, of which he was Governor for the last fourteen years of his life.
WINTHROP'S NOCTURNAL ADVENTURE.
The Governor being at his farm-house at Mistick, walked out after supper and took a piece in his hand, supposing he might see a wolf. And being about half a mile off it grew suddenly dark, so as in going home he mistook his path, and went on till he came to a little house of Sagamore John, which stood empty. There he stayed ; and having a piece of match in his pocket (for he always carried about him match and a compass, and in summer-time snakeweed) he made a good fire near the house, and lay down upon some old mats which he found there, and so spent the night, sometimes walk- ing by the fire, sometimes singing psalms, and some- times getting wood ; but could not sleep. It was through God's mercy a warm night, but a little before day it began to rain, and having no cloak, he made a shift by a long pole to climb up into the house. In the morning there came thither an Indian squaw ; but per- ceiving her before she had opened the door he barred her out. Yet she stayed there a great while, essaying to get in ; and at last she went away, and he returned safe home, his servants having been much perplexed for him, and having walked about and shot off pieces, and hallooed in the night ; but he heard them not. — History of New England.
A PURITAN OPINION OF LITERARY WOMEN.
Mr. Hopkins, the Governor of Hartford, upon Con- necticut, came to Boston, and brought his wife with him (a godly young woman, and of special parts), who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding
JOHN WINTHROP 365
and reason, which had been growing upon her divers years, by occasion of her giving herself wholly to read- ing and writing, and had written many books. Her husband, being very loving and tender of her, was loath to grieve her ; but he saw his error when it was too late. For if she had attended her household affairs, and such things as belong to women, and r.ot gone out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might have improved them usefully and hon- orably in the place God had set for her.
He brought her to Boston, and left her with her brother, one Mr. Yale, a merchant, to try what means might be had here for her. But no help could be had. — The History a/ New England.
WINTHROP, ROBERT CHARLES, an American orator and statesman, born in Boston, May 12, 1809 ; died there, November 16, 1894. He was a de- scendant, in the sixth generation, of the first John Winthrop ; was graduated at Harvard in 1828; studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1831 ; but, being possessed of an ample fortune, did not enter upon practice. In 1834 he was elected to the Legislature of Massachusetts ; and in 1840 was elected a Representative in Congress and was chosen Speaker of the House in 1848. In 1851 he received the highest vote of three candidates for the governorship of Massachusetts ; but, failing of a majority of the whole vote, he was in the end defeated by a coalition of the supporters of the other candidates. He published The Life and Let- ters of John Winthrop (1867) ; Washington, Bowdoin, and Franklin (1876), and Memoir of Henry Clay (1880). He also delivered many Speeches, Orations, and Addresses upon political, historical, biograph- ical, and literary topics. Notable among these are an address upon the laying of the corner-stone of the Washington Monument in 1840, and anoth- er upon its dedication in 1885, although infirmity prevented him from actually delivering the latter.
THE MEMORY OF WASHINGTON.
Of merely mortal men the monument we have dedi- cated to-day points out the one for all Americans to study, to imitate, and, as far as may be, to emulate.
(366)
ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP 367
Keep his example and his character ever before your eyes and in your hearts. Live and act as if he were seeing and judging of your personal conduct and your public career. Strive to approximate that lofty stand- ard, and measure your integrity and your patriotism by your nearness to it, or your departure from it. The prime meridian of universal longitude, on sea or land, may be at Greenwich, or at Paris, or where you will ; but the prime meridian of pure, disinterested, patriotic, exalted human character will be marked forever by yon- der Washington Obelisk. . . .
The inspiration of the centennial anniversary of the first great inauguration must not be lost upon us. Would that any ,rwords of mine could help us all, old and young, to resolve that the principles and character and example of Washington, as he came forward to take the oath of office on that day, shall once more be rec- ognized and reverenced as the model for all who suc- ceed him, and that his disinterested purity and patriot- ism shall be the supreme test and standard of American statesmanship ! That standard can never be taken from us. The most elaborate and durable monuments may perish, but neither the forces of nature, nor any fiendish crime of man, can ever mar or mutilate a great example of public or private virtue.
Our matchless obelisk stands proudly before us to- day, and we hail it with the exultation of a united and glorious nation. It may or may not be proof against the cavils of critics, but nothing of human construction is against the casualties of time. The storms of winter must blow and beat upon it. The action of the ele- ments must soil and discolor it. The lightnings of heaven may scar and blacken it. An earthquake may shake its foundations. Some mighty tornado, or resist* less cyclone, may rend its massive blocks asunder, and hurl huge blocks to the ground. But the character which it commemorates is secure. It will remain un- changed and unchangeable in all its consummate purity and splendor, and will more and more command the homage of succeeding ages in all regions of the earth. God be praised, that character is ours forever ! — Dedi- cation of the Washington Monument, 1885.
WINTHROP, THEODORE, an American nov- elist, born at New Haven, Conn., September 22, 1828; killed in battle near Big Bethel, Va., June 10, 1861. He was graduated at Yale in 1848, and remained there a year longer, when he went to Europe for the benefit of his health. While abroad he became intimate with Mr. W. H. Aspinwall, through whom he entered the employment of the Pacific Mail Company, and was variously engaged on the Pacific Coast and on the Isthmus of Darien, until 1854, when he began the study of law at New York, and was admitted to the bar in 1855. He, however, turned his thoughts to literature rather than to law, and wrote several novels, to which exceptions were taken by the proposed publishers. The objectionable parts were elimi- nated, and finally two of them, Cecil Dreeme, a novel of literary and social life in New York, and John Brent, a mining story of California, were ac- cepted for publication. But the Civil War broke out, and men's thoughts were not much inclined toward fiction. So the novels were laid aside on the publishers' shelves ; and Winthrop himself volunteered in the army. His military career was a brief one. At the " affair " of Big Bethel, Win- throp, then ranking as major, was shot down, and died upon the spot. Not long before this he had
sent to the Atlantic Monthly his story Love and
(368)
THEODORE WINTHROP 369
Skates, which, however, did not appear until after his death. His works are Cecil Dreeme (1861); John Brent (i 862) ; The Canoe and the Saddle (i 862) ; Edwin Brother toft (1862) ; Life in the Open Air (1863). A volume containing his Life and Poems, edited by his sister, was published in 1884.
Winthrop's style is vigorous and, when neces- sary, picturesque. Like most young writers of his time, he felt the influence of Victor Hugo, and tried to turn his earlier work out in short sen- tences, each epigrammatic, and the succession of them like the rattle of picket-skirmishing. In his Cecil Dreeme is to be seen this tendency. In his later works he abandoned this attempt and con- tented himself with simple, nervous, compact " An- glo-Saxon " English. His John Brent is a vivid story of California mining life and of his journey across the plains. In his Edwin Brother toft we have a Colonial historical romance which com- pares most favorably with those so popular in these days.
THE NEW SUPERINTENDENT.
Superintendent Whiffler came over to see his suc- cessor. He did not like Wade's looks. The new man should have looked mean, or weak, or rascally, to suit the outgoer.
" How long do you expect to stay ?" asks Whiffler.
" Until the men and I, or the Company and I, cannot pull together."
" I'll give you a week to quarrel with both, and an- other to see the whole concern go to everlasting smash."
At ten the next morning Whiffler handed over the safe-key to Wade, and departed. Wade walked with him to the gate.
" I'm glad to be out of a sinking ship," said the ex- ooss. "The Works will go down, sure as shooting.
370 THEODORE WINTHROP
And I think myself well out of the clutches of these ' men. They're a bullying, swearing, drinking set of infernal ruffians. Foremen are just as bad as hands. I never felt safe of my life with them."
"A bad lot, are they ?" mused Wade, as he returned to the office. " I must give them a little sharp talk by way of inaugural."
He had the bell tapped, and the men called together in the main building. Much work was still going on in an inefficient, unsystematic way. Raw material in big heaps lay about, waiting for the fire to ripen it. There was a stack of long, rough, rusty pigs, clumsy as the shillelahs of the Auakim ; there was a pile of short, thick masses, lying higgedly-piggedly — stuff from the neighboring mines, which needed to be crossed with foreign stock before it could be of much use in civiliza- tion. Here, too, was raw material organized — members of machines only asking to be put together, and vivi- fied by steam, and they would go at their work with a will.
Wade grew indignant, as he looked about him and saw so much good stuff and good force wasted for want of a little will and skill to train the force and manage the stuff. " All they want here is a head," he thought. He shook his own. The brain within was well devel- oped with healthy exercise. . It filled its case, and did not rattle like a withered kernel, or sound soft like a rotten one. It was a vigorous, muscular brain. The owner felt that he could trust it for an effort, as he could his lungs for a shout, his legs for a leap, or hifl fist for a knock-down argument.
At the tap of the bell, the "bad lot "of men came together. They numbered more than two hundred, though the foundery was working short. They came up with an easy and somewhat swaggering bearing — a good many roughs, with here and there a ruffian. Sev- eral, as they approached, swung and tossed, for mere overplus of strength, the sledges with which they had been tapping at the bald, shiny pates of their anvils. Several wielded their long pokers like lances.
Grimy chaps, all with their faces streaked, like Black- feet in their war-paint. Their hairy chests showed
THEODORE WTNTHROP 37*
where some men parade shirt-bosoms. Some had rolled their flannels up to the shoulder, above the bulging muscles of the upper arm. They wore aprons tied about the neck, like the bibs of our childhood ; or about the waist, like the coquettish articles which young housewives affect. But there was no coquetry in these great flaps of leather or canvas, and they were be- smeared and rust-stained quite beyond any bib that ever suffered under bread-and-molasses or mud-pie treatment. . . .
The Hands faced the Head. It was a question whether the Two Hundred or the One should be mas- ter in Dunderbunk. Which was boss ? An old ques- tion. It has to be settled whenever a new man claims power ; and there is always a struggle until it is fought out by main force of brain or muscle.
Wade had made up his mind on the subject. He be- gan, short and sharp as a trip-hammer when it has a ban to shape :
"I'm the new Superintendent. Richard Wade is my name. I rang the bell because I wanted to see you, and have you see me. You know as well as I do that these Works are in a bad way. They can't stay so. They must come up and pay you regular wages, and the Company profits. Every man of you has got to be here on the spot when the bell strikes, and up to the mark in his work. You haven't been — and you know it. You've turned out rotten stuff — stuff that any honest shop would be ashamed of. Now there's to be a new leaf turned over here. You're to be paid on the nail ; but you've got to earn your money. I won't have any idlers or shirkers or rebels about me. I shall work hard myself ; and every man of you will, or he leaves the shop. Now, if anybody has any complaint to make, I'll hear him before you all."
The men were evidently impressed with Wade's In- augural. It meant something. But they were not to be put down so easily, after long misrule. There began to be a whisper —
" B'il .in, Bill Tarbox ! and talk to him ! "
Presently Bill shouldered forward, and faced the new *uler. Since Bill had taken to drink and degradation, he VOL. XXIV.— 24
372 THEODORE WINTHROP
had been the butt-end of riot and revolt at the foundery. He had had his own way with Whiffler. He did not like to abdicate, and give in to this new chap without testing him. . . .
" We allow," says Bill, in a tone half-way between La- blache's De profundis and a burglar's bull-dog's snarl, " that we've did our work as good as need to be did. We 'xpect we know our rights. We haven't been treated fair, and I'm damned if we're go'n' to stan' it."
"Stop ! " says Wade. "No swearing in this shop ! "
" Who the devil is go'n' to stop it ? " growled Tarbox.
" I am. Do you step back now, and let someone come forward who can talk like a gentleman."
" I'm damned if I stir till I've had my say out," says Bill, shaking himself up, and looking dangerous.
" Go back ! " Wade moved close to him, also looking dangerous.
"Don't tech me ! " Bill threatened, squaring off.
He was not quick enough. Wade knocked him down flat on a heap of moulding-sand. The hat in mourning for Poole found its place in a puddle.
Bill did not like the new Emperor's mode of compel- ling Kotou. Round One of the mill had not given him enough. He jumped up from his soft bed, and made a vicious rush at Wade. The same fist met him again, and heavier. Up went his heels ; down went his head. It struck the ragged edge of a fresh casting, and there he lay, stunned and bleeding, on his hard black pillow.
"Ring the bell to go to work ! " said Wade, in a tone that made the ringer jump. " Now, men, take hold and do your duty, and everything will go smooth ! "
The bell clanged in. The line looked at its prostrate champion, then at the new boss standing there, cool and brave, and not afraid of a regiment of sledge-ham- mers. They wanted an executive. They wanted to be well-governed — as all men do. The new man looked like a roar f talked fair, and hit hard. Why not all hands give <n with a good grace, and go to work like honest fellows? The line broke up. The hands went off to their duty. And there was never any more insubordi- nation in Dunderbunk. — Love and Skates.
WIRT, WILLIAM, an American lawyer, patriot, and orator, born at Bladensburg, Md., November 8, 1772; died at Washington, D. C., February 8, 1834. His father was from Switzerland, his mother a German. He was educated in neighbor- ing classical schools, studied law, was admitted to the bar of Virginia, in 1792, and practised in sev- eral places, finally in Richmond. He was a mem- ber of the House of Delegates, and United States Attorney for Virginia. From 1817 to 1829 he was United States Attorney-General. In 1829 he re- moved to Baltimore, and in 1832 was nominated for President of the United States by the Anti- Masons. His most famous speeches are those as counsel for the Government against Aaron Burr. He published Letters of a British Spy (1803) — in the character of a travelling Englishman ; The Rainbow, consisting of essays from the Richmond Enquirer; the two arguments in the Burr trial ; a number of Addresses, and The Life of Patrick Henry (1817). He was co-author with George Tucker and others of a series of essays published collectively in 1812 under the title, The Old Bach- elor.
" Of his literary merits," says R. W. Griswold, " I do not think highly. His abilities were more brilliant than solid. He had a rapid but not skil- ful command of language, a prolific but not a
374 WILLIAM WIRT
chaste or correct fancy, and his opinions were generally neither new nor striking."
Of his volume on Patrick Henry, Daniel Web- ster reports Thomas Jefferson as saying : " It is a poor book, written in bad taste, and gives so im- perfect an idea of Patrick Henry that it seems in- tended to show off the writer more than the sub- ject of the work."
BURR AND BLENNERHASSET.
The conduct of Aaron Burr has been considered in relation to the overt act on Blennerhasset's Island only ; whereas it ought to be considered in connection with the grand design ; the deep plot of seizing Orleans, separating the Union, and establishing an independent empire in the West, of which the prisoner was to be the chief. It ought to be recollected that these were his objects, and that the whole Western country, from Beaver to Orleans, was the theatre of his treasonable operations. It is by this first reasoning that you are to consider whether he be a principal or an accessory, and not by limiting your inquiries to the circumscribed and narrow spot in the island where the acts charged hap- pened to be performed. Having shown, I think, on the ground of law, that the prisoner cannot be considered as an accessory, let me press the inquiry whether, on the ground of reason, he be a principal or an accessory : and remember that his project was to seize New Orleans, separate the Union, and erect an independent empire in the West, of which he was to be the chief. This was the destination of the plot and the conclusion of the drama. Will any man say that Blennerhasset was the principal, and Burr but an accessory ? Who will believe that Burr, the author and projector of the plot, who raised the forces, who enlisted the men, and who pro- cured the funds for carrying it into execution, was made a cat's-paw of ? Will any man believe that Burr, who is a soldier, bold, ardent, restless, and aspiring, the great actor whose brain conceived and whose hand brought
WILLIAM WIRT 275
the plot into operation, that he should sink down into an accessory, and that Blennerhasset should be elevated into a principal ? He would startle at once at the thought. Aaron Burr, the contriver of the whole con- spiracy, to everybody concerned in it, was as the sun to the planets which surrounded him. Did he not bind them in their respective orbits, and give them their light, their heat, and their motion ? Yet he is to be con- sidered an accessory, and Blennerhasset is to be the principal !
Who Aaron Burr is we have seen in part, already. I will add that, beginning his operations in New York, he associates wi^h him men whose wealth is to supply the necessary funds. Possessed of the mainspring, his personal labor contrives all the machinery. Pervading the continent from New York to New Orleans, he draws into his plan, by every allurement which he can contrive, men of all ranks and descriptions. To youth- ful ardor he presents danger and glory ; to ambition, rank and titles and honors ; to avarice, the mines of Mexico. To each person whom he addresses he pre- sents the object adapted to his taste. His recruiting officers are appointed. Men are engaged throughout the continent. Civil life is, indeed, quiet upon its sur- face, but in its bosom this man has contrived to deposit the materials which, with the slightest touch of his match, produce an explosion to shake the continent. All this his restless ambition has contrived ; and in the autumn of 1806, he goes forth, for the last time, to apply this match. On this occasion he meets with Blennerhasset.
Who is Blennerhasset ? A native of Ireland ; a man of letters, who fled from the storms of his own country to find quiet in ours. His history shows that war is not the natural element of his mind. If it had been, he never would have exchanged Ireland for America. So far is an army from furnishing the society natural and proper to Mr. Blennerhasset's character, that on his ar- rival in America, he retired even from the population of the Atlantic States, and sought quiet and solitude in the bosom of our Western forests. But he carried with him taste and science and wealth ; and lo, the desert
376 WILLIAM WIRT
smiled ! Possessing himself of a beautiful island in the Ohio, he rears upon it a palace, and decorates it with every romantic embellishment of fancy. A shrubbery, that Shenstone might have envied, blooms around him. Music, that might have charmed Calypso and her nymphs, is his. An extensive library spreads its treas- ures before him. A philosophical apparatus offers to him all the secrets and mysteries of nature. Peace, tranquillity and innocence shed their mingled delights around him. And to crown the enchantment of the scene, a wife, who is said to be lovely even beyond her sex, and graced with every accomplishment that can render it irresistible, had blessed him with her love and made him the father of several children. The evidence would convince you that this is but a faint picture of the real life. In the midst of all this peace, this inno- cent simplicity and this tranquillity, this feast of the mind, this pure banquet of the heart, the destroyer comes ; he comes to change this paradise into a hell. A stranger presents himself. Introduced to their civilities by the high rank which he had lately held in his country, he soon finds his way to their hearts by the dignity and elegance of his demeanor, the light and beauty of his conversation, and the seductive and fascinating power of his address. The conquest is not difficult. Innocence is ever simple and cred- ulous. Conscious of no design itself, it suspects none in others. It wears no guard before its breast. Every door and portal and avenue of the heart is thrown open, and all who choose it enter. Such was the state of Eden when the serpent entered its bowers. The pris- oner, in a more engaging form, winding himself into the open and unpractised heart of the unfortunate Blen- nerhasset, found but little difficulty in changing the native character of that heart and the objects of its af- fection. By degrees he infuses into it the poison of his own ambition. He breathes into it the fire of his own courage ; a daring and desperate thirst for glory ; an ardor panting for great enterprises, for all the storm and bustle and hurricane of life. In a short time the whole man is changed, and every object of his former delight is relinquished. No more he enjoys the tran-
WILLIAM WIRT
377
quil scene ; it has become flat and insipid to his taste. His books are abandoned. His retort and crucible are thrown aside. His shrubbery blooms and breathes its fragrance upon the air in vain ; he likes it not. His ear no longer drinks the rich melody of music ; it longs for the trumpet's clangor and the cannon's roar. Even the prattle of his babes, once so sweet, no longer affects him ; and the angel smile of his wife, which hitherto touched his bosom with ecstasy so unspeakable, is now unseen and unfelt. Greater objects have taken pos- session of his soul. His imagination has been dazzled by visions of diadems, of stars and garters and titles of nobility. He has been taught to burn with restless emulation at Iffe names of great heroes and conquerors. His enchanted island is destined soon to relapse into a wilderness ; and in a few months we find the beautiful and tender partner of his bosom, whom he lately " per- mitted not the winds of " summer "to visit too rough- ly," we find her shivering at midnight, on the wintry banks of the Ohio, and mingling her tears with the tor- rents, that froze as they fell. Yet this unfortunate man, thus deluded from his interest and his happiness, thus seduced from the paths of innocence and peace, thus confounded in the toils, that were deliberately spread for him, and overwhelmed by the mastering spirit and genius of another — this man, thus ruined and undone, and made to play a subordinate part in this grand drama of guilt and treason, this man is to be called the principal offender, while he by whom he was thus plunged in misery is comparatively innocent, a mere accessory ! Is this reason ? Is it humanity ? Sir, neither the human heart nor the human under- standing will bear a perversion so monstrous and ab- surd ! so shocking to the soul ! so revolting to reason ! Let Aaron Burr, then, not shrink from the high destina- tion which he has courted ; and, having already ruined Blennerhasset in fortune, character, and happiness for- ever, let him not attempt to finish the tragedy by thrusting that ill-fated man between himself and pun- ishment.— Speech in Kennedy's Memoirs of Wirt.
WISEMAN, NICHOLAS, an English Roman Catholic prelate and religious writer, born at Se- ville, Spain, in 1802 ; died at London in 1865. His early education was received in England, but at sixteen he entered the English College at Rome ; was ordained to the priesthood in 1825, and was made professor of Oriental languages in the uni- versity, and was also rector of the English Col- lege at Rome until 1835, when he returned to England, where he became noted as a preacher and lecturer. In 1840 he was created by the Pope a bishop in partibus. In 1849 ne was made Vicar Apostolic of the London district; and in 1850 Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster and a cardinal. His principal works are Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion (1836); The Real Presence (1837); Lectures on the Offices and Ceremonies of Holy Wtek(l%$g) ; Lectures on the Catholic Hierarchy (1850); Fabiola, a Tale of the Catacombs (1855) ; Recollections of the Last Four Popes (1858); Sermons on our Lord Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother (1864). Besides these there are several volumes of miscellaneous essays and sermons, and a volume of Daily Meditations, pub- lished after his death.
A CHRISTIAN HOME IN ROME.
It is in the afternoon in September, in the year 302, that we invite our readers to accompany us through the
(378J
NICHOLAS WTSEMAN 379
streets of Rome. The sun has declined, and is about two hours from his setting ; the day is cloudless, and its heat has cooled, so that multitudes are issuing from their houses and making their way toward Caesar's gardens on one side, or Sallust's on the other, to enjoy their evening walk, and learn the news of the day. . . .
The house to which we invite our reader is on the east side of the Septa Julia, in the Campus Martius. From the outside it presents but a dead and black ap- pearance. The walls are plain, without architectural ornament ; not high, and scarcely broken by windows. In the middle of f*ie side of the quadrangle is a door — in atrio, that is, merely revealed by a tympanum or triangular cornice, resting on two half-columns. Using our priv- ilege, as "artists of fiction," of universal ubiquity, we will enter in with our friend, or " shadow," as he would anciently have been called. Passing through the porch, on the pavement of which we read with pleasure, in mosaic, the greeting, Salve! or "Welcome!" we find ourselves in the atrium, or first court of the house, sur- rounded by a portico and colonnade.
In the centre of the marble pavement a softly war- bling jet of pure water, brought by the Claudian aque- duct from the Tusculan hills, springs into the air — now higher, now lower — and falls into an elevated basin of red marble, over the rim of which it flows in downy waves ; and before reaching its lower and wider recip- ient scatters a gentle shower on the rare and brilliant flowers placed in elegant vases around. Under the portico we see furniture disposed, of a rich and some- times rare character : couches inlaid with ivory, and even silver ; tables of Oriental woods, bearing candela- bra, lamps, and other household implements of bronze and silver ; delicately chased busts, vases, tripods, and objects of mere art. On the walls are paintings — evi- dently of a former period — still, however, retaining all their brightness of color and richness of execution. These are separated by niches, with statues represent- ing, indeed, like the pictures, mythological or historical subjects ; but we cannot help observing that nothing meets the eye which could offend even the most delicate
380 NICHOLAS WISEMAN
mind. Here and there are empty niches or a covered painting, proving that this is not the result of accident. Outside the columns, the covering roof leaves a large square in the centre, called the impluviam ; there is drawn across it a curtain, or veil, of dark canvas, which keeps out the sun and rain. An artificial twilight there- fore alone enables us to see all that has been described; but it gives greater effect to what is beyond. Through an arch opposite to the one whereby we have entered, we catch a glimpse of an inner and still richer court, paved with variegated marbles, and adorned with bright gilding. The veil of the opening above, which, how- ever, here is covered with thick glass or talc (lapis spe- cularis], has been partly withdrawn, and admits a bright but softened ray from the evening sun on to the place where we see for the first time that we are in no en- chanted hall, but in an inhabited house. — Fabiola.
WOLCOT, JOHN, an English physician and satirist, known under his pseudonym " Peter Pin- dar," born near Kingsbridge, in Devonshire, in May, 1738; died in London, January 14, 1819. Having studied medicine, and " walked the hos- pitals" in London, he was invited by Sir William Trelawney, the newly appointed Governor of Ja- maica, to accompany him as his medical attendant. A church living having become vacant, it was bestowed upon the convivial and sport-loving doctor, who had obtained ordination from the Bishop of London. His patron died, and Wolcot threw up the clerical profession, returned to Eng- land, and set up as a physician at Truro, where he gained local celebrity as a wit. About 1780 he went to London, where he entered upon his literary career as a satirist, lasting fully forty years. Such was their popularity that in 1795 an edition of his poems in four volumes was published, the booksellers engaging to pay him ^250 a year for the copyright, as long as he lived. To their great loss he lived to draw his annuity for a quar- ter of a century. Some of Wolcot's poems are satires of the keenest kind, but most of them are clever squibs and lampoons, aimed at literati, scientists, academicians, courtiers, and especially at King George III., whose personal character.
istics — real or alleged — afforded an inexhaustible
(381)
382 JOHN WOLCOT
theme for caricature. In the end he received a pension from the Government; the price, it is said, of his ceasing to lampoon the King and his Ministers.
THE PILGRIMS AND THE PEAS.
A brace of sinners, for no good,
Were ordered to the Virgin Mary's shrine,
Who at Loretto dwelt — in wax, stone, wood,
And in a curled white wig looked wondrous fine.
Fifty long miles had these sad rogues to travel,
With something in their shoes much worse than gravei
In short, their toes so gentle to amuse,
The priest had ordered peas into their shoes —
A nostrum famous in old popish times
For purifying souls that stunk with crimes ;
A sort of apostolic salt,
That popish parsons for its powers exalt,
For keeping souls of sinners sweet,
Just as our kitchen-sait keeps meat.
The knaves set off on the same day- Peas in their shoes — to go and pray ;
But very different was their speed, I wot : One of the sinners galloped on, Light as a bullet from a gun ;
The other limped as if he had been shot. One saw the Virgin soon, Peceavi cried,
Had his soul whitewashed all so clever, When home again he quickly hied,
Made fit with saints above to live forever.
In coming back, however, let me say,
He met his brother-rogue, about half-way,
Hobbling with outstretched hams and bended knees,
Cursing the souls and bodies of the peas.
His eyes in tears, his cheeks and brow in sweat
Deep sympathizing with his groaning feet.
JOHN WOLCOT
383
M How now ! " the light-toed, whitewashed pilgrim broke,
" You lazy lubber ! " —
" Confound it ! " cried the other, " 'tis no joke ; My feet, once hard as any rock,
Are now as soft as blubber (Excuse me, Virgin Mary, that I swear). As for Loretto, I shall not get there. No ! to the Devil my sinful soul must go, For hang me if I ha'n't lost every toe !
But, brother-sinner, do explain How 'tis that you are not in pain ;
What power hath worked a wonder for your toes ; Whilst I, just likfe a snail am crawling, Now swearing, now on saints devoutly bawling,
While not a rascal comes to ease my woes ? How is't that you can like a greyhound go,
Merry as if naught had happened, burn ye ! " " Why," cried the other, grinning, " you must know
That just before I ventured on my journey, To walk a little more at ease, I took the liberty to boil my peas."
WOLFE, CHARLES, a British poet, born in Dublin, December 14, 1791 ; died at Cork, Febru- ary 21, 182?, He was graduated at Trinity Col- lege, Dublin, in 1814, was tutor there, and, taking orders in 1817, became curate at Bally clog, and subsequently at Donoughmore. He wrote an ode on the death of Sir John Moore, which has be- come celebrated. His Remains, with a Memoir, were published by Archbishop John Russell (1825).
" In the lottery of literature," says D. M. Moir, " Charles Wolfe has been one of the few who have drawn the prize of probable immortality from a casual gleam of inspiration thrown over a single poem consisting of only a few stanzas ; and thesev too, little more than a spirited version from the poem of another. But the Ode on the Burial of Sir John Moore is indeed full of fervor and freshness, and the writer's triumph is not to be grudged. The lines
If I had thought them couldst have died I might not weep for thee,
in elegance and tender earnestness are worthy of either Campbell or Byron. The lyric went directly to the heart of the nation, and it is likely
to remain forever enshrined there."
(384!
CHARLES WOLFE 385
THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried ;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero was buried.
We buried him darkly at dead of night.
The sods with our bayonets turning ; By the struggling moonbeams' misty ligh/,
And the lantern dimly burning.
No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Nor in sheet or in shroud we wound him ;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.
Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow ; But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed
And smoothed down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head
And we far away on the billow.
Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him — But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
But half our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring ; And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory ;
We carved not a line, we raised not a stone — But we left him alone in his glory.
WOOD, ELLEN (PRICE), an English novelist, known to the fiction-reading public as Mrs. Henry Wood, born in Worcestershire, January 17, 1814; died February 10, 1887. She began to write at an early age, but her first novel, Danesbury House, was not published until 1860. It gained the prize of- fered by the Scottish Temperance League for the best story illustrating the good effects of temper- ance. In 1867 Mrs. Wood became the editor of the Argosy, a monthly magazine published in Lon- don. Among her numerous novels are East Lynne (1861); The Channings (1862); Mrs. Halliburton 's Troubles (1862); The Shadow of Ashlydyat (1863); Venters Pride (1863) ; Oswald Cray (1864) ; Trevlyn Hold, or Squire Trevlyn s Heir (1864); Mildred Ar- kell(\t>6$',Elster's Folly (1866); St. Martin's Eve (1866); A Life Secret (1867); The Red Court Farm (1868) ; Anne Hereford (1868) ; Roland Yorke (1869) ; Bessy Rane (1870) ; George Canterbury's Will (1870) ; Dene Hollow (1871); Within the Maze (1872); The Master of Grey lands (1873) ; Johnny Ludlow (1874- 80); Told in the Twilight (1875); Bessy Wells (1875) ; Our Children (1876) ; Edina (1876) ; Pomeroy Abbey (1878); Court Netherleigh (1881); Helen Whitney s Wedding (\$&$).
" Mrs. Henry Wood," says the Saturday Review* " has certain qualities which should have made her one of our best novel-writers ; popular is an-
ELLEN WOOD 387
other word. No one lays out the plan of a story better than she does, and even Mr. Wilkie Col- lins himself, to whom ingenuity is the alpha and omega of his craft, is not greater than she is in the cleverness with which she devises her puzzles and fits the parts together. But Mrs. Wood loses herself in certain besetting sins, which are apparently beyond her power to overcome. She is puerile, commonplace, and ineradicably vulgar. . . . We do not find in her books a trace of that professional pride and thoroughness which desires to make a thing good all through, without reference to publishers or profit"
A STARTLING DISCOVERY.
Charlotte Guise opened the door and stood to listen. Not a sound save the ticking of the clock broke the stillness. She was quite alone. Flora was fast asleep in her room in the front corridor, next to Mrs. Castle- maine's chamber, for she had been in to see, and she had taken the precaution of turning the key on the child for safety. Yet another minute she stood listen- ing, candle in hand. Then, swiftly crossing the pas- sage, she stole into the study through the double-doors.
The same orderly, unlittered room that she had seen before. No papers lay about, no deeds were left out that could be of use to her. Three books were stacked upon the side-table ; a newspaper lay on a chair ; and that was positively all. The fire had long ago gone out ; on the mantelpiece was a box of matches.
Putting down the candle, Charlotte Guise took out her key, and tried the bureau. It opened at once. She swung back the heavy lid and waited a moment to recover herself ; her lips were white, her breath came in gasps. Oh, apart from the baseness, the dishonor of the act, which was very present to her mind, what if she were to be caught at it ? Papers there were en masse. The drawers and pigeon-holes seemed to be VOL. XXIV.— 35-
388 ELLEN WOOD
full of them. So far as she could judge from a short examination — and she did not dare to give a long one — these papers had reference to business transactions, to sales of goods and commercial matters — which she rather wondered at, but did not understand. But of deeds she could see none.
What did Charlotte Guise expect to find ? What did she promise herself by this secret search ? In truth, she could not have told. She wanted to get some rec- ord of her husband's fate, some proof that should com- promise the master of Greylands. She would also have been glad to find some will, or deed of gift, that should show to her how Greylands Rest had been really left by old Anthony Castlemaine ; whether to his son Basil or to James. If to Basil, why, there would be a proof — as she, poor thing, deemed it — of the manner in which James Castlemaine had dealt with his nephew, and its urging motive.
No ; there was nothing. Opening this bundle of pa- pers, rapidly glancing into that, turning over the other, she could find absolutely nothing ; and in the revulsion of feeling the disappointment caused, she said to her- self how worse than foolish she had been to expect to find anything ; how utterly devoid of reason she must be, to suppose Mr. Castlemaine would preserve memen- toes of an affair so dangerous. And where he kept his law-papers or parchments relating to his estate she could not tell, but certainly they were not in the bureau.
Not daring to stay longer, for near upon half an hour must have elapsed, she replaced the things as she had found them, so far as she could remember. All was done save one drawer — a small drawer at the foot, next the slab. It had but a few receipted bills in it ; there was one from a saddler, one from a coach-maker, and such-like. The drawer was very shallow, and, in closing it, the bills were forced out again. Charlotte Guise, in her trepidation and hurry, pulled the drawer forward too forcibly, and pulled it out of its frame.
Had it chanced by accident — this little contretemps ? Ah, no. When do these strange trifles, pregnant with events of moment, occur by chance ? At the top of the drawer appeared a narrow, close compartment, opening
ELLEN WOOD 389
with a slide. Charlotte drew the slide back, and saw within it a folded letter and some small articles wrapped in paper.
The letter, which she opened and read, proved to be the one written by Basil Castlemaine on his death-bed — the same letter that had been brought over by young Anthony, and given to his uncle. There was nothing much to note in it — save that Basil assumed throughout it that the estate was his, and would be his son's after him. Folding it again, she opened the bit of paper, and there shone out a diamond ring that flashed in the can- dle's rays.
Charlotte Guise took it up and let it fall again — let it fall in a kind of sick horror, and staggered to a chair and sat down, half-fainting. For it was her husband's ring; the ring that Anthony had worn always on his left-hand little finger ; the ring that he had on when he quitted Gap. It was the same ring that John Bent and his wife had often noticed and admired ; the ring that was undoubtedly on his hand, when he followed Mr. Castlemaine that ill-fated night into the Friar's Keep. His poor wife recognized it instantly ; she knew it by its peculiar setting. . . .
When somewhat recovered she kissed the ring, and put it back into the small compartment with the letter. Pushing in the slide, she shut the drawer and closed and locked the bureau ; thus leaving all things as she had found them. Not very much result had been gained it is true, but enough to spur her onward on her future search. With her mind in a chaos of tumult, with her brain in a whirl of pain, with every vein throbbing and fevered, she left the candle on the ground where she had lodged it, and went to the window, gasping for air.
The night was bright with stars ; opposite to her, and seemingly at no distance at all, rose that dark build- ing, the Friar's Keep. As she stood with her eyes strained upon it, though in reality not seeing it but deep in inward thought, there suddenly shone a faint light at one of the casements. Her attention was awakened now ; her heart began to throb.
The faint light grew brighter ; and she distinctly
390
ELLEN WOOD
saw a form in a monk's habit, the cowl drawn over his head, slowly pass the window, the light seeming to come from a lamp in his outstretched hand. All the superstitious tales she had heard of the place rushed into her mind ; this must be the apparition of the Gray Friar. Charlotte Guise had an awful dread of reve- nants, and she turned sick and faint.
With a cry, only half-suppressed, bursting from her parted lips, she caught up the candle, afraid to stay, and flew through the door into the narrow passage. The outer door was opening to her hand, when the voice of Harry Castlemaine was heard in the corridor, almost close to the door. — The Master of Greylands.
WOODWORTH, SAMUEL, an American poet and journalist, born at Scituate, Mass., January J3» 17%5 5 died in New York, December 9, 1842. He served an apprenticeship in a newspaper office in Boston ; worked for a year as a journeyman ; then went to New Haven, where he started a weekly journal, The Belles Lettres Repository, of which he was editor, publisher, printer, and some- times carrier; but the journal lived only eight weeks. In 1809 he went to New York, where he engaged in several literary enterprises. He con- ducted a weekly journal, entitled The War, edited a Swedenborgian monthly magazine, and wrote The Champions of Freedom, a novel, founded on the War of 1812. He put forth numerous patriotic songs, and composed several melodramas, among which is The Forest Rose, which was popular in its day. In 1823, in conjunction with George P. Morris, he established the New York Mirror, with which, however, his connection was brief. Tow- ard the close of his life he was disabled by parak ysis, and received a substantial complimentary benefit at the National Theatre. He was intimate with the literary men of his day, and Halleck's poem To a Poet's Daughter was written in the album of the daughter of Woodworth. His per- manent reputation as a poet rests wholly upon The Old Oaken Bucket.
•92 SAMUEL WOODWORTH
THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET.
How dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood,
When fond recollection presents them to view ! The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild-wood,
And every loved spot that my infancy knew ; The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that stood by it,
The bridge, and the rock where the cataract fell ; The cot of my father, the dairy-house nigh it,
And e'en the rude bucket which hung in the well : The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket, which hung in the well !
That moss-covered vessel I hail as a treasure ;
For often at noon, when returned from the field, I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure.
The purest and sweetest that Nature can yield. How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing,
And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell, Then soon, with the emblem of truth overflowing,
And dripping with coolness, it rose from the well : The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket, arose from the well.
