The Project Gutenberg eBook, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858, by Various

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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858

Author: Various

Release Date: December 14, 2003 [eBook #10456] [Date last updated: June 15, 2005]

Language: English

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START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 2, ISSUE 11, SEPTEMBER, 1858

E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, Keith M. Eckrich, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. II.--SEPTEMBER, 1858.--NO. XI.

ELOQUENCE.

It is the doctrine of the popular music-masters, that whoever can speak can sing. So, probably, every man is eloquent once in his life. Our temperaments differ in capacity of heat, or we boil at different degrees. One man is brought to the boiling point by the excitement of conversation in the parlor. The waters, of course, are not very deep. He has a two-inch enthusiasm, a pattypan ebullition. Another requires the additional caloric of a multitude, and a public debate; a third needs an antagonist, or a hot indignation; a fourth needs a revolution; and a fifth, nothing less than the grandeur of absolute ideas, the splendors and shades of Heaven and Hell.

But because every man is an orator, how long soever he may have been a mute, an assembly of men is so much more susceptible. The eloquence of one stimulates all the rest, some up to the speaking point, and all others to a degree that makes them good receivers and conductors, and they avenge themselves for their enforced silence by increased loquacity on their return to the fireside.

The plight of these phlegmatic brains is better than that of those who prematurely boil, and who impatiently break the silence before their time. Our county conventions often exhibit a small-pot-soon-hot style of eloquence. We are too much reminded of a medical experiment, where a series of patients are taking nitrous-oxide gas. Each patient, in turn, exhibits similar symptoms,--redness in the face, volubility, violent gesticulation, delirious attitudes, occasional stamping, an alarming loss of perception of the passage of time, a selfish enjoyment of his sensations, and loss of perception of the sufferings of the audience.

Plato says, that the punishment which the wise suffer, who refuse to take part in the government, is, to live under the government of worse men; and the like regret is suggested to all the auditors, as the penalty of abstaining to speak, that they shall hear worse orators than themselves.

But this lust to speak marks the universal feeling of the energy of the engine, and the curiosity men feel to touch the springs. Of all the musical instruments on which men play, a popular assembly is that which has the largest compass and variety, and out of which, by genius and study, the most wonderful effects can be drawn. An audience is not a simple addition of the individuals that compose it. Their sympathy gives them a certain social organism, which fills each member, in his own degree, and most of all the orator, as a jar in a battery is charged with the whole electricity of the battery. No one can survey the face of an excited assembly, without being apprised of new opportunity for painting in fire human thought, and being agitated to agitate. How many orators sit mute there below! They come to get justice done to that ear and intuition which no Chatham and no Demosthenes has begun to satisfy.

The Welsh Triads say, "Many are the friends of the golden tongue." Who can wonder at the attractiveness of Parliament, or of Congress, or the bar, for our ambitious young men, when the highest bribes of society are at the feet of the successful orator? He has his audience at his devotion. All other fames must hush before his. He is the true potentate; for they are not kings who sit on thrones, but they who know how to govern. The definitions of eloquence describe its attraction for young men. Antiphon the Rhamnusian, one of Plutarch's ten orators, advertised in Athens, "that he would cure distempers of the mind with words." No man has a prosperity so high or firm, but two or three words can dishearten it. There is no calamity which right words will not begin to redress. Isocrates described his art, as "the power of magnifying what was small and diminishing what was great";--an acute, but partial definition. Among the Spartans, the art assumed a Spartan shape, namely, of the sharpest weapon. Socrates says, "If any one wishes to converse with the meanest of the Lacedaemonians, he will at first find him despicable in conversation; but, when a proper opportunity offers, this same person, like a skilful jaculator, will hurl a sentence worthy of attention, short and contorted, so that he who converses with him will appear to be in no respect superior to a boy." Plato's definition of rhetoric is, "the art of ruling the minds of men." The Koran says, "A mountain may change its place, but a man will not change his disposition";--yet the end of eloquence is,--is it not?--to alter in a pair of hours, perhaps in a half-hour's discourse, the convictions and habits of years. Young men, too, are eager to enjoy this sense of added power and enlarged sympathetic existence. The orator sees himself the organ of a multitude, and concentrating their valors and powers:

"But now the blood of twenty thousand men Blushed in my face."

That which he wishes, that which eloquence ought to reach, is, not a particular skill in telling a story, or neatly summing up evidence, or arguing logically, or dexterously addressing the prejudice of the company; no, but a taking sovereign possession of the audience. Him we call an artist, who shall play on an assembly of men as a master on the keys of the piano,--who, seeing the people furious, shall soften and compose them, shall draw them, when he will, to laughter and to tears. Bring him to his audience, and, be they who they may, coarse or refined, pleased or displeased, sulky or savage, with their opinions in the keeping of a confessor, or with their opinions in their bank-safes,--he will have them pleased and humored as he chooses; and they shall carry and execute that which he bids them.

This is that despotism which poets have celebrated in the "Pied Piper of Hamelin," whose music drew like the power of gravitation,--drew soldiers and priests, traders and feasters, women and boys, rats and mice; or that of the minstrel of Meudon, who made the pallbearers dance around the bier. This is a power of many degrees, and requiring in the orator a great range of faculty and experience, requiring a large composite man, such as Nature rarely organizes, so that, in our experience, we are forced to gather up the figure in fragments, here one talent, and there another.

The audience is a constant metre of the orator. There are many audiences in every public assembly, each one of which rules in turn. If anything comic and coarse is spoken, you shall see the emergence of the boys and rowdies, so loud and vivacious, that you might think the house was filled with them. If new topics are started, graver and higher, these roisters recede; a more chaste and wise attention takes place. You would think the boys slept, and that the men have any degree of profoundness. If the speaker utter a noble sentiment, the attention deepens, a new and highest audience now listens, and the audiences of the fun and of facts and of the understanding are all silenced and awed. There is also something excellent in every audience,--the capacity of virtue. They are ready to be beatified. They know so much more than the orator,--and are so just! There is a tablet there for every line he can inscribe, though he should mount to the highest levels. Humble persons are conscious of new illumination; narrow brows expand with enlarged affections: delicate spirits, long unknown to themselves, masked and muffled in coarsest fortunes, who now hear their own native language for the first time, and leap to hear it. But all these several audiences, each above each, which successively appear to greet the variety of style and topic, are really composed out of the same persons; nay, sometimes the same individual will take active part in them all, in turn.

This range of many powers in the consummate speaker and of many audiences in one assembly leads us to consider the successive stages of oratory.

Perhaps it is the lowest of the qualities of an orator, but it is, on so many occasions, of chief importance,--a certain robust and radiant physical health,--or, shall I say? great volumes of animal heat. When each auditor feels himself to make too large a part of the assembly, and shudders with cold at the thinness of the morning audience, and with fear lest all will heavily fail through one bad speech, mere energy and mellowness are then inestimable. Wisdom and learning would be harsh and unwelcome, compared with a substantial cordial man, made of milk, as we say, who is a house-warmer, with his obvious honesty and good meaning, and a hue-and-cry style of harangue, which inundates the assembly with a flood of animal spirits, and makes all safe and secure, so that any and every sort of good speaking becomes at once practicable. I do not rate this animal eloquence very highly, and yet, as we must be fed and warmed before we can do any work well, even the best, so is this semi-animal exuberance, like a good stove, of the first necessity in a cold house.

Climate has much to do with it,--climate and race. Set a New Englander to describe any accident which happened in his presence. What hesitation and reserve in his narrative! He tells with difficulty some particulars, and gets as fast as he can to the result, and, though he cannot describe, hopes to suggest the whole scene. Now listen to a poor Irish-woman recounting some experience of hers. Her speech flows like a river,--so unconsidered, so humorous, so pathetic, such justice done to all the parts! It is a true transubstantiation,--the fact converted into speech, all warm and colored and alive, as it fell out. Our Southern people are almost all speakers, and have every advantage over the New England people, whose climate is so cold, that, 'tis said, we do not like to open our mouths very wide. But neither can the Southerner in the United States, nor the Irish, compare with the lively inhabitant of the South of Europe. The traveller in Sicily needs no gayer melodramatic exhibition than the table d'hôte of his inn will afford him, in the conversation of the joyous guests. They mimic the voice and manner of the person they describe; they crow, squeal, hiss, cackle, bark, and scream like mad, and, were it only by the physical strength exerted in telling the story, keep the table in unbounded excitement. But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art.

But eloquence must be attractive, or it is none. The virtue of books is to be readable, and of orators to be interesting, and this is a gift of Nature; as Demosthenes, the most laborious student in that kind, signified his sense of this necessity when he wrote, "Good Fortune," as his motto on his shield. As we know, the power of discourse of certain individuals amounts to fascination, though it may have no lasting effect. Some portion of this sugar must intermingle. The right eloquence needs no bell to call the people together, and no constable to keep them. It draws the children from their play, the old from their arm-chairs, and the invalid from his warm chamber; it holds the hearer fast, steals away his feet, that he shall not depart,--his memory, that he shall not remember the most pressing affairs,--his belief, that he shall not admit any opposing considerations. The pictures we have of it in semi-barbarous ages, when it has some advantages in the simpler habit of the people, show what it aims at. It is said that the Khans, or story-tellers in Ispahan and other cities of the East, attain a controlling power over their audience, keeping them for many hours attentive to the most fanciful and extravagant adventures. The whole world knows pretty well the style of these improvisators, and how fascinating they are, in our translations of the "Arabian Nights." Scheherzarade tells these stories to save her life, and the delight of young Europe and young America in them proves that she fairly earned it. And who does not remember in childhood some white or black or yellow Scheherzarade, who, by that talent of telling endless feats of fairies and magicians, and kings and queens, was more dear and wonderful to a circle of children than any orator of England or America is now? The more indolent and imaginative complexion of the Eastern nations makes them much more impressible by these appeals to the fancy.

These legends are only exaggerations of real occurrences, and every literature contains these high compliments to the art of the orator and the bard, from the Hebrew and the Greek down to the Scottish Glenkindie, who

--"harpit a fish out o' saut water, Or water out of a stone, Or milk out of a maiden's breast Who bairn had never none."

Homer specially delighted in drawing the same figure. For what is the "Odyssey," but a history of the orator, in the largest style, carried through a series of adventures furnishing brilliant opportunities to his talent? See with what care and pleasure the poet brings him on the stage. Helen is pointing out to Antenor, from a tower, the different Grecian chiefs. "Antenor said: 'Tell me, dear child, who is that man, shorter by a head than Agamemnon, yet he looks broader in his shoulders and breast. His arms lie on the ground, but he, like a leader, walks about the bands of the men. He seems to me like a stately ram, who goes as a master of the flock.' Him answered Helen, daughter of Jove: 'This is the wise Ulysses, son of Laertes, who was reared in the state of craggy Ithaca, knowing all wiles and wise counsels.' To her the prudent Antenor replied again: 'O woman, you have spoken truly. For once the wise Ulysses came hither on an embassy, with Menelaus, beloved by Mars. I received them, and entertained them at my house. I became acquainted with the genius and the prudent judgments of both. When they mixed with the assembled Trojans and stood, the broad shoulders of Menelaus rose above the other; but, both sitting, Ulysses was more majestic. When they conversed, and interweaved stories and opinions with all; Menelaus spoke succinctly, few but very sweet words, since he was not talkative, nor superfluous in speech, and was the younger. But when the wise Ulysses arose, and stood, and looked down, fixing his eyes on the ground, and neither moved his sceptre backward nor forward, but held it still, like an awkward person, you would say it was some angry or foolish man; but when he sent his great voice forth out of his breast, and his words fell like the winter snows, not then would any mortal contend with Ulysses; and we, beholding, wondered not afterwards so much at his aspect." [_Iliad_, III. 192.]

Thus he does not fail to arm Ulysses at first with this power of overcoming all opposition by the blandishments of speech. Plutarch tells us that Thucydides, when Archidamus, king of Sparta, asked him, Which was the best wrestler, Pericles or he? replied, "When I throw him, he says he was never down, and he persuades the very spectators to believe him." Philip of Macedon said of Demosthenes, on hearing the report of one of his orations, "Had I been there, he would have persuaded me to take up arms against myself"; and Warren Hastings said of Burke's speech on his impeachment, "As I listened to the orator, I felt for more than half an hour as if I were the most culpable being on earth."

In these examples, higher qualities have already entered; but the power of detaining the ear by pleasing speech, and addressing the fancy and imagination, often exists without higher merits. Thus separated, as this fascination of discourse aims only at amusement, though it be decisive in its momentary effect, it is yet a juggle, and of no lasting power. It is heard like a band of music passing through the streets, which converts all the passengers into poets, but is forgotten as soon as it has turned the next corner; and unless this oiled tongue could, in Oriental phrase, lick the sun and moon away, it must take its place with opium and brandy. I know no remedy against it but cotton-wool, or the wax which Ulysses stuffed into the ears of his sailors to pass the Sirens safely.

There are all degrees of power, and the least are interesting, but they must not be confounded. There is the glib tongue and cool self-possession of the salesman in a large shop, which, as is well known, overpower the prudence and resolution of housekeepers of both sexes. There is a petty lawyer's fluency, which is sufficiently impressive to him who is devoid of that talent, though it be, in so many cases, nothing more than a facility of expressing with accuracy and speed what everybody thinks and says more slowly, without new information, or precision of thought,--but the same thing, neither less nor more. It requires no special insight to edit one of our country newspapers. Yet whoever can say off currently, sentence by sentence, matter neither better nor worse than what is there printed, will be very impressive to our easily-pleased population. These talkers are that class who prosper like the celebrated schoolmaster, by being only one lesson ahead of the pupil. Add a little sarcasm, and prompt allusion to passing occurrences, and you have the mischievous member of Congress. A spice of malice, a ruffian touch in his rhetoric, will do him no harm with his audience. These accomplishments are of the same kind, and only a degree higher than the coaxing of the auctioneer, or the vituperative style well described in the street-word "jawing." These kinds of public and private speaking have their use and convenience to the practitioners; but we may say of such collectively, that the habit of oratory is apt to disqualify them for eloquence.

One of our statesmen said, "The curse of this country is eloquent men." And one cannot wonder at the uneasiness sometimes manifested by trained statesmen, with large experience of public affairs, when they observe the disproportionate advantage suddenly given to oratory over the most solid and accumulated public service. In a Senate or other business committee, the solid result depends on a few men with working talent. They know how to deal with the facts before them, to put things into a practical shape, and they value men only as they can forward the work. But some new man comes there, who has no capacity for helping them at all, is insignificant, and nobody in the committee, but has a talent for speaking. In the debate with open doors, this precious person makes a speech, which is printed, and read all over the Union, and he at once becomes famous, and takes the lead in the public mind over all these executive men, who, of course, are full of indignation to find one who has no tact or skill, and knows he has none, put over them by means of this talking power which they despise.

Leaving behind us these pretensions, better or worse, to come a little nearer to the verity, eloquence is attractive as an example of the magic of personal ascendency;--a total and resultant power,--rare, because it requires a rich coincidence of powers, intellect, will, sympathy, organs, and, over all, good-fortune in the cause. We have a half-belief that the person is possible who can counterpoise all other persons. We believe that there may be a man who is a match for events,--one who never found his match,--against whom other men being dashed are broken,--one of inexhaustible personal resources, who can give you any odds and beat you. What we really wish for is a mind equal to any exigency. You are safe in your rural district, or in the city, in broad daylight, amidst the police, and under the eyes of a hundred thousand people. But how is it on the Atlantic, in a storm? Do you understand how to infuse your reason into men disabled by terror, and to bring yourself off safe then?--how among thieves, or among an infuriated populace, or among cannibals? Face to face with a highwayman who has every temptation and opportunity for violence and plunder, can you bring yourself off safe by your wit, exercised through speech?--a problem easy enough to Caesar, or Napoleon. Whenever a man of that stamp arrives, the highwayman has found a master. What a difference between men in power of face! A man succeeds because he has more power of eye than another, and so coaxes or confounds him. The newspapers, every week, report the adventures of some impudent swindler, who, by steadiness of carriage, duped those who should have known better. Yet any swindlers we have known are novices and bunglers, as is attested by their ill name. A greater power of face would accomplish anything, and, with the rest of their takings, take away the bad name. A greater power of carrying the thing loftily, and with perfect assurance, would confound merchant, banker, judge, men of influence and power, poet, and president, and might head any party, unseat any sovereign, and abrogate any constitution in Europe and America. It was said, that a man has at one step attained vast power, who has renounced his moral sentiment, and settled it with himself that he will no longer stick at anything. It was said of Sir William Pepperel, one of the worthies of New England, that, "put him where you might, he commanded, and saw what he willed come to pass." Julius Caesar said to Metellus, when that tribune interfered to hinder him from entering the Roman treasury, "Young man, it is easier for me to put you to death than to say that I will"; and the youth yielded. In earlier days, he was taken by pirates. What then? He threw himself into their ship; established the most extraordinary intimacies; told them stories; declaimed to them; if they did not applaud his speeches, he threatened them with hanging,--which he performed afterwards,--and, in a short time, was master of all on board. A man this is who cannot be disconcerted, and so can never play his last card, but has a reserve of power when he has hit his mark. With a serene face, he subverts a kingdom. What is told of him is miraculous; it affects men so. The confidence of men in him is lavish, and he changes the face of the world, and histories, poems, and new philosophies arise to account for him. A supreme commander over all his passions and affections; but the secret of his ruling is higher than that. It is the power of Nature running without impediment from the brain and will into the hands. Men and women are his game. Where they are, he cannot be without resource. "Whoso can speak well," said Luther, "is a man." It was men of this stamp that the Grecian States used to ask of Sparta for generals. They did not send to Lacedaemon for troops, but they said, "Send us a commander"; and Pausanias, or Gylippus, or Brasidas, or Agis, was despatched by the Ephors.

It is easy to illustrate this overpowering personality by these examples of soldiers and kings; but there are men of the most peaceful way of life, and peaceful principle, who are felt, wherever they go, as sensibly as a July sun or a December frost,--men who, if they speak, are heard, though they speak in a whisper,--who, when they act, act effectually, and what they do is imitated: and these examples may be found on very humble platforms, as well as on high ones.

In old countries, a high money-value is set on the services of men who have achieved a personal distinction. He who has points to carry must hire, not a skilful attorney, but a commanding person. A barrister in England is reputed to have made twenty or thirty thousand pounds per annum in representing the claims of railroad companies before committees of the House of Commons. His clients pay not so much for legal as for manly accomplishments,--for courage, conduct, and a commanding social position, which enable him to make their claims heard and respected.

I know very well, that, among our cool and calculating people, where every man mounts guard over himself, where heats and panics and abandonments are quite out of the system, there is a good deal of skepticism as to extraordinary influence. To talk of an overpowering mind rouses the same jealousy and defiance which one may observe round a table where anybody is recounting the marvellous anecdotes of mesmerism. Each auditor puts a final stroke to the discourse by exclaiming, "Can he mesmerize me?" So each man inquires if any orator can change his convictions.

But does any one suppose himself to be quite impregnable? Does he think that not possibly a man may come to him who shall persuade him out of his most settled determination?--for example, good sedate citizen as he is, to make a fanatic of him? or, if he is penurious, to squander money for some purpose he now least thinks of? or, if he is a prudent, industrious person, to forsake his work, and give days and weeks to a new interest? No, he defies any one, every one. Ah! he is thinking of resistance, and of a different turn from his own. But what if one should come of the same turn of mind as his own, and who sees much farther on his own way than he? A man who has tastes like mine, but in greater power, will rule me any day, and make me love my ruler.

Thus it is not powers of speech that we primarily consider under this word Eloquence, but the power that, being present, gives them their perfection, and, being absent, leaves them a merely superficial value. Eloquence is the appropriate organ of the highest personal energy. Personal ascendency may exist with or without adequate talent for its expression. It is as surely felt as a mountain or a planet; but when it is weaponed with a power of speech, it seems first to become truly human, works actively in all directions, and supplies the imagination with fine materials.

This circumstance enters into every consideration of the power of orators, and is the key to all their effects. In the assembly, you shall find the orator and the audience in perpetual balance, and the predominance of either is indicated by the choice of topic. If the talents for speaking exist, but not the strong personality, then there are good speakers who perfectly receive and express the will of the audience, and the commonest populace is flattered by hearing its low mind returned to it with every ornament which happy talent can add. But if there be personality in the orator, the face of things changes. The audience is thrown into the attitude of pupil, follows like a child its preceptor, and hears what he has to say. It is as if, amidst the king's council at Madrid, Ximenes urged that an advantage might be gained of France, and Mendoza that Flanders might be kept down, and Columbus, being introduced, was interrogated whether his geographical knowledge could aid the cabinet, and he can say nothing to one party or to the other, but he can show how all Europe can be diminished and reduced under the king by annexing to Spain a continent as large as six or seven Europes.

This balance between the orator and the audience is expressed in what is called the pertinence of the speaker. There is always a rivalry between the orator and the occasion, between the demands of the hour and the prepossession of the individual. The emergency which has convened the meeting is usually of more importance than anything the debaters have in their minds, and therefore becomes imperative to them. But if one of them have anything of commanding necessity in his heart, how speedily he will find vent for it, and with the applause of the assembly! This balance is observed in the privatest intercourse. Poor Tom never knew the time when the present occurrence was so trivial that he could tell what was passing in his mind without being checked for unseasonable speech; but let Bacon speak, and wise men would rather listen, though the revolution of kingdoms was on foot. I have heard it reported of an eloquent preacher, whose voice is not yet forgotten in this city, that, on occasions of death or tragic disaster, which overspread the congregation with gloom, he ascended the pulpit with more than his usual alacrity, and, turning to his favorite lessons of devout and jubilant thankfulness, "Let us praise the Lord," carried audience, mourners, and mourning along with him, and swept away all the impertinence of private sorrow with his hosannas and songs of praise. Pepys says of Lord Clarendon, with whom "he is mad in love," on his return from a conference, "I did never observe how much easier a man do speak when he knows all the company to be below him, than in him; for, though he spoke indeed excellent well, yet his manner and freedom of doing it, as if he played with it, and was informing only all the rest of the company, was mighty pretty." [_Diary_, I. 469.]

This rivalry between the orator and the occasion is inevitable, and the occasion always yields to the eminence of the speaker; for a great man is the greatest of occasions. Of course, the interest of the audience and of the orator conspire. It is well with them only when his influence is complete; then only they are well pleased. Especially, he consults his power by making instead of taking his theme. If he should attempt to instruct the people in that which they already know, he would fail; but, by making them wise in that which he knows, he has the advantage of the assembly every moment. Napoleon's tactics of marching on the angle of an army, and always presenting a superiority of numbers, is the orator's secret also.

The several talents which the orator employs, the splendid weapons which went to the equipment of Demosthenes, of AEchines, of Demades, the natural orator, of Fox, of Pitt, of Patrick Henry, of Adams, of Mirabeau, deserve a special enumeration. We must not quite omit to name the principal pieces.

The orator, as we have seen, must be a substantial personality. Then, first, he must have power of statement,--must have the fact, and know how to tell it. In any knot of men conversing on any subject, the person who knows most about it will have the ear of the company, if he wishes it, and lead the conversation,--no matter what genius or distinction other men there present may have; and in any public assembly, him who has the facts, and can and will state them, people will listen to, though he is otherwise ignorant, though he is hoarse and ungraceful, though he stutters and screams.

In a court of justice, the audience are impartial; they really wish to sift the statements, and know what the truth is. And, in the examination of witnesses, there usually leap out, quite unexpectedly, three or four stubborn words or phrases which are the pith and fate of the business, which sink into the ear of all parties, and stick there, and determine the cause. All the rest is repetition and qualifying; and the court and the county have really come together to arrive at these three or four memorable expressions, which betrayed the mind and meaning of somebody.

In every company, the man with the fact is like the guide you hire to lead your party up a mountain or through a difficult country. He may not compare with any of the party in mind, or breeding, or courage, or possessions, but he is much more important to the present need than any of them. That is what we go to the court-house for,--the statement of the fact, and the elimination of a general fact, the real relation of all the parties; and it is the certainty with which, indifferently in any affair that is well handled, the truth stares us in the face, through all the disguises that are put upon it,--a piece of the well-known human life,--that makes the interest of a court-room to the intelligent spectator.

I remember, long ago, being attracted by the distinction of the counsel, and the local importance of the cause, into the court-room. The prisoner's counsel were the strongest and cunningest lawyers in the Commonwealth. They drove the attorney for the State from corner to corner, taking his reasons from under him, and reducing him to silence, but not to submission. When hard-pressed, he revenged himself, in his turn, on the judge, by requiring the court to define what salvage was. The court, thus pushed, tried words, and said everything it could think of to fill the time, supposing cases, and describing duties of insurers, captains, pilots, and miscellaneous sea-officers that are or might be,--like a schoolmaster puzzled by a hard sum, who reads the context with emphasis. But all this flood not serving the cuttle-fish to get away in, the horrible shark of the district-attorney being still there, grimly awaiting with his "The court must define,"--the poor court pleaded its inferiority. The superior court must establish the law for this, and it read away piteously the decisions of the Supreme Court, but read to those who had no pity. The judge was forced at last to rule something, and the lawyers saved their rogue under the fog of a definition. The parts were so well cast and discriminated, that it was an interesting game to watch. The government was well enough represented. It was stupid, but it had a strong will and possession, and stood on that to the last. The judge had a task beyond his preparation, yet his position remained real; he was there to represent a great reality, the justice of states, which we could well enough see beetling over his head, and which his trifling talk nowise affected, and did not impede, since he was entirely well-meaning.

The statement of the fact, however, sinks before the statement of the law, which requires immeasurably higher powers, and is a rarest gift, being in all great masters one and the same thing,--in lawyers, nothing technical, but always some piece of common sense, alike interesting to laymen as to clerks. Lord Mansfield's merit is the merit of common sense. It is the same quality we admire in Aristotle, Montaigne, Cervantes, or in Samuel Johnson, or Franklin. Its application to law seems quite accidental. Each of Mansfield's famous decisions contains a level sentence or two, which hit the mark. His sentences are not always finished to the eye, but are finished to the mind. The sentences are involved, but a solid proposition is set forth, a true distinction is drawn. They come from and they go to the sound human understanding; and I read, without surprise, that the black-letter lawyers of the day sneered at his "equitable decisions," as if they were not also learned. This, indeed, is what speech is for, to make the statement; and all that is called eloquence seems to me of little use, for the most part, to those who have it, but inestimable to such as have something to say.

Next to the knowledge of the fact and its law, is method, which constitutes the genius and efficiency of all remarkable men. A crowd of men go up to Faneuil Hall; they are all pretty well acquainted with the object of the meeting; they have all read the facts in the same newspapers. The orator possesses no information which his hearers have not; yet he teaches them to see the thing with his eyes. By the new placing, the circumstances acquire new solidity and worth. Every fact gains consequence by his naming it, and trifles become important. His expressions fix themselves in men's memories, and fly from mouth to mouth. His mind has some new principle of order. Where he looks, all things fly into their places. What will he say next? Let this man speak, and this man only. By applying the habits of a higher style of thought to the common affairs of this world, he introduces beauty and magnificence wherever he goes. Such a power was Burke's, and of this genius we have had some brilliant examples in our own political and legal men.

Imagery. The orator must be, to a certain extent, a poet. We are such imaginative creatures, that nothing so works on the human mind, barbarous or civil, as a trope. Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol, and an audience is electrified. They feel as if they already possessed some new right and power over a fact, which they can detach, and so completely master in thought. It is a wonderful aid to the memory, which carries away the image, and never loses it. A popular assembly, like the House of Commons, or the French Chamber, or the American Congress, is commanded by these two powers,--first by a fact, then by skill of statement. Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.

Statement, method, imagery, selection, tenacity of memory, power of dealing with facts, of illuminating them, of sinking them by ridicule or by diversion of the mind, rapid generalization, humor, pathos, are keys which the orator holds; and yet these fine gifts are not eloquence, and do often hinder a man's attainment of it. And if we come to the heart of the mystery, perhaps we should say that the truly eloquent man is a sane man with power to communicate his sanity. If you arm the man with the extraordinary weapons of this art, give him a grasp of facts, learning, quick fancy, sarcasm, splendid allusion, interminable illustration,--all these talents, so potent and charming, have an equal power to insnare and mislead the audience and the orator. His talents are too much for him, his horses run away with him; and people always perceive whether you drive, or whether the horses take the bits in their teeth and run. But these talents are quite something else when they are subordinated and serve him; and we go to Washington, or to Westminster Hall, or might well go round the world, to see a man who drives, and is not run away with,--a man who, in prosecuting great designs, has an absolute command of the means of representing his ideas, and uses them only to express these; placing facts, placing men; amid the inconceivable levity of human beings, never for an instant warped from his erectness. There is for every man a statement possible of that truth which he is most unwilling to receive,--a statement possible, so broad and so pungent, that he cannot get away from it, but must either bend to it or die of it. Else there would be no such word as eloquence, which means this. The listener cannot hide from himself that something has been shown him and the whole world, which he did not wish to see; and, as he cannot dispose of it, it disposes of him. The history of public men and affairs in America will readily furnish tragic examples of this fatal force.

For the triumphs of the art somewhat more must still be required, namely, a reinforcing of man from events, so as to give the double force of reason and destiny. In transcendent eloquence, there was ever some crisis in affairs, such as could deeply engage the man to the cause he pleads, and draw all this wide power to a point. For the explosions and eruptions, there must be accumulations of heat somewhere, beds of ignited anthracite at the centre. And in cases where profound conviction has been wrought, the eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain belief. It agitates and tears him, and perhaps almost bereaves him of the power of articulation. Then it rushes from him as in short, abrupt screams, in torrents of meaning. The possession the subject has of his mind is so entire, that it insures an order of expression which is the order of Nature itself, and so the order of greatest force, and inimitable by any art. And the main distinction between him and other well-graced actors is the conviction, communicated by every word, that his mind is contemplating a whole and inflamed by the contemplation of the whole, and that the words and sentences uttered by him, however admirable, fall from him as unregarded parts of that terrible whole which he sees, and which he means that you shall see. Add to this concentration a certain regnant calmness, which, in all the tumult, never utters a premature syllable, but keeps the secret of its means and method; and the orator stands before the people as a demoniacal power to whose miracles they have no key. This terrible earnestness makes good the ancient superstition of the hunter, that the bullet will hit its mark, which is first dipped in the marksman's blood.

Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest narrative. Afterwards, it may warm itself until it exhales symbols of every kind and color, speaks only through the most poetic forms; but, first and last, it must still be at bottom a biblical statement of fact. The orator is thereby an orator, that he keeps his feet ever on a fact. Thus only is he invincible. No gifts, no graces, no power of wit or learning or illustration will make any amends for want of this. All audiences are just to this point. Fame of voice or of rhetoric will carry people a few times to hear a speaker, but they soon begin to ask, "What is he driving at?" and if this man does not stand for anything, he will be deserted. A good upholder of anything which they believe, a fact-speaker of any kind, they will long follow; but a pause in the speaker's own character is very properly a loss of attraction. The preacher enumerates his classes of men, and I do not find my place therein; I suspect, then, that no man does. Every thing is my cousin, and whilst he speaks things, I feel that he is touching some of my relations, and I am uneasy; but whilst he deals in words, we are released from attention. If you would lift me, you must be on higher ground. If you would liberate me, you must be free. If you would correct my false view of facts,--hold up to me the same facts in the true order of thought, and I cannot go back from the new conviction.

The power of Chatham, of Pericles, of Luther, rested on this strength of character, which, because it did not and could not fear anybody, made nothing of their antagonists, and became sometimes exquisitely provoking and sometimes terrific to these.

We are slenderly furnished with anecdotes of these men, nor can we help ourselves by those heavy books in which their discourses are reported. Some of them were writers, like Burke; but most of them were not, and no record at all adequate to their fame remains. Besides, what is best is lost, the fiery life of the moment. But the conditions for eloquence always exist. It is always dying out of famous places, and appearing in corners. Wherever the polarities meet, wherever the fresh moral sentiment, the instinct of freedom and duty, come in direct opposition to fossil conservatism and the thirst of gain, the spark will pass. The resistance to slavery in this country has been a fruitful nursery of orators. The natural connection by which it drew to itself a train of moral reforms, and the slight yet sufficient party organization it offered, reinforced the city with new blood from the woods and mountains. Wild men, John Baptists, Hermit Peters, John Knoxes, utter the savage sentiment of Nature in the heart of commercial capitals. They send us every year some piece of aboriginal strength, some tough oak-stick of a man who is not to be silenced or insulted or intimidated by a mob, because he is more mob than they,--one who mobs the mob,--some sturdy countryman, on whom neither money, nor politeness, nor hard words, nor eggs, nor blows, nor brickbats, make any impression. He is fit to meet the bar-room wits and bullies; he is a wit and a bully himself, and something more; he is a graduate of the plough, and the stub-hoe, and the bush-whacker; knows all the secrets of swamp and snow-bank, and has nothing to learn of labor or poverty or the rough of farming. His hard head went through in childhood the drill of Calvinism, with text and mortification, so that he stands in the New England assembly a purer bit of New England than any, and flings his sarcasms right and left. He has not only the documents in his pocket to answer all cavils and to prove all his positions, but he has the eternal reason in his head. This man scornfully renounces your civil organizations,--county, or city, or governor, or army,--is his own navy and artillery, judge and jury, legislature and executive. He has learned his lessons in a bitter school. Yet, if the pupil be of a texture to bear it, the best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mobs.

He who will train himself to mastery in this science of persuasion must lay the emphasis of education, not on popular arts, but on character and insight. Let him see that his speech is not differenced from action; that, when he has spoken, he has not done nothing, nor done wrong, but has cleared his own skirts, has engaged himself to wholesome exertion. Let him look on opposition as opportunity. He cannot be defeated or put down. There is a principle of resurrection in him, an immortality of purpose. Men are averse and hostile, to give value to their suffrages. It is not the people that are in fault for not being convinced, but he that cannot convince them. He should mould them, armed as he is with the reason and love which are also the core of their nature. He is not to neutralize their opposition, but he is to convert them into fiery apostles and publishers of the same wisdom.

The highest platform of eloquence is the moral sentiment. It is what is called affirmative truth, and has the property of invigorating the hearer; and it conveys a hint of our eternity, when he feels himself addressed on grounds which will remain when everything else is taken, and which have no trace of time or place or party. Everything hostile is stricken down in the presence of the sentiments; their majesty is felt by the most obdurate. It is observable, that, as soon as one acts for large masses, the moral element will and must be allowed for, will and must work; and the men least accustomed to appeal to these sentiments invariably recall them when they address nations. Napoleon, even, must accept and use it as he can.

It is only to these simple strokes that the highest power belongs, when a weak human hand touches, point by point, the eternal beams and rafters on which the whole structure of Nature and society is laid. In this tossing sea of delusion, we feel with our feet the adamant; in this dominion of chance, we find a principle of permanence. For I do not accept that definition of Isocrates, that the office of his art is to make the great small and the small great; but I esteem this to be its perfection,--when the orator sees through all masks to the eternal scale of truth, in such sort that he can hold up before the eyes of men the fact of today steadily to that standard, thereby making the great great and the small small,--which is the true way to astonish and to reform mankind.

All the first orators of the world have been grave men, relying on this reality. One thought the philosophers of Demosthenes's own time found running through all his orations,--this, namely, that "virtue secures its own success." "To stand on one's own feet" Heeren finds the keynote to the discourses of Demosthenes, as of Chatham.

Eloquence, like every other art, rests on laws the most exact and determinate. It is the best speech of the best soul. It may well stand as the exponent of all that is grand and immortal in the mind. If it do not so become an instrument, but aspires to be somewhat of itself, and to glitter for show, it is false and weak. In its right exercise, it is an elastic, unexhausted power,--who has sounded, who has estimated it?--expanding with the expansion of our interests and affections. Its great masters, whilst they valued every help to its attainment, and thought no pains too great which contributed in any manner to further it, and, resembling the Arabian warrior of fame, who wore seventeen weapons in his belt, and in personal combat used them all occasionally,--yet undervalued all means, never permitted any talent, neither voice, rhythm, poetic power, anecdote, sarcasm, to appear for show, but were grave men, who preferred their integrity to their talent, and esteemed that object for which they toiled, whether the prosperity of their country, or the laws, or a reformation, or liberty of speech or of the press, or letters, or morals, as above the whole world, and themselves also.

*       *       *       *       *

THE KINLOCH ESTATE, AND HOW IT WAS SETTLED.

[Concluded.]

CHAPTER XII.

The disappearance of Lucy Ransom did not long remain a secret; it rang through the town, and was accompanied by all sorts of rumors. Some thought she had eloped; but the prevailing opinion was, that she had been tempted into a fatal error, and then, in the frenzy of remorse and shame, had destroyed herself, in order to hide her disgrace from the world. Slight hints were now recalled by many of the poor girl's acquaintance,--hints of love, unrequited and hopeless,--of base and unfeeling treachery,--of remediless sorrow, appealing to the deepest sympathy, and not the less because her heart found utterance in rude and homely phrases. This idea of self-destruction gained the more currency because no one had seen the least trace of the girl after the twilight of the preceding night, and it was deemed improbable that she could have made her way on foot the whole distance to the railway-station without being seen by some one. And when it was reported that a boy had found a shawl not far from the dam, the public became so much aroused that it was determined to make a thorough search. The pond and canal were dragged, and the bank of the river carefully explored for miles below the town. The search was kept up far into the night, the leaders being provided with pitch-pine torches. At every bend, or eddy, or sand-bar, or fallen tree, where it might be supposed that a drifting body would be stopped, the boldest breathed faster, and started at the first glimpse of a white stone or a peeled and bleached poplar-trunk, or other similar object, fearing it might prove to be what they expected, yet dreaded to see. But it was in vain. Lucy, whether alive or dead, was not to be found. Her grandmother hobbled down to the village, moaning piteously; but she could get little consolation, least of all from Mrs. Kinloch. This incident made a lasting impression. The village boys, who remembered the search with shuddering horror, avoided the river, and even Hugh found means to persuade Mildred to give up the pleasant road on its bank and take the hill district for their afternoon rides.

Meanwhile the time for the trial of the ejectment suit was rapidly approaching, and it was difficult to say whether plaintiff or defendant showed the more signs of anxiety. Mr. Hardwick's life seemed to be bound up in his shop; it was dear to him in the memory of long years of cheerful labor; it was his pride as well as his dependence; he had grown old by its flaming forge, and he could never feel at home in any other spot. "Young trees may be moved," he would say; "an old one dies in transplanting." It was noticed by all his friends that the stoop in his shoulders was more decided, his step less elastic, and his ordinary flow of spirits checked.

Mrs. Kinloch, too, grew older unaccountably fast. Her soft brown hair began to whiten, her features grew sharp, and her expression quick, watchful, and intense. Upon being spoken to, she would start and tremble in her whole frame; her cheeks would glow momentarily, and then become waxen again.

Impatient at the slow progress of her son's wooing, and impelled now by a new fear that all her plans might be frustrated, if Mildred should happen to hear any rumor touching the cause of Lucy's disappearance, Mrs. Kinloch proposed to herself to assist him more openly than she had hitherto done--She was not aware that anything implicating Hugh had been reported, but she knew enough of human nature to be sure that some one would be peering into the mystery,--a mystery which she divined by instinct, but had not herself dared to explore. So, finding a favorable opportunity, she sat down beside Mildred, determined to read the secret of her soul; for she made no question that she could scan her, as she might the delicate machinery of the French clock, noiselessly moving under its crystal cover.

Mildred shuddered unconsciously, as she felt her step-mother's thin fingers gently smoothing the hair upon her temples; still more, as the pale and quivering lips were pressed to her forehead. The caress was not a feigned tenderness. Mrs. Kinloch really loved the girl, with such love as she had to bestow; and if her manner had been latterly abstracted or harsh, it was from preoccupation. She was soon satisfied that the suspicion she dreaded had not found place in the girl's mind. Leading the way by imperceptible approaches, she spoke in her softest tones of her joy at Hugh's altered manners, her hopes of his future, and especially of her desire to have him leave the navy and settle on shore.

"How happy we might be, Hugh and we," she said, "if we could live here in this comfortable home, and feel that nothing but death would break up the circle! How much your dear father counted on the happiness in store for him in growing old with his children around him!--and would he not be rejoiced to see us cling together, bound by ties as strong as life, and cherishing his memory by our mutual affection?"

Mildred replied in some commonplaces,--rather wondering at the vein of sentiment, and in no way suspecting the object which her step-mother had in view.

Mrs. Kinloch continued:--"Hugh needs some new attraction now to detain him; he is tired of the sea, but he finds the village dull. He is just of the age to think of looking for some romantic attachment; but you know how few girls there are here whose manners and education are such as to please a cultivated man."

Mildred grew uneasy, but remained silent. Mrs. Kinloch was every moment more eager in her manner; a novice, waiting for the turn of the cards in rouge et noir, would not have manifested a greater anxiety as to the result. But the girl looked out of the window, and did not see the compressed lips, dilated nostrils, and glittering eyes, that gave such a contradiction to the bland words.

"Mildred, my daughter," she continued, "I have no secrets from you,--least of all about matters that concern us both. Don't you see what I would say? Don't you know what would make our circle complete, inseparable? Pardon the boldness of a fond mother, whose only desire is to see her children happy."

Mildred felt a tear dropping upon the hand which Mrs. Kinloch held with a passionate grasp. She felt the powerful magnetism which the woman exerted upon her, and she trembled, but still kept silent.

"It is for Hugh that I speak. He loves you. Has he not told you so?"

"I do not wish to talk with you about it," said Mildred.

"But I have a right, as his mother and your guardian, to know. I should be wanting in my duty, if I suffered your happiness to be perilled for want of a clear understanding between you. Hugh is proud and sensitive, and you bashful and just the least foolish; so that you are at cross purposes."

"Hugh fully understands my feelings towards him."

"You have given him encouragement?" she asked, eagerly.

"None whatever: it would have been wrong in me to do so."

"Wrong to love him! Why, he is your brother only in name."

"Wrong to encourage him in a love I do not and cannot return," replied Mildred, with a mighty effort, at the same time disengaging her hand.

Mrs. Kinloch could not repress a feeling of admiration, even in her despair, as she saw the clear, brave glance, the heightened color, and the heaving bosom of the girl.

"But, in time, you may think differently," she said, almost piteously.

"I wished to be spared this pain, mother," Mildred replied, trembling at her own boldness, "but you will not let me; and I must tell you, kindly, but decidedly, that I never could marry Hugh under any circumstances whatever."

Her mother did not wince at the rebuff, but followed on even closer. "And why? Who is there more manly, well-educated, kindly, dutiful, than Hugh?"

"I don't wish to analyze his character; probably we shouldn't altogether agree in our judgment; but it is enough that I don't feel in the least attracted by him, and that I could not love him, if he were all that you imagine."

"Then you love another!" said Mrs. Kinloch, fiercely.

Mildred was excessively agitated; but, though her knees trembled, her voice was clear and soft as it had been. "Yes, I do love another; and I don't hesitate to avow it."

"That blacksmith's upstart?" in a still louder key.

"You mean Mark Davenport, probably, who deserves more respectful language."

"Brought up in coal-dust,--the spoiled and forward pet of a foolish old stutterer, who depends for his bread on his dirty work, and who, if he had only his own, would have to leave even the hovel he works in." It was fearful to see how these contemptuous words were hissed out by the infuriated woman.

Mildred was courageous, but she had not passed through the discipline that had developed her step-mother's faculties. So she burst into tears, saying, amidst her sobs, that Mark was allowed by all who knew him to be a young man of promise; that, for herself, she didn't care how much coal-dust he had been through,--_that_ would wash off; that, at any rate, she loved him, and would never marry anybody else.

Mrs. Kinloch began to consider. Anger had whirled her away once; a second explosion might create an irreparable breach between them.

"Don't lay up what I have said, Mildred," she urged, in a mild voice. "If I object to your choice, it is because I am proud of you and want you to look high. You can marry whom you choose; no rank or station need be considered above you. Come, don't cry, dear!"

But Mildred refused to be soothed. She could not sympathize with the tropical nature, that smiled like sunshine at one moment, and the next burst into the fury of a tornado. She pushed off the beseeching hand, turned from the offered endearments, and, with reddened, tear-stained face, left the room.

Hugh presently passed through the hall. "Well, mother," said he, "I suppose you think you've done it now."

"Go about your business, you foolish boy!" she retorted. "Go and try something that you do know about. You can snare a partridge, or shoot a woodcock, perhaps!"

CHAPTER XIII.

Mildred had now no peace; after what had happened, she could not meet Hugh and his mother with any composure. The scheming woman had risked everything in the appeal she made to her daughter,--risked everything, and lost. Nothing could restore harmony; neither could forget the struggle and live the old quiet life. Mrs. Kinloch, always pursued by anxiety, was one day full of courage, fruitful in plans and resources, and the next day cast down into the pit of despair. Now she clung to her first hope, believing that time, patience, kindness, would soften Mildred's resolution; then, seeing the blank indifference with which she treated Hugh, she racked her invention to provide other means of attaining her end.

Again, the thought of her inexplicable loss came over her, and she was frightened to madness; creeping chills alternating with cold sweats tortured her. It was a mystery she could not penetrate. She could not but implicate Lucy: but then Lucy might be in her grave. After every circumstance had passed in review, her suspicions inevitably returned and fastened upon her lawyer, Clamp. She almost wished he would come to see her again; for he, being naturally sulky at his first reception, had left the haughty woman severely alone. She determined to send for him, on business, and then to try her fascinations upon him, to draw him out, and see if he held her secret.

"Aha!" thought the Squire, as he received the message, "she comes to her senses! Give a woman like Mrs. Kinloch time enough to consider, and she will not turn her back on her true interest. O Theophilus, you are not by any means a fool! Slow and steady, slow and steady you go! Let the frisky woman appear to have her way,--you will win in the end!"

The wig and best suit were brushed anew, water was brought into requisition for the visible portions of his person, and, with his most engaging expression arranged upon his parchment face, he presented himself before the widow.

There was a skirmish of small talk, during which Mr. Clamp was placid and self-conscious, while his vis-à-vis, though smiling and apparently at ease, was yet alert and excited,--darting furtive glances, that would have startled him like flashes of sunlight reflected from a mirror, if he had not been shielded by his own self-complacency.

"You-have-sent-for-me-on-business,-I-believe," said the lawyer, in a tone continuous and bland as a stream of honey.

"Yes, Sir; I have great confidence in your judgment, and I know that you are devoted to the interests of our family. My poor husband always esteemed you highly."

"Oh, Ma'am! you do me honor!"

"If I have not consulted you about our affairs of late, it is because I have had troubles which I did not wish to burden you with."

"We all have our troubles, Mrs. Kinloch."

"They are very sad to bear,--but profitable, nevertheless.

"But I'm sure you must be wonderfully supported in your trials; I never saw you looking better."

And truly, her thin and mobile lips were of a strangely bright coral, and her usually wan cheeks wore a delicate flush, lending her a beauty, not youthful, to be sure, but yet fascinating. One might desire to see an eye less intense and restless, but he would rarely see a woman of forty so charming.

"You notice my color," said Mrs. Kinloch, mournfully, and with a faint smile; "it's only the effect of a headache. I am far enough from well."

"Indeed!" was the sympathetic reply.

"I have met with a great loss, Mr. Clamp,--some papers of the greatest importance. I was going to consult you about them."

"In which I got ahead of you," thought he.

"Now, ever since the disappearance of Lucy, I have thought she had something to do with them. I never went to the secretary, but she was sure to be spying about. And I believe she knew about my affairs as well as I do myself."

"Or I," mentally ejaculated the lawyer,--meanwhile keeping as close as an oyster.

She continued,--"As the girl was ignorant, and without any interest in the matter more than that of curiosity, I am puzzled to account for all this."

"'Tis strange, truly!"

"Yes, I'm sure she must be only the tool of some shrewder person."

"You alarm me! Who can it be?"

"Perhaps Mildred, or some one who is plotting for her. The Hardwicks, you know, expect she will marry Mark Davenport."

"Do they, indeed? Well, now, that's a shrewd conjecture. Then you think Lucy didn't drown herself?"

"She? By no means!"

"But what can I do in the matter, Mrs. Kinloch?"

"We must find Lucy, or else discover her confidant,"--looking fixedly at him.

"Not very easy to do," said he, never once wincing under her scrutiny.

"Not easy for me. But those that hide can find. Nothing is beyond search, if one really tries."

During this cross-examination, Mr. Clamp's premeditated gallantry had been kept in the background; but he was determined not to let the present opportunity pass by; he therefore turned the current of conversation.

"You have not told me, Mrs. Kinloch, what the loss is; so I cannot judge of its importance. You don't wish to have any more repositories of secrets than are necessary; but I think you will readily see that our interests lie in the same direction. If the girl can be found and the papers recovered by anybody, I am the one to do it. If that is impossible, however, the next thing is to be prepared for what may happen; in either emergency, you can hardly do better than to accept my aid."

"Of course, I depend entirely upon you."

"We may as well understand each other," said the lawyer, forgetting the wily ways by which he had intended to approach her. "I have certain views, myself, which I think run parallel with yours; and if I am able to carry you and your property safely through these difficulties, I think you will not scruple to----

"To pay you to your heart's content," she broke in, quickly. "No, I shall not scruple, unless you ask more than half the estate."

"I ask for nothing but yourself," said he, with sudden boldness.

"That is to say, you want the whole of it."

"Charming woman! don't, pray, compel me to talk in this language of traffic. It is you I desire,--not the estate. If there is enough to make you more comfortable than would be possible with my means, I shall be happy for your sake."

Her lips writhed and her eyes shot fire. Should she breathe the scorn she felt, and brave the worst? Or should she temporize? Time might bring about a change, when she could safely send the mercenary suitor back to his dusty and cobwebbed office.

"We do understand each other," she said, slowly. "This is a matter to think of. I had never thought to marry again, and I cannot answer your delicate proposal now. Let me have a week to consider."

"Couldn't we arrange the matter just as well now? I beg your pardon, Ma'am, if I seem too bold."

"Oh, your youthful ardor and impetuosity! To be sure, one must forgive the impatience of a lover in his first passion! But you must wait, nevertheless."

Mr. Clamp laughed. It was a good joke, he thought.

"I must bid you good afternoon, Squire Clamp. I have made my headache worse by talking on a subject I was not prepared for."

So Mr. Clamp was bowed out. He did not clearly understand her quick and subtle movements, but he felt sure of his game in the end. The scornful irony that had played about him like electricity he had not felt.

When he was gone, the woman's worst enemy would have pitied her distress. She believed more than ever that Clamp had used Lucy to abstract her papers, and that he now would hold his power over her to bring about the hated marriage. Her firmness gave way; she sank on the sofa and wept like a child. Would that she might yet retreat! But no, the way is closed up behind her. She must go on to her destiny.

CHAPTER XIV.

Mark Davenport was prosperous in all his undertakings. His position in the school did not give much scope to his ambition, but the salary he received was ample enough to pay his expenses, while the duties were not so onerous as to engross all his time. All his leisure was given to literary pursuits. He had many times thought he would relinquish the drudgery of teaching, and support himself by his pen; but he remembered the maxim of Scott,--that literature was a good staff, but a poor crutch,--and he stuck to his school. As he grew into a practised writer, he became connected with the staff of a daily newspaper in the great city, furnishing leading articles when called upon, and he soon acquired a position of influence among his associates. He had maintained a correspondence with Mildred, and was looking forward to the time when he should make a visit to his native town, hoping then to be so well established in the world that he might be able to bring her back with him as his bride. Every thought centred in her. He coveted fame, wealth, position, only for her sake; and stimulated by this thought, he had made exertions that would have broken down a man less vigorous and less resolute.

He received a letter from Innisfield one day, after a long interval,--so long that he had become uneasy, and imagined every kind of evil as the cause of delay. He broke the seal; it was not from Mildred, but from his cousin Lizzie. These were the contents:--

"My dear Mark,--I suppose you may have been anxious before this, at not hearing from us; but the truth is, we have not had anything very pleasant to write, and so have put off sending to you. Father is by no means well or strong. The lawsuit, which is now likely to go wrong, has troubled him very much. He has grown thin, he stoops as he walks about, and by night he coughs terribly. I rarely hear him sing as he used to. Then Squire Clamp has complained of him before the church, and you know father is over-sensitive about his relations with 'the brethren,'--even with those who are trying to ruin him. He is melancholy enough. I hope he will be better, if he gets through his difficulties; otherwise I am afraid to think of what may happen.

"You wonder, probably, at not getting a letter from Mildred. Don't be surprised when I tell you that she has left home and is staying at Mr. Alford's. Mrs. Kinloch has for a long time wanted her to marry that hateful Hugh Branning, and became so violent about it that Mildred was afraid of her. Lucy Ransom, who lived there, ran away a short time ago, very mysteriously. It seems that the girl had stolen something from the house, and, after Mildred had plumply refused to marry Hugh, Mrs. Kinloch charged upon her that she had induced Lucy to steal the papers or money, or whatever it was. Mrs. Kinloch acted so like an insane woman, that Mildred would not stay in the house, but ran over to Mr. Alford's, with only the clothes she wore. She passed by our house yesterday and told me this hurriedly. I have heard, too, that Squire Clamp is about to marry Mrs. Kinloch, and that he actually has procured the license. It's a very strange affair.

"To fill out the account of disagreeable things,--last evening, in one of the stores, people were talking of Lucy Ransom's fate, (as they have been for weeks,) when Will Fenton, the cripple, said, 'he guessed Hugh Branning could tell what had become of her, if he chose.' Hugh, it seems, heard of the remark, and to-day he went with a dandyish doctor, belonging to the navy, I believe, and beat the poor cripple with a horsewhip, most shamefully. I think this violence has turned suspicion against him.

"I am sorry not to have one pleasant thing to say, except that we all love you as warmly as ever, and hope to see you soon here. Indeed, Cousin Mark, I dread to write it,--but if you don't come soon, I think you will see father only on his last bed.

"Good-bye, dear Mark! Your Cousin,--LIZZIE."

We will waste no time in attempting to analyze Mark's conflicting emotions, but follow him to Innisfield, whither he went the same day. Great as was his desire to see his betrothed, from whom he had received no letter for many weeks, he went first of all, where duty and affection called, to see the dear old man who had been to him more than a father.

Mr. Hardwick was sitting in the corner, but rose up with a new energy as he heard the well-known voice. Mark was not prepared, even by his cousin's foreboding letter, to see such a change as his uncle exhibited;--the hollow eyes, the wasted cheeks, the bent figure, the trembling hands, bore painful testimony to his enfeebled condition. He held both of Mark's hands in his, and, while his eyes were dim in a tear-mist, said, with a faltering voice, "Bless you, m-my boy! I'm glad to see you once more. I thought I might hear my s-summons before you'd come. You do remember your old uncle!"

Mark could not restrain himself, but wept outright. The old gentleman sank into his chair, still clasping Mark's hands. Neither could speak, but they looked towards each other an unutterable tenderness.

At length, controlling the tide of feeling, Mr. Hardwick said,--"D-don't be cast down, Mark; these tears are not b-bitter, but f-full of joy. Th-there, now, go and kiss your sister and Lizzie."

The girls appeared wiping their eyes, for they had left the room overpowered; they greeted Mark affectionately, and then all sat down about the hearth. Topics enough there were. Mark told of his pursuits and prospects. The village gossip about the lost servant-girl, (of whom Mark knew something, but had reasons for silence,) the approaching marriage of Mrs. Kinloch, and the exile of the heiress from her own home, were all discussed. After a reasonable time, Mark excused himself and went to Mr. Alford's, pondering much on the strange events that had perplexed the usually quiet village. He reached the house, after a brief walk, and was met by Aunt Mercy, the portly mistress, but with something less than her accustomed cordiality.

"Miss Kinloch is not able to see company," she said, "and must be excused."

Mark poured forth a torrent of questions, to which Mrs. Alford listened, her broad features softening visibly; and at length, with an apparent effort, she asked him "to come agin to-morrer or the day arter."

The more Mark reflected on Mrs. Alford's behavior, the more he was puzzled. Had Mildred denied him admission? His own betrothed refuse to see him! No, he was sure she was sick; and besides, she could not have heard of his coming. So he soothed himself. But the imps of suspicion and jealousy still haunted him at intervals, and a more miserable man than the usually buoyant and sanguine Mark it would be difficult to find.

The next day, as soon as breakfast was over, Mark, though trying to cheer up his uncle, was secretly longing for the hour when it would be proper to present himself at Mr. Alford's. But time does move, albeit with lagging pace to a lover, and in due season Mark was on his way. Near the house he met the farmer, who greeted him heartily, and wished him joy with a knowing smile. Mark took a freer breath; if there was any difficulty, Mr. Alford certainly did not know it. But then it occurred to him, that shy young ladies do not often make confidants of elderly husbandmen in long blue frocks, and his spirits fell again.

Mr. Alford leaned against a fence and threshed his hands to keep them warm, while he told Mark that "he had been with Mildred privately out to the Probate Court,--that the case had been stated to the jedge, who allowed, that, as she was above fourteen, she had a right to choose her own guardeen,--that he, Alford, was to be put in, in place of the Squire,--and that then, in his opinion, there would be an overhaulin' so's to hev things set to rights."

Mark shook the hand of his good friend warmly, and commended his shrewdness.

"But 'ta'n't best to stan' talkin' with an ol' feller like me," said the farmer, "when you can do so much better. Jest look!"

Mark turned his head, and through the window of the house saw the retreating figure of Mildred. He bounded across the yard, opened the door without knocking, and rushed into the house. She had vanished: no one was visible but Mrs. Alford, who was cutting up golden pumpkins in long coils to dry.

"Come, Milly," said the good woman, "'ta'n't no use; he saw ye."

And Mildred appeared, coming slowly out of the buttery.

"Ye see, Mildred felt a little hurt about a letter; but I knew there was some mistake; so I wa'n't a-goin' to hev ye go off 'thout some explanation."

"A letter?--explanation?" said Mark, thoroughly bewildered.

"Here it is," said Mildred, taking a letter from her pocket, still looking down. Mark hastily took and opened it. The envelope bore Mildred's address in a hand not unlike his own; the inclosure was a letter from Mildred to himself, which he now saw for the first time.

"Mildred," said he, holding out his hands, "could you doubt me?"

She covered her face with her apron, but stood irresolute. He looked again at the letter.

"Why, the clumsy trick, Mildred! This post-office stamp, 'New York,' is not genuine. Just look! it is a palpable cheat, an imitation made with a pen. The color did not spread, you see, as ink mixed with oil does. This letter never left this village. I never saw it before,--could not have seen it. Do you doubt me now, dear Mildred?"

Even if the evidence had been less convincing, the earnest, heartfelt tone, the pleading look and gesture, would have satisfied a much more exacting woman. She sprang towards her lover, and flung her arms about his neck. The pent-up feeling of days and weeks rushed over her like a flood, and the presence of Mrs. Alford was forgotten.

Mrs. Alford, it would seem, suddenly thought of something; for, gathering herself up, she walked off as fast as the laws of gravitation allowed, exclaiming,--"There! I never did see! Sech hens! Allus a-flyin' into the kitchen. I wonder now who left that are door open."

The frightened cackle of the hens, the rattling of pots and pans by the assiduous housewife in the kitchen, were unheeded by the lovers, "emparadised in one another's arms." The conversation took too wide a range and embraced too many trivial details to be set down here. Only this I may say: they both believed, (as every enamored couple believes,) that, though other people might cherish the properest affection for each other, yet no man or woman ever did or could experience such intense and all-pervading emotion as now throbbed in their breasts,--in fact, that they had been created to exemplify the passion, which, before, poets had only imagined. Simple children! they had only found out what hearts are made for!

CHAPTER XV.

The last picture was a pleasant relief in a rather sombre story, therefore we prefer to commence a stormier scene in a new chapter. Mark and Mildred were sitting cozily by the ample fireplace,--not at opposite corners, you may believe,--when there was a warning ahem! at the door, and the sound of feet "a-raspin' on the scraper." Mr. Alford entered and said, "Milly, your step-mother's team is comin' up the road." In a moment there was a bustle in the house, but before any preparation could be made the carriage was at the gate, and Mrs. Kinloch, accompanied by Squire Clamp, knocked at the door.

"Milly, you go into the kitchen with Mrs. Alford," said the farmer. "I'll attend to matters for them."

"No, Mr. Alford," she answered; "you are very good, but I think I'll stay and see them. Shan't I, Mark?"

Mrs. Kinloch and the lawyer entered. She had left off her mourning, but looked as pale and thoughtful as ever. After the common courtesies, brief and cool in this case, Mrs. Kinloch made known her errand. She had been grieved that Mildred should have left her father's house and remained so long with strangers, and she had now come to beg her to return home. Mildred replied, that she had not left home without cause, and that she had no intention of going back at present. Mrs. Kinloch looked hurt, and said that this unusual conduct, owing partly to the common and wicked prejudice against step-mothers, had wounded her sorely, and she hoped Mildred would do her the simple justice of returning to a mother who loved her, and would make every sacrifice for her happiness. Mildred said she did not wish to go over the ground again; she thought she understood the love that had been shown her; and she did not desire any further sacrifices, such as she had witnessed. The request was renewed in various forms, but to no purpose. Then Squire Clamp interposed with great solemnity, saying, that, if she had forgotten the respect and affection due to the mother who had fostered her, she ought to know that the law had conferred upon him, as her guardian, the authority of a father, and he begged her not to give him the pain of exercising the control which it would be his bounden duty to use.

Mr. Alford had been uneasy during this conversation, and broke in at the first pause.

"Well, Square, I guess you'd best wait till 'bout next week-a-Thursday afore you try to use your 'thority. Probate Court sets on Wednesday, an' I guess that'll 'bout wind up your business as guardeen."

What a magazine of wrath that shot exploded! The lawyer was dumb for a moment, but presently he and Mrs. Kinloch both found breath for their indignation.

The woman turned first upon Mark. "This is your doing, Sir!"

"You do too much honor to my foresight," he replied. "I am heartily glad that my good friend here was thoughtful enough and ready to interfere for the protection of a fatherless girl."

"Insolence!" shouted the lawyer.

"The impertinent puppy!" chimed in the woman.

"Come, come!" said the farmer, "too loud talkin'!"

"Then you uphold this girl in her undutiful behavior, do you?" asked Mrs. Kinloch.

"You are amenable to the statutes, Sir," said the Squire.

Mr. Alford rose to his feet. "Now you might jest as well get inter yer kerridge an' drive back ter town," said he; "you won't make one o' them hairs o' yourn black or white, Square, not by talkin' all day."

The lawyer settled his wig in a foaming rage. "Come, Mrs. Clamp," said he, "we shall not remain here to be insulted. Let us go; I shall know how to protect our property, our authority, and honor, from the assault of adventurers and meddlers."

"I beg your pardon, Sir," said Mark, "but what was the appellation you gave to the lady just now? You can call us what you like."

"Mrs. Clamp, Sir," he answered, with a portentous emphasis,--"Mrs. Clamp,--united to me, Sir, this morning, by the Reverend Mr. Rook, in the holy bands of matrimony."

They swept out of the house. Mildred sank to her chair as if stunned. "O God!" she said, "_my_ mother and father!"

"Poor gal!" said Mr. Alford, "small comfort you'll hev in sich parents. But cheer up; you won't need for friends."

She looked up through her tears at Mark's manly face, full now of sympathy, and blessed the farmer for his words.

Mr. Alford, taking Mark aside, said, "You know about Lucy's runnin' away, most likely. Wal, now, ef she could be found, there's no knowin' what might happen; for it's my opinion she knows about Square Kinloch's affairs. I thought mebbe you might 'a' seen her in York?"

Mark replied, that he did meet her in Broadway late one afternoon, and that she looked as if she would speak; but that he hurried on, for the flaunting style of her dress was not calculated to prepossess the passers by.

"Good gracious! you don't say so! Seen her yourself? Now do you go right back to York an' hunt her up--no matter what it costs."

"But my uncle?"

"We'll look arter him."

It was speedily determined, and Mark set out the same day. Meanwhile, Mildred had promised to go and see Mr. Hardwick and endeavor to make him cheerful.

"It beats all," said Mr. Alford to his wife. "Now 'f he should find that unfort'nate gal! Wal, wal, I begin to think the Lord does look arter things some, even in this world."

We leave Squire Clamp and his new wife to their happiness; it would not be well to lift the decent veil which drops over their household. The dark, perchance guilty, past,--the stormy present, and the retribution of the future,--let memory and conscience deal with them!

CHAPTER XVI.

Never was a little village in greater commotion than Innisfield after Mark's departure. The succession of events had been such as to engage the attention of the most indifferent. The mysterious exile of Mildred, the failing health and spirits of the blacksmith, the new rumors respecting the fate of Lucy, the sudden and unaccountable marriage of Mrs. Kinloch, and her fruitless attempt to bring her daughter back, were all discussed in every house, as well as in places of public resort. Hugh Branning was soon convinced that the village was no place for him. He had bravely horsewhipped a cripple, but he could not stop the tongues of the whole parish, even if he could protect himself from swift and extempore justice. He gathered his clothes, and, after a long private conference with his mother, started before daylight for the railway-station. As he does not appear on the stage again, we may say here, that, not long after, during a financial panic in New York, he made a fortune of nearly half a million dollars by speculating in stocks. He used to tell his friends in after years that he had "only five thousand to begin with,--the sole property left him by his lamented parents." He has now a handsome mansion in the Fifth Avenue, is a conspicuous member of the Rev. Dr. Holdfast's church, and most zealous against the ill-timed discussions and philanthropic vagaries of the day. What would he not give to forget that slowly-moving figure, with swimming eyes, carrying a flaring candle? How far along the years that feeble light was thrown! He never went through the hall of his house at night without a shudder, dreading to catch a glimpse of that sorrowing face.

It was on Tuesday evening, the night preceding the Probate Court to which Squire Clamp had been cited. Nothing had been heard from Mark, and his friends were much depressed. Mildred sat by Mr. Hardwick's bedside, during the long hours, and read to him from his favorite authors. About ten o'clock, just as the family were preparing to go to bed, Mark drove up to the door. He was warmly welcomed, and at once overwhelmed with questions. "Did he find Lucy?" "What did she know?" "Why did she secrete herself?" To all these Mark merely replied, "I found Lucy; how much I have accomplished I dare not say. But do you, James, come with me. We will go up to old Mrs. Ransom's."

"Why, she's not there; she's gone to the poor-house."

"Broken down with old age and sorrow, I suppose. But I don't care to see her now. Let us go to the old house; and meantime, you girls, go to bed."

But they protested they should wait till he returned,--that they could not sleep a wink until they knew the result.

Provided with a lantern, the young men set out. They found the hovel nearly in ruins; for pilferers had taken such pieces as they could strip off for firewood. Mark eagerly ripped up the floor near the hearth. At the first flash of the light he saw a paper, dusty and discolored. He seized and opened it. It was the will of Mr. Kinloch, duly signed and attested. Lucy had not deceived him.

With hurried pace they returned to the village, scarcely stopping to take breath until they reached Mr. Hardwick's house. It was no vain hope, then! It was true! The schemes of the step-mother would be frustrated. The odious control of Squire Clamp would end. Mark began to read the will, then stopped, embraced his cousins and Mildred by turns, then read again. He was beside himself with joy.

All were too much excited to sleep; and when the first transports of surprise were over, they naturally inquired after the unfortunate girl. He had found her, after great difficulty, in a miserable garret. The surmises of the villagers were correct. She was ruined, heart-broken. Dissipation, exposure, and all the frightful influences of her wretched life had brought on a fever, and now, destitute and forsaken, she was left by those who had made merchandise of her beauty, to die. He learned from Lucy what she knew of the affair of the will. She became satisfied, soon after Mr. Kinloch's death, that some wrong was intended, and she watched her mistress. Then Squire Clamp had induced her by threats and bribes to get for him the papers. As she took them out of the desk, one, larger than the rest, and with several seals, attracted her attention. She felt quite sure it was Mr. Kinloch's will; so she secreted it and gave the lawyer the rest. The Monday afternoon following, she took the will to her grandmother's and put it under a plank in the floor. Squire Clamp, strangely enough, chanced to stop just as she had hidden it. He gave her back the papers, as she supposed, and she replaced them in the secretary. On her way home she fell in with Hugh,--a day neither of them would ever forget.

The lawyer, who had counted on an easy victory over Mr. Alford, was greatly surprised, the next day, to see him accompanied by Mark, as he came into court; he had not heard of the young man's return. Besides, their unmistakable air of confidence and exultation caused him some misgivings. But he was boldness itself, compared with his wife. Her face was bloodless, her hands tremulous, and her expression like that of one ready to faint. Imagine the horror with which she saw the production of the will, and then the proof by the only surviving witness, brought to court from his residence in a neighboring town! The letters of administration were revoked, and Mr. Alford, one of the executors, was appointed Mildred's guardian. Completely baffled, dumb and despairing, Squire Clamp and his bride left the room and drove homeward. A pleasant topic for conversation they had by the way, each accusing the other of duplicity, treachery, and folly! The will provided that she should receive an annuity of one thousand dollars during her widowhood; so that the Squire, by wedding her, had a new incumbrance without any addition to his resources; a bad bargain, decidedly, he thought. She, on the other hand, had thrown away her sure dependence, in the hope of retaining the control of the whole estate; for when she consented to marry Clamp, she had no doubt that he had possession of the will and would, of course, keep it concealed. Seldom it is that both parties to a transaction are so overreached.

The successful party stopped at Mr. Hardwick's that evening to exchange congratulations. He, as well as Mildred and Mark, was interested in the lost will; for Mr. Kinloch had mentioned the fact of the unsettled boundary-line, and directed his executors to make a clear title of the disputed tract to the blacksmith. The shop was his; the boys, at all events, would be undisturbed. One provision in the will greatly excited Mark's curiosity. The notes which he owed to the estate were to be cancelled, and there was an unexplained reference to his uncle Hardwick and to some occurrences of long ago. Mildred at once recalled to mind her father's dying words,--his calling for Mr. Hardwick, and his mention of the cabinet. She had often thought of her search in its drawers, and of her finding the lock of sunny hair and the dried flower. And the blacksmith now, when asked, shook his head mournfully, and said, (as he had before,) "Sus-some time; nun-not now!"

CHAPTER XVII.

The next day Mr. Alford came to town and advised Mark to marry forthwith.

"I've ben thinkin' it over," he said, "and I b'lieve it's the best thing to be done. You've got a tough customer to deal with, and it may be some trouble to git all the property out of his hands. But when the heiress is married, her husband can act for her to better advantage. I guess I'll speak to Mr. Rook and have the 'fair 'tended to right away."

Mark submitted the matter to Mildred, who blushed properly, and thought it rather hasty. But Mr. Alford's clear reasoning prevailed, and the time was appointed at once. Mark and Mr. Alford then went to call upon the lawyer. They entered his office without knocking, and by chance found him busy with the accounts and papers; they were scattered over the table, and he was making computations. As soon as he was aware of the presence of visitors, he made an effort to slide the documents under some loose sheets of paper; but Mark knew the bold hand at once, and without a word seized the papers and handed them to Mr. Alford.

"Not very p'lite, Square, I know," said Mr. Alford, "but possession is nine p'ints of the law, as I've heerd you say; and as you won't deny the handwritin', I s'pose you don't question my right to these 'ere."

The rage of Mr. Clamp may be imagined.

"Good mornin', Square," said the triumphant executor. "When we've looked over these affairs, we'll trouble you and the widder that was, to 'count for what the schedool calls for."

The simple preparations for the wedding were soon made, and the honest, great-hearted farmer had the pleasure of giving away the bride. It was a joyful, but not a merry wedding; both had passed through too many trials, and had too many recollections. And the evident decline of Mr. Hardwick made Mark sad and apprehensive. But he devoutly thanked God, as he clasped his bride to his bosom, for the providence that had brought to him the fulfilment of his dearest hopes.

Here we might stop, according to ancient custom, leaving our hero and heroine to their happiness. But though a wedding is always an event of interest, there are other things to be narrated before we have done with our story.

Not long after, Mark called at the Kinloch house, then occupied by Mr. Clamp; as a measure of precaution, he took Mr. Alford with him. Mildred had never regained her wardrobe; everything that was dear to her was still in her stepmother's keeping,--her father's picture, her own mother's miniature, the silver cup she had used from infancy, and all the elegant and tasteful articles that had accumulated in a house in which no wish was left ungratified. Ever since the session of the Probate Court, the house had been shut to visitors, if any there had been. Mrs. Clamp had not been seen once out of doors. But after waiting a time, Mark and his friend were admitted. As they entered the house, the bare aspect of the rooms confirmed the rumors which Mark had heard. Mrs. Clamp received them with a kind of sullen civility, and, upon hearing the errand, replied,--

"Certainly, Mrs. Davenport can have her clothes. She need not have sent more than one man to get them. Is that all?"

"Not quite," said Mark. "Perhaps you are not aware of the change which the discovery of the will may make in your circumstances. I do not speak of the punishment which the fraud merits, but of the rights which are now vested in me. First, I am desired to ask after the plate, jewels, furs, and wardrobe of the first Mrs. Kinloch."

Mrs. Clamp was silent. A word let fall by Lucy suddenly flashed into Mark's mind, and he intimated to the haughty woman his purpose to go into the east front-chamber.

"Fine gentlemen," she said at length, "to pry into a lady's private apartment! You will not dare enter it without my permission!"

And she stood defiantly in the doorway. But, without parley, Mark and Mr. Alford pushed by her and walked up the staircase, not heeding the shout of Mr. Clamp, who had followed them to the house.

"It might seem mean," said Mark to Mr. Alford; "but I think you'll agree presently, that it wasn't a case for ceremony."

He stripped the clothes from the bed. The pillows were stuffed with valuable furs; fine linen and embroideries filled the bolsters. The feather-sack contained dresses of rich and costly fabrics,--the styles showing them to be at least twenty years old. And in the mattress were stowed away the dinner and tea services of silver, together with porcelain, crystal, and Bohemian ware.

"What a deal o' comfort a body could take in sleepin' on a bed stuffed like this 'ere!" said Mr. Alford; "I sh'd think he'd dream of the 'Rabian Nights."

"After this, Madam," said Mark, upon returning to the hall, "you can hardly expect any special lenity from me. The will allowed you an annuity of one thousand dollars while you remained single; since you are married your interest ceases, but you shall receive two hundred a year. The house, however, belongs to my wife. Your husband there has a home to which you can go."

"Yes," said the lawyer, "he has a home, and won't be beholden to any man for a roof to shelter his family."

The pride of the woman was still unbent. Though her cheek was blanched and her lips were bitten blue, still she stood erect and her head turned queenly as ever. The glance she threw to the man who called her wife was enough to have pierced him. Turning to Mark, she said,--

"If you will come to-morrow,--or Monday, rather,--you can have possession of the house and property. My own things can be easily removed, and it will be a simple matter to make ready for new comers."

"I could keep them out of it a year, if I chose," said Mr. Clamp.

"But I do not choose," said she, with superb haughtiness.

"Wal, good mornin'," said Mr. Alford.

As they left the house, Mrs. Clamp sat down in the silent room. Without, the wind whistled through the naked trees and whirled up spiral columns of leaves; the river below was cased in ice; the passers-by looked pinched with cold, and cast hurried glances over their shoulders at the ill-fated house and the adjacent burying-ground. Within, the commotion, the chill, the hurry, the fright, were even more intense. What now remained to be done? Her son, vanquished in love by a blacksmith's protégé, had fled, and left her to meet her fate alone. The will had been discovered, and, as if by a special interposition of Providence, the victim of her son's passions had been the instrument of vengeance. The lawyer who had worked upon her fears had proved unable to protect her. The estate was out of her hands; the property with which she had hoped to escape from the hated town and join her son was seized; she was a ruined, disgraced woman. She had faced the battery of curious eyes, as she walked with the husband she despised to the Sunday services; but what screen had she now that her pride was humbled? The fearful struggle in the mind of the lonely woman in the chill and silent room, who shall describe it? She denied admission to the servants and her husband, and through the long evening still sat by the darkening window, far into the dim and gusty night.

Squire Clamp went to bed moody, if not enraged; but when, on waking, he found his wife still absent, he became alarmed. Early in the morning he tracked her through a light snow, that had sifted down during the night, to the river-bank, at the bend where the current keeps the ice from closing over. An hour after, some neighbors, hastily summoned, made a search at the dam. One of them, crossing the flume by Mr. Hardwick's shop, broke the newly-formed ice and there found the drifting body of Mrs. Clamp. Her right hand, stretched out stiff, was thrust against the floats of the water-wheel, as if, even in death, she remembered her hate against the family whose fortune had risen upon her overthrow!

CHAPTER XVIII.

Mark and Mr. Alford, after their disagreeable interview with the Clamps, went to see Mr. Hardwick, whom they wished to congratulate. At the door they were met by Lizzie, whose sad face said, "Hush!" Mark's spirits fell instantly. "Is he worse?" he asked. A tear was the only answer. He asked Mr. Alford to go for Mildred. "She has just come," said Lizzie.

They found Mr. Hardwick propped up in bed, whence he could look out of the window. The church-spire rose on the one hand, and on the other the chimney of the shop was seen above the trees on the river-bank. By night the column of sparks had gladdened his eye, as he thought of the cheerful industry of his sons. Mark tenderly pressed his uncle's hand, and leaned over him with an affectionate, sorrowing interest.

"Der-don't take it to heart, my boy," said Mr. Hardwick. "I am very h-happy."

"I am glad that the boys won't lose the shop," said Mark. "I see you are looking out to the chimney."

"Yer-yes, it was thoughtful of Mr. Kinloch, and a special Pr-Providence that the will was found."

"You know he mentioned his claim against me," said Mark; "that is paid, and it doesn't matter; but I can't guess the reason for the unusual kindness he has shown towards me."

The old man answered slowly, for his breathing was difficult and often painful.

"It is an old story,--old as the dried f-flowers that Mildred told me of,--but it had a f-fragrance once. Yer-your mother, Mark, was as per-pretty a girl as you'd often see. Walter Kinloch ler-loved her, and she him. He sailed to the Indies, an' some der-diff'culty happened, so that the letters stopped. I d-don't know how 'twas. But arter a while sh-she married your father. Mr. Kinloch, he m-married, too; but I guess he nun-never forgot the girl of his choice."

Mark grasped his young wife's hand, at this tale of years gone by.

"The lock of hair and the rose were your mother's, then!" she whispered. "Dear father! faithful, even in death, to his friends, and to the memory of his first love! How much suffering and crime would have been prevented, if he could only have uttered the words which his heart prompted!"

"God forgive the woman!" said Mr. Hardwick, solemnly. None knew then how much she had need of forgiveness, standing as she was on the brink of that last fatal plunge!

Mr. Alford suggested that the fatigue of talking would wear upon the enfeebled man, and advised that he should be left to get some rest, if possible.

"To-morrow is S-Sabba'-day, ef I've counted right," said Mr. Hardwick. "I sh-should like to see the sun on the st-heeple once more."

"Dear uncle, I hope you may see it a great many times. We must leave you to rest."

"Good-night, mum-my children," he replied. "God b-bless you all! Let me put my hands on your h-heads."

They knelt by his bedside, and he blessed them fervently. Mr. Alford and Lizzie remained to attend upon him, and the others withdrew.

The night passed, how wearily! None could sleep, for through all the air there was a presage of sorrow, a solemn "tingling silentness," to which their senses were painfully alive. Who, that has passed the interminable gloomy hours that preceded the departure of a loved and venerated friend into the world of spirits, does not remember this unutterable suspense, this fruitless struggle with eternal decrees, this clinging of affection to the parting soul? What a sinking of the heart even the recollection of such a scene produces!

The day dawned upon sleepless, tear-stained eyes. The dying man was conscious, cheerful, and calmly breathing. In the adjoining room the family sat beside the table on which was spread their untasted breakfast.

The bell began to ring for meeting. Mr. Hardwick roused up at the sound, and called for his children. He blessed them again, and placed his hands on their bowed heads in turn. He thought of the psalms which he had so often led, and he asked all to join in singing Billings's "Jordan."

"There is a land of pure delight, Where saints immortal reign; Infinite day excludes the night, And pleasures banish pain."

With faltering voices they sang the triumphal hymn. The old man's eyes were fixed upon the steeple, which pointed upward through the clear air, and shone in the golden light of the sun. He kept time with a feeble movement, and once or twice essayed to raise his own wavering voice. A smile of heavenly beauty played over his pallid features as the music ceased,--a radiance like that crimson glow which covers the mountain-top at dawn. He spoke almost inaudibly, as if in a trance; then repeating with a musical flow the words of his favorite author,

"Where the bright seraphim in burning row Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow, And the cherubic host in thousand choirs Touch their immortal harps of golden wires, With those just spirits that wear victorious palms Hymns devout and holy psalms Singing everlastingly,"--

his voice sank again, though it was easy to see that a prayer trembled on his lips. As a strain of music fades into silence, his tones fell away, fainter and fainter; and with the same seraphic light on his countenance his breathing ceased.

THE BIRTH-MARK.

A.D. 12--.

See, here it is, upon my breast,-- The bloody image of a hand! On her white bosom it was pressed, Who should have nursed--you understand;-- I never yet have named her name, Nor will I, till 'tis free from shame.

The good old crone that tended me Through sickly childhood, lonely youth, Told me the story: so, you see, I know it is God's sacred truth, That holy lips and holy hands In secrecy had blessed the bands.

And well he knew it, too,--the accursed!-- To whom my grandsire gave his child With dying breath;--for from the first He saw, and tried to snare the wild And frightened love that thought to rest Its wings upon my father's breast.

You may have seen him riding by,-- This same Count Bernard, stern and cold; You know, then, how his creeping eye One's very soul in charm will hold. Snow-locks he wears, and gracious art; But hell is whiter than his heart.

Well, as I said, the secret rite Had joined them, and the two were one; And so it chanced, one summer night, When the half-moon had set, and none But faint star-shadows on the grass Lay watching for his feet to pass,

Led by the waiting light that gleamed From out one chamber-window, came The husband-lover;--soon they dreamed,-- Her lips still murmuring his name In sleep,--while, as to guard her, fell His arm across her bosom's swell.

The low wind shook the darkened pane, The far clock chimed along the hall, There came a moment's gust of rain, The swallow chirped a single call From his eaves'-nest, the elm-bough swayed Moaning;--they slumbered unafraid.

Without a creak the chamber-door Crept open!--with a cat-like tread, Shading his lamp with hand that bore A dagger, came beside their bed The Count. His hair was tinged with gray: Gold locks brown-mixed before him lay.

A thrust,--a groan,--a fearful scream, As from the peace of love's sweet rest She starts!--O God! what horrid dream Swells her bound eyeballs? From her breast Fall off the garments of the night,-- A red hand strikes her bosom's white!

She knew no more that passed; her ear Caught not the hurried cries,--the rush Of the scared household,--nor could hear The voice that broke the after-hush:-- "There with her paramour she lay! He lies here!--carry her away!"

The evening after I was born No roses on the bier were spread, As when for maids or mothers mourn Pure-hearted ones who love the dead; They buried her, so young, so fair, With hasty hands and scarce a prayer.

Count Bernard gained the lands, while I, Cast forth, forgotten, thus have grown To manhood; for I could not die-- I cannot die--till I atone For her great shame; and so you see I track him, and he flies from me.

And one day soon my hand I'll lay Upon his arm, with lighter touch Than ladies use when in their play They tap you with their fans; yet such A thrill will freeze his every limb As if the dead were clutching him!

I think that it would make you smile To see him kneel and hear him plead,-- I leaning on my sword the while, With a half-laugh, to watch his need:-- At last my good blade finds his heart, And then this red stain will depart.

RAMBLES IN AQUIDNECK.

I.

NEWPORT BEACH.

Newport has many beaches, each bearing a distinctive appellation. To the one of which we are speaking rightfully belongs the name of Easton; but it is more widely known by that of the town itself, and still more familiarly to the residents as "The Beach." It lies east of the city, a mile from the harbor, and is about half a mile in length. Its form is that of the new moon, the horns pointing southward.

Let us go there now. No better time could be chosen by the naturalist, for the tide will be at its lowest ebb. Descending Bath Road, the beautiful crescent lies before us on the right,--Easton's Pond, with its back-ground of farms, upon the left. There is no wind to-day to break the surface of the standing water, and it gives back the dwarf willows upon its banks and the houses on the hill-side with more than Daguerrian fidelity. The broad ocean lies rocking in the sunshine, not as one a-weary, but resting at his master's bidding, waiting to begin anew the work he loves. In the horizon, the ships, motionless in the calm, spread all sail to catch the expected breeze. The waves idly chase each other to the shore, in childish strife to kiss first the mother Earth.

Turning the sea-wall and crossing a bit of shingle on the right, we stand upon the western extremity of the beach.

At our feet, a smooth, globular object, of the size of a crab-apple, is lying half-buried in the sand. Taking it in your hand, you find it to be a univalve shell, the inhabitant of which is concealed behind a closely-fitting door, resembling a flake of undissolved glue.

It is a Natica. Place it gently in this pool and watch for a few moments. Slowly and cautiously the horny operculum is pushed out, turned back, and hidden beneath a thick fleshy mantle, which spreads over half the shell. Two long tentacles appear upon its front, like the horns of an ox, and it begins to glide along upon its one huge foot.

Had you seen it thus at first, you could not have believed it possible for so bulky a body to be retracted into so small a shell. Lift it into the air, and a stream of water pours forth as it contracts.

Two kinds are common here, one of which has a more conical spire than the other. The animals differ somewhat in other points, but both have a cream-colored base, and a mantle of pale cream clouded with purple. You may get them from half an inch to three inches in diameter. Take them home and domesticate them, and you will see surprising things.

I kept one of middling size for many months. During two or three weeks I wondered how he lived, for he was never seen to eat. He used to climb to the top of the tank and slide down the slippery glass as though it were a montagne russe. Then he would wander about upon the bottom, ploughing deep furrows in the sand, and end by burrowing beneath it. There he would stay whole days, entirely out of sight.

One morning I found him on his back, his body bent upward, with the edge of the base turned in all round towards the centre. Did you ever see an apple-dumpling before it was boiled, just as the cook was pinching the dough together? Yes? Then you may imagine the appearance of my Natica; but no greening pared and cored lay within that puckered wrapper.

Two days passed with no visible change; but on the third day the strange gasteropod unfolded both himself and the mystery. From his long embrace fell the shell of a Mactra, nearly as broad as his own. Near the hinge was a smooth, round hole, through which the poor Clam had been sucked. Foot, stomach, siphon, muscles, all but a thin strip of mantle, were gone. The problem of the Natica's existence was solved, and the verification was found in more than one Buccinum minus the animal,--the number of the latter victims being still an unknown quantity.

Not in sport had Natty driven the plough, not in idleness had he hollowed the sand. He sought his food in the furrow, and dug riches in the mine.

Doubtless he killed the bivalve,--for until the time of its disappearance it had been in full vigor,--but with what weapon? And whereabouts in that soft bundle was hidden the wimble which bored the hole?

A few days after, a Crab, of the size of a dime, died. Nat soon learned the fact, and enveloped the crustacean as he had done the mollusk. Thirty hours sufficed to drill through the Crab's foundation-wall, and to abstract the unguarded treasure.

Every week some rifled Trivittatum tells a new tale of his felonious deeds.

His last feat was worthy of a cannibal, for it was the savage act of devouring a fellow-Natica. You might suppose that in this case the trap-like operculum would afford an easy entrance to one familiar with its use; but, true to his secret system, the burglar broke in as before. How did he do this? Did he abrade the stone-work with flinty sand until a hole was worn? Did he apply an acid to the limy wall until it opened before him? Who can find the tools of the cunning workman, or the laboratory where his corrodents are composed?

Some rods farther south, the shore is covered with smooth stones, and there you may find the Limpet in great numbers. Patella is the Latin name, but children call it Tent-Shell. Oval at the base, it slopes upward to a point a little aside from the centre.

In this locality they are small, seldom more than an inch in length. At first, you will not readily distinguish them, they are so nearly of the color of the stones to which they are attached. This is one of those Providential adjustments by which the weak are rendered as secure as the strong. Slow in their movements, without offensive weapons, their form and their coloring are their two great safeguards. The stones to which they adhere are variegated with brown and purple blotches of incipient Coralline, and the shells are beautifully mottled with every shade of those colors. Some are lilac, heightening nearly to crimson; others are dark chocolate and white, sharply checkered.

Pebbles and Patella alike are half-covered with Confervae, and from the top of the latter, fronds of Ulva are often found floating like flags. I have one with a clump of Corallina rising from its apex, like a coppice on the summit of a hill.

By atmospheric pressure, its union with the stone is so close that it is not easy to pull it away without injury; but if you slip it along, until by some slight inequality air is admitted beneath the hitherto exhausted receiver, the little pneumatician is obliged to yield.

When turned upon its back, or resting against glass, the soft arms, sprawling aimlessly about, and the bare, round head, give it the appearance of an infant in a cradle, so that a tank well stocked with them might be taken for a Liliputian foundling-hospital.

They are as innocent as they look, being vegetable-feeders, and finding most of their sustenance in matters suspended in the water. A friend of mine placed several upon the side of a vessel coated with Conferva. In a few days, each industrious laborer had mowed round him a circular space several times larger than himself.

They are not ambulatory, but remain on one spot for successive weeks, perhaps longer.

Sometimes they raise the shell so as to allow a free circulation beneath; but if some predatory Prawn draw near, the tent is lowered in a twinkling, so as effectually to shut out the submarine Tartar.

Tread warily, or you will trip upon the slimy Fucus that fringes the seaward side of every rock. This is one of the few Algae that grow here in luxuriance. The slate has not the deep fissures necessary to afford shelter to the more delicate kinds; and the heavy swell of the sea drags them from their slight moorings. Therefore, though Ulva, Chondrus, Cladophora, Enteromorpha, and as many more, are within our reach, we will not stop to gather them; for Newport has other shores, where we can get them in full perfection.

We will take some tufts of Corallina, however, for that is temptingly fine. What a curious plant it is! Its root, a mere crustaceous disk, and its fronds, depositing shelly matter upon their surface, bear so strong a resemblance to the true Corals, that, until recently, naturalists have thought it a zoophyte.

Here the plants are of a dull brick-red; but in less exposed situations they are purple. If you wish them to live and increase, you must chip off a bit of the rock on which they are growing. With a chisel, or even a knife, you can do it without difficulty, for the soft slate scales and crumbles under a slight blow.

For an herbarium, it ought to be gummed at once to the paper, for it becomes so brittle, in drying, that it falls to pieces with the most careful handling. In the air and light it fades white, but the elegance of its pinnate branches will well repay any pains you may bestow upon it.

If you have a lingering belief in its animal nature, steeping it in acid will cause the carbonate of lime and your credulity to disappear together, leaving the vegetable tissue clearly revealed.

Between low-water and the Cliff are hundreds of pools rich in vegetable and animal life--Look at this one: it is a lakelet of exquisite beauty. Bordered with the olive-colored Rock-Weed, fronds of purple and green Laver rise from its limpid depths. Amphipods of varied hue emerge from the clustering weeds, cleave the clear water with easy swiftness, and hide beneath the opposite bank. Here a graceful Annelid describes Hogarth's line of beauty upon the sandy bottom. There another glides over the surface with sinuous course, rowed by more oars than a Venetian galley, more brilliant in its iridescence than the barge of Cleopatra, albeit

"The poop was beaten gold,

Purple the sails."

We loiter here, forgetful that we are only at the first end of the bow along whose curve we propose to walk. Let us go on. The firm sand affords pleasanter footing than the slippery stones we leave behind us, but it seems bare of promise to the curiosity-hunter. Nevertheless we will hunt, and quite at variance with my experience will it be, if we return empty-handed.

Here is something already. Dark-colored, horny, flat, oblong, each corner furnished with a wiry, thorn-like projection;--what is it? A child tells you it is a Mermaid's Purse, and, giving the empty bag a shake, you straightway conclude that the maids of the sea know "hard times," as well as those of the land. But the Purse is not always so light. Sometimes it is found to contain a most precious deposit, the egg which is to produce a future fish.

These egg-cases belong to different members of the Ray family. I saw one last winter, in which the inmate was fully developed. Should some old seaman hear me, he might say that I am telling a "fish-story" in good earnest. He might inform you furthermore, that the object in question is "but a pod of sea-weed, and that he has seen hundreds of them in the Gulf Stream." I cannot help it, neither do I question his veracity. Notwithstanding, these two eyes of mine, in sound condition, awake, and in broad day, did see the supposed pericarp, with one side taken off, and did behold, lying within, as veritable a Raia as ever was caught upon the New-England coast. Moreover, its countenance was no more classical, in its minuteness, than that of its most ancient ancestor in its hugeness.

Observe those bubbles trembling upon the edge of the wave. One is left by the receding tide, and a nearer view shows it to be a jelly-like globe, clearer than the crystal of Merlin. Dropped softly into a vessel of water, at first it lies quiescent and almost invisible upon the bottom. A moment after, it rises in quick undulations, flashing prismatic tints with every motion. Again it rests, and we see that it is banded by eight meridians, composed of square, overlapping plates. It swims, and the plates become paddles, propelling the frail craft,-- prisms, dividing the sunbeams into rainbow hues. Suddenly two lines of gossamer are dropped from unseen openings in its sides, and trailed behind it as it goes. Twisting, lengthening, shortening, they are drawn back and re-coiled within, and

"The ethereal substance closed,

Not long divisible."

This delicate wonder is the Cydippe. Though among the most charming of marine creatures, none is more liable to be overlooked, owing to its extreme subtilty. So unsubstantial and shadowy are they, that a lady, on seeing them for the first time, declared them to be "the ghosts of gooseberries." Indeed, you will find them ghost-like, if you attempt to keep them, for they

"Shrink in haste away

And vanish from our sight."

The whole high-water line is strewn with the blanched and parted valves of the Beach Clam. Here and there yellowish streaks appear upon the gray sand, formed by the detritus of submarine shells. Among the fragments are often found perfect specimens, some of them with the living animal.

We can examine them as we go back, but now let us cross the "Creek." It is a creek only by courtesy or an Americanism, at the present day; but when those miles of fertile fields upon the north were unreclaimed, the dank herbage hindered evaporation, and Easton's Pond was fed by unfailing streams. Then the vast body of overflowing water swept a deep channel, which the sea, rolling far up towards the pond, widened and made permanent. Boats came from ships in the offing, and followed its course to "Green End," with no fear of grounding; and traditionary pirates there bestowed in secret caves their ill-gotten gains.

Now, the Creek is a mere streamlet, and the flow of the tide is restricted to its mouth. With our rubbers we may ford it dry-shod; but if you choose to cross the bridge, we must wade through shifting sand, and our walk will be the longer. In midsummer the bed is dry, and almost obliterated by the drift. On the approach of autumnal rains, the farmers plough a passage for the water, to prevent their lands from being submerged.

On the east side, masses of conglomerate rock are strewn in wild confusion. By the action of untold ages the connecting cement is worn away from between the pebbles, leaving them prominent; and wherever the attrition of the sea has loosened one from its bed, the hollow has become the habitation of Mollusca and Algae.

Beyond that ponderous boulder are many dark recesses among the overlying stones. Strip back your sleeve, thrust in your hand, and grope carefully about. In this way I once grasped a prickly thing that startled me. Drawing it to light, it proved to be an Echinus, Sea-Urchin, or Sea-Egg. That one was not larger than a walnut, was shaped like a brioche, and resembled a chestnut-burr. Its color was a delicate green, verging to brown.

Much larger living Echini are found on this spot. There is a shell now, more than two inches in diameter. It is wholly covered with spines half an inch in length. Radiating from a common centre, flexible at the base, they stand erect at right angles with the shell when the Urchin is in health; but in disease or death order is lost, and they lie across each other in great confusion. Their connection with the shell is very remarkable, for it is by a ball-and-socket joint,--the same articulation which gives the human hip its marvellous liberty of action. Between them are five rows of minute holes, and, in life, a transparent, hair-like foot is protruded from each, at the pleasure of the owner. When disposed to change its situation, it stretches forth those on the side towards which it would go, fixes them by means of the sucker at the tip of each, and, simultaneously withdrawing those in the rear, pulls itself along.

The mouth, placed in the centre of the base, is very large in proportion to the size of the animal. It is formed of five shelly, wedge-shaped pieces, each ending in a hard, triangular tooth. The whole mouth is a conical box, called by naturalists "Aristotle's lantern."

The shell is hardly thicker than that of a hen's egg, and is even more fragile. When the spines are rubbed off, the brioche-like shape is modified, and in place of the depression in the middle of the upper side there is seen a slight prominence.

Mine was a very inoffensive creature. He occupied the same corner for many weeks, and changed his place only when a different arrangement of stones was made. He then wandered to a remote part of the tank and chose a new abode. Both retreats were on the shady side of a stone overhung with plants. There for months he quietly kept house, only going up and down his hand-breadth of room once or twice a day. Minding his own business without hurt to his neighbor, he dwelt in unambitious tranquillity. Had he not fallen a victim to the most cruel maltreatment, he might still adorn his humble station.

As he was sitting one evening at the door of his house, bending about his lithe arms in the way he was wont, two itinerant Sticklebacks chanced to pass that way. They paused, and, not seeing the necessity for organs of which they had never known the use, they at once decided on their removal.

In vain did the poor Hedgehog oppose them. With all the pertinacity of ignorance, they maintained their certainty of his abnormal condition; and with all the officiousness of quackery, they insisted upon immediate amputation. Aided by two volunteer assistants, the self-made surgeons cut off limb after limb before their reckless butchery could be stopped.

At last I effected their dismissal. But their pitiable patient was too far reduced for recovery. His exhausted system never rallied from the shock, and he survived but a few days.

Alas! alas! that so exemplary a member of the community should have perished through piscine empiricism!

How many things you have collected! Your well-filled basket attests your industry and zeal, and suggests the fruitful question of the novelist, "What will you do with it?" Will you throw its contents on the sand, and go away satisfied with these imperfect glimpses of sea-life? Will you take them home indeed, but consign them to a crowded bowl, to die like the prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta? Or will you give to each a roomy basin with water, and plants to keep it pure?

This were well; and you could thus study their structure at leisure, but not their habits. To know the character of an individual, you must watch him among his fellows; you must observe his bearing to the small; you must see how he demeans himself in presence of the great. To do this, the surroundings must be such that none shall be conscious of restraint, but that every one, with homely ease, may act out his own peculiar nature. In short, you must make ready for them another Atlantic, in all things but breadth like its grand prototype.

Nor is this a difficult undertaking. By following the advice of some experienced person, you may avoid all those failures which are apt to attend the experiments of a tyro. I will direct you to our pioneer in aquarian science, Mr. Charles E. Hammett. He can furnish you with all you want, give you most efficient aid, and add thereto a great amount of practical information.

You need have no fears for the population of your colony; for in our future walks we shall meet new objects of beauty and interest, and in such variety and abundance that your only embarrassment will be which to choose.

And now the ramble of to-day is ended. The "punctual sea" has risen, and, waking his dreaming waves, he gives to them their several tasks. Some, with gentle touch, lave the heated rock; these, swift of foot, bring drink to the thirsty sand; those carry refreshing coolness to the tepid pool. Charged with blessings come they all, and, singing 'mid their joyous labor, they join in a chorus of praise to their God and our God; while from each of our hearts goes up the ready response, "Thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy works, and I will rejoice in giving praise for the operations of thy hands!"

ANN POTTER'S LESSON.

My sister Mary Jane is older than I,--as much as four years. Father died when we were both small, and didn't leave us much means beside the farm. Mother was rather a weakly woman; she didn't feel as though she could farm it for a living. It's hard work enough for a man to get clothes and victuals off a farm in West Connecticut; it's up-hill work always; and then a man can turn to, himself, to ploughin' and mowin';--but a woman a'n't of no use, except to tell folks what to do; and everybody knows it's no way to have a thing done, to send.

Mother talked it all over with Deacon Peters, and he counselled her to sell off all the farm but the home-lot, which was sot out for an orchard with young apple-trees, and had a garden-spot to one end of it, close by the house. Mother calculated to raise potatoes and beans and onions enough to last us the year round, and to take in sewin' so's to get what few groceries we was goin' to want. We kept Old Red, the best cow; there was pasture enough for her in the orchard, for the trees wa'n't growed to be bearin' as yet, and we 'lotted a good deal on milk to our house; besides, it saved butcher's meat.

Mother was a real pious woman, and she was a high-couraged woman too. Old Miss Perrit, an old widder-woman that lived down by the bridge, come up to see her the week after father died. I remember all about it, though I wa'n't but ten years old; for when I see Miss Perrit comin' up the road, with her slimpsy old veil hanging off from her bumbazine bonnet, and her doleful look, (what Nancy Perrit used to call "mother's company-face,") I kinder thought she was comin' to our house; and she was allers so musical to me, I went in to the back-door, and took up a towel I was hemmin', and set down in the corner, all ready to let her in. It don't seem as if I could 'a' been real distressed about father's dyin' when I could do so; but children is just like spring weather, rainin' one hour and shinin' the next, and it's the Lord's great mercy they be; if they begun to be feelin' so early, there wouldn't be nothin' left to grow up. So pretty quick Miss Perrit knocked, and I let her in. We hadn't got no spare room in that house; there was the kitchen in front, and mother's bed-room, and the buttery, and the little back-space opened out on't behind. Mother was in the bed-room; so, while I called her, Miss Perrit set down in the splint rockin'-chair that creaked awfully, and went to rockin' back and forth, and sighin', till mother come in. "Good-day, Miss Langdon!" says she, with a kind of a snuffle, "how dew you dew? I thought I'd come and see how you kep' up under this here affliction. I rec'lect very well how I felt when husband died. It's a dreadful thing to be left a widder in a hard world;--don't you find it out by this?"

I guess mother felt quite as bad as ever Miss Perrit did, for everybody knew old Perrit treated his wife like a dumb brute while he was alive, and died drunk; but she didn't say nothin'. I see her give a kind of a swaller, and then she spoke up bright and strong.

"I don't think it is a hard world, Miss Perrit. I find folks kind and helpful, beyond what I'd any right to look for. I try not to think about my husband, any more than I can help, because I couldn't work, if I did, and I've got to work. It's most helpful to think the Lord made special promises to widows, and when I remember Him I a'n't afeard."

Miss Perrit stopped rockin' a minute, and then she begun to creak the chair and blow her nose again, and she said,--

"Well, I'm sure it's a great mercy to see anybody rise above their trouble the way you do; but, law me! Miss Langdon, you a'n't got through the fust pair o' bars on't yet. Folks is allers kinder neighborly at the fust; they feel to help you right off, every way they can,--but it don't stay put, they get tired on't; they blaze right up like a white-birch-stick, an' then they go out all of a heap; there's other folks die, and they don't remember you, and you're just as bad off as though you wa'n't a widder."

Mother kind of smiled,--she couldn't help it; but she spoke up again just as steady.

"I don't expect to depend on people, Miss Perrit, so long as I have my health. I a'n't above takin' friendly help when I need to, but I mean mostly to help myself. I can get work to take in, and when the girls have got their schoolin' they will be big enough to help me. I am not afraid but what I shall live and prosper, if I only keep my health."

"Hem, well!" whined out Miss Perrit. "I allers thought you was a pretty mighty woman, Miss Langdon, and I'm glad to see you're so high-minded; but you a'n't sure of your health, never. I used to be real smart to what I am now, when Perrit was alive; but I took on so, when he was brought home friz to death that it sp'iled my nerves; and then I had to do so many chores out in the shed, I got cold and had the dreadfullest rheumatiz! and when I'd got past the worst spell of that and was quite folksy again, I slipped down on our door-step and kinder wrenched my ankle, and ef't hadn't 'a' been for the neighbors, I don't know but what Nancy and I should 'a' starved."

Mother did laugh this time. Miss Perrit had overshot the mark.

"So the neighbors were helpful, after all!" said she. "And if ever I get sick, I shall be willin' to have help, Miss Perrit. I'm sure I would take what I would give; I think givin' works two ways. I don't feel afraid yet."

Miss Perrit groaned a little, and wiped her eyes, and got up to go away. She hadn't never offered to help mother, and she went off to the sewing-circle and told that Miss Langdon hadn't got no feelings at all, and she b'lieved she'd just as soon beg for a livin' as not. Polly Mariner, the tailoress, come and told mother all she said next day, but mother only smiled, and set Polly to talkin' about the best way to make over her old cloak. When she was gone, I begun to talk about Miss Perrit, and I was real mad; but mother hushed me right up.

"It a'n't any matter, Ann," said she. "Her sayin' so don't make it so. Miss Perrit's got a miserable disposition, and I'm sorry for her; a mint of money wouldn't make her happy; she's a doleful Christian, she don't take any comfort in anything, and I really do pity her."

And that was just the way mother took everything.

At first we couldn't sell the farm. It was down at the foot of Torringford Hill, two good miles from meetin', and a mile from the school-house; most of it was woodsy, and there wa'n't no great market for wood about there. So for the first year Squire Potter took it on shares, and, as he principally seeded it down to rye, why, we sold the rye and got a little money, but 'twa'n't a great deal,--no more than we wanted for clothes the next winter. Aunt Langdon sent us down a lot of maple-sugar from Lee, and when we wanted molasses we made it out of that. We didn't have to buy no great of groceries, for we could spin and knit by fire-light, and, part of the land bein' piny woods, we had a good lot of knots that were as bright as lamps for all we wanted. Then we had a dozen chickens, and by pains and care they laid pretty well, and the eggs were as good as gold. So we lived through the first year after father died, pretty well.

Anybody that couldn't get along with mother and Major (I always called Mary Jane "Major" when I was real little, and the name kind of stayed by) couldn't get along with anybody. I was as happy as a cricket whilst they were by, though, to speak truth, I wasn't naturally so chirpy as they were; I took after father more, who was a kind of a despondin' man, down-hearted, never thinkin' things could turn out right, or that he was goin' to have any luck. That was my natur', and mother see it, and fought ag'inst it like a real Bunker-Hiller; but natur' is hard to root up, and there was always times when I wanted to sulk away into a corner and think nobody wanted me, and that I was poor and humbly, and had to work for my living.

I remember one time I'd gone up into my room before tea to have one of them dismal fits. Miss Perrit had been in to see mother, and she'd been tellin' over what luck Nancy'd had down to Hartford: how't she had gone into a shop, and a young man had been struck with her good looks, an' he'd turned out to be a master-shoemaker, and Nancy was a-goin' to be married, and so on, a rigmarole as long as the moral law,--windin' up with askin' mother why she didn't send us girls off to try our luck, for Major was as old as Nance Perrit. I'd waited to hear mother say, in her old bright way, that she couldn't afford it, and she couldn't spare us, if she had the means, and then I flung up into our room, that was a lean-to in the garret, with a winder in the gable end, and there I set down by the winder with my chin on the sill, and begun to wonder why we couldn't have as good luck as the Perrits. After I'd got real miserable, I heerd a soft step comin' up stairs, and Major come in and looked at me and then out of the winder.

"What's the matter of you, Anny?" said she.

"Nothing," says I, as sulky as you please.

"Nothing always means something," says Major, as pleasant as pie; and then she scooched down on the floor and pulled my two hands away, and looked me in the face as bright and honest as ever you see a dandelion look out of the grass. "What is it, Anny? Spit it out, as John Potter says; you'll feel better to free your mind."

"Well," says I, "Major, I'm tired of bad luck."

"Why, Anny! I didn't know as we'd had any. I'm sure, it's three years since father died, and we have had enough to live on all that time, and I've got my schooling, and we are all well; and just look at the apple-trees,--all as pink as your frock with blossoms; that's good for new cloaks next winter, Anny."

"'Ta'n't that, Major. I was thinkin' about Nancy Perrit. If we'd had the luck to go to Hartford, may-be you'd have been as well off as she; and then I'd have got work, too. And I wish I was as pretty as she is, Major; it does seem too bad to be poor and humbly too."

I wonder she didn't laugh at me, but she was very feelin' for folks, always. She put her head on the window-sill along of mine, and kinder nestled up to me in her lovin' way, and said, softly,--

"I wouldn't quarrel with the Lord, Anny."

"Why, Major! you scare me! I haven't said nothing against the Lord. What do you mean?" said I,--for I was touchy, real touchy.

"Well, dear, you see we've done all we can to help ourselves; and what's over and above, that we can't help,--that is what the Lord orders, a'n't it? and He made you, didn't He? You can't change your face; and I'm glad of it, for it is Anny's face, and I wouldn't have it changed a mite: there'll always be two people to think it's sightly enough, and may-be more by-and-by; so I wouldn't quarrel with it, if I was you."

Major's happy eyes always helped me. I looked at her and felt better. She wasn't any better-lookin' than I; but she always was so chirk, and smart, and neat, and pretty-behaved, that folks thought she was handsome after they knowed her.

Well, after a spell, there was a railroad laid out up the valley, and all the land thereabouts riz in price right away; and Squire Potter he bought our farm on speculation, and give a good price for it; so't we had two thousand dollars in the bank, and the house and lot, and the barn, and the cow. By this time Major was twenty-two and I was eighteen; and Squire Potter he'd left his house up on the hill, and he'd bought out Miss Perrit's house, and added on to't, and moved down not far from us, so's to be near the railroad-depot, for the sake of bein' handy to the woods, for cuttin' and haulin' of them down to the track. Twasn't very pleasant at first to see our dear old woods goin' off to be burned that way; but Squire Potter's folks were such good neighbors, we gained as much as we lost, and a sight more, for folks are greatly better'n trees,--at least, clever folks.

There was a whole raft of the Potters, eight children of 'em all, some too young to be mates for Major and me; but Mary Potter, and Reuben, and Russell, they were along about as old as we were: Russell come between Major and me; the other two was older.

We kinder kept to home always, Major and me, because we hadn't any brothers to go out with us; so we were pretty shy of new friends at first. But you couldn't help bein' friendly with the Potters, they was such outspoken, kindly creturs, from the Squire down to little Hen. And it was very handy for us, because now we could go to singin'-schools and quiltin's, and such-like places, of an evenin'; and we had rather moped at home for want of such things,--at least I had, and I should have been more moped only for Major's sweet ways. She was always as contented as a honey-bee on a clover-head, for the same reason, I guess.

Well, there was a good many good things come to us from the Potters' movin' down; but by-and-by it seemed as though I was goin' to get the bitter of it. I'd kept company pretty steady with Russell. I hadn't give much thought to it, neither; I liked his ways, and he seemed to give in to mine very natural, so't we got along together first-rate. It didn't seem as though we'd ever been strangers, and I wasn't one to make believe at stiffness when I didn't feel it. I told Russell pretty much all I had to tell, and he was allers doin' for me and runnin' after me jest as though he'd been my brother. I didn't know how much I did think of him, till, after a while, he seemed to take a sight of notice of Major. I can't say he ever stopped bein' clever to me, for he didn't; but he seemed to have a kind of a hankerin' after Major all the time. He'd take her off to walk with him; he'd dig up roots in the woods for her posy-bed; he'd hold her skeins of yarn as patient as a little dog; he'd get her books to read. Well, he'd done all this for me; but when I see him doin' it for her, it was quite different; and all to once I know'd what was the matter. I'd thought too much of Russell Potter.

Oh, dear! those was dark times! I couldn't blame him; I knew well enough Major was miles and miles better and sweeter and cleverer than I was; I didn't wonder he liked her; but I couldn't feel as if he'd done right by me. So I schooled myself considerable, talking to myself for being jealous of Major. But 'twasn't all that;--the hardest of it all was that I had to mistrust Russell. To be sure, he hadn't said nothin' to me in round words; I couldn't ha' sued him; but he'd looked and acted enough; and now,--dear me! I felt all wrung out and flung away!

By-and-by Major begun to see somethin' was goin' wrong, and so did Russell. She was as good as she could be to me, and had patience with all my little pettish ways, and tried to make me friendly with Russell; but I wouldn't. I took to hard work, and, what with cryin' nights, and hard work all day, I got pretty well overdone. But it all went on for about three months, till one day Russell come up behind me, as I was layin' out some yarn to bleach down at the end of the orchard, and asked me if I'd go down to Meriden with him next day, to a pic-nic frolic, in the woods.

"No!" says I, as short as I could.

Russell looked as though I had slapped him. "Anny," says he, "what have I done?"

I turned round to go away, and I catched my foot in a hank of yarn, and down I come flat on to the ground, havin' sprained my ankle so bad that Russell had to pick me up and carry me into the house like a baby.

There was an end of Meriden for me; and he wouldn't go, either, but come over and sat by me, and read to me, and somehow or other, I don't remember just the words, he gave me to understand that--well--that he wished I'd marry him.

It's about as tirin' to be real pleased with anything as it is to be troubled, at first. I couldn't say anything to Russell; I just cried. Major wasn't there; mother was dryin' apples out in the shed; so Russell he didn't know what to do; he kind of hushed me up, and begged of me not to cry, and said he'd come for his answer next day. So he come, and I didn't say, "No," again. I don't believe I stopped to think whether Major liked him. She would have thought of me, first thing;--I believe she wouldn't have had him, if she'd thought I wanted him. But I a'n't like Major; it come more natural to me to think about myself; and besides, she was pious, and I wasn't. Russell was.

However, it turned out all right, for Major was 'most as pleased as I was; and she told me, finally, that she'd known a long spell that Russell liked me, and the reason he'd been hangin' round her so long was, he'd been tellin' her his plans, and they'd worked out considerable in their heads before she could feel as though he had a good enough lookout to ask me to marry him.

That wasn't so pleasant to me, when I come to think of it; I thought I'd ought to have been counselled with. But it was just like Major; everybody come to her for a word of help or comfort, whether they took her idee or not,--she had such feelin' for other folks's trouble.

I got over that little nub after a while; and then I was so pleased, everything went smooth ag'in. I was goin' to be married in the spring; and we were goin' straight out to Indiana, onto some wild land Squire Potter owned out there, to clear it and settle it, and what Russell cleared he was to have. So mother took some money out of the bank to fit me out, and Major and I went down to Hartford to buy my things.

I said before, we wasn't either of us any great things to look at; but it come about that one day I heerd somebody tell how we did look, and I thought considerable about it then and afterwards. We was buyin' some cotton to a store in the city, and I was lookin' about at all the pretty things, and wonderin' why I was picked out to be poor when so many folks was rich and had all they wanted, when presently I heerd a lady in a silk gown say to another one, so low she thought I didn't hear her,--"There are two nice-looking girls, Mrs. Carr."

"Hem,--yes," said the other one; "they look healthy and strong: the oldest one has a lovely expression, both steady and sweet; the other don't look happy."

I declare, that was a fact. I was sorry, too, for I'd got everything in creation to make anybody happy, and now I was frettin' to be rich. I thought I'd try to be like Major; but I expect it was mostly because of the looks of it, for I forgot to try before long.

Well, in the spring we was married; and when I come to go away, Major put a little red Bible into my trunk for a weddin' present; but I was cryin' too hard to thank her. She swallowed down whatever choked her, and begged of me not to cry so, lest Russell should take it hard that I mourned to go with him. But just then I was thinkin' more of Major and mother than I was of Russell; they'd kept me bright and cheery always, and kept up my heart with their own good ways when I hadn't no strength to do it for myself; and now I was goin' off alone with Russell, and he wasn't very cheerful-dispositioned, and somehow my courage give way all to once.

But I had to go; railroads don't wait for nobody; and what with the long journey, and the new ways and things and people, I hadn't no time to get real down once before we got to Indiana. After we left the boat there was a spell of railroad, and then a long stage-ride to Cumberton; and then we had to hire a big wagon and team, so's to get us out to our claim, thirty miles west'ard of Cumberton. I hadn't no time to feel real lonesome now, for all our things hed got to be onpacked, and packed over ag'in in the wagon; some on 'em had to be stored up, so's to come another time. We was two days gettin' to the claim, the roads was so bad,--mostly what they call corduroy, but a good stretch clear mud-holes. By the time we got to the end on't, I was tired out, just fit to cry; and such a house as was waitin' for us!--a real log shanty! I see Russell looked real beat when he see my face; and I tried to brighten up; but I wished to my heart I was back with mother forty times that night, if I did once. Then come the worst of all, clutterin' everything right into that shanty; for our frame-house wouldn't be done for two months, and there wa'n't scarce room for what we'd brought, so't we couldn't think of sendin' for what was stored to Cumberton. I didn't sleep none for two nights, because of the whip-poor-wills that set on a tree close by, and called till mornin' light; but after that I was too tired to lie awake.

Well, it was real lonesome, but it was all new at first, and Russell was to work near by, so't I could see him, and oftentimes hear him whistle; and I had the garden to make, round to the new house, for I knew more about the plantin' of it than he did, 'specially my posy-bed, and I had a good time gettin' new flowers out of the woods. And the woods was real splendid,--great tall tulip-trees, as high as a steeple and round as a quill, without any sort o' branches ever so fur up, and the whole top full of the yeller tulips and the queer snipped-lookin' shiny leaves, till they looked like great bow-pots on sticks; then there's lots of other great trees, only they're all mostly spindled up in them woods. But the flowers that grow round on the ma'sh edges and in the clearin's do beat all.

So time passed along pretty glib till the frame-house was done, and then we had to move in, and to get the things from Cumberton, and begin to feel as though we were settled for good and all; and after the newness had gone off, and the clearin' got so fur that I couldn't see Russell no more, and nobody to look at, if I was never so lonesome, then come a pretty hard spell. Everything about the house was real handy, so't I'd get my work cleared away, and set down to sew early; and them long summer-days that was still and hot, I'd set, and set, never hearin' nothin' but the clock go "tick, tick, tick," (never "tack," for a change,) and every now'n'then a great crash and roar in the woods where he was choppin', that I knew was a tree; and I worked myself up dreadfully when there was a longer spell 'n common come betwixt the crashes, lest that Russell might 'a' been ketched under the one that fell. And settin' so, and worryin' a good deal, day in and day out, kinder broodin' over my troubles, and never thinkin' about anybody but myself, I got to be of the idee that I was the worst-off creature goin'. If I'd have stopped to think about Russell, may-be I should have had some sort of pity for him, for he was jest as lonesome as I, and I wasn't no kind of comfort to come home to,--'most always cryin', or jest a-goin' to.

So the summer went along till 'twas nigh on to winter, and I wa'n't in no better sperrits. And now I wa'n't real well, and I pined for mother, and I pined for Major, and I'd have given all the honey and buckwheat in Indiana for a loaf of mother's dry rye-bread and a drink of spring-water. And finally I got so miserable, I wished I wa'n't never married,--and I'd have wished I was dead, if 'twa'n't for bein' doubtful where I'd go to, if I was. And worst of all, one day I got so worked up I told Russell all that. I declare, he turned as white as a turnip. I see I'd hurt him, and I'd have got over it in a minute and told him so,--only he up with his axe and walked out of the door, and never come home till night, and then I was too stubborn to speak to him.

Well, things got worse, 'n' one day I was sewin' some things and cryin' over 'em, when I heard a team come along by, and, before I could get to the door, Russell come in, all red for joy, and says,--

"Who do you want to see most, Anny?"

Somehow the question kind of upset me;--I got choked, and then I bu'st out a-cryin'.

"Oh, mother and Major!" says I; and I hadn't more'n spoke the word before mother had both her good strong arms round me, and Major's real cheery face was a-lookin' up at me from the little pine cricket, where she'd sot down as nateral as life. Well, I was glad, and so was Russell, and the house seemed as shiny as a hang-bird's-nest, and by-and-by the baby came;--but I had mother.

'Twas 'long about in March when I was sick, and by the end of April I was well, and so's to be stirrin' round again. And mother and Major begun to talk about goin' home; and I declare, my heart was up in my mouth every time they spoke on't, and I begun to be miserable ag'in. One day I was settin' beside of mother; Major was out in the garden, fixin' up things, and settin' out a lot of blows she'd got in the woods, and singin' away, and says I to mother,--

"What be I going to do, mother, without you and Major? I 'most died of clear lonesomeness before you come!"

Mother laid down her knittin', and looked straight at me.

"I wish you'd got a little of Major's good cheer, Anny," says she. "You haven't any call to be lonely here; it's a real good country, and you've got a nice house, and the best of husbands, and a dear little baby, and you'd oughter try to give up frettin'. I wish you was pious, Anny; you wouldn't fault the Lord's goodness the way you do."

"Well, Major don't have nothin' to trouble her, mother," says I. "She's all safe and pleasant to home; she a'n't homesick."

Mother spoke up pretty resolute:--

"There a'n't nobody in the world, Anny, but what has troubles. I didn't calculate to tell you about Major's; but sence you lay her lively ways to luck, may-be you'd better know 'em. She's been engaged this six months to Reuben Potter, and he's goin' off in a slow consumption; he won't never live to marry her, and she knows it."

"And she come away to see me, mother?"

"Yes, she did. I can't say I thought she need to, but Russell wrote you was pinin' for both of us, and I didn't think you could get along without me, but I told her to stay with Reuben, and I'd come on alone. And says she, 'No, mother, you a'n't young and spry enough to go alone so fur, and the Lord made you my mother and Anny my sister before I picked out Reuben for myself. I can't never have any kin but you, and I might have had somebody beside Reuben, though it don't seem likely now; but he's got four sisters to take care of him, and he thinks and I think it's what I ought to do; so I'm goin' with you.' So she come, Anny; and you see how lively she keeps, just because she don't want to dishearten you none. I don't know as you can blame her for kinder hankerin' to get home."

I hadn't nothin' to say; I was beat. So mother she went on:--

"Fact is, Anny, Major's always a-thinkin' about other folks; it comes kind of nateral to her, and then bein' pious helps it. I guess, dear, when you get to thinkin' more about Russell an' the baby, you'll forget some of your troubles. I hope the Lord won't have to give you no harder lesson than lovin', to teach you Major's ways."

So, after that, I couldn't say no more to mother about stayin'; but when they went away, I like to have cried myself sick,--only baby had to be looked after, and I couldn't dodge her.

Bym-by we had letters from home; they got there all safe, and Reuben wa'n't no worse, Major said;--ef't had been me wrote the letter, I should have said he wa'n't no better!--And I fell back into the old lonesome days, for baby slept mostly; and the summer come on extreme hot; and in July, Russell, bein' forced to go to Cumberton on some land business, left me to home with baby and the hired man, calculatin' to be gone three days and two nights.

The first day he was away was dreadful sultry; the sun went down away over the woods in a kind of a red-hot fog, and it seemed as though the stars were dull and coppery at night; even the whip-poor-wills was too hot to sing; nothin' but a doleful screech-owl quavered away, a half a mile off, a good hour, steady. When it got to be mornin', it didn't seem no cooler; there wa'n't a breath of wind, and the locusts in the woods chittered as though they was fryin'. Our hired man was an old Scotchman, by name Simon Grant; and when he'd got his breakfast, he said he'd go down the clearin' and bring up a load of brush for me to burn. So he drove off with the team, and, havin' cleared up the dishes, I put baby to sleep, and took my pail to the barn to milk the cow,--for we kept her in a kind of a home-lot like, a part that had been cleared afore we come, lest she should stray away in the woods, if we turned her loose; she was put in the barn, too, nights, for fear some stray wild-cat or bear might come along and do her a harm. So I let her into the yard, and was jest a-goin' to milk her when she begun to snort and shake, and finally giv' the pail a kick, and set off, full swing, for the fence to the lot. I looked round to see what was a-comin', and there, about a quarter of a mile off, I see the most curus thing I ever see before or since,--a cloud as black as ink in the sky, and hangin' down from it a long spout like, something like an elephant's trunk, and the whole world under it looked to be all beat to dust. Before I could get my eyes off on't, or stir to run, I see it was comin' as fast as a locomotive; I heerd a great roar and rush,--first a hot wind, and then a cold one, and then a crash,--an' 'twas all as dark as death all round, and the roar appeared to be a-passin' off.

I didn't know for quite a spell where I was. I was flat on my face, and when I come to a little, I felt the grass against my cheek, and I smelt the earth; but I couldn't move, no way; I couldn't turn over, nor raise my head more'n two inches, nor draw myself up one. I was comfortable so long as I laid still; but if I went to move, I couldn't. It wasn't no use to wriggle; and when I'd settled that, I jest went to work to figger out where I was and how I got there, and the best I could make out was that the barn-roof had blowed off and lighted right over me, jest so as not to hurt me, but so't I could'nt move.

Well, there I lay. I knew baby was asleep in the trundle-bed, and there wa'n't no fire in the house; but how did I know the house wa'n't blowed down? I thought that as quick as a flash of lightnin'; it kinder struck me; I couldn't even see, so as to be certain! I wasn't naterally fond of children, but somehow one's own is different, and baby was just gettin' big enough to be pretty; and there I lay, feelin' about as bad as I could, but hangin' on to one hope,--that old Simon, seein' the tornado, would come pretty soon to see where we was.

I lay still quite a spell, listenin'. Presently I heerd a low, whimperin', pantin' noise, comin' nearer and nearer, and I knew it was old Lu, a yeller hound of Simon's, that he'd set great store by, because he brought him from the Old Country. I heerd the dog come pretty near to where I was, and then stop, and give a long howl. I tried to call him, but I was all choked up with dust, and for a while I couldn't make no sound. Finally I called, "Lu! Lu! here, Sir!" and if ever you heerd a dumb creature laugh, he barked a real laugh, and come springin' along over towards me. I called ag'in, and he begun to scratch and tear and pull,--at boards, I guessed, for it sounded like that; but it wa'n't no use, he couldn't get at me, and he give up at length and set down right over my head and give another howl, so long and so dismal I thought I'd as lieves hear the bell a-tollin' my age.

Pretty soon, I heerd another sound,--the baby cryin'; and with that Lu jumped off whatever 'twas that buried me up, and run. "At any rate," thinks I, "baby's alive." And then I bethought myself if 'twa'n't a painter, after all; they scream jest like a baby, and there's a lot of them, or there was then, right round in our woods; and Lu was dreadful fond to hunt 'em; and he never took no notice of baby;--and I couldn't stir to see!

Oh, dear! the sweat stood all over me! And there I lay, and Simon didn't come, nor I didn't hear a mouse stir; the air was as still as death, and I got nigh distracted. Seemed as if all my life riz right up there in the dark and looked at me. Here I was, all helpless, may-be never to get out alive; for Simon didn't come, and Russell was gone away. I'd had a good home, and a kind husband, and all I could ask; but I hadn't had a contented mind; I'd quarrelled with Providence, 'cause I hadn't got everything,--and now I hadn't got nothing. I see just as clear as daylight how I'd nussed up every little trouble till it growed to a big one,--how I'd sp'ilt Russell's life, and made him wretched,--how I'd been cross to him a great many times when I had ought to have been a comfort; and now it was like enough I shouldn't never see him again,--nor baby, nor mother, nor Major. And how could I look the Lord in the face, if I did die? That took all my strength out. I lay shakin' and chokin' with the idee, I don't know how long; it kind of got hold of me and ground me down; it was worse than all. I wished to gracious I didn't believe in hell; but then it come to mind, What should I do in heaven, ef I was there? I didn't love nothin' that folks in heaven love, except the baby; I hadn't been suited with the Lord's will on earth, and 'twa'n't likely I was goin' to like it any better in heaven; and I should be ashamed to show my face where I didn't belong, neither by right nor by want. So I lay. Presently I heerd in my mind this verse, that I'd learned years back in Sabbath School,--

"Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost"--

there it stopped, but it was a plenty for me. I see at once there wasn't no help anywhere else, and for once in my life I did pray, real earnest, and--queer enough--not to get out, but to be made good. I kind of forgot where I was, I see so complete what I was; but after a while I did pray to live in the flesh; I wanted to make some amends to Russell for pesterin' on him so.

It seemed to me as though I'd laid there two days. A rain finally come on, with a good even-down pour, that washed in a little, and cooled my hot head; and after it passed by I heerd one whip-poor-will singin', so't I knew it was night. And pretty soon I heerd the tramp of a horse's feet;--it come up; it stopped; I heerd Russell say out loud, "O Lord!" and give a groan, and then I called to him. I declare, he jumped!

So I got him to go look for baby first, because I could wait; and lo! she was all safe in the trundle-bed, with Lu beside of her, both on 'em stretched out together, one of her little hands on his nose; and when Russell looked in to the door she stirred a bit, and Lu licked her hand to keep her quiet. It tells in the Bible about children's angels always seein' the face of God, so's to know quick what to do for 'em, I suppose; and I'm sure her'n got to her afore the tornado; for though the house-roof had blowed off, and the chimbley tumbled down, there wa'n't a splinter nor a brick on her bed, only close by the head on't a great hunk of stone had fell down, and steadied up the clothes-press from tumblin' right on top of her.

So then Russell rode over, six miles, to a neighbor's, and got two men, and betwixt 'em all they pried up the beams of the barn, that had blowed on to the roof and pinned it down over me, and then lifted up the boards and got me out; and I wa'n't hurt, except a few bruises: but after that day I begun to get gray hairs.

Well, Russell was pretty thankful, I b'lieve,--more so'n he need to be for such a wife. We fixed up some kind of a shelter, but Lu howled so all night we couldn't sleep. It seems Russell had seen the tornado to Cumberton, and, judgin' from its course 'twould come past the clearin', he didn't wait a minute, but saddled up and come off; but it had crossed the road once or twice, so it was nigh about eleven o'clock afore he got home; but it was broad moonlight. So I hadn't been under the roof only about fifteen hours; but it seemed more.

In the mornin' Russell set out to find Simon, and I was so trembly I couldn't bear to stay alone, and I went with him, he carryin' baby, and Lu goin' before, as tickled as he could be. We went a long spell through the woods, keepin' on the edge of the tornado's road; for't had made a clean track about a quarter of a mile wide, and felled the trees flat,--great tulips cut off as sharp as pipe-stems, oaks twisted like dandelion-stems, and hickories curled right up in a heap. Presently Lu give a bark, and then such a howl! and there was Simon, dead enough; a big oak had blowed down, with the trunk right acrost his legs above the knees, and smashed them almost off. 'Twas plain it hadn't killed him to once, for the ground all about his head was tore up as though he'd fought with it, and Russell said his teeth and hands was full of grass and grit where he'd bit and tore, a-dyin' so hard. I declare, I shan't never forget that sight! Seems as if my body was full of little ice-spickles every time I think on't.

Well, Russell couldn't do nothin'; we had no chance to lift the tree, so we went back to the house, and he rode away after neighbors; and while he was gone, I had a long spell of thinkin'. Mother said she hoped I wouldn't have no hard lesson to teach me Major's ways; but I had got it, and I know I needed it, 'cause it did come so hard. I b'lieve I was a better woman after that. I got to think more of other folks's comfort than I did afore, and whenever I got goin' to be dismal ag'in I used to try 'n' find somebody to help; it was a sure cure.

When the neighbors come, Russell and they blasted and chopped the tree off of Simon, and buried him under a big pine that we calculated not to fell. Lu pined, and howled, and moaned for his master, till I got him to look after baby now and then, when I was hangin' out clothes or makin' garden, and he got to like her in the end on't near as well as Simon.

After a while there come more settlers out our way, and we got a church to go to; and the minister, Mr. Jones, he come to know if I was a member, and when I said I wa'n't, he put in to know if I wasn't a pious woman.

"Well," says I, "I don't know, Sir." So I up and told him all about it, and how I had had a hard lesson; and he smiled once or twice, and says he,--

"Your husband thinks you are a Christian, Sister Potter, don't he?"

"Yes, I do," says Russell, a-comin' in behind me to the door,--for he'd just stepped out to get the minister a basket of plums. "I ha'n't a doubt on't, Mr. Jones."

The minister looked at him, and I see he was kinder pleased.

"Well," says he, "I don't think there's much doubt of a woman's bein' pious when she's pious to home; and I don't want no better testimony'n yours, Mr. Potter. I shall admit you to full fellowship, sister, when we have a church-meetin' next; for it's my belief you experienced religion under that blowed-down barn."

And I guess I did.

LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.[1]

[1: The massacre of unarmed and unoffending men in Southern Kansas took place near the Marais du Cygne of the French voyageurs.]

A blush as of roses Where rose never grew! Great drops on the bunch-grass, But not of the dew! A taint in the sweet air For wild bees to shun! A stain that shall never Bleach out in the sun!

Back, steed of the prairies! Sweet song-bird, fly back! Wheel hither, bald vulture! Gray wolf, call thy pack! The foul human vultures Have feasted and fled; The wolves of the Border Have crept from the dead.

From the hearths of their cabins, The fields of their corn, Unwarned and unweaponed, The victims were torn,-- By the whirlwind of murder Swooped up and swept on To the low, reedy fen-lands, The Marsh of the Swan.

With a vain plea for mercy No stout knee was crooked; In the mouths of the rifles Right manly they looked. How paled the May sunshine, Green Marais du Cygne, When the death-smoke blew over Thy lonely ravine!

In the homes of their rearing, Yet warm with their lives, Ye wait the dead only, Poor children and wives! Put out the red forge-fire, The smith shall not come; Unyoke the brown oxen, The ploughman lies dumb.

Wind slow from the Swan's Marsh, O dreary death-train, With pressed lips as bloodless As lips of the slain! Kiss down the young eyelids, Smooth down the gray hairs; Let tears quench the curses That burn through your prayers.

Strong man of the prairies, Mourn bitter and wild! Wail, desolate woman! Weep, fatherless child! But the grain of God springs up From ashes beneath, And the crown of His harvest Is life out of death.

Not in vain on the dial The shade moves along To point the great contrasts Of right and of wrong: Free homes and free altars And fields of ripe food; The reeds of the Swan's Marsh, Whose bloom is of blood.

On the lintels of Kansas That blood shall not dry; Henceforth the Bad Angel Shall harmless go by: Henceforth to the sunset, Unchecked on her way, Shall Liberty follow The march of the day.

YOUTH.

The ancient statue of Minerva, in the Villa Albani, was characterized as the Goddess of Wisdom by an aged countenance. Phidias reformed this idea, and gave to her beauty and youth. Previous artists had imitated Nature too carelessly,--not deeply perceiving that wisdom and virtue, striving in man to resist senescence and decay, must in a goddess accomplish their purpose, and preserve her in perpetual bloom. Yet even decay and disease are often ineffectual; the young soul gleams through these impediments, and would be poorly expressed in figures of age. Accepting, therefore, this ideal representation, age and wisdom can never be companions; youth is wise, and age is imbecile.

Our childhood grows in value as we grow in years. It is to that time that every one refers the influence which reaches to his present and somehow moulds it. It may have been an insignificant circumstance,--a word,--a book,--praise or reproof; but from it has flowed all that he is. We should seem ridiculous in men's eyes, were we known to give that importance to certain trifles which in our private and inmost thought they really have. Each finds somewhat in his childhood peculiar and remarkable, on which he loves to dwell. It gives him a secret importance in his own eyes, and he bears it about with him as a kind of inspiring genius. Intimations of his destiny, gathered from early memories, float dimly before him, and are ever beckoning him on. That which he really is no one knows save himself. His words and actions do but inadequately reveal the being he is. We are all greater than we seem to each other. The heart's deepest secrets will not be told. The secret of the interest and delight we take in romances and poetry is that they realize the expectations and hopes of youth. It is the world we had painted and expected. He is unhappy who has never known the eagerness of childish anticipation.

Full of anticipations, full of simple, sweet delights, are these years, the most valuable of lifetime. Then wisdom and religion are intuitive. But the child hastens to leave its beautiful time and state, and watches its own growth with impatient eye. Soon he will seek to return. The expectation of the future has been disappointed. Manhood is not that free, powerful, and commanding state the imagination had delineated. And the world, too, disappoints his hope. He finds there things which none of his teachers ever hinted to him. He beholds a universal system of compromise and conformity, and in a fatal day he learns to compromise and conform. At eighteen the youth requires much stricter truth of men than at twenty-four.

At twenty-four the prophecies of childhood and boyhood begin to be fulfilled, the longings of the heart to be satisfied. He finds and tastes that life which once seemed to him so full of satisfaction and advantage. The inclination to speak in the first person passes away, and his composition is less autobiographical. The claims of society and friends begin to be respected. Solitude and musing are less sweet. The morbid effusions of earlier years, once so precious, no longer please. Now he regards most his unwritten thought. He uses fewer adjectives and alliterations, more verbs and dogmatism. There was a time when his genius was not domesticated, and he did his work somewhat awkwardly, yet with a fervor prophetic of settled wisdom and eloquence. The youth is almost too much in earnest. He aims at nothing less than all knowledge, all wisdom, all power. Perchance the end of all this is that he may discover his own proper work and tendency, and learn to know himself from the revelations of his own nature in universal nature.

For it is by this sign we choose companions and books. Not that they are the best persons or the best thoughts; but some subtile affinity attracts and invites as to another self. In the choosing of companions there seems to be no choice at all. "We meet, we know not how or when; and though we should remember the history, yet friendship has an anterior history we know not of. We all have friends, but the one want of the soul is a friend,--that other self, that one without whom man is incomplete and but the opaque face of a planet. For such we patiently wait and hope, knowing that when we become worthy of him, continents, nor caste, nor opinion can separate us."

A like experience is known to the young man in his reading. 'Tis in vain to advise as to reading; a higher power controls the matter. Of course there are some books all must read, as every one learns the alphabet and spelling-book; but his use and combination of them he shall share with no one. Some spiritual power is ever drawing us towards what we love. Thus in books one constantly meets his own idea, his own feelings, even his most private ones, which he thought could not be known or appreciated beyond his own bosom. Therefore he quickly falls in love with those books that discover him to himself, and that are the keepers of his secrets. Here is a part of himself written out in immortal letters. Here is that thought long dimly haunting the mind, but which never before found adequate expression. Here is a memorable passage transcribed out of his experience.

The fascination of books consists in their revelations of the half-conscious images of the reader's mind. There is a wonderful likeness and coincidence in the thoughts of men. But not alone in books does one meet his own image at every turn. He beholds himself strewn in a thousand fragments throughout the world; and all his culture is nothing but assimilation of himself to them, until he can say with wise Ulysses, "I am a part of all that I have met."

Thus Nature compels the youth to seek every means of stimulating himself to activity. He has learned that in periods of transition and change fresh life flows in upon him, dilating the heart and disclosing new realms of thought. He thanks the gods for every mood, Doric or dithyrambic, for each new relation, for each new friend, and even for his sorrows and misfortunes. Out of these comes the complete wisdom which shall make old age but another more fair and perfect youth. Even the face and form shall be fortified against time and fate. In the physiognomy of age much personal history is revealed. The dimples and folds of infancy have become the furrows of thought and care. Yet, sometimes retaining their original beauty, they are an ornament, and in them we read the record of deep thought and experience.

But the wrinkles of some old people are characterless; running in all directions, appearing as though a finely-woven cloth had left its impress upon the face, revealing a life aimless and idle, or distracted by a thousand cross-purposes and weaknesses.

If now youth will permit us to look a little deeper into its heart, we will attempt to celebrate that unpublished and vestal wisdom written there. Age does us only indirect justice,--by the value it gives to memory. It slights and forgets its own present. This day with its trivialities dwindles and vanishes before the teeming hours wherein it learned and felt and suffered;--so the circles, which are the tree's memories of its own growth, are more distinct near the centre, where its growth began, than in the outer and later development. Give age the past, and let us be content with our legacy, which is the future. Still shall youth cast one retrospective glance at the experience of its nonage, ere it assumes its prerogative, and quite forgets it.

When the first surprise at the discovery of the faculties is over, begins the era of experience. The aspiration conducting to experiment has revealed the power or the inability. Henceforth the youth will know his relations to the world. But as yet men are ignorant how it stands between them. There has been only a closet performance, a morning rehearsal. He sees the tribute to genius, to industry, to birth, to fortune. At first he yields reluctantly to novitiate and culture; he yearns for action. His masters tell him that the world is coy, must be approached cautiously, and with something substantial in the hand. The old bird will not be caught with chaff. He does not yet understand the process of accumulation and transmutation. The fate of the Danaides is his, and he draws long with a bottomless bucket. But at last his incompetency can no further be concealed. Then he either submits to the suggestions of despair and oblivion or bravely begins his work. The exhilaration and satisfaction which he felt at his first performances, in this hour of renunciation, are changed to bitterness and disgust. He remembers the old oracle: "In the Bacchic procession many carry the thyrsus, but few are inspired." The possibility of ultimate failure threatens him more and more while he reflects; as the chasm which you wish to leap grows impassable, if you measure and deliberate. But the vivacity of youth preserves him from any permanent misanthropy or doubt. Nature makes us blind where we should be injured by seeing. We partake of the lead of Saturn, the activity of fire, the forgetfulness of water. His academic praises console him, maugre his depreciation of them. His little fame, the homage of his little world, have in them the same sweetness as the reverberation of ages. Heaven would show him his capacity for those things to which he aspires by giving him an early and representative realization of them. It is a happy confidence. Reality is tyrannous. Let him construe everything in the poet's mood. He shall dream, and the day will have more significance. Youth belongs to the Muse.

How the old men envy us! They wisely preclude us from their world, since they know how it would bereave us of all that makes our state so full of freedom and delight, and to them so suggestive of the past.

"I remember, when I think, That my youth was half divine."

Thus the great have ever chosen young men for companions. Was it not Plato who wished he were the heavens, that he might look down upon his young companion with a thousand eyes? Thus they do homage to the gift of youth, and by its presence contrive to nestle into its buoyant and pure existence. If youth will enjoy itself virtuously with gymnastics, with music, with friendship, with poetry, there will come no hours of lamentation and repentance. They attend the imbecile and thoughtless. These halcyon days will return to temper and grace the period of old age; as upon the ripened peach reappear the hues of its early blossoms.

Among his seniors the youth perceives a certain jealousy of him. They pretend that all has been said and done. They awe him with their great names. He has to learn, that, though Jew and Greek have spoken, nevertheless he must reiterate and interpret to his own people and generation. Perchance in the process something new will likewise be added. Many things still wait an observer. Still is there infinite hope and expectation, which youth must realize. In war, in peace, in politics, in books, all eyes are turned to behold the rising of his star.

Reluctantly does the youth yield to the claims of moderation and reserve. Abandonment to an object has hitherto been his highest wisdom. But in the pursuit of the most heroic friendship, or the most sovereign passion, the youth discovers that a certain continence is necessary. He cannot approach too closely; for that moment love is changed into disgust and hate. He would drink the nectar to the lees. This is one of Nature's limitations, and has many analogies; and he who would never see the bottom of any cup, and always be possessed with a divine hunger, must observe them. I remember how it piqued my childish curiosity that the moon seemed always to retreat when I ran towards her, and to pursue when I fled. It was a very significant symbol. Stand a little apart, and things of their own accord will come more than half-way. Nobody ever goes to meet a loafer. Self-centred, domesticated persons attract. What would be the value of the heavens, if we could bring the stars into our lap? They cannot be approached or appropriated. Upon the highest mountain the horizon sinks you in a valley, and far aloft in night and mystery gleam the retreating stars.

It must be remembered that indirect vision is much more delicate than direct. Looking askance, with a certain oblique and upward glance, constitutes the art and power of the poet; for so a gentle invitation is offered the imagination to contribute its aid. We see clearest when the eye is elongated and slightly curtained. Persons with round, protuberant eyes are obliged to reduce their superfluous visual power by artificial means. We subordinate the external organ in order to liberate the inner eye of the mind. The musing, pensive Hindoos, who have elongated eyes, look through the surface of things to their essence, and call the world Illusion,--the illusory energy of Vishnu.

There is a vulgar trick of wishing to touch everything. But the greatest caution is necessary, in beholding a statue or painting, not to draw too near; and it is thus with every other beautiful thing. Nature secretly writes, Hands off!--and men do but translate her hieroglyph in their galleries and museums. The sense of touch is only a provision against the loss of sight and hearing. We should cultivate these, until, like the Scandinavian Heimdal, we can hear the trees and the flowers grow, and see with Heraclitus the breathing of the stars.

The youth once loved Nature after this somewhat gross and material fashion, for the berries she gave him, the flowers she wove in his hair, and the brooks that drove his mimic mills. He chased the butterfly, he climbed the trees, he would stand in the rain, paint his cheeks with berry juice, dabble in the mud, and nothing was secure from his prying fingers and curious eyes. He must touch and taste of everything, and know every secret. But it eluded him; and he lay down from his giddy chase, tired and unsatisfied, yet still anticipating that the morning would reveal all. Later he approaches men and things in a different mood. Experience has taught him so much. He begins to feel the use of the past. Memory renders many present advantages as nothing, and there is a rare and peculiar value to every reminiscence that connects him with the years from which he is so fast receding. The bower which his own hands wove from birch-trees and interwove with green brakes, where at the noon-time he was wont to retreat from the hot school-house, with the little maid of his choice, and beguile the hour so happily, suggests a spell and charm to preserve him in perpetual childhood.

*       *       *       *       *

PINTAL.

In San Francisco, in 1849, on Dupont Street near Washington, a wretched tent, patched together from mildewed and weather-worn sails, was pitched on a hill-side lot, unsightly with sand and thorny bushes, filthy cast-aways of clothing, worn-out boots, and broken bottles. The forlorn loneliness of this poor abode, and the perfection of its Californianness, in all the circumstances of exposure, frailness, destitution, and dirt, were enough of themselves to make it an object of interest to the not-too-busy passer; yet, to complete its pitiful picturesqueness, Pathos had bestowed a case of miniatures and a beautiful child. Beside the entrance of the tent a rough shingle was fastened to the canvas, and against this hung an unpainted picture-frame of pine, in humble counterpart of those gilded rosewood signs which, at the doors of Daguerreotype galleries, display fancy "specimens" to the goers-to-and-fro of Broadway. Attracted by an object so novel in San Francisco then, I paused one morning, in my walk officeward from the "Anglo-Saxon Dining-Saloon," to examine it.

There were six of them,--six dainty miniature portraits on ivory, elaborately finished, and full of the finest marks of talent. The whole were seemingly reproductions of but two heads, a lady's and a child's,--the lady well fitted to be the mother of the child, which might well have been divine. There were three studies of each; each was presented in three characters, chosen as by an artist possessed of a sentiment of sadness, some touching reminiscence.

In one picture, the lady--evidently English, a pensive blonde, with large and most sweet blue eyes curtained by the longest lashes, regular and refined features suggestive of pure blood, budding lips full of sensibility, a chin and brow that showed intellect as well as lineage, and cheeks touched with the young rose's tint--was as a beautiful debutante, the flower of rich drawing-rooms, in her first season: one white moss-rosebud in her smoothly-braided hair; her dimpled, round, white shoulders left to their own adornment; and for jewels, only one opal on her ripening bosom;--as much of her dress as was shown was the simple white bodice of pure maidenhood.

In the next, she had passed an interval of trial, for her courage, her patience, and her pride,--a very few years, perhaps, but enough to bestow that haughty, defiant glance, and fix those matchless features in an almost sneer. No longer was her fair head bowed, her eyes downcast, in shrinking diffidence; but erect and commanding, she looked some tyranny, or insolence, or malice, in the face, to look it down. Jewels encircled her brow, and a bouquet of pearls was happy on her fuller bosom.

Still a few years further on,--and how changed! "So have I seen a rose," says that Shakspeare of the pulpit, old Jeremy Taylor, when it has "bowed the head and broke its stalk; and at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it has fallen into the portion of weeds and outworn faces." Alas, Farewell, and Nevermore sighed from those hollow cheeks, those woebegone eyes, those pallid lips, that willow-like long hair, and the sad vesture of the forsaken Dido.

So with the child. At first, a rosy, careless, curly-pate of three years or so,--wonder-eyed and eager, all spring and joyance, and beautiful as Love.

Then pale and pain-fretted, heavy-eyed and weary, feebly half-lying in a great chair, still,--an unheeded locket scarce held by his thin fingers, his forehead wrinkled with cruel twinges, the sweet bowed lines of his lips twisted in whimpering puckers, the curls upon his vein-traced temples unnaturally bright, as with clamminess,--a painful picture for a mother's eyes!

But not tragic, like the last; for there the boy had grown. Nine years had deepened for his clustered curls their hue of golden brown, and set a seal of anxious thought upon the cold, pale surface of his intellectual brow, and traced his mouth about with lines of a martyr's resignation, and filled his profound eyes, dim as violets, with foreboding speculation, making the lad seem a seer of his own sad fate. Here, thought I, if I mistake not, is another melancholy chapter in this San Franciscan romance. This painter learned his art of Sorrow, and pitiless Experience has bestowed his style; he shall be for my finding-out.

Home-sickness had marked me for its own one day. I sat alone in my rude little office, conning over again for the hundredth time strange chapters of a waif's experience,--reproducing auld-lang-syne, with all its thronged streets and lonely forest-paths, its old familiar faces, talks, and songs,--ingathering there, in the name of Love or Friendship, forms that were dim and voices that were echoes; and many an "alas," and "too late," and "it might have been," they brought along with them.

"Let this remembrance comfort me,--that when My heart seemed bursting,--like a restless wave That, swollen with fearful longing for the shore, Throws its strong life on the imagined bliss Of finding peace and undisturbed calm,-- It fell on rocks and broke in many tears.

"Else could I bear, on all days of the year,-- Not now alone, this gentle summer night, When scythes are busy in the headed grass, And the full moon warms me to thoughtfulness,-- This voice that haunts the desert of my soul: 'It might have been!' Alas! 'It might have been!'"

I drew from my battered, weather-beaten sea-box sad store of old letters, bethumbed and soiled,--an accusation in every one of them, and small hope of forgiveness, save what the gentle dead might render. There were pretty little portraits, too.--Ah, well! I put them back, --a frown, or a shadow of reproachful sadness, on the picture of a once loving and approving face is the hardest bitterness to bide, the self-unsparing wanderer can know. Therefore I would fain let these faces be turned from me,--all save one, a merry minx of maidenhood, of careless heart, and laughing lips, and somewhat naughty eyes. It was a steel engraving, not of the finest, torn from some Book of Beauty, or other silly-sentimental keepsake of the literary catch-penny class, brought all the way from home, and tenderly saved for the sake of its strange by-chance resemblance to a smart little lionne I had known in Virginia, in the days when smart little lionnes made me a sort of puppy Cumming. The picture, unframed, and exposed to all the chances of rough travel, had partaken of my share of foul weather and coarse handling, and been spotted and smutched, and creased and torn, and every way defaced. I had often wished that I might have a pretty painting made from it, before it should be spoiled past copying. So here, I thought, shall be my introduction to my fly-in-amber artist, of the seedy tent and the romantic miniatures. So pocketing my picture, I hied me forthwith to Dupont Street.

The tent seemed quite deserted. At first, I feared my rare bird had flitted; I shook the bit of flying-jib that answered for a door, and called to any one within, more than once, before an inmate stirred. Then, so quietly that I had not heard his approach, a lad, of ten perhaps, came to the entrance, and, timidly peering up into my face, asked, "Is it my father you wish to see, Sir?"

How beautiful! how graceful! with what touching sweetness of voice! how intellectual his expression, and how well-bred his air!--plainly a gentleman's son, and the son of no common gentleman! Instinctively I drew back a pace to compare him with the child of the "specimens." Unquestionably the same,--there were the superior brow, the richly clustered curls of golden brown, the painful lips, and the foreboding eyes.

"If your father painted these pretty pictures, my boy,--yes, I would be glad to see him, if he is within."

"He is not here at present, Sir; he went with my mother to the ship, to bring away our things. But it is quite a long while since they went; and I think they will return presently. Take a seat, Sir, please."

I accepted the stool he offered,--a canvas one, made to "unship" and fold together,--such a patent accommodation for tired "hurdies" as amateur sketchers and promiscuous lovers of the picturesque in landscape take with them on excursions. My accustomed eye took in at a glance the poor furniture of that very Californian make-shift of a shelter for fortune-seeking heads. There were chests, boxes, and trunks, the usual complement, bestowed in every corner, as they could best be got out of the way,--a small, rough table, on temporary legs, and made, like the seats, to unship and be stowed,--several other of the same canvas stools,--a battered chest of drawers, at present doing the duty of a cupboard,--some kitchen utensils, and a few articles of table furniture of the plainest delft. As for the kitchen, I had noticed, as I passed, a portable furnace for charcoal, without, and at the rear of the tent; it was plain they did their cooking in the open air. On one side of the entrance, and near the top of the tent, a small square had been cut from the canvas, and the sides framed with slats of wood, making a sort of Rembrandtish skylight, through which some scanty rays of barbaric glory fell on an easel, with its palette, brushes, and paints. A canvas framed, on which the ground had been laid, and the outline of a head already traced, was mounted on the easel; other such frames, as if of finished portraits with their faces turned to the wall, stood on the earthen floor, supported by a strip of wood tacked to the tent-cloth near the bottom. On the floor, at the foot of the easel, lay an artist's sketch-book. A part of the tent behind was divided off from what, by way of melancholy jest, I may call the reception-room, or the studio, by a rope stretched across, from which were suspended a blanket, a travelling shawl, and a voluminous, and evidently costly, Spanish cloak. Protruding beyond the edge of this extemporaneous screen, I could see the footposts of an iron bedstead, and the end of a large poncho, which served for a counterpane.

"Will you amuse yourself with this sketch-book, please," said the pretty lad, "till my father comes?"

"With pleasure, my boy,--if you are sure your father will not object."

"Oh, no, indeed, Sir! My father has told me I must always entertain any gentlemen who may call when he is out,--that is, if he is to return soon; and any one may look at this book;--it is only his portfolio, in which he sketches whatever new or pretty things we see on our travels; but there are some very nice pictures in it,--landscapes, and houses, and people."

"Have you travelled much, then?"

"Oh, yes! we have been travelling ever since I can remember; we have been far, and seen a great many strange sights, and some such queer people!--There! that is our shepherd in Australia; isn't he funny? his name was Dirk. I tied that blue ribbon round his straw hat, that seems big enough for an umbrella. He looks as if he were laughing, doesn't he? That's because I was there when my father sketched him; and he made such droll faces, with his brown skin and his great grizzly moustaches, when father told him he must make up a pleasant expression, that it set me laughing,--for my father said he looked like a Cape lion making love; and then Dirk would laugh too, and spoil his pleasant expression; and father would scold; and it was so funny! I loved Dirk very much, he was so good to me; he gave me a tame kangaroo, and a black swan, and taught me to throw the boomerang; and once, when he went to Sydney, he spent ever so much money to buy me a silver bell for Lipse, my yellow lamb. I wonder if Dirk is living yet? Do you think he is dead, Sir? I should be very much grieved, if he were; for I promised I would come back to see him when I am a man."

--"_That_ is Dolores,--dear old Dolores! Isn't she fat?"

"Yes, and good, too, I should think, from the kind face she has. Who was Dolores?"

"Ah! you never saw Dolores, did you? And you never heard her sing. She was my Chilena nurse in Valparaiso; and she had a mother--oh, so very old!--who lived in Santiago. We went once to see her; the other Santiago--that was Dolores's son--drove us there in the veloche. Wasn't it curious, his name should be the same as the city's? But he was a bad boy, Santiago,--so mischievous! such a scamp! Father had to whip him many times; and once the vigilantes took him up, and would have put him in the chain-gang, for cutting an American sailor with a knife, in the Calle de San Francisco, if father had not paid five ounces, and become security for his good behavior. But he ran away, after all, and went as a common sailor in a nasty guano ship. Dolores cried very much, and it was long before she would sing for me again. Oh, she did know such delightful songs!--_Mi Niña_, and Yo tengo Ojos Negros, and

"'No quiero, no quiero casarme; Es mejor, es mejor soltera!'"

And the delightful little fellow merrily piped the whole of that "song of pleasant glee," one of the most melodious and sauciest bits of lyric coquetry to be found in Spanish.

"Ah," said he, "but I cannot sing it half so well as Dolores. She had a beautiful guitar, with a blue ribbon, that her sweetheart gave her before I was born, when she was young and very pretty;--he brought it all the way from Acapulco."

--"And that pretty girl is Juanita; she sold pine-apples and grapes in the Almendral, and every night she would go with her guitar--it was a very nice one, but did not cost near so much money as Dolores's--and sing to the American gentlemen in the Star Hotel. My mother said she was a naughty person, and that she did not dare tell where she got her gold cross and those jet ear-rings. But I liked her very much, for all that; and I'm sure she would not steal, for she used to give me a fresh pine-apple every morning; and whenever her brother José came down from Casa Blanca with the mules and the pisco, she sent me a large melon and some lovely roses."

--"That is the house we lived in at Baltimore. It was painted white, and there was a paling in front, and a dooryard with grass. We had some honeysuckles on the porch;--there they are, and there's the grape-vine. I had a dog-house, too, made to look like a church, and my father promised to buy me a Newfoundland dog,--one of those great hairy fellows, with brass collars, you know, that you can ride on,--when he had sold a great many pictures, and made his fortune. But we did not make our fortune in Baltimore, and I never got my dog; so we came here to Tom Tiddler's ground, to pick up gold and silver. When we are fixed, and get a new tent, my father is going to give me a little spade and a cradle, to dig gold enough to buy a Newfoundland dog with, and then I shall borrow a saw and make a dog-house, like the one I had in Baltimore, out of that green chest. Charley Saunders lived in that next house in the picture, and he had a martin-box, with a steeple to it; but his father gave fencing-lessons, and was very rich."

As the intelligent little fellow ran on with his pretty prattle, I was diligently pursuing the lady and child of the specimens through the sketches. On every leaf I encountered them, ever changing, yet always the same. Here was the child by my side,--unquestionably the same; though now I looked in vain for the anxious mouth and the foreboding eyes in his face of careless, hopeful urchinhood. But who was the other?--his mother, no doubt; and yet no trace of resemblance.

"And tell me, who is this beautiful lady, my lad,--here, and here, and here, and here again? You see I recognize her always,--so lovely, and so gentle-looking. Your mother?"

"Oh, no, Sir!" and he laughed,--"my mother is very different from that. That is nobody,--only a fancy sketch."

"Only a fancy sketch!" So, then, I thought, my pretty entertainer, confiding and communicative as you are, it is plain there are some things you do not know, or will not tell.

"She is not any one we ever saw;--she never lived. My father made her out of his own head, as I make stories sometimes; or he dreamed her, or saw her in the fire. But he is very fond of her, I suppose, because he made her himself,--just as I think my own stories prettier than any true ones; and he's always drawing her, and drawing her, and drawing her. I love her, too, very much,--she looks so natural, and has such nice ways. Isn't it strange my father--but he's so clever with his pencil and brushes!--should be able to invent the Lady Angelica? --that's her name. But my mother does not like her at all, and gets out of patience with my father for painting so many of her. Mamma says she has a stuck-up expression,--such a funny word, 'stuck-up'!--and does not look like a lady. Once I told mamma I was sure she was only jealous, and she grew very angry, and made me cry; so now I never speak of Lady Angelica before her. What makes me think my father must have dreamed her is that I dreamed her once myself. I thought she came to me in such a splendid dress, and told me that she was not only a live lady, but my own mother, and that mamma was---- Hush! This is my father, Sir."

Wonderful! how the lad had changed!--like a phantom, the thoughtless prattler was gone in a moment, and in his place stood the seer-boy of the picture, the profound foreboding eyes fixed anxiously, earnestly, on the singular man who at that moment entered: a singularly small man, cheaply but tidily attired in black; even his shoes polished,--a rare and dandyish indulgence in San Francisco, before the French bootblacks inaugurated the sumptuary vanity of Day and Martin's lustre on the stoop of the California Exchange, and made it a necessity no less than diurnal ablutions; a well-preserved English hat on his head, which, when he with a somewhat formal air removed it, discovered thin black locks, beginning to part company with the crown of his head. In his large, brown eyes an expression of moving melancholy was established; a nervous tremulousness almost twitched his refined lips, which, to my surprise, were not concealed by the universal moustache,--indeed, the smooth chin and symmetrically trimmed mutton-chop whiskers, in the orthodox English mode, showed that the man shaved. His nose, slightly aquiline, was delicately cut, and his nostrils fine; and he had small feet and hands, the latter remarkably white and tender. As he stood before me, he was never at rest for an instant, but changed his support from one leg to the other,--they were slight as a young boy's,--and fumbled, as it were, with his feet; as I have seen a distinguished medical lecturer, of Boston, gesticulate with his toes. He played much with his whiskers, too, and his fingers were often in his hair--as a fidgety and vulgar man would bite his nails. From all of which I gathered that my new acquaintance was an intensely nervous person,--very sensitive, of course, and no doubt irritable.

He was accompanied by a--female, much taller than he, and as stalwart as dear woman can be; an especially common-looking person, bungled as to her dress, which was tawdry-fine, unseasonable for the place as well as time, inappropriate to herself, inharmonious in its composition, and every way most vilely put on; a clumsy and, as I presently perceived, a loud person, whose face, still showing traces of the coarse but decided beauty it must once have possessed, fell far short of compensating for the complete gracelessness of her presence.

Her eyes had a bibulous quality, and the bright redness of her nose vied vulgarly with the rusty redness of her cheeks. I suspected her complexion of potations, but charitably let it off with--beer; for she was, at first glance, English. As she jerked off her flaunting bonnet, and dragged off her loud shawl, saluting me, as she did so, with an overdone obeisance, she said, "This San Fanfrisko"--why would she, how could she, always twist the decent name of the metropolis of the Pacific into such an absurd shape?--"was a norrid 'ole; she happealed to the gentleman,"--meaning me,--"didn't 'e find it a norrid 'ole, habsolutely hawful?" And then she went clattering among tinware and crockery, and snubbed the gentlemanly boy in a sort of tender Billingsgate.

While she was thus gracefully employed, the agonized artist, his face suffused with blushes and fairly ghastly with an enforced smile, was painfully struggling to abstract himself, by changing the places of things, shifting the position of his easel, prying in a lost way into lumbered corners, and pretending to be in search of something, --ingenious, but unable to disguise his chagrin. He pranced with his legs, and tumbled his hair, and twitched at his whiskers more than ever, as he said,--

"My dear," (and the boy had called her Mamma; so, then, it must be a fancy sketch, after all,) "my dear, no doubt the gentleman is more a cosmopolite than yourself, and blessed with more facility in adapting himself to circumstances."

"You know, Madam," I came to his assistance, "we Americans have a famous trick of living and enjoying a little in advance, of 'going ahead' of the hour, as it were. We find in San Francisco rather what it promises to be than what it is, and we take it at its word."

"Oh, pray, don't mention Americans! I positively 'ate the hodious people. I confess I 'ave a hinsurmountable prejudice hagainst the race; you are not haware that I am Hinglish. I think I might endure heven San Fanfrisko, if it were not for the Americans. Are you an American?"

Alternating between the pallor of rage and the flush of mortification, her husband now turned, with a calmness that had something of desperation in it, and saved me the trouble and the pain of replying, by asking, in the frigid tone of one who resented my presence as the cause of his shame,--

"Did you wish to see me on business, Sir? and have you been waiting long?"

"The success with which your charming little boy has entertained me has made the time seem very short. I could willingly have waited longer."

That last remark was a mere contretemps. I did not mean to be as severe as he evidently thought me, for he bowed haughtily and resentfully.

I came at once to business,--drew from my pocket the engraving I had brought,--"Could he copy that for me?"

"How?--in miniature or life-size?--ivory or canvas?"

"You are, then, a portrait-painter, also?--Ah! to be sure!" and I glanced at the canvas on the easel.

"Certainly,--I prefer to make portraits."

"And in this case I should prefer to have one. Extravagant as the vanity may seem, I am willing to indulge in it, for the sake of being the first, in this land of primitive wants and fierce unrefinements, to take a step in the direction of the Fine Arts,--unless you have had calls upon your pencil already."

"None, Sir."

"Then to-morrow, if you please,--for I cannot remain longer at present,--we will discuss my whim in detail."

"I shall be at your service, Sir."

"Good day, Madam! And you, my pretty lad, well met,--what is your name?"

"Ferdy, Sir,--Ferdinand Pintal."

At that moment, his father, as if reminded of a neglected courtesy, or a business form, handed me his card,--"Camillo Alvarez y Pintal."

"Thanks, then, Ferdy, for the pains you took to entertain me. You must let me improve an acquaintance so pleasantly begun."

The boy's hand trembled as it lay in mine, and his eyes, fixed upon his father's, wore again the ominous expression of the picture. He did not speak, and his father took a step toward the door significantly.

But the doleful silence that might have attended my departure was broken by a demonstration, "as per sample," from my country's fair and gentle 'ater. "She 'oped I would not be hoffended by the freedom of 'er hobservations on my countrymen. I must hexcuse 'er Hinglish bluntness; she was haware that she 'ad a somewhat hoff-'and way of hexpressing 'er hemotions; but when she 'ated she 'ated, and it relieved 'er to hout with it hat once. Certainly she would never--bless 'er 'eart, no!--'ave taken me for an American; I was so huncommonly genteel."

With my hand upon the region of my heart, as I had seen stars, when called before the curtain on the proudest evening of their lives, give anatomical expression to their overwhelming sense of the honor done them, I backed off, hat in hand.

"Camillo Alvarez y Pintal," I read again, as I approached the Plaza. "Can this man be Spanish, then? Surely not;--how could he have acquired his excellent English, without a trace of foreign accent, or the least eccentricity of idiom? His child, too, said nothing of that. English, no doubt, of Spanish parentage; or,--oh, patience! I shall know by-and-by, thanks to my merry Virginia jade, who shall be arrayed in resplendent hues, and throned in a golden frame, if she but feed my curiosity generously enough."

Next day, in the afternoon, having bustled through my daily programme of business, I betook myself with curious pleasure to my appointment with Pintal. To my regret, at first, I found him alone; but I derived consolation from the assurance, that, wherever the engaging boy had gone, his mother had accompanied him. Even more than at my first visit, the artist was frigidly reserved and full of warning-off politeness. With but a brief prelude of courteous commonplaces, he called me to the business of my visit.

My picture, as I have said, was a fairly executed steel engraving, taken from some one of the thousands of "Tokens," or "Keepsakes," or "Amulets," or "Gems," or such like harmless giftbooks, with which youths of tender sentiment remind preoccupied damsels of their careful penchants. It represented an "airy, fairy Lilian" of eighteen, or thereabouts, lolling coquettishly, fan in hand, in an antique, high-backed chair, with "carven imageries," and a tasselled cushion. She rejoiced in a profusion of brown ringlets, and her costume was pretty and quaint,--a dainty chemisette, barred with narrow bands of velvet, as though she had gone to Switzerland, or the South of Italy, for the sentiment of her bodice,--sleeves quaintly puffed and "slashed,"--the ample skirt looped up with rosettes and natty little ends of ribbon; her feet beneath her petticoat, "like little mice," stole out, "as if they feared the light." Somewhere, among the many editions of Dickens's works, I have seen a Dolly Varden that resembled her.

It was agreed between us that she should be reproduced in a life-size portrait, with such a distribution of rich colors as the subject seemed to call for, as his fine taste might select, and his cunning hand lay on. I sought to break down his reserve, and make myself acceptable to him, by the display of a discreet geniality, and a certain frankness, not falling into familiarity, which should seem to proceed from sympathy, and a bonhommie, that, assured of its own kindly purpose, would take no account of his almost angry distance. The opportunity was auspicious, and I was on the alert to turn it to account. I made a little story of the picture, and touched it with romance. I told him of Virginia,--especially of that part of the State in which this saucy little lady lived,--of its famous scenery, its historic places, and the peculiar features of its society. I strove to make the lady present to his mind's eye by dwelling on her certain eccentricities, and helping my somewhat particular description of her character with anecdotes, more or less pointed and amusing, especially to so grave a foreigner, of her singular ready-wittedness and graceful audacity. Then I had much to say about her little "ways" of attitude, gesture, and expression, and some hints to offer for slight changes in the finer lines of the face, and in the expression, which might make the likeness more real to both of us, and, by getting up an interest in him for the picture, procure his favorable impression for myself.

I had the gratification, as my experiment proceeded, to find that it was by no means unsuccessful. His austerity appreciably relaxed, and the kindly tone into which his few, but intelligent observations gradually fell, was accompanied by an encouraging smile, when the drift of our talk was light. Then I spoke of his child, and eagerly praised the beauty, the intelligence, and sweet temper of the lad. 'Twas strange how little pleasure he seemed to derive from my sincere expressions of admiration; indeed, the slight satisfaction he did permit himself to manifest appeared in his words only, not at all in his looks; for a shade of deep sadness fell at once upon his handsome face, and his expression, so full of sensibility, assumed the cast of anxiety and pain. "He thanked me for my eloquent praises of the boy, and--not too partially, he hoped--believed that he deserved them all. A prize of beauty and of love had fallen to him in his little Ferdy, for which he would be grieved to seem ungrateful. But yet--but yet--the responsibility, the anxiety, the ceaseless fretting care! This fierce, unbroken city";--he spoke of it as though it were a newly-lassoed and untamed mustang,--I liked the simile; "this lawless, blasphemous, obscene, and dangerous community; these sights of heartlessness and cruelty; these sounds of selfish, greedy contention; the absence of all taste and culture,--no lines of beauty, no strains of music, no tones of kindness, no gestures of gentleness and grace, no delicate attentions, no ladies' presence, no social circle, no books, no home, no church;--Good God! what a heathenish barbarism of coarse instincts, and irreverence, and insulting equalities, and all manner of gracelessnesses, to bring the dangerous impressionability of fine childhood to! The boy was nervous, sensitive, of a spirit quick to take alarms or hurts,--physically unprepared to wrestle with arduous toil, privation, and exposure,--most apt for the teachings of gentleness and taste. It was cruel to think--he could wish him dead first--that his clean, white mind must become smeared and spotted here, his well-tuned ear reconciled to loud discords, and his fine eye at peace with deformity; but there was no help for it." And then, as though he had suddenly detected in my face an expression of surprised discovery, he said, "But I am sure I do not know how I came to say so much, or let myself be tedious with sickly egotisms to a polite, but indifferent, stranger. If you have gathered from them more than I meant should appear, you will at least do me the justice to believe that I have not been boasting of what I regard as a calamity."

I essayed to reassure him by urging upon his consideration the manifest advantages of courage, self-reliance, ingenuity, quick and economical application of resources, independence, and perseverance, which his son, if well-trained, must derive from even those rude surroundings,--at the same time granting the necessity of sleepless vigilance and severe restraints. But he only shook his head sadly, and said, "No doubt, no doubt; and I hope, Sir, the fault is in myself, that I do not appreciate the force and value of all that."

The subject was so plainly full of a peculiar pain for him, he was so ill at mind on this point, that I could not find it in my heart to pursue it further at the cost of his feelings. So we talked of other things: of gold, and the placers, and their unimpaired productiveness, --of the prospects of the country, and of the character the mineral element must stamp upon its politics, its commerce, and its social system,--of San Francisco, and all the enchantments of its sudden upspringing,--of Alcaldes and town-councils,--of hounds and gamblers,--of real estate and projected improvements,--of canvas houses, and iron houses, and fires,--of sudden fortunes, and as sudden failures,--of speculations and markets, and the prices of clothing, provisions, and labor,--of intemperance, disease, and hospitals,--of brawls, murder, and suicide,--till we had exhausted all the Californian budget; and then I bade him good day. He parted with me with flattering reluctance, cordially shaking my hand and urging me to repeat my visit in a few days, when he should be sufficiently forward with the picture to admit me to a sight of it. I confessed my impatience for the interval to pass; for my interest was now fully awakened and very lively;--so well-informed and so polished a gentleman, so accomplished and so fluent, so ill-starred and sad, so every way a man with a history!

I saw much of Pintal after this, and he sometimes visited me at my office. Impelled by increasing admiration and esteem, I succeeded by the exercise of studious tact in ingratiating myself in his friendship and confidence; he talked with freedom of his feelings and his affairs; and although he had not yet admitted me to the knowledge of his past, he evinced but little shyness in speaking of the present. At our interviews in his tent I seldom met his wife; indeed, I suspected him of contriving to keep her out of the way; for I was always told she had just stepped out;--or if by chance I found her there, she was never again vulgarly loquacious, but on some pretext or other at once took herself away. On the other hand, the child was rarely absent,--from which I argued that I was in favor; nor was his pretty prattle, even his boldest communicativeness, harshly checked, save when, as I guessed, he was approaching too near some forbidden theme. Then a quick flash from his father's eye instantaneously imposed silence upon him: as if that eye were an evil one, and there were a malison in its glance, the whole demeanor of the child underwent at once a magical change; the foreboding look took possession of his beautiful eyes, the anxious lines appeared around his mouth, his lips and chin became tremulous, his head drooped, he let fall my hand which he was fond of holding as he talked, and quietly, penitently slunk away; and though he might presently be recalled by his father's kindliest tones, his brightness would not be restored that time.

This mysterious, severe understanding between the father and the child affected me painfully; I was at a loss to surmise its nature, whence it proceeded, or how it could be; for Ferdy evinced in his every word, look, movement, an undivided fondness for his father. And in his tender-proud allusions to the boy, at times let fall to me,--in the anxious watchfulness with which he followed him with his eye, when an interval of peace and comparative happiness had set childhood's spirit free, and lent a degree of graceful gayety to all his motions,--I saw the brimming measure of the father's love. Could it be but his morbidly repellant pride, his jealous guarding of the domestic privacies, his vigilant pacing up and down forever before the close-drawn curtain of the heart?--was there no Bluebeard's chamber there? No! Pride was all the matter,--pride was the Spartan fox that tore the vitals of Pintal, while he but bit his lips, and bowed, and passed.

Among the pictures in Pintal's tent was one which had in an especial manner attracted my attention. It was a cabinet portrait, nearly full-length, of a venerable gentleman, of grave but benevolent aspect, and an air of imposing dignity. Care had evidently been taken to render faithfully the somewhat remarkable vigor of his frame; his iron-gray hair was cropped quite short, and he wore a heavy grizzled moustache, but no other beard; the lines of his mouth were not severe, and his eye was soft and gentle. But what made the portrait particularly noticeable was the broad red ribbon of a noble order crossing the breast, and a Maltese cross suspended from the neck by a short chain of massive and curiously wrought links. I had many times been on the point of asking the name of this singularly handsome and distinguished-looking personage; but an instinctive feeling of delicacy always deterred me.

One day I found little Ferdy alone, and singing merrily some pretty Spanish song. I told him I was rejoiced to find him in such good spirits, and asked him if he had not been having a jolly romp with the American carpenter's son, who lived in the Chinese house close by. My question seemed to afflict him with puzzled surprise;--he half smiled, as if not quite sure but I might be jesting.

"Oh, no, indeed! I have never played with him; I do not know him; I never play with any boys here. Oh, no, indeed!"

"But why not, Ferdy? What! a whole month in this tiresome tent, and not make the acquaintance of your nearest neighbor,--such a sturdy, hearty chunk of a fellow as that is?--I have no doubt he's good-natured, too, for he's fat and funny, tough and independent. Besides, he's a carpenter's son, you know; so there's a chance to borrow a saw to make the dog-house with. Who knows but his father will take a fancy to you,--I'm sure he is very likely to,--and make you a church dog-house, steeple and all complete and painted, and much finer than Charley Saunders's martin-box?"

"Oh, I should like to, so much! And perhaps he has a Newfoundlander with a bushy tail and a brass collar,--that would be nicer than a kangaroo. But--but"--looking comically bothered,--"I never knew a carpenter's son in my life. I am sure my father would not give me permission,--I am sure he would be very angry, if I asked him. Are they not very disagreeable, that sort of boys? Don't they swear, and tear their clothes, and fight, and sing vulgar songs, and tell lies, and sit down in the middle of the street?"

Merciful Heaven! thought I,--here's a crying shame! here's an interesting case for professors of moral hygiene! An apt, intelligent little man, with an empty mind, and a by-no-means overloaded stomach, I'll engage,--with a pride-paralyzed father, and a beer-bewitched slattern of a mother,--with his living to get, in San Francisco, too, and the world to make friends with,--who has never enjoyed the peculiar advantages to be derived from the society of little dirty boys, never been admitted to the felicity of popular songs, nor exercised his pluck in a rough-and-tumble, nor ventilated himself in wholesome "giddy, giddy, gout,"--to whom dirt-pies are a fable!

"Ferdy," said I, "I'll talk with your father myself. But tell me, now, what makes you so happy to-day."

"My father got a letter this morning,"--a mail had just arrived; it brought no smile or tear for me,--no parallelogram of tragedy or comedy in stationery,--"such a pleasant one, from my uncle Miguel, at Florence, in Italy, you know. He is well, and quite rich, my father says; they have restored to him his property that he thought was all lost forever, and they have made him a chevalier again. But I am sure my father will tell you all about it, for he said he did hope you would come to-day; and he is so happy and so kind!"

"They have made him a chevalier again," I wondered. "Your uncle Miguel is your father's brother, then, Ferdy. And did you ever see him?"

Before he could reply, Pintal entered, stepping smartly, his color heightened with happiness, his eyes full of an extraordinary elation.

"Ah! my dear Doctor, I am rejoiced to find you here; I have been wishing for you. See! your picture is finished. Tell me if you like it."

"Indeed, a work of beauty, Pintal."

"To me, too, it never looked so well before; but I see things with glad eyes to-day. I have much to tell you. Ferdy, your mother is dining at the restaurant; go join her. And when you have finished your dinner, ask her to take you to walk. Say that I am engaged. Would you not like to walk, my boy, and see how fast the new streets spring up? When you return, you can tell me of all you saw."

The boy turned up his lovely face to be kissed, and for a moment hung fondly on his father's neck. The poor painter's lips quivered, and his eyes winked quickly. Then the lad took his cap, and without another word went forth.

"I am happy to-day, Doctor,--Heaven save the mark! My happiness is so much more than my share, that I shall insist, will ye, nill ye, on your sharing it with me. I have a heart to open to somebody, and you are the very man. So, sit you down, and bear with my egotism, for I have a little tale to tell you, of who I am and how I came here. The story is not so commonplace but that your kindness will find, here and there, an interesting passage in it.

"I have seen that that picture,"--indicating the one I have last described,--"attracted your attention, and that you were prevented from questioning me about it only by delicacy. That is my father's likeness. He was of English birth, the younger son of a rich Liverpool merchant. An impulsive, romantic, adventurous boy, seized early with a passion for seeing the world, his unimaginative, worldly-wise father, practical and severe, kept him within narrow, fretting bounds, and imposed harsh restraints upon him. When he was but sixteen years old, he ran away from home, shipped before the mast, and, after several long voyages, was discharged, at his own request, at Carthagena, where he entered a shipping-house as clerk, and, having excellent mercantile talents, was rapidly promoted.

"Meantime, through a sister, the only remaining child, except a half-witted brother, he heard at long intervals from home. His father remained strangely inexorable, fiercely forbade his return, and became violent at the slightest mention of his name by his sister, or some old and attached servant; he died without bequeathing his forgiveness, or, of course, a single shilling. But the young man thrived with his employers, whose business growing rapidly more and more prosperous, and becoming widely extended, they transferred him to a branch house at Malaga. Here he formed the acquaintance of the Don Francisco de Zea-Bermudez, whose rising fortunes made his own.

"Zea-Bermudez was at that time engaged in large commercial operations. Although, under the diligent and ambitious teaching of his famous relative, the profound, sagacious, patriotic, bold, and gloriously abused Jovellanos, he had become accomplished in politics, law, and diplomacy, he seemed to be devoting himself for the present to large speculations and the sudden acquisition of wealth, and to let the state of the nation, the Cortes, and its schemes, alone.

"Only a young, beautiful, and accomplished sister shared his splendid establishment in Malaga; and for her my father formed an engrossing attachment, reciprocated in the fullest, almost simultaneously with his friendship for her brother. Zea favored the suit of the high-spirited and clever young Englishman, whose intelligence, independence, and perseverance, to say nothing of his good looks and his engaging manners, had quite won his heart. By policy, too, no less than by pleasure, the match recommended itself to him;--my father would make a famous junior-partner. So they were married under the name of Pintal, bestowed upon his favorite English clerk by the adventurous first patron at Carthagena, who had found the boy provided with only a 'purser's name,' as sailors term it.

"I will not be so disrespectful to the memory of my distinguished uncle, nor so rude toward your intelligence, my friend, as to presume that you are not familiar with the main points of his history,--the great strides he took, almost from that time, in a most influential diplomatic career: the embassy to St. Petersburg, and the Romanzoff-Bermudez treaty of amity and alliance in 1812, by which Alexander acknowledged the legality of the ordinary and extraordinary Cortes of Cadiz; the embassy to the Porte in 1821; his recall in 1823, and extraordinary mission to the Court of St. James; his appointment to lead the Ministry in 1824; my father's high place in the Treasury; their joint efforts from this commanding position to counteract the violence of the Apostolical party, to meet the large requisitions of France, to cover the deficit of three hundred millions of reals, and to restore the public credit; the insults of the Absolutists, and their machinations to thwart his liberal and sagacious measures; his efforts to resign, opposed by the King; the suppression of a formidable Carlist conspiracy in 1825; the execution of Bessières, and the 'ham-stringing' of Absolutist leaders; his dismissal from the Ministry in October, 1825, Ferdinand yielding to the Apostolic storm; the embassy to Dresden; his appointment as Minister at London.

"And here my story begins, for I was his Secretary of Legation then; while my brother Miguel, younger than I, was attaché at Paris, where he had succeeded me, on my promotion,--a promotion that procured for me congratulations for which I could with difficulty affect a decent show of gratitude, for I knew too well what it meant. It was not the enlightened, liberal Minister I had to deal with, but the hard, proud uncle, full of expediencies, and calculating schemes for family advancement, and the exaltation of a lately obscure name.

"In Paris I had been admitted first to the flattering friendship, and then to the inmost heart of--of a most lovely young lady, as noble by her character as by her lineage,"--and he glanced at the open sketch-book.

"The Lady Angelica," I quietly said.

"Sir!" he exclaimed, quickly changing color, and assuming his most frigid expression and manner. But as quickly, and before I could speak, his sad smile and friendly tone returned, and he said,--

"Ah! I see,--Ferdy has been babbling of his visions and his dreams. Yes, the Lady Angelica. 'Very charming,' my uncle granted, 'but very poor; less of the angel and more of the heiress was desirable,' he said,--'less heaven and more land. A decayed family was only a little worse than an obscure one,--a poor knight not a whit more respectable than a rich merchant. I must relinquish my little romance,--I had not time for it; I had occupation enough for the scant leisure my family duties'--and he laid stress on the words--'left me in the duties of my post. He would endeavor to find arguments for the lady and employment for me.'

"It was in vain for me to remonstrate,--I was too familiar with my uncle's temper to waste my time and breath so. I would be silent, I resolved, and pursue my honorable and gallant course without regard to his scandalous schemes. I wrote to the 'Lady Angelica,'--since Ferdy's name for her is so well chosen,--telling her all, giving her solemn assurances of my unchangeable purpose toward her, and scorn of my uncle's mercenary ambition. She replied very quietly: 'She, also, was not without pride; she would come and see for herself';--and she came at once.

"The family arrived in London in the evening. Within two hours I was sent--after the fashion of an old-time courier, 'Ride! ride! ride!--for your life! for your life! for your life!'--to Turin with despatches, and sealed instructions for my own conduct, not to be opened till I arrived; then I found my orders were, to remain at Turin until it should be my uncle's pleasure to recall me.

"I had not been in Turin a month when a letter came from------the Lady Angelica. 'It was her wish that all intercourse between us, by interview or correspondence, should cease at once and forever. She assumed this position of her own free will, and she was resolute to maintain it. She trusted that I would not inquire obtrusively into her motives,--she had no fear that I would doubt that they were worthy of her. Her respect for me was unabated,--her faith in me perfect. I had her blessing and her anxious prayers. I must go on my way in brave silence and patience, nor ever for one moment be so weak as to fool myself into a hope that she would change her purpose.'

"What should I do? I had no one to advise with; my mother, whose faith in her brother's wisdom was sure, was in Madrid, and my father had been dead some years. At first my heart was full of bitter curses, and my uncle had not at his heels a heartier hater than I. Then came the merely romantic thought, that this might be but a test she would put me to,--that he might be innocent and ignorant of my misfortune. With the thought I flung my heart into writing, and madly plied her with one long, passionate letter after another. I got no answers; but by his spies my uncle was apprised of all I did.

"About this time,--it was in 1832,--Zea-Bermudez was recalled to Madrid in a grave crisis, and appointed to the administration of foreign affairs. Ferdinand VII. was apparently approaching the end of his reign and his life. The Apostolical party, exulting in their strength, and confiding in those well-laid plans which, with mice and men, 'gang aft agley,' imprudently showed their hand, and suffered their favorite project to transpire; which was, to set aside the ordinance by which the King had made null the Salic law, in favor of his infant daughter, and to support the pretensions of the King's brother, Carlos, to the throne.

"By this stupid flourish the Apostolical party threw themselves bound at the feet of Zea. All of their persuasion who filled high places under government were without ceremony removed, and their seats filled by Liberals. Many of them did not escape without more crippling blows. As for me, I looked on with indifference, or at most some philosophic sneers. What had I to fear or care? In my uncle's estimation, my politics had been always healthy, no doubt; and although he had on more than one occasion hinted, with sarcastic wit, that such a lady's-man must, of his devoir, be a 'gallant champion of the Salic law,' and dropped something rude and ill-natured about my English blood,--still, that was only in his dyspeptic moods; his temper was sure to improve, I fancied, with his political and material digestion.

"But I deceived myself. When, in the name of the infant Queen, Isabella Segunda, and in honor of the reestablishment of order and public safety, the pleasant duty devolved upon Zea-Bermudez of awarding approbation and encouragement to all the officers, from an ambassador to the youngest attaché of foreign legations, and presenting them with tokens of the nation's happiness in the shape of stars, and seals with heraldic devices, and curious chains of historic significance, not even a paltry ribbon fell to my share, but only a few curt lines of advice, 'to look well to my opinions, and be modest,--obediently to discharge the duties prescribed to me, and remember that presumption was a fault most intolerable in a young gentleman so favored by chance as to be honored with the confidence of government.'

"That exhausted the little patience I had left. Savagely I tore the note into contemptible fragments, tossed into my travelling-boxes as much of my wardrobe as happened to be at hand, consigned to a sealed case my diplomatic instructions and all other documents pertaining to my office, placed them in the hands of a confidential friend, Mr. Ballard, the British Agent, and secretly took passage for England, where, without losing an hour, I made the best of my way to the abode of an ambitious cockney wine-merchant, to whose daughter I had not been disagreeable in other days, and within a fortnight married her. You have seen the lady, Sir," he said, eyeing me searchingly as he spoke, with a sardonic smile,--the only ugly expression I ever saw him wear.

"Certain title-deeds and certificates of stock, part of my father's legacy, which, as if foreseeing the present emergency, I had brought away with me, were easily converted into cash. I had then twenty thousand sterling pounds, to which my father-in-law generously added ten thousand more, by way of portion with his daughter.

"And now to what should I betake myself? I had small time to cast about me, and was easy to please; any tolerably promising enterprise, so the field of it were remote, would serve my purpose. The papers were full of Australian speculations, the wonderful prosperity of the several colonies there, the great fortunes suddenly made in wool. Good! I would go to Australia, and be a gentle shepherd on an imposing scale. But first I sought out my father's old friends, my Lords Palmerston and Brougham, and the Bishop of Dublin, and besought the aid of their wisdom. With but slight prudential hesitation they with one accord approved my project. Observe: a first-rate Minister, especially if he be a very busy one, always likes the plan that pleases his young friend best,--that is, if it be not an affair of State, and all the risks lie with his young friend. They would have spoken of Turin and Zea-Bermudez; but I had been bred a diplomat and knew how to stick to my point, which, this time, was wool. In another fortnight I had sailed for Sydney with my shekels and my wife. But first, and for the first time, I caused the announcement of my marriage to appear in the principal papers of London, Paris, St. Petersburg, and Madrid.

"Arrived in Australia, I at once made myself the proprietor of a considerable farm, and stocked it abundantly with sheep. Speculation had not yet burst itself, like the frog in the fable; and large successes, as in water-lot and steamboat operations here, to-day, were the rule. On the third anniversary of my landing at Sydney, I was worth three hundred thousand pounds, and my commercial name was among the best in the colony. Six months after that, the rot, the infernal rot, had turned my thriving populous pastures into shambles for carrion-mutton, and I had not sixpence of my own in the wide world. A few of the more generous of my creditors left me a hundred pounds with which to make my miserable way to some South American port on the Pacific.

"So I chose Valparaiso, to paint miniatures, and teach English, French, Italian, and German in. But earthquakes shook my poor house, and the storm-fiend shook my soul with fear;--for skies in lightning and thunder are to me as the panorama and hurly-burly of the Day of Wrath, in all the stupid rushing to and fro and dazed stumbling of Martin's great picture. I shall surely die by lightning; I have not had that live shadow of a sky-reaching fear hanging over me, with its black wings and awful mutterings, so long for nothing; in every flash my eyes are scathed by the full blaze of hell. If I had been deaf and blind, I might have lived in Valparaiso. As it was, I must go somewhere where I need not sit all day and night stopping my ears and with my face covered, fearing that the rocks would fall upon me too soon.

"So, with my wife and the child,--we have had no other, thank God!--I got round Cape Horn--Heaven knows how! I dare not think of that time--to the United States. We were making for Boston; but the ship, strained by long stress of heavy weather, sprung a leak, and we put in at Baltimore. I was pleased with the place; it is picturesque, and has a kindly look; and as all places were alike to me then, save by the choice of a whim, I let go my weary anchor there.

"But the Baltimoreans only admired my pictures,--they did not buy them; they only wondered at my polyglot accomplishment, and were content with ringing silly-kind changes on an Encyclopaedic compliment about the Admirable Crichton, and other well-educated personages, to be found alphabetically embalmed in Conversations-Lexicons,--they did not inquire into my system of teaching, or have quarterly knowledge of my charges. So I fled from Baltimore, pretty speeches, and starvation, to San Francisco, plain talk, and pure gold. And now--see here, Sir!--I carry these always about with me, lest the pretty pickings of this Tom Tiddler's ground should make my experience forget."

He drew from his pocket an "illuminated" card, bearing a likeness of Queen Victoria, and a creased and soiled bit of yellow paper. The one was, by royal favor, a complimentary pass to a reserved place in Westminster Abbey, on the occasion of the coronation of her Britannic Majesty, "For the Señor Camillo Alvarez y Pintal, Chevalier of the Noble Order of the Cid, Secretary to His Catholic Majesty's Legation near the Court of St. James,"--the other, a Sydney pawnbroker's ticket for books pledged by "Mr. Camilla Allverris i Pintal." He held these contrasted certificates of Fortune,--her mocking visiting-cards, when she called on him in palace and in cabin,--one in each hand for a moment; and bitterly smiling, and shaking his head, turned from one to the other. Then suddenly he let them fall to the ground, and, burying his face in his hands, was roughly shaken through all his frame by a great gust of agony.

I laid my hand tenderly on his shoulder: "But, Pintal," I said,--"the Lady Angelica,--tell me why she chose that course."

In a moment the man was fiercely aroused. "Ah, true! I had forgotten that delectable passage in my story. Why, man, Bermudez went to her, told her that my aspirations and my prospects were so and so,--faring, brilliant,--that she, only she, stood in the way, an impassable stumbling-block to my glorious advancement,--told her, (devil!) that, with all my fine passion for her, he was aware that I was not without embarrassment on this score,--appealed to her disinterested love, to her pride,--don't you see?--to her pride."

"And where is she now, Pintal?"

No anger now, no flush of excitement;--the man, all softened as by an angel's touch, arose, and, with clasped hands and eyes upturned devoutly, smiled through big tears, and without a word answered me.

I, too, was silent. Whittier had not yet written,--

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'

"Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes;

"And, in the hereafter, angels may Roll the stone from its grave away!"

Then Pintal paced briskly to and fro a few turns across the narrow floor of his tent, and presently stopping, said,--his first cheerfulness, with its unwonted smile, returning,--

"But I must tell you why I should be happy today. I have a letter from my brother Miguel, who is Secretary to the Legation at the Porte. He has leave of absence, and is happy with his dearest friends in Florence. He shared my disgrace until lately, but bore it patiently; and now is reinstated in his office and his honors, a large portion of his property restored, which had been temporarily confiscated, while he was under suspicion as a Carlist. He is authorized to offer me pardon, and all these pretty things, if I will return and take a new oath of allegiance."

"And you will accept, Pintal?"

"Why, in God's name, what do you take me for?--Pardon! I forgot myself, Sir. Your question is a natural one. But no, I shall surely not accept. Zea-Bermudez is dead, but there is a part of me which can never die; and I am happy today because I feel that I am not so poor as I thought I was."

Ferdy entered, alone. He went straight to his father and whispered something in his ear,--about the mother, I suspected, for both blushed, and Pintal said, with a vexed look,--"Ah, very well! never mind that, my boy."

Then Ferdy threw off his cap and cloak, and, seating himself on a pile of books at his father's feet, quietly rested his head upon his knee. I observed that his face was vividly flushed, and his eyes looked weary. I felt his pulse,--it indicated high fever; and to our anxious questions he answered, that his head ached terribly, and he was "every minute hot or cold." I persuaded him to go to bed at once, and left anxious instructions for his treatment, for I saw that he was going to be seriously ill.

In three days little Ferdy was with the Lady Angelica in heaven. He died in my arms, of scarlet fever. In the delirium of his last moments he saw her, and he departed with strange words on his lips: "I am coming, Lady, I am coming!--my father will be ready presently!"

Some strangers from the neighborhood helped me to bury him; we laid him near the grave of the First Lady; but very soon his pretty bones were scattered, and there's a busy street there now.

Pintal, when I told him that the boy was dead, only bowed and smiled. He did not go to the grave, he never again named the child, nor by the least word or look confessed the change. But when, a little later, a fire swept down Dupont Street and laid the poor tent in ashes, spoiling the desolate house whose beautiful lar had flitted,--when his wife went moaning maudlinly among the yet warm ashes, and groping, in mean misery, with a stick, for some charred nothing she would cheat the Spoiler of, there was a dangerous quality in Pintal's look, as, with folded arms and vacant eyes, he seemed to stare upon, yet not to see, the shocking scene. Presently the woman, poking with the stick, found something under the ashes. With her naked hands she greedily dug it out;--it was a tin shaving-case. Another moment, and Pintal had snatched it from her grasp, torn it open, and had a naked razor in his hand. I wrested it from him, as he fairly foamed, and dragged him from the place.

A few days after that, I took leave of them on board a merchant ship bound for England, and with a heavy-hearted prayer sped them on their way. On the voyage, as Pintal stood once, trembling in a storm, near the mainmast, a flash of lightning transfixed him.--That was well! He had been distinguished by his sorrows, and was worthy of that special messenger.

*       *       *       *       *

That picture,--it was the first and last he painted in California. I kept it long, rejoicing in the admiration it excited, and only grieved that the poor comfort of the praises I daily heard lavished upon it could never reach him.

Once, when I was ill in Sacramento, my San Francisco house was burned, but not before its contents had been removed. In the hopeless scattering of furniture and trunks, this picture disappeared,--no one knew whither. I sought it everywhere, and advertised for it, but in vain. About a year afterward, I sailed for Honolulu. I had letters of introduction to some young American merchants there, one of whom hospitably made me his guest for several weeks. On the second day of my stay with him, he was showing me over his house, where, hanging against the wall in a spare room, I found,--not the Pintal picture, but a Chinese copy of it, faithful in its every detail. There were the several alterations I had suggested, and there the rich, warm colors that Pintal's taste had chosen. Of course, it was a copy. No doubt, my picture had been stolen at the fire, or found its way by mistake among the "traps" of other people. Then it had been sold at auction,--some Chinaman had bought it,--it had been shipped to Canton or Hong Kong,--some one of the thousand "artists" of China Street or the Victoria Road had copied it for the American market. A ship-load of Chinese goods--Canton crape shawls, camphor-boxes, carved toys, curiosities, and pictures--had been sold in Honolulu,--and here it was.

*       *       *       *       *

THE HOUSE THAT WAS JUST LIKE ITS NEIGHBORS.

Oh, the houses are all alike, you know,--
All the houses alike, in a row!

You'll see a hat-stand in the hall, Against the painted and polished wall; And the threaded sunbeams softly fall On the long stairs, winding up, away Up to the garret, lone and gray: And you can hear, if you wait awhile, Odd little noises to make you smile; And minutes will be as long as a mile;-- Just as they would in the house below, Were you in the entry waiting to go.

Oh, the houses are all alike, you know,--
All the houses alike, in a row!

And the world swings sadly to and fro,-- Mayhap the shining, but sure the woe! For in the sunlight the shadows grow Over the new name on the door, Over the face unseen before. Yet who shall number, by any art, The chasms that keep so wide apart The dancing step and the weary heart? Oh, who shall guess that the polished wall Is a headstone over his neighbor's hall?

Yet the houses are just alike, you know,--
All the houses alike, in a row!

And solemn sounds are heard at night, And solemn forms shut out the light, And hideous thoughts the soul affright: Death and despair, in solemn state, In the silent, vaulted chambers wait; And up the stairs as your children go, Spectres follow them, to and fro,-- Only a wall between them, oh! And the darkest demons, grinning, see The fairest angels that dwell with thee!

For the houses are all alike, you know,--
All the houses alike, in a row!

My chariot waited, gold and gay: "I'll ride," I said, "to the woods to-day,-- Out to the blithesome woods away,-- Where the old trees, swaying thoughtfully, Watch the breeze and the shadow's glee." I smiled but once, with my joy elate, For a chariot stood at my neighbor's gate,-- A grim old chariot, dark as fate. "Oh, where are you taking my neighbor?" I cried. And the gray old driver thus replied:--

"Where the houses are all alike, you know,--
Narrow houses, all in a row!

Unto a populous city," he saith: "The road lies steep through the Vale of Death Oh, it makes the old steeds gasp for breath! There'll be a new name over the door, In a place where he's never been before,-- Where the neighbors never visit, they say,-- Where the streets are echoless, night and day, And the children forget their childish play. And if you should live next door, I doubt If you'd ever hear what they were about Who lived in the next house in the row,-- Though the houses are all alike, you know!"

DAPHNAIDES:

OR THE ENGLISH LAUREL, FROM CHAUCER TO TENNYSON.

[Concluded.]

Dorset was still Lord Chamberlain when the death of Shadwell placed the laurel again at his disposal. Had he listened to Dryden, William Congreve would have received it. Of all the throng of young gentlemen who gathered about the chair of the old poet at Wills's, Congreve was his prime favorite. That his advice was not heeded was long a matter of pensive regret:--

"Oh that your brows my laurel had sustained! Well had I been deposed, if you had reigned! The father had descended for the son; For only you are lineal to the throne. Thus, when the state one Edward did depose, A greater Edward in his room arose."[1]

The choice fell upon Nahum Tate:--

"But now not I, but poetry is cursed; For Tom the Second reigns like Tom the First."

What particular quality recommended Tate we are not wholly able to explain. Dryden alleges "charity" as the single impulse of the appointment,--not the merit or aptitude of the candidate. But throughout life Dorset continued to countenance Nahum, serving as standing dedicatee of his works, and the prompter of several of them. We have remarked the want of judgment which Lord Dorset exhibited in his anxious patronage of the scholars and scribblers of his time,--a trait which stood the Blackmores, Bradys, and Tates in good stead.

But there was still another reason why Tate was preferred to Congreve. Dorset was too practised a courtier not to study the tastes of his master to good purpose. A liking for the stage, or a lively sense of poetic excellence, was not among the preferences of King William. The Laureate was sub-purveyor of amusement for the court; but there was no longer a court to amuse, and the King himself never once in his reign entered a theatre. The piety of Queen Mary rendered her a rare attendant at the play-house. Plays were therefore no longer wanted. A playwright could not amuse. Congreve was a dramatist who had never exhibited even passable talent for other forms of poetical composition. But Tate's limited gifts, displayed to Dorset's satisfaction in various encomiastic verses addressed to himself, were fully equal to the exigencies of the office under the new order of things; he was by profession a eulogist, not a dramatist. He was a Tory; and the King was out of humor with the Whigs. He was pretentiously moral and exemplary of life and pen, and so suited the Queen. The duties of the office were conformed, as far as practicable, to the royal tastes. Their scene was transferred from the play-house to the church. On the anniversaries of the birthdays of the two sovereigns, and upon New Year's day, the Laureate was expected to have ready congratulatory odes befitting the occasion, set to music by the royal organist, and sung after service in the Chapel Royal of St. James. Similar duties were required when great victories were to be celebrated, or national calamities to be deplored. In short, from writing dramas to amuse a merry monarch and his courtiers, an office not without dignity, the Laureate sunk into a hired writer of adulatory odes; a change in which originated that prevalent contempt for the laurel which descended from the era of Tate to that of Southey.

And yet the odes were in no sense more thoroughly Pindaric than in the circumstance of their flatteries being bought and paid for at a stated market value. The triumphal lyrics of Pindar himself were very far from being those spontaneous and enthusiastic tributes to the prowess of his heroes, which the vulgar receive them for. Hear the painful truth, as revealed by the Scholiast.[2] Pytheas of AEgina had conquered in rough-and-tumble fight all antagonists in the Pancratium. Casting about for the best means of perpetuating his fame, he found the alternative to lie between a statuette to be erected in the temple of the hero-god, or one of the odes of the learned Theban. Choosing the latter, he proceeded to the poet's shop, cheapened the article, and would have secured it without hesitation, had not the extortionate bard demanded the sum of three drachmas,[3] nearly equal to half a dollar, for the poem, and refused to bate a fraction. The disappointed bargainer left, and was for some days decided in favor of the brazen image, which could be had at half the price. But reflecting that what Pindar would give for his money was a draft upon universal fame and immortality, while the statue might presently be lost, or melted down, or its identity destroyed, his final determination was in favor of the ode,--a conclusion which time has justified. Nor was the Bard of the Victors ashamed of his mercenary Muse. In the Second Isthmian Ode, we find an elaborate justification of his practice of praising for pay,--a practice, he admits, unknown to primitive poets, but rendered inevitable, in his time, by the poverty of the craft, and the degeneracy of the many, with whom, in the language of the Spartan sage, "money made the man." With this Pindaric precedent, therefore, for selling Pindaric verses, it is no wonder, if the children of the Muse, in an age still more degenerate than that of their great original, found ample excuse for dealing out their wares at the best market. When such as Dryden and Pope lavished in preface and dedication their encomiums upon wealth and power, and waited eagerly for the golden guineas the bait might bring them, we have no right to complain of the Tates and Eusdens for prostituting their neglected Muses for a splendid sum certain per annum. Surely, if royalty, thus periodically and mercenarily eulogized, were content, the poet might well be so. And quite as certainly, the Laureate stipend never extracted from poet panegyric more fulsome, ill-placed, and degrading, than that which Laureate Dryden volunteered over the pall of Charles II.[4]

Tate had been known as a hanger-on at the court of Charles, and as a feeble versifier and pamphleteer of the Tory school, before an alliance with Dryden gave him a certain degree of importance. The first part of "Absalom and Achitophel," in 1681, convulsed the town and angered the city. Men talked for a time of nothing else. Tate, who was in the secret of its authorship, talked of it to Dryden, and urged an extension of the poem. Were there not enough of Shaftesbury's brisk boys running at large who deserved to be gibbeted? Were there not enough Hebrew names in the two books of Samuel to name each as appropriately as those already nomenclatured? But Dryden was indisposed to undertake a continuation which must fall short of what had been executed in the exact proportion that the characters left for it were of minor consequence. He recommended the task to Tate. Tate, flattered and nothing loath, accordingly sent to the press the second part of "Absalom and Achitophel," embodying a contribution from Dryden of two hundred lines, which are as plainly distinguishable from the rest as a patch of cloth of gold upon cloth of frieze. The credit of this first alliance proved so grateful to Nahum, that he never after ventured upon literary enterprise without the aid of a similar coalition. His genius was inherently parasitic. In conjunction with Tory and Jesuit, he coalesced in the celebration of Castlemaine's gaudy reception at Rome.

In conjunction with Nicholas Brady, he prepared that version of the Psalms still appended to the English Book of Common Prayer. In conjunction with Dryden and others, he translated Juvenal. In conjunction with Lord Dorset, he edited a praiseworthy edition of the poems of Sir John Davies, which might otherwise have been lost or forgotten. In conjunction with Garth, he translated the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid. And in conjunction with Dr. Blow, he prepared those Pindaric flights which set King William asleep, and made Godolphin ashamed that the deeds of Marlborough should be so unworthily sung.

So long as he continued to enjoy the patronage of his liberal Maecenas, Tate, with his aid, and these labors, and the income of his office, contrived to maintain the state of a gentleman. But Dorset died in 1706; the Laureate's dull heroics found no vent; and ere the death of Queen Anne,--an event which he bewailed in the least contemptible of his odes,--his revenues were contracted to the official stipend. The accession of the house of Hanover, in 1714, was the downfall of Toryism; and Tate was a Tory. His ruin was complete. The Elector spared not the house of Pindar. The Laureate was stripped of the wreath; his only income confiscated; and after struggling feebly with fate in the form of implacable creditors, he took refuge in the Old Mint, the resort of thieves and debtors, where in 1715 he died,--it is said, of starvation. Alas, that the common lot of Grub Street should have precedent in the person of laurelled royalty itself!

The coronation of Laureate Rowe was simultaneous with that of George I. His immediate claim to the honor dated back to the year 1702, when his play of "Tamerlane" had caught the popular fancy, and proved of vast service to the ministry at a critical moment in stimulating the national antipathy to France. The effect was certainly not due to artistic nicety or refinement. King William, as Tamerlane, was invested with all virtues conceivable of a Tartar conqueror, united with the graces of a primitive saint; while King Louis, as Bajazet, fell little short of the perfections of Satan. These coarse daubs, executed in the broadest style of the sign-post school of Art, so gratified the mob, that for half a century their exhibition was called for on the night of November the fifth. Rowe, moreover, belonged to the straitest sect of Whiggery,--was so bigoted, indeed, as to decline the acquaintance of a Tory, and in play and prologue missed no chance of testifying devotion to liberal opinions.[5] His investiture with the laurel was only another proof that at moments of revolution extremists first rise to the surface. A man of affluent fortune, and the recipient of redundant favors from the new ministry, Rowe enjoyed the sunshine of life, while the dethroned Nahum starved in the Mint, as the dethroned James starved at Rome. Had the dramatic tribute still been exacted, there is little doubt that the author of the "Fair Penitent," and of "Jane Shore," would have lent splendid lustre to his office. His odes, however,--such, at least, as have been thought worthy of preservation among his works,--are a prodigious improvement upon the tenuity of his predecessor, and immeasurably superior in poetical fire and elegance to those of any successor antecedent to Warton.

For, following Nicholas Rowe, there were dark ages of Laureate dulness,--a period redeemed by nothing, unless by the ridicule and controversy to which the wearers of the leaf gave occasion. Rowe died in the last days of 1718. The contest for the vacant place is presumed to have been unusually active. John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, imitating Suckling's "Session of the Poets," brings all the versifiers of the time into the canvas, and after humorously dispatching one after another, not sparing himself, closes,--

"At last, in rushed Eusden, and cried, 'Who shall have it, But I, the true Laureate, to whom the King gave it?' Apollo begged pardon, and granted his claim, But vowed, though, till then, he ne'er heard of his name."[6]

This Laurence Eusden was a scribbling parson, whose model in Art was Sir Richard Blackmore, and whose morality was of the Puritanical stripe. He had assisted Garth in his Ovid, assuming, doubtless upon high moral grounds, the rendering of the impurest fables. He had written odes to great people upon occasions more or less great, therein exhibiting some ingenuity in varying the ordinary staple of adulation. He had addressed an epithalamium to the Duke of Newcastle upon his marriage with the Lady Henrietta Godolphin,--a tribute so gratifying to his Grace, then Lord Chamberlain, as to secure the poet the place of Rowe. Eusden's was doubtless the least honorable name as yet associated with the laurel. His contemporaries allude to him with uniform disdain. Cooke, the translator of Hesiod, tells us,--

"Eusden, a laurelled bard, by fortune raised, By very few was read, by fewer praised,"

Pope, as cavalierly, in the "Dunciad":--

"She saw old Prynne in restless Daniel shine, And Eusden eke out Blackmore's endless line."

Jacobs, in his "Lives of the Poets," speaks of him as a multifarious writer of unreadable trash,--and names but few of his productions. The truth was, Eusden, secluding himself at his rectory among the fens of Lincolnshire, took no part in society, declined all association with the polite circles of the metropolis, thus inviting attacks, from which his talents were not respectable enough to screen him. That the loftiest revelations of poetry were not required of the Laureate of George I., who understood little or no English, there can be no question. George II. was equally insensible to the Muses; and had the annual lyrics been a mosaic of the merest gibberish, they would have satisfied his earlier tastes as thoroughly as the odes of Collins or Gray. A court, at which Pope and Swift, Young and Thomson were strangers, had precisely that share of Augustan splendor which enabled such as Eusden to shine lustrously.[7]

And so Eusden shone and wrote, and in the fulness of time--September, 1730--died and was buried; and his laurel others desired.[8] The leading claimants were Richard Savage and Colley Cibber. The touching story of Savage had won the heart of the Queen, and she had extracted from the King the promise of the Laureateship for its hero. But in the Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, Savage had an irreconcilable opponent. The apprehension of exciting powerful enmities, if he elevated the "Bastard" and his wrongs to so conspicuous a place, had, no doubt, an influence with the shrewd statesman. Possibly, too, so keen and practical a mind could not but entertain thorough contempt for the man, who, with brains, thews, and sinews of his own, a fair education, and as many golden opportunities of advancement as a reasonable being could desire, should waste his days in profitless mendicancy at the doors of great people, in whining endeavors to excite the sympathies of the indifferent, in poem and petition, in beastly drunkenness, or, if sober, in maudlin lamentations at the bitterness of his fortune. A Falconbridge would have better suited the ministerial taste. At all events, when his Majesty came to request the appointment of the Queen's protégé, he found that the patent had already been made out in the name of Cibber: and Cibber had to be Laureate. The disappointed one raved, got drunk, sober again, and finally wrote an ode to her Majesty, announcing himself as her "Volunteer Laureate," who should repeat his congratulations upon each recurrence of her birthday. The Queen, in pity, sent him fifty pounds, with a promise of an equal amount for each of his annual verses. And although Cibber protested, and ridiculed the new title, as no more sensible than "Volunteer Duke, Marquis, or Prime Minister," still Savage adhered to it and the pension tenaciously, sharing the Queen's favor with Stephen Duck, the marvellous "Thresher,"[9] whose effusions were still more to her taste. That the yearly fifty pounds were expended in inexcusable riot, almost as soon as received, was a matter of course. Upon the demise of Queen Caroline, in 1738, Savage experienced another proof of Walpole's dislike. The pensions found upon her Majesty's private list were all continued out of the exchequer, one excepted. The pension of Savage was the exception. Right feelingly, therefore, might he mourn his royal mistress, and vituperate the insensible minister; and that he did both with some degree of animation, the few who still read his poems will freely admit.

Colley Cibber had recommended himself to promotion by consistent partisanship, and by two plays of fair merit and exceeding popularity. "The Careless Husband" even Pope had praised; "The Nonjuror," an adaptation of Molière's "Tartuffe," was one of the most successful comedies of the period. The King had been delighted with it,--a circumstance doubtless considered by Sir Robert in selecting a rival for Savage. Cibber had likewise been the manager, time out of mind, of Drury-Lane Theatre; and if now and then he had failed to recognize the exact direction of popular taste,--as in the instance of the "Beggar's Opera," which he rejected, and which, being accepted by Manager Rich of Covent Garden, made Rich gay and Gay rich,--he was generally a sound stage-tactician and judicious caterer. His career, however, had not been so profitable that an additional hundred pounds should be a thing of indifference; in fact, the sum seemed to be just what was needed to enable him to forsake active duty on the stage,--for the patent was no sooner signed than the veteran retired upon his laurels.

The annals of the Laureateship, during Cibber's reign, are without incident.[10] The duties remained unchanged, and were performed, there is no reason to doubt, to the contentment of the King and court.[11] But the Laureate himself was peculiarly the object of sarcastic satire. The standing causes were of course in operation: the envy of rival poetasters, the dislike of political opponents, the enmities originating in professional disputes and jealousies. Cibber's manners had not been studied in the school of Chesterfield, although that school was then open and flourishing. He was rude, presumptuous, dogmatic. To superiors in rank he was grudgingly respectful; to equals and inferiors, insupportably insolent. But when to these aggravating traits he added the vanity of printing an autobiography, exposing a thousand assailable points in his life and character, the temptation was irresistible, and the whole population of Grub Street enlisted in a crusade against him.[12] Fortunately, beneath the crust of insolence and vanity, there was a substratum of genuine power in the Laureate's make, which rendered him not only a match for these, but for even a greater than these, the author of the "Dunciad." Pope's antipathy for the truculent actor dated some distance back.

Back to the 'Devil,' the last echoes roll, And 'Coll!' each butcher roars at Hockley-hole.

The latter accounts for it by telling, that at the first representation of Gay's "Three Hours after Marriage," in 1717, where one of the scenes was violently hissed, some angry words passed between the irritated manager and Pope, who was behind the scenes, and was erroneously supposed to have aided in the authorship. The odds of a scolding match must have been all in favor of the blustering Cibber, rather than of the nervous and timid Pope; but then the latter had a faculty of hate, which his antagonist had not, and he exercised it vigorously. The allusions to Cibber in his later poems are frequent. Thus, in the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot":--

"And has not Colley still his Lord and whore? His butchers Henley? his freemasons Moore?"

And again:--

"So humble he has knocked at Tibbald's door, Has drunk with Colley, nay, has rhymed for Moore."

And in the "Imitation of Horace," addressed to Lord Fortescue:--

"Better be Cibber, I maintain it still, Than ridicule all taste, blaspheme, quadrille."

"The Dunciad," as originally published in 1728, had Lewis Theobald for its hero. There was neither sense nor justice in the selection. Pope hated Theobald for presuming to edit the plays of Shakspeare with greatly more ability and acuteness than himself had brought to the task. His dislike had no better foundation. Neither the works, the character, nor the associations of the man authorized his elevation to the throne of dulness. The disproportion between the subject and the satire instantly impresses the reader. After the first explosion of his malice, it impressed Pope; and anxious to redeem his error, he sought diligently for some plan of dethroning Tibbald, and raising another to the vacant seat. Cibber, in the mean time, was elevated to the laurel, and that by statesmen whom it was the fate of Pope to detest in secret, and yet not dare to attack in print. The Fourth Book of the "Dunciad" appeared in 1742, and its attacks were mainly levelled at the Laureate. The Laureate replied in a pamphlet, deprecating the poet's injustice, and declaring his unconsciousness of any provocation for these reiterated assaults. At the same time he announced his determination to carry on the war in prose as long as the satirist should wage it in verse,--pamphlet for poem, world without end. Hostilities were now fairly established. Pope issued a fresh edition of his satire complete. The change he had long coveted he now made. The name of Cibber was substituted throughout for that of Theobald, the portraiture remaining the same. Johnson properly ridicules the absurdity of leaving the heavy traits of Theobald on the canvas, and simply affixing the name of his mercurial contemporary beneath; and, indeed, there is much reason to doubt whether the mean jealousy which inspired the first "Dunciad," or the blundering rage which disfigured the second, is in the worse taste. Cibber kept his engagement, replying in pamphlet. The immediate victory was unquestionably his. Morbidly sensitive to ridicule, Pope suffered acutely. Richardson, who found him once with the Cibberine leaves in his hand, declared his persuasion, from the spectacle of rage, vexation, and mortification he witnessed, that the poet's death resulted from the strokes of the Laureate. If so, we must concede him to have been the victor who laid his adversary at his feet on the field. Posterity, however, which listens only to the satirist, has judged differently and unjustly.[13] Theobald, though of no original talent, was certainly, in his generation, the most successful illustrator of Shakspeare, and the first, though Rowe and Pope had preceded him in the effort, who had brought a sound verbal criticism to bear on the text. It is to his credit, that many of the most ingenious emendations suggested in Mr. Collier's famous folio were anticipated by this "king of the dunces"; and it must be owned, that his edition is as far superior to Warburton's and Hanmer's, which were not long after brought out with a deafening flourish of trumpets, as the editions of Steevens and Malone are to his. Yet, prompted by the "Dunciad," it is the fashion of literature to regard Theobald with compassion, as a block-head and empiric. Cibber escapes but little better, and yet he was a man of respectable talent, and played no second-rate part in the literary history of the time.

As Laureate Cibber drew near the end of earthly things, a desire, common to poetical as well as political potentates, possessed him,--a desire to nominate a successor. In his case, indeed, the idea may have been borrowed from "MacFlecknoe" or the "Dunciad." The Earl of Chesterfield, during his administration in Ireland, had discovered a rival to Ben Jonson in the person of a poetical bricklayer, one Henry Jones, whom his Lordship carried with him to London, as a specimen of the indigenous tribes of Erin. It was easier for this Jones to rhyme in heroics than to handle a trowel or construct a chimney. He rhymed, therefore, for the amusement and in honor of the polite circle of which Stanhope was the centre; the fashionable world subscribed magnificently for his volume of "Poems upon Several Occasions";[14] his tragedy, "The Earl of Essex," in the composition of which his patron is said to have shared, was universally applauded. Its introduction to the stage was the work of Cibber; and Cibber, assisted by Chesterfield, labored zealously to secure the author a reversion of the laurel upon his own lamented demise.

The effort was unsuccessful. Cibber's death occurred in December, 1757. The administration of the elder Pitt, which had been restored six months before, was insensible to the merits of the prodigious bricklayer. The wreath was tendered to Thomas Gray. It would, no doubt, have proved a grateful relief to royalty, obliged for twenty-seven years to listen twice yearly, if not oftener, to the monotonous felicitations of Colley, to hear in his stead the author of the "Bard," of the "Progress of Poetry," of the "Ode at Eton College." But the relief was denied it. Gray, ambitious only of the historical chair at Cambridge, declined the laurel. In the mean time, the claims of William Whitehead were earnestly advocated with the Lord Chamberlain, by Lord and Lady Jersey, and by the Earl Harcourt. A large vote in the House of Commons might be affected by a refusal. Pitt, who cared nothing for the laurel, but much for the votes, gave his assent, and Whitehead was appointed. Whitehead was the son of a baker, and, as an eleëmosynary scholar at Winchester School, had won a poetical prize offered to the students by Alexander Pope. Obtaining a free scholarship at Cambridge, he became in due time a fellow of Clare Hall, and subsequently tutor to the sons of Lord Jersey and Lord Harcourt, with whom he made the tour of the Continent. Two of his tragedies, "The Roman Father," and "Creüsa," met with more success than they deserved. A volume of poems, not without merit, was given to the press in 1756, and met with unusual favor through the exertions of his two noble friends. That he was not a personal applicant for the laurel, nor conscious of the movement in his behalf, he takes occasion in one of his poems to state:--

"Howe'er unworthily I wear the crown, unasked it came, and from a hand unknown."[15]

From the warm championship of his friends, and the commendations of Mason, the friend of Gray, we infer that Whitehead was not destitute of fine social qualities. His verse, which is of the only type current a century ago, is elegantly smooth, and wearisomely tame,--nowhere rising into striking or original beauties. Among his merits as a poet modesty was not. His "Charge to the Poets," published in 1762, drew upon him the wrath and ridicule of his fellow-verse-wrights, and perhaps deservedly. Assuming, with amusing vanity, what, if ever true, was only so a century before or a half-century after, that the laurel was the emblem of supremacy in the realm of letters, and that it had been granted him as a token of his matchless merit,--

"Since my king and patron have thought fit To place me on the throne of modern wit,--"

he proceeds to read the subject throng a saucy lecture on their vices and follies,--

"As bishops to their clergy give their charge."

A good-natured dogmatism is the tone of the whole; but presumption and dogmatism find no charity among the genus irritabile, and Whitehead received no quarter. Small wits and great levelled their strokes at a hide which self-conceit had happily rendered proof. The sturdiest assailant was Charles Churchill. He never spares him,--

"Who in the Laureate chair--

By grace, not merit, planted there-- In awkward pomp is seen to sit, And by his patent proves his wit; For favors of the great, we know, Can wit as well as rank bestow; And they who, without one pretension, Can get for fools a place or pension, Must able be supposed, of course, If reason is allowed due force, To give such qualities and grace As may equip them for the place.

"But he who measures as he goes

A mongrel kind of tinkling prose, And is too frugal to dispense At once both poetry and sense,-- Who, from amidst his slumbering guards, Deals out a charge to subject bards, Where couplets after couplets creep, Propitious to the reign of sleep," etc.

Again, in the "Prophecy of Famine,"--

"A form, by silken smile, and tone Dull and unvaried, for the Laureate known, Folly's chief friend, Decorum's eldest son, In every party found, and yet of none, This airy substance, this substantial shade."

And elsewhere he begs for

"Some such draught...

As makes a Whitehead's ode go down, Or slakes the feverette of Brown."

But satire disturbed not the calm equanimity of the pensioner and placeman.

"The laurel worn

By poets in old time, but destined now In grief to wither on a Whitehead's brow,"

continued to fade there, until a whole generation of poets had passed away. It was not until the middle of April, 1785, that Death made way for a successor.

The suddenness of Whitehead's decease came near leaving a royal birthday unsung,--an omission scarcely pardonable with one of George the Third's methodical habits. An impromptu appointment had to be made. It was made before the Laureate was buried. Thomas Warton, the Professor of Poetry at Oxford, received the patent on the 30th of April, and his ode, married to fitting music, was duly forthcoming on the 24th of May. The selection of Warton was faultless. His lyrical verse was the best of a vicious school; his sonnets, according to that exquisite sonneteer, Sir Egerton Brydges, were the finest in the language; his "History of English Poetry," of which three volumes had appeared, displayed an intimate acquaintance with the early English writers. Nor should we pass unnoticed his criticisms and annotations upon Milton and Spenser, manifesting as they did the acutest sensitiveness to the finest beauties of poetry. If the laurel implied the premiership of living poets, Warton certainly deserved it. He was a head and shoulders taller than his actual contemporaries.[16] He stood in the gap between the old school and the new, between the dead and the coming. Goldsmith and Johnson were no more; Cowper did not print his "Task" until the autumn of 1785; Burns made his début about the same moment; Rogers published his "Ode to Superstition" the next year; the famous "Fourteen Sonnets" of Bowles came two years later; while Wordsworth and Landor made their first appearance in 1793. Fortunate thus in time, Warton was equally fortunate in politics. He was an Oxford Tory, a firm believer in divine right and passive obedience, and a warm supporter of the new ministers. To the King, it may be added, no nomination could have given greater satisfaction. The official odes of Warton evince all the elegant traits which characterize his other writings. Their refined taste and exquisite modulation are admirable; while the matter is far less sycophantic than was to be expected from so devout a monarchist. The tender of the laurel certainly gratified him:--

"Yet still one joy remains, that not obscure Nor useless all my vacant days have flowed, From youth's gay dawn to manhood's prime mature, Nor with the Muse's laurel unbestowed."[17]

And, like Southey, he was not indisposed to enhance the dignity of the wreath by classing Chaucer and Spenser, as we have seen, among its wearers. The genuine claims of Warton to respect probably saved him from the customary attacks. Bating a few bungling thrusts amid the doggerel of "Peter Pindar," he escaped scathless,--gaining, on the other hand, a far more than ordinary proportion of poetical panegyric.

"Affection and applause alike he shared; All loved the man, all venerate the bard: E'en Prejudice his fate afflicted hears, And lettered Envy sheds reluctant tears. Such worth the laurel could alone repay, Profaned by Cibber, and contemned by Gray; Yet hence its Breath shall new distinction claim, And, though it gave not, take from Warton fame."[18]

The last of Warton's odes was written in his last illness, and performed three days after his death. Appositely enough, it was an invocation to Health, meriting more than ordinary praise for eloquent fervor. Warton died May 21st, 1790. The laurel was vacant for a month, when Henry James Pye was gazetted. There was hardly a hungry placeman in London who had not as just pretensions to the honor. What poetical gifts he had displayed had been in school or college exercises. His real claims consisted in having spent a fortune in electioneering for ministers; and these claims being pressed with unusual urgency at the moment of Warton's death, he was offered the Laureateship as satisfaction in part.[19] He eagerly accepted it, and received the balance two years later in the shape of a commission as Police Magistrate of Middlesex. Thereafter, like Henry Fielding, or Gilbert A'Beckett, he divided his days between penal law and polite literature. His version of the "Poetics" of Aristotle, with illustrations drawn liberally from recent authors, was perhaps begotten of a natural wish to satisfy the public that qualifications for the laurel were not wholly wanting. A barren devotion to the drama was always his foible. It was freely indulged. With few exceptions, his plays were affairs of partnership with Samuel James Arnold, a writer of ephemeral popularity, whose tale of "The Haunted Island" was wildly admired by readers of the intensely romantic school, but whose tragedies, melodramas, comedies, farces, operas, are now forgotten. In addition to these auxiliary labors, which ripened yearly, Pye tried his hand at an epic,--the subject, King Alfred,--the plot and treatment not greatly differing from those which Blackmore brought to the same enterprise. The poem passed at once from the bookshop to the trunk-maker,--not, however, before an American publisher was found daring enough to reprint it. There are also to be mentioned translations from Pindar, Horace, and other classics, for Sharpe's edition of the British Poets, a collection to which he lent editorial aid. "Poet Pye"[20] was fortunate in escaping contemporary wit and satire. Gifford alluded to him, but Gifford's Toryism was security that no Tory Court-Poet would be roughly handled. Byron passed him in silence. The Smiths treated him as respectfully as they treated anybody. Moore's wit at the expense of the Regent and his courtiers had only found vent in the "Two-Penny Post-Bag" when Pye was gathered to his predecessors.

That calamity occurred in August, 1813. With it ended the era of birthday songs and New-Year's verses. The King was mad; his nativity was therefore hardly a rational topic of rejoicing. The Prince Regent had no taste for the solemn inanity of stipulated ode, the performance of which only served to render insufferably tedious the services of the two occasions in the year when imperative custom demanded his attendance at the Chapel. Consultation was had with John Wilson Croker, Secretary of the Admiralty. Croker's sharp common-sense at once suggested the abolition of the Laureate duties, but the retention of the office as a sinecure. Walter Scott, to whom the place was offered, as the most popular of living poets, seconded the counsel of Croker, but declined the appointment, as beneath the dignity of the intended founder of a long line of border knights. He recommended Southey. He had already recommended Southey to the "Quarterly," and through the "Quarterly" to Croker, then and still its most brilliant contributor; and this second instance of disinterested kindness was equally efficacious. Southey was appointed. The tierce of Canary ceased to be a perquisite of the office, the Laureate disclaiming it; and instead of annual odes upon set occasions, such effusions as the poet might choose to offer at the suggestion of passing events were to be accepted as the sum of official duty. These were to be said or read, not sung,--a change that completed the radical revolution of the office.

However important the salary of a hundred pounds may have been to Southey, it is very sure that the laurel seemed to infuse all its noxious and poisonous juices into his literary character. His vanity, like Whitehead's, led him to regard his chaplet as the reward of unrivalled merit. His study-chair was glorified, and became a throne. His supremacy in poetry was as indubitable as the king's supremacy in matters ecclesiastical. He felt himself constrained to eliminate utterly from his conscience whatever traces of early republicanism, pantisocracy, and heresy still disfigured it; and to conform unreservedly to the exactest requirements of high Toryism in politics and high Churchism in religion. He was in the pay and formed a part of the government; could he do else than toil mightily in his department for the service of a master who had so sagaciously anticipated the verdict of posterity, as to declare him, who was the least popular, the greatest of living poets? He found it a duty to assume a rigid censorship over as many of his Majesty's lieges as were addicted to verse,--to enact the functions of minister of literary police,--to reprehend the levity of Moore, the impiety of Byron, the democracy of Leigh Hunt, the unhappy lapse of Hazlitt, the drunkenness of Lamb. Assumptions so open to ridicule, and so disparaging to far abler men, told as disadvantageously upon his fame as upon his character. He became the butt of contemporary satire. Horace Smith, Moore, Shelley, Byron, lampooned him savagely. The latter made him the hero of his wicked "Vision of Judgment," and to him dedicated his "Don Juan." The dedication was suppressed; but no chance offered in the body of that profligate rhapsody to assail Bob Southey, that was not vigorously employed. The self-content of the Laureate armed him, however, against every thrust. Contempt he interpreted as envy of his sublime elevation:--

"Grin, Envy, through thy ragged mask of scorn! In honor it was given; with honor it is worn."

Of course such matchless self-complacency defied assault.

Southey's congratulatory odes appeared as often as public occasion seemed to demand them. There were in rapid succession the "Ode to the Regent," the "Carmen Triumphale," the "Pilgrimage to Waterloo," the "Vision of Judgment," the "Carmen Nuptiale," the "Ode on the Death of the Princess Charlotte." The "Quarterly" exalted them, one and all; the "Edinburgh" poured upon them volleys of keen but ineffectual ridicule. At last the Laureate desisted. The odes no longer appeared; and during the long and dark closing years of his life, the only production of the Laureate pen was the yearly signature to a receipt for one hundred pounds sterling, official salary.

Robert Southey died in March, 1843. Sir Robert Peel, who had obliged Wordsworth the year before, by transferring the post in the excise, which he had so long held, to the poet's son, and substituting a pension for its salary, testified further his respect for the Bard of Rydal by tendering him the laurel. It was not to be refused. Had the office been hampered with any demands upon the occupant for popular lyric, in celebration of notable events, Wordsworth was certainly the last man to place in it. His frigid nature was incapable of that prompt enthusiasm, without which, poetry, especially poetry responsive to some strong emotion momentarily agitating the popular heart, is lifeless and worthless. Fortunately, there were no such exactions. The office had risen from its once low estate to be a dignified sinecure. As such, Wordsworth filled it; and, dying, left it without one poetical evidence of having worn the wreath.

To him, in May, 1850, succeeded, who, as the most acceptable poet of the day, could alone rightly succeed, Alfred Tennyson, the actual Poet-Laureate. Not without opposition. There were those who endeavored to extinguish the office, and hang up the laurel forever,--and to that end brought pregnant argument to bear upon government. "The Times" was more than usually decided in favor of the policy of extinguishment. Give the salary, it was urged, as a pension to some deserving writer of verse, whose necessities are exacting; but abolish a title degraded by association with names and uses so unworthy, as to confer shame, not honor, on the wearer. The laurel is presumed to be granted to the ablest living English poet. What vocation have the Tite Barnacles, red-tapists, vote-mongers, of Downing Street to discriminate and determine this supreme poetical excellence, in regard to which the nicest critics, or the most refined and appreciative reading public may reasonably differ among themselves as widely as the stars? On the other hand, it was argued, that the laurel had, from its last two wearers, recovered its lost dignity. They had lent it honor, which it could not fail to confer upon any survivor, however great his name. If, then, the old odium had disappeared, why not retain the place for the sake of the ancient worthies whom tradition had handed down as at one time or another connected with it? There was rarely difficulty in selecting from among contemporary poets one of preëminent talent, whose elevation to the laurel would offend none of his fellows. There was certainly no difficulty in the present case. There was palpable evidence that Tennyson was by all admission the hierophant of his order; and it would be time enough to dispense with the title when a future occasion should be at a loss to decide among contending candidates. The latter reasoning prevailed. Tennyson accepted the laurel, and with it a self-imposed obligation to make occasional acknowledgments for the gift.

The first opportunity presented itself in the issue of a fresh edition of his poems, in 1851. To these he prefixed some noble verses, dedicating the volumes to the Queen, and referring with as much delicacy as modesty to his place and his predecessor:--

"Victoria,--since your royal grace To one of less desert allows This laurel, greener from the brows Of him that uttered nothing base."--

The next occasion was of a different order. The hero of Waterloo ended his long life in 1852, and a nation was in mourning. Then, if ever, poets, whether laurelled or leafless, were called to give eloquent utterance to the popular grief; and Tennyson, of all the poets, was looked to for its highest expression. The Threnode of the Laureate was duly forthcoming. The public was, as it had no right to be, disappointed. Tennyson's Muse was ever a wild and wilful creature, defiant of rules, and daringly insubordinate to arbitrary forms. It could not, with the witling in the play, cap verses with any man. The moment its tasks were dictated and the form prescribed, that moment there was ground to expect the self-willed jade to play a jade's trick, and leave us with no decent results of inspiration. For odes and sonnets, and other such Procrustean moulds into which poetic thought is at times cast, Tennyson had neither gift nor liking. When, therefore, with the Duke's death, came a sudden demand upon his Muse, and that in shape so solemn as to forbid, as the poet conceived, any fanciful license of invention, the Pindaric form seemed inevitable; and that form rendered a fair exhibition of the poet's peculiar genius out of the question. Strapped up in prescription, and impelled to move by official impulse, his Pegasus was as awkward as a cart-horse. And yet men did him the justice to say that his failure out-topped the success of others.

Far better--indeed, with the animating thrill of the war-trumpet--was "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and simply because the topic admitted of whatever novelty of treatment the bias of the bard might devise. This is the Laureate's most successful attempt at strictly popular composition. It proves him to possess the stuff of a Tyrtaeus or a Körner,--something vastly more stirring and stimulating than the usual staple of

"The dry-tongued laurel's pattering talk."[21]

Howbeit, late may he have call for another war-song!

With the name of Tennyson we reach the term of our Laureate calendar. Long ages and much perilously dry research must he traverse who shall enlarge these outlines to the worthier proportions of history. Yet will the labor not be wholly barren. It will bring him in contact with all the famous of letters and poetry; he will fight over again numberless quarrels of authors; he will soar in boundless Pindaric flights, or sink, sooth to say, in unfathomed deeps of bathos. With one moral he will be profoundly impressed: Of all the more splendid results of genius which adorn our language and literature,--for the literature of the English language is ours,--not one owes its existence to the laurel; not one can be directly or indirectly traced to royal encouragement, or the stimulus of salary or stipend. The laurel, though ever green, and throwing out blossoms now and then of notable promise, has borne no fruit. We might strike from the language all that is ascribable solely to the honor and emolument of this office, without inflicting a serious loss upon letters. The masques of Jonson would be regretted; a few lines of Tennyson would be missed. For the rest, we might readily console ourselves. It may certainly be urged, that the laurel was designed rather as a reward than as a provocative of merit; but the allegation has become true only within the last half-century. Antecedently to Southey, it was the consideration for which return in poetry was demanded,--in the first instance, a return in dramatic poetry, and then in the formal lyric. It was put forth as the stimulus to works good in their several kinds, and it may be justly complained of for never having provoked any good works. To represent it as a reward commensurate with the merits of Wordsworth and Tennyson, or even of Southey, is to rate three first-class names in modern poetry on a level with the names of those third-rate "poetillos" who, during the eighteenth century, obtained the same reward for two intolerable effusions yearly. Upon the whole, therefore, we incline to the opinion that the laurel can no longer confer honor or profit upon literature. Sack is palatable, and a hundred pounds are eminently useful; but the arbitrary judgments of queens and courtiers upon poetical issues are neither useful nor palatable. The world may, in fact, contrive to content itself, should King Alfred prove the last of the Laureates.

[Footnote 1: Schol. Vet. ad Nem. Od. 5.]

[Footnote 2: Commentators agree, we believe, that there was an error as to the sum. But we tell the story as we find it.]

[Footnote 3: DRYDEN, Epistle to Wm. Congreve, 1693.]

[Footnote 4: The Threnodia Augustalis, 1685, where the eulogy is equitably distributed between the dead Charles and the living James.]

[Footnote 5: Dr. Johnson tells the story of Rowe having applied to Lord Oxford for promotion, and being asked whether he understood Spanish. Elated with the prospect of an embassy to Madrid, Rowe hurried home, shut himself up, and for months devoted himself to the study of a language the possession of which was to make his fortune. At length, he reappeared at the Minister's levée and announced himself a Spanish scholar. "Then," said Lord Oxford, shaking his hand cordially, "let me congratulate you on your ability to enjoy Don Quixote, in the original." Johnson seems to throw doubt on the story, because Rowe would not even speak to a Tory, and certainly would not apply to a Tory minister for advancement. But Oxford was once a Whig, and was in office as such; and it was probably at that period the incident occurred.]

[Footnote 6: Battle of the Poets, 1725.]

[Footnote 7:

"Harmonious Cibber entertains The court with annual birthday strains, Whence Gay was banished in disgrace, Where Pope will never show his face, Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension."

SWIFT, _Poetry, a Rhapsody,_ 1733.]

[Footnote 8:

"Know, Eusden thirsts no more for sack or praise; He sleeps among the dull of ancient days; Where wretched Withers, Ward, and Gildon rest, And high-born Howard, more majestic sire, With fool of quality completes the choir. Thou, Cibber! thou his laurel shalt support; Folly, my son, has still a friend at court."

_Dunciad_, Bk. I.

Warburton, by-the-by, exculpates Eusden from any worse fault, as a writer, than being too prolix and too prolific.--See Note to Dunciad, Bk. II. 291.]

[Footnote 9: Duck stands at the head of the prodigious school in English literature. All the poetical bricklayers, weavers, cobblers, farmer's boys, shepherds, and basket-makers, who have since astonished their day and generation, hail him as their general father.]

[Footnote 10: The antiquary may be pleased to know that the "Devil" tavern in Fleet Street, the old haunt of the dramatists, was the place where the choir of the Chapel Royal gathered to rehearse the Laureate odes. Hence Pope, at the close of Dunciad I.,

"Then swells the Chapel-Royal throat; 'God save King Cibber!' mounts in every note. Familiar White's 'God save King Colley!' cries; 'God save King Colley!' Drury-Lane replies;"]

[Footnote 11:

"On his own works with laurel crowned, Neatly and elegantly bound,-- For this is one of many rules With writing Lords and laureate fools, And which forever must succeed With other Lords who cannot read, However destitute of wit, To make their works for bookcase fit,-- Acknowledged master of those seats, Cibber his birthday odes repeats."

CHURCHILL, _The Ghost_.]

[Footnote 12: Swift charges Colley with having wronged Grub Street, by appropriating to himself all the money Britain designed for its poets:--

"Your portion, taking Britain round, Was just one annual hundred pound; Now not so much as in remainder, Since Cibber brought in an attainder, Forever fixed by right divine, A monarch's right, on Grub-Street line."

_Poetry, a Rhapsody_, 1733.]

[Footnote 13: Whatever momentary benefit may result from satire, it is clear that its influence in the long run is injurious to literature. The satirist, like a malignant Archimago, creates a false medium, through which posterity is obliged to look at his contemporaries,--a medium which so refracts and distorts their images, that it is almost out of the question to see them correctly. There is no rule, as in astronomy, by which this refraction may be allowed for and corrected.]

[Footnote 14: London, 1749, 8vo.]

[Footnote 15: Charge to the Poets, 1762.]

[Footnote 16: If the reader cares to hear the best that can be said of Thomas Warton, let him read the Life of Milton, prefixed by Sir Egerton Brydges to his edition of the poet. If he has any curiosity to hear the other side, let him read all that Ritson ever wrote, and Dr. Charles Symnions, in the Life of Milton, prefixed to the standard edition of the Prose Works, 1806. Symnions denies to Warton the possession of taste, learning, or sense. Certainly, to an American, the character of Joseph Warton, the brother of Thomas, is far more amiable. Joseph was as liberal as his brother was bigoted. While Thomas omits no chance of condemning Milton's republicanism, in his notes to the Minor Poems, Joseph is always disposed to sympathize with the poet. The same generous temper characterizes his commentary upon Dryden.]

[Footnote 17: Sonnet upon the River Lodon.]

[Footnote 18: Dr. Huddersford's Salmagundi.]

[Footnote 19: One of the earlier poems of Alexander Wilson, the ornithologist, was entitled, The Laurel Disputed, and was published in 1791. We have not met with it; but we apprehend, from title and date, that it is a jeu d'esprit, founded upon the recent appointment. The poetry of Wilson was characterized by much original humor.]

[Footnote 20:

"Come to our fête, and show again That pea-green coat, thou pink of men! Which charmed all eyes, that last surveyed it; When Brummel's self inquired, 'Who made it?' When Cits came wondering from the East, And thought thee Poet Pye at least." Two-Penny Post-Bag, 1812.]

[Footnote 21: TENNYSON, Maud.]

WATER-LILIES.

The inconstant April mornings drop showers or sunbeams over the glistening lake, while far beneath its surface a murky mass disengages itself from the muddy bottom, and rises slowly through the waves. The tasselled alder-branches droop above it; the last year's blackbird's nest swings over it in the grapevine; the newly-opened Hepaticas and Epigaeas on the neighboring bank peer down modestly to look for it; the water-skater (Gerris) pauses on the surface near it, casting on the shallow bottom the odd shadow of his feet, like three pairs of boxing-gloves; the Notonecta, or water-boatman, rows round and round it, sometimes on his breast, sometimes on his back; queer caddis-worms trail their self-made homesteads of leaves or twigs beside it; the Dytiscus, dorbug of the water, blunders clumsily against it; the tadpole wriggles his stupid way to it, and rests upon it, meditating of future frogdom; the passing wild-duck dives and nibbles at it; the mink and musk-rat brush it with their soft fur; the spotted turtle slides over it; the slow larvae of gauzy dragon-flies cling sleepily to its sides and await their change: all these fair or uncouth creatures feel, through the dim waves, the blessed longing of spring; and yet not one of them dreams that within that murky mass there lies a treasure too white and beautiful to be yet intrusted to the waves, and that for many a day that bud must yearn toward the surface, before, aspiring above it, as mortals to heaven, it meets the sunshine with the answering beauty of the Water-Lily.

Days and weeks have passed away; the wild-duck has flown onward, to dive for his luncheon in some remoter lake; the tadpoles have made themselves legs, with which they have vanished; the caddis-worms have sealed themselves up in their cylinders, and emerged again as winged insects; the dragon-flies have crawled up the water-reeds, and, clinging with heads upward, (not downward, as strangely described in a late "North British Review,") have undergone the change which symbolizes immortality; the world is transformed from spring to summer; the lily-buds are opened into glossy leaf and radiant flower, and we have come for the harvest.

We lodged, last night, in the old English phrase, "at the sign of the Oak and Star." Wishing, not, indeed, like the ancient magicians, to gather magic berry and bud before sunrise, but at least to see these treasures of the lake in their morning hour, we camped last night on a little island, which one tall tree almost covers with its branches, while a dense undergrowth of young chestnuts and birches fills all the intervening space, touching the water all around the circular, shelving shore. Yesterday was hot, but the night was cool, and we kindled a gypsy fire of twigs, less for warmth than for society. The first gleam made the dark lonely islet into a cheering home, turned the protecting tree to a starlit roof, and the chestnut-sprays to illuminated walls. Lying beneath their shelter, every fresh flickering of the fire kindled the leaves into brightness and banished into dark interstices the lake and sky; then the fire died into embers, the leaves faded into solid darkness in their turn, and water and heavens showed light and close and near, until fresh twigs caught fire and the blaze came up again. Rising to look forth, at intervals, during the night,--for it is the worst feature of a night out-doors, that sleeping seems such a waste of time,--we watched the hilly and wooded shores of the lake sink into gloom and glimmer into dawn again, amid the low plash of waters and the noises of the night.

Precisely at half-past three, a song-sparrow above our heads gave one liquid trill, so inexpressibly sudden and delicious, that it seemed to set to music every atom of freshness and fragrance that Nature held; then the spell was broken, and the whole shore and lake were vocal with song. Joining in this jubilee of morning, we were early in motion; bathing and breakfast, though they seemed indisputably in accordance with the instincts of the Universe, yet did not detain us long, and we were promptly on our way to Lily Pond. Will the reader join us?

It is one of those summer days when a veil of mist gradually burns away before the intense sunshine, and the sultry morning only plays at coolness, and that with its earliest visitors alone. But we are before the sunlight, though not before the sunrise, and can watch the pretty game of alternating mist and shine. Stray gleams of glory lend their trailing magnificence to the tops of chestnut-trees, floating vapors raise the outlines of the hills and make mystery of the wooded islands, and, as we glide through the placid water, we can sing, with the Chorus in the "Ion" of Euripides, "O immense and brilliant air, resound with our cries of joy!"

Almost every town has its Lily Pond, dear to boys and maidens, and partially equalizing, by its annual delights, the presence or absence of other geographical advantages. Ours is accessible from the larger lake only by taking the skiff over a narrow embankment, which protects our fairyland by its presence, and eight distant factories by its dam. Once beyond it, we are in a realm of dark Lethean water, utterly unlike the sunny depths of the main lake. Hither the water-lilies have retreated, to a domain of their own. Darker than these dark waves, there stand in their bosom hundreds of submerged trees, and dismasted roots still upright, spreading their vast, uncouth limbs like enormous spiders beneath the surface. They are remnants of border wars with the axe, vegetable Witheringtons, still fighting on their stumps, but gradually sinking into the soft ooze, and ready, perhaps, when a score of centuries has piled two more strata of similar remains in mud above them, to furnish foundations for a newer New Orleans; that city having been lately discovered to be thus supported.

The present decline in business is clear revenue to the water-lilies, and these waters are higher than usual because the idle factories do not draw them off. But we may notice, in observing the shores, that peculiar charm of water, that, whether its quantity be greater or less, its grace is the same; it makes its own boundary in lake or river, and where its edge is, there seems the natural and permanent margin. And the same natural fitness, without reference to mere quantity, extends to its children. Before us lie islands and continents of lilies, acres of charms, whole, vast, unbroken surfaces of stainless whiteness. And yet, as we approach them, every islanded cup that floats in lonely dignity, apart from the multitude, appears as perfect in itself, couched in white expanded perfection, its reflection taking a faint glory of pink that is scarcely perceptible in the flower. As we glide gently among them, the air grows fragrant, and a stray breeze flaps the leaves, as if to welcome us. Each floating flower becomes suddenly a ship at anchor, or rather seems beating up against the summer wind, in a regatta of blossoms.

Early as it is, the greater part of the flowers are already expanded. Indeed, that experience of Thoreau's, of watching them open in the first sunbeams, rank by rank, is not easily obtained, unless perhaps in a narrow stream, where the beautiful slumberers are more regularly marshalled. In our lake, at least, they open irregularly, though rapidly. But, this morning, many linger as buds, while others peer up, in half-expanded beauty, beneath the lifted leaves, frolicsome as Pucks or baby-nymphs. As you raise the leaf, in such cases, it is impossible not to imagine that a pair of tiny hands have upheld it, or else that the pretty head will dip down again, and disappear. Others, again, have expanded all but the inmost pair of white petals, and these spring apart at the first touch of the finger on the stem. Some spread vast vases of fragrance, six or seven inches in diameter, while others are small and delicate, with petals like fine lace-work. Smaller still, we sometimes pass a flotilla of infant leaves, an inch in diameter. All these grow from the deep, dark water,--and the blacker it is, the fairer their whiteness shows. But your eye follows the stem often vainly into those sombre depths, and vainly seeks to behold Sabrina fair, sitting with her twisted braids of lilies, beneath the glassy, cool, but not translucent wave. Do not start, when, in such an effort, only your own dreamy face looks back upon you, beyond the gunwale of the reflected boat, and you find that you float double, self and shadow.

Let us rest our paddles, and look round us, while the idle motion sways our light skiff onward, now half-embayed among the lily-pads, now lazily gliding over intervening gulfs. There is a great deal going on in these waters and their fringing woods and meadows. All the summer long, the pond is bordered with successive walls of flowers. In early spring emerge the yellow catkins of the swamp-willow, first; then the long tassels of the graceful alders expand and droop, till they weep their yellow dust upon the water; then come the birch-blossoms, more tardily; then the downy leaves and white clusters of the medlar or shadbush (_Amelanchier Canadensis_ of Gray); these dropping, the roseate chalices of the mountain-laurel open; as they fade into melancholy brown, the sweet Azalea uncloses; and before its last honeyed blossom has trailed down, dying, from the stem, the more fragrant Clethra starts out above, the button-bush thrusts forth its merry face amid wild roses, and the Clematis waves its sprays of beauty. Mingled with these grow, lower, the spiraeas, white and pink, yellow touch-me-not, fresh white arrowhead, bright blue vervain and skullcap, dull snakehead, gay monkey-flower, coarse eupatoriums, milk-weeds, golden-rods, asters, thistles, and a host beside. Beneath, the brilliant scarlet cardinal-flower begins to palisade the moist shores; and after its superb reflection has passed away from the waters, the grotesque witch-hazel flares out its narrow yellow petals amidst the October leaves, and so ends the floral year. There is not a week during all these months, when one cannot stand in the boat and wreathe garlands of blossoms from the shores.

These all crowd around the brink, and watch, day and night, the opening and closing of the water-lilies. Meanwhile, upon the waters, our queen keeps her chosen court, nor can one of these mere land-loving blossoms touch the hem of her garment. In truth, she bears no sister near her throne. There is but this one species among us, Nymphaea odorata. The beautiful little rose-colored Nymphaea sanguinea, which once adorned the Botanic Garden at Cambridge, was merely an occasional variety of costume. She has, indeed, an English half-sister, Nymphaea alba, less beautiful, less fragrant, but keeping more fashionable hours,--not opening (according to Linnaeus) till seven, nor closing till four. Her humble cousin, the yellow Nuphar, keeps commonly aloof, as becomes a poor relation, though created from the selfsame mud,--a fact which Hawthorne has beautifully moralized. The prouder Nelumbium, a second-cousin, lineal descendant of the sacred bean of Pythagoras, keeps aloof, through pride, not humility, and dwells, like a sturdy democrat, in the Far West.

But, undisturbed, the water-lily keeps her fragrant court, with few attendants. The tall pickerel-weed (Pontederia) is her gentleman-usher, gorgeous in blue and gold through July, somewhat rusty in August. The water-shield (Hydropeltis) is chief maid-of-honor; she is a highborn lady, not without royal blood indeed, but with rather a bend sinister; not precisely beautiful, but very fastidious; encased over her whole person with a gelatinous covering, literally a starched duenna. Sometimes she is suspected of conspiring to drive her mistress from the throne; for we have observed certain slow watercourses where the leaves of the water-lily have been almost wholly replaced by the similar, but smaller, leaves of the water-shield. More rarely seen is the slender Utricularia, a dainty maiden, whose light feet scarce touch the water,--with the still more delicate floating white Water-Ranunculus, and the shy Villarsia, whose submerged flowers merely peep one day above the surface and then close again forever. Then there are many humbler attendants, Potamogetons or pond-weeds. And here float little emissaries from the dominions of land; for the fallen florets of the Viburnum drift among the lily-pads, with mast-like stamens erect, sprinkling the water with a strange beauty, and cheating us with the promise of a new aquatic flower.

These are the still life of this sequestered nook; but it is in fact a crowded thoroughfare. No tropic jungle more swarms with busy existence than these midsummer waters and their bushy banks. The warm and humming air is filled with insect sounds, ranging from the murmur of invisible gnats and midges, to the impetuous whirring of the great Libellulae, large almost as swallows, and hawking high in air for their food. Swift butterflies glance by, moths flutter, flies buzz, grasshoppers and katydids pipe their shrill notes, sharp as the edges of the sunbeams. Busy bees go humming past, straight as arrows, express-freight-trains from one blossoming copse to another. Showy wasps of many species fume uselessly about, in gallant uniforms, wasting an immense deal of unnecessary anger on the sultry universe. Graceful, stingless Sphexes and Ichneumon-flies emulate their bustle, without their weapons. Delicate lady-birds come and go to the milkweeds, spotted almost as regularly as if Nature had decided to number the species, like policemen or hack-drivers, from one to twenty. Elegant little Lepturae fly with them, so gay and airy, they hardly seem like beetles. Phryganeae, (_nés_ caddisworms,) laceflies, and long-tailed Ephemerae flutter more heavily by. On the large alder-flowers clings the superb Desmocerus palliatus, beautiful as a tropical insect, with his steel-blue armor and his golden cloak (_pallium_) above his shoulders, grandest knight on this Field of the Cloth of Gold. The countless fireflies which spangled the evening mist now only crawl sleepily, daylight creatures, with the lustre buried in their milky bodies. More wholly children of night, the soft, luxurious Sphinxes (or hawk-moths) come not here; fine ladies of the insect world, their home is among gardens and green-houses, late and languid by day, but all night long upon the wing, dancing in the air with unwearied muscles till long past midnight, and supping on honey at last. They come not here; but the nobler butterflies soar above us, stoop a moment to the water, and then with a few lazy wavings of their sumptuous wings float far over the oak-trees to the woods they love.

All these hover near the water-lily; but its special parasites are an elegant beetle (_Donacia metallica_) which keeps house permanently in the flower, and a few smaller ones which tenant the surface of the leaves,--larva, pupa, and perfect insect, forty feeding like one, and each leading its whole earthly career on this floating island of perishable verdure. The "beautiful blue damsel-flies" alight also in multitudes among them, so fearless that they perch with equal readiness on our boat or paddle, and so various that two adjacent ponds will sometimes be haunted by two distinct sets of species. In the water, among the leaves, little shining whirlwigs wheel round and round, fifty joining in the dance, till, at the slightest alarm, they whirl away to some safer ballroom, and renew the merriment. On every floating log, as we approach it, there is a convention of turtles, sitting in calm debate, like mailed barons, till, as we approach, they plump into the water, and paddle away for some subaqueous Runnymede. Beneath, the shy and stately pickerel vanishes at a glance, shoals of minnows glide, black and bearded pouts frisk aimlessly, soft water-lizards hang poised without motion, and slender pickerel-frogs cease occasionally their submerged croaking, and, darting to the surface with swift vertical strokes, gulp a mouthful of fresh air, and down again to renew the moist soliloquy.

Time would fail us to tell of the feathered life around us,--the blackbirds that build securely in these thickets, the stray swallows that dip their wings in the quiet waters, and the kingfishers that still bring, as the ancients fabled, halcyon days. Yonder stands, against the shore, a bittern, motionless in that wreath of mist which makes his long-legged person almost as dim as his far-off booming by night. There poises a hawk, before sweeping down to some chosen bough in the dense forest; and there fly a pair of blue-jays, screaming, from tree to tree. As for wild quadrupeds, the race is almost passed away. Far to the North, indeed, the great moose still browses on the lily-pads, and the shy beaver nibbles them; but here the few lingering four-footed creatures only haunt, but do not graze upon these floating pastures. Eyes more favored than ours may yet chance to spy an otter in this still place; there by the shore are the small footprints of a mink; that dark thing disappearing in the waters, yonder, a soft mass of drowned fur, is a "musquash." Later in the season, a mound of earth will be his winter dwelling-place; and those myriad muscle-shells at the water's edge are the remnant of his banquets,--once banquets for the Indians, too.

But we must return to our lilies. There is no sense of wealth like floating in this archipelago of white and green. The emotions of avarice become almost demoralizing. Every flower bears a fragrant California in its bosom, and you feel impoverished at the thought of leaving one behind. But after the first half-hour of eager grasping, one becomes fastidious, rather scorns those on which the wasps and flies have alighted, and seeks only the stainless. But handle them tenderly, as if you loved them. Do not grasp at the open flower as if it were a peony or a hollyhock, for then it will come off, stalkless, in your hand, and you will cast it blighted upon the water; but coil your thumb and second finger affectionately around it, press the extended forefinger firmly to the stem below, and with one steady pull you will secure a long and delicate stalk, fit to twine around the graceful head of your beloved, as the Hindoo goddess of beauty encircled with a Lotus the brow of Rama.

Consider the lilies. All over our rural watercourses, at midsummer, float these cups of snow. They are Nature's symbols of coolness. They suggest to us the white garments of their Oriental worshippers. They come with the white roses and prepare the way for the white lilies of the garden. The white doe of Rylstone and Andrew Marvell's fawn might fitly bathe amid their beauties. Yonder steep bank slopes down to the lake-side, one solid mass of pale pink laurel, but, once upon the water, a purer tint prevails. The pink fades into a lingering flush, and the white creature floats peerless, set in green without and gold within. That bright circle of stamens is the very ring with which Doges once wedded the Adriatic, Venice has lost it, but it dropped into the water-lily's bosom, and there it rests forever. So perfect in form, so redundant in beauty, so delicate, so spotless, so fragrant,--what presumptuous lover ever dared, in his most enamored hour, to liken his mistress to a water-lily? No human Blanche or Lilian was ever so fair as that.

The water-lily comes of an ancient and sacred family of white-robed priests. They assisted at the most momentous religious ceremonies, from the beginning of recorded time. The Egyptian Lotus was a sacred plant; it was dedicated to Harpocrates and to the god Nofr Atmoo,--Nofr meaning good, whence the name of our yellow lily, Nuphar. But the true Egyptian flower was Nymphaea Lotus, though Nymphaea caerulea, Moore's "blue water-lilies," can be traced on the sculptures also. It was cultivated in tanks in the gardens; it was the chief material for festal wreaths; a single bud hung over the forehead of many a queenly dame; and the sculptures represent the weary flowers as dropping from the heated hands of belles, in the later hours of the feast. Rock softly on the waters, fair lilies! your Eastern kindred have rocked on the stormier bosom of Cleopatra. The Egyptian Lotus was, moreover, the emblem of the sacred Nile,--as the Hindoo species, of the sacred Ganges; and both the one and the other was held the symbol of the creation of the world from the waters. The sacred bull Apis was wreathed with its garlands; there were niches for water, to place it among tombs; it was carved in the capitals of columns; it was represented on plates and vases; the sculptures show it in many sacred uses, even as a burnt-offering; Isis holds it; and the god Nilus still binds a wreath of water-lilies around the throne of Memnon.

From Egypt the Lotus was carried to Assyria, and Layard found it among fir-cones and honeysuckles on the later sculptures of Nineveh. The Greeks dedicated it to the nymphs, whence the name Nymphaea. Nor did the Romans disregard it, though the Lotus to which Ovid's nymph Lotis was changed, servato nomine, was a tree, and not a flower. Still different a thing was the enchanted stem of the Lotus-eaters of Herodotus, which prosaic botanists have reduced to the Zizyphus Lotus found by Mungo Park, translating also the yellow Lotus-dust into a mere "farina, tasting like sweet gingerbread."

But in the Lotus of Hindostan we find our flower again, and the Oriental sacred books are cool with water-lilies. Open the Vishnu Purana at any page, and it is a Sortes Lilianae. The orb of the earth is Lotus-shaped, and is upborne by the tusks of Vesava, as if he had been sporting in a lake where the leaves and blossoms float. Brahma, first incarnation of Vishnu, creator of the world, was born from a Lotus; so was Sri or Lakshmu, the Hindoo Venus, goddess of beauty and prosperity, protectress of womanhood, whose worship guards the house from all danger. "Seated on a full-blown Lotus, and holding a Lotus in her hand, the goddess Sri, radiant with beauty, rose from the waves." The Lotus is the chief ornament of the subterranean Eden, Patala, and the holy mountain Meru is thought to be shaped like its seed-vessel, larger at summit than at base. When the heavenly Urvasi fled from her earthly spouse, Purúvavas, he found her sporting with four nymphs of heaven, in a lake beautified with the Lotus. When the virtuous Prahlada was burned at the stake, he cried to his cruel father, "The fire burneth me not, and all around I behold the face of the sky, cool and fragrant with beds of Lotus-flowers!" Above all, the graceful history of the transformations of Krishna is everywhere hung with these fresh chaplets. Every successive maiden whom the deity wooes is Lotus-eyed, Lotus-mouthed, or Lotus-cheeked, and the youthful hero wears always a Lotus-wreath. Also "the clear sky was bright with the autumnal moon, and the air fragrant with the perfume of the wild water-lily, in whose buds the clustering bees were murmuring their song."

Elsewhere we find fuller details. "In the primordial state of the world, the rudimental universe, submerged in water, reposed on the bosom of the Eternal. Brahma, the architect of the world, poised on a Lotus-leaf, floated upon the waters, and all that he was able to discern with his eight eyes was water and darkness. Amid scenes so ungenial and dismal, the god sank into a profound reverie, when he thus soliloquized: 'Who am I? Whence am I?' In this state of abstraction Brahma continued during the period of a century and a half of the gods, without apparent benefit or a solution of his inquiries, a circumstance which caused him great uneasiness of mind." It is a comfort, however, to know, that subsequently a voice came to him, on which he rose, "seated himself upon the Lotus in an attitude of contemplation, and reflected upon the Eternal, who soon appeared to him in the form of a man with a thousand heads": a questionable exchange for his Lotus-solitude.

This is Brahminism; but the other great form of Oriental religion has carried the same fair symbol with it. One of the Bibles of the Buddhists is named "The White Lotus of the Good Laer." A pious Nepaulese bowed in reverence before a vase of lilies which perfumed the study of Sir William Jones. At sunset in Thibet, the French missionaries tell us, every inhabitant of every village prostrates himself in the public square, and the holy invocation, "Oh, the gem in the Lotus!" goes murmuring over hill and valley, like the sound of many bees. It is no unmeaning phrase, but an utterance of ardent desire to be absorbed into that Brahma whose emblem is the sacred flower. The mystic formula or "mani" is imprinted on the pavement of the streets, it floats on flags from the temples, and the wealthy Buddhists maintain sculptor-missionaries, Old Mortalities of the water-lily, who, wandering to distant lands, carve the blessed words upon cliff and stone.

Having got thus far into Orientalism, we can hardly expect to get out again without some slight entanglement in philology. Lily-pads. Whence pads? No other leaf is identified with that singular monosyllable. Has our floating Lotus-leaf any connection with padding, or with a footpad? with the ambling pad of an abbot, or a paddle, or a paddock, or a padlock? with many-domed Padua proud, or with St. Patrick? Is the name derived from the Anglo-Saxon paad or petthian, or the Greek [Greek: pateo]? All the etymologists are silent; Tooke and Richardson ignore the problem; and of the innumerable pamphlets in the Worcester and Webster Controversy, loading the tables of school-committee-men, not one ventures to grapple with the lily-pad.

But was there ever a philological trouble for which the Sanscrit could not afford at least a conjectural cure? A dictionary of that extremely venerable tongue is an ostrich's stomach, which can crack the hardest etymological nut. The Sanscrit name for the Lotus is simply Padma. The learned Brahmins call the Egyptian deities Padma Devi, or Lotus-Gods; the second of the eighteen Hindoo Puranas is styled the Padma Purana, because it treats of the "epoch when the world was a golden Lotus"; and the sacred incantation which goes murmuring through Thibet is "Om mani padme houm." It would be singular, if upon these delicate floating leaves a fragment of our earliest vernacular has been borne down to us, so that here the schoolboy is more learned than the savans.

This lets us down easily to the more familiar uses of this plant divine. By the Nile, in early days, the water-lily was good not merely for devotion, but for diet. "From the seeds of the Lotus," said Pliny, "the Egyptians make bread." The Hindoos still eat the seeds, roasted in sand; also the stalks and roots. In South America, from the seeds of the Victoria (_Nymphaea Victoria_, now Victoria Regia) a farina is made, preferred to that of the finest wheat,--Bonpland even suggesting to our reluctant imagination Victoria-pies. But the European species are used, so far as we know, only in dyeing, and as food (if the truth be told) of swine. Our own water-lily is rather more powerful in its uses; the root contains tannin and gallic acid, and a decoction of it "gives a black precipitate, with sulphate of iron." It graciously consents to become an astringent, and a styptic, and a poultice, and, banished from all other temples, still lingers in those of AEsculapius.

The botanist also finds his special satisfactions in our flower. It has some strange peculiarities of structure. So loose is the internal distribution of its tissues, that it was for some time held doubtful to which of the two great vegetable divisions, exogenous or endogenous, it belonged. Its petals, moreover, furnish the best example of the gradual transition of petals into stamens, --illustrating that wonderful law of identity which is the great discovery of modern science. Every child knows this peculiarity of the water-lily, but the extent of it seems to vary with season and locality, and sometimes one finds a succession of flowers almost entirely free from this confusion of organs.

Our readers may not care to know that the order of Nymphaeaceae "differs from Ranunculaceae in the consolidation of its carpels, from Papaveraceae in the placentation not being parietal, and from Nelumbiaceae in the want of a large truncated disc containing monospermous achenia"; but they may like to know that the water-lily has relations on land, in all gradations of society, from poppy to magnolia, and yet does not conform its habits precisely to those of any of them. Its great black roots, sometimes as large as a man's arm, form a network at the bottom of the water. Its stem floats, an airy four-celled tube, adapting itself to the depth, though never stiff in shallows, like the stalk of the yellow lily: and it contracts and curves when seed-time approaches, though not so ingeniously as the spiral threads of the European Vallisneria, which uncoil to let the flowers rise to the surface, and then cautiously retract, that the seeds may ripen on the very bottom of the lake. The leaves show beneath the magnifier beautiful adaptations of structure. They are not, like those of land-plants, constructed with deep veins to receive the rain and conduct it to the stem, but are smooth and glossy, and of even surface. The leaves of land-vegetation have also thousands of little breathing-pores, principally on the under side: the apple-leaf, for instance, has twenty-four thousand to a square inch. But here they are fewer; they are wholly on the upper side, and, whereas in other cases they open or shut according to the moisture of the atmosphere, here the greedy leaves, secure of moisture, scarcely deign to close them. Nevertheless, even these give some recognition of hygrometric necessities, and, though living on the water, and not merely christened with dewdrops like other leaves, but baptized by immersion all the time, they are yet known to suffer in drought and to take pleasure in the rain.

We have spoken of the various kindred of the water-lily; but we must not leave our fragrant subject without due mention of its most magnificent, most lovely relative, at first claimed even as its twin sister, and classed as a Nymphaea. We once lived near neighbor to a Victoria Regia. Nothing, in the world of vegetable existence, has such a human interest. The charm is not in the mere size of the plant, which disappoints everybody, as Niagara does, when tried by that sole standard. The leaves of the Victoria, indeed, attain a diameter of six feet; the largest flowers, of twenty-three inches,--less than four times the size of the largest of our water-lilies. But it is not the mere looks of the Victoria, it is its life which fascinates. It is not a thing merely of dimensions, nor merely of beauty, but a creature of vitality and motion. Those vast leaves expand and change almost visibly. They have been known to grow half an inch an hour, eight inches a day. Rising one day from the water, a mere clenched mass of yellow prickles, a leaf is transformed the next day to a crimson salver, gorgeously tinted on its upturned rim. Then it spreads into a raft of green, armed with long thorns, and supported by a frame-work of ribs and cross-pieces, an inch thick, and so substantial, that the Brazil Indians, while gathering the seed-vessels, place their young children on the leaves;--_yrupe_, or water-platter, they call the accommodating plant. But even these expanding leaves are not the glory of the Victoria; the glory is in the opening of the flower.

We have sometimes looked in, for a passing moment, at the green-house, its dwelling-place, during the period of flowering,--and then stayed for more than an hour, unable to leave the fascinating scene. After the strange flower-bud has reared its dark head from the placid tank, moving it a little, uneasily, like some imprisoned water-creature, it pauses for a moment in a sort of dumb despair. Then trembling again, and collecting all its powers, it thrusts open, with an indignant jerk, the rough calyx-leaves, and the beautiful disrobing begins. The firm, white, central cone, first so closely infolded, quivers a little, and swiftly, before your eyes, the first of the hundred petals detaches its delicate edges, and springs back, opening towards the water, while its white reflection opens to meet it from below. Many moments of repose follow,--you watch,--another petal trembles, detaches, springs open, and is still. Then another, and another, and another. Each movement is so quiet, yet so decided, so living, so human, that the radiant creature seems a Musidora of the water, and you almost blush with a sense of guilt, in gazing on that peerless privacy. As petal by petal slowly opens, there still stands the central cone of snow, a glacier, an alp, a jungfrau, while each avalanche of whiteness seems the last. Meanwhile, a strange rich odor fills the air, and Nature seems to concentrate all fascinations and claim all senses for this jubilee of her darling.

So pass the enchanted moments of the evening, till the fair thing pauses at last, and remains for hours unchanged. In the morning, one by one, those white petals close again, shutting all their beauty in, and you watch through the short sleep for the period of waking. Can this bright transfigured creature appear again, in the same chaste beauty? Your fancy can scarcely trust it, fearing some disastrous change; and your fancy is too true a prophet. Come again, after the second day's opening, and you start at the transformation which one hour has secretly produced. Can this be the virgin Victoria,--this thing of crimson passion, this pile of pink and yellow, relaxed, expanded, voluptuous, lolling languidly upon the water, never to rise again? In this short time every tint of every petal is transformed; it is gorgeous in beauty, but it is "Hebe turned to Magdalen."

But our rustic water-lily, our innocent Nymphaea, never claiming such a hot-house glory, never drooping into such a blush, blooms on placidly in the quiet waters, till she modestly folds her leaves for the last time, and bows her head beneath the surface forever. Next year she lives for us only in her children, fair and pure as herself.

Nay, not alone in them, but also in memory. The fair vision will not fade from us, though the paddle has dipped its last crystal drop from the waves, and the boat is drawn upon the shore. We may yet visit many lovely and lonely places,--meadows thick with violet, or the homes of the shy Rhodora, or those sloping forest-haunts where the slight Linnaea hangs its twin-born heads,--but no scene will linger on our vision like this annual Feast of the Lilies. On scorching mountains, amid raw prairie-winds, or upon the regal ocean, the white pageant shall come back to us again, with all the luxury of summer heats, and all the fragrant coolness that can relieve them. We shall fancy ourselves again among these fleets of anchored lilies,--again, like Urvasi, sporting amid the Lake of Lotuses.

For that which is remembered is often more vivid than that which is seen. The eye paints better in the presence, the heart in the absence, of the object most dear. "He who longs after beautiful Nature can best describe her," said Bettine; "he who is in the midst of her loveliness can only lie down and enjoy." It enhances the truth of the poet's verses, that he writes them in his study. Absence is the very air of passion, and all the best description is in memoriam. As with our human beloved, when the graceful presence is with us, we cannot analyze or describe, but merely possess, and only after its departure can it be portrayed by our yearning desires; so is it with Nature: only in losing her do we gain the power to describe her, and we are introduced to Art, as we are to Eternity, by the dropping away of our companions.

FIFTY AND FIFTEEN.

With gradual gleam the day was dawning, Some lingering stars were seen, When swung the garden-gate behind us,-- He fifty, I fifteen.

The high-topped chaise and old gray pony Stood waiting in the lane: Idly my father swayed the whip-lash, Lightly he held the rein.

The stars went softly back to heaven, The night-fogs rolled away, And rims of gold and crowns of crimson Along the hill-tops lay.

That morn, the fields, they surely never So fair an aspect wore; And never from the purple clover Such perfume rose before.

O'er hills and low romantic valleys And flowery by-roads through, I sang my simplest songs, familiar, That he might sing them too.

Our souls lay open to all pleasure,-- No shadow came between; Two children, busy with their leisure,-- He fifty, I fifteen.

*       *       *       *       *

As on my couch in languor, lonely, I weave beguiling rhyme, Comes back with strangely sweet remembrance That far-removed time.

The slow-paced years have brought sad changes, That morn and this between; And now, on earth, my years are fifty, And his, in heaven, fifteen.

ILLINOIS IN SPRING-TIME: WITH A LOOK AT CHICAGO.

I remember very well, that, when I studied the "Arabian Nights," with a devotion which I have since found it difficult to bestow on the perusal of better books, the thing that most excited my imagination was the enchanted locomotive carpet, granted by one of the amiable genii to his favorite, to whom it gave the power of being in a moment where nobody expected him, paying visits at the most unfashionable hours, and making himself generally ubiquitous when interest or curiosity prompted. The other wonders were none of them inexhaustible. Donkeys that talked after their heads were cut off, just as well as some donkeys do with them on,--old cats turned into beautiful damsels,--birds that obligingly carried rings between parted lovers,--one soon had enough of. Caves full of gold and silver, and lighted by gems resplendent as the stars, were all very well, but soon tired. After your imagination had selected a few rings and bracelets, necklaces and tiaras, and carried off one or two chests full of gold, what could it do with the rest,--especially as they might vanish or turn to pebbles or hazel-nuts in your caskets?

But flying carpets! They could never tire. You seated yourself just in the middle, in the easiest possible attitude, and at a wish you were off, (not off the carpet, but off this work-a-day world,) careering through sunny fields of air with the splendid buoyancy of the eagle, steering your intelligent vehicle by a mere thought, and descending, gently as a snow-flake, to garden-bower or palace-window, moonlit kiosk or silent mountain-peak, as whim suggested or affairs urged. This was magic indeed, and worthy the genii of any age.

The sense of reality with which I accepted this wonder of wonders has furnished forth many a dream, sleeping and waking, since those days; and it is no uncommon thing for me, even now, to be sailing through the air, feeling its soft waves against my face, and the delicious refreshment of the upper ether in my breast, only to wake as if I had dropped into bed with a celerity that made the arrival upon earth anything but pleasant. I am not sure but there is some reality in these flights, after all. These aërial journeys may be foretastes of those we shall make after we are freed from the incumbrance of avoirdupois. I hope so, at least.

Yet there are good things of the kind here below, too. After all, what were a magic carpet that could carry a single lucky wight,--at best, but a species of heavenly sulky,--compared with a railroad train that speeds along hundreds of men, women, and children, over land and water, with any amount of heavy baggage, as well as a boundless extent of crinoline? And if this equipage, gift of genii of our age, seem to lack some of the celerity and secrecy which attended the voyagers of the flying carpet, suppose we add the power of whispering to a friend a thousand miles off the inmost thoughts of the heart, the most desperate plans, the most dangerous secrets! Do not the two powers united leave the carpet immeasurably behind?

Shakspeare is said, in those noted lines,--

"Dear as the ruddy drops That visit this sad heart,"

to have anticipated the discovery of the circulation of the blood: did not the writers of the Oriental stories foresee rail and telegraph, and describe them in their own tropical style?

It is often said, that, although medical science leaves us pretty much as it found us with regard to the days of the years of our pilgrimage, and has as yet, with all its discoveries, done little towards prolonging "this pleasing, anxious being," yet the material improvements of our day do in effect lengthen mortal life for us. And truly, what must Indian life have been worth, when it took a month to cut down a tree with a stone hatchet, and when the shaping of a canoe was the work of a year? When two hundred miles of travel consumed a week's time, every two hundred miles' journey was worth a week's life; and if we accept the idea of a certain celebrated character, (not "Quintus Curtius," but Geoffrey Crayon, I believe,) that the time we spend in journeying is just so much subtracted from our little span of days, what a fearful loss of life must have resulted from our old modes of locomotion! And yet we inconsiderately grumble at an occasional smash-up! So easily are we spoiled!

There are grave doubts, however, in some minds, whether our present celerity of travel be wholly a gain upon the old methods. It must depend upon circumstances. If agreeable people virtually live longer now, so do bores, cheats, slanderers, hypocrites, and people who eat onions and chew tobacco; and the rail enables these to pursue their victims with inevitable, fatal swiftness.

Some hold that the pleasure of travelling is even impaired by this increase of speed. There is such a thing as fatal facility. As well eat a condensed dinner, or hear a concert in one comprehensive crash, ear-splitting and soul-confounding, as see miles of landscape at a glance. Willis says, travelling on an English railway is equivalent to having so many miles of green damask unrolled before your weary eyes. And one may certainly have too much of a good thing.

But, instead of discussing railroads in general,--too grand a theme for me,--let me say that nobody can persuade me it is not delightful to fly over ground scarcely yet trodden by the foot of man; to penetrate, with the most subtle resources of inventive art, the recesses in which Nature has enshrined herself most privately,--her dressing-room, as it were, where we find her in her freshness, before man-milliners have marred her beauty by attempts at improvement. The contrast between that miracle of art, a railroad-train at full speed, and a wide, lonely prairie, or a dusky forest, leafless, chilly, and silent,--save for the small tinkling of streams beginning to break from their frosty limits,--is one of the most striking in all the wide range of rural effects. It reminds me, though perhaps unaccountably to some, of Browning's fine image,--

"And ever and anon some bright white shaft Burnt through the pine-tree roof, here burnt and there, As if God's messenger through the close wood-screen Plunged and re-plunged his weapon at a venture."

Even where fields have begun to be tilled and houses and barns to be built, the scared flying of domestic animals at sound of the terrific visitor,--the resistless chariot of civilization with scythed axles mowing down ignorance and prejudice as it whirls along,--tells a whole story of change and wonder. We can almost see the shadows of the past escaping into the dim woods, or flitting over the boundless prairie, shivering at the fearful whistle, and seeking shelter from the wind of our darting.

The season for this romantic pleasure of piercing primeval Nature on the wings of subtilest Art is rapidly drawing to a close. How few penetrable regions can we now find where the rail-car is a novelty! The very cows and horses, in most places, know when to expect it, and hardly vouchsafe a sidelong glance as they munch their green dinner. A railroad to the Pacific may give excitement of this kind a somewhat longer date, but those who would enjoy the sensation on routes already in use must begin their explorings at once. There is no time to be lost. If we much longer spend all our summers in beating the changeless paths of the Old World, our chance for the fresh but fleeting delight I have been speaking of will have passed by, never to return. It were unwise to lose this, one of the few remaining avenues to a new sensation. Europe will keep; but the prairies will not, the woods will not, hardly the rivers. Already the flowery waving oceans of Illinois begin to abound in ships, or what seem such,--houses looming up from the horizon, like three-masters sometimes, sometimes schooners, and again little tentative sloops. These are creeping nearer and nearer together, filling and making commonplace those lovely deserts where the imagination can still find wings, and world-wearied thought a temporary repose. Where neighbors were once out of beacon-sight, they are now within bell-sound; and however pleasant this may be for the neighbors, it is not so good for the traveller, especially the traveller who has seen Europe. Only think of a virgin forest or prairie, after over-populated Belgium or finished England! Europeans understand the thing, and invariably rush for the prairies; but we Americans, however little we may have seen of either world, care little for the wonders of our own. Yet, when we go abroad, we cannot help blushing to acknowledge that we have not seen the most striking features of our own country. I speak from experience. Scott, describing the arid wastes of the Hebrides,--

"Placed far amid the melancholy main,"

and swept bare by wintry-cold sea-breezes, said,--

"Yes! 'twas sublime, but sad; the loneliness Loaded thy heart, the desert tired thine eye."

But how different the loneliness of a soft-waving prairie,--soft even before the new grass springs; soft in outline, in coloring, in its whispering silence! Nothing sad or harsh; no threat or repulsion; only mild hope, and promise of ease and abundance. Whether the glad flames sport amid the long dry grass of last year, or the plough turn up a deep layer of the exhaustless soil, or flocks of prairie-chickens fly up from every little valley, images of life, joy, and plenty belong to the scene. The summer flowers are not more cheerful than the spring blaze, the spring blackness of richness, or the spring whirr and flutter. The sky is alive with the return of migratory birds, swinging back and forth, as if hesitating where to choose, where all is good. Frogs hold noisy jubilees, ("Anniversary Meetings," perhaps,)--very hoarse, and no wonder, considering their damp lodging,--but singing, in words more intelligible than those of the opera-choruses, "Winter's gone! Spring's come! No, it isn't! Yes, it is!"--and the Ayes have it. The woodpecker's hammer helps the field-music, wherever he can find a tree. He seems to know the carpenter is coming, and he makes the most of his brief season. All is life, movement, freedom, joy. Not on the very Alps, where their black needles seem to dart into the blue depths, or snow-fields to mingle with the clouds, is the immediate, vital sympathy of Earth with Heaven more evident and striking.

The comparative ease with which prairie regions are prepared for the advent of the great steam-car is exactly typical of the facilities which they offer to other particulars of civilization. As the smoothing of the prairie path, preparatory to railway speed, is but short work, compared with the labor required in grading and levelling mountainous tracts for the same purpose, so the introduction of all that makes life desirable goes on with unexampled rapidity where the land requires no felling of heavy timber to make it ready for the plough, and where the soil is rich to such a depth that no man fears any need of new fertilizing in his life-time or his son's. We observe this difference everywhere in prairiedom; and it is perhaps this thought, this close interweaving of marked outward aspect with great human interests, that gives the prairie country its air of peculiar cheerfulness. To man the earth was given; for him its use and its beauty were created; it is his idea which endows it with expression, whether savage or kindly. Rocks and mountains suggest the force required to conquer difficulties, and the power with which the lord of creation is endowed to subdue them; and the chief charm and interest of such regions is derived, consciously or unconsciously, from this suggestion. Prairie images are more domestic, quiet, leisurely. No severe, wasting labor is demanded before corn and milk for wife and little ones are wrung from reluctant clods. No danger is there of sons or daughters being obliged to quit their homes and roam over foreign lands for a precarious and beggarly subsistence. No prairie-boy will ever carry about a hand-organ and a monkey, or see his sister yoked to the plough, by the side of horse or ox. Blessed be God that there are still places where grinding poverty is unfelt and unfeared! "Riches fineless" belong to these deep, soft fields, and they become picturesque by the thought, as the sea becomes so by the passing of a ship, and the burning desert by the foot-print of a traveller or the ashes of his fire.

It was in spring weather, neither cold nor warm, now and then shiny, and again spattering with a heavy shower, or misty under a warm, slow rain,--the snow still lying in little streaks under shady ridges,--that I first saw the prairies of Illinois. Everybody--kind everybody!--said, "Why didn't you come in June?" But I, not being a bird of the air, who alone travels at full liberty, the world before him where to choose and Providence his guide, cared not to answer this friendly query, but promised to be interested in the spring aspect of the prairies, after my fashion, as sincerely as more fastidious travellers can be in the summer one. It is very well to be prepared when company is expected, but friends may come at any time. "Brown fields and pastures bare" have no terrors for me. Green is gayer, but brown softer. Blue skies are not alone lovely; gray ones set them off--Rain enhances shine. Mud, to be sure;--but then railroads are the Napoleons of mud. Planks and platforms quench it completely. One may travel through tenacious seas of it without smirching one's boot-heel. There is even a feeling of triumph as we see it lying sulky and impotent on either side, while we bowl along dry-shod. When Noah and his family came out of the Ark, and found all "soft with the Deluge," it was very different. The prospect must have been discouraging. I thought of it as we went through, or rather over, the prairies. But if there had been in those days an Ararat Central, with good "incline" and stationary engine, they need not have sent out dove or raven, but might have started for home as soon as the rails shone in the sun and they could get the Ark on wheels. It would have been well to move carefully, to be sure; and it is odd to think what a journey they might have had, now and then stopping or switching-off because of a dead Mastodon across the track, or a panting Leviathan lashing out, thirstily, with impertinent tail,--to say nothing of sadder sights and impediments.

There were only pleasant reminiscences of the Great Deluge as we flew along after a little one. Happy we! in a nicely-cushioned car, berthed, curtained, and, better than all, furnished with the "best society," sans starch, sans crinoline; the gentlemen sitting on their hats as much as they pleased, and the ladies giving curls and collars the go-by, all in tip-top humor to be pleased. I could imagine but one improvement to our equipage,--that a steam-organ attached to it should have played, very softly, Felicien David's lovely level music of "The Desert," as we bowled along. There were long glittering side-streams between us and the black or green prairie,--streams with little ripples on their faces, as the breeze kissed them in passing, and now and then a dimple, under the visit of a vagrant new-born beetle. To call such shining waters mud or puddles did not accord with the spirit of the hour; so we fancied them the "mirroring waters" of the poet, and compared them to fertilizing Nile,--whose powers, indeed, they share, to some extent. By their sides ought to be planted willows and poplars, and alders of half a dozen kinds, but are not yet. All in good time. Thirsty trees would drink up superfluous moisture, and in return save fuel by keeping off sweeping winds, and money by diverting heavy snows, those Russian enemies to the Napoleon rail, and by preserving embankments, to which nothing but interlacing roots can give stability. Rows of trees bordering her railroads would make Illinois look more like France, which in many respects she already resembles.

The haze or mirage of the prairies is wonderfully fantastic and deceptive. The effect which seamen call looming is one of the commonest of its forms. This brings real but distant objects into view, and dignifies them in size and color, till we can take a farm-house for a white marble palace, and leafless woods with sunset clouds behind them for enchanted gardens hung with golden fruit. But the most gorgeous effects are, as is usual with air-castles, created out of nothing,--that is, nothing more substantial than air, mist, and sun- or moon- or star-beams. Fine times the imagination has, riding on purple and crimson rays, and building Islands of the Blest among vapors that have just risen from the turbid waters of the Mississippi! No Loudon or Downing is invoked for the contriving or beautifying of these villa-residences and this landscape-gardening. Genius comes with inspiration, as inspiration does with genius; and we are our own architects and draughtsmen, rioting at liberty with Nature's splendid palette at our command, and no thought of rule or stint. Why should we not, in solider things, derive more aid, like the poor little "Marchioness" of Dickens, from this blessed power of imagination? Those who do so are always laughed at as unpractical; but are they not most truly practical, if they find and use the secret of gilding over, and so making beautiful or tolerable, things in themselves mean or sad?

Once upon a time, then, the great State of Illinois was all under water;--at least, so say the learned and statistical. If you doubt it, go count the distinctly-marked ridges in the so-called bluffs, and see how many years or ages this modern deluge has been subsiding. Where its remains once lay sweltering under the hot sun, and sucking miasms from his beams, now spread great green expanses, wholesome and fertile, making the best possible use of sunbeams, and offering, by their aid, every earthly thing that men and animals need for their bodily growth and sustenance, in almost fabulous abundance.

The colored map of Illinois, as given in a nice, new book, called, "Illinois as it is," looks like a beautiful piece of silk, brocaded in green (prairies) on a brownish ground (woodland tracts),--the surface showing a nearly equal proportion of the two; while the swampy lands, designated by dark blue,--in allusion, probably, to the occasional state of mind of those who live near them,--take up a scarce appreciable part of the space. Long, straggling "bluffs," on the banks of the rivers, occupy still less room; but they make, on land and paper, an agreeable variety. People thus far go to them only for the mineral wealth with which they abound. It will be many years, yet, before they will be thought worth farming; not because they would not yield well, but because there is so much land that yields better.

Some parts of the State are hilly, and covered with the finest timber. The scenery of these tracts is equal to any of the kind in the United States; and much of it has been long under cultivation, having been early chosen by Southern settlers, who have grown old upon the soil. Here and there, on these beautiful highlands, we find ancient ladies, bright-eyed and cheerful, who tell us they have occupied the selfsame house--built, Kentucky-fashion, with chimney outside--for forty years or so. The legends these good dames have to tell are, no doubt, quite as interesting in their way as those which Sir Walter Scott used to thread the wilds of Scotland to gather up; but we value them not. By-and-by, posterity will anathematize us for letting our old national stories die in blind contempt or sheer ignorance of their value.

The only thing to be found fault with in the landscape is the want of great fields full of stumps. It does not seem like travelling in a new country to see all smooth and ready for the plough. Trees are not here looked upon as natural enemies; and so, where they grow, there they stand, and wave triumphant over the field like victors' banners. No finer trees grow anywhere, and one loves to see them so prized. Yet we miss the dear old stumps. My heart leaps up when I behold hundreds of them so close together that you can hardly get a plough between. Long, long years ago, I have seen a dozen men toiling in one little cleared spot, jollily engaged in burning them with huge fires of brush-wood, chopping at them with desperate axes, and tearing the less tenacious out by the roots, with a rude machine made on the principle of that instrument by the aid of which the dentist revenges you on an offending tooth. The country looks tame, at first, without these characteristic ornaments, so suggestive of human occupancy. The ground is excellently fertile where stumps have been, and association makes us rather distrustful of its goodness where nothing but grass has ever grown.

The prairies are not as flat in surface as one expects to find them. Except in the scarcity of trees, their surface is very much like other portions of what is considered the best farming land. There are great tracts of what are called bushy prairies, covered with a thick growth of hazel and sassafras, jessamine and honey-suckle, and abounding in grape-vines. These tracts possess springs in abundance. The "islands" so often alluded to by travellers are most picturesque and beautiful features in the landscape. They must not be compared to oases, for they are surrounded by anything but sterility; but they are the evidence of springs, and generally of a slight rise in the ground, and the timber upon them is of almost tropical luxuriance. Herds of deer are feeding in their shade, the murmur of wild bees fills the air, and the sweet vine-smell invites birds and insects of every brilliant color. Prairie-chickens are in flocks everywhere, and the approach of civilization scarcely ever disturbs them. No engine-driver in the southern part of the State but has often seen deer startled by the approach of his train, and many tell tales of more ferocious denizens of the wilds. Buffalo have all long since disappeared; but what times they must have had in this their paradise, before they went! On the higher prairies the grass is of a superior quality, and its seed almost like wheat. On those which are low and humid it grows rank and tough, and sometimes so high that a man on horseback may pass through it unobserved. The crowding of vegetation, owing to the over-fertility of the soil, causes all to tend upward, so that most of the growth is extra high, rather than spreading in breadth. In the very early spring, the low grass is interspersed with quantities of violets, strawberry-blossoms, and other delicate flowers. As the grass grows taller, flowers of larger size and more brilliant hues diversify it, till at length the whole is like a flowery forest, but destined to be burnt over in the autumn, leaving their ashes to help forward the splendid growth of their successors.

One of the marvels of this marvellous prairiedom, at the present hour, is the taste and skill displayed in houses and gardens. One fancies a "settler" in the Western wilds so occupied with thoughts of shelter and sustenance as hardly to remember that a house must be perpendicular to be safe, and a garden fenced before it is worth planting. But every mile of our prairie-flight reminds us, that, where no time and labor are to be consumed in felling trees and "toting" logs to mill,--planks and joists, and such like, walking in, by rail, all ready for the framing,--there is leisure for reflection and choice as to form; and also, that, where fertility is the inevitable attendant upon the first incision of the plough, what we shall plant and how we shall plant it become the only topics for consideration. Setting aside the merely temporary residences of the poorer class of farmers,--houses sure to be replaced by palaces of pine-boards, at least, before a great while, provided the owner does not "move West," or take to whiskey,--the cottages we catch glimpses of from car-windows are pretty and well-planned, and some of them show even better on the inside than on the out. I must forbear to enlarge on the comfort and abundance of these dwellings, lest I trench upon private matters; but I may mention, by way of illustrating my subject, and somewhat as the painter introduces human figures into his picture to give an idea of the height of a tower or the vastness of a cathedral, that I have found an abundant and even elegant table, under frescoed ceiling, in a cottage near the Illinois Central, and far south of the mid-line of this wonderful State, so lately a seeming waste through much of its extent.

And thus throughout. At one moment a bare expanse, looking man-despised, if not God-forgotten,--and at the next, a smiling village, with tasteful dwelling, fine shrubbery, great hotels, spires pointing heavenward, and trees that look down with the conscious dignity of old settlers, as if they had stood just so since the time of good Father Marquette, that stout old missionary, who first planted the holy cross in their shade, and, "after offering to the Mightiest thanks and supplications, fell asleep to wake no more."

There are many interesting reminiscences or traditions of the early European settlers of Illinois. After Father Marquette,--whom I always seem to see in Hicks's sweet picture of a monk inscribing the name JESU on the bark of a tree in the forest,--came La Salle, an emissary of the great Colbert, under Louis XIV.; an explorer of many heroic qualities, who has left in this whole region important traces of his wanderings, and the memory of his bloody and cruel murder at the impious hands of his own followers, who had not patience to endure to the end. Counted as part of Florida, under Spanish rule, and part of Louisiana, under that of the French,--falling into the hands of the celebrated John Law, in the course of his bubble Mississippi scheme, and afterwards ceded with Canada and Nova Scotia to the English, Illinois was never Americanized until the peace of '83. The spongy turf of her prairies bore the weight of many a fort, and drank the blood of the slain in many a battle, when all around her was at peace. The fertility of her soil and the comparative mildness of her climate caused her to be eagerly contended for, as far back as 1673, when the pioneers grew poetical under the inspiration of "a joy that could not be expressed," as they passed her "broad plains, all garlanded with majestic forests and checkered with illimitable prairies and island groves." "We are Illinois," said the poor Indians to Father Marquette,--meaning, in their language, "We are men." And the Jesuits treated them as men; but by traders they soon began to be treated like beasts; and of course--poor things!--they did their best to behave accordingly. All the forts are ruins now; there is no longer occasion for them. The Indians are nothing. There can scarcely be found the slightest trace of their occupancy of these rich acres. Nations that build nothing but uninscribed burial-places foreshadow their own doom,--to return to the soil and be forgotten. But the mode of their passing away is not, therefore, a matter of indifference.

On the stronger and more intelligent rests the responsibility of such changes; and in the case of our Indians, it is certain that a load of guilt, individual and national, rests somewhere. Necessity is no Christian plea, "It must needs be that offences come, but woe to him by whom the offence cometh!" The Indian and the negro shall rise up in judgment against our rich and happy land, and condemn it for inhumanity and selfishness. Have they not already done so? Blood and treasure, poured out like water, have been the beginnings of retribution in one case; a deeper and more vital punishment, such as belongs to bosom-sins, awaits us in the other. Shall no penitence, no sacrifice, attempt to avert it?

Illinois, level, fertile, joyous, took French rule very kindly. The missionaries, who were physicians, schoolmasters, and artisans, as well as preachers, lived among the people, instructed them in the arts of life as well as in the ceremonies and spirit of the Catholic faith; and natives and foreigners seem to have dwelt together in peace and love. The French brought with them the regularity and neatness that characterize their home-settlements, and the abundance in which they lived enabled them to be public-spirited and to deal liberally even with the Indians. They raised wheat in such plenty that Indian corn was cultivated chiefly for provender, although they found the voyageurs glad to buy it as they passed back and forth on their adventurous journeys. The remains of their houses show how substantially they built; two or three modern sudden houses could be made out of one old French picketed and porticoed cottage.

The appearance of an Illinois settler in those days was rather picturesque than elegant,--substance before show being the principle upon which it was planned. While the Indian still wore his paint and feathers when he came to trade, the rural swain appeared in a capote made of blanket, with a hood that served in cold weather instead of a Leary, buck-skin overalls, moccasins of raw-hide, and, generally, only a natural shock of Sampsonian locks between his head and the sun; while his lady-love was satisfied with an outfit not very different,--save that there is no tradition that she ever capped the climax of ugliness by wearing Bloomers. There were gay colors for holidays, no doubt; but not till 1830, we are told, did the genuine Illinois settler adopt the commonplace dress of this imitative land. What pity when people are in such haste to do away with everything characteristic in costume!

Both sexes worked hard, bore rough weather without flinching, and attended carefully to their religious duties; but, withal, they were gay and joyous, ready for dance and frolic, and never so anxious to make money that they forgot to make fun.

What must the ghosts of these primitive Christians think of their successors, ploughing in broadcloth and beaver, wading through the mud in patent-leather boots, and all the while wrinkled with anxiety, gaunt with ambition, and grudging themselves three holidays a year!

Immigrants in time changed the character of the population as well as its dress, and for a while there seems to have been something of a jumble of elements, new laws conflicting with old habits, hungry politicians preying upon a simple people, who only desired to be let alone, and who, when they discovered some gross imposition, were philosophical enough to call it, jokingly, being "greased and swallowed." This anarchical condition resulted, as usual, in habits of personal violence; and, at one time, an adverse vote was considered matter for stabbing or gouging, and juries often dismissed indictments, fearing private vengeance in case of a discharge of their duty. They made a wide distinction, in murder trials, between him who committed the crime in a passion and those who did the thing quietly; so that you had only to walk up to the person who had offended you, and shoot him in the open street, to feel tolerably sure of impunity. In short, there seems to have prevailed, at that time, north of Mason and Dixon's line, very much the same state of things that still prevails south of it; but there was other leaven at work, and the good sense of the people gradually got the better of this short-sighted folly of violence.

It is reported as fact, by all writers on the earlier history of this State, that the holding of courts was conducted very much in the style reported of the back counties of Georgia and Alabama in our day. The sheriff would go out into the court-yard and say to the people, "Come in, boys,--the court is going to begin,"--or sometimes, "Our John is going to open court now,"--the judge being just one of the "boys."

Judges did not like to take upon themselves the onus of deciding cases, but shared it with the jury as far as possible. One story, well authenticated, runs thus: A certain judge, having to pass sentence of death upon one of his neighbors, did it in the following form: "Mr. Green, the jury in their verdict say you are guilty of murder, and the law in that case says you are to be hung. Now I want you and all your friends down on Indian Creek to know that it is not me that condemns you, but the jury and the law. What time would you like to be hung, Sir?" The poor man replied, that it made no difference to him; he would rather the court should appoint a time. "Well, then, Mr. Green," says the judge, "the court will allow you four weeks' time to prepare for death and settle up your business." It was here suggested by the Attorney-General that it was usual in such cases for the court to recapitulate the essential parts of the evidence, to set forth the nature and enormity of the crime, and solemnly to exhort the prisoner to repent and fit himself for the awful doom awaiting him. "Oh!" said the judge, "Mr. Green understands all that as well as if I had preached to him a month. Don't you, Mr. Green? You understand you're to be hung this day four weeks?" "Yes, Sir," replied Mr. Green, and so the matter ended.

One legal brilliant blazes on the forehead of youthful Illinois, in the shape of a summary remedy for duelling. One of those heroes who think it safer to appeal to chance than to logic in vindication of tarnished honor, and who imagine the blood of a dead friend the only salve to be relied on for the cure of wounded feelings, killed his opponent in a duel. The law of Illinois very coolly hanged the survivor; and from that time to this, other remedies have been found for spiritual hurts, real or imaginary. Nobody has fancied it necessary to fight with a noose round his neck. If ever capital punishment were lawful, (which I confess I do not think it ever can be,) it would be as a desperate remedy against this horrid relic of mediaeval superstition and impiety, no wiser or more Christian than the ordeal by burning ploughshares or poisoned wine. The rope in judicial hands is certainly as lawful as the pistol in rash ones; so the duellist has no reason to complain.

Some of the later days of Illinois, the days of Indian wars and Mormon wars, pro-slavery wars and financial wars, are too red and black for peaceful pages; and as they were incidental rather than characteristic, they do not come within our narrow limits. There is still too large an infusion of the cruel slavery spirit in the laws of Illinois; but the immense tide of immigration will necessarily remedy that, by overpowering the influence introduced over the southern border. So nearly a Southern State was Illinois once considered to be, that, in settling the northern boundary, it was deemed essential to give her a portion of the lake-shore, that her interests might be at least balanced. They have proved to be more than balanced by this wise provision.

The little excuse there is in this favored region for a sordid devotion to toil, a journey through the State, even at flying pace, is sufficient to show. The fertility of the soil is the despair of scientific farming. Who cares for rules, when he has only to drop a seed and tread on it, to be sure of a hundred-fold return? Who talks of succession of crops, when twelve burdens of wheat, taken from the same soil in as many years, leave the ground black and ready for another yield of almost equal abundance? An alluvial tract of about three hundred thousand acres, near the Mississippi, has been cultivated in Indian corn a hundred and fifty years,--indeed, ever since the French occupation of Illinois. What of under-draining? Some forty or fifty rivers threading the State, besides smaller streams innumerable, always will do that, as soon as the Nilic floods of spring have accomplished their work by floating to the surface the finest part of the soil. Irrigation? You may now grow rice on one farm and grapes on another, without travelling far between. It is true, there must be an end to this universality of power and advantage, some day; but nobody can see far enough ahead to feel afraid, and it is not in the spirit of our time to think much about the good of our grandchildren. "What has posterity done for me?" is the instinctive question of the busy Westerner, as he sits down under vine and fig-tree which his own hands have planted, to enjoy peace and plenty, after suffering the inevitable hardships of pioneer life. You may tell him he is not wise to scorn good rules; but he will reply, that he did not come so far West, and begin life anew, for the sake of being wise, but of making money, and that as rapidly as possible. He has forgotten the care and economy learned among the cold and stony hills of New England, and wants to do everything on a large scale. He likes to hear of patent reapers, Briarean threshing-machines, and anything that will save him most of the time and trouble of gathering in his heavy crops,--but that is all. The growth of those crops he has nothing to do with. That is provided for by Nature in Illinois; if it were not, he would move "out West."

Stories of this boundless fertility are rife here. One pioneer told us, that, when a fence is to be made and post-holes are wanted, it is only necessary to drop beet-seed ten feet apart all around the field, and, when the beet is ripe, you pull it up and your post-hole is ready! To be sure, there was a twinkle in the corner of his eye as he stated this novel and interesting fact; but, after all, the fertility in question was not so extravagantly "poefied" by this canard as some may suppose. Our friend went on to state, that, in his district, they had a kind of corn which produced from a single grain a dozen stalks of twelve ears each; and not content with this, on most of the stalks you would find, somewhere near the top, a small calabash full of shelled corn! To put the matter beyond doubt, he pulled a handful of the corn from his pocket, which he invited us to plant, and satisfy ourselves.

The reader has probably concluded, by this time, that beets and corn are not the only enormous things grown in Illinois.

A friend told us, in perfectly good faith, that a tract of his, some fourteen thousand acres, in the southern part of the State, contained coal enough to warm the world, and more iron than that coal would smelt,--salt enough for all time, and marble and rich metallic ores of various kinds besides. In one region are found inexhaustible beds of limestone, the smoke of whose burning fills the whole spring air, and the crevices of whose formation make very pokerish-looking caves, which young and adventurous ladies are fond of exploring; in another we come to quantities of that snow-white porcelain clay of which some people suppose themselves to have been originally formed, but which has been, in a commercial point of view, hitherto a desideratum in these United States of ours. The people at Mound City (an aspiring rival of Cairo, on the banks of the Ohio) are about building a factory for the exploitation of this clay, not into ladies and gentlemen, (unpopular articles here,) but into china-ware, the quality of which will be indisputable.

One soon ceases wondering at the tropicality of the Illinoisian imagination. Ali Baba's eye-straining experiences were poor, compared to these every-day realities.

The "Open Sesame" in this case has been spoken through the railroad-whistle. Railroads cannot make mines and quarries, and fat soil and bounteous rivers; yet railroads have been the making of Illinois. Nobody who has ever seen her spring roads, where there are no rails, can ever question it. From the very fatness of her soil, the greater part of the State must have been one Slough of Despond for three quarters of the year, and her inhabitants strangers to each other, if these iron arms had not drawn the people together and bridged the gulfs for them. No roads but railroads could possibly have threaded the State, a large and the best portion of whose surface is absolutely devoid of timber, stone, gravel, or any other available material. The prairies must have remained flowery deserts, visited as a curiosity every year by strangers, but without dwellings for want of wood. The vast quarries must, of course, have lain useless, for want of transporting power,--our friend's coal and iron undisturbed, waiting for an earthquake,--and the poetical pioneer's beets and Indian corn unplanted, and therefore uncelebrated. Well may it be said here, that iron is more valuable than gold. Population, agriculture, the mechanic arts, literature, taste, civilization, in short, are all magnetized by the beneficent rail, and follow wherever it leads. The whole southern portion of Illinois has been nicknamed "Egypt," --whether because at its utmost point, on a dampish delta, reposes the far-famed city of Cairo,--or whether, as wicked satirists pretend, its denizens have been found, in certain particulars, rather behind our times in intellectual light. Whatever may have been the original excuse for the sobriquet, the derogatory one exists no more. Light has penetrated, and darkness can reign no longer. Every day, a fiery visitant, bearing the collective intelligence of the whole world's doings and sayings, dashes through Egypt into Cairo, giving off scintillations at every hamlet on the way,--and every day the brilliant marvel returns, bringing northward, not only the good things of the Ohio and Mississippi, but tropic on-dits and oranges, only a few hours old, to the citizens of Chicago, far "in advance of the (New York) mail." With the rail comes the telegraph; and whispers of the rise and fall of fancies and potatoes, of speculations and elections, of the sale of corner-lots and the evasion of bank-officers, are darting about in every direction over our heads, as we unconsciously admire the sunset, or sketch a knot of rosy children as they come trooping from a quaint school-house on the prairie edge. Fancy the rail gone, and we have neither telegraph, nor school-house, nor anything of all this but the sunset,--and even that we could not be there to see in spring-time, at least, unless we could transmigrate for the time into the relinquished forms of some of these aboriginal bull-frogs, which grow to the nice size of two feet in length, destined, no doubt, to receive the souls of habitual croakers hereafter.

But if the railroads have been the making of the land, it is not to be denied that the land has been the making of the railroads. Egyptian minds they must have been, that grudged the tracts given by the United States to the greatest of roads, the greatest road in the world. Having bestowed a line of alternate sections on this immense undertaking,--vital in importance, and impossible without such aid,--the Government at once doubled the price of the intermediate sections, and sold them at the doubled price, though they had been years, and might have been ages, in market unsold, without means of communication and building. Who, then, was the loser? Not the United States; for they received for half the land just what they would otherwise have received for the whole. Not the State; for it lays hands on a good slice of the annual profits, not to speak of incalculable benefits beside. Not the farmer, surely; for what would his now high-priced land be worth, if the grand road were annihilated? Not the bond-holder; for he receives a fair, full interest on his money. Not the stock-holder; for he looks with eyes of faith toward a great future. It was a sort of triangular or quadrangular or pentangular bargain, in which all these parties were immensely benefited. The traveller blesses such liberal policy, as he flies along towards the land of oranges, or turns aside to measure mammoth beets or weigh extra-supernal corn, to "bore" or to "prospect," to pick at oölite and shale or to "peep and botanize" through an inexhaustible Flora. The present writer has certainly reason to be grateful,--not, alas! with that gushing warmth of feeling which the owners of shares or bonds naturally experience,--but as an "'umble individual" who could not have found material for this valuable article, if certain gentlemen who do own the said shares had not been very enterprising.

The man who may be said to have devised the land-basis for railroads through unsettled tracts--a financier of unsurpassed sagacity, and once the soul of commercial honor as well as intelligence--should not, in his dishonored grave, and far beyond the reach of human scorn or vengeance, be denied the credit of what he accomplished before the fatal madness seized his soul and dragged him to perdition. Let it be enough that his name has come to be an epithet of infamy in his land's language. Let not the grandeur of his views, the intent with which he set out, and the good he achieved, be lost in oblivion. Pride--"by that sin fell the angels!"--cast him headlong down the irrecoverable steep,--

"And when he fell, he fell like Lucifer,"--

aye! like Wolsey and Bacon,--

"Never to rise again!"

It is no sin to hope that the All-seeing eye discerned in those noble undertakings and beneficent results the germ of wings that shall one day bear him back to light and mercy. Let us, who benefit by his good deeds, not insist on remembering only the evil!

Chicago, the Wondrous, sits amid her wealth, like a magnificent sultana, half-reclining over a great oval mirror, supplied by that lake of lakes, the fathomless Michigan. Perhaps the resemblance might be unpoetically traced to particulars; for we are told by lotos-eating travellers, that Oriental beauties, with all their splendor, are not especially clean. Certain it is that our Occidental sultana dresses her fair head with towers and spires, and hangs about her neck long rows of gems in the shape of stately and elegant dwellings,--yet, descending to her feet, we sink in mud and mire, or tumble unguardedly into excavations set like traps for the unwary, or oust whole colonies of rats from beneath plank walks where they have burrowed securely ever since "improvements" began. At some seasons, indeed, there is no mud; because the high winds from the lake or the prairies turn the mud into dust, which blinds our eyes, fills our mouths, and makes us Quakers in appearance and anything but saints in heart. Chicago-walking resembles none but such as Christian encountered as he fled from the City of Destruction; yet in this case the ills are those of a City of Construction.--sure to disappear as soon as the builders find time to care for such trifles. Chicago people, it is well known, walk with their heads in the clouds, and, naturally, do not mind what happens to their feet. It is only strangers who exclaim, and sometimes more than exclaim, at the dangers of the way. Cast-away carriages lie along the road-side, like ships on Fire Island beach. Nobody minds them. If you see a gentleman at a distance, progressing slowly with a gliding or floundering pace, you conclude he has a horse under him, and, perhaps, on nearer approach, you see bridle and headstall. This is in early spring, while the frost is coming out of the ground. As the season advances, the horse emerges, and you are just getting a fair sight of him when the dust begins and he disappears again. So say the scoffers, and those who would, but do not, own any city-lots in that favored vicinity; and to the somewhat heated mind of the traveller who encounters such things for the first time, the story does not seem so very much exaggerated. Simple wayfarers like myself, however, tell no such wicked tales of the Garden City; but remember only her youth, her grandeur, her spirit, her hospitality, her weight of cares, her immense achievements, and her sure promise of future metropolitan splendors.

The vicinity of Chicago is all dotted with beautiful villa-residences. To drive among them is like turning over a book of architectural drawings,--so great is their variety, and so marked the taste which prevails. Many of them are of the fine light-colored stone found in the neighborhood, and their substantial excellence inspires a feeling that all this prosperity is of no ephemeral character. People do not build such country-houses until they feel settled and secure. The lake-shore is of course the line of attraction, for it is the only natural beauty of the place. But what trees! Several of the streets of Chicago may easily become as beautiful drives as the far-famed Cascine at Florence, and will be so before her population doubles again,--which is giving but a short interval for the improvement. No parks as yet, however. Land on the lake-shore is too precious, and the flats west of the town are quite despised. Yet city parks do not demand very unequal surface, and it would not require a very potent landscape-gardener or an unheard-of amount of dollars to make a fine driving-and riding-ground, where the new carriages of the fortunate might be aired, and the fine horses of the gay exercised, during a good part of the year.

To describe Chicago, one would need all the superlatives set in a row. Grandest, flattest,--muddiest, dustiest,--hottest, coldest,--wettest, driest,--farthest north, south, east, and west from other places, consequently most central,--best harbor on Lake Michigan, worst harbor and smallest river any great commercial city ever lived on,--most elegant in architecture, meanest in hovel-propping,--wildest in speculation, solidest in value,--proudest in self-esteem, loudest in self-disparagement,--most lavish, most grasping,--most public-spirited in some things, blindest and darkest on some points of highest interest.

And some poor souls would doubtless add,--most fascinating, or most desolate,--according as one goes there, gay and hopeful, to find troops of prosperous friends, or, lonely and poor, with the distant hope of bettering broken fortunes by struggling among the driving thousands already there on the same errand. There is, perhaps, no place in the world where it is more necessary to take a bright and hopeful view of life, and none where this is more difficult. There is too much at stake. Those who have visited Baden-Baden and her Kursaal sisters in the height of the season need not be told that no "church-face" ever equalled in solemnity the countenances of those who surround the fatal tables, waiting for the stony lips of the croupier to announce "_Noir perd_" or "_Rouge gagne_." At Chicago are a wider table, higher stakes, more desperate throws, and Fate herself presiding, or what seems Fate, at once partial and inexorable.

But, on this great scale, even success fails to bring smiles. The winners sit "with hair on end at their own wonders," and half-fearing that such golden showers have some illusion about them and may prove fairy favors at last. Next to this fueling comes the thirst for more. Enlarged means bring enlarged desires and ever-extending plans. The repose and lightness of heart that were at first to be the reward of success recede farther and farther into the dim distance, until at last they are lost sight of entirely, confessed, with a sigh, to be unattainable. How can people in this State wear cheerful countenances? When one looks at the gay and social faces and habits of some little German town, where are cultivated people, surrounded by the books and pictures they love, with leisure enough for music and dancing and tea-garden chat, for deep friendships and lofty musings, it would seem as if our shrewd Yankee-land and its outcroppings at the West had not yet found out everything worth knowing. Froissart's famous remark about the English in France--"They take their pleasure sadly, after their fashion"--may apply to the population of Chicago, and it will be some time yet, I fancy, before they will take it very gayly.

At a little country-town, the other day, not within a thousand miles of Chicago, a family about leaving for a distant place advertised their movables for sale at auction. There was such a stir throughout the settlement as called forth an expression of wonder from a stranger. "Ah!" said a good lady, "auctions are the only gayety we have here!"

Joking apart, there was a deep American truth in this seeming niaiserie.

Chicago has, as we have said, with all her wealth, no public park or other provision for out-door recreation. She has no gallery of Art, or the beginning of one,--no establishment of music, no public library,--no social institution whatever, except the church. Without that blessed bond, her people would be absolute units, as independent of each other as the grains of sand on the seashore, swept hither and thither by the ocean winds.

But even before these words have found their way to the Garden City, they will, perhaps, be inapplicable,--so rapid is progress at the West. The people are like a great family moving into a new house. There is so much sweeping and dusting to do, so much finding of places for the furniture, so much time to spend in providing for breakfast, dinner, and tea, lodging and washing, that nobody thinks of unpacking the pictures, taking the books out of their boxes, or getting up drives or riding-parties. All these come in good time, and will be the better done for a little prudent delay.

There is, to the stranger, an appearance of extreme hurry in Chicago, and the streets are very peculiar in not having a lady walking in them. Day after day I traversed them, meeting crowds of men, who looked like the representatives of every nation and tongue and people,--and every class of society, from the greenest rustic, or the most undisguised sharper, to the man of most serious respectability, or him of highest ton. Yet one lady walking in the streets I saw not; and when I say not one lady, I mean that I did not meet a woman who seemed to claim that title, or any title much above that of an ordinary domestic. Perhaps this is only a spring symptom, which passes off when the mud dries up a little,--but it certainly gave a rather forlorn or funereal aspect to the streets for the time.

There is, nevertheless, potent inspiration in the resolute and occupied air of these crowds. Hardly any one stays long among them without feeling a desire to share their excitement, and do something towards the splendid future which is evidently beckoning them on. Preparing the future! It is glorious business. No wonder it makes the pulse quicken and the eye look as if it saw spirits. It may be said, that in some sense we are all preparing the future; but in the West there is a special meaning in the expression. In circumstances so new and wondrous, first steps are all-important. Those who have been providentially led to become early settlers have immense power for good or evil. One can trace in many or most of our Western towns, and even States, the spirit of their first influential citizens. Happy is it for Chicago that she has been favored in this respect,--and to her honor be it said, that she appreciates her benefactors. Of one citizen, who has been for twenty years past doing the quiet and modest work of a good genius in the city of his adoption, it is currently said, that he has built a hundred miles of her streets,--and there is no mark of respect and gratitude that she would not gladly show him. Other citizens take the most faithful and disinterested care of her schools; and to many she is indebted for an amount of liberality and public spirit which is constantly increasing her enormous prosperity. Happy the city which possesses such citizens! Happy the citizens who have a city so nobly deserving of their best services!

AN EVENING WITH THE TELEGRAPH-WIRES.

My cousin Moses has made the discovery that he is a powerful magnetizer.

Like many others who have newly come into possession of a small tract in those mysterious, outlying, unexplored wildernesses of Nature, which we call by so many names, but which as yet refuse to be defined or classed, he has been naturally eager to commence operations, and exploit and farm it a little. He is making experiments on a narrow border of his wild lands. He is a man of will and of strong physique, with an inquiring and scientific turn of mind, which inclines him chiefly to metaphysical studies. It is not to be wondered at, that, having lately discovered that he possesses the mesmeric gift, he should not sufficiently discriminate as to its application. Later he will see that it is an agent not to be tampered with, and never to be used on healthy subjects, but applied only to invalids. To-day he is like a newly-armed knight-errant, bounding off on his steed at sunrise, in search of adventures.

One afternoon, not long since, he was telling me of his extraordinary successes with somnambulists and somnoparlists,--of old ladies cured of nervous headaches and face-twitches, and of young ones put to sleep at a distance from the magnetizer, dropping into a trance suddenly as a bird struck by a gun-shot, simply by an act of his volition,--of water turned into wine, and wine into brandy, to the somnambulic taste,--and so on, till we got wandering into crooked by-paths of physics and metaphysics, that seemed to lead us nowhere in particular,--when I said, "Come, Cousin Moses, suppose you try it on me, by way of experiment. But I have my doubts if you'll ever put me to sleep."

My cousin yielded to my request with alacrity;--every subject for mesmerism was for him legitimate;--and I relinquished myself to his passes with the docility of a man about to be shaved.

The passes from the head downward were kept up perseveringly for half an hour, without my experiencing any change, or manifesting the least symptom of drowsiness. At last the charm began to work. I began to be conscious of a singular trickling or creeping sensation following the motion of his passes down my arms. My respiration grew short. I experienced, however, no tendency to sleep, and my mind was perfectly calm and unexcited. My cousin was satisfied with his experiment so far, but we both concluded it had better end here. So he made the reverse passes, in order to undo the knot he was beginning to tie in my nerves. He did not, however, entirely succeed in untying it. I was a healthy subject, and the magnetism continued to affect my nerves, in spite of the untangling passes.

Soon after, I rose and took my leave. I was strangely excited, but it was a purely physical, and not a mental excitement. Thinking that a walk would quiet me, I went through street after street, until I reached the outskirts of the city. It was a mild September evening. The fine weather and the sight of the trees and fields tempted me to continue my walk. It was near sunset, and I strolled on and on, watching the purple gray and ruddy gold of the clouds, until I had got fairly into the country.

As I rambled on, I was suddenly seized with a fancy to climb a tree which stood by the roadside, and rest myself in a convenient notch which I observed between two of the limbs. I was soon seated in among the branches, with a canopy of leaves around and over me,--feeling, in my still nervous condition, as I leaned my back against the mossy bark, like a magnified tree-toad in clothes.

The air was balmy and fragrant, and against the amber of the western sky rose and fell numberless little clouds of insects. The birds were chirping and fluttering about me, and made their arrangements for their night's lodging, in manifest dread of the clothed tree-toad who had invaded their leafy premises.

The peculiar nervousness which had taken possession of me was now passing off, to be replaced by a species of mental exaltation. I was becoming conscious of something approaching semi-clairvoyance, and yet not in the ordinary form. Sensation, emotion, thought were intensified. The landscape around me was dotted with farm-houses, pillowed in soft, dark clumps of trees. One by one, the lights began to appear at the windows,--soft rising stars of home-joys. The glorious September sunset was fading, but still resplendent in the west. The landscape was pervaded with a deeper repose, the glowing clouds with a diviner splendor than that which filled the eye. Then thronging memories awoke. My remembrances of all my past life in the crowded cities of America and Europe rose vividly before me. In the long strata of solid gray clouds, where the sun had gone down, leaving only a few vapory gold-fishes swimming in the clear spaces above, I could fancy I saw the lonely Roman Campagna and the wondrous dome of St. Peter's, as when first beheld on the horizon ten years ago. Then, as from the slopes of San Miniato at sunset, gray, red-tiled Florence, with its Boboli gardens, full of nightingales, its old towers and cathedrals, and its soaring Giotto Campanile. Then Genoa, with its terraces and marble palaces, and that huge statue of André Doria. Then Naples, gleaming white in the eye of day over her pellucid depths of sea. The golden days of Italy floated by me. Then came the memories, glad or sad, of days that had passed in my own native land,--in the very city that lay behind me,--the intimate communings with dear friends,--the musical and the merry nights,--the trials, anxieties, sorrows----

But all this is very egotistical and unnecessary. I merely meant to say that I was in a peculiar, almost abnormal state of mind, that evening. The spirit had, as it were, been drawn outwards, and perhaps slightly dislocated, by those mesmeric passes of my cousin, and I had not succeeded as yet in adjusting it quite satisfactorily in its old bodily grooves and sockets. The condition I was in was not as pleasant as I could have wished; for I was as alive to painful remembrances and imaginations, as to pleasant ones. I seemed to myself like a revolving lantern of a light-house,--now dark, now glowing with a fiery radiance.

I asked myself, Is it that I have been blind and deaf and dull all my life, and am just waking into real existence? or am I developing into a medium,--Heaven forbid!--and the spirits pushing at some unguarded portal of the nervous system, and striving to take possession? Shall I hear raps and knockings when I return to my solitary chamber, and sit a powerless beholder of damaged furniture, which the spirits will never have the conscience to promise payment for, when my landlady's bill comes in? (By the way, have the spirits ever behaved like gentlemen in this respect, and settled up fair and square for the breakages they have indulged in by way of exemplifying the doctrine of a future state?)

As I soliloquized thus, I was attracted by a low vibrating note among the leaves. Looking through them, I saw, for the first time, that two or three telegraph-wires, which I had observed skirting the road, ran directly through the tree in which I was seated. It was a strange sort of sound, that came in hurried jerks, as it were, accompanied with a corresponding jerk of the wire.

A gigantic fancy flashed across me:--This State of New York is a great guitar; yonder, at Albany, are the legislative pegs and screws; down there in Manhattan Island is the great sounding-board; these iron wires are the strings! The spirits are singing, perhaps, with their heads up there in the sweet heavens and the rosy clouds,--and this vibration of the wires is a sort of loose jangling accompaniment of their unpractised hands on earth. The voice is always above the strings.--This I thought in my semi-mesmeric condition, perhaps. I soon laughed at my Brobdignagian nonsense, and said,--There is a telegraphic despatch passing. Now if I could only find out what it is!--that would be something new in science,--a discovery worth knowing,--to be able to hear or feel the purport of a telegraphic message, simply by touching the wire along which it runs!

So, regardless of any electric shock I might receive, I thrust out my hand through the leaves of the tree, and boldly grasped the wire. The jerks instantly were experienced in my elbow, and it was not long before certain short sentences were conveyed, magnetically, to my brain. In my amazement at the discovery, I almost dropped out of the tree. However, I kept firm hold of the wire, and my sensorium made me aware of something passing like this:--"Market active. Fair demand for exchange. Transactions from five to ten thousand shares. Aristides railroad-stock scarce. Rates of freight to Liverpool firm. Yours respectfully, Grabber and Holdham."

Upon my word, said I, this is rather dry!--only a merchant! I expected something better than this, to commence with.

The wire being now quiet, I fell into a musing upon the singular discovery I had made,--and whether I should get anything from the public or the government for revealing it. And then my thoughts wandered across the Atlantic, and I remembered those long rows of telegraphic wires in France, ruled along the tops of high barrier-walls, and looking against the sky like immense music-lines,--and those queer inverted-coffee-cup-like supports for the wires, on the tall posts. Then I thought of music and coffee at the Jardin Mabille. Then my fancy wandered down the Champs Elysées to those multitudinous spider-web wires that radiate from the palace of the Tuileries, where the Imperial spider sits plotting and weaving his meshes around the liberties of France. Then I thought, What a thing this discovery of mine would be for political conspirators,--to reverse the whispering-gallery of Dionysius, and, instead of the tyrant hearing the secrets of the people, the people hearing the secrets of the tyrant! Then I thought of Robespierre, and Marat, and Charlotte Corday, and Marie Antoinette,--then of Delaroche's and Müller's pictures of the unfortunate Queen,--then of pictures in general,--then of landscape-scenery,--till I almost fell into a doze, when I was startled by a faint sound along the wire, as of a sigh, like the first thrill of the AEolian harp in the evening wind. Another message was passing. I reached my hand out to the iron thread. A confused sadness began to oppress me. A mother's voice weeping over her sick child pulsed along the wire. Her husband was far away. Her little daughter lay very ill. "Come quick," said the voice. "I have little hope; but if you were only here, I should be calmer. If she must die, it would be such a comfort to have you here!"

I drew my hand away. I saw the whole scene too vividly. Who this mother was I knew not; but the news of the death of a child whom I knew and loved could not have affected me more strangely and keenly than this semi-articulate sob which quivered along the iron airtrack, in the silence of the evening, from one unknown--to another unknown.

I roused myself from my sadness, and thought I would descend the tree and stroll home. The moon was up, and a pleasant walk before me, with enough to meditate upon in the singular discovery I had made. I was about to get down from my crotch in the tree, and was just reaching out my dexter leg to feel if I could touch a bough below me, when a low, wild shriek ran along the wire,--as when the wind-harp, above referred to for illustration, is blown upon by some rude, sharp northwester. In spite of myself, I touched the vibrating cord. The message was brief and abrupt, like a sea-captain's command:--"Ship Trinidad wrecked off Wildcat's Beach,--all hands lost,--no insurance!"

Do you recollect, when sitting alone sometimes in your room, at midnight, in the month of November, how, after a lull in the blast, the bleak wind will all at once seem to clutch at the windows, with a demoniac howl that makes the house rock? Do you remember the half-whistles and half-groans through the key-holes and crevices,--the cries and shrieks that rise and fall,--the roaring in the chimney,--the slamming of distant doors and shutters? Well, all this seemed to be suggested in the ringing of the iron cord. The very leaves, green and dewy, and the delicate branches, seemed to quiver as the dreary message passed.

I thought,--This is a little too much! This old tree is getting to be a very lugubrious spot. I don't want to hear any more such messages. I almost wish I had never touched the wire. Strange! one reads such an announcement in a newspaper very coolly;--why is it that I can't take it coolly in a telegraphic despatch? We can read a thing with indifference which we hear spoken with a shudder,--such prisoners are we to our senses! I have had enough of this telegraphing. I sha'n't close my eyes to-night, if I have any more of it.

I had now fairly got my foot on the branch below, and was slipping myself gradually down, when the wire began to ring like a horn, and in the merriest of strains. I paused and listened. I could fancy the joyful barking of dogs in accompaniment. Ah, surely, this is some sportsman,--"the hunter's call, to faun and dryad known." This smacks of the bright sunshine and the green woods and the yellow fields. I will stop and hear it.--It was just what I expected,--a jolly citizen telegraphing his country friend to meet him with his guns and dogs at such a place.

And immediately afterwards, in much the same key, came a musical note and a message babbling of green fields, from a painter:--"I shall leave town to-morrow. Meet me at Bullshornville at ten, A.M. Don't forget to bring my field-easel, canvases, and the other traps."

If there is more of this music, I said, I think I shall stay. I love the sportsmen and the artists, and am glad they are going to have a good time. The weather promises well for them.

There was a little pause, and then a strain of perfect jubilation came leaping along the wire, like the flying song of the bobolink over tracts of blowing clover and apple-blossoms. I expected something very rare,--a strain of poetry at least. It was only this:--"Mr. Grimkins, Sir, we shall expect rooms for the bridal party at your hotel, on the side overlooking the lake, if possible. Yours, P. Simpkins."

Ah, I said, that's all Greek to me,--poor, lonely bachelor that I am! I wonder, by the way, if they ever wrote their love-letters by telegraph.--But what is this coming? I am clearly getting back to my normal condition:--"Miss Polly Wogg wishes to say that she has been unable to procure the silk for Mrs. Papillon for less than five dollars a yard."--Nonsense! I'm not in the dry-goods, nor millinery, nor young-lady department.

And here was another:--"I have found an excellent school for Adolphus in Birchville, near Mastersville Corners. Send him up without delay, with all the school-books you can find."

And another,--important, very:--"I find that 'One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin' is in 'Troilus and Cressida.' Don't send the MS. without this correction."

But what's this, accompanied with a long, low whistle?--"The cars have run off the track at Breakneck Hollow. Back your engine and wait for further orders."

We are getting into the minor key again, I thought. Listen!--"Mr. S. died last night. You must be here to-morrow, if possible, at the opening of the will."

Well, said I, I have had plenty of despatches, and have expended enough sympathy, for one night. I have been very mysteriously affected,--how, I can't exactly tell. But who will ever believe my evening's adventure? Who will not laugh at my pretended discovery? Even my cousin Moses will be incredulous. I shall be at least looked upon as a medium, and so settled.

And here allow me to remark,--Have you not observed how easily things apparently difficult and mysterious are arranged in the popular understanding by the use of certain stereotyped names applied to them? Only give a name to a wonder, or an unclassified phenomenon, or even an unsound notion, and you instantly clear away all the fog of mystery. Let an unprincipled fellow call his views Latitudinarianism or Longitudinarianism, he may, with a little adroitness, go for a respectable and consistent member of some sect. A filibuster may pass current under some such label as Political or Territorial Extensionist;--the name is a long, decent overcoat for his shabby ideas. So when wonderful phenomena in the nervous system are observed,--when tables are smashed by invisible hands,--when people see ghosts through stone walls, and know what is passing in the heart of Africa,--how easily you unlock your wardrobe of terms and clap on the back of every eccentric fact your ready-made phrase-coat,--Animal Magnetism, Biology, Odic Force, Optical Illusion, Second Sight, Spirits, and what not! It is a wonderful labor-saving and faith-saving process. People say, "Oh, is that all?" and pass on complacently. There are such explanatory labels to be met with everywhere. They save a deal of trouble. All the shops keep these overcoats,--shops ecclesiastical, medical, juridical, professional, political, social.

Now all I have to do is, not to go to the second-hand slop-shops for the phrase-coat I need for my naked discovery, but look for some unfamiliar robe,--some name more recherché, learned, and transcendental than my neighbors sport,--and then I shall pass muster. The classic togas seem to be the most imposing. The Germans, who weave their names out of their indigenous Saxon roots, are much too naïve. I will get a Greek Lexicon and set about it this very night.

After all, why should it be thought so improbable, in this age of strange phenomena, that the ideas transmitted through the electro-magnetic wire may be communicated to the brain,--especially when there exist certain abnormal or semi-abnormal conditions of that brain and its nerves? Is it not reasonable to suppose that all magnetisms are one in essence? The singular experiences above related seem to hint at the truth of such a view. If it be true that certain delicately-organized persons have the power of telling the character of others, who are entire strangers to them, simply by holding in their hands letters written by those strangers, is it not full as much within the scope of belief that there are those who, under certain physical conditions, may detect the purport of an electro-magnetic message,--that message being sent by vibrations of the wire through the nerves to the brain? If all magnetisms are one in essence,--as I am inclined to believe,--and if the nerves, the brain, and the mind are so swayed by what we term animal magnetism, why not allow for the strong probability of their being also, under certain conditions, equally impressible by electro-magnetism? I put these questions to scientific men; and I do not see why they should be answered by silence or ridicule, merely because the whole subject is veiled in mystery.

It may be asked,--How can an electro-magnetic message be communicated to the mind, without a knowledge of the alphabet used by the telegraphers? This question may seem a poser to some minds. But I don't see that it raises any grave difficulty. I answer the question by asking another:--How can persons in the somnambulic state read with the tops of their heads?

Besides, I once had the telegraph alphabet explained to me by one of the wire-operators,--though I have forgotten it,--and it is possible, that, in my semi-mesmeric condition, the recollection revived, so that I knew that such and such pulsations of the wire stood for such and such letters.

But is there not a certain spiritual significance, also, in these singular experiences here related?

We may safely lay down this doctrine,--a very old and much-thumbed doctrine, but none the less true for all its dog-ears:--No man lives for himself alone. He is related not only to the silent stars and the singing-birds and the sunny landscape, but to every other human soul. You say, This should not be stated so sermonically, but symbolically. That is just what I have been doing in my narrative of the wires.

It gives one a great idea of human communion,--this power of sending these spark-messages thousands of miles in a second. Far more poetical, too,--is it not?--as well as more practical, than tying billets under the wings of carrier-pigeons. It is removing so much time and space out of the way,--those absorbents of spirits,--and bringing mind into close contact with mind. But when one can read these messages without the aid of machinery, by merely touching the wires, how much greater does the symbol become!

All mankind are one. As some philosophers express it,--one great mind includes us all. But then, as it would never do for all minds to be literally one, any more than it would for all magnetisms to be identical in their modes of manifestation, or for all the rivers, creeks, and canals to flow together, so we have our natural barriers and channels, our propriums, as the Swedish seer has it,--and so we live and let live. We feel with others and think with others, but with strict reservations. That evening among the wires, for instance, brought me into wonderful intimate contact with a few of the joys and sorrows of some of my fellow-beings; but an excess of such experiences would interfere with our freedom and our happiness. It is our self-hood, properly balanced, which constitutes our dignity, our humanity. A certain degree, and a very considerable degree of insulation is necessary, that individual life and mental equanimity may go on.

But there may be a degree of insulation which is unbecoming a member of the human family. It may become brutish,--or it may amount to the ridiculous. In Paris, there was an old lady, of uncertain age, who lived in the apartment beneath mine. I think I never saw her but twice. She manifested her existence sometimes by complaining of the romping of the children overhead, who called her the "bonne femme." Why they gave her the name I don't know; for she seemed to have no human ties in the world, and wasted her affections on a private menagerie of parrots, canaries, and poodle-dogs. A few shocks of the electric telegraph might have raised her out of her desert island, and given her some glimpses of the great continents of human love and sympathy.

A man who lives for himself alone sits on a sort of insulated glass stool, with a noli-me-tangere look at his fellow-men, and a shivering dread of some electric shock from contact with them. He is a non-conductor in relation to the great magnetic currents which run pulsing along the invisible wires that connect one heart with another. Preachers, philanthropists, and moralists are in the habit of saying of such a person,--"How cold! how selfish! how unchristian!" I sometimes fancy a citizen of the planet Venus, that social star of evening and morning, might say,--"How absurd!" What a figure he cuts there, sitting in solitary state upon his glass tripod,--in the middle of a crowd of excited fellow-beings, hurried to and fro by their passions and sympathies,--like an awkward country-bumpkin caught in the midst of a gay crowd of polkers and waltzers at a ball,--or an oyster bedded on a rock, with silver fishes playing rapid games of hide and seek, love and hate, in the clear briny depths above and beneath! If the angels ever look out of their sphere of intense spiritual realities to indulge in a laugh, methinks such a lonely tripod-sitter, cased over with his invulnerable, non-conducting cloak and hood,--shrinking, dodging, or bracing himself up on the defensive, as the crowd fans him with its rush or jostles up against him,--like the man who fancied himself a teapot, and was forever warning people not to come too near him,--might furnish a subject for a planetary joke not unworthy of translation into the language of our dim earth.

One need not be a lonely bachelor, nor a lonely spinster, in order to live alone. The loneliest are those who mingle with men bodily and yet have no contact with them spiritually. There is no desert solitude equal to that of a crowded city where you have no sympathies. I might here quote Paris again, in illustration,--or, indeed, any foreign city. A friend of mine had an atelier once in the top of a house in the Rue St. Honoré. He knew not a soul in the house nor in the neighborhood. There was a German tailor below, who once made him a pair of pantaloons,--so they were connected sartorically and pecuniarily, and, when they met, recognized one another: and there was the concierge below, who knew when he came in and went out,--that was all. All day long the deafened roar of carts and carriages, and the muffled cry of the marchands des légumes, were faintly heard from below. And in an adjoining room a female voice (my friend could never tell whether child's or woman's, for he never saw any one) overflowed in tones of endearment on some unresponding creature,--he could never guess whether it was a baby, or a bird, or a cat, or a dog, or a lizard, (the French have such pets sometimes,) or an enchanted prince, like that poor half-marble fellow in the "Arabian Nights." In that garret the painter experienced for six months the perfection of Parisian solitude. Now I dare say he or I might have found social sympathies, by hunting them up; but he didn't, and I dare say he was to blame, as I should be in the same situation,--and I am willing to place myself in the same category with the menagerie-loving old lady, above referred to, omitting the feathered and canine pets.

As to my mesmerico-telegraphic discovery, it may pass for what it is worth. I shall submit it at least to my cousin Moses, as soon as he returns from the South. People may believe it or not. People may say it may be of practical use, or not. I shall overhaul my terminologies, and, with the "metaphysical aid" of my cousin, fit it with a scientific name which shall overtop all the ologies.

Having dressed my new Fact in a respectable and scholarlike coat, I shall let him take his chance with the judicious public,--and content myself, for the present, with making him a sort of humble colporteur of the valuable tract on Human Brotherhood of which I have herewith furnished a few dry specimens.

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL.

The company looked a little flustered one morning when I came in,--so much so, that I inquired of my neighbor, the divinity-student, what had been going on. It appears that the young fellow whom they call John had taken advantage of my being a little late (I having been rather longer than usual dressing that morning) to circulate several questions involving a quibble or play upon words,--in short, containing that indignity to the human understanding, condemned in the passages from the distinguished moralist of the last century and the illustrious historian of the present, which I cited on a former occasion, and known as a pun. After breakfast, one of the boarders handed me a small roll of paper containing some of the questions and their answers. I subjoin two or three of them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless talk in young persons of a certain sort, when not restrained by the presence of more reflective natures.--It was asked, "Why tertian and quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects." Some interesting physiological relation would be naturally suggested. The inquirer blushes to find that the answer is in the paltry equivocation, that they skip a day or two.--"Why an Englishman must go to the Continent to weaken his grog or punch." The answer proves to have no relation whatever to the temperance-movement, as no better reason is given than that island--(or, as it is absurdly written, ile and) water won't mix.--But when I came to the next question and its answer, I felt that patience ceased to be a virtue. "Why an onion is like a piano" is a query that a person of sensibility would be slow to propose; but that in an educated community an individual could be found to answer it in these words,--"Because it smell odious," quasi, it's melodious,--is not credible, but too true. I can show you the paper.

Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating such things. I know most conversations reported in books are altogether above such trivial details, but folly will come up at every table as surely as purslain and chickweed and sorrel will come up in gardens. This young fellow ought to have talked philosophy, I know perfectly well; but he didn't,--he made jokes.

I am willing,--I said,--to exercise your ingenuity in a rational and contemplative manner.--No, I do not proscribe certain forms of philosophical speculation which involve an approach to the absurd or the ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the folio of the Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in his famous tractate, "De Sancto Matrimonio." I will therefore turn this levity of yours to profit by reading you a rhymed problem, wrought out by my friend the Professor.

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE: OR THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS-SHAY."

A LOGICAL STORY.

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss-shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it----ah, but stay, I'll tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits,-- Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. Georgius Secundus was then alive,-- Snuffy old drone from the German hive! That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay.

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always somewhere, a weakest spot,-- In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,--lurking still Find it somewhere you must and will,-- Above or below, or within or without,-- And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, A chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out,

But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou,") He would build one shay to beat the taown 'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it couldn' break daown: --"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain; 'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest To make that place uz strong uz the rest."

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,-- That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees; The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"-- Last of its timber,--they couldn't sell 'em,-- Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through."-- "There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew!"

Do! I tell you, I rather guess She was a wonder, and nothing less! Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, Deacon and deaconess dropped away, Children and grand-children--where were they? But there stood the stout old one-hoss-shay As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED;--it came and found The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound. Eighteen hundred increased by ten;-- "Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then. Eighteen hundred and twenty came;-- Running as usual; much the same. Thirty and forty at last arrive, And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.

Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. (This is a moral that runs at large; Take it.--You're welcome--No extra charge.)

FIRST OF NOVEMBER,--the Earthquake-day.-- There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay, A general flavor of mild decay, But nothing local, as one may say. There couldn't be,--for the Deacon's art Had made it so like in every part That there wasn't a chance for one to start. For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, And the floor was just as strong as the sills, And the panels just as strong as the floor, And the whippletree neither less nor more, And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore, And spring and axle and hub encore. And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt In another hour it will be worn out!

First of November, 'Fifty-five! This morning the parson takes a drive. Now, small boys, get out of the way! Here comes the wonderful one-hoss-shay, Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. "Huddup!" said the parson.--Off went they.

The parson was working his Sunday's text,-- Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed At what the--Moses--was coming next. All at once the horse stood still, Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. --First a shiver, and then a thrill, Then something decidedly like a spill,-- And the parson was sitting upon a rock, At half-past nine by the meet'n'-house-clock,-- Just the hour of the Earthquake-shock! --What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around? The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground! You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,-- All at once, and nothing first,-- Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay. Logic is logic. That's all I say.

--I think there is one habit,--I said to our company a day or two afterwards,--worse than that of punning. It is the gradual substitution of cant or flash terms for words which truly characterize their objects. I have known several very genteel idiots whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some half dozen expressions. All things fell into one of two great categories,--_fast_ or slow. Man's chief end was to be a brick. When the great calamities of life overtook their friends, these last were spoken of as being a good deal cut up. Nine-tenths of human existence were summed up in the single word, bore. These expressions come to be the algebraic symbols of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to discriminate. They are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy;--you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But it is no better than a toadstool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the intellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of men and youths capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we hear flash phraseology, it is commonly the dishwater from the washings of English dandyism, school-boy or full-grown, wrung out of a three-volume novel which had sopped it up, or decanted from the pictured urn of Mr. Verdant Green, and diluted to suit the provincial climate.

----The young fellow called John spoke up sharply and said, it was "rum" to hear me "pitchin' into fellers" for "goin' it in the slang line," when I used all the flash words myself just when I pleased.

----I replied with my usual forbearance.--Certainly, to give up the algebraic symbol, because a or b is often a cover for ideal nihility, would be unwise. I have heard a child laboring to express a certain condition, involving a hitherto undescribed sensation, (as it supposed,) all of which could have been sufficiently explained by the participle--_bored_. I have seen a country-clergyman, with a one-story intellect and a one-horse vocabulary, who has consumed his valuable time (and mine) freely, in developing an opinion of a brother-minister's discourse which would have been abundantly characterized by a peach-down-lipped sophomore in the one word--_slow_. Let us discriminate, and be shy of absolute proscription. I am omniverbivorous by nature and training. Passing by such words as are poisonous, I can swallow most others, and chew such as I cannot swallow.

Dandies are not good for much, but they are good for something. They invent or keep in circulation those conversational blank checks or counters just spoken of, which intellectual capitalists may sometimes find it worth their while to borrow of them. They are useful, too, in keeping up the standard of dress, which, but for them, would deteriorate, and become, what some old fools would have it, a matter of convenience, and not of taste and art. Yes, I like dandies well enough,--on one condition.

----What is that, Sir?--said the divinity-student.

----That they have pluck. I find that lies at the bottom of all true dandyism. A little boy dressed up very fine, who puts his finger in his mouth and takes to crying, if other boys make fun of him, looks very silly. But if he turns red in the face and knotty in the fists, and makes an example of the biggest of his assailants, throwing off his fine Leghorn and his thickly-buttoned jacket, if necessary, to consummate the act of justice, his small toggery takes on the splendors of the crested helmet that frightened Astyanax. You remember that the Duke said his dandy officers were his best officers. The "Sunday blood," the super-superb sartorial equestrian of our annual Fast-day, is not imposing or dangerous. But such fellows as Brummel and D'Orsay and Byron are not to be snubbed quite so easily. Look out for "la main de fer sous le gant de velours" (which I printed in English the other day without quotation-marks, thinking whether any scarabaeus criticus would add this to his globe and roll in glory with it into the newspapers,--which he didn't do it, in the charming pleonasm of the London language, and therefore I claim the sole merit of exposing the same). A good many powerful and dangerous people have had a decided dash of dandyism about them. There was Alcibiades, the "curled son of Clinias," an accomplished young man, but what would be called a "swell" in these days. There was Aristoteles, a very distinguished writer, of whom you have heard,--a philosopher, in short, whom it took centuries to learn, centuries to unlearn, and is now going to take a generation or more to learn over again. Regular dandy, he was. So was Marcus Antonius: and though he lost his game, he played for big stakes, and it wasn't his dandyism that spoiled his chance. Petrarca was not to be despised as a scholar or a poet, but he was one of the same sort. So was Sir Humphrey Davy; so was Lord Palmerston, formerly, if I am not forgetful. Yes,--a dandy is good for something as such; and dandies such as I was just speaking of have rocked this planet like a cradle,--aye, and left it swinging to this day.--Still, if I were you, I wouldn't go to the tailor's, on the strength of these remarks, and run up a long bill which will render pockets a superfluity in your next suit. Elegans "nascitur, non fit." A man is born a dandy, as he is born a poet. There are heads that can't wear hats; there are necks that can't fit cravats; there are jaws that can't fill out collars--(Willis touched this last point in one of his earlier ambrotypes, if I remember rightly); there are tournures nothing can humanize, and movements nothing can subdue to the gracious suavity or elegant languor or stately serenity which belong to different styles of dandyism.

We are forming an aristocracy, as you may observe, in this country,--not a gratiâ-Dei, nor a jure-divino one,--but a de-facto upper stratum of being, which floats over the turbid waves of common life as the iridescent film you may have seen spreading over the water about our wharves,--very splendid, though its origin may have been tar, tallow, train-oil, or other such unctuous commodities. I say, then, we are forming an aristocracy; and, transitory as its individual life often is, it maintains itself tolerably, as a whole. Of course, money is its corner-stone. But now observe this. Money kept for two or three generations transforms a race,--I don't mean merely in manners and hereditary culture, but in blood and bone. Money buys air and sunshine, in which children grow up more kindly, of course, than in close, back streets; it buys country-places to give them happy and healthy summers, good nursing, good doctoring, and the best cuts of beef and mutton. When the spring-chickens come to market----I beg your pardon,--that is not what I was going to speak of. As the young females of each successive season come on, the finest specimens among them, other things being equal, are apt to attract those who can afford the expensive luxury of beauty. The physical character of the next generation rises in consequence. It is plain that certain families have in this way acquired an elevated type of face and figure, and that in a small circle of city-connections one may sometimes find models of both sexes which one of the rural counties would find it hard to match from all its townships put together. Because there is a good deal of running down, of degeneration and waste of life, among the richer classes, you must not overlook the equally obvious fact I have just spoken of,--which in one or two generations more will be, I think, much more patent than just now.

The weak point in our chryso-aristocracy is the same I have alluded to in connection with cheap dandyism. Its thorough manhood, its high-caste gallantry, are not so manifest as the plate-glass of its windows and the more or less legitimate heraldry of its coach-panels. It is very curious to observe of how small account military folks are held among our Northern people. Our young men must gild their spurs, but they need not win them. The equal division of property keeps the younger sons of rich people above the necessity of military service. Thus the army loses an element of refinement, and the moneyed upper class forgets what it is to count heroism among its virtues. Still I don't believe in any aristocracy without pluck as its backbone. Ours may show it when the time comes, if it ever does come.

----These United States furnish the greatest market for intellectual green fruit of all the places in the world. I think so, at any rate. The demand for intellectual labor is so enormous and the market so far from nice, that young talent is apt to fare like unripe gooseberries--get plucked to make a fool of. Think of a country which buys eighty thousand copies of the "Proverbial Philosophy," while the author's admiring countrymen have been buying twelve thousand! How can one let his fruit hang in the sun until it gets fully ripe, while there are eighty thousand such hungry mouths ready to swallow it and proclaim its praises? Consequently, there never was such a collection of crude pippins and half-grown windfalls as our native literature displays among its fruits. There are literary green-groceries at every corner, which will buy anything, from a button-pear to a pine-apple. It takes a long apprenticeship to train a whole people to reading and writing. The temptation of money and fame is too great for young people. Do I not remember that glorious moment when the late Mr. ---- we won't say who,--editor of the ---- we won't say what, offered me the sum of fifty cents per double-columned quarto page for shaking my young boughs over his foolscap apron? Was it not an intoxicating vision of gold and glory? I should doubtless have revelled in its wealth and splendor, but for learning the fact that the fifty cents was to be considered a rhetorical embellishment, and by no means a literal expression of past fact or present intention.

----Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues. It is good to abstain, and teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful or hurtful. But making a business of it leads to emaciation of character, unless one feeds largely also on the more nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevolence.

----I don't believe one word of what you are saying,--spoke up the angular female in black bombazine.

I am sorry you disbelieve it, Madam,--I said, and added softly to my next neighbor,--but you prove it.

The young fellow sitting near me winked; and the divinity-student said, in an undertone,--_Optime dictum_.

Your talking Latin,--said I,--reminds me of an odd trick of one of my old tutors. He read so much of that language, that his English half turned into it. He got caught in town, one hot summer, in pretty close quarters, and wrote, or began to write, a series of city pastorals. Eclogues he called them, and meant to have published them by subscription. I remember some of his verses, if you want to hear them.--You, Sir, (addressing myself to the divinity-student,) and all such as have been through college, or, what is the same thing, received an honorary degree, will understand them without a dictionary. The old man had a great deal to say about "aestivation," as he called it, in opposition, as one might say, to hibernation. Intramural festivation, or town-life in summer, he would say, is a peculiar form of suspended existence or semi-asphyxia. One wakes up from it about the beginning of the last week in September. This is what I remember of his poem:--

AESTIVATION.

An Unpublished Poem, by my late Latin Tutor.

In candent ire the solar splendor flames; The foles, languescent, pend from arid rances; His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes, And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes.

How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine!

To me, alas! no verdurous visions come, Save yon exigous pool's conferva-scum,-- No concave vast repeats the tender hue That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue!

Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades! Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids! Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,-- Depart,--be off,--excede,--evade,--crump!

--I have lived by the sea-shore and by the mountains.--No, I am not going to say which is best. The one where your place is is the best for you. But this difference there is: you can domesticate mountains, but the sea is ferae naturae. You may have a hut, or know the owner of one, on the mountain-side; you see a light half-way up its ascent in the evening, and you know there is a home, and you might share it. You have noted certain trees, perhaps; you know the particular zone where the hemlocks look so black in October, when the maples and beeches have faded. All its reliefs and intaglios have electrotyped themselves in the medallions that hang round the walls of your memory's chamber.--The sea remembers nothing. It is feline. It licks your feet,--its huge flanks purr very pleasantly for you; but it will crack your bones and eat you, for all that, and wipe the crimsoned foam from its jaws as if nothing had happened. The mountains give their lost children berries and water; the sea mocks their thirst and lets them die. The mountains have a grand, stupid, lovable tranquillity; the sea has a fascinating, treacherous intelligence. The mountains lie about like huge ruminants, their broad backs awful to look upon, but safe to handle. The sea smooths its silver scales until you cannot see their joints,--but their shining is that of a snake's belly, after all.--In deeper suggestiveness I find as great a difference. The mountains dwarf mankind and foreshorten the procession of its long generations. The sea drowns out humanity and time; it has no sympathy with either; for it belongs to eternity, and of that it sings its monotonous song forever and ever.

Yet I should love to have a little box by the sea-shore. I should love to gaze out on the wild feline element from a front window of my own, just as I should love to look on a caged panther, and see it stretch its shining length, and then curl over and lap its smooth sides, and by-and-by begin to lash itself into rage and show its white teeth and spring at its bars, and howl the cry of its mad, but, to me, harmless fury.--And then,--to look at it with that inward eye,--who does not love to shuffle off time and its concerns, at intervals,--to forget who is President and who is Governor, what race he belongs to, what language he speaks, which golden-headed nail of the firmament his particular planetary system is hung upon, and listen to the great liquid metronome as it beats its solemn measure, steadily swinging when the solo or duet of human life began, and to swing just as steadily after the human chorus has died out and man is a fossil on its shores?

--What should decide one, in choosing a summer residence?--Constitution, first of all. How much snow could you melt in an hour, if you were planted in a hogshead of it? Comfort is essential to enjoyment. All sensitive people should remember that persons in easy circumstances suffer much more from cold in summer--that is, the warm half of the year--than in winter, or the other half. You must cut your climate to your constitution, as much as your clothing to your shape. After this, consult your taste and convenience. But if you would be happy in Berkshire, you must carry mountains in your brain; and if you would enjoy Nahant, you must have an ocean in your soul. Nature plays at dominos with you; you must match her piece, or she will never give it up to you.

----The schoolmistress said, in rather a mischievous way, that she was afraid some minds or souls would be a little crowded, if they took in the Rocky Mountains or the Atlantic.

Have you ever read the little book called "The Stars and the Earth?"--said I.--Have you seen the Declaration of Independence photographed in a surface that a fly's foot would cover? The forms or conditions of Time and Space, as Kant will tell you, are nothing in themselves,--only our way of looking at things. You are right, I think, however, in recognizing the category of Space as being quite as applicable to minds as to the outer world. Every man of reflection is vaguely conscious of an imperfectly-defined circle which is drawn about his intellect. He has a perfectly clear sense that the fragments of his intellectual circle include the curves of many other minds of which he is cognizant. He often recognizes those as manifestly concentric with his own, but of less radius. On the other hand, when we find a portion of an arc outside of our own, we say it intersects ours, but are very slow to confess or to see that it circumscribes it. Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it.

----If I thought I should ever see the Alps!--said the schoolmistress.

Perhaps you will, some time or other,--I said.

It is not very likely,--she answered.--I have had one or two opportunities, but I had rather be anything than governess in a rich family.

Proud, too, you little soft-voiced woman! Well, I can't say I like you any the worse for it. How long will schoolkeeping take to kill you? Is it possible the poor thing works with her needle, too? I don't like those marks on the side of her forefinger.

Tableau. Chamouni. Mont Blanc in full view. Figures in the foreground; two of them standing apart; one of them a gentleman of----oh,--ah,--yes! the other a lady in a white cashmere, leaning on his shoulder.--The ingenuous reader will understand that this was an internal, private, personal, subjective diorama, seen for one instant on the background of my own consciousness, and abolished into black non-entity by the first question which recalled me to actual life, as suddenly as if one of those iron shop-blinds (which I always pass at dusk with a shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor but honest shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sudden and unexpected descent, and left outside upon the sidewalk) had come down "by the run."

----Should you like to hear what moderate wishes life brings one to at last? I used to be very ambitious,--wasteful, extravagant, and luxurious in all my fancies. Head too much in the "Arabian Nights." Must have the lamp,--couldn't do without the ring. Exercise every morning on the brazen horse. Plump down into castles as full of little milk-white princesses as a nest is of young sparrows. All love me dearly at once.--Charming idea of life, but too high-colored for the reality. I have outgrown all this; my tastes have become exceedingly primitive,--almost, perhaps, ascetic. We carry happiness into our condition, but must not hope to find it there. I think you will be willing to hear some lines which embody the subdued and limited desires of my maturity.

CONTENTMENT.

"Man wants but little here below."

Little I ask; my wants are few; I only wish a hut of stone, (A very plain brown stone will do,) That I may call my own:-- And close at hand is such a one, In yonder street that fronts the sun.

Plain food is quite enough for me; Three courses are as good as ten;-- If Nature can subsist on three, Thank Heaven for three. Amen! I always thought cold victual nice;-- My choice would be vanilla-ice.

I care not much for gold or land;-- Give me a mortgage here and there,-- Some good bank-stock,--some note of hand, Or trifling railroad share;-- I only ask that Fortune send A little more than I shall spend.

Honors are silly toys, I know, And titles are but empty names;-- I would, perhaps, be Plenipo,-- But only near St. James;-- I'm very sure I should not care To fill our Gubernator's chair.

Jewels are baubles; 'tis a sin To care for such unfruitful things;-- One good-sized diamond in a pin,-- Some, not so large, in rings,-- A ruby, and a pearl, or so, Will do for me;--I laugh at show.

My dame should dress in cheap attire; (Good, heavy silks are never dear;)-- I own perhaps I might desire Some shawls of true cashmere,-- Some marrowy crapes of China silk, Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk.

I would not have the horse I drive So fast that folks must stop and stare; An easy gait--two, forty-five-- Suits me; I do not care;-- Perhaps, for just a single spurt, Some seconds less would do no hurt.

Of pictures, I should like to own Titians and Raphaels three or four,-- I love so much their style and tone,-- One Turner, and no more (A landscape,--foreground golden dirt; The sunshine painted with a squirt).

Of books but few,--some fifty score For daily use, and bound for wear; The rest upon an upper floor;-- Some little luxury there Of red morocco's gilded gleam, And vellum rich as country cream.

Busts, cameos, gems,--such things as these, Which others often show for pride, I value for their power to please, And selfish churls deride;-- One Stradivarius, I confess, Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess.

Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn, Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;-- Shall not carved tables serve my turn, But all must be of buhl? Give grasping pomp its double share,-- I ask but one recumbent chair.

Thus humble let me live and die, Nor long for Midas' golden touch; If Heaven more generous gifts deny, I shall not miss them much.-- Too grateful for the blessing lent Of simple tastes and mind content!

MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS.

(_A Parenthesis_.)

I can't say just how many walks she and I had taken together before this one. I found the effect of going out every morning was decidedly favorable on her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for which were just marked when she came, played, shadowy, in her freshening cheeks when she smiled and nodded good-morning to me from the schoolhouse-steps.

I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At any rate, if I should try to report all that I said during the first half-dozen walks we took together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint from my friends the publishers, that a separate volume, at my own risk and expense, would be the proper method of bringing them before the public.

--I would have a woman as true as Death. At the first real lie which works from the heart outward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world, where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed on strange fruits which will make her all over again, even to her bones and marrow.--Whether gifted with the accident of beauty or not, she should have been moulded in the rose-red clay of Love, before the breath of life made a moving mortal of her. Love-capacity is a congenital endowment; and I think, after a while, one gets to know the warm-hued natures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of it.--Proud she may be, in the sense of respecting herself; but pride, in the sense of contemning others less gifted than herself, deserves the two lowest circles of a vulgar woman's Inferno, where the punishments are Small-pox and Bankruptcy.--She who nips off the end of a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tip of an icicle, to bestow upon those whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize, proclaims the fact that she comes not merely of low blood, but of bad blood. Consciousness of unquestioned position makes people gracious in proper measure to all; but if a woman puts on airs with her real equals, she has something about herself or her family she is ashamed of, or ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged people, who know family histories, generally see through it. An official of standing was rude to me once. Oh, that is the maternal grandfather,--said a wise old friend to me,--he was a boor.--Better too few words, from the woman we love, than too many: while she is silent, Nature is working for her; while she talks, she is working for herself.--Love is sparingly soluble in the words of men; therefore they speak much of it; but one syllable of woman's speech can dissolve more of it than a man's heart can hold.

--Whether I said any or all of these things to the schoolmistress, or not,--whether I stole them out of Lord Bacon,--whether I cribbed them from Balzac,--whether I dipped them from the ocean of Tupperian wisdom,--or whether I have just found them in my head, laid there by that solemn fowl, Experience, (who, according to my observation, cackles oftener than she drops real live eggs,) I cannot say. Wise men have said more foolish things,--and foolish men, I don't doubt, have said as wise things. Anyhow, the schoolmistress and I had pleasant walks and long talks, all of which I do not feel bound to report.

--You are a stranger to me, Ma'am.--I don't doubt you would like to know all I said to the schoolmistress.--I sha'n't do it;--I had rather get the publishers to return the money you have invested in this. Besides, I have forgotten a good deal of it. I shall tell only what I like of what I remember.

--My idea was, in the first place, to search out the picturesque spots which the city affords a sight of, to those who have eyes. I know a good many, and it was a pleasure to look at them in company with my young friend. There were the shrubs and flowers in the Franklin-Place front-yards or borders; Commerce is just putting his granite foot upon them. Then there are certain small seraglio-gardens, into which one can get a peep through the crevices of high fences,--one in Myrtle Street, or backing on it,--here and there one at the North and South Ends. Then the great elms in Essex Street. Then the stately horse-chestnuts in that vacant lot in Chambers Street, which hold their outspread hands over your head, (as I said in my poem the other day,) and look as if they were whispering, "May grace, mercy, and peace be with you!"--and the rest of that benediction. Nay, there are certain patches of ground, which, having lain neglected for a time, Nature, who always has her pockets full of seeds, and holes in all her pockets, has covered with hungry plebeian growths, which fight for life with each other, until some of them get broad-leaved and succulent, and you have a coarse vegetable tapestry which Raphael would not have disdained to spread over the foreground of his masterpiece. The Professor pretends that he found such a one in Charles Street, which, in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble vegetation, beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of the Public Garden as ignominiously as a group of young tatterdemalions playing pitch-and-toss beats a row of Sunday-school-boys with their teacher at their head.

But then the Professor has one of his burrows in that region, and puts everything in high colors relating to it. That is his way about everything.--I hold any man cheap,--he said,--of whom nothing stronger can be uttered than that all his geese are swans.----How is that, Professor?--said I;--I should have set you down for one of that sort.--Sir,--said he,--I am proud to say, that Nature has so far enriched me, that I cannot own so much as a duck without seeing in it as pretty a swan as ever swam the basin in the garden of the Luxembourg. And the Professor showed the whites of his eyes devoutly, like one returning thanks after a dinner of many courses.

I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking in of Nature through all the cracks in the walls and floors of cities. You heap up a million tons of hewn rocks on a square mile or two of earth which was green once. The trees look down from the hill-sides and ask each other, as they stand on tiptoe,--"What are these people about?" And the small herbs at their feet look up and whisper back,--"We will go and see." So the small herbs pack themselves up in the least possible bundles, and wait until the wind steals to them at night and whispers,--"Come with me." Then they go softly with it into the great city,--one to a cleft in the pavement, one to a spout on the roof, one to a seam in the marbles over a rich gentleman's bones, and one to the grave without a stone where nothing but a man is buried,--and there they grow, looking down on the generations of men from mouldy roofs, looking up from between the less-trodden pavements, looking out through iron cemetery-railings. Listen to them, when there is only a light breath stirring, and you will hear them saying to each other,--"Wait awhile!" The words run along the telegraph of those narrow green lines that border the roads leading from the city, until they reach the slope of the hills, and the trees repeat in low murmurs to each other,--"Wait awhile!" By-and-by the flow of life in the streets ebbs, and the old leafy inhabitants--the smaller tribes always in front--saunter in, one by one, very careless seemingly, but very tenacious, until they swarm so that the great stones gape from each other with the crowding of their roots, and the feldspar begins to be picked out of the granite to find them food. At last the trees take up their solemn line of march, and never rest until they have encamped in the market-place. Wait long enough and you will find an old doting oak hugging a huge worn block in its yellow underground arms; that was the corner-stone of the State-House. Oh, so patient she is, this imperturbable Nature!

--Let us cry!--

But all this has nothing to do with my walks and talks with the schoolmistress. I did not say that I would not tell you something about them. Let me alone, and I shall talk to you more than I ought to, probably. We never tell our secrets to people that pump for them.

Books we talked about, and education. It was her duty to know something of these, and of course she did. Perhaps I was somewhat more learned than she, but I found that the difference between her reading and mine was like that of a man's and a woman's dusting a library. The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers; the woman goes to work softly with a cloth. She does not raise half the dust, nor fill her own eyes and mouth with it,--but she goes into all the corners, and attends to the leaves as much as the covers.--Books are the negative pictures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. A woman, (of the right kind,) reading after a man, follows him as Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz, and her gleanings are often the finest of the wheat.

But it was in talking of Life that we came most nearly together. I thought I knew something about that,--that I could speak or write about it somewhat to the purpose.

To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a sponge sucks up water,--to be steeped and soaked in its realities as a hide fills its pores lying seven years in a tan-pit,--to have winnowed every wave of it as a mill-wheel works up the stream that runs through the flume upon its float-boards,--to have curled up in the keenest spasms and flattened out in the laxest languors of this breathing-sickness, which keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy for three or four score years,--to have fought all the devils and clasped all the angels of its delirium,--and then, just at the point when the white-hot passions have cooled down to cherry-red, plunge our experience into the ice-cold stream of some human language or other, one might think would end in a rhapsody with something of spring and temper in it. All this I thought my power and province.

The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a while one meets with a single soul greater than all the living pageant that passes before it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are meek, slight women who have weighed all that this planetary life can offer, and hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender hands. This was one of them. Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her; the routine of labor and the loneliness of almost friendless city-life were before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, gradually regaining a cheerfulness that was often sprightly, as she became interested in the various matters we talked about and places we visited, I saw that eye and lip and every shifting lineament were made for love,--unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meeting the cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces which were meant for the reward of nothing less than the Great Passion.

----I never spoke one word of love to the schoolmistress in the course of these pleasant walks. It seemed to me that we talked of everything but love on that particular morning. There was, perhaps, a little more timidity and hesitancy on my part than I have commonly shown among our people at the boarding-house. In fact, I considered myself the master at the breakfast-table; but, somehow, I could not command myself just then so well as usual. The truth is, I had secured a passage to Liverpool in the steamer which was to leave at noon,--with the condition, however, of being released in case circumstances occurred to detain me. The schoolmistress knew nothing about all this, of course, as yet.

It was on the Common that we were walking. The mall, or boulevard of our Common, you know, has various branches leading from it in different directions. One of these runs downward from opposite Joy Street southward across the whole length of the Common to Boylston Street. We called it the long path, and were fond of it.

I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust habit) as we came opposite the head of this path on that morning. I think I tried to speak twice without making myself distinctly audible. At last I got out the question,----Will you take the long path with me?-- Certainly,--said the schoolmistress,--with much pleasure.----Think,--I said,--before you answer; if you take the long path with me now, I shall interpret it that we are to part no more!----The schoolmistress stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her. One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard by,--the one you may still see close by the Gingko-tree.----Pray, sit down,--I said.----No, no,--she answered, softly,--I will walk the long path with you!

----The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, arm in arm, about the middle of the long path, and said, very charmingly,--"Good morning, my dears!"

LITERARY NOTICES.

The Life of John Fitch, the Inventor of the Steamboat. By THOMPSON WESTCOTT. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.

What would not honest Sancho have given for a good biography of the man who invented sleep? And will not the adventurous pleasure-tourist, who has been jarred, jammed, roasted, coddled, and suffocated in a railroad-car for a whole night, with two days to sandwich it, on being deposited in an airy stateroom for the last two hundred miles of his journey, think the man who invented the steamboat deserving of a "first-rate" life? We well remember the time when nobody suspected that person, whoever he might be,--and nobody much cared who he was,--of any relationship to the individual whose memory Sancho blessed, so great was the churning in the palaces that then floated. But in our present boats this unpalace-like operation has been so localized and mollified as to escape the notice of all but the greenest and most inquisitive passengers. And now that we find the luxury of travelling by water actually superior to that of staying at home on land, we begin to feel a budding veneration for the man who first found out that steam could be substituted, with such marvellous advantage, for helpless dependence on the wind and miserable tugging at oars and setting-poles. Who was he? What circumstances conspired to shape his life and project it with so notable an aim? How did he look, act, think, on all matters of human concernment? Here comes a book, assuming in its title that one John Fitch, of whom his generation seems not to have thought enough to paint his portrait, was the inventor of the steamboat. It professes to be "The Life of John Fitch"; but we are sorry to say it is rather a documentary argument to prove that he was "the inventor of the steamboat." As an argument, it is both needless and needlessly strong. We already knew to a certainty that nobody could present a better claim to that honor than John Fitch. True, the idea did not wait for him. The engine could not have been working a hundred years in the world without giving birth to that. But till Watt invented it anew in 1782, by admitting the steam alternately at both ends of the cylinder, it was too awkward and clumsy to become a practical navigator. Moreover, though it could pump admirably, it had not been taught to turn a crank. The French assert, that experiments in steam-propulsion were made on the Seine, by Count Auxiron and Perrier, in 1774, and on the Saone, by De Jouffroy, in 1782; but we know they led to no practical results, and the knowledge of them probably did not, for some years, travel beyond the limits of the French language. There is no satisfactory evidence that a boat was ever moved by steam, within the boundaries of Anglo-Saxondom, before John Fitch did it, on the 27th of July, 1786. His successful and every way brilliant experiment on that occasion led directly to practical results,--to wit, the formation of a company, embracing some of the foremost men of Philadelphia, which built a small steam-packet for the conveyance of passengers, and ran it during three summers, ending with that of 1790. The company then failed, and broke poor Fitch's heart, simply because the investment had not thus far proved lucrative, and they were unwilling to make the further advances requisite to carry out his moderate and reasonable plans. The only person who ever claimed, in English, to have made a steamboat experiment before Fitch, was James Rumsey, of Virginia, who, in 1788, published some testimony to show that he had done it as early as April, 1786, that he had broached the idea, confidentially, two years earlier, and that Fitch might have received it from one who violated his confidence. Fitch promptly annihilated these pretences by a pamphlet, a reprint of which maybe found in the Patent-Office Report for 1850. This, and a contribution to Sparks's "American Biography," by Col. Charles Whittlesey, of Ohio, seem quite sufficient to establish the historical fact that John Fitch was the father of steam-navigation, whoever may have been its prophets. Though the infant, with the royal blood of both Neptune and Pluto in its veins, and a brand-new empire waiting to crown it, fell into a seventeen years' swoon, during which Fitch died, and the public at large forgot all that he had ever said or done, its life did not become extinct. It was not created, but revived, by Fulton, aided by the refreshing effusion of Chancellor Livingston's money. We did not need a new book to make us more certain of these facts, but we did need a more thorough biography of John Fitch, and, with great respect for the industry and faithfulness of Mr. Westcott, it is our opinion that we do still. He has demonstrated that the materials for such a work are abundant, and a glance at the mortal career of Fitch will show him to be an uncommonly interesting subject.

John Fitch was born in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1743. At the age of five, while his father was absent from home, courting his stepmother, he heroically extinguished a fire of blazing flax, which would otherwise have consumed the house, and while he was smarting from his burns was cruelly beaten by an elder brother, who misapprehended the case of the little boy, very much as the world did that of the man he became. The domestic discipline he encountered under the paternal roof was of the severest New England pattern of those days, and between its theology and its economy he grew out of shape, like a thrifty pumpkin between two rocks. He loved to learn, but had few books and little schooling. His taste tended to mechanism, and he was apprenticed to a stingy clock-maker, who obliged him to work on his farm and kept him ignorant of his trade. Getting his liberty at last, he set up brass-founding, on a capital of twenty shillings, and made money at it. Then he went into the manufacture of potash, in which he was less successful. He married a wife who proved more caustic than the potash and more than a match for his patience. He settled his affairs so as to leave her all his little property in the most manageable shape, and left her with two children, to seek a separate fortune in the wide world. The war of the Revolution found him at Trenton, New Jersey, a man of some substance, acquired as a silversmith and peddler of silver and brass sleeve-buttons of his own manufacture. It made him an officer and then an armorer in the Continental service. As a fabricator of patriotic weapons, he incurred the displeasure of his Methodist brethren by working on the Sabbath, and lost his orthodoxy in his disgust at their rebukes. Towards the close of the Revolution, getting poor in fact by getting rich in Continental money, he endeavored to save himself by investing in Virginia land-warrants, went to Kentucky as a surveyor, and became possessed of sixteen hundred acres of that wilderness. On a second expedition down the Ohio, early in 1782, he fell into the hands of the savages, in the most melodramatic style, was led captive through the vast forests and swamps to Detroit, had a very characteristic and remarkable prison-experience under British authority at Prison Island, was exchanged, and by a sea-voyage reached his home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, at the close of the same year. Immediately after the establishment of peace, he formed a company to speculate in Ohio lands, and made extensive surveys for the purpose of forestalling the best locations. Mr. Westcott's book confuses this portion of his chronology by misprinting two or three dates, on the 113th page. The hopeful game was spoiled by unexpected measures of the Confederated government; but Fitch's explorations had deeply impressed him with the sublime character of the Western rivers, and when, in April, 1785, the thought first struck him that steam could easily make them navigable upwards as well as downwards, he cared no more for lands. He had noticed the mechanical power of steam, but had never seen an engine, and did not know that one existed out of his own brain. This is the less wonderful, seeing there were only three then in America, and his science extended only to arithmetic. When his minister showed him a drawing of Newcomen's engine, in "Martin's Philosophy," he was chagrined to find that his invention had been anticipated in regard to the mode of producing the power, but he was confirmed in his belief of its availability for navigation. With no better resources than a blacksmith's shop could furnish, he set himself at work to make a steam-engine to test his theory. His success is one of those wonders of human ingenuity struggling with difficulties, moral, financial, and physical combined, which deserve both a Homer and a Macaulay to celebrate and record them. He was supposed by most people, and almost by himself, to have gone crazy. If anything, at this day, is more incredible than the feat which he accomplished, it is the derision with which the public viewed his labors, decried his success, and sneered at the rags which betokened the honesty of his poverty. To every one who had brains capable of logic, he had demonstrated the feasibility of his visions. But no amount of even physical demonstration, then possible, could bring out the funds requisite to pecuniary profit, against the head-wind of public scorn. It whistled down his high hopes of fortune. At last, dropping the file and the hammer, he took the pen, determined, that, if others must get rich by his invention, he would at least save for himself the fame of it. The result of his literary labors was an autobiography of great frankness and detail, extending to several hundred pages, and embracing almost every conceivable violation of standard English orthography, with which he seems to have had very little acquaintance or sympathy. It was placed under seal in the Philadelphia Library, not to be opened for thirty years. At the expiration of that period, in 1823, the seal was broken, and the quaint old manuscript, with the stamp of honest truth on every word, stood ready to reveal what the world is but just beginning to "want to know" about John Fitch. He afterwards went to Europe to promote his steamboat interests,--to little purpose, --wandered about a few years, settled in Bardstown, Kentucky, made a model steamboat with a brass engine, drowned disappointment in the drink of that country, and at last departed by his own will, two years before the close of the last century. A life so full of truth that is stranger than fiction ought not to be treated in the Dry-as-dust style, quite so largely as Mr. Westcott has done it.

*       *       *       *       *

Life Beneath the Waters; or, The Aquarium in America. Illustrated by Plates and Wood-Cuts drawn from Life. By ARTHUR M. EDWARDS. New York: 1858.

This book has appeared since the notice in our July number of two English works on the Aquarium. Like so many books by which our literature is discredited, it is a work got up hastily to meet a public demand, and is deficient in method, thoroughness, and accuracy. There is much repetition in it, and the observations of its author seem to have been limited to the waters around New York, and to have extended over but a short period. In spite of these and other minor defects, it may be recommended as containing much useful information for those just beginning an aquarium and forming an acquaintance with the sea.

We trust that a misprint in our former notice has not brought disappointment to any of our readers, by leading them to expose their aquaria to too much sunshine; for the sunshine should be "_not_ enough" (and not, as it was printed, "_hot_ enough") "to raise the water to a temperature above that of the outer air."

*       *       *       *       *

The Exiles of Florida: or the Crimes committed by our Government against the Maroons, who fled from South Carolina and other Slave States, seeking Protection under Spanish Laws. By JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS. Columbus, Ohio: Follett, Foster, & Co. 1858.

A cruel story this, Mr. Giddings tells us. Too cruel, but too true. It is full of pathetic and tragic interest, and melts and stirs the heart at once with pity for the sufferers, and with anger, that sins not, at their mean and ruthless oppressors. Every American citizen should read it; for it is an indictment which recites crimes which have been committed in his name, perpetrated by troops and officials in his service, and all done at his expense. The whole nation is responsible at the bar of the world and before the tribunal of posterity for these atrocities, devised by members of its Cabinet and its Congress, directed by its Presidents, and executed by its armies and its courts. The cruelties of Alva in the Netherlands, which make the pen of Motley glow as with fire as he tells them, the dragonnades which scorched over the fairest regions of France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, have a certain excuse, as being instigated by a sincere, though misguided religious zeal. For Philip II. and Louis XIV. had, at least, a fanatical belief that they were doing God service by those holocausts of his children; while no motive inspired these massacres, tortures, and banishments, but the most sordid rapacity and avarice, the lowest and basest passions of the human breast.

And so carefully has the truth of this story been covered up with lies, that, probably, very few indeed of the people of the Free States have any just idea of the origin, character, and purposes of the Seminole Wars, or of the character of the race against which they were waged. And yet there is no episode in American history more full of romantic interest, of heroic struggles, and of moving griefs. We have been taught to believe that these wars were provoked by incursions of the savages of Florida on the frontier, and, if the truth could not be concealed, that an incidental motive of our war of extermination against them was to be found in the sanctuary which the fugitive slaves of the neighboring States found in their fastnesses. The general impression has been, that these were mainly runaways of recent date, who had made their escape from contemporary masters. How many of our readers know that for more than three quarters of a century before the purchase of Florida there had been a nation of negroes established there, enjoying the wild freedom they loved, mingling and gradually becoming identified with the Indians, who had made it their city of refuge from slavery also? For the slaveholders of Carolina had no scruples against enslaving Indians any more than Africans, until it was discovered that the untamable nature of the red man made him an unprofitable and a dangerous servant. These Indian slaves fled into the wilderness, which is now the State of Georgia, pushing their way even to the peninsula of Florida, and were followed, in their flight and to their asylum, by many of their black companions in bondage. For near seventy-five years this little nation lived happy and contented, till the State of Georgia commenced the series of piratical incursions into their country, then a Spanish dependency, from which they were never afterwards free; the nation at last taking up the slaveholders' quarrel and prosecuting it to the bitter and bloody end.

This whole story is told, and well told, by Mr. Giddings. And a most touching picture it is. First, the original evasion of the slaves into that peninsular wilderness, which they reclaimed as far as the supply of their simple wants demanded. They planted, they hunted, they multiplied their cattle, they intermarried with their Indian friends and allies, their children and their children's children grew up around them, knowing of slavery only by traditionary legend. The original founders of the tribe passed away, and their sons and grandsons possessed their corn-fields and their hunting-grounds in peace. For many years no fears disturbed their security. Under the Spanish rule they were safe and happy. Then comes the gradual gathering of the cloud on the edges of their wilderness, its first fitful and irregular flashes, till it closes over their heads and bursts upon them in universal ruin and devastation. Their heroic resistance to the invasion of the United States troops follows, sublime from its very desperation. A more unequal contest was never fought. On one side one of the mightiest powers on earth, with endless stores of men and money at its beck,--and on the other a handful of outcasts fighting for their homes, and the liberties, in no metaphorical sense, of themselves, their wives, and their children, and protracting the fight for as many years as the American Revolution lasted.

Then succeeded the victory of Slavery, and the reduction to hopeless bondage of multitudes who had been for generations free, on claim of pretended descendants of imaginary owners, by the decision of petty government-officials, without trial or real examination. More than five hundred persons, some of them recent fugitives, but mostly men born free, were thus reduced to slavery at a cost to us all of forty millions of dollars, or eighty thousand dollars for each recovered slave! Then comes their removal to the Cherokee lands, west of Arkansas, under the pledge of the faith of the nation, plighted by General Jessup, its authorized agent, that they should be sent to the West, and settled in a village separate from the Seminole Indians, and that, in the mean time, they should be protected, should not be separated, "nor any of them be sold to white men or others." This, however, was not a legitimate issue of a war waged solely for the reduction of these exiles to slavery; and so the doubts of President Polk as to the construction of this treaty were solved by Mr. John Y. Mason, of Virginia, who was sandwiched in between two Free-State Attorney-Generals for this single piece of dirty work, (of which transaction see a most curious account, pp. 328-9 of this book,) and who enlightened the Presidential mind by the information, that, though the exiles were entitled to their freedom, under the treaty, and had a right to remain in the towns assigned to them, "the Executive could not in any manner interfere to protect them!"

The bordering Creeks, who by long slave-holding had sunk to the level of the whites around them, longed to seize on these valuable neighbors, and, indeed, they claimed rights of property in them as fugitives in fact from themselves. The exiles were assured by the President that they "_had the right to remain in their villages, free from all interference or interruption from the Creeks_." Trusting to the plighted word of the Head of the Nation, they built their huts and planted their ground, and began again their little industries and enjoyments.

But the sight of so many able-bodied negroes, belonging only to themselves, and setting an evil example to the slaves in the spectacle of an independent colony of blacks, was too tempting and too irritating to be resisted. A slave-dealer appeared amongst the Creeks and offered to pay one hundred dollars for every Floridian exile they would seize and deliver to him,--he taking the risk of the title. Two hundred armed Creek warriors made a foray into the colony and seized all they could secure. They were repulsed, but carried their prisoners with them and delivered them to the tempter, receiving the stipulated pieces of silver for their reward. The Seminole agent had the prisoners brought before the nearest Arkansas judge by Habeas Corpus, and the whole matter was reviewed by this infamous magistrate, who overruled the opinion of the Attorney-General as to their right to reside in their villages, overrode the decision of the President, repealed the treaty-stipulations, pronounced the title of the Creek Indians, and consequently that of their vendee, legal and perfect, and directed the kidnapped captives to be delivered up to the claimant! We regret that Mr. Giddings has omitted the name of this wretch, and we hope that in a future edition he will tell the world how to catalogue this choice specimen in its collection of judicial monsters.

Then comes the last scene of this drama of exile. Finding that there was no rest for the sole of their foot in the United States, these peeled and hunted men resolved to turn their backs upon the country that had thus cruelly entreated them, and to seek a new home within the frontiers of Mexico. The sad procession began its march westward by night, the warriors keeping themselves always in readiness for an attack. The Creeks, finding that their prey had escaped them, went in pursuit, but were bravely repulsed and fled, leaving their dead upon the field,--the greatest disgrace that can befall, according to the code of Indian honor. The exiles then pursued their march into Mexico without further molestation. There, in a fertile and picturesque region, they have established themselves and resumed the pursuits of peaceful life. But they have not been permitted to live in peace even there. At least one marauding party, in 1853, was organized in Texas, and went in search of adventures towards the new settlement. Of the particulars of the expedition we have no account. Only, it is known that it returned without captives, and, as the Texan papers announcing the fact admitted, "_with slightly diminished numbers_." How long they will be permitted to dwell unmolested in their new homes no one can say. Complaints are already abroad that the escape of slaves is promoted by the existence of this colony, which receives and protects them. And when the Government shall be ordered by its Slave-holding Directory to add another portion of Mexico to the Area of Freedom, these "outrages" will be sure to be found in the catalogue of grievances to be redressed. Then they will have to dislodge again and fly yet farther from before the face of their hereditary oppressors.

Mr. Giddings has done his task admirably well. It is worthy to be the crowning work of his long life of public service. His style is of that best kind which is never remarked upon, but serves as a clear medium through which the events he portrays are seen without distortion or exaggeration. He has done his country one more service in entire consistency with those that have filled up the whole course of his honorable and beneficent life. We have said that this is fit to be the crowning work of Mr. Giddings's life; but we trust that it is far from being the last that he will do for his country. A winter such as rounds his days is fuller of life and promise than a century of vulgar summers. He has won for himself an honorable and enduring place in the hearts and memories of men by the fidelity to principle and the unfaltering courage of his public course. Of the ignoble hundreds who have flitted through the Capitol, since he first took his place there,

"Heads without name, no more remembered,"

his is one of the two or three that are household words on the lips of the nation. And it will so remain and be familiar in the mouths of posterity, with a fame as pure as it is noble. The ear that hath not heard him shall bless him, and the eye that hath not seen him shall give witness to him.

*       *       *       *       *

OBITUARY.

The conductors of "The Atlantic" have the painful duty of announcing to their readers the death of CALVIN W. PHILLEO, author of "Akin by Marriage," published in the earlier numbers of this magazine. The plot of the story was sketched at length, and in the brain of the writer it was complete; but no hand save his own could give it life and form: it must remain an unfinished work. The mind of Mr. Philleo was singularly clear, his observation of nature and character sharp and discriminating, and his feeling for beauty, in its more placid forms, was intense and pervading. His previous work, "Twice Married," and the various sketches of New England life, with which the readers of magazine literature are familiar, are sufficient to give him a high place among novelists. He was warm in his friendships, pure in life, and his early death will be lamented by a wide circle of friends. In pace!

END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 2, ISSUE 11, SEPTEMBER, 1858

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