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| Table of Contents | |
| Section | Page |
| Start of eBook | 1 |
| Project Gutenberg’s Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859, by Various | 1 |
| 1 | |
| AGRARIANISM. | 1 |
| BULLS AND BEARS. | 15 |
| CHAPTER XIX. | 15 |
| CHAPTER XX. | 17 |
| CHAPTER XXI. | 21 |
| CHAPTER XXII. | 26 |
| CHAPTER XXIII. | 30 |
| PRAYER FOR LIFE. | 34 |
| TWO SNIFFS. | 45 |
| PALFREY’S AND ARNOLD’S HISTORIES.[A] | 60 |
| DRIFTING. | 75 |
| ENTRANCE. | 76 |
| CHAPTER II. | 81 |
| A LETTER TO A DYSPEPTIC. | 91 |
| THE UTAH EXPEDITION: | 104 |
| OUR SKATER BELLE. | 126 |
| ON TUESDAY NEXT | 127 |
| THE AFFECTING SCENE | 127 |
| OR | 127 |
| THE MINISTER’S WOOING. | 142 |
| CHAPTER X. | 142 |
| CHAPTER XI | 149 |
| REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES. | 155 |
| RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS. | 174 |
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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 [Date last updated: August 7, 2005]
Author: Various
Release Date: March 9, 2004 [EBook #11525]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of this project gutenberg EBOOK Atlantic monthly, no. 18 ***
Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Tonya Allen and PG Distributed Proofreaders
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A magazine of literature, art, and politics.
Vol. III.—April, 1859.—No. XVIII.
If we can believe an eminent authority, in which we are disposed to place great trust, the oldest contest that has divided society is that which has so long been waged between the House of have and the House of want. It began before the bramble was chosen king of the trees, and it has outlasted the cedars of Lebanon. We find it going on when Herodotus wrote his History, and the historians of the nineteenth century will have to continue writing of the actions of the parties to it. There seems never to have been a time when it was not old, or a race that was not engaged in it, from the Tartars, who cook their meat by making saddle-cloths of it, to the Sybarites, impatient of crumpled rose-leaves. Spartan oligarchs and Athenian democrats, Roman patricians and Roman plebeians, Venetian senators and Florentine ciompi, Norman nobles and Saxon serfs, Russian boyars and Turkish spahis, Spanish hidalgos and Aztec soldiers, Carolina slaveholders and New England farmers,—these and a hundred other races or orders have all been parties to the great, the universal struggle which has for its object the acquisition of property, the providing of a shield against the ever-threatening fiend which we call want. Property once obtained, the possessor’s next aim is to keep it. The very fact, that the mode of acquisition may have been wrong, and subversive of property-rights, if suffered to be imitated, naturally makes its possessor suspicious and cruel. He fears that the measure he has meted to others may be meted to him again. Hence severe laws, the monopoly of political power and of political offices by property-holders, the domination of conquering races, and the practice of attributing to all reformers designs against property and its owners, though the changes they recommend may
But what is Agrarianism, and who are Agrarians? Though the words are used as glibly as the luring party-terms of the passing year, it is no very easy matter to define them. Indeed, it is by no means an easy thing to affix a precise and definite meaning to any political terms, living or dead. Let the reader endeavor to give a clear and intelligible definition of Whig and Tory, Democrat and Republican, Guelph and Ghibelline, Cordelier and Jacobin, and he will soon find that he has a task before him calculated to test his powers very severely. How much more difficult, then, must it be to give the meaning of words that are never used save in a reproachful sense, which originated in political battles that were fought nearly two thousand years ago, and in a state of society having small resemblance to anything that has ever been known to Christendom! With some few exceptions, party-names continue to have their champions long after the parties they belonged to are as dead as the Jacobites. Many Americans would not hesitate to defend the Federalists, or to eulogize the Federal party, though Federalism long ago ceased even to cast a shadow. The prostitution of the Democratic name has lessened in but a slight degree the charm that has attached to it ever since Jefferson’s
Twenty-five years have elapsed since Mr. Hamilton put forth this alarming question, and some recent events have brought it to men’s minds, who had laughed at it in the year of grace 1833. We have seen Agrarian movements in New York, demonstrations of “Workies,” but nothing was said by those engaged in them of that great leveller, brandy, though its properties are probably better known to them than those of water. They have been dignified with the name of “bread riots,” and the great English journal that exercises a sort of censorship over governments and nations has gravely complimented us on the national progress we have made, as evidenced in the existence here of a starving population! One hardly knows whether to fret or to smile over so provoking a specimen of congratulation. Certainly, if a nation cannot grow old without bringing the producing classes to beggary, the best thing that could happen to it would be to die young, like men loved of the gods, according to the ancient idea. Whether such is the inevitable course of national life or not, we are confident that what took place a few months ago in New York had nothing to do with Agrarianism in reality,—using the word after the manner of the alarmists. It belonged to the ordinary bald humbug of American politics. It so happened that one of those “crises” which come to pass occasionally in all business communities occurred at precisely the time when a desperate political adventurer was making desperate efforts to save himself from that destruction to which he had been doomed by all good men in the city that he had misgoverned. What more natural than that he should seek to avail himself of the distress of the people? The trick is an old one,—as old as political contention itself. Was it not Napoleon who attributed revolutions to the belly?—and he knew something of the matter. The “bread riots” were neither more nor less than “political demonstrations,” got up for the purpose of aiding Mr. Wood, and did not originate in any hostility to property on the part of the people. It is not improbable that some of those who were engaged in them were really anxious to obtain work,—were moved by fear of starvation; but such was not the case with the leaders, who were “well-dressed, gentlemanly men,” according to an eye-witness, with excellent cigars in their mouths to create a thirst that Champagne alone could cure. The juste milieu of brandy, so favored in 1832, if we can believe Mr. Hamilton, was not thought of in 1857. A quarter of a century had made a change in the popular taste. Perhaps the temperance reformation had had something to do with it. The whole thing was as complete a farce as ever was seen at an American or an English election, and those who were engaged in it are now sincerely ashamed of their failure. If foreigners will have it that it was an outbreak of Agrarianism, the first in a series of outrages against property, so be it. Let them live in the enjoyment of the delusion. Nations, like individuals, seem to find pleasure in the belief that others are as miserable as themselves.
Of that feeling which is known as Agrarianism we believe there is far less in the United States now than there was at the time when Mr. Hamilton was here, and for a few years after that time. From about the year 1829 to 1841, there was in our politics a large infusion of Socialism. We then had parties, or factions, based on the distinctions that exist in the social state, and those organizations had considerable influence in our elections. The Workingmen’s party was a powerful body in several Northern States, and, to an observer who was not familiar with our condition, it well might wear the appearance of an Agrarian body. No intelligent American, however, fell into such an error. It was evident to the native observer, that the Workingmen’s party, while aiming at certain reforms which it deemed necessary for the welfare of the laboring classes, had no felonious purposes in view to the prejudice of property,—and this for the plain reason, that most workingmen were property-owners themselves. Few of them had much, but still fewer had nothing, and the aggregate of their possessions was immense. They would have been the greatest losers, had there been a social convulsion, for they would have lost everything. Then they were intelligent men in the ordinary affairs of life, and knew that the occurrence of any such convulsion would, first of all, cut off, not only their means of acquisition, but the very sources of their livelihood. Industry wilts under revolutionary movement, as vegetation under the sirocco, and they bring to the multitude anything but a realization of Utopian dreams. In the long run, there has rarely been a revolution which has not worked beneficially for the mass of mankind; but the earliest effects of every revolution are to them bad, and eminently so. It is to this fact that we must look for an explanation of the slowness with which the masses move against any existing order of things, even when they are well aware that it treats them with singular injustice. For nothing can be better established than that no revolution was ever the work of the body of the people,—of the majority. Revolutions are made by minorities, by orders, by classes, by individuals, but never by the people. The people may be dragged into them, but they never take the initiative even in those movements which are called popular, and which are supposed to have only popular ends in view. That very portion of mankind who are most feared by timid men of property are those who are the last to act in any of the great games which mark the onward course of the world. Complain they do, and often bitterly, of the inequalities of society, but action is not their strong point.
The American observer of 1829-41 would have seen, too, in the Workingmen’s party, and in other similar organizations, only sections of the Democratic party. They were the light troops of the grand army of Democracy, the velites who skirmished in front of the legions. They never controlled the Democratic party; but it is undeniable that they did color its policy, and give a certain tone to its sentiment, at a very important period of American history. The success of President Jackson, in that political contest which is known as “the Bank War,” was entirely owing to the support which he received from the workingmen of some two or three States; and it is quite probable that the shrewd men who then managed the Democratic party were induced to enter upon that war by their knowledge of the exalted condition of political opinion in those States. For their own purposes, they turned to account sentiments that might have worked dangerously, if they had not been directed against the Bank. One effect of this was, that the Democratic party was compelled to make use of more popular language, which caused it to lose some of its influential members, who were easily alarmed by words, though they had borne philosophically with violent things. For five years after the veto of the Bank Bill, in 1832, the Democratic party was essentially radical in its tone, without doing much of a radical character. In 1837, the monetary troubles came to a head, and then it was seen how little reliance could be placed on men who were supposed to be attached to extreme popular opinions. It was in the very States which were thought to abound with radicals that the Democracy lost ground, and the way was prepared for their entire overthrow in the memorable year 1840. That year saw American politics debauched, and from that time we find no radical element in any of our parties. The contest was so intense, that the two parties swallowed and digested all lesser factions. Since then, a variety of causes have combined to prevent the development of what is termed Agrarianism. The struggle of the Democracy to regain power; the Mexican war, and the extension of our dominion, consequent on that war, bringing up again, in full force, the slavery question; and the discovery of gold in California, which led myriads of energetic men to a remote quarter of the nation;—these are the principal causes of the freedom of our later party-struggles from radical theories. From radical practices we have always been free, and it is improbable that our country will know them for generations.
The origin of the word Agrarianism, as an obnoxious political term, is somewhat curious. It is one of the items of our inheritance from the Romans, to whom we owe so much, both of good and evil, in politics and in law.
The Agrarian contests of that people were among the most interesting incidents in their wonderful career, and are full of instruction, though, until recently, their true character was not understood; and their explanation affords a capital warning against the effects of partisan literature. The common belief was,—perhaps we should say is,—that the supporters of the Agrarian laws were, to use a modern term, destructives; that they aimed at formal divisions of all landed property, if not of all property, among the whole body of the Roman people. Nothing can be more unfounded than this view of the subject, which is precisely the reverse of the truth. No Roman, whose name is associated with Agrarian laws, ever thought of touching private property, or of meddling with it, illegally, in any way. Neither Spurius Cassius, nor Licinius Stolo, nor the Gracchi, nor any other Roman whose name is identified with the Agrarian legislation of his country, was a destructive, or leveller. Quite the contrary; they were all conservatives,—using that word in its best sense,—and the friends of property. The lands to which their laws applied, or were intended to apply, were public lands, answering, in some sense, to those which are owned by the United States. When Spurius Cassius, a quarter of a century after that revolution which is known as the expulsion of the Tarquins, proposed a division of a portion of the public land among the poor commons, he did no more than had often been done by the Roman kings, with good effect, and with strict legality. Much of the public land was occupied by wealthy men, as tenants of the state; and some of these his law would have ousted from profitable spots, while the rest were to be forced to pay their rents, which they had done very irregularly or not at all. The operation of all Agrarian laws like that of Cassius was, undoubtedly, a matter well to be considered; for, after a man has long occupied a piece of land, he regards it as an act of injustice to be peremptorily removed therefrom, and he ought to have, at least, the privilege of buying it, if its possession be necessary to his support. This feeling must have been the stronger in the bosom of the Roman occupant in proportion to his poverty, but to legal possession he could make no claim. The position he held was that of tenant at will to the state, and he could be legally ejected at any moment. But it was not from poor occupants of the public domain, whose number was necessarily small, that opposition was experienced. It came from the rich, who had all but monopolized the use of that domain; and, in the time of Spurius Cassius, it was complicated with that quarrel of caste which we denominate the contest between the Patricians and the Plebeians. Property and political power were both involved in the dispute. The Patricians knew that the success of Cassius would make against them in two ways:—it would strengthen the Plebeians, by lifting them out of the degradation consequent on poverty, and so render them more dangerous antagonists in political warfare; and it would render the Patricians less able to contend with aspiring foes, by taking from them one of the sources of their wealth. Cassius failed, and was executed, having been tried and condemned by the Patricians, who then alone constituted the Roman people.
More than a century after the failure of Cassius, the Agrarian question was again brought before the Roman nation, on a large scale. This was the time when the famous Licinian rogations, by the adoption of which a civil revolution was effected in Rome, were brought forward. They provided for the passage of an Agrarian law, for an equitable settlement of debts, and that thereafter one of the two Consuls should always be a Plebeian. It is something to be especially noted, that C. Licinius Stolo, the man from whom these laws take their name, was not a needy political adventurer, but a very wealthy man, his possessions being mainly in land; and that he belonged to a gens (the Licinii) who were noted in after days for their immense wealth, among them being that Crassus whose avarice became proverbial, and whose surname was Dives, or the Rich. The Licinian Agrarian law provided, that no one should possess more than five hundred jugers of the public land, (ager publicus,) that the state should resume lands that had been illegally seized by individuals, that a rent should be paid by the occupants of the public domain, that only freemen should be employed on that domain, and that every Plebeian should receive seven jugers of the public land in absolute property, to be taken from those lands which the state was to resume from Patricians who possessed (that is to say, who occupied) more than five hundred jugers. Such were the main provisions of the law, which did not touch private property of any kind. The state was merely to assert its undisputed legal right over the public domain, and the Plebeians became landholders, which was the best thing that could happen to the republic, and which was what was aimed at in every community of antiquity. Even the partial observance of this law was the cause of the supremacy of Rome being established over the finest portions of the ancient world. Had Licinius failed, Rome would have gone down in her contest with the Samnites, and the latter people would have become masters of Italy. As it was, his success created the Roman people; and from the time of that success must be dated the formation of the Roman constitution as it was recognized and acted on during the best period of the Republic. True, the Agrarian law was but one of three measures which he carried through in the face of all the opposition the Patricians could make; but the other laws were of a kindred character, and they all worked together for good. It was the triumph of the Plebeians for the benefit of all. The revolution then effected was strictly conservative in its nature, and whatever of internal evil Rome afterwards experienced was owing, not to the adoption of the Licinian law, but to the departure by the state from the practice under it which it was intended permanently to establish.
The last great Agrarian contest which the Romans had was that which takes its name from the Gracchi, and which began at the commencement of the fourth generation before the birth of Christ. On the part of the reformers, it was as strictly legal a movement as ever was known. Not a single acre of private land was threatened by them; and whoever pays attention to the details of their measures cannot fail to be struck with the great concessions they were ready to make to their opponents,—the men who had literally stolen the public property, and who pretended to hold it as of right. Perhaps it was too late for any such reform as that contemplated by the Gracchi to succeed, the condition of Rome then being in no important respect like what it had been in the time of Licinius Stolo; but one of the most interesting chapters in the history of things which might have been is that which relates to the possible effect of the Sempronian legislation. Had that legislation been fairly tried, Roman history, and therefore human history, must have taken an entirely different course, with an effect on the fortunes of every man born since that time. Whether that effect would have been good or bad, who shall say? But one thing is certain, and that is, that the Gracchi and their supporters were not the enemies of property, and that their measures were not intended to interfere with the private estate of any citizen of the Roman Republic.
Such was the Agrarianism, and such were the Agrarian laws and the Agrarian contests of Rome, which were so long misunderstood; and through that misunderstanding has the word Agrarian, so proper in itself, been made to furnish one of the most reproachful terms that violent politicians have ever used when seeking to bespatter their foes. It will be seen that the word has been applied in “the clean contrary way” to that in which it should have been applied, and that, strictly speaking, an Agrarian is a conservative, a man who asks for justice,—not a destructive, who, in his desire to advance his own selfish ends or those of his class, would trample on law and order alike. It is only within the last seventy years that the world has been made to comprehend that it had for fifty generations been guilty of gross injustice to some of the purest men of antiquity; and it is not more than thirty years since the labors of Niebuhr made the truth generally known,—if it can, indeed, be said to be so known even now. The Gracchi long passed for a couple of demagogues, who were engaged in seditious practices, and who were so very anxious to propitiate “the forum populace” that they were employed in perfecting plans for the division of all landed property amongst its members, when they were cut off by a display of vigor on the part of the government. “The Sedition of the Gracchi” was for ages one of the common titles for a chapter in the history of Republican Rome; yet it did not escape the observation of one writer of no great learning, who published before Heyne’s attention was drawn to the subject, that, if there were sedition in the affair, it was quite as much the sedition of the Senate against the Gracchi as it was the sedition of the Gracchi against the Senate.[A]
[Footnote A: We have taken for granted the soundness of the views of Niebuhr on the Roman Agrarian contests and laws, that eminent scholar having followed in the track of Heyne with distinguished success; but it must be allowed that in some respects his positions have been not unsuccessfully assailed. Those who would follow up the subject are recommended to study Ihne’s Researches into the History of the Roman Constitution, in which some of Niebuhr’s views are energetically combated. The main points, however, that the Agrarian laws were not directed against private property, or aimed at placing all men on a social equality, may be considered as established. Yet it must in candor be admitted that the general subject is still involved in doubts, the German commentators having thrown as much fog about some portions of the Roman Constitution as they have thrown light upon other portions of it.]
The feeling that was allowed to have such sway in Rome, and the triumph of which was followed with such important consequences, has often manifested itself in modern times, in the course of great political struggles, and has proved a powerful disturbing cause on several occasions. One of these occasions has fallen under the observation of the existing generation, and some remarks on it may not be out of place.
The French Revolution of 1848 was followed by an alarm on the part of men of property, or of those whose profits depended on the integrity of property being respected, which produced grave effects, the end whereof is not yet. That revolution was the consequence of a movement as purely political as the world ever saw. There was discontent with the government of M. Guizot, which extended to the royal family, and in which the bourgeoisie largely shared, the very class upon the support of which the House of Orleans was accustomed to rely. Had the government yielded a little on some political points, and made some changes in the administration, Louis Philippe might have been living at the Tuileries at this very moment, or sleeping at St. Denis. But, insanely obstinate, under dominion of the venerable delusion that obstinacy is firmness, the King fell, and with him fell, not merely his own dynasty, but the whole system of government which France had known for a generation, and under which she was, painfully and slowly, yet with apparent sureness, becoming a constitutional state. A warm political contest was converted into a revolution scarcely less complete than that of 1789, and far more sweeping than that of 1830. Perhaps there would have been little to regret in this, had it not been, that, instead of devoting their talents to the establishing of a stable republican government, several distinguished Frenchmen, whom we never can think capable of believing the nonsense they uttered, began to labor to bring about a sort of social Arcadia, in which all men were to be made happy, and which was to be based on contempt for political
Those who recollect the political literature of the years that passed between the Revolution of February and the commencement of those disputes which eventuated in the Russian War must blush for humanity. Writers of every class set themselves about the work of exterminating Agrarianism in France. Grave arguments, pathetic appeals, and lively ridicule were all made use of to drive off enemies of whose coming upon Europe there was no more danger than of a return of the Teutones and the Cimbri. Had the arguments and adjurations of the clever men who waged war on the Agrarians been addressed to the dust of the Teutones whom Marius exterminated in Provence, they could not have been more completely thrown away than they were. Some of these men, however, were less distinguished for cleverness than for malignity, and shrieked for blood and the display of brute force in terms that would have done dishonor even to a St. Bartholomew assassin or anti-Albigensian crusader. Monsieur Romieu held up Le Spectre Rouge to the eyes of a generation incapable, from fright, of distinguishing between a scarecrow and the Apollo. The Red Spectre haunted him, and the people for whom he wrote, as relentlessly as the Gray Spectre came upon the chiefs of Ivor. He saw in the working classes—those men who asked then, as in modern times they have only asked, “leave to toil”—millions of creatures “regimented by hatred,” and ready to throw themselves upon society. In the past he saw nothing so much to be admired as the Feudal System, it was so very summary and trenchant in its modes of dealing with masses of men so unreasonable as to grumble when they were starving. In the present, all that he could reverence was the cannonarchy of Russia, which he invoked to restore to France that golden age in which Crecy and Poictiers were fought, and when the Jacquerie illustrated the attachment of the serf to the seigneur. How this invoker of Cossacks and cannon from the Don and the Neva “to regulate the questions of our age” on the Seine and the Marne would have stared, could the curtain that hides the future have been drawn for a moment, to allow him to see a quarter of a million of French, English, and Italian soldiers on the shores of the Euxine, and eight hundred Western cannon raining that “hell-fire” upon the august city of Catherine under which it became a heap of ruins! Yet the
What has become of M. Romieu, and how he took Louis Napoleon’s energetic measures for laying the Red Ghost in the blood of aristocrats as well as of democrats, we know not. He ought to have been charmed with the coup d’etat; for the man who conceived and executed that measure for his own benefit professed to act only for the benefit of society, the maintenance of the rights of property being kept by him especially in view. He, too, charged his enemies, or those whom he thought endowed with the desire and the ability to resist him, with Agrarianism; and such Agrarians as Thiers and Cavaignac were seized in their beds, and imprisoned,—to prevent their running away with the Great Book of France, one is at liberty to suppose. There was something shockingly ludicrous in charging the hero and victor of the Days of June with designs against property; but the charge may have led Cavaignac to have doubts whether he had not himself been a little too ready to believe the charge of Agrarianism when preferred against a large number of the people of France, whom he had treated with grape-shot by way of teaching them respect for the rights of property. There is nothing like bringing injustice home to a man to open his eyes to its evil nature. Of all public men of our generation who have signally failed, Cavaignac must be held the most unfortunate; for his intentions were excellent, and he died just as circumstances were about to afford him an opportunity to retrieve his fame. His last days must have been the reverse of agreeable in their retrospect; for it must constantly have been forced upon his mind that he had been made the chief instrument in the work of fastening upon the country he loved the most odious of the many despotic governments it has known,—a government that confesses its inability to stand against the “paper shot” of journalists, and which has shackled the press after the fashion of Austrian and Russian
* * * * *
[Continued]
A slow and weary walk had Mr. Lindsay from the station to his house. It was after sunset, dark and cold, as he turned in at the gate. The house was dimly lighted, and no one save the Newfoundland dog came to greet him at the door. He did not hear his daughter singing as she was accustomed at evening. There were no pleasant voices, no light and cheerful steps in the rooms. All was silence. The ill news had preceded him. His wife without a word fell on his bosom and wept. Clara kept her seat, trying in vain, while her lip quivered and her eyes dimmed, to fix her attention upon the magazine she had held rather than read. At length Mr. Lindsay led his wife to the sofa and sat beside her, holding her hand with a tenderness that was as soothing as it was uncommon. Prosperity had not hardened his heart, but business had preoccupied it; though his manner had been kind, his family had rarely seen in him any evidence of feeling.
Misfortune had now brought back the rule of his better nature, and the routine life he had led was at an end.
“My dear wife, what I have most dreaded in this crash is the pain, the anxiety, and the possible discomfort it would bring to you and to Clara. For myself I care nothing. It is a hard trial, but I shall conform to our altered circumstances cheerfully.”
“And so shall we, father,” said Clara. “We shall be happy with you anywhere.”
“One thing, I am sure, you can never lose,” said Mrs. Lindsay,—“and that is an honorable name.”
“I have tried to do my duty. I gave up only when I found I must. But my duty is not yet done.”
“Why, father?”
“My creditors have claims which I regard as sacred, and which must be paid, ultimately, at whatever sacrifice.”
“Won’t the property at the store be enough when you can sell it?” asked Mrs. Lindsay. “You have spoken of the quantity of goods you had on hand.”
“I can’t say, my dear. It depends upon how much time I have. If I could have effected sales, I should have been safe.”
“If they have the goods, won’t they be satisfied?” asked Clara.
“You don’t understand, my daughter, that all I have is at their command. If the property does not liquidate the debts, then the house, the carriage and horses, the furniture, the”——
The possible surrender of all that had made life pleasant to his family was not to be considered without emotion, and Mr. Lindsay found himself unable to finish the sentence.
“Dear father!” exclaimed Clara, seizing and kissing his hand, as she sat down at his feet,—“you are just and noble. We could not be selfish or complaining when we think of you. Let everything go. I love the dear old house, the garden that has been your pride, the books and pictures; but we shall be nearer together—shan’t we, papa?—in a cottage. If they do sell my piano, I can still sing to you; nobody can take that pleasure from us.”
“Bless you, my daughter! I feel relieved,—almost happy. Your cheerful heart has given me new courage. Perhaps we shall not have to make the sacrifices I dread. Whatever happens, my darling, your piano shall be kept. I will sell my watch first. Your music will be twice as dear in our days of adversity.”
“Yes, papa,—if we keep the piano, I can give lessons.”
“You give lessons? Nonsense! But get up, pussy; here, sit on my knee.”
He fondled her like a child, and they all smiled through their tears,—heavenly smiles! blissful tears! full of a feeling of which the heart in prosperous days has no conception!
“One thing has happened to-day,” said Mr. Lindsay, “that I shall never forget,—an action so generous and self-forgetful that it makes one think better of mankind. I remember hearing a preacher say that no family knew all their capabilities of love until death had taken one of their number,—not their love for the dead, but their deeper affection for each other after the loss. I suppose every calamity brings its compensations in developing noble traits of character; and it is almost an offset to failure itself to have such an overflowing feeling as this,—to know that there are so many sympathizing hearts. But what I was going to speak of was the conduct of my clerk, Monroe. He is a fine fellow,—rather more given to pictures and books and music than is good for a business man; but with a clear head, a man’s energy, and a woman’s heart. He has a widowed mother, whom he supports. I never knew he had any property till to-day. It seems his father left ten thousand dollars. He knew that my situation was desperate, and yet he offered me his all. It would only have put off the day of failure; but I was selfish enough to be willing to take it. He had deposited the securities for the amount with Sandford, who first borrowed money in the street by pledging them, and then failed to-day. Monroe has lost his all; but his intention was as noble as if he had saved me. I shall never forget it; and as long as I have a dollar he shall share it.”
“What a noble fellow!” said Mrs. Lindsay. “How pleasant to think that in this terrible scramble for life there are some who have not lost their humanity, nor trampled down their finer feelings!”
“I couldn’t but contrast this kindness on the part of a clerk, for whom I have never done anything beyond paying him his well-earned salary, with the conduct of Mr. Bullion. I gave him my indorsement repeatedly, and assisted him in procuring loans, when he was not so rich as he is now. I know he has resources, ready money,—money that he does not need for any outstanding debts, but which he must keep for speculation. But he refused to do anything. ‘Couldn’t,’ he said, ’really; times were hard; everybody wanted to borrow; couldn’t lend to everybody; hadn’t the funds; much as he could do to stand up himself.’ There was no sincerity in his look. I saw his soul skulking away behind his subterfuges like a spider in the depths of his flimsy web. He seems to thrive, however, in the midst of general ruin. I’ve no doubt he lives like a vulture, on the dead and dying.”
“Is Mr. Bullion that short man, father, with the cold eyes and gruff voice, and the queer eyebrow which he seems to poke at people?”
“Yes, my daughter, that is the man.”
“Well, I’m sure, he is coarse, disagreeable, hard-hearted. I’m glad you are not under obligations to him.”
“My only regret is that I had the mortification of being refused. I wish I had never asked him. I can’t think of his look and tone without a pang of shame, or wounded pride, if you choose to call it so, harder to bear than a blow in the face. I had a claim upon his gratitude, but he remembers a favor no more than a wolf does the mutton he ate a year ago.—But enough of business. The bitterness has passed since we have talked together. Let us be cheerful. Come, Clara, sing some of those sweet old ballads!”
From her infancy until now in her twentieth year, Clara had been constantly with her father,—but she had never known him before.
Early next morning the officer in charge of Mr. Sandford’s house was relieved by a brother constable. Number Two was a much more civil person in speech and manner than Number One; in fact, he speedily made himself so agreeable to the housemaid that she brought him a cup of coffee, and looked admiringly while he swallowed it. By the time Mrs. Sandford and Marcia came down to breakfast, he had established an intimacy with Biddy that was quite charming to look upon. One would have thought he was an old friend of the household,—a favored crony; such an easy, familiar air he assumed. He accosted the ladies with great gallantry,—assured them that they were looking finely,—hoped they had passed a pleasant night, and that Number One had given them no unnecessary inconvenience. Marcia met him with a haughty stare which nobody but a woman of fashion can assume. Turning to Mrs. Sandford, she exclaimed,—
“Who is this fellow?”
Number Two hastened to answer for himself:—
“My name, Ma’am, is Scarum, Harum Scarum some of the young lawyers call me. Ha!” (A single laugh, staccato.)
“Well, Mr. Scarum, you can keep your compliments for those who appreciate them. Come, Lydia, let us go down to breakfast. The presuming fool!” she exclaimed, as she passed through the hall,—“he’s worse than the other. One can put up with a coarse man, if he minds his own business; but an impudent, self-satisfied fellow must be made to know his place.”
“High-strung filly! ha!” (Sforzando.)
“May have to speak to common folks, yet,—eh, Miss Bridget?”
But farther conversation was interrupted for the time. Bridget was summoned by the bell to the dining-room, and gallant Number Two was left alone in the parlor. Meanwhile he surveyed the room as minutely as if it had been a museum,—trying the rocking-chair, examining pictures, snapping vases with his unpared nails, opening costly books, smelling of scent-bottles, scanning the anti-Macassars and the Berlin-wool mats. At last he opened the piano, and, in a lamentably halting style, played, “Then you’ll remember me,” using only a forefinger in the performance. He sang at the same time in a suppressed tone, while he cast agonizing looks at an imaginary obdurate female, supposed to be on the sofa, occasionally glancing with admiration in the mirror at the intensely pathetic look his features wore.
Marcia, meanwhile, had borne the noise as long as she could; so Biddy was dispatched to ask the singer if he would not please to do his practising at some other time.
“Practising, indeed!” exclaimed Number Two, indignantly, upon receiving the message. “There are people who think I can sing. These women, likely, a’n’t cultivated enough to appreciate the ’way-up music. They’re about up to that hand-organ stuff of Sig-ner Rossyni, likely. They can’t understand Balfy; they a’n’t up to it. What do you think, Miss Bridget? Nice figger, that of yours.” (Sotto voce.) “None of the tall, spindlin’, wasp-waisted, race-horse style about you, like that” (pointing down-stairs). “A good plump woman for me! and a woman with an ear, too! Now you know what good singin’ is. I led the choir down to Jorumville ’bove six months b’fore I come down here and went into the law. But she thinks I was practising! Ha!” (Sempre staccato.)
“La! did ye?” said the admiring Biddy.
Tinkle, tinkle, again. Biddy was now summoned to call Charles, and see if he would breakfast. Number Two made another tour of the room, with new discoveries. While absorbed in this pleasing employment, the two women passed upstairs. Marcia could not restrain herself, as she saw him with her favorite bird-of-paradise fan.
“Don’t spoil those feathers, you meddlesome creature!”
“Beg your pardon, Ma’am” (with an elaborate bow). “Merely admirin’ the colors. Pretty sort of a thing, this ’ere! ’Most too light and fuzzy for a duster, a’n’t it? Feathers ben dyed, most likely? Willin’ to ’bleege the fair, however, especially one so handsome.” (Rubbing it on his coat-sleeve.) “Guess’t a’n’t got dirty any.”
Charles, meanwhile, had risen and dressed, and came out when Bridget knocked; a spectacle, indeed,—a walking sermon on the perils that may follow what are termed “good times.” His face would have been pale, except that his nose, which was as puffy as an omelette soufflee, and his left eye with a drooping lid sustained by a livid crescent, gave it a rubicund expression. His knees were shaky, his pulse feeble, his head top-heavy. He declined assistance rather sulkily, and descended holding by the stair-rail and stepping gingerly. Number Two, in spite of his genial, unruffled temper, could not repress his surprise, as the apparition passed the parlor-door.
“A rum customer! Ha!” (Con anima.)
Before the repentant owner of the puffy nose and purple eyelid had finished his solitary breakfast, Mr. Sandford came home. He had obtained bail and was at large. Looking hastily into the parlor, he saw a stranger, with his hat jauntily on one side, seated in the damask-covered chair, with his feet on an embroidered ottoman, turning over a bound collection of sea-mosses, and Marcia’s guitar lying across his lap. He was dumb with astonishment. Polite Number Two did not leave him to burst in ignorance.
“All right. Mr. Sandford, I suppose. An ’tachment put on, and I’m keeper. Sorry to disturb a family. But somebody has to. Can I do anything to obleege you?”
“Yes, by laying down that book which you are spoiling. And you may take your greasy boots off that worsted-work, and put the stopper into that Bohemian-glass bottle.”
“Beg your pardon, Sir. Didn’t intend to make trouble. Boots has to be greased, you know, else they crack all out, an’ don’t last no time; mine do. This ’ere Cologne is nice, to be sure. I jest poured out a bit on my pocket-handkercher.”
“Cologne! It’s attar of roses; and you’ve spilled more than your neck is worth,—taking yourself at your own valuation.”
“Why, you don’t say this is high-cost? It does smell good, though, ha!”
As he started to go up-stairs, Mr. Sandford saw the linen carpet-cover spattered with frequent drops of blood. He called aloud to his sister,—
“Marcia! are you there? alive? What’s the meaning of this blood? Who has been murdered? Or is this turned into a butcher’s shop?”
Marcia and her sister-in-law descended, and hurriedly explained the mystery. While they were standing at the head of the stairs, Charles made his appearance, and received such congratulations from his brother as might be expected. He vouchsafed no word of reply, but went into the room where he had slept to get some article he had left. A sudden thought struck Mr. Sandford. He followed Charles into the room, and in a moment after returned,—but so changed! Imagine Captain Absolute at the duelling-ground turned in a twinkling into Bob Acres, Lucy Bertram putting on the frenzied look of Meg Merrilies, or the even-tempered Gratiano metamorphosed into the horror-stricken, despairing Shylock at the moment he hears his sentence, and you have some notion of the expression which Sandford’s face wore. His eyes were fixed like baleful lights in a haggard, corpse-like countenance. His hair was disordered. He clutched his cravat as though suffocating. His voice was gone; he whispered feebly, like one of Ossian’s ghosts,—
“Gone! gone! Who has it? Marcia! Lydia! Charles! Who’s got it? Quick! The money! Gone?”
He rushed into the room again, deaf to any reply. He got upon his hands and knees, looked under the bed, the wardrobe, the dressing-table, the chairs, muttering all the while with a voice like a dying man’s. He rose up, staggering, and seized Marcia by the arm, who trembled with terror at his ferocity.
“The money! Give me the money! You’ve got it! You know you have! Give it to me! Give”—
“Pray, be calm,” said Mrs. Sandford; “you shall know all about it.”
“I don’t want to know,” he almost screamed; “I want the money, the money!”
Then dropping his voice to a lower key, and with a tone which was meant to be wheedling, he turned to his sister-in-law:—
“You’ve got it, then? How you frightened me! Come, dear sister! don’t trifle with me. I’m poor, very poor, and the little sum seems large. Give it to me. Let me see that it is safe. Dear sister!”
“I haven’t it,” said Mrs. Sandford, “But compose yourself. You shall know about it.”
He cried audibly, like a sickly child.
“It isn’t gone? No, you play upon my fears. Where is the pocket-book?”
“How are you ever going to know, if you won’t hear?” asked Marcia. “I wouldn’t be so unmanly as to whine so even about a million.”
“No, you think money is as plenty as buttons. Wait till you starve,—starve,—till you beg on a street-crossing.”
“Listen,” said Mrs. Sandford.
“Do, and stop your groaning like a madman,” said Marcia, consolingly. “When Charles met with his mishap and fell senseless, we asked the officer to carry him up-stairs. Rather than go up another flight, we had him taken into your chamber. Your dressing-case lay on the table, in the middle of the room, away from its usual place by the mirror. The officer at once seized and opened it. You had carelessly left your money in it. He was evidently informed of the fact that you had money, and was directed to attach it. He counted the package before me, and then put it into his pocket.”
During this recital, Mr. Sandford’s breath came quick and his eyes opened wider. His muscles all at once seemed charged with electricity. He dashed down-stairs, half-a-dozen steps at a time, and pounced upon unlucky Number Two, who, with the captivated Biddy, was leaning at the parlor-door, listening to the conversation above. Seizing the officer by the throat, Sandford shouted huskily,—
“Robber! thief! Give up that money! How dare you? Give it up, I say!”
Number Two could not answer, for his windpipe was mortally squeezed under the iron grip of his adversary; therefore, as the only reply he could make, he commenced the manual exercise right and left, and with such effect, that Sandford loosened his hold and staggered back.
“There! I guess you’ve got enough on’t. What ye talkin’ about money? I a’n’t got any of your money.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Sandford, who had followed the infuriated man, though necessarily at some distance, came and grasped his arm.
“The man who seized the money is gone,” she said. “This is the one who takes his place.”
Sandford was speechless,—but not long. While hope remained, he had whined, begged, cried, implored. Now that he was baffled, discomfited, ruined, his rage broke out. The placid gentleman, whose glossy garb and quiet air a day before made such a picture of content, would hardly be recognized in this furious, gesticulating lunatic, whose oaths and objurgations came belching forth like sulphurous flames. It was on his gentle sister-in-law that the weight of his wrath fell. She tried to pacify him, until she became actually alarmed for her safety, and turned to fly.
“Go!” he exclaimed. “You’ve done enough. You’ve ruined me. Pack off! You’ve beggared me. Now look out for yourself! Don’t let me see your face again!”
Trembling and tearful, Mrs. Sandford went to her room to gather her wardrobe. She had not intended to remain a burden upon her brother-in-law. Now she must go at once. Even if he were to repent of his blind rage and ask her forgiveness, she felt that there was an impassable gulf between them.
During the confusion that followed, Number Two, feeling hungry, went down with Biddy to lunch.
“It’s about the last ov it here, Sirr,” said the girl, “an’ we may as well ate what is good and drink something betther than cold wather.”
So saying, the best the house afforded was set out;—wines of rare vintages were uncorked, and glasses hob-a-nobbed.
Mr. Sandford, exhausted with his delirium, went to his room, and there languidly paced the floor back and forth, without cessation, like a caged white bear in midsummer. Charles crawled up to his own bed. Marcia remained in the parlor, her busy brain turning over the unusual events of the day, and wondering what loop-hole of escape from their present difficulties could be found.
The door-bell rang. Biddy, occupied with her pleasing duties as hostess, and flushed with drinking crusty old Port and “Lafitte 1844,” did not hear. Some sudden impulse or vague prescience moved Marcia to open the door herself. It was Greenleaf. Notwithstanding the untoward state of affairs, she could not deny herself the pleasure of meeting him, and ushered him into the parlor, then fortunately vacant.
A cooler observer would have noticed something peculiar in his carriage as he crossed the hall,—an unnatural pallor, a sharpness in the angles of his mouth, a quicker respiration, and a look of mingled firmness and sorrow in his eyes. A stranger might have thought him in a state of chronic nervous irritability or mild insanity. And truly, a sensitive man, perplexed between conflicting duties, spurred by conscience, yet wanting in courage to do its bidding, presents a pitiable spectacle; it is a position of sharp suspense which no mind can hold long;—relief must come, in heartbreak or darkness, if in no other way.
When Greenleaf parted from Marcia, the morning before, he intended to wait a week at least before telling her of his changed feelings. He did not know what a burden he had undertaken to carry; he staggered under it, like the pilgrim in Bunyan’s immortal story. Besides, after he had once come to a determination, he was impatient to see Alice and implore her forgiveness. Minutes were days while he waited. To pass a week in this way was not to be thought of, unless by means of ether or mesmerism he could fly from himself and find peace in oblivion.
“My dear George,” Marcia began, “it is so kind of you to come with your sympathy! We are dreadfully cast down. What is to be done I don’t know.”
“You surprise me! What has happened? I have scarcely been out of my studio since I last saw you.”
“But it’s in all the papers!”
“I haven’t seen a paper.”
“What I told you yesterday has come to pass. Henry has failed; so has the Vortex,—and Mr. Fayerweather, the President,—and Mr. Stearine,—and everybody else, I believe. We shall probably leave the house and take lodgings.”
Every word was a pang to Greenleaf. Again his heart, full of sympathy for the woman’s distress, whispered, “Wait! don’t wound the stricken deer!” But he hugged his resolve and steeled himself against pity.
“I am truly sorry to hear of your brother’s misfortunes. But with his talents and reputation, and with his troops of friends in business circles as well as in the various charitable societies, it cannot be that he will long be depressed. He will work his way back to his old position, or even a higher one.”
Marcia shook her head doubtfully. She had not heard the rumors affecting her brother’s integrity, but she saw that his manly resolution was gone, that he was vascillating, broken-spirited, and needed but little more trouble to make him imbecile.
“I was thinking of a case of conscience, as I came here,” said Greenleaf. “It was, How far a promise is binding, when it involves a lasting and irretrievable wrong in its fulfilment.”
Marcia looked at him in dumb astonishment. He continued:—
“Suppose that you were to find, by-and-by, that your affections had cooled towards me,—that you discovered incompatabilities of taste and temper,—that you felt sure a true union of souls was impossible,—that marriage would be only a mockery?”
“Dear George, how you frighten me! Why do you ask such dreadful questions in such a solemn way? You know I love you, heart and soul.”
“But consider the question as an abstract one. I ask you only to suppose the case. Should you thrust conscience into the cellar, stifle its outcries, and give your consent to a profanation of holy wedlock?”
“I can’t suppose the case. And I don’t see the use of torturing one’s self with imaginary evils. The real troubles of life are quite enough to bear.”
“I know such a case. I know a man who has to decide it. It is not a light matter for any man, and his is a soul as sensitive as God ever made. He was betrothed to a woman every way worthy; he loved her sincerely. His chief fault, and a serious one it is, came from his susceptibility to fresh impressions. The pleasure of the present had more power over him than any recollections of the past. The influence of the living woman at his side was greater, for the moment, than that of any absent love. In an evil hour, he committed himself to another. She was, doubtless, formed to inspire his passion and to return it. But he was not free, and had no right to linger on forbidden ground. For weeks, nay, months, he lived this false and wicked life, of a different mind every day, and lacking the courage to meet the difficulty. At last he became sure that his love belonged where his faith was due,—that, if he would not live a wretched hypocrite, he must humble himself to confess his criminal weakness, and return to his first engagement.”
He paused; he might well do so. Marcia, with some difficulty, was able to say, through her chattering teeth,—
“You seem to take a deep interest in this weak-minded person.”
“I do,—the deepest. I am the man.”
She rose to her feet, and, looking scornfully down upon him, exclaimed,—
“Then you acknowledge yourself a villain!—not from premeditation, which would give your baseness some dignity, but a weakly fool, so tossed about by Fate that he is made a villain without either desire or resistance!”
“You may overwhelm me with reproaches; I am prepared for them; I deserve them. But God only knows through what a season of torture I have passed to come to this determination.”
“A very ingenious story, Mr. Greenleaf! Do you suppose that the world will believe it, the day after our losses? Do you expect me to believe it, even?”
“I told you that I had not heard of the failure. I am in the habit of being believed.”
“For instance, when you vowed that you loved me, and me only!”
“You may spare your taunts. But, to show you how mercenary I am, let me assure you that the woman to whom my word is pledged, and to whom I must return, is without any property or expectations.”
“Very well, Sir,” said Marcia, rubbing her hands, in the endeavor to conceal her agitation; “we need not waste words. After what you have told me, I could only despise such a whiffler,—a scrap of refuse iron at the mercy of any magnet,—a miller dashing into every fight. A lover so helpless must needs have some new passional attraction—that is the phrase, I believe—with every changing moon. The man I love should be made of different stuff.” She drew her figure up proudly, and her lips curled like a beautiful fiend’s. “He should bury the disgraceful secret, if he had it, in his heart, and carry it to his grave. He would not cry out like a boy with a cut finger.”
“Precisely, Miss Sandford. And for that reason you would be no mate for me. My wife must have no skeletons in her closet.”
“Men generally claim the monopoly of those agreeable toys, I believe.”