How sweet from the green, mossy brim to receive it,
As, poised on the curb, it inclined to my lips ! Not a full, blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it,
Though filled with the nectar that Jupiter sips. And now, far removed from the loved situation,
The tear of regret will intrusively swell, As fancy returns to my father's plantation,
And sighs for the bucket which hangs in the well : The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket, which hangs in the welL
WOOLSEY, SARAH CHAUNCEY (Susan Cool- idge, pseudonym), an American writer for chil- dren, born at Cleveland, Ohio, about 1845. She is the niece of Theodore D. Woolsey. Her books include The New Years Bargain ( 1 87 1) ; What Katy Did (1872) ; For Summer Afternoons (1876) ; Verses (1881); A Guernsey Lily (1881); A Round Dozen (1883); A Little Country £*r/(i885); What Katy Did Next (1886) ; Clover (1888) ; Just Sixteen (1890) ; Poems (1890); In the High Valley (1891); Rhymes and Ballads for Boys and Girls (i 892) ; The Barberry Bush (1893), and Not Quit" Eighteen (1894).
"... That ever-delightful author, Susan Coolidge," says the Critic, reviewing In the High Valley. "Miss Woolsey knows as well what is good for a girl's mind as what will delight her heart — knows how to avoid the weakly senti- mental, the emotional, the abstruse, the lachry- mose, and the artificial kinds of literature that make of some children's books mere miniature novels. And she knows just what girls do and say when they are left to themselves."
LOHENGRIN.
To have touched heaven and failed to enter in,
Ah, Elsa, prone upon the lonely shore, Watching the swan-wings beat upon the blue. Watching the glimmer of the silver mail Like flash of foam, till all are lost to view ,- (393)
394 SARAH CHAUXCEY WOOLSEY
What may thy sorrow or thy watch avail ? He cometh nevermore.
All gone the new hope of thy yesterday : The tender gaze and strong like dewy fire,
The gracious form with airs of heaven bedight, The love that warmed thy being like a sun ;
Thou hadst thy choice of noonday or of night, Now the swart shadows gather one by one To give thee thy desire !
To every life one heavenly chance befalls ; To every soul a moment big with fate,
When, grown impatient with need and fear, It cries for help, and lo ! from close at hand
The voice celestial answers, " I am here ! " Oh, blessed souls, made wise to understand, Made bravely glad to wait.
But thou, pale watcher on the lonely shore Where the surf thunders and the foam-bells fly,
Is there no place for penitence and pain ? No saving grace in thy all-piteous rue ?
Will the bright vision never come again ? Alas, the swan-wings vanish in the blue. There cometh no reply.
WOOLSEY, THEODORE DWIGHT, an eminent American educator and political and legal writer, born in New York City, October 31, 1801 ; died at New Haven, Conn., July i, 1889. He was grad- uated at Yale in 1820. After a course of theology at Princeton, he was tutor at Yale two years, a student in Germany (1827-30), and, on his return, was Professor of Greek at Yale until 1846, when he was chosen president, retaining the office twenty-five years. He received the degree of D.D. from Harvard in 1847, and of LL.D. from the same university in 1886. Among his pub- lications are editions of the Alcestis of Euripides, the Antigone and the Electra of Sophocles, the Prometheus of ^Eschylus, and the Gorgias of Plato ; also, Introduction to the Study of International Law (1860) — regarded as an authority ; Essay on Divorce and Divorce Legislation (1869) ; Serving Our Genera- tion and God's Guidance in Youth (1871); The Re- ligion of the Present and the Future (1871); Manual of Political Ethics ; Civil Liberty and Self-Govern- ment; Political Science ; Inauguration Discourses on College Education, and Historical Discourses at the i^oth Anniversary of the Forming of Yale College.
THE MONROE DOCTRINE.
The history of this doctrine is, In brief, the following At Verona [1822] the subject was agitated of attempt-
396 THEODORE DWIGHT WOOLSEY
ing, in conformity with the known wishes of absolutists in Spain, to bring back the Spanish colonies into sub- jection to the mother-country. This fact having been communicated to our government by that of Great Britain in 1823, and the importance of some public pro- test on our part being insisted upon, President Monroe, in his annual message, used the following language : " That we should consider any attempt (on the part of the allied powers) to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safe- ty," and again, " that we could not view any interposi- tion for the purpose of oppressing (governments on this side of the Atlantic whose independence we had ac- knowledged), or controlling in any manner their des- tiny by any European power, in any other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." Soon afterward a resolution was moved in Congress, embodying the same principle, but was never called up. But the mere declaration of the President, meeting with the full sympathy of England, put an end to the designs to which the message refers. In another place in the same message, while alluding to the question of boundary on the Pacific between the United States and Russia, the President speaks thus : " The occasion has been judged proper for asserting as a principle, in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American conti- nents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects of future colonization by any European power." Was it intended by this to preclude the South American republics, without their will, from receiving such colonies within their borders — of sur- rendering their territory for that purpose? Such a thing, probably, was not thought of. Mr. Adams, when President in 1825, thus refers to Mr. Monroe's principle, while speaking in a special message of a congress at Panama : " An agreement between all the parties rep- resented at the meeting, that each will guard by its own means against the establishment of any future European colony, within its borders, may be found desirable. This was more than two years since announced by my
THEODORE D WIGHT WOOLSEY 397
predecessor to the world, as a principle resulting from the emancipation of both the American continents." Mr. Adams, when Secretary of State under Mr. Monroe, originated the "principle," and must have known what he meant. But the principle, even in this tame form, was repudiated by the House of Representatives. . . .
On the whole then, (i.) the doctrine is not a national one. The House of Representatives, indeed, had no right to settle questions of policy or of international law. But the Cabinet has as little. The opinion of one part of the Government neutralized that of another. (2.) The principle first mentioned of resisting attempts to overthrow the liberties of the Spanish republics, was one of most righteous self-defence, and of vital impor- tance. . . . The other principle of prohibiting Euro- pean colonization was vague. . . .
The Monroe doctrine came up again in another shape in 1848. President Polk, having announced that the Government of Yucatan had offered the dominion over that country to Great Britain, Spain, and the United States, urges on Congress such measures as may prevent it from becoming a colony and a part of the dominions of any European power. . . . Mr. Calhoun, in his speech on this subject, shows that the case is very different from that contemplated by Mr- Monroe. . .
To lay down the principle that the acquisition of ter- ritory on this continent, by any European power, can- not be allowed by the United States, would go far be- yond any measures dictated by the system of the balance of power, for the rule of self-preservation is not appli- cable in our case : we fear no neighbors. To lay down the principle that no political systems unlike our own, no change from republican forms to those of monarchy, can be endured in the Americas, would be a step in ad- vance of the congresses at Laybach and Verona, for they apprehended destruction to their political fabrics, and we do not. But to resist attempts of European powers to alter the constitutions of states on this side of the water is a wise and just opposition to interfer- ence.— Introduction to the Study of International Law.
WOOLSON, CONSTANCE FENIMORE, an Amer- ican novelist, born at Claremont, N. H., in 1848; died in Venice, Italy, January 23, 1894. She was the daughter of Charles Jarvis Woolson, and a great-niece of James Fenimore Cooper. She was educated at Cleveland and New York. From 1873 to 1878 she resided in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, and in 1879 sne went to Europe, where she afterward resided. Her winters were spent in Italy. Her literary field includes sketches, poems, stories, and novels, which appeared in Harper s and other magazines. Her books are Castle Nowhere: Lake Country Sketches (1875); Two Women (1877); Rodman the Keeper : Southern Sketches (1880); Anne(i%%2); For the Major (1883); East Angels (1886) ; Jupiter Lights (1889) 5 The Old Stone House (1893) ; Horace Chase (1894).
" She had such a high conception of her art," says Charles Dudley Warner, " that she thought no pains too great in whatever she undertook. Her conscience was never set at ease by popularity, and to the last her standard was not popular favor, but her own high conception of her office as a writer. She valued her art. She was among the first in America to bring the short story to its present ex- cellence ; that is, the short story as a social study in distinction from the sketch of character and the re- lation of incident. . . ., She was an observer
(39*)
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON 399
a sympathetic observer and a refined observer, entering sufficiently into the analytic mode of the time, but she had courage to deal with the pas- sions and life as it is. There lived among our writers no one in fuller sympathy with American life and character, none prouder of her country and all that is best in it, and no one who brought to the task of delineating them a clearer moral vision and a more refined personality."
IN THE MONNLUNGS.
They did not speak often. Winthrop was attending to the boat's course, Margaret had turned and was sitting so that she could scan the water and direct him a little. Her nervousness had disappeared ; either she had been able to repress it, or it had faded in the pres- ence of the responsibility she had assumed in under- taking to act as guide through that strange water-land of the Monnlungs, whose winding channels she had heretofore seen only in the light of day. Even in the light of day they were mysterious ; the enormous trees, thickly foliaged at the top, kept the sun from penetrat- ing to the water, the masses of vines shut out still fur- ther the light, and shut in the perfumes of the myriad flowers.
Channels opened out on all sides. Only one was the right one. Should she be able to follow it ? the land- marks she knew — certain banks of shrubs, a tree trunk of peculiar shape, a sharp bend, a small bay full of " knees " — should she know them again by night ? There came to her suddenly the memory of a little arena — an arena where the flowering vines hung straight down from the tree-tops to the water all round, like tapestry, and where the perfumes were densely thick.
" Are you cold ? " said Winthrop. " You can't be — this warm night." The slightness of the canoe had betrayed what he thought was a shiver. " No, I'm not cold."
" The best thing we can do is to make the boat as
400 CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON
bright AS possible," he went on. " But not in front that wt>uld only be blinding ; the light must be behind us." He took the torch from the bow, lighted three others, and stuck them all into the canoe's lining of thin strips of wood at the stern.
Primus had made his torches long ; it would be an hour before they could burn down sufficiently to endan- ger the boat.
Thus, casting a brilliant orange-hued glow around them, lighting up the dark water vistas to the right and left as they passed, they penetrated into the dim, sweet swamp.
They had been in the Monnlungs half an hour. Mar- garet acted as pilot ; half kneeling, half sitting at the bow, one hand on the canoe's edge, her face turned for- ward, she gave her directions slowly, all her powers concentrated upon recalling correctly and keeping un- mixed from present impressions her memory of the channel.
The present impressions were indeed so strange, that a strong exertion of will was necessary to prevent the mind from becoming fascinated by them, from forget- ting in this series of magic pictures the different aspect of these same vistas by day. Even by day the vistas were alluring. By night, lighted up by the flare of the approaching torches, at first vaguely, then brilliantly, then vanishing into darkness again behind, they became unearthly, exceeding in contrasts of color — reds, yellows and green, all of them edged sharply with the profound- est gloom — the most striking effects of the painters who have devoted their lives to reproducing light and shade. Lanse had explored a part of the Monnlungs. He had not explored it all, no human eye had as yet beheld some of its mazes ; but the part he had explored he knew well — he had even made a map of it. Margaret had seen this map ; she felt sure, too, that she should know the channels he called the Lanes. Her idea, upon entering, had been to follow the main stream to the first of these lanes, there turn off and explore the lane to its end ; then, returning to the main channel, to go on to the second lane ; and so on through Lanse's part of the swamp.
CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON 4oi
They had now explored two of the lanes, and were entering a third. She had taken off her hat, and thrown it down upon the cloak beside her. " It's so oppress- ively warm — in here," she said.
It was not oppressively warm — not warmer than a Juife night at the North. But the air was perfectly still, and so sweet that it was enervating.
The forest grew denser along this third lane as they advanced. The trees stood nearer together, and silver moss now began to hang down in long, filmy veils, thicker and thicker, from all the branches. Mixed with the moss, vines showed themselves ; in strange convolu- tions, they went up out of sight ; in girth they were as large as small trees ; they appeared to have not a leaf, but to be dry, naked, chocolate-brown growths, twisting themselves about hither and thither for their own enter- tainment.
This was the appearance below. But above, there was another story to tell ; for here were interminable flat beds of broad green leaves, spread out over the out- side of the roof of foliage — leaves that belonged to these same naked, coiling growths below ; the vines had found themselves obliged to climb to the very top in order to get a ray of sunshine for their greenery.
For there was no sky for anybody in the Monnlungs ; the deep, solid roof of interlocked branches stretched miles long, miles wide, like a close, tight cover, over the entire place. The general light of day came filtering through, dyed with much green, quenched into black- ness at the ends of the vistas ; but actual sunbeams never came, never gleamed, year in year out, across the clear darkness of the broad water floor. The water on this floor was always pellucid ; whether it was the deep current of the main channel, or the shallower tide that stood motionless over all the rest of the expanse, no- where was there the least appearance of mud ; the lake and the streams, red-brown in hue, were as clear as so much fine wine ; the tree trunks rose cleanly from this transparent tide ; their huge roots could be seen coiling on the bottom much as the great vines coiled in the air above. These gray-white, bald cypresses had a monu- mental aspect, like the columns of a Gothic cathedral, as
402 CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON
they rose, erect and branchless, disappearing above in the mist of the moss. The moss presently began to take on an additional witchery by becoming decked with flowers ; up to a certain height these flowers had their roots in the earth ; but above these were other blossoms — air-plants, some vividly tinted, flaring, and gaping, others so small and so flat on the moss that they were like the embroidered flowers on lace, only they were done in colors.
" I detest this moss," said Margaret, as it grew thicker and thicker, so that there was nothing to be seen but the silver webs ; " I feel strangled in it — suffocated."
"Oh, but it's beautiful," said Winthrop. "Don't you see the colors it takes on ? Gray, then silver, then almost pink as we pass ; then gray and ghostly again."
For all answer she called her husband's name. She had called it in this way at intervals ever since they en- tered the swamp.
" The light we carry penetrates much farther than your voice," Winthrop remarked.
" I want him to know who it is."
"Oh, he'll know — such a devoted wife! who else could it be ? " . . .
" If anything should happen to Lanse that I might have prevented by keeping on now, how should I ever "
" Oh, keep on, keep on ; bring him safely home and take every care of him — he has done so much to deserve these efforts on your part ! "
They went on.
And now the stream was bringing them toward the place Margaret had thought of upon entering — a bower in the heart of the Monnlungs, or rather a long, defile- like chink between two high cliffs, the cliffs being a dense mass of flowering shrubs.
Winthrop made no comment as they entered this blossoming pass ; Margaret did not speak. The air was loaded with sweetness ; she put her hands on the edge of the canoe to steady herself. Then she looked up, as if in search of fresher air, or to see how high the flowers ascended. But there was no fresher air, and the flowers went up out of sight. The defile grew narrower, the
CONS'! ANC& FENIMORE WOOLSON 493
atmosphere became so heavy that they could taste the perfume in their mouths. After another five minutes Margaret drew a long breath — she had apparently been trying to breathe as little as possible. " I don't think
I can — I am afraid " she swayed, then sank softly
down* she had fainted.
He caught her in his arms, and laid her on the canoe's bottom, her head on the cloak. He looked at the water, but the thought of the dark tide's touching that fair face was repugnant to him. He bent down and spoke to her, and smoothed her hair. But that was advanc- ing nothing, and he began to chafe her hands. Then suddenly he rose and taking the paddle, sent the canoe flying along between the high bushes. The air was visibly thick in the red light of the torches, a miasma of scent. A branch of small blossoms with the perfume of heliotrope softly brushed against his cheek ; he struck it aside with unnecessary violence. Exerting all his strength, he at last got the canoe free from the beauti- ful baleful place. When Margaret opened her eyes they were outside ; she was lying peacefully on the cloak, and he was still paddling vehemently.
u I am ashamed," she said, as she raised herself. " I suppose I fainted ? Perfumes have a great effect upon me always. I know that place well, I thought of it be- fore we entered the swamp ; I thought it would make me dizzy, but I had no idea that it would make me faint away. It has never done so before ; the scents must be stronger at night."
She still seemed weak ; she put her hand to her head. Then a thought came to her : she sat up and looked about, scanning the trees anxiously. "I hope you haven't gone wrong ? How far are we from the narrow place — the place where I fainted ? "
" I don't know how far. But we haven't been out of it more than five or six minutes, and this is certainly the channel."
" Nothing is ' certainly * in the Monnlungs ! and five minutes is quite enough time to get lost in — I don't recognize anything here — we ought to be in sight of a tree that has a profile, like a face."
" Perhaps you wouldn't know it at night.** VOL. XXIV.— 26
404 CONSTANCE FENIMORE WO OLSON
" It's unmistakable. No, I am sure we are wrong. Please go back — go back at once to the narrow place."
"Where is 'back'?" murmured Winthrop to himself, after he had surveyed the water behind him.
And the question was a necessary one. What he had thought was " certainly the channel " seemed to exist only in front; there was no channel behind, there were only broad tree-filled water spaces, vague and dark. They could see nothing of the thicker foliage of the " narrow place."
Margaret clasped her hands. ;< We're lost ! "
" No, we're not lost ; at least we were not seven minutes ago. It won't take long to go over all the water that is seven minutes from here." He took out one of the torches and inserted it among the roots of a cypress, so that it could hold itself upright. " That's our guide ; we can always come back to that and start again."
Margaret no longer tried to direct ; she sat with her face toward him, leaving the guidance to him. He started back in what he thought was the course they had just traversed. But they did not come to the de- file of flowers ; and suddenly they lost sight of their beacon.
" We shall see it again in a moment," he said. But they did not see it. They floated in and out among the great cypresses, he plunged his paddle down over the side, and struck bottom ; they were out of the channel and in the shallows — the great Monnlungs Lake.— East Angels.
WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM, an eminent Eng- lish poet, born at Cockermouth, in the hill region of Cumberland, April 7, 1770; died at Rydal Mount, Westmoreland, April 23, 1850. His father, who was law agent for Sir James Lowther, afterward Earl of Lonsdale, died when his son was thirteen, his mother having died sev- eral years before. In 1787 he was entered at St- John's College, Cambridge, where he took his Bachelor's degree in 1791. Soon afterward he went to France, where he remained about a year, returning to England at the opening of the " Reign of Terror." His friends urged him to enter the Church ; but he wished to devote him- self to poetry. Raisley Calvert, a young friend of his, dying in 1795, left him a legacy of £960, which enabled him to carry out his wish. Of his modest way of life he says : " Upon the interest of the £900 — £400 being laid out in an annuity, with ;£2OO deducted from the principal, and .£100, a legacy to my sister, and ^100 m< ;e which the Lyrical Ballads brought me, my sister and I con- trived to live seven years, nearly eight." To this sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, Wordsworth owed more than to any other person — his wife not ex- cepted. In time, a debt of some ^"3,000 which had been due to his father was paid, and the poet was placed beyond pecuniary straits. In 1798 Words-
406 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
worth and his sister, accompanied by Coleridge, went to Germany. Returning after a few months, Wordsworth took up his residence at Grassmere, in the Lake region, and finally, in 1813, at Rydal Mount, his home for the remaining thirty-seven years of his life, which was singularly devoid of external incident. The income derived from his writings was never large ; but in 1813 he received, through the influence of his fast friend, the Earl of Lonsdale, the appointment of Distributor of Stamps for Westmoreland, which brought him £500 a year. This position he resigned in 1842, in favor of his son, he himself receiving a pension of .£300. Southey, dying in 1843, was succeeded as Poet Laureate by Wordsworth, who was suc- ceeded by Tennyson. The Life of Wordsworth has been written by his nephew, the Rev. Chris- topher Wordsworth (1851), and by Frederick Myers in " English Men of Letters " (1882). Many interesting personal details of him are contained in Mr. Crabb Robinson's Diary (1869).
Wordsworth's first volume of Poems appeared in 1793 ; in 1798 was published the Lyrical Ballads t one of which was Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, all the others being by Wordsworth. From time to time he made excursions in Wales, Scotland, Switzerland, and Italy, of all of which he put forth Memorials in verse. His other poetical works will be more specially mentioned hereinafter. His Poetical Works have been arranged by himself in accordance with their subject matter. His prose writings, which are not numerous, consist mainly of introductions to his several poems, a political
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 407
tract on the ' Convention of Cintra," and an ad- mirable paper signed " Mathetes " in Coleridge's Friend.
The following poem is the best known of his Lyrical Ballads :
WE ARE SEVEN.
A simple child, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death ?
I met a little cottage girl :
She was eight years old, she said ;
Her hair was thick with many a curl That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad ; Her eyes were fair, and very fair ;—
Her beauty made me glad.
" Sisters and brothers, little maid.
How many may you be ? " " How many ? Seven in all," she said,
And wondering looked at me.
•* And where are they ? I pray you tell."
She answered, " Seven are we ; And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea ;
" Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother ; And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother."
** You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea, Yet ye are seven ? I pray you tell,
Sweet maid, how this may be."
lo8 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Then did the little maid reply,
" Seven boys and girls are we ; Two of us in the church-yard lie
Beneath the church-yard tree."
" You run about, my little maid,
Your limbs they are alive ; If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five."
" Their graves are green, they may be seen/'
The little maid replied : " Twelve steps or more from my mother's door,
And they are side by side.
" My stockings there I often knit ;
My kerchief there I hem ; And there upon the ground I sit—
I sit and sing to them.
"And often after sunset, sir,
When it is light and fair I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.
" The first that died was Sister Jane ;
In bed she moaning lay, Till God released her of her pain ;
And then she went away.
" So in the church-yard she was laid ;
And, when the grass was dry. Together round her grave we played,
My Brother John and I.
" And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide, My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side."
" How many are you, then," said I,
" If they two are in heaven ? " Quick was the little maid's reply :
f( O Master ! we are seven."
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 409
they are dead ; those two are dead! Their spirits are in heaven ! " 'Twas throwing words away ; for still The little maid would have her will,
And said, " Nay, we are seven ! " (i
In the summer of 1798 Wordsworth, accompa- nied by his sister, made a tour along the banks of the Wye, and there, a few miles above Tintern Abbey, he composed one of his best poems, the concluding portion of which was directly ad- dressed to his sister.
TO HIS SISTER, DOROTHY.
. . . . I have learned To look on Nature not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes The sad, still music of humanity, Not harsh or grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt, A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is in the lights of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man. A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, And rolls through all things.
Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods And mountains ; and of all that we behold From this green earth ; of all the mighty world Of eye and ear — both of what they half create, And what perceive ; well pleased to recognize In Nature and the language of the Sense The anchor of my purest thoughts, the muse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.
Nor Derohance.
4io
WILLTAM WORDSWORTH
If I were not thus taught, should I the more Suffer ray genial spirits to decay. For thou wert with me here upon the banks Of thy dear river : thou my dearest Friend — My dear, dear Friend ! and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes.
Oh ! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear Sister ! And this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her. 'Tis her privilege Through all the years of this one life, to lead From joy to joy ; for she can so inform The mind that is within us — so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts — that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith that all which we behold Is full of blessings.
Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk ; And let the misty mountain winds be free To blow against thee. And in after years, When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure — when thy mind Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be as a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies — oh, then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these my exhortations !
Nor, perchance
If I should be where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence — wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream
" She was a phantom of delight When first she gleamed upon my sight." Painting by R. van Blaas.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 4tl
We stood together ; and that I, so long A worshipper of Nature, hither came Unwearied in that service : rather say, With warmer love, oh, with far deeper zeal Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget TJiat after many years of wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green, pastoral landscape, were to me More dear both for themselves and for thy sake.
— From Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.
The possibility of future sorrow thus hinted at came indeed to be a reality. Thirty years after- ward we catch occasional glimpses of Dorothy Wordsworth in the home of her brother, broken in health and weakened in mind — hardly a shad- ow of her glad youth. But those sad happenings were in the far future. In 1802 Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson, whom he had known from boyhood; who died in 1859, after forty- eight years of wedded life, and nine years of widowhood, and of whom he wrote, two years after their marriage :
UPON HIS WIFE.
She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament.
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair,
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair,
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn ;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay,
I saw her, upon nearer view, A Spirit, yet a Woman, top ;
4I2 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty ;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet ;
A creature not too bright and good
For human nature's daily food,
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine ;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death ;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill ;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command ;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.
The Prelude, a poem which had been slowly growing up for half a dozen years, was completed in 1805. It was addressed to Coleridge, to whom portions were sent from time to time, and to whom the whole was recited when finished — this recital giving occasion for one of the finest of Coleridge's poems. The Prelude, which was not published until 1850, concludes thus:
CLOSE OF THE " PRELUDE.*'
Oh ! yet a few short years of useful life,
And all will be complete — thy race be run,
Thy monument of glory will be raised ;
Then, though (too weak to tread the ways of truth)
This age fall back to old idolatry,
Though men return to servitude as fast
As the tide ebbs, to ignominy and shame
By nations sink together, we shall still
Find solaqe— knowing wiiat we have learnt to know,
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 413
Rich in true happiness if allowed to be Faithful alike in forwarding a day Of firmer trust, joint laborers in the work (Should Providence such grace to us vouchsafe) Of their deliverance, surely yet to come. Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak A lasting inspiration, sanctified By reason, blest by faith.
What we have loved
Others will love, and we will teach them how ; Instruct them how the mind of man becomes A thousand times more beautiful than the earth On which he dwells, above this frame of things (Which, 'mid all revolution in the hopes And fears of men, doth still remain unchanged) In beauty exalted, as it is itself Of quality and fabric more divine.
The great work to which Wordsworth had re- solved to dedicate himself was, as he says, " to compose a philosophical poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society ; and to be entitled The Recluse, as having for its principal subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retire- ment." The original design was only partially carried out. The Recluse was to consist of three Parts. Of these, the first Part was written, but for some unexplained reason was never published by him. All seems to have been destroyed ex- cept a little more than a hundred lines, which, Wordsworth says " may be acceptable as a kind of prospectus of the design and scope of the whole poem."
Of the purposed Recluse, then, we have only the second Part — the Excursion (1814), which de- scribes a tour of a few days among the hills made by the Poet in company with a friend whom he
414
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
calls " The Wanderer " — a man who in youth and early manhood has been a pedler, who now, far advanced beyond mid-life, has retired with a moderate competence. He is not devoid of a knowledge of books, but is far more deeply read in the great Book of Nature ; a poet, " wanting only the accomplishment of verse." Into the mouth of this " Wanderer " the Poet puts many — most indeed — of the loftiest utterances in the Excursion. In a few cases they gain something by this attribution; but usually they might as well have been spoken directly by the Poet him- self or by some of the other interlocutors.
THE WANDERER'S HYMN OF THANKSGIVING.
How beautiful this dome of sky ; And the vast hills, in fluctuation fixed At Thy command, how awful ! Shall the Soul, Human and rational, report of Thee Even less than these ? Be mute who will, who caia, Yet I will praise Thee with impassioned voice. My lips, that may forget Thee in the crowd, Cannot forget Thee here, where Thou hast built For Thy own glory in the wilderness ! Me didst Thou constitute a priest of Thine In such a temple as we now behold Reared for Thy presence. Therefore I am bound To worship here and everywhere — as one, Not doomed to ignorance, though forced to tread From childhood up the ways of poverty ; From unreflecting ignorance preserved, And from debasement rescued. By Thy grace The particle divine remained unquenched ; And 'mid the wild weeds of a rugged soil Thy bounty caused to flourish deathless flowers, From Paradise transplanted. Wintry age Impends ; the frost will gather round my heart ; If the flowers wither, I am worse than dead !
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 4^5
Come, labor, when the worn-out frame requires Perpetual Sabbath ; come disease and want, And sad exclusion through decay of sense ; But leave me unabated trust in Thee, And let Thy favor, to the end of life, Inspire me with ability to seek Repose and hope among eternal things, Father of heaven and earth 1 and I am rich, And will possess my portion in content.
— Excursion, Book IV.
THE ORACULAR SEA-SHELL.
I have seen
A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell ; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely ; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy ; for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of Faith ; and there are times, I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things ; Of ebb and flow, and ever-during Power, And central peace subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation.
—Excursion, Book IV.
The Excursion contains more than 9,000 lines. Its special object was to describe a visit to a re- cluse who, after leading a varied life, had retired from the world to pass his last years in this se- questered valley. The remainder of the poem was to consist of the reflections of the recluse upon lofty topics.
The reception accorded to the Excursion was not encouraging. ** This will never do," said Jef-
416 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
frey, in the Edinburgh Review. Perhaps it was well that no more of the meditated Recluse was ever written ; but none the more did Wordsworth falter in carrying out the high mission which he held to have devolved upon him.
The tragedy The Borderers, written as early as 1796, but not published until 1842, might have been destroyed without the world's being the poorer. The somewhat extended narrative poems are by no means great works. We name them in the order of their publication, which was some- times several years after their composition. The White Doe of Rylstone (\^>\^) might, one would sup- pose, have been suggested by Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, which was published a couple of years before Wordsworth's poem was written. Peter Bell (1819) is barely saved from being ridic- ulous by a dozen vigorous stanzas near the com- mencement. The Waggoner (1819) was published after lying in manuscript a dozen years or more.
Among the so-called "minor poems " of these years there are some which must be regarded as trivial or commonplace, many which are merely pretty, many that are noble, and not a few which will ever stand among the grandest poems of the world. A few of these are here given, in whole or in part :
ODE TO DUTY.
Stern Daughter of the voice of God, O Duty ! if that name thou love,
Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring and reprove,
Thou who art Victory and Law
When empty terrors overawe,
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 4*7
From vain temptations dost set free,
And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity !
There are who ask not if thine eye
Be on 4hem ; who, in love and truth, Where no misgiving is, rely
Upon the genial sense of youth : Glad hearts, without reproach or blot, Who do thy work and know it not ; Oh ! if through confidence misplaced, They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power I around them cast.
Serene will be our days and bright,
And happy will our nature be, When Love is an unerring light
And Joy its own security. And they a blissful course may hold Even now, who, not unwisely bold, Live in the spirit of this creed ; Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need.
I, laving freedom, and untried ;
No sport of every random gust, Yet being to myself a guide,
Too blindly have reposed my trust ; And oft, when in my heart was heard Thy timely mandate, I deferred The task, in smoother walks to stray ; But thee I now would serve more strictly if I may.
Through no disturbance of my soul,
Or strong compunction in me wrought ;
I supplicate for thy control,
But in the quietness of thought.
Me this unchartered freedom tires ;
I feel the weight of chance desires ;
My hopes no more must change their name,
I long for a repose that ever is the same.
Stern Lawgiver ! Yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace ;
418 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face. Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads ; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong.
To humbler functions, awful Power,
I call thee. I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour;
Oh, let my weakness have an end! Give unto me, made lowly-wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice ; The confidence of Reason give ; And in the light of Truth thy bondsman let me live.
ON THE POWER OF SOUND. I.
Thy functions are ethereal,
As if within thee dwelt a glancing mind,
Organ of Vision ! And a spirit aerial
Informs the cell of Hearing, dark and blind ;
Intricate labyrinth, more dread for thought
To enter than oracular cave ;
Strict passage, through which sighs are brought,
And whispers for the heart, their slave ;
And shrieks, that revel in abuse
Of shivering flesh ; and warbled air,
Whose piercing sweetness can unloose
The chains of frenzy, or entice a smile
Into the ambush of despair ;
Hosannas pealing down the long-drawn aisle,
And requiems answered by the pulse that beats
Devoutly, in life's last retreats 1 ...
XI.
For terror, joy, or pity, Vast is the compass and the swell of notes : From the babe's first cry to voice of regal city, Rolling a solemn, sea-like bass that floats
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 419
Far as the woodlands — with the trill to blend
Of that shy songstress, whose love-tale
Might tempt an angel to descend,
While hovering o'er the moonlight vale.
Ye wandering Utterances, has earth no scheme
No scale of Irhoral music — to unite
Powers that survive but in the faintest dream
Of memory ? — Oh, that ye might stoop to bear
Chains, such precious chains of sight
As labored minstrelsies through ages wear !
Oh, for a balance fit the truth to tell
Of the unsubstantial, pondered well !
x
xu.
By one pervading spirit
Of tones and numbers all things are controlled,
As sages taught, where faith was found to merit
Initiation in that mystery old.
The heavens, whose aspect makes our minds as stilJ
As they themselves appear to be,
Innumerable voices fill
With everlasting harmony ;
The towering headlands, crowned with mist,
Their feet among the billows, know
That Ocean is a mighty harmonist ;
Thy pinions, universal Air,
Ever waving to and fro,
Are delegates of harmony and bear
Strains that support the Seasons in their round ;
Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound.
XIII.
Break forth into thanksgiving, Ye banded instruments of wind and chords ; Unite, to magnify the Ever-living ; Your inarticulate notes with the voice of words ! Nor hushed be service from the lowing mead, Nor mute the forest hum of noon ; Thou, too, be heard, lone eagle, freed From snowy peak and cloud, attune VOL. XXIV.— aj
420 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Thy hungry barkings to the hymn
Of joy, that from her utmost walls
The six-days' Work, by flaming Seraphim
Transmits to Heaven ! As Deep to Deep
Shouting through one valley calls,
All worlds, all natures, mood and measure keep
For praise and ceaseless gratulation, poured
Into the ear of God, their Lord !
XIV.
A voice to Light gave Being ;
To Time, and Man his earth-born chronicler ;
A Voice shall finish doubt and dim foreseeing,
And sweep away life's visionary stir ;
The trumpet (we, intoxicate with pride,
Arm at its blast for deadly wars)
To archangelic life applied,
The grave shall open, quench the stars.
O Silence ! are Man's noisy years
No more than moments of thy life ?
Is Harmony, blest queen of smiles and tears,
With her smooth tones and discords just,
Tempted into rapturous strife,
Thy destined bond-slave ? No ! though earth be dust
And vanish though the heavens dissolve, her stay
Is in the WORD that shall not pass away.
INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore ; Turn wheresoe'er I may
By night or day, Th« things which I have seen I now can see no more
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 421
11.
The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose, The Moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare, Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair ; The sunshine is a glorious birth ; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.
in.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief : A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong :
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep ; No more shall grief of mine the season wrong ; I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng. The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all earth is gay ;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every Beast keep holiday ;
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy !
IV.
Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the caJ.l
Ye to each other make ; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee. My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel — I feel it alL Oh evil day ! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning, This sweet May-morning, And the children are culling
422 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide, Fresh bowers ; while the sun shines warm And the Babe leaps up on his mother's anr :
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear !
— But there's a Tree, of many, one, A single Field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone :
The Pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat : Whither is fled the visionary gleam ? Where is it now, the glory and the dream *
v.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar :
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home : Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy, But He beholds the light, and whence it flows
He sees it in his joy ; The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended ; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.
VI.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And even with something of a Mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 423
Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came,
VII.
Behold the child among his new-born blisses— A six years' Darling of a pigmy size ! See where 'mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes. See, at his feet, some little plan or chart- Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly learned art !
A wedding or- a festival,
A mourning or a funeral, And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song ;
Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife ;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride The little Actor cons another part ; Filling from time to time his " humorous stags With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, That Life brings with her in her equipage,
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
VIII.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy Soul's immensity ; Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep Haunted forever by the eternal mind —
Mighty Prophet ! Seer blest !
On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave \ Thou, over whom thy Immortality Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, A Presence which is not to be put by ;
424 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Thou Httle Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife ? Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life !
IX.
O joy that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive !
The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction : not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest ; Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hopes still fluttering in his breast
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise ;
But for those obstinate questionings,
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings ;
Blank misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised :
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet a master-light of all our seeing ; Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence : truths that wake
To perish never ; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor,
Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 425
( in utterly abolish or destroy !
Hence in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be, Our souls have^sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
x.
Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song !
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound ! We in thought will join,your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May !
What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now forever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower ;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind ; In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be ;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering ;
In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.
XI.
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves !
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might ;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet ;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality ;
426 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give,
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
All of the poems which we have cited bear date between 1798 and 1828 ; that is, between the twenty- eighth and the forty-eighth years of Wordsworth's life, the grand ode On the Power of Sound being the latest of them. The Intimations of Immortal- ity was completed in his thirty-sixth year. After fifty, Wordsworth wrote little of special note, al- though a few short pieces were composed after passing the age of threescore and ten. His last volume, issued in 1842, was entitled Poems Chiefly if Early and Late Years. Throughout nearly 'chs whole of his career he was fond of casting his verse into the restricted form of sonnets. Of these he composed nearly five hundred. Many of them are prosaic in all except form, but others are among the best in our language.
THE SONNET.
Scorn not the Sonnet ; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honors ; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart ; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound ;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound :
With it Camoens soothed an exile's grief ;
The Sonnet glittered a gay myrtle leaf
Amid the cypress with which Dante crowned
His visionary brow ; a glow-worm lamp,
It cheered mild Spenser, called from Fairyland
To struggle through dark ways ; and, when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The thing became a trumpet ; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains— alas, too few !
WORK, HENRY CLAY, an American song- writer, born in Middleton, Conn., October 1, 1832 ; died at Hartford, Conn., June 8, 1884. In early youth he removed to Illinois, but returned to Con- necticut in 1845 and learned the printer's trade. Here he wrote his first song, Were Coming, Sister Mary. In 1855 he moved to Chicago and worked at his trade. The Year of Jubilee or Kingdom Coming was published in 1862, and his most popu- lar song, Marching Through Georgia, was published in 1865, after Sherman had made his famous march to the sea. He wrote, in all, more than sixty songs, many of which are still very popular.
MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA.
Bring the good old bugle, boys, we'll sing another song — Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along — Sing it as we used to sing it, fifty thousand strong, While we were marching through Georgia.
" Hurrah ! Hurrah ! we bring the jubilee ! Hurrah ! Hurrah ! the flag that makes you free ! " So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea, While we were marching through Georgia.
How the darkies shouted when they heard the joyful
sound !
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found ! How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground, While we were marching through Georgia.
(427)
428 HENRY CLAY WORK
Yes, and there were Union men who wept with joyful
tears, When they saw the honored flag they had not seen for
years ; Hardly could they be restrained from breaking forth in
cheers, While we were marching through Georgia.
" Sherman's dashing Yankee boys will never reach the
coast ! "
So the saucy rebels said, and 'twas a handsome boast, Had they not forgot, alas ! to reckon with the host, While we were marching through Georgia ?
So we made a thoroughfare for Freedom and her trains Sixty miles in latitude — three hundred to the main ; Treason fled before us, for resistance was in vain, While we were marching through Georgia.
THE YEAR OF JUBILEE.
Say, darkies, hab you seen de massa,
Wid de mouffstash on he face, Go 'long de road some time this mornin1,
Like he gwine to leabe de place ? He see de smoke way up de ribber
Where de Lincum gun-boats lay ; He took he hat and leff bery sudden,
And I s'pose he's runned away.
De massa run, ha ! ha I
De darkey stay, hb ! ho ! It mus' be now de kingdum comin',
An' de yar ob Jubilo.
He six foot one way and two foot todder,
An' he weigh six hundred poun* ; His coat so big he couldn't pay de tailor,
An' it won't reach half way roun* ; He drills so much dey calls him c ~»'n,
An' he git so mighty tan'd I spec he'll try to fool dem Y' KCCS
For to tink he contrabair
HENRY CLAY WORK 429
De darkies got so lonesome libb'n
In de log hut on de lawn, Dey move fore tings into massa's parlor
For to keep it while he gone. Dar's wine and cider in de kitchin,
And de darkies dey hab some, I spec it will all be 'fiscated,
When de Lincum sojers come.
De oberseer, he makes us trubble,
An' he dribe us roun' a spell, We lock him up in de smoke-house cellar,
Wid de key flung in de well, De whip am lost", de han'-cuff broke,
But the massa hab his pay ; He big an' ole enough for to know better
Dan to went an' run away.
De massa run, ha ! ha !
De darkey stay, ho ! ho ! It mus' be now de kingdum comin',
An' de yar ob Jubilo.
WOTTON, SIR HENRY, an English diplomat, poet, and miscellaneous writer, born at Bocton or Bough ton, Malherbe, Kent, in 1568 ; died at Eton in December, 1639. He was educated at Win- chester and Oxford, and afterward spent several years on the Continent. Upon his return he at- tached himself to the Earl of Essex, the favorite of Queen Elizabeth. Upon the accession, in 1603, of James I., to whom he had already done some signal service, Wotton was made Ambassador to Venice, where he wrote a tractate on The State of Christendom, which, however, was not printed dur- ing his lifetime. His own understanding of the duties of a foreign ambassador — " An honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country " — was in full accord with the sentiment of his time. About 1618 he took holy orders, in order to render himself eligible for the position of Provost of Eton College, which he filled until his death. In 1624 he put forth a very creditable work on The Elements of Architecture. Wotton was rather a friend of letters and of authors than dis- tinctively an author. He wrote a warm eulogium on Milton's Comus (1637), and gave the poet some sage advice upon his setting out upon his travels. He was also a friend of Izaak Walton, with whom he sometimes went a-fishing, and who wrote his Life and edited the scanty Reliquia Wottoniana (1651). As a poet Wotton is known wholly by
(43Q>
HENRY WOTTON 431
two short pieces, The Character of a Happy Life (1614), and the pieceJ beginning, "You meaner beauties of the night." The title given to the latter piece, To his Mistress, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, is misleading to the modern reader. The " Mistress " celebrated was the excellent Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James I., for several years the wife of the German Elector of the Palatinate, who in 1619 got himself crowned as King of Bo- hemia. His " reign " lasted only six months, when he was ousted and driven into exile. It is through this six months' " Queen of Bohemia " that the British crown devolved upon her great-grandson George I., Elector of Hanover.
TO HIS MISTRESS, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia.
You meaner beauties of the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light ; You common people of the skies, What are you when the moon shall rise ?
You curious chanters of the wood,
That warble forth Dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your passions understood
By your weak accents ! What's your praise When Philomel her voice shall raise ?
You violets that first appear,
By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year, As if the spring were all your own ! What are you when the rose is blown ?
So, when my Mistress shall be seen In form and beauty of her mind —
By virtue first, then choice, a Queen ! Tell me, if she were not designed Th* eclipse and glory of her kind ?
WYATT, SIR THOMAS, an English poet, born in Kent in 1503 ; died at Sherborne, Dorsetshire, October 10, 1542. His father was Sir Henry Wyatt, Privy Councillor to Henry VII. After graduation at Cambridge in 1518, Sir Thomas was an officer of the household of Henry VIII., whose good-will he was fortunate enough to retain. He was knighted in 1536, was High Sheriff of Kent in 1537, and Ambassador to the Court of Charles V. in 1537 and 1539-40. On the fall of Lord Cromwell, his friend, he was falsely accused, by Bishop Bon- ner and other enemies, of treasonable correspond- ence, but was acquitted after an able speech in self-defence. His memoirs contain excellent let- ters of advice to his son, the younger Sir Thomas, who was executed in 15 54 for conspiring in favor of Lady Jane Grey. Sir Thomas, the elder, was a man of great learning, of ready wit, and of high character. His poems, stilted to modern ears and not abounding in the poetical element, have some very happy refrains, and here and there some remarkable lines. The first selection re- minds one of Tennyson's Two Voices. Like those of his friend, the Earl of Surrey, Wyatt's poems are wholly free from impurity, a welcome quality not always to be found in poets of his day.
THOMAS WYATT
433
DESPAIR COUNSELLED THE DESERTED LOVER TO END HIS WOES BY DEATH, BIJT REASON BRINGETH COMFORT.
Most wretched heart ! most miserable, Since thy comfort from thee is fled ; Since all thy truth is turned to fable, Most wretched heart ! why art thou not dead ?
" No ! no ! I live and must do still ; Whereof I thank God, and no mo ; For I myself have at my will, And he is wretched that weens him so."
But yet thou hast both had and lost The hope so long that hath thee fed, And all thy travail, and thy cost ; Most wretched heart ! why art thou not dead ?
" Some pleasant star may show me light ; . . . But though the heaven would work me woe, Who hath himself shall stand upright ; And he is wretched that weens him so."
Hath he himself that is not sure ? His trust is like as he hath sped. Against the stream thou mayst not dure ; Most wretched heart ! why art thou not dead ?
" The last is worst : who fears not that He hath himself whereso he go : And he that knoweth what is what, Saith he is wretched that weens him so."
Seest thou not how they whet their teeth, Which to touch thee sometime did dread ? They find comfort, for thy mischief, Most wretched heart ! why art thou not dead f
" What though that curse do fall by kind On him that hath the overthrow ; All that cannot oppress my mind ; For he is wretched that weens him so."
Yet can it not be then denied, It is as certain as thy creed, Thy great unhap thou canst not hide ; Unhappy then ! why art thou not dead ?
" Unhappy ; but no wretch therefore : For hap doth come again, and go, For which I keep myself in store ; Since unhap cannot kill me so."
WYSS, JOHANN RUDOLF, a Swiss poet, editor, and juvenile writer, born in Berne, Switzerland, March 13, 1781 ; died there, March 31, 1830. He became Professor of Philosophy in the University of Berne and Chief Librarian of his native town. He edited Der Alpenrosen from 1811 for about twenty years, and for this periodical he wrote many poems, chiefly relating to Swiss history and legend. He was the author of the great national song of Switzerland, Rufst du, mein Vaterland, but his title to a place in the hearts of the boys and girls of every nation must rest upon a book whose fame the world over has been second only to that of De Foe's Robinson Crusoe — The Swiss Family Robinson (1813). This book was begun by his father, but was left in a very crude and un- satisfactory state, and to the subject of this sketch the credit of its authorship really belongs. The Swiss Family Robinson has been translated into every European language, and has gone through hundreds of editions. In 1815 Wyss published Idyls, Traditions, Legends, and Tales of Switzerland — a most delightful and valuable book.
SHIPWRECK AND RESCUE.
The tempest had raged for six days, and on the sev- enth seemed to increase. The ship had been so far driven from its course, that no one on board knew where we were. Everyone was exhausted with fatigue and
MM)
JOHANtf RUDOLF WYSS 435
Watching. The shattered vessel began to leak in many places, the oaths of the sailors were changed to pray- ers, and each thought only how to save his own life. " Children," said I, to my terrified boys, who were clinging round me, " God can save us if He will. To Him nothing is impossible ; but if He thinks it good to call us to Him, let us not murmur : we shall not be sep- arated." My excellent wife dried her tears, and from that moment became more tranquil. We knelt down to pray for the help of our Heavenly Father ; and the fervor and emotion of my innocent boys proved to me that even children can pray, and find in prayer conso- lation and peace.
We rose from our knees strengthened to bear the afflictions that hung over us. Suddenly we heard amid the roaring of the waves the cry of " Land ! land ! " At that moment the ship struck on a rock ; the concus- sion threw us down. We heard a loud cracking, as if the vessel were parting asunder ; we felt that we were aground, and heard the captain cry, in a tone of despair, " We are lost ! Launch the boats ! " These words wen,* a dagger to my heart, and the lamentations of my children were Jouder than ever. I then recollected my- self, and said, " Courage, my darlings, we are still above water, and the land is near. God helps those who trust in Him. Remain here, and I will endeavor to save us."
I went on deck, and was instantly thrown down, and wet through by a huge sea ; a second followed. I struggled boldly with the waves, and succeeded in keep- ing myself up, when I saw, with terror, the extent of our wretchedness. The shattered vessel was almost in two ; the crew had crowded into the boats, and the last sailor /eas cutting the rope. I cried out, and prayed them o take us with them ; but my voice was drowned :n the roar of the tempest, nor could they have returned for us through waves that ran mountains high. All hope from their assistance was lost ; but I was consoled by observing that the water did not enter the ship above a certain height. The stern, under which lay the cabin which contained all that was dear to me on earth, was immovably fixed between two rocks. At the same tim*» I observed, toward the south, traces of land, whi t VOL. XXIV— a8
436 JOHANN RUDOLF WYSS
though wild and barren, was now the haven of my al- most expiring hopes, no longer being able to depend on any human aid. I returned to my family, and en- deavored to appear calm. "Take courage," cried I, " there is yet hope for us ; the vessel, in striking be- tween the rocks, is fixed in a position which protects our cabin above the water, and if the wind should settle to-morrow, we may possibly reach the land." . . .
" Let us leap into the sea," cried Fritz, " and swim to the shore."
"Very well for you," replied Ernest, "who can swim, but we should be all drowned. Would it not be better to construct a raft, and go all together ? "
" That might do," added I, " if we were strong enough for such a work, and if a raft were not always so dangerous a conveyance. But away, boys, look about you, and seek for anything that may be useful to us."
Cried Jack : " Put us each into a great tub, and let us float to shore. I remember sailing capitally that way on godpapa's great pond at S ."
" A very good idea, Jack ; good counsel may some- times be given, even by a child. Be quick, boys, give me the saw and auger, with some nails ; we will see what we can do." I remembered seeing some empty casks in the hold. We went down, and found them floating. This gave us less difficulty in getting them upon the lower deck, which was just above the water. They were of strong wood, bound with iron hoops, and exactly suited my purpose ; my sons and I therefore began to saw them through the middle. After long labor, we had eight tubs, all the same height. We refresbed our- selves with wine and biscuit, which we had fc und in some of the casks. I then contemplated with Delight my little squadron of boats, ranged in a line, and was surprised that my wife still continued depressed. She looked mournfully on them. " I can never venture in one of these tubs," said she.
" Wait a little, till my work is finished," replied I, 44 and you will see it is more to be depended on than this broken vessel."
JOHANN RUDOLF WYSS
437
I sought out a long, flexible plank, and arranged the eight tubs on it, close td each other, leaving a piece at each end to form a curve upward, like the keel of a vessel. We then nailed them firmly to the plank, and to each other. We nailed a plank at each side, of the same length as the first, and succeeded in producing a sort of boat, divided into eight compartments, in which it did not appear difficult to make a short voyage, over a calm sea.
But, unluckily, our wonderful vessel proved so heavy that our united efforts could not move it an inch. I sent Fritz to bring me the jack-screw, and, in the mean- time, sawed a thick, round pole into pieces : then raising the fore part of our work by means of the powerful machine, Fritz placed one of these rollers under it.
I quickly proceeded to tie a strong cord to the after part of it, and the other end to a beam in the ship, which was still firm, leaving it long enough for secur- ity ; then introducing two more rollers underneath, and working with the jack, we succeeded in launching our bark, which passed into the water with such velocity, that but for our rope it would have gone out to sea. Unfortunately, it leaned so much on one side that none of the boys would venture into it. I was in despair, when I suddenly remembered it only wanted ballast to keep it in equilibrium. I hastily threw in anything I got hold of that was heavy, and soon had my boat level, and ready for occupation. They now contended who should enter first, but I stopped them, reflecting that these restless children might easily capsize our vessel. I remembered that savage nations made use of an out-rigger, to prevent their canoe oversetting, and this I determined to add to my work. I fixed two por- tions of a topsail-yard, one over the prow, the other across the stern, in such a manner that they should not be in the way in pushing off our boat from the wreck. I forced the end of each yard into the bung-hole of an empty brandy-cask, to keep them steady during our progress. When all was ready, we implored the bless- ing of God on our undertaking, and prepared to embark in our tubs. We waited a little for my wife, who came loaded with a large bag, which she threw into the tub
438 JOHANN RUDOLF WYSS
that contained her youngest son. I concluded it was intended to steady him, or for a seat, and made no ob- servation on it. The tide was rising when we left, which I considered might assist my weak endeavors. We turned our out-riggers lengthwise, and thus passed from the cleft of the ship into the open sea. We rowed with all our might, to reach the blue land we saw at a distance, but for some time in vain, as the boat kept turning round, and made no progress. At last I con- trived to steer it, so that we went straight forward.
We proceeded slowly, but safely. At length we saw, near the mouth of a rivulet, a little creek between the rocks, toward which our geese and ducks made, serving us for guides. This opening formed a little bay of smooth water, just deep enough for our boat. I cautiously entered it, and landed at a place where the coast was about the height of our tubs, and the water deep enough to let us approach. All that were able leaped on shore in a moment. Even little Francis, who had been laid down in his tub like a salted herring, tried to crawl out, but was compelled to wait for his mother's assistance. Our first care, when we stepped in safety on land, was to kneel down and thank God, to whom we owed our lives, and to resign ourselves wholly to His fatherly kindness. — Swiss Family Robinson.
XENOPHON, a Grecian soldier and historian, born at Athens, probably about 43 1 B.C. ; died, prob- ably at Corinth, about 341 B.C. He was of good family and moderate estate, and became in youth a pupil of Socrates. Diogenes Laertius, in his Life of Xenophon, tells a pretty story of the origin of this pupilship. Socrates one day encountered Xeno- phon, " a beautiful, modest boy," in a narrow pas- sage, put his stick across so as to stop him, and asked him, " Where can provisions be bought ? " Xenophon named a place. " And where are men made noble and good ? " inquired Socrates. Xen- ophon knew no such place. " Well, then," said Socrates, " follow me and learn." At all events, Xenophon was often present at the informal les- sons of Socrates, and took down notes of his talk, which he long afterward wrote out in Memorabilia of Socrates. Xenophon grew up to early manhood during the long Peloponnesian War, so graphically described by Thucydides. That over, at about thirty he joined the Greek " Ten Thousand," who aided Cyrus (called " the Younger," to distinguish him from Cyrus the Great) in his disastrous at- tempt to wrest the Persian sceptre from the hands of his elder brother Artaxerxes. The story of this expedition, occupying a space of just two years, is told in the Anabasis of Xenophon, by far the most important of his many works. Cyrus was defeated and killed at the battle of Cunaxa,
(439)
440
near Babylon (401 B.C.). His Asiatic forces were cut to pieces or dispersed, and the Grecian Ten Thousand undertook the long and perilous retreat through the mountains of Armenia from the banks of the Euphrates to the shores of the Euxine. Xenophon was one of the highest in command, and to him mainly was owing the successful issue of the retreat. He subsequently took up his resi- dence at Scillus, a little town of Elis, under Spar- tan protection, where he lived for some forty years, occupying himself, says his biographer, " in farming and hunting, feasting his friends, and writing his histories."
Diogenes Laertius, who lived in our second century, gives a list of fifteen works composed by Xenophon, all of which are still extant. They comprise the Anabasis, the Cyropcedia, the Memora- bilia, the Hellenics, and small essays on domestic tconomy, hunting, horsemanship, and the like, m respect of style, the Greek of Xenophon may be compared with the English of Addison ; and the Cyropcedia and the Anabasis are among the first books put into the hands of young students of the language. The following extract is from near the close of the Anabasis. When the Ten Thousand — or rather the six thousand remaining of them — had reached a place of safety, they called their commanders to account for several misdeeds alleged against them. Xenophon thus describes the scene:
XENOPHON'S EXCULPATION OF HIMSELF.
Some also brought accusations against Xenophon, alleging that they had been beaten by him, and daarg-
XENOPHON
44T
ing him with having behaved insolently. On this, Xen- ophon stood up, and called on him who had spoken first to say where he had been beaten. He answered : "When we were perishing with cold, and when the snow was deepest." Xenophon rejoined, " Come, come ; in such severe weather as you mention, when provi- sions had failed and we had not wine so much as to smell of — when many were exhausted with fatigue, and the enemy were close behind — if at such a time I behaved insolently, I acknowledge that I must be more vicious than an ass, which, they say, is too vicious to feel being tired. Tell us, however, why you were beaten. Did I ask for anything, and beat you when you would not give it me ? Did I ask anything back from you ? Was I quarrelling about a love affair ? Did I maltreat you in my cups ? "
As the man said that there was nothing of the kind, Xenophon asked him whether he was one of the heavy- armed troops ? He answered, " No." Whether he was a targeteer ? He said that he was not either, but a free man, who had been set to drive a mule by his comrades. On this Xenophon recognized him, and asked him, " What ! are you the man who was conveying the sick person ? " "Aye, by Jupiter, I am," said he, " for you com- pelled me to do it ; and you scattered about the baggage of my comrades." " The scattering," rejoined Xenophon, " was something in this way : I distributed it to others to carry, and ordered them to bring it to me again ; and having got it all back, I restored it all safe to you as soon as you had produced the man that I gave you in charge. But hear, all of you," he continued, " in what way the affair happened, for it is worth listening to. A man was being left behind because he was able to march no farther. I knew nothing of the man ex- cept that he was one of us. And I compelled you, sir, to bring him, that he might not perish ; for, if I mistake not, the enemy was pressing upon us."
This the complainant acknowledged. "Well, then," said Xenophon, " after I had sent you on, did I not catch you, as I came up with the rear-guard, digging a trench to bury the man, when I stopped and commended you ? But while we were standing by, the maoa drew up bis
442 XENOPHON
leg, and those who were there cried out that he was alive ; and you said, ' He may be as much alive as he likes, for I sha'n't carry him.' On this I struck you, it is quite true ; for you seemed to me to have been aware that the man was alive." "Well, then," explained the other, " did he die any the less after I had rendered him up to you ?" " Why, we shall all die," said Xenophon ; " but is that any reason that we should be buried alive ? "
Hereupon all the assembly cried out that Xenophon had not beaten the fellow half enough. And this com- plaint having been disposed of, no others were brought against Xenophon, who addressed the soldiers, saying :
" I acknowledge to have struck many men for breach of discipline — men who were content to owe their pres- ervation to your orderly march and constant fighting, while they themselves left the ranks and ran on before, so as to have an advantage over you in looting. Had we all acted as they did, we should have perished to a man. Sometimes, too, I struck men who were lagging behind with cold and fatigue, or were stopping the way so as to hinder others from getting forward. I struck them with my fist, in order to prevent them from being struck with the lance of the enemy. It is a plain case. If I punished anyone for his good, I claim the privilege of parents with their children, masters with their scholars, and sur- geons with their patients. In the time of storm the cap- tain must be rough with his men, for the least mistake is fatal. But this is all over now ; the calm has come. And since I strike nobody now, when by the favor of the gods I am in good spirits, and am no longer de- pressed with cold, hunger, and fatigue, and now that I have more wine to drink, you may see that it was at all events not through insolence that I struck anyone be- fore. If such things are to be brought up against me, I would ask, in common fairness, that some of you stand up on the other side, and recall a few of the occasions on which I have helped you against the cold, or against the enemy, or when sick or in distress."
Xenophon says : " All was right in the end." He was not merely acquitted, but stood the higher
XENOPHOK
443
in the esteem of his men. The Cyropcedia, the " Ed- ucation of Cyrus " the Great — not the Cyrus of the Anabasis — is not to be regarded as a history ; it is a romance setting forth the training of a great prince, not merely in childhood and youth, but through a long and varied career, down to his death at an advanced age. There are a few points of resemblance between the Cyrus of Xenophon's romance and the Cyrus of history. Both were, indeed, great monarchs, conquerors of Babylonia and Asia Minor. But the historical Cyrus was slain in a battle with the Scythians near the Cas- pian ; while the Cyrus of the romance died at a ripe old age in his palace, surrounded by his chil- dren, and with a discourse upon immortality upon his lips.
THE DEATH OF CYRUS THE GREAT.
"I have realized" (said Cyrus to his sons) "all that is most highly prized in the successive ages of life — as a child in childhood, as a young man in youth, as a man in maturity. My strength has seemed to increase with the advance of time ; I haVe failed in nothing that I undertook. I have exalted my friends and humbled my enemies, and have brought my country from ob- scurity to the summit of glory. I have kept hitherto from anything like boasting, knowing that a reverse might come ; but now that the end has arrived, I may safely claim to have been fortunate. . . .
"You cannot surely believe that when I have ended this mortal life I shall cease to exist. Even in lifetime you have never seen my soul ; you have only inferred its existence. And there are grounds for inferring the existence of the soul after death. Have we not seen what a power is exercised by the souls of murdered men after death — how they send avenging Furies to punish their murderers ? It is only to this belief in the
444
XENOPHON
power of the soul after death that the custom of paying honor to the dead is due ; and the belief is reasonable, for the soul, and not the body, is the principle of life. When the soul and body are separated, it is natural to think that the soul will live. And the soul, too, is the principle of intelligence. When severed from the sense- less body it will not surely lose its intelligence, but only become more pure and bright; just as in sleep, when the soul is most independent of the body, it seems to gain the power, by prophetic dreams, of seeing into futurity.
" Do, then, what I advise, from a regard to my immor- tal spirit. But if I be mistaken in thinking it so, then act out of regard for the eternal gods, who maintain the order of the universe, and watch over piety and justice. Respect, too, humanity in its perpetual succession, and act so as to be approved by all posterity. When I am dead, do not enshrine my body in gold or silver, but re- store it to the earth ; for what can be better than to be mixed up and incorporated with the beneficent source of all that is good for men ?
While life, which still lingers in me, remains, you may come near and touch my hand, and look upon my face ; but when you have covered my head for death, I request that no man may any more look upon my body. But summon all the Persians and the allies to my tomb, to rejoice with me that I shall now be in safety, and cannot suffer evil any more, whether I shall have gone to the gods, or whether I shall have ceased to exist. Distribute gifts among all who come. And remember this, my last word of advice: By doing good to your friends, you will gain the power of punishing your ene- mies. Farewell, dear children ! Say farewell to your mother from me. All my friends, absent as well as present, farewell ! "
Having said this, and taken everyone by the right hand, he covered his face and expired. — Cyropxdia.
YATES, EDMUND HODGSON, an English jour- nalist and novelist, born in 1831; died May 20, 1894. He received a good education, and for many years was chief of the missing-letter depart- ment in the post-office of London, but resigned in 1872 to devote himself to authorship. He lect- ured in the United States in 1873, and afterward became the London representative of the New York Herald. In 1874 he established the London World, of which he was the editor. His books are My Haunts and Their Frequenters (1854) ; After Office Hours (i 86 1) ; Broken to Harness (i 864) ; Pages in Waiting (1865); Running the Gauntlet (1865); Kissing the Rod (1866) ; Land at Last (1866) ; Black Sheep (1867); Wrecked in Port (1869); Dr. Wain- Wright's Patient (1871); Nobody s Fortune (1871); The Yellow Flag (1873); The Impending Sword ( 1 874) ; Personal Reminiscences and Experiences, Fifty Years of London Life, and Memoirs of a Man of the World. Mr. Yates also wrote several dramas and memoirs, besides contributions to periodicals and newspaper articles.
" The work which Edmund Yates leaves behind him, under his name," says Arthur Waugh, " is but a small part of his achievement. He wrote several successful works, a play or so, some vol- umes of essays, and an admirable and genial biog- raphy ; but the strength of his influence was not
(445)
446 EDMUND HODGSON YATES
here. His claim to respect mainly lay in the fact that he was the father of modern journalism. When, years ago, he was crossed off the books of the Garrick Club for writing a descriptive article which gave offence to Thackeray, he laid the foundation, for better or worse, of the new school of personal literature. That article is far less of an outrage on good taste than the ordinary jour- nalism which passes current nowadays: had Thackeray been living to-day, he would have been voted absurd for his annoyance. But Ed- mund Yates was the pioneer of literary photog- raphy, and, like all pioneers, he paid the penalty."
DR. PRATER.
Not to be known to Dr. Prater was to confess that the " pleasure of your acquaintance " was of little value ; for assuredly, had it been worth anything, Dr. Prater would have had it by hook or by crook. A wonderful man, Dr. Prater, who had risen from nothing, as his detract- ors said ; but however that might be, he had a practice scarcely excelled by any in London. Heart and lungs were Dr. Prater's specialties ; and persons imagining themselves afflicted in those regions, came from all parts of England, and thronged the doctor's dining-room in Queen-Anne Street in the early forenoons, vainly pretending to read Darwin On the Fertilization of Orchids, the Life of Captain Hedley Vicars, or the Supplement of yesterday's Times, and furtively glancing round at the other occupants of the room, and wondering what was the matter with them. That dining-room looked rather different about a dozen times in the season, of an even- ing, when the books were cleared away, and the big bronze gas-chandelier lighted, and the doctor sat at the large, round table surrounded by a dozen of the pleasant- est people in London.
Such a mixture ! Never was such a man for "bring-
EDMUND HODGSON YATES 447
ing people together "as Dr. Prater. The manager of the Italian Opera (l3r. Prater's name was to all the sick-certificates for singers) would be seated next to a judge, who would have a leading member of the Jockey Club on his other hand, and a bishop for his vis-h-vis. Next the bishop would be a cotton-lord, next to him the artist of a comic periodical, and next to him a rising member of the Opposition, with an Indian colonel and an American comedian, here on a starring engagement, in juxtaposition. The dinner was always good, the wines were excellent, and the doctor was the life and soul of the party. He had something special to say to everyone : and as his big, protruding eyes shone and glimmered through his gold-rimmed spectacles, he looked like a convivial little owl. A very different man over the dinner-table to the smug little, pale-faced man in black whom wretched patients found in the morning sitting behind a leather-covered table, on which a stethoscope was conspicuously displayed, and who, after sounding the chests of consumptive curates or struggling clerks, would say, with an air of blandness, dashed with sor- row : " I'm afraid the proverbially treacherous air of our climate will not do for us, my dear sir ! I'm afraid we must spend our winter at Madeira, or at least at Pau. Good day to you ; " and then the doctor, after shaking hands with his patient, would slip the tips of his fingers into his trousers-pockets, into which would fall another little paper package to join a number al- ready there deposited, while the curate or clerk, whose yearly income was perhaps two hundred pounds, and who probably had debts amounting to twice his annual earnings, would go away wondering whether it was bet- ter to endeavor to borrow the further sum necessary, at ruinous interest, or to go back and die in the cold Lin- colnshire clay parish, or in the bleak Northern city, as the case might be.
On one thing the doctor prided himself greatly, that he never let a patient know what he thought of him. He would bid a man remove his waistcoat with a semi- jocund air, and the next instant listen to a peculiar " click " inside his frame, which betrayed the presence of heart-disease, liable at any moment to carry the man
448 EDMUND HODGSON' YATES
off, without altering a muscl? of his face or a tone of his voice.
" Hum ! ha ! we must be a little careful ; we must not expose ourselves to the night-air ! Take a leetle more care of yourself, my dear sir ; for instance, I would wear a wrap round the throat — some wrap you know, to prevent the cold striking to the part affected. Send this to Bell's and get it made up, and take it three times a day ; and let me see you on — on Saturday. Good day to you." And there would not be the smallest quiver in the hard metallic voice, or the smallest twinkle in the observant eye behind the gold-rimmed glasses, although the doctor knew that the demon Consumption, by his buffet, had raised that red spot on the sufferer's cheek, and was rapidly eating away his vitality.
But if Dr. Prater kept a strict reticence to his patients as regarded their own ailments, he was never so happy as when enlarging to them on the diseases of their fel- low-sufferers, or of informing esoteric circles of the special varieties of disorder with which his practice led him to cope. " You ill, my dear sir ! " he would say to some puny specimen ; then, settling himself into his waistcoat after examination, "you complain of narrow- chestedness — why, my dear sir, do you know . Sir Hawker de la Crache ? You've a pectoral development which is perfectly surprising when contrasted with Sir Hawker's. But then he, poor man ! last stage — Ma- deira no good — would sit up all night playing whist at Reid's hotel. Algiers no good — too much brandy, to- bacco, and baccarat with French officers — nothing any good. You, my dear sir, compared to Sir Hawker — pooh, nonsense ! " Or in any other form : " Any such case, my dear madam ? — any such case ?" — turning to a large book, having previously consulted a small index — "a hundred such! Here, for instance, Lady Susan Bray, now staying at Ventnor, living entirely on asses'- milk — in some of our conditions we must live on asses'- milk — left lung quite gone, life hanging by a thread. You're a Juno, ma'am, in comparison to Lady Susan 1 " There was no mistake, however, about the doctor's talent ; men in his own profession, who sneered at his charlatanerie of manner, allowed that he was thoroughly
EDMUND HODGSON YATES
449
well versed in his subject. He was very fond of young men's society ; and, with all his engagements, always found time to dine occasionally with the Guards at Windsor, with a City company or two, or with a snug set en petit comitt in Temple chambers, and to visit the behind-scenes of two or three theatres, the receptions of certain great ladies, and occasionally the meetings of the Flybynights Club. To the latter he always came in a special suit of clothes on account of the impregna- tion of tobacco-smoke ; and when coming thither he left his carriage and his address, in case he was required, at the Minerva, with orders to fetch him at once. It would never have done ftrr some of his patients to know that he was a member of the Flybynights. — Broken to Harness.
YONGE, CHARLOTTE MARY, an English novel- ist, born at Hants in 1823; died at Winchester, England, on March 24th, 1901. The daughter of VV. C. Yonge, a magistrate of Hants, she early de- voted herself to literature. Her books were writ- ten for the instruction and amusement of the young, and to enforce healthy morals. She was editor of the Monthly Packet, a High Church peri- odical. Her works have gone through many edi- tions. The proceeds of her best-known book, The Heir of Redclyffe (1853), were devoted to the equipment of the missionary schooner Southern Cross, for the use of Bishop Selwyn, and the profits of The Daisy Chain (£2,000) she gave toward the erection of a missionary college at Auckland, New Zealand. Among her many works are Abbey-Church, or Self-control and Self- conduct (1844) ; Scenes and Characters (1847) '•> Lang- ley-School (1848); Kenneth (1850); The Kings of England (1851); The Two Guardians (1852); Land- marks of History (185 2-84) ; Heartsease (1854); The Lances of Lynwood (1855) ; Leonard, the Lion-Heart (1856); The Christmas Mummers (i8$8) ; The Trial: More Links of the Daisy Chain ( 1 864) ; The Clever Woman of the Family ( 1 865) ; The Dove in the Eagle's Nest (1866); Cameos from English History (1868); The Chaplet of Pearls (1868) ; The Caged Lion (1870) ; A Parallel History of France and England (1871) ; Eighteen Centuries of Beginnings of Church History
CHARLOTTE MARY YONGE 45!
(1876); Love and Life (1880); Lads and Lasses of Langley (1881); Historical Ballads; Stray Pearls. Memoirs of Margaret de Ribaumont (1883); Langley Adventures (1884); Two Sides of the £/«>/# (1885) ; A Modern Telemachus (1886); Under the Storm (1887); Life of Scott (1888); Life of Hannah More (1888); Our New Mistress (1888) ; '7%* Slaves of Sabinus (1890). She has also edited and translated a number of books, including Catherine of Ara- gon and The Sources of. the Reformation, from the French of Du Bois (1881); The Reputed Changeling (1890); Two Penniless Princesses (1891); The Con- stables Tower (1891); More By -words (1891); That Stick (1892) ; The Cross Roads (1892) ; Grisley Grisell (1893) ; An Old Woman's Outlook (1893) ; The Treas- ures in the Marshes (1893); The Rubies of St. Lo (1894); A Long Vacation (1895).
THE CLEVER WOMAN.
Rachel had had the palm of cleverness conceded to her ever since she could recollect, when she read better at three years old than her sister at five, and ever after, through the days of education, had enjoyed, and ex- ceeded in, the studies that were a toil to Grace.
Subsequently, while Grace had contented herself with the ordinary course of unambitious feminine life, Rachel 1 had thrown herself into the process of self-education with all her natural energy, and carried on her favorite studies by every means within her reach, until she con- siderably surpassed in acquirements and reflection all the persons with whom she came in frequent contact. It was a homely neighborhood, a society well born, but of circumscribed interests and habits, and little con- nected with the great progressive world, where, how- ever, Rachel's sympathies all lay, necessarily fed, how- ever, by periodical literature, instead of by conversation or commerce with living minds. VOL. XXIV.— M
452 CHARLOTTE MARY YOWGE
She began by being stranded on the ignorance of those who surrounded her, and found herself isolated as a sort of pedant ; and as time went on, the narrowness of interests chafed her, and in like manner left her alone. As she grew past girlhood, the cui bono question had come to interfere with her ardor in study for its own sake, and she felt the influence of an age eminently practical and sifting, but with small powers of acting.
The quiet Lady Bountiful duties that had sufficed her mother and sister were too small and easy to satisfy a soul burning at the report of the great cry going up to heaven from a world of sin and woe.
The examples of successful workers stimulated her longings to be up and doing, and yet the ever difficult question between charitable works and filial deference necessarily detained her, and perhaps all the more be- cause it was not so much the fear of her mother's au- thority as of her horror and despair that withheld her from the decisive and eccentric steps that she was always feeling impelled to take.
Gentle Mrs. Curtis had never been a visible power in her house, and it was through their desire to avoid paining her that her government had been exercised over her two daughters ever since their father's death, which had taken place in Grace's seventeenth year.
Both she and Grace implicitly accepted Rachel's superiority as an unquestionable fact, and the mother, when traversing any of her clever daughter's schemes, never disputed either her opinions or principles, only entreating that these particular developments might be conceded to her own weakness ; and Rachel generally did concede.
She could not act ; but she could talk uncontradicted, and she hated herself for the enforced submission to a state of things that she despised. — The Clever Woman of the Family*
YOUNG, EDWARD, an eminent English poet, courtier, and clergyman, born at Upham, near Winchester, in 1681 ; died at Welwyn, Hertford- shire, April 12, 1765. His father was rector of Upham, in Hampshire, when his son was born, but subsequently became Dean of Salisbury. The son was educated at Winchester School, and at All Souls' College, Oxford. In 1712 he commenced his career as poet and courtier, one of his patrons being the notorious Duke of Whar- ton, who brought him forward as a candidate for Parliament, giving a bond for .£600 to defray the election expenses. Young was defeated ; Whar- ton died, and the Court of Chancery decided that the bond was invalid. In 1725 Young put forth his vigorous satire, The Universal Passion — the Love of Fame, and a pension of .£200 was granted to him, which he continued to receive during the remaining forty years of his life. Up to forty-five Young lived the life of a wit, man about town, and place-hunter, the last with indif- ferent success. He now resolved upon a change ; took orders in the Anglican Church, and was presented by his college to the living of Welwyn in Hertfordshire, wrote a panegyric upon King George II., and received the honorary dignity of one of the chaplains to his Majesty. He hoped for ecclesiastical preferment, and vainly sought
tea)
454 EDWARD YOUNG
to obtain a bishopric. In 1761, when he was vorging upon fourscore, he was made Clerk of the Closet to the dowager Princess of Wales, the mother of George, III., who had just acceded tc the throne. When past fifty Young married Mrs. Lee, the widowed daughter of the Earl of Lichfield. By her former husband she had two sons, to whom Young was tenderly attached. The young men and their mother died at no great intervals — though not within three months, as suggested by Young ; there was a space of more than four years between the death of the first son and that of their mother. The threefold bereavement was the occasion of the composition of the Night Thoughts, the first portion of which was published in 1742, the last in 1744. Young's poetical works include panegyrics, odes, and epis- tles; several satires, 'the best of which is The Universal Passion ; a few dramatic pieces, the best of which is the tragedy of Revenge ; and the Night Thoughts, to which may be fairly assigned the first place among the strictly religious didac- tic poems in our language.
PROCRASTINATION.
Be wise to-day ; 'tis madness to defer ; Next day the fatal precedent will plead ; Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life. Procrastination is the thief of time ; Year after year it steals, till all are fled, And to the mercies of a moment leaves The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
Of man's miraculous mistakes this bear? The palm, " That all men are about to live." Forever on the brink of being born.
EDWARD YOUNG 455
All pay themselves the compliment to think
They one day shall not drivel : and their pride
On this reversion takes up ready praise :
At least their own ; their future selves applaud :
How excellent that life they ne'er will lead !
Time lodged in their own hands is Folly's veils ;
That lodged in Fate's to wisdom they consign ;
The thing they can't but purpose they postpone :
'Tis not in folly not to scorn a fool,
And scarce in human wisdom to do more.
All promise is poor, dilatory man,
And that through every stage. When young, indeed,
In full content we sometimes nobly rest,
Unanxious for ourselves, and only wish,
As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.
At thirty a man suspects himself a fool ;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan ;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve ;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves, and re-resolves ; then dies the same.
And why ? Because he thinks himself immortal. All men think all men mortal but themselves ; Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread ; But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air, Soon close ; where passed the shaft no trace is found. As from the wing no scar the sky retains, The parted wave no furrow from the keel, So dies in human hearts the thought of death ; Even with the tender tears which Nature sheds O'er those we love, we drop it in their grave.
THE LAPSE OF TIME — MAN.
The bell strikes one. We take no note of time
Save by its loss : to give it then a tongue
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,
I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,
It is the knell of my departed hours.
Where are they ? With the years beyond the flood.
It is the signal that demands despatch :
456 EDWARD YOUNG
How much is to be done ! My hopes and fears
Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down — on what ? A fathomless abyss ;
A dread Eternity ! how surely mine !
And can Eternity belong to me,
Poor pensioner upon the bounties of an hour!
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful is Man ! How passing wonder He who made him such ! Who centred in our make such strange extremes ! From different natures marvellously mixed, Connection exquisite of distant worlds! Distinguished link in Being's endless chain, Midway from Nothing to the Deity ! A beam ethereal, sullied and absorpt ! Though sullied and dishonored, still divine I Dim miniature of greatness absolute ! An heir of glory ! a frail child of dust ! Helpless immortal ! insect infinite ! A worm ! a god ! — I tremble at myself, And in myself am lost. At home a stranger, Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast, And wondering at her own. How reason reels ! Oh ! what a miracle to man is Man ! Triumphantly distressed ! what joy ! what dread ! Alternately transported and alarmed ! What can preserve my life ? or what destroy ? An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave ; Legions of angels can't confine me there !
—Night Thoughts, Night I.
ETERNITY.
Time the supreme ! — Time is eternity, Pregnant with all eternity can give ; Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile. Who murders time, he crushes in the birth A power ethereal, only not adored.
Ah ! how unjust to nature and himself, Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man ! Like children babbling nonsense in their sports. We censure nature for a span too short ;
EDWARD YOUNG 457
That span too short, we tax as tedious, too ; Torture invention, aH expedients tire, To lash the lingering moments into speed, And whirl us (happy riddance !) from ourselves. Art, brainless art ! our furious charioteer (For nature's voice, unstifled, would recall) Drives headlong toward the precipice of death ! Death, most our dread ; death, thus more dreadful
made:
Oh, what a riddle of absurdity ! Leisure is pain ; takes off our chariot-wheels : How heavily we drag the load of life ! Blessed leisure is our curse : like that of Cain, It makes us wander ; wander earth around To fly that tyrant, thought. As Atlas groaned The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour. We cry for mercy to the next amusement : The next amusement mortgages our fields ; Slight inconvenience ! prisons hardly frown, From hateful time if prisons set us free. Yet when Death kindly tenders us relief, We call him cruel ; years to moments shrink, Ages to years. The telescope is turned. To man's false optics (from his folly false) Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings, And seems to creep, decrepit with his age ; Behold him when passed by ; what, then, is seen But his broad pinions, swifter than the winds ; And all mankind, in contradiction strong, Rueful, aghast ! cry out on his career.
Ye well arrayed ! ye lilies of our land ! Ye lilies male ! who neither toil nor spin (As sister lilies might) ; if not so wise As Solomon, more sumptuous to the sight ! Ye delicate ; who nothing can support, Yourselves most insupportable ! for whom The winter rose must blow, the sun put on A brighter beam in Leo ; silky-soft Favonius ! breathe still softer, or be chid ; And other worlds send odors, sauce, and song;
458
EDWARD YOUNG
And robes, and notions, framed in foreign looms 1
O ye Lorenzos of our age ! who deem
One moment unamused a misery
Not made for feeble man ! who call aloud
For every bawble drivelled o'er by sense ;
For rattles and conceits of every cast,
For change of follies and relays of joy,
To drag you patient through the tedious length
Of a short winter's day — say, sages ! say,
Wit's oracles ! say, dreamers of gay dreams !
How will you weather an eternal night
Where such expedients fail ?
THE IMMORTAL AND THE MORTAL LIFE.
E'en silent Night proclaims my soul immortal ;
E'en silent Night proclaims eternal Day ;
For human weal Heaven husbands all events.
Dull Sleep instructs, nor sport vain Dreams in vain.
Why then their loss deplore that are not lost ?
Why wanders wretched Thought their tombs around
In infidel distress ? Are angels there ?
Slumbers — raked up in dust — ethereal fire ?
They live, they greatly live ; a life on earth
Unkindled, unconceived ; and from an eye
Of tenderness let heavenly pity fall
On me, more justly numbered with the dead.
This is the desert, this the solitude.
How populous, how vital is the gravel
This is creation's melancholy vault,
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom ;
The land of apparitions, empty shades !
All, all on earth is shadow ; all beyond
Is substance ; the reverse is folly's creed :
How solid all where change shall be no more !
This is the bud of being, the dim dawn, The twilight of our day, the vestibule. Life's theatre as yet is shut, and Death — Strong Death, alone can heave the massive bar—- This gross impediment of clay remove — And make us, embryos of existence, free For real life. But little more remote
EDWARD YOUNG 45g
Is he — not yet a candidate for light — The future embryo, slumbering in his sire. Embryos we must be till we burst the shell — Yon ambient azure shell — and spring to life, The life of gods, O transport ! and of Man.
Yet man, fool man ! here buries all his thoughts, Inters celestial hopes without one sigh. Prisoners of earth, and pent beneath the moon, Here pinions all his wishes ; winged by Heaven To fly at infinite ; and reach it there Where seraphs gather immortality, On Life's fair tree fast by the throne of God. What golden joys ambrosial clustering glow In His full beam, and ripen for the just, Where momentary ages are no more ! Where Time and Pain and Chance and Death expire !
And is it in the flight of threescore years To push Eternity from human thought, And smother souls immortal in the dust? — A soul immortal, spending all her fires, Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness ; Thrown into tumult, raptured or alarmed, At aught this scene can threaten or indulge, Resembles ocean into tempest wrought, To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.
—Night Thoughts, Night I.
ZANGWILL, ISRAEL, an English novelist, born in 1864. He received his early education at the Jewish Free School, London, and became a teach- er in that institution. His ambition, however, was in the field of literature and journalism, and after teaching for two or three years he accepted a posi- tion on the Ariel, a small comic publication. He then went on the Jewish Standard, contributing personal and editorial paragraphs over the signa- ture of " Marshallik." During his connection with the Standard he became acquainted with the wealthier class of his co-religionists. He was witty at everybody's expense, and his satire was merciless. After several years he severed his connection with the Standard, which was soon thereafter discontinued. He was associated with Harry Quilter on the Universal, and also with Jerome K. Jerome on the Idler. His chief repu- tation, however, rests upon his novels, his first be- ing The Children of the Ghetto, a fine exposition of the character of the London Jew. This was fol- lowed by The Grandchildren of the Ghetto. He has also produced The Bachelors Club (1891); The Big Bow Mystery (1891) ; The Old Maids Club (1892) ; The King of Schnorrers ( 1 893) ; The Master, a not- able success (1895), and Cleo the Magnificent ; or The Muse of the Real (1898).
ISRAEL Z A KG WILL 461
THE DEATH OF BENJY ANSELL.
Coleman was deeply perturbed. He was wondering whether he should plead guilty to a little knowledge, when a change of expression came over the wan face on the pillow. The doctor came and felt the boy's pulse.
" No, I don't want to hear that ' Maase/i,' " cried Ben- jamin. "Tell me about the Sambatyon, father, which refuses to flow on Shabbos."
He spoke Yiddish, grown a child again. Moses's face lit up with. joy. His eldest born had returned to intelligibility. There was hope still, then. A sudden burst of sunshine flooded the room. In London the sun would not break through the clouds for some hours. Moses leaned over the pillow, his face working with blended emotions. He let a hot tear fall on his boy's upturned face.
" Hush, hush, my little Benjamin, don't cry," said Benjamin, and began to sing, in his mother's jargon :
" Sleep, little father, sleep, Thy father shall be a Rov, Thy mother shall bring little apples, Blessings on thy little head."
Moses saw his dead Gittel lulling his boy to sleep. Blinded by his tears, he did not see that they were fall- ing thick upon the little white face.
" Nay, dry thy tears, I tell thee, my little Benjamin," said Benjamin, in tones more tender and soothing, and launched into the strange wailing melody :
" Alas, woe is me ! How wretched to be Driven away and banished, Yet so young, from thee."
" And Joseph's mother called to him from the grave : Be comforted, my son, a great future shall be thine."
" The end is near," Old Four- Eyes whispered to the father in jargon.
462 ISRAEL ZANGWILL
Moses trembled from head to foot. " My poor lamb X My poor Benjamin," he wailed. " I thought thou wouldst say Kaddish after me, not I for thee." Then he began to recite quietly the Hebrew prayers. The hat he should have removed was appropriate enough now.
Benjamin sat up excitedly in bed : " There's Mother. Esther! " he cried in English. " Coming back with mj coat. But what's the use of it now ? "
His head fell back again. Presently a look of yearn- ing came over the face so full of boyish beauty. " Esther," he said, "wouldn't you like to be in the green country to-day? Look how the sun shines!"
It shone indeed, with deceptive warmth, bathing in gold the green country that stretched beyond, and daz- zling the eyes of the dying boy. The birds twittered outside the window.
" Esther," he said wistfully, " do you think there'll be another funeral soon ?"
The matron burst into tears and turned away-
"Benjamin," cried the father, frantically, think'og the end had come, " say the Shemang."
The boy stared at him, a clearer look in his eye*.
" Say the Shemang ! " said Moses, peremptorily. The word Shemang) the old, authoritative tone, penetrated the consciousness of the dying boy.
" Yes, father, I was just going to," he grumbled, sub- missively.
They repeated the last declaration of the dying Israel- ite together. It was in Hebrew. " Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." Both understood that.
Benjamin lingered on a few more minutes, and died in a painless torpor.
" He is dead," said the doctor.
" Blessed be the true J !Tdge," said Moses. He rent his coat and closed the staring eyes. Then he went to the toilet-table and turned the looking-glass to the wall, and opened the window and emptied the jug of water upon the green, sunlit grass. — Children of the Ghetto,
£MILE ZOLA.
ZOLA, EMILE, a noted French novelist and dramatist, born in Paris on the 2d of April, 1840; died on the 2pth of September, 1902. His par- ents soon removed to Aix, where his father, an engineer of reputation, was employed on the con- struction of the canal which still bears his name. In 1858 Zola returned to Paris, studied at the Lycee St. Louis, and obtained employment in the publishing house of Hachette & Co., with which he remained connected until 1865. In 1898 his name was brought into prominence through his connection with the celebrated Dreyfus case. As a result of the defence of the captain he was sentenced to im- prisonment, and fined 3,000 francs. His first book, Con/*s & Ninon, appeared in 1864. He then re- solved to devote himself to authorship, and put forth in rapid succession La Confession de Claude (1865) ; Voeu d'une Morte (1866) ; Mes Haines, a col- lection of literary and artistic conversations (1866); Les My stores de Marseille, Manet, and The'- rese Raquin (1867), and Madeleine Fe"rat (1868). His series of romances, Les Rougon Macquart, Histoire Naturelle et Socialed'une Famille sous le Second Em- pire, in which he turns all the mud of human nature to the sun, comprises La Fortune des Rougon (1871); La Cure'e (1874); La Conqutte de Plassans (1874); L Assommoir (1874-77) ; Le Ventre de Paris (1875) ; La Faute de I' Abbe1 Mouret (1875); Son Excellence Eugene Rougon (1876); Une Pagt
484 EMILE ZOLA
d* Amour (1878); Nana(iSSo); Pot-Bouille (1882); Au Bonheur des Dames (1883); La Joie de Vivre (1884) ; Germinal, LCEuvre, La Terre (1887), and Le R$ve (1888), the last-mentioned book being so un- like the others that it has been called " a snow- drop among weeds." Zola has dramatized The"- rese Raquin, and has published two other dramas, Les He'ritiers Rabourdin and Le Bouton de Rose. His critical works, Le Roman Experimental and Le Naturalisme au Theatre, give his theory of the sphere of romance and the drama. His later works include La Bete Humaine (1890) ; L Argent (1891) ; La de Bdele (1892) ; Le Docteur Pascal (ity^) ; Lourdes (1894) ; Rome (1895) ; Paris (1898).
A WAIF IN THE STORM.
During the hard winter of 1860 the Oise froze, deep snows covered the plains of lower Picardy, and on Christmas Day a sudden storm from the Northeast almost buried Beaumont. The snow began to fall in the morning, fell twice as fast toward evening, and was massed in heavy drifts during the night. In the upper town, at the end of the Street of the Goldsmiths, bounded by the north face of the cathedral transept, the snow, driven by the wind, was engulfed, and beaten against the door of St. Agnes, that antique, half Gothic portal, rich with sculptures under the bareness of the gable. At dawn the next day it was more than three feet deep.
The street still slumbered after the festivities of the night. Six o'clock struck. In the shadows which tinged with blue the slow, dizzying fall of the snow- flakes, a solitary, irresolute form gave sign of life, a tiny nine-year-old girl, who had taken refuge under the arch- way of the entrance and had passed the night there shivering. She was clad in tatters, her head wrapped in a rag of foulard, her bare feet thrust into a man's large
&MILE ZOLA 465
shoes. She must have stranded there after long wan- dering in the town, for she had fallen from weariness. The end of all things seemed to have come for her ; nothing was left but abandonment, gnawing hunger, killing cold. Choked with the heavy beating of her heart, she had ceased to struggle. There remained only the physical recoil, the instinctive change of place, of sinking down among those old stones when a squall drove the snow in a whirlwind about her. . . .
Since the bells had struck eight and the day had ad- vanced, nothing had protected her. If she had not trod- den it down the snow would have reached her shoulders. The antique door behind her was tapestried as if with ermine, white as an altar at the foot of the gray facade, so bare and smooth that not a flake clung there. The great saints on the splay above were robed in it from their feet to their white locks, glistening with purity. Higher still the scenes on the ceiling, the lesser saints in the vaults, rose in ridges traced with a line of white upon the sombre background, up to the crowning rapt- ure, the marriage of St. Agnes, which the archangels seemed to celebrate in a shower of white roses. Upright on her pillar, with her white palm-branch, her white lamb, the statue of the child martyr stood in stainless purity, her body of unsullied snow, in a motionless ri» gidity of cold that froze about her the mystical darts of triumphant virginity. And at her feet stood the other, the forlorn child, white as snow like herself, stif- fened as if of stone, no longer distinguishable from the saints.
And now the clattering of a blind thrown back along the sleeping house-fronts made her raise her eyes. It came from the right, at the first floor of the house ad- joining the cathedral. A pretty woman, a brunette about forty years old, had just leaned out, and despite the cruel cold, she paused a moment with bare, out- stretched arm, as she saw the child move. Compas- sionate surprise saddened her calm face. Then with a shiver she closed the window, carrying with her from that swift glance under the shred of foulard, the vision of a blond waif with violet eyes, a long neck with the grace of a lily, falling shoulders ; but blue with cold,
466 £MILE ZOLA
her tiny hands and feet half-dead, nothing living about her but the light vapor of her breath.
The child remained with upraised eyes fixed on the house, a narrow house of a single story, very old, built toward the close of the fifteenth century. It was sealed so closely to the flank of the cathedral between two buttresses, that it looked like a wart between two toes of a colossus. Situated thus it was admirably protected, with its stone base, its front of wooden panels decorated with simulated bricks, its roof with timbers hanging a metre wide over the gable, its turret with projecting staircase at the left angle, and narrow window that still retained the lead placed there of old. Nevertheless age had necessitated repair. The covering of tiles dated from Louis XIV. It was easy to distinguish the work done at that epoch : a dormer-window pierced in the turret, small wooden sashes replacing everywhere those of the primitive large windows, the three clustered bays of the first floor reduced to two, the middle one being filled up with brick, which gave to the facade the sym- metry of the other more recent constructions in the street. On the ground floor the modifications were as plainly visible ; a carved oaken door in place of the old one of iron-work under the staircase, and the grand central archway, of which the bottom, the sides, and the apex filled up with mason-work in such a way as to leave only a rectangular opening, a sort of large window in- stead of the pointed arch that had formerly opened on the pavement.
The child, looking dully at the master-artisan's ven- erable and well-kept dwelling, saw nailed beside the door, at the left, a yellow sign bearing the words "Hu- bert, chasuble-maker," in ancient black letters. Again the noise of an opening shutter caught her attention. This time it was the shutter of the square window on the first floor. A man in his turn leaned out, with anxious face, nose like an eagle's beak, a rugged fore- head crowned with thick hair, already white, though he was scarcely forty-five years old ; and he also paused for a moment to look at her with a sorrowful quiver of his large, tender mouth. Then she saw him remain Standing behind the small greenish window-panes. He
£MILE ZOLA 467
turned and beckoned ; his pretty wife reappeared, and they stood side by side motionless, looking steadily at her with an expression of deep sadness. . . .
Troubled by their gaze, the child shrank farther be- hind St. Agnes's pillar. She was disquieted, too, by the walking in the street, the shops opening, the people beginning to stir. The Street of the Goldsmiths, whose end was buttressed against the lateral wall of the church, would have been a veritable blind alley stopped up on the side by the Hubert dwelling, if the Rue Soleil, a nar- row passage, had not opened on the other side, threading along the opposite flank to the grand facade, the place of the Cloisters ; and now there passed by this way two devotees who cast an astonished glance on the little pauper whom they did not know. . . .
But ashamed of her desolate condition as of a fault, the child drew back still farther, when all at once she saw before her Hubertine, who, having no maid, was going out herself for bread.
"What are you doing there, little one?"
The child did not answer ; she hid her face. But her limbs were benumbed, her senses swam as if her heart, turned to ice, had stood still. When the good woman with a gesture of pity turned away she sank upon her knees, her strength all gone, and slid helplessly down in the snow whose flakes were silently burying her. And the woman coming back with her hot bread, saw her lying thus upon the floor.
" Let us see, little one ; you cannot be left under that gateway," said she. Then Hubert, who had come out and was standing on the threshold of the house, took the bread, saying : " Take her up : bring her in."
Hubertine, without replying, lifted her in her strong arms. And the child drew back no more, but was carried like a lifeless thing, her teeth set, her eyes closed, benumbed with the cold, light as a little bird that has fallen out of the nest. — The Dream.
In February, 1898, Zola was fined and sentenced to a year's imprisonment for criticising1 a court- martial which found a Jewish officer guilty of sell- ing French military secrets to the German Gov-
l. xxiv
ZOROASTER, or ZARATHUSHTRA, a Bactrian or Persian philosopher, founder of the Perso- Iranian religion. He lived in a period of such remote antiquity that he seems to us to-day to be rather a myth than a real historical personage. According to the Zend-Avesta, he lived dur- ing the reign of Vitacpa, whom some writers identify with Hystaspes, the father of Darius I. Assuming this to be approximately true, Zoroas- ter lived between five and six hundred years be- fore Christ. Some writers say he lived 1,500 years before the Christian Era. The earliest Greek writer to mention him is Plato. Accord- ing to Aristotle and others, he lived 5,000 years before Plato. Niebuhr regards him solely as a myth. Tradition regards him as a legislator, prophet, pontiff, and philosopher. The doctrines in the Zend-Avesta are ascribed to him, and pro- fess to be the revelations of Ormuzd, made to his servant Zoroaster. He teaches that the universe is a constant scene of conflict between the good and the bad; that each of these principles pos- sesses creative power, but the good is eternal and will finally triumph over the bad, which will then sink with all its followers into darkness, its native element. He also believed in an infinite Deity called Time Without Bounds. The religion of Zoroaster has degenerated into an idolatrous worship of fire and the sun.
ZOROASTER
ORMU2D AND AHRIMAN.
469
Both these Heavenly Beings, the Twins, gave first of
themselves to understand Both the good and the evil in thoughts, words, and
works ; Rightly do the wise distinguish between them, not so
the imprudent.
When both these Heavenly Beings came together, in
order to create at first
Life and perishability, and as the world should be at last ; The evil for the bad, the Best Spirit for the pure.
Of these two Heavenly Beings, the bad chose the evil,
acting thereafter ; The Holiest Spirit, which prepared the very firm heaven,
chose the pure, And those who make Ahura contented with manifest
actions, believing in Mazda. — From the Zend-Avesta, Thirtieth Section of the Ya$na.
A PRAYER.
I desire by my prayer with uplifted hand this joy : First, the entirely pure works of the Holy Spirit, Mazda, Then, the understanding of Vohu-mano, and that which rejoices the soul of the Bull.
I draw near to You, O Ahura-Mazda, with good-mind- edness.
Give me for both these worlds, the corporeal as well as the spiritual,
Gifts arising out of purity, which make joyful in bright- ness.
I praise you first, O Asha and Vohu-mano,
And Ahura-Mazda, to whom belongs an imperishable
kingdom ; May Armaiti, to grant gifts, come hither at my call !
— From the Zend-Avesta, Twenty-eighth Sec- tion of the Ya^na.
ZORRILLA Y MORAL, Jos£,a Spanish poet, born at Valladolid, February 21, 1817; died at Madrid, January 22, 1893. He was educated at Toledo and Valladolid ; and having studied law he entered the office of a justice of the peace in his native city. His father, himself a noted law- yer, opposed the son's choice of occupation ; whereupon the young man ran away to Madrid. At the age of twenty he repeated an elegy at the funeral of the poet Larra, which was so well re- ceived that his father forgave his disobedience and a permanent reconciliation was effected. In the same year the young poet issued his first col lection of verse. He left Spain in 1845, and after a stay in Brussels and another in Paris, he went to Mexico, where, in 1853, he was made director of the theatre, for which he wrote a number of com- edies that were well received throughout the country. He next found employment in the house- hold of the Emperor Maximilian, in whose praise he wrote adulatory verses which made their author so unpopular with the patriots of Mexico that in 1865 he departed finally for his native land. His published works include Cantos del Travador \ 1 84 1 ) ; Flores Perdidas ( 1 843) ; El Zapatero y el Rey 11844); his best comedy, Granada (1853); his best poem, Pocma Religioso ( 1 869) ; &&& Album de un Loco (1877). Several collections of the works ol Zor-
JOSE MORAL Y ZORRILLA 471
rilla have been published in Madrid and in Paris. He was crowned poet in the Alhambra in 1889.
Larousse speaks of him as " the most celebrated and at the same time the most popular of the Spanish poets of our time."
THE CATHEDRAL OF TOLEDO.
This massive form, sculptured in mountain stones, As it once issued from the earth profound,
Monstrous in stature, manifold in tones Of incense, light, and music spread around.
This an unquiet people still doth throng,
With pious steps, and heads bent down in fear, —
Yet not so noble as through ages long, Is old Toledo's sanctuary austere.
Glorious in other days, it stands alone,
Mourning the worship of more Christian years,
Like to a fallen queen, her empire gone, Wearing a crown of miseries and tears.
Or like a mother, hiding griefs unseen, She calls her children to her festivals,
And triumphs still — despairing, yet serene — With swelling organs and with pealing bells.
Through the long nave is heard the measured tread Of the old priest, who early matins keeps,
His sacred robe, in rustling folds outspread, Over the echoing pavement sweeps —
A sound awaking, like a trembling breath
Of earnest yet unconscious prayer, Uprising from thick sepulchres beneath,
A voice from Christian sleepers there.
Upon the altars burns the holy fire,
The censers swing on grating chains of gold,
And from the farther depths of the dark choir Chants in sublimest echoings are rolled.
472 JOSE MORAL Y ZORRILLA
The people come in crowds, and, bending lowly, Thank their great Maker for his mercies given ;
Then raise their brows, flushed with emotion holy — About them beams the light of opening heaven.
The priest repeats full many a solemn word, Made sacred to devotion through all time ;
The people kneel again, as each is heard,
Each cometh fraught with memories sublime.
The organ, from its golden trumpets blowing, Swells with their robust voices through the aisles,
As from a mountain-fall wild waters flowing, Roll in sonorous waves and rippling smiles.
ZSCHOKKE, JOHANN HEINRICH DANIEL, a German - Swiss historian and novelist, born at Magdeburg, Prussia, March 22, 1771 ; died at Biberach, near Aarau, Switzerland, June 27, 1848. At seventeen he ran away from school and joined a company of strolling players, with whom he remained for some years. Afterward he en- tered the University of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, where in 1/92 he became a tutor, and in 1793 wrote the romance Abdllino, the Great Bandit, which he also dramatized. In both forms it was very popular in its time. In 1795 he applied for a regular professorship at Frankfort, but this was refused on account of something which he had written against the edict of the Prussian Govern- ment in respect to religion. He thereupon took up his residence in Switzerland, where he became a citizen, opened a successful private school, and during many years held important civic positions, through all the mutations of the time. In 1828 he published an edition of his Select Works in forty volumes, to which many more were subse- quently added. He wrote numerous tales, many of which have been translated into English, and some of them — as The Journal of a Poor Vicar and The Gold-maker's Village— have become classics in our language. Among his historical works is The History of Switzerland, which has been trans- lated by Francis G. Shaw, of Boston, tie also
(473)
474 J OH ANN HEINRICH DANIEL ZSCHOKKE
put forth a very readable Autobiography. His Hours of Devotion originally appeared in weekly fly-leaves during eight years (1809-16). He afterward made a revised selection of these papers, with a characteristic preface, in one large volume, which has been translated by Mr. Bur- rows. The Hours of Devotion was a great favorite of Queen Victoria, and soon after the death of Prince Albert a portion of it was newly trans- lated, and sumptuously published under her aus- pices under the title, Meditations on Death.
WILLIAM TELL AND GESSLER.
The Bailiff, Hermann Gessler, was not easy ; because he had an evil conscience it seemed to him that the people began to raise their heads, and to show more and more boldness. Therefore he set the ducal hat of Aus- tria upon a pole in Uri, and ordered that every one who passed before it should do it reverence. By this means he wished to discover who was opposed to Austria. And William Tell, the archer of Burglen, one of the men of Riitli, passed before it, but he did not bow. He was immediately carried to the Bailiff, who angrily said :
"Insolent archer, I will punish thee by means of thine own craft. I will place an apple on the head of thy little son ; shoot it off, and fail not."
And they bound the child, and placed an apple on his head, and led the archer far away. He took aim — the bow-string twanged, the arrow pierced the apple. All the people shouted for joy ; but Gessler said to the archer : " Why didst thou take a second arrow ? " Tell answered : " If the first had not pierced the apple, the second would assuredly have pierced thy heart."
This terrified the Bailiff, and he ordered the archer to be seized, and carried to a boat in which he was himself about to embark for Kiissnacht. He did not think it prudent to imprison Tell in Uri, on account of the people ; but to drag him into foreign captivity was
J OH ANN HEINRICH DANIEL ZSCHOKKE 475
contrary to the privileges of the country. Therefore the Bailiff feared an assembling of the people, and has- tily departed, in spite of a strong head-wind. The sea rose and the waves dashed foaming over the boat, so that all were alarmed and the boatmen disheartened. The farther they went on the lake the greater was the danger of death ; for the steep mountains rose from the abyss of waters, like walls to the heavens. In great anxiety Gessler ordered the fetters to be removed from Tell, that he — an experienced steersman — might take the helm. But Tell steered toward the bare flank of the Axenberg, where a naked rock projects, like a small shell, into the lake. There was a shock — a spring ; Tell was on the rock — the boat out upon the lake.
The freed man climbed the mountains and fled across the land of Schwytz ; and he thought in his troubled heart : "Whither can I fly from the wrath of the tyrant ? Even if I escape from his pursuit, he has my wife and child in my house as hostages. What may not Gessler do to my family, when Landenberg put out the eyes of the old man of Melchthal on account of a servant's broken fingers ? Where is the judgment-seat before which I can cite Gessler, when the king himself no lon- ger listens to the complaints of the people ? As law has no authority, and there is none to judge between thee and me, thou and I, Gessler, are both without law, and self-preservation is our only judge. Either my inno- cent wife and child, and Fatherland, must fall, or — Bailiff Gessler — thou ! Fall thou, and let liberty prevail."
So thought Tell ; and with bow and arrow fled toward Kiissnacht, and hid in the hollow-way near the village. Thither came the Bailiff ; there the bow-string twanged ; there the free arrow pierced the tyrant's heart. The whole people shouted for joy when they learned the death of the oppressor. Tell's deed increased their courage — but the night of the New Year had not come. — History of Switzerland.
THE BLOODLESS DELIVERANCE OF SWITZERLAND.
The New Year's Night came. One of the young men who had taken the oath at Riitli went to the castle of
476 JO H ANN HEINRICH DANIEL ZSCHOKKE
Rossburg in Oberwalden, where lived a young girl be- loved by him. With a rope the young girl drew him up from the castle-ditch into her chamber. Twenty others were waiting below, whom the first drew up also. When all had entered, they mastered the steward and his ser- vants, and the whole castle.
When it was day, Landenberg left the royal castle near Sarnen, to attend mass. Twenty men of Unter- walden met him, bearing, as customary presents, fowls, goats, lambs, and other New Year's gifts. The Bailiff, in a friendly manner, told them to enter the castle. When under the gate, one of them sounded his horn. At once all drew forth sharp spear-heads, which they fastened upon their staves, and took the castle ; while thirty others who had been hidden in a neighboring thicket came to their assistance. Landenberg fled ter- rified over the meadows toward Alpnach. But they took him, and made him and all his people swear to leave the Waldstatten forever. Then they permitted him to retire to Lucerne. No injury was done to any- one. High blazed the bonfires on the Alps. With the people of Schwytz, Staffaucher went to the Lake of Lowerz, and seized the castle of Schwanau. The people of Uri marched out, and Gessler's tower was taken by assault. That was Freedom's New Year's Day.
On the following Sunday, deputies from the three districts assembled, and with an oath renewed their original bond for ten years ; and the bond was to en- dure forever, and to be often renewed. They had re- assumed their ancient rights, had shed no drop of blood, and had done no harm to any in the land — History cj Switzerland.
ZWINGLI, ULRIC or HULDREICH, a noted Swiss reformer and co-laborer with Calvin in es- tablishing the Protestant Church, born at Wild- haus, in the canton of St. Gall, Switzerland, Jan- uary i, 1484; killed in battle at Kappel, October 11, 1531. His father's brother was parish priest of Wildhaus, and afterward Dean of Wesen ; his mother was sister of the abbot of a cloister in Thurgau. He was sent to school at Wesen and Basel, and then to the high school at Berne, where he gained his enduring love for classical literature. After two years' study in Vienna (1500-2) he returned to Basel, where from the renowned Thomas Wyttenbach he imbibed the evangelical views which later he developed and defended in the crisis of the Reformation. At the age of twenty-two he was ordained by the Bishop of Constance, and was appointed to the parish of Glarus. Here, by vigorous denunci- ation, he induced the authorities of the canton of Zurich to abolish the mercenary and immoral practice of hiring out the Swiss troops to neigh- boring states. Having been transferred in 1516 to Einsedeln, then and still a resort for pilgrims to the image of the Virgin and Child, which has stood there for a thousand years, he publicly at- tacked the practice of such worshipping pilgrim- ages as superstitious, and declined the promotion
1477)
47* ULRIC Z WING LI
with which Rome sought to buy his silence. In 1518 he accepted his election as preacher in the cathedral at Zurich on pledge being given that his liberty in preaching should not be restricted. This liberty he soon proceeded to use by de- nouncing the sale of indulgences, and discrediting fasting and the celibacy of the clergy. The stir which this caused among the people brought in terference by Pope Adrian, with a demand that the Zurichers should abandon Zvvingli. The re- former procured from the Council of Constance in 1523 permission for a public disputation of the questions involved, at which the sixty-seven theses which he maintained against Rome were upheld r>y the Council. The result was the legal estab- lishment of the Reformation in that canton.
In January, 1528, a public disputation to which Zwingli had challenged the Roman Catholics of Berne was held in that city ; and so vigorous was the presentation of the Protestant cause that the Bernese acceded to the Reformation. But, in the subsequent management of cantonal relations by the Protestant authorities of Zurich, Zwingli's earnest advice was disregarded ; a religious truce was patched up with guaranties of toleration which never were observed in the Roman Catho- lic cantons. These cantons, indeed, prepared se- cretly for war, and in 1531 marched suddenly on Zurich, whose troops, hastily gathered, and largely outnumbered in the conflict at Kappel, were de- feated. Zwingli, present as chaplain, was wounded by a lance while stooping to a dying soldier, and, it is said, was killed, unrecognized except as a heretic,
ULRIC Z WING LI 479
as he ray on the field after the battle. The vie- tors, discovering who he was, burned his body and scattered His ashes to the winds. The spot of his death was marked in 1838 by a great granite bowlder roughly squared.
Zwingli's views are fully expressed in the First Helvetic Confession (1536). They present the Re- formed, or the extreme Protestant, as distinguished from the Lutheran doctrine — being more uncom- promising in ascribing to Holy Scripture supreme authority over all traditions and all Church order- ings, and more thorough in demanding that re- form should be carried through all government and discipline as well as theology. Zwingli gave a full development to the general tendency of his times to identify the government of the Church with that of the State. In nearly all other re- spects his views were surprisingly in advance of his century, and had much in common with those held by the liberal evangelical churches of the present day. His chief difference with Luther — and one which unfortunately called forth Luther's bitter antagonism — was on the theory of the Lord's Supper, which observance he reduced from a mys- terious sacrament to an ordinance of Christ for the simple commemoration in faith of the atoning sacrifice. He denied that in any real and proper sense the body and blood of Christ are present in the bread and the wine ; yet with his idea of " faith " as not merely a belief in doctrines about Christ, but as chiefly a loving trust in Christ as a living Person, he gained a certain " real presence" of the living Lord at the chief commemorative
480 ULRIC Z WING LI
Christian observance. Zwingli's view is probably advancing now in more than one denomination ; but it seems to have failed to maintain itself fully in Switzerland after his death — the view of Calvin having gained wider adherence among the Re- formed churches.
Zwingli's writings do not show Calvin's pene- trating and iron logic, nor Luther's mighty and passionate sweep. But they give forcible and di- rect expression of an absolutely sincere and fear- less spirit awaking in what was, to him, the morn- ing light of an evangelical faith.
Among his works are Of the True and False Religion (1525); The Providence of God (1530); A Brief Exposition of the Christian Faith (1531); The First Helvetic Confession (compiled 1536); The Last Supper of Christ, On Baptism, and a treatise on Education.
EDUCATION AND PUBLIC LIFE FROM A SCRIPTURAL POINT OF VIEW.
The moral nature of the youth having been strength- ened by faith, the next in order is to discipline his mind, that he may be of help and use to his fellow-men. This can be best done if he acquaint himself with the Word of God. However, for a thorough understanding of the Scriptures a mastery of Hebrew and Greek is necessary ; for without a knowledge of these languages neither the Old nor the New Testament can be clearly understood. But since the Latin language is in universal use, it must not be neglected ; for, although it is of less service than Hebrew and Greek in the understanding of the Script- ures, it is of great importance in public life. There are also occasions where we are obliged to defend the cause of Christ among those speaking Latin. However, a Christian should not degrade these languages for the
ULRIC Z WING LI 48t
purpose of acquiring earthly gain or for pure intellect- ual enjoyment ; for language is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
As indicated fcbove, the language to be studied next to Latin is Greek, principally for the sake of a thorough grounding in the New Testament ; for it seems to me that the doctrines of Christ have not been treated so carefully and thoroughly by the Latin as by the Greek fathers. Hence the youthful student is to be taken to the fountain-head. But in acquiring Latin and Greek, one must fortify himself through faith and innocence ; for many things are contained in the literature of these languages which are apt to be hurtful ; as for example, petulance, ambition, a warlike spirit, useless knowledge, vain wisdom, and the like. Nevertheless, like Ulysses of old, the youthful student, if forewarned, can pass by all these tempting powers unscathed, if, at the first siren sound, he call out to himself, in warning tones : " Thou hearest this that thou mayest flee, thatthou canst be on thy guard, and not that thou mayest indulge thyself."
I have placed Hebrew last because Latin is now every- where in use, and Greek would naturally follow it. Oth- erwise I should have assigned the first place to He- brew, for the reason that he who is not acquainted with its idiomatic peculiarities will, in many instances, have difficulty in ascertaining the true meaning of the Greek text.
With such mental furnishings every youthful student is to be provided who would possess himself of that heavenly wisdom with which no earthly knowledge can be compared. But with it he must combine an humble, though aspiring, state of mind. He will then find models for a righteous life, especially Christ, the most perfect and complete pattern of all virtues. When he has become fully acquainted with Christ as He presents Himself in His teachings and deeds, he will become so thoroughly imbued with Him that he will endeavor to exhibit His virtues in all his work, plans, and actions ; at least, as far as it is possible for human weakness to do. From Christ he will also learn to speak and to be silent at the proper times. He will be ashamed in his young- er years to speak of things which pertain to the expe- rience of age, seeing that even Christ did opt dispute
482 ULRIC Z WING LI
until He was thirty years old, although in His twelfth year He gave proof of the powers of His mind before the scribes. By this we are taught not to appear in public at too early an age, but rather to think about great and godly things while young, and thus to ac- quaint ourselves with them.
Shall I warn a Christian youth against avarice and ambition, when these vices were considered despicable even among the ancient heathens? Whoever is given to avarice will not become a Christian ; for this vice has not only ruined individuals, but has also annihilated flourishing empires, demolished powerful cities, and destroyed every republic that has been infected by it. Whenever it overpowers a human being, it stifles every noble aspiration. Avarice is a fatal poison, which is spreading rapidly and has become one of our powerful adversaries. Yet through Christ we are enabled to over- come it if we are His earnest followers ; for He Himself has battled with and overcome this vice.
I will not speak against fencing, although I think that it behooves a Christian to abstain from the use of arms as far as is compatible with public peace and safety. For God, who crowned David with victory when he met Goliath with no other weapon than a sling, and who protected the defenceless Israelites against the pursuing enemy, will also keep and protect us ; or, if He sees fit to do so, He can strengthen our hands and fit us for the strife. Hence, if the youth would practise fencing, let it be for the purpose of defending his native country and protecting his own kin.
Finally, I would that all youth, especially those that are intended for holy orders, might think as the inhabi- tants of ancient Massilia did, who admitted only those to citizenship that had learned a trade, by means of which they were able to provide for their own necessities. If this rule were enforced among us, idleness, the cause of all wantonness, would soon be eradicated from our midst, and our bodies would become much healthier and stronger. — Education ; translation of VICTOR WILKER ex- pressly for THE LIBRARY OF UNIVERSAL LITERATURE.
•B^p
mm
¥
PN
6013 R5 1399
Ridpath, John Clark (ed.) The Ridpath library of universal literature • cclassic edition de luxeD
PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY