Kitabı oxu: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 65, March, 1863»
CHRISTOPHER NORTH
Plutarch, when about to enter upon the crowded lives of Alexander and Caesar, declares his purpose and sets forth the true nature and province of biography in these words:—"It must be borne in mind that my design is not to write histories, but lives. And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men. Sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever. Therefore, as portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face, in which character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men, and while I endeavor by these to portray their lives, may be free to leave more weighty matters and great battles to be treated of by others."
That these general principles of biography are correct, and that Plutarch, by adhering to them, succeeded, beyond all others, in making his heroes realities, men of flesh and blood, whom we see and know like those about us, in whom we feel the warmest interest, and from whom we derive lessons of deep wisdom, as from our own experience,—all this could best be shown by the enduring popularity of his "Lives," and the seal of approval set upon them by critics of the most opposite schools. What a long array of names might be presented of those who have given their testimony to the wondrous fascination of this undying Greek!—names of the great and wise through many long centuries, men differing in age, country, religion, language, and occupation. For ages he has charmed youth, instructed manhood, and solaced graybeards. His heroes have become household words throughout the world. He has been equally familiar with court, with camp, and with cottage. He has been the companion of the soldier, the text-book of the philosopher, and the vade-mecum of kings and statesmen. And his name even now, after the lapse of so many generations, is fresher than ever.
Yet Lord Macaulay could not refrain from a sneer at Plutarch as a pedant who thought himself a great philosopher and a great politician. Pedant he may have been; philosopher and politician he may not have been; but he was, nevertheless, the prince of biographers. Macaulay has praised Boswell's "Life of Johnson" as the best biography ever written. But was not Boswell a pedant? Was he a philosopher? Macaulay himself has penned many biographies. Most of them are quite above the pedantry of small facts. Instead, they are crammed with deep philosophy, with abstractions, and with the balancing of antithetical qualities. They are bloodless frameworks, without life or humanity,—bundles of peculiarities skilfully grouped, and ticketed with such and such a name. No one sees a man within. As biographies they will not be remembered, but as instances of labored learning, of careful special pleading, and of brilliant rhetoric. Elsewhere, however, he has descended from philosophy, and not been above the pedantry of detail. And he has given us, in consequence, charming lives,—successful, in fact, just so far as he has followed in the footsteps of the old Greek. Yet who would for a moment compare his Pitt, his Goldsmith, or his William IV., as biography, with Plutarch's Alcibiades, or Cato the Censor? We remember the fact that Goldsmith sometimes wore a peach-blossom suit, but we see Cato in his toga.
Very many works have been written, purporting to be "The Life and Times" of this or that man. Where a man has occupied a large historic place, has been moulded by his times, and has moulded in turn the coming years, such works are well enough as history. As biography they are failures. The Times get the upper hand, and thrust down the Life. Without the Life, such works would be better, too, as history; for man and the world are two different things, and their respective provinces cannot, without confusion, be thrown into one. Now every leading man bears a twofold character. He is man, and something more: he is a power in history. Whatever concerns him as man,—his humanity, his individuality, his personal qualities, his character and inclinations, "the marks and indications of the soul," as Plutarch phrases it,—all this, and hardly more than this, is matter for biography, and for that alone. But so far as he is a representative man, standing for communities, for nations, for the world of his time,—so far as he is an historic force, making and solving, in some degree, large human problems,—so far as he is the organ chosen by destiny to aid in the development of his race,—just so far he is a maker of history, and therefore its proper subject, and its alone. Napoleon was not only a man, but he was Europe for some twenty years. Louis XIV was the Europe of half a century. There should be lives of such men, for they were akin to their fellows: histories, too, should be theirs, for they were allied to Nature, and fate, and law. They jested; and Biography, smiling, seized her tablets. They embodied a people; and Clio, pondering, opened the long scrolls of time.
All biography has been said to be eulogistic in its nature. This is well enough. But it is not well, when the author, high on daring stilts, overlooks the little matters just about him, and, rapidly running his eye over the wastes that stretch from Dan to Beersheba, prates of the fields that lie along the distant horizon. Nor is it well, when he forgets his hero, and writes himself,—when he constantly thrusts upon us philosophy, abstractions, and the like,—when he has a pet theory to sustain through thick and thin,—when narrative becomes disquisition, memoir is criticism, life is bloodless, and the man is a puppet whose strings he jerks freakishly. There may be something good in all this; but it is all quite out of place: it is simply not biography. The foundation of most biographical sins is, perhaps, ambition,—an ambition to do something more or something other than the subject demands, and to pitch the strain in too high a key. Hence we have usually found the memoirs of comparatively insignificant men to be better reading, and more fertile in suggestion, than those of what are called great men. Not that the real life, as he lived it, of a man of mediocrity has in itself more seeds of thought than that of a hero. Far otherwise. But his written life has often greater lessons of wisdom for us, precisely because it is generally found to give us more of the individual, and more of our common humanity,—which is the very thing we want. There is less of pretext to pour this one small drop into the broad ocean, and then treat us to a vague essay on salt-water. What is it, for instance, that gives to Southey's "Life of Nelson" its great excellence? There have been many other works on the same subject, larger, fuller, and more carefully studied. But these will perish, while that will be cherished by all the generations to come. It is because the author kept throughout precisely on a level with his subject. He was conscious, on every page, that he was writing of one man,—that nothing was trivial which could throw light on this man, and nothing important which did not tend directly to the same end. Nelson was made to speak, not only in his own words, but in the many little ways and actions which best show the stuff one is made of. There is no essay, nothing strictly didactic. Facts are given: inferences are left entirely with the reader. Few books are more wearisome than those which are thoroughly exhaustive, which point a moral and adorn a tale on every page. Imagination and thought must sit supine, despairing of new conquests. Their work has all been done before.
Christopher North—Heaven be praised!—was not an "historic force." He was a good many things, but not that. And so it was always pleasant to read him and about him. He was so completely vital and individual, that nothing that concerned him ever lacked in human interest. The world has known him for a long time, and has lost nothing by the acquaintance. Latterly it has come to know him better than before in his character of citizen, son, husband, and father; and it has come to the sage conclusion that even as a family-man he was not quite so bad, after all. It is a great relief to know at last that Christopher was throughout consistent,—that the child was father to the man. One of his first exploits was fishing with a bent pin. Another was to preach a little sermon on a naughty fish. The "application," though brief, was earnest. To the infant expounder, the subject of his discourse doubtless appeared in the guise of a piscatorial Cockney. After many other the like foreshadowings, and after draining dry his native village, he went, when twelve years of age, to Glasgow University. Professor Jardine, who then held the chair of Logic, was fully alive to the rare promise of his pupil, and said of him subsequently,—"He lived in my family during the whole course of his studies at Glasgow, and the general superintendence of his education was committed to me; and it is but justice to him to declare, that during my long experience I never had a pupil who discovered more genius, more ardor, or more active and persevering diligence." But his ardor was not limited to philosophy and the humanities; his powers required a larger field than the curriculum. He walked, ran, wrestled, boxed, boated, fished, wrote poetry, played the flute, danced, kept a careful diary, and read largely. Even at this early age, he felt the merit of the then unappreciated Wordsworth, and, on the appearance of the "Lyrical Ballads," wrote the author a letter expressive of his admiration.
In 1803, Wilson, now eighteen, was transferred to Oxford as a Gentleman Commoner of Magdalen. And surely never lighted on the Oxford orb so glorious a vision, or such a bewildering phenomenon. He was, indeed,
"Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno."
There, as elsewhere, his life was an extraordinary one. His immense vitality forced him to seek expression in every possible direction. The outlets which sufficed for ordinary souls were insignificant conduits for the great floods pent up within his breast; and he surged forth mightily at every point, carrying all before him. His tastes and sympathies were all-embracing. His creed and his practice were alike catholic. All was fish that came to his net. He sat at the feet of muscular Gamaliels, and campaigned with veterans of the classics. He hobnobbed with prize-fighters, and was the choice spirit in the ethereal feasts of poets. He was king of the ring, and facile princeps in the Greek chorus. He could "talk horse" with any jockey in the land; yet who like him could utter tender poetry and deep philosophy? He had no rival in following the hounds, or scouring the country in breakneck races; and none so careered over every field of learning. He angled in brooks and books, and landed many a stout prize. He would pick up here and there a "fly in amber," and add it to his stores. He was the easy victor in every foot-race, and took the Newdigate prize for poetry, in 1806. He burned the midnight oil, and looked through ruddy wine at the small hours chasing each other over the dial. For hours, almost whole days, he would sit silent at the helm of his boat on the Isis, his rapt eye peopling the vacant air with unutterable visions. He swam like a dolphin, rode like a Centaur, and De Quincey called him the best unprofessional male dancer he had ever seen. Three times he was vanquished by a huge shoemaker,—so the story goes,—champion of the "Town": at the fourth meeting, the Gentleman Commoner proved himself the better man, knocked his antagonist out of time, and gave him twenty pounds. Another professor of the manly art of self-defence, who had ventured to confront the young Titan, and was unexpectedly laid low, said in astonishment,—"You can be only one of the two: you are either Jack Wilson or the Devil." He proved himself to be the former, by not proclaiming, "Voe victis!" and by taking his prize of war to the nearest alehouse, and then and there filling him with porter. Sotheby said it was worth a journey from London to hear him translate a Greek chorus; and, at a later day, the brawny Cumberland men called him "a varra bad un to lick."
Never were such "constitutionals" known, even at old Oxford. He would wander away alone, sometimes for many days, tramping over the country leagues and leagues away, making the earth tremble with his heavy tread, and distancing everything with his long, untiring stride. Then, on his return, he would be the prince of good-fellows once more, and fascinate the merry revellers with the witchery of his tongue. Even when a boy, he had won a bet by walking six miles in two minutes less than an hour. He once dined in Grosvenor Square, and made his appearance at Oxford at an early hour the next morning, having walked the fifty-eight miles at a tremendous pace. In his vacations, he walked over all the Lake region of England, the North of Scotland, and the greater part of Wales. On finishing his course at Oxford, he went on foot to Edinburgh,—more than three hundred miles. He was equally remarkable as a leaper, surpassing all competitors. He once jumped across the Cherwell—twenty-three feet clear—with a run of only a few yards. This is, we believe, the greatest feat of the kind on record. General Washington, it is known, had great powers in this way; but the greatest distance ever leaped by him, if we remember right, was but twenty-one feet.
The many vagaries into which he was led, and the innumerable odd pranks he played, would be sufficient, in the case of any one else, to prove that he was not a reading man. But not so with Wilson. One of his contemporaries at Oxford thus described him:—"Wilson read hard, lived hard, but never ran into vulgar or vicious dissipation. He talked well, and loved to talk. Such gushes of poetic eloquence as I have heard from his lips,—I doubt whether Jeremy Taylor himself, could he speak as well as he wrote, could have kept up with him. Every one anticipated his doing well, whatever profession he might adopt, and when he left us, old Oxford seemed as if a shadow had fallen upon its beauty." Wilson himself confessed that he yielded, for a short time, to "unbridled dissipation," seeking solace for the agony he experienced from the conduct of his stern mother, who ruthlessly nipped in the bud his affection for a bonny lass at Dychmont. He might have used the very words of Gibbon, whose father nipped, in a similar way, his attachment for Mademoiselle Susan Curchod, afterward Madame Necker:—"After a painful struggle, I yielded to my fate: I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son; my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life." It is difficult to conceive of Gibbon's wound as a deep one, or of his struggle as painful. But Wilson, whose affections were far stronger, suffered much. He almost made up his mind to run away to Timbuctoo, with Mungo Park; and his deep gloom showed how the iron had entered his soul. But time and absence and new habits healed his wound, as well as Gibbon's, without a journey to Africa.
We mentioned above that Wilson carried off the Newdigate prize for the best poem, in 1806. His subject was, "Painting, Poetry, and Architecture." He professed, in general, to put a very low estimate on college prize-poems, and rated his own so low that he would not allow it to be published with his subsequent poems. But in the "Noctes Ambrosianae" for October, 1825, he was not above saying a good word in favor of these much-berated effusions, as follows:—
"North. It is the fashion to undervalue Oxford and Cambridge prize-poems; but it is a stupid fashion. Many of them are most beautiful. Heber's 'Palestine!' A flight, as upon angel's wing, over the Holy Land! How fine the opening!
[We omit the lines quoted,—the well-known beginning of the poem.]
"Tickler. More than one of Wrangham's prize-poems are excellent;
Richard's 'Aboriginal Brutus' is a powerful and picturesque performance;
Chinnery's 'Dying Gladiator' magnificent; and Milman's 'Apollo Belvedere' splendid, beautiful, and majestic.
"North. Macaulay and Praed have written very good prize-poems. These two young gentlemen ought to make a figure in the world."
Heber was a contemporary and friend of Wilson at Oxford; as was also Lockhart, among others. The distant See of Calcutta interrupted the intercourse of the former, in after-life, while Maga and party bound the latter still closer to his old college-friend. One of Wilson's college-mates has given an odd anecdote descriptive of his appearance at their social gatherings:—
"I shall never forget his figure, sitting with a long earthen pipe, a great tie-wig on. Those wigs had descended, I fancy, from the days of Addison, (who had been a member of our college,) and were worn by us all, (in order, I presume, to preserve our hair and dress, from tobacco-smoke,) when smoking commenced after supper; and a strange appearance we made in them."
Wilson left Oxford in 1807, after passing a highly creditable examination for his degree. His disappointed affections had so weighed upon him, that he had a nervous apprehension of being plucked,—which, however, turned out to be quite unnecessary. He was now twenty-two years of age, a man singularly favored both by Nature and by fortune,—possessed of almost everything which might seem to insure the fullest measure of health, happiness, success, and fame. Rarely, indeed, do the gods give so freely of their good gifts to a single mortal. His circumstances were easy: a fortune of some fifty thousand pounds having come to him from his father, who had died while his son was a mere boy. After visiting his mother at Edinburgh, and rambling largely here and there, he purchased the beautiful estate of Elleray on Lake Windermere, and there fixed his residence. These were the halcyon days of that noted region: the "Lakers," as they were called, were then in their glory. A rare coterie, indeed, it was that was gathered together along the banks of Windermere. Though they are now no more, yet is their memory so linked to these scenes that thousands of fond pilgrims still visit these placid waters to throw one glance upon the home of genius, the birthplace of great thoughts. Here Wilson was in his element. His soul feasted itself on the wondrous charms of Nature, and held high converse with the master-minds of literature. There was quite enough to satisfy the cravings even of his multiform spirit. He soon came to know, and to be on terms of greater or less intimacy with, Coleridge, Wordsworth, De Quincey, Southey, the celebrated Bishop Watson, of the See of Llandaff, Charles Lloyd, and others,—then the genii loci. It may be remembered that his admiration for Wordsworth was already of long standing, his boyish enthusiasm having led him, when at Glasgow, to send his tribute of praise to the author of the "Lyrical Ballads." Some fifteen to twenty years later,—in one of the numbers of the "Noctes,"—his admiration for the poet had temporarily cooled somewhat. Then was its aphelion, and soon it began to return once more toward its central sun. It must have been transient spleen which dictated such sentences as these:—
"Tickler. Wordsworth says that a great poet must be great in all things.
"North. Wordsworth often writes like an idiot; and never more so than when he said of Milton, 'His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart!' For it dwelt in tumult, and mischief, and rebellion. Wordsworth is, in all things, the reverse of Milton,—a good man, and a bad poet.
"Tickler. What! that Wordsworth whom Maga cries up as the Prince of Poets?
"North. Be it so: I must humor the fancies of some of my friends. But had that man been a great poet, he would have produced a deep and lasting impression on the mind of England; whereas his verses are becoming less and less known every day, and he is, in good truth, already one of the illustrious obscure …
"And yet, with his creed, what might not a great poet have done? That the language of poetry is but the language of strong human passion! … And what, pray, has he made out of this true and philosophical creed? A few ballads, (pretty, at the best,) two or three moral fables, some natural description of scenery, and half a dozen narratives of common distress or happiness. Not one single character has he created, not one incident, not one tragical catastrophe. He has thrown no light on man's estate here below; and Crabbe, with all his defects, stands immeasurably above Wordsworth as the Poet of the Poor … I confess that the 'Excursion' is the worst poem, of any character, in the English language. It contains about two hundred sonorous lines, some of which appear to be fine, even in the sense, as well as the sound. The remaining seven thousand three hundred are quite ineffectual. Then what labor the builder of that lofty rhyme must have undergone! It is, in its own way, a small Tower of Babel, and all built by a single man."
Christopher was surely in the dumps, when he wrote thus: he was soured by an Edinburgh study. After a run in the crisp air of the moors, he would never have written such atrabilious criticism of a poet whom he admired highly, for it was not honestly in the natural man. Neither his postulates nor his inferences are quite correct. It is incorrect to say that the poet's creed was a true one; that, with it, he might have been a great poet; but that, from not making the most of it, he was a bad one. De Quincey's position, we think, was the only true one: that Wordsworth's poetic creed was radically false,—a creed more honored in the breach than the observance,—a creed good on paper only; that its author, though professing, did in fact never follow it; that, with it, he could never have been a great poet; and that, without it, he was really great.
Wilson at Windermere, like Wilson at Oxford, was versatile, active, Titanic, mysterious, and fascinating. An immense energy and momentum marked the man; and a strange fitfulness, a lack of concentration, made the sum total of results far too small. There was power; but much of it was power wasted. He overflowed everywhere; his magnificent physique often got the better of him; his boundless animal spirits fairly ran riot with him; his poetic soul made him the fondest and closest of Nature's wooers; his buoyant health lent an untold luxury to the mere fact of existence; his huge muscles and tuneful nerves always hungered for action, and bulged and thrilled joyously when face to face with danger. He was exuberant, extravagant, enthusiastic, reckless, stupendous, fantastic. It is only by the cumulation of epithets that one can characterize a being so colossal in proportion, so many-sided in his phases, so manifold in operation. He was a brilliant of the first water, whose endless facets were forever gleaming, now here, now there, with a gorgeous, but irregular light. No man could tell where to look for the coming splendor. The glory dazzled all eyes, yet few saw their way the clearer by such fitful flashes.
Wilson, in some of his phases, reminds us often of a great glorified child, rejoicing in an eternal boyhood. He had the same impulse, restlessness, glee, zest, and abandon. All sport was serious work with him, and serious work was sport. No frolic ever came amiss, whatever its guise. He informed play with the earnestness of childhood and the spirituality of poesy. He could turn everything into a hook on which to hang a frolic. No dark care bestrode the horse behind this perennial youth. No haggard spectre, reflected from a turbid soul, sat moping in the prow of his boat, or kept step with him in the race. Like the Sun-god, he was buoyant and beautiful, careless, free, elastic, unfading. Years never cramped his bounding spirits, or dimmed the lustre of his soul. He was ever ready for prank and pastime, for freak and fun. Of all his loves at Elleray, boating was the chief. He was the Lord-High-Admiral of all the neighboring waters, and had a navy at his beck. He never wearied of the lake: whether she smiled or frowned on her devotee, he worshipped all the same. Time and season and weather were all alike to the sturdy skipper. One howling winter's night he was still at his post, when Billy Balmer brought tidings that "his master was wellnigh frozen to death, and had icicles a finger-length hanging from his hair and beard." Though there was storm without, the great child had his undying sunshine within.
In 1811, he married Miss Jane Penny, of Ambleside, described as the belle of that region,—a woman of rare beauty of mind and person, gentle, true, and loving. She was either a pedestrian by nature, or converted by the arguments of her husband; for, a few years after marriage, they took a long, leisurely stroll on foot among the Highlands, making some three hundred and fifty miles in seven weeks. The union of these two bright spirits was singularly happy and congenial,—a pleasing exception to the long list of mismated authors. Nought was known between them but the tenderest attachment and unwearied devotion to each other. For nearly forty years they were true lovers; and when death took her, a void was left which nothing could fill. The bereaved survivor mourned her sincerely for more than seventeen years,—never, for an instant, forgetting her, until his own summons came. Some one has related the following touching incident. "When Wilson first met his class, in the University, after his wife's death, he had to adjudicate on the comparative merits of various essays which had been sent in on competition for a prize. He bowed to his class, and, in as firm voice as he could command, apologized for not having examined the essays,—'for,' said he, 'I could not see to read them in the darkness of the shadow of the Valley of Death.' As he spoke, the tears rolled down his cheeks; he said no more, but waved his hand to his class, who stood up as he concluded and hurried out of the lecture-room."
The joys of Elleray were destined to be fleeting. The fortune of its master was melted away by the mismanagement of others, leaving him but a slender pittance. He bore his loss like a man, sorrowing, but not repining. The estate was given up, and a new home found with his mother, in Edinburgh. This was in 1815. Four years later, fortune had smiled on his cheerful labors, and given him the wherewithal to provide a home of his own for his wife and little ones,—the well-known house in Anne Street, which was for so many years the abode of domestic joys, the shrine of literature, the centre of friendship and hospitality. On his arrival at Edinburgh, Wilson, already famous, though young, finding fame an unsubstantial portion for a man with a family, looked about him for something more tangible, and determined to get his livelihood by the law. Kit North a lawyer, eating bread earned by legal sweat! The very idea seems comical enough. Yet it cannot be doubted, that, with his intellect, energy, eloquence, and capacity for work, he would, when driven to concentration and persistence by the spurs of necessity, duty, and affection, have run his race manfully, and reached the goal with the very foremost. Happily the question is an open one, for his affairs took another turn, which may have given Scotland one legal lord the less. For some time the briefless barrister diligently frequented the Edinburgh courts, on the lookout for business. If he had few cases, he had excellent company in another "limb," of his own kidney, John Gibson Lockhart. These two roystering pundits, having little to do, filled up their moments mainly with much fun, keeping their faculties on the alert for whatever might turn up. The thing that soon turned up was "Blackwood."
The "Edinburgh Review"—the first in the field of the modern politico-literary periodicals—commenced its career in 1802, under the leadership of Brougham, Sydney Smith, Jeffrey, and Horner, all stanch Whigs. At first, literature had the second place, while politics occupied the chief seat; though in later years their relative positions have been reversed. Then, the one great thing in view was to have an able party-organ, the fearless champion of a certain policy in matters of State. The Whigs must be glorified, and the Tories put down, at all events, whatever else might be done. The rejoicings of the former, and the discomfiture of the latter, soon bore witness to the ability and success of this new-fledged champion. But this one-sided state of things could not continue always. The Tories, too, must have a mouth-piece to testify of their devotion to "the good old cause," and silence the clamors of their opponents. Accordingly, in 1809, appeared the "Quarterly Review," with Gifford as editor, and Scott, Southey, Croker, Canning, and others, as chief contributors. Under the conduct of such men, it became at once an organ of great power, yet still not quite what was wanted. It did not seem to meet entirely the demands of the case. It had not the wit, pungency, and facility of its rival, and failed of securing so general a popularity. Its learning and gravity made it better suited to be the oracle of scholars than the organ of a party. Compared with its adversary across the Tweed, it was like a ponderous knight, cased in complete steel, attacking an agile, light-armed Moorish cavalier; or, to use Ben Jonson's illustration, like a Spanish great galleon opposed to the facile manoeuvres of a British man-of-war. For such an enemy there were needed other weapons. Well might the Tories say,—
"Non tali auxilio, nee defensoribus istis Tempos eget."
William Blackwood, the Prince-Street publisher, thought, that, to be successful, the war should be carried into Africa,—that the enemy must be met on his own ground with his own weapons. Hogg, whose weekly paper, "The Spy," had recently fallen through, also came to the conclusion that a sprightly monthly publication, of strong Tory proclivities, could not fail to do well. So, the times being ripe, Blackwood issued, in March, 1817, the first number of his new monthly, then called "The Edinburgh Monthly Magazine." Though himself a violent Tory, he, singularly enough, chose as his editors two Whigs,—Pringle the poet, and Cleghorn. Hogg lent his aid from the beginning. Scott, too, wrote now and then; and very soon Wilson made his appearance as "Eremus," contributing prose and verse. But the new magazine did not prove to be what was hoped,—a decided success. It was, in fact, quite flat and dull, having nothing life-like and characteristic. The radical error of attempting to build on such heterogeneous foundations was soon perceived. Vigor of action could proceed only from entire unanimity of sentiment. Soon a rupture arose between editors and publisher, and the former seceded with the list of subscribers, leaving the latter his own master. He at once decided to remodel his periodical entirely,—to make it a thorough-going partisan, and to infuse a new life and vigor by means of personality and wit. How well he succeeded we all know. Thenceforward, until his death in 1834, he acted as editor, and a better one it would be difficult to find. The new management went into effect in October, 1817, with the famous No. VII. The difference was apparent at once, not only in the ability and style, but also in the title of the periodical, which was then changed to the name which it has borne ever since. In this number appeared the first really distinctive article of the magazine,—the celebrated "Translation from an Ancient Chaldee Manuscript,"—an allegorical account, in quaint Scripture phrase, of Blackwood's quarrel with his editors, and a savage onslaught on the leading Whigs of Edinburgh. So great a hubbub arose immediately on the appearance of this diatribe that it was suppressed as soon as possible; and though the editor offered an earnest apology for its insertion, he was finally mulcted in costs in a large sum for libel. But the general effect was highly favorable to the new magazine. It gave it—what had been lacking before—notoriety and a recognized position, and made its existence no longer a matter of indifference. It was known that Hogg conceived the idea, and wrote some portion of the article. But few could believe, as was claimed by some, that all the sharp touches came from his hand. Hogg, it appears, wrote the first part; Wilson and Lockhart together contributed most of the remainder, amidst side-splitting guffaws, in a session in the house of the Dowager Wilson, in Queen Street; while the philosophic Sir William Hamilton, in adding his mite, was so moved by uproarious cachinnation that he fairly tumbled out of his chair.
"CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM YE WILL SERVE."
Yes, tyrants, you hate us, and fear while you hate
The self-ruling, chain-breaking, throne-shaking State!
The night-birds dread morning,—your instinct is true,—
The day-star of Freedom brings midnight for you!
Why plead with the deaf for the cause of mankind?
The owl hoots at noon that the eagle is blind!
"We ask not your reasons,—'t were wasting our time,—
Our life is a menace, our welfare a crime!
"We have battles to fight, we have foes to subdue,—
Time waits not for us, and we wait not for you!
The mower mows on, though the adder may writhe
And the copper-head coil round the blade of his scythe!
"No sides in this quarrel," your statesmen may urge,
Of school-house and wages with slave-pen and scourge!—
No sides in the quarrel! proclaim it as well
To the angels that fight with the legions of hell!
They kneel in God's temple, the North and the South,
With blood on each weapon and prayers in each mouth.
Whose cry shall be answered? Ye Heavens, attend
The lords of the lash as their voices ascend!
"O Lord, we are shaped in the image of Thee,—
Smite down the base millions that claim to be free,
And lend Thy strong arm to the soft-handed race
Who eat not their bread in the sweat of their face!"
So pleads the proud planter. What echoes are these?
The bay of his bloodhound is borne on the breeze,
And, lost in the shriek of his victim's despair,
His voice dies unheard.—Hear the Puritan's prayer!
"O Lord, that didst smother mankind in Thy flood,
The sun is as sackcloth, the moon is as blood,
The stars fall to earth as untimely are cast
The figs from the fig-tree that shakes in the blast!
"All nations, all tribes in whose nostrils is breath,
Stand gazing at Sin as she travails with Death!
Lord, strangle the monster that struggles to birth,
Or mock us no more with Thy 'Kingdom on Earth'!
"If Ammon and Moab must reign in the land
Thou gavest Thine Israel, fresh from Thy hand,
Call Baäl and Ashtaroth out of their graves
To be the new gods for the empire of slaves!"
Whose God will ye serve, O ye rulers of men?
Will ye build you new shrines in the slave-breeder's den?
Or bow with the children of light, as they call
On the Judge of the Earth and the Father of All?
Choose wisely, choose quickly, for time moves apace,—
Each day is an age in the life of our race!
Lord, lead them in love, ere they hasten in fear
From the fast-rising flood that shall girdle the sphere!
* * * * *
THE HORRORS OF SAN DOMINGO.2
CHAPTER V
INTRODUCTION OF SLAVERY—THE SLAVE-TRADE—AFRICAN TRIBES—THE CODE NOIR—THE MULATTOES
It will be necessary for the present to omit the story of the settlement and growth of the French Colony, and of the pernicious commercial restrictions which swelled the unhappy heritage of the island, in order that we may reach, in this and a succeeding article, the great points of interest connected with the Negro, his relation to the Colony and complicity with its final overthrow.
The next task essential to our plan is to trace the entrance of Negro Slavery into the French part of the island, to describe the victims, and the legislation which their case inspired.
The first French Company which undertook a regular trade with the west coast of Africa was an association of merchants of Dieppe, without authority or privileges. They settled a little island in the Senegal, which was called St. Louis. This property soon passed into the hands of a more formal association of Rouen merchants, who carried on the trade till 1664, the date of the establishment of the West-India Company, to which they were obliged to sell their privileges for one hundred and fifty thousand livres. This great Company managed its African business so badly, that it was withdrawn from their hands in 1673, and made over as a special interest to a Senegal Company. The trade, in palm-oil, ivory, etc., was principally with France, and negro slaves for the colonies do not yet appear in numbers to attract attention.3 But in 1679 this Company engaged with the Crown to deliver yearly, for a term of eight years, two thousand negroes, to be distributed among the French Antilles. This displaced a previous engagement, made in 1675, for the delivery of eight hundred negroes. The Company had also to furnish as many negroes for the galleys at Marseilles as His Majesty should find convenient. And the Crown offered a bounty of thirteen livres per head for every negro, to be paid in "pieces of India."
This is a famous phrase in the early annals of the slave-trade. Reckoning by "pieces" was customary in the transaction of business upon the coast of Africa. Merchandise, provisions, and presents to the native princes had their value thus expressed, as well as slaves. If the negro merchant asked ten pieces for a slave, the European trader offered his wares divided into ten portions, each portion being regarded as a "piece," without counting the parts which made it up. Thus, ten coarse blankets made one piece, a musket one piece, a keg of powder weighing ten pounds was one, a piece of East-India blue calico four pieces, ten copper kettles one piece, one piece of chintz two pieces, which made the ten for which the slave was exchangeable: and at length he became commercially known as a "piece of India." The bounty of thirteen livres was computed in France upon the wholesale value of the trinkets and notions which were used in trade with Africa.
The traffic by pieces is as old as the age of Herodotus;4 it was originally a dumb show of goods between two trading parties ignorant of each other's language, but at length it represented a transaction which the parties should have been ashamed to mention.
Although this second Senegal Company was protected by the rigid exclusion, under pain of fine and confiscation, of all other Frenchmen from the trade, it soon fell into debt and parted with its privilege to a third Company, and this in turn was restricted by the formation of a Guinea Company, so that it soon sold out to a fourth Senegal Company, which passed in 1709 into the hands of Rouen merchants who started a fifth; and this too was merged in the West-India Company which was formed in 1718. So little did the agriculture of the islands, overstocked with engagés, justify as yet the slave-traders in the losses and expenses which they incurred.
The Guinea Company was bound to import only one thousand yearly into all the French Antilles; but it did not flourish until it became an Asiento Company, when, during the War of Succession, a Bourbon mounted the throne of Spain. It was called Asiento because the Spanish Government let, or farmed by treaty, the privilege of supplying its colonies with slaves. The two principal articles of this contract, which was to expire in 1712, related to the number of negroes and the rent of the privilege. If the war continued, the French Company was bound to furnish Spain with thirty-eight thousand negroes during the ten years of the contract, but in case of peace, with forty-eight thousand. Each negro that the Company could procure was let to it for 33-1/3 piastres, in pieces of India. In consequence of this treaty, the ports of Chili and Peru, and those in the South Sea, from which all other nations were excluded, stood open to the French, who carried into them vast quantities of merchandise besides the slaves, and brought home great sums in coin and bars. The raw gold and silver alone which they imported for the year 1709 was reckoned at thirty millions of livres.
But at the Peace of Utrecht, Louis XIV., exhausted by an unprofitable war, relinquished his asiento to the English, who were eager enough to take it. It was for this advantage that Marlborough had been really fighting; at least, it was the only one of consequence that Blenheim and Malplaquet secured to his country.
The reign of Louis XV. commenced in 1715. By letters-patent which he issued on the 16th of January, 1716, he granted permission to all the merchants in his kingdom to engage in the African trade, provided their ships were fitted out only in the five ports of Rouen, Rochelle, Bordeaux, Nantes, and St. Malo; nine articles were specially framed to encourage the trade in slaves, as by the Peace of Utrecht all the South-Sea ports were closed to the French, and only their own colonies remained. France no longer made great sums of money by the trade in slaves, but her colonies began to thrive and demand a new species of labor. The poor white emigrants were exhausted and demoralized by an apprenticeship which had all the features of slavery, and by a climate which will not readily permit a white man to become naturalized even when he is free.
It is the opinion of some French anti-slavery writers that the engagés might have tilled the soil of Hayti to this day, if they had labored for themselves alone. This is doubtful; the white man can work in almost every region of the Southern States, but he cannot raise cotton and sugar upon those scorching plains. It is not essential for the support of an anti-slavery argument to suppose that he can. Nor is it of any consequence, so far as the question of free-labor is concerned, either to affirm or to deny that the white man can raise cotton in Georgia or sugar in Louisiana. The blacks themselves, bred to the soil and wonted to its products, will organize free-labor there, and not a white man need stir his pen or his hoe to solve the problem.
At first it seems as if the letters-patent of Louis XV. were inspired by some new doctrine of free-trade. And he did cherish the conviction that in the matter of the slave-trade it was preferable to a monopoly; but his motive sprang from the powerful competition of England and Holland, which the Guinea Company faced profitably only while the War of Succession secured to it the asiento. The convention of merchants which Louis XIV. called in Paris, during the year 1701, blamed monopolies in the address which it drew up, and declared freedom of trade to be more beneficial to the State; but this was partly because the Guinea Company arbitrarily fixed the price of slaves too high, and carried too few to the colonies.
So a free-trade in negroes became at last a national necessity. Various companies, however, continued to hold or to procure trading privileges, as the merchants were not restrained from engaging in commerce in such ways as they preferred. The Cape-Verde, the South-Sea, the Mississippi or Louisiana, and the San-Domingo Companies tried their fortunes still. But they were all displaced, and free-trade itself was swallowed up, by the union of all the French Antilles under the great West-India Company of 1716. This was hardly done before the Government discovered that the supply of negroes was again diminishing, partly because so extensive a company could not undertake the peculiar risks and expenses of a traffic in slaves. So in the matter of negroes alone trade was once more declared free in 1741, burdened only with a certain tax upon every slave imported.
At this time the cultivation of sugar alone in the principal French islands consumed all the slaves who could be procured. The cry for laborers was loud and exacting, for the French now made as much sugar as the English, and were naturally desirous that more negroes should surrender the sweets of liberty to increase its manufacture. In less than forty years the average annual export of French sugar had reached 80,000 hogsheads. In 1742 it was 122,541 hogsheads, each of 1200 pounds. The English islands brought into the market for the same year only 65,950 hogsheads, a decrease which the planters attributed to the freedom enjoyed by the French of carrying their crops directly to Spanish consumers without taking them first to France. But whatever may have been the reason, the French were determined to hold and develop the commercial advantage which this single product gained for them. The English might import as many slaves and lay fresh acres open to the culture, but the French sugar was discovered to be of a superior quality; that of San Domingo, in particular, was the best in the world.
The French planter took his slaves on credit, and sought to discharge his debt with the crops which they raised. This increased the consumption of negroes, and he was constantly in debt for fresh ones. To stimulate the production of sugar, the Government lifted half the entry-tax from each negro who was destined for that culture.
A table which follows shortly will present the exports for 1775 of the six chief products of San Domingo, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Cayenne. But we must say something first about the value of the livre.
In the Merovingian times, the right of coining money belonged to many churches and abbeys,—among others, to St. Martin de Tours. There were seigniorial and episcopal coins in France till the reign of Philip Augustus, who endeavored to reduce all the coin in his kingdom to a uniform type. But he was obliged still to respect the money of Tours, although he had acquired the old right of coinage that belonged to it. So that there was a livre of Paris and a livre of Tours, called livre tournois: the latter being worth five deniers less than the livre of Paris. The tendency of the Crown to absorb all the local moneys of France was not completely successful till the reign of Louis XIV., who abolished the Paris livre and made the livre tournois the money of account. The earliest livre was that of Charlemagne, the silver value of which is representable by eighty cents. It steadily depreciated, till it was worth in the reign of Louis XIV-about sixty cents, from which it fell rapidly to the epoch of the Revolution, when its value was only nineteen cents, and the franc took its place.
It is plain from this, that, when livres are spoken of during a period of a hundred years, their precise equivalent in English or American money cannot be stated,—still less their market-relations to all the necessaries of life. The reader can therefore procure from the statistics of these periods only an approximative idea of the values of crops and the wealth created by their passing into trade.
A great deal of the current specie of the island consisted of Spanish and Portuguese coin, introduced by illegal trade. A Spanish piastre gourde in 1776 was rated at 7-1/2 livres, and sometimes was worth 8-1/4 livres. A piastre gourde was a dollar. If we represent this dollar by one hundred cents, we can approach the value of the French livre, because the gourde passed in France for only 5-1/4 livres; that is, a livre had already fallen to the value of the present franc, or about nineteen cents.
The difference of value between Paris and the colony was the cause of great embarrassment. Projects for establishing an invariable money were often discussed, but never attempted. All foreign specie ought to have become merchandise in the colony, and to have passed according to its title and weight. Exchange of France with San Domingo was at 66-2/3: that is, 66 livres, 13 sols, 4 deniers tournois were worth a hundred livres in the Antilles. Deduct one-third from any sum to find the sum in livres tournois.
Pounds. Livres.
Sugar, {To France, 166,353,834 for 61,849,381
{Abroad, 104,099,866 " 38,703,720
Coffee, {To France, 61,991,699 " 29,421,039
{Abroad, 50,058,246 " 23,757,464
Indigo, {To France, 2,067,498 " 17,573,733
{Abroad, 1,130,638 " 9,610,423
Cacao, {To France, 1,562,027 " 1,093,419
{Abroad, 794,275 " 555,992
Roucou,5 {To France, 352,216 " 220,369
{Abroad, 153,178 " 95,838
Cotton, {To France, 3,407,157 " 11,017,892
{Abroad, 102,011 " 255,027
This table, with its alluring figures, that seem to glean gratefully after the steps of labor, is the negro's manifesto of the French slave-trade. The surprising totals betray the sudden development of that iniquity under the stimulus of national ambition. The slave expresses his misery in the ciphers of luxury. The single article of sugar, which lent a new nourishment to the daily food of every country, sweetened the child's pap, the invalid's posset, and the drinks of rich and poor, yielded its property to medicine, made the nauseous palatable, grew white and frosted in curious confections, and by simply coming into use stimulated the trades and inventions of a world, was the slave's insinuation of the bitterness of his condition. Out of the eaten came forth meat, and out of the bitter sweetness.
In 1701, Western San Domingo had 19,000 negroes: in 1777, a moderate estimate gives 300,000, not including 50,000 children under fourteen years of age,—and in the other French colonial possessions 500,000. In the year 1785, sixty-five slavers brought to San Domingo 21,662 negroes, who were sold for 43,236,216 livres; and 32,990 were landed in the smaller French islands. In 1786, the value of the negroes imported was estimated at 65,891,395 livres, and the average price of a negro at that time was 1997 livres.
But we must recollect that these figures represent only living negroes. A yearly percentage of dead must be added, to complete the number taken from the coast of Africa. The estimate was five per cent, to cover the unavoidable losses incurred in a rapid and healthy passage; but such passages were a small proportion of the whole number annually made, and the mortality was irregular. It was sometimes frightful; a long calm was one long agony: asphyxia, bloody flux, delirium and suicide, and epidemics swept between the narrow decks, as fatally, but more mercifully than the kidnappers who tore these people from their native fields. The shark was their sexton, and the gleam of his white belly piloted the slaver in his regular track across the Atlantic. What need to revive the accounts of the horrors of the middle passage? We know from John Newton and other Englishmen what a current of misery swept in the Liverpool slavers into the western seas. The story of French slave-trading is the same. I can find but one difference in favor of the French slaver, that he took the shackles from his cargo after it had been a day or two at sea. The lust for procuring the maximum of victims, who must be delivered in a minimum of time and at the least expense, could not dally with schemes to temper their suffering, or to make avarice obedient to common sense. It was a transaction incapable of being tempered. One might as well expect to ameliorate the act of murder. Nay, swift murder would have been affectionate, compared with this robbery of life.
Nor is the consumption of negroes by the sea-voyage the only item suggested by the annual number actually landed. We should have to include all the people maimed and killed in the predatory excursions of native chiefs or Christian kidnappers to procure their cargoes. A village was not always surprised without resistance. The most barbarous tribes would defend their liberty. We can never know the numbers slain in wars which were deliberately undertaken to stock the holds of slavers.
Nor shall we ever know how many victims dropped out of the ruthless caravan, exhausted by thirst and forced marches, on the routes sometimes of three hundred leagues from the interior to the sea. They were usually divided into files containing each thirty or forty slaves, who were fastened together by poles of heavy wood, nine feet long, which terminated in a padlocked fork around the neck. When the caravan made a halt, one end of the pole was unfastened and dropped upon the ground. When it dropped, the slave was anchored; and at night his arm was tied to the end of the pole which he carried, so that a whole file was hobbled during sleep. If any one became too enfeebled to preserve his place, the brutal keepers transferred him to the swifter voracity of the hyena, who scented the wake of the caravan across the waste to the sea's margin, where the shark took up the trail.
The census of the slaves in San Domingo was annually taken upon the capitation-tax which each planter had to pay; thus the children, and negroes above forty-five years of age, escaped counting. But in 1789, Schoelcher says that the census declared five hundred thousand slaves; that is, in twelve years the increase had been two hundred thousand. How many negroes deported from Africa do these figures represent! what number who died soon after landing, too feeble and diseased to become acclimated!
Here is the prospectus of an expedition to the coast of Guinea in 1782 for the purpose of landing seven hundred slaves in the Antilles. They were shipped in two vessels, one of six hundred tons, the other a small corvette.
Outfit of large vessel, 150,000 livres
" " corvette, 50,000 "
Purchase of 700 negroes at 300 livres per head, 210,000 "
Insurance upon the passage at 15 per cent., 61,500 "
" " " premiums at 15 per cent., 9,225 "
––
Total cost of the passage, 480,725 "
The passage was a very prosperous one: only 35 negroes spoiled, or 5 per cent, of the whole number. The remaining 665 were sold in San Domingo at an average price of 2,000 livres, making 1,330,000 "
Deduct commissions of ships' officers and correspondents in West Indies, at 11-1/2 per cent 152,950 "
––
1,177,050 "
Deduct expenses in West Indies, 17,050 "
––
1,160,000 "
Deduct exchange, freight, and insurance upon return passage of the vessels, 20 per cent., 232,000 "
––
928,000 "
Deduct crews' wages for 10 months, reckoning the length of the voyage at 13 months, 55,000 "
––
873,000 "
Add value of returned vessels, 90,000 "
––
963,000 "
Deduct original cost of the whole, 480,725 "
––
The profit remains, 100 per cent., 482,275 "
Two hundred and seventy-four slavers entered the ports of San Domingo, from 1767 to 1774, bringing 79,000 negroes. One-third of these perished from various causes, including the cold of the mountains and the unhealthiness of the coffee-plantations, so that only 52,667 remained. These could not naturally increase, for the mortality was nearly double the number of births, and the negroes had few children during the first years after their arrival. Only one birth was reckoned to thirty slaves. There was always a great preponderance of males, because they could bear the miseries of the passage better than the women, and were worth more upon landing. Include also the effects of forced labor, which reduced the average duration of a slave's life to fifteen years, and carried off yearly one-fifteenth of the whole number, and the reason for the slaver's profits and for his unscrupulous activity become clear.
Out of the sugar, thus clarified with blood, the glittering frosted-work of colonial splendor rose. A few great planters debauched the housekeeping of the whole island. Beneath were debts, distrust, shiftlessness, the rapacity of imported officials, the discontent of resident planters with the customs of the mother-country, the indifference of absentees, the cruel rage for making the most and the best sugar in the world, regardless of the costly lives which the mills caught and crushed out with the canes. Truly, it was sweet as honey in the mouth, and suddenly became bitter as wormwood in the belly.
Let us glance at the people who were thus violently torn from the climate, habits, diet, and customs which created their natural and congenial soil, from their mother-tongues, their native loves and hatreds, from the insignificant, half-barbarous life, which certainly poisoned not the life-blood of a single Christian, though it sweetened not his tea. What bitterness has crept into the great heart of Mr. Carlyle, which beats to shatter the affectations and hypocrisies of a generation, and to summon a civilized world to the worship of righteousness and truth! Is this a Guinea trader or a prophet who is angry when Quashee prefers his pumpkins and millet, reared without the hot guano of the lash, and who will not accept the reduction of a bale of cotton or a tierce of sugar, though Church and State be disinfected of slavery?6 It is a drop of planter's gall which the sham-hater shakes testily from his corroded pen. How far the effluvia of the slave-ship will be wafted, into what strange latitudes of temperance and sturdy independence, even to the privacy of solemn and high-minded thought! A nation can pass through epochs of the black-death, and recover and improve its average health; but does a people ever completely rally from this blackest death of all?
The Guinea trader brought to San Domingo in the course of eighty years representatives of almost every tribe upon the west coast of Africa and of its interior for hundreds of miles. Many who were thus brought were known only by the names of their obscure neighborhoods; they mingled their shade of color and of savage custom with the blood of a new Creole nation of slaves. With these unwilling emigrants the vast areas of Africa ran together into the narrow plains at the end of a small island; affinity and difference were alike obedient to the whip of the overseer, whose law was profit, and whose method cruelty, in making this strange people grow.
When a great continent has been thus ransacked to stock a little farm, the qualities which meet are so various, and present such lively contrasts, that the term African loses all its application. From the Mandingo, the Foulah, the Jolof, through the Felatahs, the Eboes, the Mokos, the Feloups, the Coromantines, the Bissagos, all the sullen and degraded tribes of the marshy districts and islands of the Slave Coast, and inland to the Shangallas, who border upon Southwestern Abyssinia, the characters are as distinct as the profiles or the colors. The physical qualities of all these people, their capacity for labor, their religious tendencies and inventive skill, their temperaments and diets, might be constructed into a sliding scale, starting with a Mandingo, or a Foulah such as Ira Aldridge, and running to earth at length in a Papel.
The Mandingoes of the most cultivated type seldom found their way to the West Indies. But if ever slave became noticeable for his temperate and laborious habits, a certain enterprise and self-subsistence, a cleanly, regular, and polished way, perhaps keeping his master's accounts, or those of his own private ventures, in Arabic, and mindful of his future, he was found to be a Mandingo. Their States are on the Senegal; Arabic is not their language, but they are zealous Mohammedans, and have schools in which the children learn the Koran. The men are merchants and agriculturists; they control the trade over a great extent of country, and the religion also, for the Koran is among the wares they carry, and they impose at once the whole form of their social condition. These Northern African nations have been subjected to Arab and Moorish influence, and they make it plain that great movements have taken place in regions which are generally supposed to be sunk in savage quiescence. The Mandingoes, notwithstanding a shade of yellow in the complexion, are still negroes, that is, they are an aboriginal people, improved by contact with Islamism, and capable of self-development afterwards; but the Moors never ruled them, nor mingled with their blood. Their features are African, in the popular sense of that word, without one Semitic trace. Awakened intelligence beams through frank and pleasing countenances, and lifts, without effacing, the primitive type. Undoubtedly, their ancestors sprang into being on sites where an improved posterity reside. But what a history lies between the Fetichism which is the mental form of African religious sentiment, and the worship of one God without image or symbol!
In the administration of justice, some classes of their criminals are sold into slavery, and occasionally a Mandingo would be kidnapped. But there are many Mandingoes who are still pagans, and know nothing of Arabic or commerce, yet who have the excellences of the dominant tribes: these were found in the gangs of the slave-merchant.
So were the Jolofs, handsome, black as jet, with features more regular than the Mandingoes, almost European, excepting the lips: a nonchalant air, very warlike upon occasion, but not disposed to labor. They have magistrates, and some forms for the administration of justice, but a civilization less developed than the Mandingo, in consequence of early contact with Christians. It is said that the slave-traders taught them to lie and steal, and to sell each other, whenever they could not supply a sufficient number of their neighbors, the simple and pastoral Serreres.
The Foulahs live upon the elevated plateaus of Senegambia and around the sources of the Rio Grande. The Mandingoes introduced the Koran among them. French writers represent them as being capable of sustained labor; they cultivate carefully the millet, wheat, cotton, tobacco, and lentils, and have numerous herds. Their mutton is famous, and their oxen are very fat. The Foulahs are mild and affable, full of esprit, fond of hunting and music; they shun brandy, and like sweet drinks. It is not difficult to govern them, as they unite good sense to quiet manners, and have an instinct for propriety. Their horror of slavery is so great, that, if one of them is condemned to be sold, all the neighbors club together to pay his forfeit or purchase a ransom; so that few of them were found in the slave-ships, unless seized in the fields, or carried off from the villages by night.
They have mechanics who work in iron and silver, leather and wood; they build good houses, and live in them cleanly and respectable. The Foulahs show, quite as decidedly as the Mandingoes, that great passions and interests have given to these parts of Africa a history and developed stocks of men. When the Foulahs are compared with the wandering Felatahs, from whom they came, who speak the same language and wear the same external characters, it will be seen how Nature has yearned for her children in these unknown regions, and set herself, for their sakes, great stints of work, in that motherly ambition to bring them forward in the world. Yes,—thought the Guinea trader,—these skilful Foulahs are Nature's best gifts to man.
But the desire of enfranchising children was so great that the colonists evaded all the regulations, which multiplied yearly, by taking their slaves to France, where they became free as soon as their feet pressed the soil. The only measure which the Government could devise to meet this evasion was to forbid all men of color to contract marriages in France.
In 1787 the free persons of color in San Domingo numbered 19,632. In 1790 their numbers were 25,000.
In 1681 the white inhabitants of San Domingo numbered four thousand; but in 1790, notwithstanding a constant tide of emigration from Europe, they numbered only thirty thousand.
The number of slaves at the same time was about four hundred thousand, a number which represents the violent removal of several millions of black men from Africa: some writers not anti-slavery reckon this tremendous crime of the white man at ten millions!
What a climate, and what a system, in which only the mulatto thrives!
* * * * *
Thus far we have traced the causes and elements, of Nature, race, and policy, the passions and peculiarities of many kinds of men, which culminated at length, in no fair forms of humanity nor beneficent institutions, but in the foremost sugar-plantation of the world, whose cane-rows were planted and nourished by the first of crimes, whose juice was expressed by over-hasty avarice and petulant ambition that could not be satisfied unless the crime preserved features as colossal as the passion of the hour.
We are now in a condition to perceive that the Horrors of San Domingo were those of suicide. Bloody licentiousness lays violent hands upon its life. Its weaknesses were full of fatal vigor, lust poisoned the humanity which it inspired, the soil of the buccaneer could raise nothing which was not exuberant with vengeance. Slave-Insurrection was a mere accidental episode in the closing scenes of this bad and blundering career.
* * * * *
A LONDON SUBURB
One of our English summers looks, in the retrospect, as if it had been patched with more frequent sunshine than the sky of England ordinarily affords; but I believe that it may be only a moral effect,—a "light that never was on sea nor land,"—caused by our having found a particularly delightful abode in the neighborhood of London. In order to enjoy it, however, I was compelled to solve the problem of living in two places at once,—an impossibility which I so far accomplished as to vanish, at frequent intervals, out of men's sight and knowledge on one side of England, and take my place in a circle of familiar faces on the other, so quietly that I seemed to have been there all along. It was the easier to get accustomed to our new residence, because it was not only rich in all the material properties of a home, but had also the home-like atmosphere, the household element, which is of too intangible a character to be let even with the most thoroughly furnished lodging-house. A friend had given us his suburban residence, with all its conveniences, elegancies, and snuggeries,—its drawing-rooms and library, still warm and bright with the recollection of the genial presences that we had known there,—its closets, chambers, kitchen, and even its wine-cellar, if we could have availed ourselves of so dear and delicate a trust,—its lawn and cozy garden-nooks, and whatever else makes up the multitudinous idea of an English home,—he had transferred it all to us, pilgrims and dusty wayfarers, that we might rest and take our case during his summer's absence on the Continent. We had long been dwelling in tents, as it were, and morally shivering by hearths which, heap the bituminous coal upon them as we might, no blaze could render cheerful. I remember, to this day, the dreary feeling with which I sat by our first English fireside, and watched the chill and rainy twilight of an autumn day darkening down upon the garden; while the portrait of the preceding occupant of the house (evidently a most unamiable personage in his lifetime) scowled inhospitably from above the mantel-piece, as if indignant that an American should try to make himself at home there. Possibly it may appease his sulky shade to know that I quitted his abode as much a stranger as I entered it. But now, at last, we were in a genuine British home, where refined and warm-hearted people had just been living their daily life, and had left us a summer's inheritance of slowly ripened days, such as a stranger's hasty opportunities so seldom permit him to enjoy.
Within so trifling a distance of the central spot of all the world, (which, as Americans have at present no centre of their own, we may allow to be somewhere in the vicinity, we will say, of St. Paul's Cathedral,) it might have seemed natural that I should be tossed about by the turbulence of the vast London-whirlpool. But I had drifted into a still eddy, where conflicting movements made a repose, and, wearied with a good deal of uncongenial activity, I found the quiet of my temporary haven more attractive than anything that the great town could offer. I already knew London well; that is to say, I had long ago satisfied (so far as it was capable of satisfaction) that mysterious yearning—the magnetism of millions of hearts operating upon one—which impels every man's individuality to mingle itself with the immensest mass of human life within his scope. Day after day, at an earlier period, I had trodden the thronged thoroughfares, the broad, lonely squares, the lanes, alleys, and strange labyrinthine courts, the parks, the gardens and inclosures of ancient studious societies, so retired and silent amid the city-uproar, the markets, the foggy streets along the river-side, the bridges,—I had sought all parts of the metropolis, in short, with an unweariable and indiscriminating curiosity; until few of the native inhabitants, I fancy, had turned so many of its corners as myself. These aimless wanderings (in which my prime purpose and achievement were to lose my way, and so to find it the more surely) had brought me, at one time or another, to the sight and actual presence of almost all the objects and renowned localities that I had read about, and which had made London the dream-city of my youth. I had found it better than my dream; for there is nothing else in life comparable (in that species of enjoyment, I mean) to the thick, heavy, oppressive, sombre delight which an American is sensible of, hardly knowing whether to call it a pleasure or a pain, in the atmosphere of London. The result was, that I acquired a home-feeling there, as nowhere else in the world,—though afterwards I came to have a somewhat similar sentiment in regard to Rome; and as long as either of those two great cities shall exist, the cities of the Past and of the Present, a man's native soil may crumble beneath his feet without leaving him altogether homeless upon earth.
Thus, having once fully yielded to its influence, I was in a manner free of the city, and could approach or keep away from it as I pleased. Hence it happened, that, living within a quarter of an hour's rush of the London Bridge Terminus, I was oftener tempted to spend a whole summer-day in our garden than to seek anything new or old, wonderful or commonplace, beyond its precincts. It was a delightful garden, of no great extent, but comprising a good many facilities for repose and enjoyment, such as arbors and garden-seats, shrubbery, flower-beds, rose-bushes in a profusion of bloom, pinks, poppies, geraniums, sweet-peas, and a variety of other scarlet, yellow, blue, and purple blossoms, which I did not trouble myself to recognize individually, yet had always a vague sense of their beauty about me. The dim sky of England has a most happy effect on the coloring of flowers, blending richness with delicacy in the same texture; but in this garden, as everywhere else, the exuberance of English verdure had a greater charm than any tropical splendor or diversity of hue. The hunger for natural beauty might be satisfied with grass and green leaves forever. Conscious of the triumph of England in this respect; and loyally anxious for the credit of my own country, it gratified me to observe what trouble and pains the English gardeners are fain to throw away in producing a few sour plums and abortive pears and apples,—as, for example, in this very garden, where a row of unhappy trees were spread out perfectly flat against a brick wall, looking as if impaled alive, or crucified, with a cruel and unattainable purpose of compelling them to produce rich fruit by torture. For my part, I never ate an English fruit, raised in the open air, that could compare in flavor with a Yankee turnip.
The garden included that prime feature of English domestic scenery, a lawn. It had been levelled, carefully shorn, and converted into a bowling-green, on which we sometimes essayed to practise the time-honored game of bowls, most unskilfully, yet not without a perception that it involves a very pleasant mixture of exercise and ease, as is the case with most of the old English pastimes. Our little domain was shut in by the house on one side, and in other directions by a hedge-fence and a brick wall, which last was concealed or softened by shrubbery and the impaled fruit-trees already mentioned. Over all the outer region, beyond our immediate precincts, there was an abundance of foliage, tossed aloft from the near or distant trees with which that agreeable suburb is adorned. The effect was wonderfully sylvan and rural, insomuch that we might have fancied ourselves in the depths of a wooded seclusion; only that, at brief intervals, we could hear the galloping sweep of a railway-train passing within a quarter of a mile, and its discordant screech, moderated by a little farther distance, as it reached the Blackheath Station. That harsh, rough sound, seeking me out so inevitably, was the voice of the great world summoning me forth. I know not whether I was the more pained or pleased to be thus constantly put in mind of the neighborhood of London; for, on the one hand, my conscience stung me a little for reading a book, or playing with children in the grass, when there were so many better things for an enlightened traveller to do,—while, at the same time, it gave a deeper delight to my luxurious idleness, to contrast it with the turmoil which I escaped. On the whole, however, I do not repent of a single wasted hour, and only wish that I could have spent twice as many in the same way; for the impression in my memory is, that I was as happy in that hospitable garden as the English summer-day was long.
One chief condition of my enjoyment was the weather. Italy has nothing like it, nor America. There never was such weather except in England, where, in requital of a vast amount of horrible east-wind between February and June, and a brown October and black November, and a wet, chill, sunless winter, there are a few weeks of incomparable summer, scattered through July and August, and the earlier portion of September, small in quantity, but exquisite enough to atone for the whole year's atmospherical delinquencies. After all, the prevalent sombreness may have brought out those sunny intervals in such high relief, that I see them, in my recollection, brighter than they really were: a little light makes a glory for people who live habitually in a gray gloom. The English, however, do not seem to know how enjoyable the momentary gleams of their summer are; they call it broiling weather, and hurry to the sea-side with red, perspiring faces, in a state of combustion and deliquescence; and I have observed that even their cattle have similar susceptibilities, seeking the deepest shade, or standing mid-leg deep in pools and streams to cool themselves, at temperatures which our own cows would deem little more than barely comfortable. To myself, after the summer heats of my native land had somewhat effervesced out of my blood and memory, it was the weather of Paradise itself. It might be a little too warm; but it was that modest and inestimable superabundance which constitutes a bounty of Providence, instead of just a niggardly enough. During my first year in England, residing in perhaps the most ungenial part of the kingdom, I could never be quite comfortable without a fire on the hearth; in the second twelvemonth, beginning to get acclimatized, I became sensible of an austere friendliness, shy, but sometimes almost tender, in the veiled, shadowy, seldom smiling summer; and in the succeeding years—whether that I had renewed my fibre with English beef and replenished my blood with English ale, or whatever were the cause—I grew content with winter and especially in love with summer, desiring little more for happiness than merely to breathe and bask. At the midsummer which we are now speaking of, I must needs confess the noontide sun came down more fervently than I found altogether tolerable; so that I was fain to shift my position with the shadow of the shrubbery, making myself the movable index of a sun-dial that reckoned up the hours of an almost interminable day.
For each day seemed endless, though never wearisome. As far as your actual experience is concerned, the English summer-day has positively no beginning and no end. When you awake, at any reasonable hour, the sun is already shining through the curtains; you live through unnumbered hours of Sabbath quietude, with a calm variety of incident softly etched upon their tranquil lapse; and at length you become conscious that it is bed-time again, while there is still enough daylight in the sky to make the pages of your book distinctly legible. Night, if there be any such season, hangs down a transparent veil through which the by-gone day beholds its successor; or, if not quite true of the latitude of London, it may be soberly affirmed of the more northern parts of the island, that Tomorrow is born before Yesterday is dead. They exist together in the golden twilight, where the decrepit old day dimly discerns the face of the ominous infant; and you, though a mere mortal, may simultaneously touch them both, with one finger of recollection and another of prophecy. I cared not how long the day might be, nor how many of them. I had earned this repose by a long course of irksome toil and perturbation, and could have been content never to stray out of the limits of that suburban villa and its garden. If I lacked anything beyond, it would have satisfied me well enough to dream about it, instead of struggling for its actual possession. At least, this was the feeling of the moment; although the transitory, flitting, and irresponsible character of my life there was perhaps the most enjoyable element of all, as allowing me much of the comfort of house and home without any sense of their weight upon my back. The nomadic life has great advantages, if we can find tents ready pitched for us at every stage.
So much for the interior of our abode,—a spot of deepest quiet, within reach of the intensest activity. But, even when we stepped beyond our own gate, we were not shocked with any immediate presence of the great world. We were dwelling in one of those oases that have grown up (in comparatively recent years, I believe) on the wide waste of Blackheath, which otherwise offers a vast extent of unoccupied ground in singular proximity to the metropolis. As a general thing, the proprietorship of the soil seems to exist in everybody and nobody; but exclusive rights have been obtained, here and there, chiefly by men whose daily concerns link them with London, so that you find their villas or boxes standing along village-streets which have often more of an American aspect than the elder English settlements. The scene is semi-rural. Ornamental trees overshadow the sidewalks, and grassy margins border the wheel-tracks. The houses, to be sure, have certain points of difference from those of an American village, bearing tokens of architectural design, though seldom of individual taste; and, as far as possible, they stand aloof from the street, and separated each from its neighbor by hedge or fence, in accordance with the careful exclusiveness of the English character, which impels the occupant, moreover, to cover the front of his dwelling with as much concealment of shrubbery as his limits will allow. Through the interstices, you catch glimpses of well-kept lawns, generally ornamented with flowers, and with what the English call rock-work, being heaps of ivy-grown stones and fossils, designed for romantic effect in a small way. Two or three of such village-streets as are here described take a collective name,—as, for instance, Blackheath Park,—and constitute a kind of community of residents, with gate-ways, kept by policemen, and a semi-privacy, stepping beyond which, you find yourself on the breezy heath.
On this great, bare, dreary common I often went astray, as I afterwards did on the Campagna of Rome, and drew the air (tainted with London smoke though it might be) into my lungs by deep inspirations, with a strange and unexpected sense of desert-freedom. The misty atmosphere helps you to fancy a remoteness that perhaps does not quite exist. During the little time that it lasts, the solitude is as impressive as that of a Western prairie or forest; but soon the railway-shriek, a mile or two away, insists upon informing you of your whereabout; or you recognize in the distance some landmark that you may have known,—an insulated villa, perhaps, with its garden-wall around it, or the rudimental street of a new settlement which is sprouting on this otherwise barren soil. Half a century ago, the most frequent token of man's beneficent contiguity might have been a gibbet, and the creak, like a tavern-sign, of a murderer swinging to and fro in irons. Blackheath, with its highwaymen and footpads, was dangerous in those days; and even now, for aught I know, the Western prairie may still compare favorably with it as a safe region to go astray in. When I was acquainted with Blackheath, the ingenious device of garroting had recently come into fashion; and I can remember, while crossing those waste places at midnight, and hearing footsteps behind me, to have been sensibly encouraged by also hearing, not far off, the clinking hoof-tramp of one of the horse-patrols who do regular duty there. About sunset, or a little later, was the time when the broad and somewhat desolate peculiarity of the heath seemed to me to put on its utmost impressiveness. At that hour, finding myself on elevated ground, I once had a view of immense London, four or five miles off, with the vast Dome in the midst, and the towers of the two Houses of Parliament rising up into the smoky canopy, the thinner substance of which obscured a mass of things, and hovered about the objects that were most distinctly visible,—a glorious and sombre picture, dusky, awful, but irresistibly attractive, like a young man's dream of the great world, foretelling at that distance a grandeur never to be fully realized.
While I lived in that neighborhood, the tents of two or three sets of cricket-players were constantly pitched on Blackheath, and matches were going forward that seemed to involve the honor and credit of communities or counties, exciting an interest in everybody but myself, who cared not what part of England might glorify itself at the expense of another. It is necessary to be born an Englishman, I believe, in order to enjoy this great national game; at any rate, as a spectacle for an outside observer, I found it lazy, lingering, tedious, and utterly devoid of pictorial effects. Choice of other amusements was at hand. Butts for archery were established, and bows and arrows were to be let, at so many shots for a penny,—there being abundance of space for a farther flight-shot than any modern archer can lend to his shaft. Then there was an absurd game of throwing a stick at crockery-ware, which I have witnessed a hundred times, and personally engaged in once or twice, without ever having the satisfaction to see a bit of broken crockery. In other spots, you found donkeys for children to ride, and ponies of a very meek and patient spirit, on which the Cockney pleasure-seekers of both sexes rode races and made wonderful displays of horsemanship. By way of refreshment there was gingerbread, (but, as a true patriot, I must pronounce it greatly inferior to our native dainty,) and ginger-beer, and probably stancher liquor among the booth-keeper's hidden stores. The frequent railway-trains, as well as the numerous steamers to Greenwich, have made the vacant portions of Blackheath a play-ground and breathing-place for the Londoners, readily and very cheaply accessible; so that, in view of this broader use and enjoyment, I a little grudged the tracts that have been filched away, so to speak, and individualized by thriving citizens. One sort of visitors especially interested me: they were schools of little boys or girls, under the guardianship of their instructors,—charity-schools, as I often surmised from their aspect, collected among dark alleys and squalid courts; and hither they were brought to spend a summer afternoon, these pale little progeny of the sunless nooks of London, who had never known that the sky was any broader than that narrow and vapory strip above their native lane. I fancied that they took but a doubtful pleasure, being half affrighted at the wide, empty space overhead and round about them, finding the air too little medicated with smoke, soot, and graveyard exhalations, to be breathed with comfort, and feeling shelterless and lost because grimy London, their slatternly and disreputable mother, had suffered them to stray out of her arms.
Passing among these holiday-people, we come to one of the gate-ways of Greenwich Park, opening through an old brick wall. It admits us from the bare heath into a scene of antique cultivation and woodland ornament, traversed in all directions by avenues of trees, many of which bear tokens of a venerable age. These broad and well-kept pathways rise and decline over the elevations and along the bases of gentle hills which diversify the whole surface of the Park. The loftiest and most abrupt of them (though but of very moderate height) is one of the earth's noted summits, and may hold up its head with Mont Blanc and Chimborazo, as being the site of Greenwich Observatory, where, if all nations will consent to say so, the longitude of our great globe begins. I used to regulate my watch by the broad dial-plate against the Observatory-wall, and felt it pleasant to be standing at the very centre of Time and Space.
There are lovelier parks than this in the neighborhood of London, richer scenes of greensward and cultivated trees; and Kensington, especially, in a summer afternoon, has seemed to me as delightful as any place can or ought to be, in a world which, some time or other, we must quit. But Greenwich, too, is beautiful,—a spot where the art of man has conspired with Nature, as if he and the great mother had taken counsel together how to make a pleasant scene, and the longest liver of the two had faithfully carried out their mutual design. It has, likewise, an additional charm of its own, because, to all appearance, it is the people's property and play-ground in a much more genuine way than the aristocratic resorts in closer vicinity to the metropolis. It affords one of the instances in which the monarch's property is actually the people's, and shows how much more natural is their relation to the sovereign than to the nobility, which pretends to hold the intervening space between the two: for a nobleman makes a paradise only for himself, and fills it with his own pomp and pride; whereas the people are sooner or later the legitimate inheritors of whatever beauty kings and queens create, as now of Greenwich Park. On Sundays, when the sun shone, and even on those grim and sombre days when, if it do not actually rain, the English persist in calling it fine weather, it was good to see how sturdily the plebeians trod under their own oaks, and what fulness of simple enjoyment they evidently found there. They were the people,—not the populace,—specimens of a class whose Sunday clothes are a distinct kind of garb from their week-day ones; and this, in England, implies wholesome habits of life, daily thrift, and a rank above the lowest. I longed to be acquainted with them, in order to investigate what manner of folks they were, what sort of households they kept, their politics, their religion, their tastes, and whether they were as narrow-minded as their betters. There can be very little doubt of it: an Englishman is English, in whatever rank of life, though no more intensely so, I should imagine, as an artisan or petty shopkeeper, than as a member of Parliament.
The English character, as I conceive it, is by no means a very lofty one; they seem to have a great deal of earth and grimy dust clinging about them, as was probably the case with the stalwart and quarrelsome people who sprouted up out of the soil, after Cadmus had sown the dragon's teeth. And yet, though the individual Englishman is sometimes preternaturally disagreeable, an observer standing aloof has a sense of natural kindness towards them in the lump. They adhere closer to the original simplicity in which mankind was created than we ourselves do; they love, quarrel, laugh, cry, and turn their actual selves inside out, with greater freedom than any class of Americans would consider decorous. It was often so with these holiday-folks in Greenwich Park; and, ridiculous as it may sound, I fancy myself to have caught very satisfactory glimpses of Arcadian life among the Cockneys there, hardly beyond the scope of Bow-Bells, picnicking in the grass, uncouthly gambolling on the broad slopes, or straying in motley groups or by single pairs of love-making youths and maidens, along the sun-streaked avenues. Even the omnipresent policemen or park-keepers could not disturb the beatific impression on my mind. One feature, at all events, of the Golden Age was to be seen in the herds of deer that encountered you in the somewhat remoter recesses of the Park, and were readily prevailed upon to nibble a bit of bread out of your hand. But, though no wrong had ever been done them, and no horn had sounded nor hound bayed at the heels of themselves or their antlered progenitors, for centuries past, there was still an apprehensiveness lingering in their hearts; so that a slight movement of the hand or a step too near would send a whole squadron of them scampering away, just as a breath scatters the winged seeds of a dandelion.
The aspect of Greenwich Park, with all those festal people wandering through it, resembled that of the Borghese Gardens under the walls of Rome, on a Sunday or Saint's day; but, I am not ashamed to say, it a little disturbed whatever grimly ghost of Puritanic strictness might be lingering in the sombre depths of a New-England heart, among severe and sunless remembrances of the Sabbaths of childhood, and pangs of remorse for ill-gotten lessons in the catechism, and for erratic fantasies or hardly suppressed laughter in the middle of long sermons. Occasionally, I tried to take the long-hoarded sting out of these compunctious smarts by attending divine service the open air. On a cart outside of the Park-wall, (and, if I mistake not, at two or three corners and secluded spots within the Park itself,) a Methodist preacher uplifts his voice and speedily gathers a congregation, his zeal for whose religious welfare impels the good man to such earnest vociferation and toilsome gesture that his perspiring face is quickly in a stew. His inward flame conspires with the too fervid sun and makes a positive martyr of him, even in the very exercise of his pious labor; insomuch that he purchases every atom of spiritual increment to his hearers by loss of his own corporeal solidity, and, should his discourse last long enough, must finally exhale before their eyes. If I smile at him, be it understood, it is not in scorn; he performs his sacred office more acceptably than many a prelate. These way-side services attract numbers who would not otherwise listen to prayer, sermon, or hymn, from one year's end to another, and who, for that very reason, are the auditors most likely to be moved by the preacher's eloquence. Yonder Greenwich pensioner, too,—in his costume of three-cornered hat, and old-fashioned, brass-buttoned blue coat with ample skirts, which makes him look like a contemporary of Admiral Benbow,—that tough old mariner may hear a word or two which will go nearer his heart than anything that the chaplain of the Hospital can be expected to deliver. I always noticed, moreover, that a considerable proportion of the audience were soldiers, who came hither with a day's leave from Woolwich,—hardy veterans in aspect, some of whom wore as many as four or five medals, Crimean or East-Indian, on the breasts of their scarlet coats. The miscellaneous congregation listen with every appearance of heart-felt interest; and, for my own part, I must frankly acknowledge that I never found it possible to give five minutes' attention to any other English preaching: so cold and commonplace are the homilies that pass for such, under the aged roofs of churches. And as for cathedrals, the sermon is an exceedingly diminutive and unimportant part of the religious services,—if, indeed, it be considered a part,—among the pompous ceremonies, the intonations, and the resounding and lofty-voiced strains of the choristers. The magnificence of the setting quite dazzles out what we Puritans look upon as the jewel of the whole affair; for I presume that it was our forefathers, the Dissenters in England and America, who gave the sermon its present prominence in the Sabbath exercises.
The Methodists are probably the first and only Englishmen who have worshipped in the open air since the ancient Britons listened to the preaching of the Druids; and it reminded me of that old priesthood, to see certain memorials of their dusky epoch—not religious, however, but warlike—in the neighborhood of the spot where the Methodist was holding forth. These were some ancient burrows, beneath or within which are supposed to lie buried the slain of a forgotten or doubtfully remembered battle, fought on the site of Greenwich Park as long ago as two or three centuries after the birth of Christ. Whatever may once have been their height and magnitude, they have now scarcely more prominence in the actual scene than the battle of which they are the sole monuments retains in history,—being only a few mounds side by side, elevated a little above the surface of the ground, ten or twelve feet in diameter, with a shallow depression in their summits. When one of them was opened, not long since, no bones, nor armor, nor weapons were discovered, nothing but some small jewels, and a tuft of hair,—perhaps from the head of a valiant general, who, dying on the field of his victory, bequeathed this lock, together with his indestructible fame, to after-ages. The hair and jewels are probably in the British Museum, where the potsherds and rubbish of innumerable generations make the visitor wish that each passing century could carry off all its fragments and relics along with it, instead of adding them to the continually accumulating burden which human knowledge is compelled to lug upon its back. As for the fame, I know not what has become of it.
THE VAGABONDS
We are two travellers, Roger and I.
Roger's my dog.—Come here, you scamp!
Jump for the gentlemen,—mind your eye!
Over the table,—look out for the lamp!—
The rogue is growing a little old;
Five years we've tramped through wind and weather,
And slept out-doors when nights were cold,
And ate and drank—and starved—together.
We've learned what comfort is, I tell you!
A bed on the floor, a bit of rosin,
A fire to thaw our thumbs, (poor fellow!
The paw he holds up there's been frozen,)
Plenty of catgut for my fiddle,
(This out-door business is bad for strings,)
Then a few nice buckwheats hot from the griddle,
And Roger and I set up for kings!
No, thank ye, Sir,—I never drink;
Roger and I are exceedingly moral,—
Aren't we, Roger?—See him wink!—
Well, something hot, then,—we won't quarrel.
He's thirsty, too,—see him nod his head?
What a pity, Sir, that dogs can't talk!
He understands every word that's said,—
And he knows good milk from water-and-chalk.
The truth is, Sir, now I reflect,
I've been so sadly given to grog,
I wonder I've not lost the respect
(Here's to you, Sir!) even of my dog.
But he sticks by, through thick and thin;
And this old coat, with its empty pockets,
And rags that smell of tobacco and gin,
He'll follow while he has eyes in his sockets.
There isn't another creature living
Would do it, and prove, through every disaster,
So fond, so faithful, and so forgiving,
To such a miserable thankless master!
No, Sir!—see him wag his tail and grin I
By George! it makes my old eyes water!
That is, there's something in this gin
That chokes a fellow. But no matter!
We'll have some music, if you 're willing,
And Roger (hem! what a plague a cough is, Sir!)
Shall march a little.—Start, you villain!
Stand straight! 'Bout face! Salute your officer!
Put up that paw! Dress! Take your rifle!
(Some dogs have arms, you see!) Now hold your
Cap while the gentlemen give a trifle,
To aid a poor old patriot soldier!
March! Halt! Now show how the rebel shakes,
When he stands up to hear his sentence.
Now tell us how many drams it takes
To honor a jolly new acquaintance.
Five yelps,—that's five; he's mighty knowing!
The night's before us, fill the glasses!—
Quick, Sir! I'm ill,—my brain is going!—
Some brandy,—thank you,—there!—it passes!
Why not reform? That's easily said;
But I've gone through such wretched treatment,
Sometimes forgetting the taste of bread,
And scarce remembering what meat meant,
That my poor stomach's past reform;
And there are times when, mad with thinking,
I'd sell out heaven for something warm
To prop a horrible inward sinking.
Is there a way to forget to think?
At your age, Sir, home, fortune, friends,
A dear girl's love,—but I took to drink;—
The same old story; you know how it ends.
If you could have seen these classic features,–
You needn't laugh, Sir; they were not then
Such a burning libel on God's creatures:
I was one of your handsome men!
If you had seen HER, so fair and young,
Whose head was happy on this breast!
If you could have heard the songs I sung
When the wine went round, you wouldn't have guessed
That ever I, Sir, should be straying
From door to door, with fiddle and dog,
Ragged and penniless, and playing
To you to-night for a glass of grog!
She's married since,—a parson's wife:
'T was better for her that we should part,—
Better the soberest, prosiest life
Than a blasted home and a broken heart.
I have seen her? Once: I was weak and spent
On the dusty road: a carriage stopped:
But little she dreamed, as on she went,
Who kissed the coin that her fingers dropped!
You've set me talking, Sir; I'm sorry;
It makes me wild to think of the change!
What do you care for a beggar's story?
Is it amusing? you find it strange?
I had a mother so proud of me!
'T was well she died before—Do you know
If the happy spirits in heaven can see
The ruin and wretchedness here below?
Another glass, and strong, to deaden
This pain; then Roger and I will start.
I wonder, has he such a lumpish, leaden,
Aching thing, in place of a heart?
He is sad sometimes, and would weep, if he could,
No doubt, remembering things that were,—
A virtuous kennel, with plenty of food,
And himself a sober, respectable cur.
I'm better now; that glass was warming.—
You rascal! limber your lazy feet I
We must be fiddling and performing
For supper and bed, or starve in the street.—
Not a very gay life to lead, you think?
But soon we shall go where lodgings are free,
And the sleepers need neither victuals nor drink;—
The sooner, the better for Roger and me!
WILLIE WHARTON
Would you like to read a story which is true, and yet not true? The one I am going to tell you is a superstructure of imagination on a basis of facts. I trust you are not curious to ascertain the exact proportion of each. It is sufficient for any reasonable reader to be assured that many of the leading incidents interwoven in the following story actually occurred in one of our Western States, a few years ago.
It was a bright afternoon in the spring-time; the wide, flowery prairie waved in golden sunlight, and distant tree-groups were illuminated by the clear, bright atmosphere. Throughout the whole expanse, only two human dwellings were visible. These were small log-cabins, each with a clump of trees near it, and the rose of the prairies climbing over the roof. In the rustic piazza of one of these cabins a woman was sewing busily, occasionally moving a cradle gently with her foot. On the steps of the piazza was seated a man, who now and then read aloud some paragraph from a newspaper. From time to time, the woman raised her eyes from her work, and, shading them from the sunshine with her hand, looked out wistfully upon the sea of splendor, everywhere waving in flowery ripples to the soft breathings of the balmy air. At length she said,—
"Brother George, I begin to feel a little anxious about Willie. He was told not to go out of sight, and he is generally a good boy to mind; but I should think it was more than ten minutes since I have seen him. I wish you would try the spy-glass."
The man arose, and, after looking abroad for a moment, took a small telescope from the corner of the piazza, and turned it in the direction the boy had taken.
"Ah, now I see the little rogue!" he exclaimed. "I think it must have been that island of high grass that hid him from you. He has not gone very far; and now he is coming this way. But who upon earth is he leading along? I believe the adventurous little chap has been to the land of Nod to get him a wife. I know of no little girl, except my Bessie, for five miles round; and it certainly is not she. The fat little thing has toppled over in the grass, and Willie is picking her up. I believe in my soul she's an Indian."
"An Indian!" exclaimed the mother, starting up suddenly. "Have you heard of any Indians being seen hereabouts? Do blow the horn to hurry him home."
A tin horn was taken from the nail on which it hung, and a loud blast stirred the silent air. Moles stopped their digging, squirrels paused in their gambols, prairie-dogs passed quickly from one to another a signal of alarm, and all the little beasts wondered what could be the meaning of these new sounds which had lately invaded the stillness of their haunts.
George glanced at the anxious countenance of his sister, and said,—
"Don't be frightened, Jenny, if some Indians do happen to call and see us. You know you always agreed with me that they would be as good as Christians, if they were treated justly and kindly. Besides, you see this one is a very small savage, and we shall soon have help enough to defend us from her formidable blows. I made a louder noise with the horn than I need to have done; it has startled your husband, and he is coming from his plough; and there is my wife and Bessie running to see what is the matter over here."
By this time the truant boy and his companion approached the house, and he mounted the steps of the piazza with eager haste, pulling her after him, immediately upon the arrival of his father, Aunt Mary, and Cousin Bessie. Brief explanation was made, that the horn was blown to hurry Willie home; and all exclaimed,—
"Why, Willie! who is this?"
"Found her squatting on the grass, pulling flowers," he replied, almost out of breath. "Don't know her name. She talks lingo."
The whole company laughed. The new-comer was a roly-poly, round enough to roll, with reddish-brown face, and a mop of black hair, cut in a straight line just above the eyes. But such eyes! large and lambent, with a foreshadowing of sadness in their expression. They shone in her dark face like moonlit waters in the dusky landscape of evening. Her only garment was a short kirtle of plaited grass, not long enough to conceal her chubby knees. She understood no word of English, and, when spoken to, repeated an Indian phrase, enigmatical to all present. She clung to Willie, as if he were an old friend; and he, quite proud of the manliness of being a protector, stood with his arm across her brown shoulders, half offended at their merriment, saying,—
"She's my little girl. I found her."
"I thought he'd been to the land of Nod to get him a wife," said Uncle George, smiling.
Little Bessie, with clean apron, and flaxen hair nicely tied up with ribbons, was rather shy of the stranger.
"She'th dirty," lisped she, pointing to her feet.
"Well, s'pose she is?" retorted William. "I guess you'd be dirty, too, if you'd been running about in the mud, without any shoes. But she's pretty. She's like my black kitten, only she a'n't got a white nose."
Willie's comparison was received with shouts of laughter; for there really was some resemblance to the black kitten in that queer little face. But when the small mouth quivered with a grieved expression, and she clung closer to Willie, as if afraid, kind Uncle George patted her head, and tried to part the short, thick, black hair, which would not stay parted, but insisted upon hanging straight over her eyebrows. Baby Emma had been wakened in her cradle by the noise, and began to rub her eyes out with her little fists. Being lifted into her mother's lap, she hid her face for a while; but finally she peeped forth timidly, and fixed a wondering gaze on the new-comer. It seemed that she concluded to like her; for she shook her little dimpled hand to her, and began to crow. The language of children needs no interpreter. The demure little Indian understood the baby-salutation, and smiled.
Aunt Mary brought bread and milk, which she devoured like a hungry animal. While she was eating, the wagon arrived with Willie's older brother, Charley, who had been to the far-off mill with the hired man. The sturdy boy came in, all aglow, calling out,—"Oh, mother! the boy at the mill has caught a prairie-dog. Such a funny-looking thing!"
He halted suddenly before the small stranger, gave a slight whistle, and exclaimed,—
"Halloo! here's a funny-looking prairie-puss!"
"She a'n't a prairie-puss," cried Willie, pushing him back with doubled fists. "She's a little girl; and she's my little girl. I found her."
"She's a great find," retorted the roguish brother, as he went behind her, and pulled the long black hair that fell over her shoulders.
"Now you let her alone!" shouted Willie; and the next moment the two boys were rolling over on the piazza, pommelling each other, half in play, half in earnest. The little savage sat coiled up on the floor, watching them without apparent emotion; but when a hard knock made Willie cry out, she sprang forward with the agility of a kitten, and, repeating some Indian word with strong emphasis, began to beat Charley with all her might. Instinctively, he was about to give blows in return; but his father called out,—
"Hold there, my boy! Never strike a girl!"
"And never harm a wanderer that needs protection," said Uncle George.
"It isn't manly, Charley."
Thus rebuked, Charley walked away somewhat crestfallen. But before he disappeared at the other end of the piazza, he turned back to sing,—
"Willie went a-hunting, and caught a pappoose."
"She a'n't a pappoose, she's a little girl," shouted Willie; "and she's my little girl. I didn't hunt her; I found her."
Uncle George and his family did not return to their cabin till the warm, yellow tint of the sky had changed to azure-gray. While consultations were held concerning how it was best to dispose of the little wanderer for the night, she nestled into a corner, where, rolled up like a dog, she fell fast asleep. A small bed was improvised for her in the kitchen. But when they attempted to raise her up, she was dreaming of her mother's wigwam, and, waking suddenly to find herself among strangers, she forgot the events of the preceding hours, and became a pitiful image of terror. Willie, who was being undressed in another room, was brought in in his nightgown, and the sight of him reassured her. She clung to him, and refused to be separated from him; and it was finally concluded that she should sleep with her little protector in his trundle-bed, which every night was rolled out from under the bed of his father and mother. A tub of water was brought, and as Willie jumped into it, and seemed to like to splash about, she was induced to do the same. The necessary ablutions having been performed, and the clean nightgowns put on, the little ones walked to their trundle-bed hand in hand. Charley pulled the long hair once more, as they passed, and began to sing, "Willie went a-hunting"; but the young knight-errant was too sleepy and tired to return to the charge. The older brother soon went to rest also; and all became as still within-doors as it was on the wide, solitary prairie.
The father and mother sat up a little while, one mending a harness, the other repairing a rip in a garment. They talked together in low tones of Willie's singular adventure; and Mrs. Wharton asked her husband whether he supposed this child belonged to the Indians whose tracks their man had seen on his way to the mill. She shared her brother's kindly feeling toward the red men, because they were an injured and oppressed race. But, in her old New-England home, she had heard and read stories that made a painful impression on the imagination of childhood; and though she was now a sensible and courageous woman, the idea of Indians in the vicinity rendered the solitude of the wilderness oppressive. The sudden cry of a night-bird made her start and turn pale.
"Don't be afraid," said her husband, soothingly, "It is as George says. Nothing but justice and kindness is needed to render these wild people firm friends to the whites."
"I believe it," she replied; "but treaties with them have been so wickedly violated, and they are so shamefully cheated by Government-agents, that they naturally look upon all white men as their enemies. How can they know that we are more friendly to them than others?"
"We have been kind to their child," responded Mr. Wharton, "and that will prevent them from injuring us."
"I would have been just as kind to the little thing, if we had an army here to protect us," she rejoined.
"They will know that, Jenny," he said. "Indian instincts are keen. Your gentle eyes and motherly ways are a better defence than armies would be." The mild blue eyes thanked him with an affectionate glance. His words somewhat calmed her fears; but before retiring to rest, she looked out, far and wide, upon the lonely prairie. It was beautiful, but spectral, in the ghostly veil of moonlight. Every bolt was carefully examined, and the tin horn hung by the bedside. When all preparations were completed, she drew aside the window-curtain to look at the children in their trundle-bed, all bathed with silvery moonshine. They lay with their arms about each other's necks, the dark brow nestled close to the rosy cheek, and the mass of black hair mingled with the light brown locks. The little white boy of six summers and the Indian maiden of four slept there as cozily as two kittens with different fur. The mother gazed on them fondly, as she said,—
"It is a pretty sight. I often think what beautiful significance there is in the Oriental benediction, 'May you sleep tranquilly as a child when his friends are with him!'"
"It is, indeed, a charming picture," rejoined her husband. "This would be a text for George to preach from; and his sermon would be, that confidence is always born of kindness."
The fear of Indians vanished from the happy mother's thoughts, and she fell asleep with a heart full of love for all human kind.
The children were out of their bed by daylight. The little savage padded about with naked feet, apparently feeling much at home, but seriously incommoded by her night-gown, which she pulled at restlessly, from time to time, saying something in her own dialect, which no one could interpret. But they understood her gestures, and showed her the kirtle of plaited grass, still damp with the thorough washing it had had the night before. At sight of it she became quite voluble; but what she said no one knew. "What gibberish you talk!" exclaimed Charley. She would not allow him to come near her. She remembered how he had pulled her hair and tussled with Willie. But two bright buttons on a string made peace between them. He put the mop on his head, and shook it at her, saying, "Moppet, you'd be pretty, if you wore your hair like folks." Willie was satisfied with this concession; and already the whole family began to outgrow the feeling that the little wayfarer belonged to a foreign race.
Early in the afternoon two Indians came across the prairie. Moppet saw them first, and announced the discovery by a shrill shout, which the Indiana evidently heard; for they halted instantly, and then walked on faster than before. When the child went to meet them, the woman quickened her pace a little, and took her hand; but no signs of emotion were perceptible. As they approached the cabin, Moppet appeared to be answering their brief questions without any signs of fear. "Poor little thing!" said Mrs. Wharton. "I am glad they are not angry with her. I was afraid they might beat her."
The strangers were received with the utmost friendliness, but their stock of English was so very scanty that little information could be gained from them. The man pointed to the child, and said, "Wik-a-nee, me go way she." And the woman said, "Me tank." No further light was ever thrown upon Willie's adventure in finding a pappoose alone on the prairie. The woman unstrapped from her shoulder a string of baskets, which she laid upon the ground. Moppet said something to her mother, and placed her hand on a small one brightly stained with red and yellow. The basket was given to her, and she immediately presented it to Willie. At the same time the Indian woman offered a large basket to Mrs. Wharton, pointing to the child, and saying, "Wik-a-nee. Me tank." Money was offered her, but she shook her head, and repeated, "Wik-a-nee. Me tank." The man also refused the coin, with a slow motion of his head, saying, "Me tank." They ate of the food that was offered them, and received a salted fish and bread with "Me tank."
"Mother," exclaimed Willie, "I want to give Moppet something. May I give her my Guinea-peas?"
"Certainly, my son, if you wish to," she replied.
He ran into the cabin, and came out with a tin box. When he uncovered it, and showed Moppet the bright scarlet seeds, each with a shining black spot, her dark eyes glowed, and she uttered a joyous "Eugh!" The passive, sad expression of the Indian woman's countenance almost brightened into a smile, as she said, "Wik-a-nee tank."
After resting awhile, she again strapped the baskets on her shoulder, and taking her little one by the hand, they resumed their tramp across the prairie,—no one knowing whence they came, or whither they were going. As far as they could be seen, it was noticed that the child looked back from time to time. She was saying to her mother she wished they could take that little pale-faced boy with them.
"So Moppet is gone," said Charley. "I wonder whether we shall ever see her again." Willie heaved a sigh, and said, "I wish she was my little sister."
Thus met two innocent little beings, unconscious representatives of races widely separated in moral and intellectual culture, but children of the same Heavenly Father, and equally subject to the attractions of great Mother Nature. Blessed childhood, that yields spontaneously to those attractions, ignoring all distinctions of pride or prejudice! Verily, we should lose all companionship with angels, were it not for the ladder of childhood, on which they descend to meet us.
It was a pleasant ripple in the dull stream of their monotonous life, that little adventure of the stray pappoose. At almost every gathering of the household, for several days after, something was recalled of her uncouth, yet interesting looks, and of her wild, yet winning ways. Charley persisted in his opinion that "Moppet would be pretty, if she wore her hair like folks."
"Her father and mother called her Wik-a-nee," said Willie; "and I like that name better than I do Moppet." He took great pains to teach it to his baby sister; and he succeeded so well, that, whenever the red-and-yellow basket was shown to her, she said, "Mik-a-nee,"—the W being beyond her infant capabilities.
Something of tenderness mixed with Mrs. Wharton's recollections of the grotesque little stranger. "I never saw anything so like the light of an astral lamp as those beautiful large eyes of hers," said she. "I began to love the odd little thing; and if she had stayed much longer, I should have been very loath to part with her."
The remembrance of the incident gradually faded; but whenever a far-off neighbor or passing emigrant stopped at the cabin, Willie brought forward his basket, and repeated the story of Wik-a-nee,—seldom forgetting to imitate her strange cry of joy when she saw the scarlet peas. His mother was now obliged to be more watchful than ever to prevent him from wandering out of sight and hearing. He had imbibed an indefinite idea that there was a great realm of adventure out there beyond. If he could only get a little nearer to the horizon, he thought he might perhaps find another pappoose, or catch a prairie-dog and tame it. He had heard his father say that a great many of those animals lived together in houses under ground,—that they placed sentinels at their doors to watch, and held a town-meeting when any danger approached. When Willie was summoned from his exploring excursions, he often remonstrated, saying, "Mother, what makes you blow the horn so soon? You never give me time to find a prairie-dog. It would be capital fun to have a dog that knows enough to go to town-meeting." Charley took particular pleasure in increasing his excitement on that subject. He told him he had once seen a prairie-dog standing sentinel at the entrance-hole of their habitations. He made a picture of the creature with charcoal on the shed-door, and proposed to prick a copy of it into Willie's arm with India-ink, which was joyfully agreed to. The likeness, when completed, was very much like a squash upon two sticks, but it was eminently satisfactory to the boys. There was no end to Willie's inquiries. How to find that hole which Charley had seen, to crawl into it, and attend a dogs' town-meeting, was the ruling idea of his life. Unsentimental as it was, considering the juvenile gallantry he had manifested, it was an undeniable fact, that, in the course of a few months, prairie-dogs had chased Wik-a-nee almost beyond the bounds of his memory.
Autumn came, and was passing away. The waving sea of verdure had become brown, and the clumps of trees, dotted about like islands, stood denuded of their foliage. At this season the cattle were missing one day, and were not to be found. A party was formed to go in search of them, consisting of all the men from both homesteads, except Mr. Wharton, who remained to protect the women and children, in case of any unforeseen emergency. Charley obtained his father's permission to go with Uncle George; and Willie began to beg hard to go also. When his mother told him he was too young to be trusted, he did not cry, because he knew it was an invariable rule that he was never to have anything he cried for; but he grasped her gown, and looked beseechingly in her face, and said,—
"Oh, mother, do let me go with Charley, just this once! Maybe we shall catch a prairie-dog."
"No, darling," she replied. "You are not old enough to go so far. When you are a bigger boy, you shall go after the cattle, and go a-hunting with father, too, if you like."
"Oh, dear!" he exclaimed, impatiently, "when shall I be a bigger boy? You never will let me go far enough to see the prairie-dogs hold a town-meeting!"
The large brown eyes looked up very imploringly.
Mr. Wharton smiled and said,—
"Jenny, you do keep the little fellow tied pretty close to your apron-string. Perhaps you had better let him go this time."
Thus reinforced, the petted boy redoubled his importunities, and finally received permission to go, on condition that he would be very careful not to wander away from his brother. Charley promised not to trust him out of his sight; and the men said, if they were detained till dark, they would be sure to put the boys in a safe path to return home before sunset. Willie was equipped for the excursion, full of joyous anticipations of marvellous adventures and promises to return before sunset and tell his parents about everything he had seen. His mother kissed him, as she drew the little cap over his brown locks, and repeated her injunctions over and over again. He jumped down both steps of the piazza at once, eager to see whether Uncle George and Charley were ready. His mother stood watching him, and he looked up to her with such a joyful smile on his broad, frank face, that she called to him,—
"Come and kiss me again, Willie, before you go; and remember, dear, not to go out of sight of Uncle George and Charley."
He leaped up the steps, gave her a hearty smack, and bounded away.
When the party started, she stood a little while gazing after them. Her husband said,—
"What a pet you make of that boy, Jenny. And it must be confessed he is the brightest one of the lot."
"And a good child, too," she rejoined. "He is so affectionate, and so willing to mind what is said to him! But he is so active, and eager for adventures! How the prairie-dogs do occupy his busy little brain!"
"That comes of living out West," replied Mr. Wharton, smiling. "You know the miller told us, when we first came, that there was nothing like it for making folks know everything about all natur'."
They separated to pursue their different avocations, and, being busy, were consequently cheerful,—except that the mother had some occasional misgivings whether she had acted prudently in consenting that her darling should go beyond sound of the horn. She began to look out for the boys early in the afternoon; but the hours passed, and still they came not. The sun had sunk below the horizon, and was sending up regular streaks of gold, like a great glittering crown, when Charley was seen coming alone across the prairie. A pang like the point of a dagger went through the mother's heart. Her first thought was,—
"Oh, my son! my son! some evil beast has devoured him."
Charley walked so slowly and wearily that she could not wait for his coming, but went forth to meet him. As soon as she came within sound of his voice, she called out,—
"Oh, Charley, where's Willie?"
The poor boy trembled in every joint, as he threw himself upon her neck and sobbed out,—
"Oh, mother! mother!"
Her face was very pale, as she asked, in low, hollow tones,—
"Is he dead?"
"No, mother; but we don't know where he is. Oh, mother, do forgive me!" was the despairing answer.
The story was soon told. The cattle had strayed farther than they supposed, and Willie was very tired before they came in sight of them. It was not convenient to spare a man to convey him home, and it was agreed that Charley should take him a short distance from their route to a log-cabin, with whose friendly inmates they were well acquainted. There he was to be left to rest, while his brother returned for a while to help in bringing the cattle together. The men separated, going in various circuitous directions, agreeing to meet at a specified point, and wait for Charley. He had a boy's impatience to be at the place of rendezvous. When he arrived near the cabin, and had led Willie into the straight path to it, he charged him to go into the house, and not leave it till he came for him; and then he ran back with all speed to Uncle George. The transaction seemed to him so safe that it did not occur to his honest mind that he had violated the promise given to his mother. While the sun was yet high in the heavens, his uncle sent him back to the log-cabin for Willie, and sent a man with him to guide them both within sight of home. Great was their alarm when the inmates of the house told them they had not seen the little boy. They searched, in hot haste, in every direction. Diverging from the road to the cabin was a path known as the Indian trail, on which hunters, of various tribes, passed and repassed in their journeys to and from Canada. The prints of Willie's shoes were traced some distance on this path, but disappeared at a wooded knoll not far off. The inmates of the cabin said a party of Indians had passed that way in the forenoon. With great zeal they joined in the search, taking with them horns and dogs. Charley ran hither and thither, in an agony of remorse and terror, screaming, "Willie! Willie!" Horns were blown with all the strength of manly lungs; but there was no answer,—not even the illusion of an echo. All agreed in thinking that the lost boy had been on the Indian trail; but whether he had taken it by mistake, or whether he had been tempted aside from his path by hopes of finding prairie-dogs, was matter of conjecture. Charley was almost exhausted by fatigue and anxiety, when his father's man guided him within sight of home, and told him to go to his mother, while he returned to give the alarm to Uncle George. This was all the unhappy brother had to tell; and during the recital his voice was often interrupted by sobs, and he exclaimed, with passionate vehemence,—
A CALL TO MY COUNTRY-WOMEN
In the newspapers and magazines you shall see many poems—written by women who meekly term themselves weak, and modestly profess to represent only the weak among their sex—tunefully discussing the duties which the weak owe to their country in days like these. The invariable conclusion is, that, though they cannot fight, because they are not men,—or go down to nurse the sick and wounded, because they have children to take care of,—or write effectively, because they do not know how,—or do any great and heroic thing, because they have not the ability,—they can pray; and they generally do close with a melodious and beautiful prayer. Now praying is a good thing. It is, in fact, the very best thing in the world to do, and there is no danger of our having too much of it; but if women, weak or strong, consider that praying is all they can or ought to do for their country, and so settle down contented with that, they make as great a mistake as if they did not pray at all. True, women cannot fight, and there is no call for any great number of female nurses; notwithstanding this, I believe, that, to-day, the issue of this war depends quite as much upon American women as upon American men,—and depends, too, not upon the few who write, but upon the many who do not. The women of the Revolution were not only Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Reed, and Mrs. Schuyler, but the wives of the farmers and shoemakers and blacksmiths everywhere. It is not Mrs. Stowe, or Mrs. Howe, or Miss Stevenson, or Miss Dix, alone, who is to save the country, but the thousands upon thousands who are at this moment darning stockings, tending babies, sweeping floors. It is to them I speak. It is they whom I wish to get hold of; for in their hands lies slumbering the future of this nation.
The women of to-day have not come up to the level of to-day. They do not stand abreast with its issues. They do not rise to the height of its great argument. I do not forget what you have done. I have beheld, O Dorcases, with admiration and gratitude, the coats and garments, the lint and bandages, which you have made. Tender hearts, if you could have finished the war with your needles, it would have been finished long ago; but stitching does not crush rebellion, does not annihilate treason, or hew traitors in pieces before the Lord. Excellent as far as it goes, it stops fearfully short of the goal. This ought ye to do, but there are other things which you ought not to leave undone. The war cannot be finished by sheets and pillow-cases. Sometimes I am tempted to believe that it cannot be finished till we have flung them all away. When I read of the Rebels fighting bare-headed, bare-footed, haggard, and unshorn, in rags and filth,—fighting bravely, heroically, successfully,—I am ready to make a burnt-offering of our stacks of clothing. I feel and fear that we must come down, as they have done, to a recklessness of all incidentals, down to the rough and rugged fastnesses of life, down to the very gates of death itself, before we shall be ready and worthy to win victories. Yet it is not so, for the hardest fights the earth has ever known have been made by the delicate-handed and purple-robed. So, in the ultimate analysis, it is neither gold-lace nor rags that overpower obstacles, but the fiery soul that consumes both in the intensity of its furnace-heat, bending impossibilities to the ends of its passionate purpose.
This soul of fire is what I wish to see kindled in our women,—burning white and strong and steady, through all weakness, timidity, vacillation, treachery in Church or State or press or parlor, scorching, blasting, annihilating whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie,—extinguished by no tempest of defeat, no drizzle of delay, but glowing on its steadfast path till it shall have cleared through the abomination of our desolation a highway for the Prince of Peace.
O my country-women, I long to see you stand under the time and bear it up in your strong hearts, and not need to be borne up through it. I wish you to stimulate, and not crave stimulants from others. I wish you to be the consolers, the encouragers, the sustainers, and not tremble in perpetual need of consolation and encouragement. When men's brains are knotted and their brows corrugated with fearful looking for and hearing of financial crises, military disasters, and any and every form of national calamity consequent upon the war, come you out to meet them, serene and smiling and unafraid. And let your smile be no formal distortion of your lips, but a bright ray from the sunshine in your heart. Take not acquiescently, but joyfully, the spoiling of your goods. Not only look poverty in the face with high disdain, but embrace it with gladness and welcome. The loss is but for a moment; the gain is for all time. Go farther than this. Consecrate to a holy cause not only the incidentals of life, but life itself. Father, husband, child,–I do not say, Give them up to toil, exposure, suffering, death, without a murmur;—that implies reluctance. I rather say, Urge them to the offering; fill them with sacred fury; fire them with irresistible desire; strengthen them to heroic will. Look not on details, the present, the trivial, the fleeting aspects of our conflict, but fix your ardent gaze on its eternal side. Be not resigned, but rejoicing. Be spontaneous and exultant. Be large and lofty. Count it all joy that you are reckoned worthy to suffer in a grand and righteous cause. Give thanks evermore that you were born in this time; and because it is dark, be you the light of the world.
And follow the soldier to the battlefield with your spirit. The great army of letters that marches Southward with every morning sun is a powerful engine of war. Fill them with tears and sighs, lament separation and suffering, dwell on your loneliness and fears, mourn over the dishonesty of contractors and the incompetency of leaders, doubt if the South will ever be conquered, and foresee financial ruin, and you will damp the powder and dull the swords that ought to deal death upon the foe. Write as tenderly as you will. In camp, the roughest man idealizes his far-off home, and every word of love uplifts him to a lover. But let your tenderness unfold its sunny side, and keep the shadows for His pity who knows the end from the beginning, and whom no foreboding can dishearten. Glory in your tribulation. Show your soldier that his unflinching courage, his undying fortitude, are your crown of rejoicing. Incite him to enthusiasm by your inspiration. Make a mock of your discomforts. Be unwearying in details of the little interests of home. Fill your letters with kittens and Canaries, with baby's shoes, and Johnny's sled, and the old cloak which you have turned into a handsome gown. Keep him posted in all the village-gossip, the lectures, the courtings, the sleigh-rides, and the singing-schools. Bring out the good points of the world in strong relief. Tell every sweet and brave and pleasant and funny story you can think of. Show him that you clearly apprehend that all this warfare means peace, and that a dastardly peace would pave the way for speedy, incessant, and more appalling warfare. Help him to bear his burdens by showing him how elastic you are under yours. Hearten him, enliven him, tone him up to the true hero-pitch. Hush your plaintive Miserere, accept the nation's pain for penance, and commission every Northern breeze to bear a Te Deum laudamus.
Under God, the only question, as to whether this war shall be conducted to a shameful or an honorable close, is not of men or money or material resource. In these our superiority is unquestioned. As Wellington phrased it, there is hard pounding; but we shall pound the longest, if only our hearts do not fail us. Women need not beat their pewter spoons into bullets, for there are plenty of bullets without them. It is not whether our soldiers shall fight a good fight; they have played the man on a hundred battle-fields. It is not whether officers are or are not competent; generals have blundered nations into victory since the world began. It is whether this people shall have virtue to endure to the end,—to endure, not starving, not cold, but the pangs of hope deferred, of disappointment and uncertainty, of commerce deranged and outward prosperity cheeked. Will our vigilance to detect treachery and our perseverance to punish it hold out? If we stand firm, we shall be saved, though so as by fire. If we do not, we shall fall, and shall richly deserve to fall; and may God sweep us off from the face of the earth, and plant in our stead a nation with the hearts of men, and not of chickens!
O women, stand here in the breach,—for here you may stand powerful, invincible, I had almost said omnipotent. Rise now to the heights of a sublime courage,—for the hour has need of you. When the first ball smote the rocky sides of Sumter, the rebound thrilled from shore to shore, and waked the slumbering hero in every human soul. Then every eye flamed, every lip was touched with a live coal from the sacred altar, every form dilated to the stature of the Golden Age. Then we felt in our veins the pulse of immortal youth. Then all the chivalry of the ancient days, all the heroism, all the self-sacrifice that shaped itself into noble living, came back to us, poured over us, swept away the dross of selfishness and deception and petty scheming, and Patriotism rose from the swelling wave stately as a goddess. Patriotism, that had been to us but a dingy and meaningless antiquity, took on a new form, a new mien, a countenance divinely fair and forever young, and received once more the homage of our hearts. Was that a childish outburst of excitement, or the glow of an aroused principle? Was it a puerile anger, or a manly indignation? Did we spring up startled pigmies, or girded giants? If the former, let us veil our faces, and march swiftly (and silently) to merciful forgetfulness. If the latter, shall we not lay aside every weight, and this besetting sin of despondency, and run with patience the race set before us?
A true philosophy and a true religion make the way possible to us. The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will; and He never yet willed that a nation strong in means and battling for the right should be given over to a nation weak and battling for the wrong. Nations have their future—reward and penalty—in this world; and it is as certain as God lives that Providence and the heaviest battalions will prevail. We have had reverses, but no misfortune hath happened unto us but such as is common unto nations. Country has been sacrificed to partisanship. Early love has fallen away, and lukewarmness has taken its place. Unlimited enthusiasm has given place to limited stolidity. Disloyalty, overawed at first into quietude, has lifted its head among us, and waxes wroth and ravening. There are dissensions at home worse than the guns of our foes. Some that did run well have faltered; some signal-lights have gone shamefully out, and some are lurid with a baleful glare. But unto this end were we born, and for this cause came we into the world. When shall greatness of soul stand forth, if not in evil times? When the skies are fair and the seas smooth, all ships sail festively. But the clouds lower, the winds shriek, the waves boil, and immediately each craft shows its quality. The deep is strown with broken masts, parted keels, floating wrecks; but here and there a ship rides the raging sea, and flings defiance to the wind. She overlives the sea because she is sea-worthy. Not our eighty years of peace alone, but our two years of war are the touchstone of our character. We have rolled our Democracy as a sweet morsel under our tongue; we have gloried in the prosperity which it brought to the individual; but if the comforts of men minister to the degradation of man, if Democracy levels down and does not level up, if our era of peace and plenty leaves us so feeble and frivolous, so childish, so impatient, so deaf to all that calls to us from the past and entreats us in the future, that we faint and fail under the stress of our one short effort, then indeed is our Democracy our shame and curse. Let us show now what manner of people we are. Let us be clear-sighted and far-sighted to see how great is the issue that hangs upon the occasion. It is not a mere military reputation that is at stake, not the decay of a generation's commerce, not the determination of this or that party to power. It is the question of the world that we have been set to answer. In the great conflict of ages, the long strife between right and wrong, between progress and sluggardy, through the Providence of God we are placed in the van-guard. Three hundred years ago a world was unfolded for the battle-ground. Choice spirits came hither to level and intrench. Swords clashed and blood flowed, and the great reconnoissance was successfully made. Since then both sides have been gathering strength, marshalling forces, planting batteries, and to-day we stand in the thick of the fray. Shall we fail? Men and women of America, will you fail? Shall the cause go by default? When a great Idea, that has been uplifted on the shoulders of generations, comes now to its Thermopylae, its glory-gate, and needs only stout hearts for its strong hands,—when the eyes of a great multitude are turned upon you, and the fates of dumb millions in the silent future rest with you,—when the suffering and sorrowful, the lowly, whose immortal hunger for justice gnaws at their hearts, who blindly see, but keenly feel, by their God-given instincts, that somehow you are working out their salvation, and the high-born, monarchs in the domain of mind, who, standing far off, see with prophetic eye the two courses that lie before you, one to the Uplands of vindicated Right, one to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, alike fasten upon you their hopes, their prayers, their tears,—will you, for a moment's bodily comfort and rest and repose, grind all these expectations and hopes between the upper and nether millstone? Will you fail the world in this fateful hour by your faint-heartedness? Will you fail yourself, and put the knife to your own throat? For the peace which you so dearly buy shall bring to you neither ease nor rest. You will but have spread a bed of thorns. Failure will write disgrace upon the brow of this generation, and shame will outlast the age. It is not with us as with the South. She can surrender without dishonor. She is the weaker power, and her success will be against the nature of things. Her dishonor lay in her attempt, not in its relinquishment. But we shall fail, not because of mechanics and mathematics, but because our manhood and womanhood weighed in the balance are found wanting. There are few who will not share in the sin. There are none who will not share in the shame. Wives, would you hold back your husbands? Mothers, would you keep your sons? From what? for what? From the doing of the grandest duty that ever ennobled man, to the grief of the greatest infamy that ever crushed him down. You would hold him back from prizes before which Olympian laurels fade, for a fate before which a Helot slave might cower. His country in the agony of her death-struggle calls to him for succor. All the blood in all the ages, poured out for liberty, poured out for him, cries unto him from the ground. All that life has of noble, of heroic, beckons him forward. Death itself wears for him a golden crown. Ever since the world swung free from God's hand, men have died,—obeying the blind fiat of Nature; but only once in a generation comes the sacrificial year, the year of jubilee, when men march lovingly to meet their fate and die for a nation's life. Holding back, we transmit to those that shall come after us a blackened waste. The little one that lies in his cradle will be accursed for our sakes. Every child will be base-born, springing from ignoble blood. We inherited a fair fame, and bays from a glorious battle; but for him is no background, no stand-point. His country will be a burden on his shoulders, a blush upon his cheek, a chain about his feet. There is no career for the future, but a weary effort, a long, a painful, a heavy-hearted struggle to lift the land out of its slough of degradation and set it once more upon a dry place.
Therefore let us have done at once and forever with paltry considerations, with talk of despondency and darkness. Let compromise, submission, and every form of dishonorable peace be not so much as named among us. Tolerate no coward's voice or pen or eye. Wherever the serpent's head is raised, strike it down. Measure every man by the standard of manhood. Measure country's price by country's worth, and country's worth by country's integrity. Let a cold, clear breeze sweep down from the mountains of life, and drive out these miasmas that befog and beguile the unwary. Around every hearthstone let sunshine gleam. In every home let fatherland have its altar and its fortress. From every household let words of cheer and resolve and high-heartiness ring out, till the whole land is shining and resonant in the bloom of its awakening spring.
THE TRUE CHURCH
I asked a holy man one day,
"Where is the one true church, I pray?"
"Go round the world," said he, "and search:
No man hath found the one true church."
I pointed to a spire, cross-crowned.
"The church is false!" he cried, and frowned.
But, murmuring he had told me wrong,
I pointed to the entering throng.
He answered, "If a church be true,
It hath not many, but a few."
Around the font the people pressed,
And crossed themselves from brow to breast.
"A cross!" he cried, "writ on the brow
In water!—is it Christ's?—look thou!
"Each forehead, frowning, sheds it off:
Christ's cross abides through scowl and scoff."
Then, looking through the open door,
We saw men kneeling on the floor;
Faint candles, by the daylight dimmed,—
Like wicks the foolish virgins trimmed;
Fair statues of the saints, as white
As now their robes are, in God's light;
Sun-ladders, dropped aslant, all gold,—
Like stairs the angels trod of old.
Around, above, from nave to roof,
He gazed, and said, in sad reproof,—
"Alas! who is it understands
God's temple is not made with hands?"
—We walked along a shaded way,
Beneath the apple-blooms of May,
And came upon a church whose dome
Bore still the cross, but not for Rome.
We brushed a cobweb from a pane,
And gazed within the sacred fane
"Do prayers," he asked, "the more avail,
If murmured nigh an altar-rail?
"Does water sprinkled from a bowl
Wash any sin from any soul?
"Do tongues that taste the bread and wine
Speak truer after, by that sign?
"The very priest, in gown and bands,
Hath lying lips and guilty hands!"
"He speaks no error," answered I;
"He says the living all shall die,
"The dead all rise; and both are true;
Both wholesome doctrines,—old, not new."
My friend returned, "He aims a blow
To strike the sins of long ago,—
"Yet shields, the while, with studied phrase,
The evil present in these days.
"Doth God in heaven impute no crime
To prophets who belie their time?"
—We turned away among the tombs:
The bees were in the clover-blooms;
The crickets leaped to let us pass;
And God's sweet breath was on the grass.
We spelled the legends on the stones:
The graves were full of martyrs' bones,—
Of bodies which the rack once brake
In witness for the dear Lord's sake,—
Of ashes gathered from the pyres
Of saints whose souls fled up through fires.
I heard him murmur, as we passed,
"Thus won they all the crown at last;
"Which now men lose, through looking back
To find it at the stake and rack:
"The rack and stake have gathered grime:
God's touchstone is the passing time."
—Just then, amid some olive-sprays,
Two orioles perched, and piped their lays,
Until the gold beneath their throats
Shook molten in their mellow notes.
Then, pealing from the church, a psalm
Rolled forth upon the outer calm.
"Both choirs," said I, "are in accord;
For both give worship to the Lord."
Said he, "The tree-top song, I fear,
Fled first and straightest to God's ear.
"If men bind other men in chains,
Then chant, doth God accept the strains?
"Do loud-lipped hymns His ear allure?—
God hates the church that harms the poor!"
—Then rose a meeting-house in view,
Of bleached and weather-beaten hue,
Where, plain of garb and pure of heart,
Men kept the church and world apart,
And sat in waiting for the light
That dawns upon the inner sight;
Nor did they vex the silent air
With any sound of hymn or prayer;
But on their lips God's hand was pressed,
And each man kissed it and was blessed.
I asked, "Is this the true church, then?"
"Nay," answered he, "a sect of men:
"And sects that lock their doors in pride
Shut God and half His saints outside.
"The gates of heaven, the Scriptures say,
Stand open wide by night and day:
"Whoso shall enter hath no need
To walk by either church or creed:
"The false church leadeth men astray;
The true church showeth men the way."
—Whereat I still more eager grew
To shun the false and find the true;
And, naming all the creeds, I sought
What truth, or lie, or both, they taught:
Thus,—"Augustine—had he a fault?"
My friend looked up to yon blue vault,
And cried, "Behold! can one man's eyes
Bound all the vision of the skies?"
I said, "The circle is too wide."
"God's truth is wider," he replied;
"And Augustine, on bended knee,
Saw just the little he could see;
"So Luther sought with eyes and heart,
Yet caught the glory but in part;
"So Calvin opened wide his soul,
Yet could not comprehend the whole:
"Not Luther, Calvin, Augustine,
Saw half the vision I have seen!"
—Then grew within me a desire
That kindled like a flame of fire.
I looked upon his reverent brow,
Entreating, "Tell me, who art thou?"
When, by the light that filled the place,
I knew it was the Lord's own face!
Through all my blood a rapture stole
That filled my body and my soul.
I was a sinner and afraid:
I bowed me in the dust and prayed:—
"O Christ the Lord I end Thou my search,
And lead me to the one true church!"
Then spake He, not as man may speak:
"The one true church thou shalt not seek;
"Behold, it is enough," He said,
"To find the one true Christ, its Head!"
Then straight He vanished from my sight,
And left me standing in the light.
UNDER THE PEAR-TREE
PART II
CHAPTER IV
Two years passed; and Swan Day was to all appearance no nearer his return to the land of his birth than when he first trod the deck that bore him away from it. He was still on the first round of the high ladder to fortune. Thus far he had wrought diligently and successfully. He had been sent hither and thither: from Canton to Hong-Kong; from Macao to Ningpo and Shanghai. He was clerk, supercargo, anything that the interest of the Company demanded. He worked with a will. His thoughts were full of tea, silks, and lacquered ware,—of exquisite carved ivory and wonderful porcelains,—of bamboos, umbrellas, and garden-chairs,—of Hong-Hi, Ching-Ho, and Fi-Fo-Fum.
There were moments, between the despatch of one vessel and the lading of another, when his mind would follow the sun, as it blazed along down out of sight of China, and fast on its way towards the Fox farm,—when an intense longing seized him to look once again on the shady nest of all his hopes and labors. He hated the life he led. He hated the noisy Tartar women that surrounded him,—aquatic and disgusting as crawfish,—brown, stupid, and leering. He hated the feline yawling of their music. He hated the yellow water, swarming with boats, and settled with junks. He hated their pagodas, and their hideous effigies of their ancestors, looking like dumb idols. Their bejewelled Buddhas, their incense-lamps, their night and day, were alike odious to him.
Stretched on a bamboo chair, in an interval of labor, and when the intense heat brought comparative stillness, before his closed eyes came often up his home among the New-Hampshire hills. He thought of his dead mother in the burying-ground, and the slate stones standing in the desolate grass. Then his thoughts ran eagerly back to the Fox farm, and the sweet, lonely figure that stood watching his return under the pear-tree,—the warm kiss of happy meeting, life opening fair, and a long vista through which the sunlight peeped all the more brightly for the shadowing trees.
Then over the farm, broad and bountiful, scanning every detail of the large red house, the great barns and sheds, the flocks of turkeys, and the geese, kept for feathers, and not dreamed of for eating. (Our Puritan fathers held neither to Christmas nor Christmas goose.) Through the path up by the well-sweep, where the moss-covered bucket hangs dripping with the purest of water. Beyond the corn-barn to the butternut-trees,—by this time, they have dropped their rich, oily fruit; and the chestnut-burrs, split open, and lying on the sunny ground. Then round to the house again, where the slant October sun shines in at the hospitable open door, where the little wheel burrs contentedly, and the loom goes flap-flap, as the strong arm of Cely Temple presses the cloth together, and throws the shuttle past, like lightning: stout cloth for choppers and ploughmen comes out of that loom!
In all his peepings at the interior of the house, one figure has accompanied him, beautified and glorified the place; so that, whether he looks into the buttery, where fair, round cheeses fill the shelves, or wanders up the broad stairs with wide landings to the "peacock chamber," he seems to himself always to be going over a temple of sweet and sacred recollections. Into the peacock chamber, therefore, his soul may wander, where the walls are sparsely decked with black-and-white sketches, ill displaying the glorious plumage of the bird, and, like all old pictures, very brown,—even to the four-posted bed, whitely dressed, and heaped to a height that would defy "the true princess" to feel a pea through it, and the white toilet-table, neatly ornamented with a holder and a pair of scissors, both sacred from common usage. Asparagus in the chimney, with scarlet berries. General Washington, very dingy and respectable, over the fireplace; and two small circular frames, inclosing the Colonel and his wife in profile. The likenesses are nearly exact, and the two noses face each other as if in an argument. Dutch tiles are set round the fireplace, of odd Scripture scenes, common in design and coarse in execution. Into the "square room" below, where the originals of the black profiles sit and smoke their pipes, Swan does not care to venture. But some day, he will show the Colonel!
Many days, these thoughts came to Swan. Months, alas, years, they came,—but few and far between. The five thousand dollars that was to have been the summit was soon only the footstool of his ambition. He became partner, and then head of a house having commercial relations with half the world. His habits assimilated themselves to the country about him, and the cool, green pictures of his mountain-home ceased to float before his sleeping eyes or soothe his waking fancies.
His busy life left him little opportunity for reading. But he took in much knowledge at first-hand by observation, which was perhaps better; and as he hit against all sorts of minds, he became in time somewhat reflective and philosophical. Through daily view of the yellow water, and perhaps the glare of the bright sun on it, or the sight of so much nankeen cloth, or the yellow faces about him, perhaps,—or whatever the cause or causes,—Swan certainly altered in his personal appearance, as the years went by. The handsome, erect youth, lithe and active, with keen features and brilliant eyes, ruddy lips and clear oval face, was gradually fading and transforming into something quite different. The brilliant eyes became sleepy, and, from a habit of narrowing the lids over them, possibly to shut out the bright sun, receded more and more beyond the full and flaccid cheeks, and even contracted a Mongolian curve at the outer corners.
One May morning Swan sat alone in his Chinese-furnished room, luxuriously appointed, as became him, on his silk, shaded ottoman, and dreamily fanned himself. His dreams were of nothing more than what occupied him waking. If he glanced upward, he would see the delicate silk curtains at the windows, and the mirrors of polished steel between the carved ivory lattices. Great porcelain vases, such as are never seen here, were disposed about the room, and jars of flowers of strange hues stood on mats of yellow wool. Furniture inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl, and coral, decked the apartment, and a small, rich table held an exquisite tea-set. Swan had just been drinking from it, and the room was full of the fragrance. He toyed with the tea-cup, and half dozed. Then, rousing himself, he put fresh tea from the canister into the cup, and poured boiling water over it from the mouth of the fantastic dragon. Covering the cup, he dallied languidly with the delicious beverage, and with the half-thoughts, half-musings, that came with the dreamy indolence of the weather. Was it, indeed, ten years,—ten,—nay, fifteen years, that he had lived this China-life?
The door swung softly open, and a servant brought a note, and stood waiting for him to read it.
Swan glanced disdainfully at the object, which he could never quite consider human,—at his white and blue petticoats, and his effeminate face, so sleepy and so mindless, as if he expected him to turn into a plate or sugar-bowl, or begin flying in the air across some porcelain river, and alighting on the pinnacle of a pagoda.
"Hong man, he outside," said the servant.
"Show him in, you stupid fool!" said the master, "and get out of the room with yourself!"
CHAPTER V
The Hong merchant's intelligence proved at once to Swan Day the absolute necessity of his return to America to protect the interests of the Company in Boston. With the promptitude which had thus far been one of the chief elements of his success, he lost not a moment in (so to speak) changing his skin, for the new purpose of his existence.
It seemed as if with the resumption of the dress of his native country, (albeit of torrid texture still, since a chocolate silk coat, embroidered waistcoat, and trousers of dark satin speak to a modern ear of fashions as remote as China,) Swan resumed many of the habits and feelings therewith connected. With the flowing flowered robe he cast off forever the world to which it belonged, and his pulse beat rapidly and joyfully as the sails filled with the breeze that bore him away. He gazed with a disdainful pleasure at the receding shore, and closed his eyes,—to turn his back fairly and forever on the Chew-Sins and the Wu-Wangs,—to let the Hang dynasty go hang,—to shut out from all but future fireside-tales the thought of varnish-trees, soap-trees, tallow-trees, wax-trees, and litchi,—never more to look on the land of the rhinoceros, the camel, the elephant, and the ape,—on the girls with thick, protuberant lips, copper skins, and lanky, black hair,—on the corpulent gentry with their long talons, and madams tottering on their hoofs, reminding him constantly of the animal kingdom, as figured to imagination in childhood, of the rat that wanted his long tail again, or of the horse that will never win a race,—on the land of lanterns and lying, of silver pheasants and—of scamps.
The faster the good ship sailed, the stronger the east-wind blew, the swifter ran the life-current in the veins of the returning exile,—friend, countryman, lover.
As the vessel neared the coast of Massachusetts, and the land-breeze brought to his eager nostrils the odors of his native orchards, or the aromatic fragrance of the pine, and the indescribable impression, on all his senses, of home, the fresh love of country rushed purely through his veins, bubbled warmly about the place where his heart used to beat, and rose to his brain in soft, sweet imaginations. Vivid pictures of past and future; identical in all their essential features, swam before his closed eyes, languid now from excess of pleasure. Again and again he drew in the breath of home, and felt it sweeter than the gales from the Spice Islands or odors from Araby the Blest. Hovering before his fancy, came sweet eyes, full of bewildering light, half-reproachful, half-sad, and all-bewitching; a form of such exquisite grace that he wondered not it swam and undulated before him; over all, the rose-hue of youth, and the smooth, sweet charm of lip and hand that memory brought him, in that last timid caress under the pear-tree after sunset.
As soon as he could possibly so arrange his affairs in Boston as to admit of his taking a journey to Walton, Swan determined to do so. But affairs will not always consent to an arrangement; and although he exerted himself to gain a week's leisure, it was not till the Indian summer was past that he took his place in the stage-coach which plied between Boston and Walton.
How very short seemed the time since he was last on this road! Yet how much had things changed! Fifteen years! Was it possible he had been gone so long? How rapidly they had gone over himself! He felt scarcely a day older. The stage-coach was aptly termed "Accommodation," and Swan had great amusement, as he sat with the driver on the box, in noting the differences in the aspect of houses and people, since his own last ride over the same road. New villages had sprung up here and there, while already more than one manufacturing establishment showed the Northern tendencies; and the elements of progress peeped from every settlement, in the shape of meeting- and school-houses.
When the driver whipped up his modest team to an animated trot before the Eagle Hotel in Walton, Swan felt as if he must have been in a dream only, and had just now awakened. Walton was one of those New-Hampshire towns, of which there came afterwards to be many, which were said "to be good to go from"; accordingly, everybody had gone everywhere, except the old inhabitants and the children. All the youths had gone towards "the pleasant Ohio, to settle on its banks"; and such maidens as had courage to face a pioneer settlement followed their chosen lords, while the less enterprising were fain to stay at home and bewail their singlehood. All business was necessarily stagnant, and all the improvements, architectural or otherwise, which had marked the route on which Swan had come, now seemed suddenly to have ceased. He might have thought Walton the Enchanted Palace, and himself the Fairy-Prince that was to waken to life and love the Sleeping Beauty.
How unchanged was everything! The store where he used to sell crockery and pins,—the great elm-tree in front of it,—the old red tavern on the hill, where they had the Thanksgiving ball,—the houses, from one end of the street to the other, all just as when he left: he might have found his way in the dark to every one of them.
At the Eagle Tavern, the same men sat on the stoop, with chairs tilted back, smoking. A man in the bar-room was mixing flip or gin-sling for two others, who were playing checkers. Taft himself stood at the door, somewhat changed indeed, though he was always fat, but with the same ready smile as ever; and Swan could see through the windows, by the bright candle-light, the women flitting to and fro, in brisk preparations for supper.
Swan's first touch of surprise was that Taft did not recognize him,—him whom he used to see every day of his life! That was strange. It looked as if time told on Taft's faculties a little. He had himself recognized Taft in a moment. So he had recognized everything, as they drove along, and now how familiar everything looked in the evening light!
Wrapping his travelling-cloak about him, Swan asked to be shown directly to his room, and, in his anxiety to avoid being recognized, ordered a light supper to be sent up to him. First of all, he wanted to see Dorcas, to settle affairs with Colonel Fox, and to feel established. Until then, he cared not to see or talk with his old acquaintances. It would be time enough afterwards to take them by the hand,—to employ them, perhaps. And as it takes almost no time to think, before he was half-way up the stairs, Swan Day had got as far as the erection of a superb country-seat on the hill where the old Cobb house stood, and of employing a dozen smart young carpenters and masons of his acquaintance in the village. The garden should have a pagoda in it; and one room in the house should be called the "China room," and should be furnished exclusively with Chinese tables and chairs; and he would have a brilliant lantern-fête, and–Here he reached the top-stair, and the little maid pointed to his room, curtsied, and ran away.
Swan dropped his cloak, snuffed the candle, and, sitting down before the pleasant wood-fire that had been hastily lighted, proceeded to make his own tea, by a new Invention for Travellers.
As people are not changed so quickly as they expect and intend to be by circumstances, it came to pass that Swan Day's plans for elegant expenditure in his native town soon relapsed, perhaps under the influence of the Chinese herb, into old channels and plans for acquisition. The habit of years was a little too strong for him to turn short round and pour out what he had been for so many years garnering in. Rather, perhaps, keep in the tread-mill of business awhile longer, and then be the nabob in earnest. At present, who knew what these mutterings in the political atmosphere portended? A war with England seemed inevitable, and that at no distant period. It might be better to retire on a limited certainty; but then there was also the manful struggle for a splendid possibility.
A neat-handed maid brought in a tray, with the light Supper he had ordered.
The sight of four kinds of pies, with cold turkey and apple-sauce, brought the Fox farm and its inhabitants more vividly to his mind than anything else he had seen. Pumpkin of the yellowest, custard of the richest, apple of the spiciest, and mince that was one mass of appetizing dainty, filled the room with the flavor of by-gone memories. Every sense responded to them. The fifteen years that had hung like a curtain of mist before him suddenly lifted, and he saw the view beyond, broad, bountiful, and cheery, under the sunshine of love, hope, and plenty. He closed his eyes, and the flavor filled his soul, as sweet music makes the lover faint with happiness.
He took out his writing-materials, and wrote,—
"My DEAREST, SWEETEST DORCAS,—Never for one instant has the thought of you left my heart, since"–
"That's a lie, to begin with!" said he, coolly, and throwing the paper into the fire,—"try again!"
"DEAREST DORCAS,—I feel and I know what you may possibly think of me by this time,—that you may possibly imagine me false to the vows which "–
It will be perceived that Swan had improved in rhetoric, since the day he parted from his lady-love. Still he could not satisfy himself in a letter. In short, he felt that expression outran the reality, however modestly and moderately chosen. Some vividness, some fervency, he must have, of course. But how in the world to get up the requisite definition even to the words he could conscientiously use? The second attempt followed the first.
Swan Day is not the first man who has found himself mistaken in matters of importance. In his return to his native country, and the scenes of his early life, he had taken for granted the evergreen condition of his sentiments. Like the reviving patient in epilepsy, who declares he has never for an instant lost his consciousness, while the bystanders have witnessed the dead fall, and taken note of the long interval,—so this sojourner of fifteen years in strange lands felt the returning pulse of youth, without thought of the lapsing time that bridges over all gulfs of emotion, however deep.
In fact, that part of his nature which had been in most violent action fifteen years before had been lying as torpid under Indian suns as if it had been dead indeed; and his sense of returning vitality was mixed with curious speculations about his own sensations.
He dropped the pen, and placed his feet on the top of the high stuffed easy-chair which adorned the room. This inverted personal condition relieved his mystification somewhat, or perhaps brought his whole nature more into harmony.
"Dorcas!—hm! hm!—fifteen years! so it is!—ah! she must be sadly changed indeed! At thirty, a woman is no longer a wood-nymph. Even more than thirty she must be."
He removed his feet from their elevation, and carefully arranged a different scaffolding out of the materials before him, by placing a cricket on the table, and his feet on the cricket. To do this effectually and properly required the removal of the four pies, and the displacement of the cold turkey.
But Swan was mentally removing far greater and more serious difficulties. By the time he had asked himself one or two questions, and had answered them, such as, "Whether, all the conditions being changed, I am to be held to my promise?" and the like, he had placed one foot carefully up. Then, before conscience had time to trip him up, the other foot followed, and he found himself firmly posted.
"I will write a note to-morrow,—put it into the post-office–No, that won't do; in these places, nobody goes to the post-office once a week;—I'll send a note to the house."
Here he warmed up.
"A note, asking her to meet me under the great pear-tree, as we met–It is, by Jove! just fifteen years to-morrow night since I left Walton! That's good! it will help on some"–
The little maid here interrupted his meditations by coming for the relics of the supper; and Swan, weary with unwonted thought, dropped the paper curtains, and plunged, body and soul, into fifty pounds of live-geese feathers.
CHAPTER VI
The great clock in the dining-room whirred out twelve strokes before Swan opened his eyes. As soon as the eyes took in the principal features of the apartment, which process his mental preoccupation had hindered the night before, he was as much at home as if he had never left Walton.
The great beam across the low room,—the little window-panes,—the rag-carpet, made of odds and ends patriotically arranged to represent the American eagle holding stars and stripes in his firm and bounteous claws, with an open beak that seemed saying,—"Here they be!—'cordin' as you behave yourselves!—stars or stripes!"—all within was more familiar to his eye than household words, for it was the old room he had occupied the year before he left America. He stepped quickly across the chamber to a certain beam, where he had, fifteen years before, written four initial letters, and intertwined them so curiously that the Gordian knot was easy weaving in comparison. The Gordian one was cut;—and this had been painted and effaced forever.
Swan returned to his trunk with a half-sigh. He selected a suit of clothes which he had purchased in Boston, put aside his travelling-dress, and looked out of the window occasionally as he dressed. It was a warm, sunny day. The Indian summer had relented and come back to take one more peep, before winter should shut the door on all the glowing beauty of the year. A dozen persons were crossing the street. He knew every one of them at sight. Of course there was no forgetting old Dan Sears, with whom he had forty times gone a-fishing; nor Phil Sanborn, who had stood behind the counter with him two years at the old store. Though Phil had grown stout, there was the same look. There was the old store, too, looking exactly as it did when he went away, the sign a little more worn in the gilding. He seemed to smell the mingled odors of rum, salt-fish, and liquorice, with which every beam and rafter was permeated. And there was old Walsh going home drunk this minute! with a salt mackerel, as usual, for his family-dinner.
He wrote a short note as he dressed and shaved leisurely. The note was to Dorcas, and only said,—"Meet me under the old pear-tree before sunset tonight,"—and was signed with his initials. This note he at first placed on the little mantel-shelf in plain sight, so that he should not forget to take it down-stairs when he went to breakfast. Afterwards he put it into his pocket-book.
His dress–But the dress of 1811 has not arrived at the picturesque, and could never be classical under any circumstances. He finished his toilet, and went into the dining-room just as everybody else had dined, and asked the landlord what he could have for breakfast. Even then, the landlord hardly looked curious. Taft was certainly failing. In five minutes he found himself at a well-known little table, with the tavern-staple for odd meals, ham and eggs, flanked with sweetmeats and cake, just as he remembered of old. He nibbled at the sharp barberries lying black in the boiled molasses, and listened eagerly to the talk about British aggressions which was going on in the bar-room. Suddenly a face looked in at the low window.
Swan sprang forward, kicked over his chair, and knocked the earthen pepper-box off the table. Before he reached the window, however, the shadow had passed round the corner of the house, out of sight.
It was only a youthful figure, surmounted by a broad-brimmed straw hat, that half hid two sweet, sparkling eyes. Ah! but they were Dorcas's eyes!
He picked up the pepper-box, and mechanically sifted its contents into the barberry-dish.
Dorcas's eyes,—lips,—cheeks,—and waving grace! A rocking movement, a sort of beating, bounding, choking emotion, made the room suddenly dark, and he fell heavily into a chair.
The landlord opened the door, and said,—
"The hoss and shay ready, any time."
Swan roused himself, and drove away, without speaking to any of the smoking loungers on the stoop, to whom he was as if he had never been born. But this, from his preoccupied state, did not strike him as singular. One little voice, a bird's voice, as he drove along through the pine woods, sang over and over the same tune,—"Dorcas! Dorcas!"
The silence of the road, when all animated Nature slept in the warm noon of the late autumn day, when even the wheels scarcely sounded on the dead pine-spears, made this solitary voice, like Swan's newly awakened memory, all but angelic.
The sadness, which, through all the beauty of a New-England November, whispers in the fallen leaves, and through the rustle of the firs, overspread Swan's soul, not yet strengthened as well as freshened by his native air. He was melancholy and half stunned. He had been frightened, as he sat in the chair, by the capacity for enjoyment and suffering that was left in him. And he peered curiously into his own soul, as if the sensibilities locked up there belonged to somebody else. Impulsively he turned his horse towards the graveyard,—forgetting that he had all along intended to go there,—and fastening him at the broken gate, went on till he reached his mother's grave. Before his departure he had set up a slate stone to her memory and that of Robert Day, a soldier in the English army.
"She shall have a marble monument now, poor mother!" thought the son, picking his way through the long, tangled grass of the dreary place. Not a tree, not a shrub in sight. Not even the sward kept carefully. The slate had fallen flat, or, more likely, had been thrown down, and no hand had cared to raise again a stone to the memory of a despised enemy, who had never been even seen in Walton.
When Swan tried to move the stone, a thousand ugly things swarmed from beneath it. He dropped it, shuddering, and passed on. A white marble tablet of some pretension stood near, and recorded the names of
ZEPHANIAH FOX,
AND
AZUBAH, HIS WIFE
They died the, same day and their bones rest here, till the final resurrection.
He glanced at the date,—
JUNE 14th, 1805.
And he had never heard of it!—never guessed it! But then, he had not heard at all from Dorcas. Poor Dorcas! how had she borne this sudden and terrible bereavement? All that he might have been to her in her sorrow, for one moment all that he had not been, floated by him. The yellow melted away that had so long incrusted his soul, and he felt on his bared breast, as it were, the fresh air of truth and constancy,—of all that makes life worth the having.
He drove away,—away over the broad fields and the well-remembered meadows, out upon the Dummerston road, and over the Ridge Hill. Well, life was not all behind him!
He took out his watch. It was time to keep his appointment. He left the horse at the tavern-door, and walked up the road towards the trysting-place, the old pear-tree. He looked wistfully at it, and sprang over the wall, with considerable effort, as he could not but admit to himself. That old pear-tree! They had called it old fifteen years ago,—and here it stood, as proud and strong as then! The two great branches that stretched towards the south, and which he had often thought had something benignant in their aspect, as if they would bless the wayfarer or the sojourner under their shade, still reached forth and spread abroad their strong arms. But to-night, whether from his own excited imagination, or because the early frosts had stripped it of its leaves and so bereaved it of all that gave grace to its aspect, or perhaps from the deepening twilight,—however it was, the old tree had a different expression, and stretched forth two skeleton arms with a sort of half-warning, half-mocking gesture, that sent a shudder over his frame, already disturbed by the successive presence, in the last two or three hours, of more emotions than he could comfortably sustain.
Swan was not an imaginative person. Yet the tree looked to him like a living, sentient thing, dooming him and warning him. As in the compression of the brain in drowning, it is said forgotten memories are hustled uppermost, and the events of early life vividly written on the consciousness,—so in this unwonted stir of past and present associations, Swan found himself remembering, with a thrill of pleasure that was chased by a spasm of pain, the last evening on which he had parted from Dorcas. He remembered, as if it were but now, how he had turned towards the pear-tree, when Dorcas had gone out of sight and he dared not follow her, and that the pear-tree had seemed to hear, to see, to sympathize with him,—that it had spread out great blessing arms on the southern air, and had seemed to encourage and strengthen his hopes of a happy return.
Was the fearful expression it now wore a shadow, a forerunner of what he might expect? He shook off, with an effort that was less painful than the sufferance of the thought, both fears and prognostics. He turned his back and walked rapidly and uneasily up and down the path between the tree and the old well.
He had left Dorcas blooming, lovely, and twenty-two. As blooming, as lovely, as lithe, and as sparkling, she was now. His own eyes had seen the vision.
But would she remember and love him still? For the first time it occurred to him that he must himself be somewhat changed,—changed certainly, since old Taft did not recognize him, after all the hogsheads of rum he had sold him! For the first time he felt a little thrill of fear, lest Dorcas should have been inconstant,—or lest, seeing him now, she might not love him as she once did. A faint blush passed over his face.
He raised his eyes, and Dorcas stood before him at the distance of a few feet: the bloom on her delicate cheek the same,—the dimpled chin, the serene forehead, the arch and laughing eyes!
Somehow, she seemed like a ghost, too; for, when he stepped towards her, she retreated, keeping the same distance between them.
"Dorcas!" said Swan, imploringly.
"What do you want of me?" answered a sweet voice, trembling and low.
"Are you really Dorcas? really, really my Dorcas?" said Swan, in an agony of uncertain emotion.
"To be sure I am Dorcas!" answered the girl, in a half-terrified, half-petulant tone.
In a moment she darted up the path out of sight, just as Dorcas had done on the last night he had seen her!
Had he kept the kiss on his lips with which he had parted from her,—that kiss which, to him at least, had been one of betrothal?
The short day was nearly dead. In the gloom of the darkening twilight, Swan stood leaning against the old tree and looking up the path where the figure had disappeared, doubting whether a vision had deluded his senses or not.
Was Dorcas indeed separated from him? Was there no bringing back the sweet, olden time of love to her? She had seemed to shrink from him and fade out of sight. Could she never indeed love him again?
It was getting dark. But for the great, broad moon, that just then shone out from behind the Ridge Hill, he would not have seen another figure coming down the path from the house. Swan felt as if he had lived a long time in the last half-hour.
A woman walked cautiously towards him, apparently proceeding to the well. She stooped a little, and a wooden hoop round her person supported a pail on each side, which she had evidently come to fill. It was no angel that came to trouble the fountain to-night. She pulled down the chained bucket with a strong, heavy sweep, and the beam rose high in the air, with the stone securely fastened to the end. While she drew up and poured the water into the pails, she looked several times covertly at the stranger. The stranger, on his part, scanned her as closely. She belonged to the house, he thought. Probably she had come to live on the Fox farm at the death of the old people,—to take care of Dorcas, possibly. Again he scanned her curiously.
The face was an ordinary one. A farmer's wife, even of the well-to-do, fore-handed sort, had many cares, and often heavy labors. Fifty years ago, inventive science had given no assistance to domestic labor, and all household work was done in the hardest manner. This woman might have had her day of being good-looking, possibly. But the face, even by moonlight, was now swarthy with exposure; the once round arm was dark and sinewy; and the plainly parted hair was confined and concealed by a blue-and-white handkerchief knotted under her chin. The forehead was freely lined; and the lips opened, when they did open, on dark, unfrequent teeth. These observations Swan made as he moved forward to speak to her; for there was no special expressiveness or animation to relieve the literal stamp of her features.
"Can you tell me, Madam,—hem!—who lives now on this place? It used to belong to Colonel Fox, I think."
He called her "Madam" at a venture, though she might, for all he could see, be a "help" on the farm. But it wasn't Cely, nor yet Dinah.
At the sound of his voice the woman's whole expression changed. Her quick eyes fell back into a look of dreamy inquiry and softness. She dropped her pails to the ground, and stood, fenced in by the hoop, like a statue of bewilderment,—if such a statue could be carved.
Was his face transfigured in the moonlight, as she slowly gathered up old memories, and compared the form before her with the painted shadows of the past? She answered not a word, but clasped her hands tightly together, and bent her head to listen again to the voice.
"I say! good woman!"—this time with a raised tone, for he thought she might be deaf,—"is not this the old Fox farm? Please tell me who lives here now. The family are dead, I think."
The woman opened her clenched hands and spread the palms outward and upward. Then, in a low tone of astonishment, she said,—
"Good Lord o' mercy! if it a'n't him!"
He moved nearer, and put his hand on her shoulder to reassure her.
"To be sure it is, my good soul. Don't be frightened. I give you my word, I am myself, and nobody else. And pray, now, who may you be? Do you live here?" he added, with a short laugh.
He addressed her jocosely; for he saw the poor frightened thing would never give him the information he wanted, unless he could contrive to compose her. It was odd, too, that he should frighten everybody so. Dorcas had hurried off like a lapwing.
"Swan Day!" said the woman, softly.
"That is my name, Goody! But I am ashamed to say, I don't remember you.
Pray, did you live here when I went away?"
"Yes," said she, softly again, and this time looking into his eyes.
"Tell me, then, if you can tell me, whose hands this farm fell into? Who owns the place? Has it gone out of the family? Where is Dorcas Fox?"
He spoke hastily, and held her by the arm, as if he feared she would slide away in the moonlight.
"Dorcas Fox is here, Swan. I am Dorcas."
"You? you Dorcas Fox?" said he, roughly. "Was it a ghost I saw?" he murmured,—"or is this a ghost?"
He had seen a bud, fresh, dewy, and blooming; and now he brushed away from his thought the wilted and brown substitute. Not a line of the face, not a tone of the voice, did he remember.
"Don't you see anything about me, Swan,—anything that reminds you of Dorcas Fox?" said the woman, eagerly, and clasping her hands again.
His eyes glared at her in the moonlight, as he exclaimed,—
"No, my God! not a feature!"
CHAPTER VII
"Well, I expect I be changed, Swan," said Dorcas, sadly.
She said nothing about his change; and, besides, she had recognized him.
"They say my Dorcas favors me, and looks as I used to. Come, come up to the house; Mr. Mowers'll be glad to see you. You don't know how many times we've talked you over, and wondered if ever you'd come back! But, dear sakes! you can't think what a kind of a shock you give me, Swan! Why, I expected nothin' but what you was dead, years ago!"
Here was a pretty expression of sentiment! Swan only answered, faintly,—
"Did you?" and rubbed his eyes to wake himself up.
They walked slowly towards the house. The great red walls stood staring and peaceful, as of old, and the milkers were coming in from the farmyard with their pails foaming and smoking, as they used to do fifteen years before. In the door-way, with his pipe in his mouth, stood Henry Mowers, the monarch of all he surveyed. He had come, by marriage, to own the Fox farm of twelve hundred acres. He had woodland and pasture-land, cattle and horses, like Job,—and in his house, health, peace, and children: dark-eyed Dorcas and Jemima, white-headed Obed and Zephaniah, and the twins that now clambered over his shoulder and stood on his broad, strong palms,—two others, Philip and Henry, had died in the cradle.
Dorcas the younger stood in the doorway, and leaned gracefully towards her father. She whispered to him, as the stranger approached,—
"There's the man coming now with mother! I thought't was a crazy man!"
The mother came eagerly forward, anxious to prevent the unrecognizing glance, which she knew must be painful.
"What do you think, Henry? Swan Day has come back, just in time to spend Thanksgiving with us!"
"Swan Day? I want to know!" answered Henry, mechanically holding out his hand, and then shaking it longer and longer in the vain attempt to recall the youthful features.
"Well! if ever!" he continued, turning to his wife, with increased astonishment at the perspicacity she had shown, while Swan's eyes were fixed on the slender figure of the young Dorcas, seeming to see the river of life flowing by and far beyond him.
Keeping up a despairing shaking, Henry walked the stranger into the old square room, where the once sanded floor was now covered with a carpet, and a piano strutted in the corner where the bed used to stand. But still in the other corner stood the old "buffet," and the desk where Colonel Fox kept his yellow papers. How stern, strong, and mighty Henry looked, with his six feet height, his sinewy limbs and broad chest, and his clear, steady eyes, full of manliness! How cheery the old parlor looked, too, as the evening advanced, and Dorcas lighted the pine-knots that sparkled up the chimney and set all the eyes and cheeks in the room ablaze! That was a pleasant evening, when the three elders chatted freely of all that had come and gone in Swan's absence,—of those who had died, and those who were living, and of settlers even far beyond Western New York!
"It will be like old times to have you here to-morrow at Thanksgiving, won't it?" said Henry.
"Won't it?" echoed Dorcas.
Swan said it would, and good-night.
When he was gone, little Dorcas exclaimed,—
"What a queer little old man, mother! isn't he?"
"How, queer, Dorcas?" said her mother, curious to compare the effects on the minds of the different members of the family of their visitor's appearance.
"Oh, so odd-looking! such queer little eyes! and no hair on the top of his head! and such funny whiskers!" said Dorcas, smoothing her own abundant locks, and looking at her father and brothers, whose curls were brushed back and straight up into the air, a distance of three inches, after the fashion then called "Boston." The smallest child gave an instinctive push over his forehead at the remark, and Zephaniah added,—
"He's as round and yellow as a punkin!"
"He looked stiddy to Dorcas all the time," said 'Mima, roguishly.
"Now you shet up, you silly child!" said Dorcas, with the dignity of a twelve-month's seniority.
"Wal, he dropped this 'ere in my hand, anyhow, as he went out," said Obed, opening his hand cautiously, and showing a Spanish doubloon.
"Oh! then you must give it right back to him to-morrow, Obe!" said the honest sisters; "it's gold! and he couldn't 'a' meant you should hev it!"
"I do' know 'bout that! I'll keep it t'll he asks me for 't, I guess!" said Obed, sturdily.
"What did you think about him, Henry?" said the wife; "you wouldn't 'a' known him?"
"Never! there a'n't an inch o' Swan Day in him! They say people change once in seven years. I should be loath to feel I'd lost all my looks as he has!"
"We grow old, though," answered she, with a touch of pathos in her voice, as she remembered the words of Swan.
"Old? of course, wife!" was the hearty answer; "but then we've got somethin' to show for 't!"
He glanced at her and the children proudly, and then bidding the young ones, "Scatter, quick time!" he stretched his comfortable six-feet-two before the fire, and smiled out of an easy, happy heart.
"What's looks?" said he, philosophically. "You look jest the same to me, wife, as ever you did!"
"Do I?" said the pleased wife. "Well, I'm glad I do. I couldn't bear to seem different to you, Henry!"
Henry took his pipe from his mouth, and then looked at his wife with a steady and somewhat critical gaze.
"I don't think anything about it, wife; but if I want to think on 't,—why, I can, by jes' shettin' my eyes,—and there you are! as handsome as a picter! Little Dorcas is the very image of you, at her age; and you look exactly like her,—only older, of course.—Everything ready for Thanksgiving? We'll give Day a good dinner, anyhow!"
"Yes, all's ready," answered Dorcas, with her eyes fixed on the fire.
"I knew it! There's no fail to you, wife!—never has been!—never will be!"
Dorcas rose and went behind her husband, took his head in her two faithful hands, kissed his forehead, and went upstairs.
"Little Dorcas" was fastening her hair in countless papillotes. She smiled bashfully, as her mother entered the room, and showed her white, even teeth, between her rosy lips.
"I wonder if I ever did look so pretty as that child does!" said the mother to herself.
But she said to Dorcas only this:—
"Here's your great-aunt's pin and ring. They used to be mine, when I was young and foolish. Take care of 'em, and don't you be foolish, child!"
"I wonder what mother meant!" soliloquized the daughter, when her mother had kissed her and said good-night; "she certainly had tears in her eyes!"
In the gray dawn of the next morning, Swan Day rode out of Walton in the same stage-coach and with the same "spike-team" of gray horses which had brought him thither thirty-six hours before. When the coach reached Troy, and the bright sun broke over the picturesque scenery of the erratic Ashuelot, he drew his breath deeply, as if relieved of a burden. Presently the coach stopped, the door opened, and the coachman held out his hand in silence.
"Fare, is it?"
"Fare."
Opening his pocket-book, he saw the note which he had written to Dorcas, appointing an interview, and which he had forgotten to send to her.
As he rode on, he tore the letter into a thousand minute fragments, scattering them for a mile in the coach's path, and watching the wheels grind them down in the dust.
"'T isn't the only thing I haven't done that I meant to!" said he, with a sad smile over his sallow face.
He buttoned his coat closely to his chin, raised the collar to his ears, and shut his eyes.
The coachman peeped back at his only passenger, touched the nigh leader with the most delicate hint of a whipcord, and said confidentially to the off wheel,—
"What a sleepy old porpus that is in there!"
* * * * *
THE LAST CRUISE OF THE MONITOR
An actor in the scenes of that wild night when the Monitor went down craves permission to relate the story of her last cruise.
Her work is now over. She lies a hundred fathoms deep under the stormy waters off Cape Hatteras. But "the little cheese-box on a raft" has made herself a name which will not soon be forgotten by the American people.
Every child knows her early story,—it is one of the thousand romances of the war,—how, as our ships lay at anchor in Hampton Roads, and the army of the Potomac covered the Peninsula, one shining March day,—
"Far away to the South uprose
A little feather of snow-white smoke;
And we knew that the iron ship of our foes
Was steadily steering its course
To try the force
Of our ribs of oak."
Iron conquered oak; the balls from the Congress and Cumberland rattled from the sides of the Rebel ship like hail; she passed on resistless, and
"Down went the Cumberland, all a wrack."
The Congress struck her flag, and the band of men on the Peninsula waited their turn,—for the iron monster belched out fire and shell to both sea and land. Evening cut short her work, and she returned to Norfolk, leaving terror and confusion behind her.
The morning saw her return; but now between her expected prey, the Minnesota, and herself, lay a low, black raft, to the lookers-on from the Merrimack no more formidable than the masts of the sunken Cumberland, or the useless guns of the Congress, near whose shattered hulks the Monitor kept guard, the avenger of their loss.
As the haughty monster approached the scene of her triumph, the shock of an unexampled cannonade checked her career. That little black turret poured out a fire so tremendous, so continuous, that the jubilant crew of the Merrimack faltered, surprised, terrified. The revolving tower was a marvel to them. One on board of her at the time has since told me, that, though at first entirely confident of victory, consternation finally took hold of all.
"D—n it!" said one, "the thing is full of guns."
An hour the contest raged, and then the iron scales of the invincible began to crumble under repeated blows thundered from that strange revolving terror. A slaughtering, destroying shot smashing through the port, a great seam battered in the side, crippled and defeated, the Merrimack turned prow and steamed away.
This was the end of her career, as really as when, a few weeks later, early morning saw her wrapped in sudden flame and smoke, and the people of Norfolk heard in their beds the report which was her death-knell.
So fear ended for a time, and the Monitor saw little service, until at Fort Darling she dismounted every gun, save one, when all her comrades failed to reach the mark. Then, a little worn by hard fighting, she went to Washington for some slight repairs, but specially to have better arrangements made for ventilation, as those on board suffered from the confined air during action.
The first of September a fresh alarm came, when she went down to Hampton Roads to meet the new Merrimack, said to be coming out, and stationed herself at the mouth of the James River, between the buried Congress and Cumberland, whose masts still rose above water, a monument of Rebel outrage and Union heroism. Here she remained expectant for more than two months, all on board desiring action, but thinking the new year must come in before anything could be done.
The last week in December found her lying under the guns of Fortress Monroe, and busily fitting for sea. Her own guns had been put in perfect working order, and shone like silver, one bearing the name of Worden, the other that of Ericsson. Her engineer, Mr. Campbell, was in the act of giving some final touches to the machinery, when his leg was caught between the piston-rod and frame of one of the oscillating engines, with such force as to bend the rod, which was an inch and a quarter in diameter and about eight inches long, and break its cast-iron frame, five-eighths of an inch in thickness. The most remarkable fact in this case is, that the limb, though jammed and bruised, remained unbroken,—our men in this iron craft seeming themselves to be iron.
The surgeon who examined the limb, astonished at the narrow escape, thought at first that it might, by energetic treatment, be cured in a few days; and as the engineer, who had been with the vessel from her launching, was extremely anxious to remain on board, he was disposed at first to yield to his wishes, but afterwards, reflecting that confined air and sea-sickness would have a bad effect, concluded to transfer him to the hospital, the engineer remarking, as he was carried off,—"Well, this may be Providential."
It was Providential indeed!
His place was filled, and the preparations went on briskly. The turret and sight-holes were calked, and every possible, entrance for water made secure, only the smallest openings being left in the turret-top, and the blower-stacks, through which the ship was ventilated. On the afternoon of December 29, 1862, she put on steam, and, in tow of the Rhode Island, passed the fort, and out to sea under sealed orders.
General joy was expressed at this relief from long inaction. The sick came upon deck, and in the clear sky, fresh air, and sense of motion, seemed to gain new life.
The Rhode Island, like all side-wheel steamers, left in her wake a rolling, foaming track of waves, which the Monitor, as she passed over it, seemed to smooth out like an immense flat-iron. In the course of the afternoon, we saw the Passaic in tow of the State of Georgia, like a white speck, far in advance of us.
As we gradually passed out to sea, the wind freshened somewhat; but the sun went down in glorious clouds of purple and crimson, and the night was fair and calm above us, though in the interior of our little vessel the air had already begun to lose its freshness. We suffered more or less from its closeness through the night, and woke in the morning to find it heavy with impurity from the breaths of some sixty persons, composing the officers and crew. Sunrise found us on deck, enjoying pure air, and watching the East.
"Where yonder dancing billows dip,
Far off to Ocean's misty verge,
Ploughs Morning, like a full-sailed ship,
The Orient's cloudy surge.
With spray of scarlet fire, before
The ruffled gold that round her dies,
She sails above the sleeping shore,
Across the waking skies."
During the night we had passed Cape Henry, and now, at dawn, found ourselves on the ocean,—the land only a blue line in the distance. A few more hours, and that had vanished. No sails were visible, and the Passaic, which we had noticed the evening before, was now out of sight. The morning and afternoon passed quietly; we spent most of our time on deck, on account of the confined air below, and, being on a level with the sea, with the spray dashing over us occasionally, amused ourselves with noting its shifting hues and forms, from the deep green of the first long roll to the foam-crest and prismatic tints of the falling wave.
As the afternoon advanced, the freshening wind, the thickening clouds, and the increasing roll of the sea gave those most accustomed to ordinary ship-life some new experiences. The little vessel plunged through the rising waves, instead of riding them, and, as they increased in violence, lay, as it were, under their crests, which washed over her continually, so that, even when we considered ourselves safe, the appearance was that of a vessel sinking.
"I'd rather go to sea in a diving-bell!" said one, as the waves dashed over the pilot-house, and the little craft seemed buried in water.
"Give me an oyster-scow!" cried another,—"anything!—only let it be wood, and something that will float over, instead of under the water!"
Still she plunged on, and about six thirty P.M. we made Cape Hatteras; in half an hour we had rounded the point, and many on board expressed regret that the Monitor should not have been before the Passaic in doing so. Our spy-glasses were in constant use; we saw several vessels in the distance, and about seven P.M. discovered the Passaic four or five miles astern to the north of us, in tow of the steamer State of Georgia.
A general hurrah went up,—"Hurrah for the first iron-clad that ever rounded Cape Hatteras! Hurrah for the little boat that is first in everything!" The distance between ourselves and the Passaic widened, and we gradually lost sight of her.
At half-past seven a heavy shower fell, lasting about twenty minutes. At this time the gale increased; black, heavy clouds covered the sky, through which the moon glimmered fitfully, allowing us to see in the distance a long line of white, plunging foam, rushing towards us,—sure indication, to a sailor's eye, of a stormy time.
A gloom overhung everything; the banks of cloud seemed to settle around us; the moan of the ocean grew louder and more fearful. Still our little boat pushed doggedly on: victorious through all, we thought that here, too, she would conquer, though the beating waves sent shudders through her whole frame. Bearing still the marks of one of the fiercest battles of the war, we had grown to think her invulnerable to any assault of man or element, and as she breasted these huge waves, plunging through one only to meet another more mighty, we thought,—"She is stanch! she will weather it!"
An hour passed; the air below, which had all day been increasing in closeness, was now almost stifling, but our men lost no courage. Some sang as they worked, and the cadence of the voices, mingling with the roar of waters, sounded like a defiance to Ocean.
Some stationed themselves on top of the turret, and a general enthusiasm filled all breasts, as huge waves, twenty feet high, rose up on all sides, hung suspended for a moment like jaws open to devour, and then, breaking, gnashed over in foam from side to side. Those of us new to the sea, and not appreciating our peril, hurrahed for the largest wave; but the captain and one or two others, old sailors, knowing its power, grew momentarily more and more anxious, feeling, with a dread instinctive to the sailor, that, in case of extremity, no wreck yet known to ocean could be so hopeless as this. Solid iron from keelson to turret-top, clinging to anything for safety, if the Monitor should go down, would only insure a share in her fate. No mast, no spar, no floating thing, to meet the outstretched hand in the last moment.
The sea, like the old-world giant, gathered force from each attack. Thick and fast came the blows on the iron mail of the Monitor, and still the brave little vessel held her own, until, at half-past eight, the engineer, Waters, faithful to the end, reported a leak. The pumps were instantly set in motion, and we watched their progress with an intense interest. She had seemed to us like an old-time knight in armor, battling against fearful odds, but still holding his ground. We who watched, when the blow came which made the strong man reel and the life-blood spout, felt our hearts faint within us; then again ground was gained, and the fight went on, the water lowering somewhat under the laboring pumps.
From nine to ten it kept pace with them. From ten to eleven the sea increased in violence, the waves now dashing entirely over the turret, blinding the eyes and causing quick catchings of the breath, as they swept against us. At ten the engineer had reported the leak as gaining on us; at half-past ten, with several pumps in constant motion, one of which threw out three thousand gallons a minute, the water was rising rapidly, and nearing the fires. When these were reached, the vessel's doom was sealed; for with their extinction the pumps must cease, and all hope of keeping the Monitor above water more than an hour or two expire. Our knight had received his death-blow, and lay struggling and helpless under the power of a stronger than he.
A consultation was held, and, not without a conflict of feeling, it was decided that signals of distress should be made. Ocean claimed our little vessel, and her trembling frame and failing fire proved she would soon answer his call; yet a pang went through us, as we thought of the first iron-clad lying alone at the bottom of this stormy sea, her guns silenced, herself a useless mass of metal. Each quiver of her strong frame seemed to plead with us not to abandon her. The work she had done, the work she was to do, rose before us; might there not be a possibility of saving her yet?—her time could not have come so soon. We seemed to hear a voice from her saying,—"Save me, for once I have saved you! My frame is stanch still; my guns may again silence the roar of Rebel batteries. The night will pass, and calm come to us once more. Save me!" The roar of Ocean drowned her voice, and we who descended for a moment to the cabin knew, by the rising water through which we waded, that the end was near.
Small time was there for regrets. Rockets were thrown up, and answered by the Rhode Island, whose brave men prepared at once to lower boats, though, in that wild sea, it was almost madness.
The Monitor had been attached to the Rhode Island by two hawsers, one of which had parted at about seven P.M. The other remained firm, but now it was necessary it should be cut. How was that possible, when every wave washed clean over her deck? what man could reach it alive? "Who'll cut the hawser?" shouted Captain Bankhead. Acting-Master Stodder volunteered, and was followed by another. Holding by one hand to the ropes at her side, they cut through, by many blows of the hatchet, the immense rope which united the vessels. Stodder returned in safety, but his brave companion was washed over and went down.
The men were quiet and controlled, but all felt anxiety. Master's-Mate Peter Williams suggested bailing, in the faint hope that in this way the vessel might be kept longer above water. A bailing party was organized by John Stocking, boatswain, who, brave man, at last went down. Paymaster Keeler led the way, in company with Stocking, Williams, and one or two others; and though the water was now waist-deep, and they knew the vessel was liable to go down at almost any moment, they worked on nobly, throwing out a constant stream of water from the turret.
Meanwhile the boat launched from the Rhode Island had started, manned by a crew of picked men.
A mere heroic impulse could not have accomplished this most noble deed. For hours they had watched the raging sea. Their captain and they knew the danger; every man who entered that boat did it at peril of his life; and yet all were ready. Are not such acts as these convincing proof of the divinity in human nature?
We watched her with straining eyes, for few thought she could live to reach us. She neared; we were sure of her, thank God!
In this interval the cut hawser had become entangled in the paddle-wheel of the Rhode Island, and she drifted down upon us: we, not knowing this fact, supposed her coming to our assistance; but a moment undeceived us. The launch sent for our relief was now between us and her,—too near for safety. The steamer bore swiftly down, stern first, upon our starboard quarter. "Keep off! keep off!" we cried, and then first saw she was helpless. Even as we looked, the devoted boat was caught between the steamer and the iron-clad,—a sharp sound of crushing wood was heard,—thwarts, oars, and splinters flew in air,—the boat's crew leaped to the Monitor's deck. Death stared us in the face; our iron prow must go through the Rhode Island's side, and then an end to all. One awful moment we held our breath,—then the hawser was cleared,—the steamer moved off, as it were, step by step, first one, then another, till a ship's-length lay between us, and then we breathed freely. But the boat!—had she gone to the bottom, carrying brave souls with her? No, there she lay, beating against our iron sides, but still, though bruised and broken, a life-boat to us.
There was no hasty scramble for life when it was found she floated; all held back. The men kept steadily on at their work of bailing,—only those leaving, and in the order named, whom the captain bade save themselves. They descended from the turret to the deck with mingled fear and hope, for the waves tore from side to side, and the coolest head and bravest heart could not guaranty safety. Some were washed over as they left the turret, and, with a vain clutch at the iron deck, a wild throwing-up of the arms, went down, their death-cry ringing in the ears of their companions.
The boat sometimes held her place by the Monitor's side, then was dashed hopelessly out of reach, rising and falling on the waves. A sailor would spring from the deck to reach her, be seen for a moment in mid-air, and then, as she rose, fall into her. So she gradually filled up; but some poor souls who sought to reach her failed even as they touched her receding sides, and went down.
We had on board a little messenger-boy, the special charge of one of the sailors, and the pet of all; he must inevitably have been lost, but for the care of his adopted father, who, holding him firmly in his arms, escaped as by miracle, being washed overboard, and succeeded in placing him safely in the boat.
The last but one to make the desperate venture was the surgeon; he leaped from the deck, and at the very instant saw the boat being swept away by the merciless sea. Making one final effort, he threw his body forward as he fell, striking across the boat's side so violently, it was thought some of his ribs must be broken. "Haul the Doctor in!" shouted Lieutenant Greene, perhaps remembering how, a little time back, he himself, almost gone down in the unknown sea, had been "hauled in" by a quinine rope flung him by the Doctor. Stout sailor-arms pulled him in, one more sprang to a place in her, and the boat, now full, pushed off,—in a sinking condition, it is true, but still bearing hope with her, for she was wood.
Over the waves we toiled slowly, pulling for life. The men stuffed their pea-jackets into the holes in her side, and bailed incessantly. We neared the Rhode Island; but now a new peril appeared. Right down upon our centre, borne by the might of rushing water, came the whale-boat sent to rescue others from the iron-clad. We barely floated; if she struck us with her bows full on us, we must go to the bottom. One sprang, and, as she neared, with outstretched arms, met and turned her course. She passed against us, and his hand, caught between the two, was crushed, and the arm, wrenched from its socket, fell a helpless weight at his side; but life remained. We were saved, and an arm was a small price to pay for life.
We reached the Rhode Island; ropes were flung over her side, and caught with a death-grip. Some lost their hold, were washed away, and again dragged in by the boat's crew. What chance had one whose right arm hung a dead weight, when strong men with their two hands went down before him? He caught at a rope, found it impossible to save himself alone, and then for the first time said,—"I am injured; can any one aid me?" Ensign Taylor, at the risk of his own life, brought the rope around his shoulder in such a way it could not slip, and he was drawn up in safety.
In the mean time the whale-boat, nearly our destruction, had reached the side of the Monitor, and now the captain said,—"It is madness to remain here longer; let each man save himself." For a moment he descended to the cabin for a coat, and his faithful servant followed to secure a jewel-box, containing the accumulated treasure of years. A sad, sorry sight it was. In the heavy air the lamps burned dimly, and the water, waist-deep, splashed sullenly against the wardroom's sides. One lingering look, and he left the Monitor's cabin forever.
Time was precious; he hastened to the deck, where, in the midst of a terrible sea, Lieutenant Greene nobly held his post. He seized the rope from the whale-boat, wound it about an iron stanchion, and then around his wrists, for days afterward swollen and useless from the strain. His black body-servant stood near him.
"Can you swim, William?" he asked.
"No," replied the man.
"Then keep by me, and I'll save you."
One by one, watching their time between the waves, the men filled in, the captain helping the poor black to a place, and at last, after all effort for others and none for themselves, Captain Bankhead and Lieutenant Greene took their places in the boat. Two or three still remained, clinging to the turret; the captain had begged them to come down, but, paralyzed with fear, they sat immovable, and the gallant Brown, promising to return for them, pushed off, and soon had his boat-load safe upon the Rhode Island's deck.
Here the heartiest and most tender reception met us. Our drenched clothing was replaced by warm and dry garments, and all on board vied with each other in acts of kindness. The only one who had received any injury, Surgeon Weeks, was carefully attended to, the dislocated arm set, and the crushed fingers amputated by the gentlest and most considerate of surgeons, Dr. Webber of the Rhode Island.
For an hour or more we watched from the deck of the Rhode Island the lonely light upon the Monitor's turret; a hundred times we thought it gone forever,—a hundred times it reappeared, till at last, about two o'clock, Wednesday morning, it sank, and we saw it no more.
We had looked, too, most anxiously, for the whale-boat which had last gone out, under the command of Master's-Mate Brown, but saw no signs of it. We knew it had reached the Monitor, but whether swamped by the waved, or drawn in as the Monitor went down, we could not tell. Captain Trenchard would not leave the spot, but sailed about, looking in vain for the missing boat, till late Wednesday afternoon, when it would have been given up as hopelessly lost, except for the captain's dependence on the coolness and skill of its tried officer. He thought it useless to search longer, but, hoping it might have been picked up by some coasting vessel, turned towards Fortress Monroe.
Two days' sail brought us to the fort, whence we had started on Monday with so many glowing hopes, and, alas! with some who were never to return. The same kindness met us here as on the Rhode Island; loans of money, clothing, and other necessaries, were offered us. It was almost well to have suffered, so much beautiful feeling did it bring out.
A day or two at the fort, waiting for official permission to return to our homes, and we were on our way,—the week seeming, as we looked back upon it, like some wild dream. One thing only appeared real: our little vessel was lost, and we, who, in months gone by, had learned to love her, felt a strange pang go through us as we remembered that never more might we tread her deck, or gather in her little cabin at evening.
We had left her behind us, one more treasure added to the priceless store which Ocean so jealously hides. The Cumberland and Congress went first; the little boat that avenged their loss has followed; in both noble souls have gone down. Their names are for history; and so long as we remain a people, so long will the work of the Monitor be remembered, and her story told to our children's children.
* * * * *
LYRICS OF THE STREET.
V
THE DARKENED HOUSE
One year ago, this dreary night,
This house, that, in my way,
Checks the swift pulses of delight,
Was cordial glad, and gay.
The household angels tended there
Their ivy-cinctured bower,
And by the hardier plant grew fair
A lovely lily-flower.
The skies rained sunshine on its head,
It throve in summer air:
"How straight and sound!" the father said;
The mother said, "How fair!"
One little year is gathering up
Its glories to depart;
The skies have left one marble drop
Within the lily's heart.
For growth and bloom no more avails
The Seasons' changing breath;
With sudden constancy it feels
The sculpture-touch of Death
But from its breast let golden rays,
Immortal, break and rise,
Linking the sorrow-clouded days
With dawning Paradise.
* * * * *
AMERICA THE OLD WORLD
First-born among the Continents, though so much later in culture and civilization than some of more recent birth, America, so far as her physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated the New World. Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters, hers the first shore washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth beside; and while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched an unbroken line of land from Nova Scotia to the far West.
In the present state of our knowledge, our conclusions respecting the beginning of the earth's history, the way in which it took form and shape as a distinct, separate planet, must, of course, be very vague and hypothetical. Yet the progress of science is so rapidly reconstructing the past that we may hope to solve even this problem; and to one who looks upon man's appearance upon the earth as the crowning work in a succession of creative acts, all of which have had relation to his coming in the end, it will not seem strange that he should at last be allowed to understand a history which was but the introduction to his own existence. It is my belief that not only the future, but the past also, is the inheritance of man, and that we shall yet conquer our lost birthright.
Even now our knowledge carries us far enough to warrant the assertion that there was a time when our earth was in a state of igneous fusion, when no ocean bathed it and no atmosphere surrounded it, when no wind blew over it and no rain fell upon it, but an intense heat held all its materials in solution. In those days the rocks which are now the very bones and sinews of our mother earth—her granites, her porphyries, her basalts, her syenites—were melted into a liquid mass. As I am writing for the unscientific reader, who may not be familiar with the facts through which these inferences have been reached, I will answer here a question which, were we talking together, he might naturally ask in a somewhat skeptical tone. How do you know that this state of things ever existed, and, supposing that the solid materials of which our earth consists were ever in a liquid condition, what right have you to infer that this condition was caused by the action of heat upon them? I answer, Because it is acting upon them still; because the earth we tread is but a thin crust floating on a liquid sea of fire; because the agencies that were at work then are at work now, and the present is the logical sequence of the past. From artesian wells, from mines, from geysers, from hot springs, a mass of facts has been collected proving incontestably the heated condition of all materials at a certain depth below the earth's surface; and if we need more positive evidence, we have it in the fiery eruptions that even now bear fearful testimony to the molten ocean seething within the globe and forcing its way out from time to time. The modern progress of Geology has led us by successive and perfectly connected steps back to a time when what is now only an occasional and rare phenomenon was the normal condition of our earth; when those internal fires were inclosed in an envelope so thin that it opposed but little resistance to their frequent outbreak, and they constantly forced themselves through this crust, pouring out melted materials that subsequently cooled and consolidated on its surface. So constant were these eruptions, and so slight was the resistance they encountered, that some portions of the earlier rock-deposits are perforated with numerous chimneys, narrow tunnels as it were, bored by the liquid masses that poured out through them and greatly modified their first condition.
The question at once suggests itself, How was even this thin crust formed? what should cause any solid envelope, however slight and filmy when compared to the whole bulk of the globe, to form upon the surface of such a molten mass? At this point of the investigation the geologist must appeal to the astronomer; for in this vague and nebulous border-land, where the very rocks lose their outlines and flow into each other, where matter exists only in its essential elements, not yet specialized into definite forms and substances,—there the two sciences meet. Astronomy shows us our planet thrown off from the central mass of which it once formed a part, to move henceforth in an independent orbit of its own. That orbit, it tells us, passed through celestial spaces cold enough to chill this heated globe, and of course to consolidate it externally. We know, from the action of similar causes on a smaller scale and on comparatively insignificant objects immediately about us, what must have been the effect of this cooling process upon the heated mass of the globe. All substances when heated occupy more space than they do when cold. Water, which expands when freezing, is the only exception to this rule. The first effect of cooling the surface of our planet must have been to solidify it, and thus to form a film or crust over it. That crust would shrink as the cooling process went on; in consequence of the shrinking, wrinkles and folds would arise upon it, and here and there, where the tension was too great, cracks and fissures would be produced. In proportion as the surface cooled, the masses within would be affected by the change of temperature outside of them, and would consolidate internally also, the crust gradually thickening by this process.
But there was another element without the globe, equally powerful in building it up. Fire and water wrought together in this work, if not always harmoniously, at least with equal force and persistency. I have said that there was a time when no atmosphere surrounded the earth; but one of the first results of the cooling of its crust must have been the formation of an atmosphere, with all the phenomena connected with it,—the rising of vapors, their condensation into clouds, the falling of rains, the gathering of waters upon its surface. Water is a very active agent of destruction, but it works over again the materials it pulls down or wears away, and builds them up anew in other forms. As soon as an ocean washed over the consolidated crust of the globe, it would begin to abrade the surfaces upon which it moved, gradually loosening and detaching materials, to deposit them again as sand or mud or pebbles at its bottom in successive layers, one above another. Thus, in analyzing the crust of the globe, we find at once two kinds of rocks, the respective work of fire and water: the first poured out from the furnaces within, and cooling, as one may see any mass of metal cool that is poured out from a smelting-furnace today, in solid crystalline masses, without any division into separate layers or leaves; and the latter in successive beds, one over another, the heavier materials below, the lighter above, or sometimes in alternate layers, as special causes may have determined successive deposits of lighter or heavier materials at some given spot.
There were many well-fought battles between geologists before it was understood that these two elements had been equally active in building up the crust of the earth. The ground was hotly contested by the disciples of the two geological schools, one of which held that the solid envelope of the earth was exclusively due to the influence of fire, while the other insisted that it had been accumulated wholly under the agency of water. This difference of opinion grew up very naturally; for the great leaders of the two schools lived in different localities, and pursued their investigations over regions where the geological phenomena were of an entirely opposite character,—the one exhibiting the effect of volcanic eruptions, the other that of stratified deposits. It was the old story of the two knights on opposite sides of the shield, one swearing that it was made of gold, the other that it was made of silver, and almost killing each other before they discovered that it was made of both. So prone are men to hug their theories and shut their eyes to any antagonistic facts, that it is related of Werner, the great leader of the Aqueons school, that he was actually on his way to see a geological locality of especial interest, but, being told that it confirmed the views of his opponents, he turned round and went home again, refusing to see what might force him to change his opinions. If the rocks did not confirm his theory, so much the worse for the rocks,—he would none of them. At last it was found that the two great chemists, fire and water, had worked together in the vast laboratory of the globe, and since then scientific men have decided to work together also; and if they still have a passage at arms occasionally over some doubtful point, yet the results of their investigations are ever drawing them nearer to each other,—since men who study truth, when they reach their goal, must always meet at last on common ground.
The rocks formed under the influence of heat are called, in geological language, the Igneous, or, as some naturalists have named them, the Plutonic rocks, alluding to their fiery origin, while the others have been called Aqueous or Neptunic rocks, in reference to their origin under the agency of water. A simpler term, however, quite as distinctive, and more descriptive of their structure, is that of the stratified and unstratified or massive rocks. We shall see hereafter how the relative position of these two kinds of rocks and their action upon each other enables us to determine the chronology of the earth, to compare the age of her mountains, and if we have no standard by which to estimate the positive duration of her continents, to say at least which was the first-born among them, and how their characteristic features have been successively worked out. I am aware that many of these inferences, drawn from what is called "the geological record," must seem to be the work of the imagination. In a certain sense this is true,—for imagination, chastened by correct observation, is our best guide in the study of Nature. We are too apt to associate the exercise of this faculty with works of fiction, while it is in fact the keenest detective of truth.
Beside the stratified and unstratified rocks, there is still a third set, produced by the contact of these two, and called, in consequence of the changes thus brought about, the Metamorphic rocks. The effect of heat upon clay is to bake it into slate; limestone under the influence of heat becomes quick-lime, or if subjected afterwards to the action of water, it is changed to mortar; sand under the same agency is changed to a coarse kind of glass. Suppose, then, that a volcanic eruption takes place in a region of the earth's surface where successive layers of limestone, of clay, and of sandstone have been previously deposited by the action of water. If such an eruption has force enough to break through these beds, the hot, melted masses will pour out through the rent, flow over its edges, and fill all the lesser cracks and fissures produced by such a disturbance. What will be the effect upon the stratified rocks? Wherever these liquid masses, melted by a heat more intense than can be produced by any artificial means, have flowed over them or cooled in immediate contact with them, the clays will be changed to slate, the limestone will have assumed a character more like marble, while the sandstones will be vitrified. This is exactly what has been found to be the case, wherever the stratified rocks have been penetrated by the melted masses from beneath. They have been themselves partially melted by the contact, and when they have cooled again, their stratification, though still perceptible, has been partly obliterated, and their substance changed. Such effects may often be traced in dikes, which are only the cracks in rocks filled by materials poured into them at some period of eruption when the melted masses within the earth were thrown out and flowed like water into any inequality or depression of the surface around. The walls that inclose such a dike are often found to be completely altered by contact with its burning contents, and to have assumed a character quite different from the rocks of which they make a part; while the mass itself which fills the fissure shows by the character of its crystallization that it has cooled more quickly on the outside, where it meets the walls, than at the centre.
The first two great classes of rocks, the unstratified and stratified rocks, represent different epochs in the world's physical history: the former mark its revolutions, while the latter chronicle its periods of rest. All mountains and mountain-chains have been upheaved by great convulsions of the globe, which rent asunder the surface of the earth, destroyed the animals and plants living upon it at the time, and were then succeeded by long intervals of repose, when all things returned to their accustomed order, ocean and river deposited fresh beds in uninterrupted succession, the accumulation of materials went on as before, a new set of animals and plants were introduced, and a time of building up and renewing followed the time of destruction. These periods of revolution are naturally more difficult to decipher than the periods of rest; for they have so torn and shattered the beds they uplifted, disturbing them from their natural relations to each other, that it is not easy to reconstruct the parts and give them coherence and completeness again. But within the last half-century this work has been accomplished in many parts of the world with an amazing degree of accuracy, considering the disconnected character of the phenomena to be studied; and I think I shall be able to convince my readers that the modern results of geological investigation are perfectly sound logical inferences from well-established facts. In this, as in so many other things, we are but "children of a larger growth." The world is the geologist's great puzzle-box; he stands before it like the child to whom the separate pieces of his puzzle remain a mystery till he detects their relation and sees where they fit, and then his fragments grow at once into a connected picture beneath his hand.
It is a curious fact in the history of progress, that, by a kind of intuitive insight, the earlier observers seem to have had a wider, more comprehensive recognition of natural phenomena as a whole than their successors, who far excel them in their knowledge of special points, but often lose their grasp of broader relations in the more minute investigation of details. When geologists first turned their attention to the physical history of the earth, they saw at once certain great features which they took to be the skeleton and basis of the whole structure. They saw the great masses of granite forming the mountains and mountain-chains, with the stratified rocks resting against their slopes; and they assumed that granite was the first primary agent, and that all stratified rocks must be of a later formation. Although this involved a partial error, as we shall see hereafter, when we trace the upheavals of granite even into comparatively modern periods, yet it held a great geological truth also; for, though granite formations are by no means limited to those early periods, they are nevertheless very characteristic of them, and are indeed the great foundation-stones on which the physical history of the globe is built.
Starting from this landmark, the earlier geologists divided the world's history into three periods. As the historian recognizes as distinct phases in the growth of the human race Ancient History, the Middle Ages, and Modern History, so they distinguished between what they called the Primary period, when, as they believed, no life stirred on the surface of the earth, the Secondary or middle period, when animals and plants were introduced and the land began to assume continental proportions, and the Tertiary period, or comparatively modern geological times, when the aspect of the earth as well as its inhabitants was approaching more nearly to the present condition of things. But as their investigations proceeded, they found that every one of these great ages of the world's history was divided into numerous lesser epochs, each of which had been characterized by a peculiar set of animals and plants, and had been closed by some great physical convulsion, that disturbed and displaced the materials accumulated during such a period of rest. The further study of these subordinate periods showed that what had been called Primary formations, the volcanic or Plutonic rocks, formerly believed to be confined to the first geological ages, belonged to all the periods, successive eruptions having taken place at all times, pouring up through the accumulated deposits, penetrating and injecting their cracks, fissures, and inequalities, as well as throwing out large masses on the surface. Up to our own day there has never been a period when such eruptions have not taken place, though they have been constantly diminishing in frequency and extent. In consequence of this discovery, that rocks of igneous character were by no means exclusively characteristic of the earliest times, they are now classified together upon very different grounds from those on which geologists first united them; though, as the name Primary was long retained, we still find it applied to them, even in geological works of quite recent date. This defect of nomenclature is to be regretted as likely to mislead the student, because it seems to refer to time; whereas it no longer signifies the age of the rocks, but simply their character. The name Plutonic or Massive rocks is, however, now almost universally substituted for that of Primary.
There is still a wide field of investigation to be explored by the chemist and the geologist together, in the mineralogical character of the Plutonic rocks, which differs greatly in the different periods. The earlier eruptions seem to have been chiefly granitic, though this must not be understood in too wide a sense, since there are granite formations even as late as the Tertiary period; those of the middle periods were mostly porphyries and basalts; while in the more recent ones, lavas predominate. We have as yet no clue to the laws by which this distribution of volcanic elements in the formation of the earth is regulated; but there is found to be a difference in the crystals of the Plutonic rocks belonging to different ages, which, when fully understood, enables us to determine the age of any Plutonic rock by its mode of crystallization; so that the mineralogist will as readily tell you by its crystals whether a bit of stone of igneous origin belongs to this or that period of the world's history, as the palaeontologist will tell you by its fossils whether a piece of rock of aqueous origin belongs to the Silurian or Devonian or Carboniferous deposits. Although subsequent investigations have multiplied so extensively not only the number of geological periods, but also the successive creations that have characterized them, yet the first general division into three great eras was nevertheless founded upon a broad and true generalization. In the first stratified rocks in which any organic remains are found, the highest animals are fishes, and the highest plants are cryptogams; in the middle periods reptiles come in, accompanied by fern and moss forests; in later times quadrupeds are introduced, with a dicotyledonous vegetation. So closely does the march of animal and vegetable life keep pace with the material progress of the world, that we may well consider these three divisions, included under the first general classification of its physical history, as the three Ages of Nature; the more important epochs which subdivide them may be compared to so many great dynasties, while the lesser periods are the separate reigns contained therein. Of such epochs there are ten, well known to geologists; of the lesser periods about sixty are already distinguished, while many more loom up from the dim regions of the past, just discerned by the eye of science, though their history is not yet unravelled.
Before proceeding farther, I will enumerate the geological epochs in their succession, confining myself, however, to such as are perfectly well established, without alluding to those of which the limits are less definitely determined, and which are still subject to doubts and discussions among geologists. As I do not propose to make here any treatise of Geology, but simply to place before my readers some pictures of the old world, with the animals and plants that inhabited it at various times, I shall avoid, as far as possible, all debatable ground, and confine myself to those parts of my subject which are best known, and can therefore be more clearly presented.
First, we have the Azoic period, devoid of life, as its name signifies,—namely, the earliest stratified deposits upon the heated film forming the first solid surface of the earth, in which no trace of living thing has ever been found. Next comes the Silurian period, when the crust of the earth had thickened and cooled sufficiently to render the existence of animals and plants upon it possible, and when the atmospheric conditions necessary to their maintenance were already established. Many of the names given to these periods are by no means significant of their character, but are merely the result of accident: as, for instance, that of Silurian, given by Sir Roderick Murchison to this set of beds, because he first studied them in that part of Wales occupied by the ancient tribe of the Silures. The next period, the Devonian, was for a similar reason named after the county of Devonshire, in England, where it was first investigated. Upon this follows the Carboniferous period, with the immense deposits of coal from which it derives its name. Then comes the Permian period, named, again, from local circumstances, the first investigation of its deposits having taken place in the province of Permia, in Russia. Next in succession we have the Triassic period, so called from the trio of rocks, the red sandstone, Muschel Kalk, (shell-limestone.) and Keuper, (clay,) most frequently combined in its formations; the Jurassic, so amply illustrated in the chain of the Jura, where geologists first found the clue to its history; and the Cretaceous period, to which the chalk cliffs of England and all the extensive chalk deposits belong. Upon these follow the so-called Tertiary formations, divided into three periods, all of which have received most characteristic names. In this epoch of the world's history we see the first approach to a condition of things resembling that now prevailing, and Sir Charles Lyell has most fitly named its three divisions, the "Eocene," or the dawn, the "Miocene," meaning the continuance and increase of that light, and lastly, the "Pliocene," signifying its fulness and completion. Above these deposits comes what has been called in science the present period,—the modern times of the geologist,—that period to which man himself belongs, and since the beginning of which, though its duration be counted by hundreds of thousands of years, there has been no alteration in the general configuration of the earth, consequently no important modification of its climatic conditions, and no change in the animals and plants inhabiting it.
I have spoken of the first of these periods, the Azoic, as having been absolutely devoid of life, and I believe this statement to be strictly true; but I ought to add that there is a difference of opinion among geologists upon this point, many believing that the first surface of our globe may have been inhabited by living beings, but that all traces of their existence have been obliterated by the eruptions of melted materials, which not only altered the character of those earliest stratified rocks, but destroyed all the organic remains contained in them. It will be my object to show in this series of papers, not only that the absence of the climatic and atmospheric conditions essential to organic life as we understand it, must have rendered the previous existence of any living beings impossible, but also that the completeness of the Animal Kingdom in those deposits where we first find organic remains, its intelligible and coherent connection with the successive creations of all geological times and with the animals now living, affords the strongest internal evidence that we have indeed found in the lower Silurian formations, immediately following the Azoic, the beginning of life upon earth. When a story seems to us complete and consistent from the beginning to the end, we shall not seek for a first chapter, even though the copy in which we have read it be so torn and defaced as to suggest the idea that some portion of it may have been lost. The unity of the work, as a whole, is an incontestable proof that we possess it in its original integrity. The validity of this argument will be recognized, perhaps, only by those naturalists to whom the Animal Kingdom has begun to appear as a connected whole. For those who do not see order in Nature it can have no value.
For a table containing the geological periods in their succession, I would refer to any modern text-book of Geology; or to an article in the "Atlantic Monthly" for March, 1862, upon "Methods of Study in Natural History," where they are given in connection with the order of introduction of animals upon earth.
Were these sets of rocks found always in the regular sequence in which I have enumerated them, their relative ago would be easily determined, for their superposition would tell the whole story: the lowest would, of course, be the oldest, and we might follow without difficulty the ascending series, till we reached the youngest and uppermost deposits. But their succession has been broken up by frequent and violent alterations in the configuration of the globe. Land and water have changed their level,—islands have been transformed to continents,—sea-bottoms have become dry land, and dry land has sunk to form sea-bottom,—Alps and Himalayas, Pyrenees and Apennines, Alleghanies and Rocky Mountains, have had their stormy birthdays since many of these beds have been piled one above another, and there are but few spots on the earth's surface where any number of them may be found in their original order and natural position. When we remember that Europe, which lies before us on the map as a continent, was once an archipelago of islands,—that, where the Pyrenees raise their rocky barrier between France and Spain, the waters of the Mediterranean and Atlantic met,—that, where the British Channel flows, dry land united England and France, and Nature in those days made one country of the lands parted since by enmities deeper than the waters that run between,—when we remember, in short, all the fearful convulsions that have torn asunder the surface of the earth, as if her rocky record had indeed been written on paper, we shall find a new evidence of the intellectual unity which holds together the whole physical history of the globe in the fact that through all the storms of time the investigator is able to trace one unbroken thread of thought from the beginning to the present hour.
The tree is known by its fruits,—and the fruits of chance are incoherence, incompleteness, unsteadiness, the stammering utterance of blind, unreasoning force. A coherence that binds all the geological ages in one chain, a stability of purpose that completes in the beings born to-day an intention expressed in the first creatures that swam in the Silurian ocean or crept upon its shores, a steadfastness of thought, practically recognized by man, if not acknowledged by him, whenever he traces the intelligent connection between the facts of Nature and combines them into what he is pleased to call his system of Geology, or Zoology, or Botany,—these things are not the fruits of chance or of an unreasoning force, but the legitimate results of intellectual power. There is a singular lack of logic, as it seems to me, in the views of the materialistic naturalists. While they consider classification, or, in other words, their expression of the relations between animals or between physical facts of any kind, as the work of their intelligence, they believe the relations themselves to be the work of physical causes. The more direct inference surely is, that, if it requires an intelligent mind to recognize them, it must have required an intelligent mind to establish them. These relations existed before man was created; they have existed ever since the beginning of time; hence, what we call the classification of facts is not the work of his mind in any direct original sense, but the recognition of an intelligent action prior to his own existence.
There is, perhaps, no part of the world, certainly none familiar to science, where the early geological periods can be studied with so much ease and precision as in the United States. Along their northern borders, between Canada and the United States, there runs the low line of hills known as the Laurentian Hills. Insignificant in height, nowhere rising more than fifteen hundred or two thousand feet above the level of the sea, these are nevertheless the first mountains that broke the uniform level of the earth's surface and lifted themselves above the waters. Their low stature, as compared with that of other more lofty mountain-ranges, is in accordance with an invariable rule, by which the relative age of mountains may be estimated. The oldest mountains are the lowest, while the younger and more recent ones tower above their elders, and are usually more torn and dislocated also. This is easily understood, when we remember that all mountains and mountain-chains are the result of upheavals, and that the violence of the outbreak must have been in proportion to the strength of the resistance. When the crust of the earth was so thin that the heated masses within easily broke through it, they were not thrown to so great a height, and formed comparatively low elevations, such as the Canadian hills or the mountains of Bretagne and Wales. But in later times, when young, vigorous giants, such as the Alps, the Himalayas, or, later still, the Rocky Mountains, forced their way out from their fiery prison-house, the crust of the earth was much thicker, and fearful indeed must have been the convulsions which attended their exit.
The Laurentian Hills form, then, a granite range, stretching from Eastern Canada to the Upper Mississippi, and immediately along its base are gathered the Azoic deposits, the first stratified beds, in which the absence of life need not surprise us, since they were formed beneath a heated ocean. As well might we expect to find the remains of fish or shells or crabs at the bottom of geysers or of boiling springs, as on those early shores bathed by an ocean of which the heat must have been so intense. Although, from the condition in which we find it, this first granite range has evidently never been disturbed by any violent convulsion since its first upheaval, yet there has been a gradual rising of that part of the continent, for the Azoic beds do not lie horizontally along the base of the Laurentian Hills in the position in which they must originally have been deposited, but are lifted and rest against their slopes. They have been more or less dislocated in this process, and are greatly metamorphized by the intense heat to which they must have been exposed. Indeed, all the oldest stratified rocks have been baked by the prolonged action of heat.
It may be asked how the materials for those first stratified deposits were provided. In later times, when an abundant and various soil covered the earth, when every river brought down to the ocean, not only its yearly tribute of mud or clay or lime, but the débris of animals and plants that lived and died in its waters or along its banks, when every lake and pond deposited at its bottom in successive layers the lighter or heavier materials floating in its waters and settling gradually beneath them, the process by which stratified materials are collected and gradually harden into rock is more easily understood. But when the solid surface of the earth was only just beginning to form, it would seem that the floating matter in the sea can hardly have been in sufficient quantity to form any extensive deposits. No doubt there was some abrasion even of that first crust; but the more abundant source of the earliest stratification is to be found in the submarine volcanoes that poured their liquid streams into the first ocean. At what rate these materials would be distributed and precipitated in regular strata it is impossible to determine; but that volcanic materials were so deposited in layers is evident from the relative position of the earliest rocks. I have already spoken of the innumerable chimneys perforating the Azoic beds, narrow outlets of Plutonic rock, protruding through the earliest strata. Not only are such funnels filled with the crystalline mass of granite that flowed through them in a liquid state, but it has often poured over their sides, mingling with the stratified beds around. In the present state of our knowledge, we can explain such appearances only by supposing that the heated materials within the earth's crust poured out frequently, meeting little resistance,—that they then scattered and were precipitated in the ocean around, settling in successive strata at its bottom,—that through such strata the heated masses within continued to pour again and again, forming for themselves the chimney-like outlets above mentioned.
Such, then, was the earliest American land,—a long, narrow island, almost continental in its proportions, since it stretches from the eastern borders of Canada nearly to the point where now the base of the Rocky Mountains meets the plain of the Mississippi Valley. We may still walk along its ridge and know that we tread upon the ancient granite that first divided the waters into a northern and southern ocean; and if our imaginations will carry us so far, we may look down toward its base and fancy how the sea washed against this earliest shore of a lifeless world. This is no romance, but the bald, simple truth; for the fact that this granite band was lifted out of the waters so early in the history of the world, and has not since been submerged, has, of course, prevented any subsequent deposits from forming above it. And this is true of all the northern part of the United States. It has been lifted gradually, the beds deposited in one period being subsequently raised, and forming a shore along which those of the succeeding one collected, so that we have their whole sequence before us. In regions where all the geological deposits, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, etc., are piled one upon another, and we can get a glimpse of their internal relations only where some rent has laid them open, or where their ragged edges, worn away by the abrading action of external influences, expose to view their successive layers, it must, of course, be more difficult to follow their connection. For this reason the American continent offers facilities to the geologist denied to him in the so-called Old World, where the earlier deposits are comparatively hidden, and the broken character of the land, intersected by mountains in every direction, renders his investigation still more difficult. Of course, when I speak of the geological deposits as so completely unveiled to us here, I do not forget the sheet of drift which covers the continent from North to South, and which we shall discuss hereafter, when I reach that part of my subject. But the drift is only a superficial and recent addition to the soil, resting loosely above the other geological deposits, and arising, as we shall see, from very different causes.
In this article I have intended to limit myself to a general sketch of the formation of the Laurentian Hills with the Azoic stratified beds resting against them. In the Silurian epoch following the Azoic we have the first beach on which any life stirred; it extended along the base of the Azoic beds, widening by its extensive deposits the narrow strip of land already upheaved. I propose in my next article to invite my readers to a stroll with me along that beach.
* * * * *
PERICLES AND PRESIDENT LINCOLN
Ancient history is forever indispensable to the speculative historian. The ground of its value is the very fact of its antiquity; by which we mean, not simply distance in time, but distance as the result of separate construction,—distance as between two systems of reality, each orbicularly distinct from the other. One system—that with which our destiny is concurrent—is still flying its rounds in space; the other has whirled itself out of space, and through a maze of scattered myths and records, into human remembrances. This latter system, though hermetically sealed to the realities of outward existence, still, and by this very exclusion from all practical uses, becomes of paramount interest to the philosophic historian; indeed, it is only because the shadowy planets of the ancient cycle still repeat their revolutions in human thought, that the philosophy of history is at all possible. Philosophy, in its ideal pretensions, frequently forgets its material conditions: it claims for itself the power of constructing wholes in thought where only parts have been given in reality, as if, dispensing with material supports, it could bridge over a chasm in Nature. And so it seems to do, but so in fact it never does; it never builds but on models; it never in any system gives ideal completeness, until a real completeness is furnished, either through this system or some other that is analogous. There can, therefore, be no speculative anticipation in history, save as it makes its way into the blank future along the line of diagrams furnished by the past; the splendid composition, in our thoughts, of realities as yet undeveloped, is set up in the skeleton types left us of realities that not only have themselves been accomplished, but which belong to a system that is concluded.
Else,—if the philosophy of history does not thus depend upon some sort of real conclusions for its notional ones,—why is it that no such philosophy existed, even in name, among the ancients? It may be said that some prevailing practical motive is necessary to the existence of philosophy in any field, and that no such motive was present to the ancient mind in this particular field of history. Admitted; yet this does not at all disturb our position. No motive would have sufficed for so grand an aim, short of a sublime consciousness regarding the destiny of the human race. But whence was this consciousness to be derived? To the ancient mind, the development of the human drama, considered strictly as human, moved within narrow boundaries; traced backward through a number of generations so limited that they might be counted on one's fingers, the human personae, did not absolutely disappear, but they emerged again, and in a precedent cycle, only as divinities. The consciousness of human destiny was thus elevated by infinite grades, but not of this destiny as human, as depending for its splendors upon the human will. It was an exaltation that consisted in the sacrifice of humanity. No definite records existed through which any previous cycle of human events could be translated into thought; and in default of a human, there was substituted a divine cycle. From this mythologic past of the ancients was reflected upon their present every-day existence a peculiar glory; but it was not the glory of humanity. To celestial or infernal powers were attributed the motives and impulses out of which their life was developed, not to the human will. The future, as a matter of course, partook of this divine investment; so that history to the ancients was something which in either direction was lost in mystery, not a system to be philosophically analyzed, or to be based on principles of any sort. It is true that in the time of Herodotus, when nations, hitherto insulated, came to know each other better, an interest began to be awakened in history as resting upon a human basis; but this is to be accounted for only by the fact, that each nation coming in contact with another received from it the record of a development differing from its own in the details of outward circumstances, yet similar in certain general features; and in some cases, as in that of Egypt, there was presented an historic epos anterior in time. But in no case were furnished hints so suggestive as those which ancient history furnishes to us, nor any which would answer the purposes of philosophy; in no case was there presented a completed arch, but only antecedent parts of a structure yet in suspense respecting its own conclusion. Fate uncourteously insisted upon making her disclosures by separate instalments; she would advance nothing at any rate of discount. What, therefore, was the ancient philosopher to do? His reflections concerning the past must of necessity be partial; how much more would his anticipations of the future fail of anything like demonstrative certitude!
We moderns, on the other hand, are eminently fortunate, because within the cycle of our thoughts revolves the entire epos of the ancient world. Here there is the element of completeness: it is our privilege to look upon the final tableau before the curtain falls, to have gathered in the concluding no less than the prelusive signals, to have seen where the last stone in the arch bottoms upon a real basis. Let it be that to us it is a drama of shadows; yet are none of the prominent features lost; indeed, they are rather magnified by the distance; our actors upon the ancient proscenium walk in buskins and look upon us out of masks whose significance has been intensified by remoteness in time. This view of the case yields an ample refutation of those arguments frequently adduced of late, in certain quarters, to prove the inutility of classical studies. Thus, it is urged, that, in every department of human knowledge, we transcend the most splendid acquirements of the ancients, and therefore that it is so much time wasted which we devote towards keeping up an acquaintance with antiquity. But how is it that we so far overtop the ancients? Simply by preserving our conscious connection with them, just as manhood towers above childhood through the remembered experiences of childhood. As an evidence of this, we need only note the sudden impulse which modern civilization received through the revival of ancient literature. As it is by resolving into constellations the nebulae, disconnected from the earth by vast intervals of space, that we conjecture the awful magnitude of the universe, so do we conjecture the magnitude of human life by resolving into distinct shapes the nebulous mist of antiquity separated from us by vast intervals in time. The profoundest lessons, such as are heeded by the race, such as are universally intelligible, have this obliquity of origin. Thus, in the distractions of the present, no relief is found through compensatory consolations from the present; but we turn to the figures of the past,—figures caught in the mind, and held fixed, as in bas-relief,—figures in the attitude of antagonistic strife or of sublime rest,—figures that master our intellects as can none from the tumultuous present, (excepting the present of dreams,) and that out of their eternal repose anticipate for us contingencies that do not yet exist, but are representatively typified through such as have existed and passed away.
It is a fact well ascertained in physical geography, that the New World and the Old stand over against each other, not merely as antipodal opposites, but so corresponding in outline that a promontory in one is met by a gulf in the other, and sinuous seas by outstanding continents, (so that over against the Gulf of Mexico, for instance, is opposed the projection of Western Africa,) as if the gods had, in the registry of some important covenant, rent the earth in twain for indentures. In this way, also, do the two great hemispheres of Time stand opposed; so that, from the shaping of the ancient, we may anticipate even the undeveloped conformation of the modern: in place of the direct reality, which is of necessity wanting, we have the next best thing to guide us even in our most perilous coastings, namely, its well-defined analogue in the remote past.
Thus, considering merely this analogism, might one have prophetically announced, even in the generations immediately succeeding to Christ, when Christianity bade fair to become a world-power in a new civilization, that here, indeed, was a new planting of Mysteries, which, although infinitely transcending them in fulness and meaning, were yet the counterparts of mysteries which had hitherto swayed the human heart,—but that, pure and holy as were these mysteries, they should yet, in their human connections, share the vicissitudes of the old,—that, like them, they should march through tribulations on to triumph,—that, like them, once having triumphed and become a recognized source of power, they should be linked with hierarchical delusions and the degradations of despotism,—that, like them, too, in some future generation, they should, through the protesting intellect, be uplifted from these delusions and degradations. Thus, also, and following the same guidance, might our prophet have foretold the political shapings of the newly emerging hemisphere of Christendom. He would thus, through a precise analogy in ancient history, have anticipated the conjunction of principles so novel in their operation as were those of Christianity with the new races, then lying in wait along the skirts of the Roman Empire, and biding their time. From a necessity already demonstrated in the ancient world, he would have foreseen the necessity of Feudalism for the modern, as following inevitably in the train of barbarian conquest, the recurrence of which had been distinctly foreshadowed. In connection with the Protestantism of intellect in religious matters, he would have anticipated a similar movement in politics; he would have prefigured the conflict that was to be renewed between the many and the few for power; and if by some miracle his material vision could have been made coextensive in space with the scope which was possible for him in thought, if he could have followed the sails of Columbus across the Atlantic, then, in connection with the transference of European civilization to the New World, and foreseeing the revulsion in habits and institutions that must follow such local separation, he might have indicated the arena which representatively was to stand for Christendom, and in which, if anywhere, the great problem of human freedom should be solved, either by a success so grand that the very reflex of its splendor should illumine the universal heart of man, or by a failure so overwhelming and disastrous that the ruinous impulse should be communicated with the crushing effect of a thunderbolt through the whole structure of Christian civilization.
Standing, as we do, face to face with the crisis in which this problem is to be solved, and through one part or the other of the alternative just stated, it is evident, from what has already been said, that no light can so fully illustrate the position and its contingencies as that which reaches us from antiquity, and through analogies such as we have hinted at in the preceding paragraphs.
In the first place, in order properly to understand the specific analogy which we now proceed to develop and apply to the case in hand, it is absolutely necessary that the reader should fix Hellas in his mind's eye as the counterpart of Christendom. Let it be understood, then, that all that preceded Hellenism in the ancient world was but the vestibule of its magnificent temple, and that the sole function of the Roman Empire, which came afterwards, was to tide the world over from Hellenic realities to the more sublime realities of Christianity. The mighty deeds of Egyptian conquerors, the imperial splendors of Persian dynasties,—these were but miniature gems that gilded the corridors and archways in the propylaea of ancient civilization; and on the other side, the brilliancy of the Caesars was not that of an original sun in the heavens, since, in one half of their course, they did but reflect the sunset glories of Greece, and, in the other, the rising glories of Christianity. From Macedonia, then, in the North, southward to the sea, and from the heroic age to the Battle of Pydna, (168 B.C.,) extended, in space and time, the original and peculiar splendors of antiquity.
But two of the Hellenic States were consecrated to a special office of glory. These two were Athens and Sparta; and the sublime mission which it was allotted them to fulfil in history was this, that they, within limited boundaries, should concentrate all ante-Christian excellence,—that these two States, opposite in their whole character, should, through the conflict between their antagonistic elements, test the strength and worthiness of ante-Christian principles. Precisely in the same relation to Christendom stands America, with her two opposite types of civilization arrayed against each other in mortal conflict. Here must be tested the merits of modern civilization, just as in Peloponnesus and Attica were tested those of the old; here, too, must be tested the strength even of Christianity as a practical power in the political world. Where Ionic and Doric Greece stood twenty-three centuries ago, stand today the Northern and Southern sections of this country; they hold between them, as did their Hellenic prototypes, the heritage of laborious ages, and to their eyes alone have the slowly growing fruits of time seemed ready, from very ripeness, to fall into the lap of man. In either case, Hellenic or American, we look upon generations totally different in circumstance from those which came before them,—generations, freed not only from the despotic tutelage of Nature, (from whom they exact tribute, instead of, as formerly, paying it to her,) but also from the still more galling tutelage of ignorance and of the social necessities imposed by ignorance,—generations which, in either the ancient or modern instance, stand representatively for the whole race, and by necessity, since they only could fairly be said, unimpeded by external conditions, perfectly to represent themselves. It matters not whether we take the particular generation contemporary with Pericles or with President Lincoln (his modern redivivus); each stands illustrious as the last reach upward of the towering civilizations that respectively pushed them to this eminence; the highest point is in each case reached, and all that remains is to make this sublime elevation tenable for the race universally, so that, instead of the pyramidal mountain, we shall have the widely extended plateau.
Here we will anticipate a question which the reader, we imagine, is already about to put. He will readily admit that Greece, in her palmiest era, politically, grasped, in form and conception at least, the highest ideal of rational liberty; but why, he will ask, was not this divine boon made universally available? Why was it not extended to Persia, and to the Asiatic hosts that for security hid themselves in the folds of her garments? why not to the dwellers on the Nile? Why was it that it was not even retained by Greece herself? The truth is, that no sooner was the golden fleece in the hands of the adventurers that had sought it so zealously than it was rent by their discords. Elements of barbarism had run uncurbed alongside of intellectual and artistic refinements. Mingled with high-minded heroes were a set of treacherous Iscariots. But why, it will naturally be asked, had there not been hitherto some outbreak of these discordant elements? That question is easily answered, if we consider that up to this time there had existed certain external elements, which, by arousing incessantly the patriotic feelings of all Greece against hostilities from without, had administered an opiate to the Cerberus of domestic strife. The terrible storm was maturing its thunderbolts treacherously and in subterranean chambers; but its mutterings were effectually silenced by the more audible thunderings that burst across the Aegean from the Persian throne. Treachery was lulled to sleep, while the nobler sentiment which united Greece against Asiatic despotism was perpetually stung into activity in the popular heart, and inspired the utterances of eloquence. Thus it might not have been, if Greece had first come within hail of Persia through the ordinary commerce of peace; since, in that case, after receiving from the latter her treacherous gifts, her voluptuous effeminacies, she would easily have fallen into the vast net-work that already trammelled all Asia, and would then, through her own entanglement, include the whole world. But it was not in peace that they met. The first question put to Hellas by her Oriental neighbor was in effect this:—Are you willing, without going to the trouble of subjecting the matter to the test of actual conflict, to consider yourself as having been whipped? This, it must be confessed, was a shivering introduction to the world for Greece,—something like a Lacedaemonian baptism,—but it stood her in good stead. Like the dip in the Styx, it insured immortality. The menaces of despotism, coming from the East, gave birth to the impulses of freedom in the West; and the latter sustained themselves at a more exalted height, in proportion as the former were backed by substantial support. Subtract anything from that deafening chorus of slaves which follows in the train of Xerxes, and we must by the same amount take from the paeans of aspiring Greece. Abolish the outlying provinces that acknowledge a forced allegiance to the Persian monarch, or turn out of their course the tributary streams that from every part of Asia swell the current of Eastern barbarism, and there arises the necessity, also, of circumscribing within narrower limits the glories of the Western civilization. Against the dangers of external invasion, against all the menaces of barbarians, Greece was secure through the forces which by opposition were developed in herself,—and for so long a period was she secure against herself. But the very rapidity and decisiveness of her triumphs over the barbarian cut this period short, and cut short also the rising column of Hellenic power. At the same time that Cimon is finishing up the fleet of Persia, Pericles is preparing for the culmination of Greece. In all this there seemed nothing final; from the serenity of the Grecian sky, and from the summer silence which inwrapt her statues and Pentelic colonnades, there was heralded the promise of a ceaseless aeon of splendor. Resting from one mighty effort, and, in the moment of rest, clothing herself in the majesty of beauty, Hellas yet seemed ready to burst forth out of this rest into an effort more gigantic, to be followed by a more memorable rest as the reflex of a destiny more nearly consummated. But in this promise there was the very hollowness of deception. Just because the intense strain against external barbarism had relaxed, those elements which common necessity had made tributary to success and triumph began to suffer dissolution; each separate interest became a prominent centre of a distinct political crystallization; and it was in this way that certain elements of barbarism, inherent in Spartan civilization, now for the first time arrayed it in direct opposition to the Athenian. It was this defection, on the part of Sparta, from the cause of freedom, which cut the world off from those benefits that it was in the power of Greece to confer. Athens, whatever other faults she may have had, stood ready to extend these benefits. As she alone had awakened for herself an echo of Hellenic victory in her world of Art, so was she alone prepared, through a world-wide extension of this victory over slavery, to multiply the intellectual reflexes of so splendid a triumph; hers it was to disenthrall and illuminate the world. And here, where she had a right to look for the coöperation of all Greece, as hitherto, was she thwarted; here, holding the van in a procession of triumph, which, as carrying forward a glorious disinthralment into Asia and into Egypt, and as outfacing the most inveterate of all despotisms, should far out-rival the fabled procession of Dionysus,—here was she not merely hindered by the vis inertias of her southern neighbor, but was actually stopped in her movement by a newly revealed force of opposition, was flanked by an ancient ally, now turned traitor, in the summertime of a most auspicious peace; and in her efforts to disembarrass herself of this enemy in the rear, were her energies totally exhausted.
A position precisely similar, in its main features, does Republican America hold to-day. She has established her own freedom against all European intrusion; and in her efforts to do this she arrived at political union as an indispensable necessity, and merged all separate interests in a common one. That interest, already vindicated for herself, has become world-wide in its meaning; so that, in virtue of what she has accomplished in the cause of freedom, she takes an authoritative position of leadership in modern civilization. And what is it that hinders the fulfilment of her exalted mission? She, too, has been flanked in her march by a traitor within her own borders; against her, and doing violence to her high office, are opposed the backward-tending elements of barbarism, which, if not immediately neutralized, if not summarily crushed, will drag her to the lowest stages of weakness and exhaustion.
A very minute parallel might be, drawn between the opposing civilizations that are to-day in this country contending for the mastery and those which were engaged in a similar conflict in the days of Pericles. New England would be found to be the Attica of America; while, on the other hand, the Southrons would most exactly correspond to the ancient Lacedaemonians. As the Cavaliers who first settled Virginia helped on the Puritan exodus, so did the Dorians that settled Sparta, through the tumult of their overwhelming invasion, drive the Ionians from their old homes to the barren wastes of Attica,—barren as compared with the fertile valleys of the Eurotas, just as New England would be considered sterile when contrasted with Virginia or the Valley of the Mississippi. Like the Ionian Greeks, the "Yankees" stand before the world as the recognized advocates and supporters of a pure democracy. The descendants of the Cavaliers, on the contrary, join hands, as did the ancient Dorians, in favor of an oligarchy, and of an oligarchy, too, based on the institution of slavery. Upon this difference rested the political dissensions of Greece, as do now those of our own country. The negro plays no more important part in the difference between the North and South than did the Helot in the contests between the Spartans and the Athenians. It is not in either case the simple fact of human slavery which necessitates the civil strife, but it is the radical opposition between a government that is founded upon slavery and one which is not. The Athenians had slaves; and so, for that matter, might New England have to-day: yet, for all that, the civil strife would have been inevitable, because both in Greece and America this strife evidently arises out of the conflict between the interests of an oligarchy based upon slavery and a democracy in which slavery, if it exists at all, exists as a mere accident that may be dispensed with without any radical social revolution. Slavery, as opposed to divine law or to abstract justice, never has brought, nor ever will bring, two countries into conflict with each other; but slavery made indispensable as a peculiar institution, as an organized fact, as a fundamental social necessity, must come into conflict with the totally opposite institutions of democracy, and that not because it is merely or nominally slavery, but because it is a political organ modifying the entire structure of government. Slavery, as it existed in Athens, slavery, as it existed formerly in the Northern States, was in everything, except its name and accidents, consistent with democracy; and, in either case, to dispense with the institution was to introduce no radical change, but only to do away with the name and accidents.19
In Sparta, or in the South, the case was far otherwise. Here, slavery existed in its strict severity; it came into being in connection with material conditions,—that is, in connection with a soil especially favorable to agriculture,—and it maintained its existence by reason of its fitness, its indispensableness, to certain social conditions; it could not, therefore, be changed or annulled without running counter both to the inveterate tendencies of Nature and the still more inveterate tendencies of habit. This difference between the two estates of slavery is evident also from the fact, that, while, in the one case, the law would admit of no emancipation, in the other, the emancipation was effected legally, either in the lump, as in New England, or by instalments, as in Athens; and in the latter State we must remember that the process was rendered the more easy and natural by the fact that the slaves were, in the first instance, generally prisoners taken in war, and not unfrequently stood upon the same social level, before their capture, with their captors, while in Sparta the slaves were taken as a subject race, and held as inferiors.
Much glory has been given to Lacedaemon on the score of her martial merits. To ourselves this glory seems rather her shame, since these merits are inseparable from her grand political mistake. We might as justly exalt Feudalism on the ground of its military establishment, which, after all, we must admit to be an absolute necessity in the system. To the Spartan oligarchy it was equally necessary that the whole State should exist perpetually under martial law. In the first place, it was necessary, if for nothing else, for the intimidation of the Helots, who were continually watching their opportunity for insurrection, as is shown in that memorable attempt made in connection with the Messenian War. It was, moreover, necessary for a government not strong by sea to extend its boundaries by military conquest; for by each successive conquest a possible enemy is actually forced into subjection, and made to contribute to the central power which subdues it.
Indeed, it is true that every feature of the State polity which that old rascal Lycurgus gave to Sparta must be considered and judged in connection with this grand martial establishment, upon which the Lacedaemonian oligarchy was based, and through which the nefarious attempt to establish oligarchies in all the rest of the world was supported. The establishment itself was barbarous, and could not possibly have thrived under the art-loving, home-protecting eye of the Athenian Pallas. All domestic sanctities were rudely invaded, and even the infant's privilege to live depended upon its martial promise; the aspirations of religion were levelled down into sympathy with the most brutal enthusiasm, as afterwards happened in the case of Rome; the very idea of Beauty was demolished, and with it all that was sacred in human nature, and all hope of progress. The whole State was sacred to the idea of Military Despotism.
Thus it happened that Sparta, from her first introduction in history to her exit, was at a stand-still in whatever involved anything higher than brute force. In this respect she differed from Athens as much as the South at this day differs from the North, and from precisely the same causes, the principal of which, in each case, was barbarism,—barbarism deliberately organized, and maintained in conscious preference to intellectual refinement.
And yet it is remarkable that both Lacedaemon and the South, as compared with their respective rivals, started in life at an immense advantage, and seemingly with a far more auspicious prospect before them. The early Virginian turned up his nose at Plymouth as a very despicable affair, and wondered that the Puritans did not set sail en masse for the Bahamas. Gorgeous were the descriptions of Virginia sent home by some of the first settlers, in which lions and tigers, and a whole menagerie of tropical animals, came in for no small share of wonder; and, as an offset to this summer luxuriance of life, most disparaging pictures were drawn of the bleak sterility of New England,—and even that which was the only compensation for this barrenness of the earth, namely, the abundance of fish in the sea, was, as respects the revenue derived from it, made an especial subject of derision. Thus, doubtless, did the ancient Peloponnesian look upon Attica in the small beginnings of her infinite growth; he had exactly the same topics for his ridicule,—sterility, fishery, and all; and just as in the case of the South, was the laugh in the end turned against himself. But to the very last there was one stinging jest on the lips of the Spartan,—the very same which the modern slaveholder flings with so great gusto against the unfortunate Yankee,—and that was Athenian cupidity. The ancient and the modern jester are alike condemned on their own indictment, since upon cupidity the most petulant, upon cupidity the most voracious in its greedy demands, rested the whole Spartan polity, as does the system of slaveholding in the South. The Spartan, like the Southern planter, might protest that money was of no consequence whatever, that to him it was only so much iron,—but why? Only because that, by the satisfaction of a cupidity more profound, he was able to dispense with the ordinary necessities of an honest democrat.
In peace, Sparta was a nonentity; in the resources which enrich and glorify the time of peace she was a bankrupt. Fine arts or education she had none: these centred in Athens. These were elements of progress, and could no more be tolerated in Peloponnesus than in our Gulf States. Taking our Southern civilization or that of Lacedaemon, we must say of each that it is thoroughly brutalized; we may challenge either to show us a single master-piece of intellect, whether in the way of analysis or of construction,—but none can they show.
Even in a military sense, the forces which Democracy could marshal, either in ancient Greece or in modern America, were more than a match for the corresponding oligarchical factions. Athens, like New England, was a commercial centre, and therefore a prominent naval power; and this naval prominence, in each instance, was so great as to give a decisive superiority over a non-commercial rival. Sparta used her influence and power to establish oligarchic institutions in the various provinces of Greece, which generally corresponded to our Territories,—in which latter the South has, with an equally unworthy zeal, been for several years seeking to establish her peculiar institutions. Epidamnus proved a Grecian Kansas. As in our own country, the hostile factions refrained from war as long as human nature would allow; but, once engaged in it, it became a vital struggle, that could be terminated only by the exhaustion of one of the parties.
Athens was the stronger: why, then, did she not conquer her rival? With equal pertinence we might ask, Why have not we, who are the stronger, subjugated the South? The answer to both questions is the same. Political prejudice overmasters patriotism. Neither ourselves nor the ancient Athenians appear to have the remotest idea of the importance of the cause for which we are contending. To us, as to them, the avenue to future glory lies through the blood-red path of war, of desperate, unrelenting war. Nothing else, no compromise, no negotiations of any sort, would suffice. This the Athenians never realized; this we do not seem to understand. Among ourselves, as among them, the peace-party—a party in direct sympathy with the aims and purposes of the enemy—blusters and intrigues. President Lincoln meets with the same embarrassments in connection with this party that Pericles met in his campaigns against Sparta: it was his coming into power that precipitated the violence of war; his determined action against all sympathizers with the enemy draws down upon him the intensified wrath of these sympathizers; the generals whom he sends into the field, if, like Alcibiades, they are characterized by any spirit in their undertakings, are trammelled with political entanglements and rendered useless, while some slow, half-brained Nicias, with no heart in the cause, is placed at the head of expeditions that result only in defeat.
There is the same diffusiveness connected with our military plans which characterized the operations of the Athenians against Sparta. We do not make the special advantage which we have over the South through our naval superiority available against her special vulnerability. We intimidate her, as Pericles did the Peloponnesians, by circumnavigating her territories with a great display of our naval power; we effect a few landings upon her coasts; but all these invasions lead to no grand results, they do not subdue our armed enemy. What with these errors in the general conduct of the war, and the lack of energy which characterizes every part, our prospects of ultimate success are fast being ruined. Unless some change be quickly effected, unless political sentiment can be made to give place to the original enthusiasm with which we commenced the war, and this enthusiasm be embodied in military enterprise, our case is a hopeless one. One the other hand, if things go on as they have been going on, the political opposition to the war will rise to such a height as to overturn the Administration, and in its place install those who are desirous of a reconstruction of the Union on a Southern basis. The same errors on the part of Athens led to just this result in Greece; an oligarchy came at last to rule even over the democratic city itself. The consequence was the downfall of Greece, and in her ruin was demonstrated the failure of ancient civilization. In a like event, nothing could save us, nothing could save modern civilization, from the same disastrous ruin.
The barbarism which at successive intervals in history has swept southward over Asia was, at the least, something fresher and better than that which it displaced. The Gothic barbarians were, in very truth, the scourges of God to the inferior and more despicable barbarians of Southern Europe. The former exemplified a barbarism unconscious of itself, and carrying in its very rudeness the hope of the world; and the more complete and overwhelming its revolutions, the more glorious the promise involved in them. But, from the establishment over a continent of a system so deliberately barbarous that it dares to array its brutal features against the sunlight of this nineteenth century, that it dares even to oppose itself, with a distinct confession of its base purposes, against the only free, beneficent, and hope-giving government in the world,—from the triumph of such a system and over such a government there is not the shadow of a hope, but rather the widest possible field for dismal apprehension. From this barbarism we have everything to fear; and the only way to successfully oppose it is through the movements of war. Only through a triumph gained in the battle-field, and held decisive for all future time, can we, as a nation, make our way out of the fatal entanglements of this present time into the bright and glorious heritage of the future.
* * * * *
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES
My Diary, North and South. By W.H. RUSSELL. Boston: T.O.H.P. Burnham, pp. xxii., 602.
Plutarch, as a patriotic Boeotian, felt called on to write a tract concerning the malice of Herodotus in having told some unpleasant truths about the Thebans; and many of our countrymen have shown themselves as Boeotian, at least, if not as patriotic, in their diatribes against Mr. Russell, who is certainly very far from being an Herodotus, least of all in that winning simplicity of style which made him so dangerous in the eyes of Plutarch. It was foolish to take Mr. Russell at his own valuation, to elevate a clever Irish reporter of the London "Times" into a representative of England; but it was still more foolish, in attacking him, to mistake violence for force, and sensible people will be apt to think that there must have been some truth in criticisms which were resented with such unreasoning clamor. It is only too easy to force the growth of those national antipathies which ripen the seeds of danger and calamity to mankind; for there are few minds that are not capacious enough for a prejudice, and it has sometimes seemed as if, in our hasty resentment of the littlenesses of Englishmen, we were in danger of forgetting the greatness of England. A nation risks nothing in being underrated; the real peril is in underrating and misunderstanding a rival who may at any moment become an antagonist,—who will almost certainly become such, if we do our best to help him in it. Especially in judging the qualities of a people, we should be careful to take our measure by the highest, and not the lowest, types it has shown itself capable of producing. In moments of alarm, danger, or suffering, a nation is apt to relapse into that intellectual and moral condition of Mob from which it has slowly struggled upward; and this is especially true in an age of newspapers, where Cleon finds his way to every breakfast-table. It is her mob side that England has been showing us lately; but this should not blind us to the fact that in the long run the character of a nation tends more and more to assimilate itself to that ideal typified in its wisest thinkers and best citizens. In the qualities which historians and poets love to attribute to their country, national tendencies and aspirations are more or loss consciously represented; these qualities the nation will by-and-by learn to attribute to itself, until, becoming gradually traditional, they will at length realize themselves as active principles. The selfish clamor of Liverpool merchants, who see a rival in New York, and of London bankers who have dipped into Confederate stock, should not lead us to conclude, with M. Albert Blanc, that the foreign policy of England is nothing more or less than une haine de commerçants et d'industriels, haine implacable et inflexible comme les chiffres.20
Mr. Russell's book purports to be, and probably is in substance, the diary from which he made up his letters to the London "Times"; and it is rather amusing, as well as instructive, to see the somewhat muddy sources which, swelled by affluents of verbiage and invention, gather head enough to contribute their share to the sonorous shallowness of "the leading journal of Europe." When we learn, as we do from this "Diary," what a contributor to that eminent journal is, when left to his own devices,—that he does not know the difference between would and should, (which, to be sure, is excusable in an Irishman,) that he believes in petto to mean in miniature, uses protagonist with as vague a notion of its sense as Mrs. Malaprop had of her derangement of epitaphs, and then recall to mind the comparative correctness of Mr. Russell's correspondence in point of style, we conceive a hearty respect for the proof-reader in Printing-House Square. We should hardly have noticed these trifles, except that Mr. Russell has a weakness for displaying the cheap jewelry of what we may call lingo, and that he is rather fond of criticizing the dialect and accent of persons who were indiscreet enough to trust him with their confidences. There is one respect, however, in which the matter has more importance,—in its bearing on our estimate of Mr. Russell as a trustworthy reporter of what he saw and heard. Conscientious exactness is something predicable of the whole moral and intellectual nature, and not of any special faculty; so that, when we find a man using words without any sense of their meaning, and assuming to be familiar with things of which he is wholly ignorant, we are justified in suspecting him of an habitual inaccuracy of mind, which to a greater or less degree disqualifies him both as observer and reporter. We say this with no intention of imputing any wilful misstatements to Mr. Russell, but as something to be borne in mind while reading his record of private conversations. A scrupulous fidelity is absolutely essential, where the whole meaning may depend on a tone of voice or the use of one word instead of another. Any one accustomed to the study of dialects will understand what we mean, if he compare Mr. Olmsted's extracts from his diary with Mr. Russell's. The latter represents himself as constantly hearing the word Britisher used seriously and in good faith, and remarks expressly on an odd pronunciation of Europe with the accent on the last syllable, which be noticed in Mr. Seward among others. Mr. Russell's memory is at fault. What he heard was Európean; and Britisher is not, and never was, an Americanism.
We do not, however, mean to doubt the general truthfulness of Mr. Russell's reports. We find nothing in his book which leads us to modify the opinion we expressed of him more than a year ago.21 We still think him "a shrewd, practised, and, for a foreigner, singularly accurate observer." We still believe that his "strictures, if rightly taken, may do us infinite service." But we must enter our earnest protest against a violation of hospitality and confidence, which, if it became common, would render all society impossible. Any lively man might write a readable and salable book by exploiting his acquaintances; but such a proceeding would be looked upon by all right-minded people as an offence similar in kind, if not in degree, to the publication of private letters. A shrewd French writer has remarked, that a clever man in a foreign country should always know two things,—what he is, and where he is. Mr. Russell seems habitually to have forgotten both. Even Montaigne, the most garrulous of writers, becomes discreet in speaking of other people. If we learn from him that the Duke of Florence mixed a great deal of water with his wine and the Duchess hardly any at all. we learn it, without any connivance of his, from his diary, and that a hundred and fifty years after his death.
One of the first reflections which occur to the reader, as he closes Mr. Russell's book, with a half-guilty feeling of being an accomplice after the fact in his indiscretions, to use the mildest term, is a general one on the characteristic difference between the traveller as he is and as he was hardly a century ago. A man goes abroad now not so much to see countries and learn something from them, as to write a book that shall pay his travelling-charges. The object which men formerly proposed to themselves, in visiting foreign lands, seems to have been to find out something which might be of advantage to their own country, in the way either of trade, agriculture, or manufactures,—and they treated of manners, when they touched upon them at all, with the coolness and impartiality of naturalists: They did not conclude things to be necessarily worse because they were different. A modern Tom Coryat, instead of introducing the use of the fork among his countrymen, would find some excuse for thinking the Italians a nasty people because they used it. In our day it would appear that the chief aim of a traveller was to discover (or where that failed, to invent) all that he possibly can to the disadvantage of the country he visits; and he is so scrupulous a censor of individual manners that he has no eyes left for national characteristics. Another striking difference between the older traveller and his modern successor is that the observer and the object to be observed seem to have reversed their relations to each other, so that the man, with his sensations, prejudices, and annoyances, fills up the greater part of the book, while the foreign country becomes merely incidental, a sort of canvas, on which his own portrait is to be painted for the instruction of his readers. Pliny used to say that something was to be learned from the worst book; and accordingly let us be thankful to the voyagers of the last thirty years that they have taught us where we can get the toughest steak and the coldest coffee which this world offers to the diligent seeker after wisdom, and have made us intimately acquainted with the peculiarities of the fleas, if with those of none of the other dwellers in every corner of the globe. Such interesting particulars, to be sure, may claim a kind of classic authority in Horace's journey to Brundusium; but perhaps a gnat or a frog that kept Horace awake may fairly assume a greater historical importance than would be granted to similar tormentors of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. Were it not for Mr. Olmsted, we should conclude the Arthur-Young type of traveller to be extinct, and that people go abroad merely for an excuse to write about themselves,—it is so much easier to write a clever book than a solid one. The plan of Montaigne, who wrote his travels round himself without stirring beyond his library, was as much wiser and cheaper as the result was more entertaining.
But, apart from the self-consciousness and impertinence which detract so much from the value of most recent books of travel, it may be doubted whether, since the French Revolution gave birth to the Caliban of Democracy, there has been a tourist without political bias toward one side or the other; and now that the "Special Correspondent" has been invented, whose business it is to be one-sided, if possible, and at all events entertaining, the last hope of rational information from anywhere would seem to be cut off. And of all travellers, the Englishman is apt to be the worst. What Fuller said of him two centuries ago is still in the main true,—that, "though some years abroad, he is never out of England." He carries with him an ideal England, made up of all that is good, great, refined, and, above all, "in easy circumstances," by which to measure the short-comings of other less-favored nations. He may have dined contentedly for years at the "Cock" or the "Mitre," but he must go first to Paris or New York to be astonished at dirt or to miss napkins. He may have been the life-long victim of the London cabby, but he first becomes aware of extortion as he struggles with the porters of Avignon or the hackmen of Jersey City. We are not finding fault with this insularity as a feature of national character,—on the contrary, we rather like it, for the first business of an Englishman is to be an Englishman, and we wish that Americanism were as common among Americans,—but, since no man can see more than is in his own mind, it is a somewhat dangerous quality in a traveller. Moreover, the Englishman in America is at a double disadvantage; for his understanding the language leads him to think that everything is easy to understand, while at the same time he cannot help looking on every divergence of manners or ideas from the present British standard in a nation speaking the same tongue, as a barbarism, if not as a personal insult to himself. Worse then all, he has perhaps less than anybody of that quality, we might almost say faculty, which Mirabeau called "political sociability," and accordingly can form no conception of a democracy which levels upward,—of any democracy, indeed, except one expressly invented to endanger the stability of English institutions, certainly the most comfortable in the world for any one who belongs to the class which has only to enjoy and not to endure them. The travels of an average Englishman are generally little more than a "Why, bless me, you don't say so! how very extraordinary!" in two volumes octavo.
Mr. Russell is only an Irishman with an English veneer, and, to borrow the Kalewala formula, is neither the best nor the worst of tourists. In range of mind and breadth of culture he is not to be compared with Mr. Dicey, who was in America at the same time, and whose letters we hope soon to see published in a collected form; but he had opportunities, especially in the Seceding States, such as did not fall, and indeed could not have fallen, to the lot of any other man. As the representative of an English journal, he was welcomed by the South, eager to show him its best side; as a foreigner, his impressions were fresh and vivid; and his report of the condition of things there is the only even presumably trustworthy one we have had since the beginning of the Rebellion. The New England States, he tells us, he did not visit; but that does not prevent his speaking glibly of their "bloody-minded and serious people," and of the "frigid intellectuality" of Boston, about both of which he knows as little as of Juvenal. This should serve to put us on our guard against some of his other generalizations, which may be based on premises as purely theoretic. But it is not in generalizations that Mr. Russell is strong, nor, to do him justice, does he often indulge in them,—always excepting, of course, the ex officio one which he owes his employers, and which he was sent out to find arguments for, that the Union is irrevocably split asunder. It is as a reporter that he has had his training, and it is as a reporter that he is valuable. Quick to catch impressions, and from among them to single out the taking parts, his sketches of what he saw and heard, if without any high artistic merit, have a coarse truth that will make them of worth to the future student of these times. They are all the better that Mr. Russell was unable, from the nature of the case, to elaborate and Timesify them.
The first half of the book is both the most interesting and the most valuable,—the second half being so largely made up of personal grievances (which, if Mr. Russell had not the dignity to despise them, he might at least have been wise enough to be silent about) as to be tedious in comparison. We regret that Mr. Russell should have been subjected to so many personal indignities for having written what we believe to have been as impartial an account of what he saw of the panic-rout which followed the Battle of Manassas as any one could have written under the same conditions,—though we doubt if the correspondent of a French newspaper would come off much better, under like circumstances, in England. It is not beyond the memory of man that the Duke of Wellington himself was pelted in London. But we are surprised that Mr. Russell should have so far misapprehended his position, should have so readily learned to look upon himself as an ambassador, (we believe the "Times" is not yet recognized by our Government as anything more than a belligerent power,) as to consider it a hardship that he was not allowed to accompany General McClellan's army to the Peninsula. He seems to have thought that every thing happens in America, as La Rochefoucauld said of France. We are sorry that he was not permitted to go, for he would have helped us to some clearer understanding of a campaign about whose conduct and results there seems to be plenty of passionate misjudgment and very little real knowledge. But when should we hear the last of the vulgar presumption of an American reporter who should try to hitch himself in the same way to the staff of a British army?
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