“Love is impossible where there are concealments. A secret is like a worm in the heart of an apple, and nothing but rottenness and corruption follow.”
“Fortunately, you harbor none. You have turned your heart inside out, like a peddler’s pack,—and a gratifying display it made! I am more than satisfied.”
“The tone you have adopted is a warning to me to stop. I wish to bandy no epithets, or reproaches. I came sorrowfully to tell you what I have told. I had no fault to impute to you. But I must confess that this morning you have shown yourself capable of thoughts and feelings I never suspected, and I shall leave you with a far lighter heart than I came.”
“You expected to see me at your feet, imploring your love and striving to melt you by tears,—did you? It would have been a pleasing triumph,—one that your sex prizes, I believe; but you have not been gratified. I know what is due to myself, and I do not stoop. But there may be ways to punish the betrayer of confidence,” she said, with a heaving bosom and distended nostrils. “I have a brother; and even if he is forgetful, I shall not forget.”
“I am obliged to you for putting me on my guard. I wished to part otherwise. Be it so, since you will.”
He turned to leave the room. Swift as lightning, she ran to the front door and braced herself against it, at the same time calling loudly to her brother. Mr. Sandford came to the top of the stairs and listened with apparent apathy, while the maddened woman poured out her rage. He stood a moment like one in a dream, and then slowly came down.
“There is your cane,” said Marcia, fiercely, pointing to the umbrella-stand.
“I give you fair warning,” said Greenleaf, calmly, “that you will never strike more than one blow. No man shall assault me but at the risk of his life.”
“What is the need of this fury?” asked Mr. Sandford. “I don’t want to quarrel with a pauper. You are well rid of him. If you were to be married, you’d only have the pleasure of going to Deer Island for your bridal trip.”
“Then you will see me insulted without lifting a finger? Coward! Broken down like a weed for the loss of a little money! I should be ashamed to have a beard, if I had such a timid soul!”
“I trust, Miss Sandford,” said Greenleaf, “you do not wish to prolong this scene. Let me pass.”
“Oh, yes,—you can go; can’t he, brother?”
She opened the door, looking scornfully from the one to the other.
At that moment Mrs. Sandford came down, bringing a satchel, and asked Greenleaf to walk with her until she could get a carriage. He cheerfully promised his aid, and took the satchel. Her eyes were sadly beautiful, and still humid from recent tears; and her face wore a touching look of resignation. She did not speak to Mr. Sandford, who stood scowling at her; but, taking Marcia’s hand, she said,—
“Good bye, sister! I never thought to leave you in this way. I hope we shall never see a darker hour. I shall send for my trunks presently. Good bye!”
“Good bye!” replied Marcia, mechanically. “You have a brave gallant! See to it that he is not compelled by Destiny to make love to you on the way!”
Greenleaf, with his companion, descended the steps to the street, making no reply to this amiable God-speed.
Marcia shut the door, and with her brother returned to the parlor. At the head of the stairs that led to the dining-room stood Number Two and Biddy, who in stupid wonder had witnessed the scenes just described.
“Bridget,” exclaimed the enraged mistress, “what are you staring at? Come here! Pah! you have been drinking! You, too, you creature!”
Number Two bowed with maudlin politeness.
“You-do-m’injustice, Ma’am. On’y a smallsup, a littlesup, ponmyhonorasgen’l’man.”
“Bridget, do you pack up your baggage and be off! Rioting and feasting in the time of our trouble! Ungrateful hussy!”
“I’ll do that same, Miss Marshy; but me waages, if ye plaze, Miss.”
“Get your wages, if you can. You’ve broken more crockery and glass, and wasted more wines and preserves, than you ever earned.”
“That’s always the way, Miss, I’ve noticed, when missuses was o’ mind to get claar of payin’ the honest dues. But me brother”—
“Be off to your brother! But first go and cool your head under the water-faucet.”
Muttering and whining, the disconsolate Biddy crept up to the attic for her scanty wardrobe.
“Here, fellow!” said Marcia to Number Two, whose foolish smiles at any other time would have been ludicrous,—“go into the kitchen and get sober.”
He obeyed like a spaniel.
“Now, Henry,” said Marcia, rather more composed, “let us do something at once. It’s plain that we can’t live here for the house will be stripped; and in our circumstances we would not stay, if we could. That fellow is so far stupefied that we can save what we can carry away. If you have any spirit left, help me pack our clothes and such things as can be put into our trunks. Come! are you dreaming?”
He started up and followed her like a child. With superhuman energy, she ransacked the house and gathered the most valuable articles. Plate, linen, dresses, Parian ware, books, furs, and jewelry were packed, as securely as the time allowed. A carriage and a baggage-wagon were ordered, and in an incredibly short period they were ready to start.
“We have forgotten Charles,” said Mr. Sandford.
“True enough,” said Marcia. “Go and call him; he is too handsome to be spared from our party just now. Tell him to bring his clothes.”
The penitent came down, reluctantly; his nose was still puffy, and the crescent under his eye rather more livid; muffled and cloaked, he was led to the carriage. Mr. Sandford then remembered the cherished parchment certificates and votes of thanks,—his title-deeds to distinction.
“Leave them,” said his sister, contemptuously. “What are they good for? A few commonplace autographs in tarnished gilt frames.”
Bridget, meanwhile, went off, threatening all sorts of reprisals on the part of her brother, who “wouldn’t see her imposed upon by the likes of thim, not he!” From the kitchen, at intervals, came up doleful snatches of “Then you’ll remember me,” interrupted by hiccoughs, and with involuntary variations and cadenzas that would have driven “Balfy” mad.
All was ready and they drove off. The house wherein had lived a Benefactor of Mankind was deserted.
Greenleaf found a carriage for Mrs. Sandford, and accompanied her to a private boarding-house, where she took lodgings; he then sent the driver back for her trunks, and, having seen her comfortably provided for, returned to his own rooms,—but not to remain there. He desired only to leave a message on his door, explaining his absence. In less than an hour he was in the railway-train, on his way to Innisfield.
To the musing or drowsy traveller by rail how space and time are annihilated! He is barely conscious of progress, only when the brakeman with measured tone shouts the name of the station; he looks up from his paper or rouses from his doze, looks out at the cheerless prospect, and then settles himself for another thirty miles. Time passes as unobserved as the meadows or bushy pastures that flit by the jarring window at his ear. But with Greenleaf, the reader will believe, the case was far different. He had never noticed before how slowly the locomotives really moved. At each station where wood and water were to be taken, it seemed to him the delay was interminable. His eager desire shot along the track like electricity; and when at last he reached the place where he was to leave the train, he had gone through a year of ordinary hopes and fears. He mounted the stage-box and took his seat beside the buffalo-clad, coarse-bearded, and grim driver. The road lay through a hilly country, with many romantic views on either hand. It was late in the season to see the full glories of autumn; but the trees were not yet bare, and in many places the contrasts of color were exquisite. For once the driver found his match; he had a passenger as taciturn as himself. For the first few miles not a word was spoken, saving a few brief threats to the horses; but at last Jehu could hold out no longer; his reputation was in danger, if he allowed any one to be more silent than himself, and he cautiously commenced a skirmish.
“From Boston?”
A nod was the only reply.
“Belong about here?”
“No,” with a shake of the head.
“Ben up here afore, though, I guess?”
“Yes.”
“Thought I remembered. Year or so ago?”
“Yes.”
“Had a great white cotton umbrill, a box like a shoe-kit, and suthin’ like a pair o’ clo’es-frames?”
Greenleaf could but smile at the description of his easel and artist’s outfit; still he contented himself with a brief assent.
“Keeps tight as the bark to a white-oak,” muttered Jehu to himself. “Guess I’ll try him on t’other side, seein’ he’s so offish.”
Then aloud,—
“Knowed Square Lee, I b’lieve?”
“Yes,” thundered Greenleaf, looking furiously at the questioner.
The glance frightened Jehu’s soul from the red-curtained windows, where it had been peeping out, back to its hiding-place, wherever that might be.
“Well, yer needn’t bite a feller’s head off,” muttered he, in the same undertone as before. “And if ye want to keep to yerself, shet up yer darned oyster-shell, and see how much you make by it. Not more’n four and sixpence, I guess. Maybe you’ll come back ’bout’s wise as ye come.”
Thenceforward, Buffalo-coat was grim; his admonitions to the horses were a trifle more emphatic; once he whistled a fragment of a minor stave, but spoke not a word till the coach reached the tavern-door.
“You can drive to Mr. Lee’s house,” said Greenleaf.
“Want to go where he is?” replied Jehu, with a sardonic grin. “Wal, I’m goin’ past the meetin’us, and I’ll set ye down at the graveyard.”
“What do you mean?” asked Greenleaf, between anger and terror, at this brutal jest.
“Why, he’s dead, you know, and ben layin’ up there on the side-hill a fortnight.”
“Take me to the house, nevertheless.”
“Lee’s house? ’Siah Stebbins, the lame shoemaker, he’s jest moved into’t. Miss Stebbins, she can’t ’commodate ye, most likely; got too many children; a’n’t over an’ above neat, nuther.”
“Where is Miss Lee,—Alice,—his daughter?”
“Wal, can’t say;—gone off, I b’lieve.”
“She has relatives here, has she not?”
“Guess not; never heerd of any.”
With a heavy heart, Greenleaf alighted at the tavern. Mr. Lee dead! Alice left alone without friends, and now gone! The thought stunned, overpowered him. While he had been treading the paths of dalliance, forgetful of his obligations, the poor girl had passed through the great trial of her life, the loss of her only parent and protector,—had met the awful hour alone. Hardly conscious of what he did, he went to the churchyard and sought for a new-made grave. The whole scene was pictured to his imagination with startling vividness. He saw the fond father on his death-bed, leaving the orphan to the kindness of strangers to his blood,—the daughter weeping, disconsolate, the solitary mourner at the funeral,—the desolate house,—the well-meant, but painful sympathy of the villagers. He, meanwhile, who should have cheered and sustained her, was afar off, neglectful, recreant to his vows. Could he ever forgive himself? What would he not give for one word from the dumb lips, for one look from the eyes now closed forever?
But regrets were useless; his first duty was to the living; he must hasten to find Alice. But how, where? It occurred to him that the village lawyer was probably administrator of the estate, and could tell him where Alice was. He went, therefore, to the lawyer’s office. It was shut, and a placard informed him that Mr. Blank was attending court at the county-seat. The lawyer’s housekeeper said that “Alice was to Boston, with some relation or other,—a Mr. Monroe, she believed his name was, but couldn’t say for sartin. The Square could tell; but he—wouldn’t be back for three or four days.”
Leaving his card, with a request that Mr. Blank would communicate to him Alice’s address, Greenleaf hired a conveyance to the railway. He could not remain in Innisfield an hour; it was a tomb, and the air stifled him. On his way, he had ample opportunity to consider what a slender clue he had to find the girl; for he thought of the long column of Monroes in the “Directory”; and, besides, he did not feel sure that the housekeeper had correctly remembered the name, even.
We leave the repentant lover to follow on the track of Alice, assured that he will receive sufficient punishment for his folly in the remorse and anxiety he must feel.
It is quite time that our neglected heroine should appear upon the stage. Gentle Alice, orphaned, deserted, lonely; it is not from any distrust as to her talents, her manners, or her figure, that she has been made to wait so long for the callboy. The curtain rises. A fair-haired girl of medium height, light of frame, with a face in whose sad beauty is blended the least perceptible trace of womanly resolution. She has borne the heaviest sorrow; for when she followed her father to the grave she buried the last object of her love. The long, inexcusable silence of Greenleaf had been explained to her; she now believed him faithless, and had (not without a pang) striven to uproot his memory from her heart. Courageous, but with more than the delicacy of her sex, strong only in innocence and great-heartedness, mature in character and feeling, but with fresh and tender sensibility, she appeals to all manly and womanly sympathy.
When the last ties that bound her to her native village were broken, she accepted the hearty invitation of her cousin, Walter Monroe, and went with him to Boston. The house at once became a home to her. Mrs. Monroe received her as though she had been a daughter. Such a pretty, motherless child,—so loving, so sincere! How could the kind woman repress the impulse to fold her to her bosom? Not even her anxiety to retain undivided possession of her son’s heart restrained her. So Alice lived, quiet, affectionate, but undemonstrative, as was natural after the trials she had passed. Insensibly she became “the angel in the house”; mother and son felt drawn to her by an irresistible attraction. By every delicate kindness, by attention to every wish and whim, by glances full of admiration and tenderness, both showed the power which her beauty and goodness exerted. And, truly, she was worthy of the homage. The younger men who saw her were set aflame at once, or sighed afar in despair; while the elderly felt an unaccountable desire to pat her golden head, pinch her softly-rounded cheek, and call her such pet-names as their fatherly character and gray hair allowed.
Fate had not yet done its worst; there were other troubles in store for the orphan. She knew little of her kinsman’s circumstances, but supposed him to be at least beyond the reach of want. But not many days passed before the failure of Sandford deprived him of his little patrimony, and the suspension of Mr. Lindsay left him without employment. That evening, when Walter came home, she unwillingly heard the conversation between him and his mother in an adjoining room; and then she knew that her kind friends were destitute. Her resolution was at once formed. With as cheerful an air as she could assume, she took her place at the tea-table, and in the conversation afterwards strove to hide her desolate heart-sickness. On going to her room, she packed her simple wardrobe, not without many tears, and then, with only indifferent success, tried to compose her scattered senses in sleep.
Next morning she strove to appear calm and cheerful, but a close scrutiny might have detected the effort,—a deeper sorrow, perhaps, about the heavy eyelids, and certainly a firmer pressure of the sometimes tremulous lips. But Walter was too much occupied with the conflict of his own feelings to observe her closely. While his mother was engaged in her housewifely duties, he took Alice’s hand, and for the first time spoke of his losses, but expressed himself confident of obtaining a new situation, and begged her to dismiss any apprehensions from her mind. She turned her face that he might not see the springing tears. He went on:—
“The sharpest pang I feel, Alice, is in the thought, that, with the loss of my little fortune, and with my present gloomy prospects, I cannot say to you what I would,—I cannot tell you what is nearest my heart. Since you came here, our sombre house has grown bright. As I have looked at you, I have dared to promise myself a happiness which before I had never conceived possible.”
He hesitated.
“Don’t, dear Walter! I beg of you, don’t venture upon that subject!”
“Why? is it painful to you?”
“Inexpressibly! You are generous and good. I love and honor you as my cousin, my friend, my protector. Do not think of a nearer relationship.”
Walter stood irresolute.
“Some other time, dear Alice,” he faltered out. “I don’t wish to pain you, and I have no courage to-day.”
“Let me be frank, Cousin Walter. Under other circumstances, I would not anticipate the words I saw trembling on your lips. But even if the memory of my poor father were not so fresh, I could not hear you.” She hid her face as she went on. “I have received a wound from the faithlessness of one lover which never will heal. I could not repay your love. I have no heart to give you.”
Thus far she had controlled her feelings, when, kissing his hand with sudden fervor, she burst into tears, and hastily left the room.
She waited till Walter went out; then she wrote a brief note and placed it on the library-table at his favorite corner, and, after bidding Mrs. Monroe good morning, went out as though for a walk. Frequently she looked back with tearful eyes at the home she felt constrained to leave; but gathering her strength, she turned away and plunged into the current that set down Washington Street.
Brave Heart! alone in a great city, whose people were too much engrossed with their own distresses and apprehensions to give heed to the sufferings of others! Alone among strangers, she must seek a home and the means of support. Who would receive an unknown, friendless girl? Who, in the terrible palsy of trade, would furnish her employment?
There was naturally great surprise when Walter Monroe returned home to dinner and Alice was found to be missing. It was evident that it was not an accidental detention, for her trunk had been sent for an hour previous, and the messenger either could not or would not give any information as to her whereabouts. Mrs. Monroe was excessively agitated,—her faculties lost in a maze, like one beholding an accident without power of thought or motion. To Walter it was a heavy blow; he feared that his own advances had been the occasion of her leaving the house, and he reproached himself bitterly for his headlong folly. Their dinner was a sad and cheerless meal; the mother feeling all a woman’s solicitude for a friendless girl; the son filled with a tumult of sorrow, remorse, love, and pity.
“Poor Alice!” said Mrs. Monroe; “perhaps she has found no home.”
“Don’t, mother! The thought of her in the streets, or among suspicious strangers, or vulgar people, is dreadful. We must leave no means untried to find her. Did she leave no word, no note?”
“No,—none that I know of.”
“Have you looked?”
She shook her head. Walter left his untasted food, and hastily looked in the hall, then in the parlor, and at last in the library. There was the note in her own delicate hand.
“DEAR WALTER,—
“Don’t be offended. I cannot eat the bread of idleness now that your fortune is gone and your salary stopped. If I need your assistance, you will hear from me. Comfort your mother, and believe that I shall be happier earning my own living. We shall meet in better times. God bless you both for your kindness to one who had no claim upon you!
“ALICE.”
“The dear creature!” said Mrs. Monroe, taking the note and kissing it.
“Why did you let her trunk go, mother? You might have detained the man who came for it, and sent for me. I would have followed him to the ends of the earth.”
“I don’t know, my son. I was confused. I hardly knew what happened. I shook so that I sat down, and Bridget must have got it.”
Tears ran down her cheeks, and her hands trembled so that her fork dropped.
“Never mind, dear mother. Pray, be calm. I did not wish to disturb you.”
There was a ring at the door. A gentleman wished to see Mr. Monroe. Rising from the table, he went into the parlor.
“Mr. Monroe,” began the stranger, in an agitated manner, “do you know anything of a young lady named Lee,—Alice Lee?”
“Yes,” replied Monroe, with equal excitement, “I know her well. What of her? Where is she? Have you found her?”
“Found her?” said the other, with surprise. “Is she not here?”
“No,—she left this morning.”
“And left no word where she was going?”
“None.”
“Let me beg of you not to trifle with me. Did she not hear my voice, my step, and attempt to excuse herself through you?”
“Sir!” exclaimed Walter.
“I beg pardon. I have been in search of her for two days. I could not believe she had eluded me just at the last. I do not wish to doubt your word.”
“And who may you be, Sir, to take such an interest in the lady?”
“I can satisfy you fully. My name is Greenleaf.”
“The painter?”
“Yes. You must have heard her speak of me.”
“Never, to my recollection.”
“Have you known her long?”
“She is my cousin. It is only recently that she came here, and her acquaintances of a year ago might naturally have been passed over.”
“You seem surprised at her leaving you so abruptly. You will join me in making search for her?”
“I shall search for her, myself, as long as there is hope.”
“Let me confess,” said Greenleaf, “that I have the strongest reasons for my haste. She is betrothed to me.”
“Since you have honored me with your confidence, I will return it, so far as to tell you what I heard from her this morning. I think I can remember the precise words:—’I have received a wound from the faithlessness of one lover, which never will heal.’ If you are the person, I hope the information will be as agreeable to you as her absence and ill-judging independence are to me. I wish you good morning.”
“Then she has heard!” said Greenleaf, soliloquizing. “I am justly punished.” Then aloud. “I shall not take offence at your severity of tone. I have but one thought now. Good morning!”
He left the house, like one in a dream. Alice, homeless in the streets this bitter day,—seeking for a home in poverty-stricken boarding-houses,—asking for work from tailors or milliners,—exposed to jeers, coarse compliments, and even to utter want!—the thought was agony. The sorrows of a whole life were concentrated in this one hour. He walked on, frantically, peering under every bonnet as he passed, looking wistfully in at the shop-windows, expecting every moment to encounter her sad, reproachful face.
Walter had been somewhat ill for several days, and the accumulation of misfortunes now pressed upon him heavily. He did not tell his mother of the strange interview, but sat down moodily by the grate, in the library. He was utterly perplexed where in the city to search for Alice; and with his mental depression came a bodily infirmity and nervousness that made him incapable of effort. An hour passed in gloomy reverie,—drifting without aim upon a shoreless ocean, under a sullen sky,—when he was roused by the entrance of Easelmann.
“In the dumps? I declare, Monroe, I shouldn’t have thought it of you.”
“I am really ill, my friend.”
“Pooh! Don’t let your troubles make you believe that. Cheer up. You’ll find employment presently, and you’ll be surprised to find how well you are.”
“I hope I shall be able to make the experiment.”
“Well, suppose you walk out with me. There is a tailor I want you to see.”
“A tailor? I can’t sew or use shears, either.”
“No,—nor sit cross-legged; I know that. But this tailor is no common Snip. He is a man of ideas and character. He has something to propose to you.”
“Indeed! I am much obliged to you. To-morrow I will go with you; but, really, I feel too feeble to-day,” said Monroe, languidly.
“Well, as you please; to-morrow it shall be. How is your mother?”
“Quite well, I thank you.”
“And the pretty cousin, likewise, I hope?”
“She was quite well this morning.”
“Isn’t she at home?”
“No,—she has gone out.”
“Confound you, Monroe! you have never let me have a glimpse of her. Now I am not a dangerous person; quite harmless, in fact; received trustfully by matrons with grown-up daughters. You needn’t hide her.”
“I don’t know. Some young ladies are quite apt to be fascinated by elderly gentlemen who know the world and still take an interest in society.”
“Yes,—a filial sort of interest, a grand-daughterly reverence and respect. The sight of gray hair is a wonderful antidote to any tenderer feeling.”
“I am very sorry not to oblige you; but the truth is, that Cousin Alice, hearing of my losses, has left the house abruptly, to earn her own living, and we do not know where she has gone.”
“The independent little minx! Now I rather like that. There’s the proper spirit. She’ll take good care of herself; I haven’t a doubt.”
“But it is a most mortifying step to us. It is a reflection upon our hospitality. I would have worked my fingers off for her.”
“No doubt. But she will merely turn hers into nutmeg-graters, by pricking them with her needle, and save you from making stumps of your own. Oh, never fear,—we shall find her presently. I’ll make a description of her, and leave it with all the slop-shop fellows. ’Strayed or stolen: A young lady answering to the name of Alice; five feet and no inches; dressed in black; pale, blue-eyed, smiles when properly spoken to; of no use to any person but the owner. One thousand dollars reward, and no questions asked.’ Isn’t that it? It won’t be necessary to add, that the disconsolate advertiser is breaking his heart on account of her absence.”
“My dear Easelmann, I know your kindly heart; but I cannot be rallied out of this depression. I have only the interest of a cousin, a friend, a protector, in the girl; but her going away, after my other misfortunes, has plunged me into an abyss. I can’t be cheerful.”
“One word more, my dear fellow, and I go. You know I threatened to bore you every day; but I sha’n’t continue the terebrations long at a time. You told me about the way your notes were disposed of. Now they are yours, beyond question, and you can recover them from the holder; he has no lien upon them whatever, for Sandford was not authorized to pledge them. It’s only a spoiling of the Egyptians to fleece a broker.”
“Perhaps the notes themselves are worthless, or will be. Nearly everybody has failed; the rest will go shortly.”
“I see you are incurable; the melancholy fit must have its course, I suppose. But don’t hang yourself with your handkerchief, nor drown yourself in your wash-basin. Good bye!”
On his way down Washington Street, Easelmann met his friend Greenleaf, whom he had not seen before for many days.
“Whither, ancient mariner? That haggard face and glittering eye of yours might hold the most resolute passer-by.”
“You, Easelmann! I am glad to see you. I am in trouble.”
“No doubt; enthusiastic people always are. You fretted your nurse and your mother, your schoolmaster, your mistress, and, most of all, yourself. A sharp sword cuts its own scabbard.”
“She is gone,—left me without a word.”
“Who, the Sandford woman? I always told you she would.”
“No,—I left her, though not so soon as I should.”
“A fine story! She jilted you.”
“No,—on my honor. I’ll tell you about it some other time. But Alice, my betrothed, I have lost her forever.”
“Melancholy Orpheus, how? Did you look over your shoulder, and did she vanish into smoke?”
“It is her father who has gone over the Styx. She is in life; but she has heard of my flirtation”—
“And served you right by leaving you. Now you will quit capering in a lady’s chamber, and go to work, a sadder and a wiser man.”
“Not till I have found her. You may think me a trifler, Easelmann; but every nerve I have is quivering with agony at the thought of the pain I have caused her.”
“Whew-w-w.” said Easelmann. “Found her? Then she’s eloped too! I just left a disconsolate lover mourning over a runaway mistress. It seems to be epidemic. There is a stampede of unhappy females. We must compress the feet of the next generation, after the wise custom of China, so that they can’t get away.”
“Whom have you seen?”
“Mr. Monroe, an acquaintance of mine.”
“The same. The lady, it seems, is his cousin,—and is, or was, my betrothed.”
“And you two brave men give up, foiled by a country-girl of twenty, or thereabouts!”
“How is one to find her?”
“What is the advantage of brains to a man who doesn’t use them? Consider; she will look for employment. She won’t try to teach, it would be useless. She is not strong enough for hard labor. She is too modest and reserved to take a place in a shop behind a counter, where she would be sure to be discovered. She will, therefore, be found in the employ of some milliner, tailor, or bookbinder. How easy to go through those establishments!”
“You give me new courage. I will get a trades-directory and begin at once.”
“To-morrow, my friend. She hasn’t got a place yet, probably.”
“So much the better. I shall save her the necessity.”
“Go, then,” said Easelmann. “You’ll be happier, I suppose, to be running your legs off, if it is to no purpose. A lover with a new impulse is like a rocket when the fuse is lighted; he must needs go off with a rush, or ignobly fizz out.”
“Farewell, for to-day. I’ll see you to-morrow,” said Greenleaf, already some paces off.
[To be continued.]
Oh, let me not die young!
Full-hearted, yet without a tongue,—
Thy green earth stretched before my feet,
untrod,—
Thy blue sky bending over,
As her most tender lover,
With infinite meaning in its starry eyes,
Full of thy silent majesty, O God!
And wild, weird whispers from the solemn
deep
Of the Great Sea ascending, with the sweep
Of the Wind-angel’s wings across
the skies,
Burdened with hints of awful memories,
Whose half-guessed grandeur thrills us
till we weep!—
I love thy marvellous world too well—
Its sunny nooks of hill and dell,
Its majesty of mountains, and the swell
Of volumed waters—for my heart
to yearn
Away from the deep truth which veils its
splendor
In beauty there less dazzling, but more
tender.
With grave delight I turn
To all its glories, from the tiniest bloom
Whose hour-long life just sweetens its
own tomb
As with funereal spices,
To the far stars which burn
And blossom in fire through their vast
periods,—
Borne in thy palm,
Like the pale lotus in the hand of Isis,
When throned white, and calm,
In solemn conclave of the mythic gods.
Oh, let me not die young,
A brother unclaimed among
The countless millions of thy happy flock,
Whose deepest joy is to obey,
Whereby they feel the measured sway
Of thy life in them, their own living
part,
Whether in centuried pulses of the rock
By slow disintegration
Ascending to its higher,
Or the quick fluttering of the Storm-god’s
heart,—
An instant’s palpitation
Through all its arteries of fire!
One common blood runs down life’s
myriad veins,
From Archangelic Hierarchs who float
Broad-winged in the God-glory, to the
mote
That trembles with a braided dance
In the warm sunset’s vivid glance;
And one great Heart that boundless flow
sustains!
In all the creatures of thy hand divine
Thy love-light is a living guest,
Whether a petal’s palm confine
Its glitter to a lily’s breast,
Or in unbounded space a starry line
Stretches, till flagging Thought must
droop her wing to rest.
Oh, let me not die young,
A powerless child among
The ancient grandeurs of thy awful world!
I catch some fragment of the mighty song
Which, ere to darkness hurled,
My elder brothers in the eternal throng
Have caught before,—
Faint murmurs of the surge,
The deep, surrounding, everlasting roar
Of a life-ocean without port or shore,—
Ere I depart, compelled to urge
My fragile bark with trembling from the
verge
Of this Earth-island, into that Unknown,
Where worlds, like souls forlorn, go wandering
alone!
Oh, let me not die young,
With all that song unsung,
A swift and voiceless fugitive,
From darkness coming and in darkness lost,
Before thy solemn Pentecost,
Dawning within the soul, shall give
The burning utterance of its flaming tongue,—
The boon whereby to other souls we live!
Thy worlds are flashing with immortal
splendor,
For human speech on heights of human song
Faintly to render,
And pour back along
Its mountain grandeur, the accumulate
rain
Of star-light, dream-light, thoughts of
joy and pain,
Of love, hate, right and wrong,
In floods of utterance sublime and strong,
In dewy effluence beautiful and tender.
The kindred darknesses
Of caverned earth and fathomless thought,
Of Life and Death, and their twin mysteries,
Before and After, on my spirit press
Tempting and awful, with high promise
fraught,
And guardian terrors, whose out-flashing
swords
Beleaguer Paradise and the holy Tree
Sciential. Step by step the way is
fought
That leads from Darkness, through her
miscreant hordes,
Back to the heavens of wise, and true,
and free:
Minerva’s Gorgon, Ammon’s
cyclic Asp,
And the fierce flame-sword of the Cherubim,
That flashed like hate across the pallid
gasp
Of exiled Eve and Adam, flare, and glare,
And hiss venenate, round the steps of
him
Who thirsts for heavenly Wisdom, if he
dare
Climb to her bosom, or with artless grasp
Pluck the sweet fruits that hang around
him, ripe and fair.
Oh! glorious Youth
Is the true age of prophecy, when Truth
Stands bared in beauty, and the young
blood boils
To hurl us in her arms, before the blur
Of time makes dim her rounded form,
Or the cold blood recoils
From the polluted swarm
Of armed Chimeras that environ her.
But worthy Age to ripened fruit shall
bring
The glorious blooming of its hopeful spring,
And pile the garners of immortal Truth
With sheaves of golden grain,
To sow the world again,
And fill the eager wants of the New Age’s
youth.
A thousand flashes of uncertain light
Cleave the thick darkness, driving far
athwart
The up-piled glooms, as lightnings plough
their bright
Fire-furrows through the barren cloud
They sow with thunders. Thought on
burning thought
Shatters the doubts and terrors which
have bowed
Weak hearts on weaker leaning in a crowd
Self-crushing and self-fettering; gleams
are caught
From some far centre set by God to keep
His brave world spinning, or some drifting
isle
Of swift wildfire shot out by the wide
sweep
Of wings demoniac,
Far winnowing and black,
Our cheated souls to ’wilder and
beguile.
Only the years, the imperturbable,
Impassionate years, can sheave the scattered
rays
Into one sun, these mingled arrows tell
Each to its quiver, the divine and fell,
And life’s lone meteors to their
centre trace.
O Father, let me not die young!
Earth’s beauty asks a heart and
tongue
To give true love and praises to her worth;
Her sins and judgment-sufferings call
For fearless martyrs to redeem thy Earth
From her disastrous fall.
For though her summer hills and vales
might seem
The fair creation of a poet’s dream,—
Ay, of the Highest Poet,
Whose wordless rhythms are chanted by
the gyres
Of constellate star-choirs,
That with deep melody flow and overflow
it,—
The sweet Earth,—very sweet,
despite
The rank grave-smell forever drifting
in
Among the odors from her censers white
Of wave-swung lilies and of wind-swung
roses,—
The Earth sad-sweet is deeply attaint
with sin!
The pure air, which incloses
Her and her starry kin,
Still shudders with the unspent palpitating
Of a great Curse, that to its utmost shore
Thrills with a deadly shiver
Which has not ceased to quiver
Down all the ages, nathless the strong
beating
Of Angel-wings, and the defiant roar
Of Earth’s Titanic thunders.
Fair and sad,
In sin and beauty, our beloved Earth
Has need of all her sons to make her glad;
Has need of martyrs to re-fire the hearth
Of her quenched altars,—of
heroic men
With Freedom’s sword, or Truth’s
supernal pen,
To shape the worn-out mould of nobleness
again.
And she has need of Poets who can string
Their harps with steel to catch the lightning’s
fire,
And pour her thunders from the clanging
wire,
To cheer the hero, mingling with his cheer,
Arouse the laggard in the battle’s
rear,
Daunt the stern wicked, and from discord
wring
Prevailing harmony, while the humblest
soul
Who keeps the tune the warder angels sing
In golden choirs above,
And only wears, for crown and aureole,
The glow-worm light of lowliest human
love,
Shall fill with low, sweet undertones
the chasms
Of silence, ’twixt the booming thunder-spasms.
Yet never an age, when God has need of
him,
Shall want its Man, predestined by that
need,
To pour his life in fiery word or deed,—
The strong Archangel of the Elohim!
Earth’s hollow want is prophet of
his coming:
In the low murmur of her famished cry,
And heavy sobs breathed up despairingly,
Ye hear the near invisible humming
Of his wide wings that fan the lurid sky
Into cool ripples of new life and hope,
While far in its dissolving ether ope
Deeps beyond deeps, of sapphire calm,
to cheer
With Sabbath gleams the troubled Now and
Here.
Father! thy will be done,
Holy and righteous One!
Though the reluctant years
May never crown my throbbing brows with
white,
Nor round my shoulders turn the golden
light
Of my thick locks to wisdom’s royal
ermine:
Yet by the solitary tears,
Deeper than joy or sorrow,—by
the thrill,
Higher than hope or terror, whose quick
germen,
In those hot tears to sudden vigor sprung,
Sheds, even now, the fruits of graver
age,—
By the long wrestle in which inward ill
Fell like a trampled viper to the ground.
By all that lifts me o’er my outward
peers
To that supernal stage
Where soul dissolves the bonds by Nature
bound,—
Fall when I may, by pale disease unstrung,
Or by the hand of fratricidal rage,
I cannot now die young!
* * * * *
ODDS AND ENDS FROM THE OLD WORLD
My first visit to Turin dates as far back as 1831. We are so personal, that our impressions of things depend less on their intrinsic worth than on such or such extrinsic circumstance which may affect our mental vision at the moment. I suppose mine was affected by the mist and rain which graced the capital of Piedmont on the morning of my arrival there. Another incident, microscopic, and almost too ludicrous to mention, had no less its weight in the scale of prepossession. I was tired and hungry, and, while the diligence was being unloaded, I entered a caffe close by, and called for some buttered toast. My hair (I had plenty at that time) stood on end at the answer I received. There was no buttered toast to be had, the waiter said. “It was not the custom.” I confess I augured ill of a city from whose caffes, unlike all others throughout Italy, such a staple of breakfast was banished.
I am fond of buttered toast, I own. If it is a weakness, I candidly plead guilty. My mother—bless her soul!—brought me up in the faith of buttered toast. I had breakfasted upon it all my life. I could conceive of no breakfast without it. Hence the shock I felt. “Not the custom!” Why not, I wondered. A problem of no easy solution, I can tell you! It has been haunting me for the last seven-and-twenty years. If I had a thousand dollars,—a bold supposition for one of the brotherhood of the pen,—I would even now found a prize, and adjudge that sum to the best memoir on this question:—“Why is buttered toast excluded from the caffes of Turin?” It is not from lack of proper materials,—for heaps of butter and mountains of rolls are to be seen on every side; it is not from lack of taste,—for the people which has invented the grisini, and delights in the white truffle, shows too keen a sense of what is dainty not to exclude the charge of want of taste.
“Pray, what are the grisini? what is the white truffle?” asks the inquisitive reader.—The grisini are bread idealized, bread under the form of walking-sticks a third of a little finger in diameter, and from which every the least particle of crumb has been carefully eliminated. It is light, easy of digestion, cracks without effort under your teeth, and melts in your mouth. It is savory eaten alone, excellent with your viands, capital sopped in wine. A good Turinese would rather have no dinner at all than sit down to one without a good-sized bundle of these torrified reeds on his right or left. Beware of the spurious imitations of this inimitable mixture of flour, which you will light on in some passages in Paris! They possess nothing of the grisini but the name.
“I have it!” I fancy I hear some imaginative reader exclaim at this place. “The passion for the grisini accounts most naturally for the want of buttered toast in Turin. Don’t you see that it is replaced by the grisini?”
A mistake, a profound mistake. Grisini are never served with your coffee or chocolate. Try again.
The white truffle,—white, mark you, and not to be confounded with its black, hard, knotty, poor cousin of Perigord,—well, the white truffle is—the white truffle. There are things which admit of no definition. It would only spoil them. Define the Sun, if you dare. “Look at it,” would be your answer to the indiscreet questioner. And so I say to you,—Taste it, the white truffle. Not that you will relish it, on a first or second trial. No. It requires a sort of initiation. Ambrosia, depend upon it, would prove unpalatable, at first, to organs degraded by coarse mortal food. It has,—the white truffle, I mean, not the ambrosia, which I have never tasted,—it has a shadow of a shade of mitigated garlic flavor, which demands time and a certain training of the gustatory apparatus, to be fully appreciated. Try again, and it will grow upon you,—again and again, and you will go crazy after the white truffle. I have seen persons, who had once turned up their noses at it, declare themselves capable of any crime to get at it. Nature gave it to Piedmont, “e poi ruppe la stampa.” Gold you may find in different places, and under different latitudes;—the white truffle is an exclusive growth of Piedmont.
To return. If it is not the want of proper materials, or of taste to use them, what can be the cause of the unjust ostracism against buttered toast?
A Genoese friend of mine accounts for it on the same principle on which another friend of mine, a Polish refugee in London, accounted for the difference, nay, in many points, the direct opposition, between English and French habits of life,—that is to say, on the principle of national antagonism. Why does the English Parliament hold its sittings at night? my Polish friend would ask. The reason is obvious. Because, the French Parliament sits in broad day, when it sits at all. Why is winter the season of villeggiatura in England? Because in France it is summer and autumn. Why are beards and moustaches tabooed in Great Britain? Because it is common to wear them in France. Why are new pipes preferred in England for smoking? Because in France the older and more culottee a pipe, the more welcome it is. And so on, ad infinitum.
Arguing on the same principle, my Genoese friend avers that buttered toast is proscribed at Turin because it is so justly popular in Genoa. The Genoese, in fact, excel in the preparation of that dainty article. They have, for the purpose, delicious little rolls, which they cut in two and suit to all tastes and whims. The upper or under crust, soft or hard, deep brown or light brown, with much or little butter, with cold or hot butter, with butter visible or invisible:—be as capricious in your orders as you like, and never fear tiring the waiter. Proteus himself never took so many shapes.
There is some speciousness in my Genoese friend’s argument. The Superba, naturally enough, cannot forget that she was first and is now second. Turin, on her side, does not intend to have her official supremacy disputed. No wonder that the two noble cities should look at each other rather surlily, and stick to their own individuality. “Hence it is,” concludes my friend, “that the comparatively easy Apennines have proved to this day an impassable barrier to the buttered toast on one side, and to the grisini on the other.”
“But not so to the white truffle,” I put in, triumphantly. “The Genoese have adopted that; and honor to them for having done so! What do you say to this, eh?”
My friend scratched his head in quest of a new argument. We will leave him to his embarrassment, and have done with this string of digressions.
I was saying, that my first visit to Turin dated as far back as 1831. On that journey I had a singular travelling-companion, a beautiful fish, a John Dory, carefully wrapped up, and neatly laid in a wicker-basket, like a babe in its cradle. The officers of the octroi, who examined my basket, complimented me on my choice,—nay, grew so enthusiastic about my John Dory, that, if I remember right, they let it pass duty-free. The mistress of the house,
Turin was, or seemed to me, gloomy and chilly at that time, though the season was mild, and the sky had cleared up. Jesuits, carabineers, and spies lorded it; distrust was the order of the day. People went about their business, exchanged a hasty and well-timed sciao, (schiavo,) and gave up all genial intercourse. Far keener than the breath of neighboring snow-capped Mount Cenis, the breath of despotism froze alike tongues and souls. How could buttered toast, emblem of softness, thrive in so hard a temperature? I left as soon as I could, and with a feeling of relief akin to joy.
I was in no haste to revisit Turin, nor, had I been, would circumstances have permitted my doing so. The fish had a tail for me as well as for many others, and a very long tail too. Most of the years intervening between 1831 and 1848 I had to spend abroad,—out of Italy, I mean. Time enough for reflection. Plenty of worry and anxiety, and difficulties of many a kind. Rough handling from the powers that were, cold indifference from the masses. A flow of gentle sympathy, now and then, from a kindred heart or two,—God bless them!—a live spring in a desert. A hard apprenticeship,—still, useful in many ways, to develop the sense of realities, to teach one to do without a host of things deemed indispensable before to keep the soul in tune. I declare, for my part, I don’t regret those long years of erratic life. I bless them, on the contrary; for they opened my eyes to the worth of my country. The right point of view to take in physical or moral beauty, in its fulness, is only at a distance.
The great convulsion of ’48 flung wide the gates of Italy to the wanderer, and I returned to Turin. I had left it at freezing-point, and I found it at white-heat. Half Europe revolutionized,—France a republic, Vienna in a blaze, Hungary in arms, Radetzky driven out of Milan, a Piedmontese army in Lombardy,—there was more than enough to turn the heads of the Seven Sages of Greece. No wonder ours were turned. Serve a splendid banquet and pour out generous wine to a shipwrecked crew who have long been starving, and ten to one they will overfeed themselves and get drunk and quarrel. We did both, alas!—and those who are drunk and quarrel are likely to be overpowered by those who keep sober and united. We were divided about the sauce with which the hare should be dressed, and, in the heat of argument, lost sight of this little fact, that a hare, to be dressed at all, must first be caught. The first reverses overtook us thus occupied. They did not sober us; quite the contrary; we fell to doing what Manzoni’s capons did.
By-the-by, since that revered name comes under my pen, I may as well state, what every one will be glad to hear, that the author of the “Promessi Sposi” has perfectly recovered from his late illness. It cannot be but that the wail of a nation has reached even across the Atlantic, without the aid of an electric cable. He looks strong and healthy, and likely to be long spared to the love and veneration of his country. I have this on the authority of a witness de visu et auditu, a friend of his and mine, who visited the great man, not a fortnight ago, in his retreat of Brusuglio, near Milan.
To leave the author for his book. Do you recollect Renzo tying four fat capons by the legs, and carrying them, with their heads hanging down, to Signor Azzeccagarbugli,—and the capons, in that awkward predicament, finding no better occupation than to peck at each other? “As is too often the case with companions in misfortune,” observes the author, in his quiet, humoristic way. We were just as wise. Instead of saying, Mea culpa, we began to recriminate, and find fault with everything and everybody. It was the fault of the Ministers, of the Camarilla, of the army, of the big epaulets, of the King. Dynastic interest, of course, was not forgotten in the indictment.
Dynastic interest, forsooth! So long as it combines and makes but one with the interest of the nation, I should like to know where is the great harm of it. As if kings alone were defiled with that pitch! As if we had not, each and all of us, low and high, rich and poor, our dynastic interest, and were not eager enough in its pursuit! As if anybody scrupled at or were found fault with for pushing on his sons, enlarging his business, rounding his estate, in the view of transmitting it, thus improved, to his kindred and heirs!
But who thought of such things under the smart of defeat? I do not intend, by this post-facto grumbling, to give myself credit for having been wiser than others. By no means. I played my part in the chorus of fault-finders, and cried out as loud as anybody. The upshot was what might have been expected. Independence went to the dogs—for a while. Liberty, thank God, remained in this little corner, at least,—liberty, the great lever for those who use it wisely. I know of nations, far more experienced than we are in political matters, and whose programme in 1848 was far less complicated than ours, who cannot say as much for themselves.
The times were unpropitious to the buttered-toast question, and it had quite slipped out of my mind. I have never traced the string of associations which reminded me of it, on one certain morning. Once more I made bold to ask if I could have buttered toast. “Impossible,” said the waiter, curtly. I was piqued. “How impossible?” said I. “Erase that word from your Dictionary, if you are to drive the Austrians from Italy. Take a roll, cut it in halves, have it toasted, and
Ten years have elapsed, and here I am again, on my third visit. The journey from Genoa to Turin took, ten years ago, twenty-four hours by diligence. Now it is accomplished in four by railway. To say that this accelerated ratio of travelling represents but fairly the average of progress realized in almost all directions, within this space of time, is no mere form of speech. To whatever side I turn, my eyes are agreeably surprised by material signs of improvement. From what but yesterday was waste land, where linen was spread to dry, steam-engines raise their shrill cry, and a double terminus sends forth and receives, in its turn, merchandise, passengers, and ideas. At the gate of the city, so to say, a gigantic work, the piercing of Mount Cenis, is actually going on. Where I left, literally left, cows browsing in peace, two new quarters have risen, as if by magic,—that of Portanuova, aristocratic and rich, and that of San Salvario, less showy, but not less comfortable. A third is in contemplation; nay, already begun,—to be raised on the spot where once stood the citadel, (and prison for political offenders,) of sinister memory, now levelled with the ground. I take this last as a capital novelty. Another, more significant still, is the Protestant Temple, which stares me in the face,—a poor work of Art, if you will, but no less the embodiment of one of the most precious conquests, religious freedom. I would fain not grow emphatic,—but when I contrast the present with the past, when I recollect, for instance, how the Jews were formerly treated, and see them now in Parliament, I cannot help warming up a little. Monuments to Balbo, the stanch patriot and nervous biographer of Dante,—to General Bava, the conqueror at Goito,—to Pepe, the heroic defender of Venice, grace the public walks. One to Gioberti, the eminent philosopher, is in course of preparation. If these are not signs of radically changed times, and changed for the better, I don’t know what are.
Nor is the moral less improved than the material physiognomy of the city. I see a thriving, orderly community,—no trace of antagonism, but a free, good-natured intercourse between all classes, and a general look of ease and contentment. Of course, there are poor in Turin, as everywhere else,—except Japan, if we may credit travellers; but nowhere are my eyes saddened by the spectacle of that abject destitution which blunts, nay, destroys, the sense of self-respect. The operatives, especially,—what are here
But this is all on the surface; let us go deeper, if we can, and have a peep at the workings beneath. I knock for information on this head at the mind and heart of all sorts of people. I note down the answers of the Minister and of the Deputy, as well as those of the waiter who serves my coffee and of the man who blacks my shoes, and here is what I find,—a growing sense of the benefits of liberty, a deep-rooted attachment to the Re galantuomo, (the King, honest man,) a juster appreciation of the difficulties which beset the national enterprise, (the freeing of Italy from Austria,) and an honest confidence of overcoming them with God’s help. This last feeling, I am glad to say, is, as it ought to be, general in the army. This is what I find in the bulk. There is no lack of dissenters, who regret the past, and take a gloomy view of the future. I describe no Utopia. Unanimity is no flower of this earth.
This improved state of things and feelings, within so short a period of time, reflects equal credit on the people which benefits by it and on the men who have lately presided over its destinies. Among these last it were invidious not to mention, with well-deserved praise, the active and accomplished statesman who introduced free trade, caused Piedmont to take its share in the Crimean War, and last, not least, by a bold and skilful move, brought the Italian question before the Congress of Paris.
During the summer of 1848, I rented a couple of rooms in the Via dell’ Arcivescovado. There often fell upon my ear, wafted across the court from the windows opposite mine, a loud and regular declamation. I fancied it was a preacher learning by heart his sermon, or an actor his part. I was told one day that it was Count Cavour, the owner of the house, who, as a prelude to his parliamentary career, was addressing an imaginary assembly. The fact struck me the more, as the Count was not a member of Parliament at the time. He was elected a Deputy and took his seat not long after. I was present at his debut. It was not brilliant. Count Cavour was not born an orator; his delivery was far from fluent. He had many things to say, and wanted to say them all at once. The sense of the House was not favorable to the new member,—that of the public galleries still less so. No man
Life is substantial in Turin, and on a broad, homely scale. By which you are not to understand, either that the male portion of the inhabitants feast on whole oxen, like Homer’s heroes, or that, the fair sex are draped in tunics of homespun wool, like the Roman matrons of old. They are not so primitive as that. You may have at any restaurant a smaller morsel than an ox or even an ox’s shoulder; and as to ladies’ finery, there is no article de Paris, no indispensable inutility, no crinoline, hoop, or cage, of impossible materials, shape, and dimensions, which you may not find under the Portici, or in Vianuova, a facility of which the Turinese beauties give themselves the benefit rather freely. What I meant to say, when I spoke of life on a broad, homely scale, was simply this:—that in Turin, generally speaking, the great art of putting the appearance in the place of the substance, and juggling the principal under the accessories, has yet to be learned. If you ask for a room, a dinner, a bath, they take you in good earnest, and supply you with the genuine article. When I put up at the Hotel de Londres, from which I am writing, I had to run no gantlet between a double line of solemn-looking, white-cravated waiters; yet I have only to ring my bell, to be attended to with promptitude, with zeal, nay, con amore. My kind hostess, Signora Viarengo, does not wear a triple or quadruple row of flounces, but looks after my wardrobe when I am out, and, if anything wants mending, has it mended. The room which I occupy is not furnished in a dashing style, nor has it a parquet cire, but it is on the first floor, and thrice as large and lofty and half as dear as that I had at Meurice’s on the quatrieme; and a Titan might stretch himself down at ease on the bed in which I sleep. The dining-room of the hotel is not glittering with gilt stucco and chandeliers; but the dinner served to me there (and served at any hour) is copious and first-rate,— four dishes of entremets, butter, salame, celery, radishes, to whet the appetite,—a soup,—a first course of three dishes, two of meat, one of vegetables,—a second of three dishes, one of them a roasted fowl, —salad, a sweet
This takes me back some twenty-seven years, to the waiter’s answer, a propos of buttered toast, “It is not the custom,” and recalls to me that important question. Well, even that has not remained stationary in the general movement. Not that buttered toast has received its great or even small letters of naturalization. But you have only to ask for it, and it will be served without demur. So far the neck of routine is broken. What next? We shall find out on our fourth visit, if God grants us life. Meanwhile I feel that Turin will be regretted this time.
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From the lounge where Fred Shaw was lying, he could easily look out of the low window into Senter Place, and at the usually “uninterrupted view across the street.” Just now it was interrupted so fully with a driving snow-storm, that the houses opposite were scarcely visible. The wind tossed the great flakes up and across and whirled them in circles, as if loath to let them go at all to the ground. There was something lively and merry in it, too, as if the flakes themselves were joyful and dancing in the abundance of their life,—as if they and the wind had a life of their own, as well as poor stupid mortals, that cowered under cover, and shut themselves away from the broad, free air. How foolish it is, to be sure! Here comes one now, turning into the place,—well covered, a fur tippet about his face,—slapping his arms on his chest, —a defiant smile on his brown face, and a look of expectancy in his eyes. Yes! there they are at the window,—wife and children! The smile melts into a broad laugh, as the snow-flakes dash madly at his eyes and nose. There they are,—rosy, well, and warm! From the warmest corner of his heart comes up a quick throb that takes away his breath;—he runs up the steps,—the door opens,—one, two, three little faces,—it shuts. The snow-flakes gallop on again, madly, joyfully.
Behind the man who ran up the steps, a girl of eighteen walked swiftly and firmly over the drifting heaps on the sidewalk. Her eyes glanced upward at the sky. There are four immense clouds, of a very light gray, with silver edges, trying to meet over a speck of blue. They tumble and clamber, and press all for the same point; but whether the wind is too variable for them to gather in one mass, or for whatever meteorological reason, she does not guess, but she is attracted to the sky and gazes at it as she walks rapidly on.
Fred recognizes the blue eyes and glowing face, as they go past the window. It is only Sister Minnie. Not coming here, after all! No. And the clouds could not overcome and hide the blue sky. It shone out serenely and hopefully, like Minnie’s own encouraging spirit. She breasts the storm gallantly. If she can only get round the corner into C— Street! But here all the tempest seems collected to battle with her—She wraps herself a little closer, and holds her breath. A few steps more,—she turns round,—places her back full at the driving storm,—and draws a long breath. Now for it! The flakes stop suddenly, as if awed by the quiet determination in the young face. They fall to the ground, stilly. The blue sky looks out, the sun shimmers white for five minutes. Minnie walks rapidly, runs up the steps,—rings, and takes into the house with her a full, fresh life, that vibrates from cellar to attic in harmonious energy.
The afternoon wanes. Fred has dined. He takes his meerschaum from the teapoy by his side and examines it critically. How for the color? Is it just the right shade to stop? No. A very little darker. This is growing quite beautiful. Almost like an agate. Which of those six is the prettiest, after all? He thinks a seventh, which he remembers lying on Little’s mantel-piece, outdoes the whole. That of Little’s was not carved, nor silver-mounted even, and yet connoisseurs pronounced it worth a hundred and fifty dollars. Not one of these is worth ten. He smokes again, and looks at the cannel coal as it leaps into flame. The room is very still; not a footfall can be heard in the house;—partly because the doors are hung with a view to silence and the floors thickly carpeted, and partly because there are only two servants in-doors, and those men. The cook cannot speak English, and Fred’s own man, a jewel in his way, is taciturn to a fault. If Fred would be honest with himself, he would acknowledge that the third-hand chatter of anybody’s kitchen would often be a delightful relief to his solitude. But then how could he follow up his system of self-culture? That and society are quite incompatible things. However, he yawns fearfully.
But what then? Has the man no mind, no cultivation, no taste? Things do not indicate any such want. The walls of the room in which he is just now lounging have their crimson and gold almost covered with pictures,—copies of rare Murillos and Raphaels, and an original head of a boy, by Greuze, with the lips as fresh as they were a hundred years ago. An exquisite “Dying Stork,” in bronze, stands on a bracket below Sassoferrato’s sweetest Madonna, and Retzsch’s “Hamlet” lies open on a side-table. The three Canovian Graces stand in a corner opposite him, and he glances at the pedestal which stands ready to receive “Eve at the Fountain.” The pedestal has been there two weeks already, waiting for the “Oxford” to arrive with its many precious Art-burdens. It stands near the window; it will be a good light for it. Fred wishes, for the hundredth time, that it would come along. There are books, surely? Oh, yes, one side of the room is a complete bookcase,—tasteful, inside and out.
The small room which opens into this luxurious sitting-room has a high north window, and near it stands Fred’s easel, with a half-finished head on a canvas. Already it has changed its aspect twenty times. Sometimes it is a Nymph, sometimes a Naiad, sometimes Undine. Once, he dashed all the green of the wood-nymph’s forest, with one stroke, into green water, intending to put in Undine, with a boat. He has not fulfilled his intention; but he works on, with the luxurious abandonment of genius to its spell, be it what it may. He does not care what it ends in. One of Fred’s theories is, that the imagination, by constant and intense exercise, may so project the image it conceives, as to make it the subject of ocular contemplation and imitation. Why not? All objects of sight are painted on a flat surface, and it is by experience, comparison, nay, in some measure by the will, that we get our ideas of their shape and distance. Poor Blake’s insane painting of imaginary heads, which he saw three or six feet from him, was the only true and rational method of painting at all. Think of your thought,—intensify it,—create it,—create it perfectly,—define it carefully,—group it gracefully, —color it exquisitely,—project it, by an intense effort of the will, into the space before you. There it stands. Now paint it.
He is fond of dwelling on this theory; and as nobody takes the trouble to contradict him, he has come to believe it truth, through hearing it often repeated. He has explained it to Minnie more than twenty times, and says he is almost ready to paint. Not quite. He must lie on the sofa a year, perhaps two years longer, before he will be able to satisfy himself. But then, what is a year, two, ten years, in an eternity of fame?
The conception being completely projected from the brain in a visible form, what remains but the mechanical imitation of it? Anybody can do that. The thing is the conception. In vain Minnie suggests the vulgar notion of acquiring facility by drawing and copying things in general.
“Entirely unnecessary, Minnie. What! is not genius before rules? Why should I imitate Titian’s tints, when I can copy my own fancies? When I get my ideal perfected, you will soon see it real. I can copy it in half an hour. If it is in me, it will come out of me, like Curran’s eloquence.”
“But,” says Minnie, doubtfully, looking at the easel where the golden curls and heavenly eyes of an angel are obscured by the russet-brown of a beginning wood-nymph, “why don’t you keep to one idea, Fred?”
“Oh, because I choose to be fancy-free. I will not have my imagination trammelled. Let it wander at its own sweet will. You will see, Minnie, by-and-by. Now, here I have been getting up a head,—not painting it, you know. Sometimes I can almost see the eyes. But they elude me,—I haven’t quite command of them yet. But I shall get it,—I shall get it yet!”
Minnie remembers the same things said to her ever since she was a child. Fred used to tell it all over to her then. He was so much older than she was,—fourteen years,—that she was quite flattered by being thought worthy to listen to his theories of all sorts. However, since she had come to think for herself, one by one all these theories had faded out of her mind and seemed like last year’s clouds. She had discovered that it was useless to controvert them, and generally listened with some pretence of patience. The last time she had said, at the first pause,—
“Now, Fred, I must go. But I want you to contribute a little, if you will, to my poor’s library, and if you will, a little, too, to poor Sophia.”
“Little Sister Minnie,” answered Fred, curtly, “don’t annoy me. If you enjoy digging out beggar-women, and adorning them with all sorts of comforts and pleasures, do it. I don’t ask you not to. Will you give me the same privilege of following my own pleasure?”
“But, Fred!” said Minnie, astonished, “only last week, what did you do for poor Sophia? More than I could in a year,—two, three years! For you know I have only my thirty dollars quarterly for everything, and sometimes I have so little to give!”
“Why do you give, then, dear Minnie?” said Fred, languidly smiling.
“Oh, if you ask that, why did you give, last Monday? You gave—let me see—fifty-four dollars; every cent you had in your purse. Oh, the things I bought for her with it! Paid rent, bought medicine, blankets,—oh, so many needed comforts! Now, why did you give?” said Minnie, with a triumphant smile,—“for now I have him,” she thought.
“To save myself pain,—that’s all.”
Minnie looked puzzled.
“Nothing else, I do assure you. No very great virtue in that. The fact was, I was bored, and, to tell the truth, somewhat shocked, by your ‘poor Sophia’s’ ailments, which I came upon so inopportunely,—and I was glad to empty my pockets to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling.”
“Well, then, save yourself pain again, Fred,—for I assure you she suffers constantly for want of simple alleviations, which a small sum of money would afford her. Oh, she needs so many things, and everything is so dear! And she has so many helpless children, and no husband, and so bowed with rheumatism”—
“Minnie! excuse me for interrupting you; but can you find nothing but rheumatism to talk about? It is of all subjects the least tasteful to me.”
“My dear Fred!” And there Minnie stopped. She was both hurt and puzzled.
Fred laughed. His good-humor returned at the sight of her mystified face, and the opportunity of explaining some of his theories of morals.
“In the first place, Minnie, what do we live for?”
Minnie had not thought. She was only eighteen, and had acted.
“Well, I dare say you have never considered the subject. I have, a great deal. You see, Minnie, we are born to pursue happiness. You allow that.”
“Yes,—I suppose so,” said Minnie.
“Well, then, if I look at the wrong thing, and call it happiness, it is my mistake, and I only shall pay for it. You find your happiness in an active life and works of mercy. Very well, do so. You devote a certain part of your income, small as it is, to that sort of pleasure. I devote mine to my pleasures. They are different from yours. You might call them selfish. What then? So are yours. I don’t say you are not modest and humble, and all that; but you do enjoy your old women, and your fussy charity-schools. Very well. That is all I do with my drawing, my lounging, my smoking, my reading. And I think, Minnie,” added Fred, laughing, “I have the added grace of humility; for I am far from making a merit of my sort of life.”
“No,—it would be difficult to make a merit of it,” said Minnie.
That was clear enough. Fred loved to have her for an auditor. So long as she could not see over him, he was as good as infinite to her.
“In the first place, Minnie, you must allow, it is a duty to surround ourselves with the beautiful in all things. It conduces to the highest self-culture; and self-culture is our first duty.”
“Is it? Surely, it cannot be! Oh, you mean we ought rather to attend to our own faults than those of others?”
“I mean as I say. Self-culture is our first duty, both moral and intellectual. I might add, also, that to take care of Number One is a dictate of common prudence. You allow that? Well. First, then, the body cared for, all right. Then the morals,—attend to your own, and let other people’s alone. Then, thirdly, your intellect. Now, then, it becomes a positive duty, ‘the duty that lies nearest to me,’ to cultivate that. And to do that, Minnie, I am obliged to draw on myself to my very last dollar. To refine the taste by familiarity with the highest objects of taste, to appreciate Art, to develop the intellect, to bring one’s self to conceive and grasp the Universal, the Beautiful, to raise one’s self in the scale of created things by creative fancies imitating the Highest,—ah! in fact, Minnie, self-culture becomes a duty,—indeed, our first duty.”
Something in Minnie’s face—it was not a smile—made Fred turn the subject a little.
“Now, really, if every one would take care of one, and that one himself, don’t you see there would be no more want or suffering in this weary world? no more need of blankets or dispensaries? Each is happy, comfortable, and self-cultured in his proportion. A universal harmony prevails. Like the planets, self-revolving, and moving, each in his chosen orbit, they shout and sing for joy. How much better this than to be eccentrically darting off in search of somebody’s tears to wipe, somebody’s wounds to bandage,—who, indeed, would have neither wounds nor grief, if they would follow my simple rule!”
Minnie laughed a little at her brother’s grave sophistry, but had no wish to contest the point with him.
“It is no merit in me, but, as you say, rather self-indulgence, to be looking up and relieving destitute cases. But it would be merit in you, if you don’t like it; and you might have all that, and none of the annoyances.”
Her bright face glowed; and Fred liked to look at her when she was excited; the coloring beat Titian’s, he thought.
“You don’t know how painful to me it is to hold out empty hands to so many sufferers”—
But now Minnie’s face looked so sorrowful that there was nothing specially beautiful in the coloring, and Fred said, impatiently,—
“You bore me, Minnie. I am waiting to take my afternoon nap.”
And he turned positively over towards the wall.
The sight of Minnie, swiftly walking through the driving storm to-day, brought up to Fred’s memory all the talk they had had in that very room, he lying in the same place, a fortnight ago. Since that day he had not seen Minnie, except casually; and, indeed, she seemed very busy and very happy, if one might judge by her lighted face and her laden arm. Something keener than philosophy, subtiler than Epicurus, pricked Fred, as Minnie vanished into the cloud of snowflakes.
“Pshaw!”
He glanced around the apartment. It was still luxurious; but “custom had staled the infinite variety” of its ornament and furnishing. Already he was dissatisfied with this and that. Where to place a new bas-relief that had struck him at Cotton’s the day before, and which he had purchased on the spot, without considering that there was no room for it in the library? There it leaned against the wall,—not so big as the Vicar’s family-picture, but quite as much in the way.
“The room looks loaded. I ought to have a gallery for these things. I wonder if I couldn’t buy Carter’s house, and push a gallery through from the top of my stairway.”
He touched the bell, and lay down again.
Martin entered softly, let down the crimson curtains, so as to exclude the vanishing light, and stirred the crimson cannel into a newer radiance.
“This weather frets my nerves, Martin. My face aches. Give me the bottle of chloroform in my chamber.”
He inhaled the subtile fluid two or three times, and handed it back to Martin. It made no difference, he said. He would try to sleep. So Martin went out on tiptoe and closed the door.
The chloroform probably did relieve him, for he thought no more of the uneasiness in his face; but he was not only not at all sleepy, but every sense seemed wide awake,—wide awake to its utmost capacity of perception. It was as if a misty veil were suddenly removed from before his eyes, and he saw, what indeed had always been there, but what in his abstraction or inattention he had never before noticed. For instance, he noticed at once that Martin had not quite closed the curtains, but had left an inch or two open, and the window open besides. The air, however, had grown soft, and the wind must have gone down, for it did not stir the drapery. He looked again, to be certain he was right. Yes,—there was an inch clear, where the wind might come in, if it liked. Martin was growing blind or stupid. However, he did not so much think that. On the whole, it was more likely that his own senses were sharpening. That would be a good thing, though,—to be wiser and sharper and clearer-sighted than all the rest of the world! He would like that advantage. And why might he not have it? Already he perceived a marked difference from his usual sensuous condition. It was unnatural, preternatural,—and yet, a state which could be produced at will. It was easily done. Just homoeopathy, in fact. A little sniff, a minute dose, and he could see and hear with a miraculous clearness; but people would take a dozen, and then they grew stupid.
He looked again around the room. Was it fancy, now? Perhaps it was. It was not likely the Madonna was winking in a heretic’s parlor. Besides, it was the same sort of no-motion he had watched many a time in the twilight, when the door seemed to swing backward and forward in the dusky air, following the dilation and contraction of his own eyes. He tried it now on the Madonna. He opened his eyes as widely as possible, and the drooping lids of the picture evidently half-raised themselves from the dark, soft orbs. He nearly closed his own, and hers bent again in serenest contemplation.
He looked at the bronze figure of the “Dying Stork,” which was placed below the picture, and started to see that it moved also, and with a strange, unnatural, galvanic sort of movement, like the “animated oat,” which moves when placed on the hand after being warmed a moment in the mouth. The legs sprung against the reeds and flags, in the same way.
Lastly, he looked at the bas-relief which stood near, leaning against the wall. It was very, very strange. Had the old fable of Pygmalion a truth in it, then? And could the same genius that created also give life and warmth to its productions? Beneath the marble he could see the soft, living pulse, distinctly; and the wind that blew over the mountains, beyond the river, ruffled the waves about the tiny boat. Even the star above the child’s head sparkled in the depths of the sky.
Fred was delighted. “It is enchantment!” he said. But no,—it was one of those miracles that have not yet become commonplace. The poetic life that his perceptions were now able to enjoy, in inanimate nature, would be such a perpetual gratification to his taste,—such an incentive to explorations and discoveries! He could not felicitate himself enough.
“A thousand times better than the microscope,” said he to himself again. “Atoms are annoying and disgusting to look at, with their incomprehensible and frightful minuteness, and their horrible celerity. One does not like to think that everything is composed of myriads, be they ever so beautiful,—which they are not, that ever I could see, but chiefly all head or a wriggling tail. Bah! This is much better. Hark! I can hear the waves dash,—the hope-song of the child,—and the breeze moving against the delicate sails!
“How delightful it will be to travel, with this new-found faculty! Whenever I choose, I can have the talking bird, the singing tree, and the laughing water! I always thought those peeps into irrational nature the chief charm of the Arabian tales. How little did I dream of ever being able to read with my own eyes the riddle of the world! By-the-way, let me look at my Graces, and see if they, too, are conscious forms of beauty.”
He turned to the group. Alas! even the Graces were not proof against the ordeal of constant society. Perhaps, if he had reflected, he would not have expected it. In truth, it was surprising to see how many disagreeable sentiments they all three contrived to express, without untwining their arms, or loosening their fond and graceful hold on each other. A slight elevation of the eyebrow, a curve of the lovely mouth, or a shrug from the Parian shoulders,—how expressive,—how surprising! But Fred need not have been surprised; they never set up for Faith, Hope, and Charity. What he most wondered at was that they still looked so lovely, when they were clearly full of all pagan naughtiness. They might as well have been women.
Fred pondered on this for some time. Then, it seemed, everything had a latent life in it. He had suspected as much. “There is always a something,” said he, “in what we make, not only beyond what we intend to make, but different from it. We study a long time the powers of position,—in chess, for example;—how much is produced by one move that we did not anticipate, and perhaps cannot ascertain,—certainly not prevent! How many times we are wittier than we meant to be,—striking out, by our unconscious blow, thoughts related to the one we utter, but far more brilliant,—and ourselves becoming conscious of the very good thing we have said only by its effect on the company! So it is, I fancy, with all our mental movements. The brain acts independently of the will in sleep. Why not, in a great measure, when awake? Probably, as all Nature has a movement of its own, so all Art may be made to have, by the infusion and absorption of so much of the creative energy of the artist,—hidden to the common eye, but palpitating to the instructed touch, throbbing or sparkling to the instructed eye. Yes, it must be so. The south-wind sighs a thousand times more mournfully through the keyhole than Thalberg can make it do on the piano. What music there was in those stones the man brought round, the other day, and played on with a stick! And now, the sound here from the gas-tube, how wailing, how sorrowful!—now, how triumphant!”
Fred was so delighted with watching the gas-burner, and listening to the wild music which floated through it, that he did not at first observe that the wind had risen and was blowing almost a gale. Presently, in his speculations as to the cause of such a sudden flood of melody, he hit on the possibility of a current of air.
“But, then, how comes the air to be so full of music? Never mind,—I’ll put the window down.”
However, just as he was putting it down, a snow-flake, one of a hundred, all pressing for the same point, flew past him, and alighted on the green velvet tabouret.
It was nothing,—only a snow-flake,—and another time, Fred would have thought nothing of it. But in the novel awakening of his faculties, even a snow-flake had a new interest. With intense eagerness he watched the movement of the little thing,—and yet, feeling that he might be on forbidden ground, he had the presence of mind to seem not to see or hear. If inanimate Nature were once to suspect his new insight, what a bustle there would be! He almost closed his eyes, and lay still, where he could watch and yet seem asleep. His prudence and caution were well rewarded.
The snow-flake was, as he suspected, as much alive as the wind; and that was singing, shouting, dying away in ecstasies, at this very moment.
He glanced at her. Lithe, sparkling, graceful, she gathered her soft drapery about her, and stood poised delicately on one foot, while she looked around the apartment in which she found herself. Fred could see that she was moulded more beautifully than the Graces,—by so much more as Nature is fairer than all Art,—and that she had an inward pure coldness, beside which Diana’s was only stone. Yet it was not indifference, like that of the wild huntress,—not an incapacity to feel, but only that her time had not come; when it should, she would melt as well as another. Now she stood still and calm. She did not once look at him. She had seen human beings before,—plenty of them. Something else attracted her,—thrilled her, evidently; for the faintest rose-color suffused her beautiful form; she changed her attitude, and bent forward her graceful head.
Something about “warming his hands by thinking on the frosty Caucasus” passed through Fred’s mind, and some law of association impelled him to look at the fire. It was queer enough, that, as many times as he had looked at that fire by the hour together, he had never before noticed its shape or expression. Only last night, he had watched it, dancing and flickering just as it did now, and never once suspected the truth!
Mailed figures! Yes, plenty of them,—golden-helmeted and sworded like the seraphim! A glorious band, gathering, twining, shooting past each other,—jousting, tilting,—with blazing banners, and a field broader than that of the “Cloth of Gold”; for this reached to and mingled with the clouds—yea, tinted them with flame-color and roses,—and garlanded the earth with crimson blossoms that nestled among her forests on the far-off horizon. What a wide field, indeed! And how far might these blazes and flames go, when once they set out? To the stars, perhaps. Fred did not see what should stop them. The atmosphere might, possibly. He must study that out.
Meanwhile how strangely far he could see! What a power it was! What a new interest it gave to Nature! Nature, he must confess, had always seemed rather flat to him, on the whole. He had always liked the imitations better than the original,—pictures better than people,—busts better than philosophers. But now the case is altered. He has got what his friend Norris calls “glorification-spectacles.” Now he can have perpetual amusement. Why, it is vastly better than Asmodeus peeping in at the tops of houses. By the same token, snow-flakes are more interesting than humanity.
Speaking of snow-flakes, what does he see, but that she is evidently yielding to the soft enchantment of the nearest flame-god,—drawn thither by resistless affinity, and melting, in his burning arms, to the most delicate vapor! Snow-flake no more, yet not absorbed nor lost! Rather taking her true place, transported from the earth-tempests to a warmer and higher sphere of action.
That might be, but not yet. In their new vaporous condition, in which both had lost some of their prominent qualities, they had acquired new relations, perhaps new duties. At all events, they did not at once ascend to their kindred ether,—but swam, glided, floated, above and around, and finally separated. Watching them keenly, Fred could distinctly see that the sometime snow-flake left her sphere and came gradually towards himself. As the vaporous shape floated nearer, it also grew larger, so that, although Fred could not have said certainly that the size was human, it relieved him from the impression of any fairy or elf or sprite. No, it was nothing of that sort. It was just the gentlest, calmest, serenest face and form in the world,—with the same look of pure sweetness he had noticed on her first entrance,—with a peculiar surprised look in her wide-open eyes, that he had seen but in one human face. As well tell the truth,—the face, expression, and all, were as like Annie Peyton’s, as her portrait, drawn in water-colors, could possibly have been.
The shape sat down by him,—her vaporous garment still folding softly around her, and her clear, open eyes fixed on him. There was no need of speech, for he read her face as if written by Heaven’s own hand; and the coarse and selfish philosophy which had sufficed partially to stun and confuse Minnie fled at the presence of the spirit. Not a word still from the calm, sweet face. It looked on him with pity and surprise. Then all the ideas and convictions that throng on the mind warped, but not lost, pressed on him. He hid his face in the sofa-cushions.
His presence of mind returned as a new thought struck him. It was an ocular delusion, surely. He sprang up, took three or four turns across the room, rubbed his eyes smartly, and took his seat again. For a moment he would not look towards the chair. When at last he did look, the airy, soft form was still there, looking steadily into his eyes.
“What an idea!” exclaimed he, impatiently. “I might put my hands through it, like the flame of a candle. It is nothing but vapor. What is it made of? Nothing but a snow-flake and the gas from cannel coal. I saw it, myself, melting and falling together into this beautiful shape. But then it is only a shape. It is not a body. Oh, but then it may be a soul! Who knows what souls are made of? Snow-flakes and vapor, perhaps. Who knows indeed?”
He looked about the room. Everything was in its natural and usual place. The fire burned merrily; the wind swept fitfully without, and all was quiet within. A very uncomfortable feeling, of mingled awe and curiosity, took possession of him. He did not quite like to look at the shape. He thought,—
“Can this be the spiritual body that St. Paul says is to supersede the natural one? If this is indeed, the soul of Annie Peyton,—why, she knows, somehow, what is in mine. And, by Jove! I can see her soul now, too, without any trouble! She can’t hide her real feelings now from me, any more than I can my character from her. There’s some good in it, anyhow!”
With some effort, he raised his eyes,—very respectfully, indeed; for though he was only about to look at a soul, he was full as much overpowered as if it had been the body. His eyes fell.
“If I dared to look! But she knows how I feel. I suppose she sees me now,—shivering from head to foot like a——Somehow, I can’t look her in the eyes. However, this won’t do!” And he looked quickly and timidly into the now smiling face.
He need not have been so timid. If a soul could discern evil, it could, also, good; and this spirit was quick to see the last. Without a word,—but when were words necessary to souls?—with only a glance, she expressed so much love and pity for him, that Fred was ashamed to look her in the face. “Oh! if she could really see him,” he thought, “would she look so?” Perhaps so. For the Intelligence that sees the evil can clearest of all see the mitigations, the causes, and the sore temptations; and the fruit of the widest knowledge is the widest love.
Something like this passed from the soul that sat opposite Fred into his awakening and sensitive consciousness:—
“You have never tasted the pleasures of useful activity,” the sweet face said. “Come with me, and we will look together, and see what good may come, and also what enjoyment, from it.”
Now it was, for the first time, that Fred fully understood his position. It came like a gleam of light on his puzzled intellect, and made that quite clear which had before been so mystical and cloudy, that he had been ready to rub his eyes, and to doubt, almost, the evidence of his senses. He remembered his old and a thousand times repeated theory of “projected images.” Here it was. Instead of a fancy, a thought, here was the whole of Annie Peyton’s soul (which, to be sure, had often enough occupied
“To know, to perceive, to suffer, to rejoice, do not require skin and bones. The heart weeps while the eye is dry; the lips smile while the heart is breaking. One might have a conventional soul,—to keep house, as it were, and do all the honors of society, while the real one went abroad to regions of truth and beauty, and bathed in living waters!”
While Fred continued so to think and speculate, and also to separate, and, as it were, classify his ideas, he was pleased to perceive, that, without any very strong volition on his part, but only from the analytical processes of his reason, that portion of his mind which perceived and enjoyed the truth of things became condensed and separated from the conventional, the factitious, and the merely sensual. The qualities, or states, or whatever the metaphysician calls them, fell off him, as garments do in a dream, and left himself, his very self, separate, and a little distant, from his body. He perceived this rather than saw it. He knew it, but could not assert it. The body, with its bodily wants and limitations, leaned on the couch, half slumberously; while the mind, himself, full of vague aspirations, keen intellectual hunger, and overlaid with error, obstinacy, and the thick crust of self-contemplation, which stifles all true progress,—these assimilated qualities made himself, what he felt he was, not an attractive object to himself more than to anybody else. All his perceptions pointed inward, and cramped and narrowed his existence. He felt very, very small.
“This is strange,” he reasoned, “that I should have such a sense of contraction! I crowd on myself, as it were. My thoughts hit me, press me, instead of elevating me. I cannot see why; for the habit of looking up to no goodness or intelligence but the Supreme must surely be a good one, and self-education and development the noblest process for a human being.”
He said this in a mechanical sort of way, as if it were a lesson he remembered at school. But it made no impression on him, and did not relieve his difficulty. He knew it, somehow, to be false, and felt it falling off as he spoke, as if it were the last remnant of gauzy sophistry.
Fred had never been fond of church-going, nor was he much given to reading the Holy Scriptures. Indeed, he rather affected the style of the Latter-Day Saints, who look for a better and nobler Messiah than came in the Son of Mary. But just now, fifty texts of Scripture, which he must have learned long ago at his mother’s knee, came crowding upon his memory.
“Though I have all gifts, and have not charity, I am nothing.”
“He that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
“He that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?”
“Little children, love one another.”
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
And so on,—interminably. In a helpless, vague way, he looked at the shadow by his side.
“You like pictures, and paint them,” said she, speaking for the first time;—and the voice was precisely the tone he had recognized in the music of the wind; he had thought then it was like hers;—“look with me at these two.”
They were, indeed, magnificent pictures. They reached from floor to ceiling. Fred was artist enough to enjoy fully the wide sweep of sky and land,—the mountains in the distance, and the firmament studded with stars. A figure wandered up and down the space, sometimes to the tops of the mountains, sometimes to the clefts of the rocks. When he saw the stars, he calculated their distances;—when he saw the moon, he weighed her, and guessed about the atmosphere on the other side;—when the gold and diamonds shone in the clefts of the rocks, he gathered and analyzed them. The Leviathan he studied and classed. He groped and reached constantly, and, having gathered, looked at his gatherings, dissatisfied. He was ever searching out knowledge. Meanwhile, a gnat put him in a passion, and unleavened bread destroyed his peace. Though he might sleep on rose-leaves, as he could not command the wind, they came often to double under him, and annoy him with bad dreams.
“When shall I be a disembodied spirit, and no longer subject to the petty annoyances that belong to the flesh?” cried he, fretfully. “My knowledge, too, is a moth,—only vexing me by a sense of the limitations of my condition. If I could grasp Nature,—if I could handle the stars,—if I could wake the thunder,—if I could summon the cloud! That would be worth something,—to send the comets on their errands! But what avails it, to know that they go?—how far from me when they start, and how many millions of miles before they turn to come back? If I could move only one of these subtile energies that mock me while I look them in the face!”
The philosopher dozed. A storm came on, and swept over all creation. When he awoke, it was clearing away, and one side of the heavens was heaped with gold-lined clouds, and the darkness of the other spanned with the seven-hued bow. He looked admiringly at the clouds and critically at the rainbow, and added to his memorandum-book.
“What use?” said he, mournfully; “delicate dew, and refracted light!”
He continued to ponder and murmur, to explore, to ascertain, to grumble. He had rheumatic pains, for the elements had no mercy on him; he rubbed himself as he was able, and added to his stores of knowledge. He was very, very learned. When he reached a shelter, he lay down. If no human love welcomed him, and no gentle lip soothed him, he had self-culture, especially in the sciences.
All this Fred knew as soon as he looked at him.
“If he were wise, he would not stop at knowledge, which is, of course, unsatisfactory,—but dive beyond, as I have done, into the essence of things,” said Fred to himself. “If he could pierce through the veil that covers all things, he would find amusement enough to last a lifetime. In vegetable life, the jealousies and passions of flowers,—in the quiet eventfulness of the mineral kingdom, to see forms of living beauty in crystals,—finally, in all the under-mechanism of creation, what a fund of enjoyment and instruction! I think I should never cease to be delighted and entertained.”
Fred glanced from the picture to the fireplace. The shovel and tongs were just laughing at him; and though they composed their countenances immediately, he had caught the expression, and was excessively annoyed. Philosophy at length came to his aid, especially as the poker expressed only profound deference, preserving a martial attitude and immovable features. After all, why should he care for a pair of tongs? One must cultivate phlegm, if one is a philosopher; and a shovel, after all, is not so bad as a pretty woman. He heard the cool wind distinctly blowing across the mountains in the picture, and saw the stars coming out again. Then Fred knew he had been looking at a diorama, and that the exhibition was over.
He heard a hearty laugh at a little distance, and perceived that the picture, which at first had seemed to spread out over the whole wall, was really divided into two parts, something like an exhibition he remembered of dissolving views. This was delightful. The first picture faded out into gloom, and gave place to a bright, cheerful room in the third story of a house in the city. There were only two rooms,—this, and a small anteroom. The furniture was simple, even poor. Through the window the snow was seen falling, and the blaze flickered, in cheerful contrast, on the hearth. A woman, neither young nor pretty, stood with an astonished expression, and an elderly man laughed loudly, and sat down before the fire.
“What in the world shall I do?” said the woman.
“Do, my dear?—why, bring me my dressing-gown”; said he, laughing again so cheerily, that it was contagious; and as she brought the coarse wadded garment he asked for, she laughed too.
“A pretty kettle of fish!” said she.
“Yes! Now what shall we do? Not a dollar in our pockets!”
“Nor a coat to your back!” broke in the woman.
Then they both laughed again, loudly and heartily.
Fred remembered now what they were laughing at. The man was a minister, well known in Boston, and the woman was his wife. He had just come in, running through the storm, and almost out of breath.
“Wife! my coat! Don’t you see I am in my shirt-sleeves? I’ve got a snow-bank on my back!”
“Why! where in the world—what have you done with your coat?”
“Oh! that I am almost ashamed to tell you; it seems such a parading sort o’ thing to do in the streets! But you may depend, I didn’t stand at the corners long, to be seen of men, in this driving storm! Fact was, wife, I just took it off of my back, and gave it to poor old M’Carty;—he’d nothing on but rags, and was fairly shaking with the cold. I knew I’d another to home,—and what does a man want of two coats? One’s enough for anybody. Besides, didn’t our Lord particularly tell his disciples not to have but one? Say, now, wife!”
The wife looked blank and embarrassed.
“Well, wife! what now?”
“Only”——and she paused again.
“Only what? Out with it! You think it was silly! But, wife, you’d ‘a’ done the same thing;—you couldn’t ‘a’ helped it, nohow. Providence seemed to ‘a’ cast him in my way o’ purpose. I tell you, wife, it was as plain-spoken as it could be,—’Be ye warmed!’ Why, you’d ‘a’ done the same thing, wife!”
“My goodness! I have done it, husband! A man and his wife and three little children came along, not half an hour ago, looking so miserable and cold, that, as I thought, as you say, you had one coat, and that was all you really needed, I just out with the other, and put it on the man’s back. The thankfullest creature you ever saw!”
And here the man had broken into the hearty laugh Fred heard.
When the man put on his dressing-gown, which was comfortable for the fireside, the wife renewed her question. He answered with a bright smile,—
“The Son of Man, my dear we know, had not where to lay his head; but then he always trusted in God. God never fails his children. Thanks to Him!” added he, reverently, and raising loving eyes to heaven, as if he really spoke to somebody there,—“Thanks to Him! there’s bountiful hands and tender hearts, a plenty of ’em, in the city of Boston. I’ve only got to strike, and the waters ’ll flow out! yes,—rivers of water!”
The wife looked down, and said, meditatively, “It makes me think what our dear Saviour said to poor Peter,—’O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?’”
The man answered in a clear, joyful tone, “Oh, you won’t doubt more’n half a minute to time, wife!—and I won’t doubt at all!”
With that, the two aged Christians struck up a sweet Wesleyan melody; and that, too, was in the same soft minor key that Fred had heard singing through the gas-burner. They finished the little hymn, and the woman scraped some corn from a cob into the corn-popper. In a few minutes, she had filled a large bowl with the parched corn.
“I declare, they look like them hyacinths in the window,—don’t they? What a lovely white color!”
“I think, wife,” answered the man, as he took a handful of the kernels and looked at them, “this corn is a good deal like human nature. When we’re all shut up in ourselves, we’re poor creatures;—but touch us with the live coals of the Holy Spirit, and we turn out something refreshing. Fact is, wife, we’re good for nothing, till we’re turned inside out.”
The picture faded. It was a very homely one.
Fred turned to the soul by his side, but she was no longer visible.
“Escaped, somehow! I wonder, now, how?”
But he had scarcely spoken, when he saw, by a slight movement of the door, that she must have gone out that way. It was just closing. With a tremendous effort of will, he tried to follow her, but in vain. He had been so much in the habit of looking after himself only, that his untrained faculties refused to obey him. As a last resource, he sank passively towards the form which still lay prone on the couch. How he was again to join soul and body he could not guess. But, apparently, there was no difficulty. The spirit which had called him out of himself, for a little while, had departed, and, with her, both the power and the desire of separation. He joined his sensuous existence with ease and pleasure, and with no perceptible lapse of consciousness. No sooner had he obtained the use of his tongue, than he made an inarticulate noise. The door, which had been all that time swinging, opened again, and the velvet-footed Martin appeared.
“Who went out, Martin?”
“Out of here, Sir? No one, Sir.”
“Who opened the door, then?—What’s that in your hand?”
“The chloroform, Sir, you just handed me.”
“Just handed you?”
“Yes, Sir;—you gave it back to me not a quarter of a minute ago.”
“Have I been asleep, Martin?”
“I should judge not, Sir. You didn’t take more than two sniffs at the bottle. I just had time to go to the door when you spoke to me.”
“Martin,—is the window close?”
“Perfectly close, Sir.”
“You may go.”
* * * * *
[Footnote A: History of New England during the Stuart Dynasty. By John Gorham Palfrey. Vol. I. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1858. 8vo. pp. 638.
History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. By Samuel Greene Arnold & Co. 1859. 8vo. pp. 574.]
The London “Times,” in its comments upon a recent desponding utterance of foreboding for our republic, by President Buchanan, in his Fort Duquesne Letter, affirms that the horizon of England is clearing while our own is darkening. Mr. Bright, true to the omen of his name, thinks better of our country. He seizes upon all fit occasions, as in his late speech at Manchester, to hold up to his countrymen the opposite view, so far at least as concerns our republic. He loves to recommend to his constituents American notions and institutions. Perhaps it may be allowed,—though this is hardly to be affirmed, if any decisive argument depends upon it,—that the peculiar institutions, political and social, of the two nations, have been on trial long enough, side by side, through the same race of men and in the pursuit of the same interests, to enable a wise discerner to strike the balance between them, in respect to their efficiency and their security as intrusted with the welfare and destiny of millions. If we can learn to look at the large experiment in that light, all that helps to put the real issue intelligently before us will be of equal interest to us, from whichever side of the water it may present itself. For ourselves, we believe that the best security against despair for our country is a knowledge of its history. If the study of our annals does not train up patriots among us, we must consent to lose our heritage. We are glad to be assured that our historians do not intend to allow the republic to decay before they have written out in full the tale of its life. Their records, well digested, may prove to be the pledges of its vigor and permanence.
There are those in the land, who, for reasons suggested by President Buchanan, and for others, of darker omen, to which he makes no reference, do despair, or greatly fear. What with an honest hate of some public iniquities among us,—the tolerance and strengthening of which many of our politicians regard as the vital conditions of our national existence,—and a dread of the excesses incident to our large liberty, it is not strange that some of our own citizens should accord in sentiment with the London “Times.” Probably the same proportion of persons may be now living among the native population of our national soil, appeared at the era of the Revolution, preferring English institutions to our own, and predicting that her government will outlast our own. Discussions raised upon the present aspect of affairs in either country will not settle the issue thus opened. A real knowledge of our own institutions and a reasonable confidence in their permanence are to be found only in an intelligent and very intimate acquaintance with their growth and development. In our histories are to be found the materials of our prophecies.
We welcome, therefore, with infinite satisfaction, the two admirable volumes whose titles we have set down. For reasons which will appear before we conclude our remarks upon them, we find it convenient to unite their titles and to write about them together; but for distinctness of subject and marked individuality in the mode of treatment, no two books can stand more widely apart. Abilities and culture and aptitudes of the very highest order have been brought to the composition of each of them. An exhaustive use of abundant materials, and a most conscientious fidelity in digesting them into high-toned philosophical narrations, are marked features of both the volumes, and we will not venture upon the ungracious office of instituting comparisons, in these respects, between their authors. We must make a slight report of the story of each of them, and of the method and spirit in which it is told, and then confront them for mutual cross-examination.
Our historians have learned to write their books with full as much reference to their being read abroad as at home. The problem with which they first have to deal, therefore, is, how to make the men and the incidents and the cardinal points of our annals look as large to foreigners as they do to us. Many of our town-histories are written in the tone and style of Mr. Poole’s “Little Pedlington,”—the epithet Little being suppressed in the title, but obtruded on every page. The intensity and emphasis of our historic strain appear to foreigners to be disproportionate to the subject-matter of the story. Mr. Punch always represents a Yankee as larger than his garments. His trousers never cover his ankles; his cuffs stop far short of his wrists; his long neck extends beyond the reach of even his capacious collar; and the bone in him lacks amplitude of muscle. But Mr. Punch, with all his wisdom, does not fully understand the composition of a Yankee, as the greatest common multiple of a Teuton, Dane, Norman, Frank, Kelt, and Englishman. Dr. Palfrey’s volume will largely conciliate our cousins beyond the water to our own conceit of our annals, because, more distinctly and cogently than any previous record in pamphlet or folio, it identifies the springs and purposes of our heroic age with an era and a type of men which English historians now exalt on their own noblest pages.
Dr. Palfrey has had precisely that natural endowment, training, experience, mental discipline, and intercourse with the world in public and private relations, to furnish him with the best qualifications for the work to which he has devoted the autumn of an eminently useful and honored life. The sinewy fibre of his theme is religion. And he is a religious man of the highest pattern, deeply skilled in its scholarly lore, erudite in its Scriptural and controversial elements, and practised in the sagacity which it imparts for understanding and interpreting human nature. Religion enters into the subject-matter of his narrative,
The historian’s work, when done after the best pattern, involves a duty to his readers and a privilege for himself. To them he is bound to present all the essential facts, authenticated, illustrated, and carefully disposed in their natural relations. For himself, having done this, he is at liberty to construct his own theory, to follow his own philosophy, and to pronounce judicial decisions. The highest exaction to be made of an historian, and the loftiest function which he could claim to exercise, are expressed in these two conditions. The noble privilege and opportunity secured in the latter condition are the only adequate reward for the drudgery of the labor required in the former. It would be foolish to raise a question whether it be more essential for an historian to be faithful in his narration or to be wise in his comments. Only the statement we have made will serve to remind us how essential the philosophy of human nature is to throw life into a record of old annals.
The two books in our hands, where their specific themes are identical, substantially accord in their relation of facts,—allowing for a few exceptional cases,—but they differ widely in their philosophy. Very much of the fresh interest which both of them will create in their respective subjects will be found in the collisions of their philosophy.
Dr. Palfrey had a favorable opportunity for undertaking to write anew the history of New England. Those who have yet to acquaint themselves with that history say there was no occasion for this reiterated labor. If such persons will merely read over his notes, without wasting any of their precious time upon his text, they will discover their mistake. There are in those notes matters new even to adepts. All the recent materials which have been lavishly contributed from public and private stores by public and private
The Dedication of the volume to Dr. Sparks has in it a rare felicity, which is to be referred to two facts: first, that the writer had some peculiarly touching and grateful things to say; and, second, that he knew how to say them in language fitted to the sentiment. In his Preface, he announces his purpose with its plan, refers us to his authorities and sources, and recognizes his obligations to individual friends. Some of the choicest matters in his Notes are the results of his own personal research in England.
The limit which he sets for himself will carry forward his History to the time of the English Revolution, thus embracing our annals during the vitality of our first Charter. That Charter, its origin, transfer, and subsequent service as the basis of government, the reiterated efforts to wrest it, and the persistent resolution to hold it, give to it a symbolic significance which warrants the dating of an epoch by it. Dr. Palfrey regards our local political existence as commencing from the hour in which that document, with its official representatives, reached these shores. We have seen criticisms disputing this position, but, as we think, not even plausible, still less effective to discredit it. We must have an incident, besides a punctum temporis, for our start in government; and where could we find a better one than that on which the whole subsequent course and character of the government depended? We go, then, for the old Charter, and for the setting up of a jurisdiction under it here. It was an admirable and every way convenient document; good for securing rights, impotent as impairing liberties. It comforted the “Magistrates” to have it to fall back upon, when its provisions harmonized with their purposes; nor did they allow themselves to be embarrassed by it, when it appeared that some of their purposes were not fully provided for in it. That Charter got wonderfully aired and invigorated on its ocean-passage. The salt water agreed with its constitution. In a single instance, at least, it falsified the old maxim,—Coeium, nun animum, mutant, qui trans mare currunt. That was a marvellous piece of parchment. So far as Massachusetts was concerned, the Declaration of Independence was interlined upon it in sympathetic ink.
We hardly know of fifty octavo pages anywhere in which so much investigation and labor condense their results so intelligibly into such useful information as in each of the first two chapters of this volume. The first is devoted to the Physical Geography of the Peninsula of New England, its Natural History, and its Aborigines; the second is a summary sketch of the Early Voyages and Explorations. In this we find the most discriminating view which we have ever seen of the marvellous adventures of John Smith,—so happily and suggestively described as the “fugitive slave” who was “the founder of Virginia.” The notes on the credibility and authenticity of the narrations connected with his name are admirable. In reading these two chapters, one must muse upon the wilderness trampings and the ocean perils of the keen-set and all-enduring men who furnished the material for these high-seasoned pages.
“Puritanism in England” is, of course, the author’s starting-point. Here he finds his men and their principles. A partial reformation is the most mischievous influence that can work in society. It unsettles, but is not willing to rebuild, even when it can learn how to do so. Reaction and excess are the Scylla and Charybdis of its perils. Compromise is the very essence of a partial reformation; and compromise in matters of moral and religious concern, where it is not folly, is crime. Where any party has been in earnest in a strife, there is no honest end at which it can rest till it reaches the goal of righteousness. The active element of Puritanism was the persistency of a religious party in pursuing a purpose which was yielded up, at a point short of its full attainment, by another branch of the party, which up to that point had made common cause with them. To speak plainly, the English Puritans regarded their former prelatical and conformist associates as traitors to a holy cause. They had engaged together in good faith in the work of reformation. They had suffered together. When the time came for triumph, a schism divided them; and the more zealous smarted from wounds inflicted by the lukewarm. It appeared that the Prelatists had been looking to ends of state policy, while the Puritans kept religion in view. The Conformists thought their ends were reached when Roman prelacy was set aside, and certain local ecclesiastical changes had been effected; but the real Puritans wanted to get and to establish the essential Gospel.
Dr. Palfrey tells this story concisely, but emphatically. He takes two stages of the Puritan development in England, from which to deduce respectively the emigration to Plymouth and to Massachusetts Bay. Stopping at intervals to make intelligible the perplexities connected with the patents and charters, his narrative is thenceforward continuous, admitting new threads to be woven into it as the pattern and the fabric both become richer. For the first time we have the full connection presented in solid history between
After another most pregnant and exhaustive episode on Puritan politics in England, Dr. Palfrey brings in that thread of his story on which is strung the fortune of Massachusetts. It is here that Englishmen will find explained some of our vaunting views of the importance of our annals. Dr. Palfrey, in this and in other chapters, traces with skill and exactness the course of public measures and events in England, through kingly tyrannies and popular resistance, which ended by harmonizing the institutions of the mother country for a little while with those which had sprung up in this wilderness. He soon comes upon ticklish matters, but his touch and hold are firm, because he feels sure that he is dealing with men who understood themselves, and who were at least resolute and honest, to whatever degree they may have erred. Probably, like many of us who are aware that we could not possibly have lived comfortably with our ancestors, he feels all the more bound on that account to set their memory in the light of their noblest and least selfish ends. He is stout and unflinching in his championship of those ancestors: he sees in their experiment a lofty ideal; he vindicates their policy in the measures for realizing it; nor does he withhold apologetic or vindicatory words where “unmeet persons” among the whites or Indians stood in the way of it.
Henceforward Dr. Palfrey has to follow out each thread of his story by itself, as by-and-by he will have to gather them into one cord. He traces the developments of months and years in the original settlements, and pursues them as they lead him to new territory in the Northeast and the Southwest, into Maine, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. Another episode on the opening of the Civil War at home, which invited a large return of the exiles, and a record of the original confederacy of the New England Colonies, bring us to the present close of his labors. May they be speedily continued! and may we enjoy the reality, as we now do the promise of them!
We turn now to Mr. Arnold’s book. The field which it traverses is narrower as regards space, but its spirit is large and generous, and its subject-matter is of the loftiest significance. If the writer does not indulge us with many disquisitions, it is not from lack of ability. Wherever, as in his moralizings upon King Philip’s War, and in his incidental comments upon the peculiarities and temper of his prominent men, he allows us to meet his own mind, he is uniformly wise and interesting. He stands by Rhode Island as does Dr. Palfrey by Massachusetts; and seeing that for a far longer period than the two books run on together the two Colonies were at strife, we are glad to have before us both the ways in which the story may be told. There are various sharp judgments on Massachusetts men and principles in the Rhode Island book. The argument is in good hands on either side.
Mr. Arnold begins with the first occupation of Rhode Island by white men, and conducts his narrative to the close of the century. His research has been faithful. His style is chaste, forcible, and often picturesque. He has seen the world widely, and he knows human nature. He understands very well what a place of honor and what a well-proved assurance of safety distinctive Rhode Island principles have attained. The issue, having been found so triumphant, has dignified to the historian the early, humble, and bewildering steps and processes through which it was reached. The narrative on his pages is the most distracting one ever written in the annals of civilized men. Every conceivable element of strife, discord, agitation, alarm, dissension, and bitterness is to be found in it,—redeemed only by a prevailing integrity, right-mindedness, and right-heartedness in all the leading spirits. Each man in each of the towns composing the original elements of the Colony was a whole “democratie” in himself, and generally a “fierce” one. Disputed boundaries with both the other Colonies, and an especial and continuous feud with Massachusetts,—unruly spirits, bent upon working out all manner of impracticable theories,—the oddest and most original, as well as the most obstinate and indomitable dreamers and enthusiasts, furnished some daily nutriment to dissension with their neighbors or among themselves. Men of mark, like Roger Williams, Samuel Gorton, Governor
Mr. Arnold picks his way through all these dissensions, and finds a full reward in the nobleness of the men and the principles with which he has in the main to deal. His only abatement of praise to Roger Williams is on account of his bitter feud with William Harris. He repels, as slanderous, the imputations founded on alleged interpolations restricting religious liberty in the code, and cast at Roger Williams for undue severity to Quakers and for favoring Indian slavery. Randolph’s visit, Andros’s administration, the suspension and resumption of the Charter, bring him out into broader matters, which he treats with frankness and skill.
The more histories we have from the pens of competent writers, even though they go over the same ground, the more lively and interesting will the pages be. We need not fear that like fidelity and ability in the use of the same materials by different writers will reduce our modern histories to a dead level of uniform narration. None but those well-skilled in our annals are aware what scope they afford, not only for special pleas, but also for honest diversity of judgment, in viewing and pronouncing upon many test-points vital to the theme. Indeed, when the historic vein shall have been exhausted, it will be found that there is more than a score of special and contested points, in each of our first two centuries, admirably suited for monographs. We have but to compare a few pages in each of the two excellent works now in our hands, to see how men of the highest ability, of rigid candor, and scrupulous fidelity in the use of the same materials, while spreading the same facts before their readers, may tell different tales, varying to the whole extent of the diversity in their respective judgments and moralizings. We can easily illustrate this assertion from the pages before us. Though Dr. Palfrey stops more than a half-century short of the date to which Mr. Arnold carries us, the former indicates exactly how and where he will be at issue
Dr. Palfrey writes, unmistakably, as a man proud of his Massachusetts lineage. He honors the men whose enterprise, constancy, persistency, and wise skill in laying foundations have, in his view, approved their methods and justified them, even where they are most exposed to a severe judgment. He wishes to tell their story as they would wish to have it told. They stand by his side as he reads their records, and supply him with a running comment as to meaning and intention. Thus he is helped to put their own construction on their own deeds,—to set their acts in the light of their motives, to give them credit for all the good that was in their purposes, and to ascribe their mistakes and errors to a limitation of their views, or to well-founded apprehensions of evil which they had reason to dread. Under such pilotage, the passengers, at least, would be safe, when their ship fell upon a place where two seas met. Now Massachusetts and Rhode Island were in stiff hostility during the period here chronicled. The founder of Rhode Island and nearly all of its leading spirits had been “spewed out of the Bay Colony,”—and the institutions which the Rhode Islanders set up, or rather, their seeming purpose to do without any institutions, constituted a standing grievance to the rigid disciplinarians of Massachusetts. Indeed, we have to look to the relations of annoyance, jealousy, and open strife, which arose between the two Colonies in the ten years following 1636, for the real explanation of the severity visited upon the Quakers in Massachusetts in the five years following 1656. These early Quakers, when not the veritable persons, were the ghosts of the old troublers of “the Lord’s people in the Bay.” Gorton, Randall Holden, Mrs. Dyer, and other “exorbitant persons,” who had been found “unmeet to abide in this jurisdiction,” could not be got rid of once for all.
Mr. Arnold glories in the early reproach of Rhode Island. He finds its title to honor above every other spot on earth in the phenomena which made it so hateful to Massachusetts. In every issue raised between it and the Bay Colony from the very first, and in every element of its strife, he stands stoutly forth as its champion, and casts scornful reflections, though not in a scornful spirit. Wherever our two historians have the same point under treatment,
[Footnote B: BANCROFT’S History of the United States. I. 380.]
Mr. Arnold, we think, defines with more sharp and guarded accuracy than does Dr. Palfrey the ruling aim and motive of the founders of Massachusetts. An historian of Massachusetts, knowing beforehand through what a course of unflinching and resolute consistency with their first principles he is to follow her early legislators, has reason to limit their aim and motive at the start, that he may not assume for them more than he can make good. Especially if he intend to palliate, and, still more, to justify, some of the severer and more oppressive elements of their policy, he will find it wise to qualify their purpose within the same limitations which they themselves set for it. Dr. Palfrey parts with an advantage of which he afterwards has need to avail himself, when he states the motive of the exiles too broadly, as a search for a place in which to exercise liberty of conscience. He speaks of these exiles as recognizing in “religious freedom a good of such vast worth as to be protected by the possessor, not only for
Mr. Arnold, as we have said, is more sharply guarded in his statement of the aim of the founders of the Bay Colony in this respect; and it is all the more remarkable that he does not give them the benefit of the recognized limitation. He defines for them a restricted object, but he judges them by a standard before which they never measured themselves, and then condemns them for short-comings. He tells us distinctly that the motives of the exiles “were certainly not those assigned them by Charles I., ‘the freedom of liberty of conscience’” (p. 10); that “they looked for a home in the New World where they might erect an establishment in accordance with their peculiar theological views. ’They sought a faith’s pure shrine,’ based on what they held to be a purer system of worship, and a discipline more in unison with their notions of a church. Here they proceeded to organize a state, whose civil code followed close on the track of the Mosaic Law, and whose ecclesiastical polity, like that of the Jews, and of all those [Christian governments?] then existing, was identified with the civil power. They thus secured, what was denied them in England, the right to pursue their own form of religion without molestation, and in this the object of their exile
Dr. Palfrey and Mr. Arnold hold and utter quite opposite judgments about the treatment of Roger Williams by Massachusetts. The latter, having stated more definitely than the former the limited aim of our colonists, which was utterly inconsistent with toleration in religion and with laxity in civil matters, nevertheless considers the men of Massachusetts unjustifiable in their course toward the founder of Rhode Island. Dr. Palfrey, on weaker grounds than those allowed by Mr. Arnold, thinks their most stringent proceedings perfectly defensible. He regards Mr. Williams as an intruder, whose opinions, behavior, and influence were perilous alike to the civil and the religious peace of the colonists; and he holds the colonists as not chargeable with any breach of the laws of justice or of mercy in sending
Our two historians, with all the facts before them, honestly stated too, but diversely interpreted, stand in open antagonism of judgment about the proceedings of Massachusetts against the Antinomians. That bitter strife—Dux foemina facti—was in continuation of the issue opened by Roger Williams, though it turned upon new elements. Here, again, Mr. Arnold stands stoutly for the partisans of Mrs. Hutchinson, who moved towards the new home in the Narragensett country. He sees in the strife, mainly, a contest of a purely theological character, leading on to a development of democratical ideas, (p. 66.) Dr. Palfrey insists that it would be unjust to allege that the Antinomians were dealt with for holding “distasteful opinions on dark questions of theology,” and affirms that they were put down as wild and alarming agents of an “immediate anarchy.” (pp. 489, 491.) In this matter, also, our own judgment goes with our own historian. And the very best confirmation that it could have is found in the fact, that the prime movers in the most threatening stage of that dire conflict afterwards made ample confession of their heat, their folly, and their outrages,—approving the stern proceedings under which they had suffered. Wheelwright, especially, in whose advocacy the cause of his sister-in-law first assumed so threatening an aspect, most humbly avowed his sin and penitence.
One more very curious illustration of the divergence of judgment in our two new historians may be instanced. They have both written, as became them, quite brilliantly and vigorously, about the aborigines of the soil. But how marvellously they differ! Dr. Palfrey discredits the romance of Indian character and life. His mind dwells upon the squalor and wretchedness of their existence, the shiftlessness and incapacity of their natural development, their improvidence, their beastliness and forlorn debasement; and he is wholly skeptical about the savage virtues of constancy, magnanimity, and wild-wood dignity. He sighs over them another requiem, toned in the deep sympathy of a true Christian heart; but he does not lament in their sad method of decay the loss of any element of manhood or of the higher ingredients of humanity. But Mr. Arnold pitches his requiem to a different strain. He reproduces and refines the romance which Dr. Palfrey would dispel. He exalts the Indian character; gathers comforts and joys and pleasing fashionings around their life; enlarges the sphere of their being, and asserts in them capacity to fill it. The wigwam of Massasoit is elegantly described by Mr. Arnold as “his seat at Mount Hope,” (p. 23,)—and pungently, by Dr. Palfrey, as “his sty,” in whose comfortless shelter, Winslow and Hopkins, of Plymouth, on their visit to the chief, had “a distressing experience of the poverty and filth of Indian hospitality.” (pp. 183, 184.) Arnold tells us, the Indians “were ignorant of Revelation, yet here was Plato’s great problem of the Immortality of the Soul solved in the American wilderness, and believed by all the aborigines of the West.” (p. 78.) But Palfrey, knowing nothing of what his contemporary was writing, had already put into print this sentence:—“The New England savage was not the person to have discovered what the vast reach of thought of Plato and Cicero could not attain.” (p. 49.)
Here are strange variances of judgment. But how much more of interest and activity lives in the mind, both of writers and readers, when history is written with such divergent philosophies and comments! Nobly, in both cases before us, have the writers done their work, and heartily do we render our tribute to them.
My soul to-day
Is far away,
Sailing the Vesuvian Bay;
My winged boat,
A bird afloat,
Swims round the purple peaks remote:—
Round purple peaks
It sails, and seeks
Blue inlets and their crystal creeks,
Where high rocks throw,
Through deeps below,
A duplicated golden glow.
Far, vague, and dim,
The mountains swim;
While on Vesuvius’ misty brim,
With outstretched hands,
The gray smoke stands
O’erlooking the volcanic lands.
Here Ischia smiles
O’er liquid miles;
And yonder, bluest of the isles,
Calm Capri waits,
Her sapphire gates
Beguiling to her bright estates.
I heed not, if
My rippling skiff
Float swift or slow from cliff to cliff;—
With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Under the walls of Paradise.
Under the walls
Where swells and falls
The Bay’s deep breast at intervals,
At peace I lie,
Blown softly by,
A cloud upon this liquid sky.
The day, so mild,
Is Heaven’s own child,
With Earth and Ocean reconciled;—
The airs I feel
Around me steal
Are murmuring to the murmuring keel.
Over the rail
My hand I trail
Within the shadow of the sail,
A joy intense,
The cooling sense
Glides down my drowsy indolence.
With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Where Summer sings and never dies,—
O’erveiled with vines,
She glows and shines
Among her future oil and wines.
Her children, hid
The cliffs amid,
Are gambolling with the gambolling kid;
Or down the walls,
With tipsy calls,
Laugh on the rocks like waterfalls.
The fisher’s child,
With tresses wild,
Unto the smooth, bright sand beguiled,
With glowing lips
Sings as she skips,
Or gazes at the far-off ships.
Yon deep bark goes
Where Traffic blows,
From lands of sun to lands of snows;—
This happier one,
Its course is run
From lands of snow to lands of sun.
Oh, happy ship,
To rise and dip,
With the blue crystal at your lip!
Oh, happy crew,
My heart with you
Sails, and sails, and sings anew!
No more, no more
The worldly shore
Upbraids me with its loud uproar!
With dreamful eyes
My spirit lies
Under the walls of Paradise!
ROBA DI ROMA.
It was on the 6th of December, 1856, that I landed with my family at Civita Vecchia, on my return for the third time to Rome. Before we could make all our arrangements, it was too late to think of journeying that day towards the dear old city; but the following morning we set forth in a rumbling, yellow post-coach, with three horses, and a shabby, gaudy postilion,—the wheels clattering, the bells on the horses’ necks jingling, the cock’s-plumes on their heads nodding, and a half-dozen sturdy beggar-brats running at our side and singing a dismal chorus of “Dateci qualche cosa.” Two or three half-baiocchi, however, bought them off, and we had the road to ourselves. The day was charming, the sky cloudless, the air tender and with that delicious odor of the South which so soothingly intoxicates the senses. The sea, accompanying us for half our way, gleamed and shook out its breaking surf along the shore; and the rolling slopes of the Campagna, flattered by sunlight, stretched all around us,—here desert and sparkling with tall skeleton grasses and the dry canes’ tufted feathers, and here covered with low, shrubby trees, that, crowding darkly together, climbed the higher hills. On tongues of land, jutting out into the sea, stood at intervals lonely watch-towers, gray with age, and at their feet shallow and impotent waves gnashed into foam around the black, jagged teeth of half-sunken rocks along the shore. Here and there the broken arches of a Roman bridge, nearly buried in the lush growth of weeds, shrubs, and flowers, or the ruins of some old villa, the home of the owl, snake, and lizard, showed where Ancient Rome journeyed and lived. At intervals, heavy carts, drawn by the superb gray oxen of the Campagna, creaked slowly by, the contadino sitting athwart the tongue; or some light wine carrettino came ringing along, the driver fast asleep under its tall, triangular cover, with his fierce little dog beside him, and his horse adorned with bright rosettes and feathers. Sometimes long lines of mules or horses, tied one to another’s tail, plodded on in dusty procession, laden with sacks;—sometimes droves of oxen, or poledri, conducted by a sturdy driver in heavy leathern leggings, and armed with a long, pointed pole, stopped our way for a moment. In the fields, the pecoraro, in shaggy sheep-skin breeches, the very type of the mythic Pan, leaned against his staff, half-asleep, and tended his woolly flock,—or the contadino drove through dark furrows the old plough of Virgil’s time, that figures in the vignettes to the “Georgics,” dragged tediously along by four white oxen, yoked abreast. There, too, were herds of long-haired goats, rearing mid the bushes and showing their beards over them, or following the shepherd to their fold, as the shadows began to lengthen,—or rude and screaming wains, tugged by uncouth buffaloes, with low heads and knotted knees, bred among the malaria-stricken marshes.
Half-way to Rome we changed horses at Palo,—a little grim settlement, composed of a post-house, inn, stables, a line of straggling fishermen’s-huts, and a desolate old fortress, flanked by four towers. This fortress, which once belonged to the Odescalchi family, but is now the property of the Roman government, looks like the very spot for a tragedy, as it stands there rotting in the pestilential air, and garrisoned by a few stray old soldiers, whose dreary, broken-down appearance is quite in keeping with the place. Palo itself is the site of the city of Alsium, founded by the Pelasgi, in the dim gloom of antiquity, long before the Etruscans landed on this shore. It was subsequently occupied by the Etruscans, and afterwards became a favorite resort of the Roman nobility, who built there the splendid villas of Antoninus, Porcina, Pompeius, and others. Of the Pelasgic and Etruscan town not a vestige remains; but the ruined foundations of Roman villas are still to be seen along the shore. No longer are to be found there the feasts described by Fronto,[A] of “fatted oysters, savory apples, pastry, confectionery, and generous wines in faultless transparent goblets,”—nor would it now be called “a voluptuous seaside retreat”; but good lobsters are still abundant there, and one can get a greasy beefsteak, black bread, an ill-cooked chicken, and sour wine, at only about twice their market value. The situation is lovely, with the sea washing in along the rounded rim of the coast, close up to the door of the inn; and on a sunny day, when the white wings of feluccas may be seen gleaming far off on the blue Mediterranean, and the fishermen are drawing their nets close into shore, it seems as if it might really be made “a voluptuous seaside retreat,” but for the desolating malaria which renders it dangerous to rest there for a single night.
[Footnote A: De Feriis Alsensibus, Epist. III. See Dennis’s Etruscan Antiquities, Vol. I.]
Here, of course, we stopped as short a time as possible; and then, bidding adieu to the sea, struck inland over the Campagna to Rome. The country now grows wild, desolate, and lonely; but it has a special charm of its own, which they who are only hurrying on to Rome, and to whom it is an obstruction and a tediousness, cannot, of course, perceive. It is dreary, weird, ghostly,—the home of the winds; but its silence, sadness, and solitude are both soothing and impressive. After miles and miles up and down, at last, from the crest of a hill up which we slowly toiled with our lumbering carriage and reeking horses, we saw the dome of St. Peter’s towering above the city, which as yet was buried out of sight. It was but a glimpse, and was soon lost. The postilion covered the worn-out lace of his shabby livery with a heavy cloak, which he flung over his shoulder to keep out the dampening air, gave a series of wild flourishes with his whip, broke into guttural explosions of voice to urge along his horses, and on we went
After leaving the Piazza, we get a glimpse of Hadrian’s Mole, and of the rusty Tiber, as it hurries, “retortis littore Etrusco violenter undis” as of old, under the statued bridge of St. Angelo,—and then we plunge into long, damp, narrow, dirty streets. Yet—shall I confess it?—they had a charm for me. Twilight was deepening into dark as we passed through them. Confused cries and loud Italian voices sounded about me. Children were screaming,—men howling their wares for sale. Bells were ringing everywhere. Priests, soldiers, contadini, and beggars thronged along. The Trasteverini were going home, with their jackets hanging over one shoulder. Women, in their rough woollen gowns, stood in the doorways bare-headed, or looked out from windows and balconies, their black hair shining under the lanterns. Lights were twinkling in the little cavernous shops, and under the Madonna-shrines far within them. A funeral procession, with its black banners, gilt with a death’s-head and cross-bones, was passing by, its wavering candles borne by the confraternita, who marched carelessly along, shrouded from head to foot in white, with only two holes for the eyes to glare through.
It was dirty, but it was Rome; and to any one who has long lived in Rome even its very dirt has a charm which the neatness of no other place ever had. All depends, of course, on what we call dirt. No one would defend the condition of some of the streets or some of the habits of the people. But the soil and stain which many call dirt I call color, and the cleanliness of Amsterdam would ruin Rome for the
These thoughts, or ghosts of thoughts, flitted through my mind, as the carriage was passing along the narrow, dirty streets, and brought with them after-trains of reflection. There may be, I thought, among the thousands of travellers that annually winter at Rome, some to whom the common out-door pictures of modern Roman life would have a charm as special as the galleries and antiquities, and to whom a sketch of many things, which wise and serious travellers have passed by as unworthy their notice, might be interesting. Every ruin has had its score of immortelles hung upon it. The soil has been almost overworked by antiquarians and scholars, to whom the modern flower was nothing, but the antique brick a prize. Poets and sentimentalists have described to death what the antiquaries have left;—some have done their work so well that nothing remains to be done after them. Everybody has an herbarium of dried flowers from all the celebrated sites, and a table made from bits of marble collected in the ruined villas. Every Englishman carries a Murray for information and a Byron for sentiment, and finds out by them what he is to know and feel at every step. Pictures and statues have been staled by copy and description, until everything is stereotyped, from the Dying Gladiator, with his “young barbarians all at play,” and all that, down to the Beatrice Cenci, the Madame Tonson of the shops, that haunts one everywhere with her white turban and red eyes. All the public and private life and history of the ancient Romans, from Romulus to Constantine and Julian the Apostle, (as he is sometimes called,) is properly well known. But the common life of the modern Romans, the games, customs, habits of the people, the everyday of To-day, has been only touched upon here and there,—sometimes with spirit and accuracy, as by Charles McFarlane, sometimes with great grace, as by Hans Christian Andersen, and sometimes with great ignorance, as by Miss Waldie. This is the subject, however, which has specially interested me, and a life of several years in Rome has enabled me to observe many things which do not strike the hurried traveller, and to correct many false notions in regard to the people and place. To a stranger, a first impression is apt to be a false impression; and it constantly happens to me to hear my own countrymen work out the falsest conclusions from the slightest premises, and settle the character and deserts of the Italians, all of whom they mass together in a lump, after they have been just long enough on the soil to travel from Civita Vecchia to Rome under the charge of a courier, when they know just enough of the language to ask for a coachman when they want a spoon, and when they have made the respectable acquaintance, beside their courier, of a few porters, a few beggars, a few shopkeepers, and the padrone of the apartment they hire.
No one lives long in Rome without loving it; and I must, in the beginning, confess myself to be in the same category. Those who shall read these slender papers, without agreeing to the kindly opinions often expressed, must account for it by remembering that “Love lends a precious seeing to the eye.” My aim is far from ambitious. I shall not be erudite, but I hope I shall not be dull. These little sketches may remind some of happy days spent under the Roman sky, and, by directing the attention of others to what they have overlooked, may open a door to a new pleasure. Chi sa? The plainest Ranz des Vaches may sometimes please when the fifth symphony of Beethoven would be a bore.
STREET-MUSIC IN ROME.
Whoever has passed the month of December in Rome will remember to have been awakened from his morning-dreams by the gay notes of the pifferari playing in the streets below, before the shrines of the Madonna and Bambino,—and the strains of one set of performers will scarcely have ceased, before the distant notes of another set of pilgrims will be heard to continue the well-known novena. The pifferari are generally contadini of the Abruzzi Mountains, who, at the season of Advent, leave their home to make a pilgrimage to Rome,— stopping before all the wayside shrines, as they journey along, to pay their glad music of welcome to the Virgin, and the coming Messiah. Their song is called a novena, from its being sung for nine consecutive days,—first, for nine days previous to the Festa of the Madonna, which occurs on the 8th of December, and afterwards for the nine days preceding Christmas. The same words and music serve, however, for both celebrations. The pifferari always go in couples, one playing on the zampogna, or bagpipe, the bass and treble accompaniment, and the other on the piffero, or pastoral pipe, which carries the air; and for the month before Christmas the sound of their instruments resounds through the streets of Rome, wherever there is a shrine,—whether at the corners of the streets, in the depths of the shops, down little lanes, in the centre of the Corso, in the interior courts of the palaces, or on the stairways of private houses.
Their costume is extremely picturesque. On their heads they wear conical felt hats adorned with a frayed peacock’s feather, or a faded band of red cords and tassels,—their bodies are clad in red waistcoats, blue jackets, and small-clothes of skin or yellowish homespun cloth,—skin sandals are bound to their feet with cords that interlace each other up the leg as far as the knee,—and over all is worn a long brown or blue cloak with a short cape, buckled closely round the neck. Sometimes, but rarely, this cloak is of a deep red with a scalloped cape. As they stand before the pictures of the Madonna, their hats placed on the ground before them,
Their Christmas pilgrimages are by no means prompted by purely religious motives, though, undoubtedly, such considerations have some weight with them, the common peasantry being a religiously inclined people, and often making pilgrimages simply from a sense of duty and propriety. But in these wanderings to Rome, their principal object is to earn a little money to support them during the winter months, when their “occupation is gone.” As they are hired in Rome by the owners of the various houses adorned with a Madonna-shrine (of which there are over fifteen hundred in the city) to play before them at the rate of a paul or so for each full novena, and as they can easily play before thirty or forty a day, they often return, if their luck is good, with a tolerable little sum in their pockets. Besides this, they often stand as models, if they are good-looking fellows, and thus add to their store; and then again, the forestieri (for, as the ancient Romans called strangers barbari, so their descendants call them foresters, wood-men, wild-men) occasionally drop baiocchi and pauls into their hats, still further to increase it.
Sometimes it is a father and son who play together, but oftener two old friends who make the pilgrimage in pairs. This morning, as I was going out for a walk round the walls, two admirable specimens of the pifferari were performing the novena before a shrine at the corner of the street. The player of the zampogna was an old man, with a sad, but very amiable face, who droned out the bass and treble in a most earnest and deprecatory manner. He looked as if he had stood still, tending his sheep, nearly all his life, until the peace and quiet of Nature had sunk into his being, or, if you will, until
“Where do you come from?” I asked.
“Eh!” said the piffero, showing all his teeth, and shrugging his shoulders good-naturedly, while the other echoed the pantomime.
“Dal Regno”—for so the Abruzzi peasants call the kingdom of Naples.
“And do you come every year?”
“Si, Signore. Lui” (indicating his friend) “ed io” (pointing to himself) “siam’ compagni per trenta tre anni. E siam’ venut’ a Roma per far la noven’ ogn’ anno."[B]
[Footnote B: “He and I have been companions for thirty-three years, and every year we have come to Rome to play the novena.”]
To this the old zampogna bent his head on one side, and said, assentingly,—“Eh! per trenta tre anni.”—
And, “Ecco,” continued the piffero, bursting in before the zampogna could go on, and pointing to two stalwart youths of about twenty-two or-three years of age, who at this moment came up the street with their instruments,—“These are our two sons. He is mine,”—indicating one with his reversed thumb; “and that other is his,”—jerking his head towards his companion. “And they, too, are going to play in company, as we do.”
“For thirty-three years more, let us hope,” said I.
“Eh! speriamo,” (Let us hope so,) was the answer of the piffero, as he showed all his teeth in the broadest of smiles. Then, with a motion of his hand, he set both the young men going, he himself joining in, straining out his cheeks, blowing all the breath of his body into the little pipe, and running up and down the vents with a sliding finger, until finally he brought up against a high, shrill note, to which he gave the full force of his lungs, and, after holding it in loud blast for a moment, startled us by breaking off, without gradation, into a silence as sudden as if the music had snapped short off, like a pipe-stem.
On further conversation with my ciociari, I found that they came yearly from Sora, a town in the Abruzzi, about one hundred miles from Rome, making the journey on foot, and picking up by the way whatever trifle of copper they could. In this manner they travelled the whole distance in five days, living upon onions, lettuce, oil, and black bread. They were now singing the second novena for Natale, and, if one could judge from their manner and conversation, were quite content with what they had earned. I invited them up into my room, and there in the pleasantest way they stunned us with the noise of both their instruments, to the great delight of the children and the astonishment of the servants, for whom these common things had worn out their charm by constant repetition. At my request, they repeated the words of the novena they had been singing, and I took them down from their lips. After eliminating the wonderful m-ms of the Neapolitan dialect, in which all the words lay imbedded like shells in the sand, and supplying some of the curious elisions with which those Abruzzi Procrusteans recklessly cut away the polysyllables, so as to bring them within the rythmic compass, they ran thus:—
“Verginella figlia di Sant’
Anna,
Nella ventre portasti il buon Gesu.
Si parturisti sotto la capanna,
E dov’ mangiav’no lo bue e
1’ asinello.
“Quel Angelo gridava: ’Venite,
Santi!
’Che andato Gesu dentro la capanna,
Ma guardate Vergine beata,
Che in ciel in terra sia nostr’
avvocata!
“San Giuseppe andava in compagnia,
Si trovo al partorir di Maria.
La notte di natale e notte santa—
Lo Padre e 1’ Figliolo e lo Spirito
Santo.
’Sta la ragione che abbiamo cantato;
Sia a Gesu bambino rappresentata.”
The sudden introduction of “Quel Angelo” in this song reminds us of a similar felicity in the romantic ballad of “Lord Bateman,” where we are surprised to learn that “this Turk,” to whom no allusion had been previously made, “has one lovely daughter.”
The air to which this is sung is very simple and sweet, though monotonous. Between the verses and at the close, a curious little ritornello is played.
The wanderings of the pifferari are by no means confined to the Roman States. Sometimes they stray “as far away as Paris is,” and, wandering about in that gay capital, like children at a fair, play in the streets for chance sous, or stand as models to artists, who, having once been to Rome, hear with a longing Rome-sickness the old characteristic sounds of the piffero and zampogna. Two of them I remember to have heard thus, as I was at work in my studio in Paris; and so vividly did they recall the old Roman time, that I called them in for a chat.
Wonderful was their speech. In the few months of their wandering, they had put into their Neapolitan dough various plums of French words, which, pronounced in their odd way, “suffered a change into something peculiarly rich and strange.” One of them told me that his wife had just written to him by the hand of a scrivano, lamenting his absence, and praying him to send her his portrait. He had accordingly sent her a photograph in half-length. Some time afterwards she acknowledged the receipt of it, but indignantly remonstrated with him for sending her a picture “che pareva guardando per la fenestra” (which seemed to be looking out of the window,) as she oddly characterized a half-length, and praying to have his legs also in the next portrait. This same fellow, with his dull, amiable face, played the role of a ferocious wounded brigand dragged into concealment by his wife, in the studio of a friend next door; but, despite the savagery and danger of his counterfeited position, he was sure to be overpowered by sleep before he had been in it more than five minutes,—and if the artist’s eye left him for a moment, he never failed to change his attitude for one more fitted to his own somnolent propensities than for the picture.
The pifferari are by no means the only street-musicians in Rome, though they take the city by storm at Christmas. Every day under my window comes a band of four or five, who play airs and concerted pieces from the operas,—and a precious work they make of it sometimes! Not only do the instruments go very badly together, but the parts they play are not arranged for them. A violone grunts out a low accompaniment to a vinegar-sharp violin which saws out the air, while a trumpet blares in at intervals to endeavor to unite the two, and a flute does what it can, but not what it would. Sometimes, instead of a violone, a hoarse trombone, with a violent cold in the head, snorts out the bass impatiently, gets ludicrously uncontrollable and boastful at times, and is always so choleric, that, instead of waiting for the cadenzas to finish, it bursts in, knocks them over as by a blow on the head, roars away on false intervals, and overwhelms every other voice with its own noisy vociferation. The harmonic arrangements are very odd. Each instrument seems to consider itself ill-treated when reduced to an accompaniment or bass, and is constantly endeavoring, however unfitted for it, to get possession of the air,—the melody being, for all Italians, the principal object. The violin, however, weak of voice as it is, always carries the day, and the other instruments steal discontentedly back to their secondary places, the snuffy old violone keeping up a constant growl at its ill luck, and the trombone now and then leaping out like a tiger on its prey.
Far better and more characteristic are the ballad-singers, who generally go in couples,—an old man, dim of sight, perhaps blind, who plays the violin, and his wife or daughter, who has a guitar, tamborello, or at times a mandolin. Sometimes a little girl accompanies them, sings with them, and carries round a tin box, or the tamborello, to collect baiocchi. They sing long ballads to popular melodies, some of which are very pretty and gay, and for a baiocco they sell a sheet containing the printed words of the song. Sometimes it is in the form of a dialogue,—either a love-making, a quarrel, a reconciliation, or a leave-taking,—each singer taking an alternate verse. Sometimes it is a story with a chorus, or a religious conversation-ballad, or a story of a saint, or from the Bible. Those drawn from the Bible are generally very curious paraphrases of the original simple text, turned into the simplest and commonest idioms of the people;—one of them may be found in the Appendix to Goethe’s “Italienische Reise.” These Roman ballads and popular songs, so far as I am able to learn, have never been collected. Many of them do not exist in print, and are only traditional and caught from mouth to mouth. This is particularly the case with those in the Romanesque dialect, which are replete with the peculiar wit and spirit of the country. But the memory of man is too perilous a repository for such interesting material; and it is greatly to be wished that some clever Italian, who is fitted for the task, would interest himself to collect them and give them a permanent place in the literature of his language.
But to return to our ballad-singers, whom we have left in the middle of their song, and who are now finishing. A crowd has gathered round them, as usual; out of the windows and from the balconies lean the occupants of the houses near by, and the baiocchi thrown by them ring on the pavement below. With rather Stentorian voices they have been singing a dialogue which is most elaborately entitled a “Canzonetta Nuova, sopra un marinaro che da l’ addio alla sua promessa sposa mentre egli deve partire per la via di Levante. Sdegno, pace, e matrimonio dilli medesimi con intercalare sull’ aria moderna. Rime di Francesco Calzaroni.” I give my baiocco and receive in return a smiling “Grazie” and a copy of the song, which is adorned by a wood-cut of a ship in full sail.
Here is another, of a moral character, containing the sad history of Frederic the Gambler, who, to judge from the wood-cut accompanying the Canzonetta, must have been a ferocious fellow. He stands with his legs wide apart, in half-armor, a great sash tied over his shoulder and swinging round his legs, an immense sword at his side, and a great hat with two ostrich-feathers on his head, looking the very type of a “swashing blade.”
The singers of longer ballads carry about with them sometimes a series of rudely-executed illustrations of different incidents in the story, painted in distemper and pasted on a large pasteboard frame, which is hung against a wall or on a stand planted behind the singer in the ground. These he pauses now and then in his song to explain to the audience, and they are sure to draw a crowd.
As summer comes on and the evenings grow warm, begin the street serenades,—sometimes like that of Lindoro in the opening of the “Barbiere di Sevilla,” but generally with only one voice, accompanied by a guitar and a mandolin. These serenades are, for the most part, given by a lover or friend to his innamorata, and the words are expressive of the tender passion; but there are also serenate di gelosia, or satirical serenades, when the most impertinent and stinging verses are sung. Long before arriving, the serenaders may be heard marching up the street to the thrum of their instruments. They then place themselves before the windows of the fair one, and, surrounded by a group of men and boys, make proclamation of their love in loud and often violent tones. It seems sometimes as if they considered the best method of expressing the intensity of their passion was by the volume of their voice. Certainly, in these cases, the light of love is not hidden under a bushel. Among the Trasteverini, particularly, these serenades are common. Some of them are very clever in their improvisations and imitations of different dialects, particularly of the Neapolitan, in which there are so many charming songs. Their skill in improvisation, however, is not generally displayed in their serenades, but in the osterias, during the evenings of the festas in summer. There it is that their quickness and epigrammatic turn of expression are best seen. Two disputants will, when in good-humor and warmed with wine, string off verse after verse at each other’s expense, full of point and fun,—the guitar burring along in the intervals, and a chorus of laughter saluting every good hit.
In many of the back streets and squares of the city, fountains jet out of lions’ heads into great oblong stone cisterns, often sufficiently large to accommodate some thirty washerwomen at once. Here the common people resort to wash their clothes, and with great laughter and merriment amuse themselves while at their work by improvising verses, sometimes with rhyme, sometimes without, at the expense of each other, or perhaps of the passerby,—particularly if he happen to be a gaping forestiere, to whom their language is unintelligible. They stand on an elevated stone step, so as to bring the cistern about mid-height of their body, and on the rough inclined level of its rim they slash and roll the clothes, or, opening them, flaunt them into the water, or gather them together, lifting their arms high above their heads, and always treating them with a violence which nothing but the coarsest material can resist. The air to which they chant their couplets is almost always a Campagna melody. Sharp attacks are given and as sharp repliques received, in exceeding good-humor; and when there is little wit, there is sure to be much laughter. The salt is oftentimes pretty coarse, but it serves its purpose.
A remarkable trait among the Italians is the good-nature with which they take personal jokes, and their callousness to ridicule of personal defects. Jests which would provoke a blow from an Anglo-Saxon, or wound and rankle in the memory for life, are here taken in good part. A cripple often joins in the laugh at his own deformity; and the rough carelessness with which such personal misfortunes are alluded to is amazing to us of a more sensitive organization. I well remember the extreme difficulty I once had in breaking an Italian servant of the habit of announcing an acquaintance, whose foreign name he could not pronounce, and who had the misfortune to be humpbacked, as “quel gobbo” (that hunchback). He could not understand why he should not call him a gobbo, if he was a gobbo; and in spite of all I could do, he would often open the door and say, “Signore, quel gobbo desidera farle una visita,” (that hunchback wishes to make you a visit,) when “quel gobbo” was right on his heels. The Italians are also singularly free from that intense self-consciousness which runs in our English blood, and is the root of shyness, awkwardness, and affectation. Unconsciousness is the secret of grace, freedom, and simplicity. We never forget ourselves. The Italians always forget themselves. They are sometimes proud, very seldom vain, and never affected. The converse peculiarity follows, of course. Having no self-consciousness, they are as little sensitive to their defects as vain of their charms. The models who come to the studios, and who have been selected for their beauty, despite the silent flattery incident to their very profession, and the lavish praise they constantly hear expressed, are always simple, natural, and unaffected. If you tell them they are very beautiful, they say, "Ma che?" deprecatorily, or perhaps admit the fact. But they are better pleased to have their dress admired than their faces. Of the former they are vain, of the latter they are not. For the most part, I think they rather wonder what it is we admire in them and think worthy of perpetuating in stone or color. The other day I was so much struck with the ear of a model, from whom I was working, that I said to her,—“You have, without exception, the most beautiful ear I ever saw.” She laughed somewhat derisively, and said, "Ma che?"—“It does not seem to give you any pleasure,” I continued, “to know that you have a very handsome ear.”—"Che mi importa," answered she, "se sia bello o brutto? E sempre lo stesso, brutto o bello, bello o brutto. Ecco!"[C] —“You don’t care, then, whether you are handsome or ugly?”—"Eh! cosa a me m’importa,—se sono brutto o bello non so,—a me e lo stesso." This was all I could get from her.
[Footnote C: “What do I care whether it is handsome or ugly? It’s all the same to me,—ugly or handsome,—handsome or ugly. There!”]
But to return to our washerwomen. In every country-town a large washing-cistern is always provided by the authorities for public use, and, at all hours of the day, the picturesque figures of the peasants of every age, from the old hag, whose skin is like a brown and crumpled palimpsest, (where Anacreontic verses are overwritten by a dull, monkish sermon,) to the round, dark-eyed girl, with broad, straight back and shining hair, may be seen gathered around it,—their heads protected from the sun by their folded tovaglia, their skirts knotted up behind, and their waists embraced by stiff, red busti. Their work is always enlivened by song,—and when their clothes are all washed, the basket is lifted to the head, and home they march, stalwart and majestic, like Roman caryatides. The sharp Italian sun shining on their dark faces and vivid costumes, or flashing into the fountain, and basking on the gray, weed-covered walls, makes a picture which is often enchanting in its color. At the Emissary by Albano, where the waters from the lake are emptied into a huge cistern through the old conduit built by the ancient Romans to sink the level of the lake, I have watched by the hour together these strange pictorial groups, as they sang and thrashed the clothes they were engaged in washing; while over them, in the foreground, the great gray tower and granary, once a castle, lifted itself in strong light and shade against the peerless blue sky, while rolling hills beyond, covered with the pale green foliage of rounded olives, formed the characteristic background. Sometimes a contadino, mounted on the crupper of his donkey, would pause in the sun to chat awhile with the women. The children, meanwhile, sprawled and played upon the grass, and the song and chat at the fountain would not unfrequently be interrupted by a shrill scream from one of the mothers, to stop a quarrel, or to silence a cry which showed the stoutness of their little lungs.
The cobblers of Rome are also a gay and singing set. They do not imprison themselves in a dark cage of a shop, but sit "sub Jove" where they may enjoy the life of the street and all the “skyey influences.” Their benches are generally placed near the portone of some palace, so that they may draw them under shelter when it rains. Here all day they sit and draw their waxed-ends and sing,—a row of battered-looking boots and shoes ranged along on the ground beside them, and waiting for their turn, being their only stock in trade.
They commonly have enough to do, and, as they pay nothing for shop-rent, every baiocco they get is nearly clear profit. They are generally as poor as Job’s cat; but they are far happier than the proprietor of that interesting animal. Figaro is a high ideal of this class, and about as much like them as Raffaello’s angels are like Jeames Yellowplush. What the cobblers and Figaro have in common is song and a love of scandal. One admirable specimen
In the busiest street of Rome, the pure Campagna song may often be heard from the throat of some contadino, as he slowly rumbles along in his loaded wine-cart,—the little dog at his side barking a sympathetic chorus. This song is rude enough, and seems in measure founded upon the Church chant. It is in the minor key, and consists ordinarily of two phrases, ending in a screaming monotone, prolonged until the breath of the singer fails, and often running down at the close into a blurred chromatic. No sooner is one strain ended than it is suddenly taken up again in the prestissimo time and “slowed” down to the same dismal conclusion. Heard near, it is deafening and disagreeable. But when refined by distance, it has a sad and pleasant effect, and seems to belong to the place,—the long wail at the close being the very type of the melancholy stretches of the Campagna. In the same way I have frequently thought that the Jodeln of the Swiss was an imitation of the echo of the mountains, each note repeated first in octave, or fifth, and then in its third below. The Campagna song is to be heard not only in the Campagna, but everywhere in the country,—in the vineyards, in the grain-fields, in mountain and valley, from companies working together, and from solitary contadini,—wherever the influence and sentiment of the Roman Campagna is felt. The moment we get into Tuscany, on the one side, or over into Naples, on the other, it begins to be lost. It was only the other day, at nightfall, that I was sauntering out on the desolate Campagna towards Civita Vecchia. The shadows were deepening and the mists beginning to creep whitely along the deep hollows. Everything was dreary and melancholy
“E, bella, tu non piangera-a-a-i,
Sul giorno ch’io saro mor-or-or-to-o-o-o-o-o."[D]
[Footnote D:
“And, dearest, you will never weep
for me-e-e-e,
The day when I shall be no mo-o-o-ore.”]
Whether this constant habit of song among the Southern people, while at their work, indicates happiness and content, I will not undertake to say; but it is pleasanter in effect than the sad silence in which we Anglo-Saxons perform our tasks,—and it seems to show a less harassed and anxious spirit. But I feel quite sure that these people are more easily pleased, contented with less, less morose, and less envious of the ranks above them, than we are. They give little thought to the differences of caste, have little ambition to make fortunes or rise out of their condition, and are satisfied with the commonest fare, if they can get enough of it. The demon of dissatisfaction never harries them. When you speak to them, they answer with a smile which is nowhere else to be found. The nation is old, but the people are children in disposition. Their character is like their climate, generally sunny,—subject to violent occasional storms, but never growling life away in an uncomfortable drizzle of discontent. They live upon Nature, —sympathize with it and love it,—are susceptible to the least touch of beauty,—are ardent, if not enduring, in their affectations,—and, unless provoked and irritated, are very peaceful and amiable. The flaw in their nature is jealousy, and it is a great flaw. Their want of truth is the result of their education. We who are of the more active and busy nations despise them for not having that irritated discontent which urges us forward to change our condition; and we think our ambition better than their supineness. But there is good in both. We do more,—they enjoy more; we make violent efforts to be happy,—invent, create, labor, to arrive at that quiet enjoyment which they own without struggle, and which our anxious strife unfits us to enjoy when the means for it are obtained. The general, popular idea, that an Italian is quarrelsome, and ill-tempered, and that the best are only bandits in disguise, is quite a mistake; and when studied as they exist out of the track of travel, where they are often debased and denaturalized, they will be found to be simple, kind-hearted, and generous.
Yes, my dear Dolorosus, I commiserate you. I regard your case, perhaps, with even sadder emotions than that excellent family-physician who has been sounding its depths these four years with a golden plummet, and has never yet touched bottom. From those generous confidences which, in common with most of your personal acquaintances, I daily share, I am satisfied that no description can do justice to your physical disintegration, unless it be the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds with which Mr. Addison winds up Cato’s Soliloquy. So far as I can ascertain, there is not an organ of your internal structure which is in its right place, at present, or which could perform any particular service, if it were there. In the extensive library of medical almanacs and circulars which I find daily deposited by travelling agents at my front door, among all the agonizing vignettes of diseases which adorn their covers, and which Irish Bridget daily studies with inexperienced enjoyment in the front entry, there is no case which seems to afford a parallel to yours. I found it stated in one of these works, the other day, that there is iron enough in the blood of twenty-four men to make a broadsword; but I am satisfied that it would be impossible to extract enough from the veins of yourself and your whole family to construct a crochet-needle for your eldest daughter. And I am quite confident, that, if all the four hundred muscles of your present body were twisted together by a rope-maker, they would not furnish that patient young laborer with a needleful of thread.
You are undoubtedly, as you claim, a martyr to Dyspepsia; or if you prefer any other technical name for your disease or diseases, I will acquiesce in any, except, perhaps, the word “Neurology,” which I must regard as foreign to etymological science, if not to medical. Your case, you think, is hard. I should think it would be. Yet I am impressed by it, I must admit, as was our adopted fellow-citizen by the contemplation of Niagara. He, you remember, when pressed to admire the eternal plunge of the falling water, could only inquire, with serene acquiescence in natural laws, “And what’s to hinder?” I confess myself moved to similar reflections by your disease and its history. My dear Dolorosus, can you acquaint me with any reason, in the heavens above or on the earth beneath, why you should not have dyspepsia?
My thoughts involuntarily wander back to that golden period, five years ago, when I spent one night and day beneath your hospitable roof. I arrived, I remember, late in the evening. The bed-room to which you kindly conducted me, after a light but wholesome supper of doughnuts and cheese, was pleasing in respect to furniture, but questionable in regard to physiology. The house was not more than twenty years old, and the chamber must therefore have been aired within that distance of time, but not, I should have judged, more recently. Perhaps its close, oppressive atmosphere could not have been analyzed
I remember, as I entered the breakfast-room, a vague steam as of frying sausages, which, creeping in from the neighboring kitchen, obscured in some degree the six white faces of your wife and children. The breakfast-table was amply covered, for you were always what is termed by judicious housewives “a good provider.” I remember how the beefsteak (for the sausages were especially destined for your two youngest Dolorosi, who were just recovering from the measles, and needed something light and palatable) vanished in large rectangular masses within your throat, drawn downward in a maelstrom of coffee;—only that the original whirlpool is, I believe, now proved to have been imaginary;—“that cup was a fiction, but this is reality.” The resources of the house also afforded certain very hot biscuits or breadcakes, in a high state of saleratus;—indeed, it must have been from association with these, that certain yellow streaks in Mr. Ruskin’s drawing of the rock, at the Athenaeum, awakened in me such an immediate sense of indigestion;—also fried potatoes, baked beans, mince-pie, and pickles. The children partook of these dainties largely, but without undue waste of time. They lingered at table precisely eight minutes, before setting out for school; though we, absorbed in conversation, remained at least ten;—after which we instantly hastened to your counting-room, where you, without a moment’s delay, absorbed yourself in your ledger, while I flirted languidly with the “Daily Advertiser.”
You bent over your desk the whole morning, occasionally having anxious consultations with certain sickly men whom I supposed to be superannuated bookkeepers, in impoverished circumstances, and rather pallid from the want of nutritious food. One of them, dressed in rusty black, with a flabby white neckcloth, I took for an ex-clergyman; he was absorbed in the last number of the “Independent,” though I observed, at length, that he was only studying the list of failures, a department to which, as it struck me, he himself peculiarly appertained. All of these, I afterwards ascertained from your office-boy, were eminent capitalists; something had gone wrong in the market,—not in the meat-market, as I should have supposed from their appearance, but in the money-market. I believe that there was some sudden fall in the price of indigo. I know you looked exceedingly blue as we walked home to dinner.
Dinner was ready the instant we opened the front door. I expected as much; I knew the pale, speechless woman who sat at the head of your table would make sure of punctuality, if she died for it. We took our seats without a word. The party was smaller than at breakfast. Two of the children had staid at school, having their luncheon-baskets well filled from the cold remains of breakfast. Your eldest girl, Angelina, aged ten, one of those premature little grown women who have learned from the cradle that man is born to eat pastry and woman to make it, postponed her small repast till an indefinite future, and sat meekly ready to attend upon our wants. Nathaniel, a thin boy of eight, also partook but slightly, having impaired his appetite, his mother suspected, by a copious luncheon of cold baked beans and vinegar, on his return from school. The two youngest (twins) had relapsed to their couches soon after breakfast, in consequence of excess of sausage.
You were quite agreeable in conversation, I remember, after the first onset of appetite was checked. You gave me your whole theory of the indigo crisis, with minute details, statistical and geographical, of the financial condition and supposed present location of your principal absconding debtors. This served for what is called, at public dinners, the intellectual feast; while the carnal appetite was satisfied with fried pork, ditto roasted, strong coffee, turnips, potatoes, and a good deal of gravy. For dessert, (at which point Nathaniel regained his appetite,) we had mince-pie, apple-pie, and lemon-pie, the latter being a structure of a two-story description, an additional staging of crust being somehow inserted between upper and under. We lingered long at that noon meal,—fifteen minutes, at the very least; for you hospitably said that you did not have these little social festivals very often,—owing to frequent illness in the family, and other causes,—and mast make the most of it.
I did not see much of you during that afternoon; it was a magnificent day, and I said, that, being a visitor, I would look about and see the new buildings. The truth was, I felt a sneaking desire to witness the match-game on the Common, between the Union Base-Ball Club, No. 1, of Ward Eleven, and the Excelsiors of Smithville. I remember that you looked a little dissatisfied, when I came into the counting-room, and rather shook your head over my narrative (perhaps too impassioned) of the events of the game. “Those young fellows,” said you, “may not all be shiftless, dissipated characters, yet,—but see what it comes to! They a’n’t content with wasting their time,—they kill it, Sir, actually kill it!” When I thought of the manly figures and handsome, eager faces of my friends of the “Union” and the “Excelsior,”—the Excelsiors won by ten tallies, I should say, the return match to come off at Smithville the next month,—and then looked at the meagre form and wan countenance of their critic, I thought to myself, “Dolorosus, my boy, you are killing something besides Time, if you only knew it.”
However, indigo had risen again, and your spirits also. As we walked home, you gave me a precise exhibit of your income and expenditures for the last five years, and a prospective sketch of the same for the next ten; winding up with an incidental delineation of the importance, to a man of business, of a good pew in some respectable place of worship. We found Mrs. D., as usual, ready at the table; we partook of pound-cake (or pound-and-a-half, I should say) and sundry hot cups of a very Cisatlantic beverage, called by the Chinese epithet of tea,—and went, immediately after, to a prayer-meeting. The church or chapel was much crowded, and there was a certain something in the atmosphere which seemed to disqualify my faculties from comprehending a single word that was spoken. It certainly was not that the ventilators were closed, for there were none. The minister occasionally requested that the windows might be let down a little, and the deacons invariably closed them again when he looked the other way. At intervals, females were carried out, in a motionless condition,—not, as it appeared, from conviction of sin, but from faintness. You sat, absorbed in thought, with your eyes closed, and seemed not to observe them. I remember that you were very much shocked when I suggested that the breath of an average sinner exhausted atmospheric air at the rate of a hogshead an hour, and asked you how much allowance the laws of the universe made for the lungs of church-members? I do not recall your precise words, but I remember that I finally found it expedient, as I was to leave for home in the early train, to spend that night at the neighboring hotel, where I indulged, on an excellent mattress, in a slumber so profound, that it seemed next morning as if I ought, as Dick Swiveller suggested to the single gentleman, to pay for a double-bedded room.
Well, that is all over now. You have given up business, from ill health, and exhibit a ripe old age, possibly a little over-ripe, at thirty-five. Your dreams of the forthcoming ten years have not been exactly fulfilled; you have not precisely retired on a competency, because the competency retired from you. Indeed, the suddenness with which your physician compelled you to close up your business left it closed rather imperfectly, so that most of the profits are found to have leaked out. You are economizing rather strictly, just now, in respect to everything but doctors’ bills. The maternal Dolorosa is boarding somewhere in the country, where the children certainly will not have more indigestible food than they had at home, and may get less of it in quantity,—to say nothing of more air and exercise to aid digestion. They are not, however, in perfect condition. The twins are just getting up from scarlet fever; Nathaniel has been advised to leave school for a time; and something is thought to be the matter with Angelina’s back. Meanwhile, you are haunting water-cures, experimenting on life-pills, holding private conferences with medical electricians, and thinking of a trip to the Bermudas.
You are learning, through all this, the sagest maxims of resignation, and trying to apply them. “Life is hard, but short,” you say; “Providence is inscrutable; we must submit to its mysterious decrees.” Would it not be better, my dear Dolorosus, to say instead, “Life is noble and immortal; God is good; we must obey his plain laws, or accept the beneficent penalties”? The rise and fall of health are no more accidental than the rise and fall of indigo; and it is the duty of those concerned in either commodity to keep their eyes open, and learn the business intelligently. Of the three proverbial desiderata, it is as easy to be healthy as to be wealthy, and much easier than to be wise, except so far as health and wisdom mean the same thing. After health, indeed, the other necessaries of life are very simple, and easily obtained;—with moderate desires, regular employment, a loving home, correct theology, the right politics, and a year’s subscription to the “Atlantic Monthly,” I have no doubt that life, in this planet, may be as happy as in any other of the solar system, not excepting Neptune and the fifty-five asteroids.
You are possibly aware, my dear Dolorosus,—for I remember that you were destined by your parents for the physician of your native seaside village, until you found a more congenial avocation in curing mackerel,—that the ancient medals represented the goddess Hygeia with a serpent three times as large as that carried by Aesculapius, to denote the superiority of hygiene to medicine, prevention to cure. To seek health as you are now seeking it, regarding every new physician as if he were Pandora, and carried hope at the bottom of his medicine-chest, is really rather unpromising. This perpetual self-inspection of yours, registering your pulse thrice a day, as if it were a thermometer and you an observer for the Smithsonian,—these long consultations with the other patients in the dreary parlor of the infirmary, the morning devoted to debates on the nervous system, the afternoon to meditations on the stomach, and the evening to soliloquies on the spine,—will do you no good. The more you know, under these circumstances, the worse it will be for you. You will become like Boerhaave’s hypochondriacal student, who, after every lecture, believed himself to be the victim of the particular disease just expounded. We may even think too much about health,—and certainly too much about illness. I solemnly believe that the very best thing that could be done for you at this moment, you unfortunate individual, would be to buy you a saddle-horse and a revolver, and start you tomorrow for the Rocky Mountains, with distinct instructions to treat any man as a Border Ruffian who should venture to allude to the subject of disease in your presence.
But I cannot venture to hope that you will do anything so reasonable. The fascinations of your present life are too overwhelming; when an invalid once begins to enjoy the contemplation of his own woes, as you appear to do, it is all over with him. Besides, you urge, and perhaps justly, that your case has already gone too far, for so rough a tonic. What, then, can I do for you? Medicine I cannot offer; for even your respectable family-physician occasionally hints that you need something different from that. I suspect that all rational advice for you may be summed up in one prescription: Reverse instantly all the habits of your previous physical existence, and there may be some chance for you. But, perhaps, I had better enter more into detail.
Do not think that I am going to recur to the painful themes of doughnuts and diet. I fear my hints, already given, on those subjects, may wound the sensitive nature of Mrs. D., who suffers now such utter martyrdom from your condition that I cannot bring myself to heap further coals of fire on her head, even though the coals be taken from her own very ineffectual cooking-stove. Let me dwell rather on points where you have exclusive jurisdiction, and can live wisely or foolishly, at your pleasure.
It does not depend on you, perhaps, whether you shall eat bread or saleratus, meat or sole-leather; but it certainly does depend upon yourself whether you shall wash yourself daily. I do not wish to be personal, but I verily believe, O companion of my childhood! that, until you began to dabble in Hydropathy, you had not bestowed a sincere ablution upon your entire person since the epoch when, twenty years ago, we took our last plunge together, off Titcomb’s wharf, in our native village. That in your well-furnished house there are no hydraulic privileges beyond pint water-pitchers, I know from anxious personal inspection. I know that you have spent an occasional week at the sea-shore during the summer, and that many people prefer to do up their cleanliness for the year during these excursions; indeed, you yourself have mentioned to me, at such times, with some enthusiasm, your daily sea-bath. But I have been privately assured, by the other boarders, that the bath in question always consisted of putting on a neat bathing-dress and sitting awhile on a rock among the sea-weed, like an insane merman, with the highest waves submerging only your knees, while the younger Dolorosi splashed and gambolled in safe shallows behind you. Even that is better than nothing, but—Soul of Mohammed!—is that called bathing? Verily, we are, as the Turks declare, a nation of “dirty Franks,” if this be the accepted definition.
Can it be possible that you really hold with the once-celebrated Mr. Walker, “The Original,” as he was deservedly called, who maintained, that, by a correct diet, the system became self-purifying, through an active exhalation which repelled impurity,—so that, while walking on dusty roads, his feet, and even his stockings, remained free from dust? “By way of experiment, I did not wash my face for a week; nor did any one see, nor I feel, the difference.” My deluded friend, it is a fatal error. Mr. Walker, the Original, may have been inwardly a saint and a sage, but it is impossible that his familiar society could have been desirable, even to fools or sinners. Rather recall, from your early explorations in Lempriere’s Dictionary, how Medea renewed the youth of Pelias by simply cutting him to pieces and boiling him; whereon my Lord Bacon justly remarks, that “there may be some boiling required in the matter, but the cutting to pieces is not needful.” If you find that the water-cure agrees with your constitution, I rejoice in it; I should think it would; but, I implore you, do not leave it all behind you when you leave the institution. When you return to your family, use your very first dollars for buying a sponge and a tin-hat, for each member of the household; and bring up the five children to lead decent lives.
Then, again, consider the fact that our lungs were created to consume oxygen. I suppose that never in your life, Dolorosus, did those breathing organs of yours inhale more than one half the quantity of air that they were intended to take in,—to say nothing of its quality. Yet one would think, that, in the present high prices of other food, you would make the most of the only thing you can put into your mouth gratis. Here is Nature constantly urging on us an unexceptionable atmosphere forty miles high,—for if a pressure of fourteen pounds to the square inch is not to be called urging, what is?—and yet we not only neglect, but resist the favor. Our children commonly learn to spell much better than they ever learn to breathe, because much more attention is paid to the former department of culture. Indeed, the materials are better provided; spelling-books are abundant; but we scarcely allow them time, in the intervals of school, to seek fresh air out of doors, and we sedulously exclude it from our houses and school-rooms. Is it not possible to impress upon your mind the changes which “modern improvements” are bringing upon us? In times past, if a gentleman finished the evening with a quiet cigar in his parlor, (a practice I deprecate, and introduce only for purposes of scientific illustration,) not a trace of it ever lingered to annoy his wife at the breakfast-table; showing that the draft up the open chimney had wholly disposed of it, the entire atmosphere of the room being changed during the night. Now, on the other hand, every whiff lingers persistently beside the domestic altar, and betrays to the youngest child, next day, the parental
I hardly dare go on to speak of exercise, lest I should share the reproach of that ancient rhetorician who,—as related by Plutarch, in his Aphorisms,—after delivering an oration in praise of Hercules, was startled by the satirical inquiry from his audience, whether any one had ever dispraised Hercules. As with Hercules, so with the physical activity he represents,—no one dispraises, if few practise it. Even the disagreement of doctors has brought out but little skepticism on this point. Cardan, it is true, in his treatise, “Plantae cur Animalibus diuturniores,” maintained that trees lived longer than men because they never stirred from their places. Exercise, he held, increases transpiration; transpiration shortens life; to live long, then, we need only remain perfectly still. Lord Bacon fell in with this fancy, and advised “oily unctions,” to prevent perspiration. Maupertuis went farther, and proposed to keep the body covered with pitch for this purpose: conceive, Dolorosus, of spending threescore years and ten in a garment of tar, without even the ornament of feathers, sitting tranquilly in our chairs, waiting for longevity! In more recent times, I can remember only Dr. Darwin as an advocate of sedentary living. He attempted to show its advantages by the healthy longevity attained by quiet old ladies in country-towns. But this is questioned by his critic, Dr. Beddoes, who admits the longevity, but denies the healthiness; he maintains that the old ladies are taking some new medicine every day,—at least, if they have a physician who understands his business.
Now I will not maintain, with Frederick the Great, that all our systems of education are wrong, because they aim to make men students or clerks, whereas the mere shape of the body shows (so thought King Frederick) that we are primarily designed for postilions, and should spend most of our lives on horseback. But it is very certain that all the physical universe takes the side of health and activity, wooing us forth into Nature, imploring us hourly, and in unsuspected ways, to receive her blessed breath into body and soul, and share in her eternal youth. For this are summer and winter, seedtime and harvest, given; for this do violet and bloodroot come, and gentian and witch-hazel go; for this do changing sunsets make yon path between the pines a gateway into heaven; for this does day shut us down within the loneliness of its dome of light, and night, lifting it, make us free of the vast fellowship of stars; for this do pale meteors wander nightly, soft as wind-blown blossoms, down the air; for this do silent snows transform the winter woods to feathery things, that seem too light to linger, and yet too vast to take their flight; for this does the eternal ocean follow its queen with patient footsteps round earth’s human shores; for this does all the fair creation answer to every dream or mood of man, so that we receive but what we give;—all is offered to us, to call us from our books and our trade, and summon us into Nature’s health and joy. To study, with the artist, the least of her beauties,—to explore, with the man of science, the smallest of her wonders,—or even simply to wander among her exhaustless resources, like a child, needing no interest unborrowed from the eye,—this feeds body and brain and heart and soul together.
But I see that your attention is wandering a little, Dolorosus, and perhaps I ought not to be surprised. I think I hear you respond, impatiently, in general terms, that you are not “sentimental.” I admit it; never within my memory did you err on that side. You also hint that you never did care much about weeds or bugs. The phrases are not scientific, but the opinion is intelligible. Perhaps my ardor has carried me too fast for my audience. While it would be a pleasure, no doubt, to see you transformed into an artist or a savant, yet that is scarcely to be expected, and, if attained, might not be quite enough. The studies of the naturalist, exclusively pursued, may tend to make a man too conscious and critical,—patronizing Nature, instead of enjoying her. He may even grow morbidly sensitive, like Buffon, who became so impressed with the delicacy and mystery of the human organization, that he was afraid to stoop even to pick up his own pen, when dropped, but called a servant to restore it. The artist, also, becomes often narrowed and petty, and regards the universe as a sort of factory, arranged to turn out “good bits of color” for him. Something is needed to make us more free and unconscious, in our out-door
Who can describe the unspeakable refreshment for an overworked brain, of laying aside all cares, and surrendering one’s self to simple bodily activity? Laying them aside! I retract the expression; they slip off unnoticed. You cannot embark care in your wherry; there is no room for the odious freight. Care refuses to sit behind the horseman, despite the Latin sentence; you leave it among your garments when you plunge into the river, it rolls away from the rolling cricket-ball, the first whirl in the gymnasium disposes of it, and you are left free, as boys and birds are free. If athletic amusements did nothing for the body, they would still be medicine for the soul. Nay, it is Plato who says that exercise will almost cure a guilty conscience,—and can we be indifferent to this, my fellow-sinner?
Why will you persist in urging that you “cannot afford” these indulgences, as you call them? They are not indulgences,—they are necessaries. Charge them, in your private account-book, under the heads of food and clothing, and as a substitute for your present enormous items under the head of medicine. O mistaken economist! can you afford the cessation of labor and the ceaseless drugging and douching of your last few years? Did not all your large experience in the retail-business teach you the comparative value of the ounce of prevention and the pound of cure? Are not fresh air and cold water to be had cheap? and is not good bread less costly than cake and pies? Is not the gymnasium a more economical institution than the hospital? and is not a pair of skates a good investment, if it aids you to elude the grasp of the apothecary? Is the cow Pepsin, on the whole, a more frugal hobby to ride than a good saddle-horse? Besides, if you insist upon pecuniary economy, do begin by economizing on the exercise which you pay others for taking in your stead,—on the corn and pears which you buy in the market, instead of removing to a suburban house and raising them yourself,—and in the reluctant silver you pay the Irishman who splits your wood. Or if, suddenly reversing your line of argument, you plead that this would impoverish the Irishman, you can at least treat him as you do the organ-grinder, and pay him an extra fee to go on to your next neighbor.
Dolorosus, there is something very noble, if you could but discover it, in a perfect human body. In spite of all our bemoaning, the physical structure of man displays its due power and beauty when we consent to give it a fair chance. On the cheek of every healthy child that plays in the street, though clouded by all the dirt that ever incrusted a young O’Brien or M’Cafferty, there is a glory of color such as no artist ever painted. I can take you to-morrow into a circus or a gymnasium, and show you limbs and attitudes which are worth more study than the Apollo or the Antinous, because they are life, not marble. How noble were Horatio Greenough’s meditations, in presence of the despised circus-rider! “I worship, when I see this brittle form borne at full speed on the back of a fiery horse, yet dancing as on the quiet ground, and smiling in conscious safety.”
I admit that this view, like every other, may be carried to excess. We can hardly expect to correct our past neglect of bodily training, without falling into reactions and extremes, in the process. There is our friend Jones, for instance, “the Englishman,” as the boys on the Common call him, from his cheery portliness of aspect. He is the man who insisted on keeping the telegraph-office open until 2, A.M., to hear whether Morrissey or the Benicia Boy won the prize-fight. I cannot say much for his personal conformity to his own theories at present, for he is growing rather too stout; but he likes vicarious exercise, and is doing something for the next generation, even if he does make the club laugh, sometimes, by advancing theories of training which the lower circumference of his own waistcoat does not seem to justify. But Charley, his eldest, can ride, shoot, and speak the truth, like an ancient Persian; he is the best boxer in college, and is now known to have gone to Canada incog., during the vacation, under the immediate supervision of Morris, the teacher of sparring, to see that same fight. It is true that the youth blushes, now, whenever that trip is alluded to; and when he was cross-questioned by his pet sister Kate, (Kate Coventry she delights to be called,) as to whether it wasn’t “splendid,” he hastily told her that she didn’t know what she was talking about, (which was undoubtedly true,)—and that he wished he didn’t, either. The truth is, that Charley, with his honest, boyish face, must have been singularly out of place among that brutal circle; and there is little doubt that he retired from the company before the set-to was fairly begun, and that respectable old Morris went with him. But, at any rate, they are a noble-looking family, and well brought up. Charley, with all his pugilism, stands fair for a part at Commencement, they say; and if you could have seen little Kate teaching her big cousin to skate backwards, at Jamaica Pond, last February, it would have reminded you of the pretty scene of the little cadet attitudinising before the great Formes,
Do not think me heartless for what I say, or assume, that, because I happen to be healthy myself, I have no mercy for ill-health in others. There are invalids who are objects of sympathy indeed, guiltless heirs of ancestral disease, or victims of parental folly or sin,—those whose lives are early blighted by maladies that seem as causeless as they are cureless,—or those with whom the world has dealt so cruelly that all their delicate nature is like sweet bells jangled,—or those whose powers of life are all exhausted by unnoticed labors and unseen cares,—or those prematurely old with duties and dangers, heroes of thought and action, whose very names evoke the passion and the pride of a hundred thousand hearts. There is a tottering feebleness of old age, also, nobler than any prime of strength; we all know aged men who are floating on, in stately serenity, towards their last harbor, like Turner’s Old Temeraire, with quiet tides around them, and the blessed sunset bathing in loveliness all their dying day. Let human love do its gracious work upon all these; let angelic hands of women wait upon their lightest needs, and every voice of salutation be tuned to such a sweetness as if it whispered beside a dying mother’s bed.
But you, Dolorosus,—you, to whom God gave youth and health, and who might have kept them, the one long and the other perchance always, but who never loved them, nor reverenced them, nor cherished them, only coined them into money till they were all gone, and even the ill-gotten treasure fell from your debilitated hands,—you, who shunned the sunshine as if it were sin, and called all innocent recreation time wasted,—you, who staid under ground in your goldmine, like the sightless fishes of the Mammoth Cave, till you were as blind and unjoyous as they,—what plea have you to make, what shelter to claim, except that charity which suffereth long and is kind? We will strive not to withhold it; while there is life, there is hope. At forty, it is said, every man is a fool or a physician. We will wait and see which vocation you select as your own, for the broken remnant of your days.
* * * * *
ITS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES.
[Continued.]
In the mean while Congress had assembled. The agitation on the subject of Slavery, far from being suppressed, or even overshadowed, burned more fiercely than ever before. The Pro-slavery faction in Kansas, stimulated by the constant support of the National Administration, was engaged in a final effort to maintain a supremacy over the affairs of that Territory which the current of immigration from the Free States had been steadily undermining. Against the will of nine-tenths of the population, it had framed, with a show of technical legality, a Constitution intended to perpetuate Slavery, which the Administration indorsed and presented to Congress with an urgent recommendation for the admission under it of Kansas as a State. In the commotion which these events excited throughout the country, the transient gleam of importance which had attached to the Mormon War was almost extinguished. The people of the States no longer felt a much more vital interest in news from that remote region than in tidings from the rebellion in India or of the wars in China. Their attention, sympathies, and curiosity—were all fastened upon the action of Congress with respect to Kansas,—for therein, it was believed, were contained the germs of the political combinations for the Presidential election of 1860. The same listlessness with regard to affairs in Utah pervaded the Cabinet. All its prestige was staked on the result of the impending struggle in the House of Representatives over the Lecompton Constitution, and its energies were abstracted from every other subject, to be concentrated upon that alone.
Just at this time, Mr. Thomas L. Kane, of Pennsylvania,—son of the late Judge of the United States District Court for that State, and brother of the late Dr. Kane, the Arctic explorer,—solicited the Administration for employment as a mediator between the Mormons and the Federal Government. Mr. Kane was one of the few persons of education and social standing who were well acquainted with Mormon history. He had visited them at Winter Quarters, in Iowa, during their exodus from Nauvoo, in the capacity of a commissioner to enlist the Mormon battalion which served in the Mexican War. During an illness which attacked him there, he was treated with an unremitting kindness, for which his gratitude has been proportionate. Belonging to a family whose members have been distinguished by strong traits of individuality, not to say eccentricity, from that moment forward he displayed a practical interest in the welfare of the sect. It is said that he became a convert to the religious doctrines of Mormonism. Whether this be true at all, and, if so, to what extent, it would he profitless at the present time to inquire. For the purposes of this narrative, it is sufficient to assert only, what is unchallenged, that he was a sincere admirer of the Mormons as a people, and for a long series of years had defended them from every reproach with a zeal which many of his friends thought inordinate.
Its experience in Kansas had familiarized the Cabinet with the use of secret agents; but, nevertheless, the proposition of Mr. Kane was coldly received. After a brief correspondence, he started for California, in no capacity a representative of the government, if he himself is to be believed, but bearing letters from Mr. Buchanan indorsing his character as a gentleman, and exhorting Federal officials to render him such courtesies as were within their power. Having arrived at San Francisco, he journeyed southward to the lately abandoned Mormon settlement of San Bernardino, near Los Angeles, travelling under the assumed name of Osborne, and proclaiming his business to be the collection of specimens for an entomological society in Philadelphia. There his real name and purpose were detected, but he succeeded in obtaining transportation to Salt Lake City, where he arrived on the 25th of February, 1858, and was greeted by Young and Kimball, and the rest of the Mormon magnates, as an old and cherished friend.
In the Annual Message of the President to Congress, his disposition to make every other issue subordinate to that of admitting Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution was manifest; and it influenced the tone of those paragraphs which treated of affairs in Utah. Notwithstanding the fact that the Mormons had committed every act of warfare against the United States short of taking life, Mr. Buchanan qualified his language concerning their conduct, stating, that, “unless Brigham Young should retrace his steps, the Territory of Utah will be in a state of open rebellion,” but declining to accept the logical inference from his own expression, that the rebellion was at the time open and manifest. He recommended no further legislation concerning the matter than that four regiments should be added to the army, to supply the place of those which had been withdrawn from service in the East.
It was evident that the purpose for which he had originally planned the expedition had failed. Forced, after all, no less by inclination than by circumstances, into such a revival of Slavery agitation as he had never contemplated during the interval between his election and inauguration, the Utah War only incumbered his administration, promoting neither its policy nor its prosperity. However it might result, it would not in the least advance his interests; and it became his opinion, that, the sooner it was quieted, the better for the welfare of the Democratic party, which would be held responsible by the country for all mistakes in its management. “After us the deluge,” seemed to be adopted as the motto of the entire policy of the Administration.
The only movement in Congress concerning Utah, before the New Year, was the introduction into the House of Representatives, by Mr. Warren of Arkansas, of a badly-worded resolution, prefaced by a worse-worded preamble, looking to the expulsion from the floor of Mr. Bernhisel, the Mormon delegate from the Territory. A lively discussion ensued concerning the question of privilege under which Mr. Warren claimed the right to introduce the resolution,—and when it was ruled in order, much hesitation was evinced about adopting it, some members fearing that it would establish a dangerous precedent for emergencies that might arise in the future history of the country. The tone of debate showed that there was little difference of opinion in the House concerning Utah affairs,—the unanimity, however, being due in great part to ignorance and indifference. The issue of Slavery in Kansas was absorbing. Mr. Warren’s resolution was referred to the Committee on Territories, and slumbered upon their table through the whole session. The only other movement in Congress, which deserves mention in this connection, was the introduction, towards the close of January, by Senator Wilson of Massachusetts, of a joint resolution authorizing the appointment of commissioners to examine into the Mormon difficulties, “with a view to their adjustment.” This was referred by the Senate to the Committee on Military Affairs, and was never heard of again.
The recommendation of the President for an increase of the army secured favorable consideration from committees of both Houses, and the discussion which ensued, upon the bills reported for that purpose, was filled with allusions to the Utah question. Mr. Thompson of New York, and Mr. Boyce of South Carolina, both made elaborate speeches on the subject; but neither of them proposed any scheme for its solution. Such a scheme, however, was suggested by Mr. Blair of Missouri, who advised a reorganization of the Territorial government, in order to vest the legislative power in the Governor and the Judges, for which a precedent existed in the instance of the old Northwestern Territory; but no action was had upon this suggestion. Through the entire debate, Mr. Bernhisel remained silent. During the winter, the President conferred upon Colonel Johnston the brevet rank of Brigadier-General, believing that the uniform discretion he had manifested entitled him to promotion; and the nomination was confirmed by the Senate.
While such were the transactions in Congress, the Mormons, in December, had organized a government like that under which they had hitherto subsisted. Their legislature—the same which had been elected under the Organic Act of the Territory—met at Salt Lake City on the second Monday of that month, in the hall of the Council House, and organized by the choice of Heber C. Kimball as President of the Council and John Taylor as Speaker of the House. Brigham Young retained the title and authority of
In response to this message, the legislature passed a series of resolutions, pledging itself to sustain “His Excellency Governor Young” in every act he might perform or dictate “for the protection of the lives, peace, and prosperity of the people of the Territory,”—asserting that the President had incurred the “contempt and decided opposition of all good men,” on account of the “act of usurped authority and oppression” of which he was guilty, in “forcing profane, drunken, and otherwise corrupt officials upon Utah at the point of the bayonet,”—expressing a determination to “continue to resist any attempt on the part of the Administration to bring the people into a state of vassalage by appointing, contrary to the Constitution, officers whom the people have neither voice nor vote in electing,”—avowing the purpose not to suffer “any persons appointed to office for Utah by the Administration either to qualify for, or assume, or discharge, within the limits of the Territory, the functions of the offices to which they have been appointed; so long as the Territory is menaced by an invading army,”—and declaring that the people of Utah would have their voice in the selection of their officers. These were sweet-scented blossoms to blow so early on the tree of Squatter-Sovereignty, at that time scarcely four years old!
The only acts of the legislature were one disorganizing the County of Green River, in which the army was encamped, and attaching it for legislative and judicial purposes to Great Salt Lake County; another divesting the Governor of power to license the manufacture of ardent spirits, and conferring that authority upon the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; and several others in pursuance of the system of granting away large tracts of public domain to private persons, in direct contravention of a clause in the Organic Act of the Territory, which provides that “no law shall be passed interfering with the primary disposal of the soil.” To these acts Brigham Young attached his signature as Governor, and affixed the Territorial seal.
A Memorial to Congress was adopted also, which was transmitted to Washington, and received there and laid before the two Houses on the 16th of March. This document charged that the action of the National Government towards Utah was based upon the statements of “lying officials and anonymous letter-writers”; it rehearsed the history of the Mormons,—their persecutions in Missouri and Illinois,—and declared that the object of the Utah expedition was to inflict similar outrages. “Give us our constitutional rights,” it said; “they are all we ask; and them we have a right to expect. For them we contend, and feel justified in so doing. We claim that we should have the privilege, as we have the constitutional right, to choose our own rulers and make our own laws without let or hindrance.” Although this Memorial was nothing more than an infuriated tirade, it was honored in both Houses by reference to the Committees on Territories, from which it received all the consideration it deserved.
Indifferent and inactive as this review shows Congress and the President to have been concerning Utah, a similar apathy was impossible in the War Department. Not only the welfare, but the lives even, of the troops at Fort Bridger, depended on its action. Transactions of such magnitude had not been incumbent on its bureaus since the Mexican War. The chief anxiety of General Johnston was for the transmission of supplies from the East as early as possible in the spring. The contractors for their transportation during the year 1857 had wintered several trains at Fort Laramie, together with oxen and teamsters. The General entertained a fear that so great a proportion of their stock might perish during the winter as to cripple their advance until fresh animals could be obtained from the States. Combined with this fear was an apprehension for the safety of Captain Marcy. A prisoner, whom the Mormons had captured in October on Ham’s Fork, escaped from Salt Lake City at the close of December, and brought news to Camp Scott that they intended to fit out an expedition to intercept the command and stampede the herds with which that officer would move from New Mexico. The dispatches in which these anxieties were communicated to General Scott, together with suggestions for their relief, were intrusted in midwinter to a small party for conveyance to the States. The journey taught them what must have been the sufferings of the expedition which Captain Marcy led to Taos. Reduced at one time to buffalo-tallow and coffee for sustenance, there was not a day during the transit across the mountains when any stronger barrier than the lives of a few half-starved mules interposed between them and death by famine. All along the route lay memorials of the march of the army, and especially of Colonel Cooke’s battalion,—a trail of skeletons a thousand miles in length, gnawed bare by the wolves and bleaching in the snow, visible at every undulation in the drifts.
But before the arrival of these dispatches at New York, the arrangements of the War Department to forward supplies to Utah had been completed. The representations of the contractors’ agents with regard to the condition of the cattle at Fort Laramie were received without question, and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Hoffmann, of the Sixth Infantry, was dispatched to that post to superintend the advance of the trains. Additional contracts, of an unprecedented character, were entered into for furnishing and transporting all the supplies which would be needed during the year 1858, both for the troops already in the Territory and for the reinforcements which were ordered to concentrate at Fort Leavenworth and march to Utah as soon as the roads should be passable. These reinforcements were about three thousand strong, comprising the First Cavalry, the Sixth and Seventh Infantry, and two artillery-batteries. The trains necessary for so large a force, in addition to that at Fort Bridger, it was estimated would comprise at least forty-five hundred wagons, requiring more than fifty thousand oxen, four thousand mules, and five thousand teamsters, wagon-masters, and other employes. To the shame of the Administration, these gigantic contracts, involving an amount of more than six million dollars, were distributed with a view to influence votes in the House of Representatives upon the Lecompton Bill. Some of the lesser ones, such as those for furnishing mules, dragoon-horses, and forage, were granted arbitrarily to relatives or friends of members who were wavering upon that question. The principal contract, that for the transportation of all the supplies, involving, for the year 1858, the amount of four millions and a half, was granted, without advertisement or subdivision, to a firm in Western Missouri, whose members had distinguished themselves in the effort to make Kansas a Slave State, and now contributed liberally to defray the election-expenses of the Democratic party.
It was said to have been contemplated, for a while, during the winter, to operate against the Mormons from California, and to send General Scott to San Francisco to direct arrangements for the purpose; but the project, if ever seriously entertained, was soon abandoned, it being evident that for the speedy subjugation of Utah the Missouri frontier furnished the only practicable base-line of operations.
At Camp Scott, the winter dragged along wearily. Between November and March only two mails arrived there, and the great monetary crisis in the United States was unknown till months after it had subsided. The Mormons were constantly in possession of later intelligence from the States than the army; for, by a strange inconsistency, their mails to and from California were not interfered with. A brigade-guard was mounted daily at the camp larger than that of the whole American army on the eve of the battles before Mexico, and scouting parties were continually dispatched
On the previous evening,—March 12th,—the monotony of the camp had been unexpectedly disturbed by the arrival, from the direction of Salt Lake City, of a horseman completely exhausted by fatigue and cold, who proved to be no other than Mr. Kane, whose mission to the Mormons by way of California was at that time totally unknown to the army. The next morning he introduced himself to the Governor, was received as his guest, and remained in conference with him throughout the day. What was the character of their communication is unknown, except by inference from its results. When presented to Judge Eckels, on the following day, Mr. Kane exhibited to him the letters he bore from the President, and other letters, also, from Brigham Young, accrediting him as a negotiator in the existing difficulties. To General Johnston he showed nothing; nor did the Governor, to the knowledge of the camp, acquaint either that officer or any other person with the purport of his business. It was evident to everybody, however, that the Mormon leaders, conscious of their inability to resist the force by which they would be assailed so soon as the snow should melt upon the mountains, were engaged in an effort, of which Mr. Kane was the agent, to secure through the Governor, if possible, indemnity for their past offences, in consideration of acknowledgment of his authority.
The domestic condition of the people of the Valley confirmed the belief that this was the purpose of Mr. Kane’s mission. Dependent as they had always been, since their settlement in Utah, upon Eastern merchants for an annual supply of groceries, dry goods, wearing-apparel of all descriptions, and every article of luxury, their stock of some of even the necessaries of life—such as coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco, calicoes, boots and shoes, stationery—was at this time nearly exhausted. Many of the poorer families were actually half naked, and, to supply them with covering, an ecclesiastical mandate had been issued, directing all persons who had spare clothing of any description to deposit it at the tithing-office in Salt Lake City, to be there exchanged for grain and cattle with those who were in need.
At the commencement of the rebellion, the Mormon settlements in Southern California had been broken up, and all the missionaries of the Church were summoned to return from foreign lands. The influx of population from these sources, though slight, yet increased the destitution. Almost all the people, too, had been withdrawn from productive employments throughout the autumn and winter. Although the number of militia kept under arms, after the formation of the camp at Fort Bridger, probably at no time reached fifteen hundred, while in October and November it had exceeded three thousand, still the fever of excitement which raged through the community distracted its members from any hearty labor. Great quantities of winter-wheat, to be sure, had been sown, and the fields were prepared for cultivation during the coming summer; but no public improvements were prosecuted, and everybody was prepared for such an exodus as had been predicted to Captain Van Vliet.
The complete subserviency of the people to the hierarchy was never more strikingly manifest than in a financial scheme which Brigham Young devised at this time. Among the Mormons there had always been a quantity of gold coin in circulation, much exceeding, in proportion to their number, the amount circulating in any other portion of America. This was owing to the fact, that the Church had unconstitutionally arrogated to itself the prerogative of coining and regulating the value of money. The Mormon battalion which had been enlisted at Winter Quarters in Iowa was disbanded in California at the close of the Mexican War, and most of its members went to the gold-diggings. The treasures they there accumulated were conveyed to Utah, where the Church established a mint and coined gold pieces of $2.50, $5, $10, and $20. The device on the obverse was two hands clasped in one of the grips of the Endowment; on the reverse, a figure from the Book of Mormon, with the motto, “Holiness to the Lord.” The intrinsic value of these coins being more than ten per cent less than their denominations, they were all retained within the Territory. Young now prevailed upon his people to surrender whatever
Mr. Kane had remained in Salt Lake City eight days before starting towards Fort Bridger,—a period quite long enough for a trusted friend of the Mormon leaders to ascertain the extremities to which the people were reduced. To secure the safety of those leaders who were under indictment for treason, there was no choice except between flight and inducing the Federal authorities to temporize. Both he and they were conscious that the advance of the army could not be successfully resisted, when the snow should cease to bar its way. In case of the flight of the leaders, or of a general exodus of the population, only two courses lay open to them,—northward toward the British Possessions, southward toward the provinces of Upper Mexico.
The first two days of Mr. Kane’s sojourn in camp satisfied him of the cooperation of Governor Cumming in a plan for temporizing, as well as of the impossibility of enlisting General Johnston or Judge Eckels in any such scheme. An imaginary affront, to which he believed himself at this time to have been subjected by the General, led him into a course of action which, had it been followed out, might have terminated his mission abruptly. Considering the fact that he was within the guard-lines of a military encampment, in a country where a state of warfare existed, it was perhaps too great forbearance on the part of the General not to have required to be informed of his business, since he himself volunteered no explanation. An invitation to dinner being dispatched to him from head-quarters,—and such an invitation was no slight compliment in a camp where the rations were so abridged,—the orderly to whom it was intrusted for delivery, whether maliciously or not it does not appear, pretended to have mistaken his directions, and proceeded to place him under arrest. The mistake, when discovered, was of course immediately rectified; but Mr. Kane became so excited in consequence, that, with the assent of the Governor, he indited a challenge to the General, and applied to a gentleman from Virginia to act as his second. Having received a decided rebuff in that quarter, he was induced to abandon the design by the interposition of Judge Eckels, who became acquainted with what was passing, and informed the Governor that he had ordered the United States Marshal to arrest all the parties concerned, in case another step should be taken in the affair. It was not till some time afterwards that these transactions came to the knowledge of General Johnston.
Mr. Kane remained with the Governor until April, absenting himself once, however, for a day, in order to hold a secret interview with a party of Mormons who had come into the vicinity of the camp. Notwithstanding his presence, no precaution to protect the herds was neglected, nor was the guard-duty at all relaxed. On the 18th of March, although a furious snow-storm raged all day long, the encampment was moved down Black’s Fork to the immediate neighborhood of Fort Bridger,—a spot less sheltered, but far more secure from attack. On the 3d of April, an event occurred for which everybody was prepared. The Governor announced to General Johnston his intention to proceed to Salt Lake City in company with Mr. Kane; and on the 5th, they started upon the journey.
The District Court commenced its spring term at Fort Bridger the same day. In his charge to the grand jury, Judge Eckels was explicit on the subject of polygamy, instructing them substantially as follows: That among the Territorial statutes there was no act legalizing polygamy, nor any act affixing a definite punishment to that practice as such; that, consequently, whether the old Spanish law or the Common Law constituted the basis of jurisprudence in the Territory, the definition of marriage recognized by both was to be received there, which limited that institution to the union of one man with one woman, and also the definition of adultery common to both, by which that crime consisted in the cohabitation of either the man or the woman with a third party; that among the Territorial statutes there was an act affixing a definite punishment to adultery, and accordingly that it was the duty of the grand jury to inquire whether that act had been infringed by parties liable to their inquisition.[A] No indictment, however, was returned for the offence; neither were any proceedings had upon the indictments for treason. The business of the court was restricted to such crimes as larceny, and assault and battery, among the heterogeneous mass of camp-followers.
[Footnote A: As this charge has become of great importance in the affairs of the Territory, we subjoin the precise language of that portion of it which refers to polygamy:—
“It cannot be concealed, gentlemen, that certain domestic arrangements exist in this Territory destructive of the peace, good order, and morals of society,—arrangements at variance with those of all enlightened and Christian communities in the world; and sapping as they do the very foundation of all virtue, honesty, and morality, it is an imperative duty falling upon you as grand jurors diligently to inquire into this evil and make every effort to check its growth. It is well known that all of the inhabited portion of this Territory was acquired by treaty from Mexico. By the law of Mexico polygamy was prohibited in this country, and the municipal law in this respect remained unaltered by its cession to the United States. Has it been
At the distance of a few miles from Fort Bridger, the Governor and Mr. Kane were received by a Mormon guard. At various points on their journey squads of militia were encountered, and in Echo Canon there was a command of several hundred. The Big Mountain, which the road crosses twenty miles from Salt Lake City, was covered so deep with snow, that the party was obliged to follow the canons of the Weber River into the Valley. Upon arriving at the city, on the 12th of April, the Governor was installed in the house of a Mr. Staines, one of the adopted sons of Brigham Young, and was soon after waited upon by Young himself, in company with numerous ecclesiastical dignitaries. The Territorial seal was tendered to him, and he was recognized to his full satisfaction in his official capacity. He remained more than three weeks. Except fugitive statements in newspapers, the only connected account of his proceedings is from his own pen, and consists of two official letters,—one addressed to General Johnston, under date of April 15th, the other to the Secretary of State at Washington, dated May 2d. The former merely announces his arrival, reception, and recognition, transmits charges against Dr. Hurt, of having excited the Uinta Indians to acts of hostility against the Mormons, and suggests that he should desire a detachment of the army to be dispatched to chastise that tribe, but a requisition for that purpose was made neither then nor subsequently. The letter to Secretary Cass states that his time was devoted to examining the public property of the United States which was in the city,—the records of the courts, the Territorial library, the maps and minutes of the Surveyor General,—and exculpates the Mormons, in great part, from the charge of having injured or embezzled it.
During his stay, information was communicated to him, that there was a number of persons who were desirous of leaving the Territory, but unable to do so, considering themselves restrained of their liberty. Accordingly, on the following Sunday, he caused notice to be given from the platform in the Tabernacle, that he assumed the protection of all such persons, and desired them to communicate to him their names and residences. During the ensuing week, nearly two hundred persons registered themselves in the manner he proposed, and a greater number would undoubtedly have been glad to follow their example, but were deterred by the surveillance to which they were subjected by certain functionaries of the Church before being admitted to his presence. Those who were registered were organized into trains, with the little movable property they possessed, and dispatched towards Fort Bridger. They arrived there in the course of May,—as motley, ragged, and destitute a crowd as ever descended from the deck of an Irish emigrant-ship at New York or Boston. The only garments which some possessed were made of the canvas of their wagon-covers.
Many were on foot. For provisions, they had nothing except flour and some fresh meat. It is a fact creditable to humanity, that private soldiers, by the score, shared their own abridged rations and scanty stock of clothing with these poor wretches, and in less than a day after their arrival they were provided with much to make them comfortable.
On that same Sunday, the Governor made a speech to the congregation, being introduced by Brigham Young. He reviewed the relations of the Mormons to the Federal government; assumed that General Johnston and the army were under his control; pledged his word that they should not be stationed in immediate contact with the settlements; and gave assurances, also, that no military posse should be employed to arrest a Mormon until every other means had been tried and had failed. At the close, he invited any of their number to respond. Various persons immediately addressed the audience in almost frantic speeches, concerning the murder of Joseph and Hiram Smith at Carthage, the persecution of the Saints in Missouri and Illinois, the services rendered by the Mormon Battalion to an ungrateful country during the Mexican War, the toils and perils of the migration to Utah, and the character of the Federal officers who had been sent to rule the Territory. Personal insults were heaped upon the Governor, and a scene of the wildest confusion was the result, which was quieted with great difficulty by Young himself. It was manifest that the mass of the people, overconfident of their capacity to resist the troops, were not fully prepared for the capitulation the leaders were willing to make to save their own necks from the halter; and, at a second meeting during the afternoon, Young yielded somewhat to the popular clamor.
All this while, a movement of a most extraordinary character was being carried on, which had commenced before the Governor entered the Valley. The people of the northern settlements, along the base of the Wahsatch Mountains, including Salt Lake City, were deserting their homes, abandoning houses, crops, and their heavier furniture, and migrating southward. Long wagon-trains were sweeping through the city every day, accompanied by hundreds of families, and droves of horses and cattle. A fair estimate of the entire Mormon population of Utah is about forty-five thousand. Of this number, ten thousand is the proportion of the towns north of Salt Lake City, and upward of fifteen thousand that of the city itself and the settlements in its immediate neighborhood. Considerably more than half the people of the Territory, therefore, shared in this emigration. What was its object and what its destination are still mysteries; but it was probably directed toward the mountain-ranges in the southwestern portion of the Great Basin, of the topography of which region—hitherto unvisited by Federal explorers—the Mormons undoubtedly possess accurate information. At any rate, it was initiated and conducted under the direction of the Church, and Young and Kimball were among the first to lead the way. Commencing late in March, it continued until June, and before the beginning of May more than thirty-five thousand people were concentrated on the western shore of Lake Utah, chiefly in the neighborhood of Provo, fifty miles south of Salt Lake City. Such a scene of squalid misery, such a spectacle of want and distress, was never before witnessed in America. More than half this multitude could not be accommodated in the towns, and lodged in board-shanties, wigwams, mud-huts, log-cabins, bowers of willow-branches covered with wagon-sheets, and even in holes dug into the hill-sides. The most common quarters, however, were made by removing a wagon-body from its wheels, placing it upon the ground, and erecting in front of it a bower of cedars. It is needless to dwell on the exasperation which animated all who submitted to these sacrifices. In the history of the Albigenses hunted through Languedoc, or of the Jews writhing under the Spanish Inquisition, a record of similar bitterness of feeling may be found, but its parallel does not exist outside the annals of religious persecution.
Governor Cumming returned to Fort Bridger during the second week in May, still accompanied by Mr. Kane, and also by a party of Mormons who intended to escort the latter to Missouri. Upon his arrival, he addressed a letter to General Johnston, stating, officially, that the people of Utah had acknowledged his authority, and that the roads between the camp and Salt Lake City were free for the transit of mails and passengers, the Mormon forces having withdrawn from the canons, and none of the Territorial militia remaining under arms except with his consent and approbation. A day or two later, Mr. Kane bade him farewell and started toward the States, his mission having been completed.
It may be well to pause here and estimate its precise results. It had secured delay. The herds on Henry’s Fork had thriven better than was expected, and toward the close of April the number of mules in working condition was sufficient to have dragged a train of two hundred wagons. The dragoon-horses which survived could have been assigned to the artillery-batteries, and the regiment have served as infantry. With this equipment, slight though it may appear, a rapid movement upon the Valley was possible; and whatever may have been the opinion during the previous autumn, it was the universal opinion in the spring that the force at Camp Scott could have routed any body of militia that might have opposed its advance, although, perhaps, it was not sufficient to subjugate the Territory, in case the Mormons should flee to the mountains. Provisions, also, were running low in the camp. The ration of flour had been further reduced. All the cattle had been slaughtered, and there was every prospect of recourse to mule-meat before the first of June. Everything, therefore, favored the plan of an early march toward the city; and it is certain that it would have been commenced without awaiting reinforcements from the States, had not the Governor’s scheme for pacification intervened. Distrustful of its expediency or propriety though General Johnston might have been, he deemed it his duty to await its result. Neither he nor the Governor being supreme in the direction of affairs, it was the duty of each to defer so far as might be to the action of the other.
In the next place, Mr. Kane’s interposition had produced an irreconcilable difference of opinion between the civil and the military authority. This is evident from what has already been stated, and there is no need to confirm the fact by argument. The Governor returned to Fort Bridger in May, believing the Mormons to be an injured people, whose cause was in the main just. But his position was full of difficulties. He had been recognized in his official character, it is true; but he was conscious that every Mormon acknowledged a political influence superior to his own, which was directing the emigration southward, and leaving him Governor of empty villages and deserted fields. The only hope he entertained of checking this exodus was by quashing the indictments for treason which had been found against the Mormon leaders, and by insuring them against contact with the troops. The first he was powerless to effect; it was a matter beyond his control,—solely within the cognizance of the courts. The second he had assumed to be within his power, and had so assured the Mormons; but there he was at variance with General Johnston, who denied his claim to absolute authority over the movements of the army.
Unknown, however, to the parties who were agitating these perplexing questions, a superior power had already intervened and solved the difficulty. On the 6th of April, the President had signed a Proclamation, at Washington, rehearsing to the people of Utah Territory, at considerable length, their past offences, and particularly those which immediately preceded and followed the outbreak of the rebellion, and declaring them traitors; but, “in order to save the effusion of blood, and to avoid the indiscriminate punishment of a whole people for crimes of which it is not probable that all are equally guilty,” offering “a free and full pardon to all who will submit themselves to the authority of the Federal Government.” This document was intrusted to two Commissioners for conveyance to the Territory;—one of them, Mr. L.W. Powell, lately Governor, and at the time Senator-elect, of the State of Kentucky; the other, Major Ben M’Culloch, of Texas, who had served with distinction in Mexico. In their appointment, Mr. Buchanan imitated the example of President Washington, who designated a similar commission to convey his proclamation to the whiskey-insurgents in Pennsylvania.
The reinforcements and supply-trains for the army were at this time concentrating at Fort Leavenworth, Major-General Persifer F. Smith was assigned to the command-in-chief, and it was intended that the whole force, after concentration in Utah, should be divided into two brigades, one to be commanded by General Harney, the other by General Johnston. Leaving the columns preparing to advance over the Plains, the Commissioners started from the Fort on the 25th of April. On the same day, Lieutenant-Colonel Hoffmann advanced from Fort Laramie with several companies of infantry and cavalry, escorting the supply-trains which were parked there through the winter, and on the speedy arrival of which at Camp Scott the subsistence of General Johnston’s command depended, unless it should force its way into the Valley. On the 1st of May, he had reached La Bonte, a tributary of the North Platte, fifty miles from the Fort. There he encountered the severest storm that had occurred in that region for many years. The snow fell breast-deep, and was followed by a pelting rain which killed his mules by scores. He was forced to remain stationary more than a week, and when he renewed the march the trains were clogged by mud foot-deep.
The Commissioners reached Camp Scott on the 29th of May. The President’s Proclamation had been received the day before. With the exception of a few persons who were prepared for such a document by reflection on Mr. Kane’s mission, everybody was astonished at its purport. It seemed incredible that a lenity should have been extended to the Mormon rebels which was refused to the Free-State men in Kansas, who were once indicted for treason and sedition,—and equally incredible that all the advantages for the solution of the Utah problem which had been gained
At the camp the Commissioners remained only three days, which they employed in obtaining accurate information concerning the transactions of the last three months; for when they started from Missouri, no news of the result of Mr. Kane’s mission had reached the frontier.
On the 2d of June, they started for the Valley, intending to summon the leading Mormons to an interview, and receive their formal acceptance of the terms of the Proclamation,—of which, of course, there could be no doubt. They were accompanied by the postmaster of Salt Lake City, with the mails for the Mormons, which had been detained at the camp since the commencement of the rebellion. The Governor and the Superintendent of Indian Affairs followed them the next day. The rest of the Federal officers refused to join the party, or to make any movement based on a supposed capitulation of the Mormons, until their submission should be perfected. There were many circumstances attending the departure of the Governor which showed that he was doubtful of the stability of the positions he had been led by Mr. Kane to assume. He expressed himself distrustful of the cooperation of the Commissioners in his plan for pacifying the Territory; and he protested vehemently against allowing persons to accompany the party in order to report for the press the proceedings at the expected conferences. Every day made it more and more evident that he had committed himself to the Mormons farther than he cared to acknowledge.
Before the Commissioners left the camp, they urged General Johnston not to delay the advance of the army one moment beyond the time when he should be ready and desire to march. On the 8th of June, Captain Marcy arrived at the Fort with a herd of nearly fifteen hundred mules and horses, and an escort of five companies of infantry and mounted riflemen. He left the village of Rayado, on the Canadian River, in New Mexico, on the 17th of March, and, instead of retracing the route pursued on his winter journey, which had led him near the sources of Grand River, one of the great forks of the Colorado, he returned along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountain range past Long’s and Pike’s Peaks. When he had reached Fontaine-qui-bouille Creek, an express overtook him from General Garland, who commanded the Department of New Mexico, enjoining him to halt and await reinforcements. There he camped more than three weeks. Renewing his progress, he was overtaken, on the 29th of April, by the same snowstorm which was so disastrous to Lieutenant-Colonel Hoffmann on La Bonte. It was accompanied by a furious wind, the force of which there was nothing to break. Snow fell to the depth of three feet, and, at the very height of the storm, a part of the mule herd stampeded and ran fifty miles before the wind, for shelter. When the march was resumed, after an interval of several days, hundreds of antelopes were found frozen and buried in the drifts,—a circumstance almost unparalleled among the mountains. With this exception, nothing occurred to obstruct the march. Captain Marcy brought with him specimens of sand from many of the tributaries of the South Platte, which were found, on analysis, to contain particles of gold; and within two months after he gathered them, the same discovery, confirmed by others, originated the emigration to that region, the progress of which now promises the speedy birth of another Free State in the very heart of the continent. On the 9th and 10th, Colonel Hoffmann reached the camp with all his supply-trains; and on the following day, General Johnston issued the welcome order to prepare for the march to Salt Lake City. A strong detachment of infantry and artillery was detailed to garrison Fort Bridger.
On the 13th of June, the long camp was broken up, and the army moved forward in three columns on the route through the canons. Although the season was so far advanced, snow had fallen at the Fort only three days before. The streams were swollen and turbulent with spring floods, and difficulty was anticipated in crossing the Bear and Weber Rivers. Material for bridging had, therefore, been prepared, and accompanied the first column. Southwest of the Fort, at the distance of four or five miles, a singular butte, the top of which is as level as the floor of a ball-room, rises to the height of eight hundred feet above the valley of Black’s Fork, and commands a view of the entire broad plateau between the Wind River
The traveller who terminates his westward journey at Fort Bridger has entered only the portal of the Rocky Mountains. Along the interval between there and the Valley of the Great Lake, there is a panorama of mountain-scenery that cannot be surpassed in the Tyrol. For miles and miles in the gorges, at the season of the year when they were traversed by the army, the road winds through thickets of alders and willows and hawthorn-bushes, whose branches interlace and hang so low, under their load of leaves and blossoms, as to sweep the backs of horsemen. Through the interstices of the foliage, the sandstone cliffs that bound the canons are seen surrounded by flocks of twittering birds which build their nests in the crevices of the rock. The ridges which the road surmounts between canon and canon are covered with fields of luxuriant grass and flowers, in the midst of which patches of snow still linger. From them, in the clear noon sunshine, the broken line of the Wahsatch and Uinta Ranges is visible along the horizon; but through the morning and evening haze, only the tracery of their white crests can be discerned. The valleys of the Bear and Weber Rivers are peculiarly beautiful, the latter almost realizing the dream of the Valley of Rasselas. Corrugated and snow-capped ridges slope backward from the spectator, on whichever side he turns, until he wonders how and where the swift river, rushing under its canopy of rustling cotton-woods, finds a pathway through them.
It was into scenery like this that the troops advanced, speculating, along each day’s march, upon what obstacles they would have encountered, had they attempted to reach the Valley during the winter. On the 14th, an express from the Commissioners arrived at the camp on Bear River, announcing that no resistance would be made by the Mormons, who pledged themselves to submit to Federal authority. It was suggested, at the same time, to General Johnston, that they apprehended
The Commissioners had reached the city on the 7th. They were received there by the Mormon officers who commanded the few companies of militia which constituted the garrison, and were conducted to a restaurant, where meals were provided for them, but no lodgings; and accordingly they slept in their ambulances. The place was deserted by everybody except the garrison and a few individuals who were busily removing their property. Besides these, the only beings visible in the streets were here and there groups of half-naked Indian boys paddling in the gutters. Almost the only sound audible was the gurgling of the City Creek. Through the chinks of the heavy wooden portal of the Temple square, workmen were to be seen engaged in demolishing the roofs of the buildings within the inclosure. Over the windows of all the houses boards were nailed; the doors were locked; the gates closed; and in many of the gardens, crops of weeds were beginning to choke the flower-beds. From some of the houses of the more enthusiastic Saints all the wood-work was removed, leaving nothing standing except the bare adobe walls, while a few had been burned to the ground. In front of the tithing-office, a train of wagons was loading with grain for removal to Provo.
The Governor arrived on the 8th, and was conducted at once to the quarters he had occupied on his previous visit. The next day, he, together with the Commissioners, held an interview with the two messengers who had been sent up from Provo by Brigham Young. They returned to Lake Utah that same night, and on the 10th, about noon, Young, Kimball, and Wells, together with the Twelve Apostles, and twenty or thirty Bishops, High Priests, and Elders, embracing almost all the influential characters in the Church, rode into the city. Brigham’s mansion was thrown open and the party dined there. They called afterwards in a body upon the Governor and the Commissioners, and made arrangements for a conference on the following day.
The President’s pardon had reached the Mormon settlements along Lake Utah on the 6th, and the manner in which it was received by the populace showed that they were not satisfied with the position of their leaders. It was read from the steps of the tithing-offices, and at the street-corners, to crowds who denounced in the fiercest language the recital of facts set forth in its preamble. The excitement, which had been steadily fostered by Young and Kimball ever since the commencement of the rebellion, had amounted to a frenzy which no authority less potent than such a hierarchy as theirs could possibly have controlled. Nevertheless, the morning Brigham rode into Salt Lake City, the capitulation had been preordained.
The conferences lasted through the 11th and 12th, the inflexibility of the Commissioners securing decency of language from the Mormons, if not decency of demeanor. All the participants, including Young himself, expressed their sentiments in turn. The opening speech was made by one of the Apostles, named Erastus Snow, who forgot for the moment that he was not addressing a congregation of his brethren on a Sunday morning, and indulged in a strain of obscene and profane remark which was checked at once by Senator Powell. Some of the speakers broke into savage tirades like those with which Governor Cumming was once greeted in the Tabernacle; but these were checked by Young. There were two subjects on which the Mormon leaders were particularly anxious, all fear of their own trial for treason being removed. They dreaded that the army should be quartered upon their settlements, and that the policy inaugurated by Judge Eckels in his recent charge to the grand jury at Fort Bridger should be pursued against polygamy. No assurances were given by the Commissioners upon either of these subjects. They limited their action to tendering the President’s pardon, and exhorting the Mormons to accept it. Outside the conferences, however, without the knowledge of the Commissioners, assurances were given on both these subjects by the Governor and the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, which proved satisfactory to Brigham Young. The exact nature of their pledges will, perhaps, never be disclosed; but from subsequent confessions volunteered by the Superintendent, who appears to have acted as a tool of the Governor through the whole affair, it seems probable that they promised explicitly to exert their influence to quarter the army in Cache Valley, nearly a hundred miles north of Salt Lake City, and also to procure the removal of Judge Eckels. The news of the issue of the order for the advance of the army reached the city on the 12th, and accelerated the result of the conferences, which concluded that evening with a pledge on the part of Young and his associates to submit unconditionally to the Federal authority. During the next few days, the Commissioners, accompanied by the Governor, travelled southward, and addressed large audiences at Provo and Lehi, specially exhorting the people to return to their homes in the northern settlements, assuring them that the troubles were ended, and that they need fear no molestation of person or property.
Whether all these proceedings—which were legitimate results of Mr. Buchanan’s policy—were consistent with the honor of the country, the public can judge for themselves. The Commissioners certainly conducted themselves with dignity and credit; but it is doubtful whether they ever would have accepted their appointment, had they anticipated the nature of the duties they would be required to perform.
The army moved slowly forward during the progress of these negotiations. In Echo Canon, it had an opportunity to inspect the bugbear of the previous autumn,—the Mormon fortifications. As the canon—which is more than twenty miles long—approaches the Weber River, it dwindles in width from five or six hundred yards to as many feet. Its northern side becomes a perfect wall of rock, which rises perpendicularly to the height of several hundred feet above the road. The southern side retains the character of a steep mountain-slope covered with grass and stunted bushes. Echo Creek, a narrow streamlet, with its dense fringe of willows, fills the whole bottom between the road and the bluffs. The first indication of approach to the fortifications was the sight of piles of stones heaped into walls four or five feet high, pierced with loopholes, and visible on every projecting point of the cliffs along the northern side, from most of which a pebble could be snapped down upon the road. Just beyond, after turning a bend in the canon, all the willows along the creek had been cut away, and through the cleared space a ditch five or six feet wide and ten feet deep was dug across the bottom. The dirt thrown from it was packed so as to form an embankment, on which logs were so arranged that it would answer for a breastwork, behind which riflemen could be posted under cover. At intervals of about a hundred yards were two similar lines of ditch and breastwork, by the first of which the road was forced to skirt the very base of a cliff which had probably been mined. The other line was constructed just above the mouths of two narrow gorges which enter the canon, nearly opposite one another, from the north and south. By the aid of these dams the canon might possibly have been overflowed for half a mile to the depth of several feet, but the water would have accumulated slowly on account of the insignificant size of the creek. Several dirt walls stretched also across the gorges, commanding the whole of the fortifications below. This whole system of defences possessed as little strength as merit. It served only to confirm the impression, which by this time had become general, that the capacity of the Mormons to resist the army had been greatly overrated, and that a vigorous effort to penetrate to the Valley early in the spring would inevitably have succeeded.
For nearly a mile beyond the two gorges, a chain of low hills, over which the road runs, extends below the loftier summits on the southern side of the canon. The northern side becomes, in consequence, a deep glen, as the cliffs which form its wall rise abruptly from the level of the creek. This glen is filled with bushes, and in it, thus protected from the wind, the Mormon militia had their winter-quarters. The huts they occupied had been constructed by digging circular holes in the ground, over which were piled boughs in the same manner as the poles of an Indian lodge. Around these boughs willow-twigs were plaited,
The troops did not emerge from Emigration Canon into the Salt Lake Valley until the morning of the 26th. In the mean while, thirty or forty civilians had reached the city from the camp, and were quartered, like the Commissioners, in their own vehicles. The Mormons favored no one, except the Governor and his intimate associates, with any species of accommodation. Their demeanor was in every respect like that of a conquered people toward foreign invaders. During the week preceding the 26th, two or three hundred of those on Lake Utah received permission to go up to the city, and they alone, of the whole Mormon community, witnessed the ingress of the army.
It was one of the most extraordinary scenes that have occurred in American history. All day long, from dawn till after sunset, the troops and trains poured through the city, the utter silence of the streets being broken only by the music of the military bands, the monotonous tramp of the regiments, and the rattle of the baggage-wagons. Early in the morning, the Mormon guard had forced all their fellow-religionists into the houses, and ordered them not to make their appearance during the day. The numerous flags, which had been flying from staffs on the public buildings during the previous week, were all struck. The only visible groups of spectators were on the corners near Brigham Young’s residence, and consisted almost entirely of Gentile civilians. The stillness was so profound, that, during the intervals between the passage of the columns, the monotonous gurgle of the city-creek struck on every ear. The Commissioners rode with the General’s staff. The troops crossed the Jordan and encamped two miles from the city on a dusty meadow by the river-bank.
The orders under which General Johnston was acting directed him to establish not more than three military posts within the Territory. One of these was already fixed at Fort Bridger, and the question where the others should be located was now no less important to the Mormons than to the army. The secret of the success of Mormonism is its exclusiveness, and of this fact the leaders of the sect are fully aware. Accordingly, they now put forth most strenuous efforts to secure the removal of the troops to as great a distance as possible from their settlements. But, wholly without regard to any understanding which they might have had with the Governor, General Johnston, after a careful reconnaissance, selected Cedar Valley, on the western rim of Lake Utah, separated from it only by a range of bluffs,—about equidistant from Salt Lake City and Provo,—for his permanent camp. The army moved southward from the city on the 29th, but so slowly that it did not reach the Valley till the 6th of July. Not a field was encroached upon, not a house molested, not a person harmed or insulted, by troops that had been so harassed and vituperated by a people now entirely at their mercy. By their strict subordination they entitled themselves to the respect of the country as well as to the gratitude of the Mormons.
[To be continued.]
Along the frozen lake she comes
In linking crescents, light and fleet;
The ice-imprisoned Undine hums
A welcome to her little feet.
I see the jaunty hat, the plume
Swerve bird-like in the joyous gale,—
The cheeks lit up to burning bloom,
The young eyes sparkling through the veil.
The quick breath parts her laughing lips,
The white neck shines through tossing
curls;
Her vesture gently sways and dips,
As on she speeds in shell-like whorls.
Men stop and smile to see her go;
They gaze, they smile in pleased surprise;
They ask her name; they long to show
Some silent friendship in their eyes.
She glances not; she passes on;
Her steely footfall quicker rings;
She guesses not the benison
Which follows her on noiseless wings.
Smooth be her ways, secure her tread
Along the devious lines of life,
From grace to grace successive led,
A noble maiden, nobler wife!
THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.
I don’t know whether our literary or professional people are more amiable than they are in other places, but certainly quarrelling is out of fashion among them. This could never be, if they were in the habit of secret anonymous puffing of each other. That is the kind of underground machinery, which manufactures false reputations and genuine hatreds. On the other hand, I should like to know if we are not at liberty to have a good time together, and say the pleasantest things we can think of to each other, when any of us reaches his thirtieth or fortieth or fiftieth or eightieth birthday.
We don’t have “scenes,” I warrant you, on these occasions. No “surprise” parties! You understand these, of course. In the rural districts, where scenic tragedy and melodrama cannot be had, as in the city, at the expense of a quarter and a white pocket-handkerchief, emotional excitement has to be sought in the dramas of real life. Christenings, weddings, and funerals, especially the latter, are the main dependence; but babies, brides, and deceased citizens cannot be had at a day’s notice. Now, then, for a surprise-party!
A bag of flour, a barrel of potatoes, some strings of onions, a basket of apples, a big cake and many little cakes, a jug of lemonade, a purse stuffed with bills of the more modest denominations, may, perhaps, do well enough for the properties in one of these private theatrical exhibitions. The minister of the parish, a tender-hearted, quiet, hard-working man, living on a small salary, with many children, sometimes pinched to feed and clothe them, praying fervently every day to be blest in his “basket and store,” but sometimes fearing he asks amiss, to judge by the small returns, has the first role,—not, however, by his own choice, but forced upon him. The minister’s wife, a sharp-eyed, unsentimental body, is first lady; the remaining parts by the rest of the family. If they only had a play-bill, it would run thus:—
WILL BE PRESENTED
CALLED
THE SURPRISE-PARTY,
THE OVERCOME FAMILY;
WITH THE FOLLOWING STRONG CAST OF CHARACTERS:
The Rev. Mr. Overcome, by the Clergyman of this Parish.
Mrs. Overcome, by his estimable lady.
Masters Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Overcome.
Misses Dorcas, Tabitha, Rachel, and Hannah Overcome, by their interesting children.
Peggy, by the female help.
The poor man is really grateful;—it is a most welcome and unexpected relief. He tries to express his thanks,—his voice falters,—he chokes,—and bursts into tears. That is the great effect of the evening. The sharp-sighted lady cries a little with one eye, and counts the strings of onions, and the rest of the things, with the other. The children stand ready for a spring at the apples. The female help weeps after the noisy fashion of untutored handmaids.
Now this is all very well as charity, but do let the kind visitors remember they get their money’s worth. If you pay a quarter for dry crying, done by a second-rate actor, how much ought you to pay for real hot, wet tears, out of the honest eyes of a gentleman who is not acting, but sobbing in earnest?
All I meant to say, when I began, was, that this was not a surprise-party where I read these few lines that follow:—
We will not speak of years to-night;
For what have years to bring,
But larger floods of love and light
And sweeter songs to sing?
We will not drown in wordy praise
The kindly thoughts that rise;
If friendship owns one tender phrase,
He reads it in our eyes.
We need not waste our schoolboy art
To gild this notch of time;
Forgive me, if my wayward heart
Has throbbed in artless rhyme.
Enough for him the silent grasp
That knits us hand in hand,
And he the bracelet’s radiant clasp
That locks our circling band.
Strength to his hours of manly toil!
Peace to his starlit dreams!
Who loves alike the furrowed soil,
The music-haunted streams!
Sweet smiles to keep forever bright
The sunshine on his lips,
And faith, that sees the ring of light
Round Nature’s last eclipse!
——One of our boarders has been talking in such strong language that I am almost afraid to report it. However, as he seems to be really honest and is so very sincere in his local prejudices, I don’t believe anybody will be very angry with him.
It is here, Sir! right here!—said the little deformed gentleman,—in this old new city of Boston,—this remote provincial corner of a provincial nation, that the Battle of the Standard is fighting, and was fighting before we were born, and will be fighting when we are dead and gone,—please God! The battle goes on everywhere throughout civilization; but here, here, here! is the broad white flag flying which proclaims, first of all, peace and good-will to men, and, next to that, the absolute, unconditional spiritual liberty of each individual immortal soul! The three-hilled city against the seven-hilled-city! That is it, Sir,—nothing less than that; and if you know what that means, I don’t think you’ll ask for anything more. I swear to you, Sir, I believe that these two centres of civilization are just exactly the two points that close the circuit in the battery of our planetary intelligence! And I believe there are spiritual eyes looking out from Uranus and unseen Neptune,—ay, Sir, from the systems of Sirius and Arcturus and Aldebaran, and as far as that faint stain of sprinkled worlds confluent in the distance that we call the nebula of Orion,—looking on, Sir, with what organs I know not, to see which are going to melt in that fiery fusion, the accidents and hindrances of humanity or man himself, Sir,—the stupendous abortion, the illustrious failure that he is, if the three-hilled city does not ride down and trample out the seven-hilled city!
——Steam’s up!—said the young man John, so called, in a low tone.—Three hundred and sixty-five tons to the square inch. Let him blow her off, or he’ll bu’st his b’iler.
The divinity-student took it calmly, only whispering that he thought there was a little confusion of images between a galvanic battery and a charge of cavalry.
But the Koh-i-noor—the gentleman, you remember, with a very large diamond in his shirt-front—laughed his scornful laugh, and made as if to speak.
Sail in, Metropolis!—said that same young man John, by name. And then, in a lower tone, not meaning to be heard,—Now, then, Ma’am Allen!
But he was heard,—and the Koh-i-noor’s face turned so white with rage, that his blue-black moustache and beard looked fearful, seen against it. He grinned with wrath, and caught at a tumbler, as if he would have thrown it or its contents at the speaker. The young Marylander fixed his clear, steady eye upon him, and laid his hand on his arm, carelessly almost, but the Jewel found it was held so that he could not move it. It was of no use. The youth was his master in muscle, and in that deadly Indian hug in which men wrestle with their eyes; —over in five seconds, but breaks one of their two backs, and is good for three-score years and ten;—one trial enough,—settles the whole matter,—just as when two feathered songsters of the barnyard, game and dunghill, come together,—after a jump or two at each other, and a few sharp kicks, there is the end of it; and it is, Apres vous, Monsieur, in all the social relations with the beaten party for all the rest of his days.
I cannot philosophically account for the Koh-i-noor’s wrath. For though a cosmetic is sold, bearing the name of the lady to whom reference was made by the young person John, yet, as it is publicly asserted in respectable prints that this cosmetic is not a dye, I see no reason why he should have felt offended by any suggestion that he was indebted to it or its authoress. I have no doubt that there are certain exceptional complexions to which the purple tinge, above alluded to, is natural. Nature is fertile in variety. I saw an albiness in London once, for six-pence, (including the inspection of a stuffed boa-constrictor,) who looked as if she had been boiled in milk. A young Hottentot of my acquaintance had his hair all in little pellets of the size of marrowfat peas. One of my own classmates has undergone a singular change of late years,—his hair losing its original tint, and getting a remarkable discolored look; and another has ceased to cultivate any hair at all over the vertex or crown of the head. So I am perfectly willing to believe that the purple-black of the Koh-i-noor’s moustache and whiskers is constitutional and not pigmentary. But I can’t think why he got so angry.
The intelligent reader will understand that all this pantomime of the threatened onslaught and its suppression passed so quickly that it was all over by the time the other end of the table found out there was a disturbance; just as a man chopping wood half a mile off may be seen resting on his axe at the instant you hear the last blow he struck. So you will please to observe that the Little Gentleman was not interrupted during the time implied by these ex-post-facto remarks of mine, but for some ten or fifteen seconds only.
He did not seem to mind the interruption at all, for he started again. The “Sir” of his harangue was no doubt addressed to myself more than anybody else, but he often uses it in discourse as if he were talking with some imaginary opponent.
——America, Sir,—he exclaimed,—is the only place where man is full-grown!
He straightened himself up, as he spoke, standing on the top round of his high chair, I suppose, and so presented the larger part of his little figure to the view of the boarders.
It was next to impossible to keep from laughing. The commentary was so strange an illustration of the text!
I thought it was time to put in a word; for I have lived in foreign parts, and am more or less cosmopolitan.
I doubt if we have more practical freedom in America than they have in England,—I said.—An Englishman thinks as he likes in religion and politics. Mr. Martineau speculates as freely as ever Dr. Channing did, and Mr. Bright is as independent as Mr. Seward.
Sir,—said he,—it isn’t what a man thinks or says, but when and where and to whom he thinks and says it. A man with a flint and steel striking sparks over a wet blanket is one thing, and striking them over a tinder-box is another. The free Englishman is born under protest; he lives and dies under protest,—a tolerated, but not a welcome fact. Is not free-thinker a term of reproach in England? The same idea in the soul of an Englishman who struggled up to it and still holds it antagonistically, and in the soul of an American to whom it is congenital and spontaneous, and often unrecognized, except as an element blended with all his thoughts, a natural movement, like the drawing of his breath or the beating of his heart, is a very different thing. You may teach a quadruped to walk on his hind legs, but he is always wanting to be on all-fours. Nothing that can be taught a growing youth is like the atmospheric knowledge he breathes from his infancy upwards. The American baby sucks in freedom with the milk of the breast at which he hangs.
——That’s a good joke,—said the young fellow John,—considerin’ it commonly belongs to a female Paddy.
I thought—I will not be certain—that Little Boston winked, as if he had been hit somewhere,—as I have no doubt Dr. Darwin did when the wooden-spoon suggestion upset his theory about why, etc. If he winked, however, he did not dodge.
A lively comment!—he said.—But Rome, in her great founder, sucked the blood of empire out of the dugs of a brute, Sir! The Milesian wet-nurse is only a convenient vessel through which the American infant gets the life-blood of this virgin soil, Sir, that is making man over again, on the sunset pattern! You don’t think what we are doing and going to do here. Why, Sir, while commentators are bothering themselves with interpretation of prophecies, we have got the new heavens and the new earth over us and under us! Was there ever anything in Italy, I should like to know, like a Boston sunset?
——This time there was a laugh, and the little man himself almost smiled.
Yes,—Boston sunsets;—perhaps they’re as good in some other places, but I know ’em best here. Anyhow, the American skies are different from anything they see in the Old World. Yes, and the rocks are different, and the soil is different, and everything that comes out of the soil, from grass up to Indians, is different. And now that the provisional races are dying out——
——What do you mean by the provisional races, Sir?—said the divinity-student, interrupting him.
Why, the aboriginal bipeds, to be sure,—he answered,—the red-crayon sketch of humanity laid on the canvas before the colors for the real manhood were ready.
I hope they will come to something yet,—said the divinity-student.
Irreclaimable, Sir,—irreclaimable!—said the little gentleman.—Cheaper to breed white men than domesticate a nation of red ones. When you can get the bitter out of the partridge’s thigh, you can make an enlightened commonwealth of Indians. A provisional race, Sir,—nothing more. Exhaled carbonic acid for the use of vegetation, kept down the bears and catamounts, enjoyed themselves in scalping and being scalped, and then passed away or are passing away, according to the programme.
Well, Sir, these races dying out, the white man has to acclimate himself. It takes him a good while; but he will come all right by-and-by, Sir,—as sound as a woodchuck,—as sound as a musquash!
A new nursery, Sir, with Lake Superior and Huron and all the rest of ’em for wash-basins! A new race, and a whole new world for the new-born human soul to work in! And Boston is the brain of it, and has been any time these hundred years! That’s all I claim for Boston,—that it is the thinking centre of the continent, and therefore of the planet.
——And the grand emporium of modesty,—said the divinity-student, a little mischievously.
Oh, don’t talk to me of modesty!—answered Little Boston,—I’m past that! There isn’t a thing that was ever said or done in Boston, from pitching the tea overboard to the last ecclesiastical lie it tore into tatters and flung into the dock, that wasn’t thought very indelicate by some fool or tyrant or bigot, and all the entrails of commercial and spiritual conservatism are twisted into colics as often as this revolutionary brain of ours has a fit of thinking come over it.—No, Sir,—show me any other place that is, or was since the megalosaurus has died out, where wealth and social influence are so fairly divided between the stationary and the progressive classes! Show me any other place where every other drawing-room is not a chamber of the Inquisition, with papas and mammas for inquisitors,—and the cold shoulder, instead of the “dry pan and the gradual fire,” the punishment of “heresy”!
——We think Baltimore is a pretty civilized kind of a village,—said the young Marylander, good-naturedly.—But I suppose you can’t forgive it for always keeping a little ahead of Boston in point of numbers,—tell the truth now. Are we not the centre of something?
Ah, indeed, to be sure you are. You are the gastronomic metropolis of the Union. Why don’t you put a canvas-back duck on the top of the Washington column? Why don’t you get that lady off from Battle Monument and plant a terrapin in her place? Why will you ask for other glories when you have soft crabs? No, Sir,—you live too well to think as hard as we do in Boston. Logic comes to us with the salt-fish of Cape Ann; rhetoric is born of the beans of Beverly; but you—if you open your mouths to speak, Nature stops them with a fat oyster, or offers a slice of the breast of your divine bird, and silences all your aspirations.
And what of Philadelphia?—said the Marylander.
Oh, Philadelphia?—Waterworks,—killed by the Croton and Cochituate;— Ben Franklin,—borrowed from Boston;—David Rittenhouse,—made an orrery;—Benjamin Rush,—made a medical system:—both interesting to antiquarians;—great Red-river raft of medical students,—spontaneous generation of professors to match;—more widely known through the Moyamensing hose-company, and the Wistar parties;—for geological section of social strata, go to The Club.—Good place to live in,—first-rate market,—tip-top peaches.—What do we know about Philadelphia, except that the engine-companies are always shooting each other?
And what do you say to New York?—asked the Koh-i-noor?
A great city, Sir,—replied Little Boston,—a very opulent, splendid city. A point of transit of much that is remarkable, and of permanence for much that is respectable. A great money-centre. San Francisco with the mines above-ground,—and some of ’em under the sidewalks. I have seen next to nothing grandiose, out of New York, in all our cities. It makes ’em all look paltry and petty. Has many elements of civilization. May stop where Venice did, though, for aught we know.—The order of its development is just this:—Wealth; architecture; upholstery; painting; sculpture. Printing, as a mechanical art,—just as Nicholas Jenson and the Aldi, who were scholars too, made Venice renowned for it. Journalism, which is the accident of business and crowded populations, in great perfection. Venice got as far as Titian and Paul Veronese and Tintoretto,—great colorists, mark you, magnificent on the flesh-and-blood side of Art,—but look over to Florence and see who lie in Santa Croce, and ask out of whose loins Dante sprung!
Oh, yes, to be sure, Venice built her Ducal Palace, and her Church of St. Mark, and her Casa d’ Oro, and the rest of her golden houses; and Venice had great pictures and good music; and Venice had a Golden Book, in which all the large tax-payers had their names written;—but all that did not make Venice the brain of Italy.
I tell you what, Sir,—with all these magnificent appliances of civilization, it is time we began to hear something from the jeunesse doree whose names are on the Golden Book of our sumptuous, splendid, marble-palaced Venice,—something in the higher walks of literature,—something in the councils of the nation. Plenty of Art, I grant you, Sir; now, then, for vast libraries, and for mighty scholars and thinkers and statesmen,—five for every Boston one, as the population is to ours,—ten to one more properly, in virtue of centralizing attraction as the alleged metropolis,—and not call our people provincials, and have to come begging to us to write the lives of Hendrik Hudson and Gouverneur Morris!
——The little gentleman was on his hobby, exalting his own city at the expense of every other place. I don’t suppose he had been in either of the cities he had been talking about. I was just going to say something to sober him down, if I could, when the young Marylander spoke up.
Come, now,—he said,—what’s the use of these comparisons? Didn’t I hear this gentleman saying, the other day, that every American owns all America? If you have really got more brains in Boston than other folks, as you seem to think, who hates you for it, except a pack of scribbling fools? If I like Broadway better than Washington Street, what then? I own them both, as much as anybody owns either. I am an American,—and wherever I look up and see the stars and stripes overhead, that is home to me!
He spoke, and looked up as if he heard the emblazoned folds crackling over him in the breeze. We all looked up involuntarily, as if we should see the national flag by so doing. The sight of the dingy ceiling and the gas-fixture depending therefrom dispelled the illusion.
Bravo! bravo!—said the venerable gentleman on the other side of the table.—Those are the sentiments of Washington’s Farewell Address. Nothing better than that since the last chapter in Revelations. Five-and-forty years ago there used to be Washington societies, and little boys used to walk in processions, each little boy having a copy of the Address, bound in red, hung round his neck by a ribbon. Why don’t they now? Why don’t they now? I saw enough of hating each other in the old Federal times; now let’s love each other, I say,—let’s love each other, and not try to make it out that there isn’t any place fit to live in except the one we happen to be born in.
It dwarfs the mind, I think,—said I,—to feed it on any localism. The full stature of manhood is shrivelled——
The color burst up into my cheeks. What was I saying,—I, who would not for the world have pained our unfortunate little boarder by an allusion?
I will go,—he said,—and made a movement with his left arm to let himself down from his high chair.
No,—no,—he doesn’t mean it,—you must not go,—said a kind voice next him; and a soft, white hand was laid upon his arm.
Iris, my dear!—exclaimed another voice, as of a female, in accents that might be considered a strong atmospheric solution of duty with very little flavor of grace.
She did not move for this address, and there was a tableau that lasted some seconds. For the young girl, in the glory of half-blown womanhood, and the dwarf, the cripple, the misshapen little creature covered with Nature’s insults, looked straight into each other’s eyes.
Perhaps no handsome young woman had ever looked at him so in his life. Certainly the young girl never had looked into eyes that reached into her soul as these did. It was not that they were in themselves supernaturally bright,—but there was the sad fire in them that flames up from the soul of one who looks on the beauty of woman without hope, but, alas! not without emotion. To him it seemed as if those amber gates had been translucent as the brown water of a mountain-brook, and through them he had seen dimly into a virgin wilderness, only waiting for the sunrise of a great passion for all its buds to blow and all its bowers to ring with melody.
That is my image, of course,—not his. It was not a simile that was in his mind, or is in anybody’s at such a moment,—it was a pang of wordless passion, and then a silent, inward moan.
A lady’s wish,—he said, with a certain gallantry of manner,—makes slaves of us all.—And Nature, who is kind to all her children, and never leaves the smallest and saddest of all her human failures without one little comfit of self-love at the bottom of his poor ragged pocket,—Nature suggested to him that he had turned his sentence well; and he fell into a reverie, in which the old thoughts that were always hovering just outside the doors guarded by Common Sense, and watching for a chance to squeeze in, knowing perfectly well they would be ignominiously kicked out again as soon as Common Sense saw them, flocked in pellmell,—misty, fragmentary, vague, half-ashamed of themselves, but still shouldering up against his inner consciousness till it warmed with their contact:—John Wilkes’s—the ugliest man’s in England—saying, that with half-an-hour’s start he would cut out the handsomest man in all the land in any woman’s good graces; Cadenus—old and savage—leading captive Stella and Vanessa; and then the stray line of a ballad,—“And a winning tongue had he,”—as much as to say, it isn’t looks, after all, but cunning words, that win our Eves over,—just as of old, when it was the worst-looking brute of the lot that got our grandmother to listen to his stuff, and so did the mischief.
Ah, dear me! We rehearse the part of Hercules with his club, subjugating man and woman in our fancy, the first by the weight of it, and the second by our handling of it,—we rehearse it, I say, by our own hearth-stones, with the cold poker as our club, and the exercise is easy. But when we come to real life, the poker is in the fire, and, ten to one, if we would grasp it, we find it too hot to hold;—lucky for us, if it is not white-hot, and we do not have to leave the skin of our hands sticking to it when we fling it down or drop it with a loud or silent cry!
—I am frightened when I find into what a labyrinth of human character and feeling I am winding. I meant to tell my thoughts, and to throw in a few studies of manner and costume as they pictured themselves for me from day to day. Chance has thrown together at the table with me a number of persons who are worth studying, and I mean not only to look on them, but, if I can, through them. You can get any man’s or woman’s secret, whose sphere is circumscribed by your own, if you will only look patiently on them long enough. Nature is always applying her reagents to character, if you will take the pains to watch her. Our studies of character, to change the image, are very much like the surveyor’s triangulation of a geographical province. We get a base-line in organization, always; then we get an angle by sighting some distant object to which the passions or aspirations of the subject of our observation are tending; then another:—and so we construct our first triangle. Once fix a man’s ideals, and for the most part the rest is easy. A wants to die worth half a million. Good. B (female) wants to catch him,—and outlive him. All right. Minor details at our leisure.
What is it, of all your experiences, of all your thoughts, of all your misdoings, that lies at the very bottom of the great heap of acts of consciousness which make up your past life? What should you most dislike to tell your nearest friend?—Be so good as to pause for a brief space, and shut the pamphlet you hold with your fingers between the pages.—Oh, that is it!
What a confessional I have been sitting at, with the inward ear of my soul open, as the multitudinous whisper of my involuntary confidants came back to me like the reduplicated echo of a cry among the craggy hills!
At the house of a friend where I once passed the night was one of those stately upright cabinet-desks and cases of drawers which were not rare in prosperous families during the last century. It had held the clothes and the books and the papers of generation after generation. The hands that opened its drawers had grown withered, shrivelled, and at last been folded in death. The children that played with the lower handles had got tall enough to open the desk,—to reach the upper shelves behind the folding-doors,—grown bent after a while,—and then followed those who had gone before, and left the old cabinet to be ransacked by a new generation.
A boy of ten or twelve was looking at it a few years ago, and, being a quick-witted fellow, saw that all the space was not accounted for by the smaller drawers in the part beneath the lid of the desk. Prying about with busy eyes and fingers, he at length came upon a spring, on pressing which, a hidden drawer flew from its hiding-place. It had never been opened but by the maker. The mahogany shavings and dust were lying in it as when the artisan closed it,—and when I saw it, it was as fresh as if that day finished.
Is there not one little drawer in your soul, my sweet reader, which no hand but yours has ever opened, and which none that have known you seem to have suspected? What does it hold?—A sin?—I hope not.
What a strange thing an old dead sin laid away in a secret drawer of the soul is! Must it some time or other be moistened with tears, until it comes to life again and begins to stir in our consciousness,—as the dry wheel-animalcule, looking like a grain of dust, becomes alive, if it is wet with a drop of water?
Or is it a passion? There are plenty of withered men and women walking about the streets who have the secret drawer in their hearts, which, if it were opened, would show as fresh as it was when they were in the flush of youth and its first trembling emotions. What it held will, perhaps, never be known, until they are dead and gone, and some curious eye lights on an old yellow letter with the fossil footprints of the extinct passion trodden thick all over it.
There is not a boarder at our table, I firmly believe, excepting the young girl, who has not a story of the heart to tell, if one could only get the secret drawer open. Even this arid female, whose armor of black bombazine looks stronger against the shafts of love than any cuirass of triple brass, has had her sentimental history, if I am not mistaken. I will tell you my reason for suspecting it.
Like many other old women, she shows a great nervousness and restlessness whenever I venture to express any opinion upon a class of subjects which can hardly be said to belong to any man or set of men as their strictly private property,—not even to the clergy, or the newspapers commonly called “religious.” Now, although it would be a great luxury to me to obtain my opinions by contract, ready-made, from a professional man, and although I have a constitutional kindly feeling to all sorts of good people which would make me happy to agree with all their beliefs, if that were possible, still I must have an idea, now and then, as to the meaning of life; and though the only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas, or, at least, not to express them, with reference to such subjects, I can’t afford to pay quite so much as that even for peace.
I find that there is a very prevalent opinion among the dwellers on the shores of Sir Isaac Newton’s Ocean of Truth, that salt fish, which have been taken from it a good while ago, split open, cured and dried, are the only proper and allowable food for reasonable people. I maintain, on the other hand, that there are a number of live fish still swimming in it, and that every one of us has a right to see if he cannot catch some of them. Sometimes I please myself with the idea that I have landed an actual living fish, small, perhaps, but with rosy gills and silvery scales. Then I find the consumers of nothing but the salted and dried article insist that it is poisonous, simply because it is alive, and cry out to people not to touch it. I have not found, however, that people mind them much.
The poor boarder in bombazine is my dynamometer. I try every questionable proposition on her. If she winces, I must be prepared for an outcry from the other old women. I frightened her, the other day, by saying that faith, as an intellectual state, was self-reliance, which, if you have a metaphysical turn, you will find is not so much of a paradox as it sounds at first. So she sent me a book to read which was to cure me of that error. It was an old book, and looked as if it had not been opened for a long time. What should drop out of it, one day, but a small heart-shaped paper, containing a lock of that straight, coarse, brown hair which sets off the sharp faces of so many thin-flanked, large-handed bumpkins? I read upon the paper the name “Hiram.”—Love! love! love!—everywhere! everywhere!—under diamonds and Attleboro’ “jewelry,”—lifting the marrowy camel’s-hair, and rustling even the black bombazine!—No, no,—I think she never was pretty, but she was young once, and wore bright ginghams, and, perhaps, gay merinos. We shall find that the poor little crooked man has been in love, or is in love, or will be in love before we have done with him, for aught that I know!
Romance! Was there ever a boarding-house in the world where the seemingly prosaic table had not a living fresco for its background, where you could see, if you had eyes, the smoke and fire of some upheaving sentiment, or the dreary craters of smouldering or burnt-out passions? You look on the black bombazine and high-necked decorum of your neighbor, and no more think of the real life that underlies this despoiled and dismantled womanhood than you think of a stone trilobite as having once been full of the juices and the nervous thrills of throbbing and self-conscious being. There is a wild creature under that long yellow pin which serves as brooch for the bombazine cuirass,—a wild creature, which I venture to say would leap in his cage, if I should stir him, quiet as you think him. A heart which has been domesticated by matrimony and maternity is as tranquil as a tame bulfinch; but a wild heart which has never been fairly broken in flutters fiercely long after you think time has tamed it down,—like that purple finch I had the other day, which could not be approached without such palpitations and frantic flings against the bars of his cage, that I had to send him back and get a little orthodox canary which had learned to be quiet and never mind the wires or his keeper’s handling. I will tell you my wicked, but involuntary experiment on the wild heart under the faded bombazine.
Was there ever a person in the room with you, marked by any special weakness or peculiarity, with whom you could be two hours and not touch the infirm spot? I confess the most frightful tendency to do just this thing. If a man has a brogue, I am sure to catch myself imitating it. If another is lame, I follow him, or, worse than that, go before him, limping. I could never meet an Irish gentleman—if it had been the Duke of Wellington himself—without stumbling upon the word “Paddy,”—which I use rarely in my common talk.
I have been worried to know whether this was owing to some innate depravity of disposition on my part, some malignant torturing instinct, which, under different circumstances, might have made a Fijian anthropophagus of me, or to some law of thought for which I was not answerable. It is, I am convinced, a kind of physical fact like endosmosis, with which some of you are acquainted. A thin film of politeness separates the unspoken and unspeakable current of thought from the stream of conversation. After a time one begins to soak through and mingle with the other.
We were talking about names, one day. Was there ever anything,—I said,—like the Yankee for inventing the most uncouth, pretentious, detestable appellations,—inventing or finding them,—since the time of Praise-God Barebones? I heard a country-boy once talking of another whom he called Elpit, as I understood him. Elbridge is common enough, but this sounded oddly. It seems the boy was christened Lord Pitt,—and called, for convenience, as above. I have heard a charming little girl, belonging to an intelligent family in the country, called Anges invariably; doubtless intended for Agnes. Names are cheap. How can a man name an innocent new-born child, that never did him any harm, Hiram?—The poor relation, or whatever she is, in bombazine, turned toward me, but I was stupid, and went on.—To think of a man going through life saddled with such an abominable name as that!—The poor relation grew very uneasy.—I continued; for I never thought of all this till afterwards.—I knew one young fellow, a good many years ago, by the name of Hiram—
—What’s got into you, Cousin,—said our landlady,—to look so?—There! you’ve upset your teacup!
It suddenly occurred to me what I had been doing, and I saw the poor woman had her hand at her throat; she was half-choking with the “hysteric ball,”—a very odd symptom, as you know, which nervous women often complain of. What business had I to be trying experiments on this forlorn old soul? I had a great deal better be watching that young girl.
Ah, the young girl! I am sure that she can hide nothing from me. Her skin is so transparent that one can almost count her heart-beats by the flushes they send into her cheeks. She does not seem to be shy, either. I think she does not know enough of danger to be timid. She seems to me like one of those birds that travellers tell of, found in remote, uninhabited islands, who, having never received any wrong at the hand of man, show no alarm at and hardly any particular consciousness of his presence.
The first thing will be to see how she and our little deformed gentleman get along together; for, as I have told you, they sit side by side. The next thing will be to keep an eye on the duenna,—the “Model” and so forth, as the white-neckcloth called her. The intention of that estimable lady is, I understand, to launch her and leave her. I suppose there is no help for it, and I don’t doubt this young lady knows how to take care of herself, but I do not like to see young girls turned loose in boarding-houses. Look here now! There is that jewel of his race, whom I have called for convenience the Koh-i-noor, (you understand it is quite out of the question for me to use the family names of our boarders, unless I want to get into trouble,)—I say, the gentleman with the diamond is looking very often and very intently, it seems to me, down toward the farther corner of the table, where sits our amber-eyed blonde. The landlady’s daughter does not look pleased, it seems to me, at this, nor at those other attentions which the gentleman referred to has, as I have learned, pressed upon the newly-arrived young person. The landlady made a communication to me, within a few days after the arrival of Miss Iris, which I will repeat to the best of my remembrance.
He, (the person I have been speaking of,)—she said,—seemed to be kinder hankerin’ round after that young woman. It had hurt her daughter’s feelin’s a good deal, that the gentleman she was a-keepin’ company with should be offerin’ tickets and tryin’ to send presents to them that he’d never know’d till just a little spell ago,—and he as good as merried, so far as solemn promises went, to as respectable a young lady, if she did say so, as any there was round, whosomever they might be.
Tickets! presents!—said I.—What tickets, what presents has he had the impertinence to be offering to that young lady?
Tickets to the Museum,—said the landlady.—There is them that’s glad enough to go to the Museum, when tickets is given ’em; but some of ’em ha’n’t had a ticket sence Cenderilla was played,—and now he must be offerin’ ’em to this ridiculous young paintress, or whatever she is, that’s come to make more mischief than her board’s worth. But it a’n’t her fault,—said the landlady, relenting;—and that aunt of hers, or whatever she is, served him right enough.
Why, what did she do?
Do? Why, she took it up in the tongs and dropped it out o’ window.
Dropped? dropped what?—I said.
Why, the soap,—said the landlady.
It appeared that the Koh-i-noor, to ingratiate himself, had sent an elegant package of perfumed soap, directed to Miss Iris, as a delicate expression of a lively sentiment of admiration, and that, after having met with the unfortunate treatment referred to, it was picked up by Master Benjamin Franklin, who appropriated it, rejoicing, and indulged in most unheard-of and inordinate ablutions in consequence, so that his hands were a frequent subject of maternal congratulation, and he smelt like a civet-cat for weeks after his great acquisition.
After watching daily for a time, I think I can see clearly into the relation which is growing up between the little gentleman and the young lady. She shows a tenderness to him that I can’t help being interested in. If he was her crippled child, instead of being more than old enough to be her father, she could not treat him more kindly. The landlady’s daughter said, the other day, she believed that girl was settin’ her cap for Little Boston.
Some of them young folks is very artful,—said her mother,—and there is them that would merry Lazarus, if he’d only picked up crumbs enough. I don’t think, though, this is one of that sort; she’s kinder child-like,—said the landlady,—and maybe never had any dolls to play with; for they say her folks was poor before Ma’am undertook to see to her teachin’ and board her and clothe her.
I could not help overhearing this conversation. “Board her and clothe her!”—speaking of such a young creature! Oh, dear!—Yes,—she must be fed,—just like Bridget, maid-of-all-work at this establishment. Somebody must pay for it. Somebody has a right to watch her and see how much it takes to “keep” her, and growl at her, if she has too good an appetite. Somebody has a right to keep an eye on her and take care that she does not dress too prettily. No mother to see her own youth over again in those fresh features and rising reliefs of half-sculptured womanhood, and, seeing its loveliness, forget her lessons of neutral-tinted propriety, and open the cases that hold her own ornaments to find her a necklace or a bracelet or a pair of earrings,—those golden lamps that light up the deep, shadowy dimples on the cheeks of young beauties,—swinging in a semi-barbaric splendor that carries the wild fancy to Abyssinian queens and musky Odalisques! I don’t believe any woman has utterly given up the great firm of Mundus & Co., so long as she wears earrings.
I think Iris loves to hear the little gentleman talk. She smiles sometimes at his vehement statements, but never laughs at him. When he speaks to her, she keeps her eye always steadily upon him. This may be only natural good-breeding, so to speak, but it is worth noticing. I have often observed that vulgar persons, and public audiences of inferior collective intelligence, have this in common: the least thing draws off their minds, when you are speaking to them. I love this young creature’s rapt attention to her diminutive neighbor while he is speaking.
He is evidently pleased with it. For a day or two after she came, he was silent and seemed nervous and excited. Now he is fond of getting the talk into his own hands, and is obviously conscious that he has at least one interested listener. Once or twice I have seen marks of special attention to personal adornment,—a ruffled shirt-bosom, one day, and a diamond pin in it,—not so very large as the Koh-i-noor’s, but more lustrous. I mentioned the death’s-head ring
Sitting, as he does, next to the young girl, and next but one to the calm lady who has her in charge, he cannot help seeing their relations to each other.
That is an admirable woman, Sir,—he said to me one day, as we sat alone at the table after breakfast,—an admirable woman, Sir,—and I hate her.
Of course, I begged an explanation.
An admirable woman, Sir, because she does good things, and even kind things,—takes care of this—this—young lady—we have here, talks like a sensible person, and always looks as if she was doing her duty with all her might. I hate her because her voice sounds as if it never trembled, and her eyes look as if she never knew what it was to cry. Besides, she looks at me, Sir, stares at me, as if she wanted to get an image of me for some gallery in her brain,—and we don’t love to be looked at in this way, we that have—I hate her,—I hate her,—her eyes kill me,—it is like being stabbed with icicles to be looked at so,—the sooner she goes home, the better. I don’t want a woman to weigh me in a balance; there are men enough for that sort of work. The judicial character isn’t captivating in females, Sir. A woman fascinates a man quite as often by what she overlooks as by what she sees. Love prefers twilight to daylight; and a man doesn’t think much of, nor care much for, a woman outside of his household, unless he can couple the idea of love, past, present, or future, with her. I don’t believe the Devil cares half so much for the services of a sinner as he does for those of one of these folks that are always doing virtuous acts in a way to make them unpleasing.—That young girl wants a tender nature to cherish her and give her a chance to put out her leaves,—sunshine, and not east winds.
He was silent,—and sat looking at his handsome left hand with the red stone ring upon it.—Is he going to fall in love with Iris?
Here are some lines I read to the boarders the other day:—
THE CROOKED FOOTPATH.
Ah, here it is! the sliding rail
That marks the old remembered spot,—
The gap that struck our schoolboy trail,—
The crooked path across the lot.
It left the road by school and church,
A pencilled shadow, nothing more,
That parted from the silver birch
And ended at the farmhouse door.
No line or compass traced its plan;
With frequent bends to left or right,
In aimless, wayward curves it ran,
But always kept the door in sight.
The gabled porch, with woodbine green,—
The broken millstone at the sill,—
Though many a rood might stretch between,
The truant child could see them still.
No rocks across the pathway lie,—
No fallen trunk is o’er it thrown,—
And yet it winds, we know not why,
And turns as if for tree or stone.
Perhaps some lover trod the way
With shaking knees and leaping heart,—
And so it often runs astray
With sinuous sweep or sudden start.
Or one, perchance, with clouded brain
From some unholy banquet reeled,—
And since, our devious steps maintain
His track across the trodden field.
Nay, deem not thus,—no earth-born
will
Could ever trace a faultless line;
Our truest steps are human still,—
To walk unswerving were divine!
Truants from love, we dream of wrath;—
Oh, rather let us trust the more!
Through all the wanderings of the path,
We still can see our Father’s door!
[Continued.]
THE TEST OF THEOLOGY.
The Doctor went immediately to his study and put on his best coat and his wig, and, surmounting them by his cocked hat, walked manfully out of the house, with his gold-headed cane in his hand.
“There he goes!” said Mrs. Scudder, looking regretfully after him. “He is such a good man! but he has not the least idea how to get along in the world. He never thinks of anything but what is true; he hasn’t a particle of management about him.”
“Seems to me,” said Mary, “that is like an Apostle. You know, mother, St. Paul says, ’In simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world.’”
“To be sure,—that is just the Doctor,” said Mrs. Scudder; “that’s as like him as if it had been written for him. But that kind of way, somehow, don’t seem to do in our times; it won’t answer with Simeon Brown,——I know the man. I know just as well, now, how it will all seem to him, and what will be the upshot of this talk, if the Doctor goes there! It won’t do any good; if it would, I would be willing. I feel as much desire to have this horrid trade in slaves stopped as anybody; your father, I’m sure, said enough about it in his time; but then I know it’s no use trying. Just as if Simeon Brown, when he is making his hundreds of thousands in it, is going to be persuaded to give it up!
“But, mother, if it really is a sin to trade in slaves and hold them, I don’t see how he can help himself. I quite agree with him. I don’t see how he came to let it go so long as he has.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Scudder, “if worst comes to worst, and he will do it, I, for one, shall stand by him to the last.”
“And I, for another,” said Mary.
“I would like him to talk with Cousin Zebedee about it,” said Mrs. Scudder. “When we are up there this afternoon, we will introduce the conversation. He is a good, sound man, and the Doctor thinks much of him, and perhaps he may shed some light upon this matter.”
Meanwhile the Doctor was making the best of his way, in the strength of his purpose to test the orthodoxy of Simeon Brown.
Honest old granite boulder that he was, no sooner did he perceive a truth than he rolled after it with all the massive gravitation of his being, inconsiderate as to what might lie in his way;—from which it is to be inferred, that, with all his intellect and goodness, he would have been a very clumsy and troublesome inmate of the modern American Church. How many societies, boards, colleges, and other good institutions, have reason to congratulate themselves that he has long been among the saints!
With him logic was everything, and to perceive a truth and not act in logical sequence from it a thing so incredible, that he had not yet enlarged his capacity to take it in as a possibility. That a man should refuse to hear truth, he could understand. In fact, he had good reason to think the majority of his townsmen had no leisure to give to that purpose. That men hearing truth should dispute it and argue stoutly against it, he could also understand; but that a man could admit a truth and not admit the plain practice resulting from it was to him a thing incomprehensible. Therefore, spite of Mrs. Katy Scudder’s discouraging observations, our good Doctor walked stoutly and with a trusting heart.
At the moment when the Doctor, with a silent uplifting of his soul to his invisible Sovereign, passed out of his study, on this errand, where was the disciple whom he went to seek?
In a small, dirty room, down by the wharf, the windows veiled by cobwebs and dingy with the accumulated dust of ages, he sat in a greasy, leathern chair by a rickety office-table, on which was a great pewter inkstand, an account-book, and divers papers tied with red tape.
Opposite to him was seated a square-built individual,—a man of about forty, whose round head, shaggy eyebrows, small, keen eyes, broad chest, and heavy muscles showed a preponderance of the animal and brutal over the intellectual and spiritual. This was Mr. Scroggs, the agent of a rice-plantation, who had come on, bringing an order for a new relay of negroes to supply the deficit occasioned by fever, dysentery, and other causes, in their last year’s stock.
“The fact is,” said Simeon, “this last ship-load wasn’t as good a one as usual; we lost more than a third of it, so we can’t afford to put them a penny lower.”
“Ay,” said the other,—“but then there are so many women!”
“Well,” said Simeon, “women a’n’t so strong, perhaps, to start with,—but then they stan’ it out, perhaps, in the long run, better. They’re more patient;—some of these men, the Mandingoes, particularly, are pretty troublesome to manage. We lost a splendid fellow, coming over, on this very voyage. Let ’em on deck for air, and this fellow managed to get himself loose and fought like a dragon. He settled one of our men with his fist, and another with a marlinespike that he caught,—and, in fact, they had to shoot him down. You’ll have his wife; there’s his son, too,—fine fellow, fifteen year old by his teeth.”
“What! that lame one?”
“Oh, he a’n’t lame!—it’s nothing but the cramps from stowing. You know, of course, they are more or less stiff. He’s as sound as a nut.”
“Don’t much like to buy relations, on account of their hatching up mischief together,” said Mr. Scroggs.
“Oh, that’s all humbug! You must keep ’em from coming together, anyway. It’s about as broad as ’tis long. There’ll be wives and husbands and children among ’em before long, start ’em as you will. And then this woman will work better for having the boy; she’s kinder set on him; she jabbers lots of lingo to him, day and night.”
“Too much, I doubt,” said the overseer, with a shrug.
“Well, well—I’ll tell you,” said Simeon, rising. “I’ve got a few errands up-town, and you just step over with Matlock and look over the stock;—just set aside any that you want, and when I see ’em all together, I’ll tell you just what you shall have ’em for. I’ll be back in an hour or two.”
And so saying, Simeon Brown called an underling from an adjoining room, and, committing his customer to his care, took his way up-town, in a serene frame of mind, like a man who comes from the calm performance of duty.
Just as he came upon the street where was situated his own large and somewhat pretentious mansion, the tall figure of the Doctor loomed in sight, sailing majestically down upon him, making a signal to attract his attention.
“Good morning, Doctor,” said Simeon.
“Good morning, Mr. Brown,” said the Doctor. “I was looking for you. I did not quite finish the subject we were talking about at Mrs. Scudder’s table last night. I thought I should like to go on with it a little.”
“With all my heart, Doctor,” said Simeon, not a little flattered. “Turn right in. Mrs. Brown will be about her house-business, and we will have the keeping-room all to ourselves. Come right in.”
The “keeping-room” of Mr. Simeon Brown’s house was an intermediate apartment between the ineffable glories of the front-parlor and that court of the gentiles, the kitchen; for the presence of a large train of negro servants made the latter apartment an altogether different institution from the throne-room of Mrs. Katy Scudder.
This keeping-room was a low-studded apartment, finished with the heavy oaken beams of the wall left full in sight, boarded over and painted. Two windows looked out on the street, and another into a sort of court-yard, where three black wenches, each with a broom, pretended to be sweeping, but were, in fact, chattering and laughing, like so many crows.
On one side of the room stood a heavy mahogany sideboard, covered with decanters, labelled Gin, Brandy, Rum, etc.,—for Simeon was held to be a provider of none but the best, in his housekeeping. Heavy mahogany chairs, with crewel coverings, stood sentry about the room; and the fireplace was flanked by two broad arm-chairs, covered with stamped leather.
On ushering the Doctor into this apartment, Simeon courteously led him to the sideboard.
“We mus’n’t make our discussions too dry, Doctor,” he said. “What will you take?”
“Thank you, Sir,” said the Doctor, with a wave of his hand,—“nothing this morning.”
And depositing his cocked hat in a chair, he settled himself into one of the leathern easy-chairs, and, dropping his hands upon his knees, looked fixedly before him, like a man who is studying how to enter upon an inwardly absorbing subject.
“Well, Doctor,” said Simeon, seating himself opposite, sipping comfortably at a glass of rum-and-water, “our views appear to be making a noise in the world. Everything is preparing for your volumes; and when they appear, the battle of New Divinity, I think, may fairly be considered as won.”
Let us consider, that, though a woman may forget her first-born, yet a man cannot forget his own system of theology,—because therein, if he be a true man, is the very elixir and essence of all that is valuable and hopeful to the universe; and considering this, let us appreciate the settled purpose of our friend, whom even this tempting bait did not swerve from the end which he had in view.
“Mr. Brown,” he said, “all our theology is as a drop in the ocean of God’s majesty, to whose glory we must be ready to make any and every sacrifice.”
“Certainly,” said Mr. Brown, not exactly comprehending the turn the Doctor’s thoughts were taking.
“And the glory of God consisteth in the happiness of all his rational universe, each in his proportion, according to his separate amount of being; so that, when we devote ourselves to God’s glory, it is the same as saying that we devote ourselves to the highest happiness of his created universe.”
“That’s clear, Sir,” said Simeon, rubbing his hands, and taking out his watch to see the time.
The Doctor hitherto had spoken in a laborious manner, like a man who is slowly lifting a heavy bucket of thought out of an internal well.
“I am glad to find your mind so clear on this all-important point, Mr. Brown,—the more so as I feel that we must immediately proceed to apply our principles, at whatever sacrifice of worldly goods; and I trust, Sir, that you are one who at the call of your Master would not hesitate even to lay down all your worldly possessions for the greater good of the universe.”
“I trust so, Sir,” said Simeon, rather uneasily, and without the most distant idea what could be coming next in the mind of his reverend friend.
“Did it never occur to you, my friend,” said the Doctor, “that the enslaving of the African race is a clear violation of the great law which commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves,—and a dishonor upon the Christian religion, more particularly in us Americans, whom the Lord hath so marvellously protected, in our recent struggle for our own liberty?”
Simeon started at the first words of this address, much as if some one had dashed a bucket of water on his head, and after that rose uneasily, walking the room and playing with the seals of his watch.
“I—I never regarded it in this light,” he said.
“Possibly not, my friend,” said the Doctor,—“so much doth established custom blind the minds of the best of men. But since I have given more particular attention to the case of the poor negroes here in Newport, the thought has more and more labored in my mind,—more especially as our own struggles for liberty have turned my attention to the rights which every human creature hath before God,—so that I find much in my former blindness and the comparative dumbness I have heretofore maintained on this subject wherewith to reproach myself; for, though I have borne somewhat of a testimony, I have not given it that force which so important a subject required. I am humbled before God for my neglect, and resolved now, by His grace, to leave no stone unturned till this iniquity be purged away from our Zion.”
“Well, Doctor,” said Simeon, “you are certainly touching on a very dark and difficult subject, and one in which it is hard to find out the path of duty. Perhaps it will be well to bear it in mind, and by looking at it prayerfully some light may arise. There are such great obstacles in the way, that I do not see at present what can be done; do you, Doctor?”
“I intend to preach on the subject next Sunday, and hereafter devote my best energies in the most public way to this great work,” said the Doctor.
“You, Doctor?—and now, immediately? Why, it appears to me you cannot do it. You are the most unfit man possible. Whosever duty it may be, it does not seem to me to be yours. You already have more on your shoulders than you can carry; you are hardly able to keep your ground now, with all the odium of this new theology upon you. Such an effort would break up your church,—destroy the chance you have to do good here,—prevent the publication of your system.”
“If it’s nobody’s system but mine, the world won’t lose much, if it never be published; but if it be God’s system, nothing can hinder its appearing. Besides, Mr. Brown, I ought not to be one man alone. I count on your help. I hold it as a special providence, Mr. Brown, that in our own church an opportunity will be given to testify to the reality of disinterested benevolence. How glorious the opportunity for a man to come out and testify by sacrificing his worldly living and business! If you, Mr. Brown, will at once, at whatever sacrifice, quit all connection with this detestable and diabolical slave-trade, you will exhibit a spectacle over which angels will rejoice, and which will strengthen and encourage me to preach and write and testify.”
Mr. Simeon Brown’s usual demeanor was that of the most leathery imperturbability. In calm theological reasoning, he could demonstrate, in the dryest tone, that, if the eternal torment of six bodies and souls were absolutely the necessary means for preserving the eternal blessedness of thirty-six, benevolence would require us to rejoice in it, not in itself considered, but in view of greater good. And when he spoke, not a nerve quivered; the great mysterious sorrow with which the creation groaneth and travaileth, the sorrow from which angels veil their faces, never had touched one vibrating chord either of body or soul; and he laid down the obligations of man to unconditional submission in a style which would have affected a person of delicate sensibility much like being mentally sawn in sunder. Benevolence, when Simeon Brown spoke of it, seemed the grimmest and unloveliest of Gorgons; for his mind seemed to resemble those fountains which petrify everything that falls into them. But the hardest-shelled animals have a vital and sensitive part, though only so large as the point of a needle; and the Doctor’s innocent proposition to Simeon, to abandon his whole worldly estate for his principles, touched this spot.
When benevolence required but the acquiescence in certain possible things which might be supposed to happen to his soul, which, after all, he was comfortably certain never would happen, or the acquiescence in certain supposititious sacrifices for the good of that most intangible of all abstractions, Being in general, it was a dry, calm subject. But when it concerned the immediate giving-up of his slave-ships and a transfer of business, attended with all that confusion and loss which he foresaw at a glance, then he felt, and felt too much to see clearly. His swarthy face flushed, his little blue eye kindled, he walked up to the Doctor and began speaking in the short, energetic sentences of a man thoroughly awake to what he is talking about.
“Doctor, you’re too fast. You are not a practical man, Doctor. You are good in your pulpit;—nobody better. Your theology is clear;—nobody can argue better. But come to practical matters, why, business has its laws, Doctor. Ministers are the most unfit men in the world to talk on such subjects; it’s departing from their sphere; they talk about what they don’t understand. Besides, you take too much for granted. I’m not sure that this trade is an evil. I want to be convinced of it. I’m sure it’s a favor to these poor creatures to bring them to a Christian land. They are a thousand times better off. Here they can hear the gospel and have some chance of salvation.”
“If we want to get the gospel to the Africans,” said the Doctor, “why not send whole ship-loads of missionaries to them, and carry civilization and the arts and Christianity to Africa, instead of stirring up wars, tempting them to ravage each other’s territories, that we may get the booty? Think of the numbers killed in the wars,—of all that die on the passage! Is there any need of killing ninety-nine men to give the hundredth one the gospel, when we could give the gospel to them all? Ah, Mr. Brown, what if all the money spent in fitting out ships to bring the poor negroes here, so prejudiced against Christianity that they regard it with fear and aversion, had been spent in sending it to them, Africa would have been covered with towns and villages, rejoicing in civilization and Christianity!”
“Doctor, you are a dreamer,” replied Simeon, “an unpractical man. Your situation prevents your knowing anything of real life.”
“Amen! the Lord be praised therefor!” said the Doctor, with a slowly increasing flush mounting to his cheek, showing the burning brand of a smouldering fire of indignation.
“Now let me just talk common-sense, Doctor,—which has its time and place, just as much as theology;—and if you have the most theology, I flatter myself I have the most common-sense; a business-man must have it. Now just look at your situation,—how you stand. You’ve got a most important work to do. In order to do it, you must keep your pulpit, you must keep our church together. We are few and weak. We are a minority. Now there’s not an influential man in your society that don’t either hold slaves or engage in the trade; and if you open upon this subject as you are going to do, you’ll just divide and destroy the church. All men are not like you;—men are men, and will be, till they are thoroughly sanctified, which never happens in this life,—and there will be an instant and most unfavorable agitation. Minds will be turned off from the discussion of the great saving doctrines of the gospel to a side issue. You will be turned out,—and you know, Doctor, you are not appreciated as you ought to be, and it won’t be easy for you to get a new settlement; and then subscriptions will all drop off from your book, and you won’t be able to get that out; and all this good will be lost to the world, just for want of common-sense.”
“There is a kind of wisdom in what you say, Mr. Brown,” replied the Doctor, naively; “but I fear much that it is the wisdom spoken in James, iii. 15, which ’descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish.’ You avoid the very point of the argument, which is, Is this a sin against God? That it is, I am solemnly convinced; and shall I ’use lightness? or the things that I purpose do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be yea, yea, and nay, nay?’ No, Mr. Brown, immediate repentance, unconditional submission, these are what I must preach as long as God gives me a pulpit to stand in, whether men will hear or whether they will forbear.”
“Well, Doctor,” said Simeon, shortly, “you can do as you like; but I give you fair warning, that I, for one, shall stop my subscription, and go to Dr. Stiles’s church.”
“Mr. Brown,” said the Doctor, solemnly, rising, and drawing his tall figure to its full height, while a vivid light gleamed from his blue eye, “as to that, you can do as you like; but I think it my duty, as your pastor, to warn you that I have perceived, in my conversation with you this morning, such a want of true spiritual illumination and discernment as leads me to believe that you are yet in the flesh, blinded by that ‘carnal mind’ which ’is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.’ I much fear you have no part nor lot in this matter, and that you have need, seriously, to set yourself to search into the foundations of your hope; for you may be like him of whom it is written, (Isaiah, xliv. 20,) ’He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?’”
The Doctor delivered this address to his man of influence with the calmness of an ambassador charged with a message from a sovereign, for which he is no otherwise responsible than to speak it in the most intelligible manner; and then, taking up his hat and cane, he bade him good morning, leaving Simeon Brown in a tumult of excitement which no previous theological discussion had ever raised in him.
THE PRACTICAL TEST.
The hens cackled drowsily in the barnyard of the white Marvyn-house; in the blue June-afternoon sky sported great sailing islands of cloud, whose white, glistening heads looked in and out through the green apertures of maple and blossoming apple-boughs; the shadows of the trees had already turned eastward, when the one-horse wagon of Mrs. Katy Scudder appeared at the door, where Mrs. Marvyn stood, with a pleased, quiet welcome in her soft, brown eyes. Mrs. Scudder herself drove, sitting on a seat in front,—while the Doctor, apparelled in the most faultless style, with white wrist-ruffles, plaited shirt-bosom, immaculate wig, and well-brushed coat, sat by Mary’s side, serenely unconscious how many feminine cares had gone to his
There is a vast amount of latent gratitude to women lying undeveloped in the hearts of men, which would come out plentifully, if they only knew what they did for them. The Doctor was so used to being well dressed, that he never asked why. That his wig always sat straight and even around his ample forehead, not facetiously poked to one side, nor assuming rakish airs, unsuited to clerical dignity, was entirely owing to Mrs. Katy Scudder. That his best broadcloth coat was not illustrated with shreds and patches, fluff and dust, and hanging in ungainly folds, was owing to the same. That his long silk stockings never had a treacherous stitch allowed to break out into a long running ladder was due to her watchfulness; and that he wore spotless ruffles on his wrists or at his bosom was her doing also. The Doctor little thought, while he, in common with good ministers generally, gently traduced the Scriptural Martha and insisted on the duty of heavenly abstractedness, how much of his own leisure for spiritual contemplation was due to the Martha-like talents of his hostess. But then, the good soul had it in him to be grateful, and would have been unboundedly so, if he had known his indebtedness,—as, we trust, most of our magnanimous masters would be.
Mr. Zebedee Marvyn was quietly sitting in the front summer parlor, listening to the story of two of his brother church-members, between whom some difficulty had arisen in the settling of accounts: Jim Bigelow, a small, dry, dapper little individual, known as general jobber and factotum, and Abram Griswold, a stolid, wealthy, well-to-do farmer. And the fragments of conversation we catch are not uninteresting, as showing Mr. Zebedee’s habits of thought and mode of treating those who came to him for advice.
“I could ’ave got along better, if he’d ‘a’ paid me regular every night,” said the squeaky voice of little Jim;—“but he was allers puttin’ me off till it come even change, he said.”
“Well, ’ta’n’t always handy,” replied the other; “one doesn’t like to break into a five-pound note for nothing; and I like to let it run till it comes even change.”
“But, brother,” said Mr. Zebedee, turning over the great Bible that lay on the mahogany stand in the corner, “we must go to the law and to the testimony,”—and, turning over the leaves, he read from Deuteronomy, xxiv.:—
“Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates. At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the Lord, and it be sin unto thee.”
“You see what the Bible has to say on the matter,” he said.
“Well, now, Deacon, I rather think you’ve got me in a tight place,” said Mr. Griswold, rising; and turning confusedly round, he saw the placid figure of the Doctor, who had entered the room unobserved in the midst of the conversation, and was staring with that look of calm, dreamy abstraction which often led people to suppose that he heard and saw nothing of what was going forward.
All rose reverently; and while Mr. Zebedee was shaking hands with the Doctor, and welcoming him to his house, the other two silently withdrew, making respectful obeisance.
Mrs. Marvyn had drawn Mary’s hand gently under her arm and taken her to her own sleeping-room, as it was her general habit to do, that she might show her the last book she had been reading, and pour into her ear the thoughts that had been kindled up by it.
Mrs. Scudder, after carefully brushing every speck of dust from the Doctor’s coat and seeing him seated in an armchair by the open window, took out a long stocking of blue-mixed yarn which she was knitting for his winter wear, and, pinning her knitting-sheath on her side, was soon trotting her needles contentedly in front of him.
The ill-success of the Doctor’s morning attempt at enforcing his theology in practice rather depressed his spirits. There was a noble innocence of nature in him which looked at hypocrisy with a puzzled and incredulous astonishment. How a man could do so and be so was to him a problem at which his thoughts vainly labored. Not that he was in the least discouraged or hesitating in regard to his own course. When he had made up his mind to perform a duty, the question of success no more entered his thoughts than those of the granite boulder to which we have before compared him. When the time came for him to roll, he did roll with the whole force of his being;—where he was to land was not his concern.
Mildly and placidly he sat with his hands resting on his knees, while Mr. Zebedee and Mrs. Scudder compared notes respecting the relative prospects of corn, flax, and buckwheat, and thence passed to the doings of Congress and the last proclamation of General Washington, pausing once in a while, if, peradventure, the Doctor might take up the conversation. Still he sat dreamily eyeing the flies as they fizzed down the panes of the half-open window.
“I think,” said Mr. Zebedee, “the prospects of the Federal party were never brighter.”
The Doctor was a stanch Federalist, and generally warmed to this allurement; but it did not serve this time.
Suddenly drawing himself up, a light came into his blue eyes, and he said to Mr. Marvyn,—
“I’m thinking, Deacon, if it is wrong to keep back the wages of a servant till after the going down of the sun, what those are to do who keep them back all their lives.”
There was a way the Doctor had of hearing and seeing when he looked as if his soul were afar off, and bringing suddenly into present conversation some fragment of the past on which he had been leisurely hammering in the quiet chambers of his brain, which was sometimes quite startling.
This allusion to a passage of Scripture which Mr. Marvyn was reading when he came in, and which nobody supposed he had attended to, startled Mrs. Scudder, who thought, mentally, “Now for it!” and laid down her knitting-work, and eyed her cousin anxiously. Mrs. Marvyn and Mary, who had glided in and joined the circle, looked interested; and a slight flush rose and overspread the thin cheeks of Mr. Marvyn, and his blue eyes deepened a moment with a thoughtful shadow, as he looked inquiringly at the Doctor, who proceeded:—
“My mind labors with this subject of the enslaving of the Africans, Mr. Marvyn. We have just been declaring to the world that all men are born with an inalienable right to liberty. We have fought for it, and the Lord of Hosts has been with us; and can we stand before Him with our foot upon our brother’s neck?”
A generous, upright nature is always more sensitive to blame than another,—sensitive in proportion to the amount of its reverence for good,—and Mr. Marvyn’s face flushed, his eye kindled, and his compressed respiration showed how deeply the subject moved him. Mrs. Marvyn’s eyes turned on him an anxious look of inquiry. He answered, however, calmly:—
“Doctor, I have thought of the subject, myself. Mrs. Marvyn has lately been reading a pamphlet of Mr. Thomas Clarkson’s on the slave-trade, and she was saying to me only last night, that she did not see but the argument extended equally to holding slaves. One thing, I confess, stumbles me:—Was there not an express permission given to Israel to buy and hold slaves of old?”
“Doubtless,” said the Doctor; “but many permissions were given to them which were local and temporary; for if we hold them to apply to the human race, the Turks might quote the Bible for making slaves of us, if they could,—and the Algerines have the Scripture all on their side,—and our own blacks, at some future time, if they can get the power, might justify themselves in making slaves of us.”
“I assure you, Sir,” said Mr. Marvyn, “if I speak, it is not to excuse myself. But I am quite sure my servants do not desire liberty, and would not take it, if it were offered.”
“Call them in and try it,” said the Doctor. “If they refuse, it is their own matter.”
There was a gentle movement in the group at the directness of this personal application; but Mr. Marvyn replied, calmly,—
“Cato is up at the eight-acre lot, but you may call in Candace. My dear, call Candace, and let the Doctor put the question to her.”
Candace was at this moment sitting before the ample fireplace in the kitchen, with two iron kettles before her, nestled each in its bed of hickory coals, which gleamed out from their white ashes like sleepy, red eyes, opening and shutting. In one was coffee, which she was burning, stirring vigorously with a pudding-stick,—and in the other, puffy dough-nuts, in shapes of rings, hearts, and marvellous twists, which Candace had such a special proclivity for making, that Mrs. Marvyn’s table and closets never knew an intermission of their presence.
“Candace, the Doctor wishes to see you,” said Mrs. Marvyn.
“Bress his heart!” said Candace, looking up, perplexed. “Wants to see me, does he? Can’t nobody hab me till dis yer coffee’s done; a minnit’s a minnit in coffee;—but I’ll be in dereckly,” she added, in a patronizing tone. “Missis, you jes’ go ‘long in, an’ I’ll be dar dereckly.”
A few moments after, Candace joined the group in the sitting-room, having hastily tied a clean, white apron over her blue linsey working-dress, and donned the brilliant Madras which James had lately given her, and which she had a barbaric fashion of arranging so as to give to her head the air of a gigantic butterfly. She sunk a dutiful curtsy, and stood twirling her thumbs, while the Doctor surveyed her gravely.
“Candace,” said he, “do you think it right that the black race should be slaves to the white?”
The face and air of Candace presented a curious picture at this moment; a sort of rude sense of delicacy embarrassed her, and she turned a deprecating look, first on Mrs. Marvyn and then on her master.
“Don’t mind us, Candace,” said Mrs. Marvyn; “tell the Doctor the exact truth.”
Candace stood still a moment, and the spectators saw a deeper shadow roll over her sable face, like a cloud over a dark pool of water, and her immense person heaved with her labored breathing.
“Ef I must speak, I must,” she said. “No,—I neber did tink ’twas right. When Gineral Washington was here, I hearn ’em read de Declaration ob Independence and Bill o’ Rights; an’ I tole Cato den, says I, ’Ef dat ar’ true, you an’ I are as free as anybody.’ It stands to reason. Why, look at me,—I a’n’t a critter. I’s neider huffs nor horns. I’s a reasonable bein’,—a woman,—as much a woman as anybody,” she said, holding up her head with an air as majestic as a palm-tree;—“an’ Cato,—he’s a man, born free an’ equal, ef dar’s any truth in what you read,—dat’s all.”
“But, Candace, you’ve always been contented and happy with us, have you not?” said Mr. Marvyn.
“Yes, Mass’r,—I ha’n’t got nuffin to complain ob in dat matter. I couldn’t hab no better friends ‘n you an’ Missis.”
“Would you like your liberty, if you could get it, though?” said Mr. Marvyn, “Answer me honestly.”
“Why, to be sure I should! Who wouldn’t? Mind ye,” she said, earnestly raising her black, heavy hand, “’ta’n’t dat I want to go off, or want to shirk work; but I want to feel free. Dem dat isn’t free has nuffin to gib to nobody;—dey can’t show what dey would do.”
“Well, Candace, from this day you are free,” said Mr. Marvyn, solemnly.
Candace covered her face with both her fat hands, and shook and trembled, and, finally, throwing her apron over her head, made a desperate rush for the door, and threw herself down in the kitchen in a perfect tropical torrent of tears and sobs.
“You see,” said the Doctor, “what freedom is to every human creature. The blessing of the Lord will be on this deed, Mr. Marvyn. ’The steps of a just man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way.’”
At this moment, Candace reappeared at the door, her butterfly turban somewhat deranged with the violence of her prostration, giving a whimsical air to her portly person.
“I want ye all to know,” she said, with a clearing-up snuff, “dat it’s my will an’ pleasure to go right on doin’ my work jes’ de same; an’, Missis, please, I’ll allers put three eggs in de crullers, now; an’ I won’t turn de wash-basin down in de sink, but hang it jam-up on de nail; an’ I won’t pick up chips in a milkpan, ef I’m in ever so big a hurry;—I’ll do eberyting jes’ as ye tells me. Now you try me an’ see ef I won’t!”
Candace here alluded to some of the little private wilfulnesses which she had always obstinately cherished as reserved rights, in pursuing domestic matters with her mistress.
“I intend,” said Mr. Marvyn, “to make the same offer to your husband, when he returns from work to-night.”
“Laus, Mass’r,—why, Cato he’ll do jes’ as I do,—dere a’n’t no kind o’ need o’ askin’ him. ’Course he will.”
A smile passed round the circle, because between Candace and her husband there existed one of those whimsical contrasts which one sometimes sees in married life. Cato was a small-built, thin, softly-spoken negro, addicted to a gentle chronic cough; and, though a faithful and skilful servant, seemed, in relation to his better half, much like a hill of potatoes under a spreading apple-tree. Candace held to him with a vehement and patronizing fondness, so devoid of conjugal reverence as to excite the comments of her friends.
“You must remember, Candace,” said a good deacon to her one day, when she was ordering him about at a catechizing, “you ought to give honor to your husband; the wife is the weaker vessel.”
“I de weaker vessel?” said Candace, looking down from the tower of her ample corpulence on the small, quiet man whom she had been fledging with the ample folds of a worsted comforter, out of which his little head and shining bead-eyes looked, much like a blackbird in a nest,—“I de weaker vessel? Umph!”
A whole-woman’s-rights’ convention could not have expressed more in a day than was given in that single look and word. Candace considered a husband as a thing to be taken care of,—a rather inconsequent and somewhat troublesome species of pet, to be humored, nursed, fed, clothed, and guided in the way that he was to go,—an animal that was always losing off buttons, catching colds, wearing his best coat every day, and getting on his Sunday hat in a surreptitious manner for week-day occasions; but she often condescended to express it as her opinion that he was a blessing, and that she didn’t know what she should do, if it wasn’t for Cato. In fact, he seemed to supply her that which we are told is the great want in woman’s situation,—an object in life. She sometimes was heard expressing herself very energetically in disapprobation of the conduct of one of her sable friends, named Jinny Stiles, who, after being presented with her own freedom, worked several years to buy that of her husband, but became afterwards so disgusted with her acquisition that she declared she would “neber buy anoder nigger.”
“Now Jinny don’t know what she’s talkin’ about,” she would say. “S’pose he does cough and keep her awake nights, and take a little too much sometimes, a’n’t he better’n no husband at all? A body wouldn’t seem to hab nuffin to lib for, ef dey hadn’t an ole man to look arter. Men is nate’lly foolish about some tings,—but dey’s good deal better’n nuffin.”
And Candace, after this condescending remark, would lift off with one hand a brass kettle in which poor Cato might have been drowned, and fly across the kitchen with it as if it were a feather.
[To be continued.]
The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England. Collected and edited by James Spedding, M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge; Robert Leslie Ellis, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; and Douglas Denon Heath, Barrister-at-Law, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Vols. I.-VI. London: Longman & Co. 1858.
“For my name and memory,” said Bacon in his will, “I leave it to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the next ages.” Scarcely was he dead when the first portion of this legacy received some part of its fulfilment in the touching and often quoted words of Ben Jonson:—“My conceit of his person was never increased toward him by his place or honors; but I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, one of the greatest men and most worthy of admiration that had been in many ages. In his adversity, I ever prayed that God would give him strength; for greatness he could not want. Neither could I condole in a word or syllable for him, as knowing no accident could do harm to virtue, but rather help to make it manifest.” But it may fairly be doubted whether “the next ages” have done fitly by his memory, spite of the honor that has been indiscriminately lavished upon his name as a philosopher, and the mass of praise, for the most part ignorant, beneath which his works have been buried. The world of readers has been content to take Bacon’s greatness upon trust, or to form such imperfect idea of it as was to be got from acquaintance with his “Essays,” the only one of his works which has ever attained popularity. Even more thorough students have, for the most part, satisfied themselves with a general view of Bacon’s philosophy, dwelling on disconnected passages of ample thought or aphoristic wisdom, and rarely attempting to gain an insight into the real character of his system. Indeed, “the system of Lord Bacon” became a sort of cabalistic phrase. It meant anything and everything. It was like the English Constitution, venerable in authority and prescription, interpreted in contradictory methods, and never precisely defined. Few men undertook to study it with a zeal like that of Homer and his
In great part, this fact is the result of the condition in which Lord Bacon left his works, the manner of their composition, and their intrinsic defects. He did not publish them in any systematic order, but printed one after another, as it was written, or as extraneous circumstances might induce. Nor did he leave his system complete in any one treatise. His mind discursive, his imagination easily fired, he seized subject after subject and discussed each in a separate treatise, all with more or less reference to a general plan, but not embodied in any consecutive and harmonious development. The growth of his ideas, the changes of his views, as his life advanced, are manifest in the want of connection, as well as in the connection, of these various fragments. Dr. Rawley, his chaplain, says,—and it is a marvellous illustration of Bacon’s diligence and desire for perfection,—“I myself have seen, at the least, twelve copies of the ‘Instauration,’ revised year by year, one after another, and every year altered and amended in the frame thereof.”
Such, then, being the state of Bacon’s works at his death, much was left to the judgment of his editors, and, unfortunately, the labor of editing his books has, up to the present time, fallen into hands wanting in competence and discretion. It has consequently been a task of special difficulty to get from the ill-arranged mass of Bacon’s writings a satisfactory view of the essential elements of his philosophy and a just knowledge of his final opinions.
But the reproach of non-fulfilment of the trust committed to them will rest upon “the next ages” no longer; for the edition which is now in course of publication amply redeems the faults of those that have preceded it, and is such a one as Bacon himself might have approved. In the second book of the “Advancement of Learning,” in recounting “the works or acts of merit toward learning,” he includes among them “new editions of authors, with more correct impressions, more faithful translations, more profitable glosses, more diligent annotations, and the like.” In each of these respects the edition before us deserves the highest praise. The editors have engaged in their task as in a labor of love. It is the result of many years of study, and it exhibits the fruit of unwearied care, great
Far too much credit has been attributed to Bacon, in popular estimation, as the author of a system upon which the modern progress of science is based.[A] Whatever his system may have been, it is certain that it has had little direct influence upon the advance of knowledge. But, perhaps, too little credit has been given to Bacon as a man whose breadth and power of thought and amplitude of soul enabled a spirit that has at once stimulated its progress and elevated its disciples. That Bacon believed himself to have invented a system wholly new admits of no doubt; but it is doubtful whether he ever definitely arranged
[Footnote A: The tendency of scientific thought had been, for a considerable period before the time of Bacon, turned in the direction which he, perhaps, did more than any other single investigator to follow out and confirm. Leonardo da Vinci, the completest and most comprehensive genius of Modern Italy, had anticipated, by more than a century, several of the prominent features of the Baconian system. Too little of Leonardo’s scientific writings has been published to furnish material for a satisfactory determination of their importance in promoting the advance of knowledge,—but the coincidence of thought, in some passages of his writings, with that in some of Bacon’s weighty sentences, is remarkable. “I shall treat of this subject,” he says, in a passage published by Venturi, “but I shall first set forth certain experiments; it being my principle to cite experience first, and then to demonstrate why bodies are constrained to act in such or such a manner. This is the method to be observed in investigating phenomena of Nature. It is true that Nature begins with the reason and ends with experience; but no matter; the opposite way is to be taken. We must, as I have said, begin with experience, and by means of this discover the reason.”
Compare with this the two following passages from the “Novum Organum,”—the first being taken from the Ninety-ninth Axiom of the First Book. “Then only will there be good ground of hope for the further advance of knowledge, when there shall be received and gathered together into natural history a variety of experiments, which are of no use in themselves, but to discover causes and axioms.”—The next passage is the Twenty-sixth Axiom of the same Book;—“The conclusions of human reason, as ordinarily applied in matter of nature, I call, for the sake of distinction, Anticipations of Nature (as a thing rash or premature). That reason which is elicited from facts by a just and methodical process I call Interpretation of Nature.”
The first and famous axiom of the “Novum Organum” contains the phrase which Bacon constantly repeats,—“man being the interpreter of Nature.” Leonardo uses the same expression,—“li omini inventori e interpreti tra la natura e gli omini.” In another admirable passage of rebuke of the boastful and empty followers of old teachers, Leonardo says: “Though I might not cite authors as well as they, I shall cite a much greater and worthier thing, in citing experience, the teacher of their teachers” (Maestra di loro maestri). “And as for the overmuch credit,” says Bacon, “that hath been given unto authors in sciences, in making them dictators that their words should stand, and not counsellors to give advice, the damage is infinite that sciences have received thereby.”
Similar parallelisms of thought are to be found in some of Galileo’s sentences, when brought into comparison with Lord Bacon.]
[Footnote B: Article on Whately’s Edition of Bacon’s Essays. September, 1856.]
The cause of Bacon’s error in this regard, an error in spite of which his philosophical works still remain the crowded repositories of true wisdom, seems to have arisen, in considerable part, from a defect of imagination. Knowledge is to be viewed in two aspects: one, that of its relation to the finite capacities of the human mind; the other, its relation to the infinity of Nature, that is, to the infinity of the subjects of knowledge. Bacon regarded it chiefly from the first point of view,—and, so far as we are aware, there is nowhere in his works any recognition of the fact, that each advance in knowledge only opens new and previously unknown regions of what is yet to be known. He supposed that by his process Nature could be simplified to her few primary elements, and that from these all other knowledge was to be deduced. But, although her laws and elementary forms may be few, their mollifications, as affecting knowledge and consequently human power and interests, are unlimited. Moreover, in supposing that the discovery of Nature could be made certain, and that, by a proper collection of facts, the intellects of men might be brought upon a level of capacity for discovery,—that is, that the process of discovery could be reduced to a simple process of correct reasoning upon established facts,—Bacon omitted to take into account the essential part which the imagination plays in all discovery.
No discovery, properly so called, is the pure result of observation and induction. Maury takes the accumulated observations of fifty years, deduces from them the existence of certain prevailing winds and currents, and states the fact. It is not properly a discovery, although a collection of similar facts may lead to the knowledge of a general law. Newton sees an apple fall; his imagination, with one of the vastest leaps that human imagination ever made, connects its fall with the motion of the planets, and makes an immortal discovery. James Watt said, “Nature has her blind side.” True, but it is only the instinct of the imagination that discovers where the blind side lies. The tops of kettles had been dancing ever since kettles were first hung over fires, but no one caught the blind side of the fact till a Scotch boy saw it as he sat dreaming at his aunt’s fireside.
But if Bacon’s imagination was imperfect in some directions, it possessed in others a vision of the largest scope. No man ever saw more clearly or vindicated more nobly the dignity of knowledge, the capacity of the human mind, and the glory of God in the works of His hand. The impulse which he gave to thought is still gathering force, and many of the recommendations earnestly pressed in his works upon the attention of men are only now beginning to receive their recognition and accomplishment. When he sent a copy of the “Novum Organum” to Sir Henry Wotton, Wotton, in his letter of thanks, said, “Your Lordship hath done a great and everlasting benefit to the children of Nature, and to Nature herself in her utmost extent of latitude,”—and his eulogium had more truth than is common in contemporary compliments.
Great as a student of physical nature, Bacon was a master in the knowledge of human nature. Pope only chose the epithet which all the world had applied, when he wrote of the
“Words that wise Bacon or grave Raleigh spake.”
And nowhere is his wisdom more apparent than in the book of his “Essays.” The sixth volume of the edition before us contains, beside the “Essays,” the “History of King Henry VII.,” with other fragmentary histories, and the “De Sapienda Veterum,” with a translation, which, like the translations of the principal philosophical works in previous volumes, is executed with admirable spirit and appropriateness.
All these works give the same evidence of editorial ability and skill as those in the division of Philosophy. Mr. Spedding’s Preface to the “Henry VII.” is not only an interesting essay in itself, but an able and satisfactory vindication of Bacon’s general historic accuracy. Bacon’s view of the true office of history is very different from the theory which has lately prevailed to a considerable extent, and it would be well, perhaps, were its wisdom more considered. “It is the true office of history,” he says, (Advancement of Learning, Book II.,) “to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels; and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgment.” And to this he adds, with much pith, in the “De Augmentis,” II. 9,—“Licet enim Historia quaeque prudentior politicis praeceptis et monitis veluti impregnata sit, tamen scriptor ipse sibi obstetricari non debet.” Bacon wrote history according to his own rule, and proved its value by the practical exemplification which he gave of it. There are few better pieces of historic narrative in English than this “History of Henry VII.”
Special thanks are due to Mr. Spedding for having reprinted, in full, the first three editions of the “Essays,”—the three that were published by Bacon himself. The first appeared in 1597, and contained but ten essays; the second in 1612, when Bacon was in the height of prosperity, and contained thirty-eight; the third appeared in 1625, after his downfall, less than a year before his death, and contained fifty-eight essays. The three thus afford, as well by the successive additions of new essays as by the alterations which are made in the earlier, a most interesting exhibition of the direction of Bacon’s thought at different periods of his life, and the changes in his style. The comparison is one of very great interest, but more space is required to develop it than we have for the present at command. One fact only may be noted in passing,—that the essay on Adversity, which contains that most memorable and noble sentence, “Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, Adversity is the blessing of the New,” is one of those added in the last edition, after Bacon himself had experienced all the bitterness of adversity.
Mr. Spedding proposes, in the forthcoming volumes of the Occasional Works of Lord Bacon, to connect his speeches and letters with an explanatory narrative,—thus presenting, he says, “a biography the most copious, the most minute, and, by the very necessity of the case, the fairest that I can produce.” He promises “new matter which is neither little nor unimportant; but,” he adds, “more important than the new matter is the new aspect which (if I may judge of other minds by my own) will be imparted to the old matter by this manner of setting it forth.” We await this part of Mr. Spedding’s work with especial interest, for in it will unquestionably be afforded, for the first time, the means of forming a correct judgment of Bacon’s character, and just conclusions concerning those public actions of his which have hitherto stood in perplexing contradiction to his avowed principles, to the nobility of his views, to his religious professions, to the reverential love with which he was regarded by those who knew him best. It is not to be hoped that his life can be redeemed from stain; but it may be hoped that a true presentation of the grounds and bearings of his actions may relieve him from the name of “meanest of mankind,” and may show that his faults were rather those of his time than of his nature. We shall keep our readers informed of the progress of this invaluable edition, which should lead to the more faithful and general study of the works of him whom “all that were great and good loved and honored.”
A New History of the Conquest of Mexico. In which Las Casas’ Denunciations of the Popular Historians of that War are fully vindicated. By ROBERT ANDERSON WILSON, Counsellor at Law; Author of “Mexico and its Religion,” etc. Philadelphia: James Challen & Son. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co.
Before touching on the subject-matter of this book, we have something to say respecting the spirit in which it appears to have been written, the style of its execution, and the manner in which it has been introduced to the world. As it is avowedly an attempt to refute the positions taken up by Mr. Prescott in his “History of the Conquest of Mexico,” and to destroy the established reputation of that work, we are naturally led into a comparison between the two writers, that extends beyond the theories and ideas which they have respectively adopted and maintained. We cannot but remember, (and such remembrances awaken now other feelings besides mere respect and admiration,) that, when Prescott was entering upon his literary career, he labored in silence and retirement; that, in the prosecution of his researches, in the gradual formation of his views, and in the preparation of his work, he spared no labor and made no account of time; that, devoting himself to his chosen pursuit with the ardor of a scholar and a searcher after truth, he felt a modest self-reliance, and a just confidence in the utility of his labors, without
This is not the course which Mr. Robert Anderson Wilson has thought fit to take. An accidental visit to Mexico, for which he appears to consider himself entitled to no slight commendation, led him into some speculations on the origin and civilization of the Aztec race. Without waiting to inform himself of the ideas entertained on these subjects by other men, he hastened to put forth his own crude notions in a work entitled “Mexico and its Religion,” and twice reprinted by its enterprising publishers, with titles varied to suit what was supposed to be the popular taste. Still entertaining an aversion to laborious study, (for which, indeed, his previous education, as well as precarious health, appears to have disqualified him,) he announced his purpose to write a History of the Conquest of Mexico “from the American stand-point,” and issued what he himself called “a clap-trap advertisement,” for the purpose of enlisting the sympathies of a class in whom hatred of Romanism preponderates over knowledge and judgment. He had made some progress in his “History,” when he found that the ideas which he had supposed to be original in his own brain were old and trite. Being thus precluded from claiming for himself the merits of a discoverer, he has shown an eagerness, every way praiseworthy, to place the laurel on the brow to which he supposes it rightfully belongs. Accordingly, he presents to the world, as his master and pioneer, that renowned authority on the antiquities of New Spain, the Hon. Lewis Cass, who, it appears, had published an essay on the subject in the “North American Review.” While his work was passing through the press, Mr. Wilson wrote what he styles a “Chapter Preliminary,” but what we suppose would have been styled by persons who affect the native idiom when writing their own language, a “Preliminary Chapter.” This “Chapter Preliminary” he printed and circulated, in advance of the publication of his book; and though it contains not a single fact in support of his theory, nor even any clear statement of the theory itself, he was rewarded, as he expected, with puffs preliminary from a portion of the press, prompt to recognize the merit of a gentleman who had something to sell, and consequently something to be advertised. The “advance notices,”—so he calls them,—thus obtained, are made part of his book, and may there be read alike by discerning and undiscerning readers. With equal ingenuity
But we have omitted to make mention of the letters “preliminary” which he has printed with the “advance notices.” He indulges in frequent sneers at the “weight of authority” to which Mr. Prescott was accustomed to attach some importance in the discussion of a doubtful point. Nevertheless, in his extreme eagerness to obtain for his own opinions the sanction of an authoritative name, he publishes, as “Mr. Prescott’s estimate of his researches,” a letter which he had received from that gentleman, and, quite incapable of appreciating its quiet irony, evidently supposes that the historian of the Conquest of Mexico was prepared to retire from the field of his triumphs at the first blast of his assailant’s trumpet. Next comes a letter from a gentleman whom Mr. Wilson calls “Rousseau St. Hilaire, author of ‘The History of Spain,’ &c., and Professor of the Faculty of Letters in the University of Paris.” This, we suppose, is the same gentleman who is elsewhere mentioned in the book as Rousseau de St. Hilaire, and as Rosseau St. Hilaire. Now we might take issue with Mr. Wilson as to the existence of his correspondent. It would be easy to prove that no person bearing the name is connected with the University of Paris. Adopting the same line of argument by which our author endeavors to convert the old Spanish chronicler, Bernal Diaz, into a myth, we might contend that the Sorbonne—the college to which M. St. Hilaire is represented as belonging—has been almost as famous for its efforts to suppress truth and the free utterance of opinion as the Spanish Inquisition itself,—that it would not hesitate at any little invention or disguise for the furtherance of its objects,—and hence, that the professor in question is in all probability a “myth,” a mere “Rousseau’s Dream,” or rather, a “Wilson’s Dream of Rousseau.” But we disdain to have recourse to such evasions. We admit that there is in the University of Paris a professor “agrege a la faculte des lettres,”
Something more remains to be said of the use which our author has made of the learned professor of the Sorbonne. One page of his book Mr. Wilson devotes to “Acknowledgments.” These are few, but ponderous. “Acknowledgments are made” to the Hon. Lewis Cass, for having written—without any ulterior view, we imagine, to Mr. Wilson’s advantage—the before-mentioned article in the “North American Review”; to the late Mr. Gallatin, for the publication—also, we suspect, without any foresight of the tremendous uses to which it was to be turned—of a paper on the Mexican dialects; to “Aaron Erickson, Esq., of Rochester, N.Y., for the advantages he has afforded us in the prosecution of our arduous investigations”; to “Major Robert Wilson, now at Fort Riley, Kanzas,” for no particular reason expressed; and to “M. Rousseau de St. Hilaire, both for the flattering notice he has taken of our preliminary work” (why not, “work preliminary?”) “on Mexico, and for the advantages derived from his writings.” In regard to the “advantages” here mentioned, we are going to relieve Mr. Wilson’s mind. His obligations to M. St. Hilaire are really far lighter than he supposes. It is true that he has picked most of the little information he possesses in regard to Spanish history out of the professor’s work, and has strewed his pages with copious extracts from this recondite source. But, in making his acknowledgments, he might have gone still farther back. M. St. Hilaire is a laborious and enthusiastic scholar.
He has found time, in the midst of his professional duties, to write a really meritorious work on the history of Spain. But he had not the time, perhaps not the opportunity, for making a thorough examination of the original authorities. He was therefore obliged to take for his guide a modern author, who had made this history the peculiar field of his researches. The guide whom he selected, and he could have made no better choice, was William Hickling Prescott. So necessary was it for his purpose that the latter
But directly and knowingly, as we shall hereafter show, he has availed himself of Mr. Prescott’s labors to an extent which demanded the most ample “acknowledgment.” No such acknowledgment is made. But we beg to ask Mr. Wilson whether there were not other reasons why he should have spoken of this eminent writer, if not with deference, at least with respect. He himself informs us that “the most kindly relations” existed between them. If we are not misinformed, Mr. Wilson opened the correspondence by modestly requesting the loan of Mr. Prescott’s collection of works relating to Mexican history, for the purpose of enabling him to write a refutation of the latter’s History of the Conquest. That the replies which he received were courteous and kindly, we need hardly say. He was informed, that, although the constant use made of the collection by its possessor for the correction of his own work must prevent a full compliance with this request, yet any particular books which he might designate should be sent to him, and, if he were disposed to make a visit to Boston, the fullest opportunities should be granted him for the prosecution of his researches. This invitation Mr. Wilson did not think fit to accept. Books which were got in readiness for transmission to him he failed to send for. He had, in the mean time, discovered that “the American stand-point”
But it is not merely through “his non-acquaintance with Indian character” that Mr. Prescott was at fault. He was also, it appears, in a hopeless state of ignorance in regard to the political institutions of Spain. He knew nothing of the Spanish censorship, and its restrictions upon the freedom of the press. “He showed his faith,” writes Mr. Wilson, “by the expenditure of a fortune at the commencement of his enterprise, in the purchase of books and MSS. relating to ’America of the Spaniards.’” This last phrase is marked as quoted, but we believe it to be the author’s own. “These were the materials out of which he framed his two histories of the two aboriginal empires, Mexico and Peru. At the time these works were written he could not have had the remotest idea of the circumstances under which his Spanish authorities had been produced, or of the external pressure that gave them their peculiar form and character. He could hardly understand that peculiar organization of Spanish society through which one set of opinions might be uniformly expressed in public, while the intellectual classes in secret entertain entirely opposite ones. He acted throughout in the most perfect good faith; and if, on a subsequent scrutiny, his authorities have proved to be the fabulous creations of Spanish-Arabian fancy, he is not in fault.” (p. 104.)—We, also, desire to deal in “perfect good faith” with our readers, who will naturally inquire what new light has been thrown on the “peculiar organization of Spanish society,” and on the conditions which limit the expression of opinions in Spain, since Mr. Prescott made those subjects his especial study. We have looked carefully through Mr. Wilson’s book in the hope of being enabled
His compliment to Prescott’s “good faith” seems, after all, to have been premature. In other parts of his book we find remarks that seem in conflict with this admission. He makes several severe strictures on Mr. Prescott’s omission to give due credit to General Cass for his valuable contribution to Aztec history. “Mr. Prescott nowhere refers to the subject, as we think he ought to have done.” (p. 30.) “The ink was hardly dry on the leaves of the North American Quarterly which contained the exposure of these fictions, when another contributor to the same periodical, Mr. Prescott, began his history, founded on authors already denounced as fabulous by so high an authority as the Hon. Lewis Cass!” Think of the unparalleled audacity of the author of the “History of Ferdinand and Isabella” in actually exercising his own judgment with regard to the credibility of the Spanish chroniclers, after so high an authority had pronounced against them! However, we are not yet prepared to abandon our own belief in Mr. Prescott’s “good faith.” We really believe that he was guilty of no intentional disrespect towards the Hon. Lewis Cass. It is possible that he may never have seen the article in question. Contributors to periodicals are sometimes sadly neglectful of the most brilliant performances of their confreres. We doubt whether the “Autocrat” has ever read with proper attention any of our own modest, but not, we hope, inelegant effusions.
Mr. Wilson is not without a suspicion that the world may be slow to surrender its confidence in the veracity and accuracy of a writer whose works have already stood the test of many a severe and critical examination. When this idea breaks upon his mind, he manages to lash himself into a state of considerable excitement. He foresees the difficulty of convincing “those who take an array of great names for the foundation of their belief, and those who judge a work only by the elegance with which its periods are strung together. And, besides these two,”—meaning, we presume, not two men, but two classes of men,—“we have to encounter also the opposition of savans—men who live and judge the outside world through the medium of books alone. These hold as of no account, all but Greece and Rome,” [the proof-reader is requested not to disturb Mr. Wilson’s punctuation,]
But we interrupt the flow of our author’s bile by these irrelevant remarks. Let him have a full hearing: “Before closing this chapter, the status of our literature suggests an apology is necessary, for having opened it in conformity with the, now neglected, rules of history—that we should try and snatch something from the wreck of antiquity.” [We cheerfully offer a reward of one copy of the present number of the “Atlantic” to any person who will parse the last sentence, explain the punctuation of it, and interpret its meaning.] “In other countries, the standard of history has been steadily rising for centuries; but with us, it has been so lowered, as to sink every other qualification in the single one of turning faultless periods; and a gentleman possessing this, has been adjudged fully capable of purging the annals of Spain and her quondam colonies, from the mass of modern fable and forgery which now disfigure them. Incapable of submitting Cortez’ statement to the test, he assumes it to be true, even in those parts where it is impossible. Unable to detect the counterfeit in Diaz—he pronounces him the ‘child of nature,’ but does not on the testimony of this natural child reject the still more monstrous falsifier, Gomora; but adopts them both, according to the custom of novelists; and not the slightest objection is raised. Then descending lower and still lower; disregarding alike the warning of Lord Bacon ‘a credulous man is a deceiver,’ and of Tacitus fingunt simul creduntque—he rakes up even a devotee, Boturini, and makes him also an historic authority, without overtaxing public credulity; though this wretch, as we have seen, out-Munchausens Pietro himself, and as he may have surpassed every other man in Spain in drawing the long bow, was justly selected for historiographer,
But, though Prescott is the principal object of Mr. Wilson’s assaults, he does not fall, for he has not stood, alone. With the single exception of the Hon. Lewis Cass, every modern writer who has investigated the history and former condition of Spanish America, either with the help of books or of personal observation of the present state of that part of our continent, shares the same fate. Robertson, Dupaix, Stephens, Humboldt, are all objects of Mr. Wilson’s vituperation or contempt. To say that Alexander von Humboldt is probably the most learned man in Europe, and that Robert A. Wilson is undoubtedly one of the most ignorant men in America, would give but a slight notion of the contrast between them. Humboldt is not merely a man of science and a philosopher,—titles which the adopted Iroquois regards with natural scorn,—he has been also a great traveller, and knows almost every part of Spanish America from personal examination. Yet his claims to be considered as an authority on questions which no other living man is so competent to decide are disposed of by his shallow and conceited opponent in a single brief paragraph, which ends with a statement that “the only defect in his work is, that he started from false premises, and of course his conclusions amount to nothing.”
Robertson, however, is the especial butt of Mr. Wilson’s unwieldy sarcasms. Robertson, he tells us, was the “principal of the University High School of Edinburgh,”—an institution of which we do not remember ever to have heard before. He is especially indignant that “Robertson—a Presbyterian minister!” (the Italics and note of admiration are Mr. Wilson’s own) should have dared even to attempt to write a history of America. As Roman Catholics are also forbidden to venture on this ground, we should be glad to know the particular sect or sects to whose use it is to be appropriated. A principal cause of our author’s spite against Dr. Robertson appears to have been a statement made by the latter, that the Iroquois are cannibals. This allegation evidently touches a sensitive point.
Mr. Wilson so often returns to these “Samanca” papers, and appears to labor under so many delusions in regard to them, that, hopeless as the attempt may seem, we cannot help trying to let a little daylight into his mind. “Mr. Prescott,” he writes, “having obtained copies of the most important Simanca” [the reader must not be surprised at these little variations of orthography] “papers of Ximenes’ collection, supposes them a new discovery, of great value. Doubtless they are;” [then there could be no great harm in supposing it;] “his agents did not fail to represent them to him in the most exalted terms, to enhance the value of their services according to the Spanish custom.” Now we can assure Mr. Wilson that Mr. Prescott had not in his possession a copy of a single document placed in the Archives of Simancas (for so an excusable partiality for custom, and not any want of respect for our author, obliges us to spell this name) by Cardinal Ximenes. He will also, we trust, be glad to learn, that, for the documents relating to the Emperor Charles the Fifth which Mr. Prescott did receive from Simancas, he paid not a real beyond the established charge of the official copyists,—a charge which is the same in all cases, whatever may be the value of the originals,—the task of examining the collection and selecting the letters suitable for the purpose having been a labor of love on the part of the distinguished scholar by whom it was undertaken.
Mr. Wilson is animated by a fervent hatred against Cardinal Ximenes,—or “Jimines,” as he sometimes calls him. He terms him “a monster,” and “a wretch,” and is especially indignant at his having “founded the Samanca collection of papers.” “Any one,” he adds, “who will carefully examine them will see that hardly a single paper has been put into this collection that does not, in some way, reflect glory on the church, or show the royal approval of the Inquisition.” We cannot undertake to say what discoveries might be made by a person who should carefully examine the collection of papers at Simancas. A scholar on whom the antediluvian length of life necessary for such a labor had been bestowed might also be endowed with commensurate powers of intellect that might lead to the most astonishing results. Our own knowledge of the collection is limited to a very small portion of its contents,—a
“The monk Strada,” our author goes on to inform us, “must have consulted them” [the “Samanca papers”] “in the composition of his history of the Low Country Wars, though he does not call the papers by that name.” [We should hope not.] “The Glanville papers are not alone his authorities.” With regard to the “Glanville papers,” we cannot speak positively, never having seen them, or even heard of them. If an allusion is intended to the “State Papers of Cardinal Granvelle,” we admit that these were not Strada’s only authorities; in fact, they were not his authorities at all; he never had the opportunity of consulting them. “Robertson’s convent life of Charles V.,” Mr. Wilson continues, “is almost literally taken from Strada.” Now, if Strada followed the “Samanca papers,” and Robertson has followed Strada, how is it that these same papers have been the groundwork for a complete refutation of Robertson? Surely, when brought to light, they ought, on the contrary, to have confirmed his statements. The truth is, that Strada, who had access to no other manuscripts than those in possession of the Farnese family, never saw the “Samanca papers”; and Robertson, far from following Strada exclusively, relied much more on the authority of Sandoval and other Spanish writers.
But our readers will naturally inquire what these matters have to do with the Aztec civilization and the Conquest of Mexico. So far as we know, nothing at all. We have merely followed our Iroquois foe, and kept perseveringly upon his track in the jungle to which he has taken. Whatever course he may take, we are determined to follow him. He shall not elude us. Through all the windings of his eccentric route, through pathless forests, across rugged sierras, along the sides of nameless streams, we shall pursue his trail. On the summit of the great teocalli of Mexico, dedicated to the fearful deity, Huitzilopotchli, he shall be offered up as a sacrifice, according to the awful customs in which he affects to disbelieve. We are compelled, indeed, by want of space, to grant him a respite for a month. Our present notice must be regarded only as a parboiling “preliminary.” At the end of that time, with all due form and ceremony, we promise that the solemn rite shall be completed.
Bunsen’s Gott in der Geschichte. (God in History.) Zweite Theil. (Second Part.) Leipzig. 1858.
There is, probably, no philosophical author at the present day in Germany whose works are welcomed by so wide a circle of readers in America as those of Chevalier Bunsen. Though often more theoretical than exact in scholarship, and allowing his historical instincts to take the place of scientific conclusions, he not unfrequently anticipates thus the laborious efforts of scholars, while his peculiar suggestiveness of thought and his scope of view interest extremely the common student, and lend a charm to his works such as no other writer in the same field possesses. He has the art of making other men work for him, and, perhaps, has thus been tempted to write too much for his own fame.
The great service for which posterity will thank Chevalier Bunsen is, that, in an age of bigotry and of skepticism, he has especially represented the union of Philosophy and Christianity, and has shown that the freest historical criticism and the most open recognition of the moral principle through all faiths and races are harmonious with the most devout belief in the divine manifestation of Christ. This book, “God in History,” is written from his most advanced and religious stand-point, and seems to us the best fruit, thus far, of his studies. It is compact, consistent, and not marred by his usual defect,—a certain mysticism or indefiniteness of thought,—but is clear and philosophical to the close. It is not to be looked upon as a complete philosophical history, but rather as a suggestive and introductory treatise on that grandest of all themes, the Progress of the Instinct of God through Human History. His own definition of his subject is, that it is a history of the “Consciousness of God in Mankind”; but, as he unfolds his idea, it is evidently not always the consciousness, but the unconscious instinct of God, whose progress he is describing.
The first part of the present volume—the Third Book—is occupied with a brief, but exceedingly instructive investigation of the development of this instinct in the Aryans of Persia and of India; and in this inquiry the two prominent historical figures are Zoroaster and Buddha, or, as our author might have named them, the Moses and the Luther of the early Aryan religions,—the one the Lawgiver and the Founder of a pure monotheism in the place of a slavish belief in elementary powers, and the other the great Reformer of a corrupted faith in behalf of an oppressed people.
The illustrations which Bunsen gives of these two wonderful expressions of the instinct of God in the remote past, the religions of Zoroaster and Buddha, are exceedingly fresh and original. They are contained mostly in sacrificial and festal hymns and songs which have not hitherto been much known, even to scholars.
As an introduction to and historical preparation for these two great forms of belief, he describes also the instinct of Deity as it had developed itself among the Turanians, the Chinese, and the Egyptians.
The period embraced in the Third Book is about 2500 years, from the supposed epoch of Zoroaster (3000 B.C.) to that of Buddha (541 B.C.).
The Fourth Book treats of the instinct of God among the Greeks and Romans, “from the singer of the Iliad (900 B.C.) down to the Baruch of the Roman world, the prophet of the downfall of the Aryan Ante-Christian civilization,—Tacitus.” This God-consciousness is found first in the Grecian feeling of the Commonwealth,—the idea of a common good surpassing a personal good; then in the conception of the Epic, which assumes a political as well as a physical Kosmos, or order; then in the grand moral ideas lying at the basis of the Mythology,—the myths, for instance, of Prometheus, and the picture of Nemesis and the Fates. Next, the deep sense of God speaks out in Grecian Tragedy and the great works of Grecian Art; and in the highest degree, in the Philosophy which culminated in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
The Roman expression of these profound instincts is placed by Bunsen far below the Grecian. It is manifested especially in their idea of Law, and even in the doubts and despair of their leading thinkers in the time of the Emperors.
The closing portion of the volume terminates the history of the progress of the idea of God before Christianity, among the Aryan races, by a description of the religious instincts of the Teutonic tribes. In their respect for woman and for marriage, in their political commonwealths, in their worship of one God, and their belief in a moral Kosmos, Bunsen beholds the expression of the Divine idea within them, preparing for the more full development which is to come through the ideas and spirit of Christianity. The book closes fitly with the grand prophecy of the Voeluspa in the Scandinavian Edda.
We regret that want of space should prevent us from giving extracts from this most eloquent and philosophic work. Its glory is, that, breaking through the formulae of creeds and the external signs of religious faith, it has the courage to listen to the voice of God all along the devious course of human history,—hearing that mysterious tone, not alone in the chants of the Hebrews or the confessions of the Christians, but in every smallest utterance of truth, every syllable of unselfish patriotism, every groan of offended conscience, every myth springing from the moral sense, every song, every speech which would exalt the True, the Beautiful, and the Good over the selfish and false and base. In Bunsen’s philosophy, these, even more than all outward confession and ceremonial, are the true expression of the workings of the Divine Spirit in Human History.
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