The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Continental Monthly, Vol III. No VI. by Various Authors.

Not of those affairs which are domestic in a broad, national sense; not of any of our home institutions, 'peculiar' or otherwise; not of politics in any shape, nor of railroads and canals, nor of interstate relations, reconstructions, amnesty; not even of the omnivorous question, The War, do I propose to treat under the head of 'Our Domestic Affairs;' but of a subject which, though scarcely ever discussed except flippantly, and with unworthy levity, in that broad arena of public journalism in which almost every other conceivable topic is discussed, is yet second to none, if not absolutely first of all in its bearings upon our domestic happiness. I refer to the question of domestic service in our households.

The only plausible explanation of the singular fact that this important subject is not more frequently discussed in public is, undoubtedly, to be found in its very magnitude. Men and women whose 'mission' it is to enlighten and instruct the people, abound in every walk of morals. Religion, science, ethics, and every department of social economy but this, have their 'reformers.' Before the great problem, How shall the evils which attend our domestic service be removed? the stoutest-hearted reformer stands appalled. These evils are so multiform and all-pervading, they strike their roots so strongly, and ramify so extensively, that they defy the attempt to eradicate them; and they are thus left to flourish and increase. We have plenty of groans over these evils, but scarcely ever a thoughtful consideration of their cause, or an attempt worth noting to remove or mitigate them.

This is surely cowardly and wrong. This great question, which is really so engrossing that it is more talked of in the family circle than any other—this profound and intricate problem, upon the solution of which the comfort, happiness, and thrift of every household in the land depend more than upon almost any other—surely demands the most careful study, and the deepest solicitude of the reformer and philanthropist. The subject just now is receiving considerable attention in England, and the journals and periodicals of that country have recently teemed with articles setting forth the miseries with which English households are afflicted, owing to the want of good servants. But, unfortunately, from none of these has the writer been able to extract much assistance in [Pg 242]preparing an answer to the only practical question: How are the evils of domestic service to be remedied? I quote, however, an extract from a recent article in The Victoria Magazine, in order to show how far the complaints made in England of the shortcomings of servants run parallel with those of our own housekeepers. It is to be noted that the writer confessedly holds a brief for the servants. If the facts are fairly stated, the relation between a servant in an English family and her employer differs widely from the like relation with us;

'The prizes in domestic service are few, the blanks many. Ladies think only of the prizes. Needlewomen and factory girls, when they turn their attention to domestic service, see the hardworked, underfed scrub lacking the one condition which goes far to alleviate the hardest lot, that of personal liberty. People who have never known what it is to be subject to the caprices of a petty tyrant, scarcely appreciate this alleviation at its true value. They expatiate upon the light labors, the abundance, the freedom from anxiety which characterize the lot of servants in good places, with an unction worthy of Southern slaveholders. What more any woman can want they cannot understand. They think it nothing that a servant has not, from week to week, and month to month, a moment that she can call her own, a single hour of the day or night, of which she can say, 'This is mine, and no one has a right to prescribe what I shall do with it'—that, in most cases, she has no recognized right to invite any one to come and see her, and therefore can have no full and satisfying sense of home—that many mistresses go so far as to claim the regulation of her dress—that even in mature age and by the kindest employers she is treated more as a child to be taken care of than as a responsible, grown-up woman, able to think and judge for herself. These are substantial drawbacks to the lot of the pampered menial.... These complaints of the readiness of servants to leave their places are based on the assumption that they are under obligations to their employers. In many cases, no doubt, they are, though probably least so where gratitude is most expected. But, at any rate, employers are also under obligations to them. When one thinks of all servants do for us, and how little, comparatively, we do for them, it appears that the demand for gratitude might come more appropriately from the other side. It is an old saying that we value in others the virtues which are convenient to ourselves, and this is curiously illustrated in the popular ideal of a good servant. In the master's estimate besides the indispensable physical qualification of vigorous health—diligence, punctuality, cleverness, readiness to oblige, and rigid honesty, of a certain sort, are essentials.'

We would look long through our laundries and kitchens for the 'hardworked, underfed scrub' of the above extract; and the 'servant who has not from week to week, and month to month, a moment that she can call her own, a single hour of the day or night, of which she can say, This is mine,' etc., does not belong to so numerous a class that her sorrows in this respect invoke commiseration in the public journals. But great as is the difference still between English and American servants, as indicated by the above extract, the former are in a steadily 'progressive' state, and every year brings them nearer in their condition to the happy—and, fortunately for the rest of mankind, as yet anomalous—state of American domesticdom. An article in the London Saturday Review thus comments upon this progress:

The servant classes of France, Germany, and the other Continental countries, seem to be, to a great extent, free from the faults that beset those of England and America. A recent number of Bell's Weekly Messenger thus discusses this difference:

'The truth is that among the Celtic and Sclavonian families service is felt to be honorable; those engaged in it take it up as a respectable and desirable condition. They are as willing to acknowledge it as the physician, the lawyer, or the clergyman is to admit and be proud of their own. A French female servant, at least away from Paris, wears a dress which marks at once what she is. She is not ashamed of her condition, and nowhere is there such real attachment between servants and their employers as in France. In England, on the other hand, it is difficult to persuade a young girl to accept domestic service; she requires what she imagines to be something higher, or—to use her own word—more 'genteel.' If she be a dressmaker, or a shop girl, or a barmaid, she assumes the title of 'young lady,' and advertises—to the disgust of all sensible people—as such. This monstrous notion, which strikes at the root of all social comfort, and a great deal of social respectability, is on the increase among us. It is not quite so rampant as it is in America, but it is tending in the same direction. In fact, our household prospects are not promising. Since we feel that home cookery is far from rivalling that of the clubs, restaurants are being established in the city equal to those of Paris, and the cartoon of Punch is daily fulfilled with a terrible accuracy. 'What has your mistress for dinner to-day?' says the master of the house, on the doorstep, his face toward the city. 'Cold mutton, sir.' 'Cold mutton! Ah! very nice; very nice. By the by, Mary, you may just mention to your mistress that I may perhaps be detained rather later than usual to-day, and she is not to wait dinner for me.' With these things before our eyes, we cannot but feel grateful to any one who will bona fide undertake to teach a little plain cookery. The want of this is the cause of more waste than any other deficiency. The laboring man marries; but he marries a woman who can add nothing to the comfort of his home; she supplies him with more mouths to feed, and she spoils that which is to be put into them; she becomes slatternly, feels her own incapacity, and, finding that she can do but little of her duty, soon leaves off trying to do it at all. As her family increases the discomforts of her home increase, and the end is frequently—drunkenness, violence, and appeals to the police magistrate.'

The writer of the present article pretends to no peculiar fitness for the investigation of this important subject, and to no more varied and profound experience than that which has fallen to the lot of tens of thousands of others; but much observation leads to the conviction that the experience of any single family extending through a series of years of housekeeping, may be taken as a type of that of all families who have to employ servants; and if what shall be advanced in these pages shall have the effect of stimulating others more competent to thought upon the subject, with a view to practical suggestions for the amelioration of the universal difficulty, much will have been gained.

The chief evils we have to consider on the part of servants are, briefly, ignorance, wastefulness, untidiness, pert[Pg 244]ness, or downright impudence, and what is called 'independence,' a term which all housekeepers thoroughly understand. I leave out of the category the vices of intemperance and dishonesty, which, although lamentably prevalent among the class to which we are accustomed to look for our main supply of domestics, yet do not belong, as do the other faults I have named, to the entire class, and I gladly set them down as moral obliquities, as likely to be exceptional in the class under consideration as in any other. With regard to the other specified failings, every housekeeper will allow that it is so much the rule for a servant to be afflicted with the whole catalogue, that the mistress who discovers her hired girl to be possessed of a single good quality, the reverse of any I have named, as for example, economy, neatness, or a conscientious devotion to the interests of her employers, although she may utterly lack any other, fears to dismiss her, for fear that the next may prove an average 'help,' and have not a solitary good point. A girl who combines all the above-named good qualities is a rare treasure indeed, and the possessor of the prize is an object of envy, wide and hopeless.

In commenting upon the causes which produce bad servants, I shall confine myself more especially to those which develop in them the faults of wastefulness, impudence, and 'independence,' both because every housekeeper will allow that they are the most common as well as trying of all, and because it is only for them, I confess freely, I have any hope of suggesting a remedy. Ignorance of their duties is chronic in all Irish and German girls when they first go out to service, and their acquirement of the requisite knowledge depends very much upon the amount of such knowledge possessed by the housekeeper who has the privilege of initiating them. Untidiness is almost equally universal among the same classes, and, being a natural propensity, is extremely difficult of eradication. It may be stated, however, that given an average 'greenhorn,' Irish or German, the notable and tidy housewife will make of her a very fair servant, as well instructed as her native intelligence will allow, and, unless a downright incorrigible, whose natural slatternliness is beyond the reach of improvement, a certainly tolerably neat, and possibly a very tidy servant. And just here I will remark that it is an unquestionable fact that the good housekeeper has a much more encouraging prospect of making a useful servant out of one of these same 'greenhorns' than of a girl who has been longer in the country, and who has nevertheless yet to be 'licked into shape.' Of course this remark covers the whole ground, and it is obvious that to start a girl right in habits of economy, respectfulness, etc., is quite as important as to start her right in any other good habit. It is not necessary to say further that starting right is not of itself enough: there must ever accompany the progress of the servant in improvement, the watchful eye and guiding hand of the skilled mistress and head of the family. I cannot, within the scope of this article, enter into the consideration of the important correlative branch of my subject, which includes the fitness of housekeepers to make good servants out of the rough, to keep good what they so find, or to improve such as they receive, be they good or bad. It is obvious that this fitness presupposes a practical knowledge of the science of housekeeping—(how worthy it is to be called a 'science'!)—and a willingness to accept and carry out the responsibilities which devolve upon the mistress of a family. I admit that very many of those who keep servants are utterly unfit in many important senses for the responsibilities of family economists. Yet I still believe it possible for even the most inexperienced housekeepers to adopt and pursue, in their management of ser[Pg 245]vants, one or two cardinal principles which will save them a vast deal of vexation. Of these, more hereafter.

The very prevalent pertness and 'independence' of servants are due, primarily, unquestionably to the great demand for them, and the ease with which situations are procured. This is not, in my judgment, because the supply is inadequate; I do not believe it is. It is because the frequent changings of servants by our families places it in the power of every one of the former to procure a situation without the slightest trouble. A girl about to leave a place has but to inquire for two or three doors around, to find some family about to change 'help.' This 'independence' is also undoubtedly fostered by a false and exaggerated idea which these girls imbibe from their brothers, 'cousins,' etc.—the voting 'sovereigns' of the land—of the dignity of their new republican relation. Most of the 'greenhorns' begin humbly enough, but, after a few months' tutelage of fellow servants, and especially if they pass through the experiences of the 'intelligence offices' (of which more anon), they are thoroughly spoiled, and become too impudent and 'independent' for endurance. The male adopted citizen, fawned upon by demagogues for his vote, is 'as good as anybody;' and why not Bridget and Katrina?

Now I do not broach the abstract question of equality: I am willing to admit that in the eye of our Maker we are, and before the law ought to be, all equal—that is to say, ought all to have an equal chance; but to abolish the idea of subordination in the employed to the employer, and to abrogate the relation of dependence of the servant upon her or his master or mistress, would simply be to reverse the teachings of inspiration and nature. As well say that the child shall be independent of the parent as that the servant shall not be subject in all reasonable things to the master.

It is worthy of remark that this spirit of insubordination spoken of is far more rife among girls of Irish birth who go out to service than among the Germans, Scotch, or English. Neither is there among these latter so much clannishness, or disposition to establish the feeling under consideration as a class prejudice and principle of conduct, as there is among the former. The absence of such a homogeneity of feeling among German, English, and Scotch domestics makes them much more favorable subjects for the operation of the rules I propose to suggest for their improvement.

The clannishness just alluded to is a very important influence among those which tend to produce insubordination and other serious faults among servants. Every housekeeper must have observed that a marvellous facility of intercommunication exists among the servant classes, and more particularly among the Irish. There seems to be some mysterious method at work, whereby the troubles and bickerings of each mistress with her 'help' are made known through the whole realm of servantdom. It is no uncommon thing for a mistress to have minutely detailed to her by her hired girl the particulars of some difficulty with a previous servant, with whom she has no reason to believe the narrator has had any intercourse. So frequently does this happen that many housekeepers religiously believe that the Irish servants are banded together in some sort of a 'society,' in the secret conclaves of which the experiences of each kitchen are confided to the common ear. This belief is not confined to American housekeepers, but obtains very extensively in England also. The arrest and punishment of a woman in London for giving a good 'character' to a dishonest servant, who subsequently robbed her employer, naturally caused some excitement in housekeeping circles in that city, and numerous communications to The Times evinced[Pg 246] the feeling upon the subject. In one of these 'A Housekeeper' boldly asserts that there are combinations among the servants, and that housekeepers who refuse to give a certificate of good character are 'spotted,' and find in consequence the greatest difficulty in obtaining any servants thereafter. Indeed, she asserts that in some instances, so rigorously does the system work, offending families have been compelled to relinquish housekeeping, and go into lodgings or abroad, until their offence was forgotten! The fundamental principle which our housekeepers believe to pervade these societies is that employers are fair game; that the servant has to expect nothing but to be oppressed, persecuted, overworked, ground down, and taken advantage of at every opportunity, and that it is her duty, therefore, to hold the employer at bitter enmity, and to make the best fight she can.

Now such a belief can scarcely be termed absurd, and yet it is unquestionably groundless. The mysterious 'understanding' of servants, and their wide knowledge of each other's experiences, may be explained upon a perfectly simple and rational theory, and I think we may venture to reject the 'society' hypothesis altogether.

Servant life is as much a world in itself as political, religious, or art life. Indeed, its inhabitants are even more isolated and self-existent than those of any other sphere, for while the politician, theologian, and artist are generally, to some extent, under the influence of interests and passions other than those which belong exclusively to their special walk, the dwellers in kitchens have but the one all-embracing sphere, and its incidents, which seem to us so trivial, are to them as important as the great events which we think are worthy of being embalmed in epics or made imperishable in history. To them the reproof of the mistress or the loss of wages for the careless pulverization of a soup tureen is lawful theme for the agitation of all servantdom. Martin Luther had his tussles with pope and devil, Handel and Gluck had their wars with the hostile cabals, Henry Clay had his John Randolph and Andrew Jackson—and Bridget and Catharine have their disturbing and absorbing questions of 'wages,' and 'privileges,' and other matters; and a wrangle that the mistress forgets in a day, the maid carefully cherishes in her memory, and makes it the theme of widest discussion. Without resorting, then, to the improbable notion of the existence of a secret society among the servants, through which the knowledge of our difficulties with them is disseminated, I think the theory above outlined sufficiently explains what seems so mysterious. There can, however, be no question that the feeling among servants generally is unfortunately something like that alluded to above as the imaginary inspiration of a hypothetical society, namely, that employers are oppressive, exacting, and utterly selfish; and there is certainly a tacit understanding that, as between servant and mistress, it is 'diamond cut diamond;' and the habit domestics have of making common cause with a sister in trouble, no doubt practically works as much evil as if such a society as has been mentioned really existed. The girl, confronting her adversary, in military phrase, feels a hundred comrades 'touching her elbow,' and her lip is wonderfully stiffened thereby. Now it is needless for me to say that the idea that these poor girls have, that their employers are their natural enemies, is wrong and absurd, and every housekeeper should endeavor to make this clear to her servants. If this false idea could be eradicated, and the true theory established that the interests of the employer and employé are identical, much will have been accomplished toward making better servants.

Among the influences which are at work to spoil servants, none are more baleful than the system, as at present[Pg 247] conducted, of 'intelligence offices.' These agencies might be and ought to be among the most useful of our social institutions: they are, as a class, utterly worthless, and many of them are positively dens of thieves. Almost without exception they are conducted upon the vicious principle I have just above discussed, and in them the servant is confirmed in her belief that the employing class is a class of cruel oppressors. The interest of the employer seems to be held by the managers of most of these institutions as absolutely of no account. The following conversation, which actually took place in one of these offices, between its proprietor and an applicant for a domestic, will illustrate, better than a lengthy disquisition could do, the system upon which too many of these employment agencies are conducted:

The crude notions of the respective rights of meum and tuum furnished the 'help' graduated by such an institution, may be imagined.

Some pains are occasionally taken to provide a regular customer, whose patronage it is desirable to retain, with a good servant, but generally all is fish that comes to their net. The business is now in such ill odor that intelligence-office servants are proverbial for worthlessness and all the worst qualities of the class. I have known a thief, a drunkard, and a vixen to be sent from one of these offices in succession, the victimized housekeeper finally begging that no more be sent, preferring to let the retaining fee go, than to be pestered any further. It is well known that the more decent and self-respecting of the class of domestics rarely, now, enter their names upon the books of intelligence offices. Indeed, such seldom have occasion to seek places; if they do, they usually prefer to advertise.

In this employment-agency business a radical reform is needed. A respectable and conscientious man at the head of such an institution, managing it upon the principle that it is just as much his interest to furnish the employer with a good servant as to provide the servant with a good place, would be truly a public benefactor. In this, as in all other kinds of business, honesty would be found the best policy. It is a base imposition to recommend as good a servant who is known to be bad, and it is just as dishonest to recommend as good one whose character is totally unknown. It should be the business of every purveyor of household 'help' to ascertain, by rigid investigation, the characters and qualifications of those who apply for places; and they should steadily refuse to have anything to do with any they cannot honestly recommend. This, we repeat, they would speedily find their best policy. In this way, and this only, can they win back the confidence and patronage of the public; and they would soon find that the worthless characters who now constitute their main stock in trade, would[Pg 248] be superseded by a much better class. There would be another important benefit to the servants themselves in such a course. In an office thus conducted, the known necessity of being able to show a clean record in order to procure a place, would reform many a bad servant, who now, knowing that her twenty-five cents will procure her a place (and no questions asked by the agent, so that he need tell no lies), has no incentive to improvement or good conduct. There would soon be a rivalry among servants as to who should stand highest upon the roll of merit.

The fault which has been before alluded to under the name of 'independence,' deserves more special mention than I have yet given it. It is probably the most exasperating, as it is the most general of all the failings of servants. It makes the timid and sensitive housekeeper a slave in her own house. No matter how grave may be the offences of her hired girl, she must bear them in the meekest silence. Even the most friendly advice, conveyed in the blandest possible tone, is often declined with freezing dignity or repelled with tart resentment. The cook who makes a cinder of your joint, or sends you up disgusting slops for coffee, or the laundress between whose clean and soiled linen you are puzzled to choose, has almost invariably the reply, uttered with a majestic sternness that never fails to crush any but a veteran and plucky housekeeper: 'This is the first time any mistress ever found fault with my cooking (or washing), and I have always lived with the best families, too.' The cutting emphasis with which this point of the 'best families' is pushed home, is familiar to nearly every housekeeper. It was scarcely a departure from sober truth in the lady who, on being asked if she kept a hired girl, replied that she had an Irish lady boarding with her, who occasionally condescended, when she had nothing of more consequence to do, to help a little in the work of the family. An amusing trifle is going the rounds of the papers, which well hits off, and without much exaggeraration, the self-assumed prerogatives of the servant girl of our great cities:

I have now pointed out some of the principal faults of servants, and indicated what I believe to be some of the causes of those faults. Alluding, in passing, to some influences which it seems to me might be made available in correcting some of these faults, I have yet to mention what I conceive to be the most important reason of all for the general worthlessness of the class under consideration. And in noticing this I shall necessarily couple with that notice some suggestions which I firmly believe, if put into practice, will be exceedingly beneficial in producing the reform we all so ardently wish for. And I feel the less hesitation in saying this, because they are based upon no theory of my own devising, but upon principles which are everywhere recognized and acted upon, except, singularly enough, in the conduct of our domestic affairs. To be brief, then, I attribute the greatest of the evils of our system of domestic service to a want of business management in our domestic affairs.

A wife, in the truest sense, is her[Pg 249] husband's most important business partner—his partner in a more complete and comprehensive sense than any other he can have. It is not, as many seem to imagine, the business of the wife to spend the money the husband earns. She is as much bound to forward the mutual prosperity as he is. The household is her department of the great business of life, as her husband's is the store, the manufactory, or the office. Her department does not embrace the conduct of great enterprises, bargains, speculations, etc.; she has only to remember and act upon the brief, simple maxim: 'A penny saved is a penny earned.' In this way she can greatly advance the common weal. If she fails to act constantly upon this principle, she is an unfaithful and untrustworthy partner, and is as much, to blame as if her husband were to neglect his stock, his shipping, his contract, or his clients. Why should the husband be expected to manage his part of the business upon sound and correct business principles—system, responsibility, economy—while his helpmeet is letting hers go at loose ends, with a shiftlessness which if he should emulate would ruin him in a year?

Now what is the principle upon which every good business man manages his affairs? Why, simply that of sovereignty. In his domain his will is law, and no employé dare question it. He has to deal with the male counterparts of Bridget and Catharine, as porters, laborers, sometimes as cooks and waiters; but he has no trouble. The 'independent' man soon goes out of the door. If he be a manufacturer, he does not allow his employés to help themselves to his stores and material. He keeps, if he is a sensible man, his stock under lock and key, and exacts a rigid accountability in their use. What is to prevent the introduction of just such a system of accountability in the family economy? 'Why,' say many housekeepers, 'we would not dare to lock up our butter, and eggs, and flour, and sugar; we could not keep a girl a day if we doled out our stores and held our servants responsible for their economical use.' But, dear, doubting mesdames, your business partner does this every day, and we should like to see the clerk or apprentice who would even 'look black' at him for doing it. Perhaps your business partner has to employ girls; if so, he has many Irish among them; don't they stand his manner of doing business, without grumbling? If they don't, they find another shop, that's all. Suppose this case: A manufacturer of jewelry reasons as you do. He says: 'I cannot keep my hands satisfied unless I give them free access to my stock of gold, silver, and diamonds. I must throw open my tool drawers, so that they can help themselves; and I must not ask how much material this or that manufactured article has taken to make.' That man would have to shut up shop in a year, even if he were not robbed of a dollar. Now, I ask, is it fair to expect the husband to be orderly, systematic, and business-like, and to superintend his business himself, while the wife surrenders her legitimate affairs to the hands of ignorant and irresponsible subordinates?

But the female partner of the shrewd man of business, or the plodding, hardworking mechanic, may be inclined to say, 'I hate business,' and to think it hard that she should be called upon to regulate her household affairs upon any such severe and rigid rules. But, my dear madam, apart from the clear fact that it is your duty to manage your household wisely and prudently, which we have seen cannot be done without business system, of which you must be the head, I assure you that such a system is neither intricate nor vexatious. It does not necessarily entail upon you the least participation in the actual labor of the family. It does not absolutely require your personal presence at the scene of those labors, although the woman who[Pg 250] considers it beneath her dignity to go into her kitchen, has no more business to undertake to keep house than the master mechanic, who is too proud to enter his workshop, has to try to carry on a shop. The absolutely essential thing is that yours should be the directing and controlling mind, and that to you every one in your employ should be held rigorously responsible. Now don't tell me that such a system cannot be introduced with the present race of servants; that you would be left half the time without anybody to do your work; that until mistresses can combine to lay down rules for the better regulation of domestic service, you must submit to the present evils. You are not justified in assuming any of these things to be so, until you have honestly and thoroughly tried the experiment in your single household. To make such a system work, it is of course necessary that your servants should be made to understand perfectly certain facts, which you should take pains distinctly to announce to every new domestic you engage. They are so plainly just and reasonable that the most captious servant cannot take exception to them as a matter of principle. It must depend upon your persevering spirit and firm hand that they do not fail in practice. First, you should tell your servant that, employing them at a stipulated rate of wages, to do certain, work, their time belongs to you. Tell them that you insist upon their being absolutely under your direction and control, that you expect to grant them all reasonable privileges, but that they must be regarded as privileges, and not as rights. Tell them distinctly that, if you prefer to keep your stores under lock and key, it is not because you suspect their integrity, but because you consider it as your business as a housekeeper to know what is the cost of your living. Tell them that you are in the habit of keeping an accurate account of your expenses, and that, in consequence, it is necessary that you should know of every cent that is expended. If these facts are clearly made known and consistently acted upon, much of the trouble of managing servants is done away with.

Although the plan of keeping a book of family accounts only belongs incidentally to the main subject under discussion, it is so important that I cannot refrain from a more special mention of it than is given above. It is the simplest thing in the world, not taking more than ten minutes on an average every day. For reference, in case of a disputed bill, it is invaluable, while its influence in keeping down expenses is wonderfully wholesome.

If the affairs of a family are to be conducted on business principles, the family account book cannot be neglected. It would be just as safe and sensible for the merchant to neglect his cash book, as for his domestic partner, who undertakes to do her business properly, to fail to keep her cash book.

One of the regulations which is proposed posed above as part of the system of family management is, in my judgment, as important in its bearing upon the honesty of the servant as it is upon the question of economy. I refer to the keeping the family stores under the immediate care of the housekeeper. It is nothing to the discredit of servants that this is said. More people are honest through circumstances than is generally supposed. Many a servant is tempted into habits of pilfering by the free and unquestioned access she has to the family stores. I have before used the case of a man carrying on a business and having employés under him, to illustrate my subject. Suppose a merchant or a bank should allow all their clerks free access to the safe or till, they knowing no cash account was kept. If some of these boys or young men were tempted to steal, would not the blame lie chiefly at the door of those who, having it in their power, yet did not remove the temptation?

Having now given a few rules for[Pg 251] the improvement of servants, which are easily tried, and which I know from observation of their practical working are worth a trial by every housekeeper, I wish to add a few words concerning the material of which, our present supply of servants consists, and to offer some observations upon the question of a prospective supply of possibly a better material.

It is probably no exaggeration to say that four fifths of our female servants are Irish. I have already given several reasons why this class are more intractable and difficult to manage than any other. To apply the rules I have given to this class will be more difficult than to the domestics of any other nation. But, as I have said, I have seen them enforced with success even in cases where an Irish domestic was the subject. And here let me repeat that almost everything depends upon the starting right. No Irish girl ever yet went to a new place perfectly sure of her ground, although they generally can measure the quality of their mistress during the negotiations which precede the engagement. In starting with a new servant, it is emphatically the first encounter that must decide who is to be the ruler. Dignity, coolness, and decision, upon the first attempt to 'put on airs,' will generally bring you off permanent conqueror.

By some housekeepers German domestics are preferred. They are naturally less impulsive and more amenable to control than the Irish. Their class prejudices are not so violent; there is less unity of purpose among them, and they are, in consequence, more favorable subjects for the application of the rules given than are generally the Irish. It is, however, difficult to assimilate the German girls to American customs. They are not apt to learn, and great patience is required in teaching them. The virtues of order and cleanliness seem to be not only rare in them, but exceedingly difficult to graft upon them. Their cooking, especially, is generally execrable. But once properly trained, they make the best of servants. They are generally contented, almost always cheerful and good tempered, and have little of that irritating pertness and 'independence' so characteristic of the Irish domestic.

That branch of the present subject which relates to the going out to service of American women has been publicly discussed somewhat more extensively than any of the others, particularly of late, it having entered largely into the question of woman's labor, which has been attracting considerable attention. It is truly a deplorable thing that household service is so generally regarded as a menial employment, not fit for an American woman to engage in. Our countrywomen will do almost anything rather than go out to service. They will work ten or twelve hours a day in close, unwholesome shops, surrounded by all the unsexing and contaminating influences attending the customary free and easy commingling of male and female employés in such places. They will accept avocations from which the native delicacy and neatness of an American girl must revolt. They will put up with wages which will barely keep body and soul together, wear the meanest clothes, submit to the vilest tyranny and extortion, rather than enter a position where they will have but the natural, wholesome labor of woman to perform, that of domestic life; accompanied by all the pure influences and comforts of a home. I would be rejoiced if anything I could say would be useful in removing this absurd and injurious prejudice among American women toward domestic service. There is surely nothing menial in the work they would have to do. It is woman's work all over the world, far more so than a hundred other occupations they now eagerly seek. Their repugnance to the position itself is the sticking point. This repugnance is based upon[Pg 252] a chimera. They are, in any position in which they labor for wages, 'servants' in as complete a sense as if they labored for wages in household employments. Far be it from me to say a word to lower that just and honorable pride which is the birthright of the American girl. But in declining domestic service for that of the shops, the American girl declines an honest, reputable, healthful, and every way elevating employment, for, in many cases, a dwarfing, degrading, wretched slavery; she turns from her natural and proper sphere to enter a walk of harsh and degrading experiences, in which it is not possible she can pass her life. A word on this latter point: Almost every young woman expects some day to marry. Now, I ask, what sort of a fitting can a girl receive in a shop for the serious business of homekeeping? The significance of this word 'homekeeping' is not apparent at a glance. It means far more than mere 'housekeeping' although the latter is one of its most essential elements. A girl of sixteen is forced to earn her own living. She chooses to go into a shop. Grant that she escapes contamination from the influences heretofore alluded to; that her health bears up under confinement, bad air, scanty food, and insufficient clothing—all of which are experiences too familiar with women who labor at mechanical employments;—when she reaches a marriageable age, and takes the important step which is to 'settle her for life,' what is her condition? The chances are that she has become the wife of some hardworking mechanic, or man of scanty means, who cannot afford to keep a fine lady in his domestic establishment. But she knows no more of the mysteries of housekeeping than she does of the Latin kalends. She must keep a servant, who will waste the common substance, and keep her husband's nose perpetually at the grindstone, to the great wear of mutual comfort and temper. And once more: There is far more of forecast in young men seeking wives than they commonly get credit for. The neat, smart girl, who works in the shop, may get a good husband—the young woman who is a notable, tidy, thrifty housewife, is sure to be sought after.

I would add a remark upon another point. American girls are frequently heard to say they would not object to going out to service could they be 'treated as one of the family.' No American girl who respects herself need fear that in an American family she will fail to command respect. It should be remembered that the rigid line which is drawn in most families between mistress and servant, is not simply because such relations exist, but because there is generally absolutely nothing in common between them save sex alone; no community of nationality, religious belief, intelligence—nothing which can excite mutual sympathy, or move to homogeneity. The American girl who lives out at service need not fear that she will occupy a position in all respects corresponding to that occupied by the great mass of servants.

It is highly probable that we shall be able hereafter to procure many valuable servants from the South. When freedom shall have taken the place of slavery, and labor becomes honorable in that section, many Southern women will do—as many Northern women always have done—their own work. In this way many servants will be set free. Then, when it becomes necessary to pay wages to servants, there will be a swarming out from the kitchens of the South of Dinah and Phillis et als., and many of these superfluous servants will find their way North. Already out of the bloody wreck of society at the South, through the flaming borders of bayonets and cannon, have drifted into happy Northern homes thousands of valuable servants, and they will be followed by thousands more, 'when this cruel war is over.' We cannot judge of the qualities of colored servants[Pg 253] from the wretched specimens we have heretofore had among us. The trained house-servants of the South are the best in the world. They are docile, cleanly, quick-witted, and respectful to humbleness.

There have been many projects devised looking to the education of girls for housekeeping. There was a very excellent institution in existence ten years ago in one of the Eastern States, which combined with the customary course of intellectual instruction a systematic training in the mysteries of housekeeping. The writer has heard nothing of this school for some years, and presumes it has failed for want of support. We train our daughters only to shine in the drawing room, and the real graces of life are neglected. Music, French, and Italian are very excellent things, but they should stand second, not first, in the acquirements which we should desire for those who are to be future wives, mothers, and mistresses of families.[1] But this is a little apart from the present subject. The idea of a school for training girls for housekeeping, however, suggests a thought on the expediency of an institution for the education of servants. Such a project has frequently been urged as a most desirable one to be put into operation, though I am not aware that it has ever been tried.[2] Of course it cannot be expected that girls wishing to become servants could enter such an institution if it cost anything for instruction. But there can be no question that, purely as a matter of speculation, such a school would be a success. If, in one of our large cities, an institution should be opened by some one having the requisite knowledge, embodying the principle of our present intelligence offices, taking young girls and training them gratuitously, some for cooks, waiters, nursery maids, laundresses, and a larger number for what is termed 'general housework,' it being understood that in selecting the material the proprietor had an eye to honesty and intelligence, it would be an immense success. The servants graduating from such an institution would be eagerly sought for, and would command the highest wages. The fee for furnishing a servant could be placed at a much higher rate than is now paid at intelligence offices, and would be paid readily, for the employer would be reasonably confident of securing a good domestic. Such institutions would go very far toward remedying the evils under which we now groan, and I trust it will not be many years before schools for servants will be among the recognized institutions of our country.

ÆNONE:

A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.

CHAPTER XII.

A week passed away. It was toward the end of a bright and cloudless day, and Rome was gradually arousing itself from its wonted siesta. The heat had at no time been oppressive, for during the whole morning a cool breeze had been gambolling across the Campagna from the sea; so that even during the small hours of the day, the streets had not been kept free from moving masses of life. Now that the atmosphere became still further tempered, fresh throngs poured forth from all the smaller passages and alleys, until the greater arteries of the city swarmed with eager, animated crowds.

More now than at any other time during the few weeks that had just elapsed; for upon the morrow was to commence the dedication of the great amphitheatre of Titus, and thousands of strangers had already poured into Rome to witness the games, combats, and pageantry. From the surrounding towns and villages—from the cities of the south—from the confines of the Alps—even from the farthermost provinces, countless throngs had assembled to greet an occasion second only to the grand triumphal entry with the spoils of Jerusalem.

From her window overlooking the streets, Ænone surveyed the panorama of life spread out before her. Upon the battlements and towers of the Cæsars' house, in full sight over against the Palatine Hill, floated the imperial banners, gently waving their folds in anticipation of the splendors of the ensuing days; and round about stood crowds of strangers, wondering at the magnificence of the palace architecture, and the vast compass of its walls, and straining their eager gaze in the hope of being able to catch a chance glimpse of the emperor himself. Farther down was the now completed Colosseum, around which other thousands stood watching the pigmies who, in dark clusters upon the top and along the edge, laboriously erected the poles upon which, in case of need, to stretch the protecting velarium. This was the last outward preparation of all; and when that was done, everything would be ready. As one of these poles was being elevated, he who had hold of the lower end of it lost his balance, and fell to the ground. He was lifted up outside, dead—a shapeless, gory mass. The crowd shuddered to see that helpless body falling from such a height; but, at the next moment, all sympathy passed away. The man wore a slave's dress, and was recognized as belonging to the prætorian lieutenant Patrocles. Upon the morrow, if he had lived, he was to have appeared in the arena as a retiarius—he would then most likely have been conquered and slain—it was merely a day sooner—a victim outside the walls instead of within—he had clambered up to overlook the ground upon which he was to have fought, and need not thus recklessly have volunteered to aid the regular laborers—it was his fate—Deus vult—what more could be said?

Ænone had not witnessed the fall, for she had not been looking at palace or amphitheatre, both, of which were too familiar with her to attract her attention. The one had been for years the centrepiece of her view—and the other had grown up arch by arch and tier by tier so steadily before her eyes that it seemed as though she could almost count its stones. Her gaze was now fixed upon the open space beneath her window, where the Sacred and Triumphal Walls joined—a space always[Pg 255] at that hour gay with a phantasmagoria of shifting life, and at this time more than ever provocative of curiosity and attention. Its bordering palaces, already being hung with lively tapestries for the morrow—its sparkling fountains—its corners decked with arches—its pavement thronged with carriages and horsemen—the crowds of slaves, beginning in advance to take their holiday, and affording pleasing contrasts as they wound their way in slender currents through the openings in the throng of their betters—the soldiery passing here and there in large or small detachments—where else in the world could such a varied scene of life and animation be presented?

First before her eyes passed a number of the prætorian guard, with martial music, cutting the crowd asunder like a wedge in their steady march toward the imperial palace. Then came the chariot of the African proconsul, with liveried footmen in front, and Nubian slaves, in short tunics and silver anklets, running beside the wheels. After that a covered van, toilsomely dragged along by tired horses and guarded by armed slaves in livery. The imperial cipher was emblazoned upon the dusty canvas screen thrown over the top, and from within, at intervals, came half-smothered growls and roars. It was some wild beast arriving at this late hour from Nubia—a contribution from some provincial governor—a booty which had cost pounds of gold, and perhaps the lives of many slaves, and which was now destined to perform, in the sanded arena, the combats of the jungle. The crowd, which had let the African proconsul pass by with but a careless glance of uninterested scrutiny—for dignitaries were too common to excite much curiosity—pressed tumultuously and with frantic eagerness around the heavy cage, exulting in each half-stifled roar from within as though it were a strain of sweet music—and thus followed the van until it arrived at the amphitheatre and passed out of sight through one of the deep, low arches leading to the tiers of grated stone cages, already well filled with the choicest forest spoils of every tributary country.

Then came a black-bearded horseman. The trappings of his steed were marked with the insignia of distinction; and footmen, with staves, ran before him to clear the way. He sat with proud and haughty mien—as one who felt his power and immunity, and yet with the expression of one aware that all his rank and state could not protect him from secret scorn and hate. Not many looked at him; for, in that thronging display of wealth and power, a single gayly caparisoned horse and two liveried footmen counted for almost nothing. One or two, however, of those few who study men for their deeds alone, turned and gazed scrutinizingly after him, for he had already taken rank as one of the historians of the age. And as he passed farther along, a group of slaves, whose marked features denoted Jewish descent, suffered expressions of aversion to break from them; some turning their backs—some gazing up with faces inflamed with the fiercest intensity of hate—while one, less cautious, clenched his fist and hurled after the rider a handful of dust and volleys of heavy Hebrew curses. And so the apostate Josephus passed on, and was gradually lost to view.

After him, slowly wending his way on foot through the crowds, occasionally moving aside to allow others, more urgent, the privilege of passing him, and constantly careful not to excite the impatient wrath of those nearest to him by a too lively pressure, yet all the time making sure progress along his chosen path, came a single figure—a white-bearded man, in plain, coarse tunic and well-worn sandals. Few regarded him or even seemed to know that he was there, except when in their hurry they found it expedient to jostle him one side. But in his face gleamed[Pg 256] an intelligence far beyond what could be expected from one in his humble attire; and as Ænone watched him, a suspicion crossed her that the poor, beggarly dress and the quiet, yielding mien were assumed to baffle observation. Soon another person in similar dress but of fewer years met him. The two joined hands and looked earnestly into each other's eyes, and the older one appeared to mutter a word or two. What was that word, at which the younger bent his head with reverent gesture? Was it a command or a blessing? Whatever it was, in a second it was all said. The hands then unclasped—the bended head raised with a startled glance around, as though with a fear that even such a mere instant of humble bearing might have betrayed something which should be kept secret; and then the two men parted, and were swallowed up in different sides of the concourse.

'I know that person,' said Cleotos, He had been gazing, for the past minute, out at the same window with Ænone; and while attracted by the humble figure of that old man, he had noticed that she had been equally observant.

'They call him Clemens, noble lady. He is a leader of the Christian sect, and a person of influence among them. It was at Corinth that I first saw him, and it was he who let me copy the good words which are written upon my little leaf of parchment. That was two years ago, but I still recognize him. What does he here? Why should he thus peril his life In public?'

'Give me that little scroll, Cleotos,' said Ænone. 'Let me have it for my own.'

Cleotos gazed at her for a moment in dismay. Was she about to use her authority, and take away from him by force those few lines, which, though he understood them so little, had often served to cheer his heart with their promises of future rest and joy? If so, he must submit; but of what avail, then, was all her previous kindness?

'I ask it not as mistress, but as friend,' she said, reading his thoughts. 'I ask it because, when you are away, I shall need some memory of what have been happy days, and because I may then often wish to apply those same words of comfort to my own soul. You can make another copy of the same, and, in your own land, I doubt not, can find, with proper search, many more words of equal value.'

'In my own land?' Cleotos repeated, ed, as in a dream. But, though her meaning did not as yet flash upon him, he knew that she spoke in kindness, and that she would not ask anything which he would not care to grant; and he drew the little stained parchment from beneath his tunic, and handed it to her.

'Close, now, the window, Cleotos, and shut out from sight that giddy whirl, for I have something to say to you.'

He closed the window with its silken blind; and then, in obedience to her motion, glided away from before it She seated herself upon her lounge, and he upon his accustomed stool in front of her.

'Think not, Cleotos,' she said, after a moment's silence, 'that I first brought you hither to become a mere slave. It was rather done in order that, when the proper time came, I might set you free. Had she—Leta—but shown herself worthy of you, the day might have come when I could have managed to free her also, and send you both home again together. But that cannot be. You must go alone, Cleotos, but not, I hope, despairingly. Once again in your own loved Samos, I know that, sooner or later, there will be found some other one to make you forget what you have suffered here.'

He could no longer doubt her meaning—she was about to give him to liberty again. At the thought the blood rushed to his heart, and he gasped for[Pg 257] breath. For the moment, as he gazed into her face and saw with what sisterly sympathy and compassion she looked upon him, the impulse came into his mind to refuse the proffered freedom, and ask only to remain and serve her for life. But then came such floods of memories of his native place, which he had never expected to see again—and its hills and streams and well-remembered haunts seemed to approach with one bound so near to him—and the faces of the loved ones at home began once again to look so tenderly into his own—and the thought of throwing off even the light, silken chains which he had been wearing, and of standing up in the sight of heaven a free man again, was so grateful to his soul—what could he do but remain silent and overpowered with conflicting emotions, and wait to hear more?

'Think not to refuse your liberty,' she said, as she read his doubts and perplexities, 'It must not be. No man has the right to suffer degradation when he can avoid it. And though I might continue kind to you, who can answer for it that I should live to be kind to the end? No, no; from this instant be a free man again. And, for the few moments that remain to us, strive to think of me only as your equal and your friend.'

Still silent. What, indeed, could he say? She knew that he was grateful to her, and that was enough. But why should he, of all slaves in Rome, find such kindly treatment? What had he ever done to deserve it? And—as often before—that puzzled look of wondering inquiry came over his face while he gazed into her own. She noticed it, but now made no attempt to disguise herself by any forced and unnatural assumption of haughty pride. Were he at last to learn the truth, there could surely no harm come of it.

'You must depart to-night,' she said, 'and before it becomes known that I am sending you away; lest, knowing it, others might claim authority to delay or prevent you. Take this little purse. It contains a few gold pieces, which you may need. And here is a written pass which will lead you to Ostia. There you will go to the tavern of the Three Cranes, and inquire for one Pollio, who has a vessel ready to sail for Samos. In that vessel your passage is paid. Show him this ring. It will be a token for him to know you by. And keep the ring ever afterward, as a sign that you have a friend left here, who will often think of you with pleasure and interest.'

'My mistress,' he said, taking the ring and placing it upon his finger, 'what have I done that you should be thus kind to me?'

'Nay; no longer mistress, but friend,' she said, with a melancholy smile. 'As such alone let us converse during the hour that remains, for you must soon leave me. It may be that when you arrive at Ostia, the vessel will not be ready to set sail, nor yet for a day or two, for its owner spoke to my messenger concerning possible delays. If so, there will be time for you to look around you, and think of the days when you wandered along the shore, hand in hand with your chosen one. You will, perhaps, go over those wanderings again—along the sands leading past Druse's olive grove to the altar of Vesta, or to the—'

'How know you about Druse's grove?' he cried with a start; and again that look of keen inquiry came into his face. It was but a single step now—he stood upon the very border of the truth. Should she repress him? It were hardly worth the while. So she let him gaze, and, if anything, softened her features yet more into the old familiar expression.

'Past Druse's Grove, Cleotos—or to the smooth rock which the waves washed at Cato's Point. Do you remember, Cleotos, how often we there sat, you holding me with your arm while I slid down the sloping side, the[Pg 258] better to dip my naked feet into the water?'

With a wild sob he seized her hand, and threw himself at her feet. Near to the truth as he had been standing, it seemed at the last to burst upon him with as much force as though even a suspicion of it had been a thing before impossible. And yet, at the same time, it appeared to him as though he must have known it all the while; for how could he comprehend his blindness?

'Oh, speak not thus!' she said, touching his lips lightly with her finger. 'Had you not been about to go from here, you should never have recognized me. Forget, now, all that has ever passed between us; or rather, strive to remember it only as a pleasant dream which left us in its proper time. If the Fates separated us, it was only because they were wiser than ourselves. Those bright anticipations of our youthful love could never have been fully realized; and, if persisted in, might have led only to sorrow and despair. Let me not blush now at having revealed myself to you. Think, for the few minutes that remain to us, of friendship and of duty alone.'

Raising him up, she placed him beside her, and there they talked about the past and its pleasant recollections. How the cross miller, who had never been known to do a kindness to any one else, had sometimes let them ride upon his horse—how they had once rowed together about the bay, and he had taken her aboard his ship—how she had stolen away from home each pleasant evening to meet him, and with what feeble excuses—and the like. As the shades of afternoon deepened and shut out from sight the gilded cornices and costly frescoes, and all else that could remind them of present wealth, and as, each instant, their thoughts buried themselves still further in the memories of the past, it seemed to them, at last, as though they were again wandering hand in hand upon the beach, or sitting upon the wave-washed rock at Cato's Point.

With something wanting, however. No force of illusion could bring back to either of them, in all its former completeness, that sense of mutual interest which had once absorbed them. Whatever dreams of the past might, for the moment, blind their perceptions, there was still the ever-present consciousness of now standing in another and far different relation to each other. Though Ænone musingly gazed upon his face and listened to his voice, until the realities of the present seemed to shrink away, and the fancies of other years stole softly back, and, with involuntary action, her hand gently toyed with his curls and parted them one side, as she had once been accustomed to do, it was with no love for him that she did it now. He was only her friend—her brother. He had been kind to her, and perhaps, if necessary, she might even now consent to die for him; but, with all that, he was no longer the idol of her heart. Another had taken that place, and, however unworthy to hold it, could not now be dispossessed. And though Cleotos, likewise, as he looked at her and felt the gentle pressure of her hand upon his forehead, seemed as though transported into the past, until he saw no longer the matron in the full bloom of womanhood, but only the young girl sparkling with the fresh hue and sunshine of early youth, yet to him still clung the perception that there was a barrier between them. What though the form of the treacherous Leta may then have faded from his memory as completely as though he had never seen her? What though. Ænone's pleasant and sympathetic tones may have again melted into his heart as warmly as when first whispered at Ostia? The smile upon her face—the winning intonation of her voice—all[Pg 259] might seem the same; but he knew that he must bide within his own heart all that he had thus felt anew, and be content with the offered friendship alone, for that not merely her duty but her altered inclination had separated her from him forever.

At last the brief hour came to an end, and Ænone arose. The sun had set, and the darkness of night had already begun to shroud the city. Here and there, from some of the more wealthy neighborhoods, faint glimmers of lamp light shone out and marked the scenes of solitary study or of festive gathering, but as yet these indications were few. Already the chariots and horsemen who had thronged the Appian Way had dispersed—a single rider here and there occupying the place where so lately gay bands had cantered, disputing each available empty space of pavement. The walks were yet crowded with loiterers, but of a different class. Patricians and fair ladies had departed, and left the course to the lower orders of citizens and to slaves, who now emerged from the arches and alleys, and, anticipative of the morrow's holiday, swarmed in dusky crowds hither and thither in search of rude pastime.

'You must go now,' said Ænone, dropping the curtain which she had lifted for a moment in order to peer into the street. 'Stay not for anything that belongs to you, for I would not that you should be hindered or delayed. You have been here as mine own property; and yet, how do I know that some pretence of others' right might not be urged for your detention, if it were known that you were departing? Go, therefore, at once, Cleotos, and may the gods be with you!'

She held out her hand to him. He took it in his own, and, for the moment, gazed inquiringly into her face. Was this to be their only parting? Nay, need there be a parting at all? A flush came into his countenance as he felt one wild thought and desire burning into his soul. What if he were to yield to the impulse which beset him, and should throw himself at her feet, and ask her to forget the years which had separated them, and the trials which had beset them, and to give up all else, and depart with him? Alas! only one result could follow such an appeal as that! In the vain attempt to gain her love, he would lose her friendship also. She would part from him as an enemy who had taken advantage of her sisterly affection to inflict an insult upon her. He knew that this would surely be the consequence; but yet, for the moment, he could scarce resist the maddening impulse to thus forfeit all while striving to attain impossibilities.

'Shall we never meet again?' he said, at length, after the hard struggle to command himself.

'It may be, in after years; who can tell?' she answered. 'And yet, let us rather look the truth in the face, and not delude ourselves with false hopes. The world is very wide, and the way from here to your home is far, and the fatalities of life are many. Dear Cleotos, let us rather make up our minds that this parting is for ever; unless it may be that the gods will let us look upon each other's faces again in some future state. But there may be times when you can write to me, or send some message of good tidings; and then—'

'Talk not to me of the gods!' he interrupted, in a storm of passionate exclamation. 'What have they ever done for us, that we should worship or pray to them? Why look to them for blessings in a future state, when they have done us such evil in the present life? Here we were poor and lowly together; and have they not dragged us apart? And will they, then, in another life, be the more disposed to let us see each other's faces—you one of the nobles of the earth, and I one of its meanest plebeians? Is it written in the temples or by the priests and oracles, that when the Cæsars are throned in[Pg 260] Olympus, their lowly subjects shall be permitted to approach, them any nearer than when here? How, then, could we meet each other better hereafter than now? Away with all talk about the gods! I believe not in them! If we part now for this world, it is for eternity as well!'

'Oh, say not that!' she exclaimed. 'And still pray to the gods as of old, for they may yet bring good out of all that now seems to us so obscure. Remember that to the best of us, this world offers little but what is mingled with unhappiness. Take not, therefore, away from yourself and me a belief in something better to come.'

'Take, then, with you, a belief in the God about whom I learned in Greece, for He it is who tells of comfort hereafter for the poor and oppressed, and He is the only one who does so,' Cleotos doggedly answered.

'It may be—it may be,' she said. 'Who can tell which is right? We have so often talked about it, and have not yet found out. They may both be the true gods—they may neither of them be. Ah, Cleotos, my brother, let us not doubt. It is pleasanter and safer, too, that we should believe, even if we extend our faith to a belief in both. Choose, then, your own, as I will mine. I must not abandon the gods in whose worship I have been brought up; but when I pray to them, I will first pray for you. And you—if you adopt the God of the Christians, who speaks so much better comfort to your soul—will always pray to Him for me. And thereby, if either of us is wrong, the sin may perhaps be pardoned, on account of the other, who was right. And now, once more—and it may be for ever—dear Cleotos, farewell!'

'Farewell, Ænone, my sister!' he said. And he raised her hand and pressed it to his lips, and was about turning sorrowfully away, when the door flew open, and Sergius Vanno burst into the room.

APHORISMS.—No. XII.

A GLANCE AT PRUSSIAN POLITICS.

PART I.

The struggle now going on in Prussia, whatever may be the issue, must be regarded as one of immense political importance. To Americans certainly, no less than to any other people, is the character and progress of this struggle a matter of profound interest. Though it cannot be said that the contest is that of revolutionists or even of republicans against a legitimately ruling monarch, yet the real principles involved in the contest are in substance those of absolutism and of democracy.

Deep and irreconcilable as is now the opposition between the two contending elements, all Prussians are proud of Prussia's history. In order to a correct understanding of the present circumstances of the country, a brief survey of its previous history is necessary.

In respect to the national domain, perhaps no other instance can be found so striking as that here presented, of a steady growth of an insignificant territory, from the first surrounded by powerful nations, to a size which entitles it to rank among the first Powers of the earth. Passing over the first few hundred years of her history, during which period much confusion prevailed as to boundaries as well as everything else, we find that as late as 1417 the country embraced a territory of only about seven thousand eight hundred square miles, or of about the size of Massachusetts; whereas its present extent is about one hundred and twelve thousand square miles, i. e., about as large as New England, New York, and New Jersey.

In respect to population, the increase is proportionally great. In 1417 it was only one hundred and eighty-eight thousand five hundred; now it is over eighteen millions. As to general culture, the progress of the nation and its present relative position in the scale of civilization leave little for national pride to wish.

The history of the nation commences with the conquest of Brandenburg by the Saxon emperor Henry I., in 927. He founded the so-called North Mark, and set over it a margrave. The government was administered by margraves until 1411, when, after a century of anarchy, during which the Mark was struggled for by many aspiring dukes, it was delivered over by the emperor Sigismund, an almost worthless possession, to Frederick of Hohenzollern, burggrave of Nuremberg, with the title of elector.

The house of Hohenzollern is still the reigning dynasty. In 1701, Frederick III., who became elector in 1688, secured from the emperor Leopold I. the title of King Frederick I. Not king of Brandenburg, since Brandenburg belonged to the Austrian empire, but king in Prussia, the name of a Polish duchy acquired by John Sigismund as a feudal possession in 1621, but in 1656 made an independent possession by Frederick William. Not king of Prussia, but in Prussia, because not all the territory to which that name belonged was included in the afore-mentioned duchy. The rest was not annexed till 1772, so that Frederick the Great was[Pg 262] the first king of Prussia. And not till 1815 was the name Prussia strictly a designation of the whole land now so called.

We cannot stop even to glance at the political condition of the nation during the period of the electorate, interesting as it might be, and important as revealing the sources of subsequent political developments. Yet in passing, this at least must be borne in mind, that there was all the while a struggle going on between the nobility and the monarchy, the latter gradually gaining in strength.

Frederick I., whose vanity led him to make it his main object to secure the name of king, did less than his immediate predecessor, the 'great elector,' toward deepening the foundations of the monarchy. The most noticeable feature of his reign was the increase of the standing army from twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand. He secured the title of royalty. It remained for his son and successor to secure its power and authority.[3]

Frederick William I. was the first absolute monarch of Prussia. He was a man of rough manners and coarse tastes. Caring little for the pomp of royalty, he jealously sought to maintain his hold on the essence of it. No sooner had he dried the tears shed over his deceased father, than he dismissed the larger part of the court attendants, cut off unnecessary expenses, inaugurated a simple style of living in the court, and began to direct his attention to the improvement of the military and financial condition of the country. More than any predecessor, he identified the office of king with that of commander-in-chief of the army. His domineering disposition carried him so far that he personally scolded and threatened with blows whoever seemed to him lazy and shiftless, however little the matter personally concerned him. So violent was his temper that, because his son, afterward Frederick the Great, displayed more taste for literature, and less for religion and warfare, than he had wished, he became disgusted with him, threateningly raised his cane whenever he saw him; and, when the prince, exasperated by constant abuse, formed a plan of escape to Sinsheim, the king, having discovered it before its execution, was so infuriated that, except for the intervention of bystanders, he would have run him through with his sword. As it was, at one time he beat him furiously with his cane. Frederick's confidant was executed before his eyes, and he himself condemned to a long banishment from the court; and not till he had shown signs of repentance, was he readmitted to it and to his father's favor. Frederick William is famous for the 'tobacco club' which he established, at whose sessions over the pipe and the beer he and his friends indulged in the most unrestrained mirth and freedom; also for his monomania concerning 'tall fellows'—a passion for securing as many regiments as possible of extraordinarily tall soldiers, for which he spared no pains, and often paid little regard to the personal wishes of the tall fellows themselves. To increase their number, he scoured all Europe, other monarchs being not unwilling to secure his good will by providing him with the coveted men, for whom his almost insane passion made him willing to give any price. But the real significance of his reign in relation to Prussia's subsequent history, is the impulse which he gave to her military tastes, and his success in establishing firmly the absolute authority of the monarch. The power of feudal lords had already been shattered; it required only a strong army and a strong will to destroy it altogether. These the king possessed. He reigned at a time when the obstacles to the[Pg 263] exercise of unlimited power by the king were not what they now are, viz.: a desire on the part of the people in general for a constitutional government. The most certain way to secure the esteem of the people was to centralize the power in himself, and then exercise that power in the promotion of the people's material welfare. This the king did. He laid the foundations of the still existing system of general school education. He invited colonists from abroad to settle in the more uncultivated parts of his domains. He reformed the judiciary. He diminished the taxes, and yet by his economy increased the real revenue of the state from two and a half to seven and a half millions. Himself disinclined to become entangled in foreign wars, he raised the troops and the money without which his son could not have won the military glory which has given him the title of the Great.

Frederick William I. established the absolute monarchy by internal political changes and institutions. Frederick the Great secured for it a solid foundation in the hearts of the people. The one was thoroughly autocratic in disposition, and not seldom displayed this disposition too offensively; the other knew how to use his hereditary power without seeming to care about it. In fact, under the influence of Voltaire and the French liberalism, he himself learned to cherish very liberal opinions respecting popular rights. But practically he was absolute, and preferred to be so. By his brilliant military successes in the two Silesian wars and in the Seven Years' War he roused the national enthusiasm for the royal house to the highest pitch. He secured for Prussia the rank of a great Power in Europe. He enlarged her boundaries, and, notwithstanding his expensive wars, promoted the general prosperity of the land. Genial and kind-hearted, he won the affections of the people, so that loyalty was easy and pleasant—none the less so, the more completely the object of the loyalty was the king's person.

The reign of Frederick William II. was not characterized by any special development in the political condition of the country. Lacking in energy and decision, given to self-indulgence, controlled by courtiers and favorite women, although by the partition of Poland he increased the national domains, and by educational measures helped to promote German literature instead of the French preferred by his father, he was yet too inferior to the great Frederick to be able to uphold the glory of the royal house. By his disgraceful withdrawal from the First Coalition and the Treaty of Basle, by which he yielded to France all of Prussia lying beyond the Rhine, he prepared the way for her subsequent humiliation by Bonaparte.

The long reign of Frederick William III. is the richest period of Prussia's history. Here begins that development whose progress is now one of the most noteworthy of our time. The king, cautious, conscientious, patriotic, but timid, declined to join the Second Coalition (1799), hoping thereby to secure Prussia against the ravages of war. Prominent Prussians, moreover, were positively friendly to Napoleon; so that, even after the latter had violated his obligations by marching through Prussian territory, the king hesitated a year to declare war. This was done August 9, 1806; but two months later his army was routed at Jena; Napoleon entered Berlin; the Prussians were finally defeated at Friedland by the French, and at Tilsit, July 9, 1807, the Prussian king was forced to give up the half of his domains, and to furnish the conqueror a tribute of one hundred and forty millions of francs. For six years Prussia lay prostrate at the feet of France. In 1812 he was compelled to furnish twenty thousand men to join Napoleon's army in his invasion of Russia. Not till after the disastrous issue of this invasion did king or people dare to lift an arm in[Pg 264] defence of the national independence. But these years compose just the period which Prussians love to call that of Prussia's regeneration. The insolence of the conqueror united the national heart. Full of the most flaming patriotism, and not doubting that deliverance would finally come, statesmen and warriors, Stein, Scharnhorst, Blücher, Schill, and others, labored unweariedly to keep up the spirits of the people, and prepare them for the coming War of Liberation. Now for the first time the cities were invested with the right to regulate their own internal affairs. Now for the first time the peasants were delivered from the serfdom under which they had hitherto suffered. In short, the whole policy of the Government was determined by the resolution to inspire the people with a healthful, unconstrained, enthusiastic devotion to the national weal, and, as a means to this end, with zeal for the king. These efforts were fully successful. When the providential time arrived, and the king issued, February 3, 1813, a call for volunteers, and, March 17, his famous Aufruf an mein Volk, all Prussia sprang to arms. In alliance with Russia, finally also assisted by Austria and Sweden, her troops were engaged in nine bloody battles with the French between April 5 and October 18, the enthusiasm of the people and the dogged intrepidity of Blücher being at length rewarded by the decisive victory at Leipsic. The immediate result of this victory for Prussia was the recovery of the territory between the Elbe and the Rhine ceded to France by the preceding king. At the congress of Vienna there were assigned to her in addition all that she had possessed before the Treaty of Tilsit, half of Saxony, and an increase of the former possessions on the Rhine. Some further acquisitions and cessions were made at the second Treaty of Paris, November 2, 1815, since which time the boundaries of Prussia have been little changed.

This brief sketch of the so-called War of Liberation could not have been avoided in an attempt to describe the present political condition of Prussia. The enthusiasm with which the semi-centennial anniversary of the battle of Leipsic was celebrated on the 18th of last October by men of all parties and sentiments was a lively evidence of the profound influence of that war on the national character. The chief significance of the war for Prussia was its influence in uniting the people in the pursuit of a common patriotic end. It was a struggle for national existence; and all minor considerations were for the time forgotten. It tended to break down the barriers which before had so effectually separated the higher from the lower classes. The Government had need of the hearty aid of all Prussians; and, in order to secure this, it was necessary to abandon the invidious distinctions which, in spite of all previous reformatory measures, made a large portion of the people practically slaves. The sentiment was encouraged, that whoever was ready to lay down his life for his country deserved full protection from his country. The promise was made that this should henceforth be the spirit and practice of the Government.

We are here to mark a twofold influence on the political sentiments of the Prussian people springing from the war against French invasion. On the one hand, from here dates the first positive preparations for, and expectations of, a national representative assembly—a change from an absolute to a limited monarchy; on the other, the perfect identification of the interests of the king with those of the people, combined with a real love for the royal family, made the people satisfied, after the restoration of peace, to continue under the sway of a king in whom, though his power was unlimited, they had perfect confidence that he would use his power with conscientious regard to their good. To this day the recol[Pg 265]lection of those years of pious loyalty, when every citizen cherished a feeling of filial love and trust toward Frederick William III., is the chief element of strength in the conservative party. Prussia, they say, is what her kings have made her; the house of Hohenzollern has raised her from an insignificant beginning to the rank of a great Power; under this rule the people have prospered; no tyranny has disgraced it; there is no need of a change; there is no danger that a continuance of the former order of things can ever inure to our hurt; gratitude to our sovereigns requires us not to attack their hereditary prerogatives. There is danger of foreigners, especially republicans, not fully appreciating the force of these considerations. To us, the fact that one king, or even a series of kings, have ruled well, is no proof that they have a divine right to rule; still less, that, when their policy comes into conflict with the decided wishes of the people, they have a right by unconstitutional measures to resist the popular will. But it must be remembered that Prussia, even in the midst of the present conflict, is thoroughly monarchical. No party pretends to wish any change of the present form of government. Patriotism has so long been associated with simple devotion to the royal house, and the royal house has so uniformly proved itself not unworthy of this devotion, that it is no easy matter, especially for those who by nature are conservative, to be satisfied with a change which reduces the monarchical office to a merely empty hereditary honor. In addition to this, it would be unfair not to recognize the fact that the most cultivated and religious part of the Prussian people belongs to the Conservative party. This, as a general statement, is, as all acknowledge, true. That the exceptions, however, are very numerous, is no less true. It is also, doubtless, not unjust to assume that the dependence of churches and universities on the state leads to much hypocritical piety and selfish loyalty. Yet the general fact that the most estimable citizens are royalists, is not so to be accounted for. The War of Liberation was a war not only against French aggression, but against a power whose origin was to be traced to a contempt not only of time-honored political customs, but also of Christianity itself. Revolutions and republicanism became associated with infidelity. It was natural, therefore, that Christians should acquire the notion that every approximation toward democracy would involve danger to the church; especially as the church and state were united, and the king not only professed personal belief in Christianity, but endeavored to promote its interests by his administrative measures. It was to them a touching recollection that their king and the Austrian and Russian emperors kneeled together on the battle field of Leipsic to offer to the Lord of hosts their thanks for the victory that he had vouchsafed to them. And when two years later the same monarchs united themselves in the Holy Alliance, it is not strange, whatever may now be thought of their motives, that Christians should have rejoiced at the sight of princes publicly acknowledging their obligation to rule in the interests of Christianity, and binding themselves to promote the religious good of their subjects. As republicanism in France had appeared in a positively unchristian form, here monarchism appeared in a positively Christian form. Nothing was therefore more natural than that their devotion to the king—already, for other reasons, hearty and enthusiastic—should be increased as they thought they saw in him the surest defender of the church. Instead, therefore, of encouraging or wishing a separation of church and state—a consummation which it was in the power of leading theologians, to procure—they preferred a still closer union. Nor is it to be wondered at that, ever since, men[Pg 266] of the most earnest piety have made a defence of the royal prerogatives a part of their religion, and that some have gone even so far as to deny that in Prussia a Christian can be anything but a Conservative. It cannot but serve to soften many prejudices against this party to know that men like the venerable Professor Tholuck, of Halle, are decided supporters of the Government, and regard the triumph of the Liberal party as almost equivalent to the downfall of the church. And it may serve in part to excuse the persistence of the Government in its course to know that it is advised so to persist by men who should be supposed to have the highest good of the country at heart.

But, on the other hand, as we have remarked, the seeds of the present Liberal party were sown during this same period of national disaster, and that, too, by the royal hand. The regeneration of Prussia is attributed by all to the indefatigable efforts of the minister, Baron von Stein, and, after he was deposed by command of Napoleon, of his successor, Count Hardenberg. Their work, however, consisted not only in abolishing villanage, the usufruct of royal lands, serfdom, the exemption of the nobility from taxation, and the oppressive monopoly of the guilds; in giving to all classes the right of holding landed possessions and high offices; in the reconstruction of the courts; in the enfranchisement of the cities; in the promotion of general education; in relieving military service of many abuses and severities;—this was not all: the king was moved to issue, October 27, 1810, an edict, in which he distinctly promised to give the people a constitution and a national parliamentary representation. A year later this promise was renewed. 'Our intention,' says the king, 'still is, as we promised in the edict of October 27, 1810, to give the nation a judiciously constituted representation.' That this promise was not immediately fulfilled is, considering the condition of the country, not specially surprising. Whatever may then have been the king's personal inclinations, there is perhaps no reason to doubt that he intended to introduce the constitution as soon as the return of peace should give him the requisite means of devoting to the subject his undivided attention. That the promise was originally drawn from him by the urgent influence of his counsellors, especially Von Stein and Hardenberg, there is every reason to believe. That he should have been inclined, unsolicited, to limit his own power, is more than can ordinarily be expected of monarchs. The bad love power because it gratifies their selfish lusts; the good, who really wish the weal of their subjects, can easily persuade themselves that the more freely they can use their power, the better it will be for all concerned. But, for whatever reasons, the pledge was given; yet, though Frederick William reigned thirty years after giving it, he never fulfilled the pledge. It may be that, had he done so, the party divisions which now agitate the land would not have been avoided. Conservatives might have complained that he had yielded too much to the unreasonable demands of an unenlightened populace; Liberals might have complained that he had not yielded enough; at all events, the opposing principles, of the divine right of kings, and of popular self-government, whatever form they might have taken, would have divided public sentiment. This may have been; but even more certain is it that the failure on the part of the monarch to carry out a promise solemnly and repeatedly made, a promise which he never would have made unless believing that it would gratify his people, could not but lead ultimately to a deep disaffection on the part of the people. His course resembled too much the equivocating prophecies of the witches in Macbeth; he kept the word of promise to the ear, and broke it to the hope. It is then not strange that many[Pg 267] should have found their faith in royalty weakened, and come to the conclusion that whatever was to be gained in the point of popular government must be secured by insisting on it as a right which the Government nolens volens should be required to concede.

Such, in general terms, is the animus of the two political parties of Prussia. Turning to a more particular consideration of the historical progress of events, we find that the first movement toward a freer development of popular character was made by Frederick the Great. Throughout his life he was inclined, theoretically, to favor a republican form of government; and, although he was no friend of sudden changes, and did not think that the time had come for a radical change in Prussia, he yet recognized the truth that a king's duty is to act as the servant of the state; and, in spite of the sternness with which, in many relations, he exercised his power, he introduced some changes which may be regarded as the earnests of a permanent establishment of a constitutional government. These changes consisted specially in the increase of freedom which he allowed respecting the press, religion, and the administration of justice. But, as we have seen, nothing like a real limitation of the royal power was undertaken until the War of Liberation seemed to make it a national necessity. The changes which Frederick William's ministers made in the social and political condition of the people were in themselves of vast and permanent importance. They were made under the stimulus of a more or less clear recognition of the truth of natural, inalienable rights. Fighting against a people whose frightful aggressions were the product of this principle abnormally developed, they yet had to borrow their own weapons from the same armory. Or, if the republican principle was not at all approved, the course of the Government showed that it was so far believed in by the people that certain concessions to it were necessary as a matter of policy. But these changes were yet by no means equivalent to the introduction of republican elements in the Government. An approach was made toward the granting of equality of rights; but this was only granted; the Government was still absolute; strictly speaking, it had the right, so far as formal obligations were concerned, to remove the very privileges which it had given. But the promise of something more was given also. Besides the already-mentioned renewal of that promise, the king, June 3, 1814, in an order issued while he was in Paris, intimated his intention to come to a final conclusion respecting the particular form of the constitution after his return to Berlin. In May, 1815, he issued another edict, the substance of which was that provision should be made for a parliamentary representation of the people; that, to this end, the so-called estates of the provinces should be reorganized, and from them representatives should be chosen, who should have the right to deliberate respecting all subjects of legislation which concern the persons and property of citizens; and that a commission should be at once appointed, to meet in Berlin on the first of September, whose business should be to frame a constitution. But this commission was not then appointed, and of course did not meet on the first of September. Two years later the commissioners were named; but their work has never been heard of.

Here is to be discerned a manifest wavering in the mind of the king respecting the fulfilment of his intentions. The German States, taught by the bitter experience of the late war the disadvantages of their dismembered condition, and bound together more closely than ever before by the recollection of their common sufferings and common triumphs, saw the necessity of a real union, to take the place of the merely nominal one which had thus[Pg 268] far existed in the shadowy hegemony of the house of Hapsburg. The German Confederation, essentially as it still exists, was organized at Vienna by the rulers of the several German States and representatives from the free cities, June 8, 1815. Although there was in this assembly no direct representation of the people, it is clear that its deliberations were in great part determined by the unmistakable utterances of the popular mind. For one of the first measures adopted was to provide that in all the States of the Confederacy constitutional governments should be guaranteed. Frederick William himself was one of the most urgent supporters of this provision. It is therefore not calculated to elevate our estimation of the openness, honesty, and simplicity for which this king is praised, and to which his general course seems to entitle him, that as late as March, 1818, in reply to a petition from the city of Coblenz, that he would grant the promised constitution, he remarked that 'neither the order of May 22, 1815, nor article xiii. of the acts of the Confederacy had fixed the time of the grant, and that the determination of this time must be left to the free choice of the sovereign, in whom unconditional confidence ought to be placed.' We are to account for this hesitation, however, not by supposing that he originally intended to delay the measure in question so long as he actually did delay it, but by the fears with which he was inspired by the popular demonstrations in the times following the close of the war. The fact was palpable, not only that the idea of popular rights, notwithstanding the miserable failure of the French Revolution, had become everywhere current, but that, together with this feeling, a desire for German unity was weakening the hold of the several princes on their particular peoples. At this time sprang up the so-called Deutsche Burschenschaft, organizations of young men, whose object was to promote the cause of German union. The tri-centennial anniversary of the Reformation, in 1817, was made the occasion of inflaming the public mind with this idea. The sentiment found ready access to the German heart. It was shared and advocated by many of the best and ablest men. As subsidiary to the same movement, was at the same time introduced the practice of systematic and social gymnastic exercises, an institution which still exists, and constitutes one of the most prominent features of the German movement. Immense concourses of gymnasts from all parts of Germany meet yearly to practise in friendly rivalry, and inspire one another with zeal for the good of the common fatherland. But the Burschenschaft in its pristine glory could not so long continue. The separate German Governments were naturally jealous of the influence of these organizations, and, though not able to accuse them of directly aiming at treason and revolution, were ready to seize the first pretext for striking at their power. A pretext was soon found. A certain Von Kotzebue, a novelist of some notoriety, suspected of being a Russian spy, wrote a book in which he attacked the Burschenschaft with great severity. A theological student at Jena, Karl Sand, whose enthusiasm in the cause of the Burschenschaft had reached the pitch of a half-insane fanaticism, took it upon him to avenge the wounded honor of the German name. He visited Kotzebue at the dwelling of the latter, delivered him a letter, and, while he was reading it, stabbed him with a dagger. Sand was of course executed, and, though it was proved that the crime was wholly his own, though the German Confederation, through a commission appointed specially for the purpose of searching all the papers of the participants in the Burschenschaft movement, found no evidence of anything like treasonable purposes, yet it was resolved that these 'demagogical intrigues' must cease. The Burschen[Pg 269]schaft was pronounced a treasonable association; its members were punished by imprisonment or exile. The poet and professor Arndt and the professor Jahn, prominent leaders in the movement, were not only deposed from their professorships, but also imprisoned. The celebrated De Wette was removed from the chair of theology in the University of Berlin, simply because, on the ground that an erring conscience ought to be obeyed, he had excused the deed of Sand. In short, the princes intended effectually to crush the efforts which, though indirectly, were tending to undermine their thrones. Seemingly they succeeded. But they had only 'scotched the snake, not killed it.' It is easy to see that these developments must have shaken Frederick William's purpose. Of all things, the most unpleasant to a monarch is to be driven by his subjects. In the present case he saw not only a loosening of the loyalty which he felt to be due to him, but also a positive transfer of loyalty, if we may so speak, from the Prussian throne to the German people in general. If he should now grant a popular constitution, he would seem not only to be yielding to a pressure, but would be surrendering what he regarded as a sacred right, into the hands of ungrateful recipients. He therefore set himself against the popular current, gave up his former plan, and contented himself with restoring, in some degree, the form of government as it had existed before the establishment of the absolute monarchy. He gave, in 1823, to the estates of the provinces, a class of men consisting partly of nobles and owners of knights' manors, partly of representatives of the cities and of the peasants, the right of advising the crown in matters specially concerning the several provinces. Nothing further was done in the matter of modifying the constitution during the reign of Frederick William III., although he declared his intention of organizing a national diet.

Comparative quiet ensued till 1830, when the French revolution, followed by the insurrection of the Austrian Netherlands against Holland, and of Poland against Russia, again stirred the public mind. But, although the Polish revolution, on account of its local proximity and ancient political relations, threatened to involve Prussia in war, she yet escaped the danger, and passed through the excitement with little internal commotion. But the existence of disaffection was made manifest by sundry disturbances in the chief cities, which, however, were easily quelled. Suffering under no palpable oppression, accustomed once more to peace, seeing no prospect of gaining any radical change in the form of government except through violent and bloody measures, which, as experience had proved, would, after all, be likely to be unsuccessful, the masses of the people had little heart for a constant agitation in behalf of an indefinite and uncertain good. Those who did continue the agitation exhibited less of zeal for German unity and more for that sort of liberalism which had been current in France, than had marked the efforts of the Burschenschaft. Many of the leaders were obliged to escape the country, in order to avoid arrest.

In 1840, Frederick William IV. ascended the throne. According to the old custom, he summoned to Koenigsberg the estates of the provinces of Prussia and Posen to attend the coronation and take their oaths of fealty. On this occasion he inquired of this body whether they would elect twelve members of the East Prussian knighthood, to represent the old order of lords, and what privileges they wished to have secured. They replied that they saw no need of reviving that order; and as to privileges, instead of mentioning any in particular which they desired to see protected, they wished them all protected and confirmed. They then reminded the king[Pg 270] of the promise of his father to give the nation a constitution and a diet. The king replied that their reasons for declining the first proposal were satisfactory, but the establishment of a general representation of the people he must decline to grant, 'on account of the true interests of the people intrusted to his care.' The dissatisfaction produced by this reply was somewhat tempered by the splendor of the coronation ceremonies, and by the hitherto unknown condescension of the king in addressing the assembled throng as he took upon him the vow to be a just judge, a faithful, provident, merciful prince, a Christian king, as his ever-memorable father had been. Personally he was a man of more than ordinary talents and of estimable character. High expectations could be, and were, entertained of the success of his reign. One of his first acts was to release from prison those who were there languishing for having been connected with the Burschenschaft. He manifested in his general policy a mildness and benevolence which, had he lived when nothing had ever been heard of a constitution, would have doubtless secured for him the uninterrupted lore and devotion of his subjects. As it was, it is probable that his reign would have been disturbed by no serious outbreak, had the occasion for disturbance not come from without.

ASLEEP.

What, darling, asleep in this sylvan retreat!
Thy loose tresses sprinkled with rose petals sweet;
Blown in from the sunlight, some float to thy breast;
Less fragrant are they than their beautiful nest.

There flutt'ring a moment they rise and they sink,
As quivers a humbird his honey to drink,
Or fond doves a-wooing that shiver their wings,
Or throat of a song bird that throbs while he sings.

These petals at last swoon far down in thy snow,
Whose warm drifts of wonder they only can know;
And hidden they lie there all rocked by thy breath,
And pressed in soft odors to ravishing death.

Thine eyes their dear curtains now shut from the light,
Sweet veined and blue tinted they round to my sight,
Fair shells of deep oceans! And sometimes a shell,
When close to your ear, its home secrets will tell:

But in music so mystic, you cannot guess
The strange tales of Ocean it tries to confess.
So lady, thine eyelids, as skies shut the sea,
Or shells try to whisper, are whisp'ring to me.[Pg 271]

As glad streams of day 'neath the dawn's glowing tide,
So white keys of laughter thy curving lips hide,
Warm gates of the morning, when morning is new,
And red for the sunshine of smiles to break through!

Thy round arms rest o'er thee so fair and so lone,
Like that white path of stars across the night's zone:
That pathway, when twilight late vanishing dies,
Embraces the earth, though it quits not the skies.

Thus stars kiss the hills, and the trees, and the plain,
Yet never can they kiss the stars back again;
Though yearning they thirst for those arms of the sky,
They never will taste the white home where they lie.

So rivers and oceans with influence sweet,
Their mighty hearts swelling loved Luna to greet,
Strain sobbing their bosoms to hold her dear face,
And thrilled to their depths with her luminous grace,

In tossing waves rapturous rise to her smile.
In vain! Their coy queen half receding the while,
In slow fainting cadence they sink to the shore,
And hoarse tones of love-hunger moan evermore.

Ah, lady, bright sleeper, my soul, like the sea,
Illumed with thy beauty, is trembling to thee:
I kneel in the silence, and drink in the air
That, fragrant and holy, has toyed with thy hair;

And hushed in thy presence with worshipping fear—
The breeze even stills when it reaches thine ear—
My lips dare not whisper in softest refrain
The trance of my heart in its passionate pain.

Oh, open thine eyes! let their smile make me brave—
The Queen e'en of Ocean will look at her slave!—
Let me drown in their light—deliciously drown,
And lay thy white hand on my head for a crown,

And chrism. And thus regally shrived, might I dare
Exhale the warm infinite incense of prayer
From my deep soul to thine. Nor then couldst thou know
The wealth of the censer. Thou wak'st!—must I go?
[Pg 272]

A CASTLE IN THE AIR.

Times are changed. Most people (i.e., Bostonians) now build their castles on the 'new land.'[4] But I belong to the old school, and I still build mine in the air.

The situation has its advantages. As Miss Gail Hamilton observed, when I had the pleasure of exhibiting it to her, it is airy. I need scarcely add that it is the favorite haunt of those kindred spirits Ari-osto and Ary Scheffer. It is too high ever to be reached by any unsavory odors from the Back Bay. Cool in summer it is also, notwithstanding, remarkably warm in winter. My castle is quite too retired for any critics to intrude upon it. They cannot get at the plan of it even, unless in the event of its being shown them by my friend, the editor of a popular magazine, which is a betrayal too improbable to enter into my calculations.

There is no stucco or sham about my castle. Like a fair and frank republican, I built it all of pure freestone, from the doorsteps up to the observatory. This observatory—I will speak of it while I think of it—holds a telescope exactly like the one at Cambridge, except that the tube has a blue-glass spectacle to screw on, through which it does not put out one's eye to look at the moon.

My workmen never make mistakes nor keep me waiting. The painters paint, the upholsterers upholster, and the carpenters carpent precisely when and as I wish. I do not have to heat myself by running over the town for straw matting, nor to catch cold in crypts full of carpets. Everything that I order comes to my door as soon as I order.

Every time that I go down Washington street, I choose something in the shop windows for my castle—an engraving at Williams & Everett's, a mosaic or classic onyx at Jordan's, or a camel's hair—for a dressing gown, of course at Hovey's. It really costs surprisingly little, and is an agreeable exercise of taste and judgment. It is likewise an exercise of benevolence. I select as many things for my guests as I do for myself. My castle is never too full. Little by little my tastes change; and little by little, I let most of my old treasures go to make room for new ones.

But certain principles always prevail in my selections. For instance, as my particular friend, the Reverend George Herbert, remarked, as he looked about him on one of his visits to my castle: 'Sober handsomeness doth bear the bell.' I cannot admit anything gaudy, needlessly exotic, or impertinently obtruding the idea of dollars. Now a travelled lady, who had heard of my castle, once offered me for it a buhl cabinet, of angry and alarming redness and a huge idol of a gilded trough, standing on bandy legs, and gorged with artificial flowers. And I thanked her for her kind intentions, ordered a handcart, sent the lumber to auction, and applied the proceeds to the benefit of the insane.

Tapestry, however, clever bronzes, sheathed daggers from Hassam's with beetles crawling on the hilts, and il[Pg 273]luminated, brazen-clasped old tomes abound at my castle. They come to me one by one, each bringing with it its separate pleasure. I have no fancy for buying up, at one fell swoop, the whole establishment of some bankrupt banker or confiscated Russian nobleman. Instead of slipping at once, like a dishonest hermit-crab, into the whole investment of somebody else, I rather choose to come by my own, as I suppose other more happily constituted shell-fish do, by gradual and individual accretion or secretion.

My winter parlor looks down Beacon street. It is lofty, like all the rest of my apartments, but otherwise small and snug. The floor is of a dark wood, polished to the utmost. The great wood-fire loves to wink at its own glowing face mirrored in this floor; and, when alone, I often skate upon it. But as I do not wish to see my less sure-footed friends disposed about it in writhing attitudes expressive of agony and broken bones, I usually keep it covered, up to a yard's breadth from the dark-carved wainscot, with a velvety carpet, which was woven for me at Wilton, and represents the casting scene in the 'Song of the Bell.' The window curtains are of velvet, of just the shade of purple that nestles in the centre of the most splendid kind of fuchsia, and have an Etruscan border and heavy fringes of gold bullion. The walls are covered with a crimson velvet paper, of the hue of the outer petals of that same fuchsia, with little golden suns shining over it everywhere. One end of the room is further lighted up by a portrait of the terrestrial fury Etna, in a full suit of grape vines and an explosion of fiery wrath. Opposite is a spirited scene, by an artist who shall be nameless, suggested by a passage in an interesting sermon by Jonathan Edwards. The contemplation of the latter picture, especially, makes a chance sensation of chilliness a luxury rather than the contrary.

My tawny Scotch terrier, Wye-I, always takes up his position on the purple plush cushion at one side of the fireplace, and the Maltese cat, Cattiva, on the crimson one opposite, by instinct, because most becoming severally to their complexions. The cat never catches mice. There are no mice in my castle for her to catch. The dog is much attached to her. He is considered remarkably intelligent. In gratitude for my forbearing to cut off his tail, he uses it as a brush, watches the coals, and, when they snap out, sweeps them up with it. He sometimes, with a natural sensibility which does him no discredit, accompanies the performance with the appropriate music which has earned him his name.

My summer parlor is much larger. It is paved with little hexagonal tiles, green, purple, and white alternately, like a bed of cool violets, with a border of marine shells in mosaic. The walls are cloaked as greatly as the Cloaca Maxima, with verdant leaves, light and dark, through which, here and there, peeps a rock. There is no arsenic among them. The windows look seaward to see the ships come and go. Venetian blinds, of the kind that turn up and down, admit only green light at noon, softer or brighter according to my mood. Lace curtains sweep the floor with a slumberous sound when the sea breeze breathes in. Some of my visitors might say that this room was too empty. I should promptly disagree with them. To a person of correct taste, not to speak of a philanthropic bias, it must be painful to see, in warm weather, anything which calls up a vision of warm handmaidens, laborious with their brooms and dusters. Therefore I must persist in admitting here little furniture besides the oriental bamboo couches and porcelain barrels that flank the room, with little daisy-and-moss-like chenille rugs beside them. One Canton tepoy holds my aquarium, and another, beside the most frequented of the lounges, the last number of the[Pg 274] most weighty of North American periodicals. If ever I take a nap, it is here.

In the centre of the room, a white-marble Egeria, carved by Thorwaldsen, throws up between her hands a shaft of cold crystal water, pure as truth, which spreads into a silvery veil all around her, and plashes down in a snowy basin: no place could be more inviting for a bath. But in the winter Egeria shows her power of adaptation by furnishing instead a Geyser of hot water. Then I turn my scientific friends in here, when they call upon me, to make them feel at home.

In the position of Jack Horner, sits Miss Hosmer's Puck. Opposite is a mate production, which she never put on exhibition. It is Ariel, perched hiding in a honeysuckle, and leaning slyly out to play on an Æolian harp in a cottage latticed window.

Over the somewhat frequented couch of which I have spoken, there is a picture by Paul Delaroche of

On the other side hangs another painting which I prefer, partly perhaps because even in my castle I was for a time at a loss how to procure it. The subject was recommended to me by Hans Christian Andersen. It is the story of a beautiful princess. Are not Danish princesses always beautiful?

Her numerous brothers were so unfortunate as to be laid, by a witch, under a spell of a most inconvenient sort. Every morning they were turned into wild swans. Every day they were obliged to fly over many a league of gray ocean to the mainland and back to their home, an island in the midst of the sea. At every sunset they resumed their natural shape, and were princes all night. One day they met their sister on the shore. They undertook to carry her back with them. Her Weight made them slower than usual. A storm came up in the after noon. There was a sad probability of the swans being turned into princes again before they could possibly 'see her home.'

In my picture, half of the swans are a plumy raft for her, and row her through the air with their sweeping wings. Another relay, more tired, perhaps, make a canopy over her, and fan her as they fly. Their outstretched gaze sees only the island. But the princess, as she lies facing backward, sees the danger. In despairing, motionless silence, she looks at the sinking sun, with no color in her cheeks but that which he casts upon her. The red, warning sun looks awfully back, face to face with her, in the narrowing strip of blue sky between two horizontal bars of thundering clouds, which the lightning is beginning to chain together, that the night may come before its time, and the enchanted princes and their sister may drown in darkness.

Church did the water very well, and Paul Weber the island. Rosa Bonheur was so kind as to paint the swans—I need not say how. But the rest of the picture was such a perplexity to me that I could think of nothing better than to send for Mr. Laroy Sunderland to call one day when I was out, and knock up Raphael to draw the princess, and Salvator Rosa, the clouds, and Titian to see to the sky and light. When I came in again, the completed whole met me as a pleasant surprise.

Not far off are Landseer's 'Challenge,' and a few other Arctic pieces of his, which I look at in July to keep myself cool. But the chief of my pictures are in the picture gallery, at the top of my castle, lighted from above. Connoisseurs assure me, with rare candor, that the 'Transfiguration,' 'Last Judgment,' 'Assumption of the Virgin,' and so forth, there, are duplicates rather than copies of the originals.

In my library there is scarcely a[Pg 275] single picture to be found, nor a statue, nor a bust even, except of the duskiest, self-hiding bronze overhead—only some dim, dark engraving, or brown, antiquated autograph, fading in a little black frame, or a signet ring hanging against the book written by the crumbled hand that once wore it—only relics having the power to excite thought without distracting attention—- unobtrusive memorials of the dead with whom I am soon to live. Rich, black, old bookcases, carved all over in high relief, hold their immortal works or the records of their undying deeds. Even the writings of the living are sparingly admitted here. I stand on my guard constantly, lest I be enslaved by their influence. It is less by obsequiousness to the Present than by listening to the admonitions of the Past, that we may hope to gain a hearing from the Future.

Saints and seraphs, such as they appeared to Fra Angelico, look in upon me through the stained-glass windows, that I may always read and study as if under their holy eyes. Ivy runs thickly over their deep arched recesses, and over the stags' heads which surmount them. In winter, little but painted beams and glow come through them. In summer, the oriel opens of an evening to show me the phantom ships that haunt the misty, dreamy harbor; and the lattices that look westerly over the lake-like mouth of the Charles, are seldom shut against the sun or moon.

The floor is smoothly paved with broad, square slabs of freestone, on which is here or there engraved one or another illustrious name, like a 'footprint on the sands of time,' with a date of birth and death. Tables that match the bookcases support portfolios containing allegorical designs by Relszch, Blake, and Albrecht Durer. On a writing desk, that was once Vittoria Colonna's, a little Parian angel holds my ink for me, kneeling as if to ask a blessing upon it, and to entreat me to blot no pages with it in the souls whereon I write,

Before the reading chairs, plenty of tiger and leopard skins lie in wait to cherish the cool feet of students, but there is nothing to trip up my own, along the long diameter of the long oval room, if sometimes the fancy seizes me to walk up and down there for hours alone, listening to the 'voices' that are not 'from without.'

At the end opposite to the oriel, I have just had placed an organ, the twin of the new one at the Music Hall, except that the faces on the pipes are beautiful, and do not look as if it hurt them to pipe. The world may be too small; but the organ cannot possibly be too large. Malibran, Jenny Lind, or Mrs. Mott usually sings to it of an evening, accompanied by Franz, Schubert, or Mendelssohn; or Beethoven drops in to play one of his symphonies. Sunday nights, Handel performs upon it regularly for a choir composed of Vaughan, Herbert, the minister who chants 'Calm on the listening ear of night,' Madame Guyon, and Sarah Adams. Between their hymns, Robertson preaches a sermon and reads from the liturgy of King's Chapel. This service is designed as a special easement to the consciences and stomachs alike of those oppressed Christians, whom modern customs and physical laws impel, of an afternoon, to be dining and digesting precisely at the hours during which their pastors are unaccountably and unjustifiably in the habit of preaching.

The books upon the shelves, last not least, are less numerous than choice. Among them still are to be found the most masterly writings of the most masterly minds in the three learned professions, and the noblest treatises on the nobler of the arts and sciences. There are many 'chronicles of eld,' which, if not true, as the Frenchman said, at any rate 'méritent[Pg 276] bien de l'être.' There are such few fictions as bear the stamp of much individual thought, character, and observation. Especially there is a great deal of biography; for biography is the great, all-embracing epic of humanity.

Two suits of armor stand on guard, one on each side, by each well-assorted bookcase. I always think it prudent to warn my incautious visitors that these are automata, wound up and set to deal a box with their gauntleted hands on each ear of each disorderly wight who puts a book where it does not belong.

Below my library, and beyond my courtyard, is a boat in which I row myself out in warm weather to visit my friends along the coast. When I ply the oar, the crab-fishery is unproductive, droughts prevail, and I am not often upset or drowned.

In my stable are sometimes to be found, eating unmingled oats, two tame ponies, Mattapony and Poniatowski. They take my invalid acquaintance out on airings in the daytime, and my lingering guests home at a reasonable hour in the evening. The coachman thinks it is good for the horses to be out in bad weather. He loves to wash the coach. For my own use, I keep a large dapple-gray, an ex-charger of the purest blood. He has the smoothest canter and the finest mouth that I ever felt; but, with decent regard to appearances, and my private preferences, expressed or understood, he never fails to prance in a manner to strike awe and terror into all beholders, for full five minutes every time I mount him.

In the common world, I myself am, I trust, often amiable—always in some respects exemplary. In my castle, I am always all that I ought to be—all that I wish to be. I am as stately as Juno, as beautiful as Adonis, as elegant as Chesterfield, as edifying as Mrs. Chapone, as eloquent as Burke, as noble as Miss Nightingale, as perennial as the Countess of Desmond, and as robust as Dr. Windship. I also understand everything but entomology and numismatology; and if I do not understand them, the only reason is that, as the dear little boys say, 'I doe want to.'

The blossom-end of the day I keep to myself in my castle. I spend all the mornings alone in the library writing—calamo currente, like one of the heroines of the author of 'Ohone'—the most admirable romances and poems of the age. People very seldom call to see me. When they do, they go away again directly on hearing that I am engaged, without as much as sending in a message. My porter has Fortunatus's purse, and is giving discreet largesses, in collusion with the agent of the Provident Association, to the less opulent of the beggars who apply for my pecuniary aid, while I am providing above for the wants of those who crave my higher wealth. So that really the only drawback to the pleasure enjoyed by me at such times, is the idea of the frightful quarrels which must arise, as soon as I put anything to the press, between the booksellers, who stand ready to contend with one another for the honor of publishing it. The very first novel I ever completed led to a duel between the Montague and Capulet of the trade, in which each party must have lost his life but for the strenuous interposition of Noah Worcester. The fear of a repetition of that scene is all which withholds me from more frequently answering the importunate calls of the public to appear before them. Matters were simultaneously almost as bad between Birket Foster and Darley. But I made a compromise there, by promising that, the next time I got out an edition, I would get out another, and that of the two each artist should illustrate one. Each eagerly agreed to this arrangement, naturally feeling sure that such a comparison would forever establish his own superiority.

Did I say there was but one draw[Pg 277]back to my pleasure? There is one more. It is the idea of the monotonous uniformity with which the Reviews will eulogize me. They cannot say a word of commendation beyond what is strictly true, I am fully aware; and I am not obliged to read any more of it than I please. Still it may appear extravagant to the very few yet unacquainted with the merits of my works.

Of an evening I am usually at home to visitors; and three times every winter I give the young people a ball. It breaks up at twelve. I provide none but the lightest wines. Nor do I encourage the 'round dances.' I really cannot. Those who do not think it right to join in them would either do so against their consciences, or feel left out and forlorn; pretty girls would get overheated, tumbled, and torn, and carry about the marks of black arms on their delicate waists; and youths, unsurpassed in the natural nobleness of their port and presence, would make ridiculous faces in their well-founded anxiety lest they should lose the time or meet with collisions. But I give them, to make such amends as I can, plenty of room, pure air, neither hot nor cold, and flowers in abundance. Soyer furnishes their supper; Strauss and Labitzky play for them; and they are in a measure consoled for their privations by seeing and hearing how uncommonly handsome they look to the end of the evening. The only qualifications I require for admission to the entertainment are, that the candidates shall be generally acquainted with one another, respectable in character, tasteful in dress, happy and kind in their looks, and well-mannered enough to show that they have assembled to give and receive as much innocent pleasure as they can.

Good talkers and good listeners only are invited to my dinner parties. I give one every Wednesday. It is a pleasant thing to look forward to through the first half of the week, and to look back upon through the last.

My cook likes it. She is the complement to the unhappy gentleman who had 'the temperament of genius without genius.' She has the genius without the temperament.

Part of my waiters are the attendant hands formerly engaged in the service of the White Cat. They are always gloved, and never spill nor break anything. Others, who are dumb, carry everything needed safely to and fro between table and kitchen.

The walls of my dining room are hung with portraits of all of my presentable ancestors, from the time of Apelles down to that of Copley. There are not too many of them to leave room for some Dutch paintings of fruit, game, and green-grocers' shops, for whets to the hunger.

My responsibility, with regard to the banquet, begins and ends with seeing, as I never fail to do, that each of the banqueters has a generally agreeable and peculiarly congenial companion. As for myself, I maintain that a host has his privileges; and I always place the Reverend Sydney Smith very near my right hand. On my left, I enjoy a variety. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table is sometimes so kind as to grace that corner of my dinner table. So is a gentleman who was once two years before the mast as an uncommon sailor; and so is Sir Lainful, and a child from a neighboring college town, whose society is better than that of most men.

Nothing is more promotive of digestion than laughter. I regret that my experience does not enable me to speak quite so favorably of choking. By means of the latter, my bright career was, on the very first of this series of festivities, nearly brought to a premature close. But as upon that occasion it was impossible for me to stop laughing, so likewise was it impossible for me to stop living. Some sort of action of the lungs was kept up, and complete asphyxia prevented; and, having smiled myself nearly to death, I[Pg 278] smiled myself back to life again. Ever since, my convives, apprised of this mortal frailty of mine, time their remarks more prudently, and allow me to take alternately a joke and a morsel.

Sir Walter Scott always sits at the farther end of the table. He is the best talker that I ever heard, but not so good for dinner as he is for luncheon, because what he says is too interesting, and takes away one's appetite; nor for supper either, because he makes one dream. I always contrive that the more plethoric of my guests shall take their seats near him.

I could never be tired of Macaulay; but he contradicts people, and once made two ladies cry. They were introduced to me by an author to whom I owe much enjoyment, Miss Wetherell, of the State of New York. One was the bride of the Reverend John Humphreys, and the other Mrs. Guy Carleton. To be sure, I did not see why they should cry—unless from habit; but still, he ought not to have made them.

After dinner, those who show no signs of having talked themselves out, are rewarded and encouraged by being privately invited to prolong their stay, and meet a few other guests in the library.

Shakspeare always appears there among the first, collected and calm, but whether happy or not, his manner does not show. With regard both to his past and present life, his reserve is impenetrable. Like a mocking bird, he utters himself in so many different strains, that I can seldom make out which is most his own, except when he will sing one of his little lyrics; when, I must say, I never heard so sweet and rich a voice but that of Milton on such occasions, or those of Shelley's skylark and cloud. But yet, whether this voice of his own says that the heart out of which it comes is most glad or sad, I never can distinguish.

Dante comes with him, as tall, and, I think, as strong a man; but 'Pace' is still upon his lips and not upon his brow. He complains that heaven is a melancholy place to him. He has become better acquainted with Beatrice, and finds her not more beautiful than the rest of the angels, and otherwise rather a commonplace spirit.

To Goethe I usually have myself excused. To borrow a little slang from the critics, he 'draws' uncommonly well, especially when he draws portraits. But I do not care to have my eye trained much by an artist who has such an infirmity of color that he does not know black from white.

Schiller meets with many a welcome, and rarely a heartier one than when he brings his Wilhelm Tell or Jungfrau. I should be glad to ask some of those who are more intimate with him than I am, whether he is not a good deal like three wise men, whose plays Socrates and I used to go to see performed at Athens, two or three thousand years ago, when I was there. Further, I should be glad to ask whether it would not be better if, in one respect, he were more like them still. As he at least has seemed to me to do, they threw the strength of their invention into two or three impersonations; but as he sometimes does, they always—to steal a term from the nearest grocery—lumped all the merely necessary and accessary people, and called them simply 'Chorus.' Thus the wise men's ingenuities and our memories were spared the trouble of assigning and remembering a host of insignificant names; and there was no looking back to the dramatis personæ, or dramatos prosopa, as we called them then, to find out who was who.

A Government officer sometimes reports himself at my gates from Rydal, with a washing tub of ink on castors, which he pushes about with him wherever he goes, and in which, as in a Claude-Lorraine mirror, he contemplates everything that he can both on earth and above. He is constantly employed in fishing in it with a quill for ideas; and as often as he catches one,[Pg 279] even if it is half drowned, my door-keeper opens to him.

Lady Geraldine was one of my most constant guests of an evening. But after her courtship and marriage, she was too apt to bring in her husband. I received him cordially enough two or three times, particularly when he came with 'the good news from Ghent.' But on other occasions his conversation was so far from agreeable, so unintelligible, or, 'not to put too fine a point upon it,' unedifying, that at last my porter was obliged to hand him out for immediate chastisement.[5] He never came again. I do not quite see why not; for, if others are willing to take pains for his good, he certainly should be no less so.

Mrs. Stowe does honor to one of the most honorable places in the assembly—her head crowned with an everlasting glory by the spirit of Uncle Tom.

Poor Charlotte Bronté is always present. She looks happy at last, with a happiness that is not of this world; and if her laurels are but earthly laurels, I often fancy that in the hand which smoothed her sisters' deathbeds, I can discern a heavenly palm. There are not many secular writers whom I would not turn away, if need were, to make room for her. If I do not always admire her characters, I do her mind. I do not altogether like her stories; but I want words to express my appreciation of the way in which she tells them.

I may state in this place, as well as in any, that—an enlightened conservative in all things—I always hold myself in readiness to receive, with marked distinction, intellectual women, who 'keep to their sphere,' such as Miss Mitchell, whose sphere is the celestial globe, Miss Austin, whose sphere is the beau monde, and Miss Blackwell, whose sphere is the pill.

Cromwell, or Frederick the Great either, would have secured a standing invitation for Carlyle, I dare say; but it is impossible for me to overlook his present state of politics. I have little doubt that it fell upon him as a Nemesis, in the first place for writing bad English, and secondly for daring to 'damn with faint praise' the loyal, generous, joyous, chivalrous, religious soldier, Frederick, Baron de la Motte-Fouqué, and prince of romance. When the latter presents himself for admission my castle needs short siege. The drawbridge falls before the summons; and when I see him cross my threshold with his lovely and noble children, Ondine and Sintram, I should be almost too happy, if I were not afraid of his being affronted by the mischievous humor of Cervantes.

For Cervantes will make his way in now and then. It is impossible utterly to banish so much originality, elegance, and grace as his, even if the fun which accompanies them is sometimes too broad; and, when he comes to see me, he is always on his very best behavior.[Pg 280] Sir Thomas Browne came once; but I thought he talked too much about himself; and scarcely anybody seemed to know him.

Hazlitt brought me a letter of introduction from the Emperor Napoleon. I was not inclined to think much of either of them; but I knew Hazlitt was a friend of Lamb's; and I have a regard for Lamb, on account of his regard for his sister. So my porter asked Mr. Hazlitt to walk in; and so Mr. Hazlitt did. Presently I heard him say, in an aside to Mrs. Jameson, that women were usually very stupid; if not by nature, by education and principle. The next time he called I happened to be rather particularly engaged in writing a review of him. Nobody ever heard him say anything afterward.

Of course, I single out merely a few even of the 'representative men and women' among my guests, and conveniences and luxuries in my establishment. If I told over the tithe of them, I should become diffuse; but if there is any one thing for which, more than for any other thing, my writings are remarkable, that one thing [6] is a thrice-condensed conciseness—in my castle in the air.

THE DEVIL'S CAÑON IN CALIFORNIA.

This wonderful ravine is more generally known under the name of the Geysers of California, an ambitious misnomer, which associates it with the grand Geysers of Iceland, and has given rise to erroneous ideas in regard to the nature and action of the springs it contains.

The prevalent idea of a geyser is a hot fountain, sometimes quiescent, but at others rising in turbulent eruption. The mere existence of a hot spring does not imply a 'geyser,' for, if such were the case, their number would be very great, hot springs in many parts of the world being frequent if not general accompaniments of volcanic action. Unquestionably, the Geysers of Iceland, the 'Strokr,' and the spring of the Devil's Cañon, the 'Witches' Caldron', are the results of volcanic action; but that action differs essentially in its operation. The 'Strokr' and the 'Great Geyser' are intermittent, and are accounted for by the siphon theory: the 'Witches' Caldron' is always full and boiling, and no difference is seen in it from one year's end to another.

It is not, moreover, a fountain, but a basin in the hillside, in which a black and muddy spring is always bubbling without overflowing.

The great eruptions of the Icelandic Geysers are, it has been observed, accounted for by the siphon theory; in other words, this theory supposes the existence of a chamber in the heated earth, not quite full of water, and communicating with the upper air by means of a pipe, whose lower orifice is at the side of the cavern and below the surface of the water. The water, being kept boiling by the intense heat, generates steam, which soon accumulates such force as to discharge the contents of the pond into the air through the narrow vent, or, at least enough to allow of the escape of the superfluous steam. In the Great Geyser of Iceland[Pg 281] this eruption occurs with tremendous power, lasting only a few moments, when, all the volume of water falling back into the pool, it sinks much below its ordinary level, and remains quiescent for several days, until a fresh creation of steam repeats the phenomenon.

'The Witches' Caldron,' which is the 'Great Geyser' of California, on the contrary, never rises into the air; the subterranean pond of which it is the safety valve, may be considered to rise in it, as in a pipe, to the surface. It is not necessary to suppose a siphon; a straight pipe, communicating with the air, will account for all that is peculiar to this hot spring.

Before attempting to describe the wonders of the 'Devil's Cañon,' it may be well to give some account of the Geysers of Iceland, to render this essential difference in character the more striking, especially as numerous theories, professing to account for the Californian phenomena, have been propounded by the people of that State, none of which are thoroughly satisfactory to any one who has examined them attentively.

The following is taken from 'Letters from High Latitudes,' which appeared in 1861, and is only one of many accounts by Iceland travellers. Those interested in these matters will derive much information from the sketches of Mr. J. Ross Browne, which have had many readers through Harper's Magazine. We quote:

'I do not know that I can give you a better notion of the appearance of the place than by saying that it looked as if for about a quarter of a mile the ground had been honey-combed by disease into numerous sores and orifices; not a blade of grass grew on its hot, inflamed surface, which consisted of unwholesome-looking, red, livid clay, or crumbled shreds and shards of slough-like incrustations. Naturally enough, our first impulse on dismounting was to scamper off to the Great Geyser. As it lay at the farthest end of the congeries of hot springs, in order to reach it we had to run the gauntlet of all the pools of boiling water and scalding quagmires of soft clay that intervened, and consequently arrived on the spot with our ankles nicely poulticed. But the occasion justified our eagerness.

'A smooth, silicious basin, seventy-two feet in diameter and four feet deep, wide at the bottom, as in washing basins on board a steamer, stood before us, brimful of water just upon the simmer; while up into the air above our heads rose a great column of vapor, looking as if it was going to turn into the Fisherman's Genie. The ground above the brim was composed of layers of incrusted silica like the outside of an oyster shell, sloping gently down on all sides from the edge of the basin.

'As the baggage train with our tents and beds had not yet arrived, we fully appreciated our luck in being treated to so dry a night; and having eaten everything we could lay hands on, we sat quietly down to chess, and coffee brewed in geyser water; when suddenly it seemed as if beneath our very feet a quantity of subterranean cannon were going off: the whole earth shook, and Sigurdr, starting to his feet, upset the chess board (I was just beginning to get the best of the game), and started off at full speed toward the great basin. By the time we reached its brim, however, the noise had ceased, and all we could see was a slight movement in the centre, as if an angel had passed by and troubled the water. Irritated by this false alarm, we determined to revenge ourselves by going and tormenting the Strokr.

'The Strokr—or the Churn—you must know, is an unfortunate geyser, with so little command over his temper and his stomach that you can get a rise out of him whenever you like. All that is necessary is to collect a quantity of sods, and throw them down his funnel. As he has no basin to protect him from these liberties, you can approach to the very edge of the pipe, about five feet in diameter, and look down at the boiling water, which is perpetually seething at the bottom. In a few minutes the dose of turf you have administered begins to disagree with him; he works himself up into an awful passion—tormented by the qualms of incipient sickness; he groans and hisses, and boils up and spits at you with malicious vehemence, until at last, with a roar of mingled pain and[Pg 282] rage, he throws up into the air a column of water forty feet high, which carries with it all the sods that have been chucked in, and scatters them scalded and half digested at your feet. So irritated has the poor thing's stomach become by the discipline it has undergone, that long after all foreign matter has been thrown off, it goes on retching and spluttering, until, at last, nature is exhausted, when, sobbing and sighing to itself, it sinks back into the bottom of its den. Put into the highest spirits by the success of this performance, we turned to examine the remaining springs. I do not know, however, that any of the rest are worthy of any particular mention. They all resemble in character the two I have described, the only difference being that they are infinitely smaller, and of much less power and importance.

'As our principal object in coming so far was to see an eruption of the Great Geyser, it was of course necessary to wait his pleasure; in fact, our movements entirely depended upon his. For the next two or three days, therefore, like pilgrims round some ancient shrine, we patiently kept watch, but he scarcely deigned to vouchsafe us the slightest manifestation of his latent energies. Two or three times the cannonading we heard immediately after our arrival recommenced—and once an eruption to the height of about ten feet occurred; but so brief was its duration, that by the time we were on the spot, although the tent was not eighty yards distant, all was over; as after every effort of the fountain, the water in the basin mysteriously ebbed back into the funnel. This performance, though unsatisfactory in itself, gave us an opportunity of approaching the mouth of the pipe, and looking down its scalded gullet. In an hour afterward the basin was brimful as ever.

'On the morning of the fourth day a cry from the guides made us start to our feet, and with one common impulse rush toward the basin. The usual subterranean thunders had already commenced. A violent agitation was disturbing the centre of the pool. Suddenly a dome of water lifted itself up to the height of eight or ten feet—then burst and fell; immediately after which a shining liquid column, or rather sheaf of columns, wreathed in robes of vapor, sprang into the air, and in a succession of jerking leaps, each higher than the last, flung their silver crests against the sky. For a few minutes the fountain held its own, then all at once appeared to lose its ascending energy. The unstable waters faltered—drooped—fell, 'like a broken purpose,' back upon themselves, and were immediately sucked down into the recesses of their pipe.

'The spectacle was certainly magnificent; but no description can give an idea of its most striking features. The enormous wealth of water, its vitality, its hidden power, the illimitable breadth of sunlit vapor, rolling out in exhaustless profusion—all combined to make one feel the stupendous energy of nature's slightest movement.

'And yet I do not believe that the exhibition was so fine as some that have been seen: from the first burst upward to the moment the last jet retreated into the pipe, was no more than a space of seven or eight minutes, and at no moment did the crown of the column reach higher than sixty or seventy feet above the surface of the basin. Now early travellers talk of three hundred feet, which must, of course, be fabulous; but many trustworthy persons have judged the eruptions at two hundred feet, while well-authenticated accounts—when the elevation of the jet has been actually measured—make it to have attained a height of upward of one hundred feet.'

Such are the peculiar characteristics of the Geysers of Iceland, differing in almost every essential point from the hot springs, so called, in California. We propose to show that the phenomena of the Devil's Cañon appear in other parts of the world in connection with some known volcano, which has at some period in history been in active operation, and that there is strong reason to believe that they can be explained by the sinking of cold water into the earth, in a country rich in salts and minerals, and encountering a volcanic focus, from which the water is discharged hot and strongly impregnated with the salts through which it has passed. It was Humboldt's opinion that hot springs generally originated thus, for he says in 'Kosmos':

The most marked characteristics of the springs of the Devil's Cañon are, the small space in which they are all contained; the profusion and variety of mineral salts, and the proximity of different minerals, almost flowing into each other, but never mingling; the number and different forces of the steam jets on every side; and the remarkable appearance of the soil.

The approach to the Devil's Cañon is through a section of country bearing evident traces of volcanic action, and rich in mineral springs, of which the most important are those of the Napa Valley. First among these, at the greatest distance from the volcano (if we may be allowed to call it so), is the soda spring of Napa, a cold spring, greatly resembling in flavor the water of the Congress Spring at Saratoga. Passing up the Napa Valley, we find a tepid sulphur spring near St. Hellon's, known as the 'White Sulphur Spring,' being strongly impregnated with that mineral, and tasting much like the famous 'White Sulphur' of Virginia. Its waters, however, are slightly warm, and, although stronger than those of the 'Warm Springs' of the Blue Ridge, a basin as clear and buoyant as that could easily be made.

This spring is owned by Mr. Alstrom, of the Lick House, at San Francisco, and, being in a charming valley, is fast becoming the most popular watering place on the Pacific coast. About twelve miles beyond the Sulphur Springs are the 'Hot Springs,' which resemble the description just given of the Icelandic Geysers—the little geysera—there being the same quaking bog around them, which emits steam to the tread, and the surface being scabby, like an old salt meadow under a midsummer sun. These waters are scalding hot, but are pure, excepting a trace of iron. If they have been analyzed, the writer has not seen the results.

The Devil's Cañon lies about fifteen miles beyond the Hot Springs, and in the heart of a wild, mountainous country, difficult of access, and barren of vegetation, except of the most hardy character, such as the manzanita and Californian oak. Molten mercury, pure and rich, is found in the crevices of the rocks. Quartz and basalt are freely met with, and on Geyser Peak disintegrating lava.

Here the road attains an elevation of three thousand feet, and on either hand are broad and fertile valleys, with rivers winding through them, the Russian River valley and the Napa being the most beautiful beneath, while before us are gorges and barren hills, that rise above each other in picturesque confusion.

The first view of the Devil's Cañon is obtained from one of these desolate hills. At our very feet, fully two thousand feet below, seemingly a sheer descent, rises a little column of smoke or vapor, and the opposing hills, which rise abruptly to the height of a thousand feet, seem cleft by a narrow chasm, the sides of which and the neighboring hillside seem to have been burnt over by fire, and baked of many colors, like the neighborhood of an old brick kiln. Any one who has seen the island of St. Helena will at once recognize it as the same phenomenon which is famous in the 'Hangings,' the blasted precipice by the side of Longwood Farm, overhanging the valley which Napoleon chose for his last resting place. This striking similarity is all the more worthy of note from its occurring there in a purely volcanic isl[Pg 284]and, every inch of which is decomposed or crumbling lava or lava rock. At the 'Hangings' the soil has the appearance of having been slowly roasted, long after the central fires which produced the island had lost their energy.

Descending the mountain we find ourselves on the brink of a precipice, overhanging a turbulent stream about two hundred feet below, and facing the ravine or cañon, which contains these wonders, and which is smoking incessantly throughout its entire length.

Just at this commanding point a hotel has been erected, from the portico of which in the early morning we can watch the grand columns of vapor opposite, before they are shorn of a portion of their splendor by the rising sun.

It is possible to walk the entire length of the ravine, surrounded by jets of steam, and little bubbling springs of mineral water; some hissing, some sputtering, others roaring, and others shrieking; the ground being soft and hot, your stick sinking into the clayey ooze, and a puff of spiteful steam following it as withdrawn; your shoes white or yellow, as you tread the chalk or the sulphur banks, and your feet burning with the hot breath of the sulphur blasts below.

If you are not stifled by the sulphur fumes above, be thankful; and when at last you reach the 'Mountain of Fire' at the head of the ravine, and look back upon the perils of your upward journey, you think of poor Christian in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Bunyan in his dreams never imagined a more horrible place.

It is a vale of wonders—Nature's laboratory, where chemistry is to be studied. The name and number of the springs is 'legion,' Hot Sulphur, Warm Sulphur, Blue Sulphur, White Sulphur, Alum, Salt, and nobody knows all the mineral compounds. You may stand with one foot in a cold bath and another in a hot one—if you can. With one hand you may dip up alum water, as bitter and pure as chemistry can compound it, and with the other sulphur water, that shall sicken your very soul. If you have rheumatism, bathe in the splendid sulphur baths or the Indian Spring; if your eyes are weak, use the eye-water, which beats any ever charmed by magical incantations.

In the midst of this ravine, into which so many springs are emptying themselves, is a little stream, which, starting from the head of the cañon quite cool and pure, receives all their mingled waters, and gradually increases in heat and abominable taste, until at last it defies description.

Its stones and the rocks that line its banks, owing probably to the protection of the cooler water, are tolerably firm in texture, all other parts of the ravine being burned to a powder which crumbles in the hand, or, when mixed with water, forms an ooze or clay. Many of these stones by the sides of this little stream are banded with colors like the Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior (to compare great things with small), and probably from the same cause. These beautiful cliffs, the Schwee-archibi-kung of the Indians, are colored by percolations of surface-water, by which the coloring matter of various minerals and acids is brought to the face of the precipice, and it is reasonable to suppose that the drainage of the mountains behind the Devil's Cañon, sinking to similar beds of minerals, is thrown out by the volcano below in the shape of steam or mineral springs. It is impossible to drill a hole two feet deep in the side of the ravine without provoking a little jet of steam. Now, Daubeny, who is the highest authority on volcanoes, states that the greater part of their ascending vapor is mere steam, and that in 'Pantellaria (a volcanic island near Sicily) steam issues from many parts of this insular mountain, and hot springs gush forth from it which form together a lake six thousand feet in circumference.'[Pg 285]

Similar jets of steam and hot water are observed at St. Lucia, near the crater Oalibou, where also there is a continual formation of sulphur from the condensation of the vapors, a phenomenon which is lavishly displayed in the Devil's Cañon, and in fact around most known volcanoes. The writer observed it fully two miles from the active volcano of Kilawea, forming a fine sulphur bed, and a body of steam so dense that rheumatic natives of Hawaii were in the habit of using it as a vapor bath.

The jets of steam in the cañon are of the most curious variety. One, honored by the name of the 'Devil's Steamboat,' is quite a formidable affair, high up on the hillside, and puffing uninterruptedly, and so powerfully that the steam is invisible for at least five feet from the vent. The ground about it is too soft to permit approach, and the heat too great to tempt it. On a frosty morning, just before sunrise, it is a fine sight. This, however, is only one of hundreds. It would be imagined that if they all came from the same source, they would puff in some sort of unison—that the beatings of the mighty heart below would be felt simultaneously in every pulse; but the fact is quite the reverse. No tune or concord is preserved by any two in the cañon; one moves with the quiet regularity of respiration, while the next is puffing with the nervous anxiety of a little high-pressure tug boat. It affords endless amusement to listen to their endless variety of complaint; some are restless, some spiteful, and some angry, while others sound as merrily as a teakettle, or beat a jolly 'rub-a-dub,' 'rataplan,' that makes a man's soul merry to hear. In fact, there is a little retreat just out of the cañon, styled the Devil's Kitchen, where the pot and the saucepan, the gridiron and the teakettle are visible to men gifted with imaginations strong enough to grasp the unseen.

The great feature of the cañon, which has given it the unmerited name of 'Geyser,' is the Witches' Caldron, a small cavity in the hillside, seemingly running back into the hill at an angle of forty-five degrees, filled with villanous black mud in unceasing commotion.

How different from the pellucid basin of the Great Geyser! Lord Dufferin tells us that he 'brewed his coffee in the Geyser water.'

The mud boils like the angry lava-waves of a volcano; it is always of a very high temperature, and occasionally runs over the rim of the basin, but never rises violently into the air. It looks like black sulphur (bitumen), and has a brimstone smell. Certainly it is a diabolical pit, and worth coming far to see, but it shows none of the phenomena which tempt travellers to Iceland.

It more closely resembles the salses or mud volcanoes of Central and South America, and is a phenomenon very common on the sides of volcanoes. As far back as the time of Pliny it was observed that 'in Sicily eruptions of wet mud precede the glowing (lava) stream.'

Humboldt recognizes in the 'salses, or small mud volcanoes, a transition from the changing phenomena presented by the eruptions of vapor and thermal springs, to the more powerful and awful activity of the streams of lava that flow from volcanic mountains.'

Although the recent discovery of the Devil's Cañon in California makes it impossible to say at what time, if ever, this smothered volcano may have been more active, we have accounts of analogous phenomena in Central America and San Salvador, in the Ausoles of Ahuachapan, near the volcano of Izalco, which were described in 1576 by Licenciado Palacio, and also in what was called the 'Infernillo,' on the side of the volcano of San Vicente, which was mentioned by the Spanish Conquistadores. We also know something of the subsequent history of these volcanoes; for M. Arago has remarked that[Pg 286]

Now let us see what old Palacio says of the springs on the side of this fearful volcano of Izalco:

A later visitor has given an account of the same springs, which may be thus condensed:

These accounts would be equally correct if applied to the Devil's Cañon; but the following appears to surpass it in the power of the volcano below. It is condensed from a description by the same traveller, whose name cannot be ascertained:

Such a striking similarity in phenomena at so great a distance apart, in connection with active or dormant volcanoes, would seem to be enough to prove the connection in any candid mind, and utterly refute the idle theory that all this heat may be produced by[Pg 287] the chemical action of water on beds of sulphates or phosphates just below the surface. The temperature of the water should be sufficient to show that it comes from great depths. The writer was unable, from want of a thermometer, to verify the temperatures of the various springs in the Devil's Cañon, but was told that they average 201°, and as most of them were boiling, it appeared not to be far from the truth. Since Arago discovered, in 1821, that the deepest artesian wells were the hottest, it has been observed that the hottest springs are the purest; and from their geological surroundings, many are proved to come from great depths. The Aguas Calientes de las Trincheras, near Puerto Cabello, issue from granite, at a temperature of 206°; the Aguas de Comaugillas, near Guanaxuato, from basalt, at 205°. To more fully establish the volcanic origin of the phenomena of California and Central America, if such a thing were necessary, it can, however, be shown that similar phenomena are found around the crater of a volcano in actual eruption.

A graphic account of 'White Island,' in the South Pacific, from the pen of Captain Cracroft, R. N., who visited it with the Governor of New Zealand, in H. M. S. Niger, speaks of boiling springs, 'geysers,' and steam-escapes, in connection with a very remarkable active volcano.

As very few are acquainted with this singular island, his description of his visit is given in full:

'Sunday, January 15, 1862.

'This morning we were well inside the Bay of Plenty, and as the wind declined to a calm, I got steam up, and stood for White Island, on which there is a volcano in active operation. The white cloud of smoke that always hovers over it was in sight before eight o'clock, in shape like a huge palm tree, and at eleven o'clock, H. E., the governor, gladly accompanied me ashore, with all the officers of the ship that could be spared from duty.

'As we approached the island, its aspect was of the most singular and forbidding description. Except on its northern face, to which the sulphurous vapor does not appear to reach, it is utterly destitute of vegetation: here and there are a few patches of underwood; but in every other direction the island is bald, bleak, and furrowed into countless deep-worn ravines. The centre of the island has been hollowed out by the crater of the volcano into a capacious basin, almost circular, and, excepting to the south, where there is a huge cleft or rent, its sides or edges rise almost perpendicular full eight hundred feet from the base. After some trouble, carefully backing in with the swell, a landing was effected on the south side, when a most extraordinary sight was displayed to our view. Before us, in the hollow of the basin, was a lake of yellow liquid, smoking hot, about a hundred yards in diameter, as near as could be guessed. Around this, but chiefly toward the north side, were numerous jets of steam spouting out of the ground. A strong sulphurous smell pervaded the atmosphere, and warned us what was to be expected from a nearer proximity to the crater in active operation at the farther end of the lake, to which, nothing daunted by its appearance, our party was determined to penetrate. Our advance was made cautiously; the surface of the ground was in some places soft and yielding, and we knew not to what brimstone depths an unwary step might sink us. There were little ravines to be crossed, which had to be first carefully sounded. As we proceeded on the soft, crustaceous surface, diminutive spouts of vapor would spit forth, as if to resent our intrusion. In skirting the edge of the lake, its temperature and taste were both tested; the former varied with the distance from the seething bubbling going on at the extremity; in some places the hand could be kept in, but 130° was the highest registered, without risk to the thermometer, by Mr. Lawrenson, assistant surgeon: the taste may be imagined, but not described!

'Continuing our advance, the roaring and hissing became louder and louder, as though a hundred locomotives were all blowing off together, while the steam from the crater and numerous geysers surrounding it was emitted in huge volumes, ascending full two thousand feet in the air. Most fortunately it was a perfect calm, or the fumes of the sulphur would alone have sufficed to stop our progress; but[Pg 288] there was also every reason to believe, judging from the description I have by me of a former visit, that the volcano was to-day in a more quiescent state than usual. Everywhere sulphur was strewed around, and we had only to enlarge any of the vapor holes to obtain it in its pure crystallized state. We were now within a few yards of the crater—huge bubbles of boiling mud were rising several feet from the surface of the lake—the heat and sulphurous vapor were almost insupportable; it was evident that no animal life could long exist here. But before leaving this caldron, one of the mids, more venturous than the rest, climbed up a small, semi-detached hill, and his example being followed, we beheld a scene that beggars all description. In full activity a roaring fountain shot up into the scorching atmosphere: we deemed this to be molten sulphur, but no flame was visible in the daylight; stones were thrown in, but they were projected into the air as high as the ship's mast-heads. It was a sight never to be forgotten; and we retraced our steps to the boats with the satisfaction of having been permitted to make a closer examination of this grand natural curiosity than any previous visitor. We saw no indication of either animal or insect life, and it is not likely that any can exist on this island. On the beach, which was composed of large bowlders, lay the bones of an enormous whale, and a couple of whale birds hovered round the boats as they pulled back to the ship.'

Here we have an account agreeing in every respect, as far as it goes, with the appearance of the desolate valley known as 'Geyser Cañon,' the same 'burnt-out' look of the land, the same jets of steam, large and small, and boiling caldrons of mud.

'The surface of the soil was soft and yielding,' according to the gallant captain, and the punching of a stick called out spiteful little jets of steam. It is to be regretted, however, that the observant officer does not acquaint us with the taste of the waters. Probably one swallow was enough for him, if it was sulphur water; and he does not even tell us that, so that it is impossible to say whether the numerous kinds of salts noticed in California are to be traced here. His testimony is explicit that these 'geysers' occur on the sides of a great volcano.[7]

Thus, in conclusion, it will be seen how a comparison of all the phenomena occurring in the 'Devil's Cañon'—where, without any other positive proof,[Pg 289] we suspect the existence of a deep-seated volcano—with similar thermal springs and jets of steam on the sides of known volcanoes, in many and distant parts of the world, either now or at some recorded time in active operation, drives us irresistibly to the inference that the so-called 'Geysers' are of similar origin, and only another manifestation of the dormant energies of the interior of our globe; now bursting out in lava flames, as on Hecla or Vesuvius, and now mildly presenting us with a tepid bath.

As to the name of geyser being applied to the Californian phenomena, we protest against it. A true geyser is a natural hydraulic machine of magnificent power; it is a spring, to be sure, but a mineral spring is not necessarily a geyser, and there is as much difference between the 'Geysers of California' and the Strokr or the 'Great Geyser,' as there is between a squib and a musket-shot. Call the springs Ausoles, if you please, like their counterparts of Ahuachapan, or 'give the devil his due,' and call the place as it was called by its discoverer.

The Devil's Cañon is not a bad name for such a diabolical, sulphurous, hot, and altogether infernal den.

FLY LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A SOLDIER.

PART I.—SCALES.

There! I feel as proud of that as one of the Old Guard would have been in saying: 'I was of the Army of Italy.'

There is but one three-months (pronounced with the accent strongly resting on the numeral adverb, after the Hibernian). All others are spurious imitations. I refer to the early days of the war: the dark days that followed the first fall of Sumter, when our Southern friends had just finished the last volume of the lexicon of slavery, that for so long a time had defined away our manhood, our national honor, and our birthright of freedom, with such terrible words as 'coercion,' 'secession,' 'fratricidal war,' 'sovereign States,' and what not; before we had begun to look without fear even at the title page of the new Gospel of Liberty: the days when we were mudsills and greasy mechanics, whose pockets were to be touched: the days, in short, when we were still inclined to crawl upon our bellies, from the preference arising out of long and strong habit. Then, you remember, the rebellion was to be crushed in sixty days. So the President issued his proclamation, of date the 15th of April, A. D. 1861 (and of the independence of the United States the first), calling out SEVENTY-FIVE THOUSAND men for ninety days to do it.

On the same day we were mustered into the service as a part of this gigantic force of seventy-five thousand, at the bare suggestion of whose numbers the refractory South was confidently expected to abandon its rash enterprise, and kindly resume its sway over us. Before the awful ceremony known as 'mustering in,' we were sixty odd excited young gentlemen, hailing from and residing in all parts of the country. After it we were Company N, commanded by Captain John H. Pipes, of the First Regiment of District of Columbia Volunteers, commanded by Colonel Charles Diamond, as the muster rolls called us, or the 'American Sharpshooters,' as we called ourselves.

Major McDuff mustered us in. He[Pg 290] did it after this fashion: First he walked out into the yard of the War Department, where the company stood at 'parade rest,' or the nearest militia approach thereto, waiting to be absorbed. Then he had us marched across the yard and halted; then up it; then down it; then back to the first position; then forward in a line a few paces; then, by the right flank, into the back yard, where he left, us, at a 'rest,' for two hours and fifty-three minutes, while he retired into the War Department building, probably to ascertain if the thing was regular. Then, at the fifty-fourth minute, or thereabout, after the second hour, he caused us to be marched into our original position. After gazing at us uneasily for a few minutes, he proceeded to inspect our arms with the utmost care: the importance of which manœuvre will more fully appear from the fact that they intended to take us, and did take many of us, sans lock, stock, or barrel. Then he told us that we were—called into the—service—of the—United States—for—three months—to serve in the District—not to go beyond the District—under any circumstances. Then he called the roll, so accurately (never having seen it before) that nearly all of us recognized our names, and in hardly more than two and three quarters the time it would have taken the orderly sergeant to do it. Then we were told to hold up our right hands, and a stout party, well known to all early volunteers, stepped forward from wherever he had been before, and, introducing himself by exclaiming, in solemn and cavernous tones, 'The following is the oath!' swore us in. Then, after another short adjournment of half an hour, we were marched to our barracks.

That was a queer organization, the 1st D.C. Vols., composed as it was of a cloud of independent companies—thirty-five, or thereabout, in all, I think—all made up of men from everywhere, largely in the tadpole stage of Unionism, and all sworn in for service in the District, not to go beyond the District. Early in May they were organized into eight battalions of four or five companies each, commanded by lieutenant-colonels, majors, or the senior captains. Nearly every company occupied its own separate 'armory' or barracks, and all the officers and men lived at home when not actually on guard or other duty!

It was an awful feeling that sandwiched the gaps of new-born exultation at finding ourselves real soldiers—that feeling of a merged identity; the individual Smith sold for glory at $11 per mensem, and lost, lost in an aggregate: become only a cog in a little machine connected with a larger machine that forms part of the great machine called an army. One thing saved us the full horror of this discovery: we were not bothered with corps, divisions, brigades, or even greatly with regiments, in those days, and if individually we were ciphers or merely recurring decimals, collectively 'our company' was of the first importance; and this reflection stiffened the breasts of our gray frock coats, and caused our scales (we wore scales!) to shine again.

First night. Everybody wants to be on guard! Think of that, old soldiers, and grin. The captain details twice as many as are necessary, to prevent clamor. Some of the more enthusiastic of the disappointed ones offer to stay at the armory all night, to be on hand in case of anything happening. We can never be certain about the enemy's crossing the Long Bridge, you know. The company, guard and all, is drilled vigorously, in squads, for two hours. Then the unhappy fellows who are to go home loiter themselves, with many wistful glances, out of the building. Then the guard plays euchre, reads, reads aloud, sings, fences, and drills. A few sleepy heads lie down in corners about one a.m., and are not going to sleep, but nevertheless shortly complain of being kept awake by the noise. 'Never mind,' growls the melancholy[Pg 291] man of the company; 'won't hear any of this to-morrow night. D——d glad to go to sleep then.' The melancholy man, now as hereafter, is voted a bore, but, as I presently discover, turns out to be pretty nearly right, and achieves the sad triumph of being able to say, 'Told you so; wouldn't believe me; now see.'—Daylight. No one has been asleep, yet, strange to say, everyone has waked up and found everyone else snoring. No one waits for reveillé, this first morning. You stretch yourself, and endeavor to rise. Which is you, and which the board floor? You rather think this must be you that has just got up, because it aches so down the grain, and its knots or eyes—yes, they are eyes—are so full of sand. This must be how Rip Van Winkle felt after his nap in the Catskills, you think. You wonder how those fellows Boyce and Tripp can skylark so on an empty stomach. Three hours to breakfast. You police the quarters with vigor. 'Heavens, what a dust! Open the windows, somebody; and look here, Sergeant! the floor hasn't been sprinkled.' The sharp, quick tones of the sergeant of the guard (more like the sound of a tenpenny nail scratching mahogany than aught else in nature) soon set matters right. You think you have surely swallowed your peck of dirt that morning, and feel even more gastric than you usually do on an empty stomach. You can go home to breakfast now: but you hear Johnny Todd's cheery voice sing out; 'Fall in, cocktail squad!' and march off with a score of your comrades to the nearest restaurant, which, finding just open, the squad incontinently takes possession of. You take a cocktail, a whiskey cocktail, with the edge of the green glass previously lemoned and dipped in powdered sugar. 'Ah,' says Todd to everybody, and everybody, to everybody else, including Todd, 'that goes to the right place' (slapping it affectionately). Oh, reader, if wearer of p[)a]hnts, did you ever meet with a decoction, infusion, or other mixture whatsoever, vinous, alcoholic, or maltic, with or without sugar, that did not go to the right place? And if there was a fault, wasn't it in the addition of a trifle too much lemon peel? The crowd takes another of the same sort. You take another. Then you wish you hadn't.

You go to the office that day, for, in common with two-thirds of the company, you are a clerk in one of the Departments as well as a soldier; and you can think and talk of nothing but the war. The oldsters quiz your enthusiasm unmercifully, and cause your complexion to assume a red and gobbling appearance, and your conversation to limp into half-incoherent feebleness. Nevertheless everyone is very kind to you, for you are a great pet with the old fogies—their prize 'Jack;' and even old Mr. Gruff rasps down his tones, so that those harsh accents seem to pat you on the back. Your handwriting, usually so firm and easy, quavers a little, and exhibits more of the influence of the biceps muscle than of your accustomed light play of the wrist and fingers. But, you think, it's the rifle that does it, and are rather proud of this.

Second night. You rush down after an early dinner, in rash anxiety to be drilled. Arriving very red and hot at the armory, you find bales of straw and boxes on the sidewalk in front, and hear dreadful rumors that our armory is to be taken away; that we are to have regular barracks, and live there all the time; that we are to draw rations, and cook them. Dismay is on every face. The melancholy man alone seems not to be jostled from his habitual sad composure: he explains to the inquiring, doubting crowd that the ration consists of 'one and a quarter pounds of fresh beef or three quarters of a pound of salt beef, pork, or bacon, fourteen ounces of flour or twelve ounces of hard bread, with eight pounds of coffee, ten of sugar, ten of rice or[Pg 292] eight quarts of beans, four quarts of vinegar, four pounds of soap, one and a quarter pounds candles, and two quarts of salt, to the hundred rations. But you won't get fresh meat often, nor yet flour, and I reckon you'll have to take beans instead of rice pretty much all the time, now't South Car'lina's out.' We eat salt pork! or beans either, except very occasionally. There began to be serious symptoms of mutiny. Fippany and one or two others declaimed so violently against the outrage, that the more enthusiastic of us felt bound to use our influence to prevent the spread of a disaffection that seemed to us highly calculated to embarrass the action of the Government in this crisis. The end of it was that we marched up to our new quarters, and, in the excitement of moving in and receiving our clothing and camp and garrison equipage, had forgotten our troubles, when (just as the melancholy man discovered that the overcoats were seven short of the right number, that the mess pans all leaked, and that the quarters were full of fleas) our orders to move were countermanded, and we marched back again in joy. There were fewer volunteers for guard duty that night, and the natural rest of the sergeant of the guard was undisturbed save by the occasional nightmare of having overslept the hour for relieving the meek sentinels (not yet instructed in the art of awakening drowsy non-commissioned officers by stentorian alarms, and indeed not yet knowing accurately the measure of their 'two hours on'), or by some louder howl than usual from poor Todd second, who, having continued his course of eye-opening to the hours when sober citizens and prudent soldiers incline to close theirs, spent the major portion of the night in dramatic recitations of the beauties of Shakspeare, utterly neglecting and refusing to 'dry up,' although frequently admonished thereto by the growls and eke by the curses of his comrades.

The next afternoon and evening, including in the latter elastic term many hours more properly claimed by the night, were spent in confused and bungling attempts to issue the clothing and camp and garrison equipage considerately provided for us by the Government. First everybody opened all the boxes at once, and grabbed for everything. Then everybody put his things back and petitioned for somebody else's. 'My overcoat is too big.' 'Mine is too short.' 'Golly! what sleeves!' 'What are these bags for?' 'Those things knapsacks! how you goin' to fassen 'em? no straps!' 'My canteen has no cork.' ... 'Silence!' roars the captain, and 'Silence!' rasps the orderly sergeant, three times as loudly and six as disagreeably. And then everybody being ordered to replace everything, that a proper system of distribution may be adopted, half of us hide our plunder away, and the other half dump their prizes promiscuously and in sullenness. 'Here, here!' barks Sergeant Files; 'this kind of thing's played out. There were sixty-five canteens; where's the other sixty?' Presently the confusion unravels a little, but, after a breathing spell, begins again worse than ever, when our melancholy friend, Smallweed, having signed the clothing receipt doubtfully, presently announces, with the air of an injured martyr, that he supposes it's all right, but he can't find all the things he signed for. Then everybody frantically examines into this new difficulty, and discovers that they signed for everything, and got nothing. Poor Captain Pipes scratches his head perplexedly, and smokes in anxious puffs. Sergeant Files hustles everybody about, exposes several shamefaced impostors, who have more than everything, and by the timely announcement that Smallweed's deficiency consists of two overcoat straps, which are no longer used in the service, restores comparative quiet. Smallweed, however, retires up and shakes his head dubiously, remark[Pg 293]ing in an undertone, to a weak-eyed young man, who stands in mortal awe of him, that it may be all right, but he don't see it.

Drills, drills, drills! For the next week we have nothing but drills—except guard duty. Squad drills, company drills, drills in the facings, drills under arms, drills in the morning, noonday drills, drills at night. Besides these, the office all day, and guard duty every third night. Talk about the patriotic days of '76! you think—was there ever anything like this? In less than a week everybody is played out; everybody, that is, except a lymphatic, dull-visaged backwoodsman, named Tetter, who drags through everything so slowly and heavily, that he can't get tired, and an old Polish cavalryman, named Hrsthzschnoffski, or something of the kind, but naturally called Snuffsky, who knows neither enthusiasm nor fatigue, who never volunteers for a duty nor ever begs off from it. Growls arise. Men pale about the cheeks, beady in the forehead, and dark under the eyes, begin to collect in knotlets, and talk over the situation. 'We enlisted to fight,' the bolder spirits hint; 'we came to fight, not to drill and guard armories. Why don't they take us out and let us whip the enemy, and go back to our business?' But presently comes

The 19th of April. No drill to-night. What is that? A fight in Baltimore? Nonsense! True though, for all that, as history will vouch. Six regiments of Massachusetts troops have been attacked in Baltimore by the 'Plugs,' and cut to pieces. Where was the 'Seventh!' we wonder, educated in the creed of its invincibility and omnipresence. The Seventh was there too, and has been massacred. Colonel Lefferts is killed. There is a stir around the armory door, the knot of idlers gives way respectfully, and admits a little man, the pride of the regiment, always cool, collected, handsome, and soldierly—Colonel Diamond. He says half a dozen words in a whisper to the captain, writes three lines with a pencil on the fly leaf of an old letter, gives a comprehensive glance around, in which we feel he sees everything, salutes the captain, and marches briskly, almost noiselessly, into the street. Smallweed, the melancholy man, rolls up his blanket, packs his knapsack, combs his hair sadly, and moans out: 'Detail for the guard: Private Smallweed. I'm d——d if I stand this any longer! I'll write to——'

'Fall in men; fall in under arms; fall in lively now!' barks the orderly sergeant. 'Get up here, Snuffsky. Tetter, don't you mean to fall in at all?' and so on. Volunteers are wanted for special and perhaps dangerous service. Perhaps dangerous! (Quick movement of admiration.) 'Every man willing to go will step two paces to the front.' The company moves forward in line, much to the disgust of Sergeant Files, who finds he must make a detail after all. Lieutenant Frank, Sergeant Mullins, Corporal Bledsoe, and twenty privates are presently detailed, and, after tremendous preparation and excitement, during which Smallweed discovers that some one has stolen his percussion caps, and is incontinently cursed by Sergeant Files for his pains, march off amid the cheers of the disappointed remainder. We mourn our sad lot at being left out of the detail, when presently comes a second detail: Second Lieutenant Treadwell, Sergeant Ogle, Corporal Funk, and twenty privates, of whom you, Jenkins, are one. As you get ready, you adopt stern resolves, stiffen that upper lip, and confide a short message for some one to one of the survivors, in case, as you proudly hint, you should not return. The survivor rewards you with a pressure of the hand, and a look of wonder at your coolness.

'Support—ARMS! Quick—MARCH!' the lieutenant says, almost in a whisper, as we leave the building, and are fairly in the street. Where are we[Pg 294] going? Why do we go down Pennsylvania Avenue? This is not the way to Long Bridge. Are the enemy attacking the navy yard? all wonder; no one speaks. 'Halt!' Why, this is the telegraph office! and we take possession of it in the name of the United States. Despatches between Baltimore and Richmond have passed over the wires that very evening, and we even interrupt one with our sword bayonets. Then we hear the truth about that Baltimore business. The Southern operators and clerks crow over and denounce us. We feel gulpy about the throat, and those of us who yet tremble at the thought of 'fratricide,' wish they were out of this, until Smallweed effects a diversion by dexterously, though quite accidentally, upsetting the longest-haired, loudest-mouthed operator into the biggest and dirtiest spittoon. But worse than this is in store for the unlucky sympathizers, for, after thinking sadly over his feat, the same melancholy Smallweed suddenly asks them what tune the Southern Confederacy will adopt as its national air. One incautious Georgian suggests 'Dixie,' he reckons. ''Spittoon,' I should think,' says Smallweed mournfully. For which he is pronounced by the same gentleman from Georgia to be a divinely condemned fool. How hungry we grew, and how pale and seedy, before the relief came at 8 a.m., with the great news that the other detail had seized the Alexandria boat!

This is the age of seizures. We seize all the steamers. We seize the railroad, A train comes in, and we seize the cars. Then there is a let up: the Confederate lexicon still at work, flashing out the last feeble jerks of its poison. We release the telegraph; we release the railway; we release the steamers. One of the latter, the George Page, goes down to Alexandria, straightway to become a ram, terrible to the weak-minded, though harmless enough in reality. Then we seize them all again, and, this time, with the railway—praised be Allah!—a train of cars! Presently a detachment, envied by the disappointed, goes out from our company on this train to reconnoitre. Communication with the great North is cut off. Every stalk of corn in all Maryland rises up, in the nightmare that seems to possess the capital, a man, nay, a 'Southron,' terrible, invincible, Yankee-hating. Will relief never come? Where are those seventy-five thousand? Where is the Seventh? Officers in mufti are known to have been sent out to Annapolis and Baltimore with orders and for news. Others arrive in Washington filled with strange and vague tidings of impending disaster. But as yet these doves have no news save of the deluge. Presently an early reveillé startles us from our beds of soft plank, and, as we fall in sleepily, fagged and exhausted in mind and body by this work, so new and so trying, we are electrified by the hoarse croak of Sergeant Files—he too is used up. 'Volunteers to go beyond the District,' step two paces t'the front—H'rch!' Four men remain in the ranks. All eyes turn to this shabby remnant, but they remain immovable, with the leaden expression belonging to the victims of the Confederate lexicon, that seems to say, unaccused, 'I am not ashamed.' These men are instantly detailed for guard duty at the armory for the next twenty-four hours.

The rest of us reach the railway station shortly after daylight, are told off into platoons, and embarked on the train which the hissing engine announces to be waiting for us. Our comrades in this adventure are Captain Hoblitzel's company, the 'Swartz-Jägers,' brawny mechanics, sturdy Teutons, and all of a size. These are Germans, remember, not what we call Hessians; not the kind that are destined to make Pennsylvania a byword; not the kind that advance in clogs but retreat in seven-league boots. We part from our German friends with a rousing cheer, as heartily returned, at[Pg 295] a bridge which they are to guard. Then we have the cars to ourselves. Surely this is the ne plus ultra of railway travelling; free tickets and a whole seat to yourself. We are to keep our rifles out of sight, unless an emergency arises. The funny men play conductor, announcing familiar stations in unintelligible roars, and singing out 'Tickets!' importunately. This is our first real danger. There is real excitement in this. We all hope there will be a fight; all except Smallweed, who remains melancholy, according to his wont, save when a sad pun breaks the surface into a temporary ripple of quiet smiles. And so, with wild jokes, mad capers, and loudly shouted songs, we whirl along, twenty miles an hour, over bridges, through cuts, above embankments, always through danger and into danger. Hoot, toot! shrieks the engine; the breaks are rasped down; the train slowly consumes its momentum in vainly trying to stop suddenly. Silence reigns. Every man nervously, as by instinct, grasps his rifle, half cocks it, looks to the cap, and thrusts his head out of the window. A shout: 'There they are!' 'Where?' Several of the more nervous rifle barrels protrude uncertainly from the windows. 'Steady men, steady!' from the clear voice of Captain Pipes. 'I see them.' 'There they are.' 'Three of them.' 'One of them has on gray clothes, and—'

'The Seventh, by——!' rings in every ear. No matter who said it. 'The Seventh,' every throat shouts. Then such a cheer, and such another, and such another after that, and such a tiger after that, and such other cheers and such other tigers!—until the train stops, and, regardless of orders, unheeding the vain protests of the captain or the curses of the lieutenants, or the objurgations of Sergeant Files, we rush madly, pellmell, from the cars. Everybody shakes hands with the Seventh man, and with everybody else. He is thirsty: sixty odd flasks are uncorked and jammed at him. Hungry, too? The men hustle him into the cars, and almost into the barrels of pork and bread, with which we came provided in quantities sufficient, as we thought in our simplicity, for a siege, though really, as I have since found reason to believe, amounting to less than a thousand rations.

'Where is the Seventh?' 'At the Junction.' We are only a mile from the Junction. All aboard again, and we steam up to the Junction, just in time to see the leading companies file into the station, from their historical march—famous from being the first of the war, twice famous because Winthrop told its story; in time to see the Eighth Massachusetts follow our favorite heroes; in time to bring the Seventh to Washington; in time thus to terminate the dark hours of anxious suspense and doubt that followed the 19th of April and the drawing of the first blood in the streets of Baltimore.

Dulness succeeds this spurt of glory, and there is nothing more interesting than guarding the Long Bridge or a steamboat, alternating with drills, drills, drills! We are initiated into the mystery of the double quick, under knapsacks and overcoats. Men begin to be detailed on extra duty. More men are detailed on extra duty. Doctor Peacack makes his appearance. The sick list becomes an institution. It is curious to notice how the same men, detailed for guard, police, or fatigue, appear on the sick list, and, being excused by the mild Peacack, straightway reappear in the 'cocktail squad.' But a wink, as good as a nod, from the captain, and the fragrant oil of the castor bean, prescribed to be taken on the spot, soon corrects these little discrepancies. The guardhouse becomes an institution. Todd second is a frequent inmate; he will drink. Swilliams is another, who takes a drink, and becomes insane; takes another, and becomes sick; takes another, and then a quiet snooze, with his head resting on[Pg 296] the nearest curb. We call these unfortunates 'Company Q;' a splendid joke. The captain drills us as far as 'On the right, by file, into line,' and apparently can get no farther. So we think, and that the first lieutenant kn=ows twice much as the captain. And, oh! how we come to hate Sergeant Files, and his hard, carking voice, always rasping somebody about something! We have been in service a month. The city is full of troops; the heights back are covered with camps; the 'Fire Zouaves' have introduced the Five Points to our acquaintance; General Blankhed is still giving passes to go to Richmond; the enemy's pickets stare at ours from other end of Long Bridge; nobody is hurt as yet. Presently comes an order constituting the 'American Sharpshooters,' the 'Fisler Guards,' the Union Carbineers,' the 'Seward Cadets,' and the 'Bulger Guards,' a battalion, to be known as the Ninth Battalion (did I say there were only eight? no matter) of the First Regiment of District of Columbia Volunteers, and to be commanded by Major Johnson Heavysterne, the beau ideal of a militia major—fat, pompous, not much acquainted with military, but, to use his own vocabulary, knowing right smart in the fish and cheese line. But let me deal kindly with the honest old soul; he meant well, but he had bad luck; and he made me, Private William Jenkins, the writer of these disjointed phrases, sergeant-major of the battalion. Whereof, kind reader, more anon: for here I left off my scales and sewed on my chevrons. (That is, she did. Please see Part II.)

THE SACRIFICE

STRECK-VERSE.

THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.—A POLISH DRAMA.

Dedicated to Mary.

In offering to the public a translation of the great drama of Count Sigismund Krasinski, a statesman and poet of Poland, it is not the intention of the translator to enter upon any detailed analysis of this widely and justly celebrated work. Such a dissection would diminish the interest of the reader in the development of the plot, and moreover pertains properly to the critics, to whom 'The Undivine Comedy' is especially commended. It is so full of original and subtile thoughts, of profound truths, of metaphysical deductions and psychological divinations, that it cannot fail to repay any consideration they may bestow upon it. A few general remarks, however, seem necessary to introduce it, in its proper light, to the reader.

It was published in 1834, and, although it appeared anonymously, it at once succeeded in attracting the attention of the readers and thinkers of Poland, Russia, France, and Germany. Its author is now known to have been Count Sigismund Krasinski, a member of one of the most ancient and distinguished families of Poland. He was equally eminent as poet, patriot, and statesman. He took an active and important part in the social and political questions of his day, many of which are ably discussed in this drama; questions which have so long disturbed the peace of Europe, and whose solution is perhaps to be finally given in our land of equality and freedom.

'The Undivine Comedy' was not intended for the stage, and, as if to sever it as widely as possible from all scenic associations, Count Krasinski makes no use of the terms 'scenes' or 'acts.' This omission gives a somewhat singular appearance to what is, in fact, a drama; the translator has, however, remained faithful throughout to the original form. As the hero, the count, is styled 'The Man' throughout the original, the name has been preserved, in spite of its awkward appearance in English: the spirit of a poetic work, full of mystic symbolism, evaporates so readily in the process of translation, that no sacrifice of the literal meaning has been made to grace or elegance.

'The Undivine Comedy,' so called in contradistinction to 'The Divine Comedy' of Dante, is the first purely prophetic play occurring in the world of art. Its scenes are indeed all laid in the time to come; its persons, actions, and events are yet to be. The struggle of the dying Past with the vigorous but immature Future, forms the groundwork of the drama. The coloring is not local, nor characteristic of any country in particular, because the truths to be illustrated are of universal application, and are evolving their own solutions in all parts of the civilized world.

The soul of the hero, 'The Man,' is great and vigorous; he is by nature a poet. Belonging to the Future by the very essence of his being, he yet becomes disgusted by the debasing materialism into which its living exponents, the 'New Men, have fallen, he loses all hope in the possible progress of humanity, and is presented to us as the champion of the dying but poetic Past. But in this he finds no rest, and is involved in perpetual struggles and[Pg 299] contradictions. Baffled in a consuming desire to solve the perplexing religious and social problems of the day by the force of his own intellect; longing for, yet despairing of, human progress; discerning the impracticability and chicanery of most of the modern plans for social amelioration—he determines to throw himself into common life, to bind himself to his race by stringent laws and duties. The drama opens when he is about to contract marriage.

His Guardian Angel, anxious to save him, tries to lead him, through the accomplishment of human duties, safely into that mystic Future, which he had already vainly tried to find through the power of his own intellect. The Angel chants to him:

'Peace be to men of good will. Blessed is the man who has still a heart; he may yet be saved!

'Pure and true wife, reveal thyself to him; and a child be born to their house!'

Thus the words once heard by the shepherds, and which then announced a new epoch to humanity, open the drama. It is indeed only 'men of good will,' men who sincerely seek the truth, who, in great or new epochs, are able to comprehend it, or willing to receive it. And the number of those who have preserved a heart during the excitement and passions of such eras, is always very small, and without it they cannot be saved, for love and self-abnegation are the essence of Christianity.

To instil new life and hope into the wearied 'Man,' the Angel ordains that a pure and good woman shall join her fate with his; that innocent young souls shall descend and dwell with them. Domestic love and quiet bliss are the counsel of the heavenly visitant.

Immediately after the simple chant of the Guardian Angel, the voice of the Evil Spirit is heard seducing 'The Man' from the quiet path of humble human duties. The glories of the ideal realm are spread before him; Nature is invoked with all her entrancing charms; ambitious desires of terrestrial greatness are awakened in his soul; he is filled with vague hopes of paradisiacal happiness, which the Demon whispers him it is quite possible to establish on earth. In the temptations so cunningly set before him by the Father of Lies, three widely-spread metaphysical systems are shadowed forth: the ideal or poetic; the pantheistic; and the anthropotheistic (Comte's), which deifies man. The vast symbolism of this original drama is especially recommended to the attention of the critic.

Abiding by the counsel of the Angel, our hero marries, thus involving another in his fate. He makes a solemn vow to be faithful, in the keeping of which vow he takes upon himself the responsibility of the happiness of one of God's creatures, a pure and trusting woman, who loves him well. A husband and a father, he breaks his oath. Tempted by the phantom of a long-lost love, the Ideal under the form of a 'Maiden,' he deserts the real duties he has assumed to pursue this Ideal, personated indeed by Lucifer himself, and which becomes—true and fearful lesson for those who seek the infinite in the human!—a loathsome skeleton as soon as grasped. From the false and disappointing search into which he had been enticed by the demon, he returns to find the innocent wife, whom he had deserted, in a madhouse. False to human duties, his punishment came fast upon the heels of crime.

In the scene which occurs in Bedlam we find the key which admits us to much of the symbolism of this drama. We are conducted into the madhouse to visit the broken-hearted wife, and are there introduced into our still-existing society, formal, monotonous, cold, and about to be dissolved. Our hero had himself married the Past, a good and devout woman, but not the realiza[Pg 300]tion of his poetic dreams, which nothing could have satisfied save the infinite. In the midst of this scene of strange suffering, we hear the cries of the Future, and all is terror and tumult. This Future, with its turbulence, blood, and demonism, is represented as existing in its germs among the maniacs. Like the springs of a volcanic mountain, which are always disturbed before an eruption of fire, their cries break upon us; the broken words and shrill shrieks of the madmen are the clouds of murky smoke which burst from the explosive craters before the lava pours its burning flood. Voices from the right, from the left, from above, from below, represent the conflicting religious opinions and warring political parties of this dawning Future, already hurtling against those of the dissolving Present.

Into this pandemonium, by his desertion of her for a vain ideal, our hero has plunged his wife, the woman of the Past, whom he had sworn to make happy. And it is to be observed that she was not necessarily his inferior, but, in the world of heart, superior to himself. A true and pure character, feeling its inferiority and anxious to advance, cannot long remain in the background; it has sufficient stamina to attain the height of self-abnegating greatness. God sometimes deprives men of the strength necessary for action, but He never robs them of the faculty of progress, of spiritual elevation. Head and heart throb with the same pulsation; the brain thinks not aright without the healthful heart. Meanness and grovelling are always voluntary, and their essence is to resist superiority, to struggle against it, to try to degrade it: thus, all the bitter reactions of the Past against the changes truly needed for the development of the Future, spring from a primeval root of baseness.

An admirable picture of an exhausted and dying society is given us in the person of the precocious but decrepit child, the sole fruit of a sad marriage. Destined from its birth, to an early grave, its excitable imagination soon consumes its frail body. Nothing could be more exquisitely tender, more true to nature, than the portraiture of this unfortunate but lovely boy.

After the betrayal of our hero by his Ideal, the Guardian Angel again appears to give him simple but sage counsel:

But vain this sage advice! As if driven to the desert to be tempted, we again meet our hero in the midst of storm and tempest, wildly communing with Nature, trying to read in her changeful phenomena lessons he should have sought in the depths of his own soul; seeking from her dumb lips oracles only to be found in his fulfilment of sacred duties; for only thus is to be solved the perplexing riddle of human destiny. 'Peace to men of good will!' Roaming through the wilderness, sad and hopeless, and in his despair about to fall into the gloomy and blighting sin of caring for no one but himself, the Angel again appears, and again chants to him the divine lesson that only in self-sacrificing love and lowly duties, can the true path to the Future be found:

The reiterated warning is again given in vain. The demon of ambition then appears to him under the form of a gigantic eagle, whose wings stir him like the cannon's roar, the trumpet's call; he yields to the temptation, and the Guardian Angel pleads no more! He determines to become great, renowned, to rule over men: political power is to console him for the domestic ruin he has spread around him, in[Pg 301] having preferred the dreams of his own excited imagination, to the love and faith of the simple but tender heart which God had confided to him in the holy bonds of marriage. The love and deification of self in the delusive show of military or political glory, is the lowest and last temptation into which a noble soul can fall, for individual fame is preferred to God's eternal justice, and men are willing to die, if only laurel crowned, with joy and pride even in a bad cause.

In the beginning of the third part of the comedy we are introduced into the 'new world.' The old world, with its customs, prejudices, oppressions, charities, laws, has been almost destroyed. The details of the struggle, which must have been long and dreadful, are not given to us; they are to be divined. Several years are supposed to have passed between the end of the second and the beginning of the third part, and we are called to witness the triumphs of the victors, the tortures of the vanquished. The character of the idol of the people is an admirable conception. All that is negative and destructive in the revolutionary tendencies of European society, is skilfully seized upon, and incarnated in a single individual. His mission is to destroy. He possesses a great intellect, but no heart. He says: "Of the blood we shed to-day, no trace will be left to-morrow." In corroboration of this conception of the character of a modern reformer, it is well known that most of the projected reforms of the last century have proceeded from the brains of logicians and philosophers.

This man of intellect succeeds in grasping power. His appearance speaks his character. His forehead is high and angular, his head entirely bald, his expression cold and impassible, his lips never smile—he is of the same type as many of the revolutionary leaders during the French reign of terror. His name is Pancratius, which name, from the Greek, signifies the union of all material or brutal forces. It is not by chance that he has received this name. The profound truth in which this character is conceived is also manifested in his distrust of himself, in his hesitation. As he is acting from false principles, he cannot deceive himself into that enthusiastic faith with which he would fain inspire his disciples. He confides in Leonard, because he is in possession of this precious quality.

His monologue is very fine; perhaps it stands next in rank to that of Hamlet. It opens to us the strange secrets of the irresolution and vacillation which have always characterized the men who have been called upon by fate alone to undertake vast achievements. In proof of this, it is well known that Cromwell was anxious to conceal the doubts and fears which constantly harassed him. It was these very doubts and fears which led him to see and resee so frequently the dethroned Charles, and which at last drove the conscience-stricken Puritan into the sepulchre of the decapitated king, that he might gaze into the still face of the royal victim, whose death he had himself effected. Did the sad face of the dead calm the fears of the living?

It is well known, that Danton addressed to himself the most dreadful reproaches. Even, at the epoch of his greatest power, Robespierre was greatly annoyed because he could not convince his cook of the justice and permanence of his authority. Men who are sent by Providence only to destroy, feel within them the worm which gnaws forever: it constantly predicts to them, in vague but gloomy presentiments, their own approaching destruction.

A feeling of this nature urges Pancratius to seek an interview with his most powerful enemy, 'The Man;' he is anxious to gain the confidence of his adversary, because he cannot feel certain of his own course while a single man of intellectual power exists capable of resisting his ideas. In the interview which occurs between the two[Pg 302] antagonistic leaders of the Past and Future, the various questions which divide society, literature, religion, philosophy, politics, are discussed. Is it not a profound truth that in the real world also, mental encounters always precede material combats; that men always measure their strength, spirit to spirit, before they meet in external fact, body to body? The idea of bringing two vast systems face to face through living and highly dramatic personifications, is truly great, suggestive, and original.

But as the Truth is neither in the camp of Pancratius nor in the feudal castle of the count, our hero, the victory will profit neither party!

The opening of the last act is exceedingly beautiful. No painter could reproduce on canvas the sublime scenery sketched in its prologue; more gloomy than the pictures of Ruysdael, more sombre than those of Salvator Rosa. Before describing the inundation of the masses, our author naturally recalls the traditions of the Flood. The nobles, the representatives of the Past, with their few surviving adherents, have taken refuge in their last stronghold, the fortress of the Holy Trinity, securely situated upon a high and rocky peak overhanging a deep valley, surrounded and hedged in by steep cliffs and rocky precipices. Through these straits and passes once howled and swept the waters of the deluge. As wild an inundation is now upon them, for the valley is almost filled with the living surges of the myriads of the 'New Men,' who are rolling their millions into its depths. But everything is hidden from view by an ocean of heavy vapor, wrapping the whole landscape in its white, chill, clinging shroud. The last and only banner of the Cross now raised upon the face of the earth, streams from the highest tower of the castle of the Holy Trinity; it alone pierces through and floats above the cold, vague, rayless heart of the sea of mist—nought save the mystic symbol of God's love to man soars into the unclouded blue of the infinite sky!

After frequent defeats, after the loss of all hope, the hero, wishing to embrace for the last time his sick and blind son, sends for the precocious boy, whose death-hour is to strike before his own. I doubt if the scene which then occurs has, in the whole range of fiction and poetry, ever been surpassed. This poor boy, the son of an insane mother and a poet-father, is gifted with supernatural faculties, endowed with second or spiritual sight. Entirely blind, and consequently surrounded by perpetual darkness, it mattered not to him if the light of day or the gloom of midnight was upon the earth; and in his rayless wanderings he had made his way into the dungeons, sepulchres, and vaults, which were lying far below the foundations of the castle, and which had for centuries served as places of torture, punishment, and death to the enemies of his long and noble line. In these secret charnel houses were buried the bodies of the oppressed, while in the haughty tombs around and above them lay the bones of their oppressors. The unfortunate and fragile boy, the last sole scion of a long line of ancestry, had there met the thronging and complaining ghosts of past generations. Burdened with these dreadful secrets, when his vanquished father seeks him to embrace him for the last time, he shudderingly hints to him of fearful knowledge, and induces his parent to accompany him into the subterranean caverns. He then recounts to him the scenes which are passing before his open vision among the dead. The spirits of those who had been chained, tortured, oppressed, or victimized by his ancestors appear before him, complaining of past cruelties. They then form a mystic tribunal to try their old masters and oppressors; the scenes of the dreadful Day of Judgment pass before him; the unhappy and loving boy at last recognizes his own father[Pg 303] among the criminals; he is dragged to that fatal bar, he sees him wring his hands in anguish, he hears his dreadful groans as he is given over to the fiends for torture—he hears his mother's voice calling him above, but, unwilling to desert his father in his anguish, he falls to the earth in a deep and long fainting fit, while the wretched father hears his own doom pronounced by that dread but unseen tribunal: 'Because thou hast loved nothing, nor revered aught but thyself and thine own thoughts, thou art damned to all eternity!'

It is true this scene is very brief, but, rapid as the lightning's flash, it lasts long enough to scathe and blast, breaking the darkness but to show the surrounding horror, to deepen into despair the fearful gloom. Although of the most severe simplicity, it is sublime and terrible. It is so concise that our hearts actually long for more, unwilling to believe in the reality of the doom of that ghostly tribunal. It repeats the awful lessons of Holy Writ, and our conscience awakes to our deficiencies, while the marrow freezes in our bones as we read.

The close of the drama is equally sublime. Because the 'Truth' was neither in the camp of Pancratius nor the castle of the count, IT appears in the clouds to confound them both.

After Pancratius has conquered all that opposed him—has triumphantly gloated over his Fourieristic schemes for the material well-being of the race whom he has robbed of all higher faith—he grows agitated at the very name of God when it falls from the lips of his confidant, Leonard: the sound seems to awaken him to a consciousness that he is standing in a sea of blood, which he has himself shed; he feels that he has been nothing but an instrument of destruction, that he has done certain evil for a most uncertain good. All this rushes rapidly upon him, when, on the bosom of a crimson sunset cloud, he perceives a mystic symbol, unseen save by himself: 'the extended arms are lightning flashes, the three nails shine like stars—his eyes die out as he gazes upon it—he falls dead to the earth, crying, in the strange words spoken by the apostate emperor Julian with his parting breath: 'Vicisti Galilee!' Thus this grand and complex drama is really consecrated to the glory of the Galilean!

The intense melancholy characterizing every page of this drama, has its root in the character and intensity of the truths therein developed, and is not manifested in artistic declamation, in highly wrought phrases, or in glowing rhetorical passages proper for citation. It is as bitter as life; as gloomy as death and judgment. The style is one of utter, almost bald, simplicity. The situations are merely indicated, and the characters are to be understood, as are those of the living, rather from a few words in close connection with accompanying facts, than from eloquent utterances, sharp invectives, or bitter complaints. There are no highly wrought amplifications of imaginative passions to be found in its condensed pages, but every word is in itself a drop of gall, reflecting from its sphered surface a world of grief, of agony. The characters pass before us like shadows thrown from a magic lantern, showing only their profiles, and but rarely their entire forms. Flitting rapidly o'er our field of vision, they leave us but a few lines, but so true to nature, so deeply significant, that we are able to produce from these shifting and evanescent shadows a complete and rounded image. Thus we are enabled to form a vivid conception of every character—we know the history of their past, we divine the part they will play in the future. We know the friends, the godfather, the priest, in whom we find an admirable sketch from a decomposed and dying society. He who, in a proper state of things, would have been the representative of living spiritual principles, is a mere supernumerary. He makes signs of the[Pg 304] cross, pronounces accustomed formulas, but he never once thinks of examining into the strange and contradictory relations existing between the husband, forced by his very being into the Future, and the wife, fettered by the conventions and chains of the Past. Neither does he study, with an eye enlightened by philanthropy and spirituality, the poor infant, whose mental restlessness began in the cradle, although his character and destiny seem to have been comprehended by the father. The priest, however, remains cold and indifferent throughout, never once seeking to render the two beings, whom he had himself united in a sacramental bond, intelligible to each other, nor to save the unfortunate boy brought to him for baptism, the sole fruit of this unhappy marriage.

Our author also stigmatizes the whole medical art of our day as a science of death and moral torture. While the anguished father tries to penetrate the decrees of Providence, and in his agony demands from God how the innocent and helpless infant can have deserved a punishment so dreadful as the loss of sight, the doctor admires the strength of the nerves and muscles of the blue eyes of the fair child, at the same time announcing to his father that he is struck with total and hopeless blindness. Immediately after the declaration of this fearful sentence, he turns to the distressed parent to ask him if he would like to know the name of this malady, and that in Greek it is called αμαὑρωσις

Indeed, through the whole of this melancholy scene, only one human being manifests any deep moral feeling—a woman, a servant! Falling upon her knees, she prays the Holy Virgin to take her eyes, and place them in the sightless sockets of the young heir, her fragile but beloved charge. Thus it is a woman of the people who, in the midst of the corrupt and dissolving society, alone preserves the sacred traditions of sympathy and self-sacrifice.

The cruel tyranny of Pancratius and the mob, is also full of important lessons. From it we gather that despotism does not consist in the fact of the whole power being vested in the hands of one or many, but in the truth that a government is without love for the governed, whatever may be its constitutional form. One or many, an assembly of legislators or a king, an oligarchy or a mob, may be equally despotic, if love be not the ruling principle.

With these few remarks, some of them necessary for a full comprehension of this subtile and many-sided Polish drama, we leave the reader to the pleasant task of its perusal.

He will find a full and eloquent criticism, in which its faults and beauties are ably discussed, in a course of 'Lectures on Sclavonic Literature,' delivered by the Polish poet Mickiewicz, before the College of France. Most of the above remarks have been condensed from his valuable work.

PART I.

THE IDEAL.

Stars are around thy head—under thy feet surges the sea—a rainbow forever floats upon the waves before thee—painting the mists, or melting them into light—whatsoever thou lookest upon is thine—the shores, the cities, the men belong to thee—the heavens are thine—it seems as if nothing ever equalled thy glory!

To alien ears thou chantest airs of inconceivable rapture—thou weavest hearts into one with a single touch of thy fairy fingers, and with a breath again dividest them—thou forcest tears—thou driest them with a smile—alas! the next moment thou frightenest the wan smile from the quivering lip for a time—too often, forever!

Tell me, what dost thou thyself feel? Of what dost thou think? What dost thou create?[Pg 305]

The living stream of Beauty flows on through thee, but thou thyself art not Beauty!

Woe to thee! woe! the child crying on the lap of its nurse, the field flower unconscious of its gift of perfume, have more merit before the eyes of the Lord than thou!

What has been thy origin, thou empty shadow, bearing witness to the Light, yet knowing not the Light, which thou seest not, and wilt not see!

In anger, or in mockery, wert thou made? Who was thy creator? Who gave thee thy short and mobile life, and taught thee such seductive magic, that thou seemst to glitter for a moment like an angel before thou sinkest into clay, to creep like a worm, and be stifled in thine own corruption?

Yet, alas! thou sufferest, although thy agony brings nought to the birth, and avails thee nothing.

The groans of the lowest beggar are counted in heaven, compensated amid the music of angels' harps—but thy sighs, thy despair, fall into the bottomless abyss, and Satan gathers them together, and joyfully adds them to the pile of his own lies and delusions—and the Lord will deny and disown them, as they have denied and disowned the Lord!

But not for this do I pity thee, spirit of Poetry, mother of Beauty and Freedom! No. I mourn for the unhappy souls who are forced to remember or divine thee upon chaotic worlds destined to destruction—alas! thou ruinest only those who consecrate themselves to thee, who become the living voices of thy fame!

And yet, blessed is it when thou takest up thine abode in a man, as God dwelt in the world, unseen, unknown, yet everywhere great and mighty, the Lord, before whom all creatures bow and say: 'He is here!'

Such a man will bear thee like a star upon his radiant brow; he will never turn from thee even for the duration of a little word; he will love men, and, like a man, walk with his brethren.

And he who guards thee not, who is willing to betray thee, to devote thee to the idle pleasure of men—from him thou turnest sadly away, scattering in pity a few fading flowers upon his head; he plays with the dying bloom, and weaves his death-wreath all the days of his short life.

Chorus of Evil Spirits. Rise! rise, spectres and phantoms! Hover near him! Head them and lead them on, thou, the yesterday-buried idol, the shadow of the dead love of the Poet! Bathe thyself anew in the vapors of the ideal realm; wreathe thy mouldering brow with the fair buds of spring; and float on before him, thou, once the beloved of the Poet!

Rise, Glory, rise! Old eagle, well stuffed and preserved in hell, descend from thy crumbling perch, unfold thy gigantic wings whitened in the rays of the sun, and wave them above the head, until they dazzle the eyes of the Poet!

Come forth from our vaults, thou rotting masterpiece from the pencil of Beelzebub, thou glowing picture of an earthly Eden, which has dizzied the brain of so many philosophers! Get the old rents in thy canvas reglued;[Pg 306] the holes and cracks refilled with varnish; wrap thyself in the magic webs of hazy clouds and glittering mists; fly to the Poet, and unroll thyself ever before him!

And thou, Nature! surround him with mountains, cliffs, and seas; lull him with golden dawns and crimson eves; inweave him in thy magic circle of azure days and starry nights; O mother Nature—closely embrace the Poet!

Guardian Angel. If thou keepest the Holy Vow, thou wilt be my brother forever before the face of our Heavenly Father!

Bridegroom. I have descended to an earthly betrothal, I have found her of whom my spirit dreamed.

Bridegroom. How beautiful thou art, my love, in thy exhaustion, with flowers and pearls falling in soft confusion through the masses of thy wavy hair, glowing with the rapid motion of the dance, and blushing with maiden shame!

Bride. I will be to thee a true wife, as my mother taught me, as my own heart teaches me. But there are so many men here—there is so much noise—and it is so hot—

Bridegroom. Go and join once more the dance. I will stand here, and watch thee as thou floatest on, as I have often gazed in dreams upon the circling angels.

Evil Spirit. It is not long since at this same hour I coursed the earth—the spirits of the lower world now drive me on; they force me to assume a holy part.

Ye perfumed flowers! tear yourselves from your green stems, and fly into my hair!

Living bloom and fresh charms of buried maidens, lost here, and floating vainly about above forgotten graves—fly into, and paint my swarthy cheeks with roseate hues of youth and love!

Under this white stone a fair-haired girl moulders and festers into wormy rottenness; shadows of her lustrous curls, come—twine round my burning brow!

Under this fallen cross, two soft eyes of heavenly blue are dying in their sunken sockets—to me! to me! the pure and lambent flame which once lightened and glimmered through them!

Behind those iron bars which guard that vault of kings, a hundred torches burn to light corruption—a princess was buried there to-day: ye white and lustrous robes of costly satin, come! fluttering like snowy, downy doves leave to the worms, undraped, the youthful form—fly through the trellised grating—and softly fall around my scathed and fleshless limbs![Pg 307]

The Man (still sleeping). Ha! whence comest thou? I have neither heard nor seen thee for months—for years.

A holy calm is on thy brow—all that I have ever dreamed—have ever loved—unite in thee!

Ah! I once thought thou wert my early Dream—but thou art it not;—after years of time, it has returned to me—and is not thee, Mary, nor like thee!

The Man. Cursed be the hour in which I married a wife, in which I deserted the Love of my youth, the thought of my thought, the soul of my soul....

Wife (awaking). What is it, Henry? Does the day already break? Is the carriage at the door? We have so much to attend to to-day.

Wife. Have you been taken suddenly ill, my dear? Shall I rise and get anything for you?

Wife. My dearest, tell me what is the matter with you! Your voice trembles, your cheeks burn with fever.

The Man (jumping out of bed). I only want fresh air—for God's sake, stay here; do not follow me! Once more I beg you will not rise!

The Man. Since the bells rang in my marriage morn, I have dozed away life like a lump of clay, vegetating like a peasant, sleeping like a German boor. The whole world around me seems asleep in my own image. What a monotonous existence! I have visited relations, gone to shops, seen physicians, and when a child was born to me, I went for a nurse.

Return to me! return, O my old and misty realm, so safely sheltered in the world of thought! Ye shadowy yet lovely forms, once wont to throng around me through the lonely midnight hours, hear my adjuration, and return! return!

O my God! hast Thou in very truth sanctified the ties which link two bodies into one?

Hast Thou surely said that nothing should avail to break them, even when the two souls repel each other; when to advance at all, they must move on upon opposing pathways, while the two chained bodies stiffen into frozen corpses?

And now that thou art again near me, my all, oh, take me with thee! If thou art but a dream, the creation of an o'erwrought brain, let me too be but a dream, a cloud, a mist, that I may be one with thee!

The Man. Stay, and melt not like a dream away! If thou art beautiful above all other beauty; a thought above all other thoughts—why tarriest thou no longer than a wish a fading vision?[Pg 308]

A Female Voice. The chill of the night air will fall upon your breast, my dear. Come back, Henry; it is fearful to be here alone in this vast dark room.

The fair spirit has vanished, but she promised to return for me—and then farewell house and garden! and farewell wife! created for the house and garden, but not for me!

Wife. I have been to see Father Benjamin; he promised to be here day after to-morrow.

Wife. I have also sent to the confectioner and ordered cakes and ices, for I suppose you have invited many guests to the baptism of our infant. He is to furnish us with some of those chocolate confections, with the name of our son, George Stanislaus, upon them.

Wife. God be thanked that the ceremony is so soon to be completed, and that our little George will be made an entire Christian; for although he has been already baptized with water, it always seems to me as if he were wanting something.

Sleep, darling, sleep! Art thou dreaming, that thou thus tossest about thy white arms, and sufferest no covering to remain around thee? So now—that will keep thee warm—lie so! How very restless my baby is to-day! What can be the matter with him? My darling! my beautiful! sleep! sleep!

The Man (aside). How hot and sultry it grows! A storm is rising; will not the lightning flash from heaven, and strike me to the heart!

Wife. Neither yesterday, nor to-day, nor for the last week—O God! it is now almost a whole month since you have, of your own accord, addressed a single word to me—and every one says I am growing so pale and thin!

Wife. Alas! it is a matter of perfect indifference to you; you never even see me! When I come near you, Henry, you turn your head away; and if I sit down beside you, you cover your face with your hands.

I went to confession yesterday, and carefully thought overall my faults and follies—but I could not remember in what way I had so grievously offended you.

Wife. You kill me with the words my duty! Rather say at once, I do not love you—then I would at least know all—the worst!

Forsake him not—your son! Let all your anger fall on me alone—love my child! my child! Henry!

The Man (raising her gently from the ground). Think not of what I have said. Gloomy moments sometimes come upon me, confusion—faintness[Pg 309]—

Wife. But one word more, I implore! one promise, Henry! that you will never cease to love him!

The Maiden (entering). O my beloved, I bring thee joy and peace: come, follow me! Throw off the earthly fetters which enchain, thee, O my love, and follow me! I have sought thee from a new world of endless bliss, in which night never comes—ah! I am only thine!

This ghost is ghastly pale—its eyes are dying out—its voice is hollow as the rolling of the death-hearse with the corpse!

The Man. Thy white brow glitters; thy fair head is wreathed with flowers, O beloved!

The Man. Around and from thee rays the light of heaven! but once to hear thy voice—then die!

The Maiden. She who restrains and impedes thee is but an illusion; her life a passing breath; her love a dying leaf, to fall with thousands of its fellows at the first chill breath, lost and withered—but I will endure forever!

Wife. Henry—Henry! hide me! Oh do not leave me! the air is filled with sulphur, heavy with the breath of the grave!

The Man. Envy not, nor slander, O woman of dust and clay! Behold the Ideal in which God created you—His first thought of what you were meant to be. But following the counsel of the serpent, you became what you now are!

Second Guest. Perhaps he has been accidentally detained, or he may be writing verses.

First Guest. How pale and tired the countess looks, and as yet she has spoken to no one.

Third Guest. This christening reminds me of a ball which I once attended; the host had just lost his whole estate at cards, and was a complete bankrupt, while he continued to receive his many guests with the courtesy of despair.

Fourth Guest. I left my lovely princess, and came here, because I thought to play my part at a gay breakfast; but I am disappointed, for it seems to me that I am, as the Scripture hath it, in the midst of 'wailing and gnashing of teeth.'

A Guest. Look! look! the countess rises from the sofa, and comes slowly forward as if in a dream!

Another Guest. How she reels and totters—poor thing! She is advancing to the infant—how deadly pale she grows![Pg 310]

Father Benjamin. George Stanislaus! wilt thou renounce the devil and all his works?

Wife (laying her hand softly on the head of the infant). Where is thy father, tell me, George?

Wife. Bless thee, George! I bless thee, my son! Become a poet, that thy father may love thee, and never desert thee, George!

Wife. Become a poet! that thus thou mayst serve thy father, mayst please him, and then he will forgive thy mother, and return—

Guests (whispering among themselves). All this is very extraordinary. What can have happened here? We had better leave the house immediately.

Godfather (standing by the cradle). George Stanislaus! you have just been made a Christian, and entered into the pale of human society; in after years you will also be a citizen, and, through the grace of God and the wise training of your parents, you may become a great statesman: remember that you must love your native land; that it is noble and beautiful to die for your country!

The Man. That for which I have so long striven, for which I have so ardently prayed, is at last almost within my grasp!

The world of men lies far below me; the human pismires there may throng their ant-hills, and struggle on for crumbs and flies—may burst with rage if they fail to find them, or die with despair if they should lose them. I have left all to....

The Man. Where is she gone? The morning breeze dies suddenly away, the thick mists gather, and the sky grows dark.

There! I have gained at last the very top of this steep peak;—heavens, what a frightful abyss yawns before me! How moaningly the wind howls up this rocky pass!

The Man. Where art thou? thy voice is almost lost in the distance. How can I follow thee through this abyss?

Another Voice. What! a great, immortal soul, which in a single moment should be able to traverse the boundless space of heaven, to faint and perish at a cliff on the side of a hill! Stout heart! sublime soul, shuddering, and imploring thy feet to go no farther! poor things!

The Man. Appear! Take forms with which I may contend, which may be overthrown! If I start or quail[Pg 311] before you, may she never again be mine!

The Maiden (from the other side of the abyss). Seize my hand, and swing thyself over to me!

The flowers start from thy temples, tear themselves loose from thy hair, and when thou touchest them, they crawl like lizards, and writhe and hiss like adders!

The Man. Merciful God! the wind has twisted and torn off thy floating drapery; it hangs in squalid rags about thee!

The Man. The rain drops from thy heart, and freezes as it falls;—skeleton bones look forth from thy bosom!

Chorus of Evil Spirits. Old Satan, welcome back to hell! Thou hast seduced and ruined a mighty spirit, admired by men, a marvel to itself.

The Man. Wilt thou then damn me, O my God! because I have believed that Thy Beauty far surpassed the loveliness of earth; because I have left all to follow it; and have suffered for it until I have grown the very jest of devils?

The Man. The last hour strikes! the storm whirls in black and ever-widening circles—the sea is breaking and dashing higher and higher against the rocks, and as it mounts them, draws me on—an invisible power urges me forward—nearer—ever nearer—bands of men advance from behind upon me—mount my neck—and plunge me into the abyss!

The Man. It is vain to struggle; useless to combat! the giddy bliss of the abyss draws me on—my head is dizzy—the plunge is inevitable—my brain whirls!—O God!—Thy fiend has conquered!

Ah, I know you are only hiding for a moment to punish me for my desertion; but I suffer, Mary!

Ah! I have never wished to wrong any human being; I would have made the whole world happy; yet I have plunged the woman who trusted herself to me, the innocent creature whom I swore to love and guard, into the hell of those already damned on earth!

I blast all upon whom I breathe; and am doomed to destroy myself also! Hell has only released me for a few hours, that I might present to men its living image upon earth!

Upon what a pillow of horror will she lay to-night her helpless head! with what harmonies have I surrounded her in the darkness?—the wild shrieks and howls of madmen in their cells!

I see her there! that brow so calm, so innocent, upon which no harsh thought ever rests, is sunk and buried in her little hands. Her pure thoughts wander idly now through space; they rove in search of the husband who deserted her—and the unfortunate weeps—and is mad! mad!

The Wife of the Physician. (She is seen opening a barred door, and wears a great bunch of keys at her girdle.) Are you a relation of the countess?

The Wife of the Physician. We have indeed but little hope of her recovery. I am sorry my husband is not at home; he could have explained the whole case to you. She was brought here in convulsions yesterday—how very hot it is to-day!

Only think of it—this asylum costs us two hundred thousand—but you are growing impatient—tell me, is it true that the Jacobins seized her husband at midnight, and thus drove her mad?

Voice (from the ceiling). You have chained and fettered God himself! You have already put one God to death on the cross; I am the second, and you have given me into the hands of the headsman.

Voice (from the wall on the left). The comet tracks its way in fire across the sky; the day of wrath already breaks—the trump of Judgment sounds!

Wife. Yes, but I cannot stand up—my soul has left my body, and is all burning, blazing, in my brain.

The Man. I can carry you in my arms to the carriage, which is waiting[Pg 313] for you at the door; I want to take you home, Mary!

Wife. Yes, we will go home. But you must wait for me; leave me for a little while, and I will become worthy of you, Henry!

Wife. Ah! I have prayed through weary days and endless nights; at last God heard me, and smiled upon me!

Wife. Listen, Henry! After you left me, a great change came upon my spirit, and I felt what was wanting to make you love me. I cried to God unceasingly; I struck my breast; I placed a blessed candle on my bosom; I did penance; I said: 'Lord God be merciful unto me! Oh send down upon me the spirit of Poetry, that I may be loved!'

Wife. You will no more despise me; no longer leave me to my lonely evenings; for I am full of inspiration, a Poet, Henry!

Wife. Look upon me! have I not grown like yourself? I understand everything now; I can explain and describe all that is: I chant the sea, the stars, the clouds, battles—yes, stars—seas—storms—but battles? No, I have never seen a battle. You must take me to see a battle, Henry. I must watch men die! I must see and describe a corpse—a shroud—the night dew—the moon—a cradle—a coffin:

Wife (throwing her arms round him, and resting her head on his bosom). My Henry! my Henry! I am so, so happy!

Voice (from below). I have murdered three kings with my own hand; ten are still left for the block: a hundred priests still sing mass—

Voice (from the left). The sun has lost the half of its glory; its light is dying; the stars have lost their way, and hurtle each other from their paths—woe! woe!

Wife. Do not look so sad, Henry. Cheer up, you make me again unhappy! What is the matter? I can tell you something will make you so glad.

Wife. The priest, when he baptized him, gave him first the name: Poet; and then: George Stanislaus.

It is I who have done this; first I blessed him—then I affixed a curse to the blessing: I know he will be a Poet!

Wife. There is some one above us, suffering from strange and incurable madness; is it not so?

Wife. He does not know what he is saying; but I can tell you how it would all be if God should go mad.

All the worlds would go flying about, up and down, and crash against one another: every worm would cry out: 'I am God!' and then some of them would die every moment; they would all perish one after the other!

All the comets and suns would go out in the sky! Christ would redeem us no longer; He would tear His bleeding hands away from the nails, and pitch the cross into the bottomless abyss. It falls!

Listen! how this cross, the hope of millions, goes crashing and hurtling against the stars! Hark! it breaks! it flies asunder! the sky grows dark with the ruined fragments—they fall like hail, deeper, deeper—a wild storm surges from them—dreadful!

The holy Mother of God alone continues to pray, and the faithful stars, her servants, which have not yet deserted her:—but she too will plunge where all created things are storming down, for God is mad—and Christ has thrown away His Cross!

Wife. I have given wings to our son, and dipped him under the waves of the sea, that he might take into his soul all that is beautiful, sublime, and terrible. He will return to you a poet, and you will rejoice in him.

Wife. Some one has hung up a lamp in my brain—and the light sways and flickers—I cannot bear it!

The Wife of the Physician. Pills—powders—no. She can swallow nothing solid; a fluid potion is the best.

The Wife of the Physician. Her face grows crimson—the blood is rushing to her brain.

The Man. Her pure heart breaks—nor love nor wrong can ever reach her more! O Mary! Mary!

SOUND REFLECTIONS.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

On Wednesday, the fifteenth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, the following resolution, which had already passed the Senate, was put upon its final passage in the House of Representatives as a joint resolution of Congress, to be proposed to the people of the United States for an amendment to the Constitution:

The resolution was rejected for failure of the two-thirds vote required by the Constitution on a question of amendment; the vote standing, yeas ninety-four, nays sixty-five. Which vote has definitely determined two things: first, that the party which calls itself Democratic is afraid to trust this question to the people, and so belies its honored name; and secondly, that there is a political element in our country whose attachment to the slaveholding interest survives the attachment of the slaveholding interest to the Union. Is this the best evidence of patriotism?

Three years ago this summer of 1864, even after the treason of Southern leaders had precipitated the flagrant Southern rebellion, ay, and even after treason had dared the loyal army of the nation and flaunted its defiant banner on the field of battle, the sentiment of a forbearing people declared that no interference with the local establishments of the treason-infected South would be permitted. So faithful were we to the compromises of our fathers; so loth to believe in the wicked purpose that had moved the rebellion. Three years of desperate resistance to the nation's authority, three years of war, with its lessons of bitterness, and grief, and death, and agony worse than death, have convinced us that no further compromise is possible. Men told us so before, but we were too devoted to the Union to believe in a treason that would not stop short of the nation's complete dishonor. God be thanked that we know the issue at last! Our conviction has gradually, but how immovably, established itself! And now the sentiment of the people, no longer forbearing, but not less just, and based upon the same unalterable devotion to the Union, withdraws the pledges of the past and dictates an amendment to the Constitution that shall leave no possibility of slaveholding treason hereafter. That sentiment has found expression in two mass conventions, representing the undoubted overwhelming majority of the people, and it remains now to show the justice of it. It is accordingly the purpose of this paper to discuss the nature of the proposed amendment, and to state some controlling reasons in favor of it.

The question, plainly stated, is: Ought the Constitution to be amended so as to abolish slavery throughout the United States? Or, in other words, Ought liberty to become part of the supreme law of the land? Ought the idea of the nation to be now, at last, incorporated into the law of the nation, and so made a fixed fact of the nation's history?

It should seem that the mere statement of the question suggests the basis and positive force of the affirmative of it. For it reminds us at once of the mighty revolution that has agitated and aroused it. The progress of a century has been crowded into less than a decade of years. The statesmanship of 1850 (profound and patriotic, as alas![Pg 316] it is to be feared, too much of what we call statesmanship to-day is not) has been outgrown. Let us not be startled by the statement. The highest art of politics is to recognize existing facts. No thinking person will deny that the policies of the past are powerless to-day. We cannot, if we would, unmake the history of the last ten years. Tempora mutantur, et mutamur in illis. Or, as a distinguished and eloquent son of Tennessee lately paraphrased this old maxim: 'The world moves, and takes us along with it, whether we will or not.'

Our discussion naturally divides itself into two branches: first, as to the right, or constitutional power, to adopt the proposed amendment; and secondly, as to the expediency and necessity of it.

I. THE RIGHT, UNDER THE CONSTITUTION, TO ADOPT THE PROPOSED AMENDMENT.

No characteristic of the American people is more marked than their regard for law; and in nothing is that characteristic more striking than in their respect for the Constitution, the supreme law of the land. Whatever seems to come in conflict with that supreme law must encounter an irresistible odium. And herein appears the splendid fruit of the teachings of our great legists and statesmen, enforced, as they are, by the hereditary traditions of our Anglo-Saxon birthright. It is, moreover, a standing proof that democracy is not necessarily radical and destructive; and so furnishes us with a complete answer to the assumptions of English Tories, as in Alison's 'History of Europe,' that democracy is but the organized exponent of the self-willed passions of the multitude. What thing, indeed, is more wonderful than the tenacity with which conscientious men still cling to the doctrine (that had once some reason for it) of constitutional guaranties in behalf of slavery—an institution that has inspired the most monstrous treason of all history! What people but the American would still be hesitating, after the solemn experience of these three years, to strike down every possible support to slavery!

Surely the lesson of the French Revolution, in its trumpet-toned warning to the nations against a destructive radicalism, has not been lost upon us. How ought we to adore the Providence, guided by whose inspiration (as with becoming reverence we may believe) Washington and his supporters directed our infant republic in the track of English conservatism, fearful of the vagaries of the Red Republicanism of France! This prudent policy justifies itself more and more in our experience; and to-day the great heart of the people beats in unison with those Providential leadings. Therefore it is that the question, in reference to any measure, Is it constitutional? far from exciting ridicule, as sometimes with superficial thinkers it has done, is to be recognized as proof of our magnificent control over the wayward factions of the hour, and of our abiding trust in the hardly less than inspired wisdom of our fathers, to which we thus make our ultimate appeal. For the Constitution is the organic law of the nation, and stands for the firm foundation of our national life. The indissoluble bond of the Union, it is itself the palladium of our liberties. It is, in fine, the grandest chart of liberty and law, of justice and political order, which the world ever saw. The man who dares knowingly violate its provisions merits the punishment that followed the sacrilegious touch of David's servant to the ark of the covenant—instant death. In the midst of a fierce conflict with traitors who set at nought its binding force, let us beware lest in our zeal to punish them we be not guilty of an equal crime!

We yield, then, to no one in our devotion to the Constitution. We will not allow that any one goes before us in reverence for it. But we are of those[Pg 317] who think that the time has come, in the providence of God, for an amendment to its provisions.

Indeed, the Constitution derives not the least portion of its claim upon our tender regard from the fact that it recognizes the eternal law of progress; and, while establishing a government whose stability should be as enduring as the principles upon which it is based, does not assume to declare that it has exhausted the possibilities of the future. Guarding against any and every impulse of popular passion, it nevertheless leaves scope for the necessary changes of time and circumstance, which may make the politic statesmanship of one period the exploded fallacy of the next. For of the science of politics it may be said, as in the glowing eulogy of Macaulay upon the philosophy of Bacon: 'It is a philosophy which never rests, which has never attained its end, which is never perfect. Its law is progress. A point which yesterday was invisible is its goal to-day, and will be its starting-post to-morrow.' Political science, indeed, is only another one of those 'illustrations of universal progress,' which the genius of Herbert Spenser has made familiar to our literature. And therefore it is that we cannot too much admire the sagacity of the patriots who framed our Constitution. It was a sagacity drawing its inspiration from all history, which taught, and teaches, that if progress is attempted to be checked, it will find vent in volcanic revolution. Reformation is the watchword of history: anarchy and destruction the fate of those nations which heed it not.

Thus it was that the principle of amendment found its way into the Constitution of the United States—a principle so just that by it we are enabled in these bitter days to faithfully withstand the usurpation that seeks to justify itself by appealing to the right of revolution. For in the principle of amendment (as has heretofore been stated in this magazine) the right of revolution was at the same time recognized and exalted; and by it a means of war was made a means of peace, and so revolution was sought to be forestalled. Nothing but despotism itself would have disregarded this humane provision of the Constitution, and sought a remedy for alleged grievances that is only justified by despotism.

What, then, is the principle of amendment in our Constitution, and what are its provisions? They are found in the fifth article, and read thus: 'The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided, ... that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.'

Can anything be clearer? And yet how men have contrived to mystify the whole question by vague declamation about the rights of States! As if those rights of States that were meant to be protected, were not carefully guarded by the article itself, and especially by the proviso 'that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate'! As if, too, the rights of the States were everything, the rights of the Nation nothing! It might well be asked, moreover (as, indeed, a discriminating writer in The Evening Post has lately asked), whether the people of the States have no rights that are to be considered in this discussion; whether there are not certain reserved rights of the people that have been violated by many States—rights reserved in the very constitutions of those States, as well as[Pg 318] in the Constitution of the United States? But let it be noted, as above intimated, that this fifth article is duly careful to guard the rights of States. Three fourths of the States must concur in the amendment; and in no event may a State be unwillingly deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate, which is the distinguishing mark of the independent equality of all the States in the Union. On the other hand, the rights of the States being thus protected in a manner and degree which we must suppose to have been satisfactory to the men who framed and the States which ratified the Constitution, the article then proceeds to care for the rights of the Nation, by declaring that the amendment duly ratified by three fourths of the States 'shall be valid, as part of the Constitution:' thus binding all the States, the three fourths which have ratified it, and the one fourth which may not have ratified it. We have here a key to the motives of the Southern rebellion. The leaders of Southern politics knew well that an amendment like the one now proposed must one day come, and that whenever it should come, article fifth left them no pretext for resistance. So they precipitated their revolution, and have only hastened that inevitable day.

But it is objected that the right to amend the Constitution does not give us the right to enlarge its powers. Why not? And if not, to what things does the right of amendment extend? Such an interpretation makes article fifth an absurdity. This objection springs from the same mischievous doctrine of State sovereignty, which has so outraged the patriotic common sense of the people by the denial of our right to 'coerce' a State, and tends to the same result—nullification and secession. It is good logic for a confederation, but bad logic for a nation, to say that the articles of its organic law may not be changed by the will of the people. And let us not neglect to observe in the provisions of article fifth the strong incidental proof that the Constitution of the United States was meant to be the basis of a nation, and not the compact of a confederation. For how may this article be reconciled with the theory of a compact? Three fourths of the States may concur in adopting an amendment that shall be valid as part of the Constitution, which declares itself to be the supreme law of the land, over all the States.

This incidental point serves fitly to introduce the second branch of our discussion, namely:

II. THE EXPEDIENCY AND NECESSITY OF THE PROPOSED AMENDMENT.

For slavery, or, in other words (lest we seem to offend some), a rebellion in the interests and for the avowed establishment of slavery, has struck at the life of the nation; and in self-defence the nation must strike down slavery. If our Government is only the compact of a confederation, then not only is there no need, but we have not the right to adopt the proposed amendment. For by it an institution fostered by the legislation of some of the States would be overthrown, in defiance of that legislation. But the right, or constitutional power, of itself implies the necessity to adopt the amendment whenever the occasion for it may arise. The right is made part of the Constitution: the necessity, or expediency, must be determined by circumstances outside of the Constitution. We contend that circumstances at present point to the complete extinguishment of slavery as the political necessity of the period. The time for timid counsels is past. The day of tenderness for Southern prejudices is gone by.

Coming, then, directly to the root of the matter, we lay down this first proposition:

1. The proposed amendment finds its justification and highest warrant, as a measure of political reform, in the fact of the Southern Confederacy. This[Pg 319] fact, pure and simple, is the controlling and abundant necessity for it. We need not take the ground that slavery is the cause of the rebellion: though to the philosophical inquirer it certainly seems difficult to reach any other conclusion. We Americans are so much under the influence of partisan prejudices, so surrounded with the complications of present and past political issues, that for us a dispassionate study of this point is almost, or quite, impossible. But the investigations of impartial and unprejudiced foreigners seem remarkably to concur in designating slavery as the moving cause of the war. We may cite, for example, the recent profound review of the slave power by Professor Cairnes. And surely no person who pauses to reflect upon the inherent nature of the slave system as a labor basis of society, will venture to deny that such a principle is at war with the elemental principles of our Government. No person will deny that slavery depreciates the dignity of labor, which is the pride and boast of our institutions. Nor does it need any but the logic of common sense to point out the incongruity of a free government resting, even partially, upon a basis of slave labor.

But all this may be waived. We may discard all these considerations. Perhaps it is wise to discard them. Let us forget our differences of political opinion in the past, and seek for points of agreement in the present. Taking this position, we cannot ignore the fact of the Southern Confederacy, and that the avowed basis of it is slavery. It is a stubborn fact confronting us at the outset of our inquiry, and, like Banquo's ghost, 'will not down.' Proclaiming boldly that free labor is a mistake, and unblushingly affirming as a doctrine of social and political economy that 'capital must own labor,' the Southern Confederacy challenges the Christian civilization of the age, and declares its right to exist as an independent nation of slaveholders. How may we explain so monstrous a pretence? There is but one explanation that is adequate. It may be stated in a single word, ambition. The lesson of our experience is that this malignant system of slavery, the chattel slavery of the South, is too great a temptation to the ambition of men. Let us not disregard it. Political ambition stands always ready to strike hands with the devil, and the devil is always near the conscience of ambitious men. We have no recourse but to remove the temptation. The death-knell of Carthage is well appropriated: Servitudo est delenda. So long as a vestige of the slavery establishment remains, the temptation remains—a deadly risk to our Government. The peril of it is too great. And this furnishes a complete answer to the superficial objection that there is no need of the amendment because slavery is dead already; for ambition may revive it, and what ambition may do it will do. In other words, and to sum up the argument on this point: Whatever may have been our individual opinions and beliefs before the rebellion (variant enough at all times), the attempted establishment of a confederacy avowedly based on slavery, proves beyond possibility of cavil that chattel slavery, to which we have been lenient without limit, is a temptation too great for the peace of the nation, and therefore the highest interests of the nation require its removal.

2. The simple fact of the Southern Confederacy is also the basis of our second proposition. For it reveals clearly the necessity of the proposed amendment as a thing essential to be added to the organic law, in order to carry out the purpose of it. That purpose is thus expressed in the preamble to the Constitution: 'We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain[Pg 320] and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.' Every one of the objects therein specified is, in the baleful light of the rebellion, a plea for the amendment.

We are aware that this preamble has heretofore served as a basis for the stanchest conservatism, and wisely so. We are of those who have always contended that the 'blessings of liberty' are best secured by whatever tends most to strengthen the Union—the asylum and hope of liberty, without which liberty, disorganized and unprotected, were a vain show. We are of that opinion still, and therefore support the amendment, because we are for strengthening the Union and making it 'more perfect.' We have not changed: circumstances have changed. What was formerly conservatism is now radicalism, and radicalism is now the true conservatism. For the period is one of transition, a crisis period, when these two forces, to be of use, must be interfused, and thus become a combined power of reform.

So long as the cotton and slaveholding interest could be held in check and kept measurably subordinate to the supremacy of the Constitution, there was hope that eventually the steadily-increasing forces of free labor would overpower the gradually-decreasing forces of slave labor. It was believed that by the silent action of natural laws freedom would, in the long run, assert itself superior, and the ideal of our Government, universal freedom, would thus at last become a reality and fact. Such, we have been taught to believe, was the doctrine of the statesmanship of 1850. Such was the underlying argument of Webster's great 7th of March speech—the enduring monument of his unselfish patriotism, seeking only the good of his whole country. Such was his meaning when he declared that the condition of the territories was fixed by an 'irrepealable law,' needing no irritating legislation to assure their freedom.

Contrary to the hopes of our fathers, the slave system had prospered and grown strong—chiefly because of the impetus given to it by the growth of cotton, as was clearly shown by Webster in the speech just noted. We suppose no candid reader of our history will deny this point. But the system had no vital force within itself, and could not withstand those laws of nature and free emigration to which we have adverted. It sought protective legislation, and got it. Still, it was hampered by limitations, notwithstanding it had present control of the cotton growth. So the question of the slave trade was mooted. Thus it came to pass that within half a century after it had expired by limitation of the Constitution, that monstrous anomaly of the Christian era was sought to be revived. And so corrupt had public sentiment become that the slave trader captain of the yacht Wanderer could not be convicted by a jury of his countrymen of violating the ordinance of the nation against this traffic.[8] Will any one dare affirm that the tone of public feeling in the South on this subject was not higher and purer in the time of Jefferson than in the time of Buchanan? To what a depth of moral degradation the nation might have sunk under the thus retrogressive influences of ungodly Mammon, setting God and Christianity at total defiance, may not easily be conjectured. But that law of action and reaction which balances the powers of nature with such equal justice, holds good also in the world of mind; and in the providence of God the time of reaction came at last, and the temper of the nation reverted to its pristine purity. That time came when defiant Mammon waxed so bold as to threaten the nation's life. Under the protective statutes of Congress, jealously watching over the local institutions of States, slavery had grown to be a dominating[Pg 321] power in the country; and, bound by legislation and compromise, and the strict letter of the Constitution, the people could only protest, and bide the inevitable issue of such arrogant domination.

Now no longer is slavery dominant. Its own hand has struck down the protecting shield of a quasi-constitutional guaranty, and all men feel that its condemnation is just. Now there is 'none so poor to do it reverence.' Why is this? It is the uniform course and consequence of sin. 'Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.' But God has spoken at last in a voice that we must heed. It is the voice of war, a voice of woe; the voice of civil war, the chief of woes. Slavery is now at our mercy. And mercy to it is to be measured by our humanity to man and our fear of God. 'The word is nigh thee, even in thy own mouth.' Servitudo delenda est: deleta est. Slavery is to be destroyed: it is already destroyed. Shall we permit it a chance to be revived? The way is opened to us, as it was not to our fathers, to remove the curse from our borders. We shall be false to every inspiration of patriotism if we now fail to remove it. The time has come to complete the unity of the Constitution, and make the ideal purpose of it, as stated in the preamble, a living fact. Shall we let the opportunity slip? Now, at last, we may ordain a Constitution by which 'a more perfect Union' shall 'secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.'

3. A third reason for the proposed amendment, not less cogent though more familiar to our political discussions than the two already named, is found in article fourth, section second, of the Constitution: 'Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States.' Everybody knows that this section of the Constitution has been heretofore practically a dead letter, albeit as fully a part of the supreme law as that other provision in the same section for the rendition of 'persons held to service.' So everybody knows equally well the reason of it. It was a concession to the fierce passions of slaveholding politics. From the very nature of the case there could not be the same toleration of speech and press in a Slave State which the men from a Slave State enjoyed in a Free State. It was incendiary. So for half a century there has been this virtual nullification of one of the justest compromises of the Constitution; and citizens of the United States have, within the limits of the United States, been tarred and feathered, and burnt, and hung, and subjected to indignities without number and without name. Nobody will probably be willing to say that such a state of things is worthy to be continued. The hope of peaceable relief has for long restrained the hands of a people educated to an abhorrence of war. We have submitted to a despotism less tolerant than the autocracy of Russia, or the absolutism of France—hoping, vainly hoping, for some change; willing to forego all things rather than dissever the Union, which we have held, and hold, to be foremost, because bearing the promise of all other political blessings; pardoning much to a legacy left the South for which it was not primarily responsible, and ready to second the humane care of a feeble race, and clinging to the hope of that better time to which all the signs pointed, when, by force of freedom, there could be no more slavery. The time has come, though sooner and under other circumstances (alas! far other circumstances) than we expected. We need now no longer give guaranties to the slaveholding interest. Taking advantage of such as it had, it has not hesitated to attack its sole benefactor, and now all our obligations are at an end. The Congress of the nation may and will take[Pg 322] care that, secession being stifled, there shall not henceforth be a nullification of the least provision of the organic law, out of mistaken tenderness for the interest of any section. We have at last learned a nobler virtue than forbearance, and henceforth either the Constitution, in all its parts, is to be supreme, or else the nation must die. One or other of these things must result. Let him who can hesitate between them write himself down a traitor; for he is one. No patriot can hesitate. No lover of his country can falter in a time like this. And if three years of war have not taught a man that this is the alternative, that man does not deserve a country.

4. But there is a more emphatic expression of our fundamental law than any yet cited; which, if left to its proper working, as now it may be, strikes at the root of slavery. It is the fourth section of the fourth article of the Constitution. 'The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.'

The essence of republicanism is freedom. A republic that, like Sparta, permits the enslavement of any portion of its people, is surely not predicated upon the true idea of a republic; and it is worth while to consider that the ancient republics found their bane in slavery, and that the aristocratic republics of modern times, like Venice, have perished. Only those republics survive to-day which, like San Marino, have free institutions. A republic is a country where the whole people is the public, and the state the affair of the whole people. It is a public affair (as its name imports), a thing of the public; and this is not true of any other than a democracy. For the essential idea of such a government is expressed in the maxim: 'the greatest good to the greatest number;' and in that other maxim which is part of our Declaration of Independence, that 'government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.' It needs no argument to show that these maxims are violated in a country where any portion of the people are deprived of their highest good—liberty. For what is the object of government? To protect men from oppression. And our republican doctrine is that this is best accomplished in a form of government which gives to the voice of all men the controlling power. 'The voice of the people is the voice of God,' because humanity is of God. The doctrine is that the state is made for the individual, not the individual for the state; just as our Saviour declared that 'the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.' These things being so (and it is not pretended that they are novel, for they are very trite), does it not immediately appear how essentially opposed is slavery to the idea of a republic? Therefore when the Constitution guarantees to every State a republican form of government, it guarantees to all the people of every State a voice in its control. And whatever State disfranchises any portion of its people violates this provision of the Constitution.

To the objection that, at the time of adopting the Constitution, all the States were Slave States, with a single exception, and therefore within the meaning of that instrument slavery and a republican form of government are not incongruous, there are two answers. First, it is matter of history that the framers of the Constitution acted throughout with reference to the eventual abolition of slavery; as has been already adverted to in this paper. Therefore such States as have retained their slave establishments have done so in violation of the spirit of this provision of the Constitution; while such States as have since been admitted into the Union with slave establishments have been admitted by compromises, equally in violation of that provision, but acquiesced in by the whole country, as the slave establishments of the ori[Pg 323]ginal States had been, and therefore equally binding on our good faith. We are now no longer bound by any compromises. We have kept our plighted faith strictly and fairly, though the Slave States have not. Our duty now is to reconstruct, if we can, the fabric of the Union. If, in doing this, we abolish slavery entirely, which makes impossible the full realization of this guaranteeing clause, the guaranty will spring into new life and become a power in the law of the land. Secondly, what is meant by a republican form of government within the meaning of the Constitution must be determined by reference to the Declaration of Independence, which is the basis of our Government, and declares the principles of it. That Declaration was promulgated as embodying the doctrines of a new age—an age in which the rights of man should at last be maintained as against the rights of royalty and privilege. It is, therefore, the soundest rule of interpretation to refer the ambiguities of the organic law to the declaration that preceded and introduced it and made it possible. And so interpreting, will any one say that slavery is compatible with the principles of the Declaration of Independence?

In support, moreover, of the view here taken, may be cited the opinion of many of our statesmen, as expressed on the question of admitting new States into the Union: as, for instance, when Missouri applied for admission with a slave constitution. Nor is it competent to offset this with the opinion of such statesmen as have advocated the doctrine of the Virginia Resolutions of State sovereignty; for they notoriously disregarded the paramount supremacy of the Constitution. The conscientious doubt of others as to making the exclusion of slavery a condition precedent to admission into the Union, proves not the incorrectness of this position, but strengthens it, by showing that only a controlling love of the Union caused the doubt, which originated in a policy that would not even seem to do injustice to any State.

But whatever may be true as to the opinions of the fathers and early statesmen of the republic; whatever may be true as to the precise meaning of the term 'republican form of government' in the Constitution; surely, in the light of our rebellion, there cannot longer be a doubt as to the inherent antagonism of slavery to the principles of republican government. The Southern Confederacy sprang into existence as an oligarchy of slaveholders, willing (if need be) to live under a military despotism (as is the fact to-day, and will be hereafter if the world should witness the dire misfortune of its success), rather than submit to the searching scrutiny of republican ideas, with freedom of speech and press and person. And so it is that we recur to the simple fact of the Southern Confederacy for the vindication of the proposed amendment in all its bearings, finding in that fact the full warrant and justification of it.

5. There is still another reason for the proposed amendment, that may be urged with great force, on the ground of expediency; namely, that it would settle the whole question of reconstruction in a manner and with an effect that could not be gainsaid. For, once incorporated into the fundamental law, there could not then arise questions touching the validity of acts by which slaves are declared freemen. There would be nothing left to hang a doubt upon. The Proclamation of Emancipation as a war measure is undoubtedly a proper proceeding; but as a means of effecting organic changes, and as possible to operate beyond the period of actual war, it is open to many grave objections. Freedom being thus made the law of the land, there would be no longer reason for differences, as now there are wide differences among conscientious and capable men, as to the proper mode of reinvesting the States[Pg 324] usurped by the rebellion with their rightful powers as kindred republics of the nation. Constituent parts of a common and indivisible empire, those powers cannot be destroyed by a usurping rebellion.

But, it is objected, the proposed amendment destroys certain of those powers. Yes, it takes away all pretended right to hold slaves. For the right of slavery is nowhere recognized in the Constitution. The fact of slavery as part of the local establishments of some States could not be ignored, although, as is well known, the word 'slave' was expressly ruled out of the Constitution. Hence, the famous provisions for the rendition of 'persons held to service' (art. iv. sec. 2), and for the apportionment of representatives and direct taxes, 'by adding to the whole number of free persons ... three fifths of all other persons' (art. i. sec. 2): which are the only recognition slavery finds in our Constitution.

It is true, therefore, that slavery, never a right, but always a wrong, under the Constitution, as under the law of nature and revelation, is now to be no longer recognized even as a fact. To abolish it by this amendment is to abolish it entirely throughout the Union, irrespective of apparent State rights. The repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law remits the question of restoring 'persons held to service' to the safeguards of trial by jury, but has no further force. To supplement and complete the work of reconstruction, we need to make impossible the pretence of a power anywhere within the domain of the United States to hold a person in bondage.

To the objection we have just noted, that certain State rights are thus destroyed, there are two sufficient answers. First, in no State of the Union, it is believed, does slavery exist by virtue of positive law. It is the subject of legislation only as a recognized fact in society. It exists in Virginia in violation of the Bill of Rights, which is part of the organic law of that State, and, in its essential features, of every slaveholding State. Therefore to abolish it is both to fulfil the duty of the United States in guaranteeing to every State a republican form of government, and to assert the only true doctrine of State rights, namely, that the legislation of a State shall conform to the fundamental law at once of the State itself and the nation. And thus the Bill of Rights of a slaveholding State will be no longer a mockery, but a living power. Secondly, the destruction of this pseudo right of a State to hold slaves is no cause of complaint—even supposing it were a legitimate and proper right.[9] For, the Constitution once adopted, the provision for amendment, as part of it, has also been ratified and adopted; and therefore, by a familiar principle of law, the exercise of that provision may not afterward be questioned. It is not for the parties who have once solemnly ratified an agreement to complain of the carrying into effect of its terms. They must forever hold their peace.

Thus, by virtue of the proposed amendment, all the States of the Union will become Free States, and there will be no longer the anomaly of a free nation upholding slavery. It will then, moreover, have been settled by the highest authority in the land, that a republican form of government means, first of all, freedom; and so a free constitution will be the unquestionable condition precedent of the admission of any State into the Union. This[Pg 325] doctrine will seem monstrous to the believer in State sovereignty as paramount to the sovereignty of the nation: so it will seem monstrous to the believer in secession and rebellion. But by the lover of the Union (who alone is the true patriot in our country) it will be accepted as a doctrine that adds another bond of unity to the nation, and so tends to secure its perpetual strength.

In fine, the Constitution itself is all bristling with arguments for this amendment. Besides the provisions already quoted, there is the fifth article of the amendments, declaring that 'no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,' which has now a significance unknown before. Oh, how the rebellion has interpreted for us and commented upon the provisions of the Constitution! In the dread light of its unholy fires, we see, as never before, how cursed and doubly accursed a thing is slavery—making men forget all that is holiest and sacredest, quenching all their inspirations of patriotism, and leading them to sell body and soul for mad ambition. How true, alas! is the poet's word: 'How like a mounting devil in the heart rules the unreined ambition!'

We must, therefore, put an end to slavery. In its whole essence and substance, it militates against the perpetuity of our national Union. To think of preserving both it and the Union is to shut our eyes wilfully to the facts of the last half century, and the culminating condemnation of slavery in the rebellion. A Southern journal (The Nashville Times) has lately said, with great truth and force: 'Slavery can no more violate the law of its existence and become loyal and law-abiding than a stagnant pool can freshen and grow sweet in its own corruption.' Discard all other considerations; say, if we please, that slavery has nothing to do with the origin of the war; yet we must recognize the fact of a confederacy avowedly basing itself on the system of slavery, and which is in the interest of slaveholders, and is fostered by the minions of despotism all over the world. Then, if we can, let us come to any other conclusion than the one suggested in the proposed amendment.

This confederacy in the interest of slaveholders threatens the life of the nation. There is a limit to the powers of the Constitution, and we may not pass beyond it. But shall we deny that there is a higher law back of the Constitution, back of all constitutions—namely, that 'safety of the people,' which is 'the supreme law'? If we say that there is no such thing as moral government in the world; that a beneficent God does not sit in the heavens, holding all nations as in the hollow of His hand; yet we cannot deny this law of self-preservation. This law, this higher law of human society, the law political, in the very nature of things, demands the amendment.

Above all, let us not ignore the lessons of the war. The million graves of the heroes fallen in defence of our liberties and laws, are so many million wounds in the bleeding body of the nation, whose poor, dumb mouths, if they had voice, would cry out to Heaven against the system which has moved this foul treason against those liberties and laws. Let us, then, in the white heat of this terrible crisis, adopt the amendment, and stamp on the forefront of the nation, as its motto, for all time, those magnificent words of Webster: 'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!' For let us be well assured that the Southern Confederacy cannot triumph. In the darkest and most mournful period of the despotism of the first Napoleon, when all hearts were failing, a minister of the Church of England spoke these words of the military empire of France, and they may fitly be spoken of the military empire of the South to-day:[Pg 326]

'It has no foundation in the moral stability of justice. It is irradiated by no beam from heaven; it is blessed by no prayer of man; it is worshipped with no gratitude by the patriot heart. It may remain for the time that is appointed it, but the awful hour is on the wing when the universe will resound with its fall; and the same sun which now measures out with reluctance the length of its impious reign, will one day pour his undecaying beams amid its ruins, and bring forth from the earth which it has overshadowed the promises of a greater spring.'[10]

AVERILL'S RAID.

Say, lads, have ye heard of bold Averill's raid?
How we scoured hill and valley, dared dungeon and blade!
How we made old Virginia's heart quake through and through,
Where our sharp, sworded lightning cut sudden her view!
Three cheers!

Red battle had trampled her plains into mire;
The homestead and harvest had vanished in fire;
But far where the walls of the Blue Ridge arose,
Were prize for our daring and grief for our foes.
Three cheers!

There was grain in the garners, fresh, plump to the sight;
And mill-wheels to grind it all dainty and white;
There were kine in the farmyards, and steeds in the stall,
All ready, when down our live torrent should fall.
Three cheers!

And in the quaint hamlets that nestled more far,
Were contrabands pining to know the north star;
And home guards so loath to leave home and its joys,
But who dreamed not they staid prize for Averill's boys.
Three cheers!

Oh, keen did we grind our good sabres, and scan
Our carbines and pistols, girths, spurs, to a man!
Then up and away did we dash with a shout,
With cannon and caisson, away in and out.
Three cheers!

Away in the forest and out on the plain;
The stormy night gathered, we never drew rein;
The raw morning cut us, but onward, right on,
Till again the chill landscape in twilight grew wan.
Three cheers![Pg 327]

Sleet stung us like arrows, winds rocked us like seas,
And close all around crashed the pinnacle-trees;
Red bolts flashed so near, the glare blinded our eyes,
But onward, still on, for in front shone the prize.
Three cheers!

We climbed the steep paths where the spectre-like fir
Moaned of death in the distance; we ceased not to spur!
Death! what that to us, with our duty before!
Then onward, still on our stern hoof-thunder bore.
Three cheers!

We dashed on the garners, their white turned to black;
We dashed on the mills, smoky veils lined our track;
We dashed on the hamlet, ha, ha! what a noise,
What a stir, as upon them rushed Averill's boys!
Three cheers!

The contrabands came with wide grins and low bows,
And old ragged slouches swung wide from their brows;
But the home guards ran wildly—then blustered, when found
Not made food for powder, but Union-ward bound.
Three cheers!

The kine turned to broils at our camp fires—the steeds,
The true F. F. V.'s, fitted well to our needs;
They pranced and they neighed, as if proud of the joys
Of bearing, not home guards, but Averill's boys.
Three cheers!

We dashed on the rail-track, we ripped and we tore;
We dashed on the depots, made bold with their store;
Then away, swift away, for 'twas trifling with fire;
We were far in the foe's depths, and free to his ire.
Three cheers!

Fierce Ewell and Early and Stuart and Hill
Launched forth their fleet legions to capture and kill;
But we mocked all pursuit, and eluded each toil,
And drummed unopposed on their dear sacred soil.
Three cheers!

We swam icy torrents, climbed wild, icy roads
Where alone wolf and woodman held savage abodes;
We floundered down glary steeps, ravine, and wall,
Either side, where, one slip, and a plunge settled all:
Three cheers!

The dark, mighty woods heaved like billows, as o'er
Burst harsh jarring blasts, and like breakers their roar;
While clink of the hoof-iron and tinkle of blade
Made sprinkle like lute in love's soft serenade.
Three cheers![Pg 328]

Oh, footsore and weary our steeds at last grew!
Oh, hungry and dreary the long moments drew!
We froze to our saddles, spur hardly could ply:
What of that! we were lucky, and now could but die!
Three cheers!

But we wore through the moments, we rode though in pain;
Were sure to forget all when camp came again;—
So we rode and we rode, till, hurrah! on our sight
Burst our tents, as on midnight comes bursting the light!
Three cheers!

OBSERVATIONS OF THE SUN.

As much interest is manifested for increased knowledge of solar characteristics, and as many astronomers and numerous amateurs are daily engaged in their investigation, I have thought that the experience of thousands of observations and the final advantages of a host of experiments in combination of lenses and colored glasses, resulting highly favorably to a further elucidation of solar characteristics, would be interesting, especially to such as are engaged in that branch of inquiry.

My experiments have resulted in two important discoveries. First, by a new combination of lenses, I prevent heat from being communicated to the colored glasses, which screen the eye from the blinding effects of solar light, and thus avoid the not infrequent cracking of these glasses from excess of heat, thereby endangering the sight—whereas, by my method, the colored glasses remain as cool after an hour's observation as at the commencement, and no strain or fatigue to the eye is experienced. Secondly, the defining power of the telescope is greatly increased, so that with a good three-and-a-quarter inch acromatic object-glass, with fifty-four inches focal length (mine made by Búron, Paris), I have obtained a clearer view of the physical features of the sun than any described in astronomical works.

In a favorable state of the atmosphere, and when spots are found lying more than halfway between the sun's centre and the margin, or better still, if nearer the margin, when the spots lie more edgeways to the eye, I can see distinctly the relative thickness of the photosphere and the underlying dusky penumbra, which lie on contiguous planes of about equal thickness, like the coatings of an onion. When these spots are nearer the centre of the sun, we see more vertically into their depths, by which I frequently observe a third or cloud stratum, underlying the penumbra, and partially closing the opening, doubtless to screen the underlying globe (which, by contrast with the photosphere, is intensely black) from excessive light, or to render it more diffusive.[11] The concentric faculæ are[Pg 329] then plainly visible, and do not appear to rise above the surface of the photosphere (as generally described), but rather as depressions in that luminous envelope, frequently breaking entirely through to the penumbra; and when this last parts, forms what are called 'spots.' The delusion in supposing the faculæ to be elevated ridges, appears to me to be owing to the occasional depth of the faculæ breaking down through the photosphere to the dusky penumbra, giving the appearance of a shadow from an elevated ridge. What is still more interesting, in a favorable state of the atmosphere, I can distinctly see over the whole surface of the sun, not occupied by large spots or by faculæ, a network of pores or minute spots in countless numbers, with dividing lines or faculæ-like depressions in the photosphere, separating each little hole, varying in size, some sufficiently large to exhibit irregularities of outline, doubtless frequently combining and forming larger spots.[12] When there are no scintillations in the air, the rim or margin of the sun appears to be a perfect circle, as defined, in outline, as if carved. By interposing an adjusted circular card, to cut off the direct rays of the sun, thus improvising an eclipse, not a stray ray of light is seen to dart in any direction from the sun, except what is reflected to the instrument, diffusively, from our atmosphere; thus proving that the corona, the coruscations or flashes of light, seen during a total or nearly total eclipse of the sun by the moon, are not rays direct from the sun, but reflections from lunar snow-clad mountains, into her highly attenuated atmosphere. Solar light, being electric, is not developed as light until reaching the atmosphere of a planet or satellite, or their more solid substance, which would explain why solar light is not diffused through space, and thus account for nocturnal darkness.

The combination of glasses which enabled me to inspect the above details may be stated briefly thus: In the place of my astronomic eyepiece, I use an elongator (obtainable of opticians) to increase the power. Into this I place my terrestrial tube, retaining only the field glasses, and using a microscopic eyepiece of seven eighths of an inch in diameter. Over this I slide a tube containing my colored glasses, one dark blue and two dark green, placed at the outer end of the sliding tube, one and a half inches from the eyeglass. The colored glasses are three quarters of an inch in diameter, and the aperture next the eye in diameter half an inch. The power which I usually employ magnifies but one hundred and fifty diameters; and I use the entire aperture of my object glass. This combination of colored glasses gives a clear dead white to the sun, the most desirable for distinct vision, as all shaded portions, such as spots, however minute, and their underlying dusky penumbra, are thus brought into strong contrasts.

AN ARMY: ITS ORGANIZATION AND MOVEMENTS.

FOURTH PAPER.

In previous papers we have briefly related the history of the art of war as now practised, stated the functions of the principal staff departments, and mentioned some of the peculiar features of the different arms of military service. It remains to describe the operations of an army in its totality—to show the methods in which its three principal classes of operations—marching, encamping, and fighting—are performed.

The first necessity for rendering an army effective is evidently military discipline, including drill, subordination, and observance of the prescribed regulations. The first is too much considered as the devotion of time and toil to the accomplishment of results based on mere arbitrary rules. The contrary is the truth. Drilling in all its forms—from the lowest to the highest—from the rules for the position of the single soldier to the manœuvres of a brigade—is only instruction in those movements which long experience has proved to be the easiest, quickest, and most available methods of enabling a soldier to discharge his duties: it is not the compulsory observance of rules unfounded on proper reasons, designed merely to give an appearance of uniformity and regularity—merely to make a handsome show on parade. Nothing so much wearies and discourages a new recruit as his drill; he cannot at first understand it, and does not see the reason for it. He exclaims:

He thinks he can handle his musket with more convenience and rapidity if he is permitted to carry it and load it as he chooses, instead of going through the formula of motions prescribed in the manual. Perhaps as an individual he might; but when he is only one in a large number, his motions must be regulated, not only by his own convenience, but also by that of his neighbors. Very likely, a person uneducated in the mysteries of dancing would never adopt the polka or schottish step as an expression of exuberance; but if he dances with a company, he must be governed by the rules of the art, or he will be likely to tread on the toes of his companions, and be the cause of casualties. Military drill is constantly approaching greater simplicity, as experience shows that various particulars may be dispensed with. Formerly, when soldiers were kept up as part of the state pageants, they were subjected to numberless petty tribulations of drill, which no longer exist. Pipe-clayed belts, for example, have disappeared, except in the marine corps. Frederick the Great was the first who introduced into drill ease and quickness of execution, and since his day it has been greatly simplified and improved.

One great difficulty in our volunteer force pertains to the institution of a proper subordination. Coming from the same vicinage, often related by the various interests of life, equals at home, officers and men have found it disagreeable to assume the proper relations of their military life. The difficulty has produced two extremes of conduct on the part of officers—either too much laxity and familiarity, or the entire opposite—too great severity. The one breeds contempt among the men, and the other hatred. After the soldier begins to understand the necessities of military life, he sees that his officers should be men of dignity and reliability. He does not respect them unless they preserve a line of conduct corre[Pg 331]sponding to their superior military position. On the other hand, if he sees that they are inflated by their temporary command, and employ the opportunity to make their authority needlessly felt, and to exercise petty tyranny, he entertains feelings of revenge toward them. A model officer for the volunteer service is one who, quietly assuming the authority incident to his position, makes his men feel that he exercises it only for their own good. Such an officer enters thoroughly into all the details of his command—sees that his men are properly fed, clothed, and sheltered—that they understand their drill, and understand also that its object is to render them more effective and at the same time more secure in the hour of conflict—is careful and pains-taking, and at the same time, in the hour of danger, shares with his men all their exposures. Such an officer will always have a good command. We think there has been a tendency to error in one point of the discipline of the volunteer forces, by transferring to them the system which applied well enough to the regulars. In the latter, by long discipline, each man knows his duty, and if he commits a fault, it is his own act. In the volunteers, the faults of the men are in the majority of cases attributable to the officers. We know some companies in which no man has ever been sent to the guard house, none ever straggled in marching, none ever been missing when ordered into battle. The officers of these companies are such as we have described above. We know other companies—too many—in which the men are constantly straying around the country, constantly found drunk or disorderly, constantly out of the ranks, and constantly absent when they ought to be in line. Invariably the officers of such companies are worthless. If, then, the system of holding officers responsible for the faults of the men, were adopted, a great reform would, in our judgment, be introduced into the service. It is a well-known fact in the army that the character of a regiment, of a brigade, of a division even, can be entirely changed by a change of commanders. A hundred or a thousand men, selected at random from civil life anywhere, will have the same average character; and if the military organization which these hundred or thousand form differs greatly from that of any similar organization, it is attributable entirely to those in command.

Passing to the army at large, the next matter of prominent necessity to be noticed is the infusion in it of a uniform spirit—so as to make all its parts work harmoniously in the production of a single tendency and a single result. This must depend upon the general commanding. It is one of the marks of genius in a commander that he can make his impress on all the fractions of his command, down to the single soldier. An army divided by different opinions of the capacity or character of its commander, different views of policy, can scarcely be successful. Napoleon's power of impressing his men with an idolatry for himself and a confidence in victory is well known. The moral element in the effectiveness of an army is one of great importance. Properly stimulated it increases the endurance and bravery of the soldiers to an amazing degree. Physical ability without moral power behind it, is of little consequence. It is a well-known fact that a man will, in the long run, endure more (proportionately to his powers) than a horse, both being subject to the same tests of fatigue and hunger. A commander with whom an army is thoroughly in accord, and who shows that he is capable of conducting it through battle with no more loss than is admitted to be unavoidable, can make it entirely obedient to his will. The faculty of command is of supreme importance to a general. Without it, all other attainments—though of the highest character—will be unserviceable.[Pg 332]

However large bounties may have given inducements for men to enlist as soldiers, it is undeniable that patriotism has been a deciding motive. Under the influence of this, each soldier has entertained an ennobling opinion of himself, and has supposed that he would be received in the character which such a motive impressed on him. He has quickly ascertained, however, when fully entered on his military duties, that the discipline has reduced him from the position of an independent patriot to that of a mere item in the number of the rank and file. Military discipline is based on the theory that soldiers should be mere machines. So far as obedience is concerned, this is certainly correct enough; but discipline in this country, and particularly with volunteers, should never diminish the peculiar American feeling of being 'as good as any other man.' On the contrary, the soldier should be encouraged to hold a high estimation of himself. We do not believe that those soldiers who are mere passive instruments—like the Russians, for example—can be compared with others inspired with individual pride. Yet, perhaps, our discipline has gone too far in the 'machine' direction. To keep up the feeling of patriotism to its intensest glow is a necessity for an American army, and a good general would be careful to make this a prominent characteristic of the impression reflected from his own genius upon his command. Professional fighting is very well in its place, and there are probably thousands who are risking blood and life in our armies, who yet do not cordially sympathize with the objects of the war. But an army must be actuated by a living motive—one of powerful importance; in this war there is room for such a motive to have full play, and it is essential that our soldiers should be incited by no mere abstract inducements, by no mere entreaties to gain victory, but by exhibitions of all the reasons that make our side of the struggle the noblest and holiest that ever engaged the attention of a nation.

But we must leave such discussions, and proceed specifically to the subject of this paper—the methods of moving an army.

A state of war having arrived, it depends upon the Government to decide where the theatre of operations shall be. Usually, in Europe, this has been contracted, containing but few objective points, that is, the places the capture of which is desired; but in our country the theatre of operations may be said to have included the whole South. The places for the operations of armies having been decided on, the Government adopts the necessary measures for assembling forces at the nearest point, and accumulating supplies, as was done at Washington in 1861. A commander is assigned to organize the forces, and at the proper time he moves them to the selected theatre. Now commences the province of strategy, which is defined as 'the art of properly directing masses upon the theatre of war for the defence of our own or the invasion of the enemy's country.' Strategy is often confounded with tactics, but is entirely different—the latter being of an inferior, more contracted and prescribed character, while the former applies to large geographical surfaces, embraces all movements, and has no rules—depending entirely on the genius of the commander to avail himself of circumstances. It is the part of strategy, for instance, so to manœuvre as to mislead the enemy, or to separate his forces, or to fall upon them singly. Tactics, on the contrary, are the rules for producing particular effects, and apply to details. The strategy of the commander brings his forces into the position he has chosen for giving battle; tactics prescribe the various evolutions of the forces by which they take up their assigned positions. It was by strategy that General Grant obtained the position at Petersburg; it was by tactics that his army was able to march with[Pg 333] such celerity and precision that the desired objects were attained.

Marches are of two classes—of concentration and of manœuvre. The former, being used merely for the assembling of an army, or conducting it to the theatre of operations, need but little precision; the latter are performed upon the actual theatre of war, often in the presence of the enemy, and require care and skill for their proper conduct. The details of marches are of course governed by the nature of the country in which they are performed, but so far as practicable they are made in two methods—by parallel columns, or by the flank. The former is the most usual and the most preferable in many respects; indeed, the latter is never adopted except when compelled by necessity, or for the purpose of executing some piece of strategy. A careful arrangement of all details by commanders, and a steady persistence in their performance on the part of the troops, are required to permit this class of marches to be made safely in the presence of an enemy.

For the use of an army of a hundred thousand men about to march forward against an enemy, all the parallel roads within a space of at least ten miles are needed, and the more of them there are the better, since the columns can thereby be made shorter, and the trains be sent by the interior roads. Where a sufficient number of parallel roads exist, available for the army, it is usual to put about a division on each—sometimes the whole of a corps—according to the nature of the country and the objects to be attained. We will attempt to illustrate the march of an army by columns in the following diagram.

Suppose that E and F are two towns thirty miles apart, and that there are road connections as represented in the diagram. The army represented by the dotted line A B, wishes to move to attack the army C D. Cavalry, followed by infantry columns, would be sent out on the roads E M N and E G I, the cavalry going off toward P and K to protect the flanks, and the infantry taking position at I and O. Meantime another column, behind which are the baggage trains, covered with a rear guard, has moved to L. If the three points I, L, and O are reached simultaneously, the army can safely establish its new line, the baggage trains are entirely protected, and the whole country is occupied as effectually as if every acre were in possession.

The formation of a marching column varies according to circumstances, but is usually somewhat as follows, when moving toward an enemy:

The dots representing the ambulances and wagon trains do not show the true proportion of these to the rest of the column, and it cannot be given except at too great a sacrifice of space. They occupy more road than all the other parts of the column combined. With the advance guard go the engineers and pioneers, to repair the roads, make bridges, etc.

The difficulties and dangers attending a flank march can be made apparent by a diagram:

Let A B and C D represent two armies drawn up against each other in three lines of battle, on opposite sides of a stream, E F. The commander of the army A B, finding he cannot cross and drive the enemy from their works, determines, by a flank march to the left, to go around them, crossing at the point E. In order to effect this he must send his trains off by the road I K L to some interior line, and then slowly unfold his masses upon the single road K E H. By the time the head of his column is at H the rear has not perhaps left K, and thus the whole length of his army is exposed on its side to an attack by the enemy, which may sever it into two unsupporting portions. It will be perceived that to accomplish such marches with security, they must be made in secret as far as possible, until a portion of the marching force reaches the rear of the enemy; the column must be kept compact, and great vigilance must be exercised. In his progress from the Rapidan to the James, General Grant made three movements of this character with entire success, each time putting our forces so far in the rear of the rebels that they were compelled to hasten their own retreat instead of delaying to avail themselves of the opportunity for attacking.

Besides the topography of the country, various circumstances influence the manner in which a march is conducted—particularly the position of the enemy. When following a retreating foe, the cavalry is sent in the advance, supported by some infantry and horse artillery, to harass the rear guard, and, if practicable, delay the retreat until the main army can come up. This was the case in the peninsula campaign, from Yorktown to the Chickahominy. Again, the exact position of the enemy may not be known, or he may have large bodies in different places, so that his intentions cannot be surmised. It is then necessary to scatter the army so as to cover a number of threatened points, care being exercised to have all the different bodies within supporting distances, and to be on guard against a sudden concentration of the enemy between them. This was the case in the campaign which ended so gloriously at Gettysburg. The rebels were then threatening both Harrisburg and Baltimore, and the two extremities of our army were over thirty miles apart, so as to be concentrated either on the right, left, or centre, as events might determine. It happened that a collision was brought on at Gettysburg, and both armies immediately concentrated there. The corps on the right of our army was obliged to march about thirty-two miles, performing the distance in about eighteen or nineteen hours, and[Pg 335] arriving in time to participate in the second day's battle. As much skill is evinced by a commander in preliminary manœuvring marches and the assignment of positions to the different portions of his army as in the direction of a battle. Napoleon gained many of his victories through the effects of such manœuvres.

Time is a very important element in marching. An army which can march five miles a day more than its opponent will almost certainly be victorious, for it can go to his flank, or assail him when unprepared, Frederick the Great achieved his successes by imparting mobility to his troops, and Napoleon also was a master of that peculiar feature in that faculty of command of which we have before spoken, that enables a leader to obtain from his men the maximum amount of continued exertion. To achieve facility in marching, all the equipments of the soldiers should be as light as possible, and the columns should be encumbered with no more trains than are absolutely indispensable. Officers of the highest class must be prepared to forego unnecessary luxuries, and to march with nothing more than a blanket, a change of clothing, and rations for a few days in their haversacks.

When a march is contemplated, orders are issued from the general headquarters prescribing all the details—the time at which each corps is to start, the roads to be taken, the precautions to be observed, and the points to be gained. Usually an early hour in the morning is fixed for the commencement of the march. If not in the immediate presence of the enemy, and a surprise is not intended, the reveillé is beaten about three o'clock, and the sleepy soldiers arouse from their beds on the ground, pack up their tents, blankets, and equipments, get a hasty breakfast, and fall into their ranks. If some commander—perhaps of a regiment only—has been dilatory, the whole movement is delayed. Many well-formed plans have been defeated by the indolence of a subordinate commander and his failure to put his troops in motion at the designated hour. Such a delay may embarrass the whole army by detaining other portions, whose movements are to be governed by those of the belated fragment. At four o'clock, if orders have been obeyed, the long columns are moving. Perhaps four or five hours are occupied in filing out into the road. While the sun is rising and the birds engaged at their matins, the troops are trudging along at that pace of three miles an hour, which seems so tardy, but which, persisted in day after day, traverses so great a distance. Every hour there is ten or fifteen minutes' halt, enabling the rear to close up, and the men to relieve themselves temporarily of their guns and knapsacks. Soon the heat commences to grow oppressive, the dust rises in suffocating clouds, knapsacks weigh like lead, and the artillery horses pant as they drag the heavy guns. But the steady tramp must be continued till about eleven o'clock, when a general halt under the shelter of some cool woods, by the side of a stream, is ordered. Two or three hours of welcome rest are here employed in dinner and finishing the broken morning's nap. After the intenser heat of the day is past, the tramp recommences, and continues till six or seven o'clock, when the place appointed for encamping is reached. Soon white tents cover every hill and plain and valley, the weary animals are unharnessed, trees and fence rails disappear rapidly to feed the consuming camp fires, there is a universal buzz formed from the laugh, the song, the shout, and the talking of twenty thousand voices: it gradually subsides, the fires grow dim, and silence and darkness fall upon the scene.

Such marching, with its twenty, twenty-five, or thirty miles a day, is light compared with the harassing fatigues of a retreat, before the pursuit of a triumphant enemy. To accom[Pg 336]plish this movement, so as to save the organization and the material of an army, without too great a loss of life, tests in the highest degree the skill of a commander and the fortitude of the men. In a retreat, the usual order of marching is reversed—the trains are sent in the advance, and the troops must remain behind for their protection. Often it happens that they are obliged to remain in line all day, to check by fighting the advance of the enemy, and then continue their march by night. The dead and wounded must, to a great extent, be left on the field; supplies are perhaps exhausted, with no opportunity for replenishment; the merciless cannon of the enemy are constantly thundering in the rear, his cavalry constantly making inroads upon the flanks. Weary, hungry, exhausted, perhaps wounded, the soldier must struggle along for days and nights, if he would avoid massacre or consignment to the cruelties of a prison. The rout of a great army—the disorganization and confusion of a retreat, even when well conducted—the toil and suffering and often slaughter—are the saddest scenes earth can present. Who can paint the terrors of that winter retreat of the French from Moscow? Fortunately, in our war we have had nothing to equal in horrors the retreats of European armies, but no one who passed through those trying seven days fighting and marching which closed the Peninsula campaign, can ever fail to shudder at the sufferings imposed on humanity by a retreat.

VIOLATIONS OF LITERARY PROPERTY.

THE FEDERALIST.—LIFE AND CHARACTER OF JOHN JAY.

Among the rights which are ill protected by law, and yet of essential importance to the individual and society, are those of literary property. If any bequest should be sacred, it is that of thought, convictions, art—the intellectual personality that survives human life—and the 'local habitation and the name' whereby genius, opinion, sentiment—what constitutes the best image and memorial of a life and a mind, a character and a career, is preserved and transmitted. And yet, with all our boasted civilization and progress, no rights are more frequently or grossly violated, no wrongs so little capable of redress, as those relating to literary property. Herein there is a singular moral obtuseness a want of chivalry, an inadequate sense of obligation—doubtless in part originating in that unjust legislation, or rather want of legislation, whereby international law protects the products of the mind and recognizes national literature as a great social interest. Within a few months, the biography of our pioneer author,[13] whose memory his life and character, not less than his genius, had singularly endeared to the whole range of English readers—was prepared by a relative designated by himself, who, with remarkable tact and fidelity, completed his delicate task, according to the materials provided and the wishes expressed by his illustrious kinsman. A London publisher reprinted the work, with eighty pages interpolated, wherein, with an utter disregard to common delicacy toward the dead or self-respect in the living, unauthentic gossip is made to desecrate the reticent[Pg 337] and consistent tone of the work, pervert its spirit, and detract from its harmonious attraction and truth. A greater or more indecent and unjustifiable liberty was never taken by a publisher with a foreign work; it was an insult to the memory of Washington Irving, to his biographer and those who cherish his fame.

Not many weeks ago, an eloquent young divine, who had in no small degree saved the State of California to the Union, by his earnest and constant plea for national integrity, died in the midst of his useful and noble career: forthwith the publisher of a Review, in whose pages some of his early essays had appeared, announced their republication: in vain the friends and family of Starr King protested against so crude and limited a memorial of his genius, and entreated that they might be allowed to glean and garner more mature and complete fruits of his pen, as a token of his ability and his career; and thus do justice, by careful selection and well-advised preparation, to the memory they and their fellow citizens so tenderly and proudly cherished: no; the articles had been paid for, the recent death of the writer gave them a market value, and the publishers were resolved to turn them to account, however good taste and right feeling and sacred associations were violated.

Again, one of the few legal works of American origin which has a standard European reputation is Wheaton's 'International Law.' Its author was eminently national in his convictions; foreign service and patriotic instincts had made him thoroughly American in his sympathies and sentiments; no one of our diplomatic agents sent home such comprehensive and sagacious despatches, having in view 'the honor and welfare of the whole country;' and no one who knew Henry Wheaton doubts that, were he living at this hour, all his influence, hopes, and faith would be identified with the Union cause.

Yet an edition [14] of his great work has lately appeared, edited in an opposite interest; and the standard reference on the law of nations, so honorable to the legal knowledge, perspicacity, and candor of an American author, goes forth perverted and deformed by annotations and comments indirectly sympathetic with the wicked rebellion now devastating the nation. Can a greater literary outrage be imagined? Is it possible more grossly to violate the rights of the dead?

Aware that certain rules apply to the annotation of legal treatises not recognized in other departments of literature, and diffident of personal judgment in this respect, in order to ascertain how far our sense of this violation of literary property and reputation was well founded, how far we were right in asserting a partisan aim, we requested an accomplished lawyer, thoroughly versed in the literature of his profession, and experienced as an editor, to examine this edition of Wheaton, and state his own opinion thereof: to him we are indebted for the following clear and palpable instances of a perverted use of a standard American treatise, endeared to many living friends of the author, and all his intelligent and patriotic countrymen: of the 'additions' to the original by the editor, he says:

'1. They indicate considerable reading and industry, but are far too voluminous, and abound in extended extracts from speeches, state papers, and statutes, which should have been omitted altogether, or very much abridged.

'2. They contain no language complimentary to the Administration, little or nothing in defence of the Government—none that can be offensive to Jefferson Davis; and, as a whole, they give the impression that he regards the Confederate position as being quite as defensible, on the principles of international law, as that of the United States.

'3. He has no word of censure for[Pg 338] Lord John Russell, and no word of apology for Mr. Seward. He nowhere calls the Confederates rebels, and nowhere thinks the conduct of France suspicious or unfriendly.

'4. His positions are unquestionably the same with those of Seymour, Bishop Hopkins, Professor Morse, Judge Woodward, etc.

'5. He is everywhere cold—more willing to wound than bold to strike; and yet he fretfully commits himself before he gets through, in defence of slavery and extreme democratic positions.

'6. He does not pretend that he was ever requested by the great author with whose productions he has taken such liberties to undertake the editorial duties.

'His language is so general that one needs to read it carefully to feel the full force of what I have said.

'In the preface (page 1-20), he speaks of 'Spanish American independence, now jeopardized by our fratricidal contest'—fratricidal is indeed a favorite word; he uses it in an offensive sense as regards the United States. Page 99, note, he says of slavery, what is utterly untrue, that 'the Constitution recognized it as property, and pledges the Federal Government to protect it.' The noble act of June 19, 1862, forbidding slavery in United States Territories, he comments on in this wise: 'This act wholly ignores the decision of the Supreme Court (meaning the Dred Scott case) on the subject of slavery.' He then inserts the whole act in the note, only to hold it up to censure—'testing it by international law' as interpreted by him. At page 605 he denounces that law as 'obnoxious not only to the principles of international law, but to the Constitution of the United States.' His note and extracts, including long extracts from speeches of Thomas, of Massachusetts, and Crittenden, of Kentucky, fill more than twenty-two pages—reserving a line or two of text at the top. To say nothing of the sentiments, such notes are a shameful abuse of the reputation and work of Mr. Wheaton, and a perversion of the duties and rights of an editor. But a word of the sentiments. He exhausts himself and the records of the past in accumulating precedents to condemn the policy of freeing slaves as a war measure, or of arming them in the nation's defence.

'At page 614, in this same note, speaking of the effect of the Proclamation of Emancipation, he says: 'The attention of publicists may well be called to the withdrawal of the four millions of men from the cultivation of cotton, which, is the source of wealth of the great commercial and manufacturing nations of Europe.' That is, he suggests this as a ground for interference in our affairs on the principles of his international law. He further adds that this cultivation of cotton is 'by nature a virtual monopoly of the seceded States;' that is, nature preordained the negroes to be slaves in the seceded States to raise cotton; and hence natural and international law require emancipation proclamations to be put down. Did Stephens ever go farther? Again, on the same page, he says: 'The effect on the United States, in the event of the reestablishment of the Federal authority,' without the Proclamation in force, etc., 'would be seriously felt, in its financial bearings,' etc.—'abroad as well as at home.' Not satisfied, therefore, with suggesting a justification of intervention, on the basis of international law, he appeals to the cupidity of foreigners as well as natives, by hinting also that financial ruin may follow the triumph of Freedom and the Federal armies. What a shame that an American editor should use the great name of Wheaton to give dignity to such suggestions in foreign countries.' He then gives—all in the same interminable note (page 614)—an extract from The Morning Chronicle, of May 16, 1860, of which I give you this delicious morsel: 'No blacks, no cotton, such is the finality.' At page 609, he speaks of the 'incompatibility of confiscation of property with the present state of civilization.' At page 609, he quotes, with evident delight, the sanctimonious despatch of Lord John Russell about sinking ships in Charleston harbor, which his lordship calls a 'project only worthy the times of barbarism;' and the American annotator, who could use page after page to degrade his own Government for emancipating slaves, of course could not be expected to refer to any of the precedents that would have silenced Lord John, and have justified the United States; and he therefore passes on with no reference to them.

'At page 669, Mr. Wheaton says: 'The validity of maritime captures[Pg 339] must be determined in a court of the captor's Government,' etc. This American editor does not so much as allude to the fact, that while he is writing, the highways of the ocean are lighted by the fires of American merchantmen, plundered, and then burned, without condemnation of any court, by vessels fitted out in English ports, in open violation of the first principles of international law, and which have never been in any port under the jurisdiction of the piratical Confederacy!

'Some of his indications of sympathy with the rebellion are quite in excess of those of Lord John, with whose views, on the whole, he seems well enough pleased. For example, at page 254, Lord John is quoted as follows: 'Has a commission from the so-called President Davis,' etc.; but at page 107 and generally, the American editor, not willing to imply that there is any doubt about the reality or permanency of the Confederate concern, nor being willing to offend its managers, speaks of 'the President of the Confederate States,' and 'an act of Congress of the Confederate States,' etc.; and when he reaches page 535, as if to set Lord John a better example (and I believe there had been some Confederate victories about the time he was writing that note), he says: 'A proclamation was issued by President Davis, on the 14th of August, 1861, ordering all citizens adhering to the Government of the United States, etc., to depart from the Confederate States in forty days.' It is very evident the author approves this order as warranted by international law, at least according to his interpretation thereof.

'Need I go farther to satisfy you of the temper and character of the notes, and the views of their author? I can hardly suppress the expression of my indignation that such a use should have been made of this great national work—that such an opportunity should have been lost to say something worthily in favor of colonization and freedom, and in vindication of our nation, in its great struggle with the relics of barbarism in its midst, and with the selfish and ambitious spirits of the European continent, so ready to take advantage of our troubles to promote their own schemes.'

We now come to another and more generally obnoxious instance of this use of standard national works for personal or political objects. The 'Federalist,' from the circumstances under which it was written, the influence it exerted, the events with which it is associated, the character of the writers, and the ability manifest both in their arguments and the style—has long been regarded as a political classic. It was the text book of a large and intelligent party at the time of and long subsequent to the adoption of the Constitution; and few works of political philosophy, written to meet an exigency and prepare the way for a governmental change, have attained so high and permanent a rank among foreign critics and historians. It is evident that such a work, whoever owns the copyright or boasts the authorship, has a national value and interest. To preserve it intact, to keep it in an eligible and accessible form before the public, is all that any editor or publisher has a right to claim. Much has been written as to the authorship of the respective papers, and some passages have been variously rendered in different editions; but the general scope and merit of the work, and the obvious and unchallenged identity of style and opinion with the acknowledged authors as regards most of the articles, make the discussions on these points of comparative little significance to the reader of the present day, who regards the work as a whole, seizes its essential traits, and is en rapport with its magnanimous tone, so wholly opposed to petty division of credit in a labor undertaken from patriotic motives, and by scholars and gentlemen. Enough that we have here the reasonings of enlightened citizens, the views of statesmen, the arguments whereby the claims of the Constitution were vindicated. Whoever is familiar with the history of the period, finds in this remarkable work a memorable illustration of that rectitude and wisdom which presided over the early counsels of the nation, and an evidence of the rare union of sagacity and comprehensive[Pg 340]ness, of liberal aspiration and prudential foresight, of conscientiousness and intelligence, which has won for the founders of the republic the admiration of the world. In these pages, how much knowledge of the past is combined with insight as to the future, what common sense is blent with learning, what perspicacity with breadth of view! Each department of the proposed government is described and analyzed; the political history of Greece, Rome, the Italian republics, France, and Great Britain examined for precedents and illustrations; popular objections answered; popular errors rectified; this provision explained, that clause justified; the judicial, legislative, and executive functions defined; national revenue discussed in all its relations; the advantages of our civil list, of a republic over a democracy in controlling the effects of faction, are clearly indicated; as are those attending the reservation of criminal and civil justice to the respective States: on the one hand the defects of the old Confederacy are stated with emphasis and truth, and on the other, the transcendent benefits of Federal union are elaborately argued, and economy, stability, and vigor proved to be its legitimate fruits. Of the evils of the old system, it is said: 'Let the point of extreme depression to which our national dignity and credit have sunk, let the inconvenience felt everywhere from a lax and ill-administered government, let the revolt of a part of North Carolina, the memory of insurrection in Pennsylvania, and actual insurrection in Massachusetts, declare it.' An unique distinction of this political treatise is that while Pericles, Cato, Hume, Montesquieu, Junius, and other classical and modern authorities are cited with scholarly tact, the most practical arguments drawn from the facts of the hour and the needs of the people, are conveyed in language the most lucid and impressive. To give a complete analysis of the 'Federalist' would require a volume; the glance we have cast upon its various topics sufficiently indicates the extent and importance of the work. Not less memorable is the spirit in which it was undertaken. 'A nation without a national government,' it is said, 'is, in my view, an awful spectacle;' and elsewhere—'The establishment of a constitution in times of profound peace, by the voluntary consent of a whole people, is a prodigy, to the completion of which I look forward with trembling anxiety.' 'I dread,' writes Jay, 'the more the consequences of new attempts, because I know that powerful individuals in this and in other States are enemies to a General National Government in every possible shape.'

Under such a sense of responsibility, with such patriotic solicitude did Hamilton, Madison, and Jay plead for the new Constitution with their fellow citizens of New York in the journals of the day, and it is these fragmentary comments and illustrations which, subsequently brought together in volumes, constitute 'the Federalist'; and well did they, toward the close of the discussion, observe: 'Let us now pause and ask ourselves whether, in the course of these papers, the proposed Constitution has not been satisfactorily vindicated from the aspersions thrown upon it, and whether it has not been shown worthy of the public approbation and necessary to the public safety and prosperity.' Whatever degree of sympathy or antagonism the intelligent reader of the 'Federalist' may feel, he can scarcely fail to admit that it is a masterly discussion of principles, and that the influence it exerted in securing the ratification of the Constitution in the State of New York, was a legitimate result of intelligent and conscientious advocacy. But the work has other than merely historical and literary claims upon our esteem at this hour. Its principles find confirmation here and now, in a degree and to an extent which lends new force and distinction[Pg 341] to its authors as writers of political foresight and patriotic prescience. There are innumerable passages as applicable to the events of the last three years as if suggested by them; there are arguments and prophecies which have only attained practical demonstration through the terrible ordeal of civil war now raging around and in the heart of the republic.

When we saw the announcement of a new edition [15] of this national work, we hailed it as most seasonable and desirable: when the first volume came under our notice, our first feeling was one of gratitude to the editor for having taken such care to reproduce the work with the greatest possible correctness of text, obtained by patient collation of the different editions: regarding his labors as those of a disinterested historical student, ambitious to bring before the public a work full of warning and wisdom for this terrible national crisis, we at first saw in his annotations and comments only the labor of love whereby a standard work is illustrated and made more emphatic and complete: but, ere long, we found a spirit of detraction at work, a want of sympathy with the tone and a want of understanding of the motives of the authors, which made us regret that, instead of this partisan edition, the 'Federalist' had not been reissued with a brief explanatory introduction, and without note or comment.

Instead of a hearty recognition, we find a narrow interpretation of these eminent men: long-exploded slanders, born of partisan spite, are more in the mind of the editor than the permanent and invaluable traits which, to a generous and refined mind, constitute the legitimate claims of the work itself and the authors thereof. Guizot remarks: 'In the discussions of the numbers' (the 'Federalist'), 'for all that combines a profound knowledge of the great elementary principles of human government with the wisest maxims of practical administration, I do not know in the whole compass of my reading, whether from ancient or modern authors, so able a work.' The Edinburgh Review says: 'The 'Federalist' is a publication that exhibits an extent and precision of information, a profundity of research and an acuteness of understanding, which would have done honor to the most illustrious statesmen of ancient or modern times.'

In contrast with these and similar instances of eminent foreign appreciation, the editor of this edition of the 'Federalist' attributes to tact what is due to truth, represents the people, as such, as opposed to the Constitution, and Hamilton, Jay, and Madison 'poor antagonists' in combating their objections; if so, how does he account for the remarkable triumph of their dispassionate exposition and lucid arguments? In all political and literary history there are few more benign and distinguished examples of the practical efficiency of intelligent, patriotic, and conscientious reasoning against ignorance, prejudice, and partisan misrepresentation. And yet, in the face of this testimony, by the self-constituted editor of this national work, Hamilton is described as sophistical and disingenuous, whose object is to deceive rather than to instruct, to mislead rather than enlighten, and whose motives are partisan rather than patriotic.

Throughout the introduction there is a spirit of latent detraction; insinuations against the aims and methods, if not against the character of the illustrious men whose memories are our most precious inheritance; we feel that, however industrious in research and ingenious in conjecture, the tone and range of the critic's mind are wholly inadequate for any sympathetic insight as to the nature of the men whose writings he undertakes to reintroduce to the public—and this irrespective of any difference of political opinion: something more than verbal accuracy and[Pg 342] patient collation is requisite to interpret the 'Federalist' and appreciate its authors; even a political opponent, of kindred social and personal traits, would do better justice to the theme: and a truly patriotic citizen of the republic, at such a crisis as the present, could never find therein an appropriate occasion to magnify political differences at the expense of national sentiment.

Whatever the literary merit or political interest of the 'Federalist,' its moral value is derived from our faith in the absolute sincerity and profound convictions of its authors: not only does the internal evidence of every page bear emphatic testimony thereto, but the correspondence of each writer as well as of contemporary statesmen, attest the same truth: they regarded the condition of the country as ruinous, and lamented that the fruits of victory turned to ashes on the lips of the people, because there was no homogeneous and vital organization to conserve and administer the invaluable blessings won by the sword: against the suicidal jealousy of State rights as adequate for prosperous self-reliance without the bonds and blessings of a vital National Government, they earnestly directed the most patriotic and intelligent arguments: of these the 'Federalist' is the chief repertory; hence its value and interest as a popular treatise which prepared the way for the intelligent adoption of the Constitution; yet in this edition the introductory remarks impugn the sincerity of the authors, and attempt to revive the political heresy of extreme State as opposed to Federal power, which it is the primary object of the work to expose and condemn; and this at a time when the fatal doctrine is in vogue as what may be called the metaphysical apology for the most base and barbarous rebellion against free government recorded in history. According to this editor, Chancellor Livingston was 'dilatory and uncertain,' Duane sympathized with the Tories in power, Hamilton exaggerated the troubles of the country and consciously sought to make his fellow citizens attribute, against the facts, the depreciated currency and the dearth of trade to the weakness of the Confederation—making a false issue to effect a political triumph: 'his plan of operations,' his 'tact,' are referred to as if, instead of being a true patriot and conscientious statesman, he was a mere special pleader, intriguing and ambitious. Add to this that, when introducing the 'Federalist' to the public in what purports to be an historical preface, he is silent on the wonderful fruits of the Constitution therein advocated—and fails to indicate, as would any candid critic, the remarkable proofs which time and experience yield of the practical wisdom and patriotic foresight of the men whose honorable prestige he thus indirectly seeks to undermine. Jay, we are told, was regarded 'by the majority of his fellow citizens as selfish, impracticable, and aristocratic;' he is said to have been 'induced to undertake' his share of the 'Federalist;' he speaks of the small part he actually did write, without alluding to the fact that illness withdrew him from work of all kinds, after his third paper had been contributed—thus conveying the impression of a lukewarm zeal and even utter indifference; whereas not only do his own words confute the imputation, but we have Madison's declaration that the idea of the 'Federalist' was suggested by Jay; 'and it was undertaken last fall,' he writes to Jefferson, 'by Jay, Hamilton, and myself. The proposal came from the two former. The execution was thrown, by the sickness of Jay, mostly on the two others.' It is even insinuated by this editor that Jay confined himself to topics which could be discussed 'without compromising in the least his general political sentiments, and without obliging him to assent even by implication to any portion of the proposed Constitution.' The representative du[Pg 343]ties and offices again and again forced upon John Jay—whether as a writer, jurist, envoy, or legislator—the evidence of his own letters, and especially the testimony of his fellow statesmen, adequately confute such misrepresentations as we have noted. It is a thankless, and, we believe, a superfluous task to vindicate the manliness, sincerity, and patriotism of the authors of the 'Federalist' and their fellow statesmen; indeed, their illustrious opponents in political questions again and again bore witness to the worth, wisdom, and integrity of the men, while many disputed the doctrine of the writers; popular sentiment embalms their fame and cherishes their memories; the insinuations of any self-constituted editor cannot impair the confidence or reverse the verdict which time has only confirmed and national growth made more emphatic. On the other hand, such attempts to diminish the personal authority, by misrepresenting the methods and motives of these eminent men, as are exhibited in the whole tone and manner of this editorship of a national work, imply a perverted sense of the duties of the hour, an insensibility to the terrible crisis through which the nation is passing, that cannot be too severely condemned by the patriotic and intelligent of all parties. Now, if never before, we should keep bright the escutcheon of our country's honor, and renew our love and admiration for the fathers of the republic and our faith in their principles.

Scrupulous as firm, Jay acted with judicial moderation; he advocated the last petition before declaring hostility against Great Britain—desirous of trying every means before accepting the dread alternative of war; he insisted upon a general convention of the States before deciding upon the new Constitution; he was loyal until loyalty became an abrogation of free citizenship; law and justice with him went hand in hand with reform, and rectitude, not impulse, gave consistency to his course. Such a man lays himself open to factious criticism far more than reckless politicians, who are restrained by no sense of responsibility; but, on the other hand, in the last analysis, they stand forth the most pure because the most patient, just, and truly patriotic of representative statesmen.

'Mr. Jay,' says John Adams, 'had as much influence in the preparatory measures for digesting the Constitution and in obtaining its adoption as any man in the nation;' yet according to this editor of the 'Federalist,' he found therein 'little that he could commend, and nothing for which he could labor:' the same authority declares that he was regarded 'by the majority of his fellow citizens as selfish, impracticable, and aristocratic;' while Dr. McVickar justly remarks that the first thing that strikes us in contemplating his life is 'the unbroken continuity, the ceaseless succession of honorable confidences, throughout a period of twenty-eight years, reposed in Jay by his countrymen.'

But instead of dwelling upon such abortive disparagement, the only importance of which arises from its being annexed to and associated with a standard political text-book, let us refresh our memories, our patriotism, our best sympathies of mind and heart, by tracing once more the services and delineating the character of this illustrious man, whose benign image seems to invoke his countrymen, at this momentous climax of our national life, to recur to those principles and that faith which founded and should now save the republic.

Among the French Protestants who were obliged to seek a foreign home when the Edict of Nantes was revoked, was Pierre Jay, a prosperous merchant of Rochelle, who took up his abode in England. This statement alone is no inadequate illustration of the character of John Jay's paternal grandfather; sagacity, enterprise, and application, are qualities we may justly infer from[Pg 344] commercial success; and when the fruits thereof were, in no small degree, sacrificed by adherence to a proscribed religion, no ordinary degree of moral courage and pure integrity must have been united to prudential industry. Those who believe in that aristocracy of nature whereby normal instincts are transmitted, will find even in this brief allusion to the Huguenot merchant traits identical with those which insured the public usefulness and endear the personal memory of his grandson. The latter's father, Augustus Jay, was one of three sons. He, with many others of the second generation of exiled French Protestants, found in America a more auspicious refuge than even the more free states of Europe afforded. A family who had previously emigrated to New York, under similar circumstances, naturally welcomed the new emigré; and the daughter of Bathezan Bayard became his wife. Their children consisted of three daughters and one son, who was named Peter for his grandfather. One of the prominent names of the original Dutch colonists of New York is Van Cortland; and Peter Jay married, in 1728, Mary, a daughter of this race, by whom he had ten children, of which John, the subject of this sketch, was the eighth. Genealogists, who reckon lineage according to humanity rather than pride, might find in the immediate ancestry of John Jay one of those felicitous combinations which so often mark the descent of eminent men among our Revolutionary statesmen. With the courteous and intelligent proclivities of Gallic blood the conservative, domestic, and honest nature of the Hollander united to form a well-balanced mind and efficient character. With the best associations of the time and place were blended the firmness of principle derived from ancestors who had suffered for conscience' sake; so that in the antecedents and very blood of the boy were elements of the Christian, patriot, and gentleman; which phases of his nature we find dominant and pervasive throughout his life; for it is a remarkable fact in the career of John Jay that by no triumph of extraordinary genius, by no favor of brilliant circumstances did he win and leave an honored name, but through the simple uprightness and the sound wisdom of a consistent and loyal character—so emphatic and yet unostentatious as to overcome, in the end, the most rancorous political injustice. His early training was no less favorable to this result than his birth. His father removed to Westchester county, and, on a pleasant rural domain still occupied by the family, the future jurist's childhood was passed. At that time there was a French church at New Rochelle, the pastor of which was an excellent scholar; and this gentleman fitted young Jay for college. He gave early proofs of a studious turn of mind and a reticent temperament; acquiring knowledge with pleasure and facility; and, for the most part, exhibiting a thoughtful demeanor. In some of his father's letters, alluding to his childhood, he is described as a boy of 'good capacity,' of 'grave disposition,' and one who 'takes to learning exceedingly well.' He attended the grammar school of the French clergyman until the age of fourteen, and then entered King's (now Columbia) College, at that time under the care of President Johnson. Here he became intimate with three youths with whom he was destined to be memorably associated in after life, and whose names, with his own, have since become historical—Gouverneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and Robert R. Livingston. We can easily imagine that the diversities of character between these remarkable men were already evident; the ardor and frankness of Hamilton, the emphatic rhetoric of Morris and fluent grace of Livingston must have singularly contrasted with the reserve, seriousness, and quietude of Jay; yet were they akin in the normal basis of character—in the love[Pg 345] of knowledge, in loyalty to conviction, and that heart of courtesy which harmonizes the most diverse gifts of mind and traits of manner; even then no common mutual respect must have existed between them, and difference of opinion elicited both wit and wisdom. In a letter to the latter of these young friends, written soon after, Jay speaks of himself as 'ambitious;' but little in his subsequent life justifies the idea; he had more pride of character—more need to respect himself—than ambition, as that word is usually understood; excellence more than distinction was his aim;—no one of the leaders in the Revolution sought office less, none fulfilled its duties with more singleness of purpose, or escaped from its responsibilities with greater alacrity; the instincts of John Jay were mainly for truth, duty, and success, in the higher acceptation of the term. What he undertook, indeed, he strove to do well, but it was from an ideal rectitude and a pride of achievement more than a desire to gain applause and advancement; his ambition was more scholarly than political or personal. He graduated with the highest honors on the fifteenth of May, 1764, and delivered the Latin salutatory. His family had gained wealth and position in commerce, and it is probable that, with his clear-sighted perseverance, John Jay would have been a most successful merchant; but his tastes were intellectual; he determined to study law—at that period, in this country, when Blackstone's 'Commentaries' had not appeared, before Chancellor Kent had written, or a law school had been established, a discipline so arduous and uninviting as to be conscientiously adopted only by the most self-reliant and determined.

For a brief period Jay was the law partner of his friend Livingston, afterward the chancellor of the State. The evidences of his professional career, like those of so many eminent lawyers, are inadequate to suggest any clear idea of his method and ability, except so far as the respect he won, the practice he acquired, and the style of those state papers which are preserved, indicate argumentative powers, extensive knowledge, and finished style: in a few years he had become eminent at the bar, and while in the full tide of success, the exigencies of public affairs—the dawn of the American Revolution, called him from personal to patriotic duties. He was an active participant in the first meeting called to protest against the injustice and oppression of the British Government, and elected one of the committee of fifty chosen by the people, to decide upon a course of action: at his instance they recommended the appointment of deputies from each of the thirteen colonies. Jay was the youngest member of the Congress that met on the 5th of September, 1774, and was selected as one of the committee to draft an address to the people of Great Britain; in the next Congress he was one of the committee to prepare the declaration showing the causes and necessity of a resort to arms, and of that appointed to draft a petition to the king—as a last resort before actual hostilities; he also wrote the address to the people of Canada, Jamaica, and Ireland. The address to the people of Great Britain opens thus:

These and other state papers, emanating, as Jefferson declared, 'from the finest pen in America,' won the eloquent admiration of Chatham, and, by their dignified, rational, and well-informed spirit, had a great influence in securing, at the outset of the momentous struggle, the respect and sympathy of the wise and conscientious in both hemispheres, for the people and their enlightened and intrepid representatives.

As correspondent with the other colonies, in all the important discussions and arrangements, we find John Jay earnest, sagacious, and indefatigable: chosen a delegate to the New York colonial convention, he could not be present in Congress to sign the Declaration of Independence; but he reported the resolutions whereby his State endorsed that memorable instrument—her first official act toward American independence.

In 1774, Jay had married the daughter of Governor Livingston, of New Jersey; and the glimpses which his correspondence affords of his domestic life, indicate that in this regard he was peculiarly blest, not only in the sweet and dignified sympathies of a family inspired by tenderness, loyalty, and faith, but in the freshness and vigor of his own affections, whereby retirement became far more dear than the gratification even of patriotic ambition in an official career. His home was indeed overshadowed by the dark angel, and the loss of a beloved daughter long and deeply saddened his heart; but there was a daily beauty in the confidence and sympathy of his conjugal relation—hinted rather than developed in the freedom of his letters to the home whose attractions were only increased by absence and distance, in the respect and love of his sons, and the tender consideration devoted to his blind brother; while, spreading in beautiful harmony from this sacred centre, his heart and hand freely and faithfully responded to numerous and eminent ties of friendship, associations of enterprise and philanthropy, and the humblest claims of neighborhood and dependants.

His next eminent service was to draft the Constitution of New York; subsequently amended, it yet attests his patriotism and legal insight; while his own illustrations sanctioned its judicial workings: one of the council of safety and appointed chief justice of the supreme court, Jay maintained, but never abused the high authority with which he was thus invested; kindness to political opponents, devoid of all bitterness, inflexibly just, he was often compared to the unyielding and self-possessed characters of antiquity. When Clinton was preparing to join Burgoyne, Jay held his first court at Kingston—administering justice under the authority of an invaded State, and on the very line of an enemy's advance; under such circumstances, his uniform dignity, calmness, faith in the people, in the cause, and in the result, made a deep and salutary impression, enhanced by the courage exhibited in his charge to the grand jury. In order to serve as delegate to the Congress over which he soon presided, Jay resigned the chief justiceship on the tenth of November, 1778; and signalized his advent by a logical, seasonable, and cheering address to the people on the condition of affairs.

Jay's mind was essentially judicial: he had the temperament and taste as well as the reasoning powers desirable for legal investigation, and the probity[Pg 347] and decision of character essential to an administrator of law. With strong domestic proclivities and rural taste—the conflicts, excitement, and responsibilities of a political career were alien to his nature; but the functions of the higher magistracy found in him a congenial representative. Accordingly, it is evident from his correspondence and the concurrent testimony of his kindred and friends, that while as chief justice his sphere of duty was, however laborious, full of interest to his mind—the vocation of a diplomatist was oppressive: he undertook it, as he had other temporary public offices, from conscientious patriotism; the same qualities which gave him influence and authority on the bench commended him specially to his fellow citizens as a negotiator in the difficult and dangerous exigencies produced in our foreign relations by the war with Great Britain. Tact, sagacity, courage—the ability to command respect and to advocate truth and maintain right—dignity of manner, benignity of temper—devotion to his country—all the requisites seemed to combine in the character of Jay, on the one hand to enforce just claims, and, on the other, to propitiate good will. To raise a loan and secure an alliance in Spain seemed a hopeless task: Jay undertook it, much to his personal inconvenience and with extreme reluctance. The history of his mission, as revealed by his correspondence and official documents, is a history of vexations, mortifications, and patient, isolated struggles with difficulties, such as few men would have encountered voluntarily or endured with equanimity. The Spanish Government shrank from a decisive course, feared self-committal, promised aid, and to concede, on certain terms, the right of the United States to navigate the Mississippi. Jay took council of Franklin, who advised him not to accede to the terms proposed, but to maintain 'the even good temper hitherto manifested.' Meantime Congress drew on him for the loan without waiting to hear that it had been negotiated; after a small advance, the Spanish Government declined the loan unless the sole right of navigating the Mississippi were granted. Having thus failed to accomplish the great object, which indeed was unattainable except at a sacrifice which subsequent events have proved would have essentially interfered with the prosperous development of the Southwest—Jay, sensitively vigilant of his country's credit, despite his habitual prudence, accepted the bill at his own credit; boldly assuming the responsibility; his claims on the Spanish Government were proved; Franklin remitted twenty-five thousand dollars; of the one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, due December, 1780, only twenty-five thousand was paid by the following April; his outstanding acceptances amounted to two hundred and thirty-one thousand dollars—the greater part of which was due in two months. A more painful situation for a gentleman of refinement and honor can scarcely be imagined than that of John Jay—living without any salary, living on credit, scarcely recognized by the proud court to which he had been accredited; and yet maintaining his self-respect, persistent in his aim, courteous in his manner, faithful to his trust, harassed by anxiety—patient, true, and patriotic. As we read the lively and genial letters of the lamented Irving, when American minister at Madrid seventy years later, what a contrast to the high consideration and social amenities he enjoyed, are the humiliations and the baffled zeal of Jay, when obliged to 'stand and wait,' under circumstances at once so perplexing and hopeless! In March, 1782, the bills were protested; but the credit that seemed utterly destroyed was soon retrieved, though Jay found himself constrained, by the instructions of his Government, to yield the right of navigating the Mississippi in order to secure the treaty; having drawn and presented it, his presence[Pg 348] was no longer requisite, and he proceeded to France to act in concert with Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, and Lee in negotiating for peace.

In June, 1782, Jay arrived in Paris, and, with Franklin, for the most part carried on the negotiations which resulted in the treaty of peace; it was a period of 'painful anxiety and difficult labor:' Hamilton, Jefferson, and other of his eminent countrymen recognized warmly his services and his success: he did not altogether agree with Franklin, and was pertinacious in claiming all respect due to the Government he represented, assuring the British envoy that he would take no part in the business unless the United States 'were treated as an independent nation:' he drew up such a commission as would meet his views. While Hamilton gave Jay full credit for sagacity and honesty, he thought him suspicious, because he so far evaded his instructions as not to show 'the preliminary articles to our ally before he signed them:' this caution, however, arose from Jay's patriotic circumspection; he excused himself on the ground that his instructions 'had been given for the benefit of America, and not of France,' and argued justly that there was discretionary power to consult the public good rather than any literal directions, the spirit, aim, and scope thereof being steadily adhered to. Subsequent revelations abundantly proved that sagacity rather than suspicion, and knowledge more than conjecture justified Jay's course. There is a letter of Pickering, when Secretary of State, to Pinckney, when about to visit France as envoy from the United States Government, in regard to which Washington manifests in his correspondence particular solicitude for the absolute correctness of its statements; wherein the treachery of the French Government is demonstrated from official documents. Jay, during his residence in Spain, had ample opportunity to realize the selfish intrigues of the Bourbon dynasty, and he had a better insight as to the real objects of the French Government, from examining its policy at a distance and in connection with an ally, than Franklin, who had been exposed to its immediate blandishments, and had so many personal reasons for confidence and hope. Vergennes, then prime minister, looked to the relinquishment of the fisheries, and while France, from animosity to Great Britain, cheerfully aided us in the war of the Revolution, it was no part of her secret purpose to foster into independent greatness the power which she befriended from motives of policy during her own struggle with England. Jay, therefore, insisted upon a recognition of our independence on the part of Great Britain, not as the first article of the treaty, but as un fait accompli; and wisely declined to allow the French minister, whose plans and views he so well understood, to see the advantageous terms we made with the formidable enemy of France, until those terms were accepted, and the treaty signed.

After visiting England and returning to Paris, having declined an invitation from the Spanish Government to resume negotiations, and also a tender from his own Government of the English mission, Jay returned to his native land with delight, and on landing in New York, on the 24th of July, 1784, was received with great honor and affection. Ten years of public life had so little weaned him from his legal proclivities that he had determined to resume practice; but Congress urged upon him the important position of Secretary of Foreign Affairs, which place he filled with distinguished ability until the convention to form the Constitution met. In his correspondence, Jay's views of government are frankly and clearly unfolded: he had experienced the manifold evils of inadequate authority; and while he would have power emanate from the people, he deeply felt the necessity of making it sufficient for the exigencies[Pg 349] of civil society: a strong General Government, therefore, he deemed essential to national prosperity; his theory was not speculative, but practical, founded upon observation and experience: it was sustained by the wisest and best of his countrymen: it was, however, opposed to a prevalent idea of State rights, a jealousy of their surrender and infringement; comparatively few of his fellow citizens had, by reading and reflection, risen to the level of the problem whose solution was to be found in a charter at once securing all essential private rights and local freedom, while binding together, in a firm and patriotic union, the will and interests of a continent. Add to these obstacles the fierce partisan feeling engendered by the circumstances of the time and country—fears of aristocratic influences on the one hand, and sectional intrigues on the other, and we can easily perceive that the first duty of the enlightened and patriotic was to clear away prejudices, explain principles, advocate cardinal political truths, and lift the whole subject out of the dense region of faction and into the calm and clear sphere of reason and truth. Accordingly, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and others, by public discussion sought to elucidate and vindicate the Constitution: by conversation, correspondence, in the committee room and the assembly, through reference to the past, analysis of the present, anticipations of the future, John Jay, directly and indirectly advocated and illustrated the Constitution. With his gifted coadjutors he became an efficient political essayist; and, though prevented by illness from contributing largely to the 'Federalist,' he wrote enough to identify himself honorably with that favorite American classic of statesmen. His frankness, lucid style, perspicuous sense, made him as effective a writer in his own manner as the more intrepid Hamilton. When Washington came to New York to be inaugurated as first President of the United States, Jay proffered his hospitality with characteristic simplicity and good sense; he received the votes of two States as Vice President; at Washington's request he continued to perform the duties of Foreign Secretary until Jefferson assumed the office, when, with eminent satisfaction and in accordance with Jay's views, the President sent the latter's name to the Senate as Chief Justice, thus associating him with his Administration.

When Genet's arrival had stimulated partisan zeal into reckless faction, and his insulting course widened the breach between the two political sects, their representatives were exposed to all the unjust aspersion and violent prejudice born of extreme opinions and free discussions: one party held in high esteem the principles of the British constitution, recognized the moral as well as civic necessity of a strong central Government, and dreaded the unbridled license of French demagoguism; they steadily opposed any identity of action or responsibility in foreign affairs, cherished self-respect and self-reliance as the safeguard of the States, and sustained the dignified and consistent course of Washington: of these, John Jay was one of the most firm and intelligent advocates, and hence the object of the most unscrupulous partisan rancor: the name of Monarchist was substituted for Federalist, of Jacobin for Democrat: on the one hand, the British minister reproached the American Government with injustice to British subjects and interests, contrary to treaty stipulations; on the other, Genet complained of the ingratitude of the Government, and sought to array the people against it: England had not as yet fulfilled her part of the treaty; along the frontiers her troops still garrisoned the forts; the lakes were not free for American craft, and no remuneration had been made by Great Britain for the negroes which her fleet carried off at the close of the war: meantime her warlike attitude toward[Pg 350] France made still fiercer the conflict of the respective partisans on this side of the Atlantic; American seamen were impressed; crowds surrounded the President's house, clamorous for war; and he was only sustained in the Senate by an extremely small majority, while the Democratic party were eager for immediate action against England. At this crisis, Washington resolved to try another experiment for conciliation, and to this end proposed Jay as especial envoy to Great Britain. His nomination was opposed in the Senate, but prevailed by a vote of eighteen against eight. The mission was not desired by him. Uncongenial as were absence from home and diplomatic cares, this exile and duty were, in all private respects, opposed to his tastes and wishes; he foresaw the difficulties, anticipated the result, but, once convinced that he owed the sacrifice of personal to public considerations, he now, as before and subsequently, brought all his conscientiousness and intelligence to the service of his country. His reception at the court of St. James was kind and considerate, and his intercourse with Grenville, then Secretary of Foreign Affairs, carried on with the greatest mutual respect. A treaty was negotiated—Jay obtaining the best terms in his power: no state paper ever gave rise to more virulent controversy; it became a new line of demarcation, a new test of party feeling: Hamilton was its eloquent advocate, Jefferson its violent antagonist: Washington doubted the expediency of accepting it; and it passed the Senate by a bare majority. While in a calm retrospect we acknowledge many serious objections to such a treaty, they do not account for the intense excitement it caused; and the circumstances under which it was executed sufficiently explain, while they do not reconcile us to, the signal advantages it secured to Great Britain. She agreed to give up the forts;—but this concession had already been made; to compensate for illegal captures; there was a provision for collecting British debts in America; and in a commercial point of view American interests were sacrificed; it was declared a treaty wherein a weak power evidently succumbed to a strong: but on the other hand, public expectation had been extravagant: no reasonable American citizen, cognizant of the state of the facts and of party feeling, could have believed it possible to secure, at the time and under the circumstances, a satisfactory understanding; and no candid mind could doubt that a negotiator so patriotic, firm, and wise as John Jay had earnestly sought to make the best of a difficult cause, or that he was 'clear in his great office'—an office reluctantly accepted. It has been well said of Jay's treaty that 'now few defend it on principle, many on policy.' When its ratification was advised by the Senate, and it became public, the whole country was aroused; all the latent venom of partisan hate and all the wise forbearance of patriotic self-possession were arrayed face to face in so fierce an opposition that Washington justly described the period as 'a momentous crisis.' It was denounced as cowardly; it was defended as expedient; copies were publicly destroyed amid shouts of exultation: Jay was burned in effigy; the Boston Chamber of Commerce voted in favor of its ratification: Hamilton, under the signature of 'Camillus,' analyzed its claims, and deprecated the bitter hostility it had evoked; and Fisher Ames, in pleading for moderation to both parties, in the House of Representatives, embalmed his patriotic counsel with such heroic patience and eloquent references to his approaching end, that his speech became one of the standard exemplars of American eloquence.

Jay's own remarks on the subject in his private correspondence, are characteristic alike of his rectitude of purpose and equanimity of soul: 'The approbation,' he observes, in a letter to Dr. Thatcher, 'of one judicious and virtuous man relative to the conduct of the negotiations, affords me more satisfaction than clamor and intrigue have given me concern.'

Before the outbreak of political animosity on account of the treaty, and during his absence on that mission, Jay had been elected Governor of the State of New York; had that instrument been published in April instead of July, he would not have been chosen; and yet, despite the fever of partisan feeling, he made no removals. At the close of this memorable year, Washington died: that illustrious man held no man in greater esteem than Jay: to him and Hamilton he had submitted his Farewell Address: when the former's term of office expired, he determined to retire; and did so on the 1st of July, 1801, declining the reappointment as Chief Justice, earnestly tendered him. He now removed to his paternal estate at Bedford, in Westchester county, New York, to enjoy long-coveted repose from public duties. Thenceforth his life was one of dignified serenity and active benevolence. The superintendence of his farm, co-operation in philanthropic enterprises, the amenities of literature, the consolations of religion, and the graces of hospitality congenially occupied his remaining years—years abounding in respect from his countrymen, and the satisfactions of culture, integrity, and faith. He rebuilt the family mansion, occasionally made visits on horseback to New York and Albany. Now zealous in building up a church, and now benignly considerate of a dependant's welfare—loyal and happy in his domestic relations, interested in the welfare of both nation and neighborhood, and preserving his intimacy with the classics and the Scriptures—the last thirty years of John Jay's life, in their peaceful routine and gracious tenor, reflected with 'daily beauty' the sustained elevation of mind and the consistent kindliness and rectitude of a Christian gentleman. On the 17th of May, 1829, he died, crowned with love and honor. The echoes of party strife had long died away from his path: the clouds of party malice had faded from his horizon: all felt and acknowledged, in his example and character, the ideal of an American citizen. Not as a brilliant but as a conscientious man, not as a wonderfully gifted but as an admirably well-balanced mind, not as an exceptional hero but as a just, prudent, faithful, and benignant human being—true to the best instincts of religion, the highest principles of citizenship, the most pure aspirations of character—are cherished the influence and memory of Jay.

His personal appearance is familiar to us through the masterly portraits of Stuart: that in judicial robes has long been a favorite examplar of this eminent artist, exhibiting as it does his best traits of expression and color: although destitute of those vivid tints which Stuart reproduced with such[Pg 352] marvellous skill, the keen eyes, fine brow, aquiline nose, pointed chin, and hair tied behind and powdered, with the benign intelligence pervading the whole, render this an effective subject for such a pencil: it is a face in which high moral and intellectual attributes, dignity, rectitude, and clear perception harmoniously blend: the lineaments and outline are decidedly Gallic: one thinks, in looking at the portrait, not only of the able jurist, Christian gentleman, and patriot—but also of his Huguenot ancestor, who fought at Boyne, urbanely accepted exile rather than compromise faith, and suffered persecution with holy patience and adaptive energy of intellect and character.

The political opinions of Jay were obnoxious to a large party of his countrymen; but had we not so many examples in history and experience of the blind prejudice and malicious injustice generated by faction, it would seem incredible, as we contemplate, in the impartial light of retrospective truth, his character and career, that any imaginable diversity of views on questions of state policy, could have bred such false and fierce misconstruction in reference to one whose every memory challenges such entire respect and disinterested admiration. As it is, the record of his life, the influence of his character seem to borrow new brightness from the evidences of partisan calumny found in the more casual records of the past. Singularly intense and complicated is the history of the period when Jay's prominence and activity in the political world were at their height. On the one hand, the triumph of freedom in the New World; on the other, the atrocities committed in her sacred name in the Old: the American and French Revolutions, considered in regard to their origin, development, and results, seem to have brought to a practical test all principles of government and elements of civic life inherent in human society: so that they have since afforded the tests and illustrations of the most enlightened publicists and statesmen, and now yield the most familiar and emphatic precedents for political speculation and faith. In England, Pitt, Burke, Fox, and Mackintosh represented, with memorable power, the opposing elements of conservatism and reform, of social order and revolution, of humanity and of authority; while in America, Hamilton, Adams, Morris, Jay, and other leading Federalists, repudiated the license and condemned the encroachments of France, as Jefferson and his followers advocated the French republic on abstract principles of human rights and as having legitimate claims upon American gratitude. No small part of the bitterness exhibited toward Jay by the latter party arose from his having testified, with Rufus King, that Genet intended to appeal from the Government to the people of the United States—an audacious purpose on the part of the French envoy, which excited the just indignation of every citizen whose self-respect had not been quenched in the flame of political zeal: accordingly he, to a peculiar extent, 'shared the odium which the French Revolution had infused into the minds of its admirers:' partial to the spirit if not the letter of the English constitution, convinced by the absolute moral necessity of a strong central Government, an enlightened and strenuous advocate of law, a thorough gentleman, and a sincere Christian—his undoubted claim to the additional distinction of pure patriot did not save him from the aristocratic imputations, which professed champions of popular rights then and there attached to all men who recognized as essential to social order and progress, respect for and allegiance to justly constituted authorities in government and society: jealousy of the rights of the people was the ostensible motive of a political opposition to Jay, which, at this day and with all the evidence before us, seems inexplicable until we remember[Pg 353] how the mirage of party fanaticism distorts the vision and perverts the sympathies of men.

But to a well-poised, clear-sighted, upright character like his, the storms of faction seemed innocuous: how candid is his own confession of faith, how just his reasoning, and enlightened his principles, and patriotic his motives, as revealed in every act, state and judicial paper, recorded conversation, and private letter! 'Neither courting nor dreading public opinion,' he writes (in his account of the Spanish mission), 'on the one hand, nor disregarding it on the other, I joined myself to the first assertors of the American cause, because I thought it my duty; and because I considered caution and neutrality, however secure, as being no less wrong than dishonorable.' As he had espoused the cause deliberately, he served it conscientiously, and met the difficulties in the way of organizing the Federal Government with philosophical candor: 'It was a thing,' he observes, in his first contribution to the 'Federalist,' 'hardly to be expected that in a popular revolution, the minds of men should stop at the happy mean which marks the boundary between power and privilege, and combines the energy of government with the security of private right.'

An æsthetical student and delineator of character remarks that 'where we recognize in any one an image of moral elevation, which seems to us, at the first glance, unique and transcendent, I believe that, on careful examination, we shall find that among his coevals, or in the very nature of the times, those qualities which furnish their archetype in him were rife and prevalent.'[16] The highest class of American statesmen and patriots, and especially those grouped around the peerless central figure of Washington, afford striking evidence of the truth of this observation. A certain spirit of disinterested integrity and devotion, an elevated and consistent tone of feeling and method of action alike distinguished them; and nothing can be imagined more violently in contrast therewith than the inadequate standard of judgment and scope of criticism adopted by those who, actuated by partisan zeal and guided by narrow motives, apply to such characters the limited gauge of their own insight and estimation—endeavoring to atone by microscopic accuracy for imbecility in fundamental principles.' Hence the foreign publicist of large research and precise historical knowledge, the scholar of broad and earnest sympathies, the patriot of generous and tenacious principles, find in these exemplars of civic virtue objects of permanent admiration; while many of their self-appointed commentators, entrenched in pedantic or political dogmas, and devoid of comprehensive ideas and true magnanimity, fail to recognize and delight in depreciating qualities with which they have no affinity, and whose legitimate functions they ignore or pervert—for 'Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame.' With all due allowance for honest differences of opinion as to political or religious creeds, for diversities of taste and education, there yet remains to the truly humane, wise, and liberal soul, an instinctive sense of justice, veneration for rectitude, love of the beautiful and the true, which keeps alive their veneration and quickens their higher sympathies despite the venom of faction and the blindness of prejudice; and thus causes the elemental in character to maintain its lawful sway whatever may be the inferences of partisan logic or the dicta of personal opinion. Goethe's invaluable rule of judging every character and work of art by its own law is ever present to their minds, and they find a satisfaction in the spontaneous tribute of love and honor to real genius and superior worth, all the more grateful because there is not entire sympathy of sentiment and creed; their homage[Pg 354] and faith are as disinterested as they are sincere.

An eminent English novelist has indicated with genial emphasis, in one of his essays, how much more wonderful as a psychological phenomenon is the clairvoyance of imagination than that ascribed to mesmerism: since, by the former, writers of genius describe with verisimilitude, and sometimes with a moral accuracy such as we can scarcely believe to originate in the creative mind alone, all the traits and phases of a scene, an event, or a character, the details of which are lost in dim tradition or evaded by authentic history. Shakspeare is cited as the memorable example of this intellectual prescience. There is, however, another species of foresight and insight whereby the logic of events is anticipated, and great principles embraced before the multitude are prepared for their adoption; reformers and statesmen are thus in advance of their age, and through high ethical judgment and the inspiration of rectitude, see above the clouds of selfishness and beyond the limits of egotism, into the eternal truth of things. It was this wisdom, sustained by, if not born of, integrity and disinterestedness, that distinguished the highest class of our Revolutionary and Constitutional statesmen, culminating in Washington, and in no one of his contemporaries more manifest than in John Jay. We have alluded to the comprehensive and sagacious scope of his various state papers and judicial decisions, based invariably upon the absolute principles of equity; and the same traits are as obvious in his correspondence and occasional writings: but recently there was found among his papers a charge to the grand jury at Richmond, Virginia, in which are expressed the most authentic principles of international drawn from natural law, at a period and in a country where the former had not been codified or even vaguely understood; and so practical as to be of direct application to the exigencies of the present hour. At the root of these convictions was a profound religious faith. No one of the early American statesmen, for instance, has left on record a more clear and just statement of his views of slavery;—that foul blot on the escutcheon of the republic was ever before the eyes and conscience of Jay; he sought not to evade, but to make apparent its inevitable present shame and future consequences, and argued for a prospective abolition clause in the Constitution. The events of the last three years are a terrible and true response to his warnings. 'Till America,' he wrote, 'comes into this measure (emancipation) her prayers to heaven will be impious. I believe God governs the world, and I believe it is a maxim in His as in our courts, that those who ask for equity ought to do it.' He set the example in the manumission of a boy then his legal property, and was the president of the first anti-slavery society, bequeathing the cause to his descendants, who have faithfully acquitted themselves of the once contemned but now honored trust, for three generations; for his son succeeded him in the office, his grandson has been and is its strenuous advocate, and his great-grandson now confronts the slaveholding rebels in the Army of the Potomac. His intelligent and patriotic fellow citizens realized and recognized the faith and probity whence arose his moral courage and his clear mental vision, 'His life,' says Sullivan, 'was governed by the dictates of an enlightened Christian conscience.' One of his last letters was in reply to the congratulation of the corporation of New York that he lived to witness the fiftieth anniversary of our national independence, and an invitation to join in its commemoration; too feeble, from advanced age, to meet their wishes in this respect, in gratefully declining he thus bore testimony to his life-long convictions: 'The most essential means of securing the continuance of our civil and religious liberties is always to re[Pg 355]member with reverence and gratitude the source from which they flow?' We can readily appreciate the literal truth of Verplanck's observation, when death canonized such a character: 'A halo of veneration seemed to encircle him, as one belonging to another world, though lingering among us: the tidings of his death were received with solemn awe.'

Jay cherished a firm belief in Providence, confirmed by his long life of varied experience and thoughtful observation. Proverbially courteous and urbane, he was, at the same time, inflexible in the withdrawal of all confidence when once deceived or disappointed in character. Clear and strong in his religious convictions, he was none the less free from intolerance; he enjoyed communion with a Quaker neighbor as well as correspondence with clerical friends of different persuasions, though himself a stanch Episcopalian.

Underlying a singularly contained demeanor and aptitude for calm and serious investigations, there was a vein of pleasant humor which enhanced the charm of his intimate companionship; bold, independent, and tenacious in opinion, when once formed, he was perfectly modest in personal bearing and intercourse; his mind was more logical than severe in temper, more vigorous than versatile, judicial in taste and tone, with more precision than eagerness; and his temperament united the gravity of a cultivated and thoughtful with the vivacity and amenity of a harmonious and cheerful nature. Like Washington and Morris, he was fond of agricultural pursuits; and like them, his example as a statesman seems to acquire new force and beauty from the long and contented retirement from official life that evinced the plenitude of his own resources, and evidenced how much more a sense of public duty than political ambition had been the motive power of his civic career. It is this which distinguishes the first-class representative men of our country from the mere politicians; we feel that their essential individuality of character and genius was superior to the accidents of position; that their intrinsic worth and real dignity required no addition from fame or fortune—that they are nobler than their offices, superior to their popularity, above their external relation to the parties and functions illustrated by their talents, and made memorable by their integrity.

A SIGH.

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

A PHILOSOPHIC DEBATE.

A. I would like to hear your opinions regarding the antiquity of our race: geologists are daily becoming bolder and more unhesitating in their assertions on the subject; and we are fast drifting toward conclusions that seem to startle the religious world, and threaten to upset our confidence in that Book which we have been accustomed to regard with profoundest reverence.

B. Never, sir, never: the hand of true science can never rise as the antagonist of revelation: revelation, rightly understood, must ever find in science a brother, a protector, a friend.

A. How would you maintain your position, if the geologists should arrive at a final conclusion on the subject, and declare positively that men existed in the world twenty or thirty thousand years ago?

B. They have arrived at such a conclusion already; that is to say, they have, in a stratum which cannot be less than twenty thousand years old, unearthed some skeletons of a mammal resembling man. But let these skeletons resemble ours ever so closely, I, for one, am not prepared to concede that these creatures, when they existed, were men in the sense that we are. Revelation declares quite explicitly that the present race is not more than six thousand years old.

A. What theory, then, must we adopt respecting these human-shaped fossils? Why do you deny that they were men like us?

B. It will be sufficient for our purpose that you admit two points regarding the existing race.

B. Well, then; answer me this: Were the men whose remains are now being discovered, of a spiritual nature, and endowed with minds? Might they not rather have been mere mammals, shaped indeed in the same external mould as that in which the Creator intended, when the time should come, to form his masterpiece; but not as yet tenanted by that divine nature which would have entitled him to rank with the race existing now?

A. Such questions it is hardly the province of geology to solve. But it may fairly be asked, What right have we to suppose that beings ever existed who were men only in shape, but who were destitute of the spiritual nature? Does the Bible allow us any margin on which to base such a belief? Do the sacred writers mention the creation of two human races, one endowed with merely an animal nature, the other possessing a spiritual nature?

B. Scripture does so in passages which I shall point out presently. But first, concede to me this one point, admitted by many theologians already, that in the first and second chapters of Scripture, the term 'day' has an ambiguous meaning—that the days were vast geological eras.

B. The first human creation spoken of by Moses is that mentioned in Gen. i. 27, where, immediately after recording the creation of the inferior animals, it is said that 'God created man in his own image,' etc. Thus the visible and external creation has received its top and climax: the animals have found a[Pg 357] master. After that, we are told that 'the evening and the morning were the sixth day.' Then the second chapter is opened, and the seventh day is described as forming a vast interval of rest.

B. Now look at the seventh verse of this second chapter. The words are: 'And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul.' Now I regard this passage as referring to a creation quite distinct from that of the first chapter.

A. Theologians have been in the habit of considering the two passages as descriptive of the same act.

B. I am aware of it. But by what right have they done so? Everywhere else in Genesis we find events recorded in chronological order, and there is no reason why the historian should in this instance commit the irregularity of passing from the end of the seventh day to the beginning of the sixth: it is certainly much more likely that in the story of the second chapter and seventh verse he has passed on to an event which transpired at the close of the seventh day, or, still more probably, on the first day of a new series. And if it were so, we would thus have, in the time of this second and spiritual creation, a beautiful symbol of a more recent first-day's-work, when manifestation was made of a life far nobler than Adam's.

A. Your parallel is not without beauty, and, therefore, not without weight; but I cannot see enough of difference between the two accounts to warrant the hypothesis that the first refers to an unspiritual man, the second to a spiritual. The first account says that 'man was made in God's image.' The second says of the man which it describes, that 'God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul.'

B. We must not attach too much importance to the term 'God's image.' The sacred writer might make use of such an expression merely to show the excellency of the image or form of the body of this first human race, whose frame, relatively to the inferior animals, was, par excellence, God's image. And on the whole, the difference between the two accounts is very wide and very important. The first passage does not stand connected with the history of the present race at all: the second does. In the former passage the creation of a race is described, but the individual is not even named: in the latter we are not merely told of a race, we are introduced to an individual. His name is given, and he is connected with the existing race of mankind by a continuous history. In speaking of the difference between the two passages, it were well to consider that, till of late, there has been no reason to suspect their real significancy, i. e., to suppose that they spoke of two creations and two races. But now that the proofs of a pre-Adamite race are fast accumulating upon us, it were well to inquire whether God's revelation has not anticipated the story which the strange hieroglyphics of his finger are now unfolding. The philologist and the geologist are each deciphering the same story in two different books, that are equally divine. It remains to be seen which will be the first to read correctly.

A. The account in the second chapter certainly speaks explicitly enough of the creation of the soul or spirit.

B. Yes; and observe this: that the seventh day, a mighty geological era, has elapsed between the two creations—a period long enough for the first race to pass entirely away, leaving behind them as their only memorials a few skeletons, to be dug up here and there in the nineteenth century of the Christian era. When the last specimen of the anterior race had been long dead, God created the new man, 'breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,' and gave him a mind and a name to dis[Pg 358]tinguish him from the former race that had borne the same image.

A. Of course we cannot expect geologists to discriminate between the two races, seeing they differed only by the latter having a spiritual nature, while the former had not.

A. Perhaps, then, there is, after all not so much absurdity as has been supposed in the oriental traditions of pre-Adamite kings.

B. It need not surprise us that there should, among primitive nations, exist some traditionary vestiges of the first race: and such traditions were probably derived from some very reliable source. But be that as it may, I am not afraid to trust the settlement of the entire question to the arbitration of time.

WHO KNOWS?

LITERARY NOTICES.

A moral and interesting novel. There is a fascinating freshness and originality about it, pervaded by genial humor and strong common sense, and an utter absence of all common and clap-trap sensational expedients. The plot is simple, but well conceived; the characters consistent and clear cut, the incidental remarks tolerant and full of spirit. We know no more true and delightful character-painting than that of Rose. Her shyness, exclusiveness, pettishness, and ignorance are delicious in the rosy girl of sixteen. Her friendship with Linnet, a woman of imaginative and impassioned stamp, is natural in conception, and skilfully rendered. Linnet is expansive and sympathetic, her sweet and all-pervading influence is the true charm of the book. The woman of beauty and genius ripens into the perfect wife, strengthening weak hands and reviving courage in weary, doubting hearts. 'Linnet is like an alabaster vase, only seen to perfection when lighted up from within.'

We heartily recommend 'Linnet' to all readers of fiction, who like to study character through its rainbow sheen.

A complete treatise on this beautiful art, in which typography and illustrations are alike perfect. The directions given are ample and accurate. The contents are: Chap. 1. Anatomy of a Leaf; Green and Dried Leaves. 2. Preparing the Leaves and Flowers. 3. Bleaching the Leaves and Seed Vessels. 4. Arranging the Bouquets. 5. Illustrated List of Plants for Skeletonizing. 6. Seed Vessels. 7. The Wonders and Uses Of a Leaf. 8. Leaf Printing. 9, Commercial Value of the Art; Preservation of Flowers. We have accurate cuts of the skeletonized leaves of the American Swamp Magnolia, Silver Poplar, Aspen Poplar, Tulip Poplar, Norway Maple, Linden and Weeping Willow, European Sycamore, English Ash, Everlasting Pea, Elm, Deutzia, Beech, Hickory, Chestnut, Dwarf Pear, Sassafras, Althea, Rose, Fringe Tree, Dutchman's Pipe, Ivy and Holly, with proper times of gathering and individual processes of manipulation for securing success with each. 'Fanciful though expressive,' says our author, 'is the appellation of 'Phantom' or 'Spiritual' Flowers; it was given to the first American specimens by those who produced them, and it has since become so general as to be everywhere understood and accepted as their most appropriate name. Referring to the process by which these flowers are prepared, a Christian friend beautifully used them as emblems of the Resurrection, and as illustrating the ideas—'Sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body,' and, 'This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality.''

All who practise this beautiful and lucrative art with any hope of success, should purchase 'Phantom Flowers,' the result of five years' industrious and intelligent effort.

These translations are of far more than ordinary merit. From his exceeding and tender simplicity, Geibel is very difficult to render aright: a word too much will frequently ruin the stanza in which it may have been introduced almost necessarily to fill up the rhythm or consummate the rhyme; a single injudicious ornament will spoil the whole effect of the cadenced emotions of which his poems consist. We have tried Geibel, and the songs of Heine, and know the difficulties; we heartily congratulate our authoress on her success. Nor are her own[Pg 360] poems less beautiful. Musically rhythmed, delicately worded, and purely felt, they commend themselves to the reader. They do not soar into the region of abstract thought; they are without pretension, mysticism, or effort. She challenges no crown, her range is limited, but our hearts swell and throb with the emotions she sings. A single specimen will best elucidate our meaning:

BABY LILY.

The character of this work is so high and so widely known that it is only necessary to remind or inform our readers of the appearance of the fourth volume to awaken their interest. Merivale succeeds in making his subject intensely interesting. Beginning with the anticipations of a constitutional monarchy, the indifference of the citizens on political questions, the legislative measures to encourage marriage, the efforts of Augustus to revive the national sentiment, this volume carries us quite through his important reign, with all its great events and domestic dramas. We have descriptions of the nature of life in Rome, places of recreation, exhibitions of wild beasts and gladiators, the schools of the rhetoricians, as well as studies of the authors, Livy, Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, each reflecting in his own way the sentiments of the Augustan age. It is a complex and important period of history, and nobly treated by our author. Brutus and Cassius evoke no false sympathy. The character of Augustus is closely analyzed, and the sketch of the Roman dominion, in its political, social, and intellectual outlines, is able and interesting.

RECEIVED.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The pity of it is that the majority of our young ladies, on leaving school, know as little of music, French, and Italian as they can possibly do of housekeeping.—Ed. Con.

[2] The House of the Sisters of Mercy in New York is a worthy commencement in the above-mentioned direction, and has, as far as we know, hitherto proved successful.—Ed. Con.

[3] Frederick I. ruled till 1713; the succession since then has been as follows: Frederick William I., 1713-'40; Frederick II. (the Great), 1740-'86: Frederick William II., 1786-'97; Frederick William III., 1797-1840; Frederick William IV., 1840-'61; William I., 1861.

[4] Land recently reclaimed from the Back Bay, near the foot of Beacon street, in which the richer citizens of Boston are continually building and furnishing the most showy houses.

[5] I was made a convert to that excellent officer, Corporal Punishment, by the 'happy effects,' as medical writers say of blisters, thereby brought about in the case of a divine of tender years, who had got at his Bible through the medium of German (not Luther's).

Taking for his text the first verse of Genesis, he paraphrased it: 'In the beginning, all things projected themselves from within outward, and evolved a Final Cause out of the depths of their individual consciousness.' As soon as he had got through his discourse and gratefully asked a blessing on all that we had 'learned and taught,' the sexton, who apparently entertained unusually high and comprehensive view of the duties of his calling, attended the preacher to the vestry. Thence presently issued cries indicative not only of remorse, but of some kind of physical distress. The two are often connected as intimately as mysteriously in the discipline of the visible world, although we are often assured by those who must know, that they have nothing whatever to do with each other In the invisible. On the reappearance of the offender, as he meekly wiped his eyes and passed down the aisle, he was heard, in a broken voice, inquiring of the deacons where a Hebrew dictionary could be bought; and I have since been credibly informed that before he arrived at maturity he had learned a good deal.

Now anybody can read German; in fact, a great many persons seem wholly unable to stop. But if we do not keep a theological boy to read our Greek and Hebrew for us, then what do we keep one for? Or, to make the question intelligible to those among us who speak the Sweden-borgian tongue, what 'uses does he perform?'

[6] Said the pleader to the judge, 'If there is any one thing which, more than any other thing, proves the thing, this thing is that thing!' 'Which thing?' said the judge to the pleader.

[7] White Island is in the Bay of Plenty, not far from Auckland, the government seat of New Zealand, on the more northerly of the two islands forming the group. According to Mr. George French Angas, whose Travels in New Zealand are quoted In Dicken's Household Words for October 19, 1850, the neighboring mainland (if the word may be applied to the principal inland) abounds in hot springs of volcanic origin.

Mr. Angas says:

'I visited the boiling springs which issue from the side of a steep mountain, called Te Rapa. There were nearly one hundred of them; they burst out, bubbling from little orifices in the ground, which are not more than a few inches in diameter, the steam rushes out in clouds with considerable force: the hillside is covered with them, and a river of hot water runs down into the lake. The soil around is a red-and-white clay, strongly impregnated with sulphur and hydrogen gas; pyrites also occur. Several women were busy cooking baskets of potatoes over some of the smaller orifices: leaves and ferns were laid over the holes, upon which the food was placed. They were capitally done.

'About two miles from this place, on the edge of a great swampy flat, I met with a number of boiling ponds; some of them of very large dimensions. We forded a river flowing swiftly toward the lake, which is fed by the snows melting in the valleys of the Tongariro. In many places, in the bed of this river, the water boils up from the subterranean springs below, suddenly changing the temperature of the stream, to the imminent risk of the individual who may be crossing. Along whole tracts of land I heard the water boiling violently beneath the crust over which I was treading. It is very dangerous travelling, for, if the crust should break, scalding to death must ensue. I am told that the Rotuma natives, who build their houses over the hot springs in that district, for the sake of constant warmth at night, frequently meet with accidents of this kind: it has happened that when a party has been dancing on the floor, the crust has given way, and the convivial assembly has been suddenly swallowed up in the boiling caldron beneath! Some of the ponds are ninety feet in circumference, filled with a transparent pale-blue boiling water, sending up columns of steam. Channels of boiling water run along the ground in every direction, and the surface of this calcareous flat around the margin of the boiling ponds covered with beautiful incrustations of lime and alum, in some parts forming flat saucer-like figures. Husk of maize, moss, and branches of vegetable substances were incrusted in the same manner. I also observed small deep holes, or wells, here and there among the grass and rushes, from two inches to as many feet in diameter, filled with boiling mud, that rises in large bubbles as thick as hasty pudding; these mud pits sent up a strong sulphureous smell. Although the ponds boiled violently, I noticed small flies walking swiftly, or rather running on their surface.

The steam that rises from these boiling springs is visible for many miles, appearing like the jets of a number of steam engines.'—Vol. ii., pp. 113, 114, 115.

[8] The writer saw the defiant little yacht lying snug at the Savannah wharf, in October, 1859—after the trial.

[9] In the constitution of the republic of Texas (1836), it is declared (sec. 9 of General Provisions), 'All persons of color who were slaves for life previous to their immigration to Texas, and who are now held in bondage, shall remain in the like state of servitude.' But in the constitution of the State of Texas (1845) there is no such declaration; and article i., the Bill of Rights, sec. 1, declares: 'All power is inherent in the people.' The foregoing provision of the Texan constitution of 1836, is believed to be the only actual establishment of slavery in any Southern State, and even that has been abrogated, as is seen, by the State constitution of 1845. (See Hurd's Law of Freedom and Bondage, vol. ii.)

[10] Alison's History of Europe, vol. iii. p. 461.

[11] Imagine an immense sphere enclosed within two contiguous and equally thin envelopes, and yet sufficiently thick to show their edges distinctly when broken; the outer, a photosphere, having an intensely bright surface, and the inner, or penumbra, of a dull gray surface; while the enclosed hollow space is all dark, with the exception of an occasional fleecy cloud, floating within, and contiguous to the inner envelope. Now remove a large irregular piece from the outer, and a smaller piece from the inner envelope, and you have an exact idea of the appearance of a spot; contrasting the comparative brilliancy of the photosphere with the penumbra; their relative thickness; the intense blackness within, and occasional cloud stratum floating beneath the opening, as seen, under the most favorable circumstances, with a good telescope.[Pg 330]

[12] The Nasmyth willow-leaf appearance, I think, is either the result of imperfect vision, defective instruments, or unfavorable state of the air, distorting the unvarying result of my observations, as above described, which have been a thousand times repeated in our clearer atmosphere, both on the coast and interior mountain regions. My observation of a general pore-like character, over the whole surface of the photosphere of the sun, is, I think, corroborated by considering the spots, as usually known and visible with ordinary instruments, as merely greater pores of the same general character.

[13] 'Life and Letters of Washington Irving,' by Pierre M. Irving. New York: G. P. Putnam.

[14] Elements of International Law. By Henry Wheaton. Edited by W.B. Laurens. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

[15] The Federalist. Edited by H. B. Dawson. New York: C. Scribner.

[16] 'Caxtoniana.'

The

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

Literature and National Policy

VOL. VI.—September, 1864—No. III.

CONTENTS

OUR DOMESTIC AFFAIRS.

ÆNONE:

A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.

CHAPTER XII.

APHORISMS.—No. XII.

A GLANCE AT PRUSSIAN POLITICS.

PART I.

ASLEEP.

A CASTLE IN THE AIR.

THE DEVIL'S CAÑON IN CALIFORNIA.

FLY LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A SOLDIER.

PART I.—SCALES.

THE SACRIFICE

STRECK-VERSE.

THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.—A POLISH DRAMA.

Dedicated to Mary.

PART I.

THE IDEAL.

SOUND REFLECTIONS.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

I. THE RIGHT, UNDER THE CONSTITUTION, TO ADOPT THE PROPOSED AMENDMENT.

II. THE EXPEDIENCY AND NECESSITY OF THE PROPOSED AMENDMENT.

AVERILL'S RAID.

OBSERVATIONS OF THE SUN.

AN ARMY: ITS ORGANIZATION AND MOVEMENTS.

FOURTH PAPER.

VIOLATIONS OF LITERARY PROPERTY.

THE FEDERALIST.—LIFE AND CHARACTER OF JOHN JAY.

A SIGH.

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

A PHILOSOPHIC DEBATE.

WHO KNOWS?

LITERARY NOTICES.

BABY LILY.

RECEIVED.

FOOTNOTES: